previous issue
September 26

Senate Passes Amendment Authorizing WAR AGAINST IRAN!


expand/collapse Stealth War Authorization
by Dave Lindorff
Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Sen. Jon Kyle (R-AZ) want the US to attack Iran, but because they know most Americans know that is a crazy idea at a time that the US is already bogged down in a losing war in Iraq, they want to authorize this disastrous expansion of the conflict secretly.

That’s why, instead of introducing passing a war authorizing bill in the Senate, they have introduced a war-authorizing amendment, attached to the latest Defense Authorization Bill currently working its way through Congress.


expand/collapse A Coup Has Occurred
by Daniel Ellsberg
After the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps.


expand/collapse America’s Police Brutality Pandemic
by Paul Craig Roberts
Bush’s "war on terror" quickly became Bush’s war on Iraqi civilians. So far over one million Iraqi civilians have lost their lives because of Bush’s invasion, and four million have been displaced. Iraq’s infrastructure is in ruins. Disease is rampart. Normal life has disappeared.

Self-righteous Americans justify these monstrous crimes as necessary to ensure their own safety from terrorist attack. Yet, Americans are in far greater danger from their own police forces than they are from foreign terrorists. Ironically, Bush’s "war on terror" has made Americans less safe at home by diminishing US civil liberty and turning an epidemic of US police brutality into a pandemic.

The only terrorist most Americans will ever encounter is a policeman with a badge, nightstick, mace and Taser.


expand/collapse A Culture of Violence
by Stephen Lendman
What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that's been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. It has the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for owning guns, yet the two seem oddly unconnected. Violent films are some of its most popular, and similar video games crowd out the simpler, more innocent street play of generations earlier.


expand/collapse Video: In Guns We Trust
by Jon Stewart
Stewart recaps the GOP candidates’ race to worship at the altar of guns, including Giuliani’s 9/11 Tourette’s Syndrome.


expand/collapse Order 17
by Tom Engelhardt
In December 2004, less than six months had passed since Bremer, in his role as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in occupied Baghdad, had turned over "sovereignty" to a designated group of Iraqis and, essentially, fled that already chaotic country. Just before he left, however, he established a unique kind of freedom in Iraq, not seen since the heyday of European and Japanese colonialism. By putting his signature on a single document, he managed to officially establish an "International Zone" that would be the fortified equivalent of the old European treaty ports on the China coast and, at the same time, essentially granted to all occupying forces and allied companies what, in those bad old colonial days, used to be called "extraterritoriality" -- the freedom not to be in any way under Iraqi law or jurisdiction, ever.


expand/collapse Satire: New CBS Reality Show Sends Kids to Gitmo
by Andy Borowitz
Fresh on the heels of their reality show Kid Nation, in which children are sent to perform hard labor on a ranch with no adult supervision, CBS announced today that it was readying a new reality show in which children are sent to the federal detention camp at Guantanamo.

The new program, called Kid Detention, is expected to be ready for broadcast in time for November sweeps, with the following promotional slogan: "One detention camp. Forty kids. No lawyers."

CBS said that filming would begin as soon as 40 children are "randomly rounded up."


expand/collapse 'Fruit Bat' at Bat
by Maureen Dowd
After the Bay of Pigs, JFK and his advisers worried that American foreign policy would no longer seem intelligent. W. doesn’t even try for an intelligent foreign policy. He wallows in a willfully ignorant foreign policy. And this week, his irrational ways were contagious.

The Daily News headline, “The Evil Has Landed,” was one of the milder imprecations. Consider this reasoned analysis from Greg Gutfeld of Fox News: “So the foul-smelling fruitbat Ahmadinejad spoke at that crack house known as Columbia University today.”


expand/collapse White Supremacist Backlash Builds Over Jena Case
by Howard Witt
No sooner did tens of thousands of African-American demonstrators depart the racially tense town of Jena, La., last week after protesting perceived injustices than white supremacists flooded in behind them.

First a neo-Nazi Web site posted the names, addresses and phone numbers of some of the six black teenagers and their families at the center of the Jena 6 case and urged followers to find them and "drag them out of the house," prompting an investigation by the FBI.

Today's Quote:

"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale form of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
- Mark Twain
Editor's Notes & Rants:

Déjà vu: Senate passes Lieberman/Kyl amendment, AUTHORIZING WAR AGAINST IRAN! Now aren't you glad you voted for the Democrats, so shit like this couldn't happen? </snark> Hillary voted for it, Biden against it, and Obama didn't think it important enough to even show up and vote.

Killing two birds with one bullet. Senate also considering amendment to draft immigrants to die in Iraq/Iran.

Senate passes Kerry-Biden plan to legalize ethnic cleansing in Iraq.

Just like Stalinist USSR. US citizens may soon need gov't permission just to travel within the USA.

You think the Dept. of Homeland Security can protect America? Ha! They can't even protect their own computers from hackers. [AP] [Reuters]

Vatican euthanized Pope? Holy Hypocrisy, Godman! [CBS]

Pentagon says Blackwater is the problem in Iraq, and demands State Dept. reign them in. [UPI]

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice ordered Blackwater to cover up their war crimes, and not cooperate with Congress. [pdf] [AP] [Reuters] Which makes her guilty of conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity.