September 18, 2007 archive

The Neo-con Plan: U.S. backs Israeli pre-emption

This essay has been deleted. It is strongly suspected to have been the work of someone who is unwelcome on this site. It used dishonest sources and was deliberately inflammatory. The same will be done to similar efforts by supporters of the other side of this conflict. On this very controversial subject, we will only tolerate essays that in some manner foster dialogue and peace.

Guess who is managing Blog Talk Radio’s progressive radio site?

OK all you pundits-in-training, I have some good news for you. 


A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a diary titled “Thank you in advance for reading this”, which talked about all of the things that me, thereisnospoon, theKK, hekebolos and dday are doing over at Political Nexus, our internet radio site.  Since then, we have been real busy (also contributing to the lack of diaries by thereisnospoon and I over this time) with our site, and a few other nuggets of “progressive goodness”.

Other Great Moments in Tasing (Warning: Many Videos)

Political Protests

Miami Bike cops tase demonstrators at Free Trade Area of the Americas protests.

Police in Pittsburgh tase woman lying on the ground

The sadness and joy of being home again

Having been dropped off VERY early Tuesday  by the Road2DC crew, I am once more home in Omaha.

And as nice as it is to sleep in my own bed and being able to spark up a cigarette along with my Exxon Valdez sized mug of strong coffee and sit back and enjoy a reliable cup of bandwidth and scratch the dog behind his ears; I feel somehow smaller and discontented.

With the drone of EWTN on my Grandmother’ television in the background and my dog licking my ankles I sit here and try and put my experiences and thoughts in order on what by rights should be a large event in a persons life.  I apologize ahead of time if this meanders or bounces between the overly intimate and the coldly analytical; but the only way that I know how to do this at present is to just crack open the door and let my consciousness stream out.

Join me after the jump if you will and I think I will cross post this on the big K in hopes of keeping my donut ability, and on Road2DC to help flesh out our little travelogue.

Mind the furniture as we take a walk around the inside of my mind.

Impeach First, Then Defund

OK, enough fun and games. Time to get serious. And there isn’t any topic more serious than the Iraq War.

As the Big A may or may not recall, he was starting to convince me regarding the defunding argument prior to his departure from DailyKos. I want to thank him for his efforts, as they really helped me clarify all my thoughts on the matter.

Four at Four

This is an OPEN THREAD. Here are four stories in the news at 4 o’clock to get you started. A handful of bees is worth more than a sackful of flies.

  1. The Bush administration is racing to protect their secretive Praetorian Guard, The Guardian reports that Rice has apologized for the Blackwater USA shootings. “The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, apologised to the Iraqi government yesterday in an attempt to prevent the expulsion of all employees of the security firm Blackwater USA. ¶ Ms Rice called the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to apologise for the shooting. They agreed to run a ‘fair and transparent investigation’, according to a statement from Mr Maliki’s office. ¶ It added: ‘She has expressed her personal apologies and the apologies of the government of the United States. She confirmed that the United Sates will take immediate actions to prevent such actions from happening again.’ ¶ The apology offers a face-saving exercise for both the Iraqi and the US governments. The US would find it temporarily awkward if Blackwater was expelled. At the same time, it does not want to be seen to be undermining the decisions of the Iraqi government, which the Bush administration repeatedly insists is autonomous.” Meanwhile, there is more fallout from the Blackwater USA shooting spree. The New York Times reports that Iraq will review all security contractors in their country. “The Iraqi government said today that it would review the status of all foreign and local security companies working in Iraq after a shooting that left eight Iraqis dead.”

  2. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has released their third annual report on the most corrupt members of Congress. Twenty-two members of Congress made the group’s list with a special “dishonorable mention” going to Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). According to CREW, “this encyclopedic report on corruption in the 110th Congress documents the egregious, unethical and possibly illegal activities of the most tainted members of Congress. CREW has compiled the members’ transgressions and analyzed them in light of federal laws and congressional rules.” The four senators on this year’s list are: Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). The 18 representatives on this year’s list are: Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA), Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-LA), Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-CA), Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV), Rep. Timothy F. Murphy (R-PA), Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM), Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ), Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY), Rep. David Scott (D-GA), Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL), and Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-NM). Summaries for each member of Congress listed in the report can be found at beyonddelay.org.

  3. According to The Independent, the World’s first major wave farm is set to get the green light off the coast of Cornwall in Southwest England. “Wave Hub, a £28m project off the Cornish coast, is expected to be in place and producing renewable energy by 2009… ¶ Generators attached to Wave Hub’s infrastructure… will produce enough electricity for 7,500 homes, directly saving 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 25 years… ¶ Wave Hub could create 1,800 jobs and contribute £560m to the British economy over 25 years”. The Guardian lists the benefits and drawbacks of wave power.

  4. News of a strange, noxious meteorite in Peru is being reported by The Guardian. “A meteorite has struck a remote part of Peru and carved a large crater that is emitting noxious odours and making villagers ill, according to local press reports. ¶ A fireball streaked across the Andean sky late on Saturday night and crashed into a field near Carancas, a sparsely populated highland wilderness near Lake Titicaca on the border with Bolivia, witnesses said. ¶ The orange streak and loud bang were initially thought to be a plane crashing. When farmers went to investigate, however, they found a crater at least 10m wide and 5m deep, but no sign of wreckage.”

One more story below the fold…

5, Against 1 On The Ground, And You Have To Taze?

I’ll be putting this in orange in about 1/2 an hour, after you guys get first crack at me! 🙂

Give me a fucking break.

Quote all the Post Patriot Act Law all you want.

Get all gooey and concerned over Officer Safety as you want.

This is pure fucking bullshit.

Introducing 50,000 volts into someones body and taking the risk of death to get a pair of handcuffs on someone who is already subdued is excessive.

Period.

History will not absolve us.

While all the rage are primary diaries, OJ back in jail, Stars who will be dancing once again and the Patriots who seemed to have cheated, we just passed 1,000,000 dead Iraqi civilians.

This blood is on your, mine and every other American’s hands until we stop this war. We are the barbarians at their gate, their new Khan knocking on their door. More Iraqis have now died than during the Rwanda genocide. What will history call this? We should be beyond ashamed, we should be hiding our face in horror from international view until we stop this war.

Below, each O represents 20 dead Iraqi civilians.

Each O represents just one of these, JUST ONE:

Look at it below. LOOK AT IT.

LOOK AT IT NOW AND SEE WHAT OUR COUNTRY HAS WROUGHT.

End the damn war, or accept our place in the annuals of time as the harbringers of doom. HISTORY WILL NOT ABSOLVE US. LOOK AT IT.

EACH O IS 20 DEAD IRAQIS. LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT IT NOW.

Object Becomes Subject

Last night when I put up that “Let’s Introduce Ourselves” essay, I stated my genuine motivation for doing it right up front: I didn’t want myself or anyone else here to feel like an “outsider.”

Then, when my brain started winding down and I went to bed, some things came together for me that I’d like to share with all of you. It has to do with a quote I included in my last diary here from a book titled The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen where he is having a conversation with a friend about the similarities between corporations and hate groups:

He said, “They’re cousins.”
I just listened.
“Nobody talks about this,” he said, “but they’re branches from the same tree, different forms of the same cultural imperative…”
“Which is?”
“To rob the world of its subjectivity.”
“Wait – ” I said.
“Or to put this another way,” he continued, ” to turn everyone and everything into objects.”

Portrait of a Chicken-Hawk

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers’ Alliance, and My Left Wing.

Frederick W. Kagan

Glenn Greenwald, whose forthcoming book is on the meaningless chest-thumping of chicken-hawk culture, offers the following illustration. He quotes Fred W. Kagan, whose argument against Jim Webb’s proposal for allowing our troops more time at home between deployments, is that it will be a bureaucratic nightmare.

So this amendment would actually require the Army and Marine Corps staffs to keep track of how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home, how long the unit that they were now in had spent deployed, and how long it had been home…

Thirteen Congressmen, Thirteen Subpoenas

Anybody who watches Countdown with Keith Olbermann regularly has seen his recurring feature, the Apology Hall of Fame.  In it, the snivelling apology of Congressman federal prisoner Randy “Duke” Cunningham always holds a prominent place.  And well it should.  He’s arguably “the most corrupt Congressman in history”.  (Or at least, right up there.)

Most of that corruption was in conjunction with defense contractor Brent Wilkes.  Wilkes’s criminal trial is coming up, and his defense attorneys have issued subpoenas to 13 sitting Congressmen to appear as witnesses in the trial.  Nine of the 13 are Republicans.

All of them, in consultation with House attorneys, will not honor the subpoenas.  Call me old fashioned, but I always thought subpoenas weren’t optional.  Like if you don’t show up, you’re in contempt of court.  And can get your ass thrown in jail.  But maybe they’re all looking to the White House, and modelling their behavior on that…

Of goals personal and political

This is a short diary about personal goals, and political goals, under capitalism.

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