Letter to the Editor
President Bush is asking America to sacrifice again for the Iraq war, but not all Americans have to sacrifice. Rich America isn't sacrificing. As poor America tightens the belt and sends their sons to die, the rich keep getting more tax cuts. Just this week the Senate wants to give oil companies another 18 billion dollars at a time when oil companies are making record profits. With the Downing Street memo we know that the war was a fraud. So I question if it i good for America to give tax cuts to the rich while the poor have to fight and die. I think that Americans should not join the military until Bush makes the rich pay their fair share and he has a plan about how to get us out of a state of perpetual war.
People no longer trust the Republican controlled corporate mainstrean media and are turning to the internet to get their information. That is because corporate media giants fail to cover stories so as not to upset the Bush Administration. For example, ABC News and CBS news have yet to run a single story about the Downing Street Memos, which prove that George W. Bush deliberately and systematically lied about his reasons for invading Iraq.
The more the media covers up the more people distrust them and are turning to alternative media outlets that aren't controlled by money interests. As it turns out readers can get better information from independent sources than the can from the well funded but tightly controlled TV networks.
Letter to the Editor
As the founder of the Church of Reality - a religion based on believing in everything that is real - I consider both the decisions made by the Supreme Court to be a victory for religious freedom. The Texas case correctly allows the Ten Commandments to be displayed among other historical images and is distinguished from the Kentucky case where the Ten Commandments was clearly an endorsement of a specific class of religion. This was an important victory for religious freedom because we only have religious freedom as long as the government remains religiously neutral. There must always be room in America for a reality based religion because if the government takes reality away from the people, what do you have left?
Letter to the Editor
I find it interesting that people think that the Ten Commandment is the basis of US law. In reading the Commandments I see only three of them, killing, stealing, and lying as having any relationship to current law. The other seven are totally legal. Some people want to replace the law with biblical law, but what would that mean? Exodus 31:15: says, "Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death." And that comes from the same book in the Bible that the Ten Commandments come from. I don't think WalMart is going to have an easy time hiring help if we start enforcing that biblical law.
Letter to the Editor
Defense Secretary Rumsfield doesn't like the outcome of the Iranian elections where the winning candidate won in a landslide getting 60% of the vote. Rumsfield called it a mock election complaining that the 8 candidates they had to choose from were somehow fixed.
Here in the USA we don't have 8 candidates to choose from. We have only 2 which are chosen by political insiders. We had Skull and Bones man Bush vs. Skull and Bones man Kerry, with the electronic voting machines under the control of the Republican party. Bush won the previous election only because the Republican controlled Supreme Court stopped the vote count and illegally declared Bush the winner. This election was won by rigging voting machines in Florida to swap the totals in Democrat dominated counties in Florida.
So it seems to me that we are hardly in a position to criticize the outcome of Iran's elections. But Rummy would have to make that claim because he is moving to invade Iran next. Who would have thought we would see the day when Iran had freer elections than America?
As many of you know, one of my web sites is flagburning.org. So whenever the Republicans pass their annual constitutional amendment to take away flag burning I get some radio interviews. My good buddy Kevin Miller of WPTF Radio Raleigh NC calls me every time the flag burning issue comes up. I'm the guy the love to hate in the south, but this time there was less resistance to the idea of flag burning than there used to be. I think that the Patriot Act and the Bush administration is making people wake up and think twice about the issues of surrendering their freedoms.
This time I made a recording of my interview so that everyone can listen to the debate. The interview was 2 hours but after editing out the comercials it's only 50 minutes long (8.7mb). Several callers brought up important points that are worth thinking about.
One issue that people don't grasp is that once this passes, how will it be abused? For example, once it becomes a crime to desecrate the flag, then all they have to do is print a flag on anything and that becomes protected. So if they want you to carry a mandated ID card that has a tracking microchip in it, that card will have a flag on it. The microchip will also have a flag on it. So destroying the ID card will be construed as desecrating the flag. It is an anti-sedition law and every time we give up our freedoms we become less free. And if we turn this country into a nation that is no longer free then the flag no longer means anything. That to me is the worse form of desecration imaginable.
Letter to the Editor
The Supreme Court has again expanded the power of the government at the expense of The People ruling that city governments can force home owners out of their homes so that the city can give their land to corporations for private development to generate tax revenue. We are no longer a country where the interests of The People outweigh the interests of corporations and of the government serving itself. Now WalMart can take your home if they bribe the right city council members to do so. Another sad day for America as it slides into becoming fascist state. I want to burn a flag while I still can.
Letter to the Editor
Porter Goss, Bush's "Intelligence Czar" says he knows where Osama bin Laden is, but he's not saying right now. I know where he's hiding. Or should I say I know where Porter Goss thinks ne's is hiding. It's hardly a secret when you know how the Bush Cult thinks.
Porter Goss thinks bin Laden is hiding in Iran.
Why? How do I know this?
It's simple. Bush is in the process of putting together an invasion of Iran for the 2006 mid term elections (wag the dog) to distract the people again from the gutting of America by the Corporate/Dominion alliance. So in order to help justify this coming war they will need to put bin Laden in Iran. So that's where he is.
The way the intelligence community works in this administration is that the President tells them what he wants reality to be and then they go out and fabricate the story that supports the president's fiction.
Porter Goss is under orders from Bush to find bin Laden in Iran, so that's where he will be. By the time next summer rolls around, Osama bin Laden will have been discovered to be secretly in control of Iran and in control of their nuclear arsenal. And like Iraq, we will be required to go to war over it. I feel a draft coming.
For Immediate Release: June 19, 2005
For More Info: Bob Fertik http://democrats.com/contact
Web page: http://democrats.com/milbank
Democrats.com Seeks Apology for Washington Post Attack
On June 19, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank attacked Democrats.com by name for the third time in 10 days.
Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com, replied in detail to Milbank's attack in his blog:
http://democrats.com/milbank
Fertik also sent a Letter to the Editor of the Post requesting an apology.
To the Editor:
Re: Memos, 'Wing Nuts' and 'Hit Lists' by Ombudsman Michael Getler, June 19
On behalf of more than 300,000 supporters of Democrats.com, I write to express my outrage over Dana Milbank's libelous charge that our "followers have long been harassing this and other reporters and their families with hateful, obscene and sometimes anti-Semitic speech."
Democrats.com strictly prohibits personal attacks and takes immediate action against anyone who violates this rule.
Mr. Milbank never documented any personal attacks from Democrats.com supporters, so I am appalled that you published the allegation as though it were factual, and did not ask me for a response to this despicable charge.
I therefore request an apology from the Washington Post.
Sincerely,
Bob Fertik
President
p.s. I have published this letter, and all background correspondence, on my blog at:
http://democrats.com/milbank
----
This reminds me of a battle I had with Salon Magazine where one of their reporters, Jennifer Liberto, decided that I was the publisher of Media Whores Online and Bartcop was the writer. Salon refused to fix the story.
Are we Americans living in a cult? I have been working on my cult pages for my Church of Reality and I came across this really good 100 question cult test. It was written by a guy who was exposing Alcoholics Anonymous as a cult and focuses mostly on religious cults. But religions aren't the only cults. More common are nation cults. So take this test from the perspective of America as the test cult and see if you think we are living in a cult.
Letter to the Editor
Thank you Senator Durbin for finally standing up to tell the truth about America's torture chambers! It's about time someone is telling the truth the way it really is. When America acts like the Nazis, the Communists, and like power crazed third word dictators then it is a act of patriotism to stand up and call it like it is. At what point did telling the truth become a bad thing? At what point does telling the truth put our troops at risk? What puts Americans at risk is what the truth is. We really do torture people to death. It really is happening. We are not as bad as the Nazis, but we are heading in that direction. If stories about American torture camps is bad for America then what we need to do is stop doing the torture - and not trying to keep it a secret.
Letter to the Editor
Is the Guantanamo Bay prison camp an embarrassment to the United States? I suppose it all depends on who you believe. If you believe the American press which says that the Koran was inadvertently urinated upon then it's no big deal. People accidentally urinate on holy books all the time according to us. But some people in other parts of the world aren't believing it. The problem is - we really are acting like the Nazi's and we need to stop it. We have become our own enemy.
From the The Sunday Times - Britain. You don't see this in the American news media. Do you think the press would ignore this if Clinton faked a war?
MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.
The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.
This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.
“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.
The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.
The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.
“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.
The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003.
The briefing paper is certain to add to the pressure, particularly on the American president, because of the damaging revelation that Bush and Blair agreed on regime change in April 2002 and then looked for a way to justify it.
There has been a growing storm of protest in America, created by last month’s publication of the minutes in The Sunday Times. A host of citizens, including many internet bloggers, have demanded to know why the Downing Street memo (often shortened to “the DSM” on websites) has been largely ignored by the US mainstream media.
The White House has declined to respond to a letter from 89 Democratic congressmen asking if it was true — as Dearlove told the July meeting — that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” in Washington.
The Downing Street memo burst into the mainstream American media only last week after it was raised at a joint Bush-Blair press conference, forcing the prime minister to insist that “the facts were not fixed in any shape or form at all”.
John Conyers, the Democratic congressman who drafted the letter to Bush, has now written to Dearlove asking him to say whether or not it was accurate that he believed the intelligence was being “fixed” around the policy. He also asked the former MI6 chief precisely when Bush and Blair had agreed to invade Iraq and whether it is true they agreed to “manufacture” the UN ultimatum in order to justify the war.
He and other Democratic congressmen plan to hold their own inquiry this Thursday with witnesses including Joe Wilson, the American former ambassador who went to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore for its nuclear weapons programme.
The web site Wikipedia deleted the entry for the definition of the Church of Reality from it's database. Wikipedia which claims to be a the free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit is nothing of the sort. It seems to be intolerant of reality based religion.