Growing Up in the 50's or the 60's

If you grew up in the 50's or the 60's it's hard to believe that we lived this long. As kids, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention hitchhiking everywhere as a young kid.)

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were never overweight, we were always outside playing. We shared one grape soda with four friends, from one bottle and no one died.

We didn't have Playstations, Nintendos, X Boxes, cell phones, computers, Facebook, or Twitter...we had friends. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do it? Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with it. Some students weren't as smart as others so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. No one to hide behind. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility. If you were a kid in the 50's or 60's congratulations! We had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.

Why Progressives Should Vote for Rick Insantoium in Today's Michigan and Arizona Primaries

About the only hope that progressive voters in the US have of seeing any of their agenda being adopted in the next few years is if there's such a huge Democratic landslide in November that the DINOs-Blue Dog Democrats-will lose their power. There's nobody more likely to cause such a lanslide than Rick Insantorium.

Rick made a statement yesterday slamming JFK's speech about how religion and politics should be kept separate. Righteous Rick went on to say, "I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute." Now there's a statement that will warm the hearts of many ultra-religious Republicans and Tea Partiers but will, in the longer run, scare the beejesus out of any rational independent US voter.

Moneybags Mitt has his moments of insanity too, but his track record of changing positions on any issue to suit the demographic audience he's addressing means he'll just disavow any rhetoric that he finds doesn't play well with independents if he were to win the nomination. Rick, on the other hand, has made so many heartfelt speeches embracing the religiously hypnotized mindset that he undoubtedly is a true believer.

So, seeing as Obama has broken every progressive promise he made 4 years ago, it seems to me the only way he'll ever to forced to actually fulfill any of his promises is if/when a truely progressive majority in both houses of Congress force him to, and as he'll be a lame duck unable to run again and not needing to play kiss-ass with his corporate benefactors after November it could happen-right after pigs learn to fly. Meanwhile, mr. mud will keep rooting for Roseanne Barr and Ron Paul to somehow be able to force the lamestream media, also totally in the death grip of the their corporate owners and advertisers, to start asking real questions about the big issues of our times.

In Vegas the morning line had the odds at 99 to 1 against the media ever asking any controversial questions and the same against Roseanne Barr for POTUS, so my next best hope today is a big victory for Rick Insantorium tonight in Michigan and Arizona. Go Rick Go!

Rick Santorum slams JFK - Kennedy said religion and politics should be kept separate, which Santorum called an "absolutist doctrine" that he rejected. "I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," he said on ABC.

Harper's Phoney Elections Canada Calls a Hallmark of Rove's Tactics

Did Harpo's Conservative Party steal the last Canadian General Election? As Queen Sarah of the North would say, 'You Betcha!'. Over the last number of years it's been reported many times that different members of the Canadian Conservative Party have met with Karl Rove, the grandaddy of Republican electoral dirty tricks. Guess these last few days we're starting to learn what they discussed eh.

Last night CBC's The National had an interview with the NDP's Pat Martin [pat.martin@parl.gc.ca] where he called the phoney Elections Canada calls directing Liberal and NDP supporters to incorrect voting stations a heinous crime against democracy. Martin also denounced the dirty tricks calls as a tactic borrowed from U.S. Republicans.

Today Liberal MP John McCallum said fraudulent calls directing voters to the wrong polling stations benefited Conservatives in the last election. Elections Canada has traced the calls to numbers in Montana and Colorado.

As of now complaints have come in from 37 ridings about false fraudulent calls from people-not robo calls-claiming to be from Elections Canada. This tactic is used by the Republcan Party in the US, especially in the deep south, as a vote suppression weapon. One of the main proponents of this and other dirty tricks, so broadly used in the US that Democrats now have attorney and 1-800 numbers setup in every state to combat them, is Karl Rove-Harpo's buddy. Week after week Canadians are learning just where and how the facist Harpo's Government is going. Soon the Conservative's will be announcing their ETA in Hades-All Aboard Eh!

Class War and 'The Grapes of Wrath'

Last night was John Steinbeck night on the Turner Classic Movie channel. 'The Grapes of Wrath' is one of the best movies ever made and even though i've seen it many times it still held the same magic. It should be mandatory viewing for graduation from school [at any level] especially now, when history is repeating itself again.

Henry Fonda's performance as Tom Joad is, perhaps, the greatest role ever in movie history. Tom Joad's legend will always live on in the music and stories of the working class as long as the class war exists. As Tom Joad says in his famous last lines while saying goodbye to his other near the end of the film, "I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too."

Please take a few minutes to watch the video below titled 'Let Your Life Be A Friction To Stop the Machine'. It's a powerful, look at the history of the American empire from Class War Films.



Sunshine Came Softly Into My Dumpster Today

Sunshine came softly into my dumpster today, coulda tripped out easier but i've changed my way. [Sorry Donovan].

One California artist is taking the idea dumpster living to a whole new luxury level with his art project. Gregory Kloehn of Berkeley, Calif., is transforming a garbage dumpster into a deluxe home for one, complete with kitchen, washroom and sleeping area for his project, “Elite Waste.” He installed granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors, a gas tank, power bars, lights, a six-gallon water tank, a retractable roof with windows, and TV.

Then there's dumpster diving beyond the Freegan model as a sustainable life style where the concept is to undo your entire carbon footprint through the recycling of other people's former stuff. Treehugger recently ran an article explaining that there are many things in the dumpster that do not deserve to be buried yet. The article said, "You will see some things that do, and some that do not, belong in the dumpster. You can recycle them, repurpose them, make them into art. You can clean them up and use them, donate them or just set them next to the dumpster hoping they are adopted (Catch and Release)."

mr. mud's idea though is not the so much one of the moneyed artistic persuastion or even the moral carbon footprint version, though a bitta comfort both moral and material might tag along from time to time. No, my concept is born outta the mud, outta poverty, pride and homelessness [coming sooner or later to this mudatarian].

Right now my concept includes a bike with a heavy duty rack that could be packed up quickly each morning [after the sunlight came softly into that night's dumpster]. A person, and maybe a small best friend would need a sleeping bag, a blowup mattress, a one burner gas campstove, some candles, a library membership, maybe a pre-paid cell phone to talk to the grandkids and access to a university campus where it's usually fairly easy to use the bathrooms and showers in the gym or pool area. Granted this is an urban-ish concept and mr. mud has been living a rural life for many decades now so the plan might take a bitta tweeking. But there are good people everywhere including near urban dumpsters. Just imagine, every morning new take out pizza and sushi leftovers would be delivered airmail and as Donovan said, 'Superman or Green Latern wouldn't have nothin on me cause during the night i would use a little bucket to pee.'

Anarchy was the Answer in Argentina as it is in Greece and Beyond

Today's research led to a great, mind opening, article at Jay Walljasper's On The Commons.org titled ''Where Is Kropotkin When We Really Need Him?'. In it the reader is reminded of how our 'modern' definition of anarchism has been re-framed into a dark chaotic hell on earth from its actual historic reality. It's a short and impressive piece for its content. For today, though it also can serve an instructional container.

Perhaps the biggest story in the world right now, on so many levels, is the potential Greek default. Like everything, it's a Rorschach test in that what we see through it totally depends on the view of the viewer. Through one worldview Greece's default would be a travesty because it could very well participate a severe recession or even the big D-depression. Either of which would mean austerity for all folks everywhere, but perhaps especially for the consumptive class. Guess like Richard Fariña said in his classic1966 novel 'Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me' the perspective of a person living and dining in a dumpster is far different from that of the person throwing stuff in.

Two other bits on the pending Lazarus like rise of the Greeks, 'Economists Predict 'No Gain, More Pain' for Greece' and the little video: 'The Greek debt crisis: it's, like, totally over' are instructive on the logical level regardless of where you are on the dumpster scale. The fact is, and this portion is trying to appeal to logic, that cooperatives employ more people than multinational companies in the world's economy. The sooner the Greeks return to their roots, our roots, the better.

The ability of a Greek default to send shockwaves of contagion through the gelatinous mass of credit default swapping criminals is in itself enough to bring hope to this ol' bottom feeder. Then add to that its potential to stimulate a new/old re-localized economc solution that will be the model for other countries under the yoke of the banksters and hope rises to jejoicing. That new/old model is very well outlined by the Kropotkin article above, so too are the bright days of anarchy our ancestors enjoyed.

After Watching the Republican Debate Last Night Roseanne Barr Sounds Better Than Ever

The only good thing about the Republican debate last last night in Mesa, Arizona-it was the last one. The 3 'plausible' candidates are either ignorant religious bigots or are pandering to ignorant religious bigots. It would be a waste of time [and a blood pressure raising exercise] to list why their positions are so dangerous, so i won't. Only Ron Paul, the 'inplausible' candidate, is off the Republicn reservation as they say. Paul believes what he says and says what he believes. That in itself is refreshing.

As the monotonous monotone of ignorance wore on Roseanne Barr's statement the other day that, "The 'two part' system is clearly broken. The 1% has two political parties – Democratic and Republican – but the 99% only has one: The Green Party." seemed to ring in my ears. For sure Obama's promises, now and 4 years ago, sound far more enlightened than anything outta the 3 'plausible Republicans. But as we now know Obama's promises are worthless. Many pundits say Obama meant well 4 years ago but when he got into office he realized he couldn't fight for his ideals because the opposition to them was so vast and powerful. To which, mr. mud calls bullshit. Obama is a very well educated guy who was already in the US Senate, he knew what the story is/was but said what he knew would get him the nomination over Hillary whose much longer record made it less possible for her to pander to the yearnings of those with a triple digit IQ. Obama is a politican, he'll say whatever he thinks will get him elected regardless of the consequences.

That's why Roseanne Barr sounds so good, she's not a politician, she speaks the slang of the people, she pulls no punches, she is REAL. Can she win in a contest rigged by the two corporate parties to brook no competition? Of course not. Can she though, because of her celebrity-her common touch-her grasp of the issues and the depth of the world's despair, make the major media arise from its corporate money induced coma for a moment to allow a fresh breeze to blow through the polluted political air? YES SHE CAN.

Please take a minute and check out the Roseanne Barr for President website and read her submission to the Green Party. Her 5 main platform points are below. Roseanne is the only really plausible candidate, and is endorsed by The Mud Report.

1. OBLITERATION OF THE “TWO PARTY” SYSTEM
2. CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE
3. ECONOMIC JUSTICE
4. HEALTH CARE NOT WARFARE
5. LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA

Facebook and Twitter-Good for Social Chatting, Bad for Organizing Resistance

So many topics, so few fingers to type with. The Arizona debates-the Enbridge pipeline-slaughter in Syria-Greek default-the BC budget-nukes in Iran?, just to mane a few. But instead today The Mud Report is going to take on the limits of social media as a platform for organizing effective resistance to the status quo.

There's no doubt that social media has played a huge and vital role in the 'Arab Spring', in OWS's beginings, in Greece's uprising, in Spain, in many others this past couple of years. But as the Commondreams Article about warrentless surveillance points out, as Harper's Bill C-30 shows and as years of experience in Latin America clearly teaches us-the only really safe communications route is small scale face to face contact with trusted companions.

Social media worked well to get the ball rolling because the empire's security apparatus was behind the curve of the new media, this is no longer true. The web is an open pipe in all directions. As groups like Anonymous have shown it can be an effective tool of resistance. But the success of Anonymous, who organizies its attacks behind the scenes, also shows how they've already learned the lesson of the security limits of social media.

Spring will be on us here in the northern hemisphere soon and with it will bloom the next season of protests. mr. mud hopes that this years crop of protests will have evolved new traits in response to last year's conditions and that some of those new traits include new tactics that will have learned, as the flaura and fauna around them do each year, to anticipate the coming climate of increased repression and warrrentless surveillance ahead.

Warrantless Surveillance?: Gov't Subpoenas OWS Activist's Twitter Records - Allowing the government to gets its hands on this data with nothing more than an administrative subpoena renders the Fourth Amendment meaningless. Only with the protection of a search warrant, and the heightened judicial supervision that comes along with it, can the voracious appetite of law enforcement be curbed.

Roseanne Barr and the Rapid Rise of Rick Insanitorum

Rick's rapid rise in the polls is because the anybody but the mudslinger Moneybags Mitt contingent finds him 'likeable'. As Tony Norman's article today says "he's a principled culture warrior  who doesn't believe in evolution, man-made global warming, sex for purposes other than having children, separation of church and state...and that he'd would like to see doctors who perform abortions criminally prosecuted and that war with Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions is in America's best interests."

But is Religiously Rabid Rick really any more of a danger to civilization as we know it than Newt, Mitt or the Obomber? Not in my opinion. They're all tools of the status quo and none of them could or would change anything that their billionaire backers hadn't pre-approved.

Neither the Rebublican or Democratic parties offer any hope of any kind of meaningful change and articles like Tony Norman's that just echo the talking points of the Democrats are part of the problem not part of the solution. The only Ron Paul is offering any new ideas and the venerable Dr. Paul, despite his courageous foreign policy, monetary policy and anti-drugwar positions, basically agrees with so much other ridiculous Rabid Rick type fundamentalist crap that he too is unsupportable in the big picture.

So, as of now The Mud Report is endorsing Roseanne Barr of the Green Party for President of the United States. When Roseanne announced her decision to run she declared that she would not run as a Democrat or a Republican "because they both suck and they're both a bunch of criminals." Roseanne currently leads Moneybags Mitt in national polls and her full policy platform is available online here. Roseanne gave her first campaign speech in Zucotti Park on Sept 17th, 2011, the first day of OWS's historic occupation.

"Only three weeks into my campaign, we are off to a great start. This poll shows the deep dissatisfaction voters have with the two corporate parties of the 1% and the opportunity that the Green Party has to make a real difference for the 99% in this election and elections to come. I am in it to win it and look forward to giving the Democrats and Republicans a run for their corporate money." – Roseanne Barr, Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 

The Myths About Money

Today's reading uncovered an article-'How Greece Could Take Down Wall Street'-that says perfectly what The Mud Report has been stumbling to say recently concerning the themes of the Greek crisis and the Ron Paul revolution. It clearly explains how the $32 trillion market in credit default swaps [CDS] has everyone's economic life tettering on the brink of destruction. The author, Ellen Brown, has a new book out 'The Web of Debt' that has just become #1 on my must get and read list.

Below are a few paragraphs copied from a review, 'Exploding the Myths About Money', on the book's website:

Our money system is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been "privatized," or taken over by private money lenders. Thomas Jefferson called them “bold and bankrupt adventurers just pretending to have money.” Except for coins, all of our money is now created as loans advanced by private banking institutions — including the privately-owned Federal Reserve. Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices — and robbing you of the value of your money.

Not only is virtually the entire money supply created privately by banks, but a mere handful of very big banks is responsible for a massive investment scheme known as "derivatives," which now tallies in at hundreds of trillions of dollars. The banking system has been contrived so that these big banks always get bailed out by the taxpayers from their risky ventures, but the scheme has reached its mathematical limits. There isn't enough money in the entire global economy to bail out the banks from a massive derivatives default today.

Web of Debt unravels the deceptions in our money scheme and presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are heading. Then it explores a workable alternative, one that was tested in colonial America and is grounded in the best of American economic thought, including the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. If you care about financial security, your own or the nation's, you should read this book.

How Greece Could Take Down Wall Street - There is one bit of bad behavior that Uncle Sam himself does not have the funds to underwrite: the $32 trillion market in credit default swaps (CDS). Thirty-two trillion dollars is more than twice the U.S. GDP and more than twice the national debt.

Paulistas, Monetary Policy and 'The Golden Rule'

The establishment-GOP and otherwise-and the lamestream media belittle him and call him a threat. So why has Ron Paul been able to build such an impressive organization of enthusiastic supporters, nickamed the Paulistas, young and old? Why does he have such a strong 'ground game' especially in rural areas and college towns? If Ron Paul is a threat, who is he a threat to?

As Ron himself says, "They're right. We are a threat. We're a threat to the status quo" One of Paul's central themes in every speech is US Monetary Policy. The Federal Reserve System is as status quo as they get so in the last few days mr. mud has been trying to wade through the fog of confusing jargon and learn why Dr. Paul is so steadfast in his condemnation of the Fed.

There are plenty of sites devoted to the topic, almost all are written by economists who have been educated by, are employed by, and pay homage to the establishment point of view. The others, the non-conformists, see the system as being designed by the elites, serving the elites and creating monetary slavery for the rest of us. The fog isn't accidental, as Henry Ford once said, “It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Another policy that seperates Ron Paul from the rest, Republican or Democrate, is foreign affairs. As Ron Paul says, "In many ways America had been 'exceptional' but in an opposite manner from the neo-con driven foreign policy of the last 20 years. If America indeed has something good to offer the cause of peace, prosperity, and liberty it must be spread through persuasion and by example; not by intimidation, bribes and war. The policy of American domination of the world, as nation builder-in-chief and policeman of the world, has failed and must be abandoned – if not as a moral imperative, then certainly out of economic necessity. My [Paul's] humble suggestion is to replace it with a policy of Mutually Assured Respect. This requires no money and no weapons industry, or other special interests demanding huge war profits or other advantages. This requires simply tolerance of others' cultures and their social and religious values, and the giving up of all use of force to occupy or control other countries and their national resources." Paul wants America to follow 'The Golden Rule' and "Treat other nations exactly as we expect others to treat us."

Ron Paul says, "The war on drugs is a failure and an expensive one at that. It's another elite power play. The elite like their welfare/warfare state."

The more a person looks into Ron Paul's positions on the most important issues of our day the easier it is to see why so many bright eyed young men and women are part of his poorly funded but steadily growing ground game, why he's called the Peace Candidate' and why he is indeed a threat to the status quo.

We Are All Greeks Now

Various groups are participating in an international day of solidarity with the Greek people today [Feb. 18th]. The show of solidarity is in response to the "dictatorship of the financial markets and the troika: EU, ECB and IMF, who have imposed austerity measures and a non-elected government on the Greek people." Demonstrations are planned throughout Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, and more. - Common Dreams

The brave people of Greece are standing up to the forces of facism for us all as they did before. ...Ask those who were cowering from the pounding of Luftwaffe in the tube stations of London, during the long winter of 1940, and they will tell you that the only pieces of good news they were getting for months, were coming from the Greek mountains...- The Gaurdian

The Mud Report has spoken loud and clear about the growing consciousness of the worldwide class struggle we are all increasingly immersed in. As Bruce Springsteen says in his newest alblum, "The banker man grows fat / The working man grows thin / It's all happened before and it will happen again."



When did BC sustainably manage its forests?

Below is a copy of my comment today at The Tyee to their article BC Government Killing Forest Industry: Auditor General - Scathing report says failure to replant enough trees puts future harvests at risk

When did BC sustainably manage its forests?

Certainly never in the 43 years i've lived here. If we denounce Alberta as a petro-state we must accept that BC is lumber baron-state. every government be it Social Credit, NDP or Liberal has been under the financial influence of the timber barons and the forestry unions. Remember that the largest mass arrest of protestors was in Clayquot Sound when the NDP was under pressure from its IWA backers.

None of this though speaks to question of what are sustainable forestry practices. Certainly some practices are more or less destructive but none of them, including replanting even in the best cases, is really a sustainable method. Replanted clearcuts are really an attempt to turn a diverse forest into a monocultured farm.

A natural forest, like the one europeans found here when they arrived, is mixed and successive. One type of species preceeds the next giving its unique type of self as food for the species it coexists with and to those that replace it. Every forest at every stage in its evolution is the habitat for millions of lifeforms from tiny bacteria to giant evergreens. A forest is sustainable, an herbicide managed monoculture, no matter how well intended, is not.

Like Edward Abbey said decades go,"In clear cutting you clear away the natural forest, or what the industrial forester calls 'weed trees', and plant all one species of tree in neat straight functional rows like corn, sorghum, sugar beets or any other practical farm crop. Then you dump on chemical fertilizers to replace the washed away humas, inject the seedlings with growth forcing hormones, surround your plot with deer repellents and raise a uniform crop of trees all identical. When the trees reach a certain prespecified height [not maturity; that would take too long] you send in a fleet of tree harvesting machines and cut the fuckers down. All of them. Then burn the slash, and harrow, seed, and fertilize all over again. Round and round and round again, faster and faster and tighter and tighter until, like the fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird which flies in ever-smaller circles, you disappear up your own asshole".

Drummond Was Forbidden From Recommending Any Tax Increases in Ontario Report

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty got the desired results in the report on fixing the province's projected budget deficit from former TD economist Don Drummond by forbidding any recommendation of tax increases. "Absolutely the balancing of this province's books is a priority. It's something that is extremely important. But recklessly scrapping programs that people rely on while at the same time handing tax cuts to Ontario's richest corporations is simply wrong-headed and it just doesn't make any sense." said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath adding a more “balanced approach” is required.

McGuinty [who's brain capacity is being described by Drummond in the picture above] and his 'Liberal' government aren't interested in social justice, they're into the neo-liberal agenda of austerity for the poor, tax cuts for the rich approach. "Bigger class sizes, higher utility bills, and fewer hospitals are among the bitter pills deficit-ridden Ontario must swallow to avoid the same fate as debt-plagued Greece", economist Don Drummond warned Wednesday.

Greece, of course, is being used by the neo-liberal economist as a boogey-man, but it's also an excellant example of how wrong headed this approach is. Greece's economy is in a tailspin exactly because of the austerity measures being imposed on it by neo-liberal tunnel vision. For sure there are ways that health care could be more efficiently delivered in Ontario, same for other programs, but cuttng good paying jobs, taxpaying jobs, home buying-car buying-stuff buying jobs only reduces government tax revenues and bankrupts small businesses which then further reduces government revenues. It's the downward Greek spiral. It's not the solution, it's part of the problem.

The other part of the problem and the obvious solution in Greece and Ontario is to increase taxes on the wealthy. McGuinty refuses to even consider raising taxes on those that pay for his party's election campaigns and advertising knowing it could cause him to have to go get a real job. Ontario should start by raising taxes on luxury goods, then individual incomes over $100,000-especially those of windbag economists, then bank profits-which are soaring, then a sur-tax on bankers and the financial service sector-bloodsuckers all who add nothing to Ontario's production but live off its capacity, then add in a Robin Hood tax on ' market' speculator transactions, then chase down and confiscate every dollar their benefactors have squirreled away in the Caymen Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland, then...But long before then, in this world where the rich rule and the poor drool, McGuinty would be working at Starbucks and some other neo-liberal pawn would be dancing to the bankster's beat eh.

The EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF Now Demand the End of Democracy in Greece

Today the heads of Greece’s two biggest political parties, New Democracy’s Antonis Samaras and Pasok’s George Papandreou, will meet a second demand by supplying written pledges to enact the cuts, no matter who takes power in elections in coming months, a government official in Athens said. If this actually happens it means the end of the world's oldest democracy-Greece.

During this morning's research of this distressing turn of events i read the article Greece: Your Money or Your Life. It is a must read. It sums up exactly what i'd love to be able to say, only far more eloquently. One excellent quote: "Americans [to which i'd add Canadians too] should be paying close attention to events in Greece. They are omens showing people around the world what lies in store for them when thieves in high places get their way." says volumes.

Another backgrounder is reading the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to the Greek parliament which is the terms of the new loan agreement being forced upon Greece by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It's chilling to realize that the banksters believe the people of Greece will so easily give up the freedoms their ancestors have so long fought for.

Finally, here's a link the some great pictures taken at the protests a couple of days ago. This May Day the city of Chicago may look very similiar when a big protest is being called for by Adbusters and planned by Occupy Wall Street when the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in there.

Greece: Your Money or Your Life - The Greeks are ahead of the curve. At least they stood up and protested. Hopefully more people around the world will be like them instead of like passive Americans. Hopefully Americans will stop being passive before they end up like people in Greece.

"Stand With Us Or With The Child Pornographers" says Canada's Harper Government

First off, i'm a father and a grandfather who loves his kids and grandkids, who's never gone to a porn site-let alone a child porn site-in his life. i totally reject the statement that because i disagree with Harper's latest fascist policy to destroy my civil liberties that i in any way am siding with child pornographers. Authoritarians like Harper and his mouthpeice Vic Toews always hide behind the boogey-man of fear when they want to silence any opposition to their bullshit.

Toews statement in the Canadian Parliment yesterday echoed G.W. Bush's "You're either with us or with the terrorists" fear mongering in his State of the Union Address after 9/11. In both cases they're objective was to silence any opposition with fear. Harper, like so many fascists before him, says "if you're not a criminal you have nothing to worry about". Then again, who defines criminal? Are those who conspire to oppose the Northern Gateway Project criminals? Are those who march in defiance of government restrictions criminals? Are those who write blogs critical of Harpo and his gang of fundamentialist thugs criminals?

The list of who the authoritarians consider a criminal could be very long, no wonder Harpo is going to spend billion$ building new prisons despite the downward trend of violent crimes in Canada. Could be they're gonna need lottsa prison space 'cause soon prison may be the only moral place to be.

Online surveillance critics accused of supporting child porn  - Critics of a bill that would give law enforcement new powers to access Canadians' electronic communications are aligning themselves with child pornographers, Canada's public safety minister says.

Fascism in America - "Fascism is on the march today in America. Millionaires are marching to the tune. It will come in this country unless a strong defense is set up by all liberal and progressive forces... A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government, and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. Aboard ship a prominent executive of one of America's largest financial corporations told me point blank that if the progressive trend of the Roosevelt administration continued, he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism to America." - former U.S. ambassador to Germany William Dodd in 1938


You Either ‘Stand With Us Or With The Child Pornographers’ - This dividing comment of “you stand with us or with the pedophiles” should be pointed right back at the Harper government. Since under bill C-10 the safe streets and communities act, Marijuana growers can receive more jail time than child rapists.

Hey America...Pluck Yew!

Apparently M.I.A.'s risque gesture first appeared in 419BC when the playwright Aristophanes puns in his comedy 'The Clouds' about dactylic (finger) rhythm, with a character gesturing first with his middle finger. The Romans had their own name for it: digitus impudicus. And in 4th Century BC Athens the philosopher Diogenes told a group of visitors exactly what he thought about the orator Demosthenes by 'flipping the bird'.

My favorite story about giving the finger happened at the Wild Animal Park near Escondido, Calif. My daughter and i were riding the train around the grounds when the PA announcer warned everyone as we approached the chimp compound not to return the chimp's phallic salute as they were trying to un-train the chimps from its use.

Apparently it started when train riders started gaving the chimps the finger. The chimps musta felt the power of the gesture as they began returning it. At the time of our visit almost every chimp stopped what he/she was doing and turned towards the approaching train and gave the perfect salute to their enslavers. They held to the gesture until all the cars had passed then returned to eating or whatever different thing each was doing before the train's approach.

We went there two days in a row and rode the train each day in part becuse i wanted to see the chimps do it again. Sure enough most of them stopped and gave everybody the finger. It's hard to tell if it was the camera clicking and laughter that re-enforced the behavior or not, but of course i explained to my daughter that it was a sign of their intelligence and ability to non-verbally communicate to us, in a manner we could understand, their truei nner feelings. It was a great learning experience for us both.

M.I.A., real name Maya Arulpragasam, been praised and ridiculed for supporting the Tamii Tigers, a separatist movement that stands in violent opposition to the government of Sri Lanka. Born to Tamil parents, M.I.A. believes the Sri Lankian government to be guilty of genocide. The Tamil cause is barely understood and seldom mentioned by the American media. M.I.A.'s "fuck you” to America once again has the media missing the message. Instead of questioning the reasons behind Maya's support for groups considered by some to be terrorists the media is talking about a middle finger gesture. To bad Maya apologized.

Ya Basta!-Enough is Enough-Say the Greeks in the Streets

"Enough is enough!" said 89-year-old Manolis Glezos, one of Greece's most famous leftists. "They have no idea what an uprising by the Greek people means. And the Greek people, regardless of ideology, have risen." Glezos is a national hero for sneaking up the Acropolis at night in 1941 and tearing down a Nazi flag from under the noses of the German occupiers, raising the morale of Athens residents.

A petrol bomb explodes in front of the Greek parliament in Athens' Syntagma (Constitution) square [picture above]. Inside the parliment Socialist lawmaker Sofia Yiannaka, when introducing the legislation to designed comply with the most recent EU and IMF austerity demands Sunday, said, "We used to say 'poor state, but rich citizens' because we tolerated tax evasion for populist reasons. Is this the country we want?" Greeks in the streets, not the sons and daughters of the rich and entitled, answered "Yes! This newly risen Greece is the one that we want."

The Greek parliment, like all those in modern western democracies, is mostly made up of the privileged minority-the 1%. Of course they'll vote to accept whatever their fellow bankers, investors and ruling class members demand. The people in the streets know full well that this isn't the end of the demands. This set of demands, this set of cutbacks, are just another step in an endless series that will eventually grind working class Greeks into servitude if allowed to by Greece's ruling class.

It's the same situation in the lamestream media who's nearly unanimous spin of this story reflects their corporate ownership and their advertiser's interests not those of the population in general-the 99%. The outcome of the vote today in Greece matters not a bit. In the long run Greece will either quit or be kicked out of the Eurozone. In the longer run Greece will rise again from the fascist's current attempt to subjagate them just as they did back when Manolis Glezos tore down the Nazi flag a generation ago. Sooner or later Italy will follow Greece's example, so will Spain, Portugal, Ireland...hopefully we all won't have to throw firebombs, hopefully this generation's globalized fascists will fold their tents and quit. But don't count on it, the privileged and powerful never have voluntarily given up their entitlements before, the odds are they won't in this generation's struggle either.

Greek Default-Bad for Bankers, Good for Greeks

Most economists, those who aren't mouthpieces of the bankster mafia, say that when Greece eventually defaults and leaves the eurozone, its new drachma currency would dive in value and allow the Greek economy to become internationally competitive. Exactly the same scenerio played out ten years ago in Argentina. The IMF screamed bloody murder and warned the world of impending doom if Argentina defaulted on the debt lent to successive military juntas to buy weapons and line their pockets. Instead Argentina's industry was able to export its goods in devalued dollars, tourism cost half what it had before and now Argentina is booming.

Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is an excellant primer on what is happening in Greece and shows how the IMF has spent decades marching around the globe impoverishing country after country, forcing the sale of natural resources and other commonly held assets to multi-national 'private' interests in their role as a hedgemonic tool of American and other western capitialist corporate owned regimes.

Greece's debts were not brought on by overspending on social programs-as the financial markets keep bellowing-but by the spending forced on them by the EU's arm's dealers-especially the German arm's dealers-when Greece panicked in response to the paranoid security fears of America after 9/11 during the lead up to the 2002 Olympics and by profit hungry bankers who now demand that the poor in Greece cover their bad bets. The exorbitant interest on Greek bonds appeared to offer a free lunch to the bankster mafia. Because of the bond insurance scheme it seemed they'd win no matter what happened to Greece. But there is no free lunch. As we've seen in the other derivative schemes the insurers can't pay so either both the insurers and the bondholders lose or the poor are forced to bail them out. It's all just carnival capitialism.

Substitute the word Greece for Argentina and you'd have a nearly perfect account of the present crisis. As in Karl Marx's famous dictum 'history always repeats itself, once as tragedy, second as farce'. The de facto imposition of a technocratic prime minister and what is essentially a demand that the Greeks suspend democracy will end as it did in Argentina who's long march back to economic salvation only began after President Fernando de la Rúa had to be helicoptered out of office with the rioters at his door. The people in the streets of Greece aren't fooled, they know Marx was right, they know who has the real power and they know better times lie ahead once the banksters get the boot..

Obama Isn't a Flip-Flopper, He's a Serial Caveman

Today the lamestream media will be full of articles denouncing Obama as a flip-flopper because of his new healthcare contraception policy. But in order to agree or disagree with that assessment folks first gotta be able to agree on the defination of what a flip-flopper is.

When talking about flip-flops here we're not talking about the Jimmy Buffet kind that blows out just before stepping on a pop-top. We're talking about the intellectual kinda flip-flop, we're talking about how a person, especially a politician type person, has taken a certain position on an issue at one point, and now changes his position on the issue 180 degrees.

One simple defination doesn't always work because there's a lotta reasons, some far more noble than others, that a person can change their position. Newt Gingrich, for example, has changed horses in mid-stream often, he says he's gained wisdom from new information and now has a better informed view of the issue. Who knows if it's true but it sounds plausible if you accept that Newt believed in what was saying in the first iteration and now equally believes in this new one.

Moneybags Mitt tries his best to invent a logical sequence that leads from his old to his new position if he can't just deny there's even been a reversal. Mitt's attempts usually leave an aroma so obvious even his fellow Rerpublicrats hold their nose before endorsing him. In reality Ol' Moneybags is just doing what many other successful politicans, including Obama, have done for a long time.

Obama, like Mitt, believes in nothing, nothing except winning that is. In order to be a flip-flopper a person had to have a real opinion, a real conviction in his original position that he/she is now flip-flopping away from. If, like Obama, a person just stands there and eloquently takes whatever position seems most expedient, most likely to be agreeable to his target demographic, regardless of what he might really think he's liable to be spun on any issue. His opponents know it and use it everytime.

Obama doesn't hold a new heartfelt position on faith based organizations providing contraceptive coverage he's just caving into a special interest group that opposes his position and strongly believes in their's . Obama has no convictions, on every issue-torture, Gitmo, the environment, the government option in healthcare, etc.-he refuses to draw a line in the sand, he caves in everytime. Obama isn't a flip-flopper he's a serial caveman.