None of these guys have heart enough to meet you as an individual, they are social phenomena. Or, if you like the mythic approach, they are hydra. It is not useful to cut off the head – that is more like firing when the advancing enemy is far away – it enables observers to mark your position, dooming you to sudden fatal leakiness, or smithereens.
In lucid moments, I do not care for critiquing any far off fascist.
So, let’s focus on the social argument here – b shows us how corruption of a people works, by taking our accurate grasp of the evil being done to us by our own leaders in our own country – and pinning these crimes, first, on a foreigner. If we accept this, we are like one of King Solomon’s false plaintiffs – doomed by our own judgment.
Word, b!

Posted by: citizen | Feb 3 2006 22:14 utc | 3

“Seems the shark, under public scrutiny, gagged on Iran and spit it out.”
Iran has not been spit out. In fact, here comes the bite.
If Iran actually proceeds with plans to open their Euros-only oil trading floor on March 8th, as planned, Cheney will bomb them to prevent it.
May use Israeli planes, but he will bomb them.
If it starts a wider war, across the entire Middle East, across the entire Muslim world, well, that is just a page right out of the Project for a New American Century. The neocons want chaos across the region, so they can step in and play weakened puppet states off one another.
If Iran hits back hard, as they have promised, and shuts off their oil spigots, and sinks every ship in the Gulf, and sends a million jihadis into Iraq and Afghanistan to kill all our troops, that just gives President Cheney and his Amazing Meat Puppet free license to use any and all weapons, any way they please.
And to declare martial law in the US, and order up a Million Man Army — drafted and delivered to the burning sands of Persia.
They are just itching to release their Four Horsemen on America:
Marshall Law
Dick Tater
Jack Bootz
GI Joe

Posted by: Antifa | Feb 4 2006 2:21 utc | 5

i think this is a valid point of view. about cindy sheehan but mainly about hugo chavez.
http://www.thetalentshow.org/archives/002310.html

Posted by: charmicarmicat | Feb 4 2006 4:42 utc | 7

Chavez’s answer:
Venezuela Expands Heating Oil Subsidies

Venezuela is expanding its program of subsidizing home heating oil for the poor into Vermont, the latest jab by President Hugo Chavez against President Bush, who calls Chavez a threat to democracy in Latin America.
Venezuela will provide 2.4 million gallons of heating oil at a 40% discount to households that qualify for state home heat assistance, Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. Another 108,000 gallons will be given to homeless shelters.

Posted by: b | Feb 4 2006 10:36 utc | 9

The Asia Times published 3 comprehensive articles on Iran recently.
The first discusses Iran’s recent diplomatic missteps and the IAEA’s possible role in the New World Order.

But Iran has managed several self-inflicted wounds during the past few months, as a result of which its bid against the “unipolar” world order has been overshadowed by its seemingly ideological zeal against Zionism, even casting a large shadow on Iran’s national interests, according to some of president’s home-grown critics.
Not all hope is lost, though, and even in Russia, which has chosen to align itself with the US in backing moves to send Tehran to the UN, there are powerful voices echoing Iran’s sentiment. A case in point is former president Boris Yeltsin, who has lashed out at the United States’ “monopolistic policy” using a “big stick” and threatening nations such as Iran. Without doubt, Yeltsin is not alone and expresses the sentiment of a powerful section of Russia’s political elite.
Hence it remains to be seen how far President Vladimir Putin will go in joining the White House’s bandwagon on the way to the Security Council. Is Putin willing to set aside all his misgivings about the United States’ power projection in Russia’s vicinity and go along with sanctions on Iran, thus potentially denying Russia an important buffer between itself and the US? Asked another way, what are the limits, if any, of Russia’s current honeymooning with the US vis-a-vis Iran, given the distinct possibility of a US-planned diplomatic maneuver simply as a prelude to war against the second element of its perceived “axis of evil”? (North Korea is temporarily out of the crosshairs.)
The same questions apply with respect to China, which must now weigh the potential hazards to its long-term quest for energy security by pursuing a common path with the US that may, in fact, culminate in severe setbacks to its carefully constructed energy trade with Iran. Put simply, both Russia and China have much to lose, and little to gain, by going along with the United States’ script for action against Iran.

And the IAEA:

Given a European resolution calling on the IAEA to refer Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions, it merits our attention to examine the latest reports in the US media about the IAEA’s new revelations suggesting an Iranian nuclear-weapons program.
According to a news article in the New York Times on Wednesday, the IAEA has “for the first time provided evidence directly suggesting that at least some of Iran’s activities point to a military project”. The timing of this finding couldn’t have been more ideal as far as the anti-Iran forces within the IAEA are concerned. The article goes on to say that the IAEA, with “partial help” by US intelligence, has uncovered a “secretive Iranian entity called the Green Salt Project which worked on uranium processing, high explosives and a missile warhead design”.
According to the IAEA report, the project “could have a military nuclear dimension and appears to have administrative interconnections”. Furthermore, it cites a 15-page report given to Iran in the mid-1980s related to “fabrication of nuclear weapon components”. That report has been put under the agency’s seal.
What is curious about the newspaper report is that it is deliberately sketchy about the sources and nature of US intelligence given to the IAEA, confining itself to a passing statement that it stems from a “laptop seized in Iran”.
Well, the laptop story again….

The article goes on to deconstruct the “evidence” proffered by the US. So what’s up with the IAEA supposedly giving credit to this old story at this time? A little more pressure on Iran to take the Russian offer?
Next, the article analyzes the divisions within Iran regarding it’s current handling of the nuclear crisis:

Not everyone is happy with the course of action pursued on the nuclear front since Mohammad Khatami ended his term as president some five months ago. In fact, visible signs of a foreign-policy house cleaning can be seen aplenty in Tehran, in the light of the highly visible trip of Iran’s strongman, former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to the holy city of Qom, where he expressed public anxiety about the state of the republic and admitted that “we ourselves have not been without influence” in creating the present “crisis”.
In fact, Rafsanjani’s careful use of the word “crisis” stands in sharp contrast to the statements of Ahmadinejad, who a few weeks ago denied there was a “crisis” over the nuclear issue. Yet today not even his most ardent supporters can escape the fact that a serious international crisis has dawned on Iran and that their prescribed hardline foreign policy reorientations led by Ahmadinejad have backfired.
—-
…..the essence of the problem with Iran today is the excess weight of historical responsibility that it has been carrying, under the increasingly unbearable heat of a Western superpower and its allies. It is thinking all the time that a prudent exit strategy from the “unipolar” world order is possible, that in China or Russia or India it can find a coalition of the willing to challenge Pax Americana. So how rude an awakening it was this week to the fact that the Cold War’s winner is also aware of this historical contingency.

The next article analyzes the situation from point of view of the major players, Iran, Israel, Russia, China, the EU and US. There is quite a bit of detail and little surety how this will play out. Regarding the US:

The neo-conservatives, although slightly lower profile in the second Bush administration, are every bit as active, especially through Cheney’s office. They want a preemptive bombing strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. But whatever Cheney’s office may be doing, officially, the Bush administration is pursuing a markedly different approach than it did in 2003, when its diplomacy was aimed at lining up allies for a war. This time, US diplomats are seeking an international consensus on how to proceed, or at least cultivating the impression of that.

The author is not sure whether the apparent dissonance from administration figures represent genuine differences or an orchestrated bluff. The latter would represent an evolution of sorts from Bushco’s usual, um, diplomacy.
The third article concludes that the US has tightened the noose around Iran.

With the United Nations Security Council’s permanent five – the US, Russia, China, France and Britain – banding together to recommend that Iran be reported to the council, at least for now the clear winner is the US, which has allowed the diplomatic option to play itself out.
The loser is Iran, which seems to have lost the support – or at least understandings – given by Beijing and Moscow that it would not be referred to the UN over its nuclear program.
—-
Iran is in the process of being isolated. No major power wants to be on its side. Much of the international community does not believe that Tehran does not have intention to develop nuclear weapons. Even Russia – which has earned billions from Iran’s various nuclear plants – is not willing to state categorically that Iran would not want to become the next nuclear-armed power.
Tehran had the chance of accepting a Russian proposal that would have enabled Iran to enrich uranium on Russian soil, thereby allaying international concerns that Iran would divert nuclear material for weapon use. However, the Iranian government declared that proposed deal to be insufficient, and insisted it would conduct its nuclear research on its own soil, as per what it says are its legal international rights.
Now China and Russia will go to Tehran and explain the London agreement. They are expected to ask the government to provide “precise answers” to the questions that the IAEA has presented.
But there is more to the London agreement than meets the eye. This, in reality, is a compromise between the US and the EU-3 (France, Germany and Britain) on one side and China and Russia on the other.
The former group wanted to refer Iran to the Security Council immediately, while Beijing and Moscow wanted a more cautious approach. Thus they agreed to allow the referral of Iran to the world body only if it refuses to back down from its resolve to enrich uranium on its own soil. The IAEA is expected to submit its own report on Iran to the world body next month. That would allow time for Iran either to accept the original proposal to enrich uranium on Russian soil or work out some other arrangement with ElBaradei.
—-
What are Iran’s choices? After brewing for several months, the nuclear crisis has reached a crucial point: the ayatollahs will have to decide exactly want they want. If they don’t wish to develop nuclear weapons, then the Russian deal of enriching uranium in Russia is good option. That would bring an end to all Western threats against Iran. However, if they really wish to develop nuclear weapons, then they should declare their intentions clearly – and then get ready to face the consequences.

There will be a lot of pressure on Iran to take the Russian offer in the next month, one Bush has signaled he will accept. It is in Russia’s and China’s interest to avoid confrontation at this time, so their threat not to support Iran in the UN is a way to get Iran’s agreement. It is also sensible for Iran to take the offer since time is on their side; once the US bleeds itself out, Iran can resume doing whatever it wants to do. Russia and China know this and should make it clear to Iran. Bush will be able to claim a momentary diplomatic triumph, though time may show it to be an empty one that just saved his sorry face. All this could happen, of course, only the semi-sensible people prevail. If not….

Posted by: lonesomeG | Feb 4 2006 16:20 utc | 11

@charmicarmicat“assuming the info in the article is accurate, hugo chavez is no better that the rest of them”
That’s a huge assumption to make and kinda flies in the face of the available evidence. Lets look at the changes he’s made to the Supreme Court.
Remember up till now all the Venezualan administrations have been US toadies. What chance you think that a current Supreme Court made up of nominees from those administrations is truly independent?
Stacking High Courts is a common practise in most alleged democracies. Witness the recent Washington farce.
I was reading an old interview of Lord Tom Denning, a Force majeure in the English law for over twenty years. The interview was conducted in 1983 just after Denning had been forced to stand down for saying in effect that he didn’t believe a jury of one’s peers could include black immigrants.
Denning was the power on the English Appeals courts after the returning from the House of Lords where at the privy council the judges had final word on the law from England to the bulk of the Commonwealth nations. The reason he ‘dropped down a peg’ was that he felt he had more influence over the English law on the Appeals bench where many more cases were decided.
Anyway he let an interesting little incident ‘slip out’.
When the interviewer insinuated he was an elitist who cared more for the preservation of archaic values than the rights of man, Denning reminded the interviewer that his court had freed the leaders of a dockworker’s strike that had been imprisoned by a lower court.
He then shot himself in the foot by letting slip that the judges had been told by a worried government that leaving the union leaders ‘jugged up’ could lead to a national general strike.
So not only had this allegedly ‘liberal’ decision been made at the behest of govt., the judges hadn’t used the law except to justify a decision they had made on information obtained outside the normal evidentiary process.
We have argued in here many times that high courts generally tend to find in favour of the elites of their nation.
So in ‘balancing’ the court Chavez is creating an independent court.
He is making one that will be more representative of the nation’s values (as shown by his repeated electoral success in the face of a ‘stacked deck’) and if he were really a dictator or a meglamaniac of the Hitler ilk, he would find a reason to ‘get rid’ of the existing justices first, then replace them with ones to his liking.
Instead he had decided to equalise the numbers which means that the court will engage in healthy debate before making any decision. How many politicians in other alleged democracies allow that?
So yes Chavez is determined to try and ensure that ‘the will of the people’ is implemented but not by suppressing dissent.
In fact he is taking a huge gamble given the global history of wolves in sheeps’ clothing that some allegedly leftish judges have turned out to be once they get any real power.
So no. At the moment I don’t believe he is ‘just like the others’. The truly sad thing is that if the USA keeps up it’s unremmitting pressure on Chavez, it is unlikely that can continue. Defending the state effectively will make it difficult to preserve freedoms.
That I suspect is the agenda that Rumsfeld and the rest of BushCo are working to. That’s pretty much what happened in Nicaragua. Ortega wasn’t some messiah, he was a man and therefore fallible.
Once the nation had been subjected to violence, rape and subversion for long enough to divide the community, a concerted push by US propaganda to blame the victim ensured that stacking the deck electorally to favour US toadies, would work.
LOL Only in the short term tho. Daniel is coming back.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 4 2006 22:43 utc | 13