Unless,,,unless…The breakup of Iraq into three ‘more manageable’ pieces has always ‘been’ the goal. Each with it’s own US military base.

Posted by: pb | Dec 22 2005 1:17 utc | 4

chossudovsky: The Anglo-American War of Terror: An Overview

The so-called “War on Terrorism” is a lie.
Amply documented, the pretext to wage this war is totally fabricated.
Realities have been turned upside down. Acts of war are heralded as “humanitarian interventions” geared towards restoring ‘democracy’.
Military occupation and the killing of civilians are presented as “peace-keeping operations.”
The derogation of civil liberties under the so-called “anti-terrorist legislation” is portrayed as a means to providing “domestic security” and upholding civil liberties.
Meanwhile, the civilian economy is precipitated into crisis; expenditures on health and education are curtailed to finance the military-industrial complex and the police state.
Under the American Empire, millions of people around the world are being driven into abysmal poverty, and countries are transformed into open territories.
U.S. protectorates are installed with the blessing of the so-called “international community.” “Interim governments” are formed. Political puppets designated by America’s oil giants are casually endorsed by the United Nations, which increasingly performs the role of a rubber-stamp for the U.S. Administration.
Reversing the tide of war can not be limited to a critique of the US war agenda. Ultimately what is at stake is the legitimacy of the political and military actors and the economic power structures, which ultimately control the formulation, and direction of US foreign policy.
While the Bush administration implements a “war on terrorism”, the evidence (including mountains of official documents) amply confirms that successive U.S. administrations have supported, abetted and harbored international terrorism.
This fact, in itself, must be suppressed because if it ever trickles down to the broader public, the legitimacy of the so-called “war on terrorism” collapses “like a deck of cards.” And in the process, the legitimacy of the main actors behind this system would be threatened.
How does one effectively break the war and police state agendas? Essentially by refuting the “war on terrorism” which constitutes the very foundations of the US national security doctrine.
A war agenda is not disarmed through antiwar sentiment. One does not reverse the tide by asking President Bush: “please abide by the Geneva Convention” and the Nuremberg Charter. Ultimately a consistent antiwar agenda requires unseating the war criminals in high office as first step towards disarming the institutions and corporate structure of the New World Order.
To break the Inquisition, we must also break its propaganda, its fear and intimidation campaign, which galvanizes public opinion into accepting the “war on terrorism”.

Posted by: b real | Dec 22 2005 5:15 utc | 6

thanks anna missed, i’ll check it out in a moment
first let me drop a couple quotes that seem relevant to our current pickle…

Counterinsurgency experts believe in what one may call the “doctrine of permanent counterinsurgency.” No price – not the distortion of their professed values by the advancement and acceptance of totalitarian practices and institutions, not the destruction of a culture, not the dispossession and displacement of a people – is ultimately too high for these men who play with the lives and future of the masses in the manner of obsessed gamblers intent on a final win.
— eqbal ahmad, revolutionary warfare and counterinsurgency [emphasis mine]

and

[Americans] have come to think … that our main problem is abroad. How to ‘project’ our images to the world? Yet the problem abroad is only a symptom of our deeper problem at home. We have come to believe in our own images, till we have projected ourselves out of this world [so that] now, in the height of our power … we are threatened by a new and peculiarly American menace … It is the menace of unreality … We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them. We are the most illusioned people on earth. Yet we dare not become disillusioned, because our illusions are the very house in which we live; they are our news, our heroes … our very experience.
— daniel boorstein, the image; or what happened to the american dream (1961), quoted in alex carey, taking the risk out of democracy: corporate propaganda versus freedom and liberty

Posted by: b real | Dec 22 2005 6:28 utc | 8

At some stage during the night last night I flicked on the Beeb to see Saddam Hussein pointing out that he and his fellow accused had been subjected to torture and abuse by the US since their capture.
Giap’s mate John Simpson was immediately called in to give his expert opinion that no such thing would have occurred and why did Saddam leave it up to now to make these allegations.
Now I see little point in debating whether or not Saddam was telling the truth. Saddam said that they all still had the evidence of torture all over their bodies so it seems to me that if the US didn’t do this all they have to do is let an impartial medical expert from an independant country examine the accused and make a report. Rest assured that failure to do this will be interpreted as guilt by world public opinion.
That brings me to my point which is that does anyone think the penny has dropped with BushCo yet?
By that I mean does anyone imagine that this mendacious administration has worked out that once you start out on the slippery slope of semi-legitimised kidnapping torture and murder you are left wide open to any allegation by anyone no matter how tainted their own history may be.
Indeed that combined with the lies put about pre invasion about WMD means that even if BushCo were to let an impartial investigator check out these allegations, substantial numbers of people around the globe would put that down as yet another example of US perfidy. That the investigation was in fact a cover-up.
I have no doubt the Rovians are working on this meme to justify their refusal to allow such an investigation.
Chickens are coming hope to roost. In fact a couple of the accussed pulled some pretty smart stunts during their last court appearance. Saddam’s half brother (Or is it brother? This half brother bizzo is that how Iraqi tribesmen refer to their kin? Or is this just a ploy by the west to remind their voters that the arabs are sub humans who indulge in polygamy) in particular demonstrated that he didn’t get his gig by dint of nepotism alone. The mock trial or show trial has already begun to bite it’s architects on the ass.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 22 2005 7:08 utc | 10

one more blockquote for tonite, from douglas valentine’s history of the fbn, the strength of the wolf: the secret history of america’s war on drugs. anslinger is harry j. anslinger, commissioner of the fbn from 1930-1962.

…during the Herlands Commission investigation, Senator Joe McCarthy crowned his disreputable career by claiming there were subversives within the US Army and the CIA. McCarthy directed his assault at CIA officer Cord Meyer. As chief of the CIA’s International Operations Division, Meyer was responsible for infiltrating domestic and foreign labor unions and preventing them from being controlled by communists. His search for the so-called “compatible Left” was steeped in underworld intrigues, and dovetailed with operations conducted by CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton and his assets in the FBN, Charlie Siragusa and George White. In other words, McCarthy, through his investigation of Meyer, was getting close to the CIA’s international drug-smuggling conspiracy.
The Senate launched an investigation of McCarthy shortly after he began to attack the espionage Establishment, and for reasons that were never made public, he was censored and stripped of power by his colleagues in December 1954. The reason may have been connected to narcotics. In 1962, Anslinger confessed in his book The Murderers that he had nursed an important Congressman through a drug addiction. Perhaps that Congressman was McCarthy? If so, did Anslinger’s CIA masters encourage him to engage in this illicit activity? What better way to compromise a political hack? Anslinger kept McCarthy high, while the CIA fed him an enemies list; and when he became a liability, they pulled the plug. If true, it was the perfect MKULTRA operation.

just found that tidbit of speculation interesting. the conventional conspiracy theory is that hoover & others (namely col. john grombach, lewis rosenstiel & “the china lobby”) prepared the lists inside the fbi as a way to settle a score w/ the newly-created CIA, which was stepping on hoover’s (pedicured) toes & usurping his reach.
oh well. funny that on the shortest day of the season (’twas winter solstice earlier) i’m up so late. not for long…

Posted by: b real | Dec 22 2005 7:27 utc | 12

if the strikers want to put the PTB on the pr defensive, perhaps they could point out that it is illegal for workers to strike in cuba & then ask what these freedoms are we hear so much about in the u.s.a.

Posted by: b real | Dec 22 2005 7:36 utc | 14

I have’nt seen THIS reported anyplace else, some pieces:
    
    Their orders came from U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. The effort took months and culminated in a day of voting in which Sunni Arabs came out in droves after having boycotted the first parliamentary election a year ago.
    
    The cease-fire period started Dec. 13 and ended Sunday, spanning Thursday’s elections. The period passed with no major attacks on Iraqi civilians.
    
    The effort by U.S. diplomats and military officials also redefined U.S. policy in Iraq — a potentially seismic shift that President Bush spelled out this month in four major policy speeches that referred to three types of insurgents: “rejectionists,” “Saddamists” and terrorists.
    
    Washington seeks truce
    
    U.S. officials continue to talk with the “rejectionists,” a category that appears to include the bulk of those who have taken up arms to battle American and Iraqi forces.
    
    Now that the elections have passed, the United States is continuing the effort, seeking a long-term cease-fire that would drive a wedge between Iraqi Sunnis and terrorist forces, such as those led by Abu Musab Zarqawi and his al Qaeda in Iraq. The terrorist organization seeks to impose a primitive, Taliban-like regime on Iraq and use Iraq as a base from which to topple governments throughout the Middle East and larger Muslim world.
    
    A senior official at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad gave the following account to The Washington Times and World News & Features (www.worldnf.com), a specialized news agency focusing on conflict zones:
    
    “At several stages we told [Mr. Khalilzad] it could not work, but he insisted and pressed and pushed,” the official said on the condition of anonymity.
    
    The election-day results appear to have exceeded even the insistent and “impossibly optimistic” ambassador’s own expectations. “They bode well for a future deal, but several pitfalls remain.”
    
    The effort began this autumn when the American team drew up a list of “literally hundreds” of people they would like to meet. “We let the word out. … And we began dealing with the real bad guys, or the interlocutors.”
 ………………   
    Later, negotiators worked on a wider form of cease-fire, culminating on Oct. 28 in a “big tent” meeting at an undisclosed location, bringing together American and British diplomats and U.S. Army personnel with tribal, political, religious and insurgent figures.
 ………………   
    
    The U.S.-led coalition responded with a series of prisoner releases beginning in early October. About 2,500 were freed, including several senior officials from Saddam’s regime this week.
    
    Most of these prisoners were not true killers, but had aided insurgents by making or delivering weaponry, or by providing transportation.
    
    Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, ordered an end of “aggressive operations” effective Dec. 13.
…………………….    
    Raids endanger truce
    
    Sunni hard-liners saw military raids on two insurgent detention centers in Baghdad on Nov. 15 and in early December as U.S. determination not to permit Shi’ite excesses.
    
    “The Sunnis were uneasy about the decision to deploy an Interior Ministry unit, the Wolf Brigade, inside Fallujah for the elections, but they did not consider this a make-or-break issue,” an American official said.
    
    “The hard-line Sunnis believe we … wanted to promote the Iranian takeover of Iraq — ludicrous, but that’s what they believed,” a U.S. official said. The raids on the two detention facilities helped assuage those concerns.
    
    Negotiators reached a major turning point when the Sunnis demanded an American commitment to withdraw from the cities and stay inside their military bases.
    
    “We told them: We can go further than that. Our aim is to get out of Iraq, period, and we don’t want any military bases here at all.”
    
    But American negotiators insisted on security in Iraq before that sort of withdrawal.
    
    “Once they understood that, the rest fell into place,” the American official said.
 …………………   
    The statement laid out terms of the cease-fire and “thanked” insurgents for ensuring the polling stations would be protected and voters safeguarded. The statement had opened with a demand for U.S. occupation forces to evacuate the cities.
…………………..    
    Some Ba’athist figures ran as candidates in the election. One party even used Ba’athist martial music in television ads.
…………………..    
    
    The relatively peaceful elections have put negotiations on a firm path. Sunni hard-liners demand more prisoner releases and for Shi’ite and Kurdish militias to be disbanded and their influence within Iraqi security services curbed.
    
    In return, Sunni tribal leaders would ensure there are no more safe havens for foreign terrorists and would discourage lraqis from planting bombs or firing weapons.
    
    The release of “high-value” detainees also has been an important signal. The transfer of 24 of these top detainees was planned for a month ago, the source said. “But Prime Minister [Ibrahim al-]Jaafari was so vehemently opposed, we feared if we released them they would be killed, and we’d be in a worse position.”
    
    Several thousand lower-level prisoners are to be released in the next few months. The Bush administration is pressing for a softening of anti-Ba’ath legislation through an announced review by the Iraqi Presidency Council.
    
    Negotiators on both sides think the prospects a U.S.-Iraqi agreement and an exit strategy for the Americans and their allies are bright.
    
    “We can see light at the end of the tunnel,” the U.S. official said, “and this time it’s not coming from an onrushing train.”
 ………………….
???????????????????????   

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 22 2005 9:42 utc | 16

While it may be premature to comment on such reports, the jist of it remains plausable, particularly the release of 24 from the deck of cards — thats almost half of that original deck. And the raid on the wolf brigade secret prisons, which all considered is a rather profound reverse of policy. It could be that the administration is in full panic mode not only from the domestic erosion of support, but faced also with the prospects of hardened Shiite political control that, coordinated with Iranian interests will a)undermine the picture perfect illusion of secular democracy b)consiladate Iranian influence, c)still lead eventually to the expulsion of US troops, and d) inhance the prospects of continued civil (war), if not regional war. Superficially, this tact can be seen also as preserving the neo-liberal project of democratization if the Sunni/insurgent faction can be placated by selling them the same “protection” that has already been sold to the Kurds and the Shia, all of which kicks the real can down the road further, and looks at the same time like “progress”. I would surmise by this (if true) a feint is being established for, as Nixon said “peace with honor” — with the major objectives of bases and hegemonic control over regional resources abandoned in favor the amorphous notion of “victory” — just a minute before it evaporates. Which would be just fine with me, and the prospects for Iraqi soveignity. All of which could have been acomplished 3 years ago.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 22 2005 10:44 utc | 18

“Giap’s mate John Simpson was immediately called in to give his expert opinion” did”
now, now, now, did – am i the am of the asshole of afghanistant, the buffoon of baghdad, the loon from london
this expert on all matters, high & low
no, no no – i have been thru that movie before
have a good time my comrades in this the most soridid of solstices

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 22 2005 11:40 utc | 20

This is funny: File the Bin Laden Phone Leak Under ‘Urban Myths’
Bush has claimed that a 1998 Washington Times report about Osama’s use of a satellite phone had been a “leak” and “alerted” him not to use that phone anymore. The 9/11 commission was on the same trip, because of the testimony of three “very responsible, very senior intelligence officers,” who said “linked the Times story to the cessation of the use of the phone.” They described it as a very serious leak.
Turns out Bin Ladens use of sat-phones was well known and reported on several times as early as 1996. He turned his phone off after Clinten tried to get him with cruise missles. It had nothing to do with the munie times report.
But the CIA obviously wasn´t able to do a Nexis search…

Posted by: b | Dec 22 2005 13:34 utc | 22

@annamissed
thank you for the digby link, Adults wanted. a “big picture” look at the political landscape and how “popular” opinion is swayed/manipulated.
“fear mongering” related: The Power of Nightmares, a bbc documentary.
_________________________________________
just something else i ran across today: “Tour of US income distribution — the L-curve.” a striking visual, beyond the numbers.

Posted by: manonfyre | Dec 22 2005 18:37 utc | 24

Interesting piece by Howell Raines:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=24139&mode=&order=0

Posted by: Groucho | Dec 23 2005 1:59 utc | 26

@ Rgiap I trust you did see the humor in referring to that –I was going to say whore but there are many in the sex industry with considerably more ethical attitude towards their work than ‘Simmo” So I can’t come up with a metaphor for John Simpson because to do so would unfairly cast aspersions on the group I was equating his behaviour to.
A fool such as Simpson should only be laughed because he’s certainly not worth any human’s tears.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 23 2005 4:22 utc | 28

Daschle in a WaPo OpEd puts to rubbish a GOP talking point.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to “deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided” the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words “in the United States and” after “appropriate force” in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas — where we all understood he wanted authority to act — but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

Posted by: b | Dec 23 2005 5:18 utc | 30

I came in here just before to tell the sad story of Abu Baker Mansha.
After reading Bernhard’s posts above I have no doubt that the silly season releases made when everyone is just too damn busy consuming to pay attention are particualarly vicious this year.
The story of the two men from the people’s Republic of China whose extended unjustifiable detention by the US has made them stateless, somehow gets me madder than the gerrymander that was pulled in Congress to extend the Patriot Act which may well be the legal framework used to destroy their lives along with thousands of others.
Back to Abu Baker Mansha:

” A former Pizza Hut waiter could face up to 10 years in prison after being convicted under the Terrorism Act 2000.
It was feared Abu Baker Mansha, 21, from south-east London, was targeting Corporal Mark Byles, 34, after reading a newspaper report on his killing of three rebels in Iraq. Special Branch detectives raided Mansha’s flat in Thamesmead on 24 March. In a bag behind the living room sofa, they found a pistol and a copy of The Sun dated 8 December 2004 with a story focusing on the actions of Cpl Byles.”

The subtext of that piece from the allegedly ‘liberal’ Independent sums up pretty much why it is that many Muslims living in non muslim countries and battling away just like any other new citizen are angry.
This fellow may be many things up to and including an armed resistance fighter or terrorist however there is one thing that he wouldn’t consider himself to be neither would his friends family or fellow workers. That is a ‘waiter’. A demeaning description given to food service workers and designed to reinforce the servile nature a ‘waiter’ is meant to display, this term is nowadays generally confined to food service workers in the ‘upper end’ of the industry where the burn of paying hundreds of dollars for tiny portions of food is meant to be ameliorated by allowing the customer to take their angst out on the workers. I have never considered those who are forced by circumstance to run around after the unhealthy specimens of humanity that populate Pizza Huts to be waiters. For a start they are the opposite of servile. They have learned on their first day that the role is closer to that of a benign concentration camp guard than a servant.
The Independent described Mansha who at 21 is probably far more of a child than an adult, as a waiter so that people who actually read the story and found that his crime was in fact to write the word ‘hero’ on a copy of Murdoch’s worst example of the gutter press, the English tabloid Sun, would dismiss Mansha as a non person, a waiter. Anyone in any doubt about how the public feels about and treats food service workers should spend a little time over at The Stained Apron Coincidentally their Moron of the Month page has an ignorant,illiterate, and woefully inadequate attempt at elitism from a Brit.
Life has started badly for Mansha because he has drawn the short straw in the ‘lets have a witchunt to distract the masses’ lottery.
The media have already sentenced him to 10 years in jail for his ‘crime’.
Still he’s only a waiter.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 23 2005 7:57 utc | 32

Whoa – The U.S. Senate really want’s a democratic palestine. But only if those folks do not vote for the only non-corrupt and able party.
U.S. senators push to exclude Hamas from elections

Seventy U.S. senators on Wednesday called on President George W. Bush to make it clear to Palestinian leaders that Hamas and other groups that the United States wants terrorist organizations to disarm or be banned from upcoming Palestinian elections.
…
The Senate letter follows a resolution passed overwhelmingly last week by the House of Representatives that also urged the exclusion of Hamas from the Jan. 25 parliamentary ballot.
…
Senators said they were “deeply disappointed” that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “has yet to do what the Palestinian Authority has committed to doing on numerous occasions — asserting its control over the terrorist groups that operate freely within the West Bank and Gaza.”

Now how would Abbas do that?

Posted by: b | Dec 23 2005 11:46 utc | 34

India and China, long term adversaries, partner to purchase oil assets in Syria – another Washington target. The Asia Times again has the details.

The two countries’ pursuit of what India’s Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Iyer calls “coopetition instead of competition” in securing their energy needs started in April this year, when during his visit to India Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said that energy cooperation should be an integral part of the bilateral dialogue between the two countries.
Picking up on that cue, an Indian delegation from oil companies visited China subsequently to discuss energy ventures. The two countries also set the global oil industry’s tongues wagging when Indian and Chinese oil companies met up at the World Petroleum Congress in Johannesburg in South Africa in October. And last month, representatives from the oil industries of the two countries met in New Delhi for further roundtable ministerial talks.
Meanwhile, it appears that the stage is set for the two countries to make more joint oil bids. According to a report in the Economic Times, Indian oil companies, including downstream marketing companies like the Indian Oil Corporation, BPCL, OVL and Prize Petroleum, are set to ink agreements with China’s Sinopec, CNOOC and CNPC, for collaboration in the exploration, petroleum and gas sectors.
India and China are also expected to sign a bilateral hydrocarbon cooperation deal in January 2006, when Iyer is slated to visit China. It will work as an umbrella agreement enabling joint ventures between companies in different sectors. It has also been reported that three Chinese oil companies have shown interest in tying up with Indian oil companies in their global quest for energy.
But this cooperation could be bad news for Western oil companies. Analysts said that if the two countries teamed up on a regular basis, it should worry Western oil majors. “The Indian and Chinese companies are willing to pay a higher premium for assets. The pressure is certainly on the majors,” said Praveen Martis, an analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, in a Reuters report.

Cooperation! What a concept! Seems too radical a notion for BushCo to grasp, but it will be the strategy that defeats their global (g)aims.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Dec 23 2005 14:14 utc | 36

Alito will be a big fight in January/February and Bush will lose that one too.

Posted by: b | Dec 23 2005 15:49 utc | 38

For somethig different check out the Wandering Hillbilly aka “pinions of Buddy Don” today on patriots and partisons — all written phonetically in appalachian patois. He’s even written up a dictionary translator. Authentic.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 23 2005 19:08 utc | 40

Yeah that was a bad one but probably worse was his forays into Basra in 2005 where he went about the place with a platoon of squaddies ‘interviewing average iraqis’ and then boasted of the very different reaction to the brits in the South than the US was getting.
All complete bullshit of course. Like anyone is going to say what is really going on when surrounded by armed men one of whom bears a remarkable remsemblence to the gut who shot his brother Hassim last year. Hassim had committed the crime of being with a couple of hundred metres of the platoon.
Simpson’s ‘dispatch’ was just after the Steven Vincent murder:

“Such is the brave, sad, infuriating story of Steven Vincent, 49, art critic-turned war correspondent, who was murdered in Basra, Iraq, on Tuesday, apparently in retaliation for an editorial he authored, published in the New York Times just two days before his death:
‘An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations – mostly of former Baath Party members – that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of “death car”: a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment.’
Kathryn Jean Lopez writes in the National Review that Vincent — who wrote a series of pieces from Iraq for the NR and other publications that were collected in his book In The Red Zone: A Journey Into The Soul Of Iraq — and his Iraqi translator, Nour Weidi, were “snatched in front of a bank on Tuesday, August 2nd at 6:30 P.M. local time. Two men drove up, grabbed them, threw them in a car and took off. Nour dropped her ID on the street, which is how the British were able to figure out who it was.”
Vincent’s body was found on the side of a highway. He had been shot multiple times in the head. Weidi was seriously injured but survived.”

At that time the brit press were reporting the story this way:

“British officials hunting the killers of an American journalist in Basra are investigating the possibility that he may have been targeted over his relationship with his Iraqi translator, whom he had pledged to marry.”

‘Simmo’ is obviously untroubled by any feelings of solidarity for his colleagues because not only did he ignore that aspect of life in Basra for his documentary, he went at great pains to try and disprove the existence of SCRI forces in the Iraqi police and/or military.
The irony was that the resistance saw the ease with which the UK had been getting on in the South so they cranked up the insurgency down there.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 23 2005 23:03 utc | 42

Happy Birthday to Robert Bly
People Like Us
There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can’t remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and
people
Who love God but can’t remember where
He was when they went to sleep. It’s
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time
To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he’s lonely , and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,
You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul
And greatness has a defender, and even in death
you’re safe

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 24 2005 1:50 utc | 44

an interview w/ chomsky, on media – On Fake News and Other Societal Woes

So last night I was listening to the reporting on Bush’s speech about how to get victory in Iraq. Just imagine – just do a thought experiment. Suppose you were in Russia under Brezhnev or let’s say in the early 80s and you heard reports about the war in Afghanistan. Well, I’m sure it would have been the same thing. They would have discussed how can we get victory, how can we destroy the terrorists, will this tactic work, will that tactic work, we’re losing too many soldiers and so on. Well, just like the most liberal journal in the US. Did anybody ask the question in Russia: do we have a right to invade another country? Can you imagine anyone asking that question here? But in Russia there’s a difference. That was totalitarian control, if you said the wrong thing you’d go off to the gulag. Here it’s just willing subordination to power.

Posted by: b real | Dec 24 2005 3:05 utc | 46