Brave people are often abused.
Honor is something that recent (and present) American governments have not been known for. Indeed, our governments since John Kennedy's "Bay of Pigs" invasion have regularly been criminal in their disregard of our Constitution and United States law. Our current and on-going violations of international law make us a rogue state.
WikiLeaks is providing a valuable service to the world--and to us, as Americans. We should be glad to have the crimes and dishonesties of our government published. Only by knowing them can we correct them.
Are there any Americans who are proud of what the WikiLeaks documents expose? Shouldn't we all thank WikiLeaks, and then demand that those responsible for illegal. immoral, and unethical policies and actions be charged and prosecuted.
If we don't do that, we are as guilty as our governmental thugs are.
If our government thinks that Private Bradley Manning is ultimately responsible for these damning documents being released, then congress should award him the Congressional Medal of Honor, and we should all celebrate his heroism. Right now, however, our government has Bradley Manning in prison, in solitary confinement, at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. He has been so held for nearly seven months.
Bradley Manning has not yet been charged with a crime. He has committed no crime. In fact, under both United States civil law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice had he not made public the evidence of the serious felony crimes which he discovered, he would be guilty of misprision of multiple felonies, of being an accessory after the fact to the commission of those felonies.
Bradley Manning has committed no crime. And our government can't charge him with having committed a crime, because his defense will be that he was doing what our law requires him to do. So, since George W. Bush suspended our Constitutional right of Habeas Corpus by executive order, and Barack Obama has not undone that illegal order, Bradley Manning might just spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement at Quantico. He is now twenty-two years old.
But maybe, someday, he will be released. Maybe someday we will have an honest, honorable, law-abiding president again. But someday is a long, long time for a young man to wait for justice. Must we make him wait? Must we cooperate in violating his rights? Must we support governmental oppression? Must we be toads and toadies? Cowards?
maandag 29 november 2010
zondag 28 november 2010
THOSE THINGS MONEY CAN (?) BUY
Sure, everybody knew it. Except for the owners of the Miami Hee-Heat and the three Hee-Heaters named James, Bosh, and Wade.
In Saturday night's loss to Dallas, James Bosh Wade played 115 of the team's total of 240 minutes (48 minutes x five players on the floor). Among them, the others played 115 minutes.
Here are the statistics:
Hee-Heat; Rest of the team
Shots/Shots made 56/22; 19/9
Threes/Threes Made 6/0; 8/5
Rebounds 25; 18
Assists 11; 6
Steals 3; 5
Turnovers 13; 1
Blocks 2; 3
Points scored 67; 28
For most of the game, the Hee-Heat seem to have tried to play by themselves.
Dallas, on the other hand, played as a team. They took 87 shots--and five different players took more than shots each--and made 40 of them. 6 players scored morer than 10 points each, Five players took a total of 17 threes, and made five of them.They had 46 rebounds, 25 assists, and made 8 steals. And six players committed a total of only 11 turn-overs--whereas James Bosh Wade among them gave the ball away 13 times.
This wasn't simply a bad night for the Hee-Heat. It was their usual night. Maybe if they were in a three-on-three league they would be pretty good. But maybe not. Maybe they would be better as three entries in a one-on-one league.
In Saturday night's loss to Dallas, James Bosh Wade played 115 of the team's total of 240 minutes (48 minutes x five players on the floor). Among them, the others played 115 minutes.
Here are the statistics:
Hee-Heat; Rest of the team
Shots/Shots made 56/22; 19/9
Threes/Threes Made 6/0; 8/5
Rebounds 25; 18
Assists 11; 6
Steals 3; 5
Turnovers 13; 1
Blocks 2; 3
Points scored 67; 28
For most of the game, the Hee-Heat seem to have tried to play by themselves.
Dallas, on the other hand, played as a team. They took 87 shots--and five different players took more than shots each--and made 40 of them. 6 players scored morer than 10 points each, Five players took a total of 17 threes, and made five of them.They had 46 rebounds, 25 assists, and made 8 steals. And six players committed a total of only 11 turn-overs--whereas James Bosh Wade among them gave the ball away 13 times.
This wasn't simply a bad night for the Hee-Heat. It was their usual night. Maybe if they were in a three-on-three league they would be pretty good. But maybe not. Maybe they would be better as three entries in a one-on-one league.
zondag 21 november 2010
WAR MEMORIALS
Most countries, I suspect, have war memorials. And the majority of those memorials heroize the dead warriors. The British Cenotaph in London, a memorial to the British soldiers and sailors killed in the 1914-1918 war, is emblazoned with the words “The Glorious Dead.” The Marine Memorial in Washington, D.C. remembers those who died in World War II in the image of four Marines struggling to raise a United States flag on Iwo Jima, a small island in the Pacific Ocean.
Trafalgar Square in London has a column at its center, topped with a statue of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, the victor of the battle of Trafalgar in 1813. At Hyde Park Corner the Duke of Wellington, the British general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, has a great marble arch dedicated to his memory.
And Hyde Park Corner also has, from a century later, a white marble memorial topped with a large bronze statue of the biblical boy David. It is dedicated to the Machine Gunners Corps of the British Army: “To the Glorious Heroes . . . who fell in the Great War .” And just below that dedication, a perversely celebrative verse from the biblical Book of Samuel: “For Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.”
Nearby, there is an equally perverse statue, allegedly of Achilles. It is heroic in size, more than five meters tall. It represents the Duke of Wellington as Achilles. The Duke was forty-six years old at Waterloo, and lived to be eighty. Achilles, of course, was killed at Troy, at about twenty. The statue represents Wellington-Achilles as a beautiful, muscular young man, with not a blemish on his naked body. For decency’s sake, his genitals are covered by a fig leaf, but his sword is left naked.
There is a war memorial outside Spicheren, on the French-German border near Saarbrücken. In 1870 the French and Prussian armies fought there on a Saturday in early August of 1870. It was a horrible day for both sides. Late in the afternoon, the French retreated to Metz. By then 12,000 young Frenchmen had been killed, and 10,000 young Germans. Today there is a memorial to those 12,000 French soldiers atop the hill, and about twenty yards away another plinth, memoralising the 10,000 Germans who died that day. In between, there is a small circle of light blue gravel surrounding a rectangular stone, three feet high and about two feet square. A small brass plaque in the middle of the top is inscribed “NEVER AGAIN.” It is a European Union marker.
Washington, D.C. is full of monuments. The beautiful and worthy Lincoln Memorial; the monument to George Washington, a slave-owner; the Jefferson Memorial, dedicated to the author of the Declaration of Independence, who later sold his own children by a slave woman. John F. Kennedy. Franklin d. Roosevelt. Others. But not many war memorials, surprisingly. But maybe the United States has already had too many wars for them all to get memorials. The War of 1812, the Civil War, all the nineteenth century Indian Wars, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, the invasion of Lebanon in 1958, the invasion of Cuba in 1961, Vietnam, the proxy was against Nicaragua, Greneda, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan.
But there is a Vietnam War Memorial: a black marble wall, with the names of the thousands of American men who died in that shameful war. It isn’t a heroic monument, it doesn’t celebrate anything. It simply remembers.
I have been thinking lately that we should have, in Washington, two Iraq War Memorials, and an Afghanistan War Memorial—even before the Afghanistan War is over, and even though it may already be the Afghanistan-Pakistan War.
For the first Iraq war I would suggest several bull-dozers filling in a sandy trench, burying alive a large number of young Iraqi soldiers, with General Colin Powell supervising the operation.
For Iraq II, I would recommend a big hole in the ground, filled with oil, with the heads of Bush and Cheney sticking up out of it, and the smell of lies and death everywhere around.
And for Afghanistan? Just a very large and deep hole. Or maybe such a hole filled with worthless dollar bills.
Trafalgar Square in London has a column at its center, topped with a statue of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, the victor of the battle of Trafalgar in 1813. At Hyde Park Corner the Duke of Wellington, the British general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, has a great marble arch dedicated to his memory.
And Hyde Park Corner also has, from a century later, a white marble memorial topped with a large bronze statue of the biblical boy David. It is dedicated to the Machine Gunners Corps of the British Army: “To the Glorious Heroes . . . who fell in the Great War .” And just below that dedication, a perversely celebrative verse from the biblical Book of Samuel: “For Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.”
Nearby, there is an equally perverse statue, allegedly of Achilles. It is heroic in size, more than five meters tall. It represents the Duke of Wellington as Achilles. The Duke was forty-six years old at Waterloo, and lived to be eighty. Achilles, of course, was killed at Troy, at about twenty. The statue represents Wellington-Achilles as a beautiful, muscular young man, with not a blemish on his naked body. For decency’s sake, his genitals are covered by a fig leaf, but his sword is left naked.
There is a war memorial outside Spicheren, on the French-German border near Saarbrücken. In 1870 the French and Prussian armies fought there on a Saturday in early August of 1870. It was a horrible day for both sides. Late in the afternoon, the French retreated to Metz. By then 12,000 young Frenchmen had been killed, and 10,000 young Germans. Today there is a memorial to those 12,000 French soldiers atop the hill, and about twenty yards away another plinth, memoralising the 10,000 Germans who died that day. In between, there is a small circle of light blue gravel surrounding a rectangular stone, three feet high and about two feet square. A small brass plaque in the middle of the top is inscribed “NEVER AGAIN.” It is a European Union marker.
Washington, D.C. is full of monuments. The beautiful and worthy Lincoln Memorial; the monument to George Washington, a slave-owner; the Jefferson Memorial, dedicated to the author of the Declaration of Independence, who later sold his own children by a slave woman. John F. Kennedy. Franklin d. Roosevelt. Others. But not many war memorials, surprisingly. But maybe the United States has already had too many wars for them all to get memorials. The War of 1812, the Civil War, all the nineteenth century Indian Wars, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, the invasion of Lebanon in 1958, the invasion of Cuba in 1961, Vietnam, the proxy was against Nicaragua, Greneda, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan.
But there is a Vietnam War Memorial: a black marble wall, with the names of the thousands of American men who died in that shameful war. It isn’t a heroic monument, it doesn’t celebrate anything. It simply remembers.
I have been thinking lately that we should have, in Washington, two Iraq War Memorials, and an Afghanistan War Memorial—even before the Afghanistan War is over, and even though it may already be the Afghanistan-Pakistan War.
For the first Iraq war I would suggest several bull-dozers filling in a sandy trench, burying alive a large number of young Iraqi soldiers, with General Colin Powell supervising the operation.
For Iraq II, I would recommend a big hole in the ground, filled with oil, with the heads of Bush and Cheney sticking up out of it, and the smell of lies and death everywhere around.
And for Afghanistan? Just a very large and deep hole. Or maybe such a hole filled with worthless dollar bills.
TYPICALLY STUPID ABSURDITY--AND BEYOND
TYPICALLY STUPID ABSURDITY—AND BEYOND
With our help, the terrorists have defeated us. They helped us create the Transportation Security Administration. “Get Scared, America!” is its motto.
Every two minutes in our airports, a serious voice warns us: be above suspicion, personally--and always be suspicious of everybody else. We must keep our luggage with us—or it will be confiscated and destroyed. And if we see any unattended baggage, or suspicious-looking persons, we must report them immediately. Everybody is a potential enemy—particularly anybody who isn’t a regular northern European looking American. “Be Vigilant, America!”
First we had metal detectors. Then shoes off. Then no liquids: but that was a bit extreme, too soon, so we modified the restriction. No more than three two-ounce bottles of liquid. (Who decided that it would take more than six ounces of a liquid explosive to do something awful?) Pat-downs. Now full body radiation scans. And sexual groping by specially trained gropers. And a cancer survivor required to take off her prosthetic breast for checking. “Be Terrified, America!
Be so terrified that you will submit to anything.
It was Franklin D. Roosevelt, wasn’t it, who said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Let me suggest some ways we might really begin to protect ourselves and these United States.
1. Quit making enemies. Quit bombing Afghans and Pakistanis and then calling the people we kill “Muslim terrorists.”
2. Quit referring to Islam as “the enemy.”
3. Instead of more bombs, start rebuilding the countries that we have destroyed, house by house, village by village, city by city. And rebuild the infrastructure that our bombs have destroyed.
4. And start rebuilding the failed nation called the United States.
Build schools. Hire teachers, and more teachers, and more teachers.
Build decent housing for the poor.
Provide medical care for everybody except the rich.
Tax the rich. Tax all wealth that exceeds five million dollars at the
at the rate of 100%, and use the money to pay off the national debt.
Disband the military. Depend on moral strength instead of armed force.
Use the money we spend on the military—two billion dollars a day?—to
do good things, both at home and abroad. Teach our soldiers to build
things and help people, rather than to destroy things and murder people.
Lead the world in getting rid of nuclear weapons.
Quit honoring guns. Take them out of American life.
Quit pretending that God blesses America and nobody else. Only
a perverse God would bless us and the way we live.
Learn to honor peace.
Learn to make friends, and be friends.
With our help, the terrorists have defeated us. They helped us create the Transportation Security Administration. “Get Scared, America!” is its motto.
Every two minutes in our airports, a serious voice warns us: be above suspicion, personally--and always be suspicious of everybody else. We must keep our luggage with us—or it will be confiscated and destroyed. And if we see any unattended baggage, or suspicious-looking persons, we must report them immediately. Everybody is a potential enemy—particularly anybody who isn’t a regular northern European looking American. “Be Vigilant, America!”
First we had metal detectors. Then shoes off. Then no liquids: but that was a bit extreme, too soon, so we modified the restriction. No more than three two-ounce bottles of liquid. (Who decided that it would take more than six ounces of a liquid explosive to do something awful?) Pat-downs. Now full body radiation scans. And sexual groping by specially trained gropers. And a cancer survivor required to take off her prosthetic breast for checking. “Be Terrified, America!
Be so terrified that you will submit to anything.
It was Franklin D. Roosevelt, wasn’t it, who said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Let me suggest some ways we might really begin to protect ourselves and these United States.
1. Quit making enemies. Quit bombing Afghans and Pakistanis and then calling the people we kill “Muslim terrorists.”
2. Quit referring to Islam as “the enemy.”
3. Instead of more bombs, start rebuilding the countries that we have destroyed, house by house, village by village, city by city. And rebuild the infrastructure that our bombs have destroyed.
4. And start rebuilding the failed nation called the United States.
Build schools. Hire teachers, and more teachers, and more teachers.
Build decent housing for the poor.
Provide medical care for everybody except the rich.
Tax the rich. Tax all wealth that exceeds five million dollars at the
at the rate of 100%, and use the money to pay off the national debt.
Disband the military. Depend on moral strength instead of armed force.
Use the money we spend on the military—two billion dollars a day?—to
do good things, both at home and abroad. Teach our soldiers to build
things and help people, rather than to destroy things and murder people.
Lead the world in getting rid of nuclear weapons.
Quit honoring guns. Take them out of American life.
Quit pretending that God blesses America and nobody else. Only
a perverse God would bless us and the way we live.
Learn to honor peace.
Learn to make friends, and be friends.
maandag 15 november 2010
A FEW SIMPLE THOUGHTS
1. Everybody knows that George W. Bush's book is plagiarism. One hundred percent plagiarism. No matter how bad and how badly written it is, we know he can't have written it. He can barely write his name.
2. Terrorists 300,000,003, US 0. That's something like the score.
What do terrorists do? They make people afraid, and thus disrupt lives. With the help of an idiotic government, today's terrorists have paralyzed the United States. Now the idiots at the Transportation Security Agent are adding more terror to our daily lives. In order to get into the "secure" area of an American airport, you have to submit a nude photo op or to being sexually molested by some goon. And once you are in the "secure" area, you get loud announcements every three minutes warning you that the scare monitor is at orange--has it ever been anything other than orange?--and if you see anybody suspicious looking you should notify the nearest law enforcement officer.
Our government has been given prize after prize by Terrorism International, for helping their cause. It is rumored that Terrorism International pays for the scanning devices, and trains the sexual molesters for free.
3. In case anybody hasn't noticed, we could use all the money spent on the anti-terrorism nonsense to feed the poor, house them, give them decent medical care, and give all American children decent schools.
4. Or we could just tax the rich, and pay off the national debt. Nobody needs more than a million dollars. Do you hear your good friends quivering? Say it again: Nobody needs more than a million dollars. And if you have two one million dollar houses, one of them should be taken away from you, and you should have to borrow money to live on in the other one.
5. This year for Christmas, let's feed the turkey, and eat the greedy.
Bert Hornback
2. Terrorists 300,000,003, US 0. That's something like the score.
What do terrorists do? They make people afraid, and thus disrupt lives. With the help of an idiotic government, today's terrorists have paralyzed the United States. Now the idiots at the Transportation Security Agent are adding more terror to our daily lives. In order to get into the "secure" area of an American airport, you have to submit a nude photo op or to being sexually molested by some goon. And once you are in the "secure" area, you get loud announcements every three minutes warning you that the scare monitor is at orange--has it ever been anything other than orange?--and if you see anybody suspicious looking you should notify the nearest law enforcement officer.
Our government has been given prize after prize by Terrorism International, for helping their cause. It is rumored that Terrorism International pays for the scanning devices, and trains the sexual molesters for free.
3. In case anybody hasn't noticed, we could use all the money spent on the anti-terrorism nonsense to feed the poor, house them, give them decent medical care, and give all American children decent schools.
4. Or we could just tax the rich, and pay off the national debt. Nobody needs more than a million dollars. Do you hear your good friends quivering? Say it again: Nobody needs more than a million dollars. And if you have two one million dollar houses, one of them should be taken away from you, and you should have to borrow money to live on in the other one.
5. This year for Christmas, let's feed the turkey, and eat the greedy.
Bert Hornback
vrijdag 5 november 2010
AFTERMATH
In the aftermath of the election, and the prospect of getting nothing done in Congress, Mr. Obama has two choices: either he can accept defeat, and be a lame duck for the last two years of his one-term presidency, or he can fulfill several of the promises he made when he was campaigning and still accomplish something significant--and maybe get re-elected.
By executive order, Mr. Obama can
(1)Restore our constitutional right of habeas corpus;
(2)Close the illegal concentration camp in Guantanamo;
(3)Stop CIA kidnappings--"renditions"--all over the world;
(4)Close all the the illegal CIA prisons and torture camps;
(5)End the US invasion of Pakistan, and US attacks inside Pakistan;
(6)Quit blocking court decisions overturning the unconstitutional
"Don't Ask-Don't Tell" law.
He can do all of that in one busy day. And he can maybe save our country and his presidency.
Bert Hornback
By executive order, Mr. Obama can
(1)Restore our constitutional right of habeas corpus;
(2)Close the illegal concentration camp in Guantanamo;
(3)Stop CIA kidnappings--"renditions"--all over the world;
(4)Close all the the illegal CIA prisons and torture camps;
(5)End the US invasion of Pakistan, and US attacks inside Pakistan;
(6)Quit blocking court decisions overturning the unconstitutional
"Don't Ask-Don't Tell" law.
He can do all of that in one busy day. And he can maybe save our country and his presidency.
Bert Hornback
Abonneren op:
Posts (Atom)