Terror in Sweden?

   * I am not sure how many of you ever had the pleasure of shopping at one of those IKEA stores. It can be a very pleasurable experience. They actually have a nice little cafe with some good things to eat, and if you happen to have a small child, they will provide free day- care while you shop.

The furniture they sell, for the most part, looks pretty good as well. The problem is, though, that you don't but them already assembled, and you have to assemble them when you get home. That is when the nightmare begins. Believe me people, putting IKEA furniture together can be a terrifying experience.

I wonder if this is what was on the president's mind when he  was referring  to a terror attack in Sweden, yesterday. I say that because no one (including the Swedish authorities) knows just what the hell president trump was talking about when he made reference to that attack.    

"We've got to keep our country safe. You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden," Trump told the crowd at his campaign-like rally in Florida on Saturday, critiquing Europe's refugee policies and complaining that his travel ban had been temporarily blocked by the courts. "Sweden, who would believe this?"

Of course there were no attacks or terror coming out of Sweden. (Well, there was the group *ABBA; they were kind of terrifying, but they are no longer a thing.) Just another lie told by the liar in chief.

And, of course, as is always the case, his supporters will try to minimize the lie by saying that the poor guy is just misunderstood, or that we are taking him too literally. I swear, there will soon come a time in this country when trump supporters will believe that two plus twp equals five, and that the main stream media and those on the left are only saying it equals four to distract from the good work that president trump is doing.

But this lie was too large and obvious to go unchecked, and trump did his best to address it today.

"Trump took to his Twitter account Sunday evening to explain that he was referring to a Tucker Carlson segment that appeared on Fox News Friday. In the segment, Carlson interviewed right-wing filmmaker Ami Horowitz, who had recently made a documentary about Sweden's refugee policy. The segment did not contain breaking news.

'My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.'

A White House spokesperson had attempted to explain what Trump had been referring to prior to Trump's tweet.

"He was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general — not referring to a specific incident," White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.
The country had spent the day baffled, however, because the president had said "last night" and nothing appeared to have happened." [Source]

Of course nothing happened, But thousands of his loyal and faithful fans went home thinking that something did.

I can hear them now.

"We have got to do something about those Muslims coming into our country. They just attacked Sweden.

 I sure hope  that they put extra guards around them IKEA stores and Volvo dealerships. These Muslims  mean war."  

*Pic from en.wikipedia.org

Battlefield, Brussels.

   "Until the philosophy which hold one race superior
And another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned
Everywhere is war
Me say war.

That until there no longer
First class and second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man's skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes
Me say war.

That until the basic human rights
Are equally guaranteed to all,
Without regard to race
This is a war." 

~Bob Marley~

War indeed. Whether it's on the hot sand-strewn battle fields of the Middle East,  or on the streets of Europe, I don't see it ending anytime soon.

You can always kill the terrorist, but killing their ideology is going to be much more difficult.

Terror came to our friends in Europe today. So, once again, it's time for Americans to cower in fear.  (I always wonder why it's only when terror comes to folks in Europe that we act this way. Those terrorist in Africa are just as scary and should be just as newsworthy.)  It's time for us to be fed with 24 hour cable news loops of the same scenes over and over, and for us to have to listen to right-wingnut politicians demagogue the issue in order to gain political power. (Really Ted? Police patrol Muslim neighborhoods in America? And where exactly would that be?)

Anyway, I would love to hear some suggestions from some of you field-hands about how we could rid society of the scourge that is Isis.

*Pic from usatoday.com

The Donald's America.

    I just watched  a video of yet another African American man being shot to death by someone who is supposed to be in a position of authority. This is becoming an all too familiar theme in our country. I bet you wouldn't have to tell the officer who executed Laquan McDonald that white lives matter.

Anyway, he is being charged with first degree murder, so it seems that we are making some progress, although it took over a year for us to be able to view the video tape. (TY Craig Futterman)

 This is the climate in which Donald Trump (and his handlers) have chosen to turn up his racist rhetoric and  let his minions loose on all those who disagree with him. So while some folks in the majority population continue to worry about Syrian refugees committing acts of terror, I will worry about the men and women who are sworn to protect us----- men and women who wear uniforms and bulletproof vests, catching a sudden case of "color arousal" at the wrong time.

Speaking of the aforementioned Mr. Trump, here is another cut and paste worthy article about his antics of late:

"We’re now on day two of the latest media controversy to engulf Donald Trump, namely his insistence that he personally saw footage that featured “thousands” of American Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. For a time, Dr. Ben Carson even backed up Trump’s delusion by claiming that he had also seen the footage, a claim that was subsequently retracted by his campaign. For two days now, the media has been parsing Trump’s claim, which he now supports with an unsourced paragraph in an old Washington Post article that describes “law enforcement authorities” questioning people who were “allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops.”

The controversy is obviously a big deal to the media, and even has some predicting that this could be the thing that finally puts a dent in Trump’s poll numbers. On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski predicted that this could really hurt Trump:

'This is what could really hurt Trump. I mean if — he’s got to be smart and strong and correct, and if he’s not correct, when push comes to shove people will coalesce around a different candidate.'

This is hilarious on so many levels, starting with the notion that being “correct” means anything to Republican voters, who lap up GOP candidates’ weird fantasies like kittens with a saucer of milk. In this case, though, the media is blinding itself to the fact that Trump’s claim has more then enough truthiness to give him the cover he needs.

That old WaPo report, it has to be said, is pure bullshit. The reporters who wrote it have since said that they were unable to verify the allegation, but no one has questioned them on where it came from in the first place. Based on the lack of attribution, the only possibilities are that it was from some law enforcement source who insisted on deep background attribution (not likely given the broad nature of the claim), or it was from residents and/or local political figures who claimed knowledge of the incidents.

 

In any case, in the weeks following the attacks, literally everyone I ran into in New Jersey had a story about how they had personally seen the FBI or the cops raid their local convenience store/gas station/other business that happened to be owned by brown people, and that they knew for a fact the people scooped up in the raid had been plotting against America. People were scared shitless, and talking out of their asses.

For some reason, though, none of the coverage of Trump’s remarks has included the footage that Trump was probably talking about, footage that every American either saw or heard about that day and was deeply traumatized by. While still reeling from the tragedy, Fox News viewers got to see this footage of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attacks:

Appearing when it did, this footage gave many Americans a distorted view of Muslim reaction to the attacks, which was, in fact, widespread condemnation. It is perhaps out of concern for this sort of distorted impression that media outlets are now reluctant to replay that footage, but it bears direct relevance to the political price Trump will pay for his current campaign of lies. To the Americans who matter to Trump, the resentful Republican base and low-information independents, Trump’s conflation of this footage with that unsourced WaPo report will be seen as a forgivable transgression at worst, and at best, something that feels true.

What I find even more bizarre about this current controversy is the immense gulf between coverage of Trump’s bogus 9/11 memories and the balls-out anti-black racism he displayed almost simultaneously. There may or may not have been people celebrating the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11, but the racist tweet Trump sent out this weekend was definitively a lie, definitively racist, and yet became a one-day footnote to the 9/11 story.

 

Some have correctly expressed concern that Trump’s 9/11 story could lead to violence against Muslims, but his supporters’ anti-black sentiments have already led to violence against at least one black man. Tweeting that black people are doing all of the murdering would seem to be at least as problematic, and orders of magnitude more racist, yet it has been treated as a sideline. Only Bill O’Reilly has managed to press Trump about it, and even then, it was only to warn him that it might give people an excuse to falsely believe that racism is even a thing.

To her credit, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow became one of the very few media figures who has even been willing to use the word “racist” to describe Trump’s tweet on Monday night’s show, but even that was a small part of an 18-minute segment on the 9/11 story. The rest of the media is apparently allergic to calling Trump’s tweet “racist” and a “lie” in equal measure, instead often referring to the completely fabricated statistics from a made-up source “questionable.” No, people, “slugging percentage” and “QB rating” are questionable statistics, these are lies.

As outrageous as Trump’s lies are, I find the media’s treatment of them even more of an outrage, because Trump has no duty to serve the public. Apparently, the media doesn’t think it does, either, or at least not that segment of the public." [Article]


*Pic from chicagotribune.com taken by Zbigniew Bzdak



  

MY WAR ON NEOCON TERROR

Well it's Sunday morning on a beautiful fall day here in the land of the brave and the home of some free, and the field is still troubled about this Iraq war. There was a time, when I told my self that I wouldn't write about it anymore, because it gets me too emotional to write a lucid post. I get emotional, because my brother in law was blown up by an IED while on patrol in Baghdad, and while his wife was pregnant with his now 14 month old daughter. He still hasn't been able to really hold his daughter because his hands are so f#%&*d up. Now he sits in an Army hospital in San Antonio, Texas almost two years later, still getting skin graphs, and physical as well as emotional therapy. So this war has been personal for me, and I suspect that it has been this way for at least 23,000 American families as well.

But this is not why I write this post. War is hell, and when people sign up as soldiers they expect that bad things might happen. What I don't think the soldiers expect when they join the armed services, is that their commander the thief will send them off to war for solely political and ideological reasons. This is what frat boy and the neocons did with Iraq, because make no mistake, this war was not about protecting America against terrorist, this war was about settling old scores, setting up a Western style democracy, and being able to control the oil, and other natural resources that may flow from the Middle East. Like when have we ever cared if people are suffering in other parts of the world enough to go in and invade their country to save them? If you want to save someone frat boy, how about starting with the people of Darfur? [200,000 slaughtered and counting] But I digress. So this war, this trumped up FAUX NEWS produced war, has done nothing to stop the war on terror, and has done nothing to improve our standing with the world community. In fact, the last time I checked, the NBA sized man with the beard was still running around with a 30 million dollar bounty on his head, while he and his organization continue to make more videos than Janet Jackson.

Now there is an all out civil war in Iraq. [Sectarian violence civil war, what's the difference?] with no end in sight. And now, even my spineless homey, Colin Powell, admits that this was a mistake, and he in essence lied to the U.N., when he made the case for war. Of course there were no WMD's and frat boy and his crew knew it all along. But it gets worse, because not only did frat boy and his minions try to tell us that there were WMD's in Iraq, but they tried to tell us that Sadaam had something to do with 911 as well. Now they have since tried to reverse from those comments because of irrefutable evidence to the contrary , but listen to Darth Vader's [AKA Dick Cheney] speeches, and time and time again he makes reference to Sadaam and state sponsored terrorism, and thus, by implication, 911 and the nineteen hijackers. News flash, those guys were Egyptians, and Saudis, which the last time I checked, has given more to Al Qaeda than Sadaam ever did. None of those hijackers were Iraqis; and Americans, to our credit, are starting to realize that frat boy and his crew were lying to us all along.

So here I sit at my computer, lamenting on the faith of others like my brother in law, who lost a piece of their bodies, shed their blood, and in some cases lost their lives in a god forsaken country in the Middle East. Where the people don't want them there in the first place, and they wonder every day, just what the f%^k are we doing here? I Will tell you what they are doing there, they are there to promote a political agenda, and fund a war machine to satisfy defense contractors who gave lots of money to get frat boy elected. For those you who don't believe me, f%^&* you, I don't care, this is my opinion, and until someone can show me different, this is what I will believe. Sorry for the anger, but it pisses me off when I think that people here at home are still being killed by record numbers due to a drug culture that won't go away. And our schools are still failing, while many programs are being cut. And not just any program; proven programs like Head Start, and other after school programs. Federal programs that ear mark money to the states for child support enforcement, and crime prevention. Even programs for first responders, the very people that should help us in case of a terrorist attack are being cut. These are the types of programs that give people quality of life here at home, yet sadly, they are being cut to fund this war. We are worried about Al Qaeda threats, yet, by ignoring the basic human needs of our citizens, we are creating terrorist every day. Because make no mistake, the animal that executes five of his drug rivals in a crack house is a terrorist. The thug that car jacks a seventy year old lady in a mall parking lot, gun butts her, and leaves her for dead, is a terrorist. The SOB that rapes a thirteen year old girl at knife point is a terrorist, not to mention the animal that is HIV positive, and goes around having unprotected sex; yes he is a terrorist too. Is it any wonder that black folks even more than whites, do not support this war. We don't understand why we are over there fighting for some ideological agenda, when real f&^%*d up sh*# is happening in our neighborhoods every day. We are not buying into this notion that they Al Qaeda bogyman is around the corner to get us. We have other bogeymen in our neighborhoods that we have to worry about on a daily basis. Yeah we are in a war with terror alright, and the real terrorist are the ones setting some of these policies that are hurting our communities, and ignoring the real threats in the world. Folks do you know who Francis Fukuyama is? [His name describes perfectly what I want to tell him]He is one of the original neocons who signed the founding statement of that now infamous group. Which included people like Rumsfeld,Cheyney,Wolfowitz,Libby,Feith etc., who are war criminals all in my book. Anyway, these geniuses lobbied Bill Clinton as far back as 1998 in an open letter to go to Iraq. Now Mr. Fukuyama calls Iraq "a base for jihadist terrorist,with plenty of American targets to shoot at" and regrets his previous position with the neocons. Well f#%k you, it's too late for that now! I told you I couldn't write about this war in a calm lucid manner. OK field, take a breath....OK I am better now.

I just hope people vote this November, [yeah I know I have been on this vote kick lately] because these are serious times. Don't for a minute think that frat boy's disciples won't be voting, they will, and they will try to win these mid terms, to steal a quote from my man Malcolm; "by any means necessary". Already they are outspending the democrats by two to one, and they have also decided to go negative with their campaigning. So you figure it out. And it's not only the Republicans, vote out any democrat that you think supported this war for political expediency as well. -insert Hillary here-But just vote. Do it for those who died before you to give you the right, do it for your communities, do it for your families, and on a personal note; do it for my brother in law.

Finally, I would like to say thanks and throw out some mad love to the fellows and young women who serve in Bravo Company 1088 Engineer Battalion of the 256th Infantry, as well as some love to all the soldiers who are recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center, in Fort Houston, Texas. You all deserve our love and you have it.

Peace!