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numbered are their days .....“Giving all honour, thanks & praises to God for courage & wisdom, this is a very important rally. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts, feelings & concerns regarding a tremendous problem that we are currently facing. This problem is universal: transcending race, economic background, religion & culture, & this problem is none other than the current administration which has set up shop in the White House.
In fact, I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip.
I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner & no seatbelts & round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr & Bush Sr, John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson & any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, & take them all on a trip to the ‘hood.
Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off & leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed & no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.
I’d show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I’d employ them in jobs with little security: let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat.
I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show & prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.
I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues & boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation & while they're worried about their babies being murdered & slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick & unable to get medicine.
Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing & regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise & quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They’ll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity & as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine & paying their rent.
Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then, very contradictingly, I’d fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.
Then I’d introduce them to those sworn to protect & serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I’d show them the nightsticks & plungers, the pepper spray & stun guns, the mace & magnums that they’d soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns & illegal search & seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason.
Harassment ain’t even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones & wallets that are confused with illegal contraband. I’d introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality & then we’ll see if they finally weren’t aware of the truth, if their eyes weren’t finally open like a box of Pandora.
I’d show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders & how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida.
See, for some & justice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. TKO'd by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.
They keep telling us all is equal. I’d tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers & leading us into unnecessary wars & under-table dealings with Enron & Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful.
Instead, they take more & more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation & build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.
Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out & vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.
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Tramps with money
Great vision. .. G W Bush with a mendicant bowl in his hand, begging in Harlem...
but having seen the guy operate, he would be likely to run a sly little scam to send everyone bankrupt, cream all the moneys of little old ladies and run back to Washington with it... These blokes are menace. Gangsters. Plagues. Bird flu to our psyche. Boils on our tender parts... The world has become so politically and intellectually poor since those three guys have come to power. Blair, Howard and Bush, it's a tragedy of historical proportion. Three years would have been more than enough but ten years? All have worked hard to dismantle any social spirit and cohesion, in order to sell everyone individually wrapped mush, through fear, greed and moralisationing (their bad idea of morality). The old carrot and stick trick with porkies. We're donkeys.
So we have delegated our rights...
In the best democratic system that we have, we delegate our beliefs to charlatans, we delegate our leadership to psychopaths, we delegate our individuality to fashion merchants who incite us to copy everyone else when we clothe from the rack, we delegate our food supplies to multinational GM gangsters, we delegate our relationships to lawyers... etc.
Yes we delegate our responsibility to politicians who sells us the non-returnable wrong goods we do not need, with a twist of the tongue.
We buy this stuff for illusions of convenience and comfort.. as if once we've voted, we're not involved anymore... . In the end most of us end up machines, in a systems of machines that produce nothing more that the wind of the unnecessary... Don Quixote windmills are just spinning producing nothing but whooshing noises... . Nothing wrong with filling forms in triplicate, adding up figures that add up to more figures, or measuring powders like mad alchemists, but much of our activities are like those of a fly in a jar... Moving a lot, going nowhere with the purpose of a gnat.
Where are the now songs of the barricades? The tunes of dissent? Were are the proper referendums? Have these imbeciles in power achieved the unthinkable? And made us so comfortable in our mediocrity? Have they removed all our desires except that to fill our pocket with dirty money that will have no currency should the bizz hit the fan?
I let you decide...
the unthinkable .....
From last night’s Dateline Program.
‘A couple of months ago, Dateline brought you a report about the importation of beef from Brazil, a country where foot and mouth disease is endemic. But, potentially, what you are about to hear is much worse. Earlier this month, Federal Cabinet discussed allowing the import of beef from countries that have had outbreaks of BSE or mad cow disease. Foot and mouth only infects animals, but with mad cow, we're talking about human health. Earlier this evening, George Negus spoke to Government Senator, Bill Heffernan.
GEORGE NEGUS: Senator, thanks for your time. Any Australian waking up this morning looking at a headline like this, 'Government may soften law on mad cow disease' would be pretty frightened. You know the Prime Minister pretty well, is he aware of this whole thing and what's it all about?
SENATOR BILL HEFFERNAN, RURAL AND TRANSPORT SENATE COMMITTEE: He certainly is. The Prime Minister's office is very much aware of this issue and for that reason and for, you know, I'm obviously in strong disagreement with some parts of the proposal. The submission has been withdrawn, Peter McGauran's withdrawn it, sensibly, and it's gone back for more work to be done on it.
GEORGE NEGUS: So at this point Cabinet hasn't made any decision about it at all but it is still on the table?
SENATOR BILL HEFFERNAN: Oh yes, there's a submission from the Cattle Council of Australia, who, I have to say, need more resources to be able to think these issues through, to come to an agreement with the Government to change our protocols on the shelf - the position of our domestic market if we have a BSE outbreak.
GEORGE NEGUS: We are talking here about a disease that could kill Australians? I mean foot-and-mouth disease is one thing, but mad cow disease can affect human health. I mean, do you know what the Prime Minister himself feels about it?
SENATOR BILL HEFFERNAN: Oh look, I don't want to bring the Prime Minister into this. He's been dealing with a whole lot of other issues but I certainly know what I think and my radar locked on to this a couple of weeks ago and as a result there's been with that, and a few other people's concerns, there's going to be a rethink.
The issue is for me, George, that we've got to separate our domestic policy, given that we haven't got BSE, from adding to the risk of getting BSE by having a policy where we would tempt other countries to send meat here by changing our policy and countries that have already got BSE. Damned if I know why you'd take the risk.
GEORGE NEGUS: Exactly, it's bordering on madness to even consider it, isn't it?
SENATOR BILL HEFFERNAN: Well I think the difficulty for the Australian Cattle Council and the beef industry is they can't see, in their own minds, how to separate this issue. I've got some very strong views on how to separate what we do domestically, in the event of an outbreak of BSE, from what we do now when we haven't got BSE and I don't think that we should be making any announcements at all, presently, on giving the opportunity for countries that have got BSE to import into Australia.
If we get BSE I guess it's a different ball game but in the meantime if we make an announcement I think this will be used by people like the United States to white ant our export market because of our status we have export markets they can't get and if we announce to the world that we're going to consider taking meat from BSE countries they'll be able to go to Japan and say "Well Australia's agreed to take our meat, why won't you?"
GEORGE NEGUS: I wondered about that actually because does the conspiracy theory hold any water here? Is this some crazy idea of a level playing field where traders concerned that we're backing down, if you like, or just giving in to the American demand?
SENATOR BILL HEFFERNAN: Well I can assure you I'm unaware of whether it's a conspiracy or not. I presume, I just assume the facts and I know that if we agree to this it will give other people, countries that have got this BSE. We have this wonderful status globally of being clean, green and free of most of these diseases. It gives us a market edge, why would we give our market edge away?
GEORGE NEGUS: So what would happen though if this goes ahead?
SENATOR BILL HEFFERNAN: Well, if it goes ahead...
GEORGE NEGUS: That clean green image you're talking about is no longer a reality.
SENATOR BILL HEFFERNAN: Well, you just put it at risk. It's not to say you're going to get BSE but the prospect of us supervising abattoir work practices in other countries that may attempt to export meat to us into our market would be just a nightmare.
So I'm in total disagreement with that principle and I'm also concerned and the industry hadn't thought it through, I'd have to say, the Cattle Council hadn't thought about this being a back door way to white ant us out of our own market.
GEORGE NEGUS: Senator, we'll have to leave it there but we'll stay in touch about this issue, it's a big one.
SENATOR BILL HEFFERNAN: Thanks very much, George.
GEORGE NEGUS: Thanks, Senator.
the posse gathers .....
‘Diverse forces are assembling to bring Bush administration officials to account for war crimes. Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Mother for Peace, insists: "We cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."
Paul Craig Roberts, Hoover Institution senior fellow and assistant secretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan, charges Bush with "lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers" and calls for the president's impeachment.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and former president of the American Society of International Law, declares: "These policies make a mockery of our claim to stand for the rule of law. [Americans] should be marching on Washington to reject inhumane techniques carried out in our name."
Can such disparate forces as the peace movement, conservative advocates of the rule of law, and human rights advocates join to halt high government officials demonstrably engaged in criminal enterprise? Can they reach out and appeal to the deep but vacillating commitment of the American people to the national and international rule of law? Or will the Bush administration divide the posse and retain for itself the mantle of defender of international law and the U.S. Constitution?’
Bush War Crimes