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June 11, 2007
OT 07-40
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‘Operations’ is a very distinct word in the CIA world:
CIA Plans Cutbacks, Limits on Contractor Staffing
The CIA’s contractors do not supervise employees and are not allowed to make commitments on behalf of the government. But [Associate Deputy Director] Morell said, “We do have contractors who do case-officer work, who are conducting operations” and who work alongside the CIA’s career analysts.
The style of questioning at Tel Aviv airport seems deliberately designed to test a person’s patience and level of tolerance in the face of insults. My story is not the first, nor is it likely to be the last told about Israel. However, my experience there was worse than I could have imagine. Now I believe that Israel pursues racist policies and deliberately targets Muslims travelling there.
…
After five hours, the head of security came to interview me. The same questions were asked and he even tried to crack jokes to make it look normal. After further two hours of waiting in vain I was told I could enter the country. While proceeding to pick up my bags I was stopped again and interviewed by a customs officer whose behaviour was rather thuggish.
…
My experience is nothing compared to what non-Jewish people of the Holy Land face every day. The natural beauty of the country is breathtaking but the Israeli government’s policy towards its own non-Jewish citizens is ugly. They are treated as second class citizens; they do not enjoy the same rights. The country is deeply divided. People of different origin do not dwell in the same neighbourhood. The areas where Arab communities live, although paying the same taxes, are visibly underdeveloped. The locals say the government does not care about the Arabs.
I travelled to the West Bank and saw the Palestinians living in a dire state, poverty, unemployment, hopelessness and apathy everywhere. Anger and resentment form their daily emotions. It felt like a prison for me as a traveller, so I cannot imagine how they must feel being imprisoned in their own homes.
…
No country, no people or nation can succeed by oppressing others. Peace and security can never be obtained by erecting walls or confiscating lands. Prosperity can not be attained by causing misery to others. Daily suffering and humiliation of the Palestinians people would not make peace in the region possible.
DePaul denies tenure for controversial professor
Finkelstein, whose tenure bid drew widespread interest because of the Jewish professor’s blunt criticism of Jews and the state of Israel — and the attack on those views waged by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz — stands firmly on the beliefs that may have got him fired.
…
What Finkelstein — the son of Holocaust survivors — believes is that his people are culpable in the plight of the Palestinians. He drew wrath from prominent Jewish leaders when he accused some of exploiting Jewish suffering to block criticism of Israel, and made other enemies when he accused some survivors of conducting a “shakedown” to get payments from Germany.
…
DePaul said the political science department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences recommended tenure for Finkelstein, but the college’s dean and the University Board on Promotion and Tenure recommended against it and were upheld by Holtschneider.
“I would be disingenuous if I said I were not disappointed,” Finkelstein said.
“On the other hand, both of my parents survived the Nazi death camps. Growing up, what I remembered most was my late mother used to say, ‘Some people are beasts, and there’s nothing to be done with them. But what about the silence of everyone else? That I cannot understand.‘ Those were thoughts that left a deep mark on me.”
U.S. relies on Sudan despite condemning it
Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq, an example of how the U.S. has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its suspected role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.
I wonder how this plays to the never give “aid and comfort to the enemy” folks. U.S. supplies weapons to insurgents.
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 11 2007 9:02 utc | 5
Blowbackfrom Iraqi supporters of occupation to the Korean model of occupation. duhhhh!
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 11 2007 9:30 utc | 7
An excerpt from the excellent piece that anna missed linked to in #7. Recommended reading!
Bush Says We’ll Be in Iraq for 50 Years, But Reporters Don’t Bother to Ask Iraqis to Comment
By Joshua Holland and Raed Jarrar, AlterNet
On May 25, George Bush signed a defense bill that outlawed the construction of (new) permanent bases in Iraq. But only five days later, White House press flack Tony Snow told reporters that the president is now modeling the future of his bloody signature project on the half-century U.S. experience in South Korea, with troops in Iraq for the long haul to provide, in Snow’s words, “a security presence” and to serve as a “force of stability.”
Asked how long that commitment would last, Snow said, “A long time.” Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have been stationed in South Korea since 1953 — for 54 years.
In the days that followed Snow’s revelation, senior Pentagon officials weighed in with their support for applying the Korea Model to Iraq: keeping a few divisions of U.S. troops in-country for the next five decades or so sounded just about right to them.
It was such a naked acknowledgement of America’s long-term designs on carving out a strategic foothold in the region that even the milquetoast American press had to acknowledge it, and most of the major news outlets ran stories in the last week that at least touched on the Iraq hawks’ shiny new analogy.
But we noticed something fascinating when reading those articles: In story after story, U.S. reporters were quick to seek comment from White House officials and to “balance” those comments with quotes from congressional Democrats and from analysts at various D.C. think tanks who are critical of the administration. They talked to foreign policy and military experts, historians and even Korea experts.
But here’s the rub: None of the reporters we read bothered to pick up a phone and call Baghdad to get reactions from, well, actual Iraqis.
So we did — we called Iraqi lawmakers from different parties representing the country’s different ethnic and sectarian groups, and found that, without exception, just hearing that there were official whispers in Washington about plans for a decades-long U.S. troop presence in their country shocked and awed them, and not in a good way.
But it didn’t only inflame the Iraqi nationalists with whom we spoke — politicians who have long opposed the occupation — it also absolutely incensed those officials who have been among the coalition’s most vocal supporters. Even those who approve of George Bush’s Middle East adventurism were infuriated by the idea and insulted that the administration would make the statement publicly.
But that was one viewpoint that didn’t find its way into any of the stories we read. Which leads to a question: What would the reporting out of Iraq look like if all reporters embraced the simple idea that Iraqis’ views on the future of their country are worth a few column inches or a couple of seconds on American television screens?…
If Tyson and the other reporters had made some long-distance calls, they might have added a crucial bit of context to their stories: that regardless of what the White House may or may not have planned for the future of Iraq, the fact that they would even mention a 50-year strategy in public was profoundly bone-headed — far more so than Bush’s infamous challenge to Iraqi insurgents to “bring ’em on!”
They would quickly have realized that talking about the Korea model is a godsend for the recruiters of Iraq’s armed resistance groups and a profound betrayal of even the White House’s closest allies in Baghdad — many of whom returned from exile during the Saddam era and are now struggling to convince the population that they’re not merely puppets of the Anglo-American occupation.
But they didn’t make those calls, and that’s an important part of how consent for throwing thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars into an occupation of a distant land is manufactured here at home: It starts with the assumption that the story of the U.S. “intervention” in Iraq can be told by talking to military analysts and “senior administration officials” in D.C., but without ever hearing from the people living on the fringes of the American Empire. It not always intentional; it’s a facet of our media culture: You talk to “serious” analysts in Washington if you want to be seen as serious yourself.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 11 2007 13:29 utc | 8
In Guantanamo, men shadow-box for their lives
By Zachary Katznelson
Have your hopes dashed enough and you start to question if there is ever a way out
Imagine that this is your world: a 6 ft by 8 ft cell where everything is steel – the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the toilet, the sink, the bed. Walk two steps in any direction and you hit a wall. There are no windows. The lights are on 24 hours a day. You are allowed out of your cell two hours a day, sometimes at 6am, sometimes at midnight. For those two hours, you are placed in a 6.5ft by 16.5ft outdoor cage with a deflated football. You can go weeks without seeing the sun.
Imagine five and a half years away from your family, your wife, our
children. You can’t call them. They can’t visit. Mail takes months to get through. When it does, it is heavily censored. Imagine being
beaten, stripped naked, humiliated, again and again and again. This is the life of my clients in Guantanamo Bay.
Since 2005, my colleagues and I at Reprieve, a legal charity based in London, have been representing 37 prisoners in Guantanamo. Two of us have passed through the United States military’s screening process and have been to the base. We are the only people in Britain who can actually go and talk to these men.
Every time I visit them, the prisoners ask for just one thing: a fair trial. “I know mistakes are made,” Jamil El Banna, a British refugee from Jordan, told me when we met last month. “I’m not upset about that. But why has it taken this long to correct them? I’ve been here for years and I’ve never seen a judge. Put me on trial. Just give me a chance. Doesn’t anyone care that I’m an innocent man?”
No prisoner in Guantanamo will see a judge any time soon. On Monday, military judges threw out the charges against the only two prisoners actually charged with crimes. As a result, their trials are on hold and no one else’s will start….
Despite the fact that they desperately want to be home with their families, despite the fact that Islam prohibits suicide, many have tried. I am a lawyer, but far too often, my role when I visit Guantanamo is social worker and psychologist. I am a poor tool in this regard, but I am all the men have.
Ahmed Belbacha seems to shrink a bit every time I see him. We meet alone in a claustrophobic, windowless room, monitored constantly by a video camera. You can hear the camera shift to track us if we change position. As he sits across from me, shackled to the floor, Ahmed is despondent. “My cell is like a grave,” he said to me four weeks ago. He tells me how everything echoes off those steel cell walls. Doors slam constantly as guards come and go. Large fans drone and screech. Even footsteps seem cacophonous. There is no such thing as quiet in Camp 6. There is no peace. “If I could just sleep…”
Ahmed has never been charged with a crime. He has never been before one of those military judges. Yet, finally, after five and a half years, Ahmed has been cleared to be released. He should be celebrating. But his nightmare may just be beginning. Ahmed is originally from Algeria. He fled there to the UK, seeking asylum after he was threatened repeatedly by Islamic extremists because he worked for a government-owned oil company. But now, the UK is washing their hands of him, refusing to help because Ahmed was a resident, not a citizen. As a result, the United States wants to send him back to Algeria.
The Algerian intelligence services have told Reprieve that if Ahmed returns, they cannot ensure that he will be safe – from their own personnel. And so Ahmed sits in that steel box, freezing in the constant flow of air-conditioning. The only things in his cell are a Koran and an inch-thick mattress. He is denied even a pen. He has nothing to do but contemplate his fate. Does he resign himself to the likelihood that he will go back to abuse and torture in Algeria? Or does he let himself believe the British government might change its mind, that Gordon Brown will have the courage to act where Tony Blair has not? Can he allow himself to hope?
Read the whole thing. Then forward it to as many Americans as you can.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 11 2007 13:40 utc | 9
Oops – b, maybe you can fix the formatting mess in the second paragraph of my #9 and insert the missing “y” before “our” — should read “your children” not “our children.
Thanks
Posted by: Bea | Jun 11 2007 13:42 utc | 10
for those who also saw the injustice in the comparison of the paris hilton and genarlow wilson sentencings, wilson’s sentence was just voided!! the state is threatening to appeal, but hopefully will reconsider.
for those not familiar. wilson is the 17 year old who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15 year old. he has served 27 months. the judge reduced the charge to a misdemeanor and gave him 12 months with credit for time already served. unfortunately, if the state appeals he has to remain in jail waiting for the appeal. i hope this kids life can get back on track. he was once recruited by ivy league schools. i hope someone who can make a difference will take an interest and help him out.
here’s the contact info for anyone inclined to speak out on his behalf:
Eddie Barker
Firm: Douglas County District Attorney Off.
Address: Douglas County Cthse
6754 Broad St, Room 205
Douglasville, GA 30134-1711
Phone: (770) 920-7292
Fax: (770) 920-7123
David McDade, Esquire, District Attorney
Contact: District Attorney, Douglas Judicial District
8700 Hospital Drive
Main Floor, Douglas County Courthouse
Douglasville, Georgia 30134
Phone: 770.920.7292
Fax: 770.920.7123
background
Posted by: conchita | Jun 11 2007 17:15 utc | 11
Another Blow for Bush’s Schemes for Indefinite Incarceration of “Evil-Doers”
A federal appeals court today ruled that the U.S. government cannot indefinitely imprison a U.S. resident on suspicion alone, and ordered the military to either charge Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri with his alleged terrorist crimes in a civilian court or release him.
The opinion is a major blow to the Bush administration’s assertion that as the president seeks to combat terrorism, he has exceptionally broad powers to detain without charges both foreign citizens abroad and those living legally in the United States. The government is expected to appeal the 2-1 decision handed down by a three-judge panel of the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which is in Richmond, Va.
The decision is a victory for civil libertarians and Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was a legal resident of the United States and studying in Peoria, Ill., when he was arrested in December 2001 as a “material witness.” He was detained initially in civilian prisons, then transferred to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C. , where he has been confined for the past five years.
I hope he sues the hell out of them when he gets out.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 11 2007 20:42 utc | 12
Here’s an interesting pledge that I am going to sign, please also sign and pass it on. Well worth the effort.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jun 11 2007 22:49 utc | 14
More on the case of al-Marri:
New York Times
In a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism, a federal appeals court ordered the Pentagon to release a man being held as an enemy combatant.
“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.”
“We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”…
Two other men have been held as enemy combatants on the American mainland since the Sept. 11 attacks. One, Yaser Hamdi, was freed and sent to Saudi Arabia after the United States Supreme Court allowed him to challenge his detention in 2004.
The other, Jose Padilla, was transferred to the criminal justice system last year just as the Supreme Court was considering whether to review his case. He is now on trial on terrorism charges in federal court in Miami.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the tide is going to start to roll back on this lunacy.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 12 2007 1:46 utc | 15
Watch how the Albanians greet little w, and steal his watch
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 12 2007 9:01 utc | 16
@dan – funny
—
Hearts and minds …
U.S. Troops Mistakenly Kill Afghan police
“The police checkpoint in the area thought that they were the enemy, so police opened fire on the coalition, and then the coalition thought that the enemies were firing on them, so they returned fire back.”
The commander at the post, Esanullah, who goes by one name, said U.S. gunfire and helicopter rockets killed seven policemen and wounded four.
…
“Afghan and coalition forces took incoming fire and they responded to it,” Belcher said. The forces called in air support, he said.
A policeman at the remote checkpoint said police called out for the U.S. forces to cease their attack.
“I thought they were Taliban, and we shouted at them to stop, but they came closer and they opened fire,” said Khan Mohammad, one of the policemen at the post. “I’m very angry. We are here to protect the Afghan government and help serve the Afghan government, but the Americans have come to kill us.”
US to cooperate with the ICC at The Hague to show it doesn’t believe in countries perpetrating war crimes with impunity – unless the country in question is the US, the US’s BFF Israel, or any other ally in the GWOT, of course.
Posted by: ran | Jun 12 2007 13:31 utc | 18
from the Bible Belt, Boss denies time off to donate kidney
gotta love those Christian values
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 12 2007 16:27 utc | 19
with the sad ascendancy of the right in europe, talk of “american empire” is less and less potent abstraction to account for the machinations of a global capitalist class. I ran across this from The Global Gamble: Washington’s Faustian Bid for World Dominance by Peter Gowan. he insists, in 1998, as many of our euro comrades here do now, that american “empire” is a singularity of evil, but somehow, the “left” was supposed to change this in europe:
Is There an Alternative?
The Dollar-Wall Street Regime has tended to produce a new Atlantic alliance, shown in action for the first time in a really dramatic way during the East Asian crisis. In relation to strategies for organising the world economy there has been sufficient common ground between the US, Germany, British and Dutch capitalisms to design common programmes for advancing mutual interests internationally. Yet the creation of the euro casts doubt on the political sustainability of this alliance. Independently of the intentions of EU leaders, the euro could undermine the capacity of the US to maintain the DWSR quite quickly. The result of this development could be serious transatlantic strains, strains that will tend to be all the greater if they occur in a context of international economic stagnation or worse.
On the other hand, the euro is coming into existence in an extraordinary political and institutional vacuum. There is, for example, not even an obvious institutional mechanism for running the euro’s exchange rate policy towards the dollar. And the likelihood of any genuinely democratic leadership over the economy of the European Union looks extremely remote, since to create one would require unanimous agreement from all fifteen EU governments. It would appear, indeed, that there is a strong will to prevent democratic and accountable leadership from emerging. If so, this is another way of saying that speculative and rentier interests in the financial systems of the EU – the social groups with the strongest links to their Central Banks and to the European Central Bank-will exert predominant influence and will seek a close alliance with the United States. There is a widespread assumption in Western Europe that somehow the European Union is bound to have a more `civilised’ attitude towards the IMF/WB and the countries of the South than the attitude of American administrations. Yet evidence for this is almost impossible to come by, and at least as far as the general [132] approaches of British, German and Dutch governments have been concerned, their records in the 1980s and 1990s towards North-South economic issues have often been worse than that of US governments. And in trade policy, the European Union has had an increasingly strong emphasis on neo-mercantilism, achieving maniacal proportions on occasion, partly, no doubt, because of the European Commission’s desire to prove itself valuable to member states by responding enthusiastically to almost any call for protectionist measures – an attitude which is very understandable since the Commission as yet lacks any democratic credentials and must thus constantly prove its value as an instrument in the main policy area where it wields power, that of trade policy.
Nevertheless, the arrival in power of the German Social Democratic government alongside the Socialists in France and the PDS in Italy, may give hope for a change of direction in EU policy. It would therefore seem possible to imagine a change of orientation at the level of the Council of Ministers. If so, it is not very difficult to propose measures which would help to tackle many of the malign developments which are grouped under the name of globalisation.
A first step would be an end to the attempt to extend the power of the dominant capitalist powers over the conduct of economic and social policy in other states throughout the world. The EU should simply declare that all states should have the right to decide how they wish to manage their financial systems, what controls they wish to have on their capital accounts, what rights they wish to provide for or deny to multinational companies, financial services etc. and indeed what trade policies they wish to pursue. The EU may wish to continue to accept all the international obligations it has entered into with the US in the WTO, the OECD etc., but it would oppose attempts to brigade other states into accepting these regimes and it would oppose attempts to exclude states from the application of GATT principles because they did not wish to subscribe to this or that liberalisation programme. Secondly, the EU should declare that financial institutions lending internationally must be supervised and protected by their home governments, who should bear the full costs of bailing them out. The IMF will provide bridging loans to such governments to help them bail out their banks, hedge funds etc. but their tax-payers must ultimately foot the bill. Thus, if US banks or hedge funds are facing collapse through a payments crisis either at home or abroad they must turn to their domestic lender of last resort for help. They should no longer expect the poor of Indonesia or Brazil or Russia to foot the bill. Thirdly, lenders must understand that sovereign governments have the right to unilaterally repudiate debt. This is a risk that lenders must build into their calculations when lending funds abroad. Fourthly, the EU must take steps to initiate a new system of public EU insurance of loans to other governments whether made by EU, private or public financial institutions on the basis of EU approval of the purposes of these loans. Such loan insurance operations should be transparent and democratically accountable. All other private lending activities abroad would not be covered at all in the event of borrower default. And finally, the EU would temporarily continue to participate in current IMF/WB operations but only on the understanding that all IMF/WB conditionalities would be published and on the basis that an international conference was convened to reorganise the international monetary financial system in line with recommendations such as those suggested here. If such ideas were not adopted by the other main powers, the EU should adopt a policy of international pluralism in the handling of international economic management. Those states which desired to continue within the IMF framework would be free to do so, while other states might prefer to operate within the EU framework. At the same time, the EU would seek to negotiate agreements with other countries establishing regimes of fixed but adjustable exchange rates.
heh. sure.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 16:48 utc | 20
German Social Democratic government alongside the Socialists in France and the PDS in Italy,
history is a bitch. and to think most of the failures of the left in europe have been driven by the immigration issue.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 16:51 utc | 21
I posted recently and linked to an article that claimed the Department of Homeland Security wanted to hire science fiction authors because they were running out of “crazy ideas” on their own.
Makes me wonder where THESE ideas came from: Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build A ‘Gay Bomb’
sample…
As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”
The documents show the [Wright Patterson]Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.
“The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another,” Hammond said after reviwing the documents.
Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons
sample…
Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused “severe and lasting halitosis”, making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops’ skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.
The proposals, from the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, date from 1994. The lab sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called “harassing, annoying and ‘bad guy’-identifying chemicals”. The plans have been posted online by the Sunshine Project, an organisation that exposes research into chemical and biological weapons.
Spokesman Edward Hammond says it was not known if the proposed $7.5 million, six-year research plan was ever pursued.
Those articles make this book review seem downright plausible to me…
The Men Who Stare at Goats
Sample…
In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known accepted military practice – and indeed, the laws of physics – they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren’t joking. What’s more, they’re back and fighting the War on Terror. ‘The men who stare at goats’ reveals extraordinary – and very nutty – national secrets at the core of George W Bush’s War on Terror.
I’ve really got to stop being so depressed over the state to which hypermilitarism and fascist fundamentalism has reduced my country. This stuff is comedy gold.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 12 2007 16:55 utc | 22
far from a “potent abstraction”, u s imperialism is a concete & terrible reality. it remains the principal threat to humanity.
it was in the belly of that particular beast, that the institutions of fear – was reconstructed. the institutions of fear clearly began with the lies of yalta & the murder of the populations of hiroshima & nagasaki. the so called cold war was the elaboration of the institution of fear – whether it was in the congo or canberra. in the ‘west’ the institutions of fear are covered by what althusser called the ideological state apparatus. when louis wrote that essay he could have never imagined how crude that machinery would become & for what purpose
people in the west have become ‘ghosts of the civil dead’ – because as their civil society has been dismantled – the institution of fear has taken over operations
the u s ‘the jewel of the enlightenment’ was the first to rot, & the nature of that rot has been described in all its literature & in some of its songs. the cries of jackson pollock in ‘blue poles’ is clear – the vast melancholy which moved the work of phillip guston is another testimony but it was perhaps weegee who understood it perfectly in all his magnificent photographs
but it is in britain where we have seen what a mockery the process of transformning civil society into the ghosts of the civil dead is – it has been done relatively quickly – from the beginning of thatchers reign to the buffoon blair – both whom i imagine sucked the cocks of michael milliken/goldsmith. people are incapable of dissent or are capable only of a dissent already prefigured by the state. murdoch’s sky news elucidates exactly what the instititution of fear serves
if france italy & spain do not defend their civil society – then it will dissapear as it has done in england & elsewhere. the loss of that civil society ought to be a question of shame but on the contrary it becomes in the institution of fear – a question of celebrity
the underclass does not exist – except as the constant menace of the other, or of becoming the other
with the profound inequalites, the inequalities such societies have not seen since the 1920’s – the only escape for the underclass is either through violence or celebrity or both at the same time
when the community has lost sense of itself – it is for the individual to reinvest the self to nourish that community. the only way to reinvest is to resist & the central tenet of all resistance for all time has always been the same – bring the war home
the enabling acts of the 2000’s have been so easy to put in place in the middle of the night with the patriot acts & blairs crude machinery of the antisocial orders
they disgust me – this venal elite of littlemen – who haven’t a brain between them – when giddings is your brain – the you are well & truly fucked. but as i have noted elsewhere it is their pressmen&women who make my skin crawl – they live in an eternal battle of britain where the evil germans flies overhead always forgetting the utter desolation of their souls & their empire in dunquerque & singapore
the anger, the unbelievable anger of a dennis potter or a harold pinter are absolutely correct in their trajectory. they recognised the cancer very early on – but no one listened – & the ghost of the civil dead – hide their conditions wandering the underground waiting for the next action of a pakistani undergraduate
it is a hell that civil societies that have become negligent both about civility & society deserve
& wasn’t it the monser herself – thatcher, who said there is no society – fuck them now & forever in heaven & in hell
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 18:17 utc | 25
& in greater israel, of course, the battle of the ‘titans’ – the crossdressing commando barak & that buffoon of a bully, netanyahu
what a world awaits
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 18:58 utc | 26
and to think most of the failures of the left in europe have been driven by the immigration issue.
I never looked at it that way before but that certainly is a possible explanation. from my own experiences in Europe I have observed a lot of resentment toward what Italians call “extra communitarians”. and there are a lot more of those non european community people walking around and living in Europe now. It is hard to find native Viennese in Vienna, German speakers in Munich, English speakers in London, and so on. Europe has become a lot darker with the arrival of people from Morocco, Ghana, and other African nations. Lately there has been a huge influx of people from Bosnia and Albania. In some German schools the teachers are having trouble teaching because nearly all of the students speak Russian.
Some of this immigration is from screwy laws forced upon the Germans after WWII requiring them to take any and all refugees, other instances can be blamed on the Catholic church which makes money by renting out property to refugees and then charging the government for the rent. It is all quite complicated and the end result is nearly everyone being unhappy with the status quo. I have heard Swiss say how disgusted they were with Sri Lankans living in their country, I have seen border guards treat brown people in the most demeaning way you can imagine. Yes, it is a great problem and the elites have somehow turned this to their own advantage after causing the issue in the first place in their quest for cheap labor.
the irony of it all is of course that the left gets blamed for it.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 12 2007 18:59 utc | 27
there is always the presumption that ‘western civilisation’ needs to be defended against the hordes. western civilisation ended at los alamos when robert oppenheimer was torn between the twin impulses of saying ‘i am vishnu – i am the destroyer of worlds” & “it works”
what is there to defend – corruption, venality, endless cruelty
as the anarchists say here – laws everywhere but justice nowhere
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 19:09 utc | 28
My goodness, the USA has only existed for ~200 years….. r’giap you sound as if such human impulses/domination had never existed before, AND if the USA were no longer in existance those human traits would vanish from the face of the earth. Silly, actually.
Posted by: SoandSo | Jun 12 2007 19:19 utc | 29
and the diversion of immigration works extremely well here, as we see in the “debate” on “amnesty.” just read the range of reactions to the bill. amazing convergences between “right” and “left” condemning “amnesty” in favor of the bigass wall. in any case, no leftist account of “illegal” immigration can favor security and remain “leftist.” in other words, the “left” has wandered too far from its mind again. the bigots win. again & agaqin. even in france!
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 19:35 utc | 30
Concerning the amnesty bill/Gonzales~
I did email/call my legislators and encouraged them NOT to support the Immigration Bill as written. Just a couple comments on that subject: Jeff Sessions, R Sen. Alabama, was correct in his objections to that bill.
AND, Tom Coburn, R Sen. Oklahoma was correct in confronting the Senate about their own ‘Lack of Confidence’ as it related to the Gonzales cloture. The Senate sucks and has no business questioning anyone else’s performance.
Over and out! lol
Posted by: SoandSo | Jun 12 2007 20:07 utc | 31
if it is silly, actually soandso, then that silliness has led to nothing but slaughter & will inevitably lead to further slaughter
not even rome possessed the cultural power of the u s empire, never has the internal corruption of the dominant power so coerced the victims of it
the british & french imperialism & even the ottomans were another category entirely
there is only one real parallel of u s imperialism & that is national social germany 1933-45 & that parallel get closer every day
you don’t have to burn a reichstag in washington – it has been burning down for many decades with its irrelavance & complicity, you don’t have to publish a ‘der stürmer’because you already have the post, you don’t need joseph goebells you already have karl rove, you dont have to have the mad judge freisler when you have the even madder gonzales
i wish i had your distance soandso – & see this world as silly rather than being what i actually feel it is- sinister
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 20:07 utc | 32
the debate on amnesty is framed quite cleverly. everyone seems to think that something has to be done about this problem. no one will address the core issue in that illegal or undocumented immigrants would disappear in a very short while when their employers are fined and or imprisoned. that is all it would take, no wall, no new laws, no nothing, just rigorous enforcement of existing laws.
But that would hurt a lot of people, strawberries would be more expensive as would most fruits and vegetables. Construction costs would skyrocket in many areas, where would we find cheap maids and servants? ah so many problems but it is still something to blame on those damn Mexicans because they are taking away all the five dollar a day jobs from other card carrying US citizens.
so, lets build a wall. It sounds like a plan for the simple minded and is another federal teat for savvy businessmen to latch onto. cripes the irony of that wall is that they are using undocumented workers to build the damn thing.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 12 2007 20:10 utc | 33
Re: r’giap @ 32.
I have read your posts here for a couple years and it is apparent (to me) that you are a very well read and knowledgeable individual. I compliment you for that. It is, however, equally apparent that you unrelentingly trash everything about the USA while pretty much giving the rest of the world a free pass. I’ve mentioned in the past that there is the need for some balance, however slight. From my perspective you would benefit yourself, and your credibility, IF you moderated ever so slightly in your constant negative deluge.
With all of our faults, the US still possesses attractive traits and folks still want to come here by the millions. We just don’t want to forget that fact. Peace!
Posted by: SoandSo | Jun 12 2007 20:35 utc | 34
there is a church in san fransisco wish worship john coltrane as a divinity & there is a church in argentina which celebrates the great diego maradona as a living god – i worship somewhere between the two
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 20:53 utc | 35
& as an american might say, i have issues with u s imperialism, dude & i really just want closure which would come with the collapse of said empire & then i would be back on track, i would stay the course, i would wait for the tipping point, i would surge right out of my leather pants, i’d do & set benchmarks for enlightenment, i’d facillitate my own end, you know, whatever, cool
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 20:58 utc | 36
Thanks dos (#16) – I had to wait all day to see it but it was worth it.
Posted by: beq | Jun 12 2007 21:05 utc | 37
I’ve mentioned in the past that there is the need for some balance, however slight. From my perspective…..
so what? from your perspective r’giap is too negative about the US, ok, we get it.
r’giap you sound as if such human impulses/domination had never existed before,
could you source this please.
AND if the USA were no longer in existance those human traits would vanish from the face of the earth
could you source this please.
Silly, actually.
hmm. an interesting claim. it does appear a bit of a strawman tho. r’giap has never implied the impulse to dominate originated w/americans, nor has he implied that trait would ‘vanish’ w/america.
i get it you think r’giap is ‘silly’. let’s all pretend this isn’t meant as a degrading insult shall we. why don’t you use actual quotes from him, and take him on in the adult fashion?
lol, over and out, peace!
Posted by: annie | Jun 12 2007 21:07 utc | 38
IF you moderated ever so slightly in your constant negative deluge.
lol, ever so slightly? just everso?? how much ever so? oh please do tell. what, from your perspective, would be acceptable mr so and so. so, come on, what should he do to blend to your ‘ever so slight’ modification fron his constant negative deluge.
ps, i just thought i would mention, you know, by simply skipping r’giap’s posts, you could aliviate yourself from that constant deluge. we wouldn’t mind…well, i wouldn’t.
peace!
Posted by: annie | Jun 12 2007 21:13 utc | 39
..and peace and love to you, too. Kisses even, Annie. Lets not get silly!
Posted by: SoandSo | Jun 12 2007 21:13 utc | 40
then i would be back on track, i would stay the course, i would wait for the tipping point
let’s be clear that the end of “empire” insinuates the end of the euroland happy life. remember. europeans are equally scum parasites. we’ve already established this as a fact. so, your efforts need to integrate this reality. i’m not sure the result will soften your polemics, but will make them more credulous.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 21:16 utc | 41
oh…and hong kong/shanghai/thai/korean asians oases of growth accommodate whenever possible the profits of “empire.”
better hope, as b does always, the destruction of the u.s. military. quick!
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 21:27 utc | 42
b
whip up an “in praise of nuclear bomb attacks on stupid americans” thread.
c’mon.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 21:31 utc | 43
slothrop
“we’ve already established this as a fact”
that’s a bill kristol thangy, way past my comfort zone, babe
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 21:31 utc | 44
i thought a rightwing political swing in dear france would finally burn scales from your eyes. guess not.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 21:33 utc | 45
surely, i meant shiva
the exact quote
“…now I am become Death [Shiva], the destroyer of worlds…”
Physicist Robert Oppenheimer
Supervising Scientist Manhattan Project
on 16 July 1945 at 0529 HRS,
in the Jornada del Muerto desert near
the Trinity site in the White Sands Missile Range.
…quoting from the Bhagavad-Gita upon
witnessing first atomic detonation by mankind.
The exact quote from the Bhagavad-Gita is:
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one…
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 21:35 utc | 46
really, sloth
yr like bo diddley on bennies
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 21:38 utc | 47
& yet i still think of you as our (anthony)trollope on terazepam noting the ever dissapearing empiric empire
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 12 2007 21:42 utc | 48
Kisses even, Annie. Lets not get silly!
what?? yuuuuuk, major cooties. ok, i will be serious then. how can you accuse others of being silly when you damn well straight out say someone should change ‘ever so slightly’ from constant deluge based on over reaching claims. it is rather odd, don’t you think that w/all this material to work with (after all r’giap has many many posts insulting US) that you instead would choose to contrive something he never actually claimed , you say in fact ‘sounds as if’, as if, he merely implies what he thinks anyway.
so this is a challenge to you. what exactly, sounds as if ‘human impulses/domination had never existed before’,’if the USA were no longer in existance those human traits would vanish from the face of the earth’?? and yes, i think you started the silliness by your claim, so , back it up.
that said, it would be a huge weight off the world if US foreign policy shifted, even ever so slightly.
from the LAtimes article someone linked to earlier today..
The American people seem to understand, however — and historians will certainly agree — that the war itself was a catastrophic mistake. It was a faulty grand strategy, not poor implementation. The Bush administration was operating under an international political illusion, one that is further discredited with every car bombing of a crowded Baghdad marketplace and every Iraqi doctor who packs up his family and flees his country.
The only significant question still hanging is whether Iraq will turn out to have been the biggest strategic mistake in U.S. history.
…
Hopefully at some point during the recriminations to come, the American people will seize the opportunity to ask themselves a series of fundamental questions about the role and purpose of U.S. power in the world.
i can’t help but notice you just pipe up to defend the honor of america here and there but seem unable to grasp the depth of the problem. just a little light shove here and there (lol, peace, etc) for team america devoid the critical eye? comeon, take the challenge, or risk sounding silly.
Posted by: annie | Jun 12 2007 21:50 utc | 49
one of the constants i repeatedly hear when dealing w/ other cultures is how poor u.s.americans are at accepting responsibility for anything. always shifting blame or attempting to excuse something away. from the smallest & benign to the most deadly & damning. my take is that it stems from a privileged/imagined position in the magic kingdom. and that getting outside of one’s comfort zone is a necessity.
keep it up, r’giap. there’s a lot of ugly babies around here.
Posted by: b real | Jun 12 2007 21:52 utc | 50
shifting blame or attempting to excuse something away. from the smallest & benign to the most deadly & damning
this reminds me of something one of the iraqi bloggers said about living in the US. recently he was asking some friends at a bar about the rampant racism weaving thru our culture (all this talk of ‘immigrants’ and they responded ‘well, at least we aren’t killing eachother!’. that ended the conversation. nope, nuthin happening here.
Posted by: annie | Jun 12 2007 21:58 utc | 51
“always shifting blame or attempting to excuse something away”
The big blackout of August 2003 – blame Canada – when US deregulation/privatization caused maintenance to be sacrificed for profit…
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 12 2007 22:02 utc | 52
well, b real, that’s sad. it means the rhetorical trope, repeated a million times over without justification, is good because it unsettles the “confort zone.”
and this is not about dissembling u.s. culpability or “blaming others” to induce a sigh of relief among us dumb americans. it’s about provoking people who insist america is locus of all evil to prove their claims. and if you can’t prove your claims, you’re just a shitty leftist who deserves ridicule and defeat.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 22:07 utc | 53
i mean, the rhetoric used at the level of a small part of the discussion here, among intellectuals, is in my opinion unnecessary and annoying.
but, i’d agree, generally, the average proles need their “comfort zone” shaken by acknowledgment of the contradictions of power.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 22:13 utc | 54
I wonder why it is that there are so few persons here that challenge/question anyone’s contributions. Its like the Stepford wives…. lol.
Annie, I haven’t done challenges since college days when drinking beers/tequilla shots. lol
Posted by: SoandSo | Jun 12 2007 22:14 utc | 55
as for canada, it’d be interesting to know the investment portfolio of something like CIBC Securities Inc. my hunch is a batch of defense, currency speculation, parasite capitalism “investment.”
well, it’s the way the world works, and the trope trotted out here seriatum: destroy america=instant sunshine, is a massive fantasy no counterpunch article can correct.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 22:26 utc | 56
you are the only one that trots that trope
no one here says or believes that but you
most realize that another would take its place and then it would fall to that populous to rein it in and for us to bitch and moan
You however, believe that if the US gov’t were more competent, all would be sunshine, lollipops, rainbows and everything – i don’t believe that for a second about any gov’t
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 12 2007 22:45 utc | 57
my favorite ditty here is when this or that nonamerican boycotts “american” goods. meanwhile, their domestic bank or mutual fund is combining assets to influence the movemnent of the thai bhat, or whatever.
and i don’t believe in “competent” government more than i believe in a kind of critique of capital which understands capital to be a “world system” exceeding sole efficacy of imagined u.s. management and manipulation.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 23:01 utc | 58
one of the constants i repeatedly hear when dealing w/ other cultures is how poor u.s.americans are at accepting responsibility for anything. always shifting blame or attempting to excuse something away.
BTW this is one of those yardsticks that mental health professionals use to assess a patient’s mental status. Those who chronically refuse to take responsibility for their own actions are, well, compromised, to put it mildly. It’s one of those markers for personality disorders. Not in and of itself, of course, but just another piece of the overall picture.
Hmm let’s see what are some others? Grandiosity… reckless behavior endangering one’s own well-being (eg, reckless binge spending or eating, reckless navigating, causing deliberate self-harm such as cutting to bleed [the U.S. treasury here being equivalent to the patient’s body])… loss of insight into the effect of one’s actions on others… irritability and hair trigger violent reactions to mild provocations… attributing of one’s own disowned unconscious emotions to others (as we’ve seen, some of Cheney’s statements are doozies in this regard)…
Guess the US would be a slam dunk diagnosis, come to think of it. I think the verdict would likely be that the U.S. is afflicted with the rarest but most extreme personality disorder of them all: Complete and Utterly Fucked-Up Disorder, warily referred to as “CUFU’d” by those afflicted with it…
Posted by: Bea | Jun 12 2007 23:02 utc | 59
no one here says or believes that but you
bullshit.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 12 2007 23:04 utc | 60
And there is a whole other box of horrors to be considered in Putin’s Russia, where the skinheads in St. Petersburg murder “dark people” in broad daylight. I’ve been reading Anna Politkovskaya’s A Russian Diary, and it is a real eye-opener. From Scott Simon’s introduction to her journal (pp. xi-xiii):
[Anna] was aghast when the West turned a blind eye toward Putin’s crushing of Chechnya, his stranglehold on power, and his suppression of opposition, just as it had once overlooked Stalin’s starvations, hangings, gulags, and massacres. The sad truth is that a lot of Western democracies like dealing with dictators. Tyrants can be tidy and reliable business partners.
ON THE DAY THAT ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA was shot to death, October 7, 2006, in the elevator of her apartment block on Lesnaya Street, the editor of Novaya Gazeta says that she was about to file a long story on torture as it is routinely conducted by Chechen security forces supported by Russia. That story will almost certainly never be read by anyone, inside or outside Russia. Even the substance of it will probably never be known. Russian police seized her notes, her computer hard drive, and photographs of two people she would reportedly accuse of torture.
The Glasnost Defense Foundation, led by Alexey Simonov of the Moscow Helsinki Group, reports that during 2005 alone, six Russian journalists were murdered, sixty-three were assaulted, forty-seven were arrested, and forty-two were prosecuted. The editorial offices of twelve publications or broadcasters were attacked. Twenty-three editorial offices were closed. Ten were evicted from their premises. Twenty-eight newspapers or magazines were confiscated outright. Thirty-eight times, the government simply refused to let material be printed or distributed.
An effective Russian democracy began to collapse in late 2003, in the Duma. On December 8th of that year Politkovskaya wrote:
Were we seeing a crisis of Russian parliamentary democracy in the Putin era? No, we were witnessing its death. In the first place, as Lila Shevtsova, our best political analyst, accurately put it, the legislative and executive branches had merged, and this had meant the rebirth of the Soviet system. As a result, the Duma was purely decorative, a forum for rubber-stamping Putin’s decisions.
You can take the boy out of the KGB, but you sure can’t take the KGB out of the boy! During the presidential campaign, when “Candidate No. 1”, was sailing on an stupendous wave of government and press accolades, one of the minor candidates, Ivan Rybkin (who might have come up with some dirt to dish on the front-runner) was kidnapped on Putin’s behalf, given mind-bending drugs to extract what he might know–and later fled to exile, in London, while the campaign was still on–announcing there, that he would not be returning.
not really, but if it is back it up. show us all how everyone else but you has said that rainbows will result if the US is stopped
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 12 2007 23:21 utc | 62
it is one of the perplexities that slothrop whom i imagine works with literature, american literature seems totally ignorant of its fundamental critique of what constitutes those united states & its almost overwhelming darkness. a darkness which is paralleled with a corrupt political life
there is not one figure, one major figure from the 19th century on who does not take that society apart – often with more savagery & wit than i am capable of – it is no accident that my reading of that literature converged with my active participation in the defeat of us imperialism in vietnam was the same time that i was reading hawthorne, melville, agee, dreiser, dos passos – the commies in the theatre with waiting for lefty – the whole clifford odets gang, i was familiar with the screenwriters like john howard lawson, the potboilers – thompson, cain hammet & chandler – the harlem renaissance
on & on the creators within the beast itself – were critics of a severity & a magnitude i am not capable of & i still learn from them
yet implicitly – for old slothrop – its honky dory – all is well – or all is not well & the world entier is to blame. there is no cheney no bush, no rumsfield no gonzales – for sloth therse are managers after all – he sees it as no more important than that
but if sloth really wants to get it on – read your own literature pal – there you will find an ‘anti americanism’ of a profofondity i do not have the skill to describe
& were these critics without love, temperance or moderation. on the contrary one of the greatest of them short story genius james baldwin one of the boldest has put the state of america in very stark terms. if you must understand my anti imperialism at least try to understand it in context – understand it in the context of a world getting tired of this beast that marauds not only through our territories but through our conciousness
understand too that i imagine your theroetical concerns are a little too squeaky clean for me – i have witnessed what ideology does – even the ideology i have given my heart & soul to
in all this endless fighting with you – it is your lack of a fundamental understanding & your complete inability to concede the criminal, the deeply criminal acts of war & acts of humanity your government commits
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 13 2007 0:04 utc | 63
back it up
b, today:
It’s leave now, stay for a short while longer and receive a humbling defeat, or stay longer and get slaughtered.
Like the German campaign in Yugoslavia the current bipartisan U.S. politic discussion will result in the last alternative.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:12 utc | 64
implied by everything b says is death to american soldiers=end of “empire”
to give just one example.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:16 utc | 66
still does not imply or infer rainbows or even a light sun shower
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 13 2007 0:18 utc | 67
you know, i think you haven’t done a very good job reading who you claim to read. your collection of continental western marxists, from althusser to mandel, studied, explained, gave solutions, to capital per se. they didn’t prattle on about “american empire.”
and your collection of novelists addressed the universal complexity of power expressed in their own experience as americans. sinclaire’s closing polemic in the jungle, norris’s big picture socialism in the octopus, lewis’s criticism of small town petit bourgeois and rentiers, dreyser’s portraits of anomie, etc. these were great works because they aid understanding of universal humanity. perhaps you’ve confused dos passos w/ marvel comics.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:35 utc | 68
even a light sun shower
it’s implicit. but you’re right. come to think of it, we don’t have many examples of systemic kind of analysis from our euro comrades at all. it’s all yank hate, 24/7.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:39 utc | 69
but, rightward pointing arrow, to be straight, many of our euro comrades read the american casualties and giggle. the more the merrier.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:42 utc | 70
implicit only because you say so
really. reading minds now are we?
why exactly should anyone listen to a self described “fucking english major”
Posted by: jcairo | Jun 13 2007 0:45 utc | 71
it’s dreiser, slothrop – i’m sure you’re confusing him with the danish filmmaker dreyer
i don’t think you understand. at all. more hollywood than hart crane. your idea of america. so sad, really because it is what stops you from really comprehending clearly. ô well – as leadbelly sd i aint goin down that well no more, no more
i think finally you have only the most peripheral understanding of marxism but what is worse finally is your understanding of your own culture is so slim – some thirties proletarian pornography
if you’d like i’ll send you a reading list
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 13 2007 0:48 utc | 72
jcairo. i don’t recall anything here including you as a participant. your voice sounds like flies beating against a window screen on a summer day.
did you say something?
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:50 utc | 73
jcairo. tell us what you know about, let’s say, hedge funds and how these are controlled by us imperialism benefitting only a us capitalist class.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:52 utc | 74
& don’t confuse my hardness with the generosity of spirit that b offers almost daily here – doing work of offering interrogations, questions, responses, invitations
i know i have too little space but there are other posters here who really offer so much that your reduction of their offering is at the best cruel & at the worst dismissive of a collective work we have all tried to construct since the beginning
you define me as you want – but in the end – like any good creation what we leave here is traces & only the truths stay with us afterward & that my friend cannot be overdetermined whatever way you want to weave your words
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 13 2007 0:53 utc | 75
jcairo. 1973 oil embargo. opec biteback or wallstreet recycling of petrodollars. please explain.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:55 utc | 76
jcairo. u.s. exxon is a u.s. oil company? please explain
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:56 utc | 77
jcairo. if french pensioners are subsidized by investments in u.s. armamenmjts, how does this serve only u.s. empire?
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:57 utc | 78
jcairo. explain the historical role of private equity firms in the service of “american empire”
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:58 utc | 79
jcairo. can ron jeremy fellate himself? for “empire”?
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 0:59 utc | 80
did i spell fellate right. i don’t want to ruffle dm’s leftism.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 1:03 utc | 81
i do not know eaxactly what you remember about the beautiful letters of sacco & vanzetti, i do not know twhat you remember of the scottsboro boys, perhaps you have forgotten the pissstains of ethel rosenberg on the electric chair, perhaps you have forgotten entirely how fred hampton was murdered by the state in his bed.;;
perhaps you have forgotten these things
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 13 2007 1:09 utc | 83
reading list.
don’t be a dick. i’ve knocked you down againm and again, beaten your angryman empire routine into your own self-parody.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 1:10 utc | 84
all the same i’d suggest you read a recent novel by neil gordon – the company we keep – based on on someone from the weather underground
all i can slothrop i fell very well indeed for a man who has been “knocked sown againa & again” – keep it up, portnoy
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 13 2007 1:13 utc | 86
and you read zola germinal. you’re the fellow traveler who blows up the mine and drowns the town’s workers.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 1:16 utc | 87
it’s a beautiful near summer, but the feeling of horrible presentiment remains.
“like the whole town’s gonna blow.”
do you feel it?
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 13 2007 1:23 utc | 88
soso I wonder why it is that there are so few persons here that challenge/question anyone’s contributions…. I haven’t done challenges since college days.
gee soso, i challenged you to back up your strawman, you don’t do challenges, yet you wonder why so few people challenge? Its like the Stepford wives…. lol.
speaking for yourself? i supposed you don’t do retractions either. you’re starting to sound rather… silly. here’s something bea said in #59, reminds me of you
one of those yardsticks that mental health professionals use to assess a patient’s mental status. Those who chronically refuse to take responsibility for their own actions are, well, compromised, to put it mildly.
hmm
I get bored easily and after your first few words I was dozing off! In fact, your kinda that way most of the time. Get it together! yeah i got your #. sit on some high horse and sling empty criticisms like an air guitar player. when somebody calls you on it you slither out of it w/a new round of kiss/criticisms all purdylike“IF you moderated ever so slightly “. stepford wives my ass, you’re the one living in stepford.
Posted by: annie | Jun 13 2007 1:45 utc | 89
yeah slothrop, I do.
I’ve been missing the threads with the edges sizzling like this one. Can’t wait until everyone is asleep in the house and I have the space to read this one through and throughly.
It’s when the shit flies that compost starts to happen and we all know compost nurtures new growth; well maybe not all but at least for me.
Lol be back later at least lurking.
Posted by: Juannie | Jun 13 2007 1:46 utc | 90
If you’re not already depressed enough with all that you read here every day:
The Deadliness Below
What lurks under those azure waves off the East and West coasts of the United States?
Read the story to find out…
Warning: This story may require ocean swimmers and fish eaters to seriously consider changing their lifestyles–or moving to outer Mongolia.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 13 2007 1:52 utc | 92
don’t be a dick. i’ve knocked you down againm and again, beaten your angryman empire routine into your own self-parody.
sloth, can i have a dollar every time you claim to be winning an argument? fyi, reminding us of all your recollections of ‘knocking r’giap down’ isn’t the same as doing it. i think to ‘win’ you have to have something to show for it besides kagan quotes.
Posted by: annie | Jun 13 2007 1:53 utc | 93
darnit bea, they want me to register. can you copy paste a little?
Posted by: annie | Jun 13 2007 1:55 utc | 94
from the looks of things, slothrop must be off her meds again..
Posted by: jj | Jun 13 2007 3:11 utc | 95
Hmmm…. I was able to access it without registering, not sure why.
SPECIAL REPORT, PART 1: The Deadliness Below
Weapons of mass destruction thrown into the sea years ago present danger now – and the Army doesn’t know where they all are.
BY JOHN M.R. BULL
247-4768
October 30, 2005
In the summer of 2004, a clam-dredging operation off New Jersey pulled up an old artillery shell.
The long-submerged World War I-era explosive was filled with a black tarlike substance.
Bomb disposal technicians from Dover Air Force Base, Del., were brought in to dismantle it. Three of them were injured – one hospitalized with large pus-filled blisters on an arm and hand.
The shell was filled with mustard gas in solid form.
What was long feared by the few military officials in the know had come to pass: Chemical weapons that the Army dumped at sea decades ago finally ended up on shore in the United States.
It’s long been known that some chemical weapons went into the ocean, but records obtained by the Daily Press show that the previously classified weapons-dumping program was far more extensive than ever suspected.
The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste – either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.
A Daily Press investigation also found:
These weapons of mass destruction virtually ring the country, concealed off at least 11 states – six on the East Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, California, Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state officials have been informed of their existence.
The chemical agents could pose a hazard for generations. The Army has examined only a few of its 26 dump zones and none in the past 30 years.
The Army can’t say exactly where all the weapons were dumped from World War II to 1970. Army records are sketchy, missing or were destroyed.
More dumpsites likely exist. The Army hasn’t reviewed World War I-era records, when ocean dumping of chemical weapons was common.
“We do not claim to know where they all are,” said William Brankowitz, a deputy project manager in the Army Chemical Materials Agency and a leading authority on the Army’s chemical weapons dumping.
“We don’t want to be cavalier at all and say this stuff was exposed to water and is OK. It can last for a very, very long time.”
A drop of nerve agent can kill within a minute. When released in the ocean, it lasts up to six weeks, killing every organism it touches before breaking down into its nonlethal chemical components.
Mustard gas can be fatal. When exposed to seawater, it forms a concentrated, encrusted gel that lasts for at least five years, rolling around on the ocean floor, killing or contaminating sea life.
Sea-dumped chemical weapons might be slowly leaking from decades of saltwater corrosion, resulting in a time-delayed release of deadly chemicals over the next 100 years and an unforeseeable environmental effect. Steel corrodes at different rates, depending on the water depth, ocean temperature and thickness of the shells.
That was the conclusion of Norwegian scientists who in 2002 examined chemical weapons dumped off Norway after World War II by the U.S. and British militaries.
Overseas, more than 200 fishermen over the years have been burned by mustard gas pulled on deck. A fisherman in Hawaii was burned in 1976, when he brought up an Army-dumped mortar round full of mustard gas….
There is a lot, lot more at the link.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 13 2007 3:15 utc | 96
sloth, can i have a dollar every time you claim to be winning an argument?
Oh annie you are far more diplomatic than I. I had to exercise self-censorship and delete two posts on this matter.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 13 2007 3:22 utc | 97
US preparing air-strikes against Al-Qaeda in Somalia: official
US warplanes are overflying the northern Somali region of Puntland in preparation for air-strikes against suspected Al-Qaeda fugitives, more than a week after US warships shelled the area, officials said Tuesday.
The semi-autonomous regional government had authorised the overflights to pursue Al-Qaeda members believed to be hiding in the moutainous area, Puntland’s security minister Ibrahim Artan Ismail told reporters.
“We know that American warplanes are overflying Puntland territory. This air surveillance is part of an agreement reached between Puntland authorities and the Americans,” Islamil told a news conference in northern Somali town of Bosasso.
“The warplanes are looking for Al-Qaeda hideouts and when they get them, they will bomb them,” he said, adding that the air operation covers areas where intelligence shows Al-Qaeda elements are hiding.
Residents told Somali media that US planes have been overfying the area.
earlier this year when u.s. airships blasted away at goat & cattle herders in southern somalia u.s. officials claimed the targets were suspected individuals alleged to have ties w/ AQ. what they were really after were fleeing members of the islamic courts union.
and back at the start of june, a navy destroyer shelled northern somalia on supposed intel that suspected AQ members were in the area. but, again, multiple deaths and, wouldn’t ya know it, no AQ. my hunch at the time was that the strangers on boats that had some puntland officials crying wolf were smugglers, possibly involved in ferrying somalis across the gulf into yemen but i have not seen anything to confirm that line of thought or to entice me in another direction. but i’m pretty confident that it’s not AQ they’re (seriously) after, as most non-politicized sourcing on the horn says AQ is not in somalia.
maybe they think there are some remnants of the ICU there that could threaten the phony “reconciliation” conference still scheduled to take place on thursday in mogadishu, after being postponed for months. the conference is designed to cement the legitimacy of TFG rule over somalia though, from what i can make of it from following ongoing coverage, the list of invitees has never been announced, nor has any conference schedules.
or it could be that they’re after ICU members moving north. or that there are some bases for the resistance (being resistance to the occupier) forces in that region.
Posted by: b real | Jun 13 2007 3:38 utc | 98
nyt: In Sudan, an Animal Migration to Rival Serengeti
The first aerial survey of southern Sudan in 25 years has revealed vast migrating herds, rivaling those of the Serengeti plains, that have managed to survive 25 years of civil war, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Southern Sudan will announce today at a news conference in New York.
J. Michael Fay, a conservationist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, who has participated in the surveys, said in a telephone interview from Chad that southern Sudan’s herds of more than a million gazelle and antelope may even surpass the Serengeti’s herds of wildebeest, making the newly surveyed migration the largest on earth.
“It’s so far beyond anything you’ve ever seen, you can’t believe it,” Dr. Fay said. “You think you’re hallucinating.”
Southern Sudan, an area of about 225,000 square miles, sits between the Sahara and Africa’s belt of tropical forests. Wildlife biologists have long known that its grasslands, woodlands and swamps were home to elephants, zebras, giraffes and other animals. Before the civil war, an estimated 900,000 white-eared kob (a kind of antelope) had been seen migrating there. But in 1983 wildlife research ground to a halt with the outbreak of civil war.
…
Last January, Mr. Marjan joined Dr. Fay and Dr. Elkan in the first aerial survey of Southern Sudan in 25 years. On their first day of surveying in Boma, they flew over thousands of white-eared kob. Dr. Fay, who has flown more than 70,000 miles of aerial surveys in Africa, was taken aback. “As soon as we saw that, we said, ‘This place is insane.’ ”
For the next month, Dr. Fay and his colleagues retraced the path of the last aerial surveys before the war. The white-eared kob were joined by hundreds of thousands of mongalla gazelles and tiang, a species of antelope. They formed a gigantic column that stretched 30 miles across and 50 miles long. “It was just solid animals the whole way,” Dr. Fay said.
The biologists estimated there were 1.3 million kob, tiang and gazelle in their survey area. That is close to the size of migrating herds of wildebeest on the Serengeti, long considered the biggest migration of mammals. But Dr. Fay and his colleagues suspected that because they were replicating prewar survey methods, their estimates were low. New survey methods, such as digital photography, were likely to raise it above the Serengeti.
“My personal feeling is that it’s the biggest migration on earth,” Dr. Fay said, “but we just haven’t proved it yet.”
the white-eared kob migrate 930 miles each year, and their range is not limited to sudan. i’m sure the same applies to some of the other ungulates, so this isn’t just a sudanese issue. the real concern is how all of the oil concessions will affect these migration patterns and, hence, population sizes.
Posted by: b real | Jun 13 2007 4:23 utc | 99
oil wars blog: Venezuelan military spending – busting another anti-Chavez myth
Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have often liked to imply that under his rule Venezuela is engaged in a large scale military buildup, has increased military spending, and spends more than previous Venezuelan governments and other Latin American countries have. Mainstream media reports have also served to reinforce this notion. Of course, like so much that the Venezuelan opposition and the commercial media say these numbers don’t hold up when the actual numbers are examined.
lotsa charts & graphs & number-crunching, and, in the end
So the next time you hear some opposition propagandist or sloppy New York Times reporter tell you that Venezuelan military spending is out of line and has increased significantly remember the following:
Under President Chavez military spending has been reduced both in real terms and relative to the size of the economy.
Venezuelan military spending is significantly less than that of many other Latin American countries.
There may be countries where military spending has soared and is out of proportion to any conceivable legitimate need (a certain North American country comes to mind) but Venezuela is not among them. Yet one more anti-Chavez myth that doesn’t withstand scrutiny of the actual numbers.
Posted by: b real | Jun 13 2007 4:46 utc | 100