Crandolph’s Barbaric Yawp

It’s never to early to pick up an Xmas gift for the war-positive anti-abortion fanatic in your clan.

Link.

Very good news on the local political front: John Braxton, the reformist candidate for Philadelphia City Controller who was bumped from the ballot in the Democratic primary by the local machine, has entered the race as a Green candidate.  This is fantastic news in that not only will we have a real choice in the race come November, but we also have a reformer who realizes that if he’s going to have any impact he has to break away from the party and take them on directly.  I hope this is the beginning of a trend.  Had Seth Williams gone this route, I think he had a better than decent shot at victory in November.  (I still recommend casting a write-in vote for him against the misrule of Lynne Abraham.)

The Green Party of Philadelphia (GPOP) is working to gather signatures to put him on the ballot.  Expect me to hit you up for yours.  It’ll take well over 7,000 signatures to get Braxton on in this city-wide race.

I strongly recommend that people put their time into the Braxton candidacy instead of wasting their time attempting to replace Rick Santorum with his clone Bob Casey Jr.  An examination of Casey’s sorry website suggests that Casey really has no agenda and isn’t in any hurry to share his views on any topic.  Considering most people who oppose Santorum don’t actually agree with Casey on anything of substance either this is hardly a surprise.  I surmise he plans to rely upon his father’s name, party machinery and not literally being Rick Santorum.  One wonders how, if they bother to track things and notice (questionable!), liberal Pennsylvania will feel if they work their little hearts out to elect a new senator who spends the next 6 years voting for the confirmation of anti-choice judges, expanding the federal death penatly, and continued war at the expense of all other federal spending.   As it stands Casey’s primary issue seems to be a push to crack down on convicted sex offenders harder than we do now, primarily through ‘community notification’ which may not even be constitutional.  I wonder if Willie Horton is available for a photo shoot.

GPOP is looking to run as many people as possible in 2006, which is really the best way of gaining ballot access (by "stacking" signatures in overlapping districts for different offices) and, hopefully, gaining media coverage.  Who wants to be a State Representative or State Senate candidate?  Don’t worry that you ‘don’t know enough’ for the office.  You do; if you wade through my blog odds are that you’re generally much better informed than the party functionary chump who misrepresents you in Harrisburg currently.  If interested, shoot me a message.  We can gather signatures together all next summer should I run for Congress again …

This blog appears to be the first place that Braxton’s Green candidacy is being reported anywhere.  A genuine scoop!  Can a Pulitzer be far behind?

Well, as a British citizen - a London MP, no less - he can’t be.

Compare and contrast these remarks with anything  you’ve heard from any Democratic legislator in the past 15 years; this is what opposition sounds like.  And on the morning of terrorist strikes in his own district no less.  Americans should demand nothing less than this sort of representation and refuse to give one penny or one minute of time to any candidate who doesn’t provide it.

Maybe then things might change for the better.

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From Hansard ­ House of Commons, 7th July , 4.29pm,

Mr. George Galloway: The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) said that it is a funny old world, and that is certainly true with regard to the issue that he raised. I am, I think, a longer-serving Member of this House than he is, and I remember when the Labour Benches were littered with members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Indeed, Members who wear different badges today used then to sport daily the badges of CND.

Mr. Kevan Jones:  Some of them are in the Cabinet.

Mr. Galloway:  Indeed; the Cabinet is full of them. That was a time when Britain was facing a Soviet Union and an eastern Europe bristling with thousands upon thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles, all aimed at us. Now that there is no such adversary, those same Members have swapped their badges. I have no doubt that they will comprehensively vote down the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Pendle at the parliamentary Labour party meeting. As he is a gentle soul, I fear for his safety on that occasion if the reports I hear of the PLP are anything like accurate.

I have been sitting through the debate feeling not that it is a funny old world but that it is another world. The sort of complacent consensus that has crept by osmosis through the Chamber as the hours have passed is so utterly different from, and in contradiction to, the attitude outside in the country and around the world that I became more persuaded than ever that the House of Commons is out of touch with reality.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers) is no longer in his place. He may well be an expert on defence procurement matters but, in his  mini discourse on Islam, he reminded us of the universal truth that a little knowledge is dangerous. His Reader’s Digest analysis of Islam and the people of the Muslim world-more than 1,000 million strong-illustrated the chasm between the east and the powerful here in the west.

At least one, perhaps two of the explosions this morning took place in my constituency. Many of those caught up in the events were my constituents, heading to work in the City and the west end. I spent four hours or so this morning at the Royal London hospital in my constituency where the medical staff are toiling, without a break, to deal with the casualties who are being brought in in their scores-perhaps, by now, in their hundreds.

I walked among the emergency workers, including the fire brigade staff, in the very stations
that have in the past few weeks had fire engines taken away from them as economy measures. I refer to the fire station at Bethnal Green in my constituency and the fire station in the King’s Cross-Euston area-the two places where the fire services are stretched almost to breaking point in dealing with the consequences of this morning’s events. The people of the east end and the emergency workers are going about their business calmly and stoically in the way for which our country is famous.

I condemn the act that was committed this morning. I have no need to speculate about its authorship. It is absolutely clear that Islamist extremists, inspired by the al-Qaeda world outlook, are responsible. I condemn it utterly as a despicable act, committed against working people on their way to work, without warning, on tubes and buses. Let there be no equivocation: the primary responsibility for this morning’s bloodshed lies with the perpetrators of those acts.

However, it would be crass to do other than what the Secretary of State for Defence in a
way invited us to do. We cannot separate the acts from the political  backdrop. They did not come out of a clear blue sky, any more than those monstrous mosquitoes that struck the twin towers and other buildings in the United States on 9/11 2001. The Defence Secretary said that we must look at the causal circumstances behind the problems of security and defence in the world. I insist that we do so.

If Members examine our debate
tomorrow in the cold light of day they will discover a self-evident truth: many Members of Parliament find it easy to feel empathy
with people killed in explosions by razor-sharp red-hot steel
and splintering flying glass when they are in London, but they
can blank out of their mind entirely the fact that a person killed
in exactly the same way in Falluja died exactly the same death.
When the US armed forces, their backs guarded, as a result of
a decision by our politicians, by our armed forces, systematically
reduced Falluja, a city the size of Coventry, brick by brick
and killed an unknown number of people-probably the number runs
to thousands, if not tens of thousands-not a whisper found its
way into the Chamber. I have grown used to that. I know that
for many people in the House and in power in this country the
blood of some people is worth more than the blood of others.

Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con):  Will the hon. Gentleman clarify a whisper that has come
to the House? Did he say elsewhere today that Londoners had this coming? Is it true that he said that?

Mr. Galloway:  That is a despicable
smear.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal):  Order. I remind all hon. Members that we are debating
the fourth report of the Defence Committee.
      
Mr. Galloway:  The Minister of State says from a sedentary position
that it is more or less right. I take it that that means that
it is not right. I have never uttered any such words. The words that I am speaking now are my words. If the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) would care to listen, he can disagree
with me, but he should not attempt to put into my mouth words that I have never spoken. Madam Deputy Speaker, I ask for your
protection. [Hon. Members: "Oh!"] It is either that,
or I shall keep speaking and no one else will-

Madam Deputy Speaker:  Order.
I have already asked hon. Members to debate the motion on the
   Order Paper. Perhaps we would all do well to confine our remarks to that.

Mr. Galloway:  The exchanges
that we have just heard are further evidence of my point that in this bubble people just do not get it. If I cannot touch the heart of the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead with what happened to the people in Falluja, I shall move on to firmer ground.

Does the House not believe that hatred and bitterness have been engendered by the invasion
and occupation of Iraq, by the daily destruction of Palestinian homes, by the construction of the great apartheid wall in Palestine and by the occupation of Afghanistan? Does it understand that
the bitterness and enmity generated by those great events feed the terrorism of bin Laden and the other Islamists? Is that such a controversial point? Is it not obvious? When I was on the Labour
      Benches and spoke in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I said that I despise Osama bin Laden. The difference is that I have always despised him. I did so when the Government, in this very
House, gave him guns, money and encouragement, and set him to war in Afghanistan. I said that if they handled that event in the wrong way, they would create 10,000 bin Ladens. Does anyone
doubt that 10,000 bin Ladens at least have been created by the events of the past two and a half years? If they do, they have their head in the sand.

There are more people in the world today who hate us more intently than they did before as  a result of the actions that we have taken. Does this House understand that the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison have inflamed and deepened that sense of hatred around the world and made our position more dangerous? Do Members of this House not understand that Guantanamo Bay has contributed to the sense of bitterness and hatred against us around the world? Does nobody in this House understand that when Palestinians’ houses are knocked down, their olive trees cut down and their children shot by Israeli marksmen, an army  of people who want to harm us is created? To say that is not to hope that they succeed-I started by making clear, I hope, my utter rejection and condemnation of the events in London this morning.

It does not matter whether Britain replaces the Trident submarine system with another. The threat now, as the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) made clear, is not the intercontinental ballistic missiles of
other countries but the asymmetrical threat of angry people who
hate us and who are ready to exchange their lives for several
of ours, or hundreds of ours, or thousands of ours, if they can
do so. Is that really so hard to grasp?
      
Given that one cannot defend oneself against every angry man
among the enragés of the earth, it follows that the only
thing we can do is address what the Secretary of State called
the causal circumstances that lie behind these events. That means trying to reduce the hatred in the world and trying to deal with the political crises out of which these events have flowed. If, instead of doing that, we remain in this consensual bubble in which we have placed ourselves, we will go on making the same
mistakes over and over again. We will go on with Guantanamo Bay.
We will go on as we are doing, making Abu Ghraib not smaller
as we were told would happen after the photographs were published,
but bigger. We will go on with occupation and war as the principal
instruments of our foreign and defence policy. If we do that, some people will get through and hurt us as they have hurt us
here today, and if we still do not learn the lesson, that dismal,
melancholic cycle will continue.

It ought to be common sense
that people start from the standpoint that the only thing that matters is whether what we plan to do will make things better  or worse. I listened to the Secretary of State lay out the success story of Afghanistan and Iraq, and his account bore no relationship to the truth or reality. He talked about Afghanistan as a success
story and about the President of Afghanistan, when everyone knows
that Karzai is the president of the congestion charge area of
downtown Kabul and no more. He talked about an Afghan army-it is a fantasy. Afghanistan is a patchwork quilt of warlordism, where the warlords’ armies dwarf the so-called Afghan national army. He talked about drugs and narcotics: before we invaded
the country those lunatics of the Taliban were reducing heroin
production in Afghanistan, but the people whom we have put into
power there have increased production by 800 per cent. Our armed
forces are in Afghanistan and our taxes are being used to support
a political structure that is producing 90 per cent. of the junk that ends up in the veins of our young people in Glasgow, east
London and many other places in the world.

The Secretary of State talked about Iraq-as if Iraq were any kind of success story. I could
not believe my ears as he described, in that complacent, orotund
manner, progress over 12 months, 18 months or two years. Iraq  is going backwards, not forwards. It is impossible for the Secretary
of State to say we shall withdraw in any given time frame, because
Iraq is getting worse, not better. There are more people being
killed in Iraq now than there were before. More military operations are being conducted by the Iraqi resistance than before. Last
Saturday alone, 175 military operations were mounted by the Iraqi
resistance on one day.

American soldiers are dying
in such numbers that there is now more appreciation of the mistake of the war in Iraq over the pond in the United States than there
appears to be here in the British House of Commons. The kind
of debate that we have had today would not happen in the US Congress, because US politicians understand the scale of this disaster
far better than the politicians in this Chamber appear even to
have begun to do.

One thousand, eight hundred
American boys, conscripted by poverty, unemployment and poor
      opportunities, have lost their lives as a result of the pack
of lies that was the case for the invasion of Iraq, and 17,000
American boys have been wounded. Ten per cent. of them are amputees, who will have to go around with no legs for the rest of their
lives as a result of the pack of lies on which we went to war
in Iraq.

Eighty-nine of our own boys,
including the son of Rose Gentle from Glasgow, 19-year-old Gordon,
      were sent to die in Iraq on a pack of lies. The Prime Minister
will not even meet Gordon’s mother. He will not meet the mother
of a 19-year-old boy who was sent to die in Iraq. Last Monday, I was on a television programme and a call came through from the mother of a 17-year-old soldier who was leaving for Iraq
the following Monday. He is 17 years old, and he is being sent
to Iraq, into that quagmire. The 19-year-old Gordon Gentle is  dead. Eighty-eight other young men from this country are dead
as a result of this, yet our Ministers roll out their jokes and
their cod philosophy here today. They have absolutely no grasp
of the gravity of the situation, or of how unpopular their stand has become outside these walls. They have learned nothing from
the fact that they lost a million votes as a result of what they did in Iraq, or from the fact that millions in Britain marched against them and begged them not to do this.

The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), in an otherwise fine speech, described today’s events
as "unpredictable". They were not remotely unpredictable. Our own security services predicted them and warned the Government
that if we did this we would be at greater risk from terrorist
attacks such as the one that we have suffered this morning.

"Fourteen books were accidentally sold Thursday at a grocery store in
Canada, but a judge ordered the customers not to talk about the book,
copy it, sell it or even read it before its official release."

Quick, read the news story before a judge orders you not to.

One of the great joys in life is the witty presentation of simple truths in the face of large lies.  Add to that collection Pirates and Emporers, or Size Does Matter.  The video tells the truth and lends perspective, and that’s worthwhile.  But its aping of the Schoolhouse Rock American history animations make it priceless.

Aside from St. Augustine, an author drawing a very specific pirate/empire connection was R. Buckminster Fuller.  He did so rather directly in an overlooked, unusually clearly written (i.e. in English as opposed to Fullerese) and unusually angry book titled Grunch of Giants.  It was one of the last, if not in fact the last, works of Fuller’s published before his death.  He has some rather specific negative things to say about First World economic and colonial empire, as well as multinational corporations.

I have to say the Buckyheads usually steer pretty clear of this territory, frequently preferring Happy Face Global Development in the Tom Friedman model.  Buckyheads also tend to be averse to (if not "above") electoral politics, conflict in general or anything that might preclude a person from taking grant money for the local Dymaxion Global Partners in Happy Trade Dome and Expo Learning Center for Kids from Exxon-Mobil.

For those with the stomach for breaking social eggs to make economic omelets, the book and video make excellent starting points.

How mean are the ‘conservatives’ over at the Heritage Foundation?

Mean enough to rough up young, small women on bicycles.

This is the sort of thing that needs to be exploited to maximum effect.  This joker and the HF should never be taken seriously again, and this sort of incident (along with the Bill O’Reilly nonsense and Rush Limbaugh pill binging) need to be thrown in the face of every conservative commentator who attempts to mount a high horse.  It’s not even lying, these people really are this vile.

Who has the gonads to use this?

Link to article.

Sen. John McCain, interviewed on CBS’s "The Early Show," maintained that "one of the very big mistakes early on was that he didn’t have enough troops on the ground, particularly after the initial victory, and that’s still the case."

Sen. John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic opponent in last year’s presidential election, told NBC’s "Today" show that the borders of Iraq "are porous" and said "we don’t have enough troops" there.

Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., appearing on ABC’s "Good Morning America," disputed Bush’s notion that sufficient troops are in place.

"I’m going to send him the phone numbers of the very generals and flag officers that I met on Memorial Day when I was in Iraq," the Delaware Democrat said. "There’s not enough force on the ground now to mount a real counterinsurgency."

Biden argued, "The course that we are on now is not a course of success. He (Bush) has to get more folks involved. He has to stand up that army more quickly."

This is in response to recent polls showing a majority of Americans favoring a withdrawal from Iraq.  In other words, these 3 chuckleheads - including the recent and possible future Democratic presidential nominees - have managed to stake out a position on Iraq which is both more dangerous and less popular than that of George W. Bush.

Incidentally, here are some links to what the American-directed "real counterinsurgencies" called for by the ‘liberal’ Biden have looked like in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Angola, East Timor and what at times seems like half of the goddamn world.

Just a reminder, here is the Green Party of Philadelphia website.  New members always encouraged.  You’re welcome.

Nike has stolen Minor Threat/ Dischord cover art for an ad campaign.

This one is too good to be true: some libertarian-leaning folks are attempting to seize and destroy Justice David Souter’s home to make way for a hotel/museum as an eminent domain ‘economic development’ project.  It couldn’t happen to a better target and one hopes the other 4 justices who voted for this enormity will be similarly afflicted.  Perhaps once judges fear the real-life consequences of their decisions they will think a little more about how those decisions affect regular people of humble means.

Apparently no statement is too outrageous to make for the sycophants over at MoveOn when the topic is Democratic Party ‘leadership.’

After being dressed down by syndicated liberal columnist Norman Solomon for abandoning their anti-war base, and following recent polling that as many as 60% of Americans of all political backgrounds want out of Iraq, the Silicon Valley millionaires who run the site have decided to start mentioning Iraq again.

I really do have to quote this dispatch from MoveOn dated June 23:

‘Should we work together in a major campaign to get Democrats and Republicans in Congress on board with a responsible exit plan? Or should we focus on other issues, either in Iraq or here at home?"

Well, if that isn’t leadership I don’t know what is.  After raising millions of dollars from anti-war Americans and organizing millions of people for a slate of candidates who wished to raise 40,000 additional troops for war last year (while doubling Special Forces), MoveOn is now wondering aloud whether or not to do anything about Iraq now that a majority of the public is finally on our side!

It gets ‘better,’ from the same dispatch:

“Polling shows that nearly 60% of Americans say they oppose the Iraq war—including half who say it was a mistake. At the same time, Republican critics of the war grow by the day. Democrats are beginning to speak out. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called Iraq a "grotesque mistake" and Senate Leader Harry Reid called Bush policy, "disconnected from the reality on the ground."

None of that has stopped Pelosi from directing the House Democrats to vote overwhelmingly (we’re talking a 20:1 ratio here) in favor of the Bush war budget, Bush Homeland Security budget, Bush special Iraq-specific war appropriations bill and Bush intelligence budget.  Scroll down in this very blog for the gruesome details.  This is "beginning to speak out?"  Spare me.

Anti-choice zealot Senator Reid (D-NV) has also voted for these appropriations, and in fact the entire complement of Democratic Senators voted unanimously in favor of the FY 2006 Bush war budget with a rider that pushes this country to establish a national ID card for its own citizens.  The painful details surrounding that are also available in this blog, below.

Even more damning, Pelosi just voted against a milquetoast Iraq resolution request which the House defeated 128-300.  She countered with an even weaker fence-sitting proposal of her own, which I’ll allow her own press release to describe:

"“Specifically, my amendment would require that the President, within 30 days of the enactment of the defense appropriations bill, submit to Congress a report identifying the criteria that will be used to determine when it is appropriate to begin to bring our troops home from Iraq. It does not require the troops to be brought home by a particular date; it requires only that the means for judging when they can be brought home be shared with the Congress." (emphasis mine)

Keep in mind that this woman is supposed to be providing leadership in an opposition party.  She can’t bring herself to do that even after the public opinion tide has already turned.

The primary "speaking out" Pelosi has done lately regarding the Middle East has been to join in threatening Iran-with-a-terminal-N, that problematic larger Muslim country east of Iraq,  on behalf of Israel, which she did before the powerful foreign lobby AIPAC.  Some might question the parlaimentarian leader of a major political party giving a lauditory speech to a group currently facing espionage charges against her own country, but not Pelosi.  Some of her charming prose:

"There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist."

Holy cow.  That would sure be news to Israeli peace groups who insist that the occupation is the issue.  It gets better; we need a scapegoat:

"The greatest threat to Israel’s right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran. For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology."

Iran poses no such threat to Israel,not that this should be, in any event, the driving force behind US foreign policy.  It is, in fact, Israel which has the capability of incinerating all of Iran’s population centers with nuclear weapons.  In fact a charming Israeli hawk saying noting this runs "The Arabs have the oil, but we have the match!"  Hardy-har.  (For the record, Iranians aren’t even Arabs.)  Considering this and the fact that the U.S., with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, has already overthrown an elected Iranian government, one can hardly react with surprise that Iran wants a toy of their own.

Pelosi reaffirms her allegiance to a foreign power:

"America’s commitment to the safety and security of the State of Israel is unwavering.   America and Israel share an unbreakable bond: in peace and war; and in prosperity and in hardship."

This wasn’t quite enough:

"In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel ‘as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.’  The United States will stand with Israel now and forever. Now and forever."

Lower curtain, cue applause.

Pelosi shared the stage with evil neo-con Richard Perle and the disgusting carpetbagging Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton (D-IL/AR/DC/NY): read on if you dare.

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Also of interest is this item, posted on Answers.com, on the relationship between MoveOn and Groundswell Sierra:

MoveOn has also thrown its unquestioning support to a group called "Groundswell Sierra," which advocates that the Sierra Club moderate its positions to appeal to the center-right, opposes board candidates with the most progressive positions such as Ed Dobson and Karyn Strickler (2004) and Jim Bensman (2005), and endorses conservative candidates for the Sierra Club board, including an elected Republican official from North Carolina. This would seem to contradict Wes Boyd’s own statements.