Mel Gibson Is History

Last night after I'd typed up Gibson's arrest report, thinking that it was awfully hard to read and that clarifying the text would be a public service, I got a message from a liberal blogger who probably prefers to remain anonymous asking if it was really true, and saying that if not I was in danger of a big lawsuit. I told him that nobody was even denying it.

Is right-wing Zionist/neocon warmongering making Nazi nutjobs like Gibson think they can stop pretending? Well, they can't.

Mel Gibson DUI Arrest Report

Mel Gibson: "I own Malibu, you motherfucker."

S/Gibson was cooperative with the field investigation. His conduct began to change when I advised him he was being detained/arrested for drunk driving. S/Gibson became increasingly belligerent as he took stock of his predicament. S/Gibson angrily stated [illegible], "my life is fucked." S/Gibson became fixated on his [illegible] and concern that this incident was going to be publicized.

In order to calm S/Gibson's concern, I [illegible] S/Gibson to the back seat of the patrol car, telling him, if he remained cooperative I would transport him without handcuffing. S/Gibson quickly turned and bolted toward his vehicle as he said, "I'm not going to get into [illegible]." S/Gibson attempted to escape arrest.

I chased after S/Gibson, catching up as he reached the driver's side of his vehicle. I grabbed onto S/Gibson's arms from his back side with my hands [illegible] turned [illegible] a quarter turn so he was facing the vehicle's left side. S/Gibson offered no resistance. I placed S/Gibson's hands behind his back and handcuffed him without escape attempt. S/Gibson [illegible] S/Gibson's belligerent attitude [illegible]. S/Gibson [illegible] profanities [illegible], calling me, "You motherfucker." S/Gibson threatened me, saying, "I'm going to fuck you. You're going to regret you ever did this to me."

While en route to Lost Hills S/Gibson's conduct remained belligerent. S/Gibson [illegible] continually threatened me, saying he "owns Malibu" and will [illegible] himself to "get even" with me. S/Gibson blurted out a barrage of anti-Semitic remarks about "fucking Jews." S/Gibson yelled out, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." S/Gibson then asked, "Are you a Jew?"

S/Gibson's conduct concerned and frightened me to a point, I called ahead to the station requesting a sergeant meet the arrival of my patrol car in the station parking lot. Sgt. T. Palmer, #[illegible] and Sgt. J. Benning, #[illegible] met with me as I had requested. I briefed them about S/Gibson's conduct before [illegible] Sgt Palmer began live taping to capture any continued belligerent conduct, [illegible] Sgt. Palmer tape recorded... the chemical test, breath test S/Gibson performed, [illegible] the booking that followed. S/Gibson displayed continued belligerent conduct and mood swings, in which he cooperated by completing the breath test, but refused to provide booking information or sign any document.

I stored S/Gibson's vehicle prior to transporting him to the station per 22651 [illegible] number. While conducting an inventory search of S/Gibson's vehicle, I found EV-1, a 750 ml bottle labled "Cazadores Tequila," that was about 3/4 full of liquid content, concealed in a brown paper bag, on the right key [illegible] of the vehicle EV-1 placement in the vehicle was within easy reach of S/Gibson while he had been driving. S/Gibson merely had to reach over the [illegible] center console separating the two front bucket seats.

I advised S/Gibson about [illegible] EV-1. S/Gibson asked, "Was it in a brown [illegible] bag?" When I answered, "Yes," S/Gibson quickly replied, "It's not mine." I determined S/Gibson was driving a vehicle [illegible] beverage in violation of 23263 (A) [illegible].

S/Gibson was booked on the indicated charges with the approval of Em. Watch Sgt. Benning, and [illegible].

I tape recorded the field investigation. I did not place the tape into evidence because it also contained [illegible] and may be evidential [illegible] in those [illegible].

Lebanon, Iran, and Reality

Is Lebanon the Great Unravelling?

by William Bowles • Friday, 28 July, 2006

‘We are farmers, we can fall back on the land, hide in caves, make our own cheese and eat our lambs. The Israelis in their bunkers, this life upsets them. They will quit.’ — Mohammed Mulimh, 29, a Lebanese farmer

We tend to assume that governments, regardless of whether we agree with their policies or not, operate on the basis of a rational analysis of the situation, but I think it’s pretty obvious by now that this is not the case. Plans and objectives are all well and good but they need to be based in the real world of what is realisable. Gamblers still need to weigh the odds.

Thus I contend that the Lebanese ‘adventure’ is a sign of increasing desperation on the part of the Wolves. Some on the left (and not so left) contend that this is a portent of a coming invasion/attack on Iran but again, I caution against this interpretation, not that ‘taking out’ Iran isn’t an objective, the question is, is it a realistic objective?

But how is it to be realised short of nuking the country? Invasion is obviously out of the question in spite of all the ominous talk (fight the ‘war on terror’ on four fronts?). What it does reveal I think, is the bankruptcy of the ‘war on terror’ as a sustainable basis for a foreign policy. Once again, it reveals that the power elite have fooled themselves into confusing propaganda with real policies and real situations.

Joint Israeli-U.S. Military Operation

Dead UN soldiers had atrocities info

Our intelligence sources report that the Israeli Defense Force attack on Lebanon is being carried out as a joint Israeli-U.S. military operation. Moreover, there are joint Israeli and U.S. war rooms coordinating the U.S.-supported Israeli attacks on Lebanon. The ultimate aim of Washington and Jerusalem is not only to eliminate Hezbollah as a political force in Lebanon but also to remake Lebanon as an American and Israeli client state. Israeli forces are pounding parts of Lebanon, especially in the north, where there are no Hezbollah units and primarily Christian populations. In addition, Israeli forces are being aided by the Bush administration with high-resolution overhead imagery from U.S. spy satellites and signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts from National Security Agency assets, including SIGINT satellites.

Ground War in Lebanon

Its “Put up or Shut up” Time in Lebanon

by Mike Whitney

The Israeli High Command loves the air-war phase of the conflict. After all, no one gets killed at 30,000 ft. The only victims of this lethal strategy are the unlucky women and children who are left scampering for their lives while Israeli bombs flatten their homes and all their worldly possessions.

For 10 days now Israel has casually showered Lebanon with laser-guided munitions, bunker-busters, Daisy Cutters and cluster-bombs. The cheerily-named ordnance reflects the profound affection that US/Israel feel for the deadly weaponry that assures their dominant place in the global order.

But let’s face it: the bombing campaign is the "coward’s war". It doesn’t take bravery to pelt civilians with high explosives when the F-16s are unchallenged in the sky. Nor does it show any courage to ravage the countryside leveling bridges, milk factories and mosques. That’s just terrorism, isn’t it?

But now we’re entering the ground phase of the war and that does take courage. Israel is massing troops on Lebanon’s southern border and, apparently, has already taken a few small towns in the south. The Israeli-friendly media can be expected to craft a narrative that is sympathetic to the aggressor, but that’s okay. No one disputes the value of propaganda or the rights of the people who own the printing presses, but that will not diminish what is about to take place in southern Lebanon. We are about to see the most powerful army in the Middle East, armed with every homicidal device known to man, go up against a tough-minded, well-disciplined nationalist guerrilla force.

Israel thinks that they’ll be out in a week or two.

We’ll see.

Subpoena for Donald Rumsfeld

Panel orders Abu Ghraib documents from Pentagon

"House Government Reform Committee issued a subpoena to Rumsfeld last week and said the Pentagon must produce a raft of documents, including all drafts of the report on the Abu Ghraib investigation, by the end of business on July 14.

The subpoena follows Rumsfeld's failure to respond to a March 7 letter from the congressional panel requesting the same documents.

The Pentagon said it had already provided many of the requested documents to its oversight committee -- the House Armed Services Committee -- and has now also delivered documents to the Government Reform Committee.

'We have delivered to the House Government Reform Committee many documents previously provided to the House Armed Services Committee ... in the matter under discussion,' said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman.

Images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, including naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and others cowering before snarling dogs, first became public in April 2004, triggering international condemnation of the United States.

The country's image has been further tarnished by a string of accusations that U.S. servicemen have murdered Iraqi civilians, including the massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha.

'When the Committee requests information from executive branch departments and agencies, we try to be reasonable and accommodate their legitimate concerns about the volume and the sensitivity of what we're asking for,' said Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the committee.

'But if the department won't even return a call, after three months, and begin that dialogue, we really have no choice but to subpoena the material and compel their attention to our request.' "

Ouch.

Midland, Texas Produces War Criminals and Rapists

Inquiry Into Iraq Killings Focuses on Supervision of Soldiers

"For a year and a half before he went into the Army, Mr. Green lived with his father, John Green, in an apartment in Midland, Tex., according to a neighbor there, Albert Rodriguez. Mr. Green, he said, was 'a normal kid; he didn't look like he would hurt a fly.' Mr. Rodriguez added that the young man seemed 'more like a follower than a leader.' "

Good grief. George W. Bush grew up in Midland, Texas.

Rape and Murder in Mahmudiyah

Home Free: American Power in Mahmudiyah

Written by Chris Floyd

Monday, 03 July 2006

Did you see her and want her so bad, that young, forbidden fruit? Did she once smile nervously at the checkpoint, and you thought it was just for you? Did you come on strong the next time around, flash a little money maybe, or lay a syrupy line on her that you got from a phrasebook? What did she do – recoil? Look away? Look disgusted? Look blank? What did she do to bring on the big hurt from a big, tough man like you?

So you planned it all out. You cased the house, you reconnoitred. You got your buddies in on it – or were they in from the start, did they make a play too, were they too turned away by this haughty Arab bitch, this piece of trash from a shitheap town in a shitheap country filled with nothing but lazy, lying, murdering towelheads? Somebody like that thinks they're too good to give it up to you? You liberated her goddamned country, for Christ's sake, and now she won't even put out? That dog won't hunt. Hell no. You and your pals had to teach her a lesson. You had the power, you had the guns, you were Americans; who was going to stop you?

Seymour Hersh on Bush, Iran and the Generals

LAST STAND: The military’s problem with the President’s Iran policy.

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Issue of 2006-07-10
Posted 2006-07-03

Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans [for Iran], according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.

A crucial issue in the military’s dissent, the officers said, is the fact that American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities; the war planners are not sure what to hit. “The target array in Iran is huge, but it’s amorphous,” a high-ranking general told me. “The question we face is, When does innocent infrastructure evolve into something nefarious?” The high-ranking general added that the military’s experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. “We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq,” he said.

A senior military official told me, “Even if we knew where the Iranian enriched uranium was—and we don’t—we don’t know where world opinion would stand. The issue is whether it’s a clear and present danger. If you’re a military planner, you try to weigh options. What is the capability of the Iranian response, and the likelihood of a punitive response—like cutting off oil shipments? What would that cost us?” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior aides “really think they can do this on the cheap, and they underestimate the capability of the adversary,” he said.

A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ”

In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. The huge complex includes large underground facilities built into seventy-five-foot-deep holes in the ground and designed to hold as many as fifty thousand centrifuges. “Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “And Pace stood up to them. Then the world came back: ‘O.K., the nuclear option is politically unacceptable.’ ” At the time, a number of retired officers, including two Army major generals who served in Iraq, Paul Eaton and Charles Swannack, Jr., had begun speaking out against the Administration’s handling of the Iraq war. This period is known to many in the Pentagon as “the April Revolution.”

Movie Review: The Lake House

The Lake House, starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, is a truly terrible movie. Before the opening credits ended I had a bad feeling and whispered to John, "If it's too sappy we can leave and watch one of the others." He laughed and replied, "Give it a chance."

When I was young and impressionable it would have affected me, but now I have no more tolerance for chick flicks than the average guy, and this one is far worse than most. Utterly humorless, in the one scene in which Bullock laughs I was oddly hypnotized by her obvious, conscious efforts to control the snort.

Afterwards, as we walked to the parking lot, I tried to explain it to John, who was baffled by its stupidity and blamed the two stars. "No chemistry," he said. It's a movie for rich Republican women, I told him. Laura Bush would probably like it.

But she's probably not sentimental enough. It's a film for people who don't know anything about art or literature, but are aware of their status value and therefore attracted to the idea of liking them. The music is annoying. Bullock and Reeves both have an appealing openness and innocence (which is why I chose to see this movie without reading any reviews), but must be embarrassed by now, if they weren't while shooting it.