
Is the jury still out on the Clintons? Bill presided over huge tax giveaways to the rich, NAFTA and other concessions to globalization, the US war crimes of bombing Kosovo and the Sudan, media consolidation, and building the platform which launched George W. For her part, the first lady delivered squat on health care. Since then, have either been anything other than apologists for the current regime? Hippies my ass, those are Halloween costumes! Bill and Hill of That 70s Show were just social climbers attired in whatever folks wanted to see that day.
Tag Archives: War Crimes
Sisters speak out about all US war zones
They come together from different states, Benedictines, Dominicans, the Loretto Community, the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of St Francis, Pox Christi, the Christian Peacemakers, even a nun visiting from Guatemala, to pray a silent vigil at the gates of Peterson AFB in remembrance of the two greatest war crimes ever perpetrated, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Not only against the use of nuclear weapons, but all weapons, and not just to sit idly by in prayer. The sisters asked for inspiration and guidance to address the violence our country is directing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Latin American and Colombia.
The heaviest words were for Iraq. Here is the latter part of the prayer ceremony:
We ask forgiveness for our complicity
in the violence now unleashed in the world
and we repent of the violence in our hearts.Forgive us, we pray
For initiating war Forgive us, we pray
For believin in untruths Forgive us, we pray
For resorting to torture Forgive us, we pray
For wasting resources Forgive us, we pray
For shattering innocence Forgive us, we prayFor trampling diplomacy Forgive us, we pray
For the death of US military in Iraq Forgive us, we pray
For the Iraqi civilians killed Forgive us, we pray
For trusting in weapons Forgive us, we pray
For exporting arms Forgive us, we prayFor needing to dominate Forgive us, we pray
For failing to trust Forgive us, we pray
For failing to act Forgive us, we pray
For valuing oil over life Forgive us, we prayFor failing to love Forgive us, we pray
For our arrogance Forgive us, we pray
For our pride Forgive us, we pray
For our silence Forgive us, we prayChange our hearts
That we learn compassion Change our hearts
That we practice mercy Change our hearts
That we embrace nonviolence Change our heartsThat we may act in justice Change our hearts
That we love tenderly Change our hearts
That we do your will Change our hearts
That we will be peace Change our hearts
No civilians to worry about

The war crimes courts await several generations of uniformed Americans.
Condemning our soldiers
We’ve sentenced our soldiers to death, why not condemn them too?
At the supermarket this evening I ran across an unusual number of Fort Carson soldiers doing their shopping in their OIF camo and buzzed heads. I deliberated with making eye contact, but they seemed like condemned men in what we know now to be death-row uniforms, being led by their girlfriends or mothers through the aisles to buy their last meals.
I wanted to look at those young men with condemnation. Poor lads, but pawns for a murderous agenda. Please don’t kill anyone I wanted to say.
At the checkout I looked from the side into the pale blue eyes of a shaved-bald, sunburned junior-security-guard-in-training, and pitied the Iraqis for whom our uneducated underclass are making on-the-spot decisions about life and death. These are boys you do not imagine should be entrusted with an ounce of authority, much less guns. (In fact, critical operations such as protection of our politicians or of the Ministry of Oil are not entrusted to these boys, but rather to professional private contractor mercenaries.)
Hang the soldiers’ commanders of course, but brand these poor soldiers too for what they are. Brand them lest others, their children for example, follow their apparently patriotic path. Shit happens, that’s the soldier’s apology for killing the undeserving Iraqi, let it be the mantra over the soldier’s condemnation as well. Your leaders were bad men, but you followed them. Let no one imagine that your complicity was laudable, even acceptable. Shit happens Bro, now you IT.
I’d just been thinking about the necessity of confronting war-doers head-on instead of letting the opportunity pass for the sake of civility. Political aids to President Bush, for example, retiring at age 36 to spend their loot on their children, averting being confronted with their critics. We need to punish these people. A newscaster who characterizes the Haditha episode by saying “the marines were attacked by an IED” should meet the fate of a propagandist.
Let no war-supporter go un-criticized, and why not start now? Perhaps it will prompt some to think about why they are being condemned with such ferocity? Perhaps our scolding can lay the groundwork to effect eventual introspection and reform. How could anyone begin to think they might actually be guilty of war crimes if their accusers are always so civil? Certainly such accusations must be merely academic, otherwise would they not come with a noose? By waiting politely our turn to intone, by not calling urgently for each miscreant’s apprehension, are we not misleading the soldiers about the reprehensibility of their role?
We can talk about forgiveness later. Right now we have to stop the unthinking manslaughterers.
The United Nations is complicit with US war criminality and genocide everywhere
The United Nations is fully supporting US war crimes in multiple nations around our planet. It has become nothing less than a total satellite captured in the orbit of the US Pentagon. In Iraq, the UN has sat by without ever condemning the US genocide in that country, but rather participating in it. Over 2 million Iraqi casualties have been killed solely due to US interference against the Iraqi people over more than a decade and a half, and the role of the UN has been in total support of that.
There are currently over 4 million Iraqi refugees, 2 million inside and 2 million outside Iraq. The UN has little to say about that, and little relief offered to the victims. All its efforts go to help the US government intervene around the planet.
Jordan alone, with a population of a little over 5 million has taken in almost 1 million Iraqi refugees! That would be the equivalent relative to population as if the US had had to take in 60 million destitute refugees from some war zone! Syria, with a population of slightly less than 19 million, has had to take in an even greater number of Iraqi refugees from US violence than the almost 1 million in Jordan. And as the US and Israel are currently threatening Syria with attack alongside its ally Iran, the UN sits back nodding its head in acquiescence! Lest we forget, Syria was Iran’s ally while the US and its Arab client states were funding Saddam Hussein in its war upon Iran. It is the US that supported Saddam, not Syria or Iran, and the UN never did anything to stop him from killing hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians. .
The situation is the same around the globe, as the UN everywhere is running backup for US foreign policy and the resulting mayhem and atrocities that follow in the wake of US war crimes. The United Nations is helping the US occupy Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Haiti as well as Iraq. These are all nations where the US violated international law and bombed, invaded and occupied these countries with its military. The United Nations has acted as an integral part of these war crimes, lending the support of the troops of its misnamed ‘Security Council’ at crucial intervals. In short, the United Nations has become the Pentagon’s whore, constantly pimped out to service America’s reactionary foreign policy.
We move to Africa, and the United Nations today is calling for occupation of Somalia with its troops instead of condemning the US-Ethiopian invasion of that country. The United Nations offers no security to the people’s of the world from US war crimes and genocides. In Africa, the countries of Rwanda and Congo can attest to that.
The UN rushes into action everywhere behind US military interventionism and it offers political cover for the US just to help perpetuate this criminality. With its history the United Nations can no longer hope to be reformed but instead should be impeached and dissolved the same as was done to its predecessor, The League of Nations.
The people of the world need to get the UN out of the nations it currently helps occupy on behalf of the US. We need an international body of nations, but the UN has defaulted on all its responsibilities, and is not acting as anything other than an agent of the richer imperial nations of the world, all bullied into line by US firepower. This is a body that can not be reformed any more, just as is the US 2 party system of corporate political control. It’s time we admit that the UN is complicit with all the US war crimes being committed and not innocently continue to back this organization as some possible alternative to the US government itself. It isn’t, and never will be.
Stop the war now and get the United Nations troops back to all their home countries. These troops are nothing more than mercenaries in the same vein that Halliburton’s are. They are not peacekeepers, but rather nothing more than another type of privatization of US military operations. Dissolve the UN Security Council Now and Help Save the World from US imperialism. The UN is no friend of anybody, other than friend to the rich and powerful corporate state creeps heading up the US government.
Happy Easter, Canada
For what unearthly reason has the Canadian government sent its troops to occupy Afghanistan? These are tag along American-led imperialist troops not defending Canadian national interests in the least. One wonders how Canada has any national pride at all these days, when that country’s citizens allow their government to be led by the nose into these stupid imperial occupations of other countries, all directed by the Pentagon in Washington D.C. This Easter Day, the Canadians lost 7 of their young people there, while serving their US masters.
Similarly, the British government is secretly planning to stay in Iraq for 5 more years according to reports, and the European Union is being besmirched by having cooperated with US crimes against humanity now taking place in Mogadishu, Somalia, and in the hidden torture cells the US is running for prisoners taken captive in that country.
Shame on all you ‘poodle’ countries for letting Bush misguide you into being involved in our government’s war crimes and torture. Rebel, and we in America will certainly follow your example, though belatedly for sure. The whole world is involved in the US government’s terrorism at this point, and only the whole world together can stop it.
US out of Somalia! US out of Afghanistan! US out of Pakistan! US out of Iraq!
End the US government torture and its terrorism worldwide!
Torturers not Liable, says judge
He said allowing foreign nationals to sue American military personnel, (although Rumsfeld was appointed to a quasi-military rank, Sec. of Defense) would undermine their ability to make decisions and take actions considered necessary, and pointed out that under such a precedent, Osama Bin Hidin’ could sue because two US presidents had threatened to have him killed.
Imperialism strikes again.
Remember when Jessica Lynch was captured? How dare those Iraqis capture an American who is LIBERATING them!! Bush and Rumsfeld both ORDERED the Iraqis to abide by the Geneva Convention, while constantly stating that US personnel didn’t have to abide by any such laws.
And that US military were above prosecution for war crimes.
Apparently the criminals are above being punished in United States courts as well.
St Patrick’s interruptus for the record
May I clarify the actions of the peaceful marchers at the St Patrick’s Day parade? My fellow participants sat down, not to block the path of the parade, but to resist the rough-handed treatment of me and Esther Kisamore who were being thrown to the ground by a semi-uniformed official with his police badge obscured. This officer was yelling at us to get out of the parade, without telling us on whose authority. He was commanding us to furl our banners, grabbing three which he broke over his knee. All of this is documented by bystander videos. Officer Paladino, it turns out, then tried to wrestle the keys of the bookmobile which I was driving, still without addressing us formally. He pulled me from the truck, pinned me to the ground, and threw Esther on top of me as she was urging for calm, to the horror of the young children marching with us and the hundreds watching.
Who was it that decided our peace message was any more political than the political candidates, political parties, or pro-war organizations parading their ethics in the St Patrick’s Day festivities? In the spirit of the occasion, just as we had done the year before, we purposefully refrained from our usual calls for President Bush’s impeachment or trial on charges of war crimes. Polls now show that our pleas for an end to the war in Iraq reflect the general sentiment of the American public. What parade organizer, or police squad, has the right to squelch that cry?
We sincerely regret the traumatic scene witnessed yesterday by so many children. Yet maybe it provided a teachable moment. They saw erstwhile Officer Friendly revealed as unbridled authoritarian brute, baring tasers and choke holds to enforce someone’s subjective political opinion. Before their young eyes, freedom of speech in America was manhandled and thrown to the curb.
Eric Verlo
Owner, Bookman Bookmobile
Chairman, Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission
Permit holder 21, St Patrick’s Day Parade
Where to host the war crimes trials
NotMyTribe is soliciting proposals for where to hold the impending War Crimes Trial. Brent Green replies:
In my van downtown.
This is kind of how I see it going: I’ll drive my van downtown- there’s a huge parking lot right on the bank of the river behind the UPS packing center. It’s unmarked, which I see as my biggest asset here, the secrecy of an unmarked van will keep these officials on familiar ground. I’ll hold out my dictionary (the only title the used bookstore wouldn’t purchase from me) and say “Place your right hand on this Science Bible, and promise that you’ll try hard not to fuck up.” W says “I swear.” I don’t believe him, he seems insincere, but I didn’t really give myself a backup option, so we move on.
I guess Bush will take the stand- a comfortable cloth spinning captain’s chair (one of Bush’s demands I’ll have to meet in order for him to submit to trial). I’ll grill him mercilessly.
“True or False: you are _______.” The correct answer is that tricky T/F hybrid that everyone mastered in elementary school quizzes, but that’s a very hard letter to say, so he’ll probably get this one wrong.
Whereupon I’ll make a powerful and moving objection “HEADS WILL ROLL!!!” I’ll shout, the wind shaking my ride.
We’ll turn on the radio for intermission. Some Mexican college rock station. Yo la tengo espanol.
And if you want experience and variety, this is your location. It’s seen it all. I got it from my Uncle Oscar who met Jack Kerouac once (not in the van)- it’s seen all there is: Illinois, DUI, DOA, FBI, Florida and a charging wild elk. Before Oscar raced dogs he used the van as an ambulance.
I pretended I was a lawyer once, to get my girlfriend a paycheck her boss was trying to keep for hisself.
Back when Great Uncle Oscar had the van it was always kept in tip-top shape. Uncle Oscar was rich. He was always saying “Get in the fucking van!!”
Uncle Oscar got more money than the government racing dogs between the cars on Wall Street.
Uncle Oscar lost his mind when his mistress died, and grew a cancerous hole the size some governments between his throat and his lungs. Wheezing like an elephant chasing dogs no one else could see up and down the cellar stairs. (Later, up, down and back up the street.)
Uncle Oscar’s legs went numb on Christmas Eve, a cart pulled by his dogs brought him to our front door (he was sitting on the hood, hollering whiskey fumes above the engine’s roar). With two strong hands and a trunk full of stuff he invited us “Come on In!” tramping snow through shoveled flowerbeds. He wasn’t yet, but he already looked dead.
After a long hard chase, Oscar liked to climb in his van and “help people.” He’d go ambulancing with a stethoscope and pliers and a bottle of Mescal. Mescal is terrible. Just everyone thinks so. Hitler didn’t like it ’cause it made him mean. But apparently it cures everything. Even road rash. Just say you’re halfway between the cab and the sidewalk and an ambulance turns you into a chalkline- Oscar’s there before you wake up. He cleans the blood off the hood with your shirt and puts you in the back. He opens the bottle, wraps your lips around the funnel, and moves the muscles in thee jaw (with his right hand- the left tipping back the bottle) ’till your teeth and your tongue eat the worm. Ambulancing was fun- even though I guess it directly led to my disbarrement (it was the only cause). I always told him it wasn’t his fault- but it was. Entirely.
Anyway, I guess Oscar should be the judge. He’s the oldest person I know, and he always says he’s done his share of courting.
Old Uncle Oscar, all hopped up on Viagara, screaming at Conde Rice “I hear my zipper shaking!”
I need these war crimes trials.
Spilling the beans about Donald Rumsfield
Well it has come to this. Janis Karpinski, ex-US general in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison, is ready to spill the beans about her former commander in chief, Donald Rumsfield. See Rumsfield Okayed Abuses And she says she will do it in Germany, where Rumsfield and other top US governmental authorities are actually being tried for war crimes! If somebody had imagined such a scenario a year ago, they would have been deemed insane.
Let’s fact it, America. We’re being led by a group of bloody torturers, thieves, and asssassins. They all deserve to go to jail for their crimes, while we should save mere impeahment for the Democratic Party heavies who went along with the whole Republican scheme to tear Iraq asunder.
Jail Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and the rest of the sorry group of thugs we currently have running our country, and get our troops entirely out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We should be ashamed of having allowed this level of total corruption to have passed in our supposedly ‘Land of the Free’. It’s more than past time to dump US corporate and governmental corruption out of our public life, simply to keep it from destroying not only us, but also the entire world.
Why don’t they arrest Dumbya?
As we are treated to picture after picture of our president traversing the globe, don’t you wonder why one of those nations doesn’t arrest the little prick? How is it our war-monger emperor doesn’t find himself shaking hands with constables, being informed that he’s being detained for crimes against humanity, most of them already self-confessed?
Diplomatic immunity protects government leaders from politically motivated law enforcement. Technically, a nation has to agree to respect the diplomatic immunity of our officials before we consent to venture overseas. But technically too, the 1968 Conventions on Statutes of Limitations, to which the US is a signatory, prevents any domestic or international law from limiting the reach of war crimes prosecution.
That our little emperor can trot the globe without fear of arrest is an illustration of how virtually the entire planet is our empire. American hegemony insures that while populations certainly oppose our actions, their leaders will not.
The other day I watched a junior high adaptation of hacky-sack. A half-dozen boys take turns trying to keep airborne a beany-orb, that’s hacky-sack. In this adaptation three successive kicks entitle that boy to grab the hacky-sack and fling it as hard as he can at someone, rendering that person out, with a bruise to match. The game goes on until the last man standing. To whom the ball is given each turn is apparently random.
I noticed that one boy was a lot better at keeping the hackysack aloft, and I noticed too that he was given it with much more regularity than the others. I asked later as to why the other boys would keep giving him the ball. Because then, I was told, you’re less likely to be his next victim.
The United Nations is now a worthless organization
The United Nations is now a totally worthless organization. Why? Simply because it has been taken over by the Pentagon and thus has become an extension of imperial US foreign policy. Bush snaps his fingers, and the UN enters into Haiti as Pentagon proxy army. The UN is not now a world decision making body, but merely a charade to cover up for US war crimes. Check out the latest US plan on Times Online to convert the UN ‘peacekeeper’ forces totally into an American foreign legion.
Afghanistan, where cowardly US military is deliberately murdering children
Every week now, it seems that the US puppet president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is ‘investigating’ another tragic ‘accidental bombing of civilians. He demands that these ‘accidents’ stop. But these are not accidents, and Karzai knows this well, as every other Afghan must now know it well, too. An accident occurs once or twice, but an intentional strategy of targeting civilians becomes constant, as have become the US bombings of Afghan civilians in the more remote regions of that country.
The strategy is ‘to destroy the sea that the guerrilla fighter must swim in’, as it was once explained in the Vietnam War era, years ago. In short, the quickest, easiest way to combat the enemy, is simply to target his wife and family, including the kids. So the cowardly US-led NATO army of occupation in Afghanistan, is systematically doing that instead of engaging the enemy on the ground, where politically dangerous casualties might occur. Bomb the Afghan women and children in their homes from up high, if there is even the remotest military resistance to US forces in their general neighborhood.
This is the same strategy that the US government formerly used in SE Asia, some 35 to 45 years previously. It is the same strategy that the NAZIs used when they pushed into East Europe against the Russians during the Second World War. In their pathway, they razed to the ground villages, towns, and even entire cities. It is even the same strategy that Mafia gangsters use against their opponents. It is the same strategy that the US fed Colombian death squads use, too. They go into villages with chain saws, and cut people up before their own family members. Basically, this is government sponsored terrorism against civilians, and the US is committing internationally recognized war crimes by targeting civilians instead of the armed combatants they face. The strategy, is to target the families of combatants, and not those who might actually be able to inflict return casualties upon the invading and occupying, barbarian armed forces.
see Hamid Karzai orders investigation
We expect this cowardice from the cowardly US military commanders and chiefs, like Dubya and Dick Cheney, Donald and Alberto, who all get great glee out of torturing US-held POWs. And we expect it from the US grunts, too. They mainly just want to get out alive, and don’t much care who gets hurt, as long as it is not themselves. Innocent children bombed as they play, or as they sleep? Well who cares? Not the uniformed soldier cowards, nor their leaders. They are much like the Israeli troops, another cowardly group of soldiers, that distributed hundreds of thousands of cluster bombes in the last 3 days of their Lebanon vacation. Early Christmas for the children? Well the uniformed forces of occupying armies don’t care. They are simply cowards who want to get back home whole, and they will follow cowardly orders, from cowardly leaders.
But what of the press? The press barely even reports Afghanistan these days to US readers. And when they do, they cowardly hide away the nature of what they are reporting on. To the US press, the Afghanistan fighting is a NATO conflict, and they will report whole articles without even once using the letters, ‘US’ or ‘USA’! Let’s keep our jobs, and let’s keep the whole Afghanistan issue away from the American public, who are too cowardly to actually think about what they are doing to that poor country.
And what about the US peaceniks’? They are cowardly, too. 99% of them vote for the Democratic Party, and talking about Afghanistan is too embarrasing to the top party hacks. So, shhhhhh….. Keep quiet. The recent AFSC tour of their ‘Eyes Wide Open’ exhibit was basically a ‘Mouths Tightly Closed’ exhibit of their AFSC political cowardice when it comes to Afghanistan. They should remember and be ashamed of this, when the Quaker leaders are inside the voter booths pushing the levers for the Democratic Party candidates. They could have put boots out for the US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. But they didn’t. They could have placed out shoes of Afghani civilians killed by US and allied troops, but they didn’t.
But the other liberal peaceniks from the other liberal churches are equally as cowardly. When was the last time one saw a sign saying, Get Out of Afghanistan Now? All the talk is of Iraq instead. The liberal megawebsite, commondreams, carries bumperstickers calling for Get out of Iraq, No war with Iran, and even No War with Syria. But Get Out of Afghanistan? Not a chance! More political cowardness. It would push the Democratic Party hacks too hard. Yet our country is now deliberately bombing civilian children in that country, and doing it routinely, too.
It is political cowardice to bomb huts full of empoverished women and children noncombatants, rather than fight on the ground below against the men. But that’s what an imperialist army is full of. They are full of cowards who want to kill people like they are playing some video game back in the suburbs at home. But it, too, is cowardly for the US Peace Movement not to demand that our government get its troops out of Afghanistan with the same force we demand it get out of Iraq. We are betraying the children of that country, who are being slaughtered down like cattle. Yes, we have a cowardly antiwar movement in the US that wants only to concentrate on ‘Iraq’, and getting their cowardly Democratic Party leaders elected to office once again. Let’s hope that liberals can grow some backbone, and start opposing this war, too. Otherwise, the peace crowd is just as bad as ‘our troops’, who mainly want to kill from afar and from up high, with no possilbe repercussions to their cowardly, uniformed selves. Those that don’t mind killing innocent children, just so that they can claim a high ‘enemy’ body count.
A proposed local anti-torture resolution
We, concerned American citizens and residents of the city of Colorado Springs, call upon our city council to issue a proclamation to both the state of Colorado and the federal government, that as citizens of this city, state, and country, we categorically reject the application of any deliberate mental or physical abuse upon any and all prisoners held by our local, state, and national governments. And further that we call upon our national leaders to have all prisoners held by the US military, be treated according to the regulations of the Geneva Conventions regarding the humane treatment of prisoners of war.
We urge the passing of the following resolution by the City Council of Colorado Springs:
……………………………………………………………………………..
We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, categorically reject the current policy of our national government of transferring US held prisoners to other countries, or to US allied armed groups, to have them tortured during interrogation or as punishment. We also reject any policy of deliberate governmental assassination of foreign opponents, whether it be carried out by our own military, or outsourced to US allies.
We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, categorically reject the indefinite holding of any prisoners without trial and without charges filed against them, whether foreign or domestic. We reject the systematic denial of timely access to lawyers of the choosing of the prisoners needing legal representation. We reject harassment of the legal councils of all prisoners. All prisoners should immediately have access to the press, so that any mistreatment can be made public. Not to do so, is not in keeping with the processes of a democratic society, whether these prisoners be domestic or foreign.
We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, call upon the US government to immediately prosecute any officials who have abused prisoners, or denied them their due rights. This includes not just the immediate abusers of prisoners, but those in supervisory positions over those lower level employees, who directed the actions of their subordinates. We call upon our federal government to immediately initiate a grand federal investigator commission into these multiple abuses that have already been documented as having occurred, and to have them stopped at once.
Further, we the citizens of Colorado Springs, call upon our state and local authorities to renounce the use of abuse and torture of American prisoners held in local and state facilities. We are well aware that the deliberate use of sexual abuse, solitary confinement, and physical assault is rampant throughout the US in multiple correctional facilities, and that the multiple torture methods and abuse techniques and denial of rights used against our own citizens is now being incorporated into the systematic abuse of foreign POWs held by our military. Calling foreign POWs by any other name does not change their real status as POWs. If the US military has taken prisoner any foreign citizen during military engagements, then these troops we consider to be POWs, and their treatment is subject to the Geneva Conventions.
We, the citizens of Colorado Springs and our city council, especially condemn local military contracting agencies, with their many offices located inside our city limits, that have directed torture against POWs in other countries. Already US troops operating in conjunction with these private contractors have been found guilty of directing torture and abuse of prisoners in their custody. These private operatives have been documented as having shot at foreign nationals and having severely injured and murdered foreign civilians as a result. We do not consider these companies to be good citizens of our community, and urge that appropriate criminal charges be brought against companies that have violated prisoner rights per the Geneva Accords regarding humane treatment of POWs. We call upon the city, the state of Colorado, and the US federal government to cease contracting at once with these companies, and to end their immunity from having charges brought against them for their acts of criminality overseas.
Further, we the citizens of Colorado Springs, reject as dishonest and criminal any government denial at either the state, local, or national levels that these abuses are in fact occurring. The documentation is extensive and overwhelming that the US is mistreating POWs, and also prisoners within its own national criminal corrections facilities. The US government has a known and long history of using torture against POWs. Tens of thousands of US held Vietnamese POWs were tortured to death in the so-called ‘tiger cages’ and during the US “Phoenix Operations.” Similarly, the atrocities on prisoners captured by the US financed ‘Contras’ has been well documented. The US use of torture on POWs is not new. What is new is the open advocacy by federal leaders of what had been covert policy. We condemn, as citizens of Colorado Springs, this open advocacy of war crimes committed by US soldiers. We support our troops by demanding that they not be subject to orders to commit war crimes.
We the citizens of Colorado Springs and our city council, proclaim it time for the abuse to stop, and for humane treatment of all prisoners to begin. To allow our government to abuse foreign prisoners of war is to be complicit in the crime, just as continuing to allow abuse to be inflicted on our own incarcerated citizens. We reject both, and call upon our government, at all levels, to most urgently begin to humanely treat those behind bars.
The passage of this proclamation by our city council to be sent to both the Governor of the state of Colorado and to the President of the United State.
Judging Decision 2006
I was once a trainee in a work group, where my brash behavior caught the ire of the team. “Don’t you realize Eric that each of us has a voice on your evaluation? Aren’t you worried that your insufficient reverence (I’m paraphrasing) will reflect in each of our assessments?” Everybody stared at me across the conference table. They were high level engineers and each was smiling.
“Well I said, hoping to obscure my fool-hardiness with diplomacy, “I’m not concerned with your evaluations actually.” This was the diplomacy of speaking frankly. ” I’m on the management fast-track program. I’ve already been evaluated, I’m here because the company saw my potential. I believe that administrators are going to look at your observations in terms of whether you recognize the qualities they already like. It will be a test of your management potential more than anything.” Two weeks later, and I can’t say I wasn’t sweating it, my evaluation was filled with unrestrained praise.
I relate this story, of course because I come out fabulous, but too because I’m thinking of the upcoming elections.
If the American public reelects the GOP, reconstitutes in effect the party of lies, corruption, war-profiteering, racketeering, election-fixing, treason, war crimes, and pedophilia, it’s going to reflect on the American voter.
Someone in Europe is going to have to put together a website to answer our “sorry everybody” with “No, we’re sorry, you ignorant, ignoble fools!”
Justice delayed, denied, for now
Not to worry, not to worry. The Bush and GOP plan to indemnify themselves from responsibility for their war crimes will be to scant avail. Let them pass whatever bill they want.
It’s true, justice delayed is justice denied. And it is depressingly ungratifying to see criminals legislate themselves legitimacy. But the representatives at the United Nations have settled for this delay before.
Not long ago our nation was at war with the people of Vietnam. Our imperialist interventions eventually turned toward the people of Cambodia and Laos in illegal acts of aggression. There was absolutely no other nation powerful enough to bring us to account, and because of our veto power on the Security Council, any number of Nations United could not condemn us or stop us.
The U.N. delegates settled for delayed justice. They said, in effect, we may not stop you now, but that doesn’t make what you are doing right or legal. They agreed that there would be no statute of limitations for breaches of international law, neither should any nation be able to exclude itself from the law’s jurisdiction.
In 1968 the U.N. General Assembly made explicit the universal jurisdiction of the war crimes conventions. The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity ensured that nobody could consider themselves beyond the reach of international rule of law.
Article 1, part (b) defines the universal illegality of war crimes, “even if such acts do not constitute a violation of the domestic law of the country in which they were committed.”
Article 4 reads that no nation’s laws can redefine what are understood to be war crimes, that “statutory or other limitations shall not apply to the prosecution and punishment of the crimes referred to in articles 1 and 2 of this Convention and that, where they exist, such limitations shall be abolished.”
The torturers and warmongers can delay their appointment with the hangman, but the scurryng around to jerrymander the law is a good sign. Bush and co are showing the discomfort of knowing that justice awaits.
Mel Gibson in vino veritas
Was Mel Gibson speaking his mind when he was pulled over for drunk driving? No doubt he was. In Vino Veritas. It wouldn’t be in Latin if it weren’t true. Discounting some of the vociferous hyperbole owed to his drunken ego, were Gibson’s comments anti-Semitic? How low is the bar for what is anti-Semitic? Gibson didn’t say he hated Jews.
Gibson’s Passion Spiel was held to be anti-Semitic because it portrayed the Jews as responsible for Jesus’ death. Who did kill Christ, if it even matters? Who betrayed him, who complained about him to the Romans, who passed up their chance to have him freed? Is it a matter of biblical interpretation? Whose? Is it anti-Semitic to bring it up because the subject is still too inflammatory after 2000 years? It’s water under the bridge, it’s not water evaporated to nowhere.
I think Gibson’s alcoholic state released sentiments a lot of us are feeling as we watch Israel unleash wave after wave of bombs upon captive Lebanese masses, while our media fiddles.
Polite people are cautioning everywhere, a Jew is not the same as a Zionist. Specifically, ordinary Jews should not be blamed for Israel’s inhumanity.
Well… why are all the Jews on television speaking in support of Israel? Why are newspapers focusing on the dozen Israeli victims and not the hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese?
A Jew who does not repudiate Israel, is as guilty as a Zionist. He may not be a Zionist, but wouldn’t he equal a Zionist?
2. Media
How about, just for the immediate time-being, and I know this might sound anti-Jewish, while Israel is killing UN observers and refugees, while Israel is breaking humanitarian laws and refusing to consider a cease-fire, how about we stop asking Jewish pundits on television to explain both sides of the conflict? How about we disqualify all Jewish Center For Peace spokesmen if they are going to persistently proclaim Israel’s moral authority?
You wouldn’t ask a Dixicrat to officiate an NBA game.
Do we need Jewish American think-tank/lobbying-groups weighing in on Israel’s right to commit mass war crimes in Lebanon? Everywhere you look, all the experts/supporters are Jewish or US senators. What is up with that?
Kofi Annan makes an emergency outcry about Israel deliberately targetting a UN peacekeeping observation post, and Jewish pundits question his report.
They reply: “Of course Israel would not do that. How absurd. Why would Israel do that?” But the media talking heads do not take them up on this question:
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“Why indeed?” How about: because the observation post might have witnessed Israel doing something too dastardly for words. More dastardly than targeting refugees or ambulances or hospitals or civilian residences or what else. The Arab-Israeli conflict has already seen civilian massacres perpetrated by Israel accompanied by the bombing of the U.N. forces meant to protect those civilians. Qana was the site of a civilian cum U.N. massacre before it was yesterday’s massacre. How indeed did Kofi Annan know the attacks on the U.N. observers were deliberate? Because the Israeli forces kept firing, even as further U.N. troops attempted to rescue the victims. |
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ADDENDUM 8.03
Today Mel Gibson’s outburst and subsequent apology is being co-opted by the Jewish Lobby. With the tide of American public opinion rising against the Zionist drives to exterminate their Arab neighbors, Mel Gibson was giving voice to popular sentiment.
When Gibson immediately espressed his remorse for what he’d said, and asked for forgiveness, prominent Jewish spokesmen stepped in to offer that forgiveness. Even President Bush echoed their response.
Thus all of us who may have doubted Israel are forgiven and invited back into the fold. The error was not Israel’s bombing of a four-story building full of children in Qana, the error was our doubting the righteousness of Israel defending its own.
Inured to war crime.

In a recent harder-than-usual puff piece report, the Stars and Stripes described a day of hunting insurgents in Fallujah.
Nevermind that Fallujah was supposed to have been pacified, razed to the ground more precisely, and barricaded to such an extent that only residents with approved retina scans could get back in. Nevermind. Insurgents are planting IEDs again, they’re sniping at our soldiers again, and we’re conducting patrols to stop them again.
On this patrol, an Iraqi sniper keeps popping up in a particular neighborhood. Our intrepid soldiers have become upset with the shopkeepers on the block because not one of them will rat on who’s doing the sniping. One of the shops is a bakery.
Here’s what our GIs come up with their down-home plan. “Toss” the bakery.
They blast the business’s lock, or drive into the door with their Humvee, then “toss the place,” throwing everything to the floor including bread, flour and utensils. The strategy being that maybe the bakery will reconsider collaborating with our soldiers.
Here’s the deal. Are you interested? Expecting Iraqi civilians to take a side is not only bad form, it’s a war crime. The tactic which the Stars & Stripes article paints as affable American ingenuity, is in reality an action that comprises three distinct war crimes. Violations of a code to which the American public has become inured, perhaps because of our media’s repeated pandering.
1. Coercing civilians to be our military scouts is forced conscription, a war crime.
2. Meting out collective punishment is a war crime.
3. Destroying civilian food is a war crime.
Such actions have long been designated as war crimes by international consensus, based on centuries of abuse suffered by civilians at the hands of soldiers. Since forever war makers have improvised many cruelties to visit upon uncooperative peoples, two testaments later there are codes of conduct to stop each one.
B.
For the stubborn faint-of-mind: Yes, the Iraqis are supposed to adhere to the same laws and conventions. Yes, hiding behind non-combatants is a crime. But do you think their actions justify your commiting crimes?
Probably you remember a rule your mother taught you: Just because somebody else does it, doesn’t mean you have to.
Shit hits fan writ in Hebrew
Israel is delivering a lot of shit into the fan, and the US is shoveling to resupply them as fast as we can. The world wants an immediate cease-fire but the US objects because we say Hizb’Allah [Hezbollah] will not honor a cease-fire. In reality Israel says it won’t stop until it has meted out at least another week of punishing air strikes. Secretary Rice objected that to stop Israel now would be to accept the status quo.
The US not only supports Israel’s offensive goals, we acknowledge that her incursions into Palestine and Lebanon are part of our plan for the transformation of the Middle East, of which the democratically elected Hamas and Hizb’Allah parties are to play no part.
Imagine if Cuba started shelling Miami under the pretext of trying to assassinate the anti-cuban terrorists which we harbor there.
Israel is committing the war crimes of disproportionate use of force, collective punishment, destroying civilian infrastructure, and of course, genocide. The UN is calling these clear violations of humanitarian law. Our media is playing this down by quoting only Lebanese officials as protesting these crimes as breaches of international law.
That’s like reporting “bank robbery may have been crime.” “Man on street says money not theirs.”
The US is using its veto to keep the UN from condemning Israel. Our country is a party to Israel’s war crimes and expansionist aims.
The cat’s out of this bag. Americans are in the Middle East for Israel.
Stephen Colbert and the missing laugh track
Stephen Colbert bombed. We know this because there was no laugh track.
I watched Colbert’s verbal pie-throwing at the Washington Correspondents Association Dinner. The press corps though it wasn’t funny big time.
First off, how do you make fun of this administration and what it’s done? War crimes, torture, theft, breaking the law, it’s not readily very funny. The emperor has no clothes. His bare willy might be funny if it wasn’t pushed deep into a writhing bloody world.
Stephen Colbert did the best he could and what was most unfunny about his effort was the reaction of his audience. They didn’t like what he said at all. The emperor doesn’t know he has no clothes, he’s oblivious. But his courtiers know better, they can see it. If they’re opting to say nothing, they certainly don’t welcome a Colbert coming in and making light of their eyesight or their motives.
At the dinner, Bush played up the adversarial relationship he has with the press. Stephen Colbert played along with this so-called rivalry when he explained why he should have been considered for the position of press secretary. Pointing to the audience Colbert told the president that he had “nothing but contempt for these guys.”
Which turned out to be likely, didn’t it? Stephen Colbert proved that the press were nothing but yes-men courtiers, conspirators and collaborators who couldn’t laugh.
Colbert’s press club jokes were funny. It’s just that the laugh track was missing. His jokes hit home, even if, as we’ve always suspected, no-one was home.
Town square Citizens Tribunal

At the prospect of our nation executing Zacarias Moussaoui for perpetrating his unforgivable evil, conspiring and lying, let’s invite the big league lawbreakers to consider turnabout is fair play.
Let’s hold a preliminary trial and sentencing for our current governing criminals, traitors and kleptocrats. In advance of being able to bring them to account officially, let’s give them a vision of what they can expect for their own fate. Remember the revolutionary tribunals of the French Revolution? Something like that, the wrath of the people, without the guillotine.
Plans are to hold a mock tribunal with accused to be tried in absentia and executed in effigy. The evidence has already been presented and tried in multiple tribunals around the world. The first charge is war crime: the crime against peace, and multiple counts of crimes against humanity. These crimes have already been proven. We will enumerate upon each for the sake of onlookers who may not be as familiar.
The other crimes are treason, based on the betrayal of this nation’s founding principles, its constitution and bill of rights. Support of the Patriot Act alone is treason. Likewise is support for illegal detention and torture. And election fraud.
Other capital offenses are war profiteering, influence peddling and selling one’s vote.
The accused are the leaders, accomplices, and all complicit in permitting these crimes. If Zacarias Moussaoui can be convicted, even executed for conspiring to participate in the alleged 9/11 plot, then our local military commanders, politicians, community leaders and corporate executives can be considered guilty of conspiracy to wage a war of aggression against the nation of Iraq, the ultimate war crime. All Republicans have conspired to betray this democracy.
We’ll get a permit from the city to use the park at the center of town. We’ll hire the park for two days. On the first day we’ll begin to build the scaffold and work overnight so to have it finished by the next midday. At night we will have bright work lights to illuminate our activity. If by noon we are still hammering at the scaffold through the first part of the tribunal, all the better.
The tribunal will begin at noon with the reading of the charges. Next we will read the list of accused. We will dispense with the usual suspects in Washington and focus exclusively on the persons within the jurisdiction of our citizen’s tribunal. Our region’s own culprits.
We’ll have a display with the list of national figures to be attended by a national tribunal.
Next a prosecutor will elaborate on the charges of war crimes. Then an attorney will speak in defense of each accused. At this point we will entertain nominations for further culpable parties and consider their defense. After which the verdicts will be read and sentences announced.
The judge might be a kangaroo teleconferencing from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo through video chat on a laptop. This will be entirely for theatrical purposes. As stated, war crimes have already been proved. The accused have continuously refused to repudiate their expressed public support for the illegal war. The charges of treason and racketeering are already self evident.
A mock hanging will be performed for each of the accused, reading their name and dropping the trap door. Executions will be videotaped and streamed online in real time and archived for friends and supporters to see.
Naturally this citizen’s tribunal will act only as a precurser to the veritable tribunals. Justice will eventually catch up with each and every of these greedy buggers.
Zacarias Moussaoui and US blood thirst
Are we really contemplating hanging Zacarias Moussaoui for plotting to participate in 9/11? Even though he didn’t do it, nor was he even thwarted for trying, but simply for talking about it and expressing his enthusiasm? He’s not even guilty of conspiracy because he didn’t even contribute to the 9/11 effort.
Usually the small time hood who decides not to get up in the morning and go rob a bank, is not regarded as a bank robber. You can’t plead guilty to wanting to commit a crime because that is not a crime. Moussaoui’s behavior should land him into the care of psychiatrists certainly, but no more.
But such is the blood lust of the U.S. government that even though Moussaoui already faces life in prison, lawyers are making every effort, including tampering with the witnesses, to see Moussaoui hanged.
Let me tell you that such blood lust is very unbecoming, but it invites a heart-warming hope. If Moussaoui can be prosecuted for racketeering, for doing nothing, then the racketeering laws will be plenty broad enough to prosecute every last participant in the Bush kleptocracy. Easily. When this cabal falls, its every last minion can be prosecuted for its crimes. And it looks like this can include everyone who even just crows about their enthusiasm for the new world order fascism. This includes the media pundits, every backwater yahoo, and the cretins behind the Progess for America ads.
Most heart-warming of all to this very reluctant pacifist, is this administration’s lust for capital punishment. That blood lust is going to make it all the easier -once the trials begin for war crimes, sedition and treason- to justify seeking the death penalty for every last republican criminal. Après nous le déluge.
2.
Take away the big picture, and there’s still the matter of 9/11 justice to salivate over. Imagine if Moussaoui can be prosecuted for conspiracy for playing no part in 9/11, for not even knowing about it.
Imagine how many truly culpable parties we could hold accountable for conspiring to let 9/11 happen!
War criminals at large
Serbian General Ratko Mladic, seen here with NATO commander General Wesley Clark, wearing each other’s caps, is accused of the infamous massacre of 7,500 Muslims at Srebrenica. Separated from the women, all the men and boys from Srebrenica were gathered into a soccer stadium and killed.
Mladic is also sought as a war criminal for the bombardment of Sarajevo. Wesley Clark may still face war crimes charges based on the bombardment of the civilian population of Kosovo.
How are their crimes any different from what the U.S. did in Fallujah? We besieged the city, bombed and sniped at its civilian population, then we told the residents of Fallujah to evacuate or meet their maker. From the lines of refugees leaving Fallujah, we turned back all fighting-age men and boys, on the pretext that we didn’t want “insurgents” to escape our dragnet. We forced them back into the city where we then treated everyone as a combatant and we exterminated them.
Vets Day part 2: the 3rd Armored Cav

Before the Guernica that became Fallujah,
before our use of chemical weapons in Fallujah,
before there were civilians immolated in their beds by white phosphor in Fallujah,
before Napalm under the disguise of Mark-77 was used in Fallujah,
before our tanks were running over the injured Iraqis in the streets of Fallujah,
before our helicopters were killing every last family trying to wade across the Euphrates River to escape the blood bath that was Fallujah,
before we were turning back all able-bodied men from the age of 11 to 65 from the lines of refugees trying to leave Fallujah because we didn’t want insurgents to escape our pincer movement, forcing them back into the city to make a stand,
before we declared that anyone not evacuated from Fallujah would be treated as a combatant,
before we declared our determination to make an example of Fallujah.
2.
Before we tried to make an example of Fallujah the first time because the world saw what they did to the four contractor mercenaries,
but had to pull out because we hadn’t yet thought to cut off access to the hospitals from which were escaping horror stories of the atrocities we were committing against the civilians of Fallujah.
Before we had thought to ban Al-Jazeera from Iraq for reporting on Fallujah despite our restrictions,
before we killed the Al-Arabia reporter who dared to venture into Fallujah.
3.
Before the famous desecration of the bodies of the contractor-mercenaries by enraged Fallujah youth who’d often seen contractor-cowboys ride through their streets shooting indiscriminately out the window;
before our military tried to cordon off Fallujah with encampments.
4.
Before the killing of three unarmed Iraqi marchers, and the wounding of dozens more, who’d assembled to protest a massacre the day before, both times by nervous 82nd Airborne soldiers who thought they had been fired upon first.
3.
Before the massacre of schoolboys protesting the occupation of their school by American soldiers. The soldiers claimed to have been fired upon and yet the only bullet holes to be found after the killing of 17 unarmed Iraqi men and boys were from the American guns.
5.
Before that time Fallujah had not been occupied. Fallujah remained restful throughout America’s invasion of Iraq. It was not until the actions of the 82nd Airborne and the Marine Expeditionary Force that Fallujah erupted into a hotbed for the insurgency and, as a result of American anger, into American war crimes recalling Lidice and Guernica.
Throughout this period, and in between the disastrous actions by the 82nd and the Marines, Fallujah and the Anbar Provence were the responsibility of the 3rd Armored Cavalry of Fort Carson, Colorado Springs. To their credit, they were not party to the unfortunate American actions.
Swiftboating Vietnam
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VO: Thirty three years ago, a Republican war president Richard Milhouse Nixon, hired this man, John O’Neal to discredit a young John Kerry, who was leading a nascent effort to stop the war in Vietnam. John O’Neal lost that round. Now he’s at it again. |
This time around, O’Neal has assembled veterans who are angry because their service in Vietnam was tarnished by accusations of US war crimes.
No one said that THESE men were war criminals but war crimes were committed, of that there is no doubt. Was it John Kerry’s fault for making them known? In 1971 John Kerry and the Veterans Against the War wanted to stop the crimes and stop the Vietnam War.
Are the Swiftboat Vets really arguing today that the Vietnam War should not have been stopped?
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If John Kerry and the anti-war effort had not been successful, maybe today we’d see three times as many angry veterans, minus of course some of the men standing here who might not have survived the war. The Vietnam War was wrong. Until Bush came along, we were all agreed that we never wanted it to happen again. |
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Was Iraq perpetrated by people who thought it wasn’t wrong the first time?