Some pictures are worth more than 1,000 words.

Beautiful speech and powerful. If I could get a transcript of that speech I would just read it verbatim into a camera at Cable Access.

It is hard to keep from crying when you listen to King... what a dreamer he was...

we need someone like him today...

Wow.

So far I see nothing - is it this computer?
Will try back later.

We can't fall for the propaganda. Deals are being worked left and right.

Curious Coincidences Over Fate of Iranians Kidnapped in Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040607G.shtml
Tehran's liberation on Wednesday, April 4, of fifteen British sailors has "nothing to do" with the liberation twenty-four hours earlier of an Iranian diplomat who mysteriously disappeared two months ago in Iraq. Neither does it have anything to do with the announcement a few hours later in Tehran that five other Iranian "diplomats," captured by the American Army January 11 in Iraq, will receive a visit by an adviser from their Iraq embassy.

Amazing speech. Amazing video.

Just out here on the patio, gorgeous, breezy late afternoon here, nursin a Heinee Light... was thinkin on that speech...

Made me think, I'm starting to think I might agree with Cheney on something (don't faint)...

I am starting to believe that it is inevitable that something big is gonna happen here, again, on our soil...

But quite frankly, why would it suprise anyone at this point?

The display, the gutwreching spectacle of the last 6 years, of sheer arrogance, total disregard for human life, the degradation of human beings for sport, ignoring the will of the world, corruption and manipulation, all under the name of The United States of America, under our nations flag...

I love my country, and am sick, literally, to the core, that I feel embarrassed by it, and worse, I am sicker at what I believe may lie ahead for this generation and the next as the payback for what's happening under our very noses...

ehhhhhhh*@^$#^#, I need another Heinee....

Rant suspended due to reign.

T'aint hard to find, ralpheh, The Googlenets is your friend...

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

(MP3, WMA file, and text transcript of said speech all in one convenient place)

Oh, yes, and then there is also:

http://www.democracycellproject.net/forum/index.php?s=b32a1985f34a9eeca1f05b1e57e9f932&showtopic=768

speech into text,
Otter

Wow, good catch on the anniversary of this incredible speech. I last listened to this exactly 10 years ago, in high school. And I remember thinking, "Thanks God I may never have to see my government do something like this..."

Sigh.

I cried the first time I read that speech by MLK, and cried again today. Beautiful.

It does give one hope, though - the beauty that lies in the human spirit.

Along with the deceitfully wicked hearts, mankind also has beauty beyond compare in their hearts.

I hope. And, along with MLK, I pray to God that there will be a brighter, more righteous day again.

Thanks, Mr. Albertson. Bittersweet, but beautiful nonetheless. The beauty and hope that was in Martin Luther King's spirit lies within ours, too. And, our brothers'.....

This is great!

Kerry: latest Bush effort to Whitewash Climate Change is Unacceptable

WASHINGTON – Senator John Kerry today rebuked the Bush Administration in response to reports that several key Administration officials attempted to censor portions of an international report warning of climate change repercussions.

“This is the latest example of the Bush Administration trying to change the science to fit their ideological agenda. It’s an embarrassment. Restoring American leadership in the world means we should be the world's leading advocate, not the world's leading denier of climate change. We should lead the world to address climate change rather than joining with Saudi Arabia as the leader of the flat earth caucus. This is the latest chapter in the Bush Administration story of diplomacy at its worst -- ducking the difficult choices, substituting words for deeds, postponing the reckoning until the day after tomorrow. The world is changing and now the reckoning is real. Here's the bottom line: within the next decade, if we don't deal with global warming, our children and grandchildren will have to deal with global catastrophe. It is time to start leading, not retreating from our responsibility.”

Today’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of the global effects of climate change, including extreme weather patterns, increasing droughts that lead to famine and disease, massive floods and avalanches in Asia, and species extinction unless significant action is taken on a global level to abate climate change.

During the past six years, the Bush Administration has made several attempts to block or censure government employees or reports that warn of global warming. The United States, Saudi Arabia and China worked to tone down the panel’s report, leading many of the report’s most alarming projections to be generalized.

Robert Siegel from NPR's All Things Considered interviewed Matthew Dowd & asked some very pointed questions. You can listen to it or read the transcript at the link.

Matthew Dowd, Turning Sour on Bush
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9434786

I'm going to be gone this weekend so I'd like to wish all my friends a Happy Easter and a Passover without too many bread cravings.

T'aint hard to find, ralpheh, The Googlenets is your friend...

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

(MP3, WMA file, and text transcript of said speech all in one convenient place)

Oh, y

@@@@@

T'is hard, apparently. Were there two different versions of this speech given by King? The speech in the link you gave is much, much longer and detailed (and somewhat less to the point) - not at all like the speech in the video.

But I do appreciate your efforts... and do keep me updated as to all the details of the happenings with JK and THK. It always brings me back to the wonderful memories of the primary and election in 2004. (you know, the "skull and bones society"; "first I voted for it, then I voted against it"; "he's friends with Jane Fonda"; "most liberal Senator in the country" etc...)

Must listen to this, all the way through, especially the last song:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9310666&sc=nl&cc=mn-20070406

Just watched the video, Rick, and as I sit here in NYC, not far from the Riverside Church, forty years later, it seems that all of the truth we have heard in the past forty years, over and over again, needs to roll down like water and cleanse our souls.

We must make channels for those truths to bubble along in places where the truth is not known. Keep sending it out there.

Oh happy day!!!!

MONICA GOODLING RESIGNS!!!

Goodling said she would invoke 5th Amendment if called before Congress.
Washington - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' top aide, who refused to testify before Congress about her role in the politically charged firing of eight U.S. attorneys, abruptly quit her job Friday.

"I am hereby submitting my resignation to the office of attorney general," Monica M. Goodling said in a three-sentence letter. There was no immediate reason given for her departure, but Goodling's refusal to face Congress intensified a controversy that threatens Gonzales' job.

Asserting her right under the U.S. Constitution not to incriminate herself, Goodling rejected demands last month for a private interview with a House of Representatives committee investigating the firings.

Goodling was senior counsel to Gonzales and was the department's White House liaison before she took a leave amid the uproar over the prosecutors' ousters.

Here's the headline (Bushies dump their bad news on a Friday....)

Gonzales Aide Goodling Resigns
The Associated Press

Friday 06 April 2007

What's she got to hide?
What's going on?

Loved this intro to Mary Chapin Carpenter, Karen. Thanks.

But I do appreciate your efforts... and do keep me updated as to all the details of the happenings with JK and THK. It always brings me back to the wonderful memories of the primary and election in 2004. (you know, the "skull and bones society"; "first I voted for it, then I voted against it"; "he's friends with Jane Fonda"; "most liberal Senator in the country" etc...)

If you appreciate the efforts, why bring up Faux News GOP talking points just to tear down one of the few people (including THK) that is on our side?

Cheney sticks to his delusions
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html?hpid=topnews

Great title! It shocks me that the Vice President Cheney would go on Rush Limbaugh, as he has several times before. It is so undignified and indicates an unbelievable level of desperation, completely unprofessional.

Ann Coulter's New Misinformation (Clean Version):
In her latest "column", Coulter claims that Darfur is "a country from which no one anticipates terrorism anytime in the next millennium."

First of all, Darfur - not a "country." It's part of Sudan. Sudan gave al-Qaeda the support - in allowing terrorist training camps there, among other things - to carry out the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. Osama bin Laden once had headquarters in Khartoum. There is no doubt that Sudan is deeply enmeshed in terrorist financing and other activities. It's pretty much the polar opposite of pre-war Iraq.

If you want to read the dirty version (& about Cheney), click on my name. Profanity warning so if you're offended, do not email me to complain.

Posted by: not my president at April 7, 2007 12:28 AM

Coulter must be exposed, literally and figuratively, as the phony that s/he really is. Then buried once and for all.

It's a MAN, baby!

Well, here I am up in the middle of the night after falling asleep very early this evening. So....

Re: Goodling. Just mere speculation here, but methinks perhaps she did not want to have to lie if called upon, so insisted on invoking the 5th, thereby casting a shadow on Gonzales and the administration.

What do they care? Just another human being to either use or discard.

Karen,

In re-reading the words of MLK. You remind me so much of him!

Ralpheh,

The speech was too long to put it all on the video above, so they probably just took out some of their favorite portions to put with the film.
It was one of the most congnant speeches of truth and conviction I have ever heard, and personally my favorite. His life was snuffed out way too early, but he certainly made the most out of the time he had here. They killed him because he told the truth plain, simple, and loudly. He also was an activist, and mobilized and stirred many. I put it this way: "They just couldn't stand the Glory."

Posted by: Truth Shall Prevail at April 7, 2007 03:04 AM

(sp) cognant, not congnant. Sleepy.

Posted by: Truth Shall Prevail at April 7, 2007 03:04 AM

How interesting that this year the anniversary of MLK's speech falls on the Easter/Passover week.

Reminds me of another activist who told the truth loudly, boldly, with passion, and with love, over two thousand years ago. They killed him at an early age, too, but yet the fire burns on. Not the misuse of his righteousness, but the truth behind his very words.

TSP: Jesselyn Radack wrote about this the other day

"A little Law School 101: The Fifth Amendment is designed to protect you from implicating yourself regarding past conduct, not because you think that your very act of testifying will be a crime."

I must find a place to write this because I've always been very hazy on this issue.

Jesselyn's statement was made about Goodling.

"None of us in the Congress work for the president. We have to cast our own votes and ultimately answer to our own constituents. ... I think there's room that we can try to work with them as long as they know where we draw the line."

-- Rep. Robert Aderholt (R, AL)

Woz
I understand Woodling is a Graduate of Oral Roberts Law School.
Google Oral Roberts or check Wikipedia if you are unfamiliar with him. Only in America.

The GOP's Quiet Revolution
By Geoffrey Millard and Scott Galindez
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040207B.shtml
Sen. Ted Kennedy addressed a gathering organized by the Alliance for Justice. Kennedy spoke about the Bush administration's lack of respect for the rule of law. Following his remarks, a documentary film titled "Quiet Revolution" was screened. The film chronicles 30 years of Republican efforts to turn back the clock on civil liberties.

{{{I highly recommend reading Ted Kennedy's speech in its entirety, especially since the Roberts and Alito nominations were so avidly watched by so many on this blog. I don't dare quote excerpts for fear that what I found pertinent would be out of context to the whole speech and its conclusion.}}}

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040602202.html
McCain to Stake Bid On Need to Win in Iraq

{{{Read story on link if you can stand it. McCain's efforts at warmongering are now reduced to just pathetic. Someone needs to hand him a copy of the Geneva Conventions and point out the section in the US Constitution that incorporates treaties in with the Constitution, then point out the section in the Geneva Conventions that says wars of aggression, invading another country for no reason whatsoever, is a war crime (that was the findings of the Nuremberg judgment, upon which the Geneva Conventions are based). Then they need to point out that Bush ordering the invasion of Iraq was a war crime in and of itself (this is quite aside from the separate war crimes involved with torture and illegal detention of prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere). The FACT that the invasion of Iraq is a war crime means that there is NO "victory" to be had in Iraq, and there is NO "winning" anything in Iraq, NO "success" to be had! The FACT that the invasion is a war crime means the Iraq war was lost before it began. Hundreds of thousands of lives (theirs and ours combined) have been lost in the commission of Bu$hCo's war crime, which, at its base level, was a war of aggression so oil corporations could control the Iraqi oil fields (and it means our US military personnel are complicit in those war crimes because "I was only following orders" is not a just defense, per Nuremberg, per the Geneva Conventions, which have determined that a soldier can refuse to follow illegal or immoral orders). What's not to understand? The cited documents are crystal clear, written in elementary English. Anyone can find those documents online, for free, with a simple Google search. I do not understand why McCain persists in adopting Bu$hCo's delusions about this illegal war. Nor, of course, do I understand why Pelosi and others in the House still refuse to initiate IMPEACHMENT proceedings against this band of criminals with which McCain persists in supporting as allies for his campaign. It's truly mind-boggling.}}}

Scientific Panel Issues Devastating Climate Change Report
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040707Z.shtml
From the poles to the tropics, the earth's climate and ecosystems are already being shaped by the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases and face inevitable, possibly profound, alteration, the world's leading scientific panel on climate change said Friday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040600291.html
U.S., China Got Climate Warnings Toned Down
Some sections of a grim scientific assessment of the impact of global warming on human, animal and plant life issued in Brussels yesterday were softened at the insistence of officials from China and the United States, participants in the negotiations said.

In particular, U.S. negotiators managed to eliminate language in one section that called for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, said Patricia Romero Lankao, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., who was one of the report's lead authors.

{{{More on link. I find this whole attitude on the part of the administration totally reprehensible and disgusting on so many levels...}}}

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040600512.html
Counselor To Gonzales Announces Resignation
Goodling Had Refused to Testify on Prosecutor Firings

The senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales submitted her resignation yesterday, becoming the third high-ranking Justice Department aide to quit in the aftermath of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

The departure of Monica M. Goodling, 33, comes two weeks after she first refused to answer questions from Congress about the firings, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Goodling's resignation also comes amid signs of sinking morale in some U.S. attorney's offices. In Minneapolis, three top managers staged a revolt Thursday, choosing to demote themselves rather than work for the newly confirmed U.S. attorney there, who is a former Gonzales aide, officials said. The department was so alarmed that it sent a Washington-based Justice official to Minneapolis this week to try to talk the three out of their plans, officials said.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also stepped up their demands yesterday for hundreds of pages of unreleased records related to the firings that the Justice Department has deemed too sensitive for release to Congress.

Gonzales, meanwhile, has largely disappeared from public view as he prepares for a crucial April 17 appearance before the committee to explain his role in the firings.

Seven prosecutors were dismissed in December and another was removed earlier as part of a plan set in motion by the White House to replace U.S. attorneys viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Bush or his policies. Gonzales has sought to minimize his role in the firings, but recently released documents and testimony show he was regularly briefed on the effort.

Goodling's departure follows the resignation last month of D. Kyle Sampson as Gonzales's chief of staff. Sampson went on to testify before the Judiciary Committee that Gonzales was more directly involved in the firings than he had acknowledged, and that the attorney general was aware of proposals to circumvent the Senate confirmation process for some U.S. attorneys.

The Justice official who carried out the firings, Michael A. Battle, also left the department last month. Battle and other department officials have said his departure was not connected to the dismissals.

{{{More on link. Days later, I still find it surprising that the Minneapolis defections was actually the lead story on the 10 p.m. in-state news. I don't know if it's been mentioned since, because the lead story last night was about three jocks from the U of M who are allegedly being investigated for raping one young woman.}}}

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040602196_pf.html
An Archive of Despair
Saad Eskander Works To Protect Iraq Library From Bombs and Mold
Saad Eskander sat behind his chocolate-colored desk, another day in a promising, but broken, place.

Sunlight peeked through bullet holes in the shattered bathroom window of his top floor office at the Iraq National Library and Archive, where he is director. Downstairs, power cuts took a toll on books. And earlier on the morning of March 5, he said farewell to an employee who was fleeing the capital. Her brother had been murdered.

To his right, glass bookcases contained the rarest books and manuscripts in the building. To his left, floor-to-ceiling windows provided a view of the world outside. At 11:40 a.m. the windows shook. "Every day we hear this," said Eskander, his soft voice hardening. Calmly, he stood up and gazed out at the fog of black smoke and white paper drifting toward the sky, half a mile away. "This is not the closest one. I've lost count of the bombs."

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, looters pillaged and burned the library. Now, on the brink of the fourth anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall, and several weeks into a new security offensive, Eskander and his staff are struggling to preserve the fragments of Iraq's ancient heritage at a place he calls the "historical memory of the country."

"What makes a Kurd or a Sunni or a Shia have something in common is a national library," he said. "It is where the national identity of a country begins."

The library today is humming with young employees. Religion and politics are checked at the door. But the same forces fracturing Iraq are slowing the library's progress: violence, bureaucracy, sectarianism, political rivalries and a lack of basic services.

Eskander walked away from his desk, where he keeps shards from mortar bombs as souvenirs, his eyes inspecting the glass bookcases. "Stay away from the windows," he urged.

He looked again at the smoke mushrooming in the distance. "I think it is coming from al-Mutanabi Street," he said.

Mutanabi Street was the intellectual heart of Baghdad, filled with booksellers and booklovers. Eskander often went there to add to the library's collection. He later learned that the car bomb he had just heard outside killed at least 26 people, including a bookseller he knew.

He ordered his guards to stop any staff from leaving the building out of concern for their safety. Through the windows, he watched the ambulances pass by. Over the next several days, he wrote his thoughts in an online diary ( http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html).

Monday, 5 March

This day will be always remembered, as the day when books were assassinated by the forces of darkness, hatred and fanaticism. . . . Tens of thousands of papers were flying high, as if the sky was raining books, tears and blood. The view was surreal. Some of the papers were burning in the sky.

* * *
{{{More on link. This just makes me nearly weep in frustration.}}}

GAO Report Examines Iraqi Force Independence
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040707Y.shtml
The nation's primary federal watchdog agency says Iraqis need better logisticians to procure supply and maintain equipment to become independent from US forces and what the US Department of Defense defines as an international coalition. The report from the General Accountability Office assumes that Iraqis have a structure capable of functioning as a free-standing military force representing Iraq. In fact, according to the Department of Defense, the Iraqi forces referred to in the report are organized, armed and funded by the US force in Iraq, and operate entirely under direct US military supervision.
Excerpt:

"I think the report speaks for itself," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Defense Department spokesman. A number of reporter's phone calls and emails to the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, DC, were not returned. Gordon Johndroe, a White House national security spokesman, said: "The president's supplemental budget requests funding [from Congress] for the Iraqi security forces so they are able to be self-sustaining, which will bring all of the [US] troops home."

{{{This is the Catch-22. As long as US forces are the trainers and suppliers and leaders of the Iraqi military and police, there can be no independent self-sustaining Iraqi security forces capable of functioning on their own because they are being treated like ignorant, errant children by invading colonizers who are only interested in their oil wells (true enough, but why treat adults like children?); "training Iraqi security forces" is the loophole already in the supplemental spending bill, and this is what allows Bush to keep sending our military to Iraq, no matter who writes the legislation (it "supports the troops") and this is what will keep both neoCons and Dems voting in favor of the military spending bills (regular or supplemental). This keeps US forces stuck in Iraq and in the middle of their civil war, a civil war which would not have started if Bush had not started an illegal war of aggression in Iraq. Makes me wonder how many decades we'll be stuck in Iraq and how many of our military personnel will be killed for the sake of someone else's civil war...? If all of the various Iraqi factions really want the US forces out of Iraq, the smart thing for them to do would be to call a truce among themselves, stop their civil war, let the US forces withdraw, and then if they're going to do more fighting, they can resume that later, after the US forces have withdrawn. If they simply ceased fighting amongst themselves, that would ultimately defeat Bu$hCo. If they stop fighting, Bu$hCo would have no reason to keep US miltiary forces in Iraq, and Congress and the American people could force him to withdraw the troops.... As is, the status quo, here and Iraq, is fighting about how to end the war, which only extends the war and gets more people killed. People on both sides of the pond need to stop the endless bickering about how to end the war and DO SOMETHING....!}}}

Here are some great Saturday 'toons. There are some good ones about Pelosi & McCain, but I especially like the Keith Richards one...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x598544