Guest Blog: Why We Vote

Guest blogger Jason Tabrys of Painespeak.com shares his thoughts on Election Day 2009 and the privilege of democracy:

Another election will have come and gone today and what will it have given us, what have we retained, other then a slain forests worth of cardboard signs left sticking up out of the ground like gravestones never to be visited or removed? Why we don’t even have the excitement and mystery of election night to thrill us anymore, gone the way of the dodo, killed off by polls and analysis that pinpoint exactly who will win and exactly how they will win days or weeks before we bother to vote. Anticipation and patience, suffering the fate of other once simple riches like subtlety and reflective thought, crushed by the violent bore of technology.

Why exactly do we do it? Is it the rush of “say”? Our slight bit of power over this mammoth machine that consumes and bewilders us all. Or are we so frail, so vulnerable, so innocent as to still believe, to still hope that a word can be said and it can be a true map, a direction to a better day that supersedes the hollow delight of rhetoric and actually fulfills a promise? I know that deep below an ocean of doubt and cynicism lies a single glimmer of hope buried within me, a glimmer that cannot be found and thus cannot be extinguished no matter how hard society tries. This hope propels me toward all manner of foolishness, It propels me towards impetuousness. Toward love. Toward the feeling that no matter the trial, triumph is surely not far off. And it propels me towards a belief of heaven and a fear of hell, an open question with regards to the sky, and all manner of idealism. If this little untamed glimmer is my voice, then democracy is my song. And for all its flaws, all of its useless parts, it is far better then the frozen hell of silence.

So while I, while we, may grieve the inevitable disappointment and ready the remedies for our inevitable wounds and struggles under the thumb of those that fall short of their promise let not our sadness kill the hope for joy. Let not our glimmer relent for on the darkest day, it is the light that leads us back home.

Orwell on Totalitarianism

Famed novelist George Orwell (Animal Farm, 1984) initially considered himself a "Tory Anarchist" and then a socialist. He was, however, highly critical of various factions within the socialist movement, and especially assailed apologists for Stalin.

Orwell had seen the deadly consequences of Stalinism up close during the Spanish Civil War. In a fascinating biography of Orwell by Gordon Bowker that we're reading, Bowker quotes from an Orwell speech, circa 1941:

The totalitarian state exists for the glorification of the ruling clique, which means that the ruling clique are the prisoners of their own power and are obligated to follow any policy, no matter how self-contradictory, which will keep them in power. And having followed their policy they are obliged to justify it, so that all thought becomes a rationalization of the shifts of power politics.

Separately, Orwell wrote that "the really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits 'attrocities' but that it attacks the concept of objective truth: it claims to control the past as well as the future." Sound familiar? Hope and change anyone?

Orwell also disparagingly referred to Bolshevik commissars as "half gangster, half gramophone," which to some degree may be the contemporary equivalent of propaganda-by-talking-points.

U.S. Attorney Nominee Under Ethical Cloud

Colorado's would-be U.S. attorney is not setting good example for candor or transparency that would be expected of a state's top federal law enforcement official:

President Barack Obama's nominee as Colorado's next U.S. attorney told the FBI two years ago that she never spoke to anyone in the Denver District Attorney's Office about an illegal immigrant who became a controversial figure in the 2006 gubernatorial race.

FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had "no conversations" with anyone at the DA's office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina.

But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter's campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was about Estrada-Medina. The FBI also apparently never asked her about the nature of a series of phone calls she exchanged over the next two days with Kimbrough and First Assistant DA Chuck Lepley. Those calls came both before and after an order by Lepley to a subordinate to run a criminal history check of Estrada-Medina in a restricted federal database.

It can be a crime to access the National Crime Information Center computer for a non-law-enforcement purpose.

Update:Villafuerte withdrew her nomination.

Federal Govt. Warns Dr. Weil About Supplement Recommendation

As reported on the NaturalNews website by Mike Adams, the self-named Health Ranger, the feds are threatening legal action against Andrew Weil, a prominent MD (and frequent Larry King guest) who also supports some natural remedies, simply for recommending the herb astragulus. Adams adds the following:

When true statements about botany are outlawed, and the only statements allowed to be made about H1N1 flu protection are based on profit-driven lies, and the very leaders who try to help the People (like Dr. Weil) are threatened with being arrested as criminals and having their companies shut down at gunpoint, that's when you know you live in a "1984"-style medical police state.

When true statements about botany are outlawed, and the only statements allowed to be made about H1N1 flu protection are based on profit-driven lies, and the very leaders who try to help the People (like Dr. Weil) are threatened with being arrested as criminals and having their companies shut down at gunpoint, that's when you know you live in a "1984"-style medical police state.

For all those who voted for Obama, by the way, keep in mind this criminal FDA racket continues to operate in full swing under the Obama administration, just as it did under the Bush Administration. Sadly, Obama has done absolutely nothing to halt the tyranny against natural product companies. In fact, under Obama, this action has been accelerated by the FTC and FDA. It's worse now than ever before, and with Big Government getting even bigger -- and more lawmakers calling for increased FDA funding -- this problem is only bound to get worse.

Click here for the FDA/FTC warning letter to Weil.

As we've blogged previously, "heathcare" is more than just about drugs and surgery.

Swedish Court Upholds Charges Against Animal Rights Activist

Sweden's high court establishes a legal precedent for protection of the workplace in that country:

Sweden's Supreme Court has upheld a landmark ruling in which a 30-year-old animal rights activist was convicted for his involvement in storming the premises of four companies and harassing members of staff.

The 30-year-old Malmö resident was sentenced on charges of aggravated unlawful entry by the Swedish Supreme Court.

Officials Warn of Homegrown Radicals Trained in Overseas Terrror Camps

According to the Washington Post, the number of recruited terrorists from the West going overseas for paramilitary training is on the increase:

U.S. and European counterterrorism officials say a rising number of Western recruits -- including Americans -- are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary training camps. The flow of recruits has continued unabated, officials said, in spite of an intensified campaign over the past year by the CIA to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in drone missile attacks.

Since January, at least 30 recruits from Germany have traveled to Pakistan for training, according to German security sources. About 10 people -- not necessarily the same individuals -- have returned to Germany this year, fueling concerns that fresh plots are in the works against European targets.

...European security officials have warned for many years of the threat posed by homegrown radicals who have gone to Afghanistan and Pakistan to wage jihad. Officials in some countries, such as Britain, said they have successfully cracked down on the number of would-be fighters going to South Asia. But others, such as Germany, are seeing a significant increase and struggling to contain it.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has an interesting piece about the Taliban's fundraising techniques:

The Taliban in Afghanistan are running a sophisticated financial network to pay for their insurgent operations, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the illicit drug trade, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control, American and Afghan officials say. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency’s coffers brimming with cash.

Estimates of the Taliban’s annual revenue vary widely. Proceeds from the illicit drug trade alone range from $70 million to $400 million a year, according to Pentagon and United Nations officials. By diversifying their revenue stream beyond opium, the Taliban are frustrating American and NATO efforts to weaken the insurgency by cutting off its economic lifelines, the officials say.

CIA Surfin' The Web For Open Source Intelligence

An "exclusive" from Wired.com's national security blog:

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.