Massa Bush is calling for the imaginary army of UNIFIL troopers to seal the Syrian border when they arrive in southern Lebanon.
As if. Sealing that border would be impossible for a force ten times the size of what may eventually arrive. Maybe. Some day. Perhaps.
He’s just setting up tripwires for escalating the fighting. Because America needs more fighting.
Because as long as “the American way of life is not negotiable,” —
America needs to conquer Iran to gain control over the Middle East’s oil, to gain control over who buys it, at what price, and in whose currency.
America needs to conquer Iran to then gain control of the Caspian Basin and its gas and oil resources.
Yep, America needs a Four Front War over there.
Or, America needs to change, in some very fundamental ways.
Ray Close left China and Russia out of his analysis. China will not permit America to conquer Iran. They may permit America to attack Iran, but never to conquer it.
The Generals in the Pentagon know this. They won’t follow Bush into the heart of darkness.

Posted by: Antifa | Aug 17 2006 7:11 utc | 4

Question:
How many MOA’s have given any thought to contingency plans in the case that Moon of Alabama goes down? I fully expect that when the war on Iran starts, there will also be an all out domestic American assault on the dissident Internet blogs as well. I have asked in semi-recent posts /comments of b, if he has any plans to mirror moon, but I guess he has not seen my posts.
It would be of comfort to me if there were discussion of this very real possible dilemma, and for those whom –such as myself– do not broadcast their e-mail under their name, where do you hang out, especially our non-American friends. Any ideals on networking if in fact one day we can’t meet at the bar?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 17 2006 11:39 utc | 6

Moon is hosted in the US and currently I don´t want to spend the money to host an alternative site.

Posted by: b | Aug 17 2006 13:23 utc | 8

i have wondered about this uncle. i would suggest at a minimum everyone share their email address w/at least one other patron from the bar.

Posted by: annie | Aug 17 2006 14:40 utc | 10

I understand that r’giap has been ill lately. He and I traded e-mails last week. I thought he was getting better, but I’m afraid he may have taken a turn for the worst. It’s certainly not like him to remain silent in the face of outrages like those of the past couple of weeks, and, like many of us here at MoA, I miss his insights sorely, even if I don’t always agree with them. Except, more and more, I do.

Posted by: Aigin | Aug 17 2006 14:53 utc | 12

Ellen Schrecker’s McCarthyite Crusade
Professor Ellen Schrecker @ YESHIVA University does a course on the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), entitled: American Inquisition, the era of McCarthyism. Which has been a godsend in alot of my personal research, recently she had this article published that I thought many would find interesting.

Among the odder charges advanced by bien pensant defenders of the political homogeneity in American higher education is the claim that advocates of greater intellectual pluralism are really revivalists of Cold-War era “McCarthyism.” Its leading academic exponent is Ellen Schrecker, a professor of history at Yeshiva University. But Schrecker goes further. In the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, she asserts that the campaign to promote academic freedom–and particularly the Academic Bill of Rights–is actually “worse than McCarthyism.”

more here…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 17 2006 14:58 utc | 14

I emailed R’Giap over the weekend and have not heard back. I have been worried but haven’t gotten home early enough this week to call him with the time difference. However, I am planning to call him tomorrow and if I do not reach him I will call a colleague to find out what is happening with him. I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.
Regarding his computer, I have also told him that I will send him my laptop as soon as I have a purchased a new one – hopefully within the next couple of weeks. If anyone wants to help with this effort, I know he will need a larger monitor to work with – it is only a 12″.

Posted by: conchita | Aug 17 2006 15:38 utc | 16

I can’t vouch for this piece’s veracity (it is only a forum post after all), but it sounds genuine enough. So here it is FWIW:
Interview with Chris Cook, planner of the Iranian Oil Bourse
No major breaking news, but contains good background info on a variety of subjects including Cook’s work on community based investment in renewable energy.

Posted by: Alamet | Aug 17 2006 15:45 utc | 18

Federal court finds warrantless eavesdropping unconstitutional, enjoins the program

Posted by: b | Aug 17 2006 17:23 utc | 20

The future is Orange:
Inigo Wilson is a rancid, braying little tick. But I defend his right to be so. If only he was as funny as he and his swollen crew of bandwagon jumpers thought he was.
That said, if we’re going to rail against the Government’s attempts to police what we think and say then we also have to decry others attempting to do so. For the MPAC to play the man (by trying to get him sacked) rather than the worthless dross he’s peddling is like trying to catch the fish in the barrel with your teeth rather than taking a shotgun to them.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 17 2006 17:35 utc | 22

anyone in touch w/ rgiap pls give him my best wishes for full recovery

Posted by: Dismal Science | Aug 17 2006 17:44 utc | 24

With regards to b’s #20
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor
Here’s the opinion [PDF]

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 17 2006 18:02 utc | 26

w/regards to b’s, #20 and my #26
From CNN’s continuing coverage:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, said he backs the government’s appeal of the ruling.
“Terrorists are the real threat to our constitutional and democratic freedoms, not the law enforcement and intelligence tools used to keep America safe,” Frist said in a statement.
“We need to strengthen, not weaken, our ability to foil terrorist plots before they can do us harm. I encourage swift appeal by the government and quick reversal of this unfortunate decision.”
[emphasis mine]
Chancellor Sutler, er, I mean Skeletor Chertoff is not pleased nor amused.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 17 2006 20:12 utc | 28

geneticists to people of earth: don’t worry, everything is under control.
maybe they could engineer an “engineered grass”-eating cow that defecates a potent herbicide to kill the engineered grass.
no job too dirty for a fucking scientist.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 17 2006 23:52 utc | 30

Never heard of Oust, Paraquat,Poast, Vantage. and numerous other agricultural and industrial chemicals.
You folks are so Ancien Regime in understanding 4th Generation Agricultural wars.
Roundup has become a generic, now that the patent has run, 2+ years ago. Very cheap, hundreds of makers.
Your analysis is reductionist and utterly passe.
Better Living Through Chemistry.

Posted by: E.I. DuPont | Aug 18 2006 1:20 utc | 32

Study Group at LeSpeakeasy
and a prayer for rememberinggiap’s health
Listen, Marxist!: a proposed text for study.
Okay, let me just start by confessing nervousness. I’ve only been reading Bookchin since b real recommended him, and already I’ve learned more than I thought I could, like why to be grateful to Hegel (more on that in another session). For now, I want to acknowledge Maloogafs statement that Bookchin is one of the 10 most valuable thinkers of the last century, thank b real again for pointing him out, and invite everyone to examine a truly fruitful writer, a writer who can make clear things we want to grasp, and things we urgently want to explain.
Another initial point: Bookchin is the text, but really my goal here is to figure out how to run a study group online that would actually better prepare a number of barflies (and especially me) to actually do the same in the actual communities we live in in meatspace. It seems we get the politics wefre willing to accept, so my idea here is to raise our expectations of what we might want to develop and create in our social lives.
So, Bookchin is the first source for us to study because he offers a reasonable account of how to get unstuck from expectations that the world wonft change, and of how to reject an increasingly persuasive but irrational framework/perspective that leaves us exposed, exposed especially to fear and propaganda. Why would people take up with such a vulnerable approach? Because we know that conventional reasoning is inadequate, that contradictory thinfgs can both be true. So we reject conventional reason on solid grounds. However, Bookchin can show us that conventional reasoning is not the only kind available, and that to actually make sense of things that change over time, to make sense, that is, of history, our only reasonable approach is dialectical reasoning. Unfortunately, dialectical reasoning has earned a heavy debt of suspicion as being a kind of fetish of the left, a reputation as an illusion that is useful only among fools.
Untrashing the Reputation of Dialectical Reasoning
Before we can use this kind of thinking safely, then, we have to clear up some misconceptions about dialectical thinking, misconceptions fostered by a long process of branding from both left and right. And for that task, I have nominated Bookchinfs Listen, Marxist! as a spirited text that can remind us to re-evaluate the history of the left, free ourselves from what false legends of past glory, and continue to seek the just politics that should define left politics.
I’m not sure how many have already read the text, but I found it refreshing to read as a warning against the notion that wefve deteriorated since the 60s, that we might need to wax nostalgic about better times. A few quotes, with brief comments, to get our conversation rolling:
Keep Developing

This pursuit of security in the past, this attempt to find a haven in a fixed dogma and an organizational hierarchy as substitutes for creative thought and praxis is bitter evidence of how little many revolutionaries are capable of “revolutionizing themselves and things,” much less of revolutionizing society as a whole.

Here, we are reminded that there is no escaping work, not just the work of figuring something out for the first time, but the work of re-formulating this understanding again and again as it applies to different people and problems. Wefll even have to change our minds occasionally because everything that we reckoned by can gradually shift meaning over time. For me, it comes as a relief to hear intelligent affirmation that all that 60s heritage of thought and actions is not some sort of ritual to repeat endlessly.
Intelligent affirmation? Yes, particularly the idea that the world has been changing, and therefore a praxis that develops the good potential in the world must also keep developing to work what faces us.

We believe that Marxism has ceased to be applicable to our time not because it is too visionary or revolutionary, but because it is not visionary or revolutionary enough. . . .
. . .We are asked to establish political parties, centralized organizations, “revolutionary” hierarchies and elites, and a new state at a time when political institutions as such are decaying and when centralizing, elitism and the state are being brought into question on a scale that has never occurred before in the history of hierarchical society. . . .
. . . We have seen capitalism itself perform many of the tasks (including the development of a technology of abundance) which were regarded as socialist; we have seen it “nationalize” property, merging the economy with the state wherever necessary. We have seen the working class neutralized as the “agent of revolutionary change,” albeit still struggling with a bourgeois framework for more wages, shorter hours and “fringe” benefits. The class struggle in the classical sense has not disappeared; it has suffered a more deadening fate by being co-opted into capitalism.

A lot of this may seem old and outmoded, especially Bookchin’s hypothesis (not quoted here) that the revolutionary subject was young people of all classes, and the reactionary subject old people. But I imagine that he is dead on to assert that capitalism has co-opted the class struggle as originally envisioned by Marx. I imagine that he is also dead on to say that centralization, elitism, and the state are all traps that will swallow and digest idealists and their initial goals. If we want to continue to develop the rich potential of left politics, then we will have to keep building the communities that achieve politics for human beings.
State Capitalism: it’s Not Just for Soviets Anymore

By an incredible irony of history, Marxian “socialism” turns out to be in large part the very state capitalism that Marx failed to anticipate in the dialectic of capitalism.

And, I would like to add, American state capitalism as it is envisioned by the neo-pirates, is just the latest version of the Soviet swindle: hi-jacking more and more of what were once gpublich resources and spinning them off to whoever gets an in to the state feeding trough.
My goal in this conversation is to remind ourselves that State solutions may no longer be possible at all, and to navigate from there to consider some directions for where we might want to put our energies. Feel free to disagree, but if you do, let’s use the text as the common focus of our discussion.
What’s next?
[Next session, I plan to use Bookchin texts again to suggest how to grapple with the perspective of chaos capitalism, but oppose and overcome its irrationalities. This may require us to take up Moishe Postone as well. ]
Please post at at LeSpeakeasy if you want to participate in a longer, slower conversation.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 18 2006 3:09 utc | 34

wow. thanks for the work, citizen. i’m bloody busy, but will devote some time to this. seriously, this is a great opportunity. I also suggest his magnum opus social ecology.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 18 2006 3:32 utc | 36

slothrop,
I’ve read the intro to The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism and will get through more this weekend. Is that teh text you mean? It’s where I fond my Hegel surprise – very exciting read!
I appreciate any response you can make on Bookchin. Thanks.
b real,
A friend of mine who went to the frog exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry says the reason frogs are dying off is that the molds in the waters are no longer getting killed off as much by bright sunny days (fewer of those lately), so they multiply, and kill the frogs. Slime. . .

Posted by: citizen | Aug 18 2006 3:57 utc | 38

That was an exc. 5-day series on the Oceans b real linked to (in LA Times). Horrifying.
Don’t know why this shows up in German Press rather than NYT (but I can probably hazard a good guess…), but here is Jimmy Carter shredding xUS ME policy in spiegel
The other principle that I described in the book is basic justice. We’ve never had an administration before that so overtly and clearly and consistently passed tax reform bills that were uniquely targeted to benefit the richest people in our country at the expense or the detriment of the working families of America.
SPIEGEL: You also mentioned the hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world which has ensued as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Given this circumstance, does it come as any surprise that Washington’s call for democracy in the Middle East has been discredited?
Carter: No, as a matter of fact, the concerns I exposed have gotten even worse now with the United States supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon.
SPIEGEL: But wasn’t Israel the first to get attacked?
Carter: I don’t think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that’s justified, no.

Posted by: jj | Aug 18 2006 4:17 utc | 40

Screw these rabid warmongers. But then I’m not terribly excited w/the prospect of watching xUS & Israel commit national suicide! (From the Jerusalem Post, to which I don’t care to link, on 2nd thought.)
The United States intends to move very quickly in early September to impose UN sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend its enrichment of uranium, a senior State Department official said Thursday.
“They will be well-deserved,” Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters. “It’s not a mystery to the Iranians what is going to happen.”
The UN Security Council already has said Iran faced sanctions if it did not suspend uranium enrichment, a key step in making nuclear weapons.
Iran has until the end of the month to respond officially. It also had said it would reply by next Tuesday to a proposal by the United States and the European Union for concessions that include US supply of some civilian nuclear energy.

Posted by: jj | Aug 18 2006 4:54 utc | 42

Wow! Great work, citizen. This kind of endeavor is much more attractive to me than examining photos to see who is standing closest to dear leader today.
I have to confess that I really can’t think of anyone better to study than Bookchin. We are already quite familiar here with the ideas of Zinn on learning to differentiate our interests from the ruling classes and understanding history through viewpoint; Chomsky and Hermann on power, propaganda, and thought control; Klein and Chatterjee on corporations; Roy, Shiva, Wallach and others on globalization; Debord, Baudrillard and Knabb on appearances; through my writing, Wallerstein and Frank on economics and world systems theory; Glendening, Zerzan, Churchill and others on primitivism and indigenism; and so many other thinkers and theorists. But Bookchin is different: His work both encompasses all those that I have mentioned, and contextualizes it; he lays a groundwork for examining other work and provides us with criteria for judging its applicability in the ever-changing ecological world in which we find ourselves.
And yet, his work is not naive; nor is it rigid. Throughout his life, Bookchin struggled with theory and its applicability to the demands of quotidian life. Any idealism is tempered with a deep and abiding realism. And Murray was never afraid to change his theories when they did not measure up to the real world. There will not be a “Bookchinism” like there is a Marxism, to be argued over for centuries. Rather, the words of Bucky Fuller well describe the voyage that was Murray Bookchin, when he observed, “I seem to be a verb.”
Many people have been influenced by his work, including many who I named above. As I noted earlier, his ecological insights pre-dated Rachel Carson. By providing us with a theoretical framework for modeling all of Marxist dialectics within the larger sphere of the ecological environment, he both updated and radically changed Marxist thinking, to the point where today virtually all Marxists from the academic, like Ohlmann, to the political, like Avakian, take his insights on interrelatedness, and the ecological limits to production, for granted.
His work at the Institute for Social Ecology has nurtured a new generation of teachers to further advance the work. For instance, one instructor at the institute, Brian Tokar, has been very active in the fight against GMO foods and corporate agriculture. To tie in with b real’s post above, and debs is dead’s post of several days ago, I just finished reading the expanded Spring edition of the Northeast Organic Farmer Journal, which was devoted to the corporatization of Organic Agriculture. The work of several people who studied at the Institute is featured. The past ten years have seen a literal invasion of organics by corporate interests. The great names of the past, Arrowhead Mills, Walnut Acres, and so many others have lost their leaders, for whom OG was a way of life, of sustainability, and are now just “brands.” Many other OG farmers who I knew and trusted, like the Pavitch family, have gone bust. Instead of sustainability as a way of interacting with our environment, the way corporations interact is by the lust for ever expanding growth. Our retail food brands are being consolidated under the umbrellas of huge corporations like Nestle, and Pepsi.
One should also acknowledge some of Bookchin’s more unlikely influences. One who gets too little credit these days in Buckminster Fuller. Fuller, who like Gore Vidal, was raised to be a “ruler of the world,” understood how the world works, understood the interplay of class, and also understood the finite nature of the planet Earth. Perhaps he was far more optimistic than Bookchin, but that was more a factor of his tireless scientific search for solutions, than any facile Pollyanaism.
Well, that’s a few thoughts from me. I’m not a big fan of Postone (I trashed him in a post last week), but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Again, thanks so much citizen, for doing all this work to get the ball rolling.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 18 2006 5:07 utc | 44

I know we had this tedious debate last week about whether we should support religious muslims who were fighting US domination. I think Nassrallah provides the answer:
The Nasrallah Interview

From an interview conducted shortly before the ceasefire by reporters from the Turkish Labor Party daily, Evrensel.
Q. What is the current state of your relations with the Socialist movement?
Hasan Nasrallah: The socialist movement, which has been away from international struggle for a considerable time, at last has begun to offer moral support for us once again. The most concrete example of this has been Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. What most of the Muslim states could not do has been done by Chavez, by the withdrawal of Venezuela’s ambassador to Israel. He furthermore communicated to us his support for our resistance. This has been an immense source of moral strength for us.
We can observe a similar reaction within the Turkish Revolutionary Movement. We had socialist brothers from Turkey who went to Palestine in 1960s to fight against Israel. And one of them still remains in my memory and my heart; Deniz Gezmis..!
[Deniz Gezmis, 1947-1972, was a Turkish revolutionary in the Marxist-Leninist tradition. He led major student actions in the late 1960s, went to a Fatah training camp in Lebanon in late 1969, returned to Turkey where his group seized four US army privates in Ankara. After their release of the soldiers, Gezmis was captured, tried for attempting to overthrow the Turkish state and, with two of his comrades, was hanged in the central prison in Ankara on May 6, 1972. Editors.]
Q. What is the importance of Denizs for you?
Hasan Nasrallah: We now want new Denizs. Our ranks are always open to new Denizs against the oppressors. Deniz will always live in the hearts of the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon. No-one should doubt this. Unfortunately, there is no longer a common fight and fraternity against the common enemy left over by the Denizs. What we would have liked is for our socialist brothers in Lebanon to fight against imperialism and Zionism shoulder to shoulder. This fight is not only our fight. It is the common fight of all those oppressed across the world. Don’t forget that if the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon lose this war, this will mean the defeat of all the oppressed people of the world. In our fight against imperialism, the revolutionaries should also undertake a responsibility and should become, in the hearts of our people of Palestine and Lebanon, Denizs once again.
Q. It is possible to see the posters of Che, Chavez and Ahmadinejad side by side in the streets of Beirut. Are these the signs of a new polarization?
Hasan Nasrallah: We salute the leaders and the peoples of Latin America. They have resisted the American bandits heroically and have been a source of moral strength for us. They are guiding the way for the oppressed peoples. Go and wonder around our streets..! You will witness how our people have embraced Chavez and Ernesto Che Guevara. Nearly in every house, you will come across posters of Che or Chavez.
What we are saying to our socialist friends who want fight together with us for fraternity and freedom is: Do not come at all if you are going to say “Religion is an opiate”. We do not agree with this analysis. Here is the biggest proof of this in our streets with the pictures of Chavez, Che, Sadr and Khamenei together. These leaders are saluting our people in unison. So long as we respect your beliefs, and you respect ours, there is no imperialist power we cannot defeat! …
We uphold global resistance against global imperial terrorism…
Peace cannot be unilateral. So long as there is imperialism in the world, a permanent peace is impossible. This war will not come to an end as long as there are occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 18 2006 5:22 utc | 46

One last thought for the night:
The war in Lebanon created 7 billion dollars worth of damage. Add in the damage in Israel, and the cost of the armaments themselves, and you have a toal cost of perhaps 10 Billion dollars, about what we spend in a month and a half in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A lot of money. In fact, it amounts to about $300M/day, over a month.
Now, OPEC alone, exports 40MBPD of oil. If oil were to go up by less than $8/Barrel over the cost of the month, the profits alone would pay for the war.
Of course, the profits made by the weapons manufacturers and the huge rebuilding conglomerates, and the NGOs are all in addition to this. As well as the profits from all other energy producers, which also rise accordingly.
In fact, analysts generally agree that oil carries a security premium of $15-20/Barrel due to the war in Iraq alone. This translates to an additional profit of $600 Million per day for the OPEC nations, or $2 1/2 Trillion per year, or $10 Trillion for the entirety of the four year war. Saudi Arabia, as the largest oil exporter, would have earned 1/4 of that total in ADDITIONAL profits over and above its standard profit.
Perhaps $300 Million of that surplus profit finds its way back to the G-8, Israel and China in the form of military purchases.
So war can be very profitable.
It is only the public that pays.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 18 2006 5:59 utc | 48

MSM now openly speculating this could be a “false confession.” Sounds like a distraction from the very real circumstantial evidence against the Ramseys. Ex-wife gives alibi for JonBenet suspect.
That being sd, I speculated else where, that this seemed to be the begining of a falseflag distraction. But from what I didn’t know; I know now. Bush nailed by the court. Bingo! perfect timing…
This from another board I visit:

So as I watched the various news channels and their coverage of this new development, and it was mentioned that the alleged killer of JonBenet was corresponding with a colorado professor and documentary maker, Michael Tracey, I started to wonder what else Professor Michael Tracey does when he’s not corresponding with alleged paedophile child killers…
By now we are all aware that he’s made some documentaries trying to support the Ramsey’s innocence, based around the media not being fair to them, but what else?
There’s this:
http://www.cjc-online.ca/viewarticle.php?id=306&layout=htmlWhich he co-authored in defense of television’s generification effects on various cultures of the world.
and then there’s this:

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/co…ticle6.htm
Which seems to offer some very weird alternative explanations of what is going on with the AIDS virus.
His profile from http://www.colorado.edu/journalism/faculty/bios/tracey.html
Professor Michael Tracey, an internationally recognized researcher and scholar, came to CU in 1988 from England, where he was head of the Broadcasting Research Unit in London, Britain’s leading think tank dealing with media issues. He has served as special adviser to the BBC’s Community Programmes Unit, consultant to a variety of organizations and honorary visiting research fellow at the University of Bradford. From 1994 to 1999 he was Visiting Professor and Chair of International Communications at the University of Salford in England. From 1991 to 1998 he was a Trustee of the International Institute of Communications. His fellow Trustees included CEOs from some of the world’s largest broadcasting and telecommunications companies. Tracey earned a BA with honors in Politics from the University of Exeter and a PhD from the University of Leicester, where he also served as research fellow and taught at the graduate level. He has published extensively in eight books, academic journals, conference papers and popular media. He has also given countless talks and lectures in many countries on the politics, organization and economics of public service broadcasting. Since 1998 he has become a documentary film maker, including producing three documentaries about the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. He is currently researching and writing two books dealing with aspects of what he terms “the injustice of the American justice system.”
I’m still looking into other articles that he’s written, but I guess my question to you guys is this:
Is this what a disinformation shill looks like?

Looks like he’s a real pro to me. Can you say PsyOps?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 18 2006 8:02 utc | 50

Updated Craig Murray piece in The Guardian: The timing is political

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. More than 1,000 British Muslims have been arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, but only 12% have been charged. That is harassment on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% were acquitted. Most of the few convictions – just over 2% of arrests – are nothing to do with terrorism, but some minor offence the police happened upon while trawling through the lives they have wrecked.
Plainly, Islamist terrorism does exist. But its growth is encouraged by our adherence to neocon foreign policy, by our support for appalling regimes abroad, and by our trampling on the rights of Muslims in the UK. Now David Cameron has joined Blair and Reid in the rush to benefit politically from the fear thus engendered. Be very wary of politicians who seek to benefit from terror.
Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.

Posted by: b | Aug 18 2006 9:52 utc | 52

White House backing new plan to defuse insurrection in Pakistan?
WASHINGTON – A U.S.-backed plan to defeat Islamist militants in Pakistan’s autonomous tribal areas has backfired badly, and the Bush administration is working with Pakistan to come up with a new strategy to defuse the insurrection.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 18 2006 10:26 utc | 54

@CP:
You sure do find the most interesting stuff.
@Comrade Citizen:
Will surely attend your discussion group.
@Uncle:
Your last looks interesting.

Posted by: Smedley | Aug 18 2006 11:24 utc | 56

ACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Angry Arab claims that the Nasrallah interview is a fake. The comments section makes some good points to support his claim.
I think I’ve been had.
We’ll have to see how this plays out.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 18 2006 15:34 utc | 58

Uncle, Mike Malloy intelligently suggested that the arrest in the JonBenet Ramsey case has Rove’s fingerprints all over it, precisely to take the judge’s ruling off Center Stage. Apparently it worked – CBS news had several minutes on it, but 25 secs. on Judge Taylor’s ruling (by a stopwatch).
Why was someone from Homeland Security in Thailand at the announcement? Why did they extract a confession from a guy whose wife at the time (a highly credible Chrisian suburban Mother of 3, who left him after his first arrest for porn. & hasn’t spoken to him since) said he spent all Christmas w/the family at their home in Alabama, (JB R was murdered on Christmas Day.) and whose brother said to the best of his knowledge he had never set foot in Colorado. Doesn’t pass the smell test. Will they fake DNA evidence?

Posted by: jj | Aug 18 2006 16:17 utc | 60

William Pfaff on “Israeli ‘cheap war,’ myth of air power”
Paul Craig Roberts on
“What we know and don’t know about 9/11”
Both great articles. Pfaff says more, and makes more sense, in five paragraphs than Cordesman’s tortured equivocations can eke out in 25 pdf footnoted pages.
Some might call it sad, but I simply note here without emotion that these two centrist Republicans from the 1970’s tell more truth than the whole army of liberal pundits and officeholders: the Israeli shill Sheer, Dionne, Richard Cohen, Joe Klein, the whole gang at the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, Ned Lamont — the entire cruise missile gang.
Read both articles and learn something. Or listen to the liberals, get bamboozled, and learn nothing. Even Krugman got his start under Reagan.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 18 2006 17:56 utc | 62

citizen, b real, malooga, and others who have been worrying about r’giap – i just spoke with him and it is as i thought: his computer has stopped working and he is not feeling well enough to post regularly. posting has also become more difficult as he is borrowing time on friends’ and colleagues’ computers and is occupied with ateliers during the day. we had a horrible connection and his unique mix of australian and french was more complex than usual to understand but he did tell me how touched he was by everyone’s concern. fortunately, i was also able to understand that while he is not at all well and there are complications with his insulin levels, it is not critical at the moment and we can be thankful for that.
as i mentioned yesterday, i will be sending him my laptop as soon as i buy a new one – been hoping apple would reduce the price when they introduced new product in august, but am still only hoping. r’giap lost sight in one eye when he was a child and it will be a challenge to deal with the small screen on my 12″ laptop, so if anyone wants to help with a larger monitor i know it will be appreciated. just a little advance warning – we will all have to bear with the inevitable typos as the american keyboard he is about to receive is configured very differently than the french to which he is accustomed. but he will be back as soon as he is able.

Posted by: conchita | Aug 18 2006 18:25 utc | 64

uncle, i commiserate. if i did not need the new computer for design work, i would not be in a position to help out either as i too am still a poor student. if the world isn’t destroyed by this administration first, eventually you and i will see better days.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 18 2006 18:47 utc | 66

Thanks for your update, conchita. Also thanks for your activist post on the last OT.
There must be some organization where he lives that collects and redistributes old computers from businesses. Gosh, where I live you can pick perfectly fine 17″ monitors out of the dump all day long. I’ve got a friend with a whole network of ten computers, printers, the works, all picked out of the dump. And any old box is sufficient for word processing and internet browsing. When I was running a coop, and I put the call out for computers, I was deluged with three whole pallets full! Seriously. Disposal is more of a problem than aquisition around here.
Is there anyone out there in France who could help with some practical searching skills to find a local donor source for him?

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 18 2006 19:51 utc | 68

Mainstream TV Media Drops The Ball On NSA Ruling, Instead Devotes Attention To JonBenet Ramsey
ABC devoted twice as much time to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story. More egregiously, CBS offered seven times as much airtime to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story, while NBC devoted 15 times more airtime.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 18 2006 21:26 utc | 70

You know, I don’t really watch normal TV, and I turn it, and my mind, off when I hear “manufactured” stories. I must confess that I have no idea whatsoever what the Ramsey story is even about. I think there is a murder involved, but that’s all I know.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 18 2006 22:20 utc | 72

conchita,
Refurbished flat screens of 17″ or more are showing up online for around $150-200, but I don’t know where would be best to look for France. Regardless, if scrounging doesn’t work, sign me up as a supporter of the purchase.
Thanks for making contact.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 19 2006 1:22 utc | 74

Malooga- where is your other work published? I’m sure many of us would like to read it.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 19 2006 2:28 utc | 76

latest Krugman pearls in ‘compressed’ version
Wherein PK shows that wage inequality shifts to follow the country’s ruling ideology (not necessarily its ruling party). Wherein he also mentions that Clinton governed somewhere to the right of Nixon (but I’m not sure that made it into the compressed version).
I have to confess I thought immediately of Bookchin’s criticism of the Green party’s bid to get into national elections rather than stay at the municipal level of politics. I’ll save that link for another week, though.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 19 2006 2:53 utc | 78

Oh, yes, btw, thanks yall for turning me on to Bookchin, quite fascinating, though I haven’t had time to say so… I love being turned on to authors and people I have never heard of, it’s like christmaz morning or someting… 😉

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 19 2006 3:09 utc | 80

@Malooga et al,
If you want to read something bone chilling and lurid on the Ramseys case, I susggest Jeff Mills’s Single Pervert Theory fair warning though, you will need a stiff drink, and possibily a shower afterward. Not many would be brave enough to go down that rabbit hole…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 19 2006 3:22 utc | 82

P.S. If you want to get one out here, you can lv. me an email address & I’d be happy to go double-check that it works & take it to the shipping place!

Posted by: jj | Aug 19 2006 3:59 utc | 84

For those unsatisfied with CompressedKrugman, here’s the Full Monty.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 19 2006 5:10 utc | 86

Hezbollah says fighters clashed with IDF deep inside eastern Lebanon

An Israel Defense Forces officer was killed and two other officers were wounded – one seriously – during a commando raid near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon early Saturday.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said the Israeli unit was transported by helicopter which landed before dawn and was driving into the village, when the soldiers were intercepted by guerrillas, who forced it to retreat under the cover of warplanes.
Lebanese security sources said commandos in two vehicles unloaded from helicopters were on their way to attack an office of senior Hizbollah official Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek in the village of Bodai when they were spotted and intercepted.

One of those Israeli “defensive” military operations tacitly allowed by that masterwork of the UN. I’m sure that defending themselves from the Israeli invasion and attack were “in violation” of the sheets off that same roll of paper.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 19 2006 9:54 utc | 88

@#76:
I’ve got half a book written and the beginnings of three others, but right now my life is a model of disorganization and incipient disaster, so this is the main place to find my writing. I’ve thought of starting a blog to allow for more commenting, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I post on a few other blogs, but not usually in depth.
Thanks for the interest. It’s what every writer craves.
My last long piece was here.
I’m gonna write a post on the Bookchin article tonight if I get a chance.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 19 2006 14:23 utc | 90

I know we had this tedious debate last week about whether we should support religious muslims who were fighting US domination. I think Nassrallah provides the answer:
ACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Angry Arab claims that the Nasrallah interview is a fake. The comments section makes some good points to support his claim.
I think I’ve been had.
We’ll have to see how this plays out.
great and insightful work!

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 19 2006 21:56 utc | 92

The Hollywood Shit List

Posted by: DM | Aug 20 2006 4:04 utc | 94

In response to Debs’ comment, it’s important to point out that a similar prejudice against gays is widely prevalent among right wingers in Israel as well. For instance, see this article: Violence in Israel caused by ‘gay’ event? Rabbis link troubles to approval of World Pride parade in Jerusalem
Yet many religious leaders believe the Israeli government’s decision to allow a world homosexual parade in Jerusalem is having real-life consequences.
…
“When God’s presence is in the camp, nothing can happen to the Jewish people,” Brody stated. “But If the Jewish people bring impurity into the camp of Israel, this chases away God’s presence.”
…
Before becoming a rabbi, Brody served for many years in the Israeli army, where he fought in combat missions in Beirut during Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in the early 1980’s. He said the public display of homosexuality in Jerusalem “soils the camp of Israel with impurity, and pushes away the divine presence and protection.”
…
Despite Judicial support, a recent poll shows that nearly 70 percent of all Jerusalemites oppose the march. Mayor Uri Lupolianski, an orthodox Jew, has filed a petition to prevent the event from taking place. About half of the Knesset’s 120 legislatures signed a petition against holding a homosexual parade in Jerusalem.
…
Meanwhile, Yehuda Levin, a member of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, has come to Israel specifically to prevent the homosexual celebration from taking place. He said a homosexual parade is akin to a parade of “prostitutes promoting prostitution, or adulterers encouraging others to try adultery at least once in their life.”
“Israel is the Holy Land, not the homo-land,” Levin told WND.

Posted by: Alan | Aug 20 2006 22:15 utc | 96

truth about iraqis

“I’m not talking about those arrested or captured in the process of fighting against the coalition. I’m talking about children who were rounded up for no particular reason, who have not been charged but have been put into detention,” he said in a brief telephone interview.
In his report titled “Six Blunders we made in Iraq we can still fix,” Mr. Adame praises the work of the coalition forces that have captured and killed terrorists in Iraq.
The bad news, he said, was that “in the process of combing Iraq for bad guys, field commanders, for one reason or another, and at times indiscriminately, have confined many men and women without any specific charges or reasons that can be remembered or recorded.”
“Consequently the coalition has, without charge or specific reason, confined many innocent people and deprived them, without cause, of the very liberties we came here to preserve,” said Mr. Adame.
Mr. Adame, a retired U.S. Marine who has two sons who have served in Iraq, one of whom was wounded in July while on patrol, also criticized U.S. officials for allowing the militarization of the Ministry of Interior (MOI) and ignoring abuses that took place there.
“It was the U.S. military generals who decided, through advisory influence, on who would control the MOI, and it was all of us who looked the other way while these Iraqi generals, led by the minister, trampled all over the rights and liberties of the good Iraqi people,” Mr. Adame wrote in his report.
He describes how, in 2005, he was with an Iraqi general who was in charge of logistics for the Ministry of Interior when the general received an order — signed by the minister — to issue 1,000 AK-47 combat rifles to a Muslim cleric.

Posted by: annie | Aug 20 2006 23:30 utc | 98