Regardless of what other beliefs one might have, opposition to endless warmongering in the Middle East (and the wonderful tools used to promote it, such as rendition, torture and indefinite detentions) -- combined with a belief in the rule of law, along with basic checks and balances, as a means of modestly limiting the power of the federal government over American citizens -- is now sufficient to render one a "liberal" or "leftist." That's because the political movement that dominates our country is radical and authoritarian -- "security leads to freedom." Our political spectrum is now binary: one is either a loyal follower of that movement or one is opposed to it.

That is the re-alignment of our political landscape brought about by the extremism of the right-wing political movement in our country....The terms "left" and "right" do not mean what they meant even ten years ago, though they still have meaning. At least for now, until this movement is banished to the dustbin, those terms have come to designate whether one is loyal to, or whether one opposes, this government-power-worshipping, profoundly un-American right-wing cultism that has been the dominant political faction in America for many years.

Welcome to CLAWS at whywork.org. We're a pro-leisure and anti-wage-slavery group of people dedicated to exploring the question: why work? This site provides information, support, and resources for those looking for alternatives to traditional employment.
We actively promote alternatives to the wage slavery mindset and what we call "The Cult of the Job" which automatically equates having a job with making a living.
If you start asking yourself "why work?" you may see a connection between wage slavery, misunderstandings of leisure, lifestyles based on consumption, corporate welfare, education that often amounts to little more than conditioning, and the global social, environmental, and economic crises we are now facing. We hope that the materials we feature here will encourage critical thinking about such things. This site is primarily about ideas and encouragement, so our focus is more philosophical than practical. However, ideas and action go hand-in-hand, so we're currently expanding the "practicality" sections.

I don't know Elizabeth Edwards particularly well either, but she is responsible for one of my favorite, almost completely atypical, Washington moments. My husband and I struck up a conversation with her at a book party shortly after the election. She was, as most will tell you, animated and interested, very knowledgeable about blogs and quick to laugh. After a bit, she asked if we'd "like to meet John." (Husband and I had hung back, as Edwards was receiving a long line of admirers.) We at first demurred but she sort of pulled us to the head of the informal line and said, "John, I'd like you to meet..." and introduced us.

Anyone who's been around politicians when they're on the job would have recognized the somewhat frozen smile and half-glassy eyes that Edwards then turned on us. He's got charisma, but he's human, and you can't get through years of shaking hands with strangers without developing the ability to do it by rote. But Elizabeth saw that same automatic gesture and she cut him off mid-"how do you do?"

She hit him gently on the arm in a loving, spousal way. "No, John," she said, "I want you to meet them." He looked at her, a little surprised I think, and then broke into a genuine smile as she re-introduced us. It was the difference between shaking hands with a stranger and shaking hands with a friend of a friend. I feel very lucky to have met someone with such heartfelt charm, and I don't mean John.

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. [Speaking to Press Secretary Brian Jones], would you find out what my position is on contraception — I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me [Sen. Tom Coburn’s] thing, ask [senior adviser John Weaver] to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

"I spoke to his psychiatrist, Dr. Chirino," she said. "He's the president's psychiatrist in Venezuela. Venezuela is a very colorful country with lots of surrealism. … What could be absurd in another country — to speak to the psychiatrist of the president, in Venezuela you actually speak to the psychiatrist of the president. He said Hugo Chavez is bipolar and takes Prozac … He sleeps very little. … three or four hours … There are times he gets very depressed and when he does, he disappears and no one knows where he has gone," she said.

...

When Chavez has a period of depression, Wornat said, he sometimes will just stay in bed. "He could have a high of euphoria and the following week feel like he was in a deep depression. So he'd go from feeling like a king to feeling like he was in the dark," she said.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man long alleged to have planned the September 11 attacks, has admitted responsibility for those strikes on the US and other al-Qa'ida operations, according to a transcript of a hearing taking place at Guantanamo Bay. There was no way to confirm the testimony as the Bush administration has banned reporters and lawyers from proceedings.

According to the transcript, Mr Mohammed told a hearing on Saturday that he was "responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z". He also apparently claimed to have planned assassination attempts on the former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and on Pope John Paul II. He also said he was responsible for the 1993 attack on New York's World Trade Centre, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, and an attempt to bring down two American airplanes using shoe bombs. In all, he said he was behind 29 planned attacks.

Speaking through his representative, a member of the US military, he reportedly said: "I was the operational director for Sheikh Usama [Osama] Bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up, and execution of the 9/11 operation."

Hence my unhappy surprise when Edwards, who has an attractively comprehensive social policy and strong oratorical skills, was the first to pull out of the scheduled August debate moderated by Fox News. What is this morbid obsession that liberals have with Fox? It's as if Democrats, pampered and spoiled by so many decades of the mainstream media trumpeting the liberal agenda, are so shaky in their convictions that they cannot risk an encounter with opposing views. Democrats have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and 98 percent of American humanities professors to do their bidding. But no, that's not enough -- every spark of dissent has to be extinguished with buckets of bile.

But Fox is certainly disingenuous with its absurd "fair and balanced" motto. Oh, come on, give it up! Why can't Fox honestly admit its conservative agenda, as do major radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and simply argue that it represents a culturally necessary antidote to the omnipresent liberal line? Yet for Democratic presidential candidates, who will be assessed by voters for their ability to stand up to China, North Korea or al-Qaida, to run squealing from a Fox moderator as if he or she were a boogeyman with blood-dripping fangs makes the whole pack of them look like simpering wusses. Dennis Kucinich was quite right to express his scorn and offer to debate anyone anywhere and under any sponsorship. Nice job of skewering the sacred cow!

Fox TV in my experience tends anyhow more toward the tabloid, a traditionally populist style, which is why Fox was so reliable a destination in the days following Anna Nicole Smith's shocking death. And when any scandal breaks, I head straight for Greta Van Susteren -- how comforted one is that the agile, articulate Greta, with her keen legal mind and rugged, strong-jawed persistence, will be on the scene to unearth every lie!

The notion that our problem in Iraq is a resource deficit is pure, unadulterated madness. Our enemies don't have airplanes or armor. They are fighting us with garage-door openers and fifty year-old artillery shells, sneaking around barefoot in the middle of the night around to plant roadside bombs. Anytime anyone dares oppose us in the daylight, we vaporize them practically from space using weapons that cost more than the annual budgets of most Arab countries to design. We outnumber the active combatants on the other side by at least five to one. This year, we will spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined -- more than six hundred billion dollars. And yet Tom Friedman thinks the problem in Iraq is that we ordinary Americans didn't tighten our belts enough to support the war effort.

Friedman should be hung upside down and have holes drilled in his skull for even suggesting this, of course. We're talking about one of the richest men in media, a guy who in recent years got still richer beating the drum for this war from his $9.3 million, 11,400 square-foot mansion in suburban Maryland. He is married to a shopping mall heiress worth nearly $3 billion; the Washingtonian says he is part of one of the 100 richest families in America. And yet he has the balls to turn around and tell us that the pointless, asinine war he cheerleaded for failed because we didn't sacrifice enough for it. Are you reaching for the railroad spike yet?

...President Bush held one of his private book club sessions that Karl Rove organizes for him at the White House. Rove picks the book, invites the author and a few neoconservative intellectual luminaries, and conducts the discussions. For this Bush book club meeting, the guest was Andrew Roberts, an English conservative historian and columnist and the author of "The Churchillians" and, most recently, "A History of the English-Speaking People Since 1900."

The subject of Winston Churchill inspired Bush's self-reflection. The president confided to Roberts that he believes he has an advantage over Churchill, a reliable source with access to the conversation told me. He has faith in God, Bush explained, but Churchill, an agnostic, did not. Because he believes in God, it is easier for him to make decisions and stick to them than it was for Churchill. Bush said he doesn't worry, or feel alone, or care if he is unpopular. He has God.

An international survey conducted by British pollsters suggests that Israel and Iran are seen as having negative influences on the world.

The poll, conducted by the BBC World Service, involved 28,000 people in 27 countries. Respondents were asked whether each of a dozen countries and the European Union had positive or negative influences on the world, the BBC said.


Israel was seen by a majority as having a negative influence, with the greatest amount of negative opinions coming from Muslim nations in the Middle East. Iran, which has been embroiled in controversy over its nuclear program, rated just behind Israel in terms of negative opinions. The most positive opinions about Iran came from other Muslim countries.


Following Israel and Iran were the United States and North Korea. (emphasis added)

Friends of Britney Spears have revealed the singer scrawled the devil's digits, 666, over her bald head and screamed "I'm the Antichrist" in rehab last weekend.

One pal told the News Of The World, "The clinic people just didn't know what to do. Then she started screaming, 'I'm a fake! I'm a fake!'"

The friend added, "Later that night she tried to kill herself. She attached a sheet to a light and tied it around her neck. Paramedics were called but luckily she was unhurt."

A magnitude 4.2 earthquake struck the Bay Area Thursday night that could be felt throughout the region.

The United States Geological Survey Web site reports the temblor struck 1 mile northeast of Lafayette at 8:40 p.m. The quake could be felt for 10 to 15 seconds in Berkeley.

There were no immediate reports of any damage or injuries. The Bay Area Rapid Transit system trains were temporarily stopped.

The California Highway Patrol reports all bridges in the area have not sustained any damage.

The earthquake shook basketball fans at Haas Pavilion on the University of California's campus in Berkeley. The crowd issued a collective "Oooh," as the building briefly shuddered during a timeout in Cal's game against Arizona, then cheered loudly while officials briefly delayed resuming the game.

Dr. Melik: [puzzling over list of items sold at Miles' old health-food store] ... wheat germ, organic honey and... tiger's milk.

Dr. Aragon: Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?

Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Dr. Melik: Incredible!