“It is the ultimate definition of lip service that Secretary of State Clinton would be trumpeting the U.S. government’s supposed concerns for free speech rights, and this man would be simultaneously, brutalized and arrested, for engaging in a peaceful act of dissent at her speech.” (-Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund) "I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States."
(-Secretary of State Clinton, March 2, 2009)

"Back in the USA, the legal volleys have begun. Two weeks ago, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center, filed a lawsuit in federal court, against the Department of Homeland Security. The suit alleges violations of the Fourth Amendment, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act (which calls for public hearings). Immersed in its own bureaucratic bubble of secrecy and inaccessibility, Homeland Security cites 'national security' as justifying its unresponsiveness to critics. Napolitano wrote in USA TODAY that our security depends on being 'more creative' in adapting to evolving threats. Indiscriminate pat-downs are anything but creative. Yet the department listens to commercial lobbyists pushing scanner sales, including former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff. Earlier corporate pitchmen sold the department on the notorious puffer machines. This $36 million boondoggle forced Homeland Security to remove these failed screeners from airports, last year, at considerable embarrassment and expense. The department says full-body imaging is aimed at prevention. If so, why do passengers on the 15,000 U.S. registered business aircraft escape screening?"
(-Ralph Nader)

“I believe the PATRIOT Act represents the cracked domestic crown jewel of a disastrous global war on terror, which led us to attack Iraq based on lies, invade Afghanistan based on a misreading of history, indulge in occupations, which have fueled insurgencies, extend war to Pakistan, and other countries, demonstrating a total lack of common sense. The PATRIOT Act issues from a pestiferous soil, laced with lies and distortions. We created a national security state which threatens our Constitution, and weakens our basic liberties. This is not about whether you are a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, but whether we can actually realize that we have been sold a bill of goods, lies about WMD's, questions about the nature of an anthrax attack, which caused us all too willingly to limit our civil liberties.... We also have an obligation to defend the Constitution. We have an obligation to defend the truth. Freedom isn't free and we shouldn't freely give our freedoms away."
(-Dennis Kucinich)

"The First Black President just gave birth to an unmistakably Republican budget – and everybody knows who that ugly baby’s daddy is. For the past two years, Barack Obama has been making out quite publicly with George Bush’s corporate friends. But that shouldn’t be a scandal; after all, Obama has always told everyone in range of his voice that his main goal in life is to forge a grand consensus with the GOP, a bipartisan understanding between the Right and the Center Right. The result is an Obama budget that is all sliced up, like the loser in a knife fight – only, Obama and his corporate executives-on-loan at the White House did all the cutting, themselves. Obama is showing such extraordinary talent for obliterating poor and working class programs across the board, he’s making Republicans look redundant and obsolete. From community block grants to Section 8 housing vouchers to child care to Pell Grants to home heating oil for the poor, Obama has preemptively savaged all that decent people hold dear in the social safety net, and is in enthusiastic, principled agreement with the Republicans that the big cuts are still to come, in Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare..."
(-Glen Ford)

"Americans are walking around with blinders. The current government is no different than the government that preceded it. The country is involved in a myriad of ground actions in countries across the globe. One must wonder if World War II ever ended. We spend an inordinate amount of our nation’s budget on weapons of war, at the expense of a crumbling infrastructure and rampant unemployment. What I want to know is if this is the proper way to spend the budget money we have? I think not. Where are the citizens that realize that we spend far too much on our military? Have they bought into the myth that there are clandestine enemies seeking our demise? We can’t even find these so called jihadists that threaten our way of life. This is all a scam to broaden our military capabilities to gain world hegemony. For those that don’t know what that word means: “Hegemony is the political, economic, ideological or cultural power exerted by a dominant group over other groups. It requires the consent of the majority to keep the dominant group in power. While initially referring to the political dominance of certain ancient Greek city-states over their neighbors, the term has come to be used in a variety of other contexts, in particular Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. The term is often mistakenly used to suggest brute power or dominance, when it is better defined as emphasizing how control is achieved through consensus not force.[2]” Wikipedia This is what the United States seeks. One of the reasons that we need to do this is because multi-national corporations have outsourced American manufacturing to the point where we have become a service economy that produces almost nothing except weapons of war. Our steel industry has been moved to other countries. We hardly manufacture any of the goods we use.. We produce great aircraft carriers, but how does that help the average family? This country lives in an aura of fear. The government is constantly raising the threat level, telling us that a 'terrorist' attack is imminent. This is hogwash. They have no more idea what the terrorists are planning than you or I. That is if there are any so-called 'terrorists' left."
(-Timothy V. Gatto)

“After 4+ years of research since retirement in 2002, I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government. It is now time to take our country back.”
(-Lt. Col. Guy S. Razer, U.S. Air Force, ret. Combat fighter Pilot; MS Aeronautical Science)

“The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”
(-Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group)

“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is The People vs. The Banks.”
(- Lord Acton, Historian, 1834 -1902)

The party's over, boys and girls. The word is out about all these billionaire Democrat phonies, who represent the exact same interests as the lawless, torturing, neo-con Republicans. We were warned, by many, in the last big Presidential election, but many of us were still more television-brainwashed than we realized. We got seduced by an empty suit, and vague slogans. The big hoax of two different political parties is a whole lot of hot air. The RepublicRats won't allow third parties on to ballots, into televised debates, or very much access to the big-media. If you're on Youtube, you probably realize that Kerry and Hillary are both just rich, shameless, hardcore, rightwing, war mongers, who are completely comfortable watching their police-state gestapo taser, cuff, rough-up, and bloody peacefully protesting, honor students, veterans, and war heroes, for questioning their policies, in the Post-Patriot Act, Authoritarian, Permanent War-State, we now inhabit. Radical elements within the U.S. government led by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others used the political theater of 9/11, what most people in the world believe was a staged, false-flag attack, to undermine the democratic rights of the American people, by what amounts to suspending the Constitution and replacing it with what is essentially, fascist legislation: the Patriot Act. The co-author of the Patriot Act, Mike Chertoff, is not coincidentally, the profiteering former head of DHS under Bush, AND...get this....Lobbyist-in-chief, and owner of Rapiscan, the company that manufactures the porno-imaging, dangerous radiation machines, now installed in all the airports, at billions of dollars expense to U.S. tax-payers. Obama, Clinton, Kerry, Biden, Holder, and company continue expanding every bad, democracy-killing, war mongering, rightwing Bush policy. The big-media, owned by war profiteers, and weapons manufacturers, are complicit in covering up the truth about the wars, TSA fondlings, Obama wire-taps/his broken promises, refusal to close the torture-jails, and brazen Federal attacks on peaceful, and law abiding peace activists.

Some kind of chemical garbage is visibly being dumped on us, from unmarked planes in the sky, and not even Kucinich or Paul, or Ventura are commenting on it. The Chamber of Commerce and various energy companies are spying on us, as well as the NSA, TSA, and any bored cop who has zero regard for the Fourth Amendment. Many folks are waking up, but it seems like over half the population is still in some crazy narco-cable tv-pharmaceutical induced, make-believe, obliviousness. Bill Of Rights eviscerating, Obama, is no better than Bush and Cheney. These guys all work for the same shadow regime--NOT "we, the people". The whole thing's one big sham, a pyramid scheme, where you have no rights, under these totalitarian secret police. The reality of it all is so grim, we're all so poor, the fatcats are all so unfathomably rich, endless war is so profitable for the few...it's easy to see why the college educated, baby boomer, middle-class, masses prefer to stay doped up on credit card debt, internet porn, Ikea furniture, and their willing, "see no evil" blindness, that stems, directly, from their deep-seated, unreasonable, selfish addiction, to their comfy positions and easy money. The military locks up true heroes for revealing the war crimes so routinely committed by these mercenary war contractors. Most people in positions of real influence, like the media-class, refuse to speak out, for fear of ever jeopardizing their plush lifestyles. The wingnuts and their enabling puppet, Obama, are still using the Old Cheney/Kissinger Playbook-create a fake crisis, and take away the people's rights. They're systemically undermining all the liberal institutions, defunding NPR and PBS, Killing the unions. Bail-outs for big-business, occupations. Shock Doctrine. Obama's in bed with 'em. Has he sought to scale back the top secret, deficit multiplying, domestic spying apparatus? No. Has he sought to repeal the Patriot Act, close Gitmo, or end the occupations? Nope. Has he even once, stood up to insurance companies, union busting big business, B.P., the neo-con hawks, Monsanto, Wall Street, or the lawless Blackwater mercenaries? Uhh, nope, not really. While the United States will spend $1 trillion for war, multiple occupations and weapons in 2011, 30 million people in the U.S. remain unemployed or severely underemployed, and cuts in education, libraries, parks, housing and health care are imposing a huge toll on the people. The attacks against public-sector workers in Wisconsin and Ohio are only the latest attacks on working people from the corporate elites and their political representatives.

It was poignant to see the postmen and the firemen of Wisconsin show up with their drums, and flags, and bag-pipes, to stand with other unions, under assault by this corporate-whore, Koch toadie, Scott Walker, who keeps threatening to bring in the National Guard to bust up the protest in the style of Reagan/Mubarak/Kerry/Hillary/Mayor Daley/Kent State, etc. Are the National Guardsmen gonna fire on the firemen, like they do the hippies and college students? I think not! Go Labor! Go UNIONS! The people need to re-organize, and start acting as if we are all in this, together. We have to stand united, to mobilize against the big business authoritarians. Even conservatives are waking up to the fact that the unemployed and working poor are the only jailable classes. Cops don't go to jail. Wall Street doesn't go to jail. War criminals don't go to jail. Only poor people, for petty, non-violent, drug offenses, mostly. I've been talking about these sad trends to my associates, for a long time now, but none of 'em wanna dirty their hands with the problems of the oppressed, not until it actually happens to someone they care about. Well, now, some of the injustices that have been ruining the lives of the poor, and the workers of this country, and immigrants, and people of color, for a long time, now, are starting to affect some of the more posh folks in the ivory towers, who thought they were untouchable, just, like, fifteen minutes ago. I merely shook my head "no", at the local Fox news affiliate wank-off, tooling around in some bourgeois car, with the Fox logo painted on the side, and this jerk was so shocked and furious, that anyone would ever dare question his mighty media-empire, that he almost wrecked his automobile. He was visibly enraged, that I would convey disapproval of his luxuriant lifestyle, made primarily, by lying a nation into war, and trying to divide the people, by finding scapegoats to blame for the crimes of the investment class. Disgusting. Fox sucks. This guy's rich, so he's used to people smiling at him, kissing his ass, he knows he is part of the privileged cop-state, the people who get high, behind closed doors, who can break the law contantly, control the blackmarket drug economy, profit directly from the bogus prohibitions, all while they ruin other people's lives, and throw poor people in jail for tiny infractions. The oil baron Koch brothers, who fund much of the pro-corruption, pro-pollution, anti-labor, anti-reform movements, and bus-in all the looney, racist, rightwing nuts to protest against anything, that could actually, ever, benefit the nation's poor, and middle class, constantly use Fox TV, to orchestrate these choreographed, paid-for ("astro-turfed") bullshit media events. Their twenty four hour a day, talk radio, faux news disinformation, on all these hate-spewing fraudcasts have effectively confused many of the misguided members of the hijacked tea parties. The Koch brothers have also been convening secret conventions of their permanent class-war's lawless robber-barons, including Supreme Court justices, and various Fox propagandists, to develop more effecient ways of continuing their non-stop campaign to steal pensions, bust unions, outlaw protest, rob the poor and give to the super-rich. If people don't stand up and fight for the collective bargaining rights of teacher's unions in Wisconsin, it's going to have a terrifying domino-effect on worker's rights, henceforth. Chris Hedges, Michael Moore, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Glen Ford, Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Scahill, Tom Morrello, Gore Vidal, Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman...almost all the liberal and progressive leaders are trying to reach and wake-up the dwindling American middle-class, who seemingly still foolishly believes in friendly, phoney, Brand Obama, even while, he cracks down on activists and war protesters, turns off old people's heat in the winter, does nothing for minorities, or the poor, and essentially, behaves exactly like an extremely right-wing, imperialist, police-state despot, he was elected to oppose. It's tough to communicate to the fifty percent, who slavishly are so owned by the TV. You got folks still taking that clownish buffoon, Palin, seriously, when she insists unions should no longer be allowed to organize-that it's the working poor who should have to "be willing to sacrifice", so people like her, and Beck, and their billionaire bankers can wallow in more power, money, and war on the backs of the shrunken middle class, and workers of the land. Do people really believe her winking brand of bear a-shootin', gun a-totin', Jesus a-lovin'...or is it all just smiley code for racism? You betcha...And tapping in to that racist, "white fear" market, to blame the immigrants for Nafta, blame the unions, blame the black people, blame teachers, blame the Ay-rabs...just don't blame the military profiteers, international financiers, the central banks, the corporate elite, the Nixon alumni, or the predator lenders! Goon Beck keeps babbling about the "shadow empire", as if, he's not just a ventriloquist dummy for Evil Media Emperor, Rupert Murdoch. It's all so backasswards, deceptive, dishonest, and you have to be crazy to keep watching tv, at this point. They want you to think that sending all the living wage jobs to slavish Chinese sweat-shops was somehow good for YOU, that stealing all that oil from the people of Iraq was gonna "trickle down", that they've "cleaned up" the B.P./Halliburton oil catastrophe in the Gulf. Hillary even wants to start a war with Iran. She's a neo-con. So is Obama. The Nixonite, neo-con, wing-nuts responsible for this mess are all back in the corporate press-Cheney, Rumsfeld, W, Gingrich, are all out on the book trail, revving up the old propaganda machine for a new campaign, more wars, more political theater and shock doctrine scare tactics, and since the establishent Democrats are in no way, a real opposition party, anything the super rich fatcats of the financial oligarchy want, gets rammed through under cover of "terror", "budget crisis", "disaster", "too big to fail, "national security", etc. It is frightening the money these radical rightwingers have to squash unions, control dissent through infiltration, and agent provocateurs, to spy on protesters, and control the big media. If you go to a thrift store, there are always hundreds of those Hannity, Palin, Limbaugh, O'reilley extreme rightwing books-they publish their jive war mongering, divide and conquer propaganda, and saturate the land with this crap. This is why true alternative media, print fanzines, and honest grass roots activism has become so crucial, to any remote hopes we have of reclaiming the rights from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to peacefully assemble, the right to free speech, etc., promised by their eviscerated Constitution....Which all brings us back to the soul burning question, what does the true blue rock'n'roll renegade underground activist listen to while making stencils, banners, stickers and t-shirts before loading the gang into the van to join the good folks at the demonstration? Well, I have a few suggestions. Wayne Kramer, Billy Bragg, and Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros will never let you down. "There is Power In The Union", "Johnny Appleseed", "Know Your rights", etc., but also, Jason Heath And The Greedy Souls classic, "Anachist Girl", or how about this new band in the fun loving tradition of the Distillers, THE LAST GANG? Yeah, they're pretty cool. Brenna Red will rock your socks. A fun, upbeat soundtrack for the streetcore punk'n'rollin' shock resistance. No sweat. I'm only here to help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvPvRB6hodQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXo6vxU3R5M