Another Angle

Obama With A Whip

2009-02-19T10:33:00.004-05:00

Time to start leading with a whip and a clenched fist.

I am so sick of reading about why The Obama Administration is afraid of this and how the don't want to upset that. They lost and it's time to pay the butcher's bill.

If McCain had won and the republicans had the numbers we have, don't you think...wait, we know how the would lead. And it's not about getting even.

If what we think is true about the economy, if what we know is true about our position in the world, if what we know is true about the condition of our education system, and on and on, we don't have the luxury of massaging hurt egos of the Republicans. Think about it, they have Governors who are actually posturing about the stimulus money. They, politically, don't have a clue. They never have cared about the state of the American people, and now in their frenzy to get power back, they show everyone just who they really are.

Booby Jindal Governor of Louisiana, one of the top states as far as poverty is concerned, I believe, and where folk are still trying to recover from Katrina, ACTUALLY said he might refuse the stimulus money. Keep giving us campaign commercials Booby.

This administration needs to follow their gut and do whats right for all of us. Ignore ignorance. Ignore backward thinking. Ignore the Republican party. Hitch them up to your wagon and run them until they bleed from every orifice.

I'm Back

2009-02-17T13:43:00.002-05:00

Someone once said, take a break. Clear your head. Maybe go on a vacation.

Well, I took a break. In the midst of clearing my head so I could plan a vacation, I ran face first into an election. But not just any election, the biggest, most anticipated one since I've been around.

And unless you've been on another planet, you know which one I speak of. While doing my little part, I met a lot of tremendous people. Young and old. Of all colors and creeds. And with the anger and enthusiasm like I haven't seen since an April day in 1968 right before all hell broke loose in Avondale(little hometown reference).

We have done something that many of us never thought they would see. But now that it's done, now that all the swearing in, parades, and dancing is done reality is sinking in.

The rethuglicans are who they always were, only wounded and desperate. So desperate their mouthpiece says he wants to see President Obama fail. Now as much as I knew Bush to be a poser and benefactor of theft, I never wanted him to fail. Knew he would but didn't want it. You see, now we know what the phrase "failure is not an option" means. This is where we end up having a failure for president.

So over the last few weeks we have seen rethugs try their darndest toturn an already too small Stimulus into a relic of their past. Laden with tax cuts for wealthy. Well in a move, the likes of which we are just beginning to see, Obama and the Democratic Senators gave them what Obama had already promised to do. And they have nerve to trumpet their victory

Well now is the time to gear up for the next battle. The battle to rid our counrty of these relics of the past. Time to send them packing, never to return. For in the last few weeks they have shown themselves to not have the best interest of the people. So in my opinion, it's time for them to disappear.

Electing Obama was step one. The next step is making rethugs a footnote in history. And I say the sooner the better.

It' My Birthday...

2008-08-03T15:07:00.002-04:00

Here's The King, Stevie Wonder on his birthday.

They're Out There...And They're Weird!!!

2008-07-31T22:24:00.002-04:00

From The Randi Rhodes Radio Program on 7/30/2008. I was listening and laughing my ass off!

The only problem is he's not alone with that line of thinking. Truly tired!

Is This Why So Many Are Denied Their Disability Claims

2008-07-30T22:49:00.003-04:00

Richard Viguerie: Bush White House Hides True Scope of Federal Deficit

MANASSAS, Va., July 29, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ --

The following is a statement by Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, regarding the White House projection of a $482 billion deficit for Fiscal Year 2009:

"The White House has issued figures indicating that President Bush and his enablers in Congress will leave his successor with a budget deficit of $482 Billion for Fiscal Year 2009, which is a record.

How's that for a legacy?

"As shocking as this deficit figure is, that's still not the true scope of our budget woes because it excludes $80 billion in war costs and $227 billion borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund.

"The real budget deficit is therefore $789 billion.

"Under accounting trickery that would probably land the top officers of a publicly traded company in jail, the money borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund -- and spent on anything and everything except Social Security payments -- is not counted towards the budget deficit, although it is part of our $9.49 Trillion National Debt.

"It's way past time for Washington politicians to have their own Sarbanes-Oxley.

"But this is how corrupt Washington has become. Besides the dangerous practice of massive deficit spending, which will saddle our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars of debt, the Bush White House and Congress are conspiring to conceal the true nature and scope of the problem.

"This year's budget deficit will actually be $307 billion worse than the politicians are saying. This fraud on the American people is a conspiracy of silence by both major political parties.

"In stunning hypocrisy, the White House blamed the record budget deficit on the slowing economy and the $150 billion stimulus package passed earlier this year.

"No, Mr. President, the buck stops with you. Stand up and accept the responsibility -- and your legacy -- for massively expanding government."

Taser-Related Death

2008-07-30T17:44:00.001-04:00

Statesville suspect dies
after Taser hits in jail

At least two officers are put on administrative duty until SBI can complete its investigation.

By Victoria Cherrie

vcherrie@charlotteobserver.com

Anthony Davidson

A Statesville man died after being shocked multiple times by Tasers at the Iredell County jail over the weekend, sources say.

Anthony Davidson, 29, was unresponsive when he was taken to Iredell Memorial Hospital Saturday afternoon. He was put on life support and died late Sunday night, police said.

His death is the second Taser-related death this year in the Charlotte area. In March, 17-year-old Darryl Wayne Turner, died after Charlotte-Mecklenburg police used a Taser on him at a Food Lion store in Charlotte.

The officers involved in Davidson's arrest – at least two from the Statesville Police Department – were put on administrative duty until the State Bureau of Investigation completes a probe into the incident.

Assistant Chief Tom Anderson of the Statesville Police Department said he was unaware how many officers or deputies may have fired their Tasers and the duration of the shocks.

But a source familiar with the investigation told the Observer that Davidson was shocked at least three times by several different law enforcement officers. Family members told the Observer that police said he had been shocked at least twice.

The incident began about 3 p.m. Saturday at a Statesville grocery store. Employees at the Food Lion on N.C. 115 told police they tried unsuccessfully to stop Davidson from leaving the store with a full cart of groceries after his debit card was declined. He left the parking lot without the groceries, police said.

When officers caught up with Davidson a short time later, he was carrying an Applebee's gift card from the store that hadn't been paid for, Anderson said.

Officers took Davidson to the Iredell County Jail where he appeared before a magistrate on a larceny charge. Davidson was behaving abnormally from the time officers first encountered him, Anderson said.

While being booked, Davidson became “physically aggressive and was communicating loudly,” Anderson said. That's when officers used one or more Tasers to get him “back under control,” police said.

A nurse who screened Davidson afterward told officers he needed further medical screening because he appeared to be “under the influence of some type of impairing substance.”

Paramedics took Davidson to the hospital Saturday. His condition continued to decline and he was unresponsive when he arrived, Anderson said. He was admitted to intensive care and was taken off life support about 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

Statesville police and the sheriff's office are reviewing the incident internally to determine whether the arresting officers followed procedures. The sheriff's office did not return phone calls Monday.

Davidson, who was unemployed, had been in jail previously – mostly on charges such as possessing marijuana, simple assault and misdemeanor larceny, all of which were dropped by a district attorney, according to court documents. In 1999 and again in 2000, he was found guilty of violating a domestic violence protective order. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to driving while impaired, documents show.

Davidson's family said they weren't aware of him using or having a problem with drugs or alcohol.

“He was a very happy, joyful person – the life of the party type of person who lit up a room when he walked in,” said his uncle, Jerry Moore. “Whether he used or had used substances, we don't know.”

They said police told them Davidson fell while being subdued and may have hit his head.

An autopsy is scheduled later this week, Moore said.

Last month, the officer involved in the Charlotte Taser incident was cleared of criminal charges but was suspended for five days for violating the department's policy when he continuously shocked Darryl Turner for 37 seconds, a factor that contributed to his death.

A Taser is a weapon that typically uses compressed nitrogen to shoot two tethered needle-like probes that penetrate skin and deliver an electric shock. It's designed to temporarily subdue a person. Studies suggest that multiple shocks might increase the risk of serious injury, which has prompted some agencies to limit the number of times an officer can shock someone.

Officers are taught to pull and immediately release the Taser trigger to deliver a five-second shock. They may repeatedly pull the trigger in extreme circumstances when necessary to control a suspect. But the goal is to use the minimal force necessary to control a suspect, Anderson said.

Taser-related deaths across North Carolina prompted a coalition to study Taser use. The N.C. Taser Safety Project surveyed the state's 100 sheriff's offices and found that 70 issued Tasers to some or all of its deputies, but many agencies lack clear policies about when and how they should be used.

New York's Finest

2008-07-30T17:43:00.001-04:00

ANOTHER ANGLE 30 - 07 - 08

2008-07-30T14:36:00.002-04:00

ANOTHER ANGLE
News others won't tell you

NATIONAL:

Obama says he'll order review of executive orders (AP)
Barack Obama told House Democrats on Tuesday that as president he would order his attorney general to scour White House executive orders and expunge any that "trample on liberty."

McCain Fails McCain’s Commander-in-Chief Test
Sadly, when it comes to the war in Iraq, it is the Arizona Republican who failed his own commander-in-chief exam. At almost every turn in the run-up to the invasion and the ensuing American occupation, McCain’s judgment was almost always wrong, often disastrously so. From his predictions of a short war, claims U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators and that the U.S. would find weapons of mass destruction to his announcements of mission accomplished, his ongoing confusion over friend and foe in Iraq and so much more, John McCain the would-be wartime president gets failing marks.
Another McCain Involved In Bank Collapse?
Another McCain Gaffe?

Aide to U.S. Senator Jim Webb found dead from apparent gunshot wound

Caught on tape: Army recruiters threaten high school students
Army recruiters aren’t sticking to the program and are bullying and even lying to potential recruits and their families to keep them from dropping out.

Top Advisor to U.S. Military Confirms The War on Terror Is a Hoax: "There is No Battlefield Solution to Terrorism"

A leading advisor to the U.S. military, the Rand Corporation, just released a new study called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida".

The report confirms what we have been saying for years: the war on terror is a hoax which is actually weakening national security (see this, this and this).

As today's press release about the study states:

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."

Can we drop the "war on terror" charade now?

Pelosi Says She Would Impeach Bush If Somebody Knew of a Crime He'd Committed

INTERNATIONAL:

Haiti: Mud cakes become staple diet as cost of food soars beyond a family's reach
In Cité Soleil, one of Port-au-Prince's worst slums, making the clay-based food is a major income earner. Mud cakes are the only inflation-proof food available to Haiti's poor.

Brittle and gritty - and as revolting as they sound - these are "mud cakes". For years they have been consumed by impoverished pregnant women seeking calcium, a risky and medically unproven supplement, but now the cakes have become a staple for entire families.

The only thing stopping an exodus are US coastguard patrols, said Herman Janvier, 30, a fishermen on Cap Haitian, a smuggling point. "People want out of here. It's like we're almost dead people."

Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
Gazprom, Russia's energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on Friday outlining a new scheme for purchase of Turkmen gas. The first one elaborates the price formation principles that will be guiding the Russian gas purchase from Turkmenistan during the next 20-year period. The second agreement is a unique one, making Gazprom the donor for local Turkmen energy projects. In essence, the two agreements ensure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports.

BUSH CRIME FAMILY:

Bush Reveals True Reason for War in Push for Iraqi Agreement
All this was laid bare this month as the Iraqi government went on the offensive in its call for U.S. withdrawal by 2010. Far from embracing the desires of a sovereign Iraq, the White House instead feebly attempted to claim Prime Minister Maliki's statement was mistranslated, while the McCain camp argued that Iraqi's really want the U.S. to stay until 2020. Apparently their view of a "free Iraq" is an Iraq that is free to do what we tell them to do.

OP-ED:

Black moments in White continuum
Recently a friend told me there was no such animal as a "white moment." What whites do is a normal part of their system. "How can you call it a moment? It’s the way American society functions," she said. Since then I rephrased white moments into white continuum. There’s more to it than we can see with our eyes. It’s a unified spiritual connection they have with each other that shaped their thought patterns and this has worked for them for hundreds of years. Constant mental focus in many individual white Americans has created an unseemed thread between them that has manifested itself into material reality.

ECONOMY:

Economy hitting the elderly especially hard
“We’re having to put people on waiting lists for home-delivered meals, and we have a waiting list for air conditioners.

SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY:

'Laser jumbo' testing moves ahead
According to an American Physical Society report in 2004, the Airborne Laser could shoot down a typical liquid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from up to 600km away.

HEALTH&FITNESS:

"The Business of Being Born" Documentary

Watch the ad-Media Matters

2008-07-29T22:35:00.000-04:00

What Ya Listening TO?

2008-07-29T02:35:00.001-04:00

Jean Luc Ponty

Memories of Music Past

2008-07-27T15:46:00.004-04:00

Four Cuts from a band I first saw live on the campus of Bowling Green State University in 1972, musical genius.

The first piece is from French TV. And it's the only footage I've ever seen of the first band.

I present YES

Jesse, Thank God for Wide Stance Blessings

2008-07-17T22:35:00.001-04:00

Sen Larry Craig: Don’t let foreigners “jerk us around by the gas nozzle”

Download | Play Download | Play

Tom Tommorrow

2008-07-16T22:32:00.000-04:00

The internets are full of declarative statements about satire these days, the most common of which being that "satire does not work unless it portrays its intended target."

So let's consider this image:

Clearly this cartoon doesn't work at all, because there is no way for the reader to understand that its intended target was not Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden themselves. So let's see what we can do to clarify things:

That makes the intention of the cartoon clearer -- but there's still room for improvement.

There! That's much better! But maybe, just to be safe, we should take it one step further:

Okay then! With no room for misinterpretation whatsoever -- that's comedy gold!

Remember: satire does not work unless it literally portrays the intended target!

Another Angle 11 - 7 - 08

2008-07-11T20:46:00.000-04:00

IndyMac fails
On July 11, 2008, IndyMac Bank, F.S.B., Pasadena, CA was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named Conservator. All non-brokered insured deposit accounts and substantially all of the assets of IndyMac Bank, F.S.B. have been transferred to IndyMac Federal Bank, F.S.B. (IndyMac Federal Bank), Pasadena, CA ("assuming institution") a newly chartered full-service FDIC-insured institution. No advance notice is given to the public when a financial institution is closed.

But We are Whiners, right?
'Whiners?' Phil Gramm is a pimp for corporate criminals

Brown blunders in pledge to secure Nigeria oil
Gordon Brown is being accused of preparing for a military adventure in Africa after he pledged to provide backing to the Nigerian security forces. His announcement prompted the collapse of a ceasefire in the oil-rich Niger Delta and helped to drive up crude oil prices on world markets.

ACLU Challenges Unconstitutional Spying Law
What I ask you to remember is this...When Sen. Obama announced he would try to strip the immunity provision from the bill but would vote for it otherwise, he made a telling statement. He said it was a poorly written law. That signaled his strategy on this. He cannot get bogged down with a fight over something that WILL NOT pass constitutional muster. Now here come the folk that will make it go away.

Keep focused and keep fighting!

Gay-Bashing Alabama A.G. Caught Having Gay Sex?
What are the odds of a dude named Troy King getting caught in bed with a Homecoming King from Troy University? This seems like a wacky sitcom plot, on a gay porn channel. (Is this what Will & Grace was about?)

Iran's "provocative missile test"
If it were not so serious, it would be laughable that the USA accuses Iran of being provocative in testing a missile. Our government-controlled BBC shows a map with a potential threat to all countries within 2400 kilometres, as if the Iranians want to attack every country possible.

As provocation, I would have thought that a much better example was the approval recently given by the US Congress for a USD 400 million package for clandestine operations against Iran.
Ron Paul *Iranians Tested Missiles AFTER Israel had WAR GAMES!

Flashback: 2004 Bush Interview Banned In America - An Insight Into Insanity
This 2004 interview should be required viewing for every journalism student. I admit that I had not seen this video until today, but apparently over a million people already have and I hope that millions more will watch it as well.

René Marie~Thanks,But I Don't Dance

2008-07-06T14:24:00.002-04:00

It appears that this Sista has a large body of recorded work. How would I know I live in CincyNasty. The information black hole of the Multiverse. Yes Margaret,there are more than ours.

So in keeping with this site's tradition of throwing some serious jams at you....

	Birth of a Groove Listen in as René and her band work up a new tune, "You Can't See Me."
	Making It Live Hear what happens when René tries her new tune in public for the first time.
	Love for Sale Watch video of René and the band rehearsing the Cole Porter classic.
	Inspired by Ella Visit the inspiration page to hear René mimic jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

Thanks to NPR.

So while others try to trash her, we take a good look at a great talent.

I'm In Love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-07-06T13:53:00.001-04:00

Renee Marie was invited to sing the National Anthem at a state ceremony this week. Click the video to see what happened.

Preparing the Battlefield

2008-06-30T15:33:00.001-04:00

The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.

By Seymour M. Hersh

29/06/08 "New Yorker" -- -- Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

“The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.

The request for funding came in the same period in which the Administration was coming to terms with a National Intelligence Estimate, released in December, that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003. The Administration downplayed the significance of the N.I.E., and, while saying that it was committed to diplomacy, continued to emphasize that urgent action was essential to counter the Iranian nuclear threat. President Bush questioned the N.I.E.’s conclusions, and senior national-security officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made similar statements. (So did Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee.) Meanwhile, the Administration also revived charges that the Iranian leadership has been involved in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq: both directly, by dispatching commando units into Iraq, and indirectly, by supplying materials used for roadside bombs and other lethal goods. (There have been questions about the accuracy of the claims; the Times, among others, has reported that “significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement.”)

Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders”—the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world—“have weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”

Admiral Fallon acknowledged, when I spoke to him in June, that he had heard that there were people in the White House who were upset by his public statements. “Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” he told me. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”

When it came to the Iraq war, Fallon said, “Did I bitch about some of the things that were being proposed? You bet. Some of them were very stupid.”

The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. “The oversight process has not kept pace—it’s been coöpted” by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.”

Senior Democrats in Congress told me that they had concerns about the possibility that their understanding of what the new operations entail differs from the White House’s. One issue has to do with a reference in the Finding, the person familiar with it recalled, to potential defensive lethal action by U.S. operatives in Iran. (In early May, the journalist Andrew Cockburn published elements of the Finding in Counterpunch, a newsletter and online magazine.)

The language was inserted into the Finding at the urging of the C.I.A., a former senior intelligence official said. The covert operations set forth in the Finding essentially run parallel to those of a secret military task force, now operating in Iran, that is under the control of JSOC. Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference. But the borders between operations are not always clear: in Iran, C.I.A. agents and regional assets have the language skills and the local knowledge to make contacts for the JSOC operatives, and have been working with them to direct personnel, matériel, and money into Iran from an obscure base in western Afghanistan. As a result, Congress has been given only a partial view of how the money it authorized may be used. One of JSOC’s task-force missions, the pursuit of “high-value targets,” was not directly addressed in the Finding. There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.

“This is a big deal,” the person familiar with the Finding said. “The C.I.A. needed the Finding to do its traditional stuff, but the Finding does not apply to JSOC. The President signed an Executive Order after September 11th giving the Pentagon license to do things that it had never been able to do before without notifying Congress. The claim was that the military was ‘preparing the battle space,’ and by using that term they were able to circumvent congressional oversight. Everything is justified in terms of fighting the global war on terror.” He added, “The Administration has been fuzzing the lines; there used to be a shade of gray”—between operations that had to be briefed to the senior congressional leadership and those which did not—“but now it’s a shade of mush.”

“The agency says we’re not going to get in the position of helping to kill people without a Finding,” the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the legal threat confronting some agency operatives for their involvement in the rendition and alleged torture of suspects in the war on terror. “This drove the military people up the wall,” he said. As far as the C.I.A. was concerned, the former senior intelligence official said, “the over-all authorization includes killing, but it’s not as though that’s what they’re setting out to do. It’s about gathering information, enlisting support.” The Finding sent to Congress was a compromise, providing legal cover for the C.I.A. while referring to the use of lethal force in ambiguous terms.

The defensive-lethal language led some Democrats, according to congressional sources familiar with their views, to call in the director of the C.I.A., Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, for a special briefing. Hayden reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm.

The legislators were far from convinced. One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that “no lethal action, period” had been authorized within Iran’s borders. As of June, he had received no answer.

Members of Congress have expressed skepticism in the past about the information provided by the White House. On March 15, 2005, David Obey, then the ranking Democrat on the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee, announced that he was putting aside an amendment that he had intended to offer that day, and that would have cut off all funding for national-intelligence programs unless the President agreed to keep Congress fully informed about clandestine military activities undertaken in the war on terror. He had changed his mind, he said, because the White House promised better coöperation. “The Executive Branch understands that we are not trying to dictate what they do,” he said in a floor speech at the time. “We are simply trying to see to it that what they do is consistent with American values and will not get the country in trouble.”

Obey declined to comment on the specifics of the operations in Iran, but he did tell me that the White House reneged on its promise to consult more fully with Congress. He said, “I suspect there’s something going on, but I don’t know what to believe. Cheney has always wanted to go after Iran, and if he had more time he’d find a way to do it. We still don’t get enough information from the agencies, and I have very little confidence that they give us information on the edge.”

None of the four Democrats in the Gang of Eight—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes—would comment on the Finding, with some noting that it was highly classified. An aide to one member of the Democratic leadership responded, on his behalf, by pointing to the limitations of the Gang of Eight process. The notification of a Finding, the aide said, “is just that—notification, and not a sign-off on activities. Proper oversight of ongoing intelligence activities is done by fully briefing the members of the intelligence committee.” However, Congress does have the means to challenge the White House once it has been sent a Finding. It has the power to withhold funding for any government operation. The members of the House and Senate Democratic leadership who have access to the Finding can also, if they choose to do so, and if they have shared concerns, come up with ways to exert their influence on Administration policy. (A spokesman for the C.I.A. said, “As a rule, we don’t comment one way or the other on allegations of covert activities or purported findings.” The White House also declined to comment.)

A member of the House Appropriations Committee acknowledged that, even with a Democratic victory in November, “it will take another year before we get the intelligence activities under control.” He went on, “We control the money and they can’t do anything without the money. Money is what it’s all about. But I’m very leery of this Administration.” He added, “This Administration has been so secretive.”

One irony of Admiral Fallon’s departure is that he was, in many areas, in agreement with President Bush on the threat posed by Iran. They had a good working relationship, Fallon told me, and, when he ran CENTCOM, were in regular communication. On March 4th, a week before his resignation, Fallon testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying that he was “encouraged” about the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the role played by Iran’s leaders, he said, “They’ve been absolutely unhelpful, very damaging, and I absolutely don’t condone any of their activities. And I have yet to see anything since I’ve been in this job in the way of a public action by Iran that’s been at all helpful in this region.”

Fallon made it clear in our conversations that he considered it inappropriate to comment publicly about the President, the Vice-President, or Special Operations. But he said he had heard that people in the White House had been “struggling” with his views on Iran. “When I arrived at CENTCOM, the Iranians were funding every entity inside Iraq. It was in their interest to get us out, and so they decided to kill as many Americans as they could. And why not? They didn’t know who’d come out ahead, but they wanted us out. I decided that I couldn’t resolve the situation in Iraq without the neighborhood. To get this problem in Iraq solved, we had to somehow involve Iran and Syria. I had to work the neighborhood.”

Fallon told me that his focus had been not on the Iranian nuclear issue, or on regime change there, but on “putting out the fires in Iraq.” There were constant discussions in Washington and in the field about how to engage Iran and, on the subject of the bombing option, Fallon said, he believed that “it would happen only if the Iranians did something stupid.”

Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility. One of Fallon’s defenders is retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, whose last assignment was as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, where Fallon was a deputy. Last year, Sheehan rejected a White House offer to become the President’s “czar” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “One of the reasons the White House selected Fallon for CENTCOM was that he’s known to be a strategic thinker and had demonstrated those skills in the Pacific,” Sheehan told me. (Fallon served as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 2005 to 2007.) “He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O.”—area of operations. “That was not happening,” Sheehan said. “When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”

The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

“The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations,” Sheehan said. “If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can’t have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.”

Admiral Fallon, who is known as Fox, was aware that he would face special difficulties as the first Navy officer to lead CENTCOM, which had always been headed by a ground commander, one of his military colleagues told me. He was also aware that the Special Operations community would be a concern. “Fox said that there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing,” Fallon’s colleague said. “The Special Ops guys eventually figured out they needed Fox, and so they began to talk to him. Fox would have won his fight with Special Ops but for Cheney.”

The Pentagon consultant said, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”

In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit JSOC or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership. The Iranian press reports are being carefully monitored by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities. The Iranian press “is very open in describing the killings going on inside the country,” Gardiner said. It is, he said, “a controlled press, which makes it more important that it publishes these things. We begin to see inside the government.” He added, “Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere. There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.”

Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, and the Iranian government acknowledged that an explosion in a cultural center in Shiraz, in the southern part of the country, which killed at least twelve people and injured more than two hundred, had been a terrorist act and not, as it earlier insisted, an accident. It could not be learned whether there has been American involvement in any specific incident in Iran, but, according to Gardiner, the Iranians have begun publicly blaming the U.S., Great Britain, and, more recently, the C.I.A. for some incidents. The agency was involved in a coup in Iran in 1953, and its support for the unpopular regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi—who was overthrown in 1979—was condemned for years by the ruling mullahs in Tehran, to great effect. “This is the ultimate for the Iranians—to blame the C.I.A.,” Gardiner said. “This is new, and it’s an escalation—a ratcheting up of tensions. It rallies support for the regime and shows the people that there is a continuing threat from the ‘Great Satan.’ ” In Gardiner’s view, the violence, rather than weakening Iran’s religious government, may generate support for it.

Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field. One problem with “passing money” (to use the term of the person familiar with the Finding) in a covert setting is that it is hard to control where the money goes and whom it benefits. Nonetheless, the former senior intelligence official said, “We’ve got exposure, because of the transfer of our weapons and our communications gear. The Iranians will be able to make the argument that the opposition was inspired by the Americans. How many times have we tried this without asking the right questions? Is the risk worth it?” One possible consequence of these operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush Administration a reason to intervene.

A strategy of using ethnic minorities to undermine Iran is flawed, according to Vali Nasr, who teaches international politics at Tufts University and is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue,” Nasr told me. “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran.” The minority groups that the U.S. is reaching out to are either well integrated or small and marginal, without much influence on the government or much ability to present a political challenge, Nasr said. “You can always find some activist groups that will go and kill a policeman, but working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.”

The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.

The C.I.A. and Special Operations communities also have long-standing ties to two other dissident groups in Iran: the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K., and a Kurdish separatist group, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK.

The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

The Kurdish party, PJAK, which has also been reported to be covertly supported by the United States, has been operating against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for at least three years. (Iran, like Iraq and Turkey, has a Kurdish minority, and PJAK and other groups have sought self-rule in territory that is now part of each of those countries.) In recent weeks, according to Sam Gardiner, the military strategist, there has been a marked increase in the number of PJAK armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets. In early June, the news agency Fars reported that a dozen PJAK members and four Iranian border guards were killed in a clash near the Iraq border; a similar attack in May killed three Revolutionary Guards and nine PJAK fighters. PJAK has also subjected Turkey, a member of NATO, to repeated terrorist attacks, and reports of American support for the group have been a source of friction between the two governments.

Gardiner also mentioned a trip that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made to Tehran in June. After his return, Maliki announced that his government would ban any contact between foreigners and the M.E.K.—a slap at the U.S.’s dealings with the group. Maliki declared that Iraq was not willing to be a staging ground for covert operations against other countries. This was a sign, Gardiner said, of “Maliki’s increasingly choosing the interests of Iraq over the interests of the United States.” In terms of U.S. allegations of Iranian involvement in the killing of American soldiers, he said, “Maliki was unwilling to play the blame-Iran game.” Gardiner added that Pakistan had just agreed to turn over a Jundallah leader to the Iranian government. America’s covert operations, he said, “seem to be harming relations with the governments of both Iraq and Pakistan and could well be strengthening the connection between Tehran and Baghdad.”

The White House’s reliance on questionable operatives, and on plans involving possible lethal action inside Iran, has created anger as well as anxiety within the Special Operations and intelligence communities. JSOC’s operations in Iran are believed to be modelled on a program that has, with some success, used surrogates to target the Taliban leadership in the tribal territories of Waziristan, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But the situations in Waziristan and Iran are not comparable.

In Waziristan, “the program works because it’s small and smart guys are running it,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “It’s being executed by professionals. The N.S.A., the C.I.A., and the D.I.A.”—the Defense Intelligence Agency—“are right in there with the Special Forces and Pakistani intelligence, and they’re dealing with serious bad guys.” He added, “We have to be really careful in calling in the missiles. We have to hit certain houses at certain times. The people on the ground are watching through binoculars a few hundred yards away and calling specific locations, in latitude and longitude. We keep the Predator loitering until the targets go into a house, and we have to make sure our guys are far enough away so they don’t get hit.” One of the most prominent victims of the program, the former official said, was Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior Taliban commander, who was killed on January 31st, reportedly in a missile strike that also killed eleven other people.

A dispatch published on March 26th by the Washington Post reported on the increasing number of successful strikes against Taliban and other insurgent units in Pakistan’s tribal areas. A follow-up article noted that, in response, the Taliban had killed “dozens of people” suspected of providing information to the United States and its allies on the whereabouts of Taliban leaders. Many of the victims were thought to be American spies, and their executions—a beheading, in one case—were videotaped and distributed by DVD as a warning to others.

It is not simple to replicate the program in Iran. “Everybody’s arguing about the high-value-target list,” the former senior intelligence official said. “The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney’s office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.”

The Pentagon consultant told me, “We’ve had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags—basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics. And we’re beginning to tie them in knots in Afghanistan. But the White House is going to kill the program if they use it to go after Iran. It’s one thing to engage in selective strikes and assassinations in Waziristan and another in Iran. The White House believes that one size fits all, but the legal issues surrounding extrajudicial killings in Waziristan are less of a problem because Al Qaeda and the Taliban cross the border into Afghanistan and back again, often with U.S. and NATO forces in hot pursuit. The situation is not nearly as clear in the Iranian case. All the considerations—judicial, strategic, and political—are different in Iran.”

He added, “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates. The leaders of our Special Operations community all have remarkable physical courage, but they are less likely to voice their opposition to policy. Iran is not Waziristan.”

A Gallup poll taken last November, before the N.I.E. was made public, found that seventy-three per cent of those surveyed thought that the United States should use economic action and diplomacy to stop Iran’s nuclear program, while only eighteen per cent favored direct military action. Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to endorse a military strike. Weariness with the war in Iraq has undoubtedly affected the public’s tolerance for an attack on Iran. This mood could change quickly, however. The potential for escalation became clear in early January, when five Iranian patrol boats, believed to be under the command of the Revolutionary Guard, made a series of aggressive moves toward three Navy warships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. Initial reports of the incident made public by the Pentagon press office said that the Iranians had transmitted threats, over ship-to-ship radio, to “explode” the American ships. At a White House news conference, the President, on the day he left for an eight-day trip to the Middle East, called the incident “provocative” and “dangerous,” and there was, very briefly, a sense of crisis and of outrage at Iran. “TWO MINUTES FROM WAR” was the headline in one British newspaper.

The crisis was quickly defused by Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region. No warning shots were fired, the Admiral told the Pentagon press corps on January 7th, via teleconference from his headquarters, in Bahrain. “Yes, it’s more serious than we have seen, but, to put it in context, we do interact with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their Navy regularly,” Cosgriff said. “I didn’t get the sense from the reports I was receiving that there was a sense of being afraid of these five boats.”

Admiral Cosgriff’s caution was well founded: within a week, the Pentagon acknowledged that it could not positively identify the Iranian boats as the source of the ominous radio transmission, and press reports suggested that it had instead come from a prankster long known for sending fake messages in the region. Nonetheless, Cosgriff’s demeanor angered Cheney, according to the former senior intelligence official. But a lesson was learned in the incident: The public had supported the idea of retaliation, and was even asking why the U.S. didn’t do more. The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. “The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,” he said.

In June, President Bush went on a farewell tour of Europe. He had tea with Queen Elizabeth II and dinner with Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, the President and First Lady of France. The serious business was conducted out of sight, and involved a series of meetings on a new diplomatic effort to persuade the Iranians to halt their uranium-enrichment program. (Iran argues that its enrichment program is for civilian purposes and is legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.) Secretary of State Rice had been involved with developing a new package of incentives. But the Administration’s essential negotiating position seemed unchanged: talks could not take place until Iran halted the program. The Iranians have repeatedly and categorically rejected that precondition, leaving the diplomatic situation in a stalemate; they have not yet formally responded to the new incentives.

The continuing impasse alarms many observers. Joschka Fischer, the former German Foreign Minister, recently wrote in a syndicated column that it may not “be possible to freeze the Iranian nuclear program for the duration of the negotiations to avoid a military confrontation before they are completed. Should this newest attempt fail, things will soon get serious. Deadly serious.” When I spoke to him last week, Fischer, who has extensive contacts in the diplomatic community, said that the latest European approach includes a new element: the willingness of the U.S. and the Europeans to accept something less than a complete cessation of enrichment as an intermediate step. “The proposal says that the Iranians must stop manufacturing new centrifuges and the other side will stop all further sanction activities in the U.N. Security Council,” Fischer said, although Iran would still have to freeze its enrichment activities when formal negotiations begin. “This could be acceptable to the Iranians—if they have good will.”

The big question, Fischer added, is in Washington. “I think the Americans are deeply divided on the issue of what to do about Iran,” he said. “Some officials are concerned about the fallout from a military attack and others think an attack is unavoidable. I know the Europeans, but I have no idea where the Americans will end up on this issue.”

There is another complication: American Presidential politics. Barack Obama has said that, if elected, he would begin talks with Iran with no “self-defeating” preconditions (although only after diplomatic groundwork had been laid). That position has been vigorously criticized by John McCain. The Washington Post recently quoted Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign’s national-security director, as stating that McCain supports the White House’s position, and that the program be suspended before talks begin. What Obama is proposing, Scheunemann said, “is unilateral cowboy summitry.”

Scheunemann, who is known as a neoconservative, is also the McCain campaign’s most important channel of communication with the White House. He is a friend of David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. I have heard differing accounts of Scheunemann’s influence with McCain; though some close to the McCain campaign talk about him as a possible national-security adviser, others say he is someone who isn’t taken seriously while “telling Cheney and others what they want to hear,” as a senior McCain adviser put it.

It is not known whether McCain, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been formally briefed on the operations in Iran. At the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in June, Obama repeated his plea for “tough and principled diplomacy.” But he also said, along with McCain, that he would keep the threat of military action against Iran on the table.

BINGO!

2008-06-25T17:44:00.002-04:00

From the Department for Transport, June 25, 2008

The Thirty-Four Minute Gap

"[If the Air Traffic Control Center sector] has no datablock or other information on it, the military will usually scramble an intercept flight. Essentially always they turn out to be private pilots… not talking to anybody, who stray too far outside the boundary, then get picked up on their way back in. But, procedures are procedures, and they will likely find two F-18s on their tail within 10 or so minutes." -- Air Traffic Control Center, ‘ATCC Controller’s Read Binder’, Xavier Software, August 1998.

On October 25, 1999 at 09:19 EDT a Learjet Model 35, registration N47BA, departed Orlando International Airport, Orlando, Florida bound for Dallas-Love Field, Dallas, Texas with four passengers on board, including U.S. Open golf champion Payne Stewart.¹ After several radio exchanges with Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center (JARTCC), JARTCC at 09:33 EDT instructed N47BA to change radio frequencies and contact another JARTCC controller. There was no reply. Approximately four hours later the Learjet, off course, nose-dived into the open marshy fields of Edmunds, South Dakota, killing all on board.

Before the crash of the Learjet there ensued a curious four-hour chase conducted by the United States Air Force and units of the Air National Guard (ANG). After several intercepts and pullbacks by military interceptors, the lead pilot of a pair of Oklahoma ANG F-16s maneuvered along side Stewart’s Learjet for a close-up inspection. The pilot reported, "It's looking like the cockpit window is iced over".² Payne Stewart’s Learjet, it seems, had lost pressurization, killing all on board.

Just as curious was the NTSB Aircraft Accident Brief³ on the tragedy that was adoptedthree weeks after George W. Bush’s election in 2000, and thirteen months after the crash. The timeline the NTSB provided of the Air Force response to the off course Learjet not only contradicted the initial media reports’ of the Air Force’s own timeline of the crash, but conspicuously omitted one critical entry on the Air Force’s response.

The NTSB timeline on the Air Force’s response begins at 09:52 CDT, one-hour and eighteen minutes after JARTCC lost contact with the craft:

"About 0952 CDT, a USAF F-16 test pilot from the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Florida, was vectored to within 8 nm of N47BA. About 0954 CDT, at a range of 2,000 feet from the accident airplane and an altitude of about 46,400 feet, the test pilot made two radio calls to N47BA but did not receive a response. About 1000 CDT, the test pilot began a visual inspection of N47BA."⁴

The published media accounts of the Air Force’s timeline paints an altogether different sequence of events for the Air Force’s response, and takes note of another aspect of the Air Force’s response that for some reason the NTSB was reluctant to report on.

ABC News.com on October 25^th reported:

"According to an Air Force summary, after contact was initially lost, two F-15s from Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., were sent to track the Learjet. The F-15s pulled back and two F-16s in the air from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., moved in to track the aircraft."⁵

The Dallas Morning News on October 26^th reported:

"Instead, according to an Air Force timeline, a series of military planes provided an emergency escort to the stricken Lear, beginning with a pair of F-16 Falcons from the Air National Guard at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., about 20 minutes after ground controllers lost contact. An F-16 and an A-10 Warthog attack plane from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., took up the chase a few minutes later and were trailing the Lear when it climbed abruptly from 39,000 to 44,000 feet at 9:52 a.m. CDT.

Fifteen minutes later, the F-16 intercepted the Lear, the pilot reporting no movement in the cockpit."⁶

Note the dissimilarities between the Air Force’s timeline and the NTSB’s timeline. The NTSB timeline altogether avoids mentioning an earlier request for assistance to a pair of F-15s from Tyndall Air Force Base, who we learn were actually escorting the Learjet twenty minutes after JARTCC lost contact with it. Now if we say it took five minutes to alert the Eglin fighters once the Tyndall fighters had intercepted the Learjet, and add those five minutes to the twenty minutes it took the Tyndall fighters to initially make contact with the Learjet, then add the remaining fifteen minutes it took the Eglin fighters to actually intercept the Learjet, that gives us an arrival/escort time of 09:18 CDT for the Eglin fighters, not 09:52 CDT as chronicled in the NTSB timeline. That is a thirty-four minute gap!

Is there any official account that would substantiate this thirty-four minute gap; that the Eglin fighters were escorting the Learjet thirty-four minutes earlier than the NTSB timeline admits to? As it happens there is. CNN.com on October 26^th reported:

"An Air Force spokesman says two U.S. Air Force F-15s from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, intercepted the plane shortly after it lost contact with aircraft controllers, and followed it to Missouri."⁷

The Air Force spokesman said the Eglin fighters intercepted the Learjet shortly after contact was lost with the aircraft. Well, one-hour and eighteen minutes doesn’t register with me as meaning shortly after!

So according to the Air Force timeline we have two interceptions of Payne Stewart’s Learjet before the NTSB chronicled 09:52 CDT interception. The first interception was by a pair of F-15s from Tyndall Air Force Base at approximately 08:58 CDT, with a second interception by Eglin fighters no later than 09:18 CDT, not 09:52 CDT as claimed by the NTSB.

In order to facilitate the Bush administration’s 2001 false flag attacks,⁸ the bureaucracy within the NTSB purposefully doctored their timeline of the Air Force’s response to Payne Stewart’s Learjet. Longer intercept times were needed in the Payne Stewart incident if the tardy NORAD response times on 9/11 were to be accepted by the public as nothing unusual.

----------------------------------------------------

1. http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2000/AAB0001.htm

2. Ibid (earlier an F-16 from Eglin Air Force Base did a close-up visual of the Learjet and reported that the cockpit windows were opaque, as if condensation or ice covered the inside).

3. http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/A_Acc1.htm

4. http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2000/AAB0001.htm

5. http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/abclearjet.htm

6. http://www.wanttoknow.info/991026dallasmorningnews

7. http://www.cnn.com/US/9910/25/wayward.jet.07/

8. See: Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century (A Report of The Project for the New American Century, September 2000), whose signatories included four soon to be senior officers in the Bush administration. The key sentence in the report providing motive for the 9/11 attacks reads, "Further, the process of transformation [control of space and cyberspace; global missile defenses; the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf whether or not Saddam Hussein remains in power; precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'; and for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." http://www.scribd.com/doc/9651/Rebuilding-Americas-Defenses-PNAC, p. 51.

When You're in a Hole, Stop Digging!

2008-06-24T17:01:00.001-04:00

USA political election logos 2008 - 1960

Brings back some frightening memories!

This is wrong on so many levels!

Over the Rainbow

2008-06-23T19:35:00.003-04:00

Dody Goodman RIP
The first lady you see in the clip

And...

Funny, funny man.
George Carlin RIP

Another Angle 21 - 06 - 08

2008-06-20T23:14:00.012-04:00

ANOTHER ANGLE

News others won't tell you

John McCain: 'I really didn't love America u ntil I was deprived of her company'

NATIONAL:

State finds gas-station rip-offs
The state crackdown comes amid more complaints from New Jersey drivers that they are being ripped off as they pay gas prices hovering near $4 a gallon -- not as bad as many other places in the country but still more than $1 per gallon higher than the $2.91 average price of a year ago.

The investigation, Milgram said, was "deeply troubling," because it found that one-third of the inspected stations had violations. A similar crackdown after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 found that a quarter of the inspected stations had violations.

US faces prison ship allegations
The United Nations says it has learned of serious allegations that the US is secretly detaining terrorism suspects, notably on American military ships.

In Court Filings, Cheney Aide Says Bush Approved Leak
President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003 to permit Mr. Cheney's chief of sta ff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to leak key portions of a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony.
UHH...Doy!

Hillary Clinton struggles with debt
Now, ask me if I give a damn?

Right wing attacks on Michelle Obama hit new low
Despite the vicious and seemingly ubiquitous critical comments, the 44-year-old Princeton University and Harvard Law School educated executive has carried herself with dignity and class throughout the entire campaign gaining the admiration of many.

Is the Tyranny of Right-Wing Radio Coming to an End?
Conservative fears of an impending Democratic attack on talk radio - dubbed the "Hush Rush" effort in an homage to top-rated radio talker Rush Limbaugh -- continue to escalate, despite ample evidence that such an assault is unlikely to occur when (as is likely) Democrats sweep back into power in the forthcoming elections in November.

Passengers virtually stripped naked by 3-D airport scanner
The new body imager unveiled on Thursday uses high frequency electromagnetic waves known as millimetre waves to create a detailed 3-D image of what a person looks like underneath their clothes.

INTERNATIONAL:

Zimbabweans set to vote with their feet
This one really grinds my gears! Whatever Mugabe is, is a direct result of AmeriKKKan and European actions that have driven this country to where it is now. They decided when they declared independence and drove out the white farmers that they would take it back, no matter what the cost. Well, that cost has been many, many lives in Zimbabwe. And the suffering has just begun.

Israel flexes muscles with 'Iran attack' drill
Israeli aircraft have conducted a long-range mission designed to prepare for a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and to send a message to the world that it is ready to take military action if diplomacy fails to halt Tehran’s atomic programme.
Hamas: "Israel violated ceasefire three times today"

Chavez threatens Europe oil ban
Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has threatened to stop selling oil to European countries if they implement tough new legislation against illegal immigrants.

The move follows the EU parliament's new guidelines in which illegal migrants can be held in detention centres for up to 18 months before being expelled.

How Iran would retaliate if it comes to war
With an active military manpower of 540, 000 – the largest in the Middle East – dependent on some of the lowest per capita defense spending in the region. Iran "can deal fatal blows to aggressor America by unpredictable and creative tactical moves," the senior commander Brig. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid said in late May. "It is meaningless to back down before an enemy who has targeted the roots of our existence."

Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei also warned of far-reaching revenge in 2006. "The Americans should know that if they assault Iran, their interests will be harmed anywhere in the world that is possible," he said. "The Iranian nation will respond to any blow with double the intensity."

IRAQ:

Oil giants return to Iraq
The deals are for repair and technical support in some of the co untry's largest oilfields, the Oil Ministry in Baghdad said yesterday. The return of "Big Oil" will add to the suspicions of those in the Middle East who claimed that the overthrow of Saddam was secretly driven by the West's desire to gain control of Iraq's oil. It will also be greeted with dismay by many Iraqis who fear losing control of their vast oil reserves.

ECONOMY:

Morgan Stanley warns of 'catastrophic event' as ECB fights Federal Reserve
"We see striking similarities between the transatlantic tensions that built up in the early 1990s and those that are accumulating again today. The outcome of the 1992 deadlock was a major currency crisis and a recession in Europe," said a report by Morgan Stanley's European experts.

OP-ED:

McCain: War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?
This is the lesson of McCain’s experience as a POW: a true politician, a hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain’s campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him and in return, he danced to their tune.

The wrong side of history
Since that memorable evening, my thoughts turned to the Blacks in leadership who were on the other side of history the night Obama became the presidential nominee. I wondered ab out people like billionaire Robert Johnson, who personally attacked Obama for "doing something in the neighborhood" that he would not say while Hillary and Bill Clinton were on the front lines for black people.

Will the Mossad Assassinate Obama?
Established governments almost never in the past used assassination as a tool until the rise of mind-control assassination techniques. Even then, assassination appeared to be largely a tool by rogue elements of the CIA to eliminate political undesirables within the US. Only the Israelis appear inclined to assassinate foreign politicians since they are immune from criticism in the Western press, and the MOSSAD has been largely successful at blaming certain terrorist events and assassinations on the Muslims.

The Poverty of Reaganism-Bushism
Because your education in self-destructive political foolishness is not yet complete, it remains necessary to pretend that this is a real ideology with real economic principles that are actually adhered to. You know, stuff like 'market discipline' and the 'invisible hand', which only ever seem to apply to the already vulnerable, not to the friendly rich people forever espousing these ideas. In truth, there actually are a set of operating principles here. Just not the ones that are advertised.

SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY:

The Next Big Data Breach

It’s not that hard to fake a fingerprint," Swire told the panel. "Google it and you can find a way to fake one for less than 10 bucks."

It's true. A Google search for "fake fingerprint" returns a whole page on how to fake a fingerprint -- even a You Tube video. And most don't even charge for the information.

FOOD&DRINK:

Why Are Those Wacky Koreans Dissin' Our Beef?
You wouldn't know it from reading the newspapers, but the streets of Seoul are packed with tens of thousands of angry protestors who've brought business and government to a standstill. The demonstrations have dragged on for more than a month and show no sign of ending anytime soon. President Lee Myung-Bak's decision to lift the ban on US beef imports has set off a political firestorm that is likely to bring down the government and put the kibosh on free trade agreements for years to come

REVIEWS/INTERVIEWS:

The Lovely Trini-Born Verdery

HUMOR?:

Benazir Bhutto

2008-06-19T21:54:00.001-04:00

After the BBC censored this clip and then reinstated it, then some of them now claiming they NEVER censored it, the mystery DEEPENS. With Benazir Bhutto assassinated the motive arises in that she quite clearly leads not only her death to the door of the Pakistanis but also responsibility for the 9/11 attacks are implicated as well. Aired on 2nd November 2007,David Frost the presenter did not challenge her on her assertion (2:14) that Bin Laden was murdered, so maybe he was and the West has not announced it.

It would make sense that the West would cover up such a truth, as Bin Laden is needed as a "bogeyman" to continue the farcical "War on Terror"

Lighten Up G...A Little Music for Ya!

2008-06-19T18:26:00.001-04:00

Monk

I'm Voting Republican

2008-06-19T17:48:00.000-04:00

A REAL CLASS ACT

2008-06-17T16:26:00.000-04:00

War Hero or North Vietnam's Go-To Collaborator?

2008-06-15T21:52:00.003-04:00

Sonny Rollins, Take One

2008-06-14T19:37:00.002-04:00

Sonny Rollins, Take One

The Colossus

By ISHMAEL REED

Bebop was my generation’s hip-hop. It was more than a pastime; it was an obsession. I used to play trombone with bebop groups. When I turned sixty, I enrolled in Berkeley’s Jazz School, where I studied with jazz pianist Susan Muscarella for nearly five years. I’ve continued with jazz pianist Mary Watkins. When I met Max Roach, I thanked him for keeping me out of reform school; we were too busy listening to bop to get into trouble. We’d spend hours at each others’ homes listening to the latest recordings. We dressed like beboppers. We were clean. We went around looking like Gregory Peck in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Our idea of a party was where they’d play “Moody’s Mood for Love.” We knew all the words.

Bebop musicians didn’t walk. They came at you, dancing. When Sonny Rollins descended from his studio after our interview, he was wearing this great greenish raincoat that hit him near the ankles. Rollins, who had turned sixty-six when this interview took place, said that when he was a teenager, he was impressed with the way an older trumpet player shined his shoes. Beboppers were sharp, and we were their acolytes.

Theodore Walter “Sonny” Rollins first picked up the sax in 1944 as a sophomore in high school. By the 1950s he had come into his own, playing tenor with a variety of all-time jazz greats, including Art Blakey, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. When he left the Max Roach Quintet in 1957, Rollins created his own unique trio (sax, bass and drums) that spotlighted the versatility of his solos and hard bop style. Several years later, in an attempt to regain inspiration in his playing, he stopped recording and began practicing regularly while walking along New York’s Williamsburg Bridge; his triumphant return took place in 1962 with an album titled simply The Bridge.

Rollins’ early recording styles show him developing what would become the Rollins style: a broad repertoire including blues, standards and even spirituals and an intense devotion to melody. No matter how abstract his solos become, one is always mindful of the tune with which he started out—a trait he shares with Thelonious Monk.

Though jazz solos may sound spontaneous, many are rehearsed and memorized. Some musicians are still recycling solos originated by Charlie “Bird” Parker. Rollins, on the other hand, is known for pure improvisation. He has a dedicated following but fame in the United States has been slow to come. For some of the white critics, who form the largest segment of the fraternity of jazz critics, Rollins has an attitude. He is recognized as one of the first artists to make reference to the growing militancy of the 1960s with his Freedom Suite.

Both the Yoruba and biblical traditions hold that sometimes your worst adversary is inside your family—in this case, American fans and critics. The prophet is no honored in his own country. Abroad, though, it’s different. Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus is a best-seller in Japan, which he has visited nineteen times and where he has appeared in computer commercials. At seventy-six, he still continues his vigorous touring.

But Rollins doesn’t have to go anywhere, if he doesn’t want to. He’s come a long way since his mother bought him that first Zephyr tenor. He can kick around his Germantown, New York farm and continue to develop his music.

Rollins has accumulated a catalogue of close to fifty albums. More importantly, he’s one of the only surviving icons left from an era in jazz when genius was the norm and musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk were not only changing music but also affecting black culture and American society. When members of my generation tried to break away from the linear forms of novel writing, we did so because we were trying to keep up with the musicians and painters. How would it look if I did some refried Faulkner and Hemingway, when I lived in a community on the Lower East Side that included Joe Overstreet, Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor? Kenny Dorham and I used to drink together at a dive named the Port of Call, and Albert Ayler and his brother were guests in my home. It’s appropriate that the central image of associated with Rollins is a bridge, because the beboppers, like the hip-hoppers, those who are not pushed into music that degrades by avaricious record producers, have established a bridge that reaches back thousands of years to the sound of the mother drum, the root of all black music. But sometimes it seems that in a white supremacist society, constantly on guard against minorities gaining the upper hand, even the creators of one form of homegrown music are denied credit for their invention. American Experience, on PBS, ran a program about the history of New Orleans. Based on the visuals, one would gain the impression that whites invented jazz. Photos of great black musicians like Jelly Roll Morton, Louis and Lil Armstrong, King Oliver and others roll by without the musicians being identified. All one has to do is notice the names associated with the production to realize the problem.

Reed: There aren't many survivors from the great bebop revolution. Who is still left?

Rollins: Well, J.J. Johnson [who, since this interview, has died], Milt Jackson [died], Percy Heath [died], and his little brother Jimmy. There’s not many of us left. Art Farmer, who I guess would be about my age. Johnny Griffin. [Since the interview was conducted, bop pioneer Jackie MacLean also died.]

Reed: Do you guys have a survivor’s guild? (Laughter)

Rollins: No, we don’t have one. We should have something like that, ‘cause in the old days in Harlem, they used to have all these clubs and everyone would be together, to help guys. There should really be some kind of federation. But people just see each other now and then, you know.

Reed: You’ve said your mind is like a computer—you have different programs and you snatch from everyplace. Tin Pan Alley, country and western—very eclectic. Do you consider your music to be at all political or satirical, like poking fun at institutions that take themselves too seriously?

Rollins: Yeah, oh sure. Of course. I got a lot of criticism for The Freedom Suite, especially when I went down South on tour and we were playing mainly white colleges. A lot of people had me against the wall, asking, “What did you mean by that?”

Reed: We still get that with gangsta rap, and I remember the horrible things they used to say about bebop. When middle-class black people listened to bebop, they said the music was strange. They didn’t like the culture, they didn’t like the style; just a lot of hate.

Rollins: In a way, because of the guys in that day using drugs and stuff, they might have associated the music with that culture. So maybe I can cut them a little slack.

Reed: Let’s talk about the music here. One critic, Gunther Schuller, said that your method of playing, through melody rather than running harmonic changes, was a radical concept. What did he mean by that?

Rollins: I guess what he’s talking about is thematic improvisation. In other words, if I played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” [sings the melody], I might play for two hours from that same song, variations on that theme. What he meant was that I didn’t just play the melody of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and go into the chord changes. I kept it as a theme. I think that’s what he meant. But at the time he wrote that, I didn’t know what he meant. I might have understood it, but it was so strange to have someone tell me what I was doing that it sort of tricked me for a minute.

Reed: Describe your apprenticeship with Coleman Hawkins. I know he influenced you a great deal.

Rollins: I would say Monk was more like that. Coleman, he was sort of—I didn’t really work with him. He was just my adult. But I actually used to go to Monk’s house after school and rehearse with his band and stuff, so with him I would say it was more of a real apprenticeship. He was like my guru. Monk would say, “Yeah, man, Sonny is bad. Cats have to work out what they play; Sonny just plays that shit out of the top of his head.”

Reed: In the old days, the players and the gangsters were the real patrons of the art. And if you had talent, they would get you gigs in their clubs. Then a new kind of drug came on the scene. What was the impact of heroin on the jazz scene?

Rollins: Devastating. Devastating.

Reed: When you got in trouble, was that peer group stuff?

Rollins: To an extent, but you know, Bird [Charlie Parker] was doing it, Billie Holiday was doing it, but especially Bird. That’s why Bird was such a distraught figure. Because cats were copying him, and he knew it was wrong but he couldn’t stop. So we figured, Yeah, man, Bird is doing it, let’s go and get high. And I got strung out. I got fucked up. I mean, that’s normal when you don’t know better.

Reed: But you overcame it.

Rollins: That was a rough one. The person that gave me pride to overcome it—besides Bird—was my mother, who stood by me after I had nobody. After I had ripped everybody off. People would see me coming down the street, they’d run. But my mother stayed with me all the way. And Charlie Parker.

Reed: You had a great reputation, but you went to Chicago and worked as a laborer. How did you feel about that?

Rollins: Well, I had messed myself up so bad and burned all these bridges, so when I went to Chicago, I went there to kick my habit.

Reed: And then you went to the government rehab center in Lexington, Kentucky. And afterward made your comeback.

Rollins: I came out and I was thinking about Bird, and what happened when I was in there. I thought, boy, wait till I come out. I’ma show Bird that I’m cool. And then he died while I was still in there. But anyway, I came out and still had to struggle with cats saying, “Hey, man, come on, let’s step out.” But I won that struggle. I wanted to work, and I had to come all the way back out myself. I knew how far down I’d been; I did janitor work and all of this—well, what else was there to really do?

Reed: What about your relationship with club owners?

Rollins: I was blackballed by a lot of these people.

Reed: Why?

Rollins: Because I was what you would call an uppity nigger or whatever. So a lot of these cats were keeping me from playing festivals and shit. This was for acting up and asking for money. Some cats be so glad to play that they don’t say nothing.

Reed: People are so happy to play that they lower the standards?

Rollins: It’s not just in the past, either. I’m going through this shit all the time. They just called me to do a commercial for this car, Infiniti. They wanted us to go to Czechoslovakia to shoot it. There were no speaking parts. It would be this actor and myself sitting down in a jazz club at a table, and there’ll be some Czech jazz musicians up there playing and then a voice-over about Infiniti. Something like that. So naturally I didn’t do it. I mean, for me to just be validating white jazz music. I’m not going to put myself in that position. I’m glad they still think I’m viable, but I’m not gonna do that shit, man.

I did one commercial some time ago, where I was playing on the bridge for Pioneer. They said, “Sonny Rollins really went to practice on the bridge and became excellent, like our product.” Something like that was cool, where I’m identified and the people know it’s me playing. But to sit down and validate someone else’s shit, it’s just not right. It would get me a lot of exposure, it would be cash, of course, but I reached the conclusion a long time ago that I’m not rich. I’m not going to get rich, I just want to make enough to make it. Fuck trying to get into that race. I don’t want it; I don’t even want to speak to those people about it ‘cause I don’t like them.

Reed: Was that like a revelation—some sort of spiritual thing that led you to do that?

Rollins: It happened because I was getting a lot of publicity at the time. I had a band with Elvin Jones and I was playing these places, and I remember the place I played in Baltimore and people really didn’t get it, so I said, “Man, I’m not really doing it. I got to get myself together. First of all, I’ma go back to the woodshed.” That’s why I went on the bridge. Some cat, a writer, was up across the bridge one day and saw me playing, but nobody would have even known it if it hadn’t been for him. That’s how it happened. It didn’t have anything to do with trying to make it public.

Reed: Why are you so hard on yourself?

Rollins: I’m hard on myself because maybe I been around a lot great musicians, and I don’t think I’ll ever be at the level of some of the people I been around. So I’m trying to reach that level. I’m trying to reach a level of performance, and that’s what it’s about.

Reed: They used to hose something called the “Pat Juba” in slavery days: the white slave owners made two black guys beat each other up and one survives, and the masters stand around and watch. I think that still goes on. When it comes to blacks it always seems to be a competition, fighting to see who’s going to be the diva, like they’re having a diva war to see who’s going to be accepted. There can only be one dancer, one writer, one musician. They tried to do that with you and Coltrane, to play you against each other.

Rollins: We didn’t react to it. Coltrane was beautiful, a very spiritual person. He was like a minister. We were thinking about music. It was the writers who influenced the friends who….

Reed: Was it just a few writers who did this?

Rollins: Probably. Remember when Coltrane and I came out. I was popular before Coltrane. We used to be referred to as the angry young tenors—we were against, like, the Stan Getzes, the Birth of the Cool; we were sort of a reaction against that. That was still going on at that time, so we were the angry tenors and nobody was thinking about that shit. But I noticed that without even realizing that’s what they were doing in slavery days. I noticed that you could never have more than one person up there at a time.

Reed: Let me ask you about gangsta rap.

Rollins: I like the content of rap because it’s the black experience; what they’re saying is the truth. Not everything—I’m talking about the political stuff, of course. We have to accept that ‘cause that’s what’s happening.

Reed: What about the style, all this mixing and sampling and stuff they do?

Rollins: Well, they sampled some of my stuff. This group Digable Planets did some of my stuff. I heard it in a store. I heard somebody playing some of my stuff.

Reed: How do you feel about that?

Rollins: It’s okay, it’s alright. I just don’t want to be ripped off. I need my money. So I like the political thing and I like some of the rhythms them cats are playing. I can use it. I’m not an old fogy. I think jazz has done so much to bring people together, but jazz is only an art form. You can’t change a society with jazz. The society is still backward on racial matters. I like to be democratic; I have a white boy playing in my band right at the moment. But it’s not a personal thing. I find people personally who are great, but the oppressive society just makes it impossible to be real with people. It always fucks everything up.

This essay is excerpted from Ishmael Reed's new collection, Mixing It Up: Taking On the Media Bullies and Other Reflections. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

Ishmael Reed is a poet, novelist and essayist who lives in Oakland. His novels include, Mumbo Jumbo, the Freelance Pallbearers and The Last Days of Louisiana Red.

The Enron Loophole

2008-06-11T16:21:00.002-04:00

It is two years old, but very relevant today

The Enron Loophole Helps OPEC Serve Up a Hefty Helping of Oil-Price Baloney

Last week, the price of oil hit an all-time high of $78.40 a barrel, to the pious discomfort of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In the words of Edmund Daukoru, the president of the oil cartel and Nigeria's Minister of State Petroleum, the world economy is 'hurting.'
"The latest shoot-up to the mid-70s and above is very uncomfortable," Daukoru told Reuters. As for the increasingly deadly clashes in the Middle East, the oil czar commented: "It is always unfortunate if we have to address issues outside the power of OPEC." And without skipping a beat, Daukoru went on to advise that OPEC had plenty of spare production capacity.

I found Daukoru's comment about spare capacity particularly interesting, given that the oil patch endlessly whines that oil production is stretched to the limit and high prices are its consequence. Yet, we know that inventories are generally larger than they were last year at this time, and now it seems that OPEC can add even more if it wants to. So why are prices heading for the moon when there is oil available to draw down from storage and spare capacity to pump if the market needs it? Sure the political turmoil is making the market anxious. But is that enough to propel prices to a new record when there is no evidence of shortages? Highly doubtful.

Something else, it seems, is happening. Not that many years ago, oil and other commodities were traded on a real "wet barrel" basis. Producers sold to buyers at posted prices. When the market got tight they might extract a premium, or more stringent payment terms, or loading or discharging terms to reflect given conditions on a given day for a given trade. Conversely, if storage tanks were full, there was always a willingness to discount or make other adjustments to move product.

Then, some years back, futures trading came along and prices were set in trading-floor shouting matches in New York, Chicago, London, and Singapore, and they fluctuated in realtime and volumes grew (now prices are set electronically as well.) "Virtual" barrels on the futures exchange rather than wet barrels of actual product came to determine the purchase and sale prices of oil and downstream products.

Last week, at a conference on energy, the economy, etc., a discussion ensued about the reasons for the very high price of oil and the ever-present perception of shortages. I heard the director of the services group for the Saudi government-owned Aramco Oil Co. say that Aramco had ample spare capacity, but no takers. He volunteered that the big oil producer was ready to load additional cargos at any time.

Donning my old trading hat, I asked a simple question: "Why don't you lower the price?" I reminded him that when you have too much product, traditional business theory suggests that if you cut the price a bit, you might be able to move it. The Saudi representative answered: "Why should we sell for less than the prices quoted on the futures exchange?" He went on to say that the refiners are making too much money as it is.

"So how much are you making on each barrel?" I cheekily responded. My follow-up question was met with an icy dismissal that Saudi profits were none of my concern. That's probably true, but I wouldn't have asked had he not brought up refining margins. It was quite clear that this issue was not open to discussion.

So there we have it, straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. The price of oil for the Saudis, the godfathers of the OPEC cabal, is based on trading of "virtual" barrels of oil, not on real-time product in storage or in the production chain. And in pointing to the futures market as the determinant factor of price, the obvious question becomes: Is the futures market a fair reflection of market forces? Or, is it a manipulated cipher behind which the Saudis and others can hide to rationalize away market price distortions, claiming that "the free hand of the futures market" is in control and the producers can only set their prices accordingly.

In my July 12 post, "Gasoline Over $3.00 Gallon, Why?. . ." I called into question, with specific example, the presumption that oil and product trading on the futures exchange is free of manipulation. I am not alone.

Senators Carl Levin (D., Mich.) and Norm Coleman (R., Minn.), the ranking minority member and chairman, respectively, of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, are urging Congress to enact legislation that would close major loopholes in federal oversight of oil and gas trades. The so-called Enron loophole put limits on the ability of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to prevent speculative trading in energy and commodity markets. It's interesting to note that since the Enron loophole went into effect in 2000, the price of crude has risen by nearly 500 percent. Coincidence? Perhaps.

To quote Sen. Levin, "Right now there is no U.S. cop on the beat overseeing energy trades on over-the-counter, electronic exchanges or foreign exchanges. . . . Enron has already taught us how energy traders can manipulate prices and walk over consumers if they think no one is looking. . . ."

Sen. Coleman cut to the chase: "We need to explore legislative ideas to ensure that energy prices reflect the true market forces of supply and demand. . . ."

In the meantime, OPEC and the oil patch are munching their baloney sandwiches, salted with crocodile tears, as they lug their loot to the bank.

Bill Hicks on Iraq

2008-06-10T12:32:00.001-04:00

Bo Diddley

2008-06-02T13:48:00.004-04:00

"Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday after months of ill health. He was 79.

Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., spokeswoman Susan Clary said. He had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he had returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Diddley appreciated the honors he received, "but it didn't put no figures in my checkbook."

"If you ain't got no money, ain't nobody calls you honey," he quipped.

The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago, he said in a 1999 interview.

"I don't know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name," he said, adding that he liked it so it became his stage name. Other times, he gave somewhat differing stories on where he got the name. Some experts believe a possible source for the name is a one-string instrument used in traditional blues music called a diddley bow.

His first single, "Bo Diddley," introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as "shave and a haircut, two bits." The B side, "I'm a Man," with its slightly humorous take on macho pride, also became a rock standard.

The company that issued his early songs was Chess-Checkers records, the storied Chicago-based labels that also recorded Chuck Berry and other stars.

Howard Kramer, assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, said in 2006 that Diddley's Chess recordings "stand among the best singular recordings of the 20th century."

Diddley's other major songs included, "Say Man," "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover," "Shave and a Haircut," "Uncle John," "Who Do You Love?" and "The Mule."

Diddley's influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. Buddy Holly borrowed the bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp rhythm for his song "Not Fade Away."

The Rolling Stones' bluesy remake of that Holly song gave them their first chart single in the United States, in 1964. The following year, another British band, the Yardbirds, had a Top 20 hit in the U.S. with their version of "I'm a Man."

Diddley was also one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, adding reverb and tremelo effects. He even rigged some of his guitars himself.

"He treats it like it was a drum, very rhythmic," E. Michael Harrington, professor of music theory and composition at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., said in 2006.

Many other artists, including the Who, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello copied aspects of Diddley's style.

Growing up, Diddley said he had no musical idols, and he wasn't entirely pleased that others drew on his innovations.

"I don't like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it," he said. "I don't have any idols I copied after."

"They copied everything I did, upgraded it, messed it up. It seems to me that nobody can come up with their own thing, they have to put a little bit of Bo Diddley there," he said.

Despite his success, Diddley claimed he only received a small portion of the money he made during his career. Partly as a result, he continued to tour and record music until his stroke. Between tours, he made his home near Gainesville in north Florida.

"Seventy ain't nothing but a damn number," he told The Associated Press in 1999. "I'm writing and creating new stuff and putting together new different things. Trying to stay out there and roll with the punches. I ain't quit yet."

Diddley, like other artists of his generations, was paid a flat fee for his recordings and said he received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances.

"I am owed. I've never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."

In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music, "Jungle Music." It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll."

Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat."

Diddley won attention from a new generation in 1989 when he took part in the "Bo Knows" ad campaign for Nike, built around football and baseball star Bo Jackson. Commenting on Jackson's guitar skills, Diddley turned to the camera and said, "He don't know Diddley."

"I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked," Diddley said. "I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube."

Born as Ellas Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss., Diddley was later adopted by his mother's cousin and took on the name Ellis McDaniel, which his wife always called him.

When he was 5, his family moved to Chicago, where he learned the violin at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He learned guitar at 10 and entertained passers-by on street corners.

By his early teens, Diddley was playing Chicago's Maxwell Street.

"I came out of school and made something out of myself. I am known all over the globe, all over the world. There are guys who have done a lot of things that don't have the same impact that I had," he said.

Young Hillary Clinton

2008-05-31T00:22:00.000-04:00

Olbermann on Hillary

2008-05-24T01:39:00.000-04:00

McCain rejects Parsley’s endorsement.

2008-05-22T23:45:00.003-04:00

McCain rejects Parsley’s endorsement.
In February, Ohio televangelist Rev. Rod Parsley endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). McCain called Parsley — who once said Allah was a “demon spirit” — his “spiritual guide.” In an interview with the AP today, McCain finally said that he rejected Parsley’s support.

"I believe there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America, and I believe that even though he endorsed me, and I didn’t endorse him, the fact is that I repudiate such talk, and I reject his endorsement."

BUT:

You can't write this stuff!! Amazing!!

Paying for War at the Pump

2008-05-22T23:11:00.003-04:00

By Robert Scheer

What’s it got to do with the price of gas? Would some reporter with access to the Republican presidential candidate please ask John McCain why he wants to continue President Bush’s Mideast policy when it has proved so ruinous for American taxpayers? Because McCain is determined to ignore our economic meltdown and shift the debate to foreign policy, shouldn’t he have to explain why an open-ended military presence in the Mideast will make us economically and militarily more secure when the opposite is clearly the case?

Let’s not waste too much time on the military side of the equation. The argument that troops on the ground have made us militarily more secure is absurd on its face. American resources and lives have been squandered in an inane effort that McCain aptly criticized before becoming a presidential candidate. As a Senate watchdog, he distinguished himself by sharply denouncing one defense contractor boondoggle after another in cases involving hundreds of billions for modern weapons that had nothing to do with fighting cave-based terrorists. But as a presidential candidate, McCain now unabashedly apologizes for every twist of the downwind spiral of the Bush administration foreign policy, from wasteful weapons to inhuman torture.

McCain’s strategy is clearly that of distracting attention from the calamitous economy by sounding the demagogue’s alarm about enemies at the gate. This week, McCain again blasted Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the grounds that he underestimated the threat from Iran while ignoring the vast increase in Iran’s power—an increase actually resulting from Bush eliminating Iran’s only effective enemy, Saddam Hussein. The other winners in this folly have been the oil kingdoms that Hussein periodically threatened, led by the Saudi royal family. Seizing upon the opportunity presented by the 9/11 attacks, Bush knocked off not the Saudis, who had produced Osama bin Laden and 15 of his hijacker minions, but rather the royal family’s sworn enemy in Iraq, who had absolutely nothing do with 9/11.

And how did the Saudis thank us? Just check the price of oil, which has increased more than sixfold since 9/11. On Friday, Bush went to dine at Saudi King Abdullah’s bizarrely opulent horse farm and pleaded for an increase in oil production, but to no avail. Bush received the same rebuff in April 2005, when oil was selling for $54 a barrel. On Tuesday, it sold for $129, and the price rise is a good measure of Saudi gratitude for the Bush family’s unwavering support over past decades. Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, couldn’t have been more condescending when he turned down Bush’s request with the observation that “presidents and kings have every right, every privilege, to comment or ask or say whatever they want.” He added at a press conference, “How much does Saudi Arabia need to do to satisfy people who are questioning our oil practices and policies?”

Enough to get the price back down to where it was when we saved your sorry oil-well excuse for a country, you ingrate, Bush might have retorted. But our bold leader was too polite for anything like that. “He didn’t punch any tables or shout at anybody,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal. “I think he was satisfied.” Why? Instead of pointing out that the Saudis could easily open their spigots in gratitude for our keeping them in power, the president threatened the Saudi king not with an invasion but with a U.S. recession. “My point to His Majesty,” Bush warned in an interview with The New York Times before encountering the great man himself, “is going to be, when consumers have less purchasing power because of high prices of gasoline—in other words, when it affects their families, it could cause this economy to slow down. If the economy slows down, there will be less barrels of oil purchased.”

He’ll show them—we’ll have a recession, our families will suffer and, boy, will the Saudis be sorry. A regular Teddy Roosevelt. There is no better measure of the failure of Bush’s foreign policy than that, five years after we conquered the second-most important pool of oil in the world, the American taxpayers who paid for this grand imperial adventure are rewarded with skyrocketing prices at the pump.

At least when Bush first hyped his Iraq invasion plan, he had Paul Wolfowitz telling Congress that Iraqi oil would more than pay for it all. Not so McCain, who is so charged with imperial hubris that he is willing to commit to a 100-year lease on Iraq without expecting a penny in oil revenue in return.

Robert Scheer’s new book, ”The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America,” will be released June 9 by Twelve.

A Little Music for Ya!

2008-05-22T16:14:00.002-04:00

Jamiroquai - Soul Education(Live at North Sea Jazz Festival)

John McSame and John Hagee

2008-05-22T16:04:00.005-04:00

I wonder if the media will pay as much attention to this as they did Pastor Jeremiah Wright?

Lobbying for Armageddon

At the center of it all is Pastor John Hagee, a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. While Hagee has long prophesized about the end times, he ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, "Jerusalem Countdown," in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. In the best-selling book, Hagee insists that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the book's publication, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which, as the Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, he said would cause "a political earthquake."

McCain Defends Hagee: ‘He Said That His Words Were Taken Out Of Context’
Hagee: McCain ’sought my endorsement.’
McCain Flip-Flops In 30 Seconds: Hagee Endorsement A ‘Mistake,’ But ‘I’m Glad To Have’ It

Police Acted Properly...Again.

2008-05-09T12:18:00.001-04:00

Steve Winwood

2008-05-07T13:47:00.002-04:00

I saw this guy on "The View" earlier. Don't ask. Just Enjoy!

What's the problem?

2008-05-01T00:09:00.002-04:00

This man does not lie at any time. I enjoyed it!

Back on track

2008-04-30T23:02:00.000-04:00

I know this is not going to be popular but...

2008-04-30T11:28:00.002-04:00

I know this is not going to be popular but, here goes… Afghanistan is NOT a just or righteous or legal fight.

Why are we there? What did the people of Afghanistan do to the U.S.? Where is the proof of anything being done by anyone over there to anyone over here?

Before you say anything about Bin Laden Stop!

The U.S. is there to destroy the Taliban! Not because of their treatment of women, it couldn’t be because of their religion since a cornerstone of our “nation” is the freedom to worship as we choose…right? Oh, ask the folk in Texas that one!

We were there for one reason GREED!

To change a government to secure a route for a pipeline. Oops that has failed. And to renew production of Afghan Heroin to the world. Something the Taliban had virtually stopped.

A lot of folk seem to think the lying started with Iraq.

The lying started as soon as this group decided on a candidate to support. Plans were already in place and ready to be implemented.

Folk seem upset about Iraq, be upset about the WHOLE THING!

Why? Because we got played for suckers!

WTF

2008-04-24T17:33:00.002-04:00

The Adolf Hitler doll which comes with a change of clothes - and a spare head with a kind face

Baghdad to get ‘Disneyland’ style amusement park.
At the cost of nearly $500 million, a Los Angeles-based company is “developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum.” The park “is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland.” The company’s owner says “the time is ripe” for profit and entertainment to collide in Iraq

What the Family Would Let You See, the Pentagon Obstructs
"Love you and miss you," he wrote. "I'll write again soon."

Except, of course, that he didn't. And yesterday, his family walked slowly behind the horse-drawn caisson to section 60. In the front row of mourners, one young girl trudged along, clinging to a grown-up's hand; another child found a ride on an adult's shoulders.

It was a moving scene -- and one the Pentagon shouldn't try to hide from the American public.

Six Suspects Will Be Tried a Third Time in Sears Plot
"We're gonna FRAME NAIL these patsies no matter how many times we gotta waste the court's time! -- Official White Horse Souse

Just a quick refresher course lest we forget what has happened to many 'friends' of the Clinton's.

The Queen of Pork
Nobody doles out taxpayer money like Hillary Clinton — or rakes in as much campaign cash from the companies she does favors for.
Hillary Wants To Obliterate Iran

McCain’s televangelist ally believes God damns America

McCain open to ‘tearing down’ Lower Ninth Ward.

A Little Music For Ya! - Lou Donaldson

2008-04-15T15:36:00.002-04:00

A little Music for Ya!

2008-04-14T18:30:00.002-04:00

'Why?': Remembering Nina Simone's Tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr.

Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares For Me (Live @ Montreux)

Nina Simone - Suzanne (Teatro Sistina 1969)

Nina Simone - See Line Woman (Montreal 1992)

2008-04-09T15:27:00.000-04:00

Stevie Wonder - Free (Live at Birmingham NEC)
je jouis des oreilles!!! c'est trop le feu!!!

JettaVision Presents: "Stevie Wonder Live"
This man makes music just breathing in and out

STEVIE WONDER - LIVE- BBC LONDON -1996-PART 1

STEVIE WONDER - LIVE- BBC LONDON -1996-PART 2

STEVIE WONDER - LIVE- BBC LONDON -1996-PART 3
Now you remember!

I guess I could glean some hope from the Wal-Mart case but...

2008-04-03T17:53:00.001-04:00

I have been watching the Wal-Mart story, Wal-Mart drops lawsuit against disabled woman, with keen interest.

You see, I am going through a similar situation.

In late October of 2006 I was injured from an automobile accident through no fault of my own. In Ohio, you are required to have car insurance. The state minimum is only $12,500, which we all know is not a feasible amount for property liability, let alone medical liability.

I happened to have been fortunate enough to have Under-Insured coverage on MY car insurance.

For the last six months, after settling with both insurers, now my health insurer, APWU, The American Postal Workers Union Heath Plan wants to subrogate against me for the cost of two serious neck surgeries. Surgeries they would have paid for as part of our coverage!

The gall of them to require and recieve premiums for a service and then to want money back. That provision of my (Auto) policy was not taken to provide money for a company but to take care of me and my family. We paid a premium for a service. Premiums that they still collect. I am currently not recieving much needed therapies for fear of what it could cost me.

So I guess I could glean some hope from the Wal-Mart case but...

The fact that the court has sided with the corporations is not a real surprise, the only help for folks like me is the shame that is brought on these insurers and corporations.

So shame on the American Postal Workers Union Heath Plan. Shame on the AFL-CIO and CIGNA for their part in this.

A little advice for all, pay special attention when choosing a health insurer to the clause in your benefit book called "When Others are Responsible for Injuries." It could leave YOU on the hook and responsible for things you thought you had paid for.

Funky Decompression

2008-04-02T15:33:00.002-04:00

I have had just about enough for right now. I need to get away, if only mentally for a minute. Jazz creates to much thinking room. Some of the shit that continues out there mandates a break. I know if I'm tired I can only guess how some of the rest of you are. I If you can't guess what the thread is here it's Funk! Here, in one setting, are some of the world's Funkiest.

James Brown "Ain't it Funky Now", Paris 1971

Bootsy Collins - Funk From James to George

Bootsy Collins - I'd Rather be with you

Parliament Funkadelic Concert Mothership Connection

Parliament/Funkadelic -Dr. Funkenstein

One more...

Parliament Live -P-Funk/Funkin' For Fun

Another Angle

2008-04-02T15:33:00.001-04:00

ANOTHER ANGLE
News others won't tell you

Air Traffic Controllers Do Track Planes Even with Transponders Off
A must read for those who think it's a conspiracy "theory".`

NATIONAL:

Obama Wins Most Texas Delegates
Texas Democrats held both a presidential primary and caucus. Clinton narrowly won the popular vote in the state's primary March 4, earning her 65 national convention delegates to Obama's 61.
Precinct caucuses began immediately after polls closed primary night and quickly devolved into chaos in many parts of the state because of an unprecedented turnout of more than 1 million Democrats.

Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior
As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

VIDEO - Hillary Clinton's NAFTA Story Exposed

McCain in the dark over Maliki’s actions: Yet another foreign policy ‘Gaffe’
Read the whole article so you’ll be more informed than McCain.

Student calls McCain out for political motivations of school appearance.
“I think judging by the amount of press representatives here and also by the integration of your previous political endorsements in your earlier personal narrative, we can see that this isn’t completely absent – er political motivation isn’t completely absent,” she said. “Yet we were told that this isn’t a political event. So what exactly is your purpose in being here."

S.D. beekeepers concerned as die-off continues
"As beekeepers we're confused and the scientific community is even more confused because they feel like they should be able to figure this out and get a handle on it, and yet there are so many variables they are just having a problem."

IRAQ:

Fact or fiction? Iranian who "brokered Iraqi peace" is on U.S. terrorist watch list

ECONOMY:

US Mint Sets Gold Ounce Coin at $1,119.95

OP-ED:

What About Curt Flood?
In the 1960s, influenced by the Black Freedom Movement and the courage of his mentor Jackie Robinson, Curt Flood took a public stand against the reserve clause, refusing to be traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. As detailed in Brad Snyder's powerful book on the subject—A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports—Flood was warned by many people, including members of the Major League Baseball Players Association, that bringing a lawsuit challenging the reserve clause was an entirely uphill battle. Flood was prepared to take the risk, and with the support of the Baseball Players Association, a major lawsuit was launched.

The fraud named Hillary Rodham Clinton
If any other candidate had pulled the disgraceful stunts that Clinton and her campaign have engineered in her faltering, debt-ridden run for President, they would be driven from their party of disgrace. But this is Hillary, wife of Bill -- the President of a thousand affairs and countless other political skeletons. Some claim she and her philandering, shoot-from-the-lip husband are Democratic royalty. If she is the best the Democrats have to offer the party of the jackass deserves to get its butt kicked in November.

JUST PLAIN WEIRD:

Police: Man Had Sex With Picnic Table
Police said an Ohio man has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a picnic table.
Police said an Ohio man has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a picnic table.
Police said an Ohio man has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a picnic table.

FOOD&DRINK:

Cooking Gourmet with 99¢ Food
Christiane Jory thoroughly embraces this fact in her book, The 99¢ Only Stores Cookbook. The idea may sound silly, but the book is filled with recipes for gourmet items like gruyere beignets, salmon souffle and Pinot Noir poached pear tarts. Many of the recipes have been adapted from culinary classics like the Joy of Cooking and the Moosewood Cookbook.

black and white cookies
These dramatic cakelike cookies are a New York City favorite — and we think they deserve a wider audience.

ENTERTAINMENT:

Levert's family asks FBI to probe death
The family of R&B singer Sean Levert wants the FBI to look into his death after a jail medical emergency.

Harmonica Legend Toots Thielemans on 'Piano Jazz'
Jean "Toots" Thielemans was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1922. He began playing the accordion at age three and, as a child, he often performed for the patrons at his parent's cafe. As a teenager Thielemans took up the harmonica, and later the guitar.

HUMOR?:

The Boondocks
http://www.gocomics.com/boondocks/

The Crazy Rev. Wright

2008-03-27T12:16:00.002-04:00

There They Go Again
The Crazy Rev. Wright
By ISHMAEL REED
Nothing is more uplifting than watching MSNBC's "Morning Joe," where wealthy Anglicized Irish Americans like Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, Tim "Little Russ" Russert and Pat Buchanan hold forth on the topic of race. During the week beginning March, 17, 2008, the talk was all about whether Barack Obama should distance himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Presumably in the same manner that they distanced themselves from Don Imus.
Buchanan has been awarded more time to discuss race and the bigotry of Rev. Wright than the scores of black intellectuals and scholars, who could provide some insight, combined. According to U. S. News & World Report (1/16/92), Pat Buchanan said In 1977 that Hitler was "a political organizer of the first rank," a man of "extraordinary gifts," "great courage" and elements of "genius." Yet there was his sister, Bay, debating Roland Martin, one of a handful of token black commentators with any kind of bite. This was on CNN, March 21. She was in a tizzy about the Rev. 's anti Americanism, yet Hitler, her brother's hero, was responsible for the deaths of 120, 000 Americans.
Why doesn't Dan Abrams at MSNBC just go ahead and offer Minister Louis Farrakhan a commentary? Why isn't the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress, so quick to pounce upon blacks who say silly anti Semitic things, all over MSNBC for Buchanan's position as Dan Abram's resident authority on race.
Tim Russert, his colleague, was employed by the late Daniel Moynihan. Moynihan's report on the black family has guided public policy and been cited in hundreds of Op-eds and editorials. Black intellectuals who opposed Moynihan's report have cited the fact that the majority of women on welfare at the time of the report were white women. In fact it was a Nazi, Tom Metzger, who told Larry King that the average welfare recipient was a white woman whose husband has left her, while Neo-cons and black tough lovers ignore this possibility. Isn't it ironic that one can gain a more accurate picture of welfare in this country from a Nazi than a Neo-con? Most of those white welfare recipients were probably Celtic, members of Moynihan's tribe.
It was Daniel Moynihan who accused black women of "speciation," of reproducing mutants, the kind of thing that the Nazis use to say about their victims. Did Russert disown the Senator after this remark? Some of those in the media who are now criticizing Senator Obama's pastor are Irish Catholics. They dominate the panels on "Morning Joe." (His token black guests are passive participants, grateful-to-be-on camera types).
Have these panelists, who are so critical of Rev. Wright, disassociated themselves from a church that had to pay 2 billion dollars to people who've been sexually abused by priests? Both the last pope and the current one attempted to cover up the scandal. Would they fly to Rome to scold the pope which is what they demanded of Obama who wasn't even present when Rev. Wright preached about 9/11. Have they had a one on one with their priests during which they criticized the church's cover up of the epidemic of pedophilia infecting the church?
The classic indicator for racism has been the double standard applied to blacks and whites. This still exists for blacks in everyday life. In the criminal justice system, the mortgage lending industry, and the treatment of blacks by the medical industry, etc. Why is Rev. Wright crazy for citing racism in the criminal justice system? The infamous three strikes law where poor people might receive a life sentence for stealing a pizza pie? Even the Bush administration has documented racial profiling. MSNBC's Tucker Carlson flew into a rage when Marc Morial of the Urban League mentioned racial disparities in the criminal justice system. I sent Carlson documentation, including data from the Sentencing Project. He still probably denies it, and his misrepresentations go out unchallenged to millions of viewers. It's appropriate that he and his colleagues dance on variety shows. They're entertainers, not newspeople. Could you imagine Edward R. Murrow appearing on "Dancing With The Stars?"
When Rev. Wright talks about AIDs being an ethnic weapon, those critics who denounce him haven't examined the speculation that it might have originated in the Koprowski's polio vaccine experiment that was conducted out of Philadelphia. Those who embrace this theory might find some support in the book, The River A Journey Back to The Source of HIV and AIDs by Edward Hooper ( Penguin, 2000). A white man wrote this book.
I did a considerable amount of research for my recent off Broadway play, "Body Parts," which was dismissed by The New York Times as "angry." I found that the pharmaceutical companies use Africans to test drugs that might have bad side effects without the knowledge of those being tested. The Washington Post did a series about this scandal. A series written by whites. they mention the Tuskegee experiments. According to Harriet Washington in her book Medical Apartheid, such experiments that date back to the days of slavery continue. Tuskegee was just the tip of the iceberg. Unequal Treatment; How African Americans documenting how unwitting victims of were used in medical experiments was reviewed in The Washington Post on Jan. 7, 2007 by Alondra Nelson. She wrote:
"J. Marion Sims, a leading 19th- century physician and former president of the American Medical Association, developed many of his gynecological treatments through experiments on slave women who were not granted the comfort of anesthesia. Sims's legacy is Janus-faced; he was pitiless with non- consenting research subjects, yet he was among the first doctors of the modern era to emphasize women's health. Other researchers were guiltier of blind ambition than racist intent. Several African Americans, including such as Eunice Rivers, the nurse-steward of the Tuskegee study, served as liaisons between scientists and research subjects.
"The infringement of black Americans' rights to their own bodies in the name of medical science continued throughout the 20th century. In 1945, Ebb Cade, an African American trucker being treated for injuries received in an accident in Tennessee, was surreptitiously placed without his consent into a radiation experiment sponsored by the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission. Black Floridians were deliberately exposed to swarms of mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and other diseases in experiments conducted by the Army and the CIA in the early 1950s. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, black inmates at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison were used as research subjects by a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist testing pharmaceuticals and personal hygiene products; some of these subjects report pain and disfiguration even now. During the 1960s and '70s, black boys were subjected to sometimes paralyzing neurosurgery by a University of Mississippi researcher who believed brain pathology to be the root of the children's supposed hyperactive behavior. In the 1990s, African American youths in New York were injected with Fenfluramine -- half of the deadly, discontinued weight loss drug Fen-Phen -- by Columbia researchers investigating a hypothesis about the genetic origins of violence."
With this kind of record, is Rev. Wright paranoid when he speculates that AIDs might be the result of an experiment gone wrong or even as some black intellectuals assert a ethnic weapon? Given these recorded instances of abuse by the government and private groups, would anybody put it pass them? The New York Times has carried a series about Eli Lily's role in distributing a drug called Zyprexa. Seems that the company knew about the dangerous side effects of this drug before they put it on the market ."Eli Lilly, the drug maker, systematically hid the risks and side effects of Zyprexa, its best-selling schizophrenia medicine, a lawyer for the State of Alaska said Wednesday in opening arguments in a lawsuit that contends the drug caused many schizophrenic patients to develop diabetes."
J. B Reed of Bloomberg News wrote:
"Eli Lilly has faced legal problems over evidence that Zyprexa, a top-selling medicine, tends to cause weight gain and diabetes.
"The lawyer, Scott Allen, said that memorandums from Lilly executives showed that the company knew of Zyprexa's dangers soon after the drug was introduced in 1996. But Lilly deliberately played down the side effects, Mr. Allen said, so that sales of Zyprexa would not be hurt."
"Lilly's conduct was 'reprehensible, 'Mr. Allen said. In the suit, which is being heard in Alaska state court before Judge Mark Rindner, the state is asking Lilly to pay for the medical expenses of Medicaid patients who have contracted diabetes or other diseases after taking Zyprexa."
Of course when I read that the drug was also used on "disruptive" children, you can imagine where my mind went; probably the same place that Rev. Jeremiah Wright's went.
My oldest daughter, Timothy, a novelist, author of Showing Out, has been suffering from schizophrenia since the age of twenty-eight. Every day for her is a challenge. Her psychiatrist only stopped prescribing Zyprexa for her when I told him to stop, having read about the Zyprexa scandal about a year ago. Now Eli Lilly's offering her $2500. 00, her share of a class action suit, a pittance when compared to the complications from type one diabetes that she contacted as a result of taking this drug. And The New York Times calls me "angry" for taking on the subject of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry? Also, what am I suppose to make of a report that dangerous anti-psychotic drugs are prescribed to black patients suffering from mental illness while white patients are steered into talk therapy.
Rev. Wright proposes that crack was deliberately brought into the inner city by the government. The CIA admitted to having knowledge that US allies brought drugs into the urban areas. The late Gary Webb was ridiculed by the American press for his "Dark Alliance," yet as Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair disclose in their book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, two years after Webb's series ran, the CIA's inspector general confirmed that the agency had in fact been aiding those very same Contra drug-runners (and many more).
Even before the publication of "Dark Alliance," in The San Jose Mercury, Senator John Kerry found that other Government agencies knew about their allies drug peddling and didn't do anything to stop it.
Don't blacks have a right to ask why? These crack operations may not be effecting the neighborhoods of the rich pundits who dismiss Wright as an anti-American nut but they effect mine and probably those served by Rev. Wright. We had our latest shootout on my block on March 17. It took the Oakland police at least twenty minutes before they arrived. In a Playboy article (Dec. 2007), I described my neighbors and me as being among the marooned. We don't receive the kind of police protection or services that white neighborhoods receive. Rev. Wright knows this. Maureen Dowd doesn't. She referred to him a "wackadoodle," the typical way in which black grievances are treated. We're angry. Paranoid. Politically correct. We're wack jobs. Foreign leaders who complain about American foreign policy are routinely described by the inbedwith press as peculiar or crazy. Jokes are made about them on comedy shows.
Wasn't Wright conservative when he mentioned just two of the horrendous crimes against humanity committed by the American government? Nagasaki and Hiroshima, attacks that were unique in the history. because the Japanese are still suffering from the damaging genetic effects of the war. He could have gone all out as Ward Churchill does in his book A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (Paperback). He could have reminded them that the West has been bombing Muslim countries since 1911(see The History of Bombing by Sven Lindquist. ) Wright didn't blame the three thousand casualties world trade center on the victims( nor did he say that it was an inside job, MSNBC's Willie Geist's lie). The fact that people abroad might be enraged by the country's policies is a difficult message for the American public which has been kept in a bubble of ignorance by the media and the school curriculum. Three thousand lives were lost as a result of the American invasion of Panama alone. Rick Sanchez of CNN said on March 21 that some Hispanics warmed to Obama's speech on race because they remember invasion of Panama and the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile. They might also remember the Reagan administrations support of Contra death squads. While white commentators and politicians were cynical about Obama's speech on race another Hispanic, Gov. Bill Richardson, said that he endorsed Obama as a result of the speech. Sanchez also stepped away from his CNN comfort zone by adding that there were few Latinos represented in the media (during this week, "historian" Tom Brokaw, called Hispanics, people who've been here since the 1500s,"latin Americans"). He's right. The few Asian-Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, and Native American journalists remaining are being bought out or fired according to Richard Prince. And so what we had last week was a white separatist media criticizing a black nationalist preacher. Multi deferment chicken hawk types criticizing a Marine. All you have to is pick up a copy of The Washingtonian to see photos of these commentators and op ed writers partying with and smooching up to the people whom they cover.
Air America's Rachel Maddow seems to be the only MSNBC commentator who views the double standard being applied to Obama and other presidential candidates, when she's not interrupted bullied and screamed at by Joe Scorborourgh who has to carry on like a maniac in order not to meet the same fate as Tucker Carlson. His show was cancelled. If two CNN reporters on the show Ballot Bowl surmised on Sat. that Obama's association with Rev. Wright hurt him, why doesn't Hillary Clinton's association with Billy Graham, her spiritual advisor, hurt her? In a Time interview, Hillary Clinton reported that the evangelist "fulfilled a pastoral role during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and helped the First Lady endure the ordeal."At that time, Clinton said,"Graham was 'incredibly supportive to me personally. And he was very strong in saying, 'I really understand what you're doing and I support you. ' He was just very personally there for me.'"
Billy Graham in a conversation with Richard Nixon described the Jews as "satanic" and offered that they owned the media and peddled pornography. If Ms. Clinton denounced and rejected Billy Graham, of whom the editor of Newsweek John Meacham likened to god with his blue eyes, etc. her poll numbers would decline over night. John Meacham was on a Sunday talk show, March 23, 2008, criticizing Rev. Wright and taking some jabs at Obama, part of It laced with sarcasm. He said that now people have found that Obama doesn't "walk on water," maybe because for Meacham only Billy Graham can perform such miracles.
And if that weren't enough, On Saturday, C-Span's guest was Donald Lambro, The Washington Times' chief political correspondence who joined in the media's running loop devoted to criticizing Obama's relationship with his pastor. The Friday before, Diana West, a reporter for the same paper, appearing on the Lou Dobbs show, criticized Michelle Obama and Rev. Wright for their "anti-Americanism," and quoted Victor Davis Hanson a far right columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. Their boss is Rev. Sun Myung Moon who warns Korean widows that their husbands will go to hell if they don't give him money. If, for them, Obama should disown Rev. Wright, why are they still working for a religious shakedown artist? Why don't they step away from Rev. Moon's anti-Americanism reported by Robert Parry of consortiumnews: Moon's jingle of deep-pocket cash also has caused conservatives to turn a deaf ear toward Moon's recent anti-American diatribes. With growing virulence, Moon has denounced the United States and its democratic principles, often referring to America as "Satanic." But these statements have gone virtually unreported, even though the texts of his sermons are carried on the Internet and their timing has coincided with Bush's warm endorsements of Moon.
"America has become the kingdom of individualism, and its people are individualists," Moon preached in Tarrytown, N. Y., on March 5, 1995. "You must realize that America has become the kingdom of Satan."
In similar remarks to followers on Aug. 4, 1996, Moon vowed that the church's eventual dominance over the United States would be followed by the liquidation of American individualism."Americans who continue to maintain their privacy and extreme individualism are foolish people," Moon declared."The world will reject Americans who continue to be so foolish. Once you have this great power of love, which is big enough to swallow entire America, there may be some individuals who complain inside your stomach. However, they will be digested."
During the same sermon, Moon decried assertive American women."American women have the tendency to consider that women are in the subject position," he said. "However, woman's shape is like that of a receptacle. The concave shape is a receiving shape. Whereas, the convex shape symbolizes giving. . . . Since man contains the seed of life, he should plant it in the deepest place.
"Does woman contain the seed of life? ["No."] Absolutely not. Then if you desire to receive the seed of life, you have to become an absolute object. In order to qualify as an absolute object, you need to demonstrate absolute faith, love and obedience to your subject. Absolute obedience means that you have to negate yourself 100 percent."
Diana West and Donald Lambro are applying a double standard for their boss and for Rev. Wright. And why does CNN keep on as a regular the employee of a man who hates our country so much? Does Lou Dobb agree that the United States is satanic?Does Jonathan Klein, CNN's boss? Where is NOW?
When Richard Cohen appeared on television on March 21st, he joined the media chorus in taking offense to the remarks of Rev. Wright. This is the columnist who defended the practice racial profiling by Washington shop keepers.
On March 20, the Dali Lama was the subject of gushing praise by a writer for Time magazine where Rev. Wright had been roistered all week on cable. From Jameswagner. com: "the Dalai Lama explicitly condemns homosexuality, as well as all oral and anal sex. His stand is close to that of Pope John Paul II, something his Western followers find embarrassing and prefer to ignore. His American publisher even asked him to remove the injunctions against homosexuality from his book, 'Ethics for the New Millennium, ' for fear they would offend American readers, and the Dalai Lama acquiesced."
Also, why isn't there a running loop about John McCain's relationship with controversial ministers? Are those who control the media easy on him because he plays the father in their fantasies?
What about these Waco doodles? The late Jerry Falwell Pat Robertson and Rev. John Hagee. About 9/11, Falwell said "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For The American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen. '''
And Pat Robertson: "I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, this is not a message of hate-this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will being about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it's bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteror." This was Robertson commenting on "gay days" at Disneyworld.
John McCain's spiritual advisor is Rev. John Hagee. He says that the Roman Catholic Church and Hitler formed an alliance for the purpose of exterminating the Jews. Hurricane Katrina for him, was God's punishment for a gay rights parade that occurred in New Orleans.
The double standard applied to Obama, the Clintons and Senator McCain and their relationship to controversial pastors is the result of a media gone wild. (On "The View," Elizabeth Hasselbeck even compared Rev. Wright to Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal). A media that, since the O. J. trial, has found that it can make more money from the racial divide than by any of the other fault lines in American life.
While Obama talked to Americans as though they were adults, the media treated the controversy as though it were a video game in which Rev. Wright was the heavy. They O. Jayed Wright for cash.
Martin Luther King. Jr. had a dream. Here's mine. What would happen if all of the whites holding forth in Op-eds and on cable about race- both in the progressive and corporate media- the middle persons who interpret black America for whites( when they are capable of speaking for themselves), the screenwriters and TV writers who make millions from presenting blacks as scum, and the authors of the fake ghetto books would just shut the fuck up for a few months and listen. Just listen. Listen to blacks, browns, reds and yellows, people whose views are ignored by the segregated media. Listen, not just to their meek colored mind doubles like an Obama critic, Rev. Rivers, who nobody's ever heard of, but people who will level with them.
In 1957, Doubleday released Richard Wright's White Man Listen. In it, he wrote "...the greatest aid that any white Westerner can give Africa is by becoming a missionary right in the heart of the Western world, explaining to his own people what they have done to Africa."
Nobody expects the media to educate the public about Africa. The current coverage is consistent with the images found in the Tarzan movies. It's not going to change. I'll settle for missionary work among the American public. Free them from entrapment by the corporate media, which are causing their brain cells to atrophy. Teach them the other points of views that are smothered by the noise, and trivialized on You Tube. Then maybe they'll understand where the crazy Rev. Wright is coming from.

Ishmael Reed is a poet, novelist and essayist who lives in Oakland. His widely-accalimed novels include, Mumbo Jumbo, the Freelance Pallbearers and the Last Days of Louisiana Red. He has recently published a fantastic book on Oakland: Blues City: a Walk in Oakland and Carroll and Graf has recently published a thick volume of his poems: New and Collected Poems: 1964-2006.
He is also the editor of the online zine Konch.
Copyright 2008 Ishmael Reed

Poor Little White Boy

2008-03-27T11:09:00.003-04:00

Here is an actual email exchange over the last 24 hours between myself and a guy in Boston. A true American psychotic.

--- Gregory Williams wrote:> > If you have not heard Rev. Wright's comments in> context check them out here to find the truth. And> if you still think the man is crazy or a racist show> me!> > > > >

Tell the Whole Story FOX! Barack Obama's pastor Wright

FOX Lies!! Irresponsible Media! Barack Obama Pastor Wright

Alva Hare wrote:
America's chickens have come home to roost....Camera pans to black audience clappingWe took this country by terror....Bla bla bla fucking bla. Its a double standard. You can talk all the shit youwant about white people and excuse it. Its hypocrisyand unabashed racism. Borat Hussein Osama is a racist bigot. His wife is aspecial ed idiot that got into harvard instead of mebecause she is black. I am so sick of hearing it. Its a double standard. If McCain said the words "typical black person" hewould be forced out of the Senate. Black America's chickens are coming home to roost. 30years of affirmative action and what have we got?I want a free education at Harvard too.

My response is this and I put it here for the world to see. because it is past time for exposing this sick mentality.

I have known you for a long time, or so I thought. I guess we were just acquaintances. But thank God for Barack Obama.

You have a lot of knowledge but absolutely NO WISDOM. If there was a perfect place for you to live, it would be Boston, only back 35 years ago. That way you could stand out in the open and throw bricks at busloads of black children.

Your attack on the man's wife is childish. If she was special Ed, where would that put you, because she is obviously brighter and smarter than you.

Poor little white boy not smart enough to get into Harvard, and had to pay for and education to a school that gave me a scholarship.

I have no idea what other ethnic groups you have problems with so I'll keep the discussion to mine. Thank God for Barack Obama for allowing us to see people like you for who you really are. People like you are dinosaurs, relics of a past that should should have dried up, turned to dust, and blew away long ago. Unfortunately for us, we have this insane belief that people like you have "seen the light." Well you have but, it was a blacklight. A light from The LIAR.

What is it that scares People like you so much that you would have this nation continue down this suicidal path, than give a fair look at a Black Man. When presented with the facts that disprove the lies, you come up with things that have no basis in fact. Your mental illness has so deeply saturated you that there is no hope for you. Electroshock therapy would only make you retreat further into your insanity. Are you afraid that if a Black Man is President that you and people like you would have to give up the privileges and benefits you still enjoy from a paranoid and racist white society? That if there were truly a level playing field people like you would wind up working at a gas station? You know me and you know I am not afraid of telling you what I think, I just don't most times because peace is more important that being right. Your inbred thoughts of superiority are a hoax foisted on us and you. You are in no way superior to me or anyone else. the only way people like you keep what you think you have is by divisive lying ways. You are outnumbered in your own nation and you know it. That fact alone scares you to death. The fact that one day all those around you will one day realize what a fraud you really are and you will be reduced to nothing.

And don't think I have taken your comments personally and have anger or hate in my heart for you and people like you. It's more pity. Pity for a pitiful man with a pitifully small intellect living a pitiful, paranoid existence.

Thank God for Barack Obama. Why because he is forcing Closet racists like you into the bright light of day. You can't hide anymore and one day you will have to pay for your offences as will I. I will pray for you and those like you.

Uhhhhh.....NO.

2008-03-13T17:45:00.003-04:00

The same old fear-mongering and sneaky maneuvering that the Republicans are wont to do in their “War on Terror.” Stymied by the Democratic majority in the House from simply rubberstamping Bush’s telecom immunity, Rep. Peter Hoekstra tried to slip a telecom immunity proviso into a mental health parity bill. His justification:
This bill is intended to ensure the mental health of Americans yet no American’s health can be fully secured if they are under attack by terrorists or facing the potential threat of terrorist attack.
Beat. Head. Against. Keyboard. Now.

Um, Sean? Aren’t YOU part of the mainstream media?

Download Play Download Play
And to make matters worse, the church is raising questions with the IRS, because of how they’re campaigning for Obama at the pulpit. And we continue now with our panel. First of all, I will not let up on this issue, Jeanine Pirro, if his pastor went to Libya, Tripoli, with Louis Farrakhan, a virulent anti-Semitic racist. His past…his church gave a lifetime achievement award to Louis Farrakhan. That’s been Barack Obama’s past for twenty years. And we will continue to expose this until someone in the mainstream media has the courage to take this on.
I assume by his brave stance–speaking out against the spineless MSM–that Hannity will be doing similar segments denouncing Hagee and Parsley, who have been openly endorsing John McCain, right?

A tip of the cap to http://www.crooksandliars.com/

What wouldn't Clinton do to secure power?
Like a vermin!
Hillary's Blonde Ambition Tour!
Coming soon to a state near you!

It's 3 a.m.
Humor

Physicists Make Artificial Black Hole Using Optical Fiber
Plans to nominate the project for the Nobel Prize in physics were set back when the entire campus vanished in a blinding flash of light immediately after one of the scientists said, "Oh shit!"

OK. I got a little lazy today !

Aren't you tired of being sick and tired?

2008-03-10T14:24:00.001-04:00

Aren't you tired of being sick and tired?

What makes anybody think that the republicans don't WANT to run against billary? The one candidate that that would UNITE the opposition?

When did LIBERAL become such a bad word? It was LIBERAL POLICIES that brought this Nation into being, policies and programs that brought The U.S. out of a CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN induced Great Depression. That built the infrastructure that brought about the biggest increase in wealth for the masses in our history. And it will take the same thing to bring us out of THE GREATER DEPRESSION to come, if we continue to do the same thing.

Remember the promises made by the conservatives LESS GOVERNMENT. Every Republican administration in my life has operated on deficit spending. All have put in place policies or proposed laws that have made our lives and the world a mess.

Iran-Contra brought crack to us. The first bush, after letting Saddam go into Kuwait tricked us and the world into going in there in the first place. The first clinton watched quietly while North, Poindexter and crew used his state to bring in cocaine and send out guns. the second bush, where do you start with these criminals. I could go on, but why bother?

Where will a second clinton or mc cain administraion led us? Further down the road to destruction of the wealth of the masses. Both are republicans! Both are tied very tightly to the old ways. Both will led us straight to destruction.

How can the American People continue to vote against their own self interest?

There are no guarantees with anyone person, but the insanity of doing the same thing over and over must end? Aren't you tired of being sick and tired?

Jeff Healey

2008-03-03T14:29:00.000-05:00

Blind rock and jazz musician Jeff Healey has died after a lifelong battle against cancer. He was 41.

Healey died Sunday evening in a Toronto hospital, said bandmate Colin Bray, who was in the room with Healey's family when the guitarist died.

The Grammy-nominated Healey rose to stardom as the leader of the Jeff Healey Band, a rock-oriented trio that gained international acclaim and platinum record sales with the 1988 album "See the Light." The album included the hit single "Angel Eyes."

Healey had battled cancer since age 1, when a rare form of retinal cancer known as Retinoblastoma claimed his eyesight.

Due to his blindness, Healey taught himself to play guitar by laying the instrument across his lap.
His unique playing style, combined with his blues-oriented vocals, earned him a reputation as a teenage musical prodigy. He shared stages with George Harrison, B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Bray said he and many others expected the guitarist to rally from this latest illness.
"I don't think any of us thought this was going to happen," Bray said. "We just thought he was going to bounce back as he always does."

Healey had undergone numerous operations in recent years to remove tumors from his lungs and leg.

Jeff Healey - see the light (live)

Jeff Healey - As the years go passing by

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jeff Healey - Look at Little Sister

Twenty Years of Bush-Clinton is enough

2008-03-02T20:40:00.002-05:00

If you count 8 years of Reagan, 5 and a half(Thank God) of Nixon, 5 of LBJ, we have been catching hell virtually all our lives. Isn't it time to support a candidate who didn't come from privilege, or gets virtually all their money from the corporations they end up serving. For once in my life I REALLY feel like I DON'T have to choose between the lesser of two evils. Help put the final nail in the clinton campaign coffin on Tuesday March 4, 2008.

The entire free world is watching. Waiting on the people of the usa to get a grip. And trust me if we don't they have positioned themselves very well.

As a nation we produce almost nothing. We owe everyone. But we continue to act like we run the world.

As individuals we are in the Matrix. We work everyday, produce almost nothing. Our wealth is based on property that we never really own. We work for money that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. But we continue to run our mouths like we are doing something.

On Tuesday in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont we can take the next step in gaining control of our nation and begin to repar all the damage that has been done by others in our name.

God Bless you all

We Are The Ones Song by will.i.am - Obama

Obama: I Will Have Credibility With Muslim World

Candidates@Google: Barack Obama
Illinois Senator and 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama visits Google's Mountain View, CA, headquarters to deliver his innovation agenda, speak with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and take questions from Google employees. This event took place on November 14, 2007, as part of the Candidates@Google series.

2008-02-22T13:49:00.003-05:00

ANOTHER ANGLE
News others won't tell you

NATIONAL:

Barack Obama Wins Democrats Abroad Primary

Obama support grows among seniors

Report: Security relaxed at Obama speech
Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence -- who heads the department's homeland security and special operations divisions -- told the Star-Telegram the order had been intended to speed up seating of the more than 17,000 people who came to hear the candidate speak.Lawrence said he was concerned about the large number of people being let in without being screened, but that the crowd seemed "friendly," the newspaper said.

Only The Power of Story Can Save Clinton's Campaign
So far, Hillary is failing to make her experience enough of an issue, failing to present her 15 years of diplomacy, leadership etcetera as a compelling reason to vote for her over Obama. The only way she has any chance of turning things around is to create a narrative that actually reaches beyond people's heads and into their hearts. That narrative can only be built with stories.

Former Congressman Warns Of Martial Law Camps In America
Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

Prairie View A&M Student March Videos
Prairie View A&M students walking 7 miles from campus to the one voting location alloted for their district. Well, we now have video of the march:

Joe Louis' Sister, 92, Freezes to Death
The body of Vunies High, who had Alzheimer's disease, was found Monday outside The Heatherwood retirement complex in Southfield, a Detroit suburb, said Capt. Tom Colombo of Southfield emergency medical services.
High, who spent 25 years as a teacher and counselor for Detroit Public Schools, was last seen Sunday. When she was found, she was dressed only in pajamas and was wearing one shoe, with the other lying nearby. An autopsy shows she died of hypothermia.

INTERNATIONAL:

Nigeria Marks 50 Years Since Oil Discovery
Following the discovery of oil in commercial quantity in Bayelsa State in the late 1950s, Nigeria shipped out oil for the first time from its shores on Feb. 17, 1958.

ECONOMY:

Radio One's Stock Continues to Crash
Radio One, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROIAK and ROIA), the producer of the Tom Joyner Morning Show and the nation's largest Black-owned radio broadcasting company, stock continued on a tumultuous slide as the price headed even lower today with the release of the company’s earnings numbers for the quarter ended December 31, 2007.

Bond auction fails; cities flee to safety
Thousands of auctions run by banks to set rates on the debt failed this month as investors shunned the securities and bankers refused to submit bids, sending interest costs to 10 percent or higher on some bonds. Auctions covering as much as $26 billion of bonds a day failed to attract enough buyers since Feb. 13, according to Bank of America Corp.

OP-ED:

Spreading the Gain -- Feb. 2008
...understand the importance of the continuous movement of the Black dollar among Black people, for as long as it is possible. A major part of that movement is from Black business to Black business.

I call it “Spreading the Gain.” It is important for consumers, not just Black consumers but especially Black consumers, to support Black owned businesses. Let me say it before you do, not because they are Black but because they are good at what they do. Also, consumer support is vital to the growth of any business, and the more we support our own businesses the larger and more viable they will become.

FOOD&DRINK:

Hercules and Hemings: Presidents' Slave Chefs
Some kitchen stories are complicated — full of mystery and missing pieces — the truth hidden by time. No photographs to capture them, little historical record to go on. "Hercules and Hemings" is one of these stories.

REVIEWS/INTERVIEWS:

Hair Wars: Redefining the Updo

Music to read by

2008-02-21T18:55:00.001-05:00

I didn't forget to post music to read by.

George Duke Live at the NSJF 2001

Sade - Cherish the day

Tutu (live) Miles Davis

Luther VanDross - Superstar (Live) [Early version]

Zapp & Roger - Summer Jam '98 part2/2

The Return of Another Angle 21 - February - 2008

2008-02-21T17:21:00.006-05:00

I am feeling much better! Nuff said, back to work!

"For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country...."

But wait; let's look at the rest of that statement:

"...And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction...”
Mmmm, OK, now it makes sense when taken in it's proper context.

MOVIE OF THE DAY
"OUT OF AFRICA "

Thanx To http://field-negro.blogspot.com/

RNC Donor Event Outlines Obama Attack Plan
The RNC’s “winter retreat” for major donors at Los Angeles’ Beverly Wilshire Hotel featured such party stalwarts as Karl Rove, RNC chairman Robert Duncan, former Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, as well as some Hollywood types, including Dave Berg, a segment producer and “political director” for “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

Israeli Newspaper Prints Racist Obama Cartoon

הבית עדיין לבן, אבל לא עוד הרבה זמן, הואיל הקריקטוריסט של 'מעריב' להודיע לקוראיו. שַווּ-נא בנפשכם מֶה היה קורה אילו יהודי התמודד על הנשיאות, ועתון גדול בארה"ב היה מפרסם קריקטורה המראה אותו צובע מגיני דויד ענקיים על כותלי הבית הלבן. אנטישמיות, היתה הליגה נגד השמצה מכריזה (בצדק). אבל זה אפילו גרוע ממגיני דויד. כאן הצבע השחור הוא תוצאה של צבע עור, לא של אמונה דתית. איזו בושה

Countdown: The Implications Behind O’Reilly’s “Lynching Party” Quote
Keith Olbermann brings on Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson to discuss the horrific history behind Bill O’Reilly’s casual and callous use of the phrase “lynching party” in reference to Michelle Obama’s quote about being really proud of this country and the implications one may draw from it.

Here it comes…
Obama’s family must be Commies. That’s a new one.

Oil, gold prices strike historic highs

Famines May Occur Without Record Crops This Year, Potash Says
``We keep going to the cupboard without replacing and so there is enormous pressure on agriculture to have a record crop every year,'' Doyle said. ``We need to have a record crop in 2008 just to stay even with this very low inventory situation.''

McCain: ‘I’m The Only Candidate That The Special Interests Don’t Give Money To’
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, McCain has taken nearly $1.2 million in campaign contributions from the telephone utility and telecom service industries, more than any other Senator. McCain sides with the telecom companies on retroactive immunity.

The Divine Destruction of America: Can She Avert It?
When we’re talking about judgment, in this case we’re talking about God forming a decision that comes down against America and against this world. God has sent down His decision. His intention is the total destruction of America. The question is, is America good and by what standard? If America has exceeded the limits, then somebody has to make God’s decision known. Publish the decision. There is no appeal, but there is a way to get out from it. It’s very narrow, it’s very limited, but you can avoid it.

Oh, now they care about minorities

2007-11-10T14:51:00.000-05:00

Oh, now they care about minorities
By: Steve Benen

In September, PBS hosted a Republican presidential candidates’ debate at historically black college in Baltimore — and all of the top four GOP candidates decided to skip it. This followed close on the heels of a Univision-hosted Republican debate in Miami on Latino issues — which was cancelled when all but one candidate declined invitations. The National Council of La Raza asked Republican candidates to address its annual conference in July, but none showed up. The National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials extended similar invitations to the entire GOP field, but only Duncan Hunter agreed to attend.

Just two weeks ago, the entire Republican presidential field blew off the Congressional Black Caucus Institute’s debate, co-hosted by Fox News. A not-so-subtle pattern emerged — if you’re darker than a manila envelope, the GOP candidates aren’t interested in talking to you.
But now, I’m pleased to report that the Republicans have had a change of heart.

Jilted by the GOP earlier this year, viewers of the nation’s largest Spanish-language television network will get a chance to see the Republican presidential candidates debate in Miami on Dec. 9.

Simon Rosenberg attributes the sudden turnaround to the GOP’s new-found understanding that the party’s strategy isn’t working.

When Israel Was Apartheid's Open Ally

2007-11-07T10:49:00.000-05:00

When Israel Was Apartheid's Open Ally

Lenni Brenner

Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, has opened up much of the American public to serious discussion of Israel's realities. He's no experton Zionist history, but the Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel propagandists must now work 25 hours a day, 366 days a year, trying to discredit equating Israel and apartheid South Africa.
Curiously, Carter only mentions South African apartheid 3 times. He relates how, on his 1973 visit to Israel,"General Rabin described the close relationship that Israel had with South Africa in the diamond trade (he had returned from there a day or two early to greet us) but commented that the South African system of apartheid could not long survive."
He also tells us that:
"Israeli leaders have embarked on a series of unilateral decisions, bypassing both Washington and the Palestinians. Their presumption is that an encircling barrier will finally resolve the Palestinian problem. Utilizing their political and military dominance, they are imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories. The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa -- not racism, but the acquisition of land. There has been a determined and remarkably effective effort to isolate settlers from Palestinians, so that a Jewish family can commute from Jerusalem to their highly subsidized home deep in the West Bank on roads from which others are excluded, without ever coming in contact with any facet of Arab life."
And he presents the 3 unattractive options in front of Israel's public. One is:
"A system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. This is the policy now being followed, although many citizens of Israel deride the racist connotation of prescribing permanent second-class status for the Palestinians. As one prominent Israeli stated, 'I am afraid that we are moving toward a government like that of South Africa, with dual society of Jewish rulers and Arab subjects with few rights of citizenship. The West Bank is not worth it.'"
Beyond that, his only citation re post-apartheid South Africa is listing Nelson Mandela as supporting the "Geneva Initiative" Israel/Palestine peace plan that Carter was involved in drawing up.
In reality, Israeli and American Zionist ties to racist Pretoria were so close that there can be no doubt that Zionism's leaders were accomplices in apartheid's crimes, including murderous invasions of Angola and Namibia.
Israel denounced apartheid until the 1973 Yom Kippur war as it sought to diplomatically outflank the Arabs in the UN by courting Black Africa. But most Black states broke ties after the war, in solidarity with Egypt, trying to drive non-African Israel out of the Sinai, part of Africa. Jerusalem then turned towards South Africa.
During WW ll, Britain had John Vorster interned as a Nazi sympathizer. But in 1976 Israel invited South Africa's Prime Minister to Jerusalem. Yitzhak Rabin, then Israel's PM, hailed "the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence." Both confronted "foreign-inspired instability and recklessness." Israel, alone in the world, allowed Bophuthatswana, SA's puppet 'black homeland,' to open an embassy.
In 1989, Ariel Sharon, with David Chanoff, wrote Warrior: An Autobiography. He told of his 1981 trip to Africa and the US as Israel's Defense Minister:
"From Zaire we went to South Africa, where Lily and I were taken to see the Angola border. There South Africans were fighting a continuing war against Cuban-led guerrilla groups infiltrating from the north. To land there our plane came in very high as helicopters circled, searching the area. When the helicopters were satisfied, we corkscrewed down toward the field in a tight spiral to avoid the danger of ground-to-air missiles, the Russian-supplied SAM 7 Strellas that I had gotten to know at the Canal.
On the ground I saw familiar scenes. Soldiers and their families lived in this border zone at constant risk, their children driven to school in convoys protected by high-built armored cars, which were less vulnerable to mines.
I went from unit to unit, and in each place I was briefed and tried to get a feel for the situation. It is not in any way possible to compare Israel with South Africa, and I don't believe that any Jew can support apartheid. But seeing these units trying to close their border against terrorist raids from Angola, you could not ignore their persistence and determination. So even though conditions in the two countries were so vastly different, in some ways life on the Angolan border looked not that much different from life on some of our own borders."
Sharon went to Washington to deal with a range of Middle Eastern questions.He also
"took the opportunity to discuss with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinburger, and CIA Director William Casey other issues of mutual interest. I described what I had seen in Africa, including the problems facing the Central African Republic. I recommended to them that we should try to go into the vacuums that existed in the region and suggested that efforts of this sort would be ideally suited for American-Israeli cooperation."
By 1989 it was certain that apartheid was about to close down, hence Sharon's "I don't believe that any Jew can support apartheid." But a 12/14/81 NY Times article, "South Africa Needs More Arms, Israeli Says," gave a vivid picture of Israel's earlier zeal for its ally's cause:
"The military relationship between South Africa and Israel, never fully acknowledged by either country, has assumed a new significance with the recent 10 day visit by Israel's Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, to South African forces in Namibia along the border with Angola.
In an interview during his recent visit to the United States, Mr. Sharon made several points concerning the South African position.
First, he said that South Africa is one of the few countries in Africa and southwestern Asia that is trying to resist Soviet military infiltration in the area.
He added that there had been a steady flow of increasingly sophisticated Soviet weapons to Angola and other African nations, and that as a result of this, and Moscow's political and economic leverage, the Soviet Union was 'gaining ground daily' throughout the region.
Mr. Sharon, in company with many American and NATO military analysts, reported that South Africa needed more modern weapons if it is to fight successfully against Soviet-Supplied troops. The United Nations arms embargo, imposed in November 1977, cut off established weapons sources such as Britain, France and Israel, and forced South Africa into under-the-table deals....
Israel, which has a small but flourishing arms export industry, benefited from South African military trade before the 1977 embargo.
According to The Military Balance, the annual publication of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the South African Navy includes seven Israeli-built fast attack craft armed with Israeli missiles. The publication noted that seven more such vessels are under order. Presumably the order was placed before the 1977 embargo was imposed....
Mr. Sharon said Moscow and its allies had made sizable gains in Central Africa and had established 'corridors of power,' such as one connecting Libya and Chad. He said that Mozambique was under Soviet control and that Soviet influence was growing in Zimbabwe.
The Israeli official... saw the placement of Soviet weapons, particularly tanks, throughout the area as another danger.
South Africa's military policy of maintaining adequate reserves, Mr. Sharon said, will enable it to keep forces in the field in the foreseeable future but he warned that in time the country may be faced by more powerful weapons and be tter armed and trained soldiers."
American Zionists were equally committed to apartheid. The 5/86 ADL Bulletin ran "The African National Congress: A Closer Look." It revealed the organization's hatred of the movement leading the liberation struggle in South Africa. The ADL sent its tirade to every member of the US Congress!
It formally bowed to political correctness:
"Discussion of the political scene in South Africa properly begins with the self-evident stipulation that apartheid is racist and dehumanizing."
But
"this is not to suggest closing our eyes to what may emerge once apartheid is gone.... We must distinguish between those who will work for a humane, democratic, pro-western South Africa and those who are totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israeli and anti-American.
It is in this context that the African National Congress (ANC), so frequently discussed as an alternative to the Botha government, merits a close, unsentimental look.... The ANC, which seeks to overthrow the South African government, is a 'national liberation movement' that, plainly said, is under heavy Communist influence. The ANC has been allied with the South African Communist Party (SACP) for 50 years.... The fall of South Africa to such a Soviet oriented and Communist influenced force would be a severe setback to the United States, whose defense industry relies heavily on South Africa's wealth of strategic minerals."
ADL spying on America's anti-apartheid movement, for BOSS, South Africa's secret police, became public in 1993 when San Francisco papers revealed that Tom Gerard, a local cop and ex-CIA man, illegally gave police information to Roy Bullock, ADL's man in SF.
Gerard pled no contest to illegal access to police computers. The ADL made a 'we didn't do it and won't do it again' deal with the DA. It agreed to an injunction not to use illegal methods in 'monitoring' the political universe. ADL National Director Abe Foxman said that, rather than go to trial, where – of course! -- they would certainly have been found innocent, ADL settled because "continuing with an investigation over your head for months and years leads some to believe there is something wrong."
Despite the slap-on-the-wrist deal, Bullock's activities were documented. The ADL claimed that he was a free-lance informer whose activities for the apartheid regime were unknown to them. But (FBI) FD-302, a 1993 FBI report on an interview with Bullock, takes up a letter found in his computer files, "prepared for transmission to the South Africans." It said that, "during an extended conversation with two FBI agents," in 1990, they asked
"'Why do you think South African agents are coming to the West Coast? Did I know any agents' they finally asked?.... I replied that a meeting had been arranged, in confidence, by the ADL which wanted information on radical right activities in SA and their American connections. To that end I met an agent at Rockefeller Center cafeteria."
The FBI said that "Bullock commented that the TRIP.DBX letter was a very 'damning' piece of evidence. He said he had forgotten it was in his computer." Of course he hastened to tell the FBI that "his statements to the FBI that the ADL had set up his relationship with the South Africans were untrue."
The ADL was so anti-ANC that only fools could think that they didn't know that Bullock was working with the South Africans. Isn't it more likely that he told the truth in 1990 and lied in 1993? The feds came on another matter in 1990, surprising him with questions re South Africans. They interviewed him in his lawyers' office in 1993. Be certain that they told him what not to say. He also knew that if he wanted ADL help in his FBI troubles concerning South Africa, he had to claim that they had nothing to do with his BOSS connection. In any case, the ADL continued to work with Bullock. And NY's 7/27/93 Village Voice reported that Irwin Suall, its Chief Fact-finder, i.e., head spy, told the FBI that "he didn't think dealing with South African intelligence was different than dealing with any other police agency."
Time hasn't been kind to the ADL. The ANC runs its country and is a model of ethnic and religious tolerance. It never was anti-Semitic and there are Jewish ANCers in the Pretoria parliament. But Foxman always has a cleanup for Israeli and ADL infamies. On October 11th, he spoke at a NY Barnes & Noble bookstore on his latest book, The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. It has a chapter denouncing Carter. I was in his audience and challenged him:
"You brought up the fact that Jimmy Carter used the word apartheid in histitle. But I would remind you that of course that Israel was allied to apartheid South Africa. I'm looking at the December 14, 1981 New York Times, "South Africa needs more arms, Israeli says," Israeli meaning Ariel Sharon, the Minister of Defense, who was on a tour, as it were, with the South African army as it was invading Angola. And then, in May 1986,
Foxman: I get the point.
Brenner: Excuse me! The ADL sent this to every member of Congress, denouncing the African National Congress as pro-Soviet and wicked, yes, and anti-Semitic and so on and so forth.
I sat several rows from him. Two words on my tape are indistinct andtentatively printed here in caps. But they don't effect general understanding of his statement, even with its grammatical irregularities as he grappled with my surprise accusations:
"OK. The African National Congress during the fight for SUFFRAGE, the struggle for AFRICAN liberation, was anti-Semitic, it was pro-Communist, it was anti-Israel, it was, where ever it could, become friends and allies of Arab, Palestinian terrorism, etc.
I had the privilege, I had the privilege of flying to Geneva to meet President Mandela, before he was President, after he was freed and before he came to the United States on his 1st visit. I had the very, very special privilege of spending 5 hours with him and several American Jews who came to meet with him in advance of his visit, to better understand.
And he said to us, 'if,' he said,
'I understand why Israel made friends with apartheid South Africa. Because Israel was boycotted all over the world, Israel couldn't have relations with other countries in the world, Israel wasn't sold arms to defend itself, so I do not judge Israel, I understand why Israel, you need not to judge me, for the friends that I make. I make friends with the PLO, I make friends with those who supported our liberation movement, and if you don't make it as a prerequisite that your enemies have to be my enemies, I will not make it a prerequisite for me.'
So Mandela, who was a heroic fighter in the struggle for, understood, very well, that just like he had to make deals with the devil, he made deals for support with people that he didn't agree with, that he didn't like. You certainly know from his record, he was not a Communist, yet he took the support of Communists, because they were the only ones, he understood, and respected, that Israel was dealing with South Africa. South Africa was one of the few countries that sold it arms. Now these were the years that America wouldn't sell Israel arms. Those were the years that Europe wouldn't sell Israel arms. So he understood it. Was it pleasant for everybody? No. Did we send the stuff about the ANC then? Yes. And today things are changed, very dramatically changed."
How accurately did he recall Mandela's remarks? We know that the ANC made a deal with apartheid's leaders. Blacks got their rights and hearings were to be held on what repressive crimes actually happened during the racist era. But white military and other officials retained their posts under the new Black-led government. So if Mandela said what Foxman claims he said, it was in that reconciling spirit: 'You did what you thought you had to do, same with me, now lets move on.'
The ANC's generous peace didn't retrospectively make apartheid less criminal.If Mandela wanted relations between his new government and Israel to go to a friendlier level, that didn't make Israeli and ADL collaboration with racism even a speck less felonious. And of course ANCers still denounce Israeli crimes against Palestinians. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was emphatic at a Boston "End the Occupation" rally in 2002:
"You know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal. To criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic.... People are scared to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful. Well, so what?
For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust."
Five years later, Israel is still very powerful. But in time it too shall be replaced by a democratic secular binational Palestinian/Israeli state. The model for that is today's South African constitution. Most whites there say that they as well as blacks are the better for it. And when secular binationalism finally wins, Israelis as well as Palestinians will likewise rejoice in their equality, peace and prosperity.
~~~~~~
Lenni Brenner is the author of 4 books, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Jews in America Today, and The Lesser Evil, a study of the Democratic Party. They have been favorably reviewed in 11 languages by prominent publications, including the London Times, the London Review of Books, Moscow's Izvestia and the Jerusalem Post. In 2002 he edited 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis. It contains complete translations of many documents quoted in Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and The Iron Wall. In 2004 he edited Jefferson & Madison On Separation of Church and State: Writings on Religion and Secularism.

Turning Back the Clock-A Little Music For Ya!

2007-10-14T21:44:00.000-04:00

Bean & Bird: Ballade

Nat King Cole Oscar Peterson Trio & Coleman Hawkins - Sw

Sarah Vaughan: I Can't Give You Anything But Love

THELONIOUS MONK - Blue Monk

A Little Music for Ya!

2007-09-18T18:53:00.000-04:00

Hendryx Stays True to Her Experimental Roots
Nona Hendryx was part of Patti Labelle's trio, Labelle, when that group had the No. 1 disco hit, "Lady Marmalade." In the mid-70s, she launched a solo career and made genre-bending music that experimented with soul, funk, punk, and heavy metal. Hendryx talks about her new rock musical, "Skin Diver," and her three-decade career in edgy art, rock, and soul.

Patti Labelle - When you've been blessed
Soul legend Patti LaBelle turned down the chance to star in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple - because she thought the film would be too racy. The Lady Marmalade singer was approached to play blues singer Shug Avery in the classic 1985 film, but was turned off by the fact she'd have to perform a same-sex kiss during a nude scene and she passed. The role went to Margaret Avery.

Chic live! "Good Times" (last perfomance of Bernard Edwards)
Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards met in 1970. They formed a rock band called The Boys (later the Big Apple Band) and played numerous gigs around New York City, but despite interest in their demos, they could not get a record contract when the music companies discovered they were black; the discrimination of the day said black artists couldn't play "rock".

Chaka Khan pt2 recorded live
Khan was born Yvette Marie Stevens in Great Lakes, Illinois to Charles Stevens and Sandra Coleman. Her sister is dance music diva Taka Boom. She was raised on Chicago's South Side, and at the age of 11 formed her first group, the Crystalettes. While still in high school, she joined the Afro-Arts Theater, a group which toured with Motown great Mary Wells.

Sista To Sister: The value of the female

2007-09-18T11:00:00.000-04:00

Sista To Sister: The value of the female
By Ashahed M. Muhammad Contributing Writer
Updated Sep 14, 2007, 09:51 am
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The Honorable Minister Louis FarrakhanCHICAGO (FinalCall.com)

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered a message of encouragement and empowerment to a largely female audience at Valley Kingdom Ministries International Church located in the southwest suburbs of Chicago on Aug. 31.

Minister Farrakhan addressed those gathered for the 8th Annual “Sista to Sister” event, which is the brainchild of the Reverend Maxine Walker, publisher of The Spiritual Perspective newspaper. “Sista to Sister” has as its primary goal, the empowerment of women and the removal of the masks that often cover up perceived inadequacies hiding the true beauty of the Black woman and preventing them from reaching their full potential.

Minister Farrakhan began his remarks by pointing out that over the years, Rev. Walker has consistently spearheaded the movement to bring several hundred Christian ministers to meet with him for important interfaith dialogue in the spirit of love, brotherhood and cooperation.
“Reverend Maxine Walker has been a very dear friend of mine for the last 25 years. I have always wanted to form a bond, a relationship with the Christian community and Christian clergy because I think we misunderstand each other, and by not dialoguing with each other, Satan makes us think we are all different, when in reality the root of all of us is the same,” he said. “I pray to Almighty God that He will give time and more life to our Sister that she may continue to do the good work that she does, which is bringing people together.”

Sisters united through a common bond

“Sista seems to be ebonic,” said Minister Farrakhan as the audience laughed. “This sort of represents a Black woman who is not quite what she should be. Sister is different from Sista, but Sista is moving to or towards becoming Sister. Now, how could you be a Sister if you did not recognize a common Father?” Minister Farrakhan asked.
“Sista lost her connection to The Father; Sister has a connection to The Father, but the Sista who has lost her way is moving towards her Sister who is reintroducing her to The Father,” he said to a thunderous applause.

Minister Farrakhan greets Rev. Maxine Walker. Photos: Kenneth MuhammadMinister Farrakhan then described the systematic degradation of the female in American society.
“This is a world that does not value the female. She’s looked upon more like a plaything than the serious creation that Almighty God intended for her to be, and the sad thing about Sista is that she doesn’t recognize her value, so she plays into Satan’s game of degenerating the female and making her to see herself only as an object of pleasure,” said Minister Farrakhan.
“The enemy undresses her. The enemy wants her to use the beauty of her form to attract the natural lust of the man to keep his mind focused below the navel in the underworld, so he can never see the value of her and climb to the heavenly part of his natural existence,” he added.
“The moment you lower the woman, you automatically lower the man; the moment you elevate the woman, you elevate the man,” said Minister Farrakhan, reminding the audience of the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad that the Black woman is the Mother of Civilization.
“You are direct descendants of Him Who created the heavens and the earth, and you are not Black because you are cursed, you are Black because you are the Original Creation of The Creator,” said Minister Farrakhan.

Songs and words of praise, empty actions

Minister Farrakhan decried the actions of those who claim religion, but fail to put them into practice by living according to religious principles.

“It’s wonderful to sing glorious songs of praise; it is wonderful to preach the words of praise,” he said. “Satan’s job is to disconnect the children from The Father so that the Wisdom, the Power, the Spirit of The Father won’t be seen in His children. Now, take a look at our people. Look at the condition of our people. See what we are doing to ourselves and to one another regardless of our songs of praise? We act contrary to what we sing about, and contrary to what we preach about. We are hypocritical to what we say because we are not living the life to bring The Kingdom into reality,” Minister Farrakhan said.

Roberta Coleman, a member at Valley Kingdom Ministries International Church, said she had heard excerpts of Minister Farrakhan’s speeches on television before, however, hearing him in person was a unique experience.

“This was a powerful word. It was a word for right now—I’m almost speechless,” said Ms. Coleman, adding that many she talked to had strong opinions of Minister Farrakhan. “What I heard about him didn’t really line up. When people are afraid of something and don’t understand it, they start judging it and saying things that aren’t right,” she added.

“To God be the glory for each of you in attendance and I just praise God for this opportunity,” said Rev. Walker, during her brief remarks. Rev. Walker is currently battling cancer, but that has not stopped her from working to bring others together.

“She has spent her entire life helping others; she has done so much for so many people,” said Pastor Ronnie Lee, who hosted the event. “She’s in a fight and she’s winning the fight because she has faith in a God Who can do anything but fail,” said Pastor Lee.

Rachelle Ferrell - Sista (live)

A Little Music For Ya!

2007-09-17T22:16:00.000-04:00

I am really having fun finding live performances of some of the finest cats to ever grace us. Here are six more and I'm just getting started. Hope you like it.

KIRK WHALUM - TA TA YOU JESUS

URBAN JUNGLE Feat:Kenny Garrett & Roy Ayers

Marcus Miller "Run for cover" Kenny Garrett

Johnny Guitar Watson - Gangster Of Love
Live Bremen/Germany 1977

Sly & The Family Stone 7-15-07 North Sea Jazz Festival 2...

Sly & The Family Stone 7-15-07 North Sea Jazz Festival 3/3

Another Angle 12 - September - 2007

2007-09-12T22:31:00.000-04:00

Rally in Jena on September 20th
On September 20th, Mychal Bell--the first of the Jena 6 to be convicted--is scheduled for sentencing. If the District Attorney has his way, Mychal will face 22 years in prison. It's a horrifying moment for Mychal, his parents, and the rest of the Jena 6 families. It's also a perfect time for those who can to come to Jena, in person, and stand with them. Thousands of people across the country have already signed up to come to Jena. Please join us on Sept. 20th

Part of 'Jena 6' conviction dropped; charges reduced

By Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune September 5, 2007HOUSTON
Ruling in a racially charged case that has drawn scrutiny from national civil rights leaders, a judge in the small central Louisiana town of Jena on Tuesday partially vacated the conviction of a black teenager accused in the beating of a white student while the district attorney reduced attempted murder charges against two other black co-defendants.Judge J.P. Mauffray threw out a conspiracy conviction against Mychal Bell, granting a defense motion that Bell's June trial was improperly held in adult court and should instead have been conducted as a juvenile proceeding.

A Little Music For Ya!

2007-09-12T21:11:00.001-04:00

I have had a love affair with this musician for a lot of years and thanks to YouTube I have been able to find live performances that give a small glimpse into his talent. From Frank Zappa to backing his neice Rachelle Ferrell, he never disapoints. Here is one of my favorites George Duke. You see I am not just politics!

Brazilian Love Affair

George Duke Live at the NSJF 2001

Rachelle Ferrell - I can explain (live)
He is not playing on this one but
I had to include his niece. Enjoy! More from her later.

Clarke/Duke Project "Heroes"

george duke love reborn

Always there(Casino Lights Live)

Another Angle

Obama With A Whip

I'm Back

It' My Birthday...

They're Out There...And They're Weird!!!

Is This Why So Many Are Denied Their Disability Claims

Taser-Related Death

Statesville suspect dies after Taser hits in jail

At least two officers are put on administrative duty until SBI can complete its investigation.

By Victoria Cherrie

vcherrie@charlotteobserver.com

Anthony Davidson

New York's Finest

ANOTHER ANGLE 30 - 07 - 08

Watch the ad-Media Matters

What Ya Listening TO?

Memories of Music Past

Jesse, Thank God for Wide Stance Blessings

Tom Tommorrow

Another Angle 11 - 7 - 08

René Marie~Thanks,But I Don't Dance

I'm In Love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Preparing the Battlefield

BINGO!

When You're in a Hole, Stop Digging!

Over the Rainbow

Another Angle 21 - 06 - 08

John McCain: 'I really didn't love America until I was deprived of her company'

Benazir Bhutto

Lighten Up G...A Little Music for Ya!

I'm Voting Republican

A REAL CLASS ACT

War Hero or North Vietnam's Go-To Collaborator?

Sonny Rollins, Take One

The Colossus

The Enron Loophole

It is two years old, but very relevant today

The Enron Loophole Helps OPEC Serve Up a Hefty Helping of Oil-Price Baloney

Bill Hicks on Iraq

Bo Diddley

Young Hillary Clinton

Olbermann on Hillary

McCain rejects Parsley’s endorsement.

Paying for War at the Pump

A Little Music for Ya!

John McSame and John Hagee

Police Acted Properly...Again.

Steve Winwood

What's the problem?

Back on track

I know this is not going to be popular but...

WTF

A Little Music For Ya! - Lou Donaldson

A little Music for Ya!

I guess I could glean some hope from the Wal-Mart case but...

Funky Decompression

Another Angle

The Crazy Rev. Wright

Poor Little White Boy

Uhhhhh.....NO.

Aren't you tired of being sick and tired?

Jeff Healey

Twenty Years of Bush-Clinton is enough

Music to read by

The Return of Another Angle 21 - February - 2008

Oh, now they care about minorities

When Israel Was Apartheid's Open Ally

Turning Back the Clock-A Little Music For Ya!

A Little Music for Ya!

Sista To Sister: The value of the female

A Little Music For Ya!

Another Angle 12 - September - 2007

A Little Music For Ya!

Statesville suspect dies
after Taser hits in jail

John McCain: 'I really didn't love America u ntil I was deprived of her company'