Green Eagle

" Government doesn't need to tell you how to live your life. They don't need to tell you what you can and can't do. They don't need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.”- Nikki Haley The Civil War was about freedom.  Nikki Haley was absolutely right about that.  She only got one thing wrong.  It was about the freedom of black people not to be owned by white people, not the freedom of white people to own black people. Apparently, to people like Nikki Haley, freedom and slavery were not inconsistent.  Just as long as the right people were free and the right people were slaves. Freedom.  Well, that's what she called it.

 Green Eagle's usual wishes for a happy holiday:

 Apparently, the Colorado Supreme Court (and not all of them either) is the only judicial body in the entire United States willing to read the plain text of the Constitution and apply it; all of the rest of our courts consisting either in corrupt Republican judges or of others so afraid of right wing violence that they won't follow a simply written section of the Constitution. And here it is, from the 14th amendment: " No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." There is no co...

 Henry Kissinger is dead at age 100.

 What we have been hearing for weeks now is that it is necessary for Israel to replace Hamas as the government of Gaza.  A very laudable goal, seeing as how Hamas is at the same time a group of genocidal madmen and and among the most corrupt thieves on the face of the earth.  It's hard to think of a worse government than Hamas, but what will come along if Hamas vanishes? What follows below is a long series of excerpts from the State Department's annual report on the human rights behavior of the world's governments.  These are quotes from their evaluation of every Arab government.  I don't expect anyone to read it all, but try skimming some of them.  You will discover that every single one of them is a sinkhole of dictatorship, utter disregard for the rights of any opposition group, violent oppression and crushing of dissent.  This is the reality of government in the 460 million person strong Arab world.  Can you find a single one of these govern...

 Or the people that tell them?  Here is something that showed up on my Facebook feed today: The malignance that is within scum who are willing to tell and repeat lies like this is utterly beyond the ability of decent people to penetrate.  What can anyone even possibly do to combat hatred and contempt for the truth on this magnitude?

I'd like to relate to you an incident that I heard about today.  I can't say it is being totally ignored by the mainstream press, as I got this story from CNN, but you can be sure that it will be little covered and soon forgotten.  Here it is: "EU says around 100 civilians reportedly killed in Burkina Faso village massacre... “Nearly a hundred civilians, including women and children, are reported to have been killed in a massacre in the village of Zaongo, in the north-central region of Burkina Faso,” the EU External Action (EEAS) said in a statement. In early April, authorities blamed terrorists for the killing of at least 44 people in separate attacks on villages in northern Burkina Faso. Later that month, 136 others, including babies were killed in a similar onslaught on a village in the same region by armed men in military uniform. Authorities condemned the attack and opened an investigation. Burkina Faso has been the epicenter of violence that has spread across the va...

Yesterday was quite a historic day- the 100th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, the first open attempt by the Nazis to take control of Germany.  I'm sure most of you have heard of this event, but I think it is important to remember what it was about.  From the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, here is a bit of an account: "On November 8–9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the German government. This attempted coup d'état came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch. They began at the Bürgerbräu Keller, a beer hall in the Bavarian city of Munich. Hitler and the Nazi Party aimed to seize control of the state government, march on Berlin, and overthrow the German federal government. They sought to establish a new government to oversee the creation of a unified Greater German Reich. In this new government, citizenship would be based on race. The putsch failed and Bavarian authorities prosecuted nine participants, inclu...

Whatever the answer is, this isn't it. We now have one more in an endless repetition of the same thing:  Arab forces launch a vicious, murderous sneak attack on Israel, and then Israel tries to decide how to react.  The Arab atrocities are already history, but Israel has not responded, as any country would, to a foreign attack.  So, right on cue, the voices start screaming out, "cease fire!...Collective punishment!" Imagine if people had demanded the same thing in 1945, when allied forces moved into Germany.  But of course, with the Jews, everything is different.  Pressure is mounted around the world, with the result that Arab terrorists get to attack Israel over and over again, with Israel being demonized for responding with anything other than rolling over and just taking it. 1400 innocent lives down the drain, and any response is portrayed as an inhuman abomination. Here is an awful truth, but it is the truth nevertheless:  Hamas has managed to embed its...

 This article is currently the lead story at the Washington Post today: "Republicans and Democrats share blame for the speaker fiasco" The article is written by Megan McArdle, a known habitual right wing liar who is nevertheless allowed to publish her malicious falsehoods in the Post. And that sort of journalism is why a criminal, rapist traitor is running neck and neck with a Democratic President who is presiding over incredible economic growth and foreign policy success. _________________________________________ And here we go again.   From Today's Washington Post: "Dean Phillips’s challenge to Biden makes Democrats ask if 80 is too old" Will it surprise you to learn that this article does not quote one single Democrat who believes that this "challenge" from an attention-seeking rich guy that nobody has ever heard of before is affecting their thinking?  Nothing but sourceless fearmongering, clearly designed to distract from the fact that the Rep...

Until last night, I bet hardly anyone could tell you a thing about Lewiston, Maine, population 36,600, or slightly smaller than Studio City, CA.  Well, here is a photo of probably the only other significant thing that ever happened in Lewiston, Maine, which curiously seems to have occurred exactly 50 years ago today:

  Down goes Tom Emmer, the latest Republican "choice" to be Speaker of the House.  That makes 0 for 3. A swing and a miss- 3 out- shouldn't that mean it's the other team's turn at bat?  Time for the Democrats to pick a speaker, don't you think?  Maybe Nancy Pelosi could come back for a farewell tour.  

So many people are certain that the plea deals from these two crooked operatives represent a decisive step in the government's ability to prove Trump's clearly massive guilt in court. Don't be so certain.  I can't swear that the following is what is happening, but based on our now long and dreadful experience of Trump's behavior, I think it is all too likely. First of all, I do not believe that the willingness of these two monumental toadies to destroy themselves for Trump is at an end.  His ability to get others to wreck their lives for the most minor advantage to himself is legendary, if incomprehensible to normal people, and never more so than with these two. Second, remember that Trump's game here is apparently not to win his cases, but to delay his trials until after the 2024 election, when he is confident that he can corrupt the process enough to return himself to the White House, and then use any means, legal or not, to crush the prosecutions. Well, what ...

  From the Washington Post: "Michigan State ‘deeply sorry’ for posting Hitler image on scoreboard" I don't think I need to comment on that one.

Here's a little bit of probably errant nonsense I'd like to add to the discussion of the Gaza hospital "attack" that has attracted so much attention the last few days. Before making this comment, Green Eagle wants to declare that he has suddenly remembered that he is an expert on bomb and explosion damage.  Not real bomb and explosion damage, about which he knows no more than any other internet blabber, but fake bomb and explosion damage.  Over my career as a motion picture art director, I have had a few occasions to replicate the after-effects of explosions.  We did that by looking at pictures of similar damage we could find, and trying to make something that looks like that. Well, let's look at the "crater" at the hospital, shown here in an enlarged section of a photo from the BBC: There it is- a small hole about three or four feet across, and maybe two feet deep, with debris scattered in one direction from the hole.  What I don't see here, apart f...

  This story is all over the news right now: "Hundreds feared dead in strike on Gaza hospital...An attack on the al-Ahli Hospital in the middle of Gaza City is believed to have killed hundreds of people, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense told The Washington Post." Let's be clear here that this story comes from " the Palestinian Civil Defense," so there is every chance that it is a grotesque exaggeration or even a total lie, but assuming that it bears any resemblance to the truth, Netanyahu's tantrum in response to the Hamas butchery last week may have very well, in this single act, utterly destroyed the moral high ground that Israel held, and rendered meaningless all of the horrible suffering of Israelis in the Hamas attack.   I am a firm supporter of the state of Israel, but not under this guy  If this story is anywhere near true, he needs to be removed from power immediately, and in a just world would never see another day outside of prison.  ...

 Here we go with the endless lies that Israel is an apartheid state.  This lie is made doubly infuriating by the fact that the people who spread this false narrative do not give a damn about the fact that every single Arab state in the world practices open apartheid. I am reprinting here a post I wrote a couple of years ago discussing what the characteristics of apartheid in South Africa really were, which should make it abundantly clear that whatever its problems are, Israel does not practice anything resembling apartheid.   Here is my account: ________________________________________________ November 03, 2021  A case study in 21st century propaganda We've seen the right in this country weaponize a propaganda technique that I have rarely seen talked about: the fabrication or adoption of words or short phrases which are designed to stimulate rage toward the propagandists' enemies.  "Benghazi,"  "Her e-mails," "Socialism," "Tax and spend,"...

 Hamas has just engaged in an act of such subhuman brutality that it should have established in everybody's mind the understanding that they are nothing but a monstrous criminal gang which has reduced their own people to poverty and hopelessness to sate their own greed, and has always intended to do the same to the Israelis.  There should have never, from this point on, been a question in the eyes of the world, about who the good guys are.  But instead, Netanyahu seems determined to squander that long awaited awakening in a tantrum of violence as destructive of innocent lives as Hamas leaders could have ever dreamed of. Because, let's be clear here.  Netanyahu can level every single building in Gaza, but he is utterly impotent to stop the absentee Hamas leaders, and their backers in Iran and throughout the Arab world, from continuing to sate their hunger to destroy Israel.  And in the meantime, Netanyahu has gifted them with a thousand images like this one, to b...

 I thought it would be an interesting experience for you art lovers out there to see some of the many pieces of art, from Palestinians and their sympathizers, which have already been created to commemorate the spectacular triumph of barbarism they pulled off a few days ago.  Let's not waste any time, and just dive right in. Here we have a specimen of a whole series of AI generated photos of Palestinians attacking the Temple Mount.  It's quite something to see violent fantasies like this, generated with a couple of mouse clicks. And here we have a graphic celebrating the deaths of young Israeli women at the hands of Hamas butchers.   Again, there are numerous versions of this sort of thing, showing how popular murder of civilians is among Hamas followers. And here is a classic theme from supporters of the Palestinians, accusing Jews of another Arab-perpetrated monstrosity, because, hey, why not? Now, classic anti-Semitic portrayals of Jews cowering in fear of the...