Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Media? Via Palestinian Mothers

It seems that the Western media is after Arab media platforms, or are they only after the deep Arab pockets? People in the Middle East are still in a state of shock after last week’s Yahoo business venture of buying Maktoob.com, the only Arab internet portal based in Jordan. (Please visit Palestinian Mothers to read the rest...)

american peace- the facade

anyone else see the writing on the wall for america? tpm has been following the 'town hall meetings' around the country centered on the health care issue and things are getting fairly scary out there. led by the likes of glenn beck, sean hannity, lou dobbs, et al, the teabaggers/birthers/ordinary americans have been disruptive, disrespectful, and downright hostile towards the congress folks they elected-- or didn't. the problem isn't with dissent- the problem is with dissolution.

because that's what these folks are too stupid to realize- they are pushing for the dissolution of the united states of america. these people claim to stand up for the constitution but the only right that they seem to recognize is the one to bear arms. look, coming on top of the hording of bullets and ammo- carrying a concealed weapon holding a placard that wants to overthrow the government takes on a whole new meaning. the right wing doesn't just think politics as usual- the rethuglican party wants to annhilate anyone left of where they think. put the pieces together and it's downright scary.

hannity, et al, is laughing at the rest of the nation because they know what they are whipping up- using race, gender, political affiliation, sexual orientation, etc. as wedge issues- these people are the mouthpieces spreading the misinformation and lies to their minions while the rest of us bask in the glow that they aren't running the show officially anymore. make no mistake- they are working overtime to take back the states one state at a time- from the local governments on up. and, they are looking at taking back this country by force.

taking a look at the escalation of the right wing tactics since the 2008 election, folks should be afraid. verbal escalated to mob mentality even during the campaign- whipped up by the likes of sarah palin (who is still throwing the red meat), limbaugh, and the rest. the tea bag parties and hording of bullets and ammo- the rise of the militia groups again- and now carrying weaponry to an event that the president will be attending- well, i can't see things de-escalating.

we shouldn't turn the other cheek- we should be aware and vigilant. because they are prepared for war- and we aren't. in fact, they are waging it right now- and it is another civil war.

"He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' "

Poem
Mending Wall, by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

This post is motiviated by a comment on a post today at Lenin's Tomb.

Cross posted at Antemedius and Blazing Indiscretions.

My Muse Busts Chops (mine)

Sometimes it takes a headline to jolt the senses enough for my muse to rise up and begin to move me to write.

I had her look at the headlines below and she smirked, rolled her eyes and said, "You've got to be kidding me? Those headlines aren't inspiring, they're, unbeknownst to their authors, friggin’ rhetorical!" I responded incredulously. Really? You think so? I ducked and she began to furiously break each of them down for me. The headline comes first, followed by her detailed analysis.

Tucker Carlson and Dana Perino Join Fox News as Contributors

No shit! Couldn't have seen that one coming...

Republican Insiders: Cheney Is Hurting the Party

No shit! You reap what you sow, I suppose.

Bair: Some Bank CEO’s Will be Fired

No shit! (As well they should be!)

911 Mastermind Questioned About Iraq/Al Qaeda Link During Waterboardings

No shit!

Media Shocked, Shocked, Shocked (I tell ya!) That Pelosi Criticizes CIA

No shit! Liberal media bias my ass! The MSM are a bunch of egomaniacal corporate friggin’ lapdogs!

Miss California on Cable News: Fox & Friends Gives Carrie Prejean Her Chance

Oh my goodness! Who’d have ever imagined that one, Wally!

43 Children Stun-Gunned at Prisons ‘Take Your Kid to Work’ Day

No sh-
Wait... You snuck a headline in on me!

This one’s got legs. Not too shoddy.
That one, my dear, is a headline that,
Although shocking, no pun intended,
Hasn’t a rhetorical bone in its body.

Now, if you’ll not bother me again,
Until you stop being a nitwit,
I might, sometime in the future,
take you seriously... No shit.

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

"Fearmongering Primitive Minds"? They *Are* Us!

Following up on this earlier post of yours truly - the usual suspects are still at it again - aided and abetted by the media, of course:

Read More +/-

First, we have this:

Fox Shows Photos Of Muslim Men: ‘Would You Want A Guy Like This Living In Your Backyard?’
Since President Obama’s announcement last week that he would shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center within on year, Fox News has done its best to frighten its viewers about the rule:

SEAN HANNITY: That’s somewhat frightening, you’re going to close Guantanamo Bay, you don’t know what’s going to happen, you don’t know where you’re going to put these people. [1/23/09]
GLENN BECK: Somebody told me that if this goes through and we put 200 people into this system, that it will shut down our justice system. Our justice system just won’t be able to do it.[1/20/09]
BRIAN KILMEADE: You’re talking about the worst of the Taliban, the worst of al Qaeda, and we have to let them go, give them trials? Why do we need to do this and compromise the CIA and our intelligence bureau — a lot of the intelligence was built on these guys, was done using our clandestine operations. So we have to expose that for these trials? [1/22/09]

Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) said last week that the U.S. could hold the detainees in federal prisons, just like we hold thousands of other dangerous inmates. This morning, Fox and Friends responded by sending a reporter to Murtha’s district to flash photos of suspected terrorists — their only identification being Muslim headgear — and ask residents, “Would you want a guy like this living in your backyard?” Watch it:



Despite Fox’s suggestion that detainees could be pitching a tent in your backyard, Guantanamo detainees transferred to the U.S. for trials would be housed in federal prisons — where dozens of dangerous terrorists are already held. In fact, the United States has already successfully prosecuted 145 terrorism cases in federal court, a sharp contrast to the series of debacles in Guantanamo prosecutions.
Later in the segment, the Fox hosts repeated some of the right wing’s favorite myths about Guantanamo. They endorsed the “great idea” conservatives have been pushing of sending detainees to Alcatraz or a “haunted” prison in West Virginia:

CLAYTON MORRIS: We’ve got Alcatraz that exists. We give tours out there. Put them out on an island on Alcatraz, which is under our jurisdiction. What about Moundsville State Penitentiary? Someone from West Virginia wrote me and said it’s a haunted prison. It’s vacant.

In other words, Fox News and the right wing would prefer to send Guantanamo detainees to theme parks rather than to maximum-security federal prisons.

Then, we have that:

Rove: ‘One year from now, Gitmo won’t be closed.’

In a recent speech at the University of Miami, Karl Rove expressed his pessimism that President Obama will be able to carry through on his pledge to close Guantanamo:

“One year from now, Gitmo won’t be closed…. If it is, there will be an uproar in the U.S. about where to put these people.”

Indeed, it will be very difficult to close Guantanamo, made harder in fact by the incompetence of the Bush administration. This weekend, the Washington Post reported that the administration’s plans to “quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the [Gitmo] detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.”
Update: Today’s Progress Report debunks the right-wing myths about closing Guantanamo.

And then, we have that as well:

Gregory allowed 61-detainee falsehood to stand unrebutted on Meet the Press
On the January 25 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, host David Gregory allowed House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to repeat the falsehood that, in Boehner's words, "we've already found" that 61 detainees released from the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay are now "back on the battlefield." In fact, the figure, which comes from the Pentagon, includes 43 former prisoners who are suspected of, but have not been confirmed as, having "return[ed] to the fight." Moreover, even the Pentagon's claim that it has confirmed that 18 former Guantánamo detainees have returned to the battlefield has been questioned by experts.
After Gregory asked if President Obama's executive order requiring that the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay be closed within a year was "realistic," Boehner responded: "[W]hat do you do with these 270 prisoners? Some of them you might be able to release, but we've already found 61 of those that we've released back on the battlefield."
Gregory did not note that according to the Pentagon, the 61-detainee figure includes 43 former prisoners who are suspected of, but have not been confirmed as, having engaged in terrorist activity -- detainees who have not been "already found [...] back on the battlefield," as Boehner asserted. Indeed, as Media Matters for America noted, during a January 13 press conference, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell stated: "The new numbers are, we believe, 18 confirmed and 43 suspected of returning to the fight. So 61 in all former Guantanamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight."
Further, the Pentagon's definition of "returning to the fight" has been challenged by some analysts. As CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen noted on the January 23 edition of Anderson Cooper 360: "[R]eturning to the fight, in Pentagon terms, could be engaging in anti-American propaganda, something that's not entirely surprising if you have been locked up in a prison camp for several years without charge." Bergen further stated: "[W]hen you really boil it down, the actual number of people whose names we know are about eight out of the 520 that have been released [from Guantánamo], so a little above 1 percent, that we can actually say with certainty have engaged in anti-American terrorism or insurgence activities since they have been released. ... If the Pentagon releases more information about specific people, I think it would be possible to -- to potentially agree with them. But, right now, that information isn't out there."
Additionally, Seton Hall University School of Law professor Mark Denbeaux -- who has written several reports about Guantánamo detainees, including some challenging the Pentagon's definition of "battlefield" capture and published detainee recidivism rates -- has disputed the Pentagon's figures.

Now, here's the underlying problem:

1 in 4 Americans believe the Bush administration committed war crimes

In a new telephone survey, Rasmussen Reports has found that 25 percent of voters “believe President Bush and senior members of his administration are guilty of war crimes.” Forty-four percent of Democrats and 21 percent of unaffiliated voters believe that war crimes were committed while just 4 percent of Republicans believe the same.

Only 25% percent of Americans realize, or understand, or accept the reality that war crimes have been committed - are still being committed - in their names.

Which falls pretty much in line with this older poll which revealed that 44% of Americans approve torture.

As I said before:

(...) the barbarians and their savage followers are still living among us indeed ... and they are doing everything they can to keep us down to their primitive, uncivilized and savage level.

The problem here is that the primitive mind-thinking barbarians and savages appear to constitute the majority ...

Vive la civilisation, eh?

Once again: we have met the enemy ... and the enemy is ourselves.