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.

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::.

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?

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)

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.

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.

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::.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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*

Ancient Teachings

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

1. Using different terms and concepts with the same meaning, they point out the dysfunction in the human condition and,
   
2. 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?

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?::.

I Don't Believe in These Tests Anyway!

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

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

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

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

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.