When it comes to American imperialism, there is no difference at all between Obama and McCain. So it is no surprise at all to see Barack Obama supporting George W. Bush’s belligerent neocon aggression against Russia. The voice of the American imperialist neocons is The Wall Street Journal, and here is their report- President Bush Wins Sen Barack Obama’s Backing Over Georgia
We learned only after Roosevelt’s presidency that he had to be propped-up for photo-ops because FDR was otherwise confined to a wheelchair. The American public learned only after Ronald Reagan retired that he suffered from Alzhemers for most of his second term. Once our decider idiot’s joyride is over, is there something it will then be safe then to tell us that Vladimir Putin already knows about George Bush Jr?
We know he’s incurious, uneducated and inappropriate. We know he was an alcoholic and cocaine addict into his 40s, until he found religion before the campaign trail. Is it possible some of his down-home stupidity could be drink-fueled?
In the alter-universe of the blogosphere, it’s being surmised that George W. was blotto at the Beijing Olympics. Here’s one of the pics floating that thesis.
Not about the Mai Li – Lt Calley Massacre, or the Kent State Massacre, or other well known incidents when U.S. soldiers refused to question orders.
See, I get a little flack from ReichWing Trolls saying that Scottie McClellan was a “traitor” for documenting SOME of the lies and other machinations BushCorp did to start the war against the Iraqi people, for the profit of the shareholders of BushCorp.
And that Tony Snow was a hero for not “ratting out” his Accomplices in Treason. And Thefts. And Murders.
So I dug into my extensive memories, and came up with this one incident.
It involves Ronald Reagan, Maggie Thatcher, George Bush Sr and ONE USN seaman who disobeyed an order.
It’s not surprising, Ronnie did associate and do a lot of business with the Bush Klan. (Kartel?) and other unsavory types. Gordon Liddy, Ollie North, Bill Casey, Dick Nixon, Dick Cheney…
All of them are the type who, when you shake hands with them, you have to count your fingers afterward to make sure they didn’t Steal any of them. Theft and Lying, to these guys, is as natural as eating worms is to robins.
Bush and Family, they made one fortune financing the Slave Trade. Yep, not content to just steal people’s property, they went ahead and stole the people as well. Arguably, the ones alive today didn’t do the actual dirty deed, but they still have the money, now, haven’t they?
And they fight tooth and nail against the concept of Reparations.
But that’s not the focus of this story, just an unpleasant diversion.
Treaty law comes into the story, so allow me to explain, yes?
According to the Constitution, the Constitution itself is the Law of the Land, and the final decider in any court in America. In a related Article (VI, if I recall correctly) Treaties are given equal weight in all matters of Law to the Constitution itself.
English Law has similar provisions, that’s where the Framers got it.
Seeing the Company Kept By Reagan, one of whom has declared the Constitution to be “just a goddamned piece of paper”, it’s hardly surprising that Reagan, also, treated the Law as something to be used for his own pleasure and convenience, and put aside when it was more convenient to do so.
Organization of American States. A treaty organization to which the United States belongs. So does Grenada, which is why the invasion had to be called a “rescue operation”.
So does Argentina. Which fought a war with Britain during Thatcher and Reagans Rein of Terror.
A war involving an island where the sheep outnumber the people by tenfold at least.
An island which is strategically located and has a Naval Base and an Air Base.
A war in which, we, the United States, were either Treaty Bound to support Argentina, or stay way the hell out of it.
Charleston Naval Station. British Navy ships refueled and provisioned there, at the expense of the American Taxpayers. Considering the treaty, that was illegal.
Which is probably why the U.S. Navy ordered the sailors not to mention it to anybody.
One of those sailors defied those orders and told of all people, ME.
I am honored to know such a person. A REAL hero, unlike North or Reagan or Liddy or Bush, or their bootlicking accomplices like our own Local Liar “Gunny” Bob.
This impinges on current events because, you see, Reagan had his poodle, Ms Thatcher, Bush had HIS poodle Blair, and they had and have a whole regiment of lying coward pukes who insist that Orders are more important than Honor.
Poor Dubya, he tries to make out like he’s another George Carlin but comes up only as a totally lame George Bush. But who else other than Dubya to make this analogy, that Wall Street ‘got drunk’? … See for yourself… He’s great at economic theory, isn’t he???!
McCain is a douchebag and there’s no reason I or anybody else should bow down and worship his “hero” image.
He crashed his plane during a bombing raid on a nation against whom Congress had never declared war. That puts him in the same Legal League as the 9/11 Hijackers.
Punk-ass bitches like Gunny Bob should get the hell over that.
Gunny also cheerleads for Bush Sr, Oliver North and other traitors, who sold American arms to lots of people now considered to be enemies, including and especially the militia who car-bombed his fellow Marines and Norths fellow Marines, before, during and after the attack.
Ollie, Gunny, three words…. Semper… Fi… Bitches….
Your Marine comrades who got chopped into GruntBurger by bombs sold by your pathetic cabal of TRAITORS and liars (currently led by Deserter George Bush)
Those Real Marines are no longer alive to say it, so I’ll Say It On Their Behalf.
Semper Fi, BITCHES.
The 40,000 (much undercounted) Real Soldiers who lost their lives in VietNam, and the more than 4,000 (again, much undercounted) who lost their lives in Iraq did so not to make us free or keep us free, but to enforce the bullshit policies perpetuated by McCain, and Bush, and North, and their pathetic cheerleaders like Gunny Bob.
This might sound bizarre, but I connected to this because Miss Johnnie was watching a Rockies’ baseball game.
The commentators were mentioning that George Bush had been loudly booed when he threw out the “first pitch” on Opening Day.
Seemed a little outraged by it.
The comments were on the order of “They booed the PRESIDENT!” and “Hello! He’s ONLY the Leader of the free world! Duh!”
Where to start? How about, he was never appointed Leader of the free world or even Leader of all Americans. He can only lead people who are weak-minded enough to follow him.
For instance, he’s not MY leader.
I have enough personal strength and dignity to refuse to follow, really anybody in general and a low-life Murdering, lying, cowardly thief in particular.
Some of the people who say we should obey him in everything he tells us, use the Name of God to justify it.
They point to a biblical passage “Honor God (and) (by the act of) Obey the King”.
Allow me to point out, once again, this was not God speaking. It was a scribe of either King David or King Solomon. Both of whose reigns began with revolutions.
David who was anointed King in a secret ceremony and fought a long rebellion against Saul, who was anointed in a PUBLIC ceremony. We know this because King David told us that Samuel had done so. He mentioned it long after Samuel, and his father Jesse and his 8 brothers who witnessed the Secret anointing were dead.
Solomon who was born of adultery. In a union that accurately reflected what Samuel had been instructed to tell the people before anointing Saul.
“do not fear to anoint this King for them, for they do not reject you, but rather they reject Me… but tell them first what manner of King will reign over them, he will take their sons to run before his chariots, and their daughters to be his bakers and his handmaids”.
The fact that neither David nor Solomon were ever accorded universal recognition of their “authority” during their lives is duly recorded.
So the question would be, wouldn’t it be to the advantage of a King who is under constant threat from rebellions to get the people to believe that God Himself had commanded them to obey him?
But neither David nor Solomon would ever take unfair advantage of such an attitude, now would they? And again, we know this because they, themselves, told us so.
Thus the Religious point of view.
For a more immediately practical point of view, America was founded as a nation by Rebels who overthrew the lawful government of the King.
And there were ministers of the Gospel preaching the Loyalist propaganda, again using the Honor God and Obey the King bullpoo-poo. Right here in America.
But the point of that is, for 232 years now we in America have not HAD a king.
Those who wish to say that we owe him obedience and that God said so, must have had one of those very conveniently Private anointments.
Much like George Bush saying that God told him to smite Iraq, and that God had told him that there are Weapons of Mass Destruction there.
If God told him that, then God must have LIED to him.
In which case, it probably, most likely, wasn’t actually God talking to him.
Surely God would have told him exactly where to look for those WMDs, yes?
King George III of England was suffering from the delusional dreams of the terminal stages of syphillis. He spent his last years talking to trees, and, apparently, they talked back to him.
No telling what manner of Dementia afflicts our current King George the Simple.
But we do know that he is demented. Here’s a really radical thought, what would happen if somebody who has his finger on the trigger to more of every type of Weapon of Mass Destruction than all the rest of the nations of the world combined…. is at a Prayer Breakfast and the potted plants start talking to him, and telling him to do something incredibly stupid like launching a nuclear attack on Iran or having the Army occupy a couple of Third World nations?
Do we really owe him our support in such insane pursuits?
But we kind of expected that, no?
For instance there was a United Nations mandate about Torture, and Shirley Temple Black was one of the signatories, which said Torture was not permissible under any circumstances.
Basically our solemn word as a Nation, and according to the Constitution, a Foreign Treaty ratified by Congress has as much weight in American jurisprudence as the Constitution itself does.
But alas, somebody in writing the law put in a few Weasel Words.
For instance, nobody is to be subjected to Severe pain either as punishment or to extract information. Nobody is to be subjected to unnecessarily cruel or harsh treatment.
So the Reaganite lawyers are now saying Ha ha ha, we lied to you and you can’t do a thing about it because we had some escape clauses in the treaty.
Now George Bush and Douche Lymphnode (Limbaugh) say “Who cares what the rest of the world thinks of us?”
Well, dumbasses, it’s like this… the only alternative to actually negotiating in good faith is to commit unjustifiable atrocities, like the Invasion of Iraq or perhaps the pending attack (using WMDs, no less) on the nation of Iran.
Not meaning what you say as a civilian, Joe Citizen type, means nobody will rent you a house without you paying all the rent in advance. People won’t give you credit.
Not meaning what you say as a representative of the people means you won’t be able to get anybody to agree to anything you ask for unless it’s under threat of absolute destruction.
To do that you would have to be at a level of International Bad-Ass which has never been reached.
You would have to be Untouchable.
The hijackers on 9/11 demonstrated for us that hell no, we ain’t untouchable.
But if we negotiate constantly in bad faith, our word as a nation means absolutely NOTHING, it would inevitably inspire people to negotiate with us at gunpoint… that is, THEM pointing the guns.
Or failing the ability to negotiate that way, simply saying “screw negotiating, we’re all going to die sooner or later anyway, why not just fuck these dudes up really really badly while we’re cashing out”…
And they throw airplanes at our buildings.
Way to GO! Ronnie and George and Rush, you and your socially retarded gang of thugs have already bought us a few nasty terrorist attacks.
Gosh, George and Rush, you must have felt a huge surge of pride when those towers fell, knowing you helped it to happen.
So, now, the one general Bush could find willing to be his bag-man and “take one for the Team” is apparently not happy taking one for the Team, and taking another one for the Team, and then taking another one…
Apparently, the Surge is not working as splendiferously as Mr Bush lies to us. It’s gotten so bad the trained liars are circumventing the story by screaming about shit that means absolutely nothing, but does keep our minds off the fact that the situation in Iraq sucks much dog. And now even Petraeus is saying it.
The latest “scandal! Outrage! there must be Blood shed!” is about a presidential candidates preacher saying that (gasp!) there’s RACISM IN AMERICA!
Hard to follow an act like that. WC Fields or Foy or one of those Last of the Vaudevilleans, great actors, said you should never try to follow an act involving animals or children. I guess the Chimp and his ministry of Lies kinda qualify as both.
But the slaughter goes on… sure, you can keep the boot heel firmly on the necks of the conquered, provided you’re willing to spend the economy of your entire nation to do it.
Then one day, you have to let up, you can’t keep the boot heel on the neck forever. Physical and logistical impossibility.
But it’s not really as sad and pathetic as it seems…
actually, it’s much much worse…
Maybe that’s part of the reason Bush is willing to put the already overstretched military, most of the combat-ready brigades are already in the line of fire, in the line of Further and More intense Fire with his really stupid idea to jump a nation with 5 times the population of the nation they can’t govern effectively.
Some of the Military in town here have called this “sedition” to say things like that.
The actual charge of sedition is to teach the violent overthrow of the government and laws of the united states.
George Bush has not only TAUGHT this doctrine, he and his Gang of Thugs have accomplished it. And put in place a system wherein they might be able to make their Terroristic Dictatorship permanent.
Soldiers and Airmen read this, I know because when I first looked for the blog (not knowing the name) I googled “camp casey colorado springs” and got a discussion forum for soldiers, who were saying that we are seditious.
Fellas, your Commander in Thief is the one committing sedition. You guys swore the same oath I did, and incidentally, the one Bush swore once when he joined the National Guard and twice as POTUS, to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign AND Domestic. That would be the same Constitution he and his group of thugs Openly Declared they would eliminate, by whatever means they considered necessary. The one Bush called “just a piece of goddamned paper” in one of his Imperial Hissie Fits when he was informed that the actions he was proposing were unconstitutional.
He wants to use you as instruments of his Imperial Will, and is willing to make a burnt offering of YOUR blood in the sands of Arabia, but, if you notice, not HIS blood.
To deny this, or denounce this, you first have to read it. Some of your officers will want to suppress this idea by mocking it into disappearing. Or use your muscle to Threaten it into disappearing.
The Romans tried that with Judaism and Christianity.
How’d that work out for y’all?
And I say that because you are the heirs to that empire. Have fun trying to destroy an idea.
You’ll drive yourselves mad trying.
Ask your General with the name of a Roman Legionnaire.
Ask your president whose foreign policy is an exact copy of that offered by Emperor Caligula “Let them hate, so long as they Fear”.
The Vincent email has come around again, like flu season, hoping to cast Stutterin’ George Dubya in a pious light. Though it reads like Reader’s Digest bad fiction, even urban myth, the author is authentic, the event is factual, but of course a private moment with George cannot be corroborated. Who knows, the devotional lingo may be the story Vincent had to tell his wife, to cover for a Jeff Guckert/Gannon blue dress affair, if we’ve learned anything about Republicans.
What utter tripe. We’ve all of us looked into Dubya’s eyes enough to know there’s no there there, nothing but air. What reason is there these days to be circulating such a fawning pre-election 2004 profile of Bush? I think folk are trying to rationalize their support of their previous election year candidate. History has already sized up George Bush. I doubt even Bush’s biographer will argue that this president is not the alcoholic, half-wit tool of thieving, war profiteering, war criminals.
About any notion of Bush’s depth or spirituality, I have to point to the interview he gave his friend and fellow reprobate Tucker Carlson for Talk Magazine in 1999 (now reprinted in the National Review) where he made fun of condemned killer Karla Faye Tucker. Declining to offer clemency to the reformed Tucker, Bush mocked her supposed plea by mimicking her voice and pursing his lips: “Please don’t kill me!”
Our country is disgraceful under the direction of its current misleaders, and no more so than in what has become of the public schools under George Bush’s control. Parents Urge High School to Reverse Expulsions for Students Who Held ‘Day of Dead’ Iraq War Protest
Please sign their petition, and go to as many District 11 School Board meetings as you can, and give the jerks running Colorado Springs public schools hell for the crappy job they are doing.
Next school board election we need some much better candidates to choose from. I still have the ballot in my hand for the current election and it makes me want to cry. Is this really the only local material we have to choose from at this time?
Thank God for the high school students at Morton East High School in Cicero, Illinois and the ones in Boulder, Colorado, too! They deserve all the support we can give them. We need to send these dumb ass administrators a petition with a million or so names on it. Educate the ‘educators’ now!
Quietly, with little mention in the press, the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive was signed in May 2007. This directive places all governmental power in the hands of the President in the case of a catastrophic emergency (as defined by him alone). It also allows him to take control of the private and nonprofit sectors. It effectively abolishes the checks and balances built into the Constitution and demolishes the Bill of Rights. This is, of course, necessary to keep us safe in case of a national disaster. The “Unitary Executive” would be able to act quickly and decisively, without any interference from those other two annoying branches of government, slow-moving and contentious as they are.
Our Constitution has never been about efficiency. The checks and balances built into it were created to keep any one individual or branch of government from having unilateral power. It lays the groundwork for a democracy, not for a well-oiled machine.
George Bush has shown extreme disdain for the Constitution, the very document he swore to uphold. He has vetoed only a handful of bills while in office, but he has attached signing statements to more than a thousand, clearly indicating scorn for Congress and his commitment to enforce only the laws he chooses. He has taken bills designed to protect the American public and has amended them to be used against us. Congress recently handed Zippy even more power by passing the Police America Act 2007. He has stripped us of our right to privacy, our right against unreasonable search and seizure, our right to due process. All in the name of the fighting terror.
We already know that President “Hyperbole” Bush is a master of exaggeration, if not outright prevarication. He and his oil buddy, Cheney, lied to get us into Iraq. They’ve lied to keep us in Iraq. Long ago they planned to get their hands on all of that beautiful unctuous black gold under the desert. They are not about to cede power to a successor until they’ve gotten the goods. What terrible national catastrophe is up his sleeve that will enable him to retain power?
I won’t speculate about what the catastrophe will be, but WorldNetDaily.com reported yesterday that the administration has been authorized to set up civilian prisons at military installations, something that has not been done in our country since the WWII Japanese internment camps. Under international law, internment camps are used in times of war to incarcerate large groups of people deemed to be enemies or “belligerents,” indefinitely and without trial, of course. Hasn’t Bush already warned us that if we are not with him, then we are with the terrorists? Read the handwriting on the wall.
When the occupant of the highest office in the land decides what the law is, singlehandedly, we no longer live in a democratic society. We live under a dictator, the Unitary Executive. While we were sleeping, Zippy the Monkey’s big dream of being THE Decider has been realized. We are basically living in an autocracy. The Founding Fathers are turning over and over in their graves. But few of the living seem to care.
Prepare yourself for the war with Iran. Prepare yourself for the impending terrorist attack. Prepare for the national catastrophe that will allow the Unitary Executive to suspend the 2008 election and stay in power indefinitely.
Just watch. He’ll do it. He’s the DECIDER. We gave him that power. And he’s willing and able to use it.
Escaping tyranny by sailing to the New World was a temporary fix. A ghost has come back to haunt us. We have another King George.
In the past six years, George Bush has sought to accumulate all governing powers into one place, his grubby hands. Bush has repeatedly violated the Constitution’s command that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” by breaking many and refusing to enforce others. The Constitution grants Congress the power to make laws; after both houses pass a bill, the President can only sign it or veto it. Bush, however, takes a different tack. He has vetoed just three bills, then quietly attached “signing statements” to more than 1,000 congressional laws, indicating his intent to follow only those parts with which he agrees. He flouts the law every chance he gets. Usually with a stupid grin on his face.
The King’s latest blatant power grab, the Protect America Act 2007 (PAA), revises the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA was passed in 1978 in response to Tricky Dick and the FBI’s unlawful surveillance of critics of national policy and other political enemies. FISA required that a panel of judges grant permission to an administration to spy on individuals within the U.S. Surveillance would only be allowed if the judges could be convinced that the communications to be monitored were exclusively those of foreign powers and that there was no substantial likelihood that an American would be overheard. FISA was designed to protect us from the government, not the other way around.
Not surprisingly, this new act takes the power to approve spying out of the hands of the judges and gives it the the Attorney General. Currently the highly esteemed Alberto Gonzales. An old friend of the King’s. A known lackey. It also requires telephone companies to collect data and turn it over to the Feds. And, of course, grants them immunity from lawsuits. Our brave and noble Congress passed this bullshit legislation with nary a whimper. Behavior we’ve come to expect from our “representatives.”
Protect America, my ass. To say that this shocking theft of our freedom is to save us from terrorists, from Al Qaeda, is a frank lie. Terrorists are well-trained. They move with stealth. They have face-to-face meetings. They don’t call each other’s cell phones and chitchat about the latest and greatest plans. Our government is well aware of this. No, PAA is directed at us. The American public. Especially those of us who slander the dictator.
King George is simply a tyrant.
President Bush & Co make much ado about staying the course in Iraq because he’d rather fight them there than fight them at here at home. What remains unclarified is that we are fighting them here already.
Since the advent of the Predator drone, and now the much deadlier Reaper, the US has military personnel, at home, looking into video monitors, controlling the remote robotic killing machines, and pulling the trigger. They are fighting the war from here.
How is that different from NORAD monitoring our missile defenses, or Buckley eavesdropping on everyone? Not much perhaps, except that those are support services and not the front line. It means to me that if Joe Mohammed is under attack by our forces and the soldier looking down the barrel at him is sitting in Indian Springs, Nevada, the only way Mohammed can prevent from being fired upon is to address the machine gun nest in Nevada.
We’ve all seen the movie scene, a squadron is pinned down by a thorny and concealed enemy machine-gunner. A volunteer is sought to sneak up the ridge and lob a grenade into the enemy fortification. The mission is heralded as being sheer suicide, but somebody’s got to do it for our guys to move forward. In reality many posthumous Medals of Honor have been awarded for just that job.
Under international rules of engagement wouldn’t Mohammed’s recourse to target Nevada be justified? Our government certainly justifies doing it all the time from warships. We even justify large civilian casualties as collateral damage to our military imperatives. When they do it, it’ll be in self defense.
The drones fly too high for RPGs, the satellites are of course unreachable, the only link accessible is the control room pillbox, 30 miles outside Las Vegas. How surprising that security reports find that the American homeland is becoming a more likely target for “terrorists.”
George Bush and the US military have placed the American people in the direct line of fire. They have brought the battlefield home, at the same time claiming it’s what they want to prevent.
Cindy Sheehan has been grieving a long time, and this Memorial Day after the capitulation of the Democratic Party legislators in Congress was particularly rough. But it is more than that. The pain is made even worse by how inactive so many rank and file Democratic Party voters are in opposing this war.
At street vigils we see this, too. So many liberal minded folk wave and honk their horns in support of our vigil, but then it seems that they never get out of their cars to be the protesters, and not just the driver by-ers. After a while, this becomes disheartening.
We hope that Cindy gets her spirits back up and rejoins the activist antiwar movement after some family time off. She deserves the best, and she has given America her best. Here is her last commentary about how despairing she now feels. Many feel the same alongside her.
We are sad to see it be so, but when push comes to shove, the Democratic Party is not to be relied on. Cindy Sheehan tried to push the Democratic Party into action, but the corporate controllers resisted. She is not the first, and will not be the last to fail in such a project.
Good Riddance Attention Whore
by Cindy Sheehan
I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes.
I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”
I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?
Brit Marines Update… New yet somewhat old twist, the British Marines are alleging coercion in their “confessions” and the Iranians are denying it, but the Iranians are also quietly (or just not as loudly reported as the British story) saying that their diplomats who were seized in Iraq were tortured by the CIA, and the CIA in typical pig fashion is saying “Yeah, that’s what they ALL say…”
Of course the CIA and other pigs in America have lobbied hard to keep torture “legal” for them under the TRAITOR ACT but still denying that torture would actually ever be used…
And of course, according to Guardian,Georgie Porgie offered the overstretched American military up for sacrifice to “take aggressive action” against Iran, like having US Air Force “peace” planes buzz Iranian bases,…
Cowboy “diplomacy” at it’s worst and the British for once stood up to him, told him to basically sod off… but in a nice kind of way.
Apparently he was hoping the Iranians would fire on “his” airplanes piloted by “his” troops (only he uses the Royal/Editorial “We” and “Our”), in order to spark the war “we” want so bad.
Nice job supporting the troops, there, Bushie Boy… get some pilots killed for YOUR purpose, which by a bizarre co-incidence happens to be getting even MORE AMERICANS and of course, Iranians, British, you know, insignificant people who don’t count because they’re people who don’t happen to be George Bush… KILLED.
The duplicity accusation is excusable for people who have never faced trying to voice dissent with urgency. You want to play the game by the rules? Go apply for a permit to march with a message of peace in a pro-war parade. Have the organizer tell you no. Hire a lawyer to write him a letter, threatening to sue if you are not permitted to join the parade. Receive his lawyer’s response. No. It’s a private affair, you are not invited. Have your lawyer write another letter, citing the legal precedence in parades in other cities that were sued successfully for discriminating against minority views. Receive another formal reply calling your bluff.
Okay. File papers with a court and sue the organizer. Six months, a year. Maybe win, maybe with a conservative judge, you lose. Take it all the way to the Supreme Court even. That used to mean that the nation’s best minds would apply themselves to serve justice. These days it can mean that George Bush is declared winner of an election he stole.
Meanwhile the war in Iraq, the cause in dire need of your message, rages on.
The courts do not favor the voice of dissent. Anyone who wants to run the battle for freedom of expression through the court system has money to burn, has a delirious notion of the nobility of our judicial system, and is completely out of touch with what the dissenting voices are raised against: injustice and bloody-murder.
The helpful citizen who wants to tell the eyewitness to a mugging that he must regulate his cries for help according to local noise ordinances is very plainly a jerk, and quite possibly a criminal.
Were we trying on St Patrick’s Day to call attention to the crime of war-making? Absolutely. Were we trying to change anyone’s opinion? Naw. We were crying out to the 70% of Americans who want peace and may be timid about expressing it. If you are among those who don’t think a crime is being committed, get out of the way unless you want to be counted an accessory to mass murder.
Because some have expressed disdain at the mere thought of being considered right wing apologists… aka people who wish to accommodate and justify right wing philosophy, here are a few things to remember: Catchwords and phrases, talking points, something you might see on a bumper sticker; using these will probably get you tagged as a right wing loon. And in at least some cases the tag would fit perfectly.
examples: Love it or leave it (one recently) The Police are always right, If you have done nothing wrong why would you fear the police?, Support Our Troops, These Colors Never Run.
Recycling myths like: left wing liberals were the reason we lost in Nam… FALSE. Right Wing planners like Westmoreland, Johnson, Nixon, Al Hague, and the “Super Patriots” who supported them, were much more of a coherent and consistent reason for the loss of the VietNam War by the United States. The new crop of such losers is causing America to be drawn into yet another defeat.
Also contributing much to the American loss in VietNam was the courage and resourcefulness of the VietMinh, that’s Charley to some…
For those who don’t remember anything about it, these guys used a mix of primitive and modern technologies, small arms, improvised explosives and equipment taken from American, Australian, French and South Vietnamese soldiers, tactics which were also a mix of ancient and modern, to defeat the above named governments, even against a Shock and Awe campaign of greater magnitude than the one currently being played in Iraq.
Also like Iraq, there was never a war declared between the United States and The Democratic Republic (Hanoi).
Much as it pisses off those who see the POWs as uncompromising heroes, (some were) and the Hanoi Hilton as a hellhole, (it was) it should also be remembered that the Hanoi Hilton is about a standard in third world jails. And since the North Vietnamese didn’t do a “show trial” followed by an execution every time they captured an American airman, the treatment they accorded the Americans was one hell of a lot better than that accorded to the VietCong prisoners by the Saigon government.
a lot of Americans will scream loudly that American soldiers didn’t torture captured Charleys. Given the readiness these same people have shown to rationalize torture at Gitmo and worse places, i tend to doubt that. Probably not widespread but not nonexistent either.
But on the other hand, the Saigon government DID torture and summarily execute captured “terrorists” “rebels” “insurgents”.
Leave us remind everybody that the Americans captured in North VietNam and Cambodia and Laos had exactly the same legal status as the captured Charleys had in the South. No more, no less.
It was a combination of supporting an openly repressive government and the determination and resourcefulness of the “enemy” that dashed the American intervention in SE Asia.
The same things that are now dragging down America in South WEST Asia.
Empires are destined to fall, usually very soon after they are declared to be Empires. Such as the one declared by George Bush Senior when he proclaimed a New World Order, which is being dishonorably carried on by his son, King George the Incredibly Stupid.
Another talking point is that VietNam and Iraq were fought for American freedom.
They were not, nor has any war in which America has been engaged since 1814. To say otherwise is to propagate a myth, if you believe that myth, if you know it is false but say it anyway it is ramped up all the way to a Deliberate Lie.
The military did not fight for our freedom, they did not give us our freedom, or our rights, we do NOT OWE them our obedience, or the willing surrender of our rights.
Especially annoying (not to mention stupid) is the repeated attempt to make us believe that Freedom means we are free to do as we are told, to say only what we are allowed to say, and that we have some moral obligation to support the wars started by people who have anointed themselves our “Leaders”.
Some of my fellow Christians are of the strong delusion that God has commanded us to obey George Bush because he is supposedly “OUR” King.
This particular myth was also used by the Tories to denounce the Continental Congress and the rebels in the army during the Revolution.
It was shouted from pulpits across the Colonies by pastors, who, like Ted Haggard and Benny Hinn and Franklin Graham and Dobson… had sold their priesthood and their souls to a tyrant.
Here’s a quick formula to remember Shock and Awe = the use of fear as a weapon = Terrorism.
The proponents of Shock and Awe, like George and his supporters, are therefore Terrorists.
You don’t like that, try beating it out of me, and all the while try to forget that that too, is Terrorism.
The American media and government have begun a campaign to blame Iran for the chaos and destruction that now exists in Iraq. The storyline goes that all would be OK, but only if the Shia were to behave.
The US public is pretty damn ignorant of anything that goes on in the Middle East, always has been, and there are no signs on the horizon to make anybody think that this will ever change. However this new line of total bullshit from our imperialist misleaders really is too much to take, even by the most demented American Right Winger.
Last I heard the US has suffered less than 5,000 casualties in 2 wars with Iraq. The Iranians though, suffered 1,000,000 casualties and $350,000,000,000 dollars in losses due to a war started by Sunni run Iraq and its Sunni Arab allies, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1980. The US government of Ronald Reagan with George Bush Senior acting as the Dick Cheney of that era, solidly was behind the effort to ‘punish’ Iran for having overthrown the US backed despot, the Shah of Iran. Donald Rumsfeld, the Reagan and Bush emissary, was busy pumping Saddam’s hand in support late 1983, flat in the middle of that aggression against Iran.
In short, the Sunnis have screwed up Iraq for over 1/4 century now and screwed over Iran, too. And they could not have done the damage they did without the consistent complicity of the Bush family in support of that destruction. For more info (since they didn’t teach this history at your school), check out ‘Iraq Iran War’ over at wikipedia.
It looked for a while that the Bush Administration would use WOMD as their excuse to attack Iran. Then came along all the rhetoric that Iran was led by anti-Jewish leaders who were rearing to go at Israel with nuclear weapons. Then Iran was accused of destabilizing Lebanon, as if the US and israel had not done that themselves. But at last, we get to the current grand lie that the US media is using to sell Bush’s new strategy to regionalize the war to Iran and Syria. It can be summed up as, ‘Don’t blame US for the mess in Iraq, Iran did it! We going to kick their ass!’
The beauty of this line of unreason by the US government is that it not only takes all the blame of Bush and his cronies for the debacle there in Iraq, it takes the blame of the Iraqis themselves. For weeks Bush and all the gang have been blaming Iraqis for what has befallen them, with statements that US ‘patience’ was not unlimited and blah, blah, blah. There were exhortations that the Iraqis must get their act together, etc. The US ruling class love to think of themselves as the adults, and their colonial victims as children! Bad Iraqis! Go to your room now! But that line of crap was getting quite old real fast with the American and world public.
So with this new propaganda blitz to encourage the American dummy to support yet more bloodshed in the Middle East, it’s just great to be able to blame, get this, Iranian Muslim militancy for what’s gone wrong in Iraq.
“Shucks, Folks. We done nothing wrong. I take full responsibility, it’s the Iranians that are attacking our troops that done the damage, not I, George Bush.” How clever! So let’s go bomb them!
One of the most incredible nonsense possible to see, is the bipartisan pretense that the US is there to help Iraqis out. Hell we’re not there for our own health, but because the Iraqis need us. Damn Iranians now messing that up! How dare they interfere in their neighboring country, when we have come halfway from around the world to show the dumb Arabs how to build democracy. “Stay out, you terrorist bastards! Our patience is limited. You attack our troops, as we know you are already doing, and we’ll nuke you before you can develop nucler weapons!”
The fun thing about this new threat to National Security that must be blown up, is the Hollywood will now get to make new movies where American heroes (one Black, and the other White) now will get to route out and shoot down Persian terrorists, instead of the Pentagon standard Arab ones! This will be the White House inspired movie script… US soldier super-heroes save innocent Iraqi children’s lives from Persian super-villians, who are on the verge of killing them all off with chemical weapons, even as they laughingly munch on Gi Joe’s candy handouts. Thank you, US Department of Defense.
Don’t blame Bush, Iran did it! So we’ll have to blow them up, too. Shop till you drop, American consumers. Or, Stop Escalation
Democrats are storming Congress, threatening the Neocon oligarchy, and the MSM directs its spotlights to a sideshow: Obama! Do you worry about who’s running for president in 2008? There’s supposed to be plenty change afoot right now in the center ring.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
And please do not choose the 2008 straw men for us. Do not tell voters that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the Democrats’ best offerings. Obama is an impressive individual, certainly a non-commital politician, so let’s give him a few years to prove his effectiveness. He only became a senator in 2004. As yet we only know he’s qualified for the Tony Robbins circuit. Let’s let Obama look us up in 2016. Until then we’ve got to pick someone electible, not someone the GOP/media wants to sell us as our Last White Hope.
George Bush’s latest sales pitch to the American public highlighted for me the extreme entrenchment of corporate media. They ran nothing but interference for Bush, prepping their audiences to receive Dubya’s message well lubed. It didn’t work, and I hope the networks’ glad-handling showed.
The will of the people is overtaking congress and the land, and the media are going to proclaim otherwise until we pry the microphones from their cold dead buttholes.
The Dallas, Texas business community, my mother, and President Bush have teamed up to help me out financially. For years my liberal mother has threatened her sons with the possibility that she would donate a sizable sum of money to Dallas’s Southern Methodist University in her will. 
She went to school there and it was the best time of her life. But, she says, the university has changed, and instead of being a center of learning as it once was for her, in short it has become a creature captured by the Dallas super-rich.
Corruption seems to swirl around this university. Edwiin L. Cox Jr., son of the man whose name is attached to SMU’s now acclaimed Cox School of Business, had to be pardoned by George Bush Sr. for financial crimes he was convicted of. In return, Cox Sr. donated a hefty sum of money to that president’s Texas A&M’s presidential library shortly thereafter. But that is not what SMU is most noted for in the field of corporate corruption.
The most notable example of it, was when the Dallas business rich increasingly began to buy football players for the team. This went on despite repeated warnings and sanctions from the NCAA through the years, but the business community, alumni, and SMU coaches kept at it. Eventually, the shit hit the fan when the NCAA made SMU the first ever university to receive its ‘death penalty’. The varsity football program was closed down entirely for several years, and a program with a rich history has now become a minor player in college ranks.
But the latest scandal there is the decision by the big Whigs to make SMU the site of the George Dubya Bush presidential library. This is the type of thing that Dallas’s already most sorry political reputation certainly doesn’t need. Even some of the university’s conservative Theological Department are quite aghast and have protested this decision. The local daily paper has tried to play down the public reaction to the recent announcement that this ‘honor’ had been granted the city and Soutern Methodist, but the site of the library will be quite appropriate IMO. Southern Methodist sits inside a rich, White segreGated, suburban enclave, entirely surrounded by multicultural Dallas. Isn’t this the purest essence of Bush though? So what’s to protest? lol
Still, my mother sees this insult as the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She has written the university and told them that she has now taken them out of her will. Thanks, Mom! And thank you, George W. Bush Mom, you’re doing the right thing!
See, there is some justice still in the world. And maybe also some day, both Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush (both Texas Oilys) will be publicly hung for their crimes on the steps of the George W. Bush presidential library, of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas? We can only hope that their heads will soon roll, and in what better place than within the segreGated Park Cities enclave of Dallas, Texas, at Southern Methodist University? It would be presidential! Go Mustangs!
Though long delayed, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission is coordinating an action for January 11. We’re going to petition our Senators Allard and Salazar to end US torture and to close down Guantanamo. Cindy Sheehan is visiting Cuba to make that plea and efforts are being coordinated nationwide to call for an end to torture.
Now January 11 will be the day after George Bush’s announcement to increase troop levels in Iraq, in defiance of the will of the American people.
And of course there is the new issue of the US extra-judicial, undeclared-war bombing of Somalia.
And the new Democratic congress which has opted to abstain from discussing the war(s) until its 100 hour domestic reform agenda.
If any of those issues grab you, join us at 1pm Thursday when we’ll march from the J&P offices to Allard’s and then on to Salazar’s, followed by a car-pool to see Congressman Lamborn. Or join MoveOn and others at 5pm in Acacia Park for an impromptu rally.
Ho ho ho. John Edwards declares himself a candidate for aught eight, counting no doubt on the votes of Virginians who haven’t been told about Santa Claus.
John Edwards, half of the Kerry-Edwards day-after concession speech givers will, instead of doing his upmost to get to the bottom of vote tampering, vote fraud, voter intimidation and obstruction in the 2004 election, will instead ask the Barnum and Bailey crowd to throw their votes at him again.
In a carefully stage-managed photo-op in a black-Ammerican’s backyard, in New Orlean’s still neglected Ninth Ward (for whom he did what exactly?), Edward’s voiced the same middle of the road platitudes which -we’re told- endeared him to the American public the first time. “Let me be clear.” “Let there be no misunderstanding.” Ad infinitum, sin explicity. The Republican strategy in Iraq is wrong, no mention of what could be right. But he wants it firmly understood, so there’s no misunderstanding, it’s so clear it doesn’t need saying, know what I mean, nudge, nudge?
This is the straw man technique used by the Republican yellow press. Put a spotlight on the weakest opponent and pretend he’s the best they got.
No John Edwards, if you’re any bit the patriot at all, step aside and let somebody lead the Democrats to reclaim justice for the people. We do not need your poison pill of Benedict Arnoldry. You are a baby-faced son of a bitch God-damned traitor opportunist carpert bagger fraudster’s shill. Confess now or go down with the rest of them. Fall all the harder for the extra effort your treachery presents.
You could have contested the 2004 vote, if nothing else to bring to light the rigging of American elections by the well-placed Republican voting officials and their black-box contractor cohorts. You could have spent some of the Democratic Party funds earmarked for the fight instead of capitulating and forcing appalled Americans throw in even more contributions to aid the likes of Bev Harris and independent party candidates challenge the voting irregularities. Instead you handed George Bush the keys to the hen house, with already thousands burning inside it, and slithered away to surface another day, Christmas 2006, to ask for a chance to do it again. Fat chance Mr. Edwards, no promotion for you, you’ve been very bad elf.
Remember Dan Quayle? George Bush the Senior had a wimp factor to deal with, and had to select a running mate that wouldn’t eclipse him in the alpha department. He found that little man in J “with an e” Dan Quayle? I thought it was the same thing Nixon saw in Gerald Ford.
It can now be revealed that Gerald Ford gave an interview to Bob Woodward in which he expressed his opposition to the Bush conquest of Iraq. Ford offered his opinion with the proviso that it be kept under wrap until after his death. Or after 650,000+ Iraqi deaths, whichever came first.
Gerald Ford, Nixon apologist and doofus godparent of the present Whitehouse cabal, is now, thank goodness, dead. May he be remembered with clarity for what he did.
While I welcome any politician’s weighing in against the War in Iraq, I can’t myself give credit for anybody’s post mortem confessions, even deathbed remorse. Ford’s true opinion on the matter, like Robert McNamara’s long postponed show of contrition, comes too late.
Would it be anti-Semitism to make note that the US entertainment industry is predominated by Jews? Studio heads, producers, financiers are disproportionately Jewish, fair to say? Television, newspapers, publishing houses, quite a number headed by Jews. We could throw in the fashion industry, department stores, talent agencies, advertising agencies, financial institutions, it seems so stereotypical, but it is oddly true. The head start which Jews got during Christianity’s Dark Ages when no one but a Jew could a lender be, has set people of Jewish lineage well ahead in the world of commerce. Businesses can have an air of waspness, as the Bourgeoisie always did, but behind them, financing them, were Jews. It is not defamatory to make this observation, is it? No disrespect intended toward Jews.
It’s like pointing out that due in no small part to the African-American heritage having involved the selective breeding of slaves, Black athletes now dominate every professional sport in their hood. Of late, even golf. This is not racist talk, it’s straight talk.
So let’s address the Jewish lock on the US communications industry. It looks waspish, all the talking heads, the fat men, are wasps, but the money men are Jews. On the TV, rarely is any fun made of Jews, or Israel. The Israeli lobby can dominate our congress but the media is not going to tell us about it. Our TVs can make fun of Evangelicals, lampoon all priests as pedophiles, browbeat black welfare mothers, but Jews are inviolate. Is it because Jews have editorial control? Who knows.
When something like the Mel Gibson outburst happens, I can’t help but wonder how complex this gets. Gibson’s drunken tantrum didn’t have to make the news, in fact the police tried to downplay it. Instead the media ran with it, making Mel Gibson a household joke. Why? He would seem to be a valuable media property, why tarnish it? Later when I saw the release of Apocalypto, with Mel Gibson’s name getting top billing, I had to wonder whether the anti-Semitic rant was tarnish at all. Maybe in some ways it made Gibson more popular. Maybe it enhanced the box office for Apocalypto.
Then I heard a pundit criticizing the excessive media coverage of Gibson’s tirade compared to the lesser media coverage of Hezb’Allah’s simultaneous rampage against Israel. That false comparison hit a note for me. The media hadn’t failed to report Israel’s travails facing rocket attacks, what they failed to cover was Israel’s assault on Lebanon and Israel’s pledge to bomb ten buildings in Beirut for every Hezb’Allah rocket that struck an Israeli. The media failed to report the Lebanese civilians being massacred out of all proportion to the Israeli soldiers killed. It failed to report the secret raids in Palestine under cover of the assault on Lebanon. The media continues to underreport the targeted assassinations of Lebanese and Palestinian politicians, duly elected, with whom Israel does not want to deal.
But in the midst of all the non-reporting on Lebanon, word was still filtering out about Israel’s atrocities. It was coming mostly over the internet, via international news sources, but the truth was reaching many Americans. By the time Mel Gibson made his drunken anti-Semitic rant, a good number of Americans were coming to see that an Israeli-driven blood-bath was being perpetrated in the Middle East and American Jews were providing cover, even defending it. In a sense, as Israeli atrocities escalated, someone was bound to decry it. And it came in the form of a drunken Mel Gibson. And the media seized on it.
Kinda like the emperor parading naked, his handlers looking nervously around hoping that no one breaks decorum. But a young boy is bound to speak up unless you can preempt it with a moment you can manage. Instead of a boy, a stooge, speaking what everyone dares think, but a stooge easily discredited. Archie Bunker drunk, instead of Michael Wallace stone sober. Thus the media can address the issue of the anti-Israel backlash as anti-Semitism and not the issue of Israeli genocide in Lebanon and Palestine.
Karl Rove did this with George Bush’s cocaine rap in college. Rove knew the police records would come up, so he leaked them to a reporter whom Rove knew could be discredited. St Martin’s Press published the facts in Favorite Son, Rove stepped out to reveal the JB Hatfield’s dubious past. Immediately St Martin’s Press voluntarily withdrew all copies and burned them. Bush’s arrest for cocaine possession, very likely drug dealing, and the community service he received at a time when possession of marijuana would land prison time, simply went away.
Oh, Favorite Son was republished, and the facts circulate online, but the media didn’t and doesn’t cover it. You’d think they’d like a great story. I’m always reminded of why most of TV shows are so dumb, because they make the commercials look brilliant. That is, after all, the business of televison
I am not suggesting that Mel Gibson is part of a media conspiracy. Not in the least. I am suggesting that how the media choses to shape a story, whether to tell it or not, how to tell it, is certainly conspiratorial. Conspiracy is a loaded term because it’s become a discredited term. A handful of media entities colluding to shape a story is not a conspiracy anymore than you deciding to organize a surprise birthday party for a coworker would be a conspiracy. In your case, there’s a clear common interest in keeping the party a secret and you do it. In the case of a media conglomerate owners who decide what news may or may not hurt their common friend Israel, it doesn’t take a conspiracy to agree on a common cause. Show only Israelis worrying about rocket attacks, don’t show the half million cluster bombs left in Lebanon to snare curiosity-killed toddlers.
And when there’s a undercurrent brewing up in America, bursting to decry the Israeli murderers and their apologist Jews at home, point the camera at one who’s famous, maybe mildly sympathetic, drunk of course so it’ll be forgivable and let him rant. Next in front of everyone slap his wrists to teach how unseemly it is to be brnaded anti-Semitic. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt Gibson much, remember the adage, no such thing as bad publicity. When Apocalypto comes around, Gibson’s name will still draw. And Apocalypto’s message will work even better on the dumb white supremacists who thought his rant was serious.
It’s not anti-Semitic to condemn Israel for its campaign of genocide and apartheid in Palestine and Lebanon. It’s not anti-Semitic to point at the Israeli influence over our government’s actions. It’s not anti-Semitic or defamatory to accuse American Jews of uncritical support of colonial Zionism. It is not a case for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League to ask the American Jews underwriting our media to stop lying to themselves and us.