Compliments From Fellow Blogger

Saboma at Maryannaville has very kindly acknowledged by blog with the following badges:

Not sure if this is actually deserved, but many thanks to Saboma for her continued support.

Please, We Need Your Vote - Now

As courageously drafted by Dennis Kucinich, H.Res.333 was filed last week. It is the first and most central ground statement toward impeaching Vice President Cheney. It was Cheney who led the fabricating charge as a case to invade Iraq. The charge was based on phony weapons of mass destruction. Now, almost as if it were timed to coincide with that initiative, former CIA head George Tenet revealed that they knew that the evidence was flimsy, erroneous and just plain bogus all along, but Cheney tauted his exaggerations in the threat anyway. This is without question the most momentous issue of our time and, whether you agree that Cheney should be impeached,or not, your voice is needed in order to speak out by telling Congress what they should do about it. You can either vote yes or you can vote no. Either way, we cannot afford to remain silent.

Of course, anyone who's been honestly and fairly paying attention to this also knows that since the exposure of the Downing Street Minutes, we were misled into the Iraq quagmire by an executive branch that could not be bothered with the actual facts nor a serious policy debate about those facts. When Richard Clarke spoke the same thing he was smeared in the corporate media for speaking up about his truth as has every other previous whistle blower. What will the contemptuous talking heads say now that the chief of the CIA at the time is another and perhaps the most clinching, confirming witness?

Apparently what galled Tenet enough for him to spill the beans on his own complicity (other than an O.J. scale book advancement) was that the Bush administration, in its typical cowardly fashion, worked the media in order to pin him with the entire blame for the failure of its wrong-headed strategic debacle.

"Tenet told us it was a slam dunk." Cheney pleaded on TV, as the five time military deferment kings again tried to escape any public responsibility for his own primary malfeasance. Yet, in an astonishing twist, Tenet revealed what the words "slam dunk" actually meant in the context that it was intended.

In his book, Tenet confessed that he was not being asked at the time to vouch for the quality of intelligence. He says that he was being asked if the case could be sold to the American people. That's all that was cared about, not whether there was any factual support for their arguments. It was about whether they could get away with bum rushing the rest of us. Therefore, when Tenet said "slam dunk", what he mean twas that they were positively sure that they would be able to stuff their pre-cooked intelligence down our throats.

It's with great hope that you can see where this information is incredibly damning. Tenet unleashed the intelligence's community with the equivalent of, "If, I Helped Them Do It". They were not having a policy debate about the strength of the case against Iraq, they were having a sales meeting of con men who plotted how far they could go while cheating us out of our present lives and our children's future lives with the contents of our treasury. They were determined to go all the way with it and at any cost. "Slam dunk" was not an intelligence assessment,it was a sales projection about their conjured up product.

Tenet was neither the victim of a bad rap, nor the unwitting excuse.Instead he was a willing co-conspirator, happy enough to play along with the war fever and collect his ill-gotten medal of freedom while mooching all the other various perks of the power they had seized. The criminal mastermind of the sordid affair was none other than Richard B. Cheney and that truth can no longer be hidden by even this most secretive of administrations.

What will it take for Congress to impeach him and put him on trial in the Senate for highest of all high crimes, launching a war of immoral and unjustifiable aggression that has cost more American lives than it did on 9/11, moreover, upwards of a million Iraqis, based on nothing but deliberate and calculated lies?

What it will take? All that is required is your voice, and the voices of your friends, neighbors and acquaintances. Vote now in the National Impeachment Poll and send your personal messages to Congress at the same time. In just a couple days over 18,000 folks have cast their votes. Everyone who has ever submitted an action page is needed to cast his or her vote in this one. There's no reason why we can't present Congress with a million votes on this, and it can be achieved. Once completed, impeachment hearings will become a reality on Capitol Hill. When that happens, what a handful of corrupt and overpaid pundits may have said will not matter.

Please take the much needed action of voting now, so we can win the victories that are intended as ours just as the Constitution promises,"We The People..."

Make your concerns known by casting your vote at the link below.

http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php

(Courtesy of Maryannaville)

Best Political Blog???

Well, someone (my good friend Saboma to be precise) has nominated this blog as 'Best Political Blog', which is very flattering (and a little undeserved but hey, I'm not going to knock a compliment!!). Apparently you can cast your vote as to which site you believe is the 'Best Political Blog' by clicking on the link. I guess I will have to add the badge in my sidebar and you never know, maybe someone, somewhere might agree.

Thanks again Saboma.

Close Guantanamo Bay

With thanks to Saboma at Maryannaville™:

President Bush is holding nearly 400 detainees without criminal charges nor trials at Guatanamo Bay. For the first time, some of his top advisors have called for closing this affront to international law, including his own Secretary of Defense. This split inside the Administration gives us a real chance close Guantanamo forever.

There is a new campaign to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The campaign group's name is Avaaz The whole of this group's purpose has been toward putting together a global petition in order to close Guantanamo Bay and its prison. The petition will be running in key US newspapers and soon as they have signatures from every country so why not join in and add your convictions toward having the place closed down for good.

Avaaz.org is a community of global citizens who take action on the major issues facing the world today. Its aim is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people -- and not just political elites and unaccountable corporations -- shape global decisions. Avaaz. org members are taking action for a more just and peaceful world and a vision of globalization with a human face. Avaaz means voice in a variety of Asian, Middle Eastern and European languages. There are already 1 million people from 182 countries that form the Avaaz.org community.

I've added my name to the list. Please, will you help out by joining in and signing your name in support of this action?

Sign the Petition Here

Thoggers of the World Unite

Obsolete has very kindly tagged me (as well as four other blogs) as a 'thinking blogger'. While I am very grateful for the compliment, it means I have to tag five other blogs. So, my Thoggers are:

1) Ten Percent
2) Theft is Good
3) Wilson's Blogmanac
4) Maryannaville^TM
5) Reality-Based Educator

Apologies to those I missed out, I only wish I could do ten.

Walter Reed Hospital

With thanks to Saboma who drew my attention to it, a soldier inside the Walter Reed Hospital is currently writing a blog. To find out more about the inside story at the hospital, click here.

Rise of the Christofascists

A perfect example of the growing Christofascism, courtesy of my friend Saboma at Maryannaville:

This is the real threat to our democracy.

Guantanamo Detainee Wants to Boycott Trial

Thanks to Saboma at Maryannaville for this one:

A Canadian detainee told his family in a phone call from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he wants to boycott his upcoming trial because he believes it will not be fair, his mother said Thursday.

During the conversation, Khadr said he had little hope of justice from the military commissions and said "he would try, if he can, not to attend the court," Elsamnah said.

The chief military prosecutor for Guantanamo has prepared charges against Khadr that include murder, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism and spying. The charges, however, have not been formally filed and U.S. authorities may alter them as they did this month in the case of Australian detainee David Hicks. [From CNN]

Psyche, Science, and Society

Picked up this blog courtesy of Saboma at Maryannaville, it's well worth checking out. There are many posts about psychological torture that give an interesting insight into the tactics of the US government. It also posted on the recent HBO movie Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which has not been shown in the UK. Luckily, someone has posted the movie in eight parts onto YouTube. As a taster, Part 1 is below:

UPDATE: YouTube have now taken down the 8 part clips, so I have reposted with this promo.

Safeguarding the Internet for Children

I have been asked by Saboma at Maryannaville™ to blog about safeguarding the internet for children. Far too many adult websites allow innocent viewers to observe pornographic material without so much as a password protection system. With that in mind, I would like to request the following of all adult websites:

"Please require a password-protected login before allowing even free access to explicit adult content. We understand that selling porn is your business and we respect your right to make a legal living. But understand our legitimate concerns and work with us. You already have the “warning adult content” on your websites. Yet kids, who are not legal customers of your product, ignore the warning. So to prevent them from having direct access to explicit images, texts and sounds, the simplest way is to have a password-protected login. No more “free tours” before a visitor supplies basic information."

Keep the internet safe for children.