The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator Barack Obama’s March 18, 2008 speech on race in Philadelphia, as provided by his presidential campaign and published as such in The New York Times. It is repeated here neither to support nor detract but because it is. The United States may or may not change, but it is not going to cease to exist. How that occurs may affect all of us.

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbies with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent fire storm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their world view in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

By John Steppling
Source Cyrano's Journal

I CAME ACROSS TWO RECENT ARTICLES relating to the creation of enemies, and the dehumanizing of same. One was a release from central command regarding the sale of t-shirts on military bases in Iraq. The t-shirts in question had anti Islamic slogans and jokes printed on them. Now, the sale of these t-shirts was being stopped, finally, but the slogans were mostly about killing "towel heads" and "sand niggers".

The other item was an interview in Front Page magazine (the far right nut sheet put out by David Horowitz).

This "interview" with a "former" Muslim was pure bullshit—pure right wing racist PR — but it was being widely read by the troops, according to my soldier pal in Iraq.

The "interview" with a "former" Muslim was mostly about how one dimensional Islam was, how dangerous it was, how "freedom loving" people must fight this religion and so forth.


Now, taken together what struck me was the naked de-humanizing of the enemy. This is what most armies try to achieve with their soldiers, making it easier for these soldiers to kill without conscience.

The prevailing POV for a good many Americans these days is that Islam is backward and bad. The disturbing thing is how in an age of mass culture and media this mind set is finding its way into mainstream thinking. Sadism is popularly accepted; witness 24 and the new Rambo film (which is so bad it really doesn’t deserve any substantive comment).

There are many other examples, the entire "debate" about waterboarding (TORTURE) is reflective of this new sadism. I should be clear that mankind has always been sadistic, it’s only that it has of late found its way as a narrative trope and prevailing value into public discourse. That high elected officials in the US now openly embrace torture and mass death as part of their realpolitk seems a significant step toward total barbarism.

The recent coverage of Chavez and the tensions with Colombia are a good example too of the intensification of mass propaganda. Greg Palast has an excellent piece… http://www.gregpalast.com/ and this other piece on same topic… http://www.counterpunch.org/hylton03062008.html

THE US HAS REACHED Nazi like dimensions in disinformation. Corporate news simply denies viewers anything remotely like serious news or fact. When the NYTimes hires Bill Kristol, one knows full well they won’t be hiring a Greg Eillich or Ed Herman or Michael Parenti to balance things out. Obama and Hillary blame Ecuador and Chavez and not Colombia. The Imperialist power again sides with the fascists. The increase in what amounts to ethnic cleansing in Gaza is another side of this Orwellian fact-blackout. Here is Richard Seymour, on one of his better topics…. http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/03/israel-planning-ethnic-cleansing-in.html

This post is short, again due to time restraints, but I suspect the rise of a new aestheticization of sadism is a step qualitatively different and further than that of a Dirty Harry, say. This is the hyper drive in propaganda that results from the increase in contradictions and tension in the society and culture. It is dependent on compartmentalizing psychologically, and on mass media cooperation to achieve a near total numbness in people. Invent "bad guys" and then make them even badder — and create narratives to justify the most blatant repression of civil liberties and basic compassion. The new steroidally deformed and blanker Rambo is the poster boy for such reflex violence and de-contextualizing. Mercenaries as heroes, even if one can’t really identify the heroic act. Doesn’t matter. More noise, more bodies blown apart, and more knee- jerk religious reductionism (there are missionaries to be saved in the latest Stallone abortion of a film). History is being re-written with increasing speed. And fact and fiction have blurred almost completly. Scalia likes to reference Jack Bauer and the average US citizen grasps geo-political facts from Stallone movies or Bill Kristol op-eds, or if liberal, from Obama and Hillary. Fast track to barbarism.

Someone made the mistake of claiming there's no proof to support the position that there is a conspiracy of elitists.

Some of the evidence, is, admittedly, circumstantial.

Much of it is direct, concrete and verifiable, however. Let's focus on the verifiable stuff.

The Rothschild Banking website states clearly that they lend to governments. So does the Morgan Bank site.

When one loans to governments, which wouldn't be borrowing at 27 -35% interest if they weren't really strapped for the money (and the question as to how this situation arises in the first place demands answering), one controls the governments one has lent to and that jibes with this very real statement: "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws." Mayer Amschel (Bauer) Rothschild

The Federal Reserve system really does make people work almost four months a year to pay backs the loans.

The IRS really is not a legal government agency and there really is no law on the books requiring American citizens to pay income tax. But they really do confiscate everything and put people in Federal penitentiaries if they don't pay anyway.

There really is an Israeli Supreme Court building that contains an inordinate number of Masonic symbols and the letter of Dorothy Rothschild to Shimon Peres telling them that they intend to "gift" Israel with the construction of the building and listing provisos does exist.

The Georgia Guide Stones really exist. They really do say, in 12 languages, that the Earth's population should not exceed 5 E8. Take a cruise on Georgia Highway 77 and you'll find them seven miles north of Elberton.

The world really is descending into a prison state for no good reason.

Hi-tech electronic and sonic weapons deployed by the US in Iraq really are being deployed in the US now and they are being trained on citizens of the US. Citizens deemed "dissidents" are really being harassed and repeatedly assaulted by these weapons. The radiation from these weapons has been picked up by recordings made by these "TIs" (targeted individuals) and Federal attorneys reallyhave been forced to admit in court that US citizens were targeted for assault with these weapons by the government.

Vaccinations that babies routinely receive really do contain Thermisol, a preservative that is a mercury compound, which really does reduce cognitive ability, as well as aluminum and a lot of other nasty materials no one in their right mind would inject into a baby. And a family whose daughter was made autistic and epileptic from those shots just really won their case in Federal court. She was given nine inoculations at once at the age of one and one half years. Two of the injections were proven to contain mercury-based Thermisol.

Some toothpastes, soaps and other products used topically (skin does absorb materials and those materials do enter the blood stream) and orally really do contain Triclosan, so does agent orange - really. One drop of Triclosan in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of water is still poisonous. Triclosan combines with chlorine in water to form chloroform and other compounds.

Drinking water really does contain the very same fluoride compounds, called hexafluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6) and its salt sodium hexafluorosilicate (Na2SiF6), which is in Sarin nerve gas and Prozac. The Nazis really did fluoridate the water supply of inmates to get them so docile that they complied with their deaths. They only used sodium fluoride, a much less poisonous compound.

Despite being warned by ecologists for decades of the effects of pollution, world governments continue to pollute the atmosphere at an increasing rate. They see ecological systems shutting down. Yet they continue.

Nazi scientists really were brought to the US after WWII and really were integrated into the military-industrial complex. Have you heard of Operation Paperclip and MK Ultra? Former CIA agents have, and they've blown the whistle on it.

Prescott Sheldon Bush, father of GHWB and grandfather of GWB, really did have his holdings frozen by Acts of Congress for aiding and abetting the Nazis. Look for: Vesting Order No. 126, Vesting Order No. 248, Vesting Order No. 259 and Vesting Order No. 261 at the Library of Congress. See The US Library of Congress and The US National Archives & Records Administration. Do the research. Americans need to know just how deep the Bush involvement was.

President Bush really was pictured at the 2007 memorial service for 9/11 making the horned hand signal that he, and his family, make so often. Perhaps he was honoring the Texas Longhorns at that ceremony. Gooo, Texas!

Top scientists have admitted what HAARP can do - and one of the things it can do is cause atmospheric disturbances that mimic global warming. Put your tin foil hat on - because that baby really does produce scalar waves. No, scalar waves are not only produced shortly after the Big Bang. Nikola Tesla really did it and HAARP is based on that research.

I could go on...and on.

Any theory should be replaced with another that explains more phenomena better.

I know of no explanation that explains what we're seeing on the ground than that the world is being controlled by a financial elite, a financial elite that goes on the bar nothing principle and has proven to the world that it is capable of any atrocity and engages in them with relish.

If another explanation that explains more of what we are witnessing and/or does so better is presented, I'll be the first to amend what I now think to be true based on a great deal of evidence that is none the less concrete and real because most people feel spacey when they encounter it.

I know it's scary. I know it's overwhelming. That does not make it untrue or unverifiable. That certainly does not release us from our being beholden to learn these facts and know just what we're up against.

I know it makes people feel crazy to think about this. I know why. The reason why is MK Ultra.

There is substantiation aplenty for every statement I made here - and vastly more.

I suggest you do the research yourselves. Doing the actual research goes a long way to undoing the effects of brainwashing that we have all been subjected to. Brainwashing can be erased. The process is slow and painful, but it can be done.

Published: March 1 2008 Washington on Friday warned that the security of Mexico and the US were at stake in the battle against Mexico’s booming drugs trade, acknowledging that the increasingly violent fight is far from being won.

In a comprehensive annual report on the international drug trade, the US also said opium production in Afghanistan hit “historic highs” last year, with a harvest valued at $4bn, more than a third of that country’s gross domestic product.

Some 90 per cent of the cocaine consumed in the US passes through Mexico, which last year also increased cultivation of both opium poppies and marijuana. Washington maintains that Mexican drug traffickers now control many of the drug distribution networks within the US.

Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s president, has made his attempted crackdown on the country’s drug cartels one of the signature issues of his tenure since taking office in December 2006.

“Mexico is confronted with an extraordinary challenge in the level of organised crime that it faces from the drug trade,” said David Johnson, the chief State Department official responsible for anti-narcotics strategy, presenting the annual survey.

“The fact that they are looking at it and seizing it and trying to confront it is a positive sign ... If it is not confronted it will go very bad for both us and for Mexico.”

Praising what it described as Mr Calderón’s efforts “to reassert control over areas that had fallen under the ­virtual dominion of drug ­cartels”, the report notes what it labels Mexico’s “unprecedented results” in the fight last year.

These include the extradition of 83 fugitives to the US, the seizure of 48m tons of cocaine and, in one raid, of $200m in cash. But the report also notes between 2,300 and 2,600 drugs-related killings in Mexico last year, including the deaths of ­several high-level law enforcement officials. Mexico blames drug cartels for a failed bomb attack in Mexico City last month.

Mr Johnson also praised Colombia, which last year eradicated more than 200,000 hectares of coca cultivation, but which remains the source of 90 per cent of the cocaine entering the US. By contrast, he had strong words of criticism for Venezuela, which the US says is becoming an increasingly important transit country, especially for cocaine.

The report said that Afghanistan increased its position as the world’s largest heroin-producing country, with 93 per cent of world cultivation.

“Narcotics law enforcement was hampered by corruption and incompetence within the justice system as well as the absence of governance in large sections of the country,” it said, ­noting that no significant drug traffickers have been arrested since 2006.

By Daniel Dombey in Washington for the Financial Times

# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 3/05/2008 10:11:00 PM

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al Jazeera has been running a poll asking readers to identify their general location and which electoral candidates they would prefer as United States president. Current results for those of the Democrat Party are shown in the above graphic, which is duplicated by link to a larger more readable copy.

It shows al Jazeera participants both in and outside the US rather consistently favor Barak Obama over Hillary Clinton by roughly five to one. One would never guess that from US press and television that show them running evenly. So, what accounts for the difference? Readers of this Forum should have no difficulty answering that.

In Bolivia

By Hugh O'Shaughnessy
BBC News

Though the facts are not widely reported around the world, Cuba supplies aid to a number of countries and one of the biggest aid schemes is in Bolivia.

"There is usually a love interest behind it all, if you ask me," says Dr Maria de los Angeles.
A sparky woman from Guines, not far from Havana, she is the director of the Cuban-Venezuelan eye hospital at El Alto, 13,000 feet up (3,962m) in the High Andes. It serves La Paz, the main city of Bolivia, which lies in a canyon 1,000 feet (305m) below us.
We are discussing why a very small number of the 2,000 Cuban medical personnel sent to Bolivia from the island over the past two years have jumped ship and gone home.
Her colleague Dr Mabel, an attractive young eye surgeon from Pinar del Rio, the western-most province of Cuba, agrees.
"There's no pack of parties here," she murmurs contentedly.

At the same time, both women fiercely agree about the worth of what they are doing, attending without charge to the sight of thousands of poor Bolivians, who otherwise would not be able to see.
"Nothing could be more rewarding," says Mabel, who is on her first overseas posting, or "mission" as the Cubans call it.
They add that it is not a bad career deal either.
"We get our salaries paid in Cuba, our food and lodging is paid here, and we get some pocket money," says her colleague.

Immense benefits

We walk around her scrupulously clean premises with its well-stocked pharmacy, neat rows of free Chinese-made spectacles, and an occasional Che Guevara poster.
Maria de los Angeles reflects on her time and on the years she spent among the indigenous peoples of Guatemala.
"Until I went from Cuba to Guatemala and Bolivia, I didn't know what real poverty was," she says.
The two surgeons are part of an ambitious medical and literacy programme here, and in many other countries around the world. It has brought the Cuban government immense benefits in terms of gratitude from beneficiaries and foreign governments alike.

What Cuba has done in Bolivia alone is staggering.
In a score of general hospitals built mainly with Venezuelan money over the past two years, 2,000 Cuban medical staff including 1,300 qualified doctors have been at work.
They have provided more than nine million consultations.
In particular, Maria de los Angeles, Mabel, and her colleagues have carried out 200,000 operations in ophthalmological units up and down Bolivia.

So popular are they, that the units built on the frontiers with Peru and Argentina have treated more Peruvians and Argentines than Bolivians.
"We treat anyone who walks in, and we do it for nothing," says Maria de los Angeles.

Literacy programme

In the other Cuban hospitals in this country, services go from preventative medicine - which has pushed down infant mortality and pushed up life expectancy - to general healthcare and emergency operations.

Then there is the joint Cuban-Venezuelan literacy programme. One hundred and eighteen Cuban and 18 Venezuelan trainers backed with texts and television sets have taught Bolivian teachers the best ways of getting people to read and write.
At the Cuban embassy, the ambassador Rafael Dauza explains the diplomacy behind the scheme.
"We give our services free, bring our own supplies and equipment, and don't take any patients from the Bolivian doctors. Our staff have been accused by those who object to our presence here of being careless and unqualified. But they have never been able to stand their objections up," he says.
"And it is very difficult to attack a country that is giving free health care and education. One provincial governor who had opposed our presence here ended up having his life saved at one of our hospitals," adds Mr Dauza, with no hint of a grin.

All of this has done nothing to calm fears at the US embassy, which looks askance at the Cuban and Venezuelan presence in Bolivia.
A few days ago, the US ambassador Philip Goldberg had to apologise to Bolivia. It was established that an embassy official, Vincent Cooper, had tried to persuade a young US volunteer worker in the Peace Corps to spy on the Cubans and Venezuelans he came across.
"That was a lamentable mistake," says Mr Goldberg.

But Bolivian president Evo Morales declared Mr Cooper persona non grata. He has left for the US and will not be allowed back.
For the Cubans, the recent Cooper affair was all part of a US strategy to tempt Cuban doctors to desert.

US regulations allow Cuban citizens to enter the country with a false passport, or no passport at all.
"We are the only people on earth with that privilege," says Dauza with a wry smile.
Back at the hospital, the two eye surgeons were relaxed about the occasional defaulter.

"Some of them drift back home to Cuba anyway," says Mabel.

By Hussein Al-Alak
Source The London Progressive Journal



In January 2007, the Iraq Solidarity Campaign informed the international community about the damage which the growth of poverty has caused to the children of Iraq, through the much publicised paper "Western Civilisation - The Unspoken Fate of Iraqi Children".

The report, which was published by a wide variety of publications including the Morning Star, URUKNET, the UN Observer, Palestine Chronicle and the Global Research Institute, reported that the increase in poverty since the 2003 invasion has resulted in the growth in the child sex trade, the forced separation of families, an increase in drug and alcohol abuse. Psychiatrists have also highlighted the effect of the ubiquitous violence on the school attendance rates and performance, referred to in the report as "learning impediments".

The report also found that 400,000 of Iraq’s children are also suffering from a condition called “wasting”, which is characterised by chronic diarrhoea and high deficiencies of protein. However, the conduct of the US-backed government of Iraq has sunk to a new low, with news that the regime of Jalal Talabani and Nouri Al-Maliki, who are not satisfied with the murder of one million Iraqis since the occupation began, now plan to starve the rest by eliminating Iraq’s already meagre ration service by June 2008.

The ration system was first established during the 1990s to combat the widespread poverty which had resulted from the UN Sanctions, in a British and American backed blockade which saw the murder of an estimated 1.5 million children due to “embargo related causes”. The 6,000 children lost per month was viewed by America’s Madeline Albright as being a “price worth paying“.

Whilst the country was ruled by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, the United Nations themselves praised Iraq’s ration system as being “the world’s largest and most effective relief effort” and even in the face of invasion, the “tyrannical” Iraqi President “ruthlessly” provided his population with an advanced six months' supply but now the “independent” Iraqi government have decided to end the system, which has saved millions from starvation, on the grounds that the closure is “in line with the obligations it has made to the World Bank“.

Some analysts say that millions of Iraqis will be affected, particularly families with no bread winners, as well as women, the unemployed and children. It is also believed that Iraq is going to lose control of its own inflation and that the people are therefore going to experience a price increase in food, fuel and other daily essentials.

In other words, British and American Troops who are based in Iraq at the “invitation” of the Iraqi Government are going to be made to shoot their bullets at, and kick down the doors of, an increasingly starving population. Is this what being against Saddam or Al-Qaida now means?

The news has come as a shock to both campaigners and Iraqi families, in the face of recent allegations by one Arab newspaper, which recently revealed that Iraqi MP’s were being offered five million dollars each, to vote in favour of the privatisation of Iraq’s nationalised oil. It was further revealed that monies brought in from oil revenues were not even going towards the so-called ”reconstruction” of democratic Iraq.

But campaigners, led by the Iraq Solidarity Campaign (ISC), have sworn that plans to eliminate this essential service will not go unopposed in either the Middle East or the West, and have already begun to mount a challenge to the Iraqi regime and the US/British occupying powers, in a direct challenge which is already gathering momentum.

Within twenty-four hours of launching the campaign, the international petition “Act Against Iraq Poverty”, addressed to the governments of Iraq, Britain and America, has been endorsed by a variety of political parties and personalities. The ISC demand that the ration service be maintained and be developed to provide for the needs of Iraqi families.

Already the petition has been signed by many political organisations including the Communist Party of Britain’s Somerset Branch, RESPECT (renewal), a Liberal Democrat councillor, the Polish Labour Party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Australian Socialist Alliance, the US Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Massachusetts Green Party. Even some members of the Democratic and Republican parties in the US have endorsed it.

This is alongside the National Revival and Sovereignty Movement of Russia, the Iraq Solidarity Association in Stockholm, the Uruknet Association in Italy, and the former Scottish MSP Tommy Sheridan’s Socialist Solidarity Party in Scotland.

The breadth of international support from campaigners has also come from as far afield as Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Mexico, Sweden, Thailand, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Sri Lanka, the UK and Venezuela, each with a crystal clear message to the occupying governments and their stooges; “If you don't shoot or torture your victims, you starve them to death. Shame on you!”

One supporter from the United Kingdom wrote, “I add my name to those who urge the UN, the British and Americans, to continue the rationing program in Iraq and stop the abuses aimed at hungry Iraqis!” with Ian Douglas from Cairo asking Bush, Brown, Maliki and Talabani, “What is a government that starves the people?”

Comments to the occupiers from US citizens have also included “Over a million slaughtered, millions of widows and orphans, millions of refugees - and now the dirty occupiers want to snatch the bread from the mouths of the living - stop this genocide of the defenceless Iraqi people.” As others have stated on the petition, the occupying powers need to pay the Iraqi people reparations for the damages and trauma caused by the illegal invasion in 2003. There have been other demands for an independent commission to be established and see to the perpetrators of the war and invasion be tried as war criminals.

The international campaign against the elimination of the rations has been established against the backdrop of the seriousness that ending the service will cause to the Iraqi people, as one health worker recently told Dahr Jamail of the International Press Service: "I and my wife have five boys and six girls so the ration costs a lot when it has to be bought. I cannot afford food and other expenses like study, clothes and doctors."

But as one woman recently said to Al-Jazeera, "If they reduce the quantity of the ration, we will be displaced [made homeless] as the money to pay bills will have to be used for food. If we are considered a poor family today, tomorrow we will be considered absolutely desperate."

To sign the international petition please follow the link:
http://www.petitiononline.com/hattycat/petition.html

Hussein Al-Alak is Chairman of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign.

A photograph portraying Obama wearing a white turban and a wraparound white robe presented to him by elders in Wajir, in northeastern Kenya has caused a lot of stir.

Nobody seemed to get upset by THIS photo!



Of this one...



Or...



Here is Cheney...



Where is the stir?