A stealth bill to make military service mandatory has been slithering through Congress unnoticed and will be discussed tomorrow, June 6. Time to mobilize.

H.R. 4752: Universal National Service Act of 2006

Introduced: Feb 14, 2006
Sponsor: Rep. Charles Rangel [D-NY]

emphasis added

To provide for the common defense by requiring all persons in the United States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.

There’s no mainstream news on this anywhere. None. zilch. A Democrat proposes mandatory service for everyone and it’s not deemed newworthy by meainstream media? The blogsphere has picked on it. Just in the past few hours too.

This noxious turd of a bill apparently will be discussed tomorrow,Wed. June 6. Let’s stop it.

And yes, a Democrat proposed it.

Hat tip to reader Daniel Rivera-Franqui.

Update: Sue say Rangel has been trying this for years…

[tags]HR 4752[/tags]

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The United States is now reportedly backing some of the same warlord factions that helped drive the US out of Somalia more than a decade ago.

The warlord alliance said to be receiving US funding for weapons purchases is losing control of Mogadishu to militias affiliated with sharia courts.

They may have already lost Mogadishu, Somali Islamic militia claim Mogadishu victory

One reason for US reticence on this subject may be that the financing of warlord factions would amount to a violation of the United Nations’ arms embargo against Somalia.

Those darn pesky agreements again. Surely the Imperial Bushites should be allowed to ignore any such bothersome strictures.

So they’ve backed those who used to oppose them, and managed to lose the capitol in the process. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, underneath all the macho bluster, the neocons are incompetent, virtually every imperialist adventure of theirs has been a dismal failure.

[tags]Mogadishu[/tags]

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Drat that pesky Geneva Convention.

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans “humiliating and degrading treatment,” according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

They can ‘omit’ the Geneva Convention all they want, but such conduct will still be war crimes. And will make the US even more of a rogue nation.

The US is reaching new lunatic heights of imperialism when it decides to ignore rules it insists other countries must follow. But really, they’re failing, aren’t they? The wars are going badly, support at home is eroding. Rather than do something rational, they codify torture instead. They are sick, diseased, and it is they who are the real enemies of freedom.

The State Department fiercely opposes the military’s decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider.

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a) Dumb and dumber

This Tuesday is the primary election for California. The two Democratic candidates for governor have, through spectacularly stupid tactics and by demonstrating almost total rudderlessness, botched things so badly that Schwarzenegger, who was once left for road kill, is now in the lead. Such mindnumbing incompetence is symptomatic of the Democratic Party in general. Given an almost assured victory, they’ve managed to screw it up. But then, when you have nothing to say to voters except banalities and avoid taking actual stands on issues, that’s to be expected.

Steve Lopez gets it right in the LA Times

California’s Democratic primary for governor, in particular, is an affair so sleazy and vicious it would inspire revolt, except that no one is paying attention.

b) actual dissent emerges

Yet, there is now actual dissent within that party. Three Democratic candidates for the House in California are running an extraordinary joint radio ad campaign on major stations calling for the impeachment of Bush.

We are Marcy Winograd (D-CA), 36th C.D., and Charles Coleman, Jr. (D-CA), 28th C.D. and Bob McCloskey (D-CA), 29th C.D. We are candidates for the U.S. House, and founders of the Impeach Team. But we’re not just waiting to get elected, we are standing up for you right now.

Please join us in calling for the IMMEDIATE impeachment of both president George W. Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney. What is this talk about waiting until November? Why are our current representatives not demanding immediate accountability? Every day that passes brings revelations of more egregious abuses of power and more outrageous lies told to the American people. To find out more about the other things we are standing strong for, please visit our web sites, Marcy Winograd, Charles Coleman, Jr. and Bob McCloskey.

Wow, real, hardcore, anti-war, impeach Bush Democrats. Good. Were the corrupt, asleep at the wheel mainstream of the party to do the same, victory in November would be assured.

Watch Winograd’s campaign. She’s running against the odious Jane Harman, who votes with Republicans more often than not, thinks invasions and erosion of civil liberties are just peachy, and never met a pork barrel project for her district she didn’t like.

Much to everyone’s surprise, Winograd is polling well. Some sources say the race is even. Harman has refused to debate Winograd (a fellow Democrat) while Winograd, in a major coup, has gotten the endorsement of the West L.A. Democratic Club. The primary is this Tuesday.

[tags]impeach Bush,Marcy Winograd, Charles Coleman, Bob McCloskey[/tags]

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The civil rights movement did not tone itself down to accommodate the racists. On the contrary—it grew in scope and militancy. The continued struggles of the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee, the Deacons for Defense, and the emerging Black liberation movement cleared the way for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act that ended legal apartheid in the U.S. South and opened the door for affirmative action and other social gains.

It is a lesson for today’s immigrant rights movement.

When a movement emerges seemingly out of nowhere, with millions in the streets, there will of course be a counter-reaction. But that counter-reaction has been tiny in numbers and influence as compared to the mass immigrant rights protests of the past few months. We have the numbers. Let’s keep organizing and mobilizing. The civil rights movement did not win because it accepted half-measures or token gestures nor did it back down from the KKK and white racism. Instead, it kept pushing until it was victorious.

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Amid threats of a lawsuit from Adobe, Microsoft acknowledged Friday that it would remove support for saving files in PDF from Office 2007.

Solution. Use the free version of PrimoPDF. With it, you can print to a PDF, which gives near-identical functionality.

So, I’m baffled. With such technology freely available, what is Adobe trying to accomplish?

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