DANES WANT OUT OF IRAQ: A year ago, most Danes supported the decision to put 500 Danish soldiers in to help U.S. in Iraq. But then a scandal about Danish soldiers abusing Iraqis took away the glamor.

Today most Danes want out right away, saying that going in was a mistake. However, the govt., which will probably be re-elected on other issues, talks as if the troops will be kept in. REUTERS
===========
Brit.Transport downed, seemingly, by guerillas. 10 aboard were killed. The disturbing thing was that such a vital plane(for transport) could be downed up at its normal altitude, by a ground-to-air missile. INDEPENDENT

 
SHAMELESS CONDI IS IN: BAD NEWS: The Senate confirmed Condoleeza Rice as Secy of State. (She once intimated that not invading Iraq could produce a 'mushroom cloud'. ) Only 13 Democrats voted against her.

GOOD NEWS: It turns out there is a super-strong Senate tradition accepting a President's nominee for this post.
In fact, there were more negative votes vs. Condi than vs. any nominee SINCE 1825!

USATODAY told this latter story, but not that right-wing rag RMtnNews.
--------------
I'll be out of town until 1 Feb.

 
IRAN WILL COME OUT AHEAD from Iraq election.
They don't want another theocracy in Iraq; they'll settle for a friendly Shiite government (at least in Shiite region, with all that oil.) USATODAY

BLACK COMEDY: Iran is really anti-American. They still celebrate publicly the storming of the U.S. embassy decades ago, holding our people hostage for months. (The only time in history any nation has dared that kind of stunt vs. mighty America?)

Saddam was Iran's greatest enemy; Saddam invaded Iran, caused one million casualties.

People ask why Daddy Bush didn't go on to Baghdad. One reason was that he didn't want to destroy a top enemy of Iran. But 'W' wasn't that bright. He did just that. (He also destroyed Taliban, another enemy of Iran.)

Now the Bushies and Israel are threatening to bomb Iran.
(They can't invade; all our troops are tied up.) The result will be a Shiite uprising against us in Iraq (provoked by hundreds of Iranian operatives in Iraq and millions more of Iraqis now living in Iran)--helping the Sunni insurgents to kill GIs.

Also, the world oil market will be disrupted incredibly. (Together the Iraq Shiites and Iran may control more oil than Saudi Arabia; and Iran can block the Strait of Hormuz, to keep oil from other sources off the world market.) Gasoline here will soar above $5 a gallon--which is just what Bushie SUV owners deserve.
-----------
Britain, one of the great oil-powers, has issued a VERY NERVOUS 220-page dossier telling why Iran should NOT be attacked.
AlJazeera
Serves them right for playing poodle to Bush's Pit Bull.

 
NORTH KOREA BUYS NUKE: A quick way to get a 2d-strike deterrent vs. fire-breathing Bushies is simply to BUY a completed nuclear bomb--thus short-circuiting U.S. threats to bomb nuke-producing facilities. An N.K. official has said that's what the Pyongyang regime has done.

(They are supposed to have 8 of their own, as yet untested.) REUTERS

I've been suggesting all along that this would be the best strategy for countries wanting to resist Bushie threats.
Iran might do this also; it's going to be incredibly rich from sky-high oil prices.

 
IRAQ PUMPS UP DEFICIT, DEFLATES DOLLAR:
To economists worried about the U.S. deficit deflating the dollar further, a Bushie said, "Wait till you see our frugal new budget!" (NYTIMES24Jan)

So then today Bushies asked for $80 thousands of millions MORE for war, raising the total spent SO FAR for Iraq/Afghanistan to over $300 billion. [Bushies ridiculed earlier prophecies that costs would be $200 billion.]
This will send this year's deficit to record depths.

It's not clear how Bush can cut the present pittances for the poor enough to balance these huge war-costs.

(By the way, these expenses add not only to our FEDERAL deficit, but also to our record TRADE deficit: since the money is spent overseas, and thus counts as extra IMPORTS which cannot be balanced by our puny exports.)

A run on the dollar (panic-selling before others sell) could happen at any time.

 
ATTRACTIVENESS OF SUICIDE BOMBING: A prof in Britain has analyzed why people (not just men!) are attracted to 'starring' in a suicide bombing. GUARDIAN

Why is this method attractive to guerilla leaders? 1) there is no need to guarantee a getwaway; (2) the attacker is not available afterward to torture from him the names of his associates.

The number of available suicide bomb-volunteers in Iraq is very disturbing. (A horrifying number showed up on election-day!) First-world oppressors have failed to conquer determined 3d-world guerillas throughout the 20th-century...and till now they haven't faced guerillas able to count on a large number of suicide-bomb volunteers!

The Bushies face an unbeatable foe.

 
MORE BLAIR BULL-SHIT: He says that after the election, the 'stable' parts of Iraq will be handed over from U.S. forces to our native militia. (He doesn't note that many of these areas, defended only by our feckless militia, will cease then to be stable!)

He also reminds us that only 4 provinces out of 18 in Iraq are 'unstable'. He doesn't note that these 4 provinces contain 40-50% of Iraqi population. FinTimes

 
SUNNI ATTITUDES: A high Sunni official in the present Allawi regime was arrested by GIs when he tried to go to his office! He then resigned his post.

Most Sunnis despise the Americans. And they hold the Shia in mixed contempt and fear (practically all of our 'native militia' are Shiites), because Sunni ruled over (and held in contempt) the Shia for CENTURIES--but now the election will put 60% Shiites far ahead of 20% Sunni. (Sunni Saddamites brutalized the Shia & the Kurds within the last decade!)

A moderate Sunni who's running in the election was asked what will happen if the Shia win by a landslide--which is the most likely outcome. "We will then all join the insurgents." GUARDIAN

Perhaps the Shia majority will be smart enough to bribe the Sunni leaders, by constitutional guarantees--that might work...but it probably won't work.

 
U.S. COULDN’T PRODUCE ENOUGH EXPORTS TO MATCH ITS IMPORTS says an economist [FinTimes—full story restricted to subscribers].

Think that out; even if our industrial capacity were fully used,our exports would still lag behind our imports. Then why is this capacity used now only to 80% of full production?

Very simple; corporations know they COULDN’T SELL extra U.S.goods, here or abroad. In spite of all the hundreds of billions shovelled to ‘our’ corporations by the GOP, to ‘make our firms more competitive’, THEY ARE NOT COMPETITIVE in the world market! (Our huge cheapening of the dollar hasn’t helped the way it’s supposed to: by making our exports cheaper and our imports more expensive.)

One reason for the trade gap: our hysterical consumption of imported goods; (a good part of this is the Pentagon’s staggering expenditures overseas, which count as imports; more of this import total is the billions we spend on imported oil, to fuel our silly SUVs.)

So far we’ve got away with this ‘running up the tab’ with the rest of the world; for their own reasons (NOT trust in our solvency!) Asian central banks have bought up our government bonds to finance our deficits.

But now these banks are beginning to shift their holdings from dollars to euros. The day of reckoning for childish Americans lies close.

 
IT COSTS BUSH NOTHING! Bush encouraged Iraqis to risk THEIR lives in voting. A U.S.helicopter went down; a super-armored Bradley troop-carrier went into a river.
THIRTY-SIX GIS died on Wednesday. An American was taken hostage. Dozens of Iraqis perish each day. And Bush asked for another $80 billion to finance this ongoing fiasco.. REUTERS This brings the total costs for Afghan/Iraq wars to $300 thousands of millions.

All this blood and money for NOTHING! But what the hell? It’s costing the Bushies nothing; they’re safe in office for 4 more years. Also, it SEEMS to be costing Americans at home nothing; the money costs just get added on to our deficit; it’s all going on the tab.

And few of us hear that our friends or relatives died in Iraq. (The hidden, future costs for all of us are stupendous.)
-------------
SEVEN GIs WOUNDED BY CAR-BOMBS ON AIRPORT ROAD Wednesday. It's amazing that U.S. can't defend about 5 miles of road that is vital for connecting Baghdad with the airport--a main communication link since the national highways from Kuwait and Jordan are so unsafe.TurkPress
=========
U.S. general brags that his forces have killed/caught FIFTEEN HUNDRED insurgents. REUTERS

We learned in Viet fiasco not to lean on 'enemy body-counts' offered by our generals as indicating success.
What counts is how many guerillas are LEFT killing GIs and Iraqis! (see above).

 
PHONY SUPPORTERS OF ‘INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY’: Many, many U.S. adults are childish and ignorant, needing protection from fraud and misleading proposals (The proportion of 'kidults' here increases every decade!) But propagandists like B.R.Mross [Coloradoan26Jan] object that we should leave individuals to make their own mistakes.

You can bet that flacks like Mross are really defending the manipulators’ chance to deceive these feckless people. And, sadly, it is the saps who are so vulnerable to fraud who will most indignantly defend their right to make their own mistakes.

We don't let meth-users make 'their own mistakes', because their mistakes would harm us all. The whole point of saying we have a republic, not a democracy, is to bar a foolish,unquestioning reliance on the wisdom of ordinary people, (This point used to be made by Republicans, before they learned how to manipulate so easily the ordinary people ! )

In the case of paid petition-circulators, we are all harmed if people sign petitions they wrongly think are being handed out by idealists; if they knew the petitions were backed by Big Money, they might scrutinize the petition more carefully, and we might end up with fewer socially harmful proposals being forced to the vote.

 
INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES STILL DON'T SHARE INFO! A Congressional investigating committee said that, 3 years after 9/11, and in spite of all the chatter about improving communications, the CIA, DIA, NSA and FBI still don't share 'terrorist' info effectively. MSNBC

Of course not. People who go into spy agencies are not normal; they are more concerned with defending their bureaucratic turf than on arriving at important home-defense truths.

Back in the 60s, one of the few Republicans in our Peace Movement had a big grant from Navy Intelligence. They didn't mind at all that he was protesting against the Viet war--but when he imprudently mentioned that he thought Army Intelligence did a better job than Navy Intelligence, his grant was abruptly cancelled.

Now the Pentagon is setting up officially its own spy agency--(I thought the Defense Intelligence Agency was that already!) so the Pentagon doesn't have to rely on the unfriendly CIA. You can bet this new spy agency will be as incompetent as all of our other spy agencies; and you can bet that if they DO find out something interesting, they will keep that secret from their rival agencies.

As I say, our enemies need not fear that we will uncover their devious plots.

 
VISIONARIES: Journalists are politely praising Bush's wild inauguration speech promising to overthrow tyrants everywhere; they say his vision is great, but implementing details may be difficult.

Over one thousand millions of Muslims in the world might think that Osama bin Laden's VISION is wonderful: e.g., toppling atheist dictators in Muslim countries.
But they may demur about his methods.

The devil is, as always, in the details.

 
IRAQ/AFGHAN VOTE COMPARISONS: Bush says the Taliban threatened to disrupt Afghan vote, but failed..so also with guerillas in Iraq.

But experts point out that the actual, effective security in Afghan vote came from local warlords—whereas local Sunni warlords are out to DISRUPT Iraq election.
FinTimes

Well, we’ll know in 5 days—or will we? Unlike Afghan situation, no international observers will be around to provide TRUSTWORTHY reports on how many Sunni/Arabs voted in Iraq.
-----------
If I were a would-be Sunni voter, I'd take the UNIQUE refusal of foreigner observers to step into the Iraq volcano--I'd take this refusal as refutation enough of U.S. promises to make voting safe.

 
U.S.GENERAL HELPS TO SCARE VOTERS: He noted a sudden drop in attacks, speculating that they're saving resources for a BIG ATTACK on or before election day.
REUTERS
What counts in deterring voters is not what actually happens on election day, but on what they EXPECT TO HAPPEN. This general may have helped Zarqawi, who just issued thunderous threats.
--------
There may be a drop in the number of ATTACKS,but not in the number of people killed/maimed/injured by guerillas. Ten policemen were killed on Wed.25 just in Baghdad. A senior judge was shot. An American was allegedly taken hostage. Baghdad streets are pretty empty.

All non-official cars will be banned in Baghdad. But, unhappily, that means that any car seen will contain 'collaborators', and may be shot up.

Iraqi of our 'native militia' who were in the hospital, wounded, were still so afraid they carried their machine-guns in the ward, still wore masks, and threatened any picture-takers. They obviously don't think they or their families will be well-protected by U.S. or Allawi ! INDEPENDENT

 
ALLAWI’S GANG CLAIMS CAPTURE OF 2 TOP GUERILLAS: And one, they say, has confessed to important car-bombings. There were even rumors that Zarqawi himself had been captured. NYTIMES

Maybe so—but these captures have not been independently verified. It was to be expected that Allawi’s regime would announce successes just before the election, to bolster their slate’s miserable chances.

 
$855 THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS: that's how much in annual deficits will be added to our national debt in next decade, says Congr.Budget Office.

And that's excluding costs of Bush's nutty SocialSecurity proposals; also the costs of our Afghan/Iraq fiascos.
MplsStar/Tribune

Let's hope that at some time, enough Congressional Republicans (siding with Dems) will put the brakes on this nutty radical's mad spending plans.

 
BUSH PUSHING UP OIL FUTURES? Pres.Bush refuses to say he won’t attack Iran.

If he does, Iran has devised all kinds of 2d-strike responses, mainly blocking oil exports from Iran, Iraq, and any tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. (Oil held back now will be worth even more later.)

Oil futures (which respond to possible supply blockages) have soared back up near $50 a barrel. Perhaps the market is responding already to the RISK that the Bushie Sharonistas will push through an attack on Iran.

Drivers of monstrous vehicles (often Bush-supporters):
get ready for gas over $5 per gallon!

 
SPECULATION ABOUT BUSH & IRAN: Different newspapers around the world have guessed what’s going to happen. People have pointed out that with our lousy intelligence service, a) it’s unlikely that Bushies would know where the nuke-plants are buried, so it’s unlikely they could bomb them accurately; also (b) it’s unlikely that Bushie alarms about Iran would be believed; they’d have no allies (especially not Britain!) except Israel in the attack.

The best remarks were,strangely, in a UGANDA editorial: "The world had hoped that the Bush administration would sober up after the Iraq debacle..but the [Bushie] neocons seem desperate to attack Iran.

"As the US mobilizes against Iran, it is vital that all right-thinking nations stand up to be counted. America cannot go around attacking and invading countries just to settle old grudges. It is time to create a new global coalition to resist a new hegemony…”
GUARDIAN

(Russia and China together, impervious to U.S. threats because of their nuclear 2d-deterrents, could form the core of that coalition. But what could it do to stop the Bushies?)
----------
The European Union said there is 'no alternative to diplomacy' in persuading Iran to dismantle its nuke program. ChinaNews (Bush had said explicitly that he 'has not ruled out the military option.")

 
NABBING OSAMA: U.S. will advertise in Pakistan & Afghanistan the $25 million reward we're offering for binLaden's head. Also, we'll raise the reward to $50 million.

--Three years after 9/11, the Bushies haven't yet been able to nab binLaden! And he's not hiding out with relatives or tribe-fellows..he's an alien Saudi! The Pakis &Afghans must really revere him!

--Suppose they do capture Osama (or more likely, kill him--he'll never let himself be captured alive!)--he doesn't COMMAND the guerillas worldwide, he INSPIRES them. If he's killed (they'll never believe he's dead--any more than Elvis!) he'll inspire Islamists worldwide more than ever.

 
CHOMSKY GIVES BUSHIES TOO MUCH CREDIT? The famous liberal thinker NoahChomsky notes the high money stakes in Iraq & Iran (unlike in Vietnam). He says Brits & Bushies will NEVER give up control of all that oil. INDEPENDENT

HOWEVER: Chomsky admits he never foresaw how the Bushies would bungle up an occupation that should have been easy. Perhaps he also doesn’t foresee how these bloody clowns might lose control over all that oil—e.g., by attacking Iran (egged on by Sharonistas).

Sensible imperialists in Britain are terrified about 'loose-cannon' Bushies.

 
PENTAGON ROBOTS: JUST AS I FEARED (& WARNED):
18 robots (guided by humans at a safe distance) are being used by U.S. in Iraq.
GUARDIAN

This was obvious strategy for Pentagon,now that sucker-enlistees are thin on the ground.

Ugly corollary: such robots can be turned on Americans. U.S. soldiers would not fire on Americans; U.S. robots (guided by a few Pentagon traitors for an open takeover) would not hesitate.

 
TORTURE OF INDIVIDUALS IS A DISTRACTION FROM REAL ATROCITIES:
(Ltr to BookReviewSection of NYSunday Times)
Your front-page review of two books on our torture of prisoners (23Jan) was disturbing—but this issue is really a distraction from the main evils of our Iraq fiasco: the wholesale slaughter from our bombs and missiles.

The main tactic of the Pentagon—the only one they’re good at—is bombing and shelling.
The Fallujah blitzkrieg destroyed a city, inflicting collective punishment on innocent civilians for not turning in the guerilllas. (We were shocked when the Nazis executed a few young males in Lidice, to retaliate for the killing of a Nazi officer—but now we’re not shocked by far worse slaughters by our own govt.)

Like the torture, the bombing and shelling are counter-productive. Both types of atrocity help to recruit new terrorists around the world.

 
FRENCH JOURNALISTS 4 MONTHS(as captives) WITH GUERILLAS: "They have time, they have money, they have weapons; they're fighting in their homeland; They number in the thousands; they're too crazy to surrender. U.S.policy is headed for a wall...Bush is guerillas' greatest partner (recruiting new terrorists)."
DerSpiegel, cited by InformationClearinghouse

 
WHO'D BELIEVE IT? Suppose after election next Sunday, the 'commission' reports that there was, after all, a respectable Sunni turnout--in spite of all the threats and sermons.

The 'commission' is set up by the Allawi gang, obvious puppets of U.S. (he paid $300,000 in WASHINGTON to get his appointment!). The anti-vote Sunnis will claim that the figures are phony. There will be no independent foreign observers to validate any claims about the election..foreigners are too prudent to step into that volcano!

SO: the outcome is obvious. The Shiites will dominate the new parliament, and will (with Kurd veto) write the new Constitution. The election won't have any effect--except to increase the slaughter; we might as well have appointed Sistani's slate.

Everything will hinge on what bribes the new constitution offers to the guerilla leaders, to call them off.

Will ANY bribes work? Not if they're determined to fight to the death, rather than live in a country ruled by the previously-despised Shiites & Kurds.

GIs will go on being killed, maimed, wounded at a horrific rate..for how long? for NOTHING!

 
CENTRAL BANKS CUT $ HOLDINGS: Private investors have cut back for some time their holdings in our bonds; only central banks of various nations have kept up the purchases. But as the $ sinks in value, bonds bought for higher dollars must be sold later for cheaper dollars.

And the first banks to dump dollars will lose less than later banks.

A survey showed that the banks have started to shift from dollars to euros. Bloomberg

It's going to be more difficult for us now, with $ worth less, to finance our staggering trade deficit (we import far more than we export..somehow those excess imports have to be paid for, ultimately.)
-----------------
We station thousands of our troops overseas. We must pay their expenses in those countries. These expenses of course add to our federal expenses, so they increase our federal deficit (now over $400 thousand millions each year.)

But also, the expenses we pay overseas for our troops overseas count as imports--so they increase our TRADE deficit also.
-------------
Altogether the Pentagon gets over $400 thousand millions each year. [One could say that our government lives within its budget, except for the money going to the Pentagon.]

One wonders how much of that $400 billion is spent overseas, for instance to maintain our troops overseas.
That is, how much of our TRADE defict is due to Pentagon spending overseas?

 
FOR YOU WOULD-BE EMIGRES: Here's a convincing vote, from an Iowa woman, for Spain.( They threw out the jerk who endorsed Bush's Iraq fiasco. They've also rejected the dead hand of the Roman Church--as has also Eire.)
---------------
Call me a wannabe Spaniard, but I still think that Spain's one of the best places to live, these days. Long before Leif Erikssen discoveredNorth America (c. 1003 AD), Spain was a major world melting pot (Celtsand emigrants from Africa, Skandivavia, Eastern Europe, etc.) made Spain
their home.

The reign of Franco's iron fist is still too fresh in the memories ofmost adult Spaniards, that they seem to understand and appreciate theconcept of freedom much better than most Americans. They're not afraid to overthrow their idiot leaders when a handful of their troops getkilled in an illegal war, and Don Quixote seems to be the worst character they can think of to depict Zapata in their mainstream(uncensored and often brutally honest) media.

After the 11-M tragedies and the ousting of José María Aznar, Osama &Co. considers Spain to have learned its lesson, and took it off theirEuropean $hitlist.

Not to mention the fact that the Americas were not really ours to beginwith. These continents were inhabited by highly advanced cultures before the belligerent likes of most "Golden Age", European explorers andcolonists drugged, conquered, annihilated, and suppressed these peoples.It's a shame how my Native American family members are ashamed to talk about their long and glorious heritage.

I think most European civilizations have, for the most part, mellowed out and matured in this last century, and better understand the errors of their former ways.They have learned to live rather peacefully (or, at least, in good tolerance of one another) in such diverse settings.

Alas, my Spanish husband is the only thing keeping me here... Maybe in 10-15 years when my in-laws start pushing 80 and are no longer as independent, he'll decide it's time. In the mean time, our son is being deprived of a larger-scale, cultural education.

So until the real Utopia reveals itself, or the Neo-Cons emigrate toback to Hell (or wherever it is they came from), Spain has my vote.
========
New Zealand won't accept any immigrants over 40 yrs.old, because they have 'socialized' medicine.

 
WE'RE LOSING GROUND, says a thorough analysis of the Iraq conflict by KNIGHT-RIDDER news svc.

Our bombings are counter-productive; the child of the people killed by our bombs gets recruited by the guerillas.

 
LIBERTARIAN’S OUTBURST:
Here is an excited response to my recommendation that talented young, sensible Americans should emigrate. [His remarks in BOLD.]

OKAY, just once, I would like to know where are we supposed to emigrate to? Where can people go to just live their lives and be left alone without spy cameras or the tyranny of good intentions where persuasion rather than force is used to create (or validate) responsible citizens?
First, every government has to use force.That's not the difference between a Republic and a tyranny.
Next, If you think spy cameras are the worst evil we might face, then you are an incurable optimist!
-------
That leaves out socialist hellholes (of a sort) like Canada and Sweden
Are you out of your mind? Canada is a socialist hell-hole? You display the ignorance of the world, on the part of U.S. citizens, that helped produced 51% for Bush.
-------
or other "well meaning" nanny states! England (Australia): every inch of your life is watched by Big Brother!
Of course; when the technology is there to watch citizens, every country will watch them—especially now with the threat of terrorism. Once again, being watched is nowhere near the worst we might face.
-----------
Hungary? Where? It makes more sense to "stand and fight".
This does NOT make sense. GOP folks have the Pentagon on their side, also the gun-nuts..Liberal rebellion would be smashed…and worse than useless..every tyranny welcomes an ineffective rebellion, to excuse even worse repression.
---------------
The nazi-type Republicans and the soviet-minded Democrats
Soviet-minded Democrats..again, you’re out of your mind.
----------
..and the fascist/communist do-gooders..
again, you're hysterical. The abuse-term today is 'alQuaeda fan-club'. Get up to date!
-----
..will not quit until everyone, everywhere is under the thumb! Soon, there will be no place to hide, anyway, so why bother to move? I mean, really:
Where? signed: Responsible Freedom Lover Squashed Like A Bug
You're hardly responsible!
-------------
p.s. And why do we have to leave? This is America!
This is supposed to be "it". "They" ought to be the ones to leave!
Forget what OUGHT to happen! Pay attention to what WILL happen.
As ordinary Americans sink into poverty--and especially when the next terrorist attack happens--they’ll likely support a completely fascist govt.
Then you’ll see the folly of saying ‘Things couldn’t be any worse than they are now.”
--------
There are many countries saner than America is now, [e.g.,Spain,England,Ireland,Canada,Australia,NewZealand] let alone as America WILL be.

The problem is to get such a country to accept U.S. immigrants. Prospective emigrants will have to pick up language skills and scarce skills, so another country will want to let you in. That's why I referred to TALENTED youth.
-------
(I've apologized to the gentleman for MY over-excited phrasing. But he is a good example of Americans who are ignorant but woefully overconfident about the rest of the world.)

 
WHO GETS KIRKUK? The city on the borders between Sunni-arab region and Kurd region is in violent flux. Originally it was Kurdish; then Saddam chased Kurds out and bribed Sunni-arabs in.

Now the Kurds want their homes back. They control the provincial govt. Those who can prove they used to live in Kirkuk can vote there.

Kirkuk sits on a sea of oil, the richest oil-reserves in Iraq.
THE ECONOMIST

This will be one of the most severe challenges to the new Shiite assembly writing the new Constitution.. how to allocated the power and the oil in and around Kirkuk.

 
ZARQUAWI, on tape, denounces the very idea of 'democracy' as ungodly. Our Allawi puppets entertain rumor that Z. has been captured. If they can just keep these rumors alive till Sunday, that might help A's 'tough-guy' slate in the election. USATODAY

Top U.S. general just denied (26Jan) that Z. had been captured. So much for THAT election stunt.
--------------
Z's denunciation of democracy sounds just like Pope Pius IX's encyclical involving the 'syllabus of errors'. Catholics are bound to respect that encyclical as embodying the 'ordinary teaching authority of the Church'.

Click on piece on CAFETERIA CATHOLICS

 
IRRELEVANT DADDY: G.Herbert Bush just went out of his way to assure the world that his son's goofy inauguration speech about 'spreading freedom, fighting tyranny' does NOT mean a new round of ignorant meddling.

However, G. WALKER Bush is president, not his dad.
And 'W' has already told us he takes guidance, not from his earthly Dad, but from his Heavenly Father (in regular chats, presumably).

God help us all.

 
SCIENTISTS WANT TO CREATE ARTIFICIAL SMALLPOX MICROBES! [ INDEPENDENT ]

That would help us develop anti-smallpox drugs, they say.
But other scientists note that this would make it easier for terrorists to design new versions of the microbe that would be immune to their new drugs.

If I make a brand-new kind of pox, it would be resistant to all present vaccines & cures. In this race, the inventors of new microbes will ALWAYS BE AHEAD OF INVENTORS OF REMEDIES.

That doesn't deter these goofy, world-threatening scientists. They want to 'do it just to see if it could be done'.
---------------
People with money would do well to buy wasteland (hopefully with well) and set up a compound of trailers to retreat to with their families when (not IF !) the new epidemics hit us. (Avian flu has already spread person-to-person--experts say this epidemic will kill more than tsunami has.)

This is called 'negative quarantine'--the healthy separate themselves from possible infection, until a new immunity takes over. This is a dim hope, but probably the only hope.
-------------
All this supports my LUDDISM, my general fear of megatech as likely to do more harm than good. See my DEMOCRACY, RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS, published in 2000. (interlibrary loan from ColoStateUniv.)--chapters 1 & 2.

 
TALK OF BUGGING OUT: In U.S. & Britain, private memos between the powerful are discussing various scenarios for bugging out--especially if the new Shia govt. asks us to get out.

Opinion is divided between (a) "Our presence is counter-productive, and (b) "Our leaving would trigger new horrors." GUARDIAN

These 2 opinions don't contradict each other. Our leaving might well cause more conflict BUT our presence IS counter-productive...the longer we stay, the worse things will be when we DO bug out.

Right now is best time for the Bushies--their dim supporters will choose to forget the disgrace by 2008.
But Blairites will want to postpone bug-out till after their election this summer.

My suggestion is that we pull back all our troops soon into Kuwait and or Jordan. Then we can stop the Baathists from trying to take over Shia region by conventional invasion.

We can't stop Iranian activists from filtering into Shiite areas; we can't stop Kurds from deFacto succession (under the guise of 'federalist autonomy'; we can't stop Baathists & Islamists from taking over the SunniArab region.
(It has little oil; that region will wither on the vine.)

But we couldn't prevent these evils if we stayed there years longer, either.

The 52% of Americans who say, "Stay on" are, like Bush himself, hoping for a miracle..after all, it costs civilian cheer-leaders for war no extra blood to stay in.

But 47% say 'leave within a year'. That shows minimal good-sense, along with the finding that only 39% now think the war was 'worth it'.
--------
The Bush line is that we won't BUG out; we'll train a native militia to hold down the guerillas; then we'll leave in triumph.

There are 200,000 guerillas/or/supporters--says an official of our puppet-govt! After all the months of chatter about training 'our' men, experts estimate that there are only 5000 reliable men on our side.

Some military say realistically it will take more than ten years to train enough militia to replace our GIs. Even dumb Americans won't stand for that kind of endless stalemate.

We will BUG OUT; the only question is when.
==========
For a good sermon saying "Bug-out NOW!" see Howard Zinn, cited by INFORMATION CLEARINGHOUSE.

 
BAGHDAD SHORT OF WATER: Govt. finally admits guerillas were able to bomb underground water mains.

Some think Allawi's American-puppet regime just cut off water & gas so they could restore them days before the election, to win support for his slate.

[Allawi's regime claimed they had repaired the mains by 24Jan.]

One pensioner said of the vote next Sunday: "I'll have dirty clothes and I'll stink and I'll be thirsty. Democracy means no water, no gasolene--just elections."FinTimes
--------
UN rep. in Baghdad said elections will be 'credible'--before they even happen, when no UN observers will be on the spot! Why not? when UN Sec.Council quickly counted the puppet Allawi regime as 'legitimate'.

What counts is not what UN says, but what would stifle the guerilla movement..right now, one can't imagine what that would be.

 
BUSH SPEECH 'OVER THE TOP' (i.e., nutty) say GOP 'realists'. FinTimes Such a project as ending all tyrannies, world-wide, is 'beyond our resources'. Yeah!

A good cartoon in RMtnNews,22Jan, shows Bush as 'Johnny Freedom-seed', scattering bombs all over the world.

We are 'powerful' ONLY in our supreme ability to bomb and missile places--and more and more countries are developing 'second-strike deterrents' (germs or nukes that could wreck our vulnerable cities), so they can say to Bushies, "Yes, you can wipe out our cities..but we can make you REGRET it.."

Of course such deterrents will work only to the extent the Bushies are sanely deterrable. And I have no confidence about that.
---------
Since Americans are not really interested in the rest of the world, and are supremely ignorant about other nations, languages, and cultures--and since not many young bucks will want to enlist now in our military--we should pull back from world involvement, and concentrate on turning our vulnerable Homeland into a Fortress America.
---------
A thoughtful essay by ERIC HOBSBAWN, a distinguished Brit historian, in GUARDIAN, shows the general folly of a first-world country (even one far less ignorant and goofy than U.S.!) trying to 'introduce' democracy forcibly around the world.

 
CHINESE HOSTAGES RELEASED: Iraqi guerillas released 8 Chinese hostages, after China agreed to discourage its citizens from travelling to Iraq.CBC

How could mere guerillas intimidate a monster government like China's? Well, that government is not anxious at all to help Bushies set up a stable Iraq society, so they can call their fiasco a success. It didn't take much pressure to make Chinese rulers pull their citizens out of that volcano.

Once again, we broke it; we own it.
---------
It turns out they will mark Iraqi voters' fingers with indelible ink, to bar twice-voting. But that will mark voters for death from guerillas!

 
BURDEN ON FUTURE? (Ltr to RMtnNews) on 22Jan, you ran a huge cartoon showing our retired people burdening the infant future. It should instead have showed King George Bush burdening the future with his huge annual deficit (to be magnified by his shabby 'SocialSecurityReform' plans).

Actually, the present federal deficit closely matches the over $400 billions that George shovels to the Pentagon every year.

His deficit should be labelled the PENTAGON deficit;
except for this militaristic folly, our government is living within its budget.

 
A PARADOX: How can the Bushies be so triumphantly successful in domestic politics, yet such abysmal failures in war?

Very simple: in politics they just have to sell APPEARANCES to a dim 51% of voters every couple of years; Bushies know very well how to sell 'the sizzle, not the steak.'

But in war they have to deal with stark REALITY: with implacable guerillas, with vehicles not properly armored, with no chance of ultimate victory. Tens of thousands of Gis (killed, maimed wounded) suffer because of Bushie incompetence.

In Homeland Defense, also, what counts is grim REALITY; our country is incredibly vulnerable to all kinds of terrorist attacks, partly because the Bushies won’t fund this Protection program.

We’ll ALL suffer from this brand of incompetence.

 
GREAT BOOK NEWS: the book on shame & glory, STRUTTING & FRETTING, by Jann Benson & Dan Lyons, can now be bought online at HALF.COM/BOOKS for only $3.28 (paperback).

This book studies a very rare philosophic topic: the AESTHETICS (not the ethics) of conduct; our standards for distinguishing SPLENDID VS. PATHETIC conduct & people. (Practically all English-writing philosophers spend time studying guilty/vs./ innocent conduct. But for most people, being pathetic & humiliated is more painful than being guilty--it shouldn't be, but it is.)

One noted economist said this was the best philosophy book he'd ever read. A nurse said it was the ONLY philosophy book she could understand. However, it didn't sell well--perhaps because most people find the idea of standards for WARRANTED humiliation--standards for when one SHOULD feel humiliated--very, very painful, even frightening.

However, PRIDE (love of glory, fear of humiliation)--pride is the mother of achievement and the sense of honor--but also of folly and crime.

We'd all better study PRIDE.
----------
The book is illustrated by references to great literature (e.g. Homer & Shakespeare)--also by up-to-date cartoons.
Comments on the book are welcome here.

 
ELECTION WON'T BE MONITORED: UN won't monitor Iraq election next week--and nobody else has volunteered, understandably, to enter that volcano.

There won't be many Iraqi observers either.

A disputed election,with no observers to arbitrate, will be worse than no election. FinTimes

If Sistani's Shiite slate wins big, that will be what's expected. But if our puppet Allawi's slate does far better than expected, the election will be discredited. (Sunnis are saying that the election will be distorted by U.S.--just as Bush's was.)

 
CHENEY TALK IS WARNING TO EUROPE: VP said that Israel might bomb Iran if Europeans can't persuade Iran to halt its nuke program. KERALA

Israel bombed Saddam's nuke plant effectively, long ago.
But Iran has dispersed its nuke infrastructure to make such bombing ineffective today.

 
INCOMPETENCE ON THE MARCH: Bush says he’ll fight oppression and expand liberty around the globe.
--this is a flat lie. His allies include oppressive Egypt, SaudiArabia, Israel, Pakistan, Uzbekistan..

--Bushies used ‘security’ to get re-elected, but such talk is now dropped—just as well, since in 18 countries, most people think his re-election has made the world less safe.
----------------------
But even if Bushies sincerely tried to spread liberty around the world:
--A new book by a CIA agent tells how incompetent they are. Tenet, the former head , admitted that we won’t have a competent intelligence service for at least five years.

--So the Bushies will forge ahead--or backwards..they won’t know the difference.

This regime is a myopic giant, lunging aroundconfidently in the fog.

--They think locally, and act internationally…interventionist lunges based on isolationist thinking.
[My favorite slogans--all true.]

Rejoice, tyrants and terrorists: no threat from THIS goofy gang!

 
NEW POLL (LATIMES,cited by Information Clearinghouse): In Oct.,44% said Iraq war was 'worth it'; now only 39%.

58% see that it's a stalemate.

45% say it has DEstabilized MiddleEast.

65% see that it has harmed U.S. image, vs. 10% who think it has helped our image.
-----------------
What to do? 52% say 'stay in'. 34% say begin now to draw down forces now (that would be nuts, leaving remaining troops as sitting ducks. 47% want us out in a year, but 37% say stay in 'as long as it takes'. Only 4% agree with nincompoop Sen.McCain that we should INCREASE our forces there!
---------------
There is certainly no level of opposition that would impress King George, just re-elected. But it's nice to know that while many Americans are CALLOUS about the suffering of GIs and Iraqis, at least they're aware of the folly of the whole enterprise.

 
POLITICAL SLOGANS: George Soros and a few other liberal-minded rich men are going to found a Democratic think-tank to match the right-wing tanks like Heritage Foundation.

But it isn’t THOUGHT that makes GOP win: it’s their ingenious SLOGANS. (For the average man, ‘thought’ is a set of slogans running through the head along with various pictures.)

Decades ago they said Democrats were party of RUM, ROMANISM, & REBELLION (anti-Prohibition, Catholic immigrants, and Southern whites smarting over confederate defeat).

Then, after Viet war, Dems were party of ACID, AMNESTY, AND ABORTION. (drug-tolerance, amnesty for draft evaders who fled to Canada, and of course abortion).

Pessimists about Viet war (though completey correct) were called NATTERING NABOBS OF NEGATIVITY.

Other great GOP slogans: the DEATH TAX (for inherited wealth tax); HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA (to see this harmless group as having mysterious, threatening plans); CULTURE OF DEATH (liberals favor abortion & assisted suicide); the OWNERSHIP SOCIETY (if you have a toehold on a mortage, then you are GOP ‘winner’ type, not pathetic ‘Dem loser’ type.

“Hollywood elite’ are responsible for porn, not the corporations who use porn to gain listeners and sell soap.

In this last election, for the first time, GOP did NOT have more money for TV ads etc.
Yet Bush won anyway, by various shenanigans—partly by great slogans—like “MORAL VALUES’, for God’s sake! And ‘SECURITY’, though Bushies won’t fund Homeland Defense adequately!

Any reproach vs. predatory billionaires is labelled ‘Class-War’. (I like to say, “That war is over. They won.”) Or else ‘the Politics of Envy’.

Clever phrase-makers seem to head toward GOP, on their way to Hell. They turned ‘liberal’ and ‘feminist’ into obviously perjorative terms.
----------
Peaceniks had “Hey,Hey,LBJ: HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY?”but that was perhaps too crude. We Had NIXONOMICS..not much.
----------------
Cleverness isn’t the whole secret. GOP trades on ugly aspects of voter psychology: eagerness to say ‘we winners’ vs. ‘those losers’--and pharasaic bigotry (vs. homosexuals or abortion) masquerading as religion.

So Soros and his buddies need to recruit great phrase-makers, great coiners of liberal slogans.

 
BLACK THURSDAY: It turns out it’s bearable after all. We’re listening to Verdi’s REQUIEM, expressing rage as much as wild grief. In hearing Verdi’s DIES IRAE, we think of the fate deserved by self-styled Christians who voted for this ‘Man of Faith’.

Remember the plurality (not a majority!) of good German Christians in 1935 who voted for Hitler, counting on him to save them from godless Communism. Later, the good Nazi Christians prayed earnestly every Sunday for peace—as Christian Bushies do now—while their armies ravaged Europe.

The awful difference is that no country can conquer Amerika as we conquered the Nazis. (Terrorists can kill thousands of Americans; but nobody can conquer the Pentagon's Amerika.)

Also, recall the Italians who voted Mussolini in. The Japanese people and the Russians and the Iraqis were innocent; unlike the Americans, they never had a free press or a chance to vote.

For grim consolation, remember the perceptive contempt and loathing Bush is already receiving from every people on earth except for the goofy half of the Americans. Remember the contempt and loathing that Johnson and Nixon, creators of the Vietnam fiasco, had to live with for the rest of their lives…(of course Bush might be too dumb to notice—but Rice and Powell will notice!)

I have very bright grandchildren; I only hope they can emigrate, after reaching 18 if their parents demur. I hope to God they don’t end up happy fascists. Like all decent youth here , they’ll have to acquire scarce, ‘hands-on’ skills (e.g., in medicine)—as well as foreign languages, so some other country will accept them.
----------
If you think I'm exaggerating the resemblance between Bushies and Nazis, read the Bushies' MEIN KAMPF, their official 'security policy' printed in NYTIMES, on 2 Sept.[or 20 S?]2002. There they warned that they'd feel free to launch a preemptive first-strike at any 'hostile' nation that even TRIED TO MATCH US IN WEAPONRY!

I'm not sure that even Adolf expressed such aggressive intentions early on--not so explicitly.

 
PICTURES OF SHIA PRISONERS HUMILIATED BY BRIT SOLDIERS may trigger attacks vs. Brits in Basra.
INDEPENDENT

An interesting phenomenon: people committing atrocities feel compelled to take pictures to send home to the folks.
(Slobs enjoying new power over prisoners want permanent souvenirs.)

Unhappily, these pictures get out and are seen by Muslims worldwide, recruiting new terrorists.

A picture is worth a thousand words, damage-wise.

Sure enough, a bomb killing 9 Brit soldiers in usually-peaceful area was ascribed by insurgents as revenge for prisoner-abuse. INDEPENDENT


Doonesbury comic-strip is right that U.S. & Brits won't stop atrocities, just make sure now that the atrocities are not photographed. But with every cell-phone able to take pictures, will they succeed?

 
Bush looks at Geo.Washington's inaugural speech.
There's no way to stop that; a cat can look at a king--even a civet cat.
=========
BBC poll shows 58% of people in 21 countries think Bush's re-election makes the world more dangerous.
REUTERS
Americans who say "Fuck them!" show what fools they are, to ignore the opinions of the rest of Mankind.
==========
Rice says that there are now 120,000 trained men in our native militia. Joe Biden, Dem.Sen, says he was told by a U.S. officer that there are 4000 'reliable' men. REUTERS
=========
Rice says the Bushies have 'no common ground' with Iran regime. REUTERS You'd think that avoiding a great disaster would count as 'common ground'--but Bushies are too dumb to be scared.

 
SPANISH BISHOPS OK CONDOMS vs. AIDS:
Most Spaniards use prophylactics; few young Spaniards call themselves 'Catholic'. The Vatican, and OpusDei (big in Spain!) , expressed shock.

A Roman cardinal in Glasgow,Scot., years ago endorsed condoms vs. AIDS. Newspapers satirically said one brand of condoms would come out under his name.

It's not clear what is the shape of Vatican shock, of their 'absolute' condemnation of condoms. Do they hold that when condoms are used for anal intercourse, there is an extra sin involved?

 
FIVE CAR-BOMBS IN BAGHDAD TODAY, killing 26 people and wounding 21 [says U.S. military; Iraqi govt. says only 12 were killed.] Plenty of carnage elsewhere. NYTIMES

Suppose govt, by sealing borders and cutting off car-traffic, etc., is able to minimize carnage on actual election day.
The Sunni Arabs might not trust this process, after pre-election carnage, and so might be intimidated out of voting anyway.

It won't really matter. Shiites will win overwhelmingly anyway..and will offer some 'bribes'in the new constitution to SunniArab ringleaders to try to get them
to end guerilla war--with dubious results.

 
ATTACK THEM WHERE THEY ARE ?

A really dumb letter from one E. Barthlome (18Jan) was given much space in R.Mtn.News, trying to justify Bush's Iraq fiasco--under the familiar-slogan headline “WE MUST ATTACK THEM WHERE THEY ARE!”

The men who destroyed the Trade Towers were mostly from Saudi Arabia; Bush did NOT attack them 'where they were.—he dumbly invaded Iraq!

WHERE ARE our potential enemies? Over one thousand millions of Muslims, of many races and languages, are scattered all over the world. We can hardly attack all these hordes. Most of these Muslims are passive; but if only one in ten thousand decides for active terrorism, that makes 100,000 terrorists!

(Weren't we stupid to side with Israel, antagonizing one thousand million Muslims, some of them fanatic?)

What about our ACTUAL enemies, the thousands of individual terrorists eager to die killing Americans? We can’t attack them because, before they attack, WE DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE! Some of the 19 men who destroyed the Trade Towers lived here for years, without arousing suspicion. (Some SHOULD have aroused suspicion—like the guy who wanted flying lessons, but didn’t care to learn how to land!--but Bush's incompetent FBI never caught on.)

Americans can't realize that this crisis is completely unique, unlike our problems in WWII. Lessons from conventional wars are useless for understanding what to do now. We can’t block attacks on our Homeland completely; but we could protect our most vulnerable and dangerous targets: e.g., our 104 nuclear waste-ponds, our chemical plants, our ports receiving thousands of huge ship-containers each day uninspected; each could contain a nuclear bomb. And our whole populace is vulnerable to germ-warfare; we should have an army of medical personnel ready to diagnose and quarantine.

But these vital precautions are very expensive; the Bushies won’t pay for them. They don’t mind shovelling $1200 millions each DAY to the Pentagon, whose missiles and marines are pretty useless for countering individual terrorists.

And their bombing and shelling in Iraq recruits more and more active terrorists.

‘Dr.Strangelove’ is the movie for our times: a tragic crisis, with only some clowns on hand to deal with it.

 
Condi Rice says we were well prepared for the Iraq campaign. FinTimes It's amazing how she can lie with a straight face,to people who know quite well it's a lie.

She shows contempt of Congress--a well-justified contempt.

She also named 6 outposts of tyranny: Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, Belarus, and Zimbabwe. .

The last 3 needn't worry about a U.S.attack..they're just put in for cover.

CUBA, FOR GOD'S SAKE!
---------------
The Bush regime should be added to that list: the tyranny of a 51% majority.

 
ATTACK IRAN? S.Hersch in NEWYORKER says Bushies have planted U.S. agents in Iran to scout out air-targets. Bush refuses to forego armed attacks on Iran.

Iran says it has ample deterrent weapons. Reuters

Bushies should remember that 150,000 GIs are within easy reach of Iran's retaliation (using poison gas?)in Iraq. Hundreds of Iranian agents are scattered throughout Iraq.

Brit generals worry that if Bush bombs Iran,they'll retaliate against Brit troops in Iraq. [SCOTSMAN, cited by InformationClearinghouse ] Well,of course they will..that's the price Brits will pay for Blair's poodle role in Iraq.

But of course there's no sign that Bushies care about the GIs --let alone the Brit troops!-- now that they're re-elected.
-----------
A Senate Bill explicitly calls for 'regime change' in Iran. We'll be financing groups that promise to overthrow the mullahs. FinTimes

Fat chance. Now any groups in Iran opposing the mullahs will be painted as U.S. spies.
-----------------------------------------
The Bushies have demonstrated in Iraq that, while they're great at killing, they're completely ineffective at implementing their will overseas.

When they bomb Iran, and Iran responds with devastation on our troops--and perhaps on our homeland--the Bushies will have demonstrated their incompetence even more graphically.

Iran would of course cut off its oil from the world supply, would guarantee that Iraq oil continued to be blocked, and would block the strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil from other suppliers to the West. Bushie SUV drivers, get ready for gas at more than $5 a gallon.

The London INDEPENDENT describes the folly of an attack on Iran..Britain would desert us--Blair's foreign-affairs secy, Jack Straw, recently said, "Bush's bombing Iran is INCONCEIVABLE !" Oh yeah?

Our only ally would be Israel..THAT should help us to 'make up' with the world's Muslims ! (as some hoped from our aid to Tsunami victims).The article reminds us all of the way Americans blundered into installing the tyrant Shah in Iran, then never foresaw his overthrow, leaving in power the Ayatollahs, the only power that has ever kidnapped our embassy staff and held them hostage for months.

(And of course the Bushies just destroyed two of the top enemies of the Iranian mullahs: Saddam and the Afghan Taliban.)
------------------
Every nation will develop 2d-strike deterrents vs. America, (as Russia, China, N.Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Britain, France already have nuke-deterrents) so they can tell the Bushies: "You can destroy our cities, but we can make you regret it..your cities and population are SO vulnerable to our nukes or germs or 'dirty bombs'...!"

Plato was first (in GORGIAS) to note that the power to kill is trivial if you can't profit from the killing, if you can't ward off retaliation for killing--any fool has such a power.

 
BUSH'S INAUGURATION PARTIES TO COST MORE THAN 1/10th as much as U.S. CONTRIBUTION FOR TSUNAMI VICTIMS:

So what? Bush's model for good taste is Pope Leo X:
"God has given us the Papacy; let us enjoy it!"

 
Another super-armored BRADLEY vehicle was just damaged. The guerillas seem to be using now the super-explosives our generals let them steal early on.

Another U.S. helicopter was downed.

Those things are more important than the steady trickle of GI blood--TorontoGlobe&Mail says that, in 'pacified' Fallujah, a marine is still killed each day.

and certainly damage to these expensive machines is more important to Bushies than the flood of Iraqi blood!

DOZENS of Iraqis killed on Monday 17Jan, plus 2 GIs, plus uncounted casualties when bomb went off near a GI convoy. BostonGlobe More killed,of course, on Tuesday.

Suicide bomber hits Shiite Hq in Baghdad Voice ofAmerica

The point is that, having dismissed the Iraq police-force, we are responsible for the anarchy in Iraq. And we're demonstrating daily that we're completely incompetent in this line.

Ho-hum.

 
AN IRAQI SAID: "We're controlled now by two Ayatollahs: Sistani and Bush. Sistani is more rational."

 
THE EVIL OF OUTSOURCING/PART ONE: a full-page interview in USATODAY (17Jan) gives oneU.Doerken a chance to defend outsourcing.

His headline offers a stupefying falsehood: "Benefits [of outourcing] create more wealth for all involved."
...'creates more wealth', perhaps.. but hardly FOR the U.S. workers whose jobs are being destroyed!!

He might mean 'for all those we super-elite are concerned about--namely ourselves."
======================
Here I will deal only with one of his points: lower labor costs from outsourcing will mean lower consumer prices. That’s true: any trick that lowers labor costs will cut production-costs, and some of these savings will be passed on to consumers.

Americans wear TWO hats: ‘worker’ and ‘consumer’. One of the sources of blindness for economists is the axiom that ‘consumer is king’. That means that our role as consumers is always to trump our role as workers.

That might make sense in a country where 12th-century production-methods mean near-starvation for the populace. But what does ‘consumer sovereignty’ mean for Americans?

Walk through Wallmart, Target, Sears or Bed, Bath & beyond—notice the stuff crammed in all the shelves, the stuff mounted on portable kiosks making it almost impossible to walk through the aisle—how much would more of this low-priced stuff add real value to your lives?

Walk through a car-lot and ask how lower prices for these expensive SUV’s—which are already RELATIVELY cheap—would add real value to your lives.

Walk through a fast-food place, remembering the chloresterol and high-blood-pressure pills you have to take, looking at the obese children--and then ask what good it does for us to have food so incredibly cheap here.

If you think that being able to afford more of this junk would really improve your lives, then read no more: you're ineducable.
---------------------------
Housing here is prohibitively expensive (but not compared to other countries)—but that’s because wages & salaries here are low and tax-breaks aimed to benefit developers, real-estate sales agencies, mortgage lenders,etc.--these tax-breaks have produced a housing-price bubble that is breaking in other countries and soon will break here.

Medicines here are prohibitively expensive, but that’s because the government lets the pharmaceutical companies charge far more here than they charge in Canada for needed drugs.
---------------------------
In other words, typical consumer goods here are ALREADY TOO CHEAP for our welfare; lessening their price still further, by lowering labor costs, would do us little good.

(Actually, the lower wages for most workers, resulting from outsourcing, will mean they can't afford these 'cheaper' goods any more than they can now!)

 
OUTSOURCING/ PART II:

CRUSHING US AS WEARING THE 'WORKER' CAP:

Nobody's job is safe anymore. Sen.Moynahan (a PhD in Sociology) said there's a one-to-one relationship between the rate of unemployment and the rate of child-abuse.

 
OUTSOURCING, PART III: Back to Doerken, in USATODAY:

D: Outsourcing enables us to stay competitive and preserve our remaining jobs.
Lyons: So it preserves the REMAININGjobs in higher management..how does that help typical U.S. worker?
Why should the typical jobless person here care if the U.S. 'remains competitive'?
===============
Interviewer: “Exporting unskilled jobs is one thing. But offshoring skilled jobs?
Lyons: he figures his elite readers don’t care about the unskilled workers.
-----------
Duerken: ‘High-skill’ job yesterday might be ‘low-skilled’ tomorrow.
Lyons: Not if you define ‘high skill’ as a skill few Americans possess. In fact, as our youth gets more and more ignorant, more and more skills count as ‘high (rare) skills’: e.g., there’s a shortage here of auto mechanics, because they need a low level of computer skills, which most mechanic-types can’t master.

Of course D. defines ‘high skills’ as those FEW IN THE WORLD POSSESS. He’s right that hundreds of thousands of Indians, Chinese,etc., are picking up rare skills and rendering then un-rare. So low-level U.S. computer programmers are now jobless.
---------------
Interviewer: It seems that any job that can be done over a computer or on the phone can be outsourced. Will even a good education make our jobs safe?

D. CONTINUOUS education will make us safe.
Lyons: a) Most people can’t manage or afford lifelong education.
b) Americans in,say, the 80% percentile here are competing with the top 1% of several thousand millions of Indians,Asians,etc…potentially millions of elite, hard-working individuals, demanding incredibly low pay. Perhaps our top 1% could compete (for very low pay)..but not the typical semi-literate, semi-numerate graduate of ColoStateUniversity (who is in the top third of Colorado youths!)
---------------------
D: U.S. must stay at the forefront of value creation to earn the high salaries we expect.Outsourcing is..a tool to stay ahead. The highest-value jobs will remain here..as long as we outsource.

Lyons: Outsourcing means that millions of Americans will lose ANY SALARY!

What a consolation to know that our corporations will stay ahead. (In fact, there are NO U.S. CORPORATIONS —investors’ money has no national loyalty.)

What a consolation for the jobless workers to know that our HIGHEST-VALUE jobs will be preserved, that is the jobs of higher management!
==============
It’s encouraging to hear that only 16% of Americans approve of outsourcing. Too bad that 51% of us—the foolish saps--voted to reelect the team that will continue to sacrifice the interests of ordinary people to those of the billionaires!

 
TOP ANGLICAN SCHOLAR BACKS VOLUNTARY, AIDED EUTHANASIA: [ INDEPENDENT ]

The Christian horror at euthanasia and abortion is hard to justify, since neither Jesus nor Paul thought these issues worth mentioning, though both practices were quite common at their time.

Nowadays the fundamentalists (Catholic and Protestant) don’t seem to care to relieve suffering—only to force women to have unwanted babies, and to stop hopeless invalids from ending their suffering.

Old people like myself fear dementia especially. (I have an aunt, formerly brilliant, now brainless for several years—her vital signs say she could live for a decade past her present 92 years. She is not having a long life, only a long death.

So much for the fundamentalist propaganda that says their opponents advocate a ‘culture of death’. These self-styled Christians themselves have never opposed our murderous highway culture, or our murderous pollution; they just helped to re-elect a mass-murderer.)

Scientists are developing early diagnoses of incurable Alzheimer’s, which should give warning of the need for suicide. (If a cure is developed, the situation will change.)

Suicide is very possible now, even without any changes in the law. All an aged person needs to do is wait for a very cold night, and finish off a bottle of good whisky outside, along with some sleeping pills.

However, if a decent exit were allowed by law (as it is in Holland, Oregon, and soon in Belgium), then a person wouldn’t have to kill himself early, while he is still mobile. He could wait till the last minute, and die after saying goodbye to his family.

Also, life in one's '70's would be brightened by the fact that one did not face the possible horror of a mindless 80s.
-----------------
Abortion and euthanasia will be legalized eventually, because they’re urged on ‘by heaven and by hell’. People who care about people want early abortion and a decent death available to all.

And now that ordinary U.S. workers are redundant (replaceable by robots and foreigners)--now that the last 6 months of Americans’ lives often involve horrific expense (for Medicare and insurance companies)—now the wealthy, who really run the place, have good reason to back ‘the morning-after pill’ and convenient euthanasia.

 
BUSH SAYS VOTERS RATIFIED HIS IRAQ POLICY:
and so they did; the self-righteous suburbanites and self-styled Christians backed a gang of crooked liars, enthusiastic torturers, mass-murderers, incompetent warriors, and wreckers of the economy and the environment; they put these people in charge of all 3 branches of the federal government for the next 4 years.

(I'm advising talented young people to emigrate--AFTER picking up some rare skills such that some other country will want them.)

 
NO ELECTION TRIUMPH: When U.S. destroyed Fallujah, the rationale was that they would thus weaken the guerilla-movement enough to make the 30Jan election credible.

Instead, the attacks have increased markedly since the Fallujah blitzkrieg; the Fallujans living in tents say they won't go back into the city's rubble--and they won't vote. Now the Bushies are saying, "It's not so much the election itself that will count--it's the political process afterward!"

One observer said, "What the Bushies have shown the rest of the Arab world is that democracy means chaos and anarchy." REUTERS

 
'THE OWNERSHIP SOCIETY': This is a favorite Bush slogan. The idea is to get everyone owning SOMETHING (perhaps a trailer on a distant lot without water). Then they'll side with the billionaires who own whole islands.

It works: after they have enough to eat, people want desperately to think of themselves as among 'us splendid winners', not 'those pathetic losers'. So the sap in his trailer votes Republican.

Similarly, we hear about the huge proportion of our people who own 'some stocks'. Practically all of them own almost no stocks--they may have a tiny interest in stocks bought by their pension program. Again, they can say "We spendid winners!" along with the billionaires who own whole corporations.

Lumping together all 'owners' is like the recipe for a 'horse-rabbit stew', whose ingredients are one horse and one rabbit.
-----------
For more on this phenomenon of 'identifying upwards'-- the poor vote to advance the interests of the wealthy--see ch.1 of my book DEMOCRACY, RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS (available by interlibrary loan at library of ColoStateUniversity)..also my comments on ch.1 on my other website.

 
HUGE NEW BOYCOTT: People claiming to speak for many tribes--mainly Sunnis, numbering THREE MILLION PEOPLE (1 in 10 Iraqis !) say they are boycotting the elections. WashTimes (also heard on Natl.PublicRadio15June.)

Oddly, this bombshell story was not featured on news.google.com. One had to search for 'tribes+boycott' to call it up. And this news was buried in the middle of the W.Times story. ????

All the election workers in Mosul have quit.

The top election official in Baghdad has been shot.

(It is still possible that many Sunnis will vote. Around the world, a desire to vote as a magic gesture has spread.)
-----------
Even on Sunday,16Jan, neither news.google.com nor CNN.com offered a story about this bombshell boycott.
(As I said, you had to call up the story on news.google.)

However, CNN did tell us about the mass resignation of the electoral commission in still another province: Ninevah.

 
THE PENTAGON DEFICIT:
Some points easily forgotten:
--In our unique Homeland crisis, the Pentagon’s missiles and marines are pretty much useless against the thousands of individual terrorists from all over the world (200,000 just in Iraq) eager to kill Americans.

It would be silly to bomb nations ‘harboring’ terrorists, since the terrrorists are usually trying earnestly to overthrow their own governments. There is no 'top leadership' we could kill to decapitate the movement; binLaden himself inspires the terrorists, he doesn't command them--if dead, he'd inspire them all the more.

--Nevertheless, Bush shovels about $1200 MILLIONS EACH DAY to this irrelevant Pentagon--about $450 billion per year. Now it just happens that our awful federal deficit is a little over $400 billion per year. In other words, America is living within its budget (!)--except for the money it squanders on the Pentagon.

We shouldn’t call it the Federal Deficit; we should call it the Pentagon Deficit.

--Perhaps we couldn’t prudently cut off all money to the Pentagon. But if we cut its slush fund in half, we would automatically cut our national deficit in half. This would restore the world’s faith in our solvency.

 
For a list of the astounding number of guerilla attacks on Iraq oil facilities/personnel, click on EnergySecurity .

You can bet these upset the Bushies far more than the thousands of Iraqis & GIs who have been killed/maimed by the guerillas!

There's also a story of the effortless way the guerillas cut off energy for Iraqis, in WashPost, cited by TRUTHOUT

 
U.S. GENERAL CAN'T GUARANTEE NO BIG ATTACKS WILL SUCCEED: on election day, causing 'mass casualties'. DetroitFreePress

 
COALITION PATSIES PULLING OUT: Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, CzechRepublic, and Netherlands are bugging out. RobinCook,cited by Inform.Clearinghouse

The mystery is why TonyBlair, against the will of his people, keeps his Brit troops in Iraq, dangerously and pointlessly. What is he getting out of it (emotionally or financially)?

 
IRAQ BREEDING TERRORISTS: Bush continually says that his war in Iraq is part of his war on worldwide terror.

However, The Natl.Intell.Council, CIA's think-tank, says Iraq is serving to recruit and train terrorists who could serve all over the world to strike at U.S. & our allies.
WashPost

This is not news. The Bulgarian Intelligence service agrees.

 
JOB-BENEFITS GONE: 3.6 million Americans have used up all their unemployment benefits, without finding another job. That's the most in 30 years. (Of course, that lowers the number on unemployment!)

1.8 million have been jobless for 6 months or more.
NYTIMES, cited by TRUTHOUT

Of course those with jobs know that this army of desperate people would love to have their jobs, miserable as they are. So the employed people don't dare to ask for pay-raises or better treatment.

 
WHEELS ARE COMING OFF THE U.S. MILITARY IN THE NEXT 24 MONTHS, says an expert observer. Pentagon is exploiting Reserves & Natl. Guard—but how will they get youths to enlist and reenlist?

People say the Draft is the alternative.
TIME MAGAZINE

I worry more about robot infantrymen, which can be turned against the American people. U.S. soldiers wouldn’t fire on Americans; U.S. robots (directed by a relatively few Pentagon traitors) wouldn’t hesitate.

 
RUSS POPULATION DISASTER: Russ will decrease in number by ONE-THIRD by 2050! (few births, early deaths—often from drinking and bad health care). GUARDIAN
Never before in history has such a population-shrinking happened outside of famine or war.
3 reflections:

--Sudden introduction of ‘free-market democracy’ was disastrous.

--Chinese Communists were smarter to introduce capitalism first, holding off on instituting democracy until the people regained their balance.(Perhaps they don’t intend ever to move to democracy—but experience in South Korea and Taiwan shows that once a solid middle-class is formed, they insist on some kind of democracy.)

--Putin seems to be moving away from democracy as fast as he can. He’s also renationalizing the oil industry. Now that oil is so high-priced, Russia will be rich; Putin intends those riches to go to the State. (Statist inefficiencies can now be afforded in the oil industry.)

 
POWELL: "We're losing", Powell is said to have told Bush--whereupon Bush asked him to leave.

All the factions in D.C. see that we're failing--everyone but Bush! He is protected from harsh info by his yes-men.
Powell said, "A President is ill-served by people who hesitate to express their opinions." FinTimes

 
GERM-WAR LIKELY; Bushies don't care. A CIA overview repeated what we should already know. Using a lab the size of a kitchen, terrorists could launch an epidemic (say of anthrax, or smallpox) at the U.S.

Such an attack would be so easy that it's very likely.
BaltimoreSun

Even before the first attack, U.S. faces a severe shortage of nurses..hospitals are paying tens of thousands of dollars to lure nurses from other hospitals.

Plenty of young people would like to study nursing, but there aren't enough nurse-professors to accomodate them.
A sensible government would have, right after 9/11, set up a 'wartime emergency' program to recruit and train nurse-professors, and then nurses. But the Bushies have not even adverted to this problem. They don't really give a damn.

The Bushies have just now, 3 years after 9/11, started setting up diagnostic centers in poor areas. We're the only industrial country that ignores the medical needs of the poor to this extent. Terrorists, understanding this, will start epidemics in poor regions--epidemics which will spread to well-off Americans, who will deserve it.

 
CALLS FOR U.S. BUG-OUT: A SouthCarolina Representative, a fervent war-advocate, says his people are now only 50% in favor of not bugging out..he says he will keep calling for a debate. Many D.C. pros are also calling for at least thinking about a bug-out; Brent Scowcroft,advisor to Daddy Bush, said it publicly. TRUTHOUT

16 Democratic representatives have called for a pullout as soon as possible. TRUTHOUT

JamesBakerIII (an architect of GulfWarI) we should pull out 'some' troops, beginning a 'phased withdrawal.' SFGATE.COM

That would really be dumb, triggering wholesale attacks on those remaining. We have to pull all of them at once back into Kuwait, for instance, or into Jordan. Keep them there, ready to come back in only if the guerillas try to resort to conventional war against Shiites, where our type of forces could whip them easily.

We'll have to let the Baathist/Islamists control SunniArab territory, including Baghdad--Shiites & Kurds will have to evacuate, just as Sunnis now have to evacuate Kirkuk. These areas have little oil, as I understand it; the region will wither on the vine.

 
A U.S. BLACKHAWK HELICOPTER (with Columbian personnel aboard) crashed, killing 20 people. It turns out we have spent $3500 millions allegedly fighting Columbian drug dealers. GUARDIAN

While we are struggling to limit the importing of cocaine into the U.S., people all over America (especially in rural areas!) have learned how to make 'METH' themseves, needing no imported ingredients.

Meth is much cheaper, and much stronger and more dangerous than cocaine; you stay high longer on one dose, and then the comedown is even more devastating.

Our government's 'war on drugs' is about as ill-conceived and bungled as our 'war on terror'.

 
TOO FEW WORKERS TO PAY FUTURE RETIREES?
This mantra is often chanted by Bushies, to defend their absurd proposal to funnel some Soc.Sec.funds into the pockets of their stock-selling buddies.
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Three points:
1) Productivity (product per worker-hour) is likely to rise so fast that these 2 workers can easily afford to support one retiree.

2) The real problem is the loss of U.S. jobs to computers, robots and foreigners. These 2 U.S. workers might not have any jobs, or any income to pay to the elderly--or even to support themselves!

3) The basic fact about our world economy now is a large and growing EXCESS PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY (the ability to produce more goods than can be sold.)
The retirees who will consume, not produce, will be the saviors of such an economy--if anything could save it.

 
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SADR?
The hotblooded cleric was once one of the most popular leaders in Iraq. He's been silent lately, after leading a quixotic,doomed armed rebellion vs. Americans in the HolyCities of Shia.

Now it turns out that one Shiite slate in the election, rivalling Sistani's slate, will be one sponsored indirectly by Sadr. Their only hope is to get votes from the 3 million people--one tenth of Iraqi population!--mostly Shiites, in 'Sadr City',in Baghdad. VoiceOfAmerica

 
WORST SMUGGLING OF 'OIL-FOR-FOOD' WAS KNOWN BY U.S. GOVT. (says FinTimes; full story can be read only by subscribers.)

We're not shocked by any new Bushie scandals! But it's amusing how they tried to pin this scandal on the UN!
----------------
FBI $500 MILLION 'ANTI-TERROR' SOFTWARE DISCARDED.
FinTimes
We're also beyond shock at Bushie incompetence.
[Later reports said the bad software cost $170 million.
The incompetence remains the same.]

 
SISTANI AIDES SHOT :Two of his top aides were assassinated. REUTERS Why?

The Sunni Arabs will be at the mercy of the new Shiite-dominated parliament. Their only hope is mercy from the Shiites, in spite of the awful things Saddam’s Sunnis did to them earlier. Now the guerillas are deliberately enraging the Shiites!

Perhaps the guerillas have already rejected the proposed deal: that the Shiite parliament would write into the new constitution extravagant guarantees of minority rights and privileges for the Sunnis. Indeed, they may be worried that Sunni moderates would advocate accepting such a deal—so they’re enraging the Shiites now to prevent such a deal from being offered.

GrandAyatollahSistani himself lives in a humble house on an ordinary street in Najaf.

If the guerillas attacked HIM, the civil war would be on.

 
GOOD NEWS! A Canadian researcher has invented a new kind of solar panel that (a) is flexible, so your shirt could power your cell-phone without needing batteries, (b) is 5 times as efficient as present cells, and (c) uses infra-red rays from any heat source, for when sunlight is weak.
REUTERS

 
When a nation's currency gets devalued, says Theory, its (now cheaper) exports should increase, and its (now more costly) imports should decrease. HOWEVER...

U.S. EXPORTS DROPPED in November(further than economists predicted, of course--these are cheerleaders, not analysts)--even though U.S. dollar has shrunk 50% against the Euro. Our imports increased, in spite of the cheaper dollar--not from Europe, but from Asian countries who have cheapened their currency to match ours.
REUTERS
Also, we must buy imported gas, no matter what it costs. We could always sell our virgin daughters.
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Our exports dropped 2.7% just in November.
Bushie Snow attributed this to unconscionably slow growth in Japan & Europe. (London)TIMES

But here's another possibility: previous reports said that U.S. brands overseas are minimizing their American identity. Once U.S. was seen as super-powerful and benign; now, thanks to Iraq war & other Bushie crimes & blunders, U.S. is seen as a 'nightmare'. That change is bound to make U.S. brands less glamorous around the world.
---------------
In fact, our trade deficit (imports exceeding exports) has jumped from $40 billion to a record $60 billion in the last year--it jumped 8% just in November! [USATODAY, print version13Jan (not shown in online version!) ]
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Sooner or later, Europe will have to cheapen the Euro and the Pound, to compete in exports. Then, of course, our cheapening will do no good. When every important nation devalues their currency, it helps no nation.

This is called, "Beggar thy Neighbor", and it may well bring on a World Depression. (When this happens, the people who have cash deposits or CDs guaranteed by FDIC--these will come out ahead of those who have all their money in securities.)

The thing no journalists discuss is that this obsession with improving exports happens because there is a worldwide productive overcapacity (the ability to produce more goods than can be sold). The U.S. is now using less than 80% of its productive capacity.
--------
And of course after this report of the 'startling' increase in our trade deficit, the dollar slumped further (by 1%, immediately). It looks as if this will not increase our exports, nor decrease our exports--but it might persuade world investors (now only central banks usually buy our treasury bonds) to start dumping our bonds.

After all, they're buying bonds with expensive dollars at a higher real price than they'll have to sell them for, later (for cheap dollars)!
----------
TRASH is our main export. Our exports of trash are up 135% since 1999; but our exports of advanced technology products are DOWN 21%! (Our technological imports are UP 28%!) F.Norris (in NYT14Jan,p.C1) says the plain fact is that our competitiveness (our ability to compete in the world market) is 'waning rapidly', and the shrinking dollar is not helping.

 
SOME ELECTION! Candidates in Iraq won't tell their names. Votes will be for various slates, not for individuals.
Location of voting places won't be revealed till the week before 30 Jan. People in 4 provinces will fear to vote--and those 4 provinces include 45% of the population!
Christ.SciMonitor

And of course the Shiite candidates (60% of population, and 80% intend to vote) will by far predominate, with the Kurds second, and the Sunnis far,far behind.

Still, the election may be inevitable and grimly effective.
If the elected Shiite majority don't give (a) guarantees of effective independence to the Kurds and (b) super-strong guarantees of oil-money and autonomy to the Sunnis, then there'll be open civil war--with U.S. GIs caught in the middle.

The Sunni Arab guerillas might not be willing to disarm even with all those guarantees. Losing power after centuries of ruling, they may prefer to fight to the death.

And as long as the 'foreign, infidel invaders' remain in real control, guerillas may continue their attacks, which we and our puppets can't seem to stop. We'll see.

 
NO HURRY WITH POISON-GAS CLEANUP:
Pentagon has huge dumps of useless poison-gas in Kentucky and in Pueblo Colorado. They promised, by international treaty, to have them cleaned up by 2012.

Now they are cutting the cleanup budgets even further.
GUARDIAN
Colorado was called the 'playground of the AtomicEnergyCommission'. It was also the playground of the poison-gas industry. Why not, when Coloradoans instinctively approve of whatever Pentagon does?

 
DON'T SAY IT! A honcho at the worthy Carnegie Peace Foundation said that the most UNACCEPTABLE opinion was that the Sovereign People may be fundamentally flawed and incapable of wise judgment.
FinTimes (full story can be read only by subscribers, or readers of print version.)

I DO SAY THAT! In my book DEMOCRACY,RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS, I offered arguments that most young Americans are childish and ignorant (and worse, self-confident, i.e., stupid). [The book is available at ColoStateU, or through interlibrary loan.]

Defenders of democracy say that the common man (a) KNOWS his own interests best, and (b) CARES MOST to have those interests satisfied. I try to show that (a) is false, and that (b) is false in the sense that most ordinary, childish Americans don't care much about the future at all, so they don't care about their future interests being satisfied.

After 4 years of the clearest possible demonstration that the Bush-team are crooked liars, and ruthless, incompetent warriors, dedicated only to the interests of the very wealthy--around half of U.S. voters put them back in power for another 4 years. What could better support my gloomy claims about the intelligence & good-sense of Americans, claims made before the year 2000?

However, I say in the book that any dictatorship likely to follow after a collapsed U.S. democracy would be even worse--'optimists' say, "Democracy is a terrible form of government--but all the other forms are worse."

I say, "All the likely alternatives are even worse; but democracy is a terrible form of government."
Government is inherently tragic; almost nobody understands-and-cares-for the true, long-run interests of the ordinary person--including the ordinary person!

 
FALSE EITHER/OR: Journalists (e.g.,REUTERS) note that guerillas have killed 100 Iraqi 'collaborators' (or innocent bystanders) in the last 10 days. Then they say, "The guerillas seem to be choosing easier targets than GIs.."

However, the GI casualty rate in the last six months has been higher than ever--and it gets worse every week.
TRUTHOUT

It seems that the guerillas are now able to kill or disable more and more Iraqis AND MORE AND MORE GIS, AT THE SAME TIME!
-------------
On 11Jan, a gas-pipeline was blown up and 20 Iraqis killed. FinTimes
--------------
GUERILLAS HAVE GREAT INTELLIGENCE: Robt.Fisk, writing in INDEPENDENT (cited by InformationClearingHouse) notes that the guerillas have obviously infiltrated 'our' native militia, since they show such detailed knowledge of the travel-routes and schedules of our puppet honchos.
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CAR-BOMBS are more effective than roadside bombs.
The number of car-bombings has risen steadily, to one-a-day this month. Also,of course, the number of suicide bombers has risen--U.S. says that shows the number of foreign guerillas has risen, because Saddamites won't commit suicide for the cause. GUARDIAN

They ignore the possibility that ordinary Iraqis, whose families were wiped out by our shells or bombs, volunteer in increasing number as suicide bombers.

I've never understood why authorities don't BAN ALL MOTORIZED VEHICLES from dangerous areas.
(Checkpoints get attacked!) Apparently Americans revere cars so intensely--we accept millions of highway injuries here every year!--that banning cars is as unthinkable to us as it would be for Hindus to eat sacred cows during times of hunger!

 
BUSH NAMES PROSECUTOR for HomelandDefenseHead. InternatlHeraldTribune

There are two main aspects of Homeland Defense:
1) Defending the main vulnerable targets for terrorists: e.g. seaports, nuclear waste-ponds, chemical factories, railroads,poor regions vulnerable to germ-war,etc. This aspect, though absolutely vital, is very, very expensive.

2) Detecting and apprehending potential terrorists within our borders. Pretending to do this costs little, and justifies laws like Patriot II which shrivels civil liberties for all U.S. citizens.

Needless to say, the Bushies are not really pretending to address issue #1, the vital, expensive issue. Chertof has no expertise in this line, only in writing anti-liberty laws like Patriot.

Terrorists, rejoice. The Bushies continue to underfund (incredibly) the needed precautions of type #1. They're completely incompetent in line #2 (they can't translate hundreds of thousands of intercepted phone messages).
But #2 does give them the excuse to hunt out and pressure dissidents.