I saw Saw I, but I don’t think I’ll see Saw II. How about you?

Posted by: Sez who | Nov 26 2005 15:12 utc | 3

i will now stop reading his blog
his parsing critique of montbiot is beyond the pale
cole’s family’s military background have coulded both his perception & judgement
his obtuse defence of american war crimes – is nothing other than cafe casuitry conducted behind a shelf of books
enough

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 26 2005 15:27 utc | 5

He sounded a little like Pat yesterday, did’nt he?

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 26 2005 18:15 utc | 7

Wait. What are you guys commenting on? I’m lost.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 26 2005 19:06 utc | 9

Speaking at a news conference in Kandahar, the US-led coalition’s operational commander, Maj-Gen Jason Kamiya, said the soldiers involved had not been aware that what they were doing was wrong.
this is my surprise face

Posted by: annie | Nov 26 2005 19:36 utc | 11

oh c’mon. juan cole isn’t all that.

Posted by: slothrop | Nov 26 2005 20:43 utc | 13

I haven’t bothered to read Cole for a while. We are getting to that place where a tyre salesman would say ‘the rubber meets the road’ and a lumberjack is about to yell ‘timber’ and most of the rest of us feel the urge to relax and indulge in a little self congratulation, because everything we have said has been vindicated.
But really we shouldn’t be smug at all. One hundred thousand plus people have died in the most horrible and disgustingly cruel circumstances. A hundred thousand!! That’s more people than live in my hometown. Most of them seem OK, not neccessarily up there on my Xmas card list, but I can’t think of anyone I would want to see minced by a ‘daisycutter’ blown apart by high explosive, roasted by napalm 2, melted by WP, or have their head blown off by a high velocity bullet.
So no we shouldn’t feel smug. Most of all we mustn’t relax either.
We’ve seen this before and after the Indochina escapade where we were happy to be vindicated and ecstatic about the cessation of slaughter we took our eye off the ball.
Why wouldn’t you? No one is going to be that damn stupid again are they?
Hubris will out. Ours as well as theirs. We just got too damned smug about the outcome and let the mainchancers and greedheads rewrite history. This meant that the invaders of Indochina didn’t ever have to pay the price for their ignorance, greed and stupidity.
I’m sure if you ask the average 20 year old amerikan; they will be firmly convinced that there were US troops left behind in Vietnam who were brainwashed, tortured then eventually executed.
There was no such thing as even one MIA yet when the assholes promoted this meme to avoid being held accountable we didn’t resist strongly enough. That emboldened them to the point where they could do same shit different day.
When that black marble monstrosity was erected in Washington, how many people stopped and thought whether those people whose names had been so expensively etched onto it, would really think that canonising them by creating the myth of ‘our wonderful boys’ was a good thing? Would they consider that their elevation becoming a trade off for yet another generation’s needless slaughter was a good deal?
We’ve all seen the images of irate relatives of US troops killed in Iraq, demanding that their loved one’s photo be taken off the wall at Camp Sheehan. Well did the families of troops killed in Indochina get the same courtesy if they believed their loved one wouldn’t have wanted to be a silenced supporter of miltarism and amerikan exceptionalism?
Meanwhile nobody spoke about the thousands of kids of the new generation in Vietnam coming into the world with major birth defects. Why? Cause those a-holes won’t give us back our non-existant MIAs
We can see the the Iraq story right now and this time it is going to be our duty to ensure that everytime the corrupt, mendacious, hubris drenched, pigs try and spout it, we rebutt their lies.
The basic story is already out there. The story is Iraqis asked for it because they let Saddam Hussein the monster of the Mid East, stay in power when they should have given him the flick years before.
Yeah right the fact that countries like USuk aided him in his mad attempt to become a 20th century Saladin fully underwriting the fantasy by giving him access to the weapons he needed but denying Iraq their fair claim on historical access to the waterways and misleading the Iraqis over their stance on Kuwaiti oil theft.
Anyone would think USuk wanted Iraq to fight Iran, wanted Iraq to invade the corrupt and nepotistic Kuwait. They wouldn’t do that would they…?
So the meme is going to be that if Iraqis had shown some balls it need never have come to this. That we won’t talk about the overwhelming support the Ba’athists got from both USuk and the Soviets and ‘old Europe’. We won’t discuss the creation of Kuwait as a ploy to keep the tribes of the River bend away from any sea access to ensure that they could never be independant of any other nation’s control.
We especially won’t discuss that as far as late 20th century despots of oil rich nations Hussein was standard fare par for the course. In fact some might say he was rather better than average. He may have been brutal but the brutality was his ignorant way of ‘nation building’. He may have lived a palatial lifestyle but he kept Iraq’s asset base intact and he developed a health and education infrastructure unmatched in the Middle East. Lets face it those last tow positive attributes are the real reason that Iraq is a disater zone now.
What good is all that oil if the money is going to be spent on bridges built by Iraqis instead of white elephants designed constructed and commissioned by Bechtel?
Spending money on health? Well yep good idea but what’s with this wasting it on doctors instead of drug corporations?
Yeah I know we could ramble on forever on this the crimes are so many and nefarious, the criminals so legion and corrupt.
What we need to do though is to nip any attempt at revisionism in the bud.
When the media blatantly uses dead soldiers to till the battlefields ready for more dead soldiers, let them know that many of those dead soldiers would really feel they had died in vain if their death was going to be used to recruit more cannon fodder. Yep some of them probably would go along with it but that doesn’t give warmongers permission to use all of them to promote their foul agenda. Tell them this guilt trip them the way they guilt trip the anti war resistance.
When lame movies like that one where some lame actor won an oscar for sending up the intellectually disabled by showing him to be a content but cuddly martyr for ‘real’ people, try and argue that their is nobility in killing or that pacifists are wife beaters pull them up. Put picket lines outside the theatres just like the xtians do.
They didn’t have any wins straight off the bat but they did keep the debate going long enough for their outrageous positions to become ‘normalised’. The POV against imperialism, murder and theft isn’t outrageous it’s an eminently sensible position to have in a world where the rich are getting richer the poor poorer and the middle non existant.
It’s easy to say this now while the lessons are fresh in everyone’s mind so the insistence on facts just the facts has to bein now.
If it is left until the rethugs have already established their lying meme then the ground can’t be won back.
Simialrly if the peaceful predominate initially in this struggle, then retire to their Montanan dental floss ranches the mainchancers will strike back.
The duplicity of USuk must become the accepted ‘truth’ about this slaughter.
Of course hysteria or unsubstantiated claims will give the war mongers just the leverage they want so it is vital that we don’t indulge in that either.
So now is the time when we need to shift into top gear and Burn that rubber!
Let Cole know that his revisionism is cynical and unacceptable. When a newspaper argues that extraordinary furphy “I don’t believe it is about oil!” Contact it and let the staff know you are onto them. Point out WW1 was about oil but most of the cannon fodder never knew it.
Drip drip drip. Like water on stone slowly the uncommitted will have to accept there is another POV and eventually they will acknowledge it as well.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 26 2005 22:12 utc | 15

Who We Are
SAUL LANDAU
November 26, 2005
George W. Bush returned from a brief but difficult November learning foray in Latin America: “Wow, Brazil is big.” Meanwhile, U.S. citizens grew impatient with his performance. CBS polls rated him at 35% approval in early November. Even his supporters acknowledge that Bush’s policies have created enormous ill will throughout the world. More ethically worrisome, cried his critics, those policies don’t represent who we really are…

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 26 2005 23:33 utc | 17

‘We don’t torture’
Preznit Bush declared 18 days during a Panamanian news conference in Panama that “We do not torture.”
In the meantime though he steadfastly maintains his threat to veto a defense spending bill because it contains language written by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) banning the “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, effectively by anyone, anywhere, for any reason or justification.
Bush&Co have declared since 2002 that the United States is not bound by the Geneva Conventions or other treaties when it comes to treatment of ‘suspects’ captured in the Global War on Terra(GWOT)(sic).
A reality or unreality check ? … The United Nations 1987 Convention Against Torture has this to say on the subject:

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 27 2005 0:19 utc | 19

I know a man who tortures his dog. He ties the dog to a board, tilts the board downward, smothers the dog’s face with a cloth, and then soaks the cloth with water. The terrified creature feels as if it is drowning, but because its lungs remain higher than its mouth, it doesn’t. [The desperate, terrified flailing and pitiful muffled sounds would be …]
This man told me he did this to his dog 17 times last month.
In fact, I don’t actually know such a man, but I do know men who approve of such acts, as long as the victims are human beings rather than dogs. This is the official position of the Bush administration on the interrogation technique known as “water-boarding.”…

Defending torture is incredible

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 27 2005 0:44 utc | 21

If I were of the Political Elite, I’d keep the Shooting Wars Going. Even beyond the simple fact that they are profitable. The masses are easily distracted so they won’t focus on the fact that we’re busy Stealing Everything Everywhere. After we’ve stolen everything in America, Iraq, etc. then the shooting can stop. The masses will wake up & their lives will be over. In the meantime, anyone who focuses on that can be called an immoral selfish complainer who is worried about their own welfare while others are dying.
In the meantime, Social Security has been stolen. Hundreds of thousands are being tossed out of homes as they lose their jobs. Out to starve as another 400,000 were just cut off food stamps & their 30,000 children cut-off of school lunch programs, so we can continue to loot the treasury with tax cuts for us.
So, 2,3 Many Wars. Fret Away to your hearts content.

Posted by: jj | Nov 27 2005 2:54 utc | 23

For an insight into what the consequences of such ‘bombing’ campaigns are, smart bombs (hah ! Smart enough to magically distinguish combatant from civilian ?!) or not, check out the following article on the bombing of North Korea during the Korean War, oops ‘police action’, and if you find the writers style a little melodramatic or ‘over the top’ consider that it’s all referenced and sourced, with valuable additional commentary from various historians in the comments …
Yep, the Korean War wasn’t exactly the ‘sanitized’ saga of heroes and glory that the likes of Ollie North would like to portray … then ponder what would be the ingrained memories and attitudes of the demonized North Koreans who managed to live through it all, and are still alive today, from their perspective … no wonder they fear us (our foreign policy) so …
Ah, the heroic indiscriminate snuffing out of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives from afar and above at negligible personal risk … not exactly in the romantic, glorious or valorous style of warriors of old … but that’s high tech modern soldiers/airmen for you … if we survive, our military will eventually be slaughtering the ‘others’ using ‘sci-fi’ remote control robotic war machines of death … oops, sorry, we already are, aren’t we (armed Predator and other armed UAVs, prototype and experimental machine gun-armed urban demo-robots in Iraq, etc) …
Hm, how or even who do the victims seek justice from when killed or maimed by the unidentifiable operators of such devices ? Another advantage in the view of Pentagon planners ?

Link

(much of the relevant record is STILL classified !)

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 27 2005 3:52 utc | 25

Not only don’t we torture, but we haven’t been doing it for many years.

January 28, 1956 [diary, p.42]
The squeals of a pig being slaughtered that were heard last night toward nine o’clock in fact came from a boy. He was treated to the magneto. The method is simple: a wire on a testicle, another on an ear, and then the switch is flipped. For this kid they did not use the normal method. They attached the wires to a wrist and an ear. The kid, so it seems, confessed that he had alerted four men armed with hunting rifles who were waiting for the soldiers. This is what Lieutenant S— triumphantly announced to me this morning. Last night I first thought it was jackals howling. But it kept going on. I then went outside in my pyjamas and listened: the voices and moans coming from the lieutenants’ tent. I thought to myself, “it’s impossible that they would dare treat the kid to the magneto; it’s the older ones they want to make talk.” I went back inside, sickened yet one more time, thinking of the kid who must have been terrified to be in the custody of the soldiers. But it was indeed the kid who was being tortured. This morning I was completely shattered… Impossible to go to the boy, to talk with and console him. He wouldn’t understand, since he doesn’t speak French. I took it upon myself to go and take a photo of him. It is a photo that will be shown in France. This is why I did it.
http://soldiertestimony.org/France/France_Al/Document.2004-03-12.5717

The links between France’s conduct in Algeria then, and the United States actions in Iraq today, are rather concrete. Gilles Pontecorvo’s award-winning 1965 docudrama, “The Battle of Algiers” — detailing the illegal repressive tactics by the French — has been used as a how-to-do-it training film for the U.S. counter-insurgency forces in Iraq. The 2001 memoir by the head of French intelligence in Algeria, General Paul Aussaresses — “Special Services, 1955-57,” in which the General justified and recounted in detail the kidnapping, torture, and murder his self-described “death squad” employed — has been used, too, as a training manual, notably for the intelligence officers deployed to the torture prison at Abu Ghraib, where teenage boys were raped. (General Aussaresses was indicted in France for publishing this apologia for “crimes against humanity” — actions which French President Jacques Chirac qualified as “atrocities” when he ordered the General stripped of one France’s most prestigious decorations, the Legion of Honor, for his published confession.)
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-10/10ireland.cfm

Posted by: citizen k | Nov 27 2005 4:24 utc | 27

It being not yet dreamtime, and a spell of rainy days passing into sun,
we spent today acting instead of obsessing over our leaky roof. You see,
we spent the dry season detailing and tuckpointing the whole thing, but
then, first torrential rain of monsoon season, there it was, drip, drip, drip,
kind of like the feeling we had, after exhaustively explaining to our friends
the intricasies of BushCo’s evil dealings, only to have them drip, drip, drip
back in 2004 to supporting Bush/Cheney for another four years anyway .
So we started calling around to roofers, and putting savings in the bank.
We figured it was just us, our poor roofing skills, our inability to link syntax
and soliloquy into some compelling argument for our Republican friends.
We let it defeat us, without even investigating it. It’s that $%*’g roof again!
But not today! Maybe it was the white phosphorus, Bush’s secret plan to
smuggle WMD’s into Iraq, or the frustration of Fitzgerald and Plamegate,
but when that sun came out, after a month of rain, by golly gee, we got up
and ripped those skylights off, speaking truth to power, in full battle rattle.
Well, what do you know … the g’d–n contractors laid the skylights right on
top of the wood and sheetrock without a shim or a gasket! It was just like
that newsflash, reading about Fitzgerald’s investigation, the cross-links.
Of course! It wasn’t the roof, it was the skylight condensing and dripping!
What amazing things you discover when you really start digging.
So we took them all apart, and cleaned them with alcohol, and planed
down the roof curbs flush, and laid on a thick gaskets. Didn’t take much,
like casting your vote, just do it. Then on a hunch, I stopped by the local
hardware store and found this stretch plastic film, you tape it over the
skylight, then run a hair-dryer over it to shrink it tight and clear as glass.
Eight bucks! That’s all it cost us, and the elbow grease, and now those
skylights are clean, pristine, no weeping, no thick mat of black mold(!),
no condensation, no dribbles down the sheetrock softening the paint.
All because the sun came out, we forgot our self-doubts, and *did it*.
Now just think what we could all do if we *really ripped into* BushCo!
What happened to MoA’s plan to wikipedize our collective knowledge?
Let’s rip some collective new a–holes for the denizens of Capitol Hill!
Don’t forget our veterans in the veterans hospitals over the holidays!
Long distance calling cards can make their
very lonely holidays a happier one.
Just pick up one every time you shop, and
send them to the recovery ward desk.
They’re fighting dying on our nickel.

Posted by: Elrod MacAffey | Nov 27 2005 4:57 utc | 29

Scholorship aside, I wonder if Juan Cole is inclined to pull a punch, and tow to an extent, the exceptionalist line. Its no(or is it)
coincidence that Coles outline for withdrawl — to just over the “horizon” is essentially the same as that advocated by Murtha — which is a protectorant force for the Shiite majority, least they become unravelled and unable to prevail (and lose the access&control to stable mineral extraction). The semantic parsing of the WP argument, while annoying, is illustrative that his ideas within the beltway are being considered, perhaps (seriously) as an alternative way to preserve the sacred and unmentioned “interest” preserving in the process, the look of disengagement.Such an influence also requires exclusive “hands off” military culpubility, hence the administrative semantic song and dance. And while this would generally be a step (that is not totally clueless)in the right direction in itself, it could just as easily complicate and compress the existing situation, instead of releaving the pressure. And as much as he dislikes Chalabi, he better watch out for his shadow.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 27 2005 11:15 utc | 31

dk r’giap & remembereringgiap are one and the same.

Posted by: annie | Nov 27 2005 15:46 utc | 33

dk
the two are the same – when i am out working sometimes with what little time i have i want to either read or post
but yr right there is not much poetry in what i sd except perhaps for the dictum of maïakovski – at the moment the communities i work with are under great pressure since the ‘riots’ & this time of year is especially hard for the homeless & the exiles. there is less anger in them but there is the profoundest forms of melancholy whch i seem to absorb
& i have such a reliance on the internet for information. it has become the primary source for me so when i read the parsing of mr cole – it seems like i am watching some awful bbc talk programme where the interviwer when asked a specifi question offers – welll it could go like this or it could go like that – it could be a bad thing but it could also be a good thing & with their constant use of ‘ ‘ every time a legitimate event has taken place that they do not want to confirm one way or another
truly i am tired, i am tired of them
truth has never been as necessary as it is today
& for me fallujah has become a signifying moment – what we don’t know about the terrible events that have passed there cause great, great concern

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 27 2005 16:10 utc | 35

“In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, the Pentagon awarded the Rendon Group, a public affairs firm, a $16.7m contract to monitor media in the Islamic world. It was assigned to track “the location and use of Al-Jazeera news bureaux, reporters and stringers”, and was asked to “identify the biases of specific journalists and potentially obtain an understanding of their allegiances”.
The firm says that it did not go on to monitor Al-Jazeera. But the original contract suggests the Pentagon was interested in targeting the station and its journalists.
In 2002 Al-Jazeera’s bureau in Kabul was hit by a US missile and five months later a missile struck its Baghdad office and killed a reporter. Both were said to be accidents.
Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based think tank, last week described Al-Jazeera as “fair game” on the grounds that it promoted beheadings and suicide bombings.”
times of london

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 27 2005 16:18 utc | 37

First, Do No Harm – Music for the Broken
A few years ago, actually, decades, my spouse and I discovered a non-feral cat
abandoned at a freeway rest stop. Actually, it had been abandoned for a long
time, and only the smell of our tuna fish sandwiches made it bold enough to beg.
Great cat, tortoiseshell and tabby, awesome eyes that draw you in, wait, what the
hell is that! In the cat’s eyes, on their surface, dozens of transparent filarial worms.
J—s C—t!! We had to show the vet, he’d never seen that, but sure enough, with the
magnifying glass, dozens of worms whipping back and forth from the tear ducts.
Well, we picked out new cat up the next day, and our vet had discovered by calling
the local university these worms live in deer guts, and deer pellets, which our feral
cat had been surviving on, along with dumpster-diving at the freeway rest area.
Who knew?!
– – –
Fast forward a dozen years, when our then old cat started bringing home a lot of
mice. Not fast and furious mice, but weak and limping ones. At first I figured the
cat had chewed on them a bit first, but then I noticed these mice were coming
out of the ground in the garden, crawling around like drowning, well, rats!
I picked one up as the cat climbed onto my knee, and then dropped it in disgust.
Around the mouse’s anus were clusters of pupae the size of deer pellets. Then
it occurred to me, maybe I should take this to the local university, it might be a new
pest imported from Russia, or Holland, or one of those socialist countries! (smile)
So I gingerly plucked one off the expired mouse and pickled it in alcohol and sent
it off to the local university entomological lab. Then a couple weeks later I got a letter,
‘Thank you for sending this pupae, please don’t send any more (smile), it’s a common
form of bot fly that crawls into the mouse burrows and lays eggs on their fur, etcetera.’
Who knew?!
– – –
Now I’m not a conspiracy type, but in all my years of living and looking at the world,
I’ve never found anything, not plant infestation, not insect larvae, not frog or creeper,
not winged insect, nothing that you can’t find in the text books, and no disease the
doctors haven’t been treating since Asklepios. Sure, they may not have known what
it was, in the modern bacteriological virological fashion, and they may have treated
it by using leeches or giving mercury philters or casting spells, but they knew of it.
Until HIV1B (AIDS). Until H5N1 (AVIAN). (Now hold that thought for the denouement.)
– – –
All of which has nothing to do with diseases of mankind, but diseases of the body
politic. How is it, of all these political diseases known to man since ancient times,
the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Mayans, Christian Kings and now this behemoth
United States variant, why, when it gives so little back in return, does the American
style of government demand such a heavy tithe? Royal lines ruled for centuries on
tribute, a share of harvest, and a 10% tithe to the Church. You worked your tenant
parcel, you served in the king’s army, and that was it, the rest of your life was yours.
The ancient cultures had their captured slaves, and their war booty. Today, we
have crude oil stored for eons underground, more energy available to us than
the total sum of all civilizations gone before. Not just energy, but machines, the
industrial age, more slaves than the total sum of all civilizations gone before us.
Industrial man should be the richest folks on earth, and their government *free*.
Yet we pay more tribute, more labor, more service, than any civilization before.
Why is that? $1,450,000,000,000 every single year, year in, and year out. There
are no bad years for United States government. When tax revenues fall off, when
the people have been weakened by plagues of speculators, well, they start a war.
And what do the people get in return? Nothing! A few jobs, (you might even say a
plague of jobs, but for that kind of investment, about the lowest return possible.)
Not-for-profits and charities are watched closely to see that they remain charities.
Every year, they post their profit and loss, and their actuals percentage. Most are
in the 85% range. That is, 85% of the money contributed to them is left over after
administrative overhead, to go towards charitable giving.
Now comes Federal government. It’s nowhere near 85%! Administrative overhead
is 50%, once the money trickles down to the appropriation level. In some cases,
administrative overhead is as high as 85%, in Bureau of Indian Affairs, for example.
When you add in their in-ability to execute and collect royalties on Indian Trust lands,
their actual administrative overhead is more than 100%!!
C’est incredible!
What do we get for our Federal investment? Nothing! For $500,000,000,000, did
the Department of Defense defend US against 9/11? Nope, they were off playing
war games. For our $36,500,000,000, did the Department of Homeland Defense
(FEMA) defend US against Katrina or Shoe Bomber? Nope! Well, with the special
appropriations our Congress gave them, did they at least rebuild the devastation?
Nope!! There’s *still* a hole in the ground in New York City, and still a mountain of
siwash in New Orleans, and Iraq is now even more a living hell than it was before.
All that tax money is gone. Trillions. Pffft! Poof! Up in Federal smoke and mirrors.
Oh, but let’s send a mission to Mars!
Better, let’s lease our Federal lands to foreign companies for less than the cost of
the inevitable cleanup. No, hey, let’s spend *more* to develop those Federal lands
than can be extracted from them! There you go! Admin overhead over 100% again!
Yet somehow, citizens of Brunei, for example, live quite well on their oil royalties.
The citizens of Kuwait were largely able to fly off to Mediterranean vacations while
United States was rescuing their country from Saddam. The citizens of Libya, for
C—t sake, all have free health care services. Libya, and a whole host of other
countries. But not the great United States, the land of teeming resources and
more Federal land than any nation on earth, yet we get nothing back in return!
Not health care, not education, not nothing. Just taxes on taxes, taxes on your
cell phone from the 1800’s(!), taxes on your gas, taxes on your land, taxes, and
prisons, and deficit expenditures that have nothing to do with defense, deficits
and bureaucratic bleeding of the body politic until it’s too weak to defend itself,
weeping sores and cancerous abandoned industrial towns and whole regions.
– – –
Ergo, US Federal government is the modern equivalent of HIV-AIDS on mankind.
And like H5N1 avian flu, it’s jumping from society to society, and must be stopped.
It is, after all, our money, and our land, and we have the accountants and lawyers.
To the guillotines!

Posted by: tante aime | Nov 27 2005 16:39 utc | 39

slothrop
i don’t get the point
i have lived half of my life in france – i came to her as an exile as someone who wanted something better – i love her – but i have known her sins – since i was a young
the point is – so does she
you cannot live in this country & not understand that its melancholly is historically determined
my brothers & sisters in struggle have been vietnamese indonesians, filiinos, greeks, argentinians, peruvians ,iraqui, lebnese angolese, italians, germans, they have been syrian, scottish, siranamese, they have been portugese irish indian & mongolian
i don’t know what your point is
my internationalism is a matter of public record – a film on my work – ‘brûlures’ is available n loan through the documentary film centre
is it because i insist that at this moment – imperialism has an american face & is it because i intervonnect the cultural malignancy with the illegal & immoral foreign policies of that empire
i am not anti – american
i imagined i was having a dialogue here – with americans – who are also trying to understand the sinister nature of our times

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 27 2005 19:09 utc | 41

well i’ll give you a leg up, my friend slothrop
of learning today – that a person i hold in high esteem ramsey clark is trying to be permitted to defend saddam hussein in court – i know will be held up to ridicule
so you can begin now, my friend

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 27 2005 19:41 utc | 43

Justin Raimondo’s latest broadside against the neo-con galleon is no mere
“shot across the bow”, but rather the announcement of boarding parties ready for hand-to-hand (well at least
pen-hand against pen-hand) combat.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 28 2005 6:21 utc | 45

@ RGiap
A point of idle curiosity (and perhaps a small and somewhat paradoxical “commercial” for your work):
Is this the “brûlures” to which you referred above?
If so, I’m tempted to acquire it.

By the way, and FWIW, I find you to be no more anti-american than any decent U.S. citizen ought to be right now, and, alas, probably for a long time to come.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 28 2005 6:37 utc | 47

hkol
helas no
the film is ‘brûlure’ par lionel brouet who has alo done a film on the french band ‘lojo triban’ & a film on the taureg music festival held in the desert. the film is in french & english

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 28 2005 10:48 utc | 49

CIFA: The Pentagon’s COINTELPRO
The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts—including protecting military facilities from attack—to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 28 2005 17:45 utc | 51

A HREF=”/A>http://icasualties.org/”>Does anyone know what’s going on?
Today’s casualty report from the DoD states that the total U.S. deaths for Operation Iraqi Freedom is 2245. This is over 130 more than our count and the total number of DoD death confirmations.
The DoD has given no explanation for the sudden increase in fatality totals and there has been no mention in the press as to why the totals have increased dramatically over the past week.

Posted by: Havenite | Nov 28 2005 20:10 utc | 53

Randy “Duke” Cunningham is gone. Thanks to Josh Marshall who made this a real public case.
Some 500 left to go.

Posted by: b | Nov 28 2005 20:46 utc | 55

Good Question, Uncle – What kinda Name is “Silla Brush”?
Here’s an Extraordinary Tidbit. This letter to the editor was published in the right-wing mormon daily newspapaper – the Newspaper of Record in the blighted state of Utah.
Start with Cheney
Perhaps the vice president is correct, America should be able to torture suspects to garner information. Let us start with Mr. Cheney, as it appears he may have information regarding the CIA leak from his chief of staff.
   
   David Taylor
   Salt Lake City
link
   

Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2005 21:16 utc | 57

John @americablog, weighs in w/the 25th Amendment which provides for removing pres. from Office when he’s too mad to carry out his job. Glad to see that I’m not the only one who saw that as Hugely Significant Part of Sy Hersh’s current New Yorker Article. It’s obvious that he needs to be removed from office for Emotional Incompetence after Cheney’s “allowed to resign for medical reasons”, so it’s our job to keep focusing on it. link

Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2005 21:55 utc | 59

“Good Question, Uncle – What kinda Name is “Silla Brush”?”
I had a roommate in college who didn’t like Priscilla. She called herself Cilla. It sure beats prissy.

Posted by: beq | Nov 28 2005 23:22 utc | 61

GM to raise India workforce by 30%
America’s loss is turning out to be India’s gain. Within days of announcing 30,000 job-cuts in the US, automobile giant General Motors Corp will this week unveil plans to increase its workforce in India by nearly 30%.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 28 2005 23:59 utc | 63

the heroic & principled ramsey clark is defending, what no doubt the new attorney general/torturer-in-chied gonzales, would call the quaint notion of law
of course ramsey will be attacked for being a ‘friend’ of tyrants – when he has been constant in defending what a law might be in a half perfect world
they will of course accuse him again of beng part of the left cult answer
& they will vilify & demonise again & again but there is no way they can strip the basic decency & honor of this man
i have seen clark speaking of the late fred hampton & it made me really comprehend in a practical way in what manner power in america wanted the physical liquidation of a militant leadership of black, chicano, indian & other peoples of the americas
while so much of what passes for ‘law’ & ‘rights’ in america is just so much culturepap or gauleiter judge freiser jurisprudence – he givesthe notion of the right to defence of everyone, honour

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 29 2005 2:46 utc | 65

So, are there any democrats left in Congress to tax GM 100% of the salary differential bet. jobs here & India?

Posted by: jj | Nov 29 2005 4:41 utc | 67

Am I the only one who’s been curious to hear about the terms of J Miller’s separation from NYT? For those similarly curious, we should all be so “fired”. Golden Parachute is more apt characterization.
She’s reported to have received 3 Years Pay as Severance. Plus A BONUS – 3 more years pay. Cash rumored to be about $3M!!! PLUS Times Medical Benefits for the Rest of Her Life…and Presumably she’s still getting her pension!! Toughies…link

Posted by: jj | Nov 29 2005 5:25 utc | 69

@anna missed
None of these Bush&Co approved ‘plans’ are about ending the occupation or returning Iraq to Iraqi’s, yet … read between the lines … they reduce, not withdraw, boots on the ground and (temporarily ?) hand off to the native ‘Sepoy’s’ while manipulating/interfering with the semi-pliant ‘Raj’ … that should shut up concerns about American casualties driving the anti-war movement …
More air strikes (smart weapons my ass!) with the inevitable even greater subsequent indiscriminate civilian casualties as ‘collateral’ whilst ‘loosing’ the militia’s in Iraqi uniforms is going to douse the flames of insurgency, especially whilst we do not renounce our colonial claims nor cease gross interference ?
Jeez, the only reason Allawi is sprouting the insincere human rights crap is so we can have two ‘recycled’, publicly pseudo-anti-occupation puppets ready in the wings to install by fair means or foul at the first available opportunity …
Bush&Co and even the Dems are playing for big geopolitical stakes here … the continuance of superpower dominance … all the rest is revolving smoke and mirrors justifications …
Cole also continues with his crap about the insurgents being just Ba’athists and Sunni’s even though his own references do not support that conclusion … 82% opposed to occupation ?! when the Sunni are only ~15% of the population ?!

There is a civil war raging in Iraq, but not a conflict between Sunni and Shi’a. It is a clash between those who support the occupation and those who oppose it.
– Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington

my 0.02 cents is up

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 29 2005 11:40 utc | 71

@ Dismal Science: Thanks. I hope someone takes him up on it.

Posted by: beq | Nov 29 2005 17:52 utc | 73

Outraged,
I freely admit that I’m no ME scholar, but Juan Cole is, and this is what’s bugging me. One expects scholarship to fill in whats between the lines objectivly — as opposed to floating political fix-alls that resonate with this or that party line(that are really about and) involve preferential face saving for the US. And while its his right to be an advocate for either a democratic (plan) or his beloved Shia in Iraq, who would benifit from such a plan — he should not be suprised to find his thought (assuming they are genuine) easily and likely preverted for political expediancy. And why does he so rarely mention the social/economic problems confronting Iraq, that are the direct result of occupation, has having to do with the ever increasing chaos. 60% unemployment, all the Bremmer economic directives still in place, all the ministries still choked with US (5year) appointees, rampent brain and capital flight, massive governmental corruption and on and on — problems that if addressed would actually reduce the temperature of strife — but no — its always about us, and our money, and our war on terror, and our vanity, and our honor. How anybody, least of all these scholars, can expect that this one eye in the mirror, and one eye in the gunsight — that got us in this mess in the first place — is going to get us out is beyond me. I expect better.

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 29 2005 20:15 utc | 75

b real,
funny you should post that, my sentiments exactly.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 29 2005 20:31 utc | 77

@anna missed at 3:15:44 PM
Oh agreed. Precisely why the objectivity and validity of his subsequent analysis should not be taken at face value. Not going to skip his translation and collection output though … no different than carefully parsing the regular MSM articles …

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 29 2005 23:58 utc | 79

short simple & clear
noam chomsky
“One can go on. But the major and crucial point overlooked is the judgment of Nuremberg, declaring that aggression is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” All of the “accumulated evil.” Also overlooked are the stern words of the US Chief Counsel Justice Jackson: “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us… We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.” Until at least this is recognized, all other discussion is merely footnotes, and shameful ones.”

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 30 2005 1:16 utc | 81

via pr watch: By God, another awful Bush appointment

…the Bush administration has taken promotion of [well-connected political hacks] to embarrassing extremes, selecting unqualified people for posts because of their political loyalty and ideological persuasion. The most recent example of this was the appointment of Paul Bonicelli to be deputy director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is in charge of all programs to promote democracy and good governance overseas.
. . .
The closest he comes to democracy-promotion or good governance is having worked as a staffer for the Republican Party in the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives.
More significant to the administration, perhaps, is the fact that Bonicelli is dean of academic affairs at tiny Patrick Henry College in rural Virginia. The fundamentalist institution’s motto is “For Christ and Liberty.” It requires that all of its 300 students sign a 10-part “statement of faith” declaring, among other things, that they believe “Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh;” that “Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead”; and that hell is a place where “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.”
Faculty members, too, must sign a pledge stating they share a generally literalist belief in the Bible. Revealingly, only biology and theology teachers are required to hold a literal view specifically of the Bible’s six-day creation story.
. . .
Patrick Henry was founded in 2000 for home-schooled students. Among the fundamentalist community, home-schooling is seen as a way to promote Christian values as an alternative to what is regarded as an increasingly secular and irreligious culture prevalent in public schools. The college says it aims to “prepare Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding.” It seeks “to aid in the transformation of American society by training Christian students to serve God and mankind with a passion for righteousness, justice and mercy, through careers of public service and cultural influence.”
Though Bonicelli has scant credentials for his new post, he and his institution enjoy close ties to the Bush administration and to fundamentalist religious groups that form such a critical part of the president’s base. Many Patrick Henry students have been chosen to serve as interns working for White House political adviser Karl Rove, for the White House Office of Public Liaison, and for Republican members of the House and Senate. “Most students’ values don’t link up with [those of] the Democrats,” Bonicelli says.
. . .
…the USAID programs Bonicelli will run are important weapons in the arsenal of Bush’s new public diplomacy czarina, White House confidante Karen Hughes. These programs are intended to play a central role in boosting Bush’s efforts to foster democracy and freedom in Iraq and throughout the broader Middle East.
One can only wonder how Muslims, the target audience for these USAID programs, will react to the view that “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.”

Posted by: b real | Nov 30 2005 3:42 utc | 83

Which is special, that georgie appoints a Theocrat rather than a Corporocrat, or that we have to read about it in the Lebanese Press for christ sakes, rather than headlines of Pravda-on-the-Potomac?

Posted by: jj | Nov 30 2005 4:36 utc | 85

And for any of those still keeping score at home, the story I linked to above (29 Nov. 12:20:45 AM) about the EU threatening its members with punitive actions if they don’t stand strong against US torture flyovers has already drawn a response from the US. Strange how reasonable the US can get when the dollar is falling and a real “coalition of the willing” has something to say about things. Now, I don’t expect the US to exactly piss themselves and back down (like, say, Belgium would), but this is a good start.

Posted by: Monolycus | Nov 30 2005 8:19 utc | 87