posted October 6, 2005 (October 24, 2005 issue)
Pat Tillman, Our Hero

Dave Zirin

"I don't believe it," seethed Ann Coulter.

Her contempt was directed at a September 25 San Francisco Chronicle story reporting that former NFL star and Army Ranger war hero Pat Tillman, who was killed in Afghanistan last year, believed the US war on Iraq was "f***ing illegal" and counted Noam Chomsky among his favorite authors. It must have been quite a moment for Coulter, who upon Tillman's death described him in her inimitably creepy fashion as "an American original--virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be." She tried to discredit the story as San Francisco agitprop, but this approach ran into a slight problem: The article's source was Pat Tillman's mother, Mary.

Mary and the Tillman family are relentlessly pushing for answers to the questions surrounding Pat's death in Afghanistan. They want to know why it took the Pentagon five weeks to tell them he died in a tragic case of friendly fire. They want to know why they were unwitting props at Pat's funeral, weeping while lies were told by eulogizing politicians. Mary is now hoping that a new Pentagon inquiry will bring closure. "There have been so many discrepancies so far that it's hard to know what to believe," she said to the Chronicle. "There are too many murky details."

Read the rest of the article.

The San Francisco Chronicle article refered to.

Unicef bombs the Smurfs in fund-raising campaign

The people of Belgium have been left reeling by the first adult-only episode of the Smurfs, in which the blue-skinned cartoon characters' village is annihilated by warplanes.

The short but chilling film is the work of Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, and is to be broadcast on national television next week as a campaign advertisement.

The animation was approved by the family of the Smurfs' late creator, "Peyo".

Belgian television viewers were given a preview of the 25-second film earlier this week, when it was shown on the main evening news. The reactions ranged from approval to shock and, in the case of small children who saw the episode by accident, wailing terror.

The Spanish Flu Pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza Pandemic, the 1918 Flu Epidemic, and La Grippe, was an unusually severe and deadly strain of influenza, a viral infectious disease, that killed some 25 million to 50 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919. It is thought to have been one of the most deadly pandemics so far in human history.

The nations of the Allied side of World War I frequently called it the "Spanish Flu." This was mainly because the pandemic received greater press attention in Spain than in the rest of the world, because Spain was not involved in the war and there was no wartime censorship. In Spain it was called "The French Flu". Spain did have one of the worst early outbreaks of the disease, with some 8 million people infected in May 1918. It was also known as "only the flu" or "the grippe" by public health officials seeking to prevent panic.

Read More

In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon. The Americans had joined in the fight, bringing the Allies closer to victory against the Germans. Deep within the trenches these men lived through some of the most brutal conditions of life, which it seemed could not be any worse. Then, in pockets across the globe, something erupted that seemed as benign as the common cold. The influenza of that season, however, was far more than a cold. In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children. It infected 28% of all Americans (Tice). An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war.

Read More

In the greater scheme of things, this is trivial, but it gave me a weird laugh.
I should be saying something more serious after so long without any journals but wtf. I've been busy with school, and now I am busy with vacation. Maybe I'll post more later. The video is worth rebooting to windoze.

Enjoy:

http://www.lies.com/wp/2005/08/31/right-wing-mob-drives-off-protest-warriors/

Right-wing Mob Drives Off Protest Warriors

Check out Norm of Onegoodmove's account and re-hosted video of a hilarious turn of events at the "Cindy Doesn't Support Us Rally" in Crawford: We don't do irony.

It seems the good subversives of Protest Warrior, who like to stage counter-demonstrations with signs bearing clever (well, at least they think so) slogans like, "WAR HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING (except for ending slavery, fascism, naziism and communism)", carried said signs into a pro-Bush rally, and were driven off by angry Bush supporters who mistook them for Cindy Sheehan fans.

The poetic justice is really too, too much. I love the part of the video where they are trying to explain, and one or two of the crowd get it, and are saying to their angry brethren, "No, wait, read the sign, see? They're on our side." But the crowd looks at the sign, and squints for a few seconds at the big print ("WAR NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING"), and decides that nope, these smart-ass kids are making fun of us, and screams and yells at them until they're forced to leave.

If you Protest Warriors want to do humor and irony and subtle/clever mocking, you probably should stick to counter-protesting against us leftists. We may argue with you that you're wrong, but at least we get the joke.

Face it: You have more in common with us than with them.

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002331.html#002331

We Don't Do Irony

The right-wing doesn't do irony, at least not intentionally. The Protest Warriors a group of young freepers that show up at anti-war rallys to protest the protestors with signs sporting 'ironic' messages such as "War Has Never Solved Anything (except for everything)." were in for a surprise when they showed up to support the Cindy Doesn't Speak For Us Rally in Crawford. The irony impaired crowd took them for anti-war protestors and despite their protestations that they were on their side, knocked their signs to the ground, and chanted "Get Out of Here Liars" The Protest Warriors shaken by the less than friendly welcome left.

Read the whole story at Indybay They have Windows Media Video of the event filmed by Jeff Paterson. I've made a Quicktime version for those who prefer that format. (hat tip to Josh for the link)

http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/08/1762933.php

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/protest-warriors_sm.wmv

http://www.protestwarrior.com/

And for the rest of those who are not obsessive Nurse With Wound collectors, what the hell is wrong with you people? - Jonathan Dean

Today I was curious if the nomination of John Bolton has been put to a vote or not yet, I did a search to see if there was any news.

Nothing in particular came up. I came across this funny blog entry though.

In the end, it doesn't really matter whether John Bolton was in reality the buttcheeks-in-leather he's now cracked up to be, back in the day (though it's sure as hell entertaining); what does matter is that he has made an entire career out of opposing peace, compromise and reality-based intelligence analysis - with the deadly results we have seen in Iraq.

That's just the last paragraph. It has a number of interesting looking links, from serious, to sex scandal to Lizards From The Fourth Dimension. IE the kind of stuff that makes me find Ground Zero so entertaining.

But I am really curious as to how this turns out. I'm hoping that between this and social security BS that this will finally prod the few decent Republicans still out there into defying the leadership of the Republican party. (Because said leadership has been completely taken over but stupid liberal "neo-cons.")

I used to even have some respect for John McCain, but between him supporting the current invasion of Iraq, but now that even the mainstream corporate liberal media is reporting that Intellegence was "adjusted" to fit the policy (of invading Iraq) all he has to say about it is he "doesn't agree with (the evidence)." OK, I've studied psychology, I can recognize this as Cognitive Dissonance.

The thing is, dispite that I have a lot of values that some might call "liberal", I have a conservative background. I am a Republican turned Libertarian turned anarchist. I still have a lot of conservative values. The GWB administration offends my conservative values a lot more than my "liberal" values.

Even though I've completely given up on the Republican party, I still like to think that there are still a few good conservative (not stupid liberal "neo-con") Republicans out there.

Are people ever going to wake up?

(Note when I say this that I have no love for the Democratic party. I mostly split my votes between Libertarians and Greens, favoring Libertarians in Executive positions.)

This is yet another nomination that makes me think the current administration is deliberately trying to insult.... the ignorant masses.... everyone? Or testing the population to see how just how far they can go, and finding out that you should never underestimate the stupidity of the masses. Or would ignorance be a better term. I wonder what percentage of the population even knows who John Bolton and John Negroponte are?

Without a warrant, NYPD detectives and federal agents burst into the girl's home--no wonder they don't have time to look for Osama!--where they "searched her belongings and confiscated her computer and the essays that she had written as part of a home schooling program," say her family. "One essay concerned suicide...[that] asserted that suicide is against Islamic law." The family is Bangladeshi. They are Muslim. That, coupled with the mere mention of suicide bombing in her essay, was enough to put the fuzz on high alert....

"There are doubts about these claims, and no evidence has been found that such a plot was in the works," one Bush Administration official admitted to the Times. "The arrests took place after authorities decided it would be better to lock up the girls than wait and see if they decided to become terrorists," another told the New York Post. The same logic could be used to justify locking up any Muslim, or anyone at all. Heck, maybe that's the idea....

She says FBI agents threatened to deport her parents and place her American-born siblings, a four-month-old baby and an 11-year-old, in foster care unless she confessed.

Then They Came for the Children - Feds Arrest Girls for Teen Snottiness

Cherry Bombers? Teen-age girls, the latest terror threat to our government

[UPDATE]FBI Detain 2 16-year-old Girls as "suicide bombers"

Two Girls Held as U.S. Fears Suicide Bomb

Article at SF Gate

(02-17) 07:27 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

President Bush on Thursday named John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and currently the administration's top representative in Iraq, to be America's first national intelligence director.

It's a sudden job change for Negroponte, a career diplomat. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has been serving as U.S. ambassador in Baghdad since June.

Wikipedia on Negroponte's History

Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the US, and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit (commonly referred to as a "death squad") of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

Article at Christian Science Monitor

Human rights groups alleged that Negroponte acquiesced in human rights abuses by Honduran death squads funded and partly trained by the CIA. Negroponte testified during the hearings for the U.N. post that he did not believe death squads were operating in Honduras.

I guess it wasn't insulting enough to make him our Ambassador in Iraq.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0127-31.htm

Published on Thursday, January 27, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)
Criminals the Lot of Us
The invasion of Iraq was a crime of gigantic proportions, for which politicians, the media and the public share responsibility
by Scott Ritter

The White House's acknowledgement last month that the United States has formally ended its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq brought to a close the most calamitous international deception of modern times.

This decision was taken a month after a contentious presidential election in which the issue of WMD and the war in Iraq played a central role. In the lead-up to the invasion, and throughout its aftermath, President Bush was unwavering in his conviction that Iraq had WMD, and that this posed a threat to the US and the world. The failure to find WMD should have been his Achilles heel, but the Democratic contender, John Kerry, floundered, changing his position on WMD and Iraq many times.

Ironically, it was Kerry who forced the Bush administration to acknowledge that it was WMD that solely justified any military action against Iraq. Before the US Senate in 2002, secretary of state Colin Powell responded to a question posed by Kerry about what would happen if Iraq allowed UN weapons inspectors to return and they found the country had in fact disarmed.

"If Iraq was disarmed as a result of an inspection regime that gave us and the security council confidence that it had been disarmed, I think it unlikely that we would find a casus belli."

When one looks at the situation in Iraq today, the only way that it would be possible to justify the current state of affairs - a once secular society now the centre of a global anti-American Islamist jihad, tens of thousands of civilians killed, an unending war that costs almost £3.2bn a month, and the basic principles of democracy mocked through an election process that has generated extensive violence - is if the invasion of Iraq was for a cause worthy of the price.

The threat to international peace and security represented by Iraqi WMD seemed to be such a cause. We now know there were no WMD, and thus no justification for the war. And yet there are no repercussions.

The culpability for the war can be traced to those same Senate hearings in 2002, when Colin Powell said:"We can have debates about the size of the stockpile ... but no one can doubt two things. One, they [Iraq] are in violation of these resolutions ... And second, they have not lost the intent to develop these weapons of mass destruction."

Politicians, the mainstream media and the public alike accepted this line of argument, without debate, thus setting the stage for an illegal war.

UN weapons inspections were never given a chance. Ever since the Clinton administration ordered them out of Iraq in 1998, the US has denigrated the efficacy of the inspection process. This was a policy begun by Clinton, but perfected by Bush in the build-up to war. In October 2002, a month after Saddam Hussein agreed to the unfettered return of weapons inspectors, the US defence department postulated the existence of secret production facilities, protected by a "concealment mechanism" designed to defeat inspectors. Thus, even if they returned, a finding of no WMD was meaningless.

Inspectors did return, and they found nothing. Iraq submitted a complete declaration of its WMD holdings, which was dismissed as lies by the Bush administration. Everyone seemed to accept this rejection of fact. "Intelligence information" wasassumed to be infallible. And yet it was all just hype.

There was never any serious effort undertaken by the Bush administration to find Iraqi WMD. Prior to the invasion, the US military re-designated an artillery brigade as an "exploitation task force" designed to search for WMD as the coalition advanced into Iraq.

It did little more than serve as a vehicle for its embedded reporter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, to recycle fabricated information provided by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, creating dramatic headlines that had no substance. Once Iraq was occupied, Miller was sent home, and the taskforce disbanded.

A new organisation was created, the CIA-led Iraq survey group (ISG), led by David Kay. His job was not to find WMD but to spin the data for the political benefit of the White House. He hinted at dramatic findings, only to suddenly reverse course once Saddam Hussein was captured. Kay told us that everyone had got it wrong on WMD, that it was no one's fault. He was replaced by Charles Duelfer, whose task was to extend the WMD cover-up for as long as possible. Duelfer was very adept at this, having done similar work while serving as the deputy executive chairman of the UN weapons inspection effort.

I witnessed him manipulate reports to the security council, rejecting all that didn't sustain his (and the US government's) foregone conclusion that Iraq had WMD.

As the head of the ISG, he was called upon to again manipulate the data. As it was virtually impossible to conjure up WMD stockpiles where none existed, he did the next best thing - he re-certified Colin Powell's pre-war assertion that Saddam Hussein had the "intent" to re-acquire WMD. Duelfer provided no evidence to support this supposition. In fact, the available data seems to reject the notion of "intent". But once again, politicians, the mainstream media and the public at large failed to let facts get in the way of assertions. The ISG had accomplished its mission - not the search for WMD, but the establishment of a viable alibi. Its job done, the ISG slipped quietly away, its passing barely noticed by politicians, media and a public all too willing to pretend that no crime has been committed.

But, through the invasion of Iraq, a crime of gigantic proportions has been perpetrated. If history has taught us anything, it is that it will condemn both the individuals and respective societies who not only perpetrated the crime, but also remained blind and mute while it was being committed.

Scott Ritter was a senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 and is the author of Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America.

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Inc.

Go take the poll.

And discuss.

I haven't been doing slashdot much lately, is em still AWOL?

(Spoiler Warning)
(Don't read below this until you have taken the poll.)

Anyway, I'm going through my bookmarks and organizing them and came across an old link to a slashdot article Daily Show's Viewers Best O'Reilly's In Political Quiz.

Even before this came out, I've been of the opinion that there is more actual news on The Daily Show than on most of the corporate mainstream liberal media.

I'm also of the opinion that Fox News is actually the most liberal of the liberal media. The reasoning behind this is that they take the most liberties in editorializing the news. It is the all-spin zone so to speak.

But do not confuse this to mean that I like the corporate mainstream liberal media. I much prefer The News Hour, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The American Conservative, and Free Speech Radio News. (I'm also a big believer in getting news from multiple sources.)

I've thought of expanding this poll, but this one is sort of a joke, sort of not a joke. Also, if I put in more questions, it might influence people's choices for this question. So if I do expand on it I will create a new poll.

And if you haven't taken my other polls, go take them NOW!
Please?

In my last journal entry I voiced rumors that I heard that Colin Powell was going to resign. Hey, they were just rumors, so I didn't really know if they would come true. But I suppose I might as well gloat so....

Ha!

Here is the CNN Article.
and Here is the UK Guardian article.

This makes for 6 resignations (Out of 17 cabinet positions) since the election.

I just thank my lucky stars that John Ashcroft is one of them.

I came across this quote from February 2001:

We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Anyway, yes, I think we'd be doomed with Kerry too, or at least we would still be in deep fecal matter. I was at least hoping the economy would improve under Kerry, and that perhapse, perhapse not, that the apocalypse would be delayed a little longer.

Or maybe it has now that Bush has been declaired the winner. There is still the question of the Diebold voting machines. But then if we were going by my theory that John Kerry is really the Anti-Christ then if anything the Bush team would have had them tipping the vote to make sure that Kerry would win. Another possibility is that they are both evil conspirators bent on destroying the world, or at least controlling it, but they actually have different agendas, different evil conspiracies.

And then there is yet another possibility that they are both trying to provoke a civil war, in order to institute marshall law, and suspend the constitution and Posse Comitatus. So think carefully before you start rioting. That just may be the excuse "they" are looking for.

Police riots are bad enough. Real riots are just stupid. Note that I'm saying this as an anarchist. If you think that riots would be a good thing I think you really really need to re-evaluate your priorities, as well as political theory.

(To say nothing about "they" are much better armed that "we" are.)
(And do you really want to waste your life over a stupid putz like Kerry?)

I must say that I really hate the Democratic Party right now. I should have voted for Badnarik. It is a wasted vote but at least I would have a clear concious. Maybe I'll work on getting approval voting in the next 4 years.

So what now?
Kerry doesn't seem to be putting up a fight.
At least the Black Box Voting people are.
And impeachment is still a possibility, if unlikely.
What would be needed is incontrovertible evidence.

Oh, and another curiosity is if Colin Powell will resign. I heard a rumor that he was not going to serve another term because he felt humiliated after lying before the United Nations. I would say it has blown the possibility of his becoming president. And he might have even made a good one. I'd take him over both GWB and JFK, but that's not saying a whole lot.

A few months ago I was predicting (except I didn't tell anyone) that this years presidential election would result in Bush winning the popular vote, and Kerry winning the electoral vote. Part of it was just that it would make an interesting. Well, looking recently at the latest electoral college predictions, Bush is now ahead. But it is still really close so I think I'll stick with my previously unstated pediction.

In the state I live it has gone from Barely Kerry to Weak Kerry, so now I'm getting tempted to vote for Badnarik, which is who I would really want in the white house. I'll say it. I hate Kerry. I'm still thinking of voting for him anyway because I think another four years will do serious dammage to this country.

Heck, Kerry has even suprised me by saying a few things here and there that I agree with. I still don't trust him. I am not an anyone but Bush person. It is a "be careful what you wish for" thing. Cheney would be worse than Bush, excpet maybe he wouldn't be able to handle the PR as well. Ascroft would be a lot worse, but I think he is a bit far down on the list of succession.

And I don't care if you are a "liberal" or a "conservative" or whatever. It is time to face facts that no matter who is elected next week this country has a lot of problems and I don't think either of them will put us in the right direction. For one thing I think the citizens of this population need to wake up from the blame game and realize that both the Democrats and the Republicans have royally fucked things up and we need to hold our politicians accountable even if he is a member of the party you identify with.

Another thing that I've heard people talking about is that this country is ready to boilover with this election. People are talking about civil war, or at least riots. Actually, when it comes down to it I don't think it is going to happen but that would probably take more explanation than it is worth.

I hate to sound politically correct but dispite which asshole wins on Tuesday we still got to live together. (Queue sample of Jack Nicolson saying "can't we all just get along" from Marz Attacks.)

Can't we just admit that both Bush and Kerry are assholes and neither are fit to rule?

Bush Insists His Administration Seeking 'new Ways to Harm Our Country'

I'm not sure if this came before of after John Kerry said "We will double our special forces to conduct terrorist operations"

Yup, this is going to be a fun election.

I suppose the article is small enough, so just incase it disappears

Published: Aug 5, 2004
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush offered up a new entry for his catalog of "Bushisms" on Thursday, declaring that his administration will "never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people."

Bush misspoke as he delivered a speech at the signing ceremony for a $417 billion defense spending bill.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

No one in Bush's audience of military brass or Pentagon chiefs reacted.

A local talk show host has been critical of people whose main endorcement of Kerry is "Anybody but Bush." He has now taken to making fun of them by refering to their slogal as "Anybody's Butt." As if people are endorcing a Butt for the office of President.

This made me think, if we were to elect our president based on a person's butt, who would you want to be president.

I am now accepting nominations, and I will create a poll over at misterpoll when the comment period is over.

And please, invite your friends into this discussion.

I was listening to talk radio tonight, and someone was musing that the flights of the hijacked planes on 911 originated from Boston.

The Democratic Party Convension is in Boston this year, and the Republican Convension is in New York.

I'm not sure what to make of it but does anyone think this is a little weird?

(Insert the X Files theme here)