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<![CDATA[is it because if they knew then they would have to bust them and cut into their part time cash income. ha ha bwaaah ha]]>

<![CDATA[Yeah!Yeah!Yeah!Yeah! We heard it all before, saw it, did it and done that. The only people are rejoicing is the Republican Party and the ones that made money in this War!!! The Leaders Are to Blame too. Don't Blame the Soldiers they are only doing there Job. Kill or be Killed! The Republican Party Want's to start a Civil War and they are So Stupid that they don't even know that they are doing it because they are Greedy! Not willing to Share! It's all about me me me! Well you Republicans are going to shoot yourself in your own foot. Ha! Ha! Go and do everything yourself and leave us people alone because we are not working for you like a Slave any more. The only way we can get this Economy back on track is to go after the CEO's that makes companys go bankrup, Stocks & ETFs on wall street inside trading they do it all the time and they need to be stopped, all the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC Financial $50 billion Fraud Ponzi Scheme they all need to be stopped, There is so much MONEY that has been stolen from the American people that the federal government did not get back!!!!!! It is time to take down the house and get back the money that has been stole from the American people!!! Just follow the money and where it went and take it back because it was not theirs to begin with!!! A lot of Republican people need to be Investigated too They had made alots of money in this Corruption Republican Party of government!!! We Got To TAX! The living Hell out of these people! and give it back to the middle class so they can spend and make the Economy come good again! The middle class knows how to spends Money! The rich don't know how to spend they are so stingy! Brak Obama It's Time To Get Back The Money From The Rich & The Super Rich That has stolen The Money From The American People! TAX! TAX! TAX! TAX THE LIVING HELL OUT OF THEM FOR THEY HAVE BEEN LIVING ON THE HIGH HORSE FOR 8 YEARS OF GREEDINESS!!! TIME FOR PAY BACK! YEAH! PAY BACK IS A BITCH! THEY NEED TO PUT BACK WHAT THEY HAVE STOLEN FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!!! TOO ALL AMERICANS WE HAVE BEEN BETRAYED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE HAVE BEEN BETRAYED! BY OUR OWN PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE HAVE BEEN BETRAYED! BY ALL THIS BAIL OUTS, PAY OUTS AND SELL OUTS!!!!!!!!!!! WE HAVE BEEN BETRAYED! BY HOW WE THINK AS AMERICANS BY THE NEWS OF THE MEDIA!!! WE HAVE BEEN BETRAYED! BY THE GREED OF THE RICH AND THE SUPER RICH!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE AS AMERICANS MUST REMEMBER THE PAST "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I ASK ALL AMERICANS! LET US TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE ARE THE POWER ENGINE FOR THE WORLD IF WE FALL THE WORLD WILL FALL!!!!!!!!! LET'S MEET IN THE MIDDLE NOT TO THE LEFT OR RIGHT BUT THE MIDDLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LET'S START OVER! CLEAN AGAIN!!!!! TAKE CONTROL OF OUR LIVES!!!!! WORK HARD!!!!! VOTE FOR THE PEOPLE THAT DON'T MAKE TO TOO MUCH MONEY BUT SAME AS YOU AND ME!!!!!!! I'LL THINK OF SOME MORE THINGS BUT I GOT TO GO NOW! BYE! To All Americans DO NOT FALL IN THE TRAP WITH THE REPUBLICAN WAYS! WATCH "Braveheart" REMEMBER THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE KING IN THE Republican WAYS! LOOK AT THE FACTS WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO Americans "THE REPUBLICANS ARE TOO GREEDY" Bailout Nation!!!F---!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! America Remember Who got us into this Mess!!! It is and still is the Republican Party!!! Where is our President George Bush and his people. What are they doing!!! What!!! Hiding Now!!! Fix up What You have started you Republican's are still in power!!! Democrats that had to ride on this Money making machine for the Rich Republican ways, make it or lose it, or On board or it's to bad for you! You better give back the money too!!! It all belongs to the people of America!!! My parents has lost $200,000 I have lost $56,000 From my retirement 4O1K too! We can not retire now we have to work till we Die!!! Yeah! You think it's funny making us DOGGEDLY SLAVES but just remember! What the Germans did to the GREEDY JEWS!!! In The Holocaust!!! When you Have unbalance in anything you suffer the consequence. Like If I shove $1 down you throat or shove $1,000,000 down your throat! You Chose!!! I just Don't Want history to repeats Its self!!! For The KIDS!!! God Please Protect Mr.Brak Obama and his Family I do not want a civil war in America!!! The World is in your HANDS GOD!!! America is being Destroyed by the Republican Party I told you so! I told you so! Now we are all suffering for it! The NEW Administration The Democratic Party CAN NOT GET US OUT OF THIS DEPRESSION! DEPRESSION I SAY! BECAUSE WE OWE OTHER countries $997 TRILLION DOLLARS!!! OR EVEN MORE!!! HOW ARE WE GOING TO PAY THAT WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO SELL OUR ASSES OFF!!! F---!!! You! Republican's are still destroying America HUH! You take and you take and you take our taxs payers money and using it for the Financial crises 700 billion dollars and now you want to help the automobile industries. Come On Now Give Me F----- Break! You and I know the C.E.O.'s Have all the F----- money! The oil companies too They All have to put back what they have took. If They love the companies so damn much they should have 100% of their own money invested in it! THE CAPTAIN GOES DOWN WITH THE F----- SHIP! F----- C.E.O.'s!!! To: The NEW Administration The Democratic Party! Do you wanna fix this economy? I have the answers. Use the $700 billion dollars to make or create JOBS!!! JOBS!!! JOBS!!! Legalize Prostitution!!! Legalize Gambling In All States!!! Legalize All Drugs!!! Then Tax Them All!!! Drop interest-rate to 1% or 0% to Make It Easyer for a first time home buyer to buy a HOUSE!!! Make All Prisoners Work on the FARMS FOR THEIR OWN FOODs and they can sell it to the public to maintain the prisons and Community!!! USE CRAKE UP CARS TO RUN ON THE STREETS!!! Start selling flying cars too!!! Start flying to MARS and other planets!!! Look to the future and shoot for the stars!!! Nobody reads this anyway! Okay! All you Republican people. Our President George Bush is not the only one to blame for this war. All you political people around the World are to blame just as much too. So how are you going to pull the troops out of this war? You have less then 3 months before the next new administration takes over. You have put us in this mess. Get us out! Gud Funit you! Your running out of money and time. To: The NEW Administration The Democratic Party! To: The NEW Administration The Democratic Party! Do you wanna fix this economy? I have the answers. Use the $700 billion dollars to make or create JOBS!!! JOBS!!! JOBS!!! Legalize Prostitution!!! Legalize Gambling In All States!!! Legalize All Drugs!!! Then Tax Them All!!! Drop interest-rate to 1% or 0% to Make It Easyer for a first time home buyer to buy a HOUSE!!! Make All Prisoners Work on the FARMS FOR THEIR OWN FOODs and they can sell it to the public to maintain the prisons and Community!!! USE CRAKE UP CARS TO RUN ON THE STREETS!!! Start selling flying cars too!!! Start flying to MARS and other planets!!! Look to the future and shoot for the stars!!! Nobody reads this anyway! Okay! All you Republican people. Our President George Bush is not the only one to blame for this war. All you political people around the World are to blame just as much too. So how are you going to pull the troops out of this war? You have less then 3 months before the next new administration takes over. You have put us in this mess. Get us out! Gud Funit you! Your running out of money and time. To: The NEW Administration The Democratic Party! The Republican Party has failed in everything and in everyway. Here's your chance to make it right. Remember the history of the vietnam war. When we pulled out lots of people died. Yeah! We can play the war game make like we are going to pull out and bomb the living Hell out of them But there is a better way. Make a truce talk to them Remember only a New Administration can do that. Can't trust them but at less you can talk about the economy and how we can all live peacefully for a little while. You Want to know who is the real enemies in America! Let's look at the Facts! 1.They could not protect our buildings on 9/11/01. 2.Going to WAR & having our Men & Women Die in a another Country. 3.High Inflation in oil,foods,gas,etc. 4.Making lots of business go bankrupt. 5.The corruption on WALL STREET. Yeah We Sure Got Changes alright. Fool Me Once Shame on you. Fool me twice Shame on me. Fool me three I'm a Dummy. I can not believe that the American people are so Gullible!!! Now we are all going to suffer for it! ]]>

<![CDATA[<img src="http://voteforbreakfast.com/images/mccain_gook.jpg"> oh our resident racist moron is sad that his racist candidate John McCain went down in flames... oh well silly racist poof; he's as substantial as you are.... which is not.............at......................all......... Poof!! <img src="http://www.crazyforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/john-mccain.jpg">]]>

<![CDATA[Learn a little history. The CIA funded and directed Saddam and the Baathists rise to power 30 years ago. We thought he'd be our stooge and he was most of that time. We trained his soldiers to kill, armed him with all his weapons including Chemical and Biological then set him up against the Iranians, by telling the Iranians he was going to attack them with chemical weapons, nuclear missiles and make Iran part of Iraq. All B.S. we made up. We also armed the Iranians with weapons, and the same biological and chemical weapons and goaded them into attacking Iraq. We provided battlefield intel to both sides equally in that war, so they'd kill as many innocent children and other civilians as they could. Iran gassed the Kurds with chem weapons we provided. Saddam didn't have the gas that killed the 4 or 5,000 Kurds (not the rightwing crap about 100,000). Those Kurds were killed by the U.S.A. via proxy of the Iranians. The 2 or 3 million Iranians and Iraqi's that died also were killed by the U.S.A. who staged the intel lies and provided WMD's to both sides. Their blood is on America's hands as much as Saddam's or anyone else's. America is a racist duplicitious killing machine. I know, I was part of killing 4 million innocent Vietnamese, and 2 Million innocent Laotians and Cambodians. All for America's sick corporate oligarchy, the warped non-Christ following "Christian Churches" of the U.S.A. and southern bigot racists who have ran this country for the last 60 years, both Repubs and Dems. And we have yet even to apologize for what we did. That's the sickness that is the U.S.A. since WWII; and there's alot of other similiar stories about us directly murdering millions after millions in the 60 years since WWII. Educate yourself. <img src="http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/images/kentstate.jpg"> ]]>

<![CDATA[This list is a small telling of the crimes Republican Christians are committing against America's children. Believe me, it's the tip of the iceberg!! *** INDIANA *** YOUTH MINISTER CHARGED. Garden City Church of Christ youth minister Rev. Cameron K. Huffman, 41, was charged with 21 counts of child molestation for molesting a young boy for a year. Huffman had admitted to being a pedophile during a counseling session. When the church in Columbus was notified of Huffman's admission, it fired him and informed the congregation, also calling police. Police received complaints against Rev. Huffman from other Indiana cities and states, but the 5-year statute of limitations has hampered some investigations. Source: _Indianapolis Star_ METHODIST MINISTER ASSAULTS DEPRESSED TEENAGER? A lawsuit filed in February accuses United Methodist minister R. Gene Voss of sexually assaulting a female teenager during counseling sessions for depression at the First United Methodist Church, Crawfordsville. In 1984 her minister began fondling the 15-year-old, initiating intercourse when she was 16. "Over the next four years Gene Voss raped the plaintiff over 60 times," says the lawsuit. The woman has incurred more than $65,000 in treatment for abuse. Voss gave up his minister credentials in 1991. She is also suing the Crawfordsville church and the United Methodist South Indiana Conference. "You can say anything in a lawsuit," was the cavalier response of the conference's legal advisor. _Indianapolis Star_ <img src="http://www.cpyu.org/files/Book%20Covers/Book%20Covers%202/Caring%20for%20Sexually%20Abused%20Children.jpg"> *** KANSAS *** KANSAS CITY DIOCESE COVERS UP PRIEST CASE. Jackson Co.'s prosecutor, investigating claims that a Kansas City priest molested several boys, charges Catholic officials with refusing to cooperate with a criminal investigation. Not only did the church place pressure on prosecutors to drop the case, it tried to censor the story in the _Kansas City Star_, insisting the "story was of no public value". The church also insists the parents of the victims do not want to press charges. The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph sent Rev. Michael Brewer to an unnamed treatment center, after several families at St. Elizabeth's Parish accused him of improperly touching their boys. The priest was previously accused of caressing a boy's buttocks 2 years ago. The Rev. Norman Rotert, vicar-general, admitted Brewer was sent to therapy then, but the church did not consider it serious. "In hindsight, we would have been better off to have sent him to a national center for evaluation." The diocese adopted a secret policy in 1988 to deal with molesting priests, but finally published it last December. Generally the policy is to put the accused priest on leave and require an evaluation. Source: _Kansas City Star_ *** MAINE *** PRIEST ACCUSED OF MOLESTING BOYS IN CAMP. Marist priest Armand Thibault, 60, was indicted for unlawful sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child involving 3 boys at a church camp in Long Lake. The priest with a parish in Van Buren, was also chaplain for 2 Boy Scout troops, but the charges do not involve either Scouts or altar boys. Aristook Co. Asst. D.A. John Pluto praised the "courageous effort" of the boys in coming forward. The diocesan chancellor admitted Thibault told the chancery about the sexual misconduct charges on Sept. 30. On Oct. 2 the diocese called the D.A.'s office and human services. On Oct. 3 Thibault halted his public ministry. Source: _Bangor Daily News_ PRIEST ACCUSED OF MOLESTING PORTLAND CHILDREN. Retired priest James Vallely, now living in Florida, was accused by 3 men of molesting them when they were kids at St Dominic's Parish in Portland. Vallely was placed on administrative leave and can perform no public ministry until the investigation is complete. Source: _Bangor Daily News_ THIRD MAINE PRIEST ACCUSED. Priest of the largest Catholic parish in the state, John L. Audibert, 53, went on leave after being named for molesting a 15-year-old about 17 years ago in Caribou. He was diocesan priest for 25 years. His associate pastor at Holy Cross Parish, Rev. John Allen, said: "Father John is a beloved and well- respected priest of the diocese. I am confident that the allegations toward him are being handled by the diocese with great sensitivity for him and for the accuser. Bangor Daily News *** MASSACHUSETTS *** LAVIGNE RELEASED OVER VICTIMS' OBJECTIONS. Despite pleas by former altar boys against the release of convicted molester Rev. Richard Lavigne, he was released in January after serving only 7 months at a Catholic treatment center. Four survivors of abuse recounted at a news conference how they were molested, raped, and coerced into stealing for the priest. The priest, 51, pleaded guilty in June to reduced charges of indecent assault for fondling boys at St. Joseph's Parish in Shelburne Falls, and was given only 10 years probation. He was ordered to spend 7 months to a year at St Luke's (Catholic) Institute in Suitland, Md. Seven other men sent testimony about being molested by Lavigne to be read at the conference: "I was very terrified, scared, embarrassed, and humiliated," testified Raymond Gouin, recalling how Lavigne routinely drove him to a motel, left him in the parking lot and had him scale a wall to meet him in a room. His brother Joseph recalled how he had all the altar boys sleep in one bed during one trip, molesting him twice that evening. The men said Lavigne had boys, some as young as 11, steal antiques in Massachusetts and Vermont. Several went into therapy and drugs. "I looked at this man as a big brother," said Joseph Shattuck, 19, who said Lavigne raped him when he was an altar boy in 1987. "My self-esteem and confidence have been destroyed by Father Lavigne." The 11 men, including two nephews of the former Springfield D.A., characterized the priest as a sometimes violent, threatening man who assaulted them between 1967 and 1990 at U.S. and Canadian motels, a camp, in Arizona, at the home of Lavigne's parents, and various rectories and churches. "I felt dirty, used and damned. Father Lavigne intimidated me by telling me he was God's worker, and if I ever told anyone, God would send me to Hell," stated Raymond J. Chelte ll, 37. The 11 victims are seeking unspecified damages, as well as assurances Lavigne will never be allowed near children again. Four of them had already taken part in criminal proceedings against Lavigne. No new molestation charges are expected. Lavigne was ordered not to serve as a parish priest or work alone with children under age 16 during his 10-year probation. Source: _Boston Herald_, _Springfield Union-News <img src="http://www.netterimages.com/images/vpv/000/000/003/3271-0550x0475.jpg"> CROTEAU MURDER STILL HAUNTS LAVIGNE. One of 11 men testifying against Rev. Richard R. Lavigne's release in January was Los Angeles TV director Michael A. McMahon, whose statements reopened interest in the unsolved murder of altar boy Danny Croteau, 11. Croteau's battered body was found dead, floating in the Chicopee River in 1972. Police told the Croteau family that Lavigne was the prime suspect, but he was never charged with the unsolved murder. McMahon stated how Lavigne made the boys feel "very special", then molested them on overnight excursions. He recalled, in horse-play, how he had pushed another boy, Danny Croteau, to the floor. "Father Lavigne saw this and struck me in the face so hard it knocked me down. I was shocked, hurt, embarrassed, and confused ... He molested me that night." Hampden Co. DA William M. Bennett reportedly wants a court order requiring a blood sample from Lavigne, so he can compare it with blood found near the site where Croteau's body was found more than 20 years ago. Source: _Springfield Union-News REV. PROVOST FOUND GUILTY. Worcester Diocese priest Ronald D. Provost of Barre was found guilty of photographing a nude boy in September 1992. He argued it was an accident, but had to turn over hundreds of photos of nude boys to police. Source: _Boston Globe MORE COVERUP ON MSGR. KELLEY. More victims have come forward naming Msgr. Robert Kelley, who is serving 5 to 7 years for repeatedly raping a 9-year-old girl in her own bedroom. In February, 4 other victims from Leominster and Gardner telephoned an attorney representing the girl, now a university student, saying they too were victimized. She had met with Bishop Harrington in 1990, saying he appeared less contrite than concerned about himself. A second family accuses the bishop of assuring them that a priest who sexually assaulted their child would be sent to an institution for help, then banned from serving as a priest. But the Worcester Diocese newspaper later published the priest's name in its directory of local priests. Bishop Harrington was reportedly infuriated at the inadvertent revelation that the priest was still serving. "What they were really protecting was the good public name of the church," one observer told the _Boston Globe_. VICTIM OBJECTS TO PRIEST'S RELEASE. A college student raped by a Roman Catholic priest when she was a young girl asked the state to make Rev. Robert E. Kelley serve his full prison sentence rather than release him early on parole The former pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Gardner was sentenced in March 1990 to 5 to 7 years in prison after pleading guilty to assault and unnatural rape of a child. "The victim was robbed of her childhood by Father Kelley, and she continues to suffer the effects of the abuse," noted her attorney Robert L. Rice Jr. The Worcester diocese declined to get involved with the parole proceedings. Source: Associated Press. *** MICHIGAN *** LUTHERAN TEACHER CHARGED. St. Paul's Lutheran elementary school teacher Gerald J. Bauer, Jr., 31, was charged with molesting a Student, 12, during a visit to his home. The Farmington Hills teacher was charged with 1st and 2nd degree criminal sexual conduct. Source: _Detroit Free Press MORE CHARGES DISMISSED AGAINST BAPTIST. Washtenaw Co. Dist. Judge Thomas F. Shea threw out 2 charges of 1st-degree criminal sexual conduct against Baptist deacon Mark Foeller, leaving 6 counts of criminal sexual conduct. The deacon and bus driver at North Sharon Baptist Church is accused of raping a boy, 9, twice, at the church, which has a campaign to bus low-income children from 4 counties to its Sunday school and church camp. The dismissals follow earlier dismissals against assistant pastor Timothy Lee Leonard, 33, originally charged with 12 similar counts. Judges dismissed all his charges, saying the alleged victims were either too young to testify or that their testimony was too vague. At least one family will file a civil lawsuit against the North Sharon Baptist Church and Leonard, according to Ann Arbor attorney Mark A. Hopper. "We will sue the church for negligent hiring and negligent retention of those workers." Leonard has been invited back to the church and is directing its music programs. A mother told a reporter she was "stunned" and "numb" by the judge's decision. Shea ruled that a 9- year-old could not testify about being raped in the church nursery, because she couldn't say on which day it happened. Source: _Jackson Citizen Patriot ]]>

<![CDATA[Routine Traffic Stop For "Driving While Brown & Muslim" Is this Racism in Action?????? Yes it is. This poor innocent man was murdered for nothing more than the racist whimsy of U.S. Troopers who chose him to see who could get the "head shot" first. U.S. Policies and U.S. Troops are a disgrace to humanity. Remember, George W. Bush and the Pentagon to Prison!! <img src="http://www.amannion.com/My%20Pictures/Iraq/1_154201_1_6.jpg"> U.S. Troops set off this car bomb in the middle of a crowded Bagdad street, killing 14 and wounding 33. <img src="http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/02/11/iraq_bomb_wideweb__430x282.jpg">]]>

<![CDATA[One of the most frustrating aspects of the struggle for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans is the strength of enduring untruths, particularly those knowingly perpetuated by our opponents. And perhaps the most maddening of these falsehoods suggests that gay men present a special danger to children. Conservative Christian organizations shamelessly promote this deception. The Family Research Council's website offers the 31-page report "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys."[1] Until recently, the American Family Association's site presented "Homosexuality and Child Molestation: The Link, the Likelihood, the Lasting Effects."[2] Still not quite sure that gay men molest kids? Contact Focus on the Family and purchase "Setting the Record Straight," which alleges that a child molester is 17 times more likely to be gay than straight.[3] The moral lawlessness of repeating this untruth is all the more egregious because its falsity has been known for over 20 years. In 1978 psychologist Nicholas Groth screened 175 men who had been convicted in Massachusetts of sexual molestation of children and referred by a court for psychological evaluation. He found not a single gay man in this sample. Every one of the perpetrators was either an exclusive heterosexual, a bisexual with a predominantly heterosexual orientation, or a fixated pedophile with no sexual interest in adults.[4] His conclusion? That "the adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater risk to the underage child than does the adult homosexual male." Christian family men abused this little girl who was taken from her "Christian" home by Child Protective Services. Most abuse is by men claiming to be "heterosexual" but they abuse boys and girls. <img src="http://www.sunriseseminars.com/Parenting/Helping_Children_Cope_with_Cri/little_20girl_20crying.jpg"> In the same year, researcher David Newton reviewed the scientific literature and found no reason to believe that anything other than a "random connection" existed between homosexual orientation and child molestation.[5] Later research has confirmed these findings: In 1988, renowned sex researcher Kurt Freund at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto studied two groups of paid volunteers and found that gay men responded no more to male child stimuli than heterosexual men responded to female child stimuli.[6] He later described as a "myth" the notion that gay men are more likely than straight men to be child molesters.[7] In 1992, alarmed over claims made during a campaign for an anti-gay state constitutional amendment in Colorado, two physicians reviewed every case of suspected child molestation evaluated at Children's Hospital in Denver over a one-year period. Of the 269 cases determined to involve molestation by an adult, only two of the perpetrators could be identified as gay or lesbian. The researchers concluded that the risk of child sexual abuse by an identifiably gay or lesbian person was between zero and 3.1%, and that the risk of such abuse by the heterosexual partner of a relative was over 100 times greater.[8] Child abuse, including sexual abuse, is a terrible reality in this country. According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, established by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, nearly 90,000 children are sexually abused every year.[9] According to some researchers, the true number may be five times this.[10] Approximately 80 percent of these sexually molested children are girls.[11] Persons focusing only on the remaining 20 percent of molestations--and, even then, only on the small fraction of these crimes committed by gay men--are not authentically concerned with combating sexual abuse of children. Their primary interest lies in perpetuating fear. The source of the right's statistics linking gay men with child molestation is discredited psychologist Paul Cameron, who operates the Family Research Institute in Colorado Springs, Colorado.[12] Cameron is responsible for many of the right's most bizarre allegations about gays and lesbians, such as that gays constitute 44 percent of sexual mass murderers, that two-thirds of gay men "ingest biologically significant amounts of feces," and that being a gay male takes 30 years off one's life.[13] But Cameron is hardly a credible source. He was dropped from the American Psychological Association back in 1983 for a violation of its Ethical Principles of Psychologists.[14] And he's been censured by four other professional associations and a federal court.[15] The key to understanding research on this issue is to recognize three things. First, a person's sexual attraction to adults, whether homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual, is wholly distinct from an attraction to children. A person can be attracted only to adults, only to children, or occasionally to both, but these attractions are independent facets of a person's psychology. Second, a significant proportion of child molestation is perpetrated by men who are not sexually attracted to children, but who "regress" to sexual interactions with children under the stress of life events. Third, while pedophilia is sometimes denominated as "heterosexual" or "homosexual," this usage is simply descriptive, that is, it is intended only to characterize the relationship between the offender's and the victim's genders, and not to define the offender's sexual orientation, if any, toward adults.[16] The child molestation myth parallels in many ways the blood libel against European Jews, who during the twelfth through nineteenth centuries were accused of kidnapping Christian children and slowly bleeding them to death in ritual sacrifices.[17] Americans have an obligation to reject pernicious myths--including this one--about its citizens. Gay/Lesbian Issues Home NOTES 1. See Family Research Council. 2. By January, 2002, that report had been removed from the AFA's website. A less extensive treatment of the issue can still be found in their publication "Homosexuality in America: Exposing the Myths". See Myth #7 ("More sexual crimes against children are commited by heterosexuals than homosexuals, therefore a heterosexual is more likely to be a pedophile than a homosexual is"). 3. Larry Burtoft, Setting the Record Straight," Focus on the Family, 1995. Available on the web at Focus on the Family. 4. A. Nicholas Groth and H. Jean Birnbaum, "Adult Sexual Orientation and Attraction to Underage Persons," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 7(3), 1978, pp. 175-181. 5. David E. Newton, "Homosexual Behavior and Child Molestation: A Review of the Evidence," Adolescence, vol. 13, no. 49, Spring 1978, pp. 29-43. 6. Kurt Freund, Robin Watson, and Douglas Rienzo, "Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, and Erotic Age Preference," The Journal of Sex Research, 26(1), Feb. 1989, pp. 107-117. 7. Kurt Freund and Robin Watson, "The Proportion of Heterosexual and Homosexual Pedophiles Among Sex Offenders Against Children: An Exploratory Study," Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 18(1), Spring, 1992, pp. 34-43, at p. 41. 8. Carole Jenny, Tom Roesler, and Kimberly Poyer, "Are Children at Risk for Sexual Abuse by Homosexuals?," Pediatrics, 94(1), July 1994, pp. 41-44. 9. The report for 1999 shows that 88,238 children were sexually abused in that year. 10. Cheryl Ann Macdonald, "Treatment Effects of Pedophilia," Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: the Sciences & Engineering, Vol. 59(6-B), Dec 1998, 3065. 11. See the Report for 1999 (the most recent). 12. For general information on Cameron, see Ward Harkavy, "Slay It With a Smile," Westword (Denver alternative weekly), October 3, 1996; Mark Pietrzyk, "Queer Science: Paul Cameron, Professional Sham," The New Republic, October 3, 1994; Ann Giudici Fettner, "The Evil That Men Do," New York Native, Sept. 23-29, 1985, pp. 23-24; Dave Walter, "Paul Cameron," The Advocate, October 29, 1985, pp. 29-33. 13. Gays constitute 44 percent of sexual mass murderers, see "Homosexuality--Everybody's Problem," 1987 pamphlet from Cameron's Family Research Institute. Two-thirds of gay men "ingest biologically significant amounts of feces," see "What Homosexuals Do (It's More Than Merely Disgusting)," 1987 pamphlet from Cameron's Family Research Institute. Being a gay male takes 30 years off one's life, see Paul Cameron, William Playfair, and Stephen Wellum, "The Longevity of Homosexuals: Before and After the AIDS Epidemic," Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, vol. 29, pp. 249-272, 1994. 14. Notice from the APA to its members. Copy in the possession of the author. 15. Professional associations: In 1982, the Nebraska Psychological Association deplored the "misleading and untrue statements about psychological research on homosexuality" circulated by Cameron. (Minutes of the NPA's spring business meeting on April 17, 1982, at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Copy in the possession of the author.) In 1985, both the Midwest Sociological Society (Minutes of the second meeting of the 1985-1986 board of directors for the MSS, held on Oct. 11-12, 1985 in Des Moines, Iowa. Copy in the possession of the author.) and the Society for the Study of Social Problems (Minutes of the 1985 SSSP annual meeting on Aug. 25, 1985 in Washington, D.C. Copy in the possession of the author.) declared that Cameron had "consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented" sociological research. In 1986, the American Sociological Association condemned Cameron's "consistent misrepresentation of sociological research." (Memo from ASA Executive Officer Willaim D'Antonio to state and regional associations. Copy in the possession of the author.) Federal court: In Baker v. Wade, 106 F.R.D. 526 (1985), the judge stated that Cameron "made misrepresentations" before the court. 16. As to all three points, see generally an analysis by Dr. Gregory Herek and the Groth and Birnbaum article in note 5. 17. R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany, Yale University Press, 1988; Alan Dundes (ed.), The Blood libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore, Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. For an early source, see Hermann Strack, the Human and Human Sacrifice, NY: Bloch Publishing, 1909. ]]>

<![CDATA[Anonymously one or more ultra-wacked person(s) keep posting idiotic rants about "every mosque is full of jihadists" (in america). And "liberals and democrats are jihadists"...like we all spend our time sneaking off to mosques to discuss the latest "jihadist" issues and somehow because we care about humanity in whole, that makes us a "support of the jihadist lifestyle"..whatever the hell that is ??????? Of course most of this crap is coming from Lipp-Robertson, aka lots of other sick nicknames. After reading today's posts, there he/it is again posting the same racist lies and fascist propanganda (please flag him) <img src="http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/images/jihad_joe2.jpg"> These kind of people that post such simplistic jingoisms that don't make a bit of sense; are to be laughed at. Poo Pawed Publicly!! They are bigots and racists trying to pretend the rest of us support their murderous racist viewpoint of dealing with brown-skinned and darker people who have different belief systems than the narrow-minded ways of American Cult-style Christianity. And the narrow-minded dysfunctional legal-social-economic system that dominates our lives and keeps the vast majority largely stressed out and crazy, depressed, rigid, defensive and totally MISERABLE!! To hell with the racists who sell "jihadist" views of everyone brown or liberal or humanistic. Po Paw, talk that silly stuff in Public and you will get dressed down quick and shut your mouth. But talk it anon, and act like we don't see you're just another racist mind full of self-violence. We see you. Anytime. Anywhere. That's why you don't talk your racist trash in public. Cause even middle-class whites will shut you down quick bigot. And you know it. THIS IS HOW DUMB NEOCON REPUBLICAN RACISTS ARE: <img src="http://politicalpartypoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/jihad2.jpg">]]>

<![CDATA[ <img src="http://quebec.indymedia.org/files/arretez-la-violence_0.jpg"> Major Blow Struck Against Racist US Crack Sentencing Rules By Bill Piper AlterNet Thursday 13 December Finally, some good news for drug policy. In the history of the civil rights movement there are probably only a handful of moments in which the decision of a few policymakers propelled significant change forward. Think of President Truman's decision to integrate the military or the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Our nation recently witnessed another such moment when the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to apply recent sentencing reductions for crack cocaine offenses retroactively. Although the decision is only a partial step towards racial equality, it reunites thousands of families and sets the stage for Congress to enact major reform. Predictably, Chicken Littles in the Bush administration have insinuated that 20,000 people will be released from prison tomorrow. That's just shock and awe. Retroactivity would actually be staggered over several decades, and the largest one-year release (possibly 2,500 people in the first year) is a drop in the bucket compared to the 650,000 people released from state and federal prisons last year because they had served their time. Federal courts will also have the power to deny a sentencing reduction to people who pose a risk to society. The Sentencing Commission's decision came only a day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal judges can sentence individuals below the guideline recommendation in crack cocaine cases. The combination of both rulings puts enormous pressure on Congress to change the statutory mandatory minimums that punish crack cocaine offenses 100 times more severely than powder cocaine offenses. That sentencing disparity is responsible for appalling racial inequities in the criminal justice system. Although the majority of crack users and sellers are white, more than 80 percent of people incarcerated in federal prison for crack are black. Ironically, the biggest obstacle to eliminating the crack/powder disparity is immoral Republican drug users/child abusers. While the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to debate three reforms bills early next year, no hearings have been scheduled yet in the House. Many rank-and-file Democrats support reform, but leadership is reportedly reluctant to even debate the issue. Their silence gives the impression they don't care about reducing racial disparities in the criminal justice system. The struggle to bring some justice to federal cocaine laws is just one part of a bigger struggle to undo the damage being done by the war on drugs. In a recent op-ed in New Orleans' Times-Picayune, former ACLU Executive Director and current Drug Policy Alliance President Ira Glasser makes the case that drug prohibition is one of the major civil rights issues of our day. [T]he racially discriminatory origin of most [drug] laws is reinforced by the disparate impact they have on racially targeted drug felons. In the states of the Deep South, 30 percent of black men are barred from voting because of felony convictions. But all of them are nonetheless counted as citizens for the purpose of determining congressional representation and electoral college votes. The last time something like this happened was during slavery, when three-fifths of slaves were counted in determining congressional representation. Just as Jim Crow laws were a successor system to slavery in the attempt to keep blacks subjugated, so drug prohibition has become a successor system to Jim Crow laws in targeting black citizens, removing them from civil society and then barring them from the right to vote while using their bodies to enhance white political power in Congress and the electoral college. The Sentencing Commission's decision is a good start in tearing down this new Jim Crow, but only Congress can repeal the laws that are the source of the problem. -------- Bill Piper is director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. ]]>

<![CDATA[Another little boy raped by American Mercenaries (Marines) then stabbed and left for dead. Are you proud of America for doing this on a daily basis to hundreds of little boys? <img src="http://www.smh.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1046540180939_2003/03/04/basra1,0.jpg"> ]]>

<![CDATA[ Aiden Delgado, an Army Reservist in the 320th Military Police Company, served in Iraq from April 1st , 2003 through April 1st, 2004. After spending six months in Nasiriyah in Southern Iraq, he spent six months helping to run the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. The handsome 23-year-old mechanic was a witness to widespread, almost daily, U.S. war crimes in Iraq. His story contains new revelations about ongoing brutality at Abu Ghraib, information yet to be reported in national media. I first met Delgado in a classroom at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California, where he presented a slide show on the atrocities that he himself observed in Southern and Northern Iraq. Delgado acknowledged that the U.S. military did some good things in Iraq. “We deposed Saddam, built some schools and hospitals,” he said. But he focused his testimony on the breakdown of moral order within the U.S. military, a pattern of violence and terror that exceeds the bounds of what is legally and morally permissible in time of war. Delgado says he observed mutilation of the dead, trophy photos of dead Iraqis, mass roundups of innocent noncombatants, positioning of prisoners in the line of fire – all violations of the Geneva conventions. His own buddies – decent, Christian men, as he describes them – shot unarmed prisoners. <img src="http://www.bobbyshred.com/images/Kurds.jpg"> In one government class for seniors, Delgado presented graphic images, his own photos of a soldier playing with a skull, the charred remains of children, kids riddled with bullets, a soldier from his unit scooping out the brains of a prisoner. Some students were squeamish, like myself, and turned their heads. Others rubbed tears from their eyes. But at the end of the question period, many expressed appreciation for opening a subject that is almost taboo. “If you are old enough to go to war,” Delgado said, “you are old enough to know what really goes on.” <img src="http://la.indymedia.org/uploads/2005/09/1_050_258_686_459.jpgmid.jpg"> It is a rare moment when American students, who play video war games more than baseball, are exposed to the realities of occupation. Delgado does not name names. Nor does he want to denigrate soldiers or undermine morale. He seeks to be a conscience for the military, and he wants Americans to take ownership of the war in all its tragic totality. Aiden Delgado did not grow up in the United States. His father was a U.S. diplomat. Aiden lived in Thailand and Senegal, West Africa. He spent seven years in Cairo, Egypt, where he became fluent in Arabic and developed a deep appreciation of Arab culture. On September 11th, 2001, completely unaware of the day’s fateful events, Delgado enlisted in the Army, expecting to serve two days a month in the Reserves. When he turned on the television, he realized instantly that his whole world had changed. After he joined the Army, Delgado began to read the Sutras. He became a Buddhist, a vegetarian, and eventually became a Conscientious Objector. Delgado was honorably discharged when he returned home. Delgado earned four service medals which, he says, are standard awards. He faced criticism from the Army when he began to speak out about military conduct in Iraq. Don Schwartz, spokesman for the Army in Washington, D.C., said that Delgado should have reported any wrongdoing to Army personnel. “He should have reported first to his boss, his commander. That is the standard way the chain of command works.” When I interviewed Delgado recently, he expressed his deep love of his country, but he also insisted that racism – a major impetus to violence in American history – is driving the occupation, infecting the entire military operation in Iraq. Delgado’s testimony tends to confirm the message of Chris Hedges, the New York Times war correspondent who wrote prior to the invasion of Iraq: “War forms its own culture. It distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it.... War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us. Even as war gives meaning to sterile lives, it also promotes killers and racists.” Here is Aiden Delgado story. Q: When did you begin to turn against the military and the war? DELGADO: From the very earliest time I was in Iraq, I began to see ugly strains of racism among our troops—anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiments. Q: What are some examples? DELGADO: There was a Master Sergeant. A Master Sergeant is one of the highest enlisted ranks. He whipped this group of Iraqi children with a steel Humvee antenna. He just lashed them with it because they were crowding around, bothering him, and he was tired of talking. Another time, a Marine, a Lance Corporal – a big guy about six-foot-two – planted a boot on a kid’s chest, when a kid came up to him and asked him for a soda. The First Sergeant said, “That won’t be necessary Lance Corporal.” And that was the end of that. It was a matter of routine for guys in my unit to drive by in a Humvee and shatter bottles over Iraqis heads as they went by. And these were guys I considered friends. And I told them:“ What the hell are you doing? What does that accomplish?” One said back:“ I hate being here. I hate looking at them. I hate being surrounded by all these Hajjis.” Q: They refer to Iraqis as “Hajjis”? DELGADO: “Hajji” is the new slur, the new ethnic slur for Arabs and Muslims. It is used extensively in the military. The Arabic word refers to one who has gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca. But it is used in the military with the same kind of connotation as “gook,” “Charlie,” or the n-word. Official Army documents now use it in reference to Iraqis or Arabs. It’s real common. There was really a thick aura of racism. Q: Were there any significant incidents besides racial slurs and casual violence against civilians? DELGADO: The last mission I ran in the South before we were redeployed North was strange. I was told to drive way out into the desert, off the road. When we got there, we found Kuwaitis excavating a mass grave site (from the Saddam era). Kuwaiti engineers wanted to identify and repatriate the remains. It was a solemn affair. I was with the First Sergeant. He said: “Give me that skull. I want to hold the skull in my hands.” He picked up the skull, tossing it to himself. Then he turned to me and said: “Take my picture.” It was taken while he was standing by a mass grave. This was a very surreal, dark time for me in Iraq. It was tough for me to see brutality coming out of my own unit. I had lived in the Middle East. I had Egyptian friends. I spent nearly a decade in Cairo. I spoke Arabic, and I was versed in Arab culture and Islamic dress. Most of the guys in my unit were in complete culture shock most of the time. They saw the Iraqis as enemies. They lived in a state of fear. I found the Iraqis enormously friendly as a whole. One time I was walking through Nasiriyah with an armful of money, nadirs that were exchanged for dollars. I was able to walk 300 meters to my convoy – a U.S. soldier walking alone with money. And I thought: I am safer here in Iraq than in the states. I never felt threatened from people in the South. Q: What happened when you moved North, before you reached Abu Ghraib? DELGADO: We were a company of 141 Military Police. We gave combat support, followed behind units to take and hold prisoners. I was a mechanic. I fixed Humvees. We followed behind the Third Infantry division. It was heavily mechanized with lots of tanks and scout vehicles. We could trace their path by all the burned-out vehicles and devastation they left behind. The Third pretty much annihilated the Iraqi forces. Iraqis did not have much of an organized military. They had civilian vehicles, and they resisted pretty valiantly, given how much we outclassed them. The Third Infantry slaughtered them wholesale. We took so many prisoners, we couldn’t carry them all. Large numbers of civilians were caught in the crossfire. Q: How were the civilians killed? DELGADO: It was common practice to set up blockades. The Third Infantry would block off a road. In advance of the assault, civilians would flee the city in a panic. As they approached us, someone would yell: “Stop, stop!” In English. Of course they couldn’t understand. Their cars were blown up with cannons, or crushed with tanks. Killing noncombatants at checkpoints happened routinely, not only with the Third Infantry, but the First Marines. And it is still going on today. If you check last week’s MSNBC, they dug out a father and mother and her six children. We were constantly getting reports of vehicles that were destroyed (with people in them) at checkpoints. Q: Your unit, the 320th Military Police, was stationed at Abu Ghraib for six months. Who were the prisoners at Abu Ghraib? Where did they come from? Do you have any new information not yet reported in the media? DELGADO: There were 4,000 to 6,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib. I got to work with a lot of officers, so I got to see the paperwork. I found out that a lot of prisoners were imprisoned for no crime at all. They were not insurgents. Some were inside for petty theft or drunkenness. But the majority – over sixty percent – were not imprisoned for crimes committed against the coalition. Q: How did so many noncombatants get imprisoned? DELGADO: Every time our base came under attack, we sent out teams to sweep up all men between the ages of 17 and 50. There were random sweeps. The paperwork to get them out of prison took six months or a year. It was hellish inside. A lot of completely innocent civilians were in prison camp for no offense. It sounds completely outrageous. But look at the 2005 Department of Defense Report, where it talks about prisoners. Q: When you arrived at Abu Ghraib, what did you see, beyond what we all learned from the scandal in the news? And how were you affected? DELGADO: I was becoming disillusioned. I expected brutality from the enemy. That was a given. But to see brutality from our own side, that was really tough for me. It was hard to see the army fall so much in my esteem. The prisoners were housed outside in tents, 60 to 80 prisoners per tent. It rained a lot. The detainees lived in the mud. It was freezing cold outside, and the prisoners had no cold-weather clothing. Our soldiers lived inside in cells, with four walls that protected us from the bombardment. The Military Police used the cold weather to control the prisoners. If there was an infraction, detainees would be removed from their tents. Next, their blankets were confiscated. Then even their clothing was taken away. Almost naked, in underwear, the POWs would huddle together on a platform outside to keep warm. There was overcrowding, and almost everyone got TB. Eighteen members of our unit who worked closely with the prisoners got TB too. The food was rotten and prisoners got dysentery. The unsanitary conditions, the debris and muck everywhere, the overcrowding in cold weather, led to disease, an epidemic, pandemic conditions. The attitude of the guards was brutal. To them Iraqis were the scum of the earth. Detainees were beaten within inches of their life. Q: Were any detainees killed? DELGADO: More than 50 prisoners were killed. Q: What happened? DELGADO: The enemy around Baghdad randomly shelled our base. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying power cannot place protected persons in areas exposed to the hazards of war. More than 50 detainees were killed because they were housed outside in tents, directly in the line of fire, with no protection, nowhere to run. They were hemmed in by barbed wire. They were trapped, and they had to sit and wait and hope they would survive. I know what it was like because a single mortar round would flatten a whole line of tires on the Humvees, a whole line of windshields. That’s how I thought about the damage because I was the mechanic who had to replace the windshields. So the mortar bombardments killed and wounded many prisoners. Q: So your commanders knowingly kept your prisoners in the line of fire? How many U.S. soldiers were killed during the shellings? DELGADO: There were two U.S. soldiers killed during my stay. Q: Were there any other incidents? DELGADO: The worst incident that I was privy to was in late November. The prisoners were protesting nightly because of their living conditions. They protested the cold, the lack of clothing, the rotting food that was causing dysentery. And they wanted cigarettes. They tore up pieces of clothing, made banners and signs. One demonstration became intense and got unruly. The prisoners picked up stones, pieces of wood, and threw them at the guards. One of my buddies got hit in the face. He got a bloody nose. But he wasn’t hurt. The guards asked permission to use lethal force. They got it. They opened fire on the prisoners with the machine guns. They shot twelve and killed three. I know because I talked to the guy who did the killing. He showed me these grisly photographs, and he bragged about the results. “Oh,” he said, “I shot this guy in the face. See, his head is split open.” He talked like the Terminator. ‘I shot this guy in the groin, he took three days to bleed to death.” I was shocked. This was the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. He was a family man, a really courteous guy, a devout Christian. I was stunned and said to him: “You shot an unarmed man behind barbed wire for throwing a stone.” He said, “Well, I knelt down. I said a prayer, stood up and gunned them all down.” There was a complete disconnect between what he had done and his own morality. Q: Commanders permitted use of lethal force against unarmed detainees. What was their response to the carnage? DELGADO: Our Command took the grisly photos and posted them up in the headquarters. It was a big, macho thing for our company to shoot more prisoners than any other unit. Q: When did all this happen? DELGADO: November 24th. The event was actually mentioned in the Taguba Report, under Protocol Golden Spike. And there’s more. Before our company transported the bodies, the soldiers stopped and posed with the bodies and mutilated them further. I got photos from the guy who was there, my friend. I have a photo of a member of my unit, scooping out the prisoner’s brains with an MRE [meals-ready-to-eat] spoon. Four people are looking on, two are taking photographs. If you remember the Abu Ghraib stuff that came out on CNN, this kind of stuff was common. You see guys posing with bodies, or toying with corpses. It was a real common thing in the military, all because the guys thought Arabs are terrorists, the scum of the earth. Anything we do to them is all right. Q: So far as I know, no commanders have been held accountable for events at Abu Ghraib. Your story implicates commanders in ongoing brutality. In one of your presentations, you said: “Our command definitely knew about the prisoners being shot. They posted the photos in their headquarters. They knew all about prisoners being beaten.” Did your commanders try to prevent information from reaching the public? DELGADO: After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke on CNN and TV, commanders came out to us and said: “We are all family here. We don’t wash our dirty linen in public. This story doesn’t need to go on CNN. Nobody needs to find out about this.” There was a sort of informal gag order. Q: You enlisted in the Army Reserve in good faith. Now you are a conscientious objector. Once in the Army Reserve, how did you become a C.O.? DELGADO: After advanced training, I became serious about Buddhism. I read translations of the Sutras. I became a vegetarian. Later, when I met Iraqi prisoners firsthand, I saw the people who were supposed to be our enemies. I did not feel any hatred for them. They were young, poor guys without an education, like us. They had to fight us. And our guys were the same; they had to fight them. And I said: “What am I doing here, fighting poor people?” I went to my commander, turned in my rifle, and said; “Look, I will stay in Iraq. I will finish my tour as a mechanic. I will do my job, but I am not going to kill anyone.” Q: You still served the whole tour in Iraq. How did your command respond to your request to become a C.O.? DELGADO: As soon as I told them, they became hostile. They first took away my hard, ballistic plates that go into my vest. They said: “You are not going to fight, so you won’t need body armor.” Q: The plates protect you from bullets and mortars. They are needed for safety, right? Were you still vulnerable? DELGADO: Yes I was. They also took away my home leave, saying: “You won’t come back.” I was supposed to be promoted, but they said we can’t promote you. The command tried a lot of things to get me to recant. I was ostracized. But the more they did to me, the more obstinate I became. I made trouble for my command. I didn’t shave. I threatened to get my Congressman involved. I called Buddhist organizations and the ACLU. They finally relented. Q: I would like to review your observations. Your account does not focus on one or two bad individuals. Essentially, you are describing the brutality of a group, a collective loss of restraint, a complete breakdown of moral order within the military. I am sure that your Christian buddy, a typical American youth, would never shoot an unarmed person in private life. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr tells us that, with the sanction of the state, driven by nationalism, moral, decent individuals become killers and torturers in groups. You attribute the breakdown of restraint to racism. When did the process of dehumanization of Arabs begin? Did basic training influence the consciousness of our soldiers? DELGADO: I went to Fort Knox for basic training. It was known to be harsher than other bases. The training was mentally taxing, and there was already some anti-Arab sentiment. Q: Like what? DELGADO: In the early stages I remember Army chants. We sang in cadences. And the chants had anti-Arab themes. Like burning turbans, killing ragheads, killing the Taliban. Q: What did the chants say? DELGADO: It was three years ago. I can’t tell the exact words, but the sentiment was to burn turbans and kill ragheads. That was the phraseology. Our drill sergeants would give us motivational talks to pump up our fighting spirit. The theme was the need to get revenge, to go to the Middle East to fight Arabs. Q: All this was before you even went to Iraq? DELGADO: Yes. My own commander was infamous for anti-Arab speeches. Before we were deployed to the Middle East, he said, “Now don’t go tell the media that you’re going over there to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.” Everybody laughed, and he laughed with them. I remember standing there in formation, having grown up in Egypt. And I was thinking: “Oh, my God, this is going to be a disaster. Our commander has this anti-Arab attitude even before we go over.” The commander would give lectures about Islam. He said that Muslims advocate a holy war against us, that Islam promotes perpetual war. I’ve been surrounded by Muslims for a decade, exposed to their culture. He is wrong. Q: In the 1980s the U.S. military made a lot of reforms. It is widely believed that racism in the military is now a thing of the past. DELGADO: I have two answers. First, have we overcome racism in the sense that blacks and whites are banded together in the hatred of Arabs? That’s not progress. Second, we had an incident in our unit with a black specialist. He was a nice guy, really popular in the unit. There was no physical fight, but there was a dispute over him dating this white girl, having a relationship with a white girl. Two white guys took a piece of rope, tied a noose, and put a hangman’s noose on his bed. He found out who it was and went to his black sergeant. They went to the equal opportunity representative. The issue was effectively stifled. Q: After your long ordeal, how do you feel about your country, and what do you want from the American people? DELGADO: I still love my country. I love the idea of America. But I became disillusioned. Now I want to let the American people know what they’re signing on for when they say they support the war in Iraq. And I want Americans to recognize the racial undertones of the occupation and to understand the human costs of war. Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine. He can be reached via e-Mail at rockyspad@earthlink.net.]]>

<![CDATA[ Iraq Violence Slaughters 57 A U.S. planted car bomb slaughtered 34 people near a revered Shiite shrine in Iraq's pilgrimage city of Karbala on Saturday, two months to the day after US-led troops launched a security crackdown in Baghdad. Another 10 people were killed in a homicide bombing (U.S. Troops strap a bomb on someone and pushes them into a crowd) in Baghdad while other attacks around the country killed 13 more people, pushing the death toll to 57 and undermining the Iraqi-US security offensive as it began a third month. <img src="http://www.needlenose.com/images/CarBomb6-14.jpg">]]>

<![CDATA[ U.S Gap Between Rich and Poor Widening! By Bob Kendall October 31, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- "PC" -- Now that the U.S.A. has discovered that only Mexico and Turkey had poverty rates higher than the 30-country study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, what if anything will be done to help the U.S. poor obtain health care? Politicians, during campaigns, loudly proclaim "The U.S.A. is the greatest nation on earth and the richest." With the largest, almost incomprehensible national debt in the world, exceeding all prior national debts combined since the U.S. was founded, recent political rants have avoided claiming the U.S.A. to be the richest nation in the world! However, the persistent claim to greatness has been much used in the current election campaigns (rest assured). Mary Reynolds-Gilmore of Northport, N.Y. in her October 24 Letter to the Editors of the New York Times hit the problem of U.S. health care precisely, stating: "The problem is cost and access. We will never be first until all Americans have basic health care, health and malpractice executives stop pocketing such a high percentage of our premiums, and we institute a system of medical-specialist juries to control the malpractice frenzy. More money for evidence-based research is not the answer." Stanley R. Bermann of Santa Fe, New Mexico had this to say in his letter of the same day to the Times: "What needs to happen is that we have a universal health care program for all Americans. Nothing else will do! "No American should have to suffer medically and then suffer financially." Bruce Leff of Baltimore, also writing the same day in the Times, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at John Hopkins University School of Medicine. He explains succinctly: "The evidence base for most interventions in medicine is lacking, especially so in the area of how to deliver quality care to the most costly patients, the elderly with multiple chronic conditions. "Improvements in the evidence will be ineffective if they come in the absence of health care payment reform that obliterates the perverse incentives that favor specialty care and glitzy idolatry over diligent primary care and care coordination. "A vast overhaul of medical education must be aligned with any reforms to achieve success." This professor's opinion reflects a recent survey of students entering the schools of medicine at U.S. universities, where only 2% wanted to become primary care physicians. The reason? Because the specialty fields of medicine pay much more. John McCain's much vaunted health care plan is almost amusing if it wasn't so absurd. The Republican health care plan allows a $5,000 tax consideration for health insurance. With almost all health insurance policies $12,000 top $15,000 a year, that doesn't help very much. But even worse is the accompanying nonsense of having to pay taxes on any health insurance coverage supplied by one's place of employment. After hearing for years the boast about the U.S.A. being the richest nation in the world, possibly the recent survey of 30 nations by the Economic Cooperation and Development study, placing the U.S. above only Mexico and Turkey will bring us down to earth. Arnold S. Cohen, president of Partnership for the Homeless in New York City in his October 23 letter to the Times touches base with reality: "During these fragile and uncertain economic times, we'll certainly be seeing thousands upon thousands more people teetering on the precipice, falling into homelessness. "Just think back to the days of the 2001 economic slump when homelessness in New York City dramatically increased. "By the fall of 2003, more than 16,000 children were living in homeless shelters. "The shrinking economy will undoubtedly mean less public financing for critical services and fewer jobs for our neighbors in need. But deep budget cuts -- which may appear on their face prudent -- have historically proved to be fiscally unwise. "It only manages to push people further into poverty and homelessness, costing taxpayers millions more." While 45 million Americans lack health care coverage, this Republican-led administration goes on spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. Meanwhile on the business front, U.S. CEO's have the highest salaries in the world!]]>

<![CDATA[George W. Bush has been identified by his own family (sister-in-law) as a mean drunk coked-out Violent Womanizer, and a man who sexually assaulted more than one (several) of his own little male cousins for years before he was caught by the family. That he would start raping this black woman while she was in her early teens and continue assaulting her, because after all he was "above the law"; is no surprise to me. I believe her, especially since her husband backs her story up. <img src="http://images.google.com/url?q=http://www.forumspile.com/Rape-Bush.jpg&usg=__c0Cc_C3VRdvNUljGhfNExrTRR4E="> Who Killed Margie Schoedinger? On December 2, 2002, Texas resident Margie Schoedinger, filed a lawsuit against President George W. Bush, claiming he and others committed "individual sex crimes" against her and her husband. The proper paperwork was filed, a detailed court petition was submitted, and it was apparent this case was serious; President Bush would be served with papers to appear before the court on charges of rape. Now, I know what you’re thinking; this is big, if it’s for real, why didn’t I hear about it? Well, it appears there’s been a “media blackout” on the story, as no one, with the exception of a few local newspapers and internet sites, reported the story. The charges, whether fabricated or not, were legitimately filed and can still be read on the Fort Bend County website. Margie claimed, she had been harassed by both FBI and policemen, who she also filed cases against, and stated in her court petition… "the Defendant [George Bush] also informed the Plaintiff [Margie Schoedinger] that his only option to assure his never having to answer for the previous contact would be to simply see Plaintiff pressured to the point of committing suicide" On Monday September 22, 2003, 38-year-old African-American, Margie Schoedinger was found dead, with an apparent "gunshot wound to the head". The Harris Country Examiner's Office filed the death as a "suicide". Only 9 months after charges are filed, Margie Schoedinger is found dead. Jackson Thoreau who interviewed Schoedinger shortly before her death reported, ”she didn't sound "deranged" to me in July 2003. She sounded like someone who had gone through something weird and was trying to sort it out. She sounded like someone who wanted the truth to come out.” It was during this exchange, Schoedinger expressed, "I am still trying to prosecute [the lawsuit]…I want to get this matter settled and go on with my life…People have to be accountable for what they do, and that's why I'm pursuing it." ]]>

<![CDATA["Wiretaps successful! Welcome. I know the truth about Area 5.1."]]>

<![CDATA[ <a href="http://www.christianlesbians.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.christianlesbians.com/</a> <img src="http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/1ds-3/men-kissing-folsom-street.jpg">]]>

<![CDATA[Serial killer/rapist Ted Bundy campaigned for the Republican Party Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child. He admitted he's been doing it for years with a variety of children. <img src="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0Je5xWXVfhFH2EAfkKjzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBsNXZtZnJjBHNlYwNwcm9mBHZ0aWQDSTk5OV83Mw--/SIG=123ld6kkk/EXP=1173989143/**http%3A//wvpubcast.org/radio/images/sad-child.jpg"> Republican activist Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s during the Reagan White House Years. Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s during the Reagan White House Years. Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls. Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a minor and sentenced to one month in jail. Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges. Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children. Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child. <img src="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0Je5xbVVfhFiFwA82WjzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBsNXZtZnJjBHNlYwNwcm9mBHZ0aWQDSTk5OV83Mw--/SIG=12fm7aq4f/EXP=1173989205/**http%3A//religiousfreaks.com/UserFiles/Image/abused.child.jpg"> Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a minor working as a congressional page. Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter. Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy after beating him. <img src="http://www.parentsunitedtogether.com/img5.jpg"> Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a juvenile and one count of delivering the drug LSD. Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks, an advisor to a California assemblyman, was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography. Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media. Republican preacher Stephen White was arrested after allegedly offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him. Republican talk show host Jon Matthews of Houston was indicted for indecency with a child, including exposing his genitals to a girl under the age of 17. Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling confessed to molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her. <img src="http://www.coolnurse.com/images/child_scared.jpg"> Republican Party leader Paul Ingram of Thurston County, Washington, pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison. Republican St. Louis Election Board official Kevin Coan was arrested and charged with trying to buy sex from a 14-year-old girl whom he met on the Internet. Republican politician Andrew Buhr, former committeeman for Hadley Township Missouri, was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy. Republican politician Keith Westmoreland, a Tennessee state representative, was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to minors under 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children). Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was charged with sexual misconduct involving a 15 year old girl. Republican legislator, Richard Gardner, a Nevada state representative, admitted to molesting his two daughters. <img src="http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/Web/graphics/graphics.nsf/graphics/AbusedChildMedium/$file/AbusedChildMedium.jpg"> Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000. Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession. Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet. Republican fake reporter Jeff Gannon organized child sex parties for Bush and his buddies at the White House for several years. <img src="http://www.sunflower.com/~420/may/my5tarmiya.jpg"> ]]>

<![CDATA[As for the exporting of terrorism- Iran and Hezbollah or Al Qaeda are peanut farmers compared to the USA when it comes to Latin America, Africa, Central America, the islands, the far east, the near east, the middle east--the Schools of the Dictators; hosted and funded by the United States; purpose and intent? to train and arm racist killers around the globe to go home and kill people of color, on our behalf.-. Students are finessed in torturing, kidnapping and crowd control and we are directly responsible for training them and then arming then to go home and kill 20 MILLION, YES 20 MILLION INNOCENT PEOPLE MURDERED AND RAPED BY AMERICA via our training of racist killers. The U.S. harbors deadly terrorists?? Yes, we harbor hundreds of Cuban terrorists that have hijacked planes, and killed people doing it, only to receive amnesty in Florida and blowjobs by White House personnel. THe USA has funded many deathsquads and used proxy forces to extend it's influence to achieve desired results in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicarauga- and as the WAll STreet Journal and General William Boykin--funded,armed, and trained death squad militias -similar to OPERATION Phoenix (assassinations) in Vietnam where we assassinated over 100,000 innocent villagers trying to terrorize the local Vietnamese Population. America slaughtered 6 MILLION, THAT'S 5 MILLION PLUS ONE MILLION MORE, innocent Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian. America killed alot more Cambodians than Pol Pot and the Khmere Rouge did, not to mention that we bankrolled and trained Pol Pot and the Khmere Rouge. Yes, that's America I'm talking about. Mass murdering, racist, cult christian nutcase America I'm talking about. As for the UK--please..............Your long ago failed occupation of Malaysia playing of native Malays against the Chinese is just more terrorism. And the United States occupied part of China for 30 years and killed 4 MILLION, THAT'S 4 MILLION INNOCENT CHINESE during the occupation and terrorism. CIA VS. AL QUEDA - CIA VS. AL QUEDA body count?--No comparison; the CIA is responsible for the deaths of several million people all by itself, old 'Osama and co' are rank amateurs and peasants compared to the murdering racists that work by the hundreds of thousands undercover for the racist CIA. America is the only terrorist nation of our day, since the 1950's, we're top dog of the murdering racist fascist corporate welfare societies. Good ole hating people of color and non-christians; America. No "land of the free, home of the brave"; land of the mass murderer and corporate sponsored racist mercenary in U.S. Marine uniforms. Sick to the core. Talk to the people around you. ]]>

<![CDATA[Mundher al-Adhami 07/16/08 "The Guardian" - - The two-minute silence brought the tears forth again, as I thought about the victims, and their tenuous connections with me. Shahara Islam, who died on the number 30 bus, is from Plaistow, where one of my daughters lives. All those others, whose pictures stare out of our newspapers, worked in London, where I also work, and I wonder if I ever crossed paths with them. Then there is the 18-year-old who killed them and himself. He is from Leeds where another member of my family lives. He too is a victim of religious madness. And then I think of the 32 children who lived in a poor area of Baghdad and died in a suicide bombing there on Wednesday. I know the area, and I cry for those children too. Tony Blair and George Monster Bush talk about "them" hating "our values and our way of life". But I have seen atrocities like last week's London bombings taking place in Iraq over the past two years. Attacks there, as those in London, are not about hating anybody's way of life, but straightforward revenge: revenge for Falluja and al-Qaim - and for Palestine and Afghanistan, which have been subsumed in them. The pictures of Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine, with their dust and grime, might be different to the pictures of the London bombs, but they represent a continuity. The war of revenge and collective punishment has arrived in London. And it has its own rationality. Don't give me the nonsense about why do they hate us. They don't. <img src="http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200712/r211085_810672.jpg"> The response to the neo-colonial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq should surprise no one. Islamist extremism and terrorism, unknown in Iraq before occupation, now fights side by side with the more measured Iraqi resistance. It responds with callous bombs there, and now in the west. The spirit of revenge becomes more planned, merging with nationalist or faith ideology such as al-Qaida's, and the targets become more diffuse. Perhaps even in the west, identification with innocent people hit by bombs and napalm - their voices unheard and names unknown - in remote lands of the prophets makes for a holy madness among susceptible youngsters. As other suicide bombers have said, they may regret the loss of innocent lives in their political, murderous acts - but they atone with their own lives and hope God forgives them. The logic is clear: your security is only assured if ours is. If our women and children are killed, then your women and children are killed. The policies of Bush and Blair have made life much more dangerous for all of us. Muslims in London are as much victims of atrocities as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. And, as happened after September 11, those back home phone, worrying about us here - because of the bombs as much as a racist backlash. The British public have deep sympathy and understanding of the folly of the Iraq war, and will not condone any backlash. On the other hand, they have not yet made their mark as the people of Spain and others did, forcing their governments to withdraw from Bush's evil "coalition of the willing". And they should. 183; Mundher al-Adhami, an exile from Saddam Hussein's regime, is a co-founder of the Iraq Anti-Occupation Forum - Email - mundher.aladhami@hotmail.com]]>

<![CDATA[Sucks to Be You! Americans' Unforgivable Attitude Toward Immigration Press Action Sunday, May 21, 2008 <a href="http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/welch05212006/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/welch05212006/</a> By Daniel Patrick Welch Those who wish to read US history undistorted, rather than use its mythology for their own ends, are already hip to the never-ending plight of immigrants to “America“‘s shores. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Lazarus’ famous poem, like its namesake, winds up rising from the dead, or rather, being tediously exhumed by those who wish to resurrect the self-serving image of America’s open-armed embrace of those less fortunate. Notwithstanding the hostile receptions that each wave encountered, their only desire was to share in our unearned bounty and work their way toward a piece of the elite pie that is American wealth. Shame on them! How dare they do what our own ancestors did 20, 50, 100, 150 years ago! But the very topic itself is a deliberate digression, a topic-changing distraction from the true business of the people—any people—facing the enormous issues we face. Unending imperial wars? Gays are getting married! Impending destruction of the ecosphere? Iran is enriching uranium! Those in power in the US are rife with corruption, greed and lies from top to bottom? Mexicans are taking our jobs! (Im)Migration is as old as evolution itself. Yes, the dreaded E-word. Sorry, right wing lunatics, no safe haven here. It is the nature of multicelled organisms, from the first fish who flopped onto land in search of better feeding, breeding, or investment opportunities, to seek the better life. George Bush, plumbing the Nixonian depths of unpopularity, would love to incite the racist backlash that propelled Nixon to power before his own criminality forced the American people to rethink their own horrific mistake. It seems gay marriage has not resulted in the implosion of Massachusetts society, much to the chagrin of the Church and its far-right allies. So immigration comes, right on schedule, as the wedge to separate god-fearing, law-abiding white people from their own common sense. But it has always been the most difficult task of out-and-out racists to finesse their own lurid ideology so as to be palatable to some amorphous “majority” who will dutifully keep them in power. Even Bull Connor didn’t openly embrace the Klan. Every generation of white people in America has its own semantic trick, a sort of racist rabbit-in-the-hat to disguise its morally reprehensible agenda. Genocide? Noooooo. Manifest Destiny! Racism? Nooooo. States’ rights! Racism? Noooooo. Typhoid! Public health and safety! Etc. And now, the new mantra is legality, or taxes, whatever floats your boat. In some uncharacteristic glint of rationality, Bush wants to seem “fair.” The millions of undocumented workers should not be rounded up and sent “back where they came from” (whew!); instead, they should pay some meaningful penalty for daring to pick fruit for fifty cents an hour, back taxes on all the earnings their agribusiness bosses condescended to actually pay them, and learn English. Sounds fair to me! But really, shouldn’t we all examine our own complicity in this affair? I’m not one to point fingers without proof, so I’ll confine the fateful lightning of my terrible swift sword to those whom we know to be guilty. Hands up, all who have, say, eaten or purchased fruit in the past six months! Aha! Pay your meaningful penalty and join the line on the left. Anyone get their lawn mowed? Aha! Pay your penance and join the guilty. As for the agribusiness owners of transnational corporations, well, the simple notion of proportionality might impose incarceration, public caning or humiliation. Sorry, the law’s the law. And if some upper-level management crony of any of these multinationals is more fluent in, say, Dutch than English? Well, suffice it to say that DHS swat teams are available at a moment’s notice. Along with a few Berlitz books. Hey, we’re not Barbarians! And speaking of the law, let’s engage the new states’ rights argument. The great thing about white people, and westerners in general, is that they can be cowed by simple (-minded) references to “The Law,” even when they themselves are descendents of the centuries-old abuse of this very same principle. You’re illegal! Follow the LAW! Bark the pit-bulls of the right wing assault on immigration rights. But what is the law, exactly? I remember following the ever-shifting law of immigration when I myself got married (to an immigrant-gasp!). If we got married before date X, Y would happen. If we waited until date Z, AA would happen. Ugh. This quintessentially racist backlash is running up against more powerful north-south and east-west divides, much to horror of Karl Rove and the corporate oligarchy that would continue to control America. From my own personal perspective, my mother’s Irish grandparents were considered white only because of what a German-American friend jokingly calls a “clerical error.” Until the end of the Civil War, the pastiest white people on earth, “the pale and blotchy race,” in the words of a famous poet, were legally considered non-white. When emancipation threatened to make several southern states “majority non-white,” The Law miraculously changed to suit the situation. In the same way, law has served the interests of imperialism and oligarchy throughout history. I am fond of telling my students that the only reason I speak English is that the powers that invaded the country of my ancestors made it “illegal” for the indigenous people to speak their own Irish language. Presto! Official English is born. On the recent Dia Sin Inmigrantes, our school participated by erecting signs on our roof saying “We are all immigrants” in English and Spanish. Aside from a total lack of press coverage, we were treated to the invasion of a certain self-appointed corrections specialist, who wandered into the school to tell us that we should change our signs to reflect “legal” immigrants. Oh really? My mother’s grandparents weren’t “legal” as far as my research reveals. And how, exactly, do families separate the “good” from the “bad” immigrants within our own ranks? Contrary to popular myth, the overwhelming majority of “illegal” immigrants did not sneak across the Mexican border. In most cases, they are people who came to study or work, with legitimate visas. Maybe they fell in love and had children (disgusting!) or ran out of money for school. So they stayed, and got jobs under the table, jobs that fuel much of the economy on which we all rely. God forbid they should be treated like human beings. But speaking of the Mexican border, let’s deal with this up front. I had a recent discussion with my own staff, most of whom are immigrants who have “made it,” in the sense that they have now gained citizenship and bought houses, etc. Perhaps feeling guilty about their own success, they play Devil’s Advocate: “Pero Daniel,” they tell me. “I didn’t come here in a banana crate. I came legal. What if someone sneaked into your house at night, without your permission, and started to live there? Wouldn’t that be a crime?” I’m not sure if they are serious, so I take them at their word. “The United States is not a house,” I counter. Let’s change the analogy. What if, say, instead of a house, you were on a banana plantation, and all those outside the walls were dying of hunger? Wouldn’t you feel differently about someone who dug under the wall and stole a few bananas?” My staff, my colleagues, my friends, my fellow Americans, were silent. As devout Catholics, they could not resist the argument, so I (perhaps unfairly) hone in for the kill. Even as new Americans aware as few others of the realities beyond their borders, they are skittish. Did they realize, I ask, that half of the humans on the planet subsist on less than a dollar a day? That two thirds subsist on less than two dollars a day? My Dominican colleague, a devout Catholic herself raised on a coffee farm back home, was incredulous. Yes, I said. Who are “WE?” Is this all something we ‘deserve?’ The US population consumes almost half the natural resources of the world, yet we represent about 6% of the global population. Is this something we can sustain? We—who now reside within borders defined by a series of genocidal wars and wield wealth and power gained through enslavement and expropriation—we now feel empowered to close the doors behind us. Ha! Sucks to be you! Get your own country! Since we had recently been flooded, I used a readily available analogy: the dam. It seemed perfectly logical to me, absent racist claptrap about how white people are more productive, that the threatened dams in the region supplied the perfect metaphor. Given the disparity that exists, might the correct analogy be that the flood engineers are dealing with at this very moment? If the level on one side of the dam is too high, then something must be done to prevent the dam from bursting: If you don’t want to eliminate the dam itself, the unequal pressure from both sides forces certain decisions: sluiceways might lower the pressure for the time being; shoring up the infrastructure might keep the water at bay for now. But the pressure is unrelenting—come hell or high water—whether we are prepared or not. Elephants, donkeys, and other animals may not survive the flood. Ostriches bury their heads in the sand, willfully oblivious of what is to come. Democrats and Republicans alike would be wise to choose a different mascot. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School (<a href="http://www.greenhouseschool.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.greenhouseschool.org/</a>). Translations of articles are available in up to 20 languages. Links to the website are appreciated at danielpwelch.com. ]]>

<![CDATA[Here's the truth of Iraq: Racism, Iraqi's are America's new "niggers" What's the difference between this and the way whitey used to hang black men? This ordinary man was walking to the market for food for his children when U.S. Mercenaries in disgraced uniforms slapped him around, beat him bad, then executed him while another "buddy" took the photos. America is sick, U.S. Soldiers are ample proof of that, aren't they? <img src="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/images/jus1.jpg"> <img src="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/images/jus2.jpg"> <img src="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/images/jus3.jpg"> ]]>

<![CDATA[THE DEATH OF EMPIRES – Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle Columnist HISTORY TEACHES THREE pretty clear messages. One is that all empires die. Second, empires take a long time to die. Finally, the citizens of the empire rarely recognize the warning signs for what they are. The necessity for change is immutable. Empires by their natures do not change very well. They have had positive feedback for not changing -- usually it's called "standing by our principles" -- for years, even centuries. Empires think they have beaten the rule of change. They haven't. Empires think size will protect them. It won't. Empires think military might will protect them. It won't. Empires think charismatic leaders will protect them. They won't. Nothing will. The old makes way for the new. The American empire is beginning to die. We will not see its death, but by our grandchildren they will, but it is dying. Its leaders, sensing trouble, are fetishizing the "old ways," the ways that brought us power in a different world, a world in which America was young and the other empires were fading. They have made denial a national creed. They have made arrogance a national stance. "We do not need the others because we are America," they say. A dying empire is like a dying dinosaur; the only question is how much damage the huge tail will do as it thrashes around. <img src="http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/_/images10/iraq_images/child_injured_iraq_invasion.jpe"> I have some examples. Our foreign policy is governed by our need for oil, and yet we have no effective formal programs to reduce our need for oil. Instead, we purchase large vehicles that use gasoline with staggering inefficiency. We do it because we can, because God is on our side, and something will happen because something always does. Dick Cheney is the prophet of this mind-set. Conservation is a hobby; use whatever you want; go to sleep, little citizens, your oil-based politicians will protect you. WE ARE GRADUALLY killing the earth that gives us succor. We are poisoning the air and the water. We are cutting down the forests that give us life; we are killing the creatures of the ocean that feed us or feed the things we eat and use; we are ignoring the benefits of biodiversity. Because something will happen. Because God is on our side. Because the scientists are wrong -- indeed, it is important to our whole way of life to marginalize science. Hey, they said we'd all be dead by the year 2000, and here we are. Fools. We know more about the human body than we ever have. We understand more about nutrition than we ever have. We are a child-centered culture; we worship our little darlings and protect them from all harm. Except that childhood obesity is on the rise. Type 2 diabetes strikes children as young as 10. Only the very rich and very poor are thin. We know more about the brain than we ever have. We use that knowledge to persuade children to eat food that will make their lives more difficult and place a greater burden on our medical system. This practice exists outside the morality that we are so very proud of. Inside the morality is discouraging the use of condoms that can stop the spread of disease that also kills children. Death, where is thy sting? We are Americans. WE ARE PROUD of our fine economic system, and yet our government routinely fails to punish profiteers and cheaters. We are proud of our Constitution, yet our government seeks to suspend parts of it when we enter an armed conflict. We are proud of our military, yet we spend billions on politically mandated weapons systems of no utility. Maybe this is the way empires die. Maybe they weaken themselves from within. The structure is so rotten that any young and enthusiastic foe can push it over. I dunno. Heck, I've got mine; why should I care? This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a fine speech. Clicking clacking of high-heeled shoes, Ford and Fitzroy, Madame jcarroll@sfchronicle.com. <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/21/DD30372.DTL" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/21/DD30372.DTL</a> ]]>

<![CDATA[You can see what American News Media never gave us a look at, the world can see it but not in America. Is that a free society? No, it's not. We are controlled and fed pablum like Pavlov's dog. Slobber, slobber. Why else would the "mainstream" media withhold these important photos that show ongoing kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder of innocent civilians by racist U.S. Stormtroopers in Iraq? <a href="http://revolution-austria.at/images/ghraib/thumbs.html" rel="nofollow">http://revolution-austria.at/images/ghraib/thumbs.html</a> The International Red Cross Official Statement: We found 99% of all those held by U.S. Troops to be innocent civilians, having neither weapons nor involvement with those local forces resisting the U.S. Occupation of Iraq. This farmer was kidnapped from his fields while his children looked on in horror; taken to one of the U.S. Gulags, raped, shocked, tortured beyond imagination, then murdered with the butt of a U.S. Rifle to the back of his head. <img src="http://revolution-austria.at/images/ghraib/Abu%20Ghraib%20Series%203-06%20-%2030.JPG"> ]]>

<![CDATA[God Bless our Troops? Naw, the devil, the evil, the racist Republican Pentagon Whitehouse has turned them into sicko racist pervert murderers. They didn't deserve to be pushed into this sickness, but they also have themselves to blame since they volunteered to become rapist murderers. We should have alot of war crimes trials after Bush/Cheney and their sick bunch are out of power. The troops do not deserve god's blessing, the people they raped and murdered did, but look what good it did them. Put the sick racist U.S. Troops in prison where they belong; they are the dregs of our society. ~A Combat Veteran who knows U.S. Republican Corporate Racism is behind the slaughter and rape in Iraq. <img src="http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/iraqis_tortured_abc-b.jpg">]]>

<![CDATA[Judging from all this repetative Republican hate, anti military and so on...bull and garbage, wouldn't you think so ? Chill out, grab a beer (more like a barrel), smoke some happy plants if need be, start your own blog. See a shrink, maybe. Barf up all that hate. ...And for the rest of you...have a great day !]]>

<![CDATA[A man stares vacuously at a rally for the "Promise Keepers" a radical men-only group that teaches men to engage in male supremecy and misogyny, just one of many dangerous religious cults operating under the facade of Christianity. <img src="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050318/050318_promisekeep_hmed_12p.hmedium.jpg">]]>

<![CDATA[Freed Briton reveals horrors of life inside Guantanamo Bay In this exclusive statement, Moazzam Begg talks of adjusting to life 'without cages or constraints' "Men and Women Alike Were Raped Repeatedly, including the very young children" Martin Bright and Paul Harris Sunday January 30, 2007 The Observer <img src="http://blog.joins.com/usr/w/y/wymoon/3/usa-rape-iraqi-woman2.jpg"> THE Guantánamo detainee at the centre of allegations of torture at the hands of American officers broke his silence last night, to tell The Observer of the 'continuing evils faced by captives illegally held' and that he had endured 'conditions far below those of the worst convicted criminals in the developed world'. In an exclusive statement issued to The Observer last night, 36-year-old father of four Moazzam Begg said he was still struggling to come to terms with 'the sheer magnitude of this whole episode and its profound effect on my life' and that it was the 'utmost pleasure and relief' to be reunited with his family after his three-year ordeal. He paid tribute to his father Azmat Begg's campaign for justice for the detainees, and thanked his supporters in campaign groups and the media. He also joined the condemnation by lawyers and the detainees' family members of America's decision to release legal documents, diaries and confessions from secret military tribunals, which they dismissed as a crude attempt to smear the men. <img src="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/08/09/abu_ghraib/story.jpg"> He described the allegations against him as 'spurious' and said he would address them in his own time. 'For now, however, it is imperative that I remain in seclusion with my family and begin to readjust to my new reality: one without cages or constraints.' 'I am acutely aware of the spurious allegations [made] against me by the US authorities - and its surrogate agencies - through "leaked sources" and intend to address all that is relevant.' Begg is known to be finding the adjustment to life outside captivity extremely difficult and said: 'I envisage that the ongoing struggle to achieve some semblance [of] normality shall be a difficult one. Yet I have much to be grateful for, particularly the multitude of people to whom I can offer only my deepest gratitude.' As the Home Office backed the release of the US papers, saying this was consistent with the 'principles of freedom of information', Gareth Peirce, the solicitor representing Begg, said the documents lacked all credibility. 'It is simply too late for anyone to be expected to take this material seriously,' she said. 'Too much is known of the torture inflicted on the detainees, and about these bogus tribunals at which they had no legal representation. We were all raped repeatedly, totally humiliated by both female and male troops. And too much is known about how damaged the detainees were by their experiences at the point these allegations were made. No credibility can be attached to anything that comes out of Guantánamo via the Pentagon.' The papers claim Begg learnt to use weapons in terrorist camps and was 'engaged in hostilities against the United States and its coalition partners'. But the US authorities are still refusing to release classified interviews in which he detailed the torture he claims he underwent at the hands of interrogators. Azmat Begg said: 'The Americans held hundreds of interviews and never used the information in court.' He was not surprised the US had tried to smear his son. 'The Americans are a global superpower. They can do exactly what they like.' Claims that one detainee, Richard Belmar, 25, also trained at terror camps in Afghanistan were passed last week to the Sun, which asked readers to help identify the safe houses where the men are being protected. Belmar's sister, Janette, told The Observer she felt as if he was being pursued by bounty hunters. 'It's disgusting. They shouldn't be allowed to do this. My brother can't talk about anything now. These are false confessions after they were beaten up,' she said. The files on Belmar appear to show that he did indeed travel to Afghanistan and stay in a jihadi training camp. But they also reveal that he was pressured by US officials at Bagram to say he had sworn an oath to Osama bin Laden and met him when he had done neither. Belmar told a military tribunal hearing his case that, far from being a jihadi fighter, he had refused a chance to fight in Afghanistan against the North Alliance. Despite this the tribunal - whose rules did not allow him to call any defence witnesses or see the evidence against him - found him guilty of being an 'enemy combatant' and a member of al-Qaeda. Tribunal rules also do not allow Belmar to see any evidence used against him. A Home Office spokesman said that they backed the US actions. 'It is up to the Americans to release whatever documents they see fit.' ]]>

<![CDATA[War makes its own excuses. You name it...if there's a war on, it can be blamed for it. That's why the elites want war...they want something that ordinary people do not...resources, money, genocide...once the war has started, it becomes the excuse for everything that happens during the war. Did your kid go over there and rape/kill/get killed? What did you expect? It's a war. <img src="http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/graphics/christiantaliban.jpe"> Until the individual refuses to participate, there will always be war. Until children are raised to insist that one's own death is preferable to one's killing of another, there will always be war. As long as old men feed nationalistic bullshit to young men, and train them in the ways of killing, there will be bloody conflict. What's the use of having a military-industrial complex if you're not going to use it? This is all just part of the plan. This shit happens during war. Some of it will be exposed, and the elites will fain disgust while covering their own massive guilt-pimpled asses. What can be done about it? Don't join, and don't let your kids join. That is really all the individual can do. Dying for your country is one thing, but dying for a bunch of greedy rich fucks is something else entirely. Children must be taught that their government is not their country. It's tasteless, or "pornographic", to show the results of war on the television broadcast? Well, that's what they say, be we all know that if we Americans had to actually see what we do, there would be no war waged in our name. This is supposedly the "big lesson" from Vietnam. The idea that some would classify it as "pornography" shows where these folks are coming from. It turns them on. We are a very sick nation. "It is the duty of the patriot to defend his country from its government." - Thomas Paine ]]>

<![CDATA[Dark Waters : The shadow of Josef Mengele By Chris Floyd 07/08/08 - Last Friday, the former physician of ex-President George H.W. Bush wrote a guest column for The Washington Post. Two days later, the attorney general appointed by current President George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad. These seemingly unrelated events are not only inextricably linked; together they form a portrait of a nation gone wretchedly astray, hurtling into a moral void from which there may be no return. There was nothing unusual about the physician, Dr. Burton Lee III, doing a piece for the Post, of course; the paper is the house organ of the U.S. political elite, and a whole troop of loyal Bush Family retainers make regular appearances in its editorial pages, lauding the son who has now ascended the throne. What is remarkable is that Lee came not to praise the younger Bush, but to bury him -- with hard truths about the torture regime he has installed in his "terror war" gulag.