So Will found me a link to these folks calling themselves Progress for America. Watch that video on their front page, notice that their message equates to this: all Islamic radicals are the same as terrorists, and we need to stop them no matter what.

A nifty sentiment to be sure. And of course the bulk of terrorism going around is indeed at the hands of Islamic radicals. And it’s true that the Taliban and similar regimes are horribly iron-fisted towards women and not exactly on top of civil rights. However, there is one minor flaw in this logic that can be summed up in two words: Saudi Arabia.

Even for those who haven’t seen Fahrenheit 9/11, the fact that America has some pretty close ties to the Saudis shouldn’t be news. The Bush’s also have some close relationships with the Saudis. But it’s difficult to talk about wanting to boot out oppressive Islamic regimes when a huge chunk of our economy rests in the hands of a nation with one of the world’s worst dictators.

In Saudi Arabia, phone calls are recorded and mobile phones with cameras are banned. It is illegal for public employees “to engage in dialogue with local and foreign media.” By law, all Saudi citizens must be Muslims. According to Amnesty International, police in Saudi Arabia routinely use torture to extract “confessions.” Saudi women may not appear in public with a man who isn’t a relative, must cover their bodies and faces in public and may not drive. The strict suppression of women is not voluntary, and Saudi women who would like to live a freer life are not allowed to do so.

And this country is considered an ally of ours. Review for a moment. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, Osama is a Saudi, and even a passing knowledge of the Saudi government will show one of the most oppressive and inhuman governments in the world. Yet, no one seems to care about the Saudis because they’re helping us.

Let that swirl through your mind for a moment. One of the biggest reasons for Iraq, after the al Qaeda and WMD rationales fell apart, was that we need to liberate the Iraqi people. After all, it was called “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. I’m sure the Saudi people felt a little shafted on that deal. At least they would if they knew, as I have a feeling the media over there isn’t the freest.

Of course, this isn’t exactly news to us. Despite the public furor against Communist nations, we seem to give China a pass because they’re such big players in the economic game. From the same article:

Although some Chinese have taken advantage of economic liberalization to become rich, up to 150 million Chinese live on $1 a day or less in this nation with no minimum wage. Between 250,000 and 300,000 political dissidents are held in “reeducation-through-labor” camps without trial. Less than 5% of criminal trials include witnesses, and the conviction rate is 99.7%. There are no privately owned TV or radio stations. The government opens and censors mail and monitors phone calls, faxes, e-mails and text messages. In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, at least 400,000 residents of Beijing have been forcibly evicted from their homes.

Another horrendously oppressive nation, beating its citizens into the dirt and you never see Hannity or Rush up in arms about how we need to do something to fix China. You want to talk a defeatist attitude? There’s one for you. Guys who say we’re obligated to fix all of these countries because of their cruel governments, but we won’t go after China or Saudi Arabia because that would be too difficult.

So that’s why I tend to not give much credit to anyone who cries out about how America needs to help oppressed people out from under the thumbs of their radical leaders. Until I see a campaign to liberate the Saudis and the Chinese, or at least pull our support from these places, I’m going to be unswayed in my belief that these “liberation” campaigns aren’t really concerned with the well-being of the citizens at all.

That’d be a good slogan for Progress for America: “No radical Islamic regimes unless they’re helping us in some way!”

[tags]terrorism, islam, war, iraq, iran, china, saudi arabia, taliban[/tags]

Oh they’re getting desparate now. While the neocon message the redcoats have been happily embracing for the past half-decade or so used to seem so attractive, apparently they’re realizing what a disaster its brought. So aside from a mass exodus away from Bush, they’re also pushing for liberal republicans over conservatives.

With a barrage of television advertisements and the mobilization of its get-out-the-vote machine, the national Republican Party has lined up to beat back a conservative primary challenge to the most liberal Republican in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. The outcome on Tuesday could help determine whether Democrats have a shot at taking back the Senate.

In an extraordinary pre-emptive announcement, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has said it will concede Rhode Island to the Democrats should Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, defeat Mr. Chafee in the primary.

That’s right, folks. If the liberal republican wins the primary, they will concede the seat to the democrats. They claim it’s because a conservative can’t win the general election, but I prefer to see it as the GOP knows that redcoat policies are a disaster.

[tags]republicans, senate, election, liberal, conservative, politics[/tags]

I think I’m going to get a nosebleed. The redcoats are showing that they seriously have no grasp on reality. This 9/11 “docu-drama” fiasco is turning into more a case of those who want to show what they want to, and those who want to show what actually happened. Look at this idiot, for example.

The Democrats are opposed to free speech. Mark that down.

They only want people to say what they approve.

(Yes, I know. It could be a lousy movie, full of inaccuracies. But remember what they oppose is that it shows the Clintons in an unfavorable light. Based on actual events. And most of them haven’t even seen it.)

Okay, ignoring that “Democrats oppose Dissent” doesn’t make sense because there’s no dissenting going on here, the problem is that no, this has nothing to do with free speech. And the “actual events” this movie purports didn’t actually happen. In fact, a lot of what is claimed to be reality in fact is in complete opposition to what DID happen.

Yes, I did comment on that entry there, because dammit I had to. This is a case of a horrendously inaccurate film being portrayed as a documentary based on the 9/11 Commission report when its “facts” and key scenes are often on the other side of reality. He then goes on to mention that Clinton wanted to make a made-up film about his life.

Great, let ‘im. Clinton can do whatever he wants about his own life. If he wants to show a movie where he has huge muscles and punches out conservative reporters, he’s allowed to. As long as they aren’t named. It’s a dramatization. What changes here is that you CANNOT have Sandy Berger saying things in a movie if he DID NOT SAY THEM and in fact public record shows that what you are showing is the opposite of what you have him saying in the movie.

Whew, big sentence. But what it boils down to is one word: slander. This movie drags Clinton through the mud and does not touch upon the faults of the man in charge when 9/11 hit. And it does so without actually using factual evidence.

In the LiveJournal community for redcoats, resident truthspeaker rechan responded to the new claim that it’s just Democrats hate free speech with this:

Yeah. I mean, it’s not like ABC isn’t using airwaves to pretty much give free attacks on the Democrats while omitting the “My Pet Goat” incident and the total ignoring the Bin Laden memo, it’s not like those on the 9/11 Commission are criticising the movie’s inaccuracies, it’s not like the FBI agent consulting on the show quit half way through due to errors, it has nothing to do with the writer admitting controversial scene was “improvised”,

It isn’t as though they’re airing inaccuracies so grevious that experts and historians who’s viewed the film has called it wrong, that it was produced by a right-wing propaganda firm, it’s not like an insider told a blogger It was meant to attack Clinton, written by a guy who wants to transform Hollywood for Conservatives, it’s not like conservatives are calling it “Defamatory” and “zero factual basis”, or that a conservative media watchdog group is saying that ABC shouldn’t air it, or even A Fox Anchor, even Bush’s own terror expert says it’s fantasyland. It’s not that ABC is falsely claiming that the docudrama is based on the 9/11 report, and it has nothing to do with the fact that ABC were trying to send out this show to Children with error-filled booklets.

It all has to do with the Senate Dems threatening ABC!

A-men, brotha.

[tags]9/11, abc, disney, clinton, terrorism, movies, free speech, law, television[/tags]

Ugh. Apparently we don’t have enough of a problem with global warming, because the Bush Clan wants to loosen regulations for oil refineries and other industries.

The oil refinery industry says the eased regulation would open the way for production of more oil and other products. But environmental groups say the proposed rules are gimmicks and loopholes allowing industry to emit more pollution, evade pollution controls and save money.

Remember, Bush keeps telling us we need to break our oil addiction. So obviously the way to do that as well as fix the global warming problem would be to increase the ability for the oil companies to pollute in order to get us more oil. Jeez.

[tags]oil, pollution, global warming, bush, environment[/tags]