Gingrich Wants War with Iran & N. Korea

    1. Posted 6 months ago • SourceComments & 3 notes May 4th, 2009

      Gingrich is a very likely going to run for President in 2012, he is charismatic and to the Right of George W Bush; reading this article shows how dangerous he could be.

      Gingrich: Remove Iranian regime
      May 3, 2009br> WASHINGTON (JTA)
      — Newt Gingrich at the AIPAC policy conference called for ousting the regime in Iran and bombing its missile sites.

      Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a likely presidential candidate in 2012, in his address faulted the last Bush administration and the current Obama administration for engaging with Iran as long as it is led by theocrats who threaten Israel.

      “We need to recognize that there are some regimes we will never be able to cut a deal with because they are in fact evil,” he said Sunday, the opening day of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference, which drew nearly 7,000 delegates.

      Gingrich likened negotiations with the current Iranian regime to negotiating with Adolf Hitler, and called for “enforcing the disruption of gasoline supplies until the Iranian economy broke, the ayatollahs were ousted and a new regime was in place without a single shot fired.” That earned thunderous applause.

      The Georgia Republican also called for a military strike to destroy missiles in Iran and North Korea.

    Tags : politics

    Congress Knew About the Interrogations

    1. Posted 6 months agoComments & 2 notesApril 24th, 2009

      Via: John Cole & Retro*Politics

      Rep. Peter Hoekstra writes in Pravda the WSJ op-ed pages:

      Congress Knew About the Interrogations
      It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses. by them.
      Accessory
      An accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal. The distinction between an accessory and a principal is a question of fact and degree:
      • The principal is the one whose acts or omissions, accompanied by the relevant mens rea, are the most immediate cause of the actus reus (Latin for “guilty act”).
      • If two or more people are directly responsible for the actus reus, they can be charged as joint principals (see common purpose). The test to distinguish a joint principal from an accessory is whether the defendant independently contributed to causing the actus reus rather than merely giving generalised and/or limited help and encouragement……. wikipedia

    Tags : politics

    Quote of the day

    1. Posted 6 months agoComments & 2 notesApril 22nd, 2009

      So they tortured Gitmo detainees to get information, which turned out to be false, to build support for a war they had already made up their mind they would wage. And keep in mind, these decisions were made by political appointees. Not JAGs, not military generals, not even veteran CIA agents (most people in all three positions actually opposed these policies). They were made by neocon warmongers with little to no actual military or interrogation experience who hadn’t the slightest idea what they were doing. These people belong in a prison cell. To excuse them is to say that no abuse of power should be punishable so long as you can come up with some tortured justification about how you were only trying to protect the country.

      -

      The Agitator (via azspot) (via feinsodville)
      Here - Here - Amen!

    Tags : politicstouture

    In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ's New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush's

    1. Posted 7 months ago • SourceComments & 2 notes April 10th, 2009

      Commentary by Tim Jones @www.eff.org

      Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF’s litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration’s made two deeply troubling arguments.

      First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue “would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.” As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence….
      Read full article here

    Tags : politicssecurityobama

    Quote of the day

    1. Posted 10 months agoCommentsJanuary 9th, 2009

      Obama should be more innovative in his policy approach to Cuba. He should propose ending the travel ban to Cuba altogether, and lifting the trade embargo. This would do more for accelerating meaningful reforms in the island than continuing with a policy that has failed to deliver results for almost 50 years.

      - Via
      A Latin American Agenda for President Obama
      by Juan Carlos Hidalgo CATO Insitutute

    Tags : politics

    Photo of the Day

    1. Posted 1 year agoComments & 1 noteSeptember 28th, 2008

      via: i1236 
Article by   New York Times writer  Noah Feldman.
Feldman  is   a law professor at Harvard University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Listen to an interview with Feldman about this article here
      via: i1236 

      Article by New York Times writer Noah Feldman.

      Feldman is a law professor at Harvard University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

      Listen to an interview with Feldman about this article here

    Tags : lawpoliticssupreme court

    Song of the Day

    1. Played 0 timesCommentsSeptember 14th, 2008

      [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

      Michael Silverblatt of BookWorm interviews Camille de Toledo author of Coming of Age at the End of History. This discussion touches many of the ideas and people that have long been of interest to me. The Spectacle , Guy Debord, Lip Stick Traces, TAZ, Zapatistas and much more.

      In this election cycle it is good to step out side the media dialog and find grander ideas that can be used as fulcrums, to leverage philosophy on to the political stage.

    Tags : transgression,politicsTAZ

    Paradoxical Essence of Palin

    1. Posted 1 year agoCommentsSeptember 13th, 2008

      Palin was (quite brilliantly) chosen by McCain because — like any successful commodity product in the postmodern marketplace — she embodies what Alex Shakar, in his novel The Savage Girl, calls a paradessence: a “paradoxical essence,” a conjunction of contradictory qualities. “Every product has this paradoxical essence. Two opposing desires that it can promise to satisfy simultaneously.” The paradessence is the “schismatic core, [the] broken soul, at the center of every product.” Thus coffee promises both “stimulation and relaxation”; ice cream connotes both “eroticism and innocence,” or (in more psychoanalytic terms) both “semen and mother’s milk.” The paradessence is not a dialectical contradiction; its opposing terms do not interact, conflict, or produce some higher synthesis. Rather, the paradessence affirms everything indiscriminately; it is a matter of “having everything both ways and every way and getting everything [one] wants” (from pp 60-61 and 179).

      Palin is a paradessence, and hence a wildly popular commodity, because she combines the family-centeredness of the ideal suburban Mom with the ruthlessness of a corporate “warrior” in the dog-eat-dog neoliberal economy, or of a hard-core ideologue/foot soldier for the Far Right. She is sort of a perfect combination of June Cleaver and Ilse Koch.

      From Steven Shavior : The Pinocchio Theory

    Tags : politics

    Why rednecks may rule the world

    1. Posted 1 year agoCommentsSeptember 11th, 2008

      Via Dean:
      During this US election cycle we are hearing a lot from the pundits and candidates about “heartland voters,” and “white working class voters.”

      Funny, Scary and insightful. This article from the BBC by Joe Bageant. Outside the major metropolitan areas these heartland voters are most likely a solid majority. Mr. Bageant’s bullet list seems right to me. [link]

    Tags : redneckspoliticsheartlandbbc