Hartsongs

The Department of Homeland Security hard at work, protecting you from the perils of the dreaded Magic Cube.

People have been fired for touting Kerry bumper stickers on their cars and escorted from rallies for wearing shirts or buttons that are deemed 'controversial'. Now it's 'guilt by association'. Simi Nischal had been dropped off by a co-worker so she could pick up tickets for a rally in Lower Makefield, but was rudely evicted when organizers noticed the Kerry bumper sticker on the car when the co-worker returned.

Two elderly women were holding a leisurely conversation in the parking lot. As I approached my car they realized they were blocking my way and moved over with an apology, ending their little chat with one asking the other, “Did you leave anything for me?”

“Oh, Yes,” the other replied. “They’ve got all kinds of stuff in there.”

“Well, I didn’t,” I quipped. “Funny how that works; go in for two things and come out with twenty.” Both of them laughed and then turned serious as they commented on how expensive groceries are these days. They went their separate ways. As I unloaded my cart, the woman entering the store said, “You know, she’s my neighbor, but she never comes to see me. She’ll talk to me here. We’ll talk on the phone, but she never comes over to visit. I haven’t been feeling well the last few days, but she didn’t even know it until I told her just now. I got my flu shot and there wasn’t even a line.” She paused for a moment. “Did you get yours?”

“No,” I replied, “and I won’t.” She looks at me, quizzically, asking “Why not?”
“Everyone I know who’s had one has gotten sick after they get it,” I replied, deciding not to mention that I’ve recently been reading about the link between flu shots and Alzheimer’s.

“Oh,” she says, “that’s too bad. (Does she begin to wonder if that’s why she’s been ill?) “We went to Safeway and there was no wait at all. Over at Ralph’s people were lined up around the block.”

“Wow! That’s quite a line.” I say. “I was just reading this morning that Bush was warned about this situation three years ago and decided not to do anything about it.”

She stopped walking toward the store. “You mean he knew about this all along?”

“Yes,” I reply, “if what I read is true.”

“Oh, I hope he doesn’t get in again,” she shuddered. “I don’t like him. He’s lying and conniving….and that little smirk—I can't stand that! He’s an old stink!”

With that, she turned and trundled on in to the grocery store.

These words are from Khalid. He and his family have set up an account to provide medical supplies to hospitals in Iraq. They are horribly understaffed and lack proper equipment. Please help in any way you can.

I was so angry. I took pictures for everything. Yesterday we sent someone to Falluja, to see how the situation is there. He is from Falluja originally, and he goes there often, but this Time when he went he came back depressed, although he is in his twenties or early thirties, he had a drop in blood pressure and went to the hospital. he said that he never saw the city like that, "its a ghosts city" he said, families, women and children left the city and they are hiding in the open fields because they are too afraid to get back to their houses...there isn't a single shop opened, men are preparing their weapons and ammo to defend their city, everyone in Falluja says the same thing: we invite the goverment, anyone, to come make a full search to see if this Zarqawi exists.

The city is surrounded from all sides, and its being bombed from all sides, beside the air crafts. 13 mosques have been set to the ground in Falluja and Ramadi, the most famous restaurant in Falluja, Hajji Hussein, who makes the best Kabab in the country, was set to the ground too, people make jokes and say that Azzarqawi must have been having lunch there, some laugh for that, but I cry.

It’s one of the ugliest mass murder cases that happened, in Falluja, and will happen again soon, and you will read about it, and the whole world will read about it, and no one will do anything about it, cause you all believe that Big foot, Santa or Azzarqawi is hiding somewhere isn’t hat small city, and you all are ready to sacrifice the lives of women and children, of a whole city, to see if that is right or not.

There will be one day when the American administration will understand that violence only makes more violence, and that people will never stay in their house waiting to be killed, they prefer to die fighting, they are gonna die anyway right?

My friend who I sent to Falluja went to the hospital of Falluja, and found a unspeakable situation, the hospital is run by volunteers, they lack medicine and instruments, dead bodies are crowded to the point they don't know what to do with it, injured people numbers are way over the hospital capacity, and the few ambulance cars they had, most of them were attacked by the occupation forces and destroyed, my friend told me that in the hospital they have to clean the ground every now and then to allow people to walk through the blood.

The following are medical equipments urgently needed, this list is from a doctor in the hospital, they used to have some of these equipment and machines but they were in the ambulance cars, and were destroyed with them.

I urge everyone of you to make all you can to provide us with any medical equipments, and specially these in the list, I cant read them all, I cant understand them all, but I will write what I understand till I ask a doctor to read the rest for me:

They need:

1. 4 D.C shock machines
2. 4 cautery machines
3. as much as possible of : tracheotomy tubes
4. air way tubes
5. endotracheal tubes

I will check with a doctor as soon as possible, and correct the mistakes, and add the items I couldn't read, you know how doctors write inscriptions, no one can read them.

please...Help.

Khalid

“The Jarrars” (i.e. me and my family), decided to start a small individual humanitarian campaign for a month (maybe we’ll extend it) for buying basic things like some medical stuff, food, blankets, and other necessities and send them directly to hospitals in the most affected cities and towns. We will try our best to work under the supervision of one of the few functioning NGOs in Iraq (e.g. Occupation Watch, or others) to give more transparency to this small campaign, but over all the working plan is as follows:

• *Money will be donated through PAYPAL to my account, (Jarrar_raed@hotmail.com), and will be reported on my blog frequently.
• *My brother Majid will collect the money from Victoria in Canada and wire it to me in Jordan through my bank account.
• *I will buy everything from Jordan, and publish the receipts on my blog.
• *Then I will send things to my family in Baghdad, where they will send it in turn to hospitals depending on the priority and accessibility of the towns and cities.
• *We will get official papers from the hospitals to insure they received the certain amount of supplements; we will publish them on our blogs too.
• *We’ll publish a financial break down at the end of the month (end of Nov.)

You can send money from your credit cards too; even small amounts of money can do much in Iraq. (Raed)

Polls commissioned by newspapers in 10 countries show that most citizens in U.S. allies prefer John Kerry to George Bush, the Guardian has reported.

Voters in eight U.S. allies -- Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, Spain and South Korea -- all said by wide margins that they would prefer to see the Massachusetts senator beat the incumbent U.S. president in the election on November 2.

But the fuel was delivered anyway, by another unit...keep that in mind the next time you hear a report about helicopters crashing in Iraq. Nineteen brave soldiers tried to prevent it, and are being demoted for doing so.

Rogers's rank had been reduced from sergeant to specialist...he and another soldier, Sergeant Larry McCook of Jackson, Miss., were being transferred to the Alabama-based 2101 Transportation Company.

McCook's wife, Patricia McCook, said her husband called Friday and said the soldiers had been released after being detained.

She told The Clarion Ledger of Jackson that her husband said five members were reassigned because "they said these five really instigated the entire process."

These guys deserve the Backbone Award

Guess who provided the contaminated fuel...

Give me a break! Operation Days of Penitence?!?
No regret for wrongdoing on Israel's part. The government massacres women and children, then says they were 'terrorists'. There are Israeli's that object to the genocide of the Palestinian people; unfortunately, we hear more about the gleeful destruction of civilians by Ariel Sharon, with anyone daring to criticize being labelled anti-semitic.

The administration is condoning these actions by not speaking against them. "Sharon just has him (Bush) wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft told London's Financial Times. "I think the president is mesmerized."

We are told that the locals are not upset because we have a hostile, aggressive and angry Army occupying their nation. We are told that they are not upset at the police state we have created, or at the manner of picking their representatives for them. Rather we are told, they are upset because of a handful of terrorists, criminals and dead enders in their midst have made them upset, that and of course the ever convenient straw man of "left wing media bias."

Third, the guerillas are filling their losses faster than we can create them. This is almost always the case in guerilla warfare, especially when your tactics for battling the guerillas are aimed at killing guerillas instead of eroding their support. For every guerilla we kill with a "smart bomb" we kill many more innocent civilians and create rage and anger in the Iraqi community. This rage and anger translates into more recruits for the terrorists and less support for us.

We have fallen victim to the body count mentality all over again. We have shown a willingness to inflict civilian casualties as a necessity of war without realizing that these same casualties create waves of hatred against us. These angry Iraqi citizens translate not only into more recruits for the guerilla army but also into more support of the guerilla army.

via The Institute For Southern Studies

"I'm going to be real positive, while I keep my foot on John Kerry's throat,'' George W. Bush

The Great Presidential Debate You Didn't Watch

I'm sure the mother and single parent of three children working for $5.15/hour at Taco Bell was heartened by these words:

"Listen, the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it..."

Bush trying to explain why there hasn't been an increase in the minimum wage

Ah, that explains it!

US military planners are believed to want reinforcements in Baghdad so they can concentrate on the expected all-out assault on the rebel stronghold of Falluja, immediately after the American elections on November 2.

In the discussion of my dismissal, I asked General Halutz if he would allow the firing of missiles from an Apache helicopter on a car carrying wanted men, if it were traveling in the streets of Tel Aviv, in the knowledge that that action would hurt innocent civilians who happened to be passing at the time. In answer, the general gave me his list of relative values of people, as he sees it, from the Jewish person who is superior down to the blood of an Arab which is inferior. As simple as that.

Yonatan Shapira

You've taken supplements for years. You're out of vitamins C and E. You go to your natural food store, but you can't find the kind you want on the shelf. You ask a clerk to find them for you. She says you can't get your vitamin E as mixed tocopherols (the best natural form) anymore, and asks if you like your vitamin C in the 100- or 200-milligram size. The 1,000-milligram size, you say.

"Where have you been?" she asks. "Asleep since 2004? It's 2007 now! The types and sizes of vitamins you just asked for have been declared illegal by the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organization!"

"Wait!" you reply. "This is America! Our president says we're fighting for American freedom -- and you're telling me that the World Trade Organization can dictate what size vitamin C I can take, and forbid me from taking mixed tocopherols?" The sales clerk sighs, and reaches for a piece of paper. "It's a little complicated," she says. "A few years back, the European Commission passed the European Food Supplements Directive ... "

BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Tony Blair has secretly agreed to allow America to station interceptor missiles on British soil as part of its controversial "Son of Star Wars" missile defence programme, it has been reported.

The Independent on Sunday said that Downing Street had agreed "in principle" to a request from the Pentagon to site the missiles at the Fylingdales base in North Yorkshire...

"The concept of peacekeeping is one that is alien to our American friends."

Nicholas Soames

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

"President Bush takes the position that the troops are well-armed, but if this situation is true, it calls into question how honest he has been with the country."...

Sproul & Associates (operating under the name Voters Outreach of America), a firm hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters, told a Nevada TV station that their supervisors systematically tore up Democratic registrations.

are an unprecedented bipartisan coalition of 27 career chiefs of mission and retired four-star military leaders who have launched a nationwide campaign to press for the need for change in U.S. foreign and defense policy because they are deeply concerned by the damage the Bush Administration has caused to our national and international interests.

DMCC is dedicated to insuring an informed public during a critical election year. On the basis of foreign and defense policy experience spanning half a century, members desire, through their participation in public forums, to share their expertise and express their deep concern over the current state of this country's diplomatic and security challenges. Never in recent years, in the view of the group, have those challenges been as serious as they are today.

The Pet Goat
via Buzzflash ala AHNC

"Following inquiries by ABC News, the Pentagon has dropped plans to force a severely wounded U.S. soldier to repay his enlistment bonus after injuries had forced him out of the service."

If ABC hadn't intervened on his behalf would the Pentagon have dropped the collections process?

Many of the severely wounded soldiers returning from Iraq face the prospect of poverty and what they describe as official indifference and incompetence.

"Guys I've met, talking to people, they'd be better off financially for their families if they had died as opposed to coming back maimed," said Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly, who served as a civil affairs specialist for the Army while in Iraq.

On July 14, 2003, the Abilene, Texas, native had been on his way to a meeting about rebuilding schools in Iraq when his unarmored Humvee was blown up. A piece of shrapnel the size of a TV remote took his right leg off, below the knee, almost completely, Kelly said.

Kelly attests to receiving excellent medical care at Ward 57, the amputee section of Walter Reed, but said he quickly realized that the military had no real plan for the injured soldiers. Many had to borrow money or depend on charities just to have relatives visit at Walter Reed, Kelly said.

"It's not what I expected to see when I got here," he said. "These guys having to, you know, basically panhandle for money to afford things."

The only person that was actually answering questions was Kerry. Bush begged the question every time.

Kerry presented himself well. Bush appeared to be frothing at the mouth, but managed to stop himself from interrupting the moderator, although he did cut him off a couple of times. The look on his face when he realized what 'marrying up' meant was priceless.

Hands down, Kerry won this debate and is ahead in the polls I've seen. Daily Kos has a list

Not a Draft...it's an Inventory...

In line with today’s needs, the SSS structure, programs and activities should be re-engineered towards maintaining a national inventory of American men and (for the first time) women, ages 18 through 34, with an added focus on identifying individuals with critical skills.

Flag-Draped Coffins

United States 1,064
Great Britain 67
Italy 19
Poland 13
Spain 11
Ukraine 8
Bulgaria 6
Slovakia 3
Thailand 2 The Netherlands 2
Estonia 1
El Salvador 1
Denmark 1
Hungary 1
Latvia 1

U.S. service members injured in Iraq-related operations:

From hostile action: 7,730

Estimated minimum number of Iraqi civilians reported killed since March 2003: 13,182

Sources: Department of Defense, The Associated Press

“When this election’s over, you’ll see us move very vigorously,” said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.


“Once you’re past the election, it changes the political ramifications” of a large-scale offensive, the official said. “We’re not on hold right now. We’re just not as aggressive.”

The role of the press, said moderator John McWethy of ABC News, is to accurately report information as government officials release it. In other words, in a state of emergency, the media morph into a PR department for Washington.

It was a confidence game of the highest order. Gambling with the lives of thousands, Bush sent his shills out to convince the general public and the U.N. that the invasion of Iraq was crucial because the small country posed a grave danger to the rest of the world; most of all, America. Sadly, many bought into the game, 'patriotically' opening their wallets (and those of their great-great grandchildren) to fund the venture, sending citizens to be maimed and killed, slaughtering Iraqi civilians--for what?

flim flam
n.

1. Nonsense; humbug.
2. A deception; a swindle.


tr.v. flim·flammed, flim·flam·ming, flim·flams

To swindle; cheat.


[Probably of Scandinavian origin.]flimflammer n.
flimflammer·y n.

It's becoming increasingly clear the Bush and Blair governments deceived their citizens over Iraq, concocted false information and misled Congress and Parliament.

Both administrations face a rising storm of criticism and demands for full-scale inquiries.

This column has been contacted by a number of retired intelligence officers, both individuals and groups, backing up assertions made here two weeks ago that a cabal of neo-conservatives in President George Bush's administration distorted or faked information that formed the basis of claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that imminently threatened the U.S. and all mankind.

_______________________

When the United States invaded Iraq last year to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or any facilities to build them, according to a definitive report released Wednesday.

_______________________

The security forces are inadequate, the coalition is a joke, and reconstruction has barely begun...

Audio transcript of the debate. An interesting perspective.

Florida officials say thousands of Floridians who think they're registered to vote could be turned away at the polls November second...

Go listen. I hear Bushism is popular in Germany.
via Anti-Bush Fun

An Army Reserve staff sergeant who last week wrote a critical analysis of the United States' prospects in Iraq now faces possible disciplinary action for disloyalty and insubordination. If charges are bought and the officer is found guilty, he could face 20 years in prison. It would be the first such disloyalty prosecution since the Vietnam War.

I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead. I've shown the American people I know how to lead...Of course we're doing everything we can to protect America. I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America. That's my job. I work with Director Mueller of the FBI... when I'm in Washington every morning, talking about how to protect us. There's a lot of really good people working hard to do so.

It's hard work. But, again, I want to tell the American people, we're doing everything we can at home, but you better have a president who chases these terrorists down and bring them to justice before they hurt us again.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Efforts to create a master terrorist "watch list," a priority for the Bush administration, are lagging badly because of a lack of leadership...

_____________________________________________________________________________________

"In the years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, just as in the past, the government has continued to implement solutions in an uncoordinated manner," the report said. "The manner through which the watch list consolidation has unfolded has not helped the nation break from its pattern."

______________________________________________________________________________________

The Star reports that "prior to the Iraq war, the hospital received no more than 10 injured US soldiers a year from conflicts. Now, it usually

handles between 30 and 55 a day from Iraq and Afghanistan alone." The result, the Star reports, is that compassion fatigue is very much a problem for the staff, and anger in increasingly expressed by relatives of injured soldiers who are furious at the way they have been treated by the military.

We've been feeling tremors for several days. Sometimes they haven't been noticeable, save the water in a glass or the toilet stirring, reminding me of a scene from Jurassic Park. The sunset was colorful through the St. Helen's haze...particle masks still in the cupboard, and I hope they stay there.