Chertoff's Iron curtain

By Capt. Fogg

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, said the poet. I think it's called freedom.

Say you have a nice ranch down near the Rio Grande. The view is fabulous, you use the water for your cattle, you have a little boat to fish with. The deer and the antelope play.

Say you enjoy the San Pedro river, the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area on the Arizona border. You can forget it; it's soon to be blocked by a huge corrugated iron curtain right out of the cold war era because we're all so desperately afraid of Mexicans who don't come in to the country on tourist visas, like most illegal immigrants do.

This isn't a diatribe on any racialist or economic basis for xenophobia or the grave danger of people with expired visas cutting your lawn, it's about big government getting away with unquestionable authority by declaring emergencies. It's about Michael Chertoff's Bush-given ability to overturn court rulings and ignore laws passed by Congress because - well just because the commander guy has commanded it. Our Republican Congress gave him the power to waive any laws he needed to to get this fence built and our Republican courts in all their activist glory have now backed him up today by upholding a lower court's ruling that giving Michael Chertoff authority to write and unwrite laws passed by congress does not violate the separation of powers set forth in the constitution. Michael Cherthoff can be the law and neither we nor our elected representatives can stop him sayeth the Bush Court.

Somehow the people who give us the Fatherland and the Motherland seem awfully similar to the people who changed National Security into Homeland Security.

Many people sincerely doubt that this wall will actually secure our border and protect us from undocumented dishwashers. The history of walls lends them some support, but of course when things get bad enough here, perhaps it will help keep us from fleeing to Mexico.

Soldiers for the Right Christ

by expatbrian

Christian fundamentalists have a strong presence in our military and due to the very structured system of rank, anyone who believes otherwise is open to ridicule, humiliation and even abuse. (entire article)

Since his last combat deployment in Iraq, Jeremy Hall has had a rough time, getting shoved and threatened by his fellow soldiers. The trouble started there when he would not pray in the mess hall. "A senior ranking staff sergeant told me to leave and sit somewhere else because I refused to pray," said Hall.

Hall was reprimanded by a major who called him a troublemaker, and threatened to block his reenlistment attempts. The major accused Hall of holding a meeting of "athiests and freethinkers". Wow! That freethinking will get you every time!

A former air force lawyer has formed a group to protect the rights of these "freethinking soldiers". He has received over 6,800 testimonials from military personnel, many of them Christians, who have been harassed and even punished in attempts to force them to accept a strict fundamentalist evangelical view of Christianity.

On the other side of the battle is the 15,000 member strong Officer's Christian Fellowship (OCF). Their stated mission is

"to achieve a spiritually transformed military with embassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit". It professes belief in the "eternal blessedness of the saved and the everlasting, conscious punishment of the lost".

Just what we need. An army of fanatics committed to the concious punishment of the lost. Are we sure this is still America?

So, in other words, these fundamentalists, led by an organized group of officers, is violating one of the most basic rights of the very Constitution they are sworn to uphold. And they're so righteous that you don't have to be a Muslim or a Jew to incur their wrath. They even hate the non-fundy Christians.

No surprise to me at all. The American military is home to many of the most narrow minded, ignorant and racist losers that our country produces. And that includes both the enlisted and officer ranks.

I'm sure that many veterans would agree that a primary reason they did not and would not even consider a career in the military is because it would mean having obey these uneducated, simple minded bigots for the long term.

While some make the military their career to escape poverty or for educational opportunity, many simply don't have what it takes to succeed in the real world. For them, the military is a second mother. It feeds them, houses them, takes care of them when they are sick, clothes them and tells them exactly what to do and when to do it. And unless you really, really screw up, you'll never get fired. They are utterly and completely dependent.

These new fundamentalist Christians fit right into that. And while the Pentagon is spewing its expected rhetoric about "religious rights" and "respecting tenants of faith", they are circling the wagon's to protect these jerks.

I don't care what any individual chooses to believe as long as they keep it to them selves and don't try pawn it off on me. But if I'm in a combat situation, depending on the guy next to me to have my back, I don't want someone with a religious agenda. I want someone who can and will pull the trigger.

Bush reads his political history, follows the masters

by expatbrian

"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies."

~ Adolf Hitler

"The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it."

~ Joseph Mengele

The tactics of this White House are nothing new and as the huge lie worked for Hitler, as he convinced his people that wiping out an entire race and invading other countries was justified, so the big lie works for Bush.

Like all presidents and presidential staffs before him, he recognizes the primitive simplicity of the minds of the masses. He recognizes their innocent gullibility and the ease with which they are swayed by even the most preposterous claims and agree to even the most outrageous demands.

As long as Americans believe that this is not true, as long as they believe that they are too smart to let this happen to them, as long as they refuse to believe that their leaders will intentionally manipulate them with bold faced lies, religious mumbo-jumbo and scare tactics that keep them cowering in their homes...then Americans will continue to allow their children to be sent to foreign countries for slaughtering, they will continue to pay the rich for the right to be poor, and they will eagerly give up their few remaining freedoms because they won't believe that it is only the possession of those freedoms that keep them safe. They will prove once again how simple minded they really are.

Will the winning candidate be any different? If you think so, perhaps you should read the last paragraph again.

cross posted from World Gone Mad

Blackwater Christmas - not just a dream

By Capt. Fogg

I don't know what the spectators at the Armed Forces Bowl this New Years Eve will think when they see Blackwater mercenaries parachuting into the stadium as they did December 1st during halftime at the Sand Diego State/BYU game. Indeed, what will the Air Force team think when they see that those aren't our guys in the black uniforms? Are they staging an armed takeover or just displaying the awesome power of a private military?

I'm sorry to contradict Reagan the Great, but when someone shows up to help, I prefer that it would be someone from the legitimate government rather than armed representatives from a country without borders, or laws or accountability. I don't think it will be long, for instance, before the Bushists privatize the "War on Drugs" by giving license to companies like Blackwater to do all the things we won't allow the government to do ( like start a war in Columbia or Mexico or pour water up your nose or worse) and make no mistake, Blackwater has the vehicles, the helicopters, the ships and the intelligence division to allow them to accomplish most any mission, foreign or domestic, our next rogue president might consider to be too touchy to approach in a legal fashion.


If the next rogue president should be Mitt Romney, we can be assured that Blackwater head, Cofer Black, his chief adviser on counterterrorism, will have a lot to say about military affairs and military conduct and indeed he already has had. Romney's decision not to comment on torture was made with the advice of Black. Of course I'm sure Cofer Black's private army will be happy to accept more and better no-bid contracts from whichever idiot the American people choose to make things worse.

As Jeremy Scahill writes in The Nation,

"the Government is in the midst of the most radical privatization in history, and companies like Blackwater are becoming ever more deeply embedded in the war apparatus. Until this system is brought down, the world's the limit for Blackwater Worldwide. . ."

And what are the chances that this profitable enterprise will be brought down now that they have moved beyond the borders of brutal occupation and commercial espionage into retail sales of everything from 9mm pistols to baby clothes? Is the future a kind and degree of fascism unimaginable even in the Europe of the 1930's and 40's? Why not? With the country rallying behind thugs and idiots in blue pinstripes, what chance does freedom have?

Cross posted from Human Voices

Invasion of the Viking Women

By Capt. Fogg

A couple of readers* urged me to blog about this story yesterday, but it's one of those things that is so depressing, so horrifying and so disgusting to someone who once loved the United States that it's really hard to do anything but let you read about it yourself and weep. It seems like we're not only to suspect anyone sounding vaguely Islamic of harboring dreams of invading and conquering or subverting the US, but our new Immigration and Customs Enforcement people are worried about an invasion of Viking Women.

I've talked to Europeans who used to maintain vacation homes in the US and have sold them because of the outrageous harassment they get every time they enter the country, including fingerprinting and examination of financial records. I read recently the story of two English entrepreneurs who wanted to bring some capital and open a business here and essentially were thrown out by ICE with no reason given and I've read about people who because of visa irregularities have been held incommunicado and without charges for years without knowing why.

No, I'm not talking about "enemy combatants" I'm talking about tourists like Eva Ósk Arnardóttir, an Icelandic woman who overstayed her visa in 1995 and went home three weeks late. She's been back without any problems, but this time she's discovered the new America, the America of secret prisons, of jack-booted officers and dungeons where ordinary and harmless people are chained and shackled and interrogated and terrorized and poked and probed and intimidated and held without charges or benefit of legal help.

*My thanks to Crankyboy and Swampcracker