Citizen Reporter

Flipping through the Washington Post, just to make sure there wasn’t any real journalism going on there (it happens on occasion, they write something good), I noticed an article by a guy named Joel Afenbach or something like that. The article described how trees are urban terrors! I repeat, this “journalist” in what is supposed to be a storm damage report, concludes that Trees are an urban danger. Apprently they are not enough of an urban danger, because during the storm no tree was able to fall into this man’s office and smash his computer, or as I call it, his tool of disinformation.

More fluff from the WashPost, keep ’em dumb, keep ’em numb – thats company policy.

Briefly, Wesley Clark. Now, my more left leaning friends and acquaintances have expressed their liking of the general. Why? Well.. he’s got that military career and those good looks that steal some of Bush’s pro-military, common man appeal. Many dems see him as the savior of the party.

Trouble is, the party is rotten to the core, and it’s starting to stink. Wesley Clark? A good guy?

FLASHBACK: Kosovo, NATO under the command of Clark, bombs Serbia for weeks under the pretense that this was the only way to protect Kosovo from the Serb military. During his watch, NATO planes bomb hostipals, TV stations, Power Stations, Oil Refineries, Passenger Trains, Truck Convoys, Foreign journalists, Refugee camps. Thousands die. And Clark claims it was all “part of the mission.” I’m sorry, he may have been doing his job, but the fact is, he killed innocent people. Like his military associates, he cannot simply write-off those deaths like it’s all in a days work.

Democrat? If the dems intend to continue their self-destruction, yes he is. To those who say he’s an improvement over Bush… I say… improvement, perhaps. But Clark as the democractic candidate is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic.

Well, following a sad week in Sweden, the referendum today saw a majority “NO” vote, to join the Euro currency. Citing all sorts of crazy and not so crazy reasons, slightly over 50 percent of voting Swedes did not want to become a part of the single European Currency. Despite the fact that they are members of the EU, they are part of the European labour and travel agreements, the common agricultural policy, they vote for their own EU parliamentarians, they benefit from EU trade and trade agreements. All this, but it seems, not the currency.

This puts them in the company of the United Kingdom, which has long kept one foot in Europe and one foot, well, somewhere else. And Denmark, another fair-weather EU friend.

While the values of democracy and choice are important ones, the neverending rhetoric by anti-EU conservatives is borderline apacalyptic – as if all the other 11 countries all ready using the currency have lost their welfare systems, trade volume, sovereignty or identity. By playing on people’s fears, you can get people to vote any which way.

Democracy is an interesting and valueable practice. But when it comes to economics and trade, what makes the average person a qualified expert?

Lucky for Sweden they can follow the British example by enjoying the benefits of the EU and making as few commitments as possible. Lucky for Sweden that Europe will still be there when they change their minds.

Looking at the calender, this week is the anniversary of Sept. 11th. And perhaps the only thing worse than that terrible occurance is the tasteless, offensive, insulting, ignorant, manipulative and just plain horrible tributes/commercializations that will take place this 9/11. If it isn’t showtime showing a rediculous and pathetic movie called 9-11 featuring GW Bush as the movie’s “hero”, it will be some corporate scheme on the part of NBC or CBS offerring hours upon hours if “tributes to America” with excessive uses of American flags and photos of people crying and troops marching. As one Village Voice reporter mentions this week, it reeks of soviet propoganda. Matter of fact, you can bet the American president will be on every television pan-handling for support for his failure of a war. 4 months ago he said fuck the UN, now he changes his tune, trying to paint himself as something other than the arrogant, ignorant, international-community disrespecting president we all know him to be.

All-in-all, it’s going to be a rough week. My heart especially goes out to New York, as once again America will invade the once autonomous and creative metropolis, and give it a red-white-and blue brain washing. Have courage New York, hopefully it doesn’t last more than a week.

It seems that the Bush administration, governor Pataki of New York State, and NYC mayor Bloomberg seriously pulled the wool over everyones eyes in the aftermath of the blackout. The press helped: from CNN to NYTimes they were producing “feel-good”stories about people waiting to get home or sleeping on the street and the “party-like”atmosphere. They dedicated plenty of pages to these fluff stories, yet practically no pages were dedicated to investigating the government’s role in power-grid mismanagement. They reported nothing on the de-regulation and underinvestment of the northeast’s power generating facilities. And the public has fallen for it hook-line-and sinker, they’ve long forgotten that someone could actually be held “accontable”in all this.

This was also true when Bush first forced his way into the presidency and held top-secret closed to the public meetings to plan energy policy. Apparently no where in those plans was the Northeast situation discussed. There were big promises following the California energy crisis about better mamagement and planning, apprently more lies. Just window dressing in hopes that people won’t notice. And the worst part is, it’s worked, people aren’t questioning… the media isn’t investigating… and the government is free to keep fabricating.