06/11/07 Get This
Chris Andreae
1. Tanks For The Roses: In a preemptive strike for peace, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace and the Surge Protection Brigade marched along the route of Saturday’s Grand Floral Parade. Two of the ‘Seriously Pissed Off Grannies’ out of the SPG were arrested trying to stop the Rose Tank – what a tank is doing in the middle of a flower-related event is anyone’s guess, but there it was. Better we fight them here than in the streets of Baghdad, I always say…
2. The Undead: As it goes in a bad zombie movie, the Liquefied Natural gas companies just won’t stay dead. First there was Calpine and its evil plans for an LNG terminal in the Warrenton area near the mouth of the Columbia River. Calpine perished and now in its place reconstituted out of the ashes, so to speak, we have Oregon LNG. It wants to run a 117-mile pipeline from the mouth of the river all the way to Mollala. Public hearings will be in Woodburn and Forest Grove, but not Mollala…shhhh…they want it to be a surprise…
3. The Smell of Money Burning: the US Forest Service in a paroxysm of Orwellian rhetoric has announced that it is going to test new fire control method. The agency has decided to log trees in areas “specifically selected to influence fire behavior”.. . The Nature Conservancy is all on board this give-away to logging companies and the Bush administration. They are the environmentalists who believe that if you give up a little something to industry, industry will give back…Boy Howdy. Money really does grow on trees.
4. Fancy This: The pigeon fanciers who have been killing raptors are facing felony misdemeanor charges.
5. The senate passed the cougar hunting bill.
6. Friend of Marion County has joined groups in central Oregon, the Coast and Hood River in fighting Measure 37. It’s a question of livability, specifically, do you want to live in Oregon or Orange County? If the latter, then please do so but don’t strip mall Oregon or we’ll blow you to smithereens with our LNG terminals or leave you to freeze to death on Mount Hood.
7. Little Hyatt Dam is a little illegal. It was built ex tempore years ago and now it is considered a safety risk, a hazard and against the law. But what the hell, people like it so they are going to bring their lake up to code. Meanwhile many of the nation’s largest dams are in desperate need of attention…but the Army Corps of Engineers and your money are busy fighting one losing battle after another in Iraq….So don’t forget your towel…
8. An Oregon Coast Technology Middle school student didn’t like the taste of the water in the school drinking fountains, so he took swab samples from the fountains, the toilets and assorted other water sources, tested them in his school’s chemistry lab and found that the toilet water was cleaner…He turned his work in as an English assignment.
9. The senate will test drive a no-confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales this afternoon.
10. Blow Hard: Joseph Lieberman wants to attack Iran. (And I believe he should go for it! Follow your heart, Joseph! Let’s send AIPAC Man over there, toss him out the back end of a C-130 transport with a satchel full of Zionist literature, the latest edition of ‘Hustler’ and Scooter Libby’s book, The Apprentice.’ We could do this on a Friday and aim Joe at a fundamentalist madrassa, then sit back on watch the fun…)
11. Colin Powell wants to close Guantanamo Bay. But before you get too excited about this and start breaking out the Good stuff, the revolution is not quite here: First off, it’s Colin Powell who is saying this because he wants to have some part of his legacy that is not an utter disgrace and he can be fairly certain Gitmo will never close. Secondly, think about it: If Guantanamo Bay is shutdown, are they really going to let all the detainees go free? Then where are they going to warehouse them? The short answer is, In all the hundreds of dungeons and torture chambers in all the client nations around the world that have already played host to America’s invisible prisoners.
12. Prisons in New York are going to ban books – even the Christian ones. That leaves a captive audience planted in front of a TV. Motto, Prison: Where Addictions Go To Grow Up.
13. DePaul University professor, Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure. It has been a long struggle for a man, who like Jimmy Carter more recently, had the courage and common decency to speak truth to power. ( Finkelstein is the author of ‘Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the abuse of History’, a book that takes to task Zionist superstar, Alan Dershowitz and his puffy little propaganda piece, ‘The Case for Israel’)
14. The Enemy Hmong Us: More bail hearings are scheduled in Sacramento for some of the men charged with trying to violently overthrow the government of Laos.
15. Good Old Golden Rule Days: A foreign policy program based in Fairfax, Virginia – Intelligence Central – is making a name for itself producing “acolytes” of Bush administration Neocon foreign policy. The Defense and Strategic studies program is “outside the academic mainstream, but within the policy mainstream.” Who said that? I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you. Sorry about that. It’s just the policy…
16. Voter ID comes to Mississippi. Voters there must now carry a party registration and photo ID to the polls in primary elections. (So don’t worry, poor and minority citizens: America is moving beyond the days of intimidation, misinformation, blocked roads, threats, lies and coercion, not to mention polling places that aren’t there, aren’t open or aren’t working properly….all a thing of the past!
17. In Iraq, a bridge collapsed killing three Americans. As is the usual Way of the Wire, not much else happened…just countless Iraqis killed, injured, maimed, their homes, businesses, families destroyed, all possible hope for the future denied them for the foreseeable future. Oh, and the mad hatter who was the speaker of the Iraqi Parliament has been quietly lead from the chamber by the Nice Men with soft voices and sharp needles…
18. While not looting the Iraqi economy, raping villagers, swimming in Saddam’s old pool and generally livin’ large in the Green zone, US soldiers have been amusing themselves by arming Sunni insurgents.
19. Then there is Afghanistan another beneficiary of American democracy. An Afghan radio station owner, teacher and mother of six has been killed in Kabul. (Back in the pre-democratic days before the Glorious Dawn of the American Empire, people in Kabul wore Western clothes, men and women went out in public together, cafes were full of Afghanis and Westerners, Lou Reed was popular and the cops smoked chillums as they stood on street corners, holding hands and patrolling…America got there just in time to stop these people from killing us all in out sleep…
20. In Rome Bush scored a ‘twofer’: he was met by enormous throngs of angry protestors that turned violent. And he called the Pope, ‘sir’, instead of ‘Your Holiness.’
21. But the Albanians love him. A cursory romp through Albanian history ought to convince the reader that Bush and Albania are made for one another.
- KBOO