Tag Archives: War Machine

Is your hate of Hillary all your own?

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Stuart RisdenIf you’re indulging yourself gloating about Hillary’s dashed presidential aspirations, you might consider who’s cheering with you. As the battle for the nomination dragged on, Ms. Clinton faced near universal scorn, whipped up gleefully by all of media-dom. When has the media reported anything that you’ve discovered was truthful? Anything?
 
(Man’s traditional response to threatening women, midwives or healers? They’re witches!)

Unless you have been keeping in touch with Hillary Clinton personally, I would hesitate to say you don’t know if she has been represented objectively. Unless you’ve seen her in person, can you really say if her head’s the size of a pumpkin? Have you seen, heard, felt pangs of intuition that weren’t spun by the waves of an electronic transmission fashioned over an editor’s desk?

I’ve become rather suspicious that Ms. Clinton may have posed the biggest threat to the powers that be, to the beltway and the corporate media, and that’s why she was painted with such dastard derision.

Maybe?

The unanimity and height of disrespect shown in the catty ridicule made of Hillary has an identical scent really of an earlier smear campaign, the ulterior motives now well documented, against the embarrassment “beyond words” of Hillary’s First Husband, Bill.

President Clinton was too centrist for my taste, but it turns out he made some inroads for the people even despite being mostly thwarted by the corporate multinationals and the bankers.

Was the combined Clinton battle experience going to be crucial facing the still predominantly neoconservative-crony Washington establishment? The DC heavyweights are criminals and profiteers to the last, do we expect them to invite a reformer into the White House?

As much as they hated the Clintons, and Hillary Clinton in her own right, the power brokers appear to be smitten by Barack Obama. What does that say to you?

Some think it’s a sign that everyone’s ready for change. Some think the Republicans are content to let a Democrat be left to pick up Bush’s pieces. A friend of mine quotes T. S. Eliot:

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”

I think the vociferous appetite the Neocons have shown in devouring America’s treasury at the expense of the middle class indicates they don’t intend to leave even a piece until it’s in their bank account. The bad guys are not through. In these days of irradiation, they do not need their poultry kept live.

The media favoritism of Barack over Hillary says to me, they’ll abide a black man on their porch because they have no intention of letting him inside. They can serenade him even, confident they can excuse their ultimate inhospitality on the Appalachian problem. If American voters prove more progressive than they want, Diebold’s blackboxes will smite our great last hope.

Republican McCain has been criticized by none of the press. With Hillary out of the way, the press has already started to unleash on Obama, and will now be now free to lavish the erstwhile witch with the affection they now display for her term-limited husband.

America’s masters needed one heck of a ringer to face the Bush blow-back. A presumptive presumptuous first black president will prove just the straw man they need. Even the most cynical voter will not be surprised that white America is not ready to elect a black president.

All that hoopla about Obama needing to distance himself from his pastor’s unpatriotic rants was very telling. Do you remember Reverend Wright’s chief focus? God Damn America, yes, but his chief refrain? America’s racism. White America doesn’t want to believe it is racist, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

Apparently racism is gone if we want it gone. To decry its persistence is to break the self-hypnotic spell and bring racism back. Blame the messenger apparently.

It is not racist to predict that Obama faces entrenched racism. It would be swell to think America is otherwise, and the media would love for us to believe it. But they and the lobbyists and their owners Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Oil, the financiers and the war machine are banking on McCain.

Not in My Name

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Hello, I participated in the most incredibly diverse rally in front of the United Nations at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. Here are my remarks:

Cynthia McKinney Remarks Al Nakba Rally,
“Not in My Name”
United Nations, New York
May 16, 2008

On my birthday last year, I declared my independence from a national
leadership that, through its votes in support of the war machine, is
now complicit in war crimes, torture, crimes against humanity, and
crimes against the peace.

I declared my independence from every bomb dropped, every veteran
maimed, and every child killed.

I noted that the Democratic leadership in Congress had failed to
restore this country to Constitutional rule by repealing the Patriot
Acts, the Secret Evidence Act, and the Military Commissions Act.

That it had aided and abetted illegal spying against the American
people. And that it took impeachment off the table.

In addition, the Democratic Congressional leadership failed to
promote the economic integrity of this country by not repealing the
Bush tax cuts. They failed to institute a livable wage,
Medicare-for-all health care, and gave even more money to the
Pentagon as it misuses our hard-earned dollars.

We can add to that list, too, an abject failure to stand up for human
rights and dignity.

If the Democratic and Republican leadership won’t respect the right
of return for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita survivors, how can we
expect them to champion the right of return for Palestinians?

If this country’s leadership tolerates the wanton murder of unarmed
black and Latino men by law enforcement officials—extra-judicial
killings—how can we expect them to stop or even speak out against
targeted assassinations in the Middle East?

If the Democratic and Republican leadership accept ethnic cleansing
in this country by way of gentrification and predatory lending, why
should we expect them to put an end to it in Palestine?

If the leadership of this country impedes self-determination for
native peoples in this country, why should we expect them to support
indigenous rights for anyone abroad?

And sadly, the sensationalist corporate media would rather trick us
into thinking that reporting on a pastor, a former Vice Presidential
nominee, and a former cable TV magnate constitutes this country’s
much-needed discussion of its own apartheid past and present, so why
should we expect an honest discussion of apartheid and Zionism?

I hope by now it is clear. Our values will never be reflected in
public policy as long as our political parties and our country remain
hijacked.

Hijacked by false patriots who usurp the applause of the people and
all the while betray our values.

I’ve decided that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will
operate any longer as business as usual—not in my name.

That Democrats and Republicans will use my tax dollars and betray my
values, not one day longer—not in my name.

That neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have earned my most
precious political asset—my vote.

And that now is the time to do some things I’ve never done before in
order to have some things I’ve never had before.

And so here today, I declare my independence from weapons transfers:
including Apache Helicopters; F’16s; sidewinder, hellfire, and
Stinger missiles.

I declare my independence from occupation, demolished homes,
political prisoners, and babies dying at checkpoints.

I declare my independence from UN vetoes, expropriated land, stolen
resources, and the installation of puppet regimes.

I declare my independence from all forms of dehumanization and am not
afraid to speak truth to power.

And I am happy to join with peace-loving people around the world who
know that there can be no peace without justice.

Let us never tire in our work for justice.

Thank you.

Embed cheesecake

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embed-cheesecake.jpgIf you have a sense that embedded reporters may be reluctant accomplices to the war machine, here’s a jolt of indecorous complicity. Attractive blond reporter in sea of Green Zone testosterone lends her “me on tank” snapshot extra cheesecake by palming the big gun. One of several photos accompanying her article, this is the shot used to identify her UK newspaper column. Curiously, her column is not entitled media whore.

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan together in Mexico City!

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Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.

Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

Brothers and Sisters in the Movement

I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:

On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.

I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!

With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.

Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!

In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.

In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.

As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.

That’s why I left the Democratic Party.

I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.

And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.

To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:

Hands off Haiti!

Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!

Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!

No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!

And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.

We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.

I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.

Que vivan los pueblos de america!

Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!

Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.

Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions

Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.

Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.

In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.

Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.

What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?

First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.

All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)

The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.

Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.

I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.

Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.

We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.

In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.

I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.

When in Rome, do you know what to do?

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Apparently the music at Give Peace a Dance was terrible -in the opinion of those over 50 who excused themselves early because they thought the noise was deafening and/or cacophonous. Had the PPJPC targeted the dance to younger people, I’m sure critical reviews would have been favorable.

Outreach to community subgroups different from your own, might by definition, require stepping outside your comfort zone. Catering to youth might mean a buffet at odds with your palate. So what? Don’t go. But if you admit the need to embrace age diversity into your organization, perhaps you have to tolerate some of their ways.

Likewise if you’re thinking to reach out to “the internets,” there’s a chance the language and discourse of that world might be too coarse for your sensibilities. Send internet emissaries to do your courting. That’s the principle behind ambassadors. Send someone who can speak to the natives. Don’t venture where you might be fainthearted.

Courting diversity and different strokes is paramount to building a broader community consensus. It may be a compromise of your particular taste, and it may feel like one hell of a compromise, but it shouldn’t mean compromising your fundamental principles.

Covering your ears to bear the discord is a far cry from disparaging your own ideals in order to ingratiate yourself with potential recruits. I’d sooner speak in another language to reach people foreign to my cause, than speak English but repudiate my origins in order to find agreement with erstwhile opponents.

There might be something honorable in cozying up to your enemy to show them you are flesh and blood like them. If they agree with you on one thing, perhaps they will become acclimatized to consider another. It’s a fitting long term goal, but in the meantime, what? Do you grab knives and partake in the crimes you are against?

The PPJPC has a group of members interested in the cause of sustainability. Our opponent, the war machine, has a PR department that has glommed unto “sustainability.” On one side you could call that green-washing the business of death and destruction. Neither death, nor destruction being sustainable. On the other side of the argument, you could say that the mother of all budgets being splurged on promoting sustainability cannot but help. Both sides can be true.

So death might be portrayed as fertilizing the soil for new life. Feeding the cycle of life, TM Disney. Do we no longer hold sacred the sanctity of each life span individuated from the cycles?

Killing is wrong, no matter how much fertilizer you are able to make. Reaching across to the sustainability crowd, by minimizing anti-war ideals as merely differences of opinion, is to compromise not just taste, but substance.

Moneychangers in the temple

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It’s official, the New Life Church Killer Matthew Murray died by a self-inflicted wound. Perhaps this will take the heat off volunteer church security guard and disgraced-cop Jeanne Assam who may have fired on Murray from a concealed position and kept firing on him as she advanced according to her police training. What does this latest distinction mean? This is what it suggests to me:
 
Troubled-teen Matthew Murray, according to his own website postings, may be America’s first suicide bomber, using smoke and assault rifle to penetrate and injure a temple of American militant fundamentalism.

This is American sectarian violence, perpetrated by a former adherent rebelling against the oppressive reach of American smiley-face religio-capitalism, church of prosperity Fundamentalism. The same corporate spiritualism that drives our war machine, the rotten heart of Pax Americana, the misplaced sense that American vacant-headed fundamentalist values must police the world, and dominate, or at least prosper from the bulk of its resources. Murray believed this kind of Christianity was at the core of the world’s problems, and church leaders like New Life founder Ted Haggard as much as brag about it.

Matthew Murray was the product of too-far-isolated fundie parents, who terrorized their children with fire and brimstone nightmares. His ostracism justifies public education, where home-schooling entrusted to zealots yields intelligent but incompatible offspring.

Jena style legalized lynching is as American as apple pie, unfortunately

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Millions of people around our country are legally lynched by the legal system. Some live through it, but most have their lives damaged, destroyed, and otherwise taken away from them in part or in entirety.

The whole country knows this simple truth, but many people favor just that and keep the wheels of this legalized lynching machine constantly well oiled with their support.

Many are folk like our local rag, The Gazette, which for reasons of local political expediency ran a picture of Thursday’s march for The Jena 6 big on the front page. This is what keeps the paper in decent standing with the local NAACP chapter, which has a heavily military influenced leadership.

The Gazette wants to not endanger that constituency’s tolerance for the paper’s Business as Usual support for the US War Machine, but The Gazette editorial staff along with the whole US chain of Right Wing papers called ‘Freedom Publishing’, doesn’t care a damn about stopping legal lynching, whether in Jena, Louisiana or anywhere else. They really don’t want racial justice, they just want the social tranquility where Black folk accept their own political dominance by others.

In fact, the editorial staff at The Gazette are big proponents of continuing all the current legal injustice now totally codified in America’s courts. They are big proponents for ‘law and order’ when used against the lower classes, and against all Law and Order when directed at the fat cats who are primarily rich White men. The local NAACP will never get The Gazette and the fat cats they write opinions for to offer up any more than the most superficial posturing in regards to stopping the racist legal lynching that the Jena 6 case has brought to the fore.

Jena style legalized lynching is as American as apple pie, unfortunately. We need a new America where the legal system is taken away from the control of the super rich and then used by the exploited to stop the super rich’s theft of America’s wealth. We need a racially just America and the legal system as it currently is, is the biggest obstacle to obtaining that goal. It must be totally changed, transformed, and democratized, for as of today democratically controlled it most certainly is not.

Free the Jena Six Now! Stop Legalized Lynching of Black Americans Today!

Also, Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism
The Injustice in Jena

Americans and the Iraq War

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The impact the Antiwar Movement has made on Americans is skin deep so far. While at least 2/3 of Americans now dislike the Bush Administration, much of that rejection is because many feel that the current government has poorly managed a war they fully supported. See poll data

Despite the US government’s warfare against the Iraqi people that has gone on since 1991 and produced a total tragedy, only 1/3 of Americans feel that it was wrong to have been attacking that country in the first place.

Why has the American antiwar movement been so lackluster? I think that the main reason has been the demobilization of the US working class. In fact, much of the US working class has been largely co opted by the military and finds its employment somehow connected with continued support of the US war machine. You don’t see working class people attending protests much at all.

Another reason though has been the failure of leadership of the Peace Movement. It is dominated by store keepers, ex-monks, pastors, and nuns and ex-nuns, Mennonites and Quakers. There are also 2 other sectors of this movement whose presence is barely discernible by and large. The largest of the 2 are the college educated liberal types who think that voting for liberal Democratic Party politicians is the outer limit of what they will involve themselves in doing.

Last of the 3 main sectors of the essentially inert Peace camp is the anticapitalist Left, made up of Left Libertarians (Noam Chomsky, Znet, and crowd) and Marxists. The Left Libertairans have great analysis but no organizing ability, and are fairmly embedded in academia as professors, but are largely absent in the working population made up of ordinary citizens. And the Marxist Left, outside of the Workers World Party and its split off sister Party of Liberation and Socialism, has been mainly busy comtemplating their navels. But despite organizing many big demonstrations,the WWP is so sectarian that its national membership remains at several dozens.

Until there is a secular Left that resurects itself from the grave, the religious folks and DP addicts of voting only will continue to demobilize the American people. They will pray and they will vote, but they will not construct an activist movement that builds something different than church based organizations and the corporate Frankenstein called the Democratic Party. They will lobby and pray in fields where missile silos are located. They will pray in churches and vote for Democrats come election day along with attending an occasional forum and attending a military gate or other.

There is no easy solution to finding a way to resurrect the dormant American secular Left. Like the dormant Nazi Era German Left, we now largely are dependent on outside help. The problem is the American people themselves, ‘liberals’ and’ conservatives’ both. Both camps are totally immersed in LaLa Land.

‘Global Fleet Stations’, AFRICOM, and demanding intervention

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West Africa: U.S. Navy Plans Six-Month Regional Training Mission is to be done under AFRICOM direction. Both AFRICOM and this US militarization program for Africa that also includes bombing, invading, and occupying Somalia must be OK for all the activists calling for intervention into the Sudan. Why do I say this? It is simply because they want the US and Europe to intervene in Africa, rather than stop intervening there.

In fact, none of these groups speak out against these current activities of the Pentagon on the African continent. This is not an oversight at all. Many in the supposed world ‘peace’ camp actually unfortunately are not all that anti- US military use at all. They are what might be termed pseudo pacifists. These people just seem to think that it would be better for them to direct the war machine, and not Bush. That will not be the case though. The US war machine will bring about more suffering and bloodshed, and not greater peace, in Africa, if allowed by us to be used there.

Do not go along with all this call for intervention against Sudan. Intervene against your own reactionary government first.

The Jena 6

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Nooses were hung from this treeThe Jena 6 are a group of black High School kids who got into a fight with a White kid in a racist public school in a racist little town called Jena, Louisiana. Now they are receiving national attention since the police and the city government there decided to use the judicial system against these Black kids and charged them with attempted murder. Exaggerated criminal charges for a school yard brawl provoked by the racist actions of the ‘victim’.

We also live in a city here in Colorado Springs where the police, too, also have the approval of the city government to use the judicial system falsely and punitively against its own citizens. The fat cats at The editorial board of The Gazette think it aggressive and rude for us to point this out to other folk, and have sarcastically asked us ‘brutal’ local peaceniks (in their editorial today) to ‘Give Peace a Chance’.

Like the cheerleaders(The Gazette editorial staff) of a US war machine that has killed millions around the globe are at all convincing about any political issues they take up! Not hardly. They are warmongers instead. And they are just as insincere as have been the cops and their supporters on the Colorado Springs city council up to now.

Sorry, but it is the city government that has to control its police to make peace happen in this city. Instead, it seems that many amongst the powers to be like using the police as attack dogs against the pro-peace groups of our city? That’s why The Gazette fuels this sort of witch hunt mentality by feeding false information to the public and uses quotes both out of context and also minus portions of the actual content of what was said to their reporter. But back to the problems of Jena, Louisiana…..

Check out the local yokel paper there especially in the comments section after the article. Here is Znet’s article on the issue

Justice Now in Jena and Colorado Springs! Stop using the judicial system in a partisan manner that supports racism and war. Drop the false charges. Oh, and restore habeas Corpus and end the use of torture, too. Got that, Gazette? (If I had sent that in to their letters column they would have chopped it all up into incoherence. I know from my experience with them.)

9-11 has nothing on 2003

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I’m thinking about the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq, an unimaginable aggression that yielded unspeakable suffering, speakably unsurprising. Millions of people took to the streets in 2003, an unprecedented two thousand in this city, in a desperate renunciation of our government’s blood thirst. Today as the US war machine mobilizes to demolish Iran, I wonder what has changed, where is the outcry? Where are the double-decker buses rushing to the Gulf to put human shields between the US warships and the Iranian people, lest the cowboys dare bomb white people?!

But life was simpler in 2003. We had yet to learn what a drunken, swaggering half-wit would do at the helm of the most powerful military. A half-wit propped up by malicious connivers shifting capitalism’s ultimate human-life harvester into irreverse gear.

The media likes to talk about how 9-11 changed the world. Nine-eleven was America’s first taste of violence brought home, to the tune of a Madison Avenue catch phrase. As it turns out, it was the overture. The world didn’t change until 2003.

It was a buildup to be sure, of crooked deals in high courts, back room contracts, corporate election tampering, transnational suppression of sustainability, collapse of sovereignty and law serving the people’s discretion, and the incomprehensible judicial malfeasance of Guantanamo, culminating in a climax of lunacy and self-deception with Iraq. I believe shock and awe was the dawning of awareness of the new world order: unchecked capitalism bearing arms, baring its steel molars, its black gloves and crew-cutted vacant soul, with nothing any dedicated resistance can do about it.

What was becoming evident to globalization’s victims about the race to the bottom is that the push has become a shove and they’re already trying to throw the dirt in over us.

When are ‘the troops’ going to support the rest of America?

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Antiwar protesters repeatedly get told they are not supporting ‘the troops’. Yesterday, in fact, a woman screaming out “You Bastards!’ at our peace vigil from her car, claimed that we were not supporting her husband who was one of ‘the troops’ in Iraq. Our standard refrain has always been, ‘Support The Troops, Bring Them Back Home Now!’ But I have another reply on my mind, and that is simply to ask the pro-war hecklers when are ‘the troops’ going to support us Americans?’ What do I mean by this?

Simple. You ‘troops’ are part of a war machine that is bankrupting the funding of social programs for the elderly, children, and needy in our society. You are fighting a war that most Americans no longer want, and that will put our children into debt for a long time to come. Yet you and your families continue to want you to be considered heroes, when you sign up and join the war machine and go after the preferential benefits that are yours for joining the government imperialist team. And many of you even have the nerve to get angry at us peace activists that want money spent in better ways than in just killing foreigners for corporate profit! That takes a lotta damn gall!

Yes, when are ‘the troops’ going to start to support the American people themselves? We want you back home alive where you won’t be helping bankrupt us civilians through the love of Halliburton and your own pride. Putting on your damn uniforms does not make you heroes, a class above us tax paying commoners. You went into the military thinking that the military pseudo socialism was the way to help yourselves out, but you bargained with the Devil and he may well take your heart and soul and your very life, too, if you are not very, very careful. Reconsider what you are doing.

Troops, help the rest of us Americans out, and support stopping the Iraqi war and occupation. True patriotism supports less militarism, less imperialism, and less money spent on you the troops, to the detriment of America itself. Troops and families of troops, speak out now against this thuggery you have become part of, and we wish you the best back home alive for those in other folk’s lands.

Stop the bloated war spending to help out the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the peoples of Haiti and Colombia, too. And most of all, to help out us, the people of America. America needs less of you ‘troops’ in prison guard, police, and military uniforms, not more. Patriots support more peace in the world, and less war. So do your part as you can. And try not to let the government dehumanize you, through the insane war the government has you fighting in.

Best wishes, from the antiwar community. But there is no way we are going to ‘support’ you by cheerleading the killing the government has you engaged in. Stop the constant wars. Our money for the people, not The Pentagon!

The farce

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America’s idiotic politics has been never more pathetically framed than in the grand pseudo debate over the nonbinding resolution on whether to ‘surge’ or not. All the Democratic Party posturing done here doesn’t add up to a bean of real opposition to the Bush Administration’s constant war plans. Instead, we the public, got merely a grand show, a grand farce of pretend ‘opposition’ that is not a real opposition by any yardstick of measurement.

What delusion, what illusion, that the Democratic Party in actuality even opposes any of the torture, war, and bankruptcy being engaged in by ‘our’ Empire. The Democratic Party leadership is more delusional about Bush’s war than even the Republican Party itself is! And folk that follow behind them are as much the problem as the rabble of Republican Party nitwits themselves.

Iraq is not even the main issue, a new war against Iran is not just the issue neither. Torture and destruction of the Constitution of the US is not the issue. Destruction of the environment is not the issue. The real issue is whether the US population has anything other than total lethargy and apathy within itself to offer up for self-protection? The issue is whether the US public can ever begin to mount any campaign to rein in the fascistic minded corporate power that is sinking the whole ship? Or will it just allow itself to be pacified by nonbinding do-nothing irresolutions and pathetic babbling by a phoney play pretend opposition? The real issue is whether the public is going to ever be able to dump both of the two corporate parties, or not? They both got to be thrown out and not just one, for things to ever begin to start to change.

Nonbinding resolutions what a crock! There is no real national opposition to the war machine other than what we can put together from near total scratch. We’re staring into the possibility of Bush using nuclear weapons soon and all the Democrats can come up with are nonbinding resolutions? It’s beyond nauseating and meanwhile the public just goes on driving around in circles nonstop in their oversized and imbecilic vehicles! That’s what the real issue as our population acts more like a deer in the glare of the headlights of an oncoming truck than anything else. One out shopping…. One out to lunch.

Democracy cannot be built nor sustained on such a foundation of immobilization. We need a third party. We need a movement. Any more of this business as normal by liberals hooked into the Democratic Party is a dead end.

How well is the war in Iraq going?

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Finally there is unity! The war in Iraq is not going well for the United States so say the press, the politicians, Rumsfield, even. Oh the suffering amongst the British and Americans. They did not forsee the unfolding problems. If only the Iraqis would act normal!

It’s so bad they say, you think that the American government would be suing for peace? Cut in run, don’t cut and run? How do we get out of this unfolding disaster for our beloved country? So now we are awash in crocodile tears we are. Boohoohoo. Our poor suffering America. Yes, and the entire elite spectacle is so sickening it makes one want to vomit.

And, yes, this spectacle even includes our churchly ‘peace movement’. One group of kind people, the nuns. were rushing around Colorado last week to send canned goods to the soldiers and their families. And now, the CS pacifists are beginning a countdown. Tick-tock-tick-tock. Look what’s been done to our soldiers! We are nearing the magical 3,000 mark! Time to light some candles and pray.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Iraqis, too! Mention them at the press release for when the clock strikes 3. Don’t let it strike 4! We beg of you. One would open one’s mouth to say something to them about this sad approach, but for the fact that lighting a candle or two is a major ‘peace action’ for them. They’re in motion now! So better to remain mum so that at least the ten or fifteen of them get their pictures in The Gazette and Indy as concerned folk.

All this wailing and despair. Both Democrats and Republicans are creasing their brows with worry and cold sweat. We’ve lost Iraq they moan. It’s all going so wrong! It’s become like one big sorry soap opera. Oh the agony, and Oh the guilt. We tried to do good, but we failed. Why, oh why, oh why? Maybe it was them? Yes that’s it. The Arabs cannot be trained!

All this would be way comical if it weren’t so absolutely pathetic. First all, the start of wartime didn’t begin yesterday with Bush’s invasion of Iraq. It didn’t begin with 9/11. It didn’t even begin with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. So where do all these stupid calculations begin? The liberal churchgoing peacenics would have it all start with the number ZERO, and would have our time of great despair calculated now at 3,000. It’s very Biblical to do it that way, but it is utter nonsense. US foreign policy effecting Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq have killed millions. ‘We’ lost less than 3,000 US soldiers in this time, and all America begins to cry like babies! Jesus H. Christ! Talk about being absolutely self-centered? YES, our society definitely takes the cake!

All this hysteria proceeds from the previous nonsense we have been spoon fed. Stuff about WOMD, protecting the sovereign country of Kuwait, helping establish democracy in the Middle East, and so on for ad nauseum. Can our elderly still remember all the nonsense about what a supposedly remarkable man was the Shah of iran? I date myself here, because I certainly can. Time Magazine, and all the usual rest of the pornographic US press, loved the guy! The Shah was the world master of running a state torture regime, like the one that America’s top criminals now copy so fanatically. Back then, it was claimed in the US that he was a man ahead of his time. Oh such a teacher that Donald and his ilk had! The Shah. Oh shit! Ask the British and they will show you how it started all way before even then.

And then, the unfortunate takedown. This modern day American hero, the Shah, fell. Tears. Where did ‘we’ go wrong? Where did this modern leader go wrong? We need to arm Osama and gang to the tune of multi-billions, and make the Soviets have their own Vietnam. Osama the freedom fighter! We need to cook up a war with Iran to show them we wouldn’t let them get away with thumping our patron saint, The Shah. So America and its buddies, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia armed Saddam Hussein. Killed a million plus.

Fast forward to now. Where did Bush go wrong, The chimp? Boohoohoo. It’s a bloodbath. And we get the ‘debate’ of the press corp buffoons. Stay the course, or cut and run? Yeah, but how ’bout we all just throw up? This is not a real debate our elites are engaging in, just a charade. A country that allowed its elites to destroy the lives of millions in this stretch of ME alone, deserves to go bankrupt. And we are! Boohoohoo. How we suffer they say! We approach 3,000 of our own dead, in the midst of this shower of blood we have constructed for others, and all the press propaganda brigade can talk about is American trauma! Nauseating. The real trauma for America will come when the bill arrives in the mail, Chumps.

Let’s face it. The war is going rather well. There have been 2 main goals for Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Lockheed, and President Cheney. Max out the profits that can be financed from the public treasury. And control the oil. These pied pipers of the Democratic and Republican politician rats are not going to ‘cut and run’. From what? They’re looking to extend the war, are they not? And for good reason. The war in Iraq is going well for them. Why not take it further? Why not make it permanent war? After all these decades of killing, the local peacenics can’t even get it together enough to get 100 people out to pray and light candles. The Iraq War is going well for the war machine. Three thousand? Oh get real, please.

The war in Iraq is going well; there is no anger in the air. Only religious pacifist good will. Feliz Navidad. When people get angry, they will not light candles and meditate. And without real anger, the bloodbath will go on.

Right wing imprimaturs

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Il Duce in a blue dressDid the Neocons flat out buy the National Geographic? It was a brilliant coup.
 
If you were to have asked yourself what periodical has been the most trusted and revered, it would have been the Geographic.
 
Right behind hobbiest zines like Popular Mechanics I suppose, and Hearst’s PM too falls suspiciously in the conservative think-tank stable.

With so much of the world, and the natural word ablaze, the Geographic has avoided showing the flames, maintaining it doesn’t want to take a political stand. (Besides its photogenic depiction of America’s war machine in Iraq.)
 
Everything, even nature, is political. These days, to be a-political means to endorse the status quo. That’s decidedly political.
 
I can see their upcoming take on authoritarian oligopoly: FASCISM: IT’S THE NATURAL ORDER.