I’ve enjoyed these past few months with all of you! Thank you for being a part of the Suzie-Q blog!
Have a Happy and Safe New Year’s Eve! Let’s make 2008 a better year and future! 😉
GEF and I wish you a Happy New Year!
S-Q
ANCIENT NEW YEARS
The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago. In the years around 2000 BC, the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon (actually the first visible cresent) after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring).
The beginning of spring is a logical time to start a new year. After all, it is the season of rebirth, of planting new crops, and of blossoming. January 1, on the other hand, has no astronomical nor agricultural significance. It is purely arbitrary.
The Babylonian new year celebration lasted for eleven days. Each day had its own particular mode of celebration, but it is safe to say that modern New Year’s Eve festivities pale in comparison.
This is an important thing Edwards is doing, whether you are a supporter of his or not. For, as with our (BNF’s) War On Greed campaign or exposes on Fox have shown, there is a whole system in place that has allowed corporate hacks to break up companies and put workers on the street while literally pocketing billions–and then trumpeted their success on Fox.
This system allowed a man manifestly unprepared and unsuited for the job of President to ascend there, without the kind of scrutiny necessary for a democracy to not only thrive, but survive.
This must change (no pun intended). And whether it’s Edwards who brings it about or someone else, we must hold those in power accountable to bring us back to the pre-Reagan age, when the middle class was growing, the safety net was real and preemptive war was considered as retarded as it sounds.
LONDON: Individual privacy is under threat in the United States and across the European Union as governments introduce sweeping surveillance and information-gathering measures in the name of security and controlling borders, an international rights group has said in a report.
Greece, Romania and Canada had the best privacy records of 47 countries surveyed by Privacy International, which is based in London. Malaysia, Russia and China were ranked worst.
Both Britain and the United States fell into the lowest-performing group of “endemic surveillance societies.”
“The general trend is that privacy is being extinguished in country after country,” said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. “Even those countries where we expected ongoing strong privacy protection, like Germany and Canada, are sinking into the mire.”
In the United States, the administration of President George W. Bush has come under fire from civil liberties groups for its domestic wiretapping program, which allows monitoring, without a warrant, of international phone calls and e-mail messages involving people suspected of having terrorist links.
“There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country.” The New York Times lead editorial today echoes what millions of Americans must be feeling as this awful year comes to a close. It was a year of self recognition, when Americans finally realized America can no longer pretend to be a moral beacon. It is a sickening discovery.
Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.
It is a devastating indictment, and there is more, but it is only half finished. As we look into the mirror to see what our country has become, one cannot help but feel contempt for the passivity — or is it complicity — with which the “opposition party” and an indolent media acquiesced in one outrage after another. Do the leaders of the Democratic Party truly condemn the Administration’s actions? Do they feel the revulsion and disgust in the pits of their stomachs? And if so, why are they not demanding full disclosure, accountability, censure and removal from office for the most criminal regime in our history?
Glenn Greenwald reminds us the Democrats have been complicit in the Administration’s illegal spying, in waging illegal wars, in creating a CIA monster, in sanctioning torture, in destroying the 4th Amendment, in illegal kidnappings and detentions and the assault on habeas corpus, and in creating kangaroo courts. As much as the Administration’s arrogant defiance and contempt for the rule of law, the Democrat’s meek protests and their refusals time and again to stand up to these outrages dismayed their supporters and created a sense of helplessness, a feeling there is nothing our political institutions can or will do to do cure this sickness.
The most obvious remedy, the one expressly designed for this purpose, sits unused for reasons no one can credibly explain or defend. I suspect historians will look back on Nancy Pelosi’s decision to take impeachment off the table and describe it as one of the most cowardly, unprincipled and damaging statements ever uttered by a national leader. It has left America defenseless against an onslaught of lawlessness.
The Administration is destroying who America is, what it stands for, why it’s important. And with only a few exceptions like Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold and others, the Democrats are not vowing to save it. They’re not even acknowledging the travesty that every American can read in every day’s headlines.
Now a new set of leaders is seeking our votes. What have they done to earn our trust? They have some interesting proposals to deal with other problems, but the front runners are not speaking to the destruction of our Constitutional system, they’re not demanding accountability for the damage that has been done and a return to the rule of law. They’re playing it safe.
But this is not a time for people who lack political courage. Who among them will step up and say what must be done?
The Central Bank of Sudan will deal only in the euro beginning in 2008 and advised local commercial banks to opt for convertible currencies other than the U.S. dollar.
The announcement, made public in a circular note distributed to banks late Thursday, reflected efforts by the central authorities to steer away from the weak dollar amid Sudan’s economic boom.
The new policy note, signed by Governor of the Central Bank Sabir Mohamed al-Hassan, said all Central Bank dealings would be in the euro starting Jan. 1.
The note also recommended commercial banks us currencies other than the U.S. dollar, with the view to “lessen the risk of continuing to deal in the U.S. dollar.”
MONTPELIER, Vt. – President Bush may soon have a new reason to avoid left-leaning Vermont: In one town, activists want him subject to arrest for war crimes.
A group in Brattleboro is petitioning to put an item on a town meeting agenda in March that would make Bush and Vice President Cheney subject to arrest and indictment if they visit the southeastern Vermont community.
“This petition is as radical as the Declaration of Independence, and it draws on that tradition in claiming a universal jurisdiction when governments fail to do what they’re supposed to do,” said Kurt Daims, 54, a retired machinist leading the drive.
As president, Bush has visited every state except Vermont.
The town meeting, an annual exercise in which residents gather to vote on everything from fire department budgets to municipal policy, requires about 1,000 signatures to place a binding item on the agenda.
The measure asks: “Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictment for consideration by other municipalities?”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. The press office did not immediately respond to an e-mail.
Support for the measure is far from universal, even in Vermont, where the state Senate voted earlier this year to support impeaching the president. Anti-war rallies are regular occurrences here, and “Impeach Bush” bumper stickers are common.
“Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence. But I guess that’s better left unsaid.”–Dylan
Democracy in Pakistan doesn’t exist, any more than it does in Iraq. It hasn’t existed in Pakistan since the 1999 coup by Musharraf. Yet, the Bush administration is calling for the ‘democratic process’ to be ‘restored’ in Pakistan after the killing of the leader of the most popular opposition to the U.S. supported dictator there — much like their insistence that an end to their occupation of Iraq and restrictions on U.S. assistance to the installed and propped-up Maliki regime would threaten ‘democracy’ in the sovereign nation Bush invaded and overthrew.
For the Bush regime, democratic government is defined, more by an ability to seize and hold onto power, than by any recognized and accepted instigations of actual democracy. For Bush in Iraq, the ‘elections’ which brought the Maliki regime to power — and, were held under an increased military occupation and widely boycotted by many of Iraq’s population which wasn’t aligned with the Shiite majority who voted in overwhelming numbers — were enough to justify any and all actions by the U.S. enabled regime; including military assaults on rival communities before, during, and after the voting took place.
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