Interesting take...whether its true or not, I ll leave that you:
America Plans “Good, Humanitarian” War Against Sudan

by max blunt
Who Are the Perpetrators?

The United States has been waging war against Sudan for the past 15 years, and we need to stop it.

Just as with Iraq, the U.S. war against Sudan is a war for oil and a war for Israel. The proposed invasion of Sudan is based on lies.

The lie of accusing the government of Sudan of "genocide in Darfur" serves the same function as the lie a few years ago accusing the government of Iraq of "possessing weapons of mass destruction".

The U.S. government, and its allies the Israeli and U.K. governments, are the real world champion purveyors of genocide and possessors of WMDs.

Sudan, the geographically largest country in Africa and the home of 35 million people, has been devastated by U.S. attacks for the past 15 years.

In the early 90s the U.S. government declared Sudan to be a "state sponsor of terrorism" because the government of Sudan does not support Israel. The U.S. government imposed sanctions against Sudan.

The U.S. sanctions and trade boycott escalated in severity several times during the 90s and 00s and damaged the Sudanese economy, causing immense human suffering.

Throughout the 90s the U.S. government armed and funded the SPLA rebels in the south of Sudan in a war against the Sudanese government, and against rival southern groups, in which millions of persons were killed or displaced. LINK

Bush Has Destroyed Iraq and America

by Paul Craig Roberts

Every American who voted Republican shares responsibility for the great evil America has brought to the Middle East.

The evil that America brought to Iraq transcends the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and maimed in the conflict. The evil goes beyond the destruction of ancient historical artifacts and the civilian infrastructure of a secular state and the decimation of the lives, careers, and families of millions of Iraqis.

The violence and killing that Bush brought to Iraq has spread antagonism between Sunni and Shiite throughout the Middle East with potentially draconian consequences. Bush’s war has turned Muslim hearts and minds against America and made terrorism an acceptable means to resist American hegemony. With his mindless war, Bush has created more terrorism than the world has ever seen.

The reasons given for the American invasion of Iraq have been exposed as lies, revealing America as either a country of fools and idiots or of war criminals. Worldwide polls show that America is no longer regarded as a guiding light but is tied with Israel as the second greatest threat to world stability.

The nuclear-armed Russians, alarmed by America’s gratuitous aggression and interference in Russian and Middle Eastern internal affairs and by Bush’s aggressive withdrawal on June 13, 2002 from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty, no longer see the US as a partner in peace but as a dangerous militaristic aggressor. The chance for understanding and trust with Russia has been destroyed by the stupid Bush administration. The White House Moron, who cannot successfully occupy Baghdad, believes he can run over Russia. LINK

One of the few sane republicans...at least as the occupation goes:

Hagel's Stand

By Robert D. Novak

Monday, April 30, 2007; Page A15

Sen. Chuck Hagel returned from his fifth visit to Iraq to become one of two Republicans to join Senate Democrats in voting Thursday to begin withdrawal of U.S. troops. It was not an easy vote for a conservative GOP regular and faithful supporter of President George W. Bush's other policies. A few days earlier, Hagel sat down with me and painted a bleak picture of the war and U.S. policy.

Over a dozen years, I have had many such conversations with Hagel, but not for quotation. This time, I asked him to go on the record about his assessment of what the "surge" has accomplished. In language more blunt than his prepared speeches and articles, he described Iraq as "coming undone," with its regime "weaker by the day." He deplored the Bush administration's failure to craft a coherent Middle East policy, blaming the influence of deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams. LINK

Bill Moyers- Jon Stewarts Thoughts on the War

great stuff...check it out:

LINK

Bush & The Cult of Personality

by max blunt
Power-Hungry Regimes

Personality cults sometimes form in power-hungry regimes, such as Stalinist Russia or Mao's China.

Through extensive government-led propaganda campaigns, the leader is elevated to an almost divine level.

He is venerated as a liberator and a savior in the war against good and evil. He wins the blind adulation of an effectively brainwashed public. And he is neither questioned nor held accountable.

Much of Bush's popular appeal comes from his well-rehearsed down-home Texas style.

Most people don't seem to realize that Bush grew up in New England, a true Connecticut Ivy League Yankee, every bit as white-bread as John Kerry.

It's easier to disarm the public when you can make them think that you're one of them.

Combine the good ol' boy demeanor with religion, and you've got yourself a ticket to red-state glory.

Bush overcame a nasty drinking problem when he found religion. This became his new addiction, his new obsession, his new escape from reality. AC

Manufactured Cult of Personality

Much has been written through the ages, of course, on the predictable ability of man to go tribal and reverently elevate a singular person to godly-like political status: the cult of personality.

The ability to generate such a following is a form of charisma; expressed as a psychosis in human behavior it means blindly following whatever the charismatic leader says, no matter the felonies proposed or the utter failures of the past.... LINK

Dutch consider tough befouls criteria

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Winterthur Apr 26, 4:09 AM ET

It is the new climate change dilemma: finding alternatives for oil and gas without doing more harm than good.

In the rush to develop befouls, forests are burned in Asia to clear land for palm oil, and swaths of the Amazon are stripped of diverse vegetation for soya and sugar plantations for ethanol.

On Friday, a Dutch committee will unveil stringent criteria for growing befouls in ways that don't damage the environment or release more greenhouse gases than they save.

Other European countries are working along similar lines and closely watching the Dutch initiative — the first to reach the level of government consideration.

More than a year in the making, the report reflects a heightened awareness of the risks and complexity in efforts to reduce emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.

Among the criteria in a draft obtained by The Associated Press: Production of biomass cannot contribute to deforestation, deplete reservoirs of carbon captured in the earth, compete with food crops, degrade soil or water supplies, upset biodiversity, or displace local populations,

The report is by the Cramer Commission, named for its former chairwoman, Jacqueline Cramer, who in February became environment minister.

Without going into specifics, it suggests developing a track-and-trace system to follow a product from plantation to power plant, like an express delivery package.

"It should be implemented on a European scale because it will be difficult for Holland to do it on its own," said Kees Koede, of the Dutch branch of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group.

"Everyone is aware that it's crazy to pour money into a system that is not sustainable," he said.

But the European Commission, executive arm of the 27-nation European Union, is only beginning to look at the problem.

"We are working on a system of green certificates to make sure no unsustainable biofuel makes its way into the European market. But this is very embryonic at the moment," said Ferran Tarradellas Espuny, an EU energy official.

An organization of palm oil planters, processors, financiers, and environmentalists in Malaysia and Indonesia has been working for more than two years to devise criteria and verification schemes.

The campaign is driven by evidence that developers in the two Asian countries have burned vast tracks of rain forest to grow palm oil. The fires unleash millions of tons of carbon dioxide and smoke that shroud entire areas of Southeast Asia in eye-watering smog for weeks at a time.

The Netherlands is Europe's biggest importer of palm oil, used in a wide range of supermarket products as well as a fuel oil supplement. One Dutch company has plans to build three 50 megawatt power stations exclusively running on palm oil.

The Cramer Commission envisions imported biomass from sustainable sources by 2020, but calls for a transition period.

"Sustainability in the long term can only be achieved if a start is made with it now," the draft says.

It calls for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut by 70 percent for generating electricity, and 30 percent for transportation fuels.

The draft criteria say new plantations must not be built in protected areas, plantations should leave 10 percent of their area in "its original state" to preserve diversity, and soil and water quality of the soil and water should be improved.

The Europeans have set high targets for cutting carbon emissions. In February, EU leaders approved a plan to trim them by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. At least 10 percent of transport fuels will come from biomass, they decided.

With that goal in mind, a huge emphasis will shift toward biofuel production, risking even greater environmental damage.

"You need to be very quick with implementing criteria," said Sander van Bennekom of the Oxfam charity, one of the report's 14 contributors, in an interview. "Maybe we are already too late."

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

F.C.C. Moves to Restrict TV Violence

By STEPHEN LABATON New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 25 — Concerned about an increase in violence on television, the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday urged lawmakers to consider regulations that would restrict violent programs to late evening, when most children would not be watching.

The commission, in a long-awaited report, concluded that the program ratings system and technology intended to help parents block offensive programs — like the V-chip — had failed to protect children from being regularly exposed to violence.

As a result, the commission recommended that Congress move to limit violence on entertainment programs by giving the agency the authority to define such content and restrict it to late evening television.

It also suggested that Congress adopt legislation that would give consumers the option to buy cable channels “à la carte” — individually or in smaller bundles — so that they would be able to reject channels they did not want.

“Clearly, steps should be taken to protect children from excessively violent programming,” said Kevin J. Martin, the agency’s chairman and a longtime proponent of à la carte programming. “Some might say such action is long overdue. Parents need more tools to protect children from excessively violent programming.”....... LINK

Cheney Is Wrong About Me, Wrong About War

By George S. McGovern

05/24/07 " The Los Angeles Times " -- -- Vice President Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today’s Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed “the Windy City.” Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.Cheney said that today’s Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.

He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat - a record matched by President Bush.

Cheney charged that today’s Democrats don’t appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.

They then foolishly sent U.S. forces into Iraq against the advice and experience of such knowledgeable men as former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of State, James A. Baker III, and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft....... LINK

Long but interesting....take a look

Holocaust Redux

by Manuel Valenzuela
The State of That Which Is
Such is the state of human affairs, whether in the present age or in those that came before, that not a decade passes without humanity resurrecting, in some corner of the globe, in some forsaken nation, the devastation unleashed by human wickedness. Whether mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, endemic rape, pillage, scorched earth and yes, even Holocaust, human wickedness prevails upon the human condition, leaving us impotent beasts in its wake, unable to control or suppress its malevolent tentacles, seemingly powerless to alter or halt its predictable and disastrous momentum.

The barbarity to which we are predisposed, to which we are unable to exorcise from our nature, is as common to so-called primitive peoples, those humanity likes to call "third worlders," as it is to those societies considering themselves modern and developed. There is no difference between suicide bombers and guided missiles raining down from the sky. Technology does not behold humanity to label the terrorism falling from the sky as nobler, or as more moral, than that of terrorism bred through poverty. Possessing vast wealth and resources does not diminish murder and criminality, nor the birth of, and continuation in, a new Holocaust.

The crimes against humanity that are thrust upon the world with a consistency that betrays our anemic ability to control our mammalian nature do not discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity or religion. We are free to unleash wickedness, whether our powers derive from the machete or the smart-bomb, the suicide bomber or the guided missile, the knife or the machine gun, from tribal conflagrations or nation to nation war. The consistency by which human wickedness is thrust upon our conscious cannot be denied, nor can it be ignored. LINK

Another Brick in the Wall: Turning Baghdad into Belfast

by max blunt
Meanwhile, back in Baghdad, we’re building a wall. Actually, quite a few walls.

While we were absorbed with the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech-and before that the Don Imus affair and the Alberto Gonzales tragicomedy-the war in Iraq was pushed below the fold.

While we weren’t looking, the U.S. military started building high walls in parts of the Iraqi capital to separate Sunnis from Shiites.

Basically, we’re turning Baghdad into Belfast.

This is supposed to be a temporary expedient, a way to tamp down Iraq’s sectarian civil war-in the capital, at least, which is the ostensible goal of George W. Bush’s fraudulent “surge” policy - by making it harder for the antagonists to get at each other’s throats.

The so-called “peace lines” in Belfast, separating Protestants from Catholics, were supposed to be temporary, too. That network of walls was begun in the 1970s.

The construction of barriers and checkpoints that turn Baghdad neighborhoods into what U.S. officers sardonically call “gated communities” is another sign-as if more evidence were needed-that Bush’s “surge” is nothing more than a maneuver intended to buy time.

His open-ended commitment for U.S. forces to patrol those barriers and guard those checkpoints will become the next president’s problem.

The walls that have been built so far didn’t prevent the car bombs in Baghdad last week, including at the Sadriya market, that killed nearly 200 people.

Even the heavy fortifications surrounding the Green Zone, where the American presence and the Iraqi “unity” government are headquartered, couldn’t keep a suicide bomber from detonating his explosives in the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament. LINK

String up the Super Rich!

by max blunt
Stop being a compliant consumer. Face the ugly truth. Don’t get fooled by the stock market. Accept the need for the mistreated middle class to become the revolutionary class.

The British military establishment's most prestigious think tank sees what too few over-consuming Americans are willing to anticipate.

Unjustified and mounting economic inequality is planting the seeds for global economic conflict.

Here is what the new report from the UK Defense Ministry's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre warned might happen by 2035.

"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat...

"Faced by these twin challenges, the world's middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest."

Consider the wisdom of economist John Maynard Keynes: The rich are tolerable only so long as their gains appear to bear some relation to roughly what they have contributed to society.

Think of it as proportional and justified economic success. This can be tolerated by poor and middle class people if they believe the economic system is fair and properly rewards those who work harder or have better capabilities. But truly obscene economic rewards angers people.

When most prosperity and wealth is unfairly channeled to relatively few Upper Class people, it is only a matter of time until fuming, resentful people in the Lower Class decide enough is enough and revolt. LINK

How I Hate "Charity Capitalism"

by max blunt
We live in an age of free market compassion.

If the mystery of the market place is a hidden hand that supposedly makes everything turn out right, then charity is the invisible force that relieves our social conscience for the whole year.

By being nice to our fellow human beings, we show the world that we care.

Most people do not think that charity should be an unconditional activity.

They see it as a product, an integral part of consumption. And like all products, charity is a source of identity. We like our charity optimised as a consumer choice.

Charity Christmas cards, for example, are an institution that says something about who we are. Are you a Christian Aid or a Unicef person? A World Wildlife Funder or Lifeboater?

Or do you actually send off money for the hand- and foot-painted cards that plop through the letter box?

Would you like your favourite charity appended to your credit card, so that every time you spend you also give to charity? Do you choose the design or the cause first?

But it is not enough to share our worldly goods with a good cause. We also have to pass our world-view to our friends.

So we buy our Christmas presents from the merchandising catalogues operated by charities and causes. Colombian coffee grown by co-operatives from the Oxfam catalogue, or pencil sets from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, or Christmas decorations from Barnardo's. LINK

"Smoking Guns" Nail Bush Administration -- If People Only Paid Attention

By Paul Abrams

1. Wolfowitz's memo to Douglas Feith prior to launching the Iraq War. Wolfowitz did not ask Feith whether an al-Qaeda connection to Saddam had been found. (We already knew about the group in the NW of Iraq, NOT connected to Saddam). What Wolfowitz said in the memo is that Feith had failed to find evidence of Saddam's al-Qaeda connection, i.e., that he had not found the evidence to support what Wolfowitz already "knew." He was instructed to do a better job of getting that evidence, not to provide an assessment of whether that connection existed.....

2. Email from White House to Justice Department on firing attorneys. Read by Sen. Dianne Feinstein at the Gonzales hearing, the memo detailed a strategy -- fire them, do it in such a way that no one in particular was responsible, and be prepared for flak. Isn't this, uh, exactly what happened? No one knows who put the names on the list, the key people did not even know there WAS a list(!), and Gonzales claimed (initially) he was hardly involved......

3. Cheney's outing of Valerie Plame, that emerged from sworn testimony in the Libby trial.....

4. Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch . The administration knowingly lied about their circumstances of death and injury. .......
LINK to read full story

In case you have not heard about this, here is a good article on the subject via the New York Times:
Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
BELTSVILLE, Md., April 23 — What is happening to the bees?

More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.

As with any great mystery, a number of theories have been posed, and many seem to researchers to be more science fiction than science. People have blamed genetically modified crops, cellular phone towers and high-voltage transmission lines for the disappearances. Or was it a secret plot by Russia or Osama bin Laden to bring down American agriculture? Or, as some blogs have asserted, the rapture of the bees, in which God recalled them to heaven? Researchers have heard it all.

The volume of theories “is totally mind-boggling,” said Diana Cox-Foster, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University. With Jeffrey S. Pettis, an entomologist from the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Cox-Foster is leading a team of researchers who are trying to find answers to explain “colony collapse disorder,” the name given for the disappearing bee syndrome.

“Clearly there is an urgency to solve this,” Dr. Cox-Foster said. “We are trying to move as quickly as we can.” LINK

Economic Armageddon Is Coming

by Joel S. Hirschhorn

Stop being a compliant consumer. Face the ugly truth. Don’t get fooled by the stock market. Accept the need for the mistreated middle class to become the revolutionary class. The British military establishment's most prestigious think tank sees what too few over-consuming Americans are willing to anticipate. Unjustified and mounting economic inequality is planting the seeds for global economic conflict.

Here is what the new report from the UK Defense Ministry's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre warned might happen by 2035. "The middle classes could become a revolutionary class. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat...Faced by these twin challenges, the world's middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest."

Consider the wisdom of economist John Maynard Keynes: The rich are tolerable only so long as their gains appear to bear some relation to roughly what they have contributed to society. Think of it as proportional and justified economic success. This can be tolerated by poor and middle class people if they believe the economic system is fair and properly rewards those who work harder or have better capabilities. But truly obscene economic rewards angers people. When most prosperity and wealth is unfairly channeled to relatively few Upper Class people, it is only a matter of time until fuming, resentful people in the Lower Class decide enough is enough and revolt. Perhaps violently, if the political system remains controlled by the Upper Class. LINK

Bush Cancer Spreads to Other Organs

by max blunt
Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans.

But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo’s end-of-life medical care.

Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics.

Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he’ll take six weeks to show his face — and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers.

The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.

But he couldn’t inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City.

The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the “surge” was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg’s.

McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war.

At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer’s metastasis — the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. LINK

New Moore Film
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
Moore's new film, debuting in Cannes this May, tackles the failures of the U.S. health care system, and includes a segment where 9/11 recscue workers visit Cuba for treatment they couldn't get in America.

To state that controversy and Michael Moore go hand and hand is to utter the obvious, and Moore's latest film Sicko will clearly be no exception.

Sicko, which will be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is a comic broadside against the state of American health care, including the mental health system. The film targets drug companies and the HMOS in the richest country in the world -- where the most money is spent on health care, but where the U.S. ranks 21st in life expectancy among the 30 most developed nations, obviously in part due to the fact that 47 million people are without health insurance.

The timing of Moore's film is propitious. Twenty-two percent of Americans say that health care is the most pressing issue in America. Health care will clearly be a major issue in the upcoming presidential campaign, as the problems with America's health care system have mushroomed during the Bush administration. For example, between 2001 and 2005 the number of people without health insurance rose 16.6 percent. The average health insurance premiums for a family of four are $10,880, which exceeds the annual gross income of $10,712 for a full-time, minimum-wage worker. In addition, the lack of insurance causes 18,000 excess deaths a year while people without health insurance have 25 percent higher mortality rates. Fifty-nine percent of uninsured people with chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes skip medicine or go without care. LINK

Lee Iacocca blasts Bush & Cheney as "clueless bozos"
by John Aravosis of America Blog

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have....

Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them—or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.... LINK

Wolfowitz's girlfriend problem

Not only did the World Bank president find his companion Shaha Ali Riza a cushy job in the State Department, but she received a security clearance -- unprecedented for a foreign national.

By Sidney Blumenthal

April 19, 2007 | Paul Wolfowitz's tenure as president of the World Bank has turned into yet another case study of neoconservative government in action. It bears resemblance to the military planning for the invasion of Iraq, during which Wolfowitz, as deputy secretary of defense, arrogantly humiliated Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki for suggesting that the U.S. force level was inadequate. It has similarities to the twisting of intelligence used to justify the war, in which Wolfowitz oversaw the construction of a parallel operation within the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, to shunt disinformation directly to the White House, without its being vetted by CIA analysts, about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaida and his weapons of mass destruction, and sought to fire Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, for factually reporting before the invasion that Saddam had not revived his nuclear weapons program. Wolfowitz's regime also uncannily looks like the occupation of Iraq run by the Coalition Provisional Authority, from which Wolfowitz blackballed State Department professionals -- instead staffing it with inexperienced ideologues -- and to whom Wolfowitz sent daily orders.

Wolfowitz's World Bank scandal over his girlfriend reveals many of the same qualities that created the wreckage he left in his wake in Iraq: grandiosity, cronyism, self-dealing and lying -- followed by an energetic campaign to deflect accountability. As with the war, he has retreated behind his fervent profession of good intentions to excuse himself. The ginning up of the conservative propaganda mill that once disseminated Wolfowitz's disinformation on WMD to defend him as the innocent victim of a political smear only underlines his tried-and-true methods of operation. The hollowness of his defense echoes in the thunderous absurdity of Monday's Wall Street Journal editorial: "Paul Wolfowitz, meet the Duke lacrosse team." LINK

Capitalism Gives Us the Freedom to Starve

by max blunt
Don't believe the indoctrination: the "freedom" of capitalism
How wonderful that people have the right to choose what healthcare they receive and provide. People have the freedom to choose to go to medical school, to buy inadequate healthcare or none at all.

I'm sure people like Bill Gates enjoy that freedom immensely.

What about those of us who cannot afford a medical education or health care? What about people who have to choose between an operation and starvation? Do these people enjoy that "freedom?"

The same goes for food. People are starving across the world, and yet there is enough food and means of transportation to ensure that everyone is fed.

Capitalist economics would claim that these people just didn't value food enough for them to be fed.

The fact is the only thing keeping these people in starvation is the lack of a specific type of paper, which is green in this country.

Another "freedom" provided by capitalism is the ability to choose where you work. But for many people that means a choice of working a horrible job or being evicted. That doesn't sound like freedom. Actually, it is wage slavery. LINK

Virginia Tech: The Nauseating Spectacle of Me-Me Mourning

by max blunt
It's been a good week for death. In Iraq, 200 people were blown to bits in what witnesses called "a swimming pool of blood" with "pieces of flesh all over the place".

Remember that the dead are only part of the story: add to each of the war's hundreds of thousands of civilian corpses all those burned and crippled survivors, far beyond Iraqi medical facilities' ability to cope, breadwinners and babies lost. Few families are untouched by the sheer scale of slaughter.

But it is hard for news media to find new ways to refresh repeat tales of daily carnage.

The pictures and the thoughts tell the same dismal story day after day, raising the same terrible questions: what have we done, what have we unleashed, how can it end?

This is our war, our fault, our bloodshed for aiding America's reckless and incompetent invasion and for failing to stop civil war. But because news needs to be new, Iraqi deaths struggle to stay on front pages.

Nor does the war find a place in the nation's top concerns: people worry about terror attacks more than the war, this despite the distrust it has engendered that is now driving our three-times prime minister from power.

Perhaps the public compassion fatigue is because these deaths are caused mainly by extremist Iraqi sects killing other Iraqis, and many fewer are at the hands of our soldiers.

For whatever reason, neither the horror nor the national shame quite comes home to roost. Yet on Wednesday morning more ordinary Iraqis died than all the British troops killed so far. LINK

The State or the People

By Paul Craig Roberts

04/19/07 "ICH" -- - -What use is the political left? This is a serious question, not a rant. The same question can be asked about the political right.

The question does not imply derogatory implications about individuals on the political left or the political right. Rather, the question concerns the basket of emotions, issues, and knee-jerk responses associated with the political left and the political right.

Traditionally, the political left has had a Benthamite view of government, seeing government power as the tool for improving society whether through revolution or reform. Paradoxically, the political left has believed in Big Government despite the political left’s emphasis on civil liberty. The political left sees government power not as a threat to civil liberty but as a tool for enforcing civil liberty, for example, through Brown vs. Board of Education and coerced integration in the southern states.

Traditionally, the political right has had a Blackstonian view of government, distrusting government power as a threat to individual liberty. Paradoxically, conservatives value individual liberty while tending to view civil liberties as protective devices for criminals and, currently, terrorists.

The political left tends to blame problems on existing societal institutions, especially on capitalism which is believed to foster greed and private power that is not accountable to the people. The political right blames problems on human fallibility and on laws and regulations that create the wrong incentives and that replace private action with government action.

The Founding Fathers, being mild revolutionaries, set up a Blackstonian Constitution in which law is a shield of the people and not a weapon in the hands of government. The Founders balanced this restraint on government with reformist democracy that works against status quo hierarchies.
Another essential difference between the left and the right is “compassion.” The left tends to regard criminals, the poor, misfits and failures as victims of society and reacts with excuses and social safety nets. The political right emphasizes individual accountability. LINK

Bloody Wednesday: Guerrillas, Violence kill Nearly 300 Iraqis
By Juan Cole
Well I guess those Baghdad markets aren't as safe as Senator John McCain thought. And, they look remarkably unlike small town Indiana this morning, contrary to what Congressman Mike Pence alleged a couple of weeks ago.

The thing about reality and politics is that sooner or later, reality outstrips rhetoric, and then the politics is revealed for the lie it is. The silly allegation that the guerrillas are only artificially making it look like the surge is falling is another piece of fluffy illogic. Define "success" for the surge, and then measure reality against it. You could say that it is still early to make a judgment. You can't say that there is no evidence after 6 weeks for whether progress is being made. In that regard, the answer is clearly a resounding "No."

Nearly 300 persons were killed or found dead in Iraq on Wednesday and hundreds were wounded. Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that the smell of blood and gunpowder wafted through Baghdad on Wednesday In the capital alone, Sunni Arab guerrillas carried out five horrific bombings in Shiite neighborhoods that, with some mortar attacks and shootings, killed around 200 persons and wounded many more. LINK

Hysterical Media Response to Virginia Tech Shootings Yet Virtual Silence on Iraq

by max blunt

The profound sorrow and alarm produced in the American public by the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech should give us a baseline for what the Iraqis are actually living through They have two Virginia Tech-style attacks every single day. On Monday, 32 people were gunned down at Virginia Tech by a 23 year old senior in the English Dept. named Cho Seung Hui,originally from South Korea but who had lived in the U.S. since 1992 On Monday, in Iraq, 51 people were killed or found dead. including a university dean, a professor, a policeman's son and 13 soldiers in the northern city of Mosul:

I keep hearing from US politicians and the US mass media that the "situation is improving" in Iraq.

The profound sorrow and alarm produced in the American public by the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech should give us a baseline for what the Iraqis are actually living through. They have two Virginia Tech-style attacks every single day.

Virginia Tech will be gone from the headlines and the air waves by next week this time in the US, though the families of the victims will grieve for a lifetime.

But next Tuesday I will come out here and report to you that 64 Iraqis have been killed in political violence. And those will mainly be the ones killed by bombs and mortars.

They are only 13% of the total; most Iraqis killed violently, perhaps 500 a day throughout the country if you count criminal and tribal violence, are just shot down.

Shot down, like the college students and professors at Blacksburg. We Americans can so easily, with a shudder, imagine the college student trying to barricade himself behind a door against the armed madman without. LINK

"The Daily Spectacle" - From Don Imus to Virginia Tech

by jo swift
The Society of the Spectacle is a dense, polemical, and poetic work of philosophy first published in 1967 by the Situationist and Marxist theorist, Guy Debord.

In advanced capitalist countries, mass produced commodities are marketed for their singularity, as if individuality could be achieved by millions of people buying the same useless product.

In both instances, the spectacle inverts reality in order to pacify potential opposition. It is an inverted image of the real that nonetheless has real effects.

Debord gives us a radical critique of late capitalism; A system in which all of us are coerced into being mere spectators of the system, rather than active participants in it. Watching TV is the perfect metaphor.

Images flicker before us on the TV, just as reality passes us by, and most of us feel alienated from it and we certainly don't do much to change it.

And because most of us are passive spectators, we unwittingly reproduce the system and the dominant subjectivity which sustains it. Everyday life becomes a factory of seriality.

But what Debord and the Situationists were about was totally fucking with everyday life: turning it into a cultural battleground where we might be able to reclaim reality; that is, where we might be able to resist seriality, refuse complicity in the system, and reclaim control over our own lives. LINK

That was an Anti-war Vote?

by Alexander Cockburn

Has the end of America's war on Iraq been brought closer by the recent vote in the House of Representatives? On March 23, the full House voted 218 to 212 to set a timeline on the withdrawal of U.S. troops, with Sept. 1, 2008, as the putative date after which war funding might be restricted to withdrawal purposes only. It's not exactly a stringent deadline. It only requires Bush to seek Congressional approval before extending the occupation and spending new funds to do so.

On Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi's website we find her portrait of what U.S. troops will be doing in Iraq following this withdrawal or "redeployment," should it occur late next year on the bill's schedule: "U.S. troops remaining in Iraq may only be used for diplomatic protection, counterterrorism operations and training of Iraqi Security Forces." But does this not bear an eerie resemblance to Bush's presurge war plan? Will the troops being redeployed out of Iraq even come home? No, says Pelosi, as does Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. These troops will go to Afghanistan to battle al Qaeda.

Thus when it comes to the actual war, which has led to the bloody disintegration of Iraqi society, the deaths of up to 5,000 Iraqis a month, and the death and mutilation of U.S. soldiers every day, nothing at all has happened since the Democrats rode to victory in November courtesy of popular revulsion in America against the war. Bush's reaction to this censure at the polls was to appoint a new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, to oversee the troop surge in Baghdad and Anbar province. The Democrats voted unanimously to approve Petraeus, and now they have OK'd the money for the surge. Bush hinted that he would like to widen the war to Iran. Nancy Pelosi, chastened by catcalls at the annual AIPAC convention, swiftly abandoned all talk of compelling Bush to seek congressional authorization to make war on Iran. LINK

Via Juan Cole
7 US Troops Killed;
Iraq Has Two Virginia Techs Every Day;
Thousands Protest in Basra, Demand Governor's Resignation

I keep hearing from US politicians and the US mass media that the "situation is improving" in Iraq. The profound sorrow and alarm produced in the American public by the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech should give us a baseline for what the Iraqis are actually living through. They have two Virginia Tech-style attacks every single day. Virginia Tech will be gone from the headlines and the air waves by next week this time in the US, though the families of the victims will grieve for a lifetime. But next Tuesday I will come out here and report to you that 64 Iraqis have been killed in political violence. And those will mainly be the ones killed by bombs and mortars. They are only 13% of the total; most Iraqis killed violently, perhaps 500 a day throughout the country if you count criminal and tribal violence, are just shot down. Shot down, like the college students and professors at Blacksburg. We Americans can so easily, with a shudder, imagine the college student trying to barricade himself behind a door against the armed madman without. But can we put ourselves in the place of Iraqi students? LINK

Iraq War: It Will End in Humiliating Defeat for Bush Regime

by jo swift at 11:59AM (CEST) on April 15, 2007
There are three overlapping wars in Iraq: the Sunni Arab guerrilla struggle against the US;

strands of Sunni Arab guerrillas against assorted Shi'ite militias/death squads;

and al-Qaeda in Iraq against the puppet, US-backed Iraqi government in the Green Zone.

Make it four wars: the Sunni Arab guerrilla war against the government inside the Green Zone.

Better yet, make it five wars: the Sadrists, from Sadr City to Kufa and Najaf, against the Americans.

All strands of these five overlapping wars will never allow the United States - or Anglo-American Big Oil - to control Iraq's oil wealth.

Even if the new oil law is ratified by Parliament before June, implementation will be a certified nightmare, and security for billions of dollars of necessary investment non-existent.

Strands of these five overlapping wars also will never accept the long-term imposition of vast US military bases under a Status of Forces Agreement negotiated with dodgy politicians who spend more time in London than in Baghdad.

Setting a precise date for a total US withdrawal - the crystal-clear demand insistently formulated by Muqtada al-Sadr - would be the only way for the Bush administration to salvage a modicum of not totally humiliating defeat.

Instead, the world had better be ready for the imminent arrival of the Baghdad gulag.

Can I leave my condo, please? LINK

VIA: http://users.adelphia.net/~mbaker8/goering-quote.jpg

This is a really good article...a must read for all who favor are election system
Barack Obama: The Bourgeois Moralist by max blunt at 02:56PM (CEST) on April 13, 2007

In his 1999 book on Bill and Hillary Clinton, No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family (New York: Verso, 1999), the then still Leftish Christopher Hitchens wrote something interesting about the “the essence of American politics:

This essence, consists of the manipulation of populism by elitism.

That elite is most successful which can claim the heartiest allegiance of the fickle crowd.

That can present itself as ‘in touch’ with popular concerns.

That can anticipate the tides and pulses of opinion.

That can, in short, be the least apparently elitist.

Sometimes the absurdity and cognitive dissonance of United States political elitism masquerading as populism gets bad enough to make you wonder if you are hallucinating.

Barack Obama’s Noxious Populism

Barack Obama asks: ‘How can we engage more people in the democratic process?

Whatever its actual intent, the centrist Obama’s question was objectively democratic and populist in wording: how might a greater share of the U.S. citizenry be encouraged to participate in ostensibly popular governance?

“Well,” I said to my populist self upon reading Obama's query, “we could start by reducing the insanely expensive nature of our election extravaganzas and by abolishing the private funding of public elections.

"The way it is now, with candidates relying heavily on big money private contributions to pay for ostensibly public, astronomically expensive media- and consultant-driven campaigns, many ordinary U.S. citizens probably figure they can’t possibly compete for meaningful influence.

"It’s pretty questionable whether we really have a ‘democratic process’ given the undue power of concentrated wealth in a nation where the top 1 percent owns more than a third of the wealth and a larger share of the politicians.

"Ordinary working class people know this and they disengage. It’s not rocket science.” LINK

Kurt Vonnegut: Bush Is a Psychopathic Personality by max blunt at 02:55PM

Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say.

But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer Show

But back to people like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, each of whom have said in their own way how we could behave more humanely and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favourite humans is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana.

Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.

"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free." LINK

Radical Ecology: The Age of Consumer-Driven Capitalism Is Over
by max blunt at 03:00PM (CEST) on April 13, 2007

It wasn’t too long that the death of socialism, the triumph of capitalism and the end of history were being widely hailed.

What a difference a few years and a few fractions of a degree in world temperature change makes!

We may still be contemplating the end of history, but of a different sort.

It is suddenly becoming painfully obvious that the pursuit of profit and the philosophy of growth for growth’s sake and of dog eat dog is about to kill us all off.

Now that it has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the earth is headed for a global heat wave the likes of which hasn’t been seen in hundreds of thousands and perhaps tens of millions of years–the kind of killing heat that in the past has led to mass extinctions–it is ludicrous to talk about things like carbon trading and raising vehicle mileage standards.

We need a revolution in the way we human beings live and the way we treat each other.

There is no way that the world’s 6.5 billion people–and especially the 2 billion of them who live in wealthier societies–can continue to consume energy at even close to the level that we have been consuming it.

There is no way we in the developed world can continue to live the way we have been living, in oversized houses, heated in winter and cooled in summer.

There is no way in the northern hemisphere we can continue to have teakwood or mahogany-floored living rooms and eat strawberries in December.

There is no way that we can continue to squander trillions of dollars on war and military spending every year.

No way, that is, if we plan on leaving a livable world for our children and grandchildren. LINK

Global Burn-Out: We Can't Go On Like This

by max blunt at 02:49PM (CEST) on April 12, 2007
The fundamental cause of the big global problems threatening us now is simply over-consumption.

The rate at which we in rich countries are using up resources is grossly unsustainable.

It's far beyond levels that can be kept up for long or that could be spread to all people. Yet most people totally fail to grasp the magnitude.

The reductions required are so big that they cannot be achieved within a consumer capitalist society. Huge and extremely radical changes to systems and culture are necessary.

The per capita area of productive land needed to supply one Australian with food, water, settlements and energy, is about seven to eight hectares. The United States figure is closer to 12 hectares.

But the average per capita area of productive land available on the planet is only about 1.3 hectares.

When the world population reaches 9 billion, the per capita area of productive land available will be only 0.8 hectares.

In other words, in a world in which resources were shared equally, we would all have to get by on about 10 per cent of the present average for Australians.

The greenhouse problem is the most powerful and alarming illustration of the overshoot.

The scientists are telling us that if we are to stop the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere from reaching twice the pre-industrial level, we must cut global carbon emissions and thus fossil fuel use by 60 per cent in the short term, and more later. LINK

Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

American Empire | Books

Excerpt: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

04/11/07 "ICH" -- -- -Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out! You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for.

I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to, as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us. Who Are These Guys, Anyway? Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy. And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone? LINK

George W Bush: The Rise & Fall of a Tyrant

by max blunt at 02:30PM (CEST) on April 11, 2007
The uncanny, detailed similarities between the personalities and behavior of Adolph Hitler and George W. Bush are hair-raising.

Hitler succeeded because the German people were complacent. Just as Americans are today.

To corroborate this, here is a historical look at the Bush presidency. Or is it?

The Rise & Fall of a Tyrant

It started when the government, in the midst of an economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts.

The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted.

The man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted.

He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world.

His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media.

And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response.

When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious buildings were ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference. LINK

Doomsday for the Greenback

By Mike Whitney

“Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.” Daniel Webster

04/10/07 "ICH" -- -- -The American people are in La-la land. If they had any idea of what the Federal Reserve was up to they’d be out on the streets waving fists and pitchforks. Instead, we go our business like nothing is wrong.

Are we really that stupid?

What is it that people don’t understand about the trade deficit? It’s not rocket science. The Current Account Deficit is over $800 billion a year. That means that we are spending more than we are making and savaging the dollar in the process. Presently, we need more than $2 billion of foreign investment per day just to keep the wheels from coming off the cart.

Everyone agrees that the current trade imbalances are unsustainable and will probably trigger major economic disruptions that will thrust us towards a global recession. Still, Washington and the Fed stubbornly resist any change in policy that might reduce over-consumption or reverse present trends.

It’s madness.

The investor class loves big deficits because they provide cheap credit for Bush’s lavish tax cuts and war. The recycling of dollars into US Treasuries and dollar-based securities is a neat way of covering government expenses and propping up the stock market with foreign cash. It’s a “win-win” situation for political elites and Wall Street. For the rest of us it’s a dead-loss.

The trade deficit puts downward pressure on the dollar and acts as a hidden tax. In fact, that’s what it is--a tax! Every day the deficit grows, more money is stolen from the retirements and life savings of working class Americans. It’s an inflation bombshell obscured by the bland rhetoric of “free markets” and deregulation.

Consider this: In 2002 the euro was $.87 on the dollar. Last Friday (4-6-07) it closed at $1.34-- a better than 50% gain for the euro in just 4 years. The same is true of gold. In April 2000, gold was selling for $279 per ounce. Last Friday, at the close of the market it skyrocketed to $679.50---more than double the price. LINK

Great website with interesting insight, this is just the first couple of paragraphs in one of the many good articles. See the link at the bottom! Enjoy.
War Drums in Washington or Bush’s Last stand

By Alan Woods

Thursday, 15 February 2007

The sound of war drums is once again reverberating in the corridors of power in Washington. Despite all the official denials, there are clear signs that the clique in the White House is seriously contemplating air strikes against Iran. This website never believed that the USA would invade Iran. If it did so it would be met by an aroused people who would fight to the death to drive them out. Moreover, Iran has a powerful army that would be quite capable of taking on the US forces and giving them a bloody nose. Teheran has recently purchased missiles that would be capable of hitting US warships in the Mediterranean. An attack on Iran would be fraught with unforeseen consequences. A ground war in Iran is therefore ruled out. But air strikes are another matter. Both Washington and Tel Aviv are alarmed at the prospect of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, and Saudi Arabia is even more alarmed. George Bush and the right wing clique that advises him are publicly advocating a "first strike" against installations in Iran that they claim are manufacturing nuclear weapons. It is quite likely that at some stage they may well carry out these threats, either directly, or, if they could get away with it, using the Israeli air force. LINK

We need to get the hell out of there, the Shiites do not want us and the Saudis, the most predominant Sunni voice, does not want us....what the hell is wrong with Bush!!

Shiite rallies mark anniversary of Baghdad’s fall

Huge turnout follows calls by radical cleric for Iraqis to ‘unify’ against U.S.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Tens of thousands marched through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall.The rally was called for by powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who commands an enormous following among Iraq’s majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government MSN LINK

How scary is this:

April 9th, 2007

Is Pat Robertson’s law school changing America?

By: Steve @ 5:04 AM - PDT

One of the problems with public perceptions about crazed TV preacher Pat Robertson is that most perceive him as just a crazed TV preacher. He’ll go on his crazed daily television show (The 700 Club), offer crazed commentary just about everything, and then make crazed rationalizations for his lunacy. The media marvels at his madness, but generally overlooks the bigger problem: Robertson laid out an ambitious agenda years ago, and he’s succeeding.

Thanks to the prosecutor purge scandal, and former Alberto Gonzales aide Monica Goodling’s role in it, the public is learning about Robertson’s Regent University, which, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick noted, is doing exactly what it set out to do.

Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in this administration, as Regent's Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that "approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work." And that's precisely what its founder desired. The school's motto is "Christian Leadership To Change the World," and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a "lie of the left," according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.

The law school's dean, Jeffrey A. Brauch, urges in his "vision" statement that students reflect upon "the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system." Jason Eige ('99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter, Regent Remark: "Your Resume Is God's Instrument."

These are the folks who help run the Bush administration. Great.

Great interview...if you have at least an hour, this is a must watch or at least watch
a clip of it.

Two Who Got It Right: Scott Ritter in Conversation With Robert Scheer

The former U.N. weapons inspector, who was scorned for saying there were no WMD in Iraq, speaks with Robert Scheer about American ignorance, the lies that led us to war, Iran’s nuclear program and more. Special thanks to the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Public Library for hosting the event

LINK TO INTERVIEW

Pop, Porn & Male Sexual Arousal

by max blunt at 02:29PM (CEST) on April 5, 2007
I walked into Meredith LeVande's lecture, "Women, Pop Music and Pornography," Monday night in the Eynon Ballroom thinking that I had it all figured out.

I thought that I was going to be subjected to generic feminist rabble-rousing with the Indigo Girls playing in the background.

I volunteered to write about the event just so I could tear it apart.

An hour later, as the presentation came to a close, I realized how ignorant I was to assume how I would feel about the presentation before I even saw it.

Instead, I listened to a lecture that was insightful, concise and eye-opening.

There is no doubt about it, the media and popular culture as a whole has gotten, for lack of a better term, sexier. It's not a trend. At least not anymore it isn't. It's become an institution, an atmosphere.

I was incredibly skeptical going in. Pop music and porn aren't the same. Porn is porn. Jessica Simpson isn't porn.

Well, like most things in this life, it's not that simple. The objectification of women in the media is the rule rather than the exception.

Said objectification desensitizes us and makes us more accepting of pornography. Media conglomerates profit heavily from both mainstream entertainment and porn. Porn, by the way, is an industry worth about $13 billion dollars. LINK

From Economic Apartheid to Political Revolution

by Joel S. Hirschhorn

Americans have always accepted a certain level of economic inequality as the inevitable consequence of an open capitalist society where some people through their own efforts do better than others. The presumption is that there is fairness in the marketplace and economic system. What a quaint, outdated belief. Do most Americans really believe that the game is not rigged by rich powerful elites to preferentially benefit them? As certain as the law of gravity, the game IS rigged, and more than ever.

We have a plutocratic corporate state that now has taken economic inequality to new levels – in fact to what now is a sick and shameful condition of economic apartheid. To a society that increasingly separates Americans into two classes: the wealthy Upper Class and the Lower Class. The Upper Class has protected and gated mansions, private vacation spots and spas, special access shopping venues, private schools, lavish entertainment options, luxurious hospital accommodations, and private jets and stretch limos. The Upper Class does everything possible to PHYSICALLY separate itself from the poor, repugnant and uncouth members of the Lower Class. This physical separation is the hallmark of economic apartheid. The only contact the wealthy have and want with Lower Class people is when the latter serve, protect and pamper them. And of course they expect the hugely larger Lower Class to keep spending and borrowing their way into economic despair and to keep sustaining the two-party mafia. Voting for Democrats and Republicans is as meaningful as voting for American Idol contestants. Nothing more than a self-destructive distraction.

In Las Vegas the truly rich have their private gambling rooms and clubs, and occupy special access suites. In sports stadiums they luxuriate in their glass boxes high above the masses. In the Pacific and Caribbean they have their private island hideaways. On the oceans they travel in self-indulgent yachts. They eat in private rooms in the most expensive restaurants. The biggest entertainment stars come to them in their private social functions. And, yes, they have all the access they want to high government officials in both major parties because they provide them with all the campaign money they need. And hidden from public view they – and only they – have incredible opportunities to invest their riches to easily receive 30 percent annual gains with little taxation. As they get ever richer they find it increasingly difficult to spend all their wealth – but they handle the chore with alacrity. LINK

An Administration's Epic Collapse

By Joe Klein

The first three months of the new Democratic Congress have been neither terrible nor transcendent. A Pew poll had it about right: a substantial majority of the public remains happy the Democrats won in 2006, but neither Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reid has dominated the public consciousness as Newt Gingrich did when the Republicans came to power in 1995. There is a reason for that. A much bigger story is unfolding: the epic collapse of the Bush Administration.

The three big Bush stories of 2007--the decision to "surge" in Iraq, the scandalous treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for tawdry political reasons--precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys).

Iraq comes first, as always. From the start, it has been obvious that personal motives have skewed the President's judgment about the war. Saddam tried to kill his dad; his dad didn't try hard enough to kill Saddam. There was payback to be had. But never was Bush's adolescent petulance more obvious than in his decision to ignore the Baker-Hamilton report and move in the exact opposite direction: adding troops and employing counterinsurgency tactics inappropriate to the situation on the ground. "There was no way he was going to accept [its findings] once the press began to portray the report as Daddy's friends coming to the rescue," a member of the Baker-Hamilton commission told me. As with Bush's invasion of Iraq, the decision to surge was made unilaterally, without adequate respect for history or military doctrine. Iraq was invaded with insufficient troops and planning; the surge was attempted with too few troops (especially non-Kurdish, Arabic-speaking Iraqis), a purposely misleading time line ("progress" by September) and, most important, the absence of a reliable Iraqi government.

General David Petraeus has repeatedly said, "A military solution to Iraq is not possible." Translation: This thing fails unless there is a political deal among the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. There is no such deal on the horizon, largely because of the President's aversion to talking to people he doesn't like. And while some Baghdad neighborhoods may be more peaceful--temporarily--as a result of the increased U.S. military presence, the story two years from now is likely to resemble the recent headlines from Tall 'Afar: dueling Sunni and Shi'ite massacres have destroyed order in a city famously pacified by counterinsurgency tactics in 2005. Bush's indifference to reality in Iraq is not an isolated case. It is the modus operandi of his Administration. The indifference of his Environmental Protection Agency to the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions was rejected by the Supreme Court on April 2.

On April 3, the President again accused Democrats of being "more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than providing our troops what they need." Such demagoguery is particularly outrageous given the Administration's inability to provide our troops "what they need" at the nation's premier hospital for veterans. The mold and decrepitude at Walter Reed are likely to be only the beginning of the tragedy, the latest example of incompetence in this Administration. "This is yet another aspect of war planning that wasn't done properly," says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The entire VA hospital system is unprepared for the casualties of Iraq, especially the psychiatric casualties. A lot of vets are saying, 'This is our Katrina moment.' And they're right: this Administration governs badly because it doesn't care very much about governing."

Compared with Iraq and Walter Reed, the firing of the U.S. Attorneys is a relatively minor matter. It is true that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, but they are political appointees of a special sort. They are partisans, obviously, but must appear to be above politics--not working to influence elections, for example--if public faith in the impartiality of the justice system is to be maintained. Once again Karl Rove's operation has corrupted a policy area--like national security--that should be off-limits to political operators.

When Bush came to office--installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore--I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.

time-blog.com/swampland