The Rag Blog

Economic discussion in the United States is trapped in ancient ruts. Both right and left are stuck in old habitual ways of thinking. Neither shows inclination or ability to think independently of ideology. For a country beset with economic problems, this is problematic.

The ascendency of free market economics during the past quarter century has removed some constraints on corporate power. It is difficult to argue that this is a desirable result. For example, the concentration of media ownership permitted by the Clinton administration in the 1990s has destroyed the independence of the US media, thus reducing the accountability of government. Deregulation has had unintended consequences. The growth of corporate influence has facilitated the reach of special interests into universities and think tanks and turned some from pursuit of truth to “for-profit activities” that compromise the independence of studies and publications.

The left-wing, which refuses to accept that the Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve’s mistaken monetary policy and still blames corporate power and greed for the 1930s decade of high unemployment, is disturbed at the loosening of the leash on corporate power. Generally speaking, the left blames President Reagan for boosting corporate power by cutting taxes and for spear-heading union-busting by firing the striking air controllers.

John Kenneth Galbraith was correct that unions provided a countervailing power, one that has been removed. The left-wing is correct that corporations have grown in power and that income inequality has worsened. But the left is wrong in attributing these developments to tax cuts and dismissed air controllers.

The purpose of Reagan’s reduction in marginal tax rates was to cure stagflation and worsening trade-offs between inflation and employment that had undermined Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Reagan’s tax policy brought a record economic expansion that did not require rising rates of inflation to sustain. It is impossible to argue that the decline in inflation and home mortgage rates benefitted the rich more than others. The rich have a lot of margin in their budgets. The poor have none.

US income inequality was worsened and the unions busted by the collapse of world socialism and the rise of the high speed Internet. These two developments, which were not part of Reagan’s economic program, made it possible for corporations to substitute foreign labor for American labor in the production of goods and services for American markets.

Until the collapse of world socialism, corporations did not have access to the large pools of excess labor in China and India. Until the rise of the high speed Internet, corporations could not hire professional services supplied from distant lands. These two developments meant that highly productive and highly paid American labor could be substituted out of production functions and replaced with equally productive but much cheaper foreign labor, because large excess supplies of Asian labor suppressed Asian wages below the productivity of labor.

Industrial unions were busted by the movement of plant, equipment, and technology abroad.

The professional middle class was adversely impacted by the ability of corporations to contract for the delivery via the Internet of professional services from abroad and by the ability to import cheaper foreign workers on H-1B, L-1 and other work visas.

Jobs offshoring is dismantling the ladders of upward mobility in the US, polarizing the population into rich and poor, and, thereby, worsening the income distribution.

The nation accused of aiding the killings in Darfur provides spies in Iraq. In return, it gets access in Washington.

WASHINGTON — Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq, an example of how the U.S. has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its suspected role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.

President Bush has denounced the killings in Sudan’s western region as genocide and has imposed sanctions on the government in Khartoum. But some critics say the administration has soft-pedaled the sanctions to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan.

The relationship underscores the complex realities of the post-Sept. 11 world, in which the United States has relied heavily on intelligence and military cooperation from countries, including Sudan and Uzbekistan, that are considered pariah states for their records on human rights.

“Intelligence cooperation takes place for a whole lot of reasons,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing intelligence assessments. “It’s not always between people who love each other deeply.”

Sudan has become increasingly valuable to the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks because the Sunni Arab nation is a crossroads for Islamic militants making their way to Iraq and Pakistan.

That steady flow of foreign fighters has provided cover for Sudan’s Mukhabarat intelligence service to insert spies into Iraq, officials said.

“If you’ve got jihadists traveling via Sudan to get into Iraq, there’s a pattern there in and of itself that would not raise suspicion,” said a former high-ranking CIA official familiar with Sudan’s cooperation with the agency. “It creates an opportunity to send Sudanese into that pipeline.”

As a result, Sudan’s spies have often been in better position than the CIA to gather information on Al Qaeda’s presence in Iraq, as well as the activities of other insurgent groups.

“There’s not much that blond-haired, blue-eyed case officers from the United States can do in the entire Middle East, and there’s nothing they can do in Iraq,” said a second former CIA official familiar with Sudan’s cooperation. “Sudanese can go places we don’t go. They’re Arabs. They can wander around.”

The officials declined to say whether the Mukhabarat had sent its intelligence officers into the country, citing concern over the protection of sources and methods. They said that Sudan had assembled a network of informants in Iraq providing intelligence on the insurgency. Some may have been recruited as they traveled through Khartoum.

The U.S.-Sudan relationship goes beyond Iraq. Sudan has helped the United States track the turmoil in Somalia, working to cultivate contacts with the Islamic Courts Union and other militias in an effort to locate Al Qaeda suspects hiding there. Sudan also has provided extensive cooperation in counter-terrorism operations, acting on U.S. requests to detain suspects as they pass through Khartoum.

Sudan gets a number of benefits in return. Its relationship with the CIA has given it an important back channel for communications with the U.S. government. Washington has also used this channel to lean on Khartoum over the crisis in Darfur and for other issues.

06/10/07 “ICH” — — While on a recent business trip, I heard the jet’s stewardess announce, “And we thank any American troops onboard for their hard work to keep America free. We, especially, thank them for doing this in dangerous, far away places. We appreciate their honor and service on behalf of the great American way. They are true heroes doing whatever it takes to keep our freedom truly free at home.”

In response, I felt like calling out, “Excuse me, but how is destroying a country like Iraq keeping us free? How is warring to secure the ME oil fields for companies like Exxon-Mobile keeping us free? How is slaughtering countless civilians in dangerous, far away places (as you call them) keeping us free? Were Iraq and Afghanistan dangerous to be as a tourist before our country’s initial aggressive assaults? Perhaps our invasions fomented increased dangers from terrorists both abroad AND here. So, please stop spreading dangerous propaganda. It does us all a disservice!”

Instead I kept quiet because in the land of the free, free speech is curtailed. As a result, I’d have wound up arrested by airport security forces for “creating a disturbance” were I to contradict the flight attendant.

That perhaps would be ironically amusing if it weren’t so emblematic of the way that fostering of party-line lies and limiting truth generally prevail in the US. In this vein, the falsehoods often are so illogically absurd that they possess an Orwellian ring to them.

For example, many Americans (50% in 2006 according to a Harris Poll *) still believe that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq and provided a sufficient reason for US to preemptively attack. A considerable portion, also, think that the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq and that the Iraqi government had ties to Al Qaeda (64% according to same tally). Yet, none of this has been proven one iota true. Indeed, evidence suggests quite the contrary.

At the same time, 55% imagine that historical records will credit the US with providing democracy and freedom to Iraq. In a similar vein, 72% have concluded that Iraqis have better lives now than they did under the former regime.

While the judgment is still out on the first claim, the second is utterly wrong as chronic malnourishment, a massive number (655,000+) of civilian deaths, huge ongoing migrations (involving 10% of the prewar population) into other lands, widespread poverty, declining literacy, as well as lack of jobs, adequate housing, clean water, food, electricity, medical supplies, medical staff, sanitation and other basic provisions have impacted daily life in Iraqi. This is according to UN, Red Cross and other surveys conducted by reputable sources**.

All considered, the gap between the facts and the misconceptions held by a substantial number of hoodwinked Americans is, obviously, wide. This is so even when we don’t add in the outlooks of those amongst the evangelical masses, such as the silly notion that ME warring should be joyfully encouraged since it represent a sign from God that Armageddon is at hand.

Yet, how could such an immense disparity exist? In addition, the discrepancy begs other more critical questions: How could such a sizable portion of US citizens be so easily duped and what agents are responsible for such easy acceptance of erroneous conclusions? In other words, who created these bogus sets of facts and, equally important, were they deliberately crafted?

The answer is obvious. While fictitious interpretations of events are clearly founded in misinformation, their prevalence is quite understandable given that the US mainstream media is funded by advertising industry whose puppet strings are, ultimately, yanked by big multinational corporations — the same companies that our government courts and woos by creating expensive wars (in regions laden with resources coveted by those worldwide businesses) and myriad laws favoring globalization at the expense of American jobs.

So somewhere along the way, some devious group of people, both connected to the government and big business, developed a plot to bamboozle the American people to go along with the war, a not too difficult task following 9/11. This same group could have easily decided to not push for the reinstatement of the draft in that a mandatory draft became the indirect cause that led many Americans to protest the Vietnam War. (It got a little too close to home when one’s own middle and upper class sons were called to arm.)

Consequently, life, all in all, goes simply onward with misguided factual backdrops enduring intact because few reputable mainstream sources dare dispute them. This is especially the case as most news programs simply aren’t going to get beyond such topics as the best ways to fix your hair on high humidity days, the stores that have the cutest summer fashions, the highest grossing movie of the week, ways to make vegetables more appealing to children, the car accident in the next town, the foiled robbery at a local convenience store and so on — all making up the bland harmless pabulum demanded by sponsors, and that we can watch day after day if we choose such fatuous fare.

06/10/07 “ICH” — – On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an hour and a half-long press conference which was attended by many members of the world media. The contents of that meeting—in which Putin answered all questions concerning nuclear proliferation, human rights, Kosovo, democracy and the present confrontation with the United States over missile defense in Europe—have been completely censored by the press. Apart from one brief excerpt which appeared in a Washington Post editorial, (and which was used to criticize Putin) the press conference has been scrubbed from the public record. It never happened. (Read the entire press conference archived here.)

Putin’s performance was a tour de force. He fielded all of the questions however misleading or insulting. He was candid and statesmanlike and demonstrated a good understanding of all the main issues.

The meeting gave Putin a chance to give his side of the story in the growing debate over missile defense in Eastern Europe. He offered a brief account of the deteriorating state of US-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War, and particularly from 9-11 to present. Since September 11, the Bush administration has carried out an aggressive strategy to surround Russia with military bases, install missiles on its borders, topple allied regimes in Central Asia, and incite political upheaval in Moscow through US-backed “pro-democracy” groups. These openly hostile actions have convinced many Russian hard-liners that the administration is going forward with the neocon plan for “regime change” in Moscow and fragmentation of the Russian Federation. Putin’s testimony suggests that the hardliners are probably right.

The Bush administration’s belligerent foreign policy has backed the Kremlin into a corner and forced Putin to take retaliatory measures. He has no other choice.

If we want to understand why relations between Russia are quickly reaching the boiling-point; we only need to review the main developments since the end of the Cold War. Political analyst Pat Buchanan gives a good rundown of these in his article “Doesn’t Putin Have a Point?”

Buchanan says:

“Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from Eastern Europe voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we would not move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we bring Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother Russia’s front porch. Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin.

Second, America backed a pipeline to deliver Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, to bypass Russia.

Third, though Putin gave us a green light to use bases in the old Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem hell-bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.

Fourth, though Bush sold missile defense as directed at rogue states like North Korea, we now learn we are going to put anti-missile systems into Eastern Europe. And against whom are they directed?

Fifth, through the National Endowment for Democracy, its GOP and Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations, and “human rights” institutes such as Freedom House, headed by ex-CIA director James Woolsey, we have been fomenting regime change in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, and Russia herself.

U.S.-backed revolutions have succeeded in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, but failed in Belarus. Moscow has now legislated restrictions on the foreign agencies that it sees, not without justification, as subversive of pro-Moscow regimes.

Sixth, America conducted 78 days of bombing of Serbia for the crime of fighting to hold on to her rebellious province, Kosovo, and for refusing to grant NATO marching rights through her territory to take over that province. Mother Russia has always had a maternal interest in the Orthodox states of the Balkans.

These are Putin’s grievances. Does he not have a small point?”

Yes–as Buchanan opines—Putin does have a point, which is why his press conference was suppressed. The media would rather demonize Putin, than allow him to make his case to the public. (The same is true of other world leaders who choose to use their vast resources to improve the lives of their own citizens rather that hand them over to the transnational oil giants; such as, Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez) Even so, NATO has not yet endorsed the neocon missile defense plan and, according to recent surveys, public opinion in Poland and the Czech Republic is overwhelmingly against it.

Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration is going ahead regardless of the controversy.

Putin cannot allow the United States to deploy its missile defense system to Eastern Europe. The system poses a direct threat to Russia’s national security. If Putin planned to deploy a similar system in Cuba or Mexico, the Bush administration would immediately invoke the Monroe Doctrine and threaten to remove it by force. No one doubts this. And no one should doubt that Putin is equally determined to protect his own country’s interests in the same way. We can expect that Russia will now aim its missiles at European targets and rework its foreign policy in a way that compels the US to abandon its current plans.

The media has tried to minimize the dangers of the proposed system. The Washington Post even characterized it as “a small missile defense system” which has set off “waves of paranoia about domestic and foreign opponents”.

Down the shore yesterday, as we say in Philly, I was body surfing in the Atlantic and it got me to thinking.

On the East Coast, where the prevailing winds are offshore, the surf tends to be pretty tame, and Thursday was no exception, with the biggest waves cresting at perhaps three feet. Nonetheless, these little combers were able to send my prone body racing 100 feet toward the beach at a good clip.

There’s a lot of energy packed in even a small wave.

Just so with impeachment, where a wave is slowly building for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Since Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) filed his impeachment bill against Cheney back April 24, five other members of the House have signed on as co-sponsors, most recently Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She joins Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL and chief deputy whip of the House), William Lacy Clay (D-IL) and Albert Wynn (D-MD) as co-sponsors of H. Res. 333.

Flash Update! Just to make the point about how this wave is building, shortly after I filed this piece, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), another co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, signed on as a co-sponsor of H.Res. 333. Cheney has to be starting to sweat…

Kucinich’s bill is narrowly focused on Cheney’s criminal role in lying the nation into an illegal invasion of Iraq, and on his illegal threat to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran.

The wave that is building in the House for impeachment of this criminal administration may seem small, but it is definitely building. As each new representative signs on to H. Res. 333 as a co-sponsor, others gain courage and find it easier to buck the “leadership” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi et al.

It seems likely that as the magnitude of that wave grows, some members will add to the list of Cheney’s crimes with their own additional impeachment bills. After all, Cheney was clearly behind the illegal outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, was involved in the politicization of the Justice Department, and is now known to have been involved in the illegal, warrantless wiretapping and internet monitoring of American citizens by the National Security Agency.

At some point, there will surely be a second wave, which will begin with a member impeachment bill against President Bush.

Evidence that Pelosi is losing her footing is coming in many forms.

There’s the impeachment resolution passed late last month by the Detroit City Council. Now there have been nearly 100 such resolutions passed around the country, but this one stands out because it was introduced by Council President Monica Conyers, who happens to be the wife of Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which would be where any impeachment hearing would be conducted. Conyers was once a leading advocate of the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, but buckled when Pelosi threatened to deny him the coveted chair of the Judiciary Committee. Clearly, his wife thinks he shouldn’t have caved, and Conyers is showing signs of wanting action on impeachment. He has lately taken to encouraging the actions of impeachment activists.

There are also the many resolutions calling for impeachment of Bush and Cheney which have been passed, often overwhelmingly, by state Democratic Parties, including those in California, Massachusetts and North Carolina.

Finally, there are the statements from Democratic politicians, who are looking increasingly ridiculous in their efforts to avoid talking impeachment. Take Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). Nadler, back in 2006, was a member of the group of 39 House members in the 109th Congress who signed on to Rep. Conyers’ then bill calling for a select committee to investigate impeachable crimes by the administration (that bill died with the end of the 109th Congress).

Recently, Nadler, who sat on the impeachment panel during the Clinton impeachment farce, and who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, declared in a recent radio interview that “there’s a prima facie case” that the president and the attorney general “engaged in a criminal conspiracy.” He went on to say that when the executive branch is “contemptuous of the power of Congress” and breaks or ignores the law, then “you have to use whatever weapons the Constitution gives Congress.”

Now Nadler is no dummy. He knows that the main “tool” that the Constitution gives to Congress to combat such presidential lawlessness and abuse of power is impeachment.

Nadler’s constituency in Manhattan isn’t stupid either. They know that the president has been committing impeachable crimes, and that the remedy is impeachment. The same is true of Rep. Conyers’ constituents.

It seems only a matter of time before these leaders, and others like them, are going to have to take a stand and buck Pelosi and the sell-out Democratic leadership that is trying to adopt a do-nothing strategy ahead of the 2008 elections.

One thing you can say about waves–even small ones–and that is that they are pretty much unstoppable. Another thing you can say is that they wear down resistance–especially when the resistance is insubstantial. A third thing is that they are never alone. They keep on coming, one after another after another.

I was onstage right next to Allen Ginsberg at the Human Be-In. I had an autoharp, which I was playing in those days. Luckily, they never allowed me to perform, because it would’ve been a disaster.

There was a sea of 10,000 faces. Don’t know how many they actually counted.

I remember, in the sunset, this lone parachutist descended on the crowd. That was great.

They call that particular locale in Golden Gate park Hippie Hill. They’d had big crowds there before, but nothing like that.

At one point, Allen turned to me and said, ‘What if we’re all wrong?’ I don’t think I had answer.

I didn’t realize a big part of audience was quote “kids,” they were just turned on hippies of all ages. There was a lot of smoke in the air.

A lot of acid being dropped. Yeah, I did drop that day. It was terrible. It’s not a good idea to do it in a crowded place. The only other time I did it was in Big Sur. That was the kind of setting you should have. Actually it wasn’t so bad, I was just kind of confused.

During the Summer of Love, I got the impression kids from all over the country were descending on the Haight Ashbury. Word had gotten around the country, and they all came to San Francisco, just out of high school, still in high school, college kids.

It was about that time that things began to fall apart. Really heavy drugs came in. Before things went bad, everything was light, in both senses of the word, light physically in the sky, and also in the sense of light versus heavy. After that year, everything got heavy. Things just degenerated more and more. I think it was that summer. It’s so long ago. I’m looking through the wrong end of telescope. It’s hard to differentiate one year from another.

Before, up through the Human Be-In, the Haight was really sort of innocent, clean.

I remember the early Jefferson Airplane, which was very lyrical. I was going to the Fillmore quite a bit. (Poet) Andre Voznesensky and I performed in between sets of the Jefferson Airplane at the old Fillmore. Bill Graham generously offered us the stage. I was reading translations of Andre’s poems. He was doing them in Russian.

Yeah, there was a light show going on at the time. That movement changed the whole country. All the main aspects of the hippie counterculture were ingested into the middle class: The music, the clothes, the colors, the psychedelic colors, the anti-war movement.

Herbert Marcuse spoke of the enormous capacity of the dominant society to ingest its own most dissonant elements. That’s just what happened.

Personally, I guess I was changed by that period.

I suddenly got 20 years younger.

The scientific community now finally seems to agree on the fact that global warming is happening and that it’s urgent to find remedies against the imminent hazards that threaten the planet. The big question that confronts the world community now is how do we go about countering this imminent global disaster.

During a short tour to a few cooperative countries in Latin America in March 2007 by our opportunist president, an ethanol alliance was proclaimed in Brazil (Sao Paolo March 8) between George W. Bush and Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva. “[It was] hailed by apologists for both governments as an advance in the development of alternative sources of energy and a gain for both countries’ economies.” (WSWS – ‘Brazil: Bush-Lula biofuel plans based on conditions worse than slavery’)

The relative costs and benefits of ethanol biofuels, however, are very much subject to doubt and even to open criticism by much of the community that is fighting for alternative sources for fuel.

An article in Le Monde Diplomatique of June 2007 (‘Les cinq mythes de la transition vers les agrocarburants’ – ‘The five myths of the transition towards biofuels'[1]) makes an impressive case against the cultivating of corn, sugar cane, wheat and soy beans for the development of ethanol to replace dwindling currently existing energy sources.

There is an insufficient supply of natural gas and oil-based energy which simply has to be replaced until the masses of energy-consuming people are forced to decrease their dependence on gas and oil and all the various forms of petrochemicals that we are addicted to.

However, what is the case for or against the imagined ethanol panacea? How thoroughly were the research and the arithmetic done before this huge enterprise was launched?

The case against ethanol biofuel is written in huge and clear script, so clear it is surprising that even the corporate industry that pushes for ethanol, for obvious reasons, is unable to read the writing on the wall. The cultivation of ethanol-producing crops is clearly just another way of making more profit. Instant profit is the god of the day and the mega cultures of corn, sugar cane, wheat and soy beans will add huge profits to transnational corporations. If one day the supply of oil and gas is going to give diminishing returns, which still seems to be a somewhat distant way off in the future, the way the price of gasoline and natural gas are skyrocketing, the big corporations will certainly make sure that they are protected against any possible future economic downturn.

The United States, Brazil, India and China are already busy cultivating these crops. The industry is already under way and has been for five years as far as the U.S. is concerned.

There are two major arguments to be made in this context.

Second: Besides this obvious drawback, there is the even more frightening fact that the culture of these fuel producing crops would take away such huge amounts of land from food-producing agro business that it would lead to increasing mass starvation on the planet. Already over half a billion people on the planet are starving.[2] Is it really the moment to convert huge arable lands from food production to ethanol-producing corn, sugar cane, soy beans and wheat?

What will follow if the world ignores the need for equitable distribution of the food that is presently available (more than enough to feed the world population) and sets out on a course of depriving the people of what is their due?[3] There is already an urgent need for improved policies for feeding the world’s population, and it seems insane instead to take away the food from the people who are already exposed to the risk of starving.

American cable news has been fixated on the jailing of socialite Paris Hilton for the past week, on grounds that she twice violated the probation sentence she earlier received for drunk driving. They interrupted coverage of world leaders at the G8. They briefly spliced in Gates’s decision not to reappoint Peter Pace as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. A new frenzy broke out with every tiny twist . She was brave, she was weeping, she was mentally fragile. She was released, she was rejailed, she shouted it was unfair and cried, she was undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Just for a little perspective, we could consider the news from Iraq on Saturday. Incoming mortar fire from guerrillas hit Bucca prison, killing 6 inmates and wounding 50.

The US military is holding 19000 Iraqis, 16000 of them at Bucca. Although most are guerrillas or their helpers, a lot of them were picked up because they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once arrested, an inmate often cannot clear himself for months or years. I don’t think they have access to attorneys. No one cares if they are depressed. At Abu Ghraib earlier on, some inmates were systematically tortured. It is unclear if all such practices have ceased.

Some Iraqi women have been held in this way. Some were essentially hostages, taken to make them reveal where their husbands or fathers were or to guarantee their good behavior. Their reputations were shot, since Iraqis think Americans are sex fiends and wouldn’t trust the virtue of a woman who had been in their custody. The unmarried among them are likely doomed to be spinsters.

American television never mentions that the US has 19000 Iraqis in jail, or that some have been women, or that some are innocent, or how they feel about being in prison.

So is Paris Hilton being given special treatment by our media? We all are, folks.

posted by Juan @ 6/10/2007 06:29:00 AM

1 Comments:

At 6:52 AM, Peter Attwood said…

Why might Iraqis, Filipinos, and Okinawans, and Thais – for starters – think that Americans are sex fiends? Aren’t these the people who gang-raped a 14-year-old girl, like those who gang-raped the 12-year-old in Okinawa, in both cases protected by their chain of command? And what kind of barbarians take wives and daughters hostage anyway? Didn’t they used to think the Nazis were such awful people because they did such things?

Why does Paris Hilton have more traction with American audiences than Iraqi prisoners? That’s easy, and it has nothing to do with the nefarious media.

Paris Hilton is foxy, and slutty, and rich. Men can fantasize about having her, and women can fantasize about being her, or maybe not being her.

It’s not nearly as entertaining to think about Iraqi prisoners, because that means to think about just what you’re supporting when you “support our troops,” nearly half of whom actually say that they approve of torture, and who shamelessly sing songs like “Haji Girl” – and all with the hearty approval of their chain of command, who for the most part are even perfectly OK with their own women soldiers being raped and abused. To paraphrase Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, how much more then do Iraqis have no rights that any American is bound to respect?

“American Special Operations forces conducted raids in the area on Friday and Sunday, and on both occasions they called in airstrikes when they encountered armed resistance, the military said. It said in a statement that it had killed 136 Taliban fighters, including some who were trying to flee across the river.”

“Aerial bombing of a valley in western Afghanistan several days ago by the American military killed at least 42 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 50 more, an Afghan government investigation found Wednesday. A provincial council member who visited the site independently put the figure at 50 civilians killed “. . . some women and children were drowned in the river, and it was maybe in the heat of the moment that the children and people wanted to escape and jumped into the water”.”

New York Times, June 3, 2007

Who do you believe about the killing of Afghan civilians? Do you believe official US military statements, brought to us by the people who fabricated the story about Jessica Lynch and lied contemptibly at the highest levels about the killing of Pat Tillman? Or do you believe the Afghans who investigated the bombing?

The military gave a precise number for the number of supposed ‘Taliban’ killed by air strikes, so there are two points to be considered. First, in such circumstances how could they know the number and that all those killed were ‘Taliban’? That is impossible. Second, the military tell us smugly that they don’t do body counts. Then they feed the media with supposed exact figures of dead “enemy”. How can we trust people who produce such garbage? But this atrocity, like so many others, will vanish into the dust of history, speeded into oblivion by the lies of the Pentagon.

In another example of deception the military mind-benders went a bit too far. They made up identical quotes from an “Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified” concerning two entirely separate incidents. Here are the official announcements:

July 13, 2005: “The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,” said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. “They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists”.”

and

July 24, 2005: ” “The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,” said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified.”

According to CNN “Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, spokesman for the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said use of the quote was an “administrative error.” He said the military was looking into the matter.” Yeah, right, Colonel.

It so happened that on July 11, 2005 Bush had declared “In the face of such adversaries there is only one course of action: We will continue to take the fight to the enemy . . .”, and it looks as if the phrase lodged in what might possibly be called the minds of the Pentagon’s robots. The Department of Defense PR machine was working hard, and the lying moron who concocted the press releases and disgraced his uniform and the Constitution of the United States has probably been promoted. But he had good examples to follow.

During the barbarous obliteration of the town of Fallujah by US forces in 2004 it was stated by witnesses that in the course of their malevolent savagery US troops fired White Phosphorus (WP; what we old soldiers used to know as ‘Willy Pete’) shells which are terror explosives that kill people in the most hideous way. This was denied vehemently by Washington. One self-righteous official rebuttal was that:

” . . . some news accounts have claimed that U.S. forces have used “outlawed” phosphorus shells in Fallujah. Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. U.S. forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters. There is a great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about U.S. forces allegedly using “outlawed” weapons in Fallujah. The facts are that U.S. forces are not using any illegal weapons in Fallujah or anywhere else in Iraq.”

Well . . . , perhaps not quite all the facts, because the US Army’s Field Artillery Magazine then recounted, embarrassingly, that :

“The munitions we brought to this fight [in Fallujah] [included] illumination and white phosphorous (WP, M110 and M825) . . . . White Phosphorus proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions . . . and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired “shake and bake” missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out. . . We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions.”

The official Pentagon lie was “they were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions” but the army inadvertently revealed that they were fired to “shake and bake”. In ordinary language that means to terrify and incinerate. A tiny morsel of WP burns instantly into flesh and cannot be stopped in its fiery chemical plunge deep into the body. There is no remedy. Victims die in shrieking agony from the effects of ammunition that the Pentagon boobies tell the world was fired “into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters.” They lied. They are beneath contempt.

These people have forfeited all trust and credibility, especially as it seems they tell their lies for political reasons.

The military are supposed to be non-political. They owe allegiance to the Constitution. Their duty as citizens in uniform is to be representative of all Americans, no matter what politician is in the White House; no matter what political parties indulge in puerile antics in the House and Senate. But it appears that the generals have become politicized. Facts are acceptable only if they help the White House, and if convenient facts can’t be produced it’s easy enough to conjure up some cockamamie claptrap that will be believed by an amazing number of Americans, if by nobody else. Take, for example, the latest news about the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

We are supposed to believe that a boy who was thrown into jail in Afghanistan at the age of fifteen is a major and potent enemy of the United States. It is claimed that he is guilty of “conspiracy, murder, attempted murder, spying, and proving material support for terrorism.” At fifteen years of age he was in a compound that was bombed by US aircraft. He was the only survivor and, appallingly wounded (he lost an eye), he threw a grenade at US soldiers who came in to finish things off. They beat him up and he was then subjected to the most vicious torture before being sent to the Gulag cells of Guantanamo Bay.

Don’t these people understand that by conjuring up such twaddle they are making their nation an object of ridicule and hatred?

A courageous Iraqi journalist, who covered sectarian violence in the north of the country, has been murdered in Mosul, the latest victim of attacks against Muslim women reporters.

Sahar Hussein al-Haideri, 45, a top Iraqi reporter working in the perilous Mosul region, who fearlessly wrote about efforts by extremist forces to take control of the city and foment sectarian conflict, was murdered outside her home on June 7.

Haideri reported for a Mosul newspaper, the Voices of Iraq news agency, and the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, IWPR, where she had participated in numerous training and exchange programmes over the past three years.

Her most recent story was a moving feature on the stoning to death of a young Yezidi girl who had converted to Islam after falling in love with a Muslim boy. See “Honour Killing” Sparks Fears of New Iraqi Conflict.

Haideri had long been concerned about her security, and for the past year had contributed reports to IWPR under a pseudonym. Six months ago, her husband and four children moved to Damascus, and she had recently relocated to Syria herself.

The Yezidi minority has so far stayed well out of Iraq’s internecine battles, but violence with their Muslim neighbours has escalated following the murder of a girl who apparently converted to Islam.

Bashiqa, a small town sitting in lush green hills east of the city of Mosul, used to be regarded as an island of peace and stability while vast areas of post-Saddam Iraq were plunged into civil war.

Home to a population that is 70 per cent Yezidi – members of an old sect that is neither Muslim nor Christian – Bashiqa was spared the sectarian and ethnic strife between Arabs and Kurds, radical Sunnis and Shia that plagued surrounding areas. People from Mosul would drive the 25 kilometres to Bashiqa to have picnics and to enjoy the tranquility of a little town where Yezidi temples, Muslim mosques and Christian churches stand in close proximity, presenting a rare image of tolerant coexistence.

Until April 7, that is. On that day, a furious mob stoned a 17-year-old girl to death while bystanders applauded and filmed the killing on their cell phones.

Her crime? Duaa Khalil Aswad, a Yezidi, had run away from home because she had fallen in love with a Muslim boy. It was not the first love story of its kind, nor was it the first “honour killing” in a region where women are subject to strong social restrictions and face severe punishment for disregarding family, tribal or religious traditions.

Such cases can no longer be covered up as easily these days, because of pressure from local women’s activists – but they rarely cause a stir.

Duaa’s case was different. This killing has had much wider impact – unleashing widespread inter-communal strife in a formerly peaceful area, which has resulted in at least 20 deaths and the threat of more violence.

You might have missed it–a story buried in that slush pile of celebrity news, happy talk, and un-vetted press releases that now constitute so much of American journalism–but a report released by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta has recently added a new threat to the nation’s growing stack of worries.

An intensive study of 1,000 randomly-selected Americans has yielded conclusive evidence of a heretofore unnoted contagion, an offshoot of Tourette’s Syndrome doctors have labeled BES, or Bush Exasperation Syndrome. As first reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), symptoms of Bush Exasperation Syndrome include involuntary outbursts of projectile cursing whenever the name or image of President George W. Bush is flashed before sufferers of this malady. This catalytic image (or trigger) has produced bouts of explosive and uncontrollable profanity in well over half of those tested for the disease.

But reflexive and propulsive swearing is only the most benign symptom of BES. As the disease progresses, more advanced symptoms include the loss of a sense of humor, coupled with feelings of hopelessness and despair. And the number of traffic accidents is thought to have increased due to drivers losing control of their vehicles while suffering BES-related episodes.

Most startling and worrisome is the fact that early indications suggest that as much as 60% of the nation’s population may be infected with BES, creating a degree of suffering seldom revealed by medical research. BES now qualifies as a true epidemic throughout the American population.

Preliminary studies reveal, however, that people with measurably low intelligence have an inexplicable immunity to this ailment thought to be linked to their DNA. Scientists have found an almost exact correlation between IQ and the degree of susceptibility to BES. The lower your IQ, the less likely it is that you will be infected.

Ironically, it was President Bush’s own father who alerted the scientific and medical communities to this looming threat. In an interview with Larry King back in April, the elder Bush allowed as how the nation was, perhaps, suffering from “Bush fatigue.” The phrase resonated with scientists at the CDC who had long suspected a correlation between a notable uptick in uncontrolled cursing virtually from the moment Bush took office, an outbreak that has skyrocketed in both severity and frequency in the last couple of years. George Herbert Walker Bush’s diagnosis of Bush Fatigue was, however, imprecise and unscientific. Early studies did, in fact, disclose a condition physicians called Bush Fatigue Syndrome (BFS), but that condition is a wholly separate disorder, differing from Bush Exasperation Syndrome (BES) in etiologically distinct ways. While sufferers of Bush Fatigue Syndrome present symptoms of ennui, numbness, loss of appetite, and purposelessness, those stricken with Bush Exasperation Syndrome are more likely to be volatile, unable to control their bodily movements when seized by a fit of cursing, with arms flailing, and digits involuntarily making obscene hand gestures at television screens or other triggering stimuli.

One of the many corollary symptoms of BES is a tendency to seek comfort in food. Thus it is that we are fast becoming a diseased nation made up of legions of obese people who are thrown into paroxysms of cursing and gesticulating each time the afflicted are confronted by an image of their nation’s leader. Even more insidious, words and phrases widely known to be associated with George W. Bush can increase the severity of these seizures. For instance, the phrase “the decider” has been shown to be nearly fatal to people with advanced cases of the disease, and there have been a handful of documented fatalities attributed to BES patients exposed to the phrase “Is our children learning?”

So far, the only known antidote is to sequester patients away from any possible Bush-related stimuli, a kind of quarantine that is nearly impossible to secure.