Iraq as Armageddon

/ attacks / satanic /
A review of the building up of the attack on Fallujah, the above article concludes with a statement I actually saw on TV here:

Col. Gary Brandl voiced his troops' determination:

''The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Fallujah, and we're going to destroy him.''

This is a US Marine Colonel...

Now I might be wrong about this, but a person who has delusions about personally fighting and destroying the Devil himself, should be under heavy medication and in way allowed near heavy machinery - much less weapons or the command of heavily armed soldiers.

But then again he's probably following his superiors' battle plan...

Summarizing, the US government is about to send crazed christian fundamentalists to wreak havoc in a city, true to the American army's battleplan in situations like these: "Kill them all and let God sort them out".

Who is the terrorist again?

Letter from the people in Fallujah calling for help to end the bombardment and prevent the threatened assault.

/ massacres / impending /

"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace." - Tacitus

While the occupation forces and the local quislings, prepare for the final onslaught against Fallujah, the people of the city sent this open letter to the Secretary General of the UN. They are pleading for a UN intervention, an intervention that I'm crushed to say will never happen, and even if it does, the slaughter has been pre-decided by people who don't give two fucks about the United Nations or the World.

The few remaining residents are scared and waiting, while the stormtroopers are preparing for the kill.

A symbolic gesture: maybe you'd all like to take a look and sign the World Wide Petition Against the Escalation in Iraq, endorsed by the World Tribunal on Iraq. I know... I know... how's that going to help? but look at this way: you'll be on record opposing these coming atrocities...

Wanna see the real Red States?

/ reds / real /
A brief message of hope for us Reds and fellow travellers, the world over... A red map to enjoy!

Obituaries: "Former President George W. Bush Dead at 72"

/ obituaries / prophetic /
by Greil Marcus
"Policy Review, October 5, 2018--George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, died today at Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. He was 72. The cause of death was announced as heart failure.

Mr. Bush's always controversial presidency left behind a changed nation and a changed world. Taking office in 2001 after a disputed election settled only by a 5-4 decision by a bitterly divided Supreme Court, and decisively reelected in 2004, President Bush led the United States into four wars, oversaw the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare, and enforced a drastic shrinking of elementary, secondary, and collegiate education. He spearheaded the transformation of President Bill Clinton's budget surpluses of 1999 and 2000 into permanent deficits of more than a trillion dollars a year, thus profoundly reducing the amount of capital available to address the needs of the vast majority of citizens and inhibiting the creation of new jobs with any promise of advancement or financial security, while at the same time pursuing tax reductions that increased the differences between the income and assets of, in his own terminology, "owners" and "pre-owners" of "the American ownership society" to extremes almost beyond measure. When he left office, taxation of personal and corporate incomes, while still legally extant, had been effectively replaced by a new payroll tax, so that almost all investment, inheritance, and interest income was left tax-free. "Those with the greatest stake in America," President Bush often said throughout his second term, "have the greatest stake in defending it. Thus we as a nation must do all that we can to ensure that the commitment of those with the greatest stake to the rest of us, a commitment on which our freedom and security rests, only grows greater...."

Meanwhile in another timeline: A Patriot Falls...

Election watch

/ elections / selections /
On Tuesday, OSCE observers called to oversee the elections taking place in the north American republic of Usa (after the serious problems observed in the previous elections), despite finding certain faults and facing some access issues, concluded that voting went smoothly and normally at most precincts.
The result in this embattled country saw the nationalist and christianist "Republican" party - whose leader, George W. Bush, is the son of a former ruler - winning through the support of the fundamentalist hinterland, while the modernizing urban centers and the coasts in general, went heavily for the "Democratic" party candidate. Despite the ferocity of the cultural battle, the majority of the country didn't bother to show up at the polls, pointing to a rather large democratic deficit. The vast masses of the economically destitute and the disaffected youth saw no hope in either candidate, struggling as they are under an asphyxiating neoliberal economic policy, which both candidates, to varying perhaps extent, were certain to continue.

As the elections were polarized, despite the low voter turnout (which however was high by the county's own standards), the defeated modernizers are somewhat dazed by an unexpected defeat, especially since most of the international community was solidly against the Republican leader (and indeed was shocked that he won). There is talk of secession and a redrawing of borders among the disappointed educated classes in Usa, but most regional analysts find these prospects unlikely. The possibility of a brain drain as the younger, more progressive educated classes seek to flee from the close-minded theocrats running the country (much as what has happened in similar cases in Iran and the Arab world), cannot be ruled out, especially considering the anti-rationalist overtones of the ruling party's platform, which has created problems for scientists and researchers in a variety of fields...
The re-elected Republican administration, is forecast to remain steady in its policies of a introducing theocratic elements to government, nationalist jingoism, cronyism, raising inequalities, increasing human rights violations and world domination.

Kirchner and Krugman: a conversation

/ argentina/ economy /
"On May 5, 2004, Argentine president Néstor Kirchner and economics professor Paul Krugman held a conversation about Argentina’s economic predicament. They discussed the crisis of 2001, MERCOSUR, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and Argentina’s economic relations with the United States and the European Union..."

Excerpt:

"NK: ...Now all those who opened the market, who went into these major debt swap programs, and all the things you are aware of, said, “Go and invest in Argentina.” But it was obvious that these people ended up being responsible for much of what happened. When a business goes bankrupt you will sustain losses. Now, Professor, we are told that we need to pay more, but Enron, for instance, went bankrupt in the U.S. and it pays 14 cents for each dollar. So I think we could say that we’re almost extremely generous. We want to pay 25 cents for each dollar..."

Very interesting.

The vanguard of the revolution

/ maoists / reformed /

This was too precious not to post. Below is a picture of Durao Barroso (center, looking down) back in the day (1975), when he was a member of the Maoist MRPP. (Never trust a Stalinist in whatever guise or form, I tell you...)



Picture from the Athens daily Eleftherotypia, taken from the Portugese Visao.

Incidentally Buttiglione can find solace in the Orthodox Church of Greece's Archbishop Christodoulos'good words: he describes him as a "good christian" who was perfectly justified in regarding homosexuality as "a sin before God, although not a criminal offense".

BTW, John Laughland was busy outing other ex-communist members of the commission a month ago...

What next? Zarqawi, bin Laden and Lex Luthor?

/ october surprise / real /
Have you heard? Zarqawi, it is claimed, wrote a letter, pledging allegiance to Osama... As the above linked Asia Times article notes though...

...the letter doesn't make sense when one considers the bitter strategic split between Jordanian Zarqawi and bin Laden. This is the first time ever that al-Tawhid wal-Jihad has even considered abdicating its ruthless sovereignty. The al-Qaeda nucleus is a mix of hardcore Saudi Wahhabis and the Egyptians of Ayman al-Zawahiri's Islamic Jihad. Zarqawi's group contains basically Jordanians, Palestinians and Syrians. They are Salafis, Islamic purists. The incompatibilities are not only ideological, but also methodological: al-Qaeda never attempted kidnappings or beheadings of Muslims. On the other hand, the black and orange brigades in Iraq are growing - these are disgruntled Sunni Iraqis increasingly attracted by the hardcore methods of al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, whose symbol is black and orange.

So one is easily lead to the plausible scenario that:

In the end, this could be merely another US intelligence "black operation". Allawi wants Fallujah to hand him Zarqawi. Fallujah tribal leaders say Zarqawi is not in the city. Now, with alleged "proof" in writing of a Zarqawi-bin Laden link, there are no holds barred to leveling Fallujah. This October surprise from "the land of two rivers" is far from being the last.

OsamaBinLotto

/ terrorist / lotteries /
Given that the Osama bin Laden message was rather underwhelming and a rather poor "October Surprise"... I belatedly bring you... The October Surprise lottery: Osama bin Lotto!
Now that it's kind of late for these predictions (and anyway if anything happens tomorrow it will be the November surprise), you might want to check out the adaptability and inventiveness of online betting!

You pick the time and date among these October Surprises:

• Osama bin Laden captured;

• America attacks Iran ;

• America attacks North Korea ;

• Bush postpones the election.

• Cheney is dumped from the ticket.

This may seem like a goofy sweepstakes but there is a serious intent. The more that people are aware of the “October Surprise” before it happens, the less impact it could have and the less likely it will be to happen at all...

You see, it worked!

Adventure Capitalism

/ iraq / economy / thievery /
Spectacular revelations from Greg Palast about the planned hijack of Iraq's economy by the usual thieves:

In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department. Titled pleasantly, “Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth,” it was part of a larger under-wraps program called “The Iraq Strategy.”

The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state’s “policies, laws and regulations.” Here’s what you’ll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq’s banks and bridges—in fact, “ALL state enterprises”—to foreign operators. There’s more in the Plan, part of which became public when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history’s first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation’s copyright laws.

And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to “privatize” (i.e., sell off) its “oil and supporting industries.” The Plan makes it clear that—even if we didn’t go in for the oil—we certainly won’t leave without it.

If anyone had any doubts... But the nerve of these crooks!