Letter to the Editor
President Bush has said, "Terrorists hate us for our freedoms." So, using Bush logic, the less freedoms we have the safer we are. But the time Bush becomes king with the help of new Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito, the terrorists won't have any reason to hate us because we'll be just like them. So let's all give up our freedoms for the illusion of safety. Lets invade countries, torture people, kidnap people to secret prisons, let the government spy on us, track us, listen in on our phone calls, and read our email. Bush is making bin Laden the winner!
Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." Bush says, "Give up your liberty or we're all going to die!" I'm with Patrick Henry.
Letter to the Editor
About the only thing that the Democrats have going for them right now is that they aren't Republicans, and they aren't doing a very good job on that issue. As the vote for an extreme right wing Bush puppet is about to be put on the Supreme Court to further turn America into a fascist state, the Democrats are missing in action in the war to protect freedom and liberty. If the Democrats aren't going to be the opposition party then why should we bother to vote at all in the 2006 elections?
Letter to the Editor
One of the reasons I use Google to search the web is that Google has a stronger commitment to civil liberties than Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo do. MSN and Yahoo turned over search information to the Bush administration to support their policy of spying on The People. Google stood up for our rights and said No to Bush. So I'm going to stick with Google because I want to support companies who understand that freedom is important.
Letter to the Editor
Is America going to the dark side? The US Senate is about to confirm a new justice who supports the idea of giving the president the power of a king at a time when the President is openly breaking the law and asserting the power of a king. When criminals like Bush get to appoint their own judges then the future of freedom itself is in jeopardy. We should impeach Bush before we vote in any new justices.
The domain registrar GoDaddy.com took down an entire data center nectartech.com where I do my hosting. They are back online now but it got pretty scary for a few hours. I'm a friend of the owner and being a professional asshole I managed to help him get back online.
What happened was that last week a customer at his data center got hacked into and the hacker started sending PayPal fraud spam. Nectartech shut the server down and fixed the problem however GoDaddy who was the registrar for nectartech.com shut down the domin of the data center. That not only killed their domain cutting them off from their customers since all email went away, but all the domain names that used nectartech name servers went offline as well. Fortunately I run my own name servers and my domains were not affected.
These people at GoDaddy are serious morons and there tech support is somewhat less that 24x7. I have better support than this and I'm a one man operation. This registrar shuts down an entire data center over one machine being hacked. I don't use GoDaddy myself, and I sure as hell wouldn't recommend them to anyone. If you don't want the risk of being arbetrarilly shut down, I'd use someone else
Here are 2 actual phone calls to GoDaddy support.. The first is a phone call at midnight. to try to get them to turn the data center back on. The second call was made the next morning after there 24x7 abuse department came to work.
The bottom line is - do you want your domains in the hands of people like this?
The Church of Reality has accepted the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights as part of it's religious doctrine. The declarations are very compatibles with the Sacred Principles and are a natural extention of the Kernel, which is the Church of Reality doctrine. Here's the link to the Church of Reality version.
You won't see this in the corporate news:
Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children
By Philip Watts
01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.
This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.
What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.
It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."
This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.
Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us
Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,’ no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished."
What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the President’s right to order the crushing of a child’s testicles?
This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S. run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world?
It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President's legal right to torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush administration policies, based on his legal memo’s, being equated to those during Nazi Germany.
Yoo said, "If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves against Al Qauueda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if you’re trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who committed atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too. I think to equate Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible."
If open promotion of unmitigated executive power, including the right to order the torture of innocent children, isn’t sufficient basis for drawing such a "moral equivalence," then I don’t know what is. What would be irresponsible is to sit by and allow the Bush regime to radically remake society in a fascist way, with repercussions for generations to come. We must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot wait. While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, I’ll find myself along with many thousands across the country declaring "Bush Step Down And take your program with you."
Philip Watts - pwatts_revolution@yahoo.com
Letter to the Editor
In the last century the leaders of the world stood silent as Hitler marched across Europe taking the world nation by nation until it was almost too late. Let us never make that mistake again. Here in the United States President Bush has declared that he is above the law and that he has the power to declare war whenever he wants. Iraq isn't the end, it is the beginning. We are looking at a crisis that can lead to World War III if it is not stopped now. I therefore ask that the people of the world who value peace and civilization rise up and speak out against it while there is still time. America must not be allowed to become an imperialist dictatorship. Leaders of other nation must speak out against this now.
Letter to the Editor
At a time when the President has declared himself to be above the law we must not confirm a justice to the Supreme Court who agrees that the President is above the law. Sam Alito agrees with Bush that he is allowed to break the law. As Americans we The People must take whatever actions necessary to block him or we will no longer be a free nation.
They say, "Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel." A modern day versions of that would be never pick a fight with someone who buys data transfer by the terabyte. Someone like me. The terabyte is mighter than the ink barrel. So sayth the wise and powerful Perkel.
Letter to the Editor
Now that Bush has declared that he is above the law and he refuses to obey the law I think that we as a nation should deal with that rather than confirm any new Supreme Court nominees who might support Bush's position that he has the powers of a king. We need to put a stop to Bush and his lawless behavior now before The People decide to rise up and restore a Constitutional government. I'm not as concerned about civil war in Iraq as I am about civil war in America. No new justices until Bush is impeached.
I have registered the domain name unnameddemocrat.com and I'm in the process of building a web site there. It's about 7 weeks before I can register so if I get enough interest in the next 7 weeks I'll change my name legally to Unnamed Democrat and see how I do. The purpose of this web site is to light a fire under the asses of the Democratic Party. If major Democrats aren't denouncing me soon I'm not doing my job.
So - who wants to get in on this with me?
I'm thinking about running for Congress again. I ran in 1998 against Roy Blunt and ran for Senate in 2000 against John Ashcroft. I think I'm ready to light a fire under the asses of the Democrats and make the party stand for something.
I keep seeing polls of races where an "unnamed democrat" can beat just about anyone. So I'm thinking about changing my name legally to "Unnamed Democrat" and running against Tom Lantos here in California. I'll be the kind of Democrat people imagine of an unnamed democrat would be. My platform would be something like:
I'm not on of THEM!
Get the hell out of Iraq.
A vote for me is a vote to impeach Bush.
Clinton was one of America's greatest presidents ever.
Let's return to peace and prosperity.
No Patriot Act - a return to freedon and constitutional values.
Legalizing personal freedom. Pot, Prostitution, Dying with Dignity, Abortion, Stem Cell Research, religious rights for Atheists.
The Primary is on June 6th 2006 - Elect and Atheist on 666 - I think it's a sign from God that I should run!
The Democrats have to have more of a platform than "we aren't Republicans!" We need to either be the opposition party or we need to get out of the way so an opposition party can rise up. Either way - I can no longer sit here and take it. The only thing that pisses me off more than the Republicans is the defening silence from the Dems that give them cover. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. I probably won't win - but I will be heard.
Who is with me on this?