October 27, 2008 archive

“Major Redistributive Change”

The conservative blogs are all a-twitter with the idea that they have finally proven that Barack Obama is a marxist/socialist. It comes from an interview in which he participated on public radio in 2001 titled The Courts and Civil Rights.

Of course, they’re taking things out of context and reading their worst fear-mongering between the lines. But still…when I look at what he said, I find myself once again hoping that the man he’s been in the past is the one that gets elected next week.

Here is a transcript of part of the interview being highlighted.  

Bush’s Mafia Style Foreign Policy

Both Nightprowlkitty and Magnifico have posted today about Bush’s attempted blackmail of the Iraqi government in his latest attempt to save the face he’s never had anyway by trying to force a Status of Forces Agreement on Iraq through threatening to shut down military operations and other vital services throughout Iraq with a gun held to their heads if Iraqi parliamentarians will not sign a deal allowing US troops to remain in Iraq that will give Bush something he can use to claim success in the 5 year old debacle he has created there.

Gareth Porter, speaking by telephone to the The Real News, explains the background leading up to Bush’s desperate gangster like extortion attempt.

In an article on ipsnews.net, journalist and investigative historian Gareth Porter analyzed the final draft of the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement on the US military presence in Iraq.

He states that the agreement “represents an even more crushing defeat for the policy of the George W. Bush administration than previously thought.”

The deal not only calls for a clear deadline for a withdrawal of combat troops by 2011, it will also be unlikely the a residual non-combat force of US Troops would be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes. Porter also states: “The clearest sign of the dramatically reduced US negotiating power is the willingness of the United States to give up extraterritorial jurisdiction over US contractors and their employees and over US troops in the case of major and intentional crimes that occur outside bases and while off duty.” The Real News Network spoke to Gareth Porter.

Gareth Porter is a historian and investigative journalist on US foreign and military policy analyst. He writes regularly for Inter Press Service on US policy towards Iraq and Iran. Author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

October 26, 2008 – 7 min 34 sec

US-Iraq troop deal “crushing defeat” for Bush

Gareth Porter: Bush admin is desperate for troop agreement as end date of UN authorization nears

Fuck This

I’ll deal more with this later.

What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true

Was Canada once a land of savages? And is saying so tantamount to racism? Many people would answer no, and yes. That’s why Dick Pound, the high-profile Olympics figure, is in a heap of trouble for describing the Canada of four centuries ago as ” un pays de sauvages.” He was talking to a reporter from La Presse about the Beijing Olympics and the issue of human rights. “We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European descent, while in China, we’re talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization,” he said.

More bullshit of the dominant cultures “superiority.” Anything to make them feel better about the Pipeline and the Caledonia land dispute.

The Dominant culture was so much more “civilized,” they put the Indigenous children in holes in the ground who had been kidnapped and forced into Boarding Schools.

Four at Four

  1. McClatchy Newspapers report the U.S. threatens to halt services to Iraq without troop accord. Iraqi politicians see this as blackmail by the United States.

    The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country on Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn’t agree to a new agreement on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq…

    In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector and other areas _ “everything” _ said Tariq al Hashimi, the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. “I didn’t know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services.”

    Apparently this ‘threat’ has taken Iraqi leaders “by surprise”.

Four at Four continues with finding the right strategy for Afghanistan, the bailout’s mission creep, and Project Midas.

Hoping for A New History

By the Law of Periodical Repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again and again — and not capriciously, but a regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s, and each obeying its own law. The eclipse of the sun, the occultation of Venus, the arrival and departure of the comets, the annual shower of stars — all these things hint to us that the same Nature which orders the affairs of the earth. Let us not underrate the value of that hint.

Mark Twain

   True, without falsehood, certain and most true, that which is above is the same as that which is below, and that which is below is the same as that which is above, for the performance of miracles of the One Thing.

Hermes

Okay, a little philosophy (sprinled with some mystical crap and some “science fiction!”)for a Monday morning (here on the left coast.)

Twain cites nature, Hermes tells us that we too, as much as we try to deny it, are a part of nature, a part of the cosmos…and that thus we follow the same laws. Patterns repeat, reality is circular, the earth, the planets and the stars wheel round and round in their set and well grooved tracks until… they don’t. Because evolution is linear.

We all know (or are) people who repeat the same patterns of behavior or thought in their lives, doing the same thing, making the same mistakes, again and again. Until finally, one day, they don’t. Until they learn the pattern that they are repeating well enough to see it clearly, and then and only then, have the power to change it, until due to some revelation or some sort of lifechanging shock, they learn and grow and evolve. As above, so below. Societies, history, the human race all follow the same pattern. We do the same thing until something changes, until we as a species learn and grow…and change. Until we evolve, pulling us out of the circle and putting us on a straight line to a new future, a new (though still circular)reality. A new, when we look back at the repetitive process and see the change from that perspective, history.

But while we are ‘stuck’ in the circular pattern, things are not static. We still progress within that circle. The world and the planet and the stars still turn…..  

                    Photobucket

US to Iraq: Do as we say or else.

From McClatchy (via HuffPo):

BAGHDAD _ The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country on Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn’t agree to a new agreement on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq.

Many Iraqi politicians view the move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Sunday.

In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector and other areas – “everything” – said Tariq al Hashimi, the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. “I didn’t know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services.”

“Akin” to political blackmail?  I’d say it was the definition of same.

From what I’ve read we haven’t done a very good job “supporting” Iraq’s economy, educational sector or any “other areas.”  We have destroyed this country and now we are threatening to destroy it further unless they agree to allow us free reign to do as we wish.

Hashimi said that Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, listed “tens” of areas of potential cutoffs in a three-page letter, and he said the implied threat caught Iraqi leaders by surprise.

Is this how we negotiate?  The Army is negotiating, not our diplomats?

This just crazy.

“I lived for art, I lived for love”

Vissi d’arte

from Puccini’s opera Tosca, performed by the radiant Leontyne Price, 1965

“I lived for art, I lived for love”

Vissi d’arte

from Puccini’s opera Tosca, performed by the radiant Leontyne Price, 1965

Many Don’t Like Ralph, but……….

Ralph Nader {center}

October 27, 1969

Ralph Nader set up a consumer organization with young lawyers and researchers {often called “Nader’s Raiders”} who produced systematic exposés of industrial hazards, pollution, unsafe products, and governmental neglect of consumer safety laws.

Nader is widely recognized as the founder of the consumer rights movement. He played a key role in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Freedom of Information Act, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Kucinich: Greed, corruption, bailouts, and smears

Dennis on the current campaign:

Open Thread

 

Take the ‘A’ Thread.

Monday: Vote Obama

Here you go.  Something to move you this Monday.  Something to revivify you.  Something to get you to shake it.  Something to lift you up. We’re counting down.  One week.  From Kenya:

Play it over and over.  Go ahead.    

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