BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 05:17 PM

I wasn't invited, either. I don't have Amos' stamina to keep a jeremiad running against Dubya but that's because I get such a sinking feeling when I read much about the jerk that I just have to turn away from it.

They're building in my village, if that's any consolation (though we wish they wouldn't--losing 200+ acres of prime prairie is blow to our way of life and long walks!)

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:56 PM

We'd love to have those folks build houses in our neighborhood but there's a building moratorium here due to lack of water. However, y'all can come and visit us anytime. Even you, Brucie - orangutans are OK with us. Even Susu's Hubby is OK - we could use a few laughs.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: GUEST,Sleepless Dad
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:37 PM

Do you know why Baptists don't have sex standing up ?

It looks like dancing.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: heric
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:34 PM

I want susu's hubby to come and teach us Methodist dancing.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:31 PM

Sleepless Dad, SH can bring the beans. Only fittin'.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Peace
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:31 PM

PS, Susu's Hubby,

It just struck me that Bev and Jerry might object. I am a real orangutang at the best of time.

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Peace
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:27 PM

Dear SH:

"Turn 'em all loose and have them build houses in Bev and Jerry's neighborhood."

What bullshit, even from you.

1) You are making the assumption these folks are guilty--without trial.
2) I would love to meet the people in whose august company you have put me, and bloody well include Ebbie.
3) Stop sticking up for every damned-fool thing that idiot says. It makes you look just as stupid.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: heric
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:24 PM

I'll play folk saxophone and maybe would could ask Rapaire to bring his trumpet for some folk duets!

This thread was too serious, wasn't it? Time to get back to standard fare. . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: GUEST,Sleepless Dad
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:18 PM

Hey that sounds like a pretty good neighborhood !!

Ebbie - You bring some potato salad, I'll fire up the grill and make some jerk chicken - now - who can bring the beans and some salad??

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Susu's Hubby
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:15 PM

I'm sorry Ebbie,


You're the entertainment!


Hubby

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:13 PM

Hey, wait a minute, SH! Am I not to be invited?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Susu's Hubby
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:09 PM

Here's what we can do....


Turn 'em all loose and have them build houses in Bev and Jerry's neighborhood. Maybe they can invite Bobert,heric, Alba, Donuel, Amos, kendall, Giok, dianavan, Pauline L and brucie over on friday nights for tea and lessons on how to kill the American swine.


Hubby

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:05 PM

chimps- shatner- cubs- it's getting boring. When people have nothing to say why can't they say nothing?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Alba
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 03:47 PM

"You could have had a brain fart and put 'except' down as a near homonym for 'accept'."
yip that's it..I meant accept not except...brain fart, no irony intended.
Just as I am sure you meant 'Make our president', not "making out President"
I will accept your offer to suppose what I want then.
Regards.
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 03:24 PM

Alba, you wrote:
I will except your offer to suppose what I want then.
Thank you
Regards
Jude

Once more you are ob- er, not totally clear. Either you are trying to be cooperative with a small portion of my immediately preceding post, or you are being ironic, or you are NOT being cooperative, all dependent on your use of the word 'except'.

You could mean it literally, i.e. you are 'excepting' and not 'accepting' my offer.
You could mean it ironically, i.e. indicating that I put myself above my station by deigning to offer you terms on which you might respond to my thread.
You could have had a brain fart and put 'except' down as a near homonym for 'accept'.

In any case, you are, perhaps unconsciously, making out President look that much less like an ass. So maybe not so much unconscious as ironic.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 03:07 PM

gu^.lag

The System of Prison, Labor and Concentration Camps Spread across the Soviet Union. Officially most were "corrective labor colonies." Rooted in the exile in Siberia system of the tsarist period, the GULAG was organized by the Communist government in 1918 and vastly expanded under Stalin. GULAG is a Russian acronym for a department of the secret police, "chief administration of corrective labor camps."
www.pbs.org/redfiles/prop/inv/prop_inv_voc.htm

A system of penal institutions in the Soviet Union est'd after the 1917 Russian Revolution . The name comes from the Russian acronym for the Chief Administration for Corrective Labour Camps. Under Stalin an estimated 10 million were sentenced to forced labour in the camps in the period between 1934 and 1947 alone. These prisoners were suspected of crimes against the State (anything from political dissidence to failure to co-operate with Stalin's collective programme). Millions of inmates died from cold, disease, malnutrition and summary executions.
www.embassy.org.nz/encycl/g4encyc.htm

a Russian prison camp for political prisoners
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.1

Gulag (from the Russian ÃÓËÀÃ: Ãëàâíîå Óïðàâëåíèå Èñïðàâèòåëüíî— Òðóäîâûõ Ëàãåðåé, "Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey", "The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: heric
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 02:59 PM

Oh, well the speaker (Kahn) did circumscibe her use of the term, and sounds quite reasonable in this middle-length excerpt:

Guantanamo has become the gulag our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law.

If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, "ghost detainees" – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees - bring back the practice of "disappearances" so popular with Latin American dictators in the past.

According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees held by the US.

In 2004 thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in Afghanistan and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations.

AI is calling on the US Administration to "close Guantanamo and disclose the rest". What we mean by this is: either release the prisoners or charge and prosecute them with due process.

By peddling the politics of fear and division, this new agenda has also encouraged intolerance, racism, and xenophobia.

In 2004 our Report recorded incidents of religious humiliation of detainees in US custody, growing anti-Semitism in western Europe, including France and Belgium, and Islamophobia in Europe and North America. Ironic that this should happen as we mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Furthermore, the US, as the unrivalled political, military and economic Super Power, sets the tone of governmental behaviour world-wide. By thumbing its nose at the rule of law and human rights, what message does the US send to repressive regimes who have little regard for the rule of law anyway?

By lowering the human rights standards, the US has weakened its own moral authority to speak out on human rights.

By actively supporting repressive regimes as allies in the War on Terror, US, the EU and others actually promote greater insecurity. Uzbekistan is a case point. Belated calls for transparency and accountability cannot hide their earlier support and silence on human rights abuse by Karimov's government.

Throughout 2005, AI has also highlighted the double speak of the EU member states. They undermine their own credibility when they open dialogue on human rights with Iran, China, and Egypt but deafeningly silent on Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. It throws doubt on the EU's ability and willingness to provide a genuine value-and rule-based alternative leadership.

However, despite the failure of leadership from key governments, the new agenda was not without opposition in 2004. The voices of resistance and positive developments gave us hope and energy.

For instance:

· Judgements of the US Supreme Court and the UK House of Lords
· The tide against impunity in Latin America.
· New ratifications to the International Criminal Court.
· Continued abolition of the death penalty – though a lot still remains to be done - bringing the total number of abolitionists to 84.
· Initiatives to reform the UN security and human rights machinery.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Alba
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 02:57 PM

I will except your offer to suppose what I want then.
Thank you
Regards
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 02:44 PM

I'm not trying to make Amnesty International out to be a 'bad actor'. I think it is a useful, vitally important organization and I even like the fact that they are unafraid to speak out.

The use of the word 'Gulag' apparently comes from a speech which can be found here:
Amnesty International

Whether or not the term is used in the AI report I know not.

The speakers need to know the political spin machine they are up against.

Jude, I took advantage of your name but I meant what I said. I truly did not understand your reference against LH and me, or if you were being serious or not. You made a remark about my showing up in other forums and possibly shadowing or being shadowed by MG. I just didn't understand what you were saying because you spoke obliquely, which is close to being obscure. I still don't know if you were serious, trying to be funny, saying that I always agreed with MG, didn't agree with MG, or what the heck you were on about. I notice that MG actually said something nice about me in this thread, so maybe you are punishing me for that. If you in fact look at my posts which do occur in some threads that MG has posts in, you will see that I often encourage people to ignore MG's more pungent prose.
Being asked what 'my (and LH's)' game is sounds a lot like me asking you when you stopped beating your kid. You are welcome to suppose what you want as to my motives, but in resorting to ad hominem instead of addressing the actual point (and I do have one) is not helpful to the thread.

But keep posting. I'm a little slow and eventually I may pick up on your meaning!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: heric
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 02:18 PM

That's good news about the AI report. (I'll read it now.) But it was the reporter at the press conference who caused this kerfuffle with inflammatory language (right?). (Not that Bush's immediate responses to anything ever mean anything - I can't even be bothered to watch him anymore.)

That's bad news about the stalling on judicial review. Justice delayed is justice denied, as they say. (Espcially if you happen to be being subjected to prison abuse.) Another real very real issue issue at hand, then. (I wonder if they will have legal (cash) remedies down the line for intentional delay - probably not.)

Thanks for the link.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 01:57 PM

The Amnesty International Report DID NOT USE THE WORD GULAG. What we pasted into the first post on this thread was taken from the white house transcript of the press conference. IT WAS THE WHITE HOUSE WHICH PUT THE PHRASE "A NEW GULAG" IN QUOTES, thereby giving the impression that it was a quote from the AI report. Yet another lie.

And, Heric, your absolutely right that "Gitmo (and similar)detainees have had a right to federal judicial review of their alleged enemy combatant status since June 23, 2004, by way of a Supreme Court decision against the Bush administration." However, it's been nearly a year and not a single prisoner has been allowed to exercise this option due to stalling on the part of the Bush administration.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Alice
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 01:36 PM

I heard this the other day on the radio when Bush made the statement... I was driving along listening to the news, Bush's voice comes out, and although this subject is very serious, I burst out laughing at his attempt to define "dissemble" after he said "disassemble". What a guy.

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Alba
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 01:32 PM

"I think Jude was being obscure"
Nope I don't think I was. I think I was pretty clear in my question.
Obscure..mmm interesting response.
I would however rather be seen as obscure rather than being obtuse.
Glad my question brought some fun into your Day lads.
Thanks Little Hawk for taking the time to post your opinion.   
I am most definetly the Mistress of my own Mind, I don't think the same can be said for George Bush though:>)
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: heric
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 01:10 PM

Giok: By saying that maybe I had read the newspaper wrong, I was giving you an opportunity to double-check and self-correct your assertion, but you didn't take me up on it. Gitmo (and similar)detainees have had a right to federal judicial review of their alleged enemy combatant status since June 23, 2004, by way of a Supreme Court decision against the Bush administration. Bush doesn't have as much power as Stalin had.

(But the current crop of CIA charter flights and our net of prisons, detention centers and "out-sourced" torture sites is a national shame. If you want to get back to the real issues, you have to get back to the real issues!)

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 12:53 PM

Heh! Heh!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 12:44 PM

I think Jude was being obscure.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 12:30 PM

Jude, I am tremendously opposed to George Bush's policies, as I should think you would know by now.

I also think that it is far more effective to respond to an unexpected contribution in a thread with a brief joke than it is to fly into an emotional fit of hostility and imagine that the thread has been "ruined" by a post that is outside what YOU consider the "proper boundaries". The thread has not been ruined in the least.

Why give your power away like that? How can one other person derail you or derail a thread? They can't...unless you consent to let them.

Martin is expressing a very different viewpoint to yours. So what? Is it impossible to maintain one's own equanimity in the face of a different viewpoint or a couple of swear words?

It is not impossible. Be the master of your own mind, not the emotional puppet who dangles on someone else's strings.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Alba
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 12:12 PM

Little Hawk, Robomatic can I ask what the game is?
Have you designated yourself as the "Ones" to come in after Martin Gibson to just ruin discussions?
You must be the Friends that have been exchanging PM's with him and
I think that's great for you all but everyone has an opinion on topics in threads, that is what the forum is so why are going into nearly every thread that martin disagrees with the content of and trashing it?
I been looking in since saturday and that's all that's been happening here.

On topic..there is nothing that surprises me anymore from the Mouth of Geroge Bush..NOTHING.

Blessings to all
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 11:18 AM

Hakman, that is correct. And who can prove them wrong? If you want to get back to the real issues, you have to get back to the real issues!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 11:11 AM

The administration has now typified this sort of report as; made by people who hate America.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 11:11 AM

Look, man, camels need love too!

Chongo is in ecstasy about the Cubs.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Once Famous
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 11:05 AM

Robo hit on on the head!

This thread again is just all about hating Bush.

If they would only hate Al Aqaida and Osama so much instead of licking his camel's balls and see that Iraqui insurgents are answering and being now led by them, they would realize that millions of people in the U.S. voted for Bush because he has been dealing with this vicious enemy.

But there are way too many morons here with web feet who are too stupid to realize that.

This thread is starting to get ready for a National League wrap-up. the Cubs have now won 5 straight.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 10:45 AM

We need a crusade to rid the World of gulags and put a definitive end to disassembling in high places! Who can we get to lead it?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 10:41 AM

I think the folks who put those reports together need to sit down and carefully review their use of words. Not only was 'Gulag' overdone and provocative, it played into the hands of their opponents who will now hammer them with that word. Hey, if Bush can be hammered for 'crusade' then amnesty can be hammered for 'gulag'.

I'm still rolling my eyes ever since I heard Bush's use of the word 'disassemble', but that's beside the point.

I think by accusing the President of whopperism one similarly plays into the hands of the wordsmiths who lead the President and Ms. Rice through the mine-field of the battle of words that constitutes the far greater part of the current war. You take the attention away from the hard information in the report and contribute to the 'nyah nyah' aspect of things that suffuse the current environment.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 10:28 AM

The "gulag" rhetoric may well have been overdone.

But the current crop of CIA charter flights and our net of prisons, detention centers and "out-sourced" torture sites is a national shame.

The Administration did not speak to the issues of fact, as usual; they believe in a universe created by rhetoric, where what you claim is what you get.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 09:14 AM

In the aftermath of Dubya's "tiumphant" tour of E. Europe, Putin has agreed to remove Russian bases hitherto maintained in Georgia against the will of the Georgians. Perhaps as a quid pro quo Dubya will remove US bases and gulags maintained in Cuba against the will of the Cubans.

RtS
(Georgia on my mind)

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: kendall
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 08:54 AM

We who saw through this clown still wonder how come nearly half of the voters put him in office.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 08:38 AM

having said that..............gulag?

surely anyone can see that Amnesty's argument is weakened by this sort of comparison.

I'm an ex-member of Amnesty and I have a lot of time for it. Although I'm not sure it ever had much time for me. i wrote to them explaining that my life was depressing enough _ I didn't want to write to any prisoner - political or on death row, but I was willing to make a contribution.

However they spent more than my subscription(which I couldn't really afford at the time) every year on sending me letters asking for more money.

to most people gulag(whatever the literal meaning) means Stalin, Solzhenitsyn, etc, the murder of the Kulaks, Beria.....

This was a crime so big that there comes a point where quantitively it becomes qualitatively something quite distinct in everybody's mind. rather like the Holocaust. When we use those terms, we know of what we speak.

Whatever you think about Bush and the verbal chaos in which he exists, he's not damn silly enough to make remarks like that.

all the best

Big Al Whittle

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 08:09 AM

Yeah, John, seems that theory is being proven out right here in the good ol' US o' A...

That's what I meant by my comment about the country needing another Martin Luther King go shock us out of the downward spiril we seem to be in when it comes to morality...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 07:56 AM

Well Bobert there is the theory that countries get the leaders they deserve!
G..

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 07:51 AM

Ya know, like who really cares, any way? No, I mean that veryseriously. The Anerican people who are ridin' around in their gas gizzlers with half a dozen "Support the Troops" ribbons on the back certainly don't... They are too busy consuming and going further in debt...

Hey, when Bush was asked about torture awhile months back he said that the "United States does not engage in or support the use of torture." Then we see grusome pictures on the front pages of our newspapers and then we learn about the Bush administartions use of renderings where, in essence, they sub-contract (privatize, if you will) torture by flying people they want tortired to places were the practice is accepted...

I mean, everyone knows how these folks lie yet too many don't realy care as long as it doesn't effect them personally...

And as fir the AI report there were also references to the United States settin' an international example and in using torture and deatining folks, in violation of US and international law, was sensing a message that these types of behaviors are acceptable...

Ywah, we need another Martin Luther King to come 'round and cpature the attention of the American people and turn this evilness that the American people have accepted around so that folks will yet again feel they do have the power within them to change their own hearts and change their leaders....

How did someone like a George Bush get here? Sad...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: heric
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:02 AM

sorry, giok. Guess I read the newspaper wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 03:40 AM

Those held outwith the mainland US and in particular those held in the Guantanamo Bay 'concentration camp' [that a better description Heric?] have no access to the American court system and therefore no abilty to challenge their detention in the courts.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: heric
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 03:09 AM

It is illegal to detain them under US law unless they were "enemy combatants." They have a legal right to challenge this determination in US courts. If they are being held for political views only, then the US judiciary will have to be in league with the military, in direct violation of the law. That's a grand conspiracy.

Beyond that, they are foreign nationals of up to forty different countries. Once it is reported or reasonably confirmed that one of them was wrongfully and intentionally held for political views only, then you will be one step towards justifyingly calling this a "gulag," but you will still need 2,999,999 more such cases, where they also DIED in custody, before this can be equated with the true gulags of the brutal, authoritarian Stalinists who were intentionally and legally terrorising their own citizenry to suppress dissent. Just seems a bit of a stretch, to me.

Don't bother calling me an apologist for detention without representation, as the Bush administration wanted, and held onto for a while. Or a supporter of torture. Those are each disgraces of the highest magnitude. I'm just saying that the use of hyperbole is counter-productive. If AI is working to prevent or remedy political incarceration, good on them. Guess we should see the report.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: dianavan
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 02:09 AM

heric - a gulag can be used simply as a term for a political prison or a prison for dissenters. It doesn't have to be a forced labour camp. When used by Amnesty International, I think they intended it to mean a network of political, prison camps. If the shoe fits, wear it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Pauline L
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 01:04 AM

Amnesty International is a very highly respected, Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Bush was entirely wrong about "absurd allegations." AI was alluding to the exportation of suspects to countries where they can be tortured. It is disgusting action by our country, which claims to be the champion of freedom and democracy.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 12:47 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: heric
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 12:12 AM

Gulag is a rather inflammatory, loaded term. I haven't seen it in context, but if the report used that term, and the authors wanted to be taken very seriously as professional, credible reporters, I hope they explained their intended analogy. Sure, these detention facility pose the risk of impounding people for their beliefs alone (though that has not been proven to my knowledge), and in that sense they could be mini-gulags. But they are not used for forced labor, they are not used to terrorize millions into acquiesence (some of you will disagree), and they have not been used to kill millions of people.

If this a gulag for our times, we live in relatively good times.

There is enough wrong around here to obviate any need for hyperbole.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 12:06 AM

I CAN THINK OF SOME ASPECTS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION THAT DESERVE DISASSEMBLY...



A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush tells another WHOPPER
From: Peace
Date: 31 May 05 - 11:48 PM

My Gawd. Why is he allowed to speak in public?