Deeply disturbed “Bomb Iran” advocate John Bolton openly gushes about the recent time in American history when the CIA, and its front NGOs, would steal into democratic countries in Latin America and overthrow governments, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and widespread state-run, American plotted terrorism and economic chaos :
“The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back.”
Not only does Bolton want the United States to bomb ten kinds of hell out of the nuclear energy installations in Iran, attacks which could result in the release of deadly clouds of radioactive dust across the entire region, he also wants BushCo. to overthrow the Iranian regime :
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Tory delegates today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.
“…life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities.”
He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the “source of the problem”, Mr Ahmadinejad.
“If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change…”
The Iraq War proved it, and the warpig fulminating for attacking Iran only double confirms it : The NeoCons want to destabilise the entire Middle East, unleash chaos and depopulate Muslim nations.
Vice President Dick Cheney was recently outed as having plotted ways to provoke Iran into attacking Israel, so the United States could then go to War On Iran in retaliation.
A key aide to the US Defense Secretary told British MPs, during a visit to the Pentagon, that she hates “all Iranians” and that Britain stood accused of “dismantling” the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ through its plans to withdraw troops from Basra.
Debra Cagan is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and one of President Bush’s key foreign policy advisers. You don’t have to think too hard to imagine what kind of “advice” she’s given Bush on what to do about Iran.
Cagan’s aggressive tone on Iran, and her declared hatred of “all Iranians”, presumably including the tens of thousands of Jews and Christians who live peacefully inside Iran, unnerved the British MPs, who now fear that BushCo. is “looking for an excuse” to go to war in the Middle East, again :
The six MPs were taken aback by the hardline approach of the Pentagon and in particular Ms Cagan, one of Mr Bush’s foreign policy advisers.
The MPs say that at one point she said: “In any case, I hate all Iranians.”
Although it was an aside, it was not out of keeping with her general demeanour.
“She seemed more keen on saying she didn’t like Iranians than that the US had no plans to attack Iran,” said one MP. “She did say there were no plans for an attack but the tone did not fit the words.”
Another MP said: “I formed the impression that some in America are looking for an excuse to attack Iran. It was very alarming.”
Tory Stuart Graham, who was on the ten-day trip, would not discuss Ms Cagan but said: “It was very sobering to hear from the horse’s mouth how the US sees the situation.”
The kind of senseless hatred against Iranians from key BushCo. officials and the NeoCon warpigs is filling American, British and Australian media.
If it’s not the clearly disturbing “Bomb Iran Now” cheer-leading from the internationally loathed ‘diplomat’ John Bolton, it’s the self-declared godfather of American neoconservatives, Norman Podhoretz advising Bush to bomb Iran before it’s too late -too late being the end of the Bush presidency - and then boasting about it to any media that will listen as he tries to flog his new hate book calling for more war on Muslims.
The calls for violent bloodshed and attacks on sovereign nations are almost solely coming from the United States when it comes to a future War On Iran. By no coincidence, Bolton and Ponderhertz are two of the biggest promoters of key anti-Iranian hate myths - that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of the US, has denied Nazi Germany killed millions of Jews and that he wants to “wipe Israel off the map.”
NeoCons demand truth and accountability from Iran when it comes to its nuclear energy programs, but naturally they reject both measures of accuracy when it comes to their propaganda programs of poisoning the minds of Americans against the only Middle East nation that immediately held candlelight vigils for the victims of 9/11, within hours of the attacks, and quickly offered to help President Bush destroy the Al Qaeda terrorist network.
BushCo. and the NeoCons rejected Iran’s offer to bust apart Al Qaeda, and also recently rebuffed Iranian offers to help fight Al Qaeda in Iraq and restore security and peace to the war-shattered country.
“…whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the President’s willing to do something bad for the kids.”
You shouldn’t be surprised. Kristol’s massive propaganda campaigns to falsify a case for attacking Iraq in 2002 helped destroy competent health care programs for millions of Iraqi children. Since the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq began in March, 2003, hundreds of thousands of children have died or fallen seriously ill from the destruction of Iraqi health care infrastructure, water treatment plants, sewerage systems and food distribution networks.
Kristol now talks like he thinks the degrading of health care for millions of American children is not only a good idea, but funny as well.
The Burmese military are killing unarmed civilians and monks. Possibly hundreds are now rumoured to have been slaughtered. Thousands more jailed. The military junta claims it is regaining control of the streets and the protests are smaller.
Why won’t someone do something to stop this?
The outcry from Australia, the United States, the UK, the EU, is righteous but pathetically toothless. We can’t do anything, the leaders claim, except put pressure on China, Burma’s biggest trading partner.
The Japanese people, if not the government, are furious at the senseless murder of one of their own in the streets of Rangoon.
And now comes some extraordinary news - a growing number of Burmese military and police are refusing to shoot civilians, and may be now turning their weapons on the murderers in their midsts, or so some reports claim.
Will China’s refusal to use real pressure, and it’s enormous influence, on the Burmese military regime be the spark that leads to war between the East and West?
Myanmar is above all a key strategic pawn for China. Not only as a captive market for civilian goods in addition to weapons, but as a pawn to keep India in check and assure China of key strategic access to the Indian Ocean. Just like Britain - which twice invaded Burma, as Myanmar was known until 1989 - China’s utmost interest is natural resources. Oil and gas, of course, but also gems and timber: the once-pristine forests at the Myanmar-China border have been practically wiped out. According to the rights group Global Witness, Myanmar exported no less than $350 million in timber to China in 2005 alone, and the bulk of it was illegal.
According to EarthRights International, a crucial project of Chinese multinationals established in Myanmar has been the construction of a 2,380-kilometer oil-and-gas pipeline from the Arakan coast to Yunnan province in China. China needs this pipeline and a vital port in Myanmar for its growing energy imports from the Middle East, Africa and Venezuela.
Myanmar and China are also intimately linked by a $1.5 billion, high-tech electronic-warfare pet project of the junta’s leader, psychological-warfare specialist General Than Shwe, 74, very much appreciated in Beijing. It deals with surveillance of ethnic-minority guerrillas in Myanmar - the Karen, the Chan, the Wa, among others. It deals with surveillance of strategic competitor India. And it deals with surveillance of all naval traffic in the Indian Ocean, US warships included, not to mention the crucial Strait of Malacca.
US sanctions are just for internal American consumption; they will have absolutely no impact. For starters, Myanmar is not under a military embargo. A really different story, for instance, would be the Bush administration telling the Chinese to drop the junta, otherwise no US athletes will be seen at the Beijing Summer Olympics next year.
The French for their part now say they fear a terrible crackdown - but in fact they fear what happens to substantial oil business by French energy giant Total.
Oil and gas interests, as usual, fly in the face of genuine movements for democracy in totalitarian regimes.
You can have all the democracy you want, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of business.
Xenu - the only thing Tom Cruise fears more than well-tuned gaydar
Come on, of course this story is true. When the last time an American tabloid published a completely absurd and craptacular story about a major celebrity?
The Mission Impossible actor, who is a dedicated follower of Scientology, is reportedly fearful that deposed galactic ruler ‘Xenu’ is plotting an evil revenge attack on Earth.
Hence the need for an underground anti-alien invasion shelter.
Please, please, please sue the magazine that made this up, Tom. The court case would be so entertaining.
I’ll probably regret telling all of you this, but for most of my life I’ve had a completely unnatural, near crippling fear of giraffes. Just seeing one of bizarre horned heads on a TV ad makes my blood run cold. On a funniest home video show one night, a clip was aired where a giraffe bolted onto a road somewhere in Africa and almost took out a passing car. I nearly shrieked.
My parter, naturally, thinks Fear Of Giraffes is hysterical, and loves to show me photos in newspapers or magazines where the freakishly long-necked creatures are looming out of the page. I can’t remember a time when giraffes have featured so prominently in TV and magazine advertising. They’re fucking everywhere I look.
So, in an effort to confront The Fear, I’m posting a truly horrific video of two giraffes fighting. I needed a double Wild Turkey just to look at this clip. I still can’t watch it all the way through :
Yeah, I know. You probably think the video is funny. But look at the way their necks bend and those beak-like heads swoosh about. Brrr. Goddammit. I’m not too sure whether or not aliens have ever visited our planet, but if they have, they visited Africa millions of years ago and mated with the local wildlife. The result? Those bandy-legged, stubby-horned, flexi-necked beasts you call ‘The Giraffe’.
British author Robert Harris nails exactly what is wrong with the leaders of The West today, as they bark orders at us about how we should fear the terrorists, but not let them change our way of life, while the war they started has changed everything :
“That’s something I’m against, morally, the way that our leaders are swaddled in security, with bomb-proof cars and pampered and ferried around like dictators until the day they die, while the rest of us, on the tube or whatever, are liable to be blown up in their wretched war on terror. It seems to me to be morally wrong.
“There was a time when princes leading their people into battle were on the front line, not cosseted like this. They’re the only people who are safe! There’s something profoundly wrong about it, and leads to their isolation….I felt during the last years of Blair that it was like being led by someone from outer space.”
Exactly. We’ll hide away behind ten layers of ultra-security after we helped turn Iraq into the murder, kidnapping and terror capital of the world, and you plebians can take your chances on public transport.
The full story this quote comes from is an interesting profile of Robert Harris, the author of Fatherland, discussing his new novel, a not-so-well disguised ‘fiction’ about Tony Blair and the British relationship with the United States in the age of war and terror.
Note : The headline above, for those not familiar with those words, comes from the best anti-war song ever written - War Pigs by Black Sabbath. Excellent video of it right here. Remember, turn it up. Loud.
The “New Labour Thought Police” were accused of indoctrinating youngsters by handing out thousands of Climate Change Packs to schools.
The packs include the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, made by Bill Clinton’s former vice president Al Gore.
Lorry driver and school governor Stewart Dimmock is seeking a court order quashing the Government’s decision to distribute the documentary and four short films to 3,500 schools and also to declare that decision unlawful.
Mr Paul Downes, Mr Dimmock’s counsel, replied: “Lots of parents have written to him supporting his application. They do not want our children brainwashed in this way by the New Labour Thought Police.”
Before the hearing, Mr Dimmock, a lorry driver from Dover with children aged 11 and 14, said: “Climate change is important, but it should be taught to children in a neutral and measured manner.”
Ok, so after a week of discussing Jena 6, Bill O’Reilly, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and the various ailments of the human condition I want to start the weekend on a lighter note.
Have you seen the trailer for Iron Man? Robert Downey Jr. Is the PERFECT Tony Stark. He just pulls it off so well. I love that line he give about his latest weapon.
“They say the perfect weapon is the one you never fire. I believe the perfect weapon is the one you only need to fire ONCE! That’s how dad did it, that’s how America does it, … and it’s worked out pretty well so far.”
See the trailer yourself and tell me you aren’t interested.
An absolutely extraordinary piece of footage as a lion is reunited with his old friends. The two men in the video raised the lion and then released it into the wilds of African. One year later they return to see how the lion is getting on. For a moment, the lion looks like he is thinking about eating the visitors, and then…
Just like an affectionate cat running up to its owner to say hello after a long time apart. Wonderful stuff.
UPDATE : If you’re not getting a video screen above, try this link :
Three Caves Quarry, soon to become the United States biggest nuclear fallout shelter
For the first time in decades, the United States is refurbishing old nuclear fallout shelters, and building new ones. Well, sort of. In Alabama, officials are planning to pack 20,000 people into a massive abandoned mine in the event of nuclear armegeddon, but unlike the Cold War-era nuclear shelters, the new ones will not be stocked with food and water. It will be “bring your own everything.”
In an age of al-Qaida, sleeper cells and the threat of nuclear terrorism, Huntsville is dusting off its Cold War manual to create the nation’s most ambitious fallout-shelter plan, featuring an abandoned mine big enough for 20,000 people to take cover underground.
Others would hunker down in college dorms, churches, libraries and research halls that planners hope will bring the community’s shelter capacity to 300,000, or space for every man, woman and child in Huntsville and the surrounding county.
Emergency planners in Huntsville - an out-of-the-way city best known as the home of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center - say the idea makes sense because radioactive fallout could be scattered for hundreds of miles if terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb.
“If Huntsville is in the blast zone, there’s not much we can do. But if it’s just fallout … shelters would absorb 90 percent of the radiation,” said longtime emergency management planner Kirk Paradise, whose Cold War expertise with fallout shelters led local leaders to renew Huntsville’s program.
Huntsville’s project, developed using $70,000 from a Homeland Security grant, goes against the grain because the United States essentially scrapped its national plan for fallout shelters after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Congress cut off funding and the government published its last list of approved shelters at the end of 1992.
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Last mined in the early ’50s, the limestone quarry is dug 300 yards into the side of the mountain, with ceilings as high as 60 feet and 10 acres of floor space covered with jagged rocks. Jet-black in places with a year-round temperature of about 60 degrees, it has a colony of bats living in its highest reaches and baby stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
“It would be a little trying, but it’s better than the alternative,” said Andy Prewett, a manager with The Land Trust of Huntsville and North Alabama, a nonprofit preservation group that owns the mine and is making it available for free.
Unlike the fallout shelters set up during the Cold War, the new ones will not be stocked with water, food or other supplies. For survivors of a nuclear attack, it would be strictly “BYOE” - bring your own everything. Just throw down a sleeping bag on the courthouse floor - or move some of the rocks on the mine floor - and make yourself at home.
“We do not guarantee them comfort, just protection,” said Paradise, who is coordinating the shelter plans for the local emergency management agency.
If the “bring your own everything” fiasco of the Hurricane Katrina shelters are anything to go by, chaos in the mine will reign.
But BushCo. wanted the Iraq War, and they were going to go to war regardless of what Saddam Hussein did or did not do.
A story from the UK Daily Mail, claims Saddam Hussein wanted $1 billion to go into exile. But, back in early 2003, BushCo. refused. The War On Iraq was a go. How could it be stopped? The stock price for Boeing and Raytheon was climbing in anticipation of all the new ‘defence’ contracts to come.
$1 billion is a lot, but it’s nothing compared to the $1.2 trillion bill the United States is already racking up in going to War On Iraq. And it’s a small chunk of the more than $8 billion the United States “lost track of” in Iraq, when tons of cash was literally forklifted off the back of planes, before going missing.
War is first, and above all, a business. And business has never been so good for the American, Australian, British and Israeli war industries now supplying bullets, bombs, helicopter gun ships and other (some experimental) assorted human-slaying devices to the ‘free fire’ weapons range that is now Iraq.
Saddam going into exile in late February, 2003, would have made justifying the ‘War On Iraq’ all but impossible for President Bush, especially considering he failed to get a second resolution from the United Nations, and more than 10 million people around the world were marching in opposition.
The new revelations also render President Bush’s demands that Saddam leave Iraq, only two days before the war began, to be nothing more than an utterly cynical, disgusting last ditch attempt to try and claim the moral high ground for an horrific, unprovoked war on an all but defenceless people. A large number of whom were children, many of whom are now dead. Or dying.
Nicolas Sarkozy is viewed as “one of us” by NeoCons in the US, the UK, Europe and Australia, mostly because of his Bomb Iran Before They Get The Bomb stance. But it would be interesting to know what anti-United Nations warpigs like John Bolton think of Sarkozy after his speech yesterday at the United Nations. Bolton, like most NeoCons, despises the United Nations so much he once said he wanted to see it destroyed. Decapitated. Blown up.
Not only is Sarkozy endorsing the United Nations as the key instrument for global democracy, he wants the institution to lead the world into a new ‘golden age’ of shared prosperity and freedom.
In this speech to the United Nations general assembly, Sarkozy started coming on all JFK. And we know what happened to him :
France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, in his first appearance before the assembly, called on the UN to avail itself as an instrument for a “new world order of the 21st century.”
“In the name of France, I call upon all states to join ranks in order to found the new world order of the 21st century on the notion that the common goods that belong to all of humankind must be the common responsibility for us all,” he told the General Assembly.
The UN should ensure access for all human beings to vital resources, such as water, energy, food, medication and knowledge, he said. He called for “more morality” in “financial capitalism” and a fairer distribution of profits, earnings in commodities, raw materials and new technologies.
“There must be a change of mindset and behaviour,” Sarkozy said in a long list of demands to the international community.
Sarkozy is doing his best to show the world, and the French, that he hasn’t forgot his nation’s socialist revolution. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for NeoCons, like John Bolton, to slap the French president back into line.
How much do you think the most recent GAO (Government Accountability Office) report cost American taxpayers? 1 million dollars, a hundred thoudand? Somewhere inbetween. Perhaps the GAO should just split the amount in half and provide me the funds, tax free of course. Why am I so worthy of such funds?
These words were spoken on June 5, 2006. That’s more than a year ago. One man, on a decent sized blog, and I was able to discern that the Canadian border is the biggest threat to American saftey. While pundits and politicians argue about the Southern border and how much to spend, god knows how many individuals with anti-American agendas have entered our nation from the North.
I ask Sen. Baucus, how do you know that? What proof do you have that hundreds have not entered the nation from the north?
Investigators also noted several ports of entry have posted daytime hours and are not manned overnight.
Given this information how dare Sen. Baucus make syuch a statement.
I am angry. A visible and apparent issue has been in front of the nation for years, and all the politicians can do is worry about Mexico.
Are we to infer that Latinos are more dangerous than the defined, and repeated, threat we have observed from the lighter skinned northern neighbors.
The government may wish to stick its head in the sand, and assume that if we protect one border all are safe. The public at large may wish to assume that one culture is more dangerous than another. But the fact is, and is shown to be again, that such precepts are both false and dangerous.
The GAO has wasted money and time. Our politicians lack the resolve needed to pay attention to the issues at hand; and the media is too busy drumming up the racial tensions that provide them viewership and income. None of these things have made us any safer.
Over a year ago, we were lucky to catch 17 people that wanted to attack innocent American citizens and people at large. I mentioned then that America needed to pay attention. We failed to do that. Who knows how many have entered the nation and what they plan.
This is not just an American issue. Terrorists would gladly kill tourists, dignitaries, and illegal aliens (or undocumented workers if that silly title makes you feel better) along with any American they could get. When the Towers were attacked, they didn’t try to miss the shops and stores that had workers and visitors from other nations. They didn’t sheild the people on the ground from the falling debris. And they won’t the next time other.
As long as politicians and pundits blithely go about the usual process of blaming every Hispanic/Latino illegal alien of making America unsafe while ignoring real threats we will never be safe.
And for those that wonder, I still believe that all the illegal aliens need to be removed from the nation. Any that are in the nation deserve none of the rights of an American citizen or the taxes we pay. I just don’t believe that illegal aliens from our Southern border are the largest or sole danger to this nation.
So let’s stop freaking out about people with great tans that last all year long and cost nothing, and focus on the safety of the people. Terrorists are the only ones enjoying the imbalance.
Weird. An Australian physicist said scientists are trying to turn time travel into a reality, but thinks it would ultimately prove to be too expensive:
“Even if time travel turned out to be possible there would still be an economic problem,” said Craig Savage, relativity and quantum physics expert from the Australian National University.
“The expense of space travel runs into billions of dollars, but you would have to add many zeros to that before you were even close to the cost of time travel.”
“If time travel is possible, it is only like likely to happen in the realm of quantum physics,” he said.
“In fact some argue that some aspects of quantum physics almost demand time travel.”
Craig Savage is quoted as saying that a future society advanced enough to be able to harness the reality of time travel would be “virtually unrecognisable to those living now.”
So future humans might already be walking amongst us, gathering for front row seats at historic events, but presumably they wouldn’t look like us, or act like us nor dress like us. So we wouldn’t know who or what they were.
If you see any weird looking humanoid creatures wandering around your city wearing a nameplate with the words ‘Virgin Time Riders Club’, you know now they’re not of our age.
But if time travel does become real, say 300 or 400 years in the future, wouldn’t the very act of being able to travel in time take care of expenses?
All you’d need to do is open a bank account in 2007, throw in a few thousand dollars and by the time 2307 rolls around, you’d have enough accumulated interest to pay for plenty of time travel ventures.
Unless, of course, today’s financial system utterly collapses in a festering heap in the next decade or two. And right now, that is a more realistic scenario than the future development of time travel.
Amazing. Mr. Bill O’Reilly has a conversation about the ills of racism, and far-left groups turn that into an insult to African Americans. I spoke about it yesterday. And as I mentioned I was going to follow it up today with the response of Rev. Al Sharpton on the O’Reilly Factor.
As was stated, the unedited audio tapes are available at Mr. O’Reilly’s website. Mr. Juan Williams was on air with Mr. O’Reilly when the supposed insulting comments were made. Rev. Sharpton was with Mr. O’Reilly at the dinner at Sylvia’s in Harlem. Neither of the men is aware of such comments from Mr. O’Reilly.
In fact Rev. Sharpton dines with Mr. O’Reilly once a year, often in Harlem, for some time. I’m not guessing, those were the words of Rev. Sharpton. Given a chance to investigate the matter the Today Show vindicated Mr. O’Reilly.
Why is that a big deal?
Because this is a waste of time, a distraction from seriously important cases, and an attempt to weaken an argument made denouncing racism. This kind of story detracts from coverage of the prosecutorial bias on-going in the Jena 6 case, the lack of major news media coverage of the Ms. Megan Williams kidnapping, torture and sexual assault. [I have spoken at length on each of these cases, and will continue to do so from time to time.]
Amidou Diallo, Sean Bell, Michael Richards, OJ Simpson, Jonathan Riches, Rodney King and so many others including the abovementioned. Each of these items are serious matters. Most have received little attention, with the exception of OJ Simpson. In only the OJ cases have we seen the media doggedly follow every fact and any nuance of the cases. Only in those cases have we seen a disproportionate attention and demand for a lopsided justice.
Major news media is presenting biased and inaccurate information, seeking to gain ratings and influence decisions that are not in the best interest of the nation. Hiding the fact that a murderer was able to evade prosecution and was protected by law enforcement for 43 years is news. The apparently racially motivated torture and vile attack of a woman is news. The verbal attack of entertainers with the purpose of inflicting pain is news. The murder and injury of 3 men by police officers without provocation is news. And in each of these cases, among many others, the major news media has blinked at the news.
There is a problem here. It is not enough to say that, but I lack the words to communicate the pain I feel from what I am observing.
On one hand we have media, purportedly presenting news and facts that are important to the daily lives of ALL Americans, that is providing bias and promoting agendas that favor one side or another. On the other hand we have organizations that are promoting and validating behavior that destroys our society. They promote drug use, violence and criminality all for a few pieces of silver.
These are symptoms of a larger issue. I feel that is the festering of anger and prejudice that has existed as long as there were slaves in America. Blacks and Whites hold on to issues that only they understand completely, and neither will give them up.
Many African Americans feel the media, legal system and business are all prejudiced against them. To an extent that is true. Many Whites feel that too much has been given and too much is being asked for. Many feel fear at the different traditions, and culture many Blacks maintain. To an extent that is true as well. And thus we have an impasse.
But that is too simple an explanation. The lack of accurate history, the apathy of younger generations, the bias in the media, the fear. There is so much.
When real issues of race are ignored and cosmetic issues are created for the purpose of deception and divisive gain, something has gone far wrong. But luckily we still live in a nation that can surmount these issues and become stronger and greater for the struggle. We just need to struggle. We must.
But The Business Of Arming The Military Junta Will Continue
Before the killing began…
Some of the most remarkable scenes witnessed in years in the fight of the people against military dictatorship are now unfolding in Burma-Myanmar.
For ten days, against the stark warnings of the Burmese junta, which has squeezed the freedoms of the people until blood flows for decades, the protests demanding democracy have fermented and grown. It started with a few hundred monks, then tens of thousands took to the streets, then more a hundred thousand people marched through the capital Rangoon.
The military promised to crack down. And now they are.
Crowds of monks and nuns have been beaten by military and riot police, and now the killing has begun. At least five are reported dead, but other reports coming in while this is being written say the death toll has already reached two dozen. Hundreds more have been jailed for publicly declaring that democracy’s time has come. By tomorrow, thousands will likely be behind bars.
The whole world is watching, thanks to the junta-defying blogs and mobile phone cameras (with satellite reach), but will it stop the Burmese military killing until the people forget about democracy and true freedom for another decade?
Will all the countries, including Australia, the US, Israel, France, Germany, China and Russia, who arm the Burmese military cut off the flow of weapons and equipment? And cut off the flow to the middlemen who ’smuggle’ all that military gear into the country? Will they announce an international ban on all defence materials to the Burmese junta? Today?
Well, let’s not go too far.
The fight for freedom and democracy is fine and wonderful, but the arms business is still business. And the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms and military gear Burma buys each and every year on the world market - most recently at the massive killgear/arms show in London - means business has been very good indeed.
Democracy, and the fight for democracy, is a sideshow to the business of selling weapons. In Burma, and across the planet.
“There’s a hysteria in the media emanating from New York . . . against the president of Iran,” (Troos Out Now) coalition spokesman Larry Holmes said. “We’re here in response to what’s been going on in New York: the Columbia debate, the front pages of the tabloids, the electronic media, demonizing the president. And we know what it’s about.
“We know that the government is in very advanced stages of planning for a war in Iran. They’ve got a naval armada” in the Persian Gulf, he said. “The Pentagon’s got its plans. And now we see the psychological preparation.”
The Bush White House, the NeoCon think tanks, the mainstream media are all touting the claims that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
The question posed before the War On Iraq began, in regards to the false claims that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons and had extensive caches of weapons of mass destruction, must now be posed again when it comes to the War On Iran ‘nuke weapons’ scenario :
Where’s the proof?
The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated his country only wants nuclear energy, and is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Russia, Afghanistan, numerous EU countries, outside of France and Germany, have all stated they believe Iran poses no threat to the world, or to the Middle East and have asked for the proof to back up the claims that “Iran Wants Nukes” being made, primarily, by BushCo. and the Zionist regime of Israel.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has found no proof that Iran is doing what BushCo. and the NeoCons claim they are, and has repeatedly stated that Iran is following the rule of international law in regards to its nuclear energy program.
Do you know what the difference between New York City and San Francisco is? An abundance of liberals? Busy ports? A sense of self-importance? It would seem that there aren’t many things, but there is one vital difference. New York City supports the military, and respects the Armed Services.
You might say how I know that. Quite simply because of what San Francisco has done. Besides banning the USS Iowa from its port, trying to cancel the Blue Angels and a ban on JROC in high schools there is the latest item. The refusal to allow the Marine Silent Drill Team to perform for a commercial on the streets of the city.
Now you have to wonder what excuse Ms. Coyote would have for banning the Marines from effectively setting foot on U.S. soil.
“Traffic control was the issue,” explained Stefanie Coyote.
Really? Wow. Traffic. Now I haven’t been to San Fransico, but as a native New Yorker I am aware of Times Square traffic. I haven’t seen many cities in the world where traffic is as dense, not even in Moscow which has almost as dense a population. But in the arguably busiest city in the world, Tuesday morning the Silent Drill Team performed Live for Fox and Friends on Fox News, and then filmed a portion of an upcoming commercial.
Imagine that. In a city with 20 million people, during rush hour, The Silent Drill Team was able to perform without disrupting the entire city. But the less dense, less busy californian city couldn’t manage it. I’m sure George Soros and MoveOn.org are thrilled.
Now I wonder, if the Marines and the other Armed Forces weren’t around to protect Ms. Coyote and others of her ilk how long would they last. I wonder what those that can’t find it in their heart to show basic respect to our soldiers would do if they were living in a world where basic freedoms were not allowed. Like Iran, where homosexuals don’t exist. Probably because they kill them when they find them. Luckily for San Fransico we have Marines, Army, Navy, and the Air Force and Coast Guard all their to protect our shore and deny dictators from taking those rights from us.
Of course, if Coyote, George Soros, Moveon.org, and other that share their thoughts, can’t live in a nation that continues to exist because of the dedication and blood of those in the Armed Forces, they can always move to Iran. I’m sure Soros can afford to take everyone.
I’ll just close with one more quote that I feel fits. It’s from Mr. Vince Rios, a Viet Nam veteran and resident of San Fransico.
“does your mother know you’re doing this? And if so, is she proud of you for that?”
Vicent Van Gogh detailed his secrets to a productive working life in a letter to a fellow artist in 1888 :
“you have to eat well, be well housed, have a scr*w from time to time, smoke your pipe and drink your coffee in peace.”
“Art is long and life is short, and we must wait patiently while trying to sell our skin dearly,” wrote van Gogh, whose paintings now sell for tens of millions of dollars.