Jacob's Politics

An important request to ALL our readers

2010-07-10T13:40:00.002+02:00

Dear Readers of all our blogs,

It is with great sadness that we have to announce that we will now have to make all our major blogs accessible only to those who register with us.

The subjects we have covered over the years include the wrestler Dara Singh (probably the most popular and controversial blog entries, ever), St. Stephen's College, Delhi, Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai, Bishop Cotton School, Bangalore, the UN, talk Shows in the USA, politics, the Kandathil and Maliyakal families, Kampitie, Vesaisentie, Annikki's creative art, achievements of our children and grandchildren, CHAFF (Chamber for Assistance of Finns and Foreigners), Findians, our numerous friends, relatives, our travels, recipes, and life in general. Above all, t they contained the nostalgia the people love.

Due to circumstances far beyond our control, which affect the lives of many of our loved ones, we have to create the SETTINGS of our blogs so that only those whom we invite can read them. This is very sad as our blogs have reunited many friends across the continents.

With over 120000 readers around the world, some reading more than one of our blogs, for a decrepit old blogger and his wife sitting near the North Pole, this will prove to be a Herculean task, but one which has to be done for the safety, security and well being of many of our loved ones.

Please take the time and effort to send us an email telling us which of our blogs you want to be added to so that you can access them freely.

Our sincere apologies to each and every one of you lovely readers who have kept us going for almost a decade and a half by your readership, your inputs and your outputs!

Yours in great sadness as technology besides being a positive aspect of life can also be a very negative one.

Annikki and Jacob Matthan

Oulu, Finland

Secularity in Educational Institutions

2010-03-31T01:16:00.000+02:00

(Posted on all my main blogs as this is one of my more serious postings meant to get the broadest reach.)

I learnt from the Times of India of 25th March 2010, Bishop Cotton school principals to resign, that my second alma maters, the Bishop Cotton's Schools in Bangalore, both the Boys and Girls schools, are going through a huge upheaval. The alleged interference of the Church in their running and the seemingly marginalisation of the Principals (also known as Wardens) into puppets, possibly all in the greed for the rich pickings associated with running a well-known educational institution, appear to have taken these two schools from reality into a fantasy world. Accusations are flying left, right and centre.

Sitting 7000 km away from that base, I do not know who is right or wrong, but it is such a shame to see the schools where my late father (he was also the Old Boy's Association Chairman for many years) and all his siblings, and a greater part of my generation of Matthan's, including my four children, being destroyed by these bickerings and the unfortunate media stories being put out.

A similar situation of the differences between the Church and the Principal is causing the rot of the fourth of my alma maters, St. Stephen's College in Delhi. The Alumni in different part of the world are taking actions, but that may not stop the rot.

However, my Mumbai alma mater, The Cathedral and John Connon School, seems to have overcome this problem, or it probably has not yet come to the forefront.

Trying to remember my days in each school and college, I knew I was in a Christian Institution in all these three cases (and also my first, The Good Shepherd Convent School in Mysore).

In Bishop Cotton's Boys' School we had to go, being a Christian by birth, to the Chapel for morning service before the start of school, every single day.

In Mumbai, we had School Assembly every morning with the reading of the Bible by one of the Prefects and singing of hymns. But it was not grossly evident that it was a Christian school.

My 59er class consisted of Atheists, Christians (a handful), Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Parsis, Sikhs, Sindhis, and probably various other sects and sub-sects. Not once did it cross my mind that my classmates were from different religions.

The only time I was aware the difference was we took our shirts off for PT. I noticed a few of my classmates wore quite different vests - the Parsis, as they had a sleeveless type muslin (?) vest quite different from the rest of the class. Other than mentally noting this difference, and I never even bothered to find out or understand the reason for this, we were all equal in every other respect during our hours in school.

The only differences were those imposed by the time table, as the Christians had to do Scripture as a subject while the non-Christians were exempt from this.

These secular values, and the continuation of the same which I imbibed in St. Stephen's College of the early 60s, has stood me in good stead through my life. I learnt to respect people for what they do and achieve and not because of their religion, caste or creed.

I wish this would be the universal philosophy across the world, as the wars that plague us today are based on these stupid artificial values, called as faith - be it by any religion anywhere in the world where the religious hierarchy fights for power and prestige, misguiding the masses along the way.

2010 Doha Debate at St. Stephen's College in Photographs

2010-02-21T20:52:00.001+02:00

The Premises: Auditorium, St. Stephen's College, Delhi

The Moderator with the Panel

The Proposition: 'This House beleives Muslims are not getting a fair deal in India'.

The Moderator Tim Sebastian

The Speakers

Seena Mustafa

Sachin Pilot

Teesta Setalvad

M. J. Akbar

The Questioners

'

The Audience

The Vote

John Yoo - a modern day Nazi

2010-02-09T16:39:00.004+02:00

Any of you who watched the Fareed Zakaria interview of John Yoo, the author the Bush Torture Memo, would have seen sheer evil.

This man, Yoo, is great at hiding behind words. In the interview, I am grateful that Fareed, in his own inimitable way, pressed Yoo to the point get his views.

Dodging, twisting and turning were the tricks followed by John Yoo.

The fact that he was willing to give up the Geneva Convention to gain control of all power for the WAR pResident, showed he had no other objective.

He was at no time trying to prove any political or legal point. He was after sheer power to do anything to anyone who did not follow the pResident. His legal views on warrantless searches, domestic surveillance, enhanced interrogation torture and expansive executive power show the brain of a true Nazi! (After all, were not the German Jews, and Jews per se, only Hitler's enemy combatants? Of course, they would not have been able to be granted protection under the Geneva Convention!)

Would Yoo give the same advice he gave pResident Bush to the present incumbent?

i do not think so, as he will find many fine words and legal arguments to specify what Obama can and cannot do.

Would it be lawful for Obama to imprison John Yoo and torture him?

And that too just on MY suspicion that he is an enemy combatant?

I am a bit peeved that Fareed did not have the courage to ask John Yoo that question.

To brand anyone an enemy combatant at the will of the pResident is the height of Nazism!

And to see it expressed so eloquently by an American University Professor was positively frightening!

"I'll do it again" says Blair

2010-01-30T09:20:00.000+02:00

The Chilcot Inquiry is looking at events between 2001 and 2009, covering the decision to go to war against Iraq, whether troops were properly prepared, how the conflict was conducted and what planning there was for its aftermath. It is claimed that the terms of reference are unprecedented in their breadth.

Inquiry Chairman, Sir John Chilcot, says he will not shirk from apportioning blame where he sees fit. 179 British service personnel were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2009. Many tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians died over the period.

The inquiry began in July 2009. Sir John and the four other panel members met some of the families of the 179 UK personnel killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 as well as former and current serving personnel. During the meetings, several relatives of those killed criticised the decision to go to war, saying the British people had been lied to about the threat posed by Iraq.

Sir John and his fellow panel members also spent weeks examining thousands of relevant documents from across government. Some documents have not been declassified, meaning that although the inquiry can view them they cannot be made public.

The report of the result of the inquiry is being delayed till 2011. This shows it is a partisan one as the result should have been before the British people before the next General election.

So not much good can be expected out of this. The time frame says it all.

This man, Tony Blair, should be put away for life. He is a psychopath!

Tony Blair told the Chilcot Inquiry the he was prepared to do the same again! That is - To kill thousands of innocent people!

What Tony Blair wants to do again is kill many hundred thousand innocent women and children to fulfill HIS belief that there are weapons of mass destruction anywhere where someone whom he does not like is in power.

This man, Tony Blair, is a war criminal on par with Bush, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.

There is only one place for the likes of him.

A secure mental institution, where his arrogance, stupidity and poodle-like behaviour are never again unleashed on this world.

In front of the Inquiry, yesterday, Tony Blair was arrogant and unrepentant about all the unnecessary killings of innocent Iraqis. He linked the Iraq war to 9/11, which is simply not true. Not a single Iraqi was involved in 9/11.

Blair claimed falsely that Saddam Hussain was not allowing the Weapons Inspectors to do their job. This is simply not true. There is ample evidence from both Dr. Hans Martin Blix and Dr. Mohamed Mostafa ElBaradei what was the situation on the ground in Iraq. They were pleading for just a little more time to confirm their findings that there were no WMD in Iraq.

That would have been unacceptable to Bush and Blair as they wanted to spill blood - innocent blood, not caring whose blood it was!

Blair wanted, like Bush and Margaret Thatcher, to go down in history as a man in shining armour carrying his country to victory(?). Tony Blair destroyed the lives of several British men and women and their families to try to go down in glory in the history books.

A tragic victory (?) for whom?

Not for the innocent civilian women and children Iraqis that Blair and Bush have mutilated and murdered!

Tony Blair certainly goes down in My history book as a WAR CRIMINAL!

Obama cried "Foul"! Interesting!

2010-01-29T08:55:00.000+02:00

President Barrack Obama's State of the Union speech was interesting in that it was full of contradictions.

He said he is phasing down the US military agenda abroad, whereas all he has done since is coming to the office is to ramp it up, continue the policies of the previous administration and show no direction in world politics, except rhetoric.

However the most glaring statement made by him was the criticism levelled at the US Supreme Court, which in its recent ruling, stated that Corporations had equal rights as individuals as to their role in election financing!

Obama may stand today for something different. He may have been supported by mass popular appeal.

That was because he had a great spin machine.

Let us look at the composition of the US Supreme Court today:

Chief Justice John Roberts

Associate Justices
John Paul Stevens
Antonin Scalia
Anthony Kennedy
Clarence Thomas
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Stephen Breyer
Samuel Alito
Sonia Sotomayor

Do you note anything in particular?

The Roberts Court (2005–present) began with the confirmation and swearing in of Chief Justice John G. Roberts on September 29, 2005, and is the current presiding court.[58] The Roberts Court is seen as more conservative than the previous court.[59] Some of the major rulings so far have been in the areas of abortion (Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood,[60] Gonzales v. Carhart);[61] anti-trust legislation (Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.);[62] the death penalty (Baze v. Rees,[63] Kennedy v. Louisiana);[64] the Fourth Amendment (Hudson v. Michigan);[65] free speech of government employees and of high school students (Garcetti v. Ceballos,[66] Morse v. Frederick);[67] military detainees (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld,[68] Boumediene v. Bush);[69] school desegregation (Parents v. Seattle);[70] voting rights (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board);[71] the Second Amendment (District of Columbia v. Heller),[72] and campaign finance (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission).[73]

Do you remember when Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito were appointed? 2005 and 2006!

These two radical fundamentalist Justices were appointed under the previous administration when Obama was in the Senate.

What was he doing then?

Although he did not support the appointment of these two people, what was he doing in the Senate?

When Bush had no 60 vote majority, did Obama stand up and filibuster these appointments? Did he lobby his fellow Democrats and convince them of his belief of what lay ahead with the appointment of these two people to the Supreme Court?

Obama showed no leadership then, just as today he is swinging with the wind!

Obama can cry foul today, but he was a short-sighted Senator jockeying his position to power when these crucial appointments were made.

The rest of the democratic world could see what lay ahead.

If the man had no vision then, can you expect him to have any different vision today?

Obama can cry "FOUL" all he wants, TODAY. But he is the one, by his irresponsibility and lack of courage of convictions, that made what occurred in the Supreme Court last week, happen!

What about Western Democracy?

2010-01-24T12:14:00.004+02:00

Yesterday, I gave the reasons why I thought American Democracy, as it stands today, is pure crap.

Some of you have written to me about what I thought about Western Democracies, as a whole.

I am not an expert about Western Democracy, but I certainly know the Finnish System.

What would you say if one Government is a co-habitation of the Conservative Right with the Centre Party. In the next, it works out as a co-operation between the Conservative Right and the Socialist Left. The following Government turns out as a co-habitation between the Centre and the Socialist Left.

This is the outcome of the proportional system of election.

In short, there are no moralities or party positions in this form of election system. And that has been what the Finnish Democratic System is all about.

Would you, therefore, trust a politician who gets elected on a party platform and then, to get power, throws all his / her "principles" to the wind?

I would not.

In addition to this form of horse trading, the Police, the Judiciary and the Bureucracy are corrupt to the core in Finland. And the corruption is at the very top, not at the bottom, where there are just paid employees doing their job and carrying out orders.

Further, the entire legal system, administered through a bunch of self-serving lawyers, ensures that this corruption continues unabated. The Finnish Lawyer's Association (Suomen Asianajajaliitto) , supposedly to investigate any actions of their brotherhood which are questionable, exists purely to protect the brotherhood and the fair name of their corrupt profession.

A complaint to the Chancellor, or the Ombudsman, usually gets short shrift. They too form part of this corrupt power base.

Why would they want to shake it?

In such a situation, there can certainly be only one conclusion that the Finnish Democratic System is not a workable model.

Yes, it does work beautifully for the Oligarchic elite which rule the country and those hand-maidens who live of the crumbs that fall from the Master's Table.

But as far as the general public is concerned, Democracy means nothing except to accept what their Feudal Masters decide is in "their" best interest.

(Based on the text contained in the new book "Inheritance Nightmare" written by Jacob Matthan. This is a true story of how the Finnish corrupt systems continues to function with no checks and balances as of today!)

American Democracy is pure crap

2010-01-23T22:03:00.003+02:00

Last week, the American Supreme Court made a historic decision, 5-4, that a Corporation has the same election rights as a person.

If one looks at this decision, then one wonders what way of life is being protected by the American Constitution.

In short, the American Constitution is crap. Anyone who follows that Constitution is only fooling himself / herself that they live in a Democracy.

I reproduce here, the article which appeared in Buzzflash.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

From the presidential election stolen in December of 2000 by a 5-4 vote to the 5-4 vote in January of 2010, the decade is bracketed with a partisan Republican High Court that twice shoved the basic underpinnings of democracy -- government of the people, by the people and for the people -- into a garbage compactor and crushed our electoral rights.

BuzzFlash was one of the few progressive sites on the Internet -- and perhaps the loudest and most in your face -- when Antonin "the Fixer" Scalia stopped the 2000 recount in Florida because Al Gore would have overtaken Bush and become president. Then SCOTUS, despite virtually all legal prognostication that it would never take the case and a contrary lower Appellate court ruling, annointed George W. Bush president by a 5-4 vote.

Fast forward just a few weeks more than a decade later, replace Rehnquist with Roberts and O'Connor with Alito, and you have the same 5-4 dynamic of right wing extremist judges trampling on the seeds of democracy by declaring that corporations can finance elections in the same way as people, building upon a pernicious concept -- that BuzzFlash has discussed for some time -- known as "corporate personhood."

Just yesterday, I discussed that the best and most accessible history of how we ended up here is in Thom Hartmann's book, "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights."

I was talking on the phone this morning with Thom, and he brought up the irony that may be prophetic that the infamous Dredd Scott decision that declared slaves to be property led to the Civil War. Now, we have a Supreme Court decision that affirmed that corporations have, according to the GOP 5-4 vote, the same election rights as people.

Global corporations and Wall Street financial firms have become stifling, obstructive institutions that impede innovation and democracy, but they do not breathe; in fact, they suffocate. They don't encourage or stimulate entrepeneurship and small businesses with new ideas; they crush them.

For America, it's been a decade of two Supreme Court coups that have stolen democracy and replaced it with something akin to activist right wing judicial rulings on behalf of the oligarchy that pulls the strings in D.C.

The Dredd Scott decision, as Hartmann points out, resulted in the Civil War.

Will we sit back and passively accept that corporations have the same rights to elect our government as people do?

Are corporations now to be championed by the "pro-life" zealots to boot?

It might not be time for a Civil War, but it is time for a non-violent populist revolt to restore our Constitutional rights as people and to protect ourselves from the predatory corporations that now will transparently buy their politicians in D.C.

If "knowledgable judges" can come up with verdicts such as this, one really wonders how Americans can live with themselves under this Constitution.

If I were an Amwerican, either I would fight such gross misuse of the Judicial Forum or I would pick up my bags and go to a country which is a Democracy!

I would even go to the extent of forming a Corporation and making that Corporation stand for the American Presidency!

Luckily, I am not an American.

I hope all of Americans out there enjoy the next edition of "Big Brother". Probaly that is all the majority of you are capable of doing!

Dilemma! What do I do?

2010-01-21T06:08:00.000+02:00

I was in this dilemma when I stated blogging in December 2004. I had one blog for all my different audiences. At that time I also had web pages devoted to different sectors of readers.

There was a clamour amongst my readers of the blog that I was out of tune with them as they were reading many items that they were not interested in as they pertained to my alma maters or something specific to Oulu, etc.

It was then I started breaking up my blogs - besides my primary Blog (Jacob's Blog), I started one on Politics, another related to my association with Cathedral School (Mumbai), another about St. Stephen's College (Delhi), another about finding goods and services in Oulu, etc.

Everybody was happy!

All went well till my recent trip to India, where I stopped all my auxiliary blogs and kept only my main blog going, with just a few very specific entries to my other blogs.

My readership shot up as it appeared that many were interested in all aspects of my trip around India - which I had termed as "Incredible India".

The readership more than doubled at one point. People were referring others to my blog and it just snow-balled into a massive readerfest. Old and young, relatives and friends, school and college mates, Findians, O-Indians, my professional colleagues, past and present, were all tuned in. And many strangers from around the world were liking my style!

Wherever I went I found I needed no introduction as people had been following my blog. As I recorded, at one stage it became highly embarrassing, as people would come up to me and ask whether I knew them!

On returning to Finland, I went back to my old system.

Now I am having a spate of complaints. Many say that I should only blog at one point.

That would be great for me but not fair on my diverse audience. For instance the Cathedral School Alumni Association have especially complimented me on my sustained effort to keep the school spirit at its height by my blogging.

That is definitely not possible as my Seventh Heaven and Kooler Talk Blogs have very specific readerships. And not everyone likes my Politics. To burden all my regular readers with MY political views would be unfair. And my Oulu Best (Worst) Buy Blog is very specific to my Oulu Readers. Who in India or USA wants to read about the price of eggs in Oulu?

Is there any single solution, which is outside my very limited knowledge, which will help keep all my readers happy?

One way is that you could become a "Follower" of a specific blog. Whenever the one you are interested is updated, you will get a message from Google. No infringement of your privacy. You can always stop the "Follower" program whenever you want.

That way, it would stop my having to post important blog entries on my multiple blogs. (Possibly - as I have not yet looked into the ramifications of this alternative.)

If you have any suggestions, please email me or leave me a COMMENT. (Although my blogs are not exactly "Comment" blogs, I do read all the comments and reply them appropriately - also knocking off the spam that does come in.

This entry is being posted on all my major blogs, as it concerns all my readers in all categories.

Obama gets kicked in his teeth

2010-01-20T12:45:00.003+02:00

Yesterday was the crucial Massachusetts election to elect the replacement Senator for the late Edward Kennedy.

It is true that the Republicans ran a good campaign while the Democrats ran one of the worst campaigns ever run by a Senate candidate.

But the difference of almost 5% (52% Republicans - 47% Democrats) in a "safe" Democrat seat was not a result of this.

The result reflected a total rejection of how President Barrack Obama is keeping his campaign promises when he promised "CHANGE".

What has changed in troop deployments? The US forces are still stuck in Iraq. A new front has been opened by sending additional troops to Afghanistan. The "Stop Loss" programme in the US army has not been reformed. Another new front has opened in Yemen. Extra-judicial killings using drones and hit squads has continued. Guantanamo has not been closed. America has experienced another suicide bomber aboard a US plane! The area of attacks has widened.

This is not what the American people voted for when the elected Barrack Obama. He kept claiming he voted against the Iraq War - now we see that was a big lie!

In addition the attacks on the USA has increased BECAUSE of the "collateral damage" inflicted by US forces on innocent lives in different parts of the world.

The bank bail out has benefited Wall Street, and not Main Street.

Barrack Obama is weak on how he tries to negotiate with the Republicans.

With 60 votes in the Senate all his efforts are mired.

Did pResident Bush ever have 60 votes when he hammered the American people with his agenda?

It shows the weakness of the Democrat Party and also President Obama.

The Democrats may cry all they want - but as long as they have such weak leaders in both the House and the Senate, things are goíng nowhere. America will be back in Bush country before long and the Republicans will be talking about the "nuclear option" when the do not even have 50 votes in the Senate!

To give a Democrat Senator a personal sweetener to get him to vote for a Democrat sponsored bill on Health Care reform, really took the cake!

Say bye-bye Democrats - you had your chance and it seems you BLEW IT!

Integration Council members

2010-01-10T00:33:00.001+02:00

I read today in the Indian Telegraph about the new "Minority boost to integration council".

Here are the names of people that may be on that council:

The Telegraph has learnt that the proposed names include those of Justice A.M. Ahmadi, Omar Abdullah, Salman Khurshid, Syed Shahabuddin, Asaduddin Owaisi, Shahid Lateef, Shabnam Hashmi, John Dayal, Ramdas M. Pai (president and chancellor, Manipal University), Valsan Thampu (St Stephen’s College principal), Roman Catholic Archbishop Vincent M.C. Concessao, Ratan Tata, Rahul Bajaj, N.R. Narayana Murthy and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw.

Recognise some names in that list?

Shahid Lateef is the wife of 62er Stephanian Sarwar Lateef. John Dayal is a Stephanian, as also present Principal of the College, Rev. Valsan Thampu. Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament, Rahul Bajaj, is both a 58er Stephanian and also a 54er Cathedralite. Ratan Tata was a Cathedralite for a part of his education. I have not had the good fortune to meet him personally, although his younger brother, Jimmy, was a close friend and my hockey mate.

During my recent visit to Delhi I did meet John, Valsan and Rahul.

John broke protocol and came to see me the day I was leaving. He had just got back from Orissa and he came over that morning just to spend a few minutes over breakfast. And I did say a short prayer, holding hands with him, for his devoted work for the people of India. Maybe this is where I show him the meaning for that prayer.

I met Thambu at the St. Stephen's Founder's Day celebration on Monday 7th December, where I took part in the Holy Communion Service in the College Chapel, and then at the proceedings in the College Assembly Hall where former Indian President Abdul Kalam was the Chief Guest.

Sadly I do not see Valsan as a man with much vision at this moment of time. Hopefully God will lead him in the right direction if he gives up his ways of playing politics for power!

And Rahul paid me the greatest tribute by staying on a extra day in Delhi to be present at an event organised by Delhi Cathedrtalite to meet with Annikki and me. Having led an industry to the zenith, he now has a wondeful opportunity to show his fellow men that he has the vision to lead minorities to the centre of Indian society as equals.

Sadly, I did not learn till later that Sarwar and Shahid were in Delhi, as otherwise I would certainly have met up with this very dear couple. Shahid has always been at the forefront of the women's movement as well as a powerful spokesperson for uplifting of Muslim women.

I do hope this Council will stop beating about the bush and get a move on, not on the antiquated model of reservation of seats for the minorities in schools, colleges and jobs, but by uplifting the hearts and minds of these people labelled as minorities, into them thinking that they can compete on equal terms with the best of the world. They are not second class citizens of the world, so let us stop treating them as such.

You treat people as weak and they will be weak. You treat them as human beings and they can outstrip the very best.

Look at the fantastic performance of the black community in sports in the USA and UK (and also Kenya, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Canada, France, etc., etc.). They do not need to be treated as weak and powerless minorities. Given the right role models, they will bring in performances that are better than the best of their more fortunate brothers and sisters.

That itself is the tonic for success, not reservations, which is the sure tonic for failure!

I remember the words of my friend, former Ambassador Niranjan Desai, while we were having lunch together at the International Centre just a few weeks ago. He said that by treating the minorities as we do presently, we will not achieve any improvement in their standards.

I fully agree with his reasoning. This Integration Council should start looking at other ways to uplift the ethnic minorities in India than stupid and unrealistic reservation policies!

Recognise inherent cultural and ethnic talents. Build on successes. Do not force people into streams where they are doomed to fail.

In short, I hope this council will bring forward a new vision to the way we handle the integration of minorities into mainstream society!

Useless Terrorist profiling

2010-01-07T03:04:00.002+02:00

This post is under my JM Politics Blog, but I thought it important enough to give it multiple exposure, so it is also posted on my main "Jacob's Blog of 7th January 2010".

I just read an excellent article in Think Progress, January 6, 2010, by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, and Alex Seitz-Wald: "TERRORISM: The Wrong Kind Of Profiling" (reproduced below, Copyright acknowledged) which highlighted how the right wing conservatives in the US and other countries are talking about ethnic and racial profiling, as they consider all Muslims as terrorists before they board an aircraft, etc.

TERRORISM
The Wrong Kind Of Profiling

Following the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack by 23-year old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a public debate has erupted over the proper way to prevent terrorists and other criminals from endangering airline passengers in the future. While many politicians, pundits, and public policy leaders have engaged in responsible and rational discussions about the intelligence failures that allowed Abdulmutallab to bring bomb materials on an aircraft, a whole host of conservatives have endorsed racial and ethnic profiling that would seek out terror suspects simply on the basis of the color of their skin or religious identity. While many right wingers seem to be comfortable with succumbing to racist and nativist hysteria, the truth is that racial and ethnic profiling is tremendously ineffective. A more rational approach to profiling based on behavior -- rather than race or identity -- would help keep Americans safe while maintaining our civil rights and constitutional freedoms.

THE RIGHT'S EXTREMIST REACTION: It wasn't long after Abdulmutallab's failed attack that conservative pundits and politicians began to call for racial and ethnic profiling of people from Muslim backgrounds. Right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher argued for separate lines at airports to "scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed," which are some of the most common names in the world. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said, "One hundred percent of the Islamic terrorists are Muslim, and that is our main enemy today. So why should we not be profiling people because of their religion?" Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote a column on Human Events titled "On Terrorism it's Time to Know, to Profile, and to Discriminate," in which he claimed that "cultural sensitivities" are preventing security officials from stopping terrorism; the next day, Gingrich clarified his comments by saying he thinks that profiling should be based "on behavior, not ethnic ... [or] racial profiling." Perhaps the most brazen call for ethnic profiling came from retired Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, who declared, "If you are an 18 to 28-year old Muslim man then you should be strip searched. And if we don't do that, there's a very high probability that we're going to lose an airliner."

WHY RACIAL PROFILING DOESN'T WORK: The fact is that racial and ethnic profiling doesn't work. It creates a false sense of security and causes law enforcement resources to be wasted in chasing the wrong targets. As the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights' reports, racial profiling "diverts precious law enforcement resources away from investigations of individuals...who have been linked to terrorist activity by specific and credible evidence...[and] ignores the possibility that someone who does not fit the profile may be engaged in terrorism." Indeed, On Dec. 28, two Middle Eastern men were pulled off a flight heading to Phoenix because passengers reported they were engaging in suspicious behavior; it ended up that the men were simply speaking a Middle Eastern language. The same day, a Nigerian businessman was taken off an airplane because passengers became suspicious that he was lingering in the bathroom for too long. The FBI confirmed that the individual's behavior was due to a legitimate illness. It's important to note that terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and do not simply belong to one religion, ethnicity, or nationality. The "shoe bomber," Richard Reid, was Jamaican and British. Al Qaeda recruit Adam Pearlman was an American. Germaine Lindsay, one of London's 7/7 bombers, was Afro-Caribbean. Scott Roeder, who killed abortion-performing doctor George Tiller last year, was a white evangelical Christian. Racial profiling would, as Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council notes, extend our police dragnet over "potentially hundreds of thousands of [innocent] people every year" and drain precious resources away from other, more important security measures. And as a recent study by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science concludes, racial profiling has been no more effective than random screening in rooting out terrorists.

A BETTER WAY: While racial and ethnic profiling is a failed strategy that goes against our basic values, there are smarter profiling methods that police and other security officials can use to prevent acts of terrorism. A memo titled "Assessing Behaviors" circulated by law enforcement officials in October 2002 outlined such a strategy. One of the writers of the memo pointed out, "Fundamentally, believing that you can achieve safety by looking at characteristics instead of behaviors is silly. If your goal is preventing attacks...you want your eyes and ears looking for pre-attack behaviors, not characteristics." Former Bush counterterrorism officials have also objected to racial profiling and point out that looking for suspicious behavior is much more important. Former Bush CIA director Michael Hayden said that seeking out terrorists isn't "a question of ethnicity or religion." Rather, "it's what people do that we should be paying attention to." Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued that "relying on preconceptions or stereotypes is actually kind of misleading and arguably dangerous" because terrorists intentionally recruit people "who don't fit the stereotype." Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, suggests "effective profiling...is based on the analysis of the...behavior of a passenger and an inspection of the traveler's itinerary and passport; it does not and should not be based on race, religion, nationality or color of skin." As former Homeland Security press secretary Russ Knocke explained in 2006, security personnel are, and should be, trained "to look for abnormal human behavior. ... That is in no way racial profiling. That is behavioral profiling."

The article shows the stupidity of such an act as ethnic and racial profiling, as valuable resources are squandered.

It is my "contention of 1" that Al Qaida and other terrorist groups are flying out all sorts of schemes just to throw the entire security apparatus into a tizzy. The more failed attempts, the better for them, as the stupid security analysts start chasing shadows rather than real targets.

That pResident Bush went about wire tapping and searching his entire US population (just to stay ahead of his political opponents) shows how this sort of behaviour by a meglomaniac has squandered the valuable resources of an intelligence community.

Obama has fallen into the same trap. In his recent speech he talked about the failure to connect dots. The reason is that with one million or a billion dots to connect, even with super fast computers, this is impossible. It is easy to see this in hindsight!

During my recent trip to India I passed through so many security checks - Helsinki, London, Mumbai, Cochin, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Delhi. Every single airport followed a different procedure. Every single airport failed to focus on the real problem - separating the real and honest traveller from the potential terrorist. Hence, 99.9% of the procedure was just a waste of valuable resources.

If I were a terrorist, one look at these illogical procedures would have given me 200 ways on how to beat the system. That is what Al Qaida and other terrorist organisations are focusing on.

The security analysts want to show us they are doing a great job (to get a greater allocation of financial resources and to show important they are), but all they are doing is following a set of useless procedures.

As one writer put it, soon we will be travelling on airplanes in the NUDE - but then they will need to do an internal body scan, so we will all be cut open before we get on the plane. Great news for surgeons!

Stupid? Well, that is how stupid the present procedures are, and everyone mutters, "Oh, this is to keep US safe!" (No pun intended!)

We are no safer now than we were 25 years ago. In fact, every new procedure the security analysts introduce makes us less safe as it cuts out one more method the terrorists would have considered. They will concentrate on other more effective methods while sending the security analysts barking up the billion wrong trees!.

Forgive my scepticism

2010-01-04T21:19:00.003+02:00

The latest move to demonise Yemen and Somali seems to have some undertones.

Is it that the US and British want to establish their military presence at the narrowest point into the Arabian Sea?

Sorry, but I do not trust their politicians one bit after they played the greatest lie of all about the Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq. Killed millions without even a by your leave. And even cold blooded murderers from Blackwater can "walk" FREE on a legal technicality.

While others, especially women and cildren, are killed without any chance of even asking for a judicial process!

Do you trust that form of justice?

And there was Barack talking about peace when he is ratcheting up the war in Afghanistan. NOBEL PEACE PRIZE - THAT WAS A LAUGH!

Who is raising the spectre of war?

The Americans talk about an attack on their "homeland" when one man tries to attack them.

But when, they as a national policy, attack and kill innocent women and children in another nation with no trial, then those people must accept the justice meted out by the US meekly and are not allowed to retaliate?

God (which one - Kali) bless America but not those innocent victims?

Barrack appears to be a war monger. He needs war to keep the attention away from his failed politics in the Middle East and at home.

Barrack is certainly no Christian - just a fake one, like Bush, Blair and Brown with Blood on THEIR hands!

Drones again

2009-12-27T07:14:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago, while we were in Ahmedabad I blogged a report about Drones

Guess what. The "terrorists" have acquired software called "Sky Grabber" which enables them to watch exactly what the Americans are doing with their drones.

This is a huge embarrassment to the American military.

It is only two steps from there to be able to grab control of the drones and use them the way they like.

The Americans's are furiously working to now encrypt the data being transmitted, but anyone who has the skill can break the encrypting.

The foolishness of the American's continues to astound me.

The Soviets fought long and hard in Afghanistan. Did they win?

The Americans and NATO forces are also doing the same there. Do you honestly think they will win? And win what?

First they were fighting Al Qaida. Now they are fighting the Taliban. And they support a corrupt regime in Kabul!

Anyone heard of the support for the Shah of Iran by the Americans.

It is said that only fools commit the same mistake twice!

Americans have been committing the same mistake, again and again. Need I remind you of North and South Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the cold war against the Soviets, Pakistan, Iraq, etc., etc.

When will that country learn that they are only a banana republic. They have been unable to oust the Cuban leader Fidel Castro for many decades. Do they think they will win over the Afghan warlords even in two or three decades! Unlikely, even if they commit their entire US forces to that country.

They can never win hearts and minds through conflict, and that is all there is today in Afghanistan!.

The most sensible policy available is to move out of Afghanistan, ensure that the opium trade is unable to flourish, control all the neighbouring borders through detente, and the Afghan people will soon come to their senses and control their own destiny.

If people are so worried about Afghan women, then take them over to their country as refugees.

What society can function if there are no women to breed the fighters.

Today, the American action is only helping to breed more and more fighters. Every Afghan killed results in 10 or 100 more "freedom fighters".

As was so eloquently said by the Egyptian leader before the Iraq war, the Americans have created 1000 bin Ladens by their stupidity.

Remember, it was a Nigerian who tried to blow up the plane yesterday in Detroit. Nigeria is a far away place to Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

And do you remember what I wrote about the stupid airport security measures just a few days ago?

Will the Americans even pause and think: WHY?

Next two months

2009-10-20T20:28:00.000+02:00

All our blog postings for the next two months will only be on our main blog - Jacob's Blog

Enjoy your trip to India with us.

Inheritance Nightmare / PERINTÖPAINAJAINEN

2009-08-25T13:46:00.001+02:00

My next book, which is being published simultaneously in English and Finnish (translation by Annikki), is going to be a blockbuster.

In 1994, I exposed the serious problems within the University of Oulu. That book, "Seven Years Hard Labour in a Finnish Holiday Camp - A Finnish Unversity" was the most pirate copied book in Finland that year.

The book jointly authored by Annikki and me in 1994, "Handbook for Survival in Finland", which was also only in English, was sold out within days of publication.

Both Annikki and I have been researching and writing on several subjects, but this book was always at the back of our minds from 1992 onwards.

Now is the opportune time. We decided to leap frog many other manuscripts to publish this one. It gives a deep insight into how corrupt the Finnish System has been and is, despite whatever Transparency International has been writing.

I give below the Synopsis and Contents in both Finnish and English.

Also the pre-ordering information is given at the end so you can save some money if your order is received before the books hit the shelves. The book is written, printed, published and sold directly by us so we can give you value for money instead of lining the pockets of publishers and booksellers. Authors get a measly 10% after several years!

We do hope you will enjoy this book. The sequel "Last Will and Testament" by me will follow soon thereafter. That is a momumental work. It will not be published in Finnish.

INHERITANCE NIGHTMARE
(ISBN 978-952-67270-0-4)
by
Jacob Matthan
Author of the 1994 brilliant exposé
“Seven Years Hard Labour
in a Finnish Holiday Camp
- A Finnish University”

Synopsis

Like all the author’s books so far, this book is NOT fiction. It is the recording of the modern day repetition of Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” in Finland in the 2000s!

The author comes from a country which is the home of corruption. According to Transparency International, Finland is supposedly one of the least corrupt countries in this world.

This intricate narration of this true story, covering almost 10 years, shows the extent of malaise in the Finnish System - the judiciary, the police, the bureaucrat, the media, the banks, and above all the lawyers, who are supposedly there to uphold the rights of the innocent. It is a brotherhood network!

Kari Kantakoski is supposedly “a leading lawyer” in Oulu. The intrigue that he has been involved in to get the lion’s share of the inheritance of the family of a carpenter and his wife is still an on-going saga.

The level of audacity increased with each passing day as this lawyer flaunted the law using his “friends” in high places.

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied!

The Lawyer’s Association, supposedly to root out people like Kari Kantakoski, appears to be just a big joke! Kantakoski laughs at this organisation as he knows they would not lift a finger to indict him! The Association has been “investigating” this matter for 9 months while Kari Kantakoski carries on his plundering!

In Finland, the only recourse to justice is publicity, the internet, in particular. Certainly not via the Finnish media, as it is also part of the corrupt establishment.

This book, which will be on the internet and the shelves (in English and Finnish) in a few weeks, highlights in the greatest detail (with every supporting document) each step of the process of having to fight a corrupt system in which the height of corruption is the legal profession in this country.

Lawyers may be the butt of many jokes. That is not without sound reason.

The author leaves it to the reader to draw one’s own conclusions as to what is right or wrong, what is corruption and what is not, what is legal and what is illegal.

It is a sad sad tale.

If Transparency International were to look at this and many thousands of similar cases, Finland would lie 180th in the 180 countries that are reported on by them!

Contents

PREFACE
Chapter 1: Background to the Nightmare
Chapter 2: Matti's Death Estate Inventory Meeting
Chapter 3: Hilja's Dementia
Chapter 4: Renovation of Kampitie
Chapter 5: Public Guardian for Hilja
Chapter 6: Administrator and Executor for Matti's Death Estate
Chapter 7: Financial Misuse of Hilja's Bank Account
Chapter 8: Settlement of Renovation Cost
Chapter 9: Appointment as Care Giver for Hilja
Chapter 10: Eviction of Hilja and Court Decision
Chapter 11: Corruption in Oulu Magistrate Guardianship Section Functioning
Chapter 12: Attempt to Remove the Public Guardian
Chapter 13: February 2004
Chapter 14: Dire Warnings Ignored - Wall Deterioration
Chapter 15: Lawyers Fees
Chapter 16: Minutes of Meetings
Chapter 17: Secret Deals
Chapter 18: Hilja Passes On
Chapter 19: Matti's Death Estate Administrator / Executor Greed Uncovered
Chapter 20: Accounts Examined
Chapter 21: Forced Sale of Kampitie
Chapter 21: Hilja's Death Estate Inventory
Chapter 22: Fraud and Cover Up in Osuuspankki
Chapter 23: Keskinäinen Vakuutusyhtiö Turva Mopo Scandal
Chapter 24: Control of Kampitie
Chapter 25: Huoneistokeskus: Money Rules the Day
Chapter 26: Complaint to the Lawyer's Association
Chapter 27: Complaints to the Oulu Police
Chapter 28: Complaints to the Finnish Courts
Chapter 29: Transparency International
Chapter 30: Who Gets What?

PERINTÖPAINAJAINEN
(ISBN 978-952-67270-1-1)
Jacob Matthan
“Seitsemän vuotta kovaa työtä suomalaisella loma leirillä
- Suomalainen Yliopisto”
loistavan palastuskirjan kirjoittaja 1994

Tiivistelmä

Kuten kaikki kirjailijan kirjat tähän mennessä, tämä kirja ei ole Fiktio. Se on Viktor Hugon kirjan “KURJAT!” kaltaisten tapahtumien toisto Suomessa 2000 luvulla!

Kirjailija tulee maasta, joka on korruption kotimaa. Transparency International’in mukaan Suomen oletetaan olevan yksi maailman vähiten korruptoituneita maita.

Tämä mutkikas tosi kertomus, kestoltaan melkein kymmenen vuotta osoittaa suomalaisen systeemin pahoinvoinnin laajuutta - oikeuslaitos, poliisi, byrokraatti, media, pankit ja ennen kaikkea asianajajat, joiden pitäisi olla viattomien oikeuksien puolustajia. Se on veljeskuntaverkosto!

Kari Kantakosken oletetaan olevaan “huomattava asainajaja” Oulussa. Sotku, jossa hän on mukana saadakseen leijonan osuuden kirvesmiehen ja hänen vaimonsa perheen perinnöstä on yhä meneillään oleva tapahtumaketju.

Röyhkeyden taso nousee päivä päivältä, kun tämä asianajaja lailla pöyhkeillen käyttää “ystävään” korkeilla paikoilla.

Viivytys oikeudessa kieltää oikeuden

Asianajajien Liitto, jonka oletetaan kitkevän juurineen Kari Kantakosken kaltaisia henkilöitä, näyttää olevan iso vitsi. Kantakoski nauraa tälle järjestölle tietäen etteivät he nostaisi sormeakaan syyttäkseen häntä mistään. Liitto on tutkinut tätä asiaa 9 kuukautta. Sillä välin Kari Kantakoski jatkaa ryöstelyä!

Suomessa ainoa oikeuden turva on julkisuus, internetti erityisesti, eikä varmasti suomalaisen median kautta, koska se on myös osa korruptia valtajärjestelmää.

Tämä kirja, joka tulee internettiin ja hyllyille (englanniksi ja suomeksi) muutamassa viikossa, korostaa mitä suurimmassa määrin (kaikkea tukevilla dokumenteilla) joka askelta prosessissa, jonka joutuu taistelemaan korruptiossa systeemissä, minkä korruption huippu on laillinen ammattikunta tässä maassa. Asianajajat voivat olla monen pilan kohde. Eikä syyttä.

Kirjoittaja jättää lukijalle tehdä omat johtopäätöksensä siitä mikä on oikein ja väärin, mikä on korruptiota mikä ei, mikä on laillista ja mikä on laitonta. Se on surullinen kertomus. Jos Transparency International näkisi tämän ja tuhansia muita samanlaisia tapauksia, joista he raportoivat, Suomi olisi sijalla 180 mukana olevista maista joita on 180!

SISÄLTÖ

Esipuhe
Kappale 1: Painajaisen tausta
Kappale 2: Matin kuolinpesäkokous
Kappale 3: Hiljan dementia
Kappale 4: Kampitie remontti
Kappale 5: Yleinen edunvalvoja
Kappale 6: Matin kuolinpesän pesänselvittäjä- ja jakaja
Kappale 7: Hiljan pankkitilin väärinkäyttö
Kappale 8: Remontti kulujen sopimus
Kappale 9: Hiljan omaishoitajan nimitys
Kappale 10: Hiljan häätö ja oikeuden päätös
Kappale 11: Korruptio Oulun Maistraatin yleisen edunvalvonnan osastolla
Kappale 12: Yritys erottaa edunvalvoja virasta
Kappale 13: Helmiku 2004
Kappale 14: Välinpitämättömyys vakavista varoituksista - ulkoseinän rapistuminen
Kappale 15: Asianajan palkat
Kappale 16: Kokousten päiväkirjat
Kappale 17: Salaisia sopimuksia
Kappale 18: Hiljan kuolema
Kappale 19: Matin kuolinpesän pesänselvittäjä/jakajan ahneus paljastuu
Kappale 20: Tilinpidon tarkastus
Kappale 21: Kampitie pakkomyynti
Kappale 22: Hiljan perukokous
Kappale 23: Petos ja peittely Osuuspankissa
Kappale 24: Keskinäinen vakuutusyhtiö Turva Moposkandaali
Kappale 25: Kampitien hallinta
Kappale 26: Valitus asianajajaliittoon
Kappale 27: Valituksia Oulun poliisille
Kappale 28: Valituksia suomalaisissa oikeuslaitoksissa
Kappale 29: Transpanency International
Kappale 30: Kuka saa mitä?

ORDERING INFORMATION:

PROJECTED SHELF PRICE: € 59 per hard copy

Orders received and paid for before Publication: € 49 ONLY (including postage)

Payment to: Jacob Matthan's Nordea Bank Account Nro.: 249818-69968

Write in Message Box: International Nightmare

INTERNATIONAL ORDERS
SWIFT CODE: NDEAFIHHX
Account No: FI91 2498 1800 069968
Account Holder: Jacob Matthan

Claustrophobia - A new definition?

2009-07-04T05:38:00.000+02:00

(Posted on all my major blogs.)

Ever since the age of 12 or 13, when an uncle of mine taught me the art of relaxation using artificial stress inducement, I have never had a problem of going to sleep. Before my head is settled in the pillow, I am fast asleep. I do not wake up at night and toss and turn. I nod off as soon as the reason for waking up is attended to. I hardly ever dream. Sit in a car with a safe driver, and I can drop off into neverland within a couple of minutes.

I usually wake up fully relaxed, even if the sleep lasted only a few minutes.

I came back from the hospital on Thursday afternoon with my left hand in plaster from the forearm till the tips of my finger. The operation to repair the knuckle of my fourth finger in my left hand had been successful, but it meant that my arm would be in this plaster-cast for 5 weeks. Plenty of painkillers and a course of antibiotic for 5 days, so no real problem of pain.

When I went to bed on Thursday evening, I thought I was going to sleep in my usual fashion. However, when my head hit the pillow, and as recommended, I put my plastered arm in a suitable and comfortable position on a couple of raised pillows, I felt a tremendous and overpowering feeling of restlessness. Sleep was just not coming in the next few minutes. Each passing second was raising an anxiety within me. I was feeling claustrophobic, even though, bodily, I was not in any confined situation.

Then it dawned on me that my mind was reacting to the fact that my left hand had lost its freedom. It was caged, and the stress relaxation technique, which I have used for over 50 years to drop into my slumber, was blocked by an overpowering feeling of fear. My fingers and wrist had lost their freedom. They were confined and this feeling of confinement was causing my mind to say that I was totally confined. And the realisation that I would have to endure this confinement for 5 more weeks was mentally unbearable.

I jumped out of bed, feeling as if I could not stay put down. I walked into the kitchen and expressed my claustrophobic thoughts to Annikki.

She was cool and calm and told me that I should take each day as it came, and the 5 weeks would be over even before I knew it.

I went to the living room and plonked down in front of the tv, but my heart and soul were not into watching any of the programmes. I let tiredness possess me so much so that I allowed my body to react to a mentally created feeling of a body becoming tired. Then when I went to bed, it was not my relaxation that put me to sleep, but a feeling of great tiredness - quite different to my normal situation.

As soon as Annikki came to bed, I put my plastered arm around her, and that claustrophobic feeling suddenly lifted and I dropped quickly into my normal deep slumber.

When I woke up in the morning, although relaxed, I still had that feeling at the back of my mind that I was a caged person. My n degrees of freedom had been severely curtailed. I now understood how anyone who loses any degree of freedom, mental or physical, could suddenly feel claustrophobic.

In all my life I had never experienced this. It was indeed a major revelation to me about the sufferings of my fellow travellers on this earth who had lost their freedom, any part of it.

I will be glad when this hand is uncaged. I will value all the degrees of freedom that I enjoy much much more than I ever have! And I will appreciate the feelings of other men and women, and any animal, who are caged in any form.

I was certainly wrong

2009-05-16T11:48:00.000+02:00

(Also posted on Jacob's Blog and the Kooler Talk Blogs.)

I now realise how divorced I am from Indian Politics and especially the mentality of the Indian people.

This was just in:

Only a few results have been confirmed so far - they included a win for former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor for Congress in Kerala's capital, Trivandrum.

In the old days, an outsider would never have got in this easily as Shashi did. I remember how K. T. Chandy, who had been Chairman of Hindustan Lever, tried and failed to get into Kerala Politics in the Seventies. He was called a "foreigner" by the Keralites!!

I do hope this change also ushers in a new form of Government, especially in Kerala, where the school final failed party members have dominated the Government.

Also the antiques who have dominated Kerala Politics for a couple of decades should now call it a day.

My suspicions now fully confirmed

2009-05-14T11:07:00.001+02:00

(Also posted on Jacob's Blog.)

When everybody was raving about Obama for President, I kept quiet, as I knew that he would sway with the powerful tide on several major matters. I kept up my support for Dennis Kucinich, as he was the only candidate which did not move from his committed policies.

Obama did not even bother to give this man a chance in his Government to show what could be done in the interest of peace.

I did not have to wait long to see what I believed would happen.

Obama's strategy in Iraq remains the same - keep forces there as long as possible. Give a picture of withdrawal when there is none. An image for the masses.

In Afghanistan, not only has he increased troop numbers, but he continues the policy of Bush. Obama's policy is even worse that that followed by Bush - increase forces and keep on killing innocent women and children as part of collateral damage!

Did you vote for CHANGE?

Now comes the latest - that the photographs of American forces abusing prisoners will not be released as "it would antagonize the enemy".

Any different from Abu Ghraib where it was leaked photographs that exposed the American behaviour!?

Obama, Any different from Bush.

Come on, Congressman Dennis - please speak up NOW.

Where am I going? What am I doing?

2009-03-31T21:56:00.001+02:00

(Also posted on all my major blogs.)

Ubi does not believe that I have writer's block. Naval is meticulously letting me of intrusions into my own cyberspace. People are calling me and telling me they are my fans!

And what am I doing?

With the explosion of networking sites - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Plaxo Pulse, My World in Flock, all my blogs, Google Groups, a plethora of calendars, I am getting terribly lost in Cyberspace.

Where should I do first thing in the morning? Which place should I update first to reach the widest spread of my audience. 80000 people worldwide is quite a reach!

What should I write about? Politics, the economy, nostalgic thoughts about school and college, life in Finland?

There certainly is an inexhaustible list of topics.

It is this explosion which is numbing my mind. Everything I want to do seems to be the wrong step - or is it the right step?

I am searching for someone out there with experience to guide me - but it appears that when you are the trend setter . no one wants to proffer their advice!

So I will have to work this out by myself.

All of you out there will continue to get angry with me as no one is satisfied going to a site which just refuses to be updated!

Maybe tomorrow morning the answer will hit me - but maybe not!!!

Happy 90th birthday, Nelson Mandela

2008-07-18T04:13:00.001+02:00

Happy 90th birthday to the world's greatest politician, leader EVER - Nelson Mandela. May he have very many more.

Copyright: Photograph from Dismantling Apartheid

He has taught mankind through his sincerity to his cause - the people of Africa.

Thank you Nelson Mandela.

Hopefully back on line

2008-03-26T23:00:00.001+02:00

(Posted on all my major blogs)

Yesterday, after some 33 days of being without my internet connection, I was put back on line. Several errors were found at the connections outside our premises and also in the Gateway.

The first thing I did after getting back my connection was test my speed. I pay for a 8 M line, but I was shocked to find my upload and download speeds were less than 500 kbps.

Additionally, I have a fixed IP and I found that the IP that I was using was not mine.

Thirdly, all my computers are connected to the internet through a Router. i found that if I went on to connect my router, I lost the internet connection.

Lastly, during the last 7 years I have used DHCP to connect to the internet. I have not used PPPoE. I found that I was unable to connect using DHCP and my own Fixed IP but only through the PPPoE which was assigning me the random IP.

All these problems has made life continue to be difficult as I am using just a single computer to connect to the internet.

I have a backload of about 6 weeks of work. With this situation I will only be able to catch up by the end of April.

I have lodged my complaint with my ISP .- and hopefully I will get some action by the end of this week.

Please bear with me till I get back into full swing.

BBC, why this CENSORSHIP?

2008-01-01T23:00:00.000+02:00

There are many theories about why Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The most prominent was that she was just about to reveal how Pervez Musharaff, the illegal pResident of Pakistan, had organised to steal the up-coming election.

There is one theory however which implicates the Western Powers and its complicit midia rather than Musharaff.

In an interview on 2nd November 2007 with Sir David Frost aired on the Al Jazeera TV network, Benazir Bhutto, almost as an aside of something well known, states that one of the persons implicated in trying to assassinate her was the MAN WHO MURDERED Osama bin Laden.

Not a single major western media source picked up this statement and ran with it.

Of this were true, then the entire “War on Terror” of which Osama bin Laden is the centrepiece just evaporates and the whole Western attack on Afghanistan and Iraq just is meaningless.

What the hell is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation _ NATO, doing outside its sphere of influence?

The entire western political spin has been about Osama bin Laden. And here is Benazir Bhutto stating in an interview with the world’s most renowned interviewer, Sir David Frost, that Osama is no more - and not one major news service picks it up.

BBC even went to the extent of editing this out of what they aired!

Why?

Conference Call, Democratic Underground Forum, Impeachment

2007-11-06T11:16:00.000+02:00

It is rare that I mix a political entry on our Jacob’s Blog as I usually reserve it for my Jacob’s Politics Blog.

Dennis Kucinich with his English wife, Elizabeth.

Today is different as Democrat Congressman Dennis Kucinich is presenting a privileged resolution, HR 333, in the US House of Representatives to impeach Dick Cheney. He has 21 co-sponsors. It is likely that besides the Republicans, most Democrat Congressman will throw their oath to uphold the US Constitution to the winds and not support this outstanding Congressman in his effort to save America and the world from a couple of madmen and their cohorts.

In a Conference Call today which was packed out to such an extend that even top Talk Show Host, Peter B. Collins, was unable to enter into the proceedings, Dennis Kucinich showed that even though his fellow Democrats may sabotage HR 333, he has many steps up his sleeve so as to keep this on the table and that it could also lead to his steps to Impeach Bush.

It was amazing that Senator Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont, was worried about what Bill O'Riley would say about impeachment rather than his constitutional responsibility. This is not a question about votes but following ones constitutional obligations.

Dennis Kucinich and his band of 21 are showing the way ahead.

In a straw poll that the Talk Show Host, Thom Hartman did on his programme at the end of last week, he held a rapid fire 10 minute caller poll and out of 73 callers, 41 supported John Edwards, 21 supported Dennis Kucinich, 7 supported Barrack Obama. there was 1 for each of Hilary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson and none for Joe Biden and Mike Gravel. One voted for Al Gore, even though Al Gore was not on the list.

Everyone thinks that Dennis Kucinich is not a serious contender for the post of US President. That is because the Corporate Lobby which provides 90% of the funding for Presidential Candidates and the Main Stream Media, which is owned by these Corporates, do not want to tell the Public of the tremendous grass roots supports that Dennis Kucinich enjoys.

Over the last six months, ever major Liberal Talk Show Host has been screaming that Dennis Kucinich is the only credible Presidential candidate who has stood consistently and in every respect against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and has promised to bring the troops home within 3 months of his Presidency.

Every vote he has made and every speech has given is consistent with this stand. There has been no flip-flopping, like every other Presidential Candidate, who are time servers and sycophants to their funding sources.

Democratic Underground (DU) is the largest forum the Democrat intelligentsia base. They have over 110000 committed Democrats who take part on this forum with over 32 million postings since 2001.

I am a registered member to this forum where I air my ideas and thoughts and take part in all things which non-subscribers are permitted to do, including partake in the various polls that frequently come on line.

Thursday before last, one of the members put up a poll regarding whom the members thought should be the Democrat Presidential candidate. In the media Hillary Clinton is the front runner with Barrack Obaam and John Edwards following close behind. This is in keeping with how much money they have raised (which translates to the media in their potential advertising earnings) from their Corporate base.

From the very beginning of this DU poll, Dennis Kucinich, who has just 1 to 2 % in media run polls, pulled away with 36% with his closest rival being John Edwards with 31%. As the poll went on this ratio did not change.

After almost a week of polling, with one of the highest polling rates in all DU Polls the final standing was as shown in the screen shot below.

I tracked the polls from the very beginning, but only stared taking the screen shots when over 900 votes were cast and the results show that Dennis Kucinich is the choice of the educated and informed Democrat.

I have been a Dennis Kucinich supporter because he is only one I can trust. He is the only one who can bring back the US from being a banana republic into the group of civilised nations who believe in the rule of law, international peace, diplomacy and true democracy, not Corporatocracy which is just short of fascism.

Trials and Tribulations of Riverbend

2007-10-27T10:23:00.001+02:00

For those of use who have been following what was happening in Iraq through the writings of the Girl Blogger from Baghdad, also known as Riverbend, the decision she and her family made in April 2007 to quit Iraq was good and bad news.

Good news, if this courageous lady was able to reach safety. Bad news, as we would stop receiving the real story of common people in Iraq and their day-to-day sufferings.

On September 6th 2007, Riverbend updated her blog to tell how she and her family had crossed over into Syria. She ended her blog with this note:

"I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest..."

Life has not been easy in Syria as they live on a hour-by-hour basis. On October 22nd 2007, Riverbend described the sad and sorry choice of having to go through a "leave and re-entry process" so as to get an extra couple of months of safety in their lives.

How long is this charade going to last before the Iraqis can get control of their lives so as live in peace without foreign forces tearing apart their nation, especially the Americans in their greed for OIL.?

Our hearts bleed for Riverbend and all Iraqis who are suffering this turmoil, over 4 million of them!

Blogged with Flock

Through the eyes of an Arab Israeli Human Rights Activist

2007-10-03T14:15:00.000+02:00

Posted on my Jacob's Blog, Jacob's Politics Blog, the Move The UN Blog, and the Liberal Talk Show Ratings Blog.

Yesterday, Tuesday 2.10.2007, between 18:00 and 20:00 hours, at the Kirjakahvila Nispero, Pakkahuoneenkatu 5, Oulu, owned by Jarmo Stoor and his wife, I had the privilege and honour to listen to Israeli Palestinian Human Right Activist Najib Abu Rokaya from the B´Tselem Human Rights Group. This is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories which was established in 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members.

How would it feel if you got married to the person you love and are then told by your "Democratic" Government that you cannot bring your partner to your country but have to move away to another country where your partner lives and also give up your natural citizenship?

This is what happens in Palestine AND ALSO in Israel when it concerns Arab Israeli citizens!

No wonder that former US President Jimmy Carter addressed the present situation in Israel as being akin to the Apartheid that was prevalent in White South Africa!

But I digress.

Najib knows the effects of the Middle East conflict on the day to day life of those who live under it. His expertise has been used by the BBC (among others) in reporting on the situation there.

Najib Abu Rokaya is an Israeli Arab. He was one of the Palestinians who during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War stayed behind the green line (the internationally accepted border at the time between Israel and the planned Palestinian government) of what was to become the State of Israel. Today those Palestinians form about 18% of Israel's population.

Najib is a human asset in the position of Arabs inside Israel from his understanding of the law and personal experiences. He operates inside the internationally respected Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem.

The primary purpose of the group is to monitor the Israeli Army, Israeli governmental institutions and illegal West-Bank settlements in Palestinian areas. B'Tselem addresses its public reports to the Israeli political leadership as well as the general public.

Najib is the fieldwork coordinator of B'Tselem. Due to his position in B'Tselem and previous political activities, Najib has intimate details about the Arab minority question and the
current situation of the Israel/Palestinian conflict.

In his talk he started by drawing attention to the fact that the move to set up the State of Israel began as far back as 1890 and one of the locations suggested was Uganda! However, after the holocaust and World War II the United Nations gave Israel around 54% of Palestine.

After the various wars this increased to 70+% but when one considers the situation on the ground in Israel, Israel controls 100% of the territory.

However, clever politicking by Israeli "peace-brokers" and a feeling of absolute uselessness of the ability to stand and fight by the people of Palestine, Israel has transferred the international obligations of "the Occupier" on the Palestinians while continuing to occupy the whole territory.

As was rather strongly put by Najib, the Oslo Agreement was b------t! All it contained were paras which were to occur "God Willing", or in Arabisc "Inshallah"!

The wall / fence which has been built by Israel between "Palestine West Bank territory" on Palestinian land is another example of Israel usurping territory under the guise of "Security". The real border is about 320 km. But the wall / fence is over 700 km in length. Administration of the lands ursurped by the Israelis under this excuse is being integrated by a series of measures which makes it almost impossible for the Palestinians to even look after their own lands!

The absolute stranglehold by Israel over the Gaza is another example of how cleverly Israeli transferred "the obligations" onto the Palestinian Government while ensuring that they had absolutely no way of meeting those obligations.

There are two sides to every coin.

Najib was able, as an Arab Israeli, to put before the audience the side of not only the Palestinians living in "their" land of Palestine and of Arab Israelis, but also the 4 million refugees which have been packaged out of their land by this never ending conflict, most of whom are today stateless!

The stories given by Najib of the trigger-happy methods of the Israeli forces who have been ordered "not to take prisoners" as they infiltrate and murder the Palestinians was heart rending.

That is the other side of the story which is never told by the western media as the it has always been the Palestinians who have been accused of suicide bombings!

The Palestinians of all shades live in hope that they will once again be able to live in peace in their land. But it suits Israel to have a state of chaos prevailing as that way they will be able to draw on their superior public media presentation skills to highlight the Palestinians as the aggressors while they continue to enjoy and expand their hold of entire Palestine!

Many thanks to this outstanding personality for sharing his thoughts with us in Oulu.

Has the US already reached the Fascist Stage?

2007-09-27T07:50:00.000+02:00

Posted on my Jacob's Blog, Jacob's Politics Blog, the Talk Show Ratings Blog and the Move the UN Blog.

Mike Malloy continues to head my ratings of Liberal Talk Show Hosts. Mike lives near Atlanta in Georgia and he and his wife, Kathy Bay, who is the Executive Producer of his show, put together their show every morning which airs on NovaM Radio, a liberal radio station from Phoenix, Arizona. I listen to him live, online, over the internet. Besides being a great host, Kathy is an outstanding producer, and boy, is she quick with suitable music and her comments.

I get up at 4 am every morning from Tuesday to Saturday to listen to Mike, as not only does he have a different view point from any other Talk Show Host, but in my seven years of listening to him, I have found him to be honest and in pursuit of the TRUTH.

His listeners are known as the TRUTHSEEKERS!

Many of us get together on the Democratic Underground Forum to share the experience of listening to Mike. It is a great community.

One caller to Mike's show today from New York really set my mind thinking.

Mike has been saying that America has already reached the Fascist State. Many disagree with him.

The caller said that, at this time of the year, there are many dignitaries attending the UN General Assembly, so security is normally at a height. However, what he experienced earlier this evening was totally unexpected.

The caller lives in a small suburban area of the New York where, in the back street, there is a good small restaurant. He had gone out for a walk in the evening. On his way home, several black limousines pulled up outside the restaurant.

Out of the last car jumped out several men in full riot gear, fully armed. They stepped all pedestrians even crossing the street. The people had to wait a full 10 minutes till the dignitary emerged from the car and was safely seated in the restaurant!

Does this happen in a democratic society?

I sincerely do not believe it can - not in any Scandinavian country.

Remember the killing of Olof Palme over 20 years ago. On February 28, 1986, the Swedish Prime Minister, leader of the Social Democratic Party was gunned down on a Stockholm street home from a cinema with his wife, Lisbet. as he and his wife were walking on the streets of Stockholm without any security personnel?

Has any such procedure as described by the New York caller been put into operation in any part of Sweden? NO!

I now tend to agree with Mike that the US, led by an imbecile, has entered the final phase of a Fascist State.

As another caller said, on Mike's show, that as she was at an US Airport with her toddler, there was an announcement that the day's terrorism alert was ORANGE and she and her toddler had to go through security checks where even the toddler had to remove his shoes for checking.

Fear Rules the US - and that is what Fascism is about!

Turncoats in unexpected places

2007-09-25T22:45:00.000+02:00

Posted on Jacob's Politics and Talk Show Ratings.

Over the last four days I have heard what I always thought was the truth behind the political unsaid stand of certain individuals. I could not prove it till yesterday. Now it is time to share the facts with you.

General Wesley Clark.

When General Wesley Clark stood as a Democratic candidate to get the nomination for the 2004 presidential election, I was eager to see what were his views. There was one over-riding factor which was his stand. The American Army is composed of the greatest men that America has to offer.

I queried him, by email, several times on that.

He never provided me an answer. He was unable to say how this Army had lost almost every battle it had entered into! He was so blinded by his loyalty to his army, he was unable to see beyond the tip of nose. This Army has been and is led by a bunch of sycophants. The US army has been third rate as it has been and is run by third rate politically ambitious Generals.

This is the same Army that had run with its tail between its legs from Vietnam, it had run from Lebanon, it had run from Somalia and now it was causing an immense problem in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has been hammered out of existence almost everywhere it has shown its toothless open mouth.

It is easy for General Clark to spin all this problem on to the political leaders. However, if there are Generals in a well run Army, who know what they are supposed to do, then such situations would never arise.

As General Clark says in the Washington Post Op-Ed on 16th September "The Next War":

Any future U.S. wars will undoubtedly be shaped by the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, however painful that might be. Every military refights the last war, but good militaries learn lessons from the past. We'd better get them right, and soon. Here, the lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't be more clear: Don't ever, ever go to war unless you can describe and create a more desirable end state. And doing so takes a whole lot more than just the use of force.

[...]

In Iraq, President Bush approved war-fighting plans that hadn't incorporated any of the vital 1990s lessons from Haiti, Bosnia or Kosovo; worse, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fought doing so. Nation-building, however ideologically repulsive some may find it, is a capability that a superpower sometimes needs.

At the same time, the United States' top generals must understand that their duty is to win, not just to get along. They must have the insight and character to demand the resources necessary to succeed -- and have the guts to either obtain what they need or to resign. If they get their way and still don't emerge victorious, they must be replaced. That is the lot they accepted when they pinned on those four shiny silver stars.

Above all else, we Americans must understand that the goal of war is to achieve a specific purpose for the nation. In this respect, the military is simply a tool of statecraft, one that must work in tandem with diplomacy, economic suasion, intelligence and other instruments of U.S. power. How tragic it is to see old men who are unwilling to talk to potential adversaries but seem so ready to dispatch young people to fight and die.

So, steady as we go. We need to tweak our force structure, hone our leadership and learn everything we can about how to do everything better. But the big lesson is simply this: War is the last, last, last resort. It always brings tragedy and rarely brings glory. Take it from a general who won: The best war is the one that doesn't have to be fought, and the best military is the one capable and versatile enough to deter the next war in the first place.

We all know of the situation in 1962 when the then Defence Minister of India, Mr. V. K. Krishna Menon, had earlier put his war machinery to work building Expresso Coffee Machines in the Indian Ordinance Factories.

When the Chinese invaded, the Indian Army was routed.

The Generals who were serving their political masters had gone along with the policy which was to get another star on their shoulders rather than look at the best interests of the country!

So, when the US illegally invaded Iraq, the Generals who were worth their salt were left out of the equation. Those who strung along with the political policy, third rate Army Officers who had only got their stars because of the kowtowing with the politicians, were left to handle a war and its aftermath - something they were least capable of doing.

I was listening to the programme "Sam Seder on Sunday", a liberal Talk Show which runs on Air America Radio. His guest last Sunday was General Clark. As a forward to the interview, Sam was upbeat that General Clark would out the policy about the intentions to invade Iraq as being foolish, unwise, not good military science, etc. He was very expectant what General Clark would say about the politicised behaviour of General Petraeus.

General Clark, in quite nonmilitary behaviour, turned up late for the interview (with no apology) and within a few short minutes it became evident that the interview was not leading in the right direction as was obliging to the wishes of the US and Iraqi people.

First of all he indicated that the Saudis were arming the Sunni population in parts of Iraq. This he did not condemn. Then he went on to say that the major problem in Iraq was the Iranian interference.

His explanation was that the Iranians were providing health care to the Iraqis, providing electricity and clean water, and even educating Iraqis in the Universities in Iran.

To General Clark - this was the problem!

Something that the American Army could not do.

Here was a General pushing for war against a country which was helping to stablise the region in which THEY LIVE!

And to General Clark THIS WAS THE PROBLEM!

He was prepared to keep the US Army in the region indefinitely so as to ensure the resources of the region .- OIL!

This to me showed that this General, who had just a few days earlier come out in support of Hilary Clinton as the Democrat candidate for the next Presidential election, was laying the ground for the Defence Policy of this candidate in which he would either be the Vice Presidential candidate or be included as the Secretary of State or Defence.

It is important to remember that in 2004 the Clintons endorsed General Clark as the candidate for President, which nomination he lost to John Kerry. So this time, General Clark was putting his fortunes where he would be assured of his place in the Government.

To give Sam Seder his due, as he is not a particularly good Talk Show Host, for various reasons I have highlighted earlier on the my Talk Show Blog, he sensed something strange was going on.

But he just could not believe his ears. He wanted to go through the transcripts to analyse the words the General had used before he came to a conclusion as to where this was leading.

In keeping with this strategy, Hilary appeared on five Sunday Morning TV programmes. It was obvious that the campaign was going into full gear to throw the other Democratic candidates off balance as she stood for her beliefs and her war promotion strategy in keeping with the views of General Clark.

On Monday, Bill Clinton started to use the "fall out strategy". He used his goodwill standing with African leaders to get them to endorse Hilary as the next Presidential candidate by getting them to use their "social English" well wishing as international endorsement of Hilary!

And late on Monday, pResident Bush gave the mightiest blow of all, saying that he wanted Hilary to be the next Democratic party candidate so that the Republicans would win against her.

His endorsement of Hilary was given with the full consent of the Republican caucus as all of them know that no Republican can win this 2008 Presidential election with the Almighty Mess there is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence, they want an acceptable face in the White House who will cover their backside, and the only one who would be prepared to do that would be the Hilary / General Clark combination!

Bill Clinton was never a Democrat!

Any of you who listen to the top Liberal Talk Show Host in the US, Mike Malloy, will know that he has repeated this time and time again. And the agenda to carry on the Clinton / Bush hierarchy for another 8 years is tempting beyond all commitment to the Democratic Party!

Mandela dead? So says world's greatest ignoramus!

2007-09-21T11:45:00.000+02:00

Posted on my Jacob's Blog and my Jacob's Politics Blog.

Yesterday, George Bush, who was "elected" twice to the post of US pResident, stated that all the Mandelas were dead as Saddam Hussain had killed them all!

Referring to former South African president Nelson Mandela, who led the fight against apartheid to become a symbol of reconciliation and hope, Bush said of Iraq: "I heard somebody say, 'Now where's Mandela?'"

Is Nelson waiting for the Bush goons to disappear him in Guantanamo?
(Image copyright acknowledged.)

"Well, Mandela is dead. Because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

I am glad to refute this as Nelson Mandela is fit and well and so is his former wife, Winnie Mandela, as well as his present wife Graça Machel née Simbine, widow of Samora Machel. His mental agility remains focused on solving the problems of the world. The number one problem must be this idiot in the US White House!

Only stupid and ignorant people can elect a man like this, twice, to rule them. They get what they deserve and as he happily organises to kill more of them, his base, which includes a large number in the American House and Senate, cheer him on and continue to give this war criminal their tax money to murder their relatives and lots of innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now they are following his drum beat to start a shock and awe campaign against another country, Iran, and a programme to try and kill another lot of innocent poeople. He is not satisfied with the blood of a million innocent Iraqis on his hands.

Bush has said that he does not read newspapers but relies on people to brief him.

Wonder who briefed him that Nelson Mandela was dead?

Must be the same intelligence officers in the US who told him that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!

Fake Sheik...

2007-09-18T07:00:00.000+02:00

Greg Palast gives the background of the marvellous work of investigative reporters and cameraman Rick Rowley and Dave Enders in his exposure of the "Fake Sheik" that shook the hand of George Bush and was then "terminated".

Greg Palast: Bush's Fake Sheik Whacked: The Surge and the Al Qaeda Bunny is a special investigative report from inside Iraq which is a MUST READ!

"Here's what you need to know that NPR won't tell you:
Sheik Abu Risha wasn't a sheik.

He wasn't killed by Al Qaeda.

The new alliance with former insurgents in Anbar is as fake as the sheik -- and a murderous deceit."

More....

"The sheik wasn't a sheik. He was a fake. While proclaiming to Rick that he was "the leader of all the Iraqi tribes," Abu led no one. But for a reported sum in millions in cash for so-called "reconstruction contracts," Abu Risha was willing to say he was Napoleon and Julius Caeser and do the hand-shake thing with Bush on camera."

More...

But why should we complain as the (fingers stuck in ears, blindfolded monkeys) US taxpayers are being screwed by their Administration and their non-professional and politically compliant "army". Let them pay with their money and their lives if they are not going to fight to end their illegal invasion and occupation!

One more reason to Move The UN

2007-09-17T20:15:00.000+02:00

One of the Republican candidates for the President of the US called on the UN to bar the President of Iran from addressing the UN next week.

Romney Calls On U.N. to Bar Iranian President By Michael Luo

Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, is sending a letter to the United Nations Secretary General tomorrow, calling for him to bar Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from addressing the General Assembly next week and instead hand him an indictment under the Genocide Convention. More...

The person who should be barred from addressing the UN is the War Criminal, George Bush, pResident of the US!

Is this a surprise?

2007-09-16T11:45:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow will see the release of the memoirs of Alan Greenspan, a Republican, who for 18 years was at the helm of the US Federal Reserve.

His attack on the policies of George Bush is barbed.

In the book he exposes what we all know.

THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ WAS ABOUT OIL!

In the book he says:"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

The British and American Governments have insisted that the war had nothing to do with OIL.

The lies are finally exposed by a man who served Bush in the most powerful of positions.

It is time to bring these lying killers to justice by trying Bush, Cheney and Blair for WAR CRIMES.

Next US President, your action please

2007-09-15T16:30:00.001+02:00

Posted on my Jacob's Blog and Jacob's Politics Blog.

Please ask your American friends who have a vote to support this man for the post of the next US President.

Please watch this video till the end to know what is the real character of this amazing individual.

Dennis Kucinich won the Gandhi Peace Prize, has stood firmly against the invasion of Iraq from Day 1. He stands for a Department for Peace (not WAR).

On almost every major Liberal Talk Show, whenever there has been a straw poll amongst the listeners, Dennis Kucinich has topped all others.

But the Main Stream Media continues to discard him as they want their man in the White House who will promote WAR, not PEACE.

Almost every major Liberal Talk Show Host thinks Dennis Kucinch is the outstanding candidate for the post of President.

In a poll yesterday online, when asked who the readers wanted as the next US President, 54% voted for Dennis Kucinich. The next person trailed by over 30 percentage points.

70% of Americans are against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Over 90% of Iraqis are against the invasion and occupation of their country. Over 80% of the population of the world are against this form of unilateral action by the US in destroying another country and its people.

You can help shape the world by putting yourself forward to get the President of the US that the world needs.

Betrayal of Trust of the American People

2007-09-15T13:50:00.000+02:00

Posted on my Jacob's Politics Blog and Jacob's Blog.

This ad which will be aired in the US on Monday places the issue before the American people.

All we around the world can hope and pray for is the citizens of America will get rid of their, the Iraqi and our nightmare.

Philosophy behind my multiple entry blogging

2007-09-03T19:31:00.001+02:00

Posted on Jacob's Blog, the Oulu Best Buy Blog, the Oulu CHAFF Blog, the Cathedralite Seventh Heaven Blog, the Stephanian Kooler Talk Blog, the Jacob's Politics Blog, the Move the UN Blog, and the Talk Show Ratings Blog.

Many diverse groups of people with multiple interests are reading my blogs.

Some of you are reading more than one of my blogs.

It is very annoying to see the same posting on more than one blog.

I apologise.

I have, therefore, to introduce a strategy till such time as I can get all or most of my 120 000+ readers to install a policy of being updated whenever there is a new blog entry on the blogs of their specific interest.

If they do this registration, then I need only post any entry to a single blog. The blog info service should inform you if that particular blog has been updated.

If you subscribe to getting this info for three blogs, then I need not post an entry to all three blogs!

Till the recording service is fully operational, at the top of each entry I will include a list of the other blogs that the entry will be found.

For instance, this entry will be found on ALL my blogs.

If any of you have a better solution, I am all ears.

Remember, I am a computer idiot and know nothing about the art of designing things for the computer. :-) That's because I use a Mac!

Jacob's Blog

2007-08-12T03:24:00.001+02:00

Media driven DEMOCRACY?

2007-07-11T08:45:00.000+02:00

I posted this on The Washington Note in commenting on the entry "McCain Shakes Up and Giuliani Goes Off the Deep End":

The scarier part is not what Giuliani or anyone with such radical ideas says but that the media gives them full play of their space and time while giving people like Dennis Kucinich short shrift.

It is the media which is pushing the agenda (like the invasion of Iraq) - not what the candidates stand for!

And THAT is the fallacy of the US election system which is a far cry from DEMOCRACY!

Posted by Jacob Matthan at July 11, 2007 12:12 AM

American Style Democracy - certainly not for me!

Words, words, words...

2007-05-10T06:45:00.000+02:00

This comment was posted by me on The Washington Note.

Words, words, words...

How will it affect the use of vetos, votes concerning Israel regardless, issues regarding the visa policies of persona non grata attending the UN forum, stands on illegal invasion and occupation, actions against states violating international treaties, etc.,

Only when the UN is moved out of the US (http://movetheun.blogspot.com), veto powers are stripped to make it a "dermocratic" forum, member states who do not pay their dues on time are stripped of their voting rights, when the Security Council represents the ethnic mix of the earth, etc., will the UN become a legitimate body which can hold the "superpower(s)" accountable for their deeds.

Till then it will be words, words and more words.
Posted by: Jacob Matthan at May 9, 2007 11:38 PM

Riverbend is leaving

2007-04-26T19:15:00.000+02:00

The girl blogger from Baghdad, known around the world as Riverbend has been off-line since February 20th 2007.

Many prayed for her as she has provided many of us with the deep insight of a family caught up in the Iraqi turmoil.

Today, she was back at the blog with an excellent explanation into the cement wall in Baghdad, the American apologist politicians in her country and the dramatic news that she is planning to leave Baghdad and Iraq.

Of all the blogs operating out of Baghdad, hers has been the only one which had a true face of a faceless Iraqi.

I am sure that all of you will join me in praying that Riverbend and her family will find safe haven somewhere so as to be able to return to their beloved country, Iraq, when it is free from the illegal occupation, and so that Iraqis can start to rebuild their country in the way they want!

Keep safe Riverbend.

The wall in Baghdad

2007-04-25T23:00:00.000+02:00

I posted this on The Washington Note:

Could someone answer some simple questions.

The wall (first stage) is 5 km in length, 3.5 metres high and a average of 0.75 metres thick. (13125 cubic metres, Cement Density is 3120 kg per cubic metre = 41000 tonnes of cement!)

1. How much cement was used to produce this wall? (Theoretical value is 41000 tonnes)
2. Where did this cement come from?
3. Who transported this cement and from where to where?
3. Who was given the contract to produce each component?
4. How much was charged to build the components?
5. Who was given the contract to erect the wall?
6. How much was the value of this contract?
6. How many reconstruction projects suffered from this diversion of cement and steel?
7. From which budget was this money for this project obtained from?

Answers to these questions will lead you to what the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is all about!

Lastly - Did anyone think of those words uttered a few years ago which made all Americans feel so proud?

"Tear down that wall, Mr. Gorbachev!"

Has that wall been rebuilt in Baghdad making all Americans feel so proud of their Administration?

Wow! That was fast!

2007-04-21T22:10:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on my Liberal Talk Show Ratings Blog.)
After listening to the Mike Malloy Show today, I stayed tuned to Nova M Radio and there is a show called the John Loftus Show.

While listening to it, I wrote an email to Mike and sent copies to several people including Anita and Shelby Drobny, the founders of Nova M Radio, as well a Mike Newcomb, the CEO of the station. (I had listened to this guy for several times and each time it was worse than the previous time.)

Subject: Some musings from Finland
From: "Jacob Matthan"
Date: 04/21/2007 5:05 AM

Dear Mike,

I think it was on Thursday, when you did that show about the Alberto Gonzales hearings, I was thinking how great it was that you had a producer who was really the very best - Kathy. She tuned in some of the best and appropriate music and that show, in my opinion, rates one of the very best in your many years on the air.

It was wonderful that you complimented her on air that evening. I am sure most of us listeners appreciated what a great team you make.

You have held the No. 1 Spot on my Liberal Talk Show Ratings. 50% of the credit, undoubtedly, goes to Kathy!

The reason I write is not to pay compliments only, but to respond to your question as to why some of us may not be Radio as Founders. (I do not know whether a non US citizen. non resident of the US can in fact contribute, but that is not the issue.)

When Nova M Radio airs the rabid one-sided conservative views of John Loftus, immediately after your show, although I support liberal radio, I do not support hate-mongering the way John Loftus does on his program.

So far I thought Bill Wartenburg of KGO was the most professional hate-monger on the air as he uses his intelligence in such a morbid manner. John Loftus does it more subtly than Dr. Bill.

The other day I heard him bring on air the "Chalabi of Iran"!

I realised that he does not have just one Chalabi, but "a Chalabi for every viewpoint that he holds".

Today, he was promoting how good setting up walls to separate people were - of course he did not mention Ronald Regan's cry "Tear down that wall, Mr. Gorbachov!"). Also, he has spent his time readying the world for Israel to launch another horrible attack on the innocent people of Lebanon!

The way, in my humble opinion, he promotes the "fascist Zionist" agenda certainly does not merit my supporting the radio station that pushes these views, even though that station gives you the airtime.

John Loftus is the Judith Miller of Talk Radio. It is a shame that he shares the same air space as you. The only thing missing from his programme these days is the "three cheers" for the war criminals, Bush and Blair.

I hope you understand my point of view. This may be part of the answer to your question why some of us have not supported Nova M Radio.

I have copied Mike Newcomb, Anita and Shelby Drobny and John Loftus on this email as also some major Liberal Talk Show Hosts (as Bccs).

Very best to Kathy, Molly and you.

--
Jacob Matthan
Oulu, Finland

Within five hours I had this email from Shelby Drobny.

The Loftus show will be cancelled. Tonight was his last show. Thanks for the feedback.

I do not know whether I was responsible, but I am glad Liberal Talk Radio listeners do not have to listen to fabricated hate-speech. I think the appreciation of listeners views is the reason Anita and Shelby Drobny are successful in launching truly Liberal Talk Radio. How I wish Air America would cast aside its ridiculous ways.

Thank you Mr. Drobny.

A different viewpoint about Baghdad Parliament Bomb

2007-04-12T17:45:00.000+02:00

This was posted by me on the DemocraticUnderground.com Forum:

All the news media are pointing to...

Posted by jmatthan in Latest Breaking News
Thu Apr 12th 2007, 04:07 PM

All the news media are pointing to the insurgents having carried out this attack.

I do not doubt the freedom fighters had much to gain to show that security in Baghdad does not exist.

I listened to BBC and CNN terrorist experts and they all cluster around one thinking. The western viewpoint!

However, who had most to gain from this attack.

The Iraqi Parliament had just refused to authorise the gross profiteering (of 70%) by the Oil Companies of Iraq's oil resources.

So the best strategy was to shut down the Parliament and ensure that the collaborators clamour for more US involvement in security.

To achieve this, the best way was to attack and destroy the operation of the Parliament. (The Parliament building has collapsed!)

In my mind this was an inside job beautifully organised by the Negroponte type disruptive "insurgent". (Conspiracy theory?)

No problem of getting the explosive stuff into the Green Zone (as it was probably there already), assembling it and causing the detonations (so that no Americans are affected).

Maybe someone should look at this angle of continuing the "chaos" as no one benefits more with this incident than the US Oil Giants and the US Contractors.

In short, oil profits guaranteed for some considerable more time!

Remember - John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" - a simple job for these people to organise this!

Jacob Matthan
Oulu, Finland

Genocide

2007-04-12T07:40:00.000+02:00

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note wrote that Darfur is labelled as the first genocide of the 21st century.

I posted this in his comments:

Steve, what is the meaning of genocide?

As john sonner wrote:

"Sad as the situation in Darfur is, the toll in Iraq is worse: UNHCR reports 4 million refugees vs. 2.5 million in Darfur; 655,000 killed in Iraq (dated Lancet data) vs. 400,000 in Darfur. And the US government (and by extension American taxpayers) is directly responsible for what happened in Iraq."

But because it is carried out by the US and its criminal allies - it does not get rated as "genocide"?

The rest of the world judges US as the mass killer rogue nation.

If Bush had not been "re-elected" one could give the US citizens a pass on this one. But, whatever your election system, the re-election got every US citizen labelled as a complicit war criminal.

Posted by Jacob Matthan at April 12, 2007 12:18 AM

And this is only in the 21st century.

Does anyone remember how the Secretary of State in Bill Clinton's administration, Madeline Albright, casually said on the programme 60 minutes that the half a million or more children and innocent human beings killed as a result of US sactions on Iraq was "worth it" collateral damage? (Emphasis below is mine,)

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

I would like to know who was the WE that she meant in her statement - Clinton, Blair,....?

Does Madeline Albright believe that the killing of three of her grandparents in Holocaust was "worth it" since she became the Secretary of State in the US?

This is from the entry about Madeline Albright in Wikipedia:

In 1939 the Korbel family fled to London after Bohemia and Moravia were annexed by Germany. That may have saved her life, as many of her Jewish relatives in Czechoslovakia were killed in the Holocaust, including three of her grandparents.

Double standards - that is the norm in the American Way!

Mr. Bush, this is YOUR WAR!

2007-04-08T00:10:00.000+02:00

Harri Hursti?...

2007-04-03T07:15:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on Jacob's Blog.)

Who is Harri Hursti?

Anyone interested in Internet Security and especially about safety in elections should know about the world expert on the subject.

In the article "Hackin' Harri Hursti a Hit in Riverside County, California" that appears on Brad Blog, where Brad Friedman has been a tireless campaigner despite all odds, to get the US Election System to become more realistic so that the frauds that occurred in 2000 and 2004 and got George W. Bush annointed (totally illegally) as pResident does not happen again.

Harri is a Finn and is, like Brad, a tireless campaigner, although his interest has been the subject of Security, a field in which the Finns lead the world! (Remember our very own Codenomicon Oy headed by CEO Isaac Sundarajan and headquartered here in Oulu.)

Harri will appear in a documentary released in the US on 17th March 2007 and to be released in the UK on 20th April 2007 called "Hacking Democracy (or Votergate)" directed by Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels.

Anti-racism Week in Oulu

2007-03-16T21:30:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on all my main blogs.)

Next week, 19th to 25th March 2007, is Anti-Racism week.

Tero Raiskio and I have been involved, as CHAFF Participants, with the Oulu based organisations - Amnesty International, the Finnish Red Cross, the United Nations, the International Schoolof Oulu and Setlementi, to organise a series of events to draw attention to this.

Ildikó Hámos kicked off the proceedings with a talk about CHAFF to the Oulu City Club of Rotary International. This was organised by another CHAFF participant, Ville Suomi, who is also a Rotarian.

Ildikó then helped me in a talk about Ethnic Minorities and their problems in Oulu and Finland. This was aimed at a group of students of the Heinatori School in Central Oulu. This was organised by Päivi Jurvakainen of the Oulu Office of the Finnish Red Cross.

I was able to distribute the new Oulu CHAFF laminated information cards to all those who took part. They were kindly printed for me by Unnop Khungrai of the Thai Pailin Restaurant.

Late in the evening, I was able to get the posters that announce next weeks events, from Päivi, who returned to her office to print them after she had gone home, so that I could distribute them to all the major restaurants run by foreigners in Oulu.

The Poster was designed by Zambian artist and CHAFF Participant, Kamutaza Tembo. He came up with 3 brilliant ideas. The Organising Committee chose the one shown above to highlight all the events.

The feeling is so symbolic as the Finnish Flag in the form of a heart shaped key holder with three keys (white, black and yellow) symbolising the ethnic minorities is simply superb and absolutely original.

The other designs by Kamu are also being used for other documents associated with the Racism Week.

To help defray the costs of Kamu's designing work, Isaac Sundarajan, CEO of Codenomicon Oy, Hasim and Kasim, partners of Goreme Pizzeria, Unnop Khungrai, proprietor of the Thai Pailin Restaurant and Oulu Councillor Raimo Kuismin, joined Annikki and Jacob. Our special thanks to them for giving their hand to help a truly outstanding artist.

To see other works of Kamu, please click on a link in the sidebar, where I have set up a page of some of his great art works dating back to the time he was a young budding artist in Zambia.

Steve continues the Iranian General saga

2007-03-09T12:00:00.000+02:00

Steve Clemons continues his story about the Iranian General.

My comment on his blog was:

Obviously this is the guy that is going to confirm the "Uranium from DR Congo" fable!

Wonder which Ambassador's wife they are now looking to out this time around?

You Yanks are so so sweet! :.)

Posted by Jacob Matthan at March 9, 2007 02:09 AM

Intelligence and Oxymoronic

2007-03-08T05:45:00.000+02:00

Steve Clemons of the blog The Washington Note had an entry Key Iranian General and former Deputy Defense Minister May Haved Defected to United States,

This was a comment I posted on his blog related to his entry:

"Wonder whether the American TV Watching public have heard the words "Power Politics", "Moles", "Double Agents", "Ahmed Chalabi", "Curveball", ....

But then we know from prior experience that to use the words Americans and "intelligence" in the same sentence would be oxymoronic..."

Posted by Jacob Matthan at March 7, 2007 10:44 PM

Special action on 1st February 2007

2007-01-24T20:45:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on all my major blogs.)

This message was sent to me by my friend 59er Peter Miovic for the widest possible circulation. Since I believe in this cause, I am posting this on all my blogs and groups.

Hope you will take heed and spread it within your circle.

Send this message to as many people as you know!

An action to bring climate change to the notice of Politicians and World Leaders

On February 1st 2007 take part in one of the biggest actions against climate change organised by the people.

L'Alliance pour la Planète (a group of environmental activists) send this call to all civilians:

Make our planet rest for five minutes!

Everybody is requested to dim his/her lights for five minutes between 7.55 pm and 8.00 pm on February 1st 2007.

This not only to save engergy for five minutes, but to bring this message in a way that will attract the attention of politicians and leaders.

It is time for them to take action and avoid the waste of energy.

During the 5 minutes we'll give the planet rest: it doesn't take long and it won't cost you a thing.

And it will make a statement before the Belgian federal elections that we as citizens want climate on the agenda.

And why February 1st 2007?

Because on that day a new file from the climatologic experts of the United Nations will be published in Paris.

Because it is with our Belgian neigbours, it is impossible to let this opportunity slip!

We have to get attention to the urgent matter of the worlds climatological situation. If everybody takes part in this action it will have an effect on media and politics that might have a real influence, this would be good on such short notice before the (Belgian) elections!

Make this message go around the globe, send it to friends, family and local politicians. Put it in your newsletter and your blogs.

Hillary Clinton for President?

2007-01-23T22:30:00.000+02:00

This was my comment in The Washington Note.

Hillary did not address my question.

With everyone screaming about the Bush twins not volunteering to go to Iraq, as a supporter of the war, did Hillary want or require her daughter to volunteer for service in Iraq, or was the capping meant only for others serving in Iraq?

No reply of course!

This followed my email to Hillary Clinton of Saturday last as she asked for dialogue:

Dear Hillary,

We listened today to your invitation to people to have a dialogue with you as you investigate whether you should stand for the post of the President of the US.

We are giving you, below, are our honest views.

We are sure you will ignore them. But, as you asked for them, here they are in brief.

But first: We are not American, we do not live in America, one of us is European, the other Asian, we are concerned citizens of the world, we are not Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, fundamentalists of any religion, Arabs, Blacks.

Dear Hillary, you have not understood the problem. But you are part of the problem.

You stood for the illegal war and occupation of Iraq when millions of us around the world took to the streets and protested against it. You ignored us but showed your ignorance and could not separate the truth from falsity. Not a good qualification for someone who wants to head the US.

You helped fund it and continued the killing of innocent Iraqis.

You stood by your US generals and soldiers who took part in the carnage of innocent civilians, the torture of innocents, the illegal imprisonment of people in Guantanamo and such war crimes, that many around the world consider you as one of those who need to be charged with war crimes.

You even took to task Cindy Sheehan for standing up for her dead son.

Yet, your daughter has not volunteered to go and fight for a war that you have blindly supported.

We may complain about the Bush twins not signing up, but what about your daughter?

No way? Will she run away the same direction as your husband at the time of the Vietnam war?

Your votes in Congress on the illegal war and occupation are hardly anything you should be proud of.

Now you stand for capping of the troop levels when most Iraqis want America to withdraw and 70% of Americans want the US troops OUT of Iraq.

As much as we admire you and your husband, we think your possible election as the President of USA will only further alienate the people around the world who see you as part of the problem, just as we see the illegal occupation of Iraq as the problem.

Thank you for trying to Listen. But we know the hypocrisy of US Politicians where such words as ours will go through one ear and out through the other!

Regards

--
Annikki & Jacob Matthan
Oulu, Finland
http://jmpolitics.blogspot.com

No answer, no dialogue when it hits at the heart of the matter!

2007 vs 2006

2007-01-06T22:45:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on all our major blogs.)

2006 was a wonderful year, better than 2005; 2005 was a wonderful year, better than 2004, and.......

So what lies ahead in 2007?

Our Symbol for 2007 - The White Orchid.

Judging by the first 6 days, it is going to be a hectic year ahead, far more exciting than the previous few years.

We can see several changes ahead.

Already, the blogging world has changed. We have started something different in that we have, besides the blogs, started our own Google Groups.

The first two Groups that we started are the Oulu CHAFF Group and the Seventh Heaven for Cathedralite 59ers.

In a matter of just a few hours, the 40+ people of the Class of 1959 from the Cathedral and John Connon School, both the Boys and Girls, were aboard the Group. In a matter of a couple of days the list of persons grew by over 10 so that we have now identified over 70 members of our years at school. All our Group members are scouring the world to locate the missing persons so that we can hold a great 50th year reunion in November 2009.

This 3-year project which has excited everyone from the Arctic (Jacob) across the globe!

The Oulu CHAFF Group is only slowly taking off the ground. But the restart of the meetings in 2007 have started with a real coup with a 2005 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Arpad Hamos and his wonderful wife, from Hungary, gracing the first meeting on Sunday.

It is obvious that the Oulu CHAFF Group will have its work cut out for it during this coming year as there are literally hundreds of issues hanging over the fire. The amazing part is that those that once received help are now making significant contributions in helping others, taking the burden off the few that were origially involved in setting up this Assistance Forum. Much more ways of helping those in distress are becoming available and it is going to be an exciting year as CHAFF consolidates itself.

The main Jacob's Blog will remain intact and present a more focused look at the lives of two individuals, Annikki and Jacob, as it takes another major direction during 2007.

Important changes are just being discussed. But they are causing huge waves across the city of Oulu.

Several, we are sure, who will be quite happy to see the likes of us out of this City. But, there are an equal number who are appalled that we may make some move away from Oulu after the 23 years we have been here.

What is important to understand is that with the new power to the people of the internet, wherever we may be, in Oulu or in Newcastle, England or in Kerala, India, we will still be able to handle the problems, be parts of Groups, take part in the action in different parts of the world, without the need of the physical presence in any location.

In the computer world it is probably refered to as "virtual reality". Annikki and Jacob will be part of that virtual reality not only in Oulu, but in several locations around the world, throughout the year.

With that, both of us would like to wish each and every one of you a Happy and Prosperous New Year and let good health and vitality follow you wherever you are.

In that we share a greeting which was sent to us by Thomas Grorge from Helsinki:

May this 2007,
Blessings harrass you,
Happiness attack you wherever you go,
May misery be hijacked from you, and
May thieves pickpocket all your worries.

Almost 2 months on, she is back

2006-12-30T17:15:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on Jacob's Blog.)

One of the most watched blogs is Baghdad Burning by the Girl Blogger from Iraq. On the eve of the execution of Saddam, she has posted a powerful piece End of another year.

Our heart bleeds for Iraqis like her, who are facing all the hardships that are thrown at them by the war criminals Bush, Cheney and Blair and their cabal of sycophants.

Today morning, after I listened to the news that Saddam had been executed at 6:00 am, I went to the local wholesale market. I met with an old friend, a Christian refugee from Iraq who has a couple of pizzerias here in Oulu. I sat down to talk with him. He shook his head in disbelief of what his fellow countryman had done. He now waits for the reaction.

As has been clearly outlined by the Iraqi Girl Blogger, the Americans deliberately polarised the issue to further promote the chaos in that country.

As she poignantly asks - the only people who benefit from all that has taken place has been Iran.

If Iran is apart of the axis of evil as defined by the US, why are they working so furiously to give them more leverage everywhere? Is it that they need to promote the confrontation between Sunni Saudi Arabia with the Shiite Iran? Further chaos and bloodshed?

I hope that Bush's trial in front of the International Court of Justice will as swift as that they held for Saddam. Luckily, in his case, there will not be any need to "fix" the evidence, as millions of Iraqis will be ready to volunteer evidence and also pull the lever to exterminate this vermin.

But I pray that they do not execute the psychotic madman but that they let him suffer a slow languishing painful death, just as that he has willed on several of his countrymen and millions of Iraqis!

I would to love to hear the ghastly cowardly laugh, not as a smirk but in pain, that he offers up everytime he hears of the death of one of his fellow countrymen or those who oppose him.

Lincoln Chafee issue continued...

2006-12-17T02:25:00.000+02:00

Anonymous on Steve Clemons The Washington Note Blog wrote:
'

Jacob -

Lincoln Chafee was the only rep to vote against the war in Iraq and you would like to call him a war criminal??

I think you are missing something.

Posted by: ... at December 15, 2006 09:03 PM

To which I replied:

Lincoln Chafee voted against the Executive Branch ONLY when he knew his vote would make no material difference.

Did he vote against funding the troops when they were indiscriminately killing innocent Iraqis?

Where was his outrage against the Abu Ghraib issues?

Where was his outrage against the Guantanamo torture?

Where was his outrage against warrantless wire tappings of Americans?

Where was his outrage against Bush's refusal to appear under oath before the 9/11 commission?

Where was his outrage against the perpetrators of the Valerie Plame scandal?

Should I go on?

Lincoln Chafee may have voted against the war, but he supported it to the hilt in every other way.

He, like almost every other Senators, including Hilary Cliton, are war criminals - and that goes for non-Senator Madeline Albright as well.

We foreigners do not have short memories related only to the past and next episodes of Idols!

Posted by: Jacob Matthan at December 16, 2006 09:18 AM

War Criminal, Lincoln Chafee?

2006-12-16T00:49:00.001+02:00

Noted Blogger Steve Clemons seems to have an enormous blind spot.

He is doing much to promote former Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee in almost every second posting.

This is what I wrote on his blog:

Steve,

I think you hate to admit to say that you could be wrong.

Chafee was part of the do-nothing-roll-over Congress. I disliked him intensely when I heard him is some of the many hearings on C-Span. He played to "his audience" which above all was about supporting the madman - Bush.

Is what you want to do is to promote that attitude.

Tell me when Lincoln Chafee says he was WRONG to blanket support Bush and this horrific world that we live in thanks to HIM!

(Yes, as much as you refuse to admit it, Lincoln Chafee is responsible for over 600000 dead innocent Iraqis. He is as much a war criminal as Bush and his cohorts. And do you want to promote a war criminal?)

Then I think you can start to push him as your MAN. Till then I do not think much of your attitude about Lincoln Chafee.

I am still probably the only one who challenged Wes Clarke when he claimed that the US had a professional army. I personally think the US army sucks from top to bottom. It is corrupt and self serving just as much as Lincoln Chafee! (But then, Americans MUST support their troops, even when they are bunch of hoodlums and killers!)

I am quite surprised that a great analyst like yourself has such a large blind spot - Lincoln Chafee!

Posted by Jacob Matthan at December 15, 2006 05:42 PM

An acceptable joke?

2006-11-27T07:00:00.000+02:00

This came to me from a friend in India:

Today's Joke, fit for an 11 year old, comes from an Iranian friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous.

A US Republican Senator gets on a plane and finds himself seated next to an Iranian lady.

He sees her Iranian passport and strikes up a conversation.

"So tell me," he says, "why does a country like Iran - with so much oil and gas - need a nuclear programme?"

The Iranian lady looks at him, a little puzzled.

"That's a very interesting question," she says, "but let me ask you something first.

A horse, a cow and a deer all eat the same stuff...grass.

Yet the deer excretes little pellets, the cow turns out a flat patty and the horse produces muffins of dried poop.

Why do you suppose that is?

The American guy is dumbfounded.

Finally, he replies: "I haven't the slightest idea."

"Oh, I see," says the Iranian, "so how is it you feel qualified to discuss Iran's nuclear programme when you don't know s**t?"

I really had to laugh at this one!

Steve's "love affair" with Chaffee

2006-11-16T05:00:00.000+02:00

This was my entry on The Washington Note

It seems almost as if Steve is having a "love affair" with Lincoln Chaffee.

Chaffee only voted against the Republican Whip when he saw that his vote would make no difference to the outcome. He has been part of destroying the US Constitution!

And his stance on John Bolton shows that he has NO backbone - shifting sands.

What was that adjective about John Kerry? :-)

Steve Clemons and Lincoln Chafee

2006-10-29T19:00:00.000+02:00

Steve Clemons is one of the most respected Foreign Affairs Commentators in Washington DC. His blog Washington Note is one of the best on the internet.

But I strongly disagree with him in his support for Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee, who, in my opinion, has been a rubber stamp for Bush's White House when it comes to casting his VOTE.

This is a comment I posted on his blog.

I strongly disagree with you, Steve. (By mistake I used the word "agree" in the original posting, but later posted a correction.)

I have watched Chafee perform in many investigations, hearings, etc.

He is a person who speaks with a forked tongue. He never has meant what he has said. He knows what his constituents want him to say but the final outcome, when based on his vote, he has been subservient to the dictates of the White House.

That does not give him much character to stand on.

Of course, you are entitled to your views. But anyone to support someone who stood to remove the right of habeas corpus and to permit torture?

Steve, Americans are entitled to the Government they vote for. With Chafee is "what you see in his vote is what you get"!

I am sure when it comes to setting up gulags for Americans - he will be at the forefront VOTING for it.

Remember well the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller - and Steve, your stance as a reasoned American makes it difficult for me to believe in any "American".

I hope Steve changes his views!

The Lady Blogger from Baghdad...

2006-10-21T05:45:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on my Jacob's Politics Blog.)

makes me want to cry. She has been off-line for a long long time. On October 18the she came back on line with a posting The Lancet Study... .

Among the many important statements she makes, two stand out.

"For American politicians and military personnel, playing dumb and talking about numbers of bodies in morgues and official statistics, etc, seems to be the latest tactic. But as any Iraqi knows, not every death is being reported. As for getting reliable numbers from the Ministry of Health or any other official Iraqi institution, that's about as probable as getting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence from George Bush- especially after the ministry was banned from giving out correct mortality numbers...."

The statement about Bush and a grammatically correct sentence reflects clearly on the mental capacity of Americans. If he was "elected" once, we could point to "Bush Supporters". But to be "elected" twice labels "all Americans" as being irresponsible.

"Let's pretend the 600,000+ number is all wrong and that the minimum is the correct number: nearly 400,000. Is that better? Prior to the war, the Bush administration kept claiming that Saddam killed 300,000 Iraqis over 24 years. After this latest report published in The Lancet, 300,000 is looking quite modest and tame. Congratulations Bush et al."

What are we in this world waiting for?

Do we want Bush to reach the figures of genocide that Hitler achieved before we do something to get rid of this despotic tyrant?

Our "irresponsible" Americans seem unable to do this and many on both sides of the political spectrum even cheer him on while he does his antics of destabilising OUR WORLD.

Get out while you can...

2006-09-29T14:00:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on my Jacob's Blog and my Move The UN Blog.)

Yesterday was a dark day in the US, not only for any foreigner living in that country but also for every free-thinking American who loves his freedom and the US Constitution.

The US Constitution was shredded by the US Senate and the compliant Democrats in that house rolled over and let it happen.

Am I personally upset about what happened - well, NO.

Then why should I waste my valuable time and my valuable space writing about it.

The reason is that I have many many relatives and friends in the US who are now no more free to say or do what they want.

The Bill which passed the Senate today with a vote of 34 against and 65 for, which included 12 Democrat Senators (Joe Liebermann / Bill Nelsons type Democrats) voting for the Bill allows the US Adminstration to torture if "King George" wants to. Also, the right to "habeas corpus" (habeas corpus is the name of a legal instrument or writ by means of which detainees can seek release from unlawful imprisonment), something that has stood the test of time for 800 years, was yesterday thrown to the winds, NOT JUST for aliens in the US but for every American as well.

The Bill provides for the fascist state to hold a person in communicado till his status as an enemy combatant is determined, the fact that one is an US citizen could take 2, no, maybe 5, no, maybe 10 years, to be determined!

What was surprising that the Senate Democrats could not even mount a filibuster against what was probably the worst legislation to ever pass the House and Senate!

As was written by Taylor Marsh on today's Huffungton Post Vote Pro-Torture Republicans in '06! about one of the amendments in this Bill:

The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters.

It's a red-letter day for the country. It's also a telling day for our political system.

So if you are in the US and you are an alien or married to an alien be sure you know that when you answer that knock on the door and you are carted away to oblivion - there is none in the world (not even Amnesty International) that can do anything for you!!
'
If I were you I would ask your company to be returned NOW back to your country of origin. Do your work safely out of there.

If the US wants your services, then let it be in a situation where you live within the rule of law, not the rule of an idiotic fascist dictator who believes that God talks to him as he wields his Imperial Power.

This is from an article `Road map is a life saver for us,' PM Abbas tells Hamas by Arnon Regular on Haaertz.com

.....Abbas said that at Aqaba, Bush promised to speak with Sharon about the siege on Arafat. He said nobody can speak to or pressure Sharon except the Americans.

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

Such a man belongs in a mental institution!

The US has now become one. So stay out of it is my advice to you.

So till you get to safety, may my God look after you!

If you care to ignore this warning - then do not complain at a later day, and remember these words during your very likely unending incarceration.

Apple Mac Problems

2006-09-19T15:15:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on my Jacob's blog.)

Posted as a comment today in the Steve Clemons Washington Note Blog entry: "The Midwest, Iran and a Great Piece on John Bolton":

Thank God, Steve, you are in a better position than me. I have 5 Macs running 24/7 online and with no virus protection software for many many years. I had a small "sound out" problem on one of my Macs last week. As I was busy I thought I would try to find a repair shop. I went to every computer repair shop in our "high tech" town and not one had a Mac technician. I finally landed up at the shop I had bought my last Mac from. The owner said, pointing around the repair shop to many tens of PCs in for repair, that he had not received a single Mac for repair for 2 years! So his Mac repair technician pushed off to another bigger town. I repaired the "sound out" problem in less than 10 minutes using online data and help! (The minimum cost of looking at a PC here is Euro 103. So you can guess who wants you to buy a PC!)

Finally it is done...

2006-09-14T02:00:00.000+02:00

Many hundreds of you have been asking me to email you whenever I make a new entry on my blogs.

Now I have taken steps to ensure that every time I update my blogs, you will get an email.

However, you have to do something IF you want this to happen.

You will find on each blog page a small box just below the link to view my profile.

You have to enter your email address where you want to be informed into that box and send it so that Change Monitor can do the necessary entries.

Only enter this information for the pages that you really want to monitor.

I do not want your email Inbox filled with these update messages!

Is the UK more safe than before 9/11?

2006-08-10T19:30:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on my Jacob's Blog.)

This is the advice which has been put out for travellers travelling out of a UK Airport:

With immediate effect, the following arrangements apply to all passengers starting their journey at a UK airport and to those transferring between flights at a UK airport.

All cabin baggage must be processed as hold baggage and carried in the hold of passenger aircraft departing UK airports.

Passengers may take through the airport security search point, in a single (ideally transparent) plastic carrier bag, only the following items. Nothing may be carried in pockets:

# Pocket-size wallets and pocket-size purses plus contents (for example money, credit cards, identity cards etc (not handbags)

# Travel documents essential for the journey (for example passports and travel tickets)

# Prescription medicines and medical items sufficient and essential for the flight (eg, diabetic kit), except in liquid form unless verified as authentic

# Spectacles and sunglasses, without cases

# Contact lens holders, without bottles of solution

# For those travelling with an infant: baby food, milk (the contents of each bottle must be tasted by the accompanying passenger) and sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight (nappies, wipes, creams and nappy disposal bags)

# Female sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight, if unboxed (eg tampons, pads, towels and wipes)

# Tissues (unboxed) and/or handkerchiefs

# Keys (but no electrical key fobs). All passengers must be hand searched, and their footwear and all the items they are carrying must be X-ray screened.

Pushchairs and walking aids must be X-ray screened, and only airport-provided wheelchairs may pass through the screening point.

In addition to the above, all passengers boarding flights to the USA and all the items they are carrying, including those acquired after the central screening point, must be subjected to secondary search at the boarding gate.

Is the UK more safe than before 9/11?

Figure!

Outstanding cartoon by JARI

2006-08-10T15:00:00.000+02:00

Our local newspaper, KALEVA, has probably one of the very best political cartoonists in the world. The one he had today said it all.

(Copyright Jari, Kaleva Sanomalehti Oy)

This is insanity...

2006-07-25T18:15:00.000+02:00

BBC: Israeli bomb kills UN observers

Israeli strike in Khiam, south Lebanon

Israel had hit Khiam a number of times earlier on Tuesday.

Four United Nations observers have been killed in an Israeli air strike on an observation post in south Lebanon.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "shocked" at the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the post. Israel has expressed "deep regret".

The UN in Lebanon says the Israeli air force destroyed the post, in which four military observers were sheltering.

It said the four, from Austria, Canada, China and Finland, had taken shelter in a bunker under the post after it was earlier shelled 14 times by Israeli artillery.

A rescue team was also shelled as it tried to clear the rubble.

"I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces of a UN Observer post in southern Lebanon," Mr Annan said in a statement from Rome.

Unifil has been operational in the border area since 1978 and is currently 2,000 strong.

Where are we going with this?

What is sad is that the people who faced the genocide of Adolf Hitler are now acting as Hitler himself. These are the "fascist Jews" of todayfuelled by a fascist America led by Bush.

Are they going to kill 1 billion Muslims?

Please read my earlier entry about "War is a Racket" and you will know the objective of this event.

This death and destruction has nothing to do with the safety and security of Israel. It is the work of a war crazy set of people who enjoy killing and destruction.

When will "these Jews" learn that as they sow they will reap.

Indian Government starts blocking blogs!

2006-07-19T20:00:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on all my major blogs.)

Freedom, democracy and freedom of speech have been thrown to the winds by the irrational action of the Government of India when they told Indian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to various blogs. This can only be done by blocking access to the entire blog service provider and my blogs are, therefore, not accessible by my readers in India.

I also learnt that most, if not all, Indian ISPs have followed the directive.

Economic Times, India Tuesday July 19th 2006:

DoT casts a cloud on bloggers' paradise

Cathedralite 56er HS Uberoi, one of my faithful readers of my "Seventh Heaven" blog alerted me to this when he emailed me with this:'

Dear Jacob,

I don't know whether you are aware that effective today the Government of India has blocked access to ALL blogsites.

I cannot believe that even your nostalgic Cathedral School and St.Stephen's College sites cannot be accessed by us in India!!

I am at a total loss for words!!

Yours in shock.

Ubi

If you have friends in India who want to continue to access my blogs, even occasionally, please email them and ask them to contact me by email and I will give then the surefire way to continue access.

No Government can stop the internet - as there are many many ways round any censorship, many not known to the stupid politicians who think they are being clever by imposing such foolish bans!!

I will not publish all the methods here for reasons which are obvious.

Americans will do NOTHING

2006-06-04T17:30:00.000+02:00

Posted by me on the Ring of Fire Comments page today.

Whatever Greg Palast, Congressman John Conyers Jr. or Robert F. Kennedy have uncovered and published, Americans will do nothing except watch American idols and their other "great" TV shows!

They will also be prepared to go to the concentration camps, so long as they have their favourite TV programme "promised to them" during their incarceration.

They will blame the Republicans, the media and finally Bill Clinton!

So don't hold your breath to see any action, now or ever.

This article from 1930's is worth reading

2006-05-27T15:00:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on my Jacob's Blog.)

On the Mike Malloy Liberal Talk Show this morning I heard him mention a web site which had an article which is worh reading. (Mike Malloy is the No. 1 Talk Show Host in the US - he offers no solutions, but he tells THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH. I listen to him daily between 5 am and 8 am Tuesday to Saturday here in Finland.))

Major General Smedley Butler (1881 - 1940)

Written by Major General (United States Marine Corps [Retired]) Smedley Darlington Butler (1881 - 1940), who served his country and was awarded two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914, for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917 and the Distinguished service medal, 1919, he wrote this book WAR IS A RACKET in 1935.

WAR IS A RACKET - published 1935

For more information about the late Major General, please also read the Wikipedia entry about him. The following is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry:

Butler was known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States. His book War is a Racket(1935) presents a highly critical view of the profit motive behind warfare. Between 1935 and 1937, Butler served as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism, which was considered by many to be communist dominated[5], and gave numerous speeches to the Communist Party USA in the 1930s, as well as to pacifist groups.[6] The following, from "the non-Marxist, socialist Common Sense magazine"[7] in 1935, is one of his most widely quoted statements:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

As I listened to the 50 minute interview of Arundhati Roy (you can either read the transcript or listen to the interview online - I did the latter) by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, I realised how much this young lady has matured from a one novel writer to become one of the leading and sincere activists against corporate power, not only in the developed world but also India, where the political, bureaucratic and judicial system, as well as the mainstream media has fallen victim to fascism. Nothing could be more relevant today as witnessed by the behaviour of the Bush and Blair Administrations as well as the Manmohan Singh Administration than what this Major General wrote over 71 years ago.

The New York Times grows....

2006-05-24T13:03:00.000+02:00

A collaborator with the Bush Administration, an organisation which should be charged under the Geneva Convention for War Crimes, suddenly finds itself on the other side of the fence from the present administration which it brought to power illegally, and now tries to stand up and be counted. I publish its Editorial of today here in full as it shows the hypocrisy of this newspaper:

Editorial

A Sudden Taste for the Law

Published: May 24, 2006

It's hard to say which was more bizarre about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's threat to prosecute The Times for revealing President Bush's domestic spying program: his claim that a century-old espionage law could be used to muzzle the press or his assertion that the administration cares about enforcing laws the way Congress intended.

Mr. Gonzales said on Sunday that a careful reading of some statutes "would seem to indicate" that it was possible to prosecute journalists for publishing classified material. He called it "a policy judgment by Congress in passing that kind of legislation," which the executive is obliged to obey.

Mr. Gonzales seemed to be talking about a law that dates to World War I and bans, in some circumstances, the unauthorized possession and publication of information related to national defense. It has long been understood that this overly broad and little used law applies to government officials who swear to protect such secrets, and not to journalists.

But in any case, Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Bush have not shown the slightest interest in upholding constitutional principles or following legislative guidelines that they do not find ideologically or politically expedient.

Mr. Gonzales served as White House counsel and as attorney general during the period Mr. Bush concocted more than 750 statements indicating that the president would not obey laws he didn't like, or honor the recorded intent of those who passed them. Among the most outrageous was Mr. Bush's statement that he did not consider himself bound by a ban on torturing prisoners. Mr. Gonzales was part of the team that came up with the rationalization for torture, as well as for the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans' e-mail and phone calls.

If Mr. Gonzales has developed a respect for legislative intent or a commitment to law enforcement, he could start by using his department's power to enforce the Voting Rights Act to protect Americans, rather than challenging minority voting rights and endorsing such obviously discriminatory practices as the gerrymandering in Texas or the Georgia voter ID program. He could enforce workplace safety laws, like those so tragically unenforced at the nation's coal mines, instead of protecting polluters and gun traffickers.

He could uphold the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, instead of coming up with cynical justifications for violating them. He could repudiate the disgraceful fiction known as "unlawful enemy combatant," which the administration cooked up after 9/11 to deny legal rights to certain prisoners.

And he could suggest that the administration follow Congress's clear and specific intent for the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: outlawing wiretaps of Americans without warrants.

My wish that its entire editorial board along with members of the Bush Administration are locked up and the keys thrown away. They form the most vile scum on this earth having been responsible for the deaths of many many thousands of innocent women and children.

Methinks you protest too much.

Our letter to the US media

2006-05-06T02:15:00.000+02:00

We sent the following letter to the the following US media:

ABC Nightline
ABC News

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman & Publisher
New York Times

Comments Line
New York Times

Gil Schwartz, Vice President
CBS Television

National News Desk
Washington Post

Paula Zahn
CNN

Questions Line
NBC News

Dear Media Representatives,

We are not American and we do not even live in the US.

We have been shocked by the behaviour of the US media which has failed to realise that it has an insane lying idiot as it President, a foul-mouthed dictatorial Vice President, along with a compliant House and Senate, which with your media sycophantic has caused immense pain and suffering around the world.

Why did you decline to give Stephen Colbert's scathingly critical performance at the White House Correspondent's dinner the coverage it was due. Back in 1996, Don Imus roasted President and First Lady Clinton with a series of off-color and deeply personal jokes; this was covered extensively at the time.

But now, you seem to have decided to report on the White House Correspondents Association dinner without mentioning the remarks of the keynote speaker.

Why is that?

Were you uncomfortable with his courage in pointing out that you have not really been carrying out the independent watchdog role upon which all democracies depend?

It's time to stop your uncritical stenography (Decide, Announce, Type with spell check) of Administration viewpoints and pay attention to the stories that are really of interest to the lives and death of people around this world caused by your compliance with this horrible criminal US Administration aptly described by Mike Malloy as the "Bush Crime Family".

Sincerely,

Annikki & Jacob Matthan
Oulu, Finland

You can do the same from this link. PLEASE DO IT NOW.

Iranian Oil Bourse next week

2006-04-27T14:45:00.000+02:00

Thanks to several of my correspondents I just received several pointers to the fact that the Iranian Oil Bourse is to be launched next week, about a month and a half behind the original scheduled date.

The IRIB News Department which is a division of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Broadcasting, issued a new item as below.

Iran's oil stock exchange, next week

Tehran, April 26 - Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh said on Wednesday that the establishment of Oil Stock Exchange is in its final stage and the bourse will be launched in Iran in the next week.

more....

This is much more ahead of what caused the invasion of Iraq, as Saddam Hussain was only planning to deal in Euro for Iraqi Oil after sanctions were lifted!.

Watch for developments in the coming weeks - this is too close for comfort for the US neocons and the US Oil Lobby!

My letter is published in The Nation

2006-04-20T18:00:00.000+02:00

(Cross-posted on Jacob's Blog.)

The Nation is America's most respected Liberal magazine.

Recently they published an article "Lap Dogs of the Press" by Helen Thomas, the famed 86 year old journalist who is in the White House press Corps.

I wrote this letter to her, care-off The Nation which published her piece.

Dear Helen,

I have not emailed you for a long time but your stand in the White House and your powerful articles continue to inspire me almost daily. I did not want to wait till your next birthday to send you this one!

Way back in the early 50s, I learnt my basic journalism, when I was less than 10 years old, in the arms and at the feet of my grandfather, the doyen of Kerala, the late K. C. Mammen Mappillai.

The late K. C. Mammen Mappillai

Your recent article "Lap Dogs of the Press" certainly took me back to the days when he, and many other journalists, had to spend time in jail under trumped up charges for supporting the Indian National Congress and the Freedom Movement in India.

Gandhi, Nehru, are the well-known "journalists" that may spring to mind, but it was the small fearless newspaper editors and their journalists, like my grandfather, that had to undergo much hardship to educate their readers. Without them and their locally "respected" words, the messages of the freedom fighters would never have been heard by the masses.

Today, this 118 year old newspaper (THE MALAYALA MANORAMA) is the largest circulating one in India since some of the present editors are committed to the well-being of the people who make up its readership.

Thank you for this article which, to me, really raises the primary issue of where our journalists learn journalism, and how they practice it.

Let us hope that a few "journalists", like you, are produced in the years to come!

Best regards

Jacob

I was informed yesterday that The Nation had published an edited version of this letter in their May 8th 2006 issue, which was released online yesterday.

Unfortunately, you have to be subscriber to The Nation to read the letter online.

If it were not journalists like Helen Thomas, who fearlessly question those in power, the world would be headed for a totalitarian fascist society!

Page pulled - Why?

2006-03-30T15:45:00.000+02:00

(Click to see enlarged images.)

Strangely, a breaking story "Federal Reserve orders two trillion dollars to be printed and put into circulation" which featured on the website "Axis of Logic" yesterday evening, which was brought to my attention by one of my regular correspondents, was pulled from the website.

Mission Statement of Axis of Logic

I had already sent the link to Steve Clemons of The Washington Note, Congressman Representative John Conyers Jr. as well as Senator Barbara Boxer, plus all the major Liberal Talk Show Hosts.

Since it was really shocking news, I saved a screen shot of the page:

I do not think it was up long enough to be cached by Google.

And here is the retraction which was published a few hours later:

Can anyone throw some light on this?

I also have hard copy of this and a pdf version of the page.

Free Speech - Maturity

2006-03-16T22:00:00.000+02:00

When a small child uses indecent words, the responsibility rests on the parents and his teachers to correct the child.

When grown-up politicians behave in a similar manner, it rests on a Free Press with responsible journalists to bring them under control by exposing such immature behaviour.

When journalists behave in this manner, whose responsibility is it to bring them under control? Street mobs, fundamentalists, religious zealots, opportunist "politicians", etc.?

In this entry, I take up the issue of politicians. I draw attention to the behaviour of Finnish prime minister, Matti Vanhanen, who recently went on a jaunt to India.

Vanhanen spent valuable Finnish tax payers money to go and open a Nokia Oyj factory in Chennai, formerly known as Madras, in India.

Did any responsible Finnish media journalist ask the question as to how and why a Finnish prime minister spent this money to open the factory of a multinational whose Finnish ownership is less than 20%?

Not one!

The best joke I read about this was from the Finnish Foreign Ministry news source (STT) which said that the opening of the factory (conveniently) coincided with the visit of the prime minister in India!

If you believe that, maybe I have a bridge to sell you.

Vihantasalmi Bridge in Finland

"In relation to Finland's small size, Mr Vanhanen's visit received ample press coverage in India.

The prime minister said the interest could be partly explained by the official opening of Nokia's mobile phone factory in Chennai, timed to coincide with the visit. The factory is the first of its kind in India and is seen to represent a significant step forward for the whole country." (STT)

More interesting was the speech that Vanhanen gave in New Delhi where he called on India to open up its markets to "Free Trade" and embrace "Globalisation".

Matti Vanhanen (Centre Party), the Finnish prime minister, strongly advocated trade liberalisation at a lunch meeting with businessmen in Delhi on Monday.

With Kamal Nath, the Indian trade and industry minister, among the audience, Mr Vanhanen said free trade and deregulation together constituted one of the cornerstones of Finland's current economic prowess. He added that the early deregulation of the telecommunications and energy industries had catapulted Finnish firms to global success.

"Today our lesson learned is clear: barriers create inefficiency in the economic system at all levels. Exposure to global competition has taught us a lesson, the fruits of which are visible to you all," Mr Vanhanen said.

He also urged India to actively participate in the liberalisation of trade at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

"All studies show that a successful Doha round would produce tremendous benefits for the world economy, for developed and developing countries. WTO negotiations would help countries to progressively open their markets to competition for the benefit of all. India has a vital role to play in the Doha Development Round."(STT)

This showed the ignorance and stupidity of a person who, in a coup, took over the Finnish prime ministership.

What the public thought of him was revealed in the recent Finnish Presidential election where he mustered just 18.6% of the popular vote!

Does this man, Vanhanen, know that the wife of an Indian engineer who works for Nokia OYj in Finland, could not get her visa to stay in Finland renewed but had to fly all the way back to India to able to get a permit to stay with her husband?

India has been the centre of Free Trade for generations. The spice markets of India have been known for thousands of years.

It was the western colonialists - Britain (British East India Company), Dutch, Portuguese and the French, who came to trade in India and then colonised the country for their personal benefit driving the Indians into poverty by exploitation - their version of “Free Trade”?

On the one hand, the Finnish media shows no restraint in highlighting the poverty in India.

On the other, the same media fails to question the drive of the Finnish Prime Minister towards the western powers agenda of Free Trade, which would result in causing greater discrepancy between the rich and the poor as the modern day colonialists want to drive the poor of India to greater poverty!

Luckily, India is a democracy, the world's largest, and there are enough political forces that will not allow Vanhanen type "politicians” to put Indians into deeper poverty under the guise of globalisation and free trade.

The Finns take great comfort in such utterances:

"Mr Vanhanen added that Finland's success in surveys about competitiveness, education, level of corruption and sustainable development might have something to do with the level of interest as well." (STT)

The Finnish bureaucracy and media is great at creating a polished image, an image far from the truth. They are masters of distortion to show the world that it it is progressive, corrupt-free country.

As Annikki, my better half has put it "Finns like to show the world a highly polished image of themselves, like a beautiful apple. But if one is to cut this apple open, one finds rather a rotten core inside!"

In my humble opinion, based on my personal experience over the last 22 years, Finland has a corrupt political system, aided by a corrupt law enforcement service and judiciary, but above all a totally corrupt self-serving bureaucracy.

The very fact that Vanhanen is prime minister today demonstrates the degree of corruption in the country.

An lady politician, Anneli Jääteenmäki, who took the Centre Party to victory in the last General Election, was dislodged by two viscous Finnish politicians - Paavo Lipponenn (Social Democrat) and none other than Vanhanen.

When Anneli Jääteenmäki was cleared of all charges by the Finnish Courts, did Vanhanen offer to give the lady back her rightful place as the Prime Minister of the country?

No way - as he is enjoying his power base.

And has the Finnish Media said a word - NOT ONE!

Arundhati's take on the Bush visit to India

2006-03-03T05:15:00.000+02:00

Arundhati Roy shares her opinion of the Bush visit to India!

It's not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will.

"When George Bush places flowers on that famous slab of hig! hly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince."

ON HIS triumphalist tour of this part of the world, where he hopes to wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects, President Bush's itinerary is getting curiouser and curiouser.

For his 2nd of March pit stop in New Delhi, the Indian Government tried very hard to have him address our Parliament. A not inconsequential number of MPs threatened to heckle him, so Plan One was hastily shelved. Plan Two was that he address the masses from the ramparts of the magnificent Red Fort where the Indian Prime Minister traditionally delivers his Independence Day address. But the Red Fort, surrounded as it is by the predominantly Muslim population of Old Delhi, was considered a security nightmare.

So now we're into Plan Three: President George Bush speaks from Purana! Qila, the Old Fort.

Ironic isn't it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India's modernity, should be a crumbling medieval fort?

Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo, George Bush's audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of caged human beings who in India go under the category of "eminent persons." They're mostly rich folk who live in our poor country like captive animals, incarcerated by their own wealth, locked and barred in their gilded cages, protecting themselves from the threat of the vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries.

So what's going to happen to George W Bush?

Will the gorillas cheer him on? Will the gibbons curl their lips? Will the brow-antlered deer sneer? Will the chimps make rude noises? Will the owls hoot? Will the lions yawn and the giraffes bat their beautiful eyelashes? Will the crocs recognise a kindred soul?

Will the quails give thanks that Bush isn't travelling with Dick Cheney, his hunting partner with the notoriously bad aim? Will the CEOs agree?

Oh, and on the 2nd of March, Bush will be taken to visit Gandhi's memorial in Rajghat. He's by no means the only war criminal who has been invited by the Indian Government to lay flowers at Rajghat. (Only recently we! had the Burmese dictator General Than Shwe — no shrinking violet himself.) But when George Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.

We really would prefer that he didn't.

It's not in our power to stop Bush's visit.

It is in our power to protest it, and we will. ¨

The Government, the Police and the Corporate Press will do everything they can to minimise the extent of our outrage. Nothing the Happynews Papers say can change the fact that all over India from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes — Geo! rge W. Bush, incumbent President of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome.

— © Arundhati Roy

I concur! Do you?

Mainline: Geostrategy Feeds America's Oil Addiction

2006-03-02T19:45:00.000+02:00

Cross-posted on all my main blogs -

Jacob's Blog
Seventh Heaven for Mumbai Cathedralites;
Kooler Talk for Delhi Stephanians;
Oulu Chaff
Move The UN.

My topical article "Geostrategy Feeds America's Oil Addiction", which relates to the visit of Bush to India, has appeared in a major North American online journal Raise the Hammer in their fortnightly issue dated 1st March 2006.

Editor Ryan McGreal has really tidied up the article. Thanks.

What is original in this submission?

It is my long term speculations about:

1. The rationale for the attack on and occupation of Afghanistan relating to the Enron history.
2. Who most likely perpetrated the fraud of the Iranian election.
3. Why the Indian Industrial Community desperately want Bush and his malAdministration to stay in office for another 3 years!
4. Why the nuclear attack on Iran is imminent.

Many may wrinkle their foreheads in disbelief. But that is what political analysis is all about. I theorise and later people fit the facts to my theories.

Hope you enjoy it and would love to have your feedback - even if it is abusive!!

I love getting abusive email. I thrive on it as it drives me on harder to more fantasy! :-)

Ahmadinejad is No George Bush: Getting a Handle on Iran's Checks & Balances

2006-02-19T16:45:00.000+02:00

Comment posted by Jacob Matthan on The Washington Note at February 18, 2006 11:43 PM.

Consider this possibility:

Did America fix the Iranian elections to get Mahmoud Ahmadinejad elected as the Iranian President?

Does it not serve the neocon interests best to have rigged the election to get this radical in place so that it could be all systems go for the preplanned attack on Iran, when the doves would have ensured an "unwanted" diplomatic initiative?

Just a stray thought!

End of American Democracy

2006-01-31T15:00:00.000+02:00

With the cloture vote to confirm Samuel Alito being passed yesterday and the appointment of Alito to the US Supreme Court likely later today, I think I am not being overly pessimistic when I say that the end of the American Democracy has begun.

Alito will provide the necessary additional force along with Chief Justice John Roberts, Uncle Tom Justice Clarence Thomas and Mafia Boss Justice Antonin Scalia to ensure that the vile American neocon Fascist Empire is established and every effort to expand it is made at the expense of the ordinary middle and lower class American population.

It was stupid of Senator John Kerry to try to make a ploy to start a filibuster from Davos, Switzerland, as he has virtually no following at the grassroots level after his turning tail and running after the 2004 elections.

Senator Kerry was sort of energised to do this after former Vice President Al Gore and also Presidential Race "loser" showed some spine by calling a spade a spade five years after he too showed how spineless he was in the face of the neocon agenda after the 2000 election!

There are a few exceptions and the new party should be built around such devoted and dedicated people as Congressman John Conyers Jr., Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and Senator Barbara Boxer.

And in the process they should bury the Republican-lite in the party as Senator Joe Liebermann, Senator Ben Nelson, Senator Bill Nelson, Senator Barrack Obama amongst others!

The only passionate speech that was made at the Senate Session yesterday was that by Senator Edward Kennedy when he literally begged his other Democrat colleagues to see what they were doing by voting to approve the cloture. But even these words fell on deaf ears.

The Democrat leadership in America, of Senator Harry Reid and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi are totally bankrupt.

It would be best the Democrat Party just folded up and allowed the real grassroots Democrats to start a new party with fresh faces rather than the tired old ones and other Democrats in name only, whose only objective in the last two terms of the US Congress and Senate have been to fulfil their OWN agenda.

The American Democracy experiment is now over.

Let us, who had faith in the American Democratic way of Life, accept this and let us in this wide world proceed by calling America the "pariah" nation and the "centre point" of the axis of evil, that it is.

General Wesley Clark to Keynote "Real State of U.S. Foreign Policy Forum" ...2

2006-01-25T15:50:00.000+02:00

Comment posted by Jacob Matthan on The Washington Note on Wednesday 25th January 2006 in response to a post by "marky".

I have been on Clark's email list from its inception. I have not seen a single word in his postings which show the picture as it really is, neither from a military or diplomatic point of view. He is still so far from the breakdown point of Murtha.

Clark is posturing, just as Hilary Clinton is.

There is no economic or military reason for my analysis.

It is just ridiculous to allow this killing to go on and on - and NOTHING the Americans can do will stop it, EXCEPT to get out NOW. The Americans are the problem and the longer anyone fails to realise that, more fool them than me.

America has no diplomatic skills to bring to the table today (John Bolton ? ).

It has only US war criminals to put before the International Court of Justice.

And do you think Clark is going to do that?

No need to answer that.

General Wesley Clark to Keynote "Real State of U.S. Foreign Policy Forum" .....

2006-01-25T15:00:00.000+02:00

Comment posted by Jacob Matthan on The Washington Note on Wednesday 25th January 2006.

Clark is totally unsuited to be the President of the US.

I wrote to him after listening to the full 3 plus hours on his appearance owith Richard Perle before the House Armed Services Committee.

General Clark made several fundamental mistakes.

He said he believed that things are moving in the right direction.

That was wrong. He failed to recognise the protest that took place in Baghdad where the only chant was for the US forces to go home and statues of Bush and Blair were toppled.

1. All the Iraqi elections have been a total failures, however much the spin is put on their being successes.
2. The Bush Administration has no intention of leaving Iraq - why would anyone build 13 to 15 major bases in Iraq?
3. General Clark should stop trying to be diplomatic when it is clear that the neo-cons have no intention of doing anything diplomatically!!

However distasteful it may sound:

1. US has lost this war.
2. US should put its tail between its legs and run. (Which a proud military man like Clark will never do!)
3. US should let the Iraqi people put their own house in order but be made to pay for the chaos it had caused.
4. All war criminals belonging to occupation forces, from the pResident to the lowliest soldiers, should be put on trial before an impartial international court.

Then people will start to begin to believe in American democracy. But the recent situation reveals that American Democracy is a thing of the past! It IS a fascist state and unless Clark can state this from the podium, he is, in my mind, just hot air.

Everyone now knows the American Democratic model is a great sham. And that is what Clark has been defending time and time again.

Horror of horrors

2006-01-19T15:15:00.000+02:00

This morning's headline on the web is about Condoleeza Rice planning to relocate US diplomats into Asian countries, such as India.

The US is to reduce the number of its diplomats posted to Europe, and will send more to other countries, including China, India, Nigeria and Lebanon.

"America must begin to reposition our diplomatic forces around the world," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday.

Let us be clear what this means - the US plans to put more of its spies and undertake more covert activities to disrupt normal life in these countries.

I hope the Indian Government will put tails on all these relocated diplomats, ensure that their phones are tapped and houses and spouses are kept under constant surveillance.

"This is where the action is today, and this is where we must be."

Rice's words are prophetic - Indian Intelligence - please take note.

Al Gore's speech on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Day

2006-01-18T22:00:00.000+02:00

In 2001, probably the only foreigners who took the trouble to email Al Gore to tell him not to give up his stand and fight for the Presidency of the USA were Annikki and me.

We could see what lay ahead if Bush took up residency in the White House.

Our worst fears were exceeded by this mad man and his criminal gang.

For this we can never quite forgive Al Gore. It is lack of will and depth of understanding which has caused such chaos in this world.

On Monday, on the Memorial Day for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Al Gore gave a speech, which we give in full below.

It is probably the first step in the re-emergence of Al Gore as repentence for what he led his country and its people, as well as many hndreds of thousands of innocent Afghani and Iraqi women and children, into.

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress precisely to prevent such abuses. It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored in our country.

And that is why many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences insofar as it is possible to do so and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all of our people.

And on this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during that period.

The FBI privately labeled King the "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and tried to blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted this long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, was instrumental in helping to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

And one result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there was indeed a sufficient cause for the surveillance. It included ample flexibility and an ability for the executive to move with as much speed as the executive desired. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of affording a level of protection for American citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue whenever it is necessary.

And yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on, and I quote the report, "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit domestic intelligence collection."

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President seemed to go out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but in the next breath declared that he has no intention stopping or of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. They recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that, in his phrase, "the law is king."

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law actually strengthens our democracy, of course, and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint, under the rule of law.

And make no mistake, the rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed, and examined through the normal processes of government that are designed to improve policy, and avoid error. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion to power.

A commitment to openness, truthfulness, and accountability helps our country avoid many serious mistakes, that we would otherwise make. Recently, for example, we learned from just declassified documents, after almost forty years, that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was actually based on false information. And we now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on false information. Now the point is that America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. And that is the reason why following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is on the proposition that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government in order to protect Americans from terrorism. When in fact, doing so would make us weaker and more vulnerable.

And remember that once violated, the rule of law is itself in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its mistakes and reveal errors, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police its activities. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The Attorney General, for example, openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now know they have been conducting does require a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims, instead, that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

But, this argument simply does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that is why they consulted with some members of Congress about the possibility of changing the statute. Genl. Gonzalez says that they were told by the members of congress consulted that this would probably not be possible. And so they decided not to make the request. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the use of military force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Indeed, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically - and the Congress refused to agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made clear statements during the debate on the floor of the house and the senate, respectively, clearly stating that that Authorization did not operate domestically. And there is no assertion to the contrary.

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him the power he wanted when this measure was passed, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother. But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote: "To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between the President and the Congress."

This is precisely the "disrespect" for the law that the Supreme Court struck down in the steel seizure case during the Korean War.

It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

For example, as you know the President has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, that person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer-even if he wants to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person. The President claims that he can imprison that American citizen -- any American Citizen he chooses -- indefinitely for the rest of his live without an even arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, without even informing their families that they have been imprisoned. No such right exists in the America that you and I know and love. It is foreign to our constitution. It must be rejected.

At the same time, the Executive branch has also claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture and have plainly constituted torture in a widespread pattern that has been extensively documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive branch interrogators and many more have been broken and humiliated. And, in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were completely innocent of any criminal charges whatsoever. This is a shameful exercise of power that overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General George Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War. They have been observed by every president since then - until now. They violate the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture, and our own laws against torture.

The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals on the streets of foreign cities and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture. Some of our traditional allies have been deeply shocked by these new, and uncharacteristic patterns on the part of Americans. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan - one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons - registered a complaint to his home office about the cruelty and senselessness of the new U.S. practice that he witnessed: "This material we’re getting is useless,” he wrote and then he continued with this – “we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful."

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?

The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch's extravagant claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution."

The fact that our normal American safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is, itself, deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the Executive Branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore a healthy constitutional balance.

For example, after appearing to support legislation sponsored by John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the President declared in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply with it. Similarly, the Executive Branch claimed that it could unilaterally imprison American citizens without giving them access to review by any tribunal. And when the Supreme Court disagreed, the President engaged in legal maneuvers designed to prevent the Court from providing any meaningful content to the rights of the citizens affected.

A conservative jurist on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Executive branch's handling of one such case seemed to involve the sudden abandonment of principle, and I quote him, "at substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts."

As a result of this unprecedented claim of new unilateral power, the Executive branch has now put our constitutional design at grave risk. The stakes for America's democracy are far higher than has been generally recognized.

These claims must be rejected and a healthy balance of power restored to our Republic. Otherwise, the fundamental nature of our democracy may well undergo a radical transformation.

For more than two centuries, America's freedoms have been preserved in large part by our founders' wise decision to separate the aggregate power of our government into three co-equal branches, each of which, as you know, serves to check and balance the power of the other two.

On more than a few occasions, in our history, the dynamic interaction among all three branches has resulted in collisions and temporary impasses that create what are invariably labeled "constitutional crises." These crises have often been dangerous and uncertain times for our Republic. But in each such case so far, we have found a resolution of the crisis by renewing our common agreement to live together under the rule of law.

The principle alternative to democracy throughout history has, of course, been the consolidation of virtually all state power in the hands of a single strongman or small group who exercise that power without the informed consent of the governed.

It was in revolt against just such a regime, after all, that America was founded. When Lincoln declared at the time of our greatest crisis that the ultimate question being decided in the Civil War was, in his memorable phrase, "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure," he was not only saving our union, he was recognizing the fact that democracies are rare in history. And when they fail, as did Athens and the Roman Republic upon whose designs our founders drew heavily, what emerges in their place is another strongman regime.

There have of course been other periods in American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents. And when his successor, President Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses, in his first inaugural he said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

President Lincoln, of course, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a shameful low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, of course, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of those abuses experienced by Dr. King and so many thousands of others.

But in each of these cases throughout American history, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, our nation recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.

But, there are reasons for concern this time around, that conditions may be changing and that the cycle may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a globe where there are nuclear weapons and cold war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter- intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. But, as Justice Frankfurter wrote in that famous Steel Seizure Case, "The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."

A second reason to that believe we may be experiencing something new -- outside that historical cycle -- is that we are, after all, told by this Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to "last” in their phrase, “for the rest of our lives." And so, we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will, in this case, persist in near perpetuity.

Third, we need to be keenly aware of the startling advances in the sophistication of eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to easily sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and then mine it for intelligence. And this adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies grows. Those technologies do have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways that are both subtle and profound.

Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is real and the concerted efforts by terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction does indeed create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power conferred by the Constitution to the any President to take unilateral action when necessary to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat. And it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not. But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for many years and producing a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

And there is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential power is exactly what our Constitution intended.

This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which ought to be more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President's authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary, cannot be checked by Congress. And President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, both domestic and foreign. And when added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and subservient judiciary is ironically accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish a form of dominance in the world.

And the common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

This same pattern has characterized the effort to silence dissenting views within the Executive branch, to censor information that may be inconsistent with its stated ideological goals, and to demand conformity from all Executive branch employees.

For example, CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House assertion that Osama bin Laden was linked to Saddam Hussein found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases.

Ironically, that is exactly what happened to the FBI officials in the 1960s who disagreed with J. Edgar Hoover's assertion that Martin Luther King was closely connected to Communists. The head of the FBI's domestic intelligence division testified that his effort to tell the truth about King's innocence of the charge resulted in he and his colleagues becoming isolated within the FBI and pressured. And I quote: "It was evident that we had to change our ways or we would all be out on the street.... The men and I (he continued) discussed how to get out of trouble. To be in trouble with Mr. Hoover was a serious matter. These men (he continued) were trying to buy homes, mortgages on homes, children in school. They lived in fear of getting transferred, losing money on their homes, as they usually did. ... so they wanted another memorandum written to get us out of the trouble that we were in."

The Constitution's framers who studied human nature so closely understood this dilemma quite well. As Alexander Hamilton put it, "a power over a man's support is a power over his will." (Federalist No. 73)

In any case, quite soon, there was no more difference of opinion within the FBI. And the false accusation became the unanimous view. In exactly the same way, George Tenet's CIA eventually joined in endorsing a manifestly false view that there was a linkage between al Qaeda and the government of Iraq.

In the words of George Orwell: "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.

Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that, sooner or later, a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." 2,200 American soldiers have lost their lives as this false belief bumped into a solid reality.

And indeed, whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to gross mistakes and abuses. That is part of human nature. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded. It is human nature -- whether for Republicans or Democrats or people of any set of views.

Last week, for example, Vice President Cheney attempted to defend the Administration's eavesdropping on American citizens by saying that if it had conducted this program prior to 9/11, they would have found out the names of some of the hijackers.

Tragically, he apparently still does not know that the Administration did in fact have the names of at least 2 of the hijackers well before 9/11 and had available to them information that could have led to the identification of most of the others. One of them was in the phonebook. And yet, because of incompetence, unaccountable incompetence in the handling of this information, it was never used to protect the American people.

It is often the case, again, regardless of which party might be in power, that an Executive branch, beguiled by the pursuit of unchecked power, responds to its own mistakes by reflexively proposing that it be given still more power. Often, the request itself it used to mask accountability for mistakes in the use of power it already has.

Moreover, if the pattern of practice begun by this Administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. That’s why many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this President means that the next will have unchecked power as well. And the next President may be someone whose values and belief you do not trust. And that is why Republicans as well as Democrats should be concerned with what this President has done. If his attempt to dramatically expand executive power goes unquestioned, then our constitutional design of checks and balances will be lost. And the next President or some future President will be able, in the name of national security, to restrict our liberties in a way the framers never would have imagined possible.

This same instinct to expand its power and to establish dominance has characterized the relationship between this Administration and the courts and the Congress.

In a properly functioning system, the Judicial branch would serve as the constitutional umpire to ensure that the branches of government observed their proper spheres of authority, observed civil liberties, adhered to the rule of law. Unfortunately, the unilateral executive has tried hard to thwart the ability of the judiciary to call balls and strikes by keeping controversies out of its hands - notably those challenging its ability to detain individuals without legal process -- by appointing judges who will be deferential to its exercise of power and by its support of assaults on the independence of the third branch.

The President's decision, for example, to ignore the FISA law was a direct assault on the power of the judges who sit on that court. Congress established the FISA court precisely to be a check on executive power to wiretap. And yet, to ensure that the court could not function as a check on executive power, the President simply did not take matters to it and did not even let the court know that it was being bypassed.

The President's judicial appointments are clearly designed to ensure the courts will not serve as an effective check on executive power. As we have all learned, Judge Alito is a longtime supporter of a powerful executive - a supporter of that so-called unitary executive. Whether you support his confirmation or not - and I respect the fact that some of the co-sponsors of this event do. I do not – but whatever your view, we must all agree that he will not vote as an effective check on the expansion of executive power. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts has made plain his deference to the expansion of executive power through his support of judicial deference to executive agency rulemaking.

And the Administration has also supported the assault on judicial independence that has been conducted largely in Congress. That assault includes a threat by the Republican majority in the Senate to permanently change the rules to eliminate the right of the minority to engage in extended debate of the President's nominees. The assault has extended to legislative efforts to curtail the jurisdiction of courts in matters ranging from habeas corpus to the pledge of allegiance. In short, the Administration has demonstrated a contempt for the judicial role and sought to evade judicial review of its actions at every turn.

But the most serious damage in our constitutional framework has been done to the legislative branch. The sharp decline of congressional power and autonomy in recent years has been almost as shocking as the efforts by the Executive to attain this massive expansion of its power.

I was elected to the Congress in 1976, served eight years in the house, 8 years in the Senate, presided over the Senate for 8 years as Vice President. As a young man, I saw the Congress first hand as the son of a Senator. My father was elected to Congress in 1938, 10 years before I was born, and left the Senate after I had graduated from college.

The Congress we have today is structurally unrecognizable compared to the one in which my father served. There are many distinguished and outstanding Senators and Congressmen serving today. I am honored to know them and to have worked with them. But the legislative branch of government, as a whole, under its current leadership now operates as if it were entirely subservient to the Executive branch. It is astonishing to me, and so foreign to what the Congress is supposed to be.

Moreover, too many members of the House and Senate now feel compelled to spend a majority of their time not in thoughtful debate on the issues, but instead raising money to purchase 30 second TV commercials.

Moreover, there have now been two or three generations of congressmen who don't really know what an oversight hearing is. In the 70's and 80's, the oversight hearings in which my colleagues and I participated held the feet of the Executive branch to the fire - no matter which party was in power. Yet oversight is almost unknown in the Congress today.

The role of the authorization committees has declined into insignificance. The 13 annual appropriation bills are hardly ever actually passed as bills, anymore. Everything is lumped into a familiar single giant measure that is not even available for members of Congress to read before they vote on it. Members of the minority party are now routinely excluded from conference committees, and amendments are routinely disallowed during floor consideration of legislation.

In the United States Senate, which used to pride itself on being the "greatest deliberative body in the world," meaningful debate is now a rarity. Even on the eve of the fateful vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd famously asked: "Why is this chamber empty?" In the House of Representatives, the number who face a genuinely competitive election contest every two years is typically less than a dozen out of 435.

And too many incumbents have come to believe that the key to continued access to the money for re-election is to stay on the good side of those who have the money to give; and, in the case of the majority party, the whole process is largely controlled by the incumbent president and his political organization.

So the willingness of Congress to challenge the Executive branch is further limited when the same party controls both Congress and the Administration. The Executive branch, time and again, has co-opted Congress' role, and too often Congress has been a willing accomplice in the surrender of its own power.

Look for example at the Congressional role in "overseeing" this massive four year eavesdropping campaign that on its face seemed so clearly to violate the Bill of Rights. The President says he informed Congress, but what he really means is that he talked with the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees and sometimes the leaders of the House and Senate. This small group, in turn, claimed they were not given the full facts, though at least one of the committee leaders handwrote a letter of concern to the vice-president.

Though I sympathize with the awkward position in which these men and women were placed, I cannot disagree with the Liberty Coalition when it says that Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking sufficient action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program. Many did.

Moreover, in the Congress as a whole-both House and Senate-the enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption that some have fallen vulnerable to.

The Abramoff scandal is but the tip of a giant iceberg threatening the integrity of the entire legislative branch of government.

It is the pitiful state of our legislative branch which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by the Executive Branch now threatening a radical transformation of the American system.

I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of American government you are supposed to be under the Constitution of our country. But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must also be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has accompanied these efforts by the Executive branch to dominate our constitutional system.

We the people are-collectively-still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We-must examine ourselves. We - as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here"-must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and hollowing out and degradation of American democracy! It is time to stand up for the American system that we know and love! It is time to breathe new life back into America’s democracy!

Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will" America’s based on the belief that we can govern ourselves. And exercise the power of self-government. The American idea proceeded from the bedrock principle that all just power is derived from the consent of the governed.

The intricate and carefully balanced constitutional system that is now in such danger was created with the full and widespread participation of the population as a whole. The Federalist Papers were, back in the day, widely-read newspaper essays, and they represented only one of twenty-four series of essays that crowded the vibrant marketplace of ideas in which farmers and shopkeepers recapitulated the debates that played out so fruitfully in Philadelphia.

And when the Convention had done its best, it was the people - in their various States - that refused to confirm the result until, at their insistence, the Bill of Rights was made integral to the document sent forward for ratification.

And it is "We the people" who must now find, once again, the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution. And here there is cause for both concern and for great hope. The age of printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by television - a distracting and absorbing medium which sees determined to entertain and sell more than it informs and educates.

Lincoln's memorable call during the Civil War is now applicable in a new way to our dilemma today: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. And its dominance has now become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements, and they’re not the Federalist Papers.

The political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages.

The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the Executive branch to believe it can and should control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.

The Administration vigorously asserts its power to maintain secrecy in its operations. After all, if the other branches don’t know what is happening they can't be a check or a balance.

For example, when the Administration was attempting to persuade Congress to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit, many in the House and Senate raised concerns about the cost and design of the program. But, rather than engaging in open debate on the basis of factual data, the Administration withheld facts and actively prevented the Congress from hearing testimony that it had sought from the principal administration expert who had the information showing in advance of the vote that, indeed, the true cost estimates were far beyond the numbers given to Congress by the President. And the workings of the program would play out very differently than Congress had been told.

Deprived of that information, and believing the false numbers given to it instead, the Congress approved the program. And tragically, the entire initiative is now collapsing- all over the country- with the Administration making an appeal just this weekend to major insurance companies to volunteer to bail it out. But the American people, who have the right to believe that its elected representatives will learn the truth and act on the basis of knowledge and utilize the rule of reason, have been let down.

To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming were censored by a political appointee in the White House who had no scientific training, whatsoever. Today, one of the leading scientific experts in the world on global warming in NASA, has been ordered not to talk to members of the press, ordered to keep a careful log of everyone he meets with so that the Executive branch can monitor and control what he shares of his knowledge of global warming. This is a planetary crisis – we owe ourselves a truthful and reasoned discussion.

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information has been by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. President Eisenhower said this: "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the full Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of nuclear missiles ready to be launched on a moment’s notice to completely annihilate the country? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when the last generation had to fight and win two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it’s up to us to do the very same thing!

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, and I quote: "The President has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will."

A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the President. We’ve had a fresh demonstration of how an independent investigation by a special counsel with integrity can rebuild confidence in our system of justice. Patrick Fitzgerald has, by all accounts, shown neither fear nor favor in pursuing allegations that the Executive branch has violated other laws.

Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of this special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by the warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the President, and it should be a political issue in any race -- regardless of party, section of the country, house of congress for anyone who opposes the appointment of a special counsel under these dangerous circumstances when our Constitution is at risk. Secondly, new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive branch who report evidence of wrongdoing -- especially where it involves the abuse of authority in these sensitive areas of national security.

Third, both Houses of Congress should, of course, hold comprehensive-and not just superficial-hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed.

Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens.

Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy.

It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.

In closing, I mentioned that along with cause for concern, there is reason for hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will be re-established by the people and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed I can feel it in this hall.

As Dr. King once said, "Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

Thank you, very much.

Thank you Al Gore for this outburst. We only wish you had thought in depth about this matter 5 years ago.

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World: Albert Brooks' New Film Fails

2006-01-13T01:10:00.000+02:00

Comment posted by: Jacob Matthan at January 12, 2006 08:02 AM on the Steve Clemons blog, The Washington Note

Bending over backwards to accommodate a community is the worst that one can do.

People are people and there is no need for such a show unless there is guilt.

And America has a lot of guilt, so some "Liberals" seem to want to create a bridge.

Treat a person for what he shows himself to be, not on a preconceived notion.

Letter to Bush on Secret Spying Program

2006-01-06T11:09:00.000+02:00

Comment #13: posted by jmatthan said on 1/6/06 @ 4:07am ET... on Congressman John Conyers Jr.'s blog.

I am really why wondering why Congressman Conyers Jr. had to explain his reasons for his actions. To me, a non-American sitting here thousands of kilometres away, each of his steps has been logical and essential. Is that not obvious to all Americans who see their country moving at breakneck speed towards a totally fascistic State?

Without the systematic work of Congressman Conyers Jr. (and no other American politician has even shown the slightest intention of doing this other than Congressman Dennis Kucinich) history would be distorted by the fascists.

Congressman Conyers Jr.'s steps have been recorded by all of us political analysts around the world. Despite the American MainStream Media virtually blacking him out, he has done yoeman service to all Freedom Lovers around the world.

Thank you Congressman Conyers Jr.

Why Blair and Bush should be tried for WAR CRIMES

2005-12-30T07:25:00.000+02:00

Please visit these pages starting at Association for Democracy in Uzbekistan - Confidential letters.

The Blair Crime Syndicate is trying to suppress this information.

Copy it and make it as widely available as possible before it is banned by the criminals.

You should read this thread UK Secrecy Act Muffled Torture Docs Sent to DU'er - HERE to know what is happening.

"It's not the al-Jazeera Memo, but these are some more documents that the UK Government are trying to supress with the threat of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. They detail our use of intelligence extracted by torture, and legal advice the Foreign Office received on the subject, and we need to get them out there as soon as possible before the government act."

Congressman John Conyers Jr. Submits Censure Motions

2005-12-21T05:30:00.000+02:00

Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) is seeking an investigative body to determine whether the President committed impeachable offences.

Congressman Conyers Jr. has also introduced a motion in the US House of Representatives to censure US pResident Bush and vice pResident Cheney for providing misleading information to the US Congress in advance of the Iraq war, allowing torture of prisoners both in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, and other major provisions.

Resolution to create investigative body to determine if offences are impeachable;

Resolution to censure President George W. Bush;

Resolution to censure Vice President Dick Cheney

I hope that the world over we will take similar serious steps to issue arrest warrants to bring Bush and Blair and their criminal gang in front of the International Court for War Crimes.

On his web site Congressman Conyers Jr. says:

Stand with Congressman Conyers
Demand Censure for Bush-Cheney Misconduct

Investigate Impeachable Offenses

I am taking steps against the Bush Administration’s handling of the Iraq War and its collection of intelligence. I am going to need you to stand with me in fighting for accountability....

more....

Thank you Congressman Conyers Jr. for this monumental piece of work

The Constitution in Crisis: Censure and Investigate Possible Impeachment

2005-12-21T05:00:00.000+02:00

Comment #1: jmatthan said on the Congressman John Conyers Jr. Blog12/20/05 @ 11:57am ET...

There is only one person competent to be the President of the United States of America which could bring your nation back under the rule of law - and it is you Congressman Conyers Jr.

I hope the other Democrats and every Republican who cares about the people of the USA and the world will be backing you through this firestorm of right wing noise.

An example of sheer arrogance

2005-11-28T19:45:00.000+02:00

The oped by Joe Biden in the Washington Post is an example of the absolute arrogance of an American!!

He writes:

" ...we must forge a sustainable political compromise between Iraqi factions, strengthen the Iraqi government and bolster reconstruction efforts, and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces."

"...we need to build political consensus, starting with the constitution..."

"....We must help produce a constitution that will unite Iraq, not divide it."

"...The president should initiate a regional strategy ..."

"...we must build Iraq's governing capacity and overhaul the reconstruction program. ..."

Who is this "we".

And there is more.

And this is atrocious.

"Countries that have pledged aid must deliver it. So far, only $3 billion of the $13.5 billion in non-American aid has made it to Iraq. And the president should convene a conference of our Gulf allies. They have reaped huge windfall oil profits -- it's time they gave back."

US has caused this chaos - US should pay through its nose to put it right. Why come begging to these "other "countries". All Americans, as taxpayers, have to pay and pay and pay...

US has lost the invasion and has caused catastrophe by its occupation of Iraq, causing the deaths of thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and this person, who claims he is a Democrat, cannot see beyond the tip of his nose.

I hope some of you will tell him where to get off.

As an international observer I was sickened to read this garbage from a Democrat US Senator.

Riverbend - You are not alone

2005-11-28T08:15:00.000+02:00

Riverbend wrote this as part of her latest entry in her outstanding blog Baghdad Burning

In war, you think the unthinkable. You imagine the unimaginable. When you can’t get to sleep at night, your mind wanders to cover various possibilities. Trying to guess and determine the future of a war-torn nation is nearly impossible, so your mind focuses on the more tangible- friends… Near and distant relations. I think that during these last two and a half years, every single Iraqi inside of Iraq has considered the possibility of losing one or more people in the family. I try to imagine losing the people I love most in the world- whether it’s the possibility of having them buried under the rubble… or the possibility of having them brutally murdered by extremists… or blown to bits by a car bomb… or abducted for ransom… or brutally shot at a checkpoint. All disturbing possibilities.

I try to imagine what would happen to me, personally, should this occur. How long would it take for the need for revenge to settle in? How long would it take to be recruited by someone who looks for people who have nothing to lose? People who lost it all to one blow. What I think the world doesn’t understand is that people don’t become suicide bombers because- like the world is told- they get seventy or however many virgins in paradise. People become suicide bombers because it is a vengeful end to a life no longer worth living- a life probably violently stripped of its humanity by a local terrorist- or a foreign soldier.

I hate suicide bombers. I hate the way my heart beats chaotically every time I pass by a suspicious-looking car- and every car looks suspicious these days. I hate the way Sunni mosques and Shia mosques are being targeted right and left. I hate seeing the bodies pile up in hospitals, teeth clenched in pain, wailing men and women…

But I completely understand how people get there.

From Palestine to Iraq this sentiment really expresses what is going through the minds of many many thousands of young people. And so long as war criminals Bush, Blair and their cohorts are in power, the situation will not change.

Get your FREE 2006 Desktop Calendar

2005-11-24T21:50:00.000+02:00

As a prelude to the release of Annikki's book "Edible Art" in 2006, we are pleased to inform you that the 2006 Desktop Calendar, featuring 13 of her beautiful cake designs, will be sent, ABSOLUTELY FREE OF COST, to the first 500 readers (relatives who are in touch with us regularly need not check in) who send us their snail mail (posting) address.

FREE 2006 Desktop Calendar featuring
13 of Annikki's beautiful and artistic cake designs

As the calendar is being printed and dispatched from our printer in China, please act quickly, as I will be transferring the final database to the printer for posting purposes within the next few days.

You can email your snail mail address to:

Free Calendar Request

The dam has burst

2005-11-18T20:00:00.000+02:00

It appears that the US is getting it.

Here, however is a diametrically opposed view from his wife, Hillary Clinton, who has come out as a poor leader unable to understand what is happening in the real world.

Clinton: The big mistake of the Iraq war: Ex-President leads the critics, By Rupert Cornwell in Washington, Published: 18 November 2005 in The Independent

The dam has burst. Former president Bill Clinton's verdict that the war in Iraq was "a big mistake" is echoing around the world......

....And in another stunning development, John Murtha, an old-school Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania of 30 years' standing, demanded an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, "because they have become the target".

A decorated marine veteran and ranking Democrat on the House defence appropriations subcommittee, Mr Murtha has been a hawk on military matters, and voted for the 2003 invasion. But close to tears at times in a press conference, he said he had changed his mind.

"It is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the US, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region." His call for an "immediate redeployment" not only flies in the face of the refusal of the White House to set any date for a draw-down of American forces. Mr Murtha went further even than liberal Democrats, who mostly go no further than seeking a timetable for a phased pull-out of the 160,000 US troops in Iraq.

The latest polls show that up to two-thirds of Americans now oppose the war.

This also shows that Tony Blair has been a Bush lapdog!

It is about time that some members of the Democratics Party in the US and the Labour party in the UK finally get some backbomne rather than be Bush / Blair apologists!

My email to Judith Miller, ex-NYT reporter?

2005-11-11T00:30:00.000+02:00

Dear Judith,

I see you trying to grandstand your way to get more one-sided coverage about yourself in your web site.

Be honest and go through all the articles you spun using false intelligence supplied by Chalabhi. We, in the free world, do not have to depend on crappy newspapers as the New York Times!

All across the world, where we have a free press, we knew you were lying through your teeth!

In short, you and the New York Times Editors are nothing short of war criminals responsible for the death of thousands of American soldiers and many thousands of innocent Iraqis.

I will not even go into the question about you maybe have been treasonous to your own country - that is something you will have to live with by yourself.

I hope you can sleep at night with those thoughts and what people across the world think about you. Next to Bush and Blair, you must be the most hated persons in the world. Comforting thought?

If I was in your shoes, the demeaning jail would be a better place than in the minds of the many thousands of relatives of innocents that YOU may have "plotted to kill for YOUR story".

If you really felt strong, you would have allowed comments on your blog to hear publicly from people who do not think the way you do - but obviously you cannot face the truth "as others see it".

So be it.

Not much of a journalist if you are one who cannot listen to "all parts of a story".

Jacob Matthan
Oulu, Finland

Republican Support Plummeting

2005-11-08T20:10:00.000+02:00

Comment #17 posted by me the blog of Congressman John Conyers Jr.: jmatthan said on 11/8/05 @ 3:08am ET...

I wish I was so optimistic.

So long as US stays with the electronic voting systems out of control of an independent Election Commission, I do not give Congressman Conyers Jr. much hope.

I would love to see this wonderful Congressman as your President with Dennis Kucinch as his Secreatry of the Department of Peace.

Any further evidence of lapdog Blair required?

2005-11-07T22:30:00.000+02:00

Today's Guardian from the England has the article Blair's litany of failures on Iraq - ambassador's damning verdict

Meyer says PM failed to exert any leverage on Bush and was seduced by US power

Julian Glover and Ewen MacAskill
Monday November 7, 2005
The Guardian

Tony Blair repeatedly passed up opportunities to put a brake on the rush to war in Iraq, a failure that may have contributed to the country's present anarchy, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to Washington at the time, in his book DC Confidential, serialised in the Guardian from today.

more....

Read this Special report: foreign affairs | Special report: politics and Iraq :DC Confidential: Tony Blair and the wooing of America: Sir Christopher Meyer, former ambassador to the US, was uniquely placed to track the PM's White House charm offensive. In this first extract from his memoirs, he reveals how Labour grew to admire the Republicans: Monday November 7, 2005: The Guardian and then answer whether any more evidence is required that the poodle Tony Blair is Bush's lapdog with blood-stained paws and is also a war criminal?

Letters sent to US leading newspapers

2005-11-07T22:00:00.000+02:00

To the Editor of Washington Post:

Dear Editor,

Why have you not covered the story and the video (http://media.putfile.com/SNEIPER-OF-BAGHDAD) of a how a sniper is picking off US soldiers in Iraq at will? Scared of consequences?

See:

http://jmpolitics.blogspot.com

Is your newspaper Armstrong Williams-lite?

Jacob Matthan
Oulu, FINLAND

And to The Public Editor of The New York Times

Dear Public Editor,

Why has your newspaper not covered the story and the video (http://media.putfile.com/SNEIPER-OF-BAGHDAD) of a how a sniper is picking off US soldiers in Iraq at will? Scared of consequences? Or is it going to be left to Judith Miller to cover?

See:

http://jmpolitics.blogspot.com

Is your newspaper Armstrong Williams-lite?

Jacob Matthan
Oulu, FINLAND

Why the US can NEVER WIN this Occupation of Iraq

2005-11-07T08:20:00.000+02:00

This unique video footage of a sniper, totally untraceable, pot-shotting over 50 US troops (and please watch the whole video), shows why it is impossible for the US troops to ever gain control of this occupation.

Elusive sniper saps US morale in Baghdad

Commanders weigh their options as 'Juba' notches up more kills

Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Friday August 5, 2005
The Guardian

They have never seen Juba. They hear him, but by then it's too late: a shot rings out and another US soldier slumps dead or wounded.

There is never a follow-up shot, never a chance for US forces to identify the origin, to make the hunter the hunted. He fires once and vanishes.

Juba is the nickname given by American forces to an insurgent sniper operating in southern Baghdad. They do not know his appearance, nationality or real name, but they know and fear his skill.

200 such marksmen and you have the whole US ground forces army out of commission.

And the proof is here in the video, which obviously will NEVER be shown on US TV.

Someone please send this to Cindy Sheehan.

Dennis Kucinich gets it right

2005-11-06T04:35:00.000+02:00

Like Congressman John Conyers jr., Congressman Dennis Kucinich has been absoluely consistent.

He has a very clear statement today.

"Democrats, Don't Ignore the War", By Rep. Dennis Kucinich, AlterNet. Posted November 5, 2005 is absolutely right and tells people like Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden to stuff it.

National Democratic leaders have tried and tried again to pretend it's not happening -- and politically, it doesn't work. It's time for a true opposition party.

Time to follow the true leaders of the Democratic party - not the Bush-lite gutless variety!

Only two Congressman who have been consistent
Posted by: jmatthan on Nov 5, 2005 8:34 AM

From my experience, only two Congressmen have been completely consistent right from Day 1 - Congressman Conyers Jr. and Congressman Kucinich. (I am sure that there may be a couple more that I am not aware of.)

Please stay on this course Congressman Kucinich, for the sake of my world.

Senate Dems Call for DSM, Intelligence Answers

2005-11-02T18:17:00.000+02:00

This is with respect to the shutting down to the public of the US Senate by Democratic Senators yesterday invoking a rarely used Rule 21 to force the chamber into a closed session.

Comment #17 posted on Congressman John Conyers Jr.'s blog by me: jmatthan said on 11/2/05 @ 1:17am ET...

Congressman John Conyers Jr has been doing for years what the Democratic Senators were too weak-kneeded to do. I now hope they make up for lost time in the interest of the world. It is obvious that they are looking at the their own falling ratings and now feel "compelled" to do something. I hope some of them will have some spine to stand beside one of the greatest Congressman of all time - your goodself, Congressman Conyers Jr.

Let us see how the posturing continues!

Delhi blasts - Shocking! Responsibility?

2005-10-30T20:25:00.000+02:00

I hope the Indian Government looks deeper at the techniques, issues and likely instigators, before associating these terror blasts with Islamists. To me, it points directly to the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) destabilizers. Remember that it was PNAC that put forward the vision for the invasion and occupation of Iraq!

For the full text, please visit today's entry (30th October 2005) at Jacob's Blog

What Did the President and Vice President Know and...

2005-10-29T16:20:00.000+02:00

Comment #39 posted on the blog of Congressman John Conyers jr.: jmatthan said on 10/29/05 @ 12:16am ET...

It warmed my heart today that during the release of the indictments, the first comment that flashed at the base of the CNN screen here in Finland was the comment by Congressman John Conyers Jr. that today was the beginning and not the end of the process.

It shows that Congressman Conyers Jr. is being watched and listened to like a hawk and what he says is of tremendous interest and value AROUND THE WORLD!

Thank you Congressman for being totally on top of the subject.

Iran's Irresponsible President

2005-10-28T08:27:00.000+02:00

Comment posted by Jacob Matthan at October 27, 2005 02:26 PM

Was "shock and awe" and all its collateral damage of innocents who have been wiped off this universe already, the action of a responsible pResident and Prime Minister?

Which is more "responsible"?

A threat or a completed action?

Just a thought of double standards.