Saturday September 13th the News and Observer will be distributing a DVD to their 160,000 subscribers entitled "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" If anyone hasn't heard about this movie you can view the trailer here.
I don't know about you but I do not remember any other time where a news paper has ever sent out a DVD let alone one that his very biased and portrays Islam as an extremist religion!!!!!!!
I find it quite appaling that this type of garbage would be sent out to further instill fear into the public. It again puts innocent Muslims on the defensive and makes them worry about backlash.
http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/trailer.php
A comment was made today in the mainstream media that the Democrats have not lied in this race where the Republicans have frequently done so. If the Democrats had lied, the Republicans would have quickly called them on it.
Congress was deceived into believing that Iraq was associated with those who harmed us on 9/11/2001. We now know the truth but the cost of the deception was over one million lives all to bring one bad man to justice.In this race we are faced with similar lies and deceit authored by the same people. Nonpartisan fact checkers have proven the Republican assertions to be lies but they continue to lie. After each lie has been refuted, new lies surface thereby confusing the electorate. Just as congress was deceived 6 years ago, US citizens are being deceived about the Democratic Presidential Ticket.
It is time for the Democrats to emphatically cry in the way Obama did during his acceptance speech, "ENOUGH!" It is also time for Obama or a respected surrogate to take this issue head-on. A speech or forum on integrity could put this all in perspective for the voters.
Every 9-11 anniversary is filled with heartfelt salutes to the soldiers, but there are real gestures open to you that would actually make an immediate difference in the lives of desperate people who might turn to terrorism as the only means of supporting one's family.
On Tuesday (9-09-08), I had the rare privilege of meeting Sakena Yacoobi, an Afghan woman and doctor who has founded half-a-dozen programs to empower the poor, especially women, in Afghanistan. Since 2002, she's raised $125,000 through mom&pop philanthrophists -like you- and has put 350,000 girls into schools with that money, among other things. I know these girls are getting a good education like in America (not the African copy notes on a black board and have your students regurgitate facts way), because I asked her about her teaching methods. I know Sakena's projects are trustworthy and efficient with their money, because our GlobalGiving people spend hours pouring over the books of all our partners (I'm now an analyst at GlobalGiving, by the way).
In our meeting, Sakena brought up Al Qaeda and the Taliban: "The Taliban are not Muslims. There is nothing in the Koran to justify their rules," she said. As a devout Muslim (fasting for Ramadan this month), Sakena was the first I'd heard say this but I suspect many other Muslims share her opinion. She didn't hold her tongue about America either. "If you want democracy for us," she said, "then you should want education. But you don't want to spend money for it." She's right. She is putting an Afghan girl in school with less than a dollar per year in donations, while our government can barely maintain order in Afghanistan spending $2.3 billion a month. (that $2,300,000,000 a month!) But she is not alone on 9-11. The families of several 9-11 victims have banded together and donated their government-reparations money into a fund, the "Safer More Compassionate World Fund." They were at the Pentagon's 9-11 memorial today trying to show America a bigger picture. Our pennies add up to opportunities, which create alternatives, which mean fewer people turning to Al Qaeda to support their families. Terrorists are not irrational homicidal maniacs. They are real people who find themselves in the worst places on earth, choosing between several bad options. Sakena herself said, "I see the people in the villages. To buy one bag of flour now costs them more than a month's salary, and that only lasts two-weeks for a family of five. Then the Taliban comes in one day and flashes $100 or $200 dollars in front of them. Where do these people get this money?"
I think you know where that money comes from. It passes through many hands, but at least some of those hands sit on mountains of oil. That means we're doubly in control of our future. We need to stop terrorism both by spreading prosperity to the dark holes of the Earth and by keeping more black blood in the Earth. If you, like me, want to commemorate 9-11 in a meaningful, forward-looking way, you can read about the 10 projects that the Safer, More Compassionate World Fund is promoting on the http://www.globalgiving.com/saferworld.html website and give them money. Sakena started 2 of these. Consider donating AGAIN after Oct 1st, when this fund will begin to match all donations up to $10,000 per person.
MSNBC is replaying the Today Show from 9-11. I am shaking just like that day 7 years ago.
Please elect Barack Obama to talk with the bad guys. We can not ignore them the way Bush has.
Barack Obama is hope. Hope and Change what we need.
We are trying to organize ALL Laurel County Democrats in London, Kentucky.
A tentative meeting has been scheduled for Saturday, September 27 at 11:00 a.m. at the Laurel County Library.
Also try to volunteer at the Laurel County Democratic Women's Booth at the World Chicken Festival, downtown London, Thursday through Sunday, September 25-28, 2008.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.LaurelCountyDemocrats.org
Let's just say I have had my fill of Republicans who continually crow about how the current president and his party have "protected us all since (the very saddest of days) 9/11."
To all Republicans who share this view, I have a rather simple set of questions and one observation I would like to share.
The pretext for war was WMD, and before that 9-11. There was no WMD. Now a word about 9-11 ..
I am no believer of conspiracy theories and for 5 years I believed that our government would never do such a thing to its own citizens. I was not thinking, I was letting emotion get the better off me. I was not using common sense.
Consider the motive for the war. Construction contracts, reconstruction contracts, arms sales, control of oil, security for Israel. An old friend once told me, do not look at what you see in politics because that is what they want you to see. Look at who benefits.
The laws of science cannot be broken. Buildings do not come down at the speed of gravity unless they are pulled down. Beams do not fall unless they sag first (the facade below the fall line had perfectly horizontal lines), and steel does not melt with a kerosine fire. How many cooking pots of aluminium melt on a kerosine stove even if you cook for hours? Science speaks the truth.
And planes, made of thin aluminum do not pass through 4-5 inch steel rods encased in concrete, no matter how fast they go. In any collision there is an equal and opposite reaction, deceleration, crumpling and contents being moved forward. This was a demolition no doubt.
Bush/Cheney have no qualifications to deliver anything worthwhile so they can only stay in power by rally people around a war, and making immense profit for their sponsors and themselves. In the process they create enemies and terrorists, which in turn supports their 'war on terror'.
Let's quit this charade and get our troops back home. They deserve it. Let them fight for something honorable.
Omission of the phrase "War On Terror" from all the Obama campaign materials.
We are Democrats and the phrase is one coming not only from Republicans, but from the most warlike "neo-conservatives". It is not in keeping with the general philophy of the Democratic Party, as we strive to be inclusive and tolerant. We are the party that fights for rights of the disadvantaged, the minority ethnic groups, and the middle and lower classes. This is simply a term used in the art of "framing" where an entire set of ideas is invoked by one simple phrase. The set of ideas being invoked here is that we have to retalliate against 9-11, and protect against future attacks like this. But we, as Dems, must remind ourselves that 9-11 is not the reason our sitting Republican President sent our loved ones to harm's way in Iraq. We wish to keep our nation safe, but there are far more practical means of doing that, such as abroad with dimplomacy, and domestically by giving hospitals more grant money so they can develop disaster preparedness plans for communities, who are more likely to be hit with natural disasters and flu epidemics.
“The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world’s last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating five-year plans. From a single capital, it attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents, oceans and beyond. With a brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk. Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union, but that enemy is gone; our foes are more subtle and implacable today. You may think I’m describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world. But their day, too, is almost past, and they cannot match the strength and size of this adversary. The adversary is closer to home: It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy.” “An average American family works an entire year to generate$6,000 in income taxes. Here we spill many times that amount every hour by duplication and by inattention.” “Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” “We must change for a simple reason – the world has – and we have not yet changed sufficiently. The clearest and most important transformation is from a bipolar Cold War world where threats were visible and predictable, to one in which they arise from multiple sources, most of which are difficult to anticipate, and many of which are impossible even to know today.”
“The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world’s last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating five-year plans. From a single capital, it attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents, oceans and beyond. With a brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk. Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union, but that enemy is gone; our foes are more subtle and implacable today. You may think I’m describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world. But their day, too, is almost past, and they cannot match the strength and size of this adversary. The adversary is closer to home: It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy.”
“An average American family works an entire year to generate$6,000 in income taxes. Here we spill many times that amount every hour by duplication and by inattention.”
“Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” “We must change for a simple reason – the world has – and we have not yet changed sufficiently. The clearest and most important transformation is from a bipolar Cold War world where threats were visible and predictable, to one in which they arise from multiple sources, most of which are difficult to anticipate, and many of which are impossible even to know today.”
Spoken by Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, in an address that announced an end to the S.O.P. of waste and fiscal mismanagement at the Pentagon, delivered on September 10, 2001; the day before the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. What would have been an excellent, long-called-for policy shift (from a most unexpected quarter), tossed out with the ‘Ba’ath’ water, so to say.
In the days immediately following, George W. Bush called for $20 Billion to fund the ‘War on Terror’. Since then, he has demanded and gotten a blank check for debacle after debacle, all sanctified by ‘them-or-us’, anti-terrorist bluster and approved by a spineless, bi-partisan, rubber-stamp Congress.
(The cowards in Congress just approved another $257,000,000,000 (two-hundred-fifty-seven billion dollar) emergency supplement to fund the wars through the end of Bush’s term. )
(Any wonder there is no money for universal health care, education or infrastructure projects such as reinforced levees on the Mississippi River? That astronomical figure – more than a quarter of a trillion dollars - is only to help pay for the next 7 months of these hateful wars which so rapaciously destroy lives. Someone should check the Congress for drugs or implants. )
From being on the verge of tightening federal purse-strings to the current open-vault-door policy of hysteria-driven defense spending - financing the building of new nuclear submarines to counter the non-existent Al-Qaeda navy and new super-sonic jet fighters to combat the air force that Al-Qaeda doesn’t have – was a most fortuitous swing of events for the Pentagon and its contractors. This catastrophic bit of malevolent serendipity is what author and journalist, Robert Scheer refers to as the ‘gift of 911’ to the military-industrial complex.
The military-industrial complex; since Eisenhower used that cumbersome phrase in his farewell speech, it has seen plenty of use. Though its initial axiomatic power still resonates, it’s a stock phrase, shop-worn. Moreover, from its inception it has been inadequate. Its failing, despite its power as an axiom of unalloyed truth, is that it hides the people who operate this complex and extremely profitable relationship between government bureaucracy and big business.
It is time to put a face on these people in the Pentagon, in the Congress and in the Defense Department. It is long past time to strip the mask of anonymity from leaders of the arms industry, their lobbyists and their agents. What is needed is a more pertinent, personalizing epithet which exposes the active players of the military-industrial complex.
Pentacrats (noun) 1. The autocrats and oligarchs of the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress and the defense and arms industry who in concert advocate robbing the taxpayer to fund boondoggles, pork-barrel spending and bloated defense budgets for personal profit and political gain. 2. Their agents and functionaries.
Pentacrats (noun) 1. The autocrats and oligarchs of the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress and the defense and arms industry who in concert advocate robbing the taxpayer to fund boondoggles, pork-barrel spending and bloated defense budgets for personal profit and political gain.
2. Their agents and functionaries.
Pentacrats have usurped the power of the citizenry to influence policy and thus the course taken by the ship of state, in order to enrich themselves at the direct expense of the citizens of the United States; deeply effecting, most deleteriously, nearly every aspect of the daily lives of the American people. Furthermore, the effect of Pentacratic policies on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and every other country around the world where armament and weaponry contracted and manufactured by Pentacrats, furnished and financed by the Pentacrats in Washington are used to violently suppress democratic movements, insurgencies and up-risings, is even more dire. A maleficent mélange of death, terror and suffering is what those people get on a daily basis.
Pentacrats.
What the precepts of Pentacracy boil down to is the super-rich getting richer by many other, much poorer men, women and children dying bloody, horrible deaths. To paraphrase the old song, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get murdered.’
The American citizenry must demand that this complex be dismantled, boondoggle by boondoggle, pork barrel by pork barrel, until the Department of Defense and Congress answer once again to the voice of the true, absolute, constitutionally recognized and affirmed rulers of our republic: the people of the United States of America. This demand must be constant and unrelenting, not solely reliant on participation in general elections, but rather with consistent, perennial involvement from the grass-roots to the Belt-way and the National Mall.
Defeating the agenda of the Pentacrats - and in so doing, returning control of the nation to its rightful rulers - is the gift we can bequeath, not only to the children of America but to the children of the world.
It is the right thing to do, Senator Obama.
I remember a lot. The first president I remember in office is Bill Clinton. He was sworn into office when I was two years old (which I don't remember, obviously) and he was accused and tried of scandal in the White House when I was eight.
I also remember the next election. Even at ten years old, I rooted for Al Gore. I remember my frustration with Florida, which could have been my parent's frustration trickling down to me, through my eleventh birthday. I also remember my exclamation of "No, no!" when my mother told me that George Bush had won the election.
I remember, starting middle school as a scared girl, 9-11. Who, of those older than toddler age in 2001, does not remember where they were when they heard the news? I was horrified, like everyone else. I remember watching nothing but cartoons for weeks, months... if only because the cartoon channels didn't show it over and over. Didn't show death tolls, injuries. The crashing planes over and over again...
Then I remember rooting for everyone but Bush in the next election. Anyone but him again! Anyone at all! I thought, first rooting for Dean, who's energy I liked. Then for Kerry when Dean's energy was his downfall. That was when I was fourteen years old.
But now, almost eighteen, I will NOT stand by and watch the country I live in get run into the ground by people who don't know what they're doing. I will NOT let others decide who gets to lead me. I will absolutely NOT idly twiddle my thumbs and wait for something to happen.
I am going to DO. I am going to DO everything in my power to give hope to the next generation. Hope that they won’t have to remember the horror of 9-11. That they won’t have to remember the disappointment when they realize they are in a country run by someone that they think is incompetent for the job. That they won’t remember only war, only the threat of terrorism. That is what I hope for this country. This is what I believe Barack Obama can do for this country.
It's Wednesday, Feb. 20 and Obama has now won ten states in a row with the lowest percentage being 57%. Part of me wants to now sit back and watch it happen instead of remaining involved. I believe that would be called complacency which in my personal life, I consider to be my greatest internal enemy apart from self-pity. No, unfortunately, for me, there really is no such thing as biding my time...I'm either moving forward or losing ground.
I found this little awareness ribbon logo that's on my page a while ago, and have a lapel pin like it. I also have a pin that has the colors of our flag in a heart shape. I used to wear the heart-shaped pin all the time to show my love and pride for my country, but for several years now, the awareness ribbon seems more appropriate.
So people like to tell me stuff when I’m wearing my trusty Obama 08 button. After a most exciting Essex County Obama Meetup, I stayed up all night mapping out Initiative ideas and pricing shirts, buttons, posters, post cards, & buttons online. Anyone who’s ever seen the film Election, will understand why I actually root for Reese Whitherspoon (& it is not because she went to my alma mater).
SOFT DISSOLVE TO: Wednesday morning in Jersey. Neighbors are tickled pink by the sudden warm weather but I’m dragging my heels cause the coffee’s not workin’ on me anymore. I hit up my old high school to see about organizing a debate with another school in Jersey just before the primaries. As I’m coasting on empty, my spirits droop into my socks. Around lunch time I stop into a local convenience store and this Grey Haired Nurse Lady comes up to me in line to ask if I’ve considered Senator Clinton. So I tell her what this gorgeous Rutgers student told me, “A vote for Senator Clinton is a vote for the status quo. A vote for Senator Obama is a vote for possibility.”
DEAD SILENCE.
Surrender smirked at me.
Sleep called on me all day, but I stayed up for a NJ for Obama conference call where I’m sure I babbled incoherently like a Former-Child-Star-On-the-Skids. I finally went to bed resigned to this daunting marathon ahead of us all.
Now I have this T-shirt design on my wall, right? And I woke up to the word “Barack”. Eventually, I will mass produce enough shirts for all my BarackObama.com friends!
Somehow.
I climbed out of bed and went down to a local Printing Center in Jersey. I told this local small business owner that I was pricing merch for some grassroots Initiatives and the owner (who it turns out is probably the coolest small business owner in Jersey – if not the universe) tells me, “I like that guy.” And for the next hour, this guy and I talk about politics, his kids, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, 9-11, the war, 911, Social Security, Giuliani, John Amos, NJ for Obama, Tempest Bledsoe, Keisha Knight Pulliam, Tribeca, Robert Deniro, Charles Dutton, the printing press, Rutgers Prep, computers, the future, crime, Barack the Youth Vote, Manhattan, the colors of the rainbow, Senator Clinton, Upper East Side socialites, and just about anything else you could expect to fit on the tip of a push pin.
After learning about some great deals in the name of possibility, the most Gentile Kat you could imagine from Louisiana saunters in with a map looking for directions to Costco. It turns out one of my Stanford roommates was a rather gentile Kat from Abbeville, Louisiana so I recognized a sort of kinship to this lost gentleman from Louisiana. A’ight, I was just getting my passion back, but the bottom line is I wanted to help the guy. And then this Jamaican American woman tip toes in and this itty bitty business in Central Jersey is turning into the bar from Cheers where everybody has some kind of positive reaction to thought of “Barack Obama”.
Then I get a message on my cell from a friend from high school who I haven’t seen in a decade who it turns out is dating a big Obama Supporter.
And then…now this is where surrender took a rain check…I went back to that same convenience store around lunch time. Pat Benatar’s “Invincible” is blasting from a car stereo and that SAME GREY HAIRED NURSE LADY pulls up in her Blue Car bopping to “Invincible.” I’ll admit an affinity for any 80s pop hits. And my Grey Haired Nurse Lady waved gleefully. And my spirits soared! Not out of some deluded notion that my Grey Haired Nurse Lady was going to vote my way. But because she was going to vote. And I was going to vote. And we were sorta bonded not by our candidate, but simply by our commitment to participate in the political conversation – the conversation about everything you could possibly fit on the tip of a push pin…
A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.
-Nietzsche
I am hopeful about the opportunity to elect a leader who stands for the people and is unafraid to confront corruption in our government. However, if Barack is going to do this, he must do it all the way.
Condemning the war in Iraq is a good step. But there's a lot more that must be done at this fragile time in our country's history. We are being ruled by a covert fascist government whose goal is total control over the population at the cost of our freedom, our resources, and our very lives. Let's look at just some of the corruption in our govt today:
Supporting the propoganda about who was at the cause of 9-11 is unacceptable. There is tremendous evidence that our government not only had ample warning of the attacks, but was actually behind the attacks through purposeful negligence. 9-11 provided the justification that neo-cons had been specifically plotting for over a decade in order to pursue their geostrategic goal of occupying the middle east. It was about world control, oil profits, and war profiteering.
No link was ever found between the events of 9-11 and Afghanistan, Bin Laden, or Iraq. Even the "hijackers" named by the FBI were from Saudi Arabia. So why does Barack say in 2002 and repeat it now that we must go after Bin Laden for 9-11? And how can he ignore all the evidence that the US was responsible?
Why did Bush refuse to testify or even to allow an investigation into 9-11? Only a guilty person has something to hide. For protection of national security? What national security? Even our multi-billion dollar NORAD military super satelite space system which is designed to stop and capale of stopping attacks like 9-11 didn't work. "Protecting national security" = "covering up Bush's crimes".
Barack, did you know that it has been proven that Bush received funding from Bin Laden's family as early as 1980? Or that Bush Sr was sitting with Bin Laden's brother at a meeting of the Carlyle Ivestment group on 9-11? Or that the Bin Laden family was flown out of the US "for their own protection" by the US govt. when all other air traffic was grounded after 9-11? Or that Bush forbid FBi agents from investigating Al-Qaeda in the US leading up to the attacks? The head of the FBI resigned in frustration and his new job was head of security at the WTC. His first day of work? Sep 11. He died in the attacks. Or that the Enron investigation records possibly pointing to Bush's involvement were stored in the WTC and destroyed on 9-11? It goes on and on and on.
How can we stand for anything less than a public trial of the entire Bush administration for political corruption and crime? Think Enron, 9-11, Haliburton, war profiteering, dividing Iraq's oil to US oil companies, election rigging, erosion of civil liberties, raping the environment, killing thousands of innocent people in every country we attack, lies, fraud, stealing.
Barack, you can't forge a bold new future by holding hands with the most evil and corrupt men alive. And telling them they should do better isn't enough, either. You need to bring them to JUSTICE. You need to totally rout evil out of Washington. We need a political revolution.
We need to end the privitization of the Federal Reserve and the income tax that pays the outrageous interest to the bankers who own our country. The right to print money belongs to the people, to our govt, not to bankers. And people working their ass off to survive shouldn't be paying income tax on those wages, especially when it goes straight into the pocket of war profiteers and rich bankers. The Federal Reserve and war profiteers like Haliburton need to be brough to JUSTICE. They need to be tried and convicted of theft, treason, fraud, and everything else they've committed. They need to have their assets seized and they need to go to prison for life.
Wake up, Barack. A little change is not enough. We need a revolution. We need JUSTICE. Only then will we truly be free.
The people of this country will stand behind you because we want true freedom. It is quickly becoming too late to save this country and this world. Let's do it now!
