The Guerrilla Campaign

The anti-war groups met in D.C. this past Saturday to protest the United States' involvement in Iraq. There were many speakers and it would be fair to say that some of them had their own agenda; some wanted to oust Aquino from the presidency of the Philippines; others sought independence for Palestine; some called for revolution in this country. The prominent theme, though, was to take activism home and work to end the war on the local level by bringing pressure on representatives and senators. In contrast the much smaller "Support the Troops" rally had relatively few speakers but kept to its message a bit better. There were verbal attacks of Cindy Sheehan and revulsion at the message of the peace protesters as if they were the opposition, but the two most memorable speakers were the Navajo code talker from WWII and the lady from Maine that makes the effort to greet returning troops, many of whom travel through her state. The organizers of the Support the Troops rally wer...

Where is heaven? Muddy and bloody in Louisiana and Iraq By John Kaminski skylax@comcast.net 9/26/05 Our unconfronted fear of death makes us kill all those people. When you cover up life with myth and ritual, you can't see anything for what it is. A long time ago I wrote: "We are animals in the sunshine, and we go to parrot school ... " So we feebly follow the inescapable echoes of our own conditioning and predispositions, and this leads us to the dead end — the species termination — we are now facing. Those men in European castles whose objective is to cull the herd of its ragamuffin rifraff are also led by their echoes, demented schemes of dominion rotting them from within in the dark shadows of their own putrid souls, but of course that doesn't stop them from ever pandering to the fecklessly faithful on their way to scheduled slaughters. As high-tech oppression closes in on us from all sides, we seek sanctuary in the loving arms of another, only to see them drift of...

Those who are old enough, will remember the old soviet Union, and their five-year plans, projections, and quotas. They will also remember that the only way to meet the quotas, and therefore avoid punishment, was to lie, and just say they did. The next plan would build on the foundation of the one before. What ultimately happened was that the people and the leaders of the Soviet Union didn't have a clue as to what was real and what was fiction in their economy, their inventories, etc. The whole thing was built on lies and spin. Which brings us to today. For five years, the bush administration of corrupt cronies and their craven syncophant media allies, have been lying, suppressing facts, spinning numbers, and making them up as they went along. And we know, now, that bush doesn't like bad news, so he has insulated himself in a cocoon of yes men. What ultimately has happened is that I don't think they have a clue anymore what is real and what is fantasy. Hell, little georgie s...

in my earlier post, I was too pissed to take the time to look up a better reference to the Hamdan case. here's another link http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lubet13sep13,0,1515736.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

So, why are the senators dicking around with this guy? The question I want answered is “Does he have any ethics?” “And does he think a supreme court justice should have ethics.” Or is that unimportant, too? Back while he was being interviewed for appointment to the supreme court, he was also hearing, and ruling on ‘Rumsfeld vs. Hamdan’. Now, as I understand it, judicial ethics do not allow a judge to hear a case where he is trying to get a job with one of the parties. So, you figure they’re going to ask that question? The man’s a sleaze. A construct. He’s been groomed by the right-wing for this job. and the media’s going along. You figure the news media will ask? Toss him back, and tell bush to send ‘em another. see: John Roberts’ Role in the Guantanamo Hunger Strike

Bush's power to detain US enemy combatant upheld 9/9/05 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050909/pl_nm/security_padilla_dc WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush has the power to detain Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been held in a South Carolina military brig for more than three years as a suspected enemy combatant without any charges, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. "The exceedingly important question before us is whether the president of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda," wrote appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig for the three-judge panel. "We conclude that the president does possess such authority," wrote Luttig, a conservative whom the Bush administration has been considering for a possible Supreme Court nomination... So. there we are. We live in a dictatorship. When the president can imprison anybody. citizen or not he wants, for as lo...

NY Fox Affiliate refuses to air anti-Bush campaign ad for local Democrat, AP By Sara Kugler Associated Press September 6, 2005, 4:38 PM EDT http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--campaignaddenied0906sep06,0,6633102.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork NEW YORK -- The Fox affiliate television station rejected a campaign commercial for a Democrat running in a local race, and the candidate alleges it's because the ad slams President Bush. Brian Ellner, one of nine Democrats running for Manhattan borough president, said the station had agreed to air his ad for the two weeks leading up to the Sept. 13 primary. But Fox 5 pulled out of the deal after it saw the 30-second ad, which features Bush's head superimposed onto a bare torso as the voiceover intones, "He claims he's a uniter, but New Yorkers know the emperor has no clothes." Ellner's advertisement has already drawn attention because it concludes with a scene in which he throws his arm around his pa...

With the death of the rehnquist, the bush appointed roberts to chief justice. Now the gonzalez is being rumored to be on the short list to replace O'Connor. I know there will be hearings, and all sorts of things will be asked; abortion, privacy rights, etc. Well, OK. But let's cut to the bottom line. These men should never be placed on the Supreme Court, in fact, they should never have been given consent for their current positions by the Senate at all. And one overiding reason for each of them trumps anything the bushistas can spin up. While he was being interviewed for the job of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, roberts joined in a 3-0 decision before the US Court of Appeals in DC. (real ethical) The ruling was such a sweeping acceptance of the administration's position that one journalist wrote that "Roberts signed on to a blank-check grant of power to the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists without basic due-process protections....

Bush Taps Cheney to Assess Recovery Effort By James Gerstenzang and Mary Curtius Times Staff Writer 12:54 PM PDT, September 6, 2005 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-090605katrinadc_lat,0,3464546.story?coll=la-home-headlines WASHINGTON — President Bush said today he was dispatching Vice President Dick Cheney to the region to assess the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, amid growing unhappiness in Congress with the government's response. The Senate Government Affairs Committee announced it would begin an investigation of the government's performance, and Bush said he, too, would look into his administration's response to the storm and the disaster that followed…. I wonder if we’ll see the results of these investigations before the 06 elections. It does seem as if all these so-called “investigations” just happen to finish up just after whatever upcoming election. The white house has already begun the spin that local authorities we...

  John Nichols Tue Sep 6, 1:08 PM ET http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=20080   Finally, we have discovered the roots of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism."   On the heels of the president's "What, me worry?" response to the death, destruction and dislocation that followed upon Hurricane Katrina comes the news of his mother's Labor Day visit with hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston.   Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees -- cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.   "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them," Mrs. Bush told American Pu...

Iraq charter update fails as US fights in north By: Mariam Karouny on: 06.09.2005 [17:31 ] http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/62407   BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's main Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim sects abandoned efforts to amend a draft constitution on Tuesday and a version rejected by many Sunnis will be printed.   "The talks have ended. We did not reach any agreement on making changes to the draft. It will be printed in the form it was read to the National Assembly last week," Bahaa al-Araji, a member of the parliamentary drafting committee, told Reuters. […] "We are ... very sad that they took this decision even though they know what will happen to this country if they pass it in this form," Saleh al-Mutlak, a senior negotiator for Sunni Arabs, told Reuters.   "If the constitution gets a 'Yes' then Iraqis who reject it will say that the results were falsified. The situation will be bad politically and the security situation migh...

By E&P Staff Published: September 04, 2005 11:30 PM ET http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054596   NEW YORK In its Sunday edition, the Washington Post quoted a "senior Bush official" who said that "as of Saturday [Louisiana Governor] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency." This, of course, was meant to make the governor look foolish and spread the blame around for the disastrous response to the disaster, though it was hard to imagine on what grounds the newspaper would quote an unnamed source in this case.   Several hours of blogosphere howling ensued. Later in the day, the Post ran this correction, or rather, 180-degree turn:   "A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26."  

you do to me   from the rude pundit …Thus, God's hand was forced to bring out the biggest guns to drive into stark relief the images of God's poorest people, the ones that the rest of us are supposed to care about, the ones who got nary a visit from a presidential candidate last year, the ones who are supposed to disappear like ants into the hill after they've done their work: out of sight, out of mind. God's made this pretty fuckin' simple, God thinks: what you do to the least of these, you know. The last twenty-five years or so have shown that the American government wants God to live in shithole housing with no health insurance, no child care, bare bones job training, no welfare net, facing starvation, violence, and/or imprisonment at every turn. And that's a pretty shitty way to treat God… http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2005/09/gods-eye-view-of-recent-events-oh.html

It’s been a long time since this holiday shifted from one honoring workers to one that honors capitalism. The ads are filled with Labor Day sales, and not one mention of the workers who make those products. The ones who make ALL the products we use, the roads we drive on, the houses we live in, the sales clerks themselves. The CCMA certainly would not want to remind Americans that a minimum wage job, worked full-time, at $5.15, pays an annual wage of $10,712. After mandatory deductions for Social Security (because that is certainly way elow the cap of $93,000) of $819.64, that leaves $9,892.53. That’s $190.24 a week. Sure can’t build much of a bank account with that. We’ve seen what happens to the poor in any emergency. In the past year alone, in just New Orleans, during Ivan and Katrina, they got left behind to fend for themselves. The ultimate, and unwilling, participants in bush’s “ownership society” And when Congress reconvenes tomorrow, what is their primary concern? Katrina? the ...