Common Dreams is reporting in Wolfowitz: Iraq War Was About Oil that “at an Asian security summit in Singapore”, Paul Wolfowitz said:

“Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

This is the same guy who was also quoted earlier this week as saying that, in the recent Iraq war, “for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one... [More]”

“What possible justification could we have for going to war with Syria? Oh, I’m just kidding—go right ahead, I don’t care.”

Bombs Away, And Poor Pay by Jimmy Breslin, found on ZNet got me thinking about ways of convincing people without morals that the Bush administration is out of control. It’s quite obvious that a good percentage of the US population is willing to plunk down their hard-earned tax dollars without considering moral issues,... [More]

Congress has finally found something to do; US lawmakers lose patience over spam on the Register reports that:

“US lawmakers finally appear to be losing their patience over spam, with unsolicited e-mail now costing American business billions of dollars every year.”

Isn’t it great that as long as spam was just annoying everyone in the country and hampering our collective ability to make use of the Internet, it was fine to leave legislation out of it and accept spam as an unfortunate side-effect?... [More]

I’m reading The Clash of Fundamentalisms, by Tariq Ali, which includes some great references. One of them is by USMC General Smedley Butler, who served for 33 years in the Marine Corps and received 2 congressional medals of honor. His first book was called War as a Racket, which appears to be reproduced in its entirety at LexRex and HackVan. In a speech in 1933, he explains his position (the text is obtained from Smedley Butler on Interventionism:

“War is just a racket. A racket is best... [More]”

That title is disengenuous. Anyone who’s ever really read comic books knows that comic books have much better dialogue and much better plot than the cheap version of history being served us by this pathetic brigade of fools in charge of the largest weapons store on Earth.

If you didn’t even feel a little bit stupid being American watching Bush strutting around on the deck of that aircraft carrier to “close out the war”, in a flight suit no less, then you obviously weren’t paying attention.
... [More]

I’ve got all of the Bill Hicks albums. I think it would have been really cool to hear what Mr. Hicks had to say about the last two years in America. I think the eeriest part is that you can get an extremely good idea by listening to the albums he record a dozen years ago. You see, he was extremely critical of the first Bush administration, and Republicans and Right-to-lifers and the war in Iraq. Listen to (or read, some are available here at BillHicks.com) his material and you’ll be absolutely... [More]

“More people (4 million) tune in to The Daily Show in a given week than watched Fox news at the height of the war (3.3 million).”

It seems the Daily Show has more fans than I thought. The article rightly points out that it’s Stewart and his brilliant delivery that holds the show together. The reason it appeals is that he doesn’t take sides against policies, he takes sides against stupidity; against illogic; against doublespeak.

“Stewart’s on-air persona is that... [More]”

I was going to write an all gloom-and-doom article (to which I’m sure you’ve grown accustomed), but it seems the war suddenly got a lot easier and it’s become the cake-walk that Rummy and Shrub have been saying it was/would be all along. As US troops steam into Baghdad, meeting “ meeting surprisingly light resistance” (NY Times), does anyone else get a bad feeling? Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, but when it goes from ‘laying siege to Baghdad’ to ‘surprisingly little resistance’, either there’s... [More]

William Bennett (former drug czar) has taken time out of his busy schedule to write an article for FOX News entitled Why We Must Fight − and Now!. He presses the same line that Saddam is a monster and should be removed. Right there with you, Bill. The war is justified because it will liberate the people of Iraq. Bill, the US is about 0-for-50 on ‘liberating’ people and estabilishing democracies. Why should it be different this time?

“ The people of Iraq will soon know what Afghanis know. The... [More]”

earthli will stay remarkably (and perhaps pleasantly) succinct today, letting I should not be allowed to say the following things about America on the Onion explain why. For a guide to proper response to the war, see Rumsfeld’s weekly press gaggle with FOX operatives on Whitehouse.org.

For more context and a good bit of history (and to tie in the article title), I strongly recommend When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History, an article by Thom Hartmann, a historian and writer. The... [More]

As a recent ex-pat, I’ve recently been wishing I could catch the Daily Show every once in a while. Little did I realize what a truly excellent website they have, and what relatively unfettered creative license the folks at that show have. I just checked out a bunch of videos at Daily Show Headlines and other places. (You’ll need RealPlayer to watch the videos, but it’s well worth the free download.)

For great coverage on the recent bill given to the American people for the war and the recent... [More]

Did you catch any recent speeches by George Bush? He’s been giving quite a few lately, ramping up for his 2004 election campagin. First stop − Baghdad. President’s televised address granting Saddam Hussein 48 hours… on WhiteHouse.Org has a translated transcript of one of them, for those of you that have trouble understanding the US President.

“For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have successfully crushed Iraq into the ground with crippling economic sanctions and... [More]”

How are you interpreting the latest news about Iraq? Is it coming across as intended that the US is attempting to liberate the people of Iraq from a terrible dictator in order to bless them with self-imposed government and democracy and must do so in the face of most of the rest of the nations of the world, who are only interested in their own interests and/or are too cowardly to fight? If this is your base opinion, then mission accomplished for the White House spin doctors. Let them know so... [More]

Death Star Doesn’t Work… on Plastic covers the recent announcement by the Bush administration that it is seeking USD$1.5 Billion to fund the Missile Defense Shield deployment. From the article, on the Washington Post (which now seems to have dissappeared — deliberate or ???):

“Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld described the initial plan as “better than nothing,” saying, “The reason I think it’s important to start is because you have to put something in place and get knowledge about it... [More]”

…Bush would be a shoe-in for the next term. Between big federal deficits and cutting programs/funding, almost every state is facing serious budget shortfalls. Who does this affect the most? C’mon, you can guess…remember, he called himself the ‘Education President’ (probably because he still needs to learn how to read). It’s education that’s feeling the first wave of the budget crunches. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes in District’s shortened school year sparks interest elsewhere:

“In... [More]”

What are we in now? Terror-level fuchsia? I preferred the defcon levels myself.. like defcon 4, that sounds good and scary. These color charts are for little kids. Perhaps that should be an indication of what your government considers you capable of. Is there an equivalency chart for terror-alert colors to defcon levels? Let me know.

Remember bomb shelters? Popular Science showed you how to build them. The government told you you were going to die without one. It was all the Soviet Union’s... [More]

Rumsfeld has a list. It’s a list of things that could go wrong in Iraq. It doesn’t mention those things that you think, though. It doesn’t mention risks to troops, or a long, drawn-out war, or the possibility of retaliation here in the States. It does have these things, quoted from the New York Times in SwissInfo’s article, War planners considering risks.

There is “concern about Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction against his own people and blaming it on us [the States]”. This is... [More]

Bush Eases ‘Abortion’ Funding Ban: An Effective Compromise? on Plastic documents a recent announcement from the White House that:

“Any agency that provides treatment for AIDS will get the money, as long as none of the funds are used for family planning purposes or for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in danger.”

This is a step back in policy for the Bush administration, which heretofore has only allowed money to be used to convince kids that sex... [More]

As you’re no doubt aware, yesterday marked the largest number of people ever to march in one day, all over the world. They were marching to prevent war in Iraq. The Sunday Blick (a paper in Switzerland) trumpeted 10,000,000 total from the headlines (“Mehr als zehn Millionen gingen für den Frieden auf die Strasse” (More than ten million march for peace in the streets) from Alle gegen den Krieg in the Sonntags Blick. The New York Newsday only mentioned “millions”, with the NY estimate at “[t]ens of... [More]”

As we have our focus pointed more and more towards the impending war that will be fought no matter what, we necessarily leave small issues like the economy’s shattered wasteland to disappear into our less-focussed peripheral vision. Paul Krugman, an economist of some repute with the NY Times snaps us back to attention in Is the Maestro a Hack?:

“…the fiscal deterioration has reached catastrophic proportions. [The] first budget … projected a 2004 surplus of $262 billion. [The] second budget... [More]”

As you’ve probably already heard in alternately fevered and hushed tones from your local newscaster, Osama bin Laden has graced the world with a new diatribe. As with the other tapes and videos, there are significant doubts as to the veracity of this tape or its origins, of which you will hear next to nothing in the States. The Washington Post has the full transcript in Osama bin Laden Urges Attacks on the U.S.

Thanks For Listening In Again Folks!… on Plastic says the tape came from... [More]

Last night, the dictator of the “free world” gave a speech recorded here in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address at the Washington Post.

Summary

Pardon my cynical attitute, but my general rule of thumb with George Bush speeches is to assume he’s lying whenever his lips move. So, yeah, I exepcted to hear some innaccuracies. However, I didn’t expect the slew of fantastical imaginings this speech turned out to be. I didn’t see the speech (I read the transcript — I find it’s faster and less... [More]

CNN is reporting that Bush declares National Sanctity of Human Life Day. Hey, didn’t we just have one of those last summer? Or has it really been a year already? Or does Bush get to declare many different days “Sanctity of Human Life Day”? I don’t think there’s a gambler in the world who’d take odds that he gets the irony of talking about the sanctity of human life at the same time as mobilizing almost 100,000 troops (is it that many? The numbers are so confusing…) that are getting ready to... [More]

Slashdot is reporting a film submitted to the Online Sundance Film Festival called S-11 Redux: (Channel) Surfing the Apocalypse. It’s about 11 minutes long, has a good beat and you can dance to it. Highlights? Juxtaposing Bush with the banjo player from Deliverance. Also, watching Gephardt saying “[w]e cannot let out our country be run by terrorists”, then cutting to a picture of Bush and son, winking, smiling and waving.

It’s done by Guerrilla News and can be downloaded from there (S-11 Redux).... [More]

For all those who respond to the comparisons to Japanese internment camps and the slaughter of American Indians as phases of American History out of the deep, dark past, never to be repeated, perhaps you should read Hundreds of Muslim Immigrants Rounded Up in Calif. on Yahoo News.

“Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide... [More]”

Can’t Afford AIDS Drugs? Then DIE on Plastic has a discussion about the latest global program that the US has stymied with its single, powerful vote. The article, US blocks cheap drugs agreement on BBC News provides details, mainly that the US voted against the proposal that would make it much easier for “ poor countries to buy cheap drugs” because “US negotiators say the deal would allow too many drugs patents to be ignored.”

Hmmm….save “30 million people … in Sub-Saharan Africa” or line the... [More]

Bush Administration Pushes “Regime Change” in Venezuela on Counterpunch chronicles the continuing sage of US involvement in South America. Chavez is the legally elected president of Venezuela. He was elected with far more of a mandate than George Bush. Despite this, “A recent op-ed in the Washington Post referred to the Chavez government as a ‘dictatorship’” to let the American public know how they should feel about him.

There was already a coup attempt on April 11, and Bush and Co. “ at first... [More]”

I was on the Newsday today, in the World section. Six or seven articles down the page, I’m greeted by this headline, “Experts: Time to Put Cards on Table” which linked to this article, Experts: Time to Put Cards on Table. I was pretty sure I’d missed a big announcement from the UN. the blurb that followed the title was:

“Hoping to convince a skeptical world, the United States went before the United Nations and dramatically presented indisputable evidence that a rogue nation possessed weapons of... [More]”

Read the New York Times these days about the new round of inspections in Iraq and you’ll likely see the U.S. government’s (not it’s people’s) stance toward war in Iraq. They desire it. They want it to happen. When asked what they would like to see happen, the answer is never that they would like to see Hussein disarmed peacefully, they respond that they want to go in and take him out. The war is no only inevitable, it’s not even seen as a last resort for these people.

In Iraq Tells the U.N.... [More]

Arab League Expects Iraq to Comply on the New York Newsday discusses Iraq’s response to the new “United Nations resolution that requires Baghdad to declare and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction.” In addition, neighboring countries in the “…Arab League yesterday urged Hussein to comply with the Security Council resolution”.

“Hussein yesterday ordered Iraq’s 250-member parliament to hold an emergency session today in Baghdad. The legislature is stacked with members of Hussein’s ruling... [More]”