Tag Archives: US troops

Today at the vigil- Darfur

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Today at the noon vigil on Nevada Street, I held a sign that said ‘Hands Off Iran’ and was talking with my Mennonite friend who was holding a sign that said ‘PEACE’. Lo’ and Behold if my favorite Right Wing bicyclist came by once again.

He always has a sour look on his face, not just when he sees us, but in general I rather do believe. In short, he is the Sour Right Wing Bicyclist of the Colorado Springs barrio I live in, and he always passes by with a nasty and arrogant look on his face. He flies by so rapidly, that he usually just has a one word or two that he let’s fly when he sees us on the street corner with our signs. Today it was, ‘DARFUR’.

So just what was his word of wisdom to us miscreants supposed to mean, I thought? Why did he say what he did, at this time? Was it simply a message for us to have a sign calling for peace in Darfur, or was it more than just that? Would he get off his bike and protest in common cause with us if we had included mention of Darfur amongst our signs? I rather think not.

In fact, this particular Right Winger has shown his opposition to our vigil more than a few times before. When he shouted out ‘Darfur”, he was counterposing that cause to ours. This is bullshit, because we would like peace to come to the Darfur regions of Sudan and Chad, too. Who can be for a continuation of the slaughter that has been occurring there? Only a lunatic, I think.

How sad it is, though, that so many have deluded themselves into believing that an end to conflict anywhere, though, is to send in the Pentagon! That’s where we part company with those who campaign around the issue of Darfur. And in the case of this one sour pus neighborhood bicyclist, he was counterposing campaiging for military intervention from the US government and its allies into Sudan, against campaigning to end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan by US troops, plus probable future extension of US warmaking into Iran. Somalia alone shows that the US is no peacemaker force anywhere. Not to mention the example of Haiti.

Economic aid to Africa, including Sudan. Not military. If I could put all this on a sign I would. But I doubt that that would satisfy my favorite Right Wing Bicyclist. He’s not all that concerned about Darfur at all, except as an excuse to support the Pentagon. I’d like to think otherwise, but his past behavior regarding our vigil is not a good reason to do so.

Hillary Clinton makes it all clear

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Liberals have doggedly kept themselves under a broad delusion that has neutered their value as being any sort of a real force for ending US militarism. That delusion is that the top Democrats actually oppose being mired in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries of the Middle East and elsewhere. In fact, they are in essential agreement with the Republican Administration, that ‘national security interests’ mandate that we keep US troops to occupy foreign countries like Iraq.

The Republicans have held to their lie that the US is in Iraq to help Iraqi, and not themselves and their bloody oil comnpanies. As such, the Republicans argue that US troops must actively engage in combat in order to now keep the peace after having begun the war. Hillary Clinton and top Democrats argue that we need to keep the troops behind fortified walls, and let the Iraqis kill themselves. That way our ‘strategic national interests’ are guarded, and we lose less American casualties. When the sectarian strife we have unleashed eventually comes to a bloody climax and then the Iraqi energy is all gone, then the US can begin to cash in on the oil they came to take out. The Democrats argue, why get US soldiers caught up in the crossfire, when we can just wait it out?

It is clear that top Democrats are not going to support the views of Americans that we are morally wrong in having caused all this bloodshed, and that we would be morally wrong to continue to kill for oil to be stolen by our multi-national oil companies. OIL, oil, oil…. There is hardly a world citizen that hasn’t figured it out by now, that the US, Democrats and Republicans politicians alike are on an Easter egg hunt for oil throughout the world. Our government is using 9/11 and a phoney war aginst the shadows to cover for this vast operation. But the rest of the world is not desensitized by our state propaganda and can easily see this con for what it really is. Our US elites want the world oil supply in their hands.

Yes, Hillary Clinton is making it clear in her campaign for president, that a new Clinton Adminstration would be just like the previous one. Just another face on American imperialism now that the world has gotten utterly sick of the Rumsfields, Rices, Boltons, Dicks, and Bushes. But though Americans may be slow learners, the rest of the world does not lag so far behind. Bush and Cheney let the cat out of the bag and now it will not be so easy to get it back in. This is what the liberal imperialists hate. Cheney and Dubya dug them a hole so very deep, all just drilling for more oil. The sweet personalities of the Democrats are no longer enough to delude the world that human rights has anything to do with US foreign policy. All know that it is about brute force (military power) to be used to steal the world’s natural resources.

Out Whenever?

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I got to hand it to liberal Democrats, they are totally behind the idea of ‘Out of Iraq Now!’ That is when Out Now actually means December 31, 2007, almost 10 months away!

It reminds me of the debate about the meaning of the word ‘is’ and if Slick’s Monica blowjob constituted sex, or not. Now, we have the word ‘now’ meaning much later than it is usually meant, it seems? ‘Now’ is now to actually mean …then in 9 and 2/3 months away from today!

Maxine Waters has gotten ‘tough’ with Bush, and says she will not supplement Iraqi War funding (add to it), unless US troops are pulled Out Now (out in 9 2/3 months), that would surely only apply if there is no ’emergency’ with Iran to come along. Oh how very reasonable, Maxine. Certainly there will be no ’emergency’ with Bush and Dick in charge…. lol.

As to our very own Democratic Party Colorado Senator, Kenneth Salazar? He probably is worried still that Iraqi people might get hurt if we leave without removing their oil first? That’s the type of people many of these liberal Demnocrats truly are. Caring and responsible folk. And of course I’m being sarcastic now.

As the Democrats play their word games, the Iraqi and Afghan people continue to have to put up with foreign military occupation of their countries. Shame on these politicians for their continual bullshit. The word now should mean now, not some date in the future contingent on whatever taking place.

Out Whenever! What a catchy slogan NOT.

OUT NOW! and only when NOW! is truly now, not after Christmas.. whenever and whatever.

US troops in African fender benders

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Two US troops died in Ethiopia this week. Bush’s soldiers are adrft from their stations in Djibouti a lot these days and we can look for more f’ender benders’ ahead. What with the US Pentagon directing deployment of Ethiopian troops into Somalia and Ugandan troops into Somalia, these traffic accidents will happen.

That last is an interesting item. Ugandan troops are being sent to Somalia as ‘peacekeepers’! Wow, I’m surprised they can find time from fighting the 20 year war taking place n the Northern part of Uganda next to Southern Sudan, all to come across and ‘peacekeep’ for Dubya in Somalia.

Holy Warriors and African Crusades! That’s all Africa needs now, a ‘clash of civilizations’, Christians vs Muslims. Meanwhile, uranium kleeps coming up missing from the Congo (1oo bars or so). Oh well, it’s not really all that radioactive, is it?

Same bait, same switch

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Troops needed to watch the Mexico borderWell looky who’s used the protect the border bait and switch before! Ninety years ago, same illegal immigration scare, same perp.
 
I happened across some posters used to recruit soldiers during WWI. Here they raise the Mexico bugaboo to ease worries that enlistment into the military would automatically mean duty in the trenches. “No More Men Are Needed” at the western front. Oh really?! It reminds me of something Air Force recruiters were telling Colorado College students on Thanksgiving 2005. US troops would be out of Iraq by Christmas. Potential enlistees need not fear being sent to Iraq because America was already pulling out. Public opinion had already forced their hand, they said, and we were pulling out.

The UN becomes a creature of Bush and The Pentagon in Somalia

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As the second US aircraft carrier moves into the Persian Gulf threatening to attack Iran and while Ethiopia is bombing civilians in Mogadishu, the UN is busy rubber stamping the joint Ethiopia/ US invasion and occupation of Somalia. UN troops are being organized to go and occupy Somalia for Dubya. Like the UN occupation of Haiti, the United Nations Security Council has again demonstrated that it is in fact a creature of Washington DC and the Pentagon, and not the world’s nations.

Far from bringing democracy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration and its Democratic Party loyal ‘opposition’ are spreading mayhem and terror throughout the world. Who would have thought that after decades of the US Right Wing screaming that ‘we’ need to get out of the UN, that in fact they would actually go on to make the UN into a tool of neocon reaction? But it has happened.

The only just thing that American peace activists can call for, is removal of all foreign troops out of Somalia, including those of the UN, US, Ethiopia, and all troops from other African countries bought and mobilized by the US. This onfolding chaos in the Horn of Africa due to the US oil-grabbing war on Islam, illustrates the dangers of calling for US intervention into Darfur/ Chad/ Sudan as some liberal do-gooders are doing. We need to call for European and US troops out of Africa, and not for them to go into countries there with their imperialist troops. That is just common sense.

Iraqi government prefers Democrats.

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Not statements from Iraqi citizens, but the top cats in Iraq have apparently resented being treated as puppets by the Bushiites. Al Maliki has said that Bush appointees give the orders, tell the Iraqi “free and democratically elected” government what to do. hhuuummmmm….

But the Democrats, he says, are less provincial, more in tune with the realities of Iraq. How’s that for a kick in the teeth for Bush?

Imagine that if you will, The Decider being rebuked by his own hand-puppet. This is Nucking futs.
This also puts a severe doubt on the statements by the Bushiites that the “real people” of Iraq are demanding the continued presence of US troops. Knowing that Bush pays no attention to polls, it just stands to reason that he believes the Iraqi people to be just as dumb and pliable as he thinks the American people to be.

America’s rolling invasion of Somalia

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The US invasion and occupation of Somalia is like that of Haiti, nobody is paying much attention. And like the current occupation of Haiti, it ‘rolls’. What do I mean by describing this as a ‘rolling invasion’, for it is a term I think that describes the now prototypical US intervention into the affairs of other nations? Lebanon, too, is being violated by an American rolling invasion as yet another example. So let’s take a quick look at Somalia then, to get a glimpse of the US strategy everywhere for its misnamed ‘war on terrorism’.

In Somalia, the US first arranged an invasion of that country using Ethiopian troops. Then it followed by bombing the country from US ships. Just several weeks after the initial assault using another country’s military, that of Ethiopia, the US is switching them out, and moving a contingent of another country’s military in, 1,500 Kenyans troops. In turn, the US is pressuring Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa amongst other countries, to follow. And without any interest at home what-so-ever, the US bombed Somalia once again just yesterday!

Imagine how the Somalians feel? As a Muslim country they finally get some semblance of government after 15 years of chaos, but then the US returns once again to topple the cart yet one more time. The US sponsored troops? Thousands of Christian Ethiopians! And to follow up this humiliation using a traditional enemy of one nation, the US brings in yet a second nation’s troops. See the roll? Like rolling waves of a heavy surf on the beach. This will then be followed by an eclectic assortment of other nations, none of which have anything in common with the natives, except for their racial coloring perhaps. And that of being sponsored by George W. Bush!

We could go to Iraq or Afghanistan to see the same nonsensical outsourcing of imperialism once again. But let’s look at Lebanon first. US invasion launched using Israeli troops first. Less than successful, so the Jewish forces pull partially back out. The US then has an unwanted UN move into the country as so-called ‘peacekeepers’. The US then threatens Hezbollah. The US then has France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, and others to cajole the country with being given possible funds to rebuild itself some. The US threatens Syria and Iran. What will Bush roll in with next? US troops? Or maybe Polish troops? Don’t joke, they are already in Iraq and Afghanistan in large numbers. How about Japanese? Don’t joke, they are in Iraq! At the end of 2006, Yugoslavia had its area of Kosovo occupied by troops from 30 nations! Talk about a Tower of Babel!

OK, enough of Lebanon. More rolling imperialism, the grand daddy of idiotic imperialism, Haiti! US invades, deposes the legitimate president, and then partially removes itself, bringing in Canadians (some speak French) and Brazilians (many are Black)! Haitians in the streets improve their language skills in French and Portuguese. But wait! Troops arrive on behalf of Dubya from China, Chile, Argentina, France,Nepal, Jordan, Peru, Sri Lanka!, and Guatemala! (80 of them). I especially think the Haitians are impressed with Sri Lanka and Guatemala coming to visit. Those 2 militaries have such great reputations! And Haitians love a circus!

Isn’t all this rolling imperialism reminiscent of the Romans? They would send in all sorts of barbarians from one end of the Empire into the next. Can we even begin to imagine our own reaction if we were ever to be disrespected with such occupations and warmaking against us, as the US uses against so many others? Imagine if the former Soviet Union had won the Cold Ware, and followed it by occupying our country with troops speaking 20 different languages, 30 different cultures, etc.? That certainly would have gotten us into an enduring peace, for sure! lol.

Where will the US invasion of Somalia roll off to? What new group of heathens to trample on? Will any American ever really give a damn about these smaller societies that get run roughshod over by their government? Liberals are too busy trying ot get the US to send troops to Chad and Darfur to notice much where the troops are actually at. Some have yet to figure out that there is a war going on in Afghanistan, for example. Though it is encouraging to see that the latest poll finally finds over 1/2 of Americans are for withdrawal from that country at last. No thanks to the Democratic Party, I might add. Afghanistan is a dirty word for them to mention.

These rolling invasions create nothing but chaos and misery.

Bush’s bloody speach announces that US will soon attack Iran and Syria

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Bush’s speech was notable for not only saying that he would send more US troops to occupy Iraq, but that the US government would soon attack both Iran and Syria, which he accused of arming Iraqi Resistance forces. As the US government turns Iraq into a total hellhole, Bush is deciding on a double or nothing surge to control Iran’s oil, as well as Iraq’s.

Of course, there is no direct announcement that this is the actual goal of all the American directed bloodshedding, but the pretense of occupying Iran to help Arabs out is totally obvious to all the world now, minus only some particularly obtuse Americans. Going also, is the idea that this global war by the US government has anything to do with stopping terrorism. If anything, the US seems determined to help flare up non-state terrorism worldwide, rather than stopping it. Our US government state terrorism machine needs non-state resistance to keep itself intact. This is similar to how US cops have actually fed more drug trafficking, rather than moved to diminish it. Cops need ‘drugs’, while soldiers need ‘terrorists’ in today’s Machiavellian US Empire. Or at least the commanders-in-chiefs and generals do.

It sounds like a parrot to repeat the obvious once again, but the Democratic Party is half the problem, and not even half of any solution to this neocon-colonialist campaign to steal Third World oil. Sitting around and waiting for a Ted Kennedy or other to come superhero-like to the rescue will lead us down a dead alley. A dead alley of national bankruptcy, both moral and fiduciary. Time to do a little more to oppose the direction we are being herded to, or we as a nation suffer a lot more pain quite very shortly. Voting alone is just not going to do it.

Harry Reid underlines again that Democratic Party is not an opposition party

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Harry Reid, Democratic Party senator from Nevada and Senate Majority Leader, gave his approval in an interview this Sunday, to Bush’s plan to increase US troops in Iraq.

This comes just days after Nancy Pelosi appointed the utterly ignorant Silvestre Reyes to head up the House Intelligence Committee, where he promptly stated that he also supported a troop increase, and not withdrawal. The Democrats as a whole are utterly enthusiastic about continuing this war, even as they in the same breath blame Bush and the neocons for it. Can it be underlined any more, that the Democratic Party is not an oppositional party to the Republicans? Only their powerless rank and file voters are against the Iraq occupation to some degree or other. But so what? These people most often act as if paralyzed beyond being able to vote. Otherwise, they go about their business as if it didn’t much matter at all to them.

The Democrats are not just a non-oppositional party in regards to the Republican plan to continue the occupation of Iraq. Harry Reid is great case in point. His pretense of being something different than a Republican in donkey suit is rather ludicrous. An example is him stating strongly that the Democrats are going for an increase in the US minimum wage. How? He is going to try tying getting the increase to legislation giving members of the Congress yet another pay raise! Pay raises they don’t deserve and shouldn’t get.

Reid is a Mormon. That being said, can any even mildly liberal person actually think that he represents possible progressive change because he is a Democrat too? Any visit to his Senate website shows nothing but the most mealy mouthed rhetoric on other issues such as immigration, women’s rights, labor, environment, etc. Cases in point, he is opposed to radioactive waste being dumped in Nevada at Yucca Mountain, yet supports nuclear reactors. He wants to grab more of the boondoggle ‘Homeland Security’ funds for Nevada. He supports building a giant Border wall while talking of ‘reform’. He is for better medical care for people, yet can’t voice support for universal coverage. Wants to help women out, yet can’t support abortion rights for them. No opposition to the use of torture, etc. No defense of habeus corpus. He supports phoney ‘war on terror’ that actually makes us more endangered by it.

In short, he is a mealy mouthed, fork tongued Democratic Party hack, who is planning to do absolutely nothing to block the Republican assault on the American and Iraqi people. The Democratic Party is not an oppositional party, and Reid is what you get, Liberals, when you continue to cast your votes for these asses. Get out of the Democratic Party and demonstrate if you want change. You have to spend more time in opposing the corporate hacks that run this country, than by just going out and voting for one of them or the other.

The majority of Democratic Party politicians are not going to oppose this war in any meaningful way.

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.

Nancy Pelosi’s new dog, Silvestre, fails IQ test

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Democratic Party exINS police dog, Silvestre Reyes, flunked his IQ test this week. The new head of the House Intelligence Committee was given a series of basic questions about the Middle East by the journal Congressional Quarterly Today, and scored ZERO on their IQ test for him. Yes, truth is stranger than fiction, it seems. But Pelosi’s pick for the spot didn’t seem to even know the difference between the Sunnis and the Shia! Unbelievable! Maybe they should rename it the House Ignorance Committee instead?

Even the CQ interviewer didn’t quite believe what he was hearing when he sat down with Reyes to talk about this newest advance in his career as Democratic Party top hack. Hint hint. Now go and give this test to Obama, too. We want some more fun. This is much better than watching Sasha Cohen play Borat. And even much more fun than a vactaion to Tehran to do a philosophy conference, even! Can we get Cheney tested now? Pleaseeeee….

Doesn’t it boggle the mind to think that this bipartisan DP-RP insane asylum trying to run another culture without a clue to what’s going on, could possibly succeed? Nobody speaks Arabic or Pashto, nobody in the country other than Pat Robertson, Billy Graham Baby, and Glenn Beck know anything about Islam (just kidding), and 99% of the US public that supports this fiasco overseas can’t locate their asses from a hole in the ground on a map! Yes, our leaders are all as stupid as rocks. Good going Democrats with picking Reyes for his post. He might be even stupider than Dubya? No mean feet. duh.

Look, to be fair, the liberal voters even to the Left of the Democratic Party politician hacks try to play Risk with other people’s lives while being totally clueless. How many of these nitwits want to go rushing in with US troops from Djibouti (I guess?) into Sudan, Chad, and the Central African Republic? Give these good hearted fools an IQ test about the region, and they would be out of their Risk game within secs due to brain infarcts.. Most of these liberal wannabe admirals so ready to Trotsky into areas like that, probably have already forgotten their Kosovan Albanian. It is sad, this US desire to control the world. When will it stop?

The Democrats’ masochistic bondage games with Dubya and Dick

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All the press is gaga about the conclusions of the Iran Study Group Report, but what is this thing? It is more than just Republican James Baker the the Third pronouncing his so very esteemed judgements about the fighting.

What we have here is the most climaxic portion of the Democratic Party’s bondage game with the Bush Adminstration, where Hillary and Nancy Pelosi get to play their masochistic roles to the hilt! …. Yes! Hit them harder, Dub! Oh…. Whip it quick, Dick!

Wimp Howard Dean and DP head announced pre-election that this Democratic Party bondage game would be continued to be played no matter what, but nobody liberal believed him. But then Nancy Pelosi came along and appointed Silvestre Reyes to be top dog of the House Intelligence Committee. Within a day or two, Silvestre the Cat was calling for not a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, but yet more to be sent in. Whip them Dubya. Whip them Dick. Pelosi is loving you hard.

To add to this extreme level of masochism by the Democratic Party, they agreed to sit in with Baker the Third and cochair the Iran Study Thing with Republican pirate, Baker the Third. Conclusion? We need to stay in there longer. Ouch! But it is such a controversial form of masochism for the Democrats to say that, too. I have never seen such a tolerance for punishment!

The report also called with getting buddy buddy with Iran and Syria to soothe the perversion in Iraq down just a bit, but Dick and Dubya want to flail those two countries apart, too. Masochists like the Democratic Party leadership can never top well from down below, it seems. Plus, Nancy and Hillary are playing with these sadist savages, Dick and Dubya, without seemingly ever having decided on a ‘safe’ word like, Out Now! Guys! It Hurts too much!

Afghanistan- Our military is full of cowards and criminal murderers of children

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In Afghanistan once again, our US military (NATO) has let go, from ahigh, bombs upon civilians sleeping in their beds. This time they bombed mud huts at 2 AM in the morning full of sleeping children. Lest you say I lie, this is from Fox News, favorite source of our Right Wing’s propaganda.

A proposed local anti-torture resolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US-sponsored death squads continue to rampage in the Philippines and Colombia

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The US military is holding joint military exercises this month with the Philippine military. Yet, the death squads are rampaging there like they did in the Ferdinand Marcos era. Did Americans think that the US military was truly out of that poor country’s life? And in Colombia the death squads also continue to rampage, with funding from the US for its military operations in the last 5 years at over $3 billion dollars. Tens of thousands have lost their lives due to the US intervention in that South American country. A signal card of many Colombian death squad attacks is the use of the chain saw on their victims. Our US government sponsors terrorism around the globe, and these 2 countries have been among the worst victims of our government’s evil interventions. Lest we forget, Iraq is defintely not the only country shredded by US interventionism. And in all cases the US intervenes, to have different groups of the native populations go at each other’s throats, while US troops direct the carnage.

For the love of our war profits

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The Home Front Cares. This event screams out for parody. The Gazette ran “For the Love of Our Troops” from the website above inside its entertainment pages on Friday, the same time it put the Quaker EWO Boots stuff up on the front page. Here is just a first run idea of how to counter this event:
 
FOR THE LOVE OF OUR UNGODLY PROFITS – HELP US KEEP ON MAKING A KILLING!

$2,500 a Plate Dinner Brought to you by Locknoheed Corporation and the rest of the Colorado Springs Military-Industrial Complex, the trashy local rag, the Colorado Slumlords Association, Mayor Rivera on behalf of Curious George Dubya to thank the US troops for slaughtering off half a million dirty Arab civilians PLUS them dirty Pashtuns of Afghanistan too. So sad some of you good ol’ boys got hurt, too.

5:30 PM, November 8, 2006 Antlers Hotel. Be there, or be shelled! You’ll get food, bad country music, and bullshit philosophy from a basketball coach, and all at the very low price of $2,500 a gold seat!

Leaflet brought to you by peace activist groups who support bringing our Troops Home Now. We’ll be there with you protesting this war without end.

Eyes Wide Open Minus 279

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Why don’t we reflect on the 279 US soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan, too? I think it simply because the AFSC/ Quakers almost universally vote Democratic Party. They don’t want the public to ‘reflect on the true costs of the Afghan war’ while most liberal Democratic Party voters continue to support such. And because of that, the Eyes Wide Open has its eyes sewed wide shut regarding Afghanistan. The AFSC, it seems, will have us only reflect on US troops who died in Iraq.

I have not been much of a backer of this top down AFSC bringing of Eyes Wide Open to Denver and Colorado Springs anyway. How top down? I would say that the main impetus for bringing this exibition to Colorado came from outside the state, and not from within. Discussion was very limited and completely shut off once the honchos had their thing going.

PLUS,this fetishist AFSC focus on the boots of US GIs is a reflection of the constant US nationalist fetishism that focuses on ‘supporting our troops’. They are not OUR troops and we should not be just focusing on the dead GIs’ boots and tags while relegating to the minimalist side the consideration of the deaths of the victims of these US troops. These troops were paid for by our taxes stolen and misused by the government, but they are not my troops. Nor yours, for that matter. So why do we memorialize them as if they were something so very much more special than their victims? Why, AFSC?

And this controlling top down organizing by the Quakers has me peeved. Who do they think they are to try to limit other points of view other than their own pacifist ones at these Fall antiwar events? If the Afghans and Iraqis try to kick the US out of their countries using armed force, then so be it. One gets a little tired of the constant US pacifist Christian messaging, pontificating to other people to non-violently resist their own US government’s violence. These sanctimonious people would have had the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto turning the other cheek to the Nazis even! Defintiely, nobody should feel obligated to not bring their own materials and posters to Eyes Wide Open just because the AFSC tells them not to. They have some damn nerve trying to censor off views other than those parallel with their own. Yes they do.

As an atheist, I will help set up this nominally antiwar exhibit. At least, it will be seen by the press as such. But we sure need a more secular antiwar movement in the future, with the ability to reach out to more than just the liberal church goers. The thing about liberal Christian pacifists, is that they demand that others not just reject the US warmaking but that they do it only for the same reasons that liberal pacifists do. They keep the antiwar movement small, by excluding the majority of people that actually might want to oppose US militarism for reasons other than religiosity.

Anyway, I remember the 279 US troops who have lost their lives in Afghanista. And what’s more, I remember the country of Afghanistan we have torn to shreds. Reflect on that, AFSC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making Iraqi soldiers

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Iraqis have mastered rocket scienceUS troops are training Iraqis to be soldiers? Is that a laugh? Iraqi soldiers are already some of the most experienced in the world, many of them veterans of the ten year war with Iran and the Gulf War.
 
Iraqi fighters have shown their mettle against the overwhelming superiority of their American occupiers, twice. What do soft bellied Americans have to teach to seasoned Iraqis?

Indoctrination would be more like it. Inoculate them with vaccines, get their pledge of allegiance, record their identifying marks and family records, start a file on them, arm them with cast-off assault rifles, teach them our weapons systems I suppose, though I’m guessing not.

What ARE we teaching them? Is the timetable needed to train an Iraq security force really the time it takes to just assemble one? To convince enough Iraqis that they aren’t signing up for just one paycheck because that’s the only payday they’ll experience before they are summarily disgorged from an army bus and executed? Are Iraqi men given the choice of conscription or Abu Ghraib?

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.

Selling arms to the enemy

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Finnish Air Force200,000 Kalashnikovs collected from the streets of Bosnia by US forces were recently shipped off to Iraq via the usual arms dealers/contractors. It’s said the shipments were intended for the Iraqi-coalition soldiers but the guns have disappeared and it’s feared they are being used to fire at US troops.

Holy Fucking Shit wouldn’t you say? This would be the kind of story a so-called-liberal-press would love to expose! American war profiteers selling weapons to both sides! Where are the reporters? The world press is running with it, apparently our reporters are not.

WWII
The other day I was perusing a collection of paintings of WWII aerial dog-fights. The book had a not-so-subtle patriotic bent such that scenes mostly depicted American fighters shooting down enemy planes. My attention was thus grabbed by a dogfight depicting a swastika-clad Finnish plane having shot two red-starred Russian planes.

Noteworthy however was that both combatants were flying American planes. The US shipped thousands of planes to its Russian ally throughout the war. The Finns flew Hawker Hurricanes and Brewster Buffalos. These weren’t planes left-over from before the war. Our industrialists supplied these planes to Finland during the war. Our war-profiteers were making money from both sides of the war!

Recognize the plane? That doesn’t look like our swastika on the wings, does it?