h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

one I could share as a subscriber the other was an anonymous ditty that I wished to share.

never mind, I certainly don't wish to aid the cause of censorship.

there is an urgency to getting the material out.

abbi I think it wrong to say we the mongers of peace should be resigned to the outcome we least want.

all tyrants will fall, we must persevere. if we refuse to cooperate with their will they will not be able to have their way. then they may break us, torture us, even kill us, but they will not have our obedience nor be able to keep on their misguided path. I believe Gandhi spoke along those lines.

Except Gandhi probably didn't address it to Abbi

(just bookmarking, people, carry on your discussion and ignore me, please.)

""abbi I think it wrong to say we the mongers of peace should be resigned to the outcome we least want.""

Sorry I am hopelessly lost!I am sure I am being dense
Please explainDo you think I have resigned?

An eye for an eye will make all blind *Gandhi*

I will fight for electing a new president,new legislators. I will fight for and against different legislation.

I think war will happen.
Dubya does not care about peace.It is in NO way an objective of his.He is NOT intimidated by opposing views or parties. (I need realism too) He has all the money and all the power and THAT is WRONG. He has all he needs to go, I do not think any thing will hold him back now. Our voter elected officials LET HIM.

The Democratic Party HAS Taken NOTE! Finally they are waking up because of the People wanting Peace and marching,writing. That is where the hope lies. That is who is watching and caring,listening and wanting to show and tell the other side. That was needed. That IS happening. Because of this it HAS helped and must continue.

Dubya looks out the window and sees people demonstrating that are not HIS voters (in his words).
He feels nothing for them or their views. They cannot hurt him or stop him, they do not even cause him pause. HE is laughing at the MOST.

It's not the first time I've heard it said that that this administration listens to no-one and hears no disagreement. They are hellbent on their intentions and won't take no for an answer. It's the 'You're either with us or you're against us' syndrome.

Anyone catch Saul Zaentz's speech at the Baftas tonight btw? He said some pretty damning things about Bush and his administration

Gosho is it on the web or BBC or is it likely to be in the future? Text or video ok.

The administration is running America like a business. Corporations aren't consensual or even democratic. They are authoritarian. The Experts run them and Bush and Company fancy themselves as Experts or Professionals.

They know what's best and the only people who can get their attention are the majority stockholders. These people already have their attention because they've been promised the value of their investments will be maximized. This promise can be made because the minority stockholders can be tapped to cover any shortfalls.

The executives wax eloquently about creating value but they are doing nothing more than seizing or transferring assets and juggling the books.

Please don't confuse the majority and minority terminology here with numbers of people. The minority stockholders are far more numerous than the majority stockholders. That's why the established system isn't democratic, no matter what the party of that name may claim.

The solution, I believe is for the minority stockholders to organize or support parties which do not have majority stockholders. Only then can their dominance be broken.

It also helps if we refrain from supporting their enterprises or other schemes that separate us from what little wealth, land or resources we still retain. That would mean, among other things, no privitation of the public domain unless it's returned to its original owners and no privitation of the other assets of the commonwealth such as its youth, its intellectual skills, its air, water or other necessities of life.

And it would probably help to begin locally. To oppose developers or corporations using the collective wealth of communities to reduce their costs.

They've been playing the game for many years now and there isn't a single community that I know of that has ever gotten back what they contributed to attract a business or provide for a residential development. This is known correctly as corporate welfare.

It's one of the reasons why we must also provide welfare for the people, because the corporations loot the wealth of the people by exploiting their land and labor. This isn't new, by the way. It's been practiced successfully for centuries. It's supported mostly by brute force when persuasion proves inadequate. This is why there have been revolutions and why they have been crushed or subverted.

There has been much talk about the grassroots. Ultimately, all wealth derives from these grassroots. Somehow they can be convinced that it is a good thing for them to contribute to the larger organizations, but its not a good thing and never has been. At best it can be perceived as the lesser of evils, but I wonder why that seems to be the only way.

Surely there's a good, as opposed to merely choices of evils, somewhere to aspire to? I think that would involve local liberty.

We've had at least five centuries, if not more, to try it the other way and look what a mess has been made of things. How much more time is needed to demonstrate that grandeur is a dillusionary deadend? Even for the few who actually promote it, because even they aren't satisfied with the results and clamor for more of the same. But there is never enough and there is never going to be enough, except maybe enough said, don't you think?

I haven't seen it on the BBC news website coverage, but you can be sure it'll be in some - not all - papers tomorrow.

I will continue reading, I think I am done posting.

What I meant to say Abbi is that you and all of us must not accept that war will happen. It is what we are resisting. It is important for us to have enough self respect and self confidence to believe that we really can stop this most foul of human activities. Speaking the truth and standing up to a tyrant or a would be tyrant is a most noble task. It must be done with complete faith no matter how difficult it may seem at this moment to obtain. That is what I meant when I said that it is important not to resign yourself.

Principle Understood *?*

Thank you Abbi. I urge you to please keep posting and sharing and help lift the negativity in the world.

Did you read that the administration wants to circumvent the Constitutional checks and balances in defense procurement (as in other areas) to deploy the laughable "missle defense shield?" Maybe that's what the North Korean crisis is really all about!!

I heard they've deployed the newest version of the Patriot missile system three months early even though it's never been tested on a actual missile. This is despite the fact that it needs to actually hit the enemy missile to work which requires way more precision than just exploding it in the vicinity of the enemy missile. This will allegedly allow it to neutralize chemical or biological warheads too.

What I don't understand is how anyone in their right mind can believe this stuff much less pay for it and then actually try to deploy it for defense of real troops in what's looking like it's going to become a real war. Do you suppose the purpose of the exercise is just to make the procurors and the contractors rich? And if it happens to really work once in awhile that's sort of a bonus?

The Patriot Missile system does not work. The Pentagon has admitted as much in the past decade about its actual experience in the 'Bush Wars, Episode I,' early 1990s and in its testing of these 'weapons.'

The urgency for deploying this bogus system, just as the urgency for passing ridiculous legislation, just as the urgency for abadoning every treaty, must be to make the sellers rich.

It is the very fact that no one in their right mind will ever believe this stuff that the administration wants to circumvent all checks and balances and all due process in every aspect of its 'work.'

Oh I get it now. If you're not for us you're against us and if you're against us your opinions don't count either. But as long as Bush and Company do things with the requisite sense of urgency, that's the main thing, right?

Seems like I read that once in a big corporation's customer service manual, how the proper sense of the urgency was the key thing to communicate whether you could actually provide any service or not.

What's sad is these people and their supporters actually appear to believe their own baloney or at least some of them do. It's almost as if we're at this huge revival meeting where everybody suspends disbelief long enough for the preacher to pass the collection plate around.

This proposal sucks. How likely it will go though?

Time to go back to the impeachment thread I think.

Hi purplejenny. I hope it isn't at all likely to pass. However, given the dismal record of the US in dealing with its dissident citizens or residents it may well go through. Here are a few incidents: the Salem witch trials, the extermination of Indians, the segregation of Blacks, the bashing of people thought to be German in WW I, the exclusion of Asians Acts, the imprisonment of the Japanese in WW II, the McCarthy witch hunts, the passage of the USA Patriot Act (which is anything but!), and many other shameful episodes. The last is by far the harshest attack on the Constitution. As Analiese suggests, check the IMPEACH thread, please, and act.

If they didn't pass the Act they'd probably do all that anyway--and probably are right now! They've interned Arabs, Hispanics and Muslims (even US citizens, which goes further than the current British internment--although, of course, the former laws allowed for Irish republicans to be interned) without passing a law--even Israel has a law saying they can do it!