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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

1/16/2007

The Truth is Now a
Revolutionary Act


War is won by breaking the will of the opponent.

The enemy wants to kill you.

The terrorists’ strategy is designed to break our will – the will of the American people. Their strategy is to slowly degrade America’s four instruments of national power: political, economic, social, and military.

Their goal is to create havoc in our vulnerable democratic system until it collapses.


November 4, 1979: Iranian hostage crisis, Tehran
October 23, 1983: U.S. Marine barracks, Beirut
October 7, 1985: Achille Lauro Hijacking, Egypt
December 21, 1988: Pan Am 103 bombing, Lockerbie, Scotland
February 26, 1993: World Trade Center Bombing
June 25, 1996: Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia
August 7, 1998: U.S. Embassy bombings, Tanzania and Kenya
October 12, 2000: U.S. Cole bombing, Yemen
September 11, 2001: World Trade Center, Pentagon


Coming to a neighborhood near you?

Wake up America! This war started twenty-eight years ago!

The struggle against Islamo-fascism is clearly being lost on the home front.

Consider the following:

With over 1.1 billion Muslims worldwide, it’s estimated 10% (110 million) are radicalized and sworn to our death and destruction.

Islamic religious leader granted Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda the right to kill up to 10 million Americans. Plans are in the works for catastrophic attacks involving weapons of mass destruction.

Over 90% of American mosques are Saudi funded and tainted by Wahabbi doctrine.

Colleges like Harvard, Georgetown, etc. have received multi-million dollar gifts from Saudi Arabians – funds being used to purchase influence and capture the minds of our youth.

Thousands of prisoners are being converted to Islam in our prisons. Upon release, many of these same felons are recruited into a standing army awaiting marching orders.

Terrorist training facilities continue to operate freely within our borders.

Muslim students Associations (MSAs), Islamic centers and mosques across America and Canada sponsor paintball outings and promote survival skills.

They recommend to Muslim students that paintball is an excellent way to learn about combat.

CAIR (the Council of American-Islamic Relations) continues to exert tremendous influence in Washington. Their propaganda machine is supported by huge donations from Saudi Arabia.

Our enemies are forthright when voicing their intentions to establish a caliphate and deliver the entire world to Allah. We are the ones who refuse to accept the fact that they mean business, so we continue to live in a state of lethal denial.

In the words of CAIR’s chairman, Omar Ahmad, ‘Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to be dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.

CAIR continues to host regional conferences for thousand of Muslims nationwide. Keynote speakers include the likes of Siraj Wahhaj, the un-indicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

With the 2006 election results in, one big winner may be CAIR.

Resurrecting tabled bills, like House resolution 288, CAIR will now be able to use the new congress to expand its reach and influence even further than it has up to now.

On the horizon? Amnesty for illegal aliens, open borders, habeas corpus and rights to enemy combatants, enacting laws to make it illegal to profile Muslims, and elimination of the Patriot Act and wire tapping programs?

We have our first elected Muslim congressman, who took his oath of office on the Qur’an, not the Bible. Since the Qur’an says belief must be absolute, will his allegiance be to the U.S. Constitution, or the Qur’an? He would not answer this question when questioned by reporters.

Not a problem? You may want to check out the situation in England with their elected Muslim representatives and judges.

Over 6,300 Muslim-inspired terrorist attacks have taken place worldwide since 9/11, and jihadists have threatened even the Pope’s life. Why do our leaders in Washington continue to refer to Islam as a religion of peace?

The time has come for all concerned Americans to either rise up and take a stand or acquiesce and sink further into a state of apathy.

History has proven that a democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) usually followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

During those 200 years, these nations have progressed through the following sequence:

from bondage to spiritual faith

from spiritual faith to great courage

from great courage to liberty

from liberty to abundance

from abundance to complacency

from complacency to apathy

from apathy to governmental dependency

from governmental dependency back into bondage


Where are we today?

Many believe we’re somewhere between the ‘apathy’ and the ‘complacency’ phase, with some 40 percent of the nation’s population already having reached the ‘governmental dependency’ phase.


Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children what it was once like in the United States where men were free … Ronald Reagan



Click to view and hear the origin of all of the above -- the most powerful, urgent, wake-up call I have seen issued to the nearing brain-dead American citizenry (present company excluded, of course). You will not spend a more meaningful five minutes anywhere. May the media be damned for their purposeful, agenda-driven, and life- liberty- and sovereignty-lethal gross negligence.

~ joanie

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched the video. It made me want to scream! This country is finished.

Anonymous said...

The truth hurts. A lot.

Anonymous said...

I just clicked on the site. Every American should be required to watch that presentation. I don't know if I'll sleep tonight.

Anonymous said...

Ready for 'president' Hussein Obabama ?

Anonymous said...

I think most of us who post here or lurk here know all of the things that are talked about on that site, but seeing them all put together in such a way is really hard to take. We have to be the stupidest country on earth.

Anonymous said...

What a gruesome picture this paints. But the sad thing is I can't poke a hole in any of it.

Anonymous said...

Well done but the situation is hopeless.

Anonymous said...

"Colleges like Harvard, Georgetown, etc. have received multi-million dollar gifts from Saudi Arabians – funds being used to purchase influence and capture the minds of our youth."

What about the stooges at the US "State" Department? They dance to please their muslim masters.

By the way, how is Grover Norquist doing?

Anonymous said...

The graphic of the bombs going off in all parts of the U.S. reminds me of the recent episode of "24".

Have you read this Joanie?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,76990,00.html

Your link is very frightening and very informative, but I sadly think that most people who would watch it would think it was "radical" only because they don't know half of what they need to.

Anonymous said...

Good work, cw.

"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants." (Albert Camus)

Anonymous said...

From the list of atrocities, it look like we're overdue.

And from the noise out of Washington, it looks like we'll be unprepared again.

Anonymous said...

The unsettling reality of terrorism is that it is always looking for new ways to accomplish mass death and destruction, and always in search of the weakest link.

joanie said...

Cal,

De Tocqueville wrote, in Democracy in America (vol, 1, ‘The Federal Constitution’):

How does it happen, then, that the American Union, with all the relative perfection of its laws, is not dissolved by the occurrence of a great war? It is because it has no great wars to fear. Placed in the center of an immense continent, which offers a boundless field for human industry, the Union is almost as much insulated from the world as if all its frontiers were girt by the ocean.

Despite his incredible wisdom, he could not accurately foresee how near-sighted this one observation would become.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

I don't know how anyone could watch this and still vote Democrat. My hair is standing on end.

Anonymous said...

The Abandonment of George W. Bush--Will His Veto Pen Be the Only Thing That Keeps Him Relevant For the Next Four Years?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16675806

Anonymous said...

Hey Anonymous,

Four years, huh?

I guess you lefties never took many math classes.

Here's another article by your same CHARLIE COOK written for the sicko, commie Daily KOS.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/2/104648/2260

Enjoy, leftie.

Anonymous said...

A wake up call if there ever was one. Thanks for posting, Joanie.

Anonymous said...

Haditha Accusations Unmasked
Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Jan. 18, 2007

The report on the investigation of the Haditha slayings by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), leaked to the Washington Post by anonymous Pentagon sources, is based on incomplete information and is badly flawed, a source tells NewsMax.

In an careful, point-by-point examination, a veteran Marine intelligence officer, who was present and monitored the day-long action from its onset, revealed to NewsMax unknown facts either ignored by the NCIS or of which the agency seemed totally unaware.

"The report is more a representation of witnesses statements and undisputed facts presented from the government's biased views, than it is a representation of the actual facts," the source told NewsMax.

Here are excerpts from the Post Story and the facts reported by our source, who, unlike the NCIS, was present on November 19, 2005.

According to the Post's story on the report by their savvy military affairs correspondent Josh White, "Witnesses told investigators that Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the squad's leader, shot the men one-by-one after they were ordered to get out of a white taxi in the moments following the explosion, which killed one Marine and injured two others. Another Marine is alleged to have fired rounds into their bodies as they lay on the ground. "The taxi's five occupants exited the vehicle and according to U.S. and Iraqi witnesses, were shot by Wuterich as they stood, unarmed, next to the vehicle approximately ten feet in front of him," said a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on the incident that runs thousands of pages," the Post wrote.

"This is NCIS's representation of the witness statements and undisputed events," our source told NewsMax.com. "For example: No one disputes these facts: 1)The suspected insurgents drove up into the middle of an ambush kill zone. 2) The suspected insurgents began to exit the vehicle. 3) The Marines shot the suspected insurgents outside of the taxi while simultaneously closing with the enemy at the ambush location.

"What the NCIS has done in their investigation findings, and what the Post has done in accepting those findings, is to portray this sequence of events in the worst possible light, to implicate the Marines to the greatest extent possible."

The Post reported that "one of the witnesses, a 26-year-old Iraqi soldier Sgt. Asad Amer Mashoot, who was in the Marine convoy, told investigators he watched in horror as the four students and the taxi driver fell. ‘They didn't even try to run away,' he said. ‘We were afraid from Marines and we saw them behaving like crazy. They were yelling and screaming.'"

NCIS "is swallowing the visceral reaction of this Iraqi, hook, line and sinker," the Marine intelligence officer charged, adding that "the typical Iraqi soldier's reaction to a Marine squad in the attack is horror. The Iraqis are timid and deathly afraid of confrontation, and an Iraqi ride-along, witnessing Marines defending their position with all the accompanying yelling to each other, at the enemy, and the chaos in general is probably going to be shocked. This is a well known phenomenon in any engagement. To cherry-pick this Iraqi soldier's reaction to imply rage or out of control actions by Marines is disingenuous and deceptive."

At the time of the taxi incident, Sgt. Wuterich and his squad from Kilo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment were under insurgent fire in a carefully planned ambush and the situation was chaotic. The NCIS report ignores this fact, giving the impression that the death of the men from the taxi took place as an isolated incident instead of having occurred when the Marines were engaged in a firefight with insurgent ambushers. The killing of the men did not occur in a vacuum, but in the midst of an ambush involving sustained enemy fire.

According to the NCIS report, the Post wrote that the Marines "told investigators that they believed they were authorized to fire freely inside two houses they raided in the minutes following the taxi shootings, after concluding that insurgents were firing on them. After an officer ordered them to ‘take' one of the homes and Wuterich commanded them to ‘shoot first, ask questions later,' the Marines considered the houses ‘hostile,' according to sworn statements to investigators.

"In addition, the documents showed that Marine Corps officials have accused the troops of failing to identify their targets before using grenades and guns to kill 14 unarmed people in the houses, including several young children in their pajamas, in a span of about 10 minutes."

This last statement astonished our source, who commented "Damn right they were authorized to fire freely inside the two houses. Damn right they considered the houses hostile. There are two Purple Heart winners from another squad that day who received fragmentary grenade wounds from Syrian fighters defending from within the back bedroom of a house they were entering."

The state of mind of the Marines was totally ignored by the NCIS, although it played the key role in what happened that day.

That state of mind can be clearly understood when it is known that just one week a earlier, these Marines were briefed by an intelligence officer on how a Force Reconnaissance unit had entered a hospital bedroom tentatively, and the insurgents were lying in bed with AK-47s hidden under the blankets.

"Seven Recon Marines were killed that day
because they didn't go in hard enough, and didn't lead with grenades," our source said. "Sgt. Wuterich and his Marines were doing exactly what they had been briefed to do, what their company commander had trained them to do, and what they had been authorized to do by every echelon of command in Al Anbar Province."

Moreover, that authorization was part of what was known as "Operation Rivergate" an intelligence briefing operation that covered a number of insurgent ambushes in early October and throughout the first months of the unit's deployment.

"These incidents of insurgent actions were reinforced in the Marines' minds during October and November in their daily intel briefings," our source said.

"This kind of thing is what will ultimately burn the NCIS," he predicted. "Their investigative techniques were so focused in interrogations, that they did not do the due diligence of documentary investigation so they didn't even consider the contents of all these briefs and intel reports as pertinent."

Our source said he learned that the NCIS was even unaware of the horrendous incident in the Haditha hospital, the details of which had to have burned themselves deep into the consciousness of Sgt. Wuterich and his men. He told NewsMax.com he couldn't wait until Marine intelligence officers bring into the courtroom actual photographs of the enemy's sandbagged positions in patients' rooms, or the line drawings of how the enemy killed those recon Marines while lying in bed with AK-47s under the covers.

The Post reported that "numerous Marine officers in the chain of command in Iraq - including a major general - knew about the civilian deaths almost immediately but did not launch an investigation for months, according to interview transcripts. Some lower-level officers did not believe that the Marines had done anything inappropriate, while high-ranking officers had limited information about the incident and did not inquire further."

Said our source "Every echelon of command in Iraq had the battalion's full debrief of the incident. No one doubted for a second, from the enemy indicators leading up to that day, as well as the intelligence gained after the attack, that this action was typical of insurgent activity and [Marines'] justified reaction to that incident."

The Post reported that the Marines "who rushed to help told investigators they took enemy rifle fire from several locations on the north and south sides of the road. Navy Hospitalman Brian D. Whitt said he could see bullet impacts near his feet and noticed men with rifles disappearing from atop a house to the north. Some of the fire appeared to be coming from behind the white taxi.

"The Marines concurred that they were under fire from all sides, indicating that the incident was part of a complex insurgent attack that lasted much of the day. One Marine and two Iraqi soldiers told investigators that the men who had been in the taxi were standing in a line outside it, some with their hands in the air, when Wuterich began to fire on them.

"Wuterich said the men got out of the car, and he shot them because he considered them a threat. But Dela Cruz said the men were standing in a line when they started to fall.

‘As I crossed the median I saw one of the Iraqi civilians, who was standing in the center of the line, drop to the ground,' Dela Cruz told investigators. ‘"Immediately afterwards another Iraqi standing by him raised his hands to his head. I then heard other small arms fire and looked to my left and saw Sgt. Wuterich kneeling on one knee and shooting his M16 in the direction of the Iraqi civilians.'

"Dela Cruz told investigators that he pumped bullets into the bodies of the Iraqi men after they were on the ground and later urinated on one of them. Minutes later, a Quick Reaction Force arrived from the Marine base, bringing Lt. William T. Kallop, the first officer on the scene. Kallop told investigators he began to receive enemy fire almost immediately.

"About that time, Cpl. Hector A. Salinas spotted a man firing at the squad from the corner of a house on the south side of the road," according to the Post

"Are you confused just reading this?" the intelligence officer asked. "I am! Imagine what those Marines are dealing with as all this is going on. The enemy fire is still continuing when the platoon commander showed up at least 15 minutes later! One Marine's observation and reaction to an event will be totally different than another Marine that may be standing 100 feet away. To take their natural conflicting observations and use them to implicate each other or the situation in general is ridiculous.

"As for Dela Cruz' actions that he has admitted to - that is one of those things that you can't account for ... a young Marine by himself, doing something that makes you scratch your head. One thing occurs to me though. I wonder if he would have urinated on them if he hadn't thought at the time that they were enemy insurgents?"

The Post reported that Cpl. Salinas "then stated that he could see the enemy, so Kallop told them to 'take the house,' according to an NCIS summary of an interview with Kallop. The interview provides the first evidence that an officer ordered the attack. Richard McNeil, a lawyer who represents Kallop, declined to comment about him or his role, but he warned that "typically in an NCIS investigation, the narratives are always slanted to the interpretation of the government."

Said our source "That is an understatement if I have ever heard one. One thing that bothers me is that a combat general like General Mattis didn't see through the NCIS narrative."

According to the Post "the Marine division's rules-of-engagement [ROE] card in effect at the time in western Iraq instructed Marines to ‘ALWAYS minimize collateral damage'" and said that targets must be positively identified as threats before a Marine can open fire. It also told Marines that ‘nothing on this card prevents you from using all force necessary to defend yourself.'"
"Of course. NCIS uses the useless ROE card that division hands out, which doesn't have anything to do with the specific ROE briefed to the Marines for an operation in a well-known enemy-held territory," the intel officer explained. "Did the division follow the ROE card when it authorized TOW [Tube Launched optically tracked wide guided missile] Hellfire and GBU-12 [Guided Bomb Unit-12, a 500 pound general purpose warhead] drops on civilian residences four hours later?"

The Post wrote that "another group of Marines, including Dela Cruz, simultaneously went to the north side of the road and found a dwelling that they believed was the "trigger house" for the roadside bomb. They took several Iraqis into custody, according to the documents, but did not shoot anyone in a search of several houses. Another man was shot after Marines observed him running along a ridgeline," the Post reported.

"Just how does this jibe with the accusation of ‘Marines in a rage?'" our source wondered. "If they had been in a rage, or otherwise been indiscriminately killing civilians, why did they stop here? The fact is, this house was well away from the road, posed less of a threat, and they were not under direct fire from this house. This allowed them to go in softer, and they made intelligent decisions about the threat level and the [actions] necessary to, counter the threat. Took them longer to get there also, so they were able to process the surroundings more thoroughly.

Wrote the Post "in December 2005, the Marines authorized $38,000 in condolence payments to the families of the civilians killed in the first two houses, and [Bn. Commander Lt. Col] Chessani, in early February, explained the payments in a memo. ‘The enemy chose the time and place of his ambush. Without callous disregard for the lives of innocent bystanders, the enemy would not have chosen to fight from the bedrooms and living rooms of civilian-occupied houses,' they wrote.
"The official inquiry began two weeks later, after the Time reporter sent a list of questions about the incident to Marine officials in Iraq. In his e-mail, the reporter raised the possibility that Marines had massacred civilians and executed the men from the taxi, based in part on a videotape made by an activist a day after the incident.

"[Division commander Gen.] Huck told investigators he dismissed the allegations, believing they were part of an insurgent campaign to smear the Marines. Other Marine officers, such as Davis, also believed that the allegations were outlandish. But Maj. Samuel H. Carrasco, then a battalion operations officer, said he and the battalion executive officer suggested an investigation to Chessani. Carrasco told investigators that "Lt. Col. Chessani then shouted, 'My men are not murderers.'" According to our source "This last part (as well as the couple of previous paragraphs) pretty much accurately describes the chain of reporting, and the fact that everyone knew, and treated it with its due attention.

"One thing glossed over is that quite a bit of intelligence reporting went into those condolence payments. The track record of insurgents using civilians as cover was clear - one example is the May 2005 ‘Mother's Day Massacre' in Haditha, where insurgents set up sandbagged defensive positions in the Haditha Hospital, and ambushed Marines after driving a vehicle suicide bomb into the middle of their convoy (sound familiar?). I love how [the Post] juxtaposes an otherwise unremarkable CO comment in defense of his Marines against the other officers' observations - totally out of context, as if to bolster the dereliction charge against Lt.Col Chessani."

The NCIS investigation began months after the incident on November 19, 2005, only after Time magazine had published an account based entirely on suspect sources and a video filmed by the insurgent ambushers that had been shopped around for months.

NewsMax.com's source, an expert on insurgent tactics was present throughout the day's action and was in a position to monitor the events which amounted to a full day's combat in that insurgent-dominated city.

His revelation of the pre-November 19th action briefings casts a whole new light on what motivated Sgt. Wuterich and his men to act as they did on that day. Given their state of mind it is no wonder that he advised his men to shoot first and ask questions later. As past experience had proven, Marines who "asked questions first," did not live to shoot.

Marines familiar with the case told NewsMax that the government knows it cannot sustain murder charges in the case of the civilians in the two houses and having understood that, later focused on the taxi incident where the only so-called evidence are photos of the dead passengers and confusing testimony coerced from some of those present.

Anonymous said...

We are sitting ducks and our leaders in Washington are more concerned with grabbing power and putting their own ideology in place than protecting the country. I don't think it's ever been that way in our history before and we've never been in a more dangerous place because of it.

Anonymous said...

Joanie, deTocqueville was a brilliant man, but he could only see things from the vantage point of a mid 19th century philosopher. No one could have envisioned the many technological changes that now make some of his predictions too "contained."

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this. I have sent the link to many people who need to know.

Anonymous said...

Maybe if this was shown in theaters with free admission and free popcorn and Coke you could get people to learn.

Anonymous said...

"I don't think it's ever been that way in our history before."

Very true.

Anonymous said...

It's not over until I say it's over.

Anonymous said...

Someone here said they had a relative located in Thailand, I think:

Thai Army Officers Held in Bombings

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/world/asia/21thai.html?hp&ex=1169355600&en=f973aee949112e57&ei=5094&partner=homepage

By SETH MYDANS and THOMAS FULLER
Published: January 21, 2007
SINGAPORE, Jan. 20 — Authorities in Thailand detained 15 people, including some military officers, in connection with a string of bombings that killed three people and disrupted celebrations on New Year’s Eve, the police said Saturday.
Police sources said nearly 100 police officers and soldiers had searched 18 locations in and around the capital and detained eight military officers and seven civilians.
“I was informed by police that they have detained some suspects and it is very regrettable that some of the officers are involved,” Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont told reporters in Bangkok. “It is the power of police to investigate and file charges if they have evidence.”
The arrests were made under martial law imposed after a coup four months ago that

snip

Anonymous said...

Load of crap from supposed “news” organization Reuters

on Redford leftwing film festival

Reads like something out of a 1960’s hippie drug den
___________________________________

Sundance opens with call to speak out against war

Jan 19, 2007

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2007-01-19T065331Z_01_N18477114_RTRUKOC_0_US-SUNDANCE-OPEN.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

By Bob Tourtellotte

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) - The Sundance Film Festival opened on Thursday night with an innovative movie harkening back to Vietnam anti-war protests and a call by actor/activist Robert Redford for an apology by U.S. leaders.

Redford, whose Sundance Institute for independent film backs the annual festival, said in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks he, like many others, showed a "spirit of unity" with President George W. Bush and others who backed the war on terrorism and led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We put all our concerns on hold to let the leaders lead," Redford told a packed audience for the opening night documentary film, "Chicago 10."

"I think we're owed a big, massive apology," he added.

Sundance is the top gathering in the United States for independent film, and typically in his opening night address, Redford exhorts audiences to stay focused on the movies and moviemakers who are creating their work outside Hollywood's commercial, mainstream studios.

But this year, the Oscar-winning actor and director of films like "Ordinary People" dispensed with his normal speech to focus his few words on current-day politics. His change seemed appropriate for the debut of "Chicago 10."

Director Brett Morgen's documentary looks back at the notorious late 1960s trial of anti-war activists including Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, known at that time as the "Chicago Seven."

Using a cutting-edge blend of historical TV footage with animated characters, Morgen looks back at the anti-war protests at the 1968 Democratic convention and the trial of the famed "Chicago Seven," who were convicted of inciting riots.

As history later judged, many of the protesters were viewed less as lawbreakers and more as the voice of a new generation of leaders who chose to openly protest government policies.

Morgen, who took the stage to a standing ovation after the screening, urged today's audiences to speak out again.

One of his goals in making the documentary, he told the more than 1,000 people in attendance, was to "mobilize the youth in the country to get out and stop this war." He was, obviously, referring to the current war in Iraq.

Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore told Reuters ahead of the premiere of "Chicago 10," the documentary typifies many of the movies playing at this year's festival.
"It's about being inspired to take risks to change the world you're in," Gilmore said.

But "Chicago 10" is more than just about taking risks and speaking out against war. Morgen challenges conventions in documentary filmmaking, where tradition has it that filmmakers interview subjects talking about an issue or a topic.

In his movie, he utilizes the transcripts from the federal trial and re-creates the events by having actors including Nick Nolte and Mark Ruffalo voice the animated characters.

Hayden, who attended the premiere, was impressed. He took the stage after the premiere and wondered aloud how Morgen, who was born after the 1968 protests and trial, could have captured the intense emotion of the time.

"I thought he did it brilliantly," said the veteran anti-war protester and political activist.

More than 120 films will be screened throughout the 10-day festival that ends on January 28, and while most of them will not address the war or current events, there was little doubt "Chicago 10" set the tone for the festival, known for cutting-edge films and new, fresh voices in cinema.

Anonymous said...

Someone here said they had a relative located in Thailand, I think.

Al, I think Joanie's daughter is over there. I know she works for the Army over there.

Joanie, when you get back fill us in on where she is and whether she knows anything about this first hand?

Anonymous said...

Calling Redford and Sundance "crap" is right on the money.

We had dinner at friends house last night and afterwards they wanted to look at a part of the Goldren Globe awards (some actor they like was up for one). I had to zone out for those 10 minues. I don't have time to listen to preaching from conceited people who are stupider than me and working to kill my coutry (and P.S. I told them so).

Anonymous said...

O'Conner,

"(and P.S. I told them so)."

GOOD.

These lefties love to give each other 'awards.'

I'll give them an 'award' they won't forget if they come to close to me.

Anonymous said...

Book Review: Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US (by Steven Emerson)

Steven Emerson’s “Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.” tears the cover off this American jihad network. It is a comprehensive summation of what is known about the activities of al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other jihad groups within the United States. . . The extent to which these jihad groups have penetrated American society is likely to come as a surprise even to relatively informed readers.

Emerson, who has been tracking jihad terror activity in the U.S. for years (he is the producer of the riveting 1994 episode of PBS’s “Frontline” titled “Terrorists Among Us—Jihad in America,” which is still essential viewing for all those concerned about the security of the United States), in his book lays out evidence that jihadists are pursuing their goal of Islamic supremacism in myriad ways in America today, including through “advocacy groups, an array of disingenuous charities and foundations, corporate financing networks, and the halls of academia.” He and the staffers of his Investigative Project on Terrorism explain how al Qaeda continues to operate on our soil even after 9/11, how its operational strategy has evolved since then, and the extent of its American network.

Unimpeded Terror Financing

But al Qaeda, of course, is not the only jihad organization operating on American soil today. Emerson explores the activities of many of them, including their actions within American mosques, their operations through charitable organizations and through the Internet and their involvement in money-laundering activities that allow terror financing to continue virtually unimpeded.

At the same time, he chronicles how American Muslim advocacy groups in Washington have worked to impede law enforcement endeavors against these operations at virtually every step—raising questions about their own larger goals. And of course, these advocacy groups have benefited from friends in high places.

Anonymous said...

Thailand's recent coup was Muslim-inspired and Muslim-led, but you will not hear that in any of the major media. Up until the coup, Thailand was one of our strongest allies. We've lost that ally, but you won't hear that in any of the major media either.

One more unnoticed giant leap for jihad.

CW, you would do best to tell your daughter to come home and stay home.

Anonymous said...

Another Rogue Prosecutor?
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
EDITORIALS & OPINION 1/22/2007

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=254362047756675

Justice: As the president weighs pardoning two imprisoned Border Patrol agents, the explanation for their prosecution raises more questions than it answers . Is U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton another Mike Nifong or Patrick Fitzgerald?

In response to public and congressional protests against what is perceived as a grievous miscarriage of justice, Bush told KFOX-TV in El Paso, Texas, that he would "take a sober look at the case" of Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean.

The two have begun serving prison terms for assaulting a purportedly unarmed Mexican drug smuggler in a February 2005 incident, obstructing justice and violating the Fourth Amendment rights of an illegal alien. We hope Bush will take a long look, for some things about the case just don't add up.

In an interview with World Net Daily, prosecutor Sutton said the agents "shot 15 times at an unarmed man running away" after the smuggler first tried to surrender. Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila ran away only after Compean hit him with the butt of his shotgun.

Ramos and Compean are 10- and five-year veterans. One was once nominated for Border Patrol Agent of the Year. These are not rogue agents or rookies. Why would one hit an unarmed smuggler trying to surrender? Why would they miss 14 of 15 shots at someone close enough to hit with a shotgun butt? Why, for that matter, would they shoot at a fleeing unarmed suspect at all?

Two of Aldrete-Davila's family members, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, told the Inland Valley (Calif.) Daily Bulletin that the smuggler had been dealing drugs since he was 14. Said one: "He wouldn't move drugs unless he had a gun on him."

Sutton said "mules" — smugglers such as Aldrete-Davila — "almost never carry guns." Almost never? Ramos said that when Aldrete-Davila fled, he kept casting furtive glances at his pursuers while holding something shiny that Ramos believed to be a handgun.

Sutton may not have noticed, but there's a drug war raging along our border. Kris Eggle, 28, a National Park Service ranger, became a casualty in that war when he was shot and killed in the line of duty at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona on Aug. 9, 2002, while pursuing members of a drug cartel hit squad who fled into the U.S. after committing a string of murders in Mexico.

Sutton lamely said the agents didn't know whether they were shooting at a veteran drug smuggler or "an American citizen, father of five children, who had a traffic warrant and he didn't want to go to jail that day." And driving a van full of marijuana to pick up spare cash, no doubt.

Sutton said of Aldrete-Davila: "We had no case against him because there was no evidence tying him to the van." So if the two agents didn't know who he was, and there was no evidence linking him to the van, how did Homeland Security and the U.S. Attorney's Office find him?

Sutton said, "The way we found him is that he came forward and was in Mexico with a lawyer." And why would he do that? Well, we can think of 5 million reasons, which is the dollar amount he and his lawyer are suing for, claiming the feds violated Aldrete-Davila's rights.

In Scooter Libby's trial — he is being pursued by Patrick Fitzgerald for allegedly lying to investigators — or the pursuit of the Duke lacrosse players by North Carolina attorney Michael Nifong, we've seen what happens when the pursuit of a conviction trumps the pursuit of justice.

We hope Bush will take a very long look indeed.

Anonymous said...

From the good news department via Paul at Powerline:

Lunch with Janice Rogers Brown

The confirmation of Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was a nice victory for the Bush administration and the conservative cause. More generally, the confirmation of opponents of an imperial judicary to positions on courts of appeals and, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court represents an important triumph.

However, there was no triumphalism in Judge Brown's luncheon address to the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Federalist Society today. Drawing on conservative theorists like Frank Meyer, Judge Brown argued that erosion of our freedoms and, more importantly, the philosophic underpinnings of these freedoms, have caused a critical mass of the body politic to become too comfortable with the "parasitic state." As a result, our liberty is profoundly threatened. In the past decades, according to Judge Brown, conservatives have won some important battles but not the philosophical war.

I can quibble with some of what Judge Brown said, but tend to agree with her broad thesis.
~~~~~~~

I like this woman.

Anonymous said...

Note to Joanie: I'm posting this with Internet Explorer, since the blog won't allow posting via Firefox any more.

Mitt Romney gets it. From his speech this weekend at the Herzliya Conference, which is billed as Israel’s premier counterterrorism and security gathering:

~~~~~~~~
“No, what we should have realized since 9/11 is that what the world regarded as an Israeli-Arab conflict over borders represented something much larger. It was the oldest, most active front of the radical Islamist jihad against the entire West. It therefore was not really about borders. It was about the refusal of many parts of the Muslim world to accept Israel’s right to exist – within any borders.

“This distinction came into vivid focus this summer. The war in Lebanon had little to do with the Palestinians. And it had nothing to do with a two-state solution. It demonstrated that Israel is now facing a jihadist front that from Tehran through Damascus to Southern Lebanon and Gaza.

“As Tony Blair astutely put it, Hizbullah was not fighting ‘for the coming into being of a Palestinian state…but for the going out of being of an Israeli state.’

“Yet we have still not fully absorbed the magnitude of the change. As far as our enemies are concerned, there is just one conflict. And in this single conflict, the goal of destroying Israel is simply a way station toward the real goal of subjugating the entire West.”

~~~~~~~~

It should also be noted that Mitt Romney was the *only* U.S. Presidential candidate that was concerned enough about Islamic terrorism to actually attend this conference.

Anonymous said...

UPDATE ON WILLIAM AND MARY "DIVERSITY" STORY

Bow to diversity leaves altar empty
By Natasha Altamirano THE WASHINGTON TIMES January 29, 2007

http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20070129-123012-2388r_page2.htm