Shia Autonomy – Moon of Alabama

August 11, 2005

Shia Autonomy

A recipe for desaster: Shi’ites demand autonomy as Iraq awaits charter

With four days left until
Iraq’s leaders have promised a draft constitution, powerful Islamist leaders made a dramatic bid on Thursday to have a big, autonomous Shi’ite region across the oil-rich south.

The head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) spelled out his demands to tens of thousands of chanting supporters in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf.

But minority Sunni and secular opponents, as well as rival Shi’ite Islamists in the coalition national government, swiftly poured cold water on an idea that fueled fears about sectarian battles over oil and Iranian-style religious rule in the south.

This would result in a landlocked Kurdish province in the north, with the not-so-friendly neighbors of Turkey, Syria and Iran, all of these suppressing their Kurdish minorities. In the south the new united Shia provinces would be more or less an annex to Iran and in the middle the Sunni provinces and the multi ethic capital of Baghdad would depend on small trickles of oil revenue from the north and the south or, more probable, fight the other entities.

This may have been the wet dream of some Neocon planers who would like all bigger Middle East countries splittered into small, powerless statelets. But as the situation looks now, this will dramatically increase the strategic role of Iran and there seems to be no workable plan to deny it that role. Or is there?

Posted by b on August 11, 2005 at 19:38 UTC | Permalink

Comments

it is not a case of this or that imperial power behaving badly. i am not here to defend the history of france – i love her – that is all – all her imperfections are as clear to me as they evidently are to others
i am concerned today with what is happening now & what will happen in our immediate future. to my eyes it is absolutely catastrophic
& i will defned my argument that never, never has an imperial power acted with such stupidity & barbarity than that articulated by those united states
other imperial powers for all their many sins also sought to gather at least some semblance of local forces around them & their pedagogy was never very far away
the american – simply don’t care. whatever happened yesterday to the other – whether they are south east asian, latin american, african or arab – they simply do not care – there is not an ounce of pedagogy in them in any case have nothing to teach which is worth anything at all
i say this sadly too – as i turn further & further away rom american culture – which has given me w e dubois, sonny liston, coltrane & a tim buckley – i turn away from it because i must & any decent human being must lace themselves in support of the resistance against this empire – however much you may disagree with its components or methods. the cause of the resistance is just. that is enough for me

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 14 2005 2:41 utc | 101

LOL I’m pleased to see we’re being so nice to each other in here. A couple of months ago when I suggested that the US could have ‘won’ in Vietnam if they had been prepared to do the ‘total war’ thing I was roundly castigated for revisionism. Now I’m interested to see that Max’s claim that the US meant to lose in Vietnam, that their loss was a win in fact is being treated with such nonchalance.
It was unnecessarily provocative when I suggested that the US was on the road to becoming a vassal state.
Most people are always going to be loyal to their nation but equally all should acknowledge that no state is incapable of error. This is a big ask for citizens of a country which has been riding the crest of superpowerdom for 50 years.
This knee jerk defence of US policy no matter the outcome is no different from the attitude of many middle class englishmen when they visited France in the 19th century. Despite feeling attracted to the cultural endeavour of that nation all French were regarded by this particular breed of Englishman as being a bit grubby and not entirely honest. These feelings are a natural extension of the ‘might is right’ philosophy that underpinned most of what the English did in this period of Victorian Imperialism. Sort of “If everything we do overseas is right then obviously everything foreign is wrong”.
So applying Max’s logic to English Imperialism tells us that the Enlish meant to lose at Kharoum and that General Gordon’s head being carried through the streets on a pike was part of the overall plan.
A Gary Leupp article in Counterpunch suggests that the neo-cons do intend to nuke Iran. I don’t believe their criminal stupidity extends that far but perhaps I just don’t believe that any group of fellow humans could be that evil.
The alleged plan is to use Bolton to fail to steamroll the UN, declare the UN morally and militarily bankrupt then go straight for the nuke option. The theory is that if they move fast enough the opposition won’t have a chance to build a head of steam and by the time people realise that what the Iranians are doing doesn’t breach any treaties, the war will be over.
If they do nuke Iran apart from the huge risk of retaliation from all sorts of indignant citizens of the world I can’t believe that the neo cons could actually believe that nuking Iran would cause an Iranian surrender. IMO it would have to be a genocidal attack making the bulk of the Iranian population casualties. We had the Hiroshima discussion last week and we shouldn’t go over such recently tilled ground but it would be wise to remember that the Japanese had already seen some sort of surrender inevitable before Hiroshima and the discussion was really about the terms of the surrender. That is not the way Iranians or their leadership feels at the moment and it would be surprising if nuclear attack didn’t provoke the feelings within the Iranian population that massacre of the citizenry by ‘conventional weapons’ usually does. That is induce a siege mentality into the population had cause them to refuse to surrender until all is lost.
Any western politician outside the US would be unable to convince his nation to assist the US, no matter how long he/she may have been on the USIS/USAID payroll. There would only be Israel and it’s difficult to view their assistance as a plus given that even Egypt and Saudi Arabia would have little choice but to go to war with Israel. Musharrif would have no show of keeping Pakistani feeling under control and any use of nukes by the Israelis would result in thermo nuclear devices over Tel Aviv. The leaders of Pakistan. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are grateful for US patronage which enables them to keep their corrupt dictatorships in power, but any scenario related to US or Israel using nukes in the Middle East would immediately put their leadership on the line unless they proved that they weren’t at US beck and call. We wouldn’t be talking about mullahs cranking up the street loons to howl and fire a few ak47’s into the air here, there is every chance of an army lead coup in both Pakistan and Egypt. Saudi could be even worse because some of the younger members of the Saudi royal family would take this opportunity to purge the ‘oldies’ in the rather slim event of Abdullah not ‘seeing the US troops out of Saudi by sunrise’.
It is difficult to see how anyone could predict any forseeable outcome out of the chaotic world scenario that would occur if the US nuked anyone in the Mid East. Yes I am aware that I have had my own shot at envisioning an outcome, but being just smart enough to recognise that I’m not smart I would never bet one human life on my prediction much less millions. And that is what the neo-cons would have to gamble.
The best thing that anyone can do to prevent a horror such as this evolving is to start explaining to people now that the claims against Iran need to be viewed in the light of the Iraqi WMD claims and to point out that their is nothing in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that prohibits Iran from enriching its own uranium.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 14 2005 2:51 utc | 102

Since according to Jude Wanniski’s article Iran offered to undertake its nuclear energy program under continuous monitoring of IAEA, the xUS doesn’t have a hair, much less a leg, to stand on opposing it.
The EU Has to Stand Up to the NeoCons. I don’t understand why they’ve caved into their pressure & failed to respond to the Iranian offer, as this article makes clear they have, rather than using it as an occasion to separate themselves from the xAm. madboys. link
But now we know that the EU never even acknowledged this substantial offer, much less respond to it.
Worse, as of August 1, the EU had failed to make a substantial offer of their own containing “firm guarantees” on nuclear, technological and economic cooperation and “firm commitments” on security issues.
So as a result of these failures of the EU to negotiate in good faith the Iranians announced they would resume the uranium conversion – subject to IAEA Safeguards – that they had voluntarily suspended.
Of course, we know why the EU never made a substantial offer. And why the EU never responded to the Iranian substantial offer. Bush-Cheney-Bolton wouldn’t let them.
I think Leupp is wayy too sanguine about how he thinks they’ll engineer this invasion. (cf – London. Paris next??)
It’s time for Repugs of yore – ie of good character – to put together a coalition to oppose this. Perhaps Cindy Sheehan & her burgeoning peace movement will get on it as well. It would be an amazing movement – retired military, retired CIA, retired foreign service officers,…”civilian” thinking people of all political persuasions
The only reason for this is that the Reigning Sociopath is shown for the horrific failure he is when Americans aren’t cowering in terror. One more time, he wants to recreate for himself the feeling of omnipotence he had after 911. Are there any effing adults in this world or are we living in an insane asylum??

Posted by: jj | Aug 14 2005 3:34 utc | 103

I know that poking a needle into conspiracy theories and deterministic diatribes is a hobby of mine, but I just had an odd thought. If I were a leader of a certain Middle Eastern radical group, with a record of sponsoring guerilla attacks against the United States, I might find it difficult to stage a major spectacular against a US target.
But through my worldwide network of correspondents, I could make such an attack seem likely. Even imminent. I could build up an expectation that such an attack would happen within a very particular time-frame.
I would know that the current government of the United States has an ambition to invade Iran. And I would assume that the current administration would use a massive terror attack as an excuse to invade Iran. If I could convince them that an attack was certainly coming, I could even expect them to begin laying the diplomatic foundations for an invasion, to allow for quick action against Iran when the attack occurs.
As the date for the attack nears, the United States could be expected to adopt an increasingly belligerent stance toward Iran. Europe could be expected to dig in its heels. Frictions would arise between the two.
My upcoming terror attack would influence domestic policy as well. The US administration would be able to use the attack as a justification for reinstituting the draft.
Many changes would be put in place to prepare for my terror attack.
And then — I would not make it. I would not need to.

Posted by: Jape | Aug 14 2005 4:01 utc | 104

Debs :

So applying Max’s logic to English Imperialism tells us that the Enlish meant to lose at Kharoum and that General Gordon’s head being carried through the streets on a pike was part of the overall plan.

Max’s logic, that chaos and destruction are in fact the desired results of the neocons’ “adventure” in the Middle East, lends strength to the inference that the neocons do not really view the results of their actions from the perspective of the United States of America.
And George W Bush, the American President, is just plain in over his head, going along to get along not with the traditional Republican powerbase but now with these thoroughgoing cynics who have fortuitously found themselves the mentors of a man whose emotional development was arrested by years of alcoholism, who can be manipilated at an emotional level, as a child.
And the rest of us Americans can just get used to death as a way of life, as the Israelis have.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 14 2005 4:25 utc | 105

LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. “We will stay the course,” he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?
A president can’t stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won’t stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush’s handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend’s Newsweek poll – a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.’s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents’ overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.’s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn’t seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.
But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout “don’t ask, don’t tell” and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.
The president’s cable cadre is in disarray as well. At Fox News Bill O’Reilly is trashing Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding Mr. O’Reilly for being a defeatist. In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration’s prewar inflation of Saddam W.M.D.’s. (On this sinking ship, it’s hard to know which rat to root for.)
As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn’t unsettling enough, Mr. Bush’s top war strategists, starting with Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls “a global struggle against violent extremism.” A struggle is what you have with your landlord. When the war’s über-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it’s a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost.
That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio. There’s historical symmetry in that. It was in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, that Mr. Bush gave the fateful address that sped Congressional ratification of the war just days later. The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype. The president said that “we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade,” an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive. He said that Saddam “could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year” were he able to secure “an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball.” Our own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were “highly dubious.”
It was on these false premises – that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America – that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a Congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a “chicken hawk,” received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Mr. Bush.
These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now. Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory “a wake-up call.” The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Mr. Bush (to no avail) to “show some leadership” by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families. A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as “a matter of courtesy and decency.” Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics. Only someone as adrift from reality as Mr. Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can’t win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering TV cameras and the blogosphere 24/7…..
Someone tell the President the war is over

Posted by: Nugget | Aug 14 2005 4:53 utc | 106

@John Lee; You get it!
@Jape; In technology business, this is what we call a self-induced denial of service attack (DOS). If my purpose is to shut down your systems, all I have to do is make you believe that I’ll do something causing your systems to shutdown and to protect yourself you will shut down your own system. Mission accomplished! For example a lot Iraqi airforce assets and radar equipment was never used because Iraqis believed that the US will just shoot them down. Hence they never used their assets and we never had to face a fight in the air. I also remember seeing news items talking about network scans and probes originating from Asia causing public utilities and sensitive businesses to disconnect their systems from the Internet. Thus creating all kinds of hardship for staff and customers. Pentagon seems to have fairly firm ideas about Iran and nuclear attack is not one of them and rest assured, there will not be a draft in the US (that was the 2nd biggest reason for our loss in VietNam).
@Deb; Welcome back. (1) At no point I said that US or Israel will attack Iran with nukes, I believe despite all our hand wrninging Iran will go nuclear. I suspect that we’ll act upset but we will gain another piece in the strategic game in the middle east, a nuclear armed Iran against shitless scrared Saudis. (2) I did not say that hawks wished to loose the VietNam war, but they did not see it as a total loss either. They lost the war because they lost the PR edge and since then they have been working overtime to make sure that media is not used against them in such a manner. I belive they have gained some ground in that respect. (3) English vs. the Sudanese: Look, all empires have limited resources. Despite the ingenious system of using Indian forces against African natives and Irish/Scottish legions against Indian natives, the empire had to pick and choose its fights. And I can assure you that if English homeland had not been devastated by the Germans in WWII England would still be ruling a large part of this globe. I can’t think of a single resistance movement in the history of man, which has defeated an imperial power, untill the resistance became a surrogate for another aspiring power. Hence the role of Afghans in the Great Game, the exploitation of Arab resistance by English against the Turks, the exploitation of Arab Nationalist movements by the US and England against France, the support and use of VC by Russia and China in VietNam, the exploitation of Afghans by the US as a payback to Russians for VietNam and so on. Losing a single battle here and there has never caused an empire to collapse.
The helplessnes of a resistance movement can not be any more visible than the utter ruin of the Palestinian cause. In this age of democracy and free speech a people have had their land taken from them, locked in enclaves, bombarded with air and ground power, and visited by atrocities that go on and on. After 35 years of this they are likely to settle for a principality. I believe Palestinians failed to find a competing imperial interest to that of the US. The Soviets showed their weakness when they backed down in Cuba and after that they just didn’t want to tangle openly with the US. For resistance movements that fought valiantly but lost the list is long.
I do not preach just doom and gloom, I am looking, and working, for a change that is deep and wide. It is a change in understanding and perspective but the Dems seem to settle for the same shit of a different color year after year.
Max

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 14 2005 7:10 utc | 107

And Jape, keep working on those conspiracy theories. You’ll see that they are not that far from reality after all.
Max

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 14 2005 7:27 utc | 108

While we have’nt talked much about Cindy Sheehan here, I wonder if others also have felt in her voice, this beautiful clarity, born of innocence now tempored with the melancholy of her loss. Theres something extra-ordinary in her simple words, her simple question, that reveals another man of simple words to be a fabrication, a ventriloquist dummy spewing out the hollow platitudes of the”hard work”, of, “staying the course”, to “honor”, the “sacrifice”, of “the fallen” that are no match for her entirely and fully human expression repleat with emotion, feelings, intellegence, and steel. She is the human face of his actions that he cannot face. How pathetic.

Posted by: anna missed | Aug 14 2005 8:34 utc | 109

@Max
Glad you found the flight of fancy entertaining.

Posted by: Jape | Aug 14 2005 8:42 utc | 110

I can’t think of a single resistance movement in the history of man, which has defeated an imperial power, until the resistance became a surrogate for another aspiring power.
Offhand … Bangladesh v. Pakistan?

Posted by: Jape | Aug 14 2005 9:35 utc | 111

Of course it depends on what levels of support from competing powers there needs to be before it is counted as a surrogate. A few examples which in my opinion was primarily a resistance movement:
Lebanon v. Israel
Algeria v. France
Kenya v. Britain
German tribes v. Romans (remember the Teutoburger forest!) 🙂

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Aug 14 2005 10:50 utc | 112

I think ultimately powers come down from weakness within. all empires fail probably from the impossibility of continued maintenance. They fall under their own weight. They lose battles when the disintegration gets to a certain point.
I do not preach just doom and gloom, I am looking, and working, for a change that is deep and wide. It is a change in understanding and perspective
You need not look any further than yourself. All of us are complicit in this whole human game. The most incredible thing to me is how much people are in denial as to the contracts we all have with the rulers. As long as we consume to the extent we do, trying to fill our personal voids with tangible products to an extreme, and as long as we don’t want to be responsible for providing for our needs and desires ourselves, we are locked in this contract with the providers.
The change in understanding is vital as is the acceptance of responsibility of each individual for his life predicament. Then the path out of slavery, indenture, tyranny, etc. will come clear. As long as the dependence exists, people are going to be controlled. You can’t scream for petroleum and then tell your connection what to do, how much you will pay, and all of that. The nature of addiction.
And you can’t expect any fool politician to free you. we are all trapped in this together. Independence and autonomy work to some extent as I have found from personal experience.
Dems aren’t the only ones who settle for the same shit. We take what the Man gives. Until we learn the lessons of self importance, that we are masters of our own destinies, we are doomed to this relinquishing of control. The problem is, the rulers are out of control, too.

Posted by: jm | Aug 14 2005 11:52 utc | 113

@ASKOD that was my list or part of it. Ceratinly most of Africa, South East Asia and the sub continent drove their invaders out unaided from outside. You could argue the Maoris beat the Brits unaided by any foreign power. They forced the Brits to a treaty which is still the basis of NZ constitutional law. Certainly not Bangladesh v Pakistan. An Indian general has been made a statue in Dacca the capital of Bangladesh. He was a Sikh who led the Indian army in to liberate Bangladesh from Pakistan.
But there have been many. Vietnam really had pretty limited assistance from Russia and China. About all you can say is they didn’t stop trading with them.
The Sudanese defeated Gordon at Khartoum and much as the Brits like to blame their ‘black’ generals what happened to Britain is symptomatic of what has happened to all empires at least since the Roman and probably before. They got too big and over extended their supply lines. As the imperial nation becomes successful it no longer has the ability to supply all imperial forces from it’s own country so it turns to quislings and mercenaries. Then the empire crumbles under the weight of corruption and a sort of self cannibalising administration.
Imagining the British Empire could still be existence were it not for WW2 is like saying Newton would still be sitting under the tree waiting for the apple if it weren’t for gravity.
WW2 primarily happened because Britain got so big and committed everywhere that it was only a matter of time before it got drawn into a fight it couldn’t win and then the natives got restless everywhere else.
As technology gets more advanced empires can expand further but they still inevitably expand past the point of manageablity. Because the momentum of Empire always requires one more conquering to pay for the one before.
The other interesting dynamic is that as technology gets better the period of empire gets shorter. The Romans had 400 years of prime, the Brits about 150 and it’s looking awfully like the US won’t make it past 50.
The bind the US is in is that it needs to invade Iran financially (oil) and for prestige but it is already over extended and would like to be able to use mercenaries but they haven’t completely forgotten history and know the dangers and portents that spells.
Like the Brits and Romans before them, far too many of their own citizens are caught in the consumption and management of empire to consider fighting for it.
As they’ve concentrated on the ME, Central America (Venezuela) has slipped from grasp and it appears that any sort of conventional war against Iran is completely beyond their resources.
The Iranians have a large and well equipped military that hasn’t been subjected to 10 years of sanctions nor will it be. The Brits won’t go in however much Blair gets blackmailed/bribed by Lord Levy (an extremely complicated property transaction the story goes) because Blair imagines if he steers a steady course from now on he will have made it through the tough times by the skin of his teeth. Thanks to those nice murderers who blew up the citizens and gave him a chance to do a Rudy.
Perhaps Gary Leupp is correct when he suggests the French although this would be an adventure beyond the capability of the legion so it is difficult to believe the French citizenry would wear the high casualty rates of fellow Frenchmen for long. Plus of course they have their own Imperial committments in Africa and the Pacific which require considerable resourcing. Even the mellow Tahitians are flexing their muscles lately. Various attempts a la the US with Venezuela have been made to undermine the elected Tahitian government that is reaching for some sort of independence. The plots were as unsuccessful as the Venezualan ones.
Apparently the Tahitians didn’t appreciate being experimented on with nuclear fallout. Even worse since the end of the nuclear era in the mid 90’s unemployment has skyrocketed in French Polynesia. Still more than enough problems in Kanaky to go around too, divide and rule has made large portions of Noumea ungovernable due to inter tribal conflict. The French Army still seems to need to parachute into Africa to protect it’s ‘citizens’ (resources more likely) about once a year.
It isn’t difficult to make Iraq or Iran ungovernable but the problem is that it becomes too ungovernable for consistent efficient resource extraction.
The push of the US out of Central Asia also means that the Chinese and Russians have a much easier job of getting oil out than the US ever could. Particularly if trouble at mill in Iran flows on into Saudi or any of the small gulf states where refining capacity was going to be enlarged. The US must even be concerned about the security of the Afghani pipeline that Karzai negotiated in his previous life as a BushCo employee. It hasn’t been built and the way things are shaping in that neck of the woods it won’t be. Especially if someone else has got their paws on the hydrocarbons that were going to flow through it.
BushCo have driven the US empire to the verge of extinction by assuming that others would just play along even after they no longer had to.
Resistance is always a long hard struggle but most get there in the end. The locals usually only have to win once whereas the invaders have to keep winning.
US access to oil reserves hasn’t increased a jot since Bush took power unless you consider that the Iraqi reserves are a gimme which certainly doesn’t appear to be the case. In fact looking at the loss of Venezuela and assuming that Blair and Chirac snared the bulk of the Libyan oil, US access has been reduced.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 14 2005 13:06 utc | 114

On Iran –
Schröder says – Nein
Jack Straw says – No
And France, Russia and China won´t do anything either.

Posted by: b | Aug 14 2005 13:11 utc | 115

@Jape: To think of Pakistan/Bangladesh as a resistence movement is like thinking of Black/Lation gang violence in LA as a liberation movement. While Pakistanis raped a million Bengali women on their way out of Bangladesh, English who created the mess were sipping tee in the gardens. And when it looked like the strategic situtation could change in South Asia resulting from complete annihilation of Pakistan, White House got on the phone and told India that West Pakistan was not to be touched. Dig deeper people.
@Deb: I did a quick look up on Independence Dates of countries around the subcontinent, India being the crown jewel of the English empire, and here is what I dug up. Pakistan/India 1947, Srilanka 1948, Nepal 1946, Burma 1948. I don’t remember Ghandi marching in Burma or Srilanka and there were no significant resistence movements in Nepal, Burma, or Srilanka to the English rule, there was probably a lot of resentment though. And while I love Newzealand, last time I checked it was the Maori who were speaking english, building churches, and voting white guys in to govt? So, lets think, all the palestinians have to do to be free is to convert to Judaism and start speaking yiddish. Wow how stupid are these guys? Ann Coulter said, “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to christianity.” She must be a visionary in your book! Go back and check your definition of liberation.
Max

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 14 2005 20:12 utc | 116

Then the empire crumbles under the weight of corruption and a sort of self cannibalising administration
Always. I think the self cannibalizing factor is built in from the start. As an immunity to too much consolidated power. Distribution and balance will ultimately win as the laws of physics have proven. It will kick in when the time dictates. I think we will be seeing this in corporations in the near future as many have reached the impossible to maintain point and are about to explode and disintegrate.

Posted by: jm | Aug 14 2005 21:33 utc | 117

Max, I wonder what one would be digging for, exactly.

Posted by: Jape | Aug 14 2005 21:45 utc | 118

@Jape; You make a good bystander!
Max

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 14 2005 21:59 utc | 119

Two more points:
1- Vanezuela: Topic is being shifted to drug running, look out for a Noriega style take out of Sanchez.
2- Chin and Russia will have to fly the oil out of South America and Africa, ’cause US controls all the shipping lanes. Even more important is the fact that Russian and Chinese economies are now fully integrated into to the corporatacracy and unless people start using drakhmas for currency, every petro dollar still has to flow through the US hands.
Max

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 14 2005 22:08 utc | 120

What will happen in Iraq/Afghanistan/perhaps eventually Iran when the reality of DU contamination sinks in? Colonies of kobold-slaves ruled by remote bosses and storm troopers in white radiation suits?

Posted by: catlady | Aug 14 2005 22:15 utc | 121

@Jape; You make a good bystander!
As you frame the issues, that could be said of anyone, including yourself.

Posted by: Jape | Aug 15 2005 0:04 utc | 122

Majority of Americans Have Lost Confidence in the War, Polls Show

Consider Pennsylvanian Eric Zagata. He is a 24-year-old from Luzerne who served in
Iraq last year as a member of the 109th
Field Artillery’s Bravo Battery until he was
injured by shrapnel. He was luckier than the 92 Pennsylvanians slain thus far — in battle deaths, Pennsylvania ranks third in the nation, behind California and Texas — but he is a changed man.
“Going into it,” he said, “I just felt it was my obligation. Now I feel bad. I think we’re in such a spot. We can’t pull out of there because if we do, it would just be a waste of all our people’s lives and all their people’s lives. I think it’s a real Catch-22.”
His sentiments shifted after “seeing all these guys getting killed every day for nothing, really. We went over there, and we’re fighting this war, and we’re still paying $2.40 a gallon for gas. Eighteen hundred people have died, and nothing has been accomplished.’

They’ve lost the people who thought it was ok to invade and occupy Iraq for the oil.
I’d imagine that those same people will now oppose the spread of the conflagration to Iran.
But none of us will be consulted. The decision will be made at Likud headquarters, I’m unsure if that is in Israel or the United States.
The Likud has learned to live with chaos and destruction, with permanent warfare, and that’s exaclty what they have in mind now for all of us.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 15 2005 2:50 utc | 123

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