Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

This begs the question: If you want to be an evangelical christian, then do you also have to be a bigot?

More than 100 pastors of churches across the country signed a letter drafted by Mr. Janz and addressed to Every Tribe expressing their disappointment in the casting of Mr. Allen.

Some evangelicals have boycotted the film, and Every Tribe’s executives said that they had also turned over to the authorities material that they considered threatening.

“Does anyone really believe that Chad Allen was the best possible actor for Nate Saint?” Mr. Janz asked in his Jan. 12 Web log entry, referring to one of the characters in the movie. “That would be like Madonna playing the Virgin Mary.”

Click here for link.

Fascinating reading.

Forgive the deluge, or delete it, but this one by Whitney
lays out just what’s at stake over Bush’s obsession w/Iran.
Who’s heard of Khuzestan? I’m only vaguely aware of some
rumblings & meddlings in that oil-rich Iranian province. -Cord

Annexing Khuzestan; Battle-Plans for Iran
////////////////////////////////
by Mike Whitney
InfoClearingHouse
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11743.htm
February 1, 2006

In less than 24 hours the Bush administration has won impressive victories
on both domestic and foreign policy fronts. At home, the far-right
Federalist Society alum, Sam Alito, has overcome the feeble resistance from
Democratic senators; ensuring his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Equally
astonishing, the administration has coerced both Russia and China into
bringing Iran before the United Nations Security Council although (as
Mohamed ElBaradei says) “There’s no evidence of a nuclear weapons program.”
The surprising capitulation of Russia and China has forced Iran to abandon
its efforts for further negotiations; cutting off dialogue that might
diffuse the volatile situation.

“We consider any referral or report of Iran to the Security Council as the
end of diplomacy,” Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National
Security Council, told state television.

The administration’s success with Iran ends the diplomatic charade and paves
the way for war. Now, UN Ambassador John Bolton will appear before the
Security Council making spurious allegations of “noncompliance” that will
rattle through the corporate media and prepare the world for unilateral
military action.

The administration has no hope of securing the votes needed for sanctions or
punitive action. The trip to the Security Council is purely a ploy to
provide the cover of international legitimacy to another act of unprovoked
aggression. The case has gone as far as it will go excluding the requisite
“touched up” satellite photos and bogus allegations of unreliable
dissidents.

We should now be focused on how Washington intends to carry out its war
plans, since war appears to be inevitable.

Those who doubt that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team will attack Iran, while
so conspicuously overextended in Iraq, are ignoring the subtleties of the
administration’s Middle East strategy.

Bush has no intention of occupying Iran. Rather, the goal is to destroy
major weapons-sites, destabilize the regime, and occupy a sliver of land on
the Iraqi border that contains 90% of Iran’s oil wealth. Ultimately,
Washington will aim to replace the Mullahs with American-friendly clients
who can police their own people and fabricate the appearance of
representative government. But, that will have to wait. For now, the
administration must prevent the incipient Iran bourse (oil-exchange) from
opening in March and precipitating a global sell-off of the debt-ridden
dollar. There have many fine articles written about the proposed
“euro-based” bourse and the devastating effects it will have on the
greenback. The best of these are “Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the
Future of the Dollar” by William R. Clark, and “The Proposed Oil Bourse” by
Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.

The bottom line on the bourse is this; the dollar is underwritten by a
national debt that now exceeds $8 trillion dollars and trade deficits that
surpass $600 billion per year. That means that the greenback is the greatest
swindle in the history of mankind. It’s utterly worthless. The only thing
that keeps the dollar afloat is that oil is traded exclusively in greenbacks
rather than some other currency. If Iran is able to smash that monopoly by
trading in petro-euros then the world’s central banks will dump the
greenback overnight, sending markets crashing and the US economy into a
downward spiral.

The Bush administration has no intention of allowing that to take place. In
fact, as the tax-cuts and the budget deficits indicate, the Bush cabal fully
intends to perpetuate the system that trades worthless dollars for valuable
commodities, labor, and resources. As long as the oil market is married to
the dollar, this system of global indentured servitude will continue.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11743.htm

Make no mistake about it: The Bush II Administration’s saber-rattling against Iran has nothing to do with “global security” and everything to do with maintaining the U.S.’s world economic hegemony. This need for hegemony may also have been a primary factor for the invasion of Iraq (Hussein was actually doing what Iran is planning on doing). This article makes for fascinating reading.

It turns out that there is a small group of countries which is playing the arbiter in this global contest. These are the world’s oil exporters, in particular OPEC and Russia. Ever since the days when the US dominated world oil production, sales of oil and natural gas on international markets have been exclusively denominated in dollars. This was partly a natural state of affairs since, up until the early 1950s, the US accounted for half or more of the world’s annual oil production. The tendency to price in dollars was additionally reinforced by the Bretton Woods agreement which established the IMF and World Bank and adopted the dollar as the currency for international loans.

The vast majority of the world’s countries are oil importers and, since oil is such a crucial commodity, the need to pay for it in dollars encourages these countries keep the majority of their foreign currency reserves in dollars not only to be able to buy oil directly but also to protect the value of their own currencies from falling against the dollar. Because a sudden devaluation of a country’s currency against the dollar would lead to a jump in oil prices and a possible economic crisis, every country’s central bank needs dollar reserves so as to be able to buy its own currency on the foreign exchange markets when its value needs to be supported.
*
*
*
While the denomination of oil sales is not a subject which is frequently discussed in the media, its importance is certainly well understood by governments. For example, when in 1971 President Nixon took the US off the gold standard, OPEC did consider moving away from dollar oil pricing, as dollars no longer had the guaranteed value they once did. The US response was to do various secret deals with Saudi Arabia in the 1970s to ensure that the world’s most important oil exporter stuck with the dollar3 . What the Saudis did, OPEC followed. More recently, in June 2003, the Prime Minister of Malaysia publicly encouraged his country’s oil and gas exporters to move from the dollar to the euro. The European and American reactions were polar opposites: the EU’s Energy Commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, welcomed the suggestion, saying that ‘in the future the euro is [going to be] taking a place in the international markets in general as the money of exchange’ and that this was ‘a matter of realism’4 . Her counterpart in the US, the director of the Energy Information Administration, Guy Caruso, said that he couldn’t see ‘any particular merit’ in the move and that over the long run ‘the dollar’s always won out’5 . Either way, Malaysia is only a relatively minor oil exporter, so what it does can only have a very limited effect. A switch by a major oil exporter would be of far greater significance.

Click here for link.

http://villagevoice.com/news/0605,sutton,71959,9.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Green_All_Views/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Green_All_Views/message/12175

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greenallianceus/

Dear Dave Lindorff,

In today’s Counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff01312006.html)
you quite rightly castigate the Democrats for caving in on the Alito
nomination, but I am afraid that you hold out vain hopes that a purge of
the party will fix things. As I recall, you urged a vote for Kerry in 2004,
even if one gags in the process.

I don’t think the problem with the Democrats can be fixed by cleaning
house. Now I can understand why some would be happy if Joseph Lieberman got
booted by Democratic voters in Connecticut. I can also understand why
others would want to work for Jonathan Tasini’s campaign in NY, who is
seeking to unseat Hillary Clinton. Or for Steve Greenfield, a long-time
Green Party member who has announced that he will challenge her in the
Democratic Party primary.

I also imagine that there will be lots of progressives who would gladly
volunteer for Cindy Sheehan’s campaign if she decides to run against Diane
Feinstein in the primaries.

However, the one thing that makes the Democratic Party viable as a
pro-imperialist, racist, corrupt and anti-environmental institution is
exactly the visibility of such left liberals. As long as there are people
like John Conyers or the late Ted Weiss to serve as window-dressing, there
will be a tendency for the Nation Magazine, the CP, Medea Benjamin, Norman

Solomon et al to hold out hope.

If anything, the conduct of the Democratic Party post-2004 confirms the
wisdom of Nader and Camejo in running as well as the folly of “lesser evil”
support in John Kerry. We were told that electing a Democrat would help
preserve the integrity of the Supreme Court but their behavior on Roberts
and Alito shows that their commitment to fairness is paper-thin.

Basically, the only way to look at the two party system is as a kind of
shell game. About ten years ago, NYC streets were dominated by 3-card monte
games which were a fad at the time. Hapless out-of-towners would part with
their money in the vain hope that they could spot the Queen of Spades. The
inside man dealt the cards, while the outside man conspires with the dealer
to cheat the mark. I would suggest that the Republican Party is the inside
man and the Democratic Party is the outside man. Eventually, these games
faded away as law enforcement cracked down. Unfortunately for progressives,
the cops are part of the shell game when it comes to electoral politics.

One might hope, however, that some of our more perceptive writers would
begin to warn passers by that the game is crooked. Including you.

Yours truly,

Louis Proyect

http://www.marxmail.org

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greenallianceus/message/4129

Chief Apologizes for Ejections at State of Union
They are clearly dropping Sheehan’s charges to avoid charges of hypocrisy.

Two T-shirts — one black, the other heather gray — spotted in the House gallery the night of the president’s State of the Union speech caused a major ruckus on Capitol Hill.

It spilled into yesterday and came complete with impassioned political speeches, strident questions about rights being trampled, threats of lawsuits and a hat-in-hand apology from the U.S. Capitol Police chief.
*
*
*
The drama in cotton unfolded when Sheehan, who received a spectator ticket from Rep. Lynn C. Woolsey (D-Calif.), took her seat and unzipped her jacket, revealing her antiwar message. Sheehan’s son, Casey, was a soldier who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

A Capitol Police officer spotted the words, pointed to her and yelled, “Protester!” Sheehan said. “He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat, and roughly . . . shoved me up the stairs,” she said, adding that she was handcuffed, taken away, fingerprinted and booked.

That was before the speech.

About 45 minutes into the speech, an officer asked Beverly Young to step outside, where he told her: “We consider you a protester” because of her shirt, she said.

Click here for link.