Gaza genocide: We can stop this if we all push

Today in Montreal, the courts ruled in favour of the students camped out in support of the Palestinian people against the overblown Israeli government's genocidal response to the Hamas attack of last October.

McGill University had sought an injunction to forcibly remove them, but ultimately was thwarted by the Quebec Superior Court and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (ahem, Mr. Anthony Housefather).

When I was in school (alas, decades ago), I was introduced to the Clash and like them, I studied how the CIA destroyed the Chilean socialist govt of Allende (the Chilean 9/11) and what Nixon and his Sec. of State Kissinger did to Southeast Asia, Nicaragua (the Sandinistas), El Salvador and on and on, so I have no illusions of the USA being the good guys (but as Canadians, we are kinda' geographically stuck being their international lackeys).

In this case, with how events are spiraling out of control in the Middle East, it seems bigger. It seems like a real point of no return is happening here.

Anyway, I am currently reading a book called They Knew by Sarah Kendzior. She is a 40-something US investigative journalist and she has all the receipts about the corruption between Bibi, the Saudis, Modi, Putin, Trump, the UAE (and many other powerful US pols, Republican and Democratic), and yes, Stephen Harper and his patently anti-democratic, Orwellian-named group, the International Democratic Union, that is working hard behind the scenes to put autocratic dictators in power everywhere they can. 

Meanwhile, I see Egypt joining with South Africa in calling on the ICJ to prosecute Israel for genocide, breaking with a truce they've had with Israel since I was a little boy (also surely breaking former US President Jimmy Carter's 99 year-old heart - although I can almost picture him silently nodding in resigned accord).

But at the same time, we must be encouraged by these student protests.

When I was a young college student, I watched the Berlin Wall fall - the Iron Curtain as well -  and the pressure people all over the world put on the Afrikaaners, Botha and later deKlerk, to free Nelson Mandela and eventually end Apartheid in South Africa. 

Yeah, no way would you catch us playing Sun City.

Mandela's ANC was a "terrorist" and "communist" organization, as our news outlets pointedly reminded us at every opportunity. It isn't without irony that Hamas and Hezbollah are listed as such today. 

Now, they are both surely ruthlessly brutal in their methods (Hamas especially, as we saw on October 7, 2023), but when a people have been put in a position where they see no other way to survive, what else should one expect?

As even the untrustworthy Israeli government attests, the Palestinians in the West Bank (including their leaders) had nothing to do with the October attack, despite the fact that for decades, their physical environment has been forcibly shrunk. Lately, their homes have even being torched or stolen by Jewish "settlers" (at the pleasure of the Israeli justice system) with no recourse. 

Meanwhile, this current starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza is a Bibi-made horror. 

Essentially, Joe Biden is making this horror story possible with his almost maudlin, unwavering support of this Israeli government, sealed with the kiss of UN Security Council vetoes and endless shipments of bombs and arms. Clearly, Biden must stop Bibi and the Likud and the cabal of Kahanists and their other dehumanizing rightwing allies currently in charge of Israel, and he should have done so months ago.

So I made a small donation today to UNRWA to help alleviate the Gazans' suffering. And I put my moral support behind the protesting students, and I wish to remind you all that at least one time in my life, we witnessed a change that came about from the steadfast pressure common people put on South Africa to end Apartheid, and it actually worked.

And maybe, just maybe, we can do it again.

If we all push.

PUSH!

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PS: please go to wikipedia.org or juancole.com or aljazeera.com or cbc.ca for supporting links not provided. Or better yet, get yourself some hard copies of what's going on now. The links might not last forever.

PS 2: shameless addition of self-aggrandizing video but hey, it's also a gol-dang catchy song: 

Keep your feet planted, folks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJoX95fK_N8

EXCLUSIVE: Mubarak's conversation with Obama:

"If I go there will be trouble, If I stay there will be double"



So, go.

Hosni Mubarak, and the world that matters not to him

With time on my hands, I spent the afternoon flipping between Aljazeera English, CNN, CBC Newsworld and CTV Newsnet in between loads of laundry.

At around 4 pm EST, I watched live footage of a pro-Mubarak bus being driven backwards 50 metres or so into a thick throng of helpless non-violent anti-Mubarak demonstrators, all filmed by the CBC from a hotel balcony a few hundred metres away.

The bus rocked up and down, corner to corner as it rolled over the people. I would guess 20 or 30 casualties from that alone. The Egyptian army is standing down. This is a bloody mess:

6:41pm A former general in the Egyptian intelligence services tells Al Jazeera, "I expect the army will act to remove Mubarak from power ... Mubarak is ready to burn the country".
6:37pm Cairo resident tells Al Jazeera that he witnessed police officers trying to bribe porters and security guards in his apartment building. They we...re asked to go and beat up anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square.

Lisa Laflamme sounded scared. A Radio-Canada cameraman got pummelled by the pro-Mubarak thugs. Anderson Cooper and his CNN team, plus Aljazeera English reporters beaten and forced to report from afar. And yet, I was able to tune it out for a couple of hours and get excited at the Habs beating the Panthers. Life in the 21st Century.

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Well Israel, you have really lost the PR war now

You have got yourselves perfectly embroiled in an international incident that is not going away until you learn that even you must eat crow sometimes.

So far, it doesn't appear to have sunk in. I notice it only took you a few hours to release some propaganda on youtube, so we know you have a crack PR team working this untenable calamity. In a less imperfect world, the UN Security Council would enforce some strong measures. Against Israel, yes. And if you have the slightest desire to regain the upper hand in this PR war, soon you will have to realize there is only one good course of action for you to take.

It starts like this:

Immediately, Israel should send every one of the detainees from yesterday - and their boats - to Gaza and get that aid distributed.

Second: announce you are relaxing the border controls but reserve the right to re-invade Gaza should any proof of weaponization recur there (UN inspectors on the ground, which would both require Hamas approval, and corner them into transparency).

Third: apologize profusely and allow a third party investigation by Interpol, or China or some disinterested and globally respected NGO. Stop being the bad guys and realize your immense US support can be cut back substantially if your actions continue to be a drag on incumbent congress members during an election year.

Meanwhile, everybody: sit down. Have a cream soda.

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Greenbacked-up as hell and not taking it anymore

Roll out red carpets
Here come the China boys
-- The Payola$ (1979)

A report by Robert Fisk (the only Western journalist to ever interview Osama bin Laden) in today's Independent augurs ill for the continuance of the United States' dominance of world finance - perhaps a body blow to a crumbling empire:

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

Well that tidbit of truth is a wee bit disturbing.

No Washington Bullets in Iran please

For the very first time ever,
When they had a revolution in Nicaragua,
There was no interference from America
Human rights in America

Well the people fought the leader,
And up he flew...
With no Washington bullets what else could he do?
--The Clash, from Washington Bullets

As usual, historian Juan Cole has an excellent round-up of the latest news from Iran, taking care to attribute his sources, and contextualizing them with his knowledge of the underlying politics. In Cole's words:

Mousavi has thrown down a gauntlet before the Supreme Leader and a battle has been joined. By the rules of the Khomeinist regime, only one of them can now survive. And perhaps neither will.

It doesn't seem like that long ago that Bush's United States was perilously close to invading Iran. Thank goodness this never came to pass. Obama's low-key reaction thus far seems appropriate to me. Let the Iranians find their way on their own and avoid the impression of Washington Bullets dictating the outcome. Because then any reform movement that may come to light will have a chance at being taken as legitimate by the Iranian people and the world at large.



But before we get too excited, we must recall there is always also this possibility.

Meanwhile, we must sit and we wait; and view events from afar with a hopeful (if jaundiced) eye.

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"They are killing us all!"

There is an incredible and detailed first-hand account at Salon from a Tehran protester whose name was withheld for "reasons of personal safety". It details the swings between a festive mood and outright fear that Iranians are feeling from one moment to the next. The entire account is worth reading, but here are some tidbits that stood out for me: (all emphasis mine)

In the crowd there are families, young and old. One cannot help but notice the large presence of women of all ages. The typical daily life of the capital is out here together, the homes, sidewalks and boulevards abandoned for this shared space. There is word that the crowd is millions strong; we know that it stretches eastward to Imam Hussein Square.
...

All does not end well. Seeing the camera around my neck, several people rush up to me, frantically urging me to go take pictures, shouting, "They are killing us all!" Behind a wall, in an alleyway set off from the road, a confrontation is taking place between one spike of the crowd and basiji forces, holed up in a base. There is the unsettling pop-pop-pop of gunfire, and a plume of black smoke rises into the sky. A crowd is gathering in the alley and men rush forward to throw rocks while others tell them, "Stop, stop, that's what they want!"
...

To stop this now would take a tremendous display of violence and thus far, blessedly, that has not happened. And every day everyone says that in a few days the protests will be stopped, and what's the point of going out, but when the moment comes everyone is here.
...

In the late afternoon and lasting until around dinner time it is a place of peaceful civic celebration, a Disneyland of political action for the whole family to participate. At night, the mood shifts abruptly, and the capital becomes a battleground, a city in which fear stalks on motorbikes mounted in helmeted pairs.

Here in Canada meanwhile, the prospect of getting our apathetic asses to the polls for a summer vote is deemed so dreadful, our Opposition Leader has capitulated completely to a government he himself describes as incompetent. What a pushover. Frankly, I would have preferred this outcome.

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Rae puts Peevey Stevie off-script

Up there on the platform
He is speaking to the people
The people are responding
With clapping and a cheering
But the meaning of the message
Not revealed to those assembled
They're taken for a ride
Taken in his stride

When the generals talk
You better listen to him
When the generals talk
You better do what he say
--from "When the Generals Talk", by Midnight Oil



That really sets the table for the debates, eh? Harper is going to be on the defensive, while his deputy leader is stuck spending extra time trying to save his own riding (that's the real power play behind the Dion/May agreement). Harper has so few other mouthpieces than himself that he trusts. Now here he is shown up as someone who isn't his own man. So what other speeches has he had imported? And was this even Howard's own speech to begin with? Or possibly something prepared in Washington or London?

Here's another from the Oils: "US Forces"


And while we're at it: "Short Memory"


HELP! I can't stop!!


In case you're wondering, the singer of these songs is today Australia's Right Honourable Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, and as such, a member of the government that succeeded Howard's late last year.

As Peter Garrett sang in "US Forces" back in 1982:
"Sing me songs of no denying
Seems to me too many dying"

Indeed.

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U.S. Senate matches Oilers' $50M offer for Bin Laden

The United States Senate voted to match the Edmonton Oilers' $50 million offer on Restricted Free Agent Osama bin Laden last week, thus thwarting Oilers GM Kevin Lowe from acquiring the highly sought-after veteran.

"Bin Laden is simply too important for us to let him go, no matter the cost," said the Senator who co-authored the measure.

In a hasitly-called press conference in Edmonton, Lowe was visibly distraught.

"We are sorry to miss out on him," Lowe said. "Scouting reports noted his toughness, and the inability of other teams to knock him off the puck. As a player, he has shown great tenacity and a truly explosive offensive capability."

Several commentators expressed unease over the implications this may have on the bounties put on other terrorists' heads.

"If the NHL allows its General Managers to continue down this reckless path in pursuing free agents, there's no telling what ceiling to expect in this post 9-11, post lock-out market," blasted the Hockey Snooze in an online editorial.

Others were openly questioning Lowe's sanity.

"We knew Lowe was desperate to add offense, but I don't even know if this guy can skate, and his health is certainly questionable," mused one hockey blogger. "Playing high-stakes chicken with the Buffalo Sabres is one thing, but first he threw away $27 Million at one defenseman with questionable health and skating ability, and now he offers $50 million for another? Going up against the U.S. Senate? It's time someone told Kevin there is good psychiatric help available."

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Keith Olbermann, ladies and gentlemen

I honestly didn't think the U.S. media machine was capable of providing lucid and critical commentary like this anymore. (This is for you, Mum.)



It's ten minutes and 28 seconds of sheer courage. Edward R. Murrow reborn? Too damn bad I can't tune in MSNBC's Countdown.

For those who can't make the YouTube thingy work (or don't have high-speed), here's the full transcript.

OLBERMANN: Finally tonight, a special comment about President Clinton‘s interview. The headlines about it are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past present bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster finally lashed back. It is not important that the current president‘s portable public chorus has described his predecessor‘s tone as crazed. Our tone should be crazed. The nation‘s freedoms are under assault by an administration‘s policies can do us as much damage as al Qaeda. The nation‘s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would have quit.

Nonetheless, the headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years—he has spoken the truth about 9/11 and the current presidential administration. “At least I tried,” he said, of his own efforts, “to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. That‘s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try, they did not try, I tried.”

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty and for us. Action as vital and courageous as any of his presidency. Action as startling and as liberating as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11. The Bush administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors. The Bush administration did not understand the daily briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The Bush administration did not try.

Moreover, for the five years, one month, and two weeks, the current administration and in particular the president has been given the greatest pass for incompetence and malfeasance in American history.

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs, some of them 17 years old before Pearl Harbor. President Hoover was correctly blamed for, if not the Great Depression itself, then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the stock market crash. Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War, though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But for this president. To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11, 2001 or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honestly nor manliness we expect of the executive. But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except for this: After five years of skirting even the most inarguable facts that he was president on 9/11, he must bear some responsibility for his and our un-readiness, Mr. Bush has now moved on, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards rewriting history, and attempting to make the responsibility entirely Mr. Clinton‘s.

Of course, he is not honest enough to do that directly. As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: The very weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is-not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it.

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired—but a propagandist, promoted—promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don‘t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for e-mailing you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth untold about this administration‘s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about bin Laden. Mr. Clinton was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I, in one moment, surrendered all my credibility as a journalist, and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon. Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with “The Path to 9/11.” Of that company‘s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: Someone there enabled an authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr.

Bush‘s new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: Because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the right wingers who have advocated it—who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews—have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense, why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed bin Laden‘s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on Aug. 20, of that year? For mentioning bin Laden by name as he did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie “Wag the Dog.”

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton‘s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri—the future attorney general

echoed Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been distracted by the Lewinsky witch-hunt, who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?

Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us here?

Who preempted them in order to strangle us with the trivia that was, “All Monica All The Time?”

Who distracted whom?

This is, of course, where, as is inevitable, Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it‘s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton, but by the same people who got you elected president.

Thus, instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it, we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently read the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus, instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us “safe” ever since—a statement that might range anywhere from zero, to 100 percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush, you got the name of the supposedly targeted tower in Los Angeles wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack: You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor. You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people. Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, sir, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past. That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair, writing as George Orwell, gave us in the book “1984.”

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power is power.”

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the FOX ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln‘s State of the Union address from 1862.

“We must disenthrall ourselves.”

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln‘s sentence. He might well have.

“We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date, to save our country.

The free pass has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush.

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us-then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn‘t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.

And there it is, sir. Are yours the actions of a true American?

I‘m Keith Olbermann, good night and good luck.

Now who in Canada could you see being this tough on Stephen Harper?

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Billy Bragg - Wisdom without Cynicism

Review: Billy Bragg, live at Club Soda (Montreal)

Sorry, Ottawa; I think we wore him out. Despite his pleading with the diehard fans at Club Soda to help save his Cockney voice for tomorrow night's gig at the New Capital Music Hall, we called him back for three encores. What's more, audience members down in front hung onto him during that third encore until he relented and played all seven tracks from his original 1983 release Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy.

But it wasn't merely to hear him play his songs that I went. Bragg's witty (and sometimes scathing) on-stage banter is worth the ticket price itself. While he does take time out during his act to peddle (of all things) his new book, The Progressive Patriot, he smoothes over the sales pitch by explaining in his own heartfelt way how he came to the conclusion cynicism is our biggest social problem.

We also got to hear him describe his odd life on the road as consisting of a mesmerizing flutter of planes, shows and time killed mindlessly in hotel rooms. He talked of the joys of sharing insights with his eight-year old son, such as a YouTube download of a cat caught in a precarious situation involving a ceiling fan. And the recurring theme of his bitter disappointment with Tony Blair, whom he refered to as Bush's poodle.

More sometimes gems were to be found in reworked lyrics from old songs, such as his update to the old Leadbelly staple Bourgeois Blues with new lines like I've got the Bush War Blues / He's making the world safe for Haliburton.

Perhaps the highlight of the night was a new song written in a style Bragg dubs "Johnny Clash", wherein he claims to have channeled Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer during its composition. (He had to prepare for it by turning to his amp and getting that "first Clash album" sound going). Always that big heart.

Assuming he hangs onto what's left of his voice, he's heading across Canada next week and will then play a few dates on the United States west coast. At 48 Bragg's still got a taste of the old punk in him, even if his style is primarily a mix of folk and soul. Tour Dates here.

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How to piss off ALL your constituents in 2 easy steps, by Borys Wrzesnewskyj, MP

Wrzesnewskyj on Sunday:

When asked if he were in favour of Hezbollah being taken off the terror list, Etobicoke Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj said: "Yes, I would be."

He likened the situation in the Middle East to Northern Ireland, where "if there wasn't the possibility for London to negotiate with the IRA, you'd still have bombings."

"Hezbollah has a political wing, they have members of parliament, they have two cabinet ministers," Wrzesnewskyj said. "You want to encourage politicians in this military organization so that the centre of gravity shifts to them."

Brave, sensible words. The words of a realist with an understanding of the power shift in Lebanon that has taken hold in the midst of Israel's ruthless, yet ultimately impotent, response to the abduction of two of its soldiers.

Well, not so fast. Here's Wrzesnewskyj on Monday:

Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj has denied reports he said Hezbollah should be taken off Canada's terrorist list.
"I've said all along that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization and will continue to be," Wrzesnewskyj said. "Where I have difficulty is with the legislation that says a group on the list cannot be communicated with."

And they called Kerry a flip-flopper. Free advice to you Borys: when the CBC has you on camera right at the top of their newshour, don't bother trying to deny what we clearly heard you say. Next time, just shut your yap if you're not ready to stand behind what comes out of it.

Leave that crap to the governing party.

- 30 -

Is the U.S.A.'s Post-9/11 Bubble Bursting?

Amazing - as CathiefromCanada points out: something has changed if a twit like George Will is finally realizing what anyone with a marginal understanding of history and war concluded years ago: that terrorism is a law-enforcement issue that won't go away by bombings/invasions. I guess the warmongering all came out of Bushco's "9/11 changed everything" mentality, which conveniently set out to deny the viability of any historical context to today's world. Can the U.S.A. finally start to get over it? Dare we begin to hope that 9/11 might soon be put into proper perspective?

- 30 -

Shoot him, throw a shovel off, there you go

"When the IEDs went off, the ...practice was to basically shoot up the landscape - anything that moved. That kind of thing would happen a lot."
--Michael Blake, U.S. Iraqi war veteran (BBC airdate: March 29, 2006)

US military prosecutors plan to file conspiracy and murder charges against seven enlisted Marines and one Navy corpsman for the alleged murder of an Iraqi civilian and subsequent cover-up on April 26 in Hamandiya,...
--The Jurist, June 2, 2006

"Keep shovels on your truck, or an AK (rifle). If you see anybody out here at night, shoot him, and if they weren't doing anything, throw a shovel off (like) they were digging an IED or whatever... Shoot him, throw a shovel off, there you go."
--Jody Casey, U.S. Iraqi war veteran, describing his training instructions from other U.S. soldiers upon his arrival in Iraq (BBC airdate: March 29, 2006)

"Criminal investigators are hoping to exhume the bodies of several Iraqi civilians allegedly gunned down by a group of U.S. Marines last year in the city of Haditha, aiming to recover potentially important forensic evidence, according to defense officials familiar with the investigation. The possible evidence was disregarded at first because the slayings originally were not treated as crimes."
--The Washington Post, June 2, 2006

"I scraped dead bodies off the pavement with a shovel and threw them in trash bags and left them there on the side of the road, and I really don't think the anti-war movement is what's infuriating people... The only thing that kept (my morale) up was the fact that people were at home talking shit on the wrongs that I had to commit for this government."
--Joe Hatcher, U.S. Iraqi war veteran (BBC airdate: March 29, 2006)

"...the United States military does everything that it can to avoid civilian casualties, to limit the impact of any military operations on the civilian population and, most importantly, to take action where our soldiers do not follow the rules."
--Tom Casey, U.S. State Department spokesman, June 2, 2006)

"We acted inhumane; and a lot of soldiers down there are very inhumane. Total disregard for human life. That's why they call (Iraqis) Hajji. You've got to desensitize yourself to (the Iraqis). They're not people - they're animals. Then you watch it get covered up and shoved under a rug and you know: 'Oh, that didn't happen'. I seen innocent people being killed. IEDs go off and you just zap any farmer that's close to you... They basically jam into your head: 'This is Hajji, this is Hajji...' You totally take the human being out of it and you make them a video game, a target... If you start looking at them as humans,... how are you going to kill them?"
--Jody Casey, U.S. Iraqi war veteran (BBC airdate: March 29, 2006)

The Ishaqi investigation concluded that the allegations of intentional killings of civilians by American forces are unfounded.
--Un-named Senior Pentagon official, paraphrased by ABC News, June 2, 2006

- 30 -

Alleged Journalism

I was happy to see Peter Mansbridge lead with the Haditha investigation story on tonight's CBC news.

I was less happy to hear them dub it "the alleged massacre". The facts of a massacre are right there in the three houses with bloody corpses shot at close range by U.S. Marines in the middle of the night. At least 20 were killed, including five children and a blind septagenarian man. One child was shot up until her head was blown off, according to the mother of a Marine sent in the following day as part of the clean-up team. Child witnesses described these incidents and forensics back it up.

I just don't see the need to qualify that with "alleged". A massacre is a massacre and the word is altogether appropriate. There's no point trying to be nice about it.

- 30 -

The Revolution Will Not Be Digitized

On a day when massive protests against the Iraq war brought out "tens of thousands" of people according to the Associated Press, why does the online NY Times and Washington Post not have even a mention of it, while CNN has it showcased with a photo at the top of its site? (I have snagged screen captures in gif files that I feel sheepish about posting, but will gladly email to any doubters out there.)

Shame on them - especially on the Times, being right there in NYC and all - for ignoring the voice of the people just like Bushco wants.

For a nice round-up of photos, go check out what CathiefromCanada has compiled on her site.

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Canada: Fighting for Afghanis' Rights to Hang Christians

While Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay frets that Canadian troops would be demoralized if the House of Commons were to have a debate about our UN-sponsored NATO commitment to ISAF, I am sure they can all take heart in this news highlighting the kind of freedom Canadian troops are defending in propping up Karzai's government:

An Afghan who has renounced his Islamic faith for Christianity faces the death penalty under Afghan law in a throwback to the brutal Taleban regime.

Abdul Rahman, 41, is being prosecuted for an "attack on Islam", for which the punishment under Afghanistan's draft constitution, is death by hanging.
...

"The Attorney General is emphasising he should be hung. It is a crime to convert to Christianity from Islam. He is teasing and insulating his family by converting," Judge Alhaj Ansarullah Mawlawy Zada, who will be trying his case, told The Times.

"He was a Muslim for 25 years more than he has been a Christian. We will request him to become a Muslim again. In your country two women can marry I think that is very strange. In this country we have the perfect constitution, it is Islamic law and it is illegal to be a Christian and it should be punished," said the judge.
(Emphasis mine)

Hooboy, can't you just hear them in forty years' time, bragging to their grandchildren about their courageous exploits to save the fledgling Afghanistan government that bravely sought the most brutal punishment to stifle basic religious freedom, and promoted poppy growth to feed the world heroin market? Doesn't it make you wish you were young and idealistic and had a chance to better the world by signing up for duty yourself?

Ah, what stories they will tell...

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The Afghanistan Mission is Bullshit

Canada is supporting a new government in Afghanistan that is encouraging opium production to supply the world's misguided kids with the heroin that will ultimately destroy them. Canadian kids too. Just lovely. This is not in keeping with the values of most Canadians, and I don't need to wait for a poll to figure that one out.

Peevey Stevie can spew all the Bushco lines he can memorize to shore up support, but at the end of the day, I'm sorry to say, it's all a load of shit. Karzai, the ex-CIA hack, is not a guy we want to prop up. And he's proving it with this policy. I don't want to hear about how we have NATO commitments. Let's put leaving NATO on the table. I don't want to hear about how the UN has sanctioned the mission. There are other places in the world (and at home) where our armed forces could be more useful. The empty threat of attack here from jihadis will not be stemmed from us killing "bad guys" over there. If anything, it makes us a higher-profile target. And our presence has facilitated the United States to draw down their troop-level in Afghanistan,

In the face of Afghanistan's deepening troubles, the US government is now slashing its funding for reconstruction from a peak of $1 billion in 2004 to a mere $615 million this year. And thanks to the military's recruitment problems, the United States is drawing down its troops from 19,000 to 16,000. In short, despite Bush's feel-good rhetoric, the United States is giving every impression that it is slowly abandoning sideshow Afghanistan.

...while reports say more U.S. troops are headed to Iraq.

If I was a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, I'd be wondering why the hell I'm putting my life on the line for this.

The fact the Conservatives are pulling out all the rhetorical stops to stifle debate of this mission speaks volumes. Do not take it at face value.

Tip of the hat to Robert at MyBlahg for bringing this to the fore.

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U.S. to bomb Iran in two weeks?

A couple of weeks ago, I was very disturbed to read Gwynne Dyer's article, Iran, Oil and Euros: the War Scenario.

Here's the scenario. On 20 March Iran opens a new "bourse" (exchange) on which countries all over the world can buy and sell oil and gas not only for dollars but also for euros. It also establishes a new oil "marker" (oil pricing standard) based on Iranian crude and denominated in euros, in open rivalry to the existing West Texas Intermediate, Norway Brent and UAE Dubai markers, all of which are calculated in US dollars.

The Iranian bourse is an instant success with countries and companies that are unhappy about having to hold huge amounts of overvalued US dollars to finance their oil transactions, all of which must presently be conducted in that currency. Very large sums start to shift from the dollar to the euro, although exactly how much is unknown because the US Federal Reserve System (by pure coincidence, of course) has chosen late March as the time to stop publishing the data that would make it easy to know how fast the haemorrhage was.

But the US government knows, and is deeply alarmed by the danger that the dollar may be losing its status as the world's only reserve currency. Given the huge deficits that plague the US economy, the US dollar's value would collapse if other countries began to see it as just another currency, so the euro must be prevented from emerging as an alternative reserve currency. In practice, that means the Iranian experiment with a euro-denominated oil bourse must be stopped -- and the only way to do that is to attack Iran.

Dyer goes on to say that such complex reasoning is far too cunning for the likes of the Bush administration, and concludes that if Iran is to be attacked, it will be for "other motives". Nevertheless, I have been trying to pay close attention to news reports about the ongoing standoff with Iran over their nuclear intentions (and this new bourse), but it has been such an eventful two weeks, little news has surfaced recently. And then I noticed this article from the Guardian:

The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has told British MPs that military action could bring Iran's nuclear programme to a halt if all diplomatic efforts fail. The warning came ahead of a meeting today of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which will forward a report on Iran's nuclear activities to the UN security council.

...According to Eric Illsley, a Labour committee member, (Bolton) told the MPs: "They must know everything is on the table and they must understand what that means. We can hit different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."

...The Pentagon position was described, by the committee chairman, Mike Gapes, as throwing a demand for a militarily enforced embargo into the security council "like a hand grenade - and see what happens".

(On March 5th) Mr Bolton reiterated his hardline stance. In a speech to the annual convention of the American-Israel public affairs committee, the leading pro-Israel US lobbyists, he said: "The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve ... we must be prepared to rely on comprehensive solutions and use all the tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the Iranian regime poses."

...According to Time magazine, the US plans to present the security council with evidence that Iran is designing a crude nuclear bomb, like the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. The evidence will be in the form of blueprints that the US said were found on a laptop belonging to an Iranian nuclear engineer, and obtained by the CIA in 2004.

Well, here we go again. It seems it's Bolton's job this time to stir up the Security Council. And now Cheney has heightened his war-drum beating rhetoric in lock-step:

...Vice President Cheney had already issued a blunt threat that Iran will face "meaningful consequences" if it fails to cooperate with international efforts to curb its nuclear program. Cheney told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday that the United States "is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime" and is sending "a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

Note the almost identical terminology between Bolton's "Everything is on the table" and Cheney's "keeping all options on the table" sound-bites. In Rove's White House, that's a clear sign there is a major selling game afoot with the American people. And if you really want to stay up late, browse through some of the articles cobbled together by NewsGateway on "the War on Iran". Most commentary I've seen agrees that an iInvasion seems unlikely as long as the U.S. military remains overstretched and bogged-down in Iraq; but major airstrikes are a piece of cake, and by at least one account (from three weeks ago), the order of the day:

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

I'm not liking this one bit.

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Original Song #22: "Untermenschen"

And it all started somewhere in the bowels of the White House
Back in May two-thousand-and-one
Dick Cheney and the boys in the energy industry
Carving up a map of Iraq
Scheming war and oil and Halliburton contracts

And the voices they came shouting out
From the underground
As Billmon said:

Untermenschen, Untermenschen!
If you read between the lies
They’re always fighting for the big guy
Untermenschen, Untermenschen!
You can see it in their eyes
Either shut up or take their side

Then it got heavy on eleven September
We don’t know if they let it happen or not
But they used it as a scapegoat
Just as the neo-cons had always hoped
For another Pearl Harbor
Enter Patriot Act and the War President

And the voices they came shouting out
From the underground
As Juan Cole said:

Untermenschen, Untermenschen!
You can see it in their eyes
Either shut up or take their side
Untermenschen, Untermenschen!
If you read between the lies
A new group of brownshirts is on the rise

And it all unraveled rather spectacularly
At Abu Ghraib and Fallujah
And Ramadi and New Orleans
All the anger they unbridled
All the bloodshed they provided
All the pandering to xenophobes
To the Fundies and the faithful
Who declared to the whole world
They’re just rag-heads
They’re not people
They’re our enemies
They’ve got no souls

And the voices they keep shouting out
From the underground
And they nail it

Untermenschen, Untermenschen!
Better not speak your mind
They’re listening in on your phone line
Untermenschen, Untermenschen!
Yeah you heard him right
The president said our enemies have no souls
The president said they ain’t got no soul
The president thinks you ain’t got no soul

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