Thorn Tree

One for the road

2006-12-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

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Well, my friends, it's time to go.

It's not too hard to see that Thorn Tree's time is over. The gaps between posts grow longer just as the ideas and words in them grow colder and less inspired.

For whatever reason, I seem to have lost interest in the political world and I no longer have the fire or the courage to chronicle injustice in it's myriad forms.

I still watch and I still listen but my days of writing on these subjects seem to be done.

I'm moving on.

One of the greatest honors of my life has been the fact that the brilliant and passionate people who frequent this blog think that my words are worthy of their attention. You are my mentors, my allies, my friends.

We once huddled together as the world burned.

There is still so much to do and so many words to be said and perhaps someday I will find my voice in these matters again.

Perhaps not. Only time, as usual, will tell.

I'm concentrating now on my son and the new life I'm carving out inch by painful inch. Some days are terrible. Some just fine. Some are wondrous.

I'll be around on the web. I comment here and there and I'll continue to visit your blogs and stay in touch. You can always reach me at thornblog@yahoo.com.

I will always be there for you, my dear brothers and sisters.

I will say farewell with my favorite quote by Tennyson that just feels right at this particular time:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Don't forget about Pastor Ted

2006-12-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

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The wonderfully righteous Mrs. Betty Bowers has a great wrap-up of the Ted Haggard hypocrisy-fest:

It is quite clear that Ted Haggard is a man with admirable devotion to the Christian/GOP cause. After all, it must take enormous willpower for a meth-crazed sodomite to remove a penis from his mouth long enough to denounce homosexuality.

Read it all....

Will the real God please stand up?

2006-11-25T22:02:00.000-08:00

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With all the discussion on the draft and our all volunteer force there's this little tidbit:

PHILADELPHIA -- A Marine was deployed to Iraq this month after a military board rejected a recommendation that he receive conscientious objector status and a discharge.

The C.O. Status Screening Board noted that Marine Lance Cpl. John Rogowskyj Jr. requested the status after he learned that his Reserve unit was being sent to Iraq and suggested that the request "was simply a means to avoid a combat deployment."

But wait. It gets weirder.

Apparently his reasons for not wanting to be involved in the illegal occupation of Iraq are not of the theologically approved sort:

Rogowskyj describes himself as a religious humanist who does not belong to any organized religion.

"I believe that God has given man free will," he said in legal documents. "By surrendering my will to the military, I realize that I have willfully propagated violence."

That sounds fine, right? God doesn't want him to kill, right?

Ahhh but it's not the right God that doesn't want him to kill:

In April, a Marine captain who served as the hearing officer recommended the discharge. But in August, Maj. Gen. D.V. Odell Jr., commander of the Fourth Marine Division, said Rogowskyj's reasoning was "theologically confused and does not reflect any officially recognized faith group."

In September, the screening board agreed with Odell.

So let me get this straight. If Lance Cpl. Rogowskyj had perhaps said that he was "born again" or had "found Jesus" he would have had a better shot at CO status.

But because his beliefs did not "reflect any officially recognized faith," off he goes to war.

I don't know if this guy is a legitimate objector or not. And frankly, I don't care. If he doesn't want to deploy, throw him in the brig and then discharge him.

But don't send him to war simply because his faith is not of the "approved" sort.

All Rangled Up

2006-11-22T14:02:00.000-08:00

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A couple of people have asked what I thought about Charlie Rangel's call to renew the draft.

My personal feelings on the draft are that there's nothing worse for any country to do to it's citizens. I've always felt that if a country can't manage to field an army of volunteers to defend itself, perhaps it doesn't deserve to exist. Or, as we find ourselves in America in 2006: If you can't convince enough young men and women to be the enforcement arm of your imperial ambitions, perhaps you need to scale down your occupations of other nations.

Call me crazy.

At the same time I see Rangel's point about this current situation. Maybe John and Jane Q. Public would find themselves a bit more interested in foreign affairs if there was the chance their offspring might be the canon fodder in the unfocused, criminal, and doomed-to-failure "War on Terror."

Then again, if hell did freeze over and America instituted a draft, you would simply have the same problems that faced young people in Vietnam: The wealthy and influential would move heaven and Earth to keep their kids out of harm's way, while the poor and unknown would have to once again bear the burden.

What it all boils down to is pure politics. Rangel knows this will never fly. This is shadow and fog and I'm not really happy about it.

If you want to end the war and bring the troops home, then for God's sake, say so. Don't waste our time with resolutions and silly spectacles created to simply push buttons.

This is one of the main problems Democrats face: They do not understand the exercise of power. In January they will control both the House and the Senate. If they want to end the war then cut off the money and be done with it. Let the boy-tyrant stew and let the talking heads howl, but show them from the very start just who is in charge and that their business-as-usual warmongering is finished.

This is why the Democrats won. This is the only way they will keep power.

By not being afraid to use it.

My little man

2006-11-19T00:48:00.000-08:00

By popular demand, it's Marcus.....

Click picture to enlarge.

Sitting in the fridge drinking. Like father, like son.

That's not a Halloween costume.Every night he becomes part frog and roams the neighborhood fighting crime.

There he is in paw paw's garden. Daddy's garden is much smaller and has a lamp. :)

In the last pic, I had just told him the Senate went to the Democrats. "Daddy, what's impeachment?"

Turning and returning

2006-11-18T02:26:00.000-08:00

Hello friends.

I'm starting the graveyard shift at my job. It offers more money and will allow me to spend more time with Marcus, so I'm happy.

Another good thing is that I've always done my best thinking in the wee small hours of the morning when most everyone is asleep. Once I get myself mentally transitioned to the hours, I hope to be able to bring more quantity and quality to the Tree.

Things are strange. Lots of transitions. I will be glad to drive a stake through the heart of this particular year and I'm ready for a better one.

On the personal level, how is everyone?

Veterans Day

2006-11-11T19:14:00.000-08:00

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My favorite quote from CNN this weekend: "As long as there have been wars, there have been veterans."

Thanks CNN.

To celebrate this Veterans Day I would like to post the a link to the famous words of two-time Medal of Honor recipient Major General Smedley Butler:

War Is A Racket!

I have not forgotten

2006-11-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

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Well, isn't everything just sunshine and roses these days.

The party of the Ultra Rich has been replaced in power by the party of the Rich.

Speaking for the working poor, I'm not overjoyed.

Hey Dems! Want to help Americans? How about a livable minimum wage and universal healthcare?

I'm not hopeful

And I have not forgotten.

I've not forgotten how most of the Democrats have bent over backwards to give Bush the tools he has needed to lay waste to the country of Iraq.

I haven't forgotten most of the Democrats voted yes on a resolution supporting Israel's illegal bombing and invasion of Lebanon.

I haven't forgotten how most Democrats have remained silent over the past six years as Bush and company passed one barbaric law after another and made torture and kidnapping part of our national legacy.

I'm listening with absolute disbelief as one Democratic activist and blogger after another sings the praises of Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the spineless wonders that didn't even have the decency to speak aloud as the world burned.

I'm disgusted.

I'm also listening in disbelief to the conservatives who blog and call talk radio acting as if Al-Qaeda is about to roll down mainstreet USA in a victory march.

Is this how stupid we sound to them? How alarmist?

No wonder they think we're crazy. Maybe we are.

Bottom line: Bush is hobbled. His power to get things done is reduced to zero and he must realize that Iraq is a lost cause. I don't know if this will translate itself into the real world but it looks like his war-mongering days may be over.

That being said he still has two years left and the Neo-Cons will still be banging the war drums over Iran. One more "terror attack" or "incident" could start that ball rolling again. Don't forget that little US task force with dozens of fighter/bombers and hundreds of cruise missiles that's just sitting in the Persian Gulf.

Waiting.

Israel, the chief beneficiary of the US invasion of Iraq, still wants war with Iran. Bush still wants it as well. The only thing standing between us and that armageddon in the Middle East is the Democratic Congress and Senate.

It's a scary thought but it at least shows the truth of what the Democrats have become: small speedbumps on the way to war.

Update: Go ahead. Sign your own fucking death warrant.

We'll sleep when they're dead

2006-11-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

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I'm sitting here roaming the web after what appears to be a mass execution of GOP candidates throughout the nation. As I figured the staunch Democratic blogs are trumpeting the glories of Democracy today. In 2000 and 2004 when Democrats lost, our system was hopelessly broken and needed to be fixed.

(yawn)

Yes, I'm very glad the Neo-Cons got a bloody nose. Yes, I'm glad Nancy Pelosi, bless her wonderfully liberal heart, will be the first female Speaker of the House.

But all of this needs to be taken with a large grain of salt. There is still so much work to be done before we have a national group hug.

If two things happen, I may even begin to believe in our republic again.

Maybe.

First: American troops out of Iraq by next Christmas. No permanent garrison. No huge Green Zone/embassy. Out. Out. All the way the fuck out.

Second: An investigation into the various aspects of Republican governance with strong subpoena power to back it up. Cheney's secret energy policy meetings, pre-war intelligence lies and exaggerations, and maybe even a look at the Geneva Conventions and the power of the unitary executive.

Those are large and bold steps and the Democrats have been nothing small and timid these past few years. We shall see.

And the so-called culture war need's to take itself to some sort of nuclear next level. Several states, including here in Tennessee, passed ballot initiatives effectively banning gay marriage. It passed here with something like 85% of voters. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. It time more of these holier-than-thous behind such horrid laws get what I would call the "Haggard Treatment." Out these sad and pathetic fuckers for the hateful and hypocritical wastes of oxygen that they are.

Lots of work to do.

What a Dick

2006-11-05T15:53:00.000-08:00

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Don't worry, Mr. Vice-President. We're not going to give you much of a choice.

Frankly, I don't think the Dems have the balls to go after him or Bush.

But you can always hope.

From where I'm sitting and from the anger I hear these days, a nice, safe cell might be the best Dick and Dubya could hope for in the coming years......

Pastor Ted

2006-11-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

Well, turns out Pastor Ted is indeed a world-class hypocrite.

I was asked yesterday if I felt sorry for poor Pastor Ted. Obviously the questioner didn't know me very well.

My response: In his decades of ministry, how many adults and teens did Pastor Ted make feel ashamed of their own sexuality? Hundreds? Thousands? How many people did he make ashamed of their natural and healthy urges? All the while he was no doubt giving in to the very temptation he was condemning in others. The marriage amendments in various states, including Colorado are fairly recent developments. All the time Pastor Ted was helping to whip up support for these disgusting laws, he was having sex with at least one male prostitute, and according to his accuser, using crystal meth.

And a small aside on that one- In my younger days I used every recreational drug known to man and even created one or two new ones. Luckily meth came along after I was finished experimenting. I've never used it. But I have several friends and a couple of family members whose lives have been ravaged by it. It's not just something you decide to try one day. The usual progression is that once coke no longer does it for you, it's time to try something stronger. It's so frighteningly addictive and hard to quit, a former heroin addict I know said he had turned it down on many occasions. Something tells me Pastor Ted has a looong history of drug abuse.

And why? Because, by his own admission, he has had a "lifelong sexual problem."

Pastor Ted is gay. He was born that way and all of the happy smoke and pills won't change what he is deep down. He's ashamed and has to use drugs to mask his feelings because he has been told all is life, by "good Christians", that his feelings are an abomination.

If Ted Haggard was just some guy struggling with this problem I would feel great sorrow and empathy for him. But he's not.

He is one the leaders of the American Theocracy movement with a direct line to the Bush White House and he has been a vocal opponent, on a national level, of giving gays and lesbians the exact same rights as the rest of us Americans.

This guy is a certifiable nutcase.

And he's tried to turn Colorado Springs into a Christian version of Afghanistan under the Taliban.

But it's OK. Pastor Ted is now undergoing "intensive spiritual counseling" or what you might call "pray the gay away" and he's going to be just fine. He will no doubt turn up in a few years on your TV in a late-night infomercial for miracle healing water or he'll write a book detailing his struggles and blaming it on the media and our sex-saturated society and he'll make a million bucks.

If I have any positive wish for Ted Haggard it would be that he learns from this that he is not evil or a sinner, but a human being who has been lied to his entire life. He could make such a powerful statement if he could simply get past the fear and indoctrination and denounce all the garbage the Christian Right wants people to believe. He could be a beacon of hope to tens of thousands of young people being raised in God-fearing "Christian" households who are afraid to be who they truly are.

If he refuses to admit what he has to know by now is the truth, if he simply continues to talk of the "evil and dark lifestyle" he has been living, my hope for Pastor Ted is that he checks himself into a another cheap motel, smokes a large amount of crystal meth, and decorates the wallpaper with his own brains.

Dear Lord I pray.....

2006-11-02T16:36:00.000-08:00

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That this turns out to be true.......

I've followed this guy's rantings for years. He's lobbied hard(!) against gay marriage and has gone on record against the "evils" of homosexuality dozens, if not hundreds of times. Ted Haggard is probably the most influential evangelical pastor in America after James Dobson. His 14,000 member New Life church is one of the largest in the nation.

And according to this account, he enjoys sex with male prostitutes and though the above story doesn't mention it, the prostitute,who is scheduled to take a polygraph on Friday, says that Haggard also smoked methamphetamine in his presence.

It literally gets no better than this.

Guts

2006-10-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

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Our world is often lacking in heroes and true courage is sometimes hard to find. Last week, I pointed out the article by Kevin Tillman. It took some serious guts to write those words. To cross through the doubt, deception and often bone-deep brainwashing that our societies are so filled with.

Here are some soldiers that have that measure of courage as well.

B'hatzlacha.....

Buyer's Remorse

2006-10-29T17:37:00.000-08:00

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Last week I voted for Harold Ford Jr. for Senate in Tennessee.

Despite my misgivings about the entire Democratic Party in general and Ford's whole " I like to film campaign adds in church" thing.

I voted for him simply because he wasn't a Republican, and because his opponent, Bob Corker, is a corrupt good 'ol boy who reminds me way too much of Deputy Dawg from the old cartoons.

Earlier today I saw a television add for Ford that just made me want to burn my ballot in protest.

Corker's campaign has been running an add against Ford claiming that he "wants to give gays the right to marry" and " he wants to give the abotion pill to high-school kids" among other wonderful things.

Ford was so worried about this add that he did a rebuttal add saying that he didn't want to give teenagers abortion pills and, in large bold letters, VOTED FOR THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT. The rest of the rebuttal was fine with just having Ford narrate in his intense-yet-earnest way that makes him so dangerous to the talking-points crowd and intellectual midgets like Corker. But he wanted to make sure everyone watching knew where he stood on them gays wanting to marry.

Message received Harold.

Then there's this quote from Ford from yesterday's campaign stop in Paris, Tennessee:

HAROLD FORD, JR.: My friend Lincoln Davis who chairs our campaign says there are, there's one big difference between us and misfortunate Republicans when it comes to our faith: he said that Republicans fear the Lord; he said Democrats fear AND love the Lord .

This is now what passes for political debate in our nation. We love our imaginary friend more than they love their imaginary friend.

I knew who this guy was before I voted for him, but the race is a dead heat and we've got to try and do something to derail the Crazy Train that is our current government.....

I swore in 2004 when I voted for John Kerry I would never again vote for the lesser of two evils just to have a chance to win.

sigh

Suckered again.

Ruled by Faith

2006-10-29T14:59:00.000-08:00

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It all makes a bit more sense now......

Repairs

2006-10-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

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I'm going to be doing some major repairs and re-loading of the blog template. There is a glitch somewhere in my template HTML that neither Blogger nor I can locate or repair. This is not my semi-annual tear-it-all-up-and-start-again blog murder. I just want to fix all the problems that are occuring with the graphics and even some comments and posts.

Powerful

2006-10-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

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Kevin Tillman, brother of NFL player-turned-soldier Pat Tillman, has written an incredible indictment of the current status of the war in Iraq and the state of our nation.

You can feel the heat coming off of this one.

Farmers in the Field

2006-10-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

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They're not wasting any time

A friend of mine asked me today "You don't actually think that the government is going to start throwing Americans in prison idefinitely without trial, do you?"

I'm constantly amazed at the ability my fellow Americans have for not being able to understand that we are not special. We are not exempt from history. Just because you want to close your eyes and pretend it's not happening or prefer to simply not think about it, won't stop what's coming. The only thing, the one and only thing that protects the American people from tyranny is the Constitution of the United States. Not the good will of the government. Not God. Not wishes or hopes.

Only the document that President Bush had referred to as "Just goddamned piece of paper."

If you listen to various mainstream news sources they will tell you that this law doesn't apply to Americans.

They are either unforgivably stupid or they are simply lying. Or a mixture of both.

From the Military Commissions Act of 2006:

"Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,"

Another provision of the law states that "any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy [presumably U.S. military allies, such as Great Britain and Israel], shall be punished as a military commission ... may direct."(emphasis mine)

Anybody want to explain to me how a non-citizen could be "in breach of allegiance or duty to the United States"?

I also love how you are now considered an enemy combatant if you help groups that may be hostile to Israel.

Do I think that the government will begin wholesale roundups ofU.S. citizens today?

No.

But how about if there's another large scale "terrorist attack" on the United States?

How long after something like that do you think people who openly speak out against the government will be deemed to be "providing support for the enemy."

This descent is upon us. I never wanted to believe it. I kept thinking that somewhere, somehow, something would put a stop to this runaway train. But it's too late.

All that's left is follow this nightmare to it's logical conclusion.

"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . . Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow."-- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free. The Germans: 1938-1945.

The Last Voice

2006-10-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

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10/18/06

Keith Olbermann and the damnable truth of it all.....

Olbermann: And lastly, as promised, a special Comment tonight on the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the loss of Habeas Corpus.

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived. as people in fear.

And now - our rights and our freedoms in peril - we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight, have we truly become, the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before - and we have been here before led here - by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives - only to watch him use those Acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote, about America.

We have been here, when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives - only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as "Hyphenated Americans," most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said, about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9-0-6-6 was necessary to save American lives - only to watch him use that Order to imprison and pauperize 110-thousand Americans.

While his man-in-charge.General DeWitt, told Congress: "It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen - he is still a Japanese."

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did - but for the choices they or their ancestors had made, about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each, was a betrayal of that for which the President who advocated them, claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced, survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900-thousand votes ~ though his Presidential campaign was conducted entirely. from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States, to the citizens of the United States, whose lives it ruined.

The most vital. the most urgent. the most inescapable of reasons.

In times of fright, we have been, only human.

We have let Roosevelt's "fear of fear itself" overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said "the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass."

We have accepted, that the only way to stop the terrorists, is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets, was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

Or substitute. the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

Or the Socialists.

Or the Anarchists.

Or the Immigrants.

Or the British.

Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always. wrong.

"With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly - of course - the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

But even within this history, we have not before codified, the poisoning of Habeas Corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital. the most urgent. the most inescapable of reasons.

And - again, Mr. Bush - all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done, to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that "the United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values" and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" and ship them somewhere - anywhere - but may now, if he so decides, declare you an "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this, hyperbole or hysteria ~ ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was President, or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was President, or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was President.

And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant" - exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope, he has not lied about how he intends to use it, nor who he intends to use it against?

"These military commissions will provide a fair trial," you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush. "In which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney, and can hear all the evidence against them."

'Presumed innocent,' Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain "serious mental and physical trauma" in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

'Access to an attorney,' Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant, on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

'Hearing all the evidence,' Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies, that imperil us all.

"One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks," you told us yesterday. "said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America."

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas Corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The Moral Force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush. they would be "the beginning of the end of America."

And did it even occur to you once sir - somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 - that with only a little further shift in this world we now know - just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died -

Did it ever occur to you once, that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future President and a "competent tribunal" of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" for, and convene a Military Commission to try, not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And doubtless, sir, all of them - as always - wrong.

Good night, and good luck

October 17, 2006

2006-10-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

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Yesterday the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

This law gives the President the authority to deem any person, American citizen or not, an "enemy combatant" and confine them for an indefinite period of time without charges or trial.

It also makes it legal for any "enemy combatant", citizen or not, to be tortured for information.

This happened.

Here in America.

The President of the United States essentially named himself judge and jury over everyone in the entire world.

Some people are outraged.

Some people are trying to get the country to understand.

And some people are buying guns.

I've said it before: It's weird here in America. We're all going about our daily lives like this is still a nation of laws. Like things are like they were.

The President can imprison and torture you, me, or anyone if he so desires. Without charges. Without review.

I've suspected it for quite a while, but this makes it official.

America is dead.

Real Time

2006-10-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

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Via Crooks and Liars Bill Maher tells it like it is.

Treason

2006-10-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

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Lost amid the sports figures crashing into buildings and the Democrats forcing a poor congressman to send naughty messages to young boys, something important actually happened.

For the first time in fifty years, the United States has charged someone with treason.

Glenn Greenwald runs it down with his usual brilliance.

Interesting timing, no?

The Amish

2006-10-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

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This is is not my typical post. It's topical and I believe newsworthy but I'm not posting links with it because it's more of a spur-of-the-moment observational thing.

The Amish.

Now most of you regular readers here know that I have very little respect for religion of any sort. In my view religion can be traced directly to many of the problems facing mankind on any given day. Judaism, Islam, or my particular most-hated, Christianity, are all guilty of systematically working to destroy all that is good and real within the human spirit.

But I have to say, within the sphere of this particular shooting incident in Pennsylvania, the Amish have impressed the hell out of me

I know very little about the Amish. I know they are ultra-fundamentalist in their worldview. I know they speak German. I know they give their teenagers that have been raised in their sheltered world the opportunity to live life outside their world to see what he "real" world is like. I know they call us "the English".

So my knowledge of these strange folk is maybe just a little better than average, but I'm still woefully ignorant of their ways.

Until now, they seemed just another kooky cult. Much less harmful than most, but still a bunch of religious nuts.

Imagine my surprise when this horrific crime showed the world what people of genuine peace and faith actually do when attacked.

The following stories are entirely anecdotal. I'm sure I could track them down and link to them, but trust me, all of this I've heard reported several times in the mainstream media. Take that for whatever it's worth.

During the standoff, 13-year-old Marian Fisher appealed to the gunman, Charles Roberts, to shoot her first so as to buy time and perhaps life for the other children.

Anybody out there got that kind of guts? I don't.

The body of the killer had not even been removed from the scene when a group of Amish men went to Charles Roberts house to tell his wife that they didn't hold this crime against the family and that they forgave Roberts.

Want to try an imagine that scene? Here's the home of a man that just murdered several of your extended families' children and you go out of your way to quickly try and bring some sort of comfort.

You think that a group of Southern Baptists would do the same? A group of Muslims? Imagine if you will, a group of Orthodox Jews traveling into the West Bank to comfort the mother of a suicide bomber.

Over a hundred mourners from the Amish community attended the funeral of the killer.

Today the school where the shooting occurred was torn down. A day after the tragedy, the elders of the Amish community announced that they would do so because "one of the children was having nightmares about the school. "

One of the children was having nightmares.

A woman in South Carolina smothered her newborn twins today because they were crying too loudly. She then rolled over and went back to sleep.

Do I have to list how many ways we are monsters in America when it comes to children?

Lots of kids had nightmares about returning to Columbine. They walled off the library and left the rest of the school standing. It was rather new after all and was a state-of-the-art learning institution and the state would have lost tens of millions of dollars if they had torn it...........

One kid had nighmares and the Amish decided that was too much pain.

Who are these people?

AmI losing my angry edge? Do I suddenly think religion is a good thing? No.

Am I going to run away and join the Amish? No. There are too many video games I have yet to play. I've also fallen deeply in love with SpongeBob SquarePants and I just couldn't leave him and Patrick.

I don't know enough about the Amish to say that this behavior is atypical. I'm sure there are plenty of horror stories out there about life in their perfect little world.....

But between the bloodthirsty Christians screaming for war and the bloodthirsty Muslims screaming for war.....

It's just really refreshing to see someone live up to the teachings of their faith. To behave as if there really is some peaceful and good force guiding their actions.

And to do it in such a brave and honorable way.

Ron Kovic-Patriot

2006-10-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

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The ever-dependable Nemo sent me a link to another brilliant writer who knows what the hell he's talking about.

The film version of Kovic's searing Born on the Fourth of July was in theaters when I was waiting for my own date to report to Parris Island. I saw it and was was moved by the story. Unfortunately I was too young to understand that what's past is prologue and Vietnam wasn't just bad because of the terrain and the brutal enemy, although that certainly was a large part of it. Vietnam was bad because of the government lies piled upon government lies and it amounted to millions of wasted lives.

But what did that have to do with today, right?

I stumbled upon Kovic's book after I left the Corps in the early 90's, a much wiser and infinitely angrier man. Even though I could appreciate how bold a man he was for the journey he made, it still didn't hit me where I live. The programming ran too deep. I could not reconcile the voice in my head telling me something was wrong with our society and the voice of Ron Kovic.

These days I hear you, Ron.These days I know where your anger comes from and your hope.

I just wish I could find your kind of courage.

This post is a perfect companion to the one below about Chris Hedges. Just as Hedges knows when a hellish meltdown is coming from his own painful experiences, so to does Ron Kovic know a terribly wrong and disastrous war when he sees it.

A quick aside about the new study listing 600,000 as the body count in Iraq. I have always believed that when the true final death toll of this little venture in Iraq is known, the world would recoil in horror.

600,000 is much closer to the truth, but it's still a low estimate.

When the true numbers are known everyone from the Limbaugh-type cheerleaders, the politicians, "newspeople", and bloggers will try to say "Duhhhhhh...we didn't know".

Don't..... let........ them.

Just as we won't forget the criminal administration who started this, we won't forget all of you mass-murder enablers.

And payback is a bitch.

As bad as it can get

2006-10-09T17:45:00.000-07:00

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Something turned my eyes from the sputtering and confused response of the Bush administration to North Korea's nuclear test.

This article by Chris Hedges, one of my favorite authors and journalists.

This is so bad.

Chris Hedges is not an alarmist. He is not a foaming-at-the-mouth Bush hater with an axe to grind.

Chris Hedges is one of the most honest and clear-headed journalists out there. If he says we're on the brink of Armageddon you can take that to the bank.

This is so fucking bad.....

2006-10-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

Let The Day Start - Battlestar Galactica

There is a reason to go on living.

3rd season of Galactica is here!!!

#@@$!#$$$@!!!!!!

2006-10-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

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Once again an HTML glitch has moved my sidebar to the bottom of the page. As soon as the offending post is archived my links will be back where they belong.

Two Suns in the Sunset

2006-10-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

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On October 4, 2006 the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States of America, Chris Hill, threatened to destroy North Korea if they test a nuclear weapon:

"We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea," Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill told the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University on Wednesday. "We are not going to accept it."

"North Korea can have a future or it can have these weapons, it cannot have both."

The question of who gets to have nukes and who doesn't has always been one I have found infuriating. The United States has more nuclear weapons than any nation on earth. It is the only nation in history to use nuclear weapons against human beings.... twice.

And yet, America somehow feels it is the judge of who is deserving to have the bomb.

Here's the bottom line on this: Iran and North Korea want nuclear weapons so they can prevent the same exact disaster that befell Iraq. You know, invasion and occupation by the United States. All of this current sound and fury are simply over a test. We already know North Korea has the bomb, but we are simply unwilling to let them demonstrate it on an international stage.

We're afraid, I kid you not, that it might make us look weak.

And it might give other countries ideas.

They might get all uppity.

See, as per our new doctrine of the Bush Blitzkrieg, we can invade and occupy any nation that we suspect of terrorism-related-activity-idea-thingies.

But the U.S. doesn't like the idea of trying to invade a country that has a nuclear weapon. It might be somewhat bad for troop morale if an entire ground invasion force or aircraft carrier battle group were to simply disappear from the face of the earth in a flash.

The truth is America is a cowardly bully and wants to keep the deck stacked.

Here's the part that's really just priceless.

There has been no-zero-zilch-nada- ---no outcry from anyone that a senior member of the Bush administration has threatened the "future" of another nation if they simply test a weapon within their own borders.

No calls for clarification, apology, or retraction.

That's the worst part of all.

Nobody here gives a damn.

2006-10-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

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Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation

-Kahlil Gibran

Alas Babylon

2006-10-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

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William Rivers Pitt sums up what is rapidly becoming the worst (and perhaps last) moment in the history of this nation.

Once again I have not blogged about this in any sufficient length, or really at all. Much like the continuing occupations and slaughters in the Middle East, what more can I say?

What is more horrifying than the truth right in front of us?

Many personal setbacks and some new heartbreaks have been distracting me from almost all but a cursory following of the news. It's an indication of just how bad the situation is that I'm somewhat grateful for the personal pain. I don't know how closely I want to view the national and international stages in the coming years.

(sigh)

And when the Second American Revolution comes, and make no mistake, it is coming, we will see.

We will see what we as Americans are truly made of.

Bob Corker's mother is a stupid bitch

2006-09-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

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In his latest political add for U.S. Senate, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker is shown in a conversation with his mother.

Momma Corker opens the commercial by saying in her idiotic drawl "You've got to be tough on crime, you've got to be tough on the Middle East, you've got to be tough on airplanes."

Bob goes on to brag about how he cut crime in Chattanooga by 50% while he was Mayor. This is a blatant lie, but it's Mom with whom I've got a bone to pick.

Note: I would never go after the family of any public figure until they put themselves into the public eye in ridiculous campaign adds for their incompetent offspring. Then they're fair game.

My question to you Momma Corker is exactly how would you like to get tough on the Middle East? And do you mean the entire Middle East, including all of the innocent men, women, and children who just happen to live there? Perhaps you think that there are no innocent people in the Middle East? Is the Middle East to you simply a large , sandy area filled with with nothing but trouble makers?

Gotta keep them darkies in their place, right Mom?

How, dear Mother Corker would you suggest we " be tough on the Middle East"? Would you suggest that perhaps we should invade and occupy two nations while supplying weapons to another nation in the region to attack and invade a third while threatening a fourth and fifth?

Do you consider that to be "tough"?

And what exactly is it that you have against the poor airplanes? Do we have airplanes sneaking into the country to try and find immigrants to hijack and fly into buildings? Or maybe airplanes are wanting the right to marry? What is it Mother Corker that troubles you so about airplanes?

It's bad enough that we have another mental midget with a grating drawl trying to pass his ignorance off as charm and competence, but to bring his mother and her thinly veiled racism into it is even worse. Just goes to to show which side of the family Bob got his smarts from.

I'm just tired of all of these political adds. I'm tired of the childish, lowest common denominator-seeking lies and innuendo. My God, you people are supposed to be our leaders!

Is this the best we can do?

Update: I've been trying to find the add online so I can show just how condescending and offensive it is, but as of yet, no luck. If anyone happens to run across it, send me a link.

Awwww man....

2006-09-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

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Political ads this year seem to be annoying me more than usual. An ad for our local candidate for Senate, Bob Corker, says we need to use our "values" to help secure the borders or some such shit. His opponen Harold Ford has gone so far as to appear in an add in which he addresses the viewer from a church pew.

Sad, stupid, and disgusting all rolled into one. Add to that the fact that these adds seem to actually have an impact on the way people vote and you have one of the many reasons why I'm giving a lot less of a damn about politics this year.

This is all just self -serving politics-as-usual, but it seems some people in other states are trying to see just how low they can go.......

2006-09-23T00:23:00.000-07:00

..... do not cream the mist inside hearts.

For my dear brothers

2006-09-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

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Some came to sing; some came to pray
Some came to keep the dark away....

Again wrote:

no, i can't tell it, but maybe you understand, why i'm ashamed of myself...

Please do me a favor, my friend:

Never, ever, feel ashamed in this particular forum. You are the inspiration for every blog post I have ever written. In the dark days of doubt and despair, your words concerning growing up in your native land have given me courage, hope, and strength.

I daresay I hope to instill in my son the feeling of responsibility you have inspired in me.

He's growing into quite a joyful and sensitive little man. Despite his health setbacks, he's literally a glowing and smiling joy to know.

I cry just a little every time I have to give him his breathing treatments while being thankful for the ability to do so. It seems wrong to make him sit so still for the ability that so many take for granted....

These are often dark days but I literally wouldn't be here if I didn't have hope.

Hope that darkness will eventually destroy itself and people of courage and strength, who often toil in secret and anonymity, eventually triumph simply by experiencing the joy of life.

I believe this.

Again, you are the greatest mentor and teacher any foolish and confused man could ever hope for.....

You shouldn't be ashamed.

You should be proud.

I am proud to call you friend and teacher.

As for my dear French friend:

I can never know the pain you endure, but please know that if I could take a measure of it for you, I most assuredly would.

I'm thinking of you often, my brother.

Empire

2006-09-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

The spending for the U.S. Department of Defense for fiscal year 2006 is 441.6 billion dollars.

That's $441,000,000,000.

Why does the United States have such a large military? Is it to protect us against the overwhelming flood of people who want to thank us for bringing them freedom? Are we afraid of being crushed by the stampede of well-wishers?

Why must we spend more on defense than every other nation on earth combined?

Well, obviously to keep larger, aggressive nations from exploiting smaller, less powerful nations.

You never know what power-hungry, war-like nations often driven by religious extremism may do.

Many nations do not hold the rule of law and human rights to as high a standard as we do.
Some nations even have leaders who wage wars because they believe God wants them to,
and there truly needs to be some way to fight back against such oppressive regimes.

It's just good to know that there are nations still willing to stand up to tyranny.

Our astronomical defense budget is obviously money well spent.

And with God and truth on our side, we will prevail!!!!

Quote

2006-09-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

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It takes a village to raise a child. But it only takes a van and some puppies to catch one.

And I'm going to keep posting it

2006-09-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

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I'm going to keep pointing this out until every last moron in America who says the troops in Iraq are "defending our freedoms" reads it.

From Bush's August 21, 2006 news conference:

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

Mr. President, you're a lying piece of shit.

Listen carefully stupid Americans:

I'm really sorry your loved ones are fighting and dying in Iraq. People like me have been trying to tell you since before the war even started that it was going to be a disaster and a useless and horrible waste of human life, but you preferred to believe the lies of a wanna-be cowboy with the I.Q. of a broken chair. Now your family members are coming home from the war without many of the limbs they were born with or else in boxes draped with flags. Even in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary you still insist that the terrible cluster fuck that is Iraq has something to do with keeping America free. You're deluded. You're wrong.

The U.S. military is not fighting for anyone's freedoms in Iraq. The U.S. military is simply illegally occupying a sovereign nation that never did and never could attack the United States.

Now, I know that the people that most need to read this most likely never will. They are too busy listening to Rush Limbaugh and staring in fascination as other men drive cars in a circle really, really fast. Vroom! Vroom!

But if any of you who do happen to stumble across this blog by accident happen to know any of these poor, reality-challenged souls, please feel free to send them a link.

I'm going to keep posting Bush's admission of guilt periodically in hopes of breaking through the wall of stupid that so many Americans sit so comfortably behind.

And when, not if, but when, the United States is forced to leave Iraq in defeat and disgrace, in order to avoid losing my mind, and in memory of all the innocent people your blind support helped kill, I'm going to spend the rest of my days saying to each and every one of you Bush supporters I run across

I fucking well told you so!!!!!!!!

We now return to our regularly scheduled program Paris Hilton Helps Lure Internet Pedophiles and Little Richard and Simon Cowell Teach Them To Dance and Sing

Too Terrible To Contemplate

2006-09-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

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I'm a huge fan of Joe Bageant. His brilliant insights into the class struggle and the inevitable meltdown that is in America's future is brilliant and often powerfully moving.

This exchange with one of his readers caught my eye and I thought I would share it.

The painful truth:

I can assure you that "less conservative folks below the center of the food chain" are not only waking up, but are establishing networks and accumulating the materiel required for resistance of a type most of us find too terrible to contemplate. Their perceptions of the causes would strike the left in this country as uninformed and be considered ignorant by middle class liberals. They have never read Chomsky and they do not have the skills to articulate their political positions. But they do have certain skills gained in Nam and Iraq and Afganistan.

Yep.

Wow

2006-09-14T00:16:00.000-07:00

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You just can't make this stuff up.

I swear this is a real post from a real blog from a real person who actually believes what he's writing. Thanks to the General for pointing this out.

My favorite line simply has to be:

They mock him for showing the same shock and dismay we all felt. They mock him for being moved near to tears as the realization set in that thousands of innocent Americans were dead or dying and that he, the most powerful single man on the planet, was powerless to stop it.

I mock him because he looked like he couldn't decide whether to shit himself or faint, or both.

Then he ran away and hid until the coast was clear.

Then he let the guy that planned it get away.

Then he went to war against a country that had nothing to do with it.

Then he fucked that up.

But maybe this is all part of Bush's master plan.....

Yes, it flashed through his mind in a heartbeat as he sat there in that classroom with a glazed, catatonic look on his face....

He's just fooling the world into believing he's one of the stupidest men on earth and any day now he's going to spring his trap and all of his thousands of fuck-ups will make sense.....

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ on a pogo stick, this guy is serious!!!

Must....have....drink....lie...down

September 11- Through a Glass Darkly

2006-09-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

(This post was written as the controversy about ABC's Path to 9/11 was first heating up. I have not seen the "docudrama" but by all reports, it makes my point nicely about the rapid revision of history. This post was written from the point of view of the "official" story of 9/11 simply for the purpose of discussion. Please don't write to me and tell me about Mohammed Atta's Illumunati mind-control implant.)

I don't think it's any kind of overstatement to say that September 11, 2001 is the defining moment of my generation. Believe me, I truly wish it wasn't. I would prefer to go back into the past and view the fall of the Berlin Wall or dream of a future where man steps foot on Mars as more hopeful milestones of the children of the 70's. But unfortunately 9/11 casts it's smoky shadow over past, present, and future and that doesn't look to change anytime soon. Because the disastrous War on Terror and the barbaric and illegal occupation of Iraq follow from that bright and deadly morning, it all becomes one bloody chain of events-inescapable and horrible.

The problem is that to understand where we are going, we must know how it is we got here.

There are three films about 9/11 I want to talk about. They are the made for TV, Flight 93, the big screen United 93 and Steven Spielberg's Munich. I have yet to see Oliver Stone's World Trade Center and I'm confining this discussion to what I've seen and not just word-of-mouth.

Most people in our media saturated culture don't understand just how powerful the messages we receive through film, television, radio, and to a much lesser degree print and the Internet truly are as far as shaping our reality. For many Americans, if it's on television or if it's said to be a dramatization of a true event, then it's The Truth. Period.

I had avoided, until very recently, any dramatized re-enactments concerning 9/11. I've studied the events of that day very carefully. Dozens of book, dozens more hours on the Internet, and close and repeated readings of the 9/11 Commission Report have given me a grounding in the official story of what happened that day. Further reading and study (including hours spent viewing the horrific footage in painful detail) have given me a firm grasp on the so-called "conspiracy" theories. Some of these are ridiculous and easily disproven. Some are entirely plausible and impossible to ignore if you wish to be truly honest about what happened. None of the theories, official or conspiracy, tell the entire truth. I doubt we will ever know the entire truth of these attacks.

When it comes to an event as important to the psyche of the American people as 9/11 it's important to be absolutely painstaking in the portrayal of events. The twin films Flight 93 and United 93 are anything but. Both films in, my humble opinion, are nothing but well done propaganda.

In avoiding the re-enactments of that day I hoped to be able to keep a kind of clinical distance and not be swept up in the emotions surrounding the human tragedy.

However, one evening a few weeks ago, I was bored and the made-for-TV Flight 93 was on. I debated with myself and finally sighed in surrender. It was time to see what Hollywood had done with these important truths.

I watched Flight 93 and it was quite thought-provoking. I'm one of those movie watchers that who has to digest what I've seen to be able to understand it. The emotions in such a wrenching tale made it difficult to analyze at the moment. But later I realized what it was that troubled me: the terrorists.

I've listened to every available telephone conversation that took place between the passengers of Flight 93, airline officials, law enforcement, and families. Not one has ever mentioned the behavior and conversations of the terrorists once they barricaded themselves in the cockpit of Flight 93. No one had access to that information. Yet the film feels free to show us the interactions between the four men. It's great for the dramatic tension and the tale would be odd and disjointed without it.

The only problem is that it's just not true.

So what? Why does it matter that the film shows what the terrorists might have done?

Because their are two scenes. Two scenes that show that are no doubt supposed to show the stark difference between them and us. The difference between the "Islamofascists" and us freedom-loving Americans.

During the scene in which the passengers decide to storm the cockpit the film goes out of it's way to show everyone voting about what to do. All in favor, raise their hands. Good 'ol democracy, right? This is entirely accurate. During several of the conversations, passengers mentioned voting to storm the cockpit. No argument there.

But later, one of the terrorists guarding the passengers goes forward to the cockpit to warn the others piloting the plane that the passengers are "planning something" and asks for instructions. The pilot, and obviously the commander of the operation, snaps to his nervous companion, "You will have to stop them. I need the others in the cockpit with me." The young man begins to question how he is to do this and the commander snaps "Just do it! Get back there now!"

Once again, remember that all of this is fiction. Entirely made up.

The message that comes across is that we do things democratically.

They do not.

Now, how the hell do we know that the terrorists didn't vote on who would face the angry, democratic mob that was about to throw a crimp into the plan? How do we know that the guy didn't volunteer? How do we know that there was just one terrorist between them and the cockpit door?

We don't know. And to portray such important historical events as a cheap infomercial for democracy is unforgivable.

You may think that I'm being a bit picky in my reviews of these films. Remember that despite the fact of repeated investigations disproving a link, and a widely-ignored denial by the President, 43% of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.

85% of American troops in Iraq believe the same thing.

Propaganda works.

I had heard that the big-screen, larger budget United 93 was much more harrowing, violent and true-to-life. I waited until it was released on DVD and rented it a couple of days ago.

All doubts about what kind of reality would be portrayed in this one was dispelled during the opening scenes of the film. The first words you hear are Muslim prayers. The first scenes are of the hijackers in their hotel rooms on the morning of September 11 bowing toward Mecca and reading aloud from the Koran.

Very subtle.

Once again, we have absolutely no idea what these men did before they reached their targets. We do know from eyewitness testimony that the hijackers of Flight 11 including Mohammed Atta, the leader of the entire operation enjoyed alcohol (Atta was a rum and Coke man) and the company of exotic dancers just days before the attack. A far cry from the portrayal of the hijackers in United 93.

Another moment that felt as if the director was saying "Look! Religious fanatics!" was an incredibly powerful scene when we see and hear various passengers tearfully praying. It fades seamlessly to the hijackers in the cockpit praying as the camera pans over the blood-spattered control panels.

However, the most unforgivable scenes were of the passenger with the French accent that kept trying to convince everyone to do what the terrorists wanted and to not fight back.

I really wish I was making that up, but it's true.

Not content with portraying the French passenger as a coward, the filmmakers go so far as to have him trying to warn the terrorists that the passengers plan to resist!

There is not one single account in any of the official records showing these particular words and actions. And I'm pretty damn sure that if there had been a French citizen or American of French descent aboard making a fuss about "surrendering", the right-wing media would have already trumpeted it far and wide.

Once again, such a deliberate distortion of the known truth of that day is beyond repugnant.

United 93 does succeed on a purely visceral level. The tension is exhausting as we watch the hijackers wait for just the right moment to attack. The acting is top-notch and the final struggle for the plane is stunningly filmed and almost unbearably tragic to watch. The portrayal of the hijackers in this film is certainly more complex and nuanced than the carboard bad guys of Flight 93 but the opening scene has already given us all the reason and motivation that is required for these men to commit such unspeakable acts.

They're just religious nuts.

Muslim religious nuts.

Reading this you might think that I am sympathetic to the 9/11 hijackers. Nothing could be further from the truth. I simply believe that if you are going to deal with issues of such incredible importance, you should stick with the facts and not try to distort them for whatever message you are trying to send.

I also believe that the reasons why people do things are quite important in understanding how to predict, and if need be, prevent such actions.

I'm just silly that way.

The medium of film is far too immediate and convincing to simply make up what you don't know.

The gaps in what we know about the behavior of the terrorists that day should not be filled with simplistic propaganda aimed at convincing the public that the hijackings were purely motivated by religion.

Some may consider the third film, Munich, an odd choice for a discussion of 9/11 propaganda.

The truth that everyone knows deep down is this: Without unconditional American support for Israel's oppressive policies towards the Palestinian people, 9/11 would never have happened.

To be sure there are other issues. Many others, including American forces being stationed in Saudi Arabia which is considered holy ground by Osama bin-Laden and many of his supporters. But the issue of Palestinian oppression and the role of America in it is what has unleashed the Jihad upon our shores.

This is violently denied by those who wish to believe the fairy tales of poor lilttle Israel fighting for it's life in a land of irrational hatred, their only ally the peace-loving people of America.

Munich tells the story of the Mossad-sponsored revenge against those responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. A highly-trained group of Israelis, over a period of years, hunts down and eliminates those responsible for the planning and execution of the attack. The film pulls no punches when it comes to the portrayal of violence that is both state sponsored and that which is carried out by those that feel they are fighting oppression. That is what I truly loved about this film. It shows that bombs and bullets don't care who is right and who is wrong. They kill and maim the righteous and unrighteous alike.

Munich has moments of great beauty, unexpected humor, and terrifying violence. It is an amazing accomplishment in filmmaking.

I was frankly surprised by this film. I'm a great fan of Steven Spielberg but when I heard that he was doing a film about Munich and it's aftermath, my heart sank. The last thing the world needs is another pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda piece.

Considering Schindler's List is, and rightfully so, the definitive filmed narrative on the Holocaust, a film simply showing good vs evil in the Holy Land, created by such a gifted filmmaker, could be devastating for decades to come.

Then something hopeful happened when the film was released: The right-wing blogs and talking heads hated it. How much a particular political film or book is hated by those on the right is usually a good indication of how truthful it is. The right can't stand to have their version of reality challenged.

Spielberg's main theme in Munich is basically, where does it end? They kill our people. We kill their people. On and on, forever and ever amen. And also that the line between soldier and terrorist eventually blurs and disappears. What angered the right was that the Palestinian cause was presented as just that: a cause. A struggle for a home.

The fact that this film was made by a Jewish director is one of the most hopeful signs in an otherwise dark decade for the Palestinian people.

What most people don't like to acknowledge is that Israel was formed by terrorism and that they stole their lands from the people of Palestine. The Palestinians have been struggling for half a century to get the land back whatever means is at their disposal and are considered savages because of it.

As Avner's mother says to him about the "founding" of Israel, "We had to take it, because no one would ever give it to us."

That the Palestinian people may want their homes back from those that stole them, and that the Middle East is not our private playground was brought home to a mostly clueless United States on September 11, 2001.

The poignant final scene of Munich certainly shows that Mr. Spielberg understands the unchanging law of cause and effect.

I am fearful at the re-writing of history that is occurring right in front of my eyes. The average American will take away from United 93 and Flight 93 that religiously insane anti-democracy thugs filled with hate beyond reason attacked America on 9/11. The filmmakers did not do service to the truth. They simply commercialized ignorant stereotypes and told us to revel in our deepest fears of "the other".

In Munich, we were given a glimpse into the dark heart of humanity's longest and most complex struggle for justice. We have been taking an eye for an eye for decades now and we are now reaping the rewards of our forced blindness. This film offered us a glimpse at how it was that we found ourselves in this place.

What will the story of 9/11 be a decade from now? What sort of atrocities will we be trying to justify with our ham-handed propaganda by then?

I fear for the future of the past.

More cowards on the Right

2006-09-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

_______________________________

Mr. Greenwald has a very eloquent defense of the Fox reporters that are catching hell from the chickenhawks for their "conversion".

Greenwald has repeatedly shown how well he understands the psychology of these pathetic bullies who just want someone to protect them, no matter the cost, from the ridiculous phantom of "Islamofascism".

Finding Nemo

2006-09-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

__________________________________

Nemo wanted me to tell everyone that he is still alive and well and will be back soon.

He was arrested outside the Pentagon while protesting the war. He was taken into custody not for protesting, but because he was protesting while wearing only a pair of combat boots and a Viking helmet.

OK, that's not true.

He was arrested, but it was for trying to give German Chancellor Angela Merkel a neck massage......while wearing only combat boots and a Viking helmet.

OK, that's not true either.

He's having computer and ISP problems and just wanted me to say hi to everyone and tell you that he shall return........

Wearing combat boots and a Viking helmet.

Take the what out of my what?

2006-09-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

___________________________________

It's always been my policy here at Thorn Tree and past blogs to never, ever reveal the e-mail addresses of people to write to me with either positive or negative feedback about my blog.

I am keeping with that policy yet I simply wished to respond publicly to a couple of recent very colorful messages I received. You will know who you are I'm sure.

To e-mailer number one:

Thank you for the kind suggestion. In the future, I will always take the cock out of my mouth before I begin to write. It really had never occurred to me, and I'm really hoping this will improve my concentration.

To e-mailer number two: Questioning my parentage is not what I would consider an insult. Unfortunately, I know exactly who my father is. Perhaps you should try an insult with the word "cock" in it. It gets my attention every time.

And finally, number three: I'm really trying to figure out if yours was a threat or an offer. If it was a threat, it was a damn good one. If it was an offer, errr.... no thanks.

Twisted

2006-09-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

_________________________________

The mighty General has brings us this story that just creeps me right the hell out.

Fuck Peaceful Coexistence

2006-09-01T16:35:00.000-07:00

________________________________

In my previous post, which seems to have caught the attention of some incredible examples what passes for thinkers on the right, I made a somewhat misleading statement. Pay attention righties, this is what adults do when they make a mistake. They point it out and fix it.

I stated that The Anchoress did not allow comments on her blog. This was not entirely accurate. The Anchoress does allow comments on her blog as long as she reads them before they are posted and they agree with her completely. The last time I read her at any length, strictly for the comedic value, she was moderating and registering commentors. She may or may not be now, but my point was: With the Anchoress, as with most right-wing blogs, toe the party line or walk.

Before I even had my first blog I ran afoul of the Anchoress. This was before she started censoring her feedback. Reading her site, a cloying mix of religious dogma and right-wing talking points, you can tell rather quickly that she wears her religion firmly on her sleeve. For the most part, I let religious idiots alone and let them talk to their imaginary friends all they like. But if you do wear your faith on your sleeve, I feel perfectly justified in throwing things on it. If you publicly state something really stupid, then I believe I have the right to tell you publicly how stupid I think you are.

So I pointed out to the Anchoress, politely and without profanity, some of the glaring errors in logic that Christianity is just filled with. According to her, this was a personal attack and she labeled me a troll and banned me from commenting. Shortly after, citing trolls, which apparently includes anyone who questions the fantasy worlds that religion has created, she closed comments to anyone but registered users. She was the first person to ever ban me from a blog, and I keep a special place in my heart for her. You never forget your first.

Since then I've been banned from many a nice Christian or right-wing blog for trying to show the absolute stupidity of most people of faith. LaShawn Barber threw me out and the folks at Rapture Ready threatened to pray me into oblivion. It's a heavy cross to bear, being me. Get it? Cross? (sigh)

So in my mind, any blogger that has to review his or her comments and only publishes those that are in agreement is nothing but a goddamned coward. Yes, it's your blog. Yes, you can do what you want with it, but you're an intellectual child if you can't face criticism or challenges to your precious ideas.

As for you right-wingers that seem to find your way here from time to time. I'm not the ubber-compassionate, drum circle, give-peace-a-chance liberal that you might be used to dealing with.

I'm not ashamed to admit I hate, and hate deeply. I don't shirk from physical or psychological violence and I could gun down a Neo-Con at fifteen hundred yards in a high wind if I was so inclined. I would prefer to settle all differences in a civilized manner, but if and when push comes to shove, you fascists are going to get big surprise from the left here in America. We're a lot tougher, stronger, and smarter than you have been led to believe by the so-called liberal elite and the useless Democratic leadership.

Instead of violence I would prefer to simply marginalize your kind of thinking to something that's studied as a historical aberration like I hope most religions will eventually be. I hope it's done at the ballot box and through education but if you primitive mouth-breathers don't want to allow that, fuck it then....let's dance.

Think Iraqi freedom fighters vs. the U.S. Military as an example of what I'm talking about. That went to shit real quick for the occupiers just like any war against people defending their home and way of life.

Now, put that in your hat and smoke it.

Bush gunned down! Rooming with Nixon in hell!

2006-08-31T14:44:00.000-07:00

It's nice to dream.....

This is the dramatic moment when President George Bush is gunned down by a sniper after a public address at a hotel, in a gripping new docudrama soon to be aired on TV.

Set around October 2007, President Bush is assassinated as he leaves the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago.

Death of a President, shot in the style of a retrospective documentary, looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its 'War on Terror'.

The 90 minutes feature explores who could have planned the murder, with a Syrian-born man wrongly put in the frame.

Peter Dale, head of More4, which is due to air the film on October 9, said the drama was a "thought-provoking critique" of contemporary US society.

Several comments to make on this:

First of all to all the lefty bloggers out there falling all over yourselves to say "Of course, I wouldn't want the president killed", shut the hell up. You know you would do a little dance if someone whacked that idiot. You just want to appear "above" such a thing.

Secondly, the only real problem I have is that he's gunned down. Too quick. A flash of pain and then the big dirt nap. For Bush I would prefer bone cancer, flesh-eating bacteria, or perhaps one of those deadly four hour erections we keep hearing about.

Alright, seriously. I would prefer Bush spend the rest of his life in a cell, tried and convicted of war crimes, but somehow I just don't think it's going to happen. So I can only hope for him to suffer in some other way.

Sad that I've been reduced to wishing great physical agony and death to my fellow humans but I truly believe that he deserves to suffer. Many right bloggers refer to my kind of hatred as Bush Derangement Syndrome, but I prefer to call it a yearning for karmic justice. This president has overseen the most criminal, arrogantly stupid, and homicidal administration in American history. He, and his partners in crime, deserve whatever horrors that karma may have in store for them.

As for Bush's cheerleaders on the Internet, such as the creepy Anchoress (who, by the way, is another right wing blogger that doesn't allow comments because she's such a coward) I can only hope that someone they care for deeply dies in one of Bush's wars of choice.

That seems fair.

Been saving up lots of dark thoughts. Can you tell?

After piles of corpses and rivers of blood....the truth

2006-08-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

__________________________________

Being a bit distracted, I missed this a few days ago:

In recent press conferences Bush has been stumbling and bumbling. Today was yet another example of his lies and reality catching up with him. He, as always, tried to tie the war in Iraq to 9/11, but this time a White House reporter interjected with a question:

Ken Herman, Cox News: "What did Iraq have to do with the attack on the World Trade Center?"

Bush: "Nothing."

Can we impeach this stupid, lying motherfucker now?

Not in GITMO yet

2006-08-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

_________________________________

Sorry for my shameful non-blogging as of late. My wee little man, Marcus, has had a few health problems. Complications from recently diagnosed asthma have kept him home from pre-school for several days and though I'm glad to be able to be dad, I'm usually with him, working, or sleeping which leaves little time to blog. I'm currently working on a couple of different posts about 9/11 and will have them up as soon as possible.

Love and miss you guys,

Back soon.

Class, race, and disaster

2006-08-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

_________________________________

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Barbara Bush, September 5, 2005

The Rude Pundit has a wonderful photo essay of New Orleans one year after Katrina.

I find the difference in the response to the human tragedy of Katrina and the response to the September 11, 2001 attacks to be quite instructive about class and race in American society.

Lots of white-collar white folks die, and it turns the nation inside out and affects us in a grave way even five years on.

Nobody is even sure how many people died during Hurricane Katrina. It doesn't seem to be a national priority to find out either. We do know they were mostly poor and mostly black so that tells you a great deal.

Yes, I know one was an attack and the other was a natural disaster. I also watched the response to both of them unfold , and I can tell you that if a natural disaster had hit Manhattan or the neighborhoods of Long Island, the response would have been entirely different.

I have some thoughts on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, but I'm trying to figure out how to string them together. I think instead of one large post I will be posting about various aspects of the events from different points of reference such as conspiracy, history, and impact on our culture and foreign policy.

Stay tuned....

More terror crap

2006-08-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

______________________________________

How many of the twenty-odd "Muslims" arrested in the recent London terror plot have been charged with a crime?

That's right, none.

How much of the "liquid explosives", the wonderfully named "Mother of Satan" explosives, have been found?

That's right, none.

This is starting to remind me of the dreaded Miami Seven.

Craig Murray has the Brits' number:

This brings us to one particularly sinister aspect of the allegations - that the bombs were to be made on the plane. The idea that high explosive can be made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is nonsense. Yes, liquid explosives exist and are highly dangerous and yes, airports are ill equipped to detect them at present. Yes, it is true they have been used on planes before by terrorists. But can they be quickly manufactured on the plane? No. The sinister aspect is not that this is a real new threat. It is that the allegation may have been concocted in order to prepare us for arresting people without any actual bombs. Let me fess up here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce - as they have whispered to the media in this case - that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar, doesn't it?

I admit when I first heard of this plot I was chilled to the bone. Ten airliners blown up over the Atlantic? Horrible and highly ambitious.

Then, the news announced that the explosives to be used were liquids.

ding ding

Alarm bells

I have a working knowledge of explosives favored by various rebel groups, and as far as smuggled bombs go, liquid is the last thing you want.

Some form of plastique such as Semtex would be much better suited, but it's much easier to detect by airport security.

As Murray points out, you can't just whip this stuff up.

The odors of the mixing chemicals alone would give you away, and you would need a hell of a lot of the stuff to "blow up" an entire plane. Much more than could be carried in a sports drink bottle. The most you might be able to do with that amount is put a hole in the fuselage. More likely you would blow your hands off trying to mix the shit quickly.

I had all of these thoughts that first day, but I just assumed those ever-inventive "terrorists" had come up with some new toys to play with.

Now it seems as if they had not. The government wants us to believe that these folks were going to mix a highly unstable nitroglycerine explosive in the airplane restroom, and get it done so as to be able to blow up ten separate planes simultaneously.

Right.

I'm really getting tired of this bullshit.

2006-08-15T22:55:00.000-07:00

I was in line at the grocery store and this cover caught my eye.

Tell me again how well things are going in Iraq

Cell Phones of Doom

2006-08-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

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My SARCASTIC post

And the point I was trying to make

Die Screaming

2006-08-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

__________________________

I called it last week.

Now everyone is saying it and coming up with various excuses.

Uri Avnery tries to be tactful about it:

More than once it has been said in this column that an army that has been acting for many years as a colonial police force against the Palestinian population - "terrorists", women and children - and spending its time running after stone-throwing boys, cannot remain an efficient army. The test of results confirms this.

Let me translate that:

The IDF has spent the last several decades gunning down innocent men, women, and children. And when they ran up against an actual fighting force, they found out what it feels like to fight against someone who can actually shoot back.

A few days ago I wrote that I most definitely did not wish to see Israel "wiped off the map" or anything of the sort. I meant that.

But let me climb down off of my lofty perch and get down into the dirt and say I'm very, very glad the IDF was soundly defeated by Hezbollah.

I've only been following Israel's ongoing destruction of the Palestinian people for four years. Not long by many standards, but long enough to become sick to death of stories of murder at the hands of the Israeli military.

Children murdered

A little girl gunned down on her way to school, shot twenty fucking times while she tried to crawl away.

The shooter got off with a fine and no jail time.

You think it's wrong for me to be glad the IDF was defeated? Look at these pictures of the IDF's handiwork , and if that doesn't convince you that it's a cadre of murderers, you are beyond hope.
These are but few examples of a policy of deliberately targeting children by the Israeli Defense Force.

This is not propaganda. Hundreds of innocent deaths have been investigated and corroborated by human rights organizations and the guilty are never, ever punished for what they did.

So if any of the Israeli soldiers killed in the recent fighting in Lebanon ever served in Occupied Palestine, I hope they died screaming.

Nemo's World: Enough is NOT Enough?

2006-08-13T04:30:00.000-07:00

___________________________________

Well, isn't THIS just "precious"?!

Now that Israel's seemingly insatiable blood lust finally appears to be winding down -- in no small part directly attributable to the staunch, heroic resistance put up by Hezbollah's fighters -- we're made privy to some remarkably ugly, underlying *truths* about this capricious, unprovoked, PRE-MEDITATED campaign of carnage in Lebanon involving the purposeful prodding of one George "War Criminal" Bush of the US.

Revolution, anyone? I mean, at least a Nuremberg-style Tribunal ought to be entirely appropriate for "leaders" who have deliberately and repeatedly fostered unprovoked "wars of convenience" and the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians that goes with them! Have we NO remaining decency at ALL? These are clearly outright Crimes Against Humanity, as defined by the US itself *at* Nuremberg!

(Of course, even as I write this, the Bush Reich is attempting to grant itself immunity from the US War Crimes Act.)

Israeli Leaders Fault Bush on War
By Robert Parry [Consortium News]

Amid the political and diplomatic fallout from Israel's faltering invasion of Lebanon, some Israeli officials are privately blaming President George W. Bush for egging Prime Minister Ehud Olmert into the ill-conceived military adventure against the Hezbollah militia in south Lebanon.

Bush conveyed his strong personal support for the military offensive during a White House meeting with Olmert on May 23, according to sources familiar with the thinking of senior Israeli leaders.

Olmert, who like Bush lacks direct wartime experience, agreed that a dose of military force against Hezbollah might damage the guerrilla group's influence in Lebanon and intimidate its allies, Iran and Syria, countries that Bush has identified as the chief obstacles to U.S. interests in the Middle East.

As part of Bush's determination to create a "new Middle East" -- one that is more amenable to U.S. policies and desires -- Bush even urged Israel to attack Syria, but the Olmert government refused to go that far, according to Israeli sources. ...

[WELL worth the full review.]
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But never fear, Fascists! Your own maniacal Chickenhawk cheerleaders are hard at work condemning Israel's mere "half-measure" and clamoring for ever MORE bloodshed, as long as it doesn't *remotely* involve any of their OWN blood. (The NeoCons have indisputably *proven* themselves to be about as "Nazi" as it gets!)

Hard-line Neo-Cons Assail Israel for Timidity
By Jim Lobe [IPS]

While much of the world has criticized Israel for carrying out a "disproportionate" war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, hard-line neo-conservatives have attacked the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for timidity.

"(Hezbollah) is today the leading edge of an aggressive, nuclear-hungry Iran," wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer earlier this week. "...(Olmert's) search for victory on the cheap has jeopardised not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. The tremulous Olmert seems not have a clue."

In particular, Krauthammer and other leading neo-conservatives have assailed Olmert for not launching a massive ground invasion from the outset which, in their view, could have effectively crushed Hezbollah's military capabilities, if not the organisation itself. ...

Still others attacked him for failing to widen the war beyond Lebanon to Hezbollah supporters, Iran and Syria. ...
_____________

I personally believe that each and every one these inexplicably *deskbound* "warriors" should be provided free (ONE-WAY) air fare to Lebanon, or Syria, or Iran, so that they themselves can take the "battle" to their perceived enemies. Of course, common decency dictates that the "receiving" countries should be *fully* forewarned of the arrival of these "bloodthirsty" lunatics.

But then, I doubt that any of these arrogant, LOUD-MOUTH cowards would ever *avail* themselves of such a "golden" opportunity. They undoubtedly have "other priorities" -- Dick Cheney's own excuse for his FIVE-TIME Vietnam draft deferment -- like, say, soliciting *other* people to "fight their battles" (that is, engage in unrestrained mayhem) for them.

~ Nemo

"Rendered"

2006-08-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

____________________________

Here's something to chill the soul from MSNBC:

LONDON - NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

Sure OK. It almost seems like the US wanted to get these guys before they had a chance to pull some kind of stunt that goes boom, right?

Analysts say that in recent years, American security officials have become edgier than the British in such cases because of missed opportunities leading up to 9/11.

Maybe our guys learned a lesson about taking threats seriously, right?

Here is where we go off the tracks into the unbelievable land of savagery that the War on Terror has become:

The British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the U.S. would "render" him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.

British security was concerned that Rauf be taken into custody "in circumstances where there was due process," according to the official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, this official says, Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British.

For those of you who don't have the your copy of Fascism 101 handy, to "render" someone (shorthand for extraordinary rendition) is to use the intelligence assets of the United States, such as the CIA, to kidnap citizens of other nations, drug them, and fly them to one of several "black sites" where they are brutally tortured for information. Anyone can be rendered. Without the benefit of charges, evidence, or representation, any citizen of any country in the world can be rendered if the United States suspects that person of being involved in terrorism in any way.

So, according to these British sources, the Brits had to fight the bloodthirsty American government to keep them from rendering their suspects. In the end, the Pakistanis, no doubt ordered and supervised by the CIA, nabbed one of the guys and after "interrogation" he gave up the names of the the others.

I want to go into extraordinary rendition a little more. Here is a nicely concise definition and history of the phrase from the site World Wide Words:

This legal term has gained much attention in the press in the past couple of years because of reports that the CIA has been capturing terrorism suspects in one country and delivering them with no court hearing or extradition process to a second, in which torture is practiced, in order to get confessions or useful intelligence. The term dates to the end of the 1980s at the latest, but is in the news at the moment because of accusations that the CIA is being actively aided by the British government, and because of a court case last month in New York in which a Canadian citizen challenged his removal to Syria in this way.

The core of the term is rendition, an old but little-known legal principle. It comes from an obsolete French term that derives from render, to give back or render. Most people know rendition as a posh word for the performance of an actor or musician, but in the time of the first Queen ElizabethÂabout 1600Âit referred to the surrender of a garrison (the occupants rendered, or gave themselves up, to the victors).

In US law rendition refers to the transfer of individuals from a foreign jurisdiction to the USA to answer criminal charges; the defendant is said to have been rendered up to justice. However, the formal process iextraditionon. When the transfer is done by extra-judicial methods, the process is strictly called informal rendition, though this can be casually shortened to rendition.

A problem for the security forces is that once brought to the USA the person is subject to US law and the rules of due process, which of course excludes torture. Hence extraordinary rendition, a euphemism for taking them to a country where these rules do not apply.

The rules do not apply.

This is what we've become. Our own allies are afraid to let terror suspects fall into the hands of the dreaded Americans because they will be tortured.

This is a matter of policy.

This is not " a few bad apples" or some other kind of aberration.

This is the policy of the United States of America.

We are so lost......

2006-08-12T13:57:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the fellow heretics at Debunking Christianity for the pic.

Thank God for the Michigan State Police

2006-08-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

______________________________________

Hard on the heels of the alleged plot to blow up airlines using Gatorade, the Michigan State Police show us why we definitely needed the Patriot Act:

Around 1:00am August 11th the three men purchased cell phones from the Wal-Mart store on M-81 near the corner of M-24 in Caro. Wal-Mart places a limit on the number of cell phones that can be purchased at once, that number is three. The three men allegedly bought 80 by purchasing them three at time so that an alert wouldn't be triggered by the cash register. They also paid cash.

An alert clerk grew suspicious and called Tuscola County central dispatch. The Caro Police Department sent a unit and stopped the rented van on M-81 just east of Caro. The suspects were headed towards Bad Axe on M-81 where there is another Super Wal-Mart.

The three men are described as being of Palestinian descent but live in Texas. Police say the three, ages 19, 22, and 23 appear to be naturalized citizens.

Do you see?!!! Palestinian appearing Middle Eastern men are trying to take away our cell phones!

You won't get away with you dirty Middle Eastern men!

The three suspects are now facing two counts each of Homeland Security Terrorism charges. All three suspects are due to be arraigned August 12th.

Serves them right. This is but a taste of what the Israelis have been going through for years now. You can hardly find a cell phone in all of Israel thanks to those dirty Middle Eastern Palestinians.

Are you an Islamic Fascist?

2006-08-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

_______________________________

I think I may well be an Islamic Fascist.

What a weird thing to discover about myself this late in life.

I see the patterns. I'm outraged by the indiscriminate killing of innocents. I find myself often questioning why the military of the United States is in Iraq and why oh why we are building huge permanent bases there. I'm quite certain Israel has lost whatever collective mind it once may have had.

I have all the signs and symptoms.

Of all the things I wanted to be when I was a kid, X-Wing pilot, porn star, the car on Knight Rider, I never thought I would wind up as an Islamic Fascist.

Why I like Hugo Chavez

2006-08-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

__________________________________

I believe the word is cojones.

Fuck you very much America and Israel.

This dark place

2006-08-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

_______________________________

When I think I'm jaded to the horror of what we have become I am always proven to be simply a wide eyed innocent in a world full of monsters and monstrous ideas. Please take a look at what is considered civilized discourse these days. The post from BlackFive is charmingly titled On the Virtues of Killing Children .

Frankly friends, I'm starting to lose what small hope I have maintained for any sort of civilization here on earth. Oh, it's not just this post that is no doubt designed to enrage. I'm savvy enough to know when a blogger is desperately trying to draw attention to himself. But there just seems to be more that is dark these days than light.

The President declared yesterday that instead of fighting "terror" we are now at war with something called "Islamic Fascism."It doesn't seem to bother most people that the name of who and what we are fighting seems to change at the Idiot-In-Chief's whim.

By the way Duuuhbya, no one has declared war, no matter how many times you say it. We are illegally occupying a sovereign nation and supplying weapons to rogue regimes for terrorist attacks against civilians. These are simply crimes against humanity, not warfare.

A larger percentage of Americans today believe that Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction than thoughts so six months ago. Americans want to believe. We are desperate to cling to any fantasy that will tell us that all of the bloodshed is for a reason. Like Vietnam. Like Desert Storm. But it isn't. There is no reason, other than the fact that war is a potent distraction for a poorly informed public. The dreams of glory that the man/child in the White House and his evil handlers have dreamt is slowly turning into a nightmare for more and more Americans. But it's happening far too slowly to prevent the coming confrontation with Iran.

Here in America, in this dark place, hope for peace and justice seems farther away than ever.

And then.....

2006-08-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

_________________________________________

Just a post to say I really don't know what to say.

It seems as if we are going to see mushroom clouds in the Middle East quite soon.

Nemo pointed me to this piece on the who's, where's, and why's of the sudden U.S. hardon against Hezbollah and, of course, the connected dots lead right to Tehran.

Our military is currently occupied in Viet... Iraq, so I'm quite certain there are a couple of low-yield nuclear weapons being polished up right now so as to strike a decisive blow for.....whatever the fuck the "War on Terror" is supposed to accomplish.

That's what I really want to ask these folks leading the charge: And then what?

I want to ask Bush and the rest of the nutjobs, what the hell are you gonna do after you nuke Iran?

I want to ask the bloggers and pundits so frighteningly praying for war: What are you going to do when we finally kill millions of innocent people in the Middle East? What the fuck are you wanting to get out of this? What do you think this will bring?

What are the nutty fundamentalist Christians going to do when Israel finally reigns supreme and their promised messiah is a no-show? What a pathetic fucking joke their prophecies are.

Will there come a moment of clarity? Will the blood thirst be finally quenched when they stand in the ashes of entire civilizations?

Sure, corporations are becoming fabulously wealthy on the occupation of Iraq. Christians are getting their Armageddon. But what are all you blogging and blathering war-cheerleaders getting out of it? Validation? Proof that our way is the way and nothing else matters? Are your souls sold so cheaply? Is that the price of your humanity? Bragging rights?

Today is August 6th. Does that date have any meaning for you folks spoiling for an American/Israeli vs Iran showdown?

Does history even matter to you people?

These are the lives of millions of your fellow human beings you're playing with.

Does that not matter at all anymore? Did it ever?

Ask yourself that question: And then?

Who attacked who and who started what is not going to matter one damn bit when that first nuke flies.

And then....

Fireworks. Ugly Fireworks....

2006-08-04T22:19:00.000-07:00

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Want to know just how ugly blogging can get?

There's this.

And then there's this.

Wow

Death To Israel?

2006-08-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

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I'm a child of the 70's.

So my first exposure to American culture had some remarkable milestones. Star Wars, Jaws, The Six-Million Dollar Man, Kroft Super Show, and Good Times are but a few of the great, and not so great, television and film memories I carry.

But mixed into the warm memories of watching Steve Austin run in that cool slow motion is the first understanding that all things in the world were not sweetness and light.

In 1977, the mini-series Roots exposed me for the first time, along with a great many Americans, to the horrors that were an everyday occurrence during the years that slavery was legal in this country. I will never forget seeing Levar Burton as Kunta Kinte tied and lashed with a bullwhip. I was confused, frightened, and fascinated. I was six years old.

Now, you may ask what a six-year-old was doing watching a program with such obviously adult themes as Roots. There are a couple of reasons: In the 70's many parents still had the faith that if it was shown on television it was OK. Cable, and all of it's racy goodness, was still a few years away and the Big Three networks generally kept the mayhem out of the living rooms of the American people. The other reason I saw those wrenching scenes was that my parents were not exactly what you would call vigilant about what I was doing at any given time. That would turn out to be quite wonderful when cable did finally arrive. By the time I was ten-years-old I was a veritable fountain of knowledge on human sexuality, but that's another story.....

The incredible success of Roots must have shown the networks that people were interested in history if it's told in the acceptable narrative, because the following year, 1978, came the mini-series Holocaust.

By now I was all of seven years old and deep into what was to be a lifetime obsession with all things fantasy and sci-fi. I had the obligatory child-of-the-70's life-changing experience of seeing Star Wars for the first time, and I was hooked.

Still, as an American child I had little understanding of actual violence. Sure, I would slay legions of Imperial Stormtroopers or Cylons with my trusty laser six-shooter, and I even knew, vaguely what a war was. I knew war was a bad thing. I knew this because we had just finished fighting a war in someplace called vietnam. It was always referred to in whispers. As in "He's hooked on drugs because of Vietnam. " and "He doesn't like loud noises because of Vietnam."

I didn't know where Vietnam was, but there was a war there and it was bad.

So as fall approached, promos for a new mini-series began to air. Holocaust. I had never heard that word before. Asking the adults in my life proved to raise more questions still. A kind of blank stare followed by vague things like " Lots of people died". For the most part I might have given the whole thing a pass in favor of something with robots and explosions but for the disclaimer at the end of each promo: "Parental discretion is advised." Well, hell. To a curious seven-year-old that was like saying"There is something here you really need to see".

Now let me say at this point, for those that don't know, I was raised in the South by wacky Fundamentalist Christians. At this stage in my life I didn't know there was such a thing as different religions. And my understanding of ethnicity went as far as knowing that there were black people and white people and maybe some strange people with different eye shapes. Shogun was still a couple of years away.

I certainly knew not one thing about Jews. Odd for someone who was raised hearing the Old Testament at exhaustive length, but I'm convinced many American Christians don't like to think about the fact that Jesus was a Jew. Certainly all the artist depictions I had seen did not cast him in a Semitic light.

So I tuned in to watch Holocaust. Sure enough, before the movie started they aired once again that warning. But this time with a twist, "The following program is for mature audiences and contains graphic depictions of violence and nudity". Wow! Violence and nudity. I had certainly picked a winner!

I was hopelessly lost, of course. Having no frame of reference for the events unfolding, all I understood was that these people in the uniforms had a serious dislike for the people with the odd accents. These Jews. I don't recall how many nights I watched. At least three, I think.

But it all faded into the Scene. When I think of it, that's what I think. The Scene. In the Scene the Germans (I was later to find out specifically the Nazis, more specifically the SS) had forced a large group of Jewish prisoners to dig a trench. Then they made them strip. There, at last was nudity. But not of the kind I had desired. These were scared and crying people who tried vainly to cover themselves and to preserve a bit of dignity. Some knew what was coming, some were confused. They were told to stand, side by side, in this vast pit. They were then gunned down by soldiers standing above and behind them with machine guns.

But that description, any description, could not do it justice. I was seven years old and for the first time I saw what cold-blooded murder was. I saw what genocide was. I can still see the bullets hitting them in the back and them falling in the pit. I can still remember my confusion. I knew this was a true story. I knew this had happened. But I couldn't for the life of me think of why these people had to die in this coldly calculated way. Many children have had much, much more difficult introductions to the real world, but this was enough to color my view of the Jewish people and Israel for the rest of my life.

I have since learned how much even that graphic representation had spared me. How the children were there too. How not everyone died quickly. And how that sad line of exposed and bullet-ridden flesh was repeated over and over thousands of times.

I have never forgotten the Scene.

I know personally several people who deny the Holocaust happened. I had a good friend that I eventually parted company with because of an obsession with Jewish conspiracies. In supporting Palestinian rights you run up against a great deal of anti-Semitism disguised as concern for human rights. Another good friend recently expressed surprise that I didn't hate the Jews considering how angry I've been as of late about Israel's conduct.

It made me pause.

I do not hate Jews. I do not hate the people of Israel. I hate the policies of the Israeli government. I hate the IDF soldiers who shoot down children in the street. I hate the Israeli pilots that target ambulances. I hate the fact that many citizens of Israel are content to allow their government to lay waste to the Palestinian people.

Hear me well, my friends. I believe the Jewish people deserve a homeland of their own. No people have a greater reason for wanting the security of their own state.

But in the formation and "defense" of that homeland, Israel has become the great evil they once feared. In their refusal to deal fairly with the people of Palestine, they have turned the entire world against them. In their recent invasion of Lebanon, they have shown little regard for human life and the sovereignty of nations. They will pay for what they have done in the past month for decades to come. And the currency will be the blood of Israeli citizens. Every time they try to bring security with the gun and the bomb, they push real security farther away. The old saying still applies: without justice, there can be no peace.

Israel has backed itself into a corner and I don't think they know how to get out of it. I feel pity for them as much as anything else. Their future stretches before them filled with unending violence. Just as I have said of the United States, the days until a devastating nuclear or biological attack on Israel are numbered. Too much hate and too many available weapons make it inevitable.

The reign of the Bush administration and the neo-cons has shown me that governments can do horrible things despite the objections of large numbers of citizens. It is perhaps one of the most bitter lessons I have learned in my life. I know there are large numbers of Israelis that only want to live in peace. Israelis who want justice.

So when I hear cries of "death to Israel" or similar calls for the destruction of the Jews, I look at what my government has done. And I think that if Israel deserves to be destroyed then perhaps we all deserve it. If "death to Israel" is the answer, then we are all truly lost to the abyss.

And if the day comes that we bring back the machine gun and the pit, rather than be a part of it, rather than watch it happen, I would prefer to take my place beside my fellow humans and face the bullets with them.

Bush Grants Self Permission To Grant More Power To Self

2006-08-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

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This spoof from the Onion is just sooo spot on.

Sadly.

Benificent Israel

2006-07-31T17:22:00.000-07:00

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This from Haaretz.com via Left I on the News:

97 fatalities in Gaza, but all eyes are on Lebanon

By Avi Issacharoff

The Israel Defense Forces has killed 97 people in the Gaza Strip since the fighting began in Lebanon. Most of them were armed, and the rest were civilians - children, women, men, the elderly. The large number of fatalities suggests the IDF is engaged in indiscriminate killing under the cover of the war in the north.

Some Gaza Strip residents say, however, that the military pressure is not as bad as it was before the fighting in Lebanon began on July 12.

"The IDF is concentrating on Hezbollah," says Amjad, a Fatah activist in the Gaza Strip.

He says the problem is not the force the IDF is exerting but the absence of media coverage. "Last Wednesday 23 Palestinians were shot dead near Sajaiya, and even the Arab TV channels were busy with the nine IDF soldiers who were killed. In the past such a large number of fatalities would have raised an international storm. Today nobody counts how many Palestinians are killed."

Read the entire article.

OK, I've been paying attention and I haven't heard a damn thing about the 23 killed at Sajaiya.

I also didn't know the toll was 97. I knew it was high but....

Nice to know that it's much, much worse than any of us realized.

Pamela, vampiress from Atlas Shrugs, is in Israel for the fireworks. This woman is a piece of work. She writes:

Returning to my room and turning on the news (No FOX!), I can not make it official, CNN (Crescent News Network) makes Goebbels propaganda look like childs play. At least then we knew it was Naza state propaganda but CNN is "independent" They are anything but. They are jihad TV. Their portrayal of events in Lebanon are such lies, such Jew hatred -- it is nothing short of frightening. Nothing is as they say it is.It is as if they are getting their talking points straight from Hezb'Allah. If I hear the "Israeli war machine" one more time, I'll scream. It's a handful of Jews fighting for their lives. Where are the news reports of the bombing of Nahariyah Hospital and the destruction of its fourth floor and the Department of Eye Diseases, in which Arabs and Jews have been treated, and where Arab and Jewish interns wor? All this whining about the Lebanese people not having enough money to leave their towns (as the benificent Israel has told them to do.) Tell Hezb'Allah to stop buying armaments and bombs and buyt their human shields a one way ticket out.

CNN screaming all day for a HUDNA so that the jihadis can rearm. Sick, sick, sick. Why? For access as they did by covering for Saddams heinous acts of barbarism? These CNN dhimmis will be the first ones getting their pretty little heads chopped off if the savages they are supporting should win. A CEASEFIRE IS A DEATH SENTENCE FOR iSRAEL.

"All this whining about the Lebanese people not having enough money to leave their towns (as the benificent Israel has told them to do,)"

You mean the people ordered from their homes prior to having them razed by the IDF? The people targeted by Iraeli jets as they flee?

Benificent Israel?

Nemo's World: A Farewell to Freedom

2006-07-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

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Now it appears they're trying to flush the Bill of Rights COMPLETELY "down the memory hole"! The audacity of these Fascist bastards in even *proposing* such an overtly Totalitarian measure goes far *beyond* any concept of "astounding".

Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- an *honorable* US President -- wisely advised in the midst of the Great Depression, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." But fear it we must!! For what we are now witnessing is the "ripening" of the inevitable fruits of the Politics of Fear so cynically employed by the Bush Regime: relentless erosions and outright eliminations of the very Constitutional freedoms that *define* America. This "presidency", so utterly unlike Roosevelt's own, is vigorously striving to put the US on a fast track to Fascist dictatorship.

This Rogue Regime MUST be stopped! As things stand already, we may not even *make* it to the next (assuredly rigged) elections with any *semblance* of a Constitutional Democracy left intact. The "writing" has long been on the wall. Now this "administration" -- as unmistakable a "wolf in sheep's clothing" as has ever occupied the White House -- is attempting to chisel it in permanently, as Totalitarian "law".

Bush Submits New Terror Detainee Bill
Associated Press

U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration ...

According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."

Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda. ...

Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force Judge Advocate, said the broad definition of enemy combatants is alarming because a U.S. citizen loosely suspected of terror ties would lose access to a civilian court - and all the rights that come with it. Administration officials have said they want to establish a secret court to try enemy combatants that factor in realities of the battlefield and would protect classified information.

The administration's proposal, as considered at one point during discussions, would toss out several legal rights common in civilian and military courts, including barring hearsay evidence, guaranteeing "speedy trials" and granting a defendant access to evidence. The proposal also would allow defendants to be barred from their own trial and likely allow the submission of coerced testimony. ...
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"... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
~ Patrick Henry, 1775

~ Nemo [a future PUTATIVE "enemy combatant"]

Issues

2006-07-29T20:49:00.000-07:00

Having some browser issues. Internet Explorer puts my links and archives down at the bottom of the screen. However, everything displays just fine with Firefox. Any of you tech heads out there know what's up with IE?

Can we put him in charge?

2006-07-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

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Sadiq Khan says the most sensible thing anyone has said about this whole bloody mess:

The people being killed happen to be mainly Muslims. But that is not the point. The point is that war crimes should be condemned no matter who commits them, or whom they are committed against, and whether they are committed in the name of some evil racism or a misplaced sense of what will defeat terrorism. If British foreign policy cannot command greater respect among its own citizens, what chance is there in the Middle East?

Full article here

When the little guys fight back

2006-07-29T16:19:00.000-07:00

Israel pulls out of Hezbollah stronghold

Israel's pullback of its forces from the border town of Bint Jbail ended the bloodiest siege in what has so far been only a limited ground incursion into southern Lebanon. Israel has said it will carry out a number of such incursions rather than launch a full-fledged invasion.

The weeklong battle underscored Israel's difficulty in pushing back guerrillas who have been preparing for years for this fight, building up arsenals and digging in with tunnels and shelters in caves.

Bombardment by Israeli forces and rocket fire from guerrillas was intense Saturday morning around the Hezbollah stronghold, Lebanese security officials said.

But by Saturday afternoon, Israel had withdrawn. Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of Israel's northern command, said Israel never intended to occupy Bint Jbail or to get "stuck in one place." He insisted the real mission — "to destroy infrastructure and kill terrorists" — had been a success.

Not so easy when your targets can shoot back, now is it?

Despite the fact that the mighty IDF threw everything they had at Bint Jbail, they were turned back.

Despite the best armor and air support the United States can supply, despite days of pounding by artillery, they took dozens of casualties and were forced to withdraw without taking their objective.

As a matter of fact, it seems both imperial powers at work in the region are really great at killing large numbers of civilians from high altitude. But when it comes to actually standing and fighting, things seem to fall all to pieces.

Careful guys, or people might start to wonder which side God is really on.

2006-07-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

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What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one.

Condoleezza Rice
July 21,2006

Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ, and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

Matthew Chapter 24 Verses 4-8
(New International Version)

They seem to be following the script quite well

Nemo's World: Israeli Open Season on Blue Helmets

2006-07-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

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Well, they've gone and done it. It seems all but assured that officials of the Israeli government and/or the IDF took it upon themselves to *deliberately* attack a known UN post in southern Lebanon, killing four observers in the process. The mass of details -- including the assault's FOUR HOUR duration -- clearly belies any pretense of an "unfortunate accident".

This was obviously a willful act of unprovoked aggression committed against United Nations personnel by the state of Israel. To put it in "Israeli" terms, it was an unmistakable ACT OF WAR!

UN Attack Looks Deliberate: Annan
Agence France-Presse

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan today said he was "shocked" at Israel's "apparently deliberate targeting" of a UN post in Lebanon, in which up to four UN observers were killed.

Mr Annan described the strike as a "co-ordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post."

He said it took place "despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire."

"Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the UN Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular UN position from attack. ...

[Read on for further detail; two aditional reports follow the first.]
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Of course, this type of audacious treachery is certainly nothing *new* for Israel. Remember the USS Liberty? It's a shockingly similar example of a cutthroat betrayal by our supposed "ally".

The Assault on the USS Liberty Still Covered Up After 26 Years
by James M. Ennes Jr. [Washington Report; June 1993]

Twenty-six years have passed since that clear day on June 8, 1967 when Israel attacked the USS Liberty with aircraft and torpedo boats, killing 34 young men and wounding 171. The attack in international waters followed over nine hours of close surveillance. Israeli pilots circled the ship at low level 13 times on eight different occasions before attacking. Radio operators in Spain, Lebanon, Germany and aboard the ship itself all heard the pilots reporting to their headquarters that this was an American ship. They attacked anyway. And when the ship failed to sink, the Israeli government concocted an elaborate story to cover the crime.

There is no question that this attack on a U.S. Navy ship was deliberate. This was a coordinated effort involving air, sea, headquarters and commando forces attacking over a long period. It was not the "few rounds of misdirected fire" that Israel would have the world believe. Worse, the Israeli excuse is a gross and detailed fabrication that disagrees entirely with the eyewitness recollections of survivors. Key American leaders call the attack deliberate. More important, eyewitness participants from the Israeli side have told survivors that they knew they were attacking an American ship. ...
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Even the same duplicitous Israeli M.O. was manifested in both cases, evidenced by those hauntingly similar descriptions. They knew in advance; they clearly identified the target; and then they attacked it ruthlessly and at length in a highly coordinated assault!

One can only conclude that the government of Israel is inherently capable of the most vicious, "mad dog" exhibitions of murderous treachery. But then, we largely already knew that from the appalling events of the past few weeks.

This utterly despicable act just "ups the score" of infamy for the Zionist state.

~ Nemo

A picture's worth a thousand tears

2006-07-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

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Thanks to Barnita, for pointing to B's post. I don't know how parents in war zones do it. I would be terrified. I guess you just react and react until you get somewhere safe and can fall all to pieces. I've looked at war through lots of different filters, but this is the first I've looked at as a parent.

Looking through fear-colored glasses.

The Ultimate Internet Smackdown

2006-07-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

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I don't ever, ever want to get on Mark Spittle's bad side.

I keep picturing the steam coming from Rocco's ears when he reads these.

And I smile.

Can we put him in charge?

2006-07-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

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Juan Cole is brilliant.

To the Faithful

2006-07-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

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For Norma, who taught me to be proud of my unbelief.

We are simply living in separate realities.

The mindset that is now so gleefully cheering an all-out war in the Middle East comes from a different reality than the one that you and I share.

In this reality, some innocent people simply have to die. And if they are in proximity to a terrorist, no matter their age or status, they are not innocent.

In this reality, ethnic cleansing is called "trying to minimize civilian casualties".

In this reality, this is all OK because it's part of God's plan.

And here we get to the 8000-pound gorilla in the room. Religion. We are all viewing the growing crisis in the Middle East through the lens of our faiths, or lack thereof.

The God of the fundamentalists in America and the Middle East really loves it when his children kill each other. That's the only reason I can come up with for him to keep ordering his followers to off each other at such an astonishing rate.

If your faith tells you that that it was God himself that gave Israel to the Jews, then any "collateral damage" in "defending" Israel is OK because it's part of the plan. Says so in the Torah. Written by the Jews.

If you are of the faith that says the infidels must be scourged from the earth, then it's just fine to behead helpless captives and launch missiles into civilian neighborhoods. Repeatedly.

If you are of the faith that says your God is going to return as soon as most of the Jews and Muslims obliterate each other, you really don't have much of stake in making peace between them.

Frankly, I've about had it with all three of you goddamned idiots.

You're all like a bunch of stupid, spoiled children playing with a loaded gun.

See, I don't believe in your imaginary friends that sound just like voices in your head and happen to write books with the hands of humans. I also don't believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny.

And when I stopped believing in fairytales, life became very precious to me.

I believe every single life, every human being, is a rare and precious thing. And when you kill, when you take life, it's over. They're not coming back. They're not in heaven with the angels, nor are they in some other Paradise with or without virgins.

They are dead. They can never be replaced. There will never, ever, be another one of the individuals that has been killed needlessly in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, or Israel.

Their single light in the universe is gone. Snuffed out.

Forever.

This is the reality in which I live. The reality in which lots of people live. It's hard and it's scary. We don't know that "everything is going to work out", we don't believe we will see our loved ones in some eternal hereafter. We get one shot at loving them, here and now.

But for all the trouble, we get the unique perspective on humanity. That we are this wonderful, violent, fearful, angry group of really smart monkeys on a planet in some out-of-the-way corner of the vast universe. And if we can ever overcome our childish superstitions, all of them, we could have a shot at making this place here, Earth, our paradise.

So, to the bloody faithful: Take your Gods, guns, and glory and shove them up your asses.

We don't want to play anymore.

Captions

2006-07-21T20:07:00.000-07:00

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Fearguth at Bildungblog shows once again that he has the best captions on the internet.

A Friend of Israel

2006-07-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

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Tom Hayden tells how he came to see the light in this wonderful article. He also reminds us that we've been here before:

When we arrived at the Israeli-Lebanon border, the game plan promised by Benny Navon had changed utterly. Instead of a localized border conflict, Israel was invading and occupying all of Lebanon with us in tow. Its purpose was to destroy militarily the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) haven in Lebanon. This had been Gen. Ariel Sharon's secret plan all along...

Hmmmm....Israel invading Lebanon get rid of the militant's "haven".

Hezbollah was formed in answer to this invasion.

Israel stayed for eighteen years.

I've said it before, I will say it again: The United States, hell the western world, will not know any sort of peace or security for generations because of what we have done in the Middle East, and what we are facilitating through our support for Israel.

But if you don't believe me.....

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond.

In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.

Osama bin-Laden
November 1, 2004

Nemo's World: Fightin' Words

2006-07-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

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With all due respect to those who are indeed fighting "the good fight", it is the obnoxious demagogues cited below (among others) who need to be ground into the dirt from whence they sprang, if anything is to change. While outwardly "oblivious" to the *realities* of these barbaric, utterly unprovoked, GENOCIDAL attacks perpetrated by the government of Israel -- totally unrecognizable as any appropriate, proportional form of military "response" -- these frothing NeoConNazi cheerleaders would have the US not only *support* this Zionist bloodbath, but purposefully *escalate* it into a full-blown regional holocaust, based solely on their coldly opportunistic, rampantly militaristic, and utterly racist fantasies about "ultimate culpability"!

When is enough finally ENOUGH?? It's clearly time to purge this country -- by any means necessary -- of its insatiably bloodthirsty Nazi wannabes, who invariably sit comfortably desk-bound as they advocate the wholesale slaughter of OTHERS, primarily innocents!

Energised Neo-Cons Say Israel's Fight is Washington's
by Jim Lobe [IPS]

Seeing a major opportunity to regain influence lost as a result of setbacks in Iraq, prominent neo-conservatives are calling for unconditional U.S. support for Israel's military offensives in Gaza and Lebanon and "regime change" in Syria and Iran, as well as possible U.S. attacks on Tehran's nuclear facilities in retaliation for its support of Hezbollah.

In a Weekly Standard column entitled "Our War", editor William Kristol Sunday called Iran "the prime mover behind the terrorist groups who have started this war" which, he argued, should be considered part of "the global struggle against radical Islamism."

He complained that Washington recently has done a "poor job of standing up and weakening Syria and Iran" and called on President George W. Bush himself to fly directly from the "silly (Group of Eight) summit in St. Petersburg... to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies."

"This is our war, too," according to Kristol, who is also a founder and co-chairman of the recently lapsed Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

"All of us in the free world owe Israel an enormous thank-you for defending freedom, democracy, and security against the Iranian cat's-paw wholly-owned terrorist subsidiaries Hezbollah and Hamas," echoed Larry Kudlow, a neo-conservative commentator, at the Standard's right-wing competitor, The National Review. ...
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For additional insights into the true nature of the modern "Republican" mindset, see John Dean's Triumph of the Authoritarians. Any gap between this twisted ideology and the historical realities of Germany's own experiment with National Socialism is barely distinguishable.

It's time to exorcise this foul NeoConNazi appartion -- the ceaseless purveyor of vicious lies, belligerence, misery, and death -- and permanently lay it to rest. It's time for those who call for war and MORE war as a proposed "solution" to receive a taste of it themselves.

~Nemo

Beirut 7/18/06

2006-07-19T16:09:00.000-07:00

Just loved this pic

2006-07-17T01:17:00.000-07:00

Would she have been a doctor?

A mother?

An artist?

A musician?

A good citizen?

Would she laugh with a brother or sister?

What was she thinking as she died?

Did she hate Israel?

Was terror her goal?

She will never see another sunrise. She will never be hungry.

Or afraid.

Or happy.

She will never smile again when she sees her mommy.

She will never see, know, or do anything again.

Do you see her?

How does she make you feel?

Powerful?

Justified?

Angry?

Sorry?

Anything at all?

Olmert and Bush: The Deciders

2006-07-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

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The right and the criminally uninformed (yeah, I know) still sneer whenever you say that Bush's puppetmasters have world domination on their minds.

Regime change, for those of you that rode the small bus to school, is about taking over another country and giving them the government we think they should have.

But wait! It gets better!

Now, America and Israel, with our combined Judeo-Christian might, can also form nations, as they see fit.

Bush speaking at a G8 presser is asked about the situation between Israel/Palestine and the rest of the ME homies:

But let's step back for a minute. We were making progress toward a two-state solution, two democracies living side-by-side in peace. There's a Prime Minister from Israel, Olmert, who is dedicated to a two-state solution. He comes to the United States and holds a press conference and says, I am dedicated; as a matter of fact, I am so dedicated, I'm campaigning on the platform that if need be, we will unilaterally make the decision that there's a Palestinian state. That's a remarkable statement. He also said that he is willing to reach out to President Abbas, which he has done. He's also reached out to other nations in the neighborhood in order to -- in order to make sure there's a negotiated settlement.

Yes George, it certainly is a remarkable statement.

Thanks to WIIIAI for pointing this out.

"It's the Eye, Sam!"

2006-07-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

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Do you ever get the feeling that Rocco might come to wish that he had never posted that NYT photographer's personal information?

Beautiful Sunsets

2006-07-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

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They say that nuclear blasts make for beautiful sunsets. Kind of a silver lining.....

A handful of links pertaining to the US/Israel/Palestine/Lebanon/ Syria/ Iran/ Iraq/ Jordan/ Pakistan/ Afghanistan/ Saudi Arabia/ Russia/ Great Britain/ China/ France/ North Korea/ Outer Mongolia/ Arrakis/ Hoth crisis:

Israel- "Syria, you must bow down and kiss the feet of your Zionist overlords!"

Syria- "Hey Israel, bite me!"

Bush- "Syria, you really should bow down to the Zioe... Zeon ... Zima... to the Jews."

Israel- " It was Colonel Mustard, in the Library, with a Katyusha."

UN- "Forget the Middle East bloodletting, North Korea has declared war on the Sea of Japan!"

North Korea-"Hey UN, bite me!"

Bush to Putin- "Look, you can creepily snuggle with all the small boys you want, but my ass is hangin' out here..."

Vladimir Putin-" You fuckers don't fool me for a second."

Britain- " Really, we're just here for our civilians. Really.

Hizbullah-".....and the democracy you rode in on!"

North Korea-" Look, you know what those Japs can do if left to their own devices!"

Lebanon- " Who do we have to blow to get them to stop flattening our city?"

Israel to Palestine- "Come here bitch! (smack) I'm not done with you yet!"

G8 to Hizbollah- "Stop making Israel slaughter innocent men, women, and children!"

To be updated as needed....

Can you say "asymmetrical"

2006-07-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

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Hezbollah drone battles Israeli warship

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah rammed an Israeli warship with an unmanned aircraft rigged with explosives Friday, setting it ablaze after Israeli warplanes smashed Lebanon's links to the world one by one and destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic guerrilla group's leader.
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The ramming of the Israeli missile warship indicated Hezbollah has added a new weapon to the arsenal of rockets and mortars it has used against Israel. The Israeli army said the ship carrying several dozen sailors suffered severe damage and was set on fire. Several hours after the attack, the fire was put out and the ship was being towed back to Israel.

:)

Chimpy

2006-07-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

Putin points Chimpy towards the bananas

ML sent this in with the first entry for our caption contest.

The winner of the caption contest will win a mostly expense paid trip to glorious Lebanon.

Lebanon: See it while it's still there!

Remember

2006-07-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

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The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.

Osama bin-Laden
November, 2002

The United States and Israeli governments.

Do they think we won't remember?

Do these murderers think we won't remember these crimes for the rest of our lives?

Do they think they will escape the reckoning that must come from this horror?

Is it because those of us that are outraged have no political power and no money with which to sway the world to our whims?

The most basic and powerful weapon of the oppressed is not money.

It's not guns, nor is it bombs.

It is memory.

I'm re-reading Orwell's 1984 for the first time in years. It strikes me this time how much totalitarian regimes fear memory. They are terrified of memory.

Just mention the bombing of the King David hotel by the Irgun to a Zionist. You will see how terrified Israelis are of the memory that their nation was formed by terrorism.

Mention Sabra and Shatila. Watch the denial that follows.

I will never forget watching Colin Powell's presentation to the UN in February of 2003. Never.

I will never forget the words "Shock and Awe" and how that poison became a household word.

I will never forget the murderous reign of George W. Bush.

I will remember to my grave the names of the media cheerleaders that made this slaughter possible.

That people will recall what exactly happened instead of what the official record may show, terrifies the cowardly opportunists that are now carving up the cradle of civilization. They treat the Middle East as if it was part of some board game instead of sovereign nations filled with citizens who simply want to live their lives untouched by victimizing, greedy capitalism.

Look at what America has done to Iraq. Look at what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians.

Can you blame any nation for not wanting to be a part of "Judeo-Christian" values?

As I sit here in the early morning hours, it is quiet and cool. I am far from the hell fires being unleashed by my wicked government and her proxies. As I said, I am a man of little means and even less power.

But I can do one thing that will make the crimes of the greedy, psychoticaly deluded leaders of the United States and Israel impossible to hide forever. I can do one thing that may one day bring justice for their multitude of innocent victims.

I can remember.

Arts and Crafts

2006-07-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

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Taking a short break from watching the world burn, I got such a kick out of this.

I had Spittle and Ink in my links section but was doing some shuffling around and forgot to re-link. Thanks for reminding me just how hilarious your blog is, Mark.

Great! Everbody's Happy!

2006-07-13T00:29:00.000-07:00

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Rejoice!

Whirlwind

2006-07-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

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I have not been blogging heavily about the situation in Palestine and now Lebanon because frankly, there's not much to say which is not obvious.

Israel has now called up reserves and they seem hell-bent on setting a match to the powder keg that the region has been for a generation.

Am I outraged? Yes.

But I'm resigned. I believe these incursions may be part of the grand scheme of things. I've already called it the American/Israeli War Against Islam and that's exactly what it is.

The Un-Holy war.

Sure, maybe after a few hundred or few thousand casualties things will settle back down again.

Whatever that means in region under brutal and creeping occupation from two nuclear-armed bullies.

Or Israel may finally decide that with the slide into fascism here in America proceeding apace, and the UN becoming less than a joke, that there's no longer any reason to hide their true intentions in the region.

I'm following this closely but I honestly don't know what to say that's not painfully evident to anyone with honesty and clarity of thought.

"Never Again" has rang out across the sands for decades, a rallying cry for cowardly, bloodthirsty nations to hide their dark deeds behind. Now we simply see the deadly fruit of that bitter harvest.

And the taste is death.

Mumbai

2006-07-11T21:50:00.000-07:00

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Blasts in Mumbai have, at this point, killed at least 179 people and wounded 700.

700

The Lashkar-e-Toiba have apparently taken credit.

Barnita, who is thankfully alright in all this madness, has continuing coverage.

Rivers of blood before reason.

Spreading Freedoms

2006-07-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

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It's worked well so far In Iraq.

So now we turn our lustful eyes to someone a bit closer.

Whatever It Is, I'm Against It has the goods on something called The Compact with the People of Cuba.

I've not heard, until now, about this particular expansion of our breathing room.

I'm really going to have to get a score card to keep up.

I still, even though it's happening every day in front of me, have trouble digesting that our country is now not even trying to hide our plans for world freedom through slavery. And I consider myself in possession of (many) the facts as far as they are known at this time.

I've seen through the haze and I still have trouble comprehending all of this.

How difficult will it be to convince the Yellow-Ribbon-Fox-News-Bush-and-Jesus-in-'08-crowd, that the detention facilities and "deportations" are not in our best interests?

(sigh)

Rhetorical question, I know.

Drugs

2006-07-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

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There's a cop in my rearview mirror.

She turns into my apartment complex right behind me.

Quick inventory...license...registration is in the dash....an old insurance receipt...

I'm not holding....clean....I'm good.

She cruises by without a glance and stops in front of the building. Kind of a let down. What's the point of being a good citizen, if you can't flaunt it for the Man?

The maintenance man stands on the second floor outside his apartment. His sunken eyes meet mine as I climb out of my car. I look at the cruiser and back at him, he shrugs.

I'm reaching in for the groceries when a second patrol car eases around the corner and pulls up behind the first.

This is getting interesting.

The cops exit their vehicles in that disdainful cop way that I'm sure they teach at the academy. Bored and in charge. Heads are starting to appear at windows. I'm betting toilets are flushing as well.

Cops.

She's short but looks like she could wrestle an elephant with little effort and he's very tall with a very regulation mustache. He's ready for someone to try some shit.

I really regret that I don't get to show them my incredibly legal status. It would be so...affirming.

I'm carrying my bags to the stairs and thinking: domestic violence.... gotta be

They're on the second landing and she's asking John, the maintenance guy, loudly, "Who lives here" gesturing at one of the battered doors.

Voldermort....I think, but don't say.

John shrugs. I try not to laugh. He's fighting throat cancer and doesn't give much of a damn these days, he knows who lives in his building.

They're knocking on the door. I've reached mine and suddenly want to be inside and away from this. I don't want to see the kids behind that door seeing daddy hauled away....

Next door to the guilty apartment, the door opens. The semi-retired stripper leans out.

"They aint there."

Stocky-woman-cop isn't happy.

"Where are they?"

Paris... I think to myself

"They went to wash clothes" she said defensively, as if this was her fault.

Key in lock. Open door. I'm in here and whatever the hell that is, is out there.

Later...

John's sitting outside his apartment, smoking. I walk down and we talk for a minute and ask what was with the visit from law enforcement.

"Ahhh... somethin' about meth. One was accusin' another about somethin havin' to do with drugs. Stupid to get mixed up in shit like that."

He laughed and blew smoke into the warm summer night.

I think he said something nasty about Zidane's bald spot

2006-07-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

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Italy wins with penalty kicks.

It was a great game, the Italians were superb. They simply would not allow France to remain in the box long enough to get anything going. The officials let the boys brawl it out which was fun to watch. I hate over-officiating.

Well played, and congratulations to Italy.

Now, onto the ugliness.

I was pulling for France just because it was to be Zinedine Zidane's last match. It was great when he scored early in the game and it seemed he would leave the world of soccer, win or lose, on a high note.

Until the 110th minute. A war of words with Italy's Marco Materazzi escalated to a Zidane head-butt to Materazzi's chest. He received a red card and was booed as he left the pitch. The attack seemed quite gratuitous and vicious considering this was Zidane's swan song and there was the distinct possibility that the match was going to wind up in penalty kicks, where Zidane is particularly deadly.

However, I was not on the field, in the heat of the moment, and I have no idea what Materazzi said to Zidane to make him react so strongly.

I think it was: "Hey Zidane! I heard that last night at the hotel a German waiter knocked on your door with room service and you surrendered to him."

Your turn.....

Moments of Beauty

2006-07-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

Today we pause for simple moments of beauty.

In the blasted and bleeding world we see through our TV and computer screens, we sometimes forget.....

It can be so beautiful.....

Barnita posted at her blog a moment in time that has stayed with me and warmed me for days.....

And the picture, ML took in his yard.

Thank you both for reminding us.

One Year Later

2006-07-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

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I had thought to write something about the one-year anniversary of the London bombings. Then I remembered writing at Green September about some very strange coincidences concerning the "exercises" happening at the exact same time as the attacks.

Thank God all of these nagging questions have been put to rest.

Curiouser and Curiouser

This is the standard response people are receiving from Peter Power of Visor Consultants. He says once again that his firm was running, for an unnamed client, a simulation of bombings on the London Underground.

Thank you for your message. Given the volume of emails about events on 7 July and a commonly expressed misguided belief that our exercise revealed prescient behaviour, or was somehow a conspiracy (noting that several websites interpreted our work that day in an inaccurate / naive / ignorant / hostile manner) it has been decided to issue a single email response as follows: It is confirmed that a short number of 'walk through' scenarios planed [sic] well in advance had commenced that morning for a private company in London (as part of a wider project that remains confidential) and that two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs at the same time as the ones that actually detonated with such tragic results. One scenario in particular, was very similar to real time events. "However, anyone with knowledge about such ongoing threats to our capital city will be aware that (a) the emergency services have already practiced several of their own exercises based on bombs in the underground system (also reported by the main news channels) and (b) a few months ago the BBC broadcast a similar documentary on the same theme, although with much worse consequences [??]. It is hardly surprising therefore, that we chose a feasible scenario - but the timing and script was nonetheless, a little disconcerting. "In short, our exercise (which involved just a few people as crisis managers actually responding to a simulated series of activities involving, on paper, 1000 staff) quickly became the real thing and the players that morning responded very well indeed to the sudden reality of events. "Beyond this no further comment will be made and based on the extraordinary number of messages from ill informed people, no replies will henceforth be given to anyone unable to demonstrate a bona fide reason for asking (e.g. accredited journalist / academic).
Peter Power

Let's review, shall we?

On the morning of July 7, Visor Consultants were running a series of simulations of bombings on the London Underground.

At the precise time the bombs went off.

In the same locations.

From a BBC 5 radio interview on the morning of the attacks :
POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now. HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise? POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.

What a strange coincidence.

It becomes stranger when you add to it the fact that several of the American government alphabet agencies were running simulations on September 11, 2001 that included terrorists crashing commercial airliners into buildings in the U.S.

I have been a skeptic of both the conspiracy theories and the generally accepted story of 9/11.

I am very careful about the things I say and write about September 11, because it is such a complex and emotionally-charged issue.

But, my friends, what are the odds of two terrorist attacks, on two different continents, four years apart, happening at the same time simulations of the exact kind of attack are being staged?

UPDATE: I never thought I would be updating a year-old post but according to this Alex Jones video, he used "actuary tables"to figure out the odds of just such a coincidence:

According to Alex Jones, the odds of the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the London bombings of July 7, 2005 both occurring while drills of the exact same sort of attacks were being staged are:

1 in 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

That's greater than the estimated number of grains of sand on Earth.

Well, that clears that up.

An Interesting Development

2006-07-07T18:02:00.000-07:00

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Thanks to Nemo for pointing this out via Truthout:

Rumsfeld Subpoenaed Over Abu Ghraib

Peter Urban
Conneticut Post

WASHINGTON A Congressional committee subpoenaed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday at the request of U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays.

Shays, R-4, sought the subpoena after the Pentagon refused to answer questions regarding allegations that an Army whistleblower faced retaliation for discussing abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Shays, chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security, is investigating allegations made by Army Spec. Samuel Provance that his attempts to provide information to investigators about prison abuses were rebuffed and that he then was retaliated against for providing unclassified information to the media.

Seems Rummy and crew are stonewalling this investigation. Gosh, I wonder if they have something to hide?

This is important for two reasons:

1. This is, once again, the "inner circle" of the all-powerful executive branch thumbing it's nose at the rule of law that all of us mere mortals have to live under.

2. This is how it will happen. If, and I mean big effing if, there is ever to be a return to at least a semblance of the checks and balances that are supposed to keeps us from a monarchy, this is the way it's going to have to happen. With congressional subpoena power to look into the myriad nooks and crannies where this administration has hidden it's tons of dirt. I am not in the least optimistic because Congress has shown itself to be filled (mostly) with craven weasels, and a simple shift of control in November isn't likely to be a cure for cowardice.

I desperately hope they prove me wrong.

Oh, and Representative Shays, watch your back. These boys play for keeps.

Nemo's World: Cause and Effect

2006-07-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

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Ah, so now we see!

It appears those "vicious, barbaric acts" of "unprovoked, cold-blooded torture and murder" perpetrated in Iraq in June against kidnapped US soldiers -- which so enraged blogdom's Hitler Youth -- were quite possibly direct retribution for the troops' *own* pre-meditated, brutally savage acts of rape and murder, committed in the coldest of cold blood, against their civilian "charges".

Obviously, Americans are not the *only* people occasionally inclined to pursue a little "vigilante justice", under certain circumstances, via the formation of lynch mobs. But in this case, it seems genuinely possible that a semblance of justice, however twisted, was ultimately served.

US Sees Possible Links Between Incidents in Iraq
The Los Angeles Times

The U.S. military is investigating whether the kidnapping, killing and mutilation of two American soldiers was carried out in retaliation for an alleged [sic] rape and murder of an Iraqi woman by another member of the same unit three months earlier, a military official said Tuesday.

The incidents occurred in nearby towns and the soldiers involved were in the same unit. The bodies of the two American soldiers and at least one Iraqi were mutilated. A third U.S. soldier was killed during the kidnapping of his comrades. ...

On Monday, Steven D. Green, 21, a former Army private with the 502nd Infantry Regiment, appeared in federal court in Charlotte, N.C., on charges that he raped and murdered an Iraqi woman in the town of Mahmoudiya. According to accounts provided to investigators by other soldiers, Green dressed in black and took several other soldiers with him to a nearby house with the intent of raping the woman. According to an affidavit submitted by FBI Special Agent Gregor J. Ahlers in support of the arrest warrant, Green killed the woman's parents and young sister; he and another soldier raped the woman; then he shot her in the head and set her body on fire. ...

Although the incident occurred in March, military officials learned only recently that it might have been carried out by a group of Americans, rather than the insurgents who initially were blamed.

The attack on the three American soldiers working alone at a checkpoint in Yousifiya, near Mahmoudiya, occurred in June. One soldier, Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed. Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., were kidnapped, apparently tortured and killed. Their bodies were found beheaded and mutilated beyond recognition.

It was during counseling after the deaths of the three soldiers that military officials heard the allegations that Americans were responsible for the killing of the four civilians in Mahmoudiya. ...
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The moral of the story is clear: "Actions have consequences."

The larger lesson, of course, is that the US "occupation" of Iraq no longer has the slightest shred of credibility.
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Update

I wanted to include the following links for the sake of completeness. The so-called "woman", as the military and press typically refer to her, was in fact a *15* year-old girl.

(Personally, I hope they *fry* the son-of-a-bitch and his sleazy accomplices, but slowly -- VERY slowly.)

In Cold Blood: Iraqi Tells of Massacre at Farmhouse
Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2006
A cousin describes finding the shot and shattered bodies. A U.S. soldier is in custody.

Raped Iraqi woman feared US troops: report
Reuters, Mon Jul 3, 2006

GIs May Have Planned Iraq Rape, Slayings
AP, Saturday 01 July 2006

~ Nemo

Just how much is a one way ticket to India?

2006-07-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

I've said it dozens of times. People here in Tennessee are batshit religiously insane.

Just look at that monstrosity. A $260,000, seven story monument to ignorance.

That's it. I'm moving to Germany and crashing on Again's couch.

Ohh no wait. Better yet: India and crashing on Barnita's couch.

(sorry Again, she has a tattoo I'm dying to see)

Thanks to Tennessee Guerilla Women for the pic and the coverage.

Declaration

2006-07-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

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Lest we forget....

Nemo's World: BEFORE the Fact!

2006-07-04T02:55:00.000-07:00

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Funny! They allegedly couldn't foresee, nor even "imagine", the possibility of the 9/11 attacks. Yet the NeoConNazis of the Bush Reich *already* perceived a need to spy on Americans SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE those purportedly "unanticipated" events had even occurred!

The BUllSHit is getting MIGHTY deep here!!! We clearly have layers and LAYERS of audacious, bald-faced LIES to strip away before we approach any semblance of the whole truth regarding this junta's numerous acts of TREASON against the American people.

But all the pious pretexts are rapidly evaporating; soon we'll be left with only ONE plausible explanation for this relentless pattern of malicious deception and willful acts of mass murder -- FASCISM!

Spy Agency Sought US Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say
Bloomberg

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

"The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11," plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. "This undermines that assertion." ...
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It most certainly does. And THAT's what I would assuredly call an "understatement".

~ Nemo