BuzzFlash Mailbag for April 06, 2009

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Subject: Bush Camps

Americans need to hear a lot more about the 'tent cities' cropping up all over the country. Some are now calling them 21st century 'Hoovervilles' but many of the wing-nuts are already calling them 'Obamavilles'!

THIS HAS GOT TO BE NIPPED IN THE BUD!

Those responible are the Phil Gramms and the G.W. Bushes who offered an unfettered rape of our financial structure.

For posterity, "Bush Camps" or somesuch has got to take root and stick!

SgtRock
Waldport, OR

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Subject: I am Still Waiting

How long must the American people wait until our president and the Congress do the right thing and APPOINT A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR to investigate the CRIMES OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION?

Oh, it feels nice and fuzzy that Europe and the other world leaders like Obama and think he and Michelle are a neat couple and INTELLIGENT.

This trip to Europe is a nice public relations job, to help repair the image of America.

It's not only the Americans who are relieved that Bush and Cheney our out of office, but the rest of the world.

Unfortunately for Obama, he's the one who has been left to clean up the Bush mess(the financial one and the Iraq War), but he's ALSO the one who has to hold the Bush administration accountable for ALL the CRIMES that they have committed.

If Obama doesn't want it to look like it's political revenge, which it is not, then he can stay completely OUT of the picture.

All Obama has to do, is give the OK to Holder to appoint a special prosecutor.

Maybe, Obama and the Congress WANT the statue of limitations to run out, so they don't have to do anything about these crimes?

Maybe they're hoping that Americans will be so busy worrying whether they have a job, a roof over their heads,or a retirement, that they'll forget about the prosecutions?

Congress might be worried that crimes have been committed by both Republicans and Democrats and so the Democratic majority are trying to protect their own.

If during the Nixon era, we had politicians like the ones who are in office today,we would NEVER have had the WATERGATE TRIALS.

The politicians who were involved in conducting the Watergate trials, both Republican and Democrats alike, LOVED AND PROTECTED our CONSTITUTION, and put country above party.

A crime had been committed and it had to be prosecuted.

Today, a crime worse than Watergate has been committed and there's no one trying to hold anyone accountable.

The criminals are like bullies, sticking their tongues out at us, TELLING US THEY STARTED A WAR AND LIED, TORTURED PEOPLE, WIRE-TAPPED, STOLE ELECTIONS, RENDITIONED PEOPLE, OUTED A CIA UNDERCOVER AGENT, FIRED U.S. PROSECUTORS.

They go on T.V. ADMITTING ALL their crimes, CONFESSING,BOASTING about what they did. It's as if they're sticking their tongues out at us,thumbing their noses,and continuously taunting us, knowing full well NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO THEM.

WHERE IS THE CONGRESSES BACKBONE?

THEY KNOW OBAMA AND CONGRESS WON'T WANT TO have their agenda thrown off course or to have Republicans accuse them of political revenge.

During the Watergate trials our politicians were ANGRY and ENRAGED at the power grab of Nixon and his attitude, that the president was above the law. One felt very proud of the way our politicians conducted themselves and how they HELD NIXON AND THE OTHER WATERGATE defendants accountable for their CRIMES.

But HOW CAN ANYONE, our PRESIDENT, ATTORNEY GENERAL, MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, LET KNOWN WAR CRIMINALS OFF THE HOOK FOR THEIR CRIMES?

Obama and Congress took an oath of office to DEFEND, PROTECT and UPHOLD the Constitution and THEY'RE NOT!

Don't ANY of these people in Washington have ANY ETHICS? Don't they believe in OUR LAWS?

If this Obama administration REFUSES to prosecute Bush and Cheney, then anyone who is brought to trial should use Obama's philosophy on crimes as their defense, TO LOOK FORWARD AND NOT BACK.

Having that rational, means our judges will need to find OTHER employment, since we'll have no need for any legal system, since NO ONE WILL BE PROSECUTED.

Every time I THINK things will be righted, I'm totally taken aback by our politicians, who have turned a blind eye to ALL THE CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE BUSH administration.

These politicians DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

If Bush and Cheney are not prosecuted, they and other neocons WILL COME BACK. Next time they won't go away and this country will be a DICTATORSHIP.

When you have a Vice President who has his own SECRET ASSASSINATION HIT SQUAD, that goes around the world killing anyone who gets in his way, and he's still around to give orders to that squad, even though he's not in office right now, that person NEEDS to be REMOVED (either through prison or execution) from our society.

It's been reported that Cheney LEFT MOLES throughout the government when he left office, he's SPYING on this administration.

Wiretaps are still going on, does CHENEY get that information? What is being sent to him, so he can use it against individuals?

He has people in place to SABOTAGE the Obama administration.

I would say Cheney IS A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT to our country.

ALL of his MOLES MUST be REMOVED from office. Any who were appointed should be fired. These people are out to DESTROY OUR CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT.

There's big money behind Cheney, who'd support his HIT SQUAD, eliminating NOW anyone in their way.

Americans should take a look at what the Europeans do. They TAKE TO THE STREETS and their leaders DO take notice when hundreds of thousands demonstrate.

Their voices are being heard by their leaders.

Since e-mails, letters, phones calls and actually going to a Congressional office has made no difference, none. Taking it to the streets may be the only way to get our politicians attention.

No matter how wonderful Obama's smile is,and what a nice man he seems to be, all I can think about, is that he who promised HOPE AND CHANGE, is the same old same old.

It's the PROSECUTIONS STUPID, not health care, not Wall Street, not the war, nothing else matters, but the laws of our land that MUST BE UPHELD.

We CAN NOT go forward as a country, or as a people, UNTIL those who committed WAR CRIMES are held accountable and prosecuted.

AMERICANS DO NOT TORTURE. That is not what we stand for. By not holding Bush and Cheney responsible for these War Crimes, it means it's OK and the American people APPROVE of what they did.

We need to have louder voices, since the Congress and Obama seem to be hard of hearing.

Call Congress NOW.

Markmyword
Chicago, Illinois

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Subject: Wall Street Heist

Watch this movie ... Heist tells the story of how Wall Street orchestrated the greatest theft in history -- the robbery of Americans’ prosperity, savings, and retirement security. Click on this link and enlighten yourself: http://www.heist-themovie.com/

"William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything."

BILL MOYERS: You're describing what Bernie Madoff did to a limited number of people. But you're saying it's systemic, a systemic Ponzi scheme.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, Bernie was a piker. He doesn't even get into the front ranks of a Ponzi scheme...

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/profile.html

This lasts about 30 minutes, but if you really don't like what is going on, it is a must read.

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: 9/11

Nobody knows exactly what happened on this dreadful day that changed our lives forever. But we do know Iraq had nothing to do with it. How many people would have supported the invasion of Iraq if the Bush administration would have told us that we would have to borrow money for this war and your great grandchildren would probably still be paying for it 100 years later? Meanwhile, private corporations worldwide, if their countries would join the COALITION, would benefit tremendously through no-bid private contracts. Iraq became an experiment in privitazation of an entire nation. We rocked the "Cradle of Civilivation".

Think back on the early days of the overthrow of Saddam. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. You didn't see any Iraqis fighting each other. They sat around bewildered. MOST PEOPLE JUST WANT TO LIVE THEIR LIVES, RAISE THEIR FAMILIES, JUST SURVIVE AND HOPEFULLY A LITTLE MORE. How bad would life be without Saddam?

Well, life became extremely bad (watch "No End In Sight"). The no-bid contracts flowed in and billions were distributed to companies that had already been promised instant wealth, and they took the money and proceeded to sub-contract to companies who used slave labor from neighboring countries and even far away countries, some laborers thinking they were going to Kuwait and then having their passports taken away until completing their "Tour of Duty in Iraq".

Here is an answer from someone in Watchmen, who I know nothing about but will look into. A bible group. His (or her) answer about Bush and 9/11 should be carefully considered by every American and person in the world.

http://www.biblestudysite.com/answers67.htm#1

A BuzzFlash Reader

[BuzzFlash Note: That source has an anti-Semitic and conspiracist slant, blaming Jews for running and ruining the world. You probably can do better elsewhere.]

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Subject: Force = mvsquared

"Physics?"

"Change we can believe in."

"What's m?"

"The number of us participating."

"And v?

"How fast we rise up."

"If we rise up some time soon?"

"Forget it."

"Whereas if this very moment we rise up en masse?"

"It'll be a sure thing."

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Mar. 31 Mailbag ... M.L. Baxter

About your decision to not watch David Letterman because he was having Bill O'Reilly ... you should have watched it!!

No one despises BillyO ... more than I do ... but David actually had him on there ... to tell him he was a Bore and a Goon ... I think that was it. I was out of town ... watching a TV ... in Mississippi and I think I heard it right.

David did not have him on to give him any valuable TV time ... he had him on to let him know what a jerk he is! I did watch it!

Shirley ... St. Louis

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Subject: G-NO-P

Consistent with their penchant for just saying, "No," I propose that the "GOP" now be referred to as the G-NO-P.

Thank God the Democrats are in charge. Have a great day!

John Kirtley
Dallas, TX

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Subject: Judgmental with blinders on

Dear BuzzFlash:

After it was announced that Iowa is the latest state to allow gay marriages, the religious right responded in their predictable hate-filled self-sanctimonious fashion, citing tired old cliches like the Old Testament book of Leviticus to justify their "concern" and judge everybody who isn't in lock step with them yet again.

To hear the religious community tell it, they're not just about saving us, they are community pillars, pro-family and out to establish our morals for us, with the direct red phone hot line from God as their guiding light.

But one thing really irks me, and that's how these fanatics pick their battles and let other problems get shoved under the rug.

We hear of Roe v. Wade ad nauseam, and all matter of anti-gay and lesbian diatribe, but aren't these people curiously silent when it comes to methamphetamine using closet gay evangelist preachers, rampant sodomy and sexual abuse of young boys? Nor do we hear a peep out of them when the subject of polygamy surfaces, or cults are outed, like the Tony Alamo "church" of Arkansas, as deviant an organization as any out there. In Southwest Missouri, a preacher and a few deacons were telling the men of their backwoods church that in order to be "true men", they (the preacher and his buddies) would have to be allowed to have sex with the men's wives, and that went on for years until some victims finally got the courage to surface.

And how about other ugly stuff, like child abuse, spousal abuse or railing against TV preachers out ripping off gullible people by the thousands? Boy, it's quiet in here.

Do we conclude by the silence that this activity is condoned? Or is it so rampant in their own community that they're out to keep it quiet?

Look out for hypocrites out to point their finger at you. If I've learned anything, it's that those who scream the loudest usually have the most to hide.

Scott
Fayetteville, Ar.

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Subject: Defense Budget

One thing that seems to be ignored as President Obama adds thousands of troops to Afghanistan and withdraws some from Iraq is the tremendous size of the US military budget at 663 billion dollars plus an extra 200 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I refuse to call this a "defense budget" because it has nothing to do with defense. No country in its right mind would dare to attack the United States, as it would be the end of the world, with maybe a few viruses and bacteria surviving. Interestingly enough, no liberal or radical group I have heard or read has called it an offense budget. Since it is repeated a thousand times, it sinks into their brains as a "defense budget." For hundreds of years the countries of Europe attacked each other with appalling frequency, until the advent of the atom bomb. Now, the elites of those countries realize the game is over and they live in peace because of mutually assured destruction on a colossal scale, if they actually attacked each other. I am confident human beings didn't suffer a sudden infusion of love, compassion and peaceful feelings immediately following World War 2, especially those who own those European countries and for centuries wanted to expand their share of the world's weath.

The US "defense budget" is actually an offense budget. It hasn't been a defense budget in any connotation of the word since World War 2. Since 1945 the United States has attacked Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Haiti, Panama, that superpower of the Caribbean called Grenada, Yugoslavia, Iraq twice, and Afghanistan. The CIA has subverted governments in Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Indonesia, Haiti and Iran to name just a few. The CIA has an undisclosed budget amounting to tens of billions of dollars.

This is what the great author Leo Tolstoi stated about Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812: "Millions of men perpetrated against one another so great a mass of crime - fraud, swindling, robbery, forgery, issue of counterfeit money, plunder, incendiarism and murder - that the annals of all the criminal courts of the world could not muster such a sum of wickedness in whole centuries, though the men who committed those deeds did not at that time look on them as crimes."

To me the political definition of pork, leaving the meat aside, is something not beneficial to a great number of human beings, actually harmful in some way to the environment, but profitable otherwise, or simply ridiculous. The US offensive budget meets these criteria exactly. It is harmful to the majority of human beings on the planet, especially since radioactive uranium particles get into the atmosphere from the use of depleted uranium and are circulated world wide. Most offensive budget items like bombs, shells and bullets are destroyed. This is definitely ridiculous when there are so many human needs on the planet. A tiny fraction of the Pentagon's budget could provide clean drinking water to everyone on earth, eliminate epidemics of disease and save thousands of lives. Offensive items like the ever improved, remorseless drone bombers kill people. Bombers are not something picked up at the supermarket to add comfort to life. Pork is often ridiculous. War is ridiculous. It is never fought for the reasons stated, but to benefit a few rich people. It contributes greatly to the destruction of the environment. It is utterly futile to talk of ending global warming, saving species of animals, clearing land mines and cluster bombs, saving cultural sites or rain forests, or ending epidemics of disease, while wars continue. War is not just obsolete, but a terminal activity, which will destroy the human species as well as much of the rest of the precious phenomenon called life.

Some people state that the United States is not involved in a lot of wars like those in Africa. The United States through the CIA has its finger in every pie in the world. Few people know that the United States trained the Ethiopian troops that invaded Somalia and that the United States pressured Ethiopia to invade. Also few know that the United States and Israel trained and equipped the Georgian troops that invaded Ossetia and caused the Russian response.

Think of the additional stimulus to the American economy in this world wide economic dilemma that eliminating or cutting drastically the US offense budget could give. Even if not spent directly on human needs, think of the effect on the budget deficit and the overall US debt to the rest of the world. In a few years, it would cut drastically into both these things. Why won't it be done, no matter if Obama is President or not? Because the United States is a capitalist country and an economic and military empire and will, short of a revolution, never, never cut its offense budget. When and if the ordinary working people of the United States control this country and not until then will there be peace on Earth. I don't mean elect a Democratic Congress. The US Congress is totally beholden to large corporations and not the people. The answers are corporations owned and operated by the workers themselves. Workers would certainly never vote over decades to pay themselves the miserably low wages that have resulted in the gigantic inventories of goods and the present World-Wide depression.

As an addition to this letter, I have been writing truthful letters like this for over twenty years. No publication that considers itself liberal or radical has bothered to print a single one. Only Indymedia and college student newspapers have printed them, when I had the money for the postage to send numerous ones to every college newspaper in the country, as well as nearly every daily newspaper. I am sure all these other publications would say that I am not a known author and therefore, irrelevant. I have never heard of many of their writers either. Even my friend Michael Parenti has trouble sometimes getting his articles printed. The reason is that if one is too truthful about capitalism it grates on those who make their living by it or would just like to tinker around the edges and reform the system a bit. Neither liberal hosts like Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann will ever have a Marxist on their show or explain Marx's Labor Theory of Value, which is the reason we are in the present predicament. Therefore, humanity will continue to drive straight off a cliff, all the while tuning the radio instead of altering course.

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Why Women Don't Like Rush Limbaugh

Everyone has known an older person who longs for simpler days when up was up and down was down, when life was slower and gentlemen wore hats and you would hold the door open for a lady and she wouldn’t think you were a chauvinist. It was a time when everyone understood who the bad guys were, and someone didn’t get it, well, they were the misfits. They were the misfits and everybody knew it. It was a time when people obeyed the boss, and the boss was white. The boss was white, and the boss was a man. You know that old saying, “You learn something new every day.” Well, there was a time, so the legend goes, that you didn’t have to learn something new every day. You could stick with what you had always known, the things you’ve known since you were a young white boy, and as such, it was understood that people like you, people who looked like you, were going to get the biggest piece of cake. That was your world, and that’s how it had always been.

And suddenly that saying, “You learn something new every day,” is everywhere you go. Nowadays, you can’t count on anything. This Indonesian guy named Osama Hussein is President of the whole f**king United States. Not Vice President, but President. Suddenly, that pantsuit-wearing baby killer wife-of-a-cheat Hillary is Secretary of State. So you want to wake up in the morning and start the day by screaming “Stop. Just stop, right now.”

There was a time that a white man of means could stand up and say “Shut the f*** up” and get some respect. Not long ago, the men who did the work, the men who built this country, who drove the trucks and laid the pipes and built the cars and fixed the roads and fixed the toilets – we got respect. We didn’t have to wade through all this political correctness just to get what was ours without some pinhead whining about it.

And there was a time when you knew where the communists were. They were in Russia, not in the White House. And you could count on the respectable people to ferret out the rest. Now you got socialists and communists running everything, telling us we have to spread the wealth, telling us that what is ours is not really ours. Who the f*** let them in, anyway?

The above rant is the product of a mind who cannot grasp that black-and-white, us-and-them viewpoints no longer work. The world of simple questions (“Are you for America or against it?” “Do you love free enterprise or hate it?”), has been replaced by shades of grey. Now you have to deal with people that say, “I love my country enough to criticize it, I love my country, but can’t support it when it's wrong.”

The Rush Limbaugh mind rejects these equivocations as signs of moral laxness. You either love America or you hate it. The Rush Limbaugh mind does not have to participate in the world of nuance, the world of qualified support, the Limbaugh mind despises the politics of “yes, but except ….”, or anything that reeks of compromise. The rush Limbaugh mind lives in the bliss of absolute certitude. Certitude is a powerful anesthetic. Certitude provides almost a physical “high” because all of one’s energies can work towards pushing a cause, rather than having to rethink it, or having to pause long enough to consider you might be wrong about something. The Rush Limbaugh mind never has to stop to consider much of anything. The Rush Limbaugh mind can scream and yell and rant and swear at its enemies because it is very clear who the enemies are. In Rush’s world, the enemies never “have a good point or two.” They are always wanna-be politically-correct socialist commie cowards with pussies for dicks. The Rush Limbaugh brain embraces a type of certitude that never lets any air in. It is a closed system. If you question one of the basic tenets, for example, thinking that in some cases, higher taxes might be needed, or that, in some cases, a Democrat might have a good idea, then according to the Rush Limbaugh mind, you are showing weakness. Self-questioning is not seen as a healthy way to check your facts, to improve and mature your viewpoint, but rather, as sign of a weak will, of being contaminated by the vacillation of little men. To the Rush Limbaugh brain, if you are a leader, then you never question.

In the post-consumer age, which is where we are headed, hierarchical thinking is doomed. The mindset of “I am right and you are wrong, I am high and you are low,” is not compatible with the epoch we are entering. Our problems are universal, and not limited by boundaries. The crises we must solve are never again going to stay on one side of the tracks. Fortress America cannot hide from overproduction of manufactured goods, global warming and deforestation, a dwindling oil supply and overpopulation. Everyone will have to weigh in, everyone will have to participate, and everyone will have to feel vested in and be part of the solutions. Leaders in today’s world must view themselves as the center of a web, like the hub of a bicycle wheel with spokes moving outward. This mindset is vastly different from the traditional hierarchical style of leadership. Hierarchical leadership, with power imposed from the top downward, is no longer a good model for solving the world’s problems. Rush Limbaugh’s thinking resembles the out-of-control male parent who comes home from work, says to the family “My word is law. If you don’t like it, then get the hell out.” The leadership we need today is more maternal, recognizing that what matters in family disputes is the outcome, what matters is that the next morning, people can still look each other in the eye and live peacefully under the same roof. To the maternal mind, “winning” a dispute is measured only by the degree to which family members are able to cooperate after the dispute is over.

Such is the kind of leadership required for human survival in an age of dwindling resources, which is our future. Leadership Limbaugh-style is a vestige from a soon-to-be dead age, the age of consumption, and much like the early hominids you see on those ape-to-man evolutionary charts, as transitional as an ape with a spear.

Jerome Heyes

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Subject: Lou Dobbs' Obsessions

At one time, Lou Dobbs came across as a rather well-balanced TV personality. No more!

He is obsessed with the problem of illegal immigrants, and has nothing but criticism to offer. Lately, he has been negative about any actions proposed to address our failing economy and seems to think he is smarter than Obama. Yet I have heard him offer no cures for what ails us.

This week I have had to switch channels almost immediately after he has come on CNN, because his version of Obama's trip to Europe is so far removed from truth.

It fills me with pride and admiration to see and hear the Obamas representing this country, and the reception they have received everywhere.

It is about time the republicans and the republican-light-democrats in the house and the senate woke up and smelled the coffee: They are outclassed!

Creed Ballew
Arkansas

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Subject: Obama to Bankers: “My Administration Is The Only Thing Between You And The Pitchforks.”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/obama-to-bankers-my-administration-is.html

And: Geithner and Paulson Both Broke Law By Refusing to Close Insolvent Banks

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/bush-and-obama-administrations-both.html

And: Senior S&L Regulator Says Government Engaging in Massive Cover-Up of Economic Crisis: “The Entire Strategy Is to Keep People from Getting the Facts”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/senior-s-regulator-says-government.html

George Washington
California

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Subject: Israel 1 shot, 2 kills"

April 04, 2009 "BAR" -- Despite the best efforts of the American corporate media, the Israeli lobby, and compromised politicians, the true nature of Israel’s barbarity towards the Palestinian people is not easily hidden. The massacres of Gaza’s civilian population that were recently carried out by the Israeli Defense Force created a turning point in worldwide public opinion. Only the Israeli and American governments try to deny that war crimes were committed.

The IDF barred the world’s media from witnessing the killings of more than 1,400 people. Every norm of civilized behavior and international law was violated, including the Geneva Conventions prohibition of acts of revenge against civilian populations. Israel kept the borders of Gaza sealed, and would not even allow the population to flee and save their lives. The IDF takes the term “shooting fish in a barrel” very seriously.

Now members of the IDF themselves are coming forward to admit that they committed war crimes. Soldiers have told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that they were ordered to murder civilians without provocation. Haaretz has also revealed that the IDF prepares soldiers to kill civilians by openly condoning the killing of pregnant women and little children.

“1 Shot, 2 Kills” reads one t-shirt routinely worn by IDF soldiers. It depicts a pregnant woman covered by a bulls-eye. Another t-shirt for infantry snipers depicts “the inscription ‘Better use Durex,’ next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him.” Soldiers wear these shirts only with the approval of their platoon commanders.

“The IDF prepares soldiers to kill civilians by openly condoning the killing of pregnant women and little children.” The shirts are bilingual, written in Hebrew and in English too. It makes sense that the inscriptions are also in English, because were it not for American financial support, the IDF would not exist or be able to bomb Syria or the Sudan or invade Lebanon or carry out massacres in Gaza.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22349.htm

A BuzzFlash Reader

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