"The abolition of war has become not only desirable but absolutely necessary if the planet is to be saved. It is an idea whose time has come."

--Professor Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with an old acquaintance named Al Mancini of ABC radio. He told me what potential sponsors want are leftists who doN'T take themselves too seriously, like Michael Moore and Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. As much as I love Moore (and like Stewart), being taken seriously is exactly what the left needs. For the billionth time, I don't give a three-legged-ass how offended or alienated your right-wing friends and relatives are by THE TRUTH, there's plenty in life FAR more important than your kin folk's fragile sensibilities--such as ending the torture going on in our name and with our taxes even as you people are reading this ...

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/23/1622230

MICHAEL MOORE: First of all, it's in a satirical chapter called "How to Talk to Your Conservative Brother-In-Law." I'm going through a bunch of ideas how to convince that knucklehead down at the other end of the table at Thanksgiving dinner why he should maybe see things our way.

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2003/02/19/export274.txt

"The abolition of war has become not only desirable but absolutely necessary if the planet is to be saved. It is an idea whose time has come." That means the abolition of war ain't some hobby for spoiled suburbanites to fit inbetween concerts.

A local named PJ Perez once made this crack about me online, "The funny thing about any sort of 'radical' or 'activist' – take notes, Saab Lofton – is that they can't possibly be switched to the 'on' position all of the time."

Well, being on all the time is "absolutely necessary", as professor Zinn put it ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051231/ap_en_mu/people_bono_1

LONDON - Rock star Bono said Saturday that his commitment to campaigning against poverty caused tensions within U2. Bono acknowledged that his campaigning had sometimes "raised eyebrows" among his fellow band members ...

"When I do my rant on making poverty history, I have got Larry Mullen, our drummer, behind me looking at his watch, timing me," he said.

"There was one point when I thought, 'I'm going to be thrown out of the band for this stuff.'"

But Bono said he now feels the other band members recognize that U2's audience appreciates what he is doing.

"I thought we would wear our audience out, but it hasn't happened," he said. "People are smart out there. They know what you are doing, they know the compromises you are making, they get it."

... and I'm here to make sure that Las Vegas gets it. Lord knows it ain't easy, case in point:

http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/12/trust_but_verif.html

Several months ago, I received a telephone call at home from an outspoken black columnist at Las Vegas City Life, in response to my letter requesting that he devote a weekly column to abuses committed within the American criminal justice system. My reference was to arrests-without-warrants, surreptitious home entries, illegal FBI mail intercepts, and government collusion with the multi-billion dollar film industry (the biggest and most undisclosed scam around). WEe spoke for 55 minutes, freely and passionately. Throighout, we both noticed a telltale clicking sound, which grew louder and more frequent as we made particularly sharp comments. The columnist, Saab Lofton, was fired a couple weeks later. My name is Philip Lundquist and should someone visit Las Vegas and bring credulity and a capacity to brave some rough patches in presentation of these truths, I will stand behind what i have written here. Should these matters become fully known to the American people, much of the blase reactions to these government crimes and indecent senses of entitlement will surely go by the wayside.

Posted by: Philip Lundquist | Dec 29, 2005 10:55:41 AM

... meanwhile, in the shy, subtle white left, Arizona Cottonwood--or whatever the fuck her real name is--once told me the following:

"What has your propaganda machine gotten you? Its made you the target. You put yourself out there to be an easy target."

And how did that line from Back to the Future go?

George McFly: I know what you're gonna say, son. And you're right, but uh ... Biff just happens to be my supervisor, and I'm afraid I'm just no good at ... confrontations.

Well, that's what 2006 will be, The Year of the Confrontation. And so help me GOD, if you white leftists don't start confronting your ig-nant-ass right-wing kin, then history will record that Amerikkkan Fascism was just as much y'all's fault as it was the elite's ...

Earlier today, I was at the mall selling copies of my second novel ...

http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2005/06/2486.php

... and I was wearing what I usually wear whenever I do so ...

http://www.jarretkeene.com/?p=645

... this white man actually offered me one hundred dollars to run around the mall and pretend like I was flying--all so his insignificant ass can have a laugh. Of course I told him to kiss my black ass, but that's not the point. The point is whites put far too much importance on escapism; on being able to keep from taking anything too seriously, which brings me full circle: Al Mancini from ABC radio was claiming that left-wingers are too self-righteous or whatever. Thing is, we have every-fucking-right to be ...

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/04/07/opinion/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

This will sound like a dirty joke at first, but bear with me: An Egyptian pharaoh, a Roman emperor and a Spanish inquisitor walk into a bar. The pharaoh sits next to Bill Gates and asks, "Why don't you enslave your workers?"

Gates answers, "The unions would come after me."

The emperor sits next to Dick Cheney and asks, "Why don't you distract the public with bread and circuses?"

Cheney answers, "These days, our entertainment is allowed to be tainted with anti-authoritarian subtext. Hell, stuff like 'The X-Files' and Men in Black are as indicting as they are distracting!"

Finally, the inquisitor sits next to John Ashcroft and asks, "Why don't you torture the population into submission?"

And Ashcroft answers, "Can we say, 'Amnesty International'? Hello?!"

The moral is we [Humans] have evolved as a race. But it took us anywhere from 500 to 3,000 years to reach our current standard of living ...

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/05/12/opinion/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

... the left and the right aren't two sides of the same proverbial coin. One is smarter than the other. As elitist as this may seem, the best illustration of their differences can be found in the movie based on Jean M. Auel's novel Clan of the Cave Bear. In it, Daryl Hannah portrays a young Cro-Magnon woman raised by Neanderthals. There's a scene in which Hannah's character discovers a more efficient way of counting numbers, but is immediately told by a wise elder to suppress this knowledge (back then, the forces of planned obsolescence wielded clubs).

"Numbers were a difficult abstraction for people of the Clan to comprehend. Most could not think beyond three," Auel writes. "With difficulty, Creb [the elder] could count to 20. Numbers beyond 20 blurred into some indistinct infinity called many."

Flash forward from the end of the Paleolithic period to the present and you'll find that pioneers from Preston Tucker to Ralph Nader are treated as badly as Hannah's character.

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2005/03/09/opinion/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

I'm glad the consensus among the activists was that Amnesty International would survive the passing of its founder. It just seems to me a far more fitting homage would be for Benenson to look down from heaven and see that the fruits of his labor were no longer needed on Earth.

Let me put it this way: A revolution is simply rapid evolution (notice how the two words are only an "R" away from being identical). So if there isn't a global, civil libertarian version of the Cuban revolution in our future, never fear. There's always evolution to fall back on.

I predict the future by first looking backward.

In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was at an all-time peak. Today, the KKK is fodder for Jerry Springer -- which is to say that aside from the occasional and inexcusable hate crime, the group's become a form of comic relief in certain circles. Therefore, I foresee that by the dawn of the 22nd century, white supremacy will be extinct; the Republican Party will replace the KKK in terms of both power and popularity; the Democrats will be where the GOP currently is; and the Green Party will be considered as mainstream as the DLC. It's as simple as a Cro-Magnon replacing a Neanderthal. (Assuming we don't nuke ourselves to Kingdom Come and back before the 22nd century, that is.)

Within the aforementioned future, Amnesty International will eventually become just as obsolete as an abolitionist is today because, in part, the human race will have long surpassed the mere legal integration of the 1960s and progressed to emotional integration. Since slavery has been abolished, the Underground Railroad is now a potential tourist attraction instead of a form of sedition. Likewise, I hope a member of Amnesty will someday be viewed the same way today's political arena views a Quaker toting around a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2003/08/06/scorched_earth/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt

FUCK 2005! IT'S ALL ABOUT 2006!!

what makes u think arizona cottonwood is a "her"?

Who cares? Actually I think that assuming he doesn't know for sure the persyn's actual gender, using "she" as a default, rather than "he" which most people use conciously or not, is progressive . . . . . .
Even if the person in question is a man, is it somehow insulting to refer to them with the female pronoun?

Of all the things y'all could've fixated on ...

http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2005/12/4014_comment.php#4030

THAT's where I first heard of "Arizona Cottonwood". As you can see, whoever Cottonwood is opens with some line about how most superheroes in comics "are all men" and wonders "why that is" ...

... I doN'T want to start that argument all over again. Suffice to say that you're right, I DID assume Arizona was female because of the professed concern over how many men there are in superhero comics. I would've likewise assumed that Arizona Cottonwood was BLACK if the opening line had instead read "Oh and look they are all WHITE. Hmm I wonder why that is."

Then again, this (sort of) brings me back to my original point: The use of pen names (be they gender/color neutral or otherwise) lets white leftists off the hook. Many is the time I've heard from folks who were supposed to be my allies that they didn't want to lend their name to something I was doing because of a (largely irrational) fear of losing their job, or more specifically, alienating their right-wing friends/relatives and my point is this sort of cowardice has to cease.

Everyone is using 9-11 as an excuse to justify shit that even the Nazis would've have been able to get away with, and ironically, the very same blog or whatever that I found that quote about yours truly on also has the following ...

http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/12/trust_but_verif.html

This is why the left will continue to be the minority party. Americans want their country to be safe, and 99.9999% of us are truly unaffected by the NSA wiretapping terrorists and terrorist sympathizers in the US. So please, make the NSA wiretaps a critical part of you 2006 and 2008 campaigning plans for congress.

Posted by: Treasonous Media | Dec 30, 2005 12:15:08 PM

"Americans want their country to be safe", in-fucking-deed! What if--in the name of feeling "safe" from police brutality, for instance (something I've personally suffered from in Nov. 2001)--I decided to bomb Metro? What then? How many of y'all's friends and relatives would be directly affected by such a Stalinistic/Machiavellian terrorist act? See, the shit works both ways ...

I call 2006 the Year of the Confrontation because y'all white leftists canNOT continue to give the archetypal conservative brother-in-law at the Thanksgiving dinner table in your lives a free pass (just as George McFly let Biff walk all over him because of McFly's fear of confrontations). Not everything in life can be written off as a mere difference of subjective opinion: We're not talking about whether the '49ers are better than the Cowboys, here--or whether Kirk is a better captain than Picard--we're talking about LIFE AND DEATH!!

I'm going to get in a lot of trouble with my anarchist friends by quoting from the Revolutionary Communist Party, but this point HAS to be made ...

http://rwor.org/a/023/good-night-good-luck.htm

A CBS executive criticizes [Edward R.] Murrow for not being "neutral" in the case of Milo Radulovich--who was kicked out of the Air Force because his father and sister were suspected of being communist sympathizers. Murrow answers: "I simply cannot accept that there are on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument, call it editorializing if you like."

... this is exactly why the left and the right are NOT equal--no more than David and Goliath were equal; no more than Preston Tucker and Chrysler were equal ...

... this means that you people caN'T continue to let this country slip deeper into fascism (One could easily argue that it all started the millisecond the "founding fathers" only allowed rich white males to vote--some democracy ...) because y'all view your right-wing friends as simply being "the other side of the coin", as it were. They haven't the right to feel "safe" at the expense of the rest of the planet--especially given just how SPOILED the so-called First World is ...

"Americans want their country to be safe" ... WHAT ABOUT WANTING THEIR COUNTRY TO BE FREE?

WHAT ABOUT WANTING THEIR COUNTRY TO BE WELL-READ?

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/23/1622230

MICHAEL MOORE: First of all, it's in a satirical chapter called "How to Talk to Your Conservative Brother-In-Law." I'm going through a bunch of ideas how to convince that knucklehead down at the other end of the table at Thanksgiving dinner why he should maybe see things our way.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1227-20.htm

Published on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 by the Oakland Tribune
Big Brother is Watching
Editorial

IT took 21 years longer than expected, but the future has finally arrived.

And we don't like it. Not one bit.

We are fighting a war with no end to create a peace with no defined victory.

We occupy a foreign land that doesn't want us, while at home our civil liberties are discounted.

We are told that it's better not to know what our government is doing in our name, for security purposes. Meanwhile, our government is becoming omnipresent, spying on us whenever it deems it necessary.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

George Orwell was right after all.

In 1949, Orwell penned "1984," a dark, futuristic satire in which the totalitarian government used indoctrination, propaganda and fear to enforce order and conformity. His "Big Brother" � the face of this all-knowing

Orwell wrote his book as a cautionary tale to underscore the insidious danger of slowly eroded individual liberties. His Thought Police may not yet be on the march, but it's not hyperbole to point out the eerie parallels with today's America.

In America today, Big Brother is watching.

He's watching because President Bush told him to. Shortly after 9/11, Bush secretly authorized warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens making or receiving international calls and e-mails.

When it comes to fighting terror, Bush is totalitarian � remember, you're either with us or against us. Trust me to get it right, he says. Debate on the law is not only not needed, it's evil.

"An open debate about the law would say to the enemy, 'Here's what we're going to do.'" Bush said recently. "The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Then there's the Patriot Act, also created in the days immediately after Sept. 11, 2001. The Senate and House of Representatives voted Thursday to extend the law by a month. President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales insist it's an indispensable tool in the war on terror and want it extended permanently.

"I'm as concerned about the privacy of American citizens as anyone, but we cannot allow libraries and use of libraries to become safe havens for terrorists," Gonzales said in July, defending one of the act's most controversial provisions.

Remember, too, that we invaded Iraq primarily because we were told Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat with his weapons of mass destruction. Now the Bush administration acknowledges that wasn't so, but insists there were (are?) other reasons to invade. History is malleable.

Orwell wrote of war without end; we're told the war on terror will last decades at least. Orwell wrote of a dumbed-down "Newspeak," and who could argue that our national discourse hasn't slumped? Orwell's "Ministry of Love" tortured dissidents real or imagined; our government decries Iraq's secret torture prisons while arguing over whether to ban torture. Meanwhile, we maintain our own secret CIA prisons.

Bush is unapologetic. The president believes he has the legal authority to spy on American citizens without a warrant, and he plans to continue to reauthorize the program "for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens." But when the enemy is poorly defined, who determines when the threat is over? In this case, the same government that secretly taps our phones.

Turns out the truth is no stranger than fiction.

We think it's time for Congress to heed the warning of George Orwell.

To that end, we're asking for your help: Mail us or drop off your tattered copies of "1984." When we get 537 of them, we'll send them to every member of the House of Representatives and Senate and to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Feel free to inscribe the book with a note, reminding these fine people that we Americans take the threat to our liberties seriously. Remind Congress that it makes no sense to fight a war for democracy in a foreign land while allowing our democratic principles to erode at home.

Remind President Bush that ours is a country of checks and balances, not unbridled power.

Perhaps our nation's leaders can find some truth in this fiction and more carefully ponder the road we're traveling.

Bring or mail your books to the Oakland Tribune, 401 13th St., Oakland CA 94612. Doors are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

http://www.answers.com/topic/bowling-for-columbine

1980s: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow Muslim terrorists to kill Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan War. CIA gives them $3 billion.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zepezauer_Mark/Iraq_Boomerang.html

Saddam Hussein first made a name for himself in a CIA-backed assassination attempt against General Abdel Karim Qassim, then in charge of Iraq. In 1958, Qassim had overthrown and executed the unpopular British-backed monarch, King Faisal. The CIA was taken by surprise, and U.S. Ieaders watched in dismay as the Qassim regime pulled out of the pro-Western Baghdad pact, founded the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and asserted Iraq's long-standing claim of sovereignty over Kuwait. Soon the U.S. Iet it be known that it wouldn't mind if Gen. Qassim went to an early grave as well. One of those who answered the call was young Saddam, then a minor officer of the Ba'ath Party.

The assassination attempt was not successful, and Saddam went into exile in Cairo, where he kept in contact with the U.S. embassy. He returned in 1963, when the still-popular Qassim was successfully liquidated in a Ba'athist coup. Saddam and his colleagues quickly went to work on a bloody purge of 700 Iraqi leftists, using hit lists helpfully provided by, who else, the CIA. Over the next dozen years, through a series of murders, purges, and shifting alliances, Saddam worked his way up through the ranks. He became head of security, then vice-president, and finally, in 1979, supreme leader of Iraq.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Shaking Hands: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.

i hope u can picture that some men are also concerned about sexism -it doesn't make sense to assume that because someone (an anonymous person) expresses concern about sexism, that they must be female. They might be, and they might not be- that's why i was asking what *your* reason was behind making this assumption. So thanks for answering the question, and i agree it was minor compared to what your original article was about.

"... i agree it was minor compared to what your original article was about."

YOU DoN'T KNOW THE HALF OF IT!!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/010106Y.shtml

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,392783,00.html

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,321949,00.html

US and Iran: Is Washington Planning a Military Strike?
by Spiegel [Europe's leading newsmagazine and its award-winning Web site]

Saturday 31 December 2005 [evidently, THIS is the last word on 2005]

Recent reports in the German media suggest that the United States may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike against facilities that are part of Iran's suspected clandestine nuclear weapons program.

It's hardly news that US President George Bush refuses to rule out possible military action against Iran if Tehran continues to pursue its controversial nuclear ambitions. But in Germany, speculation is mounting that Washington is preparing to carry out air strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear sites perhaps even as soon as early 2006.

[Now, y'all HAVE to check this shit out ...]

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zepezauer_Mark/Iran_Boomerang.html

The history of America's relationship with Iran illustrates the distance between the claim that we stand for democracy and freedom throughout the world and what the U.S. actually does when that principle is stacked up against another interest: controlling the spigot of the world's oil supply. In 1953 the U.S. toppled Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, putting the Shah of Iran firmly in control. By 1979 our support of the Shah had turned most Iranians into bitter enemies of the United States. They chased him out of power and installed a fundamentalist Muslim regime that bedevils us to this day. The reason the U.S. toppled the Mossadegh regime boils down to one word, the same word that governs most of our policy in the region: oil.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Iran_CIAHits.html

In 1951, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, "the most popular politician in the country," was elected Prime Minister of Iran. His major election plank was the nationalization of the only oil company operating in Iran at that time-British Petroleum. The nationalization bill was passed unanimously by the Iranian Parliament.

Though Mossadegh offered BP considerable compensation, his days were numbered from that point on. The British coordinated an international economic embargo of Iran, throwing its economy into chaos. And the CIA, at the request of the British, began spending millions of dollars on ways to get rid of Mossadegh [MILLIONS THAT COULD'VE CREATED ECO-FRIENDLY JOBS HERE AT HOME, PAID FOR COLLEGE AND HEALTH CARE, ETC. ETC. ETC.].

The CIA's plans hinged on the young Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, a timid and inexperienced figurehead. (He was a mere shadow of his father, who had led a pro Nazi regime during World War II) SOUNDS LIKE DUBYA

In 1953, with CIA backing, the Shah ordered Mossadegh out of office and appointed a Nazi collaborator as his successor. Demonstrators filled the streets in support of Mossadegh, and the Shah fled to Rome. Undaunted, the CIA paid for pro-Shah street demonstrators, who seized a radio station and announced that the Shah was on his way back and that Mossadegh had been deposed. In reality, it took a nine-hour tank battle in the streets of Tehran, killing hundreds, to remove Mossadegh.

Compared to the bloodshed to follow, however, that was just a drop in the bucket. In 1976, Amnesty International concluded that the Shah's CIA-trained security force, SAVAK, had the worst human rights record on the planet, and that the number and variety of torture techniques the CIA had taught SAVAK were "beyond belief."

[THIS, BOYS AND GIRLS, IS WHY THE CIA IS THE SINGLE MOST EVIL FORCE THIS PLANET HAS EVER KNOWN. KEEP IN MIND THE SHAH WAS BUT O-N-E OF THE AGENCY'S MANY PUPPETS--AND WHEN YOU ADD UP ALL THEIR DEATH TOLLS, YOU'LL FIND THE CIA HAS INDIRECTLY KILLED MORE PEOPLE THAN THE NAZIS AND THE STALINISTS COMBINED!!]

Inevitably, in 1979, the Iranian people overthrew the bloodstained Shah, with great bitterness and hatred toward the US for installing him and backing him all those years. The radical fundamentalist regime that rules Iran today could never ["NEVER"*] have found popular support without the CIA's 1953 coup and the repression that followed [*IN BACK TO THE FUTURE, THEY CALL IT "THE RIPPLE EFFECT"].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_nuclear_weapons

Declared nuclear weapons states
Warheads (est.)

United States 10,500

Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) 18,000 [Damn Stalinists--no wonder they went broke! They should've given that money to Castro ..!]

United Kingdom 200

France 350

People's Republic of China 400

India 60-90

Pakistan 30-52

North Korea 0-18

http://armageddononline.tripod.com/nuclear.htm

How many nuclear weapons are there?

There are more than 40,000, distributed as follows:

� USA: 12,070
� Russia: 28,240
� UK: 400
� France: 510
� China: 425
� India: 70
� Pakistan: 15

This many warheads could destroy the world many times over.

NOW, I WENT TO TWO DIFFERENT SOURCES AND NOT ONE OF THEM HAD IRAN ON THE LIST, SO IT'S PRETTY FUCKING CLEAR TO ANYONE WHO AIN'T GOT COUSINS FOR PARENTS THAT DUBYA WANTS IRAN'S O-I-L. LOOKS LIKE WE'RE GONNA BE BACK IN THE STREETS PROTESTING IN 2006 BECAUSE MOST AMERICANS ARE TOO IG-NANT TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE WEIGHT CLASSES OF DAVID AND GOLIATH ... IF YOU'RE REALLY THAT CONCERNED, BAN A-L-L NUKES!!!

http://www.cnduk.org/

http://www.youthstudentcnd.org.uk/

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2115

Brevity is the soul of wisdom. What does this suggest for authors of verbose prose? Nothing and everything. Maybe wisdom is the soul of ignorance. Funny how the dialectic flows.

Soapbox preaching to the choir ... verbose soapbox t(pr)eaching to the already aware, already converted is the soul of insanity, the soul of self-destruction. Insane self-destruction is the soul of creation, the soul of the beginning, the soul of that which is.

Point is ... war is bad, greed is bad, capitalism is bad, racism and sexism are horrible. Saving the Earth ... good, thinking about others ... good, growing together ... also good, becoming class conscious ... great, not harming others while not being afraid of confrontation ... wow. We cannot sit back while the people destroy the Earth, force rampant individualism, and enslave us. We must use what we *have* now to make change now. Right?

FUCK 2005! IT'S ALL ABOUT 2006!! Brevity in dialectic wisdom, indeed.