President Bush has been nominated for a Purple Chin award for being injured in the line of duty during his May 22 mountain bike tumble. The commander-in-chief reportedly was thinking about ways to fix his bone-headed war without admitting any mistakes when he hit a loose patch of dirt.
Critics dismissed it as a silly attempt to beef up his pathetic military record, first as a Boy Scout duty escapee, then as a flighty National Guard pilot and now as a bumbling war boss foolish enough to don a flightsuit and pose with a bogus "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Bush, who nearly made the ultimate sacrifice after choking on a cheeto in January 2002, also fell off a hi-tech Segway scooter in June 2003, and dropped his pooch Barney on its head last September.
Media analysts differ on what the president might do for his next zany stunt. One suggested he parachute into a U.S. military compound in Iraq carrying a fake turkey stuffed with cheetos and K-Y jelly for the troops. Another said he should accidentally shoot himself in the foot at an NRA fundraiser to divert attention from his malfeasant handling of the war.
Ooops, it was too good to be true: Reducto's reverted back to his good ole' cretinous state
Yes, sad but true, the 600 pound Reducto's reflux over his computer and his subsequent apparent regain in sanity did not last. Experts are studying the case, but by and large favoring the theory that long term cheeto inhalation results in genetically modified (GM) cells of the brain and the testicles. This would explain sudden burst of deceivably apparent lucidity while in fact the organism is rotten to the core and beyond modern medical help.
Ok, down to the nitty gritty: here Regutso regurgitates once again on familiar themes. But, hey don't go away yet, he's got brand new berries up his ass and they do taste yummy according to his spokesman:
To resume the long and fart-winded course of his reasoning, I'll copy/paste the highlights - you intelligent readers can make heads and tails of it, and if needed, can always go check his blog! :-)
"THE PRESIDENT CONVINCED THE COUNTRY with a mixture of documents that turned out to be forged and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda,"
"There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever,"
The editor of the Los Angeles Times labeled as "myth" the claim that links between Iraq and al Qaeda had been proved.
A recent dispatch from Reuters simply asserted, "There is no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda."
60 Minutes anchor Lesley Stahl was equally certain: "There was no connection."
.....
"And on it goes"
BUT.....!!!!!!!!!!! Don't be a fool and think all this is the truth! No, Rotundo knows what you and I and Reuters and the Red Cross and Amenesty International and the BBC and every government and every citizen of this planet THINK they know, but in fact know cheeto's shit, so here is the real Recheeto's truth in plain and simple good wholesome american terms:
"In late February 2004, Christopher Carney made an astonishing discovery."
Like it? Yeahhh! But wait, it gets more exciting, promise!
"Carney, a political science professor from Pennsylvania on leave to work at the Pentagon, was poring over a list of officers in Saddam Hussein's much-feared security force, the Fedayeen Saddam. One name stood out: Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Hikmat Shakir."
WOWWWW! Here ya go! Undeniable proof! And to think Refucto, our hermophradite gooey cuddly friend is the hero to reveal it to the world! A tBlogger, no less! I'm sure Rocky is counting the hits to come and make tBlog bigger and brigther than Google and Microsoft combined. Ok, cool off and enjoy the rest, friends!:
"The name was not spelled exactly as Carney had seen it before, but such discrepancies are common."
Ouch. Minor problem Resuckto, we all know how all these camel fuckers have the same kind of myhomed Hali name or sumptin', but knowing our unsurpassed Intelligence (nudge nudge, wink wink!) I'm sure the CIA will determine that Osama Bin Ladden can actually be spelled WinstonSmith after a careful lab analysis of the nearest camel dropping.
So... here we have the proof! Osama bin Chirac, or is it Osama bin Saddam, whatever, one of 'm freedom cheetos dudes, are now safely in the hands of the Red Cross at the Geneva Convention Gantanamo Bay relief aid distribution center.
And so my fellow Murkans, god save texas and my virgin ass!
Reducto just vomitted some cheetos and got one freaky flash of intelligence
Following the discovery of a rat dropping in the truckload of cheetos he ingested for breakfast, Recrapto's regurgitated it all over his keyboard. This caused major electronic circuit disturbances and resulted it him posting something with a nearly sane content.
In essence, it goes like this:
The US should retreat from Iraq. The US should go home. The noisy protestors like the ignominous French will be glad. The Middle East will be glad. The world will be exctatic. This is just for starters: where the real goodies start is for US citizens, listen to this:
"America will enjoy cleaner air and less traffic congestion"... "the benefits will be immediate... 300 billion dollars". America will be able to enjoy social security funded cannabis for every man woman and child. Of course, one small penalty will be that Israel won't be able to conduct genocide over the middle east, but hey, they can always all move to NYC, right?
On the other hand, there will be major worldwide chaos, everywhere except in the US. The US will once again the place where ppl like me can't wait to swim across the Atlantic to get to and have a fulfilling life.
Geee... considering this amazingly wonderful portrait, I wonder why this is not already a fait accompli.
Reducto just swallowed a whole container of aid relief Red Cross cheetos, and has a monster case of Geneva convention diarrhoea.
Human rights, the Geneva Convention, torture - here comes ReJumbo, the unchallenged expert in these fields. Since according to him (or his copy/paste spokesperson), the Geneva convention does NOT apply to terrorists (mmm... says who? but not that it matters), it means that any person in the world, if deemed by the US government to be a terrorist (whether it's demonstrated or not), not only can be treated like shit, but as well must forget about any OTHER type of rights such as the right to be heard in a trial, where one can be proven guilty or let free as innocent.
Here are some gems:
"Critics, no doubt, will soon demand that reforms include an extension of Geneva standards to interrogations at Guantanamo Bay."
Ouch, man, this is absolutely scary: the idea of ppl being imprisoned in US extra-judiciary prisons is being challenged? What???? Human Rights groups complain that ppl who are put in prison without trial can remain there their whole life, no access to a lawyer, family, even the US's own pityful human rights representation? This is just outrageous!
I mean, only a few weeks ago, they released a 14 year-old boy who spent a year and a half there without a rat's ass reason (after having spent months in US prisons in Afghanistan). Now, any sane & reasonable person can see how fair and wholesome this is. I'm sure any of you readers would think it quite democratic and humanitarianly correct if a bunch of armed to the teeth gorillas busted your apartment and you ended up spending 2 years in jail without a clue as to why, and without a single recourse possible to be heard by any justice system in the world, let alone your own, so that you can claim your innocence or admit your guilt.
Geee.. to think we westerners were complaining about the ex-USSR's KGB prisons. We just don't know what's good for us, do we?
Here is another beauty:
"It ignores the unique demands of the war on terrorism and the advantages that a facility such as Guantanamo can provide. It urges policy makers and the Supreme Court to make the mistake of curing what could prove to be an isolated problem by disarming the government of its principal weapon to stop future terrorist attacks."
Dumb me! I only see the light now! A wonderful facility like Gantanamo, not only allows any person in the world to rot in jail till death for no reason whatsoever, but is actually a very GOOD thing that really cuts down on Al Quaeda's terrorism. How? simple: you grab the first 500 Iraqi or Afghan dudes you see, you send them to Gantanamo, and Bob's your uncle, you can claim to the US gullible population that you've just caught 500 confirmed terrorists. Uncle Bush has just reduced the terrorist population by 500 in one swift clever move, wow, what a smart and efficient president we have!!! Pretty neat, eh?
No, it's not a brand new boyfriend, nor even a brand new thesaurus, but... A JOB!!! I'm so excited for him I nearly choked on my daily Prozac and snorted my Effexor up my nose.
Rebusto's just been nominated Commander-In-Cheeto of the US army. As he explains himself, this involves pretty freaky working hours, not counting the additional hours needed to extract him out of his basement, widening roads for his missions, and getting the Airbus A380 ready real fast to be able to fly him around the world.
His highly secret duties are two-fold: one, to act as the the Cheeto Maître d'Hôtel at the White House and all US government agencies, embassies and consulates; now that's pretty demanding enough, I'm sure you'll agree; Two, .... hush hush... a secret mission to dowse the entire Middle-East with B52 cheeto droppings. This apparently will have the effect of making Iraqi as docile as donkeys and as cute as camels in heat, as well as cutting down on those dreaded sandstorms, and generally speaking make every Iraqi want to rush go buy their next Halli-Burger from the (hush hush again) the super-duper-ripper Mac-Cheeto chain of stores being built all over Iraq and the Middle-East. Some rumors hint Abu Ghraib ultra modern facilities as the first site to open, and the recent scandals, totally wrongly founded, were actually tests carried out to validate the super-happy and horny mood it puts Arabs in: and it works, they just can't themselves after a bucket-full of cheetos, they just jump on top of each other naked and start humping like Babylon whores. Good puritan GIs try to curb their democratic enthusiasm, but there ain't no stopping a cheeto intoxicated Iraqi..
Only downside is:
Our dearest hermaphrodite friend on tBlog, Returdo, may significantly reduce his invaluable contribution. Ain't it sad? I'm just mortified. I think I'll go snort a couple more Prozac and Effexor.
Anyone interested in the International Fusion Project?
Known as ITER, this project is coming close to beginning building its nuclear fusion superplant. The choice of a site is between France and Japan, and is still being debated. It is the biggest international project ever undertaken. China, Europe, Japan, Russia, Sth Korea and the US (who have recently joined back in, after having dropped out between 2001 and 2003) are involved.
This is really exciting news, for while it is unlikely we'll see a commercial model of a fusion plant in our lifetime, the last few decades of research have promised good hopes it is feasable, hence the reason for this experimental superproject.
For those who have no idea what fusion is, here is a very simplified explanation. It is what happens in a H bomb (as opposed to "fission", i.e. what happens in an A bomb). Fission consists in splitting heavy atoms (like Uranium) into 2 smaller ones and releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. Fusion is nearly the reverse: it fuses 2 atoms of Hydrodgen (the smallest and simplest atom) into one atom of Helium (the next smallest atom around), releasing in the process even much more energy than fission.
For those who think "yeah so what, what's that got to do with the good of humankind? We've already got tons of nukes!", think again:
This project is not about making H bombs. We already know how to do that, unfortunately. It is about controlling the fusion atomic reaction so that it can be used in electricity producing fusion plants. And that, we still can't do. Controlling the fission reaction is well under control: fission power plants have been around for decades. Where I live they are part of the landscape, as they produce the near totality of France's electricity. The problem with fission plants are 1) you have to dig Uranium ore out (a fairly rare commodity), 2) it is highly dangerous as we all know, 3) the "burnt" uranium fuel (i.e. the wastes) is even more dangerously radio-active and next to impossible to dispose of.
On the other hand, hydrogen is safe and plentyful: each molecule of water in our oceans has 2 atoms of it. The wastes are a very slightly radio-active isotopes of Helium, with a very short half-lifetime, as well as a few radioactive byproducts. However, while still not completely safe, these wastes are 100s of thousands of times easier to manage than fission wastes.
Clean energy with an unlimited supply, and no mines or other destruction of our planet to get to it.... sounds too good to be true... and yet, we're not far from cracking it.
Check the ITER site out: it's easy to read and has tons of information: ITER website
In a surprising move this week officials working to reelect president select George W. Bush launched a full TV, radio and newspaper campaign to garner votes for Ralph Nader.
"Don't listen to that horsey-lookin' fella John Kerry. If you've already decided to vote against me, remember that you do have a choice; vote Nader this November and let your voice be heard." says Bush in the televised commercials.
Kerry campaign leaders are infuriated over this move saying "Even those dumb green bastards knew a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. He has no right to try to split the non-Bush vote like this."
Bush -- whose campaign expenditures now exceeds all past presidential campaigns combined plus the deficit -- insists the move is in the interest of fairness. Opponents insist "All [Bush] knows of fair is hay rides and log rolling." A spokesman for Bush would not comment on this allegation though Bush himself overheard and eagerly concurred.
In the last three months the Bush campaign has spent roughly three times the money believed to exist in the world on his reelection. The effect is not suprising, polls have him earning almost 30% of the vote which, thanks to Nader, should be sufficient to earn him a second term and end the world as we know it.
While Bush himself insists that supporting Nader is "inoculate," his advisors insist he means "innocuous." Regardless, his victory is nearly assured and the end of time is near. Campaign officials suggest to "Vote Bush" and "Repent, for the judgment day is at hand."
President Bush created this chart with his Presidential Crayolas
------------ President Bush on Thursday announced the creation of a new alert system that will allow the country to know current risk levels of homosexuality at any given time. The system will coordinate risk factors with current US intelligence to determine the level of risk homosexuals pose to modern civilization as we know it. Masterminded by Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter, Mary, working in collaboration with Newt Gingrich’s lesbian sister, and Ronald Reagan’s gay son, the program will access the latest cultural trends and factor in the gay agenda, making all Americans aware of the current status of homosexuality within our borders. Also helping with the project were Jenna and Barbara Bush, the President’s twin daughters, but only that one time when they were really really drunk
Recent success of television shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the L Word, Will and Grace, and Queer as Folk have put our current risk level at Orange Alert... don’t drop the soap. President Bush issued a press release warning the country to keep their boxers on frontwards in the face of this impending danger that threatens the very fabric of our survival as a species.
Also putting America at risk is the stubborn insistence of some big city mayors to uphold the US Constitution by administering gay weddings across the country, despite public outcry from mostly frumpish, oftentimes divorced, disgruntled straight voters who can’t bear to see anyone happy.
Last week on an episode of Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club, Reverend Jerry Falwell blamed the terrorist bombing in Madrid, Spain on gay weddings happening here, right now, in America. Falwell has endorsed Bush’s Homo Alert System because “it will make God loving normal people aware of their sinful c&*# licking and c#$& sucking neighbors.”
"And by the way," Falwell added, "Spain is full of a bunch of fags. The Bible says so."
Iraqi Governing Council Appoints Jeb Bush As New Iraqi PM
In an incredible turn of events, the Iraqi Governing Council, as the new Prime Minister of Iraq, has elected Jeb Bush, the governor of the state of Florida and George W. Bush's brother.
"This raises many concerns in my book." Stated Senator Ted Kennedy, "It is preposterous to think that President Bush did not have an influence in this decision. We already had Allawi, the Iraqi exile in the U.S., lined up for the job way before we even attacked Iraq, I mean, the IGC already wanted him, then this major news came along this morning. You're telling me he was elected by the IGC? I don't think so. The IGC was told they had to pick Jeb as their new PM for the 2000 election payback Bush owed his brother. For God's sake he's not even Iraqi!"
"We are very happy and proud to have Jeb as our new Prime Minister." stated an IGC member who is really afraid to say otherwise, "Yes. It's true he is not an Iraqi, but we are an open society now. We welcome all people from all over the world to rule in our country, not just Iraqis. Heck, we have a coalition of foreigners telling us what to do now, so it's not going to be a huge change."
"I'm very happy and very honored to accept this new position." Stated Jeb Bush in a televised press conference, "I understand that people may think that the United States had an influence on the IGC's choice, but I can assure you that we didn't. They picked me on their own. It did not matter to the IGC that we would have pulled out all our troops immediately and we would have cut all money coming in to help rebuild their country if I was not picked. They are proud people."
The UN acknowledged that it is a little strange that the IGC appointed Jeb Bush as their new PM, but also added "This is really nothing new from the U.S. We've seen this before in Chile during the '70s."
Jurrasic Park IV: U.S. at risk of attack by giant pterodactyl
The U.S. has received credible "chatter" that al-Qaida may or may not try to attack the U.S. within the next 12 to 1,200 days, perhaps using a plane, a train, acid rain … or worse, a giant man-eating pterodactyl.
Justice Department wacko John Ashcroft said he has obtained documents showing that Osama bin Laden may have manufactured a genetically engineered Super Terror-Dactyl using prehistoric DNA from Nigeria. Ashcroft denied he was making up the pterodactyl alert to distract Americans from President Bush's inept handling of the war and his trouble using words to communicate. He declined to reveal the source of his information but said it definitely was not Ahmad Chalabi.
Possible targets may or may not include the Northeast, the West Coast, the South or the Midwest. Also at risk, said Ashcroft, is the town of Freedom, Wisconsin, "because the terrorists hate freedom."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who spends 8-12 hours a day deciding whether or not to keep the terror alert level at Yellow, said each pterodactyl warning must be evaluated individually and would not automatically result in naming a new terror color for people to be confused about.
When pressed, Ridge said he would definitely raise the threat level to Orange if the pterodactyl was breathing fire, and even Red if the beast was passing mustard gas.
Ridge said Americans should be 10-12% more vigilant, but added it is important to go about our daily lives in a guardedly carefree fashion. He said anyone uncertain about how to react to this new threat can call for a free pamphlet entitled "12 Ways to Not Get Blown Up By a Freedom-Hating Islamic Militant Douchebag."
Families can help children understand the threat of terrorism using Homeland Security-approved games like "Cops and Suicide Bombers," "Hide and Go Seek Weapons of Mass Destruction" and "Sy Hersch Sez." Secretary Ridge asked that anyone who spots a suspicious-looking pterodactyl call his hotline at 1-800-555-FEAR.
Major Terrorist Attack Coming Sometime This Year Somewhere In The U.S. Killing An Unknown Number Of
John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller will announce today in a press conference at 11am PST that the United States needs to brace itself for another major terrorist attack happening sometime in the Summer or Winter or Fall or Spring either in LA, New York, Boston, or any city in any of the states targeting either airports or malls or convention centers or retail outlets or restaurants or sidewalks, killing between 1 dog, 2 cats and perhaps up to 1 million people or more or less.
"This is not a joke." Stated Mr. Ashcroft, "This could possibly be at the same level as 9/11 was or not. But it is very serious. We've been hearing a lot of chatter in cell phones lately, and although we really don't understand exactly what it is they are saying, the way they were grunting and laughing, we think they are preparing for a huge attack."
The attack, officials warn, may be coming from a known sleeper al-Qaeda terrorist cell living here in the United States. The officials aren't sure of the actual cell's location at this time, neither are they aware of who the members are or how much money they have and who they are in contact with, however, it seems that there is enough credible evidence that the attack is coming.
"We have alerted all of the police departments and law enforcement agencies throughout the United States." Stated Mr. Ashcroft, "Everyone is aware now about this possible terrorist act. The only thing we ask, however, is that everyone continue on their regular day as if nothing is going to happen. However, be aware that you can report any strange acts, such as people taking the bus, people getting into airplanes, people ordering food at restaurants, or any other suspicious activity by calling 1-555-TERRORIST."
"I'm not saying that something may not happen," stated a man on the street, "However, this warning of a real big attack without any specifics really busts my balls if you know what I mean. How can I go on my normal routine when I'm told that a huge attack is coming, but yet, we have now idea as to where, when or how? I'm already paranoid enough. Now I'm going to end up turning in my parents into that terrorist alert phone number they put out."
"I had no clue we had this threat." Stated Donald Rumsfeld, "I'm the freaking Secretary of Defense! I need to know this stuff! Throw me a bone for God's sake! First Abu Ghraib, now this! What's next?! I don't know what's next! That's the hold damn problem!"
Demand Justice for Nanon Williams, American Child Offender Facing Execution On Flawed Evidence
Nanon Williams is on death row in Texas for a murder committed when he was 17 years old. Amnesty International is greatly alarmed by this case, given doubts about Nanon Williams guilt raised by false ballistics evidence, his inadequate defense representation, and the fact that he was a juvenile at the time of the crime. International law prohibits the use of the death penalty against a person under 18 at the time of the crime.
Nanon Williams was sentenced to death in Texas for the 1992 murder of Adonius Collier. He was 17 years old at the time of the crime. Amnesty International is greatly alarmed by this case, given doubts about Nanon Williams guilt raised by false ballistics evidence, his inadequate defense representation, and the fact that he was a juvenile at the time of the crime. International law prohibits the use of the death penalty against a person under 18 at the time of the crime. Please urge the Attorney General not to oppose a new trial for Nanon Williams and to guarantee that international law is being upheld.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Nanon Williams is on death row in the USA for a murder committed when he was 17 years old. His sentence violates international law, which prohibits the imposition of the death penalty against anyone who was under 18 years old at the time of the crime. The USA leads a tiny handful of countries which have executed child offenders since 1990, and accounts for 70 per cent of such executions since 1998. Inside the USA, Texas is the leading perpetrator of this violation, and Harris County is the worst offender inside Texas. Nanon Williams was sent to Texas death row after a Harris County trial.
There are serious doubts about his guilt in the crime for which he was sentenced to die. False ballistics evidence presented by the state a possible sign of systemic problems at the Houston Police Departments crime laboratory outlined in this report went unchallenged by an unprepared defence lawyer. Two of the original trial jurors have suggested that the outcome of the case would have been different if the jury had been provided with the evidence as it is known now. After hearing the post-conviction evidence, a state judge found that it had been the states prime witness, not Nanon Williams, who had first shot the victim. The judge decided that Nanon Williams should receive a new trial because he had been denied his right to effective assistance of counsel. In 2002, however, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected her recommendation without clear explanation. Nanon Williamss case has now moved into the federal courts. He does not currently have an execution date.
A mental health expert has said that Nanon Williams suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his violent upbringing. The jury was presented with no such expert evidence, and received a limited account of his abusive past and its impact on him. At the same time, the prosecutor made arguments for execution that were not only potentially inflammatory, but also flouted a central principle underlying the international ban on the execution of child offenders, namely a young persons potential for rehabilitation and change.
Amnesty International believes that Nanon Williams should receive a new trial. This time, in accordance with international law, the death penalty should not be an option.
AI watch: Protect 12 year old Turkish Girl and Her Family from Threats and Ill-Treatment
Amnesty International spotlight: =====================
B.P (f), aged 12 Members of Her Family
Twelve-year-old B.P. and members of her family have reportedly been receiving threats since she lodged a complaint that she had been severely beaten by police officers in Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey. Amnesty International is seriously concerned for their safety.
B.P. was reportedly abducted from the street in Diyarbakir on 19 February 2004 by people carrying walkie-talkies, who blindfolded her and took her away in a car. They asked her where her sister was, and when she did not reply they reportedly punched her repeatedly in her mouth and knees, so that her mouth began to bleed heavily. She was then reportedly taken to a place which is believed to be the Anti-Terror Branch of Police Headquarters in Diyarbakir where she was given treatment for her mouth but then beaten again and threatened. She was released later that day.
When B.P. applied to the local branch of the Human Rights Association (Insan Haklari Dernegi, IHD) she was unable to speak and had to write her complaint. Medical reports confirm these injuries. After the IHD lodged a complaint on her behalf about the incident with the State Prosecutor, B.P. and her family, who were staying outside Diyarbakir city, received five or six phone calls from people who falsely identified themselves as IHD members, asking them to come to Diyarbakir. On 19 May, B.P. and her mother visited the office of the IHD to seek advice.
The IHD sent a fax notifying Amnesty International about its concerns for the safety of B.P. and her family. Shortly after they sent this fax, B.P. reportedly received an anonymous call saying Why did you apply to Amnesty International? It will be very bad for you now.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION There have been several recent legal reforms in Turkey which, if properly applied, could be important measures against torture and impunity. Among these are changes in detention procedures, which include a reduction in the length of time detainees can be held without charge and which uphold the right of all detainees to have immediate access to legal counsel.
Nevertheless, Amnesty International is still receiving numerous complaints of torture and ill-treatment in police and gendarmerie stations as well as allegations that these new regulations are not being respected. A worrying practice, demonstrating the way in which some law enforcement officers are ready to bypass new regulations that may prevent torture or ill-treatment, is that of unrecorded detention, whereby the abducted person is not registered as being in detention and is generally taken not to a police station but to another place, or is driven around in a marked or unmarked police car.
Amnesty International has also received reports of individuals, and even their families, who have lodged complaints that they have been tortured or ill-treatment by police officers, have been threatened or beaten to force them to withdraw their complaints.
About Turkey Reports of torture continue in Turkey with an increasing use of torture methods that did not leave visible marks on the body. Detainees continued to be subjected to methods such as electric shocks, hanging by the arms, and falaka (beating on the soles of the feet).
Take Your Human Rights Activism to the Next Level! Amnesty International's Urgent Action Network (UAN) serves as the organization's "emergency room" for human rights violations. Every day, UAN members in over 70 countries write personalized appeals to authorities who are in the position to ensure the safety and fair treatment of those whom Amnesty International seeks to protect. While a few of these Urgent Actions appear in AIUSA's Human Rights Action Center, as this current action does, there are hundreds of other cases each year that are not posted online due to time constraints, rapid changes in the individual's situation, or the lack of an email address for a government official.
If you enjoy writing appeals and can respond quickly to urgent human rights concerns, please take this opportunity to step up your commitment to Amnesty International. Support Amnesty International and get involved in the global human rights movement.
More on Bush's 5-step plan: Democracy R Us planned for Iraq
As the clock tick, tick, ticks toward the June 30 transfer of power to a pseudo-sovereign Iraq, President Bush laid out a five-point plan to boost his bum approval rating.
Apart from some creative pronunciation of those pesky words "Abu Ghraib," the embattled CEO of Democracy R Us did not waver from reciting each word that had been written for him. (Good news about Abu, Bush aims to demolish the notorious torture house and Halliburton has stepped up to do the job for just $1.2 billion.)
Iraq's conversion to a Halliburton-based economy will be aided by a transitional Iraqi government comprised of guys who don't mind having a terrorist bull's eye painted on their headgear.
National elections will come soon enough. But first it is vital to teach Iraqi politicians how to divert millions into their campaign war-chests and slime their opponents with negative ads. Presidential candidates will also need seminars on how to exploit family connections and use the Supreme Court to seize power.
The president's speech underscored his recent gibberish tarring people who oppose his war as racists who "don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern." (Too bad he botched his slur by implying that when you speak of skin color in America "ours" equals "white." See complete quote here.)
Supporters say Bush's credibility in handling the war is heightened now that he has been wounded in the line of duty. He's not bragging about it, but the president received a Purple Chin after the bicycle he was piloting was brought down by some rogue freedom-hating loose soil. (Undaunted, Bush reportedly leapt up and asked if the crash could be linked in any way to Saddam Hussein.)
His battle wounds patched and powdered, President Bush said, "A free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America." As a bonus, they get a new Big Brother too. The commander-in-church closed with his traditional heavenly high note. "May God bless conservative, heterosexual, pro-life, pro-war America."
Reducto blocks access to comments - Rsheinfield DELETES them
Well, well. How low can those right-wing chicken-shit assholes stoop. They certainly don't have any balls, and I doubt seriously they have pussies either.
On one of the rare posts of Rsheinfield I decided to comment on ("FRENCH POLITICIAN WANTS ARABS TO HAVE NUKES TO "CHECK" ISRAEL" , which you can find here: http://www.tblog.com/template... ), I found my comment mysteriously gone a few hours later.
Although none of the other comments had disappeared, thus ruling out the possibility of him deleting his post and reposting it, I still gave him the benefit of the doubt, and reposted another comment. Same mysterious disappearance a few hours later.
Go figure.
Being Very Familiar With The 12-Step Program Bush Introduces The 5-Step Program For Iraq
On Monday night, President Bush outlined his new vision for the future of Iraq, which includes 5 distinct steps to bring freedom to Iraq and to finally get rid of the major pain in the ass Iraq has turned out to be. President Bush himself came up with the idea of having 5 steps to bring success to Iraq based on his experience with AA and their 12-step program.
"The 12-step program was a savior for me." Stated President Bush, "I partied way too much and the 12-step program brought focus back into my life. That is exactly what I'm trying to do with the new 5-step program for Iraq. I want to bring focus back into Iraq and the real reason why we are there for, oil, I mean to liberate the poor Iraqi people from tyranny."
The President's speech, which was given at the U.S. Army War College, lasted close to 33 minutes and called for the shut down of Abu Ghraib prison.
"Under Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghrabab stood for a symbol of torture and mayhem." Stated President Bush in his speech, "Under the U.S., Abu Grabibbobu stood for, oh wait, was it us or Saddam? I'm confused. Oh yeah, under us, this prison brought shame to the U.S. because of a few rat bastards that decided to do stupid things that made us look bad. One day, with the approval of the Iraqi people, we will demolish and destroy Abu Grahimini and we will make sure that any new prison that is open in the future, will not only treat it's prisoners like human beings, but will have a name I won't have a hard time pronouncing."
The 5-step program to help Iraq achieve democracy and freedom includes the following:
Step 1: Hand over authority to the IGC (Iraqi Governing Council), if they are all still alive, on June 30th. After that, start blaming them for any atrocities that happen in Iraq.
Step 2: Help establish security by making the poor U.S. soldiers stay way beyond the required time they signed up for. Also, if need be, send in more U.S. troops so that more of our soldiers can be killed by crazy religious nuts.
Step 3: Continue rebuilding Iraqi's infrastructure using the American taxpayer's dollars so that more crazy Iraqi nuts can blow themselves up and destroy the bridges, electrical power plants and water systems we just helped rebuild.
Step 4: Encourage more international support now that we can't deal with this by ourselves any longer. Ask all countries, except France, for help and in return, give them a cut of the profits from Halliburton.
Step 5: Move toward a national election that will bring true freedom for Iraqis. If that does not work, just send back Saddam Hussein and let him deal with it.
This is not as funny as some, but hey... it's more entertaining than Refucto's prose :-)
With some critics calling for him to be stripped naked and led out of the Pentagon on a dog leash, Donald Rumsfeld stepped up the campaign to save his skin by announcing a lavish compensation package (including Halliburton stock options and McDonalds gift certificates) for the victims of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.
"It's the right thing to do," the embattled Secretary of State told Congress. Poor guy. He'd never let on, of course, but it's got to bug him the way he botched the planning and execution of the war.
Now this horror show - set in a former Saddam hellhole, starring part-time soldiers not trained to be prison guards and stinking all the way to the top - may yet cost him his job as the president's guy in charge of getting people killed.
The despicable acts at Abu Ghraib have further scarred America's image around the globe. But Rummy's no dummy. He just spun the breakdown in human decency under his command as an opportunity to wow the world with another lesson on how a Democracy deals with evil-doers.
True to his word, Rumsfeld has assembled a generous package designed not only to salve Iraqi humiliation with material compensation but also to symbolize all that is good about America. Some of the items include:
- Self-esteem counseling from Dr. Phil - Season tickets to the Texas Rangers baseball team - Basketball lessons from noted Allah enthusiast Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Autographed copies of Bob Woodward's best-seller "Plan of Attack" - Cameos in the next Ben Affleck-Arnold Schwarzenegger film, "The Armagedinator" - Collectible "Spider-Man" action figures - Official "I Got Abused at Abu Ghraib and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" sportswear - Kodak Max disposable cameras - Nike Air Jordans (made by skilled Indonesian craftschildren) - A Mickey Mouse photo-op at Disneyland - A gas-guzzling Hummer with a "George Bush is a Swell Guy" bumper sticker - Allah-approved "Mission Accomplished" prayer mats - "America's Funniest Prison Home Videos" on DVD - Reducto's gut explosion following a cheeto overdose - A hand-written half-apology by Rumsfeld himself - And samples of Levitra and Cialis to help put that spring back in their step
This Republican media whore is mad as hell at the questions posed to Secretary Rumsfeld yesterday in the hearings on Capitol Hill! Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is a very sexy man who is a compassionate conservative! What's so bad about these prisoner abuses anyways? I mean who hasn't been sodomized with a broom handle or had their genitals hooked up to electricity or been put on a leash and treated like an animal or been in a nude pyramid? Secretary Rumsfeld said, "Sometimes freedom is messy!"
Freedom is messy, and I should know, for I too have been interrogated while nude and blindfolded. I had the seeds of freedom spewed all over me during my first big job interview. It was my first big break, and I was being interrogated with my legs high in the air as we formed a nude pyramid in the interview room. I was free to walk out at anytime, but I found out that by lifting up my skirt and staying in that office with those 15 company executives, that I was able to prove myself as a shrewd Republican businesswoman with morals and values. I was able to prove myself as someone who could perform under pressure and multi-task, if you know what I mean! Sure, freedom is messy, but sometimes the benefits outweigh the mess, and I got the job!
The liberal media have shown the pictures of Iraqi mistreatment so much, that I barely get turned on by seeing them anymore. Yes I admit, the first 30 or 40 times I saw the pictures my nipples became rigid with excitement for our military prowess. Wave after wave of shock and awe reverberated throughout my womanhood upon seeing our military flex its muscles on defenseless Iraqi citizens! Seeing our proud men and women sodomize these helpless ragheads made me think of how thankful the Iraqis must be for the newfound freedoms they now have. Now that we removed Saddam, we can introduce them to compassionate conservatism with a broom handle up the pooter!
So cry me a f***ing river of tears about "inhumane treatment" and how those Iraqis are being chained like dogs. Well boo-f***ing-hoo! This is one blonde neocon bombshell that has had a dog collar around her neck plenty of times! You don't have to spell it out to me, or show me some pornographic pictures of naked Iraqi men. This blonde media whore has been collared and made to get on all fours, and I loved every minute of it! So, don't tell me that these Iraqis didn't know it was only fun and games!
What is all this liberal media sensationalism about boomsticks being rammed up the Iraqis' pooter holes? Yes, maybe we did take away the rape rooms, and maybe we are still raping the Iraqi people. But we can't just expect the Iraqi people to quit cold turkey! We have to wean them slowly off of being raped! I'm too busy to worry about Adula, or Habib getting their colons reamed out by a broom. I have had lots of things rammed up inside of me! Does the liberal media expect everyone that has rammed something inside of me to apologize?
I have been there and had things inside me that would make the liberal media squirm! These things made this media whore scream out, "Do it til you and I are satisfied!" Yeah, I squirmed when things were going into me, but I squirmed and screamed for more, and I didn't turn anyone in! Don't tell me that Ali, Adula, or Habib, or whatever the F*** their names are, didn't scream out in pleasure! Yeah baby, tell it like it is and pass the motion lotion and the broom handle!
George Bush's moving explaination about killing people: "It's just so beautiful!"
In a ceremony in Tallahassee, Florida, President George W. Bush was presented with the Golden Scythe by the Grim Reaper.
In presenting the award, the Reaper noted President Bush's "outstanding contributions to death," acknowledging that while the President may not be as prolific as past winners, "he has the strength of his convictions and uses them to bring death.
"Given that he leads a nation inexplicably opposed to death, President Bush been a consistent supporter dating back to his days as Governor of Texas," the Reaper said.
It was while Governor of Texas that George W. Bush first became officially involved with death, signing off on 152 executions during his time in office.
"Of course, that was just the start!" said the Reaper, who went on to cite Bush's accomplishments since becoming President, including numerous deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan of both Coalition soldiers and enemy combatants. Showing what press materials called his characteristically mischievous sense of humor, the Grim Reaper said that Bush's efforts have earned him the title of "Junior Harvester."
Bush was unable to attend the event because of a fundraising conflict, but he told the audience in a prerecorded message, "I believe death is important to our lives. It is important to our freedom. I know when I bring death I am really bringing life, but a different, better life."
Among those in attendance were Bush supporter and former George H. W. Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan. Speaking to everyone with a camera or pencil, Noonan said, "George Bush really has made an art of death. He's shown us all that you can rid the world of anyone in the name of freedom and peace. It's beautiful."
Bush: 'We am the good guys and wasn't even invited at the goddam camel wedding'
George Bush Reminds Americans That There Are Only Good Guys And Bad Guys:
The United States Army defended today the position that the dozens of Iraqi's killed in an attack were not civilians at a wedding and were, in fact, "Bad guys."
"I can't make it any clearer," said Mstr. Sgt. Joe Pentangelo. "We are the GOOD guys. Good guys don't bomb civilians. So that proves it, we couldn't have made a mistake."
"Our bombs are SMART bombs," added PFC Michael Morano. "SMART bombs know the difference between guerillas and wedding guests. Guerillas are BAD guys and wedding guests are GOOD guys. And those SMART bombs killed all those people, So obviously, the people who died were BAD guys." He then hung his tongue out of the side of his mouth, crossed his eyes, and said "DUH!"
The reaction has remained the same all the way up the chain of command. All concerned agreed that, since we are at war with "BAD Guys", a casualty is proof that the person who died was, indeed bad. "It's simple logic," said Wesley Dobbs, Strategic Commander. "If we, the U.S. Army, are the GOOD guys, and it's in the "Good Guy Charter" that we only kill BAD guys, then those people had to have been guerillas." When the recent torture of prisoners at Abu Garib prison was brought up as an example of the blurring line between the relativeness of good versus bad, Dobbs replied, "Well, they were in prison, so obviously, they were bad. Besides, that's all in the past. Quit living in the past, focus on the NOW."
"I think we're missing the more important point here," responded President Bush at a press conference this afternoon. "Irregardless of the inproprieterness of this situation, we must ask ourselves, 'If this was, indeed, a wedding, then why were we not invited?' Sure, there was a lot of smoke, but after the fires died down, our boys checked the bodies - and there was no wedding gown or tuxedos. That alone is proof of the hineyness of these Guerillas in the Mist."
Yahooooo!!!! Michael Moore's Farenheit movie gets the "Palme d'Or" at Cannes' festival!
Only 5 minutes ago: just saw on the local news (since I'm only 150km away from Cannes). Farenheit 911 got the "Golden Oscar" of the Cannes' festival.
Oh, and for the Refucktos/Nogurus/Defenso rs/RedTigresses of tBlog, the prestigious Cannes's festival awards are not judged by French critics, but by critics from all over the world.
3 days ago, when his movie was being screened, I got to see some very interesting excerpts on the local news. No doubt that even if Disney refuses to distribute the movie in the US (seems like the distribution is assured worldwide except in the US and in Taiwan.... that's freedom of speech), there will be widespread Internet distribution.
I don't normally go buy movies, but here's one I probably will.
Bush Retracts "End Of Major Combat" Speech One Year Later
One year ago, President George Bush declared the "end of major combat" in Iraq telling the soldiers "job well done" under a "mission accomplished" banner. However, one year after that speech, close to 600 troops died in "none major combat" situations.
"When I said the end of 'major combat'," stated President Bush, "I really did not mean the end of Major Combat with a capital 'M'. I meant the end of 'major combat' with a little 'm'. Everyone knows that 'major' in lower case is much smaller then 'Major' in upper case. It's the media again twisting my words and being ignorant of the way we speak in the military. So yes, the 'major', with a little 'm' combat was over, but the overall 'Major' with a capital 'M', is not over, as it is very obvious. I hope you have it clear now."
U.S. Fires on Iraqi Wedding; Bush: 'We had intelligence it was a gay marriage.'
The U.S. shot and killed over 40 people in a wedding ceremony in Iraq from a U.S. helicopter according to Iraqi officials.
"All we heard were Americans on top shouting 'No gay marriage! No gay marriage!' and then the shots began." Stated an Iraqi attending the wedding that wished to remain nameless, "What is wrong with same sex marriage? We accept it here in Iraq."
"We had direct orders from President Bush," Stated a U.S. commander who wished to remain anonymous, "to go in and stop the wedding. It looks like it was a gay couple getting married and you know how President Bush feels about poofter marriage."
"The people of Iraq need to understand that we are bringing freedom and democracy to them." Stated President Bush in a press conference immediately following the news of the attack, "However, there are limits to freedom. The people of Massachusetts are pushing those limits and so were the people of that town in Iraq. I will not allow same sex marriage. Now, I can't do much about it here in the U.S. We have a Constitution. But there is no Constitution in Iraq. So, I gave the orders to take them down. That should set a precedent for any future Iraqi poofter couples that want to get married. They'll think twice before they say 'I do'."
21.05.2004 - 22:59 CET | By Andrew Beatty EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS The EU today (21 May) agreed a deal which paves the way for Russia to join the WTO.
Meeting in Moscow for the twice-yearly summit EU representatives announced that a deal had been struck ending six years of negotiations.
Council President Bertie Ahern welcomed the deal as means of increasing prosperity in Russia and the EU.
"This EU-Russia WTO agreement is a giant step forward for open markets and trade liberalisation in Europe", he said in a statement.
Following a rocky period in EU-Russia relations, both sides are keen to present themselves as partners and prove that the relationship can still work.
"The tone and the quality of our discussions today give me great confidence that EU-Russia relations are reaching a new level of trust", Mr Ahern said.
A row over enlargement marred relations in recent months, with Moscow refusing to sign a deal extending relations to the 10 new member states and the EU responding with the threat of sanctions.
Geopolitical goals achieved With one of Russias main geopolitical goals achieved, the EU is now looking for a trade-off.
"We would like Russia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol at the earliest opportunity. The EU underlined that the WTO negotiations have given greater clarity on energy pricing, and this should facilitate the ratification of the Protocol", Mr Ahern said.
President Putins envoy to Europe Sergei Yastrzhembsky earlier this week told the EUobserver that progress on WTO membership could facilitate progress on Russian ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.
At the summit, Vladimir Putin also announced that Russia was moving towards ratifying border agreements with Latvia and Estonia.
Previously Moscow had been unwilling to budge on the issue, however a deal last month in which the EU tacitly promised to safeguard the rights of Russian speaking minorities in those countries appears to have been enough to produce some movement.
Here is a neat one by John Breneman: ------ Alarmed by a recent poll in which 75 percent of U.S. teenagers identified Bush as a snotty British rock 'n' roll band and Jesus as a shortstop for the Angels, President Bush today unveiled a faith-based educational initiative called "No Slacker Left Behind."
Bush plans to reinvigorate the teaching of Civics in the nation's classrooms, having learned that students in the same survey identified Civics as "those cars made by those Japanese dudes." Today's young people, he said, are ignorant about the basics of Democracy and the role of God in American politics.
"Some of these children have never even heard of the Rebelutionary War or the Defecation of Independence," said the president. "Why, in my day, the teachers nurtured our patriotism with stories of the founding fathers -- great men like Thomas Washington and George Jefferson."
Asserting that high school students must be taught the obligations of citizenship and God's important role in politics even if it means using corporal punishment, the president pledged $120 million in funding for steel rulers to discipline those who refuse to chant the "Pledge of Allegiance" and said accountability could be measured using oak yardsticks.
"These kids today need to learn why it is so vital that they exercise their right to vote for the pro-life Republican candidate of their choice," the president continued. "Many of them do not even realize that their God-given duty to carry a gun begins in the womb."
India, with its 650+ million ppl, is the largest democracy in the world.
Democracy?
Yep, apparently, because ppl vote for their prime minister, it seems to qualify.
Minor problem of course is that, if the elected prime minister doesn't suit the right-wing nationalists, they threaten to assassinate her. And considering it's been the fate of all the preceeding left-wing prime ministers - including of her own family -, I can hardly blame Sonia Ghandi for stepping down. Why sacrifice one's life for a country effectively ruled by millions of racist fascists?
And so Indian democracy works real neat: you vote right-wing and the elected prime minister is in, or you vote left wing, and the elected prime minister is assassinated. Simple, but effective. I wonder when Bush is going to think of it.
Even the Iraqi prisoner scandal doesn't shake Reducto out of his congenital fascist imbecility
Here are some of the latest gems from fuckwit Retardo:
"Photos of American GIs abusing Iraqi prisoners have now been plastered just about everywhere in the world. Talk about stupid! These idiots took snapshots of themselves!"
LOL! How dare they show how fucked they are and leave clues of their crimes, eh? I mean, it's ok to torture and all that crap, no problem, hey it's war, remember, but for goodness sake, don't be a real crime perpetrator by leaving clues so that the truth can be found! That's just TOTALLY UN-American!!!
Yeah Refuckto, just about the same stupidity as Hitler's clique. Ring a bell? No? Well, for your info, the SS photographed and filmed just about every one of their murderous deeds. Why? Fuck if I know. Stupid, I guess, you'd say - just like the US army. Or maybe, they felt so above the law they couldn't care less - just like the US army.
"Amnesty International, displaying its usual selective condemnation, is leveling hysteric accusations of widespread and systemic abuses by U.S. forces."
Right! Now Amnesty International is a "hysteric anti-US" organization. ROFLMAOOOO!!!
Refracto... what's next? You gonna say like Red Tigress that the Red Cross is the worst humanitarian organization in the world? Or is it already a fait accompli?
"Historically this may be the cleanest military campaign ever waged by an army unparalleled in its restrain and honesty. "
Someone help me, I'm gonna choke laughing!!!!!!!! "Unparalleled in its restrain and honesty".... LOLLLLLLLL!!!
Shit a brick, it doesn't sound too promising and glorious for the rest of US's military campaigns, does it?
Give up the cheetos, man, the way you're going the vault in the White House basement you're expanding in won't take the stress and the whole thing will collapse.
Bush Addresses Nation: President's Ass Mysteriously Catches On Fire
Above: Vice President Dick Cheney Attempts To Extinguish The Fire That Engulfed The Presidents Pants
WASHINGTON , D.C. The pants of United States President George W. Bush mysteriously caught fire early Wednesday morning while the President was delivering a speech on terrorism and the current war in Iraq . Vice president Dick Cheney was quick to realize there was a problem and grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and put out the flames before any serious damage was incurred. Experts are currently investigating the conference room in which the accident occurred in hopes of discovering a clue that might shed light on exactly what happened to cause the President's pants to catch ablaze.
The most likely explanation is a defective electrical outlet situated right behind the President. An electric spark is believed to have ignited the profuse amount of methane produced by Pres. Bush while talking through his ass.
Speculations that Osama was hiding behind the curtain and poked a long stick of smoldering incense up the president's butt have been ruled out after a thorough search of the White House failed to discover a video cassette with a return address and tel number claiming the attack.
Canne's festival live - Michael Moore's movie previews + interwiew
Since it's local news here for me, I get 1 hour of it every night.
Day before yesterday was M. Moore's movie screening, of which I got to see some excerpts - looks very promising indeed!
There was a short interview with him, in which, among other things, he explained how he managed to get hold of some rather hard to get footage. Tonight, right now, there is a 2 hour special on Canne's festival, with due anytime, a lengthy interview with Michael.
From what I can gather, Michael has assured distribution of his film worldwide, except in the US and Taiwan... go figure!
Oh, and for NoGuru... I'd rather be a communist over a fascist like you any day, LOL.
Bush says terrorists are behind Newsweek approval rating poll
President Bush said today that his record-low 42% approval rating "sends the wrong message to our troops" and accused unpatriotic poll respondents of trying to "weaken our resolve."
Bush would not rule out using the Patriot Act to "smoke out" those who believe he might have made a mistake. In his strongest statement yet about the Newsweek survey, Bush grinned and said, "I doesn't read Newsweek." Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld agreed, but acknowledged that he sometimes uses the magazine to wipe his butt. The New Yorker, too.
"The actions of these few bad apples do not represent the America that I know," Bush said of his Newsweek naysayers. The trusted advisers who feed him his news have assured him that his approval rating is a robust 91% among right-wing chickenhawks and Halliburton executives.
Bush declined comment on a survey that showed his approval rating has slipped to just 9% among people who don't live in America and a paltry 1% among naked, dog-leashed Iraqi detainees. The president's approval numbers are holding firm at 0% among parents whose soldier-children have been killed in his mistake-free war.
The good news is that Bush's approval rating is 94% among those who believe it was a super idea to bust into Iraq with no concern about alienating the rest of the world, no clue that the welcome parade would be a funeral procession, no idea that it would actually fuel the international terrorist movement and no plan to stabilize this ethnically and religiously complex nation and get the hell out.
Bush Worries Being Informed Might Cloud His Great Decision Making Abilities
This should appeal to NoGuru. A perfect description of his philosophy, enshrined with his blog title of "Just my opinion.... but I'm a dumbass and proud of it". ----------- by Marcelo Lewin
In an interview in a new book about President Bush called "Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the Bush Haters" written by John O'Neil Clarke Woodward, President Bush says the he does not like to read the "left wing" liberal news because it may cloud his great decision making abilities.
"I don't like to read current news, editorials, watch TV or listen to the radio." Stated President Bush in the book, "Why would I want to cloud my mind with other people's ideas when I understand and know that mine are the correct ones. You see, listening to other people would make me rethink my strategies and place doubt in my mind. That is not a good thing to happen to someone that has a direct connection to God like I do. I need to keep my mind clear so that when God calls and tells me what I should do, I can proceed with the instructions."
Nine Out Of Ten Iraqis Prefer U.S. Torture To Saddam's, Says Bush
by Scott Borchert --------- President Bush, in a press conference on Wednesday, insisted that while he abhors the alleged mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war, most of said prisoners are "much happier" with the abuse administered by US soldiers than what they had become accustomed to under Saddams old regime, and in fact prefer it by a margin of 9-to-1.
We will investigate this situation, find those responsible and punish them accordingly, Bush told reporters, but lets keep in mind that most of the same prisoners are much better off with hoods over their heads and electrodes on their extremities than they would be if Saddam were still in power.
After pausing and clearing his throat, the President continued by saying, I mean, who wouldnt take some minor electrocution over having his eyeballs removed after just having watched his wife and children lined up and shot by a masked firing squad?
When asked to explain the presence of an angry mob, which has gathered around the prison daily in the hopes of speaking to loved ones, President Bush replied, I said 9 out of 10, not 10 out of 10.
I think I'm going to test John Breneman's theory and get sloshed tonight. Maybe the Bush nightmare will go away for a few hours. ----------- A new report in the prestigious Imaginary Journal of Medicine reveals that alcohol has been proven effective in combating the pain and discomfort of sobriety.
A team of researchers at Dartmouth's renowned Tappa Kegga Dei fraternity discovered that moderate to heavy consumption of alcohol provides fast temporary relief from the mental and emotional anguish caused by a world gone haywire with George W. Bush at the helm.
"The number of Americans suffering heightened stress and right-brain migraines has skyrocketed under the current administration," said Dr. Jack Daniels of the Tennessee Bourbon Institute. "Alcohol, booze in layman's terms, can produce an effect medical professionals call 'taking the edge off' or even induce a euphoric semi-conscious state if desired."
The study reported that medicinal use of alcohol has risen by 40% in the year since the president toasted his war victory with that intoxicating "Mission Accomplished" rotgut.
"Let's face it, things are looking pretty bleak. Hatred of America has exploded. All the president's men had a role in dragging us into a hellhole. Three shots of firewater, administered orally, can make the world a little less horrifying," said Professor Glen Livet of the Foundation for Moonshine Research.
Despite its therapeutic efficacy, alcohol consumed for medicinal or recreational purposes may produce a range of side effects, including but not limited to:
- Nausea - Moronic behavior - Involuntary stumbling - Slurred speech and vocal spasm - Loss of job - Loss of wallet - Loss of driver's license - Beer belly - Vietnam hangover - Increased risk of yelling at the television - Confusion about how gay weddings "threaten" traditional marriage - General obnoxiousness - Genital flacidity - Heightened use of the term "I love you, man"
For those who wonder why the US is in Iraq - IQ test on Iraq war
This article goes back over a year ago: 05-April-2003.
Not only are the facts at the time accurate, but in view of the developments over the last 12 months, some of the questions show how perceptive the author was and how predictable the entire saga was - hence giving no excuse to the Bush admin to have proceeded in spite of a world outcry and damning proofs againt it. ---------
By Daniel Quinn
Take the War on Iraq IQ Test - Do you know enough to justify going to war with Iraq?
************************* ********* 1. Q: What percentage of the world's population does the U.S. have? A: 6%
2. Q: What percentage of the world's wealth does the U.S. have? A: 50%
3. Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves? A: Saudi Arabia
4. Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves? A: Iraq
5. Q: How much is spent on military budgets a year worldwide? A: $900+ billion
6. Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.? A: 50%
7. Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the world, according the UN? A: 10% (that's about$40 billion, the amount of funding initially requested to fund our retaliatory attack on Afghanistan).
8. Q: How many people have died in wars since World War II? A: 86 million
9. Q: How long has Iraq had chemical and biological weapons? A: Since the early 1980's.
10. Q: Did Iraq develop these chemical & biological weapons on their own? A: No, the materials and technology were supplied by the US government, along with Britain and private corporations.
11. Q: Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare against Iran? A: No
12. Q: How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988? A: 5,000
13. Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time? A: 0
14. Q: How many gallons of agent Orange did America use in Vietnam? A: 17million.
15. Q: Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th terrorist attack? A: No
16. Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the Gulf War? A: 35,000
17. Q: How many casualties did the Iraqi military inflict on the western forces during the Gulf War ? A: 0
18. Q: How many retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by U.S. tanks with ploughs mounted on the front? A: 6,000
19. Q: How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War? A: 40 tons
20. Q: What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994? A: 700%
21. Q: How much of Iraq's military capacity did America claim it had destroyed in 1991? A: 80%
22. Q: Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for anything other than deterrence and self defense? A: No
23. Q: Does Iraq present more of a threat to world peace now than 10 years ago? A: No
24. Q: How many civilian deaths has the Pentagon predicted in the event of an attack on Iraq in 2002/3? A: 10,000
25. Q: What percentage of these will be children? A: Over 50%
26. Q: How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq? A: 11years
27. Q: Was the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: No
28. Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: 20 million
29. Q: How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict sanctions on Iraq's imports and exports? A: 12 years
30. Q: What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)? A: 38
31. Q: What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000 births)? A: 131 (that's an increase of 345%)
32. Q: How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999 as a result of UN sanctions? A: 1.5 million
33. Q: How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due to sanctions since 1997? A: 750,000
34. Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq? A: No
35. Q: How many inspections were there in November and December 1998? A: 300
36. Q: How many of these inspections had problems? A: 5
37. Q: Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba'ath Party HQ? A: Yes
38. Q: Who said that by December 1998, "Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history." A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief.
39. Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq's post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and dismantled? A: 90%
40. Q: Is Iraq willing to allow the weapons inspectors back in ? A: Yes
41. Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992? A: Over 65
42. Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990? A: 30+
44. Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons? A: 8
45. Q: How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got? A: 0
46. Q: How many nuclear warheads has US got? A: over 10,000
47. Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons? A: the US
48. Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have? A: Over 200
50. Q: Who said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"? A: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
Here is one dedicated to Retardo... ------ By John Breneman
Warning that America has turned into a nation of "flabby lard-asses," President George W. Bush unveiled a national fitness initiative on Saturday after leading White House staffers through a grueling "Abs of Steel" video workout.
An estimated 60 percent of U.S. adults are overweight, said the president, who challenged Americans to get 30 minutes of exercise each day, whether it's running, walking the dog or just spanking the monkey.
"Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists," said Bush, noting that our national appetite for nachos and fried food contributes to the country's dependence on foreign grease.
"Our nation's health depends on every American doing his or her part," said the president, who also cautioned citizens to avoid "risky behaviors" like smoking cancer sticks and crack, shooting heroin or getting so drunk that you choke on your own vomit.
America's obesity also impacts her astronomical health care costs. For example, the nation now spends an annual $183 billion to fight heart disease alone, almost as much as we spend on Chicken McNuggets each year.
The president's high-profile fitness extravaganza also featured a 3-mile run on Saturday. After clocking in at 20:09, the president issued a bold challenge, daring other world leaders to race him.
"Forget the nuclear arms race," he said. "Hussein, Arafat, Pervez Musharraf ... I'll leave all of 'em in the dust."
The president, a self-described gym rat who likes to spend up to four hours a day playing T-Ball, plans to give a major speech on Wednesday encouraging Americans to eat more spinach and yams.
Bush is also expected to announce new federal funding for liposuction during Wednesday's first-ever presidential "Weight of the Union" address.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry came under enemy fire from Vice President Dick Cheney, who unleashed a brazen daylight assault on the status of the war hero's medals.
Cheney counted on the element of surprise, knowing that a man who was injured fighting for freedom in Vietnam would never expect to have his Purple Heart attacked by a guy who blatantly ducked the war.
Pundits questioned the strategy of having a war coward question the courage of a war hero, but political psychoanalysts say this is just further evidence that the White House is run by arrogant chickenhawks who think the American people are stupid enough to buy anything they say.
Kerry did not respond by calling Cheney "a stinking load of ass dirt," but he did call upon President Bush to prove that he actually served in the National Guard while hiding from Vietnam. The challenged has renewed questions about whether the president also evaded Boy Scout duty.
In other White House news, the Supreme Court might make Dick Cheney spill the beans about his double-secret energy club. Critics have sued for the release of information, saying Cheney let energy companies and other big campaign donors help draft energy policy designed to line their pockets.
Fortunately Cheney's hunting pal, Justice Antonin Scalia, has refused to recuse himself from the case. No word on whether Scalia plans to brandish his duck rifle to defend Cheney's right to screw the public in private.
Finally, Cheney and his lifelike sidekick, President George W. Bush, spent some of the day getting ready for their joint appearance before the 9/11 commission. Bush sat on Cheney's knee and practiced grinning, while Cheney stuck his meaty paw up the back of Bush's shirt to gain control of his vocal cords.
When asked why the two insist on appearing together before the panel rather than individually, the president said, "Duh. To answer their questions?"
When asked why he refused to answer the question about why the president and vice president insist on appearing together before the 9/11 panel rather than individually, the president refocused his smirk and said, "Duh. To answer their questions?"
When asked a third time why he was insulting the American people by pretending not to understand a simple question they'd like to hear answered, Bush refocused his smirk and said, "Something will pop into my head."
Killing wheelchair-bound people with missiles is Awesome
I heard about the Israeli rocket attack on that old handicapped Hamas guy, and I'm sure a lot of people had the same reaction I did: Whatever reason the army had for doing it, blowing up a guy in a wheelchair with a missile is unbelievably, absolutely fucking awesome!
Now, let me say this: I realize the guy was one of their big rebel leaders over there, or something, and I guess he called for the deaths of tons of innocent people and so on, and that was the excuse they needed to take the old guy out. But that's not the point. The point is they totally fucking launched a missile at the guy's wheelchair from a helicopter! That's some grade-A Bam Margera video-game shit, and I for one am fucking stoked that they did it. I don't know how much that one missile cost, but it was utterly and completely worth it to know that some coot on wheels got rocket-launched into the middle of next year.
This sort of thing needs to happen more often. The U.S. military would be a lot more popular if they concentrated on pulling off cool-ass shit like this. And it doesn't have to be just wars, right? I mean, we have a lot, I mean a lot, of folks in wheelchairs all over the world. And sure, most of them are probably all-right guys. But people are people, so there's gotta be a whole lot of wheelchair-bound people that are total shits, too. I bet there are guys in wheelchairs who beat their women, or maybe they got that way by drunk driving, or maybe they wheel around all day trying to diddle little kids. Face it, if someone's trying to do that shit, it's okay to fuck them up as much as possible. Blowing their asses up with a missile would be pretty much perfect.
I like the part about getting them while they're leaving church, too. It's when they'd least be expecting it, being all contemplative and shit, and suddenly they're like, "Hey, do you hear a helicopter? Guys? Guys?" Then it's just pshoooowham! Blood and spokes everywhere!
God, that's cool just to think about. I guess it's probably pretty rare, too. Even if it doesn't become standard procedure, it's awesome that it happened once.
Bush vows to pay closer attention to the needs of Non-Presidents
WASHINGTON, DCResponding to recent polls suggesting that he has lost touch with the average American, President Bush vowed Monday to pay closer attention to the needs of non-presidents.
"Perhaps, in the past, I've been somewhat lax in addressing the day-to-day problems of the nation's non-presidents," Bush said during a White House press conference. "Well, that's about to change. I hereby pledge to hear and heed the concerns of non-chief-executivesa group of people who are very valuable to our country, in their own way, even if it's not always readily apparent how."
Bush has charged his staff of 50 with the task of helping him learn more about the nation's many non-commanders-in-chief.
"From here on out, I will do my best to address the needs of this group of upstanding Americans who, I'm told, are part of a proud non-presidential tradition that stretches back hundreds of years in this country," Bush said. "To this end, I have appointed a blue-ribbon fact-finding committee to look into the issues of non-presidents and find out what their jets are named, how their staffs are performing, and how they're handling increased pressure from the media during this election year."
Of particular concern to Bush are the ways in which the sluggish economy is affecting the average non-head-of-state. He said he's curious to know how non-presidents are responding to the rising costs of television-campaign ads, whether their donations from special-interest groups have dropped in number, and how much money they are able to set aside for foreign invasions.
"I want to live in a country where all citizenspresidents or notcan pursue their own policy initiatives abroad, even if they suffer from a lack of funding," Bush said. "In addition, Americans shouldn't have to go without the crucial tax cuts they've promised their political supporters, just because there's a mounting federal deficit. We must find a way for every citizen to afford the fundamentals of daily life: an adequate entourage of Secret Service personnel, limousine rides to and from fundraisers, and the political leverage to send legislation through Congress."
Bush said he will reach out to non-presidents with great care in the coming monthsfinding out how their oil wells are doing, how the major-league sports teams they own are weathering the market, and which Ivy League secret societies they belong to. He said he will also carefully read any policy papers they've had their staffs draft recently and review any recent press announcements they've made or leaked.
"There is only one way to win over the hearts, minds, and votes of our nation's non-presidentsa group which, I've learned, is larger than I had previous reason to believeand that's to ask questions," Bush said. "Is security tight enough at their military retreats? Do they have adequate support from their friends in the private sector? Are the global petrochemical companies that back them doing a good job of adhering to government guidelines regarding their campaign contributions? Do they and their households have access to high-quality spin control? If not, I'd like to help non-presidents and their families get the help they need."
Bush said he's so committed to learning more about non-presidents that he has scheduled a fact-finding visit to the home of one such non-president next month.
"In June, I'll be visiting my parents in Texas to discuss these issues," Bush said. "As it turns out, my father is one of these non-presidents. I didn't realize that before, because people still call him 'Mr. President' wherever he goes, but as it happens, he's actually been a non-president for years."
"It just goes to show that, when it comes to non-presidents, I still have a lot to learn," Bush added.
In closing, the president said he has great respect for the many hardworking non-presidents he sees on a daily basis, including those who serve his meals, schedule his phone calls, and carry his shoes.
Added Bush: "You know, some of my best friendsincluding [Secretary Of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld, [National Security Advisor] Condoleezza Rice, and [Vice-President] Dick Cheneyare non-presidents."
Bush & Blair shocked by prison abuse... but knew about it 2 years ago
String of reports warned of widespread torture by troops dating back to Afghanistan By James Cusick, Westminster Editor ---- THE US and British governments have received Red Cross reports month after month since the declared end of the Iraq war a year ago, detailing the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners. Yet, with report after report piling up on their desks, President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to say nothing in public to condemn what they knew in private.
The acknowledgement of the torture and mistreatment of Iraqis has only been made by Bush and Blair since the broadcast and publication in the past 10 days of pictures depicting horrific abuse. They have now offered public apologies.
Despite Bush attempting to portray himself as ill-informed of the true extent of the abuse and torture, the White House has been fully aware for the past year of the violations of the Geneva Convention committed by its personnel in Iraq.
Since April 2003, US authorities in Baghdad have got monthly reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
A senior source at the ICRC said: It doesnt matter which report it was, we had been telling the US and UK authorities in Baghdad for over a year about the scale of this [abuse and torture] problem. They had been given 10 or more reports. All detailed the same findings. They knew this had been going on for a year.
Paul Bremer, the US governor heading the coalitions provisional authority in Iraq, was also handed a report by Amnesty International which described prisoner abuse and Geneva violations throughout US-run camps in Iraq last July.
As a result, Bush called defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the White House for briefings on January 16. Rumsfeld is said to have told Bush the extent of the concern over abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. The meeting was attended by White House chief of staff Andrew H Card Jnr.
Yet Bush used his weekly radio broadcast yesterday to promise to learn all the facts and determine the full extent of the abuses. Admitting the scandal was a stain on US honour, he pledged to fully investigate prisons in Iraq.
Rumsfeld admitted to Congress yesterday that the Pentagon and a US general had tried to block CBS, the US TV network, from broadcasting abuse pictures taken inside Abu Ghraib. He also said more photographs and videos exist, adding: Its going to make matters worse if these are released to the public.
The comments highlight the Bush administrations priority unconcerned with the humanitarian issues, but seeking to avert a public relations disaster.
Teresa Richardson, of Amnesty, said: We have been delivering reports on these violations to the US authorities since the period between 9/11 and the beginning of the Iraq war. The abuse and torture, in Afghanistan, goes back two years.
She said Amnesty reports on abuse by British soldiers in Iraq had also been handed to the Ministry of Defence in London in the months immediately after the war.
But weve received no response from the MoD. Our experience with the MoD, going back to Northern Ireland, is that investigation should not be carried out by the MoD, but by a civilian-led organisation.
The same criticism can be levelled against the Pentagon. From the summer of 2003 till January 2004 allegations of abuse and torture had been mounting. The Pentagon ordered in the Criminal Investigation Division hoping to limit damage if details reached the public.
The MoD said that, although the US report in January was never officially sent to them, they knew of it. On the other reports from Amnesty International and the ICRC an MoD spokesman told the Sunday Herald: It would have been logical that we would have seen these reports.
Blair would have known of these reports existence and knew the MoD were quietly investigating. He too could have gone public with an apology, instead he remained silent.
Rumsfeld may have hoped the arrest of six US military police in connection with alleged abuse of prisoners would improve matters. But the final report from the US Army criminal investigation team, delivered in March this year, must have made grim reading to even Rumsfeld. The January allegations which had been the catalyst for the Pentagon-ordered inquiry now came back with a fuller report, more graphic, more horrific and backing up the allegations made for year by Amnesty and the Red Cross.
Again there was only silence from the White House, and from the Pentagon.
Colin Powell at the State Department was said to be becoming increasingly uneasy over a situation his aides say he knew could get out of control. But Powell, increasingly isolated from the White House, could do little to influence either Bush or Rumsfeld.
In late April, according to one source in the Foreign Office in London "the shit has indeed hit the White House fan". CBSs 60 Minutes programme showed the pictures the Pentagon knew were out there. The New Yorker magazine followed on with even more horrific images The Wall Street Journal published the ICRC report.
Last week Secretary of State Rumsfeld said he was "stunned", Bush apologised and said he would investigate. Tony Blair said the images were deplorable. Apologies however late will not be enough. All know worse, much worse, is still to come.
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission today (12 May) decided to delay a decision on the controversial transfer of air passenger data to the US.
"No decision will be taken today", the Commission spokesperson for internal market said on Wednesday. "I cannot say more".
The Commissioners were expected to take a decision on last December's agreement on the legal transfer to the US of information on passengers including name, address, phone number, credit cards and their traveling companions.
Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Antonio Vitorino hinted on Monday during a visit in the US that approval was likely.
"I don't want to anticipate those decisions, but [it is] likely those decisions will be in favour", he said.
However the Commissioners today decided to delay taking a decision on the matter.
The US has been requesting the data since the 11 September attacks in 2001 in order to combat terrorist threats.
Airlines failing to provide passenger data to US security agencies within 15 minutes of a flights departure already face the possibility of fines of 6,000 euro per passenger or potential loss of landing rights in the US.
The European Parliament 's position is that the transfer of such personal data breaches EU privacy laws, and voted to refer the matter to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Press Articles New York Times
Written by Sharon Spiteri
Rumsfeld rushes to visit abuse prison in Iraq & take his own piccies
In March 2003, when several U.S. soldiers had been captured, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in an interview with the New England Cable News Channel, "We have reminded the Iraqis -- and I'll do it if they are watching this program -- that there are very clear obligations under the Geneva Convention to treat prisoners humanely."
Wolfowitz added: "We treat our own prisoners, and there are hundreds of Iraqi prisoners, extremely well. We feed them, we take care of them, they're very safe with us."
Yeah, it does not get any safer than that...
God help us. If this is an "extremely" good treatment, in Wolfie's mind, it makes one shudder to imagine what torture would look like.
Wolfie has been too busy dreaming up the neo-cons grandiose world domination plans to notice that American soldiers get killed by the hundreds in Iraq, and the civilian Iraqis get butchered and raped either in their homes, or in American-run prisons. The Red Cross officials met with Wolfie in 2003 to alert him about the on-going abuse in American prisons. But his delirious mind apparently failed to register this event or its significance. Or, what's more probable -- and more terrible -- he, like his bosses, simply did not care.
President Bush warns he may use military force vs. Democrats
With his poll numbers slipping, President Bush said today he would not rule out using military force if he feels any of the Democratic candidates poses a significant threat to U.S. interests.
The president said he has evidence that retired Gen. Wesley Clark and other Democratic contenders may be stockpiling chemical and biological weapons in their campaign warchests. Further, Bush said, the British government has documents purporting to show that Sen. John Kerry attempted to purchase uranium "yellow cake" from Niger.
"You're either with us or you're a terrorist," said Bush, who claimed to possess some "darn good intelligence" revealing that each Democratic candidate opposes both the president and his policies. Bush said he has learned that Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman have ties to al Qaeda and that Al Sharpton once invited Saddam Hussein and his sons to a P. Diddy concert.
If the Democrats persist in criticizing the war in Iraq, the president said he will have no choice but to "give 'em a taste of heavy artillery." Asked what types of offenses might warrant a military response, Bush said he would only consider deploying troops if the Democrats continue to whine about U.S. casualties in Iraq and the need to seek help from the international community.
The president's mother, Barbara Bush, who recently called the field of Democratic contenders "a pretty sorry group," said she stands prepared to use even harsher language "if those pathetic liberal jackasses don't stop harassing my Georgie."
Bush stopped short of issuing a formal declaration of war against his rivals, but assured the American people that he would not hesitate to use some of his favorite "nuke-u-lar weapons" to defeat the menacing Democratic "axis of evil."
Think comparing Bush to Hitler is an exaggeration? Think again...
This is a direct copy/paste of a hair-raising article Diannemaire posted a week or so ago under the header of "When democracy failed: the warnings of history", and seemingly missed the notice it deserves.
The article is not at all about Bush, it's about the rise of Hitler. And yet, if you read each paragraph and think of what's been going on for the last 3 years in the US under Bush, you'll notice an uncanny if not freaky similarity. Most people think Hitler built gas ovens right from the moment he was in power. Nothing of the sort: it was a long and progressive road that started with apparently very commendable and social family values and eventually reached its hideous culmination.
This article was written over a year ago, and the analogy in the development of the Bush reign and Hitler's would be even more striking if updated with the events that occured since then.
Here it is: ------- By Thom Hartmann feb 27 2003
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at our disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.
Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
Bush To Hand Blame for prison abuse scandal Over to Iraq on June 30
May 11 - In a nationally televised address, President George W. Bush revealed that the blame for the Iraqi prison abuse scandal would be transferred from the United States to the new Iraqi government on June 30.
"Accepting blame for the prison abuse scandal is an important step in Iraq's evolution towards democracy," Bush said, adding that accountability for the scandal must go to the highest levels of Iraq's yet-to-be-appointed government.
"It is my hope that Iraq's new leaders will accept full responsibility for these abuses," Bush told his television audience. "There's an old saying: in a democracy, the dinar stops here."
While diplomatic experts had questioned what exactly the sovereignty handed over to Iraq on June 30 would consist of, the president made it clear that it would be made up solely of blame for the prison abuse scandal. "As of June 30, we fully expect to put an Iraqi face on this fiasco," Bush said.
At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that he was "delighted" by news of the decision to blame the prison scandal on the new Iraqi government. "This is a solution that should satisfy even our toughest critics, because now those critics will be transferred to the new Iraqi government," Rumsfeld said.
Prior to the President's announcement, Rumsfeld had been bracing himself for the release of the Abu Ghraib Golden Edition DVD, including never-before-seen footage and special tormenters' narration.
"This DVD is full of extremely radioactive stuff," Rumsfeld said. "Come June 30, the new government of Iraq will have a lot to answer for."
Reducto sues Cheeto Inc & McDonald for having become a brainless, racist, big fat fuck
Yes, I draw my hat to you, this time you didn't just amuse me, you made me angry. I mean REALLY angry.
I admit it: I screamed and was in desperate need of kicking something for at least 10 minutes. See? You do win sometimes.
Then I pondered for quite some time about a suitable retaliation. After I calmed down some, I thought "nah, forget it". But then more of your delightful inane crap keeps spewing out of your asshole like you have the runs non stop - I guess you must have set up your computer in front of your toilet and that's where you sit all day long: cheetos go in one end and out the other, right?
In the end, as I'm not very good at anger diatribes, I chose satire instead and decided to reveal this funny underground report about you:
----- A tBlogger is suing Cheeto Inc and four leading fast food chains, claiming their fat-laden products made him obese ... and ignorant & racist as well. James Yerian, aka Reducto, filed a drive-through lawsuit against McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Reducto, a 5-foot-10, 572-pound basement tBlobber at the White House, says fast food makers are liable for his two heart attacks -- one suffered in 1996 while inhaling a pail of KFC extra-crispy topped with 24 bags of cheetos, the other in 1999 while pounding Quarter-Pounders and super-size fries gratin with a 5-inch-thick layer of cheetos and gorgonzola.
"I really feel used and violated by Ronald McDonald. I thought I could trust that clown," said Reducto, who also claims he believed Col. Sanders was a high-ranking U.S. military official who had issued a "direct order from Bush" to eat bucket after bucket of glistening, deep-fried chicken parts sprinkled with truckloads of cheetos.
Reducto said he adhered to a grease-based diet for decades, always believing it was good for him and very holy too, until his doctor told him what most people with half a brain cell already know.
The poor fellow was despondent -- couldn't even whack back a Wendy's triple bacon burger -- until his attorney advised him that the corporations that fattened his waistline might also fatten his wallet.
Reducto further contends he contracted high blood pressure from daily Double Whoppers, high cholesterol from Sausage McMuffins, and diabetes from cartons of cheetos disolved in 4-liter tubs of orange soda. "The fast foot industry wrecked my life," he blubbered to the New York Post.
Other products that Reducto has consumed because nobody warned him about possible health risks include jars of Hellman's mayonnaise, Old Spice aftershave, and peanut butter and K-Y Jelly sandwiches.
Reducto suffered fat layer scraping injuries while a crane extracted him out of his basement in order to let him attend the press conference announcing his lawsuit. He was hit by a car on his way and now also plans to sue General Motors for failing to post warnings that their products may cause injury if you walk in front of them.
He is also suing the makers of Craftsman tools for a head injury sustained when he knocked himself in the skull with a hammer that was not emblazoned with the words "Warning: Do Not Hit Self in Head With This Product."
Mars probe makes shocking discovery: Wal-Mart remains found
This is a follow-up to my previous post on Bush's plan to send Reducto live on Mars and shoot NoGuru into outer galaxies. I was then wondering if the whole thing had been dropped. Far from that, it appears, and while the media are ignoring this wonderful humanitarian project, John Breneman has done his homework and here is what's going on quietly behind the scene:
NASA officials today reported an astonishing breakthrough in the search for signs of life on Mars. The discovery of a previously unknown Wal-Mart on the Martian surface is being hailed as clear evidence that the mysterious red planet may harbor an advanced race of beings capable of obtaining duct tape for 99 cents.
However, scientists admit to being baffled by the unexpected finding made by the U.S. space rover Spirit.
"We thought we might find a trace of gray hematite, an iron oxide mineral that forms in environments where water is present. Water, of course, being necessary to support life," said Dr. Fred Houston. "Nobody dreamed we'd stumble across a commercial structure that suggests the presence of an intelligent life form with access to a galaxy of material goods at reasonable prices."
Several leading astro-economists theorize that other businesses may have once existed nearby but disappeared in the shadow of the dominant Wal-Mart. According to unconfirmed reports, the robotic probe may also have detected a fragment of fossilized styrofoam emblazoned with the words "Quarter-Pounder with Cheese."
A Wal-Mart jet propulsion specialist would "neither confirm nor deny" the presence of a superstore on Mars, but said the company makes no secret of its desire to cover two-thirds of the earth's surface with retail space.
Some NASA team members suspect Wal-Mart may ultimately be seeking to squeeze the space agency out of business by selling robotic space rovers for $19.95 instead of the NASA pricetag of $800 million.
Geee... first the Red Cross is guilty of the Iraqi prisoner abuse case (but we already know what a piece of shit the entire Red Cross org is, thanks to RedTigress telling us about it), then it's Amnesty International, now it's the few reliable US medias (NY Times, BBC - but here again drama Queen RedTigress has explained how the BBC is also a piece of shit, so no wonder), and finally Reuters.
Golly, can't trust anybody now, can ya! Ah, if only there was *just* Faux-News as Jimmy calls it, and none of these bullshit liar medias around!!!
"There are no good reason for Rumsfeld to resign", Refracto says...
A few months ago, Bush revealed his grand off-the-planet project, and showed his great leadership in saying he was going to find Osama whereever he hides, including Mars and beyond.
There was such hype over it that even here in France, the George II project was in the headlines TV news every night for a week.
Then, nothing. ??? Has Bush's project died in his ass (could it be the reason for the hole in the ozone layer?), or is the great inter-galactic void in his head staying the course? Anyone here know?
For those of you who may have forgotten about this mastermind idea which would cure all problems on earth (like budget deficit, petty wars with ignorant countries recalcitrant to the teaching of good wholesome democracy, rampant oral sex, etc), here is a brief reminder by John Breneman: ---- A White House speechwriter who helped President Bush craft his vision for rededicating America to space exploration said today he is ecstatic the president took his advice not to deliver the address wearing a NASA flightsuit and astronaut helmet.
Bush on Wednesday outlined a plan to build a permanent outpost on the lunar surface and to use it as a base for manned expeditions to Mars. The speech writer, who claims he also persuaded Bush not to joke that he is "itching to explore Uranus," offered some insight into what prompted the president's sudden interest in outer space.
On Tuesday, the president walked past a TV displaying images of the Mars space rover and asked, "What's that thing?" When an aide informed him of NASA's mission to explore Mars, Bush reportedly muttered "Cool."
Intrigued, the president stayed up late watching reruns of "Star Trek" and The Jetsons." The next morning he arrived at the Oval Office buzzing with ideas and telling Cabinet officials he was eager "to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no man has gone before." When told that his dad proposed the same exact thing back in 1989 but gave up when it got too expensive, Bush squinted and replied, "Oh."
The president forged ahead with his politically courageous "pro-space" stance despite what he called "cry-baby talk" from critics who said he might want to first address the mounting federal deficit and domestic issues like health care.
In the speech he pledged $1 billion to NASA, along with an additional $200,000 if the space agency promised to hire 15 Mexican janitors by the year 2006. The president also named former astronaut John Glenn the nation's first "Space Czar." Bush said mankind is destined to explore space to help satisfy "the human thirst for knowledge," and for delicious Tang.
The president concluded, "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. And by the way, anyone who doesn't support my space plan is a friggin' terrorist."
The House of Representatives has voted to come down hard on obscenity, punishing purveyors of naughty words and "wardrobe malfunctions" with stiff penal action.
Following prolonged oral intercourse on the controversial topic, the House voted 391-22 to raise to $500,000 the maximum fine for any entertainer who says (bleep), exposes his/her (bleep) or otherwise misbehaves on the airwaves.
The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004 (H.R. 3717) imposes harsh fines for using words like zoinks, yowzah and fiddlesticks; poopshoot, egad and Jesus H. Chrysler. Also on the FCC shhhhit list: shiitake mushrooms, fudge and fizzuck.
The bill further mandates that anyone who says a bad word on radio or television must have their mouth washed out with soap. And any entertainer who grabs his crotch -- or someone else's -- must film a public service announcement warning young viewers about the dangers of crotch grabbing.
"Our children have been traumatized by the horror of Janet Jackson's mammary gland. Enough is enough," said Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.), interviewed between soundbites of President Bush calling a New York Times reporter an "@$$(bleep)" and trying to sexually assault the U.S. Constitution.
Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Censorship Commission (FCC), urged Congress to declare war on the F-word, the S-word, the C-word, the N-word, the P-word and the First Amendment.
Studies show the average American youth watches 3 hours and 43 minutes of television each day, during which time they witness countless murders, drive-bys, gang-bangs and mind-numbing morons pretending to deliver "news."
This is OK.
But critics say the epidemic of bad language and bad flesh on TV has been proven to cause moral decline, impudence and potty mouth among viewers under age 15.
Prolonged exposure to televised indecency also impairs children's ability to distinguish between shows that promote wholesome family values and those deemed vulgar by some pandering, adulterous politician.
Ever feel like you wanna pop George Bush right in the kisser? Smack that smirk off his face? Slug that smug mug?
Youd never do it for real, of course, but wouldnt it relieve a world of tension to give President 43 the old 1-2? Land a hard left for his right-wing lunacy?
Well, now you can. At www.bushbops.com. The bell rings and the crowd goes wild. Your mouse becomes a fist and every punch connects. You rock him, sock him with Bush-whacking sound effects.
In this corner from Crawford, Texas weighing in at 6-0 190 pounds wearing a black suit and a Shiite-eating grin GEORGE! W! BUSH!!!
And in this corner from Main Street, USA mad as hell at this numbskull and not gonna take it anymore YOU!
Its wholesome, harmless fun. Take a couple shots. Biff! Pow! Give him an uppercut for letting us down. Then click-click your mouse/fist for a barrage of blows, as you pound his piehole, his thorax and malignant fib-nose.
A lot of people want to Beat Bush these days, some of them literally. So if you really want to get physical you can order the presidential punching bag for $24.95 and hammer the bum below the belt like his henchmen have done to John Coulda Been a Contender Kerry.
But wait, theres more! You can dope slap this dope for bungling us into war. Whack him for whacking taxes on the rich. Smack him for being an evasive, unethical sonofabitch.
Bush hid from the fighting in Vietnam, but he cant duck you. Hit him with a haymaker for being a WMD wiseacre. Give him an ugly shiner to match the one America now has in the eyes of the world.
No boxing experience necessary. Bring him on!
PS: DO try the www.bushbops.com site: it's quite fun, kinda gives you a goohey feel-good feeling, and while not as rewarding as the real thing, it's free.
Just saw a little reminder on TV that in about a month, the anniversary of the "Debarquement en Normandie" (Normandy landing - towards the end of WWII) is coming up. Tradionally, heads of state from the countries concerned are invited for the commemoration.
Some time ago, after the yearly formal invitation, Bush pussy-footed around, playing hard to get for several weeks, saying he wasn't sure whether he could make it (that's how eager he is to pay his respect to the thousands of American soldiers who died and are buried here), but as far as I remember, eventually *officially* said he would come after all (musta been hard to reschedule that one month holiday in his ranch that was going to conflicted with this petty affair).
Anyway, the funny thought that came to mind is this: Chirac should change his invitation, and say that Bush does not deserve to represent the USA in these commemoration ceremonies, but Kerry can come take his place instead. LOL, that would be just great!
Prisoner abuse: What about the other secret U.S. prisons?
Published in International Herald Tribune, May 4, 2004 By Reed Brody
We must all, like President George W. Bush, share a "deep disgust" at the pictures of U.S. military personnel subjecting Iraqi detainees to humiliating treatment. The problem, however, is that this does not appear to be an isolated incident.
Across the world, the United States is holding detainees in offshore and foreign prisons where allegations of mistreatment cannot be monitored. It has also been accused of sending terror suspects to countries where information has been beaten out of them.
The classic case, of course, has been Guantnamo, Cuba, which the Bush administration deliberately chose as a detention facility for more than 700 detainees from 44 countries in an attempt to put them beyond the reach of the U.S. courts - and of any courts, for that matter. The U.S. government has argued that U.S. courts would not have jurisdiction over these detainees even if it they were being tortured or summarily executed.
But Guantnamo may not be the worst problem; indeed, it may even be a diversion from more extreme situations. Perhaps out of concern that Guantnamo will eventually be monitored by the U.S. courts, the Bush administration does not hold its most sensitive and high-profile detainees there. Terrorism suspects like Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are detained instead in undisclosed locations outside the United States, with no access to Red Cross or other visits.
In Iraq, we now have pictures of American soldiers degrading captives. The brazenness with which the soldiers conducted themselves, snapping photographs and flashing the "thumbs-up" sign as they abused prisoners, suggests they felt they had nothing to hide from their superiors. Indeed, there are now reports that their higher-ups in military intelligence urged such behavior to create better conditions for interrogation.
This is all the more disturbing because the United States has failed to provide clear information on its treatment of 10,000 civilians held in Iraq - and has provided no information at all for at least 200 so-called "high security detainees."
In Afghanistan, the United States is also holding civilians in a legal black hole at a number of off-limits detention facilities - with no tribunals, no legal counsel and no family visits.
Human Rights Watch has presented compelling evidence that there, too, U.S. personnel have committed inhumane and degrading acts against detainees. Released detainees have said that U.S. forces severely beat them, doused them with cold water and subjected them to freezing temperatures. Three people have died in U.S. custody there, and two of the deaths were ruled homicides by U.S. military doctors who performed autopsies. The Department of Defense has yet to explain adequately the circumstances of any of these deaths.
And then there are the so-called "renditions" of suspects to countries where they are tortured. In one case, Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian in transit from a family vacation through John F. Kennedy airport in New York, was detained by U.S officials and sent, against his wishes, to Syria, a country where torture is systematic. There, Arar was interrogated and, he alleges, tortured repeatedly during a 10-month confinement in an underground dungeon before returning to Canada.
The Bush administration has still not answered charges leveled in The Washington Post which, citing numerous unnamed U.S. officials, described the rendition of captured Al Qaeda suspects from U.S. custody to other countries, such as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, where they were tortured or mistreated. These countries, like Syria, are ones where the United States itself has criticized the practice of torture.
The sordid photos from Iraq and reports that the behavior was actually encouraged confirm that systematic changes in the U.S. treatment of prisoners are needed immediately. The United States must finally investigate and publicly report on allegations of abuse by its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as persistent accounts that suspects sent to other countries have been tortured.
From Guantnamo to Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States must also ensure that people taken into custody are fairly treated in accordance with international legal standards, such as the Geneva conventions. In particular, it must stop holding detainees in legal "black holes" where its conduct cannot be monitored.
Reed Brody is special counsel with Human Rights Watch in New York.
First, big thanks to Diannemaire for sending me the link to this article. As she suspected, this is right up my alley of outrage and wanting to scream blue murder and kick the nearest ass in sight.
I won't copy/paste the whole article, mostly because it is huge, but also because it has several links which would be too painful to recreate here. Instead, I'll rant on a bit about it and quote some parts (in italic, as usual). If you want the whole thing, you can find it here.
Here is what it's about in a nutshell - an ad by Ford for a new car:
"Here's the ad: Cute sporty little Ford car sits quietly in a tree-lined U.K. driveway. Orange tabby strolls by. Ford SportKa's sunroof suddenly slides open. Curious tabby pauses, hops onto roof, peers head inside. Sunroof suddenly closes, cat spasms and twitches, cat's head appears to pop off inside car as remainder of cat slides to ground. Logo comes onscreen: "Ford SportKa. The Ka's evil twin." "
Is it how desperate corporations are to make an extra buck? More frightening still: taking into account that marketing teams make ads that appeal to ppl, is it a sign of what is in ppl's hearts?
"It's when an ad company creates a twisted little promotion specifically designed to bypass the mainstream and penetrate the subculture and be spread by word of mouth and word of e-mail, and everyone forwards it on to their friends and family and says oh my God you've got to see this hilarious video oh my God it's so funny/sick/horrible/twist ed oh my God click here now. And Ford and the ad company cheer and applaud and grin malevolently"
How sick in the mind can ppl get? Is it any wonder the crap going on in Iraq prisons is but the grim reality? Has the population at large become one sick lot of sickos? Oh.... perhaps you think I'm exaggerating, right? How about this:
"Meanwhile, the cat video circulates. It's a huge underground hit in the States, even though you can't buy the cool SportKa here because we're Americans and Americans generally despise small cool well-designed European cars and instead prefer our vehicles huge and thuggish and pollutive with 18 cupholders and 7 mpg and room for 12 and that generally don't kill cats. Just humans"
So even though the ad doesn't run on TV in the States for the simple reason the car model is not available there, it is a huge hit. Goodness, I think I'm gonna puke.
"Animal rights groups are furious. Ford is pretending to be aghast. Even Ogilvy & Mather is claiming ignorance. Ford has issued a formal statement of denial and disgust wink wink nudge. Ogilvy & Mather has released a formal statement of we have no idea how the hell this happened hee hee titter."
If you have the patience, read the entire article: Mark Morford (the author) raises some very thought-provoking questions about our western societies. Here are just a couple of examples:
"You gotta choose your outrage. You gotta ask yourself, What is my threshold? Just what, truly, is offensive? Janet Jackson, or Howard Stern? Bono saying "f--" at the Golden Globes, or the lack of condom commercials on TV? Zoloft ads, or the Pentagon censoring photographs of dead U.S. soldiers? Kraft Lunchables, or Dick Cheney's misanthropic sneer? "
"Or another featuring skinny "alternative" youths scarfing down bags of greasy Taco Bell swill like it's harmless candy. Or wickedly sexist beer commercials featuring frat boys and the sweaty bulimic models who ignore them. Or Ronald McDonald grinningly luring kids into lifetime chemical/fat addictions. Or Dubya using shots from the 9/11 tragedy to promote his "More War in '04!" re-election campaign"
Is our human dignity gone altogether? The fact Ford and the advert company came up with this idea is only a reflection of what so many of us are like. Sure (thank goodness) some ppl are outraged, but clearly a lot of ppl aren't and even find it appealing. And that is what saddens and disgusts me most. In the meantime, Ford is rubbing its hands: it's *deposed* the ad (and replace it with another one, nearly as disgusting), but reaps the benefits from its evil sick corporation mind: making money at all costs including appealing to ppl's most revolting sentiments.
RedTigress's near suicidal nervous breakdown and miraculous instant recovery
Okay. Since RedTigress invited me to give her more publicity, here is some. At the time, I was tempted, but felt it was a bit below the belt for someone who was apparently on the verge of suicide. But since RedT, after a miraculous instant recovery from her temporary fainting flush, is not only now in full racist bloom but asking me for some free advertising to her site, I'll graciously oblige. It is pretty clear from RedT Diva's repeated comments about it, that she NEEDS lots of hits to reach tBlog orgasm. She even posts articles "asking her *FANS* " to comment.
This is going to be long, but juicy. I'll try my best to condense whenever possible. ---- A week ago or so, RedT blew her top off and vomited hatred all over SpyMaster like I have rarely seen in my life. I won't bore you with the entire disgusting diatribe (you can find it on her blog unless she's already deleted it), so here are a some excerpts to get you in the mood:
"FUCK YOU, PINHEAD! ..... SHUT THE FUCK UP!......you fucking retarded bag of shit......you anti-zionist-anti-semite! ..... you fucking stereotype me, you moron.... Let me get something straight with you, muther fucker: Pray you never meet me in person. Got it? Wish and hope and pray......It's scum like you that helped the Nazis lead my people to Auchwitz!!!" all wonderfully concluded by "you've sealed the deal [of my hatred towards you]".
All very logical and reasonable argumentation, I agree, LOL.
Now, I made the mistake of challenging this and post an article titled "SpyMaster is an Anti-Semite fucking retarded moron motherfucker!!!" - quoting her (through copy/paste as to make sure I didn't accidently misquote her), and basically making her look her rightfully disgusting self.
Ouch! poor RedT had a nervous breakdown over this, and posted a near suicidal post, of which here is a copy/paste courtesy of the friends here who pass me on her prose (I used to log on her blog, but as it takes 10 minutes to load, is illegible on my high-res screen and is riddled with pornsite-style full screen pop-ups, I gave up months ago).
Now this is the very article that I was vaguely tempted to bring up at the time, but dumbly though "no, not fair, leave the poor girl alone". Before I paste it here, I'd like you to think of a couple of things:
1. First, while the overal theme is "Booohooo, I hate you all, you all suck, and it doesn't matter what you say, I won't read it, don't even bother commenting" (ok, copy/paste quote here to make sure I can't be accused of twisting things: "Your racist little brat selves won. You're all a bunch of hypocrites ..... You all make me sick. If I could, I'd spit on you ... Feel free to leave your hateful comments below. I'm not reading them anyhow"), it appears that she got quite a few *fan* responses (she just LOVES to have FANS) and somehow, in spite of herself saying so, she was in each case within a few minutes of reading them, replying to each and everyone of them with truly tear-in-the-eye heartbreaking poetry. Then, within an hour, she was posting a new article with comforting renewed vigor. LOL.... yeah, the real convincing deep depression act!
2. Second, there is the amazing logic of someone who claims to have been unjustly victimized and whose words have been "lied about" and "sterotyped". Not to mentioned written by "mentally handicapped, unfamiliar with the English language" ppl (i.e. ME, naturally), and "some peice of crap frenchman decided that he'd take the ball and run, posting a blog filled with out of context misquotes and lies (not to mention some pretty vulgar imagry)" (yeah, you guessed it, ME again). Oddly enough, unless my puter has a severe problem, all my "misquoting" her was done through copy/paste from her own article. Go figure!
3. A truly amazing recovery took place instantly, and far from not even reading any of the comments as she had said, within a few hours, RedT was on heat again and ripping asses as only a true tiger can do, LOL!
Ah, how I love those deep tragic love stories where the heroin dies of justified indignation! SOunds so romantic! ---- Ok, here is the entire suicidal message, with a few comments from me: ---- Thursday 04.29.04 [4:17 pm]
I sit before you at my computer. I have just read an unfounded attack on me. Someone called me the usual racist epitaths (I'm a facist zionist, bent on the mass extermination of all arabs... yada yada yada). I responded to that person, angrily, but I think that my anger was totally understandable and rightful."
Absolutely. Truly understandable and rightful, not a single doubt, LOL. But, errr.... mmmm.... SpyMaster didn't actually say "you were bent on the mass extermination of all arabs" did he? At least it doesn't show on MY screen? Musta been your unique sense of misquoting getting in the way, or maybe my monitor is one of them french bastard monitors that distort the truth.
Anwhow, SpyMaster had the gall of saying "I'm sick of the Zionist Nazi hatred of Arabs", and so it is only too right that RedT should properly label him as a motherfucker moron bag of shit, etc. Ok, I understand, so far (in spite of my mentally handicapped condition)!
"Then, some peice of crap frenchman.... " (guess who?) "... decided that he'd take the ball and run, posting a blog filled with out of context misquotes and lies (not to mention some pretty vulgar imagry)."
Makes so much sense I wonder how I didn't get it the first time round: me saying "RedT lifted her skirt and what we're seeing isn't pretty" is absolutely disgusting. Whereas "SpyMaster, you're a fucking moron motherfucker" + 10 paragraphs of hatred-filled diatriabe is quite neat and proper - certainly NOT vulgar anyway. Even more interesting is the "out of context misquotes and lies" statement:
Out of context? Ah hem.... I can't see how I could have put it more *IN* context: I quoted the origin of your diatribe, the context, and quote your very statements, interspersed with my own observations.
Misquotes? Mmmmm... that is very strange indeed. Cuz everything I quoted of you was a DIRECT copy/Paste of your words. So unless my computer is anti-semite, I doubt very much one single letter of MY quotes of YOUR rants was misquoted. Care to underline a single one?
So, we have here someone who not only fucks up on a grand scale by revealing her true racist nature, but then can't take the heat of being confronted with it, and as a last resort, tries, Bush-style, to say she was misquoted when she was in fact quoted word for word.
Well.... how can you beat that kind of argumentation?
Ok, it's getting long, and while I was enjoying this at first, I'm getting rather bored with dealing with assholes like her, so I'll skip some - if you want the full rant check out her site (hey RedT: another adv for you! Hey, get ready for your next orgasm: more FANs to come bow to Queen RedT), or if she's deleted it already out of embarrassement, I can email it to you. For now, I'll abridge in order to get through the end of this pathetic story and be done with it:
"Tired of being lied about. Tired of being sterotyped. Tired of crap. My only crime is being here and being who I am. These sad little men, who get orgasmic thrills from being horrible people make me sick."
No such luck girl. I only get orgasms from making love with my wife. Certainly not from reading sicko bitch from hell crap like yours.
"Here's a tip, you really want to know what's "ruining America"? Sad little men who twist the words of the truthful in the name of their racist little dicks. That's right, I said it."
Wow, what a big girl you are now: "That's right, I said it! .... racist little dicks". Yep, you can be proud of your non-racist statement. And, of course, of NOT being vulgar in the least, LOL!
"Either they are mentally handicapped, unfamiliar with the English language, or evil men who know exactly what I said but refuse to portray that accuratly in the name of their own hatred for me, my people, my cause."
As I write this, I'm crying. I guess I probably shouldn't even admit to that because then that fuels their little orgasms more. Oh how elated they must be to know that they made the little Jewish facist cry. Well, I'm glad they're happy. At least someone can be."
Keep going, you sound more grotesquely hilarious by the second.
"All my life, I have been dicriminated against because I'm Jewish."
Huh??? Do you mean you've been discriminated against being Jew while living in America???? Hey... something's amiss here, you've told me again and again that only in France are Jews discriminated against. "ALL your life"???? Geeee... maybe California is not in the US after all.... dang, I'll have to look at my world map again.
"It continues to this very day. People ignore what I say, but rather, revamp it with their own idea of what they think I should say to forfil their prophacy of racism. I'm misquoted, taken out of context, and lied outright about."
Yeah, so sad. Misquoted and lied about.... as in copying and pasting what you write, LOL.
"What consequences to these sad little characters face? None. At least, not in this world.
I've written before about some of these same people. Some of them are the same who my 'Shut Me Up' article was devoted to, others are newcomers with the same goal. One is a french pussy who thinks it's witty to put me on his "blogs that suck" list. You know what? I don't suck half as much as he sucks other French cock. OOOOh, yea I said it."
Enjoying your orgasm? Nothing like last orgasm before suicide, right?
"These are sad little men. Very sad, petty, little men.
You won. I'd rather die than take this anymore.
You are all pathetic.
Find me quotes by me that say I hate all arabs and advocate their extermination. Find me quotes anywhere that say I want war always and not peace. Find me quotes that support the denial that I am nothing more than someone who wants to make the world a better place for human kind.
You won't find them.
I'm not giving any of your blogs any visits anymore. You can't benefit from anything that I have to say. You can't benefit from any kind of sanity. You don't want me there, I don't want to be there. The feeling is mutual. I'm keeping to myself, aside from the few SANE blogs that are left here.
Your racist little brat selves won. You're all a bunch of hypocrites. Don't go lecturing everyone about how you want to take this country back for the powers of good, don't lecture everyone about how you fight against antisemitism (that's a real joke and a half!), don't lecture everyone on how you are a proponent of diversity. You're all a bunch of liars.
I hope everyone sees you for what you are. If they don't, they're just as backwards as the lot of you.
You all make me sick. If I could, I'd spit on you.
Feel free to leave your hateful comments below. I'm not reading them anyhow. I really just don't give a shit anymore."
Well, I sure hope you don't spit on me - it's got to be poisonous for sure - Isreali WMD stuff... deadly.
Must be spring: NoGuru's visceral hatred & racism in full bloom!
Wow, in his latest post, NoGuru shows his true racist-self to new heights - beating RedTigress hands down. You can find the post in its full glory here.
I'm copying/pasting some of the highlights, together with my own comments. ---- "The filthy racists French bastards are apparently stepping up the propaganda war against the United States Military, and the coalition in general."
"filthy racist French bastards". Right! That's pretty clear, LOL! Thanks NoGuru for clearing out any doubt anybody may have had about you.
"This article indicates they intend to release sympathizer footage regarding the shooting of Iraqis. Footage they stole out of Iraq."
Goodness, releasing footage showing what's actually going on and the US TV never shows? Ouch! This is an unspeakable attempt of freedom of press, and entirely contrary to Bush's attempts to tell ppl bullshit, all the bullshit, and nothing but the bullshit. This must be squashed without delay! Send in the troops, I say! Bomb the lot!
(note that NoGuru is not only pissed at Canal+: Canal+, by daring showing something he disagrees with, is one lot of filfthy racist French bastards, and therefore (logically enough!) the whole French population is as well. I wonder if the fact some US TV network who had the gall of showing the list of all dead US soldiers recently should be called filthy racist American bastards, and therefore every American citizen should also be labeled a filthy racist American bastard. Nahhh... I forget there are 2 rules: one for the US and another for the rest of the world).
"THIS IS A WAR YOU MORONS."
Yeah, I heard of it somehow, but thanks reminding me. Oh, I also heard it from the grapevine, it's a disgusting, illegal imperialist war. Musta been dreaming...
"Somebody really needs to get this message out, in a war, people get killed, and not always the right people."
ROFLMAO!!!!!! This is wonderful. Yes, you're absolutely correct, NoGuru. Surely, you mean like the 1361 Iraqis (mostly civilians) in April, right?
"French cable television station Canal Plus on Tuesday will broadcast images, stolen in Iraq, of a US army helicopter killing three Iraqis who do not appear to be posing any threat, one of whom was wounded."
The hide of those French bastards, huh? Actually, since you seem to have no idea, I have already seen many such footage in the last few months, so the proposed TV emission is no news to me. Yeah, the concept may seem amazing to you, but we have here an independant press, who is not muzzled by our government and is not afraid of digging out the truth. Not fair, eh? I guess you never get to see what's really going on in the States, right?
"All the while,the racist bastard french ..."
LOL! This is too funny: NoGuru's unbeatable argument to demonstrate someone else than him is a racist.
" ...are in a war of their own at home, attempting to squash the oncoming uprising of muslims in their racist bastard french homeland. All the disgusting french bastards are trying to do is deflect attention away from their own problems, problems that clearly show them to be what they are, racist, cowardly, bigoted pigs."
Man, you're a GENIUS!!!! I love it! Please write some more of that stuff! You're really doing your cause a convincing favor. Hell, you've even convinced me: I thought wrong at first, but now I see the light, thanks to you! I'm now in total agreement with your cool, calm, non-xenophobic reasoning that clearly shows that for from being racist, you demonstrate beyond any doubt that the French population is but one lot of "disgusting filthy racist moron cowardly bigoted pigs".
Welcome to the new Bush America: the land of freedom - freedom from prejudice and racism. I can't wait to go back live there! Thanks for showing me the brotherly light, NoGuru!
$1200 Wedding dress sells for $3850! Bush's gift to Condi?
This is one hell of a funny eBay auction (courtesy of ScubaDiva). What the hell has this got with politics, you ask?
Good question. Nothing, in fact. Except that at the end, there is a Bush/Texas reference, which makes it good enough in my opinion to post it here for (hopefully) getting some of you with a sense of humor to wet your pants as much as I did. Ok, here goes (and thanks again, Scuba!): ============= For Sale: One Slightly Used Size 12 Wedding Gown. Only worn twice: Once at the wedding and once for these pictures.
Make: Victoria
Style: 611
Size: 12
Divorce forces sale
I found my ex-wife's wedding dress in the attic when I moved. She took the $4000 engagement ring but left the dress. I was actually going to have a dress burning party when the divorce became final, but my sister talked me out of it. She said, "Thats such a gorgeous dress. Some lucky girl would be glad to have it. You should sell it on EBay. At least get something back for it." So, this is what Im doing.
Im selling it hoping to get enough money for maybe a couple of Mariners tickets and some beer. This dress cost me $1200 that my drunken sot of an ex-father-in-law swore up and down he would pay for but didnt so I got stuck with the bill. Luckily I only got stuck with his daughter for 5 years. Thank the Lord we didn't have kids. If they would have turned out like her or her family I would have slit my wrists.
Anyway, its a really nice dress as you can see in the pictures. Personally, I think it looks like a $1200 shower curtain, but what do I know about this. We tried taking pictures of this lovely white garment but it didnt look right on the hanger as you can see, so my sister says, "You need a model." Well, quite frankly my sister isnt exactly small, (like a size 12 is?) so she wouldnt pose for the picture. Seeing as I have sworn off women for the time being and I aint friends with any, it left me holding the bag. I took the liberty of blacking out my face - not to protect the ex-wife but to protect me from my bar buddies and co-workers finding out about it. I would never live it down.
Actually I didnt think my head would fit in the neck hole, but then I figured she got her Texas cheerleader hair through there I could get my head in it. Though, after looking at the pictures, I thought it made me look fat. How do you women wear this crap? I only had to walk 3 feet and I tripped twice. Dont worry ladies - I am wearing clothes on underneath it. I gotta say it did make me feel very pretty. So if it can make me feel pretty, it can make you feel pretty, especially on the most important day of your life, right? Anyway, I was told to say it has a train and a veil and all kinds of shiny beady things. I think it's funny that one picture makes it look like the chest plate off an Imperial Storm Trooper. Did I mention that all I want is a ball game and beer? Cheap at twice the price. Ladies, you wont regret this. You may regret the dude you marry but not the dress.
Just a little side note - As I was putting this ad in EBay, it asked me for a color. Is a wedding dress any other freaking color than white or ivory??!! If it is it wouldn't be a wedding dress, now would it?? I suppose black would work...
------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ----- On Apr-26-04 at 10:38:31 PDT, seller added the following information:
Well, the auction is a little over half over and I am just amazed. This thing has taken more hits than that pothead that lives in the next building. Man, oh man, if hits were bucks Id be getting a suite at Safeco.
I also have received TONS of email. I dont have the time to reply to all of them but I just want to let everyone know that I appreciate the well wishes.
Of the email I received:
Five or so were invitations to ball games in other states. Two of those were for little league games. Do they have those cushy executive boxes with the free chicken wings at those?
One email was from Scotland. Its a good thing he wrote it because I wouldnt be able to understand a word he said. Never did get through Braveheart.
Most were thanking me for the laugh. Youre entirely welcome. Five years of misery was well worth the hearty guffaw that was my pleasure to give you.
Oh, yeah. I also got three marriage proposals. Yes, you read it right - three marriage proposals. I feel like one of those mass murderers on death row. I never understood how the hell they got more chicks than I did. Now I know. They sold crap on eBay.
------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ----- On Apr-26-04 at 23:45:56 PDT, seller added the following information:
Holy Moly!
The hit counter is starting to look like the odometer in my truck! Not the new shiny black full-size 4-wheel-drive American pick-up that I had to part with, but the somewhat older, multicolored, lumpy, tiny, 2-wheel-drive foreign pick-up that belches smoke. A little something about that vehicle, though: its absolutely amazing! When I get inside it to go to the store, I am all depressed. But when I arrive at the store, Im so freaking loopy from inhaling the fumes, I forget why I went there in the first place. Im saving buckets of money. Of course, I will probably have to spend it all on the tuberculosis I will acquire, but hey, you cant have everything.
I felt compelled to update this ad once more due to all of your emails. The first thing I have to say is thank you all for your support in my time of need. It was a truly harrowing experience. Some of you men know exactly what I mean.
Seeing as this has turned into my little public forum, I just want to address a few of the emails that kind of left me scratching my head.
I now have five marriage proposals. You would think my speaking of the ones I already got yesterday would have put a damper on it, but you women sure are persistent. One woman actually said she doesnt want to marry me, but wouldnt mind being my ex-wife. Hmmm. Let me think about that. Nope. No thanks, already got one. (Pssst. Didnt I mention I had one? Who wants an ex-wife that cant read? Now, I know what you guys are thinking - "If she cant read, then the divorce would be smooth sailing." Well, that would be all well and good but I didnt say her ATTORNEY couldnt read. You following me on this?)
Other emails are serious buyers asking about the dress. "How long is the train?" and "Does the gown come with the headdress and veil?" Yes, headdress and veil are included, but the do-rag stays with me. And if the train was long enough for my exs caboose, its long enough for yours. You will have to supply your own baggage, though. I gave mine to Goodwill.
There was this one woman who wrote, "You should have covered your tattoos. People will be able to recognize you, like on Americas Most Wanted." HELLO!!! Im a guy selling a dress. Im not wanted for war crimes.
Some of your emails made me laugh. Like the bitter woman that wished she had her exs testicles to sell on eBay. Im not too sure theres a market for that, though. Then there was the guy that gave his wifes wedding dress to the Salvation Army by mistake, thinking it was a Christmas tree. Guess he didnt have any Christmas balls that year.
This has also been a learning experience for me. I got a lot of messages correcting me about the color of wedding dresses. For Russian Orthodox, they are blue. For Chinese they are red. Mexico has multi-colored ones. All I know is, for my next wedding I will be wearing a hairy, flesh-toned ensemble because I will be buck naked with a toe tag lying on a slab in the morgue because I would have killed myself.
A lot of folks were asking me if I wear womens dresses a lot. I can honestly say that this is the first time I have ever donned female attire. Its also the first time Ive been inside something feminine that didnt nag me to take out the garbage.
It seems a few people have taken offense to my inferring a size 12 is big. One male even pointed out that Marilyn Monroe was a size 14. Now, I would agree with you that size 12/14 is small if I lived elsewhere. But I live right here in the good old 48 Contiguous, where binging and purging is a way of life. American women do not want to be double digits in size. Just ask any woman what size they want to be. Invariably they will say five or seven. Wealthy will be the person that opens a store for Lane Bryant-sized women but sews size 7 tags on all the clothes.
On the flip side of that, I have taken offense to some of the people that told me Im ugly and a loser. All I have to say is youd be ugly too if you had a huge white blotch on your face. And as far as being a loser, I think you have it all wrong. I am such the winner. It isnt every day an average guy can make 50,000 people laugh. Thanks to each and every one of you from the heart of my bottom.
Because of the high profile of this item, I am changing the listing to Pre-Approved Bidders Only. To be pre-approved, please contact me at horseplaypublishing@hotma il.com and include "Serious Bidder" in the subject line of the email and I will return your email to pre-approve your bidding on the auction. Thank you for your interest. Woooooooohoooooo! What a wild ride! The emails are coming faster than the hits. And now personal appearances. First Star94 radio in Atlanta, then King5 in Seattle,now the Today Show with that I-used-to-be-a-fat-weathe rman-but-now-I-am-as-skin ny-as-Regis-but-twice-as- funny Al "I will turn this car around" Roker. It is amazing; all this media hype. Hey, Al! Any relation to Roxy? EBay has graciously allowed me to update this page once more. So I will keep it brief.
This one guy emailed me and said, "Hey, bud. What part of Texas do you live?" Uh... Well, sir, I am from Seattle. Uh, Seattle, Texas. Right next to AreYouAFreakingMoron, Texas, which is a hop, skip and jump from IWasEducatedByGeorgeBush, Texas. Thanks for asking, neighbor.
We have a website coming that everyone can check out. It will be up soon.
Please only bid if you are serious. Or really, really hot.
Once America was a free-speech zone, today the Bush Administration is leading the charge to constrict, muzzle, and barricade the house of freedom. By William Marvel I remember when a single accidental pregnancy could go a long way toward ruining several peoples lives. Having had that experience myself, I extended my recent research trip to Washington by one day so I could take part in the march to save the Roe v. Wade decision. It was certainly the largest demonstration Ive ever witnessed, including the massively undercounted war protest in New York fifteen months ago. The march itself could really do nothing to dissuade the Supreme Court from ruling however the members prejudices dictate, but if the anger that filled the Mall on April 25 evolves into electoral activism, the Supreme Court may not long maintain its hidebound flavor.
My research took me south from Washington, into North Carolina. On the way back last Wednesday morning I stopped in Richmond, where I encountered women from Sundays demonstration who were gathering to march--Scouts honor--down Broad Street. Such trips provide my best opportunity to catch up on the news, and I usually keep my dial tuned to the lower FM frequencies, so as to pick up public stations. The farther south I drove, though, the more often those frequencies yielded Christian stations offering music and news that you want to hear. NPR covered the Washington march live all day Sunday, and mentioned it hourly into the next day. The Christian stations never mentioned it at all, that I heard, but then I suppose that was not the sort of news that Christians want to hear.
The tendency to retract into an insular world and reject or deny any threatening information seems endemic in the most fervent cells of the Jesus cult. It thoroughly infects this countrys most visible Christian, too. In order to assure that he did not see any of the hundreds of thousands of protestors on April 25, George Bush hid behind a barricade at least eight square blocks in size--if he was even in Washington at all. He prefers not to face disagreement. When American veterans protested his invasion of Iraq on the day it began, Bush flitted off to Camp David, to rest up from his long campaign to convince us about the weapons of mass destruction. His fatigue seems more understandable, now that we know how difficult that charade really was.
Bushs effort to insulate himself from any dissent is becoming his most obvious trait. He began to exercise it as governor of Texas, when he ended the long tradition of political picketing on the sidewalk opposite the governors office: once Bush took office, freedom of speech disappeared from that ribbon of concrete. He now carries that immunity from disagreement with him wherever he goes, and protestors must restrict themselves to free-speech zones strategically located out of his sight. That led to the arrest of three New Hampshire citizens late last March, when they refused to move themselves out of the theoretical range of the Exalted One. Once upon a time, the entire United States consisted of a free-speech zone, and those picketers should be forgiven for their mistaken assumption that such scandalous liberties still survive.
The Privileged Son does not wish his constituents disturbed by unpleasant information, either. The press is barred, for instance, from photographing funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, or the arrival of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base; one civilian employee of a government contractor was fired when she gave a news agency her own photograph of a cluster of those coffins. The Pentagon disguises such censorship as sensitivity for the families of the dead, but no such sympathy prevented the release of photos showing butchered American soldiers when the administration wished to whip up hatred for the enemy. The real aim, of course, is to hide the real cost of a war that should never have been begun.
It must be difficult enough trying to maintain a fragile belief system without allowing the complications of temptations and contradictions. So the free-speech zones grow smaller and fewer. The barricades push farther out from the White House each time the crowds grow larger and louder, and up in the Oval Office there is probably a radio playing soft music reflecting American family values, and offering the news that you want to hear.
William Marvel is a freelance writer in New Hampshire and served in the U.S. Army from 1968-1971. His many books include the award-winning Andersonville: The Last Depot and Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox. You can send your comments to bill@interventionmag.com
Bush's working real hard on getting Osama - Yeah, right!
AP Enterprise: Four Treasury agents track bin Laden and Saddam money, while 21 work Castro
JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money, documents show.
In addition, the Office of Foreign Assets Control said that between 1990 and 2003 it opened just 93 enforcement investigations related to terrorism. Since 1994 it has collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations.
In contrast, OFAC opened 10,683 enforcement investigations since 1990 for possible violations of the long-standing economic embargo against Fidel Castro's regime, and collected more than $8 million in fines since 1994, mostly from people who sent money to, did business with or traveled to Cuba without permission.
TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian court has ruled the United States should pay $600 million in compensation for supplying ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) with chemical weapons, the official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday.
IRNA said the money in the case, brought by Iranian war veterans and disabled, should be paid to survivors of attacks on the town of Sardasht which borders Iraq (news - web sites).
Iraqi gas attacks killed thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides and Iran has thousands disabled by chemical arms.
No further details were available and Iranian officials were unavailable for any immediate comment.
"The court has ordered the American government to pay the money for furnishing Saddam with chemical weapons to attack Iran," IRNA reported.
The United States and Iran have been at odds since 1979 when more than 50 Americans were held hostage by Iranian student militants at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days after the Islamic revolution.
The verdict was submitted to the Swiss Embassy which has covered U.S. interests in Iran since Washington cut ties with Tehran in 1980.
More "Pro-Life" BUTCHER-BUSH achievements: 1,361 Iraqis Killed in April.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Volunteers hunting for bodies in Fallujah find a woman and her daughter in their home, killed in the siege but undiscovered for days. Chanting mourners bury two boys caught in the crossfire of a Baghdad gunfight. A morgue in Basra overflows with torn and burned bodies from a suicide bombing.
Victims - young and old, women and men, insurgents and innocents - have been piling up day by day, making April the deadliest month for Iraqis - and Americans - since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago.
Official and complete death counts for Iraqis nationwide are unavailable. But a count by The Associated Press found that around 1,361 Iraqis were killed from April 1 to April 30 - 10 times the figure of at least 136 U.S. troops who died during the same period.
The Iraqi tally was compiled from daily records of violence reported by AP based on statements issued by the U.S. military, Iraqi police and local hospitals. The count includes civilians, insurgents and members of the Iraqi security forces, though a detailed breakdown was not possible. The Iraqi health ministry and the Red Crescent could not be reached Friday.
Also, the tally is likely incomplete, because witnesses reported deaths in some attacks that could not be confirmed by a hospital, the Iraqi police or U.S. officials.
by: Vic The Vulture, Raising Tomorrow's Neocons Today!
Hi boys and girls! I'm Vic the Vulture and I'm here to help you kids understand things that you'll need to know when playing with those liberal egghead kids on the playground! Things like: Voting Republican, supporting the NRA, cutting taxes, and other things that make good Kompassionate Konservative Kids, or KKK!
Vic likes to fly high above and look for things on the ground that may be hurt, or maybe moving slow. Then Vic swoops down and pounces on his prey! Yes, Vic is a good example of a fine Republican taking advantage of others who have less! You can learn to take advantage of others too, boys and girls!
Today boys and girls Vic wants to talk about the NRA. No, not the National Educational Association, that's for liberal kids who have 2 mommies or 2 daddies! I'm talking about the National Rifle Association. These fine folks advocate the use of firearms. What is a firearm you ask? A firearm is a big word meaning gun or rifle, and can also be used for grenades, tanks, bombs, and other explosives! WOW! Vic likes to watch things explode, and I bet you do too!
Vic the Vulture is always packing a firearm and he's rubbing his gun right now! Vic likes the way the long barrel sticks out, and he likes the smell of the gunpowder when he squeezes the trigger. Vic loves the rush he gets from shooting his gun!
Remember kids, Guns don't kill people -- people kill people. I know it is sad but what would you do if you came home from school early, and you saw your mommy playing house with a very large black man while daddy was out of town? While your your daddy is out of town working hard on closing a business deal, your mommie is yelling silly things like, "Faster! Deeper!" or "It's so big!" or "Pound me with that blacksnake!" Mommie should have been cleaning the house, and instead she is playing house with this large black man. What would you do, boys and girls? What would you do dammit? First of all, you need to take out a camera and snap some pictures to send to your Uncle Vic the Vulture! Next, what would you like to have in your hands at that moment? A liberal tinker toy? A video game controller? A silly child safety lock? Or, would you like to have an AK-47? An AK-47 would be nice to have, now wouldn't it? Daddy would be so proud!
UH-OH! Vic just saw Bobby Buzzard coming up the driveway. You see kids, Vic is over at Bobby's nest as he writes this column. Vic loves to come over here to play house with Brenda Buzzard, Bobby's wife, while Bobby is away at work! But, Vic can't let Bobby see Vic here, because Bobby Buzzard is an NRA member too! He is a much better shot than Vic. Bobby has threatened to blow Vic's head off if he ever caught him playing house with Brenda again! Well, so long until next time and remember our motto, "Guns Don't Kill Liberals, Necons Kill Liberals, Cock-a-doodle-doo!"
Another brilliant diatribe by zuchini-head Reducto you guys may have missed as it is posted in the Religion category. Because he's banned me from his blog, I have to reply through a new topic, and copy paste the highlights of his blurbs and the comments on it - all graciously provided through the kindness of a couple of tBloggers who send me the juicy bits via email (thanks guys and gals, btw).
Here is where you can find this stunning piece of prose:
Before I point you to the more exciting parts, here is a cute higlight of the article:
"The bottom line is that President Bush is the most pro-life president we've had in a long, long, time."
Right on, man! Ok, let's start counting: 700 (or thereabout?) dead American soldiers in Iraq. How many thousands of dead military and civilian Iraqis? Should I go on?
That's what I call a TRUE PRO-LIFE president!!!
But the real highlight of the show is the comments - basically a back and forth argumentation between Reducto and ScubaDiva. Much too painful to copy/paste the 8 comments (so far), so I'll let y'all check it out for yourselves.
Here some gorgeous snippets to get your appetite going:
"As long as we're having biology lessons....I'm not the brightest bulb, but I am pretty sure sex isn't meant to be casual and it isn't meant to be solely for pleasure. It is pleasurable, but it is meant for procreation."
Bulbs? Hey, I didn't know zuchinis grew from bulbs. Damn it! If only I hadn't skipped my biology classes...
"Which is why the Catholic church, among others, looks down on masturbation and birth control in general."
Right. So I guess women who take the *pill* are muderers, right? Geee.... lots of murderers runnning around lose here in Europe.... ouch, even my wife. Awesome to think I sleep with a murderess! SCARY!!!
"Ok, biology time. Every time a woman masturbates, she does not ovulate... So we can masturbate AS much as we want without denying a life... ha ha ha" (comment from ScubaDiva) - here is Reducto's reply: "Forgive me for the screw up, but regardless, it doesn't matter. My point still works."
"Screw up"? What's this - more undercover-in-his-basemen t illegal Reducto sexual activities? Oh, but as pointed out, "it doesn't matter" - "his point is still valid". Just like NoGuru.... "it's MY opinion.... and I'M RIGHT".
Now, ScubaDiva, you're indeed a shameless girl and a murderess on a grand scale - but you already know this, don't ya? You willingly destroy potential human lives through disgusting anti-christ fornicating acts like masturbation. Geee.... don't you realize your crimes? You're in same league of DragonBait22. Yucky pooh!
"If you're infertile, you may have all the sex you want-- as a married woman."
Phewwww!!! Lucky girl, YOU are, ScubaDiva!!! You're off the hook since you're infertile. However, you first gotta get married. Get married, then you can jerk off as much as you want. With the blessing of Bush, the Pope, and of course Reducto!
Ah, life is just so wonderful!
US spending more money in Nuclear WMDs than ever before
Our Hidden WMD Program Why Bush is spending so much on nuclear weapons. By Fred Kaplan Posted Friday, April 23, 2004, at 3:41 PM PT
The budget is busted; American soldiers need more armor; they're running out of supplies. Yet the Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years. This does not include his much-cherished missile-defense program, by the way. This is simply for the maintenance, modernization, development, and production of nuclear bombs and warheads.
Measured in "real dollars" (that is, adjusting for inflation), this year's spending on nuclear activities is equal to what Ronald Reagan spent at the height of the U.S.-Soviet standoff. It exceeds by over 50 percent the average annual sum ($4.2 billion) that the United States spentagain, in real dollarsthroughout the four and a half decades of the Cold War.
There is no nuclear arms race going on now. The world no longer offers many suitable nuclear targets. President Bush is trying to persuade other nationsespecially "rogue regimes"to forgo their nuclear ambitions. Yet he is shoveling money to U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories as if the Soviet Union still existed and the Cold War still raged.
One of the chief problems with the current exciting adventure in Iraq is that no one can agree on what to call anyone else. In the second world war we were fighting the Germans, and the Germans were fighting us. Everyone agreed who was fighting who. That's what a proper war is like.
However, in Iraq, there isn't even any agreement on what to call the Americans. The Iraqis insist on calling them "Americans", which seems, on the face of it, reasonable. The Americans, however, insist on referring to themselves as "coalition forces". This is probably the first time in history that the United States has tried to share its military glory with someone else.
Hollywood, for example, is forever telling us it was the Americans who won the second world war. It was an American who led the break-out from the prison camp Stalag Luft III in The Great Escape; the Americans who captured the Enigma machine in the film U571; and Tom Cruise who single-handedly won the Battle of Britain (in his latest project, The Few).
So I suppose it's reassuring to find the US generals in Iraq so keen to emphasise the role played by America's partners in bringing a better way of life to Iraq.
Then there's the problem of what the Americans are going to call the Iraqis - especially the ones that they kill. You can call people who are defending their own homes from rockets and missiles launched from helicopters and tanks "fanatics and terrorists" only for so long. Eventually even newspaper readers will smell a rat.
Similarly it's fiendishly difficult to get people to accept the label "rebels" for those Iraqis killed by American snipers when - as in Falluja - they turn out to be pregnant women, 13-year-old boys and old men standing by their front gates.
It also sounds a bit lame to call ambulance drivers "fighters" - when they've been shot through the windscreen in the act of driving the wounded to hospital - and yet what other word can you use without making them sound like illegitimate targets?
I hope you're beginning to see the problem.
The key thing, I suppose, is to try to call US mercenaries "civilians" or "civilian contractors", while calling Iraqi civilians "fighters" or "insurgents".
Describing the recent attack on Najaf, the New York Times happily hit upon the word "militiamen". This has the advantage of being a bit vague (nobody really knows what a "militiaman" looks like or does), while at the same time sounding like the sort of foreigners any responsible government ought to kill on sight.
However, the semantic problems in Iraq run even deeper than that.
For example, there's the "handover of power" that's due to take place on June 30. Since no actual "power" is going to be handed over, the coalition chaps have had to find a less conclusive phrase. They now talk about the handover of "sovereignty", which is a suitably elastic notion. And besides, handing over a "notion" is a damn sight easier than handing over anything concrete.
Then again, the US insists that it has been carrying out "negotiations" with the mojahedin in Falluja. These "negotiations" consist of the US military demanding that the mojahedin hand over all their rocket-propelled grenade launchers, in return for which the US military will not blast the city to kingdom come. Now there's a danger that this all sounds like one side "threatening" the other, rather than "negotiations" - which, after all, usually implies some give and take on both sides.
As for the word "ceasefire", it's difficult to know what this signifies anymore. According to reliable witness reports from Falluja, the new American usage makes generous allowance for dropping cluster bombs and flares, and deploying artillery and snipers.
But perhaps the most exciting linguistic development is to be found away from the areas of conflict - in the calm of the Oval Office, where very few people get killed for looking out of their windows. Here words such as "strategy" and "policy" are daily applied to the kneejerk reactions of politicians and military commanders who think that brute force is the only way to resolve difficult problems in a delicate situation. As Major Kevin Collins, one of the officers in charge of the marines in Falluja, put it: "If you choose to pick a fight, we'll finish it."
In the past, one might have used a phrase such as "numbskull stupidity" rather than "strategy". But then, language has a life of its own ... which is more than one can say for a lot of innocent Iraqis.
Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python
Blogs that suck:NoGuru's blog
(fascist, racist and proud of it. Hatred and dumb rhetoric are his fav. pastimes). "Just my opinion, but I'll stick to it, just like a fly to shit" Reducto's blog
(written with the vision and logic of a deep-fried zucchini. Highly recommended for a good laugh)
BushLover's blog
(take a Noguru fruitcake, add more fascist sauce, sprinkle with threatening & bullying spices, and you've got a perfect BushLover dessert). Rsheinfield's blog
(pro-israel fanatic - anything the Israel gov says or does is gospel, including mass murder)
RedTigress's blog
(same as above + delightfully racist and fascist. An embarrassment to the Tiger species)
SithSense's blog
(same as above, + he just LOVES dead bodies and massacres)
Jim Doney's blog
(kinda like Reducto's blog. Just change "zucchini" to "potato")
ajhankin's blog
(same as above)
Defensor's blog
(another fascist bore)
LynnKramer's blog
(curious case of religious zealotry having reached advanced paranoiac delusional condition. Also a delightful source of racist blogs (her fav targets are the French, closely followed by Germans - but any European target will do just fine)
jrogg's blog
(not quite as dumb as Reducto, but ok for a bit of fun every now & then. There's hope for him)
Stepdad's blog
(yet another [sigh!] fascist nutcase)
Deshanews's blog
(same as above)
Camel dropping's blog
(A shameful insult to the otherwise very cute and cudly species of camels and dromedaries.
But, as CamelFace himself proudly announces, his thinking mode is achieved by farting through his own brain)
President Bush has been nominated for a Purple Chin award for being injured in the line of duty during his May 22 mountain bike tumble. The commander-in-chief reportedly was thinking about ways to fix his bone-headed war without admitting any mistakes when he hit a loose patch of dirt. 
