Listics

Andrea Gibson via Normand ICH

Declaration of Peace

Today marks the fifth year since the decider accomplished his mission. The table was tilted and all the wealth rolled into his side’s pockets. All of the benefits accrued to the rich, all the rewards. All of the costs have been borne by the poor, all the risks. As of today I have no enemies on this globe and my peace has come with a price unpaid. What is the cost of justice? How shall we value truth? What pain will we feel as we excise the shrapnel of deceit from the body politic? What stains will permanently discolor our social fabric? The cold war is long over — Churchill and Stalin and Truman and Khrushchev long dead. There never was a war on terror. We defeated Iraq and have lost ourselves in its occupation. We ousted the Afghan Taliban and wandered aimlessly in the mountains seeking bin Laden, the golem we built. The rich and the powerful are weighing the odds that thermonuclear horror in Tehran will distract us, the drums of constant war drive us mad, erode our faculties, assure continuity of the oligarchic rule that has brought us to the brink of extinction.

But I am at peace. I have no enemies on this globe. I have only my duty to the people and the truth. It’s my job to speak up and dissect the myth of Adam Smith, to remind people of the insanity that informed their economists and game theorists, the ones who provided the scaffolding of rationalization for the politics of greed.

I am not at war. I am simply a citizen looking for justice.

Cousin Betty Jo writes,

It must be coincidence that only 9 days before the Indiana Primary, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Indiana’s photo ID voting law may be applied to the May 6 election.

What’s the problem with that? Suppose you don’t drive, so don’t have a government ID? Well, of course, you can go wait in line at the DMV to get an id.

Wait! you need a birth certificate. No, you don’t have a computer. Heck, you can barely afford to buy nonfat dry milk for your kids. So, you panhandle some spare change to buy a phone card, make some long distance calls to your state of birth. Get the right office, and they’ll be happy to send your their form. Once it arrives in 5 - 7 business days, just fill it out, include a two sided copy of a photo id, and mail it back with a check.

Wait! No checking account? you can go to the post office, wait in line and get a money order, then mail it back. Once they receive it, they will process in 2-3 days (unless they are busy), and then mail it back in 5-7 business days.

Wait! You don’t have a photo id. Well, you can contact a direct relative (like a parent or natural sibling (no step parents or step siblings allowed), and get a signed affidavit from them and a copy of both sides of their photo id, have them send you that and use it to apply for a copy of your birth certificate, after which in a while, you will have the certificate and can then go down to the DMV and wait in line for a photo id. They’ll take your pic and send you the id in 5-7 business days.

Woops. The election is over. You are TOO LATE.

hmmm. Guess all those poor Dems won’t be able to vote in Indiana after all. I can hear the news reporting on May 7 that all the hoopla over high democratic voter turnout was clearly an aberration for it seems the Indiana turnout was low…. must be because the Democrats have turned off their voters with their inappropriate (non white male) candidates….

Election day in Nepal was April 10 and while the votes are still being counted, the Maoists are winning by a landslide.

Technorati Tags: nepal, prachanda, king gyanendra, end of monarchy

The Secretary of State projects the will of the administration. Go ahead and sign the petition…

Five years have passed and and still no justice, peace, or understanding has emerged in Israel regarding the brutal death of Rachel Corrie at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces.

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Thanks to Norm for the reminder of the anniversary date and to the Rachel Corrie Foundation for keeping her activist quest for peace and justice alive.

Technorati Tags: Rachel Corrie

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Some sources call the scheme “Iran-contra 2.0,” recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.’s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

Read Phyllis Bennis’ “Institute for Policy Studies” report here.

Technorati Tags: With news like this we’ll have to sink Spitzer, statesmanlike megalomania, who’s watching Dick Cheney