On "The McLaughlin Report" tonight, they showed a list of countries that allow openly
gay people to serve in the military - most developed countries allow them,
including most of W. Europe and Israel.
Pat Buchanan (right wing Catholic that he be) called them
"'de-Christianized' countries"
What a hoot! Only in America.
This country (USA) is so (relative to other developed countries, of course) reactionary.
Un-real.
UPDATE - 032507
---------------------
Well, I read that the Pope issued similar "warnings" about Europe (not about gays) but about Europe being too secular and "individualist", so I have to "blame" it more on Buchanan's right-wing Catholicism than on his "Amerikanism" although I think they're akin, of course.
(And yes, I think there is a healthy national pride and patriotism that 's important - I spell that with a "c".)
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
Ah..so...part two......
Website - http://www.thebushagenda.net/
New York Times
March 13, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?
By ANTONIA JUHASZ
San Francisco
TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.
Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.
Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world — have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.”
A new oil law set to go before the Iraqi Parliament this month would, if passed, go a long way toward helping the oil companies achieve their goal. The Iraq hydrocarbon law would take the majority of Iraq’s oil out of the exclusive hands of the Iraqi government and open it to international oil companies for a generation or more.
In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve. It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.
Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been aggressive in shepherding the oil law toward passage. It is one of the president’s benchmarks for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fact that Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gen. William Casey, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and other administration officials are publicly emphasizing with increasing urgency.
The administration has highlighted the law’s revenue sharing plan, under which the central government would distribute oil revenues throughout the nation on a per capita basis. But the benefits of this excellent proposal are radically undercut by the law’s many other provisions — these allow much (if not most) of Iraq’s oil revenues to flow out of the country and into the pockets of international oil companies.
The law would transform Iraq’s oil industry from a nationalized model closed to American oil companies except for limited (although highly lucrative) marketing contracts, into a commercial industry, all-but-privatized, that is fully open to all international oil companies.
The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known — and all of its as yet undiscovered — fields open to foreign control.
The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development.
The international oil companies could also be offered some of the most corporate-friendly contracts in the world, including what are called production sharing agreements. These agreements are the oil industry’s preferred model, but are roundly rejected by all the top oil producing countries in the Middle East because they grant long-term contracts (20 to 35 years in the case of Iraq’s draft law) and greater control, ownership and profits to the companies than other models. In fact, they are used for only approximately 12 percent of the world’s oil.
Iraq’s neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia maintain nationalized oil systems and have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced.
Iraqis may very well choose to use the expertise and experience of international oil companies. They are most likely to do so in a manner that best serves their own needs if they are freed from the tremendous external pressure being exercised by the Bush administration, the oil corporations — and the presence of 140,000 members of the American military.
Iraq’s five trade union federations, representing hundreds of thousands of workers, released a statement opposing the law and rejecting “the handing of control over oil to foreign companies, which would undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.” They ask for more time, less pressure and a chance at the democracy they have been promised.
Antonia Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International, a watchdog group, is the author of “The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.”
New York Times
March 13, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?
By ANTONIA JUHASZ
San Francisco
TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.
Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.
Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world — have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.”
A new oil law set to go before the Iraqi Parliament this month would, if passed, go a long way toward helping the oil companies achieve their goal. The Iraq hydrocarbon law would take the majority of Iraq’s oil out of the exclusive hands of the Iraqi government and open it to international oil companies for a generation or more.
In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve. It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.
Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been aggressive in shepherding the oil law toward passage. It is one of the president’s benchmarks for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fact that Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gen. William Casey, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and other administration officials are publicly emphasizing with increasing urgency.
The administration has highlighted the law’s revenue sharing plan, under which the central government would distribute oil revenues throughout the nation on a per capita basis. But the benefits of this excellent proposal are radically undercut by the law’s many other provisions — these allow much (if not most) of Iraq’s oil revenues to flow out of the country and into the pockets of international oil companies.
The law would transform Iraq’s oil industry from a nationalized model closed to American oil companies except for limited (although highly lucrative) marketing contracts, into a commercial industry, all-but-privatized, that is fully open to all international oil companies.
The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known — and all of its as yet undiscovered — fields open to foreign control.
The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development.
The international oil companies could also be offered some of the most corporate-friendly contracts in the world, including what are called production sharing agreements. These agreements are the oil industry’s preferred model, but are roundly rejected by all the top oil producing countries in the Middle East because they grant long-term contracts (20 to 35 years in the case of Iraq’s draft law) and greater control, ownership and profits to the companies than other models. In fact, they are used for only approximately 12 percent of the world’s oil.
Iraq’s neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia maintain nationalized oil systems and have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced.
Iraqis may very well choose to use the expertise and experience of international oil companies. They are most likely to do so in a manner that best serves their own needs if they are freed from the tremendous external pressure being exercised by the Bush administration, the oil corporations — and the presence of 140,000 members of the American military.
Iraq’s five trade union federations, representing hundreds of thousands of workers, released a statement opposing the law and rejecting “the handing of control over oil to foreign companies, which would undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.” They ask for more time, less pressure and a chance at the democracy they have been promised.
Antonia Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International, a watchdog group, is the author of “The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.”
Friday, March 09, 2007
Ahh....so....
I think this is a very good and concise explanation, although I would add that oil profiteering and hegemony and control over Central Asian oil fields and pipeline rights-of-way (including those of former Soviet republics) is another prime motivator -
Reprinted from -
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html
How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington – and Launched a War
by Michael Lind
April 10, 2003
America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept the spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did not push for this war any more than it supports the Bush administration's close alliance with Ariel Sharon. Further, President Bush and Vice President Cheney are not genuine "Texas oil men" but career politicians who, in between stints in public life, would have used their connections to enrich themselves as figureheads in the wheat business, if they had been residents of Kansas, or in tech companies, had they been Californians.
Equally wrong is the theory that the American and European civilizations are evolving in opposite directions. The thesis of Robert Kagan, the neoconservative propagandist, that Americans are martial and Europeans pacifist, is complete nonsense. A majority of Americans voted for either Al Gore or Ralph Nader in 2000. Were it not for the overrepresentation of sparsely populated, right-wing states in both the presidential electoral college and the Senate, the White House and the Senate today would be controlled by Democrats, whose views and values, on everything from war to the welfare state, are very close to those of western Europeans.
Both the economic-determinist theory and the clash-of-cultures theory are reassuring: They assume that the recent revolution in U.S. foreign policy is the result of obscure but understandable forces in an orderly world. The truth is more alarming. As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable contingencies – such as the selection rather than election of George W. Bush, and Sept. 11 – the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment.
The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defense intellectuals. (They are called "neoconservatives" because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right.) Inside the government, the chief defense intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. He is the defense mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defense secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, No. 3 at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R. Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the U.S. to Saddam Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned his unpaid chairmanship of a defense department advisory body after a lobbying scandal. Most of these "experts" never served in the military. But their headquarters is now the civilian defense secretary's office, where these Republican political appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers.
Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy." They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.
The neocon defense intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the center of a metaphorical "pentagon" of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think tanks, foundations and media empires. Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) provide homes for neocon "in-and-outers" when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow at AEI). The money comes not so much from corporations as from decades-old conservative foundations, such as the Bradley and Olin foundations, which spend down the estates of long-dead tycoons. Neoconservative foreign policy does not reflect business interests in any direct way. The neocons are ideologues, not opportunists.
The major link between the conservative think tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he cosigned a Jinsa letter that began: "We ... believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces have exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of [the] Palestinian Authority."
The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist." While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush Yasser Arafat's government.
Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots – odd as it seems – in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard – edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) – acts as a mouthpiece for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government. The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-1994) is now funded by Conrad Black, who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada.
Strangest of all is the media network centered on the Washington Times – owned by the South Korean messiah (and ex-convict) the Rev. Sun Myung Moon – which owns the newswire UPI. UPI is now run by John O'Sullivan, the ghostwriter for Margaret Thatcher who once worked as an editor for Conrad Black in Canada. Through such channels, the "gotcha!" style of right-wing British journalism, and its Europhobic substance, have contaminated the US conservative movement.
The corners of the neoconservative pentagon were linked together in the 1990s by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), run by Kristol out of the Weekly Standard offices. Using a P.R. technique pioneered by their Trotskyist predecessors, the neocons published a series of public letters whose signatories often included Wolfowitz and other future members of the Bush foreign policy team. They called for the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq and to support Israel's campaigns against the Palestinians (dire warnings about China were another favorite). During Clinton's two terms, these fulminations were ignored by the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media. Now they are frantically being studied.
How did the neocon defense intellectuals – a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic – manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first – a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process – and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.
Then they had a stroke of luck – Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.
The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and vice president, George W was a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially a northeastern moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents, he converted to Southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American intellectuals, is a feature of the Southern culture.
The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: Last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.
It is not clear that George W fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz and other aides are unfolding. He seems genuinely to believe that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," something the leading neocons say in public but are far too intelligent to believe themselves. The Project for the New American Century urged an invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years, for reasons that had nothing to do with possible links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Public letters signed by Wolfowitz and others called on the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq, to bomb Hezbollah bases in Lebanon, and to threaten states such as Syria and Iran with U.S. attacks if they continued to sponsor terrorism. Claims that the purpose is not to protect the American people but to make the Middle East safe for Israel are dismissed by the neocons as vicious anti-Semitism. Yet Syria, Iran and Iraq are bitter enemies, with their weapons pointed at each other, and the terrorists they sponsor target Israel rather than the U.S. The neocons urge war with Iran next, though by any rational measurement North Korea's new nuclear arsenal is, for the U.S., a far greater problem.
So that is the bizarre story of how neoconservatives took over Washington and steered the U.S. into a Middle Eastern war unrelated to any plausible threat to the U.S. and opposed by the public of every country in the world except Israel. The frightening thing is the role of happenstance and personality. After the al-Qaida attacks, any U.S. president would likely have gone to war to topple bin Laden's Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. But everything that the U.S. has done since then would have been different had America's 18th century electoral rules not given Bush the presidency and had Cheney not used the transition period to turn the foreign policy executive into a PNAC reunion.
For a British equivalent, one would have to imagine a Tory government, with Downing Street and Whitehall controlled by followers of the Rev. Ian Paisley, extreme Euroskeptics, empire loyalists and Blimpish military types – all determined, for a variety of strategic or religious reasons, to invade Egypt. Their aim would be to regain the Suez Canal as the first step in a campaign to restore the British empire. Yes, it really is that weird.
Michael Lind, the Whitehead Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, is the author of Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics.
Reprinted from -
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html
How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington – and Launched a War
by Michael Lind
April 10, 2003
America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept the spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did not push for this war any more than it supports the Bush administration's close alliance with Ariel Sharon. Further, President Bush and Vice President Cheney are not genuine "Texas oil men" but career politicians who, in between stints in public life, would have used their connections to enrich themselves as figureheads in the wheat business, if they had been residents of Kansas, or in tech companies, had they been Californians.
Equally wrong is the theory that the American and European civilizations are evolving in opposite directions. The thesis of Robert Kagan, the neoconservative propagandist, that Americans are martial and Europeans pacifist, is complete nonsense. A majority of Americans voted for either Al Gore or Ralph Nader in 2000. Were it not for the overrepresentation of sparsely populated, right-wing states in both the presidential electoral college and the Senate, the White House and the Senate today would be controlled by Democrats, whose views and values, on everything from war to the welfare state, are very close to those of western Europeans.
Both the economic-determinist theory and the clash-of-cultures theory are reassuring: They assume that the recent revolution in U.S. foreign policy is the result of obscure but understandable forces in an orderly world. The truth is more alarming. As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable contingencies – such as the selection rather than election of George W. Bush, and Sept. 11 – the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment.
The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defense intellectuals. (They are called "neoconservatives" because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right.) Inside the government, the chief defense intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. He is the defense mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defense secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, No. 3 at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R. Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the U.S. to Saddam Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned his unpaid chairmanship of a defense department advisory body after a lobbying scandal. Most of these "experts" never served in the military. But their headquarters is now the civilian defense secretary's office, where these Republican political appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers.
Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy." They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.
The neocon defense intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the center of a metaphorical "pentagon" of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think tanks, foundations and media empires. Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) provide homes for neocon "in-and-outers" when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow at AEI). The money comes not so much from corporations as from decades-old conservative foundations, such as the Bradley and Olin foundations, which spend down the estates of long-dead tycoons. Neoconservative foreign policy does not reflect business interests in any direct way. The neocons are ideologues, not opportunists.
The major link between the conservative think tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he cosigned a Jinsa letter that began: "We ... believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces have exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of [the] Palestinian Authority."
The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist." While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush Yasser Arafat's government.
Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots – odd as it seems – in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard – edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) – acts as a mouthpiece for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government. The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-1994) is now funded by Conrad Black, who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada.
Strangest of all is the media network centered on the Washington Times – owned by the South Korean messiah (and ex-convict) the Rev. Sun Myung Moon – which owns the newswire UPI. UPI is now run by John O'Sullivan, the ghostwriter for Margaret Thatcher who once worked as an editor for Conrad Black in Canada. Through such channels, the "gotcha!" style of right-wing British journalism, and its Europhobic substance, have contaminated the US conservative movement.
The corners of the neoconservative pentagon were linked together in the 1990s by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), run by Kristol out of the Weekly Standard offices. Using a P.R. technique pioneered by their Trotskyist predecessors, the neocons published a series of public letters whose signatories often included Wolfowitz and other future members of the Bush foreign policy team. They called for the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq and to support Israel's campaigns against the Palestinians (dire warnings about China were another favorite). During Clinton's two terms, these fulminations were ignored by the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media. Now they are frantically being studied.
How did the neocon defense intellectuals – a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic – manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first – a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process – and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.
Then they had a stroke of luck – Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.
The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and vice president, George W was a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially a northeastern moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents, he converted to Southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American intellectuals, is a feature of the Southern culture.
The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: Last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.
It is not clear that George W fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz and other aides are unfolding. He seems genuinely to believe that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," something the leading neocons say in public but are far too intelligent to believe themselves. The Project for the New American Century urged an invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years, for reasons that had nothing to do with possible links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Public letters signed by Wolfowitz and others called on the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq, to bomb Hezbollah bases in Lebanon, and to threaten states such as Syria and Iran with U.S. attacks if they continued to sponsor terrorism. Claims that the purpose is not to protect the American people but to make the Middle East safe for Israel are dismissed by the neocons as vicious anti-Semitism. Yet Syria, Iran and Iraq are bitter enemies, with their weapons pointed at each other, and the terrorists they sponsor target Israel rather than the U.S. The neocons urge war with Iran next, though by any rational measurement North Korea's new nuclear arsenal is, for the U.S., a far greater problem.
So that is the bizarre story of how neoconservatives took over Washington and steered the U.S. into a Middle Eastern war unrelated to any plausible threat to the U.S. and opposed by the public of every country in the world except Israel. The frightening thing is the role of happenstance and personality. After the al-Qaida attacks, any U.S. president would likely have gone to war to topple bin Laden's Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. But everything that the U.S. has done since then would have been different had America's 18th century electoral rules not given Bush the presidency and had Cheney not used the transition period to turn the foreign policy executive into a PNAC reunion.
For a British equivalent, one would have to imagine a Tory government, with Downing Street and Whitehall controlled by followers of the Rev. Ian Paisley, extreme Euroskeptics, empire loyalists and Blimpish military types – all determined, for a variety of strategic or religious reasons, to invade Egypt. Their aim would be to regain the Suez Canal as the first step in a campaign to restore the British empire. Yes, it really is that weird.
Michael Lind, the Whitehead Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, is the author of Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Birth of the Blues (Red/Greens, that is)
yeah pre and trans were confused in the hippie/peace/love/rockandroll/yuppie movement - I was in SF around then '69 - saw the schism and misunderstandings manifesting then there - many had gone to the country -
We didn't call it pre/trans confusion, then - and rock and roll was right at the center of that - progressive rock was visionary, psychedelic, planetary visioning, ecological, postmodern - while the raunch and metal were reclaiming our cut off repressed by the European dissociation roots - the pre-rational lower chakras. Confusion ensued - I knew it at the time - and I was always calling for "discrimination" in thought - in separating the big mind larger inclusive AWARE art/culture/society/ devolved anti-intellectual regress to tribalism which were happy indulgences for a while for many since independent thinking is not required. That schizm - disease - in the spiral is a lot of what I'm reading in Ken's "Integral Spirituality" right now. I don't know why, but I'm jumping around; even though I know a lof of the material save the new, this is a book to be read cover to cover I think. More on this after I'm done cover to cover. (I'm going to blog about the Integral Institute - my impressions as a member (albeit a long-distance member via the net and snailmail. in the future.)
Sidebar: I actually hitched a ride to my flat on Fell St. on Stephen's bus - the whole group were going to The (legendary) Farm; Stephen Gaskin's current site apparently, that was the exodus I caught a ride on. They asked me, if I wanted to come. I did, but I said "no", out of fear and all my stuff was in my flat too lol - there was the question of homophobia even in higher-consciousness love groups like them - I was in a new David Bowie postmodern SF - good place (interesting) to come out in - gay lib was alive there then - just born -
We didn't call it pre/trans confusion, then - and rock and roll was right at the center of that - progressive rock was visionary, psychedelic, planetary visioning, ecological, postmodern - while the raunch and metal were reclaiming our cut off repressed by the European dissociation roots - the pre-rational lower chakras. Confusion ensued - I knew it at the time - and I was always calling for "discrimination" in thought - in separating the big mind larger inclusive AWARE art/culture/society/ devolved anti-intellectual regress to tribalism which were happy indulgences for a while for many since independent thinking is not required. That schizm - disease - in the spiral is a lot of what I'm reading in Ken's "Integral Spirituality" right now. I don't know why, but I'm jumping around; even though I know a lof of the material save the new, this is a book to be read cover to cover I think. More on this after I'm done cover to cover. (I'm going to blog about the Integral Institute - my impressions as a member (albeit a long-distance member via the net and snailmail. in the future.)
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Take Action - an important 30 second phone call you can make!
Ask Merrill Lynch to Stop Funding TXU
Texas utility company TXU hopes to build 11 new coal-fired power plants, but first it needs to raise $11 billion to finance the proposed plants. The Texas plants are part of a growth strategy that could make TXU the biggest single corporate greenhouse gas polluter in the United States.
Merrill Lynch is one of the banks helping TXU underwrite this project. We need you to call and tell them to stop helping TXU destroy our climate.
Call Merrill Lynch's Chief Executive Officer E. Stanley O'Neal and ask him to stop helping TXU build these dirty coal plants.
Link to phone number and message -
http://ga3.org/campaign/call_merrill_txu
Ok - I admit that I rant....
40 Years of Mauna Loa CO2 Data from Keeling
BUT....anger at greed and ignorance is part of action - these guys ain't gonna give up power easily, but I'm encouraged that more large corps are beginning to address g.w. - just hope it's not spin and lip-service -
"This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a battalion of intergalactic smoking missiles." - article
I'm not putting all the blame here, but a a large enough chunk of it., that's for sure:
The same Big Oil&Gas, Big Money, Big Mil/Indust. elite plutocracy that has been screwing the country and the planet economically and with wars like Iraq, etc. etc., for the last 40 years and more (the CheneyBush gang are prominent players) has been suppressing and retarding awareness and solutions in clean sustainable technology, non-carbon based, non greenhouse gas emitting energy sources and systems, for the last 40+ years (and we've been aware of this problem for that long.)
The short sighted greedy carbon pirates have brought us to this crisis, imo.
One is always reading recommendations for impeachment of Bush at progressive sites, a sentiment I'm sympathetic to, so, I'd like to call them (given the problem has been evident since ecology and the postmodern era dawned in the late sixties - Traitors to the earth, not just to the U.S. - I'll give them only so much slack as head-in-the-sand ignorants, not much, given they are supposed to be the best and the brightest (we know Cheney is no genius) - - these latter day greedy myopic Neros wanted to fill their pockets, while the earth burned!
For this active suppression of awareness and solutions they might be happier in other fires in other realms.
If there were a Planetary court, they would be up for treason.
Thank you, you reactionary carbon pirates!
STOP GLOBAL WARMING SITE
WHAT YOU CAN DO - GREEN YOUR LIFE(STYLE)
TRANSCRIPT - NOVA'S DIMMING THE SUN
BUT....anger at greed and ignorance is part of action - these guys ain't gonna give up power easily, but I'm encouraged that more large corps are beginning to address g.w. - just hope it's not spin and lip-service -
"This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a battalion of intergalactic smoking missiles." - article
I'm not putting all the blame here, but a a large enough chunk of it., that's for sure:
The same Big Oil&Gas, Big Money, Big Mil/Indust. elite plutocracy that has been screwing the country and the planet economically and with wars like Iraq, etc. etc., for the last 40 years and more (the CheneyBush gang are prominent players) has been suppressing and retarding awareness and solutions in clean sustainable technology, non-carbon based, non greenhouse gas emitting energy sources and systems, for the last 40+ years (and we've been aware of this problem for that long.)
The short sighted greedy carbon pirates have brought us to this crisis, imo.
One is always reading recommendations for impeachment of Bush at progressive sites, a sentiment I'm sympathetic to, so, I'd like to call them (given the problem has been evident since ecology and the postmodern era dawned in the late sixties - Traitors to the earth, not just to the U.S. - I'll give them only so much slack as head-in-the-sand ignorants, not much, given they are supposed to be the best and the brightest (we know Cheney is no genius) - - these latter day greedy myopic Neros wanted to fill their pockets, while the earth burned!
For this active suppression of awareness and solutions they might be happier in other fires in other realms.
If there were a Planetary court, they would be up for treason.
Thank you, you reactionary carbon pirates!
STOP GLOBAL WARMING SITE
WHAT YOU CAN DO - GREEN YOUR LIFE(STYLE)
TRANSCRIPT - NOVA'S DIMMING THE SUN
Friday, January 19, 2007
Bush sink
Shrub, sock-marionette of BigOilBigMoney descends the evolutionary spiral to his true level -
....falling, falling, falling......
....falling, falling, falling......
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Youtube vid - preview of "Dimming the Sun"
Preview vid of DIMMING THE SUN
I'm posting this (the preview is new) again; I feel awareness of this is so widely needed.
My first upload to youtube.
Another summary of the documentary -
NOVA special on a newly discovered factor that may mean we have much less time than previously thought to do anything about runaway global warming.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Juicy Satori?
Until I was musing off the cuff yesterday about the Hopper painting, I'd never seen "lush" and "Zen" together. It's somewhat of a miss-the-mark "diss" to the Spirit of Clear Light Void and Natural (with a capital "N") Zen, but I put them together, without deliberation in describing the Hopper, and I like the pairing as maybe a paradoxical trope for sensual pleasure in bliss. or just for a fun mindmovie"set" to co-create in if you're into living-art the art of living.
Besides, there is a lushness of sorts in the detail and exquisite clarity one can find in illumined nature (organic) and of course Nature (bigMind/bigSpace) in Zen.
Upward and onward not downward and backward
Sun in an Empty Room (1963) - Edward Hopper
Maybe not the preeminent symbol of the sun of Voltaire, (with its luminous and lush stillness it appoaches an American transrational Light perhaps zen, much further up the Spiral than reason), but I love this painting - just came across a net image of it - had never seen this Hopper - gorgeous!
The sun of the European enlightenment (the age of reason) -
One of my favorite quotes to use as a signature in my posts around the net is the following one from Ray Harris at a very good site - Frank Visser's "Integral World" site (a good companion one to Ken Wilber's site - and to Integral Institute site
(you can be the judge in the "shootout" scrap they got into there) -
"We are seeing a return of the tyranny of religion. We must complete the task of the Enlightenment for once and all. Only when the Enlightenment is firmly established can we shift upward to a greater vision of humanity." - Ray Harris
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Two comments to the Marty Kaplan piece reprinting
People are definitely catching on, now.
I'm going to re-print two comments to the Kaplan post (SEE MY POST JUST BELOW THIS WITH LINK to Kaplan post at huffpo) made today -
this one from "Ludwiga" -
Bush cannot leave. He made such a mess out of Iraq that the departure of the American military will probably lead to a three way split. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are going to take over the three parts. It will be the first time that the Middle East is going to be ruled by locals not by Europeans, Russians or Americans.
That is not in the oil interest of Bush/Cheney. Bush is so cornered, he is desperate. I am worried that he is going to attack Iran, just because he cannot solve Iraq.
By: Ludwiga on January 10, 2007 at 01:42am
and this strong comment (also to the Kaplan Post) by "sundialsvc4" -
If the truth be known .. and LET it be known, at last .. he only needs the idolum of "an Iraqi government" sufficient to execute an agreement that will hand 75% of the oil revenues of Iraq to American companies for the next 30 years!
A prize of war ... worth trillions of dollars.
A prize of war ... worth spening a trillion dollars to get (they also get to keep most of this money!); and a million American and Iraqi lives; and, this purely by accident and neglect, the City of New Orleans.
Realizing that their schemes are running out of time, and that Bush's (and Cheney's) own tenure in the office may soon come to an end, the oil-barons are dropping all pretenses and becoming ruthless. Proclamations are being issued trying to grab the Alaska oil-fields; troops are being deployed "anyway"; naval ships are being maneuvered into position.
The blinders are ripped away. The sheep's clothing, discarded. Gone are all pretenses of "representing the American people." Their strategems are, at long long last, exposed, but their venom is not yet spent. These men can still be very, very deadly.
By: sundialsvc4 on January 10, 2007 at 11:21am
Wow! Scary!--both of them!
America is waking up. from 100 yrs of oil dominance and dark deeds (I hope). Thank Spirit for blogs and the net.
I'm going to re-print two comments to the Kaplan post (SEE MY POST JUST BELOW THIS WITH LINK to Kaplan post at huffpo) made today -
this one from "Ludwiga" -
Bush cannot leave. He made such a mess out of Iraq that the departure of the American military will probably lead to a three way split. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are going to take over the three parts. It will be the first time that the Middle East is going to be ruled by locals not by Europeans, Russians or Americans.
That is not in the oil interest of Bush/Cheney. Bush is so cornered, he is desperate. I am worried that he is going to attack Iran, just because he cannot solve Iraq.
By: Ludwiga on January 10, 2007 at 01:42am
and this strong comment (also to the Kaplan Post) by "sundialsvc4" -
If the truth be known .. and LET it be known, at last .. he only needs the idolum of "an Iraqi government" sufficient to execute an agreement that will hand 75% of the oil revenues of Iraq to American companies for the next 30 years!
A prize of war ... worth trillions of dollars.
A prize of war ... worth spening a trillion dollars to get (they also get to keep most of this money!); and a million American and Iraqi lives; and, this purely by accident and neglect, the City of New Orleans.
Realizing that their schemes are running out of time, and that Bush's (and Cheney's) own tenure in the office may soon come to an end, the oil-barons are dropping all pretenses and becoming ruthless. Proclamations are being issued trying to grab the Alaska oil-fields; troops are being deployed "anyway"; naval ships are being maneuvered into position.
The blinders are ripped away. The sheep's clothing, discarded. Gone are all pretenses of "representing the American people." Their strategems are, at long long last, exposed, but their venom is not yet spent. These men can still be very, very deadly.
By: sundialsvc4 on January 10, 2007 at 11:21am
Wow! Scary!--both of them!
America is waking up. from 100 yrs of oil dominance and dark deeds (I hope). Thank Spirit for blogs and the net.
Many of us saw this in 2002 also - what a waste it's all been
.....except, of course for now super-rich the Defense Contractors and Big Oil Big Money elite....
Terrific post at huffpo, (especially to read today after Shrub's speech tonight) -
Terrific post at huffpo, (especially to read today after Shrub's speech tonight) -
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
msg to Dems in Congress
That's right - it's our failing "takeover" of Iraq and installing a puppet gov't and permanet 'security" bases there ) is/has been almost all to do with an oil grab and a hegemony (powergrab) play in the region, and NOW with internet speed of info sharing, it's becoming transparently so, or at least translucently so, so that it's harder to hide those articles recently in The U.K. Independent and other voices exposing what's behind the curtain.
No blood sacrifice for the enrichment of a few oil-a-garchs and Halliburton huns. Their day has been with us for 100 years - time for them to quit and go away - the planet will not sink to black climate catastophe, while these reactionaries play with their zillions.
Dems join the green future - it's not kooky or avant garde, anymore, it's CRITICAL FOR ECOLOGICAL AND MORAL and plain SURVIVAL reasons, not to mention a saner more peaceful progressing Planet/culture/society/life for all of us and our children
The Carbon Age is the Dark Age (of profiteering and lies ,too) - now,
It must pass to The Clean Renewable Energy Age - damn the old carbon oligarchs for retarding this for the last 30+ years.
Dems - Withhold funds - do it!
"The Independent" (UK) articles re "Spoils of War" 010709
No blood sacrifice for the enrichment of a few oil-a-garchs and Halliburton huns. Their day has been with us for 100 years - time for them to quit and go away - the planet will not sink to black climate catastophe, while these reactionaries play with their zillions.
Dems join the green future - it's not kooky or avant garde, anymore, it's CRITICAL FOR ECOLOGICAL AND MORAL and plain SURVIVAL reasons, not to mention a saner more peaceful progressing Planet/culture/society/life for all of us and our children
The Carbon Age is the Dark Age (of profiteering and lies ,too) - now,
It must pass to The Clean Renewable Energy Age - damn the old carbon oligarchs for retarding this for the last 30+ years.
Dems - Withhold funds - do it!
"The Independent" (UK) articles re "Spoils of War" 010709
Causal-Overmind-Formless Liberation Ultraviolet holon(/level)-Pre/Non Dual-Ultimate Supermind Clear Light full relased wholeMindBody Enlightenment
"When I am not an object, I am God. When I seek an object, I cease to be God, and that castrophe can never be corrected by more searching for more objects. Rather, I can only rest as the Witness, which is already free of objects, free of time, and free of searching. When I am not an object, I am Spirit. When I rest as the free and formless Witness, I am with God right now, in this timeless and endless moment. I taste infinity and am drenched with fullness, precisely because I no longer seek, but simply rest as what I AM."
- Ken Wilber, "The Eye of Spirit" (1997)
Monday, January 08, 2007
I don't think is conspiracy-nutcase stuff, at all - I believe it
Since I discovered this page and author the other day from a link from another commenter at huffpo, I've been meaning to post the link here.
Must-reading IMO -
The New U.S. British Oil Imperialism by Norman D. Livergood -
link -
http://www.hermes-press.com/impintro1.htm
Must-reading IMO -
The New U.S. British Oil Imperialism by Norman D. Livergood -
link -
http://www.hermes-press.com/impintro1.htm
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Iraq - Integral musings and angry rants
The following is in dissent to the p.c. relativistic, developmental/holarch denying (level, hierarchy denying) flatland pluralism favored by progressives (although I don't know how anyone can say sectarian rivalry is preferable to republican tolerance, not to mention pluralistic democracy; instead, as a progressive, I propose a depth-based integral pluralism taken largely from Ken Wilber's integral ideas that recognizes levels of development without imperialistic intent or attitude. but to help the whole planetary community find the healthiest ways for multiple cultures and societies to grow and harmonize and cooperate in alleviating and healing planet wide critical issues, such as, obviously, global warming, and in facilitating the healthiest expressions of the spiral of development, wherever along particular countries/cultures/societies are:
See -
"Integral Spirituality" by Ken Wilber
See -
"Integral Spirituality" by Ken Wilber
I don't know if 90% of (the) Iraq(is) is(are) (collectively and leadership-wise) mentally, culturally, socially, developed enough, far enough along, at this point, enlightened enough, to be ABLE to agree on and live harmoniously in a pluralistic national democracy, i.e. rise above their sectarian level to a larger collective identity.
That is, to use Ken Wilber's designated levels, Saddam kept the country socially at the power gods/mythic levels; culturally that correlates in the social quadrant to feudal empires/early nations; they haven't even had an established time for the next level, the scientific-rational (culturally)/the corporate state (socially), much less develop to the pluralistic level of culture/social correlate-value communities (what true progressives are trying to grow and model now, i.e. green planetary information care/connected communities).
Saddam certainly retarded this growth with his Stalinist heavy oppression, which kept Iraq at a standstill as far as social and cultural growth. Because of that and other factors, Iraq may have to become three states based on ethnicity.
The M.I. BigOil BigMoney (led by the neo-cons) elite want(ed) a puppet Iraq to keep bases in and grab Iraq's considerable oil and have ways to control crucial pipelines serving Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Armenia, et al [the next big prize]), and to keep Russia and China (not to mention Iran) from getting much of it -- Cheney's big obsession for many many years. They ignored (were ignorant of) the cultural and social map-WITH-DEPTH of Iraq. Anyone who sees in depth saw the levels that Iraq was at and doubted whether a pluralistic democracy was feasible yet.
Now the BigOil/BigMoney elite is shocked that we couldn't puppet this one. They have short term memories (Vietnam) But they've made millions already. They just hope the world doesn't get too hot before they die, and can spend their millions and millions in plunder. They've helped us, to a large degree, endanger the Planet's well being, by purposefully retarding and blocking green solutions that enlightened people have wanted for 36 years.
Reactionary - if that's the definition of evil - they are it.
Reactionary - if that's the definition of evil - they are it.
BTW - This has nothing to do with "terrorism" - that's always been a red herring, and in other ways too.
---------
I don't think Iraq CAN be held together as one nation, now. It should be divided into three. Bushco will have to figure out (and are if you read the news) contingent ways to get their hands on th oil and gas there and on agreements that give BigWesternOilandM.I.monies pipeline rights of way in that region for other central Asia spoils.
Sadaam held together three "countries" by force. Now that he's gone, there's not the consciousness nor intent (enough) by the Iraqis to form one pluralistic nation. Give it up Bushco. You've done more than enough damage, there and here.
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