Meet the New Boss--Same as the Old Boss

Tweet "As part of the deception, Democrats added some boilerplate pro forma comments promising a "new direction....for all the people, not just the privileged few (and) restoring economic security to a very vulnerable middle class." If only they meant it which they don't. Don't be fooled again as the clear direction ahead was signaled (for those noticing) in the supposedly "liberal" New York Times on January 5 by columnist Carl Hulse saying: "They (the Democrats) can spend their energy trying to reverse what they see as the flaws of the Bush administration and a dozen years (of a) conservative....dominated Congress. Or they can accept the rightward tilt of that period (the NYT through Hulse supports) and grudgingly concede that big tax cuts (not mentioned for the rich), deregulation (no mention of its harm), restrictions on abortion (ignoring the country's majority saying they're pro-choice), and other Republican-inspired changes now a permanent part of the legislative framework" the NYT clearly signals it approves of but fails to mention them.

"They include the oppressive Patriot Acts I and II, the Military Commissions Act, the revised Insurrection Act of 1807, the Read ID Act, secret illegal surveillance of everyone (even by the Pentagon) including a recent presidential signing statement to postal legislation allowing mail to be opened without a warrant, many tens of billions funded off-the-books for two illegal wars of aggression and many billions more for thuggish "homeland security" enforcement. All these congressionally-approved actions violate our constitutional rights now effectively annulled. So do the privatization of the hopelessly corrupted electoral process and the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution that allowed most all the above abuses to follow it. These and other legislative acts signify a nation sinking fast into despotism. The "liberal" NYT supports it in its role as a quasi-official instrument of state-approved information and propaganda.

"The Times columnist, expressing his paper's view, wants the above agenda continued opposing the majority voting for change who'll learn soon again none is forthcoming. What is ahead is little more than some tinkering around the edges in the form of inadequate feel-good legislative efforts in what's characterized as the "first hundred (meaningless) hours" leaving out the remaining 726 or so days in the 110th congressional term that count the most.

"Congressional Proposals in the "First 100 Hours" That Will Extend Well Beyond Them For the Senate to Act and Final Reconciliation to Be Completed On Whatever Bills Emerge

"It sounds like a title from a Hollywood "bad dream" factory," but this was the docket in the "First 100 Hours" of posturing hyperbole with lots more ahead from where this came from promising great pain and suffering in the next two years again failing to deliver on promises made just like it's always been.

Further on in article:

"It's also up to the Congress, not the president, that has sole authority under Section 4(a)(3) of the War Powers Resolution stating "In the absence of a declaration of war (none declared for Iraq), (whenever US) Forces are introduced....in numbers which substantially enlarge (US) Forces....for combat....in a foreign country (only the Congress has the power to authorize it)." As international law expert Professor Francis Boyle explains, failure by the Bush administration to get such authorization is an "impeachable offense under the terms of the United States Constitution for violating the Constitution's War Powers Clause and Congress's own War Powers Resolution."

"Despite the law and potential consequences of violating it, the Bush administration isn't easily deterred or intimidated. So don't expect change ahead in its permanent war agenda or any Democrat-led effort to force it whatever their post-election bluster that's only intended as a head fake diversion with no muscle backing it up. George Bush intends to do as he pleases, law or no law, so wars of aggression won't end because the new Congress backs and will fund them "supporting the troops" and the president - even one with an approval rating down to 26% in one or more independent opinion polls that's a single point above Richard Nixon's low point in August, 1974 right before he departed in disgrace to avoid impeachment.

"It gets even worse, as it always does, as not a word is heard from Democrats that the Bush administration through lies and deceit committed what the Nuremberg Tribunal called the "supreme international crime" of illegal aggression against a country posing no threat to us or its neighbors. The new Congress also said nothing about what former UN head of Iraqi humanitarian relief called an act of genocide against the Iraqi people when he resigned from his post in anger and disgust in 1998.

Stephen Lendman on Information Clearinghouse

Children of Iraq are Dying

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"We are concerned that children are dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment. Iraq, instead of being a country at the top of the league for medicine, as it once was, now has conditions and mortality of a Third World country.

Sick or injured children, who could otherwise be treated by simple means, are left to die in their hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet, and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated.

We understand that the UK may withdraw its forces from Iraq in 2007. Before this happens, we call on the UK Government not to walk away from this problem, but to fulfil its obligations that it entered into under Security Council Resolution 1483 during the period 22 May 2003 to 28 June 2004.

This Resolution recognised the UK and US as being occupying powers in Iraq but also stated that they had to comply with the Geneva and Hague Conventions. These Conventions specifically require the occupying powers to maintain order and to look after the medical needs of the population. This they failed to do, and the knock-on effect of this failure is affecting Iraqi children's hospitals with increasing ferocity. We also ask the UK, as one of the Occupying Powers designated by Resolution 1483 as Trustees of "The Development Fund For Iraq," to properly account for these assets estimated at $23bn in May 2003. It is asserted that by June 2004 some $14bn vanished in corruption, theft and payment to mercenaries.

We ask that all the revenues from Iraq's oil now pass directly to the Iraqi people, and that illegal contracts entered into by the Coalition Provisional Authority are revoked.

Only in this way can the Iraqi people rebuild their country with its infrastructure, administration, and hospitals."

Submitted by: Dr Chris Burns-Cox MD FRCP Consultant Physician, and many many others

Found on Today in Iraq

Iraqi Ingratitude--Rahul Majajan at Empire Notes

Tweet "Although he doesn’t talk about it much, this question of Iraqi gratitude has been an idée fixe for Bush. In 2004, as the transition from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the interim Iraqi government was being planned (the so-called “transfer of sovereignty”), according to Paul Bremer’s self-serving memoir, “My Year in Iraq,” Bush’s only consideration in picking the new leaders of Iraq was, "It's important to have someone who's willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq." Ghazi al-Yawer, virtually unknown before and unknown after, was picked as president over senior statesman Adnan Pachachi in part because Bush had "been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition."

"In a culture with even the slightest ability for introspection or self-reflexivity, of course, such a notion would be monstrous and laughable. After all, the disaster of the occupation is simply the final entry in a list of the worst calamities in modern Iraqi history, all of which involved U.S. backing – the Iran-Iraq war, the near-genocidal Anfal campaign against the Kurds, the savage suppression of the 1991 uprising, the brutally demoralizing sanctions. After all of that, even if the United States “liberation” of Iraqis from Saddam had made Iraq into a new garden of Eden, to claim that the Iraqis should be grateful to the United States would be a bit rich. Given that the occupation is actually a worse calamity than any of those just mentioned and has come closer to destroying the fabric of Iraqi society than all of them put together, the claim boggles the mind.

"Unfortunately, this idea is not just Bush’s insanity; it is bipartisan and it covers most of the American political spectrum. It has emerged as the dominant idea in the public discourse. When Dick Durbin delivered the Democratic response to Bush’s speech about the escalation, a speech even more stomach-churning than Bush’s, this was the core theme: “America has paid a heavy price.” “We have given the Iraqis so much.” “It is time for the Iraqis to stand and defend their own nation.”

Over 1,000 Active Duty GI's Deliver Appeal For Redress

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"Active Duty G.I.'s Kent Gneiting, Liam Madden, & Jabbar MacGruder with U.S. Rep Dennis Kucinich, who read the historic "Appeal for Redress" into the Congressional Record
Photo By: Bill Perry

"WASHINGTON, DC - Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH)
received an Appeal for Redress from active duty service members and veterans on Tuesday, January 16, 2007, at 11 a.m. on the Cannon House Office Building Terrace at the corner of Independence Avenue and New Jersey Avenue.

"An Appeal for Redress is a way for individual service members to appeal to Members of Congress to urge an end to the U.S. military occupation.

"More than 1,000 service members signed the Appeal for Redress. It was sponsored by active duty service members based in the Norfolk area and by a sponsoring committee of veterans and military family members. The sponsoring committee consists of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace and Military Families Speak Out.

From Iraq Veterans Deployed site

Officer Facing Court-Martial [STILL] Denounces War--LA Times

Tweet The nation's first Army officer to refuse deployment to Iraq urged the public in a statement Wednesday to "stop the war so that the death and sacrifices of American soldiers will not be in vain" after a major legal setback in his court-martial proceedings.

First Lt. Ehren Watada, who is based at Ft. Lewis near Seattle, faces six years in prison for failing to deploy to Iraq last year with his Stryker brigade and for criticizing President Bush and the war in statements to the media and at a peace convention.

The 28-year-old Honolulu native has argued that the war is illegal because Bush did not obtain proper authorization for it, and that Army rules and the Nuremberg principles adopted after World War II required Watada to disobey orders to participate.

On Tuesday, however, Lt. Col. John M. Head, the military judge in the case, rejected Watada's request to debate the legality of the war at his court-martial next month. Although Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, had sought to open the question so the soldier could explain why he defied his deployment orders, Head ruled that the war's legality was a political question irrelevant to the charges at hand.

Head also rejected motions to dismiss charges of "conduct unbecoming an officer" related to Watada's criticism of Bush and the war.

Seitz had argued that the 1st Amendment protected Watada's remarks. But Head disagreed in his written decision, saying that courts have ruled that soldiers do not enjoy the same degree of free-speech protections as civilians.

In an interview, Seitz said he was "appalled" by the rulings. "They are extraordinarily broad and subjective, which I find reprehensible. They are essentially saying there is no right to criticize, which we all know is not true," he said, vowing to appeal any conviction to the federal courts.

Watada's court-martial is scheduled for Feb. 5 at Ft. Lewis.

Despite the setback, Watada's statement urged Americans to "fulfill their civic obligations" by protesting the war. "I firmly stand by my belief that this war is illegal and immoral."

From Lawrence of Cyberia: Quote of the Week

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“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”

-- Michael Ledeen, "Freedom Scholar" ** at the American Enterprise Institute, via Bernard Chazelle.

Photo - A man cries as he waits to claim the bodies of his two sons, who were among the 44 bodies found on Monday, outside Yarmouk hospital morgue in Baghdad, December 19, 2006. (Ali Jasim/Reuters)

** I am not making this up. Follow the link.

Lifted in toto from the Lawrence of Cyberia blog

Demolishing Houses: Would Any American Accept This?

Tweet THIS WHOLE ENTRY IS FROM AMERICAN PALESTINIAN NEW GENERATION:

Destruction of homes by an occupying force is unequivocally wrong under international law; but so is building settlement/cities on land that is occupied, as is the imprisonment of 10,000 Palestinian prisoners that are held in administrative detention without due process.

How bitterly ironic it is that in the country which values "home ownership" as the epitome of the "American Dream," the United States allows (Caterpillar is also a US company) the wanton destruction of family houses. No American would allow this to occur in this country, at least not without a tremendous fight which would be supported by both the media and the population. Not so in Palestine where correspondent M. Abu Ghazaleh writes:

The husband, wife and 10 children had lived in the 100 square meter home house just six months after building it for 200,000 shekels. Neighbors called on the Red Cross and human rights organizations to assist the newly homeless family.

As for today's demolitions, the Jerusalem Municipal Court postponed demolishing Ghadir Abu Ghalia's Issariya neighborhood home for 24 hours yesterday after he paid 60,000 shekels to obtain a stay. Early last month Israeli forces demolished part of the house where Ghalia lived with his wife and four young children. At that time he paid 40,000 shekels to stop the demolition. His family built the 150 square meter three bedroom home for 350,000 shekels just four months ago. Israeli forces did demolish the home on Tuesday. [rest of report]

For a salutory exposure of Israeli war crimes, reported and publicized BY ISRAELI (!) visit the website of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD)

Silent About Gaza--John Pilger

Tweet "When I was last in Gaza, Dr. Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist, showed me the results of a remarkable survey. "The statistic I personally find unbearable," he said, "is that 99.4 percent of the children we studied suffer trauma. Once you look at the rates of exposure to trauma you see why: 99.2 percent of their homes were bombarded; 97.5 percent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 percent witnessed shootings; 95.8 percent witnessed bombardment and funerals; almost a quarter saw family members injured or killed." Dr. Dahlan invited me to sit in on one of his clinics. There were 30 children, all of them traumatized. He gave each pencil and paper and asked them to draw. They drew pictures of grotesque acts of terror and of women streaming tears.

From Antiwar.com

A New Cold War Can Be Averted--Mikhail Gorbachev

Tweet "If America's leaders have the foresight and the courage to look at the world as it really is, they would choose dialogue and cooperation rather than force. What is needed is not a worldwide web of military presence and intervention, but a restraint and a willingness to solve problems by political means.

"After all, the world has changed dramatically even when compared to the early 1990s. It has become even more interconnected and interdependent. New giants - China, India and Brazil - have entered the world arena, and their views can no longer be ignored. Europe is uniting, and its economic and political influence is bound to grow.

"Although the Islamic world is finding it difficult to adapt to new realities, its adjustment will continue and this great civilisation will insist on being treated with respect. Finally, the democratic transition of Russia (as well as the other former Soviet republics), for all its considerable problems, is bringing a new, strong player to the international scene.

"During the 1990s, which were a difficult time for my country, I said that Russia's troubles would pass, that it would rise to its feet and forge ahead. This is what is happening now.

"Russia's resurgence, its insistence on protecting its interests, and its ability to play a proper role in the world, are not to everyone's liking. Strangely enough, when Russia was mired in crisis, the west applauded it; today Russia is accused of rejecting democracy and of having imperial ambitions.

"Still, there are no real reasons to fear Russia. My country is facing many problems. Learning new ways and building democratic institutions is indeed hard work. But Russia will never go back. The most difficult part of the road is already behind us.

"I have always said that in this day and age we cannot afford to be pessimists. There are many reasons to be concerned and even alarmed. But history is not preordained. A new division of the world, a new confrontation, is not inevitable. A democratic world order is not mere rhetoric. It can be built.

Mikhail Gorbachev is former president of the Soviet Union - presidentgorbachev@nytimes.com

As found on Information Clearinghouse

Trapped in the Darkness That Is Guantanamo

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GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — I am writing from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen.

In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.

At Guantánamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.

From Cursor.org

Only 8% of Guantanamo Detainees Are Even Alleged to be Al Qaeda

Tweet "In the five years since prisoners began arriving at Guantanamo--the anniversary was Thursday--nearly 800 men and boys have been imprisoned at the military base; close to 400 remain in custody there.

"Bush administration officials have assured the American people that Guantanamo keeps us safe because it keeps dangerous Al Qaeda terrorists off the street.

"But the Pentagon's data show that only 8 percent of the prisoners at the base are even alleged to have been Al Qaeda fighters--assuming the allegations against them are true.

Found on Cursor.org

Burning News--Layla Anwar--Arab Woman Blues

Tweet "I called my lovely good friend Nadia, a sunni ( if you know how much I hate giving those sect qualifications) married to a wonderful man , a shia, living in a predominantly shi'a neighborhood in Baghdad.

"She was crying softly on the phone and I could barely hear her speak. Finally her husband picked up the conversation and gave me the news.

"As some of you may know, most of Baghdad has been without electricity for some time now.
Nadia was heating water on some kerosene heater, she wanted to bathe her kids.
She tripped and the boiling water fell all over her legs, arm and chest.

"She cannot get to a doctor because they had already received death threats from the Mahdi & Co death squads and she fears leaving her house. So does her husband. They might never make it back if they go past that front door.

"Her burns have turned to huge pus filled blisters and from what she described, I think the burning wounds are infected now. She cannot sleep, cannot eat, cannot walk from the pain.
Since the nearest pharmacy is a few blocks away and again too dangerous to reach, her husband upon the suggestion of some friend, is applying pads soaked in vinegar on the burns to disinfect them. And of course the burning pain is worsening and the blisters getting bigger and bigger, covering all her legs, her arm and her chest.

"She said:" I feel I have chains around my feet, they are heavy and I cannot feel them anymore,what have I done to deserve this? Baghdad is burning, and I am burning with it."
I listened to Nadia and her husband and was overwhelmed with feelings of powerlessness.
I could do nothing for them. Nothing at all. Powerlessness and rage, a burning rage.

Found on Uruknet.info

U.S. Marine Kills Self in Fallujah

Tweet FALLUJAH, Iraq, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. marine took his own life by putting a bullet through his head on Sunday morning near the restive city of Fallujah, local police source said.

"Early in the morning, a marine took the pistol of an Iraqi policeman in the police station of Amriyah town just south of Fallujah, and put a bullet in his head," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

"The soldier uttered words saying he was sad and miserable," the source said.

The U.S. troops kept the policeman who gave the marine the pistol for several hours, but released him later, he added.

From Today in Iraq

US Raids Tikrit University (Again)

Tweet Tikrit-Raid
U.S. forces raid student dormitories in Tikrit University
By Ghazwan al-Juburi
Tikrit, Jan 14, (VOI) - U.S. forces raided the students dormitories in Tikrit University and detained four students and an administrative official, a university source said on Sunday.
"U.S. troops attacked last night the Tikrit University's dormitories of the engineering and agronomy colleges in al-Arbaeen street and arrested four students and administrative official Bakr al-Samaraie," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) on condition of anonymity.
The American forces, the source added, went on the rampage and destroyed furniture and electrical equipments inside the two-storey building and assaulted a number of students.
The U.S. troops left the place at dawn today by did not release the students or the official.
The raid is the fourth by U.S. soldiers on Tikrit University. Each time they detain a number of students on charges of involvement in armed activities against U.S. patrols in Tikrit.
AE

We all should read Today in Iraq every day.

Instead of “al-Qaeda,” U.S. Kills Nomads in Somalia--Kurt Nimmo

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“'Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets,” described as “backfir[ing] spectacularly” by the British newspaper.

"All of this runs counter to the assertions of U.S. ambassador, Michael Ranneberger, who said “that no civilians had been killed or injured and that only one attack had taken place. The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, reported that an estimated 100 people were wounded in Monday’s air strikes on the small fishing village of Ras Kamboni launched from the US military base in Djibouti after a mobile phone intercept.” It is not explained why impoverished nomads, in search of water, would be in possession of cell phones (or, for that matter, why there are cell phone towers in a remote area of one of the world’s poorest countries).

"As should be expected, the operations against innocent Somalis serve but one purpose only, that is beyond satiating the blood lust of Muslim hating neocons—it was an excuse to get “boots on the ground for the first time since a 1993 mission backfired and led to a humiliating withdrawal from Somalia,” a mission mythologized in violent Hollywood fashion in the film Black Hawk Down.

“'Under international law, there is a duty to distinguish between military and civilian targets,” said Paul Smith-Lomas, Oxfam’s regional director. “We are deeply concerned that this principle is not being adhered to, and that innocent people in Somalia are paying the price,” as innocent people have since the neocons captured the Oval Office and large swaths of the Pentagon.

"It is of no concern to the Pentagon that above mentioned “terrorists” were not killed and innocent nomads suffered instead. In fact, such reckless behavior will serve as a “blueprint” for future operations against Muslim enemies.

Another Day in the Empire via Whatreallyhappened.com

Demanding an End to Bush's War--Beyond the Surge--Yifat Susskind

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"Most Democrats' response to Bush's speech was a chilling reminder of how far to the right the political center has lurched. Official Democratic opinion vacillated between two options. The first is to continue to "help the Iraqis." So far US "help" has killed well over half a million people, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure, ignited a civil war, and transformed the country from a brutal, but highly functional, secular state into a brutal, totally dysfunctional Islamist theocracy.

"The second option is to compel Iraqis to "take responsibility" for the lack of security, the marauding militias, and the crisis-level shortages of electricity, water, and housing that so many Iraqi families face. But all of these things are squarely the responsibility of the United States, which pummeled Iraq with 16 years of war and sanctions; propelled reactionary religious fanatics into power; and gave training, money, and weapons to the Shiite militias that are now prosecuting the civil war. The Democrats' condescending admonitions to Iraqis to "take responsibility" are more accurately called blaming the victim.

"What the Democrats should have been saying in response is that another 21,500 troops will not defeat the insurgency or quell the civil war. The "surge" will merely bring the total number of troops to about what it was last November--the single worst month for Iraqi fatalities. And they should have been saying that another $1 billion in reconstruction money won't make any difference. Far too much of the first $18.4 billion is now lining the pockets of Dick Cheney's friends at Halliburton. Besides, it's hard to reconstruct when you're being bombed and shot at by insurgents. If the Democrats were really doing their job last night, they would have refocused attention on the real issue, which is not tinkering with troop levels and reconstruction budgets, but ending US involvement in the war. Pursuing that goal, after all, is the reason they were elected in the first place.

"So what now? We should demand that Congress take advantage of the hearings scheduled over the next few weeks to really interrogate Bush's proposal. We should demand that they refuse Bush's request (expected in February) for another $100 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we should forcefully remind them that it's not nearly enough to say "no" to a troop increase. There are already 132,000 US soldiers in Iraq. A new Iraq policy must begin by bringing all of them home.

From Counterpunch.org

Palestine 2007: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank

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A general view of Har Homa settlement, built on the land of West Bank city of Bethlehem, and considered by Israel to be part of 'Greater Jerusalem', 29 November 2006. (MaanImages/Magnus Johansson)

Link to whole story by Israeli Professor, Ilan Pappe, from Electronic Intifada sampled below: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6374.shtml

On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.

On 28 December 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report about the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.

Sadr City--Another Fallujah in the Making? Lenin's Tomb

Tweet "So, the news from Iraqi sources is that barricades have been suddenly set up by the US around Sadr City. Recent raids have been stepped up, and firefights are taking place daily, with scores of deaths. A recent air strike on a house in Sadr City killed four civilians. Some military experts are egging the Bush administration on: "If our troops do not enter Sadr City, they belittle the notion of a 'surge' because they would leave a leading militia unscathed", said a chap from IISS (the same think-tank, in fact, that supplied Blair with a rather important propaganda report in 2002).

"Of course, attacking Sadr City and other areas where the Mahdi Army has a popular base is dangerous for the occupiers, since it is by no means clear that they can defeat a combined Sunni-Shiite rebellion. However, given that the demand made on the Sadrists to give up arms and cease militia control of Sadr City is so utterly ludicrous - with, oh you know, occupiers bombing one side, and mysterious car bombings and mortare fire hitting the other - it is not going to be met. I fear another Fallujah. And I never thought I'd have t say this, but watching the Democrats actually criticise Bush's surge policy (albeit they will do as little as possible to stop it) brought a moment of shame and horror, as the next words out of the newscaster's mouth were "but the Prime Minister applauded Bush's decision...". Now, short of revolution, how do we stop this bastard? How do we make our opposition felt in our supposedly representative institutions?

From Lenin's Tomb

Yes, Virginia, It WAS About the Oil--Richard W. Behan

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"The Bush Administration today seems to have written off the Afghanistan adventure as a failure: we hear virtually nothing about it, and the pipeline project appears to be dead. (Osama bin Laden meanwhile remains at large, of no apparent interest to the Bush Administration. "I truly am not that concerned about him," Mr. Bush has said.)

"The far larger prize is in Iraq, where the war's objective is to claim for American and British oil companies the rich crude resources of the country-some 115 billion barrels of oil, enough to dent seriously OPEC's dominance of world markets. Though the war is tenuous and increasingly bloody, capturing the oil is not yet irretrievably out of reach. (Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Conoco/Phillips, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch Shell are the visibly dominant companies in Baghdad today, according to Joshua Holland's recent AlterNet article.)

"The strategy for capturing the oil was cleverly designed and purposefully deceitful. First, the nationalized structure of Iraq's oil industry would be abolished, and the oil fields privatized instead. International oil companies (e.g., the five named above) would be invited to "invest" in the oil fields. They would do so by signing Production Sharing Agreements (PSA's), which grant the companies a share of the oil produced, in exchange for their investing in infrastructure. But the prospective "shares" for the oil companies by any standards are unfairly, obscenely large, and the PSA's are irrevocable for 30 years. (The OPEC countries have nationalized their industries-Iraq did so in 1972- but not a single one relies on PSA's; they are tantamount to legalized theft.)

"The privatization scheme and the provision for PSA's were worked out in the Bush State Department long before the Iraqi war was launched, and they were inserted into the emerging Iraqi government's tentative procedures by Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority.

"In typical Bush Administration fashion, a smokescreen obscured a repulsive reality. American and British oil companies could capture the bulk of the oil without Iraq technically relinquishing ownership. Then a "war on terror" was launched to make all this happen.

From Counterpunch.org

U.S., Ethiopian attacks “killed 100 Somali civilians”

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"More than 100 Somali civilians have been killed this week in U.S. and Ethiopian air strikes in southern Somalia, according to clan elders and residents.

"Sheikh Abdullahi Ali Malabon, an elder in the badly hit Afmadow area said Thursday 100 bodies had been counted.

"We have sent a team to assess the casualties there and they have confirmed more than 100 people killed," he told AFP. “Many others were wounded but we don't have an exact number."

"Residents in other villages closer to the Kenyan border reported at least 100 civilian deaths, but stressed that they only found 29 bodies, some burned beyond recognition.

"'I was with a team sent to the bombardment areas near the Dhobley village to bury the dead, what I have seen was really terrible," said Absuge Mohamed Weli, a Dhobley resident.

"'I counted 29 dead people, some of them burned so they could not be identified, and we have buried them," he said. "A lot of people were also wounded."

"'I have seen more dead bodies in the forest, I recognized some of them and they were local civilians," Weli said. "They were killed while keeping their animals. I have also seen animals, most of them cows, dead in villages."

I think I saw this on Cursor.org