Monthly Archives: December 2007

Destroying the evidence of military crimes

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Gang-raped then locked in van, Iraq worker says. That’s what happened to Jamie Leigh Jones, a worker for Halliburton (KBR), the same firm that Dick Cheney headed up before taking over the Vice Presidency of the US. The same firm that killed off its workers with asbestos which subsequently Dick Cheney as CEO helped limit liability for the company for these crimes of killing off its own workforce.

Jamie Leigh Jones says that Halliburton destroyed the medical evidence of its doctor that showed that she had been raped. It mysteriously disappeared? Where did Halliburton learn that it was OK to destroy evidence of criminality inside the US military and inside its principal side kick contractor?

Well, it seems that destroying evidence was learned from the Commander in Chief of the entire US military establishment himself. Halliburton learned it from George W. Bush. Or maybe it was the other way around? George W. Bush learned that destroying evidence of criminal conduct was OK from Dick Cheney, ex Hallibuton CEO?

At either rate, the destroying of the CIA tapes of where it tortured POWs in US military custody is one and the same criminal act as Halliburton committed when it destroyed the Doctor notes of the MD that treated Jamie Leigh Jones when she was raped and locked into a van afterwards. Both are evidence tampering crimes.

This rape of Ms. Jones mirrors the rapes that have also occurred over at ‘our’ Air Force Academy, a military institute highly infiltrated by the nutty religious Right Wing, the religious people that think that they are our moral guardians. Have we heard anything from these suppsedly Christian folk about how it is a crime to destroy criminal evidence? No, and we won’t.

We can only expect more cover ups of US military criminality in the years ahead. The US military and its commanders and religious gurus think that they alone are above having to follow any laws. We have to stop them before they commit yet more crimes and attempt to cover them up afterwards. They will always pretend to a higher morality, but they must tear up and destroy the evidence of their own criminality it seems. We cannot let them get away with it.

Make orgasm, not wargasm

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Orgasm-for-peaceOrgasm and the sense of well-being it brings – how would the planet be if it felt that good? Couldn’t that be one definition of Peace? Practice visualizing the planet experiencing the afterglow of a rousing orgasm and taking a break from daily despair.

What if a simultaneous universal orgasm was timed perfectly with the solstice and the funky energy surge it brings? Could that help move humankind off its sure path to self-destruction?

According to researchers at Princeton University working on the Global Consciousness Project, nearly ten years of data collected from random event generators indicate that “when millions of us share intentions and emotions the network shows correlations.” Recent studies have shown that there is indeed power in prayer. It would make sense that there would be similar power that could be released through collective orgasm.

I invite you to join me in a Global Orgasm for Peace. Hopefully worldwide orgiastic energy combined with a mindful intention for peace (no dreaming of scantily-clad nymphets or bruiser beefcake—peace, not piece, should be the focus) could reduce global levels of violence, hatred and fear. We, for a brief spell, could join in a vast post-orgasm group spoon and change the course of human history.

Saturday, December 22 at 06:08 GMT is the appointed time for the Global OooooAaahhhOh. That’s FRIDAY the 21st at 11:08 p.m. for those of us in Colorado. Women, you may want to practice a little beforehand to get the timing down. Men, I’m sure you’ve got a handle on it already. And remember, the intention is peace. Think peace. Wish for peace. Come for peace.
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Shut Up, Nancy!

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From the woman who approved Dubya’s and Dick’s use of torture on POWs comes this gem below…

“Last month, the House voted to provide $50 billion for Iraq, conditioned on deploying only fully trained and equipped troops and on setting a reasonable goal for when all of our forces can return home. The President and his Republican enablers in Congress rejected that bill. Their plan is for a war without end.

“I cannot support spending billions more in Iraq with no strings attached, particularly in the same week that the President said we cannot afford to fund basic priorities here at home, such as the education of our children, and increased investment in medical research and hiring more police officers on the street.

“Democrats will be relentless in our efforts to bring our troops home honorably, safely and soon.”
          -Office of the Speaker of the House

Shut Up, Nancy! You are no longer believable. You support torture and pretend otherwise. You support the occupation of iraq and Afghanistan and pretend otherwise. You and the rest of the Democrat Party leadership are both neocons and the same old cons at both one and the same time. You deserve the Joe Lieberman Award for doubletalk and insincerity.

Washington’s new nasty little attack dog- the French poodle Sarkozy

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Tony Blair, Washington DC’s British poodle has now been replaced with a French poodle, it seems. That little rabid asshole is the new leader of French imperialism, Sarkozy. Sounds like a STD, doesn’t it? Below is the funniest headline (in a sick sort of way) I have seen in a long time…

What a scum bag is this DC puppet, Sarkozy!

Sarkozy: I’ve reached the end of the road with Assad

French president says he’s outraged by Damascus’ intervention in Lebanese political process, expects ‘actions, not talk’ from President Assad
report by Roee Nahmias

Doesn’t it take the cake for a French leader to talk about intervention in the Lebanese political process? France was the colonizer that enslaved this region and has caused so much heartache ever since from its constant and eternal meddling in the affairs of other nations and its exploitation of them. And here is this twit doing it again and making his war mongering threats?

The world should pull France off the Security Council of the United Nations and reprimand this country for its belligerence and interference in the affairs of other nations. Our country is not the only one with sickies in power. To think that this thug Sarkozy is actually in charge of WOMD? Good Grief!

Boeing and Torture- a local company’s business

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Boeing is one of the military leech contractors who have their local Colorado Springs offices at the corner of Academy and Fountain, where Peace Activists have held several vigils, one just recently. Driver-byers hardly notice the place and that is much the way military leeches like to keep it. Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah was tortured under the direction of the US government, and in US courts is now suing a subsidiary of Boeing for having flown him on their ‘rendition’ flights.

Aren’t you proud to be an American? More about this case and another local military leech called CACI and their involvement in torture also. ‘Black Site’ Survivor Relates Horrific Tale

Hooded captive not suitable for kids

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TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE poster rejected by the MPAAThis promotional one-sheet for Taxi to the Dark Side, Alex Gibney’s documentary about US torture practices, was rejected by the Motion Picture Association of America. The sight of a hooded prisoner was deemed to be too disturbing to children, unlike Freddy Krueger, chainsaws and severed limbs.
 
Part of the original image is from photographer Shaun Schwartz, whose camera memory was erased by military censors to eliminate this objectionable photo. Schwartz recovered it from his hard drive.

Ft Carson has ample waves of grain

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Our own Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) lauded the news that Colorado Springs will be hosting more soldiers. Said he of Fort Carson: “It is one of our nation’s premier training locations and has ample space to grow and host additional units and missions.” despite the best lobbying efforts of area ranchers and residents. Though the PCMS expansion has been put on hold for a year, an increased troop level at Fort Carson will give the Army justification to push for more land. By “ample” do you suppose Salazar means the asked-for half million acres, or the planned-for 5 million leaked by a whistleblower?
 
Democrats do what for us in Washington? Do they advocate for any constituent at all, beside the corporate and military interests?

Magna Carta one-ply tissue unscented

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When I heard the Magna Carta described today as the basis for democratic freedom, in particular, as it set forth that no man is above the law, I worried about the symbolism. Someone will pay $21 million expressly to wipe their ass with it. Can I call it or what?

Magna Carta just so many wordsThe Magna Carta at Sotheby’s is one of only 17 copies drafted in the 13th Century by William Wallace’s oppressor. The other copies reside mostly at universities in the UK. The Smithsonian Institution, or the US National Archives, would like to have it in the name of the freedom loving American People. But I couldn’t help think of the aristocrats lined up in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Freshman, each eager to be the last man on earth to shoot, or eat, the last of whatever endangered species was on the menu.

The Magna Carta may be symbolic of common man’s hard won struggle, it launched the basis for our judicial system and English Common Law. But this document, certainly now, might hold special meaning to the better-than-thou sort. The entire Western world is seeing an eclipse of the commoner’s leverage over his rulers. We’re losing our rights and our rule of law. Having seen Habeas Corpus go the way of the Dodo, what could be next but the Magna Carta? “No man is above the law?” I’ll bet there is someone willing to pay 21 million dollars to use the Magna Carta as toilet tissue suitable for his noble ass. It will probably become a Skull and Bones requirement. Lo and behold, the buyer is David Rubenstein, the founder of the single most powerful, privately held, oligarch-only warlord club, The Carlyle Group.

Waste Management Inc.

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We’ve all seen those garbage trucks going around in circles, with big signs painted on them that say that their landfills (dumps) are pristine centers for wildlife! Such an ethical and ecologically concerned company is Waste Management! This below is what the CEO of this fine company pulls down in salary with his BS about ‘Keeping America Beautiful’ and other such Waste Management Inc. PR.

David P. Steiner
Chief Executive Officer
Waste Management Inc.

The proxy statement for Waste Management Inc. uses the new SEC executive compensation rules.

In 2006, David P. Steiner raked in $5,601,287 in total compensation according to the SEC. However, according to the AFL-CIO’s calculation method*, he raked in $6,541,198 in total 2006 compensation.

With all the pro Green rhetoric coming out about subjects like the supposed Fort Carson ‘sustainability’ projects, etc., it pays to keep a sceptical eye on these corporate Green cons. Interestingly, Waste Management Inc. supposedly promotes the FreeCycle Movement. You can see how effective that is by judging how little actually gets recycled here in Colorado Springs where those Waste Management garbage trucks roam the streets boasting of how ‘Green’ they are.

If they are so Green, then why haven’t they used their influence to get the Colorado Springs City Council to come up with a real recycling program? Worth mentioning, too, is that their HQ is Houston, Texas, which is hardly the pristine center of environmentalism. In fact, that city is a toxic dump.

Oh, and if you want to go out to one of those ‘wildlife refuges’ built by Waste Management Inc’s fine endeavours?… then check out this one in California. Wetlands Landfill Expansion

Let’s not save those ‘damsels in distress’ in Muslim countries…OK?

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One of the great US excuses for occupying Afghanistan with troops intermittently flowing forth from the neocon-controlled corporate press, was that American civilization was liberating Afghan women from their cruel men of the Taliban. It was a propaganda crumb thrown to church going liberals to try to appeal to their humanitarian interventionist tendencies. Save the Damsels in Distress… Holy Moly!

This ‘We Are Always the World’s Greatest Humanitarians’ argument was part of the package deal that came with the ‘Bringing Democracy’ to the Arabs’ routine. It was fed by previous routines about saving babies in Kuwait and stopping WOMD by Satan Saddam from being used against the poor Jews of Apartheid Israel, etc. and so on. These are long running themes by now in American ‘dialog’. We are a great people indeed!

In all of this, we Americans are supposed to see ourselves as saviours as we go about our daily business of allowing the corporate world to run amok in the world. Oh tax us more, please!

But here is another opinion about all of this spoon fed nonsense. A counter opinion. So how did it slip in?

From the Guardian: Muslim Women: Damsels in Distress?
The west should stop using the liberalization of Muslim women to justify its strategy of dominance by Soumaya Ghannoushi

Jesus vs. Santa rivalry is nothing new

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A holiday detente: As Easter sprung from fertility celebrations befitting the rebirth of spring, so Christmas originated from offerings of the season’s greetings to the winter solstice. And while Christians might have taken over the party, they’ve had to retain the yule tree and other pagan party favors to ensure converts would still RSVP to the festivities. The struggle between Jesus and Santa is nothing new.

The First War on Christmas happened in Oliver Cromwell’s England when Christmas idolatry came to be forbidden by law. Popular merriment was deemed to have strayed too far from the Protestant message of the church, the Lord’s Day etc, so Lord Protector Cromwell reined things in, for a time, until the reformer’s dominance over the parliament and the influence of the Puritans waned.

I heard this story on NPR, half of it actually. They described Christmas having been made illegal for a period, but curiously didn’t mention which period, and who in England had done it.

Puritans you say? Might these have been the same Puritans who came to America’s shore? The same. Well, they shared forefathers (Our forefathers, if our WASP history books can be believed, emphasizing as they do our “Christian Nation” while minimizing Jefferson and the other 90% of our settlers). Thus religious intolerance, on the part of the Puritans, drove the rest of England to send them packing, post paid, to take their anti-everybody else’s Christmas to New England, where it was thought there were no revelers to be bothered.

The Puritans fled religious intolerance to THEIR intolerance basically. What BS to assert that English merry folk did not accord them freedom of religion. England wanted freedom FROM the Puritan’s brand of religion. For some reason our historians seem content to leave open the suggestion that the Puritan party-pooper recount being expelled from the party because of his “wild and crazy” ways!

Just as in Old England, the American puritanical pin heads every so often revive to prominence, usually in reaction to economic or social catastrophe, to prescribe austerity across the board, from no drinking to unhappy holidays. In their current incarnation they’re Fundies aghast at what’s become of their Christmas. The “true meaning” having become too commercial, too secular, not enough infant Christ worship, etc.

We’ve got a nation of party-poopers, wanting to repo the universal Xmas holiday and its international message of brotherhood: Peace on Earth, Goodwill To All Mankind. Puritans aren’t about being good, they’re the fine folk who who accepted the turkey, then thanked the Lord, not the heathens. Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition!

She’s a real doll

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Realdolls come ready to step out of their steamer trunk
 
Over the weekend I saw Lars and the Real Girl, a strange but funny movie about a mentally-ill introvert who, much to his concerned family’s delight, finds a “girlfriend” on the internet. The girlfriend, Bianca, it turns out, is actually a Real Doll, a life-sized anatomically correct silicone woman, created by Abyss Creations in California and sold for upwards of $10,000. The entire community sweetly honors the “relationship” while Lars works through deep psychological issues resulting from his mother’s death at his birth.

The brilliance of the movie is that it causes us to gain an uneasy acceptance of something that would otherwise seem perverse and completely laughable. Yet Lars is not, by any stretch, a normal guy, so our acceptance is tenuous. What type of real man is satisfied substituting a silicone representation of a woman for an actual relationship? Abyss Creations has sold thousands of Real Dolls and have an order backlog even as we speak. So who is purchasing these things? Maybe the same man who leaves his wife sleeping upstairs while spending hours looking at internet pornography? The guy who can’t handle the complexities of a real relationship with a flesh and blood female?

At the core, Real Dolls and pornography appeal to the same man. Both give the illusion of love–a travesty of love–created for poorly mothered or often-rejected men. For once these men have control over the omnipotent feminine. The unattainable girl. The instrument of rejection. That intense and infantile vulnerability to the female is turned on its head. The female is now submissive, expendable, interchangeable. Performing for you! Wanting only you! Loving only you!

Ryan Gosling, who plays Lars in the movie, is quite charitable in his assessment of the men who own Real Dolls. “There’s a whole culture of guys out there who have these dolls, and they have very intimate relationships with them. Part of it is sexual, but a lot of it is emotional. One guy goes hang gliding, and he takes his doll to watch, so that he has someone to support him in the things that he likes to do. Some guys cook with them and have dinners; they’re part of the fabric of their life. So, all of this is possible. … I think it’s a romantic idea, that love’s not a transaction. It’s something you have to give, and you give it freely to whoever and whatever you want.”

Okay, I can’t disagree. It’s plenty romantic. Objectification of women is the epitome of romance. In fact, it’s the definition of romance…an artistic work that deals with sexual love, especially in an idealized form…an idealized form like a silicone doll or a stylized airbrushed photograph.

US and Hague Rules of Warfare

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Extract from the Hague Conventions of 1907
Chapter One: Means of injuring the enemy
 
Article 22.
The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy
is not unlimited.

Article 23.
In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden
  (a) To employ poison or poisoned weapons;
  (b) To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;
  (c) To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;
  (d) To declare that no quarter will be given;
  (e) To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering;
  (f) To make improper use of a flag of truce, of the national flag or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy, as well as the distinctive badges of the Geneva Convention;
  (g) To destroy or seize the enemy’s property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war;
  (h) To declare abolished, suspended, or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party. A belligerent is likewise forbidden to compel the nationals of the hostile party to take part in the operations of war directed against their own country, even if they were in the belligerent’s service before the commencement of the war.

These are incorporated into the 1940 US Rules of Land Warfare, just after these passages:

US Rules of Land Warfare

Colorado Springs Mack the Knife

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The Gazette reported this weekend that Alexander Pring-Wilson, now of Court TV fame, has won a second reprieve against accusations of knifing an Hispanic Boston teen in 2003. Pring-Wilson’s legal team has twice successfully confused juries by defaming the victim’s poor man’s past, detracting from Pring-Wilson’s drunken, unprovoked pounce with a knife.
The Jackknife is not named after Jack the Ripper, who was never caught. Is Jackie back in town?
In the fawning article about the family’s blue blood Wood Avenue heritage, the Gazette oddly shrunk Pring-Wilson’s 4-inch-blade Spyderco military jackknife to a “penknife!” We’re informed the CC grad will be spending the holidays in Colorado. And will the ex-rugby captain be drinking?
 
I say, won’t somebody visit the CSPD and ask if the Colorado College campus hasn’t any unsolved closing-time stabbing deaths among its cold cases?

Maybe Pring-Wilson can stop by the Police Department and volunteer the DNA sample he refused to give them from Boston. The CSPD were alerted in 2003 about the similarity of the Boston stabbing to the fatal assault on Jocelyn Sandburg in 2002, and have yet to be given evidence to preclude him as a suspect. But Pring-Wilson’s mother was a long time Colorado Springs prosecutor and, as the Gazette article reminds us, is from a very influential family.

In Boston, Pring-Wilson was stumbling home from a Reggae bar after closing time. He came upon a car parked next to a pizza joint, with two Hispanic teens who he thought were laughing at his drunken state. Pring-Wilson approached the car, opened the passenger door and began stabbing one teen as the other ran from around the other side to pull Pring-Wilson off. The driver had not realized that the pummeling he was witnessing involved a knife. Pring-Wilson claims self-defense, prosecutors are suspicious of Pring’s having begun at the onset with his knife unpocketed, blade open.

Before Pring-Wilson moved to Harvard, he attended Colorado College. The year after graduation he still returned to Colorado Springs regularly to visit his former-teammates, parents and girlfriend. Might one of his visits have coincided with Jocelyn’s murder, a weekend night in 2002, a little after 2am?

Jocelyn and passenger were just a block from home when someone threw an object at their car. Jocelyn stepped out to address the young pedestrian, he suddenly threw what looked like a punch but oddly Jocelyn fell face forward to the pavement. She got up to chase him further into the CC campus where her body was found later with multiple stab wounds.

If you trace a direct route between the bars of Tejon Street and Pring-Wilson’s house, as a drunk might navigate, you cross Jocelyn Sandberg’s car right in the middle. It happened at an hour when Jocelyn was returning from a concert in Boulder, and when a drunk would be turned out from a bar at closing time. And what an unusual scenario for an altercation: knife-wielding pedestrian versus car.

US is not sniping indiscriminantly 1-2-3

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The good news is that US sniper teams may not be shooting at everyone they come across anymore, as has been alleged though seldom reported. After all, the rules of war apply to snipers just as they would ordinary soldiers or paintballers: don’t shoot at someone who’s not a combatant, who’s unarmed, or who’s otherwise surrendering. But under pressure to up their kills, US snipers are defying the Hague Conventions with such innovations as 1) bait/entrapment, 2) getting go-ahead to assassinate, and 3) using fingerprint identification to confirm eligibility for execution.

1. Bait and switch
The Asymmetric Warfare Group issues to US snipers “drop items,” insurgent-type items which may be planted on Iraqis they’ve shot, but much more productively, to use as bait to lure passing Iraqis, tempting empty-handed civilians to become item-wielding insurgents whom you don’t have to get permission to shoot. The Washington Post reports:

“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”

2. Under suspicion is as good as being condemned
US snipers are executing targets if they can be confirmed as being suspects. With the cross hairs of your sniper scope aimed at your chosen Iraqi or Afghan, you can await authorization to pull the trigger based on learning the person’s identity, whether by informer or a shouted inquiry. Then according to the US rules of engagement you can terminate him. Here’s an example from the International Herald Tribune.

“From his position about 100 yards away, Master Sergeant Troy Anderson had a clear shot of the Afghan man standing outside a residential compound in a small village near the Pakistan border last October. And when Captain Dave Staffel, the Special Forces officer in charge, gave the order to shoot, Anderson fired a single bullet into the man’s head, killing him instantly.

…the shooting, near the village of Hasan Kheyl last October, was a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement. The men said such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively identified him.”

3. Coming soon: fingerprint and biometric matching
In early 2008 US snipers will be given a more efficient system for making split decisions about whether their target may be summarily liquidated. Now with the subject in your sights, you can await instructions from an intelligence database about whether your target has a fingerprint, retina scan, or biometric profile in the records as a suspected insurgent. In which case, be he standing idle, detained or captive, you can shoot him. Read this account from the Washington Post about the JEFF:

“…the Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities (JEFF) project or “lab in a box,” analyzes biometrics. It will be delivered to Iraq at the beginning of 2008, the Navy said, to help distinguish insurgents from civilians.

…the military has been scanning the irises and taking the fingerprints of Iraqis, feeding a biometrics data base in West Virginia. To date, a few ad hoc labs have processed about 85,000 pieces of evidence taken from weapons caches or roadside devices.

Each collapsible, sand-colored, 20-by-20-foot unit has its own generator and satellite link. If things go as planned, data will beamed to the Biometric Fusion Center to check against more than a million Iraqi fingerprints.

The next stage is to miniaturize, create “a backpack lab,” so that soldiers who encounter a suspect “could find out within minutes” if he’s on a terrorist watch list, [says the JEFF weapon designer] “A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?”

Academy Blvd public opinion still with us

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See more pictures and a Mark Lewis video at CSAction
PPJPC members braved the cold for this month’s UFPJ Iraq Moratorium, held this time at the intersection of Profiteer and Death Merchant Blvds. A reprise of our popular 9/11 protest, we bannered at all corners to a chorus of supportive horns.

Due to the cold, and the difficulty of using walkers to cross the snow, some of us chose to park in a nearby vacant parking lot, until a security guard arrived with lights flashing. He told us “By the way, I’m on your side, but I have to ask you to move your cars.”
Rita is asked in convivial terms but emphatic gestures to find another place to park.
We did, but three police cars converged anyway.

Christmas ornaments from child labor

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Children making ARTIC FUN Christmas ornaments for Walmart
Walmart is in trouble again. It’s selling Christmas ornaments which an investigation by the National Labor Committee has determined are produced in sub-standard conditions. Chiefly, that the young workers who produced the ornaments, in an 8,000 person factory in Canton China, are being paid piecemeal instead of the minimum 55¢/hour, resulting in wages as low as 26¢/hour.

Not to trivialize the monetary difference, but there were other workplace details for which Walmart was not being flagged. Could this imply that these factors might apply to other Chinese or third world products still being made for Walmart, Target and the other big-box retailers?

Ready? The assembly line workers were often children, some as young as 12 years old, loaned to the factory by their schools, who worked 15 hour days, seven days a week. Workers taking a day off were docked two and a half days pay. Also the children were working with paints and chemicals without protective gear such as gloves or masks.

Iraqi Oil for Beginners

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IRAQI OIL FOR BEGINNERS graphic novel by Jon Sack published by Voices in the Wilderness
Iraqi Oil for Beginners is artist-in-exile Jon Sack’s account of a century of Iraq history dominated by the fight over its oil. The 31-page comic can be ordered through the publisher Voices in the Wilderness UK or from Housmans.
 
Sack means his graphic novel to enlighten western readers about the real US and UK motives behind the occupation of Iraq, hopefully before Iraqi legislators are finally coerced into privatizing the oil industry and putting it all in US hands.

Moneychangers in the temple

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It’s official, the New Life Church Killer Matthew Murray died by a self-inflicted wound. Perhaps this will take the heat off volunteer church security guard and disgraced-cop Jeanne Assam who may have fired on Murray from a concealed position and kept firing on him as she advanced according to her police training. What does this latest distinction mean? This is what it suggests to me:
 
Troubled-teen Matthew Murray, according to his own website postings, may be America’s first suicide bomber, using smoke and assault rifle to penetrate and injure a temple of American militant fundamentalism.

This is American sectarian violence, perpetrated by a former adherent rebelling against the oppressive reach of American smiley-face religio-capitalism, church of prosperity Fundamentalism. The same corporate spiritualism that drives our war machine, the rotten heart of Pax Americana, the misplaced sense that American vacant-headed fundamentalist values must police the world, and dominate, or at least prosper from the bulk of its resources. Murray believed this kind of Christianity was at the core of the world’s problems, and church leaders like New Life founder Ted Haggard as much as brag about it.

Matthew Murray was the product of too-far-isolated fundie parents, who terrorized their children with fire and brimstone nightmares. His ostracism justifies public education, where home-schooling entrusted to zealots yields intelligent but incompatible offspring.

Why rent-a-cop if you can rent-a-killer?

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The city clerk has been working on a proposal to the Colorado Springs City Council to authorize private security firms to carry semi-automatic weapons. The New Life Church shootings raise the issue, apparently, that security personnel should be better armed, although there were no private security firms present. The mayhem was averted by volunteer church members assigned to security, who made do with a handgun.

Has there been a call for an escalation of firepower in property protection skirmishes? Are marauding bands of drug dealers challenging malls and warehouses with overpowering force? Are rent-a-cop and house alarm responders finding themselves out-gunned by burglars and mischievous teens?

Private security firm owners claim the current limit of .38 or .45 caliber handguns is too restrictive for their new hires who are often coming from the military war zones and are used to patrolling with automatic weapons. Oh, and to what else are they accustomed? Shoot to kill orders? Shoot anything that moves “kill-zones?” After an I.E.D. ambush, shoot all living beings in the vicinity? Shoot women and children if suspicious? Shoot cars that do not heed shouted commands? Shoot through walls, into doors, around blind corners? What percentage of vets are coming back with PTSD? Aren’t they unsuited to most jobs except to be lonely night patrolmen?

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina we saw assault-rifle bearing Blackwater blackshirts unleashed on the traumatized population. The only thing keeping Blackwater and Aegis type goons out of our city would be weapons restrictions such as we have, as are common to all civilized population centers. Many British Bobbies still are not permitted to carry guns at all. That’s the kind of change we need. Stand down, don’t gear up.

Too much ado about torture?

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Our panties are in a twist over a mere “torture flap?”
“This debate seems a little silly given the threat we face?”
These GIs in Vietnam were drummed out of the service for this waterboarding caught on camera.
This is waterboarding. It’s confusing I know, no board, no restraints, no bathtub, no dunking chair, etc. Just a rag and water to simulate drowning. To induce drowning actually, by forcing the subject to inhale water into the lungs. Plus ca change, MAIS plus ce N’est PAS la meme chose: these GIs were courtmartialed for getting caught on camera using water torture, on this captured Vietcong.

Red faced provocateur John Gibson had this to say on his Fox News show, about what he called “the torture flap:”

One: The entire torture flap involves three people who were subjected to harsh interrogation techniques for a grand total of less than three minutes. Call it torture if you want, but it was quick and there were darn few people subjected to it.

Two: Each procedure from slapping to waterboarding was specifically approved by Washington, and those people applying these techniques were restrained from approaching anything any sane person might consider too far or too much.

Third: Many of the people who are screaming bloody murder about it now and wanting investigations were advised what was happening and either approved or acquiesced.

Got that? You know it is happening, you understand what it is, YOU are being held accountable. Gibson can fall back and say you “acquiesced” to his preposterous rationalization.

“Waterboarding” has been considered “torture” for 500 years. There’s no “flap” about torture. The dictionary doesn’t define “torture” as ambiguously acceptable. Being made to tolerate a chilled room without a blanket is torture. TRY IT. Or do you fall in Gibson’s category of “any sane person” who would reject such restrictions on our interrogation methods as “too much?”

Here’s how a French journalist described his waterboarding in Algeria:

The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save me from suffocation. In spite of myself, the fingers of both my hands shook uncontrollably. “That’s it! He’s going to talk,” said a voice.

The water stopped running and they took away the rag. I was able to breathe. In the gloom, I saw the lieutenants and the captain, who, with a cigarette between his lips, was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed.

Ask.com you to believe in Santa Clause

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Bill Gates is honest not to call your erased files trashedThis is rich. Ask.com is hoping to lure googlers with a feature where users can “erase” the records of their internet searches (a product for people who believe they can “erase” files on their own hard drives* no doubt). It would seem Ask.com wants to play sleuth and go through your garbage/trash/recycle-bin!
Ho ho ho.

Considering that Ask.com accumulates records of not just your queries, but your unasked queries through javascript, and considering their searches are actually subcontracted to Google, meaning Google acquires the records as well, the only thing the “erase tool” will accomplish will be to remove the list of your queries which reappears for you as a typing aid. Thus you won’t be reminded of your past searches, which is handy if you share a computer and prefer other users not see where you’ve been browsing. But that can be accomplished by purging your browser’s history.

Actually, the main thing “erasing” accomplishes besides giving you a false sense of privacy, is to give Ask.com one more set of data about you, and a red flag doozy of a blue light special for intelligence files: the searches you feel bothered enough to want erased. Ho ho ha ha ha.

*NOTE: Dragging a file to the trash does not erase it. Emptying the trash does not erase it. Files are not “erased,” only the addresses to the files are erased. “Wiping” a drive will erase the actual files, but not from the eyes of forensic experts. Data recovery specialists can reconstruct files many overwrites back.

I’ll keep my Old Life, thanks

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Another tragedy has been visited upon New Life Church. This time the perpetrator is not a gay male prostitute. No, Matthew Murray is one of their own. The son of devout Christians and a former member of Youth with a Mission.
 
As is the norm for evangelicals, the story is being presented in the thought-stopping language of Christian-ese. “Ms. Assam, as you were advancing toward the gunman firing repeatedly, what was going through your mind?” “I was thinking how awesome and powerful God is, and how happy I am that I was his chosen instrument.” Okaaay.

Let’s try again. “Why would a young man raised by devoted Christian parents feel such hatred toward fellow believers?” Permit me to improvise here. Matthew Murray hated Christians because he’d allowed sin to gain a foothold in his life. Or because he didn’t have Jesus in his heart. Maybe he didn’t actually have a personal relationship with the Lord. Perhaps he was being assailed by Satan and his minions, caught in his own private Armageddon.

I have a thought. Maybe Matthew Murray despised Christians because he’d been isolated from his peers and home schooled (brainwashed) by them. Obviously he was experiencing some emotional turmoil, a common thing really, but instead of being heard, or being helped, he was expected to trust in the Lord because, after all, his ways are higher than our ways. As a young man, when his God-given inclination was to find himself and taste a bit of freedom, he was expected to be a youth with a mission. Go to the ends of the earth and spread the good news of our Lord!

One spin I’m sure we won’t hear coming out of Christian mouths in the coming days is the possibility that, like Hurricane Katrina and the AIDS epidemic, the shootings represent God’s wrath pouring down on people who claim to know him, to speak for him; people who oppress and repress and judge in his name. There will be no one uttering what many of us are thinking. Perhaps Matthew Murray was God’s chosen instrument.