You will remember the U.S. propaganda campaign around Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That figure’s media picture was build up by the U.S. occupation in Iraq as ‘leader of the Iraqi resistance’. That this was propaganda was so obvious that I had no trouble to document and satirize it here back in June 2005. Finally in April 2006 the ‘serious’ media found out too. Tom Ricks wrote how the Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi:

One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said that [General] Kimmitt had concluded that, "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

After the Ricks story the Zarqawi boogeyman’s usefulness had expired and two month later the military claimed to have finally killed him in an air attack.

Last week another PSYOPS campaign was laid to rest. But unlike with Zarqawi this one is buried to keep it alive. And the media, including McClatchy’s (former Knight Ridder) Washington Bureau, falls for it.

Cont. reading: McClatchy Falls for EFP PSYOPS Campaign

The blog lives off comments. Please add yours.

Open thread …

Mulling over the leaked Camp Delta Standard Operation Procedures (pdf, protection removed, 4.2mb) for Guantanamo one wonders, what the people who have written it think about themselves and others.

It is banality of evil documented on 250 or so pages. Consider the bureaucracy of the system that is ouzing from each page:

Chapter 8 – Detainee Behavioral Management
…
8-8. GTMO Form 508-1

a. The GTMO Form 508-1 is used to determine which rewards the detainee will lose or gain.

Cont. reading: ‘All cups are considered equal …’

The Economist is paying actress Angelina Jolie to present conflict solutions for Africa:

"Accountability is perhaps the only force powerful enough to break the cycle of violence and retribution that marks so many conflicts," the Hollywood star wrote in The Economist magazine’s "The World in 2008", out on Wednesday.

The actress, who is a goodwill ambassador to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said she hoped the coming year will see the international community seek "true accountability" for victims, particularly in Darfur.

Angelina may need the money as she just purchased a pricy patch of real estate:

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have bought a man-made island in the shape of Ethiopia that is part of an ambitious luxury development off the coast of Dubai, a newspaper reported today.
…
Prices for the islands range from $US6 million to $US36 million.

There is yet no information on how many refugees Ms. Jolie plans to resettle to her island.

A look at Iraq:

• Violence is down to last year’s level.
• Parts of the Sunni resistance, some 70,000 men, have been temporarily bought off with U.S. money.
• Al-Sadr has declared and is holding some kind of temporary truce to clean up his movement.
• The Kurdish-Turkish conflict is on hold due to winter weather conditions.
• Sectarian ethnic cleansing and the U.S. military has killed 1 million and removed 4.5 million people from the contested areas.
• The U.S. force is at an all-time height of 175,000.
• The Maliki government seems to be as ineffective and un-sovereign as ever.

As Tom Ricks reports from Iraq, the U.S. military sees this as a make or break moment.

In more than a dozen interviews, U.S. military officials expressed growing concern over the Iraqi government’s failure to capitalize on sharp declines in attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. A window of opportunity has opened for the government to reach out to its former foes, said Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the commander of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq, but "it’s unclear how long that window is going to be open."

The solution that is thought of are more purple fingers.

The answer to many of Iraq’s problems, several military officials said, would be to hold provincial elections, which they said would inject new blood into Iraq’s political life and also better link the Baghdad government to the people.

I don’t think elections would matter. They even could make things worse. How and where would the refugees vote?

My suspicion is that all we see now is only a pause of the wider conflict. The trend from here will be again downward.

The numbers of U.S. forces will decrease. The bought sheiks will lose their current sponsor and look for new ones. Al-Sadr may decide he wants a bigger share of the government cake or Karbala and reignite his movement. In spring the Turkish-Kurdish conflict will likely flame up again. If refugees come back they will their houses looted or inhabitated by other people. The Shia government shows no signs and has no reason to abondon its partisan policies.

There are reports of Sunni on Sunni violence and Shia on Shia violence. The big groups seem to split into smaller fractions.

That may make it easier for the U.S. to control the mess a bit longer. But it will not better the state of Iraq or the situation of its people.

Department of ‘Huh’:

So long as there is one Jew left on earth who still needs money to end his life in dignity, the Germans should pay, because they alone are to blame.

link

Can someone please explain the above sentence for me?

There are striking similarities between the U.S. war on Iraq and the U.S. encouraged proxy war Ethiopia wages against Somalia. The escalation of both also follow a likewise scheme.

Last December I wrote about the U.S. directed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia:

Are there any doubts that this successful U.S. intervention will follow just the same track the one in Iraq took?

There will be less dead U.S. GI’s in this war – for now at least – but the track will be essentially the same as the war took in Iraq. The travel down the road to hell will be much faster though as the knowledge that had been developed bit by bit by the resistance in Iraq over the last three years will immediately be implemented in Somalia.

(Arab News has an informative piece on the colonial background of the conflict. In the open threads here commentator b real thankfully keeps us updated on what is happening in Mogadishu and other places in Africa.)

Confirming b real‘s regular observations and my year old prediction McClatchy recapitulates:

[T]he Ethiopians have faced stubborn resistance from fighters loyal to the Islamists, who’ve proved adept at ambushes and remote-controlled bombings.

Ethiopia’s campaign has become an open-ended military intervention besieged by a stubborn insurgency, and Ethiopians recently responded by sending in a surge of reinforcement troops. Human rights groups charge that the Ethiopian forces are carelessly killing civilians.

Sounds familar? The Ethiopian tactics are exactly the same the U.S. uses in Iraq. The resistance in Somalia is copying Iraqi resistance tactics. Mogadishu is now another Fallujah.

And just like Cheney is itching to escalate the war on Iraq by bombing Iran, the Ethiopian dictator Meles wants to escalate his war on Somalia by attacking Eritrea. The U.S., in the person of the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, is confirmed (by John Bolton – none less) to be the one directing that coming war (rec. read):

She has actively been on a personal crusade to orchestrate an international demonization of the Eritrean leader and his regime as part of a coordinated effort to facilitate aggression. In Ms. Frazer’s vernacular, the Eritrean regime is a sponsor of transnational terrorism, and the answer must be “regime change”.

Cont. reading: Similarities of War on Somalia and Iraq

Today two remarkable op-eds were published in the U.S. by Pakistani women named Bhutto. Some excerpts of these from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times:

I am under house arrest in Lahore, barricaded in by Pakistani police with bayonets.

While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference.

Despite Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s announcement of a date for parliamentary elections, I doubt that we are in for a change.

Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf’s regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.

I cautioned the general earlier this year that his election as president by the present parliament was illegal.

It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so.

Musharraf knows how to crack down against pro-democracy forces. He is, however, unwilling or unable to track down and arrest Osama bin Laden or contain the extremists.

Ms. Bhutto’s repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government — making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.

Cont. reading: What’s the word for catfight in Urdu?

Around the last new year’s eve some ten or so Moon of Alabama folks met in Hamburg, Germany.

If enough people promiss to come, we might repeat such festivities. This time those would be at Dan of Steele’s place in north-westeast Italy near Venice. The timeframe is somewhere between Christmas and the first week of January.

Anyone interested?

If you are, leave a comment here or send an email to Dan of Steele or to my address.

New Republic writer James Kirchick rants about

all those liberals oddly attracted to the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul

Matthew Yglesias replies:

The people attracted to his candidacy are libertarians and conservatives disgruntled with Bush’s war. Liberals have nothing to do with it.

Duncan Black adds:

I’m sure there are "some" liberals who are on board the Ron Paul train, but there isn’t some big liberals-for-Ron-Paul movement.

I agree with Duncan. There isn’t a big movement – yet. But I can see it coming.

If the progressive voter’s decision has to be between:

1. a more-of-the-same, ‘moderate’, belicose, democratic candidate fed by lobby interests and
2. a ‘nutty’, but anti-war and at least principled libertarian

there might be a liberal wave to vote for Ron Paul as president.

Imagine Ron Paul in cohabitation with a democratic congress that prevents him from damaging too much of the social issues.  That might just be the constellation needed to upset the Washington village consensus. It is that consensus and the interests it defends that is harming the U.S. and its people.

Via Glenn Greenwald, who is busy debunking some smears the establishment tries to hang on Paul, here is a video from a Ron Paul talk with voters. Paul is asked who he would endorse if he would not run himself. His answer is Chuck Hagel and Dennis Kucinich, both because of their position on foreign policy issues and for their general principled stands. What is not like with that choice?

Ron Paul’s position on many issues are against a progressive social conscience. But with Hillary Clinton calling for more costly wars and Obama fighting against social security, they don’t seem to be good alternatives.

The republican candidates are mostly certified nuts and war will be a huge issue in the 2008 election. Paul therefore might become the republican candidate. If that happens, many disappointed liberals will likely give him a chance.

The Annapolis conference was supposed to be about some new Israeli-Palestinian agreement under the tutelage of the United States and with photogenic attendance of some U.S. friendly Arab leaders.

It will, if it takes place at all, fail for several reasons.

The Israeli condition for negotiating at all is a Palestinian declaration of unconditional surrender on their main issue – their U.N. acknowledged right of return.

Monday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the starting point for all negotiations with the Palestinians will be the "recognition of Israel as a state for the Jewish people"

This recognition is meant to bolster Israel’s position that rejects the return of Palestinian refugees to areas inside the Green Line – the border before the 1967 Six-Day War.

The atmosphere of the pre-conference negotiations gets intentionally poisoned:

Cont. reading: The Annapolis Joke

It is good to see that strikes are back in fashion. They are the best, and often the only way, people can demand their fair share of the productivity they bring to the market.

In Hollywood the Writers Guild of America is on strike to get a fair share of the revenue stream that will come through Internet distribution of their work.

In New York the stage workers are trying to protect their hard-won benefits by shutting down shows.

Huge railway and student strikes are planned this week in France to fight against Sarkozy’s neo-liberal attack on pensions and on University financing.

In Germany locomotive drivers and train conductors are in on and off strikes to get better payment.

In Ireland bus drivers are on strike over new imposed working condictions that in effect require them to do longer hours.

In South Africa construction workers fight for better wages too.

In Australia union workers are striking to have the union be the sole worker representative at a big brewery.

In all the above cases the media reports are heavily slanted against the workers. Strikes are "bad for small business", they are "inconvient" to those who do not get the service, they are "unfair", "untimely", "not justified". The demands are always "excessive".

Don’t believe any of it without checking what the striking workers really say and what the strike really is about. The media owners have no interest in presenting a fair picture of any strike and, unless they strike themselves, journalists don’t dare to cross their employers intent.

If you can, visit workers on a picket line. Bring them coffee and some supporting words. Striking is not easy to do. It requires sacrifice and no one I have ever met really likes to go on strike.

Unions are the bastions that indirectly defend every other wage owner. Strikes are the only real weapon wage owners have. Let’s hail their use.

When it bleeds it leads is an old rule in journalism. But the hierarchy in reporting also depends on who does the bleeding.

This article by the Associated Press describes a horrible incident:

What a mess! These ghastly Palestinians launch rockets on cowsheds, killing Israeli cows! People are shocked, SHOCKED! The cows are shocked too, SHOCKED!

Seven cows were killed and four were wounded when a Qassam rocket struck their shed in Kibbutz Zikim in the western Negev on Sunday morning.

Three people at the scene of the time of the attack were treated for shock and treated on site.

[…]
"The electric wiring and plumbing are damaged and the cows are suffering from shock which will mean they eat less," he said. "That means they will produce less milk."

The same piece, half way down and after the prioritized tragic tale of slaughtered cows, continues with a different scene nearby. It bleads too, but is obviously of lesser interest.

Cont. reading: Israeli Cows Suffer From SHOCK

Why is it snowing here?

News & views …

Norman Mailer died.

I haven’t read any of his books (should I?) but remember reading the piece below when it was published in 2003.

There is a subtext to what the Bushites are doing as they prepare for war in Iraq. My hypothesis is that President George W. Bush and many conservatives have come to the conclusion that the only way they can save America and get if off its present downslope is to become a regime with a greater military presence and drive toward empire. My fear is that Americans might lose their democracy in the process.

[…]
The dire prospect that opens, therefore, is that America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have more and more importance in Americans’ lives. It will be an ever greater and greater overlay on the American system. And before it is all over, democracy, noble and delicate as it is, may give way. My long experience with human nature – I’m 80 years old now – suggests that it is possible that fascism, not democracy, is the natural state.

Indeed, democracy is the special condition – a condition we will be called upon to defend in the coming years. That will be enormously difficult because the combination of the corporation, the military and the complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator sports has set up a pre-fascistic atmosphere in America already.
Gaining an Empire, Losing Democracy?, February 25, 2003

False ‘intelligence’ allowed North Korea to aquire nuclear weapons.

There are two major ways to build a ‘nuke’, either with highly enriched Uranium or with Plutonium gained from spent reactor fuel.

In 2002 the U.S. started to claim that North Korea was enriching Uranium for a nuclear bomb program.

North Korea denied the enrichment charges. The dispute led to an end of the ‘agreed framework’, a 1994 contract that provided North Korea with fossil fuel in exchange for it not to develop nuclear weapons.

Based on the allegations of NoKo Uranium enrichment the Bush administration stopped its part of the deal. Retaliating North Korea threw out the IAEA inspectors and started to extract plutonium from the used fuel of its research reactors. In 2006 it detonated a (likely) nuclear device.

Only thereafter did the U.S. restart serious talks to again provide fuel and other incentives in exchange for North Korean denuclearization.

It now turns out, as some had said before, that the whole story about North Korean Uranium enrichment was likely a ‘failure’ of U.S. intelligence. Glenn Kessler writes in the Washington Post:

North Korea is providing evidence to the United States aimed at proving that it never intended to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, undermining a key U.S. intelligence finding, South Korean and U.S. officials said this week.
[…]
"This is now in the process of being clarified," a senior South Korean official said in an interview. "The North Koreans are now ready to prove that they did not intend to make a uranium-enrichment program by importing some materials."

He said North Korea is attempting to show that the materials it imported — including 150 tons of aluminum tubes from Russia in June 2002 — were intended for conventional weapons programs and other dual-use projects, not for weapons of mass destruction.
[…]

Aluminium tubes purchased by Iraq, intended as rocket casings and unfit to be used in centrifuges, were part of the Bush administration false claims about an Iraqi nuclear program.

As we learn now a similar ridiculous claim led to an end of the agreed framework and to a North Korean nuclear device.

.. the tubes acquired by North Korea needed to be cut in half and shaped in order to be used as the outer casings of centrifuges.

A major figure in the U.S. claims of nuclear bomb programs in Iraq, North Korea and Iran is John Bolton. He and his former special assistant Frederick Fleitz, supported by Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), were the key people in providing the false claims.

Currently Bolton and the Wall Street Journal opinion editors are propagandizing an alleged nuclear program in Syria which they claim to be supported by North Korea.

Their aim seems to be to derail the talks in North Korea and to build public ground for an attack on Iran and Syria. As they have been caught in a huge lie again, one hopes that the public will disregard their claims.

The Dollar will continue to fall until the central bankers and politicians get together and hammer out a new deal on how and when to stop it. It will take a lot of pain to make that happen.

The Europeans are concerned that the Dollar fall will hit their economies. This week French President Sarkozy called for a strong dollar. When chancellor Merkel is in Washington these next days she will have the issue on her agenda too. Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank, also made some noise:

The ECB almost certainly believes that more overt currency market intervention requires agreement with other central banks. But in spite of concerns that the weaker dollar will increase the risk of inflation, the Fed has shown no interest in currency intervention.

Obviously the U.S. has decided to let the Dollar fall further. F… the Europeans. This will rapidly increase the prices the U.S. consumers have to pay for energy and other imports. A lower Dollar may help Boeing to sell a few more airplanes, but the little folks will get screwed by high prices and a tanking economy.

Cont. reading: Some Thoughts On The Dollar

Years of too long hours in front of computers and a hobby of cooking delcious meals put some twenty unnecessary pounds on my ribs. With a change in my eating patterns and daily walks I managed to turn the trend. Over the last year my weight is going down again. I didn’t do this for health reasons, I am smoking which is much more dangerous than a few excess pounds, but I feel better without the balast.

Being Overweight Isn’t All Bad, Study Says titles the Washington Post. Well, that’s not really what the study says but the headline makes a nice excuse to stay fat:

Cont. reading: Effects of Being Fat Society

Another quiz task:

We are looking for a country on the continent of Asia that has significant religious based extremism, tribal unrest and a warrior culture.

There are several of those, so here is a little help.

Some of the country’s borders were defined by British geographic carving.

Afghanistan? Not quite right.

Second hint: It has a nuclear program.

Pakistan? Well it could fit, but …

Third hint: The country’s name starts with an I.

India? I’ll give you some time to think about that.

Meanwhile the Friday Lunch Club points us to a letter by one Mohammad Alireza in Teheran to the Israeli people. It was published in, of all places, the Jerusalem Post:

Do the Iranian people really want to go to war with the Jewish people? The answer is a resounding No! For thousands of years the Iranian and Jewish peoples have lived in peace, and continue to do so to this very day. There are 25,000 Jewish Iranians living and working in Iran without any persecution or worry.
[…]

Cont. reading: Quiz: A Country With …

UPDATED below

Guess what country is in the current news.
From today’s New York Times:

Nov. 7 — Riot police officers used tear gas and a water cannon today to clear thousands of demonstrators from the streets of the capital of COUNTRY, employing extensive force in the face of protests against the country’s government.

There were no immediate reports of the extent of injuries. But people who fled the clouds of tear gas reported that police officers had rushed through the city’s main boulevard and had beaten demonstrators who had not managed to escape. Many protesters were seen bleeding. The police also scuffled with journalists covering the confrontation and confiscated or shattered some of their equipment, witnesses said.

The police sweep, while it cleared the avenue at least temporarily, underlined the intensity of the challenge to the government and reputation of the President.

The opposition has accused him of running a centralized government intolerant of dissent and undermined by high-level corruption and police and prosecutorial abuse.

Opposition leaders labeled the police action a political crackdown and mass punishment, and called for the people to gather in renewed protests. The possibility of escalation, or further clashes and police action, seemed high.
[…]
The United States, the Presidents government’s principal foreign sponsor and mentor, had no immediate response.

Here is your quiz question. What country is COUNTRY?

Burma? Cuba? Pakistan? Venezuela? The answer is below the fold.

Cont. reading: Quiz: What’s the Country?