Tag Archives: Reuters

US gives its CIA contract assassins like Raymond Davis diplomatic immunity from justice, also interrogation, torture

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The NYT, AP, Reuters, everybody loves Raymond. Even Denver’s 9NEWS kept quiet about knowing the accused American was a CIA-Blackwater shooter, and let the USG continue to pretend that Raymond Davis was protected by Diplomatic Immunity as a consular employee. President Obama even called Davis “our diplomat.” And he’s right of course, spying, killing, squashing bystanders, refusing to abide by international law, fleeing justice, that is US diplomacy.

US inhumanity maxed at Azimuth Limit

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WikiLeaks video combat footage of 2007 collateral murder in Iraq“Light ’em all up. Come on, fire!” Watching the leaked combat footage of the helicopter gunships killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007, I’m troubled by my own desensitized response. When I saw earlier leaked videos of an AH-64 vaporizing Iraqi farmers and a C-130 wreaking mayhem in Afghanistan, I remember my real shock at seeing a human life extinguished. This time not even flinch. “Just fuckin’, once you get on ’em just open ’em up.” Not at the brutality, nor the callousness of the play by play –even as the pilots targeted rescuers trying to help the wounded. I fault the Rules of Engagement that allowed the massacre, not the soldiers’ laughing swagger –as I hope they will not begrudge my unguarded satisfaction when eventually spectators will be treated to leaked footage of American soldiers taking some fire.

If you watched the video, perhaps you too were wishing that July 12, 2007 had recorded a massive setback for US troops in Iraq, at the height of the “surge” where a whole shitload of “dismounts” had been ambushed by IED explosions in a Baghdad square in the aftermath of a civilian massacre. Those who watched the 39-minute extended version I know were hoping to see a resolution like that, instead of an additional war crime of disproportional force and the targeting of civilians, a Hellfire missile attack on a building into which armed and unarmed men had entered, surrounded by passing innocents and rescuers scrambling to help.

There it goes! Look at that bitch go!
Patoosh!
Ah, sweet!
Need a little more room.
Nice missile.
Does it look good?
Sweet!

The Army has declared that no further inquiry will be made into the 2007 killing of the two Reuters journalists. Its FOIA requests long thwarted, even Reuters is not expressing outrage at this footage. Civilians and journalists about to be lit up The corporate media is hoping to let this story fade on the fringe. Does this mean that more pilots and gunners might become emboldened to leak other trophy reels? It doesn’t take Nelson Ratings for news outlets to see that viewers are already clamoring for more combat snuff films.

We could grant amnesty in exchange for those who turn in the most degenerate sequences.

And pretend they’ll remain anonymous. Ultimately friends and relatives will be able to place identities with the radio voices. Speaking on one of the clearest channels is the young voiced HOTEL-26, who reported taking fire from the photographers and ID’d the “RPG” with started the whole engagement. Likewise the gunner on CRAZY HORSE-18 who responded “Alright, hahaha, I hit ’em….” is addressed “God damn it, Kyle.”

And then there’s the poor 30mm gunner in CRAZY HORSE-19 who assessed his work thus:

Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!

While chomping at the bit to fire upon the improvised ambulance, he was momentarily thwarted by a puzzling “Azimuth Limit” which prevented his shooting.

Bloggers are now abuzz to decode the Azimuth Limit which slowed the turkey shoot when none of the gunners were showing restraint. Azimuth is the angular measurement of an object’s distance clockwise from True North. On rifles it expresses the adjustment of a gunsight to its boresight. On aircraft it apparently has something to do with the angle of relation to the axis of the fuselage. Whatever it is, maybe we can ratchet military Azimuth Limits down flat, if that’s what it will take to stop our soldiers from blowing away civilians, journalists, children and their rescuers alike. The shooters can cuss and salivate all they want so long as their trigger mechanisms respect human life or at least balk at excessive carnage.

What doesn’t come across the audio is what the US soldiers on the ground are saying to themselves as they survey “that big pile of [unarmed] bodies,” in their palaver, the “dead bastards.”

UPDATE — the testimonials begin:

From Iraq war veteran Michael Prysner, co-founder of March Forward!

The harrowing Apache footage released by WikiLeaks gives us a stomach-turning glimpse of war. Seventeen minutes of cold-blooded massacre in a war of more than seven years. A brief clip of one Apache video; a quick look at one part of one mission. Hundreds of those missions take place every day.

The video came to light thanks to military whistleblowers who provided it to WikiLeaks together with supporting documents.  Imagine if we had access to all such videos, the things we would see. Imagine all the Iraqis killed who have no one to uncover the truth about their deaths. Had the death of two Reuters news staffers not generated interest in this video, then the destruction of three families by hellfire missiles fired into an apartment building with no provocation, in a separate engagement also featured in the video, would have never been made public.

This massacre is a drop in a sea of blood. Many other such “incidents” will never be known.

Officers claimed there was “no question” that the pilots were responding to enemy fire; the video shows there is no question that they were not responding to enemy fire. They said that they had “no idea” how the journalists were killed; the video shows that they know very well how those journalists were killed. They were gunned down standing in a crowd of unarmed people.
After the slaughter of that group, the pilots beg for permission to kill the innocent passers-by who had come to the aid of one of the wounded, like any of us would have done if we saw our neighbor dying on the ground as we drove down the street. They kill everyone trying to help the dying journalist, and critically wound two children seen sitting in the front seat.

We see a group of unarmed men mowed down by a machine gun designed to destroy armored vehicles. We see a vanload of good Samaritans obliterated for trying to help a dying victim. We see all this with the soundtrack of the pilots mocking the dead, congratulating each other and laughing about the massacre.

No wonder the U.S. military goes to such great lengths to keep such videos from us. They want us to see Iraq and Afghanistan through their lens, through their embedded reporters, filtered by censorship and restrictions. They know that, once the people of this country see the extreme racism and brutality behind these occupations, they will be repulsed by what their tax dollars are paying for.

The military brass and the White House politicians have tried to justify this senseless atrocity. “Cut the pilots some slack. This was in Baghdad. This was a battle zone”—that’s been their line. The pilots had been indoctrinated with the same colonial mentality. “That’s what they get for bringing their kids into battle,” one pilot says.

The father driving that van was not “bringing his kids into battle.” He was bringing them to school, driving down the street where they live. But the U.S. occupation has made all of Iraq a battle zone. To those pilots, to their commanders over the radio and to the generals in the Pentagon, every single person in Baghdad and in Iraq is “fair game.”

The pilots joked about the people they killed, laughed about U.S. military vehicles running over dead bodies, knowing that their commanders were listening and that they were being recorded. They were not acting out of character. This is the culture of the occupation. This is how these wars are being conducted.

Having seen this, one cannot honestly believe that these atrocities are committed day in and day out for the liberation of the Iraqi people.

The Pentagon’s talking heads and media lackeys are hard at work putting their spin on this story. It’s time to tell the truth. For more than seven years, the U.S. has unleashed criminal, unprovoked aggression against the people of Iraq, and they have been doing the same thing in Afghanistan for more than eight years.

The U.S. military presence in Iraq is a colonial occupation force. The only way forward is a complete, immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. This government will not do that unless all of us who are outraged by these criminal acts stand up and demand it.

Iraq war veteran Josh Stieber, US Army Specialist, 1st ID, Bravo Company 2-16 in Baghdad (Rustamiyah) 2007-2008. Although he was not present at the scene of the video, he knows those who were involved and is familiar with the environment.

A lot of my friends are in that video. After watching the video, I would definitely say that that is, nine times out of ten, the way things ended up. Killing was following military protocol. It was going along with the rules as they are.

If these videos shock and revolt you, they show the reality of what war is like. If you don’t like what you see in them, it means we should be working harder towards alternatives to war.

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William Blum – Anti-Empire Report

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Here’s William Blum’s latest essay, on Lincoln Gordon, Brazil, Cuba, and the 2009 Nobel Laureate, reprinted from www.killinghope.org.

THE ANTI-EMPIRE REPORT
By William Blum, January 6, 2009

The American elite

Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon’s diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".

You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.

Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington’s on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil’s military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?)

In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated — in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles — that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South American Republics". (It was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a decades-long nightmare, culminating in "Operation Condor", in which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.)

Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing and while denying completely any connection to the coup in Brazil he stated that the coup was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century."

Listen to a phone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, April 3, 1964, two days after the coup:

MANN: I hope you’re as happy about Brazil as I am.

LBJ: I am.

MANN: I think that’s the most important thing that’s happened in the hemisphere in three years.

LBJ: I hope they give us some credit instead of hell.1

So the next time you’re faced with a boy wonder from Harvard, try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the man attains, even — oh, just choosing a position at random — the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused not on these "liberal" … "best and brightest" who come and go, but on US foreign policy which remains the same decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln Gordons in America’s past. In its present. In its future. They’re the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs.

Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that. Some are worse.

And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was "a good corrective to three years at Harvard."

Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be Nobel Peace Prize winners

In November I wrote:

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He’s holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Well, on December 10 the president clutched the prize in his blood-stained hands. But then the Nobel Laureate surprised us. On December 17 the United States fired cruise missiles at people in … not Iran, but Yemen, all "terrorists" of course, who were, needless to say, planning "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset".2 A week later the United States carried out another attack against "senior al-Qaeda operatives" in Yemen.3

Reports are that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway is now in conference to determine whether to raise the maximum number of wars allowed to ten. Given the committee’s ignoble history, I imagine that Obama is taking part in the discussion. As is Henry Kissinger.

The targets of these attacks in Yemen reportedly include fighters coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmation of the warnings long given — even by the CIA and the Pentagon — that those US interventions were creating new anti-American terrorists. (That’s anti-American foreign policy, not necessarily anything else American.) How long before the United States will be waging war in some other god-forsaken land against anti-American terrorists whose numbers include fighters from Yemen? Or Pakistan? Or Somalia? Or Palestine?

Our blessed country is currently involved in so many bloody imperial adventures around the world that one needs a scorecard to keep up. Rick Rozoff of StopNATO has provided this for us in some detail.4

For this entire century, almost all these anti-American terrorists have been typically referred to as "al-Qaeda", as if you have to be a member of something called al-Qaeda to resent bombs falling on your house or wedding party; as if there’s a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American terrorism while being a member of al-Qaeda and people retaliating against American terrorism while NOT being a member of al-Qaeda. However, there is not necessarily even such an animal as a "member of al-Qaeda", albeit there now exists "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". Anti-American terrorists do know how to choose a name that attracts attention in the world media, that appears formidable, that scares Americans. Governments have learned to label their insurgents "al-Qaeda" to start the military aid flowing from Washington, just like they yelled "communist" during the Cold War. And from the perspective of those conducting the War on Terror, the bigger and more threatening the enemy, the better — more funding, greater prestige, enhanced career advancement. Just like with the creation of something called The International Communist Conspiracy.

It’s not just the American bombings, invasions and occupations that spur the terrorists on, but the American torture. Here’s Bowe Robert Bergdahl, US soldier captured in Afghanistan, speaking on a video made by his Taliban captors: He said he had been well-treated, contrasting his fate to that of prisoners held in US military prisons, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I bear witness I was continuously treated as a human being, with dignity, and I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me or biting me as my country has done to their Muslim prisoners in the jails that I have mentioned."5

Of course the Taliban provided the script, but what was the script based on? What inspired them to use such words and images, to make such references?

Cuba. Again. Still. Forever.

More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here’s the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba:

"The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists. … Under Cuban law … a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of ‘dangerousness’."

That sounds just awful, doesn’t it? Imagine being subject to arrest for whatever someone may choose to label "dangerousness". But the exact same thing has happened repeatedly in the United States since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We don’t use the word "dangerousness". We speak of "national security". Or, more recently, "terrorism". Or "providing material support to terrorism".

The arrested American works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a US government contractor that provides services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2008, DAI was funded by the US Congress to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. Yes, Oh Happy Day!, we’re bringing democracy to Cuba just as we’re bringing it to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, DAI was contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela and proceeded to fund the same groups that a few months earlier had worked to stage a coup — temporarily successful — against President Hugo Chávez. DAI performed other subversive work in Venezuela and has also been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other hotspots. "Subversive" is what Washington would label an organization like DAI if they behaved in the same way in the United States in behalf of a foreign government.6

The American mainstream media never makes its readers aware of the following (so I do so repeatedly): The United States is to the Cuban government like al-Qaeda is to the government in Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds or communication equipment from al-Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States, evidence usually gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba’s "political prisoners" are such dissidents.

The Washington Post story continued:

"The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year." Period.

What does one make of such a statement without further information? How could the Cuban government have been so insensitive to people’s needs for so many years? Well, that must be just the way a "totalitarian" state behaves. But the fact is that because of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, with a major loss to Cuba of its foreign trade, combined with the relentless US economic aggression, the Caribbean island was hit by a great energy shortage beginning in the 1990s, which caused repeated blackouts. Cuban authorities had no choice but to limit the sale of energy-hogging electrical devices such as cell phones; but once the country returned to energy sufficiency the restrictions were revoked.

"Cubans who want to log on [to the Internet] often have to give their names to the government."

What does that mean? Americans, thank God, can log onto the Internet without giving their names to the government. Their Internet Service Provider does it for them, furnishing their names to the government, along with their emails, when requested.

"Access to some Web sites is restricted."

Which ones? Why? More importantly, what information might a Cuban discover on the Internet that the government would not want him to know about? I can’t imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami. International conferences on all manner of political, economic and social subjects are held regularly in Cuba. What does the American media think is the great secret being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?

"Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully."

According to a well-documented account7, Sánchez’s tale of government abuse appears rather exaggerated. Moreover, she moved to Switzerland in 2002, lived there for two years, and then voluntarily returned to Cuba. On the other hand, in January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. However, the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration.

"’Counterrevolutionary activities’, which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes."

Raise your hand if you or someone you know of was ever arrested in the United States for taking part in a protest. And substitute "pro al-Qaeda" for "counterrevolutionary" and for "anti-government" and think of the thousands imprisoned the past eight years by the United States all over the world for … for what? In most cases there’s no clear answer. Or the answer is clear: (a) being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or (b) being turned in to collect a bounty offered by the United States, or (c) thought crimes. And whatever the reason for the imprisonment, they were likely tortured. Even the most fanatical anti-Castroites don’t accuse Cuba of that. In the period of the Cuban revolution, since 1959, Cuba has had one of the very best records on human rights in the hemisphere. See my essay: "The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy".8

There’s no case of anyone arrested in Cuba that compares in injustice and cruelty to the arrest in 1998 by the United States government of those who came to be known as the "Cuban Five", sentenced in Florida to exceedingly long prison terms for trying to stem terrorist acts against Cuba emanating from the US.9 It would be lovely if the Cuban government could trade their DAI prisoner for the five. Cuba, on several occasions, has proposed to Washington the exchange of a number of what the US regards as "political prisoners" in Cuba for the five Cubans held in the United States. So far the United States has not agreed to do so.

Notes

  1. Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964 (New York, 1997), p.306. All other sources for this section on Gordon can be found in: Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary; The Guardian (London), August 31, 2007; William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 27 ↩
  2. ABC News, December 17, 2009; Washington Post, December 19, 2009 ↩
  3. Washington Post, December 25, 2009 ↩
  4. Stop NATO, "2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World", December 30, 2009. To get on the StopNATO mailing list write to r_rozoff@yahoo.com. To see back issues: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/↩
  5. Reuters, December 25, 2009 ↩
  6. For more details on DAI, see Eva Golinger, "The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006) and her website, posting for December 31, 2009 ↩
  7. Salim Lamrani, professor at Paris Descartes University, "The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez", Monthly Review magazine, November 12, 2009 ↩
  8. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/democ.htm ↩
  9. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htm ↩

Leave it to pirates to run honest bourse

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rocket propelled grenade RPG-22With investment bankers trying to weasel another broker’s percentage from a carbon-credit trading system, comes a living example of rudimentary venture capitalism. In Haradheere, Somalia, there’s a stock market for pirates, by comparison, something benefiting all participants.

The pirate’s market is no middleman’s monopoly. It works just like the collectives of investors who floated Britain’s privateers and the Dutch East Indies Trading Companies, just two examples of crown-sanctioned adventure-mercenary conquerors. Had you wondered why the definition of “float” includes the economies participant to navigational buoyancy?

Got a boat, a weapon, a tip on an incoming treasure galleon? Invest the pirates with your contribution and reap a stake in the rewards. Every successive stock market since the formative times, from commodities, to insurance, to futures, etc, have well surpassed the illegitimacy and immorality of the seafaring pirate variety.

Sang the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance: Away to the cheating world go you, Where pirates all are well-to-do.

While the corporate media decries the savagery of the lawless Somali coastal enterprises, sophisticated traders descend upon COP15 to extort a cap-and-trade protection racket from a world desperate to arrest climate change.

The pirate bourse is a reminder of what purpose the stock markets used to play. If you had a money-making idea, and needed investors, that’s where you went. But to describe a business proposal as germinating from an idea, is to peddle platitudes defining entrepreneurship as being about intellectual innovation. In practice, business opportunities chiefly present themselves from licenses obtained from the state, to operate lucrative monopolies. It usually takes the combination of disproportionate profits and manageable risk to interest wealthy investors.

I think I enjoy this Somalia juxtaposition particularly because Wall Street can’t get a piece of the pirate action. Only those with real pirate commodities need apply. And of course, only those financiers brave enough to circulate in a “pirate’s lair” like Haradheere. So the suddenly infamous Dalsan Bank of Haradheere is basically for scrappers and warlords only, and certainly no whites need apply, unless it’s to be ransomed.

Here’s a snippet from yesterday’s Reuters article:

Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel.

“I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,” she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony.

“I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the ‘company’.”

If it sounds like a personal testament for a get-rich-quick scheme, it is! But unlike the television infomercials, this bourse is grounded in providing a legitimate function in Somalia.

Note that the ransom from which Ms. Ibrahim expects to profit was paid for the release of a “tuna fishing vessel.” For those who want to judge the pirates like terrorists, the inconvenient characteristic about the Somali pirates is the role they play as coast guard for a national government not up to the task. Somalia’s inability to police its waters means that international boats visit to plunder the fisheries and dump toxic waste. Illegally, obviously. The fishing villages of Somalia suffer the most, and it’s from their workforces that the pirates recruit their expeditions. The pirates arrest the wrongdoers and assess large penalties and criminal fines before the lawbreaking crews are released.

For a good time call Heidi Barsuglia

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Heidi Dejong BarsugliaCalifornia legislator Michael Duvall has resigned over indiscretions about two infidelities. His wife’s problem, even if he postures as a Family Values politician. Our problem, one of Duvall’s playmates is a utilities industry lobbyist, whose interests Duvall protected. The QUIM PRO QUO for Sempra Energy Global, San Diego Gas and Electric, Southern California Gas Company, and the California Retailers Association is Heidi de Jong Barsuglia.

Duvall’s other infidelity also involved a lobbyist, referred to Duval as “Shar.” According to Reuters:

On July 8, Duvall told fellow Republican Assemblyman Jeff Miller of Corona, a longtime friend, that he also was sleeping with another lobbyist, who has been identified by Capitol sources as a one-time lobbyist for several different interest groups.

9/14 CORRECTION:
The identity of the second lobbyist remains to be divulged. NMT has been assured in a letter from Dale Stern of the law firm of Stern, Van Vleck, and McCarron LLC, that earlier named Shari McHugh of the “highly regarded Sacramento lobbying firm of McHugh and Associates” was not one of the lobbyists with whom Assemblyman Michael Duvall was fraternizing.

While we regret the error, we do wonder about the etiquette of accusations regarding lobbyists and members of a legislature. No quarter? What consideration is ever given the public by lobbyists who serve moneyed interests, whether they are sleeping with them, or greasing their palm?

American barbeque and Fox assholes like Scissor Bills’ O’Reilly

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FOX News
Ex-soldier bragged about Iraqi rape, deaths then celebrated at a barbeque from Reuters. “Iraqis were horrified by the crime, one of a series of incidents involving U.S. soldiers that strained relations with the Iraqi government. But the onset of Green’s trial three years later is not resonating with most Iraqis, observers there say. The incident was portrayed in the 2007 movie “Redacted” by director Brian De Palma, who complained the film was censored by the studio. Its graphic images shocked many viewers.”

From wikipedia we read that…

‘Commentator Bill O’Reilly has called for protests of Redacted and against Mark Cuban. O’Reilly claims that the film demeans American soldiers and may incite violence against them, and he has called on ticketholders to bring signs to Dallas Mavericks games and all theaters showing the movie, stating ‘Support the Troops’.[18] Mark Cuban has responded, saying “The movie is fully pro-troops. The hero of the movie is a soldier who stands up for what is right in the face of adversity… I think that the concept that the enemy will see these films and use it as motivation is total nonsense. We have no plans of translating these movies to Arabic or other middle eastern languages…It’s really easy to hate, its really hard to think issues through on their own merits. Anything that makes people think about issues is a good thing.”‘

You can see the film Redacted online for free and it is well worth it. Don’t let these right Wing creeps like Bill O’Reilly get away with what you can see or not see. It never got a chance at your local cinema but most good films never do either. There are just far too many American idiots like O’Reilly out there and unfortunately, many of them get their marching orders from Fox and Murdoch, if not their actual salaries like Master Scissor Bill himself does.

Swine flu pandemic, my ass

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1976 swine flu epidemic mandated vaccinationDo you have an uneasy sense that someone’s trying to pull the wool over your eyes? Does the hullabaloo over a looming swine flu pandemic seem a bit overblown? The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the pandemic alert level (a 6-point scale) to 4 and is considering moving it to 5 today, with only 7 confirmed deaths worldwide! Keep in mind that seasonal flu kills 40,000 every year in the US alone, so why the sudden grave concern?

I don’t claim to understand all the factors at play here, but one thing I do know: I am FAR more concerned that my government will use manufactured fear somehow to my detriment — likely another lost civil liberty or two and large profits or other benefits to a chosen few — than I am about contracting the demon swine flu.

A few facts to bolster your immune-to-bullshit system:

–Thus far, only 97 cases of so-called swine flu have been definitively identified worldwide, mostly in Mexico (26 confirmed, 7 deaths) and the U.S. (64 confirmed, no deaths). About 1600 suspected cases, including 159 deaths, are reported in Mexico. Sad as this is, it does not add up to a pandemic swine flu outbreak. We love to make this shit up for some reason. Remember the one million Americans who were supposed to die of swine flu in 1976? WHO has forgotten about them, I suppose, because they refused to become cooperative statistics.

–The virus at issue has nothing to do with swine. In fact, it hasn’t been seen in a single animal. And you can’t possibly get it from eating pork which I see as an unfortunate truth, because a good reason to stop eating pork would be a welcome silver lining to this “worldwide health crisis.”

–No existing vaccines can prevent this new flu strain. So no matter what you hear – even if it comes from your doctor – don’t get a regular flu shot. They rarely work against seasonal flu and certainly can’t offer protection from a never-before-seen strain.

–Speaking of this strain, it doesn’t seem to have come on naturally. According to the World Health Organization, this particular strain has never before been seen in pigs or people. And according to Reuters, the strain is a ‘genetic mix’ of swine, avian and human flu. Was it created in a lab? We don’t know yet, and I doubt we’ll find out anytime soon.

–The drug companies are getting excited, and that’s never a good thing. According to the Associated Press at least one financial analyst estimates up to $388 million worth of Tamiflu sales in the near future – and that’s without a pandemic outbreak. Imagine the payday when everyone begins to flip out!

–Let’s not forget that Tamiflu comes with its own problems, including side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, cough — the very symptoms it purports to relieve! But, oh well, at least the drug company benefits financially from Tamiflu sales. No one benefits if we don’t take it, which makes the whole pandemic thing seem like a wasted opportunity.

–Vaccines for this flu strain won’t have to jump through all those annoying hurdles like clinical trials for safety and effectiveness (which, if you know anything about the FDA, are usually a waste of time anyway). That won’t, however, stop the government from mandating the vaccine for all of us – a very likely scenario. And if the vaccines are actually harmful — killing people, for example, which they certainly will be — the vaccine makers will be immune from lawsuits. D’ya suppose they could bottle up some of that fail-safe immunity for the rest of us?

“Swine flu” is endemic to a sick system created by pigs. Your best defense against swine flu – your only real defense in any manufactured health crisis situation – is a bullshit-proof immune system.

Obama wants to attack us still, says Iranian general

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Iranian general“We cannot claim that the (U.S.) Democrats are not warmongering like the Republicans. They are just as warmongering and mischievous, and they would like to do that (attack Iran),” Iran’s top military commander, Major-General Hassan Firouzabadi said.

And the US under Barack Obama continues to carry out the Pentagon fund raiser ‘Global War on Terrorism’, too. That means more killer drones murdering Pakistani civilians, more US occupation terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more backing Israeli terrorism against the Palestinians of Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. It means that war with Syria and Iran might be started on a second’s notice by the US. It mean’s also that Barack Obama will try to hide away clandestine US military use of torture and that the concentration terror camps of the Pentagon will not be fully stopped. It means that the US government will continue to secretly take away the rights of its own citizens.

Obama wants to attack us still, says Iranian general? You bet he does! And I would not be over confident that the US under Barack Obama will not be any less reckless in using the military to bankrupt the economy than Dubya and Dick were. The military-inudstrial complex comes first for the Democratic Party, same as with the Republicans.

See Reuters… Iran says U.S. still “warmongering”

Stop bailing the banks out and nationalize them, Robbing Hood

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Robbing Hood$173 billions of taxpayer money given to just one financial company, AIG! Thanks, Obama, you’re really doing great here. What has the American public gotten for this travesty of economics, as Obama and Bush (the Democrats and the Republicans) have taken from the poor and given to the rich?
 
Why, they have gotten absolutely nothing. Who has gotten anything besides AIG?

‘The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that about $50 billion of more than $173 billion that the U.S. government has poured into American International Group Inc since last fall has been paid to at least two dozen U.S. and foreign financial institutions.’ See Reuters… Who got AIG’s bailout billions?

What is this? Is there some sort of competition between American conservative loonies and America’s liberal loonies going on? Why don’t Americans call for nationalizing the banks since obviously the Feds can’t get the job done without all sorts of money being stolen from the poor? Enough of these Robbing Hoods! It’s time to nationalize the banks.

The BIG LIE, or just an extremely stupid lie to prep us for more war?

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dumb donkeyThe Republicans justified the whole start of the so-called Global War on Terrorism (the invasion and occupation of Iraq) by claiming that we were all threatened by Weapons of Mass Destruction in the hands of sinister Mr Evil, Saddam Hussein, former ally of the US in trying to bring about regime change in Iran. That was their BIG LIE. But now the Democratic Party nitwits, headed up by Barack and Hee Haw Hillary, have a new BIG LIE missile aimed at us all… CORRECTION! …it is merely an extremely stupid lie. Their lie is that Iran is trying to aim nuclear weapons at …where? why at Europe! What an extremely stupid lie this one is, and as such… it will not sell war like the Republicans’ BIG LIE once did. See Reuters report… Clinton says missile shield to protect (Europe) from Iran … what a bunch of dumb donkeys!

$180 billion US government giveaway to one insurance group and counting

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AIG bailoutBarack Obama is going to put the US government into its grave! AIG has $61.7 billion loss, new U.S. aid may not be last …AIG is an insurance grouping and lost about $465,000 a minute in Oct, Nov, Dec of 2008, and was a record for a U.S. company, according to Thomson Reuters data. For all of 2008, AIG lost $99.29 billion, wiping out profits dating to the early 1990s. That amount is close to the gross domestic product of Kuwait. Total giveaway ‘relief’ to AIG by Bush and Gerald Barack Ford s now at $180,000,000,000 and still counting! Can you smell “the recovery?”

US and Mexican Drug War Czars declare Martial Law in El Paso-Ciudad Juarez metro area

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el-paso-juarez.jpg …In my book there are only 2 major international metropolitan areas in the Northern part of North America, those being Montreal and El Paso-Ciudad Juarez. I would add San Diego-Tijuana in there too except for the fact that the two cities are 25 miles apart from each other. Of course, most Anglo US citizens have never thought of El Paso-Ciudad Juarez in that manner as they mainly just drive past the area, usually with some sense of dismay.

So what’s going on down south these days a short drive right past Albuquerque from us? Put simply, basically the area has been turned into a war zone because of US drug policy and now Martial law is being implemented for the most part. See the Reuters report- Mexico to send more troops to besieged city

Yes, 1.6 million of the metro area’s population will be put under Marshall Law, but don’t think that none of people in El Paso north of the Rio Bravo is affected by this militarization, for they are. Crossing The Border now resembles walking into Northern Ireland, and all because the US government will never admit to losing its wars, no matter that they have.

Here is a slide show that gives people some small idea of the area being militarized. Audio slideshow: Mexico drug violence …Except for the fact that quite a lot of Ciudad Juarez looks not all that much different than the US does. Deserty, that’s all. And poorer. And scary. KInd of like the Bronx perhaps?

Drug cartel roundup in U.S. nets 750 in just another stupid war for the US government-military-industrial-prison complex welfare program for ‘security’ meat heads and those that profit off them.

US soldier sadists get kicks in quick at Guantanamo

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abu-ghraibExclusive: Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama So it’s not just Not My Tribe that writes about the bad character of most US soldiers, but rather Reuters does so as it informs the whole world of these facts about American soldier jailers. The US military is simply full of many sick, hateful, and sadistic people, as are the various local policing agencies within our country. That simply should be absolutely not surprising to anybody around the world, since these soldiers and police are in charge of enforcing racist, imperialist, war mongering domestic and foreign policies of the US government. The Whole World continues to watch.

US government slide rule of accounting

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bunny suitThe US government and its talking head corporate media clowns are real good at not ever admitting anything about anything. Smile, Smile, Smile! However, this is what the French press group Reuters has to say about the American economy and they do not use or put much faith in the standard US government slide rule to measure unemployment. Great Depression jobs parallel may not be far flung Notice how the statistics and data are now altered by the government. The US government has slid the data right on down from what its previous more honest accounting measured, to give all of us a falser sense of security.

How much unemployment will be seen in the next years ahead? The government and both capitalist parties want everybody to believe that throwing money at the rich who own the big enterprises will ‘stimulate’ the economy. Things don’t work that way though, since to revive the economy the ordinary people themselves are needed and not just the top governing and owning hacks of our society. It is not about ‘investment’ but work and the workers who do it. Work is what makes society move, not investment.

Capitalist society does not value work or workers though, and the elites consider those who work morons. Unfortunately many workers imitate the elites and consider themselves and those around them to be morons, too, for not being part of the owning class elite. Many workers actually begin to believe that they are worthless elements of society, and not the backbone of it!

There is certainly all kinds of work that needs to be done, but capitalist society does not pay for most necessary work but instead keeps it from happening. The only work that gets done mainly is work that can make profit for the owning elite, and not the work that should be done. Workers simply get turned away when they want to work, need to work, and could work if allowed to do so. Owners usually do not allow that unless forced to do so by the workers themselves to allow it to happen. That is always a nasty battle since this is a society run by capitalist owners, and not one that counters them.

Sadly most workers today do not think they have any power or could ever have such power, and their first reaction to increased unemployment is most likely be despair, depression, and increased self disrespect. Many families will begin to disintegrate and abuse will arise all around. Add to that the lies of the elites about what is really happening, and many will turn to violence and against all the wrong targets. The Left has a tough road ahead to try to counter the trend to come.

The US Union Movement is in total disarray and retreat and must be rebuilt from ground up. Everywhere the battle will be to get the Democratic Party lovers out of their positions where they brake rebellion, and then channel it into useless and unresponsive channels. We are in a period where it will not be the Republican Right that are the major enemies of organization, but instead the Democratic Party liberal centrists who are everywhere in positions funded from the top. There is a lot of work ahead, and it will be done only through dedicated and tough volunteers often working against paid staffers of supposedly do-good organizations that in fact do no good at all. This is true nowhere more than in the established but now utterly dysfunctional unions that exist.

Unemployment will go up, and capitalism does not automatically right itself like a sturdy boat in a strong sea might. Capitalism is more like a rotten vessel that will sink all onboard without a struggle to keep it from happening. These are just a few thoughts to measure against the corporate efforts to put a happy face on the current realities, when really there is little to be happy about.

Meanwhile, back at the lab…

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A BBC news story about why and how Ordinary People can be induced to torture another Human Being just because an “Authority Figure” ordered them to do it….

This is for all the … oh, I’ll not called them Cowards (this time), I’ll be more P.C. (temporarily) “Morality Challenged and Courage Deficient” bootlicker who yes sir yes sir three bags full sir!! Always Follow Orders bullshit artists who think they have to be Obedient.

They know who they are.

BBC NEWS
People ‘still willing to torture’

Decades after a notorious experiment, scientists have found test subjects are still willing to inflict pain on others – if told to by an authority figure.

US researchers repeated the famous “Milgram test”, with volunteers told to deliver electrical shocks to another volunteer – played by an actor.

Even after faked screams of pain, 70% were prepared to increase the voltage, the American Psychology study found.

Both may help explain why apparently ordinary people can commit atrocities.

Yale University professor Stanley Milgram’s work, published in 1963, recruited volunteers to help carry out a medical experiment, with none aware that they were actually the subject of the test.

A “scientist” instructed them to deliver a shock every time the actor answered a question wrongly.

When the pretend 150-volt shock was delivered, the actor could be heard screaming in pain, and yet, when asked to, more than eight out of ten volunteers were prepared to give further shocks, even when the “voltage” was gradually increased threefold.

Some volunteers even carried on giving 450-volt shocks even when there was no further response from the actor, suggesting he was either unconscious or dead.

Similar format

Dr Jerry Burger, of Santa Clara University, used a similar format, although he did not allow the volunteers to carry on beyond 150 volts after they had shown their willingness to do so, suggesting that the distress caused to the original volunteers had been too great.

Again, however, the vast majority of the 29 men and 41 women taking part were willing to push the button knowing it would cause pain to another human.

Even when another actor entered the room and questioned what was happening, most were still prepared to continue.

He told Reuters: “What we found is validation of the same argument – if you put people in certain situations, they will act in surprising and maybe often even disturbing ways.”

He said that it was not that there was “something wrong” with the volunteers, but that when placed under pressure, people will often do “unsettling” things.

Even though it was difficult to translate laboratory work to the real world, he said, it might partly explain why, in times of conflict, people could take part in genocide.

Complex task

Dr Abigail San, a chartered clinical psychologist, has recently replicated the experiment for a soon-to-be-aired BBC documentary – all the way up to the 450-volt mark, again finding a similar outcome to Professor Milgram.

“It’s not that these people are simply not good people any more – there is a massive social influence going on.”

She said that the volunteers were being asked to carry out a complex task in aid of scientific research, and became entirely focused on it, with “little room” left for considering the plight of the person receiving the shock.

“They tend to identify massively with the ‘experimenter’, and become very engaged and distracted by the research.

“There’s no opportunity for them to say ‘What’s my moral stand on this?'”
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7791278.stm

Published: 2008/12/19 10:41:36 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

Print Sponsor

Of course, Military Torturers have plenty of time to become acclimated to the “Routine”, are themselves trained in resisting torture and trained in how to complain to any who will listen, long and loud, when they themselves are Tortured…

And PLENTY of time to consider the Immorality of what THEY do.

Unlike college student volunteers who do it once for a 3 hour session.

The Thai Monarchist mob

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Thai kingWe have been watching from afar the activities of the Thai Monarchist mob as they have occupied Bangkok’s airport and received the complicit support of the Thai military, which refused to disperse them. This has been no ‘people’s protest’ at all but rather a Right Wing mob, all comparable to the one the US mobilized recently in Eastern Bolivia to try to divide Bolivia into two parts and remove Evo Morales from power there.

‘Dissolution of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) will heal none of the basic rifts between Bangkok’s royalist elite and middle classes, who despise ousted and exiled leader Thaksin Shinawatra, and the urban poor and rural masses who love him and continue to vote his allies into office.’ (taken from the Reuter’s report Thai protesters lift airport siege

Around the world not all mobilizations are for the people from the people at all. In Colombia, the Right Wing death squad government, too, was able to mobilize millions of common citizens into the streets in support of their corrupt government fairly recently. Unfortunately this Thai mob is mobilizing people in support of a Monarchy and the King, and there can be nothing more reactionary in this day and time than that.

More from Reuters below…

“WE’LL BE BACK”

The PAD, led by a group of royalist businessmen, academics and activists, formally marked the end of the occupation by singing the king’s anthem. Ominously, the PAD protesters vow to return if they see Thaksin allies getting near power again.

“I am sad that we are going,” said Ranatip, 48, an unemployed office assistant. “But I am ready to fight for my king and my country. I will come back as soon as I am needed.”

These people are sick. They are united in wanting to keep Thailand’s poor as poor as they can make them. Thailand’s class divisions and caste system isn’t quite as horrible as India’s but it is still pretty damn bad.

US government pimps US child prostitutes to justify its own worldwide terrorism against children

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bush pimp‘More than 600 adults have been arrested in raids across the US targeting people who force children into prostitution. Operations took place in 29 cities in a co-ordinated action involving federal, state and local law officers, according to the FBI.’ thus reads the Reuters reportage of yesterdays US government’s mass raids US smashes child prostitute rings coming just one day after the government violated all international law and entered into a Syrian village and murdered 4 children there.

The two events, though seemingly unrelated to each other, in fact are thoroughly related. So let’s take a look at the US government ‘child prostitution raid’ and examine some how the US government pimped our own American children here at home in the country to help justify its own terrorism both at home and abroad. Shall we?

Notice that ‘operation took place in 29 cities in a co-ordinated action’. Does that seem like a normal legal action to take here? If it does, then you need to think a bit more about it some. Just what type of government or policing body sits back and does not stop child prostitution involving even a single child going on for any more time than a second?

That’s right. The US government and its police sat back and did nothing for weeks and months at a time (if you believe their own storyline???), just so they could ‘co-ordinate’ in 29 different cities! In other words (their own words), they sat back and allowed multiple American children to be prostituted while doing absolutely nothing at all to save the children from these crimes, all so as to better do their own government co-ordinated showcase raids using multiple terroristic Swat Teams! You bet! What princes of morality we have here!

Imagine? You see a child being prostituted in your own neighborhood, call the police, and they say to you…

‘Don’t worry, we are working on taking action, but first we have to co-ordinate with 28 other cities before we help this one underage girl out.’

Your reaction here? Shock? Is this responsible policing? I think not.

Imagine the absolute corruption in our US municipal police forces to have just sat back in 29 cities allowing these children to continue to be prostituted, just so that they could all ‘coordinate’ these US government Swat Team raids to occur one and all at the same time! Imagine it?

‘Sorry, Mam. We know that you saw, and we believe you, too, that a neighborhood hoodlum is prostituting this 14 year old girl next door in your building. But we have to wait for the cameras to show up in 29 cities at one time before we can take action and help her out. Plus, The Feds haven’t done their Syrian raid either, and we need to wait for that to happen, so that we can show Americans how much we care about getting these bad guys out of action.’

Can you imagine? This is the morality of the Republican and Democratic Party creeps running our country today. The Syrian government said Sunday’s attack by four U.S. military helicopters targeted a civilian building under construction in Sukkariyeh shortly before sundown, and killed eight people, including four children. Our country is run by a bipartisan group of gangsters.

Ted Stevens guilt at most embarrassing

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sarah-palin-ted-stevensAlaska Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty on all seven counts of felony corruption charges. Says Reuters, it’s “a verdict that could endanger the Republican’s political future.” That’s all, for betraying the public trust? Though each charge carries a max five year sentence, reporters predict that Stevens will face only probation. And while Governor Sarah Palin issued a statement denouncing the culture of corruption in the Alaskan oil business, she stopped short of asking for the senator’s resignation. It’s thought neither will the US Senate. What is the point then of catching politicians red handed?

Polls, schmolls, and the future ahead

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vote fraudThis morning reactionary AOL front-lined for its predominately Republican fans, that the Gallup poll showed the election was a tossup! What a joke! Reuters has a much different read on the presidential election stating that Obama lead on McCain grows to 12 points In fact, it might not even really be that close? The McCain ticket does well in only an urban area or two in the entire country (Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and a very few others). People in most metro areas do not like McCain except in some of the suburbs.

Why is McCain sliding so fast? The reality is simply that not even the business community throughout most of the nation wants a Bush clone in office at this time. Bush did his job for them but his style and directly reactionary politics is all used up at this particular moment. And even more so, the business community doesn’t want a Fundamentalist Christian fool in office, which is what Sarah Palin would be if McCain died. The American Business Community, at this crashing moment world wide, wants a team of directors that might be able to keep the Western European countries from going into open rebellion against their own DC based Empire??? It might be a little too late for that however?

The Democratic Party will have control over the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. A perfect target for the Right to blame for the coming economic meltdown already under sway. Why is that? Because the Democratic Party political platforms are perfect for disintegrating the country even more as they continue to give the military-industrial complex all the plum economic government welfare contracts.

The Right will promote that very same too, but will then turn around and blame everybody and anybody else for the destruction that this will cause. Time for the hate filled then to get rabid. The predominantly Rightist Churches will be a preaching and praying against the supposed immorality and indecency that will be blamed on The Others, and history will repeat itself one more time as most folk will find it easier to go after the more defenseless people who’ll they find to be their victims, rather than those more responsible for their disintegrating plight.

As long as people continue to vote for the lesser of two evils, we can never hope for anything better than evil.

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Conservatives never learn. Jeb Bush involved in collapse of Lehman Bros. [Reuters]

Jewish Taliban brutally beating women in Jerusalem.

Wednesday is Constitution Day, a day to mourn the destruction of the US Constitution under NeoCon rule.

Heckofajob, Brownie. FEMA failing Galveston and Houston just like they did New Orleans after Katrina.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 16 notes, thomasmc.com.

South America unites in rejecting US subversion on continent

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evo moralesMuch of Latin America has watched on in disgust as the US government has fomented regional strife, civil war, and racist pogroms against the indigenous community in Bolivia that has claimed at least 30 lives so far. Reuters reports though that South American leaders back Bolivia’s Morales and not Washington DC in this battle.

Leaders of countries all around the globe are beginning to resist US government terrorism. Pakistan also has begun to fight back against US subversion of peace in their country, just as Russia gave a kick in the teeth to US subversion in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. See Pakistan troop fire turns back U.S. helicopters

Latin America, too, is just fed up with the US government. Yankees Go Home! That is the cry every where these days!

US allied Philippine government goes berserk in Mindanao

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Yes, everywhere the US is spreading violence throughout the world, and much of it is poorly reported by the US corporate media. Such is the case in Mindanao Island now controlled by the US puppet regime of the Philippines HQed in Manila. The US-Philippine troops have now created yet another world refugee nightmare as their war has uprooted close to 400,000 people there. See the Reuters report More than 180 killed in Philippine fighting-army

You probably haven’t given this fighting much thought with the Carnival season in full blast inside our United States of antiAmerica, but YES, this fighting is yet another war zone with the government label on it of –MADE IN US–

Carnage across Somalia almost 2 years after US takeover

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US and Ethiopia OUT OF SOMALIA
Somalia is a US occupied territory, not much different than the other US occupied nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Ethiopian troops do the job for the Pentagon in Somali, whereas Iraq and Afghanistan are occupied much more directly by US troops, so we don’t hear hardly anything about Somalia in ‘the news’ in our Glorious Homeland, the USA.

In its FACTBOX-Somalia, a country torn apart, Reuters does a lot of lying about history. Somalia had begun to establish a stable government, unlike what this report says, but the US-Ethiopian invasion overthrew it in 2006. Now, the fighting continues, and Ethiopia grows weary of its guard duty that they signed up for under US direction. The whole country of Somalia lies in total shambles, and the US will not let go, which would allow the country to try to repair some of the damage done. National liberation fighters, which Reuter labels ‘Islamic Forces’ have just taken over control over the countries 3rd largest city.

Shame on the US for torturing the entire Somalia nation! We can expect the US military to start casually bombing this city that Liberation forces now hold. We can expect yet more carnage, and the whole Somalia occupation remains well off the ‘Peace’ radar of the Christian liberal pacifists that dominate the US’s limp movement against US militarism. I am ashamed to be an American, when that only means being part of a System and Empire that bullies the poorest people in the world everywhere.