US Soldier Brags after Shooting Dead a 10-year-old: "We showed them We Don't Care"

"As US troops take the Iraq war out of the desert and into the main cities, they are increasingly seeing children in their line of fire," reports smh.au.online. "Many are innocent civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time and military officers concede that some may have been killed in artillery or mortar fire, or shot down by soldiers whose judgment is impaired in the "fog of war".
But others are apparently [i.e. ALLEGEDLY] being used as fighters or more often as scouts and weapons collectors. US officers and soldiers say that turns them into legitimate targets." Says 21-yr-old private Nick Boggs: "I think they thought we wouldn't shoot kids. But we showed them we don't care." The boy he killed was with another child of around the same age...other soldiers think he escaped and that he dragged his friend's dead body away. " What, of what, has America come to?



www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/08/1049567660897.html

Building a Psychopathic Society in the Image of G. W. Bush

These young American soldiers are in the process of becoming dehumanized - brutalized and reprogrammed into believing that killing a child is OK, that a devastated country filled with dead, maimed, and grieving people is "liberation," that your fellow countrymen will support you NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, that being cold-blooded and being strong are synonymous - that might, no matter how callous, how wantonly destructive - is right. This is America in the image of G. W. Bush, who personally ordered the executions of more Americans than any other governor in modern history, who has been responsible, directly, for the deaths of more overseas civilians than any president since Richard Nixon, and who has yet to show the slightest glimmer of human compassion for any of the suffering he inflicts. It is a psychopathic society that we are building, one that will haunt us for years to come and, unchecked, destroy us. If America is buying the society G.W. Bush is selling because they believe it will make them safe, then we are a nation of abject, pathetic cowards. And, if an anti-Christ exists - then he is sitting in the White House, laughing all the way to hell - with America in tow.


April 8, 10: 20 AM EST

Weapons of mass destruction found so far in Iraq: oil, pesticide, chalk, door knobs, and bottles of stuff labeled so clearly in ENGLISH as toxins that they are obvious plants

A Red Cross official in a major Baghdad hospital says that yesterday, the US attacked the city's water pumping system, leaving many areas without water. So now hospitals are trying to treat badly wounded people either without adequate clean water, or have water trucked in through the war zone created by the US. The RC official said that the number of wounded civilians now being brought into the hospitals is too high and ongoing to even estimate and utter chaos is setting in.

one of Earth's most evil money laundering corporations (they broker everything from boms to anthrax) is now sending its slimey tentacles into Italy. They are in the process of purchasing Fiat's aeronautics operation. And, you can bet they don't plan to make commercial/pleasure aircraft there.

A Canon of the Church of England today in an interview said he thinks Bush and co. are playing out a mishmash of delusional fantasies, from the Armageddon scenario to the Lone Ranger

Now that the Coalition army has trashed Basra and created a hellish scene of civil chaos, they are standing back and allowing people to loot, riot, and commit violence unchecked saying "We aren't here to be policemen...it's not our responsibility.." NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY??????? Then who the hell's is it? That's like going into someone's house, setting all the furniture on fire, killing several of the residents, then standing back and saying that the results are "not your responsibility." Talk about pure cold evil!

Speaking of Basra, the brain-dead "planners" behind the invasion didn't bother to plan for what would happen once they had removed the Ba' ath party from power . The party officials were the ones who knew all the details of the operation of the water systems, the food distribution systems, and all the other civil service systems. Now these people have either all been killed or driven out, leaving the city crippled, with no one knowing what to do - including the British. Now, in a colossal show of lameness, the Coalition is frantically trying to track down some of the Ba'ath officials who might stiill be alive who can tell them how to get things back on line. What kind of fantasy world do these people live in, anyway?????


Russians are justifiably pissed off The evidence (American M-16 weaponsd casings) and the eyewitness report of the Russian ambassador indicate that the American troops deliberately fired on the Russian convoy.

Speaking of attempted murder,American troops are now firing on a hotel where several western journalists are staying, claiming they think there is a sniper on top of the building. Yeah, right.

The Al Jazeera facility in Baghdad was bombed, killing two of the station's employees - this attack comes even AFTER international criminal law authorities have tentatively ruled that attacking media facilities is a war crime. Now its also murder.

Good Cop/ Bad Cop Scam being played out by Blair and Bush,who apparently believe everyone in the world but them are idiots (when, in fact, it is the other way around). Bush plays "bad cop", while Tony Blair is depicted as the "good cop" who is forever trying to pull Bush toward the path of moderation. So we have bogus stories thrust on us about how at the Azores meeting, Blair "desperately" tried to push the second resolution....how he wanted to proceed "slowly" with the war, etc ad nauseum. Now in today's news, Blair's PR folks have floated the story that the "noble Blair" tried to steer Bush away from attacking Iraq back after 9/11....and persuaded him to go after Afghanistan instead. Not only does this scam not work - it actually backfires! We're supposed to have sympathy for Blair's efforts to defer an unprovoked attack on one country in favor of an unprovoked attack on another (the only tangible 9/11 connection was to the Saudis, not the Afghans).

Israeli troops murder American Peace Activist in cold blood. What else can you call the execution of 24-year-old Brian Avery, shot in the face as he came out of a building in Jenin with his hands in the air, wearing a vest that clearly marked him as an international aid worker. And these cold blooded killers are the same folks to whom Bush entrusted the training of our troops. No wonder Iraq is turning into a mass murder of civilians.


UPDATE, April 8 12:55 AM

What is happening in Iraq (besides ongoing slaughter of civilians and permanent physiological and/or psychological scarring of Coalition soldiers)

In two words: WHO KNOWS? The news has turned into a veritable propaganda film festival: shots of smiling Iraqi children around jeeps with GIs in them...the same group of children over and over from different angles. When I was in New Mexico once, I wanted to take a photo of a young Navajo boy. He was very suspicious and unfriendly at first. But I gave him a lollipop and he was then all smiles - children have no political obsession like their sicker adult counterparts! Give them a smile, a lollipop - or a C-ration - and they will smile for your camera....or News cam.

Meanwhile, the "triumphal entry" into the area of Baghdad where the presidential palaces stand -er, stood - left me unimpressed. Observers in the city say this area, bombed early on, has been deserted for days now. Also, the tanks have to keep moving - they are vulnerable when stationary, so these incursions don't accomplish anything except videofootage, wasting hundreds of gallons of fuel, and exhausting already over-tired men even more.

I suspect that the Iraqis are waiting, conserving their ammo and energy...letting the Coalition, in their quest for media footage, exhaust their supplies and their men, and become over confident. - all the while the temperature climbing, day by day. Once the "triumphal army" comes into Baghdad in any force, they will be attacked. The US commanders are acting as if they have Marshmallows between their ears - and rocks where their hearts should be. Don't they give a shit about their troops? I see two more marine officers have been removed from their posts - probably men who dared to speak up on their soldiers' behalf and question the idiocy of Tommy Franks.
Back in Basra, looting and rioting has broken out in areas....my, haven't we inproved the quality of life there, already, eh?!

Saw this question raised on a forum: Is the death rate for journalists in Iraq really all that much higher than for US soldiers - or are journalists' deaths just harder to hide?


All about the oil? ...or all about the Euro?


An Irish activist suggested to me that the real reason for Blair's blind devotion to the Bush cause is to uphold the supremacy of the almighty US buck. Seems the European union's common currency, the Euro, has been gaining such momentum in the past two years that Bush and Blair feared that the dollar and its close cousin the British pound, would have their supremacy challenged - seems Iraq and Iran both wanted to switch their currency base over from the dollar to the Euro. So did Venezuela. So do several other countries that now mysteriously show up on the Bush-Blair shitlist. I did some digging and here is some info that I believe is VERY IMPORTANT....from a book entitled "BEHIND THE INVASION OF IRAQ"

Implications of the euro

In the 1970s, there was no alternative to the dollar. On January 1, 1999, an alternative arose in the form of the euro, the new currency of the European Union (EU). Of course, investors did not immediately flock to the euro. The euro stuttered at birth, falling 30 per cent against the dollar by the end of 2000. In the last year, however, it has picked up sharply, and in recent months has remained at parity with the dollar (ie about one euro per dollar).

The euro has become attractive for three reasons.

First, since the EU is a large imperialist economy, about the same size as the US, it is an attractive and stable investment for foreign investors.

Secondly, since foreign investors’ holdings are overwhelmingly in dollars, they wish to diversify and thus reduce the risk of losses in case of a dollar decline: they are increasingly nervous at the size of the US debt mountain and the failure of the US government to tackle this problem.

Thirdly, certain countries smarting under American military domination sense that the rule of the dollar is now vulnerable, and see the switch to the euro as a way to hit back.

Thus even in November 2000, when the euro was 30 per cent down against the dollar, Iraq demanded UN approval to be paid in euros in the UN oil-for-food programme. This despite the fact that the currency markets at the time did not see a rebound for the euro and despite the fact that Iraq would make the switch at considerable immediate cost, losing 10 cents a barrel to compensate buyers for their currency conversion costs. Iraq also asked that the $10 billion in its frozen bank account in New York be converted to euros. The UN, a plaything of the US, resisted the change until Iraq threatened to suspend its oil exports. (“Iraq: Baghdad Moves to the Euro”, Radio Free Europe, 1/11/00; “Iraq uses the euro in its trade deals,” Arabic News.com, 7/9/01)

Iran, which the US has now labelled, along with Iraq and North Korea, as part of an “axis of evil”, is also contemplating switching to the euro. The Iran National Oil Company welcomed the launch of the euro in 1998 itself, saying that “This money will free us from the rule of the dollar”, and we “will adopt it”. The national oil company and other major Iranian companies have made it clear to both their European and Latin American oil partners that they would “prefer the euro”. While Iran continued using the dollar thereafter, there are indications it could follow Iraq’s example. The Iranian government budget for the year to March 2002 was tabulated in dollars, but in December 2001 an oil ministry official said that “could change in the future”. Iran News (29/12/01) called for a switch to the euro for both oil and non-oil trade: “The euro could become our currency of choice” if it made gains on the dollar. Since then the euro has climbed 14 per cent against the dollar. (“Iran sees euro as way to ‘free’ itself from the US dollar”, Agence France Presse, 31/12/01)

Some in Saudi Arabia have called for switching to the euro as “a more effective punishment [than an oil embargo] for the United States, Israel’s principal source of financial and political support”. (“Protest by switching oil trade from dollar to euro”, Oil and Gas International, 15/4/02)

At the Russia-European Union summit in May 2001,
“EU leaders... made an audacious bid to lure Russia away from its reliance on the greenback [the dollar], calling on Moscow to start accepting euros instead of dollars for its exports, dangling the attractive carrot of a boom in investment and trade.
“In a report commissioned by Russia’s Central Bank in July 1999, the Russian Academy of Science said: ‘The introduction of the euro directly bears on the strategic interests of Russia and alters the conditions for its integration into the world economy. In the final analysis, the consequences are to the benefit of our country.’ Olga Butorina from the Academy of Science said whereas EU states accounted for 33 percent of trade turnover in 1998 compared with 8 percent for the United States, 80 percent of foreign trade contracts—mainly for oil, gas and other commodities—were concluded in dollars.... ‘[Switching to the euro] would increase dramatically the demand for euros in the world,’ she said. ‘For sure, it would be an important strategic shift and the euro would start to compete with the dollar in international trade markets.’” (Asia Times, 19/5/01)

Another likely candidate for switching to the euro is Venezuela, whose leader Hugo Chavez the US has been attempting to oust over the last year, without success (at the time of going to press). It is not only the oil economies that would make the switch (for example, North Korea too recently said it would convert its foreign exchange reserves to the euro); but the shift of the major oil exporters to accepting payment in euros would indeed have a major, potentially devastating, impact on the dollar.
The more countries that switch to the euro, the more attractive would be the euro.

For more from this book, see

www.rupe-india.org/34/homefront.html


Bush, Hiding behind Darth-Vader-Like Security Screens, Draws Angry Protests in Ireland where Clinton, Traveling Openly, Drew Cheers

When Clinton came to Ireland in 2000, he drew a crowd of 6,000 cheering fans as he traveled openly through Belfast. What a stark contrast now! Bush and Blair slunk by helicopter into a "fortress" tucked 20 miles outside town, which was fortified by Darth-Vade-Like security, leaving the local village a ghost town so the two "Butchers of Baghdad" (as they are know in Ireland) could do their warmongering in secret, unperturbed by the presence - or will - of the people. In just Belfast alone, 2,000 protestors gathered, while thousands of others protested in other towns across the country. A pathetic band of 500 (locals say this is a gross exaggeration by the meda) sellouts waving American and British flags (these are Irishfolk?!) protested in favor of the warlord agenda.

www.canada.com/halifax/story.asp

Unbelievable Hypocrisy! Bloodthirsty Ghouls in Washington Responsible for Slaughter of Thousands of Civilians in Iraq Condemns Slaughter of 1,000 Civilians in Congo

The Voice of America reports that the Bush administration is "outraged" by the slaughter of civilians in the Congo. One can only assume from this criminal display of hypocrisy that the Great White Warlords in the Bush Reich only call it "slaughter of civilians" when blacks and/or Muslims are doing the killing. But they themselves, being white and "Christian" (Jesus would beg to differ, I'm sure) inflict the decapitation, dismemberment, ripping-apart and burning alive of civilians, call it "liberation."



Prediction: Supreme Court Will - or at least is trying quite hard to - strike down affirmative action


The Supreme Court is getting ready to strike down affirmative action, I am willing to bet! Why do I think so?

1. They have taken so long, though the case is as straightforward as an arrow. They are merely trying to make it appear that they "agonized" over the decision. 2. They did not release the answer last Friday, as is typical of the court . Friday was the anniversary of Martin Luther King, JR's murder by a fanatical white supremacist hired by rightwingers within the government.. They wouldn't have DARED to release an anti-affirmative action verdict on that date. If they were going to issue a positive ruling, they probably would have PICKED that day so they could capitalize on the anniversary by a phony PR show of honoring King's memory 3. They issued a ruling today upholding the illegaility of cross burning - yet still haven't issued the affirmative action edict. The cross-burning decision is being released as a "sweeten the lemon" deal, as if to say, well, gee, we aren't really anti-minority!.

Meanwhile, a new report released this week shows that an astoundingly disproportionate number of blacks end up in jail - and, as many, many studies have shown, are thrown there for the same offenses that whites may never even be investigated or arrested for, thanks to racial profiling. Since Bush came into office, the number of blacks in prison has skyrocketed - and the number of people in prison, of all races, has climbed, (though less steeply than for blacks). Why? Because the Homeland Security scheme is set up to target minorities - a news, comprehensive form of racial profiling. In addition, rightwing judges, feeling empowered by having their meanspirited little Hitler in power now, are coming down more ruthlessly on "offenders" for trivial crimes - especially young, rebellious offenders.

Bush and Ashcroft are doing to Muslims the same thing Hitler did to the Jews in the earliest days of the Reich - driving them out of the country through intimidation so that they would vacate choice professional jobs and thereby artificially recusitate the failing economy - a high number of electrical engineers, physicists, etc. are from India, Iraq, Iran, and other countries where people fit the "swarthy" profile Bush's henchmen are going after. The Bush Reich is, also, like Hilter, confiscating millions in Muslim assets without having to prove any real link to terrorist groups. What saddens me greatly is that the Israelis and, alas, a disturbingly large number of American Jews, support this persecution. It seems as if they have, in two short generations, forgotten everything they themselves as a minority group experienced. Or maybe, as the psychologists have often described such cases,, they are victims who have opted to mimic their perpetrators.