August 2009 archive

President Obama is now deploying American Troops to Colombia to start new unprovoked Military hostilities against (neighboring) Venezuela, using the same advanced Predator Drone Airstrike technology that has been murdering thousands of innocent civilians throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan.

From The RawStory.com Obama Sends Soldiers And Drones To Venezeula’s Neighbor

American troops will soon find themselves stationed at military bases scattered across the South American nation of Colombia with a mission to use advanced Predator drone technology to “aid in fighting the drug trade” and to “combat terrorism”.

President Hugo Chavez warned, “the winds of war are beginning to blow.” Chavez has already accused Colombian troops of making an incursion over the border and regional tensions are running high.

Honduran de-facto President Rafael Correa also took exception, saying the United States would target Colombia’s neighbors. “It has also sparked concern from moderate Colombian allies, such as Chile and Brazil, who want assurances that U.S. forces won’t be operating outside Colombia’s territory,” The Wall Street Journal adds.

The deathers are all worried about how old folks will be treated under Democratic health care legislation.

Perhaps they have forgotten how old folks were treated under Republican rule:

How many old folks died because our federal government saw no role to play in protecting and caring for its citizens?

See, the trouble with not looking back is that we don’t remember what we ought to remember.

Katrina is something to remember.  Always.  The federal flood, they call it on the NOLA blogs.  The federal flood because the Army Corps of Engineers cut corners and didn’t make the levees right.  The federal flood because heckuva job Brownie and Bush’s happy cronies didn’t give a shit about the folks suffering but only cared about going to the cash register to hear the “ca-ching” that meant their usual profit off of human suffering.  Blackwater profited.  Halliburton profited.  A whole lot of Republicans profited.

It seems there is too much to see and too many people to talk about (as well as too many Tequila and Coke’s to consume) to have time to post in a timely manner form Netroots Nation. So you are getting the news kind of a day behind. Sorry about that, the Dog is only one hound and he can only do what he can do.

“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“

Every sane person on progressive blogs is boiling over with feelings of frustration, resentment, and betrayal as the Bushbama administration continues to feed the American people into the ravenous maw of the plutocracy. It was not enough for them to guarantee permanent war to fatten the Military-Industrial Complex. It was not enough for them to use hundreds of billions of future public wealth to assure the rich compensation of Wall Street bandits. It was not enough for them to continue the erosion of privacy and civil rights by making the whim of the President the supreme law of a national security state. No, they now want to create a massive permanent subsidy of a dysfunctional private health insurance system that combines the worst features of greed-based “disease management” with the unaccountability of massive Government spending.

The only way to get this increasingly dysfunctional hijacked government off our backs is direct action against its plutocratic puppet-masters. The Whole Foods boycott and the Glen Beck sponsor boycotts are, I believe, early manifestations of successful direct action that bypasses the profoundly corrupt Bushbama regime. It will take time to bring down the first targets, but once the people appreciate the power and precision of the direct action weapon, it can snowball into the velvet revolution our nation so badly needs.

I urge you to actively participate in any direct citizen action that strikes against the American Plutocracy. This is our only peaceful chance of stopping the subjugation of the American people by ruthless and sociopathic malefactors of great wealth. If we miss this chance, we run the risk of the violent disintegration of American society. It is time to rip the masks off the cancer men who buy our politicians and poison our society. It is time to strike at their wealth, the only thing that they care about, and thus to strip them of the power to destroy our future. Direct Action against the American Plutocracy is the last best hope of American democracy.

Just caught this over at Stars and Stripes and from AP:

Senator wins release of US prisoner in Myanmar

U.S. Sen. Jim Webb won the release Saturday of an American prisoner convicted in Myanmar and sentenced to seven years in prison for swimming secretly to the residence of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the senator’s office said.

Yettaw, 53, is to be officially deported Sunday, when he will fly with Webb on a military aircraft to Bangkok, according to a statement from Webb’s office.

U.S. Sen. Jim Webb won the release Saturday of an American prisoner convicted in Myanmar and sentenced to seven years in prison for swimming secretly to the residence of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the senator’s office said.

Yettaw, 53, is to be officially deported Sunday, when he will fly with Webb on a military aircraft to Bangkok, according to a statement from Webb’s office.

I realize this is a bad time, with the Health Care debate and all –

Source

As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: “blows to [the] testicles;” “detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;” being “inoculated … through injection with ‘a disease for dog cysts;'” the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred “under the authority of American military personnel” and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.

so allow me to put it in that context, since the teabaggers are generally the ones who condone torture – and who responded deplorably to Hurricane Katrina…

Calif. wildfires force residents to evacuate  

State of emergency declared for Santa Cruz County

Associated Press

DAVENPORT, Calif. – Fire crews fanned out Friday across a parched California where wind-whipped wildfires have forced hundreds of people to flee their homes and led to an emergency declaration in Santa Cruz County.

In the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Lockheed Fire has blackened 6.5 square miles of remote wilderness and prompted mandatory evacuations of the mountain communities of Swanton and Bonny Doon, which have about 2,400 residents and several wineries.

Inside the Taliban: ‘The more troops they send, the more targets we have’

In the first of a series of exclusive reports in the run-up to next week’s Afghan elections, award-winning correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets a group of Taliban in their mountain stronghold

In the first of a series of exclusive reports in the run-up to next week’s Afghan elections, award-winning correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets a group of Taliban in their mountain stronghold

The Guardian, Saturday 15 August 2009

The provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika in south-eastern Afghanistan are dominated by one name: Jalaluddin Haqqani. A famous commander, tribal chief and cleric, Haqqani came to prominence during the war against the Soviets. In more than 20 years of fighting, he built an extensive network of influence that covered eastern Afghanistan and the tribal area of Waziristan in Pakistan, and reached as far abroad as the Gulf states, which he visited often.

Once a minister in the Taliban government, he is now aligned with their leader, Mullah Omar, but has retained independence and control over his men. His operations have struck deep into the territory controlled by Hamid Karzai’s government, reaching targets in Kabul. The movement’s signature attack is well co-ordinated and includes several suicide bombers, who storm into buildings before detonating their bombs.