Iraq shoe thrower’s jail term cut! …Now, at long last, we do see a small change coming about in the US occupation of Iraq because of the election of Barack Obama! A man who terrorized McGeorge the Clown will be freed early thanks to Abraham Obama!
It only goes to show that Allah U Akbar! In God We Trust
Hold your fucking horses of the Apocalypse! Can you believe this red, white, our colors don’t smell, shit? An Iraqi fighter is sentenced to hang for killing three US soldiers? We’re condemning normal acts of war because they make American crimes look bombastic in comparison? The crime committed in this case, is a military injustice.
Why charge this Iraqi? For killing his US adversaries in 2006, or for showing unsportsmanlike behavior in how he killed them? Do we hold the same standard for our killers in uniform? Do we overlook the conduct of US predator/reaper drone virtual-pilots sniping at foreign civilians from video consoles stateside?
The world has been shown that US soldiers can kill, rape, burn, torture, go on homicidal rampages, on duty or off, and pass go, and collect $200. Our private mercenaries are allowed to do worse apparently, and not even the Iraqi people can object.
In fact, negotiations on the US lease agreement of occupied Iraq have stalled over the Iraqi demands to be able to hold US soldiers accountable for crimes they commit at least while not on official duty. Forget on. Those are war crimes. Those crimes will be accountable one day to a world court, and there’s no statute of limitations. Speaking of which, prosecuting an enemy for his right to defend himself and his homeland is in itself a war crime. The Iraqi insurgent resistance fighters and the Iraqi people are protected by the laws of war. Iraq is an occupied country, trying to fend off its invaders.
To execute this Iraqi will be a further war crime, but what care we? In for a penny, in for 1.2 million Iraqis. Sue us.
The corporate press is already ablaze about the coming Bush speech timed to September 11, and say that the theme will be about Iraq.
That is not the most likely scenario though about what the theme of this speech will be about, coming as it is from the ‘decider’, the aircraft carrier flak jacket dressed strutter, and the man who has played so well, the role, of being Oily Dick Cheney’s vice president.
The Democratic Party, for their part, has done their part well to make Bush’s speech next week a success. They have already endorsed Bush’s plan through funding it, propagandizing for it, and to shaking the hands and hugging their supposed political opponents, The Republicans, in mass.
The Democrats are not about to now begin to oppose the American oil industry’s president either. They, too, dare not oppose Dick Cheney and his mannequin puppet, Dubya. They are not now about to start opposing the US attacking Iran.
Just like Saddam Hussein and his non-existent WOMD were made the fall guys for Bin Laden’s attack on the Pentagon and Trade Towers, Iran will now be blamed for the mess that The Klan have made of occupied Iraq. It’s their fault! Pakistan is to blame, too, for how bad the occupation of Afghanistan is going, and those mullahs in Iran are to blame for why the GIs are not beloved in Iraq. I’m surprised that Middle East Muslims are not blamed for the state of New Orleans today even! Hallelujah Jesus for miracles!
This all makes me think back of how ‘world Jewry’ was once cast as being the cause of all problems German. Those Jews back then looked quite dirty and sinister, just like Osama bin Laden looks today. Actually his most recent press photos look much better than the true picture of his long dead corpse does. But he is alive, of course. This we are never to doubt.
Alive for the Pentagon-fed, corporate press bullshitters to parrot to the dumbed down American public about how evil he is with his bad Muhammad pedophile role of constant American hating. Exactly as they are expected to do to get their Murdoch pay checks, these knaves, murderers, and lying Pentagon-fed media whores are doing their constant ‘patriotic’ part. Green light, yellow light, Red! All fall down, all put your hands over your hearts, and pray and Pledge Allegiance to the American flag… That’s the news tonight.
The Justice and Peace group here in Colorado Springs just marginally passed even doing anything in protest this 9/11! And most of the officer/office staff/ ministerial staff and church choir may not even go to this activity of protesting the local corporate war dogs! This attitude, too, on the eve of The Pentagon’s probable mobilization to bomb the total hell out of Iran!
Statement regarding The City of Colorado Springs’ responsibility for its police attack on the Saint Patrick’s Day peace marchers
As has now been widely reported, the citizens that decided to march in the peace section of the city’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade were violently dispersed by city police officers. Many of us received no notice at all to disperse, let alone a reason for why the already paid permit for was being declared invalid. What process or procedure was there in place for revoking this permit, other than the police telling us to get off the city street in an abrupt manner?
Our only ‘notice’ for most of us, was actually to turn and see some of our friends and companions being manhandled by police officers, wrestled brutally to the ground, and threatened with tasers and choke and pressure holds. Most of the officers involved gave no verbal identification of themselves, and it was hard to see any name tags in this abrupt melee instigated by city police officers.
The City of Colorado Springs police acted in reckless disregard to our rights, our health, and appeared to relish the opportunity to stick peaceful people in a heavily tax subsidized city event, with criminal charges, instead of engaging in trying to resolve an issue in a way where nobody would be hurt.
What was especially egrarious to us, was the fact that officers in their 20s and 30s were assaulting people principally in their 60s and 70s, in front of children, some below the age of 10. Why was this done? What real and solid rules had been supposedly broken by us? Why the millisecond notice and in this rough a manner?
Afterwards, some of us made efforts to look for the rules we had been charged in the media with breaking. We looked for literature and we looked for web sites that might fill us in with info and guidelines for participation about this event? What we found was nothing. We wondered how was it that in such an unclearly organized event, with an unclearly identified organizer, the police moved in on us like a hurricane?
What we discovered is unsettling. The press afterwards repeatedly declared that police were asked to remove us by ‘event organizers’. Such was the story that city police spokepersons gave. So the search began to find and identify the ‘event organizers’, and to try to find their relationship to the city itself. What we came up with, was that a rather shadowy company called O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc had declared themselves the private party involved. They were in charge of issuing the permits. So we wondered, just what were the costs involved, and did the city itself pay much of the cost of Saint Patrick’s Day? And we also wanted to find out what other events were organized by this company?
What we found, is that the organizers, that call themselves a private company, were not really the priciple oraganizers of events they are involved with in this city at all. In fact, other events supposedly ‘organized’ by O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc were actually mainly organized by the US military, plus local Colorado Spring’s city officials in many different municipal departments, using both federal and local tax monies.
In short, that O’Donnell and O’Donnell’s principle role other than passing out permits, is mainly to pose as private organizers of what are really heavily publicly subsidized events in our area, promoted mainly by government agencies, and having largely a pro-militarism message. In short, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. is nothing much more than a small outsourcing of city and federal organizing projects, events oftentime more paid for by the tax monies contributed by all the citizens of the community than by the few few dollars picked up these hidden individuals posing as private organizers.
For an example of how this operates, ‘The Welcome Home Parade’ ‘organized’ by O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. in 2004, was actually paid for almost entirely by city and federal government moneys, and in fact, like the Saint Patrick’s Day parade itself, was heavily slanted to being pro war/ pro uniform/ pro we support the troops (read war) message. As to taking no ‘social stands’ in public parades , the O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc ‘private’ ghost front for the city actually does take political stands, and that has been consistently pro war, pro militarism, pro military industrial complex.
To give another analogy, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc operates with the public citizens of Colorado Springs, much in the way that Halliburton and other Pentagon fed private contract operators do in US occupied Iraq. Just as Halliburton is nothing more than an extension of US government operations in that country, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. is little more than an outsourced extension of the government of the City of Colorado Springs. In fact, the City of Colorado Springs was more the public provider of where to go for permits, than O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc was themselves. Part of the city building of this celebration, was merely privately outsourced to O’Donnell- O’Donnell, Inc., that’s all.
In short, we reject the legal fiction that the police were responding to a private call to eject ‘gate crashers’ at a private event when they attacked us. We have a right to these public streets, too, especially when an event is in actuality more a municipal government operation than not. And the Saint Patrick’s Day parade is just that.
We demand that the city fully disclose municipal costs for this public event, and disclose publicly how much of the entire bill was paid by the city, and how much was paid for this shadow operation calling itself, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc? Further, we believe that the city has a duty to fully publicize the regulations for participating in an event subsidized by tax dollars.
If guidelines are hidden from easy view, then how can the police ask citizens to abide by rules that have not actually been seen? It is not enough to just have permit purchasers to see, one time in small print, what others cannot ever see for themselves. We are not our brothers keeper, and if a guideline is only shown to one person out of say a hundred, this is not full disclosure of the regulations. Instead of hiding in the shadows, the municipal government of the City of Colorado Springs has a duty to admit its fundamental role in the organization of this annual parade. This they are not yet doing.
We ask that all charges against particpants in this event be dropped, and that the city government fully disclose its financial involvement with O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. Who pays for the policing of this event, the legal procedures against any of those charged with crimes due to this event, the publicity, the office space to issue permits, the costs of interrupting the normal routine of the downtown area, etc.? Certainly it is not the price of the permits paid by participants that does so alone. In fact, in large part, it is the municipal government itself that does, and that’s what makes this more a public sponsored parade than a private one.
Contrary to what some of the media have charged, those pro peace people in our city would no more crash a private event than the overwhelming majority of other Colorado Springs citizens would do. But the Saint Patricks Day parade is hardly much of that, and politicians tooting their own horns, mini-military squadrons of little kids draped out in olive green military fatigues, corporations advertising their commercial products, and all the other manifestations of people making a multitude of ‘social statements’, only underlines the reality of our argument.
This is in fact a public event in large manner publicly funded, and the city police should not try to hide their abusive actions against some participants behind the skirts of a pretense that they were mereley urgently mobilized by a private sponsor that the city government really had mainly outsourced the giving out of participant permission slips to.
Further, we would ask that the individual owner of the shadow company O’Donnel and O’Donnell, Inc., come forth, and together with us and the city government make some small effort to keep this conforntation from becoming a permanently embedded confrontation within our community. What could well have been a small problem solved via a short discussion with the parties involved, now risks becoming yet another permanent festering sore inside our diverse city. There is still time to stop this from happening if there would be the will to do so. The police should drop the 7 charges filed against the pro peace participants, and let us all move on with our lives without further bitterness. We are all deeply divided in how we feel about this war, and we don’t need to add further to that if we can avoid doing so.