Monthly Archives: January 2007

The underwhelming Barack Obama

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The media is already pushing the delusion to liberal Democratic Party voters, that Barack Obama is their Great Black Hope in 2008. And today he announced he was a candidate for President. They are trying to pass him off as the antiwar candidate, same as Howard Dean was similarly imaged in that manner in 2004.

Not only is he not that, but his positions on almost everything are not liberal, neither. As Colin and Condo are to Dubya and Dick, Barack and Jesse are to Bill and Hillary. Yuck.

I encourage everybody to go to Obama’s website to get a glimpse of his mealy mouthed political approach. He is for education, but not a mention of supporting public schools versus privatization. He is for health care, but nothing about keeping abortion legal, nor anything about supporting a single payer comprehensive national health care system, where all are covered. He speaks out on immigration, but says not a word in opposition to the Border Wall being built. He says not a word about maintaining Social Security, but talks of ‘modernizing’ it. Hell with him. We know what ‘modernizing’ really means. It means cutting SS, that’s what.

Similarly, he blabs on about National Defense, supporting the police, being against sex offenders, crime, and meth. Bullshit is what it is. Pure bullshit. He is for a ‘phased withdrawal’ from Iraq, but not a word about Afghanistan. And what is a ‘phased withdrawal’ to this sort? Over 3 months, or over 10 years? Or over forever? Not a word about cutting our excessive military spending. Why not? This is no liberal speaking, but a mealy mouthed duplicitous worm. Yet another one the Democratic party has spun out.

In the weeks and months ahead, all of America will be encouraged to put their hopes in this man. He was already being touted as the only genuine antiwar candidate tonight on the national news. Lies, lies, lies/ liars, liars, liars. About all the Democrats are hashing up with Barack Obama, is a man to help neutralize the possibility of Condoleeza Rice starting a run for the presidency. That’s about all.

Obama at best would be a return to Clintonism, but this time with a black face in office playing the role of the Slick Willie. Liberals need a better vision than that to offer America, otherwise the slide down hill will continue. And most of all, liberals need a better political party than the Democratic Party. Stuck in that Yu-don’t-go of a vehicle, we will get a wreck of America.

What a demoralized America we have now, minus a genuine third, and anti-corporate, party.

I have to stop reading Yahoo news…

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In the past two days, Scotland is thinking of seceding from the UK. Not too bad but I remember from my history that it had a lot to do with who was going to be the Rightful King than an anarchistic, freedom type of thing, when the two Kingdoms were combined in the first place.

The Chimp is critcizing Iraqis for the latest hangings. Like he didn’t have a thing to do with it.
Yesterday the Pentagon said that Iran has been continually buying military hardware through Surplus Auctions.

They mentioned a Pakistani arms dealer who was convicted in 1987 of dealing to Iran…. and who is now facing charges of doing it again as soon as he made parole… They throw a lot of names around but strangely not Ronald Reagan nor his merry band of pirates. The Pentagon has taken the Tomcat fighter out of service, so there is concern that, since Iran is the only other air force in the world which uses that particular model, might want to get their hands on some choice spare parts at a reasonable price.

They didn’t have a usable internet back then, but when Reagan got selected for president the first time, after spending four hundred plus days talking all kinds of smack about the Iranians and Jimmy Carter is a Wimp and he would handle things differently if he were president or by gosh his name wasn’t John Wayne ooops another Right Wing Hawk who never wore a uniform except in the movies.

Then the Ayatollah, who had sworn to bring down Carter with the hostage crisis just handed over the hostages as soon as Reagan took office, and we had this huge embargo on high tech stuff like airplane parts for the Iranians.

But then, for several years afterward they kept on flying Tomcat fighter jets, and anybody who mentioned the fact that news reports from the Iraq-Iran war kept showing Iranian Tomcats indicated that they were getting parts from america, specifically the General Dynamics plant in Ft Worth Texas.

But we ain’t supposed to go and get all nosey about these deals, no sir.
If we do we are conspiracy theorists and nuts.

The next Big Lie

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As the befuddled, overly religious minions of America try to figure it all out about Muslims, terrorism, Satan, evolution, chimps, global warming, Osama, and when Jesus is returning, their next Big Lie is being prepared for them to hunker down with. Condi, Dick, Dubya, and the rest of the gang have got the ships, missiles, and soldiers in place, so they got to get the Big Lie in place, too. What will it be?

It is….
We have to threaten and attack Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, because they are assisting and arming the opposition that is fighting our troops in Iraq.

In reality, our government feels the need to attack the Shia, because they will not go along with the US government plan to steal their oil reserves. Stan Goff (ex US Special Forces officer) discusses this upcoming ‘surge’ in bloodshed where the US will attack the Shia in full force. Petraeus! Is Baghdad Burning?

It’s time to oppose what is just around the corner. What are you waiting for? It’s going to happen, simply because the Democratic Party is not going to effectively oppose Bush’s plan. In fact, the Clinton pair are calling for a ‘surge’ of troops to Afghanistan right now, even as they fail to oppose the main ‘surge’. Instead of withdrawal, the government is planning the new attacks to come.

STOP THE WAR! DEMONSTRATE

Texas football

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The Park Cities, University Park and Highland Park, get Dallas city services, water supply, at no city tax cost to the residents. Super rich neighborhood, one of the richest in America. To add insult to injury, the Dallas Police department routinely patrols the “border” of these neighborhoods, to keep out the riffraff from the surrounding townships of Dallas, Oak Cliff, DeSoto and South Oak Cliff. Some of the most dirt poor areas of Dallas County. But the people and businesses in these townships, even though they also have the distinction of being separate municipalities, DO pay Dallas municipal taxes.
 
In Texas, Football is worshipped. It is their lower case g god. They sold the design to the State Legislature, which has to approve taxpayer subsidized business deals such as the New Improved cowboys stadium in Arlington, with a sliding roof over the hole , so God could still look down and watch His team play. One democratic legislator said quote “Well, if God approves of it, who are we to say different?” and voted yes to the proposition.

So now the Cowboys are no longer not in Dallas, they aren’t even in Dallas County, they are across the county line in Arlington, Tarrant Co. Texas. Just south of the Ballpark which his royal dumbness forced the City of Arlington to buy. For his team.

And the College football teams, and the high school teams, and even the Middle School teams, are considered a farm where the NFL gets to hand raise its candidates for the pro teams. Where one high school team star in a thousand gets a chance to even try out for a professional slot.

They worship the oblong ball. There was one Governor, Mark White. He was Attorney General under Republican Bill Clements, until Bush the most active death penalty freak governor in Texas, (mark white helped him along) then lost the next election to Bill Clements. One of the few powers the Governor of Texas actually has is in deciding the school curriculum. What lost Mark White the Job wasn’t his Zero Tolerance, wiretapping, warrantless searches, death death kill them all bwaaahaaahaaahaaa attitude, and laws, no sir. It was football. Specifically the No Pass, No Play law. Which is as simple as it sounds, failing grades, no extracurricular activities.

Whut do you-all mean Bubba cain’t play no more football jes cause he’s dumb as a sack of dirt? That’s downright on-American!

One thing they used to protest the law was suspending the star player of the Chess Club for failing PE at one middle school. That’ll larn them sissy-boy eggheads not to fuck with our football.

But there is one and only one good thing about the way the laws are set up.

You know the difference between an Air Force recruiter and a NCAA recruiter? The NCAA recruiter isn’t allowed on high school campuses.

The good thing is I get to use that as an example for arguing with people like our good friend Ray. Whoever he is.

No strippers allowed

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Good boys dont hire strippers
Three lacrosse players from Duke University have been held hostage by the justice system for the past 9 months. They stand accused of sexual assault and kidnapping (rape charges were recently dropped), allegations made by a stripper who performed at an off-campus party last March.

Initially the woman did not allege rape. Later, she told police that she’d been raped by 2, 5, 10, 20 lacrosse players. Her co-stripper called the claim a “crock.” The woman also claimed that she’d been given a date rape drug. Toxicology tests found no trace of such a drug in her system. Lab tests found no evidence of DNA from the three defendants, nor from any other Duke players. They did, however, find the semen of at least 5 other men.

Cell phone records and time-stamped photographs show strong alibis for a couple of the young men accused. The stripper now says she’s not sure that she was ever penetrated by anyone, and definitely not by one of the men she’d fingered earlier, one with an alibi. She’s been under psychiatric care a number of times. She’s on an anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel. She’s alleged gang rape before. Her story has changed, often significantly, no fewer than a dozen times.

The DA in the case, Mike Nifong, recently recused himself from the case as he faces disciplinary action from the North Carolina Bar for his handling of the situation.

Why would charges even have been filed in such a non-case? A case without any credible evidence? Well, because the lacrosse players are rich and white, and the stripper is poor and black, and Mike Nifong needed to pander to the African-American community in Durham in order to win re-election to the DA’s office.

I imagine when Dr. Martin Luther King told us he dreamed of the day when people aren’t judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, he was speaking of all people. Even rich white boys.

Thank you, President Bush

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The Dallas, Texas business community, my mother, and President Bush have teamed up to help me out financially. For years my liberal mother has threatened her sons with the possibility that she would donate a sizable sum of money to Dallas’s Southern Methodist University in her will. SMUShe went to school there and it was the best time of her life. But, she says, the university has changed, and instead of being a center of learning as it once was for her, in short it has become a creature captured by the Dallas super-rich.

Corruption seems to swirl around this university. Edwiin L. Cox Jr., son of the man whose name is attached to SMU’s now acclaimed Cox School of Business, had to be pardoned by George Bush Sr. for financial crimes he was convicted of. In return, Cox Sr. donated a hefty sum of money to that president’s Texas A&M’s presidential library shortly thereafter. But that is not what SMU is most noted for in the field of corporate corruption.

The most notable example of it, was when the Dallas business rich increasingly began to buy football players for the team. This went on despite repeated warnings and sanctions from the NCAA through the years, but the business community, alumni, and SMU coaches kept at it. Eventually, the shit hit the fan when the NCAA made SMU the first ever university to receive its ‘death penalty’. The varsity football program was closed down entirely for several years, and a program with a rich history has now become a minor player in college ranks.

But the latest scandal there is the decision by the big Whigs to make SMU the site of the George Dubya Bush presidential library. This is the type of thing that Dallas’s already most sorry political reputation certainly doesn’t need. Even some of the university’s conservative Theological Department are quite aghast and have protested this decision. The local daily paper has tried to play down the public reaction to the recent announcement that this ‘honor’ had been granted the city and Soutern Methodist, but the site of the library will be quite appropriate IMO. Southern Methodist sits inside a rich, White segreGated, suburban enclave, entirely surrounded by multicultural Dallas. Isn’t this the purest essence of Bush though? So what’s to protest? lol

Still, my mother sees this insult as the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She has written the university and told them that she has now taken them out of her will. Thanks, Mom! And thank you, George W. Bush Mom, you’re doing the right thing!

See, there is some justice still in the world. And maybe also some day, both Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush (both Texas Oilys) will be publicly hung for their crimes on the steps of the George W. Bush presidential library, of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas? We can only hope that their heads will soon roll, and in what better place than within the segreGated Park Cities enclave of Dallas, Texas, at Southern Methodist University? It would be presidential! Go Mustangs!

Hussein’s headless half brother

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After all the crocodile tears from the imperialist bandwagon about how wrong it was to insult and degrade Saddam Hussein while murdering him post trial by kangaroo court, apparently that was not enough show to demonstrate US government capacity for brutality against those they choose to eliminate.

So they decapitated the half brother of Hussein and filmed it yesterday, for broader distribution later. Real Bush Death Metal live, and surely such sweet music to Cheney’s and Rice’s ears. They feast on blood do these vampires.

OOps! It was an accident they say…. Yes, but we know that films the neocons watch. Some ‘accidents’ are made to happen.

CS King event a dead bust

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Anglo-saxon high school choirIt was cold, very cold, and one cannot really fault the decision to cancel out the MLK walk last night, that was supposed to start from the YMCA and Acacia Park.
 
I used to wonder why San Antonio, a city without a large African American population normally has the largest MLK evens most years? Well, duh. It’s because most of the rest of the country is quite frozen in January. About the coldest political event I have gone to was a MLK rally in Milwaukee one year. And, it is still painful cold within my memory.

So we headed to Colorado College’s chapel to see what the program last night would be. There were a few dark flakes in the liberal sea of salt, but this was a totally flavorless goo being served up. The official event brochure had Mr Colorado Springs Mayor Lockheed himself, Lionel Rivera, giving us a written and flowery city proclamation welcoming the honored event, as welcome it so did the city police department. Oh whoopee!

The event brochure was a glossy one we would expect to be handed if buying a new car. And the usual glop about ‘King’s vision’ was served up in big scoops. An all white preppy private high school group sung and played, unperturbed by the irony of not having even one nonWhite face amongst their blueblooded, trendy selves. The mainly White audience politely clapped after the renditions. My head began ot nod down, and I had to smother the beginnings of a snore several times.

This was a dead bust of a night. MLK was an organizer, not a spiritual guru. But let the Chamber of Commerce team up with the
liberal churches and the only thing organized is a insipid bowl of mush. I honored Martin Luther King’s legacy by leaving early the charade that Colorado College had sponsored. My Lord, Killing Martin Luther King anew has become an annual event in today’s America. It hurts to see the man so dishonored.

King’s true legacy lies in what he did to help organize the streets to be full of people resisting the oppressive staus quo. Inside the chapels, he truly lies dead. Sponsored by the likes of Bush and Mayor Rivera, he truly lies butchered. At least when we walk, there is the shadow of his presence walking alongside us. But that was not to be on such a cold night. What we lacked was Martin Luther King, The Organizer.

Excuse the troops redux

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Grown scouts
A lot of what happens there, and in any war, is that the soldiers are literally brainwashed.

Basic Training is designed to be an intensive indoctrination program. The similarity to Cults like the Unification Church and such is literally mind boggling. Every detail, the exact number of people in the Flight or Platoon, the number in each squad, the arbitrarily assigned Peer Leaders, chosen at random the first day, 1 flight leader and 4 squad leaders, a total of 40 men in the flight, shouted orders which you have to shout back or shout Yes Sir or No Sir, while standing in a rigid stance, made to shout again and again, in unison.

Stripped of the individualism. Made the first day to look as much exactly alike as possible. Given inadequate and often interrupted sleep, then sleep but not in a recognizable pattern. Look alike, walk alike, fold your underwear alike, soon you will be thinking alike. It gets scary by the numbers. 4 will develop acute psychoses, 1 will attempt suicide. A total of 6 out of the 40 will not complete the training.

This supposedly helps you maintain discipline, cope with being under fire or other harsh conditions and still think alike.

What it actually does is make you into equipment, for the nonce. You have your conscience sublimated, because you are ordered to not feel guilt for “doing your duty”.
You are suppressed and repressed. Soon you are either obsessed or distressed, and, I confess, depressed. But the effect is temporary, sooner or later, the guilt of what you ordered to do gets to you, unless you are a true psychopath or sociopath. But that too is timed, it usually takes years, sometimes decades, and you are out of the Armed Forces by the time it hits you.

You are not yet insane by definition while you are blowing people to their component particles. You are controlled, but not by yourself. But when the reality comes to you, usually after but not always After you have left the constant reinforcement of this behavior.

That you enter into it voluntary, or not, makes no difference. Once you are indoctrinated any pretense of you being a volunteer drops away.

And you have the constant threat to your life, just from the nature of the “job”, for some odd reason you can’t just go around shooting people without them wanting to do everything they can to prevent you from doing so, and there is a distinctly mind chilling effect piling up, every time somebody points a gun at you, you look down the barrel and see death looking at you with a hideous one eyed stare.

A bullet wound isn’t clean, a little hole and the person looking for all the world like he is merely sleeping, no, sir, that is Hollywood. The kind of movie where somebody gets thrown through a window, picks himself up, dusts himself off and goes back to drinking. Instead of being cut to shreds like really happens. Those movie windows are called Candy Glass. The same when somebody hits you with a bottle. In real life, bottles are thicker and harder than the human skull, you bust somebody’s noggin with a bottle and he might just die right in front of you.

A real bullet might throw your friends’ innards all over you. The blood and guts and the shit, and the horrifying smell and sounds, constantly. But even the intervals of calm, because they are not scheduled, random, interspersed with random acts of violence and pain, nothing stable, nothing safe, eats you just as fast as the active phases.

Add in the idea that there real monsters in with the crowd, people who join for the knowledge that they will get to kill somebody without going to jail for it. And you have to stand day and night with these Socially Retarded Animated Sphincters. You have to remain loyal, even to them, but you know they might shank you when you get careless.

No, it isn’t an excuse. It is a reason.

To take that and make it positive, we really need to expose that for what it really is, and find a way to make it stop, and heal.

One way the heal the Troops is to Heel the Commander. Put a leash on that thar dawg. Make him mind.

If there is one dawg in the world that needs the Ol’ Yeller treatment, it’s him.

There is a book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which makes the same point, if we become like them to control them, then we become them, and somebody else will eventually control us the same way.

Dead, in concert, the King!

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Strange title, grabs you. I get to that later on. What prompted me on this was a couple of days ago there was a statement from Steve Irwins widow, about the Death Tape being destroyed. There has been a lot of tabloid trash about an investigation and even an autopsy ordered, that last was bullpoopoo because he had already been cremated.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, they are playing his shows every day on Animal Planet, have a Croc-a-thon at least once a week, play the tape of his memorial service, Croc Hunter Diary, you name it. He was a valuable property for his production company. They have to recoup their money right?

Elvis Presley MunsterWhich brings up the title.

Many years ago, before Larry Flynt was shot, or taken to court in his wheelchair, how long ago was that? But it WAS right after Elvis died.

Don’t anybody get dumb and ask “Elvis who?” and one of his magazines, Hustler, published yet another of his truly sick cartoons, had Elvis’ corpse hanging on wires, rotting flesh and his guitar wired to his hands, a sign saying “Dead, in concert, the King! See him twitch to his favorite songs!” and Colonel Tom Parker talking to somebody saying “This just goes to show that NO son-of-a-bitch ever gets out of a contract with the Colonel!”

Apple and the PC image

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I saw the actor who plays “PC” in the Mac versus PC commercials in a bit part on a television show. Odd, I thought, that he would be permitted a role outside of his corporate representative commitment.
Apple's popular PC and Mac mascots
Usually mascots like the Maytag repairman, the Dunkin’ Donuts and Frito-Lay guys, even Juan Valdes and Mr. Goodwrench, sign exclusive contracts to prevent them from diluting their brand identity with competing entertainment images. What distinguishes Apple’s PC guy is that he is a defamation of himself. The Mac strategy seems positively libelous.

It could be that since “PC” doesn’t represent an Apple product, whatever other screen time the actor got would matter little to Apple. But let’s not be so naive. More probably Apple has a say over which acting gigs PC can take. As long as PC portrays a feeble, emasculated frump like his Mac versus PC persona, Apple’s campaign is extended beyond its ads, right into the world of television. But is that playing fair? Can you create a straw man to represent your competitor, just to take the Mickey out of him at every opportunity, outside of the scripted ads, even in real life possibly. PC in real life could be painted to be quite the Wally if Apple if so desired.

The brilliance too of Apple’s singular circumstance is that “PC” represents no actual corporate rival. PC is not an IBM anymore, he’s part Windows, part Intel, and part PC clone maker. Microsoft would have to join Dell, HP, Gateway, eMachine, et al, to sue Apple for defamation.

Microsoft is trying some of Apple’s medicine pitting the Zune against the iPod, using representatives cleverly similar to the original actors, but my favorite adaptation of the me-better-than-you genre was Nintendo’s fun with Sony.

Open letter to Bill O’Really…

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yeah I know the name isn’t spelled exactly the way you want, bill, but I have lots of Irish relatives who feel the same way I do. Since you and Rush LimpDog and Anne Coulter appear to be the only ones on the planet that Mr Bush listens to, try giving him this message from the American People.

It is readily apparent that when he and you and others of your ilk say that he doesn’t make decisions based on polls, he means it. He doesn’t even listen to the Official Poll on election day.

It doesn’t help that trash like you help by insisting on the pretense that the overwhelming outcry at the polls and massive defeat you suffered is actually a mandate for “let’s have more constructive bi-partisan dialogue to help us win the War.”

The message and mandate is YOU and your henchmen have been de-selected by the American people. You have been evicted from the seat of power. You are no longer entitled to run a damn thing.

The eviction papers were served two months ago. You have been given plenty of time to pack your bags, get it cleaned for the new occupants. The Sheriff is at the door. Get the Hell out!

More news, really bad all of it

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Baghdad Dick claims unqualified victoryCheney said on DumFox news last night that the president has the final say on the course of the war, Mr Bush is about to make the same announcement tonight, I think in a few minutes.

Cheney also said that the policy course is going to be for the next 3 or 4 decades.

Apparently congress doesn’t matter, and neither do the American People.

Also on Yahoo news they finally admitted to the kids hanging themselves, added 5 more to the list and said that there were others, but not confirmed.

Charter school infection

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War criminal given immunity from prosecutionDo you wonder how this nation’s infection of immorality keeps spreading? For one, the Colorado Springs charter school Classical Academy is employing former Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman to coach its students. The Gazette front page today tells of Sassaman, the Army commander, disgraced but given immunity, who tried to cover up his men’s attempted and probable murder of two Iraqi captives on the banks of the Tigris River in 2004, is now shaping young minds and bodies of fragile charter school students. I say fragile because remember what kind of parents are sending their children to these “charter” schools.

MLK Day March today

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The choice today is no longer between violence and non-violence
We hope to see everybody out today for the march starting at Acacia Park at 5:30 (assemble at YMCA next to park at 5:00). Sure, it will be cold, but this is the only American holiday that actually mobilizes people in the streets in support of a multicultural country. That’s what makes it so important to carry Martin Luther King’s legacy forward by getting outside and making these events as big as they can be. We’ll see you there!

Hannibal, Somalia

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NMT- US war planes bombed Hollywood again yesterday in an attempt to kill feared criminal mastermind Hannibal Lector. Human Rights advocates point out that Lector’s guilt has never been established in a court of law. Though his heinous crimes are documented in three blockbuster movies, Lector’s culpability is considered alleged until he has received his day in court. Military strikes meant to assassinate persons suspected of crimes are considered by international legal authorities to be extra-judicial executions. Still others insist that Hannibal is a fictional character played by a Sir Anthony Hopkins who has nothing to do with al-Qaeda, crime or masterminding. Spokesmen for the Defense Department first denied the raids but now admit that Hopkins’ Hannibal was not hit but for the uncounted civilians now dead who were in the way.

Judging a Bush by its cover

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Self-negating peoplehood
If I were to ask you to imagine a car load of war-supporting teenagers, you could picture them, can’t you?

If I were to describe a man who pulled over and got out of his car to shout from across the street that he supported our right to say what we were saying –thanks to our soldiers in Iraq fighting for our freedoms, you could picture that guy, couldn’t you?

Imagine a pickup truck bed full of pro-war males –no, this didn’t happen– jumping up and down, shouting and pumping their arms, but you know what they would look like don’t you?

It’s the pro-war look. Not just a lack-of-flair, conformity thing, the look actually seems genetic or familial tradition. Bad haircuts, ill-fitting clothes, pudge, stiff necks, shiny complexions, eyes deep set reflecting someone with nothing upon which focus if they tried to meditate, their only private moments shared with the TV or the loo or their private parts. You can see on their foreheads the neon “vacancy” sign, or a flashing Don’t Walk signal.
A Denver counter-protester at a 2004 anti-Bush rallyOafs -maybe that describes them. Not un-smart, not mean per se, not undeserving of their mother’s love, or sympathy. Really, they’re not unlike dogs. They do what they’re told, follow their food source unconditionally, bark at strangers because they’re nervous, pee on what they claim to be theirs, and shit on the carpet when they want attention.

Dumb smirks. You can spot Bush supporters before they open their mouths. If the American Right has a uniform, it’s eugenics.

Don’t tell me we can’t judge these books by their covers.

Scorched journalist policy

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Shall we speculate as to who is killing journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan? (141 to date in Iraq.) Well, the who is documented, much of it labeled “friendly fire.” Shall we speculate about the why? Forgive me if it feels like I am connecting the dots with a crayon.
 
A recent documentary interviewed some Iraqi journalists about their inconsistent use of flack jackets. The journalists said they choose not to wear protection around fellow Iraqis because they don’t want to be mistaken for working for the occupiers. But walking beside American soldiers the journalists do wear flack jackets because they are fearful of being shot …by the Americans.

Witness to a crime
We’ve all seen it in the movies: the protagonist is accidental witness to a crime and becomes targeted by the perpetrator lest he live to testify. Or the victim begging for life, vowing in exchange not to go to the police. Both victim and criminal know it’s an offer the villain cannot risk.

Massacres usually intend to leave no survivors because the dead tell no tales. Countless war movies have depicted the war correspondent happening upon a war crime in progress, recognizing immediately that a “stray bullet” will be eminent.

Kill Boxes
We’ve learned over the course of two Gulf Wars that our military employs such tactics as “Kill Boxes” and “Free Fire Zones.” Both describe a similar US M.O.. The first is Air Force lingo for an area bounded by given coordinates inside of which everything is considered a target. The airmen are tasked with killing everybody in that box. They have the discretion not to shoot something, but they will be held responsible for whatever they leave, authorized as they were to annihilate all.

Photo shown across the world except in the USA renowned Kill Box in 1990 was the Highway of Death, where thousands of Iraqi soldiers fleeing from Kuwait were incinerated in their vehicles. (American viewers were spared the graphic images.)

The Hague Conventions forbid firing upon soldiers who are no longer attacking you. Even cowboys know you don’t shoot somebody in the back. Both the Hague and Geneva Conventions outlaw the indiscriminate killing of civilians and other non-combatants.

Free Fire Zones
Kill Boxes violate all international conventions. They are as illegal as the US Army’s Free Fire Zone in which soldiers are ordered to fire freely at “anything that moves.” Civilians are expected to know beforehand to get out of the way. They figure it out when our snipers begin popping their family members’ heads off in their gardens. IED detonations now trigger automatic Free Fire Zones around the radius of the blast. An American reputation for ruthless overkill now precedes us. As a result, when IEDs explode, Iraqis have learned to run for their lives. Our soldiers lie to themselves that the escaping figures must be responsible for the IED, and are thus combatants. American Humvees carry extra shovels to plant on the bodies of the slain civilians to paint them as bomb laying insurgents.

The US has deliberately shot civilians since the Korean War, though this has only recently been revealed. In No Gun Ri, entire masses of refuges were machine-gunned to prevent fighters from passing amongst them. This policy continued in Vietnam, the My Lai massacre being unique only for having been uncovered. In war, Collateral Damage has always been a tragic unintended consequence, but by no stretch of a JAG’s imagination can it be a sanctioned consequence.

Secret and Confidential
Let’s speculate here… If military manuals exist with instructions for Kill Boxes and Free Fire Zones which explicitly require the killing of civilians and non-combatants, how do you suppose the instructions read for dealing with uninvited members of the press? The US military seems quite preoccupied with how its actions appear in news broadcasts. How might US soldiers be instructed to deal with journalists who stumble upon the bodies and capture the unbecoming bloodshed with their cameras? We’ll find out someday when a witness survives.

Excuse our soldiers

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This quote from James in particular, about too many cameras and too many people back home caring more for the Iraqis than for the soldiers. AS IF the soldiers had ordered themselves to go over there, and AS IF the name of the war wasn’t Operation Iraqi Freedom and AS IF the Iraqis actually invited us over there in the first place.

From torture to show trial: our Evil Empire conveyor belt on

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President Cheney is preparing Guantanamo show trials for this year, reports the New York Times. No hangings will happen, though a frying or two appears to be on the agenda. This ought to play so very well with the rest of the world, for sure. So, isn’t American ‘democracy’ lovely they will say? And of course it is. Condaleeza sez it so. And so it is so.

Let’s see? After being held and tortured without access to either charges or lawyers, legal procedure, or rights of any kind, that is then to be followed by a cluster fuck of show trials, judgement of the POWs by the Pentagon, and then the punishment they evidently have not yet already received. Oh, I”m sorry. I meant judgement of the ‘enemy combatants’. With a title like that, I am sure they will be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Or insane. They call this a jury of one’s peers…. in Alice’s Wonderland, the USA.

Prayer for historic precedence

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There will always be common people,
as there will always be opportunists to exploit them.
But there will be some who feel outrage,
who will rally for reform and refuse to be beaten down.

More often than not, the idealists are beaten.
(Paintings of historic uprisings usually only depict
rebellion leaders being executed.)

There are other occasions, rare perhaps,
but within grasp enough to offer hope,
when reforms succeed, and the opportunists are beaten
for the dogs that they are.

Pizza Patron shows that Tancredoista Right Wingers have no good taste

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Patron means bossThe Right Wing are such ignorant nuts. Any decent red blooded American would be rushing down to the local Pizza Patron restaurante and trying out their chain’s pizzas with flair. Where else can one get a barbacoa pizza, a chorizo pizza, or chicken wings with limon y queso?

Hey! What about the one I make at home, too, with hamburger, tomates, onions, and nopalitos? And I suggest for all the nutty Right Wing racists now aghast with rage at Pizza Patron for accepting pesos when their pizzas are bought… How ’bout a pizza con sesos in the barbacoa for you taste-retarded, racist gringo types? They should give that one out free even, and help get y’alls, Conservative, gasoline powered brains recharged some! You dittoheads are in dire need for sure. Hey! Free pizza for the Gavachos, please!

Pizza Patron is even receiving death threats, and other assorted attentions from all the usual Right nutter sources. Not only are they accepting pesos, printing their menus in both Spanish and English, and sponsoring good Hispanic causes, but the owner also has an Arabic last name (he’s half Lebanese)! Now that’s just too damn much for the idiot American nationalistic Right to take. Right, Sir Tom? (Tom Tancredo is Colorado’s Congressional HouseNut serving his patria sin sesos.)

Let’s pass a law where only hamburgers can be served in restaurants for Homeland Security reasons, of course. And only if any vegetables are deep fried Tancredo style. I think even Taco Bell is too spicy and unAmerican for our Zieg Heil Right. Poor people. They are so challenged about everything, it seems.

Neocon regalia

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Neocon Bald-faced EagleFor decades after the Second World War, German vets would get together in beer halls to remember the great days of the Third Reich. The Nazi cause may have become perverted, but its ideals were certainly grandiose: a Germany reborn as the worker’s utopia, a master race unshackled to bring order to a never-before united Europe.

My father grew up in occupied Norway. He remembers the incomparable German swagger. To this day he judges the authenticity of war movies based on whether the actors capture the arrogance of the German officers in their walk. I remember reading a Wehrmacht soldier’s autobiography reflecting on the initial ease with which Germany had overrun its neighbors. “It was impossible in those days not to feel immense pride in being a German.”

German regalia is highly collectible now, though my father remembers the days immediately following the war when Norwegians wouldn’t deign to pick up the Nazi medals, ribbons and flags strewn outside the German headquarters in newly freed Oslo.

Of course the German WWII regalia is collected fervently also because it was esthetic. A deliberate malevolence was courted by the fascists, a darkness amplified by the visual design of their uniforms, equipment and printed material. Albert Speer and Leni Reifenstahl were widely condemned for their contributions to the glorification of Nazi culture.

So when old SS veterans are clanging their glasses in memory of Germany’s grab for the brass ring, the nostalgia has quite a bit of pomp and polish. It was an Aryan dream in smart costumes and effective looking machinery.

Are ex-American servicemen going to look back at the U.S. adventures in Fascism with equal nostalgia? What trappings do the Neocons offer to distinguish their racist machinations? Wrap-around Oakleys? Kneepads and leggings? The mercenaries’ gold chains and Hawaiian shirts? And what stateside? Yellow ribbons? Cheap suits? Americans exude nothing but our simpleton arrogance I’m afraid. Yankee Fascism has probably required banality to disguise it. Later Americans will have to own up to our inhumanity and hubris with the additional shame that we couldn’t even transcend our ugliness for the occasion.

MoveOn flexes non-electoral muscle at last

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Yesterday the Democratic Party’s liberal appendage, MoveOn.org, organized around 500 demonstrations throughout the US to express opposition to the War Against Iraq. There was one even in Pueblo, Colorado, not to mention the activities here in Colorado Springs, that got excellent TV coverage last night!

What caused them to finally get off their butts and show their real strength? After all, MoveOn claim to have 3,000,000 supporters (Democratic Party voting) in the US, so why ‘move on’ now at long last, when they have all the while pretty much sat around doing much of nothing for so very long? In short, the answer is that some Democratic Party politicians are beginning to panic at continuing to follow the Republican Administration into continuing The Petrol Wars, from Iraqi and Afghanistan occupations into launching an extension of this war into Iran, Syria, Africa, Pakistan, and Lebanon. This disaccord represents a beginning fracture within the US ruling stratas over whether united they can actually pull off this neo-con megatheft of the world’s most important natural resource, or not.

From the point of view of some of them, the consequences of military failure to successfully recolonize the Middle East petrol producing region and totally monopolize world oil resource supply, will be far more cataclysmic than even an Iraqi pullout at this time would be. Bush’s speech was a Rubicon crossed, of sorts. Is it better to pull out now, or go for broke? Many think it better to pull back instead of continuing to charge into disaster.

In short, some of America’s elite are beginning to think that throwing more bad money after all the bad money already looted from the American treasury by the Pentagon, Lockheed, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, Boeing, and others of the same ilk, is total suicide for the country, and even its super rich, too. Still, there is nothing to make us think that this fracture within US elites at this point can stop the upcoming Bush escalation into a major US government attack on Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. The dominant sector of the US elites think that it is now the only option that willl work, so the rest of us should not be surprised when this new and higher level of violence is begun. In fact, it already has been.