Zero Party Politics

Clean Air is Satan’s Work—Screw the EPA and Their Job-Killing Smog Standards

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 04:18:00 +0000

In the 2000 presidential campaign Ralph Nader said, "The only difference between Bush and Gore is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock at the door."

Substituting George Bush with the current Republican imbeciles in Congress, and Al Gore with Barrack Obama and his impotent Democratic Congressional zombies, nothing much has changed since 2000, except perhaps the increase in velocity in which both parties rapidly prostrate themselves before their corporate deities.

Now in 2011, Corporate Jesus has descended to planet D.C. yet again knocking on Congress’s door and you’ll never guess what the All Mighty exhorted to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber this time around.

As usual he had a myriad of “dogmatic goodies,” but one of his more choice homilies this time around was his insistence that President Obama halt the EPA smog standards.

Why would Corporate Jesus demand such a thing?

Because clean air kills jobs dummy!

(I know what you’re thinking.)

“This makes perfect sense! Why didn’t I think of this?”

The nexus is rather obvious if you just take the time to think about it. Congressional Republicans and Democrats were commanded by Corporate Jesus to look out for the little man. Corporations like General Electric, for example, are not hiring Americans despite recording record profits because the air is just too damn clean. (Okay, so it’s not really clean, but the prospect of making the air less polluted is more than the Church of Corporate America can bear to handle if it is expected to create jobs—they may be creationists, but they can’t do it without brown air.)

Still not convinced? (I’ll be honest with you, I feel a touch annoyed that I have to dumb this down for you, but alas this is the cross I must bear to educate the non-believers.)

Let me break it down for you by quoting a great American…

"This effective ban or restriction on construction and industrial growth for much of America is possibly the most harmful of all the currently anticipated Obama Administration regulations," says Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

And who on earth wouldn’t trust the Apostle Eric Cantor?

After all, an “overly regulated” government could potentially one day prevent Cantor from doing something as innocuous as shorting American Treasury bonds while voting to send the country into default by voting against raising the debt ceiling and praying for a credit downgrade. (He actually did this by the way.) This is the type of regulatory slippery slope that could potentially lead to clean air and an avalanche of unemployment, not to mention screwing up the Apostle Cantor’s investment portfolio by preventing him from betting against America.

I want to be fair though, it’s not as though there aren’t uninterested trustworthy folks out there that are providing their two-cents to help our stalwart progressive president arrive at a conscientious decision on this “job creation” measure. The highly sanctimonious environmentalist and “job creationist” Jack Gerard, the President of the American Petroleum Institute, offered this decree in support: “The President’s decision is good news for the economy and Americans looking for work. EPA’s proposal would have prevented the very job creation that President Obama has identified as his top priority.”

See? The only thing standing between you and a new job is clean air. Men like Cantor and Gerard are practically saints and their piety can be described as nothing less than genuine.

Just look at the evidence.

Why have we lost 3,000,000 manufacturing jobs since 1998? Clean air.

Goldman Sachs estimated that over the past few years between 400,000 and 600,000 professional services and information sector jobs moved overseas. Why? Clean air.

Bank of America just laid off 3,500 people this month and 10,000 for the year. Why? Clean air.

Over 500,000 government jobs have been lost since 2008. Why? Clean air.

Why did General Electric, a company that made $14 billion in profits last year while paying no income tax ship 25,000 jobs overseas? Because American air is too damn clean and devil-worshippers at the EPA are intent on making it even cleaner by implementing satanic smog standards!

Incidentally, GE should know about creating American jobs because President Obama appointed GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt as America’s Job Creation Czar—this is the CEO of one of America’s largest companies and charged by the government to help you find jobs (despite shipping thousands of them to China and India). He’s a damn expert in helping you get work (if you don’t mind commuting to China and India). It would be completely irresponsible for you not to trust him, and though he’s not technically a saint yet, his beatification and canonization are a mere formality.

I ask one thing of you my fellow Americans—please do your part in helping our country get out of its jobless rut and diligently partake in the debauchery of our ridiculously clean air so that we can get back on our feet. Pay your tithe to the Corporate Church. Do you own an SUV that gets 10 miles a gallon you selfish heathens? Do you drive in lieu of walking like Jesus did in Nazareth back in the day? Do you point aerosol cans skywards two at a time and spray their contents into the atmosphere yelling, “Screw you, you job-sucking adiamorphic sky!?”

What are you selfish clean air-breathing infidels doing to create jobs? Corporate Jesus, along with his Republican and Democratic disciples are counting on you. Stop sitting there and whining about your lack of employment as you breathe in only marginally polluted air like a bunch of ungrateful, crybaby, atheistic socialists.

God helps those who help themselves (and breathe brown air).

For a more in depth analysis on the important issue of dirty air and job creation please enjoy the ZPP broadcast featured in the link below. Before you know it you will be wearing a gas mask and enjoying your non-union job that offers you no pension, healthcare, or paid vacation—just as Corporate Jesus intended:

Listen to internet radio with cynicalrevolt on Blog Talk Radio

ZPP Episode 6: Failing to address the issue of campaign finance reform has crippled our democracy.

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:07:00 +0000

How do you lose your individual voice in a democracy? Your vote gets muted by hundreds of millions in corporate dollars in a political process where your vote counts far less than those dollars. It's why a corporation in Texas can have a far bigger say in what happens in a New York election than a registered voter in New York.

The Supreme Court, courtesy of Citizens United vs. FEC has ensured a corporation's (and non-constituent's) First Amendment "rights" while muting the First Amendment rights of the individual voter and constituent.

The President of the United States has to raise a staggering $1 billion to get elected to a job that pays him $400,000 a year. You don't think he's going to be owing a few corporations some favors? Do you honestly believe your voice amounts to a hill of beans in comparison to corporate dollars?

In this broadcast, Clint Hulsey interviews Dave Levinthal from Opensecrets.org in the opening 20 minutes and reveals the hidden underbelly of campaign financing. In the remainder of the broadcast, Clint and Gus Bridi discuss the ramifications of campaign financing and its impact on a vast array of issues effecting American politics today.

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The New American Revolution Has Begun! (Sort of) Care to Join Me?

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 06:42:00 +0000

No, I didn’t burn myself alive in the middle of my town square or fire a shot that was heard around the world, but this July 4^th I did do something.

I had it up to my ears sitting around watching this country imploding around me and doing nothing about it but complaining. (Insert Howard Beale "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" rant here.)

I was tired of feeling helpless and powerless. I was tired of waiting for someone else to do something. I was tired of battling the establishment with my one lousy vote that meant nothing in a two-party system beholden exclusively to the very establishment that was screwing me. I was tired of observing politicians from both sides of the aisle routinely abandoning their constituents and selling their souls to political action committees and lobbyists.

I had long come to the realization Republicans and Democrats were nothing but two sides of the same establishment coin with their sole function being the creation of an illusion of choice where none existed. They had stopped listening to you and me.

I wanted to us be heard.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I drafted a revised Declaration of Independence which called for six action items designed to break our chains from the corporate oligarchy which now runs and owns this country. I called for the People of the United States to:

1) withdraw all their deposits from the Oligarchy’s banks,

2) divest all their stock holdings in the Oligarchy’s corporations (particularly corporations in the so-called “defense” industry, financial industry, and any company that has not paid corporate income tax over the past year who has declared profits),

3) refuse to vote for any Oligarchic candidate identifying him or herself as a Democrat or Republican on any ballot for any political office,

4) refuse in the future to enlist in any of the Oligarchy’s military forces,

5) conscientiously object to any foreign deployment for those of the People who are presently enlisted in the Oligarchy’s military while continuing to defend the borders of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic, and

6) recognizing that the Oligarchic “justice” system refuses to prosecute its own racketeers who prolifically operate financial criminal enterprises, the People, when summoned to sit as jurors in federal or state criminal courts of the Oligarchy, refuse to convict any of their fellow People accused of acts deemed as “crimes” by the Oligarchy other than those involving violence or theft against the People.

I vowed to not only follow through on each of those action items, but to post my new Declaration of Independence at my local federal building on Independence Day, and send copies to my various elected officials.

This July 4^th I did just that.

I rolled out of bed, put on a pair of old sweats and a t-shirt that didn't quite match, and before the barbecue and pool party started, I drove down to my local federal building with some classic-rock station blasting on the radio, and midway through 'Pinball Wizard' I parked my car, got out, marched over to that stupid, stoic building, and posted this Declaration to it with duct-tape (that’s me and my bed-head in the picture below, which my "army of one", also known as my wife, took). I also faxed a copy of the Declaration to my Representative, Senators, and various media outlets.

It wasn't difficult to do, and it took all of one hour out of my day.

Will it make a difference? I have no idea.

This is the age of the internet. Things like kittens playing with strings and college girls on racist rants can go “viral.” Perhaps this can too with your help.

You can easily follow suit and print out the Declaration and do the same thing I did. If “We the People” make enough noise and vow to follow through on those action items, who knows where this could lead?

I realize Che Guevara is not exactly an American icon and the Cuban Revolution is not exactly an event that is celebrated in this country, but nearly a half century ago Guevara, along with 80 or so men, set sail from Guatemala to Cuba to start a revolution. Those men defeated Batista’s army and won. My purpose in mentioning this is not to glorify Guevara nor to advocate for a violent American revolt, but to emphasize that far reaching change can happen when the dedicated will of a few kindle a fire in the masses.

Guevara famously said, “The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” I’m trying my damnedest to make that apple fall, but I can’t do it alone.

Perhaps you could lend me a hand and simply do what I did? Again, this is the link to the revised Declaration of Independence: Print it. Go to your stupid, stoic federal building and post it there (posting it with duct-tape is a nice touch, but feel free to use the adhesive of your choosing--this is a democracy after all). You can click this link to ContactingTheCongress.org to get the contact information for your district's Representative and your state's Senators. You can also fax the Declaration to any number of media outlets. Below are the entities with the fax numbers I sent the Declaration to:

For California's 27th Congressional District, Rep. Brad Sherman's fax is: (202) 225-5879. Sen. Barbara Boxer: (202) 224-0454. Sen. Dianne Feinstein: (202) 228-3954. NBC/MSNBC News: (212) 664-4085. CBS News: (323) 575-4536. CNN: (404) 827-1784. Fox News: (212) 301-4229. ABC News (323) 671-4261.

Follow through on the six action items I identified above. Periodically, I will be writing articles elaborating on each one. Here is a link to an article I wrote regarding the first action item entitled ‘The New American Revolution Must Begin in Your Mind’.

We’re not exactly storming the beaches at Normandy here. You’re not going to be risking life and limb. It will take one whopping hour out of your life to make a difference by non-violently and legally bucking the establishment enough to possibly substantively change things.

Help me shake this tree and make the apple fall (as you can tell from the picture, I don't exactly have the muscle to pull this off on my own).

ZPP Episode 5: Gay Marriage, Afghanistan, Israel, Healthcare... Mr. President, GROW A SPINE!

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 19:10:00 +0000

Gus Bridi and Clint Hulsey discuss gay marriage, Afghanistan, Obama, healthcare, Israel, voting, elections, campaign finance, and then primitivism versus modernism. The common theme for the episode was that Barack Obama has routinely failed to take a Progressive stand on any of these issues, and continues to be another cog in the establishment's wheel.

Mr. President, we didn't vote for you to get you into the exclusive establishment's club, we voted for you to reign in the establishment's club.

Take a Progressive stand!

Listen to internet radio with cynicalrevolt on Blog Talk Radio

Zero Party Politics on the Radio! Episode 4: Wall Street corruption and the recent global economic crash; American guns in Mexico; Legalizing drugs in the United States; and drone bases in Yemen

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:24:00 +0000

Ed Walker of Firedoglake (username Masaccio on FDL) joins Clint and Gus to talk about the financial crisis, banks, and Obama and Wall Street. The U.S. building drone bases for the CIA in Yemen, and a report shows that 70% of guns used by cartels in Mexico came from the United States.

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Zero Party Politics on the Radio! Episode 3: "We don't give a damn about the lives of Arab civilians...we went to Libya for money."

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:48:00 +0000

This episode opens with an interview of Matthew Rothschild, editor of 'The Progressive' on the issue of the Libyan conflict. Further topics included some humorous musings regarding the Weiner scandal (which you'll find in the last 10 minutes or so of the broadcast) and rantings of the ineptitude of mainstream media covering topics on a wide range of issues.

The most provocative clip from this episode include the following comments from Yours Truly on the question of the American and NATO motivation to begin air-strikes on Libya for the so-called "humanitarian" purpose of saving the lives of Libyan civilians who were on the verge of being killed by pro-Quadaffi forces. This portion of the commentary begins at 26:35 of the interview and goes for about five minutes. The following is a partial excerpt of what was said:

"..[saving the lives of Libyan civilians] to say that this was our mission, to say this was our goal... let's look at Iraq as an example...think about the 1,000,000 children that Amnesty International estimated died as a result of our embargo on Iraq between the first Gulf War and second Gulf War...children...one million...think of those lives lost because of our policies there...if Quadaffi killed a thousand people a day for three years, that would add up to the blood on our hands in Iraq... so the whole notion to me that we went there [Libya] to save civilians or that we give a damn about Arab blood is preposterous to me... it's something to me that shouldn't even be part of the discussion... when you look at what happened in Gaza in 2009... when you look at what happened in Lebanon in 2006 at the hands of of Israel, to say that we give a damn about Arab lives in this country is an insult... when you look at what the Saudis did in Bahrain, when you look at what Bashar al-Assad did in Syria and to see our non-response to that... to say that we give a damn about Arab lives is an insult... it's an insult to me as an Arab, and it's an insult to me as a human being... we don't give a damn about these people...we went there [Libya] for money..."

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The New American Revolution Must Begin in Your Mind (Part 1 of 6)

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 06:41:00 +0000

In 1970 the late Gil Scott-Heron wrote ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’—a poem which famously became one of many rallying cries for resistance in the African-American community during the Civil Rights movement and which later gained wider popularity to represent the rallying cry of would-be revolutionaries of all races and creeds throughout the world. In his poem, with congas and bongo drums beating a methodical, pulsing rhythm, Scott-Heron proclaimed in a defiant and chaotic cadence:

You will not be able to stay home, brother.

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.

You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,

Skip out for beer during commercials,

Because the revolution will not be televised…

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock

news and no pictures of hairy armed women

liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.

The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,

Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom

Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.

The revolution will not be televised…

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,

will not be televised, will not be televised.

The revolution will be no re-run brothers;

The revolution will be live.

In an interview many years later Scott-Heron was asked about the poem, and more specifically the meaning of the message behind the “the revolution would not be televised.” He said modern revolutions take place in the mind. “The powers that be” rely on mind control to keep you in your place and thinking you cannot effect change.

The new American Revolution is going to take place in the mind. The same kind of mind which inspired a young Indian lawyer to spark a revolution against a seemingly omnipotent British Empire through non-violent civil disobedience in 1915. The same mind which emboldened an African-American woman in Montgomery, Alabama to refuse to sit in the back of a public bus in 1955 and spark a Civil Rights revolution that would fight against 400 years of oppression, slavery, and segregation. The same mind that empowered one man with a vegetable cart in a Tunisian village to spark a revolution in December 2010 and overthrow an Arab autocracy without firing one bullet and which ignited an Arab Spring that spread revolutions in a part of the world the rest of humanity was convinced would never see change.

History is replete with minds kindling sparks and igniting flames which emblaze pathways toward revolution, reform, and change.

Your mind is far more powerful than the establishment would have you believe. The establishment needs you more than you need them, and this is precisely why they endeavor to keep you mindless. It’s what they’re banking on (pun definitely intended). Your mind is the only thing that stands between their domination of the world and your independence and liberation as an individual.

I say this because as I continue to write about political reform and revolution, I am often criticized of being a day-dreaming idealist. “We are powerless to make change,” I am often told, “those who are in power will never give us the opportunity to effect any real change.”

What an absurd cop out frankly. Of course you will never be gift-wrapped an opportunity and have it handed to you by the establishment. Was Gandhi gift-wrapped an opportunity by the British for Christ's sake? Rather you must decide in your mind to seize opportunity when you see it and take it and never let it go. In the manner Mohandas Gandhi did in India and Rosa Parks did in Montgomery and Muhammad Bouazizi did in Tunisia.

Open your eyes (and mind) for a moment. It’s happening all around you—people are seizing opportunity and running with it. Look at the Middle East. Look at Spain, Greece, Ireland. Look at Madison, Wisconsin smack-dab in the middle of middle-America. It’s unfolding right in front of you. Have the courage to seize this opportunity for change and stand up to the oligarchy of banks, corporations, and military industrialists who have been denying you the very freedom you claim you lack the power to fight for.

In a previous ZPP article entitled ‘An American Person's Declaration of Independence from the Un-American Corporate Oligarchy', I wrote a “Declaration of Independence” which emulated our country’s original Declaration of Independence and edited it to represent the needs of a modern America that would declare the rights of individual Americans over the international corporate oligarchy which I believe has usurped our rights as Americans, and which I believe has perverted our democracy and turned it into a near fascist state.

I proposed we take to the streets on July 4, 2011 and walk to our federal buildings and Congressperson’s office and duct tape this new Declaration of Independence to their buildings and offices. I also proposed we follow through on several action items that would allow, “We the People” to effectuate a revolution non-violently, peacefully, but with a tangible plan to bring this oligarchy to its knees.

I received quite a bit of feedback on that article which included several requests to delve further into the action-items I highlighted in my modernized Declaration of Independence. Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to break those action-items down to both explain their importance relative to the ultimate goal of revolution, and to also describe how they can practically be applied. This article will be one in a series of six that will focus on each action-item in an attempt to answer that call.

In part, here is what the Declaration called for:

It is the People’s intention to disseminate this Declaration over the course of the next months until the date July 4, 2011 where the People shall adopt it as their official Declaration of Independence from the Oligarchy. The People shall march to their local Federal Buildings and Congressmen’s Offices on that day, and peacefully present this Document to the Oligarchy with their signatures and pledges. The People vow to:

1) withdraw all their deposits from the Oligarchy’s banks,

2) divest all their stock holdings in the Oligarchy’s corporations (particularly corporations in the so-called “defense” industry, financial industry, and any company that has not paid corporate income tax over the past year who has declared profits),

3) refuse to vote for any Oligarchic candidate identifying him or herself as a Democrat or Republican on any ballot for any political office,

4) refuse in the future to enlist in any of the Oligarchy’s military force,

5) conscientiously object to any foreign deployment for those of the People who are presently enlisted in the Oligarchy’s military while continuing to defend the borders of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic, and

6) recognizing that the Oligarchic “justice” system refuses to prosecute its own racketeers who prolifically operate financial criminal enterprises, the People, when summoned to sit as jurors in federal or state criminal courts of the Oligarchy, refuse to convict any of their fellow People accused of acts deemed as “crimes” by the Oligarchy other than those involving violence or theft against the People.

Each item is designed to attack a prong of the oligarchic structure which maintains control over individual Americans. The structure is in place, with the assistance of mainstream media, to exercise manipulation of the masses. The structure cannot function without our willing participation, and in understanding this, “the powers that be” rely on convincing you that you need the structure more than it needs you. This is a fallacy—they need us far more than we need them.

Don’t allow them to get into your mind.

This article will address the issue of the first action item—namely the withdrawal of our deposits from the major banking institutions which rely on those deposits to perpetuate an elaborate Ponzi scheme ensuring they have money when they need it, and when push comes to shove, there is no money left for you when you need it.

Am I being a melodramatic alarmist?

When the nation ran out of money three years ago—the Troubled Asset Relief Program (more commonly referred to as “TARP”) bailed every last one of them out with your tax money and allowed them to post record profits and bonus their executives tens of millions of dollars. What did you get out of it? Your home got foreclosed, your interest rates went up on your credit card while your borrowing allowance went down, your interest rates went down on your cash deposits and Certificates of Deposit, your banking fees went up, and good luck re-financing or modifying your existing home loan if you managed to escape foreclosure.

You see this is what happens when the money dries up in a Ponzi scheme. The con-men at the top of the pyramid get the money and the suckers at the bottom of the pyramid get stuck with nothing but promises that are as empty as their bank accounts.

Stop being a sucker and stop giving them your money to play with.

In a March 24, 2011 Wall Street Journal article the 50 largest banks in this country (most of whom received TARP bailouts) were identified. Please click on to the hyperlink and find your bank. If it’s named on there, immediately withdraw your deposits and credit cards and either invest in a small neighborhood bank, or better yet, a credit union, where you will find that service is infinitely better, fees are either non-existent or nominal, and where your deposits are also guaranteed by the federal government. Here are the top 10 banks on that list of 50 cited to in the Wall Street Journal:

1. Bank of America

2. JP Morgan Chase

3. Citigroup

4. Wells Fargo

5. HSBC

6. U.S. Bancorp

7. PNC Financial Services Group

8. Bank of New York Mellon Group

9. Capital One

10. TD Bank US Holding Company

If you really want to blow a gasket and are wondering how TARP got passed so quickly in Congress without so much as a debate (like the Patriot Act—but that’s a story for another day), take a gander at the top TARP money recipients in relation to their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures as revealed in this February 4, 2009 article on OpenSecrets.org. It’s as illuminating as it is infuriating (note nearly every one of those 50 banks donated to lobbyists and campaigns and were generously rewarded when the TARP kickbacks were paid out to them. Bank of America received $45,000,000,000 of your tax dollars. Citigroup received $50,000,000,000. Wells Fargo $25,000,000,000. Chase $25,000,000,000. Go down the list. The amounts are staggering. The total bailout figures, in aggregate, amount to the GDP of some first-world countries.

So how did these banks respond after you so generously gave them $700,000,000,000 (that’s $700 BILLION) to bail them out?

They foreclosed on you of course and took your homes. According to RealtyTrac , lenders filed for foreclosure on 3.8 million properties in 2010, which was up 2% from 2009, and an increase of 23% from 2008. Fasten your seat belts though, because 2011 is supposed to be even worse. In short, that’s $700 billion that was forced up to the top of the pyramid, without one thin red dime “trickling down” to you.

So absent cashing out all your money and investing in gold bullion and hiding cash under your mattress, what’s the alternative to handing over your money to these institutionalized con-men operating this for-profit internationally legalized Ponzi scheme? (Incidentally, I am not engaging in hyperbole or exaggeration, this is literally a Ponzi scheme—they are not holding anywhere near enough money to cover your deposits.)

The answer is in the theme for this revolution we’re seeking. Invest in “mom and pop.” Invest in individuals at the local level. With people you know. With people that are not another cog in the institutional wheel. Invest in living, breathing, individuals who have a stake in maintaining a relationship with you. This is how American businesses were born, and pardon the cliché, it’s what made this country great.

Invest in George Baily and his Bedford Falls handshake, not in Chase Bank and their phone pool in India.

The closest thing you’re going to get in this context is your local credit union, and I’ll explain why. First, credit unions are non-profit. They are not designed to push you and your needs aside to make way for profits. Which means no ridiculous monthly fees to maintain a checking account, which means cheaper interest rates on your credit cards, and which also means you will soon be on a first name basis with everyone who works there. They’ll know you—who you are, what you need, how to take care of you—all without having to refer you to an 800 number that shoots you over to a phone pool where some guy with no last name, no accountability, and no care in the world other than to try to get through your call as quickly as possible tries to figure out your history and banking issues by reading notes on a computer screen left by the last guy or gal without a last name, who couldn’t help you or otherwise gave a damn about you.

There are no anonymous people at credit unions. They have last names. They shake your hand and smile at you. If you need them to sign a letter and put their names on it, they’ll actually do it.

You want to know why?

Credit Unions are owned by their membership. If you have an account there, you are a member, and you have an ownership stake. This gives you the right to run and vote to be a member of the Board of Directors, and you get one vote regardless of how much or how little money you have deposited in there.

Your money is also insured by the federal government just as it would be in a for-profit bank. Your savings are federally insured to $100,000 by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA). This is a government agency. Moreover, many credit unions are privately insured for $250,000 by Excess Share Insurance Corporation, Inc. (ESI) to a total of $350,000. IRA's are also insured through NCUA up to $250,000. Many credit unions also privately insure their IRA’s for $250,000 by ESI for a total of $500,000.

Does that sound easy enough for you in terms of starting a revolution? (This isn’t exactly Che Guevara running to the Cuban jungle and fighting dysentery and Batista’s army.) Here’s your revolutionary homework assignment for this week. Action item one for this non-violent revolt is to get your money out of for-profit banks, particularly the top 50, and get them into non-profit credit unions. You can spend an hour out of your day accomplishing this. You’ll feel better. You’ll get better service. You’ll pay reduced fees. You will have a tangible stake in the credit union and a say in how your money and the union’s money are handled. Best of all—no anonymous people in a phone pool without last names will ever be entrusted with your life savings ever again. If only 20% of Americans did this, these institutional for-profit banks will begin crumbling and we’ll put a significant chink in this oligarchy’s armor.

Resolve to do at least this within the next week. We’ll talk about the next action item around then.

Remember, this revolution will not be televised and it will not happen around you or in your history books. It will happen through you and by you. It will begin in your mind. Stop letting these oligarchs control your mind and make you think you are powerless. Your mind is where this revolution will start. At its most basic, your mind is little more than a collection of human tissue, a blood supply, and neurological impulses. For all practical purposes your mind is indistinguishable from the minds of Mohandas Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Muhammad Bouazizi. The only difference is when they realized they had an opportunity to seize, they seized it and never turned back.

Here is your opportunity. Seize it as they have. Don’t allow yourself to be another cog in this oligarchy’s wheel.

Zero Party Politics on the Radio! Episode 2: REVOLUTION, Spain, Greece...America?

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 16:59:00 +0000

The archived Episode 2 of the ZPP podcast. The topic is REVOLUTION. We discussed what is occurring in Spain and Greece and comparing it with the Arab Spring, and what COULD happen here in the United States...

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Zero Party Politics on the Radio! Episode 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sat, 28 May 2011 16:01:00 +0000

Listen to my rantings on the air every week! My weekly podcast will be broadcast every Friday night 9:00 pm PST (you can call in live at 1-949-209-2964 and participate in the discussions). Click the play button on the link below and you can hear the entire archived episode which discusses Obama's stance on Palestine, institutional media and corporate influences, and the impact of recent events in Europe and the Middle East on the United States. Hope you enjoy it and please help spread the word by sharing the link!

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Osama Bin Laden's Announced Death Highlights Two Stark Realities: One, America is the Most Gullible Country on Earth, and Two, Obama is About to Go to War With Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Wed, 11 May 2011 00:34:00 +0000

Ernest Hemingway gave a great piece of advice to aspiring writers and journalists (or it could have been some intoxicated rant while he was drunk and high on absinthe, but who really cares?). “Develop a built-in bullshit detector,” Papa warned. Of course if you look at mainstream journalism today, particularly in the United States, this “built-in bullshit detector” is about as well developed as a set of testicles on a steer.

So as a writer who actually possesses a pair let me emphatically and unapologetically call “bullshit” on this Osama Bin Laden charade that’s been embarrassingly reported in what is equally embarrassingly referred to as news media in the United States. This same charade these gutless steers in the American media helped play with the government of the United States during the build up to the second Iraq war when not one of them (absent Helen Thomas) had the journalistic competence or integrity or balls to call “bullshit.”

So here it goes President Obama: ”BULLSHIT!”

How gullible is America?

Osama Bin Laden was killed in a mansion he had been living in for six years a hundred kilometers outside the capitol of Pakistan (our ally on the war on terror) in the midst of a Pakistani military academy, surrounded by Pakistan’s elite intelligence agency (the ISI) by an elite American Navy SEAL team that was only now able to locate a six foot five inch Arab who was the most wanted man in the history of the world and who formally worked with the CIA?

You’re seriously reporting this with a straight face without even having the most remote desire to say, “bullshit!”? (This is a serious question.)

Hold on it gets better…

This is the very same Osama Bin Laden who also happened to have a $25 million bounty on his head, who needed to be attached to a dialysis machine three times a week, and was the subject of more conspiracy theories than there are stars in the sky, but who nevertheless was conveniently “buried at sea in accordance with Islamic traditions” by a country that has proven itself so respectful of honoring Islamic traditions as evidenced by Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, a Ground Zero non-mosque mosque, not to mention two wars resulting in the deaths, either directly or indirectly, of over a million Muslims premised on WMD’s that never existed and in two countries who this man who is now “sleeping with the fishes” along with Luca Brasi, was never in! (Okay, so apparently he was in Afghanistan 7 years ago, but I’m still calling bullshit.)

How freaking gullible are you and how incompetent is your free press?

SERIOUSLY?

Just when I thought I heard it all. Just when I thought this country couldn’t possibly swallow another morsel of bullshit, here comes a seven course dinner worthy of a Top Chef finale, with the main ingredient being a mountain of Bandini pâté. And there you are America, eating this steaming pile of manure as though you were eating Roast Magret duck breasts with shaved black truffles.

“Buried at sea in accordance with Islamic traditions?”

Say that out loud three times, so that it can sink in.

Say that out loud and understand the absurdity of that statement. A statement like this coming from a country that has the blood of millions of Muslims on its hands courtesy of three wars over 20 years. A statement like this about a man this same country equates to being an Islamic Adolf Hitler. Then conveniently brush off the absurdity of such a claim made by such a country because this same government that has lied to you about everything from TARP, to WMD’s, to non-existent Iraqi 9/11 connections, to the Gulf of Tonkin, to corporate citizenship, to Social Security, to death panels—this very same government has just told you they “confirmed” the identity of the most wanted man in history by having a Navy SEAL lie next to his dead body to confirm his height, the taking of a few Polaroids by their crack forensic team, a DNA test you will never see conducted either on a helicopter or some navy vessel on the Arabian Sea with no outside confirmation, and then buried him at sea in accordance with the dictates of a religion that was founded by DESERT NOMADS.

How FREAKING gullible is this country?

And you’re cheering about it! You and the press, are holding hands, singing “God Bless America” in front of the White House forgetting about how you just got bent over a barrel and took corporate bailouts, a bankrupt economy, cuts in every component of the budget except military spending, the gutting of Medicare, the outlawing of collective bargaining for labor, corporate citizenship and personhood, and a million other things which are screaming your imminent death as a first world country… But goddamn it, the Arab with the beard was buried at sea because the same government that lied to you about everything else told you it happened, and both you and your free press are jumping around like hysterical monkeys juiced on cocaine and ecstasy while throwing your excrement at the world who are collectively pointing their fingers at you laughing out loud as they’re watching you in the same monkey cage you genuinely have no idea you’re actually in.

You know what though?

It doesn’t really matter anymore. Not for me at least. How Bin Laden was killed, how it was even remotely possible that we weren’t aware of where he was living, how they disposed of his body—all of those questions and their answers are completely irrelevant to me, because I am a serious person who possesses a bullshit detector that apparently no one in main-stream U.S. media possesses (and certainly not the monkeys who regularly watch them).

Here’s the real question serious people are actually asking: “What does the announced ‘capture’ and ‘death’ of Osama Bin Laden actually signal? What’s coming next?” (And if you’re answer to that question is that we are finally going to be able to end our campaigns in Afghanistan and everywhere else in the Middle East—please just stick a rusty fork in my eye and bang be over the head repeatedly with a ball-pein hammer, because that would literally be less painful to me than hearing you think out loud).

“Bin Laden” is “dead” because the government of the United States, and the military industrial complex which runs it, is getting prepared to introduce you to another bogeyman. They are well aware you caught up to their WMD scam with Iraq, and that chasing a phantom Arab with a long beard in Afghanistan has worn thin with you. They are aware you have seen your economy in shambles and observed what has occurred in places like Wisconsin and understand you are aware you are being scammed with corporate bailouts and corporate welfare and are about to take to the streets with pitchforks and torches and start calling for serious changes and reform and heads to roll.

So now they are announcing this victory, and allowing you to wave your flag and sing “God Bless America” in front of the White House and at Ground Zero and in Times Square (with your free press)…and they are going to count on you (and your free press) forgetting about all that, just before introducing you to another “threat” to America and scare the living daylights out of you with another load of bullshit, so that they can divert trillions of more dollars you don’t have to another threat to our national security that doesn’t exist.

Why?

Because you are so damn gullible.

Serious people who are seriously looking at this Bin Laden charade are not really curious about the “elite SEAL 6 team” that “got him.” Nor about wife number 5 that stood in their way as a “human shield”, nor about whether Bin Laden had satellite TV in his three story mansion in the outskirts of Pakistan’s capitol nowhere near Afghanistan where 150,000 American troops were aimlessly looking for him in a cave. Serious people are not asking the question of whether this development means the death nail to Al Qaida.

Serious people understand Osama Bin Laden served an important purpose for the Bush administration. They realize he needed to be real and he needed to be alive because so long as he was, hundreds of billions of dollars could go into a machine that could drop bombs and build military hardware to chase a phantom in two countries he was never in.

Sometime very soon, America will take a deep breath, have a drink, and while it’s still half drunk waving its flag again, another bogeyman will emerge. One it vaguely recognizes—some brown-skinned hummus eater with multiple wives and a beard.

But this time the bogeyman will be far better armed than the normal babaghanoushi toting a sling shot and an arsenal of firecrackers. Americans may be gullible after all, but after trillions of dollars, even a gullible American is going to need some convincing after 20 years of bullshit—these guys really better have something that goes “BOOM!” this time (with capital letters and preferably an exclamation point) and it better make a big damn noise for Christ’s sake!

And what can be more convincing to a gullible American public with a castrated “free press” than a nuclear holocaust premised, of course, on utter bullshit?

Forget about 3000 dead Americans and a few buildings. America, after you’re done catching your breath, and right before you’re about to start complaining again about your economic meltdown, and while you’re still singing “God Bless America”, waving that flag, right before your buzz wears off, and just as you begin to realize your free press is actually charging you, let me tell you about the new seven course dinner of bullshit you will be getting served. (“They” have been in the kitchen working this crock for quite some time, so I hope you brought your appetite.)

This is season 4 in the Middle East Bogeyman Scare the Crap out of America Series. Forget about IED’s. Forget about milk trucks taken from satellites from outer space that Colin Powel advertised as mobile chemical weapon factories presented to the UN General Assembly. Forget about Hamas firecrackers that re-arrange dirt in Israeli parking lots, translated into American English as “rockets”. Forget about Iraqi Scud missiles that couldn’t hit water if they were dropped off a row-boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Forget about underwear bombs, shoe bombs, and toothpaste bombs that don’t seem to know how to explode.

Folks, this time…THIS TIME… the secret ingredient is an honest to goodness Iranian nuclear holocaust from a country that lacks the technology to refine its own oil, and you’ve already seen the previews for this episode, so it just HAS to be true, and you couldn’t possibly be gullible enough not to believe it because THIS TIME it isn’t bullshit (and my fingers are totally not crossed). Why? Because “they” used two really super scary words: 1) NUCLEAR! and 2) HOLOCAUST! (note the use of both capital letters and exclamation points…note they were used on both words…and further note, that this must undoubtedly make it true.)

I know what you’re thinking. There must be some pro-Islamic, anti-American, anti-Semitic voice out there that is attempting to dissuade your astute mind from buying into this crock. You’re absolutely right! Those Anti-American bastards at the International Atomic Energy Agency are attempting to do just that. Just listen to this video that was cleverly made by a suspected Arab-lover named “Scott” in an attempt to con you! (This is actually a short video explaining the Iranian nuclear program by Scott Horton who is a human rights activist and attorney. It’s a 6 minute video. I implore you to watch it. My tongue in cheek banter aside, and my sarcasm displayed in this article aside, please spend six minutes to understand why Iran’s nuclear weapons program is a canard and how the Obama Administration, in Bush-like fashion, has utterly ignored this reality. Please watch this):

But what about the Ahmadinejad claim that he wanted to “wipe Israel off the face of the map”?

Let me first say I am no fan of this man and have no particular interest in defending him. But let me also add that I have had it up to my ears with American gullibility and what the vast majority of Americans are so willing to believe so long as it comes from Israeli and American main-stream media. It’s astonishing how if you repeat a lie often enough on the idiot box, the idiots watching said box universally accept said idiocy as unequivocal truth. In this infamous speech (which was taken completely out of context incidentally) these were Ahmadinejad’s exact words in Farsi:

"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

This is the literal translation:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

This is the explanation of the passage from a native Farsi speaker explaining that portion of the speech in full context::

That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "regime." pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).

So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh" is not contained anywhere in his original Farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's president threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." despite never having uttered the words "map." "wipe out" or even "Israel."

While the false "wiped off the map" extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad's actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the "map" comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a "world without Zionism." One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.
In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.

so let’s put this entire Iranian bogeyman in context before we move on to the more frightening point of where this is all leading to from an American, Israeli, and Saudi (and yes the Saudis are equally motivated to eliminate Iran as their chief rival in the region) perspective in their collective strategy for regional domination. Remember, Bin Laden and Iraq have been put to bed. There is a military industrial complex that needs another war as they have needed one every decade since World War II. Iraq is already in American hands. Saudi, Iraq, and Iran represent the bulk of the oil reserves in the Gulf. A false flag of an Iranian nuclear threat has been sold to the American people for nearly a decade. Bin Laden and Iraq were Bush’s wars which now act as an albatross for Obama because the American public has become more concerned with a collapsing economy and are therefore not interested in continuing two wars they perceive as not only a colossal waste of money, but also utterly counterproductive to American interests.

After the closest battle for a presidential nomination in the history of the United States, and after weeks of legal battles determining who would become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, on the evening of June 3, 2008, Barrack Obama was announced as the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party.

Twelve hours later, Nancy Pelosi (then the Speaker of the House), Barrack Obama (the newly announced nominee for President), and Hillary Clinton (who lost the nomination by the smallest of margins in American history and who later became Secretary of State), arguably the three most powerful Democrats in the country, made an appearance and gave a speech before guess who? Understand the political climate at the time and the Democratic Party base. Did they appear before the AFL-CIO? A “veterans against the war” organization? The ACLU? The NAACP? A group promoting healthcare reform? Did they appeal to young voters and movements that helped propel their message against the Republican establishment, and speak before a group like Moveon.org to continue their momentum and advance their message for change?

Nope.

All three, within 12 hours after this battle for the Democratic nomination appeared before AIPAC—the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee—and pandered to a foreign, right-wing, fanatically hawkish lobbying organization who, on top of their agenda, was waging war against your new bogeyman, Iran.

Remember the lie about an Iranian nuclear weapons program that the international community universally denies exists? Remember the lie that Iran threatened to “wipe Israel off the face of the map” with nuclear weapons the entire world knows they don’t have?

Here are some illuminating quotes from that AIPAC event on June 4, 2008 you may find interesting…

Barrack Obama—June 4, 2008 one day after becoming the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party for President of the Untied States:

“There is no greater threat to Israel — or to the peace and stability of the region — than Iran…
“The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat…
“We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…
“We cannot unconditionally rule out an approach that could prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. ”

Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State on the same day, delivered this message to AIPAC:

“The second principle is simple one; no nuclear weapons for Iran…Iran is a country whose leaders, whose President denies the Holocaust. He defies the international community…We can never let Iran obtain nuclear weapons. The next President will have to deal with the Iranian challenge from day one. This is not just in Israel’s interest; it is in America’s interest and the world’s interest and this is a threat that I take very seriously… I have also said that should Iran ever--ever contemplate using nuclear weapons against Israel they must understand what the consequences will be to them…it is imperative that we get both tough and smart about dealing with Iran before it is too late.”

Why should you be worried now that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are conveniently put to bed and after the Bush administration and the military industrial complex have made their trillions off of them?

Because Israel, along with your new President, and your new Secretary of State are convincing you that Iran (as they did with Iraq) wants to “wipe Israel off the face of the map” (which was never said) with nuclear weapons everyone else on the planet (including the IAEA) says they don’t have. DOES THIS AT ALL SOUND FAMILIAR TO YOU? For crying out loud this was the precise lie presented to you for the Iraq war by the Bush administration!

Saudi Arabia (as they did with Iraq) wants to eliminate its biggest rival in the region. Don’t think for one minute this is some kind of anti-Semitic finger pointing conspiracy. There is a very significant fear repeatedly raised by the Saudis and the other oil kingdoms not only against Iran, but against a growing Shiite domination in the region. It’s why you heard very little about the Shiite uprisings in Bahrain during the Arab Spring revolutions. The majority Shiite population was massacred both by the minority Sunni government in Bahrain along with the help of the Saudi military (who of course are also Sunni). People were killed en masse. You heard scarcely a peep about it in the American media, unlike what occurred in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia (incidentally other revolts were equally ignored, but that’s a topic for another day).

The United States is in bed with both Israel and Saudi Arabia for different reasons, but they all have a common purpose—they want the Iranian regime eliminated in the same way they wanted the Iraqi regime eliminated, and the military industrial complex is salivating at the opportunity to line its pockets again with trillions more of your tax dollars to do just that. Now that Saddam and Bin Laden (and all Bin Laden was, was a convenient excuse to go after Iraq) are eliminated, Iran will emerge as the new Islamic bogeyman, and the ground work for that has been being laid for years now.

Our military apparatus and intelligence personal (i.e. CIA and NSA) are already conveniently in place. We have nearly a quarter million American troops and tens of thousands American mercenaries (aka “contractors”) surrounding Iran in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom are either bordering Iran or are within spitting distance of it.

We have the bulk of our Atlantic naval fleet either in the Persian Gulf or the Eastern Mediterranean.

Iran, Iraq, and Saudi represent the bulk of OPEC’s oil reserves.

The only thing missing? Nothing much really—convincing a profoundly gullible American public that there is an imminent nuclear threat from Iran after the ground work has already been laid for it for at least a decade and which was practically applauded and endorsed by a supposedly liberal President and Secretary of State before they ever even took office.

The clincher that will get you to forget about corporate bailouts and zero taxes for multi-billion dollar multinational companies that are exporting all your jobs overseas as your pensions disappear, your unions get busted, your Medicare and Social-Security get privatized, your homes get foreclosed, your 401k disappears into oblivion?

Are you familiar with the term “false flag operation”?

If you’re not, do a little research, because this is likely what will happen in the next 18 months. A “dirty bomb” is going to go “BOOM!” in the United States, or in Israel, or in Europe, or in Africa… some group you never heard of linking itself with Iran will “take credit” for it… and just like you’ve done dozens of times before, you’re going to forget about how you just got screwed by corporate America, and you’ll be putting your right hand over your heart while F-16’s do flybys at the Super Bowl right after Whitney Houston lip-syncs the Star Spangled Banner, as you pray to Baby Jesus to give your boys in uniform the courage to drop 2,000 pound bombs on another group of brown people that had the audacity to call your God “Allah”.

(And you can count on Israel invading Lebanon again to take on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah right around the same time—they will not let their failed campaign against Hezbollah in 2006 go unanswered. This will be a multi-tiered attack against not only Iran, but all Shiite influence in the region).

Contemplate this for a moment: The military industrial complex has started a war of choice overseas every decade since World War II against an “enemy” that never attacked you. Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq I, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan (and don’t continue to play stupid, Afghanistan never attacked you…the guy who was a CIA asset who you claimed attacked you, you wound up killing in Pakistan, and he was a Yemeni born in Saudi Arabia), Iraq II… and here we are in 2012 and only seven damn years left in this decade…

Anyone willing to bet me we aren’t going to war with Iran?

In “A Farewell to Arms” Hemingway famously wrote a line attributed to the character Passini: "It doesn't finish. There is no finish to war. . . . War is not won by victory. . . . One side must stop fighting. Why don't we stop fighting?"

Because my dear Passini, Americans are so damn gullible, and the people who own them make trillions relying on that sad reality.

An American Person's Declaration of Independence from the Un-American Corporate Oligarchy

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 05:20:00 +0000

On July 4, 2011 I will be marching down to my local federal building and congressman's office and duct-taping a hard copy of this "revised" Declaration of Independence (which I took the liberty of drafting/revising) to their front doors, along with every electronic signature and comment anyone of you wish to contribute in the comment section below (whether it's one or one million). I will also follow through on all the vows I made in the Declaration. I would also invite anyone who gives a damn to join me. "Sign" this if you wish, and do the "brave" thing on Independence Day and duct-tape a hard copy of this to your local federal building and congressperson's office door, or a telephone poll, or a fire hydrant, or any place you deem fit (it's not exactly a revolt in Tahrir Square--you'll be back home in time for your pool party, fireworks, and corporate sponsored fake freedom before you know it):

The Declaration of

the People of the United States

Against the American Corporate Oligarchy

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a faceless Corporate Oligarchy, and to assume a concept of a free United States for the People of the United States, the separate and equal station in which the laws of nature and the rights inherent in human existence versus artificially created corporate “personhood,” a decent respect for mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to such a separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, and we hold these truths to be further self-evident that our rights, as men, as women, as Americans, and as human beings, are separate and distinct from the rights derived from a contrived “corporate personhood,” a false personhood that has usurped the rights of the literal human person, and which has diverted the attention of so-called American politicians from their human constituents, and has thus created a government which derives a primary motivation to benefit the false person with the lie that eventually the benefits given to this false person will trickle down and ultimately benefit the literal People—the true “People” recognized by nature, science, the Constitution of the United States and all logic and morality, as the only entity, worthy of being referenced as “the People” and entitled to the inalienable rights associated with same.

As our Forefathers wrote in their initial Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are endowed by certain inalienable rights that, among these, are the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, a United States government was initially formed by the People, deriving the powers from the consent of these governed People and their will, but which has now been usurped by the “will” of a Corporate Oligarchy now falsely and treasonously claiming the title of “Personhood.” That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to the ends of life, liberty, and the pursuit of the People’s happiness and beholden to artificial “persons,” it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to the People shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.

The history of the present Corporate Oligarchy is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the People of these United States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to the candid world:

The Corporate Oligarchy has refused to honor and enforce laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

These United States were intended to be a nation led by a government “of the People, by the People, for the People,” not a government “of Corporate interests, by Corporate shills, for their Corporate puppet masters.”

The Corporate Oligarchy has forbidden their corporate shills holding political office to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance—such as, inter alia, laws requiring radical and substantive campaign finance reform, laws limiting appropriations to a Military Industrial Complex which demands more money than all of the militaries of all of the other world’s nations combined, and laws increasing appropriations to repair the People’s collapsing infrastructure.

The Corporate Oligarchy has refused to allow their corporate shills to hold the elite of the Corporate Oligarchy criminally liable for their vast financial Ponzi and derivatives schemes which have bankrupted the People, while insisting on imprisoning more of the People per capita than any country on earth for petty crimes.

The Corporate Oligarchy has created a political process which makes near impossible the election of any candidate without its sponsorship and approval. Whether Democrat or Republican, both “parties” are beholden to the same Corporate Oligarchy and continuously pay their dues to same to remain in power. We the People recognize that “partisanship” is merely a myth to create an illusion of a debate and an illusion of a choice where neither exists.

The Corporate Oligarchy has maintained a giant military apparatus which has forced the People into overseas “wars of choice” in every decade since World War II and created false enemies to legitimize the vast tax expenditures the Oligarchy annually takes from the People’s Treasury and tithes to the Military Industrial Complex.

The Corporate Oligarchy has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, civil power.

The Corporate Oligarchy has imposed taxes on the People, while excluding the Oligarchy from any such obligations.

As the People starve, the Corporate Oligarchy has exported most of the People’s jobs overseas, while insisting the People invest in the Oligarchy’s “private” corporate stocks.

The Corporate Oligarchy has declared itself a “person” allowing it the same rights and privileges of the People, but with very few of the obligations imposed on the People by the Oligarchy.

The Corporate Oligarchy has taken power over all news media outlets and disseminates information only under its own terms and controls. We the People recognize there cannot be a “free press” if it requires trillions of Corporate Oligarchic dollars to exist.

The Corporate Oligarchy has created a dubiously named “Patriot Act” designed to erase the People’s Constitutionally protected rights of privacy, speech, assembly, free exercise of religion, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and is contrary to any notion of a free state for the People. We the People recognize an Oligarchy which demands to monitor the People is a regime whose aims are designed to dismantle all notions of a free society.

The Corporate Oligarchy has created a multitude of new agencies and offices to harass the People and dissolve their substance while attempting to establish the Oligarchy as the substantive “People.”

We the People recognize that in order for this Corporate Oligarchy to continue, it requires the continued acquiescence of the People. To the Oligarchy, this is the People’s message to “you”: “You” need the People far more than the People need “you.” Therefore, the People of the United States of America, do in the name, and by the authority of the good People of this country and in the memory and spirit of our Forefathers, solemnly publish and declare, that these People United are, and of right, ought to be free and independent from the Corporate Oligarchy which has taken over the hallowed legislative, judicial, and executive halls of this once great nation. We hereby absolve ourselves of any loyalty or allegiance to the Corporatist Crown and that all political connection with this Crown need to be dissolved in the same manner this connection was dissolved by the People from the British Crown in 1776.

It is the People’s intention to disseminate this Declaration over the course of the next months until the date July 4, 2011 where the People shall adopt it as their official Declaration of Independence from the Oligarchy. The People shall march to their local Federal Buildings and Congressmen’s Offices on that day, and peacefully present this Document to the Oligarchy with their signatures and pledges. The People vow to:

1) withdraw all their deposits from the Oligarchy’s banks,

3) refuse to vote for any Oligarchic candidate identifying him or herself as a Democrat or Republican on any ballot for any political office,

4) refuse in the future to enlist in any of the Oligarchy’s military forces,

The People demand a peaceful revolution and a return of a government of the People, by the People, and for the People. We, the People are powerful, and we hold the assets of the Corporate Oligarchy in our collective hands. On July 4, 2011 we shall peacefully, legally, and profoundly declare our official and final Independence from this Corporate Oligarchy and reclaim these United States by literally taking our money and our nation back.

And for the support of this Declaration, and as our Forefathers did on July 4, 1776, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It's Time for an American Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:15:00 +0000

Had I lived a hundred years ago, I would have been some anonymous man, writing words in an anonymous journal which no one would have ever read. I would have been lamenting the recent passing of Mark Twain, remembering his mirthful yet poignant musings on American politics as I glanced through old copies of The Atlantic Monthly or The North American Review, perhaps with a bit of envy, wishing my words could have had the same import and magic Twain’s did so that I wouldn’t be relegated to anonymity—an unknown and disgruntled observer of an American political process which had as little use for me as I had for it.

A hundred years later, thanks to the internet, I (along with millions of others) am not quite so anonymous. I don’t know if this was fate’s or America’s way of pacifying me and the other members of “the masses” class, but if we were honest with ourselves, “completely anonymous” and “obscure blogger” are probably rather close points on the historical relevancy (or more aptly “irrelevancy”) meter. Make no mistake, this is done by design. Just as we are presented with fake choices when we go to a polling booth, we are also given a fake voice in a vast internet echo chamber that allows us to believe we are actually saying something someone is actually listening to. It’s what America has become really good at—creating an illusion of choice and voice in a process that has already done the choosing and speaking for us.

This modern age is convenient if nothing else. In order to run across interesting political commentary, I no longer have to flip through stacks of magazines creating a clutter in my study (that space could be much better used for a 50 inch plasma TV). For example, I spent this afternoon watching Youtube and relishing in the ruminations of our modern version of Mark Twain—George Carlin--humorist, philosopher, and ever the observer of Americana and its absurdities. I ran across an old clip of Carlin’s on the Keith Olbermann Show which aired a few years before he died.

Carlin said something that I found hard to disagree with. “America is finished,” he said. In fact, he wasn’t even fatalistic or melancholy when making that proclamation. It was more of a matter-of-fact resignation to a notion that this is the way things were in this country. As he described it, he was being an honest observer who had no stake in how America turned out.

Is it healthier spiritually to observe this reality as a "non-stakeholder" than to waste your energy trying to force change on a public that doesn’t seem to want it and in a system that could never accommodate the change you really wanted? For George Carlin it was. For him, it was a waste of time to change this fundamentally flawed institutional process. He preferred to observe America circle down the metaphorical toilet bowl (as Carlin himself described it) as a mere bystander to history than to do anything to actively attempt to "un-flush" what he believed was destined to disappear into oblivion.

As I found myself with Twain, I found myself being envious of Carlin. I wish I had the luxury to remain a detached observer without a stake in the outcome. I’m 40 years old. I am by no means successful financially. I am mired in a career I don’t particularly like. I don’t have a voice that is going to live on after I die. As hopeless as this sounds, this America which is making the circles around that toilet bowl drain, is the last chance I have to salvage any meaning out of my life.

I’m not naïve. I realize we have a political process that is inherently flawed. The very people we have charged with saving this country are the very people who are beholden to the same process which is responsible for flushing this country down the Carlinian toilet.

That being said, there is an alternative to the Carlinian Flush…

Dare we say it? Dare we even whisper it?

“Revolution.”

It’s a word you know. People have used that word before. People are using that word today in parts of the world we never dreamed would ever use it. But for that word, there would not be an America to begin with along with the sappy country music songs and American flag lapel-pins that go with it.

As "we the people" see America’s infrastructure collapsing around us, as we see our national treasury usurped by military industry blood lusts and financial industry Ponzi schemes, as we see every news media outlet sponsored exclusively by large multinational corporations do the political "thinking" for us , as we see a country that imprisons more people per capita than any country on earth, as we see a country that denies pensions to working class citizens so that it can cut taxes to the same corporations those working class people invested in to fund the very pensions they are being denied, as we see a political process that requires candidates to be sponsored by the same corporations, military industrialists, financial institutions, and "news" media franchises that are robbing us blind and lying to us…it may behoove us to reintroduce the word “revolution” to the American-English lexicon.

What more do we have to lose? Our homes? Our infrastructure? Our retirement? Our wages? Our access to healthcare? Our “democracy” which requires corporate sponsorship to run a candidate even for municipal office?

Let’s pick a day this year.

July 4^th seems like an appropriate one.

Let’s pick that day to literally take to the streets and “collectively bargain” for our individual rights against the oligarchy of corporations that run this country who have spent decades taking them away. I put “collective bargaining” in quotes, because though it is far more docile than a word like “revolution,” it is also a word that may become extinct in American-English if these corporatists continue to get their way.

On July 4, 2011 let’s make a new Declaration of Independence and dissolve our ties with our 21^st century kings and queens just as we did with our 18^th century kings and queens.

What if we resolved to withdraw the deposits we’ve made in the king’s bank which fraudulently claims to hold our money while charging us usery to give it back to us?

What if we demanded the king’s bank actually proves it holds the notes and mortgages to our properties before it collects another dime in payments or forecloses on another one of our homes?

What if we pulled out of the stock market, and told the king’s “publically traded” companies “if the king can’t pay our pensions because you need tax breaks, we will no longer invest in you?”

What if we told the king, “until you reinvest in our infrastructure and ensure social security and Medicare are funded, we are no longer going to pay taxes and fund your corporate war machine and Ponzi schemes?”

What if we collectively practiced jury nullification and refused to convict anyone charged with a marijuana related “drug” offense in the king’s court?

What if every rank and file soldier told the king, “we will continue to defend our country’s borders from any enemy foreign or domestic but we refuse to be deployed overseas to fight wars on behalf of the king and his corporations?”

What if we said, “until we see massive campaign finance reforms, and until corporations are banned from funding the campaigns of candidates, we’re not going to vote for either a Republican or a Democrat on ‘election-day’ who are nothing more than members of the same American royal party?”

George Carlin was right. We’re already circling the toilet bowl.

I don’t know about you, but I’d just as soon not be a passive observer while the Tidy Bowl Man waves goodbye to me and what’s left of the memory of a democratic America. As much as I love George Carlin and as much as I always will, life hasn’t been as kind to me as it was for him and I actually do have a stake in this outcome. I don’t think I’m overstating things by saying the contents of what is being flushed down this Carlinian toilet bowl (as pathetic as it may sound) is all I have left in my life. I am like many of you. I am not rich. I am not famous. I am not likely a man that history will remember. As things stand today, I have neither a past to fondly reminisce over, a present to comfortably live in, a future to look forward to, nor a legacy to leave behind.

We've gone beyond the need for poignant political punditry in this country. Unless rather substantive activism takes hold, American democracy will be as dead as Carlin and Twain. We either accept our fate as subjects to our corporate masters as we play the role of bystanders to history, or where we stand up with all we have and make history by preventing this democracy from being flushed away into oblivion.

During the Spanish Civil War Dolores Ibárruri—"La Pasionaria”—famously said, “Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.”

On July 4^th 2011, I propose we as Americans who still have a dog in this fight take to the streets and peacefully, but in no uncertain terms, declare the independence of “we the people” from “them the corporations.”

Would anyone care to get off their knees (or couch) and join me?

Bill Maher Using the Lara Logan Sexual Assault to Advance His Anti-Arab Agenda Makes Him the Same Sexist Pig He Accuses the Arab World of Being

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 06:49:00 +0000

I have long been a Bill Maher fan and “religulously” watched ‘Real Time’ for years along with its predecessor ‘Politically Incorrect’ before it was canceled. In fact my admiration for Maher grew in large part as a result of the issues surrounding the cancelation of ‘Politically Incorrect’ and the unapologetic stand he took in his analysis of the 9-11 attacks, suggesting the reasons for those attacks were perhaps a bit more complicated than “they hated us for our freedom.” In a landscape full of reactionary rhetoric, Maher was admittedly one of alarmingly few voices of reason at the time.

As a left-leaning libertarian (whatever that means) I find myself in alignment with Maher on most issues, and feel his voice is one which has been missing from the popular American political narrative for far too long. I’m not claiming the man is Noam Chomsky or some other intellectual giant, but with all the political punditry on television it was refreshing to have an entertaining perspective in line more closely with my own political leanings than with that of the neo-conservative and neo-liberal talking heads that dominate the political discourse in mainstream media.

Those who know me, or those who read me, know that I have very liberal leanings on a vast array of social issues—from gay rights, to abortion rights, to women’s rights, to immigrant and minority rights, to universal healthcare, to the legalization of marijuana—indeed on just about any issue regarding civil liberties and social justice you will scarcely find a position I take that can be classified as anything but liberal.

That won’t be enough to get me invited to dinner at Bill Maher’s house though, because you see, I also happen to be an Arab and that’s a no-no in the world of Maher, for as he proclaimed in a bigotry laden segment on ‘Real Time’ this Friday, “talk to women who have ever dated an Arab man—the reviews are not good.”

As I was sitting on my couch with my wife (who not only dated this Arab man but apparently gave him good enough “reviews” to actually marry him without so much as one goat or camel for payment to her father) listening to that declaration which was followed by a smattering of applause by the audience, I couldn’t help but think how quickly the audience would have turned to applause had the word “Arab” in Maher’s statement been substituted with “Jewish” or “Black” or “Latino.”

It was terribly hurtful. I have been accustomed to hearing such closed mindedness from the Glenn Becks and Bill O’Reillys of the American pundit world, but when a popular liberal says something like that and that statement is then applauded by a largely liberal audience, I realize that even amongst liberals who accept everyone, I still don’t have a place at the American political and cultural table.

Other statements made by Maher which were applauded by his audience in that segment on Friday:

“I was much more excited about the Arab revolution in the Middle East before I heard the horrible news about Lara Logan.”

“We do not know the details of what happened there but I think it’s fair to say Muslim men have a bad attitude about women in general. And I would just like to say you are never going to have this revolution happen unless there is also a sexual revolution that goes with it.”

“Civilization begins with civilizing the men.”

“I’m not pre-judging, I’m judging. They’re worse, what’s wrong with just saying that?”

“[Democracy] isn’t going to happen unless you get right about your attitudes towards women.”

It wasn’t only what Maher said (which was bad enough), it was also how he said it with an arrogant, “how dare you disagree with me" attitude every time one of his bigoted statements was challenged by members of his panel. Maher repeatedly cut off Tavis Smiley and marginalized him any time he attempted to make a point that was decidedly not premised on Islamophobia or anti-Arabism. It was uncomfortable to watch—Maher sounded, acted, and appeared as out of place as a pre-Civil War plantation owner zapped into a 1960’s commune trying to explain the virtues of “white America” to a group of free-love hippies. Even a self-proclaimed “very right-leaning” Michelle Caruso-Cabrera seemed to be taken aback by Maher’s comments.

Maher’s obsession with demonizing all Arab men as misogynistinc Neanderthals while laying claim “we are better than they are” because we in America “value women,” and Arabs “aren’t ready for democracy” because they’re sexist baboons, demonstrates either a profound ignorance of American history on Maher’s part, or rather convenient amnesia. Apparently it's lost on Maher that women in the United States weren’t permitted to vote until nearly 150 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. If we are to use Maher’s logic, “democracy didn’t happen” in America until 1920, because that was the first year women were allowed to go to the polls and vote in a country which respected and valued them so much.

(By the way, it’s a good thing the “democracy barometer” isn’t actually measured with the election of a woman president or prime minister, because even assuming the United States elects its first woman president in 2012 to begin serving in 2013, that would put our “democracy” 25 years behind Pakistan, an Islamic nation that elected a women, Benazir Bhutto, as prime minister in 1988 and later in 1993.)

What made Maher’s comments downright duplicitous and nasty was that he cheaply exploited the Lara Logan sexual assault and used it as a vehicle to indict 80 million Egyptians, 300 million Arabs, and 1 billion Muslims in order to disregard the historically epic changes emerging in the Arab and Islamic worlds through non-violent civil disobedience, because that just wouldn't fit neatly enough into his view of a barbaric Arab people. After all why celebrate revolutions the designs of which were to overthrow the same autocratic (and universally misogynistic) regimes decried by Maher, which were and are ironically propped and financed in large part by the “democracy-loving” women libbers of the United States that Maher seems to be so proud to attach himself to, and undermine his bigoted view of an entire race of people and their religion? Speaking as a liberal, as an Arab, and as an American, I was disgusted to see Maher use Logan’s rape for this purpose—even as he admitted to not knowing the details of that incident, he was so quick to exploit it so that he could have an “aha!” moment to advance his tired narrative that “they’re worse than we are.”

I don't want to diminish the sexual assault on Lara Logan. It’s obvious she went through something quite horrific, but we still don't know the details of what happened and to claim that “they” are worse than “we” are because “they” are barbaric Arabs who arbitrarily rape women and are therefore not ready for democracy, sounds a lot less like something a liberal would say and far more in line with Fox “News” rhetoric.

Shame on you Bill Maher.

For goodness sake, it’s not as though American men don’t rape women. It’s not as though lawlessness in America doesn’t take place when masses take to the streets with no police presence. There are riots in the United States. People get raped in those riots. People die in those riots. Yet despite that, Americans are worthy of living in a democracy.

Illustrative of that point, is that in the irony of all ironies, another horrific story of rape and misogyny broke the very same day the Lara Logan story broke. Had Maher been an honest political commentator, he may have felt it compelling to juxtapose that story with the Logan story. Of course he didn’t, because that would have blown his “we’re better than they are” adolescent argument right out of the water and put the Logan story in appropriate perspective.

On the same day the Lara Logan story broke, the Associated Press (among others) reported that more than a dozen American service men and women filed a class-action law suit against the Department of Defense and the Secretary of Defense alleging, “servicemen get away with rape and other sexual abuse and victims are too often ordered to continue to serve alongside those they say attacked them.”

The same article tells of one rather disturbing incident where an American Army Reservist alleges “two male colleagues raped her in Iraq and videotaped the attack. She complained to authorities after the men circulated the video to colleagues. Despite being bruised from her shoulders to elbows from being held down, she says charges weren't filed because the commander determined she ‘did not act like a rape victim’ and ‘did not struggle enough’.”

How’s that for sexism and misogyny Bill?

Perhaps Maher is right. Perhaps “civilization begins with civilizing the men,” and to that end let me just say, in the words of that same great liberal icon, “[democracy] isn’t going to happen unless you get right about your attitudes towards women.” Sadly, it would appear that according to the Bill Maher Misogyny/Democracy Meter, neither Egypt nor the United States are quite ready for democracy.

You needn’t worry Bill. I’m not going to issue a “fatwa.” I’m not going to strap my body with C-4 and proclaim “God is great” before I detonate myself in a fit of rage against your blasphemy in front of the same Playboy Mansion you regularly visit to celebrate women’s rights in rooms full of geriatric men snorting cocaine off the bare buttocks of 20 year old strippers. This is a democracy after all and because American men respect American women so much (hardy-har-har), they are allowed to have a democracy in peace and quiet without getting blown up by Arab sexists with “bad reviews.”

I’m simply not going to watch you on Friday nights anymore that's all, and I say that with a somewhat heavy heart, because I rather do enjoy watching you (your bigotry notwithstanding) and I think in many ways you still contribute positively to the political discourse in this country (your bigotry notwithstanding). But candidly, if you think because of either my genetics or my culture I’m not capable of grasping your sophisticated, western, non-sexist version of “democracy,” then I’d rather just go somewhere else where I am more welcome and don’t have to tolerate the rants of a hypocritical, bigoted windbag.

Who knows? I may even spend my Friday nights doing something antithetical to my Arab roots and go to my den, roll a joint and open a Chomsky book from my library while not once thinking about beheading my wife (even though I have 3 spare ones).

(For my Arabic speaking readers: Bill Maher = Bill 7mar)

The Egyptian Revolution and Our "Best Interests"

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 06:42:00 +0000

Let’s make one thing clear—this is an Egyptian revolution, not an American revolution nor an Israeli revolution. This revolution should be about what is in the best interest of 80 million Egyptians, not what is in the best interest of 7.5 million Israelis or 300 million Americans.

I don’t want to sound crass, nor do I want to minimize the implications the recent events in Egypt may have for the United States and Israel, but I have grown weary of American and Israeli pundits overlooking these remarkable events with concerns over America’s and Israel’s purported “best interests.”

To my fellow Americans and to our Israeli allies, our “concerns” really need to take a back seat to the rights of Egyptians for self-determination and freedom. Ultimately, if the United States and Israeli "best interests" require 80 million Egyptians to be subjected to poverty and oppressive autocratic rule under the boot-heels of a police state in perpetuity in order to safe guard 7.5 million Israeli's from a hypothetical, non-existent, Islamic boogey-man that may or may not attack Israel twenty years from now, then I say our “best interests” are inherently flawed and need to be re-evaluated.

In truth, both the United States and Israel are best served by allowing the Arab masses the right of self-determination, freedom, and democracy. The "dictator we can control" has universally led to the resentment of Americans and Israelis by the Arab masses over the past 50 years and was, and continues to be, the catalyst for Islamic fundamentalism which, though is a grim reality today, wasn’t even a word half a century ago.

We have propped dictators in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. All of those regimes had and continue to have their secret police and torture rooms. All of those regimes were and are despised by their people. Consequently, all of “their people” resented and still resent the United States for supporting those regimes as they observe the United States hypocritically advertising freedom and democracy while celebrating Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East." It’s rather insulting actually and we are fooling ourselves if we think the average Arab lacks the sophistication to digest this duplicity.

As Americans, how can we not applaud what is occurring in Egypt? Here we have a regime change (in the making) without one American bullet fired, without one drop of American blood shed, and without one American dollar spent.

Simply because Hosni Mubarak agreed to do our bidding for money and played nice with Israel and participated in what the international community (outside of the United States, Israel, and Mubarak’s Egypt) recognized as an illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, does not erase the fact that Mubarak was a brutal dictator who quite literally starved his own people—quite to the contrary—it underscores it.

We cannot force Iraqi's into democracy behind the barrel of our own guns, and then turn our backs on Egyptians who are claiming democracy on their own terms in peaceful, non-violent protests. That message certainly would not serve our best interests (and hopefully not Israel's). It would send the message we don't believe in democracy, except as an excuse to wage war and take advantage of the same people we are purporting to be saving, while putting in jeopardy the lives of our own citizens who we purport to be protecting with these morally flawed, self-serving policies.

It is impossible to ferment democracy and freedom in the Middle East while sponsoring Arab dictators who serve our corporate and military interests against the best human interests of 300 million Arab people. If America stands for anything substantive anymore, those should be mutually exclusive positions. Such notions should be fundamentally un-American, and in my opinion, if not contrary to our best interests, then certainly contrary to our best values.

300 million Arabs and one billion Muslims across the globe are observing what is happening in Egypt today, and waiting with baited breath to see our reaction to same. We are at the precipice of history and on the verge of erasing 50 years of clumsy foreign policy bungling which alienated even the most secular and moderate of Arabs and Muslims.

Either fate, or Divine Providence, or good old fashioned dumb luck decided to give us a mulligan. Let’s not slice this opportunity into the metaphorical rough again.

If we turn our backs on Egypt now, let me suggest that we won’t be serving our best interests, nor Israel’s, but rather the best interests of Islamic fundamentalists. We need to face reality and realize we are not omnipotent. Regardless of what position we decide to take, this revolution will not be stopped and the genie will not be forced back into the bottle. Egypt and the rest of the Arab world will be moving forward with us or without us—and in light of the specter of Islamic fundamentalism, moving forward without us is inherently dangerous to our best interests.

I won’t be fatalistic (or arrogant) by claiming moving forward without us is necessarily a death nail for democracy in the Middle East. Frankly, I have too much faith in the Arab people to think Arab democracy must be inextricably linked to America’s and Israel’s approval. However, if our best interests are truly what we are concerned about, abandoning the Arab masses yet again (particularly at this juncture), after being given the chance to embrace a democratic change in the largest and most influential Arab country in the world, will almost certainly make our best interests in the Middle East utterly unachievable, whether under a democratic Egypt or a theocratic Egypt.

The best chance (indeed, perhaps the only chance) to ensure Israel’s security, our free passage through the Suez Canal, the free flow of oil, the stifling of terrorism, and everything else we have been told is in our “best interests” is to do everything in our power to ensure Israel isn’t the one country we celebrate as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” We must enthusiastically, and in no uncertain terms, support this Egyptian revolution and the revolutions in the rest of the Arab world that are almost certain to follow.

We are either for freedom, or we are not. Either all men and women are created equal or they are not. Let’s stop kidding ourselves by copping out with transparent rhetoric like “best interests.” History will judge once and for all if our best interests are truly our best values, or if they are just hollow talking points to mask pretexts for waging war and empire building.

Not Endorsed by American Express (but who cares?)

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 03:31:00 +0000

10 years of war...

5000 Americans dead...

1,000,000 Iraqi's dead...

for a "regime change" 30 million Iraqis never asked for...

3 trillion dollars and counting.

One trip to Cairo...

one olive branch extended in one eloquent speech...

not one bullet fired...

not one drop of American blood shed...

for a regime change 80 million Egyptians demanded...

PRICELESS.

(Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America, and Leader of the Free World)

Saying "No" to the Party of "Duh"--No Republican Gets My Vote in 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 06:59:00 +0000

In an increasingly imperfect two-party system, I will be choosing between the lesser of two evils come November 2nd and avoiding anyone with an “R” beside their name on the ballot. I’m not a Democrat, but I’m also not an idiot, and I have a memory that goes back farther than 22 months. For the sake of giving a very sick America a chance to heal, I hope your memory goes back farther too.

The big question to consider before going to the polling booth next week and contemplating voting “R” again is “why?”

Why on earth would you ever consider voting for a Republican in 2010?

I realize government spending is the hot button issue utilized by those endorsing the GOP and their mentally challenged little brother, the “Tea Party.” However, before you decide to make the colossal mistake of linking “fiscal responsibility” with the GOP and its psychotic sibling, there may be a few hard issues you need to contemplate before you pull that trigger.

Let’s start with the big, bloated elephant (pardon the pun) in the room and address the issue of military spending which I freely admit is equally ignored by both parties. It’s bad enough when Democrats ignore the issue, but when the party which routinely preaches “fiscal responsibility,” ignores the most fiscally irresponsible exercise our government engages in, it becomes nearly impossible to take them seriously.

Before you cast your votes next Tuesday and fall victim to the same "neo-con" con again, please take the time to digest the gravity of this military spending problem while juxtaposing it with the other spending these Republicans and Tea Baggers routinely complain about. If you can reconcile GOP indifference to defense spending with GOP complaints about TARP spending, Stimulus spending, and Healthcare spending, then please also consider purchasing this bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn--I can certainly use the money.

Let's consider our military budget so that we can fully realize the GOP hypocracy here. When adding the Department of Defense budget for 2010 (over $719 billion) with other defense related costs in the federal budget, such as International Security Assistance, Veterans Benefits and Services, Interest on National Debt Attributable to Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and other non-DOD “defense” related expenditures, we are due to spend over a trillion dollars this year on our military.

Let me repeat that. We are spending a TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR ON OUR MILITARY.

Recall what Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican President, a five-star general, and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in World War II declared in his farewell address to the American people when leaving office in 1961:

“…we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

Back when the Republicans were a serious political party, they actually used to worry about an out-of-control military which demanded out of control spending.

But the Republicans aren’t a serious party anymore, so they commonly say very silly things to justify a ridiculous defense budget while claiming there is no money left over for anything else. They’ll routinely cite to the Preamble of the Constitution claiming “providing for the national defense” is right there in black and white. They’re able to get away with this because they are leading an army of drones, and drones rarely scrutinize any information given to them.

Here’s how the Preamble to the Constitution reads by the way:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Aha! See? Not one mention of “healthcare” and there was “common defense” as PLAIN AS DAY! (Of course there was no mention of ICBM’s either, but this is not a time for logic.)

Do we really need to explain to the party of “duh” why “provid[ing] for the common defense” does not justify the expenditure of a trillion dollars a year?

Of course we do—they are, after all, the party of “duh.”

Understand what a trillion dollars a year for military spending means. It means we spend over $900 billion more than China does on its military. Why is that so important? Because other than the United States, China spends more than any other country on the planet on its military. How much does China spend? $78 billion dollars a year. You read that correctly—$78 billion. I didn’t leave out a zero. The difference in spending between us and number two in the world is more than the rest of the world COMBINED spends on their collective militaries.

Still holding steadfastly to your “fiscally responsible” argument using the Constitution as your justification for a gazillian dollars a year on a reasonable military budget? Still unimpressed by a five-star general’s warnings?

Here’s what another general and former president said:

"...avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty."

Those words were written by President (and General) George Washington.

Let’s forget about the fiscally reckless and irresponsible Democrats for a moment—we know they’re going to spend like drunken sailors on the military because that’s what fiscally irresponsible people do. Republicans (and this goes for your idiot Tea Bagging brothers as well), I’m asking you, as the “fiscally responsible” party, what are YOU going to do to rein in these outrageous expenditures?

I am not asking this question rhetorically, nor am I trying to be cute. I really want to know what Republicans and Tea Baggers are offering on this issue, because if there is a Republican candidate that is actually offering to seriously do something about reducing military spending, that candidate will get my vote. Unless I’m way off the mark (and I’ve been known to be), other than Ron Paul, I don’t see anyone of you addressing this issue at all. In fact, all I hear coming from your side is that we need to start yet another war against yet another group of brown people who don’t pose any threat to us (that’s code for “Iran” by the way).

Instead of addressing the issue of military spending, I seem to hear three major areas of concern raised by the GOP concerning “fiscal responsibility.” Those issues are: 1) Healthcare Reform; 2) TARP; and 3) the Stimulus Bill.

To be fair to Republicans, since both major parties get an “F” on the issue of military spending, let’s take a look at those other three issues so that we can separate the fiscally responsible men from the fiscally irresponsible boys.

Let’s start with Healthcare.

As previously stated, I am often confronted by neo-conservatives with the same justification arguing against healthcare reform as I am when confronted with an argument in favor of spending a trillion dollars a year on our military—the Constitution. First of all, as I outlined in great detail in a March 27, 2010 article, the current healthcare bill, though far from perfect, is also perfectly Constitutional.

The Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the explicit right and power to regulate insurance, and all so-called “Obamacare” does is regulate health insurance. Also, unless you’re an abject moron, you should know that under the bill, the government is not BECOMING the health insurance industry, the government is simply REGULATING the health insurance industry.

Regarding the Constitutionality of the tax issue under the bill, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution allows Congress to levy taxes and the 16th Amendment expanded that authority by giving Congress the ability to levy taxes on non-apportioned direct taxes on income. Under so-called “Obamacare,” Congress is essentially levying a 2.5% tax to pay for subsidies to uninsured citizens for those citizens with a household income of over $88,000. But those same taxpayers receive a tax exemption if they have health insurance and therefore don't have to pay the tax. All Congress did here was levy a tax on income and provide an exemption for a classified group of citizens. They’re not forcing you to buy health insurance, they’re just giving you a tax break if you do buy health insurance. (You may now come down from off the ledge).

There is a bigger practical and moral issue here though that seems utterly lost on neo-conservatives. When the Constitution was written and ratified in 1787, “healthcare” meant something quite different then than it does today. In the late 18th century, access to healthcare meant little more than running to your local barber and having leeches applied to your face and body in an attempt to suck out whatever disease was ailing you. Healthcare was very unsophisticated, very cheap, and readily available to the masses. Too, since healthcare was more hocus-pocus and less science, it was rarely the difference between life and death.

We’re in 2010, however. And in 2010, healthcare is a matter of life and death, not to mention being rather expensive. Getting your appendix removed could run you $30,000 in 2010. Pre-natal care can run you tens of thousands of dollars. Chemotherapy, AIDS “cocktails”, open heart surgery, and all the other costs associated with modern medicine can run you into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Unlike 1787, in 2010 we reached a crisis point with regard to healthcare in this country: According to Reuters (citing to a Harvard Medical School Study):

“Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and cannot get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis…”

In a world where most industrialized countries provide free healthcare to their citizens, we now rank 49th in the world in life expectancy.

In 1787 nothing much needed to be done to ensure ready access to healthcare to Americans other than ensuring a healthy leech population in barber shops. In 2010, something CLEARLY had to be done, and a budget allocation of $94 billion which is less than a tenth of what we spend on our military, and which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office states will not add to our deficit, is not only the humane thing to do, but it’s also the fiscally responsible thing to do. The minimal cost justifies the enormous reward.

Going back to the often cited Constitutional Preamble, recall that the Constitution was not only designed to “provide for the common defense,” but also "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility…promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…” In a country which ranks 49th in the world in life expectancy, where 45,000 people die every year because they lack access to healthcare, and where healthcare costs can exceed the price of an average home, it is morally reprehensible that we would Constitutionally justify spending more than the whole world combined on our military, while in the same breath denying Americans access to healthcare citing to the very same Constitution.

The next big gripe many Republican supporters have with the federal budget is the Troubled Asset Relief Program, more commonly referred to as “TARP.” Let me be the first to admit I was vocally against TARP and was a critic of both George Bush and Barrack Obama for pushing the measure through.

I will also freely admit I was wrong.

Let’s face it, the bailouts worked and most honest “fiscal conservatives” would agree. Renowned conservative columnist Ross Douthat recently wrote the following in an op-ed piece in the New York Times:

“…the bailout might actually end up costing the taxpayer less than $50 billion over all, rather than the $700 billion originally set aside to pay for it. Moreover, it’s the auto bailout, which the TARP funds eventually underwrote as well, that’s likely to end up being responsible for the bulk of these losses. As it stands, the federal government may actually end up turning a modest profit on the money injected into Wall Street’s failing banks.

“Given what seemed to be at stake in the fall of ’08, TARP’s defenders argue, that doesn’t seem like such a bad bargain: the bailout may have averted a Great Depression, and it didn’t end up costing very much at all.”

Not to mention the fact that bailing out the auto industry may have saved as many as a million jobs. As it turns out, TARP cost us relatively little and saved us from one of the largest economic calamities in American history.

On to "Stimulus"…

Of the $787 billion in the Stimulus Bill, $288 billion wasn’t spent on anything at all. That $288 billion dollars was actually tax cuts and incentives, much of which was directed to small businesses, and all of which was supported by Republicans. About $111 billion was directed to expanding infrastructure and education, the remainder was spent on extending benefits for unemployment, food stamps, COBRA, and supplementing state welfare programs at a time when Americans, who were facing the biggest recession in recent history, desperately needed relief.

Other than the issue of defense spending (which neither party will seriously address), I really don’t see what more could have been done on the part of Democrats over the past 22 months to fix the problems created by Republicans over the preceding eight years.

I do have multiple beefs with the Democrats and Obama—among other things, they haven’t done anything to curtail defense spending, they expanded the war in Afghanistan, and they renewed a significant portion of the Patriot Act.

But what was the Republican alternative? Were they going to curtail military spending, repeal the Patriot Act, or pull out of Afghanistan?

Of course not.

Understand what they’re asking you to do to. They are insisting you vote for them because they want to repeal healthcare reform (despite drafting a nearly identical bill in 1994) at a time when 45,000 Americans are dying every year because they lack health insurance. They are unwilling to cut a nickel in military spending. Despite voting for it while Bush was president, they are now retroactively against a TARP bill that many conservative economists believed averted a Great Depression and saved up to a million jobs. They want to institute a tax cut for the top 2% of earners to take away an additional $75 billion annually from the National Treasury while at the same time complaining about deficit spending. And the cherry on top—they are suggesting rather strongly that they want to wage war against Iran.

Remember what got us into this mess to begin with—the Republicans inherited a budget surplus which they turned into a record deficit, sent us into two avoidable wars which many economists estimate will wind up costing us 3 trillion dollars, and nearly sent us spiraling into a Great Depression, which, but for TARP and (possibly the Stimulus Bill), would have been a grim reality we would all be facing today.

With all his faults, Obama’s greatest accomplishment in the last 2 years was avoiding an economic disaster which would have been surely realized had we proceeded forward with the advertised Republican agenda. His great disadvantage was that averting a Republican created disaster was not a tangible thing that was easily demonstrable to a largely gullible and unsophisticated American public which only “understands” economics in 30 second television sound bites and catchy (albeit sophomoric) Tea-Party rhetoric.

I want to give Obama and the Democrats another 2 years to see their policies through. (I say that as though I actually have a choice.) Frankly, I have no choice, because handing the ball back to the same party that created this mess, and who’s only solution is to go back to business as usual, is suicide. And I can’t for the life of me understand how the vast majority of Americans don’t see that.

Does anyone honestly think we will hasten our way to an economic recovery by repealing a health reform bill that won’t take effect until 2014, cutting taxes, and starting a war with Iran? Doesn’t anyone remember how close the entire financial sector came to failing only two years ago? Does anyone realize where this country would have been if that actually happened?

TARP worked. “Stimulus” worked. Healthcare won’t start working until 2014, and it certainly hasn’t cost a single person a single job in 2010.

I’ll issue this challenge to Republicans. If you want to talk about fiscal responsibility—then REALLY talk about it, and you may REALLY get my vote back one day. But here’s a piece of advice—REALLY talking about fiscal responsibility isn’t talking about cutting taxes for the richest 2% of Americans in the middle of a recession, or repealing a healthcare reform bill you tried to pass in 1994 and denying sick people access to doctors, or starting another war of choice against yet another country that doesn’t pose a threat to us. Too, saying “no” to everything proposed by Democrats because you want to get back into power is not a demonstration of “fiscal responsibility” nor is it responsible governing.

If you want my vote back, start sounding more like Eisenhower and less like Palin. As it stands today, no Republican will be getting my vote this fall. I have no love for Democrats, but I will be saying “no” to the party of “duh.” I literally have no choice.

AUTE4EHSCCJ5

Implementing a Zero Party System of Government in American Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 07:29:00 +0000

In an earlier article, The Case for a Zero Party System , I dared you to imagine a non-partisan system of government which became the namesake of this blog—Zero Party Politics. An old idea lying dormant for more than two centuries which was George Washington’s vision of a newly formed America. I asked you to imagine the possibility—the “why.” This article will focus on the practicalities—on the “how.”

The first article opened with a quote from our first president warning of the perils associated with partisanship. The following is a quote from our second president, John Adams, taken from a letter he wrote to a Massachusetts state senator in 1789 while serving as vice-president in George Washington’s administration:

“There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures into opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” –John Adams October 2, 1789.

John Adams was a conservative with Puritan roots who probably would have little in common with me ideologically—the Alien and Sedition Act, which he signed into law demonstrating the dark underbelly of America’s xenophobic history, is one prime example why. Understand however, he also assisted a liberal icon, Thomas Jefferson, with drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776. As a delegate to the Continental Congress, Adams played a vital role in persuading Congress to declare independence from Great Britain. Yet in 1770, as a lawyer, it was Adams who defended several British soldiers who fired upon a Colonial crowd killing five men in what later famously became known as the “Boston Massacre.”

Adams was a man of dualities. Rivals with both the Federalist conservative Alexander Hamilton, and the classical liberal Thomas Jefferson, yet working in unison with those political rivals to champion independence from Great Britain.

Non-partisan politics made for strange bedfellows in the late 18th century I suppose. Had Jefferson been a modern day Democrat, and Adams a modern day Republican, the Declaration of Independence may have never been drafted. Even if it had been, only one “party” would have drafted it and it probably would have looked far different. The measure would have surely been filibustered in Congress by the rival party so that it never came up for vote. And instead of starting every spring with a baseball game singing the Star Spangled Banner as the American flag “yet waved over the land of the free and the home of the brave,” we’d be starting cricket season under the Union Jack, singing God Save the Queen while eating crumpets and sipping tea...

Fast forwarding more than two centuries, to 2010—is Zero Party Politics in today’s modern political landscape even possible?

The biggest brush off I get from people when I mention a “Zero Party” system is the issue of the First Amendment. However, given the restrictions and limitations in participation inherent in an institutionally driven two party system of government, I would argue our First Amendment rights with regard to the political process, are far more significantly restricted under the current system than anything contemplated by Zero Party Politics.

First, nothing in the First Amendment requires the active participation of political parties in the political process per se. For example, there is no Constitutional requirement which states a candidate’s party affiliation must be identified on a ballot. (In fact, such an animal already exists in American politics—Louisiana does not identify candidates by party affiliation for state and local offices, for example). There is no Constitutional requirement which mandates primary elections be held by the various parties to announce which of their candidates’ hats they wish to drop into the general election ring. There is no Constitutional requirement mandating the use of filibusters in Congress. There is no Constitutional mandate requiring a majority or minority leader be named in either house of Congress.

Under the model I propose, political parties would be free to exist, but they would be restricted from participating as an unofficial branch of government (which is really what the Republicans and Democrats have morphed into). As the NRA, ACLU, NOW, AFLCIO, AIPAC and a seemingly infinite array of other organizations and special interest groups who are advancing political agendas exist without being intrinsically linked to government, so can political parties.

There is no candidate “nominated” by the NRA. There are candidates endorsed by the NRA, but not “nominated.” Similarly, political parties can endorse the candidate of their choosing as they assemble and gather like the other special interest groups I identified do. With regard to both major parties, they’re really nothing more than “special interest” groups with multiple special interests. Accordingly, political parties certainly have a right to choose who they wish to endorse—who they wish to pick. But they shouldn’t have the mandate to pick those candidates on my behalf.

Let’s not fool ourselves. “Voting” has become institutional. The institutions dictate our choices, not by their advertised core values, but rather by their disguised corporate, military, and special interest influences. The political process then becomes a propaganda war to meld the disguised special interests into the trumpeted core values which have been relegated to nothing more than window dressing.

Look at the last presidential election as an example. John McCain and Barack Obama were nominated by their respective parties whose advertised core values were far more honestly represented by Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. Ideologically and principally they were far more aligned with what their parties advertise, but since they are far less linked to the corporate, military, and special interest machines driving each party, Paul and Kucinich are ironically labeled “radicals” while their political contemporaries are described as “mainstream.”

Under the Zero Party Politics model, as a candidate can be a member of the NRA or ACLU, so can a candidate be a member of the Republican Party, Democrat Party, Green Party, Libertarian Party, or no party at all.

Yes, you read that correctly. In a country which extols the First Amendment, you should be given the liberty to not be affiliated with a political party while tangibly participating in the political process, rather than “theoretically” being allowed to, as you’re “literally” being muted. This is a country “of the people” after all, not “of the parties and their institutional constraints.”

As such, shouldn’t you have the ability to participate in government and not be identified by a political party or by a party that isn’t “Republican” or “Democrat?” You do of course have that right and technically you can. But in all practicality—and I mean all practicality—you cannot. And to have a right “technically” which means nothing “practically” is about as meaningful as telling me I have a right to speak after sewing my lips shut.

How many times do you need to be told by members of either of the two major parties that if you don’t vote for one of them, “you’re throwing your vote away?” They will look you dead in the eye and tell you that with a straight face while also admonishing you, "you have no right to complain if you don’t vote at all!”

Makes perfect sense doesn’t it?

Either choose between two parties you want nothing to do with, or stay at home and don’t complain. And whatever you do, don’t talk about eliminating party politics, because such a “radical” thought is a violation of free speech and assembly.

Well, being the sarcastic, irreverent “Zero Party” politico that I am, I enthusiastically and unapologetically say, “That’s a crock!”

Admittedly, in order for the Zero Party Politics model to work and be fully realized, the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC (I’ve discussed this in a prior article), which essentially confers certain First Amendment rights to corporations, needs to either be overturned by Constitutional amendment, overturned after a more left leaning Court emerges, or get de-fanged by some creative legislation. (There is a reason this horrific ruling went down the way it did, and it had nothing to do with “free speech” and everything to do with entrenching the establishment even deeper into the political process than it already is.)

Here’s the good news. Quite a bit of what I am proposing is already being advocated for by a myriad of different groups. So in terms of activism, the processes (to a significant degree) are in place, they simply need to be put under a “Zero Party Politics” umbrella and supplemented. The goal really needs to be to push these various agendas under a unified banner where people can visualize the accomplishment of the ultimate goal—which is not the elimination of political parties entirely—but rather the limitation of political parties’ roles so they are no longer necessary to the process of governing.

This idea at first may seem counterintuitive only because we have been so programmed to thinking political parties are government.

They’re not.

Not any more than the ACLU or the NRA are government. Partisanship and government are not synonymous, nor were they intended to be, as argued in The Case for a Zero Party System.

One needs to contemplate such a system under two processes: 1) the election cycle and the 2) governing cycle. Both need to be reformed, but most particularly the election cycle because politicians aren’t realistically electable unless they are members of one of two parties. Consequently, they don’t dictate policy anymore, rather they let policies dictate them. Their political parties dictate their policy positions based on which special interest groups are funneling their parties and their campaigns with the money they need to get elected and re-elected. They are straw men in an institutional corporate and military power grab.

In modern politics, political parties are nothing more than a vehicle used by (often times) disparate special interest, corporate, and military groups to “buy” legislation. The more important money becomes linked to getting elected, the less stake individual citizens have in the process. The goal therefore must be to make the electoral process far less about institutions while making it far more about individual American citizens.

How do you make the process less institutional? As stated earlier, an obvious necessary step is the overturn of Citizens United vs. FEC—either by Constitutional amendment, a re-test of the issue at a time when the Court is more left-leaning so that it may be overturned judicially, or legislation, such as with the DISCLOSE Act proposed by several Congressional Democrats.

Candidly, I don’t think legislation ultimately will be enough—we very well may need a Constitutional amendment to specifically define who can and who cannot participate in political advertising. Simply put, political advertising on television, radio, and print media, should be limited to only the campaigns of the individuals running. Under a Zero Party Politics model, all others—whether individuals or organizations—can be permitted to publically endorse candidates, but may not advertise on behalf of them.

Another proposal would be to limit campaign contributions to candidates to only individual US citizens. No corporate donations, no political action committee donations, and no donations from US citizens who are not part of the constituency of the individual running for office. Only an individual, who is a US citizen within the constituency of the running candidate may contribute.

Other proposed measures under a Zero Party Politics plan:

• Maintain the cap on individual contributions per candidate, while limiting all campaign contributions to individuals who are citizens of the United States eligible to vote in the district the candidate is running.

• Institute an aggregate maximum a campaign may raise based on a sliding scale dependant on the political seat being sought (i.e. Presidential campaigns may raise more than a campaign for Senate, and so on down the chain). The goal should be to eliminate the need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to run a campaign in order to be a viable political candidate so that the process is opened up to candidates who are not beholden to institutions and who are therefore more responsive to their real constituents.

• Establish a minimum dollar amount a candidate must raise, along with minimum signatures of American citizens registered to vote in his or her district in order to qualify that candidate to run in primary elections and appear on ballots.

• Create a publically funded mechanism in which the candidates can all announce their positions on issues relevant to their respective campaigns and have those articulated positions readily available to voters. This needn’t be a pricey or elaborate exercise. For example, this could include print and internet forums where candidates announce their policy positions on various pre-determined categories and are also given an opportunity to supplement their positions with other categories they deem relevant to their campaign. The point would be to have a place where any voter can easily view candidates’ positions on all the issues, rather than relying on misleading 30 second television sound bites. The other important thing would be to provide all this information in one forum where all the candidates get equal time and exposure.

• Eliminate identification of party affiliation from all ballots.

• Restructure the primary process to alter it from a restricted “member’s only vote” in which political parties choose their own candidates, into an open process commonly referred to as “a non-partisan blanket primary” or a “jungle primary.” In other words, have candidates run on their own individual platforms and allow for a primary process to whittle down the candidate pool for a general election to the top 4 or 5 candidates.

• Institute “Quaker Polling” for elections. This is a voting process in which voters assign a positive vote for candidates they approve of, a negative vote for candidates they disapprove of, and a neutral vote for candidates they have neither a negative nor positive opinion of by selecting “+1”, “-1”, or “0” next to their respective names. The winner is the candidate with the highest “score.” This eliminates the possibility of several candidates with similar popular positions being outvoted by a single candidate with radicalized positions who is far less popular. Also, under such a process, you can vote for a Ralph Nader and an Al Gore, or a Ross Perot and a Bob Dole, without worrying that you’re “throwing your vote away” by voting for the seemingly less popular choice who is more in line with your political mindset. This also provides an opportunity for a Ralph Nader or a Ross Perot to realistically compete with so-called “mainstream” candidates.

• Eliminate the electoral-college. The candidate who gets the most American votes should always be the next American president.

• Significantly restrict the filibuster in the Senate.

• Eliminate the appointment of majority and minority leaders in both Houses of Congress.

• Significantly tighten restrictions on “fact-finding travel junkets” sponsored by lobbyists and special interest groups, which are really nothing more than legalized bribery.

Ultimately the goal here is to open the process to a variety of candidates and to eliminate the need to be party affiliated to participate in the process either as a voter or a candidate. Too, my proposal creates a process which forces voters to be more informed about the policy positions their candidates take and gives voters the ability to hold those candidates accountable to those positions when they are in office contemplating a re-election without having to “abandon” a political party to vote them out of office. They won’t have to pick from the “lesser of two evils. ” They can freely pick the best option, but they also cannot just blindly go down a ballot and vote “R” or “D”.

Our democracy in 2010 is diseased, and it’s been diseased for a long time. What began as an annoyance and a cause for concern to our founding fathers more than two centuries ago has developed into a monster that has turned this democracy into a near fascist state run by corporatists and military industrialists as American drones march blindly along thinking they actually have a say in this government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” It’s rather regrettable to say, but the notion that this country is a democracy is a joke to any honest observer.

I don’t know if there has been a more astute observer of Americana who wrote more eloquently than Mark Twain. His ruminations on politics and partisanship are epic and apropos to this discussion. Near the end of his life he articulated what is perhaps the most poignant reflection of American politics I have ever read and it was an observation he made more than a century ago. Twain wrote:

“We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one -- the one we use -- which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics. Look at the candidates whom we loathe, one year, and are afraid to vote against, the next; whom we cover with unimaginable filth, one year, and fall down on the public platform and worship, the next -- and keep on doing it until the habitual shutting of our eyes to last year's evidences brings us presently to a sincere and stupid belief in this year's. Look at the tyranny of party -- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty -- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes -- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction…”

Of course, Twain was dead on. Party loyalty is nothing but “a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes.” It is indeed time for Zero Party Politics.

The President is a Muslim and I Have Proof

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 02:51:00 +0000

There’s no doubt about it, the President is a Muslim.

You want proof?

• Over the past 20 years, tens of millions of dollars from the Saudi government and Saudi businessmen have been traced to companies in which the President and members of his cabinet held prominent positions.

• Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia contributed a cool $1 million to the President’s “future Presidential Library,” which of course, has yet to be built.

• Several years ago members of the Bin Laden family “invested” $50,000 in a company in which the President held a partnership interest (not ACORN related however).

• The President and his fund raisers share the same lawyers as three wealthy Saudi businessmen who have been investigated by the federal government for helping finance Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network through an Islamic charity in the same state the President once held a Congressional seat.

• The President repeatedly praises Saudi Arabia in the news, protects charities associated with the Saudi royal family accused of funneling money to terrorist organizations, and has invited Saudi government leaders to break bread with him in his private home in the United States. (At least he has the "decency" not to allow them in the White House.)

• The President’s father was the real give away. Largely unadvertised by the mainstream media, while alive and breathing, he was a senior-advisor to the Carlyle Group—an investment bank with well known deep connections to the Saudi Royal family. And you guessed it, now out of the blue, the Carlyle Group (an obvious Saudi shill) has donated $1 million to the President’s unbuilt “future Presidential Library.”

• In order to help facilitate a second term for his Presidency, rumors abound and evidence suggests, the Saudi government has agreed to increase their production of oil by several million barrels a day when election time for the President’s run for a second term comes around in order to drive the price of oil downward and create a temporary illusion of economic stability, while in reality, the economy will continue to rapidly spiral downward.

• According to a Wall Street Journal article, the President, along with those in his administration, prevented and blocked the U.S. Treasury Department from designating all but one charity affiliated with the Muslim World League (MWL) as a terrorist entity (despite having ample evidence that other charities associated with MWL may have terrorist ties). Other than the designation of that one group, the administration shut the door to any other such “terrorist” designations to groups associated with the Muslim World League.

It goes beyond the pale that the brainwashed masses cannot connect these very transparent dots and finally admit to themselves that a Muslim put his hand on the Bible and took the Oath of Office to sit at the highest seat in the land.

Do you need to see him holding hands with the Saudi King and giving him a big, fat, wet Islamic kiss before you believe it?

All joking aside, I’m rather proud I live in a country which elected two Muslim presidents to lead this great nation. How ironic both their names were “George” after the first president and figurative father of our country?

This is why I get irritated when people point their crooked fingers at the Republican Party and carelessly throw around accusations of bigotry. Not one Republican disparaged George Bush’s obvious ties with Islam.

Perhaps it was motivated by their sensitivity to the notion that being Muslim isn’t an “accusation” of anything nefarious? Perhaps it was motivated by their insistence to judge people by their conduct rather than by some sensationalized “issue” that absolutely lacks substance? Or perhaps it was their ability to not equate something “different” with something “evil?”

Whatever the case, I think we all can learn a lesson or two from Republicans.

Do you honestly think their opinion would change one iota if the President were a black man?

I rest my case.

Jewish and Arab Anti-Semitism—“We are killing each other for nothing.”

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 10:57:00 +0000

“Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those words were spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of a Christmas Day sermon delivered in a Montgomery, Alabama church in 1957. He wrote the sermon while in jail, after being arrested for participating in the Montgomery bus boycotts.

Over five decades later, Arabs and Jews have come to this same impasse—they must both learn to love their “enemy” or face being “plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation” which Dr. King warned of.

Then again, the larger challenge may very well be understanding who, or more precisely, what, the real “enemy” is.

Speaking from the Arab perspective, our problem is that the “enemy” is not quite so obvious. The enemy isn’t Israel. The enemy isn’t Judaism. The enemy isn’t even Zionism. The enemy is the lie that Israel and Judaism have always been our enemy and the inevitability that they always will be. The mirror image of that lie is the same “enemy” for Israelis and Jews.

The “enemy” is the lie, and not the Jew nor the Arab.

Palestinians and Arabs, if you believe Israelis and Jews to be your enemy, listen to what your “enemies” are saying:

• We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, self-sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.

• We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty in the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people.

• We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides,

• We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Occupied Territories destroy all the values that we were raised upon,

• We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society,

• We, who know that the Territories are not a part of Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated,

• We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.

• We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.

• We hereby declare that we shall continue serving the Israel Defense Force in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.

The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.

This open letter was signed by 627 members of the Israeli Defense Force who all refused to serve in the IDF and take part in the Occupation of Palestine. A similar letter was signed by 27 pilots in the Israeli Air Force which included the signature of a general. Yet another letter was signed by 13 members of Sayaret Matkal—the IDF's most elite commando unit, and one of the most highly regarded commando units in all the world.

The following words were spoken in British Parliament by Sir Gerald Kaufman a well respected member of the Labour Party. He is an Orthodox Jew, a self proclaimed Zionist and a grandson of Holocaust victims. He visits Israel regularly, has family who lives in Israel, and has met every Israeli Prime Minister since the birth of the nation in 1948. Among many memorable quotes in that speech was the following:

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

Israel, listen to what your “enemies” are saying:

Per the Arab Peace Initiative (signed by all 22 member states of the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority)…

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries.

5. Calls upon the government of Israel and all Israelis to accept this initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for peace and stop the further shedding of blood, enabling the Arab countries and Israel to live in peace and good neighbourliness and provide future generations with security, stability and prosperity.

6. Invites the international community and all countries and organisations to support this initiative.

7. Requests the chairman of the summit to form a special committee composed of some of its concerned member states and the secretary general of the League of Arab States to pursue the necessary contacts to gain support for this initiative at all levels, particularly from the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the Muslim states and the European Union.”

There it is. The “enemies” spoke and peace is right there for the taking.

Ironic that Arabs and Jews, both Semitic people, are also both victims of the same lie, the same “enemy” if you will. The lie that peace is “impossible” because they had been at each other’s throats since the beginning of time. Erasing history of over a thousand years of peaceful and harmonious co-existence. Erasing the history of both Arab and Jew defending Jerusalem from European Crusaders. Erasing the history of Jews and Arabs living together in historic Palestine, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Morocco, in Egypt—all through the “Arab” and Islamic world.

This conflict isn’t 6,000 years old. It’s 60 years old, and despite what historically ignorant Western pundits may suggest, the problem is very fixable provided that distractions and false “enemies” are set aside. Understanding there is bitterness and fanaticism on both sides, generally speaking both sides also want peace. Both sides, in varying degrees, believe the Occupation of Palestine is immoral and/or unsustainable. Both sides have a long established history of living together.

Let’s get another thing straight with the historically ignorant by answering the question of: “what is a Semite?” Biblically speaking, Semitic people are descendants of Shem, who was a son of Noah. Historically speaking, Semitic people are not only Jews, but also Arabs, Phoenicians, Assyrians, and others who inhabit various parts of the Middle East.

Given that Arabs and Jews are both Semitic people, why are they “enemies?”

Let me answer that question by sharing a story about a friend of mine who is an unabashed Semite. My friend Yosi is an Israeli Jew who served in the IDF for 6 years. He and his wife were visiting my wife and me at our home the other day. As usual we began debating Middle East politics over some coffee while our wives were giving us the “here we go again” evil eye followed by their quick exit to another room. Yosi’s from Jaffa, which (I think) is a sister city of Tel Aviv and which has a significant Arab population. He lived amongst Arabs, easily relates to Arabs, likes Arabs, and is quite comfortable being friends with Arabs though he may have political disagreements on certain issues with Arabs (no one’s perfect—and for those of you lacking a sense of humor, that was a joke). Incidentally, he’s a remarkably friendly, compassionate and generous man, which is why this Arab likes him and is proud to call him a friend, despite disagreeing with him on certain political issues.

Okay, enough with the sappy kumbaya handholding sentiments. Yosi said something profound during our discussion as we were “politely” explaining to one another why the other Semite was sitting on the wrong side of the Semitic fence. In a distinctly Israeli accent (there’s a methodical, deliberate way certain Israelis speak when they are imparting an important idea in English that has a certain authority to it—it’s hypnotic when I’m agreeing with them and annoying as all hell when I’m disagreeing with them—on this occasion I was hypnotized), Yosi said something to the effect of this:

“If I as a soldier were to kill a Palestinian kid in the Territories, I would be incapable of going to his mother and giving her a logical explanation ‘why’ her child had to die. If a suicide bomber detonated himself in a bus in Tel Aviv and killed a Jewish kid, I would be incapable of going to his mother and giving her a logical explanation ‘why’ her child had to die. There is no logical explanation for it. No reason for it. We are killing one another for nothing.”

And that “answers” the question of why Arabs and Jews are “enemies.” Namely, the answer is “for nothing.”

Lost in the typical “Semitic” debate of which Semite is more “anti-Semitic” than the other, is the reality that “we are killing one another for nothing.”

If you’ve ever eavesdropped on a conversation between an Arab and a Jew, the “conversations” generally have these same tired comparisons and “moral equivalency” clichés (it’s rather entertaining actually if you have a dark sense of humor): the Holocaust of the Jewish people (facilitated largely by Europeans) versus the Palestinian Diaspora, (also facilitated largely by Europeans); the bombing of a Tel Aviv café by a Palestinian suicide bomber versus the use of phosphorus bombs by the IDF on civilian Palestinians in Gaza; the occupation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers versus the economic and diplomatic isolation of Israel from most of the Arab and Islamic world; Arab lunatic terrorists versus Jewish lunatic settlers; Hammas versus Likud; you get the idea—you can literally grasp the concept of infinity by understanding the “Semitic” tendency to argue until the end of time to avoid accepting the reality that “we are killing one another for nothing.”

How will the subject of peace ever be substantively addressed if we are perpetually playing the “who is more ‘anti-Semitic’ than who” game? It won’t be, which is precisely the point of the game. The point of the game is to perpetuate this conflict and continually talk about a peace while doing very little substantively to achieve it.

Going back to Martin Luther King’s sermon with which I opened this article, Dr. King on that Christmas Day talked about something that is lost on most Arabs and Jews as it applies to the topic of peace. That “something” is forgiveness. In Dr. King’s words:

“First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love… Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the canceling of a debt.”

We must forgive one another and table the “infinite” arguments for later (perhaps over a friendly cup of coffee at a hookah lounge), so that we can talk about peace today, right now, post-haste, and end this nonsensical “killing one another for nothing” game.

Do you know what the real anti-Semitism is here? It’s the failure of two Semitic people to come together, as they have for thousands of years, and their failure to utilize the gifts given to them by the very God they both worship to become a world power and a beacon for peace and an example of the best modern civilization can offer. Can you imagine a Middle East at peace? A Middle East in which free trade exists and resources (human, natural, financial, and otherwise) are used to propel commerce and the interests of the people? It would rival anything North America, Europe, and East Asia could offer.

People who understand and know history may appreciate this. Imagine a European Crusader who was attacking a Jerusalem defended by Arabs and Jews, jumping into a time machine to pick up a Third Reich Nazi, and they both magically appear somewhere in Middle-America in 2010 at a Best Buy. Imagine the chain mail armored Crusader and the goose stepping Nazi wondrously click-clacking by the plasma TV section as CNN is airing a story about “anti-Semitic” Arabs. While this Crusader and this Nazi are trying to figure out what an “anti-Semitic” Arab could possibly mean, the news breaks into a pundit’s commentary who explains how the Arab/Israeli conflict is irresolvable because “they’ve been at each other’s throats since the beginning of time.” As both Crusader and Nazi are nearly convinced they are on another planet, and these are Martian Jews and Martian Arabs who have a distinctly different “history” than Earthling Jews and Earthling Arabs, the news breaks to some other stories, and they start getting the picture (pardon the pun).

They see a story of an American arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Then a story about an American arms deal with Israel. Then a story about American troops in Iraq. Then a story about American oil companies in Saudi Arabia. Then a story of a white American preacher with a Southern drawl talking about the “End Times” in Jerusalem which he claims is just around the corner. Then a story about America “brokering a peace” between Israel and the Arabs, which according to the pundits, will be negotiated in perpetuity, because “they’ve been at each other’s throats since the beginning of time.”

The Crusader and the Nazi finally get it. They’re still on earth. They recognize anti-Semitism when they see it, even if it took them a while. Anti-Semitism is a bit more sophisticated and a little less obvious in the 21st century, but they’re relieved to see the new “white empire” has adopted it.

Semites read your history. Anti-Semitism is very real and you are indeed victims of it, but you’re too caught up fighting a false enemy to see it for what it really is.

While you were both busy hating your “enemy,” your “friends” were busy encouraging you to spill your blood and your cousin’s blood so that they could secure a stake in your collective birthright.

Sixty years of fighting a false enemy is enough. We should have known better. We saw Crusaders and Nazis morph a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago preaching in Aramaic of peace and tolerance, into a blonde haired, blue eyed Viking war god. It is insane to think that one more Arab or Jew needs to die for a sliver of land so that Thor the Thunder God can distract them long enough to stake a claim to it too.

Shall we reclaim our peace and our birthright, both of which are easily within our grasp?

Or shall we be “plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation…

“...for nothing?”

“You and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.”—An Arab-American’s/Human Being’s Perspective on 9/11

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 02:28:00 +0000

Revisiting 9/11 as an Arab-American is a challenging exercise.

The difficulty is in being overwhelmed with what to focus on. Under the Arab prism I view this catastrophe with one set of emotions. Under the American prism I view it with another set of emotions.

I spent this September 11th in, of all places, Universal Studios. I was with my wife and a group of Arab-American friends from different countries of ancestry and various religious persuasions. I befriended a man named Mohammad, whom I just met that day and was a brother of a friend of mine who was also there. We were a natural fit. I’m an attorney, he is a CPA—upon finding out our respective professions, the predictable clichéd jokes ensued, and we immediately hit it off.

Mohammad was unlike many “Mohammads” most Americans are accustomed to seeing through their American prism. Though he was originally Palestinian, he is very fair skinned with soft, blue eyes. He is a vibrant, gregarious man who makes friends with nearly everyone he meets. He’s DEFINITELY the loudest guy in any room he walks into, though he is one the most gentle and approachable people you will ever meet. And he has a heart of absolute gold—we were in an area of Universal where they had carnival games, and he saw an African American girl that couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9 years old, trying to win a stuffed animal prize. Mohammad observed her failed efforts, went over to the booth, won the prize, and gave it to the little girl as they both shared an ear-to-ear smile.

Under the Arab prism, this “Mohammad” is not all that unusual. In fact, this Mohammad is quite common.

While we were in line waiting for the studio tour (by the way, that studio tour was far more entertaining when I was a kid—message to Universal: your rides are terrific, but for a $75 admission fee, let’s try punching up the tour a little), Mohammad and I were discussing something I think most Americans unacquainted with Arab culture may find quite interesting. We were talking about how funny it was that most Americans view Arabs in the precise stereotype which represents the small sliver of our population which, we as Arabs, almost routinely make fun of. The average American perception of the “mainstream” Arab being a crazed jihadist is ironically as ridiculous as the average Arab perception of the “mainstream” American being Larry the cable guy.

The whole point behind our conversation was that we’re really all the same if you toss aside the American and Arab prisms and just looked at the human beings right in front of you with human eyes. You couldn’t distinguish the group I was with from any other group that was there—we spoke the same language, wore the same clothes, and we laughed at the same stupid jokes.

And then it occurred to me. I…we…can’t look at 9/11 through Arab prisms, through American prisms, or through Arab-American prisms. I…we… have to look at 9/11 through human eyes—unobstructed by diffracted light and skewed perceptions.

The quote in the title of this article, is from another Arab-American—Kahlil Gibran. Gibran was an acclaimed poet, artist and philosopher, born in Lebanon and who spent his adulthood in the United States, in New York and Boston. Many prominent Americans have quoted him—from Maritn Luther King Jr. to John F. Kennedy. His most famous literary piece was a book entitled “The Prophet” which was originally written in English.

Gibran so eloquently revealed his humanity when he put pen to paper. He once wrote, “I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.”

“…you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.”

I believe Gibran was on to something. The human spirit is a remarkable thing. The pure spirit—not a spirit distorted by being Arab or being American—but a spirit which is purely human without the stain or blemish of division between race, creed, color, and religion. The very human being you were before you even knew to identify yourself as an Arab or as an American or as a Christian, Muslim, or Jew.

Through the eyes of this human spirit your attention was drawn to the thousands of Iranians who held candle light vigils in Tehran mourning the American dead on 9/11 only days after the attack. You saw them also in Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Israel—all over the Arab and Islamic world—Muslims, Christians, and Jews together. You heard the voices of the people and the leaders of those countries extend sympathy for the tragic loss of life on that terrible day.

Through the eyes of this spirit your attention was also drawn to the mass of Americans—Christians, Jews, and Muslims who bravely declared they knew this crime was not about religion, or culture, or people—this crime was about monsters perverting religion and culture and people. You heard those Americans declaring they would not let those monsters define that religion, that culture, and those people.

I am not engaging in hyperbole. Those things did all happen—Americans to this day, still take to the streets to march in solidarity with Arabs and Muslims. The Arab prism may have focused on the bigotry expressed by some, but the human being saw droves of Americans compassionately and courageously standing along side their fellow human beings. The human eye saw tens of thousands of mourners take to the streets in the Middle East only days after the attack. It saw the 9/11 murders being condemned by the most unlikely of American sympathizers—Iran, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority among others. It was difficult to see any of that through the American prism—a half dozen random people caught on a video played over and over on a loop became “every Arab and Muslim celebrating in the streets.” It took the human eye to view reality un-obscured by the justifiable emotion of being American on that fateful day.

Perhaps this is the lesson we can glean from September 11, 2001. We are all human beings. And in order for our very real human wounds to heal, we must put down our Arab prisms, and our American prisms, and look to the human being standing next to us while uttering Gibran's exquisite words with nothing obscuring our site except for perhaps an emotional tear, “I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.”

As an Arab, as an American, as a Human Being, I want the legacy of 9/11 to be the death of a monster which appeared one day roaring hatred. And I want that monster's death to make way for the birth of a human being who, rather than roaring with hatred, now lovingly whispers in a distinctly human voice…

“Peace, Shalom, and Salaam.”

Toxic Student Loans—The Ruling Class War with the New American Proletariat

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 13:58:00 +0000

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” –Nelson Mandela

Which is precisely why the “free market” wants to keep you stupid.

Those who run the so-called “free market” like America just the way it is and they have no desire to upset the status quo. These shopkeepers of the “free market” love that Americans can name all of the Three Stooges but can’t name one branch of government. Keeping America stupid makes it much easier to control.

Why is America so dumb?

In part, it’s because Americans need to go nearly bankrupt to get a postsecondary education. The same “free market” which demands and takes a $700 billion dollar TARP bailout courtesy of the taxpayers, forces a life of serfdom on those same taxpayers if they actually go to a college and graduate school to learn precisely what a racket this “free market” is.

According to a National Postsecondary Student Aid Study conducted by the National Center for Education: For the academic year 2007-2008, American students on average cumulatively borrowed $27,708 to earn a bachelors degree; $51,223 cumulatively for a master’s degree; $85,366 cumulatively for a doctorate degree; and $105,705 cumulatively for a professional degree.

By the way, this is the only money you borrow that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. If you borrow this money, you WILL be paying it back with interest, accrued penalties, and no forgiveness until it’s dead and buried or until you’re dead and buried.

Conversely, the banks can get handouts from working class taxpayers to the tune of $700 billion to bail themselves out of the toxic loans they prolifically sold to a gullible, uneducated American public. But please don’t expect the same courtesy to be reciprocated to the working class for something so trivial as a university education.

John Kennedy once said, “Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind,” said our fallen president, “is our fundamental resource.”

Well, so much for Camelot.

Today, derivatives and bonds are more valuable than degrees and books to those who own this country. Coincidentally or by design, with Kennedy’s assassination our country’s fate was sealed with the military industrial complex seizing power once and for all. Less than a decade later we were off the gold standard. Less than a decade after that “conservative” fiscal policy ushered in the era of deficit spending with Reagan, and here we are today—with debt now our primary “fundamental resource” and “education” the butt of Rush Limbaugh’s neo-conservative jokes.

Make no mistake about it, this country is owned by a ruling class. Let’s dispense with the canard of this country being a democracy operating under a “free market.” We are a country of a ruling class elite comprised of corporatists and military industrialists, and a working class of uneducated or broke (or both) people who are pacified with a false notion of democracy and free markets.

A democracy which offers the “choice” between two parties who are virtually indistinguishable—both bought and paid for by the very corporatists and military industrialists who sell their charade to the uneducated masses—is hardly a democracy. A “free” market which fabricates equity in real estate markets and stock markets where none exist in order to convince the masses they have a stake in this economy when they don’t, is hardly a free market.

It’s a divide and conquer strategy, don’t you see?

“They” make university education available to a wealthy elite class who can send their children to college and graduate school without saddling them with debt, and for the rest, they create the illusion of postsecondary education accessibility through a trillion dollar debt vehicle which, unlike almost any other debt vehicle, affords no bankruptcy protection to the borrower, who more often than not, is a teenager.

These crooks offer these “loans” to 18 year olds before these kids have an understanding of the consequences of that non-dischargeable debt obligation and before they have earned a dime in income. They yoke them with this obligation at a time in their lives when they are brimming with hope for their futures, and as the “free market” carrot is dangled before their teenage eyes. And boy howdy do they pile on the debt! They issue them credit cards while they’re in school so that they’ll fall even farther behind, all while pushing consumption and frivolous debt spending and putting the whole con in a red, white, and blue package practically exclaiming out loud, “it’s patriotic to spend money you don’t have!”

Then it’s time to pay up. These twenty-somethings have been bamboozled into serfdom and forced into a “work force” to pay off the debt they now owe to their masters in the ruling class. The lucky ones get jobs in the technology sector building killing machines for the military, or they become “investment bankers” in the “debt industry” so that the ruling class’s economic machine remains greased just enough.

The “rest” have to fend for themselves because the other jobs have been exported overseas in exchange for cheap labor to increase the bottom line of corporatists. The “rest” have to figure out a way to pay for their education through menial jobs without pensions. The “rest” can forget about social security, because that was raided to finance the ruling class’s debt spending, their TARP bailouts, and their military. We can’t let the ruling class fend for themselves after all.

It’s up to the “rest” to fend for themselves, and if the “rest” fall behind on their payments, Big Brother keeps careful track of it on his computer and marks them with poor credit scores. What a field day for the ruling class! Now, the marked “rest” get to be charged even more interest to borrow even more money—money which was theirs to begin with. Money raided from the taxpayer funded national treasury through TARP. Money raided from the taxpayer social security coffer. Money collected “privately” from the taxpayer through usury.

Round and round we go. “They” really are nothing but loan sharks, absent the Tony Soprano New Jersey accent, but every bit as ruthless. “They” make nothing and produce nothing other than debt.

Then the coup de grâce…

The owners of this country convince the uneducated two thirds of the masses that the educated one third are, with all their accumulated debt notwithstanding, the “elite” class.

We’re also wide-eyed liberals, they’ll tell you, because we may be able to tell the difference between Monet and Manet and have a conversation about it. We want to destroy capitalism. We are socialists. We like art. We drink foreign beer. We think we know better than you. We hate America. We hate family values. We hate God. And we’re probably gay.

At the risk of being accused a Marxist by a certain segment of my audience, let me just offer this idea: capitalism isn’t the answer to everything.

Profiteering doesn’t work for healthcare and it doesn’t work for education. It’s really time we get off our silly “free market at all cost” game and realize there are things this government needs to spend money on that don't involve blowing things up and bailing out banks, and doing so doesn’t make us socialists—it simply makes us ethical, responsible stewards of our future. These are things democracies are supposed to spend tax money on.

There is a reason the ruling class makes it difficult for you to get educated and then hamstrings you when you do. Presidents Mandela and Kennedy believed education was a powerful tool for change. Indeed, education can be a more powerful tool for change than a standing army.

Of course we can resign ourselves to giving up, allowing our corporatists and military industrialists to just have their way. And as we do, you may find them saying something along these lines:

“By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.”

Or perhaps this:

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.”

Do you know who said those things?

His name was Adolf Hitler.

Ten Reasons Why Glenn Beck Can't 'Restore' Honor to America

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:41:00 +0000

Quite a bit of fuss was being made regarding Glenn Beck’s choice to “restore honor to America” on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Junior’s epic “I Have A Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday.

And let’s make something perfectly clear, despite his claim to the contrary, this was no “coincidence”—to his own admission, he’s “reclaiming” America and he’s conceited and delusional enough to think he’s the “white King” (my claim, not his) chosen by the “Spirit” (his claim, not mine) to do just that.

Despite that, I have no issue with the choice of date. He certainly has a First Amendment right to choose whatever date he wishes to choose for his “My God Can Beat-Up Your God” unity rally.

Historic as it may be, no one owns this date.

However, if he is bold (or stupid) enough to pick this date to “reclaim” America and put the spot light on himself and his movement (take that word any way you wish to take it), then he doesn’t get to complain about people exercising THEIR First Amendment right to mock him and his army of goose stepping, tea-bagging drones and their stinky "movement."

And that’s just what I’m going to do, so without any further ado, here are ten reasons why Glenn Beck can’t restore honor to America:

1. You can’t restore honor to America by announcing you have a First Amendment Right to deliver a “Restore Honor to America” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in which Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent are among your featured speakers (“sadly” Mr. Nugent couldn’t attend due to a scheduling conflict) on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the very same Lincoln Memorial, while ALSO claiming American Muslims may have a First Amendment right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan, though it would be in “bad taste” for them to do so. Link.

2. You can’t restore honor to America by claiming we don’t have $94 billion to reform health insurance in order to provide wider access to healthcare for sick Americans in an America where (according to a Harvard Medical School Study) 45,000 Americans die each year because they lack health insurance, but we do have $1 trillion a year to fight wars of choice in foreign countries while also building more than 700 military bases across the globe in order to legitimize that trillion dollar expenditure.

3. You can’t restore honor to America when the only amendment in the Bill of Rights you hold true and dear is the Second Amendment, and when your contrived “right” to own an assault rifle becomes more important than personal liberties erased away by the so-called “Patriot Act” (and yes, despite claiming you were against it when a black guy “took” the “White” House, you were all for it when the white guy passed it into law.) Link.

4. You can’t restore honor to America by claiming your rally is not political, when there are speakers from only one political party invited to speak at your “non-political” rally (and no, Alveda King doesn’t count as a “Democrat”—nice touch though, the half of gullible America sharing one brain seems to have swallowed that little ploy hook, line, and sinker).

5. You can’t restore honor to America by claiming you want to unify it on one hand, and on the other hand, claiming the first African-American President of the United States “has a deep-seated hatred for white people” and is a “racist” because his political ideologies don’t comport with yours. Link.

6. You can’t restore honor to America by misspelling “oligarchy” on your fancy Glenn Beck chalkboard and featuring it on your nationally televised political talk show as “oligarhy,” while claiming you deciphered the secret code of the racist President of the United States, revealing said racist President’s intention to create an “oligarchy” (or was it “oligarhy?”). Link.

7. You can’t restore honor to America by claiming embryonic stem cell research is akin to eugenics and practically labeling the physicians and scientists engaging in this ground breaking research as Nazis. Link.

8. You can’t restore honor to America if you think global warming is an intricate plot fabricated by Al Gore, the National Academy of Sciences, and the United Nations in a nefarious scheme to increase your taxes. Link.

9. You can’t restore honor to America by claiming you didn’t want to have your rally on a Sunday because you didn’t want “anyone to work on the Sabbath” unless your idea of honoring America means Jewish and Muslim Americans need to start going to Temple and Mosque on Sundays. Link.

10. And while we’re at it, you can’t restore honor to America by claiming that in order to restore honor to America “we have to turn back to God” which implicitly excludes all atheists and agnostics from being a part of an “honorable America.” Link.

Look Glenn…YOU can’t restore honor to America—you’re just too big of a boob.

The Ground Zero Synagogue—Lebanon Becoming More American than America

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:13:00 +0000

"There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.”— Newt Gingrich

Has Lebanon officially become more tolerant and progressive than the United States?

Let's talk about Lebanon’s Ground Zero and you can decide for yourself.

One must first understand what “Ground Zero” means to most Lebanese.

In a country with about the same land mass as Los Angeles County which has been at war off and on for nearly four decades, “Ground Zero” for the Lebanese is arguably their entire country—and at the center of their Ground Zero is downtown Beirut, captured and occupied by the Israeli Defense Force in 1982 and which was almost entirely reduced to rubble from Muslim West Beirut to Christian East Beirut, and all points in between.

Once upon a time not too long ago, there was scarcely a building left standing or unscarred by shrapnel in all of Beirut. I know, because I was in Beirut in 1991, and witnessed first hand a city once described as "the Paris of the Middle East" reduced to ruins, pock marked with unexploded munitions and a haphazard "network" of open sewers.

Miraculously, Beirut was rebuilt and reclaimed its prominence. It once again became the jewel of the Arab world, remarkably able to bridge the ancient mystique of the east with the modern allure of the west.

Upon the first completion of its "rebuilding" process however--after 15 years and tens of billions of dollars spent on reconstructing Lebanon and its Ground Zero from rubble to splendor, Israel did what Israel does...

In July and August of 2006, Israel again followed through on its promise to “bomb Lebanon back into the Stone Age,” and in so doing displaced 1,000,000 Lebanese civilians (nearly a quarter of the country’s population), completely destroyed the country’s infrastructure (again), its only airport, at least 64 bridges, leveled entire buildings and neighborhoods to rubble (again), including the country's largest milk factory, a food factory, two pharmaceutical plants, water treatment centers, power plants, grain silos, a Greek Orthodox Church, several mosques, and a handful of hospitals (in a country which only had a handful of hospitals to begin with).

Over 1,200 hundred Lebanese civilians were killed and over 5,000 wounded.

Israel routinely talks about “proportionality” when comparing their “terrorism deaths” to American 9/11 deaths. In order to shock the sensibilities of a gullible American public, they portray a figure “in American terms,” by multiplying their dead by a number which reflects their population in comparison to the American population.

Well, what’s good for the Israeli goose is good for the Lebanese gander. I will play their game: 1,200 dead Lebanese civilians are the “proportional equivalent” to 90,000 American dead when accounting for the two countries’ population differences. Therefore, according to Israeli goose math, that’s the equivalent of roughly thirty 9/11’s Israel exacted on Lebanon in July and August 2006 over the course of 34 days—nearly one 9/11 a day for an entire month without relent.

Incidentally, July and August of 2006 only tell a small part of the story when it comes to Israeli aggression against Lebanon. There have been decades of invasion, devastation, and occupation which predated 2006. Several thousands of Lebanese have been killed at the hands of the Israeli Defense Force. Tens of billions of dollars of damage have been levied on the Lebanese infrastructure and private and public property courtesy of the IDF over the course of decades.

“Ground Zero” for Lebanon is an ever expanding, never ending, open wound that never heals.

So what now Newt?

Should you expect the Lebanese to allow a synagogue to be built on their Ground Zero, in the aftermath of a 9/11 that occurred 5 years after ours and which, “proportionately” speaking, was 30 times the size of ours?

Well guess what you hateful, misguided, twit?

THEY DID.

In the process of re-building Beirut yet again, in 2008, renovations began and have now been completed on the Maghden Abraham Synagogue located in the middle of newly renovated downtown Beirut in an area known as the “Solidere" which has become the focal point and showcase of Lebanon’s rebirth.

This isn’t some hole in the wall, nondescript, “excuse me” synagogue hidden out of view so as to not “offend” Lebanese non-Jews—this is an elaborate, ornate, beautifully designed, cathedral-style house of worship built for a Lebanese Jewish population that totals less than 500 in a country of more than 4,000,000 (in stark contrast to the eight million American Muslims living in the United States).

And wait until you hear Hezbollah’s response to the building of this Ground Zero Synagogue.

(To those expecting a Newt Gingrich equivalent response, prepare to be woefully disappointed).

Courtesy of Hassan Nasrallah himself: "We respect Judaism, just as we respect Christianity. Our only problem is with Israel."

Did you hear that Newt (and the rest of you idiots)?

An Arab democracy, with a Muslim Prime Minister and a Christian President, allowed the building of a synagogue, squarely in the center of their “Ground Zero” in the heart and pride of downtown Beirut which used to be a dumping ground for Israeli military ordinances.

An Arab democracy allowed this, without so much as a protest being made by its citizens, or allegations by politicians that this was sacrilege, or hateful commentary by the media that the Jewish faith was barbaric, or any of the other stupidity I have seen and heard plastered all over American television, talk radio, and internet-blogs regarding a certain “Ground Zero Mosque” and the Islamic faith.

Regardless of whether you perceive Israel to be justified in perpetrating the devastation it did on Lebanon is irrelevant. The purpose of this article is not to debate that. What cannot be debated, is that Israel (a Jewish State, flying a Jewish flag) unleashed hell on Lebanon for 34 straight days in July and August of 2006 (and for decades prior in its wars against Lebanon). Regardless of whether or not you feel Israel had a right to do that, you cannot deny that Lebanese civilians harbored, and continue to harbor, a very real resentment against the government of Israel—this Jewish state—for those actions and the devestation those actions caused.

Yet these very Lebanese, who are so quickly labeled as “blood thirsty terrorists” by Newt Gingrich and his army of xenophobic morons, were able to draw a distinction between the Jews “flying those planes” in July and August of 2006 working at the behest of the Israeli government, and the Jews whom are citizens of Lebanon who had no connection with those attacks.

Lebanon rebuilt that Ground Zero Synagogue for its Jews.

Not for Israel. Not for the world’s Jewry. Not as a monument to mark a “Jewish victory” over Lebanon.

Lebanon rebuilt that Ground Zero Synagogue because its Jews lived in that neighborhood and they had every right to build a house of worship in a place they called home.

For crying out loud, Hassan Nassrallah and Hezbollah can even draw the distinction between a Lebanese Jew and an Israeli soldier who happens to be a Jew. So how is it that Americans can’t distinguish between American Muslims who were victims of 9/11 and Saudi Muslims who were the perpetrators of 9/11?

Thank you Mr. Gingrich for allowing Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah to outclass you and the Republican Party (and you Democrats aren't too far behind--yes Harry Reid, I'm talking to you). When the former Republican Speaker of the House and the current Democratic Senate Majority Leader start sounding less tolerant and less reasonable than a "terrorist," we need to start sounding the alarm bells.

What a sad state of affairs for America.

“Terror Babies”—Erasing the 14th Amendment and the Republican Party

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:55:00 +0000

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

—Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, 1863.

If America is defined by a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” what is it that defines “the people?” What is an “American” under this “new birth of freedom” articulated by Abraham Lincoln after the Battle of Gettysburg?

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution defines an American under this “new birth of freedom” in no uncertain terms:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

This is our Constitution and it is sacrosanct. This is in plain English and not subject to interpretation.

An American is any person “born or naturalized in the United States” and this has been the case since 1870 when the 14th Amendment of the Constitution was ratified in the Reconstruction Era in the aftermath of the Civil War. It was made a part of our Constitution so that the issue of American citizenship cannot be politicized or pruned away or re-interpreted at the whim of an angry mob or a politician looking to egg on an angry mob to get elected into office. It is the basis upon which we as Americans are defined—in a country celebrated as a “melting pot,” a country barely more than two centuries old, comprised of a hodge-podge of nationalities, classes, races, religions and political ideologies from all over the world—this, and only this, defines an “American.”

Under a Republican President and under a Republican Congress the Reconstruction Amendments were passed and became the Republican Party’s greatest legacy and their greatest gift to these United States—the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment which established rights of citizenship (as defined in Section 1 above), the Privileges and Immunities Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause (which were the foundation for Civil Right’s guarantees in the 20th century); and the 15th Amendment which granted voting rights regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Fast forward to 2010, and the same Republican party now wants to erase (or in their words, “revise”) the 14th Amendment.

Why?

Because Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert went on a plane ride to the Middle East and apparently lost his mind with his luggage:

It first came to my attention. Some of us were traveling to the Middle East last August, a year ago. And a lady on the plane was telling one of our group that they were about to have their second granddaughter. Her husband was with Hamas. Her grand -- I'm sorry -- her son-in-law was with Hamas -- and that they were going to do with the second as they did with the first grandchild. Daughter is going to come to America right before it's born on a tourist visa, have the baby.

They just like the option of having American citizens in the family.

Hamas, we recognize as terrorists. They're coming over -- oh, and she added, as a real kicker: And you know what the best part of it is? We don't have to pay anything for the baby to be born.

And then Gohmert talked to the FBI (which maybe code for his invisible friend, Barnie):

I talked to a retired FBI agent who said that one of the things they were looking at were terrorist cells overseas who had figured out how to game our system.

And it appeared they would have young women who became pregnant, would get them into the United States to have a baby. They wouldn't even have to pay anything for the baby. And then they would return back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists.

And then, one day, 20, 30 years down the road, they could be sent in to help destroy our way of life, because they figured out how stupid we are being in this country.

Well this idiot from Texas got one thing right—boy howdy are we becoming stupid in this country.

So stupid are we, that now the 14th Amendment is at issue, on some baseless, politicized overtly racist rhetoric designed to ignite the emotions of an angry mob—our Constitution is under attack so a group of morally bankrupt politicians can get elected into office.

And it goes far beyond Rep. Gohmert, and it goes far beyond this absurd notion of “terror babies.”

In the aftermath of Arizona’s SB 1070, mainstream Republicans including former Republican nominee for President Senator John McCain of Arizona, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and a mob of others, are calling for Senate hearings to “revise” the 14th Amendment.

Make no mistake—this isn’t “immigration reform.” This is a neo-conservative attempt to redefine an “American.”

This is redefining an American so that brown people and Muslim people and people who are otherwise “inconveniently” Americans to other Americans become increasingly excluded from the definition of being “American.” More than placating to the emotions of an angry mob, this is an abandonment of the Republican Party and its greatest legacy by the very people who are ironically trying to sell themselves as being more “Republican” than the next guy.

The Republican Party, if not officially dead, is now an undead zombie—a mutant spirit occupying a barely recognizable body separated from its soul. And while we’re at it, since Republicans are redefining “Americans,” you might as well tag them with the label of being “un-American.”

What else could they be?

If neo-conservatives are willing to ignore the Constitution of the United States and proclaim Americans aren’t Americans, what business do they have calling themselves Americans, and why should I be compelled to call them Americans?

In a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” when you wish to re-define “the people” and take America away from Americans, in my eyes you are committing an act of treason. Let’s call a spade a spade—this is racism masquerading as patriotism and let the Constitution be damned.

This “terror baby” nonsense is just one in a series of clumsy smokescreens to mask the new “Republican” Party’s agenda of pruning and re-interpreting Constitutional liberties so that they may redefine America and Americans into something convenient for their political purposes.

The new “convenient” American to be “revised” in the 14th Amendment under the guise of “immigration reform” will be whittled and pigeonholed into some category of drone who agrees with the mob’s notion of “American” founded on some contrived “Judeo-Christian,” pale skinned vision of America that only exists in history because it was re-written and interpreted to suit the mob’s needs and their warm and fuzzy apple pie nostalgia.

Anyone else will be just a “guest” who should either be grateful or get out.

The angry mob, after all, is white, “Christian” (another mutated label), and armed—and they want their ounce of blood for the “wrongs” they were conned into believing these “guests” (invited or otherwise) levied upon them.

Will real Republicans stand up and take their party back? Can we as a nation carry forward the promise made by President Lincoln on the solemn grounds of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, “that these dead shall not have died in vain” and honor those men who gave their lives so that we can be defined as Americans, in no uncertain terms, and shielded from the whims of the angry mob?

Perhaps the rest of America should speak in the language that the mob can understand...

YOU’RE EITHER WITH US, OR AGAINST US.

We the people of the United States are still the people of the United States whether it’s convenient for you or not.

Let us heed the words of our country’s most exalted Republican:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”—Abraham Lincoln

Ground Zero Mosque Hysteria--Americans Aren't Allowed to be Muslims

noreply@blogger.com (Gus Bridi) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:57:00 +0000

Feisal Abdul Rauf is an American.

Back in 1983, he established a Sufi-Islamic ministry in lower Manhattan, and became one of many personifications of a familiar cliché—an immigrant finding a home in America’s ultimate melting pot, the Big Apple.

Abdul Rauf established his roots in a lower Manhattan neighborhood in the same manner his Italian, Irish, and Jewish predecessors did in generations past. He became a member of that diverse community nearly 30 years ago, as the progressive Imam of the Masjid al-Farah mosque on 245 West Broadway, ironically sandwiched between two pubs, Cercle Rouge and Tribeca Tavern and Café, a half mile southwest of “Ground Zero” and nearly within the literal shadows of the World Trade Center Towers before they fell.

Can this be anymore “New York?” A Sufi mosque nestled between two bars? It’s what makes Manhattan so deliciously diverse and ironic and every bit the clichéd melting pot it is advertised to be.

And in the spirit of “Big Apple irony,” earlier this year, the New York State Liquor Authority threatened to shut those two bars down because they violated the “200 foot rule” banning the sale of alcohol within 200 feet of a house of worship.

The irony lies in what the “militant” Imam’s/New Yorker’s reaction to the threatened ban was:

"We don't dictate other people's behavior," he said. "We believe in non-judging and tolerance." Other spokespersons for the mosque said they had no objections to the nearby bars and never had problems with them. The bars were allowed to remain open.

After all they’re all part of the neighborhood. They’re all Americans. And they’re all New Yorkers.

Not really what you’d expect crazed terrorists to proclaim is it? Clearly not an example of fundamentalist Muslims running amuck and antagonizing their neighbors, wouldn’t you agree?

As a New Yorker residing in lower Manhattan, the 9/11 tragedy quite literally occurred in Imam Rauf’s backyard. He and his parishioners were one of many Americans directly affected by this horrible event, all of whom will be forever scarred by it.

And yes, they are Americans.

They are allowed to suffer the losses associated with that tragedy, even though they are Muslims. Even though they are Muslims, they are allowed to bleed, and cry, and live with the nightmares of that horrific day. Whether you want to give them that “right” or not, they are human beings, they are Americans, and they suffered every bit as much as anyone living and working in lower Manhattan did that day, and they deserve the right to participate in the healing process.

Once upon a time, an American was an American regardless of his religion (or lack thereof). Call me an idealist, but I’d like to still pretend I live in an America where the majority of its citizens aren’t bigoted and hateful. I’m going to pretend, even if it’s just for the purpose of writing this article to escape reality, we live in a country where a Muslim is allowed to be an American, and where a terrorist is defined by his or her actions rather than by the religion he or she practices as a result of an accident of birth.

Imam Rauf dedicated his Manhattan ministry to bridge a dialogue between the Islamic faith and Western society. He wrote a book entitled “What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America,” which was described by the Christian Science Monitor as “an invigorating glimpse into the heart and mind of a wise Muslim seeking the higher ground." Like most Americans (and like most Muslims across the globe), he condemned the 9/11 attacks and characterized them in no uncertain terms as “un-Islamic.”

In continuing his nearly 30 year old ministry in lower Manhattan, what has Imam Rauf done now?

He had the audacity to participate in the 9/11 healing process as a Muslim American. He found a dilapidated 150 year old building in his neighborhood which no one wanted. He wanted to convert it into an Islamic community center which would advance his 30 year old ministry’s goal of creating a dialogue between Islam and Western societies, and most particularly with his country of citizenship—the United States of America.

It was going to be called the “Cordoba House.” $100 million was proposed to be spent on the facility, located two blocks from Ground Zero and a half mile north of his mosque, and would include a 500 seat auditorium, a swimming pool, a bookstore, a library, a restaurant, and a prayer room. The name referenced an old Spanish city in Andalusia (which I’ve had the privilege of visiting many years ago and I remain awed by the memories of those layers of history from the three Abrahamic faiths which influenced Cordoba over the centuries and continue to be maintained in a city located in the heart of modern Europe, thousands of miles away from the birthplace of all three religions). According to investors in the project, the name "Cordoba" was chosen because it symbolized a time period in the 8th through 11th centuries (over 300 years) in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together in peaceful co-existence.

Well, so much for peaceful co-existence…

On July 21 of this year, this country’s former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, wrote the following in his blog: “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.”

Did you get that? No AMERICANS are allowed to build mosques in lower Manhattan (I don’t know what else “near Ground Zero” could mean) until Saudi Arabia allows churches and synagogues to be built in their country.

Seems perfectly reasonable doesn’t it?

Christian Americans and Jewish Americans, are free to build their churches and synagogues anywhere they wish, but until Saudi Arabia changes its policy on churches and synagogues, we’re going to declare lower Manhattan an “Islamic-free zone,” and not allow Americans who have lived in that neighbourhood for three decades to build a house of worship or a community center—because they’re Muslims.

Wow!

Excuse me for sounding alarmist—but isn’t this just another way of saying Muslims aren’t Americans?

Are we going to now be in the business of banning Americans from their own neighborhoods because people of another country who share their religion committed a horrific crime? Great policy! Let’s ban the building of churches “near” synagogues because Adolf Hitler was a Christian. Let’s ban the building of Catholic community centers “near” schools and Chuck E. Cheese’s because of the institutionalized paedophilia seemingly endorsed by the hierarchy of the Church. How about this—since Timothy McVeigh was not only a Christian, but an AMERICAN, let’s ban all churches within spitting distance of a federal building. To what absurd extreme are you willing to condemn the followers of one religion over another, and punish Americans for the actions of what foreigners of the same religion have done?

Has this country completely lost it?

Of course we have—look at the new wave of leaders we enthusiastically celebrate. The poster child for neo-conservative “intellects” and former vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. had this pearl to add via Twitter: "Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate." As “peaceful Muslims” across the United States are scratching their heads trying to figure out what it means to “refudiate” something, I think the bigger question is how does a community center built by American Manhattanites in Manhattan and who have been in the neighborhood for 30 years, become the business of “heartland Americans,” let alone an Alaskan soccer mom who thinks the 10 commandments are part of the Constitution?

To further advance the notion of not “minding your own business,” the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by Pat Robertson sued the New York City Planning Commission for allowing the community center to be built on the proposed site (thankfully, they lost). So now Pat Robertson has a dog in this fight too. Newt, Pat, and Sarah, are admonishing and suing New Yorkers in order to prevent other New Yorkers from building a community center because they can’t stomach American Muslims “near” Ground Zero, a neighborhood, in a city and in a state they don’t live in.

(You have to love this country.)

Let’s ask an actual New Yorker what he thinks of this shall we?

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg himself, bravely and eloquently declared, “We would betray our values - and play into our enemies' hands - if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else." Mayor Bloomberg is a staunch advocate for the building of the community center at its proposed location, and with all due respect (not really) to Newt, Sarah, and Pat, I will defer to his opinion on this issue.

How did this become an issue of offending the memories of 9/11 victims? How are we honoring their memories by making lower Manhattan an Islamic-free zone? In order for their memories to be honorably preserved, all Americans will be welcome in lower Manhattan, unless they are Muslims? It doesn’t matter if you’ve spent 30 years in this New York neighborhood, you don’t get to build anything new, and in fact, just move the hell out all together so as to not upset the delicate sensibilities of Georgian, Alaskan, and Virginian fundamentalist Christian neo-cons?

Is this what this country has turned into? Is this what New York (the unofficial "capitol of the world") has turned into?

Understand, this isn’t a case of Saudi nationals coming in and building a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero (which would have a far better agrument for being distasteful). This is a case of Americans, already in that neighborhood, taking an old building no one was using to expand their ministry which has been a very real part of that neighborhood for three decades.

You know what this is? This is “birth certificates.” This is a “socialist President.” This is a President “accused” of being Muslim (as though being Muslim were a crime to be accused of). This is uninformed, dim-witted Americans yet again becoming distracted by a contrived issue courtesy of the neo-conservative spin machine designed to distract them from real issues in an election year by playing on the average American’s ignorance, gullibility, and bigotry. This is another in a long series of lame duck decoys, which once again has fooled lazy thinkers into demonizing yet another group of Americans so that neo-conservatives have a talking point going into another election.

It’s a revolting spectacle to behold. (Unless you’re Osama Bin Laden, in which case, you may now officially proclaim victory.)

If this community center is not allowed to be built at the proposed site, what we once knew to be America will be officially gone.

Note to neo-con drones: they can’t hate us for our freedom, if we have no freedom left to hate.