How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! (Mark Twain)
Mentch of the month (year?)
MentchGood news today from film maker Michael Moore. He has put up $20,000 to guarantee bail for Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder. He has also offered use of his servers for Wikileak traffic*. It’s a move that would be unquestioned anywhere in the world, but probably puts him at legal risk here in the U.S., and perhaps if it were done in China.
International criminalIn other news, Halliburton has reportedly agreed to pay $250 million to Nigeria to encourage that country to drop its bribery charges against Dick Cheney. (Sounds suspiciously like another bribe.) As with all well-connected criminals, Cheney walks free.
And isn’t it interesting that $20,000 is a blow for free speech, while $250 million allows a criminal to walk free. What’s wrong with this picture?
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*Moore’s web page
Your problem is that of the fundamentalist – that things must be either this way or that way, with nothing between. Government is a means to ends, and as so often happens in life, leads to bad as well as good consequences. But to do without it is as foolish to to subject ourselves to the whims of corporations and wealthy families, over whom we have even less control.
When the corporations and wealthy families take over government, we are screwed (and indeed we are at this point in time), but that is not due to the existence of government. It is due to the existence of concentrated power with no counterbalancing power to offset it. We are safer in a bipolar world than a unipolar one, as the U.S. demonstrates.
Concentrated power, in any form, is the enemy of human freedom. Here’s something I just made up on the spot: “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. “
Piece of Mindful 
Mark,
What’s wrong?
Government attacks a free man exposing bizarre government,
and government rakes in “extra” cash with wink to keep quiet about another government man trying to manipulate another government.
Nothing wrong here, Mark. This is the system you think works best.
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Your problem is that of the fundamentalist – that things must be either this way or that way, with nothing between. Government is a means to ends, and as so often happens in life, leads to bad as well as good consequences. But to do without it is as foolish to to subject ourselves to the whims of corporations and wealthy families, over whom we have even less control.
When the corporations and wealthy families take over government, we are screwed (and indeed we are at this point in time), but that is not due to the existence of government. It is due to the existence of concentrated power with no counterbalancing power to offset it. We are safer in a bipolar world than a unipolar one, as the U.S. demonstrates.
Concentrated power, in any form, is the enemy of human freedom. Here’s something I just made up on the spot: “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. “
LikeLike