Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
I Quit! A Movement of One, Or Maybe a Million
by Dave Lindorff
It's time to quit being a Democrat, and start being a democrat!
I’ve always been a registered Democrat. I think it has something to do with my having reached voting age in 1967, when there were actually some serious anti-war candidates challenging the party leadership, and being able to vote in the primaries really mattered, and because in 1972, there was a genuine choice between an honest peace candidate and a truly wretched war-monger, who was working to destroy the Constitution.
My party, the Democrats, eventually took a stand against President Richard Nixon, and together with some Republicans who also valued the Constitution above blind party loyalty, they brought him down, and ushered in a rare, albeit brief, roll-back in the national security state.
by Gary Leupp Neocon officials in the Defense Department call them “low-hanging fruit” — as though countries were produce ripe for picking and eating. The term refers to nations targeted for regime change that might be achieved with minimal strain, at least when compared with the effort needed to topple the regime in Iran.
Some neocons are beginning to concede that the effort might not be feasible at this time (not that they would be climbing the tree and plucking the fruit; they’d stand below advising on how it should be done). They’re advocating instead that the Bush administration move soon against Syria.
The
debate over what to do about the crisis in Iraq has, on one hand, those
who argue for immediate withdrawal and, on the other, those who argue,
justification (or lack thereof) of the initial invasion aside, that the
US must remain lest the country descend further into chaos. Among the
latter, the focus is on finding a "timetable for withdrawal", which
would be dictated by how quickly "Iraqization" could be successfully
implemented to a degree that Iraqi forces could take over the job
currently being done by US troops. That this needs to occur seems to be
the general consensus. This view is predicated upon a number of
assumptions that are in need of serious questioning if any real
solutions to the ongoing crisis are to be found.
One
assumption is that the US has intended to withdraw from Iraq from the
onset. The US has an enormous number of strategic military bases
scattered around the globe. It never completely withdrew from either
Germany or Japan after WWII. It maintains a military presence in South
Korea. As a result of the war in Afghanistan, the US acquired a number
of military bases in Central Asia, not only in Afghanistan but also in
several neighboring former Soviet republics. It is well known, and was
easily demonstrable prior to the invasion, that the principle
justification for war, namely the threat of weapons of mass
destruction, was a fabricated pretext. Although chosen as the selling
point for public consumption, it is self-evident that the "threat" of
Iraq was simply not the true motive for the invasion. Rather, if we
assume the historical norm is being followed, and if we trust documents
expressing the views of policymakers within the US government, the goal
of the invasion was hegemony over what has been long been regarded as a
region of the utmost strategic importance, primarily due to its rich
resources in oil and gas. There is little reason to believe that US has
any intention whatsoever of abandoning the bases in Iraq it has
acquired as a result of the invasion.
On Friday there was an article in the New York Times (“In a Daylong Drill, an Agency Tries to Prepare for a Real Outbreak of Avian Flu”, Donald McNeil Jr.) that gave the details of the drills that are being conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) in case a full-blown pandemic breaks out in the United States. The exercises were supervised by CDC chief, Dr. Julie Gerberding, the agency’s director. A number of disastrous scenarios were simulated to test the judgment of the supervisors and the strengths of the system.
I’m sure everyone is relieved that the C.D.C. and Dr. Gerberding are practicing their routine in the event of an outbreak of lethal influenza. After all, Gerberding may confront a situation where she will be asked to decide whether or not to quarantine cities or, perhaps, entire states to prevent the spread of an epidemic, like Avian Flu.
MidEast News 
I’ve always been a registered Democrat. I think it has something to do with my having reached voting age in 1967, when there were actually some serious anti-war candidates challenging the party leadership, and being able to vote in the primaries really mattered, and because in 1972, there was a genuine choice between an honest peace candidate and a truly wretched war-monger, who was working to destroy the Constitution. 
Neocon officials in the Defense Department call them “low-hanging fruit” — as though countries were produce ripe for picking and eating. The term refers to nations targeted for regime change that might be achieved with minimal strain, at least when compared with the effort needed to topple the regime in Iran. 
These guys give me the creeps.
