Shlonkom Bakazay?

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.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. intervention in Iraq was hampered early on by a lack of adequate forces and efforts to contain looting after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, according to the former U.S. administrator in Iraq.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Paul Bremer said in a speech reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday. "We never had enough troops on the ground."

No shit Sherlock. And that whole disbanding of the army thing was a splendid idea that has no bearing on the current violence.

Another case, of using hindsight 20/20 to be a false prophet...or seem like a smart-guy.

***

Also, here's confirmation of the KBR rip-off scam from an employee of KBR. And some other letters of dissatisfied soldiers.

From: Anonymous
Sent: Thursday April 15 2004 12.41am
Subject: From KBR truck driver now in Iraq

Mike, I am a truck driver right now in Iraq. Let me give you this one small fact because I am right here at the heart of it: since I started this job several months ago, 100% (that's right, not 99%) of the workers I am aware of are inflating the hours they claim on their time sheets. There is so much more I could tell you. But the fact is that MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of dollars are being raped from both the American taxpayers and the Iraqi people because of the unbelievable amount of greed and abuse over here. And yes, my conscience does bother me because I am participating in this rip-off.

It's hard work looking like a complete idiot in the debate. It's hard work for Bush to not use complete sentences. It's hard work to get the "Moooolahs" to cooperate. But it's not so hard if you're the president.

Juan Gonzalez, of the NY Daily News, broke the story about Army National Guard Spec. Gerard Darren Matthew's daughter being stricken with deformities from what seems is from depleted uranium. He was sent home after he himself was struck with an illness suddenly. He then tested positive for uranium contamination.

"My husband went to Iraq to fight for his country," Janice Matthew said. "I feel the Army should take responsibility for what's happened."



Welcome to Nuclear War. In the interest of logic, anytime a cell's nucleus is deformed through depleted uranium...that is a clear and definable form of nuclear war. It is not what we conventionally identify as nuclear war, but it is nonetheless.

The tragedy cascading upon this single tragedy is that millions of Iraqis have been subjected to the horror, the pure horror, of DU contamination. Yes, even children the same age as Gerard and Janice Matthew's. And what's more is that the land that the DU was exploded upon has been ruined for millions of years. There will be no crops for DU contaminated land.

On the plate: 1) Abu Ghraib and other prison torture and sexual abuse 2) Lies about WMD and connection with Al Qaeda (Rumsfeld has helped me out on both today.) 3) Depleted Uranium Exposed as Nuclear War 4) Samarra and the many new Fallujahs to come according to this administration, that will go nowhere in solving Iraq's ills 5) More art and fun to make the pill of reality easier to swallow 6) And the two elections that will mean little to Iraq (though we're all in trouble if the NeoCons don't get the boot in D.C. in November.) 7) And I'm sure I'll include some other random and shocking things

there is NO HARD evidence that he was in Iraq before the war. Iraq invasion = Zarqawian Violence

If you ask me, I'm very skeptical it is just one man. It is from the Epic of Giglamesh, really. You need a scapegoat...to hold within him/herself all the ills of society, to be ostracised from society...Zarqawi could possibly be a phantom scapegoat that will not leave society (or be captured...and I mean possibly, I'm not saying this for sure.) He's made more real when 25 million dollars are put on his head or capture. Money and reporters saying, "that man with the black mask on is Zarqawi...and he is actually the one that beheaded that American"...makes him even more real. And it allows the current administration to say that Zarqawi was connected to Saddam when it is frankly a lie. It's very basic distortion of the collective psyche of American and westerners. Cold and calculating...and meant for consumption by ahistorical Americans in an election year. Many Iraqis, living inside of Iraq, do not buy this...and I can guarantee you this.



How do you like them apples?

In front of an audience in New York, Mr Rumsfeld was asked about connections between Saddam and Osama Bin Laden. "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," he said

First, ALL New Yorkers practically are a step ahead of you...you moron. So, you're not divulging anything new to New Yorkers.

Second, yes now that they see the fact that they have to deal with Bush trying to think on his feet two more times...some concessions are in order. So, a few of them that were formerly so persistant about this false connection have to shift the policy of the president--and yes, FLIP-FLOP--in order to make half-sense to people in the next debate.

Lastly, it is in perfect time for the election. And, Rumsfeld could probably stay if Bush is re-elected, because he's such the champion for truth all of the sudden.

Bottom line: These lying bastards are going to do whatever it takes to get re-elected. Even back-pedal. But expect Cheney to remain saying that Saddam harbored Al- Qaeda (Al-Ansar connection that Saddam repeatedly bombed) and that was a good enough reason to invade. Notwithstanding the fact that Cheney and Co. basically invited terrorist inside Iraq in a suspiciously deliberate manner (to perhaps give them an excuse to stay and continue destroying Iraq?), the damage has been done. And Iraq is a mess directly because of misguided and foolish policy concerning Iraq...and you'll see, once and if this receives more exposure, somebody will have to back-pedal on the continued Cheney crazy-talk eventually, too.

Will the truth come out in time for it to make any difference?

Update: SEE? The method of sending mixed messages creates psychological torment and confusion among the American populous. And Rumsfeld did it yet again. I'm not surprised. In NY, to win some votes for Bush/Cheney, he said the above. Once he left (i'm guessing he left NY), and on the night of the Cheney/Edwards debate, he goes back to the Cheney line...to reenforce,what I imagine will be some pretty belligerent bs coming out of Cheney's mouth tonight. Rove has this thing all planned out. Keep sending those mixed signals to the American people. It worked before, and there's no reason why it won't work again. Pure psychological manipulation through fear-mongering and constant retractions.

Reality is something most of the NeoCons have lost complete touch with.

But you can't deny Bush cannot think on his feet. And there is reason for Rove to panic. That's a good thing.

I like Nader much more than either of them. Apparently, he didn't accept GOP help in Michigan like I said and thought before...I'm too tired to explain it, but he's the only one with the slightest bit of integrity and clear purpose. And if he debated Kerry and Bush, he would destroy them both with words. So, although, Michael Moore and Bill Maher begged him to step out...more and more I'm convinced that American democracy is in danger if a third part candidate cannot be taken seriously by this stagnant two-party system. WHERE in the Constitution does it say it has to be a two-party system?

That's all...Don't buy all the FLIP FLopping Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney are doing. And that is precisely what they're doing and accusing Kerry of doing at the same time.

One of my favorite directors is Chris "Magic" Marker for a number of reasons. First, he says his name is Marker after 'Magic Marker'. Second, I can relate to his non-ness in terms of being, seeing, living, and breathing ...u know, consciousness. Maybe I was born in Mongolia, too. And at times I feel I'm from a different planet. So, I had an immediate connection with him from the first moment I saw one of his films and before I knew any details about him personally. I was moved. And it wasn't La Jetée that turned me onto him, his most reknown film I guess...the story that the, yeah, the movie 12 Monkeys was inspired by...Anyway, he's one of the most thought provoking people alive. And sure, Antonioni is pleasurable to type, and Fellini at his best is a force of nature, but Marker is the man, the shiznit, if you will.



So, please please if you get a chance see Sans Soleil and Le Joli mai

A lot of his work is really hard to come by, but you should have no problem finding Sans. I could go on about him, but I'll let you see him (or if you've already seen his work then go ahead) and comment on him yourselves.

I'm completely losing it over Martin Wolf Wagner's photographs. Please visit his website and check out some fantabulous minimalist macular generation.


Other things I'm enjoying at the moment are copy-art.net

Of course, eyeBeam in NY is great, but they can be kind of stuck-up self-righteous art snobs that live in some super-strata artworld fantasy. Some of them are really really nice, though... but check them out regardless of my opinion. Actually, I have a superficial gripe with only one of them...so I should back-off judging myself. They're quite the influential bunch, but one could use a dose of modesty, though. Alex Galloway's book Prototype is a must read. He's a class act, too. ..so, guys, no offence aight? I nub you guys/gals, you know I do. But since you probably couldn't even begin to guess who I am in my incognito persona, it really doesn't matter now does it?

And check their reBlog. Tom Moody just left reBlog...and I've grown extremely fond of his own blog.

Wooster Collection in Paris, per esempio...a taste of what's on Tom's Blog


Zentai woman (via)


Bifurcated Rivets is text only that takes you to places you would probably never go to otherwise...

...and take a peek and ars electronica's site

one more thing...is the artsfeed blog that aggregates some dope feeds all in one special place for your viewing pleasure.

and JUST one more, space and culture...yes, oh yes...you must check this...

The lesson is...there's more to the internet than news. So all you news-junkies try something new because your brain will rot otherwise.

lim.

First, read the story "How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence" by David Barstow

I proceed with this as an echoBlog post of the nytimes coverage on this matter + some other pictures.


"We know we have a part of the picture. And that part of the picture tells us that he is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons." --Vice President Dick Cheney
"Meet the Press," Sept. 8, 2002

Right, you lie and lie like it's goin' out of style. You lied us into a war of choice. And you deserve the wrath of informed voters on November the 2nd


Alex Wong/NBC

American centrifuges in the Oak Ridge plant stand much higher than those used in Europe
These are the ones we have to enrich uranium. Cool, huh? We could blow up the world with the amount of uranium enriched in Oakridge.



Aluminum tubes accumulated by Iraq were often stored outside and had to be coated to resist the weather. That coating made them unsuitable for use in centrifuges that could have refined uranium into bomb material.
Now look at the Aluminum tubes Iraq was supposed to be able to enrich uranium with and destroy the "civilized" world with...I think they could use these for building the new national council tents. So, they don't go to complete waste, you know?

The International Atomic Energy Agency

Now, I realize it doesn't benefit the Iraqi psyche for me to post the following pictures. I feel it's necessary to confront the ills and without these pictures existing we cannot claim that these abuses happened. So, this is for the record. And herein are some of those responsible for the abuse that have yet to be held accountable. Namely, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. General Karpinski is pictured with Rumsfeld below at Abu Ghraib. Do you notice that look of complete horror on her face? She has spoken out, as many know, that her orders came from higher up on the food-chain. I wonder who those gluttonous gorgers of food were...Cheney, Rumsfeld??? And I'm sure there are plenty others that were in on this clear violation of human rights and the Geneva Convention. I'll try to paint a clearer picture with the help of those like General Taguba and Seymour Hersh. I'm sure others will come forward--in time--no matter how much of a gag-threat they place on persons through methods they applied to the likes of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. So here you go...apologies if you don't wish to see it...but if you don't, you don't wish to accept the reality that heinous acts did, in fact, take place and now few scapegoats are being hushedly ostracised so that Bush and Cheney's re-election hope remains alive. One or two more whistleblowers could end their hopes to retain the White House in a heartbeat and they know it.




Now, I don't know what looks more evil than this...

General Karpinski, please get some rest...you look like a walking zombie. And Donald, iron your pants...look a little more presentable to the tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib.


Update: My, the time off writing editorials did Thomas Friedman some good. I'm amazed at his forceful voice. And Bush Inc. better be worried because they lost one of their staunchest allies for the war at the NY Times. And that ain't no joke.

PDFs:
Here's the original (3.3 MB)
Here's a text version, and another, and yet another, and the memory hole's version

Note: the MSNBC version is not the complete version. Names are redacted out of privacy, but the entire report is not included (to my knowledge)...funny, huh?

Profiles of Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba: 1, 2, 3

(thought i'd get more up , but maybe later...something came up)

North-African Soldiers cooking their meal in a village in Oise, France, 1917
(Autochrome color picture by Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud)

This is one of the few real color photographs of the First World War: a group of Spahis, Algerian soldiers, who fought with the French on the European battlefields.

This is a fascinating look into this war in color. Click the pic for plenty more.

This is a re-post from earlier with some new additions to come The one that I am very happy about now is the Kathim link at the bottom.


I'm going to try to collate some articles about Iraqi artists. Come back to this post for more.

'Iraqi Drama in Crisis'
Art Imitates Iraqi Life in All Its Chaos and Misery
Leading Iraqi artist dies
Looted Iraqi Art Displayed Online
Kathem Al Sahar
Punk Rock in Iraq
Iraqi Elvis
AfroPop Worldwide Interview of Kazem
Iraqi Theatre Struggles for Normality
on Iraqi Cinema, 'baghdad blues'



some websites:

IraqiArt.com
Rahim Al Haj, Iraqi oud player's website
oriental tunes.com
belly dance museum Check out my favorite, Taheya Carioca!!!
songs of assyria
ilham al madfa3y's streaming music
on Old Iraqi music

LA MUSICA:

Kathim Al-Saher

A lot of music, by the beloved Kathim...both streaming and
download'able

Fairuz, while you drink your tea in the morning: She was something else (wink, wink) , Maah'shallah!

Some streaming Iraqi music...tons of artists! Sometimes the quality is sketchy, but well worth your time.

The interview is both entertaining, informative, short, and sweet.

Also, this is a humorous prelude to the research I'll be doing about Abu Ghraib and other situations that have to do with abuse and torture in Iraq. It will include other things, too, that I find pertinent when it comes to the collective amnesia settling amongst the American population. I don't expect millions of people to absorb whatever I end up coming up with, but at least it will be in the public domain.

From time to time, I'll scatter some comic relief amidst the depressing and missing details yet to be adumbrated to a degree that's sufficient for the unacceptable nature of these matters. I don't promise anything new, though I'm sure new things will be unearthed as time passes. I just promise to create a catalog or space on the web of items in a format that is more accessible to the average reader and web-surfer.

More on this later...I have a lot of catching up to do with real-world stuff and I'll be in touch with everybody I've emailed and heard from about this and other things soon. So, please, pardon the delay and thank you for the support and kindness. I look forward to any collaboration that might spring forth. :)

Liminal

Update: Other daily show interviews and clips of note...Ambassador Joe Wilson, Senator Joe Biden, Bush debating Bush, ...more later?

While I realize it's a personal thing (or not at all) to put an image, color, or pattern on one's desktop...every once and a while I'll put up what I've got on mine. I have no idea why I've decided to do this, but here's what's on mine at the moment. Any guesses where this is? More often than not, they'll be of picures (altered or not) that I have taken...like this one. Of course, I gave it a photshop halftone pattern with some wicked colors, but I'll supply you with the original if you're so interested.

Oh, I guess I've done it before with the abstract photos with the Kant excerpts. But I'll try to make it a habit now. :)

here, you decide who looked more like a parroting fool.

Let me be completely clear. Iraq will not be a better place with either Bush or Kerry. As far as foreign policy goes, they are almost carbon copies of one another. The matter is whether we're going to keep following the failed neo-conservative vision for the Middle/Near East or if we're going to try to take a bit more multilateral approach to the region and world.

Besides, getting that cold and calculating group of Neo-Cons out of Washington shall be to the benefit of all. And change is never negative when matters continue to be exacerbated by assymetrical policies in place that plunder the liberties and values that should be trademark of a free society.

In otherwords, lets nix the Orwellian coma.

Update: Ed Helms and John Corddry of The Daily Show give their analysis of the debate.

Update II: Juan Cole has some important remarks about the debate and Chalabi.

I plan on doing some serious digging about Abu Ghraib and the NO, no wmd situation...yes, history is upon us. And I'm going to grasp it now before it is erased.

All these wedge issues / distractions of bush's service in vietnam must be obliterated.

The first debate is today. And I want to hear something real come out of one of their mouths. So I'll hold myself to the same standard of focusing on what the hell has happened to this country and Iraq in the process of the past couple years. Abu Khaleel just mentions that it needs to be described before we ahve the solutions.

And I'm in full agreement of his methodology and logic. You must describe a problem before solving it.

But in the back of my mind, I'm afraid without any reconciliation for what tragic events that have unfolded, that we'll be running in place with any solution we could possibly come up with. (But more power to you AK)

I'm going to go on describing to Americans especially what has taken place. Because there seems to be an amazing attention deficit disorder or collective amnesia setting in here.

So...I'm going to do my part with the blog and with other ways to get people's memories jogged.

Pace,
lim.