@b#1 – 🙂
(love the eclairs, somehow I relate to that)
Thanks.

Posted by: beq | May 6 2007 13:36 utc | 3

Are you familiar wuth Julian Beever’s work, b?

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 6 2007 14:39 utc | 5

belge tv is saying sarkozy 53 & royal 47

Posted by: r’giap | May 6 2007 15:51 utc | 7

my compatriots have chosen darkness – now they will taste it
they will finally understand how thatcher & blair ran a country into the ground & sold it to the rest of the world as a victory

Posted by: r’giap | May 6 2007 17:29 utc | 9

who is the neocon NRO promoting? hilary.
Republicans defect to the Obama camp

Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the president’s reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing.
…
The current issue of the New Yorker contains a profile of Obama, which highlights his appeal to conservatives.
For his optimism about the future, Obama has been dubbed the “black Ronald Reagan”.

Posted by: b | May 6 2007 17:44 utc | 11

the only hope – that between now & the legislatives they parti socialiste show a solidity – but unfortunately that is not their history

Posted by: r’giap | May 6 2007 17:51 utc | 13

in part because the ps is incapable of solidity – not 2 minutes after the announcement strauss kahn already makes a play for the leadership
b, all over the world people are rushing towards absolutes except in central & latin america, in the west the rush for absolutes – which is represented by a rejection of a real complexity & mutiplicity in daily life & an embrace of a kind of infantilism – a retour when no such retour is possible
more & more – the fear directs public life but because sarkozy will be so hard on the people perhaps it will allow a revitalisation of the forces of the left
also there was in this campaign & soft selling of the anglosaxon approach which is in reality a disaster, they never speak of the defecit for example, neither of the underclass, they never speak of the impoverished services the legacy of thatcher & blair have led that model to
yes the real fear – is a proximity to the us in foreign affairs & a direct attack on the poorest & most marginal & there will be little liberté & egalité & fraternité for thos who need the most help
practically it means in the midst of life i will have to work a great deal harder

Posted by: r’giap | May 6 2007 18:33 utc | 15

b, 11. i read that newyorker profile yesterday in my paperback edition. i am a voracious newyorker reader, can read behind the lines and judge this piece as hardly being up to their standards. it painted a very mealy mouth message without coming out and calling him a fraud. but then, hillary is the new york senator and the new yorker is commonly a friend to israel. frankly i haven’t made up my mind what to think of obama, or what kind of leader he would be but i am not so sure the kagan piece is not designed to turn dems away from obama.
in full disclosure you might mention the shit storm you were part of over @ kos and eurotribune (more links at the link). then there are the rebuttals

When Obama refers to rogue nations and muscular alliances, he makes damn sure to stress that “we must use effective diplomacy” in the same breath. Notice that Kagan took that out? The “strong nuclear deterrent” line? That’s from this carved-up beauty: “We can maintain a strong nuclear deterrent to protect our security without rushing to produce a new generation of warheads.” In other words: No new nukes. And the rest about “seizing the moment” and a “world anew” is from Obama’s ending rhetoric flourish about writing new chapters in America’s history that include his father’s acceptance to an American university – nothing to suggest military might. Kagan’s attempt to use these quotes here starkly betrays what he’s doing …. it’s not a gleeful Mr. Kagan in this article anyway, but a mocking one. He says “realists, call your doctors” at one point. At the end of the article, he accuses Obama of pandering to the debate audience last week. Kagan loves Obama? Maybe someone isn’t reading the entire article either.

am i disturbed obama is calling stronger military? who isn’t. on the other hand one way you can make your military stronger is to bring them home and let them do training excercises for a decade.
my point is i am not promoting obama, but having a republican starting a support group for the opposition is an ol sorry trick. who do you think funded naders campaign? the greens? maybe the guys sincere but it is not the same as when a neocon supreme writes a condescending article that gets plastered all over the web and picked up by every rightwing site this side of timbuktu. you can bet this was a smear job, whether it has merit remains to be seen but i do not believe it was designed to promote anyone. we are going to be treated to some very creative campaigning this election season.
timesonline?? isn’t that the london version of washington times?? i think we should hold onto our hats, whatever they are telling us is probably another rovian lie.

Posted by: annie | May 6 2007 18:56 utc | 17

r’giap,
I suspect that when the tallies are known the words of Hunter Thompson will come back to haunt us. He said that we were depending on the youth to get us out of this mess and the little bastards let us down.
I don’t see any of the idealism we had when we were young these days. seems like everyone is born old, serious and bitter.
what annie linked to in #8 is good news but I am a bit suspicious. this seems to be a press release written by Move-on and I really never saw them as being anti-war as much as pro-democrat. I believe this needs a bit more investigation.

Posted by: dan of steele | May 6 2007 19:18 utc | 19

i don’t what it is like in other villes but there is a grand demonstration here tonight

Posted by: r’giap | May 6 2007 20:29 utc | 21

r’giap- how do the French cast their ballots? I know the U.S. tried to install the election-stealer machines in Venezuela a few years ago but they were returned as “substandard.”
I just wonder.
Royal seemed nothing like HRC to me. I was hoping France would finally elect a woman. It seems that only right wing women, or militaristic ones get elected to lead nations.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 6 2007 21:09 utc | 23

it içs a bit of every method including the election stealers but mostly by hand & ballot
i’m ambivalent about royal but the rest are so clannish in the ps – that i think they need to get behind her for any chance in the legislatives

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2007 21:46 utc | 25

Condolences, r’giap. Many of my ancestors were French; I studied French language and literature both in high school and university; and I have always felt very close to that country. This loss feels personal to me.

Posted by: Copeland | May 6 2007 22:01 utc | 27

thanks, esme. nice to see you post here again.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 6 2007 22:52 utc | 29

annie @obama:
Did you read Obama’s speech that b linked? It is a clear statement of American imperialist intent. A b points out, where did his $20+ million bucks come from. There’s a reason they’re called Demoplicans.
I hope a general uprising of the people who voted the Demoplicans into power, that would be me to the extent of my vote, can force them to end the war.
In reality it is not hard to do. Pass an appropriations bill for Iraq that funds the immediate repatriation of all American forces from Iraq over a period of sixty days and forbids the use of those funds for any other purpose.
In terms of politics it will take a common legislative draft of the above seized upon by everyone committed to ending the war and emailed, faxed, snail mailed, read over the phone to the Congress, both House and Senate, both Republicrat and Demoplican, and posted on lamposts and telephone poles everywhere for all of us to see.
If we persist and accept nothing other than the people’s proposed legislation then it will become reality. Pass it again and again, each time by a slightly greater margin until in the end it overrides the veto and ends the war.
What’s needed is the common legislative draft. Mike Gravel had said he would provide it… if he cannot do so… someone else must.
Edwards has already embraced Gravel’s exhortation to persistence with his reference to his own, Gravel’s, one man filibuster against the draft when he, Edwards, said that the present Demoplican appropriation bill ought to be passed again and again and delivered to the President for non-signing.
Hillary is afraid that a campaign such as I outline is going to get traction, so she has accepted the tactic of making the war illegal, if that will allow it to continue. She is going to sign on to some measure said to rescind the authority to wage the war when Byrd delivers it at some future time.
I think the plan outlined above, originally Gravel’s as I understood him, has a real chance of success. Once the draft is in hand it can proceed with out any further coordination and it costs next to nothing.
I would like to hear of any other plans that we can undertake to speedily end the war in Iraq.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 7 2007 1:11 utc | 31

Gaza school festival attacked

Armed men have opened fire and thrown grenades near a children’s festival at a UN-operated elementary school in the southern Gaza Strip, killing a local Fatah leader’s bodyguard and wounding seven people.
No one has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack but earlier armed men outside the school had warned authorities not to hold the event.
Majed Abu Shamaleh, the Fatah official whose bodyguard was killed, said the men had also tried to enter the school in Rafah as the celebration took place.
The group had apparently announced that any festivities held where girls and boys mixed, showed dissent against Islam.

I have the sinking feeling that this is the result of Elliot Abrams’ funding of militant Islamic extremists in Palestine.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 7 2007 5:20 utc | 33

Those of us interested in George Lakoff’s books on Frame Semantics may also
like ‘Unspeak’ -by Steven Poole
Here’s an extract from the chapter ‘Freedom’

. . . The idea that everything is now subordinate to what ‘capital’ wants to ‘see’ is not merely an idée fixe of paranoid anti-globalisation protesters, but stated clearly in public by those who minister officially to capital’s desires. Back in the US, George W. Bush declared: ‘We need to reform our legal systems so the people, on the one hand, can get justice; on the other hand, the justice system doesn’t affect the flows of capital.’ First a hasty sop to liberals -acknowledging that, sure, people should still be able to ‘get’justice, just as they pop down to the store to get a can of soda – and then the remarkable notion that justice, on the other hand, should never interfere with the operations of money. So justice is a subeconomy within the larger one (you can ‘get’ justice), but it has no right to interfere with overarching systems of profit. Justice is subordinate to and dependent on capitalism, as is even ‘the strength of our families’, according to Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin . . .
The order of priorities in western ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ was again evident in the spiritually ascendant language of another Bush
pronouncement: ‘In every region, free markets and free trade and free societies are proving their power to lift lives.’ It seemed the
commercialists had finally got their way: markets were indeed
acknowledged to be quasi-divine autonomous systems raising all to
heaven. Why, then, if they were so free, could they not be left alone
to function in their utopian way? Bush was not just compelled to tell
Vladimir Putin how to change his country in order to clear a path for the march of free markets. The mollycoddling was necessary
domestically as well: ‘It’s important for the markets to see that we’ve got enough discipline in Washington, D.C. to make hard decisions with the people’s money,’ Bush said in 2004. This speech was reported the next day in the New York Times under the headline ‘Bush Says Social Security Plan Would Reassure Markets’, as though ‘markets’ were frightened children.
How protean, indeed, these markets were. On the one hand, they
dispensed God’s justice, free from any interference by merely human
justice; yet on the other hand, when the rhetorical occasion demanded, the markets were vulnerable little flowers, in desperate need of ‘reassurance’. It is true that markets, being essentially consensual
hallucinations, depend on confidence, but calls to ‘reassure’ them on one point or another are often made for unstated ideological reasons, if not to disguise a simple motive of private profit. Similar kid gloves were apparent in former UK Trade Secretary Margaret Beckett’s announcement that ‘Britain’s businesses need to be able to trade throughout the world’s markets as easily as they can in home markets without facing high tariffs, discriminatory regulations or unnecessarily burdensome procedures.’ Businesses may indeed want these things, but for Beckett to say that they ‘needed’ them, presumably in
order to flourish maximally, was to endorse their wants without weighing them against the wants of others.
After her trip to Latin America, Condoleezza Rice had gone on to
declare: ‘A region that trades in freedom benefits everyone.’ She did
not mean, we can assume, trading in freedom like trading in textiles
or precious metals: I will sell you this much freedom for so many
bananas. Celebrating the signing of the Central American Free Trade
Agreement, Rice was invoking again the concept of ‘free trade’, under
the auspices of which, as British chancellor Gordon Brown once
explained, poor countries have ‘obligations’ to ‘create the conditions for new investment’.
The freedom granted by ‘free trade’ was not quite symmetrical. Among
the ‘obligations’ of poor countries under World Bank and International
Monetary Fund deals have been, for example, the obligation to import
food from the heavily subsidised US and EU agricultural industries,
thereby driving local producers out of business; the rich countries
kept high tariffs on imports such as clothing and leather goods, thus
preventing the poor countries from competing freely. Meanwhile,
‘creating the conditions for new investment’ meant, for example,
allowing western companies to take over indigenous public services and
run them for profit. Water privatisation in Manila and electricity privatisation in India have resulted in price increases of up to 80 per cent; in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, ‘profit-maximising behaviour
has led privatised companies to keep investments below the necessary levels, with the result that rural communities and the urban poor were further marginalised in terms of access to electric power and water supply’. Tens of millions of pounds of the UK’s aid budget were given to ‘privatisation consultants’ at big accountancy firms, the acceptance of whose advice was made a condition of aid to poor countries.
To render the enlargement of such ‘free trade’ more palatable to an
increasingly informed and concerned public, the IMF, in a transparent
coup of Unspeak, had simply changed the name of its ‘structural
adjustment programmes’ to ‘poverty reduction and growth programmes’.
No one would be so churlish as to disagree that ‘poverty reduction’
was a fine idea, yet there was no new evidence that the same old
policy, thus relabelled, would actually achieve it.
One meaning of bringing freedom to Iraq, in particular, was clear in
George W. Bush’s May 2004 explanation of why things were going so well in that country:
[A] growing private economy is taking shape. A new currency has
been introduced. Iraq’s Governing Council approved a new law that
opens the country to foreign investment for the first time in decades.
Iraq has liberalized its trade policy, and today an Iraqi observer
attends meetings of the World Trade Organization.
International lawyer Philippe Sands explains that Coalition
Provisional Authority Order Number 39 had ‘opened much of Iraq’s
economy to foreign ownership [and] … stretched the limits of what an
occupying power was entitled to do under long-established rules of
international law.’ Note that what Bush acclaims as ‘foreign
investment’, implying generosity, Sands translates bluntly as ‘foreign ownership’. The order, in fact, made possible total foreign ownership of industries in all sectors except that of ‘natural resources’, defined closely as oil and gas; in a subsequent interview, trade minister Ali Allawi did not rule out future foreign ownership in those industries either. Business and income taxes for ‘investors’ would be capped at 15 per cent.
The Iraq economy was thus obliged to be much more ‘free’ than, say,
the US itself, which has laws governing foreign ownership of media companies, among others, and whose politicians worked hard in the summer of 2005 to ensure that a Chinese takeover bid for its oil
company Unocal would fail. Bush’s implication that the Governing
Council was the source of the Iraq ruling, meanwhile, hid the fact
that the Council was essentially obliged to rubber-stamp (‘approved’) the US order. Of course, these agreements were not simply a one-way street, and Iraq enjoyed some quid pro quos. In July 2005, for example, it was announced that the US would reduce to zero its import tariffs on Iraqi dates.
The US Congress had voted to spend $18.4 billion of taxpayers’ money
to reconstruct post-war Iraq. By the end of June 2004, Paul Bremer’s
Coalition Provisional Authority had spent only $300 million of this
sum. Instead, up to $20 billion of the Iraqi people’s own money, kept
in the Development Fund for Iraq and meant by the UN to be used ‘in a transparent manner to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people […] and for other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq’, had been handed out, most in no-bid contracts to American corporations such as Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, and in ways that were poorly accounted for. It was later alleged by Henry Waxman and the House Committee on Government Reform that in one such contract, Restore Iraqi Oil, Halliburton had overbilled by ‘more than $177 million’, charged to the Iraqi people. (In logistical contracts paid by the Defense Department, Halliburton charged $100 to clean a bag of laundry, and hundreds of millions for meals that were never served to troops.) In September 2004, the $18.4 billion of US money meant for reconstruction was reassigned to counter-insurgency warfare. For
Iraqis, it seemed, freedom came at a rather hefty price.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush had quietly signed an Executive Order
(#13303) granting blanket immunity from criminal prosecution or civil
lawsuits in the US to any American company or individual working in
any industry related to the Iraqi oil business. Perhaps that was what
he meant when he scrawled, on a note from Condoleezza Rice informing him that ‘Iraq is sovereign’ in June 2004, the possibly rehearsed reply: ‘Let freedom reign!’

Sorry about the formatting and length…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 7 2007 8:21 utc | 35

I suspected the answer to outcome of French election was the same as that in Am. ’00 & ’04.
yep

Posted by: annie | May 7 2007 9:43 utc | 37

annie:
Well I hope you’re wrong about Gravel. But the 2008 election is far away and the war is now. I think that the plan as outlined, who ever iis author, has a good chance of bringing the war to an end and I hope to pursue it. Good luck with the “top tier”.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 7 2007 11:15 utc | 39

Two insightful articles at Asia Times Online :
Damascus moves to center stage
About Saudi/Lebanese/Syrian detente and the fall of Bandar.
Why Iran spurned a US handshake
About Iran’s view of US “talk-talk, fight-fight” “diplomacy”.
There is one, almost off topic, reference to Palestine in the second article :

On the other hand, during his visit to the West Bank last month, Louis Michel, European commissioner for development and humanitarian assistance, noted that conditions in the Palestinian territories had never been worse.
Some 60% of the population live below poverty line (on 2 euros – about US$2.70 – per day); some 35% of the population is going hungry; more than half of the children suffer from anemia; a quarter has no access to drinking water. As American commentator on Middle Eastern affairs Patrick Seale put it recently, Israeli security has reduced the Palestinian population to a “situation of permanent siege and permanent terror”. Michel asked whether Israel’s security justified such measures.

The criminals at the scene are the Israelis of course.
But they could only seethe and hate, and stew in their own juices; they could never realize their remorseless oppression of the Palestinians and their expropriation of Palestine if not for the Gang of 4 Enforcers : US, EU, Russia, the UN.

Posted by: ๋John Francis Lee | May 7 2007 16:08 utc | 41

annie posted this on the occupiers evolution thread and I think it’s imp. reading, to me, to get some sense of a few other perspectives (commenters, too, whatever their position).
Al queda/Taliban in Iraq
There are so many stories to be told about the new Talibanization in Iraq. All kinds of explosions, kidnappings, killings and beheadings, but one specific article made it pretty clear that it is official now that Iraq is out of control and that the government is hiding behind the blast walls which the Americans built for them when the end of modern Iraq started with their invasion which came with no future plans, except capturing and executing Saddam.
the only thing I agree with that “anonymous” said on that thread is that other nations in the middle east should work out a way to help stop what is going on in Iraq…if nothing else b/c it threatens their populations with the same sort of backward medievalist repulsive ideology.
if someone wants an analogy to hitler’s evil, the taliban does it for me.
this story, of course, does not concern americans killing Iraqis…or rather, peripherally as a consequence of their actions, so it doesn’t fit that narrative.
it also makes me wonder who would be considered “an insurgent” – by what definition – on the dead thread (you know the one I mean.)
the situation is so full of despair I can hardly read what the people experience there without crying in shame.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 7 2007 17:11 utc | 43

perpetually choosing twixt lesser evils changes nothing but garners more evil whilst engendering false hope

Posted by: jcairo | May 7 2007 17:53 utc | 45

Beyond the the dizzy run of daily news, the Bush Gvmt. bashing:
1989, the fall of the wall;
subsequently, the rape of Russia (Yeltsin, oligarchs, free market);
the invasion of Yugoslavia, a test case, run by Germany (it is re-arming big time btw, afaik?) with the US, with Islamics jihadists as proxies – they come pretty cheap, they are very eager, slavering, any deal is good;
Merkel, the prime Atlanticist;
and now, and now, rgiap posted:
my compatriots have chosen darkness – now they will taste it
they will finally understand how thatcher & blair ran a country into the ground & sold it to the rest of the world as a victory
Oh it is a done deal alright.

Posted by: Noirette | May 7 2007 18:58 utc | 47

Tangent – Jerome a Paris posted this on EuroTrib about the economic (macro) ‘decline’ of France, it is worth reading:
link
He goes moves towards revealing hype and BS that the French pubic has in part latched on to, with solid ‘numbers.’ (Arguments can be made against, notably that the ‘problems’ of France cannot be measured in this way, or should be treated differently.)

Posted by: Noirette | May 7 2007 19:10 utc | 49

France:
1) the future pres. could not make the promises they did, it is the PM who has charge the Gvmt. But then, media, etc.
2) Both candidates ran a slogan campaign, with buzz words, emotion: A rigorous France, a Kinder France – pure pol BS. Technical details, such as the 35 hr. work week, which deserve deep discussion, and referral to the many serious and thorough economic studies made, were turned into a buzz word ideology scream fest
3) the important, long term issues, were shunted aside, or were sloganised (wd?)
–> Europe; Energy; Peak Oil; Agriculture; Immigration and emigration; Foreign policy in general; War in the ME; Territorial Organization: The Army (not one word!); post Colonialism (ex. Algeria), Education, Globalisation, and more.
Both ‘sides’ collaborated in that, as mentioning any of it is practically bound to loose votes.
Sarko went for right wing rubbish about national identity dirty foreignors more controls security ‘kill’ the criminals liberate the work place reduce taxes stimulate the economy so on. Sego played a similar nationalist card (each household should possess a French flag, she said, and the Socialists should sing the Marseillaise!); and nanny-state wise promised she would take care of raped women and sick dogs, preserve work rights, the people need respect, and so on…pay out a lot of money for whatever..some good props. though but that is not my topic now..
Sarko then promised to respect dogs (excuse my sarcasm) and old ppl, and crack down on crime, be ecological, etc. etc. (He said anything to anyone, anytime, anywhere, pure pol posturing. Sego was a little more consistent, as a new pol, woman must be.)
And so? the French elected the big boss who is aggressive and postures. Sarko, though, was elected I guess (haven’t seen breakdowns yet of the vote), by ppl over 60, or 65. That was all calculated.
Sarko will not do much internally, either because he won’t try (while wasting a lot of spit, Chirac did nothing after all, it is becoming a habit), or because the street will rise up and he will be stopped. Or he may ‘reform’ a bit, be supported by the media, as he can’t be discredited right away – after all, what a superb democracy! So much emotion! A great turn out! The best man wins! Everyone wins! Respect!
Meanwhile, foreign policy will remain practically invisible, veiled by some fears of terrorism, or scandals about raped children, dying old ppl, more quarrels about work contracts, etc etc.. Sarko supports the Iraq invasion by the US (that was not mentioned during the campaign), is a closet Zionist, not because of personal inclination or roots but because of desperate need to latch into global power (think Blair.) The French will wake up and notice too late, or not; we will see.

Posted by: Noirette | May 7 2007 20:16 utc | 51

when i see the fucking face of that cretin blair i could almost believe in alien habitation except i know there does not exist a species more stupid than he except perhaps in the cabinets of either pap doc or baba doc duvalier, blair is bokassa withiut brains, he is mobutu without mojo or means, he is mugabe without mischief – blair is like stroesner frpm parugauy or one of his lesser officials – & when i hear him speaking french i become like the little austrian corporal & i commence to eat the carpet & do a dirge in honour of disraeli – i cry & cry & cry & i chant my songs of cromwell
richard the 111 was a gentelman compared to that cretin & macbeth reminfs you that maybe in the middle ages women & men were more reflexive, that they thought more about their acts or at least had the capacity to meditate on them
today these imbeciles – these moronic mujahadeen of modernism – everywhere except central & latin america & province of china or two & maybe vermont & a place just outside montreal & of course my beloved naples & palermo where a man of honour is a man of honour – after all is said & done
riina & provenanzo were statesemen compared to these criminals & now they orgy even on al jazeera blowing their kisses to one another – they warn us of the dark caliphates of the future – well, for some time as dylan has sd it has already been getting dark getting darker by the decade – but ist suez without the sex, its profumu without the poofs, its the thrid man without the first & second, its dirk bogarde in some self regarding movie in englan in the sixties where even the women have moustaches, its david frost when he was funny, it’s the malaysin emergency without chin peng
& as someone once sd its all a bit of a drag
& as bogart sd i only came here for the waters

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 7 2007 22:39 utc | 53

annie:
I was not attacking you. You don’t need to defend yourself. I don’t want to fight.
I do think that the Republicrat/Demoplican complex is utterly corrupt, that Obama/Clinton/Dodd/Edwards is not in any meaningful way different from whoever the Republicrats come up with.
I am not a partisan of Mike Gravel. I view him as a third party candidate running in the Demoplican Primary. He looks like an unusually viable third party candidate to me right now. It he wins the nomination he takes out one the pillars of corruption.
Your summary of our political circumstances does sound like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me.
Get mad at me if you want to. I don’t mind. I still think you’re the top.
The Democrats Don’t Own the Antiwar Movement

In our local Portland, Maine newspaper on May 6 the editorial page editor explained why the paper had last week announced they had decided to come out against the war in Iraq after long supporting Bush’s shameful and illegal occupation. The editor said, “We’ve not renounced our belief in American exceptionalism. Speaking for myself, I’ve withdrawn my support for the war for pragmatic reasons, not because my underlying world view has changed. I believe we should use our strength as the world’s only military superpower with great caution, but I do believe we should use it…..Our nation has a unique role in the world, and with it come unique responsibilities and unique privilege.”
In other words he supports U.S. empire and all that comes with it. The bases, the killing, the domination of cultures is all acceptable. In this case he is “withdrawing” his support for Bush’s Iraq operation primarily because “this war has been mismanaged by the president to the point where turning things around is impossible.”
This is largely the Democratic Party position as well. The war is not necessarily bad, the U.S. has the right and responsibility to take out anyone that we decide should be eliminated, but it must be handled well so that world opinion and the American people do not turn against the policy. (You might call it Winning Without an unpopular War.) In this case Bush and his crew “mismanaged” the operation. It reminds me of the 2004 debates between Bush and John Kerry when Kerry said he’d do a better job of “killing terrorists” than Bush would and that he’d spend “$100 billion more on the military” than Bush would. Kerry would do the war/occupation better than the Republicans.

Posted by: ๋John Francis Lee | May 8 2007 0:29 utc | 55

Report: Saudis, US sponsoring covert action against Iran

The governments of Saudi Arabia and the United States are working with other states in the Middle East to sponsor covert action against Iran, according to a report in this month’s edition of The Atlantic. The report also suggests that covert attacks may occur against Iran’s oil sector.
(snip)

Posted by: Alamet | May 8 2007 0:47 utc | 57

Get mad at me if you want to. I don’t mind. I still think you’re the top.
oh don’t be silly JFL i am not mad at you at all, sometimes i just get a little cranky. 04 was the only election i ever worked on because i was so depressed.
I do think that the Republicrat/Demoplican complex is utterly corrupt, that Obama/Clinton/Dodd/Edwards is not in any meaningful way different from whoever the Republicrats come up with.
well, i can think of a dozen democrats that if elected in 00 wouldn’t have chosen to invade iraq. gore being one of them. we also would have no oversite going on right now w/a rethug congress, not that i think it will necessarily make a difference, but it certainly is entertaining.. i have no idea who this dodd character is, but other than that, you’re right.

Posted by: annie | May 8 2007 2:30 utc | 59

NO THE FRENCH PEOPLE DIDN’T CHOOSE DARKNESS. ELITES PUT IN ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES, so they could STEAL THE ELECTION. There was a massive uprising when this happened in Mexico. Will the French people be over-educated Sheep like Americans when that happened here, or will they honor their democratic traditions & rise Up?

Posted by: jj | May 8 2007 3:33 utc | 61

Well well, the plot thickens: Iran ex-nuclear negotiator arrested on ‘security’ charge

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 8 2007 4:25 utc | 63

A little refresher is due about now, in light of Alamet’s recent post…
The [Saudi intelligence] Enron pipeline connection to 9/11

Back in the 1970’s and 80’s, Saudi intelligence (not the CIA as has been reported) funded the early Taliban faction and later Al Qaida as part of the insurgency to throw the Russians out of Afghanistan. A few years afterwards, US energy companies (Enron, as the Afghan pipeline consultant for UNOCAL) used the Saudi intelligence connection to the Taliban to begin negotiations for a pipeline across Afghanistan.
Prince Turki, chief of Saudi inteligence, has publicly admitted making
several trips into Afghanistan to negotiate a peace mission with the
Taliban. My sources say he was the pipeline mediator for Enron. Prince
Turki was fired as head of Saudi intelligence immediately after the
pipeline discussions collapsed in August 2001.
Prince Turki is allegedly close to the Bin Laden family which was allegedly promised the construction contract in return for a percentage to the Saudi Royal family. This is a common business practice initiated by the Carlyle Group’s contracts in Saudi Arabia.
As the Republican IPO magazine, Red Herring, confirms, President Bush’
father was business partners in the Carlyle Group with the Bin Laden family during this period . This company is a Who’s Who of former Democratic and Republican intelligence and political officials, whose specialty is acting as super-lobbysists at the highest levels of government. They are also suspected of arranging construction kickbacks to the Saudi royal family in return for discount oil sales.

Before it was shut down in 1991, BCCI was used by U.S. and Saudi intelligence to fund the mujahideen.
Also see, What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 8 2007 5:42 utc | 65

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your
herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the
income.
SOCIALISM: You have 2 cows, and you give one to your neighbour.
COMMUNISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.
FASCISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.
BUREAUCRATISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the
other, then throws the milk away…
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the
other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to
analyse
why the cow has dropped dead.
ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your
publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your
brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an
associated general
offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five
cows. The
milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman
Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the
rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says
the
company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a
new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance
sheet
provided with the release. The public buys your bull.
THE ANDERSEN MODEL: You have two cows. You shred them.
A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot,
and block the roads, because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are
one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You
then create a clever cow cartoon image called ‘cowkimon’ and market it
worldwide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live
for
100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don’t know where they
are.
You decide to have lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have
five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them
again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another
bottle
of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You
charge the owners for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and
arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them.
A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad.
IRAQI CORPORATION: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that
you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out of you and
invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part
of a
Democracy….
WELSH CORPORATION: You have two cows. The one on the left looks very
attractive.
AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You
close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 8 2007 6:56 utc | 67

From Hannah’s #66
For this reason, military and intelligence officials have taken matters in their own hands to make sure that the most pressing issues with Washington were attended to without further delay
gosh, that sure does sound like a coup d’etat. what the hell is going on? who is this message for?

Posted by: dan of steele | May 8 2007 10:49 utc | 69

well, i can think of a dozen democrats that if elected in 00 wouldn’t have chosen to invade iraq. gore being one of them.
this isn’t true. in 1998/99, clinton was ramping-up the war:

So what were we doing bombing Iraq? Back in February 1998, we wanted to bomb Iraq when Saddam prevented UN arms inspectors from entering his palaces. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan produced a “memorandum of understanding” to allow the UN to make a one-time inspection, in the company of foreign diplomats, of these supposed symbols of Iraqi sovereignty. But once Saddam objected to the American UN inspectors, it was “chocks away”: he now almost certainly wished to be bombed-because he had given up any hope of sanctions being lifted and knew that the Arab world would sympathise with Iraq. Journalists became frightened of the figure of half a million children dead under sanctions; it was safer to debate the rights and wrongs of killing eighty-two civilians in the December air raids. Arabs did not see events in so distorted a way. However deplorable their regimes, they were possessed of an overwhelming sense of fury and humiliation; [724] the conviction that the raids on Baghdad were all staged to avoid Clinton’s impeachment seemed to place events beyond the immoral.
Then-and only then, in the New Year, in the first week of January 1999, less than three weeks after the attacks were staged on Iraq because Saddam had “blocked” the UNSCOM teams-came the revelation. American arms inspectors were spies. CIA men had been planted among the UN teams-along with M16 agents from Britain, if a report in The Independent was correct-and the UN was forced to admit that “UNSCOM directly facilitated the creation of an intelligence collection system for the United States in violation of its mandate.” U.S. agents had installed a “black box” eavesdropping system into UNSCOM’s Baghdad headquarters that intercepted Saddam Hussein’s presidential communications network. Operation Shake the Tree was supposed to uncover the regime’s weapons concealment system, but UN officials quickly realised that the SIGINT operation run by the CIA’s Near East Division-which was led by Ritter’s nemesis Steve Richter-was not sharing its intelligence information with UNSCOM. The UN arms mission to Iraq had become a U.S. spying operation against the regime. Few bothered to recall that Saddam’s reasons for expelling the U.S. inspectors-the official cause of the December bombardment-had now been proved true. But UNSCOM was finished.
The military assault on Iraq was not. For with little publicity-and amid virtual indifference in Western capitals-U.S. and British aircraft staged well over seventy air strikes against Iraq in just five weeks during January and February 1999, inflicting more damage than the pre-Christmas Anglo-American bombardment. Pilots flying out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were now given new rules of engagement that allowed them to open fire on Iraqi installations even if their aircraft were not directly threatened. The air offensive was carefully calibrated to avoid criticism or public debate, although it coincided with further attempts by Washington to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime.
At my home in Beirut that great rain-washed winter, I spent hours searching through back copies of the Arab and British press for details of these raids. I visited Tewfiq Mishlawi, a veteran Palestinian-Lebanese journalist whose daily Middle East Reporter was meticulous in recording each Western air attack on Iraq-and its political consequences in the Arab world-and found that his own archives were filled with small, often apparently inconsequential quotations from Western military spokesmen. Yet, sitting in his cold drab offices near the centre of Beirut, I placed these paragraphs of copy next to one another and found myself reading a coherent and all too disturbing account of a near-secret war. One-inch news items-nibs, as we call them in the trade-would turn into longer stories as I photocopied them and pinned them, one after the other, into my file. The file began to thicken. Every hour, I would have to open a new folder for the next stack of cuttings.
Iraqi missile sites were being attacked without warning and radar stations targeted solely because their presence-rather than any offensive activity-was said to menace American forces in the Gulf. In early February, for example, U.S. aircraft bombed a CSSC-3 “Seersucker” anti-ship missile battery on the Fao penin [725] sula which, according to a spokesman, “could [sic] have threatened shipping in the Gulf.” Military sources said that there was no evidence the missiles were about to be fired, although American and British government officials continued to maintain for more than a year afterwards that pilots responded only to specific threats against their aircraft. In an article in The Independent on 7 August 2000, for instance, Foreign Office minister Peter Hain-the same Peter Hain who had condemned Halliday and von Sponeck for their outspoken criticism of UN sanctions-wrote that “there have been about 85o direct threats against our aircrew in the past year and a half, including missile attacks and heavy anti-aircraft fire. Our pilots have taken action only to defend themselves against this kind of attack” (my emphasis).
This was obviously untrue. But by attacking Iraq every day while issuing only routine information about the targets, American and British officials had also ensured that their salami bombardment attracted little or no interest in the press; newspapers now frequently carried little more than four lines about air-strikes that would have captured front-page headlines a year earlier. Only when U.S. missiles hit civilian areas was the mildest criticism heard. Often, these attacks turned out to be even more bloody than the Iraqis admitted at the time. When an American AGM-i3o missile exploded in a Basra housing complex, initial reports spoke of eleven civilian casualties, although a total of sixteen died on that day and almost a hundred were wounded. Von Sponeck, who was still the UN humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad at the time, stated that two missiles hit civilian areas 30 kilometres apart, the first in Basra–where a woman and five children were among the dead-and the second in the village of Abu Khassib, where five women and five children were killed. In other words, most of the victims were children; a Pentagon spokesman later admitted the Basra attack, responding to the casualties with the words: “I want to repeat that we are not targeting civilians.”
The 1999 air offensive had begun at the New Year with five American attacks in two weeks and was followed on 11 January when U.S. aircraft attacked Iraqi missile sites from air bases in Turkey. Almost daily air raids continued to the end of January, by which time British fighter-bombers were joining U.S. planes in the attacks. On 31 January, eight British and American jets were bombing “communications facilities” in southern Iraq. A statement from the Americans on 4 February that U.S. and British planes had by then destroyed forty missile batteries-adding that this alone caused greater damage than was caused to Iraq in the whole December air bombardment–passed without comment. Neither Washington nor London explained whether the attacks had UN backing-they did not-and a warning by Britain’s socialist elder statesman, Tony Benn, went unheeded.
On i t February, General Sir Michael Rose, Britain’s former UN force commander in Bosnia, condemned the offensive in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute. “The continual TV images of the West’s high-technology systems causing death and destruction to people in the Third World will not be tolerated for ever by civilised people,” he said. But his remarks were largely ignored. Instead, U.S. officials continued their fruitless attempts to form a united Iraqi opposition to Saddam and to seek Arab support for their plans. By declaring the Western “no- [726] fly” zones invalid-which they were in international Law-Saddam could encourage his air defences to fire at U.S. and British aircraft. He even offered a reward of $14,000 for ground-to-air missile crews who shot down raiding aircraft. It went unclaimed; Iraq’s air defence batteries were hopelessly inferior to American and British technology.
Yet still this near-secret war went on. In Baghdad, six more civilian deaths were announced-one in an air raid near Najaf on ro February 1999, and five more, with twenty-two wounded, in southern Iraq five days later. After The Independent published the details of this war-by-disinterest, I continued my trawl through the daily Arab press. On 22 February, for example, it was reported that U.S. and British jets had attacked an Iraqi missile site and two communications bases near Amara and Tallil. On I March, American jets dropped more than thirty 2,000-pound and goo-pound laser-guided bombs on radio relay sites, “communications targets and air defence guns” in northern Iraq. Defence Secretary Cohen said the same day that U.S. pilots had been given “greater flexibility” in their attacks. When an air raid disrupted Iraqi oil exports to Turkey, the executive director of the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme, Benon Sevan, complained that there was already a $9oo million shortfall between expected revenues and what was needed to fund the humanitarian programme under sanctions, and that continued raids could frustrate efforts to supply food and medicines to Iraqi civilians. Like Benn and Rose, he was ignored. Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization

Posted by: slothrop | May 8 2007 15:47 utc | 71

Six dopes watched some videos and some had stupid ideas – the FBI tried to sell them weapons – yawn …
Fort Dix Soldiers Targets of Plot
Whenever the FBI has “infiltrated” such a group like in this case, you can be 99% sure that the FBI agents came up with and financed the “bad idea” that the boys will be hanged for …

Posted by: b | May 8 2007 18:27 utc | 73

@ 67… whoever you are, thanks for the nifty cow-peration analysis of the world and the great giggle before turning in.
g’night barlies 🙂

Posted by: esme in paris | May 9 2007 0:44 utc | 75

Great rant on Blair by rgiap.
For those interested in La Belle France, the rays of hope are:
a) Sarkozy is not as clever, as confident, as knowledgeable, as educated, as persuasive, as Tony B Liar. Sarkozy also does not relate well to collaborators, underlings, partners, or the public (excepting his groupies, or when on a platform, or for a short time at the start, pats on the back, glitter…etc.), and doesn’t have, amongst the elite, the same ‘base’ as Tony. The French equivalent of paleo-conservatives, and a fair chunk of the Le-Pen type electorate despise him or are very suspicious.
b) Perhaps most important, he doesn’t know and understand the ‘dossiers’ – the facts of the matter, and French pols are supposed to. He is a real upstart, pulling the strings of power, or amassing them, in a primitive way, using the traditional discourse of French politics, which is easy to do… The one who took leaves out of Blair’s third-way book was Sego, both in style and substance.
c) The French are different from the British; their relation to authority is oppositional rather than subservient or accepting, collaborative: that’s a caricature – consequences all the same.
d) rumor has it (I can’t repeat) that he has stumbled badly once, and it was covered up. Watching the faces on tv, reading the editorials, it is obvious that his personality (independently of *any* political stance) has many people extremely worried, mostly in the right wing camp. This is, in my eyes, new in French politics, in the sense that personalia (Mitterand had two ‘wives’, after all), while they are becoming more important (eg. media pix of the happy family), following US influence, are not taken seriously by the elite or the ‘educated’ public – but for Sarko, they are. A an example is Chirac’s enmity and his late lame endorsement..not, as I read it, merely due to rivalry or difficulties in endorsing a ‘successor’ …
e) then there is the delicate matter of Sarko’s wife who has now announced (as was expected) that she will play no official role at all. Ever.
It is not a good beginning – even Bush’s was better; Tony’s was stellar.

Posted by: Noirette | May 9 2007 15:15 utc | 77

Yes, alongside the “surge” efforts in Iraq it’s now clear that here at home, there was a very substantial campaign to “purge” — purge democrats from voter rolls, that is. New details are emerging daily. Here are two good video reports that everyone should really watch, because they do an excellent job of synthesizing a complex situation that in essence is horrifying:
Keith Olbermann: Where Does the Politicization of Justice End?
TPM TV [Scroll down to May 8/4:36 pm to “Meet new Attorney Purge bigwig Bradley Schlozman in today’s episode of TPMtv.”]
FYI Schlozman is being called to Capitol Hill to testify later this week. Should be very very interesting.

Posted by: Bea | May 9 2007 15:29 utc | 79

I just noticed in the link above that the picture of Cheney has him wearing a flak jacket. Last throes of the “insurgency” indeed.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | May 9 2007 16:21 utc | 81

above

Posted by: anna missed | May 9 2007 17:37 utc | 83

noirette
on the buffoons that made britain
i suggest in parallel – the two series based on john le carre’ novels ‘tinker, tailor, soldier, spy’ & ‘smileys people’ followed very quickly by an itv documentary in 4 parts -‘the mayfair set’ (annie’s link google video)
you could not see a clearer picture
& as they say it’s no oil painting

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 9 2007 22:41 utc | 85

amy goodman remembers journalist anthony mitchell, killed recently in the kenyan airliner crash
A Shining Light Goes Out in Africa

On Saturday, May 5, Anthony Mitchell died in the crash of Kenyan Airways Flight 507, which killed all 114 people on board. Based in Nairobi, he was an Associated Press reporter who had recently broken a story on secret prisons in Ethiopia and the U.S. involvement in the detention and interrogation of prisoners there. The world has lost another journalist, one who was taking the necessary risks to get at the heart of the complex and often ignored story of Africa.

amy also writes “Make no mistake about it, the Horn of Africa is in the cross hairs of the United States. There is oil in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.”
here’s to hoping future democracynow reporting reflects that clarity of judgement. (the recent focus on ‘save darfur’ was quite lacking in enough facts for the audience to form a clear understanding of the sitch, to say the least…)
– – –
Sudanese minister says oil production increased in 2006

May 9, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese Minister of Energy and Mining Awad Ahmed al-Jaz has told the federal parliament that production of crude oil during 2006 has reached half a million barrels daily, the national TV reported.
In a statement before the National Assembly on May 7, al-Jaz said that production of crude oil had touched 500,000 barrels per day in 2006. Sudanese TV reported that the increase was due to additional production from Blocks 3 and 7 in the provinces of Upper Nile and White Nile state, Block 5a in Wihdah state, and Block 6 in south Kordofan state.
…
The minister also said that 66 exploratory wells were drilled, in addition to 21 wells to define location and 181 developmental wells. This resulted in adding another 212.5 million barrels to the country’s oil deposits.
…
Sudan’s finance minister had said average oil production for 2007 will run at 520,000 barrels per day (bpd) as new fields that were delayed last year are now fully on stream.

Posted by: b real | May 10 2007 3:58 utc | 87

@beq – 84
yes some exitement –
There are big protests planed for the G8 meeting next month.
The fascistoid Secretary of the Interior ordered houses of activists raided yesterday to look for “evidence” of planing of disruptive protests.
In answer to those raids there were of course protests all over Germany yesterday night and in Hamburg the usual ritual was followed when police tried to stop an spontanious march of some 2000 people.
It is an attempt to criminalize the G8-protests – in consequence, those protests will grow.

Posted by: b | May 10 2007 10:08 utc | 89

There was an hour interview with Mike Gravel on KAOS Radio 95.9 Austin, TX with Scott Horton on 7 May apparently. The tape is available over the wire.
At about 4 and 1/2 minutes into the interview :

04:35 “I have drafted a piece of legislation, and it’s a law, and it’s very clear, and it’s a one-pager, and essentially what it says is that the Congress directs, by law, the chief executive to get the troops out within 60 days… real simple, you introduce the law in both chambers and then Pelosi brings it up for a vote… you could have it up for a vote within a week’s time… you get the troops out in 60 days, you certify that, and if you don’t have ’em out in 60 days… and then certify every few months that you have kept them out… the penalty for not doing that is 5 years in jail and a million dollar fine… and in jail with no possibility of parole.”

At about 17 minutes in :

17:00 “I’m prepared to go public on it, and I’m going to have a press conference next Monday [14 May 2007] releasing the specific legislation and the specific document outlining the tactics that I have just outlined with you.”

The main point it calls for is the repatriation of American troops within 60 days of the bill’s passage. I don’t know that it will work but I am certainly going to be sending copies of the bill to my Representative and Senators, and to Demoplican Central everyday and demanding that they pass it and requesting my friends to do so too.
On Monday as well the Iraqi oil workers, the 26,000 member IFUO, are going out on strike against the BearingPoint Oil Bill for Iraq. Solidarity with the IFOU.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 10 2007 14:10 utc | 91

I’m sure this will be old news by the time everyone gets here (if it hasn’t already been posted), but:
Britain’s Blair says he is resigning
For R’Giap.

Posted by: Monolycus | May 10 2007 15:08 utc | 93

according to William Blum the argument – “If the United States leaves Iraq things will really get bad.” is The Last Argument of Fools

To better understand this argument, it helps to keep in mind the following about the daily horror that is life in Iraq: It did not exist before the US occupation.
The insurgency violence began as, and remains, a reaction to the occupation; like almost all insurgencies in occupied countries — from the American Revolution to the Vietcong — it’s a fight directed toward getting foreign forces to leave.
The next phase was the violence of Iraqis against other Iraqis who worked for or sought employment with anything associated with the occupation regime.
Then came retaliatory attacks for these attacks.
Followed by retaliatory attacks for the retaliatory attacks.
Jihadists from many countries have flocked to Iraq because they see the war against the American Satan occupiers as a holy war.
Before the occupation, many Sunnis and Shiites married each other; since the occupation they have been caught up in a spiral of hating and killing each other.

Posted by: jcairo | May 10 2007 23:26 utc | 95

Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation

More than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected for the first time on Tuesday the continuing occupation of their country. The U.S. media ignored the story.
On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 11 2007 2:25 utc | 97

This op-ed by Gregory Clarke on the limits (and virtues) of free trade from undoubtedly fits with the prevailing views here at MOA. It would, therefore, be of interest to see a reasoned critique.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | May 11 2007 5:32 utc | 99