letsmovetocanada

Now we've got a game going. We're going to slaughter those s.o.b's.

Except for my not being an atheist, I pretty much agree with everything else he has to say here. I hope this isn't offensive to anybody. If so, I sincerely apologize.
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July 2, 2004

Put Out No Flags

On this July 4, I declare my independence.

From patriotism.

It's not that I'm unpatriotic.

I'm anti-patriotic.

I don't believe in patriotism.

To be more precise, I know that this sentiment exists but I don't believe it's a worthy one.

Most of us were born into this country. Should patriotism swell our breast simply because of a happenstance of birth?

As the late Milton Mayer, the old roving editor of The Progressive, used to say, "It's a great country. They're all great countries."

Nor do I believe that the United States is the greatest country on the face of the Earth. We do have some great things in this country--chief among them, the Bill of Rights--but we also have more than our share of problems, including poverty, racism, and inequality, which are much worse here than in many European countries.

Nor do I believe, as President Bush does, that the United States is entrusted by God to deliver the gift of freedom to people all over the world.

I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God at all. And I suspect that invoking the supposed deity is often a way to stack the deck and put an end to rational discourse.

But the main reason I'm anti-patriotic is because this sentiment too easily morphs into its malignant twin, nationalism, and nationalism has stacked the corpses high all over the world in the past 500 years.

Robert Jensen, in his fine new book "Citizens of the Empire," makes many of these same arguments. "There is no way to rescue patriotism or distinguish it from nationalism," he writes. And he quotes Emma Goldman aptly: "Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others."

This superiority complex is particularly virulent in the United States. And it has led one President after another--from William McKinley in the Philippines to Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam to George W. Bush in Iraq--to wage brutal war.

Patriotism is an illegitimate concept, one that is too toxic to toy with.

And so I renounce it.

-- Matthew Rothschild
www.progressive.org/webex...70304.html

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I'm sorry I haven't written for a while but this really pissed me off.

So House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) makes a statement:

"The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader," Pelosi said. "These policies are not working. But speaking specifically to Iraq, we have a situation where -- without adequate evidence -- we put our young people in harm's way."

Asked specifically if she was calling Bush incompetent, Pelosi replied:

"I believe that the president's leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers."

(MORE)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1207458,00.html
British troops in torture scandal

Mistreatment of PoWs deepens controversy in Iraq

Julian Borger in Washington, Luke Harding in Baghdad, Sarah Hall and Conal Urqhuart in Jerusalem
Saturday May 1, 2004
The Guardian

The controversy over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners deepened last night when photographs were released apparently showing the torture of a PoW by a British soldier.
The Ministry of Defence launched an immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the photographs, in which a prisoner appears to be battered with rifle butts, threatened with execution and urinated on by his captors.

The MoD investigation came as it was announced that the US military had launched an overarching investigation into interrogation procedures and the role of private contractors in military prisons across Iraq after revelations of torture and sexual abuse at an army-run jail near Baghdad.

Dear Bernie Sanders,

I was just reading your "Buzz," and have a couple concerns about your position on gasoline prices.

You say that "Americans are paying far too much money for gas," but Americans pay much much less for gasoline then most of the rest of the world. We don't pay anywhere near the true cost for gasoline, which should include the cost of subsidies to oil companies, cleanups of oil spills, and the environmental destruction caused by the burning of oil, not to mention the devastating wars our country has fought to maintain access to foreign oil fields.

Why do you want OPEC to produce more gasoline? So that we'll burn it faster and expedite global warming? This makes no sense to me.

Guy #1: Dude, young people are dying in Iraq every day.

Guy #2: No way bro, George W. says that we are winning the war on terror!

Guy #1:Oh yeah, peep some of these photos:

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Today, the Bush-Cheney campaign took a decidedly different turn in its quest to get voters to see eye-to-eye with the evil neo-conservative agenda of pain.
This is a completely different campaign effort for the Bush camp, who recently tried to explain this picture to the news media.

However, they have still yet to explain this one.

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Well, its official. This company is corrupt. No bones about it. In their latest move, Halliburton has finally gone overboard. I fail to see how the clear connection between Cheney and Halliburton can be downplayed this time. I mean, come on, look at the guy! Nobody ever gets away with that lie!

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638 and counting. This is our Vietnam, plain and simple.

[MORE]

story.news.yahoo.com/news...rkeisahero

WHY RICHARD CLARKE IS A HERO
Sat Apr 3, 8:01 PM ET by Richard Reeves

Richard Clarke seems an odd duck, or perhaps I mean that you probably would not want to go on a duck-hunting trip with him. He comes across, in both appearance and in interviews, as arrogant, tough to get along with, a loner who spent hours one early morning working out the precise wording of his public apology to the families of Sept. 11 victims. He is also smart as hell and is telling very unpleasant truth in a critical whirl of many truths -- and many lies.

He is a national hero -- odd in that, too. There is no real American tradition of resignation in protest or whistle-blowing. In Great Britain, after all, which does have such an honorable tradition, two members of Prime Minister Tony Blair 's Cabinet, Robin Cook and Clare Short, resigned to protest that government's role in the Iraq war. Americans prefer team play, loyalty, patriotism as an end in itself. My country, right or wrong.

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These guys are part of the "Coalition of the Willing"

I'm really glad Fiji is hookin' us up in Iraq. If only Samoa would donate some troops with the readiness that these guys show, then I'd be all for the war. Holla atcha boy George W. The guy on the right looks really tough.

This is a really cool "google hack":
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/

This is a really cool "google hack":
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/