Propaganda?

Wanting it Both Ways

Politics is sad. Or maybe, American politics is sad. Our citizens continue to elect total nimcompoops who are only self-interested. Yes, there are always exceptions but for the most part they are all full of shit.
One day I thought about making a list of right wing rhetoric and how they want "it both ways". Take the "sanctity of life" and the bombs we drop. The bullshit from Bush about not wanting to take human life to save other human life but that was the exact purpose of our invasion of Iraq.
So I thought maybe some others out there could help me fill up a good list that we all can use against right wing nonsense.

First off there is Democracy. The RW, NeoCOns and Bush speak glowingly about the spread of Democracy and its great benefits. While at the same time supporting autocrats and dictators world wide. Hugo Chavez is a dictator and the Sauds are our moderate allies.
They claim to be the ones who truly love the country and the left is treasonous yet they do everything in their power to not to pay taxes to fund the country they purport to love.
They are fiscally more responsible then the Democrats. This one I don't need to even expand on.
Reagan gets the credit for bankrupting the Soviets but the Democrats were in control of Congress yet when you bring up the huge deficits created by Reagan then it becomes the Democratic Controlled Congress's fault.
Claim to be for the "Free Market" but they are for subsidizing industry, allowing tax dollars to be spent on pollution clean-up left by industry, want to protect certain American industries, and on.....
They want us to believe that supercomputers and 1500 scientists can't predict future weather patterns but want us to believe their predictions for Social Security.
Republicans were whining about giving Bush nominees for Federal Judges an "up or down vote" but refused to allow Clinton nominees the chance to get a vote at all.
The Right claims to be against regulations unless it is regulating sex, euthanasia, drug use, reproduction, art and on and on...
Tout adoption as the alternative to abortion unless you are a gay couple.
They claim to be strong on defense but always show so much fear and weakness by being "terrified" by weak tin pot dictators without weapons.
They say people should be held responsible for their actions unless it is something like Abu Ghraib, "bad intelligence", after war planning, Sept. 11 etc
Claim the UN is useless until it is needed.
They tell us that the Treasury Bonds backing Social Security are just "pieces of paper" but they wouldn't say that to Japan, Saudi Arabia or China.
Criticism is unpatriotic unless they are the ones criticizing.
They continue to spew nonsense about "our dependence on foreign oil" yet don't fund real alternatives.
One standard right wing complaint is that Government is intruding into our lives but they did everything in their power to try keep Terry Schiavo alive.
Against special treatment for certain groups in regards to college admission unless they are the rich white kids of Alum.
For State's Rights unless they control the Federal Government.
The pretend to be champions of the Constitution but don't believe a jury of ones peers is capable of hearing malpractice cases.
For open markets for American products only.
Claim the Democrats are a hazard to our safety all the while they outted a CIA agent.
Claim to support Religious peoples abd family values unless of course you are a mexican immigrant.
Claim market forces rule except when it comes to labor following capital.
That is my incomplete list. I'm sorry if it isn't the easiest read, I have drank way too much coffee this morning so there may be some typos. I look forward to everyones additions.

Great Political Commercial

Hurricane Hugo

Why does Washington fear the Venezuelan President so much? Why is Washington working so hard, actually bribing and threatening nations, to get other countries to vote with them to put Guatemala on the UN Security Council instead of Venezuela. It isn't as if the Venezuelans would have veto power like the world's rulers deserve. In fact they would have very little power since the world has decided that the US, Russia, England, China and France are the only important countries of the world and has granted them veto power. What’s even more wonderous are the attacks against Hugo Chavez by Democrats like Chuck Rangel and Nancy Pelosi. Is it the man we fear or his message? This is the real question.
As we speak the US is bullying countries into voting with them to put Guatemala on the Security Council. John, I can't get confirmed to the UN, Bolton is telling Venezuela to back down and give up on their attempt to get a seat on the Security Council. Never you mind that Guatemala, the lesser of two evils in our Empire's eyes, is systematically slaughtering street kids. Also forget that like most of the Third World, Guatemala's elites are enriching themselves at the expense of the poor in their nation. As usual, these are all good things in Washington's eyes.
The easily elected leader of Venezuela is a dictator our sheepish media tell us. He is a "thug" according to Nancy Pelosi. Christ, Nancy Pelosi wouldn't ever call our President a thug even though the description fits him much better. Both Bush and Chavez came to power around the same time and guess who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Not Hugo. Yet it is Hugo who is the thug. Even though our President has just been given the power, by Congress, to indefinitely hold prisoners without the right to a trial yet it is Hugo who is becoming Authoritarian.
There are two main reasons our Empire is fearful of Hugo. Today I will only address one of the two. The main reason that Washington, both parties, fears the Venezuelan President is because he offers a different view of the world. One that is not supposed to be voiced and when it is, in our country, we can count on the obiedient media to refer to those suggestions as crackpot or utopian. National healthcare is some pie in the sky idea that isn't feasible unless of course you are one of those uncompetitive utopian nations like Canada, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Austria, or Switzerland. When was the last time you bought something from Sweden(Erickson phones) or Finland(Nokia). Better yet, we are told how much better our for-profit healthcare system is. Still where is the political movement in any European country to institute for-profit American style healthcare? It doesn't exist because the concept is so widely popular that only a fool would advocate some change.
Just imagine if Venezuela had been on the Security Council during the lead up to our invasion and occupation of Iraq. They would have had the lap dog, Mexico's, seat. If my memory serves me right the Mexicans didn't support our illegal and immoral invasion but they weren't vocal critics and did nothing to stave off the tragedy. Had the Venezuelans been on the Council we would have seen the them using the forum to show how illegal and unnecessary this war was. They may have even sponsored envoys which would have really pissed of our Empire.
If anyone had the chance to see Hugo Chavez's over the top performance at the UN last month, they can understand why the US is scared of their message, "Another world is possible." My main disappointment about the speech was Chavez's reference to Bush being the devil. I had really hoped that Chavez would have turned out to be an atheist but oh well. I can overlook it though, since he follows Christ's teachings teachings far closer than our holier than thou born again fake. Still it was a little disappointing to see him use such infantile, Bush-esque, rhetoric.
I agree that his rhetoric was over the top and may have done himself more damage than good but why, one must ask, does he have such strong feelings. It could be that the CIA attempted to overthrow him in April 2002. The CIA involvement was obvious, to anyone who knows even a basic history of Latin America, because the only country in the Western Hemisphere that didn't condemn the coup was the US. While the rest of the Americas were calling for the Democratic will of the Venezuelans to be respected the Bush Administration called for the opposite but with the same terminology. The outrageous level of rhetoric that goes unchallenged by our media should be frightening to any and all American whom are not members of the ruling elite. It doesn't matter what the facts are because the media create the true facts. Remember how Saddam was responsible for 9/11.
Again this shows how weak our country really is. Greedy oligarchs who are terrified of ideas entering the lexicon of the world hold up our whole society. They do not want to be removed from their undeserving position of world rulers. They understand that their hold is flimsy once exposed to light so they send out faithful Democrats to use harsher words for a populist than that of a man who is responsible for the deaths of 655,000 people. Who the fuck are the real thugs? Us!

At least some newsman cares.

Quick Rant

I was going to apologize for not writing lately, due to my working on the third shift, but I realized that there is no one there.
Two things
First why can't North Korea build nuclear weapons? WHy do we, America, have the right to keep tens of thousands of nuclear weapons but North Korea is not allowed to have one? When was the last time North Korea used a Weapon of Mass Destruction? When was the last time Americans did? Some could argue that the sanctions applied to Iraq by both Bush I and the great liberal Clinton were form of weapons of mass destruction. Sure it wasn't all spectacular with big explosions but nontheless the sanctions killed at least half a million children alone. When Madeleine Albright was asked by Leslie Stahl, on 60 minutes, about the half a million dead kids, she didn't deny it, instead she said that they thought the price was worth it. How fucking sick. Here we have all these fake liberals crying about the war in Iraq yet where were they when Clinton was slaughtering them? They didn't care, plain and simple. It wasn't until lives that count, American lives, began to be lost that these pseudo-liberals began to talk about how bad Bush is.
When Clinton was forced to stop the "genocide" in Kosovo, many of us argued that invading non-nuclear states would increase the need for them to acquire the weapons. Of course, we were wrong. Genocide was being committed. Sure if you go and look at the numbers that claim doesn't stand up to the scrutiny. First off 2000 dead rebels is not genocide any more than Israel's overreaction to the Hizzbollah was genocide. If we look at the numbers, the Israelis are more guilty of genocide in Palestine then the Serbs were. Yet when will any American administration stand up to the "Israeli Lobby". We would rather piss of the entire Arab world then make the Israelis play nice. Nobody wants to be called an antisemite do they?
The second bit is that our Dear Leader has signed into law the suspension of Habeus Crpus and the right to torture people. Finally we can ram metal rods, retroactively, into the rectums of our prisoners. It is sick that Americans want to torture other humans so bad they split hairs when it comes to the Geneva Conventions. They say things like, "Well they aren't fighting for a foreign army so therefore the ban on torture shouldn't apply." THis shows the immense desire to attach electrical currents to mens testicles. We are truly a sick nation. 3000 people die and we instantly start to figure out how to legally force our captors to perform oral sex on other inmates. If you don't believe that we have, I will send you the photos, not to mention the raping of women. This is all legal now, in retrospect. We have given immunity to torturers because we are so terrified of a scattered group of Arabs who have killed less Americans then our roads have in the last month. Yet there is no war on car accidents. Americans have a, what many see as, a legimate racism towards Muslims. SO now it just makes sense that we smear human feces on them.
For all the weapons we have, we are a bunch of pussies. It is amazing. We have slaughtered millions over the last few decades and know we are led to believe that there is no legitimate right to fight back even though that is exactly what we would do. We actually invaded an entire country without a single piece of evidence and now we are torturing people under the guise of a threat for which they can not present a piece of evidence. Hey but at least the masochistic can get there kicks.

Noam

Holy Shit!

New figures have come out from the Johns Hopkins University about the numbers of Iraqis that have died as a result of our illegal invasion and continued occupation of Iraq. In our attempt to rid Saddam of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or wait to liberate Iraq, no, I mean bring Democracy to the Middle East, over 650,000 Iraqis have died. In three years the actions of our government have killed 655,000 people. In about one years time from now the number will top one million. We are truly a sick country.
As soon as this study came out our science friendly president said it was flawed. Remember that this is printed in the Lancet Medical Journal, Europe’s most prestigious medical magazine, which is peer reviewed. Also remember too, that Bush was a C student who has said he doesn’t read. Bush, who is nothing but an enemy of science, is going to tell us that this survey is flawed? C’mon you have got to be kidding me. The man is an idiot plain and simple and the people who he is surrounded by are a bunch of idiots as well. These are the same people who told us that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators. They were so certain that this would be the case that Cheney refused to answer a hypothetical question posed to him by Tim Russert about what may happen if we are viewed as occupiers and not liberators. Cheney told him that simply wasn’t going to be the case so there was no reason to even answer the hypothetical. This asshole is going to tell us that the Doctors at Johns Hopkins have a flawed study.
George Bush says that the survey is flawed. This is the same guy who stood on an Air Craft Carrier and told us that major combat operations in Iraq are over and he removed an ally of Al Queda. Yet the vast majority of all of the US causalities have resulted after Bush’s staged photo op. Did you know the Navy had to turn the ship around so the cameras wouldn’t be able to see San Diego on the Horizon? As far as an ally of Al Queda being removed, even he now claims that he never said Saddam was in cahoots with Saddam. Yet he is going to tell us that this study is flawed.
The great thing about our totally worthless media is that this number and this story will be sent down the memory hole. Bush doesn’t need to explain how the study is flawed because, one, he can’t and two, it couldn’t be explained away with a ten second sound bite in between the really important stuff, the commercials. What is truly scary is that many Americans will take Bush at his word not because he is intelligent or has a grasp of science but because they are sheep. They really believe that our government is always acting with the bests intentions and not malicious or evil, to use the fairy tale terminology so favored by Bush and his little mind. “We didn’t kill 655,000 people just so we could control the Middle East’s oil. We were trying to help people.” Luckily for the ruling elite the American public’s attention span is about as long as a ten second sound bite or a thirty second commercial. You ever wonder why the commercials are only thirty seconds?
So lets review, Johns Hopkins puts out a study in a peer reviewed medical journal after surveying thousands of households across Iraq. They interview people and are shown death certificates by most of the interviewees. They use the same techniques that they used in Kosovo and the People’s Republic of Congo that were widely accepted by the Western World, England and America included.
George Bush and his moronic crew told us so many fanciful stories. They told us of tens of thousands of gallons of mustard gas. They told us of mobile weapons labs, which were actually given to them by the British to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. They told us that Saddam was a grave threat to our existence. Rumsfeld told a press conference that he knew where the weapons were. Cheney refused to even toy with the idea that the Iraqis would resist American occupation because it wasn’t going to happen he reassured us. He also told us half a year ago that the insurgency, I believe he referred to them as terrorists, were in their last throes. So who are the ones that are flawed?

Good-Bye, Habeas corpus!

Our government has finally rid them of that little inconvenience that is the right to challenge one’s detention. It goes back to 1215 and was a check on the power of the English King John. Yet today, after those 3000 people died, we now must throw it out in our attempt to create our own King. “We live in dangerous times unlike any time since 1215. These are different times.” Talk about a bunch of bullshit. We are slowly creating an elected Emperor who can do as he so chooses. If the President wants to use a Mexican-American to distract attention from his own failed policy and hold him indefinitely that’s fine. We can’t have that pesky Supreme Court deciding what is legal or not. We are now led to believe that Bush is so extremely competent, except on 9/11, that he can read the Geneva Conventions and interpret them, when I doubt he can find Geneva on a map.
Here are two good pieces of bullshit rhetoric.
The first is the idea that the Democrats can’t stand up to the President for fear of being labeled weak and losing the election. This latest law should have been filibustered but the Democrats are more concerned about being re-elected to Congress, because they have the easiest job in the world with automatic pay increases, then protecting the Constitution they vowed to uphold. Instead we are told that this election is too important which sounds very familiar.
During the 2004 election, us Nader voters were told the election was far too important to vote for someone who stands with you. Instead we were told we must vote for a guy who wants to increase troop levels and escalate an immoral and illegal war. This was a life or death situation we were told. Yet when numerous Democrats knew, prior to the election, that the President was secretly listening to our telephone calls, they said nothing. Sure maybe disclosing that information could have swung the election towards the Democrats but they, knowing how extremely important this election was, chose to do nothing. So was the election really that important?
Now we have the Democrats voting to get rid of Habeas Corpus under the guise that they must not lose the next election because abortion on demand is far more important than the right to challenge one’s detention by the State. All of our elected rulers are tools especially the Democrats. I hold the Democrats to task because Republicans are only concerned about not paying taxes. When one falls for the root of all evil, even when their supposed holy book warns them, why should we expect them to have morals. If this election, or any other, truly mattered then the Democrats would fight accordingly. Instead, all they do is remind us of how important this election is. Refusing to mention that it is important only for them.
The next piece of bullshit rhetoric is the one being spewed by Bush and his posse. They keep claiming that we must win this war otherwise we are all screwed. Of course they need to tie the illegal aggressive war, the crimes of Nuremberg, to the war against resistance towards our Empire. Instead of forcing the Israelis out of the Palestinian Occupied Territories, which is the moral thing to do, they invade and occupy another Muslim nation. Neither parties want to force Israel to get out of the Occupied Territories because they are beholden to the "Israeli Lobby and fear being labeled an Anti-Semite.
So if this aggressive war is necessary for the Empire to win then why not fight it as if you wanted to win. Why not call a draft in order to have enough troops to win? Why not get rid of the tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, since they are the ones reaping the benefits of the Empire and its illegal war? Why not? Because this war is in no way important to America, outside of the ruling classes and the oil barons. The Empire doesn’t want to steal the oil but control it. If you don’t believe me, wait, I will be writing a column like this in a decade when a Democratic leader tells us we need to send troops to Columbia or Central Asia to fight drugs. I’m certain, if this administration wasn’t filled with people who have a dual loyalty to the state of Israel we would be in Venezuela right now.
Habeas Corpus has been the basis for humane law for centuries and we have now rid ourselves of it. Three thousand people die, the same amount that die every month on the roads, and we decide to give the President powers that he should never have. To all those who think that, “Well when we get a Democrat in office they will reverse this.” When in history has a ruler given up their power? We shouldn’t believe any of their bullshit rhetoric because there is no truth in it. If we do fall for it we have only ourselves to blame. Unfortunately, since 9/11, we have become complete dipshits, from the conspiracy that Bush, the genius, orchestrated 9/11 to the idea that terrorists hate our freedoms shows that many have drank the kool-aid.

Essay from 2002

This is a reprint of the original essay I wrote in the summer of 2002. I have reprinted this here to show that a person without a college degree is more fit to be running this country then all the assholes that currently do. I made a few predictions that didn’t come true but I made a few that did.
Enjoy


Today in the Journal-Sentinel there was a report that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is positioning his forces in and around Baghdad and other cities. He’s doing this most likely to make his removal more difficult and bloody. Luckily for the U.S., we’ve been practicing Urban Warfare for a decade or so, knowing that cities are slowly covering more and more of the planet.
Going into Iraqi cities is going to be a messy operation. We will have thousands of troops walking through alleys and into buildings. This isn’t like the villages in 'nam or even the West Bank. Baghdad was once a cosmopolitan metropolis with tall buildings and Chevy Trucks. If you’ve followed the Jewish occupation of Palestine you’ve seen how simple and cheap it is to booby trap doors and buildings.
It is well known to anyone who’s watched the evening news that Saddam doesn’t really care about the welfare of his people. He is more that willing to use them as “human shields”. Human shields is really just as euphemism for innocent civilians who are protected under the Geneva Convention and aren’t to be targeted but if they are then they are human shields. It is very likely that we could kill thousands of civilians in the cities of Iraq. Also, Al Jazeera, Russian and French journalists who are already there will broadcast this war all over the world.
Why do innocent civilians deserve to be killed over the petroleum reserves in Iraq? We’ve found it is a lot cheaper to kill humans in order to satiate our addiction for energy than it is to install solar panels on the roofs of U.S. houses. How spending 70 billion on war can be cheaper than alternative fuel sources is beyond my reasoning. Unless you figure that Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, TRI and McDonald Douglass stand to make a shit load of money replacing Tomahawk Missiles and other death machines. I guess also that transnational oil companies stand to make a lot of money at the same time. Our oil companies are sick and tired of the French and the Russians reaping the profits from the Iraqi oil. They want a piece of that black pie.
Saddam is a dictator plain and simple. He has a terrible record of oppressing his people and fattening his wallet. This has never been a crime in the past. From the Suharto family in Indonesia to Somoza in Nicaragua to the Saudi royal family. Christ, even the people who ran Mexico for 70 years fall into this category. What tends to be the crime is the overthrow of these regimes by the people of the country. From the Sandinistas to Castro.
We have no moral or legal right to attack Iraq. We won’t ask the UN Security Council for the go ahead because we know that three of the permanent members would veto it. They have already informed us of that fact. Maybe France, Russia and China are the new “Axis of Evil”. Watch out France you’re next.
The Bush administration is claiming we need to do this for our own security. A pre-emptive move they claim. If this is a moral justification, then shouldn’t Iraq be attacking us under the same notion? Never mind, the US is a hypocritical nation.
Anyone who thinks that a nation will attack the US is a fucking moron. We can, will and have destroyed whole nations. No one is going to attempt to wipe Israel off the map either. They are all aware that the Jews have 200 nuclear missiles and the US war machine on their side.
Saddam wants more than anything to remain in power and wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that. Though if he knows his end time is soon nothing is stopping him from using these phantom weapons of mass destruction against our soldiers. Die for oil suckers. Attacking America would for sure lead to his death and most people don’t want to die. It’s a natural instinct deep in our genetic makeup and it is hard to fight against.
I do agree that the Iraqi people would be better served by a democracy, if the democracy were real and open, unlike our own. The only problem with having a democracy in Iraq is that most likely the Iraqi people would want to nationalize the oil under their feet. Could you imagine a nation saying, “Look. This is our oil and we will do what we please with it. Hands off.” That would really piss off Haliburton, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and the rest of the richest companies in the world.
So we would be better off installing a puppet, a puppet that would allow all the profits from Iraqi resources to flow into the pockets of a few extremely rich westerners. Who could then turn around and give us our two candidates for the next presidential election. Once the oil companies candidate, either one, it doesn’t really matter, won the election we could then go to war again and steal some more natural resources. Our government won’t stop until we increase our consumption from 25% of the world’s resources to maybe 50%. Yet, we are still just 4.5% of the world’s population. Why is it that people all over the world hate us? Oh ya, its our open and free society.
Our leaders are Christian, right? There must be something in their “holy” text that makes them act so crazy. Maybe it’s the Ten Commandments.
Lets take a quick look at some of those.
Worship no God but me. Well that is a no-brainer, we worship the Almighty $.
Do not worship any false idols. The Pledge of Allegiance?
Do not use the Lord’s name in vain. That is the only way they use their lord.
Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. We started bombing Afghanistan on a Sunday just as the Packers were kicking off.
Do not commit murder. Hmmm.
Do not steal. Hmmm.
Do not bear false witness. Hmmm.
Do not covet your neighbor’s possessions. Hmmm.
So where do you think all these people screaming for Saddam’s head will end up after they die?
See you in hell Cheney.

Darfur

Wow,
I now know more about Sudan and Darfur then I thought possible.
Okay lets leave oil out of this for the moment. I think oil is being coming the cliché reason nowadays.
Your friend is right on many points I believe. The number of rebel groups is kind of hard to pin down because they seem to be changing all the time. Basically what we have in Darfur is a reaction to rebels trying to take down the government in Khartoum. The whole thing is kind of complicated but I will try my best to convey what I have just taken in.
The rebels are farmers. They are pro-Chad and pro-Eritrea. They are Islamists in nature. They may or may not be led by a former ally of Bin Laden's, Hassan al-Turabi, more on him later. From what I can tell though they, the victims, basically started it. They attacked the government first in an attempt to overthrow it.
The Government was humiliated numerous times by the rebels and they got pissed. So they unleashed hell on the rebels. At first the Sudanese Government wasn't prepared to fight in the desert and the rebels, like most insurgencies exploited that weakness. Typically though governments catch up and go overboard. Think Serbia's reaction to Albanian rebels in Kosovo. So during the start of the conflict the government was only able to punish the rebels with vicious air raids.
In Sudan there was already a long time animosity between the farmers and the Arab nomads. The fact that the nomads are Arabs and the rebels are Islamists kinda fucks up the whole Arab/Black narrative. There has been a long drought in the region and as a result there was very little cultivatable land to be had. So the farmers and the nomads had to battle it out for land.
Since there were already problems between the farmers and the nomads, who had been previously armed by Quadaffi (Sp?), it wasn't difficult to rally them in support of the government against the rebels. These nomads became the Janjaweed. The Sudanese government armed them to the teeth creating a paramilitary force.
I have a hard time calling this genocide in the classic sense as does the UN. It really seems like impropriate force and massive war crimes. To me genocide is more like the Jewish holocaust, where an entire ethnic group is systematically being exterminated. This is simply not happening in Darfur. Yes it is ugly, terrible, and should be stopped but it is not genocide. It has the appearance of genocide. The refugees fleeing into a neighboring country, a perceived ethnic difference, villages torched and children being slaughtered.
OK, western intervention, the Government of Sudan is not cool to the idea that Western troops coming into his country. This is why to date the peacekeepers have been Africans. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, is fearful of the fact that he is a war criminal and does not want to be arrested by Western Forces. So he will not agree to a western force.
Now on Bin Laden and the supposed rebel leader Hassan al-Turabi. After the Iraq invasion of Kuwait Bin Laden lobbied the government of Saudi Arabia to bring an army of the mujadeheen (sp?) to expel Saddam from Kuwait. The government instead allowed the West to intervene and station combat troops in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the reasons given by Bin Laden for 9/11. Bin Laden was invited to Sudan by Hassan al-Turabi. Osama actually married on al-Turabi’s nieces. In return for protection, Bin Laden spent his money building infrastructure.
Al-Turabi has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood as do most influential populist Islamists. He rose to power in Sudan and became the second most powerful man in the country. Of course, if the second most powerful person gets too popular the most powerful man usually takes action. That was the case here. Omar al-Bashir arrested al-Turabi as a threat to Sudan and imprisoned him. He was then released in 2003 and teamed up with the main rebel group at the time, the JEM, Justice and Equality Movement. He of course denies this.
I have had a hard time finding any information about oil in the Darfur region, which is not to say that the information isn’t there or that there is no significant oil supplies in Western Sudan. From my own old recollection oil is a factor mainly because the government is oil rich and the Chinese, with Security Council veto power, get oil from the country. Bin Laden believes that the call by the west for action in Darfur is cover for a takeover of Sudan and its oil wealth, kinda like Iraq. I think that many distrust the West for good reason. Anyone who doesn’t think that the War In Iraq pt.2 is about oil is either stupid or in denial. I also do believe that the West has been creating a new form of colonialism in the form of capital control.
I hope that was helpful. I didn’t really know anything about the conflict because there are just too many shitty things happening all at once all over the globe and it is too hard to pay attention to all. Over all I think your co-worker may be right on a lot of it.
Here are some of my sources I used.
Human Rights Watch
Images of War Dead
London Editorial from Tawianese Paper
Wikipedia

Five Years Later

9/11/06
Today is the fifth anniversary of the hijacking and surely it will be wall-to-wall coverage on all the networks. They will ask if we are safer five years later and all the experts will claim that we are. They will ask what we have learned five years later and so on. Just the same drivel and garbage that passes for news in America. We can again expect the media to do its part in ignoring any facts that may cast the event in any other terms except, us the victims against those bad Arabs. So since we can’t count on our media to inform us on things that aren’t somehow related to our celebrities, I figured I would explore some of them.
“A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found that 36% of Americans consider it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves”(Time 9/11/06 Vol.168 No.11) What!? Over one third of the general population actually believes that the government was involved? I guess this is the same country where 70% believed Saddam had a hand in 9/11. Still, how can one third of Americans actually believe their government was involved yet not react. If these people really believe that our Government actually slaughtered 3000 of its own citizens, why are they sitting in their homes? This is the crime for Saddam Hussein is being tried for in Iraq, “the murdering of his own people”. Is it that these people are so terrified of their government that they refuse to act?
Five years later and the mass media finally have admitted that the first responders are suffering from a variety of illnesses due to working in the environment around the collapsed World Trade Centers. For years the media did its part and kept quiet but recently this has changed. They are beginning to report on the illnesses and the costs the people will have to endure. It seems they are trying to create a mini-scandal about the Governments lack of help for these firefighters, police, guardsmen, and on. If we lived in a decent society that believed in taking care of its people, this would all be moot. If we had free healthcare none of this would be an issue because we would already be taking care of these brave citizens. Since 9/11 has been not only called “an act of war” and used to start two wars, the Pentagon should be paying for the treatment. Though we don’t live in a decent society, so we shower the defense contractors with hundreds of billions of tax dollars when just a few billion could take of these people for the rest of their suffering. That is the patriotic and shameful thing to do.
Just in case anyone didn’t realize it, today is Patriot Day. On October 25, 2001 our House of Representatives voted 407-0 to call on President Bush to designate September 11th as Patriot Day. On Sept 4th 2002 Bush used his power as President to do so and has every year since. This year's Press Release
It turns out that Congress was quite busy the week it was voting to create a Patriot Day for us Americans to observe. Two days earlier my fine Congressman James Sensenbrenner introduced a little Resolution entitled “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001” better known by its acronym the USAPATRIOT act. The next day the House voted it for. One day later, the Senate passed it, and then 24 hours later it became law with the swipe of a pen by our President. It goes against all conventional wisdom to think our Government could work so quick and effectively. As it turns out our Government can work really rapidly when it is removing rights from it’s citizens and increasing it’s own power.
Finally the line about the “terrorists” hating our freedoms is sure to pop up on the news today. The idea that Al- Zawahiri hates our bill of right is hard to stomach. He hates freedom of speech? The fact that Americans buy that garbage is the reason they buy all the rest of it. It is a known fact that he and Bin Laden dream of creating an Islamic State in the Arab peninsula that would most likely be under Shariah law which is nothing but oppression. This is all true but is it really believable that they think they will take over our country, kill our leaders and convert us all into Muslims? Please. History shows that typically people fight for freedom not the other way around, unless of course we are talking about the State.
So why are they attacking us? Have they ever said why? Yes. Virtually every speech aired on AL Jazeera from either Bin Laden or Al-Zawahiri lists their goals. For the oddest reason though the American press never airs or reprints the speeches in whole. If we are lucky they will reprint about three lines about infidels or something out of context.
Of the four major reasons, only one has been addressed with disastrous results. One of Bin Laden’s gripes was the presence of thousands of US combat troops in Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest sites of Islam. The US has changed their policies in regards to that one by moving all combat troops into Iraq.
Our Government has been lying to us since 9/11 and at the same time grabbing more and more power while slowly stripping our rights away. They have used the attacks as a pretext to invade the second largest known oil reserves in the world. The Republicans have used September 11th to scare the nation and get re-elected. Surveillance cameras are going up in major cities around our nation to “protect” us. I now wish I hadn’t checked out that book on Hamas from the library. We have no reason to believe anything the government or the media says in regards to terrorism. Instead we should think the opposite.

America is dumb as shit

Islamofascists? What the hell does that mean? Why is it being used by the Bush Administration? Why don't Americans understand what fascism is? Why can politicians spew bullshit without anyone stopping them? Because the Americans are dumb as shit.
First off the use of the term fascism. Does fascism apply to the loose knit group of Islamists who want to attack America? No. Fascism requires that there be a State involved. That is why Spain under Franco, Italy under Mussolini and Germany under Hilter are considered fascist.
Notice that during WWII our government wasn't going around referring to those fascist States like Hitler's Germany as ChristianFascists. To do so would be a major insult to the Christians of the world. Therefore it should follow that Muslims may be a little offended by the term. To be fair, our great allies, the Saudis are truly fascists and zealots. But just forget that.
The use of fascism is solely to invoke a certain feeling. Namely fear.
IT is sad that people are more interested in the fictional world then the real one. They would rather watch someone's life on TV than participate in their own. We are a little too docile here in America. Remember too that when fascism comes to our shores it will be holding a Bible in one hand and a flag in the other. That is how it always works. Will it be called ChristianFascism? Maybe by non-Christians.V.P. Wallace's Essay For the New York Times on Fascism 1944

Why War With Iran is Insane!

Normally I don't write diaries. Actually this is my first time. I was getting ready to email my mother one day about Zarqawi's death being celebrated and suicides at Gitmo being called a PR stunt and an act of war, when suddenly this came out instead.
Just when you thought these nutcases had gone too far they are getting ready to go even further. According to a former CIA analyst the US is moving forces into the Persian Gulf to give us the option of attacking Iran. If we truly are getting ready to attack Iran it proves that we are undoubtedly being led by a bunch of madmen and one madwoman. It is as if we are all on one big bus and the driver is drunk and rumors around Washington are that Bush has fallen off the wagon. Launching the war in Iraq has been one of our greatest foreign policy blunders in US history but attacking Iran would make this war seem quaint.
Many will argue that the US isn't really thinking about attacking Iran because of our latest actions. They will say, "See the Bush administration has opened up dialogue with the country for the first time in 27 years. It is unprecedented." This undertaking, by Bush, is merely a way to show the world that we tried everything in order to stave off this war but those Iranian are nuts. (They are Muslims remember) It is similar to when Bush went to the UN Security Council one last time, before the start of The War in Iraq, to prove that at least he tried to work multilaterally.
I know this is going to sound a wee bit cynical but this world has led me in that direction. Is it possible that Bush knows that the US Congress is most likely going to fall into the hands of the Democrats this fall? If and when this happens the Democrats will take over leadership positions in Congress and control the agenda. With this new power the Democrats will launch investigation after investigation into the Bush Administration. From Katrina to the intelligence leading up to Iraq to the billions of dollars unaccounted for in Iraq to, shit there are so many reasons and Karl Rove knows it. Many may argue that no person would use such an exercise just to stay in power. If so ask yourself this one, why did this administration hold the vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq right before the 2002-midterm elections? It wasn't like the Congress couldn't have waited until after the elections but then Republicans would have been unable to use a Democrat's vote against it in their campaign commercials. With Condee and Dick running around saying that the "smoking gun may come in the form of a mushroom cloud over one of our major cities" it wasn't like people were purposely and unnecessarily scared, as irrational as it all was. The resolution was simply a political ploy and 2500 Americans are dead as a result, like the pawns they are considered.
Okay now here is a little exercise. Just look at a map of the region for a moment because this is very important for two reasons. The reason or pretext for the launch of this war is that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Even though the Iranians have stated clearly that they have no intention to build weapons, lets just say they are lying. (Personally I think that they are trying to give themselves the option to do so in the future.) Here is where that map comes in. If you look to the east of Iran you have Afghanistan and about 30,000 US combat troops. If you look to the west the US has 130,000 combat troops. Now look north to Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan where the US has Air Force bases in both of those countries. Finally to the south is the Persian Gulf with the Fifth Fleet's Navy ships and probably nuclear subs circling below the water's surface. Now I don't know about you but if I had a hostile enemy, with the world's largest military, surrounding me and I was rich in oil and gas, I would do something to attempt to balance the power. Only a pacifist would be stupid enough to not consider such an option.
So that was one important reason for our map but I said there would be two. Okay now just take a broad look at the region. Head east for a moment and we have Pakistan, a country with a large fundamentalist Islamic population, nuclear weapons, an unelected military ruler whose life has been nearly taken numerous times. Now just imagine if the region got so unstable that the military ruler was replaced with Al-Queda sympathizers with nukes. Would this extreme regime nuke India finally? If so India would launch nukes back. Killing millions upon millions.
Now move slowly to the west from Pakistan and we come upon Afghanistan. Here in Afghanistan, as I said earlier, we have some 30,000 troops that would be a prime target for Iran. This would make the Taliban resistance that much stronger making a victory, if it were even possible, nearly impossible. So it is very likely that the Taliban would come to power only to ally themselves with a fundamentalist Pakistan, with Nukes.
Head north from Iran for a moment and you find Russia in a war against jihadists in Chechnya. Now you can understand why Russia would veto action against Iran because it would make their efforts in Chechnya, which I abhor, that much more hellish. Most likely Russia would have to increase its military presence in the area. Thus expanding the war into a whole other arena, the Caucasus Mountains.
Then there are our troops in Iraq. The moment we attack Iran the border between it and Iraq becomes meaningless. It is a well-known fact that many Iraqi Shia leaders hid out in Iran during the rule of Saddam and that many Iranians are loyal to the land of Iraq because many of its most important religious shrines are there. By attacking Iran we would risk inflaming a mostly restive and pro-American, for the time being, population. Thus making the war in Iraq a much messier problem for our soldiers. Now they would have to concentrate on the whole country instead of just the Sunni TriangleTM?. Yet the whole thing is about to get much much worse.
Shia Muslims, the majority in Iran, are also in Saudi Arabia and are located primarily in the northeast, bordering Iraqi's Shia, in the oil rich region of Saudi Arabia. One of the biggest power struggles in the area has been who is going to be the main player in the region with Iran and Saudi Arabia doing the battling. So I am sure it wouldn't one bit bother Iran to attack Saudi Arabia itself. Remember too that Iran has conventional missiles that can reach Saudi Arabia's largest refineries. If they were to attack the refineries, which they have stated they will, it would plunge the world's economy into at least a terrible recession if not depression. It was a depression that started WWII.
Then there is Israel. Israel would be attacked immediately the moment our Government attacks Iran. Now with missiles raining down on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem is too sacred to Islam, how does Israel restrain itself? It refuses to restrain itself against rock throwing boys so why would they not just go ballistic on Iran, maybe even literally since they are a nuclear power? So what would Israel do? First off they would have to take out Syria because Hezbollah is stationed there and would be attacking from the north. Would then Syria get involved? It isn't that they are very capable but at this point what other choice would they have?
So now we have Israel and Syria involved. With Syria and Iran both attacking Israel, the US would have intervene to help Israel by attacking Syria. Syria would respond by attacking US forces in Iraq while attacking Israel at the same time. Israel would probably decapitate Syria as quickly as possible maybe by nuking them. It isn't like Israel will be able to stop at Syria while missiles are raining down on Haifa. Most likely too is that Iran has chemical weapons unlike Iraq. If Iran attacked Israel with chemical weapons the Israeli military would go nuts on Iran. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons not to mention chemical and biological weapons.
So basically the result would be a smoldering pile of rubble that used to be called the Middle East. With Asia sizzling from India to Israel the oil would stop flowing. The entire world would be in dire straits and America is part of that world. Without Middle Eastern Oil the world's economy would come to a screeching halt.
The most interesting aspect of this scenario is it is the same as the Christian's Armageddon right before the second coming of Christ. Tim Lahaye's "Left Behind" series starts with an attack from Iran against Israel. The sect in Christianity that truly believes this will happen are WASPs more specifically the born again evangelical community. Some thirty percent of Americans believe in the bible literally and, I would believe, the President is one of them. Many of those same people subscribe to the notion of the rapture. Our country is going completely and utterly insane. Which leads me to believe that we must sneak up and remove the bus driver otherwise we are all going to die.