Reporting from Cairo

Egyptians are friendly, polite and still take kindly to Americans. While they get a kick out of Americans who claim to be Canadians, there is no need for Yanks to do that.

Security is tight with checkpoints set up at museums, hotels and even restaurants.

They drive here like no other place I have encountered, even in Mexico City. Call it bumper cars with seemingly few bumps. Few traffic lights work and many drive at night with no headlights. Linda Heard and her hubby's driver is truly amazing in the way he snakes through traffic with less than an inch to spare.

Cairo police are unbelievably polite. On the way home from dinner last night, we encountered the police abusing an elderly man and his donkey pulling a cart. Linda's husband, Ramy, jumped out of the car and gave the police what for. I had visions of Ramy being slammed face down on the ground, handcuffed and hauled to jail. Instead, the police came over to the car and profusely apologized to us all for the way they had treated the man and his donkey.

[More to come in the next few days -- I hope.]

New York police 'came in like gangbusters' and pulled plug on Cindy Sheehan

From the Village Voice:

NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan
City’s Finest pulls move even Bush wouldn’t have tried

by Sarah Ferguson
September 19th, 2005 5:54 PM

Cindy Sheehan may be the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. But that didn't stop members of the New York Police Department from marching into the crowd of about 150 people gathered in Union Square Monday to hear her speak and yanking away the microphone.

The NYPD pulled the plug just as Sheehan was calling on the audience not to lose heart in the fight to end the war in Iraq.

"We get up every morning, and every morning we see this enormous mountain in front of us," said Sheehan, speaking on behalf of the other parents and family members of fallen soldiers who have taken up the crusade to bring the troops home.

"We can't go through it, we can't go under it, so we have to go over it," she continued, just as the cops rushed the makeshift podium.

Police dragged away Paul Zulkowitz, a.k.a. Zool, an organizer with “Camp Casey NYC,” the small encampment that he and other activists set up a month ago in Union Square in solidarity with Sheehan’s vigil outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The New York branch existed much to the ire of the city’s Parks Department. Today, Zulkowitz was arrested for failing to obtain a sound permit—a charge that normally warrants no more than a summons.

Moments earlier, Zulkowitz had been chastising Parks officials for refusing to grant a permit to the encampment, and accusing the police of trying to harass the antiwar protest away. Contrasting the liberal Big Apple with the hostile environs Sheehan faced in Crawford, Zulkowitz told the crowd: "You would think that here in New York City, at Union Square—our Hyde Park—you would think that we would little difficulty having a 24-hour vigil to oppose the war. In fact, we've had two arrests and eight summonses and endless harassment from the police for doing what we do."

As the activists hustled away Sheehan and the other family members on the Bring Them Home Now tour, an enraged crowd of about 50 people stormed after the police, chanting, "Shame! Shame!" Meanwhile Iraq war veteran and now peace activist Jeff Key played "God Bless America" on his trumpet.

"Since when can't you talk out here in Union Square?" demanded an Upper West Side social worker who identified herself as Quha, who said she'd taken her lunch break to hear Sheehan because she has a 20-year-old son who is considering enlisting. "I've seen everyone and their mother come out and speak nonsense out here in this park, and for them to shut down Cindy Sheehan is just not right."

"They came in like gangbusters. It was really ridiculous," said Margaret Rapp, a retired teacher from Inwood who added that she planned to file a complaint after an officer forcibly shoved her in the chest. A mother of a 19-year-old, she said she'd come to hear Sheehan because she lost her fiancee during the Vietnam War. "This is very close to home. There is a chord that Cindy hits among people that have lost people in this war and other wars, or who have draft age children like me. We're scared to death.”

Inspector Michael McEnroy, commander of the 13th Precinct, insisted the shutdown order had nothing to do with the content of Sheehan’s speech, but was instead about the "provocation" caused by Zulkowitz. “This has been going on for much longer than today,” McEnroy said, adding of Sheehan, “I don’t even know the woman.” That last part prompted one pissed-off onlooker to shoot back: “Haven’t you watched the news or read a paper in the last three months? ”

Sheehan has been touring the country for the last month with members of Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak out, and Iraq Veterans Against the War. They will be speaking tonight at 6:30 at St. John the Divine (Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street), part of the lead up to Saturday’s big anti-war march in Washington, D.C.

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Another disgrace: Football fans take precedence over Katrina victims

To the University of Florida, football is more important than the welfare of the victims of Hurricane Katrina who will be evicted today from hotels and motels in Gainesville and surrounding communities to make way for fans arriving for Saturday's season opener between the Gators and Wyoming.

The university didn't have the decency to postpone the game. Then college football is big money. Besides, many of those who made it to the area before Katrina struck southern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama will soon be out of money to pay for shelter. So it's out into the street with them.

Americans have such compassion, except when there is a buck to be made. Let the game begin!

Christian Dominionists declare God destroyed wicked New Orleans

While decent people reach out to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, there is no bottom to the hate-filled extremist Christians who blame the disaster that has ravaged New Orleans on its "citizens" who "tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long."

Beware, these Christian Dominionists are taking over America in order to impose their hateful, wrathful, warmongering and blood-lusting god on us all. They already control the White House and Congress and soon will control the courts.

If you have any doubt about them and their intention, the below press release, reproduced here in full, is just one disgusting example of the depth of their depravity.

Repent America Press Release:

ACT OF GOD DESTROYS NEW ORLEANS
DAYS BEFORE "SOUTHERN DECADENCE" 8/31/05

PHILADELPHIA - Just days before "Southern Decadence", an annual homosexual celebration attracting tens of thousands of people to the French Quarters section of New Orleans, an act of God destroys the city.

"Southern Decadence" has a history of filling the French Quarters section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars. Last year, a local pastor sent video footage of sex acts being performed in front of police to the mayor, city council, and the media. City officials simply ignored the footage and continued to welcome and praise the weeklong celebration as being an "exciting event". However, Hurricane Katrina has put an end to the annual celebration of sin.

On the official "Southern Decadence" website (www.SouthernDecadence.com), it states that the annual event brought in "125,000 revelers" to New Orleans last year, increasing by thousands each year, and up from "over 50,000 revelers" in 1997. This year’s 34th annual "Southern Decadence" was set for Wednesday, August 31, 2005 through Monday, September 5, 2005, but due to massive flooding and the damage left by the hurricane, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has ordered everyone to evacuate the city.

The past three mayors of New Orleans, including Sidney Barthelomew, Marc H. Morial, and C. Ray Nagin, issued official proclamations welcoming visitors to "Southern Decadence". Additionally, New Orleans City Council made other proclamations recognizing the annual homosexual celebration.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city," stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage. "From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence,’ New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same," he continued.

New Orleans is also known for its Mardi Gras parties where thousands of drunken men revel in the streets to exchange plastic jewelry for drunken women to expose their breasts. This annual event sparked the creation of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series.

"Let us pray for those ravaged by this disaster. However, we must not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long," Marcavage said. "May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God," Marcavage concluded.

"[God] sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matthew 5:45)

Rev. Pat 'Assassinate Chavez' Robertson, a lethal example of Christian 'love'

Are there still those out there who think we can be nice to these psychopaths, such as the Rev. Pat Robertson who yesterday called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez?

Imagine what would happen to us if we called for the assassinations of the monsters in Washington, along with the monsters behind the curtain who control them. We would be charged as terrorists, labeled 'enemy combatants' and sent to rot in Gitmo, if not executed at the pleasure of you-know-who.

Don't hold your breath waiting for George W. to even denounce Robertson, much less declare him a terrorist and have him hauled off to one of the Bush Gulags.

It's time to stop fooling around, folks, thinking we can be polite to such bloodthirsty, war-loving, gold-worshipping excrement or suffer the consequences. And excrement on the soles of your shoes is what they are.

These trash people have gone beyond their trash talk and their smear tactics to frighten decent and rational people into shutting up and doing their bidding under the guise of bogus patriotism.

Cindy Sheehan has stood up to them without mincing words, which has sent them into a frenzy. The rest of you can, too. Let's send them into such a frenzy that they implode.

I don't know what god Pat Robertson and his ilk worship, but it isn't a loving god. And for them to claim they are Christians is blasphemy.

It is time to let them know we are mad as hell and aren't going to take their crap any more; that they should consider themselves endangered feces—feces so poisonous that it can't be used for fertilizer.

Hatch likens Bush to Jesus Christ

In a Thursday Washington Post article about George W. Bush's Supreme Court pick, John G. Roberts, and what the wimpy Democratic sell-outs plan to do about Bush's awful choice, other than again capitulating to the GOP juggernaut, the Post picked up a remark Senator Orrin Hatch made on Fox News, comparing the Democrats to the Pharisees and Bush to Jesus Christ:

"'It's a little bit like biblical Pharisees, you know, who basically are always trying to undermine Jesus Christ,' he said on Fox News. 'You know, it goes on the same way. If they can catch him in something, they can then criticize and the outside groups will go berserk.'"

To Christians, is this remark not blasphemy?

Will Orrin next tell us that criminal Bush, who for all intents and purposes is now a dictator—though most Americans don't yet get it—is actually the Second Coming of Christ? Will Bush attempt to walk on water to prove it?

State Department’s "Ministry of Truth" honors Madsen and Online Journal

We are flattered—flattered!—that the excellent work of investigative journalist Wayne Madsen and Online Journal have come to the attention of the State Department and are deemed worthy of attack by its Ministry of Truth (a.k.a. Counter Misinformation Team) honcho Todd Leventhal.

While this is not quite as prestigious an honor as being included in Richard Nixon’s Enemies List, especially since Mr. Leventhal’s operation can barely be called a team—himself, a full-time assistant and one part-timer—and is part of the Karen Hughes-inspired International Propaganda . . . Information Programs, we accept this honor as a start in getting the Bush administration’s panties in a wad or, as our British cousins say, knickers in a twist.

Not all of us in the Fourth Estate will lie down to be trampled on by neocons, theocrats, Republicans and Democrats. To borrow the words of Dylan Thomas, we will “not go gentle into that good night,” but we shall continue to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”