The future of America...

People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay* rights movement).

Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveals trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.

America's structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly Western, not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.

...

A Warning for Americans: A Message from a South African by Robbie Noel

The jobs myth...

Don't fall for the big lie about "new" jobs.

From WhiteHouse.gov:

The
economy created 211,000 jobs in March and has created about 2.1 million
jobs over the past 12 months - and more than 5.1 million since August
2003.

From Census.gov:

	2005	2000	1990
Population	296,410,404	281,421,906	248,709,873

Let's do some math, shall we?

296,410,404 - 281,421,906 = 14,988,498 total population increase between 2000 and 2005

14,988,498/5 = 2,997,699 population increase each year, on average

2,997,699/12 = 249,808 population increase each month, on average

211,000 "new" jobs in March 2006 - 249,808 population increase in March = -38,808 ACTUAL jobs created last month

2,100,000 "new" jobs created in the last year - 2,997,699 population
increase in the last year = -897,699 ACTUAL jobs created in the past
year

Yea, a truly great economy. Negative savings rates, huge
trade deficits, enormous federal budget deficits, and an inconceivably
large federal debt.

The fall of the dollar...

China should stop buying U.S. Treasuries and take steps to reduce its holdings in those bonds, a Hong Kong newspaper on Tuesday quoted a high-ranking Chinese official as saying.

Chinese Official: Don't Buy U.S. Bonds

Government schools don't work...

Two great articles making clear why many parents don't even consider sending their children to government schools.

I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.

Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why by John Taylor Gatto

It was May 2000, and the guy at Al Gore’s polling firm seemed baffled. A Yale political-science major, I’d already walked away from a high-paying consulting job a few weeks earlier, and now I was walking away from a job working on a presidential campaign to do . . . what?

How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million by Joshua Kaplowitz

Delta Force founder says Iraq is a 'debacle'...

Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, was a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit. He culled his experiences for "Inside Delta Force" (Delta; $14), a memoir rich with harrowing stories, though in an interview, Haney declines with a shrug to estimate the number of times he was almost killed. (Perhaps the most high-profile incident that almost claimed his life was the 1980 failed rescue of the hostages in Iran.) Today, he's doing nothing nearly as dangerous: He serves as an executive producer and technical adviser for "The Unit," CBS' new hit drama based on his book, developed by playwright David Mamet. Even up against "American Idol," "The Unit" shows muscle, drawing 18 million viewers in its first two airings.

Since he has devoted his life to protecting his country in some of the world's most dangerous hot spots, you might assume Haney is sympathetic to the Bush administration's current plight in Iraq (the laudatory cover blurb on his book comes from none other than Fox's News' Bill O'Reilly). But he's also someone with close ties to the Pentagon, so he's privy to information denied the rest of us.

We recently spoke to Haney, an amiable, soft-spoken Southern gentleman, on the set of "The Unit."

Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq?

A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

Q: What is the cost to our country?

A: For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero. So we destroyed whatever credibility we had. ... And I say "we," because the American public went along with this. They voted for a second Bush administration out of fear, so fear is what they're going to have from now on.

Our military is completely consumed, so were there a real threat - thankfully, there is no real threat to the U.S. in the world, but were there one, we couldn't confront it. Right now, that may not be a bad thing, because that keeps Bush from trying something with Iran or with Venezuela.

The harm that has been done is irreparable. There are more than 2,000 American kids that have been killed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed ñ which no one in the U.S. really cares about those people, do they? I never hear anybody lament that fact. It has been a horror, and this administration has worked overtime to divert the American public's attention from it. Their lies are coming home to roost now, and it's gonna fall apart. But somebody's gonna have to clear up the aftermath and the harm that it's done just to what America stands for. It may be two or three generations in repairing.

Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney ...

A: (Interrupting) That's Cheney's pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does.

I've argued this on Bill O'Reilly and other Fox News shows. I ask, who would you want to pay to be a torturer? Do you want someone that the American public pays to torture? He's an employee of yours. It's worse than ridiculous. It's criminal; it's utterly criminal. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in. Now we're going to throw it away.

Q: As someone who repeatedly put your life on the line, did some of the most hair-raising things to protect your country, and to see your country behave this way, that must be ...

A: It's pretty galling. But ultimately I believe in the good and the decency of the American people, and they're starting to see what's happening and the lies that have been told. We're seeing this current house of cards start to flutter away. The American people come around. They always do.

'Unit's' military expert has fighting words for Bush by David Kronke

Warring Democracies...

I've witnessed this debate on Usenet several times, and it always follows the same pattern:
1. Somebody casually brings up the old factoid about how no two democracies have ever gone to war with one another.

2. Somebody jumps in and lists a dozen or so wars which have been fought between democracies.

3. Somebody else points out that those countries weren't democratic, not really.

4. Everybody gets into arguments over who was or was not democratic.

5. The argument fizzles out except for two guys continuing to argue over whether the American Civil War was about slavery.

In any case, here is the traditional list of wars which may or may not have been fought between democracies:

War Between Democracies by Matthew White

Economic Ignorance...

I strongly recommend that every American acquire some basic knowledge of economics, monetary policy, and the intersection of politics with the economy. No formal classroom is required; a desire to read and learn will suffice. There are countless important books to consider, but the following are an excellent starting point: The Law by Frédéric Bastiat; Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt; What has Government Done to our Money? by Murray Rothbard; The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek; and Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan.

The Perils of Economic Ignorance by Ron Paul

Open letter to Rush...

Dear Rush:

I started listening to you way back in the early years of the first Clinton administration. I couldn’t stand Bill and Hil or any of their associates, and hearing you and the other conservative talk-radio jocks light into them made their eight years in the White House a little more bearable for me. I even bought your books for my elderly mom, who was a big fan of yours and listened to you regularly until my elderly dad became more dependent on her and made it difficult for her to do so. While I didn’t agree with you on everything back then, we were generally on the same page and when we weren’t I wasn’t particularly bothered. That hasn’t been the case since George W. Bush took office, and particularly since 9-11 and his administration’s atrocious response to that atrocity.

...

An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh by William R Tonso

The "bird flu" scare...

Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease...

Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug by Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen

America builds concentration camps...

KBR announced today that its Government and Infrastructure division has been awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency. KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton (NYSE:HAL).

With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term, consisting of a one-year based period and four one-year options, the competitively awarded contract will be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005.

“We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency operations support,” said Bruce Stanski, executive vice president, KBR Government and Infrastructure. “We look forward to continuing the good work we have been doing to support our customer whenever and wherever we are needed.”

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. In the event of a natural disaster, the contractor could be tasked with providing housing for ICE personnel performing law enforcement functions in support of relief efforts.

ICE was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of four integrated divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.

KBR is a global engineering, construction, technology and services company. Whether designing an LNG facility, serving as a defense industry contractor, or providing small capital construction, KBR delivers world-class service and performance. KBR employs more than 60,000 people in 43 countries around the world.

Halliburton, founded in 1919, is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries. The company serves its customers with a broad range of products and services through its Energy Services Group and KBR. Visit the company's World Wide Web site at www.halliburton.com.

Official Halliburton press release

The lies are unraveling...

Now here we are again, contemplating the seemingly unthinkable events of September 11. An official explanation has been offered up: The nation was attacked by the forces of radical Islam led by Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda jihadists. Again, this narrative has been accepted by many.

But not all.

The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll by Mark Jacobson

Just Say No...

Americans who are not in a self imposed coma are aware that Congress has once again shredded the Fourth and Fifth Amendments with their recent vote to extend certain provisions of the un-Patriot Act. The only problem is, the Constitution must be amended, not changed, altered or nullified depending on the vicissitudes dictated by political corruption.

Tell Your Sheriff: No Enforcement of the "Patriot" Act by Devvy Kidd