12 June 2004

Violating Iraqi Detainees Continues

Excerpt from .::International Occupation Watch Center::. of an interview conducted with men and women who had been in U.S.-run jails in Iraq:
In a tent we were 20 women, ten of them were arrested for political reasons. . . . The others had different charges. The female tent was facing male tents. We could see them. There were bathrooms made of wood. They do not reach the ground, in fact there are at least 50 centimeters between the ground and the wooden wall of the bathroom. Our feet and legs could be seen when we go to the bathroom, which was very embarrassing and opposite to our religion.

One morning, female prisoner S., who was an old, very respectable lady, was having a bath when a woman soldier, accompanied by many men soldiers, called her. S. put the clothes on her wet body, tied her hair, and run to the yard where she was called. The woman soldier said, 'We want to search you.' It was a strange order because she had nothing on, apart from her prison dress. We realized that they wanted to humiliate her. She was put between two soldiers, her arms stretched vertically, her legs opened as wide as she could. The woman soldier began to [search] her. She pinched her, pressed parts of her body, opened her hair, pulled it strongly and searched it severely, and then she hit the women between her legs. She repeated this for four times, each time from one side. By then, we were sure that she was humiliating the woman in front of the male prisoners. The message was clear: These are your women in our hands, either you confess or . . .

11 June 2004

Quick Fact Check

The .::National Bureau of Economic Research::. reports the longest economic expansions in U.S. history are:
  1. Mar. 1991 — Mar. 2001: 120 mo.s
  2. Feb. 1961 — Dec. 1969: 106 mo.s
  3. Nov. 1982 — Jul. 1990: 92 mo.s

.::Documents::. filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), show that NewsMax, one of the loony right wing media outlets which includes a website, magazine, and publishing house, is funded by none other than conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife and its co-founder, Christopher Ruddy.

Scaife is one of the players in that .::VRC::. —vast right wing conspiracy— whose name keeps popping up over and over again.

Credit to .::Media Matters::. for the Research

.::Ray Charles::. Dead at 73

For him, I will mourn.

He didn't send our military to invade a small, militarily inferior country like .::Grenada::. and kill untold numbers of innocent civilians. He was an artist, a profound and ingenious singer and songwriter. "He could make a Pepsi soft drink commercial sound soulful."

He was .::courageous::. at a time when courage could get you killed, or relegate you to the scrap heap of could-have-been Black performers. Sometime in the 1950s, a promoter said he was going to segregate the audience and put Black folks upstairs and the whites downstairs. Ray told him he should have his folks close to him (Blacks downstairs, white upstairs) since he was Black, and that he wouldn't play otherwise. The promoter sued Ray and won.

In 1972, he made an album of protest songs (about poverty and civil rights) titled A Message from the People, that featured other greats like .::Stevie Wonder::. and arrangements by .::Quincy Jones::. He said the song I Gotta Do Wrong, an unfortunate narrative of the necessity to attract attention "by any means necessary" to right society's wrongs, was the story of his life.

For him, I will mourn.

More on Mr. Charles

Who will pay for this death holiday?

You and I will, that's who! Somebody should have asked me first. I would have thrown a party before I chose to give employees the day off because a shitty leader from our recent past died.

Closing government offices because Reagan is dead means paying for city and county employees to stay home. For the employees who have to work, they get holiday pay.

In states across the nation, whose budgets are already stretched as thin as the elastic waistband on Oxycontin-Rush's boxers, they are paying for services not performed.

In Washington, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management estimates the tab to run over $60 million. California will pay almost the same amount for its government workers.

They're willing to pay because they prefer style over substance. They're paying because a 93 year old man died. He died, not unexpectedly, but finally.

.::Tampa Article::.

10 June 2004

They're not going to stop until it gets ugly!

I wish they'd hurry up and bury that man. I don't have to say who, everyone knows who. At first it was sad, for the family, but now it is sad for everybody else who knows that fool was a disaster for the country.

That blithering idiot backed .::Somoza's army::. ... a dictator's army that engaged in terrorism! His meddling resulted in horrific abuses against the people of Honduras, thanks to one of his minions, .::John Negroponte::. (now a Chimpy minion ready to unleash his idiocy on Iraq). He is the motherfucker who armed Saddam —ask Rumsfeld, at Ronnie's behest he went to .::meet::. the man, and liked him! He's the one who sold arms to Iran (think Iran-Contra, arms for hostages). We had astronomical deficits under this B-movie actor, who like the rest of the moronic right wing claims that Democrats can't balance the budget despite the fact that it is rethuglicans who run up the bills (.::deficit::.) and let other people worry about paying them. Government also has the odd habit of .::growing::. when they are in office. Yes, GROWING under the small government advocates.

I am sick of hearing about him. Bury him already!!

08 June 2004

They Want to Rewrite History

But there are too many people who will not allow it.

Reagan was a horrible president. He is not responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall, nor did he single-handedly end the cold war. The awe-struck fools who run around repeating these lies should be smacked! Maybe that will help them to remember .::perestroika::., .::glasnost::. and that Russian guy, uhhh .::Gorbachev::. who introduced both of those things that led to, in large part, the Soviet Union's demise. Did Reagan's refusal, at the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, to give up on .::SDI::. speed up the process? Maybe, but the process was in place already.

Under I-can't-remember-Ronnie Reagan's watch we had: massive deficits, .::high unemployment::.; downsizing became a common occurrence; industry deregulation that led to the .::Savings & Loans::. failures and bailouts; the .::Iran-Contra::. fiasco; the .::CIA allowed::. drugs into the country, elimination of the .::Fairness Doctrine::.; the racist imagery of the mythical .::welfare queen::. was invented (by ol' RR); homelessness of whole families was epidemic; etc., etc., etc.

He was a liar, a marginal actor, a divorced man, he was a .::confused zealot::. who named names at the McCarthy trials, he was a father and a son. He was obviously loved by his family, friends and admirers.

He was not a saint, he is not a GOD, he was not good leader, he was not a good president.

07 June 2004

Don't Mess with Other White Folks

It's one thing for holy george and his minions to meddle in the affairs of countries populated by people who aren't white; that rarely meets disapproval from the masses. It's an entirely different thing to try to manipulate the government of a country like Australia. The self-annointed one is getting a bit beside himself.
The United States has on more than one occasion inappropriately intervened in Australian politics. President George Bush's verbal attack late last week on the Australian Opposition Leader should not have taken place.

It is quite wrong for the US President to take sides in that dispute and seek to assist one party.

We all know the President's views and will presumably take them into account. But Australian politics must be left for Australians to determine, not by intervention by either President Bush or his ambassador in Australia. ...

.::Read about the abuse of power::.

Should this become one of the stories corporate-owned media decides to dessiminate this week, expect to hear the brown-shirted, jack-booted members of the GOP talk mucho shit about how awful a country Australia is, and always has been.
More of Smirky's Politically Expedient Lies & Flipflops

As Governor he vowed that regulation would be based on science— "I think we ought to have high standards set by agencies that rely upon science, not by what may feel good or what sounds good." .::Votesmart::.

As squatter-n-thief, he ignores science— "60 leading scientists—including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents—issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels." .::Union of Concerned Scientists::.

He supports caps on carbon dioxide as governor— "[If elected], Governor Bush will work to…establish mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide." .::Environmental Plan of '00::.

He opposes them as the squatter-n-thief— "I do not believe, however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a 'pollutant' under the Clean Air Act." His .::letter::. to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) in '03

06 June 2004

Flipflopper or just a liar for political expediency?

Bush used to oppose budget deficits. Then, as he was trying to pass his 2003 tax cut, he said they didn't matter.

Bush said that he believed our foreign policy should be "humble" and we should not go around "nation-building." We now have a doctrine of pre-emption and pax Americana in Iraq.

Bush was against the McCain-Feingold campaign financing legislation during the 2000 campaign, but then he signed it.

While serving as governor of Texas, Bush was against a bill of rights for HMO patients, and tried to veto it. Then he tried to take credit for it during the 2000 campaign trail. Thean, once in office, he killed it.
Hmmm...
To make a long story short, the results of a second Bush administration would be as follows: A bankrupt United States possessing a broken military ...it will take years to reconstitute the supplies that have been cannibalized for the Iraq venture -- faces off against a nuclear-armed Iranian regime that’s seen its two regional adversaries replaced with failed states in which Iran-affiliated warlords wield disproportionate influence.

The American people need to start asking themselves, whose side is Bush on?

.::The rest of the story::.

Once again for all the dumbasses in the back of the room:
No stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq ....

Kay [former chief U.S. weapons inspector] criticized the reluctance of coalition leaders to admit that their assessment of Saddam's weapons arsenal was, as he believes, incorrect.


"The problem is the unwillingness to take the responsibility of saying a few simple words — we were wrong," he said.


"We simply got it wrong. There were actually no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was a dangerous country, Saddam was an evil man and we are better off without him and all of that. ... But we were wrong in our estimation."

.::The AP report on Yahoo::.


Did you get that? Stop reading newsmax and believing its lies. There were no and are no WMD in Iraq, which means that the doctrine of pre-emption perpetuated by the hawks is really just a cover for domination.
Oh' Sure, Invading Iraq Didn't Foster More Terrorism
.::WARSAW, Poland (AP)::. - Four civilians working for a U.S. company in Iraq were killed in an ambush in Baghdad, the Polish Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

... two Americans and two Poles working for .::Blackwater Security Consulting::. were killed Saturday afternoon when a convoy they were traveling was ambushed, said Boguslaw Majewski, the spokesman for Poland's Foreign Ministry.


The neo-cons and their discombobulated followers trip over their own feet as they try to run from acknowledging that instances like these were not happening with such frequency prior to our illegal invasion. For some reason they think of more death as a positive.

They verbalize their pretzel-logic and proclaim that the "terrorists" are being engaged on foreign soil and not our own. What they can't understand is that "terrorists" do not feel obligated to retaliate with the relative immediacy displayed in Iraq because they know that they cannot go toe-to-toe with a well-armed, organized military force. What we're seeing in Iraq is resistance by Iraqis to an occupying army.

Terrorists have no one base of operations, that is why they can and do strike anywhere at any time. They're not all going to run to Iraq and lose badly. They're going to bide their time and carefully pick and choose their targets. That's why a "war on terrorism" cannot be won purely with retaliatory violence. International cooperation is a critical element, but the unthinking war hawks don't understand anything except violence.
He Is So Wrong, and His Beak-lipped Friend Is Too!
.::PARIS::.
On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, French President Jacques Chirac rejected President Bush's statements comparing the war in Iraq with the liberation of Europe from the Nazis in World War II.

With Bush at his side at a joint news conference, the French president said he understood why Bush made the comparison, but he added, "It is very difficult to compare historical situations that differ, because history is not repetitive."

Bush compared the Iraq war with the World War II liberation in a speech last week at the Air Force Academy as a way of justifying the U.S. effort to the American people and putting it into historical context.


Sorry Jacques, history is indeed cyclical. He need look no further than France's complicity in destabilizing Haiti just a few .::months ago::. and helping to imprison its leader (shades of .::Pierre Toussaint L'Ouverture::.).

Not-so-sorry Chimpy, WWII is nothing like your war of choice against Iraq. The US is Iraq's occupier, not liberator.

Get it straight you two!
.::Ronald Reagan died::.

His family must be very sad.
For the last time, you idiots!
“Why do they hate us?” Americans are hated because we want to control and dominate, which always leads to killing, stealing or helping others who want to do the same thing. ... They hate us because after we kill and destroy we ask stupid questions as if we were innocent.

.::Margaret Kimberly::.


Have They NO Decency, at long, last...?

They're going on and on about the study funded by Pew that supposedly vindicates their false allegations that the medias is biased in favor of liberals. As usual, they prefer the information be spoonfed to them from their contingent of unethical, loud-mouthed leaders rather than read the study themselves. And, as usual, they're being lied to, albeit through sly implication and reliance on the predictable inferences of neo-con viewers, and they're loving it:
"A new Pew Research Study shows...the networks, as well as most major urban newspapers, rarely treat the president fairly."

Bill O'Reilly, 5/24/04

versus

"Solid majorities of national print and TV journalists, as well as Internet journalists, say the media has not been critical enough in its coverage of the administration."

.::Pew Study::. entitled "Press Going Too Easy on Bush", 5/23/04


Further proof of what shallow thinking people they are is the research done by .::Fair::. that shows even NPR (National Public Radio) has more rethuglican guests on its show than Democrats.