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November 25, 2004
Just Another Open Thread
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“If the situation gets better, I will go back, but I think it will get worse.”
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 25 2004 21:47 utc | 1
We live in a parody methinks?
Israel demand that Egypt move to control locusts
Families of 3 Egyptian police killed by IDF tank sue Israel
(moved from other thread – b)
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 25 2004 21:59 utc | 2
Israeli officer: I was right to shoot 13-year-old child This happens so often of late, people get use to it. I HAVE NOT GOTTEN USE TO IT!
GODDAMN THESE PREDATORS TO HELL.
(moved from other thread – b)
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 25 2004 22:00 utc | 3
Where’s Picasso?
By Saul Landau
Progreso Weekly
25 November to 01 December 2004 Issue
Falluja: The 21st Century Guernica
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937), depicts the artist’s
impressions of the Spanish Civil War.
On November 12, as U.S. jets bombed Falluja for the ninth straight day, a Redwood City California jury found Scott Peterson guilty of murdering his wife and unborn child. That macabre theme captured the headlines and dominated conversation throughout workplaces and homes.
Indeed, Peterson “news” all but drowned out the U.S. military’s claim that successful bombing and shelling of a city of 300,000 residents had struck only sites where “insurgents” had holed up. On November 15, the BBC embedded newsman with a marine detachment claimed that the unofficial death toll estimate had risen to well over 2,000, many of them civilians.
As Iraqi eyewitnesses told BBC reporters he had seen bombs hitting residential targets, Americans exchanged viewpoints and kinky jokes about Peterson. One photographer captured a Falluja man holding his dead son, one of two kids he lost to U.S. bombers. He could not get medical help to stop the bleeding.
A November 14 Reuters reporter wrote that residents told him that “U.S. bombardments hit a clinic inside the Sunni Muslim city, killing doctors, nurses and patients.” The U.S. military denied the reports. Such stories did not make headlines. Civilian casualties in aggressive U.S. wars don’t sell media space.
But editors love shots of anguished GI Joes. The November 12 Los Angeles Times ran a front page shot of a soldier with mud smeared face and cigarette dangling from his lips. This image captured the “suffering” of Falluja. The GI complained he was out of “smokes.”
The young man doing his “duty to free Falluja,” stands in stark contrast to the nightmare of Falluja. “Smoke is everywhere,” an Iraqi told the BBC (Nov 11). “The house some doors from mine was hit during the bombardment on Wednesday night. A 13-year-old boy was killed. His name was Ghazi. A row of palm trees used to run along the street outside my house – now only the trunks are left” There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable.”
Another eyewitness told Reuters (November 12) that “a 9-year-old boy was hit in the stomach by a piece of shrapnel. His parents said they couldn’t get him to hospital because of the fighting, so they wrapped sheets around his stomach to try to stem the bleeding. He died hours later of blood loss and was buried in the garden.”
U.S. media’s embedded reporters – presstitutes? – accepted uncritically the Pentagon’s spin that many thousands of Iraqi “insurgents,” including the demonized outsiders led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had joined the anti-U.S. jihad, had dug in to defend their vital base. After the armored and air assault began and the ground troops advanced, reports filtered out that the marines and the new Iraqi army that trailed behind them had faced only light resistance. Uprisings broke out in Mosul and other cities. For the combatants, however, Falluja was Hell.
Hell for what? Retired Marine Corps general Bernard Trainor declared that: militarily “Falluja is not going to be much of a plus at all.” He admitted that “we’ve knocked the hell out of this city, and the only insurgents we really got were the nut-cases and zealots, the smart ones left behind the guys who really want to die for Allah.” While Pentagon spin doctors boasted of a U.S. “victory, Trainor pointed out that the “terrorists remain at large.”
The media accepts axiomatically that U.S. troops wear the “white hats” in this conflict. They do not address the obvious: Washington illegally invaded and occupied Iraq and “re-conquered” Falluja – for no serious military purpose. Logically, the media should call Iraqi “militants” patriots who resisted illegal occupation.
Instead, the press implied that the “insurgents” even fought dirty, using improvised explosive devices and booby traps to kill our innocent soldiers, who use clean weapons like F16s, helicopter gun ships, tanks and artillery.
Why, Washington even promised to rebuild the city that its military just destroyed. Bush committed the taxpayers to debts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which Bechtel, Halliburton and the other corporate beneficiaries of war will use for “rebuilding.”
Banality and corruption arise from the epic evil of this war, one that has involved massive civilian death and the destruction of ancient cities.
In 1935, Nazi General Erich Luderndorff argued in his “The Total War” that modern war encompasses all of society; thus, the military should spare no one. The Fascist Italian General Giulio Douhet echoed this theme. By targeting civilians, he said, an army could advance more rapidly. “Air-delivered terror” effectively removes civilian obstacles.
That doctrine became practice in late April 1937. Nazi pilots dropped their deadly bombs on Guernica, the ancient Basque capital – like what U.S. pilots recently did to Falluja. A year earlier, in 1936, the Spanish Civil War erupted. General Francisco Franco, supported by fascist governments in Italy and Germany, led an armed uprising against the Republic. The residents of Guernica resisted. Franco asked his Nazi partners to punish these stubborn people who had withstood his army’s assault.
The people of Guernica had no anti-aircraft guns, much less fighter planes to defend their city. The Nazi pilots knew that at 4:30 in the afternoon of market day, the city’s center would be jammed with shoppers from all around the areas.
Before flying on their “heroic mission,” the German pilots had drunk a toast with their Spanish counterparts in a language that both could understand: “Viva la muerte,” they shouted as their raised their copas de vino. The bombing of Guernica introduced a concept in which the military would make no distinction between civilians and combatants. Death to all!
Almost 1,700 people died that day and some 900 lay wounded. Franco denied that the raid ever took place and blamed the destruction of Guernica on those who defended it, much as the U.S. military intimates that the “insurgents” forced the savage attack by daring to defend their city and then hide inside their mosques. Did the public in 1937 face the equivalent of the Peterson case that commanded their attention?
Where is the new Picasso who will offer a dramatic painting to help the 21st Century public understand that what the U.S. Air Force just did to the people of Falluja resembles what the Nazis did to Guernica?
In Germany and Italy in 1937, the media focused on the vicissitudes suffered by those pilots who were sacrificing for the ideals of their country by combating a “threat.” The U.S. media prattles about the difficulties encountered by the marines. It never calls them bullies who occupy another people’s country, subduing patriots with superior technology to kill civilians and destroy their homes and mosques.
On November 15, an embedded NBC cameraman filmed a U.S. soldier murdering a wounded Iraqi prisoner in cold blood. As CNN showed the tape, its reporter offered “extenuating circumstances” for the assassination we had witnessed. The wounded man might have booby-trapped himself as other “insurgents” had done. After all, these marines had gone through hell in the last week.
The reporting smacks of older imperial wars, Andrew Greely reminded us in the November 12, Chicago Sun Times. “The United States has fought unjust wars before – Mexican American, the Indian Wars, Spanish American, the Filipino Insurrection, Vietnam. Our hands are not clean. They are covered with blood, and there’ll be more blood this time.”
Falluja should serve as the symbol of this war of atrocity against the Iraqi people, our Guernica. But, as comedian Chris Rock insightfully points out, George W. Bush has distracted us. That’s why he killed Laci Peterson, why he snuck that young boy into Michael Jackson’s bedroom and the young woman into Kobe Bryant’s hotel room. He wants us not to think of the war in Iraq. We need a new Picasso mural, “Falluja,” to help citizens focus on the themes of our time, not the travails of the Peterson case.
The Bush Administration sensed the danger of such a painting. Shortly before Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003, UN Security Council fraudulent, power point presentation, where he made the case for invading Iraq, UN officials, at U.S. request, placed a curtain over a tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica, located at the entrance to the Security Council chambers. As a TV backdrop, the anti-war mural would contradict the Secretary of State’s case for war in Iraq. Did the dead painter somehow know that his mural would foreshadow another Guernica, called Falluja?
Landau directs digital media at Cal Poly Pomona University’s College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences. He is also a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. His latest book is The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and how we can Reverse the Trend.
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 25 2004 23:21 utc | 5
“Bush has distracted us. That’s why he killed Laci Peterson, why he snuck that young boy into Michael Jackson’s bedroom and the young woman into Kobe Bryant’s hotel room. He wants us not to think of the war in Iraq.”
@RG:
Peterson, Jackson, and Bryant are the biggest of deals in 24-7 cable “news”. El Presidente, of course, did nothing. Cable news, in its usual fashion, provided the mental deficients of the New Rome with their three- ring circuses, ad nauseum.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Nov 25 2004 23:55 utc | 6
Russia is trying to rebuild it’s sphere of influence. They control or try to control Belarus, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Abkhazia and Ukraine. (They failed in Georgia.)
The case of Lithuania is interesting:
Lithuanian secret service produced a report that accused the assistents of their president of connections with the russian mafia and giving in to a Mr. Borisov connected to the Russian arms industry and russian secret services. Borisov is a guy who owns an arms company and traded with terror sponsoring states. When the US asked the Lithuanians to help eliminate him, he sponsored the election campaign of Paksas, a political outsider, to the tune of at least $400 000. Borisov engaged a russian PR company with ties to russian intelligence community in Paksas’ campaign. They were successful in creating for him the image of a strong statesman and he won.
After the election Borisov wanted to be made a chief presidential advisor and even prime minister. But in the end Paksas got impeached on three charges:
– he violated Lithuaniam law by giving Borisov Lithuanian citizenship
– he leaked state secrets – he warned Borisov, that his phones conversations are being listened to
– he used his power to help his friends take over a private company
(my sources: polish mainstream press)
Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Nov 26 2004 1:28 utc | 7
More than 2,000 killed in Falluja – Qassem Dawoud
Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 26 2004 3:19 utc | 8
”….Claims of divine inspiration, reinforced by expansionist designs and driven by an outdated moral mission, are no longer accepted by a broad segment of a divided world that has grown tired of global autocracy and a reincarnation of old-fashioned imperialism,” he added.
Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told IPS, ”Finally, the member states of the U.N. General Assembly are taking a stand against the administration of (U.S. President George W.) Bush and its wanton aggression, war crimes and gross human rights violations all over the world, including here in the United States where they are trying to establish a police state…”.
U.N. body rejects censure, threatens revolt
Rumsfeld in Nicaragua – The reason? Falluja and SAM-7s
Dollar sinks to record low for third day
Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 26 2004 4:18 utc | 9
Wayne Madsen, former NSAer I think, excellent journalist has given us a real thanksgiving present. YAHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOO. I’ll print in full for the occasion…..
Saudis, Enron Money Helped
Pay For US Rigged Election
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal
11-25-4
According to informed sources in Washington and Houston, the Bush campaign spent some $29 million to pay polling place operatives around the country to rig the election for Bush. The operatives were posing as Homeland Security and FBI agents but were actually technicians familiar with Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Triad, Unilect, and Danaher Controls voting machines. These technicians reportedly hacked the systems to skew the results in favor of Bush.
The leak about the money and the rigged election apparently came from technicians who were promised to be paid a certain amount for their work but the Bush campaign interlocutors reneged and some of the technicians are revealing the nature of the vote rigging program.
There have been media reports from around the country concerning the locking down of precincts while votes were being tallied. In one unprecedented action in Warren County, Ohio, election officials locked down the facility where votes were being counted. The officials said this was in response to a Level 10 high-threat terrorist warning being issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI for Warren County. George Bush won 72 percent of the vote in Warren County, much larger than his percentage of victory statewide.
The money to rig the election in favor of Bush reportedly came from an entity called Five Star Trust, largely based in Houston but a worldwide entity that is directly tied to the Saudi Royal Family. Five Star Trust was termed “a well-protected vehicle” that has been used to support both Bush and Osama bin Laden in the US and around the world.
Other money used to fund the election rigging was from siphoned Enron money stored away in accounts in the Cook Islands, which was once the base of one of the more questionable and Saudi-linked BCCI subsidiaries. Cook Islands banks also handled some of the weapons smuggling financing of the Iran-Contra scandal. A former Justice Department attorney who helped prosecute the BCCI case said the use of the Cook Islands by the Bush reelection team indicates they wanted the bank arrangements to be a “quick folding tent” operation that would cease to exist when the election was over. He said the Cook Islands was notorious for not requiring any documentation for such operations.
In fact, the Cook Islands has been a favorite location for various covert intelligence activities. This most recent use of the islands is a continuation of a scandal discovered in New Zealand in the early ’90s called the “Winebox Affair.” In 1992, a computer dealer named Paul White bought some secondhand computers and floppy disks from the Citibank office in Auckland, New Zealand, that had earlier sold them to a scrap dealer.
White later discovered the floppies (and 10 paper files) detailed a scheme to use the European Pacific Bank in the Cook Islands to bilk foreign governments and banks for a phony 15 percent tax bill assessed on various transactions by the Cook Islands government (at the time run by Tom Davis, a former US Army and NASA research scientist who was allegedly on the payroll of the CIA). European Pacific reaped millions of illegal dollars from the New Zealand Treasury and a number of Japanese banks, including Mitsubishi Bank. Paul White later died in a suspicious auto accident.
As detailed in the book “The Paradise Conspiracy” by New Zealand journalist Ian Wishart, the Cook Islands scheme also involved several CIA operatives, including Lawrence John Fahey, who had an interest in InterAir of Nevada, one of the airlines used by Ollie North to funnel arms to Iran. It also involved William Raupe, a CIA officer stationed under cover as a USAID employee at the US embassy in Suva. Raupe had once worked for Air America in South East Asia. Another CIA agent active in the Cooks was Robert C. Allen, known to New Zealand authorities as a US agent who was formerly with the CIA proprietary firm Bishop, Baldwin, Dillingham, Wong Ltd. In addition, along with the late former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Gerald Parsky was also involved in the European Pacific Bank’s Cook Islands operations. Parsky is George W. Bush’s chief fundraiser and adviser in California (he led Bush’s 2000 California campaign) and supported Simon’s son’s unsuccessful bid for the governorship of California against Gray Davis and then again in the recall of Davis. Enron was involved early on with Arnold Schwarzenegger at a meeting in 2001 at the Beverly Hills Hotel at the same time Enron was bilking California utility customers with increases as high as 1000 percent This scheme eventually led to Davis’s recall and his replacement by Schwarzenegger.
The Cook Islands-Citibank-European Pacific fraud appeared to have been cooked up to take the place of other “outed” CIA banking activities, including Nugan Hand Bank in Australia. European Pacific also involved assets of BCCI, in particular the Commercial Bank of Commerce in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, a BCCI subsidiary. MIchael Hand, a former Green Beret who reportedly served with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in Laos (and whose partner, Frank Nugan, was found shot to death in 1980 in Australia) later turned up associated with Euromac (European Manufacturing Center) Ltd., a British company that tried to sell nuclear trigger krytrons to Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War. Nugan Hand’s chief counsel, William Colby, a former CIA Director, was found floating in the Chesapeake in 1996.
The sale of nuclear material to Iraq was funded through Saudi operations in Houston, including those associated with George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, James R. Bath, and Saudis Abdullah Taha Baksh, and Kamal Adham, as well as Lebanese businessman Ghaith Pharaon (who was also involved in the collapse of Miami’s CenTrust S&L, a bank that had ties to Jeb Bush). This gang, along with Salem Bin Laden, the older brother of Osama, funneled over $1 million into failed Bush ventures, including Arbusto, Spectrum 7, and Harken Energy. Some of the Saudi money also financed Enron Oil and Gas Resources (later EOG Resources) in the Belspec Fusselman Field in Midland, Texas, a deal in which George W. Bush had a financial stake. In fact, Saudi planes in the 1980s landed in Houston with mountains of cash used to buy nuclear material for Saddam to possibly use against the Iranians. The money was laundered through Houston’s Main Bank, a bank close to the Bush family. Skyway Aircraft of Houston, owned by Bath, was invested in by Abu Dhabi’s ruler (the main owner of BCCI) and whose parent company in the Cayman Islands was used by Ollie North to collect foreign money for his Iran-contra enterprise.
Another person involved in the Cook Islands bank defrauding scheme was a Lebanese-American named Samir Bashout (alias Dr. Khalaf B. Bashout) who set up Midland International Bank and Trust Ltd in the Cook Islands with no real capital. Bashout’s Midland had nothing to do with Midland Bank of the UK but may have been named for Midland, Texas, of George W. Bush fame. Bashout was later convicted of beating his wife in Rancho Park, Calif., amid a nasty divorce. She claimed he secreted away much of his money. Bashout’s Metro Bank (Philippines) account in Los Angeles was found to contain only $10,000, not the $10 million he claimed to Cook Islands’ authorities. US Treasury agent John Shockey alerted the Cook Islands internal auditor to Bashout’s repeated attempts to bounce a check for $5 million. In January 2002, Hamilton Bank failed after it lost $500 million due to loan scandals and money laundering charges. The recipient of a $5.5 million loan was Metro Bank International, headquartered in Vanuatu, an offshore banking location similar to the Cook Islands. Metro Bank was thought to contain some of the billions of dollars laundered by the CIA and the Cook Islands International Trust Corp. on behalf of Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos’s CIA intermediaries in the Cooks were Eldon William Morris, James Centers, and Dante Dominigo Agdeppa. Morris was under investigation by the Queensland Special Branch and the FBI in Hawaii and California.
Bashout was also involved in the defunct World Arabic Television News (WATN), an Arabic television network that attracted the attention of the Houston-based Arab Times newspaper as not delivering on its promises and defrauding investors.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative reporter. He was also the Operations Officer at Naval Facility Coos Head, Oregon from 1980 to 1982 and assisted the FBI and NIS in the investigation as a temporary special agent.
Posted by: jj | Nov 26 2004 5:58 utc | 11
It seems that the Marsden article delivers less than the
title promises. Knowing about the funny money bankers
and their ties to the CIA and friends of Bush is interesting, but doesn’t give us anything specific or
“actionable” on the alleged tampering with the election.
Major sections of Marsden’s article are unsourced, and
unfortunately amount to mere hearsay (IMHO).
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 26 2004 6:18 utc | 12
Hannah, sounds like you want Churchill identifiable on the day of conception. We have urgent deadlines. All we need now, is one person in a safe house, willing to talk. The last thing we need is to have their name made public. Their safety and reliability is step one. And it sounds like there is more than one which provides corroboration.
Frankly I don’t give a flying shit if some royally pissed off military or intel. types, got wind of the scheme & are bribing them to come forward. Let’s not get too picky here, the Republic is on the line. I’m more worried that Madsen went public too soon, which might put a damper on things.
Posted by: jj | Nov 26 2004 6:28 utc | 13
Uncle, I am sick of it too. Reminds me of the events reported in Chris Hedges Oct 2001 Harpers article “A Gaza Diary”.
Beyond words.
Posted by: Stoy | Nov 26 2004 8:10 utc | 14
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 26 2004 8:46 utc | 15
Why couldn’t the inept Democrats do at home what has been done to other countries?
Please note the reference to exit polls in the media campaign, and the legitimacy they should give to accusations of fraud.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Nov 26 2004 9:10 utc | 16
Just another spam. An oldie but still a goodie:
Bible moral values: So, it’s really ok if I sell my daughters into slavery, but what would be a fair price?
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Nov 26 2004 11:11 utc | 17
…. Some of the killings took place in the build-up to the assault on the rebel stronghold, and at least in one case, that of the death of a family of seven, including a 3-month-old baby, American authorities have admitted responsibility and offered compensation. Men of military age were particularly vulnerable. But there are also accounts of young children, women and old men being killed….
US Marines accused of slaying children
Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 26 2004 11:38 utc | 18
Ukraine
Must read Guardian Ukraine’s postmodern coup d’etat
A Fistful of Euros is following the development closly and has lots of links to Ukraine bloggers and recources.
read there, comment here
Here are two related stories. The first is a feelgood kind of story and the second is not
When one cobbler is called to Iraq, 90-year-old dad steps up
Texas cobbler killed while working in Iraq
I know we all decided not to feel bad for these guys, and this one probably voted for Bush, but it is still a damn shame.
Posted by: dan of steele | Nov 26 2004 15:31 utc | 20
Noami Klein today:
Smoking while Iraq burns – Its idolisation of ‘the face of Falluja’ shows how numb the US is to everyone’s pain but its own
Iconic images inspire love and hate, and so it is with the photograph of James Blake Miller, the 20-year-old marine from Appalachia, who has been christened “the face of Falluja” by pro-war pundits, and the “the Marlboro man” by pretty much everyone else. Reprinted in more than a hundred newspapers, the Los Angeles Times photograph shows Miller “after more than 12 hours of nearly non-stop, deadly combat” in Falluja, his face coated in war paint, a bloody scratch on his nose, and a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips.
…
Yes, that’s right: letter writers from across the nation are united in their outrage – not that the steely-eyed, smoking soldier makes mass killing look cool, but that the laudable act of mass killing makes the grave crime of smoking look cool. Better to protect impressionable youngsters by showing soldiers taking a break from deadly combat by drinking water or, perhaps, since there is a severe potable water shortage in Iraq, Coke. (It reminds me of the joke about the Hassidic rabbi who says all sexual positions are acceptable except for one: standing up “because that could lead to dancing”.)
and my guess is, that it is clear why they are pushing the following!
Congress Seeks to Curb International Court – Measure Would Threaten Overseas Aid Cuts to Push Immunity for U.S. Troops
The Republican-controlled Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court, threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to governments that refuse to sign immunity accords shielding U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal.
…
Congress’s action may affect U.S. Agency for International Development programs designed to promote peace, combat drug trafficking, and promote democracy and economic reforms in poor countries. For instance, the cuts could jeopardize as much as $250 million to support economic growth and reforms in Jordan, $500,000 to promote democracy and fight drug traffickers in Venezuela, and about $9 million to support free trade and other initiatives with Mexico.
…
The legislation includes a national security waiver that would allow President Bush to exempt members of NATO and other key allies, including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, South Korea, New Zealand or Taiwan. The waiver was added to the provision, which Rep. George R. Nethercutt (R-Wash.) introduced into a House appropriations bill in July, after the State Department raised concern that the cuts could undermine key programs that advance U.S. foreign policy.
Posted by: Fran | Nov 26 2004 15:54 utc | 21
Nice schools they are – producing what?
I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own.
This is disgusting!
New Video Game Recreates Kennedy Assassination
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A new video game allows players to
simulate the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
The release of “JFK Reloaded” is timed to coincide with the
41st anniversary of Kennedy’s murder in Dallas and was designed
to demonstrate a lone gunman was able to kill the president.
“It is despicable,” said David Smith, a spokesman for
Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late president’s
brother. He was informed of the game on Friday but declined
further comment.
…
Shooting the image of Kennedy in the right spots in the
right sequence adds to the score, while “errors” like shooting
first lady Jacqueline Kennedy lead to deductions.
Each shot can be replayed in slow motion, and the bullets
can be tracked as they travel and pass through Kennedy’s
digitally recreated body. Players can choose to see blood by
pressing a “blood effects” option.
Posted by: Fran | Nov 26 2004 16:43 utc | 23
Four Killed in Baghdad’s Green Zone
Two Marines Killed in Fallujah Clash
U.N.: 3,000 Iran Kurds Cut Off From Aid
Fallujah rebels claim to have resumed Iraq attacks
At least 40 bodies found in Iraqi city of Mosul in past week
Policeman, political party member killed in Iraq violence
Iraqi Government to Hold Talks With Resistance: Official
Fran: This should be the real test to see if the EU has any guts. If they’re clever, they’ll propose more money than what the US threatens to cut to countries who will decide to held US citizens accountable when charged of genocide, war crimes and others nastyness. Though, with the current leadership of the EU (new commission, parliament and govt of most countries), I wouldn’t plan on it. It would be nice to actually have some guys with a true vision for Europe.
Bush relationship with Turkey? After seeing the pics, I have a bad case of flashback about Gene Wilder in “Everything you ever wanted to know about sex”. I’d better stop now.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 26 2004 19:36 utc | 26
New leadership of the EU……… CJ……. forget about morals.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 26 2004 20:28 utc | 27
tonight, in mosul in bassorah, in tikrit & in baghdad the heroic resistance of the iraqui people continues
& though perhaps i have nothing in common with the ideas of these people it is difficult to not be humbled before their courage & their ferocity
they are teaching the world & especially the third world that the only terrian imperialism understands is the battlefield & on that battlefield they are exposing imperialism for what it is – a beast
they are exposing that at hthe heart of the imperial project there is horror & there is terror. the resistance is fighting their uneven battle against that terror. they are fighting against an imperial enemy who uses overwhelming force, disproportionate force. a force that is in itself illegal, immoral & unjust
fallujah has been like guernica for us because in geurnica fascism showed its real face – a face of great brutality. before that point the world could weave its lies about what was happening under national socialism, it could demonise the anti clerical element of the spanish republicans but in that moment, in that moment that was both revelatory & prophetic – fascism showed the world what it was – the brutal use of disproportionate force. the germans continued in that policy until the great battles of the east turned their minds to morality & justice – something which had dissapeared from the national agenda for twelve long years
in fallujah -, we have been shown what the indonesians & the vietnamese already understood. they exposed what latin america has shouted in our ears for over three decades. that the people who run the project of the empire are beasts. they are not men. they are worse than men. u s imperialism has debased everything it touches & that which it does not debase, it despoils or it destroys
latin america has just come out from the dark night of fascism & even in nicaragua where the sandinisas will likely win a fair election in 2006 – where they already control 80 municipalities – latin america is showing that a peoples history is written in their blood & their destiny is in their beautiful hands. they have much to reconstruct from that fascist night where american directed oligarchies stole from the people, killed the people, turned their people into slaves made a mockery of their history – finally the fascist night is beginning to end & the people are beginning to decide. & as venuezala proved – they can not do their coups like they have done before – the people will not permit it
& that is the lesson of fallujah of the patriotic war in iraq – is that in face of the imperial project – the people must fight – if not for this generation – then for the next . the resistance is showing that from something small enormous things grow. that freedom & national independence are precious & are not to be sold to the highest bidder or to the next tyrant. iraquis are teaching the world many lessons
& not least of these lessons is being picked up by the old school of journalist in america – walter cronkite, molly ivens, jimmy breslin, rooney – these are not the natural allies of the insurgency but they are saying what needs to be said – that this administration is criminal & corrupt & that journalism has had an important part to play in ensuring that corruption. you can hear it in their texts – they do not want to say it but in the twilight of their lives they are forced to tell the truth of a world they have known & the world they will die in. their disgust in front of what is happening is palpable. you can hear their hearts breaking. that all they believed in has turned to shit
& an element of that shit. is the questions that are not being answered or being posed except on sites like this : –
how many iraquis have died
how many of the american forces have died
who is kidnapping & killing hostages
how many ghost prisoners in iraq
who is killing the intelligentisa of iraq
what is the role of israeli ‘advisors’
who was challabi
did allawi kill prisoners in summary executions
how can the cities be held
who can hold the cities
how many people are being held in detention in america
what are they being held for & for how long
what are the plans for future detentions
how will the patriot acts be enacted in day to day practice
there are endless questions which are not being asked & are never going to be answered
to argue about the legal definition of this & that as nat hentoff does for example is to hide the day to day terror that is being practiced on human beings as well as ideas
to forget , at any moment , that we are witnessing a carnage without parallel is a form of consent & that is the last thing that these criminals need
you are right to question the election results – to constantly question the very basis of their election, if there needs to be semantic questioning – then it needs to be a questioning of what constitute, ‘democracy’, what constitutes ‘information’, what constitutes ‘relations’ & ‘interests’
what we are witnessing today is nothing other than the slow walk to fascism & the beneficiaries of that fascism ought to wake up from their sleep before it is too late
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 26 2004 21:29 utc | 28
Published on Friday, November 26, 2004 by the Inter Press Service
‘Unusual Weapons’ Used in Fallujah
by Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Nov 26 (IPS) – The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report..
”Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah,” 35-year-old trader from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS. ”They used everything — tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground.”
Hammad is from the Julan district of Fallujah where some of the heaviest fighting occurred. Other residents of that area report the use of illegal weapons.
”They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud,” Abu Sabah, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area told IPS. ”Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.”
He said pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns. Phosphorous weapons as well as napalm are known to cause such effects. ”People suffered so much from these,” he said.
Macabre accounts of killing of civilians are emerging through the cordon U.S. forces are still maintaining around Fallujah.
”Doctors in Fallujah are reporting to me that there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad. ”Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.”
Kassem Mohammed Ahmed who escaped from Fallujah a little over a week ago told IPS he witnessed many atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in the city.
”I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks,” he said. ”This happened so many times.”
Abdul Razaq Ismail who escaped from Fallujah two weeks back said soldiers had used tanks to pull bodies to the soccer stadium to be buried. ”I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them because of the American snipers,” he said. ”The Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah.”
Abu Hammad said he saw people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. ”The Americans shot them with rifles from the shore,” he said. ”Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters, they were all shot..”
Hammad said he had seen elderly women carrying white flags shot by U.S. soldiers. ”Even the wounded people were killed. The Americans made announcements for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed.”
Another Fallujah resident Khalil (40) told IPS he saw civilians shot as they held up makeshift white flags. ”They shot women and old men in the streets,” he said. ”Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies…Fallujah is suffering too much, it is almost gone now.”
Refugees had moved to another kind of misery now, he said. ”It’s a disaster living here at this camp,” Khalil said. ”We are living like dogs and the kids do not have enough clothes.”
Spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad Abdel Hamid Salim told IPS that none of their relief teams had been allowed into Fallujah, and that the military had said it would be at least two more weeks before any refugees would be allowed back into the city.
”There is still heavy fighting in Fallujah,” said Salim. ”And the Americans won’t let us in so we can help people.”
In many camps around Fallujah and throughout Baghdad, refugees are living without enough food, clothing and shelter. Relief groups estimate there are at least 15,000 refugee families in temporary shelters outside Fallujah.
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 26 2004 21:33 utc | 29
@giap
Adding to your list above of questions that demand answers:
– How many American soldiers have been wounded, whether physically or psychologically or both, to the point where their lives are permanently altered? (let’s say for the sake of argument that this number is 20,000).
– How many family members, by extension, have seen their lives either destroyed or harmed by their loved ones’ injuries? (Assuming that a family ranges in size from 1 other person to an average of 6-1 spouse, 1 sibling, 2 children, 2 parents– this number would be anywhere from 20,000 to 120,000 minimum).
– Now, how many Iraqis have been injured, whether psychologically or physically, such that there lives will never be whole again? (Well there was an estimate of 100,000 dead – how many tens of thousands of wounded does that imply?)
– And how many family members of those Iraqis have had lives destroyed?
– And finally, the most haunting (to me) and the least estimable of all — how many American service personnel and how many Iraqis will suffer medical effects, either in this generation or the next or the next, from depleted uranium?
And all of this misery, all of this mindless destruction of lives and souls and families and property and future genetic inheritance was for… what? Can anyone say, in confidence, today, what the US is really fighting for?
Posted by: bea | Nov 26 2004 21:56 utc | 30
bea
we need to archive the questions that are not being asked or answered because what seems to be happening is one obscenity hides another & even the best of us are horrified by the intoleraable truths
but if we forget or do not add to the questions that need to be asked & answered then we are complicit
that much is clear
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 26 2004 22:14 utc | 31
@giap
you are right on all these questions that need answers.
what we are witnessing today is nothing other than the slow walk to fascism
They will give a different name to it when it’s over, but that doesn’t matter. The will ask us how it could happen just as I asked my parents. Will we be able to answer?
b
i think one of the more terrible differences between fascism as it was practiced in germany & as it is practiced by the united states – is in how it speaks to the basest character in man. even the premier exteminations(the euthanasia programme) carried out by globotnik & T4 at haddemar were hidden behind the welfare of the nation
german fascism spoke to a confused people – it was not till later that it had to use it people’s most basic instinct in the war in the east for example – & even then it was couched in the language of health – pest, bacteria, rats, diseases
i’m not saying it particulrly well – but there is something in the refinement & elaboration of american fascism that is coarser, more vulgar – it speaks directtly to the worst instinct in man. of course it uses fear – but fear can only work if you as a people do not know who & what you are – when you do not – as it seems americans are not – then a pathological condition becomes a psychopathological one
there is something – in that it hides all the details, nearly every single detail of importance – yet at the same time though it press conferences & through its organs like foxnewscnnbbc it rubs our noses – the noses of the 12 million people who opposed this war – it rubs our noses in the filth, in the blood, in the skin of their terrible ‘victories’
& it is that perhaps which horrifies me most of all – that in effect as abu ghraib so eloquently articulated – we are in the middle of a sadean opera directed by the three stooges
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 26 2004 22:36 utc | 33
b
i am frightened that the germans & the french will comprimise in front of the americans – i hope this does not happen – that the populations of our countries do not permit that to pass & then the generations who follow us in europe can have at least that – that in the face of american fascism they became as one nation -to say to that generation we learnt from the tragedies that constitute the past of both germany & france & that we attempted for our part to stop this beast that risks to devour us all including itself
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 26 2004 22:55 utc | 34
returning from thanksgiving dinner with family in the liberal northeast of the us, i am struck dumb with the overpowering, undeniable reality that people do not care. i wonder was my family of democrats the only one not to mention one word of awareness, never mind concern or disgust, about what our country is doing in our name in iraq, not one word about a fraudulent election, about the fact that we no longer have the checks and balances in place that define a republic, and without secure and honest elections we have lost the essence of democracy, not one word – and borderline accusatory stares of divisiveness when i introduce a note of reality into an otherwise deafeningly silent day of meaningless chatter. or even worse an invective against, not the republicans, but kerry – i gave $xxx to his campaign and look what i got?? not a word about the appointments in the new regime – gonzalez, hadley, rice, rumsfeld. rather than question an election with thousands of reported irregularities, clear cut attempts at disenfranchisment, an election that is very likely fraudulent, an election which if overturned could be a last chance to stop the theft of life as we know it, instead they sit silently resenting me for asking them to consider fighting, engaging in the democratic process. is this what we have become? we worry about the red states, it is time to worry more about the blue. are we complacent in our drive for personal comfort or are we a society driven by fear, wanting to hide our heads in the sand, thinking that someone will solve it all if we just wait? what will it take to wake the masses? and who will do it if we have lost the media? how much more will have to be endured? i live in fear in this country.
Posted by: conchita | Nov 27 2004 5:15 utc | 35
jj – an update on the masden article with additional hard info.
More on the buying of electoral fraud by the Bush campaign
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
November 26, 2004—Additional information on the buying of vote riggers with Saudi and former Enron funds has been obtained. The epicenter for the vote rigging operation is Dallas, Texas, and the operation may involve retired FBI agents who used a well-established “good ole boy” network to arrange for access to polling precincts by electronic voting machine technicians who took advantage of various November 2 security “lockdowns” to illegally alter the tabulation of votes in favor of Bush. Some of the retired agents may have used courtesy credentials issued upon retirement to fool unsuspecting polling place workers.
The cost of the operation was estimated at $29 million with the money sent via a circuitous network of offshore trust companies and shell activities. This reporter has obtained a copy of a bank check for $29,600,000 that was allegedly sent to cover the cost of the Texas-based vote rigging operation. The check is dated October 22, 2004, and was made payable to “Five Star Investment Ltd.,” a trust said to have long connections to Saudi-funded operations in Texas and around the world. The payer is identified as “Equity Financial Trust,” a Houston-based “brass plate” and post office box entity tied to offshore Cook Islands “folding tent” accounts used to hide away profits amassed by the former Enron as well as Saudi financiers.
On October 6, 2004, some two weeks before Equity Financial Trust transferred the money to Five Star Investment Ltd., the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions for Canada listed Equity Financial Trust, along with Bankers Financial and Security Trust, Falcon Financial and Trust, and Unity Virtual Trust Group as “unauthorized financial institutions.” In fact, the check for $29.6 million, which is marked “Not to exceed fifty million dollars,” is drawn on the Laurentian Bank of Canada’s Toronto branch. Its serial number is 317675450 3 and the bank number is 23-97/1020. The bank instrument is issued by Integrated Payment Systems, Inc. of Englewood, Colorado, and Bank One, NA, Denver, Colorado.
It is noteworthy that a number of companies operated by past Bush campaign contributor Pierre Falcone, under criminal investigation in France for weapons smuggling in Angola, are called “Falcon.” Several non-governmental organizations, including Global Witness, have tied Falcone to questionable Halliburton activities when Vice President Dick Cheney headed the firm.
Some of the vote riggers who were guaranteed a minimum payment for their services have started talking about the operation because they did not receive the money they were promised.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist who previously served in the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration. He concentrates on national security and intelligence issues.
Posted by: conchita | Nov 27 2004 5:24 utc | 36
Thx. Conchita……Madsen’s got a copy of the check….that’s awesome……I trust Madsen’s a helluva lot brighter than a mere newsreader @CBS.
So, the US is organizing the Ukraine resistance to elect the CIA’s boy. Where are American’s – esp. the young…..they could travel around the country….but they were following orders from higher-ups….Dean’s people or Soros’ MoveOn…..But not organize themselves in their own town to demand They Resign Now?
I’m starting to think that the Net is great for distribution of info., but inhibits grass-roots action. Pre-computer days, when people were upset, someone would call & meeting & everyone would flock to be w/like-minded people. That proximity led to action. Now, people dissipate that energy over the computer. One of the grass roots orgs. that org. anti-war rallies, is organizing a Jan. 20 rally ……..Anyone have any thoughts about this?
Posted by: jj | Nov 27 2004 6:50 utc | 37
This is so amazing, not only is there no real public discussion – but it seems the ‘people’ representatives are not doing their work either. What even amazes me more is, that lobbyists write clauses into the legislation. And this in the so called ‘greatest democracy’ on earth. To me it sounds more like this system has become pretty rotten.
Legislators want more time to read bills
There’s a dirty secret on Capitol Hill: Legislators usually vote on bills that could radically change constituents’ lives without reading them.
In part, this reflects the complexity of legislation. But it also shows the increasing distance between legislators and the mundane but important work of drafting laws.
…
Buried inside hundreds of pages are clauses written by lobbyists and congressional staff members that could have dramatic policy effects. The elected representatives rarely see them.
“There is great truth to the fact that most people probably go by talking points: by the advice of staff, which is based on talking points; by the recommendations of their party leadership; and by input from lobbyists,” Baird said. “But some of us take this matter very seriously.”
More and more while reading about the US, Lemmings come to my mind. A mystery that, as far as I know, has not been solved up to now.
@Clueless Joe – This should be the real test to see if the EU has any guts. If they’re clever, they’ll propose more money than what the US threatens to cut to countries who will decide to held US citizens accountable when charged of genocide, war crimes and others nastyness.
Great idea – I do not know if we have enough visionary and smart people in the EU, however there might be many hurt ego’s here, who might want some revenge and maybe, maybe come up with that kind of reaction. At present I wouldn’t mind their motivation as long as it helps the world.
Posted by: Fran | Nov 27 2004 7:10 utc | 38
jj, not sure i agree with you about the net. i am participating in a protest tomorrow in new york that i learned about on the internet.
e.g.,
vote fraud protest Saturday, November 27 at 1:00 Times Square
http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/bbballot-invitation.htm (646) 369-0492
Saturday, December 18th NOW-NYC Protest
(issues unclear to me so check website or ask prez@nownyc.org or ask vote
fraud folks if it’s related.)
2:00 p.m. Washington Square Park, Manhattan.
From: “Cheryl Guttman”
11:08:39 -0500 Subject: This Sat–AND OTHER–NY Demos About Vote Fraud!
Happy Thanksgiving. This is really exciting–there are going to be vote
fraud demos all around the country starting this weekend. The one listed
below is THIS Sat, the 27th at 1 p.m. (the organizer may do it again on the
4th, she requests you let her know if you can make it then–contact info
below). There is also a NOW-NYC demo on the 18th, 2p.m. at Washington
Square Park! After this announcement about the Demonstration this Sat. I
will put a short list of other demos around the country in case you know
anyone in those places that you can forward this info to.
In addition, If anyone is either interested in going to Ohio to volunteer
for the recount if transportation is subsidized or has frequent flyer miles
that they would donate, let me know. Also please don’t forget to check out
the updated action alerts page: the latest Ohio action is really urgent.
Please check this page frequently for updates
http://stolenelection2004.com/alerts.html .
Who: New Yorkers concerned about fair and accurate
> elections
>
> What: Black Box T Party
>
> Where: Times Square, south side of island at 44th
> between Broadway and 7th Ave.
>
> When: Saturday, November 27 at 1:00 (I’d like
> volunteers to start arriving around 12:30 to make sure
> we’re set up).
>
If you are concerned about the issue of voting
> irregularities and the flaws in the current system, I
> will be coordinating a rally (with VotersUnite.org) in
> Times Square this Saturday, 11/27, at 1:00 p.m. The
> goal is to raise visibility in the media about the
> voting irregularities, suppression and fraud. The
> theme is Black Box T-Party, (view this invitation:
> http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/bbballot-invitation.htm
> ), but we’re going to skip the body of water and just
> throw our black boxes in the trash.
>
> I need people to be there to hold boxes and signs, and
> hand out flyers.
>
> I need someone to help me design the flyers.
>
> I need people to help make signs (maybe at my place on
> Friday).
I would appreciate help with the PR as well.
>
> This needs to be PEACEFUL, we want to raise awareness,
> not get ourselves arrested. There’s already enough
> dismissal from the media referring to anyone who
> questions the “smoothness” or “success” of the
> election as “conspiracy theorists” or “tin-foil hat
> crazies”. Let’s not contribute to that spin. Instead,
> let’s show them we’re intelligent citizens serious
> about our democracy, and that this is a very real
> issue.
>
> Please RSVP to me if you are interested, and
> specifically what you are able to do to help.
>
> I need a rough idea of number of participants to
> expect.
>
> If you’re able to help out or attend, please either
> e-mail me or call me: alexisact@yahoo.com or (646)
> 369-0492.
(There is some possibility I might do this again next week on the 4th. Let
me know if you would be interested in that)
Short list of other demos around the country
Saturday, November 27th, Protest Rally, Kansas City, MO.
1:00 p.m. 47th & Main, Mill Creek Park by Fountain.
No Stolen Elections. Bring signs. Distribute flyers after rally.
(Contact kc4kerry@yahoogroups.com)
Monday, November 29th, Demonstration, San Francisco, CA.
11:00 a.m. : 900 Front St. KGO TV.
12:00 noon : 1700 Montgomery St. Sen. Boxer’s office.
(Contact dan@redefeatbush.com… Cheryl Lilienstein, Donald Goldmacher,
650-856-0624, 510-527-1761, lilienstein@earthlink.net,
dongolmacher@sbcglobal.net)
Thursday, December 2nd, No Stolen Elections KC Meeting, Kansas City, MO
7:00 p.m. – 8:45 p.m. Location to be announced.
(Contact kc4kerry@yahoogroups.com)
Saturday, December 4th, Rally, Columbus, OH.
1:00 p.m. High & Broad Sts., Ohio Statehouse.
(Contact http://www.caseohio.org)
Saturday, December 4th, Protest Rally, Kansas City, MO.
1:00 p.m. 47th & Main, Mill Creek Park by Fountain.
No Stolen Elections. Bring signs. Distribute flyers after rally.
(Contact kc4kerry@yahoogroups.com)
Saturday, December 18th Protest, New York, NY.
2:00 p.m. Washington Square Park, Manhattan.
(Contact prez@nownyc.org)
Ray Beckerman
http://www.fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com
And don’t forget to do urgent actions on this page– thanks, Cheryl
http://stolenelection2004.com/alerts.html .
Posted by: conchita | Nov 27 2004 7:33 utc | 39
@Conchita, not sure I agree w/it myself. Just trying to account for lack of demos since Kerry’s landslide victory….Throwing out thghts. for everyone’s consideration….
That’s wonderful that demos breaking out…..The People Obviously Have to Lead the Elites on This One……..
Posted by: jj | Nov 27 2004 8:49 utc | 40
jj – not sure myself and it is something i, too, have been pondering. i think the lack of obvious leadership continues to be a big part of the problem. if kerry had stepped up to the plate as he did in his late twenties he could have been the one. howard dean certainly tried but was cut down by the media. jesse jackson has just joined the election investigation effort on the basis of disenfranchisement of african american voters. perhaps his voice will help to mobilize people in this action. i don’t know, the complacency of the general public is really frightening. the fact that half the country seems ready to forfeit the right to vote, and would rather hide behind the hope that everything will be better in 2008 rather than take action to ensure that it will be not just then but also now, dumbfounds and frightens me. i do what i can in my small way and hope that by others doing the same we can, as margaret mead said, effect change. but at this moment in time it looks to be an uphill climb.
Posted by: conchita | Nov 27 2004 12:41 utc | 41
I wonder why?
Along with President Putin – but in contrast to almost everyone else – a large delegation of observers from Israel pronounced the elections in Ukraine legitimate. The diplomatic repercussions could be serious.
Link
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 27 2004 14:35 utc | 42
I am holding onto this.
There is much going on and the media is killing it all. Fraud in >Ukraine for crying out loud!
Posted by: beq | Nov 27 2004 15:31 utc | 43
conchita @ 12:15 AM, a majority of Americans, blue or red, Democrat or Republican, seem to support a shoot-out on foreign soil provided it promises to stay there–an export of violence in hopes of preventing its import (and much of this “subsidy” consists of sending our own sons and daughters off to die on the sands of Iraq). I wish we could just admit this. I wish our leaders, red and blue alike, would just admit that they’re terrified of some “invasion,” so that we wouldn’t have to hear so much noise about “the spreading of democracy”.
Posted by: alabama | Nov 27 2004 16:31 utc | 45
beq, jj, cp –
check this out – article documents connection between Sequoia and ES&S and fraudulent elections and organized crime.
Thugs, Racketeers Counting American Votes
“An electronic voting system is to a mechanical one what a nuclear bomb is to a hand grenade… If someone manages to sabotage it, the results can be catastrophic.”
November 24 2004-Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker
While Ukrainians poured into the streets of their capital Kiev to protest a presidential election they say was stolen by that country’s current regime, here in the U.S. a little-known election company called Sequoia Pacific, responsible for putting our own ‘current regime’ in power four years ago, was at the center of controversy last week… for the second Presidential election in a row.
While U.S. newspapers have been filled with quotes from American officials pontificating about election miscues in the Ukrainian election, doubts have been raised anew about the accuracy of the election results of Sequoia Pacific, fingered for blame four years ago in the Florida Vote Snafu which marred the 2000 election.
“Mum’s the word”
Senator Richard Lugar, ‘monitoring’ butterfly ballots in Cyrillic, issued a statement calling the Ukrainian election “unfair.” And a top White House representative said authorities in the Ukraine appeared to have indulged in a “concerted and forceful program” of fraud.
Yet a MadCowMorningNews investigation into the ownership of the companies that count America’s votes has uncovered evidence indicating the crisis of democracy in Kiev is hardly more serious than the one taking place in Washington, D.C.
One of America’s two major election companies, Sequoia Pacific, has a felony ‘rap sheet’ an arm-long. In the endless news coverage of the recent Presidential Election, this news has somehow failed to surface, perhaps because if it had, people might start pouring into the streets here, too.
http://www.madcowprod.com/11242004.html
Posted by: conchita | Nov 27 2004 16:36 utc | 46
alabama – exactly what was running through my mind during the holiday. i saw it when my brothers defended the invasion of afghanistan. chilling because they are the ones who should be able to think it through.
Posted by: conchita | Nov 27 2004 16:39 utc | 47
conchita, what puzzles me are the motives for that fear. 9/11 doesn’t account for it, in my view. I think it has more to do with the loss of the Cold War–the loss of an opposing Super Power. Having defined our status as a “Super Power” in terms of our superior military might, we were unprepared for a world where we didn’t have to maintain our military might at Cold War levels to sustain our “Super Power” status. But we couldn’t adapt. We needed an “enemy” as a pretext for maintaining business-as-usual. And so we carry on as if we were living in the ’50’s and ’60’s. I think Clinton had the lucidity to see this problem, and did his best to move us along, but only made people uneasy. No they cam sleep better at night, what with Bush in office. And this is true of Democrats and Republicans alike: an absence of civil courage and imagination is common to both parties. I’m even prepared to believe that the hijacking of our foreign policy by Israel speaks to our most retrograde and nostalgic yearnings. Certainly it went unmentioned in the last campaign.
Posted by: alabama | Nov 27 2004 17:36 utc | 48
CANNONFIRE is doing quite a job of keeping up with our own election fraud and whereas I usually check in at MoA first, I have been opening Joseph Cannon’s blog first and often (sorry bernhard) to read what is developing. I still have hope and the clock hasn’t run out on the theft of an election (again) here.
Posted by: beq | Nov 27 2004 19:10 utc | 49
“We needed an ‘enemy’ as a pretext for maintaining business-as-usual.”
Why put enemy in quotation marks? The enemy, at least in the form of al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations, is a real one – unless one subscribes to the notion that these were invented expressly for the purpose of obtaining the support of the people of the United States for a pre-planned invasion of a country (Afghanistan) that it otherwise had no interest in. As I recall, it was Don Rumsfeld who needed most of all to be persuaded in this matter, as Iraq was his bizarrely preferred object of rataliation in the immediate aftermath of 9-11; Afghanistan offered a target-poor environment in his estimation. Now, there are any number of individuals who sincerely believe that the attacks of 2001 were a conspiracy of this administration, and I do not know whether to rank their imaginations above or below those who maintain that they must have been a conspiracy of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. In any case, can an outfit that publically declared war against us – and meticulously listed the various offenses for which we ought to be, and were, punished – be safely identified as an enemy, without need of skeptical or cynical quotation marks? I think so.
A couple of weeks before 9-11 my husband and father were mulling over a paper proposing the creation of an organization whose mission would be to counter threats to domestic, or homeland, security. I scoffed. What current or potential threat could justify the mountain of money that would be shoveled into yet another government agency? “Terrorism,” came the answer. I continued to scoff. If we no longer needed tanks in the Fulda Gap, we certainly did not need thousands of bureaucrats to defend us against fantasy-inspired dangers here at home.
But I’d be pleased at this point in time if the Department of Homeland Security were the most obvious defense boondoggle we had to contend with.
Posted by: Pat | Nov 27 2004 19:39 utc | 50
@Pat, alabama
I think you both are right. The US people need an “enemy” and in fact there is “terrorism”.
Unfortunatly terrorism is a method and therefor is only an “enemy” and not an enemy. So when Bush came up with Saddam, I delivered exactly what the US people asked for.
Now the US spends 5.8 billion a month in Iraq to foster further terrorism and enacts a Patriot Act which will do nothing to prevent another attack but helps population control. In between the enemy has been renamed form OBL to Saddam to Zarquawi and next year the will find a new on.
Check this report from the Defense Science Board (PDF). It says what the US should do to long term fight fundamentalistic religious terrorism applying groups (note: not only from islamists). About exactly the opposite of what the US is doing now.
To fight terror applying groups you need to fight the basis of their “complains”, which is what keeps their supporter active.
The British learned to do that with the IRA, the Germans with RAF, the Spanish with ETA, the Italiens with Red Brigades. The US will have to learn that too. Unfortunatly it is quite slow doing so.
Pat, the enemy may be real, but it’s not large enough to threaten us in any way–and hence it’s not truly an “enemy”….and I put that word in quotes because I’m not sure that it ever adequately designated our relationship (for example) to the Eastern bloc and Communist China during the Cold War–let alone to Viet Nam or Cuba (unlike World War II, during which, for at least a few months in 1942, the forces we fought against were truly stronger than our own, and could rightly be called an enemy )…. Conflicts and competition there may have been during the Cold War, but there were all kinds of accomodations, and even of interdependence (one silly example: even in 1950, fur traders could travel freely back and forth between the Soviet Union and the United States).
Posted by: alabama | Nov 27 2004 20:47 utc | 52
And while it’s true that both blocs took the opportunity of the Cold War to beef up their military (certainly not a bad hedge against domestic unemployment, etc.), it takes a real stretch of the imagination to suppose that we’ve needed to maintain the military at Cold War levels since 1990–even in order to fight Al Qaida, Saddam Hussein, and who knows whom else besides. But we could never manage the socio-economic dislocation that a real downsizing of the military would entail….What better motive, therefore, to inflate the magnitude of our jihadist detractors?….I, like you, would be happy to trade in our whole military machine for a well-staffed, competent, fully-funded Department of Homeland Security….
Posted by: alabama | Nov 27 2004 20:48 utc | 53
tonight , reading genet on violence & brutality in ‘l’ennemi déclaré – textes et entretiens – gallimard 1991 – i suddenly see the wisodom in this most opaque man who hated imperialism & especially u.s. imperialism with a hatredd that is transcedental in character
it is only in rereading genet – i see the fundamental vulnerabilty of imperialism in our age. genet understands well mao tse tung’s maxim that “all reactionaries are paper tigers” & indeed they are & like the mafia they imitate – the more they express their will through violence – the more we can witness their basic emptiness
tonight as us imperialism destroys the desires & hopes of the iraqui people – it is unable to threaten anyone else – this is no comfort to iraq but it is clearly understood in iran – that there is absolutely no possibility at all for america to place its troops on their soil. no possibility at all. with 130,000 troops completely unable to quell the resistance – they do what they have done best in these last years – to commit mass murder & to do so on the scale of a common murderer. sordid, unequal, injust & venal. this they are & can do – & they will keep on doing though i imagine they would love to leave -though they cannot & will not. they have created their proper disaster. & the world looks on & sees this beast in all its sordid splendor.
i’m sure, as i’ve said in other post that perhaps this late in my life i am witnessing the beginning of the beginning of the end for that empire that has reproduced evil as a mechanism to inhibit, thwart & to destroy the will of the people. slowly, very slowly – it is becomin apparent that though she is willing to sacrifice her own sons & daughters for her territorial imperatives – the territorial imperatives change faster than the beast
yes it is true – as in venuezala yesterday she was capable of killing the chief prosecutor & a valuable functionary in an assasination – it will not be able to create a coup. in honduras & in nicaragua the people are prepared & they are not bullied by rumsfield who comes to them giving them orders as they have done for the last century. llatin america is witnessing the fall of an empire which has brought it much harm – but the harm it is capable of doing today is lessened. & it is lessened by the courageous resistants of the people of iraq & the awakening of the arab people.
in this historic moment the arab people have proved even in chaos that the empire has no clothes – that it can mutilate & deform the country but it cannot change its souls. bolivar & jose marti have sd this before but now we understand. we understand beneath the psycopathic menace of the american administration that it will not dare touch iran because it will be beaten. it does not dare to do anything with north korea because the north korean leadership is as mad as the american one & they don’t mind a massacre or two
i would not be surprised if this administration decides to accelerate the menace to the beautiful island of cuba to teach latin america a lesson. it would do so because cuba is in the state where it is not capable of offering a challenge to overwhelming force. but the soul of cuba which is the soul informing almost all of the newer democracies of latin america is so strong that it cannot be defeated
& perhaps the new deal – over nickel – done with their ‘fratenal brothers’ – the chinese – will cause this administration to halt any threat to the cuban people
no, i think in each case we are witnessing an empire in collapse – & it is being brought donw by its own corruption & greed & by its ignorance of the world outside it
there was a time when between them & russia they could bully the world into their way of being – well those days are truly over & all the lies that were once used have proven to be false, to be empty
i dread the immediate future of the iraquis because this beast has not finished the damage it can do & in its humiliation before the world i think it is capable of many, many fallujahs – i think it is capable of destroying a nation to save it & in this the iraqui people do not enter into the equation. they are the flesh, bone & blood that will be sacrificed on the impotence of the imperial beast.
there will be sad days & nights to come & as rilke suggested of lovers – we have to be the guardians of iraq. we have to speak for her when she is being silenced by all the means at this empire’s disposal. this empire does not care for people & it never has – not even its own people & that is a pathetic story that only the american people can understand & speak
i read genet tonight & i understand that this tyranny of brutality, of horror, of terror will end & it will end because the empire exposed itself in fallujah & once an empire is exposed it is doomed to collapse under its own weight
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 27 2004 20:53 utc | 54
September 4th, 2001
Wanted: Enemy to justify $344 billion war budget
And exactly one week later………
Posted by: Like a rabbit out of the conjurer’s hat | Nov 27 2004 21:07 utc | 55
b
i have to differ with you. the ira were a movement of people, of a people armed with legitimae complaints against the empire & it fought a heroic battle against that enemy & it won, militarily & politically
the rote armée fraktion – were a particularly german – organisation – influenced as they were by lin piao – who had suggested in the field & the city – that it was the duty of antiimperialist in the west(the city) to take pressure off the country(third world). what was legitimate demand for an end to the debauchery in vietnam quicly became like a sect – where they became ‘the people'” – their moral courage can not be doubted as their contemporaries entered a torpor from which few have come out but they became exactly what the german state wanted & there existed a symbiosis between them & it became sadder – that at some time in their history their political confusion allowed them to be complicit in events & actions in which they shared goals with the far right – the grey wolves of trukey, for example.
the red brigades & the autonomous groups of italy are different again in character & in analysis & ultimately in conditions. for all intents & purposes – italy was a mafiocracy – its constituted governments both illegal & conducting business in great illegality. & in that state’s illegality it used means – disproportionate means & so it became a real war – which was never true in germany. the ‘years of lead’ in italy were an openly declared war between an illegal state & its enemies who were pushed more & more into actions that condemned them to illegality while each of the other parties – the socialists, the communists & christian democrats shared a historical & political responsibility for this state of tension.
if you like, the italian searched for cleanliness in a country marinated in corruption, in germany – this armed left tried to be a conscience, tried to wipe away historical wrongs but created them & the ira who i think are closer to a people’s war fought on any level where it could conduct its politics whether it was in the streets, the prisons or in local councils
a term of “terrorism” has been so corrupted by the american it is empty of meaning. what was it that naomi klein sd – she sd that terrorists were just the free marketeers of violence & they did not believe a state or any states should have a hegemony on that violence
b what we are seeing in iraq is a war – a war of national liberation against an empire that would steal from it, its sovereignth, it’s that simple
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 27 2004 21:12 utc | 56
“it takes a real stretch of the imagination to suppose that we’ve needed to maintain the military at Cold War levels since 1990–even in order to fight Al Qaida, Saddam Hussein, and who knows whom else besides.”
alabama, you’ll get no disagreement from me – except in pointing out that our military is quite obviously not the size it was at the end of the Cold War, and will not be for the forseeable future.
I said during the 90’s that the only reason most liberal opinion-makers were disinclined to support still sky-high defense outlays is that, despite the fact that they’re the foundation of the most “successful” welfare, nay “jobs,” scheme going in the US, those outlays involve guns, bombs, jets and other instruments of concrete violence. Otherwise the defense-industrial complex would be a real winner with Lefties looking to the government to provide a comfortable living to everyone and his brother. (Ah, but Democratic politicians, as much as their Republican counterparts, generally love nothing so much as hundreds of millions of defense dollars funneled into their districts to provide employment to residents who might hold against them the local disappearance of handsomely remunerative work.)
Posted by: Pat | Nov 27 2004 21:49 utc | 57
b
“The British learned to do that with the IRA,———- Unfortunatly it is quite slow doing so.”
800 years?
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 27 2004 22:03 utc | 58
@r’giap
I totally agree with you that the all the movements we saw in 70s 80s in Europe had different degrees of public/moral justification, cooperation with the government and were totally different in character. But each of those had support in a significant part of the people, probably only because they showed resistance is possible, and each of these were only subdued when their supporters were given the freedom they asked for (though some have settled for far to less – Italy is still a mafia ruled country).
I personaly have witnessed and lived through this in the fights for Hamburg’s Hafenstrasse. The support for RAF wained there and elsewhere when a turn in the understanding of the rulers and the majority of people occured. After it was understood and accepted that things were wrong and had to be corrected, a multitude of issues was solved in a very different way. By negotiation, by listening, by understanding. It took the extremism of the RAF to push the movement but at one point the rulers and understood and compromised and the movement settled with them (but it did not die).
That did take away the base the RAF needed to live. The return for supporting the RAF deminished to a point where other methods (The Green Party, in Hamburg The Alternative) delivered more return for less struggle.
Iraq is on a totally different scale. A country occupied for a commodity grab will fight. They did before, they will again and they will win – even if it takes 10 years.
It has nothing to do with extreme fundamentalistic religion – even if people on both sides try to push it that way. It has nothing to do with the real fight for liberation and self domination of many nations in the Middle East. This real fight seems to need the extremism displayed by The Base (Al Qaida) to get to a compromise they can live with. But this has just started and will take years too.
@BEQ – thanks for the link. I fear a commenter nailed it when they said that the guys who haven’t been paid are prob. using Madsen to send word to the top that they’ll blow ’em out of the water if they don’t get paid immediately. SHITCITY. SHITCOUNTRY. SHITWORLD.
Posted by: jj | Nov 27 2004 22:31 utc | 60
Pat, a while ago, in a moment of particularly vivid delusion, I suggested to a friend who knows a lot about environmental protection that the military might be an ally of the green cause, because it keeps so much acreage off the commercial market. I even proposed (as one of your liberals looking for ways to shield the working-man from cuts in the defense budget) that the military might somehow be persuaded to lead the way in environmental protection, in the manner of the CCC…..This friend (whose name is also “Pat”) looked at me as if I’d been smoking some very strong stuff….When she saw that I actually hadn’t, her eyes narrowed, and she read me the riot act concerning the role of the military where matters of environmental impact are concerned…..Dreaming is what I’ve done with my life….
Posted by: alabama | Nov 27 2004 22:31 utc | 61
alabama, i spent most of this afternoon at the local nyc protest against the election. while walking home i had time to think more about the question we both posed about why have the dems caved and why are americans so complacent. i am not a psychologist or sociologist by trade but planned to do some research and then write. however, i do have the basis of a response in a truthout article by james nickel who put a label on what i had been thinking – learned helplessness. it is the best term to describe my the reactions of my brother and father. here is an excerpt and the url. (i have not yet figured out how to link properly.)
Now that the predictable damage is done, Americans are amazingly more silent than before the election: like Seligman’s shocked dogs, seemingly resigned to learned helplessness. Perhaps some are afraid of supporting or fighting for post-election investigations, concerned that, if they do not ultimately show that Kerry would’ve won, they will have been proved wrong and wasted energy and resources – what would be the point? This mindset, epitomized by Kerry’s concession speech statement, “we cannot win,” has carried over into defeatist post-election attitudes and action. What Kerry and many of his supporters don’t understand is that the critical post-election battle is not about John Kerry. What is at stake is far greater. Democracy is not about men; it’s about ideals. The battle which must be fought is one to save representative democracy from the final death blow that will be dealt by ignoring the widespread electoral problems of the past two presidential elections.
Unlike the Ukrainians, Americans still take too much for granted. We still cling to the myth that America is inherently different from other societies: that democracy is enduring, that crime in high places is rare (ie. Nixon was a fluke), that we are permanently immune to tyranny. We defer to the principal of “innocent until proven guilty” while shrugging off mounting evidence that wrongdoing has taken place. We dismiss the intuitive observation, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” while choking on the smoldering aftermath of our election. We ignore millennia of history demonstrating that powerpaths will pursue whatever schemes necessary to maintain power. Indeed, they typically usurp power incrementally, pushing the envelope and testing the boundaries. As George Soros has observed, when those boundary tests are successfully passed, the dominant paradigm (and associated behavior) is further reinforced and perpetuated. Considering the relative ease with which the Bush administration stole the 2000 election, deceived the congress and American people, and impudently committed crimes against the international community, why wouldn’t they take steps readily available to them (via Diebold, Jeb Bush, Kenneth Blackwell, et al.) to stay in power by stealing another election? After all, they’re on one hell of a roll. If the corrupt precedents set in yet another election again go unquestioned, won’t the Bush regime essentially have an implicit mandate to do more of the same and worse?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112704D.shtml
i also think there is something to your “enemy” theory. at the time we invaded afghanistan there was no clear proof that osama bin laden was behind 9/11 (and there are many who would say that there still is none), yet i was told repeatedly, even by my very intelligent but fearful brother, that the us HAD A DUTY to invade afghanistan to avenge itself and protect the homeland. when i asked what the afghans had ever done to us he sputtered the usual taliban stuff, forgetting entirely our previous relationship with them and obl. can this be broken down to the need to have a “bogeyman” to frighten and control. simplistic, i know, but maybe it is that simple. and to whom would a bogeyman be most frightening – children, the uneducated, those who do have not learned better? so it is that much easier to exercise control now that most americans, because they rely on mainstream media, are not educated about what is happening in the world.
i have only one thing to say about obl as the enemy. we have made him the enemy – not just as the bogeyman, but in our dealings in the world, just as we are creating more terrorists in iraq.
now i must leave quickly if i am to be on time.
Posted by: conchita | Nov 27 2004 22:35 utc | 62
b
Very sad really
Lance Cpl. Nicholas Anderson’s brother Jackson Anderson, 10, left, holds a folded American flag.
A ten year old lance corporal?
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 27 2004 23:22 utc | 64
b
no, you are right also – i remember in holland – the genius of their leadership in front of a very profound form of resistance & very integrated was the squatter movement – who fought very gard & on many levels & needed an intransigent government to grow but the government using great intelligence turned over the buildings to that movement & demanded they take responsibility – which they did & which took all their time & concentrated all their issues into housing
in a year of the historic comprimise that movement had been integrated almost fully into dutch society & the threat if it existed at all to the state was completely diminished
it was a strange & unique situation where a government by being flexible forced an opposition into a responsibility that perhaps they did not want but were obliged to accept because it was a principal demand
that kind of intelligence, that form of flexibility & i think that is also true in germany now no longer exists – the american model of inflexibility & immoral posturing replacing real government & actual strategy is what the world in large part lives under
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 27 2004 23:43 utc | 66
Let’s try again, b…. I spent an hour this afternoon with a young marine who’s served one turn in Iraq, and who’s scheduled to serve a second turn starting next June. He has a wife and child here at home. He has no enthusiasm for this war, and tells me that none of his friends in uniform have any enthusiasm for it either. The faces we see on that powerful link belong to the friends and relatives of that young man, and I just hope I don’t turn up in the background of one of those photos.
Posted by: alabama | Nov 27 2004 23:45 utc | 67
@Conchita, here’s an easy how-to-link.
1)type
4)type whatever words you want to appear in brown
5)type
6) That’s it. To test before posting, when finished w/yr. blurb, hit “preview” & see if it works.
Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2004 0:10 utc | 68
oops……guess that didn’t work. System thght. I was trying to do a real link. I will enclose things you must type exactly as I have in an *, so hopefully stystem will ignore them.
oops again….. It didn’t. So much for my lesson!! I don’t know how to smuggle things thru.
Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2004 0:16 utc | 69
@RG:
Since you have, in previous posts, recommended the Atlantic Monthly highly,
I checked several issues out today.
I was somewhat disappointed. I think the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker are better really.
Some Links for You:
NYRB
NEW YORKER
Posted by: FlashHarry | Nov 28 2004 1:11 utc | 70
Well, according to Keith Olbermann I should be eating a big pie of crow with Wayne Madsen. Had some doubts myself, but wanted to believe (yes, I admit it) and sent it along without verifying. My apologies for leading anyone astray in my enthusiasm. He is on a panel at Dartmouth, former Navy guy, etc. I thought it was a solid. Anyway, here is Olbermann’s url: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/.
Posted by: conchita | Nov 28 2004 2:13 utc | 71
conchita @ 5:35 PM: though James Nickel certainly isn’t wrong, I think his comment suffers from a lack of exactness. For one thing, it thinks along party lines (Republican vs. Democrat, Bush vs. Kerry, red vs. blue), and, for my money, the problem lies entirely elsewhere. It lies in the refusal, not altogether unconscious, of Republican and Democrat, Bush and Kerry, red and blue alike to protest this or that program, this or that policy, because they don’t want to pay the price that goes with opposing things, even when they know those things are going badly, and are leading to serious trouble (or else they don’t oppose them at all–quite the contrary!)
Posted by: alabama | Nov 28 2004 2:48 utc | 72
A year ago, almost to the day, Howard Dean stated that he’d be “even-handed” in his approach to the conflict in Israel; and even though he didn’t make a campaign issue out of it, that statement crippled his campaign. Kerry and Bush never once spoke to the topic during their own campaigns, and no public intellectuals dared to call them on this, and if they had so dared, they’d have been absolutely silenced by (for example) the New York Times and the Washington Post, because Tom Friedman and Charles Krauthammer don’t suffer disagreement for even a minute. This is not an example of “learned helplessness,” it’s an example of powerful, consistent, devastating and efficient censorship. The voice of protest in this land is indeed massively censored–much more so, in my view, than the voice of the Left ever was during the Cold War (and I speak from experience here).
Posted by: alabama | Nov 28 2004 2:48 utc | 73
Conchita, what gives this story it’s underlying plausibility is that the Central Tabulators were designed to be manipulated & given that Kerry won by a sizeable margin, someone(s) did it. We can’t lose sight of that. It’s always a problem when one is connected to the nefarious world of criminal disinformation that’s called the “intelligence community” to know who is using who for what puposes.
Whether Madsen’s account is substantially true, he was being used to send some sort of msg. to someone, he was being set-up, he got lost in the mad mazeway……..
And don’t forget that DunceBoy made an unprecedented election day stop in Ohio to meet personally w/the Sec. of State, which lends a high degree of credibility to fraud coming from the very top.
Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2004 3:44 utc | 74
The whole Madsen thing smells like interference, like diversion. So the question: is Madsen stupid enough to be fed a crock o’ shit by false sources or is he among those we count as the enemy? And how would one of his other recent articles which Olbermann refers to, claiming a Bush October Surprise strike on Iran which, obviously, never materialize fit into the picture? Was it intentionally false for reasons of information warfare, in order to establish Madsen as a nut job with a history of bunk stories so that any subject he touches in the future will be easier to dismiss as crazy talk — that is get “Dan Rather’ed”? Or again, his he just a dope who is fooled by crank sources or worse?
Posted by: Stoy | Nov 28 2004 5:46 utc | 75
Stoy, probably none of the above. We know they have a plan to invade Iran. Just because they didn’t implement it doesn’t prove anything. And often one can foreclose a path of action simply by making it public.
How about we pull any Tommy Friedman column…….He’s held in High Regard and he’s virtually all bullshit.
Madsen cannot be dismissed that readily. Thank god there are people like him who are willing to be wrong, or there would never be anyone willing to surface things from the Underworld in what might be a timely fashion. Peter Dale Scott is overwhelmingly spot on about the Underworld, but he publishes books long after the fact.
Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2004 6:42 utc | 76
“He has no enthusiasm for this war”
Oh, alabama, we could transcribe volumes on the lack of enthusiasm for this war.
Posted by: Pat | Nov 28 2004 6:52 utc | 77
Speaking of which, here are Peter’s post-election thoughts.
for those unfamiliar w/him, he’s a (Canadian) diplomat, a poet, a retired UCB Lit. Prof, who has spent recent decades studying the Underworld – JFK assasination, Nixon, drugs….. Aside from being an extraordinary lovely human being, as a poet he’s very sure-footed travelling about the UnderWorld, unlike virtually everyone else.
Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2004 6:55 utc | 78
“the enemy may be real, but it’s not large enough to threaten us in any way–and hence it’s not truly an ‘enemy'”
Okay, another point of disagreement. Size of the enemy is not decisive. The financial costs of “defending the homeland” after 9-11 are not insignificant, as weren’t the absorbtion of losses from the attacks of that day alone. And the infliction of almost 3,000 same-day casualties is, in the world of jihad, striking the motherlode.
A massive horde they are not. But they are capable of serious damage nonetheless.
Posted by: Pat | Nov 28 2004 7:20 utc | 79
Someone more articulate and with a more current grasp of history will say this better than I, but inmho “I am waiting for his body” renders the examination of what is an enemy meaningless.
Posted by: conchita | Nov 28 2004 16:47 utc | 81
Imperialism at work:
Revealed: how Britain was told full coup plan
Britain was given a full outline of an illegal coup plot in a vital oil-rich African state, including the dates, details of arms shipments and key players, several months before the putsch was launched, according to confidential documents obtained by The Observer.
But, despite Britain’s clear obligations under international law, Jack Straw, who was personally told of the plans at the end of January, failed to warn the government of Equatorial Guinea.
…
In December 2003 and January 2004 two separate, highly detailed reports of the planned coup, from Johann Smith, a former commander in South African Special Forces, were sent to two senior officers in British intelligence and to a senior colleague of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, according to the documents seen by The Observer .
a senior colleague of Donald Rumsfeld is a funny way to name Colin Powell
I know this is tinfoil stuff but I’m sure remembereringgiap will want to read this
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 28 2004 18:19 utc | 83
@ Cloned
Yes, Vialls is always extremely interesting, but has he ever been right about anything? For instance,
some of his stuff on the Bali bombing is, as far as I know, not yet debunked, but I would be interested in seeing a detailed debunking of anything he puts out.
He could, of course, even be right on occasion.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 29 2004 6:44 utc | 84