Our Father, Who art in blogdom, hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdome come. Thy will be done
In the Real World, as it is on the Web.
Give us this day our daily blog
And forgive us our babble,
As we forgive those who babble with us.
And lead us not into the illusion that our words are wisdom;
But deliver us from the evil of certitude.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
Forever --- or until Web 3.0. Amen
At last, a Bush administration crime that media can sink their teeth into.
It involves sex!
A Bush official has been linked to a call-girl probe.
So okay, it's not one of the major players in the Bush administration. It's only a middle management official, Randall Tobias,, the head of foreign aid programs, not Bush or Cheney or Rice. And it doesn't involve torturing prisoners, spying on Americans, lying us into war, or horrendous war crimes like destroying Falluja.
But hey, it's SEX!!!
Maybe now that we've got the media's attention....
Congress doesn't give a damn about Bush's crimes, the Democrats can't take their eyes off the 'THE CHANCE FOR POWER' in the 2008 elections and are afraid to act on principle lest they queer it, and the public is angry but apathetic.
What to do?
Well, you can always join the folks pounding IMPEACH NOW in 100-foot letters in the sand of Ocean Beach in San Francisco on Saturday.
The event is being held in conjunction with April 28 impeachment events in 100 other cities -— see www.A28.org.
After folks are through pounding sand, they'll join a Codepink march to the San Francisco home of , Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
A lot of us have been worrying about the fascist tendencies of the Bush administration and the refusal of the courts and Congress to do anything about it. Naomi Wolf, writing in the Guardian, suggests that we're a lot farther along that path than most of us realize.
"Beneath our very noses," she says, "George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society."
She outlines 10 steps that Bush & Co. have used, including:
1) Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
Think 911 and the eternal 'War on Terror.'
2) Create a gulag
Guantánamo Bay
3) Develop a thug caste
Brownshirts in Nazi Germany are the model. Today we have "America's security contractors" in Iraq, and hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And back in the 2000 election, we had groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menacing poll workers counting the votes in Florida.
4) Set up an internal surveillance system
Done.
6) Engage in arbitrary detention and release
Think the No-Fly list, which snared Senator Kennedy among others. Unlike Senator Kennedy, most of them can't get off the list. "It is a standard practice of fascist societies," Wolf says, "that once you are on the list, you can't get off."
8) Control the press
The corporate media needs little control. They are, in the popular and accurate phrase, 'stenographers of power,' conveyor belts for Bush administration propaganda. "As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol," Wolf says, "the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded."
A very disturbing article. Read it:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/24/708/
Caging the natives
The U.S. is building a Berlin Wall in Baghdad to separate Sunnis from Shiites --- a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods.
A Sunni doctor told the New York Times that the wall would transform the residents into caged animals, and added: “The Native Americans were treated better than us.”
He doesn't know enough American history. We may have slaughtered Indians because we wanted their land, but we never caged them up.
Oh, wait, there are those Indian Reservations....
Sen. John McCain has made an ass of himself again. When he was asked what we should do about Iran, he sang "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann."
He later said he was only joking. Yeah, right. It is the kind of joking about the horrors of war that politicians often make. President Reagan joked about bombing Moscow on an open mic. George Bush has made all kinds of jokes about Iraq, including his fatuous “bring them on” remark.
But neither Reagan know Bush ever actually saw the horrors of war firsthand. McCain did, and should know better. But he is a murderous clown.
He’s got a lot of flak over his’ singing,’ and now MoveOn.org wants to join in. They are asking their members for money to run an ad calling him out. Big deal. McCain is already self destructing. Where MoveOn.org should be spending its money is on supporting impeachment proceedings for Bush and Cheney.
But they don’t have the guts to go after the politicians that count.
It's bad enough that we have lost hundreds of independent bookstores in the last few years, but we are also losing newspaper book editors and book pages.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, has just killed its book editor position, though it promises to keep covering book news.
Zachary Steele, the owner of an area bookstore, Wordsmiths Books, praised the former book editor, Teresa Weaver.
"How invaluable she has been over the years in fostering a sense of passion and enthusiasm for books that you do not typically see in metropolitan presses," he said. He called book lovers to arms. "It is time that the AJC recognize the importance of the literary world and its impact on the culture it breeds in Atlanta."
It's not likely that the newspaper will change its mind, however. When I worked for the Miami News, I complained about the space devoted to sports, with nothing devoted to books. Basically I was laughed at. But now even papers that once paid attention to the book world are bailing out.
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Reacting to a Supreme Court ruling that allows a major curb on abortion, President Bush, the man responsible for more than 650,000 deaths in Iraq, said that the ruling, and I quote:
affirms the progress his administration has made to defend the "sanctity of life."
The man responsible for the deaths of more than 650,000 people expressed condolences today for the deaths of 33. "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," President Bush said.
The people in Iraq agree.
Yesterday, when the 33 died at Virginia Tech, at least 69 Iraqis and six American soldiers died in Bush's war.
Today, at least 104 Iraqis and three G.I.s were reported killed.
Of course, that's not really news in the corporate press.
The Bush administration is guilty of more crimes than a Mafia mob.
Congress is both complicit and enabling (Republicans), and gutless and clueless (Democrats.)
The judiciary put Bush in the White House in the first place and is now preparing to let him run the government the way he sees fit --- fuck the Constitution.
Maybe we need to go outside the country to get some justice.
According to El Pais (as reported by bellaciao.org), the Spanish judge who wanted to prosecute Chilean dictator Pinochet, has called for Bush and his allies to be tried for war crimes over Iraq.
Baltasar Garzón called the war on Iraq one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history. He said it broke every international law and is a devastating attack on the rule of law and against the very essence of the international community, and added that Bush and his allies should eventually face war crimes charges.
He is too kind.
Such a pity that nothing can come of this.
"Americans are poor soldiers. The best soldier is a Nazi. But we'll become better and better soldiers as we become more and more like Nazis." Kurt Vonnegut in a talk in Chicago in 1995
Like most satire, this is funny and true without being factual.
Even in Iraq, American soldiers aren't acting like Nazis; as a matter of fact, even the Nazis didn't act like Nazis. Outrageously brutal behavior by soldiers is simply part of war.
In wars like Iraq -- a war based on a lie and fought for oil, for power, for profit -- the individual soldier doesn't know why he is fighting. He can do unbelievably vile things -- because he doesn't know any better, because he is confused, because he is scared, because he is ordered to.
Last February, US troops opened fire on a taxi, killing a woman, and wounding her two children. "There is evidence to suggest that the warning cones and printed checkpoint signs had not yet been displayed in front of the checkpoint, which may be the reason why the driver of the taxi did not believe he was required to stop," says an official memo matter-of-factly.
Ho-hum. These things happen. And so it goes.
In another case, an Iraqi civilian said US forces opened fire with more than 100 rounds on a sleeping family, killing a mother, a father and a son. The army acknowledged responsibility and made a compensation payment to a survivor.
If we act like Nazis sometimes, at least we make amends with a cash payment. Money solves everything.
The real Nazis are the politicians who authorized this grotesque war, and still defend it -- e.g. McCain, Hillary Clinton, George Bush. The president blathered about today's attack on the Iraq parliament: "There is a type of person that would walk in that building and kill innocent life and that is the same type of person that is willing to come and kill innocent Americans."
Of course, there are no innocent Americans in Iraq. We are the occupiers, we are the destroyers.
If democracy falls under the axe of an increasingly imperialistic presidency, and the corporate media doesn't report it,
does it make a sound?
John McCain is a genuine hero, even his detractors say.
His US Navy jet was shot down during the Vietnam War in a bombing raid on Hanoi in October 1967 and he spent five years in a prison camp where he suffered beatings and other torture.
So he was a hero. Such is the mythology of war.
Is heroic to drop bombs on cities? It was not warriors McCain and other American pilots killed when they dropped bombs on cities in Vietnam. It was civilians -- men, women, babies. And they frequently died horribly, burning to death, which is not a death you would wish on your worst enemy.
During the Vietnam War, I ranked people from Most Admired to Least Admired in the following order:
FIRST,
those who went to prison rather than fight in an immoral war
those who fled to Canada
the grunts who were drafted
professional military men who simply did their duty
military men who signed up for extra combat tours because it offered chances for advancement.
At the very bottom, of course, were
the political leaders who started the war.
McCain did what his country ordered him to do. He was a loyal professional and he did what he was asked. But he was no hero; he was a trained killer who gloried in his job. And he thinks we're doing a great thing by slaughtering Iraqi men, women, and children.
Save us from the heroes.
I have a modest proposal to save American democracy.
It doesn't require any drastic restructuring of American society, or even the political process.
All it takes is one new law.
NO-ONE WHO WANTS THE JOB CAN BE ELECTED PRESIDENT.
Simple, effective. It would eliminate the dangerous insane Megalomaniac, such as the current occupant of the White House, for starters.
How you accomplish that is a little tougher, but it can be done. A lottery, perhaps?
I'll work on it.
Phoenix Fox 10 News ran a poll to pick "The Most Foolish American" and the host proclaimed the winner was ... drum roll ... Britney Spears! and the camera lovingly lingered on her bald head at a press conference.
The poll tabulations in the background showed Britney with a score of 33%.
Also on the chart was someone named, George Bush, who only got 40%.
Unh, oh never mind. One never speaks ill of the emperor.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/04/fox-news-they-distort-their-own-april-fools-
New York City health officials are considering a program to urge circumcision for men at high risk of
AIDS, noting studies that the procedure can reduce the chances of getting the disease.
Which is rather like proposing cutting off the ears of all newborns, rather than teaching children to wash behind them.
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The other day I echoed a suggestion by Dave Lindorff that Democrats quit the party until the cowardly leadership gets serious about impeaching Bush and Cheney for their multiple crimes against the country, most particularly lying us into war.
I got a response from my suggestion from a fellow who calls himself 'warmonger,' who said: "That would be cool if all the Democrats quit and moved to France."
The name itself tells you most of what you'd want to know about the man --- or woman, I don't want to be sexist. Someone who loves war has a profound moral sickness. Even if the name is meant in jest, it is a sick joke.
Warmonger, in war, people die. That can sound so nice and simple, almost benign. We all die eventually. But in war, people --- men, women, children, babies --- are torn apart by bullets, blown apart by bombs, burned alive by napalm and white phosphorus, tortured, beheaded ... make your own list. The wounded lose eyes, arms, legs, hands and feet and will spend the rest of their lives, often brutally short, dealing with the consequences.
And most of the victims are innocent. In modern war, the warrior is at less risk than the civilians, who are killed at ratios of 10 to 100 times that of the soldiers.
And in the case of Iraq, what they are dying for is to enrich the Halliburtons, and oil to drive our SUVs.
If all us antiwar folks, Democrats and Republicans alike, were to leave for France, you would have a very interesting country, warmonger. I doubt even that you would want to live in it.
"If Democrats will not impeach this president," says Dave Lindorff, "I quit."
What a fantastic idea.
The cowardly Democrats have been playing around with fake and meaningless antiwar resolutions and pointless hearings about administration crimes, but refuse to even talk about impeachment.
It is obvious that they hope to placate angry voters by giving the illusion that they are stopping Bush, but doing nothing of substance. They hope only to embarrass the president and position themselves as the country's saviors to win the next election.
That's not good enough.
If enough Democrats quit in disgust, the party might be encouraged to get a little backbone and do the right thing, even becoming real saviors in the process.
Lindorff joined the Green Party. Your choice may vary. It doesn't matter whether you join the Greens, the Socialists, the Populists, or just go unaffiliated. As long you don't join the Republicans, of course
As Lindorff says, "Only the impeachment of Bush and the other criminals in the current administration can restore the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the tradition of separation of powers that has provided the underpinning of American democracy for over two centuries."
When you quit, change your registration, be sure to let the Democratic National Committee and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi know. Tell them you won't be back until they actually begin impeachment.