Oh, so rape by instrumentation isn’t wrong in your opinion? :rolleyes:
Dumbfuck.
Mrs. Lieberman, perhaps.
Olent, did you notice that if you follow your link, we get to this photo which is supposed to be the high school graduation photo of the soldier in this photo?
The fuck?! Man, that went up and came down fast. It was a still photo of my comrades and some other protesters when I posted the link. I’ll have to ask the Mods to delete it.
Jonathan, mass movements start from small movements and actions like that. They don’t just spring up all of themselves. The mass anti-war movement grew from people like the six or seven people there who decided to take some sort of action just to give the seedling movements a little more profile. I really don’t think any damage was done at all.
Don’t bother, it’s some sort of rotating set up and one just has to click the “next” link on the page to get to it. (At least that’s how the page loaded in Opera, your browser may vary.)
As a matter of fact, several of the photos that have made the rounds do indicate torture and while no photographs have (yet) turned up, there are several charges of murder running through the reports about our abuses of prisoners.
Of course, if you insist on following Senater Lieberman’s lack of logic, I suppose we will be forced to remind you that none of those imprisoned Iraqis had anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (inasmuch as we had them bottled up in their own country and they were not participants in al Qaida–adminstration lies to the contrary, notwithstanding) and none of those people who were tortured in prison had anything to do with the incident in Fallujah (as they were in prison being tortured at the time of said incident).
Your argument (and Lieberman’s) is rather obnoxiously reminiscent of the people who claim we were right to put American citizens in concentration camps during WWII because people of the same ethnic background bombed Pearl Harbor.
tom, I might be mistaken, but IIRC the Japanese were denied citizenship until sometime after WWII, or at least it was well-nigh impossible for the majority of them to get. None of this excuses what happened to them, of course (though, on the bright side, at least we didn’t gas them).
You do realize that those who our soldiers tortured* probably* are not the same guys you were talking about in Fallujah. Unless you think of Iraqis as some sort of Borg collective, all interchangable and whatnot.
Also, there was no need for the Iraqis to apologize for 9/11, because they had fuck-all to do with it.
Not that it matters. What our guys did was criminal in any circumstances. You get that, right? As in, there are no circumstances where what they did would be OK? Are we on the same page there, at least?
I don’t see the point in refraining from protesting because it may be dismissed by people who will probably never agree with the protestors. That kind of advice probably comes from the same people who sagely advise every Democratic candidate in the last 20 years to move towards the right.
Issei (first generation immigrant Japanese) were denied ctizenship. However, their children (Nisei) and grandchildren (Sansei) were citizens by right of birth within this country (although they were still treated as second class citizens and many bars were put in the way of their being able to exercise their rights).
Or people who aren’t politically active in general.
After watching part of the hearings, I’m not sure whether to be highly amused or really alarmed by our elected officials in action.
Personally, I’d take Joe Lieberman over a pompous windbag like Ted Kennedy, who preceded his “question” with the most unimpassioned speech I’ve ever heard from a politician. Put down the vodka, Ted. Even Senator Byrd, who soon will be appealing with St. Pete to bend the rules and let a career politician in, could work up more honest to God outrage than Kennedy.
And then we have the schmaltzy Republican senators who practically got out of their chairs to kiss Rumsfeld’s ass. Do we have any politicians, aside from McCain and Lieberman, who have a thought independent of what the party leaders tell them to think?
I guess we’ll see in a few weeks whose head is going to roll over this. It doesn’t look like any of our Senators are going to lose any sleep over it, though.
I don’t think he looked rattled. He just patiently sat and waited for the riff-raff to be removed. He even took a casual sip of water.
Please send a mailing address forthwith so I might bill you for the industrial cleaning chemicals I need to eliminate that image from my brain.
Robin
How come he was still there at the end of the clip, then?
And that ‘riff-raff’, as you so patronizingly put it (or were you just channeling for him?), are the ones whose lives he has quite a bit of political power over. You’re damn straight we’ll take any opportunity to tell him directly to his face what we think of him and his buddy Dick’s ventriloquist dummy - er, boss in the Oval Office.
This isn’t the only political thing Blue Shirt (aw, hell - his name is Ben) has done this week, this month, this year, or even over his whole career as an activist. It’s one small piece of the puzzle. And I still say good on him for doing it. I wish I had been there myself.
If all your friends wanted to do was to let Rummy knwo how much they despise him, well congrats, mission accomplished. But as satisfying as that must have felt, it’s not enough.
Why do you refuse to understand the antics of your activist friends aren’t winning over the people you need to–heck, those of us who want those sumbitches out of office are telling you that the far left tantrums are alienating us, and we’re on your side!
“Rattling cages” is insignificant–your goal is to remove Bush and his cronies from office, right? Get large scale, create a mass movement, make alliances with other groups who despise Bush as much as you do.
Consult with JC–the man knows media and how to get access.
I’ll help too because we have the same goal–to get Rumsfeld to resign and then to throw Bush out of office.
One the subject of access to the seat of power, which has very little to do with Senator Lieberman’s “because Joe hit me there is no reason to think its not OK for me to hit Jack” position, the President was in Dubuque, Prairie du Chien and LaCrosse on Friday. He was welcomed by what the media described as cheering crowds. True I guess, but the crowds were all inside and the only way anyone could get inside was to get a pass from the local Republican Party apparatus. We are rapidly getting to the point that the only people who get to see the President, the Cabinet Secretaries and the other big wigs are the people who are screened as being highly unlikely to tell them something they might not want to hear or react to what the big wig has to say with anything other than the approved manner. There are few ways left to “petition the government” except to cause what may be a counter productive disturbance at a Congressional hearing. It may well be silly, it may well be futile, it may well harden the big wigs in their determination to follow a bad policy (stay the course!), but short of actually waiting for the election (when it may well be too late) there are not many options left for ordinary people to influence the holders of power. It’s pretty obvious that these message boards are not having much effect on the big boys in DC.
On a happier note, the 389th Engineer Battalion (Combat), a local Army Reserve outfit, was mobilized last year and has been at the Baghdad airport since last March building roads, barracks. They have had a few casualties but, thank God, no killed. They are coming home today. Good people who did a hard job well. This is no day to suggest that the fight they served in was an unnecessary fight or has turned in to a fiasco. They know that. This is a day to be joyful for their return and buy ‘em a beer.
If it’s getting that bad that our leaders are taking on the mantle of absolutism, the time may not be far off when we will need a second American Revolution.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants” Thomas Jefferson
Well, no shit, Sherlock! Why do you think I said that’s not the only thing Ben has done in his political career? What do you think “It’s only one small piece of the puzzle”? Or did you think I meant the puzzle was constructed entirely of ‘antics’ like these?
OK, how about organizing an action in support of gay marriage? Ben’s not helping organize that; I am. 17th of May, at the DC Superior Courthouse. 4:30 PM, a handful of gay couples are going to demand marriage licenses; presumably they’ll be denied. At 5:30 we’re holding a press conference and rally with gay and straight speakers about why we shouldn’t have to wait for the politicians to move on this. You coming?
Yep, I can Metro in to DC after work; see you there.
Much better. The local news programs here in Philadelphia showed footage of some folks in t-shirts and mentioned that they were yelling for Rumsfeld to be fired. There was no interview with them. There was no explanation of why exactly they wanted Rumsfeld out of office.
Here in Philly, there’s a group of activists who make very large puppets. People on both sides have called them silly and told them they’re wasting their time. But shots of the puppets get on the news. Their message gets airtime.
From watching the news, I was as clueless about the blueshirt as I was when that Soy Bomb guy danced at the MTV awards.