Friday, November 18, 2005

Plan BK - The Solutions: "I believe that children are the future..."




...but for the present, if you can, please, swallow your pride.


(sigh)


Or help get some stuff done to do to make sure they're cool.


(...)


I remember watching the special features on the "Thug Angel" DVD, a documentary about the late great Tupac Shakur. One of his mentors, Shock G from Digital Underground ("The Humpty Dance" and other classics), spoke of deciding what artistic direction they wanted to pursure as a rap group.

Before becoming "the original big-nosed, two-toned, skinny-rapper", Shock was a hardcore militant Save The World artist who regularily attended Black Power meetings in Oakland with his friends in Digital Underground. They were planning on bringing the drama in a hardcore political way; and then Public Enemy hit, and they had to re-evaluate. Then they planned on bringing the drama in a hardcore hippie way; and then De La Soul hit, and they had to re-evaluate.

One thing Shock said struck me in particular.

He noticed that the only time he saw black and white and other people just enjoying being together in peace and harmony was at parties or concerts where they were enjoying music.

Or, to quote the great Bob Marley:

"The one good thing about music;
When it hits, you feel no pain."


Shock felt that the combination of music and sex bringing people together to party would make revolution possible, and in fact, was the best means available. And so it came to pass that we enjoyed Digital Underground bringing the drama with a hardcore booty-shaking philosophy, moving the revolution forward on jiggy-joint at a time.

(Or he just wanted to get laid. One never really knows why these filthy, filty rappers do anything.)


(...)


INTERLUDE: Irony is Dead - Defending Kanye West's song "Goldigger".





I think he's being ironic.

The whole song is ironic, and I like the way he doesn't make a straight-up value judgment on what a "Goldigger" is to each of us.

We all know what is "right" and "wrong" from a knee-jerk reaction perspective, and we can all take "words" or "thoughts" that inflame our anger instinctively and deny any nuances. This sucks, but is part of the f-word (fascism) that's blanketing the world right now and reducing us to simple tribalism, leaving us at the mercy of fear-mongering that gets a mob-reaction.

It's all part of the "flip-flop", "blame-game", "cut-and-run" and the rest of the simple-speak being GOPimp'd through the mass-media that's weakening us intellectually, and we're all starting to speak and think this way. If we fall victim to it we quickly demonize each other for not being exactly what we or our peers are, denying ourselves the right to define our own morality and expect a sympathetic ear to allow us explain it. This leads to more stereotyping based on evidence that we may not even fully understand because we feel we don't need to.

I think Kanye cares.

I think he's his own man, and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his artistic expression... so I'll work a little harder to try and understand it in that context.

If I fail, he's an evil, arrogant, self-loathing, racist bastard hell-bent on destroying the black community.

If I succeed, he's an incredible artist with great beats and a unique evolving flow who makes the complex simple - like many great thinkers do.

Then I can bump his stuff and feel great.

(Which, I confess, I do now. His first album was okay... too many skits, a little over-produced, but with some classic tracks. But "Late Registration" is awesome: the best album of the year.)

So, here I go...


VERSE ONE:

- He's saying he met this gorgeous girl who likes to be spoiled by guys with money. He grumbles about the situation and is clearly frustrated by it; then he reflects on who she's been with and why; and then he says screw it:

What would you do with money?

- Back off, because if you don't have any you don't know, and if you look at nearly everyone else who's paid-in-full, they've all done variations on the same thing by using money to have excessive or indulgent fun.

- Money makes it easier to get a girl or anything else today for that matter, and he's admitting his weakness for this particular mami despite the issues he's struggling with, recognizing that he's basically trading his cash for some (nice) ass.


Cutie the bomb
Met her at a beauty salon
With a baby Louis Vuitton
Under her underarm
She said I can tell you ROC
I can tell by ya charm
Far as girls you got a flock
I can tell by ya charm and ya arm
but I'm lookin for the one
have you seen her
My psychic told me she would have a ass like Serena
Trina, Jennifer Lopez, four kids
An I gotta take all they bad ass to show-biz?
Ok get ya kids but then they got their friends
I Pulled up in the Benz, they all got up In
We all went to Den and then I had to pay
If you fuckin with this girl then you betta be payed
You know why
It take too much to touch her
From what I heard she got a baby by Busta
My best friend say she use to @#%$ wit Usher
I dont care what none of yall say I still love her...



VERSE TWO:

- He's saying be careful, if you're going to mess around with one of these girls keep your wits about you (2Pac warned us similarily), and make sure you don't get taken. That sounds like fair advice, I hope his "Denny's date" above went well.

- He's already called-out Busta and Usher in this track, so I'm guessing he's got a football-friend who had half his NFL paycheques taken by a girl. And, while he probably doesn't drive-off in a Hyundai, he might have, and it's a nice lyric-metaphor for how he downsized (or "de-PIMP'd") his car-collection anyway.

- So, better make sure you get a pre-nup so you're money's tight, and if you knock her up make sure you get that paternity test: a women who'll date you for your money may want to keep it.

(Note: Crap-tastic Caveat... "not all women are like this"... blah-blah-blah... more obvious crap... blah-blah-blah... I mean c'mon, can't we identify real people anymore? Of course not all women are like this, but you can't tell me none are, and you can't tell me that people don't make fair-deals involving love/money/stability this way all the time, trading what they got for what they get.)


18 years, 18 years
She got one of yo kids got you for 18 years
I know somebody payin child support for one of his kids
His baby momma's car and crib is bigger than his
You will see him on TV Any Given Sunday
Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai
She was spose to buy ya shorty TYCO with ya money
She went to the doctor got lypo with ya money
She walkin around lookin like Michael with ya money
Should of got that insured got GEICO for ya moneeey
If you aint no punk holla "We Want Prenup!"
"WE WANT PRENUPT!, Yeaah!"
It's something that you need to have
Cause when she leave yo ass she gone leave with half
18 years, 18 years
And on her 18th birthday he found out it wasn't his?



VERSE THREE:


- Much like other leaders speak on behalf of their communities, I think he's putting himself on the line here with a last lyric that's actually:

"But when HE get on he leave yo a** for a white girl..."

He knew it would be controversial, but also in some cases, sadly true.

(Note: Crap-tastic Caveat... "not all guys are like this"... blah-blah-blah...)

- This reminds me of Chris Rock's issues from a while back with his "black people vs. niggaz!" comments, where he broke down the problems in a way that didn't whitewash them for public consumption. He wasn't endorsing them in any fashion and in fact was critiquing them, but just mentioning them got him in a lot of hot water.

- Kanye's doing the same thing here: he's not endorsing this behavior, but after taking shots at "Goldiggers" for the whole track he's showing how guys can be just as shady once they get that money and start chasin' them damn "Goldiggers" themselves. The sexual-politricks game is complicated and he's breaking its problems down honestly, so to take this as "instructive" is to miss the boat: it's the exact opposite. He's defining a destructive pattern in the black community as he sees it (and as anyone honest will admit does happen), and suggesting that we all keep our eyes open when entering into a relationship.


Now I aint sayin you a gold digger you got needs
You dont want ya dude to smoke but he can't buy weed
You got out to eat and he cant pay yall cant leave
There's dishes in the back, he gotta roll up his sleeves
But why yall washin watch him
He gone make it into a Benz out of that Datson
He got that ambition baby look in his eyes
This week he moppin floorz next week it's the fries
So, stick by his side
I know his dude's ballin but yea thats nice
And they gone keep callin and tryin
But you stay right girl
But when HE get on he leave yo a** for a white girl...



Damn. Now that's a wikkid track.


Peace, (NOW!!!)
BK

_________________

...

Black Krishna Brand

Philosophy - blackkrishna.blogspot.com/

Music - www.soundclick.com/bands/0/blackkrishna.htm

...


SOURCE - http://p076.ezboard.com/fpoliticalpalacefrm1.showMessageRange?topicID=11101.topic&start=21&stop=23


(...)


Anyway, some good news and some bad news.

I first heard about this from a buddy who said it was in the third issue of "Women's Health Magazine", a sister publication to his preferred "Men's Health" fitness-Bible. Sorry I couldn't find anything more recent online, but check the magazing racks or Google in the near future if you care about this subject. He read from a small article which claimed (among other things) that no matter how it's received, it has 110% more pain-relieving properties than the strongest women's pain-reliever. Frankly, it's entirely possible that we'll all be much happier if this information is acted on by more of us. Hey, I'm just sayin'...

Who knows?

Maybe we were made like this for a reason, and hopefully we can work out something that works for all of us.

(Or, each of us.)

(I'm skipping a Crap-tastic Caveat for now, I'm sick of 'em.)

Ahem.

Laura Bush?

Lynn Cheney?

Joyce Rumsfeld?

I'm talking to you.

Please, chill your dudes out.

They're scaring the crap out of us.

Thanks.


Yours truly,

The World


(...)


BBC News

Wednesday, 26 June, 2002, 18:00 GMT 19:00 UK

Semen 'makes women happy'

Women exposed to their partner's semen during sex may find themselves feeling happier than those who use a condom, say scientists.

Scientists in the US believe the mood-altering hormones in semen absorbed through the vagina help to boost women's mood.

Semen contains a range of hormones, including testosterone and oestrogen, both of which have been shown to improve mood.


"We are not advocating that people abstain from using condoms." - Gordon Gallup

However, they warned that their findings should not be used to encourage people to practise unsafe sex.

Gordon Gallup and colleagues at the State University of New York divided 293 female students into groups on the basis of how often their partners wore condoms.

Mood tests

They used standard psychological tests to assess how happy they were and their overall mood.

They found that women whose partners never used condoms were happiest. They were followed by women whose partners sometimes used condoms.

Women whose partners always used or usually used condoms were less happy.

The study, details of which are published in New Scientist magazine, also found that a lack of sexual intercourse made some women depressed.

Women whose partners never or sometimes used condoms became more depressed the longer they went without sex.

However, there was no similar pattern for those women whose partners usually or always used condoms.

The scientists also found that depression and suicide attempts were more common among those women whose partners used condoms regularly.

Further evidence

Mr Gallup told the magazine that an extended study on more than 700 women has backed up these findings.

He added that other factors such as how often the women had sex, the strength of their relationships, their personalities or the use of oral contraceptives did not affect the overall conclusions.

Mr Gallup said the findings may also apply to women who engage in unprotected oral sex and people who engage in anal sex. But he said further research was needed in these areas.

But Mr Gallup, whose study will be published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour, urged couples to continue to practise safe sex.

"I want to make it clear that we are not advocating that people abstain from using condoms," he said.

"Clearly an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease would more than offset any advantageous psychological effects of semen."

SOURCE - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2067223.stm

PERSIAN TRANSLATION - http://i.hoder.com/archives/2002/06/020629_004628.shtml



(...)


Psychology Today

Crying over spilled semen: hormone-rich sperm may elevate women's moods

Relationships - Brief Article

Psychology Today, Sept-Oct, 2002
by Tiffany Kary


The finding that women who do not use condoms during sex are less depressed and less likely to attempt suicide than those who use condoms or those who are not sexually active leads one researcher to speculate that semen contains powerful--and potentially addictive--mood-altering chemicals.

Study author Gordon Gallup, Ph.D., a psychologist at the State University of New York in Albany, also found that women who routinely had intercourse without condoms became increasingly depressed as more time elapsed since their last sexual encounter. There was no such correlation for women whose partners regularly used condoms.

Gallup's survey of 293 college women also found that those who did not use condoms were most likely to initiate sex and to seek out new partners as soon as a relationship ended. "These women are more vulnerable to the rebound effect, which suggests that there is a chemical dependency," says Gallup.


Semen contains hormones including testosterone, estrogen, prolactin, luteinizing hormone and prostaglandins, and some of these are absorbed through the walls of the vagina and are known to elevate mood.

Gallup controlled for variables including method of contraception, frequency of sexual intercourse, as well as the women's perceptions of their relationships. He concedes that women who regularly have sex without condoms might share personality traits that make them less susceptible to depression. But the behavior most often associated with non-condom users is sexual risk-taking, and studies have found no correlation between high-risk sexual behavior and lower rates of depression.

Gallup's study, which he deems "the first serious attempt to investigate the effect of semen chemistry on women," titillated the public and rankled some academics upon publication in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Gallup says he has since replicated the findings with a sample of 700 women and will examine whether "semen withdrawal" places women at an increased risk for depression when they are premenstrual, menopausal or have just given birth, as many women abstain from sex during these times.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Sussex Publishers, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group

SOURCE - http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1175/is_5_35/ai_92136168


(...)


Semen makes women happy, scientists prove

The news we have all been waiting for
by Lester Haines

Male ejaculate contains hormones which make women happy, a survey has proved. Females who had unprotected sex were found to considerably more cheerful than those who insisted on a condom.

Visibly-excited scientists were quick to press the advantages of semen on their female colleagues, with a resultant immediate improvement in staff morale.


But the work doesn't end there: the boffins now intend to further prove that regular doses of the wonder fluid will be effective in fighting the seven signs of ageing.

"There's no doubt that man-juice will show itself to be seventeen per cent ahead of pro-retinol A in eliminating minor wrinkles and improving skin tone," one beauty expert told The Rockall Times. "Quite frankly, there's no point in shelling out a fortune for lotions and unguents when there's a virtually unlimited free supply of age-defying cream just waiting to be harvested."

Male government health advisors enthusiastically agree, and are urging women to "swallow, not spit". A nation-wide TV advertising campaign aimed at married females is expected in the Autumn.

[E] Email an enemy [P] Pub-friendly printable version [I] ‘Science’ index page

SOURCE - http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2002/07/01/semen-benefits.html


(...)


Google Answers

Q: Is semen good for the complexion?

( Answered 5 out of 5 stars, 13 Comments )

Subject: Is semen good for the complexion?

Category: Health > Women's Health

Asked by: alan2000-ga
List Price: $10.00 Posted: 22 May 2005 11:06 PDT
Expires: 21 Jun 2005 11:06 PDT
Question ID: 524355


I've heard somewhere that semen is good for a woman's complexion.

Is this just an old wives tale, or is there some truth behind it?

Answer
Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
Answered By: nenna-ga on 22 May 2005 22:47 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars

Hello alan2000-ga,

It seems that it just may be good for skin and complexion. In addition
to the resource Pink mentioned in the comments, I have came across
another which says that semen contains protien, which tightens the
skin helping with wrinkles. Also, "contains an abundance of natural
lipids and essential amino acids and prostaglandins, natural
substances which aid in skin repair and increase blood flow bringing
in more nutrients to the to the skin."

http://www.tomigion.com/phpshop/sun_tip.html

While I'm sure it's been used to many man's advantage, I think there
may be some truth to it.

Google Search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=semen%20good%20for%20the%20skin%20face&btnG=Google+Search


If this answer requires further explanation, please request
clarification before rating it, and I'll be happy to look into this
further.
Nenna-GA
Google Answers Researcher


alan2000-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars

Very quick answer, and not only can men use the question as a great
excuse, we now have something to back it up with! I honestly thought
it was an old wives tale so well done!!!


Comments Log in to add a comment
Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: pinkfreud-ga on 22 May 2005 11:11 PDT

There's a lot of interesting discussion of the matter here (warning -
highly sexual content):

Oil of Man vs. Oil of Olay
http://satanosphere.com/story/2003/10/22/124231/39

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: hardhat-ga on 22 May 2005 19:22 PDT

YES

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: cynthia-ga on 22 May 2005 20:17 PDT

hardhat...

We know YOU would think it's great for the complexion, with a name
like hardhat, we don't have to wonder... ummmm...never mind... Your
endorsement would be taken more seriously if you had a user name like
Monica, ...LOL!!

Sorry, I just simply could NOT resist!

~~Cynthia

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: bichinho-ga on 22 May 2005 21:21 PDT

Would the skin of women and men respond differently?

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: scubajim-ga on 23 May 2005 08:57 PDT

Of course, that's what I tell them all the time. (NOT, I'm not that desprate.)

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: pinkfreud-ga on 23 May 2005 11:22 PDT

Better put some preservatives in there, girls. Somehow I doubt that
your guy is going to want to kiss you if your face smells like rancid
man-juice.

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: myoarin-ga on 24 May 2005 16:25 PDT

Hmmm! I was trying to combine at least three terribly witty thoughts
into one horribly witty comment, but it was getting out ... ! almost
did it again!

Look at it as a placebo, if you think it works it probably will ;-)

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: baz2121-ga on 08 Jun 2005 05:59 PDT

I KNOW THIS QUESTION HAS ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED AND RATHER RECKLESSLY I MIGHT ADD!!!

Nenna-GA you might notice that on the website you referenced the
section on semen "having an abundance of natural lipids and essential
amino acids and prostaglandins" is under the ANTI-AGING **MYTHS**
section!!

I have a degree in medical science and studying medicine, and I can
tell you now with a 99% certainty that yes while semen has all these
attributes (proteins and lipids and prosta-glandins) none of these are
able to penetrate the skin without an adjuvent to aid in penetration
WHICH SEMEN DOESN'T HAVE!

Sorry don't get your hopes up - sorry guys!.

:)

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: alan2000-ga on 08 Jun 2005 07:01 PDT

He he he...

I showed my girlfriend the answer and she was curious.

So we tried it! I get to come on her face (which she now doesn't mind)
and, believe it or not, her skin HAS actually started to clear up!

Her diet, habits etc haven't changed, only this.

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: nenna-ga on 08 Jun 2005 09:13 PDT

baz2121-ga,

Thanks for your comment, however, it states that a reader's feedback
challenged the myth, so they said to use your best judgement. While it
may work for some, it may not for others. So, hey, as you can see from
the comment from Alan2000-ga, maybe it does work!

Nenna-GA


Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: baz2121-ga on 14 Jun 2005 01:34 PDT

Hey Nenna-GA,

I guess so! I just can't explain it scientifically! Doens't make sense
chemically, but if it works it works! Could be a psychosomatic thing
though LOL.

:)

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: myoarin-ga on 14 Jun 2005 03:32 PDT

Maybe some skin problems are psychosomatic, caused by contemplation of the cure
(however contemplated ...).

Subject: Re: Is semen good for the complexion?
From: annie666-ga on 28 Aug 2005 23:42 PDT

Yes it works well! My face went dry and crispy, leaving the remains of
protein and minerals, the only thing that put me off was the smell.
You have to be careful what direction you shoot it though. I had a
clumpy eye for a while. It makes you wonder what benefits it has for
your eyes aswell. When I smell bleach it reminds me of my partner so I
have now turned to savlon disinfectant.

My partner has seen the benefits aswell but tends to make his beard
look mattered. His work mates tend to steer clear of him.

Important Disclaimer: Answers and comments provided on Google Answers are general information, and are not intended to substitute for informed professional medical, psychiatric, psychological, tax, legal, investment, accounting, or other professional advice. Google does not endorse, and expressly disclaims liability for any product, manufacturer, distributor, service or service provider mentioned or any opinion expressed in answers or comments. Please read carefully the Google Answers Terms of Service.

SOURCE - http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=524355


(...)


BONUS: It may be a good way to kill time too...



An apolitical site for passionate appreciation of VP Dick Cheney.

Operating from an undisclosed location.

http://dickcheneyfanclub.com/dickcheneyphotos.html



Infowars.com

Cheney warns of 'decades of war'

BBC News | November 17, 2005
By Jonathan Beale

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said that the US must be prepared to fight the war on terror for decades.


Addressing US military personnel, he said that the only way terrorists would win was if the US lost its nerve and abandoned Iraq and the Middle East.

Mr Cheney is the latest senior member of the US administration trying to bolster support for the war in Iraq.

On Thursday, President George W Bush will once again address the issue in a major speech in Washington.

"Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort, and it will be resisted by those whose only hope for power is through the spread of violence."

Dick Cheney
US Vice-President


The situation in Iraq remains the Bush administration's biggest challenge and all its senior figures have been brought out to defend the policy as public support for the war continues to slide.

Mr Cheney said that the threat of terrorism would be removed as people in Iraq and the wider Middle East took control of their own lives.

But he added, in a direct appeal to the American people, that like other great duties in history, it would require decades of patient effort.

'Civil war'

The vice president insisted that progress was being made in training up Iraq's own security forces, though he did not indicate how long US forces would remain.

President Bush has promised that America will stay on the offensive to prevent insurgents from disrupting next week's referendum on Iraq's new constitution.

But as the number of US military personnel killed rises towards 2,000, the grumblings are getting louder.

In a letter to President Bush, Democrat senators have warned that continuing on the same path in Iraq could lead to a full-blown civil war.

REAL SOURCE - http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/cheney_warns_decades_of_war.htm


(...)


BONUS: And it's cheap...



U.S. President George W. Bush, left, talks to his Chilean counterpart Ricardo Lagos during a meeting with APEC business leaders in Busan, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 18, 2005. (AP Photo/Yonhapa)



Yahoo! News

Tax-Cut Measure Faces Bush Veto Threat

By MARY DALRYMPLE, AP Tax Writer 1 hour, 15 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A $60 billion bill the Senate passed to continue expiring tax cuts and shelter 14 million families from higher taxes faces a White House veto threat because it also includes a hefty tax increase for oil companies.

The legislation passed by senators early Friday would spare millions of families from paying increased taxes through the alternative minimum tax. Much of the bill, passed 64-33, preserves tax cuts approved in previous years that are set to expire unless lawmakers keep them alive.


But unlike a bill assembled by the House tax writing committee, it does not preserve lower tax rates for capital gains and dividends scheduled to disappear at the end of 2008. Congress lowered the maximum tax rate on that investment income to 15 percent in 2003, and many Republicans want to act this year to keep those rates in place in 2009 and 2010.

It was doubtful whether the House would vote on its bill before leaving for the Thanksgiving holiday. "It's a possibility that we'll move it if we're ready to move it," Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said early Friday. "We'll have to see where the votes are."

Most Democrats oppose the tax cuts for investment income. Senate leaders dropped an extension from their bill because a key moderate Republican balked at its inclusion.

GOP leaders vow it will reappear before the final tax bill reaches President Bush's desk.

The White House wants to see another change in the Senate bill: elimination of a $4.3 billion tax increase on oil companies.

"This provision would result in a retroactive tax increase by changing a long-accepted accounting practice," the White House said in a statement warning that senior advisers would recommend that President Bush veto the legislation if it's not removed.

The House omitted a major provision in the Senate bill, a change preventing a tax hit on millions of families caused by the alternative minimum tax. Originally intended as a levy to prevent the wealthy from avoiding taxation, the alternative minimum tax must be tweaked every year to keep it from applying to additional millions more families.

The House and Senate bills reduce taxes roughly $60 billion over five years. Both preserve tax breaks scheduled to expire, including a business research and development credit, a low-income saver's credit, investment incentives for small businesses and a deduction for state and local sales taxes.

Both are versions of a $70 billion tax cut outlined in a budget drafted earlier this year.

The Senate's bill would offer $7 billion in assistance to businesses and individuals hit by Hurricane Katrina and other storms, filling in details of President Bush's proposed Gulf Opportunity Zone. Taxpayers also would get new incentives to make charitable contributions at the same time that tax-writers put new curbs on charitable deductions deemed excessive.

A last minute change to the Senate tax bill would require corporate executives to count as income the value of personal use of corporate aircraft.

___

The bill is S. 2020

Congressional information on the Net: http://thomas.loc.gov/

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* Discuss
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RECOMMEND THIS STORY

SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051118/ap_on_go_co/congress_taxes


(...)


BONUS: And it's better than paying attention to the lies quickly and half-heartedly farted out by the mainstream media...


"You say,
Fallujah..."

"I say,
Zarqawi..."


"You say,
Fallujah..."

"I say,
Zarqawi..."


"You say,
Fallujah..."

"I say,
Zarqawi..."


"Let's call the whole thing off..."


- Black Krishna, "Bomb Dropping Shenanigans"



Jordanians hold Jordanian flags and pictures of King Abdullah II as the cling to an arch during an anti terrorism rally in downtown Amman, Jordan, Friday, Nov. 18, 2005. Tens of thousands of flag-waving Jordanians thronged downtown Amman on Friday in the 'March of the Nation,' a noisy, emphatic demonstration against the deadly terror attacks that struck the kingdom last week.(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)



Yahoo! News

Search: Advanced AP

Al-Zarqawi Threatens to Kill Jordan's King

2 minutes ago


AMMAN, Jordan - An audiotape purportedly from the head of al-Qaida in Iraq Friday threatened to kill Jordan's King Abdullah II and bomb more hotels and tourist sites.

The speaker on the tape, identified as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also said the group's suicide bombers did not intend to bomb a Jordanian wedding party at an Amman hotel last week, killing about 30 people.

Al-Zarqawi said the bomber who detonated his explosives in the Radisson SAS hotel on Nov. 9 was targeting a hall where he claimed Israeli and American intelligence officials were meeting.

That bomb caused part of the roof to fall in the wedding hall.

Al-Zarqawi accused the Jordanian government of hiding casualties among Israeli and American intelligence agents, and he insisted al-Qaida in Iraq was not targeting fellow Muslims.

"We want to assure you that ... you are more beloved to us than ourselves," al-Zarqawi said, addressing Jordanians.

* Email Story
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* Printable View

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/jordan_bombings;_ylt=AljTBADBE2U1j2dl2BEtJcOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--


(...)


And who's on the front-end of this again?

(Hint: we're not actually in the picture, and we're not enjoying it anyway.)



Monday, November 14, 2005

A Patriot Acts: Alex Jones





Good for him. I love dude.

Because really, I can't figure out his angle.

I don't know why he'd do it the way he does if he's lying.

I don't get it.

So, I buy it.

Sold.



(...)


Besides, he makes a lot of sense.

The world sucks, and The Bush Crime Family has proven time and time again to be evil representatives of evil friends. The world sucks proves this, as for the last 25 years Bush's have destabilized and frightened the world, for 12 years under Bush Sr. as VP and President from 1980 to 1992, and Bush Jr. from the year 2000 to Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, Iran, Avian Flu, Syria, North Carolina Harbor, and beyond...

That's 17 years of "Bushit" (Dope Poet Society), and that's about enough.


(...)


You go Alex Jones, tell us what's up.







Infowars.com

Prominent Physics Professor Refutes “Official” 9/11 Story

Planes causing collapse bad science, Thermite charges suspect

Infowars | November 11, 2005


RELATED:

Prof. Jones' Article Questioning the 'Official Story' of 9/11

Steven E. Jones Bio & CV

The controlled demolition of the twin towers and building 7

Prisonplanet WTC 7 Archive

Case For WTC Tower Demolition Sealed By Griffin


Steven E. Jones, Professor of Physics at Brigham Young University reported to the Deseret Morning News and later revealed on the Alex Jones Radio Show that through imperical research he has come to discover that the World Trade Center towers could not have possibly collapsed due to the impact of the jets that hit the buildings on September 11th. While this news may not seem particularly shocking to many in the 9-11 Truth Movement, Jones’ testimony is representative of the growing list of many prominent Americans that have gone public in recent time exposing the systematic cover-up of 9-11.

According to Professor Jones, all of the laws of science and mathematics point directly to the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center and not to fire bringing down the three towers.


Through his intensive and methodical research, Jones has come to realize that the speed and symmetry of the collapse of the WTC buildings prove that the so-called official story must be false. He points to venting or squibs (smoke puffs) present around the collapsing structures as being direct indicators of the use of pre-positioned explosives. He also noted that the way that NASA infrared satellites and aircraft were able to take photos of the burning wreckage and molten steel for weeks was indicative of a massive use of thermite in the structure.

For Jones, the real problem with the official line on 9/11 is that it relies on wrong-headed science that starts with a conclusion and seeks out evidence that supports that theory to the exclusion of all others in order to cover up what really happened on September 11th. FEMA, the 9/11 Commission, and even the National Institute of Standards and Technology had all started with the supposition that what caused the WTC collapses was the impact of the jets and their exploding fuel and ignored any and all evidence to the contrary even though their findings were “highly unlikely.”


The Deseret Morning News article reports Jones’ major points of concern:

These observations were not analyzed by FEMA, NIST nor the 9/11 Commission, he says.

• With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically be a piling up of shattering concrete. But most of the material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder while the buildings were falling, he says. "How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives? Remarkable, amazing — and demanding scrutiny since the U.S. government-funded reports failed to analyze this phenomenon."

• Steel supports were "partly evaporated," but it would require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel — and neither office materials nor diesel fuel can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in any given location, he says.

• Molten metal found in the debris of the World Trade Center may have been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly used explosive such as thermite, he says. Buildings not felled by explosives "have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal," Jones says.

• Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these explosions occurred far below the region where the planes struck, he says.


No third party was ever called on to examine ground zero and Jones lamented the government’s decision to so quickly ban any investigation of the crime scene and to haul all of the wreckage away to China before it could be examined by any third party investigators. Many like Jones are now coming forward with skepticism this such as fire engineering which went public that the WTC was a crime scene and shouldn’t have been hauled away and that fire could not possibly make towers collapse.

He also described the findings of Underwriter’s Lab and Kevin Ryan who used complex models in the testing of the collapse and revealed that it was impossible for the jet-fuel and fire alone to cause any of the three buildings to collapse

Now Jones, who is head of research in fusion and solar energy at BYU, is calling for an independent, scientific investigation that would focus on the physics of the WTC collapse and not be guided by political constraints and efforts to limit the findings to the “official story” that the buildings collapsed because a hijacked plane was crashed into them.

REAL SOURCE - http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/prof_jones_refutes_official_911_story.htm








BONUS: Enough is enough, if it worked once they'll do it again, and if they do it again, they'll do it again, and then... we're screwed.



Infowars.com

GOP memo touts new terror attack as way to reverse party's decline

Capitol Hill Blue | November 10, 2005
By DOUG THOMPSON


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

The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could “validate” the President’s war on terror and allow Bush to “unite the country” in a “time of national shock and sorrow.”

The memo says such a reversal in the President's fortunes could keep the party from losing control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.


GOP insiders who have seen the memo admit it’s a risky strategy and point out that such scenarios are “blue sky thinking” that often occurs in political planning sessions.

“The President’s popularity was at an all-time high following the 9/11 attacks,” admits one aide. “Americans band together at a time of crisis.”


Other Republicans, however, worry that such a scenario carries high risk, pointing out that an attack might suggest the President has not done enough to protect the country.

“We also have to face the fact that many Americans no longer trust the President,” says a longtime GOP strategist. “That makes it harder for him to become a rallying point.”

The memo outlines other scenarios, including:

--Capture of Osama bin Laden (or proof that he is dead);

--A drastic turnaround in the economy;

--A "successful resolution" of the Iraq war.

GOP memos no longer talk of “victory” in Iraq but use the term “successful resolution.”

“A successful resolution would be us getting out intact and civil war not breaking out until after the midterm elections,” says one insider.

The memo circulates as Tuesday’s disastrous election defeats have left an already dysfunctional White House in chaos, West Wing insiders say, with shouting matches commonplace and the blame game escalating into open warfare.

“This place is like a high-school football locker room after the team lost the big game,” grumbles one Bush administration aide. “Everybody’s pissed and pointing the finger at blame at everybody else.”


Republican gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey deepened rifts between the Bush administration and Republicans who find the President radioactive. Arguments over whether or not the President should make a last-minute appearance in Virginia to try and help the sagging campaign fortunes of GOP candidate Jerry Kilgore raged until the minute Bush arrived at the rally in Richmond Monday night.

“Cooler heads tried to prevail,” one aide says. “Most knew an appearance by the President would hurt Kilgore rather than help him but (Karl) Rove rammed it through, convincing Bush that he had enough popularity left to make a difference.”

Bush didn’t have any popularity left. Overnight tracking polls showed Kilgore dropped three percentage points after the President’s appearance and Democrat Tim Kaine won on Tuesday.

Conservative Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum told radio talk show host Don Imus Wednesday that he does not want the President's help and will stay away from a Bush rally in his state on Friday.

The losses in Virginia and New Jersey, coupled with a resounding defeat of ballot initiatives backed by GOP governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California have set off alarm klaxons throughout the demoralized Republican party. Pollsters privately tell GOP leaders that unless they stop the slide they could easily lose control of the House in the 2006 midterm elections and may lose the Senate as well.

“In 30 years of sampling public opinion, I’ve never seen such a freefall in public support,” admits one GOP pollster.

Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin says the usual tricks tried by Republicans no longer work.

"None of their old tricks worked," he says.


Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) admits the GOP is a party mired in its rural base in a country that's becoming less and less rural.

"You play to your rural base, you pay a price," he says. "Our issues blew up in our face."

As Republican political strategists scramble to find a message – any message – that will ring true with voters, GOP leaders in Congress admit privately that control of their party by right-wing extremists makes their recovery all but impossible.

“We’ve made our bed with these people,” admits an aide to House Speaker Denny Hastert. “Now it’s the morning after and the hangover hurts like hell.”


REAL SOURCE - http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/gop_memo_touts_terror_attack_as_party_decline_reverse.htm







Infowars.com

Senate Approves Limiting Rights of US Detainees

New York Times | November 11, 2005

By Eric Schmitt


Washington - The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured "enemy combatants" at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts.

The vote, 49 to 42, on an amendment to a military budget bill by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, comes at a time of intense debate over the government's treatment of prisoners in American custody worldwide, and just days after the Senate passed a measure by Senator John McCain banning abusive treatment of them.

If approved in its current form by both the Senate and the House, which has not yet considered the measure but where passage is considered likely, the law would nullify a June 2004 Supreme Court opinion that detainees at Guantánamo Bay had a right to challenge their detentions in court.

Nearly 200 of roughly 500 detainees there have already filed habeas corpus motions, which are making their way up through the federal court system. As written, the amendment would void any suits pending at the time the law was passed.

The vote also came in the same week that the Supreme Court announced that it would consider the constitutionality of war crimes trials before President Bush's military commissions for certain detainees at Guantánamo Bay, a case that legal experts said might never be decided by the court if the Graham amendment became law.

Five Democrats joined 44 Republicans in backing the amendment, but the vote on Thursday may only be a temporary triumph for Mr. Graham. Senate Democrats led by Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico said they would seek another vote, as early as Monday, to gut the part of Mr. Graham's measure that bans Guantánamo prisoners from challenging their incarceration by petitioning in civilian court for a writ of habeas corpus.

So it is possible that some lawmakers could have it both ways, backing other provisions in Mr. Graham's measure that try to make the Guantánamo tribunal process more accountable to the Senate, but opposing the more exceptional element of the legislation that limits prerogatives of the judiciary. Nine senators were absent for Thursday's vote.

Mr. Graham said the measure was necessary to eliminate a blizzard of legal claims from prisoners that was tying up Department of Justice resources, and slowing the ability of federal interrogators to glean information from detainees that have been plucked off the battlefields of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"It is not fair to our troops fighting in the war on terror to be sued in every court in the land by our enemies based on every possible complaint," Mr. Graham said. "We have done nothing today but return to the basics of the law of armed conflict where we are dealing with enemy combatants, not common criminals."

Opponents of the measure denounced the Senate vote as a grave step backward in the nation's treatment of detainees in the global war on terror. "This is not a time to back away from the principles that this country was founded on," Mr. Bingaman said during floor debate.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of four Republicans to vote against the measure, said the Senate was unduly rushing into a major legal shift without enough debate. "I believe the habeas corpus provision needs to be maintained," Mr. Specter said.

A three-judge panel trying to resolve the extent of Guantánamo prisoners' rights to challenge detentions sharply questioned an administration lawyer in September when he argued that detainees had no right to be heard in federal appeals courts.

The panel of the District of Columbia Circuit is trying to apply a 2004 Supreme Court ruling to two subsequent, conflicting decisions by lower courts, one appealed by the prisoners and the other by the administration.

In its June 28, 2004, decision in Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the Guantánamo base was not outside the jurisdiction of American law as administration lawyers had argued and that the habeas corpus statute allowing prisoners to challenge their detentions was applicable.

Under Mr. Graham's measure, Guantánamo prisoners would be able to challenge only the narrow question of whether the government followed procedures established by the defense secretary at the time the military determined their status as enemy combatants, which is subject to an annual review. The District of Columbia Circuit would retain the right to rule on that, but not on other aspects of a prisoner's case.

Detainees would not be able to challenge the underlying rationale for their detention. "If it stands, it means detainees at Guantánamo Bay would have no access to any federal court for anything other than very simple procedural complaints dealing with annual status review," said Christopher E. Anders, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Otherwise, the federal courts' door is shut."

If the measure is enacted, civil liberties groups said it would appear to render moot the Supreme Court's decision on Monday to decide the validity of the military commissions that Mr. Bush wants to try detainees charged with terrorist offenses to trial. But some legal experts said the court might be able to move ahead if determined to do so.

Under the Graham amendment, the measure would apply to any application or action pending "on or after the date of enactment of this act."

Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First, said: "The Senate acted unwisely, and unnecessarily, in stripping courts of jurisdiction over Guantánamo detainees. Particularly now, as the string of reports of abuse over the past several years have underscored how important it is to have effective checks on the exercise of executive authority, depriving an entire branch of government of its ability to exercise meaningful oversight is a decidedly wrong course to take."

The Senate vote on Thursday came just days after senators voted, for the second time in recent weeks, to back a measure by Mr. McCain to prohibit the use of cruel and degrading treatment against detainees in American custody.

Vice President Dick Cheney has appealed to Mr. McCain and to Senate Republicans to grant the C.I.A. an exemption to allow it extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might know about future attacks. Mr. McCain said Thursday that negotiations with the White House on compromise language were stalemated.

In addition to Mr. Specter, Republicans voting against the bill were Senators John E. Sununu of New Hampshire, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. The five Democrats voting for the bill were Senators Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

REAL SOURCE - http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/senate_approves_limit_rights_detainees.htm








Infowars.com

C.I.A. Asks for Criminal Inquiry Over Secret-Prison Article

New York Times | November 8, 2005

By DAVID JOHNSTON and CARL HULSE


WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - The Central Intelligence Agency has asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, government officials said on Tuesday.

The C.I.A.'s request, known as a crimes report or criminal referral, means that the Justice Department will undertake a preliminary review to determine if circumstances justify a criminal inquiry into whether any government official unlawfully provided information to the newspaper. The possibility of this new investigation follows by less than two weeks the perjury and obstruction indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, in a leak case involving other news reporting about a national security issue.

Republican leaders in Congress also jumped into the matter over The Post's article, asking the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate on Tuesday to investigate whether classified material had been disclosed. At the same time, the Senate rejected a Democratic call for an independent commission that would conduct an investigation into claims of abuses of detainees in American custody.

Eric C. Grant, a spokesman for the newspaper, said it would have no comment on the new developments concerning its article. A spokesman for the C.I.A. said a crimes report had indeed been sent to the Justice Department but would not otherwise comment.

The front-page article, published last Wednesday, said the agency had set up secret detention centers in as many as eight countries in the last four years.

The existence of secret detention centers, and the identity of a few of the countries in which they were located, like Thailand and Afghanistan, had been previously disclosed. But the article, describing the prison system as a "hidden global internment network," told of previously undisclosed detention facilities at highly classified "black sites" in "several democracies in Eastern Europe."

The Post, citing a "request of senior U.S. officials," did not identify the Eastern European countries. But the mention of Eastern Europe stirred anxiety at the intelligence agency, particularly after Human Rights Watch, a group that has opposed American detention policies, issued a statement on Monday saying its research had tracked C.I.A. aircraft in 2003 and 2004 making flights from Afghanistan to remote airfields in Poland and Romania. The group said aircraft used in the flights had been previously flown by the C.I.A. for prisoner transport.

More broadly, former intelligence officials said the Post article had prompted concerns at the C.I.A. over threats to the agency's ability to maintain secret relationships with other intelligence services on detainee matters.

In the wake of the disclosure, the top Republican Congressional leaders - Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist - sent the chairmen of the Intelligence Committees a request Tuesday for a joint investigation into the origin of the article.

"If accurate," the letter said, "such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks."

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he was willing to undertake the inquiry but acknowledged that leak investigations were notoriously difficult.

Another Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, indicated skepticism at such an inquiry. Mr. Lott noted that accounts of a private discussion on detainee policy between Mr. Cheney and Senate Republicans last week had also leaked to the press.

"When you get into investigations around here, where does it end?" he said. "Who is going to investigate who?"

Democrats, meanwhile, said that if Republicans wanted to pursue an inquiry, it should go beyond any leak related to secret detention facilities and cover a range of other issues that Democrats say are ripe for investigation.

"That includes the possible manipulation of prewar intelligence on Iraq, and the disclosure for political purposes of classified information involving the identity of the C.I.A. officer," said the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California.

But the Senate voted, 55 to 43, to reject an outside commission to examine detainee abuse. The measure, introduced by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan as an amendment to a broader military policy bill, was opposed by 54 Republicans and 1 Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

In debate on the amendment Monday, Mr. Levin said 12 military investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba had failed to address several important matters, including the role of contractors and Special Operations forces in interrogations.

"The investigations so far have swept critical issues under the rug," Mr. Levin said.

Republicans said that any problems had been exhaustively examined and that the armed forces had already changed many of their detention and interrogation procedures.

"In my judgment, the further investigation is simply unnecessary," said Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.

REAL SOURCE - http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/cia_secret_prisons_cia_asks_for_ciminal_inquiry.htm







BONUS: Freshly-Skimmed News...








Yahoo! News

9/11 Panel Gives White House Mixed Review

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer 10 minutes ago


WASHINGTON - Reviewing action on recommendations it made last year, the Sept. 11 commission on Monday criticized the Bush administration for not adopting standards for treatment of captured terror suspects.

The administration was given a mixed review in a report on the commission's key recommendations that were designed to help the United States better prepare for and respond to a terror attack.

There was high praise for U.S. attempts to integrate the Arab and Muslim world into the global trading system and in fighting terrorism financing.

But former commission chairman Thomas Kean, former vice chairman Lee Hamilton and the eight other members who formed the 9-11 Public Disclosure Project found much to criticize.

Their review gave the administration the grade "unfulfilled" on the commission's recommendation that the United States develop a common approach with friendly nations on the treatment of captured terror suspects. The commission also had suggested the Geneva Conventions on the law of armed conflict should be applied to military prisons and secret detention centers.

What the Bush administration still needs to do, the review said, is to adopt standards for terror suspects that are in accord with international law.

"These standards should cover the treatment of detainees held by all elements of the U.S. government," the former commission members said.

And, they said, "the United States should work with its allies to develop mutually acceptable standards for terrorist detention."

President Bush last week defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorist suspects lawful. "We do not torture," Bush declared.

Congress, meanwhile, is engaged in a high-profile debate over the handling of detainees. The Senate twice has signed off on legislation to ban the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody.

The provision is included in two defense bills. The House versions of the bills do not include the language, which the White House opposes.

At Monday's presentation, commission member Richard Ben-Veniste said Iraq is on track to succeed Afghanistan as a terrorist training ground. "How much this trend has been fueled by the highly publicized reports of brutalization, humiliation and desecration cannot be measured accurately," he said.

"But the flames of extremism undoubtedly burn more brightly when we are the ones who deliver the gasoline," Ben-Veniste said.

On another front, the former commission members found insufficient progress on thwarting attempts by the al-Qaida network to acquire or make weapons of mass destruction.

On the positive side, the review cited an agreement reached last February by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to secure nuclear warheads and material.

Russia, for instance, has made several dozen additional nuclear warhead storage sites available for inspection and improvement, the review said.

But more than 100 research facilities worldwide — in some 40 countries — contain enough highly enriched uranium to fashion a nuclear device, and this is troubling, the report said.

"Preventing terrorists from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction must be elevated above all other problems of national security," the former commission members said. "It represents the greatest threat to the American people" and President Bush should publicly make this goal his top priority, the review said.

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051114/ap_on_go_ot/commission_detainees;_ylt=Avx7cnaKJfGBDINL_rguk20Gw_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OXIzMDMzBHNlYwM3MDM-







BONUS: Freshly-Charred Skinspiration... or, "Aired-Out Jordan".








Yahoo! News

Bush Takes Fresh Shot at Iraq War Critics

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent 20 minutes ago


ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE - President Bush, heading to Asia with hopes of improving his image on the world stage, hurled a parting shot at Iraq war critics on Monday, accusing some Democrats of "sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy."

"That is irresponsible," Bush said in prepared remarks he planned to deliver to U.S. forces during a refueling stop in Alaska. Excerpts from the remarks were released by the White House as Bush flew to Elemendorf Air Force Base on the initial leg of an eight-day journey to Japan, South Korea, China and Mongolia.

"Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war, but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people," Bush said in his prepared remarks.

"Only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world — and that person was Saddam Hussein," Bush added.

The president sought to defend himself against Democrats' criticism that he manipulated intelligence and misled the American people about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction as he sought grounds to go to war against Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Meanwhile, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters aboard the presidential aircraft that two agenda items on Bush's Asia trip were the huge Chinese trade surplus with the United States and a U.S.-Japanese dispute over U.S. beef imports.

Neither dispute was expected to be resolved on the president's trip, Hadley said.

"I don't think you're going to see headline-breakers" from the president's trip, Hadley said.

Iraq and other problems — from the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina to the indictment of a senior White House official in the CIA leak investigation — have taken a heavy toll on the president's standing. Nearing the end of his fifth year in office, Bush has the lowest approval rating of his presidency and a majority of Americans say Bush is not honest and they disapprove of his handling of foreign policy and the war on terrorism.

In his prepared Alaska remarks, Bush noted that some elected Democrats in Congress "have opposed this war all along.

"I disagree with them, but I respect their willingness to take a consistent stand," he said. "Yet some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past. They are playing politics with this issue and sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy."

In the Senate, 29 Democrats voted with 48 Republicans for the war authorization measure in late 2002, including 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and his running mate, John Edwards of North Carolina. Both have recently been harshly critical of Bush's conduct of the war and its aftermath.

On Capitol Hill, top Democrats stood their ground in claiming Bush misled Congress and the country. "The war in Iraq was and remains one of the great acts of misleading and deception in American history," Kerry told a news conference.

Democrats offered a proposal urging the president to outline an estimate for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Senate was expected to vote on it on Tuesday, as well as on a rival GOP Iraq policy proposal that does not include a withdrawal provision.

Bush is expected to get a warmer welcome in Asia than he did earlier this month in Argentina at the Summit of the Americas, where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez led a protest against U.S. policies and Bush failed to gain support from the 34 nations attending for a hemisphere-wide free trade zone.

Japan, the first stop on Bush's trip, and Mongolia, the last, are likely to give him the most enthusiastic response, while China and South Korea probably will be cooler but respectful.

In South Korea, Bush also will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference summit in Busan, where 21 member states are expected to agree to support global free-trade talks. The summit also is expected to agree to put early warning and information-sharing systems in place in case of bird flu outbreaks.

"It is good for the president to show up in Asia and say, `We care about Asia,' because that is in doubt in the region," said Ed Lincoln, senior fellow in Asia and economic studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

At his first stop, in Kyoto, Japan, the president will deliver what aides bill as the speech of the trip on the power of democracy — not only to better individual lives but contribute to the long-term prosperity of nations.

The remarks — aimed at China — will hold up such nations as Japan, Australia and South Korea as models because of their strong democratic traditions and willingness to help establish democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush also is expected to press China to reduce its trade surplus, revalue its currency and curb the piracy of American movies, software and other copyright material.

China's leadership in six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions also will be a key topic when Bush meets Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing.

Bush will also be working the issue when he sits down with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Kyoto and spends a day with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun ahead of the APEC meetings. Japan and South Korea are part of the six-way talks.

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051114/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_asia











The Asian-Gang Formula: Just Add Racist Ass-Whuppin's, Media Coverage, Simmer To A Boil, and Stir Up The Pot...





This sucks.

You can see it happening right here and right now, just some more dumbass tribalism tearing communities apart and turning good people into bad. It's a war of attrition really. They are not robots and so won't all turn bad, and many will continue to prosper and succeed. But, we'll get enough to make them a "problem" for us and more importantly for themselves to suffer with, and that's be a small victory for simple Crack Containment Continuity - without using all that messy crack.

Brilliant.

Then, the abused learn the tools of their abusers and go on to use them vengefully, as picked-on kids resort to picking on others or picking up guns.

Ah, it's so dramatic.

The grand games of chess played with people...


(...)


A War in the Planning for Four Years

HOW STUPID DO THEY THINK WE ARE?


Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CFR Put War Plans In a 1997 Book - It Is "A Blueprint for World Dictatorship," Says a Former German Defense and NATO Official Who Warned of Global Domination in 1984, in an Exclusive Interview With FTW

Summary

"THE GRAND CHESSBOARD - American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives,"
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997.


These are the very first words in the book: "Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power."- p. xiii. Eurasia is all of the territory east of Germany and Poland, stretching all the way through Russia and China to the Pacific Ocean. It includes the Middle East and most of the Indian subcontinent. The key to controlling Eurasia, says Brzezinski, is controlling the Central Asian Republics. And the key to controlling the Central Asian republics is Uzbekistan. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Uzbekistan was forcefully mentioned by President George W. Bush in his address to a joint session of Congress, just days after the attacks of September 11, as the very first place that the U.S. military would be deployed.

As FTW has documented in previous stories, major deployments of U.S. and British forces had taken place before the attacks. And the U.S. Army and the CIA had been active in Uzbekistan for several years. There is now evidence that what the world is witnessing is a cold and calculated war plan - at least four years in the making - and that, from reading Brzezinski's own words about Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center attacks were just the trigger needed to set the final conquest in motion.

SOURCE - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/zbig.html



(...)


I remember back in the heady days of Scarlemworld Baby, we grew up in arguably the most multicultural suburb in the most multicultural city in the entire freakin' world.

We didn't just deal with race, we were the entirety of it.

And this lead to some interesting situations, more good than bad.

We dealt with race frankly and honestly without being solemn about it.

It was good. Some bad. But overall good.

And so was the food.


(As an aside, you know, Indians are freakin' everywhere these days. Not the "Native" Indians, I mean, as Chris Rock said: "You know a people have it bad when you just never see them. I mean, when was the last time you saw an American Indian family just chillin' out at Red Lobster?" Nah, sorry guys, we're all on the come-up though, no worries, keep hustlin'. Still, we can see Brownsville Represents these days, and we're like Italians were in the 70's - especially our girls coming into style. We're kind of sneaky like that, and as my buddy The Other C-Murda said a while back, brown people are "The Stealth Race". We fly under the radar, don't make too much of a fuss, and somehow we end up being all your cabbies, doctors, scientists, convenience store owners... and of course, once you've had butter chicken - and yes, we do put some Ayurvedic-crack in it that makes you crave it fortnightly (and if you defy us feel it) as part of the curry. But, that's besides the point, we're playing "the game" well and getting the right publicity from "the system", the very short Intro to rapper The Game's "The Documentary" which Dr. Dre said you absolutely had to listen to is a cool little snippet of simplicity that breakes it down nice. I mean, Russell Peters last stand-up comedy special vaulted him right up there for me and many others as he rounds into form as a possible new Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle. Yep. It was that good. So we flossin' a bit, that's cool, true-playaz change the game so we see where that go. But, I've got faith in our history. In fact, we've done some crazy stuff as the only country in the world to have never had slavery (though we still have servants), never invaded another country in the last 10,000 years, invented language in the form of Sanksrit, and figured out many other math, science, health and philosophical ideas that still work today. See? Now that's good P.R. I really think we start colonizing in the same way, as in the first brown person to get to a country opens up a restaurant. That's it. The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and while women should, unfortunately, men run the world. So, we feed 'em some good grub and it gets us the good pub. I mean c'mon, that's how it started in the first place. White guys said: "Oye, where's that place with the great gold, great weather, hot curry, and hot girls? Crikey, it's worth the trip just to make our steak'n'kidney pudding taste better!" And we were like: "Hey, we LIVE here!" You never heard two brown guys going: "We must get to Britain! C'mon! I double-dawg-dare a desi! It's the NEW WORLD! Who's with me?" Nah, we knew you were coming, you weren't the first and you weren't the worst, so we just chilled-out. Of course, then we got our butts-kicked for a while. In fact, by 1901 the Brits had taken what would be worth in today's dollars $1 trillion. So yeah, they're still winning, but we gave 'em a huge headstart. Sorry about that, that's why we got the nukes. You've got a dog? Same thing. Actually, we've got 1.5 mm of them, 3rd largest standing army in the world. They don't do much, but we like 'em standing anyway, keeps 'em ready in case they have to, and they just chill-out the rest of the time. In fact, this new extree-hard-working crop is an interesting anomaly. Driven by duty we'll do almost anything, but really, it's the money-man, the money-man, that'll get us doing it for years. Fair enough, get that money-man, that money-man, we'll just take it from there. That's also why we can make a billion people and have trouble winning one freakin' Olympic medal... unreal. Makes for a whole bunch of pretty and ugly people and smart and dumb ones, so it's just a question of drafting people properly to play they' position given a fair shot at a try-out. I mean, as shady as it may seem, it was really half'n'half survivin'n'thrivin' when we got to South Africa and said: "Oh crap, the white people are REALLY on top, and black people are REALLY on the bottom... hmm... how can we fit in the middle somewhere?" And we did. Probably by making your food taste good again. That's an oldie but a goodie. I expect us to pull the curry-card whenever we need to. I hope we remember to keep a third-eye on the prize, I mean, some of these cats is dirty and runnin' they' dirty-biz. I mean, didn't LiveAID and "We Are The World" promise to fix Africa 25 years ago? And now 25% of Africa has AIDS? What the hell is going on here?)

(Strange way to end, that...)


Anyway, my Chinese high-school buddy was a fighter, loved to scrap, and envisioned a perfect world where guys could beat the hell out of each other, feel the pain and break things while getting that unique ass-kicking rush, and just be magically fine the next day.

Nice guy though, seriously.

Only wanted a legit scrap, no bully-style ass-beatings.

But just like everywhere in Scompton, race was a free-for-all, and racism was not something that was feared in the arsenal of us Archie Bunker's, it was either an accident or malicious: that's it. And we knew it when we saw or heard it. You couldn't say the same thing to everyone, but you wouldn't necessarily be knocked for saying it either. And then we often stepped to each other honestly and resolved it: if you wanted to be friends there was one way, enemies another...

So buddy would say to me: "You wanna go?" (Or you wanna "fight"?)

And I'd say: "Yeah, but I don't think you'll do it, I think yer yellow!"

And he'd say: "What? Look at you, you're full of shit! You're so full of shit you're brown!!!"

And then we would laugh like idiots.

Which we were.

And since it still works today, probably still are.


(...)


Anyway, here's some crap...


(...)



Rita Zeng, 19, stands on the Avenue U subway platform in New York's Brooklyn borough Aug. 24, 2005, where she witnessed a racial attack on another Lafayette High School student. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)


Yahoo! News

Asian Youths Suffer Harassment in Schools

By ERIN TEXEIRA, AP National Writer Sun Nov 13,12:26 PM ET


NEW YORK - Eighteen-year-old Chen Tsu was waiting on a Brooklyn subway platform after school when four high school classmates approached him and demanded cash. He showed them his empty pockets, but they attacked him anyway, taking turns pummeling his face.

He was scared and injured — bruised and swollen for several days — but hardly surprised.

At his school, Lafayette High in Brooklyn, Chinese immigrant students like him are harassed and bullied so routinely that school officials in June agreed to a Department of Justice consent decree to curb alleged "severe and pervasive harassment directed at Asian-American students by their classmates." Since then, the Justice Department credits Lafayette officials with addressing the problem — but the case is far from isolated.

Nationwide, Asian students say they're often beaten, threatened and called ethnic slurs by other young people, and school safety data suggest that the problem may be worsening. Youth advocates say these Asian teens, stereotyped as high-achieving students who rarely fight back, have for years borne the brunt of ethnic tension as Asian communities expand and neighborhoods become more racially diverse.


"We suspect that in areas that have rapidly growing populations of Asian-Americans, there often times is a sort of culture clashing," said Aimee Baldillo of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. Youth harassment is "something we see everywhere in different pockets of the U.S. where there's a large influx of (Asian) people."

In the last five years, Census data show, Asians — mostly Chinese — have grown from 5 percent to nearly 10 percent of Brooklyn residents. In the Bensonhurst neighborhood, historically home to Italian and Jewish families, more than 20 percent of residents now are Asian. Those changes have escalated ethnic tension on campuses such as Lafayette High, according to Khin Mai Aung, staff attorney at the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is advocating for Lafayette students.

"The schools are the one place where everyone is forced to come together," Aung said.

Brooklyn's changes mirror Asian growth nationally. Between 1980 and 2000, the number of Asians and Pacific Islanders grew from 3.7 million to nearly 12 million. After Latinos, Asians are the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group.


Stories of Asian youth being bullied and worse are common. In recent years:

• A Chinese middle schooler in San Francisco was mercilessly taunted until his teacher hid him in her classroom at lunchtime.

• Three Korean-American students were beaten so badly near their Queens high school that they skipped school for weeks and begged to be transferred.

• A 16-year-old from Vietnam was killed last year in a massive brawl in Boston.

Some lawmakers have responded. The New York City Council, after hearing hours of testimony from Asian youth, last year passed a bill to track bullying and train educators on prevention. Also last year, California Assemblywoman Judy Chu won passage of a new law to allow hate crimes victims more time — up to three years — to file civil suits; the bill was inspired by a 2003 San Francisco incident in which five Asian teens were attacked by a mob of youth.

In August, the Oakland-based Asian Pacific Islander Youth Violence Prevention Center organized a first-ever conference on the subject in Sacramento. Isami Arifuku, assistant director of the center, said she expected about 200 participants but nearly double that number attended.

Experts offer several broad explanations for the bullying problem.

In the broadest strokes, Baldillo said, Asian youth are sometimes small in stature and often adhere to cultural mores urging them to avoid confrontation and focus on academics. Many don't report bullying because they fear repercussions or don't want to embarrass their families, she added.

Language barriers also exacerbate the situation. "I have to hear, '(Expletive) Chinese!' at least three times a day, and they always say it to people who look weaker and don't speak English," said Rita Zeng, 19 and a senior at Lafayette High. The parents of limited-English students often have little access to translators and struggle to advocate for their children, Aung said.

Chen Tsu described his beating in April at a subway station, saying through a translator: "Those guys looked like they could kill somebody. ... I was scared to go back to school."

Increasingly, some victims are fighting back. A 2003 California survey by the Services and Advocacy for Asian Youth Consortium found that 14 percent of Asian youth said they join gangs for protection. Department of Justice school crime data found the number of Asian youth carrying weapons nearly tripled from 1999 to 2001.

"There are more Asian kids being brought to juvenile court for assault and battery," Arifuku said. "The thing we're finding in their history is that they had been picked on — called names and teased — and in some cases they lashed out and retaliated."

Advocates and students say that, typically, large fights erupt after weeks or months of verbal taunting.


That's what happened at Edison High School in Fresno, Calif., according to Malcolm Yeung of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. For months starting late last year, Hmong students had been repeatedly called names and had food thrown at them.

"There had been patterns of this happening over and over again," said Yeung, whose group investigated the case on behalf of Asian students. "But the school had overlooked the issue."

On Feb. 25, the lunchtime taunting escalated into fights involving at least 30 students, according to Susan Bedi, spokesman for Fresno Unified School District. Seven students were treated for injuries, 12 were suspended and two faced expulsion, she said. Eight were convicted of misdemeanor assault, said Fresno police Sgt. Anthony Martinez.

This year, officials at Edison High added more security and started an on-campus human relations council to address ethnic tension, Bedi said.

At Lafayette High, tension has long been high on campus and in surrounding areas, said Steve Chung, president of the United Chinese Association of Brooklyn, whose group was founded in late 2002 after an earlier student beating. That incident "was like the ignition — it started a fire" in the community.

The student, a straight-A senior, was thrashed to unconsciousness while anti-Chinese slurs were yelled at him. Some news reported dubbed the school "Horror High," and Chinese students began going public about the problem.

"The more we dug into Lafayette High School, the more we found," Chung said.

Aung's probing revealed that school administrators seemed reluctant to intervene, translation services for parents and students was spotty and teachers who reported the problems may have been punished.

School officials say some reports were exaggerated. But "the problems there went back many, many years," said Michael Best, general counsel for New York City schools. Since signing the consent decree in June, he said, "the situation at the school in our view is very, very different." A Justice Department spokesman agreed that the school has been "very responsive."

Teachers this year are getting training to curb harassment, translation services throughout the district have been beefed up, and race relations experts are working with students and staff on campus, deputy New York schools chancellor Carmen Farina said.

Last year, Lafayette's longtime principal retired, and many are optimistic about the new principal, Jolanta Rohloff. In addition, new vice principal Iris Chiu is fluent in Chinese and working closely with parents and students. "We actively sought someone that we knew could handle the delicacy of the school," Farina said.

Still, she said, an incident already has been reported since school started: An Asian student was attacked by several classmates on his way to the subway. He suffered minor injuries.

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051113/ap_on_re_us/asians_bullied


(...)


BONUS: Bill Cosby vs. Black People...


Courtesy of the good folks at www.rockrap.com and their peeps...








Bill Cosby recently concluded a fifteen-city tour of town hall meetings in American inner cities. On October 19, he was in Compton.

"He and other speakers traced many of the problems back to the home," wrote the LA Times, "calling on parents to take a firm hand, to participate each day in their child's education, to demand excellence, and to be role models for self-sufficiency."

Bill Cosby's message comes through best in his own words:

"People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around…the lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal."

"These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids--$500 sneakers for what? And they won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'"

"I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't? Where you is?'…You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."

"With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua, and Mohammed and all that crap, and all of them are in jail."



*****


Bill Cosby's relentless diatribes have stirred revulsion in millions of people.

Where did Cosby go wrong?

Let's look at the situation from another point of view:


"I got into the civil rights movement when I was about sixteen years old. We used to fight. We used to struggle like hell. My dad struggled. My grandfather struggled. They couldn't make any headway whatsoever. They were up against a stone wall.

"I can remember many times my grandmother used to tell me: 'Nobody's going to listen to you. People are going to listen to you when you put on a white shirt and tie and learn to speak the King's English. Then people will listen to you.

"Well, I put on a white shirt and a suit and tie and went down to the YMCA and they said: 'We don't allow any niggers in here.' I'm talking about Minneapolis, Minnesota. So I came to the conclusion that my individual appearance was not the foundation of my problem. That's what I was taught. Every black person in the United States was taught that it's your fault the way you are.

"Finally, somebody sat me down and began to explain to me what was my position in society, what was my relationship to the way people earned their living in the United States and then I understood why I was segregated.

"But what I didn't understand was why I couldn't make any headway. We fought like hell. If I could give just a brief history of the black soldier….

"In the Revolutionary War, around 7 per cent of the army on both the American and British sides was black. Both sides said: 'If you fight, we'll give you liberty.' Of course, on the American side, they won the war and they clamped the chains right back on. At least the British had the dignity to not sign the peace agreement until they had taken all the blacks who had fought on their side to Britain or at least got them to Canada.

"So fighting for freedom in the Revolutionary War didn't mean anything. In the Civil War, it obviously could not have been won without the black soldier. They tipped the scale to make it possible to win that war. When that war was over, the form of slavery changed somewhat, but the slavery continued.

"World War I? I had one great uncle who ran away to Mexico, to Veracruz, and said he wasn't going to fight for this country. Another went to Canada and fought in the Canadian army. But my father said, 'Well, we gotta prove to these white people that we can be just as patriotic and just as good a soldier as anyone else.'

"So he was in the 93rd Division, 369th Infantry and fought in France. And then, twenty years later, I went into the 93rd Division, 369th Infantry and fought in the Pacific.

"I could tell you stories about what was going on in America in 1945 that you wouldn't believe. But the point I want to make is a simple one: No matter how hard we tried we could not move ahead and we did not understand why. It was all subjective: 'Goddamn white people!'

"Then along came the 1952-53 period and a new wave of struggle broke out under the leadership of these church people, Martin Luther King being in the center of it. They began making some headway. The Episcopalian Church was responsible for tens of millions of dollars to support that movement. The Catholic Church moved in with millions of dollars. The church and the liberal sections of the Republican and Democratic Party was behind this movement. We couldn't understand why they would support Martin Luther King and wouldn't support us.

"It never occurred to us to look at the shift in the economic foundations upon which segregation rested. What was the economic foundation that segregation rested upon? That cotton could not be grown and picked if you paid people wages. American cotton had to compete with Egyptian cotton and Indian cotton. If you were going to compete on the world market you could not pay more than what was paid in India.

"We didn't understand that as long as we were hooked to a plow and a mule as a basic means of production in cotton culture and in Southern agriculture in general there was no way to break free from this. What we didn't thoroughly understand was that in 1940 the International Harvester Company came up with a machine that could pick cotton 35 times faster than a human being.

"You notice one thing when you go to Mississippi and Alabama-they've got these roads straight as an arrow, one mile this way and one mile that way. The sheriff could sit up in that watchtower with a shotgun and if he sees anybody on that road after five o'clock at night, he'd shoot 'em. Because you're either supposed to be at work or asleep in your cabin so you can go to work the next day. You weren't allowed to leave the plantation; they had patrols out there.

"If you tried to leave it you went to court and the court says 'You owe Mr. Johnson how much money? You owe him four dollars? Well, I'm sentencing you to forty years on the chain gang for trying to get away with his money.' So it was either stay there and work, for nothing, or the chain gang. There seemed to be no way out of this.

"Then all of a sudden one day the sheriff comes to the shack, kicks down the door, and says 'Get your black butt out of here by six in the morning, we're knocking this shack down and plowing it under!'

"What happened? They didn't need human beings to pick cotton any more. In fact, they were in the way. So the blacks were getting liberated because the economic foundations upon which Southern Jim Crow society rested was disintegrating. And as it disintegrated, the possibility of breaking that legal superstructure apart then became apparent.

"The government then had to find out how to control this process, how can we guarantee that it doesn't break out.



*****


"Let me tell you a story of the beginnings of the modern civil rights movement in Minneapolis, which was supposed to be the liberal mecca where everybody had an equal opportunity. In the spring of 1946, I remember standing on the corner of the black enclave where we lived, and we're talking to a couple of the white guys we'd grown up with about whether the war was worth it. These white guys were saying: 'We had to fight the war, the war was for democracy.'

"I kind of felt we had to do something about Hitler. Hitler, Senator Bilbo, Senator Rankin, they were all part of the same gang so kicking one of them was as good as kicking the next one. I wasn't' against it but I didn't see where the war did us any good.

"A good friend of mine, a white guy named Sid Speigel, he said: 'That war did make the world safe for democracy.'

So one of our guys hadn't gone to the war because he'd been in prison. He got into a fight with a cop and got three years. So he'd just gotten out and he had to prove himself. Wilbur says 'You mean to tell me that Minneapolis is safe for democracy?'

"There was not one bar in the city of Minneapolis where a black person could go and get a drink, there was not one restaurant that would serve you. When you had a date, you took your girlfriend to the airport because federal law did not allow for discrimination at the airport. So Wilbur says, 'OK, I'm going to go see if America's safe for democracy.'

"He went down to a slummy kind of a working class area down on Cedar Avenue and 19th Street and walked into a bar. You go into a middle-class bar they probably will call the police and have you taken out of there but a working class bar, you're going to get a fight. Wilbur walks in, sits down at the bar. Everybody's just glaring at him. Finally, the bartender realized he had to deal with this man.

He walked over and said, "What do you want?"

"I want a beer."

"Well, we don't serve no niggers in here."

Wilbur pulls out his .38 and says: "You're gonna serve this one."

"The guy drew a beer. Wilbur glanced in the mirror and saw a guy coming at him with a chair from behind. So he turned around and as he turned, the gun went off and killed the bartender.

"When Wilbur came back to the corner, he said, 'I made 19th Street and Cedar Avenue safe for democracy in America.' Then we were all jealous. We were gonna make Minneapolis safe for democracy. We started fighting all over that city. We'd go in bars and beat hell out of the bartender, throw chairs around, and get out before the cops came. It was getting more and more violent. The violence continued around the country, all led by the veterans. It peaked out in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1947 where about 150 veterans dug in and fought the Klan, the police force, and the National Guard. Five of the leaders were taken out and simply murdered.

"This was going on everywhere. The government has always understood in relation to the black struggle that you have got to appoint a leader of the black people and make them speak through him. We can control one person but we can't control 10,000 half-drunk veterans who are out the country up.

"So suddenly the churches became the center of gravity of the civil rights movement and the government came in on the side of the protestors. But that was not because of Martin Luther King. It was because of the shift in the economy of the South, the mechanization of Southern agriculture, which drove the blacks off the land, into the city, where they developed a certain amount of political power, and could be dealt with on the basis of being citizens.

Whether it's the degeneration of a city or the development of a movement, you've got to look and find out what the objective foundation of it was.



*****


Ten years ago, when Jeremy Rifkin published his book The End of Work, he realized that not only is this a great opportunity for human beings to develop unfettered by carrying bricks and sweating like a dog in factories but what in the hell are you going to do with 50-60 million unemployed and unemployable human beings? The robots are spitting out all the means of subsistence and nobody has the money to buy it.

Suddenly the government realized they've got a different kind of a problem. How do they solve it? More jails, more wars, more terrorizing of the American population with no effort to dig into the fundamental problem that is shaking up not only America, but the entire world.

We're not living in just a period of change, we're living in a period of fundamental transformation. This future is going to be determined by what we do. If we just sit back and let it happen, I can guarantee you the other side has got plans for you."

Nelson Peery, author of Black Fire, speaking in Chicago, January 2003

"Black Fire is a well-told scathing story and it resounds with a sense of justice."--The New Yorker

"In places the book is Wolfean or Whitmanesque, suffused with an awareness and an optimism that have become unfashionable in American writing."--The Washington Post



*****


Bill Cosby recently concluded a fifteen-city tour of town hall meetings in American inner cities. On October 19, he was in Compton.

"He and other speakers traced many of the problems back to the home," wrote the LA Times, "calling on parents to take a firm hand, to participate each day in their child's education, to demand excellence, and to be role models for self-sufficiency."

Bill Cosby's message comes through best in his own words:

"People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around…the lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal."

"These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids--$500 sneakers for what? And they won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'"

"I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't? Where you is?'…You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."

"With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua, and Mohammed and all that crap, and all of them are in jail."

www.rockrap.com






SOURCE - http://blacktown.net/bill_cosby__hypocrite.htm