Isome

2010-07-12T18:23:00.002-04:00

2009-03-06T04:41:00.001-05:00

This is a good primer on the origins of the mortgage crisis and the wide-ranging ramifications it has on both the domestic and global economy.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

2008-10-25T13:56:00.002-04:00

What can you say about a segment of the population that functions at the lowest possible level?

No amount of logic will change their minds and holding up a metaphorical mirror to their faces won't help them to see any clearer. They cannot be ignored, however, this nation cannot move forward, our society will not evolve, if they are given any consideration beyond acknowledging their presence and their humanity.

Undoubtedly they see themselves as good people, yet they are blind to their pernicious prejudices ...and they vote!

2008-10-06T00:05:00.000-04:00

He wouldn't look at him. I mean, really!! We all know exactly why.

2008-10-05T11:27:00.000-04:00

::Is it 2008 or 1908?

A Marianna middle-school teacher has been suspended for 10 days without pay after he wrote a racially charged interpretation of a commonly used phrase in the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.

While some parents and community activists were outraged by the actions of Greg Howard, Jackson County NAACP officials want to gather more facts before the group considers taking action. But some parents feel Howard should be fired.

Larry Moore, deputy superintendent for the Jackson County School District, said school officials determined Howard wrote an acronym with an explanation on a dry-erase board in his class Sept. 26 at Marianna Middle School.

It said, "C.H.A.N.G.E. — Come Help A ****er Get Elected."

Read the rest of the story .::here::.

This is just another example of the racism that we've allegedly 'transcended' in this country. Remember with Obama's candidacy came all the lofty rhetoric about him being a "post-racial" Black candidate? (Saying he's a Black candidate in and of itself contradicts the post-racial crap but that's beside the point.)

This country is STILL polarized and still plagued with bigotry and racism (racism being the result of collective bigotry that dehumanizes another ethnicity & impedes their social, economic & political empowerment). This guy's attitudes have been passed on to his children and the kids in his classroom. Some will reject it but others will embrace it right away and the viciousness will continue.

Imagine being a kid of African descent in that classroom when that was written up on the board. Think about that for a moment. A person in a position of ultimate authority in your life during those long hours at school, day after day, has just let you know in no uncertain terms that even a Harvard educated man (graduated magna cum laude, no less), a constitutional scholar and a presidential nominee of the Democratic party is nothing more than a *racial epithet*.

Think of being a young kid and how desperately you wanted and needed to fit in, to not be someone who is pointed at or considered an aberration from what is considered the norm. Now you've learned that even in 2008, no matter how much education you have or how successful you are in your career, there are people like THAT (in positions of trusted authority) who will see your skin color and reduce you & your achievements down to one single, derogatory word.

If the left doesn't get it together and recognize that there is much to do regarding this issue (on the left side of the political spectrum as well as the right), then they should not act indignant or surprised that clergy like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Reverend Pfleger have a large and receptive audience.

2007-03-29T19:33:00.000-04:00

::Bush Ally, Saudi Arabia, Calls Iraq Occupation Illegitimate

I'm sure this is quite a shock to American war cheerleaders. But no doubt, they will recover by hurling insults at the Saudis and claiming not to need their approval. Bush and the dead-enders still supporting the occupation of Iraq suffer from the White Man's Burden. By that I mean that they believe all the world, especially countries comprised of non-English speaking, non-white people, exists merely as a backdrop, in front of which they can enact their fantasies of cultural superiority and mega-machismo.

According to the same NYTimes article from Reuters wire service, the Saudis also re-proposed a plan for peace in the Middle East that requires Israel to once and for all respect the boundries of Palestine before 1967. That requirement has also been the subject of long-ignored UN Sanction 242, dating back to the 22nd of November 1967. It is my sincere hope that the Arab world will finally stand behind Palestine and ensure that the apartheid currently practiced by the Israelis ceases without delay.

Based on the slow creep of unity among South American countries (courtesy of Hugo Chavez), I suspect and hope that in the near future the US warmongers will suffer many more shocks, like the Saudis provided, as the non-white people of the world realize that not everything the U.S.A. does is beneficial for them.

The times, are they a'changing, or do the more things change the more they stay the same?

2007-03-25T00:11:00.000-04:00

::Weekend Cat Chronicles

Hmmm...

2007-03-21T18:54:00.001-04:00

::No Commendations for Marissa

On today's episode of Tyra there was a young Latina by the name of Marissa who felt that all Black people fit the negative stereotype of a socially unacceptable personality (rude, untrustworthy, violent, criminal, etc.). Her reasoning was based on being a victim of a robbery and carjacking by Black men.

To disabuse her of this notion, Tyra found some 'successful' Black women to host a tea in one of their homes and have a hearts-to-heart chat with Ms. Marissa. After it was over they were invited back to the show to share their thoughts (that's the point at which I began watching).

For some odd reason, each of the Black women prefaced her comments by commending Marissa for her willingness to talk to them. Not only did I find it unwarranted, but it made me angry as well.

And, here's why.

Black people have to deal with people like Marissa each and every day, yet no one would think to commend us for doing so. I've personally worked with white people who thought that an enticement for me to attend a Halloween party was to excitedly inform me that they were serving fried chicken and then innocently suggest that my costume choices could be a California raisin or a basketball player (hint: I am only 5'6"). I've also worked with white people who felt compelled to tell me that "Black people can make it in this country if only they tried". Just as importantly, I've been ripped off by white people more times than I can count via white collar criminal activity like unethical and downright illegal business practices. Finally, the pièce de résistance, I was verbally and physically assaulted by a white woman in the workplace.

Do I need commendations for waking up each morning and going through another day with a smile on my face while surrounded by white people? Where are the commendations for other Black people who do the same thing after having even worse encounters with non-black people? It's just ridiculous.

Figuratively speaking, all Black people need to learn to leave trash where it lays. Step over it, walk around it, take a stick and move it out of your path, but for goodness sake leave it alone! Don't sully your hands and pick it up--try to convince people that you are a worthy human being, unlike the stereotypes that they cling to like a security blanket. It's not worth the effort because it does nothing for our collective.

In fact, the Black man's propensity to reach out to others and ignore our own (build horizontally) is a deconstructive, self-perpetuating cycle. Instead of reaching out to each other and consequently learning that stereotypes are not truisms, we fall into the trap of believing in those stereotypes and trying to distance ourselves from the group to show the world that we're a different kind of Black. That reinforces the fissures in our population and induces more individuals to look outside the group for acceptance and validation.

If we reach out to one another (build vertically) however, we would not be debased by courting favor with people who are merely masquerading as intelligent human beings, like the Marissas and the Kenneth Engs of the world.

2007-02-06T20:10:00.001-05:00

I'm watching PBS, and being that it is once again Black History Month, they are airing a special about an inventor named Percy Lavon Julian.

The guests being interviewed all say that he never allowed anyone to stop him from doing what he wanted to do. It goes without saying that intestinal fortitude is admirable. However, when that particular sentiment is repeated often enough, the unspoken message becomes clear: racism cannot stop you from succeeding.

My response is that they are wrong.

People of African descent need to recognize that even when individuals fail to hurdle the obstacles placed in their path by bigoted people, that in no way negates the fact that racism in America was and continues to be an abominable and, too often, lethal practice--it does not nullify the deleterious effects those obstacles have on a human being.

If individuals that share my skin color and African ancestry do not transform into super-humans who traverse the perilous gauntlet of racism unscathed, we should not turn around and blame them for not somehow succeeding (financially or otherwise). At the same time, we should look critically at those who are considered a success after entering into unholy alliances with those who would do our ethnicity harm (read: Condoleeza "tha' Skeeza" Rice).

I celebrate Percy Julian, and all my brethren and sistren who came before me to make my path in this country of high ideals a little smoother. Yet, I empathize and identify with other brethren and sistren who found that they were too human to psychologically survive being bludgeoned by the cudgel of racism.

I do not blame those who succumb, I honor their fight.

2006-08-30T20:12:00.000-04:00

2006-08-30T20:11:00.000-04:00

Why is this group so appealing? Have look Michelle Wohlers!

2006-06-19T10:42:00.000-04:00

It’s just ....numbers.

Since the start of the illegal invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq:
3 US soldiers are now missing
72 journalists have been killed
226 Coalition troops have been killed
337 contractors have been killed (of which 215 were American)
1,780 Coalition troops have been wounded
2,502 American soldiers are dead
18,490 American soldiers have been wounded or maimed for life
250,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed

.:: The Timeline ::.
A New Milestone in Iraq: Five Hundred US Soldiers Dead
by Medea Benjamin on CommonDreams.org
Monday, January 19, 2004

A new milestone was reached in Iraq this week: the death toll for US soldiers reached the 500 mark. Most of these deaths have occurred since President Bush declared an end to the major hostilities on May 1. … fear that the American people been lulled into accepting these daily casualties, processing them as lightly as they do the day’s weather report or the sports figures. The fact that the media is banned from covering the flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base or that President Bush has not attended one funeral helps shelter the public from the true horror of this daily carnage. And just recently, the press stopped covering the soldiers’ deaths as front-page news.

U.S. death toll in Iraq passes 1,000
Wednesday, September 8, 2004

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged the death toll earlier Tuesday, but told reporters at the Pentagon that going on the offensive against terrorism “has its cost.”

“It should be noted that the civilized world passed the thousandth casualty mark a long time ago,” he said. “Hundreds were killed in Russia last week. And this week, of course, on September 11, 2004, we remember the 3,000 citizens of dozens of countries who were killed on September 11 in 2001.”

US death toll in Iraq reaches 1,500
By Philippe Naughton,
Times Online March 03, 2005

A grim milestone was passed in Iraq today when a US Marine was killed in action south of Baghdad - the 1,500th American soldier to lose his life since the invasion.

It would not give any more details, saying in a statement: “Force protection measures preclude the release of any information that could aid enemy personnel in assessing the effectiveness, or lack thereof, with regard to their tactics, techniques and procedures. The release of more details about the incident could place our personnel at greater risk.”

Worryingly, the number of military deaths has shown no sign of falling since President Bush landed on USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 with a banner saying “Mission Accomplished” and declared an end to major combat operations.

Military’s Advice to Reporters: 2,000 Dead in Iraq ‘Not a Milestone’
By E&P Staff
Published: October 25, 2005

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, director of the force’s combined press center, wrote in an e-mail to reporters, “I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq. The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives.”

Tony Snow on U.S. Death #2500 in Iraq: “It’s a Number”
By E&P Staff
Published: June 15, 2006

Q Tony, American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?
A. MR. SNOW: It’s a number…

2006-04-23T20:20:00.000-04:00

.::A Little Bit o'News::.

A white supremacist was convicted of ::conspiracy to acquire:: sarin nerve gas and other chemical weapons of mass destruction.

"Demetrius Van Crocker said that he dreamed of setting off a dirty bomb at the U.S. Capitol and that he wanted a helicopter license so he could bomb black neighborhoods or spray them with poison gas."

For some odd reason, the mainstream media hasn't publicized this important conviction of a US citizen with terroristic aspirations. In the meantime the majority of Americans continue to conjure the image of a brown, black or swarthy face when the subject of terrorism is at hand.

Apropos to that fallacious link of exclusivity of non-whites and terrorism, the NYPD has used federal funding, provided by Homeland Security for the war on terror, to pay for ::surveillance cameras:: overlooking Knickerbocker Street-- an overwhelmingly Brown and Black community in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

2006-04-23T20:08:00.000-04:00

.::Savetheinternet.com::.

The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner — want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won’t load at all.

They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors.

These companies have a new vision for the Internet. Instead of an even playing field, they want to reserve express lanes for their own content and services — or those from big corporations that can afford the steep tolls — and a leave the rest of us on a winding dirt road.

Click the ::link:: and sign the petition!!

2006-04-15T01:18:00.000-04:00

I think this needs to be disseminated far and wide!

.::The Beloved Cynthia McKinney::.

A White Ex Cop Speaks Out About a Georgia Congresswoman
by Michael C. Ruppert

© ^{Copyright 2006, From The Wilderness Publications, From The Wilderness.}

April 11, 2006 1000 PST (FTW) - ASHLAND -Cynthia McKinney is a friend of mine. Until the day I die she will be a friend of mine. More than that, she will be a role model and an inspiration that I don’t ever expect to be equaled, let alone surpassed. Full disclosure.

Out of several dozen Op-Eds, news reports and commentaries on the now-infamous so-called “cop-slapping” event of March 29th, I haven’t seen a single one that, from my perspective, got it right. So right up front, let me say that if I am forced to look at this one snapshot incident, divorced from context and history, then yes, my very good friend messed up. It shouldn’t have become as big a deal as it has and she bears some responsibility for that. But if I look at the event as part of a continuum of the life of congress, or the life of this nation, and (no less importantly) of the life of this woman, things look and feel a whole lot different.

The virulent, spit-dripping, white, racist commentators from Boortz to DeLay and the oh-so-PC and dainty black Democratic pundits, columnists and pols who pick Cynthia McKinney apart—pretending to defend her while putting her black butt on the E-Bay auction block for November—are actually allies. They both want her to go away. They both want the issues that have come too close to public recognition in this case to go away. Leaders from left and right, black or white, cannot bear the thought of actually looking deeper at what happened with Cynthia McKinney and what it means.

Let me give you an historical hint. As a rule, wars are generally started over big events, (e.g. the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, North Korea’s Army Crossing the 38th parallel). Revolutions are generally started over less memorable things (e.g. “Let them eat cake,” a tea tax, some government troops opening fire on unarmed demonstrators). People of all colors and political persuasions understand that underlying both wars and revolutions are monstrous icebergs of unresolved inequity. So it is with Cynthia McKinney. And it is her hairdo (new or old, take your pick) that now sits atop an iceberg that both right-wing whites and bought-off blacks would like to go away.

I have walked the halls of Congress with Cynthia McKinney maybe eight to ten times. I have walked into and out of the Cannon and Longworth house office buildings with her. I have walked to hearings in the Rayburn house office building with her. I have walked the underground tunnels from one of those office buildings directly to the edge of the House floor and its anteroom with her. I can tell you one thing for certain because I have seen it and I have felt it. Cynthia McKinney and her staff get treated differently from just about anyone else on the Hill. It’s subtle, but so is the taste of dirt when it’s in your mouth.

ICEBERGS

Between 1974 and 1977, as I prowled the streets of “The Jungle” in South Central L.A. (in uniform and later as a detective and undercover narc) I knew little about being human. The Jungle is the place where “Boyz in the Hood” and Denzel Washington’s “Training Day” were filmed. I was a good cop, a very good cop. I didn’t have any sustained personnel complaints. My rating reports were always “outstanding.” The law-abiding citizens by and large trusted me when they saw me. My liberal education at UCLA had at least partially sensitized me to a world that seemed impossible to understand—a world that scared me just as much as it enticed me with its opportunities for heroism, peer recognition, and self-acceptance. My father had been a war hero and I wanted to know if I was cut from the same cloth.

I was known for being aggressive; eager to embrace danger; a budding, brilliant investigator; and an unmatched report writer. I was a “hard-charger” as they called it in those days. Perhaps the best role model I had as a cop was a black LAPD Captain by the name of Jesse A. Brewer who also taught me about leadership, friendship and loyalty.

I didn’t need to beat up innocent people because the streets where I worked were full of guilty people: robbers, burglars, heroin dealers, wife beaters, rapists, and car thieves. I was on the streets (and not far away) the night the Symbionese Liberation Army were roasted like marshmallows after making the mistake of trying to shoot it out with my brothers in blue. We were all men in those days, no women. I was on the streets for months before and after the time when every LA cop had a fear of making a routine traffic stop and facing an automatic weapon, a rocket launcher, a bomb, or a Molotov cocktail. Tense times.

For several years I averaged between 20 and 30 felony arrests per month—good arrests. Who had time to go after innocent people just because they were black? Also in those days, I also used the word “nigger” about 15 times a day. It was the culture. It was my ignorance. In the 1970s, LAPD reports used the official word Negro to describe African-Americans and before I joined LAPD in 1973 I had seen or talked to only around 20 black people in my whole life: maids, taxi drivers, bellmen—you know “colored people.” I talked like those around me talked. I thought it was cool.

As front-page stories in the Herald Examiner described me in 1981, I was “… a white kid from Orange County in a blue uniform sent to a black ghetto.”

The one thing I could not understand for about fifteen years after that was the maybe half-dozen different black men who had approached me in futility and rage, tearing open their shirts and looking at me with absolute sincerity as they said, “Shoot me. Go ahead, shoot me. I got nothing to lose.” They meant it, and it mattered not at all what the last incident was that had taken place before they snapped with that sublime mix of rage and complete despair. A lifetime of inequalities, social and economic; injustices, past and present; and frustrations, ever present; had pushed those men beyond their breaking point. It took me a while to get to that point, but I got there too, and now I understood something about being black.

Through two decades of 12-Step work, intense spiritual effort and personal therapy I have seen my errors, felt genuine remorse, and made my amends. One of those amends came in 1996 when—in a face-to-face confrontation with a CIA director—I challenged the same government I had once protected for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, where much of it was intentionally routed to the inner cities.

Since then, and on more than one occasion, Black America, and black individuals in America have saved my life. No one rushed to take a bullet for me. No, what was done for me was to give me acceptance, support, friendship, a meal and some soul. You can do a lot with a little bit of soul.

Among all of the African Americans I know—and there are many—Cynthia McKinney stands head and shoulders above the rest. Screw her hairdo; It’s the woman’s mind and heart that need to be considered here.

Flash forward a couple of decades from the late 1970s.

It’s now 2000 and my little newsletter From The Wilderness is steadily growing as we look at issues like US Government covert operations in Colombia, death squads, the global drug trade, the prison-industrial complex, drug money flowing into Al Gore’s presidential campaign, PROMIS software and a then little-known company named Halliburton. My friend Al Giordano of the Narco News Bulletin brought Cynthia McKinney to my attention. I emailed her and she responded almost immediately.

There was an immediate friendship. Cynthia McKinney was the first member of congress I had met (about 15 at the time) who actually seemed to be a human being who actually gave a hoot and who actually comprehended all the government criminality people were talking about. She responded to emails. She took phone calls. She actually cut checks from the Treasury to subscribe to FTW. She bought our videos and reports and…she read them. She handed them out.

She asked questions and didn’t pretend to know everything. She read. She listened. She understood.

And then came 9/11.

There are millions of Americans who still have major unanswered questions about the attacks of September 11th. Some are wives, husbands, and children of the victims. Some, like me, are investigative journalists. Many are just average people who could never swallow the galactic inconsistencies of the government account and who have refused to succumb to pressure for conformity. Cynthia McKinney was the one to ask “What did the Bush administration know and when did it know it?” about the scores of detailed warnings received by the administration in the months before the attacks. Contrary to one account from a black commentator recently, she has never retracted that question.

For that question, she was tarred and feathered in the press. From her long-standing support of Palestinian rights and objections to Israeli strong-arm tactics in the occupied territories emerged a new double-edged motive to remove her from congress at all costs. Cynthia McKinney was an un-American, anti-Semitic supporter of terrorists!

An Oreo black candidate named Denise Majette emerged as lots of money poured from the coffers of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) funded not only a hate campaign against McKinney, but in support of her opponent as well. Illegally, thousands of Republican voters crossed over to vote for the Oreo in the primary while the seat stayed safely Democratic, and all were quietly relieved when Cynthia didn’t even make it to the general election.

Cynthia McKinney will tell you that I and the entire 9/11 movement stayed with her loyally throughout her two-year imposed vacation. And I believe she will tell you that it was in part because we organized fundraisers for her and kept her name out there that she made it back—to everyone’s surprise except ours—in 2004.

Cynthia McKinney had been the only member of congress to ask real questions about 9/11. And she didn’t stop or forget when she got back either. More than that, she continued to do—no matter what—the things that her conscience bade her to do as an African-American woman who is anything but a racist (unless you want to refer to the human race). In hearings she questioned Donald Rumsfeld about the multitude of wargame exercises I had identified in my book Crossing the Rubicon. She asked repeated questions about 9/11 in repeated hearings and no one on the Democratic side backed her up when her questions were brushed aside, ignored and forgotten. She also kept up her support for the rights of the oppressed everywhere and she didn’t change one single note of her sheet music or its cadence.

She held the only hearing on Capitol Hill where investigators, authors, and families questioning the official version of 9/11 had a voice. She invited me, Wayne Madsen and Ray McGovern to act as questioners at that hearing, and she was the only member of congress to sit through that hearing.

She was there for the victims of Katrina and Rita who fled as refugees to Atlanta last fall. She was there to protect black culture and black history through her Tupac bill. She was there for her constituents and for all of the disenfranchised, battered, demoralized, and desperate Americans of all colors who had come to see her as “the politician of last resort.”

PLATE TECTONICS

Almost every armchair pundit (left or right) who has criticized Cynthia McKinney has told only part of her story.

When she was returned to congress, her party, overlooking well-documented procedure with a number of historical precedents, refused to give her back the seniority to which she was entitled. In terms of committee assignments, instead of being a six-term senior member of her committees, she was a freshman. This placed her last on the list of questioners, last in terms of pecking order, last in terms of recognition, and last in terms of agenda setting. She was denied her old spot on the House Foreign Relations committee. She was moved further and further away from the coveted and influential title of “ranking member” that she should have been approaching. Should the House revert back to Democratic control this year she might have even chaired a committee. God forbid!

They did throw the Negro woman McKinney a bone in the form of a nicer office than before (the only place where her true seniority was recognized). “Here bitch, drive this Cadillac and shut up!”

While House Democratic leadership under Nancy Pelosi of California has been brutal to Cynthia McKinney, the treatment afforded her by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has been equally despicable. Not only did the CBC not fight for McKinney’s legitimate seniority, it also seems that they have taken pleasure in snubbing her. Solidarity my ass.

One anecdote paints the picture pretty clearly.

Last fall, after I had acted as a questioner for two panels sponsored by McKinney at the CBC’s annual convention, I was surprised as she handed me a ticket to the CBC formal banquet. This is a big annual event and I sat just a few tables away from John Kerry. Howard Dean was a few tables past Kerry. More than a thousand people, dressed to the nines, filled a crowded ballroom.

Cynthia was a no-show and it didn’t take long to figure out why. As every black member of Congress was introduced by seniority, starting with the Honorable John Conyers of Michigan, Cynthia McKinney’s name was saved for last. Even the Congressional Black Caucus could not recognize a sister’s seniority and service, not even when it wouldn’t have cost them a thing.

Where was Cynthia during that dinner? She wasn’t there. She was off violating a direct order from Nancy Pelosi not to attend a massive anti-war rally on the Mall. She was standing with Cindy Sheehan. She was giving a speech denouncing the war in Iraq and the Bush administration. She was doing her job. I sat at McKinney’s table next to my ad hoc dinner partner Kathleen Cleaver, weeping over the insult on McKinney. Not once since have I seen Cynthia McKinney even flinch over it.

I have watched Cynthia McKinney quietly and gracefully endure monstrous insults, sleights and provocations that I could never keep silent over. I have watched the world wait for a misplaced burp or worse from her and I have watched her refuse to take the bait on at least fifty occasions.

Are revolutions started because those in revolt rise to offered bait? I think not.

In the case of Cynthia McKinney and the Capitol Hill Police officer, I, like the rest of those reading this story, have not seen what happened. There may be a tape that will surface at some point as we wait to see whether a grand jury will indict her on idiotic charges of assault. I don’t know whether the Capitol Hill Cop was white or black, young or old, a rookie or a veteran. I wish it all hadn’t happened and I’d bet Cynthia feels the same way.

But then again…

THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT OF MY LIFE

In the spring of 2004 as I was arranging a speech and fundraiser for Cynthia McKinney in Los Angeles wherein we visited a small local museum of the civil rights movement. It was only about two miles from where I had once worked. Pictures of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy triggered painful memories for me. As I stood transfixed looking at a picture taken circa 1965 of an LAPD black and white with two helmeted officers wielding batons high above their heads in a street fight with blacks, Cynthia McKinney walked up and stood beside me. Quietly, so that only I could hear she said, “That’s what you used to do when you used to be white.”

Human being.

John Kennedy and even Dwight Eisenhower were forgiven for having affairs. Bill Clinton was forgiven for a dozen crimes. Ronald Reagan was forgiven for everything. Who will dare call it justice when and if Cynthia McKinney is not forgiven and approved of for being real? There is an easy way for most people to avoid reaching their limits and the risk of being embarrassed. The first rule is: don’t do anything risky. Don’t stretch the envelope.

With 2,400 American KIA in Iraq, with the US economy ever-shrinking for the poor and middle classes, with US government corruption reeking like a rotting Elephant in the African sun, with voting rights being violated in a gentrifying and whitening New Orleans, with the crimes of 9/11 not only unsolved but covered up by both Democrats and Republicans, there would seem to be many reasons why the envelope needs to be ripped apart a bit.

I have little hope for it now. All the “just get along” folks seem to be winning the day and my friend Cynthia McKinney has some big choices ahead for her. I and many others will be doing all we can from around the country to get her re-elected again this year if that’s what she asks.

But let me say this clearly: If Cynthia McKinney wants to start a revolution over a cop who touched her, or anything else, I’ll welcome it and I know damn well which side I’ll be on.

2006-04-01T16:53:00.000-05:00

.::Feeling Whimsical Today::.

.::What type of Fae are you?::.

2006-03-26T19:51:00.000-05:00

.::A Retort to Remember::.

William M. Arkin, a journalist with the Washington Post, gave a speech in Denmark earlier this month, in which he criticized the lethal decisions of a notorious American citizen in a high level government position. A Marine Corps Brigadier General took exception to the criticism because it was done in a foreign country, and proceeded to ask one of those loaded questions that unthinking, rabid wingers are famous for. The exchange went like this:

General: 'Mr. Arkin, do you consider yourself a journalist or an American.'

I took a drink of water as my blood boiled.

Me: 'Well General, because I am an American, I cherish the fact that I can call you a f***ing idiot for asking the question.'

There's more to the story on Mr. Arkin's blog, which you can find here.

2006-03-25T11:26:00.000-05:00

.::What's Been Happening Lately::.

Recently, the Washington Post showed it's true Right Wing leanings when it created a winger (right wing) website and named it Red America. Media Matters, as usual, does a great job of explaining the obviously partisan manuever by the Post.

Journalism's left wing Don Quixote, Greg Palast, has again been ignored by corporate-owned media, despite another tight piece in The Guardian called Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools: THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED. He makes the case that the war (on terrah in Iraq) was actually begun to keep oil out of the international market so the oil companies could profit.

Meanwhile down under, Scoop News in New Zealand disseminated an article from the Atlanta Progressive News organization telling anyone interested in knowing that 30 members of Congress support an impeachment hearing for Chimpy McCokespoon. Corporate-owned media, on the other hand, decided that the Senate Democrats unwillingness to support Senator's Feingold call to censor was the end all and be all of the whole story.

And, finally we come to voting suppression, intimidation and outright fraud. It seems voting scandals are breaking out across the country like acne on a teenager's face! There were important stories ignored by the MSM (mainstream media a/k/a corporate-owned media) from Alaska, California, Texas, Maryland, Florida and Utah. But that's an incomplete list. Brad Blog is the best source of information for this that I've found.

Undoubtedly the average citizen can tell you all about the last American Idol episode, but they are blissfully unaware that this democratic republic is being decidedly changed into a Banana Republic.

2005-10-15T06:44:00.000-04:00

.::Ho Hum - Another Lie by the Bush Administration::.

Despite Press Secretary Scott McClellan's protests to the contrary, the supposedly off-the-cuff conversation Smirky had with some troops stationed in Tikrit were very well scripted. The live satellite feed betrayed the administration and may have finally put to rest the hopes of any Bush apologists that he is truthful.

Click Here to Read All About It

2004-10-28T09:50:00.000-04:00

.::Know Your Voting Rights::.

www.myvotemyright.com

I hope to GOD that my people do not allow themselves to be intimidated at the polls by rethuglicans sent out to suppress the BLACK vote this coming Tuesday.

Everyone should know this number: 1-800-946-3504. It is there for you to call if some whitebread asshole challenges you on election day and cowardly pollworkers refuse to allow you to exercise your right.

2004-10-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

Still in New York... and loving it!

Lately I have been noticing the small and frequent kindnesses that are overlooked, in favor of intense focus on the rare, yet egregious, indignities that city dwellers are more likely to encounter than suburbanites or small townies.

.::Scene On the Subway::.

On the Franklin Avenue shuttle one evening, it is crowded, as usual. Conspicuous among the people is a young, thin, man-child with a luggage cart. Strapped to his cart is a large and unwieldy computer monitor.

The shuttle stops and everyone begins their rushed exit, including the young brother with the cart. It is instantly clear that the cart’s wheels will fall into the wide gap between the train and the platform. He looks at his heavy cart and then quickly looks up into the crowd behind him. Watching his eyes shift rapidly back and forth, I suspect he is even wondering if the mood will turn ugly if he doesn’t hurry and get the cart out of the way.

During that small blip in time, an older brother, looking a bit rough around the edges, steps forward. He reaches down and picks up the bottom end of the cart, lifts it over the gap and gently sets it down on the platform. The man-child looks up and says, "thank you." In the process, he shows off the gorgeous smile of the truly grateful. His older counterpart responds with his own crooked, charming smile and a booming "you’re welcome."

2004-08-03T15:20:00.000-04:00

Living in New York ...Brooklyn to be exact!!

I've been here since the 1st of July and discovered that the South does NOT have a monopoly on stupid or unthinking people. Of course, I knew that before I got here, but for some reason was still surprised to encounter so many of them.

With a dense population comes more of every kind of people, obviously. I just envisioned a more enlightened populace, a more politically aware citizenry, a more thoughtful constituency. What I have found instead is a mass of ignoramuses who are smart enough to know how to cut down their commute time by catching two different subway lines and then a bus, or who know how to feed themselves well for $5 a day, but believe the machinations of the political system are unrelated to the hardships in their lives.

I am working (temporarily) for the popular clothing designer Liz Claiborne and the vapid conversations that go on are enough to drive me right back to the heat and humidity of Florida... if I wasn't so in love with the other stuff (and people) the city has to offer, including 24-hour access to just about everything!

2004-06-22T09:05:00.000-04:00

Guatanamo - Home of the Harmless?
.::NY Times::.

In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful -- some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen -- were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings.

2004-06-19T11:10:00.000-04:00

From .::Common Dreams::. A History Lesson

Far too frequently, unthinking neo-conservatives extoll the virtues of the free market, believing that they will somehow reach the financial heights of the duplicitous priests of privatization they consider their elected representatives. They seek privatization of everything from public schools to social security. What the neo-con congregation doesn't know, mainly because they're too stupid to think, is that the free market they yearn for is neither free, nor the ladder to financial success.

A totally "free" market where corporations reign supreme, just like the oppressive governments of old, Jefferson said could transform America "...until the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man."

As Jefferson realized, with no government "interference" by setting the rules of the game of business and fair taxation, there will be no middle class.

Although this may come as a sudden realization to many, we've really known it all our lives.

For example, every year, millions of Americans revisit Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" about Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob (and Tiny Tim) Cratchit. Yet somehow Americans fail to realize the subtext of the story (and so many of Dickens' other works). That subtext is that the middle class is not a normal thing: exploited workers are the norm. In fact, in the six-thousand-year history of the "civilized" world, a middle class emerging in any nation has been such a rarity as to be historically invisible.

Beginning with the Interstate Commerce Commission Act of 1887 —the first federal law regulating the abuse of monopoly power— the mythical free market, that created such desirable American institutions like sweatshops filled with minor children working from sun-up to sundown, has had to be regulated. Without the dreaded "interference" of the government, there would be no eight-hour workdays, nor would there be the concept of a "weekend" for that matter. The soldiers returning home from war would not have been able to attend college on the GI Bill (and thereby better their chances of climbing the corporate ladder) or buy a home with VA loans.

...to be continued

2004-06-18T08:52:00.000-04:00

Wow! What an Economy!

May marked the nation's third straight month of job growth ...The strongest service-sector bets are in education, health care, and state and local government. The single best choice may be to join the ranks of registered nurses (623,000 new jobs).

But here's the depressing news: Of the top 10 occupations with the rosiest projections, seven are by and large poorly paid McJobs: retail (596,000 new jobs by 2012), customer service (460,000), food preparation (454,000), cashiers (454,000), janitors (414,000), waiters and waitresses (367,000), and nursing aides (343,000). And the .::BLS::. [Bureau of Labor Statistics] admits its numbers don't distinguish between full-time jobs with benefits and part-time or temp work. In other words, there will be plenty of jobs, but far fewer careers.

...the gist trickles down through the media and career counselors, and through the anecdotes of friends and relatives. The result? A rapid drop in enrollment at Web, tech-related, and manufacturing programs, and a stampede into programs for accounting, education, and especially nursing. Some of the cheaper nursing programs, at technical schools, already have one- to two-year waiting lists, and programs elsewhere can cost $60,000.

.::read the rest::.

But wait a minute, the GOP-ites all say that the economy is doing so swell under their free-market driven guidance, that the outsourcing they think so much of will leave the privileged citizens of this country with the highly technical, high paying jobs. With the dubious exception of nursing aides, there isn't a single job category that could be considered highly-skilled in any of those named by the BLS. What gives? Surely the repugnant... uh, rethuglicans aren't lying to their faithful free market minions? Surely the government's own agency is having a bit of fun at our expense...

2004-06-16T22:17:00.000-04:00

Best Interests

Just a quick thought on the constant debate among white Democrats about why poor white folks vote against their best interests:

It's nothing new! Don't they remember the Civil War? As many non-blacks love to point out, most white people in the South didn't own slaves, but those poor ass crackaz came out in droves to support the rights of slave owners to keep their darkies in shackles. Why? Well, for gawwd's sake, because what feels more satisfying than being BETTER THAN someone else and having them be the scapegoat for all your problems?!!

If they were thinking in their best interests, they would have seen that economically it would have been better to support abolition, like most in the North did, so that the plantation owners (and the companies that hired slaves from them) would have to pay someone a decent wage for work that needed to be done.

As my friend likes to say: white folks will be white folks! If there is someone to look down on, then by golly that IS in their best interest.

2004-06-13T16:06:00.000-04:00

Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change

Still more experienced ex-officials feel compelled to weigh in on Chimpy's total incompetence.

26 former diplomats and military officials, including many who served in Republican administrations, have a signed a statement calling for the defeat of President Bush in November. Their names and some of the posts they have held are:

Avis T. Bohlen — assistant secretary of State for arms control, 1999-2002; deputy assistant secretary of State for European affairs 1989-1991.

Retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. — chairman, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Committee, 1993-94; ambassador to Britain, 1993-97; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1985-89.

Jeffrey S. Davidow — ambassador to Mexico, 1998-2002; assistant secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, 1996

William A. DePree — ambassador to Bangladesh, 1987-1990.

Donald B. Easum — ambassador to Nigeria, 1975-79.

Charles W. Freeman Jr. — assistant secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs, 1993-94; ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1989-1992.

William C. Harrop — ambassador to Israel, 1991-93; ambassador to Zaire, 1987-1991.

Arthur A. Hartman — ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1981-87; ambassador to France, 1977-1981.

Retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar — commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, overseeing forces in the Middle East, 1991-94; deputy chief of staff, Marine Corps, 1990-94.

H. Allen Holmes — assistant secretary of Defense for special operations, 1993-99; assistant secretary of State for politico-military affairs, 1986-89.

Robert V. Keeley — ambassador to Greece, 1985-89; ambassador to Zimbabwe, 1980-84.

Samuel W. Lewis — director of State Department policy and planning, 1993-94; ambassador to Israel, 1977-1985.

Princeton N. Lyman — assistant secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, 1995-98; ambassador to South Africa, 1992-95.

Jack F. Matlock Jr. — ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987-1991; director for European and Soviet Affairs, National Security Council, 1983-86; ambassador to Czechoslovakia, 1981-83.

Donald F. McHenry — ambassador to the United Nations, 1979-1981.

Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. McPeak — chief of staff, U.S. Air Force, 1990-94.

George E. Moose — assistant secretary of State for African affairs, 1993-97; ambassador to Senegal, 1988-91.

David D. Newsom — acting secretary of State, 1980; undersecretary of State for political affairs, 1978-1981; ambassador to Indonesia, 1973-77

Phyllis E. Oakley — assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, 1997-99.

James Daniel Phillips — ambassador to the Republic of Congo, 1990-93; ambassador to Burundi, 1986-1990.

John E. Reinhardt — professor of political science, University of Vermont, 1987-91; ambassador to Nigeria, 1971-75.

Retired Air Force Gen. William Y. Smith — deputy commander in chief, U.S. European Command, 1981-83.

Ronald I. Spiers — undersecretary-general of the United Nations for Political Affairs, 1989-1992; ambassador to Pakistan, 1981-83.

Michael Sterner — deputy assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs, 1977-1981; ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, 1974-76.

Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner — director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1977-1981.

Alexander F. Watson — assistant secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, 1993-96; deputy permanent representative to the U.N., 1989-1993.

.::LA Times Article::.
.::National Press Club::.
.::mlive.com::.

It becomes less deniable everyday, he is running this country into the ground and has made morons feel comfortable espousing their ignorance. Chimpy isn't stupid, even if he is only semi-literate, he's just evil, and he makes others of his kind (and the weak-minded) quite happy.

The predictable response from the knuckle-dragging neo-conservative contingency will be that the signatories are all a bunch of commie, pinko, leftist, marxist, fascist liberals who hate America. Awww...

2004-06-12T23:28:00.000-04:00

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 . . .

2004-06-11T19:13:00.000-04:00

Quick Fact Check

The .::National Bureau of Economic Research::. reports the longest economic expansions in U.S. history are:

Mar. 1991 — Mar. 2001: 120 mo.s
Feb. 1961 — Dec. 1969: 106 mo.s
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

2004-06-11T13:49:00.000-04:00

.::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

2004-06-11T12:51:00.000-04:00

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::.

2004-06-10T03:09:00.000-04:00

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!!

2004-06-08T18:17:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-06-07T09:02:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-06-07T08:31:00.000-04:00

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

2004-06-06T17:35:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-06-06T16:46:00.000-04:00

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::.

2004-06-06T15:58:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-06-06T12:48:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-06-06T12:25:00.000-04:00

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!

2004-06-06T01:42:00.000-04:00

.::Ronald Reagan died::.

His family must be very sad.

2004-06-06T01:39:00.000-04:00

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::.

2004-06-06T00:49:00.001-04:00

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.

2004-06-05T19:47:00.000-04:00

It's a Numbers Game—

In .::Georgia::. the not-so-public subsidies for Wal-Mart were found in a state survey. Out of the 166,000 participants in the PeachCare program (health care coverage for children from low-income uninsured families) 10,261 of them were children of Wal-Mart employees— more than 10 times the number for any other employer.

.::$150,000,000::. That's the back pay Wal-Mart is estimated to owe employees in Texas for having compelled them to work through their 15-minute breaks over a four-year period.

.::40 hours, 36 seconds::. The amount of time worked in one week by Wal-Mart employee Georgie Hartwig of Washington State, for which she was upbraided by her manager for clocking more than 40 hours, which costs the store in overtime wages.

2004-05-13T03:34:00.000-04:00

Found on .::Bartcop::.

Subject: You don't want to watch it
There are a number of web sites on the Internet that have the whole video of Nick Berg getting his head cut off.

Having viewed the video - you don't want to watch it. I decided to watch it because it is what really happened and it is the price of fighting a fraudulent war. But having watched it I strongly recommend that you don't. It's enough to know that the guy was beheaded alive and that it was not a quick death. I'm still in shock as I write this.

Having said that - I think that every single member of Congress who voted for the war and every one of those generals in the chain of command who decided that torture was a good idea and let this happen - they should all be forced to see the video - and see the results of what happens when you have a clueless president. Had we gone after the real terrorists instead of Saddam this would never have happened. We are on the verge of losing this war because we have wasted our resources fighting the wrong enemy. It's time we got out of Iraq - turn it over to the UN - and go after Osama bin Laden. Let's go after the real terrorists who actually cut the man's head off and were behind 9-11, instead. —Marc Perkel

I don't know what made Marc want to watch it, and I don't want to know.

Things are going from bad to worse over there. I can't help but think about the cheerleaders (of the black skin persuasion) for war, who ignored the racist nature of the illegal invasion. Most of them, I'm certain, will begin to backpedal as support steadily erodes. They are the weak of mind who cannot bear NOT to be on the good side of loudmouth, malicious white folks. Their stupidity is sickening.

2004-05-12T16:33:00.000-04:00

Berg Refused to Leave Iraq?

Nick Berg, the 26 year old telecom business owner whose beheading was videotaped, had been advised to leave Iraq according to US officials.

There are some odd details to this one.

If the tape identifies Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, why did all of the men (except Nick Berg) have their faces covered.
Since when have those kidnapped by resistance fighters, or al-Qaida, been clad in US-prison orange jumpsuits.
Where did they get those flak jackets (bulletproof vests), I've never seen them wear those either . . .

Here's the .::link::.

2004-05-11T20:28:00.000-04:00

So the Red Cross has a Report . . .

Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested ''by mistake,'' according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a .::Red Cross report::. disclosed Monday.

Abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was widespread and routine, the report finds—contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment ''was the wrongdoing of a few.''

Red Cross delegates saw U.S. military intelligence officers mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison and collected allegations of abuse at more than 10 other detention facilities, according to the report.

.::Chicago Sun-Times::.

That's it! That is last bit of information necessary to determine that:

There are more people involved in the human rights abuses than the half dozen Guard members put on the hotseat.

Contrary to the lame excuses of the rabid right wing, US soldiers had no reason to direct their anger, or fear, at the detainees under their control, because the majority of them shouldn't have been arrested in the first place.

Abu Ghraib is not an aberation; abuses were happening in other US controlled prisons and in other US instigated war zones in years past.

The problem is not that the abuse was captured on camera and distributed all over the world, the problem is that it happened!

The abuses could not have been as widespread without the ok of leaders in Washington.

Violence begets violence.

I cannot understand why there are American citizens who deny that America (its government and its military) can be just as brutal and amoral as any other country. It doesn't help us grow (collectively) to be a better nation.

We cannot claim moral superiority, or the right to tell others how to live, and then try to excuse what happened at Abu Ghraib. Are there Americans who don't want to be better or to learn from our mistakes (egregious or slight) and the mistakes of others? Is acknowledging our own human frailties a sin?

2004-05-11T19:22:00.000-04:00

Legitimacy Can't be Earned at the Point of a Gun

“There has always been a tension in our occupation between control and legitimacy. And the more we’ve sought control, the less legitimacy we’ve had. I think we have erred in general, from the start, much too heavily in the direction of control at the expense of legitimacy, and that has come back to haunt us.” —So says .::Larry Diamond::. senior fellow at the Hoover Institution (right wing think tank)

2004-05-11T19:18:00.000-04:00

Liberation, American Style

"... former CIA official who collected enemy ears, dropped decapitated human heads from the air on to communists and stuck heads on spikes. . . [Tony Poe ] twice won a CIA Star -- the Central Intelligence Agency's highest award —from directors Allen Dulles, in 1959, and William Colby, in 1975," the obituary reported.

'"I used to collect ears," a cheerful Poshepny was quoted as telling Roger Warner in his book, .::Shooting at the Moon::. ...'I had a big, green, reinforced cellophane bag as you walked up my steps. I'd tell my people to put them in, and then I'd staple them to this 5,000 kip [Lao currency] notice that this [ear] was paid for already, and put them in the bag and send them to [the Laos capital] Vientiane with the report."

"We were murdering these people, incinerating them. My efforts had resulted in the deaths of many people and I just – for me it was a period when guess I was – I considered myself nearly insane – I just couldn’t reconcile what I had been and what I was at the time becoming," McGeehee said.

See .::Agitprop::. for the rest of the story.

2004-05-11T18:21:00.000-04:00

The Fish Still Rots from the Head Down

"Some psychological warfare [psywar] guy in Washington thought of a way to scare the hell out of villagers," CIA officer Pat McGarvey confided to Seymour Hersh. "When we killed the VC there, they wanted us to spread eagle the guy, put out his eye, cut a hole in the back [of his head] and put his eye in there. The idea was that fear was a good weapon"

See .::CounterPunch.org::. article to learn more about how mutilation of the declared enemy isn't what only Iraqi resistance fighters do.

2004-05-10T09:18:00.000-04:00

Those Who Don't Learn From History...

"I lost my brother in Vietnam," added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. "I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in."

.::Complete Ariticle::.

2004-05-05T02:33:00.000-04:00

Is there a lesson to be learned somewhere in here?

On March 4th the .::Economic Policy Institute::. published findings that show higher education will not save you from losing your job or finding another one, contrary to what cheerleaders of this BUSHED economy are saying. The unemployment rate for college graduates is higher than that for high school dropouts.

College graduates represent 15.3% of total unemployment, but 19.1% of long-term unemployment. Long-term unemployment among college-educated workers increased by 299.4% between 2000 and 2003, a much faster rate than the increase of 156.1% for workers with a high school degree or less.

While long-term unemployment hit all age and occupational groups, more experienced jobless workers had a disproportionately difficult time getting back to work in 2003. Although job seekers age 45 and older made up 25.7% of the total unemployed population, the rate of long-term unemployment for this group was 35.4%.

"Sometimes it's better to trade economic efficiency for values like fairness and equity; that strengthening the hand of labor instead of sucking up to capital can be more economically beneficial in the long term, for Americans as much as Indians (who after all might soon surrender their newfound bounty to cheaper English-speaking workers in the nearby Philippines)—until then, maybe it's time to outsource them for another." .::full story::.

The .::Hull House Report::. — Minding the Gap: An Assessment of Racial Disparity in Metropolitan Chicago reaffirms other studies regarding disparities in the judicial system and the war on drugs.

"Whites are 125% more likely to use marijuana than Blacks; 181% more likely to use cocaine; 431% more likely to use inhalants; 516% more likely to use LSD. And yet Blacks account for 79% of all drug arrests."

Reports cited in quite a few papers reveal that employees from private contractors .::CACI International::. and .::Titan::. were interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Sewell Chan (The Washington Post) .::said::., the contractors are "at the center of the probe" into the abuse / humiliation / torture of Iraqi prisoners.

Civilians cannot be court-martialed and are not accountable. So, why are military functions being privatized? Is it money? Is someone trying to set a pattern (a precedent) for future wars, in which private armies are loyal only to them?

2004-05-02T03:19:00.000-04:00

You Didn't Expect This?

The recent revelations that American and British soldiers have .::abused::. detained Iraqis shouldn't be surprising. In fact, it should have been expected.

In the direct aftermath of the terrorist attack on the US, there were very public statements made by US officials explaining the usefulness of torture, and we eventually began .::shipping individuals::. we detained to countries that practice it. In conversations and debates during the build-up to the illegal invasion, many Americans dehumanized Iraqis, and all other people who weren't American or didn't support our plans to invade the sovereign nation. Reports of abuse at .::Guantanamo::. don't make mainstream news often, but they are there, like the stench of rotting garbage that everyone pretends not to smell so they won't be responsible for taking it out. After the assassination of two Hamas leaders by Ariel Sharon, even .::Howard Dean supported::. the murders.

The fish rots from the head down!

The barbarity of our leaders was manifested in the behavior of the soldiers. The rage and latent racism of the average American (.::including US soldiers::.) was fostered by a misadministration that specializes in deceit, because of its own bigotry and delusions of devine inspiration.

All it took to turn fresh-faced, patriotic troops into sadistic savages were instructions from .::Pentagon-hired mercenaries::. —trained in the fine art of torture & abuse. Voila! The liberators supplant Saddam's brutality with their own.

Mission Accomplished.

2004-04-30T20:00:00.000-04:00

Public Interest Decided by Sinclair Broadcasting "John"

So, David D. Sinclair, moral authority that he is, .::announced::. that Nightline's Ted Koppel is politically motivated because his show .::this evening::. will consist of reading all the names of US soldiers killed in Iraq —I believe it's strictly those deemed "killed in combat", not suicide, friendly fire, illness, or accident. As a result, it is not in the "public interest" to air this particular show, and his company will not allow it to be broadcast on its networks.

How would he know what is in the public interest when he didn't ask the public, nor did he know (or didn't care) that having oral sex .::with a prostitute::. is illegal?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)

August 17, 1996, Saturday, SOONER EDITION

David D. Smith, president and chief executive officer of Sinclair Broadcast Group, was arrested this week in his hometown of Baltimore and charged with a misdemeanor sex offense. Sinclair owns WPGH, the Fox affiliate in Pittsburgh, and programs most of WPTT.

The Baltimore Sun reported that Smith, 45, was arrested Tuesday night in an undercover sting at a downtown corner frequented by prostitutes.

On Thursday night, Sinclair issued a statement that Smith's arrest was unrelated to company business and ''The company will continue to operate under the direction of its current management.''

Broadcasting official charged in sex stakeout
Sinclair president, woman arrested in company car

Published on: August 15, 1996
Edition: FINAL
Section: NEWS
Page: 2B
Byline: SUN STAFFPeter Hermann

372

The president of Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., which owns the local Fox television affiliate, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with committing a perverted sex act in a company-owned Mercedes, city police said. ...

That is typical of what you find when the rocks of rabid right wingers' lives are turned over... the slime produced by vice & hypocrisy.

2004-04-27T17:02:00.000-04:00

Here we Go 'round-n-round Again

Bremer has made noises about restoring former Baathist leaders to power. It isn't that shocking, considering the charge that .::bribes were made::. to Iraqi tribal leaders in an attempt to buy their allegiance, yet the average Iraqi was subject to .::extortion::. at the hands of Baathists after the invasion.

Karzai the Feckless, our pick to head Afghanistan, long ago expressed his .::receptiveness::. to allowing Taliban members back into the government. Things have not been going well in Afghanistan for .::quite some time::. , much to the chagrin of white-hooded neos (liberal & conservative) who manage to sneak a peek out of those eyeholes every now and again.

It isn't as though a single man actually ruled those countries! Without the participation of those others we are bribing into compliance with offers of restored power, there could not have been a dictatorial regime in Iraq, nor a fundamentalist theocracy in Afghanistan.

Baathists as authority figures in Iraq, and the Taliban welcomed into the government of Afghanistan. What was the sense of going to war when we only put members of the ruling group back into positions of authority — members of the same group that benefited from the oppression and exploitation of the rest of their people?!!

We should have left well enough alone, militarily that is. We could have done so much more with diplomacy and international cooperation and planning.

But, then again, we're talking about Gee Duhhhhh-bya, he can barely put two coherent sentences together.

2004-04-27T11:16:00.000-04:00

Sometimes You Have to Stand Up for What's Right

There are very few politicos on the right who will say enough is enough on some issues. .::John McCain::. is one of them —

McCain recalled that he had worked with .::Kerry::. on "POW/MIA issues and the normalization of relations with Vietnam" and wanted to stand up for his war comrade because "you have to do what's right." Speaking of Kerry, McCain said: "He's my friend. He'll continue to be my friend. I know his service was honorable. If that hurts me politically or with my party, that's a very small price to pay."

The GOP is shameless and its blind followers deserve every dispicable ill they have ever wished upon other people. This is the THIRD war veteran they've targeted for denigration during a campaign for public office. Nonetheless, you will continue to hear (or read) mealy-mouthed sychophants within the GOP claim to hold the military and its veterans in high esteem. They LIE!!

2004-04-26T01:59:00.000-04:00

On Friday in Florida

Using his special brand of dishonesty, Dubya .::said::. "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers..."

This man is insane. How could any rational adult buy into his bullshit? The Sunnis & Shias are united against the US-led occupation. Is he calling all Sunnis & Shias "thugs and killers?" Are the vocabularies of his various handlers so limited they can't provide him with different pejoratives than "thug" and "killer".

The murders of individual Sunnis & Shias is being denied by all sides, which indicates that some unidentified group is trying to create the basis for a civil war and further destablize the country. So far, it hasn't worked, it has only hardened their resolve to oust the occupiers.

But the ol' idiot-n-thief is determined to send other people's children to die because he speaks to GOD and GOD .::speaks back::. That alcholic cokehead is hallucinating!

Here in the Sunshine State we have a way to deal with people who are mentally unstable and pose a threat to others, it's called the .::Baker Act::. The man needs to be immediately Baker-acted and sent to an institution where he won't cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people with his megalomaniacal plans.

2004-04-25T23:15:00.000-04:00

I've Always Wondered...

Is former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr Black? He looks Black, even though his skin is light bright, looking damn near white (*that phrase is meant to be sung to the tune of the .::Light Brite::. toy jingle) his features are strong and broad, as though he is of African descent. It would be a real shame if he is, but it would also be too damn funny! The way he embraces the conservative ideology with a deathgrip is typical of many people of African descent who have a fatal case of self-loathing.

In doing a cursory search, I found that I'm not the only one who wondered about Mr. Barr's lineage. I found this .::short exchange::. and this informative piece .::here::.

I also found this comment that made me crack up: "Unfortunately, some such as .::Georgia Congressman Bob Barr::. are still perpetrating this lie even to this very day, as everyone in the Black community knows that he is a light skinned Black man masquerading as an ultra conservative, Republican white man!"

Damn Bob... come on back home boy! You know we're the forgiving kind! *lmao*

2004-04-25T17:45:00.000-04:00

Ancient Teachings

The teachings of Jesus, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc., all have two things in common:

Using different terms and concepts with the same meaning, they point out the dysfunction in the human condition and,
they illustrate how to live in a higher state of consciousness.

Too many didn't quite understand the message though, so the truth was distorted as "superstructures of religious beliefs" were built throughout history.

Those beliefs became the sole source of some people's identities, and it is those people who are the biggest source of the insanity in the world today. It is just as maddening as it is sad to hear, or read, people lay claim to one religion that holds life sacred while bashing another that holds life sacred. They then turn around and recommend condone, encourage, or cheerlead the death of all who don't believe as they do.

Has the whole world gone mad?

2004-04-25T04:06:00.000-04:00

But I Still Don't Write As Well As I Should...

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

.:: How grammatically sound are you?::.

2004-04-22T16:56:00.000-04:00

I Don't Believe in These Tests Anyway!

.::What Famous Leader Are You?::.

2004-04-22T16:44:00.000-04:00

I Am What I Am... and That's All That I Am!!

I've taken .::these tests::. multiple times and get the same results. I have no idea how accurate they are, but the results only confirm, for me, that who we think we are isn't always how we're perceived.

Extroverted (E) 60.53% Introverted (I) 39.47%

Intuitive (N) 64.52% Sensing (S) 35.48%

Thinking (T) 51.61% Feeling (F) 48.39%

Perceiving (P) 50% Judging (J) 50%

ENTP - "Inventor". Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative. 3.2% of the total population.

Conscious self	Overall self

2004-04-20T16:10:00.000-04:00

.::List of the Ten Most Wanted Documents for 2004::.

The 28 Pages: Secret Pages of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 Intelligence Failures
Type of crime investigated each time a Patriot Act power was invoked
A list of the contaminants found in the sources of our drinking water
A number of court cases partially or totally closed to the public and an explanation why for each
Industry-written reports on chemical plants' risks to communities
Identities of those detained after 9/11 on immigration charges or as material witnesses
Gifts from lobbyists to Senators and their staff
Federal contracts, grants and other agreements, their total value (in dollars), records documenting violations, and fines and other federal enforcement actions
All changes made to publicly available versions of congressional legislation before a committee vote
Congressional Research Service Reports

2004-04-20T13:27:00.000-04:00

What is Everyone Talking About?

Rarely do people intellectually process what the talkingheads on television are saying. As a result, it is easier for those with ulterior motives to introduce language into the mainstream that validates their actions and beliefs. Without critical thought, they are able to "frame the debate" on any issue.

A prime example is the "insurgency" in Iraq, comprised of the Sunnis, Shias, et al. There is no "insurgency" in Iraq. There is a war, however distasteful their methods of causing death and destruction may be to us, we also cause death and destruction while participating in war.

in·sur·gent ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-sûrjnt)adj.

Rising in revolt against established authority, especially a government.
Rebelling against the leadership of a political party.

The U.S. is not an authority, nor is it established in Iraq. Those who are fighting against them are resisting an occupying foreign army. That would make them resistance fighters. By mislabeling them, it adds credence to Smirky's belief that it is natural for the white man with the biggest army to be in charge of other people, no matter how illegal the military's presence in their country may be.

2004-04-20T13:04:00.000-04:00

Tha' Skeeza's in Love with her Monkey-faced Boss!

.::Political Conversation: Condi’s Slip::.

A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, “No comment.”

I guess it should have been obvious that only a confused Black woman in love would shill as hard for this administration as Condi has. Ewww!! I wonder if she has daydreams about being in empty-eyed Laura Bush's place. Tha' Skeeza and Chimpy holding hands as they stand before a shocked press corp(se) and announce how wonderful interracial love is. *gaaaaackkkk!*

That sad woman! Doesn't she know that men like him wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole? Ol' Dubya is a white woman's man all the way!! Other white men would go for what they know in private, but never publicly. I would hope that she's been around white folks long enough to at least know that she should never even entertain the thought of some "crushes."

2004-04-19T17:07:00.000-04:00

Must Read Articles:

Chas Freeman—

"Wars end only when the defeated accept defeat, not when the victor declares victory. ... Arrogant daydreams that inspire military actions can become humiliating nightmares that produce political debacles."

.::The Cost of 'Arrogant Daydreams'::.

David Podvin—

Conservatives explode in rage when the current disaster is compared with Vietnam - there is nary a rice paddy in view! But the parallel is unmistakable: America has again put its soldiers in a chaotic killing field where they are unable to distinguish friend from foe. In seeking to justify this endeavor that they insist in no way resembles the Vietnam War, Republicans have dusted off all their arguments from the Vietnam War: if we fail to subdue these ideologues, it will have a domino effect…we better fight the enemy over aid and comfort there or we will have to fight them over here…it may have been a mistake to get in, but it would be a bigger mistake to get out…to disagree with the war is to give to the enemy…

.::Greed and Hubris::.

2004-04-14T12:27:00.000-04:00

France & US Work Together Again

.::United Nations, April 13 (IPS)::. The United States and France have intimidated Caribbean countries into delaying an official request for a probe into the murky circumstances under which Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from power in February, according to diplomatic sources here.

The two veto-wielding permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council have signalled to Caribbean nations that they do not want a U.N. probe of Aristide's ouster.

2004-04-13T21:33:00.000-04:00

— Dubya's Alleged "News Conference" —

"Free societies are hopeful societies..."

I'm sure that's what his cronies were thinking when they hand-picked the new leaders of Iraq — people will feel free when an occupying nation chooses the right leaders for you. I'm even more sure that's what his people were thinking when they shut down Muqtada al-Sadr's newspaper.

"I feel it in my soul..."

That bastard is SOULLESS!

2004-04-13T21:22:00.000-04:00

"We've had some success with the decision I took..."

Then he goes on to cite the nation of Libya and how finding mustard gas on a turkey farm made the world safer. Oh' yeah, we're much safer from al Queada because Quaddafi gave up the ghost. Fallujah would have been 20 times worse had we not found that mustard gas in Libya, eh'?!!

"Nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens... it's gut wrenching..."

So, if we don't see the dead bodies being unloaded from the planes, we won't know that our soldiers are dying because of a lie about weapons of mass destruction and we'll all feel so much better about a unilateral invasion of a sovereign nation.

"I wish you'd given me that written question ahead of time so I could prepare for it."

That lying sack of skin. He got those questions ahead of time; probably days ago.

I'm open for suggestions. I look forward to seeing what the 9/11 Commission comes up with...

Of course he does, he hand-picked the people on the commission. Whatever they come up with will downplay his role in the disaster we call the 'war on terrah'.

2004-04-13T20:55:00.000-04:00

"Let Me Step Back & Review My Thinking..."

...so said the tongue-tied buffoon occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That man hasn't had a thought in his head since he gave up cocaine & alcohol in his early 40's.

This entire "press conference" is yet another scripted charade by the misadministration that's ruining this country!!

2004-04-13T20:39:00.000-04:00

Did I Hear the Word D-R-A-F-T?

Dubya said:

"If additional forces are needed, I will send them."

We already know our Armed Forces are stretched too thin, that people are not re-enlisting, and that enlistment numbers are flatlining. How will we continue to occupy Iraq in the coming years without injecting fresh blood into the military without conscription?

2004-04-13T20:35:00.000-04:00

First Misspoken Word of Dubya's Press Conference Speech:

Insticated ... he later pronounced it properly, but damn, he was only a half a sentence into his schtick and he flubbed it already.

2004-04-12T23:32:00.000-04:00

Nightmarish Images

A short clip of GeeDubya flashed across my television screen this evening. He was at a press conference stammering and stuttering about being "comforted" because the FBI was "doing its job." He was spinning feverishly and the effort showed in his face; it was strangely flush, he had an obvious look of desperation in his eyes, and he allowed his mouth to hang open as if in a stupor.

He's feeling the pinch, and no one deserves the pain more than he does!

2004-04-12T16:55:00.000-04:00

A Jordanian Newpaper Writes About Condoleeza (tha' Skeeza)

As for you, .::black Condoleeza Rice::., swallow your tongue, remember your origins and stop talking about liberation and freedom. Have you not been taught by your cowboy masters that 'slaves' cannot liberate themselves, that they are not capable to capture the large Islamic world whose cultural roots are planted in the depths of history. The slaves who are happy with their enslavement, O Condoleeza, will continue to be enslaved. They will never be free and will never free others.

2004-04-11T19:21:00.000-04:00

Ohio & Black Box Voting

.::BELMONT COUNTY, OH::.

Ohio voters planning to use the revolutionary touch-screen technology can likely forget it - at least for this year. A legislative committee says voters who use electronic machines should be able to confirm their choices with a paper receipt. Because the current voting boxes do not offer that option, the board has ordered Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to cancel $128 million worth of Ohio voting machine contracts.

Congrats to all the Ohioians who understand that democracy ceases to exist when we stop participating in it!

2004-04-11T18:14:00.000-04:00

CARICOM Stakes Out the Middle Ground on Haiti

The .::Trinidad and Tobago Express::. reported about the CARICOM summit in St. Kitts.

Instead of knuckling under to the immoral demands of the US, and the meaningless .::pronouncements::. of the US-installed Prime Minister, Gerard Latortue —he suspensed Haiti's membership in the organization on March 15th because of Jamaica's decision to offer Aristide temporary refuge —CARICOM decided not to recognize Haiti's new government of criminals, but definitely not to ignore the needs of the Haitian people.

Latortue has .::openly embraced::. the former FRAPH members (Guy Philippe, et al) comprising the armed opposition. "Aristide associates and politicians from his Lavalas Family party are being illegally held captive by armed rebels, Human Rights Watch said... Others are in hiding or have been killed." What more is needed for principled citizens and organizations of the world to openly denounce Latortue and his supposed authority over the Haitian people?

It would behoove CARICOM to remember that riding the fence will give one splinters, and deals with the devil always result in the dealee being badly burned.

2004-04-11T03:41:00.000-04:00

A New Generation of Recruits

...Mr. Muaimy .::said::. American soldiers had humiliated him in front of his children.

"They searched my house," he said. "They kicked my Koran. They speak to me so poorly in front of my children. It's not that I encourage my son to hate Americans. It's not that I make him want to join the resistance. Americans do that for me."

What intellectual, psychological or social dysfunction blinds the Bush cabal and their vengeful supporters to the obvious results of their "war on terror?"

2004-04-10T17:31:00.000-04:00

If It's Not Wrong When the Government Does It ...

The television station A&E is airing an .::Investigative Report::. about the increasing number of women being sent to America's prisons. A sub-segment deals with battered women who killed or assaulted their abusive spouses.

My question is this:

If the U.S., as a nation, is supported by a number of its citizens in invading another country based on what they might do, why does our judicial system lock up women who kill their abusive spouses based on a pattern of inflicting great physical harm?

Our troops were deployed 8,000 miles to invade, occupy and control another country to "prevent" them from harming U.S. citizens. The women who killed their spouses were batttered and had their lives threatened in their own homes.

Pre-emptive violence is the same, whether employed by the state (our nation) or by an individual. If current mores in this country condone it, these women need to be immediately let out of prison.

2004-04-09T21:02:00.000-04:00

Condoleeza "Tha' Skeeza" Rice Surpasses Her Masters' Expectations

According to the negress, the Administration didn't act on the information provided by Richard Clark because it was waiting for more "actionable" intelligence.

What is "actionable" intelligence anyway? I think she means they wanted a more specific PLAN.

The best (most outrageous) lie of all is refuted by Coleen Rowley in an interview on .::Democracy Now::.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, yesterday, Dr. Condoleezza Rice said that all of the field offices knew about the potential threats. What did you understand at the time, Coleen Rowley?

COLEEN ROWLEY: Well, you know, historically the FBI has been investigating al Qaeda for a long time. Obviously, the first 1993 World Trade Center attacks brought that into focus. So, al Qaeda certainly was considered a threat, but what I'm talking about is any special urgency, especially during the summer of 2001 which would have made people, especially the mid-level management people, more aware of information, little pieces of information that were generated to them. And again, if you read -- reread the letter and the fact that the .::Phoenix Memo::. and the information that came in from our office and other offices simply was not acted on --

AMY GOODMAN: I just want to interrupt for one second. On August 15, Zacarias Moussaoui was taken into custody. To refresh people's memories -- three weeks before the September 11th attacks. At that point when the alleged 20th hijacker is taken into custody, at a point when -- well certainly, if information was gathered and if in fact he was a part of this, and you could get information, perhaps the September 11 attacks could have been avoided -- averted, can you talk about what you understood the threat level to be, and if you understood how high the people in Washington -- how seriously they were treating things at this point?

COLEEN ROWLEY: I don't have any firsthand information about what the threat level was, and the people in Washington, other than what the comments and the responses that were given from these people to our field office agents here. Again, if you reread the testimony, even from the Joint Intelligence Committee of responses that were given, it does not show that there was any understanding of the urgency of the threat.

See .::Claim vs Fact::. for a complete deconstruction of her lying testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

2004-04-09T20:37:00.000-04:00

Capitalism Thrives Where Violently-Imposed Democracy Fails

...The atmosphere .::in Baghdad::. has changed for the worse. At the entrance to the hotel where I am staying, there is a noticeboard near the reception desk. Last year, the pieces of paper stuck on the board were mostly from Iraqis wanting jobs as translators for foreign companies and itemising their qualifications. Today, there are no such notices. Too many translators have been killed or threatened for any Iraqi to advertise the fact that he or she wants to work for a foreigner.

Instead, there are three notices on the board from different companies all advertising armoured vehicles for sale. One of them says it can also offer body armour, adding seductively that this is in "limited quantity in the country". ...

2004-04-09T19:33:00.000-04:00

More Troops, More Troops, Iraqi OIL for More Troops

...::word leaked out::. that US generals are "outraged" by their lack of soldiers.

America's generals consider current troop strengths of 130,000 in Iraq inadequate...

...His [General John Abizaid, commander of Central Command] words overrode months of public assurances from the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other civilian chiefs that more troops are not necessary.

...US forces are so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that "there are simply no large units available and suitable for assignment", Novak wrote in his column in The Washington Post.

...Many still in uniform bitterly recall the public dressing-down earned by the then army chief of staff, .::Gen Eric Shinseki::., when he told Congress a month before the invasion, in February 2003, that "several hundred thousand troops" might be needed to occupy Iraq.

That estimate was slapped down as "wildly off the mark" by the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. .::Thomas White::., the army secretary and a former general himself, publicly backed Gen Shinseki. Mr White was sacked shortly afterwards by Mr Rumsfeld. ...

The rabid right are experts at telling the lies to start a war, but they're lousy at knowing when one is .::over::. and how many soldiers are required to actually WIN it!

2004-04-02T17:48:00.000-05:00

And they called Lani Guiner a "loony" for espousing the same view...

"Democracy entails not just majority rule, but protection of minority rights."

– L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator, Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Paul Bremer made that statement after giving an overly optimistic yearend .:review:. of the American occupation of Iraq. The belated American allegiance to the protection of minority rights is an effort to keep Iraq’s Shiite majority from thinking too highly of themselves and demanding one man one vote - majority rule - in their multi-religious, multi-ethnic country. The need to satisfy the desires of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds is just one of the issues that was not thought out in America’s rush to establish new military bases and turn Iraq into a cash cow for Halliburton and Bechtel. Only painful desperation would entice a Republican to publicly declare that minority rights are sacrosanct.

...When Lani Guinier was nominated by President Clinton to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights she was called “loony” and a “quota queen” for advocating what Bremer now wants for Iraq. The unfortunate Ms. Guinier was not attempting to create a compliant puppet government. She was talking about bringing justice to the electoral system of the United States, a nation whose majority does not always appreciate minorities making too many demands or even asking too many questions.

.:read the rest:.

2004-03-24T11:45:00.000-05:00

From Bad to Worse

.:American Family Voices:. website weighs in on the .:Richard Clark:. brouhaha with a collection of quotes from devout Bushites that belie their claims, and further indict this administration for mishandling intelligence prior to 9-11-01 and lying about the need to invade Iraq.

"Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to." – Condoleezza Rice, March 22, 2004

In fact, Clarke sent an urgent memo calling for a Cabinet-level meeting to discuss the possibilities of an al Qaeda attack back on January 24, 2001. The meeting was delayed for three months, and was held without the presence of Cabinet-level officials.

Clarke's colleague Thomas Maertens, former National Security Council director for nuclear nonproliferation under both Clinton and Bush, remembers that Clarke "was the guy pushing hardest, saying again and again that something big was going to happen," but that Bush officials weren't responsive to the advice of a Clinton administration holdover.

"Ramzi Yousef [convicted of the attempted WTC bombings in 1993] turned out to be Khalid Shaykh Muhammad's nephew. Khalid Shaykh Muhammad is the guy who came up with the idea of using airliners to strike the World Trade Center in about 1996, we believe, when he first suggested that, and who later supervised the attacks of 9/11." – Cheney, March 22, 2004

Another failed gambit from Cheney during his phone-in appearance on Limbaugh's show. This statement is part of a desperate attempt by the Bush team to pin the blame for 9/11 on the Clinton administration. Of course, as usual, Cheney vastly overstated himself and stuck his foot in his mouth, selling out a colleague in the process. Here's why:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people…would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." – Rice, May 16, 2002

Cheney's comments directly implied that people (meaning people in the Clinton administration) should have predicted that al Qaeda would use a plane as a missile, because Muhammad's plans stretched back to 1996. In a desperate attempt to free the Bush administration from blame, Rice similarly overstated her case as well. In fact, a 1999 report by the National Intelligence Council did issue an alert about this type of hijacking plan.

"The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11." – Rice, March 22, 2004

"But just days later, the President met with his National Security Council; the Director of Central Intelligence informed him that there was no link between the September 11th attacks and Iraq." – McClellan, March 22, 2004

It is embarrassing that the White House would even attempt to make this claim after shamelessly using 9/11 as grounds to invade Iraq. In fact, the Bush team had better hope that Rice and McClellan are lying. Otherwise there's no possible way to explain these comments:

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own." – President Bush, 2003 State of the Union Address

"We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s." – Cheney on "Meet the Press," September 14, 2003

And, in a letter to Congress, President Bush argued that an attack on Iraq was justified because force was authorized against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11."

The Bush White House has been spinning so many half-truths on this issue for so long that it was inevitable that at some point, they were going to overlap and contradict. That point appears to be now. It was perhaps the most poorly constructed web of deceit in recent memory – it only trapped the spider. ...