Wednesday, September 28, 2005

When We Were Psychos

Sunday in the Park for George

They came to cheer for Bush’s war. They came to counter the anti war rally. They came to heap praise on their president for his leadership and wisdom. What a sorry group they were.

Their organizers had planned for thousands. The glitzy bandstand looked out on a sea of chairs prepared for a large turnout of real Americans to show their support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, a meager few hundred souls showed up. They came to prop up their trusted leader and his blind commitment to staying the course. They failed quite miserably.

It wasn’t only the poor turn-out that made this event so pathetic. First, it was the exploitation of the dead. Family member after family member of a dead soldier thanked George Bush profusely for waging the war that took the life of their loved one. And second, it was the concerted effort to portray the anti war protesters as fools and traitors and left wing radicals. That, too, fell totally flat.

Torturous Silence on Torture

Where do American religious leaders stand on torture? Their deafening silence evokes memories of the unconscionable behavior of German church leaders in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Despite the hate whipped up by administration propagandists against those it brands "terrorists," most Americans agree that torture should not be permitted. Few seem aware, though, that although President George W. Bush says he is against torture, he has openly declared that our military and other interrogators may engage in torture "consistent with military necessity."

One of their torturers "brought to justice":



But wait! They FORCED me to do it!



Uh, wait! I did it for my boyfriend!!!! See!!! He really DIGS IT!!!!

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Cindy Sheehan Won't Pay Fine For "Demonstrating Without A Permit"

Did you get that Americans still think they live in a free country? 'Demonstrating without a permit' Get into that "free speech zone" you dirty peacenik!

Katrina/Rita Fallout Part One



Whether it be a state attack, a terrorist attack, an accident or a natural disaster matters not anymore, the outcome will be the same. We are just one event, ANY event away from Martial Law.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

WAR PORNOGRAPHY

US soldiers trade grisly photos of dead and mutilated Iraqis for access to amateur porn. The press is strangely silent.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

The mass of men serve the State ....

"The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. ... In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones, and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw, or a lump of dirt."

Monday, September 19, 2005

Electricity Turned On In New Orleans Neighborhood For Bush, Turned Off When He Left

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

It is impossible to over-emphasize the extent to which this area is under government occupation, and portions of it under government-enforced lockdown. Police cars rule the streets. They (along with Humvees, ambulances, fire apparatus, FEMA trucks and all official-looking SUVs) are generally not stopped at checkpoints and roadblocks. All other vehicles are subject to long lines and snap judgments and must PROVE they have vital business inside the vast roped-off regions here. If we did not have the services of an off-duty law enforcement officer, we could not do our jobs in the course of a work day and get back in time to put together the broadcast and get on the air. As we are about to do.

The Coming Depression

Most of the world now realizes that the main reason for the USA to invade Iraq was to take its oil. What most governments, but few citizens, know, is that the rush to war was due to Saddam Hussain’s committing the high crime of accepting Euro dollars for oil under the “Oil for Food” program.

'I could have saved her life but was denied permission'

Friday, September 16, 2005

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

A Nation of Fools

My entire family is being played for fools by the power brokers in Washington; and they don't even have a clue about how they are being manipulated. I am embarrassed for them. The truth is out there; but no one is bringing it to our door step. You have to look hard. You have to want to know the facts. You have to care about social justice; and that requires effort; it requires living with a troubled conscience and trying to set things right. It requires that you inform yourself and make an effort to change things. The trouble is that most Americans don't want to know the truth because it would make them uncomfortable. So they turn their heads the other way and allow themselves to be distracted from their civic and patriotic duties. It is easier to display the flag and plaster their cars with 'Support our troops' stickers. This mode of being requires no real effort; nor accountability.

Monday, September 12, 2005

They're vultures!

So, I'm reading about this company, "Kenyon International", a "Houston based" company who got the cherry deal to mop up the bodies of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and I'm wondering what the ties are to the Bushies. Hell, Houston? Say no more! So I look just a tiny bit deeper and see that Kenyon is a "wholly owned subsidiary" of SCI. Then I find this:

Service Corporation International or SCI is a corporation based in Houston, Texas which runs one of the largest chains of funeral homes in the world with over 3800 funeral homes, 40000 employees, and revenues of $2.4 billion dollars. It operates in 18 countries in five continents and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

In contrast to many other large corporations, SCI tries to keep an extremely low profile. Typically, a funeral home that is owned by SCI will not have any trace of the corporation, and the corporation does not actively publicize its existence. In many cases, SCI will buy a pre-existing funeral home with a long history and keep the name, the family history, and be otherwise invisible.

This is largely because grieving families would much rather deal with what appears to be a small mom and pop funeral home than a large corporation. This leads to the odd situation that most customers of SCI do not even know that they are dealing with this corporation.

In recent years, SCI has liquidated most of its overseas assets and has brought to the forefront a brand of funeral service called Dignity Memorial.


Scandal
In the late 1990's, SCI was involved in a scandal in which the remains of a number of people were desecrated in a cemetery that the company owned. The cemetery was found to have been "recycling" graves - removing the remains of previous burials and placing other people in the graves.

The scandal took on an extra political dimension - company chairman Robert Waltrip was a friend of President Bush's family. He had made a number of campaign contributions to the Bush family over the years.

The scandal grew even further when Eliza May - a director with the Texas Funeral Service Commission - was fired while investigating SCI. She alleged in a lawsuit that she was fired because she refused to halt the investigation despite pressure from then Governor George W. Bush to halt the investigation into SCI's practices. However other members of the commission indicated that she was fired because others in the office had lost confidence in her, and that she was using her authority in an inappropriate manner.

May's lawyers tried to compel Bush to testify at the trial, but Texas Judge John K. Dietz threw out the subpoena that would've required Bush to give a deposition. Bush opponents claimed that this decision was politically motivated due to him campaigning at the time for the Republican party's nomination for President. Bush supporters claimed that the judge was correct to throw out the subpoena - that the suit was a partisan attempt to damage his chances of receiving the party's nomination for President. May's lawsuit was settled in November of 2001 for $210,000. SCI paid $55,000 and the state paid the balance


Oh yeah, there's more. But, I'm going to go throw up now.

Blackwater Mercenaries: Coming Soon to Your Town!

It is now obvious how martial law (not officially declared as such) will work in America in the wake of the devastation of New Orleans. Instead of federal troops or an influx of National Guard troops sent to “restore order” (the latter mandated in our now anachronistic Constitution; see Article 1, Section 8) and empowered to “suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions,” in Louisiana the state and federal governments have brazenly violated the Constitution by sending in Blackwater Security and other private goon squads. “Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans,” write Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo. “Some of the mercenaries say they have been ‘deputized’ by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force.”

Friday, September 09, 2005

WAKE UP PEOPLE!



"How fortunate for leaders, that the masses do not think." - Hitler


Last night, while watching ABC's Nightly "News" program, I witnessed the single most frightening thing I have yet to witness as an American. They showed the National Guard/Army going door to door in New Orleans. Not in a flooded area mind you, but in what they described as the "driest and wealthest" areas of New Orleans. Door to door, banging on the doors, entering each and every home, either by homeowners allowing them in or by force...they were breaking into locked homes and it showed this on TV. They were taking guns away from people. Full out gun confiscation from law abiding citizens who had those guns to protect their families and their property. And they broke into a church and used it as a base. Since the Pastor wasn't there to "ask permission" they said they would "leave a note" A direct violation of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Amendments to our Bill of Rights going on in full force in New Orleans! Total Police State Tyranny in full swing right here, right now!

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Murder and mayhem in New Orleans' miserable shelter

After reading about this super-duper "shelter" the State set up for these folks, hell, I'd take my chances on the street. Support your 2nd Amendment rights - now more than ever!

Defining Anarchy

Anarchy is a functioning society free of government controls. That is individual persons operating together in harmony based on freely reached agreements concluded between individual members and groups of a society. Anarchy is simply a free society. Anarchy is not the result of a statist-government failure; that would be chaos. The chaos in New Orleans is not due to anarchy, it is an example of the failure of statist-government.

People have said and written to me that: “See, anarchy can’t work because look at what happened in New Orleans when there was no government.” To define anarchy as statist-government failure is such an obvious distortion of the concept of a free society that it is hard to decide where to begin to dismantle such thoughtlessness. I like to begin by simply pointing out that at least four layers of statist-government agencies still claim jurisdiction over the area known as New Orleans (city, parish, state and federal). The undeniable fact is that they all four failed to provide the services they had promised to provide when they were justifying the theft of individual resources called taxes.

It boggles the mind how one can point to obvious failure to live up to political promises as a way to abdicate the responsibility of politicians to live up to those promises. Of course statist-governments never have and never will provide what they have promised. They simply return promising more and more if only they could have more power and more money. Next time, politicians promise, things will be different, better. Politics is just a show, and the curtain was pulled back in New Orleans .

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food

New Orleans Left to the Dead and Dying

Thousands more bedraggled refugees were bused and airlifted to salvation Saturday, leaving the heart of New Orleans to the dead and dying, the elderly and frail stranded too many days without food, water or medical care.

No one knows how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina's floods and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.

And the dying goes on - at the convention center and an airport triage center, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.

New Orleans, or what's left of it, awoke Friday to discover that fire had been added to the array of pestilences - floodwaters, hunger, looting and mass death - that have beset the city since Hurricane Katrina's winds ripped it apart five days ago.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Feds have no clue

Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, is seething over what he sees as the government's slow response to his city's disaster.

Thursday, September 01, 2005