News, views, visions …
Back to Main
February 21, 2005
Open Thread 05-20
Comments
Just did read through Bush speech (Transcript via NYT) in Brussels.
The speech was directed to US people, not to Europeans. It touched Middle East, Russia and Africa and only a little bit of Europe.
The most funny part is this:
We should all pursue fiscal policies in our nations — sound fiscal policies of low taxes and fiscal restraint and reform that promote a stable world financial system and foster economic growth.
Sole reason for the trip is to get (financial) support for the Iraq catastrophy. I hope our politicians are not dumb enough to give any.
@b
So far I get the impression that European polititians are scared to face up to the Dub and call him out on his emperialism. I can’t believe that slimy little shit is that powerful.
Posted by: rapt | Feb 21 2005 17:43 utc | 2
You know, I really wish the left in the US would pull itself together and find an effective way of undermining the free-market religion of that country of fools. Fiscal restraint in-fucking-deed. Arrogant fucking fools.
Yeah colman, this free trade bullshit is like religion to these rethug idiots. The problem is the dlc assholes are cut from the same mold. The Clintons. John Breau, all have sucked up the free market kool-aid and drank a-plenty.
I live in Michigan and we have been devistated. 170,000 manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 in our state. And what is Bushies answer, put more strain on state budgets with his budget and tax cuts, then push congress for cafta to further erode the US labor market.
We need a wholesale cleaning out of all the beltway elites. They just don’t have a clue. We don’t make anything anymore. How can you ad wealth to a country when you don’t make anything? I think it was b or jerome that posted a post that said 40% of all US corp profits were from financial institutions. That is basically passing money around and taking the money from others.
Posted by: jdp | Feb 21 2005 19:33 utc | 5
coleman, i agree , but how how how do we ‘pull ourselves together”?
it seems we are not nasty or cunning enough for this adversary. i would follow a leader. we need someone radical.
Posted by: annie | Feb 21 2005 20:45 utc | 7
Ha ! Joe Bageant, a short history of the Redneck Nation – thanks beq, priceless.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 21 2005 22:10 utc | 8
The Social security war has begun and for those interested a little e-book entitled: 1999 Social Security Explained by Sacks, Avram might come in handy, before the Bush crime family has it purged from the net…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 21 2005 22:38 utc | 9
Add Baluchistan as one MORE overheated powder keg in the world:
Pakistan’s gas fields blaze as rape sparks threat of civil war
Fight for provincial autonomy escalates after attack
Posted by: JMF | Feb 21 2005 23:11 utc | 10
Incidentally, is Thailand’s government heavily infested with American-style politicos or corporate racketeers?
This reported sequence of events smacks of the same type of inhuman preference for unchecked profiteering over lives that was manifested in the US EPA’s hasty assurance to New Yorkers that their air was entirely “safe” to breathe shortly after September 11, 2001:
Risk of deadly global epidemic as bid to halt spread of bird flu is foiled
Thailand, one of two countries at the centre of the bird flu outbreak, is refusing to act against its spread, scuppering attempts to stop a devastating pandemic expected to kill tens of millions of people around the globe.
An emergency plan to tackle the disease, drawn up by the country’s Deputy Prime Minister, would have involved slaughtering more than ten million ducks and chickens, and distributing face masks to protect people from catching the flu. But it has been rejected on the grounds that it could alarm the public. …
Thailand’s decision not to act, the personal initiative of its Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, marks the second time in two months that it has failed to take life-saving action in the face of a looming disaster. On Boxing Day, it was one of only two Indian Ocean countries to receive an immediate warning of the tsunami. But it failed to relay this to its coastal people or to tourists on the beaches until after long after the wave hit. Experts suggested that the warning was delayed because it might damage tourism. …
[Talk about having your prorities Bass-ackwards!]
Posted by: JMF | Feb 21 2005 23:26 utc | 11
“I think it was b or jerome that posted a post that said 40% of all US corp profits were from financial institutions. That is basically passing money around and taking the money from others.”
Oh, dear, the US is turning into a giant Switzerland. One with nukes.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Feb 21 2005 23:51 utc | 12
And again :
And Bush is in Brussels (Belgium)…2500 policeman are guarding him from demonstrators…
“Hiroshima- Belgrade- Baghdad”
is displayed by the crowd.
Let’s face it. It’s NOT about Bush ONLY…He is just an obvious and brutal personification of USA politic after WWII. And people around world HATE IT.
Hollywood managed to show for decades that Americans are humans so generally people around the world do not hate Americans …but their politicians…that they vote for…Lately even Hollywood changed and there is not much movies worthy to waste one’s time even watching it…There is only particular amount of claptrap that people around the world can handle…
Posted by: vbo | Feb 22 2005 0:01 utc | 13
@ anna missed: Hits home. In my neighborhood, civil war battle flags are “window treatments”.
Posted by: beq | Feb 22 2005 2:02 utc | 14
Repent Sinners!
Heareth the word of the lord and be saved:
LINK
Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 22 2005 4:18 utc | 15
Looks as if this Europe visit was most of all a good show, and as b wrote, why argue with a fool. There seem to be promises with lots of ifs and whens.
Bush reaches out to Europe with pledge on Middle East
EU leaders promised to open an office in Baghdad as soon as the security situation allows, one that will co-ordinate the training of Iraqi judges, prosecutors and prison guards. Today the EU and US hope to agree to set up an international conference on rebuilding Iraq.
Posted by: Fran | Feb 22 2005 5:16 utc | 16
Would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in Bradislava, when Putin an Bush have their talk. Interesting situation for Bush to talk all tough with Putin, when the lather can sort of pull Bush pursestrings.
Oil Exporters Behind Weak Dollar-Soros
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Moves by Middle East oil exporters and Russia to switch some revenue from dollars to euros lie behind the U.S. currency’s weakness, and a further rise in crude prices could prompt more declines, the billionaire investor George Soros said on Monday.
Soros told delegates to the Jeddah Economic Forum that the dollar’s fall should help to lower the U.S current account and trade deficits, but warned that a fall beyond an undisclosed “tipping point” would severely disrupt markets.
The U.S. current account deficit is more than five percent of gross domestic product despite the currency’s three-year slide. The dollar, however, has staged a comeback recently, gaining about 3.6 percent against the euro and three percent versus the yen so far this year.
“The oil exporting countries’ central banks … have been switching out of dollars mainly into euros and Russia also plays an important role in this. That is, I think, at the bottom of the current weakness of the dollar,” Soros said.
Posted by: Fran | Feb 22 2005 5:24 utc | 17
Damn! Love Joe Bageant. My husband is about to send it off to all his Scots Irish friends. 😉
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 22 2005 5:33 utc | 18
coleman, i agree , but how how how do we ‘pull ourselves together”? it seems we are not nasty or cunning enough for this adversary. i would follow a leader. we need someone radical.
Annie, we will lead ourselves. We are the radicals.
We’re not going to take it anymore. It’s time to stop waiting for the hallowed leader and take our own lives in our hands. Here. Now. And out in the world in our everyday lives.
Posted by: SusanG | Feb 22 2005 5:41 utc | 19
@Colman (1:02 PM)
Sure, gladly—just one question: how? If I can find a way to swing a pickaxe at the foot of Mount Greedmore, I’ll do it, singing and laughing hysterically. But realistically, what can the American left really do? Anything big, at this point, will merely give the right an excuse to overreact—again. I keep trying to think of things to do, and the ones which are impressive all end up with “then we get squashed like bugs, and the proportion of right-wing nutjobs in the population increases even more because of our absence.”
If nothing big happens—no trumped-up wars or “terrorist” attacks—what will happen is that the American economy will melt down. (It may happen even if there is some big event; it depends on the event, and how people react to it.) The multinational corporations will largely abandon the country, taking as much with them as they can. They will go to China and Europe, and the neocons who are Left Behind in the corporate Rapture will howl bitterly when they are betrayed. Things will get really bad in large parts of the country. (Among other things, maybe we’ll all be lucky and that will be the death of the mass media, which will help the healing process tremendously. After all, without money, there is no electricy or gas, and without electricity and gas, there is no television and no USA Today.) The American part of the Internet will disintegrate. Richer states, which are largely blue, will be harder hit by the general cessation of services, but because they will start from a higher standard they will generally end up better off than the red states, where things are going to get really bad. With luck, no nukes will go off or go missing, and America will eventually split off into at least two distinct countries. (Without luck, of course, there will be gaping radioactive pits in the scenery where various lunatics decided to push the red button… Try not to think too much about it.)
It’s amusing that Bush is trying so hard to cut federal social spending. The states that benefit the most from it are red states. (Remember all those charts, pre-election, showing which states took in the most federal benefits and which took in the least?) Left-leaning states will soon be raising taxes to continue providing even reduced services, and that’s dangerous to the union. If the sole benefits a blue state gets from remaining part of the country are American passports and the right to pay taxes to support an overextended military, independence starts to look mighty attractive, particularly if the state is on the border and can trade that way. If the American government becomes seriously weakened, and such a thing appears to be on the horizon, there will be tremendous temptation to leave the red states to deal with the mess they made and break away.
Mind you, like any even remotely left-leaning American these days, my grasp of the mindset of my fellow citizens is tenuous at best. Maybe most blue-staters would rather hang around even though it would be against their best interests. But it is still a fun thought to think… all those horrible people stewing in their own juice and sleeping in the beds they have made (Blind Misery: Now With 150% More Mixed Metaphors!)… even if there is a tough row to hoe for the blue states, it would be worth the effort to see the idiots suffer the results of their own stupidity for once. For those who are having trouble sleeping at night, try to imagine Bush, bereft of backing, beseiged on his ranch by an army of embittered Texan unemployed.
Posted by: Blind Misery | Feb 22 2005 5:43 utc | 20
Interesting, thought everything is just fine, now even Pakistan is drawing its line. Pakistan Army told to fire at intruding Americans
Washington: Pakistan has issued new rules of engagement permitting its Army to fire at US forces that cross the border from Afghanistan without coordinating first, according to a report contributed to the magazine ‘American Conservative’ by a former CIA officer.
Philip Giraldi, now an international security consultant and writer of intelligence matters, writes in the February 28 issue of the magazine’s ‘Deep Background’ column that “President Musharraf has been receiving angry reports from his military that US forces have been engaging in hot pursuit across the border in violation of bilateral agreements.
Musharraf is also said to be unhappy about the recent abrupt withdrawal of Predators and other surveillance resources from Pakistan for transfer to Iraq for use against Iran. According to high level Pakistani sources, Musharraf and his Army chiefs expended a great deal of political capital in their support of the Al Qaeda hunt, clashing frequently with hostile tribesmen along the border. The US Central Command’s January announcement that the drones and other supporting surveillance technologies that were being used against Al Qaeda would be withdrawn to support ‘elections in Iraq,’ was an unpleasant surprise, particularly when ‘in Iraq’ turned out to be a euphemism for ‘against Iran.
Thats it for today, lots of work is waiting.
Posted by: Fran | Feb 22 2005 5:43 utc | 21
Believe it or not, Blind Misery, there are no blue or red states worthy of the name, notwithstanding the efforts of the simple-minded Right to persuade us otherwise. Some states are super-powers, and others are third-world countries, but no state–not even Utah–exists as an ideological monolith. It’s certainly true that some political voices are a whole lot louder than others, but it’s almost always the case that the loudest are screaming in pain. On a merely individual level, just look at a Limbaugh, an O’Reilly, or a Bennett, and you’ll notice that each and every one of them is famously, comically, in pain, and has been in pain for the whole dreadful length of his “adult” life.
Posted by: alabama | Feb 22 2005 7:06 utc | 22
Or look at the Southern Baptists who make up the core of the fascist right. Is it an accident that their marriages are blowing up all around them, and that they spend more of their hard-won earnings on internet pornography than any other segment of the population? And of course they’ve been losing the culture wars for the past 150 years, beginning with the federal destruction of slavery. Weird is what this country is, and the figment of “red” and “blue” does nothing to keep our eyes on the fact of that weirdness. If we don’t pay attention to that, then we’ll never do anything constructive.
Posted by: alabama | Feb 22 2005 7:07 utc | 23
What can the left in the US do? Stop drinking the damn Kool-Aid for a start. Red-Blue states are nonsense: your enemy lives off division, deny him that support. You never fought back effectively after against the association of the left with the Commies. Do that now, and attack the extreme free-marketers with everything you have. Stop being polite, stop being nice: when they’re wrong, damn well say it, when they’re being hypocrites call them on it. Stop being embarrassed about being on the left.
Stop looking for perfection. The Democratic Party is a mess, and the revolutionaries will want to throw it away. You have a first-past the post electoral system whose integrity is compromised: it will take a long time (decades) to get a third party into a position of power. It will be too late. Easier to take over the Democratic Party. Then fix the electoral system. In the meantime, use whatever allies you can find: anything to make things better.
Educate your fellow citizens: they’ve been lied to for their whole lives, they’re not stupid. Maybe lazy, maybe uneducated but generally not stupid. They need to understand that the Robber Barons are back, and that they will destroy everything that generations of Americans fought for. You have to teach them.
The key is to fight, not whine. But don’t listen to me, I don’t know anything and I’m not even in the US. Listen to SusanG. Listen to Steve Gilliard. Listen to the guys on dKos. Give money. Write letters. Campaign. Get organised. Run for office: every office that a Republican is running for should be contested – every last one. Vote, for someone if you can, against someone if you have to.
Note: Comments may not apply to posters here. If you’re hoping that we’re on the track to a revolution of the proletariat and Marxist utopia your mileage may vary.
(Why in hell is there a black, unmarked helicopter flying low over my area? I jest not. It even seems to have a sensor package on the front.)
I ‘ve found people’s behavior is very strange actually. It’s unbelievable but that same year 1993 when we experienced terrible super-mega-inflation and most of the people were almost literally hungry, THEY VOTED FOR MILOSHEVIC IN EVEN GREATER NUMBERS. That was when we definitely decided to emigrate.
One would say that as living conditions deteriorate people would be determined to change government at least. Not in a WAR situation tho…and as they said USA is in WAR with unidentified enemy ( and new enemy found when ever needed) that will last “indefinitely” practically for ever… They (who ever is governing USA) are safe.
But you’ll need to organize anyway…you that will stay there. For your own protection and mental health. This looks like only distant beginning of and from the end…
Posted by: vbo | Feb 22 2005 13:30 utc | 25
So, of course, we all know that the greatest threat to mankind is Iranian possible nuclear program. Right?
Juan Cole and pretty much every informed person had doubts about Chalabi claiming he had a majority of Sistani’s list backing him as PM. Looks like they were right: Chalabi dumped, Jaafar, leader of the religious Dawa party, to be future PM. Looks like Tehran found Chalabi to be too unreliable an asset to get the post.
Oh, and it’ll be fun to explain to military families that their kids died so that the comparatively free women of Saddam’s secular Iraq would now live under Sharia, as veiled 2nd class people.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Feb 22 2005 13:33 utc | 26
re Chalabi –
Pressure from within the ranks of the winning United Iraqi Alliance forced the withdrawal of Chalabi, a one-time Pentagon favorite, said Hussein al-Moussawi from the Shiite Political Council, an umbrella group for 38 Shiite parties.
“They wanted him to withdraw. They didn’t want to push the vote to a secret ballot,” al-Moussawi said.
Who did hold the gun to Chalabi’s head here – Sistani?
Who pays some local internet sites?
Bin Laden Arrested? Not so says Iran.
TEHRAN, Feb 21 (AFP) – Iran denied Monday suggestions on some local Internet sites that it arrested Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, the Western world’s most wanted man, on the border with Pakistan.
“This information is wrong and bin Laden has not been arrested by our security forces,” government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said at a weekly press briefing.
Some Iranian Internet sites quoted American officials as saying the Al-Qaeda leader, who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head, had been arrested two weeks ago by Iranian forces.
Could these local Iranian internet sites be hosted in the US? http://iranblogger.pentagon.mil anyone?
US Senator Says Afghan Bases Should Be Permanent – sure.
“We also want to declare our commitment and that of the people we represent to a long-term strategic partnership that we believe must endure for many, many years,” he said.
McCain, who represents Arizona, said this was “not only for the good of the Afghan people, but also for the good of the American people, because of the long-term security interests we have in the region.”
A well written Salon article on the CPAC conservative meeting in Washington
Among the believers –
At the Conservative Political Action Conference, where rabid Bush-worshippers learn that liberals hate America and that we really did find WMD in Iraq.
Like comrades celebrating the success of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, attendees at CPAC, the oldest and largest right-wing conference in the country, invest their leaders with the power to defy mere reality through force of insistent rhetoric. The triumphant recent election is all the proof they need that everything George W. Bush says is true.
…
. For much of the rank and file, though, the thousands of blue-blazered students and local activists who come to CPAC each year to celebrate the völkisch virtues of nationalism, capitalism and heterosexuality, Bush is truth.
And now for something completely different:Mother of the Year
Posted by: Jérôme | Feb 22 2005 16:01 utc | 31
poor ducklings.. so why didn’t the photographer intervene? from the same site, i nominate this image for Mother of the Year. (-:
Posted by: b real | Feb 22 2005 16:22 utc | 32
Bernhard or Jerome–is this worth a new thread?
Scott Ritter drops a couple of bombshells.
He was right about WMDs. Will anyone listen to him (and Seymour Hersh) this time, in time to make a difference?
Posted by: catlady | Feb 23 2005 6:21 utc | 35
HaHa, b
In some ways it says it all. What is so vexing about the USA, how so many are so comfortable on the rack of so many contradictions, must be a mystery to the rest of the world. Just the latest incarnation of a public garden party lynching attended by polite society, little girls and boys running in Sunday finery as fathers and mothers chat in the shadow of a black man just strung up without so much as an arrest warrant. There is this brain stem consciousness that relishes in the cycle of sin guilt and redemption that has played like a broken record in America for 200 years. The fact is, they want it both ways, and both ways is what we get — the corporate/media creates and feeds the bloodlust desire fantasy while the theocratic annointed government offers redemtion in exchange for loyality. And so the little fascist engine chug -chugs on as entertainment tonight.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 24 2005 10:42 utc | 37
Faiza, business women from Bagdhad, with a very clear vision on the real reasons for war
Now, Syria is on the list, there is another scenario prepared to control her, and bring her to line, then, it will be Iran, and God only knows what shall they bomb, or perform assassinations and disasters in order to accuse Iran, then besiege her, so she would submit to their demands.
And what are the demands, truly?
Would they be human rights, freedom, and democracy, as the official media their cries??
Huh.
In truth, I see one reason very clear to my vision…and I shall speak of no other. Iraq, Syria, and Iran have all one thing in common; their economy is almost closed in the face of the west in general, and America in particular.
There is a state economy, and state production establishments; there are factories for food productions, carpets, fabrics, porcelain, plastics, medicines, paper, cars, tires, electric products, cement, petrol products, etc…… and it seems that the west, and America in particular, prefers to “privatize” the production, meaning; handling it by private companies. And likes marketing and globalizing this type of economy.
And these private companies would grow and grow, becoming giants that would eat up everything that stands in their way, in order to remain alive.
And when the growing opportunities of these companies start to decline, they start looking for new markets, new cities, and new consumers.
This is the reason for a lot of the recent wars, in my opinion, for the ideological wars ended long ago. There are no more ideals to fight for, nor to market.
Wars became for the sake of companies afraid to become bankrupt….the owners of those companies having a strong hand on the leaders of states, and parties, (that is, if some of them aren’t actually cabinet members).
Why??
Because those leaders need the money to finance the spreading of their ideas, they need the media, to reinforce their power, because, for those leaders and parties, it means remaining a longer period in the seats of power.
And where would the money come from?? From the donations of poor, or mid-income citizens??
Of course not, for those are not related to the matter, nor have any interest.
The real interest lies with the huge, private companies, (owned by minorities of people), that want to remain alive, regardless of the price… to keep on producing, and find the consumers for that production, some chicken, hamburger, and pizza restaurants, companies of Pepsi-cola, and others, companies producing cars, trucks, planes, and trains, clothes, shoes, home electrical instruments, mobile companies, and computer companies. Then, there are the companies that produce war technologies; (radars and computers), and weapons for armies; (guns, tanks, humvy cars, war planes, and helicopter planes).
There are companies who want new markets, and new customers to invest, and remain alive, like banks, financial establishments, and oil industry companies, etc……
I see all these dreaming of getting to Iraq now, and shall do all they can to implant their feet into the new Iraq.
And that would be the most evident and logical reason for the war on Iraq.
There are many companies who are facing the dilemma of not being able to grow and expand, and perhaps, the inability to remain alive for a long coming period. New markets mean new life. That would be the new blood pumping into the veins of these old companies, to keep her alive.
This is capitalism… it has to grow And expand into other countries, in order to live…
Is it connected with the colonization of other countries?
That’s how I see it…there must be this connection.
Armies, occupation, and an occupying countries, and some people who refuse occupation, of which the victims would fall. And some huge companies who are ready to finance the war, and wait to reap the harvest of that war.
This is how I see the scene in Iraq today, and in Syria, then Iran, later on.