Louisiana is Racist as Hell

Read about The Jena Six for some proof that there is racism in America.

So many cases like this exist, especially in the South, but, of course, Right Wing pundits like BillO and Uncle Toms like Larry Elders will vilify anyone who "pulls the race card" as if we've move passed it since some white guy killed Martin Luther King and black people got to drink from the same drinking fountain and enter the front door.

I insist that everyone read about this not-so-isolated incident.

Life Under Occupation

The Nation is presenting an article that interviews 50 Iraq War veterans and their stories of Iraqi civilian collateral damage and the impact of occupation on the daily lives of Iraqis.

In an interview on Democracy Now, Staff Sergeant Timothy John Westphal states, "I thought of my family at the time and thought 'If I was the patriarch of the family, if soldiers came from another country and did this to my family, I would be an insurgent too.'"

According to Laila Al-Arian from The Nation states in the same interview that, according to the Army Surgeon General only"47% of soldiers and 38% of Marines said that Iraqis should be treated with dignity, and only 55% of soldiers and 40% of Marines said that they would turn in a friend in the military who basically killed or injured an unarmed Iraqi combatant.

Closer to War with Iran

Have We Forgotten 2003 Already?
Statement on H Con Res 21

by Rep. Ron Paul

This resolution is an exercise in propaganda that serves one purpose: to move us closer to initiating a war against Iran. Citing various controversial statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this legislation demands that the United Nations Security Council charge Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Having already initiated a disastrous war against Iraq citing UN resolutions as justification, this resolution is like déja-vu. Have we forgotten 2003 already? Do we really want to go to war again for UN resolutions? That is where this resolution, and the many others we have passed over the last several years on Iran, is leading us. I hope my colleagues understand that a vote for this bill is a vote to move us closer to war with Iran.

Clearly, language threatening to wipe a nation or a group of people off the map is to be condemned by all civilized people. And I do condemn any such language. But why does threatening Iran with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as many here have done, not also deserve the same kind of condemnation? Does anyone believe that dropping nuclear weapons on Iran will not wipe a people off the map? When it is said that nothing, including a nuclear strike, is off the table on Iran, are those who say it not also threatening genocide? And we wonder why the rest of the world accuses us of behaving hypocritically, of telling the rest of the world "do as we say, not as we do."

I strongly urge my colleagues to consider a different approach to Iran, and to foreign policy in general. General William Odom, President Reagan's director of the National Security Agency, outlined a much more sensible approach in a recent article titled "Exit From Iraq Should Be Through Iran." General Odom wrote: "Increasingly bogged down in the sands of Iraq, the U.S. thrashes about looking for an honorable exit. Restoring cooperation between Washington and Tehran is the single most important step that could be taken to rescue the U.S. from its predicament in Iraq." General Odom makes good sense. We need to engage the rest of the world, including Iran and Syria, through diplomacy, trade, and travel rather than pass threatening legislation like this that paves the way to war. We have seen the limitations of force as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. It is time to try a more traditional and conservative approach. I urge a "no" vote on this resolution.

Save the Internet

Have you signed on to Save the Internet?

Plus, my blog about how Fox is justifying the end of a free internet.

Mind the Gap

Find out why you can buy a pair of Nikes for the absolute steal of $150.

John Pilger Expose on Sweat Shop Labor.

The War of Terror

More Investigations by John Pilger on the War on Terror.

Scott Ritter on Sun Tzu's Art of Anti-War

Scott Ritter give a fantastic assessment on Uprising Radio about how the Peave Movement can combat the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media-Complex. He is a Marine and was part of the United Nations Inspection team that didn't find WMD in Iraq.

He uses Sun Tzu's Art of War to reveal simple techniques for the often sporadic and unorganized Peace Movement to win what he calls a "life and death" struggle for peace.

Dennis Miller vs Ron Paul

The far Right has seemingly sunk to new depths of entertainment news when it hires a failed comedian who lost his relevancy years ago as an informed and level headed pundit, if there even is such a thing. I don't want to go on rant here, but Dennis Miller seems to have something of an accuracy deficit that makes Bill O'Reilly look like the Encyclopedia Brittanica. FOXNews has Mr. Miller as a regular geist to give his two minute Rant styled talking points to an audience who's focus has devolved into that of a squirrel surrounded by cats with ADHD.

Remember his Rants being 10 minutes long? I do. And they used to have opinions and relevance and poignant commentary about society and the human condition. Now he's turned into the slightly wittier and more articulate Sean Hannity. He's even more hawkish than Hannity, if that's even possible. But Miller is never one to be outdone by a mental midget like Hannity. I'm sorry. Mental little person.

I don't know if anyone listens to his new drive time radio show on KFI 640 am that starts at who cares and ends at just shoot me in the head. His recent guest was Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul.

I was flipping through stations when I thought I heard someone speaking intelligently about the Middle East and US Foreign Policy when I suddenly realized it was Paul on the Dennis Miller Radio Show.

He did quite a nice hit job on him afterwards, once again using the same tired corporate hand out rhetoric in the form of "he's blaming America." Actually, Miller believes that if we pull out of Iraq right now their will be a blood bath. In fact, Miller believes we should stay as a matter of human rights. Paradoxically, he also believes, and mentions in the same sentence, that we should have invaded Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMD, but simply because we needed to punch someone around as an example to the rest of the world, and to make sure everyone realizes that we are strong like bull. Or bully. Beating up the bean sprout munching kid with glasses is classic bully behavior. Actually fighting someone with balls and the brawn to back it up? Never happens.

So how would Ron Paul feel if we pulled out and, as Miller puts it, proving he's more literate than the President he's rooting for, Iraq becomes "Slaughterhouse 5, 6, 7, and 8?" Paul, quite correctly, said that he would blame the architects of the war, those who got us in there in the first place. After Paul went off the air, Miller courageously confronted Paul by saying that he was blaming "Americans."

Naturally, Miller also used the time honored polemical technique of denying his listeners an objective frame of reference. He mentions, after Paul's exit, that Paul naively believes that our invasion of Iraq is what started terrorism to clime and that Middle Easterners have been crazy for 50 years or more. Naturally, Paul isn't this naive, but Miller seems to think that we are. The fact is, Paul has pointed out, accurately, that US involvement in regime change and the propping up of radical Islamists has been going on for quite some time now, dating back to 1953, when the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosadegh, was overthrown by the CIA. And, of course, it just goes downhill from there.

Its unfortunate that Miller has to play the flunky to a foreign policy that, there's no euphemistic way to put this, is dragging this country into a black hole the size of Dennis Miller's food-hole. But it also proves that news and entertainment have merged to such a degree that you have to hire a comedian to shove opinions down your throat. Oh, and, please, make it funny, because if you can't laugh about war, what can you laugh about?

Ray Robison not a Heavy Hitter

I'm a newly minted Ron Paul fan, and like most Ron Paul fans, finding any media exposure is almost next to impossible without resorting to constantly reading the same three free market blogs 50 times a day.

Imagine my surprise when I ran across an article by noted pseudo-intellectual hawk Ray Robison. Being the naive reader that I am, I thought, perhaps, that Robison had gone the way of Andrew Sullivan in backtracking hugely after Ron Paul gave him a backbone. Some of you may note that Robison has been referenced by Christopher Hitchens, former Trotskyite turned savior of the Western world. Others may additionally note that Robison actually doesn't know anything.

In his article, Robison continued his flair for disseminating obfuscations. Robison compares Paul's analysis that US policy contributes to "blowback" with the late Jerry Falwell's contention that our tolerance of homosexuality contributed to 9/11.

Did Falwell blame gays because of blowback? Or was he just intolerant of gay people? In the same way, other people's prejudices can metastasize as hatred and aggression towards us, as long as we fail to abide by their theocracy, ideology, philosophy, politics, etc. Is the hatred of gay people by Islamic extremists a case of blowback caused by US foreign policy? Of course not, they just hate gay people and the societies that foster homosexuality by allowing free people to be gay. This is why it is absolutely correct to say they hate us because of our freedom... So Paul and Falwell were correct in noting that we contribute to our own fate, an unfortunate smattering of truthfulness that scintillates the American liberal senses.

Naturally, in addition to this, I found several misconceptions in his review. Since he had contact information, I thought I would kindly point out some of his mistakes. It went something like this:

I read your article, and you are correct that there are many details missing from the Ron Paul's position of which he has only 30 seconds to explain during the 2nd Republican Presidential debate.

But those are details you haven't bothered to research, since the argument is full of polemics. Allow me to innumerate:

1. Claiming that Falwell blaming gays for 9/11 is somehow similar in any way to Paul's assertion that US foreign policy contributed to events leading to 9/11 is, at best, fallacious. Falwell's claim has no backing whatsoever, and I challenge you to find documented evidence that suggests that our tolerance of homosexuality contributed to 9/11. Paul assertion is well documented and confirmed by more state officials and policy makers than you care to learn about, not the least of whom are, Chalmers Johnson, CIA Chief Michael Sheuer, and the esteemed war architect Paul Wolfowitz. Not to mention that such assertions are within the 9/11 Commission reports.

2. If you care to look outside of a 30 second rebuttal, you might discover that Paul is not simply linking 10 years of bombing of Iraq under Bush I and Clinton. The list is myriad and Paul is well aware of them: Including a decade of bombing of Iraq, sanctions against Iraq, though ultimately Hussein's fault, were instrumental is the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi civilians through lack of resources and medicines, support for dictators, including Saddam Hussein, the Taliban (in March 2001 Bush II gave the Taliban 4 million dollars), the Saudi Family (who are, unlike your insinuations, an oppressive theocratic regime), the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran, to name a few. Osama bin Laden himself was once an ally of the United States. Details, details, details...

Does any of that excuse killing 3000 Americans in cold blood? Should we allow extremism to fester? No. Obviously not. Neither should we circumvent the Constitution and our principles to defeat an enemy. If we compromise on the principles that make us uniquely American, then the enemy has already won.

An informed criticism of US policies and it real consequences is the domain of citizenry. Stifling that criticism wishful platitudes is irresponsible and undemocratic.

That seemed like a fair assessment of the article. I didn't browbeat him or anything. This was his response, which I copy and paste here:

bush gave the people of afghanistan aid money, not the fucking Taliban.
spread your lies somewhere else you sick fuck...

and in conclusion fuck you you fucking pussy ass fucking cunt

Robison is the man that the Right proudly flaunts as an expert analyst of secret documents and a commentator. He is probably most noted for being wrong, as YourPlanetisDoomed points out:

James Ray Robison, a former Army officer from Alabama. He was contracted to work with the Iraqi Survey Group at the Combined Media Processing Center in Qatar, though only as an administrator working alongside others to triage/gist/digitise captured documents and other related media. He is neither a linguist nor a professional intelligence analyst. Indeed, it seems Ray has been rebuked by his seniors more than once for getting ideas way above his station.

Needless to say, I felt justified in offering this rebuttal:

Wow. I'm the pussy. You don't seem to deal well with people.

After your Ritalin kicks in, you might be able to calm down enough to go to a therapist and then maybe get your GED once you learn to read. Then maybe you'll be able to struggle through difficult reading material like the 9/11 Commission Report. Its riveting. Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, Mmmm. Book taste good. Make happy. Brain more big.

In conclusion, Bush didn't give the Afghan people 4 million dollars. He gave the Taliban 4 million dollars as a reward for fighting their own personal war on drugs. Specifically, destroying opium crops.

Thanks for poking the hole into my response, even though it was wrong. Next time, let your mother check your homework first.

We'll see if he has anything further to say.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd (is that really how his last name is spelled?) are too old to catch ghosts. And, frankly, who's going to top Ghostbusters 2? It had Bobby Brown and everything.

In an effort to prove my point, Imams in Malaysia have its their prerogative to issue a fatwa declaring "exhibitions on ghosts, ghouls and supernatural beings were forbidden, as they could undermine the faith of Muslims." This includes genies.

Why, you might ask?

Abdul Shukor Husin, The National Fatwa Council's chair stated, without a hint of irony, "We don't want to expose Muslims to supernatural and superstitious beliefs."

He also mentioned that meta-beings of that nature were beyond the scope of human comprehension. Which leads me to ask, if lesser supernatural beings are beyond human comprehension, what does that say about our ability to comprehend a Supreme Being, the Supreme Being?

Hmm...