Truths to live by

[Resistance Is Futile]

America will suffer massive economic collapse by 2010 if fiscal policies enacted under Chimpy are not reversed.

Few nations have survived economic collapse without reverting to authoritarian or totalitarian forms of government.

Chimpy will never reverse own policies nor will his backers stop at anything to win.

If you are drowning in an ocean of blue water, or in a sea of red ink, and you are thrown a life ring, it is not wise to complain if it is not your favorite color.

No true progressive will be elected President in the next fifty years.

The only good plutocrat is a plutocrat behind bars.

The only good Bush is a Bush out of office and on the streets.

This is the last chance to fight for the future because if the fascists win again, there will be no meaningful elections in 2008.

Get out there and take the fight to the enemy like the future of the world depends on it because it damned well does.


ABB

[RichM]

1. I don't believe the one about "no true progressive... in the next 50 yrs"

And I don't at all accept the ABB idea -- not even a little bit.

Re "no meaningful elections in 2008" - it isn't clear there will be one in 2004, either. For that matter, the case that 2002 was hijacked by rigged voting machines is sounding better every day.

[lostnfound]

2. Amidst the smoke, megabillionaires and babies

I don't have the slightest idea what's in the heart of Wesley Clark or of most of the other Democratic candidates. I HOPE it's good. For sure, I will start breathing again when ANY of these 10 Democrats gets sworn in to replace George W. Bush. Clark? Well, I've got a fondness for Rhodes scholars with advanced degrees, and respect for those former soldiers whose first-hand experience of war's horrors has brought them to a place of seeking peace. And since he has never held elected office, I'm free to hope for the best about an unknown, rather than despair over a known disaster like Bush/Cheney.

What is Wesley Clark all about? Running a 'namebase.org' search turns up close ties to mega-billionaire George Soros. I don't know what George Soros is all about either. Oh, sure, I know that Soros beats Richard Mellon Scaife any day, and I like the sound of Soros' 'Open Society Institute' and his charitable attitude.. But I don't like the $100 MM he invested in the Carlyle Group.

I get the feeling that "we the people" need to understand the Scaifes and Soros and their few brethren even more than we need to understand the Clintons and Clarks, the Kerrys and Edwards, the Cheneys and Rices of the world.

I run across this:
Soros deems a society "open" not if it respects human rights and basic freedoms, but if it is "open" for him and his associates to make money. And, indeed, Soros has made money in every country he has helped to prise "open". In Kosovo, for example, he has invested $50m in an attempt to gain control of the Trepca mine complex, where there are vast reserves of gold, silver, lead and other minerals estimated to be worth in the region of $5bn. He thus copied a pattern he has deployed to great effect over the whole of eastern Europe: of advocating "shock therapy" and "economic reform", then swooping in with his associates to buy valuable state assets at knock-down prices. http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/2003/George-Soros-Statesman2jun03.htm

For two years now, since 9-11, I've struggled to grasp the connections..war for empire, neoliberalism, 'structural adjustment policies', the Washington consensus. And the specifics. But how can I? Smoke and mirrors are all around. "It's all about the corporate control of governments and their use of the peoples money and military to take, with force, the natural resources and control the world markets." Maybe.

But today what's stuck in my heart is quite human: a voice I heard today, about a 4-year-old Iraqi boy with shrapnel, telling his mother what his 6-year-old brother cried out with his last breath -- 'Mama??!'. Tied to that is the thought of my own little child growing up in a world full of locks and bombs and resentment; and the dilemna of helping him live a life of comfort which partially requires shutting his heart carefully to the pain of others, or about teaching him to pick up his own cross and work for change. Above all else, I think about the next war. Somewhere out there is a 4 year old boy who still has a whole body and a whole brother.

So I am driven to try to understand, and to ask myself if I'm crazy. Last week I found a bit of solace in a commondreams article http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0906-07.htm about an agent's excessive suspicion in a world of smoke and mirrors. It's only natural, the author reassures us.

In the body of the empire, the warbone is connected to neoliberal bones..connected to the market backbone..connected to Lockheed Martin bone..connected to the Pentagon bone..connected to the propaganda liver, which recirculates the blood of the young men and keeps it colored red..Struggle to see the empire from the outside, through the eyes of its subjects -- Arundhati Roy, farmers in the lesser-developed countries, starving coffee workers, thirsty sippers of privatized water, and sweatshop seamstresses. The empire is not strictly American. I'll ask for the weapons of the Shambala warrior, the gifts of compassion and insight.

Tonight let me be lulled to sleep..I'll say if the mega-billionaires are intent on using the levers of power, let them at least select implementers smart enough to get the gold without open warfare. But while I'm sleeping, I'll dream that a new human decency will sweep its way across Washington like Hurricane Isabel, and we -- citizens, politicians, and mega-billionaires -- will awaken to a new consensus.

Tomorrow I'll go back to work.

One person can make a difference. The important thing is we can not be afraid.
~Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich
We need a new relationship between corporations and our society. Just as our founders understood the need for separation of church and state, we need to institutionalize the separation of corporations and the state.
~Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich

ABB

[HydroAddict]

3. Agreed...but what's the ABB for?