agitprop version 2.0

Let's Gas The Peaceniks!

Did the U.S. government utilize biological weapons materials against war protesters in Washington, D.C. last weekend? Well then, how do you explain this:

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Small amounts of a bacteria that causes "rabbit fever" were found on Washington's National Mall last weekend as thousands of protesters marched against the Iraq War, U.S. health authorities said on Saturday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said several government environmental air monitors in the Mall area detected low levels of Francisella tularensis bacteria that cause Tularemia, commonly known as rabbit fever, on Sept. 24-25.

I wonder why the CDC waited until Friday to release this information--a full five days after the protest. Oh, by the way, the disease is airborne.

The CDC also said the bacteria can be used as a weapon if made into an aerosol that could be inhaled. "The bacteria that cause Tularemia occur widely in nature and could be isolated and grown in quantity in a laboratory, although manufacturing an effective aerosol weapon would require considerable sophistication," the CDC said.

The Washington Post said the germ that causes tularemia is considered a biohazard because it is highly infectious and was tested in the 1960s by the United States as a biological weapon.

Don't tell me that it was a random fluke of nature that Tularemia just happened to be floating through the air that Saturday afternoon. About 200,000 critics of the current regime descending on the nation's capital to protest the regime provided a perfect opportunity to test out the latest in biological weaponry. Sounds to me like the Anthrax attacks all over again, except this time the government screwed up and no one died.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the government released the toxins, but it sounds too fishy for my skeptical ears.

What's So Friendly About 'Friendly Fire'?

Move over Cindy Sheehan. The Pentagon (and their cadre of right-wing chickenhawk yellow elephant lackeys) has a new family to demonize and slander--the Tillman family. Why? Because they want to know why their dead son was used as a pawn in a Pentagon propaganda exercise.

Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. The army knew that Tillman died from "friendly fire" yet General John Abizaid awarded Tillman the Silver Star and the Purple Heart on the basis of a citation report that said that Tillman was killed by enemy forces. This report contained a detailed account of the alleged battle (which the Army knew had never taken place). Five weeks after his memorial service on May 3, 2004 the Tillman family was told that their son was actually killed by "friendly fire".

I wonder what prompted the Pentagon to lie about Tillman's death and turn him into an uber-American hero? What negative damning story that surfaced in late April 2004 did the Pentagon want to divert attention from? Hmm.

Tillman became the poster child for military heroism in the middle of Bush's 2004 campaign. He was used as a propaganda tool just like Private Jessica Lynch was in 2003.  According to The Chronic, Pat Tillman's family wants to know why testimony from fellow soldiers was changed and why the military lied about the "friendly-fire" aspect of his death:

Mary Tillman says that’s how Pat would have wanted to be remembered, as an individual, not as a stock figure or political prop. But she also believes “Pat was a real hero, not what they used him as.” For the moment, all that is left are the memories and the thick binders spread across Mary Tillman’s dining room table in San Jose. As she waits for the Pentagon investigators to finish their new probe, she wonders whether they will ask the hard questions. Like other family members, “I just want accountability,” she said. “I want answers.”

I am deeply suspicious about the circumstances of this story. Blogger Newsguy goes so far as to ask Was Pat Tillman Victim of a Fragging Incident? During the Vietnam War, fragging referred to "the assassination of an officer by his own troops, usually by means of a grenade." Maybe the army intentionally disposed of Tillman because he disliked President Bush and was a Noam Chomsky fan:

The Chronicle also revealed that interviews “show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known -- a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought, and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author.”. . .

A colleague who served with Tillman for more than a year in Iraq and Afghanistan, said: “We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. ... We were talking. And Pat said, 'You know, this war is so f— illegal.' And we all said, 'Yeah.' That's who he was. He totally was against Bush.”

How dare Tillman question the wisdom of Dear Leader's decision to invade Iraq! Only a pro-terrorist communist sympathizer would do such a thing! In all seriousness I do believe Pat Tillman is a real hero. He gave up his football career to join the Army Rangers not to invade Iraq but to hunt down Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Treason doesn't come close to describing the Pentagon's deceitful actions to cover up the truth behind his death.

Stay tuned for more updates on this story. I assume the plot will thicken in the days and weeks to come.

tags: afghanistan pentagon iraq war on terror impeach bush pat tillman

Watch Your Back Ron Jeremy!

Sagging poll numbers? Well then, it's time to resurrect an old battle from The Culture War™.

The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has pledged to carry on John Ashcroft's War on Porn™. Gonzales is currently mobilizing the FBI to fight the evil pornographic menace. They are going to take fight directly to the pornographers with various pre-emptive strikes, undercover missions, and counter-pornographic measures. They're going to smoke 'em out of their holes.   

        

More coverage of the War on Porn can be found at the following porn-free blogs:

[The Heretik]    [Blogenlust]   [Tattered Coat]

porn squad war on porn alberto gonzales impeach bush

America, Circa 2005

          

Who's the one getting f*%ked over again?    

Faith-Based Disaster Relief

Hulkaleezza to the rescue:

BAYOU LA BATRE - After fending off criticism that help came too slowly for Hurricane Katrina's black victims, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nodded in agreement Sunday to a call for patience.

"Wait for the Lord," the Rev. Malone Smith Jr. told Rice and the rest of the Pilgrim Rest AME Zion congregation outside Mobile.

"There are some things the president can do; there are some things the government can do," Smith told about 300 worshippers. "But God can do all things. I want you to know he's never late. He's always on time."

Rice, the Bush administration's chief defender against charges that the government's sluggish response showed racial insensitivity, later echoed the call for patience.

"The Lord is going to come on time, if we just wait," she said.

Be patient you whiny petulant children. All you do is complain!

"Waaahh, we lost our house in the hurricane. We had no food or water for a week. No one helped us, not even the government. Waaahh!!"

Be patient and the Lord will come to your rescue (that is if you pray correctly).

Condi's damage control mission simply gives credence to Kanye West's outburst last Friday. If I may I'd like to revise Mr. West's statment . . . George Bush doesn't care about poor black people or ones that aren't in his administration. Actually, George Bush doesn't care about anyone but his corporate donors.

This also speaks volumes about the Republican attitude toward government. Starve it until it drowns in a bathtub. Then, simply tell citizens that they must be patient and wait for God's help.

hat tip: watertiger

hurricane katrina katrina politics michael brown kanye west

Katrina: Blame It On The Kids

White House Information Minister and stenography session leader Scottie McClellan has argued that we should not play the blame game by assigning responsibility to the Bush administration for their failures to respond to Hurricane Katrina. F*%k that Scottie! I'm gonna play the blame game whether you like it or not you little pudgy faced bastard!

            

The young members of the Presidential Prayer Team for Kids should be charged with dereliction of duty for inadequately praying for both Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA chief Michael Brown. On June 10, 2005 they were given clear orders to pray for Michael Brown. Twenty days later, on July 1, they were specific instructions to pray for Michael Chertoff. Therefore, PPT Kids members had three full months to pray for these leaders before Hurricane Katrina struck on August 28.

"Brownie" was doing a heck of a good job even though he was abandoned by the bratty kids who willfully chose to ignore their Presidential Prayer Team Weekly Briefings. Clearly they either did not pray enough, or their measly prayer effort was not enough to convince God to enable these bureaucrats to save the city of New Orleans.

hurricane katrina katrina politics michael brown

FEMA: We Won't Save Your Ass But We'll Shizzle Fo Yo Kids!

hat tip: Shakespeare's Sister;   image source: Gizoogle

FEMA--the Federal Emergency Management Agency--which has been consistently de-funded since it was annexed by the leviathan Department of Homeland Security, really cares about yo kids! Check out their rap on the FEMA for Kids website:

Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere,
But we've got a few tips, so you can be prepared
For floods, tornadoes, or even a 'quake,
You've got to be ready - so your heart don't break.

Disaster prep is your responsibility
And mitigation is important to our agency.

People helping people is what we do
And FEMA is there to help see you through
When disaster strikes, we are at our best
But we're ready all the time, 'cause disasters don't rest.

You can listen to the rap here in Real format.

This is merely another example of the Potemkin Presidency. The Heretik gives the background on Potemkin and what it means for the United States as a Potemkin country.

If there's one word that I would use to describes Bush and his style of governance it would be fake. These thugs value the facade--political window dressing, image, spin, phony photo-ops. Everything might look good on the surface but beneath the fancy tiled floors everything is rotting and decaying. The talking points are about "making us safer" when in fact we have become less secure and less safe over the past five years. Homeland Security appears to be secure and acts like they know what the hell they are doing with their fancy schmancy color-coded terror chart. Mr. Chertoff sure looked like he knew what he was doing during his interviews this weekend. And FEMA? Well, I think they've gotten used to thumb twiddling.

It's all a charade. Those in control of the government don't care about making us safer. They only care about lining their pockets and the pockets of their corporate cronies. Just look who has benefited from this regime in the past five years. Oil companies, defense contractors, multinational corporations and polluters to name a few. Poverty has increased as has consumer prices. I could go on. But my point is that everything is phony. Having a rap song for kids is great, but if the agency doesn't do what it says ("people helping people is what we do") then what is it good for?

hurricane katrina katrina fema

Katrina, One Week Later

The chaos caused by Hurricane Katrina and the lack of federal response to the disaster has led to some interesting discourse as well as some strange politicking.  I'd like to give a quick wrap-up to some of these items.

Look what the Queen Mum had to say about hurricane victims who are finding refuge in Houston. Babs thinks that poor black people are not only scary but they are also opportunistic:

"What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality . . . And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them." 

I think it's fair to call George W. Bush a son of a bitch. Norm has the audio @ onegoodmove. Maybe we can ship both Babs and Pat Robertson off to the funny farm now?

I previously mentioned that according to the media, black people loot while white people borrow. Well, it appears that cops borrow as well. Check out this footage of cops borrowing merchandise at Wal-Mart.

Bill Clinton spoke out today on CNN about the lack of federal response to aid hurricane victims:

"Our government failed those people in the beginning, and I take it now there is no dispute about it," Clinton told CNN. "One hundred percent of the people recognize that -- that it was a failure." We've got the departments on the ground, we've got the military on the ground, we've got a chance to do it right now, and we should do it right," he said. "And then in an appropriate time we should analyze what went wrong and why and what changes should be made."

Say what you want about his extra-marital affair, but at least Clinton didn't cut funding and staff to FEMA for three straight years in a row like the Chimperor has. Thanks Dubya!

Republic of T notes that Al Gore was helping hurricane victims evacuate from New Orleans and flying them to his home state of Tennessee. He kept these actions under the radar without any fanfare unlike Bush's Friday photo-ops.

Last but not least, I recommend reading or watching Keith Olbermann's hard-hitting editorial from yesterday evening:

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?  I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant . . .

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."

Countdown is probably the only MSM show I watch occasionally, simply because Olbermann is not a right-wing wacko talking head like the rest of the pundits on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc. Norm has the video and transcript here in case MSNBC decides to pull a Winston Smith and erase Olbermann's blog. There is video here also.

Got any interesting Katrina-related information? Send it along in the comments . . .

hurricane katrina katrina politics barbara bush bill clinton keith olbermann downing street memo

The Revolution Starts Now!

On January 21, 2005, President Bush took this oath:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

What was that he was supposed to defend again? Apparently it's this:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I've never witnessed such a grievous violation of the Constitution as this week's tragic events in the Gulf Coast states. Tranquility, common defense, and general welfare were certainly neglected this week as were security and humanity. The federal government completely abandoned its people leaving them to drown and suffer in anarchy. I guess that's what happens when you starve government so it drowns in a bathtub.

The president of Jefferson Parish, Aaron Broussard: "We have been abandoned by our own country. . . Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area . . . For God's sakes, SHUT UP AND SEND US SOMEBODY!" If you haven't already seen Broussard on Sunday's Meet the Press, then you must watch this heart-braking clip.

I still can't believe my eyes and ears. It's been one whole week since Hurricane Katrina hit and only yesterday people started receiving relief, food and water. As citizens we give up our rights to the government in exchange for protection. The government has proved that it has other priorities than its citizens.

The Potemkin President welcomes you to his latest affair: Lake George (formerly known as N'Awlins). Welcome to the land of death and destruction, the site of floods and famine. It's also the site of presidential photo-ops: food distribution, food delivery and levee repair photo-ops (via BradBlog).

The Heretik describes the Hurricane President as an American Caesar. Shakespeare's Sister shows that the Republican spin machine led by Karl Rove has already started cranking. I honestly don't know how these evil bastards are going to spin their way out of this mess. They've already shamelessly pinned the blame on the local authorities. Of course the buck never stops at the White House does it?

If heads don't roll over this fiasco, then our democracy is lost.

(Sorry for the unorganized nature of the post. I'm just too shocked to be fully coherent right now)

This did NOT have to happen

       

As I was driving home today I flipped the radio on the Tom Leykis show [note: his website contains explicit material]. Typically I can't stand the arrogant bloviations of this fat misogynist pig but today I was curious to see what he had to say about the hurricane and its aftermath. Quoting an article by Tim Rutten in today's LA Times, Leykis noted that the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided. Rutten's article actually discusses a 2002 joint report by NPR's All Things Considered and the Times-Picayune which argued that New Orleans was at risk and hundreds of thousands of lives imperiled by exactly the sequence of events that occurred this week.

The report describes this week's events so closely that it is eerie:

The series' second part began: "It's a matter of when, not if. Eventually a major hurricane will hit New Orleans head on, instead of being just a close call. It's happened before and it'll happen again." In that installment, McQuaid and Schleifstein reported that "a major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time.... Evacuation is the most certain route to safety, but it may be a nightmare. And 100,000 without transportation will be left behind.... Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins....

The original full five-part report from the Times-Picayune is located at NOLA.com. The original two-part NPR audio report is archived in Real format at NPR (1) and (2).

According to the NPR report, scientists predicted the odds were 1 in 6 for a storm as powerful as Katrina. What amazes me is that the local, state and federal governments ignored these warnings from scientists and reporters. The federal government even cut funding to the Army Corps of Engineers--the very group responsible for bolstering the levees which broke--despite insistence by Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.

Editor and Publisher has a nice breakdown how the federal funding was removed from this project and pumped into the Iraq War:

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

That's your government at work folks. Give tax cuts to the wealthy and spend money blowing shit up in foreign countries while starving the beast at home and neglecting the security of the nation.

hurricane katrina