The Israeli Factor

One simply cannot understand American foreign policy without Israel in the equation and this war plan unfolding today is about Israel at least as much as it is about oil. But the oil is not so much for American consumption as it is political and economic control of a crucial commodity. This is the same criticism leveled against Saddam when he invaded Kuwait - he could control half the worlds oil supplies and extort world governments and influence policy, oh no! But now Bush does the same thing and it's a wonderful new world of freedom and democracy! The point is, oil is a commodity that must be controlled in order to further American-Israeli interests with an emphasis on the second one. "Arab diplomatic sources said the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq shut down the Iraqi-Syrian oil pipeline that extended from Kirkuk to the Syrian port city of Banyas. The Iraqi oil then continued via pipeline to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli." Headline: U.S. also denies Iraqi oil to Lebanon, (World Tribune recycles their links but it was valid at the time of this writing). First task: turn off the spigot.

Not only does the U$ have a military base in the heart of west-Asia but Iran is nearly surrounded with nominally American controlled Afghanistan on the other side, Syria is nearly surrounded with Israel on the other flank. All these enemies of Israel can be either kept in line through fear or more likely directly targeted through economic warfare such as the sanctions about to be slapped on a 'non-compliant' Syria and the oil deprivation against Syria and Lebanon of more limited effect. And of course the Palestinians suicide 'martyr' families won't be getting those $10,000 dollar payments from Saddam anymore. Also, Israel is set to get a direct pipeline of Iraqi oil through Jordan and terminating at the Israeli port of Haifa. What a deal. Let no one claim the Bush administrations is difficult to predict anymore, Hitler's policies of military aggression had more subtlety and nuance than Bush & Associates! Look at the biggest supporters for this war on Iraq, who are they? Neo-conservatives, Likud backers, Israel lobby, the Christian Fundamentalists and Dispensationalists, etc.

Much of the American public knows they've been lied to about this war on Iraq from beginning to end but the widespread attitude in America is - so what? Who cares? Which itself is indicative of shortsighted ignorance among other flaws, but whatever the case they should care and here's why...

• Public acquiescence shows those in government that blatant, self-serving lies and hypocrisy are deemed completely acceptable behavior by the American electorate.

• The fundamental source of terrorism is economic and social instability and this present age of imperialistic warfare is like gasoline on the that smoldering fire.

• The political elite's are crafting a self-fulfilling situation wherein greater worldwide instability plays directly into their plans. They can use this artificial disorder as a pretext to consolidate their power, deprive the public of its rights, negate the Constitution and use increased warfare as a smokescreen and diversion for escalating domestic problems.

• Israel is not friendly to American interests, they consume billions of American taxpayer dollars in aid and economic subsidies, re-sell sensitive, top-of-the-line American military equipment around the world (China and India are major customers) and regularly kill American citizens without remorse, compensation or even an official apology such as Rachel Corrie or Thomas Hurndall.* As the saying goes with friends like Israel who needs enemies?!

• Countries just like individuals are known by the company they keep. The Israeli government is regularly censured by the UN and multiple Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) for their apartheid social-political structure, chronic abuse and degradation of women, military-police brutality and gross-violations of human-rights just to start with.

The Bush administration has consistently stifled the efforts of developing world debt-relief organizations but suddenly after Iraq has been 'regime changed' whoa! These poor people need help, Iraq's foreign debts which could total up to 300 billion dollars, need to be forgiven! The double standards of Bush & Associates are as blatant as they are shameless, they don't even care - it seems that only divine retribution for hubris can stop them now anyway. But in the meantime they'll be busy knocking down all of Israel's enemies one after the other. Witness that immediately after Iraq is wasted and the countries money and natural resources expropriated into U$ control, Rumsfeld and the rest start vilifying Syria. Now it seems Syria has a vast arsenal of deadly chemical weapons while protecting all of Saddam's minions recently vanished from Iraq. Phase two begins.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel has "a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans." 'Israel Wants U.S. to Pressure Syria' And of course the Bush administration has so much credibility after telling the world that Iraq had everything from chemical to nuclear weapons hidden ready to torch the world (how?!) if America didn't go in and 'take out' Saddam. Then where are these weapons?! If the Iraqi military machine was so big and bad why did they crumble like a sandcastle at high tide?

So the American government has defied world opinion to do this completely discretionary war against Iraq, already spent at least $80 billion dollars to begin with, trade and budget deficits are hovering around record levels, unemployment is increasing and the world economy is set for a 'double-dip' recession. Anger and resentment at the hypocrisy and injustice has already fanned the flames of fundamentalism and polarized opinion, setting the stage for even more bloody and contentious conflict throughout the near future. So then what do American's get from this prelude to perpetual war? Where's the benefit to the public, the taxpayer, the voter, the unemployed, the working mom, the small-business owner? I'm at a loss.

Any consistent criticism of Israel always draws out the same tired whine from the supporters of the dysfunctional status-quo -' you can't say that it's anti-Semitism!' Look, if you are honestly trying to identify facts and speak the truth you can't let spurious, emotionally charged slander like anti-Semitism stop you and this is why: the portion of the Israeli populace that actually wants to cleanup their corrupt and brutal government and integrate with the world needs external support to achieve their task. As long as American presidential administrations tacitly and overtly support the worst excess' and regimes in Israel such as the Likud party and Ariel Sharon, Israel will not become safer, livable or respected but rather more dangerous more hated and more isolated throughout the world. Further, if America continues to share the same bed with Israel, America and Americans will get up with the same diseases. 14.04.03

* OK, Thomas Hurndall is British and he's only brain dead but the fact remains, the killing of activists really is being done on purpose by the Israeli military and indeed it's difficult to conceive how a sniper bullet through the head can be anything but intentional. The Israeli military knows that if they just slay a few they can claim it's an accident and maintain just enough plausibility to cover heir own butts and still scare away the protesters and cameras so they can go back to the business of demolishing homes and fruit trees as part of project: creeping colonies.

A Visual dictionary of modern American warfare

You Can't Spell War Without Dubya

Notice to Americans and non-Americans living in those other countries that are not America. Here is your official George W Bush update (just in case you've been in prison or an uncharted desert isle the past six months).

• The 'War on Terrorism' has so far cost at least $28 billion dollars and considering how much safer we all feel now it has to be money well spent, right?

• Headline: U$ budget deficit at record levels as federal spending runs amok. Spending money is easy when it's someone else's and they even let you sign checks with a stamp!! Attention Federal Reserve: America needs greenbacks, don't let her down - keep those printing presses hot boys!

• After just a few years of surplus' the government has announced it's out of cash and has to borrow more, a lot more, or go bankrupt. Keen observers out there may be feeling deja vu right about now since the federal government just went thorough the same debt ceiling battle nine months ago! So, how much more are we talking? $500 billion dollars would likely be a very close guess. Sorry guys can't help ya, my savings account is already tapped out, try Japan.

• Bush buddy Donald Rumsfeld pushes for abolition of the Chemical Weapons Convention so he can preemptively gas the Iraqis. The nightly news may have forgotten to tell you that one, probably just an honest mistake.

• Bush and trusty sidekick, the venomous Condi Rice, declare that massive worldwide protests against unprovoked war on Iraq are all just working for the benefit of that dastard Saddam. Further, these significant efforts by the public to voice a non-executive-approved-opinion will be ignored by the President because they just get in the way of freedom and democracy. Whoa, and I was nervous there for a second - stick to your guns Dubya (you've got a lot of 'em).

• Oil prices are set to reach record highs in the near future as they soar towards $40 dollars a barrel or in layman's terms $2.25 a gallon for regular. Fill 'er up!

• Oh yeah and the Pentagon (with enthusiastic Presidential approval of course) decided to invade the southern Philippines. Thousands of Marines are now chasing down an army of a few hundred bad guys called the Abu Sayyaf who like to kidnap for cash (Philippine military intelligence estimates 100 members). Overkill you say? Hey it's a big jungle and we need something to keep the salivating news-crews busy until the real fireworks kick off. Besides nobody remembers what Jingoism is anyway. 21.02.03 [Note: This plan went down in flames in early March. Turns out there are a few people left in the Philippine government that don't want to abrogate their constitution. Sure surprised Rumsfeld. 06.03.03]

Icon America

Democracy Is a Lie

Observing the most recent U$ election for instance, the only consistent element to the results that I could discern, because really a lot of it seemed almost random if not outright foolish on the part of the electorate, is that whoever spends the most money on their campaign walks away the winner. This is essentially given as a dirty fact within political science, at least in the sense that large financial advantages of one side or the other rarely results in a loss at the polls for the wealthy side.

If this is the case, think about what it means for American 'democracy'? If democracy is a commodity to be bought and sold, then there really is no democracy is there?! Reality is somewhere between a popularity contest and a very raw plutocracy. One way to test this would be to chart the winning side against the amount of money they spent on advertising and campaign promotion. If the correlation is as solid as I think it is then it will directly show that indeed elections are just another tradable commodity bought by the highest bidder.

Certain exceptions to this rule exist, for example if one candidate runs a very negative campaign flinging mud beyond the bounds of acceptability, they can sabotage their campaign despite financial and incumbency advantages. And theoretically, if a candidate is universally disliked by media outlet owners then the controllers of the primary information portals can refuse to sell that candidate airtime for commercials or billboards for ads or, radio spots, etc. In this case even a rich candidate could not win short of actually buying their own media empire, which has happened. Italy's Berlusconi is one example and I suppose Bloomberg in New York would be a smaller scale version too.

Initiatives that are placed on ballots are usually too complex for the average voter to figure out, (and determining their eventual consequences is a task beyond just about anyone!) so they just vote according to whichever side pushes their position the hardest using advertising. Tax increases are a little different because the public can directly understand the personal impact, but even there, if the tax increase is small and the proponents have serious cash to throw at it they can very often push it through.

Thus I would conclude that the November 2002 Republican party 'blow-out' if you want to call it that was largely due to their superior funding. President Bush has already broken records in his fundraising efforts (many of them set by Bill Clinton), so this election outcome really shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

Another element within American politics is the two party system. This system won't change anytime soon because of the above stated financial supposition. Only the two primary parties, Republicans and Democrats, possess the fundraising capability, the money machinery to compete in the election process. This is why even rich third party candidates have a difficult time getting elected. Ross Perot had to spend millions and millions of his own dollars to compete in a presidential election and lose anyway.

Democracy is based upon numerous assumptions, most notably the belief that each individual voter carefully chooses the candidate that they perceive to be the most qualified and most likely to represent their needs and concerns in public office. Secondly, once elected those candidates will proceed to do what they promised they would do. OK, OK you can stop laughing now, seriously you and I both know neither assumption has any bearing upon reality. The choices presented to us on the ballot is rarely if ever what we really want to choose between and every politician is a liar at some point or another.

Democracy is flawed in the same way capitalism is by virtue of the disparity between promise and practical reality. A free market is a myth, an illusion, and both beliefs are predicated upon this mythical 'free market' of information to make them fair. Both democracy and capitalism are presented to us as operating under a situation of totally free information but in reality the information we get is far from complete and usually corrupted. We can't see all the outcomes and all the actual possibilities but rather just a few and of those few we realistically see it is further narrowed down by obstructions meaning lies, disinformation, confusion as well as the restrictions from the information portals that bring us the news. Furthermore anyone that obtains the power to limit information has an obvious interest in doing so against their opponents and in support of the candidates, issues or whatever that they favor.

In a capitalist system money buys just about anything including not just information itself, but more importantly the control of that information. So when people quip 'information is power' what they really mean is 'control of information is power'! This is why in our 'free' western society, the open and unobstructed exchange of information is not just a luxury but a necessity; anything less is not democracy but dictatorship. The authors of the American Constitution started well with the 1st amendment, the freedom to speak and express yourself, but that's only half the battle. As we've already seen it's not enough to just be able to say what you want we have to be able to learn and find out what we want too. 07.11.02

The $200 Billion Question

The latest figure on war with Iraq puts the total cost at US $200 billion dollars, and even at that astronomical level is widely deemed a conservative figure. This is up from previous estimates of around 60-90 billion based on extrapolations from the original Gulf War which was mostly reimbursed from allied coffers such as Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Now clearly an important question to ask is, just what kind of war are we talking about, full blown land invasion, pinpoint air strikes, intimidating insults, diplomatic trash talk? Whatever the actual case will turn out to be, the $200 billion price tag is as good as place as any to start with numerically speaking since it comes from President Bush's chief economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House National Economic Council.

OK so let's start with that. How much is 200 billion? I don't really know, I can't imagine ONE billion of anything and I doubt that anyone else can either. So the best thing to do is find a comparison. The entire Apollo moon project which was initiated by the visionary President Kennedy and lasted over a decade, cost $25 and a half billion dollars. That's 1960s dollars mind you. So, courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, I adjusted that figure for inflation to find out how much it cost in today's dollars to put astronauts on the moon for the first time in history. If 1965 = $25.5 billion then 2002 = $145.15 billion. So the entire Apollo moon project cost less than the official estimate of a new war on Iraq will cost. So, instead of blowing up an impoverished third world country, we could send 8 missions to the moon (Apollo 11-18) and still have over 50 billion dollars left over!

Don't want to explore space, perhaps send American's to Mars? More materialistic in your desires? Think of 200 billion this way. If instead of allowing another sad chapter in a personal vendetta between national leaders to continue, we just treated this money as a direct loan to the American public (which indeed it is, all debt spending anyway). If every man, woman and child living in America, 270 million of them, were to get an equal piece, that would mean everyone in America got $740.74, not a bad deal. I could use a cool 700 dollars, how about you? Or more likely just dealing it all out to every taxpayer. I'm estimating 100 million since the IRS website was of no help, that would be a very nice $2000 dollars for each one.

The outcome of a question is dependent upon the options and how they are phrased. I have a distinct feeling that if instead of just asking the American public if they support a war on Iraq but if they would instead prefer a $2000 tax refund, well, let's just say the answer would be nearly universal. 17.09.02

The Use of Farce Against Iraq

Anymore one can't utter the word America without the word war somewhere in the first few sentences. They say if you've got it flaunt it, but I don't think that was supposed to mean the shameless application of superior military force against every weaker nation within striking distance. Nevertheless that seems the case, especially if your nation happens to be on top of a large oil or gas supply.

So the Bush administration has been talking up war with Iraq in one form or another for nearly a year now, no invasion has occurred, no unusual combat actions have occurred and Bush steadfastly dodges details with some meaningless quip along the lines of 'I'm exploring all the options'. More recently Bush has been reduced to concocting obscure terms of derision, such as referring to Saddam as a crawfish (them's fightin' words!), necessary for over-personalizing the conflict and maintaining the boiling heat on the controlled pressure-cooker of pseudo-debate. Although public support for a military attack on Iraq is essentially zero in most of the world, roughly equivalent to the number of people who think Saddam Hussein is a great guy and a benevolent leader. Israel and the United States are the two cases where any sizable public support of the idea can be found. Despite this the incessant discussions by news media analysts and propagandists alike, U$ public support according to polls, has fallen from around 70% to near 50% over the past few months.

The only way any of this makes sense is that either it's all a smokescreen to hide domestic political challenges of the Bush administration from a sagging economy treading water on the edges of double dip recession to the rampant corporate corruption scandals to the bald-faced hypocrisy and partisan interests being magnified at the cost of national health and well-being by the Bush administration themselves.

Everything blamed on Saddam the U$ has either done to its own people, or even worse tacitly and overtly supported Saddam's own actions, especially when he was an ally against the big bad post-Shaw Iranian monster. For instance the U$ government covertly used poison gas on it's own soldiers during cold-war era naval tests. That same democratic government also turned a blind eye to Saddam's very same gas attacks used by Bush and similar warmongers today to justify a 'regime change' in Iraq! And actually the U$ government has gone even further than Saddam Hussein has, for President Truman ordered the use of nuclear weapons on a defeated enemy (so as to actually test them in combat) not once but twice!

The other view of the endless talk of war on Iraq is that it serves as a smokescreen to hide the fact that the U$ and UK are ALREADY AT WAR WITH IRAQ! Truly this is one of the oddest things going at the moment but it's widely unknown that American and UK aircraft routinely strike sites in northern and southern as part of the ongoing operation to control the 'No-fly zones' over the top and bottom thirds of that country.

It started out innocently enough, allied warplanes circle around like vultures with a right to self-defense if Saddam happened to fire any missiles or light up any radars. However this limited targets of allied rage to missile and electronic sites, once those were destroyed the rules of engagement had to be altered, obviously. Now the rules are pretty much - 'if it looks unfriendly, shoot it up'. Either way most people have not a clue this is going on, or don't care. So instead of reporting air strikes over Iraq the mainstream media can fight for ratings with endless talk show debates on bombing Iraq 'today' or 'tomorrow' when in reality the only part of Iraq left to attack is the central third of the country where Baghdad and Saddam Hussein reside. Thus the only thing left to blow up in Iraq is Saddam, and that's where we are today with indications of military equipment, most notably heavy Abrams main-battle tanks being shipped out of the southeast into the Gulf, most likely from Fort Hood in Texas and probably into Kuwait since it's the only Gulf state to publicly voice support for this operation and grant the land desperately needed for staging an invasion.

Given the apparent fact that the more this war gets talked up the less likely it is to happen without massive public and even government resistance, one is left to conclude that Bush is shrewdly exploiting this circular debate for maximum political advantage. When he's played it for all it will cover up domestically he will likely move to the next stage and initiate some sort of high-profile military assault on the middle third of Iraq not already being bombed. Suffice to say no one really wins here. Not the long-suffering Iraqi people plagued by despotic abuse and starvation inflicting sanctions courtesy of world authorities. Not the America people who, despite the entertaining charge from a televised carnage in another far off land, gain nothing but worldwide enmity and another generation of suicide warriors. Not even the 'W' Bush who will likely meet the same ignominious electoral defeat as his father in a remarkably similar situation about a decade earlier.

Those who care or dare to look will find that a very serious crack has formed in the foundation of The Empire of Lies. This fracture was started when the first American bombs fell on Afghanistan. Just since the second world war America has attacked and bombed: China 1945-46 and 1950-53, Korea 1950-53, Guatemala 1954 and1967-69, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, the Belgian Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Grenada 1983, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-?, Bosnia 1995, Sudan 1998, Serbia 1999, Afghanistan 2001-? Not to mention various 'dirty-wars' and 'black operations' too numerous to mention. I don't know about you but I think I see a pattern of aggression here.

Essentially every war recorded in the popular history of America was (conveniently) started by enemies thus neatly absolving America of ensuing atrocities while also justifying blatant jingoistic antagonism. For example, we all (should) know that the Vietnam war was officially initiated by the concocted Tonkin Gulf incident thanks to the belligerency of President Lyndon Johnson. World War II was a similar case. While not conducting provocations in the North Atlantic against the German Navy, the Americans actually fired the first shot before Pearl Harbor against the Japanese. Revealed just a few days ago thanks to a surprise discovery off the coast of Hawaii of a sunken Japanese midget submarine. "Despite testimony from Lieutenant Outerbridge and the seamen on the Condor and the Ward, the first shot against Japan by any American was ignored by military and congressional tribunals investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor - including nine wartime commissions of inquiry - and the incident has since been omitted from historical accounts." This in conjunction with the fact that the American government had advance knowledge of the attack since they had already broken the 'Purple' code, but delayed informing Hawaii to make sure that Pearl Harbor happened and Roosevelt's war could get started.

But that's only part of what really happened, for in 1941 high ranking Japanese Naval officers visited Pearl Harbor where they were gladly sold every kind of map and aerial photo they wanted while posing as tourists. But the attack plan they used was exactly the same as the one created and tested in 1932 by Admiral Harry Yarnell of the US Navy. All the Japanese had to do was read it. [2]

The machinery of the state run amok as well as the institutions functioning in conjunction with it, fight battles with guns and lies. But never forget that we are all in the middle of a war of the mind and no ammunition is more devastating that revelations of truth. 04.09.02

1. 'Northwest spy station sees all, hears all', by James Long, The Oregonian, Sunday April 28 2002.
2. More of Paul Harvey's The Rest of The Story, by Paul Aurandt, Morrow 1980.

Downward Spiral

Anti-American sentiment is on the rise worldwide, a predictable and understandable product of federal government actions and rampant cultural misunderstandings. The way in which America functions is something both Americans themselves are often in the dark about because they have no other references and outside audiences have a difficult time figuring out just who is in charge and what the motives are because they use a traditional domestic template to understand a unique foreign occurrence.

America is a vastly misunderstood paradox for many reasons, mostly because of media distortions but also simple cultural misunderstandings. I think this is a bit tough to adequately convey to external audiences and perhaps explains much of the antipathy towards American society, but we have no core constituencies. All the power, all the resources are divided up according to who has the greatest influence at present within the spoils process. Conversely the European system for example is much more academic, much more let's be nice and we can agree upon a method of making everyone happy, the socialist model has immense public appeal. But there you have a core interest, a consistent, singular culture and ethnicity. Hell, even Mexico has this. Everybody understands what to expect in Mexico, the culture, the people, etc. But what is America?! It's Mexico on this block, it's Greece on that block, it's China on that block...

Consequently revolution and direct social action is viewed in radically different ways between America and the rest of the world. In Europe these people are usually seen as either communist agitators or fascist thugs both of which want to take over the government so they can tell others what to do. Most Americans couldn't care less about the damn government, they're concerned with their own interests. Europeans see that aggression and interpret it to mean "believe what I do or I beat you up". In America this process isn't for fun, this is for survival. We can't kick back and collect unemployment for years like some European welfare state, if we get sick or injured there is no health care, and the ones with jobs do 40,50,60 hour work weeks not 35. If you want anything here you have to fight for it and all you get is what you can take. This isn't a demo-cracy it's a mob-ocracy! Welcome to the Balkanized America 2002.

Community is destroyed and undermined by good intentions and flawed planning, zoning laws, inconsistent building regulations, layers and layers of government all trying to regulate a huge country of vastly disparate norms, cultures and standards. Federal and state policies carve everything up into districts creating ghettos and ethnic enclaves coupled with the rise of commercial professionalism and the erosion of traditional private and informal social ties, wreak havoc with community and connections. This is America turned fully into a business and not a nation. Asian gangs, skinheads, crips, bloods, I mean I don't like gangs but I can completely understand the reasoning driving people into them. They're trying to protect themselves, their friends and their territory. The structure of U$ politics and how resources are apportioned creates this mess because it doesn't address their needs. It gives them no jobs, police harassment, discrimination, and lip service to their deeply rooted problems. Then wages a narco-war against its own people and whines about drug abuse. No shit these people are selling drugs, what the hell else can they do for income?

Today we've got middle-aged people reaching retirement but instead of the pensions system their parents had they have stock market portfolios. The stock market has crashed and now they can't retire. The generation of my parents will be working until they die because they have no money. This means people my age can't get jobs, can't break into the marketplace and start a career because all the open slots are filled.

We've got a 'Social Security' system that is nothing but a sick joke and everyone knows it will be gone by the time my generation reaches that age but we've still got to pay a big chunk of our wages into it! We know this because we see how the resources are funneled off, we see how the government steals from it's own and how they do the exact same it now accuses private corporations of doing - cooking the books, lying about income, and defrauding customers. Back during the Clinton years, magically the budget went from deficit to surplus because of a cute little accounting trick, counting Social Security money as income even though it has to be paid out again later!

If you wait on your ass here the avalanche will bury you. One has to be an activist here, you wait in one place long enough and you're dead meat. So to survive one has to fight for what you need and the bigger you are the more influence you have and the better your slice of the pie so to speak. It's an ominous commentary on society that the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) is the largest interest group in the U$A now. It will only get bigger as the population gets older. Leftists like to talk about 'unity,' 'solidarity' and similar ludicrous fictions. How can we have unity when everything you get is at my expense? One can't co-opt this type of a system, a system where equilibrium is maintained by the frantic distribution of dwindling resources amongst competing factions, it can only be exploited until it collapses. 24.07.02

Planet U.S.A. (Axis of the Universe)

October 2004

From an article by The Economist, A stigma that never fades, "Roughly one in five black men has been incarcerated at some point in his life; one in three has been convicted of a felony." I had to read that part several times to get the full impact; stunning if true. Connected to this but from another unofficial source: "On any given day, nearly a third of all young black males are in prison, on probation, or on parole." So is the truth racist or are we just inundated by misleading statistics? Well the Economist being the race baiting rag that it is .... not ,I decided I should check out the statistics myself. Unfortunately since they didn't cite the report they used it was pretty much impossible to find that specific data point, but what I did find was nonetheless quite interesting.

"In 1997, a quarter of the people living with HIV or AIDS in the United States had come out of prison that year. The numbers are even higher for hepatitis C and tuberculosis. When a resistant form of TB hit New York city in the late 1980s, 80% of cases were traced to prisons." See the 1996 HIV in prisons report and keep in mind, "The average prison sentence is still only 28 months."

"In 2000, nearly 6.5 million people were under some form of correctional supervision including:" 4 million just on probation!

The demographic information is buried within the reports but the dollar amounts are much easier to find, for example America spends $54 billion a year on the entire prison system. 12.08.02

"I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run," Bush on Osama, March 2002. Every time the Bush administration people are asked about Osama they say they're "in hot pursuit" but when asked where he's at they say they don't know. How can you be in hot pursuit if you don't even know where your target is?!

"The war on terrorism was bigger than any one person." ibid. Now Bin Laden's vanishing act is so good that he's even missing from much of the administrations dialogue on terrorism to be replaced by 'axis of evil' hyperbole and the imperative threat to humanity posed by the dastardly Saddam Hussein.

But Osama is not the only one versed in the art of vanishing into thin air, the "eviscerated" Taliban seem to be remarkably adept at doing the same against U$ military forces. One moment "hundreds" of Al-Qaeda / Taliban soldiers have been killed and the next they find a dozen bodies and a smoldering campfire in the newly liberated mountainside cave(s). The war that's supposed to be over doesn't look like it will be ending anytime soon. Instead the brutal reality is American, Canadian and many other western forces are now pitted against a cunning, well trained army of guerrilla forces sharp enough to take down helicopters with small arms fire, spin their opposition in circles while drawing their fire then leave suffering only minor damage! At the same time U$ forces are being tricked by duplicitous local warlords into bombing friendly Afghans who just happen to be the warlords competition. This highlights the fundamental difficulty plaguing intelligence and planning in this operation, that being just dividing the friendly from the enemy.

And even a half-wit can appreciate the absurdity of a B-2 stealth bomber dropping precision munitions on a mountainside. It seems like a concerted effort to use the most expensive weapons against the most mundane targets. Certainly given the billions going into just the Afghan conflict alone, before Iraq gets it's turn in the near future, it's making some campaign donating defense entity some serious cash - so why stop now?

You know, muddling through is usually not the best solution, but it's surprising how often it works in practice. Nevertheless the most glaring issue remains unanswered - how does this operation serve American interests and how is it making America safer? 17.03.02

***

• "Officials said blood was drawn from 300 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters held at a U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This could be used to create a DNA database to track them."

• 'Operation Anaconda': "One senior Afghan leader, Commander Abdullah, said that the enemy fighters fled during the heavy U.S. air bombardment. Another commander Abdul Wali Zardran, said that coalition forces did not wipe out al-Qaida's fighters. "Americans don't listen to anyone," Zardran said. "They do what they want. Most people escaped. You can't call that a success."

• "If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world, that's going to keep us going beyond doomsday." - Senator Robert Byrd

Crisis Colombia

Colombia is best known for it's drugs and coffee, but it also produces oil and coupled with Mexico and Venezuela sates much of North America's voracious appetite for gasoline and best of all in a cheap, reliable, non-Arab form. So it should be no surprise the increasing frequency of interest in Colombian events, especially as they have been rapidly deteriorating lately.

The statistics tell their own story. Colombia has been embroiled in a civil war for 38 years. A large portion of southern Colombia was ceded to the guerrillas as a demilitarized zone by President Andres Pastrana in peace talks. 3500 people die every year in the conflict and 40,000 have died over the past ten years. Over 30,000 cars are stolen each year which some say end up in the demilitarized zone in the south. Those rebels are composed of outlawed right-wing military commanders and their associated death squads now numbering over 10,000 and ideologically murky, leftist rebels of which Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is the most notable with around 15,000. The other leftist group has 4,000 soldiers and goes by the name National Liberation Army, or ELN.

It's difficult to discern exactly what, if anything ideology has to do with the characters involved in this tragicomedy being played out in the stifling humidity of the South American jungle. More than anything it really seems like just a power play among disaffected leadership cliques barely running, or trying to run the zoo that is Colombia.

But of course from the American standpoint it's never enough to let a Western hemisphere nation get bogged down in a civil war alone and indeed Washington has been arming and training the Colombian military for years on a rapidly increasing curve of cost and involvement. The pretext for the past decade or so has always been counter-narcotics, in other words it was legal to support and arm an untrustworthy government because it was for the express purposes of stifling the supply of illegal drugs reaching North American black-markets. Of course as even the lukewarm perceptions of a fool could predict, by depressing supply only at one point without decreasing demand at the receiving end only boosts production of drugs in another unstable and impoverished portion of the world. But herein lies a self-fulfilling prophecy because Colombian drugs have not waned over that time period but the apparent need for increased military training and hardware to stem the rising drug tide has increased remarkably.

So if the guerillas aren't going away, if the drugs aren't going away, if American involvement isn't going away, what are we left with? Some pundits have called it the next Vietnam (but Pinochet's Chile might be a more apt comparison). It certainly has many of the factors, impenetrable jungle, guerilla safe zones and the facade of your standard issue, left-right ideological conflict. Regardless of the parallels or differences, America has spent over one billion dollars just in the last year on Colombia. Colombia receives more aid than any other outside of the middle east, meaning Israel and Egypt. The Clinton administration devised 'Plan Colombia' to funnel millions of dollars into that south American regime while Bush has adopted the same program but at higher funding levels and more overt assistance.

Welcome to FARC country, Colombia

"Bush has also requested $731 million for the Andean Counterdrug Initiative in fiscal year 2003, including $439 million for Colombia, and an additional $98 million in military aid to help train a Colombian brigade to guard the 490-mile (780-km) Cano Limon pipeline whose oil field is operated by U.S. firm Occidental Petroleum Corp." (Reuters, February 2002)

President Bush's latest maneuver has been to mostly drop the flawed and failing counter-narcotics boilerplate excuse and simply state that aid to Colombia is for protecting the oil pipeline running out of the southern part of the country. Yes the same one that gets bombed and leaks all over the place on a near daily basis. How is the big question. Details, details. We all know oil and related industries of exploiting natural resources are very important to this administration. And why shouldn't they be? Money talks and when you can pump oil out of the ground for pennies and sell it for $20 bucks a barrel on the market, that's a serious profit margin! Are the corporations involved in that scam ever going to sincerely promote their replacement? Will they ever openly allow alternate forms of energy to reach the consumer in a cheap and reliable form equal or better than gasoline? If they did it would be suicide.

Now the crisis in Colombia is about oil and the issue is made complex by the simple fact that oil originates in guerrilla held territory in the south and has to be piped to the ports in the north. Even though the Colombian government made peace deals with the guerrillas, chronic, low level insurgency has been ongoing throughout the country (and the wider region actually). The Colombian President has now declared war upon the guerrillas, dumping dialogue, giving up on peace talks and sending the military with American aid into guerrilla territory. The timing of this move, although superficially precipitated by a rather typical guerilla kidnapping, is interesting because it coincides perfectly with Bush's change in approach from drugs to oil.

One thing is for sure, Colombia's president Pastrana would never have declared full war on the rebels if he didn't have the unconditional backing of his powerful neighbor to the north, the good 'ol US of A. And now it looks like the jungle's of Colombia are set to get even hotter. 22.02.02

Triumph Over Reason

USA! USA! USA! Who cares about Al-Qaeda anymore, the monstrous and immense Taliban have been defeated because they're now an amorphous guerilla group you can't easily find or target - out of sight out of mind. And let no one question the stellar ability of the U$ war machine to slay the innocent for vague, opportunistic geopolitical goals, then play up the wrong victory for a few popularity points from the dazed electorate all the while creating a brutal, chaotic, destabilized situation replete with increased anti-American animosity in yet another impoverished country. It should seem ironic that more American soldiers have been killed by the ultra-accurate laser/GPS guided munitions of their own military than the enemy can claim credit for, oh but you'd have to be getting your factoids and agenda driven sound-bite from some other 'news' source than the redacted domestic outlets, ABCNNBCBS et al.

The Pentagon's Generals get a thrill from boasting of more violence to come, since 'now the world knows the consequences of supporting terrorism!' neatly crystallizing dissociated sentiment into a monomaniacal 'us first at the expense of everyone else' mentality. It's not necessarily a new policy just a convenient culmination in presidential administration and chance events; 'so fuck the rest of the world, its just U$A and Israel all the way and everyone that doesn't totally support us is against us!'

Evidence? Here's a recent one, what of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) consisting of no less than 144 countries. This December just an hour before the meeting was to conclude in agreement the U$ delegation does a complete turnaround and demands that any legally binding elements be removed thus totally sabotaging the convention leaving the other members with a lot of wasted time and effort as well as some appropriately unkind words for Americas egregious behaviour. Just a few more toes crushed with the cowboy boots, eh Bush?

Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, America's triumvirate of treason in the name of 'patriotism' and Israel's Sharon must be reading the same book on domination and repression through intimidation and abuse of power. It's hardly any secret the two nations are joined at the hip in foreign policy goals. Both countries do the same thing anymore, act conciliatory even though you aren't, set up diplomatic channels then trash them at the last minute and blame everyone but your own intransigence for the damage that ensues. It shouldn't come as any surprise the similar horrific conclusion that will play out for America just as it already is for Israel. But what's really frightening is the shared attitude apparent in the Bush administration's overall tone since September 11th, namely the repetition of America's completely blameless nature coupled with the absolute rejection of all appropriate responsibility for past actions or present policy. Just like the West Bank Hamas suicide bombers, Bush like Sharon is using September 11th as a blank check to attack any country from Afghanistan to Zaire, and any group or individual from middle eastern looking cab drivers to Islamic charities in Texas, anywhere and anytime.

Headline in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot reads 'Bush: I would act exactly like Sharon.'

'So who cares, wars are brutal, people die, accidents happen give 'em a break! ' Bush and Rumsfeld's reckless, vindictive rhetoric against military opponents and demonization of enemies directly undermines America's moral authority crucial to winning this undeclared war (assuming it can ever be won). Secondly the public proclamations of 'no mercy' are flagrant promotions of Geneva convention illegality. Finally it magnifies the fighting resolve of opponents, after all if they're sure of execution or torture upon surrender the enemy becomes immensely more dangerous and fanatical. This was a key point in the Gulf War conflict. America's military leadership carefully employed a reputation for humane treatment of war prisoners in propaganda and for the most part in battlefield conduct, to defeat the resistance of Iraqi soldiers. Consequently despite Saddam's direct threats of death against his own soldiers Iraqi's defected in droves.

This is common sense and psychological warfare 101 but the Bush administration is throwing that reputation away with wayward words and dastardly deeds and once it's gone it will essentially be impossible to regain! Future conflict will be immensely more violent and bloody because of their policy all the while Americans are immersed in a new world no longer able to glibly believe they're protected from flawed foreign policy and distant conflict. 10.12.01

A Menace To Society

You know the September terrorists who perpetrated the attack are bad enough but venal politicians exploiting the tragedy to further their agendas, aggrandize their authority and attack opponents are far, far worse, especially the ones that find zeal in vitiating the Bill of Rights - meet Attorney General John Ashcroft, menace to American society (cue ominous music). No one can really know what this guy is thinking, maybe he actually believes he's making America safer, he already believes Jesus is giving him divine guidance on how to subtly update the Constitution (with a blowtorch) so it wouldn't surprise me. Not that it ultimately matters given the irreparable damage being done to the Bill of Rights and rule of law, all of which would have been unthinkable only three months ago.

Where did Bush find this clown? Missouri, but they didn't want him, they voted for the dead guy instead, so where else could an authoritarian religious zealot find work but with the Bush administration? Nobody voted for him to be Attorney General, he was appointed by Bush who most Americans didn't vote for either. The Supreme Court appointed Bush to the office of President and last time I checked the American people were never asked for their electoral input on determining the members of the Supreme Court either, all are appointed. So much for 'representative' democracy where it counts and when it really matters; no, this brand of democracy is just a misnamed form of collective punishment. So what's our unelected representative sworn to uphold the Constitution been doing in office lately?

• On the fifth of November the Justice Department reported a total of 1,182 detained in connection with the terror investigation. All of those detained entered the country completely legally but are being held on thin or nonexistent pretexts, meaning they didn't cross the t's on the work visa or whatever. For various excuses er I mean reasons the justice Department is unable to state exactly how many are still locked away and how many have been released, so in other words they don't know and aren't keeping track. Indeed not even the identities of those being detained can be released because it will purportedly damage the case against them and besides the ever fair and benevolent Justice Department is protecting their identities you see! None of those detained have been charged with a terrorism-related offense.

• Without a twitch on his poker face Ashcroft has denied singling out anyone on the basis of race, creed, or national origin for his worldwide roundup of 'suspicious' people nearly or indeed all of which are of Arab or Central Asian descent so it's all just a remarkable coincidence, right John?

• John Ashcroft's public appeal to report "anything suspicious" to the FBI has netted over 400,000 tips from dutiful snitches across America. Yet oddly enough none of those leads have done anything but divert FBI resources from other crimes while yielding NO substantive clues in the September 11th terrorist attack.

• This terror investigation has sent out lists of names of vaguely, potentially suspect but otherwise completely innocent people to be rounded up and interrogated by police. So far only one city has balked at this flagrant violation of law, that being Portland Oregon because it contravenes state law. Not surprisingly Ashcroft's minions fire back declaring his decrees completely legal, you know don't worry about it just do what we tell you dammit.

• The same month Ashcroft already angered many Oregonians for attacking their four year old 'Death With Dignity' law passed twice by state voters and functioning without complaint or problem. Suddenly in November 2001 during the middle of the terrorist investigation and an undeclared war on Afghanistan, Ashcroft, evidently with little better to do, determines Oregon is way out of line and orders an immediate halt to all assisted suicides. Complicated issues are always easier when Jesus is telling you what to do, right John?

• Ashcroft has mandated that prisoners no longer have the right to private legal counsel, granting his office the power to eavesdrop on any such conversations at his discretion.

• The FBI has invested some six million man-hours into the largest criminal investigation in American history yet remains completely unable to prove any terrorist conspiracy took place on September 11.

• The argument used by Ashcroft and the Bush administration for it's drastic actions is inaccurate at best and completely erroneous at worst because the United States is not at war, only Congress can declare war and no such thing has happened. But Ashcroft has already demonstrated his respect for the spirit of freedom and Constitution by personally stating that criticism of his authoritarian measures aids the terrorists.

• How many more bullet pointed outrages on American civil liberties is dictator Ashcroft going to perpetrate before he either shuts down all dissent or shrivels up in the sunlight of honest, open debate and adherence to Constitution and law only to ooze back into the dark crevice he came out of?

The most likely explanation, that everyone involved died a fiery death in the plane crashes seems logical to me, but is clearly unacceptable to Ashcroft, Bush and the FBI since they can't use it as a pretext for establishing a police-state. I mean secret trials, secret charges, no legal privacy, racial profiling, extended detention, jailing without charges and now even trial under military tribunals with Bush's latest Executive Order; does all this sound like an expression of confidence in securing a conviction for the truly guilty? Or more like this massive, globe straddling security investigation combing the world for weeks is so desperate for a patsy or a thousand that it's reduced to framing innocent people and trashing the Bill of Rights and hundreds of years of legal procedure in the process?

Seems to me like the desperate maneuvering of a failed and fundamentally flawed, illegal investigation working from the singular pretext of de facto guilt and the monomaniacal desire to guarantee the desired verdict and maximize punishment regardless of involvement. Those a part of this including Ashcroft and President Bush are guilty of far worse crimes than anyone they could possibly trump up charges against and prosecute. America, let's quit this foolish game of hypocritical rhetoric and besotted language and for once just call it as it really is. Anyone supporting these flagrantly illegal policies regardless of the purported expedient justification or public placating excuses, is not a patriot, they are not pro-American they are in direct opposition to those estimable values - it's called being a traitor. 11.12.01

Finding Patriotism

The entire allied campaign is falling apart faster than a Mexican Rolex; Pakistan's pronouncement that America is "bogged down" is if anything an understatement. And yet this would be difficult to perceive from purely domestic American mass-media channels; even CNN has agreed not to show so many sad pictures of shrapnel shredded refugees or flaming Red Cross buildings that it could alter American public opinion.

Regardless of whatever fantasy world the dominant American media and its allied partners in Federal office want to blithely inhabit, the remainder of the planet is under no such false illusions. Depending on who you ask it's either a plot to run an oil pipeline through the country or yet another Israeli proxy war utilizing the enthusiastic dupe of the American military machine to destroy their mortal Islamic opponents. But that's of course assuming the Bush administration even has a plan outside of the immediacy of electoral and more importantly plutocratic expediency; which is more than I would personally posit given the superficial evidence. Unfortunately the only thing clearly not an issue or reason for the conflict is the destitute situation of the Afghan people themselves. Despite the halfhearted efforts by the UN and the overlooked pleas of aid groups it's remarkable how little official concern was given to the abuses of the Taliban or the brutality of Northern alliance warlords before September 11th, and equally remarkable is the bombastic rhetoric applied to such abuses by Bush and Blair in the opportunistic aftermath.

Yet the end result is not leading anyone let alone the world to victory, as President Bush proudly proclaimed at the ignominious start of it all. It's conveying the message America is impotent to rectify even the most black and white issues (superficially speaking anyway) and that America is rudely incompetent at defeating technologically challenged opponents like the Taliban militia despite the most advanced weaponry money can buy. Furthermore the global political order is equally inept for America and allies can agree on virtually nothing let alone a definition of terrorist because every leadership throws in it's own self-centered definition. Domestic security is proving even more challenging as anthrax letters keep popping up. Government is powerless to stop even this seemingly tepid but decidedly low-tech terrorism effort. The only ones arrested so far have been pranksters. Given this astonishing track record it should fill us all with pride and hope that the nascent worldwide recession will be met with equal aplomb and tact by the 'experts' and elected officials alike.

Despite the incessant calumniation to the contrary the true patriots are the ones opposing this war with reason and sanity because they're aware the whole thing is a one way ticket to more of the same terrorism it purports to eliminate. War and social destabilization are gasoline on the fire of religious extremism, it completely undercuts the tenuous position of moderates and diplomats. Furthermore it's increasingly apparent that military confrontation with Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda through the proxy of Afghanistan is a trap for America, it can only enhance the stature and broaden support of fundamentalism around the world. The day America dropped the first bomb on Afghanistan is the day America's leadership declared their divorce from reality and the best interests of the American people.

Confirming this hypothesis is the fact that instead of stepping down the military mess, most of the planners instead favor an increase in the bombing campaign as means of achieving solution such as the vociferous senator McCain. Dean McCain should know all about what 'military advisors,' 'quagmire' and "Vietnam' means; and tell us senator proficient pilot, how many times were you shot down? And what of your wife's booze empire that brought you the cash to even become a hotshot politician in the first place? Some American's will be dying to know.

The people looking out for America and it's citizens aren't the brain-dead flag-wavers, the same "patriots" that have never owned a flag until everyone else started buying them. They certainly aren't the reactionary politicians using American soldiers to dig another mission oriented morass to die in. The real American patriots are the critical media (the few left anyway) and those illuminating America's suicidal foreign policy and fatally flawed foreign entanglements among other issues. The same ones that the "patriots" and government want silenced and censored (for national safety of course). Similarly it's typical of the era to call black white, call war peace and cogent criticism extremism or hatred or whatever the latest 1st amendment stifling euphemism is. 01.11.01

These Humanitarian Daily Rations being air-dropped over Afghanistan are just repackaged MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) used by the military. Go to an army surplus store and pick one up if you've never seen one. The stores near military bases have tons of them even though they're clearly marked as government property and not for resale, the enlisted are so poorly paid they sell them as a supplement to food stamps; well that and booze money. The point is these meals are dehydrated to reduce weight and preserve the food which means that if you don't drink a lot of water while eating these things you'll regret it. Contents of one HDR: "Beans with Tomato Sauce, Beans and Tomato Vinaigrette, Biscuit, Fruit Pastry, Fruit Bar, Short Bread, Peanut Butter, Strawberry Jam, instructions, and utensils package including salt, pepper, napkin and a match." I have yet to see either water listed in the contents of these humanitarian rations or a package of water shown in the pictures. Making the whole concepts look like a sick farce on the part of the American military and policy planners, but I'm open to alternate evidence if found.

Food is of course important in impoverished war torn regions but water is even more so. Look at the countryside in Afghanistan, does it seem like they have a lot of