A commentor on a "Crooks & Liars" thread about David Letterman mocking bush II's SOTU speech:
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The Limits of the Conservative Party of Canada
It's been interesting watching the complete implosion of Stephen Harper's micro-managing of his government and the government's ham-handed power plays against the Canadian state, with the most glaring examples being Chalk River and Afghanistan.
There really never was much to the Conservative Party of Canada. A pack of religious weirdos, closet-cases, racists and shallow greed-heads, following a 10th-rate con-man with zero charisma and a huge ego.
This noteworthy failure is what inevitably happens when you mix brainlessness with corruption and bullying.
There really never was much to the Conservative Party of Canada. A pack of religious weirdos, closet-cases, racists and shallow greed-heads, following a 10th-rate con-man with zero charisma and a huge ego.
This noteworthy failure is what inevitably happens when you mix brainlessness with corruption and bullying.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Holocaust Denial 101
First, just to bring people up to speed; the term "holocaust" refers to:
So, for instance, right now as I type these words, perhaps one million people (perhaps more) have perished violently and tragically in the nightmare that George W. Bush has made of Iraq. To this number should be added the estimated one million deaths from US-UK enforced UN sanctions in Iraq of the George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair years. As well, we can add the numbers (no doubt also in the millions) of those permanently scarred or maimed by violence in Iraq, and those four million refugees, half internal , half external to Iraq, caused by this international crime.
Who is to blame for starting this latest part of this conflict? Was it the bush II, whose administration fabricated lurid stories about nuclear weapons programs, massive bio-chemical warfare factories, and all that other rot, and who demanded that Saddam Hussein reveal these imaginary WMDs or face invasion, and when Saddam did not, bush II (along with craven, nauseating, pompous hypocrite Tony Blair) invaded?
No. The US invasion of Iraq was the fault of Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, for somehow not magically stripping his country naked so that anyone with a satellite could see that (just as he had been saying, and just as UN weapons inspectors were discovering before they were forced to flee bush II's bombardment) Iraq had dismantled all of its WMD programs in the early 1990s.
At least this is the story being told by the unelected undemocratic imbecile currently occupying the Whitehouse, as well as by the corporate propagandists in the US news media.
So responsibility for the holocaust in Iraq does not lie with the invaders. It does not lie with the people responsible for destroying the government in Iraq and setting sectarian and ethnic and clan rivals against each other, whilst perpetrating numerous atrocities and war-crimes itself. It lies with the dictator who they toppled. At least so far as the gutless pieces of shit in US political and "journalism" circles would see it.
But what of the extent of this holocaust? The medical journal The Lancet printed two studies estimating mortality figures due to bush II's illegal invasions. The first study, conducted by John Hopkins Bloomberg estimated that by 2004 perhaps 100,000 people had died and a second 2006 study estimates over 600,000 excess deaths. This death-toll is now perhaps at 1,000,000.
Think about that. The Republican Party of the United States of America blatantly steals an election in 2000, allowing its candidate, a vain, shallow, dunce of a man, to occupy the Whitehouse and then proceed to launch a war, illegal regardless of any evidence that the USA could have produced that wasn't fabricated, when it was all the crudest of lies and hoaxes, this slavering moron is then allowed to steal another election in 2004, tear-up the civil rights of every American citizen, continue his war, ... and this war has now killed one million people.
And "progressive" Americans, for the most part, focus their energies on trying to elect the party that has funded this atrocious crime for yet another year. They're going to try to let their system redeem itself when it has already lowered itself beyond redemption. It has already had all of its safeguards destroyed and there's the blood of at least one-million souls on their heads.
I'll leave out, for now, Canadians' own stupid self-deceptions about Afghanistan, if only to discuss the latest horrors of American delusions about Iraq.
On top of the falsification of history that the US political and media elites engage in to grant themselves absolution for their criminal invasion of Iraq, these pathetic cowards must also conceal from themselves the true exent of the carnage brought about by their actions. To that end, the Iraqi mortality figures in The Lancet must be discredited.
The usual source for disputing the numbers of civilian casualities is to idiotically refer to the numbers provided by Iraq Body Count, which counts the deaths by violence reported by a changing number of journalistic sources. This is akin to estimating US gun violence deaths by refering to the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the LA Times.
By hook or by crook, war apologists, cowards, liars, and academic hacks have sought to shroud the John Hopkins surveys in disrepute, to confuse the public about the true extent of the outrage that they have committed.
Here is a rebuttal to these loathsome attempts, one that I can say nothing more but to recommend it to your attention.
1. a great or complete devastation or destruction, esp. by fire.
2. a sacrifice completely consumed by fire; burnt offering.
3. (usually initial capital letter ) the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II (usually prec. by the).
4. any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.
So, for instance, right now as I type these words, perhaps one million people (perhaps more) have perished violently and tragically in the nightmare that George W. Bush has made of Iraq. To this number should be added the estimated one million deaths from US-UK enforced UN sanctions in Iraq of the George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair years. As well, we can add the numbers (no doubt also in the millions) of those permanently scarred or maimed by violence in Iraq, and those four million refugees, half internal , half external to Iraq, caused by this international crime.
Who is to blame for starting this latest part of this conflict? Was it the bush II, whose administration fabricated lurid stories about nuclear weapons programs, massive bio-chemical warfare factories, and all that other rot, and who demanded that Saddam Hussein reveal these imaginary WMDs or face invasion, and when Saddam did not, bush II (along with craven, nauseating, pompous hypocrite Tony Blair) invaded?
No. The US invasion of Iraq was the fault of Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, for somehow not magically stripping his country naked so that anyone with a satellite could see that (just as he had been saying, and just as UN weapons inspectors were discovering before they were forced to flee bush II's bombardment) Iraq had dismantled all of its WMD programs in the early 1990s.
At least this is the story being told by the unelected undemocratic imbecile currently occupying the Whitehouse, as well as by the corporate propagandists in the US news media.
Prominent Washington journalists have even repeated Bush’s lie as their own. For instance, in a July 2004 interview, ABC’s veteran newsman Ted Koppel used it to explain why he - Koppel - thought the invasion of Iraq was justified.
“It did not make logical sense that Saddam Hussein, whose armies had been defeated once before by the United States and the Coalition, would be prepared to lose control over his country if all he had to do was say, ‘All right, U.N., come on in, check it out,” Koppel told Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now.”
Of course, Hussein did tell the U.N. to “come on in, check it out.” But he did so in the real history, not in the faux reality that now governs Washington and pervades America’s top news programs, including “60 Minutes.”
In Pelley’s historical formulation, the question is not why did Bush invade Iraq in violation of international law, causing the deaths of nearly 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but rather “How could [Hussein] have wanted his country to be invaded?”
This strategy of repeating a “big lie” often enough to make it sound true was famously described in the writings of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels during World War II. However, given the relatively free U.S. press, many Americans feel they are protected from “big lie” techniques, counting on journalists to call lying politicians to account.
So responsibility for the holocaust in Iraq does not lie with the invaders. It does not lie with the people responsible for destroying the government in Iraq and setting sectarian and ethnic and clan rivals against each other, whilst perpetrating numerous atrocities and war-crimes itself. It lies with the dictator who they toppled. At least so far as the gutless pieces of shit in US political and "journalism" circles would see it.
But what of the extent of this holocaust? The medical journal The Lancet printed two studies estimating mortality figures due to bush II's illegal invasions. The first study, conducted by John Hopkins Bloomberg estimated that by 2004 perhaps 100,000 people had died and a second 2006 study estimates over 600,000 excess deaths. This death-toll is now perhaps at 1,000,000.
Think about that. The Republican Party of the United States of America blatantly steals an election in 2000, allowing its candidate, a vain, shallow, dunce of a man, to occupy the Whitehouse and then proceed to launch a war, illegal regardless of any evidence that the USA could have produced that wasn't fabricated, when it was all the crudest of lies and hoaxes, this slavering moron is then allowed to steal another election in 2004, tear-up the civil rights of every American citizen, continue his war, ... and this war has now killed one million people.
And "progressive" Americans, for the most part, focus their energies on trying to elect the party that has funded this atrocious crime for yet another year. They're going to try to let their system redeem itself when it has already lowered itself beyond redemption. It has already had all of its safeguards destroyed and there's the blood of at least one-million souls on their heads.
I'll leave out, for now, Canadians' own stupid self-deceptions about Afghanistan, if only to discuss the latest horrors of American delusions about Iraq.
On top of the falsification of history that the US political and media elites engage in to grant themselves absolution for their criminal invasion of Iraq, these pathetic cowards must also conceal from themselves the true exent of the carnage brought about by their actions. To that end, the Iraqi mortality figures in The Lancet must be discredited.
The usual source for disputing the numbers of civilian casualities is to idiotically refer to the numbers provided by Iraq Body Count, which counts the deaths by violence reported by a changing number of journalistic sources. This is akin to estimating US gun violence deaths by refering to the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the LA Times.
By hook or by crook, war apologists, cowards, liars, and academic hacks have sought to shroud the John Hopkins surveys in disrepute, to confuse the public about the true extent of the outrage that they have committed.
Here is a rebuttal to these loathsome attempts, one that I can say nothing more but to recommend it to your attention.
Monday, January 28, 2008
But Perhaps ...
Yesterday's post about the illusion that is Barack Obama was on my mind while I was firing up my computer this morning.
Aside from the possibility that Obama is a "liberal" Manchurian Candidate (making with the empty rhetoric and the cozying-up to Lieberman and etc. to lull the authorities into a false sense of security in order to win and then turn the tables on them [yeah, as if!]) his victory, or any other Democrat presidential victory might finally wean Americans off of their devotion to their empty political process.
A Democratic president would be just as effective at changing the course of neoliberal imperialism and domestic failure as the Democratic legislature has been at reversing 8 years of bush's neoliberal imperialism and domestic failure, which is to say, not at all.
To be fair to the American people, and to clarify yesterday's post: Half of them don't vote, which is probably due to apathy and a belief that voting is a waste of time there, which is correct because it certainly is. (But that doesn't mean that the political process won't still screw you over, ... it does. If apathetic resignation was a successful political strategy we'd all be living like kings today, ... it isn't.) And, also to their credit: as a voting people they rejected bush II twice, both in 2000 and 2004. To their discredit, they didn't rebel against the installation of this corrupt, murderous twit and his cabal of vermin.
But the US political system has run its present course. This is all that can be expected of capitalist politics folks. Wars based on greed and lies abroad. The wrecking and looting of the domestic economy by the plutocracy at home. And empty vessels like bush II to serve it all up to a bloated, idiotic ruling class that will be too stuffed and jaded to read the writing when it shows up on the wall.
Aside from the possibility that Obama is a "liberal" Manchurian Candidate (making with the empty rhetoric and the cozying-up to Lieberman and etc. to lull the authorities into a false sense of security in order to win and then turn the tables on them [yeah, as if!]) his victory, or any other Democrat presidential victory might finally wean Americans off of their devotion to their empty political process.
A Democratic president would be just as effective at changing the course of neoliberal imperialism and domestic failure as the Democratic legislature has been at reversing 8 years of bush's neoliberal imperialism and domestic failure, which is to say, not at all.
To be fair to the American people, and to clarify yesterday's post: Half of them don't vote, which is probably due to apathy and a belief that voting is a waste of time there, which is correct because it certainly is. (But that doesn't mean that the political process won't still screw you over, ... it does. If apathetic resignation was a successful political strategy we'd all be living like kings today, ... it isn't.) And, also to their credit: as a voting people they rejected bush II twice, both in 2000 and 2004. To their discredit, they didn't rebel against the installation of this corrupt, murderous twit and his cabal of vermin.
But the US political system has run its present course. This is all that can be expected of capitalist politics folks. Wars based on greed and lies abroad. The wrecking and looting of the domestic economy by the plutocracy at home. And empty vessels like bush II to serve it all up to a bloated, idiotic ruling class that will be too stuffed and jaded to read the writing when it shows up on the wall.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The Power of Habit
Or should I say: "The Audacity of [vague] Hope"?
So many Americans, who otherwise have their heads screwed-on properly, are getting really excited about the career trajectory of Barack Obama.
Who are we talking about again? A Democratic presidential candidate. You remember the Democrats don't you? Elected to end the war in Iraq and punish 8 years of Repug corruption and lawlessness, and who have instead voted funds to prolong the war, and aid and abet in bush II's corruption and lawlessness.
Barack Obama, whose "electrifying" speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention was actually a bunch of meaningless pap, and the guy who made Joe Lieberman his "mentor" in the Senate, is neck-and-neck with the epitome of what's wrong with the system, Hillary Clinton, ... and people are getting excited???
Stop wasting your time.
Really, check out "The Obama Illusion" from Z Magazine, ... and then cough-up some dough to support Znet/Zcommunications.org
So many Americans, who otherwise have their heads screwed-on properly, are getting really excited about the career trajectory of Barack Obama.
Who are we talking about again? A Democratic presidential candidate. You remember the Democrats don't you? Elected to end the war in Iraq and punish 8 years of Repug corruption and lawlessness, and who have instead voted funds to prolong the war, and aid and abet in bush II's corruption and lawlessness.
Barack Obama, whose "electrifying" speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention was actually a bunch of meaningless pap, and the guy who made Joe Lieberman his "mentor" in the Senate, is neck-and-neck with the epitome of what's wrong with the system, Hillary Clinton, ... and people are getting excited???
Stop wasting your time.
Really, check out "The Obama Illusion" from Z Magazine, ... and then cough-up some dough to support Znet/Zcommunications.org
Never mind that Obama’s speech scaled new heights of cringing, pseudo-patriotic nausea-inducement by making disturbing “hope” parallels between: “the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs,” “the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta,” and the “hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him.” The lieutenant referred to in his speech was Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry whose government’s imperial right to “patrol” great rivers on the other side of the world during the 1960s Obama took as axiomatic. The “skinny kid” referred to a young Obama, grooming himself for a Harvard education while attending an elite private school and living with his white grandparents in sunny Hawaii. The connection with singing slaves? A shared belief in what Obama called “God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation—a belief that there are better days ahead.” Yes, the brutalized black slaves of racist antebellum America were looking forward to the glorious white-imperialist rape of Southeast Asia when their faith in “better days” would find glorious realization in the napalming of Vietnamese children, the images of which shocked Martin Luther King, Jr. into denouncing the Vietnam war in strident and forceful terms.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Belated Addition to the Blog-Roll
I added good ol' boy, Jim Bobby, from his blog "Jim Bobby Sez." He's been alright in my books for a looooong time.
Another Busy Day
bush II is back up to the 30% support range. No doubt partially due to his lying-low and bogus news stories that the failed "surge" is working. And much discredit for the Democrats' failure to shine the light of enquiry upon his thorough criminality, incompetence, and dictatorial behaviour.
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That poster called his or herself "xoites defends Constitution." Now, if only another five million could think that way. You'd have a movement to be reckoned with.