Comment from OMG!
Time February 9, 2010 at 10:31 am

I would make an excellent breast bomb checker…will work cheap too.

Comment from Joe Pilon, MD
Time February 9, 2010 at 2:58 pm

I agree. No different than soldiers trying to walk through scanners in full battle regalia. I would be for banning the burqa for flying.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 9, 2010 at 6:03 pm

My Bonnie, quite the conumdrum, when women want to wear them vs equality of muder and kookiness. Oddly I didn’t see the big hew and cry when the Taliban were “equally” lopping off the heads of women for the crime of working or getting educated. Apparently, Bonnie, to the contrary has found an “anti-burqa stance” that “is founded primarily on cultural grounds”, oddly at genuine odds with her supposed stand on “freedom of religion”.
I am however enheartened that Bonnie can use the “T” word and not so much the “R” word.

Comment from Cal
Time February 9, 2010 at 8:57 pm

They can wear anything they like as long as they comply with law enforcement requests for legal searches as required AND as long as we don’t make the mistake England’s made and allow Sharia law to gain ANY foothold in our judicial system. If you want to spend your life looking through a peephole in fabric wrapped around your head, knock yourself out. But whenever clothing comes up against security, sorry, Mrs. Ahmed, off come the covers.

Comment from geoff
Time February 9, 2010 at 9:09 pm

JS: “Oddly I didn’t see the big hew and cry when the Taliban were “equally” lopping off the heads of women for the crime of working or getting educated.” You weren’t paying attention. Probably because the Taliban were America’s allies against Russian pipelines at the time. Selective amnesia, senility, too much Fox or syphillis? You decide.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 10, 2010 at 4:53 am

Gg
\"Taliban were America’s allies against Russian pipelines at the time.\"
No amnesia, apparently our history professor, you don’t know that after the Russians left in 1989, by 1996 the Taliban took over after civil war until ousted in 2003, and started the head lopping and other things of Islamic law.
As for the “pipeline” that was the “barrel full of stupids” like you referring to the Afghanistan Oil Pipeline never built by Unocal, as the “excuse” for invading Afghanistan. Still “on the boards” mr. History Professor, but they are still talking about it.
geoff, do you ever get embarrassed in being proven so wrong so often by the stupidest things you say, which is pretty much everything.
All in all, and to be quite charitable, you’re an idiot, well, if you study really hard, you might be as smart as an idiot, some day.

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 9:28 am

Jack Sprat:
“Foreign powers, including the United States, were at first supportive of the Taliban in hopes it would serve as a force to restore order in Afghanistan after years of division into corrupt, lawless warlord fiefdoms. The U.S. government, for example, made no comment when the Taliban captured Herat in 1995 and expelled thousands of girls from schools. These hopes faded as the Taliban began to engage in warlord practices of rocketing unarmed civilians, targeting ethnic groups (primarily Hazaras) and restricting the rights of women. In late 1997, American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright began to distance the U.S. from the Taliban and the next year the American-based oil company Unocal, previously having implicitly supported the Taliban in order to build a pipeline south from Central Asia, withdrew from a major deal with the Taliban regime concerning an oil pipeline.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.....ted_States
No sense suggesting you learn some history, right? Obvious you’re only going to keep making your same mistakes over & over again.
If you want more detailed information, I might suggest you visit your library and/or bookstore.

Comment from Phil
Time February 10, 2010 at 12:17 pm

JS,
just stop responding to Geoff,
Whether you answer him or not, he still is the source of all knowledge (in his own mind).
The Wikipedia is his bible and his (self claimed no body know the truth) history class his throne.
If it is on Wikipedia, it is the truth carved in stone.
There cannot be any other truth existent in the universe, other than the one on Wikipedia.
He will live on the guidelines of Wikipedia and the internet till his last breath.
For geoff, Wikipedia and the internet is the source of all energy, the reason for all existence, the need of all mortal beings and the universe exists because of wikipedia.
Now he will answer back, “PROVE WHEN I SAID THAT. I HAVE NEVER SAID THAT, I ONLY USE IT AS REFERENCE.”
Yes yes, he uses it only as reference, but he imposes it on others as the only truth in the world.
Then he will say, “PROVE WHERE I IMPOSED, I ONLY WRITE DOWN MY VIEWS”
Then we write read your own comments.
Then he answers back “I WILL NOT DO YOUR HOMEWORK. YOU HAVE TO POINT IT OUT”
Then you copy paste his comments in a long winding comment.
Then he answers back “WHAT A WASTE OF TIME. WHO HAS THE TIME TO GO THROUGH REPETITIONS”
So Jack. get wise. just shut up.
No one can win against Geoff.
And then if you look at it my way, do you really want to be proven smarter than an Idiot?
Your call JS.
You know what, at least for 3 months we all should resist our urge to respond to these idiots like geoff, amilam, etc.
Let them build a cocoon around themselves.
Then we will boil them and create silk :)
What do you think?

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 12:23 pm

Phil: if you really want long detailed bibliographies, they could be supplied. Most of you are too lazy to click and read wikipedia, let alone google something or (heaven forbid) visit a library.
If you really want to learn something about Afghanistan, and the long history of US ties with the Taliban, you could start here:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb.....+afghanist
If you know anything about history, you would recognise that US/UK support for the Taliban parallels their ties to the Khmer Rouge after Vietnam invaded Cambodia.
When you go to bed with a pile of ugly dudes (the Shah, Marcos, Pinochet, the Taliban, Khmer Rouge, Contras, etc.) you have to expect some blowback from time to time.

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 12:25 pm

Oh, and Phil (to answer your question): JS doesn’t think.

Comment from Phil
Time February 10, 2010 at 12:49 pm

Better than think and still be dumb. :)

Comment from Amilam
Time February 10, 2010 at 12:57 pm

Either you disagree with Geoff’s sourced interpretation of the U.S. helping aid the Taliban (really, it’s historical fact, but that’s never stopped some people here) or you can try to weasel out of the conversation by attacking the messenger. I wonder what tact Phil has taken? Of course Phil is under the hilarious misconception that his opinion in any way sought out. You’re going to shut up and stop offering substanceless retorts? Go for it! Perhaps morbidly overweight people will start wearing appropriate swimwear or that annoying dog will stop barking at all hours of the day. *sigh* It’s a nice dream.

“you don’t know that after the Russians left in 1989, by 1996 the Taliban took over after civil war until ousted in 2003, and started the head lopping and other things of Islamic law.”

You’d have to be pretty dense to think this is a rebuttal. The fact that the Taliban became the law of land in 1996 does not refute the fact that they owed a lot of their rise to power to the United States. Geoff’s comment in no way conflicts with your timeline.

Geoff, shame on you for suggesting that JS read!

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 1:22 pm

“The fact that the Taliban became the law of land in 1996 does not refute the fact that they owed a lot of their rise to power to the United States.” There were a whole pile of warring factions - warlords - and someone figured the Taliban were the only ones with the discipline to take over. CIA & ISI.
So Phil: does this imply that you are not only “proud to be dim” but somehow perceive the lack of effort on your part of attaining and/or maintaining this condition to be in some way meritorious?

Comment from OMG!
Time February 10, 2010 at 6:26 pm

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts02102010.html

Anyone Could be Next

The U.S. is Now a Police State

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the “detainees” (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law.

The Bush regime created a new classification for its detainees that it used to justify denying legal protection and due process to the detainees. As the detainees were not U.S. citizens and were demonized by the regime as “the 760 most dangerous men on earth,” there was little public outcry over the regime’s unconstitutional and inhumane actions.

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui an American citizen of Pakistani origin might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children were with her at the time she was abducted, one an eight-month old baby. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach resulting in her near death.

On February 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation.

Wikipedia has this to say about the trial: “The trial took an unusual turn when an FBI official asserted that the fingerprints taken from the rifle, which was purportedly used by Aafia to shoot at the U.S. interrogators, did not match hers.”

An ignorant and bigoted American jury convicted her for being a Muslim. This is the kind of “justice” that always results when the state hypes fear and demonizes a group.

The people who should have been on trial are the people who abducted her, disappeared her young children, shipped her across international borders, violated her civil liberties, tortured her apparently for the fun of it, raped her, and attempted to murder her with two gunshots to her stomach. Instead, the victim was put on trial and convicted.

This is the unmistakable hallmark of a police state. And this victim is an American citizen.

Anyone can be next. Indeed, on February 3 Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee that it was now “defined policy” that the U.S. government can murder its own citizens on the sole basis of someone in the government’s judgment that an American is a threat. No arrest, no trial, no conviction, just execution on suspicion of being a threat.

This shows how far the police state has advanced. A presidential appointee in the Obama administration tells an important committee of Congress that the executive branch has decided that it can murder American citizens abroad if it thinks they are a threat.

I can hear readers saying the government might as well kill Americans abroad as it kills them at home–Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Black Panthers.

Yes, the U.S. government has murdered its citizens, but Dennis Blair’s “defined policy” is a bold new development. The government, of course, denies that it intended to kill the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver’s wife and child, or the Black Panthers. The government says that Waco was a terrible tragedy, an unintended result brought on by the Branch Davidians themselves. The government says that Ruby Ridge was Randy Weaver’s fault for not appearing in court on a day that had been miscommunicated to him, The Black Panthers, the government says, were dangerous criminals who insisted on a shoot-out.

In no previous death of a U.S. citizen by the hands of the U.S. government has the government claimed the right to kill Americans without arrest, trial, and conviction of a capital crime.

In contrast, Dennis Blair has told the U.S. Congress that the executive branch has assumed the right to murder Americans who it deems a “threat.”

What defines “threat”? Who will make the decision? What it means is that the government will murder whomever it chooses.

There is no more complete or compelling evidence of a police state than the government announcing that it will murder its own citizens if it views them as a “threat.”

Ironic, isn’t it, that “the war on terror” to make us safe ends in a police state with the government declaring the right to murder American citizens who it regards as a threat.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Comment from OMG!
Time February 10, 2010 at 6:37 pm

http://www.counterpunch.com/boykoff02102010.html

The Olympic Industrial Complex Meets Gold Medal Resistance

Showdown in Vancouver

By JULES BOYKOFF

Upon arrival at Vancouver International Airport everything was smooth, suave, and sparkly. I immediately encountered colorful billboards splashed with 2010 Winter Olympic Games ad copy blending gold medals, commercial merchandise, and sports clichés. I was barraged with offers of assistance by friendly folks donning shiny nametags and chartreuse vests emblazoned with the official Olympic logo.

But as I took mass transit into downtown Vancouver—where the Olympic Games opening ceremonies will take place on Friday—I began to sense what activist Harsha Walia of No One Is Illegal and the Olympic Resistance Movement described as “the overall militarization of Vancouver, an encroaching police and surveillance state.”

Within sniffing distance of official venues like the Olympic Village this militarization is palpable, with a multiple-cop-a-corner mentality the norm. Chain link fences sheathed in teal-colored Olympic banners block off massive swathes of the urban center from public access. Police perpetually patrol the perimeter, handguns jutting from holsters. Helicopter buzz above, punctuated by the occasional whoosh of a CF-18 Hornet fighter jet.

Just behind the slick, smiley-faced façade of Olympic spirit, the Canadian state is flexing its militarized muscles, employing an array of tactics designed to suppress political dissent in the lead-up to the Olympics.

Meanwhile a parallel universe of anti-Olympic resistance thrums full-throttle. This movement marked by creative resistance and cross-class solidarity has achieved significant rollback of repressive measures, setting the stage for a showdown with state forces in the days to come.

Repressive Measures

The International Olympic Committee’s official charter forbids the expression of anti-Olympic dissent, stating in Rule 51,“No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

The City of Vancouver followed suit, issuing synergistic “2010 Winter Games By-laws” that demonstrated to the IOC its willingness to squelch free-speech rights. For instance, the “Sign By-Law” outlawed placards that were not “celebratory,” though one could still tote “a sign that celebrates the 2010 Winter Games, and creates or enhances a festive environment and atmosphere.” That meant anti-Olympic signs were a no-go and Canadian authorities had the right to remove such signs, even from private property.

After a legal challenge from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) and plaintiffs Chris Shaw and Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, the city backed down, amending the by-laws to allow for anti-Olympic signage (though signs that don’t chime with the logos of Olympic corporate sponsors are still not permissible).

In 2003 Olympic boosters low-balled their estimate for the Olympic security budget at $175 million. Since then, security costs have ballooned to almost $1 billion, with taxpayers on the hook for a huge chunk of it. Much of this money has been spent on the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit (ISU), created specifically for the Olympics in 2003 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Comprised of groups like the Vancouver Police Department, the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS—Canada’s top spy organization), and the Department of National Defense, the ISU patently shatters the thin glass wall between policing and military activity.

As the Olympics approach, the ISU has made numerous moves to intimidate activists and gather intelligence on them. For starters, there is a concern among activists and civil libertarians that ISU officials are infiltrating activist groups and that these undercover agents lack proper safeguards guiding their actions. In February 2009 B.C. Civil Liberties Association President Rob Holmes wrote letters to CSIS and the ISU asking for assurance that agents would not inflame tensions and tactics as agents provocateur or attempt “to influence the political direction, policy positions, or internal discussions of any organizations infiltrated by security forces.” In clipped, written responses, both CSIS and ISU officials refused to rule out the possibility that their infiltrating agents would break the law or try to assume leadership positions within anti-Olympic groups.

Law enforcement officials have also frequented the homes and workplaces of anti-Olympics activists as part of their “threat assessment” program. On January 20, 2010, ISU personnel visited the workspace of Vancouver-based dissident Franklin Lopez. An hour earlier, Lopez had filmed a public talk that political sportswriter Dave Zirin delivered at the Maritime Labour Centre in Vancouver. “To be honest,” Lopez told me, “I was not surprised, being that most people that I have been involved with either through friendship or through organizing have been visited, some multiple times.”

First Nations activist Gord Hill was also visited by the ISU’s Joint Intelligence Group after he offered strongly worded criticism of the Olympics in the media. It should be noted that the Olympics are taking place on unceded indigenous territory—hence, the slogan “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land” is plastered on kiosks across Vancouver, which sits on unceded Coast Salish territory. ISU officials visited Hill’s residence in October 2009, leaving their business cards when they did not find him home. Hill, from the Kwakwaka’wakw nation, promptly plunked images of these cards online along with an account he penned, “Statement by Gord Hill Regarding Visits by Olympic Police Agents.”

As David Eby, the Executive Director of the BCCLA, points out, treating activists as a “threat assessment” sends the message that anti-Olympic activists are neither to be trusted nor taken seriously: “The net effect is that the public has the perception as a result of the visits that the police are properly investigating these people because of their dissent. It becomes equivalent in the public mind to a threat to security.”

In addition to such face-to-face surveillance, nearly 1,000 surveillance cameras have been installed in Vancouver. According to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, around 900 CCTV cameras will be used at Olympic venues and another 50 to 70 will be deployed in other urban areas. A majority of the cameras have been leased rather than purchased outright, but normally surveillance camera companies offer the right of purchase at a deep discount, so while Canadian officials have asserted most of the cameras will come down after the Olympics, they may well argue later that it would be less expensive to just keep them installed.

Eby commented, “Our concern is that under the guise of a special state of exception, these cameras will be brought in and then they’ll become permanent.” Am Johal, the Board Chair of a Vancouver-based group called Impact on Community Coalition (IOCC), added, “There’s going to be a net expansion of cameras that will remain after the Games with pretty much little to no discussion of whether we wanted that in the city.” Johal views Olympics as a pretext for the intensification of the Canadian security apparatus.

The ISU has also ramped up its stock of high-tech weaponry, purchasing a Medium Range Acoustic Device (MRAD) for possible use against anti-Olympic activists. The MRAD emits painful, piercing sound that can damage human hearing. After pressure from activists, Canadian authorities have promised to erase the weapon function from the hard drive and only use the MRAD as a public address system—essentially a massive bullhorn, and a pricey one at that. The MRAD’s bigger, louder brother—the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD—was used in Pittsburgh during the G20 meetings last September, much to the chagrin of protesters and their eardrums. The sonic weapon has also been deployed in Mosul, Iraq. The timing of the MRAD’s purchase—just before the Olympics—is suspicious, to say the least.

To assist in crowd control, the ISU has also planned “safe assembly areas” where protests can occur under the watchful eye of the authorities. In the US these are know as “free speech zones” but dissidents on both sides of the border more commonly refer to them as “protest pens.” The “safe assembly areas” have generated great confusion, as the Vancouver Police Department and RCMP have offered conflicting information about their locations, functions, and the rules that will inform their use.

Canada has also played border games with potential Olympics critics. In a highly publicized incident last November, Amy Goodman and two of her colleagues at Democracy Now! were detained and questioned on their way to Vancouver where Goodman was scheduled to speak at the public library. Suspicious she intended to speak out against the Olympics, border guards rifled through her personal effects and questioned her about the topics she intended to cover in her talk and whether one of them was the Winter Olympics. Just this week, Martin Macias Jr., a freelance radio journalist from Chicago, was held up and grilled by Canadian border officials regarding his knowledge of anti-Olympics activism.

Jittery Citizens and the Downtown Eastside

The police-induced intimidation anti-Olympic activists are experiencing has long been ingrained into the everyday existence of downtown eastside residents—an area often cited as the poorest postal code in Canada. But according to Harsha Walia, in the lead-up to the Olympic Games, the heightened police presence in the neighborhood has clicked into “full-on warfare” mode, “with four to six beat cops on every block in the neighborhood.”

While the mainstream media swarm the downtown eastside to collect poverty porn for middle-class public consumption, the Vancouver Police Department has been working furiously to sanitize the neighborhood so it doesn’t undermine the smooth-surfaced spectacle Olympic organizers so desperately wish to produce.

The number of homeless in Vancouver has more than doubled since the Olympic bid process began, thereby widening the scope of people susceptible to police intimidation and harassment. One element of the state’s legal arsenal is the “Assistance to Shelter Act” which allows police to round up homeless people and use force to remove them from the streets and place them in shelters. Walia dubs it the “Olympic Kidnapping Act” and notes that even if the police don’t use it to move people into shelters, it affords the cops an enhanced opportunity to interact with downtown eastside residents and to snatch them up on other charges, should any conflict arise.

There are also laws already on the books in Vancouver that usually remain either unenforced. Not so as the Olympics approaches. Selective enforcement is now the order of the day.

Take the case of longtime Vancouver activist Ivan Drury. On February 4, he was putting up anti-Olympics posters when he was stopped and handed a $100 ticket for “Defacing Poles (Posting Signs).” Drury reported, “I was confused because I have put up tens of thousands of posters in my life, all in Vancouver, and I have never gotten a ticket before. There were even a couple years where I was trying to get a ticket in order to launch a constitutional challenge against Vancouver’s anti-postering by-laws and I couldn’t get a ticket no matter how hard I tried.” This is clearly a new era: broken-window theory gone wild.

Police recently embarked on a ticketing blitz for minor municipal bylaw infractions like jaywalking and unlicensed street vending, zeroing their attention on the downtown eastside. Given the extreme material poverty of those receiving the tickets, many people are unable to pay the fines. This, in turn, shunts the vulnerable more firmly onto the treadmill of what Walia calls “the criminal injustice system.” In effect many of these laws criminalize who people are as much as what they do, as they’re disproportionately wielded against people of color, indigenous peoples, and the poor. This, notes Am Johal of the IOCC, is part of an intimidation process designed to silence those who might like to speak out against the Olympics.

Five-Ring Catalytic Converter

Despite intensified state suppression, activists have ramped up their resistance, with the anti-Olympics Convergence kicking off today, preempting the Olympic opening ceremony by two full days. The Convergence, which runs through the 15th is designed is to deepen already existing social movements, pressing the Global Justice Movement forward with energy and vision.

Media activists from the Vancouver Media Coop, W2 Community Media Arts, VIVO Media Arts, and other groups have the alternative-media machine firing on all cylinders, providing the public with up-to-date information, politically driven art, and all the news that’s unfit to print in the corporate media. There will be direct actions, mass rallies, festivals, art shows, a tent city going up in the downtown eastside. The Olympics has been catalyst for solidarity—a coalition of coalitions, a movement of movements—with numerous groups expressing their resistance to the Olympic Games. As Johal notes, “It’s about asserting human rights in the urban domain.”

All this hard work is already working. A recent poll found 50% of respondents in British Columbia do not expect the Olympics to have a positive impact on their province. Anti-Olympic activists have created this space of dissent for the population to saunter into.

Pierre de Coubertin, a key figure in the founding of the modern Olympic Games, once said, “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”

Activists and organizers are taking this advice seriously. The Olympics promises to be a remarkable seventeen days, and it may just be the activists who take home the gold.

Jules Boykoff is the author of Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States (AK Press 2007) and The Suppression of Dissent: How the State and Mass Media Squelch USAmerican Social Movements (Routledge 2006). He is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Pacific University in Oregon.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 10, 2010 at 8:41 pm

“American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright began to distance the U.S. from the Taliban and the next year the American-based oil company Unocal, previously having implicitly supported the Taliban in order to build a pipeline south from Central Asia,”
So what size and what is the distance of the “pipe line” Herr Professor?
That it was the Dems that pulled the plug on real aid to support “women’s” rights or anyone’s is and was the no brainer, glad you could qualify, but you’re still a little sketchy as to why the US company was keeping the Russkies from a pipeline they could have built while there, but yet to this day is no “fact in the ground”, but they are talking about it some day, probably.
Oddly the NATO and comrade president teleprompter still thinks the Taliban can be “honest brokers of Piece” and are still trying to “enlist their help”. They’re kind of like you supporting the terrorist’s right to murder. Of course we did wind our way back to the point, liberals just don’t care about mistreatment, just power. You might also strengthen your argument a bit by dropping Madd Maddy, she’s the same blockhead that thought the pot bellied pig in NK was such a nice guy, you know he really likes basketball.
You do recall how we got into having to help the Afghan “freedom fighters” don’t you?
Thanks lil’ peanut guy, again thanks for the mess in Iran also.
And geoff thanks for being the gift that keeps on giving, well now we have two.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 10, 2010 at 9:02 pm

Phil
I think you\’ll find both of the single helix DNA samples begin and end their arguments with \"is too\" and \"Is not\", I\’m kind of waiting for them to bring out the \"big guns\" in their arsenal \"you\’re nothing but a poopy head\", I say that but I\’m pretty sure they\’ve both passed that point.
The exercise is for my own purposes if I wanted to find “the truth”, I find it and confirm it in the challenge, or in their corporate cases, lacking challenge. Stug used to be a great ping pong partner, we didn’t agree but neither is that the point. Good Life can be a good challenge, only because he has to challenge the source, if not his, then goes predictably through the exercise of miss-quote and miss-statement of the points, but at least he doesn’t get down to the poopy-head position most of the time.
I’m afraid I just like an occasional food fight, because that’s all I’ve been able to get out of Gg, tcp, he won’t even answer why the Canadians only sent one brave man to Rwanda, instead of a contingent, why the Canadian Supreme Court found their health care unconstitutional bordering on a 3 to 3 tie one whether it violated “the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada\’s bill of rights”, not to mention why Canada is drilling our Gulf Shelf oil from Cuba and apparently letting the Russians claim their artic shelf reserves, all the while lecturing the US on go green, when the facts were, last time I checked, the US produced more green energy per capita that the little land of Nod north of us.
Phil he’s an idiot, one chromosome away from a huge step up, a chimp. Have you never ticked off the monkey’s on purpose? Fortunately the complete failure of the AGW coffee crowd and BO’s highly entertaining failures are giving us a show of a life time, we’re paying for it we might just as well grab some popcorn and enjoy it.
Have a great day.

Comment from Cal
Time February 10, 2010 at 9:30 pm

Phil, I don’t know how long you’ve been reading Cagle, but you stone-cold nailed geoff. That is exactly the way he plays the game. He’ll pose a question, then dodge the response with a new question. When you repost the original question he asks you why you’re changing the subject and follows up with yet another unrelated question. It’s like watching a political debate where every question is answered by talking endlessly around the question that was posed but never directly addressing it.

Don’t worry about Jack Sprat. He enjoys the banter. I don’t read any of geoff’s rubbish after many go-rounds with him when I first found Cagle. Any guy who sees the Taliban as freedom fighters isn’t worth reading or talking to anyway. But hey, he listed a source so that settles it, right? No matter how poor the source may be just listing it does the trick.

My former description of geoff as a “smarmy pseudo intellectual” is pretty darn close to the truth. (I also like “self-styled savant.”) I’m every bit as partisan as he is but at least if you ask me a direct question, I’ll do my best to provide a direct response. You may disagree but I won’t dodge the question. Geoff will not. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

As for the back and forth on the Taliban, no one is providing any kind of a balanced picture of what happened and why. Amilam is correct in asserting the US gave the Taliban a sense of moral authority by backing the mujahedeen during the Soviet-Afghan war. But the historical, political, and military analysis of what the US did and why is very complex and our own worldviews tend to color how we interpret the facts of what happened and the reasons for it.

I could delve into it, but it isn’t a subject I’m much interested in. We’re where we are now for a lot of reasons and finding the “way ahead” is the challenge. Debating who’s responsible for what is like the way we sort through the current economy and try to decide what belonged to Bush, the congress(es), or Obama. In either case, ideology on both sides tends to trump facts. I’ll take a pass on this one. Have fun!

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 9:48 pm

“I’m every bit as partisan as he is but at least if you ask me a direct question, I’ll do my best to provide a direct response. You may disagree but I won’t dodge the question.” BS, Cal. How long did it take before you finally provided a source on your assertion that “most people earning minimum wage are teenagers”? Even then you fudged it: your source said “about half” of minimum wage earners are over 26. You dodge, you slip and slide ’cause you’re spineless. You do it all the time, and turn around and accuse others, shamelessly, without substance.
And then you got in a real big sulk when I pointed out Rush has been divorced 3 times, was a junkie and charged with drug smuggling.
Some big, tough Marine.
“But the historical, political, and military analysis of what the US did and why is very complex”: meaning: Cal doesn’t understand it.
“Amilam is correct in asserting the US gave the Taliban a sense of moral authority by backing the mujahedeen during the Soviet-Afghan war.” It was more than that. The Taliban were supported because they were seen to be the only ones able to bring stability to the country. Strangely enough, once those bright guys came up with their idea to bring down the Soviets, they didn’t bother following through with any ideas about what to do in the aftermath. At least if you go to the store “you break it, you bought it.” When it comes to countries… you just walk away. Unless you decide you want something like a pipeline, or you figure watching too many countries (Somalia at about the same time, Yugoslavia…) disintegrating into anarchy probably wasn’t all that clever, really.
So yeah: it ain’t just a matter of pointing fingers, Cal: it’s about learning from past mistakes. It’s about making logical inferences on the basis of previous experience. It is noticing rather alarming patterns in historical processes.
Which is how I know you’ll continue dodging, spinning those wheels, making stuff up and outright lying when the mood fits. Like the one about how all the world’s intelligence agencies believed Saddam had WMD. Except of course Hans Blix, and the problem with that Plame woman’s husband, and MI6, and… the CIA had to keep sending the intel back for revision (”sex it up!”).

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 10:15 pm

Charlie Wilson died.

Comment from Cal
Time February 11, 2010 at 8:44 pm

“Anyone can be next. Indeed, on February 3 Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee that it was now “defined policy” that the U.S. government can murder its own citizens on the sole basis of someone in the government’s judgment that an American is a threat.”

Holy crap, Batman! Thanks OMG! I was a planning a trip overseas but knowing I’m retired military and therefore a potential terrorist in the eyes of Janet Napolitano means I could be taken out while looking for a cup of coffee somewhere. This is good to know. Is this Blair guy’s last name Cheney by any chance? (I thought only the Bush administration could come up with something this lovely.)

Comment from OMG!
Time February 11, 2010 at 10:27 pm

Cal,
I remember years ago a movie, “Three Days of the Condor”. It had Robert Redford in it and was quite good. If you haven\’t seen it, please do.

Comment from Cal
Time February 12, 2010 at 8:27 pm

OMG. It’s been quite awhile but I have seen the movie. Seems like he’s a low-level employee who goes back to the office and everyone’s dead. All the “good guys” are trying to kill him. I can’t remember why but “forewarned is fair warned”, right? I’ll have to vary my route! That reminds me of a short story…

In 1993 I had the pleasure of going through defensive driving school at BSR in West Virginia before going to work at OSIA (later DTRA). That was one of the “coolest” things I ever did. High speed driving. Evasive maneuvering, threshold braking, J-turns, bootlegs, car ramming, and how to spot surveillance and get out of the kill zone. Got to practice it in Moscow when I’d come out of the embassy and my “tail” would pick me up. Now my biggest thrill is watching a kid “get it” when I show him how to find the area of a circle and my biggest worry is getting a paper cut! (They also shot up gas tanks with every small arms weapon to include an Uzi to show how the just don’t blow up like they do on TV. Pretty good school!)

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 12, 2010 at 9:04 pm

Phil
Have you ever spit on the counter and then slap it just to see which way it goes, as Cal has pointed out, that’s “my guy” geoof (phonically goof, thanks amilam)
My G_d love every one equally including him and those like him, his greatest “hero” is Freddie (I’m nuts over you, or anything) Nietzsche who was so smart he came up with “G_d is dead” because “He was no longer in the social consciousness” in his neighborhood, how logical is that? Much vaunted thinking like that would have him thinking the sun was gone because “it went down and it was dark”.
g’s intellect is much like that, but far more rodent like when cornered, and so easy to corner. Hell, we have a whole batch of inbreds here, 63% of Dems (dums) think socialism’s ok, 17% of Rep’s, tell that to anyone in eastern Europe, which we’ve had visit from time to time, that wasn’t a party member or Cuba, Hollywood heads don’t live there they just visit, Castro had to go to Spain for his anal surgery, apparently they had it hooked up backwards.
Undoubtedly he’s had his share of Che, Mao and Arafat t-shirts proudly proclaiming his stupid.
Cal, said it best, just pass it up, I kinda like to see the worm squirm