A Lemming Parade

The March to the Edge of the Cliff
By Siv O'Neall
Jul 29, 2007, 01:48

Mankind is blindly marching straight towards the edge of the cliff. Our so-called leaders are busy filling their pockets with gold and making sure they are first in line, that they can yell louder and grab faster than all the rest of us and that they can reach farther into whatever we're heading for. The fact that it's a morass and that it's going to suck us all up, nobody seems to care about.

Every one of the big guys wants to be the first one to cross the line at the goal. What goal? Total destruction, but that is not yet clear to anybody. Or so it seems. Let the show go on. Let's kill more innocent people, let's buy up competing corporations, let's lead the pack of thieves in money speculation, let's bankrupt more small companies, let's suck up the retirement savings of the little people, let's fool the idiots who think we're here to govern the world. We are here to take care of ourselves and our bank accounts. Who cares about the world? Who cares about tomorrow?

All the politicians and corporate leaders of the world seem to be set on exhausting the planet, killing off all the superfluous people and having a party when it's all over. Who is leading the pack? Well, Cheney & Co., clearly. Is there anybody left who can put the brakes on that clique? When they are busy destroying the world, when they happily plan to nuke Iran, when they start bombing the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, when they let the Palestinians kill each other off and yell hooray on the sidelines, is there anybody left who will stop Cheney & Co.? They are so busy dancing a victory dance because the oil and arms industries are making huge profits that they don't even see how the planet is burning. Corporate profits are soaring, so to hell with the dollar that's going down. It's good for exports and who cares if we owe trillions in debt to China and Japan? We don't intend to pay it back anyway.

The poor people are dying of AIDS and starvation. Who cares as long as the pharmaceutical industry is making a fortune? Who cares if millions of children are without health insurance? They are the children of the poor and they are not good for anything anyway.

Let the little people lose their life's savings in the big bankruptcies, the big money holders always save themselves and their fortunes. What matters is that business goes on. We can always fool enough people into believing that such and such stock is safe. When the bottom falls out, the CEOs will already be gone with their package intact and they'll pick up the lead somewhere else where people can be fooled into investing. As long as there is a war on, corporate profits are safe.

Iraq is in our way for taking over the world. There are more countries in the way, but let's take one at a time. Let's first invade and take over Iraq. Oh damn, Iraq is not going too well. Well, let the bastards kill each other off and then we'll take over when things calm down. They'll sort things out between themselves and we'll play ball with the winners after the civil war is over. In the meantime, let's nuke Iran. We can't have an Islam world power reaching from Morocco to Indonesia.

September 11 was a godsend. What would we have done if we hadn't been able to scare the people into paralysis and dumbness? What would we have done if it hadn't been for Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? There seems to be clear evidence that we are secretly supporting Al Qaeda, making sure they will not disappear. No surprise. And as for bin Laden, we have to go on pretending he's still alive so we have a precise target in our war on terror. It's lies and propaganda that keep the world going. It's what we say that matters, not what we do. We can make the imbeciles believe anything we want them to believe. Repeat it often enough and it becomes the truth. We create our own reality.

If the Dems pick up some backbone and begin to realize that resistance to a dictatorship is possible, we'll have to arrange for a repeat of the attack on the homeland. It's essential that the executive should not in any way be limited in his power. What Cheney says stands, George will always go along and Rove is around to oil the wheels and keep the spin machine going.

The world has to see that it doesn't serve any purpose to isolate the U.S. We don't need the rest of the world. We are the leaders, we run the show, we decide how the Middle East is supposed to be cut up and reshaped.

Oh they say China is coming on big. That's a lot of bull. China has no international standing and they are too heavily weighed down by poverty among their own people. After all, China is not even a civilized nation. No, there is nobody who can ever stand a chance to surpass America, the United States of America. America is the leader of the world and we have made sure that the world knows. One head of government after the other is coming on board the U.S. ship of State. Europe is veering to the right and the leaders are more and more interested in being on good terms with the giant in the west.

Besides, it's Big Money that's running the world and all we have to do is make sure that the big corporations are centered around us. Europe is playing our game once again and the rest of the world is sufficiently in awe of our military and financial power to want to be on good terms with us. Look at India. They were more than happy to clinch the deal about nuclear power in March 2006. That was a clever move, whoever thought of it. And as for Africa, it's being robbed by the IMF and the World Bank and there is no way African states can ever get in our way to power. Besides, the people are dying of AIDS and that's good riddance of useless people who are just overcrowding the planet.

We'll just get a major stake in the oil in the Middle East and the world is ours. Israel will help us take care of Syria and Lebanon, and Palestine will never go along with our requirements for a peaceful solution with Israel so they are out of harm's way. The Palestinians will go on self-destroying and nobody even knows that we helped kindle the fire. Smart move there. And now that we've poured fuel on the civil war in Iraq, they will soon self-destroy as well. As long as the different branches of Islam can't stop the infighting, we can safely count on being the winners in the end.

They say the United States is a wounded beast. Just wait and see what we can accomplish. Nobody can beat us. We have our own people eating out of our hand since they've been told and retold for centuries that we're the best, we're the greatest, the most moral, we're God's chosen people! America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. They would never dare tear that myth apart. Patriotism and religion keep them going.

Ok, so where do we go from here? We'll nuke Iran and then we'll see the Iranians toe the line that we set out for them. Who ever said the United States was a loser? Just wait and see.

© Copyright 2007 by AxisofLogic.com

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If These Fucking Hadjis Learned to Drive, .....

Please note the post title reflects our desire to emphasise the horrible racism, arrogance, and disrespect exhibited by the US military in Iraq. And anyone has to wonder why they hate us ....

Accustomed to Their Own Atrocities in Iraq, U.S. Soldiers Have Become Murderers
By Chris Hedges, Adbusters. Posted July 27, 2007.

After four years of war, American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.

All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in "atrocity producing situations."

In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress pushes troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. This hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find.

The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing -- the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm -- to murder -- the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.

After four years of war, American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The American killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor, and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed with this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish.

The reality behind the myth, however, is very different. The reality and the ideal clash when soldiers and Marines return home, alienating these combat veterans from the world around them, a world that still dines out on the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. But slowly returning veterans are giving us a new narrative of the war -- one that exposes the vast enterprise of industrial slaughter unleashed in Iraq for a lie and sustained because of wounded national pride and willful ignorance. "This unit sets up this traffic control point and this 18 year old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun," remembered Geoffrey Millard who served in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division. "And this car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split second decision that that's a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts 200 rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three."

"And they briefed this to the general," Millard said, "and they briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. They briefed it to him. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, 'if these fucking Hadjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen.'"

Those who come back from war, like Millard and tens of thousands of other veterans, suffer not only delayed reactions to stress, but a crisis of faith. The God they knew, or thought they knew, failed them. The church or the synagogue or the mosque, which promised redemption by serving God and country, did not prepare them for the betrayal of this civic religion, for the capacity we all have for human atrocity, for the lies and myths used to mask the reality of war. War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians. This bitter knowledge of betrayal has seeped into the ranks of American troops.

It has unleashed a new wave of embittered veterans not seen since the Vietnam War. It has made it possible for us to begin, again, to see war's death mask.

"And then, you know, my sort of sentiment of what the fuck are we doing, that I felt that way in Iraq," said Sergeant Ben Flanders, who estimated that he ran hundreds of convoys in Iraq. "It's the sort of insanity of it and the fact that it reduces it. Well, I think war does anyway, but I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people, the only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with. And everybody else be damned, whether you are an Iraqi, I'm sorry, I'm sorry you live here, I'm sorry this is a terrible situation, and I'm sorry that you have to deal with all of, you know, army vehicles running around and shooting, and these insurgents and all this stuff.

"The first briefing you get when you get off the plane in Kuwait, and you get off the plane and you're holding a duffle bag in each hand," Millard remembered. "You've got your weapon slung. You've got a web sack on your back. You're dying of heat. You're tired. You're jet-lagged. Your mind is just full of goop. And then, you're scared on top of that, because, you know, you're in Kuwait, you're not in the States anymore … so fear sets in, too. And they sit you into this little briefing room and you get this briefing about how, you know, you can't trust any of these fucking Hadjis, because all these fucking Hadjis are going to kill you. And Hadji is always used as a term of disrespect and usually, with the 'f' word in front of it."

Read the rest here.

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Junior Is Finishing Prescott's Project

Bush Fulfills His Grandfather's Dream
by David Swanson | Jul 28 2007 - 2:01pm |

It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd documenting President George W. Bush's grandfather's involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.

Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he'd received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.

If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush's early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya's middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott's business dealings went better, and he entered politics.

Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as "Hitler's Angel." During the 1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware of both Thyssen's political activities and the fact that the companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S. government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.

Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush's businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America. (Is this starting to remind anyone of our current president's relationship to the freedom of the press?)

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933. Here's how the BBC promoted its recent story:

"Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy."

Actually, if you listen to the 30-minute BBC story, there is not one word of so much as speculation as to why this story is so little known. I think a clue to the answer can be found by looking into why this BBC report has not led to any U.S. media outlets picking up the story this week.

The BBC report provides a good account of the basic story. Some of the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them embittered by the government's treatment of them. Prescott Bush's group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were blacked out in the committee's records, and nobody was prosecuted. According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason. They agreed to end Wall Street's opposition to the New Deal.

Clearly the lack of accountability in Washington, D.C., did not begin with Nancy Pelosi taking Dubya's impeachment off the table, or with Congress' decision to avoid impeachment for President Ronald Reagan (a decision that arguably played a large role in installing Prescott Bush's son George H.W. Bush as president), or with the failure to investigate the apparent deal that George H.W. Bush and others made with Iran to not release American hostages until Reagan was made president, or with the failure to prosecute Richard Nixon after he resigned. Lack of accountability is a proud tradition in our nation's capital. Or maybe I should say our former nation's capital. I don't recognize the place anymore, and I credit that to George W. Bush's efforts to fulfill his grandfather's dream using far subtler and more effective means than a military coup.

Bush the grandson took office through a highly fraudulent election that he nonetheless lost. The Supreme Court blocked a recount of the vote and installed Dubya.

Prescott's grandson proceeded to weaken or eliminate most of the Bill of Rights in the name of protection from a dark foreign enemy. He even tossed out habeas corpus. The grandson of Prescott, that dreamer of the 1930s, established with very little resistance that the U.S. government can kidnap, detain indefinitely on no charge, torture, and murder. The United States under Prescott Bush's grandson adopted policies that heretofore had been considered only Nazi policies, most strikingly the willingness to openly plan and engage in aggressive wars on other nations.

At the same time, Dubya has accomplished a huge transfer of wealth within the United States from the rest of us to the extremely wealthy. He's also effected a major privatization of public operations, including the military. And he's kept tight control over the media.

Dubya has given himself the power to rewrite all laws with signing statements. He's established that intentionally misleading the Congress about the need for a war is not a crime that carries any penalty. He's given himself the right (just as Hitler did) to open anyone's mail. He's created illegal spying programs and then proposed to legalize them. Prescott would be so proud!

The current President Bush has accomplished much more smoothly than his grandfather could have imagined a feat that was one of the goals of Prescott's gang, namely the elimination of Congress.

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It Sounds Like BushCo Talking

Sharistani: Iragi oil unions not legit

WASHINGTON, July 26 (UPI) -- Iraq's oil minister said Iraq's oil unions are not legitimate and have no more standing in the debate over the oil law than an ordinary citizen.

"There are no legal unions in Iraq," Hussein al-Shahristani said Wednesday in response to a question about various factions' positions on the controversial oil law. "Those people who call themselves representatives of the oil workers have not been elected to the position."

Shahristani spoke to UPI by phone from Baghdad.

Saddam Hussein outlawed worker organizing in the public sector; subsequent U.S. occupying powers and now the Iraqi government do not recognize the workers' rights to organize.

Despite that, workers have come together and leveraged their power. Since 2003 they've blocked numerous attempts to privatize management of both oil and other facilities and stopped work over disputes -- most recently early last month over the oil law and other unmet demands.

Earlier this month workers in the southern, oil-rich town of Basra marched in protest against the oil law and demanded Shahristani's resignation.

The law would govern exploration and development of Iraq's 115 billion barrels of proven reserves and unknown reserves to be found in under-explored areas. But the law is stuck over central government vs. regional/local control over certain oil fields. And the unions, along with other political elements, have led the charge that the law allows for contracts they see as too friendly to foreign oil companies.

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The Green Zone Is Safe, And Sometimes It Is Dangerous

The Baghdad Death Map: Iraqis Offer Their Own Security Assessment of Baghdad Neighborhoods
By ZEYAD KASIM 06/30/2007 00:55 AM ET

In their distinctive style of morbid humor, resourceful Baghdadis are circulating emails presenting their own personal assessment of the security situation in the capital. The detailed lists of what neighborhoods and areas are safe and what to avoid completely, because of Mahdi Army or Al-Qaeda activity or the random car bomb, are quite different from those found in Iraqi government or U.S. military statements. As many parts of the capital have become no-go zones for members of either the Sunni or Shia sect – or sometimes for both, it is a challenge for Baghdadis to identify areas where they are able to move freely and areas where they should better stay out.

The following is a translation of one such email making the rounds among residents of Baghdad and on Iraqi Web forums. The sarcastic email, which was written in Iraqi slang, attempts to classify the districts of Baghdad based on their level of danger. According to the author, the safest neighborhoods are the ones where the odds of staying alive are 50%:

The situation in different areas of Baghdad in regard to takfiri gangs of the new age: Al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, and their spiritual leaders – the forces of liberation.

fall into four different categories: safe, relatively safe, dangerous, and relatively dangerous. They are classified as follows:

- A safe area: where the probability of you staying alive is 50%.
- A relatively safe area: where the probability of you staying alive is 40%.
- A relatively dangerous area: where the probability of you staying alive is 30%.
- A dangerous area: where the probability of you staying alive is 20 to 10%.

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Announcements

Sat. Sept. 1st -- Ft Worth protest

Looking for a fun way to spend Labor Day weekend?
PROTEST OUTSIDE THE REPUBLICAN STRAW POLL.

That's right, the Republicans are coming to Fort Worth, along with the national media, to hold their publicity-hungry Straw Poll. We want to use this opportunity to make our own voices heard against the war, so we're conducting the American People's Poll on Iraq, right outside the Convention Center. We have the 800-900 blocks of Main blocked off for this protest on Saturday, September 1st, with the main activity happening from 1:30 to 3:30. We'll have national speakers and a lot of excitement. Think about all those tv cameras with nothing better to do than focus on our signs.

More information at: http://www.texansforpeace.org/peoplespoll/

We are seeking ENDORSERS among other organizations, from anywhere in the country. If you can endorse, please e-mail me at aburgin@texansforpeace.org.

Thanks!
Alyssa Burgin,
Texans for Peace

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Changing the Nature of the Food Supply

Pasteurized almond rule has some going nuts: On September 1, almost all almonds must be pasteurized

MADERA, California (AP) -- Raw, organic almonds form the basis of Karyn Calabrese's garlicky nut pate, her vegan pie crusts and vanilla ice cream custards.

But under a new federal rule requiring that virtually all almonds be pasteurized to prevent foodborne illness, the Chicago restaurateur will have to substitute a new nut, or go to vast lengths to import her raw almonds from across the globe.

Industry representatives say tightening food safety rules to subject almonds to heat treatment will help expand the market for California farmers, who grow about 80 percent of the world's almonds in a flat strip of land sandwiched between the Pacific coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains.

But the regulation, set to take effect September 1, has also angered everyone from organic farmers to followers of the restrictive raw foods diet.

"The almond is the king of the nut world and a main staple for raw foodists," said Calabrese, whose elegant restaurants feature small plates of raw, vegan food, none of which has been heated above 110 degrees. "I haven't even thought out what I'll do because it's just such a mind-blowing situation."

Almonds have become increasingly lucrative as they've gained popularity with health-conscious consumers. California farmers expect to harvest 1.3 billion pounds of almonds this year, a bumper crop worth more than $1.4 billion.

Following Salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004 that were traced to raw almonds, the Almond Board of California rallied for a federal rule requiring all almonds in the state to be pasteurized to keep bacteria from infecting the nuts while they dry in the orchard or while they're processed.

"We consider it unacceptable to continue shipping a product that could contain a microorganism that could make somebody sick," said Richard Waycott, president and CEO of the board, a marketing arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "We're really confident that this program is a win-win for everybody because it does not alter the product."

In pasteurization -- a process also used for milk, juice and eggs -- the shelled and hulled nuts typically are laid out on a conveyor belt that passes them through a moist burst of steam to heat the kernels' surface to about 200 degrees, killing any pathogens present. An alternative process sends the nuts into a chamber where they're sprayed with propylene oxide gas.

Major almond buyers such as Mars Inc., Kraft Foods Inc. and The Hershey Co. reviewed a study by the board to determine if the process impacted the nut's quality, taste, texture and appearance, and found it had no effect, Waycott said.

Once treated, the pasteurized almonds are ready for sale and can be legally shipped throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico, said Michael Durando, chief for the marketing order administration branch at USDA.

Growers can apply for exemptions if they can prove that their manufacturing process -- be it dry roasting, blanching or any other traditional treatments -- achieves pasteurization. They also can sell small quantities of raw, unpasteurized almonds direct to customers at farm stands or at certified California farmers markets, but can face penalties if they're caught selling more than 100 pounds a day to any one person.

That's not enough volume for Berkeley-based Living Tree Community Foods, which soon will start importing its raw almonds from Spain to make its "living" nut butter. Company officials said its customers are concerned about the health effects of propylene oxide, a gas listed as a possible carcinogen by the International Agency on Cancer Research.

Federal guidelines found that extremely low residue levels of the gas had no harmful effects, Waycott said. But the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, asked the USDA to hold off on implementing the rule to solicit an independent study on the chemical.

The rule was developed over three years of careful discussions between industry representatives and agriculture officials, and won't be reconsidered, Durando said.

Madera-based farmer Mike Braga, whose organic nuts are favored by live food fans and grocery chains such as Trader Joe's, said he won't break the law by continuing to sell raw almonds. But if customers aren't demanding it, he said he doesn't see why he shouldn't be able to freeze his almonds instead of pasteurizing them.

"We're going to lose our entire raw market," Braga said. "If such good almonds are available here, why should our customers have to import them from Europe?"

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Democrats: Another Piece of the Ruling Class

Tomgram: Ira Chernus, Democratic Doublespeak on Iraq

Start with the simplest, most basic fudge. Newspapers and the TV news constantly report on various plans for the "withdrawal of American troops" from Iraq, when what's being proposed is the withdrawal of American "combat troops" or "combat brigades." This isn't a matter of splitting hairs; it's the difference between a plan for full-scale withdrawal and a plan to remain in Iraq in a different military form for the long term. American combat brigades only add up to perhaps half of the troops we presently have in that country.

There is, in fact, quite a gap between withdrawal from that embattled land and the withdrawal of some American troops, while many of the rest hunker down on the enormous, all-but-permanent military bases the Pentagon has built there over the last four years -- while defending the largest embassy on the planet, now nearing completion (amid the normal woes that seem to go with American construction and "reconstruction") in Baghdad's heavily fortified but distinctly insecure Green Zone. And yet, thanks to the carefully worded statements of leading Democratic (and Republican) politicians now criticizing the Bush administration, as well as generally terrible reporting in the mainstream media, most Americans who don't make it to the fine print or who don't wander widely on the political Internet, would have no way of knowing that withdrawal isn't withdrawal at all.

Ira Chernus, Tomdispatch regular and author of Monsters To Destroy, takes a careful look at the leading Democratic candidates for president and raises a few crucial, if largely unasked, questions about the nature of the positions they are taking on the Iraq War. Tom

******************

The Democrats' Iraqi Dilemma: Questions Unasked, Answers Never Volunteered
By Ira Chernus

Pity the poor Democratic candidates for president, caught between Iraq and a hard place. Every day, more and more voters decide that we must end the war and set a date to start withdrawing our troops from Iraq. Most who will vote in the Democratic primaries concluded long ago that we must leave Iraq, and they are unlikely to let anyone who disagrees with them have the party's nomination in 2008.

But what does it mean to "leave Iraq"? Here's where most of the Democratic candidates come smack up against that hard place. There is a longstanding bipartisan consensus in the foreign-policy establishment that the U.S. must control every strategically valuable region of the world -- and none more so than the oil heartlands of the planet. That's been a hard-and-fast rule of the elite for some six decades now. No matter how hard the task may be, they demand that presidents be rock-hard enough to get the job done.

So whatever "leave Iraq" might mean, no candidate of either party likely to enter the White House on January 20, 2009 can think it means letting Iraqis determine their own national policies or fate. The powers that be just wouldn't stand for that. They see themselves as the guardians of world "order." They feel a sacred obligation to maintain "stability" throughout the imperial domains, which now means most of planet Earth -- regardless of what voters may think. The Democratic front-runners know that "order" and "stability" are code words for American hegemony. They also know that voters, especially Democratic ones, see the price of hegemony in Iraq and just don't want to pay it anymore.

So the Democratic front-runners must promise voters that they will end the war -- with not too many ideologically laden ifs, ands, or buts -- while they assure the foreign-policy establishment that they will never abandon the drive for hegemony in the Middle East (or anywhere else). In other words, the candidates have to be able to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.

No worries, it turns out. Fluency in doublespeak is a prime qualification for high political office. On Iraq, candidates Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson don't meet that test. They tell anyone and everyone that they want "all" U.S. troops out of Iraq, but they register only 1-4% in the polls and are generally ignored in the media. The Democrats currently topping the polls, on the other hand, are proving themselves eminently qualified in doublespeak.

Clinton: "We got it right, mostly, during the Cold War"

Hillary Clinton declares forthrightly: "It is time to begin ending this war…. Start bringing home America's troops…. within 90 days." Troops home: It sounds clear enough. But she is always careful to avoid the crucial word all. A few months ago she told an interviewer: "We have remaining vital national security interests in Iraq…. What we can do is to almost take a line sort of north of, between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and basically put our troops into that region." A senior Pentagon officer who has briefed Clinton told NPR commentator Ted Koppel that Clinton expects U.S. troops to be in Iraq when she ends her second term in 2017.

Why all these troops? We have "very real strategic national interests in this region," Clinton explains. "I will order specialized units to engage in narrow and targeted operations against al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the region. They will also provide security for U.S. troops and personnel and train and equip Iraqi security services to keep order and promote stability." There would be U.S. forces to protect the Kurds and "our efforts must also involve a regional recommitment to success in Afghanistan." Perhaps that's why Clinton has proposed "that we expand the Army by 80,000 troops, that we move faster to expand the Special Forces."

Says her deputy campaign manager Bob Nash, "She'll be as tough as any Republican on our enemies." And on our friends, he might have added, if they don't shape up. At the Take Back America conference in June the candidate drew boos when she declared that "the American military has done its job.… They gave the Iraqi government the chance to begin to demonstrate that it understood its responsibilities.… It is the Iraqi government which has failed." It's the old innocent-Americans-blame-the-foreigners ploy.

More importantly, it's the old tough-Americans-reward-friends-who-help-America ploy. We should start withdrawing some troops, Clinton says, "to make it clear to the Iraqis that … we're going to look out for American interests, for the region's interests." If the Iraqi government is not "striving for sustainable stability…. we'll consider providing aid to provincial governments and reliable non-governmental organizations that are making progress."

Clinton's message to the Iraqi leaders is clear: You had your chance to join "the international community," to get with the U.S. program, and to reap the same benefits as the leaders of other oil-rich nations -- but you blew it. So, now you can fend for yourselves while we look for new, more capable allies in Iraq and keep who-knows-how-many troops there to "protect our interests" -- and increase our global clout. The draw-down in Iraq, our signal that we've given up on the al-Maliki government, "will be a first step towards restoring Americans moral and strategic leadership in the world," Clinton swears.

"America must be the world's leader," she declared last month. "We must widen the scope of our strength by leading strong alliances which can apply military force when required." And, when necessary, cut off useless puppet governments that won't let their strings be pulled often enough.

Hillary is speaking to at least three audiences: the voters at home, the foreign-policy elite, and a global elite she would have to deal with as president. Her recent fierce criticism of the way President Bush has handled Iraq, like her somewhat muddled antiwar rhetoric, is meant as a message of reassurance to voters, but also to our elite -- and as a warning to foreigners: The next President Clinton will be tough on allies as well as foes, as tough as the old cold warriors. "We got it right, mostly, during the Cold War.… Nothing is more urgent than for us to begin again to rebuild a bipartisan consensus," she said last year in a speech that cut right to the bottom line: "American foreign policy exists to maintain our security and serve our national interests." That's what the bipartisan consensus has always believed.

Read the rest here.

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Children As Prisoners

The Police State Takeover Of Schools
Published on Tuesday, July 24, 2007.
Source: Infowars.net - Steve Watson

Schools have become hi-tech prisons. Children all across America and the UK are being conditioned to accept that they are not free and that they must submit to draconian laws and measures for their own safety. Soon enough children will not even know what it is like to act as a private individual within society. Don't believe this? Read on.

All over the United States and Britain children are increasingly being subjected to measures that wouldn't look out of place in maximum security prisons.

Everyday we post reports from mainstream news sources documenting this disturbing trend.

Today The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that schools across America are banning backpacks that are made of non see-through materials .

If students walking between classes want to use a backpack, it must be made of clear plastic or mesh so its contents can be seen at a glance. Cloth backpacks can be carried into the school in the morning but must be stored in lockers.

So the students should all now feel much safer due to the fact that they can all see each other's personal items right? Wrong.

The move has unleashed a torrent of protest from some Wissahickon students, who say high schools are coming to resemble "prisons or police states," in the words of one. Brandon Hemmen, a senior, said the clear bags will make it easy for thieves who already rip off students every day. And "bags will get mixed up; we'll have to use name tags," he added. "This is wrong. They can't take all our freedoms away."

A second item today comes from Security tech website Security Park which reports that Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania is to deliver the convenience and security of contactless payments by cell phone to students and the faculty.

Beginning in July, Slippery Rock University's 8,500 students, faculty and staff will receive a new official campus ID card and a separate contactless token designed for use with their mobile phones.

Using either the card or the phone, they will be able to make payments at on-campus locations as well as participating merchants in the surrounding community....

The new mobile phone tokens incorporate the same standards-based contactless technology (ISO 14443) used worldwide by MasterCard, Visa and leading card issuers in the payment and identity sectors.

Good, prepare the kids first and then bring in the cashless society nationwide, with an ID card of course, which you will need to be able to buy and sell. We have long warned of the dangers of a cashless society putting total control into the hands of state regulated and private corporations and the break down of basic freedoms that it encompasses.

Still don't feel there is anything to worry about in schools?

Do a prisonplanet.com google search on the word "school", you will be confronted with literally hundreds and hundreds of news articles from the past few years that detail the police state takeover of schools all over the US and throughout the UK.

There are far too many to mention, however, a quick overview of linked headlines follows.

Read the rest (with mega-links to pertinent evidence, such as forced fingerprinting, pervasive security cams) here.

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And We Aren't Gonna Take It Anymore

Injured Iraq War Veterans Sue VA Head
By HOPE YEN,AP
Posted: 2007-07-23 18:38:45

WASHINGTON (AP) - Frustrated by delays in health care, injured Iraq war veterans accused VA Secretary Jim Nicholson in a lawsuit of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment.

The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad changes in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on numerous fronts. It contends the VA failed to provide prompt disability benefits, failed to add staff to reduce wait times for medical care and failed to boost services for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.

"When one of our combat veterans walks into a VA hospital, then they must see a doctor that day," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, which filed the lawsuit. "When a war veteran needs disability benefits because he or she can't work, then they must get a disability check in a few weeks."

"The VA has betrayed our veterans," Sullivan said.

VA spokesman Matt Smith said Monday he could not comment on a pending lawsuit.

"Through outreach efforts, the VA ensures returning Global War on Terror service members have access to the widely recognized quality health care they have earned, including services such as prosthetics or mental health care," Smith said. "VA has also given priority handling to their monetary disability benefit claims."

The lawsuit comes amid intense political and public scrutiny of the VA and Pentagon following reports of shoddy outpatient care of injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and elsewhere.

The complaint seeks to represent between 320,000 and 800,000 veterans of the Iraq war who lawyers say are at risk of having PTSD. Ultimately, a federal judge will have to decide whether the lawsuit is properly deemed a class action that adequately represents them.

As of March 31, roughly 52,375 Iraq veterans were evaluated at VA facilities for suspected PTSD, according to an internal quarterly VA report released Monday to The Associated Press.

"Unless systemic and drastic measures are instituted immediately, the costs to these veterans, their families and our nation will be incalculable, including broken families, a new generation of unemployed and homeless veterans, increases in drug abuse and alcoholism, and crushing burdens on the health care delivery system," the complaint says.

It asks that a federal court order the VA to make immediate improvements.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in San Francisco issued a strong rebuke of the VA in ordering the agency to pay retroactive benefits to Vietnam War veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and contracted a form of leukemia.

"The performance of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs has contributed substantially to our sense of national shame," the opinion from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals read.

Nicholson abruptly announced last week he would step down by Oct. 1 to return to the private sector. He has repeatedly defended the agency during his 2 1/2-year tenure while acknowledging there was room for improvement.

More recently, following high-profile suicide incidents in which families of veterans say the VA did not provide adequate care, Nicholson pledged to add mental health services and hire more suicide-prevention coordinators.

Some veterans say that's not enough. In the lawsuit, they note that government investigators warned as early as 2002 that the VA needed to fix its backlogged claims system and make other changes.

Yet, the lawsuit says, Nicholson and other officials still insisted on a budget in 2005 that fell $1 billion short, and they made "a mockery of the rule of law" by awarding senior officials $3.8 million in bonuses despite their role in the budget foul-up.

Today, the VA's backlog of disability payments is between 400,000 and 600,000, with delays of up to 177 days to process an initial claim and an average of 657 days to process an appeal. Several congressional committees and a presidential commission are now studying ways to improve care.

"While steps can and will be taken in the political arena, responsibility for action lies with the agency itself," Melissa W. Kasnitz, managing attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, said in a telephone interview. Her group is teaming up with a major law firm, Morrison & Foerster, to represent the veterans.

"We don't believe the problems will be fixed by the VA if we wait for them," she said.

Gordon P. Erspamer, a partner at Morrison & Foerster, stressed that the lawsuit does not seek to make a partisan statement about the Iraq war but instead finally force action after years of delay.

"This is the worst it's ever been for veterans, and it's only going to get worse," he said.

The lawsuit cites violations of the Constitution and federal law, which mandates at least two years of health care to injured veterans.

The veterans groups involved in the lawsuit are Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., which claims 11,500 members, and Veterans United for Truth, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., with 500 members.

On the Net:

Copy of the complaint: http://www.mofo.com/docs/pdf/PTSD070723.pdf

Department of Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov/

Source

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Help Stop Amerikkkan Racism

Support the Jena 6

A major injustice is unfolding in Jena, LA as six black young men are railroaded in a case that reads like one straight from the era of Jim Crow. Read up and take action, now.

This is a modern day lynching" -- Marcus Jones, father of Mychal Bell


WRITE LETTERS TO:

JUDGE J.P. MAUFFRAY
P.O. BOX 1890
JENA, LOUISIANA 71342
FAX: (318) 992-8701

WE NEED 400 LETTERS SENT BEFORE MYCHAL BELL'S SENTENCING DATE ON JULY 31ST. THEY ARE ALL INNOCENT!

Sign the Color of Change Petition Online at http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/index.html

Sign the Jena 6 Petition to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice at
http://www.petitiononline.com/aZ51CqmR/petition-sign.html


JOIN THE MASS PROTEST IN SUPPORT OF MYCHAL BELL & THE JENA 6

WHERE: JENA COURTHOUSE in Louisiana

WHEN: TUESDAY, JULY 31ST

TIME: 9:00AM

THE HOUSTON MMM MINISTRY OF JUSTICE IS ORGANIZING A CARAVAN TO JOIN FORCES WITH THE JENA 6 FAMILIES, THE COLOR OF CHANGE, LOCs, AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS ON STEPS OF THE COURTHOUSE THAT DAY TO DEMAND JUSTICE!

ALL INTERESTED IN GOING CALL BRO. GARNET AT: 832.258.2480

Send Donations to the Jena 6 Defense Fund:
Jena 6 Defense Committee
P.O. Box 2798
Jena, Louisiana 71342

ministryofjustice@mmmhouston.net

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The Political Culture of Anti-Intervention

Support Their Troops: Towards a United Front
July 22nd, 2007

Alexander Cockburn raises the pertinent question: When every antiwar event takes pains to offer its support to the troops engaged in an illegal and immoral war against a sovereign nation, why no one is offering similar support to those defending their homeland?

Lawrence McGuire, a North Carolinian now teaching in Montpellier, France, organized a meeting of antiwar Americans and various interested French parties there at which I spoke last fall. Since then, we’ve been discussing off and on the strange fact that while two-thirds of all Americans oppose the war in Iraq and want the troops to come home, the antiwar movement is pretty much dead. McGuire raises the matter of direct solidarity with Iraqis fighting the US presence in Iraq. In other words, support their troops:

“I was reading a recent piece by Phyllis Bennis recently. She talked about the ‘US military casualties’ and the ‘Iraqi civilian victims’ and it struck me that the grand taboo of the antiwar movement is to show the slightest empathy for the resistance fighters in Iraq. They are never mentioned as people for whom we should show concern, much less admiration.

“But of course, if you are going to sympathize with the US soldiers, who are fighting a war of aggression, than surely you should also sympathize with the soldiers who are fighting for their homeland. Perhaps not until the antiwar movement starts to some degree recognizing that they should include ‘the Iraqi resistance fighters’ in their pantheon of victims (in addition to US soldiers and Iraqi civilians) will there be the necessary critical mass to have a real movement.”

Now there are many obvious reasons why the direct solidarity with resistance fighters visible in the Vietnam antiwar struggle and the Central American anti-intervention movement has not been visible in the movement opposing the Iraq war. The “War on Terror” means-and was designed to mean-that any group in the US with detectable ties or relations with Iraqi resistance movements would be in line for savage legal reprisals under the terms of the Patriot Act. Another important factor: The contours of the Iraqi resistance have been murky and in some aspects unappetizing to secular progressive coalitions in the West, or so they virtuously claim.

But such cavils were familiar in the Sixties and Eighties too as huge chunks of the solidarity movement found endless reasons to distance themselves from the Vietnamese NLF or the Nicaraguan FMLN. That said, ignorance about the Iraqi resistance is somewhat forgiveable. This time there has been no Wilfrid Burchett reporting from behind the lines, and that has had consequences of the kind McGuire sketches out above.

The personal aspect of international political solidarity is not just the stuff of nostalgic anecdote. In the late 1980s the Central American resistance was constantly among us here in the United States in physical form. While Daniel Oretega and Rosario Murillo worked the Hollywood liberal circuit, the sanctuary movement sheltered militants and sympathizers in churches across the country and defied federal efforts to seize them. Labor organizers from El Salvador traveled across North America from local to friendly local. I can remember being at a picnic of a union local striking a door factory in Springfield, Oregon, southeast of Eugene, where a man from a radical labor coalition in El Salvador got a cordial reception from the strikers and their families as they swapped stories of their respective battles.

The other day I found in a box of old papers in my garage a directory to “sister cities”-towns in the United States that had paired with beleagured towns in Nicaragua, regularly exchanging delegations. The directory was as thick as a medium-sized telephone book. There were hundreds of such pairings and many were the individual pairing they led to. People’s Express, the “backpackers’ airline,” as it used to be called, would shuttle demure sisters in the struggle from Vermont or the Pacific Northwest to Miami, for onward passage to Managua and a rendezvous with some valiant son of Sandino or oppressed Nica sister liberated by North American inversion from the oppressions of Latin patriarchy.

Today there is no draft, a prime factor in stocking the Vietnam antiwar movement. This absence of the draft is certainly a major factor in the weakness of the antiwar movement. But though there was no draft in the Reagan years, there was certainly was that very lively political culture of anti-intervention in the 1980s.

It looked as though just such a vibrant left antiwar movement was flaring into life in 2003. But many of its troops have either veered into 9/11 kookdom, or whining about global warming or nourished an often unspoken resolve to vest all hopes in a Democratic presidency after 2008. The bulk of the antiwar movement has become subservient to the Democratic Party and to the agenda of its prime candidates for the presidency in 2008, with Hillary Clinton in the lead.

To describe the antiwar movement in its effective form is really to mention a few good efforts-the anti-recruitment campaigns, the tours by those who have lost children in Iraq-or three or four brave souls-Cindy Sheehan, who single-handedly reanimated the antiwar movement last year and now vows to run against house speaker Nancy Pelosi unless the latter stops blocking impeachment proceedings, or the radical Catholic Kathy Kelly, or Medea Benjamin and her “Code Pink” activists occupying Hilary Clinton’s office and ambushing her for youtube.

A simple question: Has the end of America’s war on Iraq been brought closer by the recapture of the US Congress by the Democrats in November 2006? The answer is that when it comes to the actual war, which has led to the bloody disintegration of Iraqi society, the deaths of up to 5,000 Iraqis a month, the death and mutilation of US soldiers every day, nothing at all has happened since the Democrats rode to victory in November courtesy of popular revulsion in America against the war. I don’t think there is much of an independent Left in America today, if there was, then Lawrence McGuire’s statement about the lack of solidarity with the Iraqi resistance wouldn’t be so obviously on the mark.

Meanwhile, Sami Ramadani offers insights into how the Iraqi resistance can bring together its disparate elements and turn events to its decisive advantage.

Yesterday’s Guardian report on armed resistance organisations in Iraq and their plans to form a political front was a fresh and illuminating snapshot of the most dangerous and far-reaching conflict of our times. By eschewing the usual cliches and bundles of distortions about any Muslims bearing arms, the report enriches our understanding of the best organised of the resistance groups active in parts of Baghdad and the areas up to and including Mosul, north of the capital. What they say indicates a major shift in tactics and strategy, but also reveals these groups’ achilles heels.

Politically, one of the most telling statements was from the spokesperson of a faction of the Ansar al-Sunna resistance group:

“Resistance isn’t just about killing Americans without any aims or goals … Our people have come to hate al-Qaida, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. Suicide bombing is not the best way to fight because it kills innocent civilians. We are against indiscriminate killing - fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy. They [al-Qaida] believe that all Shia are kuffar [unbelievers]- and most of the Sunnis as well … The Americans magnify their role, even though they are responsible for a minority of resistance operations - remember that the Americans brought al-Qaida to Iraq.”

The statement is significant in two respects. One is the fact that al-Qaida is being denounced openly, and the second is that the man making the statement is from Ansar al-Sunna, one the organisations that gained notoriety in its indiscriminate methods of fighting and sectarian ideology. Equally significant is the fact that the other faction of Ansar al-Sunna is being accused of working with al-Qaida.

One of the least sectarian of the seven groups forming the new alliance is the 1920 Revolution Brigades, whose leader, Harith al-Dhari, was assassinated recently by al-Qaida, according to Muthanna al-Thari, spokesperson of the very influential Association of Muslim Scholars. The leader of the AMS, Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, is the assassinated leader’s uncle and the most influential of the anti-occupation Sunni cleric. Reversing earlier statements, Sheikh Dhari, has also become very critical of al-Qaida. His and other recent anti al-Qaida statements are fuelled by the enormous loathing that Iraqis of all sects and ethnicities have for al-Qaida and all sectarian attacks. Indeed, popular opinion in the streets of Iraq habitually accuse the occupation of backing al-Qaida to spread sectarian divisions and split the struggle against the occupation.

The seven groups are not only anti al-Qaida but also keen to distance themselves from the Saddamist wing of the Ba’ath party, led by Izz’at al-Douri, Saddam Hussein’s deputy until the 2003 invasion.

Such political credentials should in theory make the task of unity with Muqtada Sadr’s movement less difficult. However, the resistance leaders who talked to the Guardian accuse Sadr’s Mahdi army of sectarian killings while ignoring the fact that most of the sectarian attacks have been aimed at Sadr City, Najaf, Kufa and Karbala. For his part, Sadr has conceded that his movement has been infiltrated by its enemies, including the occupation authorities. Referring to the climate of chaos and occupation presence, Sadrist spokesmen have often referred to “the ease with which sectarian crimes could be committed by anyone wearing black and claiming to be from the Mahdi army.”

Following the second attack on the Samarra Shia shrine, Sadr accused the occupation of being behind the attack - a position echoed by Sunni clergy and secular forces - and stressed unity with Sunnis. He later accused the US of sabotaging his attempts to unite with Sunnis. While it obviously suits the US to divide the opposition to its occupation of the country, Sadr’s own tactics are attacked for being one of the biggest obstacles to greater anti-occupation unity. These tactics include on-off participation in the government and the Sadrists’ presence in parliament (in the sect-based Coalition List that won most of the seats in the January 2006 occupation-controlled elections).

Though some of the criticisms of Iranian policies by the resistance leaders interviewed by the Guardian are based in fact, the seven groups’ hostility to Iran is still trapped within the old Saddamist-style anti-Iranian chauvinism that fuelled his eight-year war against Iran following the 1979 overthrow of the US-backed Shah regime. Racist propaganda against the Iranian people lasted for a quarter of a century and permeated Iraqi society and its educational system. The US-led propaganda campaign against Iran has thus fallen on receptive ears. The US is happy to see Iraqis directing their wrath against the fictitious “presence of hundreds of thousands of Iranians fighting alongside the US forces to evict Sunnis from Baghdad and replace them with Shia” - in the words of one Iraqi victim of the occupation who, with her daughter, was forced to leave Iraq after the murder of her brother.

The seven resistance groups don’t appear to be facing up to the fact that effectively by far the biggest organised armed resistance group in Iraq is Sadr’s Mahdi army, estimated to be well over 100,000 strong - or that, in the absence of strong non-religious anti-occupation organisations, millions of people across Iraq are supporters of Muqtada Sadr’s anti-occupation message. US jets and helicopters are daily bombarding Sadr City in Baghdad and towns south of Baghdad. Thousands of Sadrists are in jail and the US is acutely aware that the Sadrists remain one of the biggest obstacles to controlling Iraq.

Last but not least, when talking about the resistance in Iraq it’s important to remember that most of the thousands of military operations that the Pentagon reports are carried out monthly against the occupation forces go unclaimed by any organisation. This confirms the impression that I and many Iraqis have that most of the armed resistance to the occupation is conducted by localised groups in the villages and cities of Iraq. Armed resistance to the occupation has much deeper and more popular roots than the politicians in Washington and London dare to admit. For admitting it, at least in public, means abandoning their much trumpeted “exit strategy”, otherwise known as having your cake and eating it. Having a pro US government in Baghdad, withdrawing most of the troops but keeping military bases in Iraq is not what Iraqis mean by ending the military and economic occupation of Iraq. Such an exit strategy will not stop the resistance and the sea of popular support that feeds and protects it.

For even those who are engaged in anti-occupation political and trade union activities in Iraq do not hide their support for the “al-muqawama al-sharifa” (”the honourable resistance” as distinct from terrorism). And it is these deep Iraqi roots which are likely, sooner or later, to produce the united front that rises above the differences based on religion or ethnicity. A slogan gaining momentum in the streets of Iraq reflects this popular mood:”La lil ihtilal; la lil ta’iffia; la lil irhab”: “No to the occupation; no to sectarianism; no to terrorism.”

Source

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Lammas Seasonal Message - Kate Braun

Tarot by Kate 512-454-2293
www.tarotbykate.bigstep.com
kate_braun2000@yahoo.com

“Landlord, fill the loving cup until it doth run over”


Wednesday, August 1, 2007 is Lammas, First Harvest. Lady Moon is in her second quarter in Pisces, giving us a view of a gibbous moon this night. On this day we honor the Goddess-as-Matron, celebrating her ripe lushness. Lammas is a fire festival, so light red, orange, yellow, and gold candles and use these colors in your decorations and dress. If possible, celebrate outside and make a fire. A barbecue pit, Weber grill, and chiminea are some items in which a fire can be lit without danger. If you live outside the city limits and have the space, build a bonfire (and invite your guests to help).

To honor the Matron Goddess, include whole-grain breads, corn muffins, fruits and berries in your menu. Toast the season with beer, ale, and cider -- but no wine at this time, please.

First Harvest celebrates abundance. Many of the rituals associated with this date are concerned with promoting continuing abundance. To that end, you may choose to ask each guest to bring a dish and when the leftovers are shared, make sure that each departing guest has some food brought by another guest to take home. This shares the abundance with all.

Corn dollies, whether made by yourself or as a group activity for you and your guests, can be a decorative focus for your table. If you buy fresh ears of corn to roast, keep the husks for this purpose. To make corn dollies: Use the green husk leaves from an ear of corn. Line up the straight ends and tie tightly together with string. Holding the tied ends up, drape the green leaves up, then down around the tied ends, arranging evenly on all sides. Tie in the center with a stray piece/strip of corn husk. This forms the torso and skirt of the Corn Dolly. Fluff out the skirt. Then create arms and head by poking 5 or 6 long corn leaf husks horizontally through the top of the torso under the “shoulders” so that they extend out on either side. Take the bottom 2 husk ends and twist them to make “arms”. Cut the ends to even them out. Take the remaining husk leaves and bring them up over the top of the shoulders. Twist tightly together, then bend them in the center over toward the body. Tie to create the neck and tuck any loose ends into the shoulders. Fluff the head out slightly to round it. If there are enough corn dollies made, let each guest take one home as a party favor.

Another ritual for abundance is for each guest to toss a bit of their bread into your ceremonial fire. If you are celebrating indoors and have an iron cauldron or other pot in which you can burn a charcoal tablet or otherwise make a flame, it should be in the center of the table. As each guest throws their bit of bread into the flames, they should say “May we never hunger”, “This action signifies that there will always be food on out table” or other words to that effect. In addition to feeding the elementals, the burning of bread creates the promise of more to come.

Don’t forget the fairies: a bit of beer in a small cup, half a berry, and a crust of bread or a bit of oatmeal cookie will please them greatly.
_____________

Reminders: Saturday and Sunday, August 4 & 5: Metaphysical Fair at the Renaissance Hotel on Middle Fiskville Road between Lincoln Village and Highland Mall. 10 AM to 6 PM on Saturday, 11 AM to 6 PM on Sunday. $8 entry fee, good for both days. Free lectures both days. Door prizes both days.

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Signs of a Sick Society - What Brain?

Generation Chickenhawk: With The College Republicans

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Repugnican Sex Scandals - Not About Sex

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Concerted Resistance

From Missing Links.

Straight talk

Ibrahim Izzat al-Douri, leader of the part of the Iraqi Baath party, says he is planning to call together Baathists and Iraqi islamist groups to consider forming a united front to "escalate the military resistance" to the occupation, on a common program of defeating not only the occupation itself, but everything that has been derived from it, including the government and the constitution, in order to make a clean start under occupation-free conditions. This was conveyed to Al-Quds al-Arabi by unnamed sources, who added that a rival Baath figure Ahmed al-Yunis, isn't being invited, but that another big Baathist name is expected to attend, namely Fawzi al-Rawi, leader of a wing that is said to be close to the Syrian Baath party. It is hard to know what to make of the internal Baath comings and goings, and similarly it is hard to know what to make of the list of a half-dozen Iraqi islamist groups, none of which are familiar names. Overall, as Marc Lynch noted in his thumbnail tag on this item, it appears al-Douri is responding to the fact that he and the Baath party were left out of the group whose existence was announced yesterday in the Guardian piece. The program is identical: Defeat of the occupation and all that it brought with it, while at the same time being prepared to negotiate the withdrawal process.

Awni Qalamji, a resistance figure who writes regularly in Al-Quds al-Arabi, notes in his op-ed piece today (pdf, bottom of the page) that there has been a recent wave of meetings and conferences and common fronts, although he doesn't specifically mention these latest two (the column may well have been already written when these last two common-front ideas were announced, but it applies just the same). He does mention a recent series of meetings held in various foreign capitals, for instance one Nuri al-Marsumi, organized a series of meetings with "[Iraqi] figures preaching nationalism and leftism, coming from London and other places", and he refers in a similarly dismissive way to a recent series of meetings by the better-known Iyad Allawi, including a meeting in Cairo with the participation of a Kurdish figure opposed to Talabani, and with people from the Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian Mukhabarat. This whole meetings fad is based on expectations of an American withdrawal, Qalamji points out. This isn't the first time rumors of an American withdrawal led to a flurry of this type of meetings, and he refers specifically to mid 2005 and a meeting in Beirut (which if I knew something about it I would insert it here). Qalamji's point is that there isn't going to be an American withdrawal, so this whole conference fad is based on a mistake.

Read all of it here.

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Now We Know Why

So many innocent Iraqis are dying every day. With this many bullets flying around all the time, it's a wonder they haven't killed everyone there (including every one of the each others).

US forced to import bullets from Israel as troops use 250,000 for every rebel killed
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.

A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. The total has more than doubled in five years, largely as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as changes in military doctrine.

"The Department of Defense's increased requirements for small- and medium-calibre ammunitions have largely been driven by increased weapons training requirements, dictated by the army's transformation to a more self-sustaining and lethal force - which was accelerated after the attacks of 11 September, 2001 - and by the deployment of forces to conduct recent US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq," said the report by the General Accounting Office (GAO).

Estimating how many bullets US forces have expended for every insurgent killed is not a simple or precisely scientific matter. The former head of US forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, famously claimed that his forces "don't do body counts".

But senior officers have recently claimed "great successes" in Iraq, based on counting the bodies of insurgents killed. Maj-Gen Rick Lynch, the top US military spokesman in Iraq, said 1,534 insurgents had been seized or killed in a recent operation in the west of Baghdad. Other estimates from military officials suggest that at least 20,000 insurgents have been killed in President George Bush's "war on terror".

John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that, based on the GAO's figures, US forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. "How many evil-doers have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don't know," he said.

"If they don't do body counts, how can I? But using these figures it works out at around 300,000 bullets per insurgent. Let's round that down to 250,000 so that we are underestimating."

Read it here.

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Announcements

SUNDAY JULY 22, 2007: CONCRETE SKOOLYARD w/ Legalized Police Brutality?

Legalized Police Brutality? - How Gang Profiling & Gang Injunctions Target Youth and Communities

We're examining the latest trend in law enforcement tactics against the Hip Hop generation and their communities. We'll take a look at how Police, Prosecutors and Judges have joined forces to target communities all in the name of gang suppression.

We'll hear from criminal justice experts, gang experts and youth activists about this law enforcement phenomenon and its real effects on the communities the law is supposed to "protect and serve".

It's today's Hip-Hop activism in a real way .... And of course we're still hitting you with nothing but the REEAAAAL HIP-HOP!

Hosted by SAADIQ & KC

Alex Alonso developed the leading website regarding Los Angeles based gang information (www.streetgangs.com) He is a PhD Candidate at USC and acknowledged as a street gangs expert. He has consulted in nearly 100 gang related cases in Los Angeles Superior Court, Ventura, Orange County, and Kern County courts in multiple areas including history of gangs, gang rivalries, gang migrations, the connection between Hip Hop and Gang Culture, Differences between Taggers, Crews, and Gangs and interpreting tattoos, graffiti and handsigns. His services in gang-related cases have also been requested in Texas, Colorado & North Carolina.

Judith Greene - of Justice Strategies of NY, is co-author of " Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies."
(http://www.justicepolicy.org/reports_jl/7-10-07_gangs/report.htm)
She is a criminal justice policy analyst whose essays and articles on criminal sentencing issues, police practices, and correctional policy have been published in numerous books, as well as in national and international policy journals.

El Presidente is a Hip-Hop reporter and commentator who regularly appears on Concrete Skoolyard. He is a Hip-Hop youth activist and emcee from the Mission District in San Francisco that is currently being targeted for gang injunctions by the San Francisco City Attorney's Office.

Jose Palacios and Danny Calderon of YOUTHJUSTICECOALITION/Free L.A.! are youth activists that participated in organizing protests against the use of injunctions against Los Angeles youth and their communities. YJC is a youth-led movement to challenge race, gender and class inequality in the Los Angeles County juvenile injustice system. Their goal is to tear down a system that has ensured the massive lock-up of people of color, widespread police brutality and corruption, vast disregard for youth and communities' Constitutional and human rights, and the build-up of the world's largest prison system. They use direct action organizing, advocacy, political education and activist arts to agitate, expose, and annoy the people in charge in order to upset power and bring about change. http://www.youth4justice.org/


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For those of you near North Austin:

July 22, 2007 at 03:00 PM
Aziz Shihab: Does the Land Remember Me

Biography
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Arboretum
10000 Research Blvd #158
Austin, TX 78759
512-418-8985

In the Arboretum Shopping Center, at the Southwest Corner of 183 and Great Hills Trail.

Description:

Summoned by his dying mother, Palestinian- born Aziz Shihab returns to the homeland he and his family fled as refugees decades earlier: to a Palestine reclaimed by Israelis and to a country no longer that of his youth in a nation whose estate has been challenged by history. This gripping book chronicles that month-long journey.

Part memoir, part travelogue, it reveals the complexities of leaving behind such the past and coming to grips with its abandonment. With his sharp ear for dialogue and with a journalist's eye, Shihab records and considers, sometimes with fond humor, the Palestinian psyche. Family meetings brim with soothing time-honored ritual and cultural blindness. Pungent street anecdotes resonate with profound themes like human rights, land dislocation, and poverty. Shihab's stories of departure and return, loss of land and reconnection provide enriching insights into the depth and intricacy of Palestinian culture and history and its legacy of displacement.

Aziz Shihab is known for his independent newspaper, The Arab Star. He has written about the Middle East for The Dallas Morning News and The San Antonio Express-News.

http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/spring-2007/does-the-land.html

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The BushCo MO - Lies, Bad Lies, and More Lies

U.S. choppers kill ... who? Enemy or innocents?
By Hannah Allam and Jenan Hussein | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sat, July 21, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq — This much is agreed upon: at least six Iraqis died overnight Saturday when American attack helicopters pounded a cluster of homes in a dusty, nondescript neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Baghdad.

But the story of why those homes were targeted and who was killed depends on the storyteller.

The U.S. military said the dead were insurgents and the homes in the Husseiniya district probably served as weapons depots; troops observed seven or more secondary explosions after the air assault. By the military's tally, six fighters were killed and five wounded.

Iraqi residents told a different version: the dead came from two Shiite Muslim families who lived in an area controlled by the powerful Mahdi Army militia. The bodies pulled from the rubble, locals say, were ordinary parents killed with their children in the middle of the night. Locals counted 11 corpses - two men, two women, and seven children. Another 10 were injured. Some Iraqi authorities put the death toll as high as 18.

In Iraq, where new bombings occur before authorities can even investigate the previous day's violence, the truth about Husseiniya might never come to light. Roadblocks erected around the neighborhood prevented reporters from reaching the scene.

"Lies, lies, lies," sputtered Salam al Rubaiye, 35, a computer technician who lives in Husseiniya and works in Sadr City. "The Americans always try to change the truth, especially when it concerns the Sadrists," the collective name for followers of the Mahdi Army commander, cleric Muqtada al Sadr.

Rubaiye visited the scene of the air strike twice Saturday. He first showed up early in the morning when, he said, volunteers were still digging the corpses of women and children from the rubble. Later, he brought a camera and snapped 14 photos.

They showed several piles of cinderblock where homes once stood. The interior of a severely damaged home showed only the detritus of family life: a potted plant, a wall hanging, a refrigerator, an electrical generator. "For Sale" was written in Arabic on the only surviving wall of one home.

Rubaiye also e-mailed two short cell-phone video clips that showed at least seven bodies swathed in blankets, some with grayish feet sticking out at the ends. Two of the bundles were tiny, as if they shrouded young children.

Residents said they'd finished retrieving the dead by 8 a.m., and that two young girls were still missing.

"I took out with my own hands the bodies of two young children, two men, two adult women and four little girls," said Bassem al Musawi, 30, who lives in the neighborhood. "I don't know why the Americans bombed these homes. I know one was the house of Abu Mustafa. He's a very poor man with only one boy and the rest of his family are girls. And he didn't even have a rifle."

In an e-mail response to questions on the incident, an American military spokesman wrote that U.S. troops had come under small-arms fire from gunmen in the area just before midnight. The troops "returned fire and attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged the structure the gunmen were firing from."

When three of the gunmen fled into another building, the military statement continued, "attack aircraft dropped a bomb on that structure and observed at least seven secondary explosions, likely caused by explosives and munitions stored inside the building." Iraqi police who inspected the site reported to the Americans that the home was destroyed, six insurgents were killed and five wounded.

Presented with the dueling accounts, both sides modified their versions.

Iraqi residents acknowledged hearing gunfire before the air strikes. And the U.S. military no longer insisted that only militants perished, though a spokesman emphasized that the air raid was a self-defense measure.

"The adversary is ruthless and puts no value on human life and will endanger innocent civilians - women, children - by hiding and cowering in buildings they take over," read a statement from Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, spokesman for U.S. forces north of Baghdad.

Burials were planned, though it was unclear who had custody of the bodies. By late Saturday, there were plans for a large Mahdi Army demonstration to accompany the expected funeral procession.

"They say they target the terrorists, so where are they?" asked a 45-year-old Husseiniya resident who identified himself only as Abu Ghufran. "Most of the dead are women and children. There is no justice in this life."

Hussein is a special correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers. Special correspondent, Laith Hammoudi, contributed.

Source

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And We Just Keep Taking It

How to Create an Angry American

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How a Weapon of Mass Effect Has Brought Us Down

Working for the Clampdown
By James Bovard

07/21/07 "ZNet" --- - How many pipe bombs might it take to end U.S. democracy? Far fewer than it would have taken a year ago. The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on September 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist “incident” or if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of “public order” or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations.

The media and most of Capitol Hill ignored or cheered on this grant of nearly boundless power. But now that the president’s arsenal of authority is swollen and consecrated, a few voices of complaint are being heard. Even the New York Times recently condemned the new law for “making martial law easier.”

It took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to destroy one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the permission of Congress. But there was a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from Insurrection Act to Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act. The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition”—and such “con- dition” is not defined or limited.

These new pretexts are even more expansive than they appear. FEMA proclaims the equivalent of a natural disaster when bad snowstorms occur and Congress routinely proclaims a natural disaster when there is a shortfall of rain in states with upcoming elections. A terrorist “incident” could be something as stupid as the flashing toys scattered around Boston last fall.

The new law also empowers the president to commandeer the National Guard of one state to send to another state for up to 365 days. Bush could send the New York National Guard to disarm the residents of Mississippi if they resisted a federal law that prohibited private ownership of semiautomatic weapons. Governors’ control of the National Guard can be trumped with a simple presidential declaration.

The story of how Section 1076 became law demonstrates how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the Administration signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it.

The Katrina debacle appears to have drowned Washington’s resistance to military rule. Bush declared, “I want there to be a robust discussion about the best way for the federal government, in certain extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets for the good of the people.”


His initial proposal generated only a smattering of criticism and there was no “robust discussion.” On August 29, 2006, the Administration upped the ante, labeling the breached levees “the equivalent of a weapon of mass effect being used on the city of New Orleans.” Nobody ever defined a “weapon of mass effect,” but the term wasn’t challenged.

Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision, along with committee chair Sen. John Warner (R-VA). Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) openly endorsed it and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), then-chair of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent.

Every governor in the country opposed the changes and the National Governors Association repeatedly and loudly objected. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on September 19 that, “We certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law,” but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: “Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.” Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it “was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals.”

Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article in the December issue on how the provision became law with minimal examination or controversy. A Republican Senate aide blamed the governors for failing to raise more fuss: “My understanding is that they sent form letters to offices. If they really want a piece of legislation considered they should have called offices and pushed the matter. No office can handle the amount of form letters that come in each day.”

Thus, the Senate was not guilty by reason of form letters. Plus, the issue was not on the front page of the Washington Post within the 48 hours before the Senate voted on it. Surely no reasonable person can expect senators to know what they were doing when they voted 100 to 0 in favor of the bill? Apparently, they were simply too busy to notice the latest coffin nails they hammered into the Constitution.

This expansion of presidential prerogative illustrates how every federal failure redounds to the benefit of leviathan. FEMA was greatly expanded during the Clinton years for crises like the New Orleans flood. It, along with local and state agencies, floundered. Yet the federal belly flop on the Gulf Coast somehow anointed the president to send in troops where he sees fit.

“Martial law” is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. Perhaps some conservatives believe that the only change when martial law is declared is that people are no longer read their Miranda rights when they are locked away. “Martial law” means obey soldiers’ commands or be shot. The abuses of military rule in southern states during Reconstruction were legendary, but they have been swept under the historical rug.

Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation—something that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree. The Bush team is rarely remiss in stretching power beyond reasonable bounds. Bush talks as if any constraint on his war-making prerogative or budget is “aiding and abetting the enemy.” Can such a person be trusted to reasonably define insurrection or disorder?

Bush can commandeer a state’s National Guard any time he declares a “state has refused to enforce applicable laws.” Does this refer to the laws as they are commonly understood—or the laws after Bush fixes them with a signing statement? Some will consider concern about Bush or future presidents exploiting martial law to be alarmist. This is the same reflex many people have had to each administration proposal or power grab, from the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001 to the president’s enemy-combatant decree in November 2001 to setting up Guantanamo prison in early 2002 to the doctrine of preemptive war. The Administration has perennially denied that its new powers pose any threat even after evidence of abuses—illegal wiretapping, torture, a global network of secret prisons, Iraq in ruins—became overwhelming. If the Administration does not hesitate to trample the First Amendment with “free speech zones,” why expect it to be diffident about powers that could stifle protests en masse?

On February 24, the White House conducted a highly publicized drill to test responses to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) going off simultaneously in ten American cities. The White House has not disclosed the details of how the feds responded, but it would be out of character for this president to let new powers he sought to gather dust. There is nothing to prevent presidents from declaring martial law on a pretext than there is to prevent them from launching a war on the basis of manufactured intelligence.

Senators Leahy and Kit Bond (R-MO) are sponsoring a bill to repeal the changes. Leahy urged his colleagues to consider the Section 1076 fix, declaring, “It is difficult to see how any Senator could disagree with the advisability of having a more transparent and thoughtful approach to this sensitive issue.”

He deserves credit for fighting hard on this issue, but there is little reason to expect most members of Congress to give it a second look. The Section 1076 debacle exemplifies how the Washington establishment pretends that new power will not be abused, regardless of how much existing power has been mishandled. Why worry about martial law when there is pork to be harvested and photo ops to attend? It is still unfashionable in Washington to worry about the danger of the open barn door until after the horse is two miles down the road.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy and eight other books.

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