Thu
- 29 Sept - Royal
Hashemites On Parade: The political hacks have taken over
just about all the Washington international affairs centers and
think-tanks. And that certainly includes the Woodrow Wilson
Center for International Scholars at the Ronald Reagan Center now
headed by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and his long-time cronie
side-kick Mike VanDusen. The former Crown Prince of Jordan spoke
there yesterday, a dull speech full of long-winded platitudes received
by an aging compliant audience which offered up largely meaningless
questions and quite restrained ever-so-polite applause.
Hardly any serious comments or questions at all by the way about the
real issues of the day from Iraq to Palestine to Afghanistan to Chechya
to Iran. No mention or questions as well about how
the speaker who had been the Crown Prince for more than 30 years was
suddenly pushed aside at the last minute -- in a little
CIA-inspired political coup -- and replaced with Abdullah II, son
rather than brother of the late King Hussein ending up with the new
crown. It was actually fitting of course because it was after all
the British who enthroned the Hashemites to Amman in the first place
shortly after World War I -- the other branch of the family being
brought to Baghdad where they stayed in power until the violent 1958
revolution which found most of them dragged through the streets and
dismembered.
Abdullah II was in town last week pretending to be a
credible spokesman for Islam -- easy in the U.S. but increasingly a
mission impossible back home. Now the former Crown Prince,
Uncle Hassan, is reemerging again, pretty much in the hands of the same
American handlers as before, the very same who dealt him the terrible
humiliation just a few long years ago when the Jordanian Constitution
was changed (at the Royal Jordanian Embassy in Washington by the way
and unknown to Hassan) making it possible for Abdullah, born of British
mother actually and far more suited for the Georgetown Sandhurst crowd
than for any throngs back home to take the Kingship. After all
Abdullah, even more than Hassen, had been carefully groomed for the job
by his Western patrons in order to use him to to keep those he rules in
the Arab Muslim under what let's call a kind of remote control.
Wed
- 28 Sept - Dan Rather's
Chilling but Unheard and Unheeded Warning: Partially
retired, understandably somewhat bitter, former CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, like his predecessor
Walter Cronkite, is now free to speak his mind. Earlier
this month he spoke at Fordham University Law School and told some of
the under-the-rock truths that we all very much need to hear and
understand. Rather got little attention in Washington but this
attempt to belittle him and the important new messages he is bringing
did appear in the Washington Times on 21 Sept with the title of "Weeply
Dan":
Former CBS News anchor Dan
Rather said Monday that there
is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has
ever seen in his more than four-decade career, according to a Hollywood
Reporter article by Paul J. Gough.
Mr.
Rather famously tangled with
President Nixon and his aides
during the Watergate years while Mr. Rather was a hard-charging White
House correspondent.
Addressing
the Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan,
occasionally forcing back tears, he said that in the intervening years,
politicians "of every persuasion" had gotten better at applying
pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He
called it a "new journalism order."
He
said this pressure -- along with the "dumbed-down,
tarted-up" coverage, the advent of 24-hour cable competition and the
chase for ratings and demographics -- has taken its toll on the news
business.
"All
of this creates a bigger atmosphere of fear in newsrooms," Mr. Rather
said.
Mr.
Rather was accompanied by HBO Documentary and Family President Sheila Nevins, both of whom received lifetime
achievement awards at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards on Monday
evening.
Miss
Nevin asked Mr. Rather whether he felt the same type of
repressive forces in the Nixon administration as in the current Bush
administration.
"No,
I do not," Mr. Rather said.
Meanwhile
old Texas crony Karen Hughes,
a kind of media fix-up gal Friday to her friend George Bush and now the
Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, is on her first,
that's right first, visit to the Middle East lecturing one and all on
everything on the virtues of American-style democracy to women
driving in Saudi Arabia.
The idea that the main problem the Americans have is public relations
-- even with all of their funded and manipulated TV, radio, and oh so
many other propaganda conduits and methodololgies -- is quite off the
mark of course. The real problem has been for some time the
policies; Washington remains in deep denial; and Hughes has no idea
what's going on in the Middle East though she does know her way around
he Bushies and their Washington.
Tue
- 27 Sept - Civil Wars and
Multinational Wars: Iraq has already been
plundged into Civil War and the American-generated Constitution to be
voted on next month in an American-prepared-and-guarded pseudo photo-op
election may well push the country to the breaking point.
Meanwhile the Palestinians too are being pushed and pushed toward Civil
War; Lebanon and Algeria of course already having had theirs.
Meanwhile as well targets Iran, Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah) and
Palestine (Hamas) are all very much on the Bush/Cheney/Neocon radar
awaiting the moment of opportunity sure to come, or to be manufactured,
sooner or later one way or another. Few people really read
these days, fewer still understand and are able to connect the
dots. The following is right on the front page of the Washington Post today for those who
care:
Car bombings and other insurgent
attacks, as unknown in
Baghdad before the invasion as suicide subway
bombings were in London
until this summer, have killed more than 3,000 people in the capital
since late spring.
Leaving
the house for work each
day has become a matter of turning the key and consigning one's fate to
God,
said Jassim Mohammed, 41, a Karrada merchant who has lost two of
his closest friends and one of his lighting
shops in car bombings since
the Americans came. "Now in Iraq, no one and nothing
can protect you but that.
Every morning you kiss them goodbye,"
Mohammed said, referring to his wife and children, "because you don't
know if you will be back or not. Everyone in Iraq does that now."
As
this quote illustrates, the Washington
Post foreign service still has a tradition, however watered
down and under pressure, of trying to report realities from the
field. The
editorial page is another matter, today with more finger and
gun-pointing anti-Iranian
war preparations inspired, truth be told, by the papers traditional
close alliance with Israel and a host of American Jewish groups and
personalities. 
But Washington also has a second paper and that's the one that really
whips up continually the
Clash of Civilizations' supposedly pitting Judeo-Christianity
'civilization' against a rising Islamic 'horde'. Along with
constantly promoting a coming U.S.-Chinese clash The Washington Times seizes every
opportunity to foment anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hysteria. Today for instance on the
editorial page you can read all about how Europe is being taken over by
Islam! 'Thwarting
Eurabia', is the title of Michael Barone's Op Ed which is itself an
advertisement, complete with picture, for editorial page editor Tony
Blankley's new book titled with true fear-mongering hysteria The West's Last Chance - Will We Win the
Clash of Civilizations?
Mon
- 26 Sept - New Old Gaza - New
Old America: "The 'new' Gaza' looks
very much like the old Gaza" -- that was the BBC News take on the
situation Saturday night; much closer to reporting the realities of the
situation than any of the American networks.
As for the new USA -- the one dominated by the
Neocons and the Evangelicals brought to power in the Bush/Cheney
Administration -- just imagine had V-P Gore become President in the USA
instead nearly five years ago now. Think how different the
political, economic, and Supreme Court history of the USA would have
been; how differently policies in the Middle East might have played
out; how different would be the U.S. relationship with other countries
in the world.
Now imagine that a former President of the
United States declares that he is sure Gore won the election in 2000
not Bush. And imagine that that former President is in fact
known throughout the world for 'monitoring' elections in countries far
and wide.
Actually this later little footnote to history
you don't have to imagine. It happened last week right here in
Washington. And even with the help of BlogWashington reporting
what happened, giving the precise quote, and even obtaining the audio
of Jimmy Carter's startling pronouncement (listen), you won't find
even
reference to what the former President said in the corporate big-media.
 Sun - 25 Sept - Anti-War Makes It To Page 1:
It's not often that the anti-war realities make it to
page 1 of the Washington Post, even with a decent picture this
time. Now don't get me wrong. The Post nearly always
misplays these things including this time. The picture should
have been of demonstators in front of the White House, that was the
theme of the demonstration and one of the unusual aspects to it in fact
-- itstead for some unknown reason they showed demonstrators on '14th
Street' unlike the photo to the left. And the articles focus and
themes were widely off in crucial aspects as well. Last
night there was supposed to be a joint Cindy Sheehan, George Galloway,
evening. Sheehan decided to spend the hours with the
Congressional Black Caucus instead; and even though literally just a
few blocks away couldn't find 15 minutes to appear. Galloway
literally brought the house down, a riveting performance by a master
political showman and quite a serious political gadfly, even if his
kind of grandstanding turns many a little off. Could he handle
his p.r. better and have a much bigger outreach...yes. But
even so his American booktour on top of his sui generis Senate performance now
make Galloway, the renegage British Parliamentarian, one of the most interesting and credible
of America's anti-war anti-imperialism personalities.
Sat - 24 Sept - Huge Numbers
Call for Bush Impeachment in DC...Police State
Mentality and Tactics Growing: It was a huge sea of
protesters today in Washington -- far greater than anticipating and
surely numbering in the many hundreds of thousands regardless of what
the 'authorities' and the corporate press will report.
Judged by numbers and enthusiasm it was a considerable success.
Judged by political and social realities it was nothing of the kind
however. The range of speakers continued to be very narrow and
limited, thanks to the way the organizers choose to play their
cards. The total failure to use the powerful weapon of
peaceful civil disobedience is another feature of the organizers who
have their little deal with the authorities that as long as they police
their own themselves they will continue to get favored treatment from
the real police who then have a far easier time of it and the
politicians who breath a sign of relief. And in the end
everyone knows that these demonstrations have kind of become an end in
themselves for the organizers; there is no serious ongoing day-to-day
strategy to actually change the policies they so vehemently protest for
that is not really the main goal.
Meanwhile, it was a few days ago now that the famous
international journalist Robert Fisk was boarding a plane in Canada to
be the keynote speaker at a sold-out conference in New Mexico
when U.S. immigration police barred him from
entering the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Fisk ended up being brought in by satellite hookup. No one in
Washington can remember a time when someone with Fisk's journalistic
stature and credentials was barred from the U.S. It's but
another sign of the growing police state mentality of the new 'Homeland
Security' dominated American polity.
Fri
- 23 Sept - Carter Declares Gore Won Bush Lost:
As usual with Jimmy Carter his honesty
comes too late, though maybe in
this case we won't say too
little. Speaking Tuesday at American University Carter
finally declared in public (listen): "Well I would say that
in the
year
2000 the country failed abysmally in the presidential election
process," the former president remarked. "There’s no doubt in my mind
that Al Gore was elected president." And after the applause
Carter added: "He received the most votes nationwide, and in my
opinion, he also received the most votes in Florida. And the
decision was made as you know on a 5-4 vote on a highly partisan basis
by the U.S. Supreme Court, so I would say in 2000, there was a
failure." Noteably, even though this is a monumental issue for
Carter to be speaking about, he chose to do so in a very low-key way,
in response to a student question, and without his usual side-kick
these days, James Baker, who in fact was the point-man for Bush/Cheney
in what follows from Carter's remarks was the stealing of the 2000
election and one of the greatest perversions ever of the American
'democratic' system.
But beyond this gross perversion of democracy
that
the Republicans and the Supreme Court perpetrated a few years ago -- we
know now even according to
a former President -- the criminally
incompetent and corrupt policies of the Bush/Cheney/Neocon regime
should be the current focus. If these guys were the CEO of
a major corporation the Board of Directors would have gotten rid of
them by now in view of their terrible deceptions and disastrous
policies --
much too destructive of the bottom line and the brand name, that's for
sure!
In a parliamentary system the legislative branch would surely by
now have thrown them out to public applause and new elections.
But even with such a miserable record of lies, deceptions, failures,
and hugh costs that were promised not to be -- just a few of which are
noted below -- the Bush/Cheney/Neocon/Evangelical regime continues in
power;
and with such things as Supreme Court appointments, CIA actions,
Pentagon war
plans, and corporate-determined environmental policies, is still
deciding and ruining the future for us
all for some time to come.
Rumsfeld,
3/30/03 - "We know where [the WMDs] are."
Cheney, 3/16/03 - "We will in fact,
be greeted as liberators... I think it will go relatively
quickly... [in] weeks rather than months."
Cheney, 3/16/03 - "We believe
[Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
Rice, 9/10/02 - "We do know that
[Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon."
Bush, 5/29/03 - "We found the
weapons of mass destruction."
Bush, 9/17/03 - "There's no question
that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties."
Thur
- 22 Sept - Iraq Civil War expanding - Global
Warming Consequences:
Finally last night a major news network, NBC, presented the
unprecedented Hurricanes now hitting the U.S. with greater force than
ever as 'possibly' the result of 'Global Warming'. Most of the
independent scientific community says 'almost definitely' global
warming is a major factor in what is happening. The Bush
regime says 'definitely not'. The man who got more votes than
Bush to be President in 2000, Al Gore, says 'for sure', but can't get
much attention from the corporate mass media in the U.S. though finally
did get some big exposure big in the Financial
Times this week. The situation now borders on critical and soon may
be disastrous though the public at large doesn't quite get it, largely
because their mass media won't seriously raise the alarm in a serious
and sustained way. Who is responsible? More than any
other country the policies pursued by the United States for many
decades now have contributed far more to global warming than any
other -- Gore is right, Bush is culpable. And more than any
other the leadership of the United
States is also more responsible than any other for denying what is
happening
and for blocking international efforts to even attempt to deal with
it. What could be more
historically criminal to the welfare and
future of us all that what the United States has done to our world through
its grossly exploitative and
abusive economic policies; yet who will hold the U.S. and
its leaders responsible and what can still be done to head off the far
greater disasters now looming and quite forseeable?
"We will not cut
and run. We will not leave the job half done" -- that's
John Reid yesterday, British Defense Minister, at a London Press
conference with the current U.S./U.K. Iraqi government's P.M., the day
after an Iraqi crowd in Basra exploded in rage against the British
assault on an Iraqi prison to free a couple of British secret service
agents caugt in the act, dressed as Arabs, with a car full of
explosives and secret communications gear. The U.S./U.K.
occupation of Iraq is now running out of steam as well as out of
crediblity. The cost of the Iraqi fiasco has already been
tremendous in blood and treasure; and it seems the historical
ramifications are just beginning....just as is the blowback from the
flagrant excesses of the industrial revolution that spawned global
warming.
 Wed
- 21 Sept - Israel On The March: At a Mayflower Hotel
conference just blocks from the White House today journalist Seymour
Hersh harshly warned that the Bush regime has promised the Sharon
regime in Israel to take on Iran,
even as stories leak out that the Pentagon is preparing tactical
nuclear weapons to make sure Iran's military capabilities are totally
destroyed when and if the clash comes, the
Israelis are quite unbelievably pushing for a Security Council seat
for the first time. Meanwhile the Palestinians are being pushed
and pushed closer to
civil war -- something the Israelis have actually been hoping to
bring about for many years -- and the situation in Iraq is more
explosive than ever, in fact already a kind rolling partial civil war
under Western occupation.
Tue
- 20 Sept - Global Warming Denial and Criminality +
Gaza Push Push Spend Spend: The Israelis have a big push
underway in Washington, using various front-groups and NGOs connected
with government, to push the Gaza 'Disengagement' as an opportunity for
the Palestinians that has to be both supported and financed by the
'international community'. Yesterday they brought the deputy
Mayor of Tel Aviv, Yael Dayan, to the Carnegie Endowment, and today
they brought a group of a few Israelis, along with a few quisling
on-the-take Palestinians, to Capitol Hill. Private meetings are
taking place all over the city pushing the idea that lots of money has
to be pumped into Gaza now, even if there are no political agreements
and no one really knows where things are going. But of course the
Israelis aren't talking about their money, and certainly not about
reparations as are fully called for -- they're talking about everybody
elses money.
Of course the financial and attention American
burden with Katrina on top of Iraq make things a harder sell for the
Israelis then they had anticipated. With the natural
barrier islands and the wetlands of the American coastlands having been
considerable destroyed by the politicians and developers, and with so
much denial from Washington when it comes to global warming, Katrina is
hardly the end of the line. Add to global
warming and its increasingly likely ramifications the coming oil
glut and you have a world of conflict and despair coming
considerably greater than the politicians dare admit. But they
will be long gone while all of us and our offspring will be suffering,
and paying, and crying, forever now.
Oh yes, I said yesterday that the Korean nuclear
'agreement' was more or a U.S. ploy to deal with Iran just in advance
of the latest important IAEA meetings; and sure enough it only took a
day for the media to start calling the 'agreement' actually just a
statement of 'principles', and the North Koreans themselves have
indicated not much has really changed as far as they are
concerned. The corporate media has such a hard time connecting
the dots when the government propagandists blow just a little smoke in
their eyes.
Mon
- 19 Sept - Get IRAN!: Washington's Neocons, with
V-P Cheney and many elements of the Israeli-Jewish lobby in the lead,
keep manuevering to put Iran in the crosshairs just as soon as they can
politically manage it. Militarily the situation may continue to
deteriorate so the clock is ticking. The push to get Iran helps
explain why the Americans at the last minute last night backed up
regarding North Korea after a phone call from the Chinese Foreign
Minister to Secretary of State Rice. Though it remains
highly questionable what the North Koreans are said to have agreed to
today -- "Little More Than Pleasant Sounding Words" is the way the BBC
reported the agreement today -- it appears the Americans wanted to give
the impression of some kind of agreement in advance of the upcoming
IAEA meeting that will focus on Iran. Israel's Sharon has
been pushing the Americans hard for some time now to bring Iran down,
one way or another; and the powerful coalition of Christian Evangelical
and Jewish Zionists in Washington is very much singing the same
tune.
Sat
- 17 Sept - U.N. 60th whimpers away: Guess who got the loudest
applause among the 160+ world leaders attending this week's 60th
anniversary gathering at the U.N.? It was non other than Hugo
Chavez of Venezuela the beit
noir
of the U.S. whom leading American Evangelical Pat Robertson has
publicly called upon the CIA to assassinate. The Americans
managed to castrate the U.N.'s grand plans, and practically personally
Kofi Annan himself. But then the last Secretary-General,
Boutros-Ghali, Washington fired for mildly attempting to give the U.N.
a modicum of independence from Washington. With Kofi it's only
necessary to put him in his place now and then.
Meanwhile the intellectual cock fight of the week -- no
definitely of the year so far at the least -- took place this week with
British MP George Galloway and former Trotskyist far leftist now Neocon
far rightest Christopher Hitchens providing the slugging
entertainment. Read
all about it from this Hitchens' endorsed blog summary.
And listen if you can't
resist -- yes who among us can resist the intellectual equivalent of
Smack Down.
 Fri - 16 Sept - Smell More War: How can we overlook Bush
asking Condi if he can go to the Bathroom -- and right there sitting in
the Security
Council representing his country! Flashback for many to
the 6th grade. This is one of those cases where the picture is
out of this world. "I think I may need a bathroom break? Is this
possible? W(hen)?"
In a Parliamentary system the Bush/Reagan/Neocon regime
would already be history.  But the Americans are saddled with a
Presidential/Congressional system increasingly controlled by a
military-industrial-p.r. complex and in the end this unaccountability
will continue to weaken the American Empire maybe at an escalating
rate. The Katrina catastrophe/fiasco will not totally pass
from consciousness but it will fade and soon again the political
and international realities will reappear. Bush's 'brain', Karl
Rove, and VP Cheney's 'Scooter' are still likely to be charged for
CIAgate soon now; the
Israeli/Jewish Lobby Spy Scandal is not over; the Israeli/U.S. Peace
Scam (i.e., 'Disengagement' and the 'Road Map') is a short-term p.r.
fix with a considerable price tag and already unraveling; the Iraqi
civil war will further escalate and maybe regionally metasticize, the
Chinese
and Japanese hold over Washington through hundreds of billions in U.S.
Treasury notes continues to grow with untold consquences; and neither
Iran nor North Korea are planning to succumb to U.S.
dictate. Be it financial or political the
Bush/Reagan/Neocon camp has massively mortgaged and short-changed
Americans who are increasingly living far beyond their means; and thus
their future is more in doubt than ever whether they want to talk about
it or not.
Inside Washington the political purging in the foreign
policy establishment is still continuing, even though the focus has
been nearly solely on the considervatization of the Supreme
Court. During the summer a 4-star General opposed to the Neocons
was abruptly relieved of command forced out. A few days ago
the same happened to the equivalent of a 4-star
at the CIA.
Thu
- 15 Sept - Syria and Iran in the Gunsights: First thing this morning
driving in to work Washingtonians heading to their power positions were
alerted louder than before that Syria is next. The All-News
WTOP radio station -- increasingly a conduit for government propaganda
information and an official sponsor in fact of last week's Pentagon
'Freedom March' -- featured a report with Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad
(now in Iraq after his stint in Afghanistan) proclaiming that the U.S.
has definite proof the Syrians are training the Iraqi insurgents, and
then quoting anonymous sources warning that 'American cruise missiles'
can easily take out those bases. Even with Iraq exploding
and Afghanistan a narco-state just as before Washington power brokers
are using the CIA more than ever attempting regime change in both
Tehran and Damascus, and will use the military to bring about that goal
as well as de-arm those still-independent states. This is the
firm joint U.S.-Israeli policy in the Bush-Sharon years and even with
all the other problems Washington is facing this 'New World Order'
restructing of world affairs is going forward and could erupt more into
public view at anytime.
Meanwhile the Washington pressure is really on in the
Middle East region. Bashar Assad is so afraid he didn't even risk
leaving Damascus to attend the 60th U.N. anniversary -- the Americans
pleased of course. The Iranians are about to be further isolated
and sanctioned; all designed to further weaken their economy and
Washington hopes create more troubles for the regime there. And
in Palestine Mahmoud Abbas also stayed home rather than attend the U.N.
summit, even though the situation in Gaza proved so dangerous for him
that he didn't even attend the big rally celebrating the settler
departure from Gaza. Such celebrations are going to be
short-lived anyway when the realities of what the Israelis and the
Americans have done to the Palestinians in fracturing and imprisoning
them more than ever begin to hit home.
Oh yes, by the way, Washington is so extraordinarly full
of itself and its own little and big problems that the largest
gathering of world leaders in history for the 60th anniversary of the
U.N. didn't even make it to the front page of the Washington Post. Indeed, one
has to scan to page 8 to find out about the event; and even then the
real story is largely masked as if it's really all about President
Bush's speech scolding and chastising the United Nations. Kofi
Annan has bitten his tongue repeatedly in recent days, finally managing
to emerge from the disasters he has overseen with a comment about how
'it's a start'. And old Bill Clinton is at it again, he just can
manage to stop running for something. As nutty as it may seem to
many the man really does want to be Kofi's successor and today is
convening a 3-day global initiatives gala in Manhattan claiming that he
and his and going to be activists to get done what others are just
talking about. Bill is determined that he's either going to
be back in the White House with Hillary or the first American
Secretary-General
looking ahead to U.N.'s new digs soon to be under
construction. A little ironic though that on the day
Clinton convenes his Clinton
Global Initiative a major
global survey finds politicians mistrusted even more than they
might find acceptible.
Wed
- 14 Sept - Clash of Civilizations:
Official Washington, including nearly all of the official mass media
and political correct academic class is pretty much oblivious to views
and political realities expressed beyond American shores...and in most
cases beyond American hearing. But indeed there is an
escalating Clash of Civilizations and one
which the Americans -- propelled forward by the Neocons and the
Evangelicals -- is largely responsible for both creating and constantly
fueling. Lucky we have such figures as the Mayor
of London in Europe and Arundhati Roy in the subcontinent (New
Delhi) and Mohamed Mahathir in Asia to help present things in
contrasting and stark terms helping us all understand what is really
happening and how huge the stakes really are.
Meanwhile, let's call it 'Patsy United Nations', though
tempted to simply say 'Damn the U.N.' Publicly raped
by the Americans as never before in 2002, continually sullied and
defied by America's protege Israel, world leaders are meetin today at
the U.N. in greater numbers than ever before. Yet the
declaration they were supposed to issue to seriously combat world
poverty, weapons proliferation, global warming, etc., had been gutted
by the Americans and Kofi Annan is reduced to being a kind of powerless
empire as the Americans use their big dog, John Bolton, to keep
everyone fearful and in line. That includes Palestinian
'President' Mahmoud Abbas by the way, ordered by his American and
Israeli keepers to stay away and police his own on their ever-shrinking
bantustans. Oh yes, news from Iraq is more blooody than ever as
the world leaders meet in New York to listen to George W. opin and
dissemble about what he and his have done, and about which he has
forced the U.N. into such miserable complicity. Ironic that this
is also the day the occupied Iraqis have finally said they've finished
their new Constititution and turned it over to, guess whom, the
gullible U.N. for printing and distribution.
Tue
- 13 Sept - Undermining the U.N.: It
appears Washington has
successfully undermined the major plans many at the U.N. had to
make this week's gathering of world leaders a time for a major
declaration on world affairs setting the agenda for years to come
-- including alleviating international poverty, strengthening
international law, and dealing with global warming. Indeed John
Bolton was pushed on the U.N. without Senate confirmation precisely to
do the dirty work, and he's been super busy at achieving renewed U.S.
control over U.N. affairs. Chief Justice to be John Roberts
may be dominating the Washington headlines at the moment, and he is
sure to have a major impact on American constitutional law for years to
come; but what happens to the world in the meantime is actually of far
greater significance, and the Bush/Cheney/Neocon/Evangelical regime
operates on multi-simultaneous tracks even if the corporate media has a
hard time reporting and understanding.
Mon
- 12 Sept - Iran, Iran, Iran!:
Major preparations now are underway to prepare the way for either
forcing Iran to knuckle under to U.S. and Israel demands (less and less
likely it appears) or to take
Iran on and destroy
it's capability to produce weapons of mass destruction (more and
more likely it appears). Just who is bluffing whom, and just what
capabilities the various players actually have, and just ramifications
would flow from a U.S. and/or Israeli attack on Iran are all matters
for more serious contemplation than ever.
Oh yes, the resignation of the political hack
appointee who until day was FEMA Director. Rumors are swirling in
Washington that Michael Brown got the job in the first place because of
his long-time political fix-it tricks performed for Bush/Cheney; and
that he was handled so gingerly by Bush ("Brownie, you're doing a great
job!") and then allowed to quickly resign rather than be fired with
expectations of keep his loyalty and surely of keeping his mouth shut.
 Sun
- 11 Sept - Pentagon Readies Its New 'Useable'
Nukes: Even as world
leaders begin to arrive in New York for one of the greatest ever
gatherings, even as the Americans demand the Irans stop their nuclear
programs, even as the Israelis build more settlements and prepare their
own nuclear forces, and on the very 9/11 memorial day, the American
military has let it be known they are not only building a whole new
generation of 'tactical' and 'useable' nuclear weapons, but they are
preparing to 'preemptively'
use them. Such hypocrisy and double-standarrds may have
worked for many years in the past, but now the price is beginning to be
paid and the future looks bleaker than nearly everyone dares imagine.
Also today, how
interesting that 9/11 is also the day the Israelis decided to finally
'leave' Gaza -- even though they are amazingly leaving
behind their synagogues to defy the Palestinians and so imprisoning
the Palestinians inside Gaza ghetto/prison that even the 'Palestinian
Authority' officials they pay for today refused to attend the departure
ceremony which the Israelis had encouraged the world's media to beam
far and wide.
Sun
- 11 Sept - Never Forget Is Universal Not Made In
America: The U.S.
government, the intertwined corporate mass media, and much of the
American public are so good at remembering their own symbols and
bloodshed -- be it Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg, the Minutemen, and now in
our lifetimes 9/11. But when it comes to remembering the much
greater bloodshed and suffering of others -- even those whose
catastrophes were brought about by themselves -- Americans are all too
often crassly oblivous. I'll skip the list today; we have
to deal with it often enough.
Sat
- 10 Sept - More U.S. Destruction at the U.N.:
The 9/11 anniversary and Katrina's wake will dominate American news
this weekend; but of far more lasting consequence for entire world's
future is what the Americans are doing at and to the U.N. quite
literally this weekend and in the days ahead. Leading
Neocon warrior John Bolton is now at the U.N. -- uniquely unconfirmed
by the Senate but 'recess' appointed anyway -- and he has wasted no
time going about the destruction of much that the Secretary-General and
major European allies have been working so hard to achieve.
Here's a guarded yet adequate summary of the situation, along
with an earlier Wash Post editorial about
'Undiplomatic' Bolton.
Fri
- 9 Sept - The Pentagon's "Freedom Walk":
Not much freedom for the Pentagon's Sunday 9/11 anniversary 'Freedom
Walk'. No public, no one not 'registered', no media, everyone
behind fences and guarded by the entire National Park
Service. It's another case where the choise name bears
little resemblance to the realities of the situation. But the
powers that be just don't seem to get it. Read
a little about it -- the Wash Post having withdrawn its endorsement
and free advertising, but other big players in the Washington media
playing the game as usual.
Fri
- 9 Sept - Never Forget At Home...but Not Abroad:
Americans love to be told 'Never Forget' and to wrap  themselves in the
stars and stripes forever. It's the fourth
anniversary of
9/11 this weekend and from public tours at the Pentagon to memorials
from
morning to night Americans will be repeatedly told 'Never Forget' the
3000+ dead on that day. But when it comes to others abroad
and to what has happened and is still happening to them - from the
Palestinians to the Afghanis, Iraqis, Chechnyans, et. al. - Americans
are not only large unaware of the far greater sufferings others have
been
subjected to, including much bloodletting and suffering for which the
Americans themselves are directly or indirectly
responsible. To others the message is whether stated so
clearly or not, "Forget and Move On and trust us now".
Ironically as well this weekend's Pentagon "Freedom March" will take
closed behind all kinds of barriers and with all kinds of quite
unprecedented restrictions.
Meanwhile, the Bush/Cheney regime raced ahead this
week, sometimes just minutes in advance of what others in the
'opposition party' were planning,
to set up their own Katrina investigations -- those who failed so badly
are insisting they remain in charge of the investigations into their
failures. And here's what George's better half and the Republican
Senate leader want Americans to think about how the the Katrina
catastrophe was handled:
"Overall it was a very good response... "Across
the
board...very very well"
- First Lady Laura Bush
"We
all know things didn't go perfectly..."
-
Senate Majority Leader Frist
"So many
of the people in the arenas here were
underpriviledged anyway. This is working very well
for them."
-
President Mother, Barbara Bush
Over the weekend I'll get back to the
prescription Washington policy-wonks handed the anti-Americans at the
New America conference earlier this week.
Thu
- 8 Sept - Show Every Body and Connect the Dots to
Iraq: As Bush/Cheney/FEMA
prepare for maybe more than 10,000 bodies from the Katrina disaster
official Washington is running scared that as the waters recede
constant images of hundreds and thousands of decomposing corpses will
be
seared into the American consciousness. Even as the White House
desperately attempts to stay in charge of the investigations into its
own
mismanagement, incompetence, and gross errors in resource allocation,
steps are being taken to restrict access to the bodies and to pressure
for a kind of 'respectful' censorship when it comes to body
photos. Underneath the gruesome daily images though is a far
greater reality. By putting nearly all the focus and attention on
'terrorism' -- that approach itself partially designed to keep the
American public focused
on such fears and thus willing to support the imperialist war policies
of Iraq now and Iran next -- American society has been everywhere
short-changed and the American future itself thrown into far more doubt
than
ever before. Had just a few of the hundreds of billions of
dollars and
just some of the attention of government officials and the media not
been so 'war on terrorism' one-dimensional there would have been time
and attention paid to preventing the
disaster that happened, one which was repeatedly in fact predicted and
which
all the public officials knew, or should have know, was not being
properly
prepared for.
Tomorrow:
If those fighting the U.S. were watching C-span or internet Wednesday
they
must have been gleefully cheering the prescription they were handed
free of charge for what to do next to hurt America the most and set the
whole world on fire.
Wed
- 7 Sept - America's Centrist Imperialists Gather:
Craving the power they have lost to the Neocons and Evangelicals others
within the American power structure are regathering using the
catch-terms "Realists", "Values-Driven", "Off-Shoreists", et. al.
Of course they can smell the political blood in the water surrounding
the Bush/Cheney regime and the scent of possibly taking real power in a
few years is already in the fall post-Labor Day Washington
air. But at the end of the day, as they proved yesterday
and today at the Capital Hilton a few blocks from the White House, they
are also very much part of the American Imperial party. Unlike
the Neocons and Evangelicals they just take a little pride in being
considerably more cerebral, much more internationalist, and what they
think of as bi-partisan. And so what's left of the
'moderate Republicans' teamed up this week with the mid-to-hard-line
Democrats to produce a pre-911 anniversary two-day conference designed
to push themselves more visibly onto the political scene.
It was a well-funded extravagenzy whose main purpose was to exploit
C-Span coverage and international webcasting to let it be known that
there is a new Washington think-tank in town known somewhat
appropriately actually as the New America Foundation. More
on this to come...especially as it all relates to U.S. Middle East
policies and the new big push to smoother and extinguish the
Palestinian cause by forcing a quisling mini-state down their
historically battered throats.
"It appears that the money has been moved in the
president’s budget to handle homeland security
and the war in Iraq, and I suppose
that’s the price we pay.
Nobody
locally is happy that the levees
can’t be finished,
and we are
doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue
for us."
New Orleans
Times-Picayune Newspaper - 8 June 2004
NEW ORLEANS
DESTROYED BECAUSE OF IRAQ: That's quite a leap many
will be thinking; and certainly
don't expect the
public officials,
especially the Washington regime, to acknowledge the terrible errors of
their
ways and the gross squandering
and mismanagement of public
resources. But the facts and
the statistics are there if people
want to connect the dots.
 Mon
- 5 Sept - America's Debacles at Home and Abroad:
60,000 heavily-armed toops now occupy New Orleans, including the 82nd
Airborne, most recently the 'heroes' of Baghdad -- but where were they
when they were so badly needed days ago? In fact hardly few
civilians are now left in New Orleans, and thanks to the poor planning
and failure to properly protect the city when it was possible to do so,
hardly anything is left in and of historic New Orleans as well.
Meanwhile the troops when they finally did come came more looking like
military occupiers than relief workers...armed to the hilt it appears
against a few gang members with a few rusting rifles and
sidearms. What terrible imagery the Americans continue to
present to the world, and to their own as well. Meanwhile
in Iraq, where nearly $300 billion have now been squandered bringing
primarily death, destruction, and neo-imperialism -- just a few of
which could have prevented the New Orleans disaster which has turned
out to be far greater in death and impact than all the terrorism ever
perpetrated against the Americans both at home and abroad -- more
thousands have died compliments of the Americans just in the days
since Katrina struck a long week ago. And oh yes, let's not
overlook global warming which the Americans have contributed so much to
bringing about and which is surely a contributor to the terrible
historic flooding throughout much of Europe this year and last, as well
as to the growing number and strength of hurricanes now emerging from
the warming Caribbean and Gulf waters.
Sun
- 4 Sept - America's Disaster and Danger:
Disaster in Beverly Hills or Connecticut Avenue Washington, D.C., would
certainly not have been handled as it was in poor, black,
ignored-for-years New Orleans. Then after the inexplicable and
inexcuseable 5-day delay what in the world was the National Guard doing
entering this natural disaster zone in its own
backyard armed for combat as if the scene were Somalia or Bosnia or
occupied Iraq. Incompetent leadership, awful resource allocation
mismanagement, gross lies
and deceptions, a blood and money sink-whole in tortured Iraq, this is
the real legacy of the Bush/Cheney/Neocon/Evangelical regime which
still holds the reigns of power in the only world super power.
But for how much longer can this kind of terribly lead American Empire
remain on top; and what will be the ramifications for Americans and for
the world as this national weakening progresses with other nations,
especially China and the EU on the rise?
Sat
- 3 Sept - Incompetence and Lies At the Highest
Levels of Govt: Thursday morning
BlogWashington
featured this quote
and published it widely -- just as it appears below in BW dated 1 September; then
yesterday morning BW
highlighted the same quote just as it appears above in the BW banner and published it
widely for all to contemplate and remember. Finally last
evening the same exact quote was featured nationwide on
PBS.
But what wasn't featured as it should have been was
the quote from the President of the United States insisting that "No
one imagined the levees would break", reminiscent of his former
National Security Adviser, now promoted to Secretary of State, shortly
after 9/11 insisting "No one imagined that airplanes could be used like
missiles like that."
And yet in the past few years the government itself
had done a major disaster exercise dubbed 'Hurricane Pam' almost
exactly predicting what happened with Hurricane Katrina; and
best-selling author Tom Clancy years ago wrote a popular novel, easily
available for $9.95, featuring a Boeing jumbo jet crashing into the
Congress during a State of the Union Speech.
But of course this is the same Administration that
keeps insisting that all the attention and money for the Iraq War, and
the fact that more than a third of the Louisiana National Guard is
currently deployed there, have nothing to do with Americans being
short-changed everywhere, with the big oil companies and arms merchants
continually gouging the country, and with the political leaders
continually feeling the imperative to lie and cover up day after day,
issue after issue.
Simply asked what the hell is wrong with the
American people who keep allowing such leaders to speak and act as they
do without being held to account for such gross misdeeds and blatant,
continual lies?
 Fri
-
2 Sept - AMERICANS Taste the Real World: "National Disgrace"
indeed! "Hell on Earth"...these the opening comments on the NBC
Today Show this morning at 7am. Cruel as it may be to
articulate, Americans are unexpectedly getting a taste, and in many
ways it is only a small taste, of what has been going on in other parts
of the world for some time -- from natural flooding disasters in
Bangladesh to human-made disasters in Iraq and Chechnya and Palestine.
"...the vast majority poor, black and Angry... This city
now looks more like Africa
than America..."
-
Matt Frei, BBC, in New Orleans
"This is not Iraq,
this is not Somalia, this is Home."
-Martin Savage, NBC News
"Private Katrina has joined the global Jihad"
-Islamic website reported on MSNBC
And
it is not being insensitive to the catastrophe of the moment to reflect
that what has happened because of Hurricane Katrina
would be minor in comparison to the nuclear war that we have so far
escaped or to Pandemic Flu which literally is threatening at the door
or to decades in the future if the projections of Global Warming and
Polar Icecap Meltdown prove to be accurate -- and we may well be
already feeling the early effects. Nor should we overlook
for now, even in the midst of the Gulf Coast catastrophy still
unfolding, that there has been considerable faulty planning and
resource allocation on the part of the U.S. government -- all of which
has at the least considerably exacerbated today's crisis.
Thu
-
1 Sept - BUSH Keeps Covering-Up and Dissembling: On any normal day the
fact that another thousand Iraqis got killed compliments of the
American invasion/occupation -- this time just on one day -- or that
for the first time in human history both Human and Chimp DNA had now
been totally mapped out for comparison with untold possibilities from
disease cures to future real human Frankensteins would have dominated
the news. But today's new coverage is anything but normal with
New Orleans and gas prices trumping all. Speaking about
President Bush's 9-minute speech late yesterday after his little
'fly-over' of the hurricane devastation:
He also unleashed a torrent of facts and figures: "The Department of
Transportation has provided more than 400 trucks to move 1,000
truckloads containing 5.4 million Meals Ready to Eat...13.4
million liters of water, 10,400 tarps, 3.4 million pounds of ice, 144
generators, 20 containers of pre-positioned disaster supplies, 135,000
blankets and 11,000 cots." It was as if by piling so many
disparate
numbers so high he might be able to block out the two most significant
numbers of all: the number of National Guardsmen unable to help
out in
Louisiana and Mississippi because they are deployed in Iraq, and the
tens of millions of hurricane and flood-control dollars that never
made it to Lake Pontchartrain because they had been diverted to
Iraq.
- Orina Huffington, Huffington Post, 1
Sept
Thu
-
1 Sept - NEW ORLEANS DESTROYED BECAUSE OF IRAQ: That's quite a leap many
will be thinking; and certainly don't expect the public officials,
especially the Washington regime, to acknowledge the terrible errors of
their ways and the gross squandering and mismanagement of public
resources. But the facts and the statistics are there if people
want to connect the dots.
"It appears that the money has been moved in the
president’s budget to handle homeland security and
the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody
locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are
doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue
for us."
Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish,
Louisiana
New Orleans
Times-Picayune, 8 June 2004
With nearly $300 billion now having been spent to
invade, occupy, and essentially destroy Iraq -- and with more money now
flowing to the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex than even
during the cold war -- the public sectors of America are being
short-changed time and again, over and over, issue after
issue.
If less than 1% of just the Iraq war costs had
been allocated to New Orleans, a city which has been continually
begging Washington for funds to improve the well-known inadequate
levee systems that protected the city, the tremendous loss of life and
the untold billions in property damage and nation-wide economic
consequences now sufferenced could have been and should have been
prevented.
But as I said don't expect the politicians to
admit the terrible errors of their ways, the gross mismanagement of
public resources, the abominable mistakes that have been made and lies
they have been told. And don't expect the corporate mass
media -- itself interwined with and largely dependent on the largess of
the military-industrial-corporate complex -- to seriously and properly
connect the dots either.
If and when the Pandemic Flu hits --
which top scientists have been warning for years is all but inevitable
now -- and millions die with untold consequences for American society
and international relations, it will be another case of having
squandered hundreds of billions for the wrong things while the
alternative allocation of those billions could have, should have, saved
large numbers of lives and greatly strengthened the basic fabric and
textue of American society.
In the Reagan years proper emergency funding
could have significantly lessened the AIDs epidemic; but now an amazing
1 in 20 citizens in the national capital, in Washington D.C. itself,
are infected with HIV! Decades from now others will
look back and lament how the Americans wasted trillions of dollars on
imperial adventures -- on war and destruction -- even as they
criminally allowed global warming to become irreversible, the
polar ice cap to melt leading to catastrophic new weather patterns,
both world and national poverty to increase, the social infracture to
crumble, political an social poliarization to reach unprecedented
proportions, and, in all likelihood, a Pandemic Flu to ravage Americans
and humanity in the year 20??.
Had such huge amounts of money and human
energy been properly, thoughtfully, and honestly spent in preventive
ways and for anticipatory preparations for what was known to be coming
much of what has now happened, and much of what is likely to soon
happen, could have and should have been prevented. In the
future they will look back and lament how they could have made all the
difference by choosing to focus their attention and spend their
recourses and energies on other things; but they we did not...
|
