Our only chance as a country is to be attacked by terrorists?

Is the point to have us demand as much violence as is necessary? Wow. These right-wing dudes are even worse than I'd imagined, and that's saying something.

clipped from crooksandliars.com Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

We don't really think about it.

Bob Herbert meant for the following quote to describe the USAmerican attitude toward gun violence, but I think it accurately describes the USAmerican attitude toward just about everything pressing, important, and horrifying.

We don't think.

We go through the motions.

We never really do anything about it.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Actually, that’s our problem. We don’t really think about it. If the crime is horrible enough, we’ll go through the motions of public anguish but we never really do anything about it. Americans are as blasé as can be about this relentless slaughter that keeps the culture soaked in blood.

Marijuana "more dangerous" than alcohol or tobacco, US Attorney blows smoke up law students' asses

Of course, US Attorney Russoniello is right, marijuana is far more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, but not for any reasons that are given.

It is more dangerous for the simple fact that once you've tried pot and seen how absolutely un-dangerous it is, you realize that the US government lies to you.

And if it is willing to lie to you about something as relatively insignificant as the health implications of the occasional toke, how much more is the state willing to lie to you in matters of real importance --- like bailing out Wall Street banks with tax payer monies, invading countries that haven't threatened us, or pretending that carbon caps and trading will have any real effect on global warming.

Once you realize you can't trust the government, you start to wonder about your church and the local Chamber of Commerce. And then all hell breaks lose...

clipped from www.counterpunch.org Joe Russoniello, US Attorney for the Northern District of California (a Bush appointee), says at a Hastings Law School forum that all medical marijuana dispensaries are profiteering operations in violaton of state law and therefore “fair game” for DEA raiders. He asserts that marijuana is “a more dangerous substance” than alcohol or tobacco... Dispensary operators who draw “reasonable compensation” and who only obtain their cannabis from and sell it to collective members hope they can be distinguished from “egregious offenders.”

We need to create a new culture

clipped from www.counterpunch.org To reverse what is happening, we must create strong alternative ideas and hardy alternative institutions and communities, a counter culture that rejects the myths of Washington and Wall Street just as, in the 1960s, a generation put the establishment on the defensive or in the closet. In any case, we need to act, but independent of those responsible for the mess, those exculpating them, those offering remedies that are mere manipulated shadows of the failure, and those engaged in misleading or misguided organizing on their behalf even if with purportedly noble intent. The collapse of American culture was an inside job. Its cure is to be found on the outside, in a counter culture that is clear and worthy in its goals, eclectic in its alliances, and which builds community, recovers integrity and helps us to sing again. If we can't save our culture, we can at least create a new one.

Banksters: We need $2 trillion, but we're solvent

clipped from www.pbs.org Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine.

Global currency? Global bank?

Of course conspiracy theorists (as opposed to coincidence theorists, I guess) will "love" this, since it is precisely what "they" have been suggesting is in the works for some time.

I always thought that the prime measure of a theory's merit was how accurately it made predictions. Seems to me that the prognostications of the "conspiracy theorists" have been a lot more accurate than those put forward by the coincidence theorists in the MSM, especially lately.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.

Lula tells it like it is; Brown looks mildly uncomfortable

We white folks really are funny. We get so embarrassed at the wrong stuff. We're ashamed of being called out on crashing the world economy (e.g., Lula's "outburst"), but we aren't ashamed of crashing it in the first place. Can't have "fuck" written on the canisters of napalm we use to incinerate women and kids, after all.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk "This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person," Lula said after talks with the prime minister in Brasilia to discuss next week's G20 summit in London. "This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics." You go to a shopping mall and you are filmed. You go to the airport and you are watched. I can't imagine that only the financial system has no surveillance at all." Brown looked mildly uncomfortable during Lula's outburst.