Winter Patriot Community Blog

I've started a series on the Mumbai attacks.

Here's the first installment:
Nothing Can Ever Be The Same

You can comment below if you like; I hope to have more for you soon.

The post I wrote yesterday could have been read in a very different way than it was intended, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of my readers took it the wrong way.

You can read more here or comment below.

Torturing Democracy, an expose of how and why America came to be involved in open large-scale torture of prisoners (many of whom were simply shepherds captured by mountain tribesmen and sold into captivity), is now available for viewing online.

You can read the whole thing here, and/or comment below.

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga speaks a bit too freely sometimes -- to our great benefit. Recently he made some not-so-startling admissions, which were picked up by Chris Floyd ...

Read all about it here -- or comment below.

Forty-five years ago today, the world was changed by an audacious act of terrorism.

Ensuing events have confirmed the suspicions that arose at the time: the changes that came in the wake of the event have been forever, and not for better.

Humanity's last reasonable hope for peace and prosperity was dashed. The last real President of the United States was dead. And all the rest has been decline and fall.

You can read the rest here, and/or comment below.

I don't agree very often with any of the people who host and contribute to FOX News, but that's not because of any hard and fast rule; it's just because of the things they say.

Usually they feed you one lie wrapped in another, smothered by a third. But every now and then they accidentally allow a little bit of truth to slip into the mix, and that's when they get interesting.

One interesting bit of accidental truth-telling was occasioned by Wednesday's release of yet another "al Qaeda" video...

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You can read the rest here, and/or comment below

Ya gotta love this headline!!

Texas grand jury indicts Cheney, Gonzales of crime
Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:49am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AI11B20081119
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A grand jury in South Texas indicted U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday for "organized criminal activity" related to alleged abuse of inmates in private prisons.
...The grand jury in Willacy County, in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border, said Cheney is "profiteering from depriving human beings of their liberty," according to a copy of the indictment obtained by Reuters.
The indictment cites a "money trail" of Cheney's ownership in prison-related enterprises including the Vanguard Group, which owns an interest in private prisons in south Texas.
Former attorney general Gonzales used his position to "stop the investigations as to the wrong doings" into assaults in county prisons, the indictment said.

More:
Cheney's indictment in south Texas moves forward
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081120/ap_on_re_us/cheney_indicted

Following one of my most recent posts ("Pass The Cheese: Iraqi Soldier Kills Two American Soldiers") there was a discussion at Winter Patriot dot com which reminded me of a few things. And rather than tell you about them, I've decided to show them to you.

This is a piece from October of 2007, which I called "When Will We Ever Learn? Airstrike Kills Civilians In Iraq, Pentagon Denies Everything". It is reposted here, in full, with no apologies for the graphic content.

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You can read the whole thing here, and/or comment below.

I've been feeling a bit embarrassed at the sudden proliferation of laundry lists in the wake of the election: open "Dear Santa" letters to our new president-elect, from people who ought to know better. It's as if they had never seen politics before.

You can read the whole thing here, and/or comment below:

An Iraqi soldier shot and killed two American soldiers and wounded several others yesterday on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, according to various sources. Details are sketchy, except in Australia.

You can read the rest here, and/or comment below.

The American way of war has come to Canada, and it's incredible what a dose of manure can do, even in the cold!

Here's a case study in the process by which a government can take a menace to society, put him in a uniform, and ship him halfway around the world where he can be a menace to some other society until he gets himself killed there and comes home a national hero.

You can read the rest here and/or comment below.

Chris Floyd is one of those few journalists whose work is usually too good for journalism. In a profession that boasts of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, the things Floyd writes afflict everybody -- journalists included -- and journalism, therefore, doesn't seem to like Chris Floyd very much.

Your typical Chris Floyd essay doesn't merely inform by asking and answering questions about the subject: it demands that readers examine themselves. Floyd's ironies are prickly at both ends; his questions are double-edged. People get stabbed and cut reading Floyd, which is why -- I think -- Chris Floyd's essays draw an audience of only one-to-four thousand readers from an English-speaking Internet population that must number some two billion people. No matter who you are or what you believe, it takes guts to read Chris Floyd.

So it is with one of Mr. Floyd's latest efforts. Titled WIBDI: A Prism for the New Paradigm, this one is a 1400-word smart bomb aimed at the mob of self-styled 'dissidents' who came to themselves during the regime of George W. Bush and now, having given their all to Barack Obama, expect jobs and many other great things from him. Floyd writes:

Of course Floyd knows most readers won't actually do as he asks. Tens of millions of people will not, suddenly, wax morally and politically sentient. 'Progressive' Americans are not going to turn on Obama and his Democrats and call their straw heroes to account for the things the 'heroes' have done and said (or not done and not said, as the case may be). There will be no mass demonstrations demanding an end to the wars in Central Asia. No angry horde will march on Washington to compel the repeal of the USA Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, an end to government prying into Americans' private lives, the depoliticization of our justice system, and the prosecution for treason of George W. Bush and his hatchet-men. No outraged, 'progressive' mob will humble corrupt leadership and force a return to constitutional government and the rule of law. None of those things will happen because, to cite the old saw, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

None of the odious things that George W. Bush has done could have been done without Democratic cowardice and complicity. Had Democrats insisted on a rigorous, public investigation into events surrounding 9/11 and the onset of the Iraq War, the bulk of the Bush presidency would never have happened because any rigorous, public investigation would have ended in the impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney. Democrats voted "YEA!" on the USA Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and a long list of other perverse, Bush/Cheney initiatives. Democrats laid supine while Bush virtually shredded the U.S. Constitution and nullified, with signing statements, every piece of legislation for which he felt the vaguest distaste.

Speaking of Barack Hussein Obama, who was initially against the war in Iraq: by the end of Campaign '08, Obama had so changed his position on Iraq that he could have served as John McCain's running mate. Along with McCain, Obama went to Washington and stumped for Hank Paulson's widely despised and obviously corrupt $700 billion, Wall-Street bailout package. Obama stood with McCain -- and with Pelosi, Reid, and the whole herd of hypocrite swine who lead the purportedly 'progressive' Democratic congressional caucus -- stood on the stump and told the American people that they had done us all a huge favor; that the bailout was a thing the nation couldn't live without; that they shoved the swindle six feet up our collective ass because they knew the experience would be good for us -- a thing, they evidently suppose, that we ourselves are too stupid to realize.

The facts about Obama and his 'progressive' Democrats are rationally indisputable. They are in the public record of the last eight years. Most Americans over the age of 20 probably learned of them as they happened. Thoughtful people are taken aback, therefore, when they see the 'progressive blogosphere' awash in rhetorical swill: Obama is great; Obama is good; Obama is God's gift to Western Civilization; Obama will save us from the evil Bushmen; Obama will do this or fix that or make (plug in your pet peeve here) right again.

That crap wouldn't be so disgusting if we only heard it from rabid, rank-and-file Democrat partisans. It's the kind of stuff one expects from such as them. But when supposedly intelligent people like Naomi Klein start spouting the same sort of deluded gibberish, it's time to call for a reality check.

In an essay posted on Alternet, Klein asks: Can Obama Stop the Bush Administration's Final Economic Heist? She answers the question this way: Maybe Obama can stop it, but only:

"There will be consequences for betrayal?" Since when? Democrats betrayed their constituency even before Election '06 handed them a majority in the House of Representatives. Of the people who coordinated that betrayal, Speaker Nancy Pelosi won reelection in '08 by a huge margin. Here in Iowa, Pelosi's lapdog congressmen all won reelection handily. Sen. Tom Harkin, who voted for the bailout, easily won reelection. One of Pelosi's personal political goons, IL. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, was named White House chief of staff by Obama on Nov. 5 -- the day after Obama won the presidency. And Obama himself -- even though he touted the bailout at a time when public opinion was running about a hundred-to-one against the legislation -- beat all third-party candidates by a stupendous margin. So I think Naomi Klein will have to find a way to pardon Obama (I'm sure it won't be difficult) when she finds he is not terrified by her threats of reprisal.

About the idea of forcing Obama to keep his campaign promises, I have two questions:

1) Promises to who? I'm sure Obama promised his Wall Street supporters that he would work for a bailout, and I'm sure he delivered. Does Klein suppose the president-elect will now reverse himself and fight tooth-and-nail to have the bailout legislation repealed? Any such move would make our new president a lot of friends -- both in Wall Street and in Congress -- as Klein should know perfectly well. So just for my own self, I suppose Klein had better quit smokin' dat nasty shit.

2) What promise did Obama ever make to us, the people? I recall he promised "hope" and "change". Speaking just for myself again, I've been hoping for political change every year since Ronald Reagan first got elected, and I've never been disappointed. Every year for the last 28 years, things have changed for the worse. Every year, the changes were helped along by 'progressive' Democrats, and I expect Obama and his 'progressives' will continue in that grand tradition.

Still, "hope" and "change" are good ideas, I think. So maybe Naomi Klein and her grassroots 'progressives' can persuade President Obama to have 'progressives' in Congress emend the Declaration of Independence. The new version should read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and the Hope for Change."

I'll drink to that.

Whatever President Obama does or doesn't do, the Obama presidency is a wormy apple: its bane already gnaws at its vitals. The fatuous mob who sent him to the White House and now sing his praises will almost certainly howl for his head within two years because Obama is not what they think he is and -- even if he were -- the things Obama is bound to do if he honestly tries to save the nation will cause us, the people, as much pain as would the things his rich sponsors want him to do for them at our expense.

I don't now believe Obama is what he puts on to be and I don't now believe he has the best interests of our country at heart. I do believe he will spend his huge mandate taking care of his rich friends. Still, I am open to persuasion, for I'm conscious that I was wrong when I argued that Obama could never win the presidency. I was wrong about America when I once wrote that there will never be a president of the United States named 'Barack Hussein Obama'.

Knowing I've been twice wrong about him, I wish Obama the best because the United States of America are in dire straits. We need a leader in the White House who is wise and just and strong. So if, by and by, President Obama convinces me that what he's about is all for the good of the country, I will support him in whatever he does no matter how much it hurts.

If the mess we're in hurts you, too, then get on over to Chris Floyd's place and treat yourself to a little rhetorical iodine. It stings like hell but you feel better afterwords, and you won't get bullshit all over your clothes.

... it's so cute ...

You may read the whole thing here or comment below.