Tag Archives: President Bush

Belligerence leads us to war

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By now Americans have learned our government’s routine of starting with belligerence and following with war. Between the start and finish, lies are used to justify our aggression. This time the intended victims are the people of Iran, whose country President Bush’s advisers have been wanting to attack for some time. Our current hesitation seems only to be about finding excuses for starting hostilities, after which bombing will begin and chaos will follow.

Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan lie in ruins amidst the ever-increasing strife the US has caused. Everywhere US warfare has generated terrorist acts, refugees fleeing for their lives, and deaths of innocent civilians including those most vulnerable, the children. We at the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission ask you to mobilize your voices in protest alongside us, not only against the planned “surge,” but against making war on yet another country, yet another people, the people of Iran.

To oppose US belligerence is to support our troops, to support our country, and to support saving our own humanity. PEACE is patriotic. Join the J&P to demand peace NOW. Think of the countless who will die if we are not successful in bringing about peace. Our current government must be stopped from spilling more blood. US national security is at stake. Together we must win.

Join us March 17 in Pioneer Park for a rally for Peace!

The pastor who moved from California to Denver

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OK, everybody is tired of picking on Ted Haggard now. Even the ludicrous announcement that he has been cured of his habit of sucking on male penises after three weeks of counseling hasn’t lit up the slightest interest.

As long as President Bush doesn’t have Ted doing it for him in the Oval Office no one seems to care. Especially not the ‘Moral Majority’. It’s as passe` as talking about J. Edgar Hoover’s wardrobe for them. However, what about this guy, Pastor Randall? Why did he move to Denver instead of Colorado Springs, we’ll never know?

Ask Senator Allard to vote against escalation

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There’s another action planned for the PLAZA OF THE ROCKIES, organized by MoveOn.org, to present petitions to urge Senator Allard to resist President Bush’s ESCALATION plan.
 
The event will be a press conference starting at noon on Wednesday. There will be two short addresses followed by a visit to the senator’s office. George Reichel and Kathy Kleinsmith are the organizers working with MoveOn. Mark Lewis and Eric Verlo will represent CSAction and the PPJPC. To sign up for this event, or to find out more, click here.

Will our petition do any good? Let’s keep an open mind. Senator Allard may be a conservative, pro-rich politician, he may favor giving poor people a good butt-kicking in the army, he may favor the US imperialist design on the world, he may think capitalism run rampant is the greatest thing since cucumber sandwiches, but to support the Iraq War you’d have to be a complete crook. Allard is not a crook, right?

Thank you, President Bush

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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. SMUShe 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!

Save Darfur from us

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Do you wonder how the word is getting out about Darfur? How is it Americans can’t mobilize a decent opposition to the harm we’re perpetrating in Iraq, but we can -seemingly by grassroots efforts alone- make a case for coming to the rescue of the people of Darfur? It’s because taking action in Sudan means intervention. Taking action in Iraq means ceasing intervention.

With intervention the Western participants get to control the problem nation’s resources. In both Sudan and Iraq that means the oil. Remember how the Coalition of the Willing worked? If you didn’t participate with soldiers, your businesses weren’t allowed to bid on any of the contracts.

The tragedy unfolding in the Sudan is deplorable and must be remedied. But it’s not going to be solved by petitioning President Bush to send US troops there. We’re just inviting the fox into the henhouse. They’re busy with another henhouse right now, but I’m sure they’re pleased as punch that “grassroots” operatives can get them a personal invite into the next one.

George Clooney and so many well-intentioned college clubs are being coordinated by a well-funded PR machine in DC. They are being blinded by the ferocity of the crimes against the people of Darfur, which require urgent policing, but they are ignoring the necessity of an African-managed remedy. Help the Organization of African Nations join with the political players in the Sudan to enforce peace. Any solution will be better than sending in the white vultures who are only after the oil. There are enough regions of the world being kept destabilized for the profit of Western multi-nationals without adding Sudan to the list. Not to mention that Darfur is one of the places where Islamic forces have determined to make a stand against western capitalism.

Making a killing

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War profiting well in Iraq 
The longer President Bush can put off closing down the war in Iraq, the longer he and his cronies can keep making their millions in war profits.
 
The nightmare in Iraq may have spun beyond our capacity to minimize it, but to the weapons industry and big oil, the Iraq enterprise just gets better and better.

Legal clarity

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President Bush feels the Military Commissions Act of 2006 will provide “clarity” for American interrogation specialists to know they can torture their suspects with impunity. Because America doesn’t torture, in the dictionary sense of the word.

But there’s a clarity that will hit all the Bushmen when they sober up. They will face the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention on Torture. And there are two further legal principles already in force since the last world war. No one is exempt from international law, and no domestic law may abridge or revoke international conventions.

Pass whatever tortured laws you think can protect you, you can run but you can’t hide.

On the issue of providing indemnity to American interrogators, there is one further principle exercised at Nuremburg. Each of us is responsible for refusing immoral commands. There is no such excuse as just following orders.

The US Supreme Court, rigged as it has been to Bush’s favor, may not strike down his permit to torture, but international jurists will. Bush’s vengefull threat aimed at the already-dead 9/11 highjackers will prove true in a manner opposite his intent:

“Those who kill the innocent will be held to account.”

Eavesdropping steak and potatoes

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Israeli President Moshe Katsav, head of the Likud Party, has been charged by the Israeli police of rape and eavesdropping. He is accused by ten women of rape, and he is accused of eavesdropping. He is being asked to resign, and he’s expected to resign.
 
For eavesdropping? How silly!

Rape and eavesdropping. You don’t accuse a killer of murder and loitering. It’s not meat and a side order of potatoes, it’s meat AND potatoes. Rape AND eavesdropping. I guess it’s no small thing, eavesdropping: a president, wiretapping the phones of his subjects and associates.

Our own Chief of Misbehavior is not only accused of eavesdropping, he’s admitted to eavesdropping. He’s confessed. No amount of wrangling with the law retroactively can render illegal actions legal. Let’s ask President Bush to resign. Let him know it’s expected of him.

Mel Gibson in vino veritas

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Was Mel Gibson speaking his mind when he was pulled over for drunk driving? No doubt he was. In Vino Veritas. It wouldn’t be in Latin if it weren’t true. Discounting some of the vociferous hyperbole owed to his drunken ego, were Gibson’s comments anti-Semitic? How low is the bar for what is anti-Semitic? Gibson didn’t say he hated Jews.

Gibson’s Passion Spiel was held to be anti-Semitic because it portrayed the Jews as responsible for Jesus’ death. Who did kill Christ, if it even matters? Who betrayed him, who complained about him to the Romans, who passed up their chance to have him freed? Is it a matter of biblical interpretation? Whose? Is it anti-Semitic to bring it up because the subject is still too inflammatory after 2000 years? It’s water under the bridge, it’s not water evaporated to nowhere.

I think Gibson’s alcoholic state released sentiments a lot of us are feeling as we watch Israel unleash wave after wave of bombs upon captive Lebanese masses, while our media fiddles.

Polite people are cautioning everywhere, a Jew is not the same as a Zionist. Specifically, ordinary Jews should not be blamed for Israel’s inhumanity.

Well… why are all the Jews on television speaking in support of Israel? Why are newspapers focusing on the dozen Israeli victims and not the hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese?

A Jew who does not repudiate Israel, is as guilty as a Zionist. He may not be a Zionist, but wouldn’t he equal a Zionist?

2. Media
How about, just for the immediate time-being, and I know this might sound anti-Jewish, while Israel is killing UN observers and refugees, while Israel is breaking humanitarian laws and refusing to consider a cease-fire, how about we stop asking Jewish pundits on television to explain both sides of the conflict? How about we disqualify all Jewish Center For Peace spokesmen if they are going to persistently proclaim Israel’s moral authority?

You wouldn’t ask a Dixicrat to officiate an NBA game.

Do we need Jewish American think-tank/lobbying-groups weighing in on Israel’s right to commit mass war crimes in Lebanon? Everywhere you look, all the experts/supporters are Jewish or US senators. What is up with that?

Kofi Annan makes an emergency outcry about Israel deliberately targetting a UN peacekeeping observation post, and Jewish pundits question his report.

They reply: “Of course Israel would not do that. How absurd. Why would Israel do that?” But the media talking heads do not take them up on this question:

“Why indeed?”
 
How about: because the observation post might have witnessed Israel doing something too dastardly for words. More dastardly than targeting refugees or ambulances or hospitals or civilian residences or what else.
 
The Arab-Israeli conflict has already seen civilian massacres perpetrated by Israel accompanied by the bombing of the U.N. forces meant to protect those civilians. Qana was the site of a civilian cum U.N. massacre before it was yesterday’s massacre.
 
How indeed did Kofi Annan know the attacks on the U.N. observers were deliberate? Because the Israeli forces kept firing, even as further U.N. troops attempted to rescue the victims. 		  Ambulance given Israeli treatment

 
ADDENDUM 8.03
Today Mel Gibson’s outburst and subsequent apology is being co-opted by the Jewish Lobby. With the tide of American public opinion rising against the Zionist drives to exterminate their Arab neighbors, Mel Gibson was giving voice to popular sentiment.

When Gibson immediately espressed his remorse for what he’d said, and asked for forgiveness, prominent Jewish spokesmen stepped in to offer that forgiveness. Even President Bush echoed their response.

Thus all of us who may have doubted Israel are forgiven and invited back into the fold. The error was not Israel’s bombing of a four-story building full of children in Qana, the error was our doubting the righteousness of Israel defending its own.

Zarqawi character killed off

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US military press liasons have decided to claim some headway in Iraq by discontinuing the Abu Musab al ZarqawiTM character.
 
The world first heard of al-Zarqawi when Nicholas Berg was beheaded in a widely circulated video which coincided with the emergence of the Abu Ghraib photos. Although the video appeared to conceal western soldiers disguised as hooded Islamic militants, US spokesmen insisted the principle sword-bearer among them was “Zarqawi,” head of al Qaeda In Iraq. To this day, most Iraqis do not believe there was any AQII, nor that it might be lead by any “Zarqawi,” unless of course it exists as an American fabrication.

The Iraqi people rejoice today at the killing of “Zarqawi” because there should now be fewer 500-lb bombs being dropped on unsuspecting households in what has been the ongoing attempt to kill the mystical insurgent. While it is being reported that this successful strike annihilated an entire house and all its occupants, why is no reporter asking how many households have been obliterated by the previous air strikes?

Meanwhile, the US media is making a curiously pointless effort to report that though Zarqawi expired immediately when US troops arrived on the scene, he had been captured alive. Is this to say, as opposed to on ice? Cold storage is where many critics had suspected an al Zarqawi corpse might have been biding its time.

Maybe the time had become ripe. Having failed to resuscitate their approval ratings with the old gay-marriage attack, George W.’s party sure needed to pull something else out of the hat. Behold ol’ Zarqawi, with blown-up pictures a la Che Guevara.

Everyone from President Bush on up through the media seem to find it important too to point out that Zarqawi’s departure from the insurgency line-up will not mean a reduction of activity on the part of the Iraq resistance movement. Would this be because Zarqawi wasn’t actually responsible for any of it before his demise?

Jordanian man of mystery, Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s only verifiable action was to be know by the US military spokesmen to be Saddam Hussein’s link to al Qaeda. His Iraqi organization’s name was thoughtfully bi-lingual and idiot-proof: al Qaeda In Iraq, previously known as S.P.E.C.T.R.E.

Taking it to the streets

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Protests in Nepal
This picture was taken in Nepal shortly before soldiers began swinging their sticks and firing into the crowd. Recent events have wrought inumerable protests such as this. Except for the Ukraine, Haiti and Bolivia, few have ended favorably. Protestors in western nations have thus far faced only tear gas, rubber bullets and trunchons, nothing like the massacres in Uzbekistan and China.

Look hard at this picture. Do you think the American People could ever see themselves brave enough to face this moment?

Americans have seen their elections stolen, their treasury looted, their sons and daughters killed to enrich war profiteers. They’ve seen a president lie to take them into war, try to steal their Social Security, stack the Judicial Branch to a marked imbalance, hold himself above the law against invasion of privacy, exempt himself from new laws with “signing statements,” imprison people without due process, insist on being able to torture, limit free speech to “free speech zones,” declare a war on terror but refuse to acknowledge prisoners of war, weaken pollution standards and call it a “Clear Skies Initiative, ” sell protected public lands, promote the outsourcing of jobs overseas, seek to legalize the payment of poverty waves to illegal immigrants, inhibit states and foreign nations from taking action to avert global warming, double the U.S. deficit in order to give a tax break to the super rich, launch the thoroughly illegal war against Iraq and supervise the killing of now upwards of 250, 000 Iraqi lives, more than half of them children.

Feel free to add to this list if I’ve missed something.

Most recently we’ve learned that the president considers it his right to intimidate political opponents like Ambassador Joe Wilson by “declassifying” the CIA status of Wilson’s wife, thereby endangering the life her colleagues, her contacts, her friends, and all of their contacts and friends, everyone who foreign governments now suspect might have been CIA informers.

More Americans are coming to see that our president might have conspired, abetted or at the very least permitted the mass murder of 2,986 Americans on September 11th, 2001, to create the rallying cry of “9/11” not dissimilar to Remember the Main, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin before it. Each as dubious as the Reichstag fire.

Is it time as well to consider that the fate of the world rests in the hands of a man who believes in the end times as foretold in the Book of Revelations? Is it possible that our president does not care if Armageddon is hastened in the Middle East because anyhoo it has been prophesied?

If President Bush attacks Iran, this time using nuclear weapons, will it finally occur to the American people to do something to stop him? Are they up to the task?

Sheehan power

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Cindy Sheehan has no peer in the world. She can travel to any country and be received by their governments as a dignitary. Few celebrities or politicians can expect such treatment, and when they do, their entitlement comes from being plugged into the establishment.
 
Cindy Sheehan’s power comes from the people. It comes from our belief that an outsider could make a difference in the turn of events. The American media could easily have ignored Cindy Sheehan’s stand in Crawford Texas, but Sheehan had captured the public’s fascination. Why? Because she reflected the public’s idealism. As long as the ordinary people of the world believe that there exists someone who could call President Bush to the carpet, Cindy Sheehan will be imbued with her power. Who other than one improbable woman could face off the man who holds the fate of the world in his hands?

This Easter Cindy Sheehan is returning to Crawford Texas to lay siege one more time to President Bush in his lair. Since initiating her movement in August last year, Sheehan has participated in diverse actions, including a Thanksgiving reprise in Crawford which led only to several prompt arrests. The media has learned that as public attention wanes, it can ignore or temper their enthousiasm for Cindy Sheehan when it wants to. Again, Sheehan’s power comes only from us.

Perhaps it is again time to rally to Sheehan’s side. Maybe joining Sheehan’s vigil in Crawford for Easter can once more focus the world’s hope that the peace movement can plant itself before George Bush’s eyes.

We can rally in large numbers all over the world, but because the media can typify the effort as lacking cohesion, it can certainly pretend that the peace movement is peopled by malcontents who offer no alternative.

Cindy Sheehan offers a real alternative, and I think she has hit on an ideal strategy. Not just withdrawal from Iraq, but an appeal to Bush’s conscience. He may have one.

Why ask Bush?

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The media are showing themselves for the shills that they are. The story would seem to be President Bush’s ever lower approval ratings. Yet the media are working overtime to quote bush left and right. As if to prove the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
 
Why we looking to Bush for any answers at all? Greenland is melting yet Bush denies global warming. Iraq is disintegrating into fearsome indescriminate violence yet Bush calls it victory.
 
Bush sets up a straw man argument by saying he can understand why Americans are disheartened. Try disgusted. Explain that.

Who’s afraid of the Christian Peacemaker Team?

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Motley crew
Lock up your daughters, it’s the Christian Peacemaker Team delegation!
 
By now the story is out about our visit to Senator Allard’s office today, particularly the effort we encountered to thwart our visit.

I’ll recap. After holding our daily noon vigil for the four CPT hostages being held in Iraq, a delegation of vigil keepers went downtown to visit the offices of three local congress members as part of the national SHINE THE LIGHT campaign. We walked with three yard signs and another sign of similar size held aloft. One among us wore a black hood over his head, to remind onlookers of the Abu Ghraib captives.

After a pleasant walk down Tejon Street, we first visited Congressman Hefley’s office where we received a warm reception. They’d seen the TV news report the night before. They also confirmed having received our emailed press releases.

When we tried to find Senator Allard’s office, our reception was quite a different matter. We nearly didn’t make it to his office.

Senator Allard’s office is located in the Plaza of the Rockies, a mid-sized office building with a large atrium. The building is home to many financial service companies such as Morgan Stanley, RBC Dain Rauscher, Booz Allan and Hamilton, Stewart Title, and Vectra Bank among others.

Finding ourself on the second floor of the atrium, unable to get to the floor above, our group fanned out to find a stairwell or alternative elevator. We were no longer parading with our poster boards, carrying them instead under our arms. But our identity as war malcontents was probably apparent enough and we could tell that a couple of the occupants of those glass offices appeared to grab their phones on seeing us walk by.

After my own fruitless search for Suite 300, I returned to find our group being confronted by two men in suits. We were being asked to leave the building. This was private property they explained and we were not permitted to protest on their property.

We answered that we were not protesting, but were merely trying to reach Senator Allard’s office. Could they tell us which way to Suite 300? They would not, “he’s not there.” They insisted instead that we leave. Private property and all that.

We countered that Senator Allard’s office was a public space, and certainly the conveyance to his office must be considered public. They did not agree. When we asked with whom we were speaking, the first identified himself as “Larry,” the chief security officer, the other was the property manager.

Finally we offered to relinquish the offending signs and take them outside the building. I ran the signs down to Pat and Esther who were waiting outside the front door.

I got back in time to hear the property manager arguing “if you knew your bible, you’d know why we have to be in the Middle East!” I learned afterward that I had missed him accusing the leader of our delegation, CPT member Bill Durland, of being “Taliban.”

Eventually the two building representatives agreed to conduct us to the Senator’s office, but only on the condition that Peter remove his hood. Though again we made our case that the Abu Ghraib hood represented an important message we were trying to communicate, in the end Peter agreed to take it off. He would be able to put it back on in the Senator’s office.

In the Senator’s office we were greeted by his assistant who offered to talk with us. But she insisted that the security official remain in the room, and she insisted that Peter remove his hood.

There followed a polite exchange whereupon members of our group spoke from their hearts about the illegality of the war in Iraq, the immorality of torture and other crimes related to the taking of captives without just cause, etc. Senator Allard’s assistant pulled out an old chestnut that Allard is still using at fund raising speeches. Apparently 9-11 caused more casualties that our fighting in Iraq, and that if we hadn’t fought the war in Iraq, the war would have come to us here.

Throughout this discussion, police officers were arriving. The first two arrived at the heels of another Allard staffer. They walked in the door without saying a thing, walked through the reception area where we were having our exchange, and went to stand in the office just inside the reception area.

The odd thing was that no one was addressing these officers, they were merely shown the inside office where they could hear our discussion and interrupt presumably if they were needed. A third officer arrived shortly, and then a fourth. We could see them waiting unsupervisez in the other room. One of the police officers wore the typical tight black gloves and left them on.

When asked who had called for the police officers, Allard’s assistant repeatedly declared that she did not. Although she also did not question any of the officers as to what was the purpose of their visit, and why there came another and another. Instead she proffered that the police were merely a routine measure of building security.

In the end, our visit felt more fruitless than constructive. I don’t know what we would have expected to communicate to one of the few senators who voted against the anti-torture bill. Allard’s assistant defended her boss by telling us that his opposition to the anti-torture bill was because he wanted a stranger one. We interjected that simultaneously Allard had expressed his approval of President Bush’s signing exemption.

In the end we saw the soft underbelly of the beast. and should have taken greater advantage of it. The Neocons may be formidable adversaries, but their supporters, the underbelly, are about as soft as they come.

Senator Allard’s office help kept insisting that they welcomed our visit, yet they seemed quite in step with the actions taken on the part of building security, actions which were not welcoming in the least.

Had our confidence not been boosted by the knowledge that our lead negotiator was an ACLU lawyer, we might not have been persistent enough to reach Allard’s office.

The routine scrambling of police officers certainly surprised us. Afterward I longed to have questioned one of the police officers in the next room. What was the nature of the disturbance described to them? What trouble were they fearing might errupt from a christian(!) peacemaker(!) team visiting their senator’s office?

Give it ALL back

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Jack Abramoff is indicted and suddenly everyone in Washington is scrambling to return whatever money he may have been known to have given them.
 
When we catch a shoplifter, they always offer to pay for what they’ve tried to take. We tell them it doesn’t work that way. What kind of a deterrent is that? You pay only if you get caught?

With lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleading guilty, to charges of what amounts to the bribing of government officials, suddenly all sorts of politicians are offering up the monies he contributed to them. Even President Bush returned something of what he’d received from Abramoff for the Bush reelection campaign.

Will these gestures suffice to reform these waylaid politicians-for-hire? No. Not at all. It don’t work that way.

Let’s see what else they might offer in atonement. Let’s see if they can offer to give it all back.

If they want to give the contributions back, they need to return more than just the monetary value of the goods and services they received. We don’t want their golf game in Scotland for example, we want what they gave of ours in exchange for that game.

The wayward politicos should rescind whatever vote they gave in exchange for Abramoff’s payments. Give that legislation back. Take it from the special interests and give it back to the people.

As well, the politicians should return their public office to whoever had run against them in the election. Their opponent might have won if the miscreant had not had the advantage of Abramoff’s contributions.

And last, where did the money go? It didn’t simply disappear. It went to the media companies in exchange for campaign ads. Shouldn’t the media conglomerates consider returning the dirty money? They knew where it was coming from.

This is no time to let each of these parties off the hook. It will not be enough that they return their bribes. Do we want to set an example, or do we want to accept government representatives selling out our system to the highest bidder?

Federal investigations, American innocence

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U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzales has just called for another Justice Department investigation. This time they want to know what government official leaked the story that President Bush has been conducting illegal surveillance upon U.S. citizens without the proper warrants.
 
Does this recall the investigation prompted by the revelation that our CIA has been using secret prisons in Europe to detain people illegally? They’re against European law and against American law. But Gonzales wanted to know the same thing: who told.
 
Soviet era prisonKiejkuty- a Soviet era prison in Poland, revealed to be one of the “black sites,” the secret network of CIA prisons for keeping ghost detainees from domestic scrutiny.

Remember the indignant reaction in 2004 to the suggestion that America was operating “gulags?”

Illegal activity on the part of the president. Illegal activity on the part of the CIA. Where is the investigation into the members of this government who failed to leak these stories?

Not only are there laws which protect whistleblowers, there are laws which punish people who keep mum about wrong-doings which they’ve witnessed. Is Alberto Gonzales interested in any of those laws?

Perhaps Gonzales authored another position paper advising Bush administration officials that they needn’t worry themselves with notions of personal responsibility in this the shiny age of Neocon omnipotence.

Need for warrants
President Bush claims that he ordered this domestic spying to protect our nation against terrorists. Since the warrants he would have needed are practically rubber stamped anyway, why would he need to act without having obtained them, in accordance to the law?

A leader elected in a democracy is not supposed to be able to declare all by himself who is an enemy of the state, just as a police commissioner is not supposed to be able to pick on whatever neighboor’s household he wishes. That’s what judicial review is for. “Got a warrant?” We all know our right. It’s in the Constitution. We put it there.

Freedom of Information Act requests have shown that Bush’s surveillance extends beyond looking for Taliban suicidal hijacker suspects. Perhaps Bush feared that the judicial oversight which comes with having to apply for a warrant might preclude those other categories. That’s what the oversight is for, to prevent a dictator from usurping a democracy.

Because someone is a particular religion is not a probable cause which would justify spying on them. No, George, because someone is protesting for peace, this is not a cause to spy on them.

A judicial review board trying to uphold the constitution will not issue a warrant because someone is blowing the whistle on a major energy company, or because they are making a competitive bid against Halliburton, or trying to organize a union against Wal-mart, or trying to expose the Bush family financial ties, or challenging Tom Delay’s redistricting. Those are not illegal activities and thus do not justify law-enforcement attention.

And what are you trying to learn from eavesdropping? What they are up to? What they are up to is generally known, that’s how you became worried about them in the first place.

Instead, are you looking for a vice, or a family secret, or some vulnerability which you can exploit, either through blackmail, coercion, brute force, or by sudden secret unconstitutional detention, to stop their activities which you say are a threat to your America?

Special effects masked King Kong’s erection

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When I came across the headline MIRACULOUS SPECIAL EFFECTS MASK KING KONG’S MIGHTY MEMBER I thought, that explains a lot.
 
Virginal maidenHollywood convention:
Innocent white maiden
displayed for the taking
against her will
by large beast.

Promotional posters for Peter Jackson’s KING KONG remake show a Naomi Watts, even fully dressed looking every inch desabiller, facing an admiring Kong looking every missing inch a eunuch. What’s up with that?

What is Kong’s interest in his little friend supposed to be about in the first place? I don’t know, is Naomi the mouse who removed his thorn? Is she like KOKO’s kitten? Is she simply an aesthetic beauty with which Kong is so enthralled he must possess her? (Would art-loving in itself be necessarily platonic? I don’t know, can someone pay 58 million dollars for a Van Gogh and not masturbate to it?)

If this primate is in fact infatuated, even if he knows he can’t copulate with his tiny Fay Wray, it would seem only primal that were he to set his petite ami down anywhere to gaze at her, it would not be atop his hand.

And so there it is, the film is about fluff. There is no Mrs. Kong, there are no Kong hormones, there is nothing in Peter Jackson’s Kong world, like the Middle Earth trilogy before it, that has anything to do with sex, with the sexes, with what life is about. It’s like a film about race cars without wheels, not going anywhere useful.

You may tell me that I’ve missed the point, you may ask what do I think Fay Wray is screaming at, you may say that King Kong is sex, but I’ll tell he is not. The Empire State Building may be about sex, but having a hairy ape climbing to the tip of it is not about sex, with a partner at least. And what about all the dinosaurs for God’s sake! (If you think I’m a kill-joy, I’ll tell you that if the part of the virginal maiden had been played by BENJI, I would not have an issue.)

So this is a tale for children, western children, who needn’t grasp a sense of the real world until they are sensibly grown apparently. But there cannot be much good in perpetuating children’s stories to adults.

The problem with storytelling in modern times is bigger than Kong’s erectile disfunction. From today’s Saturday morning cartoons to the typical Hollywood blockbuster, there’s a distinct lack of telling any actual story. There’s an adventure usually, a road story at best, but never anymore a transformation or a lesson or something which an audience could take home with them to illuminate their own life experience.

And not only is there a lack of lesson or insight, there’s deliberate disinformation.

A not very profound example might be Hollywood’s interesting take on how to shoot a gun. Every gang banger has learned from the movies that a handgun is fired sideways, just as you would throw down a gang gesture. A hand extended straight out looks like you’re wanting a handshake, putting your elbow out to the side projects a dancer’s ambivalence of gravity, thus attitude.

Doubtless a gun held sideways is more attractive to film, you can get more of the actor’s face in the shot, but it’s impossible to aim a gun that way. Weight, recoil, even the gunsight conspire against you.

A simply nefarious example of movieland disinformation is sexless male aggression. When Wes Craven makes a film like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, or Sam Peckinpaw makes STRAW DOGS, or Stanley Kubric makes A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, community leaders are outraged, and those filmmakers are vilified!

But the studios are all strangely comfortable with American horror villains like Freddy Krueger of HALLOWEEN and Jason of FRIDAY THE 13TH, both on fruitless psychotic rampages. Even SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE features an intruder bent on killing, not raping the girls. Has there ever been a serial killer who was not motivated by sex, however disfunctional? Hannibal Lecter exudes all of the sadism of a believable predator, without any of the biology. Vampires used to represent sexual malevolence, back when there was just Dracula. Now vampires abound but they’re all zombies.

Am I intending to say that I wish American horror films were more pornographic? Absolutely! The violence is pornographic, why not throw in the sex? Does this exclude children from being able to watch? Certainly!

But I mention these horror films chiefly as examples of villainy depicted out of context. Villainy abounds in the real world, much of it disguised. Villainy abounds in the movies, and usually without a human face. It’s often mega-maniacal or psychotic, far removed from the reality of despotic patriarchs. This is one reason perhaps why President Bush finds it an easy sell to describe terrorists as simply evil-doers. Few in his audience seem to question that terrorists might have any plenty obvious motivions.

Why not describe a real motive or two in the movies? Maybe the world’s 800 pound gorillas don’t want to offer too many clues lest their real world villainies be rooted out. A culture informed about sexual aggression might better understand and respond to problems of gender violence, human trafficking, war atrocity and systemic abuse.

In truth, Shakespeare pioneered the archetype of the faceless villain with Iago, whose plotting against OTHELLO seemed all the more evil because Iago had no discernible motive. But Shakespeare’s devices highlighted his insight into humanity. Hollywood offers not even artifice. Its fables are just plain dumb.

Not that it is terribly brilliant to worry that Peter Jackson’s KING KONG misrepresents what gorillas have in mind with minuscule waifs. The marked absence here of King Kong’s genitalia may not be the most egregious case of cinema-verité violé, but I have to say I’m curious that it may have been pretty big.

The Colorado Springs 2005 bid committe

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The Colorado Springs 2005 hosting bid to host the upcoming U.S. war crimes trials has been officially accepted by INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIME TRIALS .US! We now approach phase II. We must continue to raise awareness for the trials and widen the circle of Colorado Springs citizens who support the calls for reconcilliation to international law.

1.
How can we bring the International War Crimes Trials to Colorado Springs? The advent of hosting war crime trials will be a reality if John Kerry wins the US elections in November 2004.

Kerry has already expressed his intention to make the United States a signatory to the International Criminal Court, at which point the indictments can begin.
President Bush has stated that his objections to ratifying the ICC were to protect American soldiers from facing charges in international courts. But this reason is disingeneous because the prosecution of common soldiers is not the purpose of the ICC.
It is not the intent of the ICC to prosecute regular crimes of war in those cases which already fall under the jurisdiction of military tribunals or domestic courts. As we can see from the ABU GHRAIB cases, the US government has every intention to prosecute the common soldiers it holds responsible for those abuses.

The unique capability of the International Criminal Court is to indict heads of state and otherwise unassailable diplomats, functionaries, administrators and conspirators.
Preparations have already begun with the IWCT to document the charges, gather the evidence, and prepare the briefs. Efforts are well underway in Japan, Greece, Turkey and Belgium to organize the extra-judicial tribunals to supplement the ICC staffs.

Colorado Springs must act as early as possible to offer our city as a potential US host to the trials!

2.
The first objective of the COS2005 bid project is to make the concept of international law more tangible in American minds. Today when someone hears a protester denounce President Bush as a war criminal, it sounds like so much rhetoric.

But the charge is more than an opinion or an academic argument. The war of aggression which the U. S. pursued against Iraq is a war crime by any number of international laws. As a result there is an inevitable legal action coming against the U. S. for waging an illegal war. International law is not hyperbole.
Criticisms between presidential candidates might be political, but charges of war crimes are out of everyone’s hands. No one is exempt from prosecution for war crimes, and there are no statutes of limitation.

The concept of impending war crime trials thus become an election issue. Can we consider re-electing leaders who are guilty of war crimes, chiefly, the war crime of “crimes against the peace?”
An American voter might hesitate to endorse someone who they can imagine will go down in history as having been the bad guy in the black hat. We believe most people aspire to be law-abiding god-fearing citizens, of America, and of the world community as well.

Reprinted from ColoradoSprings2005.com