Bush seeks to slash public broadcast funds Reuters February 07, 2006 WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - President George W. Bush took a swipe at Big Bird and his ilk Monday as he proposed slashing funds to public broadcasting by more than $150 million. In the president's 2007 budget request, funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be cut by $53.5 million in 2007 and $50 million more in 2008. Those cuts don't reflect others made in funding at the Education and Commerce departments and the elimination of specific programs for digital TV conversion and satellite delivery system. Public broadcasting officials estimate that the entire budget cuts run $157 million over the two-year period. "Oscar the Grouch has been friendlier to the Sesame Street characters than President Bush, who has chosen to make huge cuts to children's television programming," said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. "In a world of fast-and-furious television with ratings-driven content, the public broadcasting system represents the last stronghold of quality child-oriented programming -- we owe this to America's children." The cuts in public broadcasting are part of an attempt by the White House to reduce the country's red ink as the administration seeks more money for the military and seeks to make Bush's first-term tax cuts permanent. Attempts by conservative Republicans to cut CPB funds are nothing new. Many conservatives view the public broadcasting as a bastion of liberalism. While there have been attempts to make cuts, the service has wide support in Congress from Republicans and Democrats who like its dedication to public affairs and educational programming. Last year, an overwhelming majority in Congress voted to restore cuts proposed by the administration. This year, those cuts go even deeper, and it could be more difficult to win the fight in Congress, said John Lawson, president and CEO of the Association of Public Television Stations. "We've dealt with cuts from this White House every year, but these are the deepest he's ever presented," Lawson said. "We see a clear and present danger here." It took an advertising campaign from public TV stations to mobilize the service's supporters, something that might not be as effective a second time, he said. "This is a tough environment in Washington right now, and we're competing with other priorities," Lawson said. "If you don't make your case, you lose," he said. "We won last year, but only after we asked the stations to go on the air and tell their communities what was happening. It's an effort we won't foreclose, but if you do that every year, it loses its effectiveness. We're going to try to win this one on the ground." In his $2.77 billion budget, Bush asks Congress to sharply cut or eliminate 141 government programs. Almost one-third of the targeted programs are in education, including ones that provide money to support the arts, vocational education, parent resource centers and drug-free schools. "My administration has focused the nation's resources on our highest priority -- protecting our citizens and our homeland," Bush said in his budget message. Bush's spending proposals are for the 2007 budget year that begins October 1. The $2.77 trillion in spending would be up 2.3% from projected spending of $2.71 trillion this year. The administration in its budget documents said the deficit for this year will soar to an all-time high of $423 billion, reflecting increased outlays for the Iraq war and hurricane relief. Comment: From a recent article on the Signs page: What’s coming When all fascisms exhibit the same social and political agendas (the 14 points listed by Britt), then it is not hard to predict where a new fascist uprising will lead. The actions of fascists and the social and political effects of fascism and fundamentalism are clear and sobering. Here is some of what’s coming, what will be happening in our country in the next few years: - The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to those who control money, and the increasing destitution of all those dependent on social security and social welfare programs. - Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already has the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in the developed world. - Increased loss of funding for public education combined with increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust their children’s education to Christian schools. - More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into the police state necessary for fascism to work. - Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. At their best, these media sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly seen as enemies of the state’s official stories. [...] See full article below.

Flashback: Living Under Fascism Davidson Loehr 7 November 2004 First UU Church of Austin You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word “fascism” in a serious discussion of where America is today. It sounds like cheap name-calling, or melodramatic allusion to a slew of old war movies. But I am serious. I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying. That’s what I am about here. And even if I don’t persuade you, I hope to raise the level of your thinking about who and where we are now, to add some nuance and perhaps some useful insights. The word comes from the Latin word “Fasces,” denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it’s worth knowing that the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker’s podium in the chamber of the US House of Representatives. Still, it’s an unlikely word. When most people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that the use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there was also an economic dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," which was an essential ingredient of Mussolini’s and Hitler’s tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a model by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe. As I mentioned a few weeks ago (in “The Corporation Will Eat Your Soul”), Fortune magazine ran a cover story on Mussolini in 1934, praising his fascism for its ability to break worker unions, disempower workers and transfer huge sums of money to those who controlled the money rather than those who earned it. Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during the 1930s. Yet reviewing our past may help shed light on our present, and point the way to a better future. So I want to begin by looking back to the last time fascism posed a serious threat to America. In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy — those concerned with individual rights and freedoms — as anti-American. That was 69 years ago. One of the most outspoken American fascists from the 1930s was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book, The Coming American Fascism — a coming which he anticipated and cheered — Dennis declared that defenders of “18th-century Americanism” were sure to become "the laughing stock of their own countrymen." The big stumbling block to the development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was "liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights." So it is important for us to recognize that, as an economic system, fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and '30s, and nearly worshiped by some powerful American industrialists. And fascism has always, and explicitly, been opposed to liberalism of all kinds. Mussolini, who helped create modern fascism, viewed liberal ideas as the enemy. "The Fascist conception of life," he wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual." (In 1932 Mussolini wrote, with the help of Giovanni Gentile, an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism. You can read the whole entry HERE) Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual rights: The essence of fascism, he believed, is that government should be the master, not the servant, of the people. Still, fascism is a word that is completely foreign to most of us. We need to know what it is, and how we can know it when we see it. In an essay coyly titled “Fascism Anyone?,” Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 “identifying characteristics of fascism.” (The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2.) See how familiar they sound. 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. 2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. 4. Supremacy of the Military Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. 5. Rampant Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy. 6. Controlled Mass Media Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. 7. Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. 8. Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. 9. Corporate Power is Protected The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. 10. Labor Power is Suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. 11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts. 12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. 14. Fraudulent Elections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. This list will be familiar to students of political science. But it should be familiar to students of religion as well, for much of it mirrors the social and political agenda of religious fundamentalisms worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that have always been the default setting of our species: amity toward our in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hierarchical deference to alpha male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to raise us above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again. But, again, this is not America’s first encounter with fascism. In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?” Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. See how much you think his statements apply to our society today. “The really dangerous American fascist,” Wallace wrote, “… is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.” In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism he saw rising in America, Wallace added, “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.” By these standards, a few of today’s weapons for keeping the common people in eternal subjection include NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, union-busting, cutting worker benefits while increasing CEO pay, elimination of worker benefits, security and pensions, rapacious credit card interest, and outsourcing of jobs — not to mention the largest prison system in the world. The Perfect Storm Our current descent into fascism came about through a kind of “Perfect Storm,” a confluence of three unrelated but mutually supportive schools of thought. 1. The first stream of thought was the imperialistic dream of the Project for the New American Century. I don’t believe anyone can understand the past four years without reading the Project for the New American Century, published in September 2000 and authored by many who have been prominent players in the Bush administrations, including Cheney, Rumsfleid, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Kagan to name only a few. This report saw the fall of Communism as a call for America to become the military rulers of the world, to establish a new worldwide empire. They spelled out the military enhancements we would need, then noted, sadly, that these wonderful plans would take a long time, unless there could be a catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor that would let the leaders turn America into a military and militarist country. There was no clear interest in religion in this report, and no clear concern with local economic policies. 2. A second powerful stream must be credited to Pat Robertson and his Christian Reconstructionists, or Dominionists. Long dismissed by most of us as a screwball, the Dominionist style of Christianity which he has been preaching since the early 1980s is now the most powerful religious voice in the Bush administration. Katherine Yurica, who transcribed over 1300 pages of interviews from Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” shows in the 1980s, has shown how Robertson and his chosen guests consistently, openly and passionately argued that America must become a theocracy under the control of Christian Dominionists. Robertson is on record saying democracy is a terrible form of government unless it is run by his kind of Christians. He also rails constantly against taxing the rich, against public education, social programs and welfare — and prefers Deuteronomy 28 over the teachings of Jesus. He is clear that women must remain homebound as obedient servants of men, and that abortions, like homosexuals, should not be allowed. Robertson has also been clear that other kinds of Christians, including Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are enemies of Christ. (The Yurica Report. Search under this name, or for “Despoiling America” by Katherine Yurica on the internet.) 3. The third major component of this Perfect Storm has been the desire of very wealthy Americans and corporate CEOs for a plutocracy that will favor profits by the very rich and disempowerment of the vast majority of American workers, the destruction of workers’ unions, and the alliance of government to help achieve these greedy goals. It is a condition some have called socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, and which others recognize as a reincarnation of Social Darwinism. This strain of thought has been present throughout American history. Seventy years ago, they tried to finance a military coup to replace Franlkin Delano Roosevelt and establish General Smedley Butler as a fascist dictator in 1934. Fortunately, they picked a general who really was a patriot; he refused, reported the scheme, and spoke and wrote about it. As Canadian law professor Joel Bakan wrote in the book and movie “The Corporation,” they have now achieved their coup without firing a shot. Our plutocrats have had no particular interest in religion. Their global interests are with an imperialist empire, and their domestic goals are in undoing all the New Deal reforms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that enabled the rise of America’s middle class after WWII. Another ill wind in this Perfect Storm is more important than its crudity might suggest: it was President Clinton’s sleazy sex with a young but eager intern in the White House. This incident, and Clinton’s equally sleazy lying about it, focused the certainties of conservatives on the fact that “liberals” had neither moral compass nor moral concern, and therefore represented a dangerous threat to the moral fiber of America. While the effects of this may be hard to quantify, I think they were profound. These “storm” components have no necessary connection, and come from different groups of thinkers, many of whom wouldn’t even like one another. But together, they form a nearly complete web of command and control, which has finally gained control of America and, they hope, of the world. What’s coming When all fascisms exhibit the same social and political agendas (the 14 points listed by Britt), then it is not hard to predict where a new fascist uprising will lead. The actions of fascists and the social and political effects of fascism and fundamentalism are clear and sobering. Here is some of what’s coming, what will be happening in our country in the next few years: - The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to those who control money, and the increasing destitution of all those dependent on social security and social welfare programs. - Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already has the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in the developed world. - Increased loss of funding for public education combined with increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust their children’s education to Christian schools. - More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into the police state necessary for fascism to work. - Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. At their best, these media sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly seen as enemies of the state’s official stories. - The reinstatement of a draft, from which the children of privileged parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving our poorest children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed that could never benefit them anyway. (That was my one-sentence Veterans’ Day sermon for this year.) - More imperialistic invasions: of Iran and others, and the construction of a huge permanent embassy in Iraq. - More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national security. - Control of the internet to remove or cripple it as an instrument of free communication that is exempt from government control. This will be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist measure. - Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status of churches like this one, and to characterize them as anti-American. - Tighter control of the editorial bias of almost all media, and demonization of the few media they are unable to control – the New York Times, for instance. - Continued outsourcing of jobs, including more white-collar jobs, to produce greater profits for those who control the money and direct the society, while simultaneously reducing America’s workers to a more desperate and powerless status. - Moves in the banking industry to make it impossible for an increasing number of Americans to own their homes. As they did in the 1930s, those who control the money know that it is to their advantage and profit to keep others renting rather than owning. - Criminalization of those who protest, as un-American, with arrests, detentions and harassment increasing. We already have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country in the world. That percentage will increase. - In the near future, it will be illegal or at least dangerous to say the things I have said here this morning. In the fascist story, these things are un-American. In the real history of a democratic America, they were seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of critical questions that kept the American spirit alive — the kind of questions, incidentally, that our media were supposed to be pressing. Can these schemes work? I don’t think so. I think they are murderous, rapacious and insane. But I don’t know. Maybe they can. Similar schemes have worked in countries like Chile, where a democracy in which over 90% voted has been reduced to one in which only about 20% vote because they say, as Americans are learning to say, that it no longer matters who you vote for. Hope In the meantime, is there any hope, or do we just band together like lemmings and dive off a cliff? Yes, there is always hope, though at times it is more hidden, as it is now. As some critics are now saying, and as I have been preaching and writing for almost twenty years, America’s liberals need to grow beyond political liberalism, with its often self-absorbed focus on individual rights to the exclusion of individual responsibilities to the larger society. Liberals will have to construct a more complete vision with moral and religious grounding. That does not mean confessional Christianity. It means the legitimate heir to Christianity. Such a legitimate heir need not be a religion, though it must have clear moral power, and be able to attract the minds and hearts of a voting majority of Americans. And the new liberal vision must be larger than that of the conservative religious vision that will be appointing judges, writing laws and bending the cultural norms toward hatred and exclusion for the foreseeable future. The conservatives deserve a lot of admiration. They have spent the last thirty years studying American politics, forming their vision and learning how to gain control in the political system. And it worked; they have won. Even if liberals can develop a bigger vision, they still have all that time-consuming work to do. It won’t be fast. It isn’t even clear that liberals will be willing to do it; they may instead prefer to go down with the ship they’re used to. One man who has been tireless in his investigations and critiques of America’s slide into fascism is Michael C. Ruppert, whose postings usually read as though he is wound way too tight. But he offers four pieces of advice about what we can do now, and they seem reality-based enough to pass on to you. This is America; they’re all about money: - First, he says you should get out of debt. - Second is to spend your money and time on things that give you energy and provide you with useful information. - Third is to stop spending a penny with major banks, news media and corporations that feed you lies and leave you angry and exhausted. - And fourth is to learn how money works and use it like a (political) weapon — as he predicts the rest of the world will be doing against us. That’s advice written this week. Another bit of advice comes from sixty years ago, from Roosevelt’s Vice President, Henry Wallace. Wallace said, “Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.” Still another way to understand fascism is as a kind of colonization. A simple definition of “colonization” is that it takes people’s stories away, and assigns them supportive roles in stories that empower others at their expense. When you are taxed to support a government that uses you as a means to serve the ends of others, you are — ironically — in a state of taxation without representation. That’s where this country started, and it’s where we are now. I don’t know the next step. I’m not a political activist; I’m only a preacher. But whatever you do, whatever we do, I hope that we can remember some very basic things that I think of as eternally true. One is that the vast majority of people are good decent people who mean and do as well as they know how. Very few people are evil, though some are. But we all live in families where some of our blood relatives support things we hate. I believe they mean well, and the way to rebuild broken bridges is through greater understanding, compassion, and a reality-based story that is more inclusive and empowering for the vast majority of us. Those who want to live in a reality-based story rather than as serfs in an ideology designed to transfer power, possibility and hope to a small ruling elite have much long and hard work to do, individually and collectively. It will not be either easy or quick. But we will do it. We will go forward in hope and in courage. Let us seek that better path, and find the courage to take it — step, by step, by step.

The Bush budget is a trillion little pieces of fantasy Feb. 7, 2006, 11:43PM By LOREN STEFFY Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle WE will be out of Iraq and, for that matter, Afghanistan, by the end of the next fiscal year. No troops, no economic support of any kind. The alternative minimum tax, that secret tax system ensnaring more and more middle-class families, will vanish without costing the government a dime in lost revenue. The tax cuts that have saved some of the wealthiest among us hundreds of dollars a year will continue indefinitely. This, too, will cost the government nothing. That spiffy alternative energy technology that President Bush said in his State of the Union speech last week will help end our oil addiction? It can be funded on a shoestring. Those are just a few of the twisted fantasies you have to embrace if you want to follow the president down the rabbit hole of his latest budget proposal. We have been here before. It's the parallel universe in which difficult choices are put off in favor of mind-bending assumptions. When those assumptions don't come true, the White House will embrace its familiar retreat: Blame Congress. The cost of our national debt, according to the little counter that sits on my desk, now tops $8.19 trillion. By the president's own projection, the budget deficit will set a record of $423 billion this fiscal year. Under Bush's proposed budget, service on our national debt would constitute 9 percent of the $2.77 trillion in spending. That percentage, like the deficit, will continue to grow. Mounting debt, though, hasn't swayed federal spending habits. The government is entering its fifth year of paying out more than it brings in, a trend the Congressional Budget Office predicts will continue through 2012. This is what passes for fiscal leadership in 21st century America. The issue here isn't partisanship. It's choices. Not the ones already made, but the ones we have put off for far too long. The proposed budget lacks any concern for the nation's financial future. The claim of deficit reduction is an economic parlor trick of understated expenses and overstated revenue. A budget with blinders In the short term, though, it takes a hard line on most spending. Bush proposes some significant cuts in education spending and housing programs, reductions in environmental protections and a smaller reduction in overall spending for energy programs. The president also has taken a swipe at entitlement programs by making more wealthy Medicare recipients pay higher premiums. Total spending will increase 2.3 percent, modest by government standards. But overall, it's a budget with blinders. It ignores the reality beyond the next fiscal year. We have come to expect nothing less, because year after year this administration has followed the same pattern. The Concord Coalition, the nonpartisan balanced-budget think tank, notes that Bush's plan to extend the current tax cuts and raise federal spending will add some $400 billion to the deficit by 2011. The tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, you may recall, came with the promise that their cost would be offset by surpluses generated by the economic stimulus of the cuts. Those surpluses have evaporated, yet the push for the tax cuts remain. That shaves about $285 billion from federal revenue projections over five years. If Congress doesn't act, the AMT will nail almost 21 million unsuspecting taxpayers next year. Fixing that antiquated provision of the tax code would add $500 billion to the deficit over five years, the Concord Coalition estimates. That leaves Congress with a looming choice: allow a de facto tax increase on middle America or stoke the already bloated budget deficit by once again borrowing from the future to fund tax cuts in the present. The problem with debt, as debt counselors would tell you if they weren't too busy dealing with the charade of the new bankruptcy law, is that it takes away choices. No choices for children This administration and this Congress offer no commitment, other than hollow words, to preserving our choices or those of our children. They continue to max out the national credit card with abandon. It is, quite simply, fiscal cowardice. The war on terror? Our addiction to oil? Unfair taxation to a growing percentage of the population? Social Security? Those are someone else's problems. Choices delayed are choices made. Time is running out. We can't afford three more years down the rabbit hole. Comment: And if Bush and the people that pull his strings are aware that in a certain sense "there is no future"? What if they are aware that in ten years the world may be unrecognisable due to climate change and cosmic bombardment, war and "population reduction"? Time is running out, but maybe not for the reasons that most people belive.

Army Charges GI for Being Wounded antiwar.com 7 Feb 06 The last time 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood. Now he is forced to pay for the "missing" body armor. The army charges soldiers for missing equipment. When medics rushed to save Rebrook's life, they neglected to keep track of the bloody and destroyed body armor. "I last saw the [body armor] when it was pulled off my bleeding body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter," Rebrook said. "They took it off me and burned it." Rebrook decided to leave the army because of his injuries. But he was informed that he could not be discharged until he paid $700 for his "missing" armor. Rebrook scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home last Friday. I wonder if we will hear anything on this from the "Support Our Troops" crowd.

Bush squirms as policies denounced at King funeral By Andrew Gumbel 08 February 2006 President George Bush led a crowd of 10,000 mourners at yesterday's funeral for Coretta Scott King, one of the icons of the civil rights movement, only to squirm in his seat as one speaker after another invoked Mrs King's spirit to lambast his administration on everything from the Iraq war to the response to last year's Hurricane Katrina. The lavish occasion, bringing together civil rights veterans, three former presidents, more than a dozen senators, musicians and poets at a megachurch in the suburbs of Atlanta, was both a tribute to the woman who carried on the campaigning legacy of her assassinated husband, Martin Luther King Jr, for almost 40 years and also an opportunity to invoke some of the Kings' passionately outspoken rhetoric. President Bush called Mrs King, who died 10 days ago at the age of 78, "one of the most admired Americans of our time". Her nearest and dearest pointedly did not return the compliment. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," said Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr King more than 40 years ago, "but Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here." The Rev Lowery issued a searing indictment of the Bush administration's economic priorities. "For war billions more," he said, "but no more for the poor." Far better received than President Bush was Bill Clinton, who won an enthusiastic ovation as he described how Mrs King might easily have given up the civil rights struggle after her husband's assassination in 1968. Instead, he said, she asked herself "What am I going to do with the rest of my life?"

China may eradicate poverty by 2050: report www.chinaview.cn 2006-02-08 20:33:17 BEIJING, Feb. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- In 2050, 1.3 billion Chinese will live in a moderately developed society, with a minimum monthly income of 1,300 U.S. dollars, an average life-expectancy of more than 80 years and social services available to all, according to a new report. The blueprint was drawn up by a research team with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Using statistics provided by national institutes and world organizations, the report said that by then, no one in China will live with an annual income of less than 668 yuan (81 U.S. dollars) per capita, the country's absolute poverty line. He Chuanqi, head of the research team who compiled the report, told Xinhua that to attain this goal, China should follow two stages of social transformation. It should first turn into a city-based industrialized society from the present agricultural one, and then step into a knowledge-oriented society with rural and urban areas developing at the same rate. By 2050, 80 percent of the urbanization work in China will have been completed, the researcher said. He added that the social transformation will also bring great changes to peoples' life-styles, as 80 percent of the population would have access to information industry services, 50 percent could afford overseas travel and 50 percent would own private cars. However, he was keen to point out that the current situation is still not that optimistic. The economic index of China in 2001 equaled that of the United States 100 years ago. China is lagging far behind developed countries in terms of urbanization, life-expectancy and adult literacy. He also noted that the social transformation will change peoples' opinions and life-styles, thus evoking controversy and provoking social problems. "Chinese society is now undergoing the first stage of its transformation towards an industrialized society," He said, adding the economic modernization in China has been faster than the social modernization over the past 50 years. Comment: Excuse us if we throw cold water on such a rosy scenario. Earthquakes, volcanoes, meteorites, and pandemics, anyone? Not to mention the "Peak Oil" manipulation that will justify cuts in oil production as well as "population reduction".

WTO says EU broke trade rules by stopping genetically modified food imports 16:07:17 EST Feb 7, 2006 GENEVA (AP) - The WTO has ruled that the EU broke international trade rules by stopping imports of genetically modified foods, officials said Tuesday. The preliminary judgment by a World Trade Organization panel concluded that the European Union had an effective ban on biotech foods for six years from 1998, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is a confidential report. The report sided with a legal complaint brought by the United States, Canada and Argentina over an EU moratorium on approval of new biotech foods, the officials said. The panel ruled that individual bans in six EU member states - Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg - violated international trade rules. The decision has been delayed several times and diplomats said they were still studying the details late Tuesday. The ruling, said to be one of the most complex the commerce body has issued, runs to about 1,000 pages. The complainants claim that there is no scientific evidence for the EU's actions and that the moratorium has been an unfair barrier to producers of biotech foods who want to export to the EU. An environmental group, Friends of the Earth, says the case undermines the right of governments to decide for themselves what is safe for their citizens, and pressures other countries, especially developing ones, to accept genetically modified foods against their will. The EU ended its moratorium in 2004 when it allowed onto the market a modified strain of sweet corn, grown mainly in the United States. Washington has said it will continue with its WTO case until it is convinced that all applications for approval are being decided on scientific rather than political grounds.