God Damn You, Amer­ica, and Your White, Priv­i­leged Grief [Once Upon a Time…]

An excel­lent (if typ­i­cally long-winded) arti­cle on the rather dis­gust­ing dis­plays of hypocrisy and nar­cis­sism in response to the recent mur­ders in Con­necti­cut. Let’s not for­get that the very same peo­ple who today are claim­ing to be oh-so-upset about a cou­ple dozen mur­ders were, just over a month ago, actively and enthu­si­as­ti­cally endors­ing the mass slaugh­ter of many hun­dreds of times as many peo­ple by the vile, mon­strous tyrant who rules in Mor­dor on the Potomac (and this includes the peo­ple who voted for his phony “oppo­nent,” who made it clear that he would do the same things).

Our New Terrorist-Tainted House Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee Chief.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is the new chair­man of the House Home­land Secu­rity Committee.

This dude knows all about ter­ror­ism, since he has spent decades doing big-time fundrais­ing for the Irish Repub­li­can Army.

Muckraker/hell-raiser/freedom-fighter Will Grigg has an excel­lent piece on King’s hypocrisy on LewRockwell.com today.

[BOVARD]

It’s def­i­nitely appro­pri­ate, given the bla­tant hypocrisy of the Evil Empire, to appoint some guy who used to be Osama bin Laden for white peo­ple to this posi­tion. After all, this is the same coun­try that con­quered Iraq using ter­ror­ism as a pre­text, and then appointed a ter­ror­ist as pup­pet ruler.

How many fed­eral laws would I be break­ing…. …if I sug­gested that the world would be a bet­ter, cleaner place if this per­son and all his syco­phants choked to death on cans of caf­feinated alcohol?

I note that Sch**er adds a nice incon­gru­ous touch:

Let This Serve as a Warn­ing to Any­one Who Tries to Ped­dle Dan­ger­ous Bev­er­ages to Our Kids, Do it, And We Will Shut You Down

[The Ulti­mate Answer to Kings]

Nat­u­rally I don’t spend much time in gov­ern­ment build­ings, but I know that both pris­ons pub­lic schools and cour­t­houses have drink­ing foun­tains. I don’t think there’s any bev­er­age on Earth that’s killed more peo­ple than water…

For both par­ties: I know what you’re think­ing. “Are the Amer­i­can peo­ple really so stu­pid and blinded by par­ti­san­ship that they won’t real­ize we were mak­ing pre­cisely the oppo­site argu­ments just four years ago?” The answer is: Yes! Yes they are!

Radley Balko

The ulti­mate reap­ing of what one sows: right-wing edi­tion. Right-wing polemi­cists today are shriek­ing in self-pitying protest over a new report from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity sent to local police forces which warns of grow­ing “right-wing extrem­ist activ­ity.” The report (.pdf) iden­ti­fies attrib­utes of these right-wing extrem­ists, warn­ing that a grow­ing domes­tic threat of vio­lence and ter­ror­ism “may include groups and indi­vid­u­als that are ded­i­cated to a single-issue, such as oppo­si­tion to abor­tion or immi­gra­tion” and “groups that reject fed­eral author­ity in favor of state or local authority.”

[…]

But the polit­i­cal fac­tion screech­ing about the dan­gers of the DHS is the same one that spent the last eight years vastly expand­ing the domes­tic Sur­veil­lance State and fed­eral police pow­ers in every area. DHS — and the still-creepy phrase “home­land secu­rity” — became George Bush’s call­ing card. The Repub­li­cans won the 2002 elec­tion by demo­niz­ing those who opposed its cre­ation. All of the enabling leg­is­la­tion under­ly­ing this Sur­veil­lance State — from the Patriot Act to the Mil­i­tary Com­mis­sions Act, from the var­i­ous FISA “reforms” to mas­sive increases in domes­tic “counter-Terrorism” pro­grams — are the spawns of the very right-wing move­ment that today is pet­ri­fied that this is all being directed at them.

When you cheer on a Sur­veil­lance State, you have no grounds to com­plain when it turns its eyes on you. If you cre­ate a mas­sive and wildly empow­ered domes­tic sur­veil­lance appa­ra­tus, it’s going to mon­i­tor and inves­ti­gate domes­tic polit­i­cal activ­ity. That’s its nature. [Glenn Green­wald]

Rwanda expels Ger­man ambas­sador. Rose Kabuye, the direc­tor– gen­eral of state pro­to­col in Rwanda, was detained at Frank­furt air­port on Sun­day, a move that Paul Kagame, the Rwan­dan pres­i­dent, has called a “vio­la­tion of sovereignty”.

Louise Mushiki­wabo, Rwanda’s infor­ma­tion min­is­ter, said: “The Rwan­dan gov­ern­ment told the Ger­man ambas­sador to leave within 48 hours until the arrest of Kabuye is resolved.

“The ambas­sador should leave the coun­try by Thurs­day,” she said.

Kabuye was arrested on an inter­na­tional war­rant issued by France in 2006 for her and eight other asso­ciates of Kagame.

She is accused of involve­ment in the shoot­ing down of an aero­plane car­ry­ing Juve­nal Hab­ya­ri­mana, the Rwan­dan pres­i­dent, in 1994. His death was one of the sparks that ignited a cam­paign of geno­cide in the cen­tral African nation, Ger­man pros­e­cu­tors have said. [Al Jazeera]

I note that Bush has been to both Ger­many and France with­out being arrested, and there’s no ques­tion that he’s guilty of far worse crimes than what Ms. Kabuye is accused of. I don’t par­tic­u­larly approve of coun­tries impos­ing their own laws on for­eign­ers for things that hap­pened in for­eign coun­tries (a prac­tice the Evil Empire is fond of), but the dou­ble stan­dard here is even more offensive.