Monthly Archives: November 2008

‘Vigilant Shield ’09’? More like just scary and crazy…

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putinPurely by coincidence, my daughter and I were out walking on a rather warm Colorado Springs night with our ‘PEACE” dog, Harriet. Little did we know???? As we walked under the stars Wednesday night, my daughter asked me what bright star was that high above Cheyenne Mountain? And I looked….

…and we looked… and we looked.

‘Heck, that’s no star at all’, I said. ‘but what is it?’

And the more we looked, the more we noticed that it was too bright to be either a star or a planet. And then we noticed another more faint light, kind of red light. Then we noticed that there was many more than just one or two unusual lights up there! And they were moving slow and creepy like!

‘What is this?, asked my daughter with increasing anger. I, having grown extremely accustomed to much military nonsense when she was several years younger watching the Navy pilot training play center over Corpus Christi Bay, plus many other similar glimpses at the over militarization of our country, I really did not get to emotional this night at the “Boys with Toys’, but my daughter kept getting angrier and angrier as she became aware that the entire sky seemed taken over by their UFOs. She was hardly calmed down by me mentioning that these flights by the UFOS seemed to slowly criss cross between Cheyenne Mountain, Peterson Air Force Base, and the Air Force Academy. What was going on?!!!! she wanted to know?

I told her that I had no idea what this was all about. However, today I have now learned that it was some sort of bullshit nuclear game role playing called ‘Vigilant Shield ’09’ kickoff from the NORAD bunker here in our fair city. In the olden days of my youth, I would have fallen to my knees, placed my hands behind my head, and stayed close to the floor. I guess the training for this has gotten rather cold now post former Soviet Union times and I did not even inform my daughter how to best protect herself from a nuclear bomb ala ’50s Red Scare days.

‘Cover Up, Honey! You don’t want to get radioactive or pulverized into vapor!’

Here is a good question? What Is NORTHCOM Up To? Let’s follow that by What is Braxton Technologies up to?

I don’t really feel much safer with this going on, and in fact it makes me think maybe Southern Argentina might be a safer place to live than Colorado Springs, which will be Ground Central for a Nuclear Holocaust? Do you feel safer now that Braxton Technologies and others like them are out there making a killing? If you do, then I’d like to know WHY? These fools seem to think that they actually can ‘win’ a nuclear war! More than just a bit scary… Our neighbors here in Colorado Springs are just plain scary and crazy both. 601st Air and Space Operations Center

WUO terrorized government property

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weather undergroundTo clarify, the terrorist acts for which Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground are being demonized targeted only property damage and resulted in no casualties. Here is a list of 25 bombings attributed to the WUO, with notes from the FBI files, and the original communiques.

BOMBINGS BY WEATHERMEN / WEATHER UNDERGROUND

October 7, 1969
Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago. The Weathermen later claim credit for the bombing in their book, Prairie Fire.

December 6, 1969
Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO claims responsibility in Prairie Fire, stating it is a protest of the fatal police shooting of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969.

May 10, 1970
National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C. is bombed.

June 6, 1970
San Francisco Hall of Justice. (WUO claims credit for bombing although no explosion occurred. Months later, workmen locate an unexploded bomb).

June 9, 1970
New York City Police headquarters. The Weathermen state this is in response to “police repression.”

July 27, 1970
United States Army base at The Presidio in San Francisco, on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.

September 12, 1970
California Men’s Colony prison break for Timothy Leary.

October 8, 1970
Marin County courthouse. WUO states this is in retaliation for the killings of Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, and James McClain.

October 10, 1970
Queens traffic-court building. WUO claims this is to express support for the New York prison riots.

October 14, 1970
Harvard Center for International Affairs. WUO claims this is to protest the war in Vietnam.

March 1, 1971
United States Capitol. WUO states this is to protest the invasion of Laos.

August 29, 1971
Office of California Prisons, allegedly in retaliation for the killing of George Jackson.

September 17, 1971
New York Department of Corrections in Albany, New York. In protest of the killing of 29 inmates at Attica State Penitentiary.

October 15, 1971
MIT research center, William Bundy’s office.

May 19, 1972
Pentagon. “in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi.”

May 18, 1973
103rd Police Precinct in New York. WUO states this is in response to the killing of 10-year-old black youth Clifford Glover by police.

September 28, 1973
ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy. WUO states this is in response to ITT’s alleged role in the Chilean coup earlier that month.

March 6, 1974
Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco. WUO states this is to protest alleged sterilization of poor women. In the accompanying communiqué, the Women’s Brigade argues for “the need for women to take control of daycare, healthcare, birth control and other aspects of women’s daily lives.”

May 31, 1974
California Attorney General office. WUO states this is in response to the killing of six members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

June 17, 1974
Gulf Oil Pittsburgh headquarters. WUO states this is to protest the company’s actions in Angola, Vietnam, and elsewhere.

September 11, 1974
Anaconda Corporation. WUO states this is in retribution for Anaconda/Rockefeller’s alleged involvement in the Chilean coup the previous year.

January 29, 1975
State Department. WUO states this is in response to escalation in Vietnam.

June 16, 1975
Banco de Ponce, NYC. WUO states this is in solidarity with striking Puerto Rican cement workers.

September, 1975
Kennecott Corporation. WUO states this is in retribution for Kennecott’s alleged involvement in the Chilean coup two years prior.

WUO COMMUNIQUES:

Communiqué #1, May 21, 1970

Hello. This is Bernardine Dohrn.

I’m going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR.

This is the first communication from the Weatherman underground.

All over the world, people fighting Amerikan imperialism look to Amerika’s youth to use our strategic position behind enemy lines to join forces in the destruction of the empire.

Black people have been fighting almost alone for years. We’ve known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution. We never intended to spend the next five or twenty-five years of our lives in jail. Ever since SDS became revolutionary, we’ve been trying to show how it is possible to overcome the frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system. Kids know the lines are drawn revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don’t do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way.

Now we are adapting the classic guerrilla strategy of the Viet Cong and the urban guerrilla strategy of the Tupamaros to our own situation here in the most technically advanced country in the world.

Ché taught us that “revolutionaries move like fish in the sea.” The alienation and contempt that young people have for this country has created the ocean for this revolution.

The hundreds and thousands of young people who demonstrated in the Sixties against the war and for civil rights grew to hundreds of thousands in the past few weeks actively fighting Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the attempted genocide against black people. The insanity of Amerikan “justice” has added to its list of atrocities six blacks killed in Augusta, two in Jackson and four white Kent State students, making thousands more into revolutionaries.

The parents of “privileged” kids have been saying for years that the revolution was a game for us. But the war and the racism of this society show that it is too fucked-up. We will never live peaceably under this system.

This was totally true of those who died in the New York townhouse explosion. The third person who was killed there was Terry Robbins, who led the first rebellion at Kent State less than two years ago.

The twelve Weathermen who were indicted for leading last October’s riots in Chicago have never left the country. Terry is dead, Linda was captured by a pig informer, but the rest of us move freely in and out of every city and youth scene in this country. We’re not hiding out but we’re invisible.

There are several hundred members of the Weatherman underground and some of us face more years in jail than the fifty thousand deserters and draft dodgers now in Canada. Already many of them are coming back to join us in the underground or to return to the Man’s army and tear it up from inside along with those who never left.

We fight in many ways. Dope is one of our weapons. The laws against marijuana mean that millions of us are outlaws long before we actually split. Guns and grass are united in the youth underground.

Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks. If you want to find us, this is where we are. In every tribe, commune, dormitory, farmhouse, barracks and townhouse where kids are making love, smoking dope and loading guns—fugitives from Amerikan justice are free to go.

For Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins, and for all the revolutionaries who are still on the move here, there has been no question for a long time now—we will never go back.

Within the next fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice. This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown and all black revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people.

Never again will they fight alone.

/May 21, 1970/

Communique #2, June 9, 1970

SLIP NR 12 / 1909 / JUNE9-70 / POLICE HDQTRS / 77 BOMB EXPLOSION-240 CENTRE ST-POLICE HDQTRS-UNK

DAMAGE AND INJURIES AT THIS TIME — DETAILS LATER

Tonight, at 7 P.M., we blew up the N.Y.C. police headquarters. We called in a warning before the explosion.

The pigs in this country are our enemies. They have murdered Fred Hampton and tortured Joan Bird. They are responsible for 6 black deaths in Augusta, 4 murders in Kent State, the imprisonment of Los Siete de la Raza in San Francisco and the continual brutality against Latin and white youth on the Lower East Side.

Some are named Mitchell and Agnew. Others call themselves Leary and Hogan. The names are different but the crimes are the same.

The pigs try to look invulnerable, but we keep finding their weaknesses. Thousands of kids, from Berkeley to the UN Plaza, keep tearing up ROTC buildings.

Nixon invades Cambodia and hundreds of schools are shut down by strikes. Every time the pigs think they’ve stopped us, we come back a little stronger and a lot smarter. They guard their buildings and we walk right past their guards. They look for us—we get to them first.

They build the Bank of America, kids burn it down. They outlaw grass, we build a culture of life and music.

The time is now. Political power grows out of a gun, a Molotov, a riot, a commune … and from the soul of the people.

WEATHERMAN

Communiqué #3, July 31, 1970

From the /Berkeley Tribe/, July 31, 1970. The Red Mountain Tribe.

July 26, 1970
The Motor City

This is the third communication from the Weatherman underground.

With other revolutionaries all over the planet, Weatherman is celebrating the 11th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Today we attack with rocks, riots and bombs the greatest killer-pig ever known to man—Amerikan imperialism.

Everywhere we see the growth of revolutionary culture and the ways in which every move of the monster-state tightens the noose around its own neck.

A year ago people thought it can’t happen here. Look at where we’ve come.

Nixon invades Cambodia; the Cong and all of Indochina spread the already rebelling US troops thin. Ahmed is a prisoner; Rap is free and fighting. Fred Hampton is murdered;

the brothers at Soledad avenge—”2 down and one to go.” Pun and several Weatherman are ripped; we run free. Mitchell indicts 8 or 10 or 13; hundreds of thousands of freaks plot to build a new world on the ruins of honky Amerika.

And to General Mitchell we say: Don’t look for us, Dog; We’ll find you first.

For the Central Committee, Weatherman Underground

Communiqué #4, September 18, 1970

From /San Francisco Good Times/, September 18, 1970. /San Francisco Good Times/.

September 15, 1970. This is the fourth communication from the Weatherman Underground.

The Weatherman Underground has had the honor and pleasure of helping Dr. Timothy Leary escape from the POW camp at San Luis Obispo, California.

Dr. Leary was being held against his will and against the will of millions of kids in this country. He was a political prisoner, captured for the work he did in helping all of us begin the task of creating a new culture on the barren wasteland that has been imposed on this country by Democrats, Republicans, Capitalists and creeps.

LSD and grass, like the herbs and cactus and mushrooms of the American Indians and countless civilizations that have existed on this planet, will help us make a future world where it will be possible to live in peace.

Now we are at war.

With the NLF and the North Vietnamese, with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Al Fatah, with Rap Brown and Angela Davis, with all black and brown revolutionaries, the Soledad brothers and all prisoners of war in Amerikan concentration camps we know that peace is only possible with the destruction of U.S. imperialism.

Our organization commits itself to the task of freeing these prisoners of war.

We are outlaws, we are free!

(signed) Bernardine Dohrn

Somalia and the Pentagon Pirates of the Indian Ocean

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pirateIt is a clear indication of how iron clad government controlled is the US corporate press that news reporting about Somalia in the last couple of weeks has been centered on the stoning to death of a young girl and ‘pirates’. Never mind those millions of starving refugees in the country that the Pentagon has created, it’s ‘Indiana Jones’ time here for the American media! And pirates are always fun to play with! But who are the real pirates off the coast of Somali in the Indian Ocean? Asia Times Online gives us some insight into just that question… NATO reaches into the Indian Ocean

India was once a neutral player in the old Cold War, but not anymore these days and times. The US has captured another satellite government to use in its geopolitical warfare against China and Russia… and that country is India. That old ally of the US, Pakistan?… well let’s just say that their new role is to be turned into a battlefield zone in Southern Asia for the Pentagon. The US based military industrial complex needs to get the Pentagon firmly into that region for more sales for them to be funded from US taxpayers. How better to keep the welfare system for them going? They need Federal ‘bailout’!

As to the Somali ‘pirates’ seizing ships inside their coastal waters? Look at it from their viewpoint? Nobody complained much about the US/ Ethiopian piracy in their homeland, now did they? How about those $300,000,000 of fish annually pirated from their coastal waters by international fisheries based in other countries? Who cares about fish piracy stealing from the starving Somalians? Did you even hear about it? Then why not Somali ‘pirates’ getting into the big game?

The US government is into a big geopolitical play to corner the world’s last remaining natural resources away from China and Russia. Southern Asia is the new zone of combat and the Indian Ocean sits strategically placed between Asia and Africa and most of all, the Middle East. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is now into piracy in the Indian Ocean in a big way, all under the direction of the USA, and that wonderful little building in Northern Virginia, the Pentagon! Peace Now, Y’all. I’m sure that Obama plans to deliver ‘PEACE’… lol. He’s going to fight the Big Bad ‘pirates’ in Africa!

The unmitigated gall of General Motors

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networking-profits.jpg You might have missed it, but General Motors yesterday took out a full page advertisement in the National newspaper, USA Today? Today, that same newspaper’s website has this info online Bipartisan group of legislators craft auto bailout compromise So what was in the advertisement that poor little Ol’ General Motors paid for? They asked for $25 billion dollars, that’s what!

Imagine if you or I went bankrupt with the aid of The Lawyer online at Not My Tribe? Would he have taken out out an ad for us in the local Gagzette, asking for the government to give us $25,000 dollars to keep from going bankrupt and perhaps not being able to provide for our family members, give the landlord rental money, and pay the loan agency their monthly piece of pie? Just like GM, we have a lot of people depending on us, and would he run that ad for us asking for the US government to take taxpayer money and bail us out to save THE ECONOMY?

Maybe those on welfare assistance need to learn from the high paid CEOs and bless their hearts, take out a full page national ad in USA Today? Give us $25 billion now! We need it for our welfare cadillacs! Oops, they don;t actually have any of those cars, but the CEOs probably do. Big Pink ones!

Barack, what you going to do, Buster? Oops, I think we already know the answer to that. We haven’t been sleeping. All these dompanies aren’t advocating for their own brand of socialism at all. They are merely doing like the military industrial complex done always, even in the very best of financial times for them. They are merely looking for more governmental paid welfare for the super rich. What unmitigated gall they have! And they look down on the poor unemployed for asking for some scraps from time to time!

Pentagon Liars

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cheneyThe American people want to rally around a gang of liars. We have liars in the Bush Administration, liars talking CHANGE, liars in the top levels of almost our entire business sector, and liars above all else in the Pentagon. What is with the American people?

You cannot build a great country always rallying around liars like this. I am not about to single out the military by pointing out that they are liars. They certainly aren’t the only liars around in our country at all. But what are we to make of how they lied about the people they threw into Guantanamo to torture without end? Judge orders release of 5 terror suspects at Gitmo These people didn’t do anything, and the military didn’t give a damn, they just wanted some POWs to torture! Never mind that many if not most of them were in fact civilians. The Pentagon Liars didn’t care!

Of course, the military tends to lie to a lot of people a lot of the time. They like to lie to high school seniors, they like to lie to those they plan to make grunts for the meat grinder. They lie about exposure to toxic elements, they lie about the dangers of forced vaccinations, they lie about radioactive exposure to the lower ranking pawns, they lie about their military bases being GREEN. The Pentagon Liars lie just about everything. They lied about Gulf War Syndrome’ all to keep from accepting blame for the harm the military does.

The military doesn’t build character, it destroys it. It makes of us all a giant nation of liars. Our entire sense of national worth has been transformed by these Pentagon Liars into one based on fire power and the lies that are always made to use it on others. We have had the US turned into a giant lie, all by the Pentagon Liars and the government liars that are their supreme commanders. We no longer run the government, the government runs us, and the supreme lie of them all is that we are some how a functioning democracy. This is what Pentagon Liars are all about… their LIES to keep others marching to keep others in place.

One of the most pathetic lies by men permeated, inbedded by their support for the Pentagon Liars is the one that has most of them always blaming all that is bad on something they call BIG GOVERMENT. How ironic that these BIG GOVERNMENT pawns are the ones that seem to often line up most to complain about the dangers of BIG GOVERNMENT??? Like Duh??? You’re part of it, Military People! Support Our Troops bullshit! You’re talking supporting BIG GOVERNMENT and the Pentagon Liars. You’re supporting maintiaining your own sense of special entitlement.

Yes, let those men go. There is no reason to support these Pentagon Liars in their holding men outside of all law and against it, and then destroying them. Shame on you, Pentagon Liars! You’re holding the innocents hostage. Shame on you! You take orders without questioning them and then want to be worshiped as some sort of big heroes for doing such. You want us to lie for you, too!

Who did not play Faust for George Bush

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I’d like to compile a collection of letters from famous personages in which they decline to dance with the Bush Administration. Were there many?

Shouldn’t any artist/musician/author or intellectual/humanitarian of note have publicly refused to collaborate with the immoral tyrant and his saccharine-smile patronizing librarian wife?

I have some favorites:
Mr. Feiffer Regrets -by Jules Feiffer, 2002
Poets Against War -Sam Hamill, 2003
Statement of Conscience -by Jennifer Warn, 2003
Open Letter to Laura Bush -by Sharon Olds, 2005

Archived copies are below:

Mr. Feiffer Regrets

October 12, 2002

Mrs. George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I wish that I could come to your National Book Festival breakfast at the White House on Saturday, but after giving it much thought, I can’t attend.

I was thrilled to be invited, along with other writers and illustrators, to help celebrate your campaign to inspire young people in the pleasures of reading.

But I find it unbearably ironic that, while the uses of language are celebrated by you and your renowned guests, elsewhere in the White House language is being traduced and transformed to nudge us into war.

There are honest arguments on both sides of the Iraq debate (such as it is), but it seems necessary on the occasion of a celebration of reading to press the point that words, at their finest, don’t set out to confuse or obscure. Their aim is to clarify.

But clarity is not what we’re getting from your husband’s White House. It seems that clarity would deny him a war.

I am a father and a grandfather. As every parent knows, most children can intuit whether the stories their parents tell them are true or if they’re making them up.

The American people are able to tell too.

I am delighted to participate in National Book Festival events scheduled for the Library of Congress and the Capitol grounds. But as for your breakfast, may I convey my regrets and best wishes to you and your guests.

Sincerely,
/s/Jules Feiffer

Sam Hamill

Dear Friends and Fellow Poets:

“When I picked up my mail and saw the letter marked “The White House,” I felt no joy. Rather I was overcome by a kind of nausea as I read the card enclosed:

Laura Bush requests the pleasure of your company at a reception and White House Symposium on “Poetry and the American Voice” on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 at one o’clock

Only the day before I had read a lengthy report on George Bush’s proposed “Shock and Awe” attack on Iraq, calling for saturation bombing that would be like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless innocent civilians.

I believe the only legitimate response to such a morally bankrupt and unconscionable idea is to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam.

I am asking every poet to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend his or her name to our petition against this war, and to make February 12 a day of Poetry Against the War. We will compile an anthology of protest to be presented to the White House on that afternoon…

Statement of Conscience -Jennifer Warn

February 12, 2003

Mrs. Laura Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.

Dear Laura Bush,

Thank you for inviting me to the White House symposium on Poetry and the American Voice. Your call to better understand and celebrate the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes led me and many thousands of American poets to find their voices of dissent.

Since January 30th poets in many countries have joined in an upsurge of conscience and compassion, submitting over [15,000] poems to the Poets Against the War web site (www.poetsagainstthewar.org), organizing hundreds of anti-war poetry readings around the world, and joining with millions of others in vigils, processions, prayers and intercessions, lobbying and rallying for peace.

You have inadvertently presented a gift to the American people and to the world by providing poets an opportunity to express their most passionately held beliefs about their vision for the world’s future. Your gesture has revealed the very relationship it was meant to deny: the connection between poetry and politics, between literature and reality. Another great American poet, Wallace Stevens, presented this relationship succinctly:

“In life what is most important is the truth as it is, while in arts and letters what is most important is the truth as we see it.”

This wisdom is excerpted from “Imagination as Value,” an essay in the long tradition of poets puzzling over the power of poetry and asserting its place in a world primarily shaped by the machinations of politics and money.

What is poetry’s power? Why should you, vested with the power of the White House as First Lady, pay attention to such a rush of words at this late hour?

Poetry’s power lies in its perceptive ability to describe both inner and outer realities. In reading a poem we experience the paradoxical delight and anguish of human life. Poetry holds a mirror to the reality that our political systems and values create and in doing so reveals both the limitations of our current state and life’s endless possibilities. In its refracted light we see our intangible connections, the irrefutable unity of all people and beings on the planet.

We invite you to read this selection of poems which represents some of the most powerful in the Poetry Against the War Anthology. These poems were written by Pulitzer Prize winners, former U.S. poets laureate, and poets who work as professors, business people, homemakers and veterans. Those who have submitted poems or personal statements to register their opposition to ill-considered military action, including a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, honor a long and rich tradition of thoughtful and moral opposition by poets and other artists to senseless and murderous policies, including those of our own government.

We believe that the world is poised on the knife-edge of a decision between war and peace. It is our hope and conviction that peaceful American voices, conveyed in part and without historical precedent by the poets of this country, may help to avert a disaster of tragic proportions.

We call upon the Bush administration to halt the headlong rush toward war, to heed the voices of the people of the world, and to seek peaceful means of resolving conflicts in company with the world community.

Never before in history have so many poets gathered to speak in a single voice.

Sincerely,

Emily Warn
Poets Against the War

Open letter to Laura Bush -Sharon Olds

September 19, 2005

Laura Bush
First Lady
The White House

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

In one way, it’s a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents–all of us who need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it delivers.

And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women’s prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students–long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.

When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking and almost nonmoving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing. When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely nonspeaking and nonmoving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit–and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person’s unique story and song.

So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country–with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain–did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made “at the top” and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism–the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness–as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing–against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting “extraordinary rendition”: flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

Sincerely,
SHARON OLDS

Smile, your mom chose life!

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masturbation is murderOn Fillmore Street there is one of those giant, obnoxious billboards with a giant smiling baby on it, and the words, ‘Smile, your mom chose life’. Probably put up there with the help of one pedophile plagued church, too. You know the name of that church, I think?

All over the world this church that aided the Nazis and aided in the genocides against indigenous people in the Americas and aided in the pogroms against Jewish people even before the Nazis, is on one giant campaign to make people think that they respect life because they want to impose their will on young women. Smile, but did your mom always not have an abortion when she got pregnant? One rather thinks that it is not quite that simple at all, in fact.

You see, these crazy church people are often liars and hypocrites. They do one thing for themselves and urge something else entirely on others. Does Ted Haggard come to mind? Maybe many of those religious moms did have an abortion even if they did later on life give birth to you and your brothers and sisters? Maybe they had several abortions before they started to raise kids? Maybe they had an abortion or two after you were born? It’s not quite as simple as that billboard portrays it as being, now is it?

These crazy religious nuts don’t even choose much life at all, but choose death most often instead. Imagine advocating that women give birth wholesale in countries like Nicaragua, where this obnoxious church, the Catholic, has gotten the government to ban all abortions for all reasons. The Nicaraguan people do not even make $1,000 per year per capita to raise their families on. Does this church do anything to ‘choose life’ when these children are born? I rather think that they do not. How about you?

You know what this church does with its money? It invests it in real estate. It invests it in sanctimonious propaganda billboards that tell others what they should do. But they don’t help raise those poor families in countries like Nicaragua where they force women to give birth to often unwanted and uncared for children. They spend it on lawyers to get out of paying money to people molested by their priests when these people were still children. This is the Catholic Church for you. This is the American Catholic Church.

‘Smile, your mom chose life’ my ass. The Catholic Church has a totally checkered attitude towards choosing life, and that’s their little secret they don’t want you thinking much about. Life with the Catholic Church! What a trip! And NO, life does not begin at conception. And NO, there was no ‘immaculate conception’ either.

So keep your nutty religion away from the rest of us, OK? And reform yourself before you go getting ‘papal’ on those you disagree with you on this issue. (No Catholics were actually harmed by this commentary, I might mention) And Catholics, stop trying to force women to do dangerous things to keep from getting themseves financially sunk into a hole! They have kids to raise, you know? You’re not going to raise these kids for them. Now are you?

Ft Carson shredding casualty records

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pfc-albert-nelson-document-shredded
IS THE US-ARMY-BEDMATE-GAZETTE GOING TO REPORT THIS STORY? Salon Magazine was leaked helmet-cam video showing the 2006 deaths of two US soldiers in Ramadi, by friendly fire, which the US Army is still attributing to Iraqi insurgents. Within hours of breaking the story, soldiers working in Fort Carson offices were ordered to shred the documents relating to the slain PFCs. Fortunately Salon was leaked this development as well.

Watch the video. Pay no heed to the warnings of graphic violence and profanity. What the tape reveals is the inanity of all the soldiers’ conduct. First, a very imprudent peek through a window at a US tank, which more than likely prompted the tank to fire. As a result, the helmet wearer is knocked to the floor, a soldier on the floor above is wounded (and dies), and another on the roof is killed. What followed was discussion about whether the tank had fired the single round, countered by the commanding officer repeating that the official attribution would be mortar fire until a report proved otherwise. Despite that fact that all the soldiers coming up to the commander are reporting that the tank had fired, and he tells them “I agree with you–.” Also, during the entire sequence no other shot is heard.

It will be interesting to see what Fort Carson intended to accomplish by shredding the records of PFCs Albert Nelson and Roger Suarez. In particular because some of the documents were spirited aside and sent to Salon. Was the Army intending to produce revised versions to support their official report of the soldiers deaths?

The US depression torpedoes the US medically sick ‘Health Care’ System

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doctor doomToday, Wall Street broke 8,000 going the wrong way… DOWN. Tomorrow will it be 7,500 on the road to national bankruptcy? Who knows. But one thing is for sure, the already sick US Medical System is going down alongside the US stock market and companies like Fannie Mae and General Motors. Report: Economy is sickening US hospitals. Data shows decline in admissions and increase in patients who can’t pay. Don’t get sick!

And don’t get old either… since Uncle Sam will now just let you flounder if you do. The US economic depression is torpedoing the US For-Profit Medical System and so far nobody in government has much of a plan to do anything about it. How much ‘bailout’ money is there left from your taxpayer’s money?

So what are the more alert companies doing about staying afloat? Why they’re heading to Mexico! See Newsweek’s report Ultimate Outsourcing Now, Mexican medicine What a deal, right? If you or somebody in your family gets hit by a car and don’t have insurance because you don’t have a job, then take a trip Far South! If you have any savings still? A big IF????, I know.

You might want to check out the US’s Christus Hospital Chain for where to go to a hospital in Mexico? They’re a US outfit building new hospitals all over Mexico like mad, to help take in those fleeing American citizen refugees from the lack of a functioning US Medical System! That’s right! Not only are the American patients running off to Mexico, but so are the US chains of For-Profit hospitals, too! Que bueno! Y que pendejada tambien… Isn’t this all rather sick?

Extrajudicial murders [air-] strike terror

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PATHRI- It’s Pakistani for a new computer chip/beacon which agents can throw in a window or over a wall to direct precision US missile fire to the domicile. Such that now: “People are sleeping outside the houses, in case somebody has thrown this pathri inside. It’s created fear in the area.” Umm, would that define terrorism? Imagine the fun to be had tossing jump-drives over your shoulder at anyone who’s displeased you, as you tour areas where US drones are known to be marauding!

In Pakistan, the US military reports having taken out an al-Qaeda leader and henchman, causing limited collateral damage, with a drone missile strike deep in Pakistan, so deep, this time it was outside the al-Qaeda controlled area. There is the usual outrage from Pakistanis, but initial Western media reports tell of Pakistani neighbors appreciative of the tidiness of the single-dwelling air-strike. Would those be the same neighbors who threw in the chip?

Who’s to say, post-missile-delivery, exactly what people were in the targeted house? Were they the al-Qaeda fighters the agents say they were? Were they guilty as charged? Oh, sorry, no time to make a case for charges.

If al-Qaeda or Taliban leadership wanted to direct a missile strike to where US military decisions were being made, in the US (as we are alleging is happening in Pakistan), such a retaliation would be denounced by us as a terrorist act. And they wouldn’t even be involving a third party sovereign nation, the US being their declared adversary.

Off the coast of Somalia, an Indian warship reports having blown to smithereens a pirate ship, a pirate mother ship in fact. In the wake of the weekend’s oil tanker capture by pirates, public support would seem to be behind India’s military strike. But what evidence is there that the ship struck was offending anyone? Might it be reasonable to expect rule of law from warships purporting to enforce maritime law?

Whether the Indian warship targeted an authentic pirate ship or not, the strike served its purpose to put everyone on notice that the military means business. That’s state terrorism.

See Ann Wright in action or at the PPJPC

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DNC arrest-bushCOLORADO SPRINGS- The PPJPC is collecting money to bring noted antiwar activist Ann Wright to Colorado Springs. They’re hoping to have her speak for a fundraiser. I’ve had a chance to meet the retired colonel/diplomat in person a number of times. You can too, with no fund-raising necessary. Go to an action.

The first time I met Wright was in Crawford Texas when a delegation from Colorado Springs joined Cindy Sheehan’s encampment outside George Bush’s ranch. Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin were the primary organizers behind Sheehan’s “Camp Casey” PR coup. When our group convened our own Camp Casey at Nevada Avenue and Dale Street, Wright was our liaison to the continued national effort.

Most recently we ran into Wright at the DNC in August. Ann Wright brought the white faceless masks to the Denver demonstrations. She spoke at the rallies and participated in several marches. Even now, whether the issue is closing Guantanamo or saying no to the Fed, you’ll see Wright’s squad with their masks, representing the faceless victims of America’s destructive imperialism.

While I look forward to Ann Wright’s upcoming visit, I think it is unfortunate that local energy for activism be dissipated with an in-house lecture. What would Wright rather see us doing? Hopefully she can illuminate the hole into which the PPJPC is burying its head. Perhaps a study of her successes can show that a nonviolent ethos need not limit one’s actions to the avoidance of confrontation.

Greed is the true Republican religion

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The Wimpocrats voted to let Traitor Lieberman keep his committee chair. If you thought that Obama winning meant the Dems had somehow become vertebrate, you could not have been more wrong.

Vice President and Mafia Don Dick Cheney indicted for organized crime. New office pool: on what date will Bush pardon his partner in crime?

Holy Crap. American Family Assn. selling burning cross lawn decoration.

After wave of hijackings, Indian navy destroys pirate ship. Think about that: The US Navy is the largest in the world, and was created specifically to stop piracy. Yet they sit on their butts and do nothing except spend a hundred billion dollars a year of taxpayer money, while one of the smallest navies in the world actually succeeds in combating it, with just a handful of boats.

"Man never worshipped anything but himself." –Sir Richard Francis Burton

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Nov 19 notes, thomasmc.com.

Palin/Stevens ticket Loses in Alaska, America WINS- Big Time.

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Even if you’re convinced that it’s all symbolism anyway. It’s really contrarian of me as judged by D or R standards, but the main reason we win is because the Ice Princess Barbie has no chance now of getting into the halls of Federal Power.

Al Franken of Minnesota is putting some seriously advanced Whoopage on Norm Coleman, a Republican Incumbent whose campaign was based not on any accomplishment of his own, but on trashing Al Franken.

His campaign is nearly as nasty and Hate-filled as Palin’s was.

and then… There’s Georgia…

How can you describe Chambliss, a man who couldn’t get a majority in GEORGIA, Greater Redneckistan, because he is so repulsive.

Somebody who, if you threw him into a Tankful of Live Great White Sharks they would throw him back, with a court order for Cease and Desist, because they won’t Eat Junk food and we should stop dumping garbage in their dinner bowl.

One Republican comment on another website got my attention “Al Franken and Begich winning the recounts is “what I fear the most…” and “my only hope is that Chambliss wins in Georgia”

They’re so TERRIFIED of “That One” having such a consensus in Congress they would hold their noses and vote for Chambliss.

It’s (almost) expected that people on anti-war bulletin boards and blogs would dismiss the notion of somebody having his legs and one arm blown off in a war automatically making him a hero.

I think it’s a tragic reminder of what war is like, and aside from 9/11 people like Max Cleland are our only daily reminder of how badly war affects a Nation.

But Chambliss is a ChickenHawk. He proudly claims to have supported the Viet-Nam war, just, you know, not with his presence.

And proudly supports the current wars, just, you know, not with his presence.

Or, since he’s a U.S. senator, not with funding for rehabilitation of the people who DO go “over there” and leave pieces of themselves before coming back. Or for their long term health care, education, things like that.

Believes that “Born on the Fourth of July” is a Commie Propaganda play, and that Ron Kovic deserves far worse treatment than he got.

…and likewise Max Cleland, because Cleland spoke against going to war in Iraq.

Fellow Republican Senator John McCain, who rode the War Hero Horse into politics, gave him a stern tsk-tsk’ing for his slanderous attacks on Cleland.

And now, when it’s politically convenient for him to do so, is joining his Accomplice Chambliss in continuing such attacks. Against a fellow Viet-Nam veteran named Jim Martin.

Real Republican “moral values” in action.

Why not win the ‘Drug War’ by creating a Peace with Drugs?

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junkieAs a professional drug pusher, I have seen the worst abuse with drugs comes most often from the doctors. Society doesn’t seem to much mind that though, because these doctors are considered esteemed members of society. On the other hand our Christianity influenced hate filled world does despise ‘self abuse’, whether it be masturbation, self medication for depression (often called alcoholism), or filling prescriptions without a doctor’s order. As a result of this madhouse way of thinking, people’s heads are being decapitated (in Mexico and other countries) and little babies and small children are getting shot down through apartment building walls. Is there not another approach other than the ‘Christian’ one of punishment?

Yes there is, and Vancouver, BC seems to be at least partially taking a different route toward winning the ‘Drug War’. It has declared Peace! Vancouver’s Radical Approach to Drugs: Let Junkies Be Junkies Good for them! For their approach to truly win the ‘War’ though, it must be made national, and not just local. Otherwise junkies in Canada will just migrate West until they reach Vancouver. Hey, they did that for years even before the change in local law! Even junkies like good scenery, it seems. And good Chinese food, too!

Christians are why I do not believe in Christianity

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Confirmed: Obama considering Hillary for either Secretary of State, or to answer the phones at 3 am. She’s already publicly declared an interest in the later.

NeoNazi Republicans retaliate against Obama win with hundreds of hate crimes nationwide. [AP]

Church of h8. “Know a tree by its fruit.”

Hoping the Supreme Court will steal another election for the GOP, nutcase Republican Alan Keyes files suit challenging Obama’s election.

Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel shocks Arab community by appologizing for his father’s ugly anti-Arab comments.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Nov 18 notes, thomasmc.com.

Innocent Voices

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el-mozote-1991-memorialThere have been many effective antiwar movies made through the years, but the most moving antiwar movie about the US wars in Central America that our population funded back in the late ’70s and ’80s is a movie called Innocent Voices. It came out in 2005 and got little notice inside the US although it deserved to win the Academy Award for the best foreign film of that year. However with Bush firmly in power and the US government committing atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq as elsewhere and as before, the film got downplayed here at home.

The film takes place in El Salvador and examines the lives of the children there during the ’80s. As grim a picture as the film paints, the reality was even worse, as the massacre at El Mozote underlines. I recommend watching this film with children ages 10 and above. They need to know why it is important to protest US war making and why it is relevant to them. as children.

To get a good idea of the themes of this film, be sure to check out all 3 of the clips on the link given above. This is definitely a film worth watching and I only wish that more Americans knew about it.

Once an unrepentant soldier, always a…

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Iraq liberatorA bumper sticker ahead of me read ONCE A MARINE, ALWAYS A MARINE. Next to it was LESS MEAN, LESS LEAN, STILL A MARINE. It got me thinking about the soldiers who come back from war, in light of later revelations of their true brutality. A suppressed investigation in the Mekong Delta 1968-1969, resurfaced in this month’s Nation: “A My Lai a Month.” Operation Speedy Express produced a casualty ration of 40:1, with Vietnamese civilians accounting for an estimated 92%. In view of atrocities which turn out to have been pervasive, what are we to conclude about our veterans? These men are still what? are always what?

The preponderance of our dehumanized ex-soldiers are not in the street committing serial murder and rape, at least not in American streets. The Vietnam vets who suffered are now antiwar. The others unrepentant have been perpetrating the wars that followed –should we be surprised– with the same ferocity and collateral damage? Suppressing the crimes committed in Vietnam, out of concern for the fragile consciences of our vets, has only served to grant license to the war-fueled sadists who still command our inhuman arsenal.

Yesterday, a memorial was held in Missouri for William Doyle, of the infamous Tiger Force unit of the 101st Airborne, who went to his grave bragging about the civilians he’d killed, wishing he’d killed more. The 1965-67 atrocities of the Tiger Force were only revealed in 2004. They were not aberrations but results of the orders the soldiers had been given. This was true about the Free Fire Zones of Operation Speedy Express of the 9th Infantry Division, and for the My Lai raid by the Charlie Company. Few were prosecuted, and fewer punished. Lieutenant Calley served only four months for presiding over the murder of 400 Vietnamese villagers in 1968.

To be fair, each of these examples involved the US Army. The Marines have their own rap-sheet of war crimes that span more engagements than just America’s declared wars, especially in Central and South America. Already Iraq War veterans are trying to confess their deeds in Operation Iraqi Freedom. How many years before journalists are able to report the true crimes of the battle of Fallujah?

America’s racists retaliate in mass with their hatreds

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john mccain Just this night on the job, a White co-worker was telling each and every one of us all his racist antiBlack and anti ‘Mexican’ catalog of jokes. Quite a sad joker he was, in fact. I told him my joke in reply, asking him what the words pen, day, and hoe all combine into? Answer… an Anglo pendejo, like himself it was implied. Of course, he didn’t really know what the word meant but knew it wasn’t in English. His brow kind of grew wrinkled after my joke for him. He’s not really a vicious guy, but just a run of the mill White racist. So no harm done, right?

Unfortunately, the press reports that the Obama election spurs race crimes around country There are some vicious racists out there though and they do seem to have become rather rabid. John McCain, what do you know about this?

How the US helped out in Indonesia’s forgotten genocide of 500,000 dead

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indonesia-klan.jpg We get fed so much bullshit all the time about how supposedly the US has always been this great beacon of light in the ‘civilized world’. But did you know that the US under Lyndon Johnson helped create a genocide that murdered at least 500,000 people in the island country of Indonesia? Yes, this was a MADE IN THE US genocide, People, and the Associated Press revisits the scene in this brief report online today. AP Exclusive: Indonesians recount role in massacre

So the next time some anti-Communist fanatic starts off about how communists supposedly always kill people wholesale, remember capitalist Indonesia. Remember capitalist Nazi Germany and capitalist WW2 Japan, too. Millions of people were murdered in the fight of these capitalist dictators against Communism. And remember, too, the United States of America which also murdered millions of people in that same fight by the international Business community against their own workers all over the world. Capitalism is a murderous system of rule by the rich, over the many poor. Yes, the US has been involved in many, many genocides in fairly recent times, and not just in the distant past.

Dying Planet

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Even as the corporate media brags about how our ‘civilization’ can now visualize planets in other solar systems, the real news is at home on our Dying Planet. butterfly Even the bugs are dying off, along with the mammals, fish, plants, and everything. Insecticide! An ecological disaster that will affect us all. Nobody seems much to care as we have a society that has now embraced suicide as norm. And everybody says they are so happy!

The officials in New York State help murder immigrants in Suffolk County

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marcello luceroWhen it comes to murderous racism, Louisiana doesn’t have anything up on Suffolk County, New York State. Here on Long Island, officials have a long history of acceptance and promotion of racial intolerance leading to murder. The latest case started out like this…

A friend who said he had been hanging out with the seven defendants in the park that night said there had not been much in the way of a plan before the group set out.

“We were just chilling, having a few beers,” said the friend… and then they set out to ‘fuck some Mexicans up’.

These racists were quite typical in that they didn’t know their ass from a hole on the ground. The Latinos living in their area are mainly Ecuadoran and are not from Mexico at all. So their victim, as in many of these same sort of hate crimes, was a person from a totally different group of people than from the supposed target group…. Mexicans. These teenagers murdered Mr. Lucero, who had come to the United States to help support his family in Gualaceo, Ecuador. They knifed him in the street in cold blood without any provocation at all.

So what do the scum bag local officials do? They admit that it was in fact a hate crime, but in Suffolk County these officials turn premeditated murder into ‘first degree assault’ and ‘first degree manslaughter’ charges. See Hate-crime death highlights racial tensions in Suffolk for additional information about this.

Notice if you read the news article, that a certain County Executive Steve Levy is at the center of the racism in Suffolk County, but won the majority of the Latino voters. How did that happen? It happened because he is from the Democratic Party though the Democratic Party has anti-immigrant policies as bad as the Republicans. Hispanic voters had to choose their County Exec from the locked up and undemocratic, supposed lesser of 2 evils. Actually, he last ran unopposed except for the Green Party candidate, and the Democratic Party and the Sierra Club have promoted this guy as being Mr. Green.

But there is another side to Steve Levy, and it is his racist campaigning against the immigrant community, a campaigning that animated these teenagers who wanted to ‘fuck up some Mexicans’. Ramirez: Levy has blood on his hands So did Steve Levy, if it helped get him elected?, which it did.

Steve Levy says that he did not want murder to occur, but with the long history of racist violence in Suffolk County, this is just a tad disingenuous on his part. Murder could easily be foreseen, but Levy chose not to give a damn. He hated immigrants too much. Here is what the New York Times had to say about him a year ago… Long Island The Riddle of Steve Levy

In some ways, Democratic Party politicians Steve Levy is a microcosm of the entire Democratic Party, one which has gone along with the Bush Administration racism for a long, long time. Yes, the party is embarrassed by it, but they are addicted to the racism and share it, too. Meanwhile, Mr Lucero is dead. Long Island ‘lynch mob’ killed our American Dream

Dear Mrs Palin: write the 10 Commandments on the tablet of your heart…

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This is a recurrent theme, Mr Bush and Mrs Palin have gone to bat for the notion of placing the Ten Commandments in every government building and facility in America. Except they don’t actually live by them in the first place, and actively break most of them daily in the second place.

1.You shall have no other gods before me

2.You shall not make for yourself an idol

3.You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God

4.Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy

5.Honor your father and mother

6.You shall not murder*

7.You shall not commit adultery

8.You shall not steal***

9.You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

these last are counted as one Commandment
10.You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife
You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor

We have been told, repeatedly and indignantly, that we need to support a war started by none other than Mr Bush, and that God says we need no support it. That’s Commandments 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10 all in one swoop.

We were told in the beginning that it was because Saddam Hussein was amassing Weapons of Mass Destruction in preparation for a terrorist attack on America, and that he had been a participant in the attack on 9-11-2001.

Both of which had been exposed as lies before the first bombs fell on Baghdad.

So much for Commandment #9

The real reason is obviously to take the Oil which belongs to the Iraqi people.
Commandments #8 stealing and #10 coveting it in the first place.

This is in relation to an Idolatrous worship of money by the lying murdering thieves who started the war. They “jokingly” refer to a Graven Image (literally, the picture of George Washington is an engraving) as “The Almighty”.

A title usually which usually refers to God.

If it is “merely a joke” then it’s taking God’s name in vain Commandment #3.

If it’s not “merely a joke” then it’s having another god before God, Commandment #1, Graven Image #2 AND Blasphemy #3.

They now very arrogantly admit that the original reasons for George Bush starting the war, they’re somehow proud of committing perjury which breaks Commandment #9.

But they insist that God is somehow instructing them to do these things, in “Revelations of the Holy Ghost”.

A type of Blasphemy, Commandment #3, which Jesus Himself said is The One Unforgivable Sin, Blaspheming against the Holy Ghost.

And they insist that we support this action, and that God Himself commands us to do so… again with Commandment #3. And that it doesn’t matter that they broke Commandment #9.

When they use the name Christian, they are AGAIN using the Name of God, and doing it in vain

It’s been described as The Adoption and the Church has been termed “The Bride of Christ”, so we as Christians take the name the same way an adopted child takes the name of his adopted father, and the way a bride takes the name of her husband.

Thus #3 Taking God’s Name in vain, #5 honor thy mother and thy father, both their physical human parents (the surnames of their parents are dishonored by their hideous acts, and George Walker Bush has three of his father’s names.)

#7 Adultery because they, as the Bride of Christ, are whoring after their Other god “the almighty” dollar.

And #4, keep the Sabbath holy…

They do the other 9 on Saturday too, so, yep, It’s A Perfect Score of All TEN.

Common Dreams? Or is it censorship in common with the corporate media?

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Ira ChernusThe biggest liberal website out there online, Common Dreams, informs us with its headline today that ‘OBAMA’S PROGRESSIVES: HOLDING, PUSHING, TUGGING’. Common Dreams has become a major resource for the US Left and liberal community in the last couple of years through its posting of many important commentaries by Leftists and liberals plus its convenient links that many of us use quite often. Unfortunately there is a big weakness of the site, and that is their censorship of commentaries, writers, and readers who are not completely 100% on board with their ‘support the lesser of two evils’, pro-Democratic Party point of view.

As a result, when I go to read their headline, I today get the message that THE WEBSITE DECLINED TO SHOW THIS WEBPAGE (to me) HTTP 403 FORBIDDEN. What is Common Dreams scared of from me?

The exact post I made to one of their commentaries that got me blacklisted from their site was made on election night and was linked the following day to a commentary at Common Dreams, from the one I made here on Not My Tribe titled Sadly, Barack Obama will probably get us OUT of Iraq by getting us INTO Iran. Many people who read Common Dreams material link to other commentaries that back up their opinions and beliefs, and I merely did the same.

But this belief that Obama’s election will lead to yet more war ran counter to their cheeleading for the Democratic Party, and earned me their shunning. And you know what? I still think it is most probable that attacking Iran is a most possible final result, post national arrival of Obama into the White House. How will the Common Dreams’ censor feel if this actually happens? Will he/ she remember the decision to put me permanentl offline from their site, for simply making this observation? Probably not.

I certainly do not feel all alone at all in being treated so shabbily by the Common Dreams Democratic Party cheerleading censor on their site. The site shuns many others, too, including the Libertarian site ANTIWAR.COM that it has never chosen to link to and acts as if the site does not exist. ANTIWAR.COM, you see, is a major resource for those who oppose what they call one of the War Parties, the Democrats? Can’t do that per play book of Common Dreams censorship. Not at all if you want publication there.

Also of note, is that Common Dreams likes anarchists somewhat, linking to the giant academician anarchist site, Znet, but has no links to overt Marxist links. Major antiwar activists (and presidential candidates) like Gloria La Riva will never see any comment of theirs allowed the Common Dreams site. CENSORED by the CD group-ling of ‘OBAMA’S PROGRESSIVES:HOLDING, PUSHING, TUGGING’. More like BLOCKING, I would say, and Common Dreams doesn’t like people that are aware of that, and will comment to that effect on their pro-Democratic Party site.

I could list many people whose comments will never appear at Common Dreams, merely because they are activist Marxists. Many academic anarchists act at election time though as Social Democrats, and Social Democrats can be easily herded into voting Democratic Party in the US. ALLOWED.

The thing about Common Dreams is that they are not real honest, and pretend often to have no bias for the Democrat Party even as they push them with countless articles praising people like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, et al. With the final days to push to get Barack Obama elected though, they seem to have dropped much of their camouflage and subterfuge and the long time effects will be to make their site less attractive to people who actually do want uncensored Left opinion, and not just cheerleading for the new DP executives in power. The CD approach to activism is to try to herd all ‘Progressives’ into voting the Democratic Party. It really is about that plain and simple, but it would be much better for activism if this major Left resource in the US had a less sectarian and less Democratic Party partisan approach.

So to the question is it Common Dreams, or is it censorship in common with the corporate media? I leave you to contemplate that question? For me, I just know that I can no longer read the site on my home computer, let alone comment on their posted articles, all because I do not share their ‘common dream’, which seems narrowly limited to getting the Democratic Party politicians into office, and propagandizing for them. That’s why I see them as being so like the corporate media itself, which will only endorse one of the two corporate parties, and will censor those who want a different world.

As to those whose commentaries are promoted by Common Dreams? I will be writing to at least one of them, Ira Chernus who lives here in Colorado, and asking him what it feels like to have article after article of his promoting the idea of voting Democratic Party this last election published on the Common Dreams site, and then finding out how Common Dreams has censors who keep opposing ideas to his own offline at their Common Dreams site? I don’t think that Ira, or many of the other nice liberal Democratic Party voting writers, have given this censorship much thought. It reflects poorly on them though, when Common Dreams publishes their commentaries and then keeps ‘Progressives’ from actually being able to challenge their POV. Ira, that is censorship. Have you anything much to say about this?

PS.. That picture above is of Ira Chernus, whose multiple articles framed the Common Dreams site the last weeks of the election. He is a professor who happens to live in The Democratic Party Peoples Republic of Boulder.

Bootsie Hall, 1919 – 2008

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She was a lady I did recycling with down in Texas.

I told Eric the other day when he gave me and Miss Johnnie a ride to the hospital that I would write about it.

Which I probably have anyway, but Miss Bootsie died on October 7th.

She would have been 90 if she had lived until February.

Just in the past 3 years she had to stop recycling. Coronary arteries deteriorating.

She had this beat up white Ford Ranger 1/4 ton pickup she would have routinely filled with a ton of metal and half a ton of me and whoever else was dumb enough to ride with her.

Yeah, she drove crazy.

Riding with Miss Bootsie was a Religious Experience. I would even call on the Name of Our Lord three or four times every time we went out “hunting”.

I got in the habit of closing my eyes while we were rolling because, you know, if you’re fixing to die, why spend an extra few seconds being tortured by the certain knowledge thereof?

Her oldest brother was killed in World War One, just before Armistice Day in fact.

She only knew him from a picture.

Her Obituary in the Star-Telegram said that the longest she had worked any job was as a waitress for a few years.

Not so.

She had the Recycling, I guess Some People don’t consider that to be work but it sure the Hell is.

And the really important lifetime job of Being a Spectacularly Good Example and my hero.

Her given name was Beulah Faye Hall. I didn’t know that until I asked how to find her in the phone book.

I started singing that Hymn “I’m not worried for I’m dwelling, in Beulah Land” and she told me to stop.