CITIZEN ALERT v1.163CHINA NUKES

You'd have to go all the way back to CITIZEN ALERT v1.8 to find where I was talking about the exaggerated nuclear threat of China. Well, it seems now a report from the Federation of American Scientists is confirming the same thing.

The U.S. military, intelligence agencies, and conservative think tanks and news organizations are exaggerating China’s nuclear weapons capability to justify developing a new generation of nuclear and conventional weapons, according to a report issued today by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Now, in fairness I believe some of the upgrading of our nuclear arsenal is intended to stop any misuse of the weapons if they were to fall into the wrong hands, but as far as the arms race with China is concerned the report is backing up an article I read awhile back in Foreign Affairs that our government "[has] been embellishing China’s submarine and long-range missile capabilities".

THE WHOLE STORY IS HERE

CITIZEN ALERT v1.162SISTER HELEN

February 23-25, 2007 - Pasadena, CA

Sister Helen Prejean will be the Keynote Speaker for the 2007 Festival of Life
Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, will be the Keynote Speaker for the 2007 Festival of Life, All Saints’ Lenten educational experience. The subject for the Festival of Life this year is “Humanity Imprisoned, Humanity Transformed.” Join us as we explore themes of reconciliation, justice, dignity and redemption. Sister Helen will speak of her personal experiences in prison ministry and many years of reflection on justice in America. An impressive offering of workshops will be offered on Saturday.

Save the dates February 23 - 25, to attend the Festival of Life.
For more information contact Lori Kizzia at lkizzia@allsaints-pas.org or 626.583.2766.

All Saints Church is located at 132 North Euclid Avenue, Pasadena, CA. 91101. Our phone number is 626.796.1172. The church is just across the street from Pasadena City Hall, and is convenient from the 110, 710, 134, and 210 freeways.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.161THIRD TIMES A CHARM?

Oh man, here we go again. The President is out there threating to "respond firmly" if Tehran doesn't stay out of Iraq and now John Bolton, the former UN "thug", is calling for regime change in Iran!! These people have no pause button.

BOLTON STORY HERE

CITIZEN ALERT v1.160THE FIGHT

Caught up on a lot of political talk shows this weekend discussing the escalation and surge in Iraq and the Congress' duty to stop it and so on. Let's see if I can discuss this without completely contradicting myself and everyone thinking I've gone over to the darkside. This is tough. Iraq puts even the most anti-war proponents in a bind I admit. And fair warning I will not get to my point til the very end.



Okay, here's what's irking me lately. The fact that Bush and Cheney stick so vehemently to their idea of how to "win" this war, but refuse to practice it. I think Cheney is one of the most evil people to walk the planet, but he's not fighting this war like someone who really wants to win. That's what makes no sense to me.

I'm a huge anti-war supporter, but I'm that way because I believe war is humanity at its lowest level, it is humanity at its utmost laziest, we are tired of communicating with each other so lets just start shooting. War is humans at a level where you can barely describe them as humans, AND WE SHOULD KEEP IT THAT WAY!! I believe some wars have to be fought, and when that time comes, THERE'S NO RULES! It's war for crying out loud. And it's not that I would go fight it that way myself, it's that I EXPECT people to fight it that way.

When Abu Ghraib broke the headlines, and everyone was so shocked, I was like: IT'S WAR! WHAT DO YOU EXPECT!? A lot of civilians were swept up and carted away to Cuba? IT'S WAR! Some Canadian was mistakenly arrested and sent to a foreign country to be tortured. OF COURSE, IT'S A WAR!

What I don't understand is if this is the way the Bush administration feels is the best way to fight, then why are we not using these tactics on the right people? Why was the Bin Laden clan allowed to even leave the country after 9/11. You want to rendition some people, there they are! Why didn't they strap Bin Laden's family to the front of the tanks that rolled into Afghanistan and put that on Al Jazeera? If you think you're Alexander the Great, George, then act like him.

Why did we not round up Bin Laden's wives and sons, cousins what have you and send them to Syria to be tortured? Why have we not swept up the families of the Taliban and held them for ransom until they show their faces or give up Bin Laden. Why have we not fire bombed all the tribal areas of Pakistan?

All these things are completely awful, and I'm not recommending we do any of them. If it was up to me, I'd take all of us out of that part of the world until we were asked back. But that's me, I have no pride when it comes to global matters, I don't need to win. But the Bush administration has shown time and time again that they must win. They can not be seen losing, so here's the million dollar question. Why aren't they playing to win? Why didn't we send 500,000 troops into Afghanistan right off the bat? Why didn't we descend on that part of the world like a total eclipse of all hope?

And here's my point finally: Bush and Cheney do not care about winning the War on Terror, they only care about fighting it.

Fighting is profit. Fighting is perpetual power. To win, is to finish. And the smoking gun on all of this is what I've just listed above - these awful awful things we do in the name of democracy and peace, but not where we need to be doing them, not to the people that might effect an end to this lowest of points in human history.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.159SOAW

Freelance reporter Willy E. Gutman conducts an interview with Honduran Lt. Col. Roberto Nuñez a graduate of The School of the Americas:


Q: Who were your instructors?

A: Officer-level classes were taught by Latin American SOA graduates.

Q: Did the school offer courses on human rights?

A: I don't remember.

Q: Did some SOA graduates commit acts of barbarism?

A: Warring sides give different labels to the tactical components of a military operation.

Q: Military operation?

A: Yes. We were at war.

Q: Against your own people. Civilians. You were not defending against foreign invasion.

A: Civilians subverted by outside influences can destroy a nation.

Q: Old men, women, children?

A: All part of a fifth column.

Q: Are you calling clergy, teachers, students, journalists, peasants and trade unionists a "fifth column," thus justifying-

A: Yes. Communists. They threatened the public order and national security. Ours was a war fueled by outside ideological forces intent on subverting the whole region and-

Q: - justifying the murder of priests and labor organizers because their vision of hope for the poor clashed with the interests of the plutocracy? Some were executed face down in the mud.

A: So what?

Q: - rationalizing the rape and slaughter of nuns who taught children how to read and write? Justifying the "disappearance" of thousands of civilians? Validating the massacre of 900 peasants in El Mozote, and gunning down an archbishop and six Jesuit priests who championed the powerless against the powerful?

A: I don't care if they were the pope. War makes titles, status or celebrity quite irrelevant. They were communists. All the damned lot. They had to be neutralized.

Q: - or throwing people out of helicopters several thousand feet above ground? Or using private houses as detention and torture chambers?

A: Yes, yes, yes. Madness! No one pretends that war is pretty. There was no other way. The main moral question is, what was the right thing to do under the circumstance, not who did it, or how. Many praiseworthy policies are promoted for morally dubious reasons, and many pernicious policies are advanced with the best of intentions.

Q: Good intentions and an unshakable conviction in the morality of a cause do not make such a cause moral, do they?

A: Philosophers must decide, not soldiers. Ultimately, we must ask to what extent the military actions of a debtor nation are driven by the policies and objectives of its creditor.

Q: A nation that depends on the U.S. for survival can never be free - is that what you're saying?

A: It's one way of putting it.

Q: Is there democracy in Central America today?

A: No. What we have are amorphous societies run by improvisation, governments that have no national conscience, no doctrine, no vision, no plan. They have lost sight of the priorities. When everything is important, nothing gets done.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.158ACLU

THIS FROM THE ACLU:


The California Court of Appeals ruled on December 21 that the voting rights of over 145,000 Californians (mostly young men of color with non-violent felony convictions) will be restored. The ACLU-NC, along with our co-counsel, The Social Justice Law Center, filed a suit in August to restore voting rights to this wrongfully disenfranchised group following an opinion issued by the Attorney General

For over 30 years, the California Secretary of State said that this group could vote. But, as of November 2005, the California Attorney General issued a contrary opinion, effectively disenfranchising over 145,000 individuals, mainly African-American and Latino men.

“Felony disenfranchisement laws remain the most significant means of preventing people of color from having a voice in the political process,” said Maya Harris, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. “Every Californian should have the opportunity to fully participate in the electoral process.”

CITIZEN ALERT v1.157MINIMUM WAGE

Well, after the House passed the minimum wage bill during their 100 hour marathon, the Senate or I should say a small group of REP Senators has blocked it. It looks like the only way it's going to get through is with a tax break for small businesses attached to it.

Two things, I don't think the DEMS should fight this tax break, and also they should help WRITE the tax break to make sure it ONLY effects small businesses that pay their employees the federal minimum wage. If they do it right, two things could happen; it will pass, and the tax break will not matter - if they write it correctly.

Now, I'm the first to admit tax code confuses the hell out of me, so any of you out there that know this stuff, chime in. But here's the thing, during the mid term election the DEMS time and time again said they were going to lift the tax burden off the middle class. Well, small businesses are owned by the middle class, so what's the problem. As long as we really are talking about small businesses - NOT MCDONALDS OR WAL-MART - then the DEMS are going back on a campaign promise. Secondly, and this is really important, MOST SMALL BUSINESSES ALREADY PAY THEIR EMPLOYEES ABOVE THE FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE! If the DEMS write the tax break correctly, then 3 out of 4 small businesses won't even be effected by it as I see it.

It is more important to raise the minimum wage than to worry about a tax break for middle class folk who own their own business. Like my company I work for; my boss is middle class, she struggles to make her business run, and she pays starting employees double the federal minimum wage just to start. So, she could care less if the minimum wage went up.

If the DEMS are really all about bipartisanship then they should take the tax break wage increase and run like hell with it. Take credit it for like the REPUBS used to do with all the DEMS ideas.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.156THINK PROGRESS

The guys at THINK PROGRESS have a great blow by blow video of the President's State of the Union speech backed up by facts to rebut much of Bush's speech.

Yesterday was a crazy day for news. SOTU speech, the Libby trial kicked off into HIGH gear as Libby's lawyers show that their plan is to dump the whole CIA leak right back in Cheney and Rove's laps. This is going to be interesting. Another aircraft carrier moved into the gulf off the coast of Iran, and the President of Israel has been indicted on RAPE charges! E. Howard Hunt died as well! Geeez!

For those who don't know E. Howard Hunt, he is the conspiracy theorist's wet dream. In the CIA, one of the Watergate plumbers, linked to the JFK assasination. I'll get back to this.

Oh Oh! Wait! I forgot one. Investigators think the Chechen police are linked to the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. AAAAaa! My head nearly exploded yesterday morning, but I had no time to write.

Anyway, check out the Think Progress video and watch this trial with Libby closely. I think America will find out how deeply members of the Whitehouse were involved in the CIA leak. This is very important. This is the Bush Whitehouse unraveled and laid bare. Expect pardons, maybe earlier than you would expect.

Getting back to Hunt for a second, he summed up the philosophy of people like Libby and Cheney one time when he said that he didn't think he should have gotten in trouble for Watergate because he believed the presidents wishes were the law of the land, and that it was a mission like any other mission, this one just happened to be inside the United States. This is exactly how bent these people are. We are just window dressing, they are actually playing "the game". They owe us no explanations. This mentality must come to an end.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.155STATE OF DISTRESS

Waiting to hear Bush's State of the Union speech tonight. Very interested to hear what he has to say on Iran seeing how today more U.S. aircrafters are entering the Gulf in an effort to intimidate Iran.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.154BIGGEST STORY OF THE WEEK

This is huge. This is gigantic - and U.S. and world media really don't get it. As you know, CA likes to bring you under the radar news, and this one is I think too far under the radar. On January 11th, China successfully shot down one of their own weather satellites with a missile carrying a "kill vehicle" that rammed the satellite and sent it out of orbit into a hundred pieces.

This in effect kills the U.S. missile defense shield (MDS). The MDS as flawed as it was had the potential to deter at least a strike from China that reportedly only has about 18-20 nuclear weapons. When and if they ever got it up and running, it would have in effect canceled out China's nuclear arsenal giving the U.S. first strike capability.

With the successful kill of an orbiting satellite, China has evened the playing field seeing how the MDS relies on GPS satellites to guide its interceptors. A preemptive strike against the MDS GPS satellite and our shield is useless.

Now, I'm not taking a hawkish position on this by any means. I think the MDS is technology that should have been shared. It's the peacenik in me, sorry, but I'm just worried how trigger happy neocons like Bill Kristol will react to this turning tide. They could start to stir up the hawks in Washington D.C. once again and set them on a foolish path.

STORY BELOW:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- China last week successfully used a missile to destroy an orbiting satellite, U.S. government officials told CNN on Thursday, in a test that could undermine relations with the West and pose a threat to satellites important to the U.S. military.

According to a spokesman for the National Security Council, the ground-based, medium-range ballistic missile knocked an old Chinese weather satellite from its orbit about 537 miles above Earth. The missile carried a "kill vehicle" and destroyed the satellite by ramming it.

The test took place on January 11.

Aviation Week and Space Technology first reported the test: "Details emerging from space sources indicate that the Chinese Feng Yun 1C (FY-1C) polar orbit weather satellite launched in 1999 was attacked by an asat (anti-satellite) system launched from or near the Xichang Space Center."

A U.S. official, who would not agree to be identified, said the event was the first successful test of the missile after three failures.

The official said that U.S. "space tracking sensors" confirmed that the satellite is no longer in orbit and that the collision produced "hundreds of pieces of debris," that also are being tracked.

The United States logged a formal diplomatic protest.

"We are aware of it and we are concerned, and we made it known," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Several U.S. allies, including Canada and Australia, also have registered protests.

Under a space policy authorized by President Bush in August, the United States asserts a right to "freedom of action in space" and says it will "deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so."

The policy includes the right to "deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

Low Earth-orbit satellites have become indispensable for U.S. military communications, GPS navigation for smart bombs and troops, and for real-time surveillance. The Chinese test highlights the satellites' vulnerability.

"If we, for instance, got into a conflict over Taiwan, one of the first things they'd probably do would be to shoot down all of our lower Earth-orbit spy satellites, putting out our eyes," said John Pike of globalsecurity.org, a Web site that compiles information on worldwide security issues.

"The thing that is surprising and disturbing is that [the Chinese] have chosen this moment to demonstrate a military capability that can only be aimed at the United States," he said.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.153WORD OF THE DAY

Keep this word in mind when you start to hear things about Iran, and bomb building and "Israeli intelligence says", and bomb triggers and so forth.

Stovepiping
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Stovepiping refers to retrieval of filtered information from disconnected sources lacking context, which may in turn lead to decisions lacking common sense. The term also refers to barriers that form within organizations or databases that preclude normal or rational responses to ongoing events. Theoretically, higher authorities would want to avoid making decisions based solely on information, rendered by disconnected information systems or underlings, that has not yet been adequately scrutinized.

In the intelligence community, stovepiping is often used to characterize the inappropriate transmission of raw information to high-level officials that could lead to misguided policies, as sometimes happens with military intelligence.

The Office of Special Plans was created by the Bush administration to stovepipe raw intelligence to high level officials, thus circumventing the normal vetting process. This was done so that information that would have otherwise been deemed unreliable by intelligence analysts could instead be incorporated into claims of WMD possession and collaboration with Al Qaeda by Iraq, thus facilitating the the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.152ONWARD TO ETHICS

You know I just can't talk about Iraq today. I watched all the pundits debate it this weekend. I watched the President "dare" the DEMS to stop him, and I listened to Cheney who's stuck in some time warp back in 2004 still spewing out the same crap that nobody believed the first time around. He just keeps repeating himself, like if we hear it a thousand and one times THEN we'll agree with him.

Just forget it! They have made up their minds to pass this war onto the next Presidency so that they have an out. And just "saying" the DEMS don't have a plan doesn't mean it's true. I've heard plenty of plans coming from the DEMS side, they even have a freaking website. These guys have just lost their marbles. Just BUILD UP THE GREEN ZONES in 3 or 4 major cities in Iraq and work from the inside out. Pay money for guns, go door to door, run contests, make the cities a model. You have to turn the outlands of Iraq into the battleground you could have had in Afghanistan.

Anyways, forget all that. CALL YOUR SENATOR today and tell them S.1 is the be all end all of your day. The LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2007 is the Senate bill that requires all earmarks to have an identification of the member who proposed it and an explanation. That's what we want. We want the greed out in the open.

READ THE FULL BILL HERE

CITIZEN ALERT v1.151MARTIN THE DREAMER

Tomorrow we may get back into talking about plans for Iraq, but for today let's remember a more peaceful man.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. And this will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!" And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring -- from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring -- from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring -- from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring -- from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring -- from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring -- from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring -- from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring -- from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

"Free at last, free at last.

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

CITIZEN ALERT v1.150DEMOCRACY IS A DRAG

CITIZEN ALERT v1.149MORE OF THE SAME

I really can't comment on last night's speech by President Bush because I find the whole thing too boring. It was really just more of the same. The same plan repackage and reworded and tied up with a new bow on it and presented back to the American people as if they had come up with some innovative idea.

This administration is looking for a the perfect plan for victory so they say, but the reality is that there will be no perfect plan. There will be no good plan even. As Al Franken rightly commented this morning, I think he said, there's horrible, terrible and bad to choose from. Bad being the plan of dividing Iraq into three sections long touted by Joe Biden.

You may think that this is a dismal thing to do for an occupying power - dividing up a country into three sections, but if I'm remembering my history correctly that's the way Iraq was before the British got to it, so we'd really be putting it back the way it was before the Western world started messing with it.

I find this story much more interesting than Bush's speech last night:

New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon believes the U.S. prison at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay should be shut down, he said on Thursday.

"Like my predecessor, I believe that the prison at Guantanamo should be closed," Ban told a news conference. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who stepped down on December 31, had also called for the facility to be closed.

WHOLE STORY HERE

CITIZEN ALERT v1.148TICK TOCK

I will withhold comments today until the President speaks tonight.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.147WHAT IRAQ STUDY GROUP?

Everyone is counting down to Wednesday when the President is set to explain to the everyone that he really doesn't care what anyone thinks, and sets out to send MORE troops to Iraq. Pelosi and the DEMS are fighting back this week with their plans to clamp down on the spending and try to wrest control of the war from the President.

It's gonna be an uphill battle since the military is the President's territory, so look for the DEMs to fall into another neocon voting trap. The DEMS can deny the funding for the additional troops, but I could easily see the President sending the troops anyway and then it's the DEMS not supporting the troops again if they don't cough up the money. REPUB playbook.

On a more surreal note, California is hearing that universal health care may be on its way. Where are they hearing this from? Arnold Schwarzenegger!! Man, did this guy do an about face. Geez, if the REPUBS give us uni health care before the DEMS do, I'm going to be a little disappointed. Boxer needs to watch her back.

Also, just to throw one more log on the fire, I was reading a couple of interesting articles today - one on Saddam's execution that my drummer Bryan sent me, and one on the decline of executions in this country in the past decade.

I was just swapping comments with a CA reader on this the other day, and as the article was saying, I too think that Saddam's execution will do more to stir up violence than easy it. Our debate was who was really to blame for the execution. I blamed the U.S. because the chef can't blame the boiling water for killing the lobster, you know.

And I know Saddam was an evil guy, but does anyone else find it creepy that he was sent to his death by a trial and execution controlled by an imperialistic power, jeered on by a rival sect, supposed to die with a couple of other guys - although I don't think they ended up showing them or maybe they didn't execute them that day, and also that they had to rush the execution in on a weekend because of a religous holiday. Remind you of something? YIKES! Can we stop turning these guys into martyrs right and left?

CITIZEN ALERT v1.146BACK TO WORK

Congress is back at work, yes actually working this time around, on matters that need to be addressed unlike our 109th - "Let's talk about flag burning and call it a day" Congress.

Right off the bat we have:

H.R. 1 The Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007 http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/200501243.html

H.R. 2 The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/200501244.html

H.R. 3 The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007 http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/200501245.html

H.R. 4 The Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007 http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/200501246.html


A peek at the H.R. 2 shows that they plan for the minimum wage to go up to $7.25 in two years, still not what you'd call a "living wage" but I wonder what kind of impact this will have on our friends at WAL-MART.

SEC. 2. MINIMUM WAGE.

(a) In General- Section 6(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1)) is amended to read as follows:

(1) except as otherwise provided in this section, not less than--

(A) $5.85 an hour, beginning on the 60th day after the date of enactment of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007;

(B) $6.55 an hour, beginning 12 months after that 60th day; and

(C) $7.25 an hour, beginning 24 months after that 60th day;'.

(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect 60 days after the date of enactment of this Act.


BREAKING NEWS: New York City smells apparently.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.145ACK!

Citizen Alert has been down this weekend because I was down. Sick. Yuck! Returning Monday.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.144110th!!

It's so nice to turn on CSPAN and see Nancy and all those Democrats. :)

CITIZEN ALERT v1.1431 800 SUICIDE

CITIZEN ALERT v1.142THOSE RAMS ARE SO GAY

If you haven't already, you may start to hear of a story where scientists at Oregon State University have made a gay ram - apparently 1 in 10 rams prefer other rams (who knew!) - anyway, they say they have adjusted the hormonal balance in the brains of these rams and made them "straight".

The scientists have been able to pinpoint the mechanisms influencing the desires of “male-oriented” rams by studying their brains. The animals’ skulls are cut open and electronic sensors are attached to their brains.

By varying the hormone levels, mainly by injecting hormones into the brain, they have had “considerable success” in altering the rams’ sexuality, with some previously gay animals becoming attracted to ewes.

Professor Charles Roselli, the Health and Science University biologist leading the research, defended the project.

He said: “In general, sexuality has been under-studied because of political concerns. People don’t want science looking into what determines sexuality.

Okay, so we all know where this is leading, so let's say, for the sake of argument, that this research will not eventually be ripped to shreds, but let's say, okay, you figured out away to make a gay person into a straight person. How offended are you by this? Let's change the attribute for a moment. What if these same scientists came out and said, we've figured out a way to make any baby white! Now, how offended are you?

Is altering a persons sexuality "curing" them or in fact altering them? It's only a "cure" if you assumed the sexuality was abnormal to begin with.

CITIZEN ALERT v1.141DEATH PENALTY BY COUNTRY

Check out this table to see which countries opposes or practice capital punishment.