New, and ‘Real’ Journalists Please Lineup Here:

Iceland - world’s first free speech haven:
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/iceland-worlds-first-free-speech-haven

WikiLeaks:
http://wikileaks.org/

More Info at WikiLeaks on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/wikileaks

Sunlight is always the best disinfectant!

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

Hotel Two-Six and Crazyhorse One-Eight,
Bushmasters all, but ain’t you good and great?
Your deeds live on for all posterity,
Killing young girls for all the world to see,
And injured men being helped into a van:
Live with yourselves forever, if you can.
But as for me, let it be understood,
I will not either call you great nor good.
America, America, God shed his wrath on thee,
And leave deeds in Iraq their infamy.
.

Gerard, I promised myself i wouln’t engage this week and
leave Truth Diggers alone. but that is just one more very
lame defense of Barrack Obama. If you followed him while
he was a senator you would know Gates was spewing out his
bosses sentiments , otherwise, Barrcack could fire Gates
yesterday or today.

It still amazes me all those that called for Bush and
Cheny’s head that give Obama a pass for the very same
Policy. My family, my friend in Forida, rail on Bush and
co., you mention one bad thing about Obama and their
hackles rise, which makes him a much more dangerous
leader than bush ever was.
Peace, love and happiness…..ofer

Honestly, now—would any one of us take on Obama’s job if several million people rose up out of nowhere and begged us to? 

Would any one of us, wade throughtons of information, some accurate, some conflicting, having to be sorted out if we are to get through even 1/10 of it, and feel we could depend on it to make bold moves toward liberal change, hearing the 24.7 howls of opposition in the background and doubting that we had more than a handful of real supporters?

Would any of us risk the lives of our families every single day, knowing the hatred, the fear, the instability out there among the “masses” of ignorant, undereducated, angry citizens, many of whom are racially prejudiced and deeply resentful for any one of a number of false assumptions that we can’t do a thing about?

Would any of us be willing to stand up and hold onto our sanity, all the while we know that tens of thousands of people actually want us to fail, to prove inadequate, to do the wrong thing—especially since the picture is so complicated that nobody knows what the right thing to do is?

Would any one of us understand the heartbreak of knowing the things that could and should be done, yet also knowing that, for any one of a hundred reasons totally beyond our control, they will be fought over, resisted, sabotaged, resented by people whose support we need in order to get good results?

I can think of other “woulds” but this is enough for starters.

It Ain’t Hell!

According to former Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler stated that, “War is a racket and patriotism is nothing but the last refuge of scoundrels”.

Indeed it is! And, peace is the perpetual enemy to an industry of war. An army of soldiers can do anything but sit on their bayonets. They must either use them, or lose them…..Pass the taxes please!

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

“Do you ever shoot women and children?”

“Some times..”

“How can you do that, shoot women and children?”

“It’s easy, you just don’t lead ‘em so much…
Ain’t war hell?”

This is of course a scene from Full Metal Jacket…and it has accurately described war from the day it was filmed.

Ooh Rah!

DOD - Department of Domination

Until more people rise up and realize that the military is just a tool protecting the corporate elite, nothing will change, and innocent civilians will die, and it doesn’t make any difference to the corporate elite whether they are ‘foreign’ or ‘American.’

At some point those guns will be turned on us when our economy is collapsing and the corporate elite try to maintain their unfair share while the public is short of food and water.

“We have guided missiles and misguided men.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gates defends U.S. soldier’s actions

Shit, what the hell else is he suppose to do? Denounce them as murderers who use 30mm automatic canon, designed to destroy tanks, on unarmed civilians? Get fucking real will ya!!!

The real shame of this video…
1 it is a way for voters of the status quo to vet
  their own guilt in their part of this massacre.
2 a way to blame the atrocities that have been occuring
  almost every day like this on a couple of chopper
  pilots
3 a way to take the blame off of their superiors

anyone voting for candidates that support these wars
are as guilty as the ones pullin the trigger.
This was an everyday occurance.
The effects of this war is responsible for at least
one million deaths in Iraq, 450,000 during the blockade
of the Clinton years.

  This blood is on every American that keeps voting these
war hustlers in office, not just the marines doing their
job.

Gates feels comfortable as long as Main Stream Media (obvious representatives for the Industry of War) remains content on ogling the size of Tiger Woods putter; injecting the public mind with other such idiotic mental opiates, Gates can confidently remark, “he doesn’t anticipate the footage will hurt the U.S. image abroad” or “that it will have a lasting effect”.

MSM talking heads already know they too are complicit and up to their necks in innocent blood; in this, they’re all guilty of murderer and cover-up!

The continued lame excuse that this is a, so called, ‘War Zone’ is empty and without merit! Who the hell turned it into a ‘War Zone’? This isn’t U.S. property where manufactured psycho-killers can fly in and turn a gathering of folks into a fun-for-all turkey shoot!

WikiLeaks needs to be protected so that we can see all of it. How else will we put this beast to rest?

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, or we’ll never see closure to this, so called ‘Global War on Terror; if not checked on this planet, perhaps a ‘Universal War on Terror’.

Only dark and evil deeds require the cloak of secrecy.

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

Revealing comment from Gates:  “It should not have any lasting consequences.”

Lasting consequences for whom? The usual brutal dichotomy—them ... or us?

What consequences?  Great personal loss for family and friends of the deceased?  Or a “story” that will die down if “public relations” “handles” it “wisely”?

Words slip out of “important” people’s mouths that tell us more than they wished to say.

“These guys were breathing hard to kill someone.”

....Defense analyst Pierre Sprey, who led the design teams for the F-16 and A-10 and who spent many years in the Pentagon, stresses two particularly damning features of the footage. The first is the claim that Noor-Eldeen’s telephoto lense could be mistaken for an RPG. “A big telephoto for a 35mm camera is under a foot and half at most. An RPG, unloaded , is 3 feet long and loaded, 4 foot long. These guys were breathing hard to kill someone.”

Sprey’s second point is that Apache helicopters makes a very loud “whomp, whomp” noise. “ Twelve guys are unconcerned, with loud helicopters right overhead. Imagine if they were planning an assault on American troops. They’d be crouched down and skulking along walls, spread out. They would not be walking casually down the middle of the street, totally ignoring the helicopters.”

A retired U.S. Marine was even blunter:

“Not a good show at all. The group on the ground were banishing nothing that ‘looked’ or appeared as weapons. The Apache crews were stupid and the intelligence clowns pointing them egging them on are guilty of murder.”

In the aftermath the US military claimed that some AK-47s and a grenade launcher had been found at the scene. Sprey comments that, in the course of the subsequent cover-up, the weapons may well have been planted, LAPD style.

FULL STORY:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04092010.html

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

(RE: photoshock—War has now become corporatized, we no longer control the military, in fact the military controls us, with their advertisements for an ‘Army of One.’)

I know! The Industry of War ads have become just as ubiquitous and prolific as the government sanctioned pharmaceuticals – drug pusher ads! Then there are the blood-sport video games; no doubt, promoted by the same Merchants of Death.

The War Industries product: an army of insensitive ‘Pharmaceutical Soldiers’; a wet-dream killing machine for the Corporatarchs of aggressive dominance, whose sole economy is war and terror.

Remember also, Zoloft and Haldal were two of the mind benders implicated in the Columbine shootings; these drugs, including the widely dispensed and popular Prozac known as ‘serotonin uptake inhibitors’ act in the same fashion as LSD.

The Winter Soldier

....., in a packed public hearing, 2008, the soldiers testified before a panel of lawmakers…..
Mainstream Media has completely ignored the cries and pleas from the voices of these broken spirits, while the industry of war continues to indoctrinate its youth into becoming serial killers.
Some Highlights:

.....We would carry an AK-47, and if the person that was shot did not have the weapon, an AK-47 would be placed at his corpse, and when the unit would come back to the base, they would turn it in to identify the shot man as the enemy combatant…..

.....high-ranking officers that leave a base once in awhile have brand new, fully armored Hummers that are always spotless clean sitting on the base, while other Hummers are bleeding with our brothers’, sons’, daughters’, sisters’ blood every day…...

.....When we all come back from Iraq and we seek help from our command, they call us “weak” and “cowards.” The lines for a psychologist is almost a year long, and the only thing that can help us is the alcohol and the prescription pills they’re giving out to us like candy…..

Watch Amy Goodman video The Winter Soldier:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/26/memorial_day_specialwinter_soldier_on_the

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

Not only are the actions of the helicopter pilots indefensible but the actions of the ‘can do’ president in escalating a conflict that the United States of Corporate America are becoming less and less humane and more and more like a colonial power that is using the extermination of the indigenous population as an excuse to commit genocide of the highest order.
America, what used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, instead we have become a colonial power the kind, we the people used to rail against.
Murder committed in the name of the state, is still murder, it is not in any way excusable for soldiers to act in a wanton manner, the likes of which we see in this video. Soldiers who do this are murderers, nothing more than that.
We see the darkest side of human nature in this video. More than that we see the acts of someone, who has been trained to act without empathy or sympathy, who by their very nature now consider these ‘fuckers’ to be nothing more than animals and targets for their weaponry.
War has now become corporatized, we no longer control the military, if fact the military controls us, with their advertisements for an ‘Army of One.’
We the people, must take back the reins of government and control the ‘Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex,’ that Dwight David Eisenhower so presciently warned us about in his speech as out-going president. If we do not take back the reins of authority and power from the elitist banking
cartels, then, we the people will become nothing more
than economic slaves to the powerful banking elite cartels that are trying their damndest to take over the governance of the world.

I saw the video a number of times. First on DemocracyNow!.  Then on PBS News Hour and then of all places on Emily “The Cambridge-Boston Coffee Clatch” Rooney’s on PBS.  I thought it would go viral.

It shows and records it all in video and audio.  We train an Army of wanton killers. 

To deny it or make excuses for this action at the level of Secretary of Defense is a coverup and should be regarded as criminal. 

It is not the Department of Defense anymore.  Just as the name was changed from the Department of War years ago, it should now be called the Department of Brutality and Terrorism.

We are training our youth to be killers.  There will be a Day of Reckoning.

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

- Proverbs 22:6

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/first-person-sho0ter/

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/payback/

The reason so many of us have simply had it with the military and its ill-trained soldiers is that no one, from the commanders down to the soldiers, are interested in changing their ways.  I know this from dealing with ROTC trainees at my university; more than a few of these kids walk around with an attitude that will lead them to do exactly what those murderers in the helicopter did in the video.  The military seems to be generating such killer attitudes, although there may be something of a self-selection process at work as well.  In any case, the ROTC recruiting and training must be changed. 

There will be more of these incidents as long as we continue to excuse those responsible, from the soldiers pulling triggers to the commander who carelessly command and protect murderers with their own careless attitude.  Recall McChrystal’s casual remark recently: “We sure seem to be killing an awful lot of people who were no direct threat to us.”  He obviously has not done anything to change procedures, as evidenced by yet another incident reported in this morning’s New York Times:

U.S. Troops Fire on Afghan Bus, Killing at Least 5 Civilians
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and TAIMOOR SHAH
Published: April 12, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near the southern city of Kandahar on Monday morning, killing as many as five civilians and wounding 18, Afghan authorities and survivors said.

What kind of stupid contextual excuse will the military come with to justify shooting at a civilian bus full of people they had no way of identifying?  How is this not cold-blooded murder?  Mothers, you should be so proud of your little killers!

OzarkMichael, April 11 at 6:51 pm

I so seldom agree with you,Michael, that I could not pass this occurrence sans comment.

I have been defending our troops on another forum and taking much heat for it, not that holding unpopular opinion bothers me much. Many express vitriol about what happened and, I agree, incidents like this are all too common in a war, any war, and illustrate why war should never be an option.

Ak-47’s and one RPG were found among the bodies there, this neighborhood had been the scene of gunfire for over a month prior and the unit involved had been taking casualties, including dead and wounded, for all that time. There was an exchange of gunfire a short distance from this street simultaneous with the sighting of armed men. The helicopter crew asked for permission prior to opening fire. Many of the critiques are heartfelt and a typical reaction to a tragedy involving innocent children certainly.

But most importantly, at least to me, is that the singling out of children ( these soldiers are teens and early twenties) for over the top vehemence is just counter productive to getting progressive goals and agendas acted upon. Unwise epithets directed at our soldiers alienates much of the electorate and costs the movement far too much.

Blame is certainly needed, but blame those who send our children into such situations, blame war itself, and I have seen war and understand what occurs in it. Bashing soldiers may make one feel good, but it makes the job of changing the course of this nation that much more difficult. Folks should decide what it is they wish to accomplish.

If one of us were to grab a rifle and proceed to kill people in the street, any one of us would be arrested and charged with murder and executed by the state. But, under the magical guise of war, anything goes, carte blanche murder is legitimized; murder is good; murder is okay; where the murder of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions is acceptable, without question or shudder. Where persons are encouraged to exhibit the deepest darkest depths of depravity, rewarded by a high-5, pat on the back along with the encouraging words, “good shoot – look at that pile of dead bastard there”.

All mothers and fathers should be ashamed of turning their sons and daughters over to the Corporate Industry of War, who train their blood to rise up and become serial killers for the Company.

This video is reminiscent of stories from Wounded Knee. After heading the savages into a boxed canyon, it becomes a turkey-shoot; depicting U.S., overwhelming, superior fire-power. The Question remains! Who are the real savages and barbarians in this picture?

Every man women and child should be exposed to the dark underbelly of this iceberg! Shielding the eyes and ears only promotes its cancerous clutch and growth. We really have lost our sight of the forest for the trees!

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

The forces in the universe are neither good nor evil. But, misappropriated into the hands of those who perceive those forces as weapons of power, then do they manifest as evil.

Welcome to Obama’s Murder Inc., where colonial massacres are defended and excused.

Context? Consequences? IMAGE?
Did you not hear and see…

AT 3:08-3:12 VIDEO HELICOPTER: “ESTIMATES ABOUT 20 INDIVIDUALS” ON THE
STREET. 

3:46: SAYS THERE WERE 5 TO 6 INDIVIDUALS WITH WEAPONS AND THEN…
“REQUEST PERMISSION TO ENGAGE AT THIS TIME.” 

 THERE WERE PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE THEY HAD WEAPONS BUT THEY WERE
STANDING AROUND OR WALKING.

THEY DID NOT ENGAGE THE HELICOPTERS OR LOOK LIKE THEY WERE ABOUT
TO ENGAGE THEM.

THE HELICOPTER VEIW STARTS TO CIRCLE THE AREA…

3:53 RESPONSE “ROGER THAT. WE HAVE NO PERSONAL EAST OF OUR
POSITION.” 

3:56 RESPONSE: “SO UH, YOU ARE FREE TO ENGAGE. OVER.”

4:00 HELICOPTER: “ALL RIGHT, WE’LL BE ENGAGING. ROGER, GO AHEAD. 

4:03 I’M GONNA… I CAN’T GET ‘EM NOW BECAUSE THEY’RE BEHIND THAT
BUILDING…

AT THAT POINT A PERSON ON THE GROUND IS LOOKING AT THE HELICOPTER
AND IS STICKING HIS HEAD OUT AROUND A CORNER OF A BUILDING AND I AM
THINKING HE PROBABLY SEES GUNS BEING DRAWN AND POINTED AT THE
CROWD ...

4;08 “HE GOT A RPG” VIDEO FOCUS ON THIS GUY

4:11  “ALL RIGHT, WE GOT A GUY WITH AN RBG I’M GOING FIRE!

4:13 VIDEO SHOWS THEM GO BEHIND A BUILDING… “OKAY. NO HOLD ON. LETS
COME AROUND NOW FROM OUR POINT OF VIEW… OKAY, WE’RE GOING TO
COME AROUND.”

4:19 YOU CAN NOW SEE THE GUY WITH THE RPG… IT LOOKS LIKE HE WANTS
TO GET A SHOT IN TO SAVE THE 20 OR SO PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO CLUE THAT
THESE HELICOPTERS ARE ABOUT TO OPEN FIRE ON THEM… BUT HE DID NOT
FIRE… 
I SAYING HE MUST OF HAD A BETTER SHOT TO SHOOT DOWN ONE OF THESE
HELICOPTERS WHEN THEY PASSED STRAIGHT ABOVE HIS POSITION… ABOUT
30 SECONDS BEFORE… HELICOPER CIRCLES BACK AROUND

4:19 “HOTEL 2-6 HAVE EYES ON INDIVIDUAL WITH RPG GETTING READY TO
FIRE. WE WON’T…” 

HELICOPER MOVES BEHIND BUILDING… 

4:22 “YEAH WE HAD A GUY SHOOTING… AND NOW HE IS BEHIND THE
BUILDING…” 

HELICOPTER CIRCLED AROUND TO A CROWND OF 9 MEN STANDING IN THE
MIDDLE OF THE STREET TALKING TO ONE ANOTHER, NONE OF THEM WERE
ARMED… AND THE HELICOPTER SEEMED TO GET RIGHT ON TOP OF THEM
BEFORE 

THEY OPEN FIRED.. 

4:50"LIGHT THEM UP! COME ON FIRE!” 

 MACHINE GUN FIRE… VIDEO SHOWS THEM JUST STANDING THERE AS THEY
GET SLAUGHTER, AS ONE ON THE END RUNS 

4:57"KEEP SHOOTING” DUST FROM THE GROUND FILLS THE SCREEN… 

5:05 A VOICE SAYS, “STOP SHOOTING.” 

7:53 AFTER THE DUST CLEARS YOU SEE A GUY CRAWLING FROM THE GUTTER
TO THE SIDEWALK… 

8:36"ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PICK UP A WEAPON.” 

8:59 “IF WE SEE A WEAPON WERE GOING TO ENGAGE.” 

9:09 “WE HAVE A VAN THAT’S APPROACHING AND PICKING UP THE BODIES.” 

9:19 LOOKS LIKE POSSIBLE PICKING UP BODIES AND WEAPONS…” THERE IS
NO WEAPONS IN SIGHT.

AND A VAN PULLS UP… 

9:26  “LET ME ENGAGE! CAN I SHOOT? ROGER BREAK 

9:29  “UH CRAZYHORSE 1-8 REQUEST PERMISSION TO UH ENGAGE? 

9:33 YOU SEE IN THE VIDEO THAT A VAN PULLED UP TO PICK UP THE
WOUNDED GUY(TWO MEN)THEN ANOTHER MAN RUN TO HELP PICK UP THE
INJURED MAN 

“PICKING UP THE WOUNDED” 

9:34"YEAH, WE’RE TRYING TO GET PERMISSION TO ENGAGE” 

9:45"THEY’RE TAKING HIM! 

AT 9:57 - 10:01 THEY PLACE THE WOUNDED GUY IN THE VAN WHILE THE 
HELICOPTER HAS REQUEST PERMISSION TO ENGAGE… YOU HEAR “FUCK” 

10:07"THIS IS BUSHMASTER 7 ROGER. THIS IS BUSHMASTER 7 ENGAGE!”

THE VAN PULL AWAY TO TAKE THIS WONDED GUY TO THE 

HOSPITAL… AND THERE IS ONE GUY WHO IS OUTSIDE THE VAN AS IT PULLS
AWAY AND HE IS NOT ARMED… 

10:09 YOU HEAR, “1-8 ENGAGE, CLEAR.” 

10:10 YOU HEAR AN IMPATIENT VOICE SAY, “COME ON.”  

MACHINE GUN FIRES… AS THE UNARMED MAN DUCKS FOR COVER BEHIND A
WALL… AND THEY TRY TO SHOOT HIM… AFTER HITTING THE VAN…

A VOICE - I GOT HIM.

 Who is taking “context” out of the “Video”?
   To have peace and justice you have to have consequences. If you don’t you have
“WAR.” That is what you call it.
The right way to discribe these actions is “MURDER.” 
   

OzarkMichael writes:

“What you need to know is that there is an American convoy passing nearby and that is why the helicoptor guys are edgy. It is their job to stop people with RPGs who want to take pot shots at American lightly armored vehicles.”

These points are, on the one hand, irrelevant because no one was being directly threatened when they shot and killed people they could not clearly identify as enemy combatants.  These points also reveal the misguided mentality that has turned us into a nation of murderers.  We seem to have forgotten that we are occupying a country full of ordinary people and we patrol around civilian neighborhoods where 99.9 percent of the people just want to live their lives.  We have no business killing, or in Michael’s terminology “stopping”, anyone that looks like they might threaten our convoy.  And if the pilots are “edgy”, they should not be pilots on patrol in a civilian neighborhood where the people below them cannot be clearly identified as threats.  It is nothing other than murder to shoot people in a civilian neighborhood just because they look suspicious.
We are occupying a country; this is not a war zone!  We need police patrols, not incompetent and cruel soldiers edgy to kill someone.  The most hostile people in the video were our soldiers.  They need to be brought home immediately before they kill again.  And Gates needs to resign before he sends one more of our incompetent soldiers into situations where they will again enthusiastically kill innocent people.  Let’s stop making excuses for or trying to find justifications for murder.

What you need to know is that there is an American convoy passing nearby and that is why the helicoptor guys are edgy. It is their job to stop people with RPGs who want to take pot shots at American lightly armored vehicles.

At about the 2 minute mark a second cluster of men came into view. At 2:15 they are clearly in view. One of the men in that second group is carrying a rather heavy long object, four or five feet long.

he attaches or modifies the object at 2:20. It looks like an RPG. At 2:25 he cannot be seen. So there was an RPG/bazooka there.

At 2:35 a different person peaks around the corner and is holding an object this was assumed to be another RPG. But apparently this was a journalist with a telephoto lens.

That journalist did take a picture of the Bradley vehicle 2 blocks away.

Gates is just one more apologist for our military’s murders overseas.  There is no way to interpret the video other than to see us as murderers.  I don’t know what the secretary is smoking, but this was not a split second decision while the helicopter was under fire.  No one was threatening the helicopter, and they circled forever before getting permission from someone not there to go ahead and kill people they had no way of identifying.  This was clearly murder, and the soldiers seemed to enjoy it.
There is nothing to say here except that we have become a nation of criminals, and we seem to be comfortable with this.  Hopefully the rest of the world will wake up to our hopeless state and do something to stop us.  We sure don’t seem able to stop ourselves anymore.

Can we now definitively state that no individuals in the video had a RPG?

If so, who provided the verification?

Apparently the human psyche is not “wired” for on-going violence and war. Basic training assumes this to be the case, and attempts to overcome this “weakness” (which is very likely a built-in “strength” that works to preserve survival) by training soldiers to overcome their inate revulsion against killing.
  The psychic clash between revulsion and performance seems to lead, more or less inevitably, to a numbness that causes various symptoms of abnormality, including irrational laughter, bravado, callousness, nightmares, drug addictions, suicide, erratic and inappropriate behavior patterns, etc.
  It is possible that these symptoms are warning signals, trying to send the human race a message that wars today are not merely inhumane for all sides, but are so counterproductive that any financial gains from war products, or from victory, are less significant than the costs of the psychic damage sustained by all involved.
  Naturally, the military agencies will be the last to admit such a possibility, which is too bad, because many lives would be saved if the stupidity and cruelty of wars could be acknowledge by those who promote them.

SecDef Bobby can’t defend the indefensible. This was NO “split-second situation”
as the copter circled and circled those men like the old proberbial vulture waiting
on it’s meal to die.
The Iraqnam is a naked war of aggression. Started on lies, kept it’s momentum on
more lies, and the lies continue to date.
SecDef Bobby is a war criminal. Bush is a war criminal. Cheney and et al. When oh
when do the war crimes tribunals begin? Oh right, never.
Wow, that leaves the Obama administration complicit in war crimes. Hmmm, go
figure. Eric Holder SHOULD have prosecuted Bushco and Holder did NOT.