Bombing Iran: Lessons Unlearned
Batten down the hatches, folks. It’s about to get even crazier up in here…
This from The Raw Story:
Fox News asked former CIA field officer Bob Baer on Tuesday whether the US is “gearing up for a military strike on Iran.” Baer has written a column for Time indicating that Washington officials expect an attack within the next six months.”I’ve taken an informal poll inside the government,” Baer told Fox. “The feeling is we will hit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” His Time column also suggested that “as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
The war drums have been beating for an attack on Iran for years now. It probably would have happened a lot sooner if the nation’s misadventure in Iraq had worked more in the NeoCon’s favor. Even if Baer’s six month time line is ambitious, odds are Bush will make the strike well before the November 2008 elections. Continue reading
The Punk Democrats Will Not Save Us
We’ve been had. Hoodwinked. Pimped and Played.
Eight months have come and gone since We, the people of the United States, elected a Democratic majority to both houses of the U.S. Congress. Our hope was that they would end the occupation of Iraq, bring our troops home, deliver the Bush/Cheney/NeoCon cartel to justice and reverse the dangerous tailspin that we have endured since the first non-election of George W. Bush.
What have the Democrats given us in return?
- Continued funding for the imperial mission in Iraq, despite a clear mandate from the American people to end this thing.
- An overdue and largely superficial increase to the federal minimum wage that means even less as the weak U.S. dollar struggles on global currency markets. (We know this wage increase isn’t enough because there are already rumors that another hike is in the works.)
- A newly passed, bi-partisan, domestic surveillance law that grants the government more latitude when spying on the legal actions of U.S. citizens.
- The Bush Administration’s extended middle finger in the face of Congressional subpoenas over the U.S. attorney scandal.
So what gives? Why are the Democrats still the punks they were before they held power in Congress? Continue reading
Novak: Bush Admin Considering Secret Military Action in Turkey
So is Bush for the Kurds or against them?
A former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney is briefing lawmakers on Pentagon plans for secret military intervention in Turkey, Robert Novak reported Monday.The Bush administration is considering covert military activity by U.S. Special Forces to help Turkish troops quash Kurdish guerilla fighters, who are believed to be using northern Iraq as safe-haven, according to the syndicated columnist.
Undersecretary of Defense Eric S. Edelman, a former Cheney aide, briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week on the plans. The plans call for secret U.S. involvement to assist Turkish action against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
US support for Iraqi Kurdistan has riled the Turks for years now. The Turks have been threatening to stage cross-border raids into Iraq to fight the PKK.
Members of Congress were stunned after Edelman briefed them on plans calling for U.S. Special Forces to help Turkey eliminate PKK leaders they have targeted for years, Novak reports. Edelman told the lawmakers that he was “sure of success,” according to Novak, and assured them the U.S. role would be concealed and denied.
“Even if all this is true,” Novak writes, “some of the briefed lawmakers left wondering whether this was a wise policy for handling the beleaguered Kurds, who had been betrayed so often by the U.S. government in years past.”
Is the Bush admin selling the Kurds out in return for Turkey honoring Iraq’s “sovereign border”? Will this pacify Turkey?
I’m not even going to talk about Robert Novak… That dude springs more leaks than a colander.
MSNBC: Dems to Impeach Gonzales?
From NBC’s Mike Viqueira
A group of House Democrats will introduce a resolution calling on the Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will sponsor the measure. It will be dropped in the hopper tomorrow [July 31].
Based on the text of the resolution posted on the MSNBC site, this is a ‘Gee. Do you think we should really impeach this guy?’ resolution, not articles of impeachment.
The Democrats are punks! Damn! Impeach somebody!!!
MSNBC: Impeach Gonzales?
Chronicles of a Dropout
Originally published in The Michigan Citizen
In the controversy over varying interpretations of Detroit Public School graduation rates, or the district’s well-documented financial problems, adults tend to ignore the opinions of the very students who struggle through these difficulties in their effort to obtain a decent education. On the audio cd Rising Up From The Ashes: Chronicles of a Dropout, young people use hip hop and recorded interviews to speak their minds, tell their own stories, and tell the stories of friends and family members who have dropped out of school.
Detroit Summer’s Live Arts Media Project (LAMP) is a youth-led popular education arts and media program that helps young people develop creative solutions to the problems they face. LAMP’s youth participants and an all-star cast of Detroit’s best hip hop artists and producers use the disc’s 23 tracks to take us on a journey through the world of Detroit’s youth and their challenges. Continue reading
FBI Proposes More Domestic Spying
Originally posted by Nadir at LastChocolateCity.com
As if the NSA and CIA spying on Americans weren’t enough…
Justin Rood of ABC News reports that the FBI plans to “recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities.â€Â
Many US cities now have cameras that watch our every move. Between RIF chips that can be planted in our clothes to our cell phones spying on us, to our neighbors ratting us out as part of the TIPS Domestic Spy Program, which supposedly didn’t go into effect (yeah, right)…
Can y’all just stay out of my business???
ABCNews.com – The Blotter:
FBI Proposes Building Network of U.S. Informants
Detroit Rebellion 1967: Forty years later
Originally published in The Michigan Citizen
For the last 40 years, the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and the United States as a whole have struggled to come to grips with the week of anger and violence that ravaged the city on those hot summer days and nights in July 1967. Was it riot or rebellion? Why did it happen? Who is to blame? What has changed and what hasn’t?
These questions and many others have been asked and answered for decades now, but somehow the questions remain. The answers begat more questions. The frustration and fury of that time linger for many, mostly lying dormant, but rearing their ugly heads from time to time. Continue reading
Just Three More: Conyers Ready to Impeach?
On Monday, July 23, activists in Detroit and Washington DC plan protests and demonstrations at Congressman John Conyers’ district and Capitol Hill offices, and citizens all over the country will converge on the district offices of other Congress members. Their demands? Impeach Bush and Cheney now.
But on the eve of this highly publicized action, David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org reports that Conyers may be ready to impeach against the wishes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Or so he says… Continue reading
Time to Get Angry, America
From www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com
“You have somebody like George Tenet acknowledging in his book that he knew that the administration was deceiving the American people into a situation that is murdering young men and women from this country, then George Tenet and Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and George Bush should be in f***ing jail.”
— Sean Penn
The video above illustrates how the U.S. government lied to its citizens. It also shows us what angry Americans do to respond to the government that should be protecting the American people not sending their young men and women to fight and die for their personal enrichment.
Haven’t you had enough?
ImpeachCheney.org