- - Badges? We Don' Need No Stinkin' Badges! - -

So . . . a coupla days ago, Richard "The Chickenhawkhearted" Pearle sez, "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." "The right thing" being, of course, invading Iraq. Note well - this is the first time anyone in The Cheney Gang has admitted publicly that the war is illegal. I don't think anyone in The Gang (except for Rummy) ever says anything that is not calculated - so I conclude that these guys feel safe in saying, "We're above the law." The Guardian has the whole story here.

I just can't pass this up: Jörgen Krönig writing in Die Zeit, as quoted in The Guardian's Press Review:


For most Britons, Mr Bush is just as laughable as he is dangerous, [to them] Mr Bush is just a foolish, uncultivated cowboy, who is linguistically clumsy, who displays an alarmingly limited intelligence, who is a religious fanatic with dubious oil interests and who shoots from the hip.

Now I feel better.

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- - More Bread and Circus - -

William Rivers Pitt, in a truthout editorial, thinks maybe the wrong guy was put in handcuffs yesterday. Excerpts:


In the last two years, CNN has not devoted this much energy and coverage to any story in the manner that is unfolding right now. Enron, the stock market, the reasons for September 11, the nomination of Henry Kissinger to chair the investigation into that event, the disinformation that was pushed by the Bush administration before the attack on Iraq, the civilian casualties during the attack on Iraq, the American troop casualties during and after the attack on Iraq, the missing weapons of mass destruction, the missing Osama bin Laden, the war in Afghanistan that is far from over, the outing of a CIA agent by the Bush administration in an act of political revenge, and about two hundred other explosive stories did not get the attention that Michael Jackson is getting now . . .

TV news viewers who think they are getting the hard truth from the mainstream media just forgot Bush exists, forgot the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have dogged his state visit to Britain, forgot the attacks in Iraq, forgot the dead soldiers, forgot September 11, forgot everything except a mutant in a Bronco who lives in a place called Neverland.

They just showed Jackson in handcuffs. The talking heads almost fainted. God bless America.


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- - Here . . . Breathe THIS, Asshole! - -

RFK, Jr., writing in Rolling Stone:


George w. Bush seems to be trying to take us all the way back to the Dark Ages by undermining the very principles of our environmental rights, which civilized nations have always recognized. Ancient Rome's Code of Justinian guaranteed the use to all citizens of the "public trust" or commons -- those shared resources that cannot be reduced to private property -- the air, flowing water, public lands, wandering animals, fisheries, wetlands and aquifers.

When Roman law broke down in Europe during the Dark Ages, feudal kings began to privatize the commons. In the early thirteenth century, when King John also attempted to sell off England's fisheries and erect navigational tolls on the Thames, his subjects rose up and confronted him at Runnymede, forcing him to sign the Magna Carta, which includes provisions guaranteeing the rights of free access to fisheries and waters.

The whole piece is here.

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- - And just in case you're lost . . . - -

A Current Affairs Primer by Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers includes:


Q. And, don't tell me: After the election, back to neo-con 101?

A. You're a quick study. You got it. If Bush wins, the neo-con attack dogs are unleashed and off we go once again into the bloodred sunset.

Q. Could our government be so mendacious, so greedy, so power-hungry? I don't want to believe that, even of a Bush Administration. Nobody could be that manipulative, so traitorous to American values and long-terms national interests.

A. Wanna bet? The neo-cons (or neo-conmen, as some call them) have spent a good dozen years, and more, getting ready for the day when they could finally see their strategies working in the real world, with them in control. With the implosion of Soviet communism and the installation of a malleable Bush Jr. in the White House - and the monstrous 9/11 attack - they finally got that opportunity, and they're not about to abandon their long-range plans.

Be at peace.