Shlonkom Bakazay?

That about sums it up.

Here's frontline's program Rumsfeld's War. But I'd say the title could well as be "Wolfowitz' War". And, sorry, but Rumsfeld doesn't run into problems. He creates them and then disappears for months to save face for this administration that hopefully has a short rope on its life.

They deserve to be out of office. Too much death, too much suffering ...the human consequences have been more than what its worth. 100,000+? And I fear the human consequences will only rise to a level of genocide (if it already hasn't)...and that is not a good thought.

GOTV.

lim

If you're angry listen to these two songs. Some of you might think the hook in the first song's lyrics are conspiracy theories. The second song clears up the first. Just read them. Then judge. Whether you like it or not, Immortal Technique's got something to say. You better listen. This is a test for FREEDOM OF SPEECH. I repeat, this IS a TEST. And, yes, I AM so ANGRY. You know why?

GRrrrrrrrr...
lim.
_______________________________

Immortal Technique & Mos Def

'Bin Laden' (produced by Green Lantern) [mp3]

***

[Mos Def - talking]


Man, you hear this bullsh*t they be talkin’....Every day, man
It’s like these motherf*ckers is just like professional liars, youknowwhatI’msayin?
It’s wild....Listen


[Hook - Mos Def]
Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, n*gga, Tell the truth, n*gga
(Bush knocked down the towers)--[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, n*gga
(Bush knocked down the towers)--[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, n*gga
(repeat hook)


I PLEDGE NO ALLEGIANCE NIGGA FUCK THE PRESIDENTS SPEECHES,
I'M BAPTIZED BY AMERICA AND COVERED IN LEECHES,
THE DIRTY WATER THAT BLEACHES YA SOUL & YA FACIAL FEATURES,
DROWININ' YOU IN PROPAGANDA THAT THEY SPIT THRU THE SPEAKERS,
AND IF YOU SPEAK ABOUT THE EVIL THAT THE GOVERNMENT DOES,
THE PATRIOT ACT'LL TRACK YOU TO THE TYPE OF YA BLOOD,
THEY'LL TRY TO FRAME YOU & SAY THAT YOU WAS TRYNA SELL DRUGS,
AND THROW A FEDERAL INDICTMENT ON NIGGAZ THAT SHOW YOU LOVE,
CUZ SHIT IS RUN BY FAKE CHRISTIANS FAKE POLITICIANS,
LOOK AT THEY MANSIONS AND LOOK AT THE CONDITIONS YOU LIVE IN,
ALL THEY TALK ABOUT IS TERRORISM ON TELEVISION,
THEY TELL YOU TO LISTEN BUT THEY DON'T REALLY TELL YOU THEY MISSION,
THEY FUNDED AL-QAEDA AND NOW THEY BLAME THE MUSLIM RELIGION,
EVEN THOUGH BIN LADEN WAS A CIA TACTICIAN,
THEY GAVE HIM BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND THEY FUNDED HIS PURPOSE,
FAHRENHEIT 9/11, THAT'S JUST SCRATCHIN' THE SURFACE.


(HOOK.REPEATS)


THEY SAY THE REBELS IN IRAQ STILL FIGHT FOR SADAAM,
BUT THAT'S BULLSHIT I'LL SHOW YOU WHY IT'S TOTALLY WRONG,
CUZ IF ANOTHER COUNTRY INVADED THE HOOD TONIGHT,
IT'D BE WARFARE THROUGH HARLEM AND WASHINGTON HEIGHTS,
I WOULDN'T BE FIGHTIN' FOR BUSH OR WHITE AMERICAS DREAM,
I'D BE FIGHTIN' FOR MY PEOPLES SURVIVAL AND SELF ESTEEM,
I WOULDN'T FIGHT FOR RACIST CHURCHES FROM THE SOUTH MY NIGGA,
I BE FIGHTIN' TO BE KEEP THE OCCUPATION OUT MY NIGGA,
YOU EVER CLOCK SOMEONE WHO TALK SHIT OR LOOKED AT YOU WRONG?
IMAGINE IF THEY SHOT AT YOU AND WAS RAPING YOUR MOMS,
AND OF COURSE SADAAM HUSSEIN HAD CHEMICAL WEAPONS,
WE SOLD HIM THAT SHIT, AFTER RONALD REAGAN'S ELECTION,
MERCENARY CONTRACTORS FIGHTIN' A NEW ERA,
CORPORATE MILITARY BANKIN' OFF THE WAR ON TERROR,
AND THEY CONTROLLIN' THE GHETTO WITH THE FEAR OF ATTACK,
TRYNA DISTRACT THE FACT THAT THEY ENGINEERIN' THE CRACK,
SO I'M STRAPPED LIKE LEE MALVO HOLDIN' A SNIPER RIFLE,
THESE BULLETS'LL TOUCH YOUR KIDS I DON'T MEAN LIKE MICHAEL,
YOUR BODY BE SENT TO THE MORGUE STRIPPED DOWN AND RECYCLED,
I'LL FIRE ON HOUSENIGGAZ THAT SUPPORT YOU AND LIKE YOU,
(CUZ) INNOCENT PEOPLE GET MURDERED IN THE STRUGGLE DAILY,
AND POOR PEOPLE NEVER GET SHIT AND STRUGGLE DAILY,
THIS AIN'T NO ALIEN CONSPIRACY THEORY THIS SHIT IS REAL,
WRITTEN ON THE DOLLAR UNDERNEATH THE MASONIC SEAL*

____________________

Immortal Technique

'The Cause of Death'

***

[Talking]
Immortal Technique
Revolutionary Volume 2

Yeah, broadcasting live from Harlem, New York
Let the truth be known..

[Verse 1]
You better watch what the **** flies outta ya mouth
Or I'ma hijack a plane and fly it into your house
Burn your apartment with your family tied to the couch
And slit your throat, so when you scream, only blood comes out
I doubt that there could ever be...a more wicked MC
'Cuz AIDs infested child molesters aren't sicker than me
I see the world for what it is, beyond the white and the black
The way the government downplays historical facts
'Cuz the United States sponsored the rise of the 3rd Reich
Just like the CIA trained terrorists to the fight
Build bombs and sneak box cutters onto a flight
When I was a child, the Devil himself bought me a mic
But I refused the offer, 'cuz God sent me to strike
With skills unused like fallopian tubes on a dyke
My words'll expose George Bush and Bin Laden
As two separate parts of the same seven headed dragon
And you can't fathom the truth, so you don't hear me
You think illuminati's just a ****in conspiracy theory?
That's why Conservative racists are all runnin' ****
And your phone is tapped by the Federal Government
So I'm jammin' frequencies in ya brain when you speak to me
Technique will rip a rapper to pieces indecently
Pack weapons illegally, because I'm never hesitant
Sniper scoping a commission controllin the president

[Hook]
Father, forgive them, for they don't know right from wrong
The truth will set you free, written down in this song
And the song has the Cause of Death written in code
The Word of God brought to life, that'll save ya soul..

Save ya soul mother****er...save ya soul..

Yeah, yeah, yeah

[Verse 2]
I hacked the Pentagon for self-incriminating evidence
Of Republican manufactured white powder pestilence
Marines Corps. flak vest, with the guns and ammo
Spittin' bars like a demon stuck inside a piano
Turn a Sambo into a soldier with just one line
Now here's the truth about the system that'll **** up your mind
They gave Al Queda 6 billion dollars in 1989 to 1992
And now the last chapters of Revelations are coming true
And I know a lot of people find it hard to swallow this
Because subliminal bigotry makes you hate my politics

But you act like America wouldn't destroy two buildings
In a country that was sponsoring bombs dropped on our children
I was watching the Towers, and though I wasn't the closest
I saw them crumble to the Earth like they was full of explosives
And they thought nobody noticed the news report that they did
About the bombs planted on the George Washington bridge
Four Non-Arabs arrested during the emergency
And then it disappeared from the news permanently
They dubbed a tape of Osama, and they said it was proof
"Jealous of our freedom," I can't believe you bought that excuse
Rockin a mother****ing flag don't make you a hero
Word to Ground Zero
The Devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th
The New World Order was born on September 11

[Hook]

[Verse 3]
And just so Conservatives don't take it to heart
I don't think Bush did it, 'cuz he isn't that smart
He's just a stupid puppet taking orders on his cell phone
From the same people that sabotaged Senator Wellstone
The military industry got it poppin' and lockin'
Looking for a way to justify the Wolfowitz Doctrine
And as a matter of fact, Rumsfeld, now that I think back
Without 9/11, you couldn't have a war in Iraq
Or a Defense budget of world conquest proportions
Kill freedom of speech and revoke the right to abortions
Tax cut extortion, a blessing to the wealthy and wicked
But you still have to answer to the Armageddon you scripted
And Dick Cheney, you fuckin leech, tell them your plans
About building your pipelines through Afghanistan
And how Israeli troops trained the Taliban in Pakistan
You might have some house niggaz fooled, but I understand
Colonialism is sponsored by corporations
That's why Halliburton gets paid to rebuild nations
Tell me the truth, I don't scare into paralysis
I know the CIA saw Bin Laden on dialysis
In '98 when he was Top Ten for the FBI
Government ties is really why the Government lies
Read it yourself instead of asking the Government why
'Cuz then the Cause of Death will cause the propaganda to die..

[Man talking]
He is scheduled for 60 Minutes next. He is going on
French, Italian, Japanese television. People
everywhere are starting to listen to him. It's embarassing
___________________________________________

Here's B-Real, Defari, Alchemist, WC, Mobb Deep, KRS-ONE, WC and Dilated Peoples with an anti-bush rap song

Dick Cheney documentary

Some more info about Cheney. 5 exemptions from military service? wow. Flunked out of Yale twice. double-wow. Helping Iran out. Helping Libya. And even making money off Iraqi children suffering (during sanctions), giving Saddam lots of money to help him build his sprawling complexes. Good job dick.

Thanks to Ricken, from Res Publica, for making me aware of VoterCall.org. Please help participate in this wonderful project.

The most important election of our lifetimes is just a few days away, and yet millions of Americans who are most affected by unjust government policies may not vote. Progressive non-partisan groups have registered over 2 million new low-income, minority, and young voters. VoterCall.org offers you a fast and easy way to call these voters with a word of encouragement to go vote. Research shows that such calls increase turnout dramatically.

The Pentagon is collecting figures on local casualties in Iraq, contrary to its public claims, but the results are classified, according to one of the authors of an independent study which reported last week that the war has killed at least 100,000 Iraqis. [Independent UK]

Professor Garfield's Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children from 1990 Through 1998: Assessing the Impact of the Gulf War and Economic Sanctions

I'm probably going to go long like River soon. I cannot do the off-the-cuff breaking-news blogging for much longer. And I'm realizing there are so many people like Josh Marshall that are doing this so extremely well. So, I'll see. Here's something I wrote that some of you might enjoy. It's a review of Gillo Pontecorvo's film, The Battle of Algiers. I'll add all the italics tags where needed later on. Does anybody know how to do paragraph indentions? If you could let me know that'd be great.

Enjoy, lim

***

Having harbored one of the Pentagon’s three copies of The Battle of Algiers for years without the Feds knowing about it, I see it as only just that I review it since the war in Iraq is obviously over. I’m afraid it’s clear administration crustaceans learned nothing from studying the film. And since what’s going on in Iraq at the moment isn’t really re-colonialization, I don’t think Rumsfeld will be sending Cambone after me to retrieve the NTSC copy.

The Battle is an intense and brooding account in mockumentary style of the eventually successful Algerian attempt of ending French Occupation. It is shot on-location 10 years after the end of the events portrayed. The setting is mostly in the slums of Algiers (or the Casbah), the luxuries of the “French City”, the dark hide-outs of the revolutionaries, torture chambers of the French Legion, outdoor leisure events, and in press conferences. The Battle ‘s relevancy today is that it was used as a visual cultural guide by the Pentagon and other neo-con goons (even though a mockumentary) to prepare for the eventual outcome in Iraq.

Occupation is like S&M gone completely naive stepping into a different culture with bombs, barbed wire check-points, guns, ammunition, political charlatans, and economic terror to send its subjects through mindless trials and tribulations while both the oppressed and the oppressor are voyaged off into the throes of hellish masochisms imbued with metastasis deriving from Dante’s eighth circle that arrive at no single point of pleasure or relief. Pontecorvo’s team thoughtfully captures the rawness of an occupation. The mono sound, stark black and white sometimes verging upon blown-out frames makes for an uncooked heaven of lo-fi audio/visual asphyxiation of the soul that wishes to find a better place in this world. The unrefined qualities that contrast with impeccable use of space by the cinematographer and the cut by the editor are essential in filling out both characters and situations. The shifting of the film grammar’s degree of harshness and cacophonic elegance, plus the coloration of the characters rabid clarity of purpose delivers a shockingly beautiful cinematographic dance of light that includes strong politics. If you include the fact that its subject matter is in the Arab world, this combination is peerless among all films.

Pontecorvo’s team shows illustrative naturalism in a most potent form. Through languid silences and multi-hued shadows, The Battle codifies the language of resistance intermittently between cathartic symbols of vibrancy, mental suffocation, fresh resuscitation through riot and the death. The patchwork of dark and unthinkable tragedies and the lighter shadows of hope in acts of resistance visibly wear at the seams of colonial rule. 130 years is far too long. Why did it take so long? I wonder if the Penta-quacks thought they could learn how to oppress Iraqis for 130 years through this film. Instead, they watched with popcorn and candy saying, “Hey Don, isn’t this what we don’t want to happen?” There’s a vast array of ironies and direct similarities regarding torture, occupation, methods of resistance and oppression, and the foreshadowed defeat in the on-going Iraq war, so I’ll refrain from mentioning much more of the obvious.

The Battle is far from being a film that traps the viewer inside a static version of events. Instead, one’s imagination is left to run rampantly along the endlessly convoluted lines of Algier’s Casbah where one finds throbbing flux of Algerian society bathing in the acuity of simmering upheaval. They are portrayed resembling one and the same. Anybody can be a revolutionary: A mother with her son, a beautiful Algerian masquerading as a French woman playing upon the desires of her occupier. A revolution is born with wings in destitute alleyways and briskly oscillating hearts that mourn loved-ones lost and dies with Independence. And one learns terrorism is what reflects from the eyes and actions of the French commanders and soldier alike, while freedom and the will of self-determination becomes light guiding the eyes and deeds of Omar Ali (the main protagonist) and his fellow revolutionaries.

The Battle is not hampered by the setbacks and impossible situations that might hatch out of shooting pure documentary (or of being caught dead in the middle of a civil war). The freedom of expression of Pontecorvo wittingly aligns its purpose with the goal of the revolutionaries. In a regular documentary, the closer one engages his subject (i.e. reality), the task of giving it form and meaning becomes increasingly difficult. This is a great advantage of the mockumentary with non-actors as this one. And Pontecorvo is a brilliant perceptatician in this regard; he takes full advantage of this form to gain an immutable result. The Vertovian nature of The Battle would lend itself easily to being categorized as kino pravda (especially in the sense that Vertov originally desires the term to be used). Namely, a film that takes on a subject matter seeking to uncover hidden truth(s) vis a vis contrivance of representation through narrative sequence.

It also fits the ideological tilt of both Pontecorvo and Vertov. The truth of terrorism and how the oppressor plays the dual role of victim and terrorizer becomes all the more fluently expressed in The Battle. In the film there are members of the resistance and there are the occupiers. Innocents reveal themselves as homunculi only. So, the revolt shows itself to penetrate all walks of life. Those engaged in terrorism for oppression can be clearly differentiated from those engaged in terrorism for freedom. This is the poignant arrival of empathy that Pontecorvo so diligently expresses throughout the film with uncompromising aesthetic tenacity.

Pontecorvo relies on the narrow, winding streets of the casbah to serve as a central character and even embody the resistance’s path to freedom. There is a constant shift of setting to show the affect of occupation and resistance: between open-air events (such as horse races or dance clubs) being bombed, insurgents running through the narrow fare ways of the Casbah, the darkness of destitute hide-outs, and the French occupation soldiers harassing, humiliating, arresting, beating, and killing Algerians at will. It’s both the actual formula for resistance and the necessary visual formula Pontecorvo adopts to allow for the most believable account of these events.

The other types of scenes are the press conferences and the torture sessions toward the end of the film, which reveal the hypocrisy and brutality of colonialism through its supporters own words in public and actions in private: the Lt. Colonel Mathieu (top French soldier in Algeria) smacks of Bushisms and the torturers wax Rumsfeldian diatribes of brutish rhetoric.

The soundtrack is typically flawless of Ennio Morricone (though done in collaboration with Pontecorvo himself). At times, Tarantino rips off sounds of Morricone and Pontecorvo in his Kill Bills. But who hasn’t ripped-off Morricone in this manner? Then in a remarkably gorgeous and teriffying torture scene spilt with Algerian blood and battered bodies, French instruments implement by fresh-pressed uniforms, and Morricone’s sounds come the inhumanity of torture that is sadly still applied in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. As confrontation looms, the hues in scenes with French occupation soldiers grow darker and less definable while the sound track becomes sullen. This is in comparison with Algerian freedom fighters that wear white, especially in the beginning of the film before they commit their worst bombings in the “French City”. If an Algerian wears all white, he or she is bound to be a member of the resistance. This expresses the obvious, they are in the right wearing white.

Pontecorvo’s stellar team offers blind omniscience, the all-seeing eye, through their raw depiction of the Algerian fight for independence. Though he takes sides, Pontecorvo merely outlines the fact that occupation is inhumane and a misguided ideal for any peoples from the occupier to the resister’s point of view.

Amy Goodman reports,

Last month in Eugene Oregon, 54-year-old Perry Patterson was arrested and charged with criminal trespass after attending a campaign event by Vice President Dick Cheney. When Cheney told the crowd that President Bush has made the world safer, Patterson blurted out the word "No" and was arrested soon after.

Is this the America you want to live in? If so, vote for Cheney/Bush and extend the term of the plutocratic hypocrisy sowing hatred and violence around the world, while promoting delusory thinking and rampant ignorance. You cannot lead with a bomb. America will not be able to lead the world in anything if Kerry is not elected.

So, if you want to preserve your right to say "NO" then vote for Kerry/Edwards. The Orwellian nightmare we live must be stopped.

Meanwhile, Iran wants 4 more years. I wonder why...

George said,

Sept. 2, 1999: "Effective reform requires accountability. ... It is a sad story. High hopes, low achievement. Grand plans, unmet goals. My administration will do things differently."

Oh?

Kristof laying it plain.

Klein has the knack of doing the same.

[James] Baker has not managed to get a single country to commit to eradicating Iraq's debts. Iraq's creditors know that while Baker was asking them to show forgiveness, his company was offering Kuwait a special side deal to push Iraq to pay up.

Can you say, CONFLICT OF INTERESTS?

"What was your first thought when you saw the photographs?"

"My first thought," he said, "was 'Oh shit!'"

"What was your second thought?"

"Thank God that's not me at the bottom of that pyramid."

"What was your third thought?"

"My third thought," said the general, "was 'This was not started by some youngsters down in the trenches. This had to have been driven by the intelligence community.' Yep. Someone much higher in intelligence deliberately designed this, advocated it, directed it, trained people to do it. No doubt about it. And whoever that is, he's in deep hiding right now."

part 1, part 2

more coming...
lim

The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, publishes that the US & Coalition forces have killed 100,000 civilians since the fall of Baghdad.

I'm not going to even say anything. (video)


IAEA seal, courtesy of 5 Eyewitness, Minneapolis KSTP and Norm at onegoodmove.

Update:No, Donald, you can't use satellite pictures to prove there were weapons anymore. That's old hat now. Powell used all that juice at the U.N. already.

Update II: Based on a review of the KSTP videotape, former weapons inspector David Kay said late Thursday that the seal is consistent with those used by the International Atomic Energy Agency and that the explosives in the barrel were the type of high-grade explosives missing from the complex.

"That's either HMX or RDX," Kay said, referring to the types of explosives. "I don't know of anything else in Al-Qaqaa that was in that form."

Update III: Dr. Kay with more about Al' Qa'qaa. Well, at least with regard to this one bunker, and the film shows one seal, one bunker, one group of soldiers going through, and there were others there that were sealed. With this one, I think it is game, set, and match. There was HMX, RDX in there. The seal was broken. And quite frankly, to me the most frightening thing is not only was the seal broken, lock broken, but the soldiers left after opening it up. I mean, to rephrase the so-called pottery barn rule. If you open an arms bunker, you own it. You have to provide security.

Update IV: Di Rita in a remarkable show of incompetence. , It's not just Al' Qaqaa (krugman)

Update V: Soldiers Describe Looting of Explosives

John Kerry must be elected. The Economist even thinks so. Amazing, The Economist? Ha, I bet they want John Kerry. I'll post the more interesting endorsements here in the future. So, while I would rather vote for Nader, there is too much at stake. That's why I'm voting for Kerry.

I have a strong feeling we are headed for another Supreme Court decision putting the President in power. In fact, I would bet on it. Here we go again.

Update: Republicans for Kerry, Newspapers as undecided as their readers over choice for president, Bush Receives Endorsement From Iran (oops wrong post),

Thankfully, Greg Palast's BBC/Newsnight report of last night concerning Broward County shenanigans of the Republican Party airs on American TV today and tonight. You can see or hear the report in the following formats: 128k, 256k video; real stream & mp3. It starts about 12 minutes into the program. Well, exactly on 13:30 into it. But the minute and half preceding describes the previous ways the vote fraud was committed.

The bonus is the interview with Palast included in the Democracy Now's show today. Here's the web page about today's show. NOTE: Greg Palast was the first person to report the voting fraud in 2000 that made sure 1 million black persons votes were not counted, among many other things. I can't express how important his report is this time around.

Just kidding. Or am I? But are they? What does this look like to you? Foul play?

Norm at onegoodmove has out-done himself yet again.



Here's the "one finger victory salute" by George W. Bush himself.

I thought Prince Bandar was the only one that used the finger to speak subliminal messages. Boy was I wrong.

Update: An especially convincing Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in London's Independent. Here's the article for the archive on common dreams.

Sometimes the most obvious things don't jog the brain. I think it is interesting that John Abizaid, the leader of the most powerful military and Ralph Nader, the leader of Public Citizen and one of the most progressive thinking and important social activists in the world who could completely get Dubya re-elected ...are Lebanese Americans. What's up with that? I think it's so strange. I mean, sure, Tony Chalhoub and Casey Kasem. But these guys pull some weight. The future of the world is being mitigated and possibly decided by the actions of the two. One's of course a servant of W. The other is the opposite, but could actually help W.

I was just thinking about how Lebanon is so screwed up (with the whole cabinet resigning with Hariri plus the 35 billion dollars in debt). Lebanon is a prism of deceit because of the wars and aftermath of those wars during the last quarter century. Don't get me wrong. I still love it. But there are no jobs and no future for so many. So, I was thinking how America has these two guys in pretty prominent positions.

Slightly related: My friend tells me that when Kerry was testifying in the Senate hearing for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Nixon said they had to do something about him because he was going to become another Ralph Nader. So, I find all this so amusing.

Update: It was a secret memo issued by Charles Colson, Nixon's consel. But here's what it said plainly: "Destroy the young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader."

I'm not sure if it is irony that I'm trying to point out or just the oddity--which isn't so so odd really--that they are such prominent public assets. I just wanted to mention it.

What if Abizaid and Nader were Iraqis? That would be ridiculous, of course. But imagine today as the Iraqi-American John Abizaid and his fierce opponent, also an Iraqi-American, Ralph Nader tries to disrupt the onslaught of Iraqi "insurgents" on innocent Iraqis themselves on Iraqi soil. Now, that would be ironic. Funny thing is that it's not a stretch of the imagination by any means. It could have happened.

I'm especially quirky at the moment. Pardon my recalcitrant verbage, or lack thereof, as of late. A full night's rest will straighten me out.

Hitobanjuu manjiri to mo shinakatta...

Nande konnani doki doki shichau n darou?

Domo...

WoooOOOOOLAAAAHHHHHH LOOOO LAHHHHHHHHHH!

warble warble

grrrrrrrr...

Robert Fisk's lecture at MIT features a great question and follow-up by an Iraqi. Go to 2:13min into 2:44min to hear it. A sixty year old Iraqi man squares Fisk up quite well. Of course, this is like trying to rewind. But I think it's well worth the time. (click to go direct to video)

Also, about 45min of Fisk's documentary is also screened at this lecture. You can hear the audio only as well (32k) if you like. And if you've never been-to or heard a Robert Fisk lecture, I highly recommend it.

Fo' real, quicktime, real player streams of the video (lyrics, download 46MB hi-quality quicktime video version, mp3, & bit-torrent)



J'yea, get pissed-off, vote, then get 10 of your friends to do the same.

lets get this guy out of DC.

NOW.

go.

l.

Iraqi Americans:
= Salam Al-Rawi, on democracy now (April 10, 2003), audio
= Pre-war Expatriate Discussion
= Kanan Makiya @ MIT: who wrote REpublic of Fear and was for the war. Major advisor to Chalabi's INC. Here's the most recent article I found on him. Trying to balance a bit. There will need to be another Memory Foundation to remind and warn about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners + other atrocities that have been committed. Because he's right. There could be an "attempt to erase the past." (video)
= Fawzi Karim, Iraqi poet
more coming...

Zeyad, Riverbend, & Salam

Zeyad_The Marji'iya of Najaf: Voting is a legal duty  
Riverbend_American Elections 2004...
Salam_Washington D.C.

Go speed racer Go

lim.

James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger report "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq"

Now this isn't your average story. Juan Cole has already offered commentary. Josh Marshall has several posts about it, too. And asks, "Where's Jerry Bremer?" Do we still have a problem with accountability? Or was this not happening under his and Bush Inc's watch?

Incredible. I don't feel any safer. Bush has made America less safe.

What do you think?

+++

The impact of FEAR on politics and civil society. Commentary about the subject given by Madeleine Bunting of the Guardian. And this video folds neatly within the topic.

+++

Onegoodmove, with an interview and segment of Jon Stewart's on the news magazine 60 Minutes. Kinda big, sorrrrry.

Btw, Jon Stewart's book is damn funny. Check it out.
-cspan's american perspectives with jon stewart, (1 hr long)

+++
uPdating this story: Cornwell, indpendent (uk), Bombshell for Bush, Krugman, nytimes, The Culture of Cover-ups, Making Things Worse, nytimes ed.

I'm going to be one of those Republicans doing illegal things in the election (see last post) singing warm leatherette to the top of my lungs. I should be taking a hearty nap preparing for a surreal 9 days+, but instead I'm captivated and disturbed. And consequently awake...Scary. Diana Moon of Letter from Gotham sums it up. Andrew Gumbel of The Independent (UK) breaks it down. I wish I could have a sense of humor about anything right now. I just don't see anything pointing to something positive. I will vote soon, though. That's all I can do. Washington Post is supporting Kerry. Pretty significant. Senators McCain and Biden criticize the treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Why is it just occuring to them now, though? Maybe it's because of a CIA report that shows that Iraqis are being taken out of Iraq for interrogation. That's illegal.

Round down:

-Heads up about MTC opening jails in Britain. These are the same cats that ran Abu Ghraib. So, take good note of it.

-William Gibson back to blogging. Cool. Virtualize yo'self fo' us.

-Juan Cole talks Eminem: Juan Cole and others digest Eminem's "Mosh". Very significant leak of a song. (quicktime, real player streams of the video)

-Rolling Stone with an infuriating piece.

-Rory McCarthy in Baghdad with a real story with some interesting points. How did he manage it?

-A brief chart. 21 rationales for war.

-Dear Limey A$$holes

-Punk rockers unite

-Fisk @ MIT after Powell's lies at the UN, direct video

Iraqi Vox Alert
-Salam's week in DC with The Guardian. 7 days of wicked glory and insanity!!!
-Ghaith, as well. He knows how strange it is and says it here.
-Abu Khaleel with some moist Iraqi tidbits and an ambitious project.
-Iraqi doctor, Dr. Saif tells you what's happening in his life.
-Ibrahim Khalil writes, Iraq Today from Mosul. Some interesting perspectives about Christians in Iraq from a Muslim point of view.

more later...sorrry to those of you who've been trying to contact me. i tried my best to catch up today. i'll be in touch soon.

I was just walking casually on the sidewalk after a particularly grueling weekend, deadline approaching. Already, my emotions are amped as of late. And I glance over to read the headlines of today's NyTimes. Then I see this through the glass: Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State. Read a few paragraphs. And my jaw drops...it's like entering the twilight zone. I quickly bought the paper after reading this, thinking, "Is this for real?" I rarely buy the print version of the NyTimes. And sure enough



Now: I'm listening to a live hafley of Abdel Halim Hafez. It's late. I'm tired and he says, "na'am ya habibi na'am..." Perhaps this is a sign affirming my feeling. The strings are so tight. Almost bursting--like the world--at the seams. I laugh a cry and sigh. The exit wound is Iraq. But where is the entry wound? We must find it quickly. Yet it's so small. How can a thing so small and near-undetectable cause such a mess? Velocity. What about the escape velocity for Iraq?

  The escape velocity is the velocity that a body would need to have in order to be free of the gravitational influence of another body of mass M and radius R . v escape = 2 GM R

Find the entry wound and solve.

[enter Abdel Halim] "Meen enta, wa meen ah'nah..."

Bizarre...

L to the L

Three of Four Bush Supporters Still Believe in Iraqi WMD, al Qaeda Ties *) Poll shows that Bush supporters lie to themselves to feel better boing boing &l ink

hat-tip to Juan Cole first for making me aware of this (will finish reading his post later, must post now)

According to the Associated Press, Bush would "accept" an "Islamic" Iraq.

Becoming a client to another state in the region, in process...

Problem is...Iraqis will not handle being controlled, not to mince words. Enough damage has been done on Iraqis.
Where did secular Iraq go? With the fundamentalization of the middle east through acts such as Fallujah and Abu Ghraib...
Did secularism in Iraq die its first death with the launching of this illegal war? What is the goal of stamping out Iraqi secularism? All I know is that you'll have trouble doing this, if that's the actual plan.

This is remarkable. How excitable and actionable rhetoric in doses can completely change the meaning of what is exactly occurring.

The US came into Iraq and fundamentalized it for a purpose...to fight the terrorists in Iraq instead of NY...the logic doesn't hold water. Unless the result you wish for is perpetual war in some form or another. How much more proof does the world need that these extremisms (of the white house and of osama) HELP one another foment to levels of extremism that previously never existed. And that's bad for us all, isn't it? I believe Iraqis do not want their cities to be the sites of EVEN MORE terrorism than has been inflicted upon them. But that's the plan from the American perspective from the out-set? To take the battle over "there" to fight "them" ? Well this is good for both militant American administration and militant islamic fundamentalist...one group (the US) holds a blanket on the uproar with their superior media control, while another (osama and the gang) revels in the humiliation of America having to stay in Iraq and continue their crazy reality, and strengthen their ranks through the Iraqi pawn. What could strengthen the Iraqi resistance more than those pictures of Abu Ghraib, where NO substantive accountability may yet be seen. This is a complex web of understanding and I need a few.

Colin Powell was right, they are "fucking crazies." Unfortunately, he helped legitimize them.

That's all for now.

That would be a sin against my integrity at this point. The man in his position goes on a talk show and calls them out on their BS. What is more poetic than that? And the day after's program.

The man is legend in this time of both contrived and extrapolated verbosity in mainstream media. That does it. Here's to Jon Stewart, a political hero in a time of considerable discomfort.

...as if we needed another example. just as a reminder that we live in time/space and

what a beautiful dystopia...a lo-fi virtuality with the virility of goodness( or google-ness, googledom)...thank the lord



Way to think on your feet. Happy you're safe :)

I wonder if google will sponsor you now. I have this orwellian futuristic vision of you becoming a spokesperson for Google as we "fight" the "war on terror." How much do you love google?

Lim

The practices enabled by the spatialization of ground convert it into a foundation for technological change. This is not simply a "cultural construction." It is becoming cultural of nature. The very ground of life changes. But it remains as natural as it becomes-cultural.

read more

The US-led coalition may need to spend another five years in Iraq before the country's own security forces are able to take over and guarantee security, a London thinktank said today.

And even then, success in Iraq is not a foregone conclusion, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual report.

Anybody who is half-informed about the situation in Iraq now will tell you this is an impossibility. For me, this is not within the realm of a possibility. I couldn't imagine if American troops are allowed to stay by the Iraq people for five entire years. I'm not saying they couldn't do it by force. But if elections seem flawed when they take place. The situation will get more difficult by the day.

Well done Salam!

:)

Too many have died

208 civilian deaths and many more casualties occurred between 11 October and 17 October. A very bad week to say the very very least.
_

So which one is it Don Segundo?

Ooohhh, Krugman feels it, too.

Putinization

-do I really have to define it?


Are we experiencing the Putinization of Bush?



hm...thinker...

Operation Truth

A little website I came along because of democracy now today.

"If the United States and its allies wanted to maintain the same ratio of peacekeepers to population as it had in Kosovo, the briefing said, they would have to station 480,000 troops in Iraq. If Bosnia was used as benchmark, 364,000 troops would be needed. If Afghanistan served as the model, only 13,900 would be needed in Iraq. The higher numbers were consistent with projections later provided to Congress by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq. But Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed that estimate as "way off the mark." "



Hey! They must not like us!

...at both ends of the political spectrum. I've seen it in activist friends and I've seen it in people who proclaim their undying love for Bush. People have fear in their eyes. Welcome to the new Republic of Fear, America. Afraid of WMDS. Afraid of DUBYA. Afraid of Osama. Afraid of Saddam, but he's in jail. Afraid of Ashcroft, he runs jails well...in fact, so does Rumsfeld. Afraid of Baathists. Afraid of extremists both in and out of the American administration. Afraid of American soldiers. Afraid of beheadings and kidnappings. Afraid of mercenaries working with corporations. Afraid of "Insurgent" or Afraid of "Freedom fighter"? Afraid of foreign terrorists brought in by the war. Afraid of Iraq. Afraid of ourselves. Afraid of different standards. Afraid of our own standards. Who am I talking about now? We don't have standards. We blow away habeus corpus like it ain't a thing. Afraid of American intent. Afraid of American intent. Afraid of American intent. Verging on the pathological, America dawns its fangs and fury forlornly through the Neoconservative rose-tinted glasses of malice. The vision they reflect is callous and disingenious.

"Whaaaaaat? What? You lookin' at me???"



"You're either with US or with the Terrorists," Bush said. So, who's it gonna be tough guy?

Get us scared enough (Show intent that you'll build WMDs) and we'll blow the shit out of you? It's cool, we'll be global police. We won't expect to build nations though...even after we've tested out all our new weapons destroying it. But those of you who aren't scared-because you have WMDs...You will get diplomacy and negotiation. Because we're not that stupid, now, are we?

Who's going to save the world? Superman is dead. What are we going to do now? Isn't showing North Korea that it is to their incentive to have Nuclear weapons kind of twisted? So we'll just make More Weapons. And be sure to know...We'll kill it first and then see if IT should have died later. And we don't do body counts.

What consequences? You mean there is collateral damage. I have to thank Madeleine Albright and the Albright Foundation for that one. Well, that's to be expected when you fight a war on terror. Well, there's collateral damage on both sides.

How very human of America...not humane. Human. When you are afraid is when you strike out with less accuracy. Need I say more? Oh, yes. America is intent on becoming a warfare state (if it isn't already). You've heard of welfare states. You know those wonderful ones in Scandanavia and North Europe (that have no racism or problems at all, ha). Well, America's a Warfare State with No Plan to Win (any) Peace. Iraq now, the litmus test for preventive war, is barely standing on its own as the pentultimate articulation of this miserably failing foreign policy. The excuse to stay in Iraq will be repeated. It is so unstable, if we pull there will be civil war. Well, how about this...what if under either circumstance, you leave or don't leave, there will be civil war. Now that suits Neocons just fine as long as their sons and daughters do not have to fight. Who suffers? The consequences Iraqis suffer is the analog for the digital misery thrust upon Iraq. Failed American foreign policy or lack of a policy is the output. American troops and the turmoil they cause are the forced input. These troops and their families are sufferers, too, no doubt.

I'm amazed at the current state of global affairs. How there is actively thriving existential tenacity that induces fear, paranoia, and creates an eerie vision of the future of humanity. We each bath in it in the metropolii of the earth. The range it reaches in the US is unmistakable, though. To bring what I'm talking about into more focus. There is no doubt it is in tune with that existential crisis you may have had or are having at this moment. Hope shines as an exception amidst the chaos in Iraq. These glimpses of hope are not enough to render a sane image of what I hope Iraq to be. Really, though. So much is stripped down and naked before our own eyes. Literally and figuratively. Literally, there are those prisoners stripped naked before millions of Americans and for the consumption of them. The now notorious hooded man is a symbol of Iraqi opression from the housewife to the baathist. Nobody should have to suffer like this and be told we are here to "liberate" the rest of you. Many here, in America, in the academy, are ashamed while existing in this ill contrived frame-work. Sure names come to mind as to who should held accountable for acts that have gone far beyond "just a few bad apples." Now, the fact that this administration has held nobody accountable just shows how few people hold most of the power in this "democratic" society have changed the nature of our what one could classically define as democracy.

Is this a democratic republic still?


"No."


"Ha ha ha...shuuut uuuup, you're kidding right?"


((((MORE OPINIONS FROM the CHRONOTOPE LATER))))


The fourth and sixth amendments are essentially nullified under the Patriot Act. We're going backwards for perptual war. If we choose this path (even if Kerry gets elected) we know it's untenable. What are the grandchildren of America going to do because of the dopplering effect this war on Iraq has created? If America is at the point were it relies on new alliances just springing up for conveineince like Pakistan, then don't the state of things seem a tinge of imperialistic? So, we're in the battle for the new age. It's exactly like star wars, or mad max out there...ah, but that's not real. This "brother of star wars" project is apparently. And once Americans say hey, now space is ours. And kicks the ISS out of orbit, the moon and mars are colonized along with the entire middle east and south asia, and we all live happily ever after.

Americans need to witness, see, I mean see. This lack thereof, or vacuum, of images that are realities for millions of Iraqis is missing. The Iraqi voice is still missing. What if those photographs were never caught at My Lai? What if those photographs of Abu Ghraib never existed? And there are more even more horrible things we've yet to SEE. Americans need to see certain things and they're minds will change quickly. The problem is the Media structure being so corporate and top-heavy that seeing is not believing (when watching television, say). But when the American voice shows up, informed with the facts, I have no doubt they would be appalled by current circumstances.

Iraq and Iraqis are tired. But not tired enough to resist occupation. Matters are tenuous at best. I'm hearing about and now experiencing worse things than I have in the past 19 months of occupation. The American foothold in the middle east is indeniable at the present moment. But it's foothold with the Iraq people does not even exist. There is a complete disconnect between governing and the people.

I thought we are giving up too many liberties in America to save freedom. Iraqis don't have security to run a state at all! And what is sovereignty under such terrible security conditions currently in Iraq? Indeed, it is and will continue to be the excuse of the American presence in Iraq. LACK OF SECURITY...NOT ENOUGH SECURITY...TO HOLD ELECTIONS...

Well, I don't think George Bush Co. or Iyad Allawi knows there is a difference in the definition of the terms freedom and liberty...there is a difference in sovereignty and lack of sovereignty....there is a difference between liberal ideals like the woman's right to vote and the inalienable rights of all men and women. Should we not preserve these rights, first and foremost?

And Iraq was doing far better in the rights of women category during Saddam's time, it is sad to say. Women cannot go out right now. Where is secular Iraq going? And why am I so afraid that the intention of this administration will result in precisely what the Neocons say they are trying to prevent. They say they are trying to prevent a religious theocracy in Iran from getting WMDs. And then they said they will prevent Iraq becoming a religious theocracy. Well, they may have created another monster again...and would I be so coarse to say they did it on purpose. An excuse to control all of the middle east and south east asia. A foothold on CHINA perhaps? That's Act II Scene 4, in case you're wondering.

Sidenote: You cannot logically prevent a war by starting one. But you can set-off a series of events and conflicts that can only lead to more potentialities of negative realities.

Again, you cannot prove a negative. Haven't we at least learned this through the failed attempt to hold to international law and making the UN relevent in solving the crisis? Instead, it became our obsession to prove one's guilt of intent through military solutions...this war was one of choice and was in the cards for a long time according to the neocons that must now be excommunicated from office. Impeachment won't do for me. They must exile and seek refuge. These people do not belong in the realm of American politics or any where near power. Il est tres dangereux pour le monde, non?

And if any body in this administration thinks there is a viable military solution for Iraq, they will be sorely mistaken. No bases, no oil, no strategic control. No soup for America. Come back, never again.

Without dialogue, respect for our peoples, our ancient culture and traditions, those little glimpses of hope that we can measure with a yardstick are jagged spears edges slicing through my eyes.

Without accountability, there shall be no justice.
Without real elections across 100 percent of Iraq, there is no Iraq--with the exception of our memories.

Lim.

ps, i'll fix and add later, sorry bit messy...wrote it too wuickly...more research and links on the way.

The Taguba Report
here too
wikipedia
stanford prison experiment
Hersh Article in New Yorker
the photos
Human Rights Watch Report "The Road to Abu Ghraib"
Riverbend's "Tales from Abu Ghraib"
boykin
"Why Have We Suddenly Forgotten Abu Ghraib?" - Fisk
Lessons of Abu Ghraib -Bowdon
manual
Rape at Abu Ghraib
The Horror of Abu Ghraib

The Secret File of Abu Ghraib and here
Widespread Abuse Alleged in US-run jails

Abu Ghraib Probe Points to Top Brass
FBI Saw Inmates Treated Harshly at Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib, Unresolved (28.10.04)
The road to Abu Ghraib (30.10.04)

more coming and please email me links. thanks, lim.

Here's an art exbt. (T)error that you may find of interest. (thanks to exitart, robert praxmarer)



Related is the reality or terror that Iraqis awake to besides being "liberated" from the ills of the past. Unfortuately, an array of new harsh realities knock up-side the head of Iraq.

I wonder who doesn't have a horrible story to tell (who has been living inside Iraq) during the past 19 months. You'd have to be exceedingly jaded to take on such an optimistic view as to cloud the reality that nothing is getting done in Iraq. Senseless death has few friends besides wanton destruction and the occassional smell of napalm in the morning.



Culture wars are on: iRaq commercials via some culture jamming that rubs the many Iraqis the wrong way (but not me). I'd rather have some truth in the couple weeks preceding the elections, instead of continued distortion of the facts on the ground.
- if there's any way to get exposure for a momentous event like Abu Ghraib I do not take offense to the commercials Ladybird shows on her blog. Well done, as a matter of fact. A view from Broome St.



Economic war is on (200 billion reparations to kuwait on Oct 21 - see Naomi Klein, among other monstrosities with James Baker and Mad. Albright). This was clearly a major reason for launching the invasion. OPEN THE MARKETS!

Political war is brewing on both ends of the atlantic, gulf, and sea at about an 8 hour cycle. Plan to keep up with events. Good luck. Here's what I think. Fragmentation possible. Legitimate elections across 100% of Iraq is THE last hope for bring a semblance of democratic method to Iraq. And Iraq that is representative of its people. Not an Iraqi interem government that was appointed by American authorities. More accountability from American administration would allow for an easier and less dangerous time from Iraqi resistance.

I skirt myself, but we've had some terrible news. I reserve my family's right of privacy concerning this great loss for Iraq and for our family.

love over fear,

I still don't believe Iraqi Christians should leave. Sure, I'm angry. I'm angry about a lot of things right now. But my unequivocal position remains unchanged. Christians in Iraq shall stay beyond the odds and difficulties...and in some cases, beyond the Iraqi's ability to even secure proper exit into a Western country.

We shall work to preserve our rights (what are our rights under occupation???) as long as we feel they are threatened or being taken away from us by Negroponte and Allawi. And if proper elections do not come along on-time and in such an indeniably viable method. We're in for the real shit-storm.

(streamofconsc.))))

Welcome to the black, welcome to Iraq

Where the love over fear
will bring us near
to those for whom we care
and hold high in our sight
a vision of light
that our self-determination is bright.

Without our culture of resistance
without the respect we command
without relentless insistance
on the standards of the righteous
(not standards of puppets and former tyrants)
mothers and fathers bore unto Iraq
its greatest natural resource...its children.

I fear an occupation pre-occupying (toward a righteous goal of NOT being occupied) a generation of young Iraqis, as was done and continues to be done in Palestine.
I fear an occupation lasting over 35 years, as we aided and abated whilst continuing to do so in Palestine.
I fear an occupation will not last long. And it will take ONLY a limited number of Iraqis to defeat the occupation politically if was wished.
So beware Brits and Americans please, because if you don't read your history carefully
This episode could well repeat. And while I know the level of fondness for re-runs has peaked
here in the U S of A for the TV and reality blows shows, rent it on DVD, watch it for a week,
and puke out all the deep idle mind shit you learned in a jif. Don't create hypnotization through moat-like avoidance and stubborn inebriation sowed from electron stimulation on blinking color tubes, plasmas, and flat screens...
it's all an orgasmatorium for explorium. the liberal nation state shat upon by Saudi Arabia (yes 15 out of 19 of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia). So, why didn't we attack them? They're OUR friends. Oh, so that's how one treats a friend, huh?

Let's send a bunch of special ops forces into Israel to crack down on both the suicide bombers and the settlers who are BREAKING International Law. Don't mean to get you worked up too much.

Rest well and do all those noueveau riche + half-yuppy with high cultural capital in western things like yoga and health food, but DON'T just don't forget to vote. Important point: 'Security MOMS' merge verge and purge themselves along with most of the House of Bush if they vote for him. And, yes, America is less safe.

Only through dialogue (-our vote-) and care to communicate shall we slowly come out of such a deep reclusive hole of decrepit sterile and slanted cultures that have lead to the alienation of America in the world and America's own desensitization of its problems that have deeply embedded roots in the manner which this country began and governed both most recently and since Locke and Hobbes--our "great" finders of our "liberalism" that even O'reilly cannot dispute.

Young one, this nation, 200 or so...should it be given another chance in its own context of 30-50 year lifetime cycle short-term thinking? Or should empire collapse upon itself through more self-destructive policy that leads us further into a tunnel of excrement, dark with no protective eyewear.

VOTE!

Liminal

note: i'm still on my stream of consciousness bit of writing when it comes to the blog. you'll have to deal with this until i get more focused.

A man is never too feeble to pay tribute. Happy Ramahdan
lim

some unfortunate events have come to pass. i will be in touch later.
good day,
lim

Zeyad is BAAAAACk..


River too

Is this what the so-called "war on terror" is about from the American perspective? Are Americans just wanting to preserve the privelege that goes along with being American? Building fortress-America is an on-going project that is detailed in documents written by The Project for a New American Century like "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (pdf). It is essentially an expanded version of America's current National Security Strategy and has its roots in the Pentagon's "Defense Planning Guidance" of 1992, which was a post-cold war classified document written by Paul Wolfowitz. (here and here too, if the previous links do not work).

You must listen or watch Democracy Now's latest show. We need to remember where these policies are coming from. It isn't a new policy from these classics experts, as Wolfowitz is, that is just sprouting from the aftermath of September 11 or the Iraq War. This has been in-the-making. I urge you to watch this special on democracynow.org.

So check yo'self before you wreck yo'self.

-lim

To read all, click

Can we escape? Can we one day say--both the West and the peoples of the Middle East--"Enough! Let us start again!'' I fear we cannot. Our betrayals and our broken promises--to Jews as well as Arabs--have created a kind of irreversible disease, something that will not go away and cannot and will not be forgiven for generations.

Look, for example, how we egged on Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, how we patronised him for eight terrible years with export credits and guns and aircraft and chemicals for gas. Looking back now, we were doing something else. By supporting Saddam's war, we were helping an entire generation of Iraqis to learn to fight--and die.

I called up my old friend Tony Clifton in Australia this week. He and I reported the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war from both sides. "Just think,'' he said. "All these millions of Iraqis were taught about how to fight a big army. They used to use their tanks as static positions with just their gun barrels pointing over the earth to stop the Iranians. But they weren't allowed to use their initiative. But now Saddam has gone and all those lieutenants and captains are older and can use their initiative and their fighting abilities against the Americans. I think that's why the resistance in Iraq is so successful.''

I suspect that Clifton is right, and that the eight-year war with Iran which we were so keen on is intimately connected to the current insurgency and the savagery with which it is being conducted by the Iraqi gunmen and suicide killers.

And what of the Americans themselves? I've been re-reading Seymour Hersh's stunning 1970 account of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. And there's something about the casual attitude to death and cruelty in the way that Medina and Calley did their killings there that I find chillingly familiar.

The Americans have a professional army in Iraq, but it is becoming frighteningly casual about the way it kills women and children in Fallujah, simply denying that its air strikes are killing the innocent, and insists that all 120 dead in their Samarra operation are all insurgents when this cannot possibly be true. What about the latest wedding party carnage, another American "success" against terrorism? Because journalists can scarcely travel in Iraq any more, there is no longer any independent witness to this awful war. What is going on in Ramadi and Hilla and all the other cities where US forces carry out their brutal raids?

Also, an older Swedish interview with Robert Fisk.

I will comment on the article later.
-lim.

David Sanger writes in the NY Times,

Taken at face value, Mr. Bush appears to be saying that under his new standard, a country merely has to be thinking about developing illicit weapons at some time. "He's saying intent is enough," said Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor who under the Clinton administration headed the National Intelligence Council, the group that assesses for the president when countries have trespassed that hard-to-define line.

"The classical definition for pre-emption was 'imminent threat,' " Mr. Nye said. Then, with the development of the president's "National Security Policy of the United States," that moved to something less than imminent, because, as Mr. Bush argued, it is often hard to know when a country is about to attack. Now, said Mr. Nye, "the Duelfer report pushed him into a box where capability is not the standard, but merely intention."

And we have yet another confirmation that we're on the slide to an even more dangerous pre-emptive, rather preventive, war doctrine. You know, you got to ease the masses into performing atrocities in their name...just like romancing a female you fancy. It's just about loving yourself, really...I mean, It's just about loving somebody else. Because by killing them you liberate them. I mean, by invading them...I mean by liberating them through military means, you love them. You follow me, right?

So all it could take is this...

Karl Rove

...or this...

Kim Jong-Il

...or this...

Musharraf & Khan

...or this...

Khamenei

...or this...

Sharon

...to end up with this.


Hiroshima


Nagasaki

Of course a combination of the tensions that are newly creating themselves or existing under the surface between these players could do the trick. I'm sorry I don't explain myself in full. But yes, I'd have to include India's Vajpeey too when I put a picture of Khan and Musharraf. And Iran is hardly the threat that Bush Inc. makes it out to be. We couldn't continue this "war on terror" without another target, right? Not to mention the fly of a menace that Syria is to Israel. So absurd is the claim that Syria is a threat to America. And sure, I don't necessarily like the regime in Syria at all, but does that give America the right to invade it? And Palestine...well, Arafat is a corrupt fool. But does he really have any power? No...other than being a symbol that is actually useful for the Likud to place all their anger upon. No. He is still a holed up nothing. If he were to be killed by Israel they would have no image (as a signifier) to blame for suicide bombings. There would be a symbolic vacuum. And this would work to the disadvantage of the Likudniks in both Israel and America. So, Arafat is as safe as Disney World in France from being touched or appreciated in a positive manner.

Next thing you know they'll invade Lebanon for it's tastebuds of mass appeal.

Essentially who wouldn't want self-determination over these power-trippers that control populations with the thrusts of their egos, poverty, misplaced nationalism, and manipulated foreign policies that invoke fear in the hearts and minds of their respective peoples?

Shouldn't we, yes America, be addressing non-proliferation and setting a better example, instead of creating new nukes and weapon systems and selling our old ones to Israel? It's too bad this is so idealistic. Now, the American psyche seems to have an embedded fear that will not help create a better place for our children to live their lives. And who embedded or is trying to further embed this fear?

Do you want some more of that fear and extremism and less of the hope and creativity we'll need to correct the mistakes of the past? Vote for below.



Totally pertinent to this entry is Juan Cole's latest installment of insight.

The "war on terror" of Bush-Cheney is a smokescreen for naked American imperial aggression.

I've taken ill, so I might be blogging some more and trying to tie up some loose ends.

Peace out,
lim

half-baked thesis: Through certain 01-vortices existing on the internet we can tap into the usage of information on news sites that would give us a clue as to their readership. dada on your panopticon...

ok, if anybody knows of any other sites that do this, please make note in the comment section.

Most emailed story on Al Jazeera: Evangelist warns Bush over Jerusalem

Monday 04 October 2004, 17:16 Makka Time, 14:16 GMT

American television evangelist Pat Robertson has warned President George Bush that he will risk losing Christian support if he stops backing Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem

update:one day later, Iraqis may sue US over invasion

Most emailed story on Guardian: Orgies are the way to ease social tensions, claims US judge

Oliver Burkeman in New York
Friday October 1, 2004

He is the conservative bastion of the US supreme court, a favourite of President Bush, and a hunting partner of the vice-president. He has argued vociferously against abortion rights, and in favour of anti-sodomy laws.

But it turns out that there is another side to Justice Antonin Scalia: he thinks Americans ought to be having more orgies.

Most emailed story on Common Dreams:

From Baghdad
A Wall Street Journal Reporter's E-Mail to Friends
by Farnaz Fassihi

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.

more more more later. ...later later...

Derrida died on Friday in a hospital in Paris from cancer. My condolences to his family.



I recommend Acts of Religion and Of Hospitality

I didn't blog about what happened yesterday due to the ridiculous nature of it. I have something to do with the academy... so I was at the university student union after I bought a new pen, a stapler, a recent academic journal, and some batteries. I'm a real pen freak or not. I go through phases of pen-freakdom. Anyway, while fixing up my bag outside the student union, 3 of these,




or 3 of these,
comes throttling by overhead at about 300-400 meters, if that.

But they don't just fly-by dangerously once. Thrice they visit upon the nucleus of the campus. It isn't a very pleasurable experience as they were going so extremely fast. After each plane-formation passes by the chatter outside raises a notch higher.

And it reminds me of the sonic booms of Israeli jets over Beirut...even recently! It's a fairly common tactic to use against Lebanon when there is some problem in the south (or whatever the problem may be) and it does nothing but scare the people and cause more animosity.

They do this at such a time when most people are sleeping. And one time, I was thrown up from my bed. I didn't know where I was and I thought it was a dream and perhaps I was not alive. Strange waking up like this...

But why did these planes pass overhead here in the confines of fortress-America? To raise fear or venge-off the evildoers? Were they chasing an osama's magic carpet over the student union?

They may have found Ghengis Khan finally...how did he elude our devoted vesteculations to capture him and liberate Iraqis after sacking Baghdad?

Well, at least we have Saddam! and Stalin! and Napoleon's balls!

gotta run...looking for ZarQawi's black mask! and osama's smell!

Update: The problem is you can't look for a smell. And that's what this administration's been doing for far too long.

The big J.C. (hee hee)...

By taking his eye off the ball and failing to finish the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bush perpetuated dangerous instability in South Asia. By giving in to the Likud Party's aggressive settlement of the West Bank and encroachment on Palestinians there, which end any chance of a Palestinian state ever being established--and by failing to pursue a just peace that would bestow security on both Israelis and Palestinians-- Bush perpetuated dangerous instability and virulent anti-Americanism in the Mideast. By creating a failed state in Iraq, and mismanaging the aftermath of the war so as to allow the rise of an audacious guerrilla war there, Bush perpetuated dangerous instability in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. All three bombings on Thursday spoke eloquently of the Bush administration's failure to create a safer world with less terrorism.

The Bush administration announced a "war on terror" in fall of 2001, but it has never been clear what exactly a war on terror was. Terror is not itself a concrete enemy. It is a tactic. As horrible as the tactic of inflicting deliberate harm on noncombatants is, it has been widely used in world history in all sorts of struggles. Warring on a tactic is a meaningless phrase.

The actual wars fought by the Bush administration have only been two. The first was against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, with mixed results. The Taliban regime was overthrown, but Afghanistan was not substantially rebuilt and remains unstable. The top leadership of al-Qaeda escaped capture and has continued to encourage terrorist actions. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man in the organization, is said to have suggested the bombings in Istanbul last winter, and is probably behind Taba.

The second was against the Baath regime in Iraq. It was not a purveyor of anti-American international terrorism and was so weak and ramshackle as to pose no conceivable threat to the United States. That war was won handily, but the subsequent guerrilla war and political struggle continues and appears to be growing in scope and influence. Bush opened the floodgates to terrorism in Iraq.

This is a poor record for Bush to run on. Half of Afghanistan's gross national product derives from opium sales, creating the threat of major narco-terrorism. The Taliban are resurgent in some Pushtun areas of the south. The Afghan vice president was nearly assassinated earlier this week. National parliamentary elections were postponed nearly a year and only a presidential election is being held on Saturday.

Usamah Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are at large, along with several other important leaders. Worse, al-Qaeda has morphed into a headless set of asymmetrical terrorist organizations, such as the Fizazi group based at al-Quds mosque in Tangiers, which hit both Casablanca and Madrid.

The Bush administration thinks the problem is rogue states. But the real problem is radical terrorist groups. Bush has done all too little about the latter. Most of the al-Qaeda officials captured have been taken by the Pakistani military, so that this vital task has actually been outsourced. But where the Pakistani military wants to coddle an al-Qaeda-linked group, like the Army of the Prophet's Companions, it does, and Bush seems too weak to stop it. Bush and Cheney want now to overthrow Syria and Iran, pushing them into the sort of instability we have seen in Iraq.

If you were a company that brought in terror consultants to work on this problem, and after 3 years you saw the sort of results we saw on Thursday, would you really rehire them?

I'm getting to the other stuff eventually...I'll be back with more soon. Real busy days! :) meanwhile, Juan Cole in classic form. I just can't say it much better.

Mahmoud Darwish writes his farewell to Edward Said.

We've got to listen to Naomi. But there's more to it than just this...she makes some interesting points, as always.

forgetting about the dual-use technology that the UN has been used as to destroy and run away from the situations that cause most pain and anguish on the human soul (palestine/israel, the iraqi people and iraq, not to mention much of AFRICA) while allowing israel to expand their occupation through american vetos, i wonder what would happen if another rogue nation arrested UN staff?



And i have family that work for the UN. I have no qualms about criticising it. But there are wonderful people who really care about the world working for it...(yes, sure, i say this bec. a few of them are member of my family--so this is biased). BUT it has passed the buck far too many times. I still have a high opinion of Kofi Annan somehow. Poor guy...

domestic: Delay go away and don't delay. one of the few nightmares of american politics is having trouble being exposed because all his buddies are still covering his ass.

Now, Iran is saying they are using they're nuclear programs--that do exist--for peaceful purposes. Wouldn't that be far and beyond a reason to suspect that they are not using these programs for peaceful purposes for the neocons now in office? And wouldn't they love to invade Iran for this simple reason? But could they after such failed policy incarnate vis a vis Iraq? I honestly don't think so. Would they if they could create the conditions to invade Iran? Of course they would. Could they create the conditions to invade Iran? Well, once you've attempted to play god once, try to fool the world, then carry out your sinister plans...well, you could probably do it again. I would hope not, under current world turmoil, but I wouldn't get anything past this administration's will to destroy and conquer for the benefit of the few.

Would there have been an invasion if iraq was just planning to resume a weapons program, instead of not having WMD of any sort?

A valid question, wouldn't you agree?

"You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad beyond Basra," Mr. Kerry said, as W. blinked and burned. "And the reason he didn't is, he said, he wrote in his book, because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. That's exactly where we find ourselves today. There's a sense of American occupation."

incoming...
lim

I'll do some back-trcking with background and fore-tracking with commentary...but here's a couple paragraphs that struck me today as I was trying to get some work done. Please bear with the vocabulary...it is sensical, just give it a chance. Right now it doesn't matter who wrote these words...I'll unfold this like origami.

--The Culprits--




I. General economy is a traffic system; marking routes within the complex immanence or quasi-horizontality that infests the axis of transcendence. Every vertical difference is collapsible onto a tangled horizontal flow. It is not that base materialism denies the necessity of vertical articulation; there is no tendency to delete the vocabulary of summits and troughs, differences in intensity, materialist thought would leave nothing but a theologically constituted reality abandoned by God (a colony of particles). Scaling is the positive superfluity of God inherent to matter, but its gradations of relative transcendence must be commensurated with an impoersonal nature exhausting the real: genealogically rather than metaphysically explored. The labyrinth is the unconscious of God, or the repressed monotheism. The illusion of ego in general requires that it remain unthought. What God really was is something incompatible with anything 'being' at all. Real composition is not extrinsically created nature, but if this is a Spinozism, it is one in which substance itself is sacrificed to the scales. So that atheism is in the end (an end without an end) an immense sponge, a mega-sponge, the dissolution of boundaries in all of its positive complexity. It is an inexhaustible porosity, drunk upon the sea. Sponge-matter -- encroached without limit bt silence -- is the same thing as fate. In any traffic system real transition precedes articulation (which means that there are no boundaries, but only digressions). Sponge-vectors do not connect pre-existing points, but spawn decomposable patches from out of the subtilization of speeds and the intricate criss-crossing of routes. Absolute points are transcendent mirages, hyperbolically projected out of dismantled vector nets. The reality of space is only the possibility of flow.



sub-I. Freud, too, is an energeticist (although reading Lacan and his semiological ilk one would never suspect it). He does not conceive desire as lack, representation, or intention, but as dissipative energetic flow, inhibited by the damning and channelling apparatus of the secondary process (doman of the reality principle). Pleasure does not correspond to the realization of a goal, it is rather that unpleasure is primary excitation or tension which is relieved by the equilibriating flux of sexual behaviour (there is no goal, only zero); 'unpleasure corresponds to an increase in the quantity of excitation and pleaure to a diminuition' [F III 218]. This compulsion to zero is -- notoriously --ambivalent in Freud's text: 'the mental apparatus endeavors to keep the quantity of excitation present in it as low as possible or at least to keep it constant' [F III 219]. Far from being a discrediting confusion, however, such ambivalence is the exact sympton of rigorous adherence to the reality of desire; epressing the unilateral impact of zero within the order of identitarian representation.
Psychoanalysis, as the science of the unconscious, is born in the determination of that which sufferes repression as the consequence of a transgression against the imperative of survival. It is the pursuit of this repressed threat to the ego which carries Freud along the profound arch of thought from sexuality to the death drive. At first ( in the period up to the First World War) the attempt to explicitly formulate the site of the most irremediable collision between survival and desire leads Freud to his famous reading of the Oedipus myth and the sense os the Father's law, since it is the competition with the Father -- arising as a carrelate of the infant's incestual longing for the mother --- that first brings the relations between desire and survival to a crisis. Later, in the formulation of the death drive, the sacrificial character of desire is thought even more immediately, so that desire is not merely integrated structurally with a threat to existence within the oedipal triangle. but is rather related to death by the intrinsic tendency of its own economy. The intensity of the affect is now thoughtt as inherently oriented to its own extinction, as a differentiation from death or the inorganic that is from its beginning a compulsion to return. But despite recognizing that the conscious self is a modulation of the drives, so that all psychical energy stems from the unconscious (from which ego-energy is borrowed), Freud seems to remain committed to the right of the reality principle, and its representative the ego, and thus to accept a survival (or adaptation) imperative as the principle of therapeutic practice. It is because of this basic prejudice against the cleaims of desire that psychoanalysis has always hasd a tendency to degenerate into a technology of repression that subtilizes, and therefore reinforces, the authority of the ego. In the terms both of the reality principle and the conservative moment of psychoanalysis, desire is a negative pressure working against the conservation of life, a dangerous internal onslaught against the self, tending with inexorable force towards the immolation of the individual and his civilization.

MORE TO COME...stay tuned after these respites of light abundance.

lim



update: a nod to maureen dowd for beating me to the glazing of one of my points regarding (the start of) this thread of eventual discovery. sorry for not being able to get to point sooner... i'll try. too much right now...too much.