Overwelming firepower. In this case against a three-inch knife.
 
Moments after this video was taken, while the young amateur camera operator was racing down the stairs to film the standoff from street level, the New Orleans police officers shot and killed this man.

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DG3K could as easily have been my niece Elizabeth, or her husband Brandon, both recently discharged from the Marines. Or my nephew Nathan, strong as an ox and damned near as smart as one too… Re-enlisted in the army and about to graduate Ranger school. Then headed back to Iraq right into the swirling shit-storm brought about by Our Leader to distract attention away from the then pending DG3K story.

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Dear Independent:
May I inquire how much you charge to run a fast food advertisement on the front cover of your publication? Apparently it was for a story about a corporate mascot who gets lots of press for appearing not to be an advertisement. Sort of Tony the Tiger for the Napoleon Dynamite set, but fascinating to you I guess.

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No one is suggesting that the Holocaust didn’t happen, or that six million Jews weren’t killed by the Nazis. The mythology surrounding the Holocaust has to do with its aftermath: how the murder of six million Jews became justification for the creation of a Jewish state on land which belonged altogether to someone else.
 
That is the mythology about the Holocaust which natives of the Middle East would like the rest of us to contemplate.

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Many people who I’ve tried to enlist in this or that effort talk about not wanting to appear “political.” This is such a regretful argument because it reflects I think their ignorance of what all of us are up against. Anyone who is seeking to tackle societal problems at the source has to recognize that the causes are certainly political.
 
As opposed to “partisan.” Political activism has nothing to do with partisanship. Trying to improve our representation in government is not a liberal issue, nor progressive. Those who consider themselves conservative have the same need for representation and voice than anyone, especially it seems if you are a fiscal conservative!

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It’s finally here! The Camp Casey TAKING THE FUN OUT OF WAR baseball cap. Be part of our team, if only from the comfort of your warm living room! You can buy it online at the Camp Casey.info website. All proceeds benefit the effort to stop the war.

In a remarkable reversal, the U.S. military has decided that even a slap on the wrist would be too much torture for an American soldier to bear.
 
Suffocating an Iraqi general, tying him head first in a sleeping bag, sitting on his chest, covering his mouth as he tries to call out to his god. These are acceptable methods apparently.

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For Tom Fox,
Jim Loney,
Norman Kember,
Harmeet Singh Sooden;
for Jill Carroll,
all Western hostages,
all Eastern hostages;
for all detainees held without charges
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo,
and CIA black sites around the world;
for prisoners of conscience everywhere.

In defending his administration’s warrant-less surveillance of domestic communications, Bush explained “We have ways of knowing who’s Al-Qaida.”
 
Ring a bell?
 
I didn’t see it. Was Bush wearing a monocle? A high collared uniform? Was he snapping a riding crop? Didn’t Prince Harry get in trouble for such an impersonation?

What is the lesson we’re supposed to be gleaning from the story of David and Goliath? The theme is repeated in traditional folk tales which originated in the Dark Ages. Cleverness can overcome brute force. The pen is mightier than the sword. Overcoming the odds?
 
But is it true? Or is it a dream we’re being sold to make our meek existence more palatable?

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Gwen and I carried this message from Acacia Park to Shove Chapel in this year’s MLK March.

In the film Brazil, the smallest typo, a brush with an unlicensed repairman, or a humanitarian impulse, can see you in the hotseat.

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Lock up your daughters, it’s the Christian Peacemaker Team delegation!
 
By now the story is out about our visit to Senator Allard’s office today, particularly the effort we encountered to thwart our visit.

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How did this happen? Colorado fundies are driving around with their own license plate. It’s a state license plate for pro-lifers!
 
It looks like someone used the Columbine High School tragedy to invent a commemorative license plate to remind us to “respect life” which apparently means don’t shoot your fellow classmates.

There is a point to partisanship after all.
 
Senator Diane Feinstein takes a curious stand regarding Judge Alito and the Supreme Court. “I do not see a likelihood of a filibuster,” said Feinstein. “This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be on the court.”
 
Well, what would be a reason why he shouldn’t be on the court?

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Today 345 pilgrims in Saudi Arabia were stampeded to death. Hundreds more were injured. It happened in the frantic scramble of millions of pilgrims trying to edge close enough to three ancient pillars to cast 29 pebbles at them. Or something like that. Before the sun set.

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I’m crossing my fingers that this James Frey guy gets what’s coming to him. James Frey has written a best-selling memoir called A MILLION LITTLE PIECES and thanks entirely to Oprah’s shrewd endorsement, has become an inspiration for a suburban nation in the grip of a drug addiction epidemic. The trouble is that Mr. Frey’s memoir has been largely invented. THE SMOKING GUN went looking for Frey’s police records, as is their thing, and found Vanilla Ice basically.

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The fifth cycle of America’s Next Top Model featured a repudiation of the exotic and a return to the roots of the wasp super model. Perhaps if even to address the credibility gap the show faces for having yet to produce a discovery.
 
From the first episode you could recognize the button nose and arched eyebrows of Jean Shrimpton or Michelle Behennah. Viewers had to suffer the unbearable possibility that a miscarriage of judgement could entertain a Tori Spelling in Lisa, or an Angelina Jolie in Nik. But ultimately judge Twiggy recognized her own English beginnings in Nicole Linkletter.

Are Americans at war with the Neocons? Have the Neocons declared was upon us, on our way of life, our civility, our humanitarian compassion, on social services, on health care, on a social safety net, on anybody who isn’t ungodly rich? Sure!
 
Katrina didn’t cause the death and destruction in New Orleans. The levees did.
 
The federal government did this. The gutting of resources for infrastructure, for preparedness. The graft at the top left nothing for those in need. And now they’re looking to the middle class for the money and effort to pick up after this national disaster.

News is that PHANTOM OF THE OPERA has now surpassed CATS as the longest running Broadway musical.
 
Is that worthy of celebration? Yes I certainly think it is. It is a milestone of the triumph of crap. Not just style over substance but crap over style and substance. The “style over substance” put-down always grants that a thing has style if little else, when in fact it may have neither. These days you only recognize style because someone’s large budget has declared it so.

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One of 17 techniques authorized by Rumsfeld. This is non-fatal duress, permitted so long as it does not induce organ failure. Here Navy Seals put a hood over a detainee and strike his head unpredictably from directions unforeseen.

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An American sniper at work.
 
Fallujah is often declared a Free-Fire Zone, which means soldiers are to shoot anything that moves.

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What’s up with sudden re-pronunciations in the news? I just heard a prosecutor listing the charges against Jack Abramoff. She read his name as though she had not heard it a thousand times in the news, begining with an “ah” instead of the familiar American diphthong “ay”. Abracadabra, not Abraham.
 
One person’s tomayto to another’s tomahto wouldn’t seem to mean anything. But isn’t there something fishy about re-branding Abramoff as a two-bit hood?

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