The third Friday of the month has come around again. Time for the IRAQ MORATORIUM with a JULY message: DON’T BOMB IRAN. Meet on the I-25 pedestrian overpass at Monument Valley Park NOON to 1PM.
Visit United For Peace & Justice for more info or check Iraq Moratorium about the other JULY 18th actions nationwide.
ACLU calls for probe of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff (an Israeli citizen) over ‘terrorist’ watch list. Chertoff responds that the ACLU has been added to the terrorist watch list…
Hope for liberty, prepare for theocratic dictatorship?
The filthy-rich are just like us, except they don’t pay taxes.
Radical Islamists denouncing terrorism? This is one you’ll never read about in the American Military Industrial Complex controlled “news” media!
Bush’s “appeasement” of Iran continues…
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 17, thomasmc.com.
———– The Gazette editorialist got out his little Ayn Rand ‘Atlas Shrugged’ book last Monday, waved it in the air, and pronounced it a good thing that El Paso County (Big Bad Government!) was no longer going to inspect tattoo parlors in the area. This is the same nut case at the paper that is all ‘for the troops’. Well, who does he think goes to many of these tattoo parlors? Well, it is the troops, Sir.
The Gazette is run my a bunch of sad sack ideologues who are always against Big Government, except when Big, Big, BIG GOVERNMENT is destroying somebody else’s country and making Big, Big, BIG BUSINESS a killing in tax payer paid government contracts. But when it comes to protecting the troops from getting AIDS or Hepatitis at the tattoo parlor, well The Gazette is against the County checking out the sanitation there! Sick. See below…
———————————-
July 14, 2008 – 9:57PM The Gazette
SELF-POLICING TATTOO JOINTS
Don’t involve county in body art
You walk into Bob’s Tattoos seeking service. You want a bone through your nose and the Virgin Mary etched into your arm. Something’s not right. You’re struck by the stench of kitty litter and other strange smells. You’re introduced to 300-pound Bob, the parlor’s founding partner and managing artist. Bob wears a grubby muscle shirt and Dolfin shorts to show off his own tattoos. They don’t look so good, but that’s OK because Bob explains he got them in prison, and not at Bob’s Tattoos. What do you do?
A. Look for a certificate from the county that says Bob’s OK to pierce your nose and jam ink into your skin.
B. Leave, and do some research. Speak with multiple peers with good body art, and ask them which parlors do it best. Find a reputable shop, check it through the Better Business Bureau, and then personally assess the risks.
Unless you’re ultra brave, the correct answer is “B.” After all, even Bob’s Tattoos could look good on the day of a county inspection. And even a once-good tattoo business can go downhill after getting a stamp of approval from the county.
The right tattoo on the right part of the right person can be a fine thing. But good, safe results aren’t something the county can or should try to ensure. If ever there were an activity in which the buyer must beware, it’s the business of shopping for body art.
The mere fact that so-called painful cuts to El Paso County’s budget involve the elimination of tattoo parlor inspections indicates fiscal excess. The health department has no legitimate reason for spending nearly $30,000 annually to inspect tattoo parlors.
It’s not in question that dirty body art tools can lead to infection and disease. But nobody is required to commission a tattoo, and the majority of citizens never do. It’s a risk anyone can easily avoid by simply choosing against body art. Those who do seek tattoos and such ought to be responsible for assessing the risks themselves. The tattoo-free public shouldn’t be forced to subsidize needless, private, elective bodily expressions.
The county’s Board of Health plans to vote Wednesday on whether to permanently eliminate inspections, and most certainly they should. Tattoo artists are organizing to converge on the meeting, however, urging the county to maintain inspections.
The fact that responsible tattoo parlors favor county inspections isn’t surprising. An approval certificate is like a valuable reward for good, clean practices. The inspection requirement creates a layer of bureaucracy that serves as a hurdle to entry. It dissuades cheap, startup fly-by-night operators from wanting to set up shop and compete. It also eases concerns of customers who might otherwise ask lots of questions or chicken out of getting tattooed.
Tattoo artists, however, don’t need government to give them a useful stamp of approval. Reputations speak for themselves, and stamps of approval are best obtained through private associations of professionals. Free publications that sell advertising, for example, pay private auditing associations to verify circulations. Without the audit, it’s hard to compete. Lawyers join private associations, such as the American Bar Association, that enforce standards on members and offer assurances to customers. Good tattoo artists, if they wish to separate themselves from the riffraff, need to form a credible organization that sells a stamp of approval to those who qualify.
No stamp of approval, however, should weigh in too heavily when it comes to letting someone inject ink beneath your skin. Few transactions require more personal information and diligence than the purchase of a tattoo. Good, safe tattoos aren’t something the county can or should guarantee. Nothing can replace the ages old advice: Buyer beware. Besides, tattoos are free-spirited expressions of individuality. Don’t involve the county in what’s otherwise a solid act of rebellion.
It may not be clear in Colorado Springs that the national antiwar movement is trying to deal with the probability for a coming military attack on Iran, because the local group Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission has planned nothing so far. They are asleep at the wheel downtown in the PPJPC offices. United for Peace and Justice has called for a series of actions next week, but where are the local paid crew at PPJPC here in town? MIA once again?
The national United for Justice Peace and Justice (UFPJ) has 5 suggestions for local actions, of which #2 and #5 seem to be the most important ones to take. Here they are listed below…
2) Ask your mayor to sign on to a resolution urging the Bush administration to pursue diplomatic engagement with Iran. At least 36 mayors have already signed on — now is the time to approach your mayor! For more information visit the Cities for Peace website.
5) You can organize a visible presence in a busy location in your town: a vigil, an afternoon of leafleting or tabling, a human billboard, etc. Be sure to pick a time and location that has a lot of pedestrian or vehicle traffic!
The local group pays out $600 a week in salaries to 3 guys who seem to be only there in the offices to pull down their salaries? I sincerely doubt that any of these 3 would be there without the money they get in their paychecks. Why are they not organizing these vigils suggested? Why are they not organizing municipal government resolutions against US government use of torture and against plans to go to war with Iran? That’s what they should be getting the money paid to them to be doing. What are they doing instead?
Not only is it the national UFPJ that is planning actions nationwide, but also another national grouping called StopWarOnIran.org. They are planning demonstrations on August 2 around the country. Where is our local PPJPC in the planning of these events? What is their unaccountable to no one other than themselves Board of Directors doing to plan for this event? Where are the 3 office staff who think it their business to impede others and keep organization of the group entirely under their control, even as their salaries are bankrupting the group? Why are they always doing nothing?
Time is running out to do activities against this planned war with Iran, BEFORE the attack occurs. The PPJPC here in Colorado Springs simply is not doing the work that needs to be done. This group needs to be reorganized so that it is not run top down, but bottom up. Organize today to stop this war on Iran from happening.
Faux Christian anti-Obama email that inspired New Yorker cover still circulating.
MA Senate votes to repeal law blocking gays from other states from marrying.
For gawdsake, quit calling it a “war,” it’s the brutal occupation of a helpless country.
The world can no longer afford the filthy rich. But they might make a good source of alternative energy. I’m just saying…
Treason in the highest. Remember when Dubya vowed to find out who was responsible for outing covert CIA operative Valerie Plame? Well, I guess now it’s pretty obvious who it was: Dick Cheney.
Faux Democrat John Conyers vows to ignore his Constitutional duty and ignore impeachment resolution.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 16, thomasmc.com.
If you are reading this you are smarter than John McCain
Rebel. Mutiny, take the arms away from your officers, gently if they cooperate, by force if necessary.
According to the UCMJ you not only have a right but a DUTY to refuse unlawful orders.
Your Commander in Thief cannot think for himself, why should you allow him to think for YOU?
Is it that you have no respect for your own intellect?
He has ordered you to kill, imprison and torture Civilians, in nations against whom the Congress of the United States has NOT declared war.
Throughout history this has never once worked as a coherent battle strategy.
It has also sparked reprisal killings, reprisal tortures, every single time it was used.
King Richard Couer-de-Leon of Normandy and England discovered this fact at Akkra.
I’m sure many of you have been to the Near East by now, and you might have noticed that the Arabic peoples still bear that particularly gross War Crime, the slaughter of P.O.W.s, in mind with all their dealings with you, or any other Eurocentric cultural invaders.
And that happened more than 8 centuries ago.
Your President ordering you to do the same thing only reinforces that.
His foreign policy of “Let them hate, as long as they fear” is even older than that, it was the policy of Caligula more than 1900 years ago.
It got so many Roman soldiers killed in reprisals that it’s been suggested (especially by me) it was the real reason for him being assassinated by his (military) guards.
… the people who loudly proclaim they oppose Immigration, only on the basis of Respect for Law and Order and not out of racist fear and racist fearmongering, start opposing the United States Army exporting a Violent and Deadly form of illegal immigration, where they forcibly take over a nations economy, government, society…
And imprison, torture or kill anybody in the “Host” country who objects…
That violates many many laws, including and especially the Constitution of the United States, which is the standard by which ALL American laws, statutes and government actions are to be judged.
For instance, foreign treaties, according to the Constitution, are supposed to have as much full weight of law in American Jurisprudence as the Constitution itself.
Treaties like the Charters of the League of Nations and the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague conventions, the World Court, the international doctrines which provided the basis for prosecuting the Nazis for war crimes like the ones Mr Bush orders committed daily.
…..Risks Incorporated,
US firm, ………… has been doing US government torture training for instructing police in Leon, Mexico. This US company is now embroiled in a scandal in Mexico because one of its how to torture training clips was exposed to public scrutiny.
Next time you want to get tough on undocumented Mexican workers in the US, think a little bit about this US company and what it is doing in Mexico. It is a US firm training Mexican police on behalf of the American government on how to torture Mexican citizens. This government doesn’t practice torture, its employees do! That would be both the US and Mexican governments which use torture on people…
1) Isolation 2) Simulated drowning or ‘waterboarding’ 3) Sexual humiliation and/or rape 4) Forced positioning 5) Sleep deprivation 6) Refusal to allow legal representation 7) Refusal to state the ‘evidence’ being used against prisoners
8 ) Refusal to classify POWs as being actual POWs instead of criminal prisoners 9) Trying POWs as if they were civilians, even though they are being tried in military courts 10) Refusing to inform families of POWs that their relatives are in custody
Hey, that’s quite a few methods of US government use of torture, is it not? And to think that they are still trying to pretend that they are not using torture! And to think that the United Nations has taken no actions against the US government for using torture! And to think that the local peace group here in Colorado Springs, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, still has not found itself capable of asking the city council to pass a city resolution against the US government use of torture! Sad…
BTW, that photo is a picture of US troops ‘waterboarding’ a POW in Vietnam. You can click on the photo to see those American faces better. They’ve always used torture on POWs from other countries, so why support them? Why support the US troops in doing what they do?
Inflation went up by 9.2% over the last year, which makes it the worst 12 months of inflation since 1981. But not to worry, the Federal government has married you to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 2 sick cousins from the Appalachian Mountains. You are now part of a triage, and ain’t that sexy? You have been made into trailer trash!
Yes, you have gotten kicked in the fannie by Uncle Sam, friend of Freddie, but not you. You’re bailing the couple out with your money! Don’t you just love it, too? Would Freddie and Fannie have helped you out? What about that asshole uncle, Sam?
Good luck, since you’re certainly going to need it. Strangely enough, 75% of Americans actually think the economy will get better in a few years. Are you that stupid? Well if not, 3 out of 4 of your neighbors sure are! They’re as irresponsible and out of it as Fannie and Freddie.
Now, let me tell you about Cousin John… He may be coming soon to stay around your house for at least 4 years? If not, Cousin Barack wants to give you a vacation in Afghanistan. He’s got a plan, too, for a big change. What more could we ask for?
Check this out! An actual building in San Diego accidentally built by the Pentagon that looks like the Nazi swastika! The Navy is now spending over $600,000 to change the appearance of their building!
Everywhere one looks, American government is building bunkers and walls! All though out Baghdad, the Pentagon is building bunkers and walls. In the West Bank, Israel and the Pentagon together are building bunkers and walls. On our southern border with Mexico, YES you guessed it, America is building bunkers and walls.
Do we think for one split second that the rest of the world hasn’t noticed that America is about bunkers and walls these days? All the sugary sweet talk in the world is not going to hide that fact away from the world. When one drives by an American embassy anywhere in the world one sees bunkers and walls. When one drives down the road in much of America, one sees bunkers and walls (prisons). Oh Sweet Land of Liberty…. Hardly!
Yes, America is now an imprisoning nation, land of bunkers and walls. Do you live in a gated community? Probably not, since you would not be likely to be reading this commentary if you were into that sick mindset. But many, if not in fact the majority of us, live behind bunkers and walls.
Bunkers and walls need regulations, lots of them. They need tickets, passports, and papers to go with this order. They need guns, barbed wire, and tasers. They need dope, lots of it, because bunkers and walls are shall we say it? … they are depressing. Bunkers and walls need uniforms, officials, and lawyers, though not to enforce the law but to break it.
Once it was parking lots, shopping malls, and interstate freeways. Today, it is more bunkers and walls. United We Stand. Divided We Fall. We are falling with bunkers and walls. Bunkers and walls is what brought elites, other than our own, down before, simply because most people hate bunkers and walls.
American government has a love affair with bunkers and walls.
All American businesses are trying to pose themselves as being respecters of the environment, energy efficient, and Green, and so is the Federal Government and Pentagon, too. However, even a cursory examination of policies by these organizations show that American government and businesses, at all levels, simply refuse to take any major measures to reduce energy consumption by our country.
Big Business controls government in our country, which can scarcely be considered a democracy due to this business control. We are a corporate plutocracy instead. So, at this time, it is really in corporate hands to control major government policy regarding energy use. What are the needed measures in this country to reduce energy use? These measures are never mentioned or talked about, simply because Big Business and corporate Big government do not want to implement them.
To reduce energy use in the future, government would have to take major steps to change previous and current urban planning and transportation policies. A federal zoning policy would have to be instituted that would make it impossible to stretch out construction of our cities over huge expanses of land as they are stretched out now. Also, measures would have to be taken to push back our overly extended cities into more manageable arenas of human activity. As we can see, corporate government has no plans to do any of this, even though doing it is necessary to reduce energy use.
Too much energy is used in getting people to work, and allowing them to try to escape our ugly cities. Many of our cities are quite frankly pure hell to live in. There is little escape from noise pollution, few clean public spaces of any real beauty, and a boring monotony in our public space. Our cities are making people ill, and most try to escape the cities as much as they can afford. That uses up a lot of fuel.
Simply investing in a really functioning public transit around our country would take a tremendous federal commitment to change the energy inefficient system of public transport we are presently saddled with. There currently are ZERO signs that any of big business and government agencies at almost all levels see any need to change their behaviors, and hence ours. There is nothing on the books other than continuing to fund huge amounts of pavement stretching into infinity.
This is not the time (nor do I have the time now) to discuss the many ways that energy policy must be redirected. Simply enough to just say that American government and Big Business, contrary to how they project themselves in their propaganda, are not interested in taking any measures to conserve energy use in a real manner. They are lying to us when thy talk about being Green. They are ignoring our needs, and are destroying the word for future generations all because they simply want to keep making money in the same old manners they have grown accustomed to. To reduce energy use, our cities must be made into livable places, which most are not.
As one who doesn’t like to leave the house, I am a big fan of the internet. In truth, I can hardly speak a negative word about it. The web has given us unfettered access to news and information, consumer goods, visions pleasing to the eye, sounds pleasing to the ear, easy communication one step removed. I can’t say I miss a single thing about the “good ol’ days.” Except waiting in line for concert tickets.
I love live music. I’ve been to zillions of concerts. In fact, I am going to a 2-day concert event in Denver this weekend. The headliners are Tom Petty and the Dave Matthews Band (woot! woot!). Over the years I’ve seen the Stones, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Michael Jackson — the list goes on and on. And, so I don’t date myself too closely, I’ve even seen ‘N Sync and James Blunt.
Raised in an environment of easy internet access, my poor darling children have never had to stand in line for anything. Until last week when the new iPhone was to be released. After I made the big mistake of describing the many reasons I was considering an iPhone purchase, they decided that their future health and happiness was predicated on having 16GB iPhones. With no advice from me, they decided that they had to get to the store very early or risk failure.
They got to the AT&T store at 1 a.m. They were 22nd and 23rd in line. By the time Eric and I arrived shortly before 8, there were 100 people in line. There were camping chairs and coolers, even a gas grill. Decks of cards, pop cans and water bottles, fast food litter. I imagine there were a few dead soldiers (uh, empty beer containers) although I didn’t see any. The atmosphere was convivial. The camaraderie palpable.
They allowed people into the store 6 at a time. As each lucky buyer emerged, a bright orange AT&T bag signaling victory, their fellow consumers clapped and yelled in celebration.
We (read: they) left with our iPhones at 8:30. I later read that they’d sold out in 40 minutes — many campers went home empty-handed. But my two lucky ducks were thrilled with their phones, made all the more precious by the procurement experience.
Are you one in a million? Psycho administration thinks there are one million possible terrorists in the United States. So, actually the odds they think you are a terrorist are more like one in 300.
If a cop beats a transient, but he can’t remember, did it ever really happen? Nashville police injecting Versed to erase memories of police brutality.
Gee, support Hillary much? New Yorker magazine cover depicts Barack Obama as a turban wearing muslim, and his wife as a terrorist, while an American flag burns in their fireplace, and picture of bin Laden hangs above the mantle. Why, if it weren’t for yellow journalism, we’d have no journalism at all!
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 14, thomasmc.com.
Fist-bumping Obama in a turban giving us a sidelong glance. Afro-engulfed Michelle toting a machine gun. The American flag burning in the fireplace. The depiction is obviously satirical, but will the humor be lost on the many?
Recent studies show that an understanding of satirical intent and higher Scholastic Aptitude Test scores are strongly correlated so, yes, the joke will bomb in the eyes of Joe Average.
I appreciate the creative bravery often associated with satire, and I look forward to hearing The New Yorker defend this magazine cover to the lowbrow schmucks upon whom the point is lost.
Mark Lewis took this video in Acacia Park Saturday. His notes are below.
Police shot this man with a Taser in the park Saturday, July 12, while I was taping the IVAW Tower Guard action nearby. There had been a fight and one man was arrested earlier and you can see the paramedics attending to a woman on the ground behind the police, who was involved in the earlier fight.
This man was arguing with them about something and so one cop held him while the other shot him from about three feet, and they arrested him. He had stopped resisting and was talking to them, and had both arms behind his back at that point and the arrest and handcuffs could have been applied without this.
The waist-level attempted tackle from behind was poorly executed and did not pen his arms, so the cop could have been injured as a result. He could have also been shot with the Taser.
I don’t know what the argument was about and I don’t know what the guy did, but this is punitive use of a Taser to me, and not needed by the four cops that could have arrested this man without that level of violence. It is certainly NOT minimum force, which is the department requirement.
Former White House Liar Tony Snow died of cancer. Conservatives want the flag flown at half mast, or perhaps invade a Middle Eastern country in his name.
Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran.
Iraqi PM ready to oust US from Green Zone.
A 19th century president for a 21st century world power? McCain “learning” to use the internet. Now, at 50 I may be an old coot who doesn’t even have a cell phone (I refuse to be “on call” 24/7 for the rest of the world), but I bought my first computer and taught myself programing back in the 70s. My mother has been on the internet since the 90s. If McCain is just now “catching up,” how fast do you think he can comprehend the realities and needs of techological society?
The filthy-rich are doing just fine, thank you. Washington Post opinionator George Will defends Phil Grahamm, calls the rest of America “crybabies.”
Barack Obama’s poll ratings plummet after FISA vote.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 13, thomasmc.com.
Pastor Obama says that, ‘Too many fathers are M.I.A., too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.” So spoke Obama while at church on last Father’s Day… This was Barack Obama’s Bill Crosby style Jello moment.
Lest we forget, Bill Cosby is a Black millionaire who popularized himself with Whites by acting Republican in this manner. Republicans love Black folk when they echo their own racist sentiments! Yes they do! They love it when somebody with a tan gets off on castigating cliché absent ghetto dads!
‘Bad boys bad boys, what you going to do when they come for you’ routines. Well yeah, get down with Jesse Helms and crowd, why don’t you?
But let us not forget, that these bad ‘boys’ that Obama and Cosby put the blame on simply don’t make those 6 figure annual salaries of their denouncers. They are not attorneys, politicians, and actors in Jello commercials. They live real lives, many of them lives of desperation due to the racist economic, legal, and educational structures of our racist USA. Why Hell, many of these men don’t even go to church so that they can spout off their hateful pseudo religiosity like Cosby and Obama are most prone to do.
Barack Obama is following in the media made footsteps of Bill Clinton, who the corporate press ludicrously dubbed as supposedly being ‘America’s First Black President’. Many bought for a while this nonsense, even many Blacks? What Clinton and his wife actually were were racists passing themselves off as being charitable to Blacks, even as they screwed the Black community as a whiole over royal. Now along comes Obama, who is actually part Black, who is totally prepared to do more of the same, all in the name of bringing America together!
What helps this campaign of promoting the Left image of Obama most of all towards having success is the rabidity of the nutty Right, who simply don’t think that Barack Obama hates Black males as much as say, a Jesse Helms does. They don’t find him intolerant enough of undocumented workers either. I mean Look, he even has the same skin color of some of them Haitian rabble! Sink that Obama boat! This sort of Republican Right rabies is enough to stampede the liberals into thinking that Obama must be a real sweetheart if the Nazis hate him so. But they are wrong.
In fact, I still can’t stomach watching that asshole Bill Cosby. Thank god he is rightfully retired (more or less) so that we don’t see him as often as we once did. Now I do like Redd Fox (also retired). He was a good dad and a better comedian still. True, he did run a junkyard but at least he won’t help make America into more of a junkyard, as the Democratic Party behind Obama’s imagery most certainly will.
Thank about it a little, Boys (and Girls). I like Cynthia, too, though the party she is a candidate for is a laughable charade. There are better choices than BO out there. One better choice is simply to not vote in this charade of pretend democracy that the corporations have sold to us as their product. Don’t buy.
Last week saw many a liberal author writing about why, in their opinions, the US government will not start a war against Iran. This is true lost-in-the-fog liberal denial of reality, though why is it? By what combination of stumbles in thought did they reach their conclusions?
These liberal academics (that’s what they are mainly), that believe that an attack on Iran is improbable, simply misread the general US public mindset. They believe that since Bush is so unpopular now that he has become entirely neutered and restrained by general disapproval. But is that really true?
Bush is unpopular so much not because Americans believe that the Iraq War was wrong, but rather because Americans think it wrong that Bush did not wrap up ‘victory’ there as quickly and as easily as they were promised. That does not mean that the general American public is now somehow a group of anti-imperialists. Quite the contrary. They still love American imperialism but just want it done more successfully.
Most liberals actually think that ‘the tide has turned’. As usual, they are totally out of touch with reality in this. Here liberals cannot even organize small street demonstrations against the Pentagon wars currently underway, yet somehow they think that they have the public behind them all the way! Talk about lost in inner space!
Quite simply, liberals mistake the fact that the corporate elite wants a new team in office for a while, with their own delusions that now they are going to get more say in management through the Democrats. You are not, Dummies! You are a side show, and the US government has a bipartisan corporate consensus that their war needs to be extended even more and this time towards Iran.
Real political power comes from independent organization, but liberals mistake groups like MoveOn for being such. They mistake all their tiny little office paid ‘peace’ groups for being a real antiwar movement. They mistake their liberal church group participation for being the necessary work that has to be done. They simply do not get it. They don’t want to get it!
The liberals simply do not have a movement going and neither do we more radical types. We have not yet currently constructed a Labor Movement, a Black or Hispanic Movement, or a Movement to Defend the Environment. These Movements simply do not exist at this time, and without them in place, the US government does not feel restrained in the least.
The government is simply going to continue with their so-called ‘Global War on Terrorism’ until we are able to do something about through our own independent organization. We have not even begun to do that yet, and we certainly are not entrenched in any sort of major success. We are losers up to now, and the liberal Democratic Party voters amongst us are addicted to losing. They lose most often when they ‘win’ even! They mistake losing for victory, thus liberal authors can write about how the Bush Administration will not do this or that, like they, the liberals, are in control now!
Yes, the sad fact of the matter is that America remains with a pro-war mindset. Americans love war! They believe that all war is theirs for the easy win. They simply do not understand why Bush and his Administration are such failures at doing just that. They are simply not antiwar in the least.
Strangely enough, liberals have been developing delusions of grandeur recently. They do think that the tide has changed. However, what evidence is there really that that is actually true? Obama might win? Talk about being really out of the loop in understanding one’s own society though!
We are in a definite danger period now. The oil industry and all the other major corporate industries, too, all want a continued and prolonged global war. They have no public opposition to this so far inside the US. And sad to say, the European middle classes are behind this game plan, too. The European populations are simply not mobilizing themselves against this global warfare. Where is this supposed change in the tide then? Certainly not in Europe, and certainly not here in America.
Sitting around with their thumbs up their rear ends saying that it is improbable that the US will attack Iran is pathetic. It is an excuse for continuing their own lack of success in actually building an independent movement against the war. The liberal community is not doing anything much other than taking it as it comes, and pretending that it won’t come when it will.
They are going to vote, and that is about all.
We need to give Monserrat political asylum now that she has been arrested in Chile! She is my favorite political prisoner in the world, in fact, and we need more women like her, those who would protest the prudishness of society rather than being the prudes. See Chilean subway stripper arrested The serious lack of a sense of humor and any sense of proportion around the world today is indicative of how authoritarian society everywhere actually is.
One might note, that the head of the Chilean government is herself a woman. We should all hold our breath though if she were in fact to speak out against the prosecution of Monserrat. These politicians always talk about freedom and liberty but in fact are the direct antithesis of freedom always.
Monserrat is in more danger in jail of being raped by those that claim to be upholding morality, the police, than she was on that subway where filmed. A good question was asked by spectators of the police as they hauled Monserrat away.
‘Que es el motivo?’ or translated simply to English… ‘Why?’ Yes, why indeed?
Free live sharks!! Must come now!!! (Peterson/Constitution)
Reply to: see below
Date: 2008-07-13, 1:55PM MDTWe have 3 sharks and a 50 gal tank that have to go right now, house has been foreclosed and need to get out now. Not able to deliver and since we live in Woodland Park, can only wait until about 2:45-3pm today. NO emails!! We will not have access, please come to (address) or call (phone) for directions.
Thanks!
That was from Craigslist.
Dig the part about the “not able to deliver”, ….
50 gallons of water would weigh 400 pounds, almost a quarter ton just in Water.
But, you know, if you’re a Foreclosure Officer working for a bank in the local area, be really careful when you do the walk-through on the house…
The US and French have moved their troops into Chad and Darfur (around 10,000 UN troops are there now) and this weekend the US is set to use the United Nations once again to set up a war against yet another sovereign nation!
In a crime scene that is reminiscent of how the US government once gave Saddam Hussein the go ahead and permission to attack Kuwait and then later used this Iraqi attack as an excuse to attack Iraq itself, the US is planning to use Sudan’s permission to allow UN troops into Darfur as its beachhead in furthering its attack on the country of Sudan as a whole. President Bashir of Sudan will be accused of war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor in a day or two ahead.
This is what the pro-war ‘Save Darfur’ campaign has wanted all along, to give liberal ideological support for US- Euroepan aggression behind a cloud of ‘humanitarian’ interventionist rhetoric. They have succeeded in their goal 100% but have not succeeded in doing anything other than bringing another disguised US occupation to yet another African country. Instead of helping save Somalia, they have helped enslave Sudan.
We cannot be sure exactly how this coming declaration of US war on Sudan will unfold? What can be known with certainty is, that the US criminalization of another official enemy head of state in their ‘international’ kangaroo court can only be nothing more nor less than a US declaration of war on Sudan’s government.
None of this is for any benefit to the people of Darfur themselves, just like using the Kurds in Iraq has done nothing much to help out the Kurdish nation as a whole. Newsweek in their July commentary DARFUR-A Thin Coat of Blue More than six months after the United Nations formed a peacekeeping force in Darfur, little has happened on the ground gave an honest accounting of what UN troops in Darfur has meant to the people there. Instead of helpers, the area are getting nothing more than US mercenary pawns in the US government’s grand plan of obtaining total global control for its well established Empire.
The US antiwar movement is totally unprepared to today honestly analyze how their own stupidity and national jingoistic mindset has helped get its own government into yet more of African territory. It is a very sad situation. We should never promote ‘humanitarian interventionism’ when our own government is nothing more than just pirates and gangsters. To do so as many ‘peace’ activists did is criminal.
CHICAGO- The Green Party convention has nominated Cynthia McKinney as their 2008 presidential candidate. Puerto Rican activist Rosa Clemente will be her running mate. “We are not the alternative, we are the imperative!”
What’s left for Carla Bruni-Sarkozy? Heiress, supermodel, pop diva, Queen of France. Now everyone’s mind is on her chrysanthemum.
Follow Jane Birkin to Serge Gainsbourg to Citizen Kane to find it’s French for Rosebud.
In reprising her recording career, Mrs. France now wants Jane Birkin’s repute. Her album As If Nothing Happened is a Je T’aime Moi Non Plus remake for our Gattaca millennium, antiseptic, callous, Birkin’s expressive orgasm gone the way of pubic hair.
In her song Ta Tienne, Bruni pledges to her president husband “I give you my body, my soul and my chrysanthemum” encrypted for state security reasons perhaps. France-soir says: “I think we know exactly what she means by this. It is hardly appropriate imagery for a First Lady of France.” I think I do too, although I’m determined to imagine the allusion is literary and not botanical.
Coincidentally, the similarly named Euro-trash film Je T’aime Moi Non Plus which Birkin made for her husband, eminent enfant-terrible composer Serge Gainsbourg, also the song’s composer, centered around costar Joe Dallesandro’s incapacity to be aroused by anything but her delicate rosebud.
How does Bruni’s inability to sing compare to Birkin’s? Definitely comparable. But her artlessness soars. Birkin’s long career included showing herself to be a critically acclaimed film director. The French First Lady’s artifice is calculated like Faust.
I remember when Carla Bruni hit the public scene. The old Italian money heiress merited a topless photo blurb in Vanity Fair, no doubt arranged by PR reps because the caption credited the bohemian scion with no distinction besides reading Kant in her skivvies. From there it was fashion model, then groupie, then pop singer apparently, until she landed the ultra-right European Union enforcer hit-man Sarkozy for a husband. The press pretends her leftist circles don’t understand the attraction.
Wealthy Italians have been fascists since the Medici. Where did Carla get a leftist rep? That’s like expecting a physicist to emerge from shop class. In marrying Sarkozy I think the dilettante has shown her social-climber colors, and this lamentable recording puts a finer, and I’m sure it’s lovely, point on it.
We might argue the anatomical nomenclature, in any event the distinction’s a pun. Carla shows her man-eating reputation is undaunted by the French dictator. If she’s meant to be upstaged by an asshole, it’s going to hers, fragranced.