Cartoons!

Well, it beats paying any attention at all to Buish's SOTU speech!



Sadly, Ted Rall is right.

And Steve Bell's latest is brilliant...

What If Sibel Is Right?

Let's just think for a minute about exactly what Sibel Edmonds says:

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.

Now, ignoring all the official silence and water-muddying, let's just assume that Sibel's allegations are 100% correct. What does it MEAN?

Let's break the story down into its constituent parts:

1. There are highly placed US officials leaking important secrets about nuclear weapons (and other things too, presumably).
2. These officials are being "controlled" (paid) by Israel and Turkey. So both those governments (and others?) have infiltrated the top levels of US government and intelligence agencies.
3. These nuclear (and other?) secrets are being sold on an "international black market".

But surely the most damning fact of all is this:

4. The FBI, the Bush administration, the US Congress and even the US media have all conspired to silence Sibel's allegations.

If you are wondering how far the tentacles of corruption reach, that last one spells it all out, doesn't it?

Now, it would be one thing for spies to betray their country by leaking information to another nation because they felt some compassion or loyalty to that other nation, for whatever reason. But these appear to be corrupt officials who are basically just cashing in on their positions of privilege, and not giving a damn about the consequences. The same can be said for the Israeli and Turkish folks who are on-selling these secrets to the highest bidder. The network does not appear to be motivated by anything other than profit-making. The fact that these secrets are being sold to unstable nations further belies this lack of morality.

But wait a minute, I hear you say - what about the War On Terror? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that the Bush administration and it's intelligence agencies are most committed to stopping? Hasn't this been their top priority since 9/11/01?

Well, no.

In fact, the entire Bush administration has been complicit in this greedy corruption. The entire War On Terror has been a hoax foisted upon the citizens of the USA (and the world) in order to fill the coffers of Bush's friends in the military-industrial complex.

And these allegations from Sibel Edmonds confirm that. And the more the FBI tries to gag her, and the more they hide the evidence, the more they confirm our worst fears.

The US government has been bought up by corrupt profiteers, who have taken the people of the USA for all they can get. And they are not going to stop until - and unless - you can stop them.

War Profiteers

UPDATE: Well, whaddaya know? Within 48 hours, Omar post some more drivel. Are these guys reading my blog?

Is it time to declare IRAQ THE MODEL dead yet? No new posts from my old friends since December 5th, and only a smattering of posts since Omar declared he was in New York studying international affairs at Columbia University (I kid you not) way back on September 5th, 2007. Brother Ali is also going to college at Sony Brooks in Long Island.

I assume that's the end of their gig as "Baghdad Editors" at the notorious Pyjamas Media, where no new Fadhil bylines are to be found. Of course, you can still find plenty of rabidly delusional rightwing crap, like Michael Ledeen slamming Gandhi and his entire family as disgusting anti-Semites, or some rather bizarre coverage of the Sibel Edmonds story:

And the State Department hates Israel with a passion, so why are they cooperating with Israeli spies?

It's hard to believe that people are dying because of such blatant idiocy. These imbeciles remain dangerous as long as anyone keeps taking them seriously.

PS: It's quite possible that I blew Omar's cover with this post on September 3rd.

UPDATE: This link has some interesting info too:

At first glance, Omar might not appear to have the background or the personal history that would vault him to international attention as one of the strongest Iraqi proponents of liberal democracy and the American invasion and a pioneer of the nascent Iraqi blogosphere.He was born in 1980 into a Sunni family in Baghdad, the youngest in a family of three boys and one girl. His mother, Rasmia, taught elementary school to third and fourth graders in Baghdad, while his father, Fadhil, spent decades years in Saddam’s army before retiring in 1990 as a high-ranking general.

Omar and his siblings grew up in an upper-middle class Baghdad suburb as a privileged part of the ruling elite. In the afternoons, after homework was finished, he and his friends would gather to play soccer in the streets or at school. When Baghdad baked in the summer heat, his father would drive the family to a social club to swim, an activity that Omar hated as much as his brothers loved. In Iraq, to succeed meant becoming, in order of prestige, a doctor, dentist or engineer. His older brother Ali and older sister Rasha* (name changed to protect her identity) became doctors, while Omar followed the footsteps of his brother Mohammed into dentistry. He liked the ratio of work to play that the career offered, and couldn’t imagine ten years of training required to become a doctor. Eight years for dentistry was more than enough.

In spite of his family’s relatively privileged position, Saddam’s rule of fear shaped Omar’s political views from a young age. His father, Fadhil, had a military career as a commander in Iraq’s air defense system where he continued to steadily work his way up the chain of command. A professional soldier, he abhorred having to defer to incompetent and inexperience military officers appointed by Saddam’s family. The situation came to a head in 1990 when he directly opposed a decision made by a non academic officer. Luckily, his only punishment was early retirement, a gift from military friends that allowed him to escape the hanging that awaited had the disagreement escalated up to Saddam. It was a lesson about freedom of expression that Omar never forgot.

Fear of the regime remained constant as he grew older...

Omar’s on-the-ground reporting quickly earned him the attention of the international media. Reporters from USA Today read the brothers’ blog and interviewed them in Baghdad. Editors from the WSJ, New York Daily News, and the Philadelphia Enquirer contacted them to write OpEds, and the BBC was soon regularly calling Omar for information whenever something happened in Iraq. He also became the de factor Baghdad correspondent for Pajamas Media.

In addition, Iraq The Model (ITM) began providing its own content, offering some of the most comprehensive coverage of the second parliamentary Iraqi elections in 2005. At its peak, it was receiving tens of thousands of hits per day. The blog was a demanding mistress however, and ITM’s allure soon made his under-funded dentistry practice seem insignificant by comparison. The blog’s pull proved too strong and eventually, as Omar puts it, “I lost the dentist within me.”. With ITM he had found his medium and his mission. “Gradually you get the feeling that what you are doing is worthwhile, you are providing information that people appreciate. You tend to feel committed to doing this mission.” says Omar...

Almost five years have passed the US invasion, and Omar and I now sit talking over a beer at a bar on the Upper West Side near Columbia University. He came to the United States in August of this year to study international security policy at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He plans to return to Iraq and run for public office in the 2013 parliamentary elections. In addition to handling a crushing academic workload, he continues to contribute periodically to ITM.

The writer of that piece, Aaron Ernst, seems to have established a bit of an anti-Hillary policial rapport with Omar, if these Google responses are to be believed:

I can't see more than that, because clicking the links just gives you a "Deleted Account" message.

SIBEL!

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer:

Sibel Edmonds makes a number of accusations about specific criminal behavior that appear to be extraordinary but are credible enough to warrant official investigation. Her allegations are documentable: an existing FBI file should determine whether they are accurate. It’s true that she probably knows only part of the story, but if that part is correct, Congress and the Justice Department should have no higher priority. Nothing deserves more attention than the possibility of ongoing national-security failures and the proliferation of nuclear weapons with the connivance of corrupt senior government officials.

THE BIG JHING!!!

I am beginning to think there is a lot more to this global financial crisis than meets the eye. As Barak Obama said today:

"The world continues to fear that the United States government won't do enough to prevent a recession."

But in fact, the world is way (way!) beyond that.

The rest of the world watched in horror as the people of the USA elected a blatantly idiotic chimpanzee to the most powerful position - evuh! - in the history of human evolution. We watched in horror as he lied about WMDs and dragged the globe into a totally bogus war for control of Iraq's oil reserves.

We have watched in mute disgust as both sides of US politics have tried to justify the use of torture, cluster bombs, white phosphorous and other horrors in their pursuit of a totally ridiculous "war" on terrorists (who, we notice, they are not really all that intent on capturing and/or rendering to justice).

So now, predictably, the economic chickens have come home to roost in downtown DC. And what do you frikkin' EXPECT the rest of the world to do?

I mean, sharemarkets are controlled by money, and that money is controlled by real human beings with real emotions and real opinions and (in many, many cases) real disgust at what nearly eight years of George W. Bush has done to our planet.

The Bush-Cheney cabal has pushed their luck way (way!) too far, and people around the globe have woken up to what has been going on for the past fifty years. Why should WE continue to bankroll the US military-industrial establishment, which continues to threaten our very existence?

Or why should WE be expected to bankroll the USA's profligate addiction to polluting fossil fuels, which (again) threaten our very existence?

Maybe the people of Teh USA have not quite woken up to reality yet, consumed as they are by MTV, Nascar, Oprah and FOX TV, but we, the people of the world at large, are now very well aware of what is going on.

So why should WE come to the financial rescue of the Federal Reserve?

Why should WE not sit back and watch with a certain smug satisfaction as the US economy tanks, lilts to starboard, and (hopefully) sinks forever into the muddy shoals of ancient history?

NB: No, I have no idea what "the Big Jhing" means either. It just came to me like a revelation.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The BRAD BLOG:

For the second time in two weeks, the entire U.S. press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt U.S. officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the U.S. Congress and the courts.

For the last two weeks --- one could say, for years --- the major American media have been guilty of ignoring entirely the allegations of the courageous and highly credible source Sibel Edmonds, quoted in the London Times on January 6, 2008 in a front-page story that was front-page news in much of the rest of the world but was not reported in a single American newspaper or network.

Aussie readers must explain why the US media refuses to cover this explosive story, and why our own media is also ignoring it.

More at Common Dreams. Have we got traction yet???

Retribution?

The wave of panic unfolds:

In the media sector, Fairfax shed eight cents to $4.11, News Corp lost 44 cents to $21.32 and its non-voting scrip was down 74 cents to $20.51. Ten Network lost six cents to $2.51 and Seven Network was down 23 cents to $11.55.

These are the people who failed to warn us about the coming crisis, who lauded the fools who engineered it.

Wouldn't it be nice if ANYONE in Ozblogistan was actually reporting this as it is? But it seems the post-election Aussie blogosphere is nearly as dead as a dodo. We've "moved on", it seems...

It's A Small, Small World

Tony Snow writes to fellow wingnut cancer patient Tim Blair:

"Keep your spirits up, your attitude aggressive and positive. We live in an age of miracles, and researchers are finding new treatments every day.

"At any rate, I'm one of many thinking of and praying for you. If you need to bounce things off a fellow cancer patient, don't be shy. But in any event, fight - and enjoy every moment!"

Sounds like a familiar attitude...

A Wierd Mob

From Richard L. Hasen at The Canberra Times:

For Australians, many features of US election administration must seem peculiar. Even for national polls, US elections are administered on the local, not even state, level, with up to 14,000 different electoral jurisdictions each using different types of ballots, different voting machines and different voting rules. In most electoral jurisdictions, election administrators are openly partisan with an allegiance to the Democratic or Republican Party. Not only is voting not mandatory, enrolment, called registration, is the responsibility of the voter, not the state.

The Florida 2000 debacle, in which the fate of the US presidency was determined by whether and how to count partially perforated punch-card ballots, should have taught the US to emulate Australia's professionalised, non-partisan, and nationalised system of election administration. But instead, the US has gone in the opposite direction...

Hasen's article documents a whole host of un-Democratic scandals besetting the USA (who, let us not forget, frequently go to war to "spread" their ideas of "Freem" and "Moxy"). More at his blog, www.electionlawblog.org.

Open Letter To Professor Juan Cole

I urge all readers to go read Juan Cole's blog today, in which he pays an inspiring tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King. His post inspired me to write this comment...

Juan, your continued efforts on your blog and elsewhere are testimony to your inspiring faith in your readership. But as you note MLK said:

"If we assume that mankind has a right to survive then we must find an alternative to war and destruction. "

Under current circumstances, the assumption that mankind has a (divine) "right" to survive must be questioned. If nothing else, the Iraq War has provided us with a ghastly insight into the base failings of human nature. Is this is who and what we are, the world is better off without us.

Men like MLK and Gandhi rise up from among the thronging masses of the deprived. They are feted as heroes. Their message of peace is trumpeted around the globe.

And then we kill them.

And then we forget them.

What is wrong with us? How do we transcend the greed, hatred, fear and bloodlust that holds us down in the pits of evolutionary primordialism?

In the end, perhaps it is only faith and hope that offer a solution. And I am not talking about faith in a divine being who offers us a "right" to survive all our self-made horrors, but faith such as you, sir, show in your own readers.

Thank you.

When I Said "One World" This Is Not What I Meant

Gordon Brown's new world order:

Gordon Brown has begun secret talks with other world leaders on far-reaching reform of the United Nations Security Council as part of a drive to create a "new world order" and "global society".

More here:

Proposing sweeping changes to international institutions, Brown called for rapid response teams of police and experts to be set up that could be sent quickly to trouble spots to restore order and begin rebuilding after conflicts.

He also called for the creation of a multi-billion dollar global climate change fund within the World Bank to finance environmentally sustainable development in the poorest countries.

Brown believes that the rapid spread of the credit crisis last year after problems with US subprime mortgages points to failings in global financial supervision that must be fixed.

"With financial markets and flows transformed by globalisation, I propose that - acting with the same independence as a central bank - the IMF should focus on surveillance of the global economic and financial system and thus prevent crises, not just resolve them," he said in excerpts of a speech he will deliver to business executives in New Delhi.

The IMF, working with the Financial Stability Forum - a group of central banks, regulators and international bodies - "should be at the heart of an early warning system for financial turbulence affecting the global economy," he said.

Yeah, let's all take those massive budget surpluses that are propping up the failed capitalist economic model and throw them to the IMF and World Bank. Great idea.

Tonight's Top Story?

The Sunday Times keeps faith with Sibel:

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive.

You have to wonder what Rupert and his friends think when real journalism like this pops up.

BushWorld: Where Did All The Money Go?

Follow the M3:

If jobs have not increased, salaries have gone down, and the value of business has not risen, where is that 35 percent growth in the economy?

There is a number called the M3 money supply.

The M1 is basically cash, plus checking and "current" accounts. The M2 adds savings accounts, money market accounts and CDs up to $100,000. The M3 adds in the big CDs, Eurodollar accounts and other large exotics.

Already rising very fast, the M3 took off like a rocket after 2001. The Fed stopped publishing the M3 in 2006 (conspiracy theorists, please note.) But a quick look at the chart of its growth, and assuming its trajectory continued, clearly shows that the M3 grew by something in the range of 35 percent.

The entire growth of the economy under Bushenomics is accounted for by growth in the money supply.

The administration did not directly inflate the economy by 35 percent.

They pumped it by the size of the deficit. The rest happened this way....

Read the full article by Larry Beinhart for details, but basically the Bush administration printed off wads of money to keep everything looking better than it was.

The subprime crisis, the housing bubble, whatever you want to call it, is not the problem.

It's a symptom of pumping in money with no place to go.

Other symptoms are no job growth, no business growth, no stock market growth, falling median incomes, disappearing pensions and health plans, and the fall of the dollar...

One way to think of what the administration has done, is as a leveraged buyout. That's when someone buys a company, using the company itself as the collateral for the loan used to purchase it, usually at very high interest, then pays off the interest by cutting the work force and salaries, selling outsets and even breaking up the company.

It's good for the guy who makes the deal, skims the cream off the top and gets rich. (The company that Mitt Romney got rich working for specialized in doing that.) It's good for the lenders, who get a good return (if the buyer is able to squeeze enough money out of his purchase), but it's bad for the work force, bad for the company, and, if no one comes along to replace it, bad for the business as a whole.

We've experienced a leveraged buyout of the national economy.

Beinhart calls for some more responsible fiscal policy goals, financed by increased taxes on the rich. But he feels compelled to add this disclaimer:

By the way, this is not a call for socialism! Or other ism! Except a call for sensible and effective capitalism.

Denouncing capitalism remains the great thoughtcrime of US society! Are we allowed to ask why???

Also interesting to read the comments on that story at AlterNet - there is a lot of anger brewing out there in BushWorld.

Stop The Clock!

This article by Steven Weber really highlights what a disaster Bush has been:

In 2001, the Administration declared a revolution in the practice and substance of US foreign policy. It ridiculed liberal internationalist ideals of multilateral cooperation. It opposed using US military power dressed up as "nation-building". It wrote off global warming as Al Gore's obsession, and it said it wouldn't get bogged down, as its predecessors had, in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Then after 9/11, the Administration went further, developing a radical new doctrine for the pre-emptive use of military force. The war on terrorism became its defining issue indeed its supreme purpose superseding all else, strategically as well as morally.

Today, the world looks very different...

Weber cites a whole host of issues on which the USA has back-tracked, wasted time, and squandered opportunities. For example, last month Bush, who called Kim Jong-il a "tyrant" and "pygmy" in 2003, wrote the North Korean leader a personal "Dear Mr Chairman" letter.

The Republican candidates who would build on Bush's old approach to foreign policy clearly don't get how the world has changed. But neither do Democrats who stress reversing what Bush has done. No one should feel vindicated by the Bush Administration's reversals, because defining the future of US foreign policy in terms of the past would be as big a mistake for the next president as it was for Bush.

The Next US President?

God help us all. Mike Huckabee is being seriously presented as a viable GOP alternative to 71-year-old John "Bomb, Bomb Iran" McCain. Here's how Huckabee excites his evangelical fan base:

"I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than trying to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."

Then there's Mitt "The Mormon" Romney:

Romney supported the invasion of Iraq, and supports the "troop surge." Upon hearing the testimony of David Petraeus, Romney reemphasized his agreement with current policy in Iraq and has called for a "Surge of Support" for the military. Romney has called for increased military spending to at least 4 percent of the United States GDP and wishes to increase the size of the military by at least 100,000 troops.

There are the US right's best and brightest? Really???

Hillary's N.H. Surprise: Did Murdoch Know?

The editor of Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper, Rebekah Wade, yesterday told a House of Lords communications committee that Rupert Murdoch called her at 1.30am on the day of the New Hampshire primaries to warn her that the exit polls were wrong.

There has been heated speculation in the blogosphere that Hiliary Clinton's win in New Hampshire was rigged. And everybody is well aware that Murdoch favors Clinton in 2008.

So was Murdoch just (a) hanging on the wires, keeping a close eye on results, and checking that his UK morning editions didn't stuff up? Or was (b) he in on the vote rigging and controlling the story he wanted to see in print?

If you answered (c) we'll probably never know, you are probably right.

You Were Warned

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was campaigning against George Bush Snr for the Republican Party ballot, Reagan's camp ran an advertisement which claimed:

"A coalition of multinational corporate executives, big-city bankers, and hungry power brokers... want to give you George Bush... their purpose is to control the American government."

At that time, the widely unpopular George H. W. Bush was considered "unelectable". Does anyone remember that?

Before WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt issued a warning:

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling power... Among us today, a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."

That "concentration of private power" included George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, who was later convicted by the US government under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Then there's President Eisenhower's dire warnings in 1960 about the growth of the "military-industrial complex", a term he himself invented:

"Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

There were other warnings too. Here's Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, in 1941:

“We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

Here's Huey Long, who won fame by taking on the powerful Standard Oil Company, which he sued for unfair business practices:

“When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag.”

How Trivial Can the Media Make the Presidential Race?

Rolling Stone:

I'm amazed. Here we are, the world's lone superpower, holding elections at a time when we're engaged in a catastrophic war in Iraq, facing a burgeoning nuclear crisis in Pakistan, dealing with all sorts of horrible stuff. And at the crucial moment, the presidential race turns into something from the cutting-room floor of Truly Tasteless Jokes #50: "Three change-promisers walk into a bar ...."

I mean, is this a joke, or what? What the hell is the difference between "working for change" and "demanding change"? And why can't we hope for change and work for it? Are these presidential candidates or six-year-olds?

This 2008 presidential race looked interesting once, a thrillingly up-for-grabs affair in which real issues and real ground-up voter anger threatened to wrest control of America's politics from the Washington Brahmins who usually puppeteer this process from afar. And while the end result in Iowa -- a historic and inspirational Obama victory, coupled with a hilariously satisfying behind-the-woodshed third-place ass-whipping for status quo gorgon Hillary Clinton -- was compelling, the media has done its best to turn a once-promising race into an idiotic exchange of Nerf-insults, delivered at rah-rah campaign events utterly indistinguishable from scholastic pep rallies. "If there's policy in this race," one veteran campaign reporter tells me with a sad laugh, "I haven't noticed it."

And while it's tempting to blame the candidates, deep in my black journalist's heart I know it isn't all their fault.

We did this. The press. America tried to give us a real race, and we turned it into a bag of shit...

Both the Huckabee and Ron Paul candidacies represent angry grass-roots challenges to the entrenched Republican party apparatus, while the Edwards candidacy is a frank and open attack on his own party's too-cozy relationship with corporate America. These developments signaled a meaningful political phenomenon -- widespread voter disgust, not only with the two ruling parties, but with a national political press that smugly enforced the party insiders' stranglehold on the process with its incessant bullying of dissident candidates.

But there was no way this genuinely interesting theme was going to make it into mainstream coverage of the campaign heading into the primary season. It was inevitable that different, far stupider story lines would be found to dominate the headlines once the real bullets started flying in Iowa and New Hampshire. And find them we did.

A month ago, I was actually interested to see who won these first few races. But now that this whole affair has degenerated into a mass orgy of sports clichés and celebrity catfighting, I find myself more hoping that they all die in a fire somehow. And something tells me that most of America would hope that my colleagues and I burn up with them.

In not-unrelated news, it's interesting how the media has been increasingly ignoring John Edwards as his anti-corporate message gets louder.

And this bit of Guardian analysis was interesting to me:

The apparent inability of the Republicans to select a candidate to replace George Bush in the White House signals a fundamental internal debate about what the party stands for.

"This is clearly a battle for the future of the Republican party," said David King of the Kennedy school of government at Harvard. He said the fight was between Huckabee's social and moral conservatism and Romney's economic conservatism.

"They represent two sides of a coalition that was put together by Ronald Reagan and has held together only tenuously. I think it will be split apart for all time by this election, though which side triumphs within the party is not clear."

Gordon Brown is struggling to hold the UK Labour Party together in the trail of Tony Blair's stewardship, John Howard's Australian Liberals are now howling like a pack of hoons in the wilderness of political irrelevance... Does the same destiny await Bush's GOP? One can only hope so.

Comment at Prof Q's Blog

By gandhi:

G.W. Bush has set a new standard for incompetence, but it’s not really his fault. We should blame the people who pushed him through the door: if ever there was a puppet President, this guy is it!

And of course all roads lead to Dick Cheney and his Big Oil mates. No wonder they wouldn’t release the details of those Energy Taskforce meetings in the early days of the Bush 43 administration! Big Oil took over the White House in 2000.

So if we accept that fact, we need to look at things from this viewpoint. US-based Big Oil going to the casino with trillions of US taxpayer dollars in their pockets… and losing. Big time. Year after year.

Because oil has peaked, the US military is a pack of ignorant teenagers, the world has long had a gutful of US exceptionalism, the theatrical drama of 9/11 didn’t survive the post-release scientific reviews, and it turns out that US allies in the Middle East never liked them anyway.

So where are we? You can come up with all kinds of conjecture, but the basic fact remains: we are smack bang in the middle of a massive global economic disaster. It just hasn’t played out yet.

I’m tempted to say, “put on your sunglasses and get out the popcorn”, but it’s far too serious for that. We are all fucked.

George "The War Monger" Bush Descends Into Self-Ridicule

From The Huffington Post via TPM:

"My image [is] 'Bush wants to fight Muslims.' And, yes, I'm concerned about it. Not because of me, personally. I'm concerned because I want most people to understand the great generosity and compassion of Americans," he said.

"I'm sure people view me as a war monger and I view myself as peacemaker," the president said. "They view me as so pro-Israeli I can't be open-minded about Palestinian peace, and yet I'm the only president ever to have articulated a two-state solution. And you just have to fight through stereotypes by actions."

OMFG.

Dinner With The Devil

Glyn Myerscough wonders why JP Morgan would want to employ a man like Blair?

Why would they want to pay him a purported £2 million salary? We might find the answer in France where the US’s new poodle in new Europe, President Sarkozy is touting Blair for the EU Presidency. Since his resignation Blair has effectively been airbrushed from political existence - like the failed Soviet Siloviki of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Could Blair, the rising son of JP Morgan, be the New World Order’s chosen man in the new European century? Are we witnessing the rehabilitation of Blair as a ‘political asset’?

Myerscough ridicules the idea that Blair has anything to offer JP Morgan, and suggests this is just payback for (a) the Iraq War profits and (b) numerous trans-Atlantic single market economic "bridges".

Myerscough recalls how the US Federal Reserve was established in 1910, following a secretive meeting of powerful banking families on Jeckyll Island:

The one attempt in the 20th century to break the power of this defacto-private bank, for this is precisely what the Federal Reserve is - when founded its board comprised 80% private bankers 20% government representatives – failed spectacularly. 44 years ago John F Kennedy attempted to end the Federal Reserve System to eliminate the national debt this ‘so called’ central bank creates by printing money and lending it to government.

On June 4, 1963, presidential order EO 11110 authorised the president to issue currency. Kennedy ordered the US Treasury to print $4 billion worth of "United States Notes" backed incidentally by US bullion reserves, to replace Federal Reserve Notes, which were backed by nothing, so he could end the Federal Reserve System and the control it gave international bankers over the US government and its citizens. Kennedy’s strategy to bring US troops home from Vietnam by the end of 1965, combined with the removal of the Fed’s control of the US money supply would have killed the profits of this private bank. Literally as Kennedy’s dollars went into circulation he was assassinated in Dallas.

I am pretty sure George H. W. Bush knows exactly who killed Kennedy, because he was involved. At the time, of course, he was working undercover for the CIA. But he attended a secretive dinner of powerful men the night before Kennedy's death.

"Liberals Are The New Fascists" M'kay?

And up is down:

They attacked me. They went after all my advertisers. They learned good from their friends at Media Matters, that rat-bum -- it's a homosexual, fascist website. Let me explain who Media Matters is. It was founded by Hillary Clinton. It's run by a bunch of fascist homosexuals. They're the brownshirts of our time.

When are you gonna wake up to the fact that liberals are not liberal? When are you gonna wake up to the fact that the liberals are the new fascists. They are the brownshirts! And they're gonna take this country over the cliff if you don't stand up to them and stop them.

OMFG! We gotta get mobilized right now, dudes!

Stressed?

Layla Anwar puts it in perspective:

I will tell you what real stress is all about you motherfuckers.

Stress is when you have been no with water and no electricity for over 5 years. That is stress.

Stress is when you have no job because some fucking backward retard came and occupied your country, pillaged it and stripped you of your livelihood. That is stress.

Stress is when you run from hospital ward to hospital ward, from prison to prison, from militia to militia looking for your loved one only to recognize them from their teeth fillings in some morgue...That is stress alright.


Stress is when you pack your bags quickly and run to the nearest border only to be asked to return and in the meantime some american western motherfucker has bombed your house into a pile of stones... Yeah, that is stress.

Stress is when you see your family and loved ones dying in front of your eyes and you can't afford to buy them the basic medication to ease their pain...That is stress.

Stress is when your baby girl or baby boy is born looking like fucking Frankenstein, because some american motherfucker who is stressed out bombed your country with D.U.

Stress is when they walk into the middle of the night and you sleep with your clothes on, because you don't want them to see you half naked just in case, when they smash your door down, pull you from your hair or shirt out into the cold and place a sand bang over your fucking head. That is stress.

Stress is when you are a prisoner in your own country by some smelly shit faced, pimpled stinking american who has not even finished high school, and stress is when that same motherfucker rapes you and sodomizes you, tortures you and calls you a dirty Iraqi in your own fucking country...That is stress.

Bend Over

Has anyone ever done an economic analysis of where the USA might be without its massive global arms industry?

I'm just trying to work out what the US taxpayer gets out of this obscene charade:

1. The Bush Gang abuses political power to send billions of US taxpayer dollars to the Saudis via oil deals, aid deals, and straight-out corruption.

2. The Saudis send billions of dollars back to The Bush Gang's friends in the US military-industrial complex.

3. The US military-industrial complex lobbies for the Bush Gang to achieve even more political power.

Repeat, repeat, repeat...

But what does the US taxpayer get out of this cycle? Increased poverty, an increased threat of terrorism, and an economy set to collapse.

When and if the US economy does collapse, Bush's Big Money friends will just take their money and walk away. They already operate as global corporate elites, they are not going to be bound by the limitations of one nation, one government, or one set of tax laws.

I think you can compare what is happening today in global business with what happened back in the days of C.18th English colonialism. Then, British companies traveled the world, exploiting native workers and plundering natural resources, and taking all the profits back home to London. Today, corporate giants spread their tentacles around the world, exploiting native workers and exploiting natural resources, but now the profits are held in offshore accounts and safe havens, ready to be shifted whenever and wherever the next business opportunity arises.

Psycho Bloggers - Qu'Est-Ce Que C'est?

I present to you three psychopathologically compulsive bloggers who (coincidentally?) have arrived at very similar conclusions about the nature of the world we live in:

1. Darryl Mason,

2. Winter Patriot, and

3. My good self.

All three have multiple blogs and blog compulsively on international political issues. All three enjoy minimal public support and/or recognition.

So I ask you...

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Choosing To Believe What We Want To Believe

The story of "Caesar", an Iraqi soldier who opened fire on his US colleagues when they assaulted a pregnant woman, has become the top item in Iraqi news, although it has been virtually ignored in the Western media. Now it is also the top story at Alternet.

When I first saw a bland report on this incident in the Fairfax press (straight off the wires), it related the incident for an official US government and military point of view. I emailed the editors with details and URLs for the Iraq version of the story. They replied that there was already a (very, very tiny) mention of the Iraqi version of events, and that was enough for them. Little wonder most Westerners do not understand what is going on in Iraq, or why.

In the comments on the story at Alternet, I read this plaintive cry:

I don't understand this need to believe that US is a benevolent power, and we generally do what is right except for the occassional 'bad apples' who screw up things.

Consider the following scenarios since WW2:

1. Bay of Pigs
2. Gulf of Tonkin
3. USS Liberty
4. Coup against Mossadeq
5. Coup against Allende (the original 9/11/73)
6. Iran-Contra
7. Shooting down Iranian Ariliner flight
8. FBI infiltration of antiwar movement in 60's
9. Mai Lai massacre
10. Falluja and the use of illegal chemical weapons
11. Haditha Massacre
12. Iraq-WMD and AlQaeda connections

There are so many other examples. Why is it that a majority of us continue to buy the US government propaganda?

There was only one reply:

I seriously doubt that any significant portion of American citizens know anything about the events you listed; and more significantly, I doubt any care. Americans generally prefer to approach their government as they approach their God, with religious faith. There is no questioning it. The academic performance of American youth is infamous, and getting worse. They are too busy to read a book, probably fighting over who is the father of their illegitimate child. I say these things because you asked why. In a democracy that depends upon the active participation of highly literate intelligent citizens it should be obvious why this country has become a monstrosity.

Are we supposed to just write off the whole Iraq War, the Bush administration, and even the "dream that was America", as just a harsh lesson in human nature? Is that really the best we can do?

Eschaton!

Three interesting posts from Atrios overnight. First up:

Iraq Logic

People shot and killed are victims of sectarian violence.

People killed by bombs are victims of "al Qaeda."

"Sophisticated" bombs are all built by Iran.

"Al Qaeda" are Sunni.

Iranians are Shiite.

And only stupid bloggers notice this stuff.

Secondly, I've been wondering when this story would start to surface:

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

Finally, a juicy bit of irony: a Saudi Prince who was criticized for saying US policies contributed to 9/11 has stepped in as a saviour for Citibank. That's almost as ironic as the recent story I saw predicting the Chinese would become world leaders in green power technology.

If you don't read Atrios regularly, you should. From an international perspective, he does get a little bogged down in local politics, but he has a brilliant knack of encapsulating complex issues in a nutshell.

Why Tony Got The Job

Surprise:

JPMorgan is heading a consortium set to make billions as Iraq's economy recovers from the war spearheaded by Mr Blair and U.S. President George Bush.

It was chosen to run the new Trade Bank of Iraq, which has raised billions in trade guarantees by mortgaging future oil production and will make huge profits from the deals.

Westminster watchdogs have ordered Mr Blair not to attempt to lobby his former Government colleagues on behalf of the bank for the next 12 months.

Did Diebold Win New Hampshire For Hillary?

Maybe.

Naked News!

Surely this is the logical next step in mainstream media? See here for more, er... info.

Gordon Gecko Lives!

From The Canberra Times:

All last year, as the housing market worsened in the United States, I've been waiting to read of ex-millionaire/billionaires taking high dives from their New York penthouses. Yet it seems, no matter what, for Wall Street's high rollers these days, you just can't lose.

The system is rigged.

Where Now On The Financial Front?

Mike Whitney delivers his verdict:

Bush is going to have to give away the farm just to keep the economy from crashing. Good luck. Clearly, the prospect of a system-wide meltdown in banking, real estate and equities has become a "Road to Damascus" moment for lame-duck George.

This is a comprehensive article by Whitney and should be required reading for everybody with any sense at all.

Feminism And Beyond

John Pilger looks at the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which he calls "the high bar of feminism, home of the bravest of the brave":

Year after year, Rawa agents have traveled secretly through Afghanistan, teaching at clandestine girls' schools, ministering to isolated and brutalized women, recording outrages on cameras concealed beneath their burqas. They were the Taliban regime's implacable foes when the word Taliban was barely heard in the west: when the Clinton administration was secretly courting the mullahs so that the oil company UNOCAL could build a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian.

A RAWA spokeswoman criticizes Western double standards: we rail against the Taliban but support the regional warlords whose oppression of women is no different.

The reason the United States gave for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 was "to destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11." The women of Rawa say this is false. In a rare statement on 4 December that went unreported in Britain, they said: "By experience, [we have found] that the US does not want to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse to stay in Afghanistan and work towards the realization of their economic, political and strategic interests in the region."

The truth about the "good war" is to be found in compelling evidence that the 2001 invasion, widely supported in the west as a justifiable response to the 11 September attacks, was actually planned two months prior to 9/11 and that the most pressing problem for Washington was not the Taliban's links with Osama Bin Laden, but the prospect of the Taliban mullahs losing control of Afghanistan to less reliable mujahedin factions, led by warlords who had been funded and armed by the CIA to fight America's proxy war against the Soviet occupiers in the 1980s...

The "moment in history" was a secret memorandum of understanding the mullahs had signed with the Clinton administration on the pipeline deal. However, by the late 1990s, the Northern Alliance had encroached further and further on territory controlled by the Taliban, whom, as a result, were deemed in Washington to lack the "stability" required of such an important client.

Pilger argues that "the tactical victory in Afghanistan in 2001, achieved with bombs, has become a strategic disaster in south Asia".

Credibility Is A Bitch

When the USA first accused Iranian gunboats of harassing their warships, I was skeptical. When the USA released video of the incident, I was intrigued. But when the Iranians claimed that the US video was a hoax, the whole thing started to sound like just another sorry charade. That has been confirmed now that the USA had admitted that they doctored the video.

Then there is the latest Iraq body count from the World Health Organization, which puts the number of deaths from violence from April 2003 through June 2006 at between 101,000 and 224,000. As Juan Cole notes, whatever the discrepancies with the Lancet guesstimate of over 600,000 deaths, "the last time Bush admitted his war had killed civilians, he quoted the figure of 30,000, and we can definitely dismiss such tiny numbers as woefully inaccurate. Bush has to face up to what he has done."

One of the arguments warmongers gave for overthrowing Saddam Hussein was that his regime was responsible for the violent deaths of some 300,000 civilians between 1968 and 2003. That estimate now appears exaggerated, since the number of bodies in mass graves has not borne it out. But what is tragic is that in 4 1/2 short years, a foreign military occupation has unleashed killing on a scale achieved by the murderous Saddam Hussein regime only over decades. Bush did not kill all those people directly, of course, but he did indirectly cause them to be killed, since these are excess deaths beyond what you would have expected if there had been no invasion and occupation.

I am often struck by how clueless the American public is to the vast destruction we have wrought on Iraq and its people, directly or indirectly. It strikes me as a bitter joke that 4 million are displaced, often facing hunger and disease, and the rightwing periodicals and presidential candidates are talking about how the "surge" has "turned things around." For whom? How many orphans have we created? How many widows? How many people who weep and cry every night while trying to fall asleep on straw mats?

The fact that Bush would even dare to push such a ridiculously low figure speaks for itself.

Gone are the days when anyone ever took the USA at its word. The US military in particular has disgraced itself over the past 8 years or more. Bush's "war" on terrorism may be a bogus construction, but Truth (starting with lies about 9/11 and WMD) has nevertheless been its first casualty.

Tony Blair Heads To Wall Street

Now that Herr Dubya is helping fulfill the role of special super ambassador envoy dove of peace to the entire Middle East, Tony Blair is picking up some lucrative "work" at US bank JP Morgan:

The former prime minister's first City job will be to provide JP Morgan with strategic and political advice. Mr Blair, who is not paid for his role as a Middle East envoy, said he expected to accept a "small handful" of similar posts in other sectors.

"I have always been interested in commerce and the impact of globalisation. Nowadays, the intersection between politics and the economy in different parts of the world, including the emerging markets, is very strong," he told the Financial Times.

"Intersection"? Or just an increasingly blurred distinction? You decide!

Blair's soul brother Nick Sarkozy is also touting Blair as a future EU President. That should go down well.

Gross(man) Indecency

Larisa Alexandrovna follows up Sibel Edmonds' recent claims in the Sunday Times:

The person against whom these allegations are being made is Marc Grossman. The Times could have published the name and also provided the denial from Grossman's camp. I find it incredibly disturbing that they would not name the official.

Explosive stuff! But wait, there's MORE:

Those senior DOD officials who are not mentioned in the Times article, all but one are no longer in government. They are alleged to be Doug Feith, Richard Perle, among others. There is also one person who is part of these allegations, still serving in a high level position at the DOD. His last name begins with an E [hint from gandhi: Edelman].

I have tried getting someone in broadcast and print media to run this story. My sources did not include Edmonds, but because of the sensitive nature of the information, I was concerned that she would go to jail anyway, unless I proved she was not a source - which would require me to reveal my sources.

I thought if I approached a big enough news outlet, the pressure generated by the public response would spare Edmonds jail time and I would not be pressured to reveal sources - something I would not have done anyway. Even a former high ranking CIA officer offered to byline the article with me if that would help sell a broadcaster/publication on running the story. No one was interested.

That the Times ran these allegations (she is under a state secrets gag folks, so it is not like she is gagged for lying) is encouraging. But that they omitted all names from the allegations is unethical. The point of a free press is not to protect the powerful against the weak, but to protect the public from the powerful. The Times was willing to stick a toe in, but was not willing to risk upsetting a foreign government (This is, after all, a British paper).

Sibel Edmonds could well be facing prison time for divulging this information to Rupert Murdoch's Times. Will it be worth it? That's up to you and me, folks.

The Development Of The Know How

What a dickhead:

"Iran is a threat to world peace," Bush declared. "Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat and Iran will be threat to world peace if the international community does not come together and prevent that nation from the development of the know how to develop build a nuclear weapon," he said.

Bush is still working on developing the know how to begin to make sense.

Socialism, Anyone?

From the always illuminating mind of Albert Einstein:

"Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate."...

The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil...

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights...

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

US citizens have been indoctrinated to equate the word "Socialism" with "Communism". Alarm bells ring in the US citizen's lizard brain whenever someone associates lofty concepts like "equality" and "compassion" with an economic model.

As Einstein said back in 1949, "under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo".

The US economic model, which was founded on the usurping of land and livelihood from the natives, has always been based on a combative ruthlessness: "Greed is good", "Business is business" and only "winners" deserve respect.

That mentality has brought us to where we are today. Unfortunately, it is now threatening to kill the entire planet.

It seems to me that words like "socialism" and "capitalism" and "working class" and "bourgoise" have now become so loaded with emotion and historical baggage that they can easily sidetrack a debate. Let us dance around them if necessary.

But let us not pretend that a more equitable, peace-loving and just society is not critical to our survival as a species. We need to globalise our own minds, empathise with all people of all nations, and the key to that, as this article suggests, is UNITY.

The Most Dangerous Country On Earth

I'll let the images speak for themselves:






Glenn Greenwald adds the text, if you are interested.

NB: What the hell is Australia doing so far up that list?

Been Wrong So Long It Looks Like Right to Me

Cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.

Heckuva Job, George

On September 11th, 2001, the price of a barrel of crude oil was still under $20. Last week it hit $100. Tom Engelhardt counts the cost:

Take a glance around the world – theoretically made "secure" and "safe" for Americans – and ask yourself this: If the Global War on Terror were over, what would be left? What would we be rid of? What would be changed? Would oil be, say, $60 a barrel, or even $20 a barrel? Would Russia return to being an impoverished nearly Third World country, as it was before 2001, rather than a rising energy superpower? Would the Iraq War be over? Would the Arctic Sea re-ice? Would Afghans welcome our occupation with open arms and accept our permanent bases and jails on their territory? Would all those dollars in Chinese and Middle Eastern hands return to the U.S. Treasury? Would Latin America once again be the "backyard" of the United States? Would we suddenly be hailed around the world for our "victory" and feared once again as the "sole superpower," the planetary "hyperpower"? Would we no longer be in, or near, recession? Would hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs begin flowing back into the country? Would the housing market bounce back? Would unemployment drop?

The answer to all of the above, of course, is resoundingly and repeatedly "no." Essential power relations in the world turn out to have next to nothing to do with the war on terror (which may someday be seen as the last great ideological gasp of American globalism). In this sense, terrorism, no matter how frightening, is an ephemeral phenomenon. The fact is, non-state groups wielding terror as their weapon of choice can cause terrible pain, harm, and localized mayhem, but they simply don't take down societies like ours...

Imagining how a new president and a new administration might begin to make their way out of this mindset, out of a preoccupation guaranteed to solve no problems and exacerbate many, is almost as hard as imagining a world without al-Qaeda. After all, this particular obsession has been built into our institutions, from Guantanamo to the Department of Homeland Security. It's had the time to sink its roots into fertile soil; it now has its own industries, lobbying groups, profit centers. Unbuilding it will be a formidable task indeed. Here, then – a year early – is a Bush legacy that no new president is likely to reverse soon.

Ask yourself honestly: Can you imagine a future America without a Department of Homeland Security? Can you imagine a new administration ending the global lockdown that has become synonymous with Americanism?

The Bush administration will go, but the job it's done on us won't. That is the sad truth of our presidential campaign moment.

A Referendum On Racism?

What an Obama versus Ron Paul campaign might look like.

Sunrise, Sunset

And you thought Cheney's visit to Sydney, which closed down half the city, was an inconvenience! Get a load of this:

Lights in the Old City of Jerusalem will be turned off before dawn this week so visiting US President George W. Bush can get a better view of the sun rising over its ancient walls.

Bush, who arrives in the Middle East on Wednesday for a visit lasting more than a week, had made a request to watch the sun rise over the Old City from his suite at the King David Hotel, a municipal spokesman said on Tuesday.

To make the scene more dramatic, the authorities have decided to turn off the lights illuminating the limestone walls before dawn on Thursday and Friday, the spokesman told reporters.

Via Talking Points Memo.

Mister Nobody

From The Independent today:

He is the forgotten leader, scorned by his people, disowned by his party. This week George Bush has a last chance to undo the damage done by his presidency as he begins a Middle East tour..

George Bush will embark on an ambitious nine-day tour of the Middle East tomorrow in a last desperate effort to salvage a legacy from two terms in office overshadowed by a catastrophic foreign policy that has earned him the distinction of being one of the worst presidents in the country's history.

The Bush legacy will not be peace in the Middle East nor an end to conflict in Iraq, but it could be a political earthquake among voters so dismayed by the mess he has made of America's foreign policy and fearful of economic recession that they are deserting his party in droves.

As he prepares to board a plane for Israel and wrap himself in the tattered flag of victory in Iraq, Mr Bush's real legacy to the American people is evident in the disillusionment on display in New Hampshire...

Few see any prospect of securing an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians but remarkably, this is Mr Bush's first visit to Israel or the occupied territories since becoming president seven years ago.

So that's what Bad Press looks like, in case you were wondering.

Feel The Obamamomentum!

Obama jumps 10% in a day:

As an Obama supporter since before he entered the race, I can tell you that with most people I talked to, their biggest obstacle to supporting Barack was whether or not he could actually do it. With his win in Iowa, he has opened the flood gates of all those people.

There has been a sleuth of excited stories about Obama since his Iowa win, and I think the comment above from a TPM reader nails the real reason for all the excitement - the Iowa win was huge because it shows the USA has changed enough for a black man to become President.

That is probably in large part a reaction to the never-ending misery inflicted by the Texan redneck, and maybe even the Bubba from Hope before him.

As with Rudd in Australia, there is a palpable desire for change across the USA. I think Obama will go all the way, and I'm not sure that is a bad thing. Sure, he has sucked up to the pro-Israeli lobby and he is being very careful what he says about a whole host of issues including withdrawal from Iraq. But as with Rudd, there is a sense that nobody really knows for sure what an Obama Administration might be like. Hillary Clinton said voting for Obama was like crossing your fingers and rolling the dice - but I think that's exactly what the people of the USA want to do right now. What have they got to lose, right?

I'm also hopeful that Obama might - once in power - get the USA out of Iraq. On the first day after he declared his candidacy, Obama called for US troops to be withdrawn by March this year. That led to some outrageous criticism from John Howard and his goons, which Obama duly bitch-slapped into touch. If that's a sign of things to come, great!

I'm not convinced that any other US Presidential hopefuls (bar Ron Paul, who hasn't got a snowflake's hope in hell or being elected) will really get the USA out of Iraq. Even Edwards. So maybe Obama is the best chance we in the anti-war camp have got.

And even if he doesn't get the USA out of Iraq, his election would be good in so many other ways that it could have a knock-on effect and lead to a substantially more positive US foreign policy in other areas. We live in hope.

Where Does All The Money Go?

From The Washington Monthly:

The numbers in this chart are all normalized to zero in 1979, and what they show is that the total share of national income going to the super-rich has more than doubled over that time. The merely well off have also gotten a slightly bigger piece of the pie, while everyone else has funded this free-for-all. "Everyone else," in this case, means 90% of the country. Our share of national income has gone down in order to make sure that virtually all the fruits of economic growth over the past four decades could go to the well-off, the rich, and the super-duper-rich.

So much for the trickle-down effect, eh?

Iraqi Kills US Soldiers Who Beat Pregnant Woman

A potentially explosive drama developing in Mosul, where an Iraqi soldier opened fire on his US colleagues.

It is being widely reported in the Middle East that this soldier, nicknamed "Caesar", opened fire after the US soldiers started beating a pregnant woman.

The Association of Muslim Scholars has confirmed this story, which was also reported in Lebanese newspaper Al-akhbar. Graffiti in Mosul today says "Well done Caesar" And leaflets in support of him are being distributed. This could become a big story in Iraq.

Links here and here and here.

Oddly, Reuters is reporting this story without any mention of the pregnant woman.

Just What Pakistan Need Right Now...

This is how the system works, see:

Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) was awarded a $US498.2 million ($569.53 million) contract to supply F-16 aircraft to Pakistan, the US Pentagon said..

Pakistan has received about $US10 billion ($11.43 billion) in US funding since 2001 because Washington views Pakistan as a key ally in President George W Bush's campaign against terrorism...

The United States has agreed to sell Pakistan up to 36 new F-16 jets together with refurbished F-16s.

You see? The US government fleeces their own taxpayers and gives the money to a business partner like Musharraf, who then signs deals to give large chunks of the money back to the US military-industrial complex. Under pressure to maintain US support, Musharraf just signs off on another deal and - bingo! - he still has the full support of the White House.

And don't look for any Democrat presidential hopefuls to criticize the deal. The only one speaking up now is Joe Biden, hardly a front-runner. [UPDATE: Biden drops out of the race. Surprised?]

Pretend To Care?

From Ted Rall.

Who Will End The US Occupation Of Iraq?

Joshua Holland says Edwards is the only viable Democrat who is truly committed to withdrawal:

Both Clinton and Obama have bought into the dangerous idea that the U.S. must maintain forces in Iraq to protect U.S. bases -- yes, they're actually saying that we need to leave soldiers to guard the bases that the U.S. built to house the troops occupying Iraq -- to fight "al Qaeda in Iraq," and to help train Iraqi forces...

Only two candidates have proposed a complete pullout of U.S. troops: Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. But John Edwards has come very close to their position, saying that he'd only train Iraqi troops outside of Iraq and leave no troops to "guard U.S. bases." And, while he'd keep a rapid-response force in the region, it too would remain outside the country's borders. Unlike Obama and Clinton, he's put a hard number on what he thinks is necessary to keep in-country -- only a single "brigade of 3,500 to 5,000 troops to protect the embassy and possibly a few hundred troops to guard humanitarian workers." He'd pull the rest out within ten months.

Well, sorry, Joshua, but that is still not a complete pullout, is it? You ridicule Obama and Clinton for leaving troops to protect the bases, but it's OK for Edwards to leave troops to protect the so-called "Embassy" (actually a monolothic stronghold of power)?

The only "positive" (if you can call it that) in Edwards' plan is that it is totally unworkable: such a small US presence would certainly come under very heavy fire (from the Mehdi Army if nobody else) and the troops would have to withdraw quickly or be annihilated. The precious multi-million-dollar "Embassy" would either be destroyed or become the stronghold of a new authoritarian government.

I doubt the Joint Chiefs of Staff would even sign off on such a plan. Would YOU want to be one of the grunts left guarding Saddam's former palace in such circumstances?

To me (an Australian observer) this coming 2008 US election is already lost because so-called US "progressives" really haven't done enough in the past 8 years to deliver a viable alternative to the standard two-party military-industrial agenda. Ron Paul is a moonbat who will never become GOP candidate, let alone Prez, and Dennis K. remains unelectable because he has not had enough support (the UFO talk didn't help either, but that's Dennis for you). Of course Nancy Pelosi must bear a lot of the blame for failing to fulfill the hopes and dreams of so many hard-working progressives, the people who delivered both House and Senate.

So the eternal dilemma with US politics remains - do you try to change the Dems from within, or give up on the whole corrupt system? Either way, it's already too late for real change in 2008. A pity.

Michael J. Totten Goes To Fallujah

A classic example of how wingnuts think:

Some Iraqis only pretend to be friendly, but it's obvious when you meet someone who isn't pretending. Human emotion and its expression is the same across cultures. This man could not have been a combatant. I was certain the odds of him trying to kill us were zero. I couldn’t help wondering: was it really necessary to have a plan to kill everyone? But complacency kills. You never know who might attack you in Iraq. I imagined bashing his head into the sidewalk.

Bloody hell. What is he doing over there anyway? Telling his wingnut readers that Falluja is "a paradise compared with, say, a shantytown-packed Mexican border town like Juarez or Tijuana".

Merry Christmas

Still looking for that perfect gift? The image above comes from The Lovely Mistresses of George W. Bush, 2008 Pin-Up Calendar. And don't forget your George W. Bush White House Christmas card - this year's theme is "all the multitudes worship you".

And something to give thanks for? Only one more year of this shit to go.

Huckuva Job, George!

For anyone still seeking understanding, this graph from the OPEC website shows exactly who George W. Bush's real paymasters are:

See here for background.

What's Howard Kurtz's agenda at the Wash. Post ?

Media Matters asks the question.

Gandhi supplies an answer.