northern light

Space Invaders or Maybe the Banks Don't Know Squat

2010-12-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

Timothy Geitner said a few months back that 40% of the houses in foreclosure remain unoccupied and that that is having a disastrous effect on neighborhoods and causing stress on municipal services .

In European cities , in Germany, England, Holland, Spain for instance or the case of Christiana in Denmark , alternatives expressed themselves by squattering vacant buildings, houses and in the aforementioned case of Christiana, an abandoned military base.

Why not stand with those who have lost their homes by putting them back in them through methods such as these ? Seems like a good way to bring attention to the issue, get some free press and provide housing to the homeless and dispossessed in a nation whose people are facing record poverty because of the banks and big business !

Our laws were created for the good of the citizens , the citizens were not created for the good of the laws !Apparently those laws now only apply to 98% of the population.

Killing more than a million in an illegal war based on transparent lies for resources and then profitting handsomely by doing so,( halliburton and the carlyle group )

Torturing and kidnapping individuals never formally charged with a crime and then using the states secret defense to shield those responsible from justice,

Spying on the American public en masse without a warrant and then passing retroactive immunity for the criminality,

Defrauding millions in the stock and housing markets and then putting billions of borrowed dollars, to be paid by the poor and their children with interest, into the hands of those who perpetrated the fraud, people who then promptly awarded themselves multi million dollar bonuses for their service to the elite on wallstreet .

Violating virtually every law known to God and man is alright apparently, if you have the right connections.

The rule of law is what keeps society civil . Perhaps the elite should consider this before violating them so openly !

Dancing With Tyrants or Why Civil Disobedidience Is Now The Only Way Forward

2010-12-14T09:46:00.000-08:00

Recall, if you will, the sudden rise of Barack Hussein Obama and his quick ascent to the throne.

An unknown , unelected, constitutional law professor seemingly made to fit history, right down to his middle name, at the time of the worst constitutional crisis in our nations history .

Introduced to the nation at the democratic national convention by the party establishment, Obama served less than half his term as Senator while campaigning for and clinching both the democratic nomination and presidency all at the same time. Pretty slick huh .

Remember FISA ?

Along side the other contenders for the democratic nomination for president Obama pledged not to allow retroactive immunity for the telecoms. The FISA laws had teeth, carrying a penalty of up to $10,000 and five years in jail for each citizen whose rights had been violated. FISA would have locked up Bush officials and anyone caught spying on American citizens for something like a million years and this was seen by progressives as the best chance of restoring what had been destroyed under Bush and bringing those responsible for dismantling our rights to justice . Then, just shortly after receiving the nomination, surprise, a complete about face on our best chance at restoring democracy in America.

But he would still stand firm for the constitution in the courts and roll back the abuses of the Bush era once coronated we were told .

Well we now know that Obama has defended all the powers he inherited from Bush and even expanded his evil footprint claiming even the right to assassinate Americans abroad and essentially eliminating Miranda. Spying without oversight had reached a level that could be admired by Stalin, who lacked today's technology . Innocent individuals tortured and later released were prevented from ever seeking retribution in the courts . Bush administration officials, implicated in shameful crimes never before imagined possible in the US, were shielded through the use of the states secret privilege in American courts and defended against all comers abroad .

The democratic super majority

Progressives and independents aware of our nations descent into tyranny worked feverishly to place "progressive democrats in power in Washington over two election cycles. These democrats then voted in the largest military budget since the second world war with the majority we handed them , a majority larger than any enjoyed by republicans for over seventy years . At a time of record poverty and at a time when the disparity of wealth was greater than at any time since 1928 our nation was spending as much as the entire planet combined on it's military and invading oil and gas rich nations for their resources.

Torture, secret prisons,use of the states secret privilege, warrant less wiretapping,extrajudicial rendition,the loss of habeas corpus,military commissions,and indefinite detention of suspected enemy combatants all continued unabated . Practices such as signing statements and the supposed reinstatement of posse comitatus which Bush attached a signing statement to have never been adequately addressed and the new administration worked to eliminate Miranda protections while proclaiming the right to assassinate American citizens abroad without judicial interference.

This has been, from the onset , a very involved con job by people responsible for the deaths of 100s of 1000's at least, who have demonstrated a complete lack of compassion for the average man here or abroad and who run big business, the government and both parties.

We are living in a surveillance state without meaningful constitutional protections for it's citizens, global warming threatens our existence as a species on this planet in a very real way and the corporate entities which control our government are obligated to produce as much profit for their stockholders as possible making ethical behavior essentially impossible and outside their abilities .

It may make you feel good to believe that signing petitions and running progressive candidates in the primaries will change this ,or that voting once every two years in federal elections will help save America but may I suggest that that is rather naive. I believe that without a popular uprising involving the majority of the American population and direct non violent non cooperation en masse with the powers that be, we will never see any change meaningful enough to address the dire situation our nation and planet find themselves in .

Change You Can Believe In

2010-06-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

As long as oil companies control our energy policies , as long as the insurers and big drug companies control our health care , as long as the military machine controls our economy ,we can never hope to exercise any control of our destiny as a democracy .

We will only continue to catalog and whine about events after they have already happened until we break the chain of corporate control of our collective destinies as a people .

We must unite and focus the outrage , expressed across the political spectrum .

A national boycott of big oil and a general strike nationwide must now be considered as the only viable way of pushing for a constitutional amendment barring corporate person hood from controlling our democracy .

Anything else is just ignoring the fact that we are being played and the change will never come from voting for either of the two parties at the voting booth .

Lets stop commenting on the news and start making some !

A symbolic boycott of a major oil corporation

2010-06-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

A boycott using the oil spill is the best place to raise awareness of our power as a population ! BP alone is too obvious ! We should promote taking out one of it’s competitors and perhaps BP as well .

All done with the the final goal of planting the seed of eliminating corporate influence of our democracy !

Opportunity and Treason

2010-01-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

The Massachusetts election was a message to the establishment in Washington that they are too cozy with the banks, phrma, the health insurers, and wall street . Only a day later the Supreme court hands down a decision that amounts to treason, allowing corporations whose person hood is an obvious falsehood to trump the people’s voice in our faltering democracy .

The best solution in the wake of both the special election and this obscenity from the supreme court is to pass a constitutional amendment revoking the ridiculous claim of person hood for corporations and there by protections under the first amendment .

Entities which exist simultaneously all over the globe , who can clone themselves , have unlimited resources , never die and are comprised of many stockholders who are not American citizens are not people !

The arrogance of the five justices may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise. However if this ruling stands, without a constitutional amendment to fix it ,the only place democracy will find a voice is in the streets !

The root of all our largest problems in Washington is the intrusion of corporations in our government .

All attempts at reform and to address the dire problems which confront our species on planet earth, war, poverty, and the environment are rebuffed and repelled by these moral less entities, who by there very legal definition exist solely to pursue profit for their stockholders.

This may well be the best opportunity we have ever been given to fix the root of the problem !

No problems only solutions !

Think of this ruling as part of the “healing process” . This is an opportunity !

Our opponent is off balance.

It has been a piece meal approach up till now .

By Scotus over stepping themselves they have left their flank exposed.

Just because they are rich and powerful doesn’t mean they’re smart.

Tell the democrats that the population which handed them an electoral defeat in Mass,because of bank bailouts and talk of a mandate unanimously agrees that corporations have too much power in their government!

Let any republican who wants to go down in defeat in November oppose such an amendment

Why the Massachusetts Elections Are The Next Best Thing to a Popular Uprising

2010-01-18T07:56:00.000-08:00

I'm a progressive and my hard work helped the democrats over two election cycles into a majority in both houses of congress and the presidency .

If Coakley loses, The Health Insurer Corporate Welfare Act of 2010 goes down and the American people win.
May I suggest a little hard ball ?

A Coakley defeat would be a shot across the bow of the establishment .

It would eliminate the 60 vote super majority we gave them .

It would kill the corporations bogus reform as it is now or force the democrats to do what they wouldn’t do to pass what the public wanted , the public option, by using only 51 votes in the senate.

It would send a wake up call to the party’s leadership and all those seeking re election that unless they move left their screwed in November .

The symbolic value of this being Kennedy’s vacated seat , the man who this reform is to be named after is priceless.Perhaps the symbolic value of that seat is more important than the seat itself ?

The downside ? The loss of a senate seat that will only be occupied for two years by a non progressive candidate !

The End of American Democracy or atleast the pretense of it

2010-01-12T09:14:00.001-08:00

The line between corporate economic interests and American governance is quite likely to become blurred irreparably this week as the Supreme court is set to decide the fate of our democracy and the ability of the citizenry to have a reasonable voice in it going into the future .

The Supreme Court's decision in the campaign finance reform case Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission , which may be announced as early as today ,will be a watershed moment for American democracy with far reaching implications .

The case revolves around corporate funding during the last election cycle and a movie on Hillary Clinton. At issue is whether as legal "persons" corporate money spent to influence elections is protected under the first amendment as free speech and whether limits on corporate money spent during elections should be eliminated altogether !

With the increasing corporate control of the military and intelligence communitites, as well as the likelihood of a mandate to purchase the flawed product of the health insurers , a decision in favor of persons which, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out during the Citizens United oral argument, are not endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, seems inevitable.

Tenderly

2009-12-24T13:58:00.000-08:00

Tenderly

After Chet Atkins

Mistakes by Freeman

Deuce Ambience

2009-12-08T16:57:00.000-08:00

music by Django

mistakes by freeman

Minor Swing

2009-12-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

music by Django

mistakes by freeman

The corporations lawyers

2009-10-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

Anyone who supports less than a robust public option ,Obama included , is legislating on behalf of corporations over the wishes of the the citizenry ,period .

According to the CBO the stronger the public option the larger the savings to the American people and today when asked by the press Harry Reid said ,” All the national polls show a wide majority of Americans support the public option ".

The American People when polled for decades have supported medicare for all at rates of near or above 70 % .

The public option has been pronounced dead and revived so often over the last several months as to make Lazarus dizzy solely it would seem as a result of a continuing uproar from the public.

What more need to be said ?

Why the debate ?

If the actual goal were to provide health care to the American people than anything else than other than universal coverage under a single payer system is garbage . If the goal is about keeping a system in place which allows the middle man ( insurers ) to drive the price up while providing nothing of actual benefit to the consumer than hot air and paperwork at great expense then congress is crafting a thing of art .

The debate is only about saving the corporations profits at the expense of the taxpayers wishes ,health and savings !

What could be more obvious !

My Attorney Bernie

Music by Frishberg
mistakes by freeman

A meeting with my senator's legal aide

2009-10-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

I was in Washington DC recently and made an appointment to discuss the seeming death of our democracy with Senator Patty Murray's legal adviser , Andrew Rowe . We discussed , signing statements , posse comitatus , domestic spying , national security letters , indefinite detention , torture , several court cases involving the invocation of the state secrets defence by the administration , and the Patriot Act over about 45 minutes .

Mr. Rowe listened attentively to my concerns over a government that no longer follows it's own laws . The sheer volume of evidence that the Obama administration is embracing and even expanding many of the most egregious policies of the Bush years was obvious to both of us and when I finally pleaded that he tell me where I was wrong in this appraisal of the current state of affairs he looked very depressed and said he couldn't because he completely agrees with me and that the Senator is also VERY concerned .

Okay , I asked him what can the Senator do , in regards to these troubling policies . He pointed out that Patty Murray had voted against the Patriot Act in 2006 . He told me that as a legislator Mrs. Murrray could only do so much ,and that these policies would ultimately have to be challenged in the courts .

Reigning in the Patriot Act and FISA revisited

2009-09-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

Russ Feingold , Bernie Sanders and a group of other senators introduced new legislation on Thursday , constitution day ,to deal with three provisions set to expire this year in the Patriot Act , the so called roving wiretap , lone wolf and library provisions .

The justice act or "Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools in Counterterrorism Effort" Act would also amend several other provisions , not set to expire ,which many critics believe violate civil rights of Americans guaranteed under the constitution .

National Security Letters, which were struck down by a lower court and later upheld in Federal appeals court because the gag provision was deemed a violation of first amendment rights and the FISA amendments act ( FAA ) which granted telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution for helping the NSA listen in the the international phone calls of innocent Americans ,a clear violation of the fourth amendment .

Hearings will be held next week in both the house judiciary sub commitee and the senate judiciary committee on the patriot act . Contact your representatives and tell them to support these efforts !

If not you, who ? If not now, when ?

2009-09-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

When will the greed to do good over take greed for wealth and power ? Our earth , the polar ice caps melting , the primeval forests that once covered it's surface cut down and indeed our very survival as a species hangs in the balance .

Will there be anyone to write our history , that we perished while all the while holding the solutions in our hands because we lacked the ability to evolve beyond groteque self interest and nationalism toward a greater awareness of our own divinity ,and never managed to see the profit in kindness and compassion ?

Hairless heart

music by Steve Hackett

mistakes by freeman

This Day Keeps Getting Better

2009-09-17T18:57:00.000-07:00

Okay somebody pinch me .

The Baucus Bill is dead , or at least appears to be without major changes . Killed not once but twice in the Senate . First by Rockefeller in the finance committee , then by Rolland Burris ,who promised to vote against it on the Senate floor without a public option , leaving only 59 votes for it's passage ,60 votes being necessary for cloture . Progressives in the house had already pledged to kill any bill without a strong public option .

According to Howard Dean at least 218 House and 51 Senate Democrats have said they would vote for the final health care bill if it included the choice of a public option . Now, of course, it remains to be seen what kind of public option they'll be voting for , but still a very welcome about face for a plan that was said to have withered on the vine only yesterday .

Then the news that Obama will not go through with the construction the planned missile shield in Eastern Europe with which the Bush administration had been surrounding Russia . Later the news that a group of US Senators has unveiled legislation aiming to strip telecommunications companies of immunity from lawsuits on domestic spying , Fisa revisited .

If this wasn't enough Bill O'Reilly tells his viewers that while the public option is dead , he actually supports it .Okay I do believe in unicorns .Happy Constitution Day !

The Lady and the Unicorn
arr / John Renbourne
mistakes by freeman

. Thinking outside the box .

2009-09-16T19:10:00.000-07:00

Sense of Urgency

Original music by freeman

Video and graphs NASA

2009-09-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

Eonverye that can raed this carp rsaie your hnad.

If you can raed this, you have a sgtrane mnid too Can you raed this? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Azanmig huh?

Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

If you followd this so far , a song atonal for your reward .

Music by Dodson , mistakes by Freeman

The Super Hero

2009-09-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

Self be your guide . Self be your leader . Do not look for any other leader .

Gautama Buddha ... Dharmapada

There is a Zen saying . " If you meet the Buddha on the road kill the Buddha ". I wonder where that leaves politicians ?

Rock stars are so yesterday .

Where the public option stands today

2009-09-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

A day after the President's speech on Health care reform the democratic leadership signalled their willingness to walk away from the public option . This is , of course a serious disappointment to progressives who after helping to get Mr. Obama elected have seen little of their agenda addressed and watched as the new administration embraced or sought to expand many of the worst policies of the previous administration . Having hoped to see an honest debate on single payer health insurance , which the American Public has overwhelmingly supported in polls for decades ,but was never even on the table , the public option was seen as a compromise . The progressive caucus has promised to kill any bill that lacks a strong public option in the House . Perhaps it is a coincidence that within hours of Nancy Pelosi's walking away from the public option , Steve Elmendorf , chief lobbyist for United Health invited the well connected to a $ 2,400 dollar a plate fund raiser for Nancy at his Washington DC home or perhaps it is what it appears to be , a little quid pro quo for a job well done , I don't know . It does however illustrate the situation of what real reform faces in the trenches in Washington . Rep Raul Grijalva , co chair of the progressive caucus plans a head count early next week .Here is a petitionfor the public option .

The Ancient by Steve Howe
mistakes by freeman

The more things change ...

2009-09-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

In Chile the CIA helped Pinochet to power on 9 11 1973 .
While at a joint press conference with Chile's current president Obama took 1 question from the S.American press .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Actually, Ben, I’m going to make an exception. We’ll get one question from the Chilean press. How’s that?
Q Mr. President, yes, I’d like to ask you, I realize that your agenda is moving forward. But I’d like to ask you, President Bachelet in a previous trip to the United States made echo of an old joke: "There’s never been a coup d’état in the United States, because there’s no American embassy." The point being that almost --
PRESIDENT BACHELET: That was a joke from an American guy. (Laughter.) I just said it was a good joke.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes, it is. (Laughter.)
Q The point being that almost no Latin American nation has been free from CIA -- bloody CIA intervention, Chile being a prime example, President Bachelet being one of its victims. Is it time for a historical apology?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, look, I think you answered your own question right at the beginning, which is I’m interested in going forward, not looking backward. I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world. I think there have been times where we’ve made mistakes. But I think that what is important is looking at what our policies are today, and what my administration intends to do in cooperating with the region."
Allow me to point out that Michelle Bachelets father was tortured to death and both she and her mother were tortured !
Presently in S. America the US gives a free pass to the Honduran coup leaders trained at the school of the America's , the secretary of states former campaign manager Lannie Davis represents the wealthy business community there and the US military stations itself in Colombian bases having seemingly been directly involved in a coup attempt in Venezuela !
In Mexico city recently the president said this : "the same critics who say that the US has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say we are always intervening and the yankees need to get out of latin America .You can't have it both ways ".
Disingenuous at best !

The graffiti of Valparaiso

2009-09-12T17:00:00.001-07:00

The writing on the wall is off the wall .....

Valparaiso is very left wing and built on steep hillsides with incredible views of the Pacific Ocean and the harbor . Once extremely prosperous...

An original ...

Valparaiso was said to be the San Fransisco of South America before the entire continent became" America's back yard " with the building of the Panama Canal .

It and all of South America fell into economic ruin afterwards .

Okay .........this Mural,painted by a friend and rival of Diego Rivera's at the mexican school is actually in Chillan .

Inti Illimani ... Alturas

2009-09-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

Love this tune !The band who performed it ,Inti Illimani, from Chile , was out of the country touring in Europe when the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a military coup supported by the U.S. on .....and get this ...9 11 1973 . Their friend and fellow performer Victor Jara was arrested and tortured along with over 2000 of his countrymen in the national Stadium .
Victor ,hands broken , a guitar thrown at him and mockingly told to try playing now , actually began to sing with many of the other victims before he was shot through with machine gun fire and his body thrown in the street in Santiago . Over 200o people were tortured to death over the next few days .
911 1973 .