History And Its Discontents

As y'all probably already know, if you're following this Cat's annual Book List & Review over at the sisterblog, we've been reading a lot of history over the past few years, and it has been extremely — extremely very — educational, indeed. We are shoved into schools, as children, not necessarily so much for the purposes of educating our eager young minds as to function as a sort of childcare-cum-penitentiary in which we are prepared for our future as obedient tools of the state. Learning to function in 50-minute segments, to slice-and-dice our attention into suitable spans, to absorb unquestioningly whatever the school system and our local school board shall deem it fit in their infinite lack of wisdom to shovel down our youthful throats.

No one questions this pablum, this feeding-tube of culture and knowledge that is piped directly into our veritable livers of learning, fattening us like those unfortunate foie-gras geese on things that mold our minds and early impressions, but travel under the radar, placing seeds in that fertile soil that are never questioned again.

Some of us are fortunate enough to be raised in homes that value education and the written word for its own benefits. But what about the hundreds of thousands of us who are lucky to complete twelve years of basic education, if that? Those individuals are wandering around with a worldview that is not even close to what those of us fortunate enough — or determined enough, or lucky enough — to educate ourselves further have developed.

Hell, even those of us who are educated better sometimes slip into the easy language of that early pablum. What have Americans been taught about the foundation of this country?

Tonight, PBS will be screening a documentary on General Custer, the stupid schmuck who has come down to us through the ages as the "hero" of "Custer's Last Stand." It's good to know that there are many white (and Black) Americans who have educated themselves on the true nature of this country's founding, and on the genocide of the Native tribes. But the local fishwrap carried a TV review column today by one Dave Weigand, who we must presume is an educated American. Educated sufficiently to find employ with the local fishwrap, in a time when nearly ten per cent of the nation's employable individuals are struggling to find employment. Here, for your enjoyment, are some gems from his recent review.

"After the war, Custer and his wife, Libbie, moved to Fort Riley, Kan., where Custer would head the 7th Cavalry as part of the government's effort to deal with the growing problem of Indians."

No, seriously. This is what passes for an educated reviewer's comment. What, exactly, does the writer mean by "the growing problem of Indians"? Were Indians suddenly becoming taller? Fatter? Experiencing a population explosion? The writer doesn't bother to explain what the term means. You, the reader, are left to figure it out for yourself, to ask your own questions, find out your own information, come to your own conclusions.

But this is a film/tv review, not a history examination or a job interview. We read movie reviews to be entertained, to be amused, to enjoy ourselves in a moment of leisure, slouched in our favourite chair. We're not going to bother to ask questions about what we're reading. So what do we do with this phrase, "the growing problem of Indians"? We file it away in our mental cabinets and the next time we're talking to someone or writing email or writing in our journals or blogs or FB walls, we might mention that "a growing problem with Indians" caused Custer's last stand. Suddenly, we've gone from being killed for killing other people and trying to steal their land to having "a growing problem with Indians" causing the death of an American hero. And this piece of information continues to colour anything we read or hear or see about Native Americans. We "know" that "the government" had a "growing problem" with "Indians." Even though we really don't know anything at all. No facts have been imparted to us, our store of knowledge about the Native people, or the white Americans of that day, the number of protagonists and antagonists, is richer by not one iota. Instead, what we have is an assumption that masquerades as fact. One of that family of statements that lives in the land of "Everyone knows" and "they say."

"While, in general, politicians in Washington hoped that the Indians could be contained, the sentiment in the West was to eradicate them, especially after gold was discovered in the Black Hills, on the Sioux reservation."

Again, we're not actually being given any information here. "In general" is a nice way of saying "I'm not going to tell you how many." Not that we need to know. And what does it mean, to "be contained"? Is that the same as being "killed"? Eradicated? Rounded up on reservations? Why not just admit that the Americans of the time longed to seize the land of the Native people? Because that IS what we're talking about, you know. It's not as if he doesn't say that exact thing in the very next sentence, either.

"As civilization advanced the frontier towards the Pacific ..."

This one got to me. The assumption that the greedy people who were simply looking for new frontiers to exploit,new forests to cut down, new natives to shoot and steal the land from, that these wretches and scoundrels and flim-flam men had any right to be seen as the forces of civilization, is nothing short of ridiculous, and outright offensive. Mind you, I'm not arguing the concept of the Noble Savage, here. The nobility, or lack thereof, on the part of the savage has no bearing whatsoever on the civilization or lack thereof of those who would exploit, rape, and murder him.

In short, Weigand appears to conclude that Custer was done in by "manifest destiny," without ever bothering to explain that "manifest destiny" is that doctrine that justifies the bloody imperialistic genocide of the Natives, the First Nations of this land, and the theft of their land, as well as the war with Mexico to take by force that land that now constitutes the whole of the present-day United States of America. I guess it sounds a lot less appealing to say that Custer died because he believed that Native Americans should be exterminated and their lands stolen by force. I can't imagine why.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. and #OccupyWallStreet

The war in VietNam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. [...] With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profits and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs re-structuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say: "This is not just." It will look upon our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

[...]

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-anti-revolutionaries.

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Politics: War Atrocities

Goya, War

Because, as you know, this blog is dedicated to peace, to the end of war and its atrocities, to the hope of a brighter tomorrow when we will no longer throw our children — and everyone else's — into the gaping maw of Moloch.

The combat soldier, as an absolutely deprived person, responds to direct situational exigencies. [...] Deadening fear intermingles with acts of bravery. [...]

If enemy prisoners are taken, they may be subjected to atrocities in the rage of the battle or its immediate aftermath. The soldier's distaste of endangering civilians may be overcome by his fear that [the enemy], of any age or sex, can be responsible for his own death (Ed: Or the death of those of his comrades whom he has been trained to think of as his best and only friends.) Where the opportunity arises, looting often occurs. War souvenirs are frequently collected either to be kept personally or later sold to rear-echelon servicemen. (Italics added. Editorial note from ThePoliticalCat.)

— Charles C. Moskos, as cited inMalaya and Singapore During The Japanese Occupation

The "absolutely deprived person" status that is inflicted on servicemen as part of their basic training has the effect of deadening them to all that is human and humane. Apparently, such deadening no longer has the desired effect, for even these poor, pitiful humans retain some vestige of conscience and feeling. They come back from their war crimes with PTSD, and inflict upon their loved ones, neighbours, families, and society in general, the cost of rehabilitating them and dealing with their costly and painful suffering.

Thus, our armies now seek robots, "unmanned drones," that do not, and cannot, suffer any twinge of conscience about killing the innocent, the unarmed, the civilians who are so unfortunate as to live in a zone of war.

It is stated as a matter of fact in many of the memoirs written by PoWs in the Pacific Theater during WW II that their Korean and Taiwanese guards were often more brutal and inhumane than even the Japanese soldiers, who committed unparalleled war crimes in their imperialist expansion into Southeast Asia. Upon reading at greater length of the treatment meted out to these unfortunate "Imperial subjects" of Korea and Taiwan, it becomes clear that the dehumanization process to which these unfortunate "subjects" were subjected could only be remedied or stalled by inflicting upon their helpless prisoners torments that were at least as unpleasant as those that they themselves suffered.

Thus the cycle continues. Each person one rung up on the ladder of abuse directs their kicks and blows to those one rung below. Those at the very bottom of that ladder have no one upon whom to vent their frustrations and rage, and so turn them inward and punish each other and themselves, as they have been taught and shown to do.

Picasso, Guernica

When will humanity emerge from these dark ages? When will we evolve beyond the need of war? It must come soon, or we will surely destroy ourselves and all we hold dear. Iran announced the existence of a hidden uranium-refining facility, and everywhere, the neocons have crawled out of the woodwork demanding an immediate attack upon that unfortunate nation. Why? Because the government of the State of Israel, a bunch of neocon hacks and hawks to the last man, are "afraid" of the possibility that Iran might soon have nuclear weapons. Earliest estimates of this happening range from one to five years. Not that facts should get in the way of hysteria, of course.

Israel possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons, but will neither confirm nor deny that it does so. Israel is not a signatory to the NNPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Iran is. Iran has notified the IAEA, as required by its membership in the IAEA, of its "secret" facility. Iran has also agreed to permit IAEA inspectors to assess its nuclear sites. Israel, not being a signatory to this, most important treaty, refuses to release any information whatsoever about what its doing with nuclear power. Israel is a hawkish state, constantly engaging in acts of hostility against its neighbours, supported by the U.S. to the tune of $10 million in taxpayer money PER DAY. In addition to obscene yearly quantities of military aid. Just this year, despite our own horrendous economic situation, we gave Israel nearly $3 billion in military aid.

The interests of the Israeli people are not being represented by their government, which prefers to use its own civilians as an excuse for further armament rather than negotiate peaceful solutions with its neighbours. Children of Abraham, of Hagar and Sarah, the time has come to beat your swords into plowshares. If you do not, then you will all be obliterated when the Third World War begins, because there are too many people who want it to begin on your doorstep. It is not a war that anyone will survive.

As Tom Lehrer sang, "We'll all go together when we go." Rather than contemplate the death of every living being on this planet, let us work together to a just solution. It can be done, if we all insist on it. Those Christian Dominionists who want Armageddon and The Rapture, do you think that teacher who said "Love thy neighbour as thyself; there is no greater commandment than [this]" would care for your efforts to create Armageddon?

Crossposted over at The Peace Tree

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Politics: Telling It Like It Is

In case you hadn't already heard, our President has just warned Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's current and rabidly rightist leader, NOT to carry out a preemptive strike on Iran without the agreement thereto of the United States (my paraphrase — his exact words, according to Ha'aretz, were: "Don't surprise me with (an) Iran strike.")

Naturally, the rightwingnuttia of America is foaming at the mouth with their unconsidered, rageful, and rabid reaction. Loud cries of "fuck him," and "bomb 'em anyway," with no thought of the consequences. Although I suppose putting "thought" and "rightwingnuttia" in the same post ought to be the best example of oxymoronia.

Which leads me to believe that rightwingnuttia could not care less if the state of Israel and all its people, and all Jews whereever they may live, were to be wiped off the face of the earth tomorrow. They are just an excuse for the more rabid among them, to be used as a catspaw, with no value inherent in themselves except the ability to be used as a whipping post, as an excuse for military posturing, as a tool to permit this or that action against others, for example, the Muslims, or those who live in countries with vast oil resources. Because should Israel carry out ANY military action without the full support and military commitment of the United States, death and destruction for our Israeli brothers and sisters is sure to follow.

Sickened by the howling of these wretched beasts, I dug around and found within myself the wherewithal to post this comment on HuffPo, where I found the link to the Ha'aretz story:

This is a warning, not a request. One does not warn another without invoking consequences. What are the consequences if you warn someone not to do something and they do it anyway? You take away any privileges you might have previously afforded them, or any future benefits that you might award them. What does America have that Israel wants? Money. American money supports the troubled Israeli economy. Arms - American arms and armaments enable Israel to protect itself against hostile neighbours.

Israel engaged in two wars recently and lost them both. Israel's security is a matter of grave concern. Yet that concern must not outweigh pressing humanitarian concerns. President Obama has shown that he supports Israel by refusing to attend the recent conference at which Israel was vilified (in my opinion, not without grounds) for crimes against humanity. However, President Obama is not going to allow Israel to determine American foreign policy. This is a good thing. The tail should not wag the dog.

It is not unreasonable for President Obama to take such a stand. Many Americans do not wish to continue to support, financially, in a difficult economic time, an Israeli policy of expansion that continues to take land, water, and resources from Palestinian residents and give them to Israeli settlers. We all respect Israel's right to exist - with the exception of the most rabid anti-Israelis. But most of us also want peace in the Middle-East according to the agreements made half a century ago, signed and ratified by all parties thereto. Shalom, Salaam, let us live in peace. For peace benefits all, whereas war benefits only a few, and that few the worst among us.

Thanks to extreme pain (still?!) and the resulting heavy doses of medication, I'm not sure this makes much sense to me, much less anyone else.

Still, I think our President has done something most American leaders of past decades have been unable to do: he has told Israel, nay, warned Israel, that American support is not to be unconditionally assumed, and that American public opinion is tired of Israel's (1) refusal to engage in a good-faith process towards implementing the solution that Israel itself agreed to lo, these many years ago; (2) shameless meddling in American policy, domestic and foreign; (3) unwarranted assumption of unconditional access to the American taxpayer's assets; (4) acting as if laws agreed to by the entire international community do not apply to Israel alone, although everyone else should be bound by them. Well, this was long overdue. As a lifetime supporter of Israel, I am glad of this.

Israel must find a peaceful solution, because the martial solution puts the entire Israeli citizenry, and the Jewish people everywhere, at risk. Not all Jews are Israelis. Not all Jews want to live in Israel. Many have made their home elsewhere for generations, and have no wish to give it all up to return to Eretz Israel. Not all Jews support the policies of the Israeli government. Yet all Jews will pay the price for Israel's shortsighted policies, for some of those who oppose Israel will not hesitate to kill a Jew. Or many Jews.

Not even all Israelis support the Israeli government's policies, and many among them are courageous enough to call them what they really are, which is, mad, short-sighted, self-destructive. For the sake of the Children of Israel, the leaders must make peace with their brothers and neighbours, the Arabs. For are they not all the children of Abraham, and brothers belike?

I am very proud of my President today, for his courage and lucidity in speaking the truth to leaders who have so little care for their own people, who seek only to frighten them into perpetuating a cycle of hate and fear laid down a long time ago.

Enough!

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World: Enough!

Image from AliyaAllZionists

Enough of what's going on in the Gaza strip. For all of you upset by the Israeli military action against the mostly civilian population of Gaza, we have to come up with something to do. It's useless wringing our hands and moaning and mourning. Israel has gone too far, this time.

Today, the Israeli military bombed the UN headquarters in the Gaza strip,

[...] engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.

It was bad enough that, after the ceasefire ended in late December of 2008, Israel attacked Gaza which has suffered for nearly two years under an Israeli embargo that has prevented basic supplies like fuel, food, water, medicine, even concrete for the burial of bodies, from reaching the Palestinians of Gaza.

Despite the fact that the so-called "free and fair" elections held in Palestine resulted in the election of Hamas, Israel and its supporter and military paymaster the United States have refused to recognize Hamas as legitimately elected political leaders of Palestine. Had the US not pressed for the elections at the time that they were held, it is quite possible that Hamas would have lost the elections. However, once they were held, Hamas became the legitimately elected government and, as such, should have been accorded the basic courtesy extended to every elected government.

Why is it that we are willing to sit down with murderous dictators like Mugabe and Ferdinand "we love your adherence to democratic principles" Marcos, but refuse to negotiate with a fairly elected democratic government just because we don't like them?



For the record, I know quite well that Hamas once held the view that the State of Israel had no right to exist. But that State of Israel is long since gone, having gorged and bloated itself on Palestinian territory and squeezing the Palestinians into two tiny corners of what was once their land. At this point, Hamas is not capable of wiping out the State of Israel, and the more pragmatic among their leaders recognize that fact. These people SHOULD be courted and given a seat at the table while all the countries of that region sit down with the funders of this ludicrous and soul-destroying conflict to determine how to best effect a peace. There is no question of being unable to do this because the alternative is to murder every Palestinian alive no matter where they are to be found, and that is not a viable course of action.

Regardless of the willingness of Israel to engage in such acts, we can no longer afford to, financially, morally, intellectually, or socially, support such acts. Firstly, we don't have the money to keep paying the Israelis billions every year in social welfare and military supplies. Israel cannot survive without American taxpayer dollars at this point because a wartime economy does not thrive. The state of Israel needs to find a peacetime footing in which currency can be stabilized, economic prospects realized, jobs created, and monies exchanged. Then it can safely get off the American dole because heaven knows, Americans need their money to start repairing the damage that has been done to their own country. We would like, for example, to have a health care system just like Israel's. But we can't afford it because a lot of our money is paying for Israel's excellent medical system. Which I don't begrudge, unless it's at our expense.

Worse yet, our dollars are paying for bombs that blow up Palestinian babies, guns to shoot them, concrete walls and armed soldiers that forbid humanitarian assistance to them, checkpoints that harass and humiliate them multiple times daily as they walk to work or school. Jobs don't exist any more in Gaza. If we were to stop paying for these murderous crimes, we would have more money to repair our broken bridges and roads and give our own children health care. The Israelis could then be forced to negotiate with the Palestinians. Instead of financing the building of luxury homes for Israelis in land unlawfully seized from Palestinians, we could finance our own homeowners who are losing their homes.

We could make aid to Palestine and Israel conditional upon a peace settlement, a two-state solution, acceptance by Israel of multiple world court decisions that were preceded by free and fair trials and findings of fact and that have found against Israel and for the Palestinians. It is not too much to ask that Israel be a law-abiding member of the international community instead of a gangster, thug, and murderer that only gets away with these horrible crimes because we are playing their bully enforcer.

The process has begun in the EU. The EU is Israel's largest trading partner, and activists in European nations are calling upon their governments to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement (petition here). We here in the US can do the same.

Please take a moment or more to write, call, email, or fax your Congresscritters, both in the House and in the Senate, and tell them that you want them to ensure that your tax dollars do not go to Israel until Israel agrees to abide by the law and ceases bombing civilians, the UN, the Red Cross, schools housing only refugees, humanitarian aid stockpiles, ambulances, and the like.

Here is a list, compiled by activists in the UK, of brands that are either made in Israel or made by companies that unquestioningly supply Israel. Here is another that appears to focus on American companies and brands. Adbusters is calling on citizens and consumers to join in the boycott, pointing to the ever-inspiring Naomi Klein's call as a fine example. Professor Ilan Pappe has also said that the only way to stop this humanitarian crisis is to impose financial sanctions on the Israeli State. If anyone knows of any other information that should be widely distributed, please, pass it on to us and one of us will try to spread it around on this blog and in other fora.

The Global BDS Movement is calling on everyone to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel for its violations of human rights laws in Palestine. I believe firmly in wallet pains as an instructive action. People who don't give a fuck about human rights suddenly care a lot if they start losing money as a result. We managed to overcome apartheid in South Africa through a combination of boycott, divest, and sanction. We can bring peace to Palestine/Israel the same way. As a consumer, please boycott anything made in Israel, or by companies that have ties to Israel. Check with your local manufacturers whether they support Israel. Not Israel's right to exist, which we at this fine blog support wholeheartedly, but Israel's current and past violations of the precepts of international law and human rights.


Note: Look for the digits 729 at the beginning of the bar code on any products you buy. 729 indicates that the product was manufactured in Israel. Talk to your local grocery store or deli if they carry such products. Do not buy them and tell your store why you will not buy them. Tell your friends to look out for this barcode as well.

Here are many other sites involved in the boycott, with helpful hints about how to go about registering your feelings about the Gaza situation.

Once again, I want to say — no, not that some of my best friends are Jewish — that I have been pro-Israel all my life from the time I was a child, when I first heard about the Holocaust from my father, who told me that it was my moral obligation to ensure that such a thing would never happen again. I cannot support what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, but that does not change my support for the right to existence of the Israeli state. I cannot condone crimes against Israel or against Jews based on what the criminals in the IDF and the government of Israel are doing. Many Jews and many Israelis are also protesting and calling for a boycott. Please do not direct your anger at Jewish people, whether religious or secular. That helps no one, and especially not the Palestinians. What we need is to do something. We need to do it in a peaceable and law-abiding manner, but we also need to let the Israeli government and its puppets in the United States know that we are neither blind nor stupid and we want an end to the conflict in Gaza and to the flagrant murder of civilians.

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World: Eyeless in Gaza

From the New York Times

Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke;
Samson Agonistes, John Milton

One — this one, anyway — can't help wondering what the fuck is going on in Gaza this week. Why is Israel bombing, shooting, and sending the sixth largest and best equipped army in the world into Gaza, the refuge of 1.3 million Palestinians, most of whom are unarmed civilians? Some 400,000 of that population lives in refugee camps funded by the UN.

Israel has bombed the power plants, water and sewage treatment facilities, and restricted movement in and out of Gaza which has essentially become the world's largest standing concentration camp. Why? What is this about? And why is Israel getting away with this starkly inhumane treatment?

Before you start lecturing me about what the Palestinians have done to bring this upon themselves, stop. No. I'm well aware of the tortuous politics of the Middle East (or West Asia, if you prefer). Here's a timeline of the events leading up to today's report of tanks entering the much-bombed and repeatedly destroyed strip of Gaza.

This is the most recent mapping of the conflict. Its roots go back all the way to the fight of two desert tribes over scarce land and water resources. Or perhaps, given the Jewish Diaspora under Rome, only as far back as the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which established in Palestine a "home" for the Jewish people with a guarantee of "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Of course, in the intervening years, Israel has repeatedly taken land and scarce water from the Palestinians, refused the refugees that it has created the right of return (thereby ensuring that their lands and goods, if any, become the property of the state of Israel), and reduced the "land of Palestine" to a series of narrow unconnected strips with no sovereignty and severely restricted movement.

This fine map courtesy of aucegypt.edu

It was generous of the British to so dispose of the land and the fruits of the labour of others.

As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I long admired the state for its tenacity, its refusal to contemplate surrender or nonexistence, its bravery in the face of daunting odds. But there is a huge difference between fighting the remnants of the great Turkish empire and an assault upon a defenseless civilian population when you have the best army and armaments that the contents of the American Treasury can buy.

What is now going on in Gaza is nothing short of despicable. Yes, Israel has a right to exist. But nobody has a right to rain bombs on the heads of women, old people, children, noncombatant civilians. To those who seek to apologize for Israel's actions by claiming that it is Hamas, the "terrorists," who hide their bombs and guns behind the bodies of civilians, let me point out that Gaza is currently the most densely populated place in the world. Where exactly could Hamas locate their weapons of self-defense away from civilians? Why should they give up their pitifully ineffective weapons when the State of Israel kills 100 Palestinians for every Israeli that is killed? How can they trust Israel to safeguard their rights, when Israel brazenly destroys their homes, orchards, lands, wells, and their children?

It is well documented that Israel has eaten away at the "civil rights" of the Palestinians as well as at their territory. The Western Powers created the State of Israel as a salve for their collective guilt of a thousand years of pogroms, discrimination, hatred, bloodshed, killing, concentration camps, and Final Solutions. Why did they choose to carve out for the victims of their evil a "home" in a place already occupied by others? Why, since they were presumably moved by a generous spirit, did they not generously give up their own damned land, or some portion thereof?

They have discriminated against the Roma (gypsies) in much the same way, for nearly the same length of time. Yet they do not feel obliged to give the Gypsies a new home (assuming that they could find a location to which they could trace their historical roots). They prefer to leave them to the tender mercies of their fellow Europeans.

There is no honour in this battle; nothing of which to feel proud. This is not like the fight over the Golan Heights, the Six-Day War, in which Israel took on multiple armed foes and triumphed. This is a disgrace. Gaza has been cut off from the rest of the world for years now. Deprived of food, water, sewage treatment facilities, light, power, medicine, basic dignity. To attack an armed enemy and prevail is a mighty feat. To attack a weakened toothless civilian rabble of children and women — that is a disgrace and a shame.

Read what the Gazans have to say. It indicts the Israeli Army very effectively.

And not just the Israeli Army. The current occupant of the White House, the most wretched to occupy that space, has given Israel his full permission to indulge in this disgraceful carnage; asking only, in the most timid of voices, that Israel "try hard to avoid civilian casualties," even as reports tell us that Israel's air strikes over the past week have killed more than 400 Palestinians, wounded many more. And even as I write this, Israeli tanks are rumbling into the beleaguered Gaza strip.

The only good news to report in the midst of this revolting ongoing Holocaust upon the Palestinians is that finally, the scales seem to be falling from everyone's eyes. I can no longer support Israel. I will always support the right of the Israeli people and the State of Israel to exist, but that existence must now be tempered with a verifiable demonstration of their commitment to civil rights for Palestinians, peace with their neighbours, and a return of Palestinian land and property.

Rest assured, those of you who are demonstrating against Israel's unacceptable military actions, that millions of Jews, whether Israeli, American, or other, and countless millions of people of every nation, ethnicity, and faith or lack thereof stand with you. Israel can no longer whitewash these crimes against humanity.

The blindness of the Israeli hawks who willingly lead their own people into the role of catspaw for the American military-industrial complex is sad to see. So great a nation, deluded by its failure to recognize that there is no military solution to the Gordian knot that binds it.

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Politics: Who Knew Condi Was So Popular

with our friends in New Zealand?

Banner reads "War Criminal Wish You Weren't Here"

Not a single major media outlet in the U.S. reported on this enchanting display of respect and affection for our Esteemed ChevronTanker-in-Chief, Condoleeza Rice. Even as our Saudi Arabian Overlords were showering Bootsie Ferragamo with expensive jewels — $316,000 worth of them, which our bootlickers in the professional media are describing as "Foreigners take(ing) a shine to" Rice — not a single one of them bothered to report that students in NZ had put a price on Rice's head.

Auckland University Students Association had to withdraw the bounty it placed on the head of Condoleezza Rice two days earlier, under threat of legal action. However, the students association at Victoria University in Wellington doubled the price, offering $10,000 for a successful citizen's arrest. Although several people turned up to the demo with handcuffs, the chance to nab Rice didn't present itself. Police refused to cooperate in the arrest of this war criminal, giving the irrelevant excuse that she is a visiting dignitary.

Much more newsworthy in my opinion. The degree to which our media shapes the information we receive is not lost upon the hoi polloi, you media jackals. There's a reason your circulation is dropping faster than Bush's approval rates (or lack thereof).

A third of a million dollars worth of jewelry gifted to the Secretary of State. Doesn't that look — and smell — bad? As one more famous than our humble self would say, "It stinks in my nostrils." Didn't anyone tell you, Condi, that Caesar's wife must be above suspicion?

Fortunately, our laws say that Condi can't keep the glitter for herself. It's all been turned over to the GSA, along with the mere $100,000 or so of gifts these same people gave to Boosh. It does make you wonder why these wealthy monarchs would give such expensive gifts to the Shoe Queen, though, doesn't it?

From the New Zealand Protest

Thanks, New Zealanders, for showing us what we should have been doing from the first moment this warmongering lunatic began spouting her bullshit about war and torture and Terra. Thanks for standing up for human rights and human(e) conscience.

Photographs of this fine event are available at this link.

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World: Counting the Dead in Mumbai

Amiran White/NYT

Raw Story is reporting that 195 people lost their lives in the attacks on Mumbai, the financial and showbiz heart of India. The number includes 26 foreigners and 15 of the security forces who fought them. Eleven terrorists were also killed, and one terrorist, a Pakistani national, is in custody.

The Times of India is reporting that the captured terrorist has told his police interrogators that the terrorists received assistance from locals in Mumbai. Given the extreme carnage and destruction in Mumbai carried out by a mere dozen terrorists, it is possible that a significant number of terrorists got away and blended in to the local population. Sources among the survivors have claimed that the terrorists appeared to be quite familiar with the layout of the hotels they took over. However, survivors of violent incidents are not the most reliable source of evidence.

Also, given interrogation methods favoured by the Indian police, it is quite possible that the suspect in custody is telling them whatever he thinks they want to hear. Other things the suspect, the unfortunate Azam Amir Kasab, has told the police: The terrorists' specific mission was to target Israelis to avenge atrocities on Palestinians.

This is why, he claims, they attacked Nariman House. Times of India's sources said Kasab's colleagues killed in the operation had stayed in Nariman House earlier. Interesting. How would Muslims be able to rent in Nariman House, a building owned by an Israeli businessman who rented only to Jews?

Also, the dead terrorists who had previously stayed at Nariman House assumed the identities of Malaysian students. Does this mean that Malaysians are involved? Or is the guy just saying whatever comes to mind?

Meanwhile, the Independent reported on Friday that two of the arrested gunmen appear to have been Britons of Pakistani descent. Since there is only one gunman in custody, it is clear that some sort of misunderstanding occurred. Moreover, the unfortunate Kasab has given the names of all his colleagues at this point and claimed that they are all from Pakistan (although that claim may embrace a multitude of sins, given that many individuals who are Pakistani or Indian or Chinese by ethnicity but citizens of the U.S., UK, or any other nation, often make trips to the old country to visit friends or relatives, or merely to ascertain their cultural roots.

The foreigners killed appear to have come from various nations, including Mauritania, Singapore, and Cyprus. Earlier reports that the terrorists specifically targeted U.S. and U.K. passport holders appear to be incorrect.

Some 300 people were injured. The terrorists, who appear to have been well-trained in military tactics, well-armed and provisioned for exactly such a battle, took three buildings — Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, Oberoi and Trident Hotels, and Nariman House, the last being a building owned by an Israeli who rented to Chabad-Lubavitchers. Apparently, some of the Lubavitchers were U.S. citizens.

All eight inhabitants of Nariman House were killed before Indian commandos retook the building. The terrorists also targeted a hospital and the main Mumbai railway station. The New York Times is reporting that the terrorists immediately killed everyone they came across in the various buildings they invaded, although they allowed security forces to assume that they had taken hostages. The terrorists also fired randomly at people on the street and in facing buildings, killing several bystanders whose only crime appeared to be being within the line of fire.

CNN is reporting that the terrorists had planned on killing 5,000 people.

U.S. intelligence is stating that it has no firm opinion as to who is behind the attacks. According to the NYT, the Indian government seems to believe that Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, assisted the Lashkar e Taiba, or LeT, a militant Islamic group in Pakistan, in carrying out the attacks.

The terrorists claimed membership of the "Deccan Mujahideen." The Deccan is the mountainous plateau that divides North and Central India from South India. Mujahideen roughly translates to "freedom fighters." The group has not been involved in previous incidents and appears to be virtually unknown.

Indian security forces based their suspicions on the discovery of a boat adrift off the coast of Mumbai. The captain of the boat was discovered bound, face-down on the deck, dead. Four crew members are missing; and the logs from cell-phones retrieved from the boat indicate that they had been used to call Jalalabad, in Pakistan. Indian security have also, according to the Times of India, recovered multiple identity and credit cards from many different organizations. The level of sophistication involved is believed to indicate ISI involvement.

The current leader of Pakistan, best known for being the husband of Benazir "Pinkie" Bhutto, the corrupt Asif Ali Zardari, has warned India against holding Pakistan responsible while simultaneously, through the other side of his neck, warning Pakistani militant groups of a strict response should any of them be found responsible.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, as well as previous presidents, and a supposed expert on the Middle-East and South Asia, claimed in his book, The Search for al-Qaeda, that Usama bin Laden assisted the ISI in developing LeT. A devastating attack on India's Parliament was carried out in 2001 by another terrorist group, Jaish e Mohammad, also apparently in collusion with the ISI. It is not clear at this time which of these two terrorist organizations is behind the current attack.

The ISI has long operated as an independent force in Pakistan. It is controlled by no one and beholden, apparently, only to U.S. military and intelligence who supply it with arms and aid. It has been instrumental in the downfall of politicians who have not toed its line. It is quite possible that the ISI, acting on its own, planned and executed the attack on Mumbai with the intent to destabilize relations between India and Pakistan: an attempt that may well suceed, given the increase in such incidents since George W. Bush first took power.

For evidence of such increase in terrorism, see Rep. Henry Waxman's letter to Colin Powell written in 2004. The letter points out that while the misadministration of Gee Dumbya manipulated data to make it appear as if terrorist incidents decreased during his ill-favoured reign, the underlying data make it clear that the number of incidents had actually increased.

The only good news that has come out of this is that President-elect Barack Obama has already formed and announced an emergency advisory team to deal with intelligence received on the Mumbai situation. However, unfortunately, Obama does not assume the reins of power for a little over fifty days as yet, during which time the Idiot-in-Chief can fuck the situation up in a hundred different ways.

And before I forget - thank you, George, for leaving the world in the shitty state it's in. We couldn't have done it without you, ya little schmuck. While you bombed the crap out of women and children in Iraq, destroying the cradle of civilization, al-Qaeda had plenty of time to build up in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks.

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Politics: Old Fat Naked Women

For Peace wants you warmongering shmucks to KNOCK IT OFF! Or they'll come over and take their clothes off.

They don't think even Dick "Satan" Cheney wants to see his grammy's titties swaying in the breeze.

My Gram didn't have any (or if she did they were tiny leathery flaps and practically invisible, but I can tell you now, that's an image I NEVER want to see. Rest in peace, Grammy. Fully clothed peace.

Anyway. La Casa de Los Gatos says Checkidout!

With special thanks to Jo!

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2008 Elections: More of the Same

From Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing, a graphic (in many senses of the word) illustration of the past 8 years with Chimpy McDrunkensot and Dick "dick" Shootemintehface.

Vote for this guy if you want more of the same:

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World: What Really Happened In South Ossetia? Part II

We closed the first part of this lengthy post on the situation in South Ossetia with the denunciation of Mikheil Saakashvili. We didn't give a list of reasons why we thought Saakashvili was worthy of such denunciation. We will do so right after including this comment from allencharles, who said, in response to Part I:

Some history of the area needs to be presented to if my comment is to be understood.

The South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast was established in 1922 by the U.S.S.R. and remained a part of the U.S.S.R. inside Georgia until it (presumably the USSR) failed. The new Georgian government declared their (the South Ossetian) government as illegal and took away the freedoms the Ossetians had lived under since 1922. They Ossetians refused to accept the loss of their local government and have been in rebellion until the present. Over 90 percent of the Ossetians are duel citizens of both Georgia and Russia. One way of understanding their local government would be to compare an American Indian Nation and the US Government.

When the army of Georgia decided to attack and kill every Ossetian the Russian’s moved in to stop it. THEY HAD ALREADY KILLED 1,400 Ossetians. This has been confirmed by multiple news sources. We refer you to Teh Google.

This is where we find the situation today. When the Serbs attempted to wipe out the Arimeans in Kosvo, America did exactly the same thing to stop them and we bombed Serbia.

You can think for yourselves as to whether or not Bush is in order with his comments to Russia.

The people of Kosvo were not American citizens yet we felt a moral duty to protect them. If 1,400 American Citizens had been murdered just south of our boarder what to you think we would have done?

Well, I think we showed exactly what we would have done when Reagan sent the army to the tiny nation of Grenada simply because there were students with American nationality in that nation when they had their revolution. Of course, it was an excuse to wipe out the progressive movement there, even though no Americans were actually harmed. We notice that Bush isn't rattling quite so many sabers at China despite the recent murder of an American citizen there. Our guess is, it's easier to conduct "regime change" on small, poorly armed countries than on some people who outnumber you four times AND to whom you owe a ton of money for financing your last war.

But, to continue. Essentially, South Ossetia has been autonomous since the 1920s. When Georgia attempted to take over, the South Ossetians resisted and have continued resisting to the present. In the 1990s, South Ossetia expelled the Georgian army from its territory, but Saakashvili and the Georgian government have refused to recognize South Ossetia's claims to autonomy and continue to treat the region as part of Georgia, despite the South Ossetians' lengthy history as a separate ethnic and linguistic group. Dr. Gerard Toal, professor of Government and International Affairs at Virginia Tech's Washington, D.C., campus offers a nuanced look at the situation in an article at The Irish Times.

In 2002, U.S. military advisors were seconded to Georgia, where they have purportedly been training the Georgian military in the "war against terror," which is starting to look markedly like an excuse for global hegemony. One which, it hardly need be pointed out, is untenably expensive for American taxpayers and the U.S. military, which is currently fighting a "war" on two fronts — Iraq and Afghanistan. All pretense of finding Usama bin Laden or the perpetrators of the 2001 attack on U.S. soil has long since been abandoned.

Wikipedia tells us that in 2006, a second referendum on the autonomy of South Ossetia was held, the first (in 1992) having been deemed invalid by other nations.

According to the Tskhinvali election authorities, the referendum turned out a majority for independence from Georgia where 99% of South Ossetian voters supported independence and the turnout for the vote was 95% and the referendum was monitored by a team of 34 international observers from Germany, Austria, Poland, Sweden and other countries at 78 polling stations. However, it was not recognized internationally by the UN, European Union, OSCE, NATO and the Russian Federation, given the lack of ethnic Georgian participation and the legality of such referendum without recognition from the central government in Tbilisi.

Once again, the South Ossetians were not recognized as having a right to autonomy and sovereignty, even though the inhabitants of the tiny enclave of Kosovo within Serbia were granted such autonomy. This is sheer hypocrisy.

The following year (2007), the Georgian government appeared to lend greater credence to South Ossetia's claims of autonomy. Essentially, the region of South Ossetia had, by this time, been behaving as an autonomous state for over 15 years (since the referendum of 1992 and the Dagomys ceasefire agreement of that year) if not longer (since the 1920s).

In the intervening years, Saakashvili, an American-educated Georgian, had been cultivating American neocons and was getting particularly cosy with that spectacular human failure, George "Dumbya" Bush, who hailed him as a "liberator" — sort of like the Iraqis did with us — in this particularly ironic speech, delivered in Tsibili:

Georgia is "building a democratic society where the rights of minorities are respected; where a free press flourishes; where a vigorous opposition is welcomed and where unity is achieved through peace," he said.

Saakashvili, whom honest taxpaying Americans might term "a kiss-ass," showed his gratitude with this particular lickspittlery:

Saakashvili praised Bush as a "decisive and visionary leader," [...]

Oh, indeedy. The only way you could refer to Jor Jee as visionary is if you were describing what he sees in his drunken or drugged stupors. But we digress.

In the meantime, the blessed recipients of the freedom and liberty promised by Saakashvili had found that they were enjoying precious little of either. As is the wont of free and liberated citizens of democratic societies, they took to the streets in peaceful protest — much like the Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili to power. Imagine their surprise when the democratic liberator of Georgia, instead of welcoming their "vigorous opposition," proceeded to turn riot police with rubber bullets, hoses, tear gas, and water cannons on them. He added insult to injury by imposing a 15-day state of emergency in which Interior Ministry troops armed with truncheons patrolled the streets. He suspended news services and banned all demonstrations.

Remarkably democratic, ain't it? Some 500 were injured, approximately 100 of them seriously enough to require hospitalization, and many were jailed and tortured.

Saakashvili's popularity was on the wane. In response to pressure from opposition forces, he held snap elections in January of this year (2008) and won with a mere 52 per cent of the vote — a significant come-down from his first election, which he won with nearly 96 per cent. Meanwhile, Saakashvili is doing his best to get Georgia into the EU and NATO. The Europeans have been relatively cool to the idea, but American neocons, who have tricked American citizens into foolish and costly wars repeatedly, have no such compunctions.

Saakashvili's machinations behind the scenes aside, the little dictator is in a dangerous position. He is trying to draw the U.S. and Europe into a war with Russia — a war which no one will win. Vladimir Putin is an ex-KGB man and nobody's fool. And unfortunately, the U.S. is currently in the hands of the biggest fool to ever walk the planet. Now we come to the events of this week.

Saakashvili concluded a ceasefire agreement, that included Russian-mediated negotiations, with South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity on Thursday, August 7th 2008.

At 2200 hours (South Ossetian time) on that same day, as the rest of the world was preparing to watch the Olympic games, Georgia invaded South Ossetia in a surprise attack. These allegations are made by South Ossetians and have been confirmed by no less an authority than Aunty Beeb. Georgian tanks were soon rolling into South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali. For the next day and night, the Georgian military attacked South Ossetia, bombing, shelling, destroying houses, targeting hospitals, and indiscriminately killing civilians. The current estimate is that between 1,400 and 2,000 civilians were killed. The Mail reports that 30,000 fled the city of Tskhinvali, looking for refuge in Russian North Ossetia. Georgian authorities were making statements such as this:

The Georgian Minister for Integration, Temur Yakobashvili, said Georgia's aim was not to take over the territory but to finish "a criminal regime".

[...]

In a televised address, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili earlier called for the bloodshed to end, but also warned the Russian-backed separatists not to try Tbilisi's patience.

This can only be deemed provocative. A criminal regime? To be finished? Is he referring to Kokoity, who his fellow South Ossetians consider their leader? Tiny Georgia warning the Russian bear not to try their patience?

On Friday, 8th August 2008, Russia requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. It offered an immediate halt to violence in South Ossetia on the condition that both parties renounce the use of armed force. Mark Ames, writing in The Nation, says that Saakashvili refused to renounce armed force. Al Jazeera confirms this. Meanwhile, Georgian military forces continued to bomb civilian targets and reduce buildings to rubble. All the while, Saakashvili, in a display of hubris heretofore unequaled, continued to rail at the Russians and the South Ossetians. Russian response was swift and merciless.


Later that same day, Russian planes and tanks entered South Ossetia, sweeping the terrified Georgian army before them and halting the indiscriminate attempts at genocide by Georgian forces. The Georgian military abandoned the town of Gori, birthplace of Georgia's most famous son Josef Stalin, without firing a single shot.

By Sunday, August 10th, Russian troops having cleared South Ossetia of the Georgian military presence then proceeded to cut roads and bomb a military airfield in Georgian territory, although the Georgians claim they also hit the airport in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. Russian warships had also deployed to the coast of the Black Sea, where the Georgians claimed they were blockading food and fuel supplies. The Russians replied that they were not interested in a blockade but had a right to search all ships in the region.

Saakashvili then proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire and urged the Russians to respect this. Meanwhile, Georgian military forces continued to attack civilian populations in South Ossetia. Russia pointed this fact out in refusing to accept the ceasefire. Meanwhile, Georgian troops were advancing on Abkhazia. Russia warned Georgia to pull back and when Georgia failed to do so, advanced deep into Georgian territory from the Abkhazian side of the border after first evicting any remaining Georgian military from Abkhazia (which has its own long-running dispute with Georgia about autonomy; many Abkhazians hold Russian citizenship).

European diplomats have met with Saakashvili in Tbilisi — which does sort of put the lie to Saakashvili's claims that the Russians are bombing Tbilisi, doesn't it? — to persuade him to sign a ceasefire agreement.

Presently, the situation stands like this. Nicolas Sarkozy of France has met with Dmitry Medvedev of Russia to discuss the ceasefire. Medvedev has announced the end of Russian operations in the region. Georgia has yet to respond. A final settlement discussion is expected to occur soon.

There are rumours that Russian peacekeepers were killed by Israeli troops operating on Georgian soil. However, Ha'aretz is reporting that all Israeli security personnel who were training Georgian troops left before the war took place.

A retired senior Israeli officer who recently trained troops in Georgia said yesterday he was surprised that the Georgians faced off against Russia, since they have a much smaller army.

"They got into an adventure that I wouldn't have chosen to get into, based on the level of professionalism I saw in my visits to the Georgian army," the officer said. "Who knows where this will end."

Wherever it ends, it will NOT be good for Georgia and that idiot Saakashvili, may camels urinate on his parents' graves. Perhaps now the Georgian public will finally succeed in ridding itself of this nationalistic, tyrannical, expansionist loon.

As our regular visitors and friends know, we are anti-war. However, in this world, war is the nature of the beast we call human. We also believe in calling a thug a thug. Saakashvili is a thug. This does not make Putin or Medvedev saints in comparison. Only thugs get to power because only thugs want it badly enough to engage in thuggery for it. Poets, visionaries, and humanitarians rarely hold on to power long, even when it is thrust upon them — or else they too, turn into thugs.

Ultimately, we believe in pragmatism. Tiny little countries living on the edge of big nasty countries need to be very careful not to provoke their big nasty neighbours. Because it is not the thugs who suffer. It is the poor civilians, the women, the children, the aged, infirm, and disabled. They have no way to protect themselves, much less the strength to do so. It is immoral and wrong for thugs to win power at the expense of the suffering masses. It is cruel and depraved to force these most helpless of people to bear the cost of the thugs' desire for power.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Russia responded with force to Saakashvili's provocative acts. Georgia is a desperately poor nation, although Saakashvili is making Western investors happy by permitting a pipeline carrying oil out of BP's leased fields for European consumption, and instituting economic measures that penalize the poor and needy in favour of the rich and greedy.

The United Nations is distributing food to the victims of this engineered humanitarian crisis; Russia is setting aside funds for South Ossetia; and World Vision is working to help refugees in Tbilisi.

Part III of this lengthy post will analyze the possible reasons for this war.

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World: Bombings in India

A group calling itself the "Indian Mujahedeen" is claiming responsibility for the 17 bomb blasts that rocked Ahmedabad, the former capital of the Indian state of Gujarat, today. The IM, believed to be a loose coalition of three other groups &mdash SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India), Pakistan-based Lashkar e-Taiba and the Jammu-Kashmir-based Harkat ul-Jihad e-Islami.

The group emailed a 14-page manifesto to the media ahead of the bombings, claiming responsibility and declaring the purpose of the bombings &mdash to "avenge" communal violence against Muslims in 2002 in the state of Gujarat.

According to reports, some 30 people were killed and approximately 100 were injured. Twenty-four hours before the attack on Ahmedabat, the Indian IT centre of Bangalore was rocked by nine, smaller blasts. The IM is believed to be using bombs strapped to bicycles. The explosions were planned to cause maximum disruption, but some also believe that they were targeting Congress Party ministers and the home districts of political leaders who belong to the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), known for its fiery Hindu nationalism.

News sources from India are claiming that the bombs used in the attacks in Bangalore and Ahmedabad bear similar signatures &mdash rather than military ordinance, they appear to be made with ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer, and utilize quartz timer devices and microprocessors.

Intelligence sources believe that the attacks are being coordinated by Pakistan. They attribute the attacks to Pakistan's desire to distract attention from its own internal problems and the terrorist presence there, now that (thanks to Barack Obama) global attention has shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan and the Taliban. Even the U.S. is finally talking about links between Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani national security and intelligence agency) and the Taliban.

Thanks to George W.'s lame duck status, the truth about the situation in Pakistan &mdash a failed state by every definition of the term &mdash and its role in international terrorism is finally beginning to emerge. Muslims who do not support terrorism really need to speak out, as the IM is actively seeking to recruit "jihadis" for its covert operations in India. Despite the occasional shameful bouts of communal violence, many and varied religions have coexisted in peace for milennia in India. Don't let the death throes of the failed Pakistani state destroy India which has given shelter to so many different groups for so long.

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2008 Elections: Telling The Truth

Was it just yesterday? Or the day before? That senile warmonger John McInsane had the big brass balls to tell Barack Obama he was going to instruct Obama about how peaceful Iraq was and how things are going so fucking well in Iraq? Let's see, here's a few pertinent spittle-fleckings:

[...] McCain added, he [Obama, Ed.] will change his position on the war because of the success the U.S. is having there. “Sen. Obama was driven to his conclusion by ideology, not by the facts on the ground,” McCain said. “Success in Iraq is undeniable.”

The Seattle Times responds with an editorial that basically informs McInsane of what everyone else with a working brain cell already knows: the aged, cranky, nasty old Republican nominee is fuller of shit than a constipated cow. A pertinent snippet:

McCain is having a jolly time pretending he is the only candidate with enough cachet and experience to lead the U.S. on military matters, even offering to squire Obama around Iraq.

McCain's posturing would be silly one-upmanship if the costs of the war in Iraq and at home were not so enormous and never-ending. McCain has the wrong position. He supports continued military involvement in Iraq. Obama, more credibly, vows to end the war and bring troops home.

Kudos to the editorial writer! More than two-thirds of the American electorate is utterly sick and tired of this bogus war. Bombing the helpless populace of a small country that has done nothing to us is nothing less than a war crime. A war crime that has, incidentally, destroyed our economy and is threatening the combined economy of the rest of the world.

Does anybody remember the last time McInsane went to Iraq? March of this year. Protected by about 100 Marines, in full body armour, with helicopter gunships overhead, McInsane was photographed (at taxpayers' expense, of course) strolling about in Baghdad, proclaiming it safe. The old geezer conveniently forgot to mention to anyone during his recent spittle-flecked rant that his army escort would not let him go to the Shorja market where he had his picture taken last year, because it was "too unsafe."

Of course, someone who can't tell Sunni from Shi'a and doesn't even know how many troops we have in Iraq is hardly the authority on the war. If only fate wasn't tempted to give the old man the smackdown every time he opens his mouth and switches feet. Pertinent snippet:

McCain's comments about Mosul being "quiet" have also been criticized. On the day he made them, 30 Iraqis were killed by suicide bombings in the Mosul area.

Meanwhile, the town of Hit, near Baghdad, didn't want to be left out of the rush to smear a little egg on the erstwhile candidate's face. A suicide bomber in that town, no doubt having read or heard McLame's comments, rushed off to glory, taking ten people with him and wounding 12 others.

McLame displayed his usual tin ear on the issue:

McCain, speaking to reporters in Milwaukee, refused to acknowledge a mistake, saying that "I said we have drawn down. And we have drawn down."

Gee, where have we heard that refusal to admit making a mistake before? Oh, yeah, the previous two terms of Gee Dumbya Pumpkinhead.

In an attempt to defend the senile warmonger, his advisers said the flap amounted to nothing more than "nitpicking" about "verb tenses."

"It is the essence of semantics," said a frustrated Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, on a conference call organized by the campaign. "We're having this call about a verb tense."

Wow, they sure have learned their lessons well. They're borrowing from the arsenal of Karl Rove and Bill Clinton. Next they're going to tell us what the definition of "is" is. Good work, kids! No, let's rephrase that: Heckuva Job, Johnny!

In other convincing evidence of the peacefulness of Iraq, thousands of Iraqis turned out to protest the U.S. presence. Intelligence (a quality Mr. McInsane seems dreadfully short on) officials announced today that our progress in Iraq basically sucks wet monkey ass. The scheduled elections are already getting the Sunni mad at each other. Progress! Peace! Missing Limbs! Awakening Councils!

Is there anyone in Iraq that we haven't pissed off yet? Well, maybe McInsane's definition of "progress," "success," "drawdown," and so forth are not exactly the same as Merriam-Webster's or Oxford's OED, or, let's be honest, any fucking body else's.

Tell the truth, Mr. McCain. If you remember how that's defined any more, that is. And don't forget to tell all those American servicemen being blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan why you refuse to sign Jim Webb's GI Bill that would give them better benefits than the pile of steaming crap the Bush misadministration's been trying to feed them for the past X years.

Crossposted over at Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus

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World: Free This Man!

From The Guardian via Raw Story comes news today of a human-rights activist and pediatrician who has been jailed by the Indian government on some very dubious charges.

Dr. Binayak Sen, 58, who treats prisoners and tribal communities for free in the forest region of India's Chhattisgarh state, was arrested last May charged with carrying notes from a member of a Naxalite Maoist rebel movement, who was his patient in prison.

He has protested his innocence of the charges. Under the laws against "turrrrists," he is accused of being a "member" of a terrorist organization, and has been denied bail since his arrest a year ago. If convicted he faces the death sentence.

The article states, in part:

Sen is famous for drawing up one of the most successful community-based primary healthcare schemes in India, based on the Mitanin, the local barefoot health worker who gives the rural poor invaluable advice on preventative health.

Twenty two Nobel laureates have signed a letter to Indian PM Manmohan Singh, calling for Dr. Sen's release. The Mitanin "barefoot doctor" program for which Dr. Sen is responsible is based on educating and empowering rural women and tribal women in health care.

If you are a member of Amnesty International, you can find out more about their campaign to free Dr. Sen here. For information about actions taking place in North America in support of Dr. Sen, see here. More information about Dr. Sen is available here.

It's simply scandalous that Bush and Cheney, who are responsible for the deaths of over 1 million people and the grievous wounding and possible permanent harm to over 1 million more are free to walk around, while a man who provided health care to sick children, prisoners, and poor people, is sitting in jail.

Feel free to write the Indian Embassy as well, and remember, honey draws more flies than vinegar. In other words, keep it sweet. No matter how much disgust you feel.

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World: Israel and Peace

The only good thing about this story is that The Man With The Reverse Midas Touch basically shit all over his own legacy, and as Steve Gilliard used to say, you can't unshit the bed.

Now that Mr. 28 Per Cent needs a legacy (other, that is, than eight years of the worst misadministration and destruction of the United States of America), he's been sending his hunchmen and women flying around the globe looking for something that's not covered with the foul effluent of his and Cheney's eight years of lies, thievery, thuggery, crookedness, deceit, maladroitness, perversion, immorality, cruelty, mendacity, and exploitativeness ad nauseam.

Try as they might, they've failed to find a single thing that they can leave as the Idiot Boy's legacy. A single positive thing, that is. And now, to find that he's fucked up his own hopes of a Mid-East peace agreement, well, what can we say? Tears of joy, children, tears of joy. And bitterness, too. All our lives since we were sprog we've heard about and hoped for peace in the Middle East. But for an incompetent crook to think he can just snap his fingers and have it be so, well, it's good to see him skewered on his own stupidity. Hoist, as it were, on his own petard. And given that he's Le Petomaniacal in his petardaciousness, it's only too fitting.

Because here's what the Israelis are saying. Chimpy McTurdibus personally delivered a letter to Ariel Sharon giving

[...] the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements.

Whom do you believe? The administration, which has told nearly one thousand lies about the Iraq war alone? Or the Israeli government, which may or may not lie but is unlikely to do so if it would embarrass their chief source of financial aid?

The article adds this nice little zinger from the then-ambassador to Israel:

Daniel Kurtzer, then the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he argued at the time against accepting the Weissglas letter. "I thought it was a really bad idea," he said. "It would legitimize the settlements, and it gave them a blank check." In the end, Kurtzer said the White House never followed up with the plan to define construction lines. "Washington lost interest in it when it became clear it would not be easy to do," he said.

Sounds like the frat schmuck in chief, alright. Got bored with Afghanistan because we would need a detailed plan to take out Osama bin Laden, so here we are seven years later &mdash no Osama, increasing problems in Afghanistan. Got bored with New Orleans, so nearly three years later housing still hasn't been rebuilt, and NOLAians are still scattered all over the fifty states. Got bored with Iraq so five years later diplomats are refusing to serve in Baghdad, the city is an open sewer, concrete walls and ethnic cleansing everywhere, an Iraqi army that sees defection by the thousands, and 4,050 lives (U.S. military), ~1 million lives (Iraqi) and unknown numbers of dead contractors and U.S. civilian personnel and veterans who have committed suicide.

Who let this idiot near the controls? We did. Do we want four more years of this type of disastrous shenanigans? The economy in the toilet, shrinking lifespans for women, no health care for children, joblessness growing, rising crime, increasing poverty, a failing infrastructure, burdensome debt, and a world at war?

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That's your legacy, Chimpenfuhrer. And, make no mistake, John McSame's job is to continue that legacy. And Hillary Clinton's, according to whispers throughout the blogosphere, is to ensure that McSame is elected.

Who you gonna vote for? Because Hillary will never beat McSame, and her only mission appears to be to damage the only candidate who can bring real change. Think carefully before you choose. Remember, the fate of your children, your neighbours, your nation, and your world is in your hands.

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