Last week while doing my grocery shopping I noticed a copy of "People " magazine at the checkout counter, adorned with a large portrait of one of the Bush twins, Jenna, in her wedding gown. "TEARFUL VOWS! THE FULL MENU! AND MORE!, the cover screeched. Well, I am so happy that Jenna, with her life of privilege, got "exactly the wedding she wanted" to go with her "unglamorous personality" (Her quote, not mine). This was then followed by a list of totally inedible sounding foods, like "Grilled Rio Grande ranch flat iron steak"( was the steak iron? or was it just flat?) and "Fried oysters on tostadas" (I personally am fond of fried oysters, but I am not sure if they would be improved by balancing them on tostadas). The wedding, we hear, was not "cluttered up by publicity or press people"

I don't know about you, but the whole thing makes my gorge rise. Wouldn't it have been too, too ghastly if poor Jenna, who has had to suffer through being the President's daughter, as she told one of the officers who arrested her for underage drinking, couldn't have had exactly the wedding she wanted. How heart-rending, if she had had to clutter up her Special Day with publicity or press people, just in case the American people wanted to see the bride, or see coverage of her wedding.

Does this bubblehead and her retarded family have any concept that there is a war going on in this country? A stupid, wasteful, pointless war that they started?

Let's hear about how another young couple is doing in George Bush's America.

B.J. Jackson, a double amputee from Des Moines, Iowa, and his wife, Debby, were hesitant to resume their intimate relationship after B.J. lost both his legs in Iraq. Abby shyly asked the doctor in the hospital where B.J. was recovering from his horrific injuries for advice on how she could have sexual relations with her husband. 

It would just take time, the doctor said, offering no additional advice.  Abby now wonders whether it would have helped her husband if she had simply ignored the doctors and nurses hurrying in and out of B.J.'s room and gotten into the hospital bed with her husband with the curtains closed.

Pick any day in front of Naval National Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. You will see rows of 18, 19, and 20 year old boys and girls missing arms and legs, sitting dispiritedly in wheelchairs. Will anyone want to marry them? What is their future to be? But not to worry. Jenna Bush danced the night away in an Oscar de la Renta gown.

Every Sunday morning there is a list on the ABC television program "This Week" of servicemen and women recently killed in Iraq. Every week it brings tears to my eyes. There is always a list of 18 and 19 year olds, and I think to myself, how awful- they just had no lives at all. Then you see the occasional service member who is in his late thirties and early forties. One wonders if this is in reality more tragic, as they probably had children and spouses who will never recover from this loss- this pointless, unnecessary loss for a pointless, unnecessary war.

Jenna and her new husband Henry will settle in a $440,000 row house that they bought in Baltimore, where Henry will begin work in June, earning a base salary "in the low six figures" Do you suppose they'll have wounded vets in to Sunday Dinner? But then for the Bush family no sacrifice is too small. For example, the President recently told an interviewer that he had made the ultimate sacrifice- he has given up golf for the remainder of the war because "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander- in Chief playing golf" Gotta love that Bush- he really feels our pain.

UPDATE: According to The Washington Post, our Commander- in- Chief was recently seen playing golf, proving that not only is he an idiot and a wetbrain, but a congenital liar as well.

The blogosphere still vibrates with wars and rumors of wars- with Iran, with Syria, occasionally even with Russia or China. One writer whom I read has been predicting the imminent outbreak of war with Iran at least since 2004, which was when I first started reading him. When the elections are over and the troops start being shipped back from Iraq- which in spite of all the saber-rattling by the current gaggle of presidential contenders is a foregone conclusion- I often wonder what the fallback position of these pundits will be. They probably won't have one. My theory about World War III, as the neocons liked to call it- World War @#$%  would probably be a more apt turn of phrase- is that it rose and fell on the fortunes of one man, George W. Bush.

Bush has gotten exactly the fate that he deserves. In five years this man went from "Mission Accomplished" and all those yellow ribbons on pickup trucks proclaiming, "Support The Troops", from hearing his garbled, moronic speeches about bringing democracy to the world being praised on TV, to the humiliation of getting the bird after throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day 2008. Bush's disapproval ratings, we are told, are the highest in recorded history, higher even than Nixon's right before his resignation. Bush even made a public appearance on a cheesy game show, "Deal Or No Deal". When it was learned that he was to be on the show, the ratings dropped by twenty percent.

George W. Bush is about the weirdest, least qualified man to ever occupy the oval office. The thing about Bush that is so scary is that he has no shame. A more normal man would be humiliated by the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, for example. But not Bush. He actually sent his wife out on the public airwaves to criticize the government of Myanmar for not allowing foreign aid to come into the country after Cyclone Nargus. His own administration did not allow foreign aid to come into the country after Katrina, claiming it would not be needed. Tell that to the starving people who were breaking into shops on half-flooded streets in New Orleans, desperately hunting for bottled water and any type of foodstuffs. As far as the Iraq war goes (and have you noticed they have completely stopped talking about Afghanistan? Psst... apart from providing a boost to the opium crop yield, it's because we lost.) the reasons for it exist inside George W. Bush's warped mind, and nowhere else. He is an inadequate fool, but deep down, he knows that he is one. How awful to have to get up every morning, knowing that you can't speak, think, govern, make decisions, lead, or in point of fact do anything. No wonder he hides in a make-believe world of being "Commander -in Chief"

One wonders when the nadir of the Bush Administration will finally come. Many people felt it happened last week, when Bush addressed- if you can call it that- the Israeli Knesset. He raved on about appeasement, stating, "Some people seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will convince them that they have been wrong all along" Then of course, all the usual tired analogies about Neville Chamberlain, Munich, and Hitler were dragged out. Bush just doesn't get it, does he? He is Hitler. He is the one who goes to war "preemptively", in other words, commits aggression against other countries. He is the one appeasement didn't work against.

In a very interesting development, Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted the notorious Manson Family murderers, and was also the author of the best- selling crime book of all time, "Helter Skelter" has written a new book on George W Bush. It is titled, "The Prosecution Of George W Bush For Murder" and carefully goes over all the lies Bush and his lackeys told, leading up from 9/11, the famous yellowcake speech, and the mushroom-cloud shaped question mark, right up to the outbreak of hostilities. The book will be available on May 27, and I feel that it will drop like a bombshell. Bugliosi, with his experience as a trained investigator, and also as a card-carrying member of the establishment, has the gravitas and experience to do what should have been done a long time ago: indict George W Bush as a war criminal, at least in the court of public opinion, if not at the Hague.

 The world is sliding into an entirely preventable global mosaic of food famines in which many millions of men, women and children will perish in anguish and in agony.

It is likely that at least a billion will die in the next few years, and many children become brain-damaged, if the United Nations is not immediately democratized; and if the domination by a few imperial powers, a situation mandated by the UN, is not ended.

With grisly irony, the United Nations has launched an investigation into the food crisis to find answers that don’t implicate itself; an impossible task because the UN has facilitated this destruction through World Bank and World Trade Organization policies; as will become evident in the following analysis.

Rather than one or two causes of the food crisis, there are eleven:

Fuel crisis The most immediate and tangible is the ethanol programme, in which food crops are being converted to fuel. Quite apart from the reality that the conversions are neither cost-effective nor energy-efficient , corn, rice, wheat and other crops; the staple diet of four billion human beings, are being used to fuel cars for the arrogant wealthy elite.

What is worse is that the inevitable starvation this will cause has always been known to those who administer this programme. They proceed because they consider the genocide to be commendable. Language experts must now coin a new word for these sociopathic administrations, or will eugenics still suffice?

The United Nations must immediately declare food for fuel programmes a Crime Against Humanity, and ban these under threat of expulsion from the UN, and the conjoint imposition of immediate global trade and currency sanctions.

Urban sprawl Governments and UN support for giant agribusiness to replace family farming, has created massive unemployment and forced many millions of regional and rural people into towns; which has promoted urban sprawl, which in turn has swallowed up the arable lands that were the genesis of the towns in the first place. Developers have bribed politicians to maintain the status quo. This population explosion has also created a desperate shortage of water, particularly in dry continents such as Australia; a situation exploited by the ruthless water privateers such as Bechtel and Vivendi. The single simple step required to reverse urban sprawl is immediate tariff restoration.

Tariff removal Incremental tariff removal has destroyed the food production diversity of nations like Australia and America, who must now consume reduced nutrition mass-marketed hybrids, contributing to obesity; or import food from third world nations; food that the people of developing countries themselves should be eating.

This has had severe rolling impacts on these globalized nations, and Australia is the classic example. Over a period of two and a half decades, two thirds of family farms have been destroyed, and between one third and a half of the national manufacturing sector has been forced into bankruptcy by subsidized imported third world product. Because of population-flooding, (and in Australia, combined with high mortgage rates and oil/groceries inflation) in some cities rents have almost doubled and 21% of the nation is now unemployed; although a cynical government fudges figures down to below 4%. It has been conservatively estimated that, in the next year or so, 300,000 Australian families will be living on the streets; which, arguably, is around one in fifteen.

54% of Australians now barely survive on incomes below $15,000, and cannot afford adequate nutrition, medical or dental care; which means they are dying in slow motion.

This is the direct result of the Australian Government’s slavish ideological compliance with WTO and White House’s free trade policies. Tariffs must be immediately restored and all free trade policies declared illegal by the UN, and continued impositions prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.

Drought An objective perusal of non-selective evidence suggests that, far from experiencing global warming, we may now be moving into a phase of solargenic cyclical global cooling. The Antarctic ice sheet is the most extensive it has been since measuring began, and much of this is water that probably should have fallen on Australia and parts of Africa and South America. Greater scientific funding independence, and absolutely objective research; are needed to gather all evidence until at least tentative conclusions can be drawn. It must be presumed that drought will worsen and that new food production policies must emerge. Population dispersal is essential, as is encouragement for family vegetable gardens.

GM Genetically manipulated crops and animals Taking advantage of an ethic-less legal industry, especially in the provision of patents on life itself, Monsanto/Bayer and other corporations have bribed governments, manipulated research and the employment of scientists, and have trapped farmers into signing contracts to plant and harvest crops that quickly under-perform. In only a decade, 110,000 farmers in India have committed suicide, in irresolvable despair over the debts subsequently incurred. Elsewhere, farmers have been imprisoned for refusing to pay royalties on wind-drift-effected GM crops. Independent research has showed that rats fed GM corn produce young with undersized testicles, brain and liver; organs that deteriorate with age. Considering the risks of this impinging on food productivity, not to mention human health, there must be a global moratorium on GM foods.

Selective breeding Although the media, and especially science publications, have lauded selective breeding, there has been a serious downside. Species have been promoted that are suited to mass marketing, at the expense of those that are resistant to drought, flood and disease. Species that have already adapted to local environments are becoming extinct, thus eliminating an important range within the gene pool. There is evidence that this may soon have a significant impact on food crop and animal survival rates in the aftermath of global warming or cooling.

Trade hegemony and imperialist policies As a means of dominating markets, major nations have forced the elimination of alternative species of food types. The experience of Australia’s Northern Territory illustrates the seriousness of this. The United States forced Australia to eliminate a large proportion of its cattle herds, to eliminate bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis, or suffer exclusion from the long-standing meat export quota that was the sister agreement to the ANZUS Treaty. This was both hypocritical and phoney as the US retains these same diseases in its livestock, especially in the Dakota region. Moreover, the Northern Territory was forced to entirely shoot out its water buffalo population; which was the world’s largest pool of lean clean meat. Although the collaborating Murdoch media presented buffalo as being 90% infected, in fact the average infection rate was less than 2%; an extraordinarily low rate for feral animals. This is because less than 1% of the NT is cleared; providing a unique opportunity for natural food harvesting, instead of risk-endemic farming. Meanwhile an embryonic multi-billion dollar market was emerging in Germany and other parts of Europe for this environmentally sustainable and unpolluted animal. Once again, Australian scientists further diminished the social value of buffalo by blaming this magnificent animal for the environmental damage inflicted by feral pigs (the genuine issue of saltwater intrusion was merely a management factor, not understood by the scientists).

Elsewhere, this trade colonialism and exploitation has been endured for centuries; first experienced in India when the British Raj forced the replacing of indigenous crops with monocultures, such as cotton to feed the Manchester mills. This monoculture depleted soils, and production methods dislocated peoples, destroyed skills and eroded cultures. Logging decimated forests. Out of this emerged the famines and flooding, which had never before been a feature of India. Currently, Australia and many other nations are required to replace food crops with cotton, GM soy and palm oil. Vast areas of forest are being sacrificed, which will affect climate and, therefore, global food production.

Pseudo-science We are paying a dear price in lives for the myth that scientists are intelligent. Few are, and a meaningful percentage are entirely mercenary and without ethics. Agriscience promoted NPK regimes for 70 years, depleting soils and contaminating creeks, lakes, coral, mangroves and the ocean. Many scientists have supported the absurdity of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), knowing full well that the primary long term measuring devices are faulty. In fact, in the US, only a measured 4% of land surface temperature gauges are correctly sited; the rest having been absorbed by urban sprawl, and are now recording higher ambient temperatures from adjacent concrete, bitumen, air conditioner unit exhausts and sun-heated motor vehicles. It is reasonable to presume a similar situation exists elsewhere. Anyway, 17,200 climate-orientated scientists have listed their refutation of AGW (DigitalJournal.com, 2008).

Another example of scientific asininity is the logic that says fire is natural therefore fire is good. This has resulted in burn-off regimes that damage environment and climate. In Australia, this affects the entire northern third of the country, an area the size of Europe, causing very measurable erosion of soils, depletion of fauna and flora, reduction of woodland canopies, sterilizing of soils, and pollution of the air, creeks, rivers, mangrove forests and coral formations (and hence, fishing). Scientists, ignoring fire-sensitive species that would have become extinct millions of years ago, were fires a widespread natural event; wonder childishly at seeds that germinate prolifically after fire, not understanding that this relates to ground longevity, not fire. They also gullibley absorb urbanized Aboriginal claims of ‘firestick farming’; a practice conceptualized through linguistic and cultural miscomprehension, lyrical romanticism and simple ignorance of hunting environments and techniques.

Agribusiness Under the coercive influence of agribusiness, food is produced for trade, rather then to feed local populations. In third world countries, and under traditional circumstances, food is for family consumption; only surpluses are sold.

Industry-dominated governments Corporations and international banks contribute to major political party election campaigns and therefore control political agendas. This results in the poisoning of rivers, lakes and aquifers; all of which impact on food production; and food production policies are subverted for profit rather than benefiting the people. Secondly, thus-suborned governments allow the incomes of workers to degenerate to the point by which they can no longer afford adequate quantities of sufficiently nutritious food.

Inequitable taxation regimes These over-tax the poor and families, and under-tax the wealthy. Secondly, revenue is distributed back to the wealthy and corporate/banker elites. And again, contrary to media-produced propaganda, corporate welfare always outsizes welfare for the disadvantaged.

Resolving the food crisis; critical requirements

(1) Restore Tariffs The first step must be the resurrection of Domestic Production Cycles, which can only be achieved through the restoration of national tariffs, which protect food producers; and also protect manufacturers, who employ workers so that they have incomes and can afford to purchase the food. Put simply, the circle widens to accommodate distributors, retailers and service providers.

First, second and third world tariff restoration also prevents the food needed by third world peoples being siphoned off by giant agri-corporations and sold to developed countries at greatly expanded profits.

Contrary to the claims of pseudo-green organizations, these are not family and village crops we are consuming, but are corporate-produced with exploited labour. The former traditional village people’s surpluses were first rendered profitless by subsidized unfair competition by agribusiness; and these people subsequently forced to work for the corporations on slave labour wages. In other words, the removal of tariffs did not help third world people as asserted, but forced then into virtual enslavement. Tariff restoration will result in the corporations departing from these countries.

In countries like the US and Australia, another direct effect of tariff restoration will be re-invigoration of regional and rural economies. This will have significant radiant impacts:

New job opportunities will attract people back to rural regions, with concomitant recommissioning of health and education facilities, the reopening of bank branches; and the blossoming of regional economies. Local councils will once again become solvent, and the current and hated amalgamation of councils will need to be reversed.

According to surveys, young families and retirees will also abandon cities: families for the better jobs, housing access and healthier lifestyles; and retirees for the much lower property rates and taxes; and the absence of violent crime. Other retirees will move to be closer to their grandchildren. Many traditionally urban-bound occupations will follow, enabled by the transportability of Internet productivity.

This massive rural migration will attract new service industries. Overall, it is calculated that employment opportunities, in terms of full time jobs, will increase around 55%; somewhat higher than was evident prior to tariff removals. In the US it will restore the labour imbalance caused by 15 million illegal immigrants, with many returning to Mexico and other countries of origin, to enjoy the restored regional economies. Terrorist organization La Raza will die a natural death.

The consequential regeneration of the Domestic Production Cycle will be a new dynamic injected into manufacturing and commerce generally, with expanded consumer incomes enabling adequate profits; which will discourage outsourcing and off-shoring. And, of course, because tariff restoration automatically removes the unfair competition of foreign corporate imports, both farming and manufacturing prosper. For the first time, migrant intake will actually be needed to mitigate labour shortages.

A cumulative effect of rural migration will be greatly reduced demand on city water catchments; important factors in Australia and on America’s west coast.

(2) Democratization of national and international governments All of the listed causes of the food crisis; and in fact, almost every other crisis, is due to the political myth that the act of electing a corrupt politician to do our thinking for us, and to determine our futures for us, constitutes democracy. It does not.

Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people. Anything else is simply not democracy.

What we do have now is representationalism, and we are currently experiencing the hideous product of that propagandized ideology… corruption, exploitation, pollution, poverty, famine, war and genocide. It will get worse.

In the modern context, democracy is government by informed electoral consensus. In other words, the electorate decides the general direction and thrust of policy. Those citizens, who wish to become involved in details of implementation, have every right to do so.

But it must be firmly understood by everyone, that no such government exists today; but many existed prior to the 9th century; prior to the Vatican takeover of Europe. This is a history that we need to catch up on, especially the social and economic organization of the Finnish and Irish of that period; and the role of the Irish Monks.

Today, each nation’s people must take whatever steps are necessary to install genuine democracy; and books and papers are available to guide the architects. Contrary to hierarchic propaganda, implementation is not difficult; and any instance of successful referendum demonstrates just how simple it can be.

Once again, Australia can point to an illustrative example: the 1967 referendum in which 90% of Australians voted to give Aborigines the same population status as other citizens. Although the so-called political representatives were utterly divided on the issue, the electorate had had a decade to discuss the implications and experienced no difficulty whatsoever in deciding; in spite of the media muddying the waters.

Finally, each nation’s votes in the United Nations must echo plebiscites of each entire national adult population. The current practice of corrupt government leaders appointing retired cronies to represent nations is probably one of the most appalling scandals in history. It is envisaged that a democratized UN will quickly dismantle the Security Council, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the IMF and the BIS. If there were genuine representation on the UN, they would do this forthwith, and so save millions of lives.

(3) Ban the production of ethanol from food No explanation is required.

(4) Place an international moratorium on GM foods, and permanently ban patents on life Again, no elaboration is required.

Tony Ryan, today's guest columnist,  is an activist from Down Under in Australia. He has spent a lifetime working for Direct Democracy. Tony is a fascinating man with a unique perspective; read him and learn. 

Two Triple Crown Events in three years, two dead animals. Do we really need to continue this fiasco, so that millionaires can get falling-down drunk on mint juleps and their wives can parade themselves around wearing idiotic-looking hats that they couldn't wear anywhere else?

If Bret Favre and Tom Brady were both killed in the Super Bowl over the course of three years, would we soothe our grief and shock with inane comments like, "It's just part of the nature of the sport"?

Of course not.

The latest advances in chemicals (yes, thoroughbred race-horses take as many drugs as Roger Clemens, the only difference being that they have no choice in the matter) and the concomitant new fashion for breeding light-weight animals have brought us to the point where the horses are highly overstressed, in many cases to the point of death. Is the money being made really worth the lives of these beautiful and intelligent animals? Ah, yes, "The Sport Of Kings". We'll see how regal it starts looking when the sponsors start dropping out. It's not particularly good advertising to have your commercial run on television right after the trainers are shown preparing the poor horse for a lethal injection.

While Eight Belles is the latest tragedy. many of us have not recovered from the spectacle of Barbaro running at the Preakness with the broken leg that proved fatal many agonizing months later. It would have been kinder to the animal simply to euthanize him right at at the track, but what about all those lost stud fees? No, let's keep pushing and torturing the poor creature, on the one-in-a-million chance that he survives and can impregnate a few mares.

The truth behind all this is even worse than most people realize. According to Pat Forde of ESPN, Too many horses are dying on the sport's biggest days. Most people watch horse racing four times a year: the three Triple Crown races(the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont), plus the Breeders' Cup. If you watched the past thirteen of those Saturdays, you had a 38.5 percent chance of watching a horse break down. These races are supposed to showcase thoroughbred horse-racing, showing us the cream of the crop of current horses and jockeys. They are not supposed to be stomach-churning, tear-jerking tragedies.

Of course, PETA, with its singular gift of promoting something good, kindness to animals, in an absurd way, has called for the jockey riding Eight Belles, Gabriel Saez, to be penalized for using the crop. Have these people ever watched a horse race? ALL the jockeys have crops, and they are not holding them for decoration. All racehorses are whipped past the finish line. Many jockeys have said they feel the crop should be banned or limited. However, just as in the steroid controversy in other sports, it is quite literally not a level playing field. The jockeys don't get to make those decisions. In many ways, they are as much victims as the racehorses are. No jockey wants to be riding a horse when it breaks down on the track. It's a great way to be crippled or killed. Also, remember that jockeys make next to nothing-unless they win.

I have read many suggestions by "experts" over the past few days about what can done to fix thoroughbred racing. Weight limits, age limits, adjusting bloodlines, resurfacing tracks with a new material called Polytrack- I have heard them all weighed and discussed. I have a suggestion of my own. Maybe it's time for thoroughbred horse- racing to go the way of cockfighting, bearbaiting, and dogfighting and be banned as being cruel and barbaric. Maybe the day will come when we will be shocked to remember that we wasted our Saturday afternoons in such a fashion.