Jean Charles de Menezes, Killed by a Piss

". . . a leaked investigation report revealed they had identified Mr. de Menezes as a would-be bomber without looking at his face because their intelligence officer was busy urinating. . ."

Way to Go Keith

I guess the painkillers wipe out your memory along with your ethics. Rush Limbaugh, today's worst person in the world!

Keith Olbermann

Way to Go Arianna

"So Cindy might have used the "f-word" when talking about the administration that sent her son to die in Iraq. Big fucking deal."
Arianna Huffington

Even Cindy Sheehan Can't Help the Dems

It really is amazing. Cindy Sheehan has galvanized dissatisfaction with Bush, but Hillary Clinton won't take advantage and mention her name. Bush's poll numbers are tanking because of Iraq but Dem leaders (Clinton, Biden, Kerry, Reid, et al) are too chicken and too stupid to act like an opposition. They also never lose their desire to be a part of the permanent government.

I'm truly sick and tired of being told that we must follow them or lose. The choice is a phony one. We are already losing and we are losing because of them. Ari Berman explains how the insanity of the Democratic establishment stays firmly in place.

de Menezes Murder

"Leaked documents, believed to be from the IPCC inquiry suggest Mr de Menezes was sitting calmly in the Tube carriage, surrounded by surveillance officers, moments before police stormed in and fired eight bullets into him.

According to the documents, an officer grabbed Mr de Menezes, pinned his arms down, and pushed him back on a seat before he was shot."

Scotland Yard tried to squelch an investigation into the shooting of de Menezes the very day that they killed him. Thank God for whomever leaked these documents. We are now getting the real story from London. Read about it here.

Cindy Sheehan Gets Smeared

"He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."
Cindy Sheehan

Even a blue eyed white woman can't get a fair hearing if she criticizes Israel. Oh well. Cindy is dog meat now. Supporters of Israel have publicly stated that Iraq should be occupied for Israel's benefit, but if the rest of us quote them we are villified. So long Cindy.

De Menezes Killed in Cold Blood

He wasn't wearing a heavy jacket. He used his card to get into the station. He didn't vault the barrier. And now police say there are no CCTV pictures to reveal the truth.
The Guardian

As I predicted a few weeks back, everything we were told about the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes was a lie. If he had been wearing a bulky jacket, they would have showed it to us. If he had jumped the turnstile, they would have the video and we would have seen it a million times.

So much for the argument that racial profiling is a good thing. Then again, the ones who advocate it are never the ones who are profiled.

War Mongering Media

The German people knew that the German government managed the news. They could take it or leave it. But the U.S. corporate media is pervasive, it is everywhere, with hundreds of channels of propaganda, virtually all of them repeating the same government lies, while claiming to be independent of the government. The corporate media are engaged in a monstrous scam. They are the megaphones of war, just as guilty as the warmongers in Washington. If there are ever war crimes trials in the future, the corporate media should also be under the harshest indictment.
Black Commentator, Radio BC


I hadn't intended to post until my mini-vacation ended on Tuesday, but Glen Ford, my friend and mentor at Black Commentator, has provided us with a searing and brilliant radio commentary that must be made known to as many people as possible.

That’s a standard tactic of the U.S. news media, which is really not about news, at all. Just smiling faces with quips and jokes, making fun of the rest of the world on television, and snide, self-satisfied state propagandists holding down newspaper jobs, sneering at anyone who is not hooked up in the power grid.

If the role of journalists is to make power accountable, then there is virtually no journalism going on in the United States. That is, no journalism that reaches the masses of the people. Americans are left deaf, blind and dumb to the world around them. This would be sad, if it only affected the population of the United States. But the U.S. is the sole remaining super-power, and the disappearance of journalism means that the criminals in power in Washington can convince the public that up is down, day is night, and hot is cold.

Television and the newspapers will not challenge them, and as a consequence, the Bush men are free to wage war against whoever they choose, under any pretense they can conjure up. They can lie at will. Citizens who point out the lies are ignored, or made to look insane, or worse.

Read or listen to Glen's commentary and then pass it on to as many people as possible.

Another 9/11?

As I embark on a long weekend trip, I leave you with these sobering words.

A whopping 84 % of respondents approved the President’s job handling immediately post 9/11/2001, with only 11 % disapproving. If the President’s job handling approval ratings have to go back up to that level, a similar event must take place.
Anwar Hussain

Hopefully nothing will happen before I return to New York on Tuesday.

Fascism Watch

I mean, isn't there something nightmarish about our misleader swooping down on a steaming pit of testosterone and sweat and whipping a throng of brown-shirted youths into a nationalistic frenzy?
Rick Mercier

The Boy Scouts certainly need to change the color of their uniforms.

Bush Has "No Conscience"

And so president Bush came marching in, to make a long story short, came marching in to the room, got right in my face, eyeball-to-eyeball, nose-to-nose this close, toe-to-toe and he said, "I'm George Bush, President of the United States, and I understand you have something to say to me privately.' And I said, 'Yes, I do respect the office of the presidency of the United States, but I want to tell you how it feels to lose your only child in a cause that you don't believe in, in an unnecessary war.
Dolores Kesterson, Gold Star Mother

Here we have another story of a grieving mother who lost a child in Iraq who was later creeped out after meeting the president. He is a frightening, terrifying, megalomaniac and we will all pay dearly before the constitution forces him to go back to Texas in January 2009.

Now we know that he can't even pretend to have any empathy for the mothers of soldiers he sent to die. Mrs. Kesterson also had this to say.

But my personal feeling is that he really doesn't have a conscience about all this death and destruction. That was the essence I took away after looking him in the eyes and meeting with him—there's just no conscience there.

White Guy with Bomb

After the London bombings we were told that racial profiling is not only OK, but it is necessary. No point in screening white grandmas when we know that bombers are all brown skinned Muslim men.

Well, not so fast. A very white man was caught trying to bring a bomb on board a plane in Oklahoma City. The FBI says that Charles Alfred Dreyling, Jr. has no known connection to any terrorist organization. That remains to be seen. Lest we forget, there are white supremacy terror groups operating openly in the U.S. and they have bombs.

How can we forget Timothy McVeigh? What about William Krar? Never heard of Krar? Thanks to the corporate media, the story of Krar's possession of over 100 cyanide bombs has been largely unreported.

So let's keep screening everyone. A lot of red blooded white Americans are walking around with bombs.

Fascism Has Arrived

A few months ago I wrote a Black Commentator column entitled, "Fascism: Are We There Yet?" Well, it seems there is no longer a need for rhetorical questions. The answer is a definite yes. The U.S. military has devised plans, CONPLAN 2002 and CONPLAN 0500, (sound like movie titles), that will allow them to take control in the event of terror attacks.

If this news doesn't give you the creeps then you aren't thinking clearly. Check out this less than comforting piece of information.

But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.

I for one don't trust Donald Rumsfeld to call out the troops to "help" me. This week we were told that the 9/11 Commission hasn't received any of the documents it requested from the White House and that some of the hijackers were known to military intelligence but were allowed to roam freely.

What a neat trick. You allow a terror attack to take place and then use it to justify invading other countries and putting the American people under military control.

Fascism is here.

The Times Gets the Goods on Judith Miller

"I gather that Doug Jehl, who is a dogged and respected reporter, has been assigned to do an in-house investigative report for the Times and that he is already cutting pretty close to the bone. Several editors he has spoken to are now asking themselves why there wasn't more questioning of whether Miller's silence reflects a fear of incriminating herself rather than betraying a source. I predict this will start to unravel in the next couple of weeks -- if only because the Times is afraid of getting scooped again by outside rivals."

Hmm. You can tell the truth for the sake of telling the truth or you can tell the truth because you don't want someone else to tell it first. I suppose we should take our victories wherever we can get them.

It will all come out. In all probability Judith Miller is not in jail to protect a source. She is in jail to protect herself from incrimination. Arrianna Huffington keeps getting the goods on Miller and on the Times too.

Robin Cook's Resignation Speech

We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.

Well, if that isn't good old fashioned common sense I don't know what is. Those were some of the late Robin Cook's words as he resigned from Tony Blair's government in 2003.

Robin Cook: A Man of Principle

Robin Cook served as Britain's Foreign Minister until his boss, Tony Blair, formed an unholy alliance with George W. Bush and occupied Iraq. Cook resigned his position in protest. He died suddenly on Saturday but his courage should not be forgotten.

60th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Many Japanese historians have long judged the Soviet declaration of war to have been the straw that broke the camels back - mainly because the Japanese military feared the Red Army more than the loss of another city by aerial bombardment.

For the past 60 years Americans have been told that vaporizing men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the only way to end the war with Japan. What a convenient justification for a war crime.

Well, maybe the Soviets should get credit for ending the war. The endless discussions of whether or not the bomb had to be dropped might be useless after all. Common Dreams has a great article on the subject.

Judith Miller

And no fewer than four sources have either e-mailed, called, or, in one case, run up to me on the street to tell me that what I termed Miller's "especially close relationship" with Chief Warrant Officer Richard Gonzales, the leader of the WMD-hunting unit Miller was embedded with during the war, might have been, well, very close indeed.
Arianna Huffington

We already know that Judith Miller is a corrupt journalist who used compromised sources to help the administration in its campaign of lies that led to the deaths of thousands. She may also have been the source who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. Now it turns out that she may have taken the term "embedded" rather literally. Was she making a little whoopie with the troops in Iraq? Thanks to Arianna Huffington for the heads up.

CNN Suspends Robert Novak

CNN should have suspended Robert Novak long ago. He did out a CIA agent after all. At any rate it took a childish melt down on the air to get CNN to do its job. Novak had a hissy fit and walked off the set during a segment of Inside Politics. Crooks and Liars gives you a peek.

Bolton Booed

Another embarassment for America. Our new UN Ambassador, John Bolton, was booed as he walked in the door. Why was he booed? Perhaps because he made statements like these.

"There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occassionally can be led by the only real power left in the work, and that is the United States, when it suits our interest, and when we can get others to go along."

"The secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

"The United States makes the United Nations work when it wants it to work, and that is exactly the way it should be because the only question for the United States is what is in our national interest."

See the video here.