News, views, etc. …
Back to Main
May 21, 2005
Open Thread 05-49
Comments
via Suburbian Guerilla
Bush on stem cell research:
“I made very clear to Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayer’s money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life – I’m against that,” Bush said. “Therefore, if the bill does that, I would veto it.”
The Iraqis will love such a principled man.
Run, don’t walk, straight over to Digby, and take a look at the very graphic way he compares the acceptable versus the unacceptable ways of “destroying life in order to save life.”
Best thing I’ve seen in a blog this week.
Posted by: Mrs. Robinson | May 21 2005 17:03 utc | 3
Reuters story
“Violence in Iraq cripples $21-bln rebuilding effort”
Posted by: x | May 21 2005 17:24 utc | 4
Another good Knight Ridder analysis
Senate rules change would help Bush’s effort to consolidate power
All presidents seek power, but President Bush is setting a new standard with his efforts to consolidate and expand presidential authority.
He may be on the verge of his biggest victory yet as the Senate debates whether to change its rules for dealing with judicial nominations. A decision to bar Senate filibusters – unlimited debate – against judicial nominees effectively would give Bush a free hand in picking judges. It also would reduce the inherent power of every senator, and the Senate itself, to exert leverage against any president.
…
Presidential scholars say Bush already has gone beyond previous presidents in the use of his authority.
“This Bush White House has been extremely aggressive in expanding presidential power,” said Allan Lichtman, a presidential scholar at American University in Washington. “Previous presidents have used presidential power, have used executive privilege, have used executive orders, but this president has really sent it into the stratosphere.”
Exc. Digby post.
If one considers the number of fertilized eggs destroyed in IVF attempts…. then it’s OK to destroy life to “make” life, but it’s wrong to destroy life to save life.
A new version of it’s OKIYAR.
Posted by: jawbone | May 21 2005 19:44 utc | 6
We don’t hear a lot about Bush as a figure of fabulous pretension….but this piece of damaged goods who spends hours every day playing at video-games–does anyone honestly think that he could know anything, care anything, or think anything on the subject stem-cell research? In our formative years, from ages zero to forty, when we learn to do our thinking, Bush’s career was confined, so far as I can tell, to the ingestion of mind-altering substances. That’s all he ever did, and the time for his taking an interest in biological science was over and done with long, long ago. His political career is nothing more than the massive denial of a wasted life: this is very often the case with the self-st yled “born again,” who can’t bear to accept the irreversible and undeniable loss of life-time that made such an improbable turn of events so urgently imaginable in the first place.
Posted by: alabama | May 21 2005 20:01 utc | 7
outraged
thanks for the chinese defence link – china could walk in to wherever it wants tho i doubt they have any intentions to do so but it possesses an unbelievable level of defence on every front
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 21 2005 20:01 utc | 8
Question about capitalism for our experts here.
I’m reading Sach’s book “end of poverty” and it has an interesting note about a program in Bangladesh to give micro-loans to small groups of village women to start businesses. The claim is that default rate is very low and the lenders have worked very hard to reduce transaction costs.
For me this story gets at what I don’t like about both our current form of capitalism and the socialist critique.
Imagine you went to JP Morgan and offered them a tightly validated proof that by firing 80% of their white collar staff, automating, and hiring lower wage not micro but mini loan officers who could vet small business loans, they could boost profits. Of course they would tell you to fuck off, because the purpose of JP morgan is to improve the social status of its management, not to give a shit about stockholders, public, or envronment. High transaction costs and the focus on often terribly insecure lending to big companies like GM and LTCM is a function of the use of social power, not the simple profit making model beloved of Marxist and non-marxist economists. Right? Wrong?
Second, the experience of these women is one of liberation. Entering the money economy means exiting from the slave labor and beatings economy. Their money gives them independence and influence that their physical strength could never get them. So the horribly corrosive effect of markets and alienating extraction of surplus value from labor instead of that glorious “use value” of rural idiocy as Karl so charmingly put it, seems pretty damn good to me in this context. Am I merely deluded, lost in the superstructural wilderness of hegemonic idealism?
Posted by: citizen k | May 21 2005 20:26 utc | 9
U.S. faces questions over ‘kidnappings’ in Europe
Pressure is growing on the United States to respond to allegations that its agents were involved in spiriting terrorist suspects out of three European countries and sending them to nations where they may have been tortured.
In Italy, a judge said this week that foreign intelligence officials “kidnapped” an Egyptian suspect in Milan two years ago and took him to a U.S. base from where he was flown home.
In Germany, a Munich prosecutor is preparing a batch of questions to U.S. authorities on the case of a Lebanese-born German who says he was arrested in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003 and flown by U.S. agents to a jail in Afghanistan.
And in Sweden, a parliamentary ombudsman has criticized the security services over the expulsion of two Egyptian terrorism suspects who were handed over to U.S. agents and flown home aboard a U.S. government-leased plane in 2001.
Campaign group Human Rights Watch said there was credible evidence the pair had been tortured while being held incommunicado for five weeks after their return. One was later convicted in a “patently unfair” trial.
Posted by: Fran | May 21 2005 20:39 utc | 10
New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action – Probe Finds ‘Rendition’ Of Terror Suspects Illegal
Inside an airport police station, Swedish officers watched as the CIA operatives pulled out scissors and rapidly sliced off the prisoners’ clothes, including their underwear, according to newly released Swedish government documents and eyewitness statements. They probed inside the men’s mouths and ears and examined their hair before dressing the pair in sweat suits and draping hoods over their heads. The suspects were then marched in chains to the plane, where they were strapped to mattresses on the floor in the back of the cabin.
So began an operation the CIA calls an “extraordinary rendition,” the forcible and highly secret transfer of terrorism suspects to their home countries or other nations where they can be interrogated with fewer legal protections.
…
Swedish security police said they were taken aback by the swiftness and precision of the CIA agents that night. Investigators concluded that the Swedes essentially stood aside and let the Americans take control of the operation, moving silently and communicating with hand signals, the documents show.
“I can say that we were surprised when a crew stepped out of the plane that seemed to be very professional, that had obviously done this before,” Arne Andersson, an assistant director for the Swedish national security police, told government investigators.
…
More conflicts arose after the plane landed. One Swedish officer walked up the steps of the aircraft to greet the crew and was surprised to see that the agents — a half-dozen or so Americans and two Egyptians — were wearing hoods with semi-opaque fabric around the face, even though the small airport was essentially deserted.
“I told them that you don’t need to wear hoods because there is no one here,” the officer recalled in his statement to investigators. The foreign agents ignored him.
Posted by: Fran | May 21 2005 20:56 utc | 11
“Am I merely deluded, lost in the superstructural wilderness of hegemonic idealism?”
Do the people there wear shriner hats and watch arena football?
I’ll say countervailing pressures of concentrated capital expansion obviate these micro-lending schemes, as expanding capitalism in “developing” world requires ever cheaper labor.
But, I would like to know more, and will read this, even though saxhs is a contributing author of Russia’s kleptocracy.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to expropriate most of the wealth of the 380 or so billionaires and centrally distribute resources and centrally plan a kind of “development” intended to avoid the exploitation of labor?
Me, strolling toward my little philanstery of the mind.
Posted by: slothrop | May 21 2005 21:37 utc | 13
short but effective commentary on the iraqui resistance by l. saud at counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/laith05212005.html
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 21 2005 22:05 utc | 14
“The war, the older woman told me, was not the war for democracy and freedom that she thought her young family member had been sent to fight. Others must know, she said. There was one other thing she wanted to share with me. Since returning from Iraq, the young woman had been getting large black tattoos all over her body. She seemed intent on changing her skin.”
seymour hersh
guardian
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 21 2005 22:14 utc | 15
Slothrop: “Do the people there wear shriner hats and watch arena football?” Only the better sort. The rest of us wear gimme caps and watch videos. My favorites this week are “Wild Cheerleaders of the Upper Midwest” and “Jules et Jim IV: Moulin Parole Cha-Cha”. Well, one of them is more entertaining than the other.
Sachs did stupid stuff in Russia and I’m not sure I buy his schtick, as we put it here in the dark ages of the Red States, but none of that matters for this little anecdote.
You ask Wouldn’t it just be easier to expropriate most of the wealth of the 380 or so billionaires and centrally distribute resources and centrally plan a kind of “development” intended to avoid the exploitation of labor. Sadly enough, the answer is “no”. Central plan implies central administrators with vast powers, and due to the insufferable workings of the laws of human organizations, it appears as if that works poorly – whether at GOSPLAN or JP Morgan.
You say “I’ll say countervailing pressures of concentrated capital expansion obviate these micro-lending schemes, as expanding capitalism in “developing” world requires ever cheaper labor. Can you refer me to an empirical backup for that or is it just, as theory predicts? What would be the mechanism?
In any event, none of that addresses my query. From the viewpoint of a german graduate student of the 19th century with a rather narrow range of experience and certainly from the viewpoint of an observer of the Manchester textile mills in full foulness, the money economy is wage slavery. Without dismissing this view, I ask about an alternative view. The virtue of cash is that it provides an anonymous equalizer. You buy this, you sell that, all without the permission of a husband or village elder, or responsible comrade. You can tell me all you want that Concentrated Capital will crush this feeble flouresence of false consciousness (I hope you would not stoop to such alliteration), but still, they move? No? They have a moment of dignity, freedom, and modest prosperity. Not bad on this planet of sorrow.
Posted by: citizen k | May 21 2005 22:16 utc | 16
I have such a superficial reading of development lit., I should probably keep quiet.
One thing: you hear now and again folks from places like AEI claim development in China and India have elevated standards of living. But, how does “standard of living” calculus account for the status of subsistence economy as opposed to the standard of living endured by urban poor? Seems what proponents of globalization do is begin an index of standard of life with urban poor, whose standard of living can only be measured by the value of abstract labor, rather than a standard of life measured by subsistence agriculture and barter enonomy. I don’t know.
Posted by: slothrop | May 21 2005 22:41 utc | 17
R.I.P.
Gur was politically outspoken on her tours abroad, and was popular in Europe and Germany. In March 2004, she lectured in Brussels, and criticized Ariel Sharon’s policies, saying she could understand the mechanism that produced suicide bombers.
Friends and associates called Gur a “warm and wise woman,” who was “like an older sister to us all.”
Gur was diagnosed with cancer nine months ago. “I view life as a journey of initiation for death,” she told a journalist a year ago. “A person lives, suffers, dies. All the rest is grace. And love is grace. Writing is grace.”
Gur’s funeral took place today at 11 A.M. at Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery.
Posted by: Friendly Fire | May 21 2005 22:51 utc | 18
Slothrop: The question you ask about living standards is a tough one. I first visited China nearly 30 years ago and was impressed by two things. First, that people were poor and very unhappy with the weight of the state. And second that, from what I saw, there was little of the horrible poverty you saw in the non-communist third world. Most people were poor, but there were not babies on the streets starving. There was obvious wealth disparity and more obvious power disparity, but compared to Nigeria or Mexico it was nothing. Of course, it’s a huge country, so I didn’t see what I’m told was widespread starvation in parts of the countryside. Now you see absurd wealth, vast inequality, but Beijing has miles of comfortable workers apartments where there used to be just disgusting concrete slab people warehouses and ordinary people have some hope of living reasonably well – and there are beggars in the street. How do you do the financial or moral calculus on that? Beyond me, but I know I’d rather be an ordinary worker in Shanghai or Beijing or even Wuhan now than 40 years ago. By the same token, it would obviously be better to be poor in Havana than in Cali. But I can’t dismiss the obvious fact that people in Beijing today can go out to eat, watch a movie, fall in love, read a book, play a football game, walk in the park, without some nasty little people’s commissar grinding his shoe into their face. And that means something
Posted by: citizen k | May 21 2005 23:06 utc | 19
citizen k
are you completely naîve
what do you think happens in your blessed western ‘democracies’. the people’s commissars have other names there but they are all the more poweful. & i know china very well indeed & you do not hint in your post at the quite ‘plural’ lives lived even by a chinese person in shenyang or in sinkiang province
your ‘open’ world, i do not envy at all, not in the least, i would rather live in changsha than florida
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 21 2005 23:30 utc | 20
The Great Forgetting: Saddam’s statue and Leopold’s ghost
Posted by: Nugget | May 21 2005 23:36 utc | 21
RGiap: Perhaps that is because you see yourself at the podium giving a lecture on the subtleties of Mao thought, while I see myself in the audience hoping that my lack of attention and interest won’t be noticed or that at least I only escape with a minor beating, and that maybe I can chat up some girl there after the meeting. From your Olympian view, my crass concerns must seem very deficient in Moral Gravitas.
Do you really know China very well indeed? Do you speak and read both Mandarin and Cantonese? Have you lived there in a small town? Have you travelled widely with a non-state guide? Or like the French maoist academics of my experience do you operate at the level of cultural knowledge that satisfies Richard Perle on Iraq? I am far from an expert on China, so I await, with anticipation, for you to share some of your deep knowledge.
Posted by: citizen k | May 21 2005 23:45 utc | 22
citizen k
i am not the french maoist academic cadre that you so dearly imagine
but yes i think my knowledge of china is very reasonable indeed tho i am thankful for outraged’s link to the chinese defence news
your comment do not lack gravitas – indeed you insist on it – but i feel that they are naïve & a little maniplulative with the ‘facts’
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 21 2005 23:53 utc | 23
RGiap: I noticed you did not answer my question. Without reading knowledge and conversational mandarin it seems hard to be even moderately well informed, let alone expert. Have you read Simon Leys? I read him when I came back from China the first time, and it ruined my poltically correct attitude I fear permanently. Meeting the lingdao in rural china and, with a shock, recognizing this distillation of small town banker’s smugness combined with gangster arrogance started to cure me of grand theories. Leys explained why quite clearly.
What exactly do you mean by asserting I am not careful with the ‘facts’? I’m impressed that such an ambivalent post as mine – for I am not really sure of the answers – raised such a strong objection from you.
Posted by: citizen k | May 22 2005 0:31 utc | 24
i’m familiar with the work of mr leys who is celebrated here by right wing anarchists bu whose ‘understanding’ of the chinese & their government i find peculiar
i prefer his fellow australian – neale hunter – who wrote shanghai journal – a meticulous account of what happened during the cultural revolution while it was happening. hunter had both intellect & generosity
& there is a site – far from sympathetic to chinese politics – morning sun -(it seems to be from new york – the long bow group who also do documentaries)
bruce mcfarlane is also an interesting writer in chinese economics & politics
i have had a particular relationship with the chinese since the early seventies & visited then & again in the nineties. without guides or the need for them
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 22 2005 1:13 utc | 26
& my reaction to your post.
i found it a questioning post as your often are – sometimes i wonder if it is only rhetorical but always ending with a slur or an attack on ‘marx’, ‘marxism’ or ‘communism’. sometime i wonder if you have only purely academic notions of them
i just find primitive anti communism appearing at a time when the world is going up in flames a little troubling
i am not an academic – i am a poet – tho i suppose that is not evident here
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 22 2005 1:21 utc | 27
Galloway ally sells US arms kit to Iraq
….It has now emerged that a firm run by Mr Zureikat, 51, and other members of his family, has the exclusive rights to sell highly sensitive military encryption technologies made by a US firm in Iraq.
Their company, Middle East Advanced Semi-conductors, was awarded the contract in January 2004 by the US firm Transcrypt to sell its specialised chips to the Iraqi military, police and government. The same chips are heavily used by the US army, other major US federal agencies and other secret military clients in the Middle East.
A Transcrypt spokeswoman confirmed that all exports and sales contracts – including its deal with Mr Zureikat’s firm – first have to be authorised by the US government under strict export control rules…..
Posted by: Nugget | May 22 2005 1:23 utc | 28
Plan to let F.B.I. track mail in terrorism inquiries
…The proposal, to be considered next week in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would allow the bureau to direct postal inspectors to turn over the names, addresses and all other material appearing on the outside of letters sent to or from people connected to foreign intelligence investigations.
The plan would effectively eliminate the postal inspectors’ discretion in deciding when so-called mail covers are needed and give sole authority to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if it determines that the material is “relevant to an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence,” according to a draft of the bill….
“Prison wardens may be able to monitor their prisoners’ mail,” said Lisa Graves, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, “but ordinary Americans shouldn’t be treated as prisoners in their own country.”
Posted by: Nugget | May 22 2005 1:56 utc | 29
Allow me to insert some silliness among all the horror. If only it were a bit shorter, I could start going by my unitarian jihadist name, Sister Nail Gun of Compassion.
Do you have your Unitarian Jihadist name?
I assume there can be no spoiler in this, but I think there was a mistake in the new Star Wars…the kids were named Barbra and Jenna, weren’t they? Wrong Dark Father.
Posted by: fauxreal | May 22 2005 2:01 utc | 30
Leys was not writing as a theorist of government, he wrote as a witness of how people lived and spoke. I don’t particularly care if he shares my politics, what I cared about was that at a time that many people in some segments of the left shared Mr. Nixon’s enthusiasm for the Great Helmsman, what I read in Leys corresponded with what I saw in China and rang true. For me, the ideology of the secret policeman, the bully, or the Great Leader is of little moment. And I am suspicious of set formula for understanding the world – especially when they produce judgements such as that the American catastrophe in Iraq is identical to the Wermacht on the Eastern Front.
As for my notions of Marxism, I have both studied the subject and met many people who believed in it or lived under it – but few who had both qualities. My hostility to Marxism is based partly on my hostility to all such theories of everything, and partly for my disgust with an ideology used to justify so many crimes, but also on my observation that it serves to cripple the opposition to the right.
Posted by: citizen k | May 22 2005 2:05 utc | 31
i feel it completely appropriate to compare the illegal occupying forces in iraq to the wermacht on the eastern front. the differences are only casual
as i noted simon leys was amongst the first to demonise what was happening in china. i simply do not agree with him
& again i find the generalisations you so kindly offer about the natural cruelty of communists as little more than an insult. as for oppositin to the right – ask any jewish person alive of my mothers generation who fought for them the only people to fight for them in whatever country you want to name – who fought fascism & won & she will reply in a breath – communists
i do not want to get into an endless argument about this citizen k – i think i understand from where you speak – & it is a far different space than the one i have chosen – but i do not want to construct fury where critique is more necessary
i shall respec our differences – i haveno interest at all in conversion – of any kind
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 22 2005 2:22 utc | 32
reading rgiap’s defense of chinese communism reminds me of a joke ostensibly told in Poland prior to the fall of communism in eastern europe.
“what is the difference between communism and capitalism?”
” in capitalism, man exploits man; in communism is is just the reverse.”
Posted by: gylangirl | May 22 2005 3:07 utc | 33
The Great Game- looks like it’s going to go into extra innings:
“complete strategic failure”
Posted by: biklett | May 22 2005 3:09 utc | 34
I will jump in in an earlier moment of the citizen k – slothrop – rgiap debate:
Second, the experience of these women is one of liberation. Entering the money economy means exiting from the slave labor and beatings economy. Their money gives them independence and influence that their physical strength could never get them. So the horribly corrosive effect of markets and alienating extraction of surplus value from labor instead of that glorious “use value” of rural idiocy as Karl so charmingly put it, seems pretty damn good to me in this context. Am I merely deluded, lost in the superstructural wilderness of hegemonic idealism?
As I see it they are able to enter the position of selfemployed entrepreneur. In my reading of Marx this is according to him a rather good position as it gives opportunity to control but not alienate themselves from their work. From Marx perspective they were however domed to disaster as they would be gobbled up by the monopoly capitlistic structures. Please note that they do not become capitalists (in marxian terminology) simply from owning their own business, capitalists are more or less pure owners, people who own but not work in companies.
As I see it, the future is not easy to predict. And no matter how high esteem you might hold Marx in, he did consider natural resources to be of no real value (in so far as they held no work), thus allocating all advances of capitalism (and the future thereof) in organizational structure and none in coal.
Guess this is a longwinded way of saying that I think it is good they got their mini-loans.
Now for something completely different:
Fran,
thanks for bringing this up here. It has been a sort of slow-boiling scandal for some time now, with new chapters popping up now and then. Considering that Sweden is supposed to be (according to the mainstream swedish discourse) a non-aligned country and a beacon of human rights (it is neither, but I said according to mainstream discourse didn´t I?) it has got a lot of press that Sweden handed over two terror-suspects to USA that then got tortured in Egypt.
However, there is no probability that the government might fall on this since the resonsible minister was Anna Lindh and she is dead and you do not speak ill of the dead.
Very interesting to see that this is a part of a pattern – which was to be suspected – and that the US is picking up people in different parts of the europe.
Speaking of that where is DeAnander? (Just jesting, but failed to find the appropriate smiley.)
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | May 22 2005 4:07 utc | 35
Fingerprint scanners coming to Illinois library
Via Boing Boing
Library officials in a Chicago suburb plan to scan and record visitor fingerprints, purportedly to prevent unauthorized persons from using library computers. Way to make libraries a more happyfun haven of knowledge, guys!
The scanners _ to be installed on 130 library computers this summer _ will verify the identity of computer users. Library officials said they wanted to tighten computer access because many people borrow library cards and pass codes from friends or family to log on. The technology also will help the library implement a new policy that allows parents to put filters on their children’s’ accounts, officials said.
But privacy advocates have criticized the plan, which would make Naperville only the second library system in the nation to use fingerprint-scanning technology, according to the American Library Association. “We take people’s fingerprints because we think they might be guilty of something, not because they want to use the library,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union in Illinois.
-Uncle $cam
Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 22 2005 4:18 utc | 36
Frank Rich:
It’s All Newsweek’s Fault
IN the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Fareed Zakaria wrote a 6,791-word cover story for Newsweek titled “Why Do They Hate Us?” Think how much effort he could have saved if he’d waited a few years. As we learned last week, the question of why they hate us can now be answered in just one word: Newsweek.
From the Independent:
Revealed: health fears over secret study into GM food – Rats fed GM corn due for sale in Britain developed abnormalities in blood and kidneys
Rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified corn developed abnormalities to internal organs and changes to their blood, raising fears that human health could be affected by eating GM food.
The Independent on Sunday can today reveal details of secret research carried out by Monsanto, the GM food giant, which shows that rats fed the modified corn had smaller kidneys and variations in the composition of their blood.
According to the confidential 1,139-page report, these health problems were absent from another batch of rodents fed non-GM food as part of the research project.
Posted by: Fran | May 22 2005 5:11 utc | 37
RGiap – as you say, experiences cause different perceptions. I know a generally far left Frenchwoman who is an enormous fan of the US Marine Corps – because they rescued her pregnant mother from a German jail just as interrogation was about to begin. But I was earlier reminded of Camus infamous excuse for supporting the war in Algeria so I desist – he might have even been right. Perhaps if the left had fought against the pied-noirs, instead of in favor of the romantic, but not so pleasant rebels, things could have turned out better.
Swedish Mortality: For sure. One argument, I think this is Braudel’s argument, is that the market and a cash economy is not the same as capitalism. The marxists say, “markets generate capitalism” but whether this is correct or not, capitalism (the rule of people who control money) is as hostile to markets and entrepreneurs as marxism. To me, the mechanism of the economy is not so important as the result for actual human life. If we could all be assured of a 4 hour workng day and independence would it matter whether it came from selling vegetables in the market or giving them away at the State Emporium ? I’m not convinced by anything I ‘ve read or seen that anyone knows what type of economic system leads to greater actual benefit, but we do know that lack of accountability and too much concentrated power leads to misery. And as a practical matter, these micro-loan banks seems to me to do more for poor women than all the People’s Solidarity speechifiers in the world. I’m unconvinced that with a proper grasp of the grand scheme of history I would be able to understand that Poulantzes and Althusser and the United Masses Fan Club for the Great Helmsman have anywhere near as good intentions, results, or political insight as the micro-bank lenders.
Posted by: citizen k | May 22 2005 7:44 utc | 38
“To me, the mechanism of the economy is not so important as the result for actual human life.”
From a different angle. Isn’t this point built into the idea of the “economy,” as independent of actual human life, which is a rather quaint belief that is not supported by the evidence, yet, it is aa belief that is nonethelss popular with Marxists, capitalists, anti-capitalists, as well as marketers of all varieties, who make false assumptions out of professional obligation (e.g., competitive equilibrium, Pareto efficiency, auxiliary hypotheses)?
So what demand is supplied by those who pretend “economy” is a real thing independent of actual human life? This seems to be the interesting theoritical question, as opposed to, the interesting practical, Reaganesque, actual life question: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Posted by: razor | May 22 2005 8:15 utc | 39
Retreat to the fortress: Commanders Plan Eventual Consolidation of U.S. Bases in Iraq
U.S. military commanders have prepared plans to consolidate American troops in Iraq into four large air bases as they look ahead to giving up more than 100 other bases now occupied by international forces, officers said.
…
Eventually, U.S. units would end up concentrated at the four heavily fortified, strategically located hubs, enabling them to provide continued logistical support and emergency combat assistance, the officers said.
…
Nonetheless, the consolidation plan appears to reflect a judgment by U.S. military commanders that American forces are likely to be in Iraq for some years, even after their numbers begin to decline, and that they probably will continue to face danger. The new buildings are being designed to withstand direct mortar strikes, according to a senior military engineer.
…
According to Yenter and others working on the plan, the four bases were chosen to enable U.S. forces to maintain a foothold in various regions of Iraq. Centered around airfields to facilitate resupply operations and troop mobility, the four are Tallil in the south, Al Asad in the west, Balad in the center and either Irbil or Qayyarah in the north.
Each base is being designed to hold a brigade-size combat team plus aviation units and other support personnel. Initially referred to in planning documents as “enduring bases,” the term was changed in February to “contingency operating bases.”
“The new, sturdier buildings will give the bases a more permanent character, the officers acknowledged. But they said the consolidation plan was not meant to establish a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq.Instead, they said, it is part of a withdrawal expected to occur in phases”
absurd
Posted by: annie | May 22 2005 9:08 utc | 41
“…it is part of a withdrawal expected to occur in phases”
absurd
Quite so …
Posted by: Outraged | May 22 2005 9:12 utc | 42
An Open Letter to President Bush:
‘Prove to Iraqis You are Not an Imperialist Force’
An Iraqi political party, the Free Iraqi Society Party, has published an open letter to President Bush that calls for the U.S. to compensate all Iraqi victims of the invasion, and to withdraw its forces, initially out of the major cities.
By Qasem Salman
May 17, 2005
Summary/comment and a link to the english translation of the open letter here.
Posted by: Outraged | May 22 2005 9:18 utc | 43
The US a sinking ship upon the Sea of world opinion ?
Le Jornada, May 13, Mexico:
September 11th Made U.S. ‘Fascistic’ – and Mexico Must Adjust
English Translation
“The people of the United States have been immersed in the process of becoming fascistic since the beginning of the 21st century, due to the fear of losing the ‘American way of life.’
This tendency, … has been utilized regularly by George W. Bush during 2004 [the election], and has been accompanied by criminal policies that have led to Afghanistan and Iraq, and the restructuring of the global legal order to suit his imperial will — in complete disregard for the principal of peaceful coexistence between nations or the fundamental rights of so many people.
All the studies and polls of recent months indicate that a clear majority of Americans approve of the actions of the U.S. forces in Asia, and the role that multinational [corporations] have in those conflicts …”
Summary/comment and a link to the original article here.
Posted by: Outraged | May 22 2005 9:31 utc | 44
U.S. Army officers plot exit strategy – from the army
…Last year, Army lieutenants and captains left the service at an annual rate of 8.7% — the highest since 2001. Pentagon officials say they expect the attrition rate to improve slightly this year. Yet interviews with several dozen military officers revealed an undercurrent of discontent within the Army’s young officer corps that the Pentagon’s statistics do not yet capture….
Posted by: Nugget | May 22 2005 9:49 utc | 45
SOUTHERN SHUNEH, Jordan – While top Israeli and Palestinian officials discussed security at a Middle East forum Saturday, an American senator advised Arab leaders to focus on injustices in their own countries and reminded them that U.S. policy is security for Israel first and justice for Palestinians “if possible.”
Posted by: Nugget | May 22 2005 10:31 utc | 46
Dahr Jamail again. Shia shooting at Shia. Excellent stuff.
citizen k/razor
evidently you are the two last Great Bourgeois Humanists whose understanding of humanity surpasses the idosyncracies of 18th century german philosophy, you have clearly surpassed the english philsopher of the 1th & the french of the 20th
clearly you not only understand your Great Nation but all us little people especially the poorer of us & of course you know what is better, what is good for us
because you have seen the red banners burning with the blood of martyrs & you know everything from the 4th congress of the cpsu(b) & the 9th congress of the cpc & of course you understand completely every strand of leftisht thought to its last fibre
that much is clear
the right wing anarchism of mr simon leys is a god ally for your cause as he seems to miss the entirety of what he so sanctimoniouslly attacks
this is not a real conversation & you know it
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 22 2005 13:11 utc | 49
I just discovered a book which could help us a great deal. It’s an old (humorous in intent) book by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd called The Deeper Meaning of Liff. The book takes a bunch of place-names, some obscure, some well-known, and makes up definitions for them as ordinary words. Most of them are droll, but some strike me as indispensible for discussing politics:
Abalemma (AB-a-LEM-mah) n.: The agonizing situation in which there is only one possible decision but you still can’t make it.
Brabant (brah-BANT) adj.: Very much inclined to see how far you can push someone.
Deventer (de-VEN-ter) n.: A decision that’s very hard to make because so little depends on it—like which way to walk around a park.
Firebag (FYR-bag) n.: A remark intended to cue applause at a Republican convention.
Foffarty (FOF-er-tee) adj.: Unable to find the right moment to leave.
Ely (EE-le) n.: The first, tiniest inkling you get that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong.
Wembly (WEM-blee) n.: The hideous moment of confirmation that the disaster presaged in the ely (q.v.) has actually struck.
Yetman (YET-man) n.: A yes-man who is waiting to see whom it would be most advantageous to agree with.
Hoff (hoff) vb.: To deny indignantly something which is palpably true.
Hordle (HAW-dul) vb.: To dissemble in a fruity manner, like William F. Buckley.
Grimbister (GRIM-bis-ter) n.: Large body of cars on a highway all traveling at exactly the speed limit because one of them is a police car.
Macroy (ma-KROY) n.: An authoritative, confident opinion based on one you read in a newspaper.
Nindigully (NIN-di Gull-i) n.: One who constantly needs to be repersuaded of something they’ve already agreed to.
Old Cassop (OLD KAS-up) n.: Piece of caring reassurance which all parties know is completely untrue. As in “a load of…”
Pitroddie (pit-ROD-ee) n.: A middle- or upper-class person who affects a working-class style of speech.
Spoffard (SPOF-ard) n.: A congressman whose contribution to politics is limited to saying “Hear, hear.”
Think of how useful these words could be: “To my mind, the ely was when the firebags started hoffing about global warming.” “The coalition of the willing was obviously just a grimbister; now that they have stopped being so foffarty, it has fallen apart.” “Bush has been caught in an abalemma of his own making over… well, just about everything, really.”
Posted by: Blind Misery | May 22 2005 15:35 utc | 50
RGiap: I’ve never claimed to understand everything. Especially when it comes to something as complex as China, I feel the limitations of my own knowledge rather painfully.
Since you seem to be like me unable to read Chinese, can I suggest:
1. Li – Mao’s Last Dancer.
2. Niu-Niu, No tears for Mao
3. Sun-Childers/Childers – The white haired girl
4. Shapiro – Mao’s War against nature.
5. Becker – Hungry Ghosts
6. Jung Chang – Wild Swans
Thanks for the morning sun reference. Mao cures deaf mutes – a revelation to me!
Posted by: citizen k | May 22 2005 15:44 utc | 51
finally, i have read most of the books you note above & it has not altered my opinion of china greatly – my relation with that country extends now for over thirty years
i have my own problems in relation to chinese developments & read in a nulber of languages constantly towards thos problems
but the chinese can take care of themselves as a people, as a nation – as the new furnace of modern capitalism
i am not here to offer them praises nor to condemn them – it has always been a more complex world than that even in the midst of the great proletarian cultural revolution it was not so black & white as conemporary commentators or recents historians, especially chinese historians would like us to believe
i witnessed aspects of that revolution very clearly & to read revisionist accounts of those moments is a little like alice in wonderland
their history or even their politics do not concern me here at this time – except to the degree that ut could be argued that that the whole middle eastern military adventure of the united states is the first steps in its war against china because a war there will be
my concern here at moon is almost exclusively concentrated on what is happening in the middle east & what is happening to the central asian republics
another focus is clearly the political, legislative & juridque collapse of the american empire
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 22 2005 16:11 utc | 52
Don’t you forget about me citizen k, I make you think LONG time.
Posted by: Anchee Min | May 22 2005 16:26 utc | 53
blind misery, you have made my day and i just woke up . there’s a deventer thats been on my mind for days,no matter how much i try i will never be able to turn it into an abalemma,and i have decided to face the music. thank you.
Posted by: annie | May 22 2005 17:37 utc | 55
razor
So what demand is supplied by those who pretend “economy” is a real thing independent of actual human life?
Karl Korsch:
“From the bourgeois point of view, the individual citizen thinks of `economic’ things and forces as of something entering into his private life from without…. According to the new conception, however, individuals in all they do are moving, from the outset, within definite social circumstances that arise from a given stage in the development of material production. . . . Such high ideals of bourgeois society as that of the free, self-determining individual, freedom and equality of all citizens in the exercise of their political rights, and equality of all in the eyes of the law are now seen to be nothing but correlative concepts to the fetishism of the commodity. . . . Only by keeping the people unconscious of the real contents of those basic relations of the existing social order . . ., only through the fetishistic transformation of the social relations between the class of capitalists and the class of wage laborers, resulting in the `free and unhampered’ sale of the `commodity labor-power’ to the owner of `capital,’ is it possible in this society to speak of freedom and equality.” Korsch, Karl Marx,
pp. 75-77.44
Posted by: slothrop | May 22 2005 19:00 utc | 56
It appears to me that by most measures, China/India, per capita, have improved the quality of life (caloric intake, health, etc.) over the past 20 years. To what extent has this been achieved by command economics? As the Millennium UN Report insists, “supply-side” constraints to growth are a primary concern in attempts to end poverty:
Market forces alone will not rescue the village. Indeed, markets tend to
bypass villages with little if any monetary income, and no ready means to
earn it, given the low productivity and poor connections with the regional and
world economy. The village barely lives off its own food production. Without
money it cannot attract doctors, teachers, or transport firms. Without electricity
or access to modern fuels it cannot run food processing equipment, irrigation
pumps, computers, or electric tools for carpentry or apparel. Villagers do
not have enough income to save. And since infrastructure and a skilled work
force are lacking, private investors do not come. Young men and women, particularly
the literate, leave the village—and the best educated, the country.
Indeed, the report stresses very strategic “official development assistance” to alleviate poverty.
It’s a good read so far.
Posted by: slothrop | May 22 2005 19:27 utc | 57
In all seriousness, microloans seem to be a good development stimulus, but even more so, a means to preserve local economies against the exploitation of monopoly capital. Obviously, any success of this effort would depend on curbing corruption and regulating uses of investment to promote environmentally sustainable enterprises.
But, I am no expert, certainly.
Posted by: slothrop | May 22 2005 19:39 utc | 58
razor
Korsch: In the bourgeois epoch, “the production of the products of labor is pretext and cover for the … exploitation and oppression of the laborers. The scientific method of concealing this state of affairs is called political economy.” Its function: to shift “responsibility for all the waste and hideousness which is already found at the present stage of development of the productive forces of society, and which emerges catastrophically during economic crises, from the realm of human action to the sphere of so-called immutable, nature-ordained relations between things.” Korsch, Karl Marx, vol. 2, p. 65
Posted by: slothrop | May 22 2005 19:50 utc | 59
Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated 🙂
Seriously, I have been going through a rough patch of late — not so severe as that reported by Outraged but along somewhat similar lines. Am not feeling too frisky nor do I have a lot of energy to spare for online debate. Face-space is taking up all of my energy at present, and trying to rebuild after minor-league devastating experience. Compared to being detained in A.G. or surviving in Iraq, nothing to write home about; but our little personal crises seem large to us while they are happening.
I miss y’all but it may be a little while before I have much to contribute. I do note that Fran’s post above re side effects of GM diet in rats, reproduces Arpad Puzstai’s results a couple of years back (for which he was blackballed and discredited). Also note that I have been in Canada for a week or so and most Canadians I met were deeply afraid of the US and almost resigned to being invaded or otherwise taken over by the Yanks. As one middle-aged gentleman said to me sadly, “Well, we have water. And we have natural gas. And the Americans will just take whatever they want. What could we do?”
My mood at present is morose and deeply depressed — in metaphorical bar-space I would be wandering in with bedroom slippers on, unwashen and unkempt, possibly singing “I’ll Take you Home Again Kathleen” or “Danny Boy” at the drop of a hat, and tending to get a bit teary with anyone who will stand me a drink, ugh — so I’ll spare the company any maudlin monologues and drop by again when I’m feeling a bit more coherent and presentable.
My apologies Min. So many good books, so few brain cells to remember them.
RGiap: China is a big country and certainly I knew people who went there during the CR and obtained a view akin to the view of NYC inhabitants of the Trump Hotel get. One of my painful memories of China in the early 1980s was Chinese friends being refused addmitance to the Foreigner Hotels: dogs and Chinese workers not permitted.
Slothrop: only wacko “free market” ideologists can pretend there is any possibility of development without the state. Obviously the Chinese have been too smart to follow the Russian example and hope that the recipe of “loot, add gangsters; attract hot foreign money” produces anything good.
I’d guess that the biggest danger to those micro-loan Bangladeshis is violent suppression by the existing feudal power structure. What I find appalling in Sachs so far is that he still seems to think that markets operate independently of government. But I think this is the mirror image of the grave error in the Korsch quote. Freedom, equality, human dignity are all concepts that are as old as human society although they are elaborated over time. The revolutionary potential of these ideas threatens all exploitative regimes whether they justify their exploitation in terms of the immutable laws of the market or the equally fictitious unbreakable dialectics of history. Patrick Henry even knew that his pleas for liberty were fire on the gasoline of an eventual slave rebellion.
Posted by: citizen k | May 22 2005 20:53 utc | 62
Freedom, equality, human dignity are all concepts that are as old as human society although they are elaborated over time.
In fact, they might be part of primate biology .. there was an article in Scientific American I’ve been meaning to write up. I’ll try and do it tomorrow. It might interest some people here.
deanander
Personal crises are a solution to an online obsession? Gotta get me one of those crises.
Posted by: slothrop | May 22 2005 21:04 utc | 64
Welcome back DeA … take a rest, do some gardening, let some of the others do the heavy lifting round here for a while … we’ll send the drinks over. Just don’t sing too loudly, you’ll disrupt the guys arguing in the corner.
elaborated over time.
No denial of this in the Korsch quote, imo. No marxism, even humanism, can exist without a concept of morality, of “proper humanity,” as Benjamin called it.
Posted by: slothrop | May 22 2005 21:12 utc | 67
colman
“Cure” is always some kind of economic management. Really, isn’t this in fact the basic assumption of macroeconomics?
To me, it is naive, even nihilistic, to believe otherwise.
Posted by: slothrop | May 22 2005 21:17 utc | 68
colman
In the UN Report, 100 billion buys people mosquito nets and protein enough to keep the poor alive. A sensible “cure” I’d say.
Posted by: slothrop | May 22 2005 21:19 utc | 69
deanander
take care, friend
as woody sd take it easy, but take it
Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 22 2005 21:20 utc | 70
fauxreal:
Sister Katana of Sweet Reason (aka: me) sat in the third row of her UU church this morning, proudly wearing the little plastic badge that proclaimed her true name.
We are slowly changing everybody’s badges over to include both their street names and their UJ names.
Gonna take over the world, ya gotta have some fun with it.
Posted by: Mrs. Robinson | May 22 2005 21:50 utc | 71
oh de, i was hoping you were just out sailing.you’re missed around here, heal and come back to us.
Posted by: annie | May 22 2005 21:54 utc | 72
Last china notes:
From memory from the Great Scribe’s records:
1) The Lord of Shang reforms Ch’in by killing or enslaving all merchants, all scholars not working for the state, and any idlers. Peasants are organized in groups of 25 families and strictly governed by headmen. There is no commerce. Anyone objecting is killed. After 5 years there is much increased prosperity. Some people say that they now understand and support the new system. They are punished – because having an opinion on such matters is not permitted. After 10 years Ch’in is the most powerful state in China.
2) And then: Why did Ch’in disappear in total ruin just a few years after obtaining total power? Because they did not understand that the (brutal) methods needed to build an empire are poor methods for keeping an empire.
Posted by: citizen k | May 22 2005 23:38 utc | 74
DeA-,
I too was hoping you were off enjoying yourself, perhaps on the water. Pls. don’t forget how healing sailing can be, in a way that nothing else can…since we were amphibians before we were Chimps…so it takes us wayyy back…
But, please, depending on what happens Tuesday w/Theos attempt to Smash the Senate, You Must Stop by for Huge Celebration or Serious Wake… a few cowards is all that stands between us and a theocracy…or maybe they’ll compromise & put Bork or Hatch in as Chief Court Wrecker rather than Tony the Cow Scalia.
On the Great News Front, did everyone see that Ignacio Chappela just won his tenure fight? He was turned down initially for opposing “selling” of UCB’s College of Natural Resources to Novartis, and his brilliant study showing that even Mexican grown corn was suffering wind blown contamination from Genetically Mutilated Corn planted in America. Happily due to international pressure plus being proven right on the stupidity of the UCB deal w/Novartis, that decision was over-turned. So, Ignacio Chappela was Finally Granted Tenure @UCB.
Posted by: jj | May 23 2005 0:10 utc | 75
The trigger is pulled — 72 hours to save the courts !
“I just signed MoveOn PAC’s emergency petition to stop the ‘nuclear option’, the far right wing’s plan to seize absolute power to stack our courts -– and I hope you will sign too.
Starting Monday, the petition will be delivered straight to Congress every three hours until the final vote, and many of our comments will be read aloud on the Senate floor.
Please sign right now at:
http://www.moveonpac.org/nuclear
Why is this an emergency?
This Tuesday, the Senate will vote on Republican Leader Bill Frist’s ‘nuclear option’ to break the rules of the Senate and give the Republican Party absolute control over appointing federal judges.
For 200 years the minority’s right to filibuster has kept our courts fair, by making sure that federal judges needed to get at least some support from both sides of the aisle before they were given life time appointments.
If Frist eliminates the filibuster, his next step would be to force far right partisan judges onto the powerful U.S. Courts of Appeals. The real targets, however, are the four seats on the Supreme Court likely to become vacant in the next four years.
With that much power on the Supreme Court, the far right could strike down decades of progress on labor rights, environmental protections, reproductive rights, and privacy.
The ‘nuclear option’ will live or die by a final vote, probably on Tuesday, and the vote is still way too close to call. There are at least 6 moderate Republicans still on the fence and only 3 more votes needed to win. If we can get enough of our voices into congress and into the streets in the next 72 hours, we can still save our courts.
Please take a minute to join me and sign the emergency petition today.
http://www.moveonpac.org/nuclear”
P.S, For some reason I didn’t get an email notice from moveon.org on this, and would otherwise have missed it. And wonder how many others didn’t get one.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 23 2005 1:56 utc | 76
It is impolite to blame my foolishness on citizen k or to consign us to the same thought defect camp.
Slothrop. Man, what a host of assumptions, none of which square with my experience, all of which are far wide of the mark as best as I can tell. Curious how marxism can resemble predestination, the analysis of a random blogging stranger fully supplied years ago. Aren’t you disquieted by this improbability?
Posted by: razor | May 23 2005 2:04 utc | 77
DeAnander,
Glad to know that you have not been abducted by the black choppers. Do take care. I saw on BBC that the sun was shining in California (but ain´t it always?) and tea is always good, no matter what you are trying to cure. I think Colman is on to something about gardening, so tea, sun and a bit of gardening might do the trick.
By the way I had some fresh honey in my tea a few weeks ago when visiting bee-keepers and thought about your bees. You are quite right about the difference in quality, fresh honey is far superior to the store varieties. I hope your bees are doing alright, and that you will too soon.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | May 23 2005 2:25 utc | 78
@DeAnander: it would be really interesting to watch the U.S. try to conquer Canada. First, the MSM would talk a lot about how Canada was building the world’s first hydroelectric nuclear weapon—with blurry photos that they would claim were cannisters of weapons-grade maple syrup. Then the U.N. would be given 24 hours to search the country for plutonium. When they failed, we would claim that the Mounties were holding them back by giving them tickets for speeding, and Bush would give a national address telling us about the dire threat posed by Mounties, only he would get the word wrong and tell us that we should be afraid of invasion by Mountains. Finally, we would send off troops, only they would take two weeks to get there because, Canada having no significant oil deposits, our leaders can’t find it on a map.
I used to wonder, when I was a kid, about cartoon shows where the villain would pretend to be nice for a single episode, eroding the heroes’ popular support until they made a mistake and got caught being villainous, usually over something quite silly. I mean, after being the villain for half a season, you would think that people would be smart enough to see through that tactic within about five seconds, right? It has taken the Bush administration to convince me that, if anything, the cartoons overstated the IQ of the average persion.
Posted by: Blind Misery | May 23 2005 5:16 utc | 80
DeA- glad to hear from you. sorry to hear you’re having some bad times. you might want to see if rhodiola rosea, a little liquid b-complex, and some green tea could help.
but who wouldn’t be depressed with the Canadians thinking we’re going to invade…all most of us want to do is move there to get away! :/
when they see us all running for the border, who knows what they’ll think.
after this week, who knows what the US will look like. Bush must not be given more power by the Senate Republicans. They should uphold their side of the separation of powers…but like the separation of church and state, they don’t seem to care too much about constitutional provisions to avoid tyrannies.
Posted by: fauxreal | May 23 2005 5:37 utc | 81
DeA,
Sorry to hear about the roughness – wishing you some tranquility.
Posted by: citizen | May 23 2005 5:46 utc | 82
Uh, Slothrop, my last remark to you was referring to your remark about personal crises rather than the ongoing struggle for the proletariat.
Chavez must sure feel like a thorn in the flesh of Bush! I do no know what to really think of Chavez, but he sure has mojo or whatever! From BBC:
Chavez considers breaking US ties
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he will consider breaking diplomatic ties with the US if it fails to hand over a Cuban-born terror suspect.
Venezuela says Luis Posada Carriles must stand trial over the 1976 bombing of Cuba’s plane that killed 73 people.
Mr Chavez says Washington would be guilty of protecting international terrorism if it refused extradition.
…
“If they don’t extradite him (Mr Posada Carriles) in the time allowed in our agreement, we will review our relations with the United States,” Mr Chavez said in his regular Sunday TV programme.
…
He said Caracas would decide “if it worth having an embassy in the United States, wasting money, or for the United States to have an embassy here”.
“It is difficult, very difficult, to maintain ties with a government that so shamelessly hides and protects international terrorism,” Mr Chavez said.
The president last week described Mr Posada Carriles as “a self-confessed terrorist”.
Will be interesting to see if Karzai is also growing some mojo! Somehow these guys seem to be multipling and poping up all over the world.
Posted by: Fran | May 23 2005 7:36 utc | 84
Kurgman: America Wants Security
Everyone loves historical analogies. Here’s my thought: maybe 2004 was 1928. During the 1920’s, the national government followed doctrinaire conservative policies, but reformist policies that presaged the New Deal were already bubbling up in the states, especially in New York.
In 1928 Al Smith, the governor of New York, was defeated in an ugly presidential campaign in which Protestant preachers warned their flocks that a vote for the Catholic Smith was a vote for the devil. But four years later F.D.R. took office, and the New Deal began.
Of course, the coming of the New Deal was hastened by a severe national depression. Strange to say, we may be working on that, too.
Another nail in Musharrafs coffin:
U.S. Rockets Reportedly Kill 5 Pakistanis
A battle between U.S. forces and militants in eastern Afghanistan spilled across the border into Pakistan during the weekend, and witnesses said American rocket fire had killed five Pakistani tribesmen.
U.S. attack helicopters opened fire in Lawara Mandai, a Pakistani border town in the North Waziristan tribal region, as American forces pursued a dozen men who the U.S. military said had staged an ambush, officials and local residents said.
Iraq counter-insurgency chief assassinated – cabinet office
BAGHDAD (AFX) – The commander of Iraq’s new counter-insurgency headquarters was gunned down while driving to work in Baghdad this morning, a cabinet office statement said.
Major-General Wael Rubaye and his driver were shot dead by unknown assailants in a district of west Baghdad.
Rubaye was the commander of a new special operations room, set up by the national security ministry to coordinate the fight against insurgents……
Posted by: Nugget | May 23 2005 9:45 utc | 87
Daniel Cohn-Bendit: ‘No one has dared tell the French left that we live in a world of market forces’
Cohn-Bendit is a German/French-French/German hero of the barricades of 1968. He is campaigning for the EU constitution.
That’s unpossible, How on could the dead-ender insurgents have got such information? You’d think that the Iraqi government forces had been penetrated at every level, which is of course silly.
The insurgents must have been given the information by Cuban intelligence agents acting in cahoots with Venezuelan terrorists and Syrian foreign fighters funded by Iranian mullahs backed by the Chinese and liberal gays from the left-wing media.
Colman
Five U.S. soldiers dead, attacks in Mosul, Tikrit, Samarra, Kirkuk and Baghdad (and the day is still young) – just remember that the C.I.A. is actually running the new mukhabarat (secret police), and everything should become clearer to you. Besides, the (ex) counter-insurgency chief obviously wasn’t up to the job anyway.
You may be sure Iraq has its own Dave al-Neligans and Ned ibn Broys. The surprise is that the U.S. omitted to factor in to its calculations the fact that Iraqis have had years to plan for what was coming.
Posted by: Nugget | May 23 2005 10:16 utc | 90
The surprise is that the U.S. omitted to factor in to its calculations the fact that Iraqis have had years to plan for what was coming.
How is this a surprise? You’re confusing the US administration with rational actors again.
i just spent a half hour writing a giap long post.and boy did it feel good.glad i somehow deleted it.sometimes all yu need to do is pour your heart out to friends,you don’t need to hit post because feeling able to pour your heart and knowing you are amongst friends regardless of your beliefs or standing in life.being valued for being is the best therapy i’ve never paid for.thanks.and the several of you who we have missed who have made a brief appearance stay strong,j&giap
still sending good thoughts your way.
Posted by: onzaga | May 23 2005 11:05 utc | 92
Remember Col Tim Collins who had that speech that Bushboy framed:
But he makes no attempt to defend the war itself. “I went with the Irish to Iraq with the intention of liberating the Iraqis, with the cry that ‘small nations can be free’. But what is happening there is much more reminiscent of American policy than British colonial policy. Love it or hate it, British colonial policy is about acting in partnership with the people you come across for mutual benefit. American policy is all about subjugation. My view is that we were sold a dummy.”
Posted by: Cloned Poster | May 23 2005 11:16 utc | 93
Posted by: Nugget | May 23 2005 11:18 utc | 94
Iraq’s ‘devil-worshippers’ seek constitutional rights
Presumably “Or else.”
Posted by: Nugget | May 23 2005 11:31 utc | 95
Nugget
Reminds me of when the head of the Swiss Guard was taken out
Posted by: John | May 23 2005 11:51 utc | 96
@Nugget
Bravo. Such a refreshingly stark, dry wit. A joy to read. 🙂
Posted by: Outraged | May 23 2005 12:06 utc | 97
U-S trumpets crackdown as violence continues
If only people would only read CENTCOM press releases and the uncritical regurgitation of them that is the mark of most journalists then propaganda stunts like ‘Operation Squeeze Play’ could be swallowed whole and provide the illusion that the U.S. was on top of things. That way the more than 50 dead and injured blown apart at a Baghdad restaurant this lunchtime, the dead and maimed in northern Iraq and other areas, the attacks on U.S.troops in Mosul, Ramadi, Baghdad, Samarra and elsewhere in the last 24 hours, today’s dead Iraqi civilians, police, soldiers, politicians and officials and the corpses being fished out rivers or found dumped on the streets wouldn’t have to boom, scream and wail forlornly from behind a bloody veil in a parallel universe that Iraqis call reality and have to endure day after day after day.
Posted by: Nugget | May 23 2005 12:16 utc | 98