Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Bush's New Bracero Program

President Bush is back on his effort to create a guest worker program to "fill jobs that Americans will not do." Rather than letting market forces adjust the terms and conditions of these jobs - hours, pay, health care, education, upward growth, etc. he proposes to flood the supply of labor with a new and expanded Bracero program.

The Bracero Program (1942-1964) was an agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments that permitted Mexican citizens to take temporary agricultural work in the United States. When US farmworkers protested poor wages or working conditions, farm owners brought in braceros, undercutting the bargaining power of the American farmworkers.

Many of the braceros lived in poverty conditions - without adequate food, water, or shelter. Additionally, many of the barceros were forced to pay a portion of their pay to so called manditory savings programs that were never paid to them. The program was ended to prevent further abuse of braceros and US farmworkers.

Bush's Guest worker program will not only include agricultural workers, but workers from all sectors of the economy. What will make it work this time? And who will pick up the tab for the health, education and welfare of their children? Will Bush convince Vincente Fox to create a high-tech jobs program in Mexico to provide jobs for all the unemployed high tech workers desiring a better climate and lifestyle?

Sunday, November 27, 2005


Horatio Alger was a 19th-century American author. Many of his works have been described as rags-to-riches stories, illustrating how down-and-out boys might be able to achieve the American dream of wealth and success through hard work, saving, planning, and determination.

He would be considered a fool here in Mexico, a nation which retains the native life ethic. That is something to which America can never aspire, having murdered those who could teach it.

A quote often repeated in describing difference between Americans and Mexicans is "Americans live to work while Mexicans work to live". It is well understood by Mexicans, but the meaning usually passes over the heads of Americans.

Suppose a Mexican and an American met for the first time. The American might say "I am a doctor, engineer, bricklayer, truck driver, salesperson, etc., etc., etc..", and the Mexican, "I live in the small town of Xtlahuacan with my wife, mother, two sons, a daughter, and an uncle". The American would question "But what kind of work do you do?" The Mexican would then think "Who is this man, and why in the hell would he want to know that?"

The American defines himself in terms of how his work benefits those he considers superior. The Mexican considers no one superior and views himself a part of those near.

A Mexican friend once succinctly described the difference another way. "Mexicans have more heart." Normally lacking in that, most Americans would not understand. I learned something about myself in realizing I did.

A passport issued on basis of a first 56 years in America claims I am of it. But hearts trump passports every time. The subsequent 19 in Mexico ensure mine's final beats will tap a mariachi rythm.

Friday, November 25, 2005

BUSH - A Clear and Present Danger

If BUSH does not like what you say or do... Bush makes a couple quick phone calls. This is why no network will carry pictures of dead bodies or caskets from the war. In foreign countries where he does not have political control over the news source, he simply orders a Clear and Present Danger style shut-up hit.

According to a recent article in the Daily Mirror, Bush ordered the bombing of al-Jazeera's headquarters building in Doha for reporting behind rebel lines and broadcasting pictures of dead soldiers, private contractors and Iraqi victims. Yesterday, he followed-up with a gag order on publishing further details on the story.

In 2001 the al-Jazeera's Kabul office was demolished by two 500-pound "smart" bombs.

On April 8, 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad office.

On April 8, 2003, more journalists, Julio Anguita Parrado and Christian Liebig were killed south of Baghdad.

On September 12, 2004, Mazen Al-Tomaizi, a Palestinian television journalist working for Saudi news channel Al-Ekhbariya and Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya, was killed yesterday by an American missile as he was reporting live from Baghdad on deadly clashes between US forces and insurgents.

On June 24, 2005 Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi special correspondent for the news agency Knight Ridder, was asassinated by a single bullet to the head for investigating US-backed death squads in Iraq.

How many more of these were Clear and Present Danger style shut-up hits?

How many Clear and Present Danger style shut-up hits happen here in our country?

Thursday, November 24, 2005


Today is what those in the Untied Slates of Aremica call their Thanksgiving holiday. It is celebrated in honor of a bunch of white crooks from England who found a new place where they could slaughter natives who wouldn't slave for them and replace them with natives stolen from another continent. Americans families, under guidance of schooling's historical lies, celebrate by watching athletic contests and gorging themselves on bland food.

Their chief cowboy will be at his Texas ranch pretending to do the same. He isn't really a cowboy, but a spoiled rich kid from the eastern USA state of Connecticut. His daddy established fake residence in Texas because it does not have an income tax and profits from his CIA drug running wouldn't have to be shared with ordinary people. Little Georgie's contribution to family empire continuance was to garner votes by mimicking the accents of white Texas bigots.

You have never seen a picture of him on a horse. Falling off bicycles, yes, but a horse, no. The ranch isn't even a ranch but a pig farm purchased for photo opportunity effect. Construction of its "ranch house" was completed the day after the "election" took place. "Cowboy" Bush will be there through the weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Others will be there too and so can you. Anti war protesters were arrested yesterday for violating a new law prohibiting anyone who opposes the war from spitting or going to the toilet within a ten mile radius of the pig farm. There is another way. Enter 31.530399, -97.544391 in Google Earth's upper left search box, and you will quickly be looking down on the fake ranch house. Enlarge the image until the house fills the window and get ready to join the rest of us BASTARDS.

Bloggers Against Stupid Tyrants And Reprehensible Dictatorial Sonsobitches (BASTARDS) will conduct an experiment to determine if psycho kinesis can be used to see if there really is a god. The action will occur at exactly midnight Universal Mean Time. That is 6 pm Texas time for Americans unaware of other places and times besides those of their latest invadee. All BASTARDS will have computer screens focused on the fake ranch house at that moment and spit in unison on their computer screens.

We may then see if inundated Texas bushes fare any better than the downtrodden of New Orleans.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Falling Down Fast

Bush carried his $3,000 bike to China in order to seize the moment for a photo op, one which would show the Chinese he was a regular good old guy, just like them.

Like most of his misadventures, it didn't work out that way.

Newspapers carried a photo of the venture's start in front of a sign of the olympic mascot symbol at the trail bike course. The photo provided impetus for an unintended national joke.

"Which one is the American dummy?"


"Keep watching. He'll be the one that falls off".

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Haitians get it

Haiti's electoral agency on Friday threw out Dumarsais Simeus, Samir George Mourra and Jacques Jose Nicolas from the race for the country's presidency. The council on Friday ruled that no holder of a foreign passport can run for election in Haiti. Simeus is Haitian-born millionaire who was naturalized an American Citizen in 1970. Mourra, a business man, was also a naturalized American Citizen. Nicolas, was dropped due to problems with his documents. This leaves 35 candidates running for presidency in the election expected to be held in December.

Two presidential candidates ruled out of Haitian election due to American nationality by Vario Sérant
Caribbean Net News Haiti November 10, 2005

Haiti election body bars US citizens from ballotReuters
Nov 11, 2005

Haiti's Pre-election fight goes on Heartbeat News November 14, 2005

Two Haitian-U.S. citizens barred presidential vote Tehran Times November 13, 2005

USA Considers Another Terror Attack

A confidential memo circulating among senior US ruling party leaders suggests creating another attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as his party and "restore his image as a leader of the American people."

The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring his party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could "validate" the President's war on terror and allow Bush to "unite the country" in a "time of national shock and sorrow." The memo says such a reversal in the President's fortunes could keep the party from losing control of Congress in the next elections.

The memo circulates as disastrous election defeats have left an already dysfunctional White House in chaos, Insiders say shouting matches are commonplace and the blame game is escalating into open warfare. "This place is like a high-school football locker room after the team lost the big game," grumbles one Bush administration aide. "Everybody's pissed and pointing the finger of blame at everybody else."

Party insiders who have seen the memo admit it's a risky strategy. Some worry that such a scenario carries high risk, pointing out that an attack might suggest the President has not done enough to protect the country. "We also have to face the fact that many Americans no longer trust the President," says a longtime strategist. "That makes it harder for him to become a rallying point."

US politicians no longer talk of "victory" in Iraq but use the term "successful resolution. A successful resolution would be getting out intact and civil war not breaking out until after the midterm elections, Suggests one "Declare victory and run like hell".

"In 30 years of sampling public opinion, I've never seen such a free fall in public support," admits one party pollster. Another says "None of the old tricks work." One legislator admits the ruling party is mired in its rural (read racist) base in a country that's becoming less and less rural. "You play to your rural (read racist) base, and you pay a price," he says. "Our issues blew up in our face."

As party political strategists scramble to find a message "any message" that will ring true with voters, leaders in Congress admit privately that control of the country by right-wing extremists makes recovery all but impossible. "We've made our bed with these people," admits one "Now it's the morning after and the hangover hurts like hell."

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

We Are The Message

Public information about early native confrontations in the eastern US spread slowly over years by mouth. Ignorant accounts of the western phase of the genocide took weeks or months to print. Early US manifest destiny adventures in Mexico, the Philippines, and Cuba shortened reporting time but little. People could read within a week what they were supposed to believe of the last century's first War To End All Wars. The next, World War II, featured make believe movie news reels lying about and glorying one side's heroes. The people of the US were treated to early television coverage during their Korean defeat, but that was so restricted, few not directly engaged realized there were so many Chinese.

Rapid rapes of smaller nations since received quick mention and that's about all. Vietnam was an exception because of its length. Real credit for ending it goes to the Vietnamese in victory, but reports and films in the US of just a few of its uglier moments helped cut through and harness America's self glorifying craziness. Today's commercial media propagate pre written fairy tale chapters almost concurrent to the underlying events on which they are tagged. The times are changing by speeding communication's stop watch.

A steadily expanding crowd now grows beyond fairy tale age and knows to look elsewhere for the story. I learned a short wave antenna and radio could pierce the fictional shield when the US was in Vietnam. Voice of Havana, Radio Moscow, CBC, and BBC radio were as self serving as the CIA's Voice of America. Taken together however, one could make more informed guesses as to what was really happening. The internet is the short wave radio of today.

There are those that would try control the internet. A conference is in session at this moment in Tunisia fussing over not whether it should it controlled but rather how by who. Whatever schemes are developed will be but sneezes in the wind as wishful masters of manipulation try to determine which computers connect to which others.

The only way the internet could be controlled would be by banning computers. There is too much profit and selfish interest for that. A salesperson without a customer earns no commission. Propagandists lacking audience effectively say nothing. The sellers and the liars need the internet and see their future enhanced by the number of its users. The concern of the various competing interests is that they are no longer alone in fabricating content. They would like to expand the audience but fence the podium. It can't be done. You and I and our friends have voices too. Though we shout from backstage, more and more of the crowd is taking the stroll behind.

Anyone with but little facility can take from the Internet and add to it. Even limitation of differing language is surmounted. Though most in ruling nations absorbed in self satisfying arrogance speak only their own tongue, that self imposed wall of communicative isolation is punctured by much of rest of the world's multilingual capability. The con artists have become their own worst enemy in teaching intended marks to follow the pitch.

Wars and other abuses of power depend in large part on secrecy to insure ignorant supporting populations as well as cannon fodder. That doesn't work well anymore, and we, here and now, are one small example of the reason. What we do here adds to and spreads not only personal belief but information gathered and blended from unfettered sources the world over. Its value is much more than an outlet for political frustration. We know what papers in France and Italy report because of Nur-el Cubical's blog. The thoughts and attitudes of yabasta's Mexican neighbors are spread through her blog, forum contributions, and chat room comments. The more frequent users of our chat room express views and news gained in Argentina, China, England, Germany, India, Mexico, Romania, Thailand, and USA. We transend not only space but time through perspective of ages varying from old to young.

If those we oppose are secretive or lie, we can and will provide what it takes to expose them. Collectively, we can't be stopped. If one of us departs from this partucular chorus, others will arrive to take up the tune. If a site goes down, similar ones will rise. We are heard. We do have an effect. We are the message.

Emiliano Zapata stated "It is not only by shooting bullets in the battlefields that tyranny is overthrown, but also by hurling ideas of redemption, words of freedom and terrible anathemas against the hangmen that people bring down dictators and empires." They arranged to have Zapata killed but not his revolution for the words remained in the hearts of those who continued his dream.

So, what can you tell us today that may help the world out?

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Another Perspective

They call themselves Purepechos and live in the mountains of central Mexico's State of Michoacan. They had been a strong empire feared by and never giving in to the Aztecs. In a way they still are. Anthropologists call them Tarascans. Anthropologists, however, have not the slightest notion of the language, religion, or culture. The Purepechos keep it that way. Though the Purepechos have successfully rejected and protected themselves from destructive enroachment, the information block is one way.
They are not unaware of what goes on around them and may understand it more than those closer to events.

Purepecho art is distinctive in its bright colors and often exagerated humorous topic. We recently attended an artisan exibit that hosted several tables of Purepecho figurines. One two foot tall piece in particular caused raised eyebrows and frowns from passing gringos but brought approving smiles from Mexicans. As my laughter subsided, I asked if I could return the next day and photograph it. The lady graciously granted permission in what seemed to have been her pleasurable surprise to encounter a gringo who empathized with the outlook of her people.

Friday, November 11, 2005

America's New Enemy

Posted by Alexandros : Fri Nov 11, 03:39:27 PM UTC (from the New Statesman)

Latin Americans have spent the past few years finding their voices. Now they may have the strength to defy their northern neighbour. By John Pilger

I was dropped at Paradiso, the last middle-class area before La Vega barrio, which spills into a ravine as if by the force of gravity. Storms were forecast and people were anxious, remembering the mudslides of 1999 that took 20,000 lives. "Why are you here?" asked the man sitting opposite me in the packed jeep-bus that chugged up the hill. Like so many in Latin America, he appeared old, but wasn't. Without waiting for my answer, he listed why he supported President Hugo Chavez: schools, clinics, affordable food, "our constitution, our democracy" and "for the first time, the oil money is going to us". I asked him if he belonged to the MVR (Movement for the Fifth Republic), Chavez's party, "No, I've never been in a political party; I can only tell you how my life has been changed, as I never dreamt."

It is raw witness like this, which I have heard over and over again in Venezuela, that smashes the one-way mirror between the west and a continent that is rising. By rising, I mean the phenomenon of millions of people stirring once again, "like lions after slumber/In unvanquishable number", wrote Shelley in The Mask of Anarchy. This is not romantic; an epic is unfolding in Latin America that demands our attention beyond the stereotypes and cliches that diminish whole societies to their degree of exploitation and expendability.

To the man in the bus, and to Beatrice whose children are being immunised and taught history, art and music for the first time, and Celedonia, in her seventies, reading and writing for the first time, and Jose whose life was saved by a doctor in the middle of the night, the first doctor he had ever seen, Chavez is neither a "firebrand" nor an "autocrat" but a humanitarian and a democrat who commands almost two-thirds of the popular vote, accredited by victories in no fewer than nine elections. Compare that with the fifth of the British electorate that reinstalled an authentic autocrat in Downing Street.

Chavez and the rise of popular social movements, from Colombia down to Argentina, represent bloodless, radical change across the continent, inspired by the great independence struggles that began with Simon BolIvar, born in 1783 in Venezuela, who brought the ideas of the French Revolution to societies cowed by Spanish absolutism. BolIvar, like Che Guevara in the 1960s and Chavez today, understood the new colonial master to the north. "The USA," he said in 1819, "appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty."

At the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, George Bush announced the latest misery in the name of liberty in the form of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) treaty. This would finally allow the United States to impose its ideological "market", neoliberalism, on all of Latin America. It was the natural successor to Bill Clinton's North American Free Trade Agreement, which has turned Mexico into a US sweatshop. Bush boasted it would be law by 2005.

On 5 November, Bush arrived at the 2005 summit in Mar del Plata, Argentina, to be told his FTAA was not even on the agenda. Among the 34 heads of state were new, uncompliant faces and behind all of them were populations no longer willing to accept US-backed business tyrannies. Never before have Latin American governments had to consult their people on pseudo agreements of this kind; but now they must.

In Bolivia, in the past five years, social movements have got rid of governments and foreign corporations alike, such as the tentacular Bechtel, which sought to impose what people call total locura capitalista - total capitalist folly - the privatising of almost everything, especially natural gas and water. Following Pinochet's Chile, Bolivia was to be a neoliberal laboratory. The poorest of the poor were charged up to two-thirds of their pittance-income even for rainwater.

Standing in the bleak, freezing, cobble-stoned streets of El Alto, 14,000 feet up in the Andes, or sitting in the breeze-block homes of former miners and campesinos driven off their land, I have had political discussions of a kind seldom ignited in Britain and the US. They are direct and eloquent. "Why are we so poor," they say, "when our country is so rich? Why do governments lie to us and represent outside powers?" They refer to 500 years of conquest as if it is a living presence, which it is, tracing a journey from the Spanish plunder of Cerro Rico, a hill of silver mined by indigenous slave labour and which underwrote the Spanish empire for three centuries. When the silver was gone, there was tin, and when the mines were privatised in the 1970s at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), tin collapsed, along with 30,000 jobs. When the coca leaf replaced it - chewing it curbs hunger - the Bolivian army, coerced by the US, began destroying the coca crops and filling the prisons.

In 2000, open rebellion burst upon the white business oligarchs and the US embassy whose fortress stands like an Andean Vatican in the centre of La Paz. There was never anything like it, because it came from the majority Indian population "to protect our indigenous soul". Naked racism against indigenous peoples all over Latin America is the Spanish legacy. They were despised or invisible, or curios for tourists: the women in their bowler hats and colourful skirts. No more. Led by visionaries such as Oscar Olivera, the women in bowler hats and colourful skirts encircled and shut down the country's second city, Cochabamba, until their water was returned to public ownership.

Every year since, people have fought a water or gas war: essentially a war against privatisation and poverty. Having driven out President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in 2003, Bolivians voted in a referendum for real democracy. Through the social movements, they demanded a constituent assembly similar to that which founded Chavez's BolIvarian revolution in Venezuela, together with the rejection of the FTAA and all the other "free trade" agreements, the expulsion of the transnational water companies and a 50 per cent tax on the exploitation of all energy resources.

When the replacement president, Carlos Mesa, refused to implement the programme he was forced to resign. Presidential elections are scheduled for 4 December and the opposition MAS (Movement to Socialism) may well turn out the old order. The leader is an indigenous former coca farmer, Evo Morales, whom the US ambassador has likened to Osama Bin Laden. In fact, he is a social democrat who, for many of those who sealed off Cochabamba and marched down the mountain from El Alto, moderates too much.

"This is not going to be easy," Abel Mamani, the indigenous president of the El Alto Federation of Neighbourhood Associations, told me. "The elections won't be a solution even if we win. What we need to guarantee is the constituent assembly, from which we build a democracy based not on what the US wants, but on social justice." The writer Pablo Solon, son of the great political muralist Walter Solon, said: "The story of Bolivia is the story of the government behind the government. The US can create a financial crisis; but really for them it is ideological; they say they will not accept another Chavez."

The people, however, will not accept another Washington quisling. The lesson is Ecuador, where a helicopter saved Lucio Gutierrez as he fled the presidential palace in April. Having won power in alliance with the indigenous Pachakutik movement, he was the "Ecuadorian Chavez", until he drowned in a corruption scandal. For ordinary Latin Americans, corruption on high is no longer forgivable. That is one of two reasons the Workers' Party government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is barely marking time in Brazil; the other is the priority he has given to an IMF economic agenda, rather than to his own people. In Argentina, social movements saw off five pro-Washington presidents in 2001 and 2002. Across the water in Uruguay, the Frente Amplio, socialist heirs to the Tupamaros, the guerrillas of the 1970s who fought one of the CIA's most vicious terror campaigns, formed a popular government last year.

The social movements are now a decisive force in every Latin American country - even in the state of fear that is the Colombia of Alvaro Uribe Velez, Bush's most loyal vassal. Last month, an indigenous movement marched through every one of Colombia's 32 provinces demanding an end to "an evil as great as the gun": neoliberalism. All over Latin America, Hugo Chavez is the modern BolIvar. People admire his political imagination and his courage. Only he has had the guts to describe the United States as a source of terrorism and Bush as Senor Peligro (Mr Danger). He is very different from Fidel Castro, whom he respects. Venezuela is an extraordinarily open society with an unfettered opposition that is rich and still powerful. On the left, there are those who oppose the state in principle, believe its reforms have reached their limit, and want power to flow directly from the community. They say so vigorously, yet they support Chavez. A fluent young anarchist, Marcel, showed me the clinic where Cuban doctors gave his girlfriend critical emergency treatment. (In a barter arrangement, Venezuela gives Cuba oil in exchange for doctors.)

At the entrance to every barrio there is a state supermarket, where everything from staple food to washing-up liquid costs 40 per cent less than in commercial stores. Despite specious accusations that the government has instituted censorship, most of the media remains violently anti-Chavez: a large part of it in the hands of Gustavo Cisneros, Latin America's Rupert Murdoch, who backed the failed attempt to depose Chavez in April 2002. What is different is the proliferation of lively community radio stations which played a crucial part in Chavez's rescue then by calling on people to march on Caracas.

While the world looks to Iran and Syria for the next Bush attack, Venezuelans know they may well be next. On 17 March, the Washington Post reported that Feliz RodrIguez, "a former CIA operative well connected to the Bush family", had taken part in the planning of the assassination of the president of Venezuela. On 16 September, Chavez said, "I have evidence that there are plans to invade Venezuela. Furthermore, we have documentation: how many bombers will over-fly Venezuela on the day of the invasion . . . the US is carrying out manoeuvres on Curacao Island. It is called Operation Balboa." Since then, leaked internal Pentagon documents have identified Venezuela as a "post-Iraq threat" requiring "full spectrum" planning.

The old-young man in the jeep, Beatrice and her healthy children, and Celedonia with her "new esteem", are indeed a threat - the threat of an alternative, decent world that some lament is no longer possible. Well, it is, and it deserves our support.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Give this guy 5!!! It can be done....

High School Student in Michigan wins write-in campaign for mayor
According to a Detroit News article, Michael Sessions, an 18-year-old high school student, was elected mayor of Hillsdale, Michigan by a 732 to 668 margin after mounting a write-in campaign to oust the 51-year-old incumbent Mayor Doug Ingles.

Sessions was 17 and not yet qualified to get on the ballot in the spring. The day after his birthday, on Sept. 22, he registered to vote. The next day, he signed up as a write-in candidate.

He funded his race from a mere $700 he earned from a summer job. Sessions put up signs all over the town and campaigned door-to-door.

Sessions wants to attend Hillsdale College next year to study political science.


Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Privacy Advocates Help Correct Wireless Passports

According to a warning on new passport applications, all new passports will have a chip embedded in them containing all the information available inside of the passport. 99% percent of the public responding earlier this year to the government's proposed rule to equip U.S. passports with required RFID chips were opposed to the idea, but the State Department finalized the rule anyway.

The chip also contains small tranceiver which will enable reading devices to "ping" or interrogate the data on the chip. The government had long maintained that the passport chips to be used could be read from only 10 cm away. But at least one test showed that a reader could read a passport chip from 30 feet away. Privacy advocates said anyone with a portable reader could remotely read, or "skim," a passport holder‘s personal information from a distance. Also advocates insisted the data should be encrypted over the air to prevent snooping of personal data as its being read.

In response, the State Department says they re-designed the new passports so that the front covers and spines will include an anti-skimming material that blocks the radio waves that could pick up the data when the passport is closed. The RFID only wakes up if the data sent to the passport contains the proper key, which is derrived from the printed data in the passport. According to a recent Harold News Daily article "It will not permit tracking‘ of individuals," the State Department said in making the announcement. "It will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry, which governmental authorities already know from presentation of nonelectronic passports."

RFID passports will be required by the Patriot Act for visitors from 27 countries that currently do not need a visa to enter the US. Some people still fear that if a mechanism could be found to detect a passport containing an RFID, that muggers or terrorists could target such passport holders.


Monday, November 07, 2005

The torture they don't do

According to President Bush in a recent speech, "We do not torture". Why then do we need an exemption from the McCain Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill? Isn't this a contradiction?? I believe we, as any other Democracy, should not be involved in torture.

I believe that so called black sites should be closed, extraordinary renderings and torture flights should be discontinued. It bypasses our system of checks and balances - judicial overview, the right for people to defend themselves in a court of law, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Furthermore, these actions only encourage our enemies to kidnap and torture our own service men.


Sunday, November 06, 2005

Bush Connected Texan runs for Haiti President

Dumarsais Mecene Simeus, a multi-millionaire from Texas and a naturalized US Citizen is running for President in the upcoming Haiti election on November 13, 2005. This is the first election since democratically-elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown by a US-lead coup d'etat in Feburary 2004.

Simeus is the CEO of the $2 Billion food processing giant Simeus Foods International in Texas and the Chairman of PromoCapital, Haiti's first investment bank. He also is the Chairman of the humanitarian group RepresentAction.

A group of a bout 40 US-based Hatian business and civic leaders have urged him to to run for the Presidency. Some of his ties include the Bush family. He was a member of Jeb Bush's advisory board for Haiti and visited with Condoleeza Rice when she recently made her visit to Haiti. Simeus's campaign is entirely funded by his friends in USA, Canada, France and Germany.

Simeus was allowed to run in this election after he took this issue to the Haitian supreme court, claiming dual US and Haiti citizenship. He still faces charges to his candidacy and false candidacy claims. The US does not recognize dual citizenship.

Last week, during one of his campaign stops in Solino, a suburb of the Haitian Capital Port au Prince, he was met with an agry mob hurling rocks and chunks of concrete.



Every activist has heard "I agree with what you seek but not how you go about it" or "What you are doing will only lead to.....". Perhaps we ought to focus less on desired ends and devote more concern to comparing possible means.

Here are some means that might be chosen.

  1. armed struggle
  2. assassination
  3. sabotage
  4. riot
  5. targeted violent confrontation
  6. non violent civil disobedience
  7. organize
  8. picketing
  9. marches
  10. vigils
  11. tatoo a political statement
  12. wear a political T-shirt
  13. graffitti
  14. boycott
  15. write letters to the editor
  16. write to government officials
  17. privately message those in opposition
  18. privately message those in agreement
  19. publish anonymous opinions
  20. donate to work of others
  21. vote
  22. pray to some god
  23. wish
  24. wait and see what happens
  25. party while one can

Here are some criteria that could to help guide the choice.

  1. which stands a better chance of getting the job done
  2. which would enhance the lives of the most people
  3. which would cause the least harm to the most people
  4. which entails the least risk to oneself
  5. which would detract least from current comfort
  6. which would cause popular labelling
  7. which would cause unpopular labelling
  8. which would cause loss of friends
  9. which would be easiest
Here is some study to better prepare making the choice.
  1. history and current events

Friday, November 04, 2005

Turtles Rabbits and Cockroaches

This picture is stolen from Nur al-Cubical's blog where she titles it "Ninja Turtle Brigade". It appears in her article on the US president's current desperate but certainly go nowhere journey to Argentina. Miguel_x98, a Buenas Aires activist, identified them in our Chat Room as professional smugglers who officially masquerade as the Argentinian coast guard. Whatever their day job, the picture recalled some lyrics whose original intent stand in contrast to what the ninja bosses might desire.

Turtle and the Rabbit had a race one day,
Rabbit thought he had it won any old way,
So he lay down and went to asleep.
Well when he woke up,
Why the turtle had him beat,
You know life is a gamble,
People come rain or shine,
You got to keep on a betting,
And you're bound to win sometime.

Related thoughts surface every time I sing La Cucaracha, the revolutionary song deriding government soldiers and sung by Pancho Villa's forces. Satirical verses were often invented on the spot in a contest of seeing who might raise the most laughter. The most common chorus is...

La cucaracha,
La cucaracha,
Ya no puede caminar,
Porque no tiene,
Porque le falta,
Marijuana que fumar.

(The cockroach,
The cockroach,
Still he cannot walk,
Because he has no,
Because he lacks,
Marijuana to smoke.)

The words conjour images of American Soldiers in obvious easily seen environmentally mismatched "camoflauge" clothing with techy crap hanging and sticking out all over them. It would be interesting if a TV producer, in vengful preparation of chucking his job after suffering a career of forced bullshit, made a swan song broadcast of what one of the cockoaches has to do just to take a leak? It is a wonder resistance fighters are effective as they are during breaks from what must otherwise be constant choking laughter. Cucaracha is a fitting name especially in light of what often happens to a cockroach?

Thursday, November 03, 2005


Absolute ill will is easy to overcome. Shallow good will is more difficult. The real enemies in the stride toward freedom are not those who openly so state. They are instead the fair weather self deemed friends whose words signal alliance but who are more devoted to comfort than justice. They are those who proclaim agreement with goals but fail to fight for means of achievement.

They claim something they call "the system" is the enemy and point fingers of culpability at others in it while ignoring their own three fingers pointing back. Their complaints are heard beyond intentionally opaque and close drawn borders as but self serving whines. To see farther than immediate personal concern requires acknowledging what is enjoyed has been and continues to be obtained through pillage and suffering.

As long as such hesitant false friends fail to act to destroy that which grants their position within the system, their words are without substance. They are the system. That makes them the enemy.

They can either join us, get out of the way, or be walked over.



Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Summit of the Peoples

The 3rd Summit of the Peoples, with the presence of hundreds of organizations and social movements from the American hemisphere, begins today in Mar de Plata, Argentina with the purpose of coordinating and seeking alternatives to continue confronting imperialist plans led by the United States of America. Students, workers, artists, religious leaders, representatives of indigenous communities, women, jurists and human rights activists are all part of the multi-faceted movement holding this event for the third time; the first two editions were in Santiago de Chile (1998) and Quebec (2001). A full description is on Granma and linked here.


David was a terrorist to Goliath. Didn't fight fair using a sling. No, that's not right! He was a hero. It's not how you fight but the killing of innocents that marks terrorism. Some say woman, children, and businessmen are innocents. Can property be innocent? Are some people really just property of others?

Slain farmers' families were innocent when they occupied and fenced hunting lands of the Apache Nation that had been cleared by the US army. No! They were usurping from the Apaches. Nat Turner was a terrorist when his guerrillas raided slave plantations. The owners were innocents. Laws said so, but slaves didn't write laws.

Were the mothers and children of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Hanoi innocents and the bombers terrorists? No. The pilots were heros, and those people weren't innocent. There was a war and lives of tomorrow's heros had to be saved. Besides, the targeted people supported their country's evil. Well, at least some must have. There was a homeland to be saved by destroying another. If not, foreigners would have soon been in hero neighborhoods raping mothers and sisters. Anyhow, all that stuff was long ago and best forgotten.

Well then, let's bring it up to date and consider what has changed. Todays invaders are not now taking anything from anyone. Well, just oil. Camels can't drink it and the price of gasoline is too high. Walk? Don't be silly, I'd never get where I wanted to go and that wouldn't be fun.

Did the people working at the World Trade Center and twin towers generally support or at least not oppose actions of their ultimate employers? Did they accept benefits from the global money handlers housed there? Were they innocent? Is anyone not wearing a military uniform innocent? Are any innocent of the actions of a nation who are not effectively engaged in actions to oppose it? What if there are no means of opposition without risk to oneself? How much risk acceptance buys innocence? Does paying taxes that support that disliked decrease one's innocence?

Were the kids dancing merrily before the boom in a Jerusalem night club innocent while their brothers occupied lands of suicide bombers? Where the kids wearing the bombs innocents, heros, or terrorists when they believed they were defending their homeland and families in the only way they could?

All conflict is ugly and brutal. People are maimed and die. Land is made ruin. There is no right and no wrong. Rules for conduct of warfare and designations of terrorism, innocence, and heroics are formulated in self serving motivation by intellectuals, politicians, and military chiefs not directly risking themselves in struggle. They are ignored by direct participants. For them, there are no innocents, terrorists, or heros, just death, destruction, and attempts at survival.

The jargons of power and war have no inherent meaning and tell more about those uttering them then the intent of their use.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?