Open Thread ..
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August 24, 2005
News, Views, Opinions ..
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Stan Goff has an analysis of what various folks and interests are trying to build on top of Camp Casey :
Joint Demo, Sheehan, MoveOn, Hayden
Let me just say something about how to withdraw. This is my plan, and it requires nothing of the Iraqis.
The National Command Authority orders all US forces redeployed out of Iraq within one month and out of the theater in two months. Any commander that fails to meet the deadline will be summarily relieved, and replaced with a commander that will thereby be placed on a shorter timeline. I can promise anyone who has no experience of the military that this is perfectly feasible, and that with that kind of command emphasis, the mission can and will be accomplished.
But the movement that will hopefully put hundreds of thousands in the streets of DC in September has not yet achieved the goal of forcing this political decision to be made.
Politics as an exercise of popular power will be sidelined if it takes up the issue of HOW to leave Iraq. It’s a bullshit issue designed to stand us down, and put us back in the box.
I agree with Goff. Conditions on withdrawal will only be played on and on and on. Imagine starting out with all the conditions that Juan Cole suggests!
Hiding in enclaves in Iraq and sallying forth with aerial gunships when the export of hydrocarbons is threatened, while the country thrases around in a permanent Mad Max nightmare, is not the way to roll back the imperial “adventure”.
Anything short of rolling back the imperial adventure will condemn us to its repetition and to continued terrorism and the domestic oppression built taking terrorism as its rationale.
Mad Max is there already. Iraqis stand their best chance of coming out of it with a say in determining the result if we just leave.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 24 2005 7:33 utc | 1
From Gary Hart:
The real defeatists today are not those protesting the war. The real defeatists are those in power and their silent supporters in the opposition party who are reduced to repeating “Stay the course” even when the course, whatever it now is, is light years away from the one originally undertaken. The truth is we’re way off course. We’ve stumbled into a hornet’s nest. We’ve weakened ourselves at home and in the world. We are less secure today than before this war began.
Who now has the courage to say this?
uh, Howard Dean said this long ago and everyone jumped on his yee-hawing ass. Why doesn’t Hart give Dean his propers? Just wondering.
Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 24 2005 11:46 utc | 3
Ah, good, Gary Hart? He’s still living? The reason why I ask is the words of sense quoted by fauxreal are something the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present or Future would say as they are direct and uncomfortable to the brickwall facing us.
Posted by: christofay | Aug 24 2005 12:21 utc | 4
I read Billmon’s post about the mullahs, Bush, and the draft constitution in Iraq with great frustration. Yesterday I heard a superb interview with Peter Galbraith, speaking from Baghdad, on the Al Franken show. My frustration stems from having heard the interview in my car, not being able to record it, and not being able to listen and record at home because (damn it! this really irritates me!) Air America doesn’t post audio the way NPR does.
Galbraith had seen much of what’s happening in Iraq now coming down the pike for months and years. Iran very much a part of what’s happening — something we’ve made possible by our ham-fisted invasion — after millenia of efforts on Iran’s part to expand the old Persian empire into Iraq. Now they’ve got a conservative imperialist — a mirror of Bush — running Iran, it looks like a done deal.
The problems are tougher and the players more intransigent than we’re able pick up from Mainstream Pablum (and New Pravda) news reports here in the US. If there’s any way you can catch that Galbraith interview in repeats — over the weekend, maybe… don’t miss it!
Gary Hart:
The successful Demoplican candidate for POTUS in 2008 will have to tell us:
‘ how we can drive a wedge between Iraqi insurgents and outside jihadists and leave Iraq for the Iraqis to govern’
Well… we can’t do both now can we.
‘ what we and our allies can do to dry up the jihadists’ swamp ‘
This “hypothetical” Presidential Candidate in 2008 will have to dry up the Israeli Entitlement Program.
By 2009 Ariel Sharon will have annexed the West Bank.
No… forget 2008. If we cannot elect a pro-democracy, anti-war, anti-terror congress in 2006 it won’t matter in 2008.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 24 2005 13:07 utc | 6
My frustration stems from having heard the interview in my car, not being able to record it, and not being able to listen and record at home because (damn it! this really irritates me!) Air America doesn’t post audio the way NPR does.
PW, you’re lucky. I can’t even hear Air America in my bloody red state.
Posted by: beq | Aug 24 2005 13:34 utc | 7
O.K. here’s an argument I thought up that I’m surprised I haven’t heard yet:
The Brits blew it for us in Iraq!
They were given control of the Shiite south and refused to employ the kind of overwhelming force,the “FEAR and AWE” that we did in the center of the country–indeed, they were always lecturing us, superciliously, about the wisdom of following their methods. The Brits should have kicked some ass, blown up a few hospitals, engaged in random killings, and psyops an’ terror an’ stuff, like us, and generally instilled the fear of God (well, someone’s God, anyway) into them lowly Shiites so that they would know their place and be afraid to rise up and ally with the Iranians. I mean, Shiites are so used to being kicked around and abused all the time that they probably need this kind of treatment just to remember who they are in the morning.
Because the Brits didn’t do what was necessary to win, they are “dead-enders”, and have jeopardized our mission in Iraq.
In reality, we love them just like the good little brothers they are. But as older brothers, it does get tiring having to teach them right, might from wrong, epecially with so much on the line in this little adventure. Maybe we need to beat some sense into them to–though it does seem that the police in London are coming along just fine.
This line of reasoning lets our own brain-dead ruling elite schemers off the hook and shunts the blame on to someone else, at the same time that it emphasizes the need for the use of harsher terror tactics. A win-win, if you ask me, for the Bushistas!
Maybe Condi is afraid to shoot off her left foot when her right is a bit wonky, maybe the rope hasn’t played out far enough for this defense to be employed, but I’m surprised that we haven’t heard this meme bubbling up from the fetid depths of the vast Wingnutville swamp.
I would love to hear comments on this from everyone. Perhaps Billmon could develop this theme: It sounds like just the thing one might hear rolling off of Joe Lieberman’s tongue. I mean, where is the good ol’ DLC posse when you need ’em?
yahoo copy ed caught in charming freudian slip – check out the first headline below the article
Posted by: b real | Aug 24 2005 14:58 utc | 9
beq- but they made up later (and robertson still ended up w/ his freedom gold)
Posted by: b real | Aug 24 2005 16:58 utc | 11
yahoo copy ed caught in charming freudian slip – check out the first headline below the article
Looks like somebody at Yahoo is going to have a nice LONG chat with the Secret Service.
Posted by: Billmon | Aug 24 2005 17:49 utc | 12
If there’s any way you can catch that Galbraith interview in repeats — over the weekend, maybe… don’t miss it!
I think he covered all those same points in his piece for the New York Review of Books.
Posted by: Billmon | Aug 24 2005 17:54 utc | 13
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson accused President Bush of “undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels” by asking Liberian President Charles Taylor, recently indicted for war crimes, to step down.
“How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, ‘You’ve got to step down,'” Robertson said Monday on “The 700 Club,” broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network.
–Yeah. Assassination’s the only Christian thing to do.
“It’s one thing to say, we will give you money if you step down and we will give you troops if you step down, but just to order him to step down? He doesn’t work for us.”
Robertson, a Bush supporter who has financial interests in Liberia…
’nuff said. The Elmer Gantry Fudd Robertson talked openly about the issue of oil, too.
And that headline below the Chavez article….LOL. Definitely someone messing with because you can’t click on the link or copy it, even.
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 24 2005 18:57 utc | 14
Crowds of wildly exuberant Canadians filled the shores of the St Lawrence Shipway between the US and Canada yesterday in a wild
and drunken debauch, in tribute to the Christian Broadcasting
Network leader Pat Robertson’s call to assassinate Hugo Chavez.
With the #3 US oil supplier Saudi Arabia on the ropes in the
Middle East, now that Bush has unleased the jihad whirlwind,
and #2 US oil supplier Mexico’s economy virtually assured of
destruction behind CAFTA, with #5 US oil supplier Iraq now
permanently crippled, and with #4 US oil supplier Venezuela
set to cutoff all future oil shipments to the US over the
terrorist remarks made by Pat Robertson, the Canadians as
#1 US oil supplier suddenly find themselves golden. GOLDEN!
The Canucks are made in the shade! Let’s all move to Toronto!
CANADA 1,696 1,722 1,604 1,724 1,622
MEXICO 1,616 1,748 1,568 1,668 1,597
SAUDI ARABIA 1,564 1,430 1,521 1,455 1,388
VENEZUELA 1,292 1,273 1,329 1,439 1,353
NIGERIA 896 1,111 1,021 1,208 1,107
IRAQ 608 588 548 636 657
ANGOLA 397 341 430 127 287
ALGERIA 292 152 195 216 198
ECUADOR 288 238 289 186 197
UNITED KINGDOM 269 194 227 304 262
BRAZIL 212 115 80 91 57
COLOMBIA 207 116 139 192 158
KUWAIT 184 213 186 224 226
NORWAY 183 117 137 155 171
CHAD 136 37 78 32 49
Posted by: tante aime | Aug 24 2005 19:59 utc | 15
http://www.worldmessenger.20m.com/weapons.html
For those who have any last lingering doubts that
you Americans, are now truly and royally f–ked.
Posted by: lash marks | Aug 24 2005 20:03 utc | 16
War Over Silk Routes And Petro-Bourses – Would History Repeat Itself
A secular Iraq was fooled into taking on the fury of the Khomeini revolution in early 1980s . A direct attack against Iran now will change the entire situation and even bring all Muslims together, with the Chinese, Russians and others letting Anglo-Saxons have an interesting time.
Posted by: jj | Aug 24 2005 21:19 utc | 17
End of the American Dream
I followed this up from a BBC article in my iTunes podcasts.
For those reality-based fin-de-siecle among us, a recent paper (pdf) from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics compared social mobility in developed countries and found the US and UK at the bottom of the pile. If you are born poor/born rich in the US, you are more likely to remain poor/remain rich than in other developed countries.
“International comparisons of intergenerational mobility show that Britain, like the United States, is at the lower end of international comparisons of mobility. Also intergenerational mobility has declined in Britain at a time of rising income inequality.”
The mobility deficit in the US appears to arise from both educational differences and race. In the UK, mainly education.
“America and Britain have the highest intergenerational persistence (lowest mobility). Germany is around the middle of the estimates, while the Nordic countries and Canada all appear to be rather more mobile.”
Socialism = social mobility? Wasn’t that supposed to be the best thing about unbridled capitalism?
“However, the idea of the US as ‘the land of opportunity’ persists; and clearly seems misplaced.”
It is annoying when data gets in the way of a good fantasy.
Posted by: PeeDee | Aug 24 2005 23:52 utc | 18
b
the empire is beginning its slow march to oblivion. in fact ut is burning in flames except the american people do not know it
the poor of this world have suffered too long & these last years are small mercies to see this beast finally felled & it has been felled only it does not know it
the poor of this world will suffer disproprtionally while the beast dies & they know exactly why they are suffering – it is not an abstraction for them – nor some form of information – it is the accumuation of facts
what the cheney bush junta have brought to the table is certified madness – we are stuck permanantly in tension about laughing a their utter imbecility while at the same time crying at the ineveitable loss of real people that their junta has brought to this world
i don’t think lin piao would have ever understood how imperialism in this form of madness has declared people’s war on itself
we have entered politics as jackie gleason would have understood it & a form of politics that would have sent brendan behan a little further down the road of drink
& in this world of sober thinkers perhaps everyone needs to go down behans route
i truly detest with a passion – reasonableness – it doesn’t exist – as objectivity does not exist – they are informed ideologically & always have been
how we can be presumed to make sense & reason out of a slaughterhouse of stupidities is beyond me
there exists for me this one unmistakable reality – the american armed forces must be defeated decisively – the loss of american life is sad but they are not victims – they are perpetrators & already the poor of this world have suffered it for a century too long
& yes if it comes to that i’d prefer an islamic theocracy to the sordid scenes we are living through
what priveleges i possess are nothing worth keeping at the price of this butchery & the planned butchery to come
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 25 2005 1:41 utc | 19
Anybody else think that Pat Roberts was told by the Rove etc. that murder of Chavez was in the works & he should rally the rabble? Or was that just “spontaneous enthusiasm” from him??
R’Giap wrote:
& yes if it comes to that i’d prefer an islamic theocracy to the sordid scenes we are living through
After you can’t get an education, have a glass of wine or get a job, then get raped & are about to be murdered in the public square because of it, post & we can discuss that at length…But as I posted on other thread, SH was definitely preferable by a wide measure.
Posted by: jj | Aug 25 2005 3:00 utc | 20
Hopeful bit over @americablog. Reagan official wrote in Houston Chron that the lid would blow off DC & Bu$hCo. would be history, if link
Does this make sense to anyone? If they’re not going to get them for 911, what’s the big deal about fabricating a case for war? That’s SOP. They came in planning to do whatever it took to invade Iraq. Obviously, it’s all bullshit…what’s this carping on technicalities game all about.
Posted by: jj | Aug 25 2005 3:36 utc | 21
I concur with jj’s questioning of R’giap’s preference for living under a caliphate. What we have in the west, amidst its blood and hypocrisy, is actual spaces for dissent–online or on the streets. An Iraq under the rule of Sharia, of re-entering the 12th Century in terms of the value of science, or reason and human rights, would blot all that out. The US have fucked up pretty badly in their strategic plans. For whatever reason, the boil has been lanced. The US and its allies need to clear up the mess (destroying the ‘al-Qaida in Mesopotamia’ gang; forcing the Sunni headcases through shooting them, the error of their ways in trying forment civil war witht the intent of keeping the US forces in place so as to widen the conflict, and of ‘helping’ the government agree a constitution that would be the basis for bringing an end to the need for the US being there.
Posted by: theodor | Aug 25 2005 3:52 utc | 22
Meanwhile, on the homefront, we’ve got our own little
“base” building itself up day by day …Christian..Muslim… 12th cen theocracies have more in common than not.
Important update on Ameriban from LA Times:
Grooming Politicians for Christ:
Evangelical programs on Capitol Hill seek to mold a new generation of leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God.
Posted by: jj | Aug 25 2005 4:07 utc | 23
thx b real….that ‘assassinate bush’ snafu was hilarious.
Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Aug 25 2005 5:31 utc | 24
@rgiap
i truly detest with a passion – reasonableness – it doesn’t exist – as objectivity does not exist – they are informed ideologically & always have been
remembereringgiap, so true, your comment reminds me of Charles Dodson / Lewis Carroll’s dialogue between Alice and Humpty Dumpty:
Humpty Dumpty: [Having just proved it is 364 times better to celebrate
your un-birthday] There’s glory for you!
Alice: I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory.’
Humpty Dumpty: Of course you don’t — ’till I tell you. I meant
‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’
Alice: But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument.’
Humpty Dumpty: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to
mean — neither more nor less.
Alice: The question is whether you can make words mean so many
different things.
Humpty Dumpty: The question is which is to be the master — that’s all.
This ride is in motion, please remain seated, until it comes to a complete stop. “The delusion ride”, six flags over EyErackie. You have to be ____ tall to ride the ride. I believe, when historians look back (if their is a history left)
The Cheney/Bush junta will be looked upon as delusional as ANYTHING DONE during Mao/Stalins “GREAT LEAPS”.
Indeed, worse to come, so says Dante.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 25 2005 8:33 utc | 25
No no jj, you should have written thus:
Meanwhile, on the homefront *
, we’ve got our own little
“base” building itself up day by day ..,
So,what was that about some nobody, saying something about our military industrial complex again:
Troops’ Gravestones Have Pentagon Slogans
“I was a little taken aback,” Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he first saw the operation name on Patrick’s tombstone. “They certainly didn’t ask my wife; they didn’t ask me.” He said Patrick’s widow told him she had not been asked either.
“In one way, I feel it’s taking advantage to a small degree,” McCaffrey said. “Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact.”
The owner of the company that has been making gravestones for Arlington and other national cemeteries for nearly two decades is uncomfortable, too.
“It just seems a little brazen that that’s put on stones,” said Jeff Martell, owner of Granite Industries of Vermont. “It seems like it might be connected to politics.”
How insulting, indeed. I’m surprised they didn’t add a registered trademark as well.
*Also see:
Jonathan Benthall. 2002. “Imagined Civilizations?” In Anthropology Today 18(6) pp.1-2.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 25 2005 9:16 utc | 26
jj (11:36):
If Fitz’s investigation – and it’s a big if – links the Niger forgeries to the White House Iraq Group (the folks who coordinated the pro-war PR), it is a big deal. The allegations that BushCo lied us into Iraq could then be proven in court. The Plame outing is small potatoes next to this, important only in that it lead (hopefully) to an investigation of the Niger forgeries. Pauken is a Republican, demonstrating that not all Republicans have succumbed to the Bush cult of personality. He seems to believe the worst is true; the only question is whether Fitz can prove it.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Aug 25 2005 10:09 utc | 27
Tante Aime;
If we Canadians are so golden, how come we’re all feeling like deer caught in the headlights these days?
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Posted by: OrlandoMary | Aug 25 2005 15:36 utc | 29
The entire WORLD should know this! Where are the indictments for all of this outrageous, extensive TREASON?!
…
[lots of badly formated conspiration theory followed this. I did delete it because I have no time to reformate such stuff and HTML-ize all the URLs.
Please post links to such stuff with a short sentence of explanations and maybe an excerpt but not complete triologies.
Thanks
b.]
Posted by: OrlandoMary | Aug 25 2005 15:38 utc | 30
Long LA Times piece about Rove/Plame A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed
Editors and Pushliers comments:
The article includes some fresh revelations or comments. For example, it notes that allies of Karl Rove defend his talks with reporters in which he tried to counter claims by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Then it adds that “some of Rove’s colleagues say that he and others used poor judgment in talking about Wilson’s wife. ‘With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear our focus should have been on Wilson’s facts, not his conclusions or his wife or his politics,’ said one official who was helping with White House strategy at the time.”
The piece also reveals that in one White House conversation, investigators have learned, Rove was asked why he was focused so intently on discrediting the former diplomat. “He’s a Democrat,” Rove said, citing Wilson’s campaign contributions.
…
The article details conversations involving Karl Rove, “Scooter” Libby, Matt Cooper and Robert Novak. But near its conclusion it raises an emerging issue, promoted by Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair, among others: If Time magazine had gone public about Rove’s conversations with Cooper, it might have had some impact on the Bush-Kerry race for the White House last year.
Not until this summer did Cooper ask Rove for a waiver to talk to the grand jury, and ultimately the public, about their conversation. The L.A. Times article today notes that he did not do this before “because his lawyer advised against it.” But the reporters add that in addition, “Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year.”
The story concludes: “The result was that Cooper’s testimony was delayed nearly a year, well after Bush’s reelection.”
I´d say the Time editors successfully influenced the election.
b: “I´d say the Time editors successfully influenced the election.”
That is their job Bernhard. Nothing could be more obvious in my POV.
Posted by: rapt | Aug 25 2005 18:42 utc | 32
Five Ideas That Matter
And I agree to all of them though I would have made that five more…
my friend theodor
i already feel as if i live under a form of caliphate in the sense you mean it. this systematic disorder does not allow a space of dissent – it pretends to. any dissent that is effective will be met by force – especially in america. there can be no illussions about that
it does not have to use force or its judicial apparatus because the dissent is not effective. the war continues – the slaughter of innocents continues. the planned & premeditated murder of others is being planned
i already feel we live within a bloody debauch filtered through the imbecilic tounges of commentators who can do nothing else but crawl
i am deeply ashamed of the left – the left of which i iam part – for it has failed on such terms to make its actual threat to any sort of order – minimal
you may not like the analogy my friend but iraq is this time’s spain – revolutionaries of all sorts should be fighting with their erstwhile enemies – the theocrats of islam against the greater threat – the greater menace to humanity – the cheney bush junta & all of its configurations today & in the future
i feel wounded by my own impotence in face of this slaughter – we do what we can but it is not enough – & for that not enough – we will pay, dearly now & in the future
the so called open spaces are controlled monitored marginalised & whaét my friend is our freedom worth when it is built on the blood of others & this truth has never been more clear
i am of the opinion that we have not yet entered the bloodies episodes of this debauch. thing will not return to normal & i instinctively feel that the forces rallied against the oppressed will use all & every aspect of their machinery against the oppressed & their representatives in a way j edgar hoover dreamed of only when his pal was on top
we & the world are being pissed on & we are being pissed on by imbeciles who have created theior own & personal gods – their caliphate
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 26 2005 2:02 utc | 37
@Malooga,
The reason the Bushistas don’t falsely blame the Brits for the US losing the war is because it’s more politically advantageous to falsely blame the anti-war protestors/liberals/”extremists”/”traitors”/”terrorists”. BTW, BushCo doesn’t like win-win scenarios; win-lose is their preferred scenario. The Democrats see who is being falsely blamed and then distance themselves from them. Thus pro-war=winners is the accepted meme, even though Dems are, by definition of the meme creators, always “losers”.
@Uncle scam, jj, and whoever else questions rgiaps’ outrageous misogynistic and anti-reason/objectivity statements: He is not reality-based. He is a “useful idiot” coldwarrior who only attacks communist-state-sanctioned targets. Therefore he is less free to dissent. He is an exact mirror image of the Bushies, who only question/examine political rivals’ integrity, never their own. [Which is also not unlike most Dems who can be counted on to cry foul when the other power break rules, but look the other way when any Democrat abuses power.]
Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 26 2005 2:53 utc | 38
@Gylangirl, thank you darling, so very much. I’ve been fuming & fretting over R’Giap’s post. I Really Appreciate you weighing in on his utterly disembodied misogyny. He writes as though he’s so sensitive, yet like women simply Do Not Exist for him. thank you again!!
Posted by: jj | Aug 26 2005 3:07 utc | 39
W/ that thorn removed, I wanted to throw something else out to for people to weigh in on if they have anything thoughts.
Someone up above posted from a dubious site about manipulating price of oil. Didn’t read the details, as it’s not the sort of site I’d check, but I have been wondering about it. The reason it has some credibility for me, is that pricing seems very peculiar, AND… Now I think oil is beginning to reach the pricing range where it becomes possible to start drilling/digging in Canada’s tar sands, or whatever their oil ‘n’ sand mixture is called. I notice that Canada is doing a lot of deals w/China over oil. We’ve posted those. Although xUS elites are steaming full speed ahead to merge this poor mess of a country w/Mexico & Canada – Goddamn them – to get access to the oil, Cheney either was just up there to discuss the oil sands, or is about to go. So I’ve been wondering if the price wasn’t manipulated to make it more attractive to work out some deals now, before they negotiate any more rights w/Chinese?
Posted by: jj | Aug 26 2005 3:15 utc | 40
Here’s a link from Canadian press on lovely Dickies’ upcoming Canada trip – oil & build the radical right up there. They couldn’t merge if there weren’t budding fascists up there to merge w/, now could they??? Does anyone know anything about this Institute that’s hosting him? Is it the Canadian Heritage, or AEI? link
U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney will make a visit to Canada in early September. His itinerary, though, isn’t likely to take him near the nation’s capital in Ottawa, as he plans to stick to the more familiar territory of oil-rich Alberta. Cheney’s trip highlights once again the priorities of the U.S. administration. Dick will be here to size up the vaunted tar sands of Alberta which, despite still difficult and costly extraction, some tout as the world’s largest reserve of hydrocarbons. On September 8, Cheney will have a high-level “invitation-only” dinner in Calgary with western premiers Ralph Klein and Gordon Campbell, with the evening’s host being none other than the ‘non-partisan’ Fraser Institute, an influential right-wing ‘think-tank.
Posted by: jj | Aug 26 2005 3:23 utc | 41
It’s hot, understand.
but, no0t for the arab man!!
aint that right, jj?
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 26 2005 3:38 utc | 44
bummer. looks like the espn ad with the hot, bellyshirt-clad babes, slutting for fantasy fball, was replaced.
damn.
It was so apropos!
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 26 2005 3:42 utc | 45
b real
as mystified by attacks on y misogony – perhaps its my reference to j edgar hoover & his colleage – frank or whatever he was called – i’m not going to be bothered to respond other than the obvious – that these two figures in the fibi along with roy cohn were homosexuals who delivered upn the everyday hiomsexual in their season – the worst form of blackmail, ‘law’ & punishment
i think i talk about love often enough here both personal – & collective – that it is beyond me how anybody could accuse me of that –
to puti it simply for gylangirl et al – i live in a world ruled by common murderers who say they are in a war against terror in which their common murder is going freelance
& if you like hypocricy constitutes a form of this bloody debauch. & redbaiting me gylangirl is getting a little tired in its inexactitude & its inability to read what i actually said
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 26 2005 3:50 utc | 46
R’giap,
I do in fact like your analogy of Iraq being our Spain. But as you say yourself, the left is completely bankrupted. It is a melange of slogans, a drifting impotence with no longer any coherent or coordinating centre. That was the politics of modernity, of reason, progress and the promise of socialism. Neoliberalism stands unopposed today, with the ideas of socialism fed into history’s shedder long ago. The institutional Left of social democracy is wholly complicit with the project of postmodern capitalism. I do wish there were a range socialists from all across the world volunteering to go to Iraq–but who would you fight with? (and who would you fight against). US imperialism needs to be stopped, but the vacuum on the left will not do it. In the absence of a general lack of understanding of the dyanamics of political economy (the abbreviation of thinking through accelerated mass media) we need to look to the contradictions of the imperialist project itself and see where we might benefit from them as they unfold. It sounds pretty impotent, I know, but that is where we are today.
I read somewhere recently that 64 per cent of UK 16-24 year-olds could not put a name to John Lennon’s face. And this is popular culture. How many could work out a ration and coherent position on Iraq, to get fucking angry enough (a la Spain) to got an do something about in in a serious and sustained way. I’ve been seriously trying since mid-2002 and am still confused and apprehensive. I share your sense of gloom and ineffectualness–but things change…
Posted by: theodor | Aug 26 2005 5:26 utc | 48
jj: you’re absolutely right, the Canadian tar sands region is booming, bigtime. Big, big money going into a very expensive and potentially highly-polluting extraction process, for very little “light ends” that become our gasoline. They will be able to pave the entire earth with the “bottom ends”, and pollute all of Hudson Bay and the Arctic. From this point forward, $65 a barrel will *be* the “bottoms”.
Now you could say, (and hence my “golden” post above) that BushCo deliberately destroyed Iraq oil (as I’ve said many times) because Saddam was selling it at $12 a barrel in 1990, and again in 2000, and so crippling US Big Oil exploration-hegemony around the world.
That’s seems obvious. But then, for BushCo to castrate Mexico with CAFTA, and do in Venezuala with the coups, strikes and assassination attempts, either they get their hands on the southern oil, or they’ll drive the price of it so high, that they can get their hands on the tar sands, and Gulf of Mexico deep-drilling rigs.
The motis, the driving force, is probably business-as- usual, in a world gone deregulated and unchallenged.
But to attribute to those nincompoops in the White House any semblance of the kind of business acumen it would take to pull off Orlando Mary’s post … nope, sorry, maybe the Saudi’s and the bin Ladens and their banker hired guns, but not our Republican leadership.
If you want a visual of George Bush and Dick Cheney’s brain-pan capacity, just tune into 700 Club and watch Pat Robertson scrinch his beady little eyeballs shut, and pray to God to kill three Supreme Court justices.
These guys are not to be feared as evil geniuses, but
as gibbering chimps in a fragile economic china shop.
That’s the kind of “bright lights” on Pennsylvania Avenue, the limp dickwads who mired US down in Iraq, trying to be the faithful running lapdogs for HRH King Faisal and his rogue’s gallery of Islamic princes.
We are so close to a Christian Fundamentalist Jihad, it’s not even funny. And for those women shrilling out about the fate of their sisters of Islam, hey, take a look around you, baby. The moment this deficit bubble pops, it’s legs-up for you. Is the life of a stripper and lap-dancer any better for you and your daughters, than wearing a burkha and subsisting on B&W TV?
That all sounds so much like the lingo they used back in the 60’s about commies and blacks. How it would be better dead than red, and keep the (you know the word) down in the ghetto. How’d you like to wake up one day as a black sister struggling in the GOB-USA, sister?
Better dead than wrap your head? It’s a red herring!!
And we know for certain
that some lovely day,
Someone will set the spark off,
And we will all be blown away.
Which is why BushCo elevated Bolton, and the Israelis pulled out of Gaza and the West Bank. They’re circling the wagons for the imminent bombing attack on Tehran.
A real house of cards. First, the “terrorist” attack by “unnamed jihadists”, then the cross-border invasion into Jordan, and then the B-2’s heading NE from Qatar.
If you need the visual, imagine Ronald Reagan taking Slim Pickens’ place on the H-Bomb in Dr. Strangelove, screaming yahoo, while the Christian Coalition proudly salutes their soon to be twice-dead spiritual leader.
As we will also soon wish that we were twice dead.
I’ll hold with remembereringgiap. We are living in delusion and the, what, second stage of denial, the false hope there isn’t really a problem, or that the real problem is *someone else*, some *ultimate Enemy*.
Such are 1,000 year fascist reich dreams made of.
The Enemy is US. And to quote a great cartoonist,
the next great source of energy will be slavery.
Posted by: tante aime | Aug 26 2005 6:06 utc | 49
Tante Aime wrote:
Now you could say, (and hence my “golden” post above) that BushCo deliberately destroyed Iraq oil (as I’ve said many times) because Saddam was selling it at $12 a barrel in 1990, and again in 2000, and so crippling US Big Oil exploration-hegemony around the world.
I read that WreckIraq I happened – aside from wanting to test weapons – ‘cuz Oil Cos. were scared that Iraq would start selling oil very cheaply since they were so broke from war v. Iran (thanks again to US). And Big Oil had just/were about to spend a pile on undersea exploration so they needed the price to go up.
You’re helping put to rest the canard, even passed out here, that the point was to keep cheap oil flowing to xUS. Rather it’s to control access & price.
The Marxist barflies bring to mind Angela Davis in an earlier era. She spouted all the standard CP crap. She thought feminism was bourgeois nonsense – until she got married. Married one of those standard issue maleleftists whose politics stopped at the mailbox. The schmuck expected her to be his domestic slave. Not long after returning from her honeymoon, she showed up at the feminist bookstore w/a wheelbarrow. There was talk she’d start relating to women.
Posted by: jj | Aug 26 2005 8:12 utc | 50
Theocracy and DemocracyTM:
Yo, dawg, it’s ‘Iraq Star’
“They have their own version of American Idol. Iraqis are obsessed with Idol and a Lebanese version called Arab Superstar, Reuters reports. When al-Sumeria TV announced it was putting on Iraq Star this year, more than 2,000 hopefuls signed up.”
Link
The prize? One way ticket, one way ticket…
A visa and trip to Beirut for the finale. That’s all.
Contestants have been beaten (only the girls?), threatened, and rejected by families and lovers. They are sticking in the hope of winning and leaving.
Posted by: Noisette | Aug 26 2005 8:50 utc | 51
other topic, I wondered how it was done…
Official: Italians treated, hid Iraqi insurgents
ROME (AP) — Italy’s Red Cross treated four Iraqi insurgents and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two Italian aid workers kidnapped last year in Baghdad, an official said in an interview published Thursday.
USAtoday
They also brought 4 children with leukemia to Italy to treat them.
Posted by: Noisette | Aug 26 2005 8:54 utc | 52
I don’t give much credit to stories about ‘control’ of oil prices or the endless accusation of Oil Companies (or the Queen of England). As said, the aim is control of natural resources (which inludes water, etc.) Within this larger scope, prices don’t matter too much, except insofar as they affect US citizens and their reactions, certain aspects of the economy, etc. Even the fact that high oil prices make extracting oil from tar sands possible because lucrative is a sort of spin; what really matters in the long run is EROI (energy returned on energy invested.)
Peak Oil is here, and the Free Market works (much as some may dislike it), particularly in a global area like this one. Prices rise through a combination of relative scarcity, or just change in availability, the ensuing competition, and certainly psychological factors as well (hype, etc.), all up and down the chain, which is very long, from exploration to the trucks that bring gas from the refinery to the pump, and the company that insures the trucks.. Of course the oil companies (traders, nations, investors, etc. etc.) want to make hay while the sun still shines, and a certain amount of price fixing and manipulation, cheating, does go on.
Just mho. I’m no economist, luckily I sometimes think.
Posted by: Noisette | Aug 26 2005 9:14 utc | 53
On the German election, funny, but take it with a grain of salt: The Americanization of German Politics
I’m no economist, luckily I sometimes think.
I can tell from your posts that you think more than just sometimes Noisette. However you’re probably lucky you’re not an economist as well. That would put you in the same category as Alan Fraud Greenspan.
Posted by: Juannie | Aug 26 2005 18:11 utc | 55
so who edits wikipedia?
listening to dan ellsberg on kpfa, talking about sibel’s case, and the host inadvertently discovered a smear in his wikipedia entry. somehow, under the ‘works’ link, the listing reads
Daniel Ellsberg. 2002. Secrets: A Memoir of an American Traitor and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Viking
the real title of his memoir is Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
Posted by: b real | Aug 26 2005 19:35 utc | 56
okay. i see anyone can edit it & the title has been corrected now.
Posted by: b real | Aug 26 2005 19:41 utc | 57
Oh bulls–t on Peak Oil@! There is still more oil in the ground
than has ever been used to date. It’s a ***Monopoly*** Oil play!
And something else for jj. The reason Saddam went into Kuwait, (after he had asked GHWBush’s US State department and heard them explicitly say the US had no policy on that) is because the US was selling horizontal well drilling equipment to the Kuwaiti Regime, allowing them to steal the Iraqi pool, at the same the princes are waving their gold regalia in Saddam’s face, demanding their Iraq-Iran war loans money back, to invest in more US technology oil stealing, after Saddam had lost a million of his people defending the Kuwaiti pigs against hardline Islamics. The same Kuwaiti pigs who took off to the Mediterranean while our kids did the fighting for them! So now you know why Saddam burned Kuwaiti oil rigs strung like pearls along the Iraqi border. They demanded their war loans back, so they could steal even *more* of the Iraqi people’s oil, using US drilling technology.
I have this first hand from an Oakie who set up Kuwaiti drill rigs,
probably the same Adair crew who went back in to put out the fires.
So close to having perpetual $12/BBL oil! Damn! Greedy bastards!
“1914: Britain recognize independence of Kuwait.” Just like they
did re Israel and Palestine. The Brits muck it all up, then bail.
God Save the Bloody Queen! Thank her for your soon 6x $70/BBL oil.
http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/progs/cpsc-ccsp/fr-rf/_01_e.cfm
What, isn’t the British Crown like the richest people on earth now?
And aren’t they joined at the hip with the Bush – bin Laden families?
So RNC freaks out the Jesusland and single females who voted for Bush.
‘Jihad is at hand! Christ, we have to wipe out 5,000,000,000 darkies!’
Why don’t we do the world a favor. Pauperize the British Royal Family.
Pauperize the bloody-handed vampiroyals until their pennies bounce…
Posted by: tante aime | Aug 26 2005 19:41 utc | 58
@tante aime, right – I knew WreckIraq I was set up…Iraq lured into Kuwait that way…the question was why.
Dan Ellsberg is speaking. More later. He’s just back from speaking to Sibel Edmonds. I’ll have good links there. Vanity Fair focused on trivia. He stated unequivocally that suitcases of cash were delivered to Hastert. It was known some of that was drug money. (I think that’s Edmond’s big thing – drug smuggling underwrites Al Q-. US knows.) He says its impt. to get rid of Hastert.
But beyond that it gets really ugly. Dan is really grim about the future. Says after 911 the Sequel, there’s undoubtedly another UnPatriot Act already waiting to be forced through. He expects a Fundie Theocracy to takeover, just like the one they’re trying to impose in Iraq now. He thinks we’re in the pre-Reichstag Fire stage.
More – Dan says there are rumors Fitzgerald is tracking down who forged Niger documents. He mentions the Obvious Person – Ledeen – has connections w/Ital. Intel, from whence they originated.
Posted by: jj | Aug 26 2005 19:55 utc | 59
Typo, I meant to say I’ll have good S. Edmonds links later.
If we don’t get these bastards out, we’re toast.
Posted by: jj | Aug 26 2005 19:59 utc | 60
ellsberg also commented on sibel’s adamance that foggy bottom is the most corrupt of all the govt agencies, that money changes hands there on a regular basis. he says his mentor is peter dale scott.
the two interviews he mentioned are the ones sibel has done since the vanity fair article. both are up at antiwar.com, one by Christopher Deliso, the other by Scott Horton. might have been linked here before.
i’m still waiting to see what john stanton has to say about these latest leads from mrs. edmonds.
Posted by: b real | Aug 26 2005 20:12 utc | 61
in sibel’s interview w/ deliso she makes some specific suggestions for figuring this thing out. here’s one:
It’s amazing that in this whole “war on terror” thing, no one ever talks about these issues. No one asks questions about these countries – questions like, “OK, how much of their GDP depends on drugs?”…And then to compare that little survey with what countries we’ve been putting military bases in
has anyone seen an instance where this data has been assembled? a few minutes w/ google didn’t turn anything up directly referencing her comments.
some relevant material from peter dale scott – AL QAEDA, U.S. OIL COMPANIES, AND CENTRAL ASIA
Posted by: b real | Aug 27 2005 3:36 utc | 62
Thanks b real for doing the links. I was going to add the part about Foggy Bottom being the most corrupt. I wasn’t clear if he was comparing it to Congress. Hard to believe that anything is more corrupt than the DC 535.
Ellsberg also said that he’d checked around to verify Edmond’s veracity. Her reputation is stellar. She is a Patriot. God how that term has been perverted.
Personally, I was a bit surprised that Ellsberg was so surprised by what Edmonds had to say about Al Q- being financed by drug money. Al Q- was created by the CIA. They always finance their overseas rogue armies w/drug running – at least back to Vietnam. Don’t know if it extends further back than that – but then the CIA doesn’t go much further back than that…
Ellsberg wasn’t optimistic that Edmond’s knowledge would be allowed out. Clearly, they don’t want us knowing how thoroughly corrupt our “govt” is. Can’t you just see her testifying about how suitcases of cash are handed to members of State Dept. in exchange for…!!!Catherine Austin Fitts says we “don’t have a govt.’ It’s been hollowed out by organized crime. How many Trillion have been stolen from the War Dept – that’s their pension funds.
I think part of the reason for declaring a police state is ‘cuz everyones pension funds & social security have been stolen, so they don’t know how else to control us. Anybody agree?
Posted by: jj | Aug 27 2005 5:26 utc | 63
jj- i saw that the exact phrasing from sibel is “the most corrupted.” not sure what difference that makes, but your reaction is pretty much the std one, but then she says that all investigations stemming from her claims have been quashed by the dept of state.
w/o researching it right now, it’s definately the case that the u.s. has been funding overseas operations by illicit drug trafficking a lot further back than vietnam. in the 1920’s we were involved in opium to fund the kmt. there’s bound to be other examples, both external & internal, probably running all the way back to whiskey or something & the wars on the native americans.
the more i stay away from the computer, the less likely i think that this govt could ever pull off a state of martial law. dissent in this country is percolating under the surface. actually, this has never been a nation any too friendly w/ the concept of govt interference in their daily lives. for many neightborhoods and population groups, it’s already been a police state here for decades. if the attorney general starts trying some of those mass roundups on any targeted group w/ regularity, i can’t see it sitting very well w/ the majority of the public, no matter what political affiliations they have.
Posted by: b real | Aug 28 2005 3:31 utc | 65