Lamont changes his name to Lieberman
By DANNY ESPOSITO, AP Special Correspondent
Sat Jul 29, 9:45 AM ET

Citing his participation in a Party line conversation with Jehovah and Joe Love Man, Ned Lamont announced that he was changing his name to Ned Lieberman. “Since the name is now available I thought it made sense to avail myself of it, to cover an area that I hadn’t previously thought would show in the campaign”, said Lamont. “In fact as I understand now whenever you climb a tall coconut tree that particular part of the anatomy becomes more visible.” Lamont said he’d learned that from a Hartford campaign aide originally from Haiti.

It’s really not funny. Clinton and Boxer backing Joe and Lamont without the moxey to stand up to the AIPAC, his only real chance of winning the race.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 30 2006 9:31 utc | 3

Power Games

“By the 36th law, you start to feel unclean and worried about your own morality,” said one. “By the 44th, you have accepted the fact that you are basically immoral and so is the world. By the time you reach No. 48, you are saying: ‘Right, who is my first victim?’ “

Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 30 2006 14:25 utc | 5

Connect the Dots

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 30 2006 15:33 utc | 7

Israeli Ambassador is now spewing his lies and hatred as I write this at the U.N. Security Council Emergency meeting.
I am so angry and disgusted – I am afraid to even write this post expressing my anger – my emotions may tempt me to say something I will regret.

Posted by: Rick Happ | Jul 30 2006 16:15 utc | 9

Speaking of dots…
With regards to the Interesting new laws BushCo is seeking… Put this and that together with a few (hundred) signing statements and it certainly looks like they want a carte blanc, nicht wahr? eh?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 30 2006 17:29 utc | 11

iraqui oil & everyday criminality

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 30 2006 17:47 utc | 13

Qana Massacre – SEE FOR YOURSELF
Made in the USA, imported by Israel.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 30 2006 17:57 utc | 15

[From an Afghan warlord I spoke with in Kabul, over tea:]
“I love your Jesus, but I hate your Christ.”
Jesus (and G-d for that matter) has nothing to
do with Secular NeoConmunism in America today.
Repeat that meme every massacre by PNAC/AIPAC.
Secular Zionist NeoConmunism
G-d need not apply.

Posted by: Peristroika Shalom | Jul 30 2006 18:20 utc | 17

It has everything to do with 2008.
Everyone knows the End of the World
(as we believe in it) is coming 2008.
2008 will bring riots in the streets,
oil over $100/bbl, SSTF and MediCaid
declared officially bankrupt, the US$
crashing along with the US stockmarket
along with the US economy. Have you
seen the financials lately? The short
interest? The float on remnimbi? SF?
Yet we all have to keep racing forward,
like Harrison Ford racing in front of
that giant rolling boulder. Those who
are fleet and swift may even survive.
Those who are slow, feeble, old, women,
children, 3rdW, Qana-ese, will be dead.
This race is vers the Swift and the Dead,
racing for the Golden Apples of the Sun.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 30 2006 18:34 utc | 19

Has the euphamism ‘pounding’ ever been used more in the press to describe slaughtering? Try as I might, Shylock keep coming to mind.

Posted by: biklett | Jul 30 2006 19:00 utc | 21

on al arabyia – an incredible sequence of from quana – with the people speaking & speaking with an eloquence that should bring us shame
one man very tersely but with a resoluteness broke a branch of a tree with flowers & threw it at the bodies telling the camera – they want to make us into monsters, by doing this action you want to turn us into monsters, you cannot turn us into monster
he said this with a clarity & a humanity that turns the turgid treatises of marc regev into the sordid shit they really are

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 30 2006 19:42 utc | 23

MEXICO: Gunmen attack university radio station

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 31 2006 2:59 utc | 25

b real, i have been thinking for the last 24 hours about how critical letters to the editor are at this stage. in the u.s. street protests go unnoticed, calls to congressional representatives too often fall on deaf ears. the only thing short of civil disobedience that i can see might work is lte’s. firedoglake has used this tactic and has seen some results. the internet is an invaluable tool but in order to reach the general public on its terms we must regain control of the media.

Posted by: conchita | Jul 31 2006 4:07 utc | 27

cochita,
the only thing short of civil disobedience?

Your getting warm here…
Since you tacitly acknowledge that CD is what will REALLY work — why, then, dismiss it?
Letters to the Editor help to reinforce mainstream elite opinion — if the editors sympathize enough to even publish them.
Two tactics work: slowing down the capitalist cogs through civil disobediance, and public embarrassment, as the Qana massacre shows.
Letters to the Editor had absolutely NO effect during Vietnam — and people actually read newspapers back then. Marches, and the threat of complete civil chaos scared the corporations to death, and pressured the government to finally relent.

Posted by: Malooga | Jul 31 2006 4:45 utc | 29

And for anybody who still believes that ANYONE in Washington should be supported, how about this chilling little item fom Bill Blum’s latest anti-empire report:

Since 9-11 it has been a calculated US-Israeli tactic to label the fight against Israel’s foes as an integral part of the war on terror. On July 19, a rally was held in Washington, featuring the governor of Maryland, several members of Israeli-occupied Congress, the Israeli ambassador, and evangelical leading-light John Hagee. The Washington Post reported that “Speaker after prominent speaker characteriz[ed] current Israeli fighting as a small branch of the larger U.S.-led global war against Islamic terrorism” and “Israel’s attacks against the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah were blows against those who have killed civilians from Bali to Bombay to Moscow.” Said the Israeli ambassador: “This is not just about [Israel]. It’s about where our world is going to be and the fate and security of our world. Israel is on the forefront. We will amputate these little arms of Iran,” referring to Hezbollah.[5]
And if the war on terror isn’t enough to put Israel on the side of the angels, John Hagee has argued that “the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West”. He speaks of “a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.”[6]

Not only did not a single congresscritter dissent from the Poliburo’s party line incorporating Israel’s battle against their neighbors with the ever-expanding TWAT (The War Against Terror), but it is even more chilling that not a single one spoke out against Hagee’s eschatological excrescense! Not a one of them….. What does that tell us? Is there really room for all of them to be magically “raptured up” to Cheney’s “secret hiding place” in the hills of West Virginia. Surely, there is no room left over for you and me.

Posted by: Malooga | Jul 31 2006 6:00 utc | 31

In Canada I caught a few minutes of “Question Period,” a show on commercial tv’s CTV — the original alternative to state-run CBC.
Quite a good segment, they had the NDP and Liberal foreign policy critics up against the Parliamentary Secretary who represented the ruling Conservatives, PM Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister MacKay. I think.
The questions were, first Harper supported Israel’s (quote) “measured response.” I’ve heard that exact phrase from a US official commenting on previous Israeli actions so I think it is a code word. Then came the fumbled evacuation of civilians from Lebanon. Then came the death of a Canadian Forces Major in the shelling of the UN post.
Well-asked and well-reported by the moderator. The government response emphasized the complexity in the region, focused on the completed extraction of 11,000 Canadians, then continued with “no ceasefire unless it is a lasting ceasefire.” Straight from the playbook, but by a Canadian government spokesperson.
Really! Where did you get that? A quick view of the CTV website finds an interesting title,
“Canada not parroting U.S. pro-Israel policy: MacKay (07/23/2006)
While the prime minister has been criticized by some for siding with Israel, Foreign Minister Peter MacKay says Canada has not abandoned its traditional mediator role in foreign affairs.”
So they hit again on Canada’s 50-year role as mediator, even-handed in the ME, and the usefulness (less deaths) of an immediate, even if short-term, ceasefire. Also (the liberal guy) talked about the lack of foreign policy expertise in the Harper government. The commentator noted that domestic issues dominated the federal election campaign less than a year ago …
More runarounds from the Parliamentary Secretary.
It was nice to see some truth and accuracy from my government’s minority MPs being covered on TV. I don’t watch it much but I guess the citizens do.
They also spoke about a foreign policy review this coming week, hope that is well-covered too.
I am given some hope by this, CTV has a wide audience and it is giving good coverage. Mr. Harper is probably not in such a big hurry now to rush a majority-granting election.

Posted by: jonku | Jul 31 2006 9:41 utc | 33

I have been thinking about the comment made on a previous thread that one shouldn’t form a coalition with Sadr (always called the “radical” cleric, when he is actually reactionarily conservative), because he restricts women’s rights.
I suppose this means, de facto, allying oneself with the equally reactionary quisling, Sistani, who flew off to London for his personal instructions.
As many deaths, and as much violence as Sadr has caused with his resistance, it pales before the sea of blood caused by Sistani — and his refusal to call for peaceful mass demonstrations two years ago — in order to evict the occupiers, when he had the power to do so. Every Shiite who dies now — and in the future because of DU — every one of those deaths lies upon his head.
I believe that when history is eventually written by the Shiites of the region, he will be seen as the great traitor to his people that he is. History will not judge his inaction kindly.

Posted by: Malooga | Jul 31 2006 14:25 utc | 35

I’m not sure what it means to “form a coalition” with Sadr. Can you explain? Are we signing up to beat disobedient daughters to death or can we join the death squads that carry out retaliatory raids against Sunnis? Are we enthusiastically lining up against football in the name of the international oppressed masses? Can we all at least agree on the salutary effect of stoning in Iran and how Iraq will benefit? Or can we assist in the campaign to stop Zionist picnicking and women who play music?

Another major source of extremist mores is firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Last March, Mr. Sadr’s followers disrupted a picnic held by Basra University students, during which men and women – many with their hair uncovered – played secular music and mingled freely. In the ensuing melee, Sadrists beat and robbed students, and one woman temporarily lost her eyesight. And though Sadr’s office later apologized for the incident, some members remain unrepentant. “We believe we have a religious task to separate good behavior from bad,” says Abu Zahara al-Mayahi, a director of Sadr’s Basra office.
The militias have also harassed Basra’s media. At the scene of the picnic attack, for example, Sadr’s men physically assaulted and broke the equipment of cameramen trying to film the event.
Recently, the author of a newspaper article about the Sadrist movement received death threats because the newspaper accompanied the article with a photograph that showed many women with uncovered hair.
But even this type of thuggery is not the only manifestation of religious extremism in Basra today. “This is a city where if you have a birthday party for your child, you could end up dead,” says one Iraqi journalist.
As drama professor Thawra Yousif Yaakub relates, her sister-in-law Salina belonged to an all-female band that performed at baby showers, birthday parties, and other festive occasions, playing before all-women audiences only. Last May, the band were unloading their equipment on the street after a gig, when a man leaped out of a car and opened fire, killing Salina and another band member.
“They died because they were women and they made music,” Yaakub says.
here

Posted by: citizen k | Jul 31 2006 14:52 utc | 37

Social ecologist Murray Bookchin dies at 85
The Visionary Life of Murray Bookchin

Posted by: b real | Jul 31 2006 16:17 utc | 39

rip, m. bookchin:

It is tempting to venture into a utopian description of how an ecological society would look and how it would function, but I have promised to leave such visions to the utopian dialogue that we so direly need today. However, certain biotic and cultural imperatives cannot be ignored if our concept of an ecological society is to have integrative meaning and self-conscious direction. Perhaps the most striking example of how natural evolution phases into social evolution is the fact that we are the heirs of a strong natural thrust toward association. Owing to our prolonged dependency as children and the plasticity of mind that this long period of growt1i provides, we are destined to live together as a species. Highly privatistic pathologies aside, we have a maternally biased need to associate, to care for our own kind, to collaborate. Whether in village or town, polis or city, commune or megalopolis, we seem impelled by the very nature of our child-rearing experiences and attributes to live in a highly associative world.
But what kind of associations could we expect to find in our future ecological society? While the kinship tie or the blood oath is a more strictly biological basis for association than any form we know, it is pat ently too parochial and restrictive, in view of our modern commitment to a universal humanitas. Indeed, it is fair to ask whether the strictly biological is necessarily more “natural” than the human social attributes produced by natural evolution. Our very concept of nature may be more fully expressed by the way in which biological facts are integrated structurally to give rise to more complex and subtle forms of natural reality. Society itself may be a case in point, at least in terms of its abiding basic elements, and human associations that extend beyond the blood tie may reflect more complex forms of natural evolution than the highly limited biological kinship relations. If human nature is part of nature, the associations that rest on universal human loyalties may well be expressions [344] of a richer, more variegated nature than we hitherto have been prepared to acknowledge.
In any case, it is apparent that we score a much richer ecological advance over the conventional biological wisdom of early humanity when we relate on the basis of a simple affinity of tastes, cultural similar ities, emotional compatibilities, sexual preferences, and intellectual interests. Nor are we any the less natural for doing so. Even more preferable than the blood-related family is the commune that unites individuals by what they choose to like in each other rather than what they are obliged by blood ties to like. Conscious cultural affinity is ultimately a more creative basis for association than the unthinking demands of kin loyalties. The rudiments of an ecological society will probably be structured around the commune-freely created, human in scale, and intimate in its consciously cultivated relationships-rather than clan or tribal forms that are often fairly sizable and anchored in the imperatives of blood and the notion of a common ancestry. It is not “retribalization” that an ecological society is likely to seek but rather recommunalization with its wealth of creative libertarian traits.
On a still larger scale, the Commune composed of many small communes seems to contain the best features of the polls, without the ethnic parochialism and political exclusivity that contributed so significantly to its decline. Such larger or composite Communes, networked confederally through ecosystems, bioregions, and biomes, must be artistically tailored to their natural surroundings. We can envision that their squares will be interlaced by streams, their places of assembly surrounded by groves, their physical contours respected and tastefully landscaped, their soils nurtured caringly to foster plant variety for ourselves, our domestic animals, and wherever possible the wildlife they may support on their fringes. We can hope that the Communes would aspire to live with, nourish, and feed upon the life-forms that indigenously belong to the ecosystems in which they are integrated.
Decentralized and scaled to human dimensions, such ecocommunities would obey nature’s “law of return” by recycling their organic wastes into composted nutriment for gardens and such materials as they can rescue for their crafts and industries. We can expect that they would subtly integrate solar, wind, hydraulic, and methane-producing installations into a highly variegated pattern for producing power. Agriculture, aquaculture, stockraising, and hunting would be regarded as crafts-an orientation that we hope would be extended as much as possible to the fabrication of use-values of nearly all kinds. The need to mass-produce goods in highly mechanized installations would be vastly diminished by the communities’ overwhelming emphasis on quality and permanence. Vehicles, clothing, furnishings, and utensils would often become heirlooms to be handed down from generation to generation rather than discardable items that are quickly sacrificed to the gods of obsolescence. The past would always live in the present as the treasured arts and works of generations gone by.
We could expect that work, more craftlike than industrial, would be as readily rotated as positions of public responsibility; that members of the communities would be disposed to deal with one another in face-to face relationships rather than by electronic means. In a world where the fetishization of needs would give way to the freedom to choose needs, quantity to quality, mean-spirited egotism to generosity, and indifference to love, we might reasonably expect that industrialization would be seen as an insult to human physiological rhythms and that physically onerous tasks would be reworked into collective enterprises more festive than laborious in nature. Whether several ecocommunities would want to share and cojointly operate certain industrial entities-such as a small-scale foundry, machine shop, electronic installation, or utility-or whether they would want to return to more traditional but often technically exciting means of producing goods is a decision that belongs to future generations. Certainly, no law of production requires that we retain or expand the gigantic, highly centralized and hierarchically organized plants, mills, and offices that disfigure modern industry. By the same token, it is not for us to describe in any detail, how the Communes of the future would confederate themselves and coordinate their cominon activities. Any institutional relationship of which we could conceive would remain a hollow form until we knew the attitudes, sensibilities, ideals, and values of the_pe.ople who.establish and maintain it. As I have already pointed out, a libertarian institution is a peopled one; hence its purely formal structure will be neither better nor worse than the ethical values of the people who give it reality. Certainly we, who have been saturated with the values of hierarchy and domination, cannot hope to impose our “doubts” upon people who have been totally freed of their trammels. THE ECOLOGY OF FREEDOM: THE EMERGENCE AND DISSOLUTION OF HIERARCHY (1991) (revised edition).

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 31 2006 17:33 utc | 41

I am quite sure that citizen k knows some of the history of how “the defense of oppressed foreign women” is mobilized by payroll poets to kill, maim, and genocide colonials. So I don’t imagine ck is ignoring this. But how does ck take account of it? I do wonder why ck mentions such a thing at all to determine who one’s allies should and should not be.
I’m guessing that the most likely reason is that it is the same way both brother k and I might choose our allies domestically. And if we choose our allies domestically, then why should we hold foreign allies to lower standards? Alright, say we agree on this (I’m not sure about that yet, but).
If brother k and I were living in a place under foreign occupation, under threat from death squads, and under threat from the sheer potential violence of large crowds of people unemployed and desperate to save their own families… If we were presented with a church (a group of people united religiously) that promised to defend us from the invaders, and the death squads, and the for-profit kidnappers, and the starvation and diseases so long as we abided by their rules, would we say no thanks? Would we refuse to join a group because although it saved 100, it destroyed 10? Isn’t this the sort of calculus that made Israel in the 20th century?
Not exactly. The Israelis do not require woment to cover up, do not require dancing to cease, or music CDs, etc. All that is required is the sacrifice that Ursula LeGuin once described in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
I am wondering, ck, if you are saying that you would walk away from Sadr because you would walk away, as LeGuin put it?

Posted by: citizen | Jul 31 2006 17:38 utc | 43

powerful stuff citizen,
I don’t know that I would walk away either.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 31 2006 18:06 utc | 45

Thank you citizen & r’giap for putting my argument in a coherent context.
Ah, Murray… Now there was a man who had soul, real soul.
Take a few idle moments to poke around:
Bookchin Archive
Institute for Social Ecology
One of my strongest criticisms of Amy Goodman (and also the team I produced radio with for two years in Boston), is that while they provide endless hours for Sy Hersh and Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn and Harry Belafonte, and many others — all very worthy people in their own rights — perhaps 50 hours/yr. in total with people whose work is fairly familiar to the general public; others, visionaries, such as Bookchin, and Andre Gunder Frank, and Gene Sharp, and Immanuel Wallerstein, and Ken Knapp, and Wade Frazier, etc., whose work could really broaden the horizons between “bad Bushism” and a general progressive consciousness, are completely omitted. I almost fell off my seat last month when Amy had on Bertold Ollman, perhaps the most renowned Marxist academician in the US. Of course, he was not speaking about the body of his work at all.
For us tragically handicapped Anglophones, here is the Wikipedia entry in English for pierre vidal naquet (Actually, you may have to click on the English link on left to translate.)
And for those who remember The Faurisson Affair, with Chomsky; here is some vintage Naquet:

Vidal-Naquet also criticized the 1990 Gayssot Act which prohibits revisionist discourse, claiming that the law shouldn’t interfer in historical matters [3]. Vidal-Naquet’s arguments against legislation relating to historical studies is not, however, a door opened to negationist speech. He once declared that he would rather name revisionists “negationists”, and that he wouldn’t discuss with them for “simple and scientific reasons. An astronomer doesn’t debate with an astrologuer. I wouldn’t discuss with someone who supports the idea that the moon is made of Roquefort [a type of French cheese]… it is impossible.” [4]

Of course, De Gaulle was famously quoted on the impossibility of governing a country with 240 different kinds of cheese. Still, little did he suspect that a country with only one type of indigenous cheese (Velveeta), could be so easily led by the collective nose-ring. I imagine for those neo-cons who “create their own reality” the moon could be made of any type of cheese they so choose. All one has to do is offer Pat Robertson a little wedge……

Posted by: Malooga | Jul 31 2006 18:39 utc | 47

One of the most disingenuous acts of racism against Arabic people is to suggest that the incidence of violence against women in the society is firstly a direct result of the majority religion, Islam, and secondly that it is higher/than worse than the incidence in xtian countries.
The fact that it is generally men of the judeo/xtian ethic asserting this serves to completely undercut any validity. When it is asserted by anyone living on either American continent it must be regarded as being a deliberate attempt to insert lies and propaganda into a serious issue that they would do well to keep their interfering and self serving noses out of.
They can only be attempting to hide behind a wall of obfuscation to conceal their misogynous culture’s far worse incidence of female oppression.
Just last week Federal authorities conceded that they were not going to prosecute the murderers of women on the Mexican/US border. The obscene number of homicides against women in the area includes 400 women in the Juarez alone area since 1993. The rate of violence particularly homicide against women in the area around the mexico/amerika border is far higher than anywhere in the Middle East yet amerikans persist in the notion that somehow the people of the ME treat women worse than they do. What they really mean is that the people of the ME are reluctant to see any of their people become unthinking soap opera watching consumerists. The women who are allegedly ‘safe’ in Amerika are the women of the bourgeois. If they are safe, which is debatable it is at the expense of the millions more poor women of the Americas who pay a huge price for those other women’s safety.
Men who wish to practice violence against women take it out on the least able to defend themselves either the poor women in ghetto amerika or more recently by outsourcing. Why just get your jeans made cheap South of the Border? Go South for a cheap rape and murder as well!
“Hell there’s some synergy there. Hold on while I talk to a Hollywood agent I know.”
“What a great idea! We’ll make a movie while we’re having fun. Make a dollar!”
“Bordertown”! How’s that for a name?”
“Whaddya mean its been done! Dammit.” “Well then how about “The Virgin of Juarez “? That will get the Catholics along.”
“Hear about that Mel Gibson?”
“Fucking mamzer”
Of course if it were just on the Mexican/amerikan border that would be bad, but not an epidemic.
If only it were confined to that area.
In Guatemala so far this year nearly 200 women have been murdered:
UNITED NATIONS (WOMENSENEWS)–In the first four months of this year, almost 200 women in Guatemala were murdered.
Like the other 1,800 women who have been killed in that country since 2001, they were young and poor, usually hailing from the cities. Their bodies were found in gutters and empty lots, sometimes missing breasts or eyes, sometimes beheaded and, other times, cut to pieces.
During the past five years, only 14 of these murder cases have been resolved. And there may be hundreds more murders that have gone unreported.
While far more men than women are murdered in Guatemala, the rate at which women are being killed has jumped dramatically in the past four years and the sexualized circumstances of the slayings alarms local and international rights advocates.”
No wonder. Two hundred women in a population of 14 million is incredibly high.
We thought that the incidence of violence against women was high in NZ and it has been made a priority for our society to address, but as near as I can work out female homicides here run at about 12% of the Guatemalan rate, the vast majority of which are solved, which still makes it something to be ashamed of and something which will require everybody’s involvement to redress.
If this rate of female homicide has increased as drastically in Guatemala as has been suggested, it may well be tied to the death squads introduced, trained and funded by Amerika. If that is the case one can only hope that the emphasis Iraqi society has always placed upon protecting women will protect Iraqi women from a similar fate.
Incidentally it would be interesting to compare the rate of violence against women in Amerika with that of the ME. My notion would be that the amerikan people kill women at a far higher rate than ‘those ragheads do’.
Still what better way to conceal that deplorable fact than to attack Middle Eastern societies for being ‘different’ and by implication therefore worse.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 31 2006 18:44 utc | 49

malooga
i don’t know skynews seems to be like murdoch’s british version of dkos – so perhaps it can be taken with a great deal of salt – are making a point of syria’s assad’demands on his military to be in a state of high readiness & is making much of israels’s demand to the lebanese “to stop cryin to the u n & place their destiny in their hands”
it is hard to tell if these is a noh play or a no play

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 31 2006 20:04 utc | 51

Wonderful news: my friends who were getting married in Beirut made contact today. They made it back by driving out of the country. Everything had to change, date, location, guests, but they are married now and back in the U.S.
I’ll see them later this week – for now I’m just relieved.

Posted by: citizen | Jul 31 2006 20:44 utc | 53

Good news citizen. Thanks.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 31 2006 21:05 utc | 55

Whew, has this gotten off topic, here.
Let us remember that we just devasted the Arab state with the highest rate of education, freedom and equality in the world, while we protect the Arab states with the lowest.
This argument is drifting dangerously towards the deplorable liberal justifications for “just war.”
Not to worry, in this country women are free to both join the Army to kill people they don’t know, for reasons that they have no clue whatsoever of, AND get raped by their enlightened male countrymen serving beside, and literally, above, them.
Using statistics, prepared by the powerful, to excuse meddling with the powerless, is a dangerous game indeed. But, if that’s your game, then the libral Kristof, over at New Pravda, is your man.

Posted by: Malooga | Jul 31 2006 21:12 utc | 57

LOL. this is why I quit this site. The UN is against Arabs? Or argues for a “just war?”
why is it okay for debs to post something with NO empirical evidence, other than his hatred, but if you post studies you are somehow out of line?
I guess if it’s not skewed to support the dominant prejudices here then it’s unacceptable. whatever.
bye.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 31 2006 21:52 utc | 59

amina mire on somalia, shia & women & warlords

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 31 2006 22:21 utc | 61

walden bello: The Debacle of Doha

Several guilty parties were responsible for the recent collapse of the Doha round of trade negotiations, but none guiltier than the United States. U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab refused to make a serious offer on cutting domestic subsidies for U.S. farmers. Worse, at a late stage in the negotiations, she appeared determined to eliminate any protection for developing country farmers. The WTO’s December 2005 Hong Kong Declaration designated “special products” for exemption from tariff cuts, and Schwab singled out these provisions for attack.
Why the United States chose protection of its farming lobby over the survival of the multilateral trading system it had taken the lead in creating will long be a matter of debate. In the hotly contested congressional elections in November, the Midwestern farming states could determine whether or not the U.S. Congress will remain under Republican control, and Karl Rove was not willing to let anything get in the way of continuing GOP dominance.
U.S. intransigence may well go beyond electoral considerations. It reflects Washington’s unilateralist thrust since George W. Bush came to power in 2001. Like its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. refusal to substantially cut its agricultural subsidies reflects a strategy of making others, including traditional allies, bear the costs of necessary adjustments in the global economy. Last Monday’s unraveling of the Doha Round, in this view, was the death knell of multilateralism.

vandana shiva: W.T.O. IS DEAD, LONG LIVE FREE TRADE

The Doha round negotiations collapsed once again at the Mini Ministerial in Geneva on 23rd July 2006. Martin Khor of Third World Network reports from Geneva that when asked of the Doha Round is dead or in intensive care, Mr. Kamal Nath, India’s Commerce Minister, said it is somewhere between intensive care in hospital and the crematorium. Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner told the press following suspension of WTO negotiations, “we have missed the last exit on the motorway.”
The U.S. is being identified by all as responsible for the collapse of talks, by its refusal to reduce its agricultural subsidies. The US and its corporations were the driving force behind two agreements of the Uruguay Round, which have the highest impact on the poor of the Third World. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement has increased the cost of seeds and medicine by promoting monopolies. Thousands of Indian farmers have committed suicides due to debts resulting from a new dependence on costly yet unreliable hybrid and Bt cotton sold by Monsanto and its Indian partners. The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) has destroyed agricultural livelihoods of millions of peasants and food security of the world’s poor.
The willingness of the US to allow the Doha Round negotiations to grind to a halt by showing inflexibility in offering to reduce distorting farm subsidies in exchange for increased market access is not because agricultural market access is no longer of interest to the US. The US does not have to give up anything multilaterally because it is getting market access bilaterally, often with “non-agreements” like the US – India Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, which is promoting GMOs, agricultural imports and the entry of US grant Walmart in Indian retail. Monsanto, Walmart and ADM are on the board of the US India Agriculture Initiative.

Posted by: b real | Jul 31 2006 22:32 utc | 63

Fauxreal: Using Debs reasoning, you must be Jewish a Zionist. Welcome to the Tribe. Your check from the Rothschilds may take some time, I’m still waiting for mine. Remember, use the left hand shake with the masons below 32cd degree and take as much guilt from Enlightened Europeans as you can handle.
Malooga: My complaint about Amy Goodman is that access to PRIME radio time and band produces a news show that only appeals to the already convinced. Which brings me back to tactics. Maybe those tactics need some fine-tuning. Back in the day, the left was into mass movements. That might require some deep market research into why alliances with Reverend Sadr or tedious monologs from Professor Chomsky (who has the speaking style of a typical MT professor) would play poorly with the, you know, people of America.

Posted by: citizen k | Jul 31 2006 22:47 utc | 65

ck
I am not asking you to ally with Sadr. I am asking you on what principles you do ally. No answer forthcoming yet.
My sense is that people partly agree on principle of peace. Not sure if I’m right about fauxreal there, but my sense was that she got ticked by the process of argument, not that she meant to imply “sometimes you just need to start a war to make women’s lives better.”
If you are looking for what is popular, some people say that principles such as fairness have a bit to do with it. What’s your approach?
Seriously.

Posted by: citizen | Jul 31 2006 23:00 utc | 67

Citizen: I’m trying to answer your complicated question by pointing at Ned Lamont. He’s to my right, but my calculation is that my support of him moves the political center in the right direction. As for your hypothetical, I’m not a purist – in fact, far from it – perhaps not to my credit – so I don’t have a cut and dried answer. Since we note the passing of Bookchin, the obvious case is the anarchists in the time of the Leninist rise to power. Some chose to ally themselves with the CP, some chose to oppose the secret police. Neither had happy outcomes. Is it possible that some Iraqis ally themselves with Sadr for good motives? I guess. Are they right? I don’t know. But I’m not an Iraqi or a member of a political cult so don’t I have the obligation to oppose both the US war and the rise of the worst elements of theocratic gangs? Again, for Americans or Europeans to “support” Sadr looks like both bad moral and bad tactics. I don’t see the advantage.

Posted by: citizen k | Jul 31 2006 23:19 utc | 69

I am pleased that my point about violence against women in societies got a response but it would have been considerably better if it hadn’t fallen victim to ‘theirs is worse/better than ours’ argument which wasn’t what I was trying to say.
My point was that the Arabic culture towards women is an oft cited reason by liberals for some level of interference in the ME.
Yet that argument could easily have some culture which considers it’s women’s lives are better/easier interfering in amerika.
Whether or not women are treated badly in Arab society is a question that can only be resolved by Arabs yet ‘superior’ whiteys or westerners are always taking incidents which may well be sexism, that have occurred in the ME or Islamic world and bringing them into the discussion about western aggression in the ME.
These incidents are frequently taken out of context and amplified by a partial media.
Just last week someone (and this is not a ‘go’ at the poster because this is far from the only occurrence) posted a link about statements an Islamic preacher had made about the licentious behaviour of UN aid workers.
The story this link took us to was used as proof positive that ‘they’ were all expletive forgotten and expletive forgotten. Yet when one read the story it seemed that some of the aid workers had indeed been drinking and carousing across the gender divide. But more importantly the authorities in the community completely dismissed any suggestion that this would mean that the preacher’s demand to chase them all out of town would be heeded.
In other words it was a non-story about a two-bit preacher in a traumatised community.
Imagine for a minute if someone bothered to troll the pages of the tabloid rags which pose as media outlets in amerika, until they found a piece about a small town two-faced, forked tongued god botherer, claiming that ‘nigras who lie with white women should be castrated’ and used that as a reason to call ‘them’ all pillow-biting buggerees.
So that type of tale isn’t worth anything and before anyone reaches for their keyboard to say that is what I did above, I will state again that was not my motive.
My motive was to try and impress on us all the simple truth that issues like women’s rights and violence against women can only be resolved within a society. There is no point trying to impose it from without.
I thought I had made that point when I raised the issue of the society I currently live in where violence particularly violence against women is getting out of hand.
Statistically it isn’t that clear that it has really risen because crystal meth has a lot to do with the current epidemic and it may be just that the violence is occurring more publicly and is no longer confined mainly to the whanau or family unit.
That said the usual assholes there are using the violence to grind their own ax, just as the issue of women in Islamic society is used by imperialist to try and justify their excess.
This means that Maori are being accused or being the chief perpetrators. Sigh nothing really changes when a scapegoat is needed.
Without going all complex on many NZers’ inability to confront the truth that this is more likely to be a result of colonialism and subsequent loss of self-esteem than some cultural bent, it is important to note that many of us are trying to deal with the issue on a personal or whanau level rather than waste time arguing with idiots that never listen.
The political party I supported last election (financially, and volunteered for and voted for if anyone wants to know)was the newly formed Maori Party who were successful beyond their wildest dreams. natch most of the votes came from the centre left Labour Party so now their assholes are trying to do what these type of assholes always do.
That is discredit the Maori Party’s leadership. One of the co-leaders of the Maori Party is an amazing bloke by the name of Pita Sharples (an increasing number of NZ political parties have co-leaders one male and one female, as well as a pretty even distribution of seats between men and women in Parliament).
Anyway Pita Sharples is a Maori leader who didn’t come from the maori aristocracy that colonists like to develop amongst colonised people, The reasons for this another time. This means his life is ‘out there’. He is a human and by no means perfect so that when he spoke against violence the centre left did what they do. They dug up some sordid piece of Dr Sharples’ past.
His response is here.
I point this out only to illustrate the importance of acknowledging this stuff and trying to deal with it in our own community rather than point the finger elsewhere.
My sister and I have been working with Tangata Whenua in the area where we live who have inter generational violence going back it seems like forever.
The area I currently live in was one of the first settled in NZ, it was one of the first whaling communities/stations.
Now I’ve been trying to interest an academic in doing a study of the rate of violence and incest in those areas first settled by whalers because it certainly seems anecdotaly that whanau in those areas have a higher than average incidence.
the point of such a study would not be to blame others (in this case the whalers/fishers who had a reputation for raping anything and everything) but to try and lift some of the weight of guilt responsibility off the shoulder of the whanau that have borne this horror for so long. If they can get a grip on the notion that whilst it will be only by dint of their effort they break the cycle yet it wasn’t because they were evil or corrupt that this was visited upon them, it will hopefully make their own job seem more achievable.
This stuff takes generations to get rid of just as it took generations to acquire and have no fear, given the opportunity society will throw money at it for a short while, then when the next really bad incident happens they will have a whole new scapegoat, us.
So as much as is possible we are trying to work ‘under the radar’.
And Giap, you are correct about anger at the moment. I for one, make no apology for being blunt at the moment. When I’m home doing the basics it seems the whole world has compressed into a tale of wanton murder in ME. Something I am completely powerless to effect in any way from here. So I am short with anyone who seems to justify or excuse any part of it.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 31 2006 23:36 utc | 71

& news such as dismal science brings just tears my heart out because that terror against the palestinians can only exist because people want to forget, to forget & never remember
so if fury is a means to make people remember or at least make us ashamed of forgetting then it is a good & healthy thing
if this site is just a means of remembering & remembering & remebering it is doing the best of work – if it aids or leads us in our actions then it is a sacred thing
& i feel that is possible
& i feel we’re old enough to manage our fistfights & lead them to clarity
the political question, that fine political question that is being asked by both citizen & malooga is –
who is creating the chaos
who is benefiting from that chaos
the work here forces us through that forest

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 31 2006 23:54 utc | 73

another wall nearer to home

Posted by: Dismal Science | Aug 1 2006 0:07 utc | 75

@Dismal#75:
I liked it.

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Aug 1 2006 0:37 utc | 77

Back before this regime, I was supporting homegrown Afghani women’s rights organizations. Lonely position. This was before the Taliban blew up the statues and after the Unical deal fell thru.
After 9/11, I, like many US feminists, was all for war on the Taliban. In hindsight, I should have seen the Afghan campaign for what it was: another cynical ploy to hide a bad motive [Iraq war profit/oil profit/squeezing Iran] under better sounding ones [freedom for Afghani women/justice for 9/11] that they had no intention of fulfilling.
Lesson learned, [over and over]: if your government is campaigning to take away human /women’s rights here at home, don’t believe them when they claim to be expanding human /women’s rights overseas. Like every other good motive they have claimed, it is another outright lie.

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 1 2006 1:06 utc | 79

Heres on take on why the U.S. and Israel keep taking out that same old hammer to fight a 4th generation war.

Posted by: anna missed | Aug 1 2006 2:29 utc | 81

i don’t know about fidel, but just looking & listening to that one man idf fan club, anderson coooper is enough to give me a sharp intestinal crisis & listeniong to that israeli goon from the u n now suggesting that the hezbollah held the children hostage in qama just so a smart bom could hit them
fuck me dead
there isn’t enough fluid in my body to expel the hatred i have of them

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 1 2006 2:57 utc | 83

@RG:
In hospital, one should not exert oneself too much in recreational activities.
Take care of the diabetes, RG.
I would like to simply link to one of Dismal Science’s links, in case anyone missed it:
DEAD FUCKED, FUCKED DEAD,DEAD POOL, NEED A LIPSTICK, SEMANTIC OR ORAL DECONSTRUCTION OF IT?

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Aug 1 2006 3:22 utc | 85

I wish anybody hospitalized well.
But Fidel… exemplary? …as Mandela?
The dispelling of political illusions is painful. At least RG can count his blessings there.

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 1 2006 4:25 utc | 87

ah, Ms. Manners, everything calculated to cause maximum despair. lovely nightmares you must suppress at night!
you take care too.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 1 2006 4:29 utc | 89

ck,
Again, for Americans or Europeans to “support” Sadr looks like both bad moral and bad tactics. I don’t see the advantage.
Entirely reasonable. I would agree that none of acts politically from pure principle, and there is not much practically that we can do with Sadr even if we did want to support him. On the other hand, it is spiritually disabling for people to get too tactical about whom they support, and end up feeling hypocritical and heartless. People politics cannot be Machiavellian, that is politics for the Prince.
So, to help us discover what sort of a heart we think there might be for a heartless world, I thought we could get together and think about ways to think/act/write consistently about supporting people who aim to lessen the chaos. If it turns out to be reasonable to consider Sadr as one such person, then one might conceivably support him. But I would agree with you that I can’t find much likelihood of most of us ever having to decide whether or not to support him and his movement. There are many things much closer to home we need to do. However, it is a very real question these days whether or not Israel (or the IDF if we want to narrow) is making people too nauseated to continue their support.
And here I wonder if your practical commitments might veer away from a principled stand against chaos-making, and veer towards sheer partisanship towards things with the label “Israeli” on them. Forgive me for the brusque approach here, but I imagine the conversation would improve if you would tell us if Israel is a limit case for you.
in cameraderie,
citizen

Posted by: citizen | Aug 1 2006 4:50 utc | 91

gylangirl
it is not with joy that i watch the hoodlums of miami & their gangster masters gloat over the death of fidel which will not come
cuba is far from perfect but it is a far cry from the crime infested miami & the completely corrupt state of florida
for the entire left of latin america – fidel rests a beacon
it is fashionable too in france to criticise fidel for the lack of freedom of press, intellectuals, homosexuals but even on the most base comparative level he is far ahead of the so called democracies
who pervert the use of justice, who in essence have no real freedom of press, whose own neglect of intellectuals & whose absence of equality of opportunity, mark everbody
at least he exports doctors & not guns – he offers medical schools even for americans who could otherwise not afford to do so
& do not exhaust me about the stories of ochoa etc – i know them well – this is not a perfect world but the least that can be said that la havane or santa maria or any other town are not an abbatoirs like iraq or afghanistan

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 1 2006 14:59 utc | 93

debs
always wanted to read durell.
I bet this fellow will write a fine iraq war novel one day. maybe a trilogy whose central plot is the struggles of an ex marine to build a walmart in tikrit.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2006 15:21 utc | 95

R’Giap,
I am not so dismissive of human rights that I use the violations of one system to justify/excuse the violations of another. Where dissent and true democracy are concerned, none are “exemplary”. None.
Until dissent is no longer brutally crushed; and until all people are free from violence-backed tyrants, there exist two false choices: Man exploiting man in a disguised dictatorship or… just the reverse in an overt one. Choose your fruitcake.

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 1 2006 16:58 utc | 97