Tag Archives: Africa

MTA and the ‘failure to communicate’

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There is a sad but funny commentary on Alternet titled, ‘The Iraq Debacle- Failure to Communicate?‘ I took a semester of Modern Standard Arabic ages ago and this article and the subsequent commentaries discuss the lack of available Arabic translators amongst ‘our troops’ and the various causes for that.

Following is my comment under one of the threads discussing this article.

Nothing new here…
Posted by: logansafi on Apr 9, 2007 7:14 PM

There’s nothing new here with our clownish military and our clown CIC. Nobody knew how to speak Albanian or Serbo Croat either, and God save us if they ever go into Darfur-Chad-Sudan! ‘Saviours’ without a clue they always are.

It is obvious why the US military is so in bed with Israel. Israel is the only country that has some Arab linguist ability, especially when you count their Falangist Lebanese killer friends.

MTA should be what this lingua franca should be called. Modern Torture Arabic. Good for use while stealing Iraqi oil.

Happy Easter, Canada

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For what unearthly reason has the Canadian government sent its troops to occupy Afghanistan? These are tag along American-led imperialist troops not defending Canadian national interests in the least. One wonders how Canada has any national pride at all these days, when that country’s citizens allow their government to be led by the nose into these stupid imperial occupations of other countries, all directed by the Pentagon in Washington D.C. This Easter Day, the Canadians lost 7 of their young people there, while serving their US masters.

Similarly, the British government is secretly planning to stay in Iraq for 5 more years according to reports, and the European Union is being besmirched by having cooperated with US crimes against humanity now taking place in Mogadishu, Somalia, and in the hidden torture cells the US is running for prisoners taken captive in that country.

Shame on all you ‘poodle’ countries for letting Bush misguide you into being involved in our government’s war crimes and torture. Rebel, and we in America will certainly follow your example, though belatedly for sure. The whole world is involved in the US government’s terrorism at this point, and only the whole world together can stop it.

US out of Somalia! US out of Afghanistan! US out of Pakistan! US out of Iraq!

End the US government torture and its terrorism worldwide!

Has the US started a new war across the Horn of Africa?

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Fighting is raging across Somalia as the people of that country are increasingly resisting the invasion and occupation of their country by US directed foreign mercenary troops from Uganda and Ethiopia. Over 50,000 refugeees have fled Mogadishu already, and the war there threatens to spark clashes between Ethiopia and Eritrea, too, eventually. All this because English only assholes sitting in their Washington DC giovernment offices nonchalantly decided like chess players, to move their pawns into action on the African board. The resulting conflicts potentially could destabilize the Congo once again, not to mention to destabilize Sudan further.

Funny how all the Darfur fethishists seem so silent now about what the US is now doing to Somalia. Check out aljazeera.net’s reporting on these 2 locales- Somalia and Sudan for a breath of fresh air in reporting.

The best thing for the entire continent of Africa would be for all the US and European military interventions into Africa’s affairs to immediately end. The UN has nothing to contribute positively to bringing peace to Africa neither, since the UN Security Council is itself firmly in the hands of the Bush Adminstration and its Democratic Party allies, that together make up the US government.

Today at the vigil- Darfur

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Today at the noon vigil on Nevada Street, I held a sign that said ‘Hands Off Iran’ and was talking with my Mennonite friend who was holding a sign that said ‘PEACE’. Lo’ and Behold if my favorite Right Wing bicyclist came by once again.

He always has a sour look on his face, not just when he sees us, but in general I rather do believe. In short, he is the Sour Right Wing Bicyclist of the Colorado Springs barrio I live in, and he always passes by with a nasty and arrogant look on his face. He flies by so rapidly, that he usually just has a one word or two that he let’s fly when he sees us on the street corner with our signs. Today it was, ‘DARFUR’.

So just what was his word of wisdom to us miscreants supposed to mean, I thought? Why did he say what he did, at this time? Was it simply a message for us to have a sign calling for peace in Darfur, or was it more than just that? Would he get off his bike and protest in common cause with us if we had included mention of Darfur amongst our signs? I rather think not.

In fact, this particular Right Winger has shown his opposition to our vigil more than a few times before. When he shouted out ‘Darfur”, he was counterposing that cause to ours. This is bullshit, because we would like peace to come to the Darfur regions of Sudan and Chad, too. Who can be for a continuation of the slaughter that has been occurring there? Only a lunatic, I think.

How sad it is, though, that so many have deluded themselves into believing that an end to conflict anywhere, though, is to send in the Pentagon! That’s where we part company with those who campaign around the issue of Darfur. And in the case of this one sour pus neighborhood bicyclist, he was counterposing campaiging for military intervention from the US government and its allies into Sudan, against campaigning to end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan by US troops, plus probable future extension of US warmaking into Iran. Somalia alone shows that the US is no peacemaker force anywhere. Not to mention the example of Haiti.

Economic aid to Africa, including Sudan. Not military. If I could put all this on a sign I would. But I doubt that that would satisfy my favorite Right Wing Bicyclist. He’s not all that concerned about Darfur at all, except as an excuse to support the Pentagon. I’d like to think otherwise, but his past behavior regarding our vigil is not a good reason to do so.

Washington DC’s Torture International at work in Somalia

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The US has succeeded in taking a relatively quiet and tranquil situation in Somalia and converting it back into yet another human rights disaster. Now, Somalia is another country occupied by brigades of foreign troops all led by the Pentagon. And where the Pentagon goes, the use of torture soon follows. Has anybody heard of their supposed representatives, Democratic or Republican, opposing this US terrorism underway in Somalia? MIA once again…..
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Rights group slams ‘rendition’ of Somalis
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Monday, April 02, 2007

NAIROBI: Human Rights Watch on Saturday accused the governments of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and the United States of secretly detaining hundreds of people fleeing the deadly conflict in Somalia. “Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone,” said Georgette Gagnon, HRW’s deputy Africa director. “Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to disappear, and US security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado,” he added. In a statement, the rights panel detailed “arbitrary detention, expulsion and apparent enforced disappearance of dozens of individuals who fled the fighting” between Ethiopia-backed Somali troops and the powerful Islamist movement from December through January 2007. HRW said since late December, Kenyan security forces arrested at least 150 individuals from some 18 different nationalities at the Liboi and Kiunga border crossing points with Somalia.

“The Kenyan authorities then transferred these individuals to Nairobi where they were detained incommunicado and without charge for weeks in violation of Kenyan law,” it said. The rights body said the US and other national intelligence services interrogated several foreign nationals while they were being detained in Nairobi, where they were also denied access to legal counsel and their consular representatives. “At least 85 people were then secretly deported from Kenya to Somalia in what appears to be a joint rendition operation of those individuals of interest to the Somali, Ethiopian, or US governments,” the statement said. – AFP

Get the US and its hired goons out of Somalia

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It has been weeks since the US and its ally Ethiopia invaded Somalia. Invasions of other countries, lest we forget, are violations of international law. Unfortunately, the United Nations Security Council acts as Bush’s puppet and is once again rubber stamping US imperialist aggression. Now, Mogadishu threatens to spin into total anarchy ala Baghdad.

Every place the US carries its wars, chaos develops and security disintegrates. That goes for whether it is the US international so-called war on drugs, are it’s phoney so-called war on terror. Get the US and its hired goons out of Somalia now. In fact, get them out of Africa altogether!

Congo spinning back into war

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Most people in the US do not realize that the warfare in the Congo is the world’s most deadly war of the last decade, with well over 4,000,000 casualties. Unfortunately, European and US intervention continues throughout the continent of Africa, and fighting once again is erupting in the Congo. The only solution to the bloodshed is to get the imperialists permanently out of all of Africa. Instead, we have the European Union and the US controlled United Nations running Congo’s affairs, all the while claiming that they are defending democracy. Sound familiar?

Calling for intervention in Darfur rather than calling for withdrawal from Iraq

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More and more people are getting smart about knowing what the ‘Save Darfur’ campaing is really about. Today’s Spotlight article on antiwar.com (The largest antiwar website out there) had an article that hit the nail on the head about the campaign to encourage further US/ European militarism in Africa under the facade of giving humanitarian assistance. The commentary by Anthony Arnove and Tom Engelhardt was appropriately titled, ‘The Anniversary From Hell‘.

Tom Tancredo and Darfur

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While nice sweet liberals like Rebecca Tinsley and Jody Williams are pushing for imperialist interventionism into Sudan for supposedly humanitarian reasons, it is interesting to see the company they keep on their Darfur rescue missions. They are long time Far Right reactionaries like Elliot Abrams, Kansas Senator Brownback, and our very own lovable Colorado prick, Tom Tancredo.

Tom, who is for Border Walls, deporting penniless undocumented workers looking for work, and committing US genocide against the Iraqi people, is also teaming up with the good hearted interventionist liberals who love NATO, the UN Security Council, European and African Union troopers under the Pentagon’s AFRICOM control. Both groups are united in desire to be ‘humanitarian’ it seems, by principally sending in the troops.

Check out ‘The Right’s Stuff in Africa‘ published on the counterpoint. org site. Tom Tancredo stars in this Darfur ‘benevolency’ as the article mentions.

Mini AIPAC- The American Turkish Council and its connections with Lockheed

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The story begins with Sibel Edmonds, a Turkish translator fired from the FBI after one year of work. She is now being defended by the American Civil Liberties Union as a whistle blower who was unjustly retaliated against for doing her job. An interesting case for sure. But even more interesting is the peephole that her case has opened into the shady doings of The American Turkish Council which has been termed the ‘Mini AIPAC’ due to its similarities with AIPAC, the Israeli ‘lobbying’ machine.

Here in a long commentary, ‘The Highjacking of a Nation‘, Sibel Edmonds talks the truth about what she call The True Lords of Afghanistan’s Poppy Fields, which would be Turkey. It turns out that Turkey’s government is a key US governmental regional ally, human rights abuser, and world class smuggler in drugs and material for nuclear weaponry, which Edmonds comments on well. The country hosts numerous US military personnel, and sits astride Europe, Asia, and Africa. Of particular interest to the US government, is the opening into regions of the former Soviet Union, where Turkish language group populations predominate, that alliance with a barbaric and corrupt Turkish government provides.

And the story gets worse, when Edmonds connects up The American Turkish Council with American big wigs and companies like Lockheed, whose corporate officers sit on that council. Now we can begin to see why Sibel Edmonds was such an unfortunate worker to have at the FBI in so many eyes. Translate, but shut up is how they wanted it, but she did not oblige. She became a dangerous person to have around, so that most probably got her fired. Corruption does like to work in secret, and Sibel Edmonds was not about to let things just lie.

US troops in African fender benders

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Two US troops died in Ethiopia this week. Bush’s soldiers are adrft from their stations in Djibouti a lot these days and we can look for more f’ender benders’ ahead. What with the US Pentagon directing deployment of Ethiopian troops into Somalia and Ugandan troops into Somalia, these traffic accidents will happen.

That last is an interesting item. Ugandan troops are being sent to Somalia as ‘peacekeepers’! Wow, I’m surprised they can find time from fighting the 20 year war taking place n the Northern part of Uganda next to Southern Sudan, all to come across and ‘peacekeep’ for Dubya in Somalia.

Holy Warriors and African Crusades! That’s all Africa needs now, a ‘clash of civilizations’, Christians vs Muslims. Meanwhile, uranium kleeps coming up missing from the Congo (1oo bars or so). Oh well, it’s not really all that radioactive, is it?

AFRICOM and the US/ European drive to control Africa’s oil

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The Center for International Policy has an excellent report about the newest US push to further militarize the continent of Africa and control the oil supplies located there. All of this is to be done under the propaganda cover of fighting terrorism, and through the establishment of the new African command operation center (AFRICOM) of the US military, which is already the military coordinator of US interventions into Somalia, into Chad and Sudan, and into Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, and where much of the African oil is located.

No area of Africa will actually be free from US military control when these plans are fully put into place, and antiwar activists should be pushing to oppose the expansions of US and European military organizations into the African continent now. That includes opposing the further deployments of African Union and United Nations Security Council troops as well, since these groups are not autonomous or free of Pentagon control. Not in the least.

After literally killing hundreds of millions of Africans through decades and centuries of European/ US colonialism and imperialism on the continent, the new push to control and loot African oil for the industrialized countries promises much more suffering to come to Africa in the years ahead. The real genocide that is taking place throughout Africa has been in march for a very long time through the entire continent, and can only be ended by giving the boot to the US and Europe and their imperialist armies out of the region altogether. African oil for Africans and not for imperialist based multinational oil companies backed up by the Pentagon! Stop AFRICOM now. We need to stop the genocide across the entire African continent, and that can only be done by getting our own US government’s military demobilized.

(You might want to read the entire CIP report and not just the link I provided to the summary of that report. The link to the entire PDF shown article, if you missed it, is at the bottom of the introduction itself. Very interesting material.)

Democracy Now’s adulatory interview with Gen. Wesley Clark, war criminal

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America’s ruling elite have split about whether Bush’s decision to expand the War to Steal Iraq’s Oil into the neighboring countries of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran is likely to succeed or not. Wesley Clark, Clinton’s mad war criminal bomber of Yugoslavia, certainly is on the side that fears future failure by the Bush Administration.

He even has his own website dedicated to trying to stop the expansion of US government started warfare into Iran. But in the Amy Goodman interview, it appears that he actually wanted to attack Iran, and not Iraq, first. Now he feels that it is a mistaken strategy to do this attack he previously supported, after 6 years of Bush’s bungling, incompetence, and failure.

Amy Goodman all but begged Wesley Clark to run for president, echoing the incomprehensible stupidity of Michael Moore in the previous election. These liberals seem to be looking for some Dwight Eisenhower type to latch on to? How pathetic, since Wesley Clark is absolutely nothing more than a war criminal who started a war with a sovereign country illegally, and sat quiet as Clinton/ Gore killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents through economic sanctions and continual bombings of Iraq during the 8 years of that Administration. These are the type of imperialist liberals who now talk of helping citizens of Sudan out, when during their time in office they were bombing illegally targets in that country, specifically one of Africa’s largest pharmaceutical factories. Clark, and his Slick Commander Clinton, sat and twiddled their thumbs, while hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were cut down. The US and French could easily have stopped that slaughte, but they were occupied with ‘stopping the Serbs’.

After much of the interview with Clark by Goodman conducted on a chit-chat friendly level, Goodman eventually felt the need to let Clark pretend to respond somewhat adequately to his record of continually bombing Yugoslav civilian infrastructure when he was top general in command of the Clinton war of Aggression Against Yugoslavia. This record includes the deliberate bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, also bombing the Serbian television station in that city killing journalists and and other civilians at work there, and bombing various factories along the Danube River, thereby contaminating that important waterway for years afterwards with toxic chemicals, as well as killing workers and neighborhood residents. The few parts of his miserable terrorist record Clark was asked to account for by Goodman, was predictably blamed on Milosevic and the Serbs themselves. Goodman made no effort to illustrate the dishonesty of his responses.

Further, Clark went on to support the continued US use of nuclear weapons and cluster bombs in US war making. Amy Goodwin let him walk on all of this, absolutely free as a breeze. How very sad to see this desperate desire for allies against the neocons turned into Goodman’s covert prompting of Clark towards a run for US presidency by this war criminal. Shame on you, Amy. I respect your show immensely but felt ashamed for you Friday night. Don’t let these rats off the hook when they try to desert the ship that Bush is trying to run aground. These imperialist just want a better vessel at hand to continue their imperialist aggressions against other countries. Certainly everything about Wesley Clark points towards continued disaster if he were actually to gain the presidency in 2008. Why prompt for more capable imperialists to regain command? Wesley Clark couldn’t even muster up a call for the impeachment of Bush or a description of the invasion and occupation of Iraq as being illegal. I guess not, since that would have been to illustrate how he himself had carried out and commanded an illegal war against Yugoslavia.

Rebecca Tinsley and Darfur- when ‘Waging Peace’ is calling for imperialist military action

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Rebecca Tinsley, head of a British group called ‘Waging Peace’, spoke this past Tuesday at Colorado College. Her topic was Darfur and stopping a supposed genocide going on there. The report of the meeting in the Colorado College student newspaper neglected to mention that she was also director of this group, ‘Waging Peace’, nor that Tinsley is also a hotshot within the Carter Center.

And who else is hot within the Carter Center right now? Why it happens to be Madelyn Albright, who once told a CBC reporter that the deaths of half a million Iraqis per Clinton’s sanctions ‘were worth it’. Albright was also a featured speaker last year at an American rally calling for ‘action’ against Sudan. ‘Waging Peace’ it seems, is in reality making propaganda in favor of imperialist intervention rather than against it, though they might try to deny it.

I was unable to get to the Colorado College forum on time, but a quick google on Tinsley and ‘Waging Peace’ is quite educational in itself. Here is Tinsley calling for European imperialist intervention into the African country of Sudan from the website of that group she directs. See their Feb. 15, 2007 press release.

Rebecca Tinsley spends much of her time lobbying Tony Balir and George W. Bush to ‘intervene’ in Africa where she is fond of shouting GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE in every direction. It seems that she is not that interested in the genocides underway against the peoples of Iraq, Palestine, or Afghanistan, though. She specializes in calling for imperialist action, not for calling to stop imperialist action. She calls this ‘Waging Peace’!

Progressives need to educate themselves more about these NGO types that do as Rebecca Tinsley and the Carter Center associated liberal hawks like Madelyn Albright are doing with Darfur. Edward Herman has an interesting commentary today on Znet about Human Rights Watch, another NGO that is prone to shrill for starting off imperialist ‘actions’ by crying GENOCIDE, while staying rather mum on ongoing genocides by imperialist countries. See HRW in Service to the War Party

Of note: Rebecca Tinsley is also a member of the London Human Rights Watch committee.

The UN becomes a creature of Bush and The Pentagon in Somalia

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As the second US aircraft carrier moves into the Persian Gulf threatening to attack Iran and while Ethiopia is bombing civilians in Mogadishu, the UN is busy rubber stamping the joint Ethiopia/ US invasion and occupation of Somalia. UN troops are being organized to go and occupy Somalia for Dubya. Like the UN occupation of Haiti, the United Nations Security Council has again demonstrated that it is in fact a creature of Washington DC and the Pentagon, and not the world’s nations.

Far from bringing democracy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration and its Democratic Party loyal ‘opposition’ are spreading mayhem and terror throughout the world. Who would have thought that after decades of the US Right Wing screaming that ‘we’ need to get out of the UN, that in fact they would actually go on to make the UN into a tool of neocon reaction? But it has happened.

The only just thing that American peace activists can call for, is removal of all foreign troops out of Somalia, including those of the UN, US, Ethiopia, and all troops from other African countries bought and mobilized by the US. This onfolding chaos in the Horn of Africa due to the US oil-grabbing war on Islam, illustrates the dangers of calling for US intervention into Darfur/ Chad/ Sudan as some liberal do-gooders are doing. We need to call for European and US troops out of Africa, and not for them to go into countries there with their imperialist troops. That is just common sense.

Nigerian Episcopalian hatred leads to draconian homophobic legislation

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How many times have we heard the sorry and hateful Right Wing Christian refrain, that ‘We hate the sin but love the sinner’? Much more honest would be a retort to these people, that ‘we hate the lie, and don’t particularly respect you liars’.

When the British Anglican Church appointed an openly homosexual man to be a bishop, the Nigerian Archbishop Akinola, leader of 18.5 million church sheep, decided to split the entire world Anglican Church last year. Many Episcopalians in the US used their own homophobia to follow along. So just what were they supporting?

Well it turns out, the Nigerian Archbishop was supporting new legislation in Nigeria that would throw people in prison for five years if they openly showed in any way that they were gay! What a loving example of Christianity the archbishop is, NOT.

How absolutely shameful and backward can Right Wing Christianity get? Ask Adolf and Pope Ratzinger, I guess? Though not Episcopalians, they might shed some light on where following Holy Scripture their way might ultimately lead? Not much has really changed it seems. Christian religious hatred is making a big comeback worldwide and this is sad news.

No peacemakers without justice makers

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The Gun that won the WestThe Peacemaker of the American west was a Colt 45. What does Peacemaker mean to you?
 
I’ll start. A peacemaker would be someone within a community, preferably a peer, who polices the activities between fellow members such as to temper the periodic injustice to which human nature is prone. Fair enough?

A peacemaker would not be an overseer of slaves for example, bent on keeping the oppressed from overwhelming their master. Not a peacekeeper. A peacekeeper would not be a security guard contracted to keep a population from disrupting the extraction of mineral wealth of a country by a foreign corporation. Not a peacemaker. A peacemaker is not a caretaker of properties fretted over by international investors. A peacemaker would not be a foreign soldier sent in to protect the sovereignty of a ruling elite who no longer can control the displeasure of their impoverished subjects. A peacemaker would not be an international police agency trying to quell a civil war, where revolutionaries are trying to free the people of their post-colonial dead weight.

A UN peacemaker in Africa is often a white cop in a black neighborhood. A United African peacemaker is often a neighbor’s soldiers occupying your land. Foreign intervention into the affairs of a sovereign nation is an invasion. Interrupting the violence of a people’s uprising is to shove into their throats more fistfuls of the status quo. And call it keeping the peace.

The principle of an international governing body such as the UN being able to dispatch peacekeepers who have no ulterior motive is an honorable one. The principle of an international body being able to make loans to small nations to provide aid for their development is likewise honorable, unless the bureaucrats in between are corrupt.

A peacemaker is meant to maintain a peaceful equilibrium, but the equilibrium must be just. The Justice and Peace movements worldwide say: no peace without justice. And who is it that’s pursuing the justice beside the reformers and the rebels? It’s not the banks.

No peacemakers without justice makers.

Is Kosovo just an accident of war?

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Remember when America was torn asunder and went to war for the Albanians? Yeah, the liberals’ war. Clinton and Gore’s war. We cared so much about Albanians then and whether they were getting a fair shake! Makes one laugh in retrospect, does it not?

Care about them now, Liberal? We bombed and invaded another nation, and the cheerleaders for that activity back then, are the liberals innocents so aghast about Dubya’s and Dick’s actions these days. They’re planning to ‘take back America’ for us the Democrats say! What a bunch of sorry ass phonies those donkeys are! But if one day you support invading and tearing apart one ethnic minority out of a multi-ethnic society, then it shouldn’t surprise the Democrats that the Republicans are doing the exact same thing in Iraq today. Oops, didn’t Slick Willy start that off, in fact, by arming the Kurds?

Well what to do about Kosovo? The NATO forces want to move on, yet can’t. They’re too busy guarding Albanians for Western humanists, I guess? So why not have 2 Albanias? The genius who thought that might be a cute trick is Bill Clinton! But how to do it? Even with all the aid and support the Kosovo Albanians have received, the 2,000,000 of them have an unemployment rate of over 50%. Remember those evil Serbs that oppressed these gentle US allies so? Well, Milosevic never allowed such a crime to occur to the people there. It was the American, Brit, European Union imperialists that did them in.

I remember even all the so many European, American, Australian, Canadian socialist and communist groups that said that they were against that war, yet supported the US objectives there. They said that they opposed Milosevic, and opposed NATO in equal part. Heard any of them lately urging that NATO pick up and leave? Shoot, NATO is using the bases they built in Bosnia and Kosovo both, to ‘render’ and torture prisoners from other parts of the globe. Heard the Lefty, anti-Milosevic do-gooders campaign on that issue much? Neither have I.

Is Kosovo an accident of war? examines the issues a bit. Heck, Kosovo as it exists today was no accident, but rather it was an excuse for a crime. It was an excuse for a gang of imperialist countries to further crack up the multiethnic society that was once called Yugoslavia. Your British and American liberals brought that crime on, and by extension they brought the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq into being.

Let’s take back American from the Democratic Party liberal dummies, too! And the other Kosovo lesson to take home to heart? Just because a group calls itself Left, socialist, or communist even, does not mean that they know much what they are doing or talking about. They may be screaming along with the liberals to supposedly help folk out in boonies, like Darfur, East Timor, Kosovo, etc. But when all is said and done they are mainly helping the imperialists formulate propaganda to convince people that their wars are necessary to help people, when in fact, they are most certainly not.

America’s rolling invasion of Somalia

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The US invasion and occupation of Somalia is like that of Haiti, nobody is paying much attention. And like the current occupation of Haiti, it ‘rolls’. What do I mean by describing this as a ‘rolling invasion’, for it is a term I think that describes the now prototypical US intervention into the affairs of other nations? Lebanon, too, is being violated by an American rolling invasion as yet another example. So let’s take a quick look at Somalia then, to get a glimpse of the US strategy everywhere for its misnamed ‘war on terrorism’.

In Somalia, the US first arranged an invasion of that country using Ethiopian troops. Then it followed by bombing the country from US ships. Just several weeks after the initial assault using another country’s military, that of Ethiopia, the US is switching them out, and moving a contingent of another country’s military in, 1,500 Kenyans troops. In turn, the US is pressuring Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa amongst other countries, to follow. And without any interest at home what-so-ever, the US bombed Somalia once again just yesterday!

Imagine how the Somalians feel? As a Muslim country they finally get some semblance of government after 15 years of chaos, but then the US returns once again to topple the cart yet one more time. The US sponsored troops? Thousands of Christian Ethiopians! And to follow up this humiliation using a traditional enemy of one nation, the US brings in yet a second nation’s troops. See the roll? Like rolling waves of a heavy surf on the beach. This will then be followed by an eclectic assortment of other nations, none of which have anything in common with the natives, except for their racial coloring perhaps. And that of being sponsored by George W. Bush!

We could go to Iraq or Afghanistan to see the same nonsensical outsourcing of imperialism once again. But let’s look at Lebanon first. US invasion launched using Israeli troops first. Less than successful, so the Jewish forces pull partially back out. The US then has an unwanted UN move into the country as so-called ‘peacekeepers’. The US then threatens Hezbollah. The US then has France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, and others to cajole the country with being given possible funds to rebuild itself some. The US threatens Syria and Iran. What will Bush roll in with next? US troops? Or maybe Polish troops? Don’t joke, they are already in Iraq and Afghanistan in large numbers. How about Japanese? Don’t joke, they are in Iraq! At the end of 2006, Yugoslavia had its area of Kosovo occupied by troops from 30 nations! Talk about a Tower of Babel!

OK, enough of Lebanon. More rolling imperialism, the grand daddy of idiotic imperialism, Haiti! US invades, deposes the legitimate president, and then partially removes itself, bringing in Canadians (some speak French) and Brazilians (many are Black)! Haitians in the streets improve their language skills in French and Portuguese. But wait! Troops arrive on behalf of Dubya from China, Chile, Argentina, France,Nepal, Jordan, Peru, Sri Lanka!, and Guatemala! (80 of them). I especially think the Haitians are impressed with Sri Lanka and Guatemala coming to visit. Those 2 militaries have such great reputations! And Haitians love a circus!

Isn’t all this rolling imperialism reminiscent of the Romans? They would send in all sorts of barbarians from one end of the Empire into the next. Can we even begin to imagine our own reaction if we were ever to be disrespected with such occupations and warmaking against us, as the US uses against so many others? Imagine if the former Soviet Union had won the Cold Ware, and followed it by occupying our country with troops speaking 20 different languages, 30 different cultures, etc.? That certainly would have gotten us into an enduring peace, for sure! lol.

Where will the US invasion of Somalia roll off to? What new group of heathens to trample on? Will any American ever really give a damn about these smaller societies that get run roughshod over by their government? Liberals are too busy trying ot get the US to send troops to Chad and Darfur to notice much where the troops are actually at. Some have yet to figure out that there is a war going on in Afghanistan, for example. Though it is encouraging to see that the latest poll finally finds over 1/2 of Americans are for withdrawal from that country at last. No thanks to the Democratic Party, I might add. Afghanistan is a dirty word for them to mention.

These rolling invasions create nothing but chaos and misery.

Made in the US- Iraq’s wave of refugees

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WalMart may be as Chinese as rice these days, but there is still one product that’s made still in the US of A. Our government still leads the world in making refugees out of people. Let’s look at Iraq alone, where 2,000,000 have fled outside the country’s, and 2,000,00 more are internal refugees at ‘home’. Iraq’s population was only about 27,000,000. One out of seven then, have been made refugees by the violence of the US invasion and occupation.

Before that, when the US gave Afghanistan the Taliban and Osama, 1/5 of the population there had already become refugees. I don’t know how they can even do a count there now? It is hopeless, after decades of US warmaking there, to even try. And US war making in South America has made about 1,000,000 Colombians internal refugees, though that number may be down at moment. And who can forget how US foreign policy has kept 4,500,000 Palestinian refugees in place, and who can forget the refugees of SE Asia? Those of Central America? So many everywhere…. US made.

From time to time there are contenders to our throne, especially form locales like the Congo and Sudan. But the US has always been a leader in Africa at refugee making, too. The US heyday was back when it was supporting the South African and Rhodesian Apartheid regimes, as they waged wars across half the continent. Millions became refugees due to that US African foreign policy, in just Angola and Mozambique alone. And the US vs Russia in the horn of Africa? Well who can count them?

One strategy of the US to stop the iraqis from fighting the theft of their oil underground? Shoot! Well why not just make ALL THE COUNTRY refugees? Totally depopulate it then! Maybe that’s what’s really behind Bush’s hidden strategy, The Surge? Like a tsunamai wave on shore, all to wash all out to sea! Brilliant! Made in America, the 21st Century refugee. How proud can we be, with the American production of this product of our Great Society? Go for Iran, too?

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.

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.

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.

PPJPC condemns US bombing of Somalia

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Instead of admitting that the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are immoral violations of international law, the US government has extended their war into more and more regions of the world. The Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission opposes the most recent US bombing strikes in Somalia. These bombings are acts of war that have not been discussed or voted upon by anyone in the US congress. Further, they follow US government approval and encouragement of Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia, in itself a violation of international law.

The American people are asked to believe that only ‘terrorists’ are being killed and injured when the US conducts bombing raids in countries such as Somalia and Pakistan. In fact, the US is killing many innocent civilians and those casualties are being considered acceptable collateral damage by the Pentagon and the Bush Adminstration. We do not agree.

There is no way to pinpoint targets without unacceptable civilian bloodshed, especially when American forces do not even speak the local language, as is most often the case. We must not sit by and passively accept the resulting carnage without raising our voices in protest and condemnation. Essentially, the American people are being asked by their government to condone a policy of political assassinations that convicts others without trial or jury, and also maims and kills scores of innocent bystanders.

We at Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission reject these illegal acts of war and call on all our elected representatives to help stop this continual warmaking. We encourage everybody to do what they can to actively oppose the US military intervention in the Horn of Africa. Stop the bloodshed, do not feed into it. Do not encourage regional and ethnic conflict.

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Ho hum, which country did we invade today?

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Where is the John Birch Society when we really need them? For decades they posted big bill boards around the US warning us of the dangers of the UN and ‘one world government’. We have it now for sure, as the US invades and bombs country after country and all pretense of international law has been thrown in the garbage can. The US runs the United Nations which stamps every illegal Bush activity with its followup stamp of supposed legitimization. Except the moral authority of the UN is about at the same level as the honesty of the Bush Adminstration. Low. Very low.

Almost nowhere in the world do any people really see any legitimacy in their rulers. Everywhere it is pretty much the same, with an exception or two to prove the point. Why such lack of faith in the rulers? it’s pretty much because all of them go along with the group of thugs misleading The American Empire. International hate for our own native US ruling thugs rubs off into becoming a growing hate and disrespect for all the local country klans that follow along behind this constant US government terrorism. How much longer will the world just go along silently with all this? They’re going to begin to tear their own local ruling classes of whores to shreds pretty damn soon because this hate can’t just continue to build without any release.

And what is it about our leaders’ addictions to kicking the poor of the Third World in the teeth again and again? They tromp around and pat themselves over and over on the back, but in essence they are the most despicable bullies. The type of bullies whose grandparents murdered off the natives, and held Blacks as property which they treated worse than today we treat our dogs and cats. And everybody knows, too, that America’s ruling class still treats its dogs and cats better than they treat the children of the world. No Humane Society for those kids murdered while I write this commentary, in the very same hours that the US military now rains down its weaponry on its newest found victim, Somalia.

The liberal community here seems numb by this new assault. But it’s time for some indignation instead of prayer. Stop this new miserable escalation of fighting that Bush and The Invertebrate Party are bilaterally engaging in. Always begging, lobbying, and voting for the Invertebrate Party politicians turns the voter him/herself into a spineless jellyfish, too. Get out and demonstrate YOU spineless lazy wimps! I’m talking about the American liberals now. You Tory Republican turds aren’t spineless. Just dumber than shit, that’s all. Not even shit for brains most of you DittoDips. But what’s the excuse for the inability to get indignant and move… for the spineless, lazy Ass kissing liberal?