[Iowa-dx] Pat LaMarche

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:25:13 -0500

This from our 2004 Green Vice-President candidate and comments that follow.

Ted Pfeiff
Scott County

       Home | Newswire | About Us | Donate | Sign-Up | Archives   Friday,
September 28, 2007      

 Discuss this story  Print This Post  E-Mail This Article    
  Published on Thursday, September 27, 2007 by The Bangor Daily News
(Maine) 
God, Machiavelli, & Mercenaries
by Pat LaMarche
So I guess you know that Nebraska Sen. Ernie Chambers filed suit against
God last week. Yep, the God. Turns out this week, God got a lawyer. Some
Texas attorney who probably sees a good chance to make a name for himself
here on Earth - or even get into heaven - representing the Almighty.At any
rate, under advice of counsel, His defense rests on the assertion that God
is above the law.

Sen. Chambers wants a judge to rule on this, because Chambers wants God to
quit, well, raising hell. See, Chambers contends that God has caused
“calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction
and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants
including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without
mercy or distinction.”

Killing innocent people and above the law: Seems God has a thing or two in
common with Blackwater USA.

You’re up on the news so you know that Blackwater mercenaries opened fire,
apparently unprovoked, and killed 11 people last week. Maybe God can enter
into evidence the videotape that the Iraqi police have. Apparently it shows
that the mom, child and everybody else who died in this incident did so
because Blackwater employees murdered them and it wasn’t His fault.

And Friday, in addition to three U.S.-Iraqi probes into this latest
Blackwater incident, Congress began hearing testimony about the role of
mercenaries in the Iraq war.

Blackwater doesn’t like that term, by the way.

Armed to the teeth and trained to kill while getting paid for it,
Blackwater employees get a little squeamish about the term “mercenary.” On
Blackwater’s Web site under the heading “Warriors for Hire” it says,
“Blackwater objects to the use of the m-word for its employees, preferring
the term “private military contractors.”

Oh, my Lord! What kind of sissy-hypocrite opens fire on 20 unarmed people,
killing 11 of them, and then can’t say the “m-word”?

So Friday, before Congress, former contractor Donald Vance testified that
some contractors in Iraq use rules of engagement and some don’t. He
testified that the last company he worked for didn’t require employees to
report anything bad that happened while they were on a mission - sort of a
“don’t ask don’t tell” for killing.

And according to Jeremy Scahill, a reporter for The Nation and author of
“Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army,”
Blackwater is the worst of the bunch. Scahill explains that countless
Blackwater m-words use blended metal bullets, even though the U.S. military
has banned them. Scahill refers to tapes, apparently made by Blackwater
employees, of some m-words bragging about using these bullets and watching
their victims’ stomachs explode.

Similar tales with Blackwater m-words boasting of their “turkey shoots” can
be found in last week’s issue of Newsweek magazine. In addition to relating
the gory details of mercenary slaughter, writer Michael Hirsh explains how
killing without liability, by someone other than God, can be possible. “Two
days before he left Iraq for good, L. Paul Bremer III, the Coalition
Provisional Authority administrator, signed a blanket order immunizing all
Americans.”

Maybe just a handful of these all-powerful beings in Iraq would be
manageable. But as it says on the Blackwater Web site, “In the first Gulf
war, the ratio of private contractors to military personnel was one to
sixty. This time it’s approaching one to one.”

I spent most of Monday studying the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
That’s a code of behavior that applies to half the U.S. armed combatants in
Iraq - the poorly paid half - our soldiers. It doesn’t apply to the 160,000
or so contractors whose inflated incomes depend on this war continuing. Oh,
and it doesn’t apply to God.

Maybe the rush to war didn’t give the administration time to sort this all
out in advance. Hurrying often has unanticipated consequences. But jeepers,
the president and the vice president both went to Yale. Didn’t they have to
read Machiavelli at Yale? OK, we’ll let Cheney off the hook because he
flunked out, but Bush must’ve read it.

Nicolo Machiavelli wrote in 1505, “And experience has shown princes and
republics, single-handed, making the greatest progress; and mercenaries
doing nothing except damage.”

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth, Maine is the author of “Left Out In America: The
State of Homelessness in the United States.”

© 2007 The Bangor Daily News

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and
discover new web pages. 

 Discuss this story  Print This Post  E-Mail This Article 
24 Comments so far 
qbaldsmoove September 27th, 2007 1:22 pm 
That’s funny, most of the conservatives I know are still blaming Clinton
for all of the worlds woes. 

Auite honestly there are at least a few I can ascribe to him.

andersdl September 27th, 2007 1:44 pm 
I was in college during the same era as Bush and although I was not a frat
boy, it was common knowledge that the frats’ archives contained term papers
and professors’ tests. It was therefore unecessary for frat boys to read or
study. Heck, they didn’t even need to read the Cliffs Notes.

You can bet, however, that nobody on the face of the earth
understands Machiavelli better than Karl Rove.

Galen September 27th, 2007 1:45 pm 
Would the murdering thugs from Blackwater prefer the term ‘babykiller’?

vinlander September 27th, 2007 2:08 pm 
Machiavelli wrote before the idea of the joint stock corporation made
mercenary activity profitable for the rich rather than something to fear.

Daniel David September 27th, 2007 2:15 pm 
We should not be hiring incorporated contractors with guns to do things in
other countries that can end only with shame being heaped upon our heads.
Our soldiers in some circumstances MAY be respected and appreciated by
citizens of other countries. Secret hired guns will NEVER be, and having
them at all is very, very bad foreign policy.

Making fun of God –or even making fun of some Republican conservatives’
mis-use of God– is equally very, very bad (and dumb) political policy,
which also leads to shame (and election losses) being heaped upon our
heads. Some of us Democrats still believe that Jesus is exactly who He said
He was, and want to elect leaders who respect his real teachings.

dkitching September 27th, 2007 2:45 pm 
1. I agree that the Dems haven’t done all they can. And it is true they
can’t break a filibuster. We need to elect enough, probably 9 and 10 for
sure next election. And for sure a Dem Prez no matter who. The Supreme
court is on the verge and one more conservative on it can undo everything
that is still intact. And that will last for another 20 years. I don’t
contend this is more important than lives being lost isn’t the most
pressing issue, but it is important to realize that one more wingnut judge
and they will overturn not just Roe v. Wade, but Social security, medicare,
most large social programs. Remember Social Security only survived by a 5
to 4 vote in the 30s despite a court that at that time was liberal. Think
of the damage that could be done, millions of seniors in poverty, no
healthcare for them. Medicaid, Schip. If you don’t think that the right
wingers won’t push for all of this as they become more and more emboldened,
you are wrong. If you listen to right wing talk, their overall objective is
to totally overturn the new deal of FDR, the new society of the 60s and 70s
of the war on poverty, medicare, etc.
The electorate in the last 7 years has made the Dems extremely gun shy and
the constant lies from prez and repugnets do echo across the land and it is
unfortunate that this still resonates in the red states. I live in Georgia
and hear the wingnuts exicited that this can occur in our lifetime;
Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia are licking their chops for just one more
wingnut Supreme court judge and we can begin. Justice Breyer, liberal is
87, Ginsberg, Stevens, and Souter in their 70s DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!
Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, just licking their chops for one more
wingnut
We must support the Dems and nurse them along no matter what!!! Don’t vote
for any 3rd party candidates, don’t sign any petitions to get other
candidates on the ballot in any state. THIS COMING ELECTION IS THAT
IMPORTANT.
REMEMBER DIVIDE US AND THEY WIN!!!!!!.

curmudgeon99 September 27th, 2007 4:01 pm 
I am afraid that free elections may be relic of the past in the US

ballsy September 27th, 2007 4:53 pm 
vote for dems? JEEEEEBUS h> christ on rubber crutches!

geoff29 September 27th, 2007 5:15 pm 
really, what is a “free election?” all of a sudden there’s Hillary and
Obama and so on and so forth and they are my choices? I wouldn’t say so,
they are assigned choices.

the thing about mercenaries that’s risky is if you don’t or can’t pay them
they probably turn on you or go to the next highest bidder. They won’t
fight for free and because they believe in your cause, that’s not the
nature of a mercenary.

we live in a country of mercenaries it occurs to me. Most of the folks who
live here only do what they do because they’ve been paid to do it. What
happens when they don’t get their pay check? No matter how you look at it,
bush and his backers must be very desperate people, you know “take but
degree away.”

Dr. Zimmerman Robert September 27th, 2007 5:33 pm 
The God-O-Meter

http://blog.beliefnet.com/godometer/index.html

Dr. Zimmerman Robert September 27th, 2007 5:38 pm 
Karl Rove has been a straw man for the Democrats to hide their incompetence.

Blame “Miss Piggy” as Karl Rove is called in the DC gay scene

bildad September 27th, 2007 5:55 pm 
dkitching:
THEY win regardless of whether you vote for one wing of the
corporate-imperialist duopoly or the other. Your rant about the importance
of disenfranchising anyone who disagrees with THEM reeks of out-and-out
Stalinism. I am astounded that you are trying to use the tactics of
intimidation and “lesser-evil” political coercion to deny American citizens
the right to get on the ballot and run for office. What will you propose
next–sending armed thugs to every precinct to strong-arm any freedom-loving
voters who dare to claim their constitutional right vote in free and fair
elections? 

DON’T YOU DARE TRY TO COERCE ME OR TELL ME THAT I “MUST” VOTE AGAINST MY
OWN BEST INTERESTS AND THE PARTY OR CANDIDATES WHO BEST REPRESENT MY VIEWS
JUST SO I CAN HELP ELECT YOUR WAR-MONGERING, BUSH-ENABLING,
CONSTITUTION-SHREDDING DEMOCRATS!

Oh, I forgot. They are “better than the Republicans.” Right. In the same
way that a phony friend who will sell you down the river when the going
gets rough is better than a known enemy you can trust to be exactly what
they claim to be. 

NO MORE LESSER EVILS! DUMP THE DUOPOLY!
VOTE GREEN IN ’08!

militantliberal September 27th, 2007 6:52 pm 
Macchiavelli didn’t know the half of it. Germany was devastated by
mercenary companies during the Thirty Years War (1618-48). The problem
wasn’t just what they did when they acted under orders from their customer.
It was also what they did when they weren’t paid or lost their contracts.

Galen September 27th, 2007 7:12 pm 
Militantliberal: Like when the Pope didn’t pay the Landsknechts in gold,
but instead said they were working ‘for the glory of God’… and then the
Landsknechts looted the Vatican, even breaking up and stripping the throne
of St. Peter?

Ryszard62 September 27th, 2007 8:42 pm 
Some of you may remember the comic strip “Pogo” by Walt Kelly. In the late
1950s, he sent two of his swamp dwellers, Albert and Churchy, to Australia,
where they encountered the “Russian Bear,” who was masquerading as Santa
Claus, or as the bear called him, “Sam Nikolaus.”

Albert and Churchy wanted to return to the US in order to vote. The ersatz
Santa exclaimed, “Going to vote again> Two candidates? You’ll never learn.
Why waste the voter’s tim making him choose? Pick the best man and let the
people vote him in…efficiency!”

In approximately 1979, the real “Russian Bear,” Leonid Brezhnev warned the
west (and the same line was used in a Canadian production of a science
fiction show, “The Outer Limits,”), “What you know too well, you are in
danger of becoming.”

Son of a Gun, both Brezhnev and Walt Kelly were (and are) RIGHT!

Neil Uecke September 27th, 2007 8:58 pm 
VOTE ALL INCUMBANTS OUT OF OFFICE!

milesofmusic September 27th, 2007 9:01 pm 
after maliki took his little fit last week and was so presumptuous to think
that he could effect a political decision in his own country by throwing
blackwater out the american military stated that they could not prosecute
this war without them.

huh!

what’s that?

fact is, the armed forces can no longer feed themselves, house themselves,
clothe themselves or wipe their asses themselves.

not without blackwater.

i don’t know about you but that - in an already very strange world - freaks
me out.

worse, this messed up situation is not a mistake, it is a but another step
on the path of privatizing the american government.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein 

review here:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,2169298,
00.html

explains that the largest growth industry in the united states is the
cannibalization of the american government.

bush wants to privatize everything, social security, intelligence, the
military, and all the remaining government services.

the plan as naomi explains so well is to create a moment of shock and in
that moment put forward major initiatives that the population cannot deal
with, and tin this way, make more and more gains to privatize and make for
profit everything.

and the shocks need to keep on coming.

that would be you and me folks.

cheney is going to be out of the sump pump this week to up the rhetoric on
iran - to make ready the war. cheney has got a lot of shocks for us in his
evil little mind.

it is an important book - check it out.

so as the military continues to create inabilities of every sort, the
blakcwaters move in and take over.

don’t worry, blackwater is ready to stand up as the american military
stands down.

hey?

isn’t that the plan is iraq?

mwb26810 September 27th, 2007 9:55 pm 
follow milesofmusic’s advice

Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” is a
must-read.

godlessrant September 27th, 2007 10:54 pm 
“Some of us Democrats still believe that Jesus is exactly who He said He
was, and want to elect leaders who respect his real teachings.”

and some of us don’t believe in god at all and are tired of hearing about
god all the time. i do agree though that we all need to work together to
fix our country.

Paul Bramscher September 27th, 2007 11:06 pm 
Some just want to see forgiveness, peace, compassion, kindness, honesty,
generosity, etc. IN ACTION HERE AND NOW and aren’t concerned about beliefs,
abstractions, professions, alternate realities, etc. one way or the other.

kalia September 28th, 2007 12:30 am 
There will come a time and that day may not be far off when God will get
tired of all this and unleash his wrath. Woe un to you.

Lobo Gris September 28th, 2007 3:16 am 
dkitching September 27th, 2007 2:45 pm

“We must support the Dems and nurse them along no matter what!!! Don’t vote
for any 3rd party candidates, don’t sign any petitions to get other
candidates on the ballot in any state. THIS COMING ELECTION IS THAT
IMPORTANT.
REMEMBER DIVIDE US AND THEY WIN!!!!!!.”

You’re just another cut and paste shill trying to scare voters into voting
once again for the lesser of two evils. You probably won’t even be back to
read and reply to all of your cut and paste posts.

“1. I agree that the Dems haven’t done all they can.”

You are right about that but your solution is to vote for them anyway?

There is a reason why Congressional approval ratings are at 11%. After we
voted the Democrats into office in 2006 they not only haven’t done their
jobs, they haven’t even tried. My take on it is that they think they can
just coast along doing nothing, watching Bush self implode, and they will
win in 2008 by default. Wrong IMO. We didn’t elect them to just coast. We
elected them to do the hard things that need to be done because they are
right. What did we get? A Speaker that took impeachment off the table
before she was even elected to the position. And we got a bunch of whining
about how they can’t beat a filibuster or override a veto. Both are wrong
factually.

The Democrats could stop the war anytime by simply not funding it. They
don’t even have to let a spending bill out of committee, and if there is no
bill it can’t be filibustered or vetoed. 

My take on it again, the Democrats are scared that if they do stop the
funding they will be labeled as not supporting the troops. Not supporting
the troops is lying to put them in harms way and getting almost 4,000 of
them killed and almost thirty thousand of them wounded. They are also
scared that if things get worse in Iraq after the defunding that they will
be blamed. We heard the same thing about Viet Nam which ended drawing out
that war for over ten years with 58,000 dead before it was over. The end
result? We still left in 1975 in an ignoble retreat, helicoptering people
off the embassy roof and pushing the helicopters off into the sea when they
reached the waiting carriers.

The Democrats have a chance to do the right thing here and avoid a repeat
of the Viet Nam fiasco. And that is what they get paid the big bucks for,
not whining about how they can’t do this or they can’t do that when they
can.

And don’t tell me to wait until 2008 when the Democrats will have a big
enough majority to get us out. I watched the Democratic candidate debates
last night and none of the three front running candidates would even
promise to have our troops out by the end of their first term in 2013.

As for impeachment, we have the worst president in U.S. history that has
blatantly violated the constitution, the law, international treaties, and
the Democrats won’t even try to impeach him. My God, the Republicans
impeached Clinton for lying about getting a BJ in the White House.

So no don’t expect me to support or vote for the Democrats in 2008 if they
refuse to stand up and do the right thing now. And I’m one of the voters
they need, an independent swing voter. Isn’t it a shame that in this
country neither one of the two major parties can attract enough voters on
their own merits to be able to win elections on their own without help from
independents? Both parties IMO need to take a close look at themselves and
see what they are doing wrong and correct themselves if they want to remain
viable. The voters, myself included, in this country are crying out for
competent leadership that will turn the country around and head it in the
right direction, rather than in the direction that the so called elites
have been taking us. As of right now I don’t see that and a majority of the
rest of the people in the country don’t either.

Lobo Gris

Lobo Gris September 28th, 2007 6:29 am 
NEW YORK A new Gallup poll reveals that, as the organization puts it,
Americans now “express less trust in the federal government than at any
point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions
is now lower than it was during the Watergate era, generally recognized as
the low point in American history for trust in government.” 

Among the findings: Barely half trust the government to handle
international problems, the lowest number ever. And less than half express
faith in the government handling domestic issues, the lowest findings since
1976. 

Gallup adds: “The candidates running for president in 2008 will be trying
to win over a skeptical public. Just 55% of Americans express trust in the
‘men and women in political life in this country who either hold or are
running for public office.’ That matches the low Gallup found in 2001.”

Lobo Gris

DuraMater September 28th, 2007 7:30 am 
Neil Uecke:
“VOTE ALL INCUMBANTS OUT OF OFFICE!”

The word you’re looking for is RECUMBENTS - as in “people who can’t stir
themselves to rescue themselves from their house burning down around their
ears.” “INCUMBENTS” suggests they are doing something - which we know
they’re not.

Lobo Gris - good point. Next thing is to go around and do a Poll of
Americans who agree that Santa Claus has more believable foreign and
domestic policies than BushCo and the Democrats have. I think there are now
more Americans who believe in Santa Claus than in BushCo.

Join the discussion:
You must be logged in to post a comment. If you haven't registered yet,
click here to register. (It's quick, easy and free. And we won't give your
email address to anyone.)

   FAIR USE NOTICE   
  This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always
been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such
material available in our efforts to advance understanding of
environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific,
and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of
any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US
Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material
on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use
copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond
'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Podcast Powered by podPress (v8.2)