Robert Fisk 18

Robert Fisk schrijft:

'The Empire Is Falling.

The Roman Empire is falling. That, in a phrase, is what the Baker report says. The legions cannot impose their rule on Mesopotamia.
Just as Crassus lost his legions' banners in the deserts of Syria-Iraq, so has George W Bush. There is no Mark Antony to retrieve the honour of the empire. The policy "is not working". "Collapse" and "catastrophe" - words heard in the Roman senate many a time - were embedded in the text of the Baker report. Et tu, James?
This is also the language of the Arab world, always waiting for the collapse of empire, for the destruction of the safe Western world which has provided it with money, weapons, political support. First, the Arabs trusted the British Empire and Winston Churchill, and then they trusted the American Empire and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Truman and Eisenhower administrations and all the other men who would give guns to the Israelis and billions to the Arabs - Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Bush...
And now they are told that the Americans are not winning the war; that they are losing. If you were an Arab, what would you do?
Be sure, they are not asking this question in Washington. The Middle East - so all-important (supposedly) in the "war on terror" - in itself, a myth - doesn't really matter in the White House. It is a district, a map, a region, every bit as amorphous as the crescent of "crisis" which the Clinton administration invented when it wanted to land its troops in Somalia. How to get out, how to save face, that's the question. To hell with the people who live there: the Arabs, the Iraqis, the men, women and children whom we kill - and whom the Iraqis kill - every day.
Note how our "spokesmen" in Afghanistan now acknowledge the dead woman and children of Nato airstrikes as if it is quite in order to slaughter these innocents because we are at war with the horrid Taliban.'

Lees verder: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-fisk081206.htm

De Israelische Terreur 129

Zoals altijd werkt de Israelische terreur contraproductief voor de 'joodse natie' zelf en voor het Westen, dat het Israelisch terrorisme steunt.

Truthout:
'Analysts: US at Root of Effort to Topple Lebanese Government.

Beirut, Lebanon - American political leaders watched with alarm during the past week as the Hezbollah militia laid siege to the U.S.-backed Lebanese government, but few would acknowledge publicly what most analysts and politicians here say is obvious: American policy may bear much of the blame.
Many in Beirut say that U.S. failure to stop Israel's onslaught against Hezbollah last summer crippled the Lebanese government - a U.S. ally - while strengthening Hezbollah - a U.S. enemy. That created an environment in which the Shiite Muslim militia could call for overthrowing Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and his Cabinet.
"Hezbollah has more support in the population now because they are the `victorious resistance,'" Cabinet member Ahmed Fatfat said. "And it weakened the government because we did not get any concessions ... the last war was a disaster for Lebanon and the image of the United States."
Fatfat, like several other Cabinet members, has been in hiding at the government building in downtown Beirut for days as tens of thousands of protesters outside demand a new administration led by Hezbollah, a group that's on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
The standoff between Shiite Hezbollah and its allies and the Christian and Sunni government has sparked street fighting in Beirut's neighborhoods and raised the specter of civil war.
It's also underscored a belief among some regional leaders that the United States has lost its footing in the Mid'le East. On Tuesday, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended in Washington that the Bush administration reach out to Syria and Iran - U.S. foes - in a search for ways to resolve Iraq's violence. The group called for Syria to cease aid to Hezbollah and to stop trying to topple Saniora's government as part of a deal that might include Israel returning the Golan Heights to Syria.
But those suggestions seem behind the times as Hezbollah presses its campaign to force Saniora out.
Fatfat and other Lebanese officials said that while there was a complex set of reasons for the crisis - Syria is trying to derail a tribunal from investigating Syrian participation in political assassinations, Shiites long have felt underrepresented by their government, Iran is pushing against U.S. interests across the region - the conditions largely were set by U.S. actions during the conflict last summer.
The fighting began in July when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, an act that began weeks of thunderous Israeli bombing and artillery barrages - often using munitions bought from U.S. suppliers - that killed at least 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians. Hezbollah answered by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel.
Saniora pleaded with American officials to intervene, but for weeks Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others said there first must be a "durable solution," meaning primarily that Hezbollah had to be contained and then disarmed.'

Lees verder: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16188334.htm Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120806D.shtml

The Empire 78

'We Don’t Need Them.

I’ve never understood the idea of speaking truth to power. The truth, surely, is that in almost all countries of the world, political and economic systems are designed to benefit only the rich and powerful, at the expense of those with less money and power. This is how the world works, and I see no reason to think that the powerful don’t already understand that. After all, they designed it; they maintain it.
They steal our money, sacrifice our children in their wars, send the poorest and most victimized among us off to jail for petty mistakes, and crush those of us who might present a real threat to the arrangement. They know we don’t like it. They don’t care. They don’t need to care. They also control most of our avenues of dissent. It’s a very simple, very elegant design.
Meanwhile, we get angry and toddle off to tell the truth to the powerful. We have been telling them the truth for centuries. We travel to their great palaces by the hundreds of thousands, to express our anger and despair. We shout and sing and stomp and whine. We threaten. We plead. Sometimes we’re beaten up, or sent to jail. It’s a tradition of great courage and personal sacrifice, no doubt.
We go to tell them to stop using our money and our children and our energy and intelligence to further rob and rape and murder us. We tell them to be more respectful and compassionate. We’re like angry but terrorized children, anxiously scolding our stern, all-powerful parents. And, in the end, we look to the Democrats or to some congressional panel or to the Supreme Court and demand that they come to our aid. As my friend Harry puts it: “We’re left in the terrible position of trying to decide which elite group will be less likely to prey on us.”
Well, the government and their pals are not going to stop using and abusing us. They’re not going to stop preying on us. They cannot stop! Republican or Democrat, they are rich and powerful precisely because they prey on us. They are rich because they rob us. They’re robbing us right this minute. They are powerful because they dominate every aspect of our lives, because they’ve taken control of all the major social, political, economic, and communication systems in the world. These systems were designed to increase their wealth and power by taking both from all the rest of us.
But, we are not children, and they are not our parents. We’re not little people and they are not big people. We’re not insignificant and they are not significant. In fact, we do not need them.
They are very few and we, here in the US alone, are roughly 300 million. We don’t need to rush out to tell the few that they are abusing the many. They already know that. We need to stand upright and walk out to tell the many that they are being slowly devoured by the few, for -- incredibly, they do not know. We need to look to our next door neighbors, and to their next door neighbors and to the folks all along the block. We need to tell the truth to each other -- for we are the answer.
While hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators gathered in Washington, DC, back in September, hundreds of millions of American citizens went about their business without even a vague awareness of the protests. The media to which most of them attend barely mention such things -- obviously. And, most Americans don’t live in the DC area, so they didn’t see a thing.
Most Americans live in my neighborhood, or in your neighborhood. Most Americans eat breakfast right next to you in the local café. Most Americans get their car fixed at the same garage as you and I do. Most Americans visit my library, my bookstore, my grocery store, my local park -- or yours.
But the rich and powerful have convinced us that we cannot -- we must not -- communicate with the people we can see and hear and touch, right here, right now. They have convinced us that we need to travel to some government office to persuade elected officials and bureaucrats to change our world for us. The government and media drone on, endlessly, hypnotically, and convince us that if we just elect the right leaders, they’ll talk to our next door neighbor for us.
Government programs, they promise us, will fix that gaping hole in the pavement right out beyond your driveway. Government will help poor Mrs. Wilson, languishing in the old, dilapidated house right across the street. Government will settle your dispute with that family right down the block. Government will take care of your neighbors who can’t escape the hurricane:
“It’s OK, just hop in the SUV and go, we’ll take care of everything!” Government will help; government will heal; government will bring us together.
That’s not going to happen, of course. The elites are too busy dividing us, setting us against each other, exacerbating every animosity, every misgiving, every anxiety, however slight. They insinuate themselves into every new crack and crevice and offer convoluted, expensive legislation and bureaucracies to bring us back together again. “There oughta be a law,” says the old complaint. Well, there will be, to be sure -- but it will just make things worse.
We’re all looking in the wrong place for reason and compassion and justice. It’s not anywhere to be found in Washington, DC. It’s not in governments or state houses. It’s not there in that prestigious gathering of experts and big brains.'

Lees verder: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Carpenter1102.htm

Gods Schepping 2

In The Man Made of Words schrijft de Indiaanse schrijver Scott Momaday:

'I believe that what most threatens the American Indian is sacrilege, the theft of the sacred. Inexorably the Indian people have been, and are being, deprived of the spiritual nourishment that has sustained them for many thousands of years. This is a subtle holocaust, and it is ongoing. It is imperative that the Indian defines himself, that he finds the strength to do so, that he refuses to let others define him. Children are at greatest risk. We, Native Americans in particular, but all of us, need to restore the sacred to our children. It is a matter of the greatest importance.'

Ik moest daarbij onmiddellijk denken aan onze Turkse- en Marokkaanse Nederlanders en aan mijn eigen kinderen. Ik denk dat Momaday gelijk heeft, een ontheiligde wereld vernietigt zichzelf omdat uiteindelijk niets meer een waarde van zichzelf heeft, niets spreekt dan meer in zijn of haar eigen termen met ons.

De Bush Bende 31

Tom Engelhardt schrijft:

'Greenberg, In a Confessing State of Mind.

An early impulse of Bush administration officials after the attacks of September 11, 2001 was to take off "the gloves," or, as CIA Director George Tenet put it (so Ron Suskind tell us in his book, The One Percent Doctrine), "the shackles." Those were the "shackles" that they believed had been placed on the imperial presidency after Richard Nixon came so close to committing the constitutional coup d'état that we have come to call Watergate, but that involved an illegal war (in Cambodia), illegal wiretapping, illegal break-ins, robberies, black-bag jobs and so many other crossing-the-line events. That was the moment that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and all the Bush administration advocates of a "unitary executive theory" wanted to return us to -- the impeachable moment.
The neocons and their patrons, especially our Vice President, wanted to unchain executive power, but that wasn't all. They weren't about to waste perfectly good shackles. Another impulse of theirs after the 9/11 attacks was to capture or kidnap, detain, secretly imprison, shackle, and torture their enemies, picked up on battlefields as well as peaceful city streets around the world. The accumulation of leaked documentation from their secret world has long indicated that they had torture on the brain. The urge to institute a torture regime had, perhaps, less to do with torture itself than with the knowledge that if you somehow gained the right to torture, you could gain the right to do just about anything; you could, in short, unchain the presidency in a major way.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Bush administration officialdom was that, before they reached for their waterboards, they reached for their dictionaries; and so, out of their world of secret imprisonment, humiliation, and pain emerged an unending stream of twisted definitions of otherwise common terms in classified but quickly leaked documents. Karen Greenberg, executive director of NYU's Center for Law and Security and co-author of The Torture Papers (which collected all those grim classified memorials to these last years of excess), now considers the most secret impulse of all revealed by this sordid collection of documents -- the impulse to confess. Tom'

Lees verder: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=146171

De Miljonair Fair

Degenen die het bavianenhok van Artis een leuke verpozing vinden, hadden gisteren bij de opening van de Miljonair Fair een geweldige avond. U ziet hier onze neoliberale elite. Ordinair volk? Ik ben het met u eens: alles is een kwestie van smaak. In elk geval voor en door dit soort luitjes groeit de kloof tussen arm en rijk. Voor meer aapjes kijken: http://www.miljonair.nl/fair/indexc.jsp

Irak 130

Paul Craig Roberts , was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington ; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice

Information Clearing House:

'Catastrophe Still Awaits.
By Paul Craig Roberts.

"The real difficulty in changing any enterprise lies not in
developing new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones." - John
Maynard Keynes

12/07/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- A ray of realism appeared
in the confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense nominee Robert
Gates before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Gates himself said
that the U.S. was not winning in Iraq, a statement with which
everyone agreed except the White House.

The U.S., however, is not out of the woods. The question remains:
what will be the U.S. government's response to the lost war and the
terrible calamity that Bush has created in Iraq?

Many Americans are still fighting the Vietnam War. They see Iraq
through the lens of the futile Vietnam misadventure and express their
dismay that America will lose another war because "the Democrats will
cut and run like they did in Vietnam." These Americans have forgotten
that it was a Republican administration that got the U.S. out of
Vietnam and that it was the Democrats who committed the U.S. to that
conflict. Moreover, Democrats are not showing a cut-and-run propensity.

For example, Silvestre Reyes, the incoming Democratic chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee, says the U.S. cannot withdraw from Iraq
until it has dismantled the militias. Reyes wants to put 30,000 more
U.S. troops into Iraq to dismantle the militias. Reyes has forgotten
that sending more troops was the Democrats' policy in Vietnam, a
policy whose only result was that more Americans lost sons, fathers,
husbands, and brothers.

Obviously, sending more U.S. troops will not succeed in dismantling
the Iraqi sectarian militias. However, a U.S. attempt to dismantle
the militias will result in the militias joining the insurgency and
turning on the U.S. troops. The situation would deteriorate, not
improve. It is frightening that the incoming chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee does not understand this.

The appearance of a ray of realism about Iraq in the Senate Arms
Services Committee does not mean that the U.S. will escape
catastrophe. At the Armed Services Committee hearing (Dec. 5), some
senators said that U.S. troops must not be used in a civil war
between Iraqis, but that the troops have to stay until stability is
created. Senators have the idea that U.S. troops can be shorn of
their combat role, but remain to train the Iraqi army so the Iraqi
government can put down insurgency and civil war.'

Lees verder: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15837.htm