Notice, too, how he doesn't answer the young man's question (which is highly pertinent) but bypasses it to tout his work (with Joe Lieberman) in establishing the 9-11 commission, instead.
And this is the man who would lead the US?
...bomb, bomb Iran:
If you ever wanted to know about US mercenaries and just how low they can go, this is the guy who wrote the book. It's called Blackwater, and it's not pretty, but it's one compelling read. It will wake you right up to the dangers of privatizing everything--including the worst of the worst, namely war. So far, Blackwater and all its false fronts have been immune from prosecution, but that could all change if the government of Iraq manages to cut enough of its puppet strings.
Let's hope so!
Whoa--is the sky falling, or what? The Economist has finally gotten (partway) off its "rah rah, America" kick and published a (somewhat) honest assessment of what's going on in the States. And a thing of beauty it is, too:
One source of angst is the sorry state of American capitalism (see article). The "Washington consensus" told the world that open markets and deregulation would solve its problems. Yet American house prices are falling faster than during the Depression, petrol is more expensive than in the 1970s, banks are collapsing, the euro is kicking sand in the dollar's face, credit is scarce, recession and inflation both threaten the economy, consumer confidence is an oxymoron and Belgians have just bought Budweiser, "America's beer".
Wow! And that's only the second paragraph. It goes on in that vein pretty much throughout the piece, with occasional excursions into the silly (which I'll get to shortly.)
I think we can safely say this marks an epoch. Just a few short years ago, this self-same Economist was totally behind the Washington consensus. Rather like the woman in the famous picture, cleaning up after the elephant by catching its droppings in a big bag-on-a-stick as they fell, so they wouldn't hit the ground and be seen for the vast load of shit they are.
Unfortunately, this moment of truth shall pass, as does everything else in the transitory world of market capitalism. And in fact, within the same article, we see evidence that the editorial writer doesn't really get what's going on at all:
Continue reading "I could have told them so, but would they listen?" »
Let's hope so.
A $5000 dollar reward is being offered to any Auckland University student who can make a successful citizen's arrest of United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit to the country this weekend.Auckland University Student Association (AUSA) president David Do said the arrest would be for her role in "overseeing the illegal invasion and continued occupation" of Iraq.
"It is hard enough living as a student in Auckland these days without having a war criminal coming to town, so we thought we'd give our students a chance to make a dent in their student loans and work for global justice at the same time."
Dr Rice will be in Auckland on July 26, where she will meet with Prime Minister Helen Clark, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Opposition leader John Key.
Good luck, mates! You'll probably be rugby-tackled by some thug in a black suit and earpiece, but give it the ol' college try anyway!
Verdammt noch mal. You'd think a German newsmagazine could, in the interests of journalistic integrity, at least get its own country's history right. But Der Spiegel is now so far up the ass of neo-con Washington, it's even rewriting that...and in an interview with, of all people, the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki:
SPIEGEL: Germany, after World War II, was also liberated from a tyrant by a US-led coalition. That was 63 years ago, and today there are still American military bases and soldiers in Germany.
Funny, but as I recall, the liberation of Germany occurred not "after World War II", but at the moment when the tyrant suicided in his own Berlin bunker. It was the liberation of the concentration camps that took place after the war ended; crucial distinction there, since not all of Germany was a concentration camp. And the coalition in question was not led by the US, which entered the war three years later than the original coalition leaders, Britain and France. The US didn't get into the war until attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. And they are not the ones most widely credited with Hitler's suicidal discouragement; that would be Russia.
That's an awful lot of revisionist lies the slick Spiegel interviewer told right there in the first sentence. What about the second one, about US military bases and soldiers? Well, there are still some (68,000 at last count), but most are gone. First there's no more need for them (Germany can police her own damn Nazis, thankyouverymuch), and second, Donald Rumsfeld--a source of shame to his German relatives--threatened to pull all the remaining ones in a grotesque form of economic retaliation for Germany's pacifist stance on Iraq. The ones still there aren't protecting Germany from tyranny; they're just there to provide operational support...to the war on Iraq. So that one is, at best, only a half truth, expressed to a disingenuous end.
I guess Der Spiegel, whose name means "The Mirror", really lives up to it. The paper just reflects...not reality, but what Washington thinks: that the sovereignty of other nations doesn't matter, but that Neo-Con America's will is supreme. So supreme, in fact, that history has to be rewritten in deference to its current war plans.
Schade!
"Fascism may be a purer evil, but empire is a more pervasive one, and ultimately more dangerous because it's able to call on the loyalties of well-intentioned people who'd never go near fascism. But if you're a Vietnamese kid napalmed in 1968, or an Iraqi kid with your hands blown off in 2008, empire is every bit as bad as fascism. Or, for that matter, if you're a Bangladeshi or a Chinese sweat shop worker or an Afghani forced to grow and process heroin to survive, the economic ramifications of empire are as bad as the explicit political repression of fascism. And for decades, what traditional fascism has cropped up around the world — in Central America, in some African nations, for instance — has been made possible only through the support of empire."
--Jeff Sharlet, interviewed at The Wild Hunt Blog
If you haven't seen this video yet, you simply must. In the space of five minutes, you get to see how Christopher Hitchens saw the light on waterboarding in an undisclosed location somewhere in North Carolina. Not only does he admit that it IS torture, he also admits that it's not "simulated" drowning, it IS drowning--of a particularly terrorizing kind. And it takes him just a few seconds to "break". He flings away the metal object (poetically called a "dead man's handle") that the torturers have given him to signal--simply by dropping it--that he can't take the torment anymore. It all looks so unceremonious, which makes you wonder how long anyone can withstand such a treatment.
Here's Hitchens in his own words:
Continue reading "17 seconds to moral clarity with Christopher Hitchens" »
Ha ha, Boris Johnson cracks me up. First that undead haystack cancels the London public transit system's cheap-fuel deal with Venezuela, out of some idiotic desire to punish the poor with fare hikes. Now, get a load of what he keeps on his desk--or used to:
Police have forced London Mayor Boris Johnson to hand over a cigar case belonging to Iraq's former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz.The ex-MP, who obtained the red leather case from Mr Aziz's bombed-out home while visiting Iraq as a journalist in 2003, said the situation was "stupid".
He said: "The police have no choice but to investigate this ludicrous affair."
Under the Iraq (UN Sanctions) Order 2003, anyone possessing Iraqi cultural property must give it to the police.
Granted, it's not much of a "cultural property", seeing as it's not exactly a first edition cuneiform scroll of the Code of Hammurabi or anything like that. But it's not rightfully his, either, and keeping such a grotesque trophy on his desk speaks of extremely poor judgment on his part.
Not, I hasten to add, that his sentiments regarding the president of Venezuela say anything better.
...with a rare dose of honesty:
A B.C. father says the loss of his soldier son to a freak accident in Afghanistan will haunt him forever."Of course I grieve," David Snyder told CTV News from his home in Penticton on Sunday about the death of Capt. Jonathan Sutherland Snyder.
"Of course I will have a hollow in my being forever."
[...]
"It's about hazard and chance, and unfortunately there was an accident -- and he died," David Snyder said.
The former reservist also said: "War is stupid. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. Well, no they don't. The politicians don't know that."
He also told The Canadian Press that he supported his son and the military, but not the Afghanistan mission.
You had to see the video yesterday, though--they actually showed this intelligent, articulate man questioning the government, the Afghanistan mission, the stupidity of war. For a corporate, corporatist, rah-rah network like CTV, this was really saying something.
Of course, some commenters on the CTV site took him to task for it, accusing him of "playing politics" like Cindy Sheehan. I doubt whether this is "playing" anything. Cindy was right to question the cause for which her son died, and so is this man. It's a credit to see, however, far more voices criticizing the critics than the grieving father, who has every right in a democratic country to express his obviously well-thought-through opinion.
It's not a soldier's prerogative to question his mission; it is that of the civilians, particularly his family, who can hold the government accountable in the event of his death.
The California prosecutor (and author of Helter Skelter) who brought the Manson Family to justice has a new book out:
...in which he makes the case for prosecuting Dubya as a war criminal.
I think it has merit.
See, this is why I call CNN the Chicken Noodle Network:
Anderson Cooper is shocked, SHOCKED to learn that his fellow CNNer, Jessica Yellin, who worked for a time at ABC, was pressured by network execs during her ABC days not to do hard-hitting pieces on the war, the White House, and its scurrying cockroach inhabitants.
Continue reading "You can't tell the truth--there's a war on!" »
Generals Petraeus and Odierno were confirmed, but so was something else:
...the spirit of brave women speaking out for peace. They got THEIR hearing, too.
...has issued some rosy forecasts for total pie in the Iraqi sky. Behold:
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Saturday that al-Qaida's network in the country has never been closer to defeat, and he praised Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his moves to rein in Shiite and Sunni militant groups.Ryan Crocker's comments came as Iraqi forces have been conducting crackdowns on al-Qaida militants in the northern city of Mosul and on Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra. Thousands of Iraqi forces also moved into the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad last week imposing control for the first time in years.
But truces with the powerful Mahdi Army militia that have calmed violence in Basra and paved the way for the Sadr City deployment have been strained in the past two days.
Ohmygawds, don't you just love what Dubya said about Barack Obama in the Israeli Knesset today?
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals," said Mr Bush in his speech."We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement."
This from a man whose own grandfather banked for Hitler, thus violating federal law. I shit you not.
Worst. Godwin. Violation. EVER.
But of course, the US has the adults in charge of the government, so none of this would EVER happen. Right? RIGHT???
From the color-me-SO-not-surprised files, a little something on the kind of people who are eligible not only for hiring, but RE-hiring by Kellogg, Brown & Root...
In 2006, while working in Iraq for the U.S. military contractor now known as KBR, Ira L. Waltrip was caught in possession of suspected child pornography and fired, according to a federal court affidavit.He returned home to Lampasas and by the end of 2006, the affidavit said, was rehired to work for the company, previously a subsidiary of Halliburton known as Kellogg, Brown and Root.
"The only effective way to reduce the threat of terrorism is to work to end the conditions that give rise to it. In the case of Islamist terrorism, this means a comprehensive and enlightened political, economic and diplomatic strategy for dealing with the Arab/Muslim world. Only a tiny minority of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims support radical jihadis, but catastrophic errors like invading Iraq make violent fundamentalism more attractive. Follow the physician's credo: First, do no harm."
--Gary Kamiya, "Iraq: The Ten Commandments", at Salon.com
Auntie Condi's double-talk just jumped up to bite her.
Now, when will it do the same for Dubya and the Big Dick?
Think it couldn't happen? Read this:
The troubled effort to build the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad seemed to be months away from completion when a team of top State Department officials flew to Iraq on March 20 to meet with senior staff from the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting. But as insurgent rockets began to rain down on the flimsy trailers housing diplomats inside the Green Zone, the two sides suddenly found ways to settle many of the major issues dividing them."The only way to do this was for us to get in the room, nail the door shut and get this resolved," said Robert S. Nichols, a partner with the Crowell & Moring law firm who attended the meeting and provides legal advice to First Kuwaiti. "It started out as the 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral' the first day or so, but then we got past it."
Construction of the embassy in Baghdad had been greatly complicated by several factors, including a fast-track building plan that had kept key State Department inspectors out of the loop until the building was largely done, changes made on the spot by the project manager without complete documentation, and cultural differences between State and a Middle Eastern company working on its first embassy project.
Then read this:
Continue reading "What if they built a fortified embassy and nobody came?" »
Rick Astley probably never thought his song would become so useful, but it's the perfect illustration of why John "Insane" McCain should never become president of the US of A.
Veterans For Peace staged a brilliant bit of civil disobedience in Washington on the 5th anniversary of IraqAttaq. The vets marched, delivered a citizens' arrest warrant for Dubya, the Big Dick and Auntie Condi and unfurled a large replica of the Constitution to raucous cheers on the steps of the National Archives. Watch for cameo appearances from Buddy Georgia ("drummerboy" on UNN) and Buffy Ste. Marie.
Poor John Yoo. Once BushCo goes, he'll be out of a job, I'll bet. And what do you suppose he will have to white out from HIS résumé before he starts sending it out again?
The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect" calculated to "cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality."
Continue reading "Somebody's boilerplate is missing a few screws" »
Sadly, this is NO April Fool's joke:
If you know a returned Iraq vet who has been in contact with any facilities "serviced" by Halliburton, KBR, etc.--please, urge them to see their doctor to be tested for waterborne pathogens. You could save a lot of lives.
Yeah, right...
April Fool!
Obvious to you, me, and Noam Chomsky, obviously. But to the hawkish disaster-capitalist types, maybe not so:
"Aggressors have no rights. Responsibilities, maybe, but no rights."
I wonder what PNAC, BushCo, Halliburton, etc. will all do when they find out that they have no right to be in Iraq. Something tells me they will only find it out the hardest possible way.
Two Iraqi expats--journalist Ali Fadhil, working out of London, and professor/author Sinan Antoon, of New York, talk with Charlie Rose about the invasion/occupation of Iraq.
Cue up the banjo music. Here comes some inadvertent hilarity from a party that once marched to war on Iraq in lockstep.
First, Sen. Lindsey Graham, on Face the Nation, claiming a "breakthrough in Baghdad" thanks to Dubya's "surge":
Ring-ring. Osama calling. Yeah, so I'm dead. So what? If you could resurrect a bunch of shitty Danish 'toons in time for the Prophet Mohammed's birthday, I guess I can come back from Hades to haunt you and taunt you.
And pay no attention to the fact that this bit of blatant scaremongering comes right in time for the fifth anniversary of Operation Royal Fuckup. Which, BTW, is STILL based on a pack of lies...
Booga, booga, booga.
I see that somebody has the same sense of unaccountability as her Commander in Thief does.
Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a powerful rallying point for anti-American insurgents.In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern conducted in English and posted on its Web site Tuesday, England was both remorseful and unrepentant — and conceded that the published photos surely incensed insurgents in Iraq.
"I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it ... no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved," she was quoted as saying.
Yes, you read that correctly. Dubya, that great champion of freedom, is a would-be censor, making sure the people of the United States stay in the dark about what's really happening in Iraq. Here's the video:
Ahahaha...I think I know why he doesn't want you to see this. The Iraqis want the Dems to win, and they like both Hillary Clinton AND Barack Obama. They have nothing good to say about the situation the war has plunged their country into. And it is SO OBVIOUS from this that the Iraqis are not the backward stupidheads BushCo wants us to believe they are.
And they've committed two hacks. One on the website of a certain Ecuadorable president:
The official website of the Presidency of Ecuador (www.presidencia.gov.ec) was blocked today for the second time by a hacker who left it out of service.The info-pirate left a message, "Don't mess with Colombia", and blocked all access to infromation on the portal, which remained disabled for several hours until, around 2 p.m. local time (7 p.m. GMT), it came back online but with error messages.
Okay, so he didn't quite put it THAT graphically. But the fuck-you-very-much was pretty unambiguous just the same:
My translation follows:
Does this sound like the behavior of anyone you know?
Continue reading "Oh look, the world's #1 terrorism sponsor is projecting again" »
Yes, Foreign Policy is a smelly rag with some pretty horrible biases and outright distortions. (Their blog also sucks because it can't keep the most basic facts straight, such as the identities of non-white supermodels.) But Jack Cloonan's words to them on the subject of torture are well worth hearing:
BTW, he totally shoots down the "24" scenario of the "ticking bomb" that can only be defused by a torture-obtained confession. He also points out that torture victims tend to become martyrs to their supporters, even if they are "the bad guys" to those on the other side. Not to mention that it really, REALLY makes the torturers look like shits.
And if you have to ask what "it" is, here's a hint: It's brown, it steams, it smells bad, and you don't want it all over the bottom of your shoe. Unfortunately, that's exactly where Alvaro Uribe is wearing it right now, in light of the following:
One of the three female FARC guerrillas wounded in the Colombian military operation in Ecuadorian territory last Saturday said today that there had been two bombings against the clandestine encampment in the border region of Angostura.
Continue reading "Colombia: Even deeper in it than originally thought" »
...and of course, it would have to be Colombia, deciding to repeat not-so-ancient history and once more, conduct a raid on foreign soil without having the common decency to identify that soil's government about its intentions ahead of time.
Continue reading "So this is what John Perkins warned Rafael Correa about..." »
Keith Olbermann spells it out clean, clear and cold:
And that's why I love Keith Olbermann.
A veteran for peace, in his 80s, shows what he found on a recent trip to Iraq.
Warning: Very disturbing images.
Hard home(boy) truth about FUX Snooze:
...and a shout-out to Barack Obama at the end. Let's hope that if nominated and elected, he'll be able to make REAL change to all this.
Well, that's flattering. I'm glad to know we bloggers have been upgraded from a mere nuisance!
The laundry list of fictional catastrophes -- which include hundreds of people on "No Fly" lists suddenly arriving at airport ticket counters -- is significant because it suggests what kind of real-world trouble keeps people in the White House awake at night.Imagined villains include hackers, bloggers and even reporters. After mock electronic attacks overwhelmed computers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an unspecified "major news network" airing reports about the attackers refused to reveal its sources to the government. Other simulated reporters were duped into spreading "believable but misleading" information that worsened fallout by confusing the public and financial markets, according to the government's files.
The $3 million, invitation-only war game simulated what the U.S. described as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers. The government is organizing another multimillion-dollar war game, Cyber Storm 2, to take place in early March.
[...]
The AP obtained the Cyber Storm internal records nearly two years after it requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. The government censored most of the 328 pages it turned over, marked "For Official Use Only," citing rules preventing the disclosure of sensitive information.
Including the most sensitive information of all, which becomes blatantly obvious from reading the above--namely, that the US government is full of loopy, paranoid yahoos. They see threats in everything, even the blogosphere and the news media. And no wonder: Guess who's most likely to report that the US government is full of loopy, paranoid yahoos?
And boy, is it ever hot stuff.
THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency's investigation of the network.
Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency's Washington field office.
She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Continue reading "Sibel Edmonds tells all (that she legally can)" »
But would they listen to me? Nooooo. They just had to figure out for themselves that certain interrogation methods don't work as well as advertised...
A threat of possible terrorist attacks in Germany, based on a tip from Lebanese authorities after they interrogated an al-Qaida suspect, is less severe than initially thought, authorities said Monday.The tip came after Lebanese police arrested suspect Mohammed Naddoum last Thursday on allegations that he called the German Embassy in Beirut threatening to strike German security targets.
Officials have given no details of the possible threats, but German news reports said Lebanon told officials that the suspect indicated terrorists inside Germany were prepared to attack targets such as Berlin's Justice Ministry building. The ministry said it had heightened security.
The details of the tip have now been checked out, and have led to no concrete results, said Federal Criminal Police Office spokeswoman Sandra Clemens.
"At this point in the investigation, an attack can be ruled out," she said.
My guess is they got it out of him by what's euphemistically called "coercive interrogation", and what is more correctly called TORTURE. Lebanon is not exactly free from it.
But I could have told them that Germany is not on the terror shit list. Why? It's not involved in the war on Iraq. Spain was; that's why Spain's trains were bombed, and why the Spaniards wised up and got rid of Aznar in their next election. Australia was; that's why a nightclub in Bali catering to Aussie tourists was bombed in '02. Britain still is; that's why ITS subway trains were also bombed. (The Brits, alas, have not gotten wise and thrown out THEIR warmongers.)
Logic should dictate that Spain is now off the terror shit list. And that Australia, too, will soon follow suit. And that Britain should watch its back.
Well, according to the Navy Times, he could be anywhere in the world. Including, as luck would have it, a recent "sighting" alleged to be in the Strait of Hormuz:
The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the "Filipino Monkey."Since the Jan. 6 incident was announced to the public a day later, the U.S. Navy has said it's unclear where the voice came from. In the videotape released by the Pentagon on Jan. 8, the screen goes black at the very end and the voice can be heard, distancing it from the scenes on the water.
"We don't know for sure where they came from," said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for 5th Fleet in Bahrain. "It could have been a shore station."
Gather 'round, kiddies, 'cause here's a fine example of just how desperate the Bush Crime Family is to start a war on Iran. First, here's a video from the Pentagon, supposedly detailing a menacing move by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz:
It doesn't seem terribly conclusive, except towards the end, when the screen suddenly goes black, and a menacing voice with a heavy accent drones out over the radio, "I am coming to youuuuuuu...going to explode after a few minutes."
Booga, booga, booga!
Now, after you're done scrubbing the skidmarks out of your underpants, watch this video, which was taken from one of the Iranian patrolboats in question:
And of course, since this happened in Cuba, we only get to hear about it after the fact...
Former CIA agent Philip Agee, a critic of U.S. foreign policy who infuriated American intelligence officials by naming purported agency operatives in a 1975 book, has died, state media reported Wednesday. He was 72.Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mostly in Latin America at a time when leftist movements were gaining prominence and sympathizers. His 1975 book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," cited alleged CIA misdeeds against leftists in the region and included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives.
[...]
Agee's U.S. passport was revoked in 1979. U.S. officials said he had threatened national security. After years of living in Hamburg, Germany — occasionally underground, fearing CIA retribution — Agee moved to Havana to open a travel Web site.
The site, cubalinda.com, is designed to bring U.S. tourists to Cuba, offering package tours and other help that is largely off-limits to Americans because of the U.S. trade embargo. Agee opened the site in 2000 with European investors and a state-run travel agent as his partners.
There was no mention of Agee's death on the site Wednesday.
From the Halifax News, some important information about the difference between Canadian privacy law and that of our neighbors to the south--a difference that is now being eroded due to the push for "deep integration":
Individual privacy is best protected in Canada and under threat in the United States and the European Union as governments introduce sweeping surveillance and information-gathering measures in the name of security and border control, an international rights group said in a report released yesterday.Canada, Greece and Romania had the best privacy records of 47 countries surveyed by London-based watchdog Privacy International. Malaysia, Russia and China were ranked worst.
Both Britain and the United States fell into the lowest-performing group of "endemic surveillance societies."
"The general trend is that privacy is being extinguished in country after country," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. "Even those countries where we expected ongoing strong privacy protection, like Germany and Canada, are sinking into the mire."
Gol-dang, if that Osama isn't the most talkative spook or the most animated corpse you've ever seen. Now that everyone is talking about his death (thank you, Beni!), he has to pipe up via audiotape and claim that the rumors of his demise are premature...
Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida's latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida's Iraq branch on the run.The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistan's government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.
Or by someone who isn't in fact Osama.
This is hardly the first time we've seen an impostor being fobbed off as him. Or heard one, come to that. Apparently, since we aren't overly familiar with his voice (are you? I'm not), and all Arabic-speakers are supposed to sound alike to our western ears, we are meant to take it on faith that if a Pentagon "expert" says it's him, it must be him. Never mind that the Pentagon has had a problem with Arabic translations, since it refuses to let perfectly qualified gay people do the job even in the face of an acute shortage.
So...how are we to know if this latest "Osama" is, in fact, the real Osama? Or, come to that, if any of the rest of them were?
An intriguing David Frost interview from last November, shortly after a failed assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto, who was killed today in Rawalpindi, Pakistan:
At 6:13 in this video, she mentions an "Omar Sheikh, who murdered Osama bin Laden" (italics mine).
Continue reading "Did Beni know something we don't, but should?" »
4 minutes from the movie "The Kingdom", taking us from Ibn Saud to 9-11.
And yes, it's all about oil.
Now that I have your attention, get a load of Dubya. He just never quits looking for people to fuck up the ass, does he?
First, there's Colombia...
President George W Bush has called on Congress to pass a controversial free trade deal with US ally Colombia to help promote regional stability.Some Congress members are opposed, citing concerns over workers' rights.
Mr Bush suggested the deal could help counter the influence of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, with whom both the US and Colombia have difficult relations.
[...]
Mr Bush's comments came after he was asked to react to the result of Venezuela's referendum on Sunday, which saw Mr Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms defeated.
"The Venezuelan people rejected one-man rule. They voted for democracy," Mr Bush said.
"Crackpot realists never learn anything, even when the lessons are cuffing them roughly about the head and shoulders. They continue to pile on more of the same actions that got them into trouble in the first place, expecting to be seen as Churchillian heroes for staying the idiotic course they have set.
"They keep spinning the bad news, year after year after year, wearing out entire battalions of press officers, until they finally escape from the morass by leaving office. Afterward, they heap blame on their successors for "losing China" or "cutting and running."
"Although the crackpot realists are neither wise nor honest, they are politically shrewd and personally vicious. When their malfeasances are exposed, they toss subordinates to the wolves and prepare the ground for their own pardons, understanding that the political winds may shift sharply against them later on.
"They are not squeamish: they digest mass murder as easily as they consume their eggs and toast, and they do not lose sleep by agonizing over the cannon fodder they sacrifice in the service of their own aggrandizement. Other people's children go to war; theirs go to Harvard and Yale.
"Being busy people, they cannot waste time on pity, except when a photo op requires its feigned expression.
"Imperialism appeals to them: if controlling the economic heights at home is good, controlling them throughout the entire world is better. Once ExxonMobil, Shell, Citigroup, J. P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Halliburton, and Bechtel have made their multinational arrangements, everything else will fall into place nicely.
"If it doesn't, because some uppity mullah or tin-pot dictator has created a snag, the U.S. Marines are always available, in the immortal words of the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen, 'to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.'"
--Robert Higgs, "The Triumph of Crackpot Realism"
...see, he's legally elected!
Pakistan's new Supreme Court has - as expected - dismissed the final legal challenge to the recent re-election of President Pervez Musharraf.Gen Musharraf's opponents had argued that his election was illegal because he was still head of the army.
The move clears the way for the general to resign as army chief, as promised, and be sworn in as a civilian leader.
Give Sunsara credit, she never backs down. And she brings out the ugly bitch who is never far below the surface of one carefully bleached mediablonde:
BTW, get how the students cheer when the World Can't Wait protestors interrupted Tortureboy Gonzales. I bet that's more applause than Bush's Little Tejano ever got in all his slimy career. And FUX could not edit that out! I bet that was especially galling.
As for "good news out of Iraq", Sunsara missed a golden opportunity to get a good laugh at Ms. Dark Roots' expense. I'd have said something like "Yeah, I hear Blackwater's making a killing there--literally!" But she did stick to her guns, which is not easy to do with a barking mad harpy like Ingraham trying to ridicule her (and failing miserably.)
Considering the fact that the US media is quick to label Hugo Chavez's regime "anti-American", there sure are a lot of US nationals, expats and dual citizens living and visiting unmolested in Venezuela. Some, like Eva Golinger, have a high profile. And they enjoy considerable grassroots popularity--the kind the transnational corporate leaders would literally kill for. Why are they being treated so respectfully? Maybe it's not the fact that they are Americans, but the fact that they are dissenters--dissidents of capitalism and the war machine. In their own ways, these Americans are with the revolution.
An emerging force in the ranks of Americans welcomed with open arms in Venezuela is Jimmy Massey. The former Marine and Gulf War II vet's book, "Cowboys From Hell", is a big noise at this year's FILVEN book fair in Caracas. Ernesto Villegas interviews him on his morning talk show, En Confianza, with an expat American, Chris Carlson (who writes at Venezuelanalysis and blogs at Gringo in Venezuela) translating:
Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) has created a powerful video that rings all the right alarm bells. Crank your speakers.
A three-part series whose title speaks for itself. The subject is the dark (and crazy) side of US military intelligence.
Part 1, "The Men Who Stare At Goats":
Mike Malloy reads an article speculating on who will be the last US citizen to die for Dubya's asinine blunders.
And for that matter--when? It all sounds terribly familiar...
France and the US have dismissed a finding by the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog Mohammed ElBaradei that there is no evidence of Iran building a bomb.French Defence Minister Herve Morin challenged Iran to allow UN inspectors unlimited access to sites.
A White House spokeswoman said Iran was "enriching and reprocessing uranium, and the reason that one does that is to lead towards a nuclear weapon".
Mr ElBaradei said on Sunday that Tehran was years away from developing a bomb.
Gee, this sounds just like that smoking gun that was supposed to turn into a mushroom cloud. But did it? I don't remember, I was too busy watching Dubya crawling around on all fours looking for WMDs.
Well, at least they can't piss all over the French this time. C'est la guerre!
John Pilger's documentary, broadcast on British channel ITV in 2000, explores just how old the "Saddam had WMDs" fallacy was, and how destructive. And also how hypocritical was all the tut-tutting on the part of the US and Great Britain. Both countries were responsible for the ascension of Saddam as well as for the WMD stockpiles he did possess--the same ones which were destroyed later on under the UN's eyes.
Judging by the sudden jumps in cancer rates and birth defects, related by the doctors you see here, it's a no-brainer that Iraq was nuked with the ultimate dirty bomb--the "depleted" uranium shell. Yet another layer of Anglo-American hypocrisy reveals itself. Just who were these people to try to starve out Iraq in the name of eliminating a dictator they created and armed? And what right had they to use WMD on Iraq--in the name of eliminating Saddam and his WMD, which they themselves supplied?
Bear in mind that this is the country PNAC urged Bill Clinton to bomb in 1998, feeling that what was going on, though devastating to ordinary Iraqis, was just not devastating enough. Clinton declined to bomb--but over half a million sanctions-related child deaths were, apparently, quite acceptable to Madeleine Albright's State Department. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein and his cronies were demonstrably NOT affected in the slightest by the sanctions. Gee, maybe PNAC was right about bombing and full-scale war (i.e. more death, more destruction, and even less humanitarian aid getting through) being needed to dislodge him.
Oh wait, there was bombing, too. It was still not enough to appease PNAC. Maybe because the targets were a few shepherds, their children...and sheep.
And don't forget, this all happened BEFORE Gulf War II and the current occupation.
Actually, this dovetails rather nicely with The Secret Government, don't you think?
A 1987 documentary by Bill Moyers, in two parts:
Part I explores the Cold War mentality and the beginnings of the CIA. It also examines the CIA's role in the toppling of the popular, elected Iranian leader, Mohammed Mossadegh (the Chavecito of his time and place) and his replacement with a brutal dictator-monarch, the Shah. Also looks at the CIA-engineered demise of Jacobo Arbenz, the popular president of Guatemala, because he wasn't tame enough to certain US corporate interests, namely the United Fruit Company. Democracy was replaced with dictatorship and death--all in the name of corporate profit.
Part II explores the role of death squads in Guatemala, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion (an attempt to turn Cuba into another Guatemala with a second "Operation Success", no doubt.) Also shows that JFK was at first for, and later against, dirty trickery. Guess he learned his lesson--which made him a marked man, particularly when he began putting out feelers toward a peace process. Moyers doe