De Bush Bende 28

'The Rumsfeld Memo: “I was just about to change everything….Really!?!”
By Mike Whitney.

By now, everyone has heard about Rumsfeld’s memo. It was leaked to the New York Times supposedly without Rumsfeld’s knowledge. It makes the case that Rumsfeld was just about to make major changes in Iraq because he could see that the strategy was failing and had created a disaster. Everything about the memo reeks of deception. In fact, the Times even admits that, “Rumsfeld may have been trying to shape the coming discussion and present himself as open to ‘change’”. Why? Because, according to the article, “President Bush interviewed Texas A&M University President Robert Gates as a potential successor to Rumsfeld a day before the midterm elections.” Do you think that Rummy, who controls 80% of the US intelligence budget and listens in to the conversations of Quakers, antiwar protestors, and other unsuspecting citizens knew that he was going to be canned? You bet he did. And now he’s rewriting history to cast himself as a flexible and open-minded military leader who could change course when the situation warranted. It’s just another way of patching together a legacy before tottering off into retirement. Nothing Rumsfeld says can be trusted. He spies on Americans’ phone calls, computers, medical records, bank records and groups. He has been a stanch supporter of planting propaganda in newspapers and TV. He introduced a program that created a “rapid response” team to rebut information that is critical of US foreign policy appearing on blogs, web-sites and letters to the editor. He controlled the flow of information coming out of Iraq and managed to silence many of the war’s critics. He developed a plan for “Total Information Awareness” that is designed to control everything that the public sees and hears from cradle to grave. Now he is trying to write his own legacy. It is just another in a long list of deceptions; a smokescreen created to conceal his responsibility in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.'

Lees verder: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15816.htm

Mohammed R. Jabri 5

Mohammed Jabri schrijft het volgende:

'De viering van genocide (over Thanksgiving).

Het is een jaarlijkse sport voor Amerikanen geworden om zichzelf net zo vol te proppen tijdens de nationale feestdag ‘Thanksgiving’ als dat ze hun kalkoenen op diezelfde dag vullen. Thanksgiving is een typisch Amerikaanse feestdag. Sterker nog, het is niet alleen een feestdag maar, zoals de ethymologie al impliceert, één van de heilige dagen die bijna universeel gevierd wordt door de Amerikanen. Binnen de kaders van die heilige dag komen hele families en gezinnen in feite bijeen om – al dan niet bewust – de ene genocide te vieren (de genocide tegen de Indianen) door de andere genocide uit te voeren (die tegen de kalkoenen). Kunnen de Amerikanen dit in goed geloof en bij volledig bewustzijn van het geheel vieren?
Ik stel mezelf even voor dat ik een Amerikaan ben:
Op Thanksgiving zijn we dankbaar. We zijn dankbaar voor het feit dat we een invasie hebben uitgevoerd en de plaatselijke bevolkingsgroepen (alle indianenstammen) bijna hebben uitgeroeid. We zijn dankbaar voor het feit dat we dominante, hebberige, gulzige, kolonialiserende dieven zijn, dankzij de uitgevoerde genocide en ontkennen ons eigen imperialistisch op een nulsaldo gebaseerd moordspel. Zoals Mark Twain al zei in zijn Oorlogsgedicht: "hopen op en dankbaar zijn voor het eigen succes en overwinningen is hetzelfde als hopen op en dankbaar zijn voor het verlies en destructie van een ander". Moet je dit soort dankbaarheid en hoop als Amerikaan nou eigenlijk wel willen?
De Libanese dichter Kahlil Gibran verklaarde ooit: "het is de eer van de vermoorde dat hij niet de moordenaar is". Dat is misschien wel zo, maar het is een nogal moeilijk te verteren eer. De indianen die het 500 jaar durende genocideplan van gevluchte Europeanen hebben overleefd behoren tot de armste etnische minderheid in het rijkste land ter wereld. Elk jaar komt op Thanksgiving een groep indianen bijeen, aan de voet van de rots ‘Plymouth Rock’ om in gemeenschap te rouwen om al het verlies dat zij hebben geleden, zowel in persoonlijke als in materiële en culturele zin. Waar zou je als Amerikaan nou eigenlijk voor geëerd willen worden? Welke eer zijn Amerikanen nou eigenlijk dankbaar voor?
Het is ooit oprecht door de indianen gevraagd: "waarom zou je iets met geweld nemen, dat je met alle liefde ook kunt krijgen?" Christopher Columbus schreef in zijn persoonlijk logboek dat toen hij arriveerde in ‘the America’s’, hij zich vooral verwonderde. De Arawaken (oorspronkelijke bewoners van Guyana en Suriname, alsmede de omringende eilanden) kwamen met nieuwsgierige vreugde hun stranden op om de Europese vreemdelingen te begroeten. Deze Arawaken (die door Columbus werden verward met de indianen) waren in ieder denkbaar aspect vredelievende mensen, bereid om alles wat zij hadden te delen en boden in een roes hun emotionele vriendelijkheid en fysieke objecten aan. Columbus omschreef op deze manier hoe bewonderenswaardig de gastvrijheid was van deze mensen. Volledig onschuldig van gebruik van wapens en geweld reikten de Arawaken hun armen uit om de voor hun vreemde, glimmende objecten die de Spanjaarden en Portugezen als zwaarden gebruikten te kunnen aanraken. Arawaken werkten maar een paar uur per dag, om hun resterende tijd te kunnen benutten om te relaxen, hun sociale contacten verbeteren en hun cultuur te helpen vormen op een wijze die voor een ieder van hun het beste uitkwam. Columbus vertelde ook hoe de Arawaken geen schaamte kenden omdat ze bijna naakt rondliepen en de liefde bedreven wanneer zij dat maar wilden. Met de kleine hoeveelheid goud die op hun eiland aanwezig was, fabriceerden zij sieraden waarmee zij zichzelf decoreerden. Zoals het geval is met alle inheemse volkeren die een naar Europese maatstaven contactgestoorde samenleving vormden, leefden ook de Arawaken in Utopia. Kunnen Amerikanen dankbaar zijn voor het leven in een utopische samenleving? Of zijn ze dankbaar voor het feit dat ze er 1 hebben vernietigd? Misschien zijn ze wel dankbaar voor het feit dat ze zoveel dodelijke wapens hebben. Of toch voor het verlangen naar goud, zowel actueel als metaforisch?'

Lees verder: http://www.elqalem.nl/elqalem/aspx/template.aspx?item_id=1244&category_id=46&group_id=24

Nederland en Afghanistan 113

Terwijl de Nederlandse pers en politiek doorsnurken, bericht Der Spiegel:

'The Taliban Gets Closer to Kabul.
A report from the German military, the Bundeswehr, warns that the Taliban is approaching Kabul and that attacks on the capital city are likely to increase. Security in nearby districts is already deteriorating.
The regeneration of the Taliban -- which has retaken control of parts of southern Afghanistan -- is no longer fresh news to anyone. But are the insurgent forces preparing to launch a series of attacks on the capital city of Kabul, which is home to peacekeeping troops, the Afghan government and non-government organizations that are helping to rebuild the war-torn country?
The leadership of Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, fear that Taliban attacks on the Afganistan capital of Kabul will likely increase in the coming months. According to a classified report on the state of Afghanistan obtained by SPIEGEL, "militant opposition forces" have made it clear that they will focus fighting during the winter "on the country's largest cities."
The security situation has already "visibly deteriorated" in two districts located just 10 kilometers from Kabul's city limits -- to the point that Afghan security forces don't even dare to patrol the streets at night. The report warned that Taliban fighters could use the district as "gateways" to Kabul and also as place where they could stage future attacks.
According to the report, Taliban fighters are smuggled into the districts in small "groups of up to eight men," and they often blend in with the population by staying in the homes of local residents for several days at a time.
In a separate development, NATO troops fired on civilians after a suicide car bomb exploded next to their convoy on Sunday. The suicide blast in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, killed two civilians and injured ten outhers, including three British soldiers. NATO spokesman Maj. Luke Knittig said that as the patrol was driving away from the scene they saw a car they feared might contain a second suicide bomber. At least one civilian was killed and nine were injured during the ensuing shooting.'

Zie: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,452290,00.html

Nederland en Afghanistan 112

Zoals te verwachten was begint de Taliban nu robuust op te treden tegen de bezettende NAVO-macht. De strijd in Irak is definitief verloren. Nu maar eens kijken hoelang de NAVO troepen beseffen dat ze verloren hebben.

Reuters bericht:

'Taliban repel British assault in south Afghanistan.
GARMSER, Afghanistan (Reuters) - British Marines attacked a Taliban-held valley in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday but withdrew after a ferocious counterattack that withstood air strikes and artillery fire, witnesses said.
One Royal Marine was killed and a second wounded during the battle, the UK Helmand Task Force (UKTF) said.
Scores of soldiers ran across a bridge over the Helmand River under a full moon shortly before daybreak and began sweeping south through wheatfields in the south of the province, the opium center of the world's major producer.
A Reuters cameraman said the Marines initially faced only sporadic resistance but when they advanced, Taliban fighters launched a ferocious, organized riposte with heavy weapons and tried to outflank the British troops.
The fierce resistance illustrated the challenges facing the NATO troops in Afghanistan where they are trying to subdue well-armed Taliban and other militants bolstered by profits from a record opium crop, according to Afghan and foreign officials.'

Lees verder:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-12-05T190122Z_01_L05724251_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-BRITAIN-ASSAULT.xml

Het Olierijke Venezuela 3

Vroeger vloeiden de petrodollars van Venezuela onmiddellijk terug naar VS, om ermee te speculeren in aandelen of onroerend goed, zoals dat nog steeds gebeurt met de petrodollars uit de arabische olieproducerende landen. Maar nu gebruikt de Venezolaanse president de oliedollars voor financiele steun aan arme Latijnsamerikaanse landen en de ongeveer 40 miljoen mensen in de VS, die onder de armoedegrens leven. Dat maakt Chavez buitengewoon gehaat bij de westerse politieke en economische elite.

'Chavez uses petro-dollars to help the poor - in America.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Hugo Chavez coasted to another six-year term as Venezuela's president on the strength of petro-dollars and promises to spread more of his country's oil wealth to the poor.
But as Chavez struggles to alleviate poverty for eight million of his own citizens, the 52-year-old leftist leader is using his oil riches in an unlikely way - by paying the winter heating bills for hundreds of thousands of underprivileged Americans.
Even as Chavez demonized the United States as an evil imperialist empire during campaign events leading to his re-election Sunday, Venezuela's state-owned oil company renewed a deal to provide 40 per cent discounts on furnace oil to 400,000 people in 15 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
The act of generosity is dismissed by Chavez's critics as pure propaganda - an attempt to embarrass the Bush administration - and it is drawing mixed reaction among Venezuelans.
''I think he is just giving the money away,'' huffs Carmen Herrara, a retiree who lives in a suburb of east Caracas. ''There is a lot of poverty in this country that needs to be solved first.''
The heating-oil program offered by Venezuelan-owned Citgo is but one element of an incredibly complex, carrot-and-stick relationship Chavez and the U.S. have with each other, one revolving predominantly around the politics and economics of oil.
Chavez won Sunday with 61 per cent of the vote.
In Washington, the Bush administration expressed hope the U.S. could improve relations with Venezuela even though Chavez called his victory another "defeat for the devil."
Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said "we hope that we could have a positive constructive relationship" with Chavez in the future.
"There are, of course, well-reported frictions on some issues. From our standpoint, there don't have to be any frictions," said McCormack, who added the U.S. was awaiting reports from international election observers before passing final judgement on the election.
Chavez had rankled President George W. Bush in August 2005 when he offered to ship emergency fuel supplies to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.'

Lees verder:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=843b9ec3-c8a3-40ef-99c0-9bb017568503&k=419

The Empire 77

Een beeld van The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

'This still photo from a video obtained by The New York Times shows Jose Padilla’s forced isolation and sensory deprivation, including the use of blinders and sound dampeners as he is moved from his cell.

Becoming What We Despise.
By Robert Scheer Truthdig.com.

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, has been tortured by his own government for the better part of three-and-one-half years, suffering years of systematic sensory deprivation documented in his attorneys' filings and supported by photos of the prisoner published this week by the New York Times.
In that time, Padilla, who has been judged by professionals as mentally ill as a consequence of his brutal treatment, has been denied his Constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial and was permitted no legal representation for 21 months. The Bush administration's excuse for this betrayal of our legal system was that Padilla was a dangerous al Qaeda agent, a big fish caught in the administration's successful pursuit of its much ballyhooed war on terror. In the words of then-U.S. Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, Padilla was "a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States." Those lurid claims were abandoned when the government, faced with a belated U.S. Supreme Court censure, finally charged Padilla with vague and lesser crimes carrying a maximum 15-year sentence.
Were this some isolated case of officially condoned sadism, say in a rural county jail, it could be minimized as an aberration. Instead, it is an all-too-accurate reflection of a presidential policy of dehumanizing anyone even suspected of being an enemy. The Times photos, taken from a government video, give evidence of a heavily manacled prisoner with masked eyes and muffled ears being walked down a corridor within a Navy brig, lending physical evidence to Padilla's lawyer's claims of a pattern of disorienting isolation. "There is nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement," Philip D. Cave, a former Navy judge advocate general, told the Times.
Obviously, a prisoner who has been deliberately disorientated for so long is no longer in a position to exercise his right to confront his accusers. An examining psychiatrist wrote that "as the result of his experience during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness ... complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation."
The excuse for this heinous treatment of a U.S. citizen is the same as that given for an entire orgy of despicable treatment of prisoners held in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and a gulag archipelago of secret military facilities around the world: Our enemies, all linked through sophistry to the 9/11 terror attacks, are so vile and dangerous that the limitations on government power enshrined in our guiding documents and political culture no longer apply. Once the Twin Towers were knocked down, supposedly, we could no longer afford to be "nice guys" - as if the rule of law is an indulgence of only the most secure nations.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120606E.shtml

De Commerciele Massamedia 16

'Media Sham for Iraq War - It's Happening Again.

By Norman Solomon t r u t h o u t Guest Contributer

Wednesday 06 December 2006
The lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has become notorious in the annals of American journalism. Even many reporters, editors and commentators who fueled the drive to war in 2002 and early 2003 now acknowledge that major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war.
But it's happening again.
The current media travesty is a drumbeat for the idea that the US war effort must keep going. And again, in its news coverage, the New York Times is a bellwether for the latest media parade to the cadence of the warfare state.
During the run-up to the invasion, news stories repeatedly told about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, while the Times and other key media outlets insisted that their coverage was factually reliable. Now the same media outlets insist that their coverage is analytically reliable.
Instead of authoritative media information about aluminum tubes and mobile weapons labs, we're getting authoritative media illumination of why a swift pullout of US troops isn't realistic or desirable. The result is similar to what was happening four years ago - a huge betrayal of journalistic responsibility.
The WMD spin was in sync with official sources and other establishment-sanctified experts, named and unnamed. The anti-pullout spin is in sync with official sources and other establishment-sanctified experts, named and unnamed.
During the weeks since the midterm election, the New York Times's news coverage of Iraq policy options has often been heavy-handed, with carefully selective sourcing for prefab conclusions. Already infamous is the November 15 front-page story by Michael Gordon under the headline "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say." A similar technique was at play December 1 with yet another "News Analysis," this time by reporter David Sanger, headlined "The Only Consensus on Iraq: Nobody's Leaving Right Now."
Typically in such reportage, the sources harmonizing with the media outlet's analysis are chosen from the cast of political characters who helped drag the United States into making war on Iraq in the first place.
What's going on now in mainline news media is some kind of repetition compulsion. And, while media professionals engage in yet another round of conformist opportunism, many people will pay with their lives.
With so many prominent American journalists navigating their stories by the lights of big Washington stars, it's not surprising that so much of the news coverage looks at what happens in Iraq through the lens of the significance for American power.
Viewing the horrors of present-day Iraq with star-spangled eyes, New York Times reporters John Burns and Kirk Semple wrote - in the lead sentence of a front-page "News Analysis" on November 29 - that "American military and political leverage in Iraq has fallen sharply."
The second paragraph of the Baghdad-datelined article reported: "American fortunes here are ever more dependent on feuding Iraqis who seem, at times, almost heedless to American appeals."
The third paragraph reported: "It is not clear that the United States can gain new traction in Iraq ..."
And so it goes - with US media obsessively focused on such concerns as "American military and political leverage," "American fortunes," and whether "the United States can gain new traction in Iraq."
With that kind of worldview, no wonder so much news coverage is serving nationalism instead of journalism.'

Zie: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120606L.shtml