LEMON TREE FOREST: 2010

Hugh Hefner, 84, Engaged to Playmate, 24

Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System

Today's raucous revolt against Washington and Wall Street is a classic populist uprising. In Mad As Hell, two respected political pollsters show what it means for the future of American politics.The riotous tea parties and angry town hall meetings of last summer seemingly took everyone by surprise. They shouldn’t have: populist movements have always arisen in times of economic hardship and uncertainty. In Mad As Hell, pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen use extensive and original research to explore the mind and heart of the populist uprising that has suddenly thrown American politics into turmoil.In the past, populist movements have taken root either on the right or on the left. Today’s populist revolt is unusually broad and has two wings: a left wing that wants universal health care and redistributive economic policies, and a right wing that wants to reduce the power of government to interfere in our lives. Both are hostile to the Washington political class, Wall Street, and the mainstream media—all of which they consider out of touch with the concerns of “real” Americans. The key difference is that left populists are effectively represented by Barack Obama and congressional Democrats who are pursuing their agenda, while right populists are chiefly represented by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh— an angrier and potentially more powerful political force.So-called professionals in politics, business, and media have completely failed to comprehend the new populism and have dismissed it as marginal and extreme. The authors explore the broad-based nature of the new populist movement and explain how it is reshaping American politics—whether politicians and elite journalists like it or not.The Tea Party movement is not a flash in the pan,as many have assumed. Nor is it a movement of racist rednecks and ignorant boobs, as its detractors have crudely suggested. To the contrary, it is an authentic grassroots movement of concerned American citizens demanding to be heard by an out-of-touch political establishment. Their concerns are real and their issues are legitimate, the authors maintain; moreover, the new populism is here to stay, and it has already changed our politics for the better.In Mad As Hell, Rasmussen and Schoen have produced an authoritative guide to the new populism, featuring a combination of proprietary polling data, political analysis, results from online focus groups,and interviews with on-the-ground players. It is must-reading for anyone interested in American electoral politics for the remainder of the decade.A must Read....

All hail President Mugabe

President of Zimbabwe since 1980, he attained his job after leading bloody guerrilla warfare against the white colonial rulers of what was then Rhodesia.Birthdate:Feb. 21, 1924, near Kutama, northeast of Salisbury (now Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe), in what was then Rhodesia. Mugabe quipped in 2005 that he would remain president until he was "a century old."
Mugabe was married to Ghanian national Sally Hayfron, a teacher and political activist, in 1961. They had one son, Nhamodzenyika, who died during childhood. She died of kidney failure in 1992. In 1996, Mugabe married his onetime secretary, Grace Marufu, who is more than four decades younger than Mugabe, and with whom he had two children while his wife Sally's health was failing. Mugabe and Grace have three children: Bona, Robert Peter Jr., and Bellarmine Chatunga.Political affiliation:Mugabe leads the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front, a socialist party founded in 1987. Mugabe and his party are also heavily nationalist with left-wing ideology, favoring land seizures from white Zimbabweans while claiming that doing so counters the nation's imperialist past.Career:Mugabe holds seven degrees from South Africa's Fort Hare University. In 1963 he was secretary general of the Maoist Zimbabwe African National Union. In 1964, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "subversive speech" against the Rhodesian government. Once released, he fled to Mozambique to launch a guerrilla war for independence. He returned to Rhodesia 1979 and became prime minister in 1980; the next month, the newly independent country was renamed Zimbabwe. Mugabe assumed the presidency in 1987, with the prime minister role being abolished. Under his rule, annual inflation has soared to 100,000%.Future:Mugabe has faced probably the strongest, most organized opposition in the Movement for Democratic Change. He accuses the MDC of being Western-backed, using this as an excuse to persecute MDC members and order arbitrary arrest of and violence against supporters. Instead of striking terror into the citizenry, this could further galvanize opposition against his iron-fisted rule. Action from neighboring South Africa, deluged by Zimbabwean refugees, or world bodies could also pressure Mugabe, who relies on the "war veterans" militia to help him keep his grip on power.Quote:"Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy!" -- Mugabe in the Irish Times, Dec. 15, 2000

Hugo Chavez strikes again, but not as quite

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Is this really Beyonce's Real hair????....

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Smile, wave, wish them well and move on.

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The day the war came home

Forty years ago, on May 4, 1970 soldiers opened fire on a student anti-war protest on the campus of Kent State University, nestled around the small, sleepy Ohio town of Kent.The number of dead - four students, two of them simply heading to class - does not compare to the number of American soldiers ultimately killed in Vietnam: some 57,000.And the death toll cannot begin to compare to the number of Vietnamese civilians who lost their lives: between 700,000 and 2 million, according to estimates.But those student deaths were momentous."May 4th represented the war coming home to America. And in many ways it was. It was soldiers firing at unarmed people," said Jerry M. Lewis, who was just a young professor at the time of the shootings, an eyewitness who is still troubled by what happened, four decades on.Turning pointOf the Kent State killings, President Richard Nixon's adviser Richard Haldeman wrote in The Ends of Power that the 67 rifle bullets fired that day would, metaphorically, ricochet right back into the White House."Kent State, in May 1970, marked a turning point for Nixon, a beginning of his downhill slide toward Watergate," Haldeman writes.Four days before the killings, Nixon had announced that the American war in Southeast Asia was spreading from Vietnam to Cambodia - where the Communist Viet Cong had set up operational bases.That announcement, a stunning reversal from Nixon's election promises of a "secret plan to end the war," sparked the initial protests in Kent, on April 30.But the demonstrations at Kent State on May 4 were also meant to voice anger at the presence of Ohio National Guard soldiers, who had come to occupy the university campus and impose a curfew.The troops had been sent in by Ohio's tough-talking law-and-order governor, as he campaigned for election to the US senate: during the first protests there had been some vandalism in the town of Kent, and an arson attack on the campus' military officer training centre.But Kent State was much more than a turning point in the tragicomic story of Richard Nixon, who was kicked out of office because of a break-in organised to spy on the Democratic National Committee, ensconced at Washington DC's Watergate apartment complex.Public outrageFour students were killed, including Elaine Holstein's son, Jeffrey MillerThe killings, and the public outrage which ensued, helped accelerate the end of the war."Here were kids who had been brought up to believe that America was different because we had freedom of speech," says Elaine Holstein, whose son Jeffrey Miller was killed.She remembers how her son had promised her on the phone that nothing would happen to him that day, and how terribly wrong he was."I called Jeff's apartment and it rang and rang for quite a while, and some kid picked up, and I said let me talk to Jeff, and he said 'Jeff is dead'," she told us in her small Queen's apartment, her hands trembling as the emotion came flooding back with the memories.Holstein would teach herself to pretend that Jeff was "just sleeping" in the photographs that were endlessly reprinted in newspapers and magazines, and even displayed in art shows.InspirationThe heart-rending snapshot of 14-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio, screaming in anguish, was taken by student photographer John Filo. It would help mobilise some four million outraged students in the nation's first and only nationwide student strike, just days after the killings."That clearly had a powerful impact on congress, they started seriously to end the war in Vietnam, they started to cut off the funding" said Alan Canfora, a survivor of the shootings, and an activist who wants Barack Obama, the US president, to open a new investigation into the events of that day.Despite hundreds of photographs, hundreds of metres of film, and audio recordings of the events, no-one went to jail.Nine years of lawsuits ended in a carefully-worded expression of regret by the soldiers and the state of Ohio, and a meager financial settlement.Still, demonstrators against today's American wars told us that Kent State remains an inspiration.Talking in front of the White House at an anti-war rally in March, 20-something Ryan Smith said: "Back then they were doing it for Vietnam, today we're doing it for Iraq and Afghanistan. All we can say to them [is] that it lives on - the spirit lives on."And that is how Elaine Holstein feels.The mother who needs to pretend her son is sleeping just so that she can bear to look at the famous photograph memorialising his death, still feels Jeff's spirit and still sees the ghost of Kent State, when she sees students anywhere in the world stand up to the state.

U.S. Has 5,113 Nuclear Warheads

Malcom X still lives on

Times Square: Failed Terror Attack

Iran, US take their nuclear dispute to UN stage

UNITED NATIONS — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brought his nuclear showdown with Western powers to New York on Monday, turning a U.N. treaty conference into a stage for the long-running confrontation over Iran's uranium enrichment program.U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, opening the monthlong review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), directly challenged Tehran."The onus is on Iran to clarify the doubts and concerns about its program," the U.N. chief told the delegates from 189 nations.He called on the Tehran government "to fully comply with Security Council resolutions" demanding that it halt enrichment, which Washington and others contend is meant to produce the nuclear fuel for bombs in violation of Iran's NPT obligations.Ahmadinejad, the only head of state participating in the session, was scheduled to speak later Monday morning.Departing Tehran on Sunday, the Iranian leader made clear he would assail U.S.-led efforts to impose a new round of U.N. sanctions on his country. "Under the pretext of prevention of nuclear weapons proliferation, they impose heavy pressures on independent countries," Ahmadinejad complained to reporters.He is also expected to counter with a denunciation of the United States and other nuclear-armed nations for their slow movement toward disarmament. "The atomic bomb has become a tool for bullying, domination and expansionism," he said Sunday.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, following Ahmadinejad to the U.N. stage later Monday, suggested over the weekend he was coming to New York "to divert attention and confuse the issue.""We're not going to permit Iran to try to change the story from their failure to comply" with the NPT, she said on Sunday's "Meet the Press" on NBC.While delegates assess the state of the NPT in U.N. conference halls, American and European diplomats will be working elsewhere to reach agreement with the sometimes reluctant China and Russia on a fourth round of U.N. Security Council economic penalties to impose on Iran.Although Ahmadinejad's presence meant the first-day agenda was dominated by the Iran issue, it was only the beginning of a four-week diplomatic marathon meant to produce a consensus final document pointing toward ways to better achieve the NPT's goals of checking the spread of nuclear weapons, while working toward reducing and eventually eliminating them.The treaty is regarded as the world's single most important pact on nuclear arms, credited with preventing their proliferation to dozens of nations since it entered into force in 1970. It was a grand global bargain: Nations without nuclear weapons committed not to acquire them; those with them committed to move toward their elimination; and all endorsed everyone's right to develop peaceful nuclear energy.The 189 treaty members gather every five years to discuss new approaches to problems, by agreeing, for example, that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear inspection agency, should be strengthened. The only countries that are not treaty members are India, Pakistan, North Korea, all of which have nuclear arsenals or weapons programs, and Israel, which has an unacknowledged nuclear arsenal.But the NPT conference cannot easily "name and shame" an alleged treaty violator, such as Iran, since as a member state its delegation would block consensus.At three of seven past conferences, delegates failed to produce a declaration, including in 2005, at a time when the U.S. administration, under President George W. Bush, was unenthusiastic about arms control talks.President Barack Obama has steered the U.S. back onto a negotiating track, including with a new U.S.-Russian agreement to reduce their thousands of long-range nuclear arms. Despite that, Libran N. Cabactulan, the Philippine diplomat who is president of this 2010 NPT conference, said he finds the No. 1 goal of many treaty nations is to press the NPT nuclear powers — also including Britain, France and China — to move more rapidly toward disarmament.In his opening remarks, the U.N.'s Ban listed "real gains for disarmament" as his first "benchmark for success."To that end, the Nonaligned Movement of 118 developing nations has submitted to the conference a detailed "plan of action" for moving toward global nuclear disarmament by 2030. One its earliest steps is full ratification and entry into force of the 1996 treaty banning all nuclear tests.In the first concrete step associated with this 2010 meeting, Indonesia announced last week it would ratify the test-ban treaty. Obama has pledged to push for U.S. ratification of the pact, which was rejected by the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate in 1999

HUGO CHAVEZ!.

Hugo Chavez (1954 - ) is a former Army Lieutenant Colonel and the current President of Venezuela. A populist, Chávez has instituted what he calls a “Bolivarian Revolution” in Venezuela, where key industries have been nationalized and oil revenues are used in social programs for the poor. Hugo Chávez is a vocal critic of the United States of America, in particular former President George W. Bush, who he once famously and publicly called a “donkey.” He is very popular with poor Venezuelans, who in February of 2009 voted to abolish term limits, allowing him to run for re-election indefinitely.Early Life:Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías was born on July 28, 1954 to a poor family in the town of Sabaneta in the province of Barinas. His father was a schoolteacher and opportunities for young Hugo were limited: he joined the military at the age of seventeen. He graduated from the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences when he was 21 and was commissioned as an officer. He attended college while in the military but did not get a degree. After his studies, he was assigned to a counter-insurgency unit, the start of a long and noteworthy military career. He also served as head of a paratrooper unit.Chávez in the Military :Chávez was a skilled officer, moving up in the ranks quickly and earning several commendations. He eventually reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He spent some time as an instructor in his old school, the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences. During his time in the military, he came up with “Bolivarianism,” named for the liberator of northern South America, Venezuelan Simón Bolívar. Chávez even went so far as to form a secret society within the army, the Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200, or the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200. Chávez has long been an admirer of Simón Bolívar.The Coup of 1992:Chávez was only one of many Venezuelans and army officers who were disgusted by corrupt Venezuelan politics, exemplified by President Carlos Pérez. Along with some fellow officers, Chávez decided to forcibly oust Pérez. In the morning of February 4, 1992, Chávez led five squads of loyal soldiers into Caracas, where they were to seize control of important targets including the Presidential Palace, the airport, the Defense Ministry and the military museum. All around the country, sympathetic officers seized control of other cities. Chávez and his men failed to secure Caracas, however and the coup was quickly put down.Prison and Entry Into Politics:Chávez was allowed to go on television to explain his actions, and the poor people of Venezuela identified with him. He was sent to prison but vindicated the following year when President Pérez was convicted in a massive corruption scandal. Chávez was pardoned by President Rafael Caldera in 1994 and soon entered politics. He turned his MBR 200 society into a legitimate political party, the Fifth Republic Movement (abbreviated as MVR) and in 1998 ran for president.President:Chávez was elected in a landslide at the end of 1998, racking up 56% of the vote. Taking office in February 1999, he quickly began implementing aspects of his “Bolivarian” brand of socialism. Clinics were set up for the poor, construction projects were approved and social programs were added. Chávez wanted a new constitution and the people approved first the assembly and then the constitution itself. Among other things, the new constitution officially changed the name of the country to the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” With a new constitution in place, Chávez had to run for re-election: he won easily.Coup:Venezuela’s poor loved Chávez, but the middle and upper classed despised him. On April 11, 2002, a demonstration in support of the national oil company’s management (recently fired by Chávez) turned into a riot when the demonstrators marched on the presidential palace, where they clashed with pro-Chavez forces and supporters. Chávez briefly resigned and the United States was quick to recognize the replacement government. When pro-Chavez demonstrations broke out all over the country, he returned and resumed his presidency on April 13. Chávez has always believed that the United States was behind the attempted coup.Political Survivor:Chávez has proven to be a tough and charismatic leader. His administration survived a recall vote in 2004, and used the results as a mandate to expand social programs. He has emerged as a leader in the new Latin American leftist movement and has close ties with leaders such as Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo. His administration even survived a 2008 incident when laptops seized from Colombian Marxist rebels seemed to indicate that Chávez was funding them in their struggle against the Colombian government.Chávez and the US:Much like his mentor Fidel Castro, Chávez has gained much politically from his open antagonism with the United States. Many Latin Americans see the United States as an economic and political bully who dictates trade terms to weaker nations: this was particularly true during the George W. Bush administration. Ever since the coup, Chávez has gone out of his way to defy the United States, establishing close ties to Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua and other nations recently unfriendly towards the US. He has often gone out of his way to rail against US imperialism, even once famously calling Bush a “donkey.”Administration and Legacy:Chávez is a complicated political figure who has done much for Venezuela, both good and bad. Venezuela’s oil reserves are among the largest in the world, and he has used much of the profits to benefit the poorest Venezuelans. He has improved infrastructure, education, health, literacy and other social ills from which his people suffered. Under his guidance, Venezuela has emerged as a leader in Latin America for those who do not necessarily think that the United States is always the best model to follow.Chavez’s concern for Venezuela’s poor is genuine. The lower socioeconomic classes have rewarded Chávez with their unwavering support: they supported the new constitution and in early 2009 approved a referendum to abolish term limits on elected officials, essentially allowing him to run indefinitely.Not everyone thinks the world of Chávez, however. Middle and upper-class Venezuelans despise him for nationalizing some of their lands and industries and have been behind the numerous attempts to oust him. Many of them fear that Chávez is building dictatorial powers, and it is true that he has a dictatorial streak in him: he has temporarily suspended Congress more than once and his 2009 referendum victory essentially allows him to be President as long as the people keep electing him.Venezuelan elections are rarely squeaky-clean and Chávez certainly has the power to pull off any number of crooked elections, even if the people decide to stop re-electing him. He has cracked down on the press, greatly increasing restrictions as well as punishments for slander. He drove through a change in how the Supreme Court is structured, which allowed him to stack it with loyalists.He is widely reviled in the United States for his willingness to deal with rogue nations such as Iran: conservative televangelist Pat Robertson once famously called for his assassination in 2005. His hatred for the United States government occasionally seems to approach the paranoid: he has accused them of being behind any number of plots to remove or assassinate him. This irrational hatred has driven him to pursue counter-productive strategies, such as supporting Colombian rebels, publicly denouncing Israel (resulting in hate crimes against Venezuelan Jews) and spending enormous sums on Russian-built weapons and aircraft.

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LEMON TREE FOREST

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