I dare anybody

to check these photos of the children of Iraq and still support our invasion of their country.

How the world sees us

This essay is right on on the subject of the fantasy of Bushies (of many Americans, too, alas) that the US is a respected nation with ideas and ideals that are emulated by the world. Not so, citing facts and figures.

One significant omission: I believe that increasingly even the youth of foreign lands are rejecting the compulsive consumerism of America. Maybe not consumerism, but the American style, because of their distaste for the government that fosters it.

This could get ugly

For more than a year, I've been posting on the subject of the prospect that the nations (Japan, China and Europe, chiefly) that have been purchasing and holding assets in dollars, including our federal debt instruments and stocks in American companies, would tire of doing so as the value of the dollar against other currencies declines. The Bush administration has telegraphed that it wants the dollar to decline so that foreign nations will be able to afford our products, thereby causing increasing sales of US goods abroad. This may benefit the corporations that export, but the decline of the dollar has a distinct downside for American consumers, namely, that the cheaper dollar can buy fewer imports (cars, computers, everything, actually), so that price inflation begins to take hold in the US, coupled with interest-rate increases as the US must increase the interest rate on its debt in order to attract buyers on the instruments.

It looks like the dollar is losing out to the euro lately in terms of foreign holdings. Will the nightmare of inflation, increasing interest rates and less purchasing by consumers then follow, causing a catastrophic decline in the condition of the US economy?

If I were a betting man, I'd say, buy euros.

I wish I'd said that

For a quick take on Bush's plans for the world as announced in his inaugural address, check out this article, the opening line of which reads, "After listening to his inaugural speech, anyone who thinks President Bush and his handlers are sane needs to visit a psychiatrist."

Tough duty

That US Army. A bunch of toughies, strong sense of justice and discipline. Why, after court martial conviction for "shooting a female civilian interpreter in the head" one soldier was sentenced to three years, a second soldier to eighteen months, in the stockade. Three whole years, eighteen whole months!

Sign me up!

I don't like the sound of this

but this essay, quoting various highly placed Democrats in favor of a preemptive strike on Iran, makes a strong case that we the people--we the good people--are the only ones who can keep the Bushies from launching yet another war.

Don't read my son's lips

After most inspiring speeches, like Bush's inauguration address was, I'm sure, supposed to be, the president's supporters are supposed to be elucidating and expanding on its meaning, to carry it out into the world. Not with this president, however. His ravings about "spreading freedom" throughout the world have so alarmed other nations that Bush's father has had to insert correcting provisos and explanations, to make sure his son's madness isn't taken seriously.

The Selling of MLKing

This post about the hypocrisy of the Right's recent attempts to appropriate Martin Luther King to their side is right on. I've been noticing it too, and it cannot stand. King, at the end, was a rabid antiwar, anti-Rightist. His last expressions were of utter frustration and rage and the broad range of inequities based on race, poverty, capitalist oppression--much broader than merely segregation and voting rights. The whitewashing of his positions and role in America must be brought to light, so that the religious right can't rewrite history and claim as their own this strong and important man.

How can you not feel sorry for what we've done to law-abiding Iraqis?

Just read this post from Riverbend. We've turned her country into a theater of war. A war between the US and the Middle East.

The rant of a madman?

I didn't--couldn't bring myself to--watch Bush's inaugural speech, but Justin Raimondo did, and if his analysis of Bush's rhetoric is accurate, I'm glad I didn't waste my time tuning in. I need all the time I can get to gather weapons and ammunition.

Four more years

This article about the brand-new "grim assessment" of Iraq's future by a commission of intelligence officers not only contradicts Bush's Pollyanna-ish outlook for that nation after the elections, but contains a hint of what we can expect from the Administration if things continue to go poorly. The Shiites will gain power in the elections, the Sunnis and others will continue to wage violent insurgency, the Shiites will try to placate them by setting a firm schedule for US withdrawal of its forces (the US will be consulted no doubt, and there'll be conditions and caveats galore) and then as the time-limits arrive and we commence withdrawal, leaving a "residual force" or something, Bush will claim victory. He'll have saved face, the NeoCons will have their vested power in Iraq to control the Middle East and protect Israel, and Iraq, though still torn apart by fractious war, will be no threat to anybody except itself.

Okay, so the article doesn't say all of the foregoing, but I do.

If you ever doubted that Bush was the creature of American corporations

check out this list of donors to his inaugural celebrations.

I'm becoming anti-American

And why not? We're barbarians.

Altruism or some other -ism?

I don't know, but to me any religion, Christian or Muslim or any other, that uses the entree that is provided by the needy's need arising from the tsunami for prosetylizing is worthy of disgust and outrage and more.

This is really unpleasant for me to realize

but there are few things going on the United States today that I approve of. On the eve of MLK's day celebration, I don't think we've come very far from the early sixties, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Have blacks and browns and other nonwhites gained in income, in status, in fundamental equity? A look at the stats says no. The persons of color are woefully over-represented on death row, in prisons, in poverty, in lack of insurance and income. They're still doing our most onerous, least rewarding (income-wise and otherwise) jobs. They're still not able to participate meaningfully in many social events--not because of laws, but worse, by ongoing social custom, something harder to amend.

Internationally, the US is at its nadir. We've never been so misguided, so hated. We're the evil empire, so regarded throughout the world, including among many of our traditional allies.

Economically, we're headed into an abyss of excess spending, due to an orgy of defense spending and a loss of income. We can't support our own, much less others', infirm and helpless. We've misspent our resources on wasteful adventures that cause wreckage of the planet and distrust throughout the world.

The inequities of earnings and wealth in the world are increasing; the waste of resources is profilgate; the lessons of these are unheeded. We are lost and have no desire to find our way. Is it time to bail out of America?

Why not?

Fallujah failure

By now, no one reading this blog is other than a Bush-bashing, Cheney-loathing leftist. But even those must read this evaluation of the US actions in Fallujah.

Isn't there anything we can do to save these people, and ourselves, from these evil warmongers?

No comfort at all

Now that Bush won the election, he's publicly eating his words--expressing regrets over the phrase "Bring 'em on!" for example--but meanwhile he's packing his administration with yea-sayers and proceeding along with his announced agenda of "staying the course" in Iraq, privatizing Social Security, limiting lawsuits and so forth.

So if he's doing precisely what he said he'd do, why has his approval rating plummeted? His approval numbers, which hovered in the 52% range in the weeks before the election (as opposed to Kerry's 48%), are now in the mid-40's, as low as any president's on the eve of inauguration.

Could it be that a majority of us hate this asshole, but that at least he's an asshole we know, as opposed to one we never learned to know?

Did you know this?

That some of the prisoners being held in the abu Graib prison are being taken to a courthouse to be tried in court? Apparently some escaped while being transported, otherwise I sure didn't know that was happening.

What court is trying them? What are the charges? Is there coverage allowed of the trials and if so, why aren't we being clued in by any media? And if the trials aren't public--as Saddam Hussein's trials were not--what's that about it the "democracy" that's being showcased in Iraq?

And the rope handcuffs? Does this story give off a bit of an odor to you?

Don't let Bush get away with it

Here's the deal. The Bushies have lately been downgrading expectations for the election, and will soon be downgrading the expectations for the occupation itself. After the January 30 election, chaos will reign in Iraq, we all know that--even the administration predicts it--but what will happen is that our troops will withdraw into the many bases we've built in Iraq and will therefore suffer fewer deaths while they watch what plays out in Iraq. Craziness, of course, but our forces will intrude only when the craziness begins to impinge on the actions of the pro-US government that is bound to be elected.

Bottom line: Bush will claim victory in Iraq by the establishment of a large US force in the nation to watchdog its government and police its politics so that it remains loyal to the US. What this will look like, precisely, is the Vichy government of France, where the Nazis allowed the southern French to run their domestic affairs with Nazi oversight, largely because the Nazis couldn't afford the money and troops to be full-time enforcers in the region, but they nevertheless maintained fierce control.

There won't be anything like "democracy" in Iraq. It will be a cauldron of conflict and misery--but it will be our cauldron. We'll be in place, wedged into and in control of the country and its assets and its politics.

Bottom, bottom line: This is, of course, why our soldiers died: so we could control Iraq. The same reason Caesar's legions and Alexander's armies died. Not for democracy, for empire.

Now wait a little minute here, buddy

The resolution by which Congress (including Kerry, to his eternal discredit) authorized Bush to wage war in Iraq does not, by its terms, allow Bush to take a whack at Syria, as is now under discussion. A careful reading of the resolution delimits Bush to action against Iraq and requires periodic reports to Congress about his actions. Clearly, unless Bush seeks additional authority his actions will be in violation of the US constitution, not to mention international law. Maybe, if Bush does seek authority from Congress, the Democrats can find the guts to stand against such an outrageous extension of this mad adventure.

Up from the canvas

Here's a piece I wrote to the editor of the SB News-Press. Don't know if they'll print it. I must say, though, this Gonzales is a slimeball, bigtime.

To the Editor:

Remember less than three months ago when we Americans faced the most
momentous election—our gravest political choice--in memory? How could we
forget? How indeed?

It was billed “The Battle for the White House” and it was the longest, most expensive pre-fight promotion in history. The marquee carried their names as a tag-team: Bush/Cheney vs. Kerry/Edwards. Each contestant was skilled, both teams well-fitted. The promoters and pundits touted the match ceaselessly and as the election neared the pollsters called it a toss-up. Interest in the outcome was keen.

The incumbents’ handlers proclaimed that the election pitted principled patriotism against squishy internationalism, determination against equivocation, traditional values against unrestrained license. The opponents countered, claiming that the battle was between truth and falsehood, reason and force, greed-driven inequity and fairly-apportioned means, peace and war. Each side had its ardent,
well-publicized proponents: FoxNews/Clear Channel faced off against “the
liberal media”; Limbaugh/Hannity against Moore/Franken; Christian
Evangelicals against Hollywood Heavyweights. Each team had its unquestioning,
unswerving supporters: Nascar dads and Born-agains for Bush/Cheney; eggheads and alienateds for Kerry/Edwards.

The divisions of fan-base therefore couldn’t have been clearer—this was no Tweedle-dee/Tweedle-dum election—and the stakes couldn’t have been higher. Everybody—the pundits, the contestants, even the voters, agreed: The Battle for the White House was indeed The Battle of the Century, the twentieth as well as the twenty-first.

The match went the distance. The incumbents won fair and square (maybe). But
by no means was it a one-sided bout. The electors of a single populous
state, or a combination of two smaller states out of fifty, were the difference.
But nevertheless, in the intervening weeks, here’s what the incumbents have
done.

First, even before all the votes, by punch or tap, were finally tallied, they declared that they’d handily pinned the opponents (or knocked them out, depending on your choice of metaphor), and thereupon claimed a mandate to rule. Next, they cleared out their Cabinet, moving all but those most solidly in their corner out into private (and very gainful, no doubt) employment, and elevated or retained those who’d been most loyal, regardless of merit, thereby consolidating their power. Third, they announced a series of programs—limiting consumer lawsuits, perpetuating tax reductions for the wealthy, opening national parks to mining and logging, entrusting Social Security funds to private investment, cutting back on international aid to
developing nations—to make certain their intentions are clear: They’d won the
battle for the White House and meant to claim the spoils.

That includes the spoils of war—that is, wars. The war in Iraq and the war on terror.
Remember them? Those are the wars that have gone so well, according to the
incumbents, that they had the temerity recently to award their planners—Tenet,
Bremer and Franks—the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Meanwhile, Iraqi
cities lie in ruins and the country remains a shooting gallery for our
soldiers—1350 of whom have died there, and 10,000-plus have been wounded—and a haven for insurgents. Afghanistan is also largely a wasteland, its peoples
destitute, that has deteriorated into heroin-heaven run by warlords. And
by all accounts—including those of the State Department, the CIA and the
Pentagon—the standing of the United States in the world—Europe, Eurasia, the
Middle East, even South America and Africa—has deteriorated significantly since
the US began its recent reign as world tyrant.

So here’s the question. Given that the election was a tough bout with high stakes and that the winners are claiming and wielding their power with the obvious—indeed, announced—purpose to effectuate their odious (to the losers) agenda, what do the losers do now? Do they remain forever on the canvas, allowing the
incumbents to dance around the ring in celebration? Do they let the
incumbents kick them while they’re down? Or do they, acting out the
American ideal of courage and perseverance in the face of acknowledged
adversity, rise up and say enough!

Well, here’s their chance. The incumbents, flushed with the arrogance of victory, have designated as their choice for the next Attorney General—the nation’s chief law enforcement officer—a man who has in writing presented a legal case to justify
the use of abuse and torture of prisoners, and in the process has belittled the
humanitarian provisions of Geneva Convention, a treaty that the US sponsored,
has rigorously observed and adhered to for decades. The man, Alberto Gonzales,
whom the incumbents seek to have serve as enforcer of our federal laws and
arbiter of their scope, must not be allowed such power.

The opponents must now rise from the canvas, wipe off the sweat and raise their
gloves. So too must any citizen of the United States, supporter of the
Bush/Cheney card or not. We must defeat Gonzales’ nomination. This nation
cannot stand among those who make up the civilized community with him in charge
of our laws. Our troops abroad will pay the price—an horrific price of
fear and flesh—because our most vicious enemies will believe, with Gonzales as
our Attorney General, that we are like them. We ask enough of our soldiers
to send them off to endless, meaningless battles. We can’t strip them of
the one protection they have from desolation and horrible death: The sense that
the nation on whose behalf they serve is the finest nation on Earth, a nation
that in all extremities is a nation of laws.

Do we do this one thing? Do we rise up and defeat Gonzales?

Or are we punchdrunk?

End of empire, continued

My post about the end of the American Empire, in particular my welcome farewell to it, wasn't unAmerican, it was anti-empire. Not just this kind of empire--although it sickens me--but the expansionist, grandiose use of technology and arms to attempt to take over the world. I spent many summers in Sweden, a fine nation of fine folks, which was once an imperial power in the northern climes but has apparently learned its lesson and now rests comfortably on the benefits of its peaceful position in the world.

Could the US ever assume such a role? Certainly not with the Bushies in charge.

Yeah, we gotta watch out for those chisling Marines

We wouldn't want them to get away with any cheap medals.

You heard it here first

The American Empire is over. We are now in the post-period, rather like Britain in the mid-1800's, or Rome in the second century. It'll take a few years, perhaps a decade or two, but mark my words, it's over.

Why do I say this? Because the rest of the world has decided to allow us to spend and waste ourselves into oblivion, has determined that its only course is to stand aside while we implode, or explode, depending on your choice of metaphor. Indeed, they're watching us do so. Just check out these facts:

1. They've determined our madness in Iraq is to be allowed to proceed, deaths and destruction and demonic purpose and all, in the face of the unimpeachable history that "democracy," which we profess to be fostering, cannot be achieved through force of arms. They'll observe from the sidelines while we throw our money into that bottomless pit while they build up their infrastructures, they improve their standards of living (already superior to ours), and they grow stronger and wiser and more humane than we.

2. They've determined that our currency should be allowed to survive the assault occasioned by our monetary and fiscal profligacy. They hold so much of our debt that they can't bring themselves to question the worth of the dollar, and so they support it. But they're merely biding their time, knowing that a slow accretion of value of alternative currencies (there are three contenders) will, in the end, benefit them--and doom us.

3. They pretend to support us--perhaps out of fear of not supporting us--but are merely fiddling while we burn. They buy our products (although some of them are rebelling), they bow to our culture (ditto), they suck up to our leaders (ditto, ditto), all the while wishing for, and plotting, our demise.

Every empire, every dominant culture--Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, France, Britain (not to mention USSR)--has expired, doomed by the weight of its righteous assumption of propriety. The United States, after all is said and done, will be the briefest empire of all. And I for one say Good Riddance.

Life in the trenches

From Riverbend, at her Baghdad Burning blog:

"The elections are set for the 29th. It's an interesting situation. The different sects and factions just can't seem to agree. Sunni Arabs are going to
boycott elections. It's not about religion or fatwas or any of that so much as
the principle of holding elections while you are under occupation. People don't
really sense that this is the first stepping stone to democracy as western media
is implying. Many people sense that this is just the final act of a really bad
play. It's the tying of the ribbon on the "democracy parcel" we've been handed.

It's being stuck with an occupation government that has been labeled
'legitimate' through elections. We're being bombarded with cute Iraqi
commercials of happy Iraqi families preparing to vote. Signs and billboards
remind us that the elections are getting closer...Can you just imagine what our
history books are going to look like 20 years from now?

"The first democratic elections were held in Iraq on January 29, 2005 under the ever-watchful collective eye of the occupation forces, headed by the United States of America. Troops in tanks watched as swarms of warm, fuzzy Iraqis headed for the ballot boxes to select one of the American-approved candidates..."

Wow!!

I've discovered UnderNews, a website with original articles, a blog, references to progressive material from other sources, that's erudite and clever and insightful. Check it out.

And this related site, FreePress, is a fine source of information about what, to me, has become the most critical subject in our deteriorating democracy, media reform.

This is just a test

My last several posts have drawn zero comments, causing me to wonder if anyone's reading these wondrous observations. I know Kyle is, because I nag him in person. But is anybody else? If so, just now and then let me know. If not, the silence will be telling too.

A timely tsunami

Bushies must be dancing in the oval office, rejoicing in the effects of the tsunami and the media attention it's receiving. I swear, Bush is blessed, a Fortunate Son, to have nature provide him with relief from having to answer for the continuing death toll of US soldiers in Iraq. Does anybody realize that five--count 'em, five--soldiers died yesterday? That was once big news, but now with hundreds of thousands of bodies in Indonesia and India and places like that, it feels puny to complain about just five--count 'em, five--dead Americans and the scores of others who died in the past week in the war we've waged in Iraq.

I gotta tell ya, there's something horribly wrong with this nation, its media, its morality. Something wicked and, it feels, irremediable.

Fallujah's not forgotten

The recent report of the ascending death toll in Fallujah, a high percentage of the victims being children, are emanating from medical officials who survived the attack three months ago. Recall, the first target in that assault by Marines was a hospital that was claimed to be a nest of insurgency because it kept complaining of the death toll. Well, that place is toast, so these awful numbers must be from a "reliable" source, i.e., someone even the US can't impeach.

Are we safer yet?

So now, in addition to al Qaida, we've got the Iraqi resistance announcing that they're going to attack the US. Thanks, George.

Interesting statistic

The number of Iraqi policemen and security troops killed by the insurgency since the US occupation is 1300, just about the same number of soldier/corpses as the US has experienced, which means that as of today almost as many people have died "liberating" Iraq as died in 9/11. My reaction? Disgust. And if you add in the number of American and Iraqi wounded, plus the number of Iraq deaths since the US invasion (estimated at 100,000), I feel an inexpressible revulsion at those--Bush and his evildoing henchmen--who've brought this on. May they rot in hell, and if there's no hell, may they simply rot.

Spinning, spinning

Even before the Western media announces the US Army's capture of their pre-determined super bad-guy in Iraq, Al-Zarqawi, the anti-occupation groups in Iraq are claiming that he's just another bad guy and that his arrest won't diminish the power of the insurgency, that it's Iraqis, not just outlanders, who want the US to cease its occupation.

So--is there truth somewhere in the middle of this muddle?

Why our billions and our soldiers are being spent in Iraq

Here's the deal: All previous false justifications for this illegal war have evaporated in light of reality. So here are the three that are left.
First, we broke it, we own it. Great. A terrific reason for killing and maiming them and us: To keep Bush/Rummie/Condi from losing face.
Second, we're building a free nation. Great. With force of arms we're installing "democracy"? Is there any historical precedent for the success/justification of this? I defy anybody to come up with one--and that's the reason the Republicans, including Bush/Rummie/Condi, have said this cannot be a reason for our expenditure of life and treasure abroad.
Third--and this is what I most often hear on the barricades from slope-headed Bush supporters--we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. Fabulous. We create a war and wage it with fury, killing and maiming thousands of our soldiers, and multi-thousands of Iraqis, in a battle we created as a diversion. That's it, Mr. and Mrs. Republican, slope-headed American: Your kid died as a decoy, a fakey wooden-duck target, to keep the bad guys whom we've provoked from knocking down our towers and symbols and freeways.

Well, if anyone's willing to admit to such a senseless, inane, false justification for the slaughter of innocents, let them be labeled barbarians, because this is precisely the barbarity that I for one thought we'd evolved from.

One look into the simian face, the fatuous, ignorant visage of our leader, placed in power by fatuous ignorance, tells me this: Americans, all but me and 52 million others who voted Bush out, deserve the deaths they're inflicting on the world. The continued wails from the warriors and their supporter to "support the troops" is rank idiocy. Support the troops by getting them home, giving them some loving and education and a decent task to do.

Rowdy Saudi

It seems that a principal planner of the deadly blast last month that killed 18 US troops in the mess hall in Mosul, Iraq, was a Saudi Arabian. So were most of the WTC and Pentagon attacks on 9/11. I wonder why, since we've laid waste to Iraq and Afghanistan in pursuit of "terrorists" we haven't attacked Saudi Arabia? Any ideas?

Genius at work

Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is a fascist pig--but he's a Latino fascist pig. As this NYT essay points out, he'll face "hard questioning" by the Senate Judiciary Committee before it sends its recommendation of approval to the Senate, but eventually he'll be confirmed. The "story" of his rise from poverty to power will be too irresistible for the Senate to ignore; it will instead ignore his evil opinions on matters of torture, treaty and justice.

Reagan came up with a black fascist pig for the Supreme Court, a man whose qualifications were minimal for the seat and whose conduct was genuinely ugly and reprehensible. Now this. Where do the Republicans get these people? Out of what cave do they crawl?

Clint Eastwood

I'm watching the Actors' Studio interview of Clint Eastwood. He's certainly a charming guy, good looking, straight-talking. But I've never been much of a fan of his acting--he seems entirely one-dimensional--nor of his directing, even though he's received adulation and awards galore for his movies. I didn't sign on to the Mystic River cult and even The Unforgiven was, to me, a fine, but somewhat ordinary story.

He's just come out with a movie about a female boxer and I heard a reviewer say what I've been wanting to say for years: That Clint Eastwood is revered by actors and fellow-traveling movie folks more for his persona than his talent.

So, you see, I have more interests than just picking on Bush/Cheney/Rummie/Condi. I can pick on Clint too.

Thoughts on the new year

My brother sent me an email today that I'm setting out as a post on this blog. We think alike, my brother and I, and so if he protests my posting his thoughts, I hereby adopt them as my own.

So we drift into another year as nature wreaks greater havok than war.. A Tsunami that no one could have predicted has randomly inflicted suffering on poor people in third world countries. Thr magnitude of this disaster dwarfs the Florida hurricanes and the twin towers tragedy. And while the world mourns the innocent loss of life, the survival of almost a million of survivors becomes questionable. . And this country continues another year of wasting its human and material recourses in a futile Iraq war that cannot be won militarily. It's another Vietnam alright and we are doomed to defeat. This year will bring more humiliation and disgrace as well as outright danger from the terrorists we have spawned by our stupidity.Using military force to fight a guerilla war in a country with so many cultural and religious obstacles to having a democratically government will only make the situation worse. We need to bring our troops home now and let the chips fall where they may. If, by some miracle, we extract our military from Iraq this year, we may preserve our own democracy that is at risk by continuing this misadventure. May the new year bring the blessing of bringing our troops home from a war that not only is not necessary to our national security but is endangering it.

Who writes this stuff?

This AP report, carried on ABC's website, adopts the Bush administration spin entirely as to its reaction to the damage caused by the tsunami in Asia. It leads with Colin Powell's imminent visit to the area, accompanied by Jeb Bush (supposedly because of his familiarity with relief efforts), and touts the administration's "broadening of its effort" at relief, quoting exclusively Republicans' concerns for the needy and displaced. Buried at the end of the story are the tallies of other nations' financial commitments to the effort and the aside that they "far outdistance" the US contribution. Not a mention of the obvious: That Jeb Bush's involvement is an early step in advertising him for a White House bid in 2008; and that five days have passed since the disaster and only now is there any official response by the administration (other than a Bush's earlier reaction that the US is not "stingy" with its foreign assistance).

The AP dispatch isn't a news item, it's a Republican "talking points" memo.

The end of war

There was a time, about fifteen years ago, when I felt as does the author of this fine essay, that humankind possessed the capacity for peace, that the prospect of world peace was at hand. Walls had crumbled, dictatorships had ended, new alliances were being formed in place of decades of hostilities. There was talk among economists of a "peace dividend," the reversion of massive sums of money and effort that could be turned to humanitarian goals now that major enmities had ended.

I wish I shared the author's view--it's more of a hope, really--that humans can know peace, but while I acknowledge her perspective, I find little comfort in it. True, we now embrace wider notions of justice and include more humans within our concept of entitlement to decency. But as we've done so, we've also expanded our capacity to kill and exploit. Our race may indeed be more sensitive to suffering, but it is also more able to inflict it, creating, in my mind, a race much closer to the finish than ever before.

Molly Ivins has a point

The reason she doesn't write fiction, she tells us, is that truth is so much more interesting and odd and, actually, unbelievable than anything a writer could make up. The examples she gives are amusing, to which I would add a few that are so astounding as to be too far out to make it into even a Tom Clancy novel. (1) The largest ocean liner in history, carrying titans of industry on its maiden voyage, sinks in the Atlantic less than a day from its destination, New York City. (2) An odd-looking, uneducated Austrian, fresh from prison, becomes the leader of a German nationalist party and goes on to cause world devastation. (3) A second-rate Texan, loser in his only solo business ventures, is made president of the US without winning a majority of votes and goes on to wreak havoc and misery on the world's populace.

Yeah, Molly's got a point. You couldn't make any of those stories up.

Stingy?

How can you call the Bush administration stingy when it comes to monetary relief for the victims of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean? Why, with the addition of $20 million, the US has pledged a total of $35 million to the effort--almost as much as the Republicans are going to spend on the inauguration ceremonies for their president!

Worth reading, activist or not

Rebecca Solnit's essay, Hope at Midnight, found after scrolling down a bit in this TomDispatch post, is worth reading for anybody who's despairing over the course of our nation's politics. It does its best to paint hopeful signs for the planet and almost persuades me to overcome my abiding pessimism. Almost.

These people are monsters

Bush has already, before his second term begins, cut back on environmental regulations in the national parks, vowed to make his weathy-favoring tax cuts permanent and determined to cut back on "discretionary spending" in the budget because (largely on account of his war in Iraq and the loss of income from his tax reductions) the US is mired in debt. Guess who's the first to lose out on funding for the upcoming year: Save the Children.

Well, now, isn't this interesting?

Venezuela, whose president Chavez is no fan of Bush, has just made a deal with China, granting them access to large quantities of its oil and natural gas. Venezuela recognizes China's increasing need for oil and wants to reduce its dependence on exports to the US; China wants to reduce its dependence on Middle East oil; and together the two nations are telling the US this: go fuck yourself.

Rummie's umpteenth justification for invading Iraq

The Iraqis are from the "same part of the world" as those who attacked the US on 9/11/01.

Coming soon to a theater near you

film footage showing the actual suicide bombing of the Mosul Army mess hall. It was so well rehearsed that a video of the blast will soon be released, according to this source (scroll to end of article).

A new high

The dollar hit $1.35 to the euro yesterday, based on tepid financial news from the US and moderating information about the European economy. This figure had previously been said to be a tipping point, the level at which European financial folks would begin to intervene to support the dollar. No such move has been mentioned lately, and as the article in Forex states, the dollar may slide as low as $1.50 next year, a low that may be necessary for the US to begin softening its trade imbalance. (The idea is, apparently, that at some point the dollar may be so cheap to Europeans that they start buying US products--and of course the US consumer and traveler pays the price because they can no longer afford anything European.)

If I were holding dollars, I'd be bailing out. Wait! I'm holding dollars!

A slice of life in Iraq

is captured in this report about the thriving market that has arisen in scavenging out-of-date drugs and magazines and cans of food from the trash left by our soldiers, then reselling them for profit. What are we doing to these people?

Bush lied, People were tortured

According to this blog, and supported by the pdf copy of one of the documents recently obtained by the ACLU, the use of dogs, stress positions and the like was expressly authorized by Bush in an executive order signed by him. Since he has denied issuing any such order, and it was probably drafted by his Attorney General designate, Gonzales, the EO will surely come to light during Gonzales' confirmation hearings in the Senate. No?

Suicide bombing

It's been said that if you're willing to die to accomplish it, you can kill anybody. We're certainly learning that in Iraq, with this bombing of the US Army mess hall. The effect is, of course, to place all military installations at risk, to foil the US efforts to trust the Iraqis to handle their own security, to be taught skills by US teachers, to participate in their "democratization." There will soon be body searches of every Iraqi (and, for that matter, every not-obvious gringo) who happens by a military installation, and a checkpoint at every location where Americans congregate. Iraq will become, even more than it is now, a concrete-barriered encampment.
The Bush-repeated refrain is that the insurgency is stepping up in advance of the election. The Administration said the same thing in advance of the Interim Election. Of course that's bullshit. The insurgency is stepping up, and will continue to step up, so long as the US military is on Iraqi soil.

Not the Lincoln Memorial, but close.

"If you heat me, do I not melt?" A fitting tribute to Bush, to be carved in wax at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. But as one of the three wise men in a Nativity Scene?

Riverbend's Christmas list

Here's what Riverbend, the Baghdad blogger who tells it (the occupation) like it is, wants for Christmas.

Fallujah, continued

This article details the present status of Fallujah and the US military's plans for its future. It's been said that war is hell. Apparently, liberation is hell, too.

Can they do this?

The US State Department can ban a foreign TV source from satellite transmission into the US by labeling it a "terrorist organization"? News to me. But then, that's the point, isn't it--to keep the news from us.

Blogging away

I'm away from my cable connection, surviving on an iffy dialup connection in Tucson, and so will be unable to post more than occasionally for the next two weeks. But I couldn't, just couldn't let the results of this poll go undisplayed. Seems that forty-plus percent of Americans want to curtail the civil liberties of Muslims in America. And who are these folks, these unAmericans? Why, they're the religious right, of course, in particular those who get most of their news from TV. Let's see, what demographic does that describe? You got it--Bush's base.

Ya know, this just might work

Here's a plan--long-range and iffy, to be sure--that just might work. Antiwar efforts should be channeled toward making military service, in the outrageous context of this Commander-in-Chief, an uncool thing for military-age youth. It would seem possible to convince them that these wars are wars of old whities, for the protection of corporate interests. A decline in recruitment could occur, requiring that the war machine be fed by a draft; and when that happens--look out. A powerful peace movement, fed by the Internet and encouraged by already-prevalent youth entertainment personalities, would not be far behind.

Rewarding failure

This WaPo editorial about Bush's latest public relations idiocy--his awarding of Medals of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to Bremer, Franks and Tenet--is spot on.

To make these awards in the face of failure -- the mounting American death toll,
the awful suffering of the Iraqis, the looming possibility of civil war, the
nose-thumbing of the still-at-large Osama bin Laden and the madness of making
war for a nonexistent reason -- has the creepy feel of the old communist states,
where incompetents wore medals and harsh facts were denied.

.

Somebody please watch Bush's inauguration proceedings

because I'm sure not going to, for obvious partisan reasons. But I do need to know how much it looks like a Nazi gathering at Nuremberg in the 1930's.

Blog trolling

Is the US government--that is, the Bush administration--funding "independent" bloggers from Iraq so that they'll be supportive of the US occupation? A couple of Iraqis, two brothers, are apparently being feted in Washington by Wolfowitz and the gang because of their favorable postings on their website; while those Iraqis who are critical are being left to suffer the miserable, dark, freezing Badhdad. So, be warned: Not all of what you read on Iraq's blogosphere is "independent."

Here are two relatively brief accounts of the present effort by the Bush administration to oust the US nuclear weapons inspector, Mohammed ElBarradei, one from The Nation, the other from the New York Times. Their content is similar, but their cant differs significantly. I'm not certain which form of information I prefer. I believe The Nation piece accurately reflects reality, but the NYT story is more complete. (Of course Fox News would carry the report under this headline: "US seeks replacement of pro-Iran UN functionary".)

Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder

Halliburton hires twenty-five Columbian gunmen to guard its facilities in Iraq. The pay is $7000 per month, with quarterly vacations in Europe and free life insurance.

Exit strategy

There's a saying in AA: The way to stop drinking is to stop drinking. Same with Iraq. The way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq.

Has it come to this?

Tapping the phone of the UN's nuclear-weapons inspector? Apparently so.

What to do, what to do?

Four years ago I "sat out" the presidential election, voting as a Green for its candidate, Ralph Nader. (Fortunately, California was a "safe" state that went solidly for Gore, so I didn't end up losing sleep over my vote--and in fact, at the time, I regarded the choice of Bush/Gore as a tweedledee-dum situation.)

This time, I voted as if my vote counted, even though Kerry was a lock in California and I wasn't enamored of his candidacy much.

Now, if I were a Sunni Muslim in Iraq, what would I do? One Imam calls for a boycott, others believe participation is imperative. This article spells out their dilemna, and for them the stakes are as high, if not higher, than ours were in 2004.

The Power of Nightmares

This three-part documentary on BBC TV needs to be aired in America. Its premise is that those who are engineering the "war on terror," on all sides, have a stake in its maintenance. On our side, the film points out that the same folks (you know who they are) who neo-conned Reagan (and us) into beefing up our forces with mock armaments in the eighties are once again at it, creating phantoms for us to make war on.

Thom Hartmann synopsizes the film here.

For regular readers of this blog, this may not be news. It certainly isn't to its author. I long ago realized that both bin Laden (and now his formal and informal cohorts) have a stake in the ongoing "war on terror," without which they'd have no function, no purpose. The same is true of the Bush administration, commanded by the same forces that long ago made war (on the Soviets, now on terror) their reason for existence.

We who don't want war--the vast majority of human beings--are at their mercy. They've now gained control over the political and military power and with continued feints toward more attacks and uncertainty and fear will maintain it until they're at last found out. It will take a huge upheaval in the US to dislodge them. The media loves war--check out the rise in ratings of both escapist fare and newscasts during our several wars--and so the mainstream broadcasters can't be counted on to focus on the reality that our warmongering leaders are continuing war to continue in power.

Well then, Who will arise to bring us to our senses? You? Me? Us? I guess so.

Once again, I'm speechless

Not only has Blogger been eating up my posts lately, and delaying those that it doesn't devour, on the rare occasion that I am successful in posting, the item leaves me without words to express my outrage. Like this one, describing our troops' actions in Iraq.

Blowback

This article about the consequences of America's international arrogance and imperial designs places in perspective how instead of a "peace dividend" from the "end of the cold war" our policies have created a more dangerous world where we're viewed as the enemy in most, if not all, regions. The author leaves out Africa and Central and South America; probably only in the interests of space.

There was once a time, not too long ago, when world travel--seeing the pyramids, the Holy Land, Thailand--was a distant dream of mine. Now that I'm older, it's not so distant in time--but it's no longer a dream. It's become a nightmare.

The Higher Pie

is a clever blog, taking on all facets of the world view of the great unwashed. Check it out.

It gets sadder and sadder in Iraq

Check out this report on the status of Iraq's economy, in the wake of the 100 illegal orders issued by Tribune Bremer, essentially turning Iraq into a US subsidiary.

Family values in action

One of Bush's posterboys bites the dust. From Atrios, by way of Daily Kos.

Isn't this special?

Clear Channel radio, the already right-wing purveyor of Limbaugh, Hannity, Michaels Reagan and Savage and the like, with a string of 100 stations nationwide, has chosen Fox News to provide its hourly news summary for the next five years. Those who listen to the rightist commentary, therefore, will have no respite from that poison, receiving instead the "fair and balanced" spewings of Rupert Murdock's minions.

Chicken Little, I'm not

This essay, from no less learned a journal than The Economist, frets in similar fashion about the future of the US economy, given Bush's profligate disregard for the status of the dollar in the world markets.

My outrage is unexpressible

but that won't stop me from posting this study about the miserliness of the rich countries in extending development aid to the poor nations. In particular, check out this sentence at the end of the piece:

In fact, [the US] entire development aid spending in 2003 came to only ten percent of what it spent on the Iraq war that year.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

Bush is apparently relying on this adage in his continuing rosy descriptions of the situation in Iraq. His lies worked to get him elected over Kerry, and so why not keep on lying?

Do you think that authoritative reports about how awful the situation really is, such as this one by the retiring CIA station chief in Badgdad will change Bush's mind, or his rhetoric? Probably not.

And meanwhile, the kids--ours and theirs--keep dying.

I bought a television a year ago

solely for the purpose of following the TV media's account of politics leading up to the election, and I watched (and posted about) the travesty regularly. Since the election, I haven't watched the news (can't handle it), and am once again dependent solely on newspaper and newsmagazine accounts (which are okay, I guess), but I'm wondering, once again, if accounts such as this are picked up in the US in any form that may sway the stupid shitheads who supported this war, to make them appreciate that it's worse than a quagmire.

Here's why it's worse: Like Vietnam, we can't get out with "saving face." But unlike Vietnam, if we "lose" this war, we'll lose a lot more than a barricade against evil Communism; we'll actually lose something of value, and I'm not talking oil. I'm talking about global morality. Indeed, we've lost that whether or not we subjugate the arabs in Iraq. We've lost it, win or lose. The perfect quagmire.

The last straw?

If ever there were a doubt about our status in Iraq--liberators or occupiers--this latest outrage seals it. Now, it turns out, Fallujans will be required to wear identity badges at all times, cars will be banned, and the men--those who are allowed to return to the city after its demolition by our forces--will find that the only work they can carry out is in the supervision of our military. Of course, travel in and out of the city will be banned.

Warsaw, anyone?

Addendum: I didn't mention it above, and should have: The Boston Globe article had this scary sentence about our security procedures in Fallujah:

Back at their headquarters, the [Marines] debated the procedure for allowing civilians to return. Major Wade Weems warned that there should be a set number per day so that a backlog would not form behind the retina-scanning machine, fueling resentment.

A retina-scanning machine? What the fuck????

Naomi Klein rocks

Since I read her book No Logo a couple of years ago, I've been a fan of hers. Back then, her main beat was anti-commecialism, and she's still at it. But lately she's been reporting on the war in Iraq, to great effect.

Never mind

I guess that wasn't the actor Nolte who died in Iraq. He's here, very much alive.

It's the media, stupid!

Sure, the media--television, especially--cost Kerry the election. Sure, TV will continue plumping for the incumbent, a supporter of big business, which said businesses own the media. Sure, the media will continue to ignore facts--such as the ever-increasing civilian death toll in Iraq--that are unfavorable to the incumbent president. And so, sure, in two years, or four, six and eight, the same big-business politicians will win election, courtesy of their lackies, the TV stations that provide the great unwashed in America the only source of their information.

So what are we going to do about it?

Ya gotta watch this

If you've got broadband, and eight minutes, take a look at Orwell's America, thirty years later. So well done, it's frightening.

Thanks, Kyle.

Miserable, miserable failure

Everything Bush touches turns to shit. From the headlines: Iraqi soldiers are turning out to be completely worthless in combat against the insurgents; the International Red Cross has found that our treatment of "enemy combatants" at Gitmo is tantamount to torture; the dollar is sinking due to international unease at America's growing trade and treasury deficits; inflation is on the rise; consumer confidence is down. That's just today. And we have four more years of this?

A day late and a dollar (many dollars, actually) short

I've written several posts in the distant past (and I also wrote one last week that somehow didn't find its way onto my blog--Thanks, Blogger!) about the sinking dollar. A year ago I predicted it would decline to $1.30 against the euro, and now it's at $1.34. Why do I remind you of this? Because--your heard it here first--tomorrow, Monday, 11/29/04, is going to be a disaster for the dollar. Due to the feints in favor of the euro by the Chinese and others, individual dollar-holders are going to start dumping, and individual dollar-buyers are going to wait for a sizeable drop in the value before buying. I understand the European banks (maybe other governmental entities) will intervene and start buying dollars at $1.35, but that may be too late. There could well be a panic--really--in which even governmental buying won't ward off the selling frenzy.

Okay, maybe I'm being too dramatic. Maybe tomorrow will bring only a further gradual decline in the dollar's value, but that decline will only be gradual for a little while. The arrogance of America's leadership, led by capitalists who believe they govern the world, has shown no desire to stop the decline of the dollar in the hope that a weak dollar will lead to more sales of their products abroad. But guess what: Maybe they don't rule the world anymore. Maybe the dollar will prove to be like any other commodity, susceptible to evaluation based on its inherent worth. If so, I'd be selling like crazy. Wouldn't you?

Speechless

My access to Blogger to create posts has been interrupted lately (don't know whazzup, but it's okay now), but no matter. I've been tongue-tied. So much is amiss in the world that I'm frozen in despair, unable to address any of the outrages.

And besides the usual observations and protests of the Left (and to some extent the Far Right) in the US, and the disbelief of the rest of the world, nothing is being done to stanch the inexorable flow of events to disaster.

Perhaps the events themselves will bring the evil folly of the US administration to an end. The dollar may nosedive so deeply that we lose the ability to control the flow of oil, plunging us into depression. Foreign nations may gather enough gumption to stand up to our global reach. Even our citizens may rise up, once the charade of Bush's legitimacy is seen as the fraud it is.

But none of this seems likely this morning. So I'm going to shut up.

Amazing, amazing.

This article shows the unbelieveable tolerance of the parents of this US soldier.

The soldier was wounded in the battle for Fallujah, Iraq. He was riding in a Humvee when a sniper’s bullet hit him in the left temple and exited his right temple. He survived a two-hour ride in the Humvee from Fallujah to the Army hospital in Baghdad. He was in surgery for five hours.

Doctors told his parents he was the luckiest and healthiest, but everything is not rosy.
Doctors told them that where he got hit, would change his personality opposite to what it was.
His mother said that is good for he did get mad and was irritated easily.
He is now able to move both sides of his body. He has not walked yet, but doctors predict that he will.
He could possibly always need help and not be independent, but his mother does not believe that.
His mother is turning to her faith for him to have a complete recovery and asking all to pray for the same for her son.

Talk about calling up the infirm for active duty

I just read that Nick Nolte died, having suffered battle injuries in Iraq.

An elucidaton

In yesterday's "Thanksgiving" post, I made a comparison between Cambodia and the direction the US is headed in. I need to explain.

Certainly, the agonies of Cambodia, then and now, are far deeper than ours. Pol Pot's rule, for example, was tryannical compared even to Saddam Hussein's; and the aftermath is still felt in that country, as is that of our massive bombing during the Vietnam war. I intended to use Cambodia as an example of tyranny unchecked, not as a direct factual comparison to the US presently.

Here's why I'm so sad about the US, both historically and now. The geography of the nation is the world's finest. Beautiful, isolated from foreign foes, rich beyond anywhere else in natural resources and farmland and climate. It was for centuries guarded by natives who were neither numerous nor rapacious enough to ruin it, and so when the Europeans "discovered" it they found almost no opposition to their conquest and exploitation.

The most courageous and vital of Europeans settled the nation, just at a time in western history when democratic ideals were flowering; and in response they drew up their liberating documents to reflect those ideals. At that moment in history, the nation had its finest hours (tainted of course by slavery and conquest of the natives.)

It's been all downhill from there. We've engaged in endless wars and conquests. In 1812, in the 1860's, in the 1890's, in 1917, in 1941, in 1950, in 1965, in 1991, in 2003. Some of the wars have been forced upon us, but these last two--and in particular the latest invasion of Iraq--was a straightforward war of agression, in violation of the UN Charter (a document we drafted) and of international law.

We are now an occupying force in Iraq, murdering its civilians, imposing our version of government on its citizens, imprisoning thousands, devastating its cities. We are wrecking the planet with our profligate waste of resources, tearing at the environment, depleting its resources, spreading our ruinous "pop culture" across the globe, leaving the peoples of the poor nations to starve while we carry away their few riches: oil, timber, minerals, to feed our frenzy of consumption. We are led by maniacal liars, cheats and frauds, whose sole purpose is to perpetuate their power, and we re-elect them in elections that are meaningless, based on fluffy ads disseminated by power-seeking corporations.

From a country flush with energy and ideals, blessed with limitless resources, we have become a cynical, power-mad nation, corrupt and dangerous to Earth. We are the evil empire. Maybe not like Cambodia, but certainly more frightening.

Thugs and terrorists

On CNN yesterday, the talking-head newscaster told of the resistance that the US was facing in Fallujah and elsewhere. He called the resisters "thugs and terrorists" even though, in the stories he was reporting there were no killings of civilians, no beheadings, just a pitched battle between US military forces and the armed people who were shooting at them.

CNN has no business spouting the Bush party line, that any Iraqi, or anybody, who fights the US occupation is a thug or terrorist. If a foreign nation invaded the US, I--and most of the Red State citizenry--would fight like crazy, using rocks, shotguns, anything. Would we therefore be thugs and terrorists? Maybe we would be so labeled by the occupiers, but to me we'd be heroes.

Thanksgiving

This morning, a glorious, vibrant sunny morning in Santa Barbara, I was reflecting on giving thanks. It crossed my mind that our nation was in dire straits due to the recent election of Bush/Cheney, and that most, if not all of the complaints I'd blogged about over the last months were unattended and likely to be exacerbated during Bush's next term. What, I wondered, was there to give thanks about given that condition of the nation?

And then, as I was getting ready for a bike ride, a neighbor happened by. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a logo on the back. "Danger--Land Mines!" it said, beneath the image of a skull. I asked him about the shirt and he told me he'd bought it in Cambodia, where that sign was posted on every pathway through the jungle and where every third child he'd seen in the month that he visited Cambodia was missing a limb, usually a leg.

And so I give thanks. Compared to Cambodia, the United States, even with Bush in office, isn't so bad.

But it's close.

Silly me

I thought that Bush's call for January elections in Iraq, and lately his insistence that the date not be moved back on account of the violence, was because of his firm commitment to a democratic rule in the country. But no, he (probably Rove and Wolfowitz or somebody) has a more devious purpose. The sooner the Bushies can claim the election to be a done deal, the sooner they can claim that the US occupation is truly legitimate because it's at the behest of an elected government. And make no mistake, the US will be invited to stay and enforce "peace," because of the genius of the Bush plan. An "election" in January 2005 will just be another rubber-stamp, confirming in power those who favor the US presence because, like the interim government, the assembly will contain largely representatives of the status quo--Shias and Kurds--who've fared relatively well since the invasion.

There's this prospect in the long term, however. The arab nationalism that's for decades been at the root of unrest throughout the Middle East (even we support it, in theory, calling it "self-determination") will eventually call for the ouster of the American presence, at which time, Look out. The region will explode in violence, as factions battle for control of Iraq and, likely, other nations. And the strongest factions, and most highly motivated, will be those who resisted the occupation in the first place.

Two more cents

I've heretofore laid out a sketch of my reasons why Bush won the election, my conclusion being that he won for about fifty coalescing reasons, some inherent in his incumbency and the existing state of the nation and the world, and some manufactured by Rove, by the Democrats, by Kerry himself. But the abiding problem, the 800-pound gorilla, that swayed much of the Red State public to support Bush in spite of his amazing record of bungling and failure, was the media. The network and cable-TV reporters were demonstrably terrible in telling the American public what was really going on in Iraq, in the "war on terror," in the economy--everywhere.

They were cowed and/or corrupt in 2004 and the reason I'm writing this post is this. They're at it again, now falling into line in their reporting of politics in the US and abroad. No analysis, no definitive evaluation of anything. Just headlines, mostly spouting military and administration talking-points, night after night. All media owned by huge corporations who either support Bush or benefit from his positions. And this isn't going to change between now and the next election. We're in for years of this barrage of managed information, and we may never be able to take back the truth except by revolution. I mean, REVOLUTION, in which the monster companies that dominate the sources of information that the American public receives are overtaken and are allowed to disseminate something other than the Republican party line.

Update: I'm not alone in my assessment of the cowed media, especially television reportage of the war in Iraq. Check out this authoritative piece.

Frightening

This long article in the New York Times details the Kerry get-out-the-vote effort in Ohio, and concludes that although it was magnificent, and did indeed result in a higher number of Democratic voters than ever before--and more Kerry votes than they had planned--Ohio was lost because the Republicans launched a powerful operation too and, to the horror of the Democrats, "there are more Republicans in Ohio than Democrats," reversing an ancient political fact.

The "I" word

Many months ago I predicted inflation in the American economy because of the profligate spending by the Bushies on crazy domestic programs, tax cuts, trade imbalances that are staggering and, of course, the mad spending on the Iraq adventure. Finally, after Greenspan tried to hold onto the low interest rates as long as possible, inflation is finally imminent, and it's going to be vicious, because it will be triggered by foreign investors' finally becoming disenchanted with US federal debt instruments, causing the interest rates on notes to rise, and dragging everything in the economy, from consumer loans and mortgages to retail goods to rise, all in an harmonious surge of prices.

This is as good as it gets

Once again, AntiWar dot com--Justin Raimondo--has said it all.

Just for today

Check out this site--Iraq Coalition Casualties--for the incredible string of violent attacks on troops, civilians, oil facilities throughout Iraq. The list is of just today's attacks. Imagine if the same thing were happening daily in California, which is one-third more populous than Iraq. We'd be in a state of seige! Like Iraq.

More Gestapo

Now, it seems, officials of political parties that oppose the Iraqi interim government are being arrested.

What next? Are Sunnis going to be required to wear yellow crescents on their robes, or maybe six-pointed stars?

This is an interesting twist

We liberals can't contain Bush over the next two or four years. He's off to the races, naming a Fascist to the Attorney General's post, keeping Rummie aboard at Defense, and now putting Condi Rice's name up for Secretary of State, to replace Colin Powell, the only colorably sane member of the Bush administration.

But maybe Bush won't name Condi, after all. Not because of his scruples or our protest, but because of the impact on the dollar. As Forex puts it,

Considering Rice’s staunch support for the war in Iraq, there is a sense that Rice’s unilateral tendencies [and] rhetoric may be too excessive for the habitually diplomatic State Department. Increased expectations of rising unilateralism in US foreign policy would tend to trigger dollar selling by an increasingly geopolitically sensitive currency market.

More Gestapo

This story about the US flying its prisoners to torture-using countries for "interrogation" isn't just some conspiracy-theorist's rant. It's being reported by the London Times (through an Australian weekly), a newspaper that's owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdock.

Kerry's alternate concession speech

Found on this clever blog, through Kyle's blog, Metaphor, the concession speech Kerry should have made. Not a healing address, but true.

The latest Gestapo tactic

Let's see: Invasion, armed occupation, installation of a puppet government, collective punishment, torture, oppressive treatment of civilian population, massive armed suppression of the resistance and now, arresting members of the clergy for opposing the occupation. All to "liberate" the occupied nation.

Sound like the Nazis in France, the Soviets in Hungary, the Italian Fascists in Ethiopia? No, it's America in Iraq, the Good Guys of the world.

The other Fallujah

"Rebel city captured," "Fallujah under control," trumpet the headlines of US dailies. And the news channels are worse, filled with talking-head ex-generals, who tout the military acumen of our fighting forces in using airpower, tanks, missles, and ten-fold the troops to bring to its knees a tiny brigade of arabs armed with rifles, rocks and grenades. What war-mongering, bullshit! What ghastly lies! Here's what's going on in Fallujah, according to a Red Crescent member who's trying to get medical attention to the thousands of wounded Iraqis in the city. And even if the report is one-sided, why not report it together witht the one-sided reports from our military?

I am disgusted with our media. They never learn. Or is it that they don't want to? Are they part of the problem? Absolutely.