Dubya’s Show Trials

The more elderly generation might well remember Stalin’s Show Trials, or the Moscow Show Trials of 1936-37. These show trials brought by the Soviet Communist Party leader of the time, Joseph Stalin, weakened the country right before Hitler’s onslaught. As a result, millions upon millions more of Soviet citizens died that didn’t have to. These show trials of Stalin destroyed patriotic unity when it was most needed.

The supposed reason Stalin gave for the trials was to protect Soviet communism and Soviet citizens, though, and today we have the preparation under way for Dubya’s Show Trials to supposedly protect Americans from ‘terrorism’. Unfortunately for us Americans, George W. Bush seems to be just as big a dunderhead as Stalin once was. Out of these show trials from Guantanamo will only come misery, so why doesn’t the US population begin to speak up?

Why didn’t the Soviet citizenry oppose the Moscow show trials? The answer is similar to why Americans have remained so quiet post 9/11. The Moscow show trials followed a huge national tragedy caused by Stalin’s attack on the peasantry, which became a 1932 famine that killed around 5,000,000+ people. The Moscow show trials then were actually Stalin’s attempt to deflect blame from himself for this previous catastrophe just a few years before.

Similarly, trying 6 men tortured illegally at Guantanamo to then put at least some of them to death, is Bush’s effort to deflect attention away from his foreign policies which are destroying the financial and social stability of the US Empire and the US population itself. And like the Moscow show trials before, these modern day show trials by the US government will lead to greater strife in the immediate years ahead. There will be new ‘terrorist’ attacks, precisely because the Bush Administration and their Democratic Party enablers have done so damn much, most if it idiotically not well thought out at all.

Dubya’s show trials might well be the preparatory event for a coming world holocaust that might well dwarf what the world went through in WW2. Time will tell. But certainly none of our nation feels any safer now than they did in the immediate days following 9/11/2001, and murdering POWs after torturing them at the Guantanamo Concentration Camp will change none of that.

US government thanks Guantanamo prisoners for having themselves tortured- Have a good life!

It really takes the cake, does it not? The US government broke all international laws, tortured numerous innocent Prisoners of War for 4-5 years, and then releases these innocents without a note to anybody! Not even a ‘Good bye, So sorry’!

What a lawless goon squad we have for a government! See Ten Saudi Guantanamo inmates free

I wouldn’t look to see much of this story soon in the local Right Wing rag. They always pretend to be against big government and then back it all the way. That’s the calling card of The Gazette troop of editorial nitwits.

They love the suppression of individual freedoms and the War to Promote Terrorism. Anything to support big business and ‘defense’ contracting. A little torture here and there on innocent POWs bothers them not the least.

Destroying the evidence of military crimes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shut Up, Nancy!

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

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

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

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

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

Destroying the evidence of US government torture of POWs

Our despicable national government has just admitted that it destroyed the video taping of its use of torture on prisoners held at the Guantanamo concentration camp for US captured POWs. See article… CIA destroyed video of ‘waterboarding’ al-Qaida detainees

What a group of liars and hypocrites the Bush Administration has assembled at the head of power in the US. First they deny that torture is being advocated, then they say that certain torture methods are in their eyes not actual torture, and then they destroy the evidence of the torture actually already being used on POWs in their hands.

And our local governments follow this type of misleadership straight on down the line. Don’t believe that? Then go and try to get a municipal resolution passed stating local opposition to the US use of torture in our domestic jails and military concentration camps. See what the reaction would be like down at the city council meetings here in Colorado Springs?

Speaking of torture…. do you know that the El Paso County has its school police force equipped with taser guns at middle schools and high schools? Do you know that the city police of Colorado Springs has used these devices on people already, even as some divisions of the United Nations says there is strong evidence that these weapons are being used as instruments of torture in an increasing manner?

Just recently I saw the downtown post office flying the black POW/MIA flag that became so promoted by the US Right Wing post Vietnam War. Apparently the concern about POWs is pretty damn selective in the US.

When is the US public going to say enough is enough about our government using torture on US held POWs, as it has been doing? Are we all too damn scared now to have POW/MIA bumperstickers on our cars and/ or a flag that demands that all human beings have rights to ethical treatment… even if the US government authorities presume them guilty of some crime or other?

We need some symbols like this, and they need to be flown from government buildings in place of that garbage accusing the Vietnam government of torturing US soldiers in secret. The Right Wingers in charge of our municipality prefer to promote war and the use of torture on US held POWs instead of speaking out for human decency though. And currently this city hasn’t had enough local citizens oppose this city government-military-industrial complex led by Mayor Lionel Rivera and his corporate backers like Lockheed, et al.

The people who ordered destroyed the tapes of the water boarding of POWs held by the US military are war criminals and need to be jailed and tried for their crime of destroying evidence. And then they need to be jailed for ordering the torture of POWs in the first place. Are Americans proud to have a government like this? All of us should be deeply ashamed for not doing more to stop these thugs. Get out and make your voice heard! Go to the local government meetings held downtown and put some pressure on the local officials to stop going along with it all.

Why?

Black Americans are getting sick and fed up with the entire racist criminal injustice system of the US. Still fresh in memory is the picture of White cops with guns turning back Blacks trying to cross the Mississippi Bridge to get out of New Orleans. In mind, too, is the new blatantly open use of torture not only of American military held POWs, but also of Black common folk held in US prisons around the country.

Thousands marched against racial profiling this week In D.C., their protest fed by the movement to defend the Jena Six. Why?

Why? is the question that was asked in Miami this week, too, and got a young man shot down by the police there. Why? too another taser death, not just in Canada, but in Miami that same week, this time of a Black man? Why? Black Agenda Report reports these stories of the Miami events. Executed ‘Walking While Black’ in Miami

Why? The answer is simple. We live in a world ruled by corporations run by Whites of privilege. They control and run a police and judicial system run and controlled by Whites of privilege, too. We live in a US privleged White world where a White privileged and dominated system arrests and tortures prisoners of color without any sense of the human indecency of their actions, fed by an even larger White community that cheers this on. We live in a racist US society.

Nothing that much has changed from the past. MLK’s ‘dream’ is still a dream and not any reality. That is the answer to Why?

For Black Americans especially there is no national security under the so-called national security state. Instead, it is a state of criminal injustice Blacks live under and promises of change for the better cannot be fed when all the recent changes have been for the worse. Racial injustice cannot be disappeared, when class injustice is the norm.

Darfur

Darfur AID not sanctionsYesterday’s Colorado College rally (October 29) by the interventionist group, ‘Save Darfur’, was quite an educational event. There, we got to see a train load of comfortable American speakers demand that we begin an economic war against a Fourth World country, Sudan, to be carried out by US corporations and the US government.

How could anybody be against that, their puzzled faces questioned those few of us that were there with signs against the increasing US military presence in Africa? Don’t you want to help the people of Darfur? As a matter of fact, we do, and that is precisely why we oppose groups like ‘Save Darfur’. They do not advocate economic assistance to Africans, but rather they advocate ‘policing’ them and dominating them from Washington D.C.

Not a word was said about opposing AFICICOM, the new Pentagon intervenionist command center designed to terrorize Africa. Not a word was said about the US use of Ethiopian troops to invade Somalia and overthrow the government there. The Eritrean government is predicting an attack on their country backed by the US government since they opposed, and continue to oppose, US actions against the people of Somalia. Not a word was said against US military aggression in Africa at the rally.

The mention of the US genocide against the Iraqi people met a shout from the crowd to ‘stay on focus’ about Darfur. Nobody talked about the need to end the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq by the Pentagon. Nobody talked about the genocide of the Palestinians by the combined US and Israeli governments’ aggression. Not a word was said against the what is being done in Gaza and Lebanon, Pakistan and Iran by current US foreign policy. Not a word was said in opposition to the so called ‘War on Terror’, a made-in-the-US war that breeds terror, and celebrates terror and torture everywhere. Not a word was said against US government torture and rendition of POWs to be tortured by other countries.

Instead, we were exhorted by the speakers to begin a campaign to blame China for African bloodshed! This campaign is to be brought to bear on the Sudanese government and China from the countries that have terrorized Africans for centuries! Nobody in the pro interventionist rally crowd seemed to see anything much wrong with this? Instead they acted as if their actions were some how saintly and divine.

They talked about genocide a lot, though even Jimmy Carter has just declared most recently that the killings in Sudan do not meet the defintion of being a genocide. We agree. See the Christiian Science Monitor report ‘Elders’ criticize West’s response to situation in Darfur…Brahimi says West ‘pampered’ rebels, while Carter calls US’s use of term ‘genocide’ to describe violence ‘unhelpful.’ We too want to see the civil war and bloodshed in Sudan to come to an end, but do not agree with the activities of the group ‘Save Darfur’.

The US has spent at least $2.5 trillion in tearing apart Iraq and Afghanistan. We call on the US to spend that sort of money to end poverty, war, and disease in Africa. Why isn’t ‘Save Darfur’ doing the same? Instead they are calling for troops to be sent in, economic war to be begun against an impoverished country, and blame to be cast on the developing country of China. We find this to be shameful, and say that the Peace Movement should not put its stamp of approval on this campaign by the misnamed ‘Save Darfur’.

Peace Now. Spend the war budget on human needs. End the bloodshed by holding our own government responsible, instead of calling for it to increase its intervention into other countries’ affairs. We demand that the US start an economic aid package, without strings attached, that gives billions of dollars of reparations for the crimes that our government has done to Africans over several centuries. Forgive all of Africa’s foreign debt now. That’s how you help the people of Darfur, not by urging US power plays to control African resources.

Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission must demand no more US intervention into the affairs of other nations.

The Kangaroo Trial of Lieutenant Colonel William Steele

Saddam’s US jailer goes on trial What’s this about? Who is this man, Lieutenant Colonel William Steele, who now faces life in prison? What did he do?

Wikipedia gives us some basic information about the charges this man faces. William H. Steele We learn what the legal charges consist of here, and what we find is that this man, like Guantanamo military chaplain James Yee before him, has done absolutely nothing worthy of being made into a criminal offense. James Yee was let go after a torturing Kafkaesque experience where the military threatened to destroy his life completely. William Steele will not be so lucky it appears.

So what did he supposedly do, this Lieutenant Colonel? It turns out that he gave Saddam Hussein a cigar and some hair color to cover up the gray hair while he was in jail! For this he is charged with aiding an enemy of the United States and was threatened originally with the death penalty!

Oh yes, there are other charges they used to stack the deck for conviction against this career officer. He was charged with flirting some with a female interpreter! And get this! He was charged with having porn on his computer! Oh, and it gets much worse…. He allowed some kids, that were thrown into this military prison, to call out on his own personal cell phone to notify family members of their arrest by the US storm troopers! What a beast!

I think we can see now why people like Yee and Steele have to be imprisoned. They are to be made into an example for others in the US military, that no compassion must be allowed with Muslim prisoners. Muslim prisoners are to be tortured, humiliated, and murdered, and not coddled as Steele is made out to have been doing.

What a contrast! Under the Bush Administration with active Democratic Party help, the US has put thousands of POWs in Afghanistan in air tight containers where they were suffocated, choked, and shot to death. They have hooded and tortured POWs at Guantanamo using isolation techniques of sensory deprivation. They have raped and sexually humiliated POWs at Abu Ghraib, along with using other forms of physical and psychological tortures. They have moved (‘rendered’) POWs to hidden torture centers around the globe using a hidden fleet of unmarked aircraft. But giving a cigar to Saddam Hussein in jail is now to be made into a capital offense, which in the infinite mercy of these Christian Crusaders will be turned into a mere life sentence in prison. All minds off Donald Rumsfield and Dickey Cheney… Who’s the guy who gave the cigar to Saddam? Get him! Give him LIFE!

This whole trial is an indecent charade, and shows how little support the government really does give the troops. Instead of support, they threaten and bully them just like they wish to do with the rest of the whole world. When you sign up with the military, you truly do sign a deal with the Devil. This is the real mistake that Lieutenant Colonel William Steele has made. Now he is to be scapegoated and made into an example for the other troops.

Bad guy! You showed a drop of compassion for our official enemy, the Muslims. For this you must be punished but good.

The Democrats are to blame for allowing Bush to attack Iran

Let’s face it, the Democrats are to blame. They are to blame for allowing Israel to attack first Lebanon, and now Syria, and they are to blame for allowing Bush and Cheney to attack Iran, too. This is no real surprise, as they were to blame for allowing Bush to attack Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place, followed by the attacks on Haiti and Somalia.

The Democrats are no real opposition to the Republicans, and their major politicians keep silent on all this violence, even including keeping silent about the US use of torture on POWs captured by the US military.

The Democrats are definitely to blame for the coming attack on Iran. There is absolutely no reason that they should have kept silent all this time, except for when they occasionally opened their traps to be dittoheads alongside the Republicans, speaking out about how they favor an attack on what is a peaceful country. The Democrats are also a political party for mass destruction.

Let’s face it, we have a sick society of sheep. People keep pretending that the Democratic Party is somehow different in its foreign policy positions than the Republicans yet it is just not true. Stop voting for these creeps, PLEASE.

Antiwar people should boycott the elections, not be deluded by them. We don’t have a functioning democracy at all! Work for one, but do not continue to participate in this charade.

Do not vote for any of these Democrats, as you would do better to throw rocks through the windows of their offices than voting for their corporate fed dog politicians. Apologies to my own dog, Harriet.

Camp Bucca is not in Minnesota

I have done sort of a personal poll recently by asking folk if they have heard of Camp Bucca. Almost nobody has, since after Abu Ghraib Doctor Franken Rummy and Attorney General ‘Cinco de Mayo’ Gonzalez set out to hide away the continuation of Abu Ghraib from public (and media) scrutiny.

Currently there are upwards of 20,000 US held Iraqi POWs held at Camp Bucca out of about a total 25,000 in all. They’re all being treated most kindly of coarse since that is the American Way. Camp Bucca

Memorial Day jingoism and celebration of death

The 3 largest Colorado papers all had the same headline pictures this Memorial Day. Graduating Air Force Academy Cadets all throwing up their caps into the sky in unison with jet planes flying overhead. Thus we arrive to half time in America’s annual jingoistic display. Second half of this supposed public patriotic display of support for imperialist foreign policies will certainly be the 4th of July.

We are awash in ‘support our troops’ brain wash. Don’t you dare not support them! And not supporting the constant and continual warfare is always construed as not ‘supporting the troops’. Thirty of us met the parade of cars entering into the Air Force Academy base and they penned us dangerous folk in behind chains and concrete barriers. Up on the hill mounted Calvary watched us terrorist Injuns down below. What a sad lot the people entering the base seemed.

It gave me great pleasure to hold a sign demanding that the torture of American held POWs be ended. Just how proud can these graduating cadets actually be, when the employer they will be working for has such a low reputation from routinely torturing people? How about their parents? How proud can they really be?

This Memorial Day’s celebration of death just seemed more gruesome and pathetic than it has ever been. There was something pathetic about it all that seemed etched in the faces of the people in their vehicles as they came in. Next step? Buy some fire works and pretend that one is having a good time. Eat some turkey dogs and drink a little. Red, White, and Blue.

NATO Out of Somalia and Sudan Now!

Last night, a nice person called me up and wanted to assure me that she and other pro-Peace activists in Colorado Springs had not called for military interventionism into Darfur when they recently met at Poor Richards. I was half asleep and there was background noise on her end of the line, so the conversation didn’t really go on for too long. But for several hours now I have been thinking of this call. What to make of it?

Actually, it brought me back to the days of when so many nice liberals (and socialists, too) were demanding that Clinton do what he wanted to do anyway. They demanded that he intervene against Yugoslavia. They always made it clear that they were not calling for NATO to bomb the living day lights out of Yugoslavia, but that is just exactly what they helped accomplish. Today a US military base stands in Kosovo, and it has been deemed Europe’s Guantanamo since American held POWs are sent there to be tortured and held in secret.

Even worse, by being complicit in the NATO and US campaign against Yugoslavia, the liberal supporters of ‘action against Milosevic’, essentially sat on their butts for 8 years, while the Clinton gang killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and spread lies that Bush later used about there being WOMD in that country, all just waiting to be used to kill millions elsewhere. Today, Iraq is occupied with American troops. Surprise!

Fast forward a few months to Africa… NATO is in Sudan, and is now being considered for use in Somalia. And this good person who called me wants to reassure me that no Peace activists are pushing that this be the case. Yes, but it is the case, so why not ask (demand) that NATO get out of Africa? Instead, what is it the ‘action’ that is actually being demanded of by ‘Save Darfur’ folk?

I just don’t get this?! They are demanding that economic war be waged against Sudan as NATO troops intervene in country after country as forces of occupation and reaction! Why in the world would Peace activists want economic ‘sanctions’ to be applied to any country in the world by Britain and the US, 2 horrible imperialist and genocidal powers?

I am going to call this woman back up and ask that she, or any of the people who met at Poor Richard’s, write to explain on this blog what ‘action’ they want, and to explain their reasoning. I just don’t get it? I would think they would be more thoughtful about asking for ‘action’, when their allies on this taking of ‘action’ are Dubya, Condi, Madelyn Albright, and Tom Tancredo. I just don’t get it? The best action that can be taken is to demand that the US and Britain, NATO and the UN just get out of all of Africa. And while we are at it, how ’bout demanding getting these troops out of the Balkans and Afghanistan, too?

The ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ propaganda in support of US African military intervention is utterly reactionary

Sunday in Denver one of the many nationwide rallies by the so-called ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ will be held, demanding that Bush, John Negroponte, Condaleeza Rice, and The Pentagon move troops into Sudan supposedly to help stop a civil war in that country.

Their incredible demands pushing for yet more US militarism come at the exact same time that the US government has just created close to half a million refugees in Somalia in the short time span of just 6 weeks! The US is the cause of genocides worldwide not the relief of any of them.

One cannot imagine anything more totally reprehensible and retrograde than what these nitwitty do-gooder liberal types are doing now than in currently rallying to justify to the public yet more US global foreign interventionism at this particular moment. It’s like they haven’t an ounce of common sense about them at all? It’s all very sad to see liberal peaceniks actually push for US governmental militarism rather than opposing it as they should be spending their entire energies doing.

Sure, all in the antiwar community want the end of warfare in Sudan as well as throughout Africa to occur. But calling for ‘peace’ to be implemented by the Pentagon meddling is hair brained at best. And asking for the Pentagon to intervene in Darfur is exactly what the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ is doing despite their stealth tactics in going about it.

Their ‘Call to Action’ is the polar opposite of the mainstream International Peace Movement’s strategy, which is to call for the US to end the Made-by-the-US genocide currently being implemented by the US military against the Iraqi people. It is the job of the Peace community to oppose one’s own government’s imperialism and not to help justify it, as the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ is currently doing.

With the construction of a US military African command center (AFRICOM) now underway, the ‘Save Darfur Coaliton’ should be opposing this. Instead, they are actually demanding that it be put into service! And once in Darfur, where else in Africa will the call go out to to send in US or US directed troops as directed by AFRICOM? We know already, do we not? AFRICOM is directing the war against the Somali people now and abducting POWs taken there to be taken out and tortured in other countries, same as has been done in Afghanistan and Iraq. The call to ‘Save Darfur’ in actuality is a call to plan out more genocides, rather than to eliminate one of them.

US troops out of Africa, not into the continent! Stop the Pentagon! No more military adventures using supposed humanitarianism as the justification.

PS… here is from the ‘Save Darfur’ blog. The same types that had the US kidnapping and removing President Aristide from Haiti and occupying that country with US directed troops are the same people now running the “Save Darfur Coalition’. This is not a group of humanitarians at all. They are from the US State Department.

….
Global Day for Darfur III – A Critical Initiative Now!
Posted on Monday, 04/23/07 – 9:23 am
Cross-posted at Globe for Darfur

Amb. (ret.) Lawrence Rossin, Senior International Coordinator at the Save Darfur Coalition, is responsible for designing and leading implementation of the Coalition’s outreach to foreign governments and non-governmental organizations to advocate on behalf of the people of Darfur. Rossin joined the Coalition after serving as Assistant Secretary General and Principal Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, and as part of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. He has also served in a number of diplomatic positions in the U.S. Department of State.

Torture en mass

Amnesty International says that the US government has been actually worsening conditions for POWs and other prisoners (many can’t even be called POWs, since they were basically sold to the US by mercenary forces) held at Guantanamo. That can be only with deliberate intent, too.

How does it feel to be part of a society led by a government that is deliberately torturing several hundreds of prisoners en mass? Good? This has been going on for 5 years now, and the American public acts as if they were a bunch of brain dead zombies. And not one leading Democratic Party presidential candidate has come out against this torture and has called for closing Guantanamo.

I am ashamed to be an American. We need to overthrow this two-faced one party dictatorship that rules over us and the world. Unfortunately most of our fellow citizens seem to be total chumps and chimps, out shopping and driving around in circles endlessly refusing to take the smallest steps to help liberate themselves. Luckily all this must eventually self destruct. There won’t be much left though.

Pleading guilty to end the torture

David Hicks, the only Guantanamo torture victim to plead guilty, did so to end 5 years of unlawful imprisonment and torture. What a mockery of any legal justice or due process this charade is. The whole world should be ashamed for us Americans for allowing this Orwellian kangeroo trial to be held by our illegal and totally rotten and corrupted government. This is about the most shameful moment in my lifetime to have witnessed such abuse being done publicly, and without any sense of mass American public indignation, too.

This is why I am against calling for impeachment of George W. Bush. That is much too little and much too late. The entire Bush torture team needs to be imprisoned for their crimes, and an organized national response of apology to those tortured without due cause needs to be issued following the immediate release of all POWs and other prisoners held without any evidence or charges against them having been made.

I have never been more ashamed to be an American.

Clarifying a few terms…

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.

MoveOn vigil at Woodmen and Powers

A MoveOn member got fed up with all the vigils being close in downtown, and called a street corner vigil late Monday afternoon in his out of the way (for many of us) neighborhood at Woodmen and Powers. It was a great success, and we even had one Iraq vet, who was passing by, get out and demonstrate against the war with us!

When asked if he wanted to hold one of the 2 remaining signs, he chose the one that said, ‘Stop US Torture of POWs’ instead of the one that just said ‘PEACE’. He kept repeating that he was worried about a frined of his who was still over there.

We had 8 people protesting The War in all. Not bad and many people were pleasantly surprised to see us protesting in such an unlikely, but well trafficked place. Earlier, in another peace vigil here in Colorado Springs, we even had a cop in a police car give us the peace sign. I guess the publicity about the St Pat’s day nonsense was part the reason why. People, even some cops, don’t like totally uncalled for abuse in the manner that happened last Saturday afternoon.

Jewish Israeli ethnic cleansing by strip search

If you ever wondered where the Pentagon got the idea of throwing menstrual (fake or real) blood on nude American-held Muslim POWs, there is a film by ‘If Americans Knew’ that points out who developed this sort of practice in the first place. See the video clip, ‘The Easiest Target‘ and learn about how modern day ethnic cleansing is done via psychological oriented methods. See the methods used by American and Israeli government sponsored state terrorists, otherwise known as US and Israeli police and soldiers.

The tiers of torture inside American prisons

It’s been ages since I saw an article in Time Magazine worth reading, but ‘Are Prisons Driving Prisoners Mad?‘ does ask the right question It even goes so far as to answer the question honestly, and then to conclude that driving prisoners insane is in nobody’s real interests. There is though another question which is, ‘Are the Prisons Deliberately Driving Prisoners Insane?’ I believe that the answer is YES, which in turn leads to yet another question. ‘Why?’

The short article in Time hints that YES, the prisons are deliberately doing what they are doing, and says that it is out of society’s relatively normal urge, which they call ’emotional sense’ to make life harsh for those who have committed brutal acts. They conclude though, that ’emotional sense’ does not make practical sense. That’s because some of these now insane prisoners get eventually released back out into society and there they are even more likely to do harm than before.

What was interesting about this relatively honest Time Magazine commentary, is that nowhere did it ever call what was going on TORTURE. It did say that examining how SuperMax prisons and isolation function to permanently injure people did open up the need for courts to examine these practices and to maybe stop them. That somehow a line had been crossed?

So what amount of torture crosses the line for Time/Life/ AOL and folks like them? Apparently they have some second thoughts about turning people into vegetables and raving psychotics through sensory deprivation? But that is just one tier of torture within America’s Gulags. You get to that tier because other tiers of torture also are in place. SuperMaxes and isolation chambers begin in stages to torture prisoners. Are the earlier stage of solitary confinement deemed normal and appropriate by Time Magazine?

Take for example, the routine separation of prisoners in America from their children and spouses? Is that not a form of torture and prisoner abuse, too. Is that not the first tier towards driving human beings insane by torture? After all, what is a norm in prisoner abuse in American jails is not the norm in many other countries. In other systems of detention, prisoners are not forced into homosexuality, nor separated from the calming effects of holding their babies and hugging their older children. Is it not a form of torture to not allow normal human contact of this type for prisoners that will, in their majority, some day return to society?

Also, is it not torture to physically and emotionally allow some prisoners to torture others. The prison administrators like to charge that this is something that prisoners do to themselves and that they are doing all they can to stop it. Does anybody really believe this? Actually, just like in our foreign wars, the ‘deciders’ in control use one group against another, and afterwards blame them all for being responsible for the mayhem that is presided over. Inside the prison, homosexuals are often used against the others as informants, and heterosexuals are used against the homosexuals. Blacks vs Whites vs Hispanics. Short timers vs lifers, and lifers vs short timers. The prison administrative gang lords it over the prisoner gangs, and the prisoner gangs fight back, but usually against each other. The forms of torture administered within the American prisons are varied and often quite camouflaged. but they are there and constant. The greatest torture in the prisons is arbitrariness. It is used as a constant stick by the legal system.

All this mayhem encouraged amongst the tiers of torture inside American prisons only goes to reinforce the excuse for having so many locked up. ‘See? We got to do it! It’s not that we are cruel, oh hell no! It’s just that they are animals!’ But that’s all really a lie.

The truth is, that America’s tiers of torture inside the prison system were deliberately put into effect because the economically elite ruling class hates the poor, hates the weak, hates the people they rob and abuse, and want to torture them. It’s no mistake at all, and they encourage a mob to support them in their own hatred towards those they despise. The torture is there, because the rulers want to break others down into dysfunctional, mentally and physically destroyed human beings. This is the same nastiness and viciousness of those that burned witches at the stake, lynched innocent Blacks, beat and whipped slaves and prisoners of the past. It’s still going on, though the forms have evolved.

The tiers of torture within the US prison system are twin to the secret rendition centers and Guantanamo where our military abuses POWs held without any due process. So the answer to Time Magazine’s question is…. Yes, US prisons are driving prisoners insane. Thats’ what torture is meant to do, and torture works.

Should we honor the torturers and their work in America, Time? You do in most of your commentaries and ‘news’. We need to stop torturing all prisoners, and not just those held by the military.

From torture to show trial: our Evil Empire conveyor belt on

President Cheney is preparing Guantanamo show trials for this year, reports the New York Times. No hangings will happen, though a frying or two appears to be on the agenda. This ought to play so very well with the rest of the world, for sure. So, isn’t American ‘democracy’ lovely they will say? And of course it is. Condaleeza sez it so. And so it is so.

Let’s see? After being held and tortured without access to either charges or lawyers, legal procedure, or rights of any kind, that is then to be followed by a cluster fuck of show trials, judgement of the POWs by the Pentagon, and then the punishment they evidently have not yet already received. Oh, I”m sorry. I meant judgement of the ‘enemy combatants’. With a title like that, I am sure they will be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Or insane. They call this a jury of one’s peers…. in Alice’s Wonderland, the USA.

Come tell Cheney not to torture!

Meet at Lake Avenue and Second StreetCome protest Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign stop at the Broadmoor. This is your chance to tell him you don’t think the US decision to use torture is a “no-brainer.” (Read about one of the first US female casualties in Iraq. A recent FOIA has revealed her death was a suicide, covered-up. Her motive? She did not want to participate in US methods of torture.)

CSAction Activist Alert from Mark Lewis:
On Friday, November 3 at the Broadmoor Hotel, “The Dick” cheney will come to do a fund raiser for lamborn, who is close to loosing the 5th congressional district seat to Fawcett. The supporters will start arriving at 4 pm (according to the local GOP office) and must be inside for the security sweep at 6pm just before cheney arrives up Lake Avenue.

We need to be there in force to “welcome” cheney (that’s Mr. Dick to you) with orange hunting vests, signs about halliburton, war profiteers, Abu Ghraib, POWs, Gitmo, Iraq, “Who would Jesus torture?”, maybe a “water board” display?

Maybe the same location as the 2004 NATO protest at 2nd and Lake, where the motorcade will have to slow for the “round about” and where there is parking in the church lot?

The sat trucks will go live at 5 for TV coverage, so we need to be in place at least by then. Spread the word.

Afghanistan, where cowardly US military is deliberately murdering children

Every week now, it seems that the US puppet president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is ‘investigating’ another tragic ‘accidental bombing of civilians. He demands that these ‘accidents’ stop. But these are not accidents, and Karzai knows this well, as every other Afghan must now know it well, too. An accident occurs once or twice, but an intentional strategy of targeting civilians becomes constant, as have become the US bombings of Afghan civilians in the more remote regions of that country.
 
The strategy is ‘to destroy the sea that the guerrilla fighter must swim in’, as it was once explained in the Vietnam War era, years ago. In short, the quickest, easiest way to combat the enemy, is simply to target his wife and family, including the kids. So the cowardly US-led NATO army of occupation in Afghanistan, is systematically doing that instead of engaging the enemy on the ground, where politically dangerous casualties might occur. Bomb the Afghan women and children in their homes from up high, if there is even the remotest military resistance to US forces in their general neighborhood.

This is the same strategy that the US government formerly used in SE Asia, some 35 to 45 years previously. It is the same strategy that the NAZIs used when they pushed into East Europe against the Russians during the Second World War. In their pathway, they razed to the ground villages, towns, and even entire cities. It is even the same strategy that Mafia gangsters use against their opponents. It is the same strategy that the US fed Colombian death squads use, too. They go into villages with chain saws, and cut people up before their own family members. Basically, this is government sponsored terrorism against civilians, and the US is committing internationally recognized war crimes by targeting civilians instead of the armed combatants they face. The strategy, is to target the families of combatants, and not those who might actually be able to inflict return casualties upon the invading and occupying, barbarian armed forces.

see Hamid Karzai orders investigation

We expect this cowardice from the cowardly US military commanders and chiefs, like Dubya and Dick Cheney, Donald and Alberto, who all get great glee out of torturing US-held POWs. And we expect it from the US grunts, too. They mainly just want to get out alive, and don’t much care who gets hurt, as long as it is not themselves. Innocent children bombed as they play, or as they sleep? Well who cares? Not the uniformed soldier cowards, nor their leaders. They are much like the Israeli troops, another cowardly group of soldiers, that distributed hundreds of thousands of cluster bombes in the last 3 days of their Lebanon vacation. Early Christmas for the children? Well the uniformed forces of occupying armies don’t care. They are simply cowards who want to get back home whole, and they will follow cowardly orders, from cowardly leaders.

But what of the press? The press barely even reports Afghanistan these days to US readers. And when they do, they cowardly hide away the nature of what they are reporting on. To the US press, the Afghanistan fighting is a NATO conflict, and they will report whole articles without even once using the letters, ‘US’ or ‘USA’! Let’s keep our jobs, and let’s keep the whole Afghanistan issue away from the American public, who are too cowardly to actually think about what they are doing to that poor country.

And what about the US peaceniks’? They are cowardly, too. 99% of them vote for the Democratic Party, and talking about Afghanistan is too embarrasing to the top party hacks. So, shhhhhh….. Keep quiet. The recent AFSC tour of their ‘Eyes Wide Open’ exhibit was basically a ‘Mouths Tightly Closed’ exhibit of their AFSC political cowardice when it comes to Afghanistan. They should remember and be ashamed of this, when the Quaker leaders are inside the voter booths pushing the levers for the Democratic Party candidates. They could have put boots out for the US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. But they didn’t. They could have placed out shoes of Afghani civilians killed by US and allied troops, but they didn’t.

But the other liberal peaceniks from the other liberal churches are equally as cowardly. When was the last time one saw a sign saying, Get Out of Afghanistan Now? All the talk is of Iraq instead. The liberal megawebsite, commondreams, carries bumperstickers calling for Get out of Iraq, No war with Iran, and even No War with Syria. But Get Out of Afghanistan? Not a chance! More political cowardness. It would push the Democratic Party hacks too hard. Yet our country is now deliberately bombing civilian children in that country, and doing it routinely, too.

It is political cowardice to bomb huts full of empoverished women and children noncombatants, rather than fight on the ground below against the men. But that’s what an imperialist army is full of. They are full of cowards who want to kill people like they are playing some video game back in the suburbs at home. But it, too, is cowardly for the US Peace Movement not to demand that our government get its troops out of Afghanistan with the same force we demand it get out of Iraq. We are betraying the children of that country, who are being slaughtered down like cattle. Yes, we have a cowardly antiwar movement in the US that wants only to concentrate on ‘Iraq’, and getting their cowardly Democratic Party leaders elected to office once again. Let’s hope that liberals can grow some backbone, and start opposing this war, too. Otherwise, the peace crowd is just as bad as ‘our troops’, who mainly want to kill from afar and from up high, with no possilbe repercussions to their cowardly, uniformed selves. Those that don’t mind killing innocent children, just so that they can claim a high ‘enemy’ body count.

Phosphorous Bombs- US/Israeli Weapon of Torture

The BBC has a news item today saying that Israel has just admitted for the first time today that it used Phosphorous bombs on Lebanon. The evidence kept piling up that they in fact had, and evidently Israel came to the conclusion that their lie, that they had not used this type of chemical weapon, was no longer defensible.
 
A similar process had ocurred earliet where the US originally denied using this chemical weapon on Falluja, but then later admitted that it had. Both countries have argued that phosporous bombs are legitimate military weaponry, though previously they had attacked Saddam Hussein’s use of this chemical weapon against his Kurdish population.

The US/ Israeli defense of their use of this weapon is similar to Bush’s defense of using torture against POWs. They have merely changed the label on what they say constitutes torture, as they have now changed the label of what the phosphorus bombs actually are. They call them incendiary bombs now, instead of chemical weapons, which is what they called them when Hussein was using this weapon.

The use of chemical weapons against civilian populations by the US military is ancient news, as is their juggling of labels for them. Chemical weapons are often called ‘pesticides’, ‘defoliants’, or described as ‘smoke bombs’, as Israel did with phosphorous, which gives off plumes of camoflaging smoke, which just happens to be poisonous. Israel claimed to be merely marking targets with phosphorus bombs’ smoke, rather than using this weapon to burn the insides out of its targets. That’s what phosphorous does as it burns downward and into the blood stream, where it is later carried to organs inside the body while still burning.

The US/ Israeli use of these weapons explains their political policies in the Arab world quite well. These are the weapons of terrorist countries, rogue staters that defy international law that has tried repeatedly to limit weapons of torture like this, not to mention trying to outlaw the cluster bombs also dropped everywhere by the same two states. These are the weapons of terrorist states, and not merely legitimate countries just trying to fight the terrorism of a few rogue individuals. Rogues, one might add, that originally fought on behalf of the US in other terrorist conflicts directed from Washington DC. These are the weapons of imperial governments that illegally occupy territory of other peoples, peoples they consider inferior to their own. These are the weapons of racists.

A proposed local anti-torture resolution

We, concerned American citizens and residents of the city of Colorado Springs, call upon our city council to issue a proclamation to both the state of Colorado and the federal government, that as citizens of this city, state, and country, we categorically reject the application of any deliberate mental or physical abuse upon any and all prisoners held by our local, state, and national governments. And further that we call upon our national leaders to have all prisoners held by the US military, be treated according to the regulations of the Geneva Conventions regarding the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

We urge the passing of the following resolution by the City Council of Colorado Springs:
……………………………………………………………………………..

We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, categorically reject the current policy of our national government of transferring US held prisoners to other countries, or to US allied armed groups, to have them tortured during interrogation or as punishment. We also reject any policy of deliberate governmental assassination of foreign opponents, whether it be carried out by our own military, or outsourced to US allies.

We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, categorically reject the indefinite holding of any prisoners without trial and without charges filed against them, whether foreign or domestic. We reject the systematic denial of timely access to lawyers of the choosing of the prisoners needing legal representation. We reject harassment of the legal councils of all prisoners. All prisoners should immediately have access to the press, so that any mistreatment can be made public. Not to do so, is not in keeping with the processes of a democratic society, whether these prisoners be domestic or foreign.

We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, call upon the US government to immediately prosecute any officials who have abused prisoners, or denied them their due rights. This includes not just the immediate abusers of prisoners, but those in supervisory positions over those lower level employees, who directed the actions of their subordinates. We call upon our federal government to immediately initiate a grand federal investigator commission into these multiple abuses that have already been documented as having occurred, and to have them stopped at once.

Further, we the citizens of Colorado Springs, call upon our state and local authorities to renounce the use of abuse and torture of American prisoners held in local and state facilities. We are well aware that the deliberate use of sexual abuse, solitary confinement, and physical assault is rampant throughout the US in multiple correctional facilities, and that the multiple torture methods and abuse techniques and denial of rights used against our own citizens is now being incorporated into the systematic abuse of foreign POWs held by our military. Calling foreign POWs by any other name does not change their real status as POWs. If the US military has taken prisoner any foreign citizen during military engagements, then these troops we consider to be POWs, and their treatment is subject to the Geneva Conventions.

We, the citizens of Colorado Springs and our city council, especially condemn local military contracting agencies, with their many offices located inside our city limits, that have directed torture against POWs in other countries. Already US troops operating in conjunction with these private contractors have been found guilty of directing torture and abuse of prisoners in their custody. These private operatives have been documented as having shot at foreign nationals and having severely injured and murdered foreign civilians as a result. We do not consider these companies to be good citizens of our community, and urge that appropriate criminal charges be brought against companies that have violated prisoner rights per the Geneva Accords regarding humane treatment of POWs. We call upon the city, the state of Colorado, and the US federal government to cease contracting at once with these companies, and to end their immunity from having charges brought against them for their acts of criminality overseas.

Further, we the citizens of Colorado Springs, reject as dishonest and criminal any government denial at either the state, local, or national levels that these abuses are in fact occurring. The documentation is extensive and overwhelming that the US is mistreating POWs, and also prisoners within its own national criminal corrections facilities. The US government has a known and long history of using torture against POWs. Tens of thousands of US held Vietnamese POWs were tortured to death in the so-called ‘tiger cages’ and during the US “Phoenix Operations.” Similarly, the atrocities on prisoners captured by the US financed ‘Contras’ has been well documented. The US use of torture on POWs is not new. What is new is the open advocacy by federal leaders of what had been covert policy. We condemn, as citizens of Colorado Springs, this open advocacy of war crimes committed by US soldiers. We support our troops by demanding that they not be subject to orders to commit war crimes.

We the citizens of Colorado Springs and our city council, proclaim it time for the abuse to stop, and for humane treatment of all prisoners to begin. To allow our government to abuse foreign prisoners of war is to be complicit in the crime, just as continuing to allow abuse to be inflicted on our own incarcerated citizens. We reject both, and call upon our government, at all levels, to most urgently begin to humanely treat those behind bars.

The passage of this proclamation by our city council to be sent to both the Governor of the state of Colorado and to the President of the United State.

Hussein’s Kangeroo Court Time- days when law is littered

In the last couple of decades, the US Empire has developed a fondness for using show trials following its own violations of international law. The cardinal foundation of international law is that one nation does not have the right to militarily attack another. And of course we know, that the US has violated this maxim time after time. In fact, no other nation can even come close to the US’s sorry record on this account. I believe that even the Hungarians would certainly agree with this statement.

Our citizenry has become so numbed to the sheer number of times that our government continually violates this Principal Number One of international law, that the overwhelming majority of the US feels that it is not incongruent for our leaders to preach constantly about democracy, human rights, and basic humanity to others. In reality, violating the law, while preaching it, is the the central tenet of the advocation of a constant world war that both parties now are in total agreement on. American elites think by giving their constant world war a fancy name, the so-called ‘war on terrorism’, that that somehow absolves them from obeying the central tenets of international law itself. International law is seen as a nuisance,that needs to be buried in a grave somewhere along with those POWs murdered by US troops. If we recall right, the Germans at the height of their Third Reich did away entirely with courts and law, and just loaded their supposed enemies into cattle cars headed for concentration camps to be exterminated. Death penalty, no law. Period.

So one can see easily that elites in general, have little or no respect for the law they often preach to others. Law is seen merely as a codification of their own power, and outside of that, law is simply discarded when inconvenient to the powerful. Which leads to an most cogent recent example of that. I refer to the dismissal of the head judge of the kangeroo court ‘trying’ Saddam Hussein. He was seen as too polite to the guy the Pentagon is getting ready to execute, so they just said “you are terminated.” Our servile corporate press basically just treated the incident as if it was entirely normal and legal! This, much as they had already done with the unusual news of how Milosevic conveniently died, right smack in dab of when he was becoming an indelicate nuisance to American elites. Heck, who cared? Clinton and Wesley Clark maybe? They were going to execute him anyway, so why bother with completiing the trial. But Milosevic thought he was being poisoned. And I don’t find that a bizarre paranoia on his part at all.

So let’s ask another question on our minds right now. Is Osama alive or not? Does anybody really think that it has already been anything other than shoot now, and try him later? But even that seems to be too much for the top dogs to do in obeying some structure of law! How inconvenient a ‘trial’ in a kangeroo court would be for Rumsfield, say. So, Osama’s dead already, IMO. His body buried away in rubble. Only the illusion that he is still alive has lived. The Pentagon finds that illusion necessary to justify themselves for sure, but a show trial? No way. Osama was killed quite some time back it appears. He is dead, and only Pentagon prop-op resusrrects him from time to time. The US is judge, jury, and executioner, and then lies about the whole thing.

Our political bosses now state, over and over, that our government is beyond all legalities, and I think that is something we poltiical Americans need to thoroughly understand. After all, where is the legality of calling for a ‘constant war’ as they do? It’s time that Americans see their elites for what they really are, and not just follow them along as far as the Germans and Japanese once did with their elite misleadership gone wild. Of course most Americans will say that ‘our’ government is not anywhere near as barbarous as our WW2 opponents were. Oh yeah? Well I’m still thinking about how the US suffocated to death in metal containers, POWs ‘our’ troops captured as they successfully invaded Afghanistan. How is that different from the actions of the Nazis with sending their opponents away to the ovens? It’s time to quite dillydallying around thinking that we are dealing with ‘decent folk’ like ourselves when we deal with our elites. They are not like that at all. They hardly even consider their own poor folk human, let alone the rest of the world.

Something we should contemplate, as our government moves toward the possible use of nuclear weaponry against Iran in the coming days, is that they no longer feel the need to obey ANY laws even as they demand that we obey them all. They have legalized for themselves, murder, mayhem, and torture. Before they just did it to The Others in the shadows. Our elites have no plans to turn back from the road they have chosen to move upon. They are just making too damn much money for them to do otherwise. Hussein, long time servant of the US in his war upon Iran, did not understand where our US elites were heading. His fate for his misunderstanding will be? Well, it will most likely be death by Kangeroo Court ala Milosevic. And that is what passes for legality these days. International law has been trashed, and can be found only as litter in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti.