GOTV MATTERS MORE THAN ENCOURAGING POLLS

I am thrilled about the polling news I see (Globe article linked below) BUT we must NEVER forget that that will mean nothing without significant GOTV (Get Out the Vote) efforts. We must get all those who will vote for the Democrat Ed Markey on June 25, 2013 out to vote; we must get Independents who will vote for Ed Markey out to vote; and most of all we must get the still undecided out to vote for Ed Markey on June 25.

We who know and love Ed Markey understand his positions are INFINITELY superior to the Republican candidate. We who know and love him understand the following:

1. Ed Markey takes on the NRA;
2. Ed Markey Protects Social Security and Medicare;
3. Ed Markey is pro choice;
4. Ed Markey has and will continue to act for the environment and against climate change.

We MUST translate what we know to those who may know Ed Markey less well. I believe we WILL do that but we can only do that if we GOTV! Spread the message to every village and farm that Ed Markey is for the 99% and that his Republican opponent will vote as he will be instructed to vote by the Republican Party of obstructionism and that is for the 1% wealthiest American. The Republican Party is NOT about most of you.

WHY IT IS IMPERATIVE TO GOTV FOR DEMOCRAT ED MARKEY FOR US SENATE ON JUNE 25TH AND TO IN 2014 ELECT DEMOCRATS EVERYWHERE ELSE. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OF OBSTRUCTIONISM IS NOT ABOUT MOST OF YOU NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE. VOTE DEMOCRATIC PARTY ACROSS THE NATION TO SAVE YOUR LIFE, YOUR CHILDREN'S LIFE, THE NATION'S LIFE AND THE PLANET ITSELF! FORWARD THIS TO WHOMEVER YOU CHOOSE.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/06/15/markey-leads-gomez-double-digits-new-poll/i6NM7vs5fPIS07fj9s1tRO/comments.html?ia=18334925

Something REALLY Did Happen!!

Brilliant pieces from the creator of The Wire and Tom Friedman NYT journalist with whom I often do not agree.
I diverge from my usual agreement with my left of center compatriots with respect to NSA "spying" and they explain better than I exactly why. Something REALLY did happen on 9/11 and those buildings REALLY did come crashing down!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/friedman-blowing-a-whistle.html

http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/

Dirty Wars -- Jeremy Scahill

Part political thriller and part detective story, the documentary Dirty Warsfollows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, author of the international bestseller Blackwater, on a gripping journey into the heart of America's covert wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond. What begins as a report into a U.S. night raid gone terribly wrong in a remote corner of Afghanistan quickly turns into a global investigation of the secretive and powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is pulled into a world of covert operations unknown to the public. In military jargon, JSOC teams "find, fix, and finish" their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the "kill list," including U.S. citizens. Drawn into the stories and lives of the people he meets along the way, Scahill is forced to confront the painful consequences of a war spinning out of control, as well as his own role as a journalist. Dirty Wars takes viewers to remote corners of the globe to see first-hand wars fought in their name, leaving haunting questions about freedom and democracy, war and justice. Original score by the Kronos Quartet. (Partially subtitled) Official Web Site

Is at the Kendall Theater, Cambridge, MA

Snowed by Snowden? I think not!

I remember who I was at 29 years old. I was always interested in left of center politics. I had dreams of going to Washington. I had an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore and I thought god, fate or something was on my side. I thought I could charm the pants off of the world's most egregious tyrant. In short I wanted notoriety and certainly power as I felt the country of my birth would surely give me that. Many years later I got few of those things I thought I would.

I can only imagine the size of ego and the idealism this man NSA leaker Ed Snowden possesses. Idealism is commendable. I had lots of it then. The years as they passed took their toll and I began to see as George Orwell did, when tyrannies are overthrown they often do not bring a better outcome as they are replaced by other tyrannies. We need to look at the Middle East to prove that is so true. Why? Because man is animal with a variety of perceptions. We do not all think alike. This nation is perhaps one of the very very few whose revolution brought something better -- not for all but for many and it brought a ray of hope that things COULD in fact get better if one tried.

As an adult I put away childish things and I saw this country for what it is HUGE and with a variety of competing interests. The fact that it runs as well as it does is the eighth wonder of the world. Mr. Snowden will have his 15 minutes of fame, make people THINK he is an idealist, either a goat or a hero and he will bask for a short time in the glory of the ends justifying the means politics. But as the play Chicago tells us, fame is a fleeting thing though glorious while one has it. It will NOT be there for long. Sooner or later this massive country's people will become board with this story, drop Snowden and go on to the next big or not so big scandal or thing.

Mr. Snowden, I fear you will lose in the end. In the end you are sought after prey by the lion of the jungle. You may THINK you will evade its grasp. You won't at least not for long and then you will be abandoned by the people, by the media and in permanent exile from the comfort this nation once provided you.

You can be sure, Mr. Snowden and Glenn Greenwald too if our enemies succeed they will accord you NONE of the freedoms you enjoy now, had or would have had had you not abandon your national security oath and the nation of your birth. Life will go on and it will go on very well, indeed, without you!

Robert Reich Political Analyst Extraordinaire

Robert Reich, the former Clinton Labor Secretary, has a huge brain and a big heart to match.  I urge you to read his opinion below and see why the Democratic retaking of the House, crushing the Tea Bag movement and keeping the Senate Democrat is imperative to take our country back:

The Quiet Closing of Washington

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

09 June 13

 

onservative Republicans in our nation's capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They've basically shut Congress down. Their refusal to compromise is working just as they hoped: No jobs agenda. No budget. No grand bargain on the deficit. No background checks on guns. Nothing on climate change. No tax reform. No hike in the minimum wage. Nothing so far on immigration reform.

It's as if an entire branch of the federal  government - the branch that's supposed to deal directly with the nation's problems, not just execute the law or interpret the law but make the law - has gone out of business, leaving behind only a so-called "sequester" that's cutting deeper and deeper into education, infrastructure, programs for the nation's poor, and national defense.

The window of opportunity for the President to get anything done is closing rapidly. Even in less partisan times, new initiatives rarely occur after the first year of a second term, when a president inexorably slides toward lame duck status.

But the nation's work doesn't stop even if Washington does. By default, more and more of it is shifting to the states, which are far less gridlocked than Washington. Last November's elections resulted in one-party control of both the legislatures and governor's offices in all but 13 states - the most single-party dominance in decades.

This means many blue states are moving further left, while red states are heading rightward. In effect, America is splitting apart without going through all the trouble of a civil war.

Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, for example, now controls both legislative chambers and the governor's office for the first time in more than two decades. The legislative session that ended a few weeks ago resulted in a hike in the top income tax rate to 9.85%, an increased cigarette tax, and the elimination of several corporate tax loopholes. The added revenues will be used to expand early-childhood education, freeze tuitions at state universities, fund jobs and economic development, and reduce the state budget deficit. Along the way, Minnesota also legalized same-sex marriage and expanded the power of trade unions to organize.

California and Maryland passed similar tax hikes on top earners last year. The governor of Colorado has just signed legislation boosting taxes by $925 million for early-childhood education and K-12 (the tax hike will go into effect only if residents agree, in a vote is likely in November).

On the other hand, the biggest controversy in Kansas is between Governor Sam Brownback, who wants to shift taxes away from the wealthy and onto the middle class and poor by repealing the state's income tax and substituting an increase in the sales tax, and Kansas legislators who want to cut the sales tax as well, thereby reducing the state's already paltry spending for basic services. Kansas recently cut its budget for higher education by almost 5 percent.

Other rightward-moving states are heading in the same direction. North Carolina millionaires are on the verge of saving $12,500 a year, on average, from a pending income-tax cut even as sales taxes are raised on the electricity and services that lower-income depend residents depend on. Missouri's transportation budget is half what it was five years ago, but lawmakers refuse to raise taxes to pay for improvements.

The states are splitting as dramatically on social issues. Gay marriages are now recognized in twelve states and the District of Columbia. Colorado and Washington state permit the sale of marijuana, even for non-medical uses. California is expanding a pilot program to allow nurse practitioners to perform abortions.

Meanwhile, other states are enacting laws restricting access to abortions so tightly as to arguably violate the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. In Alabama, the mandated waiting period for an abortion is longer than it is for buying a gun.

Speaking of which, gun laws are moving in opposite directions as well. Connecticut, California, and New York are making it harder to buy guns. Yet if you want to use a gun to kill someone who's, say, spray-painting a highway underpass at night, you might want to go to Texas, where it's legal to shoot someone who's committing a "public nuisance" under the cover of dark. Or you might want to live in Kansas, which recently enacted a law allowing anyone to carry a concealed firearm onto a college campus.

The states are diverging sharply on almost every issue you can imagine. If you're an undocumented young person, you're eligible for in-state tuition at public universities in fourteen states (including Texas). But you might want to avoid driving in Arizona, where state police are allowed to investigate the immigration status of anyone they suspect is here illegally.

And if you're poor and lack health insurance you might want to avoid a state like Wisconsin that's refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, even though the federal government will be picking up almost the entire tab.

Federalism is as old as the Republic, but not since the real Civil War have we witnessed such a clear divide between the states on central issues affecting Americans.

Some might say this is a good thing. It allows more of us to live under governments and laws we approve of. And it permits experimentation: Better to learn that a policy doesn't work at the state level, where it's affected only a fraction of the population, than after it's harmed the entire nation. As the jurist Louis Brandies once said, our states are "laboratories of democracy."

But the trend raises three troubling issues.

First, it leads to a race to bottom. Over time, middle-class citizens of states with more generous safety nets and higher taxes on the wealthy will become disproportionately burdened as the wealthy move out and the poor move in, forcing such states to reverse course. If the idea of "one nation" means anything, it stands for us widely sharing the burdens and responsibilities of citizenship.

Second, it doesn't take account of spillovers - positive as well as negative. Semi-automatic pistols purchased without background checks in one state can easily find their way easily to another state where gun purchases are restricted. By the same token, a young person who receives an excellent public education courtesy of the citizens of one states is likely to move to another state where job opportunity are better. We are interdependent. No single state can easily contain or limit the benefits or problems it creates for other states.

Finally, it can reduce the power of minorities. For more than a century "states rights" has been a euphemism for the efforts of some whites to repress or deny the votes of black Americans. Now that minorities are gaining substantial political strength nationally, devolution of government to the states could play into the hands of modern-day white supremacists.

A great nation requires a great, or at least functional, national government. The Tea Partiers and other government-haters who have caused Washington to all but close because they refuse to compromise are threatening all that we aspire to be together.

Everest High -- what I worry about

I have blogged many times in support of the president and Democrats.  Naturally civil liberties is something that surely is a part of left of center DNA politics.  The fact that the president is getting criticism from the left because of his national security policies makes me nervous.  

The right of course, at least their leadership, is not unmindful of using this to gain political points as if their side was not so EGREGIOUSLY guilty of obliterating civil libertarian rights in modern times, trying to use voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering districts and other voting nefarious activity to limit minority rights.  The GOP has been the WORST of the worst notorious for secrecy and worse for implementing illegal policies.  

Someone like Republican right winger extreme Rand Paul will milk this seemingly bipartisan agreement for all its worth so the unthinking and know nothing voter will in ignorance turn to God forbid Republicans to save them from the national security state.   They will if they gain power do anything but.  Rand Paul and those like him are opportunists and have literally NOTHING in common with our Democratic base and platform.

Rand Paul's party brings with it rancid economic policy eliminating any kind of market regulation or fairness in business practices relegating us to the precivil rights era of the early 1960's.  With them comes the threat of obliterating the health care law, obliterating Soc Sec. and turning it into a voucher program,  gutting Medicare and Medicaid.

Republicans are representative of  DANGEROUS politics.   For those of you on the left or on the center who supported the president but now are a bit quizzical about the president's NSA policy I ask you to give him the benefit of the doubt and come out STRONG very STRONG for the Democratic Party not only on June 25 when Massachusetts WILL elect Ed Markey to the Senate but in 2014 when we MUST MUST MUST take back the House and we MUST work hard to overturn Republican state legislatures and governorships across the nation.  This party has shown its colors.  Republicans are against action to reverse climate change, against a woman's right to choose, against Planned Parenthood and birth control, against gay people having the same rights as everyone else and WILL if they attain power reverse Roe v. Wade relegating women to lethal back ally procedures.  If all of this were not bad enough they are against SENSIBLE gun control and against solid immigration reform without brutal conditions.  They would if they could regress our nation to a 19th century world.

NSA issues are NOT new.  You must only imagine how egregious it would have been had a Romney won and how dastardly it will be if we the Democratic base become lukewarm and inactive.  I can assure you Republicans will not be inactive.  We must still, no matter what, come out to work and vote for Democrats.  The stakes including and beyond national security are Everest high if we do not!!

Why Ed Markey MUST be elected on June 25. 2013 and Democrats everywhere should be supported in 2014.  Our lives, the lives of the next generation and the generation after that depend upon it!

NSA in the Crosshairs--An Unconventional Liberal Position

Those who debate the minutiae of US National Security spying policy seem to in their luxury life not have a significant understanding of what the threats to this nation are or really remember the details of the 9/11 attack. They do not know how serious this is. They are willing to compromise the security of this nation for due process Constitutional clauses.  No one has thought the pillars of our republic more important than I. BUT while they are important they are NOT everything in comparison to the threat. One difference between our Founding Fathers in 1776 and the modern era is found in one word: nukes.

There are those who do not have a clue about what that means.  One should Youtube something about the effects of those incomprehensible weapons in the hands of those who want to destroy this country before one tries to weaken the US government compromising this nation and all of our lives within it!

A final thought:  Those journalists like Glenn Greenwald, excellent writer and expert civil libertarian that he is,  freely spout whatever they want, whenever they want to whomever they want and are still writing their columns.  They are NOT sitting in jail with the key thrown away.  They are gaining fame and notoriety while making a big capitalist buck off it.  I rest my case.

When the Towers Fell on that Blue-Sky Day

When I see news hysteria now about NSA government metadata collection and the seeming overreach of government power I shrug my shoulders because I have heard it before.  It is surely bigger than my capacity to influence policy.  Moreover, it is the government's Constitutional obligation not only to follow Constitutional due process clauses but also to protect its public and the nation from a life-ending attack. It would be negligence and even treason if it did not.

 

Once 9/11 happened, no matter the rationale behind the perpetrators' actions our nation’s past deeds have been done and cannot be undone. Think about it.  Think about the massive twin towers in NYC on that sun-drenched day being attacked, falling and spewing their structural poisons.  Think on the first responders who rushed to the scene walking up the towers’ stairs to their deaths in a vain attempt to save others who were walking down to try to escape their own.  Think on many who incredulously and out of desperation jumped from the Towers’ Everest heights to the concrete below, bodies smashed to smithereens some of whose bones are buried forever into the stone age of history at the site of new concrete.  Last but, of course, not least think about the 3000 dead from the greatest attack on the homeland in history.

 

It is easy to forget as time passes but we must revisit in our mind's eye the physical reality of what occurred when those towers fell on that blue-sky day. Think on the huge plumes of toxic dust inhaled by so many and think on those today who are still suffering trauma both physical and psychic, lung destruction, cancer or other related diseases and think of those who died since the attack and who will die because of it in present and future time.

 

The 9/11 attack was an action like no other.  It changed our culture like fossil fuels are changing the climate, altering weather and the earth in our lifetime and, perhaps, even forever.  In view of that, I do see why there is massive overreach by the national security state. At the same time, there is a collection of data which is seemingly irrelevant to the prosecution of the amorphous war on terror.  We ought to take a breath from this latest national news media hysteria, not overreact but demand our government look at what is necessary and what is not to secure our person and our nation from a fatal onslaught.

 

There can be no doubt there are those who would, if they could, destroy us, our nation and our culture. If one is dead no number of civil liberties and Fourth Amendment search and seizure Constitutional protections will matter.

 

Our president is a constitutional law scholar.  I believe the president through legal mandate and by any means legally necessary is implementing extensive national security measures, warrantless wiretaps and other seemingly extra-constitutional methods not because he loves to bathe in power but because he is trying to provide every safeguard available to ensure a horrific attack like the 9/11 attack or worse never happens again.

 

Republican Hypocrites -- waste, fraud and Republiccan partying at Taxpayer expense

Whatever the IRS may or may NOT be guilty of, Republican utter waste of taxpayers dollars is legion.  I did not hear Republicans complaining when private contractors decimated Iraq and Afghanistan with shoddy work resulting in the deaths of our soldiers and billion buck crony no bid contracts.  This is the pot calling the kettle.  Not only that I seem to remember  another agency doing the exact same thing I think it was the Interior Department taking its employees to big bashes and parties funny thing I found a site at Think Progress:

Bush’s Department of Interior: Sex, Drugs, and Oil?

    -Earl Davaney, Interior Department Inspector General, 9/14/06

From lobbyists buying million-dollar homes with DOI officials to a high level administrator being sentenced to prison time amid the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, the agency that is tasked with protecting America’s natural resources was wrought with flagrant ethical failures during the Bush administration. Here’s the background on the biggest scandals and the key figures in the DOI under the Bush administration. 

http://thinkprogress.org/report/interior-scandals-under-bush/

DO NOT LET REPUBLICAN HYPOCRITES TAINT THE GOOD WORKS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.  WHY WE NEED ED MARKEY MORE THAN EVER!!

Pass this on to whomever you like.

From Prosperity to Poverty. "A Word from Our Sponsor" and "Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream"

The American Dream has been hijacked.  The essence of what brought immigrants to our shores, the essence of that which much of the world desired to emulate, and the essence of Lady Liberty's message written by Emma Lazarus:  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is no more.  Our American Dream has been taken over by the 1% at the top of the economic ladder because they have bought your nation by not only owning many huge corporations and Wall Street but by owning the halls Congress as well.  The game is rigged and it is rigged against you.  As the late great and prescient comic George Carlin said in his American Dream Youtube -- "It's a club and you ain't in it!"

Instead of writing more I will post two important links.  The first is an article written by the wonderful writer and journalist Jane Mayer entitled "A Word from Our Sponsor" in the May 27, 2013 edition of the New Yorker.  It is about the Koch's influence of that former bastion of thought, educational television, thereby skewing the content of its programming and their quest to stop documentaries like Carl Deal and Tia Lessen’s “Citizen Koch” and Gibney’s “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream,” which places them and the 1% under the microscope. The slide under the microscope is not a pretty one!

The second is the controversial Alex Gibney documentary "Park Avenue: Money Power and the American Dream" which was shown by a number of PBS stations. Ultimately Koch pulled out of sponsoring WNET because it did not like the anti-Koch trajectory of its independent films content.   

It is well known that David Koch and his brother, oil and energy multi-billionaires are trying to usurp it all.  Their money is buying the American Dream through development of numerous "conservative" think tanks, through the buying up of educational television, the purchasing of universities, and most importantly contributing anonymously huge amounts of money to buy Congress. Recently it is no secret that the Koch Brothers are even attempting to buy up many prestigious formerly liberal news media like the Boston Globe.  This will, of course, crush the people's voice and insert their version of Ayn Randian propaganda into our brains.  I urge you to let these entities know this is unacceptable and that Congress persons who accept or lie about dirty money entering their coffers to do the bidding of the 1% will suffer at the polls.  

Read Mayer's article and watch the WNET video and see for yourself what has happened to this nation we once thought a paradise that catapulted us from poverty to prosperity and not the reverse.  Now prosperity is in a few -- very few -- mega wealthy hands unreachable by the vast majority of the country who has suffered greatly at the hands of unregulated and corrupt Wall Street greed.  

Moreover, do NOT buy what Koch Brothers have to sell and pass this around to anyone whom you think should read and hear it.  It is our only chance to defeat these Randian right wing extremist forces of inhumane evil that have imprisoned our nation and to truly take our country back! The links are below.  I urge you to look at them both!

http://video.pbs.org/video/2296684923

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/27/130527fa_fact_mayer

Oklahoma is NOT OK -- Corporatists without Conscience

After the Moore, Oklahoma F 5 tornado yet again yesterday that area saw multiples of Moore.  It is hard to believe there are still science denying know nothings who put our nation and the world at risk.  The abundance of catastrophic weather events of massive continuing tornadic activity, floods, devastating coastal changing hurricanes, blizzards in nearly any season, not to be eclipsed by massive fires and droughts proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that climate change as witnessed by these extreme weather events is truth.  It is truth and as 98% of scientists know it is directly influenced by a century of fossil fuel pollutants sold to an unknowing public by corporatists without conscience. 

 

The Koch Brothers, oil, coal and other corporate giants like the tobacco charlatans before them, will keep the doubt of it flowing through the veins of the electorate like the filthy fossil fuels they produce.  They have hijacked an entire Republican Party through their deep pocket payoffs to Washington keeping it stagnant, divided and on the side of the fossil fuel industry.  It is shameful and does NOT have to be so.

 

Speak up, write or send smoke signals to Washington and everyone you know that our nation must change before it is too late if it is not too late already.  While you are at it crush those unconscionable right wing morally corrupt extremists and vote them permanently out of office.

Nothing less than your life, your children’s lives, their children’s lives indeed the functioning of an entire nation and ultimately the life of the planet itself is at stake.  If you do not believe me hang on for awhile you will experience the results of it yourself.

 

I paste the NBC story link above the headline for your reading pleasure!  

http://www.nbcnews.com/

FIVE DEAD AS TORNADOES ROAR THROUGH OKLAHOMA CITY AREA AGAIN

  Tornadoes kill five people, at least 98 are injured, and 'life-threatening' floods are occurring after a massive storm system spins off twisters in four states.

Comfortable with Comey

The president is nominating James Comey, Deputy Attorney General in the Bush administration to head the FBI. Mr. Comey was at the center of the opposition to the warrantless wiretapping attempt of team Bush. Mr. Comey has integrity as he was one of the few in the prior Machiavellian administration who was willing to quit his job rather than take part in an end run around due process principle against warrantless wiretapping. Comey possessed strong ethical character and knew what he thought was legal and what was not. He was so opposed to what Gonzalez and Card were determined to do he won the race to Bush Attorney General Ashcroft's hospital bed to persuade him to oppose it. It prompted many others in that administration to threaten a mass exodus if Comey did not get there in time. This could have brought the Bush administration to its knees. 

Mr. Comey is an honest man so much so that Ashcroft raising his head from a hospital bed, on the edge of death, said no to Gonzales and Card in their Constitutional subversion attempt. He put Comey in charge.

The Obama nomination of Comey I speculate is reflective that the president in essence agrees with the Comian constitutional interpretation of due process. In practice we know, though, this administration has reinvigorated that for which the Bush administration advocated. However, to many of my liberal compatriots' chagrin on this issue, I trust this president. I trust him because he is a constitutional scholar, I trust him because I truly think he would not be leaping across the civil libertarian bow that seemingly, before his ascension to the presidency, went against his fundamental creed and I trust this president to do what he thinks is necessary to safeguard the nation.

Comfortable discussion of the intricacies of due process Constitutional issues is a healthy endeavor. It is a luxury when one sees up close and personal the annihilative risks to which the nation is exposed by those who want to bring it down. When faced with the life of the nation and the lives within it there are, I believe, times when the nuances of due process as it pertains to terrorist activities must entail granting the executive branch the immense power to suspend even those safeguards which have been the foundational bedrock of the republic.

I believe the recommendation of Mr. Comey to the apex of FBI power is symbolic that this president wants to return and adhere to the Comian constitutionally interpretive due process principle even if at times he has chosen, I believe, out of necessity to turn his back on it.

Truth

If you want to know why Ed Markey is a necessity to win the Senate on June 25, it is because he is a progressive's progressive but it, in my opinion and for me, is because of his views on climate.  Read the following.  It is superbly written (with the exception of my introduction ) !

I just learned a new word ("terracide" -- Latin terra means earth and cide or cida is the word for killer -- thank you high school grade 9-12 Ms. Vancavage for four glorious years of Latin --.  I digress.  

You are free to choose what you read and whom you believe.  At the very least I can provide opinions of others who are significantly more prescient than I, have better credentials and express their views much better. 

It is because of that I send Tomgram which I receive periodically.  What is written by Tom Englehardt is beautifully done and I urge you to consider his thoughts.

Subject: Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Biggest Criminal Enterprise in History

May 23, 2013 Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Biggest Criminal Enterprise in History [Note for TomDispatch Readers: TD will be taking the Memorial Day weekend off.  The next piece will be posted on Tuesday May 28th. Tom] Terracide and the Terrarists  Destroying the Planet for Record Profits  By Tom Engelhardt\ We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night. A possibility might be “terracide” from the Latin word for earth. It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist. The truth is, whatever we call them, it’s time to talk bluntly about the terrarists of our world. Yes, I know, 9/11 was horrific. Almost 3,000 dead, massive towers down, apocalyptic scenes. And yes, when it comes to terror attacks, the Boston Marathon bombings weren’t pretty either. But in both cases, those who committed the acts paid for or will pay for their crimes. In the case of the terrarists -- and here I’m referring in particular to the men who run what may be the most profitable corporations on the planet, giant energy companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and Shell -- you’re the one who’s going to pay, especially your children and grandchildren. You can take one thing for granted: not a single terrarist will ever go to jail, and yet they certainly knew what they were doing. It wasn’t that complicated. In recent years, the companies they run have been extracting fossil fuels from the Earth in ever more frenetic and ingenious ways. The burning of those fossil fuels, in turn, has put record amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Only this month, the CO2 level reached 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. A consensus of scientists has long concluded that the process was warming the world and that, if the average planetary temperature rose more than two degrees Celsius, all sorts of dangers could ensue, including seas rising high enough to inundate coastal cities, increasingly intense heat waves, droughts, floods, ever more extreme storm systems, and so on. How to Make Staggering Amounts of Money and Do In the Planet\ None of this was exactly a mystery. It’s in the scientific literature.  NASA scientist James Hansen first publicized the reality of global warming to Congress in 1988.  It took a while -- thanks in part to the terrarists -- but the news of what was happening increasingly made it into the mainstream.  Anybody could learn about it. Those who run the giant energy corporations knew perfectly well what was going on and could, of course, have read about it in the papers like the rest of us. And what did they do?  They put their money into funding think tanks, politicians, foundations, and activists intent on emphasizing “doubts” about the science (since it couldn’t actually be refuted); they and their allies energetically promoted what came to be known as climate denialism. Then they sent their agents and lobbyists and money into the political system to ensure that their plundering ways would not be interfered with. And in the meantime, they redoubled their efforts to get ever tougher and sometimes “dirtier” energy out of the ground in ever tougher and dirtier ways. Click here to read more of this dispatch.

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Dirty Wars Trailer

http://dirtywars.org/trailer IN THEATERS JUNE 7 Just a few months ago Dirty Wars premiered at Sundance, won the Cinematography Award for U.S. Documentary, and then teamed up with IFC Films | Sundance Selects. We open June 7 in New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Then we play in theaters in many other cities nationwide, fromChicago to Boston, Nashville to Boise, Milwaukee to Tuscon. We're in Little Rock and Manhasset, Portland and Berkeley. Watch the trailer. (It's a sizzler.) Then find a theater near you. Also, our poster is out. NEW YORK CITY

SPECIAL EVENT Join Jeremy Scahill and Spencer Ackerman, two leading national security reporters, for what will surely be a lively conversation at a free public event on May 31 at The New School. Hosted by The Nation Institute.   TICKETS ON SALE NOW 40+ theaters have already booked Dirty Wars. Only the IFC Center in NYC has tickets on sale now. Members of the filmmaking team and special guests will be at the evening screenings opening weekend. FESTIVAL NEWS

After our start at Sundance, quickly followed by True/False, it's been great to be part of the creative energy of so many festivals. Awards are nice too. At the Boston Independent Film Festival, Dirty Wars won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary. The film won the Golden Rock for Best Documentary at the Little Rock Film Festival and Jeremy Scahill won a special award for Courage in Filmmaking. We're also heading to Mountainfilm (May 24 + 25), Seattle International Film Festival (May 24 + 25, with Jeremy Scahill in person) and the Berkshire International Film Festival (June 1) before our theatrical release June 7. Coming up, we go global: SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL | Proud to be on opening night, June 5. SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST | We're part of the rockingest film fest on the planet. Director Rick Rowley will be at our two screenings, June 14 + 15. NEW ZEALAND FILM FESTIVAL | Dirty Wars was one of the first films announced. Rick Rowley and Jeremy Scahill, with Brent Renaud, co-founder of the Little Rock Film Festival. THE BOOK Jeremy Scahill's book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield debuted at #5 on the May 12 New York Times bestseller list and has stayed in the top 20 since then. Read Steve Coll's analysis on drone wars and Dirty Wars in The New Yorker and watch Jeremy talk to Chris Hayes on MSNBC about his findings. Check out other reviews on our site. Jeremy was in London last week for the launch of the book in English worldwide. For a preliminary list of planned translations, including into Spanish, French, German, and Swedish, visit Roam Agency.