Freak Flag Fly

God told me in 1985 to give up prostitutes. Now I'm Snoop Dogg's spiritual adviser.

# posted by Godshamgod @ 7:30 AM 0 comments

The war on terrorism is phony. True, bin Laden's boys were able to hit us pretty hard, thanks to luck and our own government's incompetence. But that was one organization and one hit. President Bush, after he got his instructions from the Establishment, declared war on every underground organization in the world, 95 percent of which were not even thinking of us, much less thinking about attacking us. Colombian rebels are against the Colombian government; Irish Republicans oppose British control of Northern Ireland; Palestinian groups are fighting Israeli occupation; and so on and so on. People employing guerrilla-war tactics to seek independence, an end to occupation, the overthrow of a dictator or to attain some degree of autonomy are not our enemies. Bin Laden is our enemy, and we should have concentrated on him.

# posted by Godshamgod @ 11:35 PM 0 comments

SKEEZA KEEPS SINGING THE SAME OLD TUNE!

In a speech to the American Embassy in Baghdad, Condoleezza "Skeeza" or "Skee" Rice deftly delivered the administration's most essential propaganda point: the conflation of Iraq and 9/11:

The United States of America, when it was attacked on September 11, realized that we lived in a world in which we cannot let threats gather, and that we lived in a world in which we had to have a different kind of Middle East if we were ever to have a permanent peace. It just could not continue to be a Middle East in which dictators like Saddam Hussein paraded around, lived in great palaces, and yet tortured, and oppressed, and just made mincemeat of this wonderful infrastructure here in Iraq. We just couldn’t let that stand, a man who had been a danger to this region for his entire reign.

And we had to have a chance to work with people in the Middle East who wanted a different kind of life, because the absence of freedom in the Middle East, the freedom deficit, is what has produced the ideologies of hatred that led people to fly airplanes into a building on a fine September day.

Skee reasons that we were attacked on 9/11 because Saddam oppressed his people.

OH, SKEEZA! THAT'S WHY WE LOVE YOU!

MEMO TO DEMS: Skee's propagation of the faulty reasoning behind the so called Global War on Terror testifies to your failure to refute such brazen hackery early and often. I guess we've all "moved on" at this point since "we're in Iraq now" and "failure is not an option." Grow some freaking nards, dinkwads.

# posted by Godshamgod @ 11:36 AM 0 comments

Whatever goddam military genius came up with the bright idea of flushing the Koran down the toilet at Guantanamo should be court-martialed, and Bush had better get out there apologizing before this thing spirals further out of control.

# posted by Godshamgod @ 9:45 AM 0 comments

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. [Cofer] Black gave you specific instructions on what he wanted you to bring home.

MR. SCHROEN: That's true. He did ask that once we got bin Laden and killed him, that we send his head back in a cardboard box on dry ice so that he could take it down and show the president.

MR. RUSSERT: Where would you find the dry ice in Afghanistan?

# posted by Godshamgod @ 10:07 AM 0 comments

It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.

# posted by Godshamgod @ 12:06 PM 0 comments

The report discloses that the Federal Aviation Administration, despite being focused on risks of hijackings overseas, warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable."

# posted by Godshamgod @ 10:03 PM 0 comments

AMMAN, Jordan, Jan. 21 -- President Bush's inaugural address... drew a skeptical reaction Friday in the Arab world, where analysts questioned whether the rhetoric of the speech was consistent with the administration's actions in the Middle East.

In interviews... a number of political analysts and commentators commended the values outlined in Bush's speech.... But they said the words belied the fact that the United States supports several authoritarian governments in the Middle East and would ring hollow to the many Arabs who perceive U.S. policy in the oil-rich region as motivated by financial concerns and support for Israel....

Several writers called the speech "messianic" in tone and language and potentially harmful to fledgling reform movements across the region.

"It's scary stuff, so sweeping and overarching you don't know what to make of it," said Sadiq Azm, a Syrian writer and reform advocate. "He's saying that what's good for America is good for everyone else. We are used to this kind of bombast from our Arab leaders. But it's been a long time since I've heard it in English."

...Many frustrated reformers say the apparent disarray of the U.S. project in Iraq has given autocratic governments an excuse to forgo even the most modest political reforms....

Many Arabs, including some involved in democratic reform movements, also say the U.S. record of alliances in the Middle East is at odds with Bush's agenda. The United States supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980s during Iraq's long war with Iran. The Bush administration has applied steady pressure on largely resourceless Syria, including economic sanctions for its military presence in Lebanon, while leaving alone the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, which sits atop a quarter of world's petroleum reserves.

...Abdulaziz Alsebail, a professor of modern literature at King Saud University in Riyadh and part of a reform movement in Saudi Arabia that is nudging the ruling family toward allowing more public participation in politics [said] "But the question is: How can you impose freedom? Is military intervention the right way to do it? I don't think it's been a very successful attempt at all."

"Are we going to see more military intervention, or are we talking about something like a Marshall Plan?" said Mohamed Alayyan, publisher of the al-Ghad daily newspaper in Amman. "To achieve this objective, the perception of the people in the Middle East must be changed, especially regarding the Palestinian dilemma and the treatment of prisoners of war. You cannot forget the effect Abu Ghraib had on American credibility here."

Azm called Bush's language "Churchillian, but at a time without an adversary as serious as the Nazi regime." He said the speech would likely alarm governments such as Syria's, already fearful of U.S. military intervention, as well as the reform movement that has been pushing Syrian President Bashar Assad to allow for more open government.

"People will see in this the old civilizing mission, the old colonialism," Azm said. "He has adopted the reformers' agenda, but in such a messianic way that even we are not ready to go that far."

# posted by Godshamgod @ 5:12 PM 0 comments

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.
• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,” but rather, they hate our policies. The
overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic
societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that “freedom is the future of the Middle East” is seen as patronizing, suggesting that
Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do
not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions
appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim selfdetermination.
• Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have
elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an
Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public support.
• What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of “terrorist” groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam.

Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim World is not one of “dissemination of information,” or even one of crafting and
delivering the “right” message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply,there is none...

# posted by Godshamgod @ 12:47 PM 0 comments

...are allegations that a particular group kills people as a form of human sacrifice, and uses their blood in various rituals. The alleged victims are often children.

Many different groups have been accused, including Canaanites, Jews, Christians, Cathars, Knights Templar, Witches, Christian heretics, Roman Catholics, Roma, Wiccans, Druids, neopagans, Satanic cultists, and evangelical Protestant missionaries.

A famous example of blood libel is the allegation that Jews kill Christian and Muslim children and use their blood to make Passover matzohs. Variants of this story have been circulating since at least the 1st century.

# posted by Godshamgod @ 10:42 AM 0 comments