Dan Lyons
~ Sunday, July 30, 2006
 
SHIA 'POPE' SISTANI (usually a figure pushing moderation and nonviolence) says 'Muslim world will not forgive' those blocking a Lebanon cease-fire--i.e., they will not forgive America.
SeattlePI
 
RICE SNUBBED BY LEBANON/
LEB. PM THANKS HEZBOLLA/
ISRAEL HAS NO REAL OPTIONS, since it can't eliminate Hez rockets (100 fired today, past Haifa).

Some DC hawks want to use this excuse to attack Syria--but Israel vetoes this idea, because it would bring Syria back in control of Lebanon.

Israeli bureaucrats have started blaming each other for this fiasco.
HAARETZ (Israeli periodical).

IF the secret aim was to take over EasternMediterranean (to protect super-pipeline cutting out Russia) that pipeline now seems really vulnerable to anti-Israel saboteurs!
~ Saturday, July 29, 2006
 
US chatter in Iraq is about new US troops restraining 'Shia death-squads'.
But detailed stories of attacks almost always involve Shia victims !
A top Shia pol (aligned with BADR, rival militia to MEHDI, Sadr's militia) reproached US forces for 'interfering' with govt. forces going after Sunni insurgents.
US attacked forces of Shia leader Sadr. [ SeattlePI ]

It looks as if Bushies have managed to turn BOTH Shia militias against us !

Of course Iraqi Shia are enraged at US slavishly backing Israel as it slaughters Lebanese civilians.

PM alMaliki is still in US pocket--but observers say he's isolated, communicating only with US agents.

It sure looks as if US is now siding with Sunni against the Shia. Understandable, since they finally realize that their chatter about 'democracy' has put the supermajority Shia in control of the government, and they finally realize that the Shia will be aligned with hated Iran !

Understandable, but very dangerous for GIs; if Sadrites align themselves with Sunni insurgents (the secular Saddamite wing, not the crazy Zarqawists who hate Shia as heretics)--if this alliance forms, united to drive Americans out of Iraq....
 
GOP LEADERS: skimpy pay rise for poor [ $2 more, phased in over 3 yrs] ONLY WITH luscious tax-cut for billionaires. [Tax-cut especially lobbied for by WaltonFamily, of ever-beloved Walmart.]SeattlePI

GOP muscled this bill thru the House,(along with more deficit-hiking tax-cuts!]
but more sensible Senate will likely kill it.[USATODAY ]

Could anything make more clear who counts for GOP?

Understandably, the billionaires gratefully support the GOP. Sadly, many ordinary Americans are dumb enough ALSO to support the pols who work ardently for the billionaires.
 
HEZ ROCKETS HIT NEAR TELAVIV: they have often hit Haifa, the 3d largest Israeli city.
Apparently they can't be aimed well--but they remind Israelis dramatically of the price they will pay for Israeli bombs on Lebanon. (These 'precision' bombs seem to hit at random targets also !)USATODAY


LEBANON WAR HURTS US 'WAR ON TERROR', say experts: [Baltimore Sun,29Jy ]
i.e, it alienates further our European 'allies' and our (covert) Arab allies like SaudiArabia./ It unites Sunni and Shia warriors (alQuaeda & Hezbollah)./

Jihadists from around the world could rush into Lebanon, eager to die killing Jews.

Or, paradoxically, this war could lead to region-wide civil war between Sunni & Shia,
wrecking governments and setting up terorrists in power.

US will be dragged down ever-further by its crude and slavish backing of every goofy Israeli action.
~ Friday, July 28, 2006
 
DOES AIRPOWER WORK? or does it just enrage and strengthen the bombedpeople's resistance?
We dropped FIVE MILLION TONS on little Vietnam--about as large as NewMexico-- TWICE AS MUCH AS WAS USED IN ENTIRE WWII ! but they drove us out.

Pentagon bragged about the effectiveness of our bombers in Kosovo war--but it turned out that our high-flying pilots (anxious to save their own necks) often bombed fake tanks and bridges.

In Lebanon war Israel needs good intelligence which it doesn't have. It's claimed that 'precision bombing' minimizes 'collateral' damage to civilians..but pictures have been TVd all over the world showing blown-up pieces of children, etc. GUARDIAN

We used to think Israeli military were much smarter than our Pentagon..but now...? The Siamese twins are much more like each other than people suspected.
 
Opponents of Muslims have likely rejoiced at seeing Iraqi Sunni & Shia slaughtering each other.
But they should be dismayed to see how rage at Israel's blitzkrieg in Lebanon (and pride at the way Hezbollah has stood up to 'Darth Vader' Israel and survived!)--these feelings have UNITED the 2 sects all over the world from Egypt to Indonesia (the country with most Muslims.)

"O Shia, O Sunni, Kill the Jews!" was a cry in Cairo. And the 'top mufti' in Cairo (govt. appointed 'pope') has endorsed the Hezbollah resistance.

Arabs are furious at the 'impotent inaction' of their rulers in this crisis.
GUARDIAN
 
MORE GI's TO IRAQ & TO BAGHDAD--but will this help? FinTimes
Shias are turning against US because of Bush's slavish backing of Israel's blitzkrieg in Lebanon.
(Also, they might perceive that US is now siding in Iraq with Sunnis vs. Shias!)
Shia might find GIs an easy target.

Hundreds of GIs are told they won't go home when they were promised they would. Unpredictable rage.

Analysts: "Too little, too late. Danger is that US will be a bystander in a civil war it couldn't prevent."
20,000 GIs (plus 55K feckless Iraqi troops) will be in Baghdad. "They'd need twice that number to prevail."
Instead, the extra troops might just be extra targets.

The ugly, winless Iraq war will NOT fade into background before November elections.
 
THANK HEAVENS, IT'S FOR OIL ! It looked for a while as if the Israeli blitzkrieg on Lebanon was a completely irrational 'honor' retaliation for kidnap of 2 Israeli soldiers. And Bushies' immediate endorsement of the attack seemed really loco--it seemed we had nothing to gain, much to lose (in increased Muslim hatred) by this latest slavish kowtowing to Israel.

But now it has been suggested that Turkey/Israel/America are out to protect a new pipeline (biggest in history) that bypasses Russia, cuts off China, guarantees water to Israel, makes Israel a big transshipper of oil to other countries. [ GlobalResearch.cited by INFORMATION CLEARINGHOUSE ]These bullies want to conquer Eastern edge of Mediterranan (including Lebanon & Syria) to protect this huge new pipeline. (Why is this good? It's always safer if international bullies are motivated by limited greed than by crazy ideology or revenge.)

Several related problems:--Iraq insurgents have shown how easy it is to sabotage long, crucial pipelines.(This sabotage would be strongly encouraged by Russia, cut out of this deal.)

--Turkey is now a democracy; the army has quit taking over to counter public opinion.(US invasion of Iraq was really hampered by last-minute refusal of Turkish land-route to Iraq; this refusal was insisted on by Turkish (democratic) parliament !) Might not Turkish Islamists be further enraged--and activated for sabotage--at any idea of open alliance with diabolic Israel and 'Great Satan' US ?

--binLaden, shrewd in economics, has advised world Islamists to concentrate on disrupting Western oil supplies. He pointed out that ordinary Arabs get little benefit from obscene riches pouring onto the oil-sultans. (One wonders if the continual pipeline-sabotage in Nigeria is partly motivated by Islamism.) We can be pretty sure that there will be vigorous attempts at sabotaging this new pipeline.

CAN Israel & America take over Lebanon & Syria completely enough to protect this pipeline?
Israel is having a hell of a time accomplishing the first steps at conquering Lebanon. (Hezbollah just launched into Israel new rockets with 45-mile range, carrying 200 lb of explosive.
Stratford
There seems little chance that Israel can annex a 50-mile 'security' strip, its life-loving Westernized troops facing a possible influx of suicide-loving Shias from all over.

And Bushies' America has displayed legendary incompetence in its attempts to take over Iraq and Afghanistan !
~ Thursday, July 27, 2006
 
PRES.BUSH, OPPOSING USE
OF EARLY EMBRYOS
IN RESEARCH:
"These boys and girls
are NOT spare parts! "
==================
Are you a boy
or a girl ?
----------------------
\/
* *
=====================
 
VIRTUAL HUMANS: How describe the human embryo? Like human sperm and unfertilized ovum, it's certainly a being and 'human' in some sense: they're NOT pig sperm, ovum or embryo.

So must we say these 3 creatures are full human beings , whose killing is murder? Hardly !
Even Roman bishops DON'T say that masturbation (wasting many sperms) is murder, nor practicing the rythm method they endorse (avoiding sex at ovulation time, deliberately intending that the poor ovum should perish, unfulfilled) .

Similarly we should deny that the early embryo is a right-bearing human being (especially the morula--the primitive, fertilized ball of cells that has not yet nested in the uterus). (It is this morula that MIGHT BE 'doomed' by Plan 'B', 'emergency contraception'.)
-----------------
And yet, it's not quite accurate to say this morula is merely a 'potential' human, the way a block of marble is 'potentially' a great statue--i.e, it can (passively) be made into a statue by an external sculptor. It's also inaccurate to say that the elaborate genetic coding in the morula is like a mere blueprint, compared to the final house.

No, the morula is a VIRTUAL human; given normal culture, it will use its own powers to develop into a full human. (By the way 'virtual human doesn't mean 'virtually a human.')

So? Any baby is a 'virtual adult': given proper culture and training, the baby will use its own powers to develop into an adult. However, a virtual adultis NOT YET an actual adult.. the baby is not entitled to drive a car or drink alcohol !

Similarly, a 'virtual human' (an early embryo) is not yet an actual human, with rights--whose killing would count as murder. (Indeed, no Roman bishop has demanded that aborting women & their doctors be indicted for conspiracy to commit homicide! This chatter about 'unborn boys & girls" is mere GOP rhetoric, intended to milk fundamentalists of their money and votes.)

A fertilized hen's egg is a virtual chicken, not an actual one. (Catholics must not eat chicken on Good Friday; but they may eat eggs without checking to see if they're fertilized!)
---------------
The Catholic Church once criminalized the use of POST-humans (corpses) for scientific research--medical students, to perform dissection, had to pay 'resurrection men' to rob graves ! (Indeed, the Church has always revered 'post-saints', the bones of holy people. Venetians stole the bones of St.Mark from a church in Egypt, then revered those bones as 'Protector of Venice' for centuries !)

Finally, the needs of real live humans, for medical research involving dissection, won out over this misguided 'respect for 'human dignity'. (A person today can 'donate his body to science'.) So also the needs of live, ailing humans have won out all over the world to justify 'embryonic stem-cell research' EXCEPT IN PRIMITIVE US.
 
WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE?Opponents of abortion ask, "If you won't draw the line (between prehuman and human) at conception, then at what point before birth would you draw the line?"This opens up an important logical topic: the human tendency to impose 'either/or' ('digital') lines on more-or-less ('analogue') natural realities.

The person who 21st birthday is tomorrow could ask, "Why am I inferior to this other guy who just celebrated his 21st birthday--as an 'adult',he may drink alcohol, but this would be a crime for me!"

The fourteen-year-old may wonder how he is inferior to his friend, just turned 15--the friend can get a learner's license for driving, but the 14-year-old is forbidden by law to drive.

People don't always die in an either/or way;often it's a matter of 'more-or-less' !
Ms. Schiavo was dead as a human for years (her brain was mush) but as an animal or vegetable being she was able to breathe on her own, and could survive when fed by tube. Whence the politcal fuss when the tubes were withdrawn !

Temperature varies in a more-or-less way, but our thermometers record a rise in heat as an either-or matter: even if we say that the temp is 98.5, that's still an either-or difference from 98.4.---
(Actually, mercury thermometers register heat as analogue; but we report it as digital.)

Students who 'just missed a B' complain--but that's inevitable in a digital system, even one involving more than 2 possibilities. (Some schools have set up 'B+' systems--but then the teacher must decide where to draw the line between B+ and A- !)
-------------
People of the Book (Christians, Jews, Muslims) are determined to see the label 'human' as an either-or matter; so they have to DECIDE TO DRAW A (crucial) LINE between a pre-human (or a post-human)and a full-human.

Aristotle, on the other hand, thought that 'full human, eligible for citizenship' was more-or-less. Some homo sapiens are able to follow out orders, but are NOT able to initiate good new projects. These lesser beings Aristotle labelled as 'natural slaves'. But even he would have to DECIDE WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE between a talented 'natural slave' and a barely-adequate potential-citizen !
--------------
My point is that 'where to draw the line' is always a DECISION, not a discovery. We don't hesitate to treat a normal infant as a full human, with rights. In other words, we have DECIDED (with almost unanimous agreement) to draw the 'full-human' line somewhere before normal birth. The fight is 'at what point before birth do we decide to count the creature as fully human?" That's a political debate,NOT a metaphysical disagreement.
---------------------
Now there are good and bad RANGES for plausible lines to be drawn. For instance, Colorado just discovered that, inadvertently, under its present law, twelve-year-old girls could agree (as presumed adults) to common-law marriages! That's surely outside the plausible range; so we just changed the law to set the threshold at 16 (slightly less absurd).

Similarly it would be absurd (though perhaps tempting) to exclude human teen-agers, as mere pre-humans, not counting them as right-holding-full-humans.

In some situations and societies, the coming-of-age for boys is set differently than for girls !

Where before birth should we decide to draw the line between rightless prehumans and rights-endowed full humans? This much is sure: we should NOT count the morula with only a few cells, that has not yet nested in the uterus, as a full human--so we should NOT forbid the Plan B pill ('emergency contraception')--even though it might flush out a morula--as killing a full human !

In fact, we don't do this, even in America--because we now allow abortion at a much later stage. But even if we forbade abortion after 7 months--which would not be ridiculous--it would still be absurd to count Plan 'B' as abortion!

The 'medical consensus' that 'pregnancy' begins with nidation in the uterus is not at all arbitrary.
 
ISRAELI ATTACK A DISASTROUS FIASCO: [UnitedPress]
They thought they'd star as they did in the 'six-day-war'. And at first they had the covert backing of shia-hating Mideast rulers.

But their bombing hasn't cut the rockets raining down on Israel--113 yesterday ! (This writer thinks Hezbollah has 10,000 more! )

Israel now hopes only for a 'security strip' of less than 2 miles--which will not protect HAIFA from Hez's long-range missiles.

Number of Israeli soldiers killed in one ambush (in proportion) would be, for America, as if we'd lost 1600 troops in one battle in Iraq !

Now the Israeli army, trying to minimize casualties, is up against a Shia force who worship martyrdom. (60 Iranians have already vowed publicly to come join in the fun.)

And, as noted below, even the cynical Sunni rulers, to appease their own people, now have to pretend that they admire Hezbollah and hate Israel.
-------------
Just last week, Sunni binLaden denounced Shia wholesale as traitors siding with US.
But now alQuaeda says 'All us Muslims must stick together !" Wouldn't this be ironic ? Suppose Sunni insurgents in Iraq quit killing Shia civilians, and joined with Shia Sadr (under open attack by Americans) to open up a second front vs. Americans !

However, this Sunni change-of-heart in Iraq hasn't happened yet. Today they inflicted almost 200 Shia casualties ! SeattlePI
---------------------------
A Congressional panel of experts warned how the Lebanon conflict could expand: e.g., to war between Israel and Syria..or to civil war in Lebanon (the last one let terrorists flourish) and of course to increased terrorist threat vs. our Homeland. SeattlePI
 
LEBANON SPIKING ANTI-AMERICANISM ? SURPRISE !
The Sunni fanatics hate the Shia heretics as well as the Americans.
And Mideast govts. are usually in bed with America (so, indirectly, with Israel!)

But the Mideast Peoples strongly admire Hezbollah, the first Muslim movement that has stood up to America/Israel bravely (at great cost to all Lebanese!)

So now even cynical royals in SaudiArabia are threatening war over 'Israeli arrogance'. FinTimes
----------------
"They all hate us anyway. Who cares how they react?" But these televised horrors may ACTIVATE terrorist sympathizers who up to now have been all talk: moving them to hide & fund terrorists, perhaps to volunteer to kill & die themselves to fight the 'ZIONISTS & CRUSADERS' (that's us!)
------------------------
Here's the kicker: Bushies dumbly hoped to get cheap oil from Iraq invasion. But in backing Israel's blitzkrieg, even they know we will get NO ADVANTAGE, ONLY TROUBLE.

And Dem 'centrists' are just as slavishly obedient to Israel's frothing whims.

Later historians will wag their puzzled heads at the stupidity of the whole US Establishment.
~ Wednesday, July 26, 2006
 
IMPORTANCE OF 'HONOR': John Tierney, in NYT, deplores IMPLACABLE HONOR as the primitive motivation of Hezbollah guerillas. However, 'implacable honor' was also the motivation for Israel's vicious and stupid attack destroying Lebanon. Israel was affronted by the INSULT of having 2 of its soldiers kidnapped by inferior 'rugheads'. Now Israeli soldiers are being killed or maimed by the dozen; rockets are killing people in Northern Israel--but you can bet many Israelis think that's a small price to pay to vindicate their HONOR. (They pretend the attack is to deter the Hezbollah--but the leaders should understand that such a blitzkrieg will INCITE, NOT DETER future attacks on Israel.)

And 'implacable honor' is the strange motivation of murder-suicides happening regularly, often among Caucasians, in Colorado. Some male is HUMILIATED and enraged to find his woman has dumped him, is perhaps sneering at him. So he kills her, then himself (to escape legal punishment). One poor sap said sadly," If I was a real man, I'd have killed her when she left me!"

Strange motivation--to think it is manly for a guy to shoot an unarmed woman !
------------
Philosophers study 'ethics', analysing the logic of (and criticizing) complex social codes of guilt/innocence. These codes are often arbitrary and unreasonable (e.g., feeling horror at the thought of eating pork; or labelling the killing of a 6-cell human blastocyst as murder!)
[Bush just said indignantly of very early embryos: "These boys and girls are not spare parts!"]
--------
From Plato on, philosophers also analyzed and criticized the amoral social codes of glory/ humiliation. (These are far more powerful codes than the guilt-codes in affecting human conduct!)But since Kant, most English-writing philosophers have been obsessed with guilt/innocence, shamelessly neglecting the study of 'splendid/pathetic' standards of conduct.

A recent book 'STRUTTING AND FRETTING: STANDARDS FOR SELF-ESTEEM' (by Jann Benson & myself) tried to analyze and criticize these primitive, powerful codes of conduct. But this book died aborning, perhaps because it asked when people APPROPRIATELY feel humiliation (low self-esteem)--in a society that asks only how to INCREASE your self-esteem.

A summary of this position is presented in ch. 1 of my DEMOCRACY, RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS. (Both books are available by interlibrary loan. Cheap used copies of STRUTTING & FRETTING are also available at AMAZON.)

PRIDE--the love of glory and the fear of humiliation--is the mother of achievement and the Sense of Honor--but also of folly and crime. WE HAD BETTER STUDY PRIDE.
 
DEM PAWNS OF ISRAEL. 20 Dem Senators demanded that alMaliki NOT be allowed to talk to Congress [ !!! ]--because he calls Israelis criminals and doesn't give 'balanced' condemnation of Hezbollah.

They should realize that he's trying desperately to conceal from Iraqis that he's as much a pawn of Bushies AS THEY ARE PAWNS OF ISRAEL.
 
ISRAEL WILL OCCUPY A STRIP OF LEBANON WITH GROUND TROOPS
'until an international force of peacekeepers take over.'
InternatlHeraldtribune
That is, until 4 days after the Messiah comes (for 1st or 2d round.)

It's said that Hezbollah has missiles it hasn't used, with longer ranges.Even pushed back a few miles, they'll still be able to shell Haifa.

Muslim terrorists (from a limitless supply around the world) will RUSH in to die gloriously while killing hated Jews. (60 Iranians have already volunteered PUBLICLY for this dieing and killing.)
 
GI-PULLBACK BEFORE ELECTION? Hell no ! Tours extended ! [ UnitedPress.26Jy ]
Nasty surprise for GIs in Iraq. We have tens of thousands of troops stationed elsewhere around the world--but instead of moving them to Iraq, Bushies will force exhausted GIs now in Iraq to stay, to 'bolster our forces' against insurgents and militia in Baghdad. (It's not clear how MORE troops will help much in Baghdad.)

We can expect higher casualties, more 'friendly-fire' incidents, more crazed-GI atrocities--and perhaps the beginning of 'fragging' unpopular officers by outraged GIs...and all this just before November !
 
CUI BONO? (Who benefits?) Hezbollah says it has longer-range rockets it hasn't yet used vs. Israel. Israel/US will announce these come from Iran. This will likely trigger their attacking Iran--then a huge spike in world oil prices. (Look for speculators to jack up oil price-futures even before this attack.) Oil up above $76 on Thursday. Gas averaging $3 a gallon all over US.

We know who will lose out from expensive oil & gas: the oil-importing countries like Israel, US, Europe,China and Japan. A worldwide Depression might result, harming China's exports. China might retaliate economically vs. US for causing this price-spike. (If they started selling their gigantic stock of US bonds, this would cause a panic and finish wrecking US economy.)

We could expect the chatter about Free Trade to disappear (The Summit just failed after 5 years of negotiation). Every country will erect tariff-walls to discourage imports (to sell more of their surplus production at home) thus lowering everyone's exports--the 'beggar-thy-neighbor' reaction that helped bring on the Great Depression of 1929.
-------------
But who would gain financially--in the short run--from the oil-spike resulting from an attack on Iran? The oil-exporters.

First, the Sunni/Arab members of OPEC, especailly Saudi Arabia--covertly hostile to Iran AND to US. (We could expect them to favor the attack on Shiite Iran.) Also Russia and Venezuela, openly hostile to US. Also Canada, with its huge reserves of oil-sands. (Of course a world-Depression would tend to LOWER oil-prices in the long-run. But if world has reached a 'peak' in oil production, the oil will increase in value the longer it sits in the ground.)

Also the US oil-refining companies would benefit (GOP buddies); they have brazenly managed to raise their profit-margins even in the face of rising crude-oil prices. [USATODAY,26Jy]
[ msnMoney ]

However, at some point, abstinence even among impoverished US gasoline-addicts would stop gas-prices from rising further.
------------
The only good news is the increased riches for the peaceful, sensible Norwegians !
~ Tuesday, July 25, 2006
 
IRAQ PM WILL ANNOY BUSHIES: [ NYTIMES ]--by demanding that murderous GIs be punishable under Iraqi law; ALL Iraqis are enraged by this situation. (Bush will NEVER consent to this!)


--by asking that amnesty be extended to insurgents who have killed GIs but not Iraqis (one Iraqi leader said that a person who killed foreign invaders should have a statue erected by his country!)

The fact that US can block these moves shows all Iraqis that Maliki regime is a tame poodle of US. He's trying to show his independence by even asking.
 
'FREE TRADE GLOBALISM' on the ropes! WTO negotiations collapse, with other nations blaming US (of course!) because Bushies won't defy agribusiness Senators and lower tariffs against foreign imported foods. GUARDIAN

Notice: Bushies cry against protectionism when someone suggests protection of US workers; but when it comes to protecting Archer/Daniels/Midland, to hell with free trade.
 
IRAQ 'ON THE BRINK' ? ChristSciMonitor Writer admits that many Iraqis say they're in the midst of a civil war !

US hoped that killing Zarqawi and setting up a new puppet regime, including more Sunni representation, would calm sectarian tensions. They hoped that Zarqawi's hatred of Shia was just a personal thing. But then Osama binLaden himself said Iraq Shia were traitors for colluding with US occupiers. (Casualty rate has spiked up sharply and continuously since Zarqawi's killing.)

Maliki recently offered 'amnesty' to some Sunni insurgents--but not to those who have killed GIs (due to last-minute US pressure). Insurgents replied that US must leave.

Even alMaliki (who recently denied that there was a civil war ! )--even he said that if the sectarian hatreds continued, 'There will be no Iraq left."

Of course not ! Kurds have already effected deFacto secession. Baghdad is being divided into Sunni enclave & Shia enclave. Shia are likely arranging for their own ministate: they'll have most Iraqis, most of the oil, an airport and the only seaport--and the help of their giant Shia neighbor, Iran !
--------------
Bush will send more GIs into Baghdad. REUTERS But there are said to be 30,000 there already.
The low GI casualty rate shows they're NOT GOING ON PATROL MUCH.
Bushies worry about GI casualties this close to election. How will it help to have MORE GIs sitting in bunkers?
 
SAUDI WARNS OF WAR: a Saudi leader warned that 'Jewish arrogance' could leave 'no option but war'.

Syria prepares for Israeli/US attack. JTA
 
UNFORTUNATE STRAIGHT-LINE:
She's English major, doesn't show much respect for his work in computer programming.

He says, haughtily: "You'll never know the triumph of taking a basically trivial gadget and manipulating it to do something important!'

She says, "Women have done that for centuries."
~ Monday, July 24, 2006
 
MALIKI SAYS THERE'S NO CIVIL WAR even though Iraq officials say privately that the civil war is already far underway. INDEPENDENT

He's going to meet Bush, but he'd find CHENEY more congenial. Cheney still insists that the insurgency is 'in its last throes'.
--------------------------
It's said in Iraq that a united Iraq is dead, that leaders are moving to 'Plan B' (dividing country into ministates, perhaps dividing Baghdad into Sunni West of Tigris , Shia to the East.
INDEPENDENT, cited by InfoClearinghouse
---------------------------
US NOW GIVES 'PRIORITY' TO 'DEATH SQUADS' CNN
This seems to be code for "We hope for a truce with Sunni insurgents while we polish off Shia Sadrites."

But as I remember, Sadr once had fairly good connections with Sunnis, shared with them the priority of driving out Americans. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Sunni insurgents JOINED UP WITH SADR to make life hell for the Yanks ?
 
Writer in LONDON INDEPENDENT sketches a few possible outcomes of the Israeli/Hezbollah fight: in almost every outcome, Israel is now a hell of a lot worse off than just having 2 soldiers kidnapped !
 
SMALLPOX VACCINE ON WAY? UnitedPress That would help in preventing bioterror attacks; but there are many other kinds of war-germs. Already we face a severe shortage of nurses; if biogerms spread among our poor, we have lousy public-health facilities for them.
We can't institute a quarantine if the new germs are not instantly detected.

So the wargerms may spread to our middle-class, who will rather deserve them for their contempt for their poor fellow-countrymen.
 
SCUTTLE ESTATE TAX--TO HELP THE POOR ? !
This right-wing response [ in USATODAY] opposing the Estate Tax claims that taxing the billionaires eliminates the jobs that MIGHT be created by their lost investments. In other words, "to help the poor, give back money to the obscenely wealthy".
This kind of nonsense might please right-wing lower-middle-brows who love cheap paradoxes.
(The same ninnies fear damage to their marriages if we let gays say they're married.)

There is absolutely no reason to think that the wealth of US billionaires WOULD be invested to make US jobs. This wealth might be spent on buying still more foreign villas. It might be invested in overseas corporations. (Money has no national loyalty.)

It might be simply stored in cash accounts; it's said that US corporations are sitting on mountains of cash. And the ten-year US treasury bonds are selling so well that they need to pay LESS interest than the 2-year bonds.That's because the 'savvy wealthy' see few good investment-opportunities here; after all, when less than 85% of our industrial plant is in use, we already have the capacity to produce more goods/services than people-with-money are able or willing to consume. Why invest in more capacity?

If there were good investment opportunities in US (which might make more jobs) money would flow into our corporate stocks here from all over the world--the alleged investments of the US wealthy would not be needed.

And much 'domestic' investment here goes to DESTROY US jobs, financing automation or outsourcing.

Much of this mountain of cash has come from covert subsidies to the wealthy from our right-wing government.

Whatever the good arguments for abolishing the estate tax, 'generating more US jobs' is NOT among them !
 
INCREDIBLE ABOUT-FACE ! Israelis have launched 'SHOCK & AWE' experiment in Lebanon, to see if DESTROYING a county 'harboring terrorists' might work.

We just read that Bushies were rushing "bunker-buster' bombs to Israel, to help with this experiment. (That way they can kill Lebanese hiding out in underground parking garages ! )

Then, suddenly, Rice stopped in Beirut, to bolster our feckless puppet govt. there. (Our backers, the middle-class Lebanese, have all fled from the Israeli havoc--only the Hezbollah are now in control)
You can imagine the welcome 'Israeli Rice' would get from the ordinary Lebanese.

NOW Rice (after much pooh-poohing of 'merely short-run solutions' ) has called SUDDENLY, URGENTLY FOR CEASE-FIRE. What the hell ...?

Perhaps the new urgency is because HAIFA is in Hezbollah rocket-range, and rockets are hitting ever-closer to huge PETROCHEMICAL COMPLEX in Haifa.

In any case, we can assume that this 'shock&awe' experiment has failed.
------------------
STRANGE ! The story about Rice calling for URGENT cease-fire was run by Australian PM

but now this story has COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED FROM GOOGLE !

However, the stories saying that AWESOME ISRAELI AIRPOWER HAS FAILED to hamper Hezbollah rockets pouring down on Israel:


--These stories continue.
--------------
And a commentator in TIME MAGAZINE with pretensions to 'inside the WhiteHouse' info,
repeats that Rice DID suddenly say the cease-fire was URGENT. He says that Bushies have suddenly realized that the outcome may be Lebanon as a FAILED STATE (like Somalia), with Islamist terrorists flourishing there. / duh !
 
MORE GIs TO BAGHDAD? alMaliki's scheme to pacify Baghdad (using 50,000 Iraq troops) has failed miserably. So now he's meeting with Bush, and they're talking about sending more GIs into Baghdad--even, in desperation, pulling reserve troops into harm's way from Kuwait !
HOWEVER:
--Bushies' 1st priority till Nov. election is to minimize GI casualties. Sending more troops into the Baghdad maelstrom might well INCREASE GI casualties. (Till now, the GIs there have not being venturing out on many patrols.)

--That means that more GIs to Baghdad will DO NOTHING to stop the 'soft ethnic cleansing' going on there, with Sunnis fleeing to West of the Tigris, Shia & Christians fleeing to right of Tigris.

Pundit Cordesman says the chaos is spreading outside Baghdad; he says cautiously that the data SUGGEST that we're losing. They sure do. [ WashPost ]

Perhaps the move is for US troops to scale up their attacks on Shia Sadrites. This will trigger a SECOND FRONT when GIs are attacked both by Sunni insurgents and by Shia militia.

US troops just fought battle against Sadrites Saturday. Shia rebels will outnumber Sunni insurgents 3 to 1. They control South Iraq, controlling our supply lines from Kuwait.
[ UnitedPress, cited by Monsters&Critics.]

Maliki's faction controls the Badrs, a rival militia to the Sadrite Mehdi. So this may be a secret alliance between the Badr & US to polish off the Mehdi before Shia secession.
But even the Shia loyal to Sadr far outnumber the Sunnis; earlier they were dumb enough to face up to US troops conventionally; they got slaughtered. One presumes this time they'll imitate the sneaky Sunni Insurgents.


Those cunning Bushies !
~ Sunday, July 23, 2006
 
THREE HUNDRED CASUALTIES TODAY (SUNDAY). Practically all casualties were Shia--but US insists that "danger from (shia) militia is now GREATER THAN DANGER FROM SUNNI INSURGENTS!" ABC/NEWS

Bushies have at long last awakened to see that their chatter about 'democracy' has put Shia in power in Iraq (as they should be, with 60% of the population!). Naturally, foreseeing finally the alliance between Iraq Shia & Shia Iran, they're horrified at this surprising outcome--surprising only to ignorant Bushies!

So now US has declared war on the (Shia) Sadrites.Result will probably be a second front against our GIs (beside the Sunni insurgents, who have not been weakened or pacified.)
 
'SHOCK & AWE' EXPERIMENT:
The only real talent of money-stuffed Pentagon is BOMBING & missiling: dumping high-explosives on a target from a safe distance. So it's embarrassing that this talent is USELESS vs. INDIVIDUAL terrorists (e.g., the 19 men with box-knives on 9/11, or the 3 men with knapsacks devastating the London transport system.)

Studies showed that the allied bombing offensive vs.Germany didn't pay off in cost/benefit even in WW II.

In Korea, we completely controlled air-space for 400 miles over a narrow peninsula; yet Chinese managed to convey enough explosives to 38thParallel for a conventional war that stood us to a tie.

We dumped an INCREDIBLE tonnage of bombs on Vietnam; yet they drove us out.

Shoulder-fired missiles nullified Soviet airpower in Afghanistan.

Clinton tried to defeat Serbia just by airpower (planes flown so high by prudent US airmen, unwilling to take risks, that they sometimes bombed the refugees they were supposed to protect.) We'll never know now why Milosovec pulled back. But when he did, his tanks and artillery emerged from caves unharmed by our bombers.

The only real success story for bombing was the 2 A-bombs that made Japan surrender.So Pentagon figures that 'SHOCK & AWE' inflicted on a 'nation harboring terrorists' is the trick. Pentagon planned a 'shock & awe' bombardment of Iraq; but the world press and US horror blocked that move.

So now our SiameseTwin Israel is experimenting with 'shock and awe' bombing,hoping to make the Lebanese turn against Hezbollah. They have basically wrecked that once-prosperous country. But once again, it isn't working. The middle-class Lebanese (who backed our puppet govt.) have fled the country, leaving only Hezbollah in control. The shells falling on Israel have not diminished.

The Iraqis now realize that US planes will NOT protect them from insurgents or Shia militias.
--------------------------------
The Pentagon won't lose faith in bombing; that's their only talent. But it should be increasingly clear to everyone else that airpower is a paper tiger.
~ Saturday, July 22, 2006
 
US FORCES INCREASED, NOT PULLED OUT ! Bushies have hinted that some GIs would be pulled out before Nov. election (wouldn't they want that!) But the increased carnage in Iraq, especially in Baghdad, has silenced such hints..indeed a reserve unit in Kuwait has to be pulled into Baghdad. TorontoStar

The question is whether these added troops will help. One thing sure is that our Iraqi troops are pretty useless.
 
MALIKI VS. BUSH: One reason the neocons wanted us to invade Iraq was so that we could install a pro-US govt. that would back our positions in the Mideast.

But now, as the Bushies are enthusiastically supporting Israeli brutality in Lebanon, the Iraq PrimeMinister alMaliki has strongly condemned the Israeli bombings and invasion.
PensacolaNews

US & Israel could hope that the Sunni govts. in Mideast hate the Shia & Iran more than they hate US & Israel, so they won't actively oppose the brutality. But it seems the Sunni populations are supporting the Shia victims in Lebanon. (Millions of already-resentful Shia inhabit the oil-rich parts of SaudiArabia ! )
-----------------
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF Maronite Catholics are being bombed by Israel in Lebanon--but His Holiness MALEDICTUS I has called only for prayer--not for cease-fire--in this crisis.(Perhaps his embarrassing stint in the Nazi army has made him fear ever crossing the Israelis.)
[Ratzinger's previous stint in HITLER YOUTH should have warned him of the bestial quality of the regime; he could have fled to some other country--but he let himself be drafted..then he says he deserted, though he ended up in an allied POW camp.
Catholic GIs who think they're being used in an unjust war should remember that their revered Holy Father was himself a --self-styled-- principled deserter. ]

His esteemed predecessor JPII might have been thinking of the plight of Iraqi Catholics when he condemned, several times, Bush's blitzkrieg. Under our regime, they're all fleeing from Iraq, if they can afford to.
------------------------
OOPS! An Italian paper said that the Pope on Sunday RENEWED h is call for a cease-fire.
I read ten news-sources each day, US & foreign; I saw no reference before Sunday of any Papal call for a cease-fire. Still, I apologize to Our German Shepherd.
 
TREASURY YIELDS IN 'INVERSION': i.e., ten-year rate is lower than 2-year rate.
This is abnormal, because usually investors foresee more risk (say, of inflation) over ten years than over 2 years, so they insist on higher rates for 10-year notes. Bloomberg

Bernanke's recent remarks made investors suspect Fed.Reserve will NOT grab next chance to spike up short-run rates (the only power they have). They don't want to trigger a recession just before Nov. elections.

Also, corporations are said to be sitting on mountains of cash. That means they don't see good opportunities for investment. Why invest in added productive capacity, when worldwide capacity already exceeds the amount of goods/svces the people-with-money are willing & able to consume ?

In other words, the 'savvy' guys foresee, NOT world inflation, but world deflation and recession.

Thank the gods that our modest savings are all in CASH, not in stocks or bonds.
~ Friday, July 21, 2006
 
"AFGHANISTAN IS NEAR TO ANARCHY!' says NATO commander there, puncturing the optimism of Blairite ministers. GUARDIAN

He complained about the lack of proper supplies for his troops.
----------------------
Israel says they will insist that peacekeeping force (on border with Lebanon) be 'European', preferably NATO.

Bloody likely ! NATO is stretched beyond its limits already in endless war with Taliban !
 
"(UNITED) IRAQ AS A PROJECT IS FINISHED ! " said an anonymous honcho. And Baghdad is splitting into Sunni West, and Shiite East (separated by Tigris river). REUTERS

ELEVEN THOUSAND IRAQI CASUALTIES IN THE LAST 2 MONTHS !
In this type of war, a government which can't control ITS OWN CAPITAL is doomed.
UnitedPress
 
ORDINARY MUSLIMS SIDE WITH HEZBOLLAH & LEBANON:
The Sunni rulers don't like the indirect influence of Shiite IRAN. But the citizens have no ambivalence.
And of course the automatic Bush (& Congress!) siding with Israel has isolated US ever more from 'the world'. AssocPress
~ Thursday, July 20, 2006
 
VIOLENCE UP 40% IN BAGHDAD THIS WEEK ! in spite of US & Maliki throwing in 50 thousand troops to stem the violence. Shia 'Pope' Sistani called for peace, but it's doubtful he will be heard.
ETHNIC CLEANSING: Sunnis are fleeing to their people on the West side of the Tigris; Shia and Christians are fleeing to their people on the East side. (Prelude to partition into 3 ministates.)

Shells are falling even inside the sacred Green Zone (hideout for Americans & their puppet pols).
SeattlePI
 
WILL IT WORK ?: Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel agree [in USATODAY] that before the next war (there will be one ! ) an independent panel of experts should be consulted as to whether the other nation constitutes a real threat.

That question alone, honestly faced, would have prevented our Iraq fiasco--but the experts should also ask if our military intervention will be successful, without causing disastrous side-effects.

Before plunging into Vietnam, our leaders never asked seriously whether we could win that war. (Johnson and MacNamara admitted that they plunged on even after they realized we couldn't win.They, along with Nixon & Kissinger, committed treason.)

Before we invaded Iraq, the experts might have doubted whether we could take over Iraq without provoking a huge insurgent rebellion that would block our success. And knowing that Iraq was an artificial nation into which three unfriendly groups were drafted (Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs) the experts should have asked whether removing the dictator Saddam might result in the awful bloodshed of a civil war, as a side-effect. SFGATE

Suppose on a primitive island, the elders propose throwing a few virgins into a rumbling volcano. Even if the volcano is really a threat, the question should still be asked, will the virgin-sacrifice WORK to ward off this threat?
--------------
It's interesting that observers who deplore the seemingly-hopeless civil war now going on openly--none of these US observers suggest that the only solution now is PARTITION into 3 ministates: Kurdland, SunniArabLand, and Shialand.
~ Wednesday, July 19, 2006
 
GOOFY OLMART ! Israel PM says that Iran caused the hezbollah-Israel conflict just to distract the world from the G-8 meeting, which will focus on Iran's nuke-program. JerusalemPost

However, if the issue were just 2 Israeli soldiers kidnapped, the world would not be distracted.
The distraction comes from the spectacular, unbelievably-brutal Israeli attack on Lebanon !
Is Olmert as nutty as his actions indicate?
 
"WE'RE NOT WINNING !" the terror war, say polled experts. UnitedPress
Liberal, moderate, conservative experts were equally weighted.
84% say we're in more danger.
but strangely only 30% say danger is from Muslims, and only 28% say it's from Iraq fiasco.
[Where from then? from Russia ? China ?]

52% said Pentagon budget should be cut; 87% say State & other depts. should get increased funding.

One expert says we have to do 'vastly more killing' !

Another guesses that 40-100 million Muslims (out of 1300 millions worldwide) are funding the terrorists. We can't kill them all; we have to persuade them.
~ Tuesday, July 18, 2006
 
PARTITION A US PLOT? Writer in AlJazeera suggests this--but offers as evidence only the obvious fact that Western imperialists have always arranged to get local tribes to turn against each other "Divide & Conquer' !

He doesn't mention that 'Iraq' is itself an artifical political entity slapped together by the Brits after WW I. Three unfriendly ethnic groups were drafted into this 'nation': Kurds, Sunni/Arabs, and Shia/Arabs.

What would America/Israel (joined at the hip) gain from Iraq's partition into 3 ministates ?

Obviously Israel and Kuwait would rather face 3 weak 'mini-Iraq's rather than one strong, hostile Iraq.
And US oil companies may have dreamed that they'd rather negotiate with dispersed Iraq segments than a unified Iraq.

And Kurdland will be friendly to US and Israel. If they can grab the oil-soaked Kirkuk area (as they seem likely to do) they will have lots of oil to contribute--IF they can stop the insurgents from sabotaging pipelines...right now NO OIL is flowing out from Kurdland to the Turkish outlet.
(Kurdland is already deFacto independent of Iraq; they don't dare declare FORMAL independence because Turkey threatens invasion if they do. Split between Sunni/Arabs & Shia/Arabs is irrelevant to Kurdish situation.)
(In response to US warnings not to invade, Turkey says this is THEIR decision; they will invade if they want to. ZAMAN To defend our Kurdish friends, GIs might end up fighting TURKS also !)
---------------------
HOWEVER: most Iraqi oil will come from Shialand. And that ministate will be allied with our hated enemy IRAN ! In fact, Iran is the main beneficiary of Bush's loony invasion; we're eliminated their worst enemy, Saddam; and we're setting up a Shia ally. Together Iraq Shialand and Iran may produce more oil than Saudi Arabia.

So it's not clear at all that the Iraq chaos is benefitting US/Israel--both countries need to import oil. So far,the resulting DESTABILIZATION of MiddleEast has spiked crude oil futures up to around $80 a barrel. (New riches are flowing to anti-US Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.)
 
MORE ON DUMB BRUTALITY:
Tens of thousands of prosperous, educated, INFLUENTIAL tourists in Lebanon, from all over the world, have had a chance to taste, first-hand and vividly, Israeli brutality (allegedly to rescue two Israeli soldiers). When they return home, they will NOT be fans of Israel.

Twenty-five Thousand US citizens are included; and they complained that they were not being evacuated quickly enough. They were likely less than enchanted by hearing of Bush's instantaneous approval of Israel's attack.
 
"POPE WRITING BOOK ABOUT JESUS" [ GUARDIAN ]

I'd rather hear Jesus' assessment of Ratzinger.
 
HEADLINES SCREAMED 'INFLATION'--but consumer prices (excluding food & energy)rose only 2.4% (annualized). FinTimes Fewer people were eating out. [USATODAY]

If ordinary Americans insist on paying $3 for gas, they can't spend in other directions.
So merchants can't get away with raising prices in general.

Yet Bushies on FedReserve seem determined to raise short-run interest rates again, possibly provoking recession. If one must come, let's hope it starts before Nov. elections.
 
ONE HUNDRED IRAQIS KILLED EACH DAY IN JUNE, with US proving useless in protecting Iraqis from each other.

Over 14 thousand in first six months of '06.

One hundred fifty three casualties today NYTIMES

Whatever the reason for keeping GIs there, 'protecting Iraqis' is not one of them.
~ Monday, July 17, 2006
 
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SHIA CASUALTIES from attack by gunmen.
Local people said it was 'Saddamists'; but they wouldn't have the motive that Zarqawists have.
(If they can provoke Shia to slaughter and enrage Sunnis, then the Saddamists wouldn't have the nerve to try to make a separate peace with the Shiite govt., turning on their erstwhile Zarquawist allies.)
GUARDIAN
Bushies would have us believe that the Shia are killing more than the Sunnis--but almost every story tells of SHIA killed or maimed.

What this shows is that Bushies have turned against the Shia friends of Iran (US just attacked Sadr City!)and now the Sadrites have turned on the softer 'coalition' targets, the Brits.They just shot down a Brit copter (Brits don't have enough copters for both Iraq & Afgh. fiascos ! [ HERALD ])

Sunni pols now want US to stay in Iraq ! Of course they would, when the supermajority of Shia turn on them. They are outnumbered 3 to 1. And they realize that the main winner in Bush's invasion is their longtime enemy IRAN ! FinTimeshttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/5073e7d6-cf1d-11da-925d-0000779e2340.html
---------------------------------
As Shia realize this US treachery, they will speed up moves toward deFacto secession of their region in the South (driving out minority Sunnis there who might be harboring Sunni insurgents).This 'ministate' will have most Iraqis, most oil, an airfield, and the only Iraqi seaport--with mighty Iran next door as ally. (Of course the ministate might be ruined by civil war between Sadrites and the other Shia militia, the Badr. But this disaster could also happen under nominal rule by 'central govt'.)

The 'central govt'. will shrink and shrivel (with deFacto independent Kurdland in North--and Shialand in the South--controlling oil revenues, and the Sunni/Arab insurgents basically controlling the middle region, in spite of US air-raids--in fact the US might DONATE that region to Saddamite control.)
 
SKILL SHORTAGE: There is already a US shortage of pharmacists, nurses, engineers--even auto mechanics ! This shortage is so severe that desperate corporations are contacting MIDDLE SCHOOLERS, trying to interest them in math and science !

Math deficiencies are not the only problem. Ability to analyze problems and READ INSTRUCTIONS, and write intelligibly are also scarce.

Why can't corps. outsource? Defense contractors--a BIG section of US production !--don't dare outsource much, for fear of anti-US foreign workers screwing up our weaponry.
REUTERS
----------------------------
Right-wingers will put all blame on school systems. And some blame belongs there.But the main blame goes to US parents. Often ignorant and childish themselves, they let their kids have TV and computer games in their bedrooms, completely unsupervised.The children don't get enough sleep, don't do their homework--learning sags.
-----------------
Basic problem is capitalist excess productive capacity. Technology makes world corporations able to produce FAR MORE than consumers-with-money are willing-and-able to buy. So the corporations have had to deliberately STUPEFY our people to spur them to hysterical heights of consumption. Unhappily, that stupefication extends beyond consumption, to render our youth--and their parents-- unable to contribute much to high-level production.

So far, that hasn't hurt all that much, because of the huge surplus of workers caused by the baby-boom and forcing women into the work-force. But now the boomers are retiring, and the female workforce can't be expanded further. So, as the number of available workers shrinks, that smaller cohort of SKILLED workers shrinks even faster.

Meanwhile the Pentagon is moving to robotize warfare. But the pool of technically-skilled, fully-literate enlistees (who could manage the war-robots competently) is shrinking fast. Pentagon will lure elite youth into service by huge bonuses, aggravating shortage of elite workers in our civilian economy.

Sooner or later, US will have to depend, one way or another, on foreign skilled workers.Just as the RomanEmpire was weakened by depending on foreign soldiers--just as Soviet empire was weakened by disillusionment of skilled workers--so the US empire will be weakened.
-------------
This is good news for the smart, disciplined youth who will want to emigrate from self-destructive US.
Elite youth should prepare for emigration
(a) by learning several foreign languages, and
(b) by developing a trade needed by foreign countries they might want to emigrate to.
For instance, pharmacists and medical personnel will be needed all over the First World as the number of the aged, needing medicines, rises. (The youth of other first-world nations are also being stupefied.)
 
RATE INVERSION: One-year Treasury bonds are paying 5+%. Ten-year & 30-year bonds are paying the same rate !

Normally, long-term bonds must pay more. There is more RISK (say,of inflation) over 30 years than over the next year. When this is NOT true (sit. called INVERSION) that means that savvy investors firmlly expect rates to go DOWN over 30 years, because they expect fewer solid investment opportunities--world already faces excess productive capacity: capacity to produce more goods/svcs than people-with-money will be willing and able to consume.

These big investors must expect world recession & deflation, NOT INFLATION. So they want to lock in the present rates, even though they are no higher than one-year rates.

(True, the main buyers of our bonds are now central banks of other nations, not private investors.
They want to keep the dollar 'up'. which effectively devalues their own currencies, to help their exports and slow down their imports. But why would they be so lustful over our 30-year bonds, as opposed to our one-year bonds? )
 
BLACK HUMOR IN NYTIMES HEADLINE:
"BUSH MAY SEND RICE TO HELP CALM MIDEAST"
Next he'll send her to calm the tsunami in Indonesia.
~ Sunday, July 16, 2006
 
ANOTHER ATTACK ON NIGERIAN PIPELINE WED. CNN

This is the latest in a series of attacks that have cut severely the output of Nigerian oil, have spooked speculators to jack up the 'futures' price of oil (to over $80 a barrel).

Oil Exports from No.Iraq are stopped for now, because of sabotage.
-----------
All this means that the price of gas in US will be going up (from $3 a gallon) not down, with the election in less than 4 months.
--------------
This means more riches for (anti-US) Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. But it also means that Bushies/Israel would be really stupid to attack Iran.
 
COMMANDER OPTIMISTIC ABOUT RAMADI: The capital of insurgent-pestered Anbar Province, its people now don't feel safe cooperating with Americans. Convoys get attacked approaching or leaving the 'govt.house'.

In a similar situation in FAllujah, Americans bulldozed in and wrecked the city. This commander doesn't THINK that will be necessary in Ramadi.
He' stationing his troops in small concentrations throughout the city, using the 'ink-blot' approach. (Of course they're now more vulnerable to ambush, and their supply lines are more vulnerable to car-bombs.)
He's confident about his Iraqi troops ('as long as they're fed, paid, and equipped.')

The next step is to restore electricity and jobs. (But will insurgents block this?)
UnitedPress

Even if this works in Ramadi, US has far too few troops to match this success in all Iraq cities.
And Bushies are talking of cutting the troop number! (60% of AMericans want troops out, either immediately or 'gradually'; only 30% (undeterred by killed or maimed GIs) want to 'stay the course'.)
 
ISRAEL EMPOWERS ISLAMISTS (vs. moderate secular Mideast leaders) by its crude overreaction to kidnapped soldier.

It is wrecking Lebanon's tourist trade (which is the big employer of ordinary Lebanese).
All over the Muslim world, Hezbollah is admired (even tho it's Shia ! )..more so than ever now.
UnitedPress
Muslims won't be deterred by 60 Lebanese dead. They will rejoice instead that one Hez.rocket killed 8 people in Haifa, far from the Lebanon border. (Tiberias, even further away, is also in range.) Also that a Hez. drone plane could hit an Israeli warship.

You can understand Israeli rage. In the short run, they'll prevail. But in the long run, one thousand millions of Muslims world-wide, now reinforced by trillions of new oil dollars, will manage to cripple Israel..not destroy it--not when it has 200 nukes--but cripple Israel economically.

EU and Russia have formally condemned this brutal assault. Jews around the world feel ever-less sympathy for Israelis. Bush's fatuous endorsement is the kiss of death.
 
GOOD NEWS--HUGE GAS FIND in So.China sea--up to ONE BILLION CU.FT.
(one mile deep--but that's manageable). UnitedPress

Now maybe China can use less coal--and spare the world the destructive increase in CO2 as China industrializes.
 
COPTER DOWNED BY SHOULDER-MISSILE in Basra. Immediately a large crowd gathered to gloat, shouting "Victory [to Sadrites] !"; the crowd burned 3 Brit vehicles trying to retrieve the 4 burned corpses in the copter. GUARDIAN (Sadrites are Shia ! A 2d front?)

Immediately Brit Tory & Liberal parties called again for a Brit 'exit strategy'.
(Brits just handed over one province to Iraqis, claiming it was peaceful and safe.
Such incidents as this show that such withdrawals are beginning of bugout.)

Brits were hoping to avoid road-bombs by moving soldiers & supplies in copters.
Recently, desperate Brit general in Afgh. begged publicly for more copters there.
(Presumably he also worried about supplies vulnerable to road-bombs.
Brit unit there was said to be desperately under-supplied.)
Blairites flatly turned him down !
----------------
A US copter was recently downed, perhaps also by shoulder-missile. Insurgents are learning how to aim these things. Terrorists trained in Iraq will be better able to attack Caucasian cities.

Such missiles are cheap and available all over the world. They seek heat; someone said that our cumbersome airliners would 'suck them off the assembly-lines'. It's a mystery why they haven't been used more frequently--SO FAR ! (Bushies, unlike Israelis, refuse to pay for gadgets that could make airliners less vulnerable to shoulder-rockets.)
 
ATTACKS ON TALIBAN:--[ GUARDIAN,16Jy ]
One attack killed '30 Taliban', SAYS US SPOKESMAN.

--The biggest attack, (involving 300 Brits dropped from the sky) killed only 10 Taliban; the others may still be hiding out nearby. GUARDIAN

What counts in NOT how many guerillas killed; what counts is how many are left (after they've recruited more natives enraged by brutal allied tactics.)
 
'ACCUSATIONS PILE UP VS. COCKY IRAN !" SydneyHerald

It's claimed that the Iran contributed the Hezbollah missiles which can now reach Israeli cities from Lebanon. (One rocket killed 8 in Haifa. NYTIMES )

Why is Iran risking retaliation? Because they know
(a) that US /Israel (joined at the hip) need no justification for bombing Iran (who'd stop them?) and
(b) that no justification would prevent the painful retaliation from Iran once they're bombed--e.g. slaughter of GIs in Iraq, and skyrocketing world oil prices. (Israel/US must import their oil.)

Israel & US should note that Hezbollah had a drone plane that could hit ships in nearby waters. (US has vulnerable naval armada nearby.)

Both Israel and US have been chased out of Lebanon earlier.

Also, both Russia and China are backing Iran verbally (e.g., saying they'd veto any UNSec.Council threats). (China badly needs Iranian oil & gas.) They might have warned Bush that they'd retaliate in various covert ways for his bombing Iran. (e.g., China could wreck US economy quickly by starting a panic, selling their huge store of US bonds.)
 
ANCIENT HAWK UTTERS TRITE LIES: V.DHanson, over and over, tells us that Bushies couldn't have invaded FOR OIL because gas prices here have leaped up since our invasion. But in fact the neocon Bushies actually SAID they expected the oil to pay for our occupation !

Truth is, Bushies bungled the occupation so badly that Iraq now exports less oil than under Saddam, even when he was restricted by UN sanctions!
~ Saturday, July 15, 2006
 
"WINNING? WELL, WE'RE NOT LOSING!" says army honcho. "We're nearer to the beginning than to the end." AssocPress, cited by GAZETTE

That last gnomic utterance seems to say that we'll need more than another 3 years, with 2500 more GIs dead, with 2500 more crippled or blinded or brain-damaged.

In other words, he admits we're in a STALEMATE. But it's accepted that guerillas win all ties, when they have support of even a large minority of the population, when the invaders are hated by most of the population, when invader's domestic politics demands that the ugly, unpopular war end soon. (Only 30% of Americans say they want IMMEDIATE pullout. But another 30% want gradual pullout. That's code for "We want out, but we dream that waiting might allow a MIRACLE that would allow us to escape bugout humiliation." Every month that dream will fade some more. )
 
SHIITE HEZBOLLAH, HAMAS, LEBANON, IRAN MAY BE ISOLATED:

Israeli & US leaders may be chuckling over Shiite Hezbollah triggering bloody Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
There are verbal protests of course all over the Arab world. ALJAZEERA

But Arab Sunnis may hate Shia as much as they do Israel & America. All the govts. are Sunni except Iran's.

So there may be little real Arab support for poor Lebanon.
 
AFGHAN WAR DISASTROUS FOR NATO: [UnitedPress ]
2 reasons:
--Taliban was supposed to shrink, retreat..Instead, they're back in force !
(So NATO forces are not 'peacekeepers', but --unwilling--warriors.)

--NATO is grossly unable to handle such overseas combat.
================
HUGE ATTACK BY CANADIANS, US,& BRITS ; Taliban melts away safely.
"Philosophically we don't want a single civilian killed." says commander.
But in practice, bombing kills many Afghans, enrages survivors to help Taliban.

Brits are desperate for supplies.

'Afghanistan is no place for quitters.' says NATO commander. No, it's a place for pig-headed leaders to sacrifice troops and civilians for years--then it's a place for final bugout.

Toronto Globe&Mail

We gloated when Afghans drove Soviets out; now you can bet Putin is chuckling.
 
ltr to RMtnNews:
Your right-wing comic PRICKLY CITY (15Jy) is pretty shameless. They quote decorated veteran Rep. Murtha's sad comment that US is now the biggest threat to world peace. Then they say "What about nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea? Murtha is off his meds."

Iran has no nukes; N.Korea has a few model-T A-bombs. US has thousands of H-bombs, ready for use. (Only the US has actually dropped nukes on cities!) Iran and N.Korea have not attacked another country in the last 50 years. US has launched a needless, pointless invasion of Iraq that now threatens to drown the whole MiddleEast in sectarian war.

Any RMN readers who take seriously this comic-strip propaganda--it's these readers who are off their meds.
~ Friday, July 14, 2006
 
STRAWS IN THE WIND: I mentioned before that by 3 to 1, polled Americans say they want Dems to control Congress--less than 4 months before election.

2 other points: [ CNN ]

--i'ts often said that all Congressional elections are local, not national. It's also said that most people like THEIR representative, however they disapprove of Congress in general.
But this poll says that by 51% to 41%, people want a Dem elected in THEIR DISTRICT.

--Also, the 'undecideds' ('persuadables) say they lean toward a Democrat, 51% to 41%.

Much 'economic pain' lies ahead for ordinary Americans. For people making $40k a year, the extra $500 they're paying this year for gas really hurts. And it will likely get worse.

Dems should emphasize that right now, GOP controls ALL 3 BRANCHES of fed.govt.
Hard for GOP to avoid blame for our awful situation, in Iraq/Afgh & at home.
 
IRAQ MOVES TOWARD 'FAILED STATE' CONDITION: [ UnitedPress ]
Shia militias degenerate into criminal gangs. Result will NOT be sensible partitition into 3 stable ministates, but Somali-like anarchy. (Bushies have always insisted--correctly--that terrorists thrive in 'failed states'--now they seem to have reduced Iraq to that status.)

Present 'central govt'.receives, deserves contempt for being a puppet of the infidel invader. (Sure sign was when US forced alMaliki to drop 'amnesty for those killing GIs' from his 'peace proposal' aimed at Saddamite insurgents. "Even when they're losing, insurgents won't give up when they face prosecution..and these insurgents are winning ! "
---------------------
One Sunni mosque bombed, and one Shia mosque Friday [ SeattlePI ]. It's conceivable that BOTH were bombed by Sunni 'Zarqawist jihadists'. They benefit if ordinary Sunnis get so enraged at Shia that the secular Saddamites don't dare make a separate peace with our puppet 'central govt.'
 
'OIL HOVERS ABOVE $78 A BARREL; MOVE TO $80 INEVITABLE.' WashPost
And that's not allowing for US hurricanes !
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"GAS PRICES WILL JUMP UP 10CENTS MORE IN NEXT WEEK OR SO !" says expert.
The rise 'is going to be rapid and will be sustained." CNN/Money
Unless Americans use less gas, price of every other kind of item must drop.
Stagflation (fall in jobs, worker pay; rise in prices)--not inflation.

Retail Spending (excluding energy) fell last month at an annualized rate of 3%, when 'WallStreet analysts' had predicted it would rise ! Surprise. RTE

Consumer Confidence is falling in July, contrary to predictions of 'analysts'. REUTERS
These 'analysts' are really cheer-leaders.
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Some analysts are using the 'R' word: Recession It's suspected that FedReserve will raise interest rates one more time, then lower them quickly ( ! ) But expansion-effect of lower rates will be delayed by months.
Oil 'futures' 'soar above' $80 a barrel.
REUTERS

----------------------------
One benefit of 'perceived economic pan' just before election : By THREE TO ONE, AMERICANS WANT DEMS TO CONTROL CONGRESS ! GUARDIAN

So what? Bush can veto any Dem innovation. However, Dem control would enable INVESTIGATIONS making ever clearer the astounding bungles and corruption of GOP government!
~ Thursday, July 13, 2006
 
KEVORKIAN: A MARTYR TO SANITY /
He helped 130 desperate people to escape from long deaths by suicide.The last guy had LouGehrig's disease, a monstrous syndrome that ends up with complete paralysis.
He wanted help in dying; Kevorkian was convicted of murder.

Now he's almost dead himself, but primitive Michigan won't parole him.

In future ages, he will be remembered with as much reverence as we now remember early abolitionists who were imprisoned or killed for their 'illegal' activities.
 
"SHIA NOW KILL 4 SUNNIS FOR EVERY SHIITE KILLED" says knowledgeable observer.
He says Pentagon has always underestimated danger from Shia militia.
The only solution now would be to flood Baghdad with GIs. (only 55k there now).


But US doesn't HAVE extra troops. Anyway, the troops we have are not sent out on patrol, because Bushies want to minimize US casualties before Nov. election. UnitedPress

Result? Baghdad turned over to 'central govt. security forces' which are at best ineffective, and at worst infiltrated with murderous Shiite militiamen.

Shias would of course dominate in any full Sunni/Shia conflict, since they outnumber Sunnis by 3 to 1, and they control the nominal 'central govt'.

Big worry is that as Sunnis get slaughtered, Sunnis from neighboring countries would flood in to make the present civil war REGIONAL. US is NOT moving GIs to borders; there wouldn't be enough of them anyway.

Bushies have turned unhappy Iraq into a hellhole. Again, only solution is quick partition.
 
BOYS FALLING BEHIND IN LITERACY: why? One rather chauvinist male gave a plausible explanation: "Whenever a field involves competition with women, men drop out. After all, if they win, no glory; if they lose, much humiliation !"

Of course he was speaking of other men, not himself.
 
"Every boy & every girl who's born into this world alive
Is either a little liberal, or else a little conservative !"

Facing a picture of a politician from opposite party,
brain reacts in a unique way. UnitedPress

We are half-evolved chimpanzees, still needing allegiance to a pack, still needing a 'them' to contrast with 'us'.

Even now, when many GOP voters have turned against Bush, you can bet their brain reacts with automatic hostility to pictures of prominent Democrat pols !

Loyalty to a sect or church may be more tribal than devout in nature. A beleagured boy in CATCHER IN THE RYE snarled, "You can pick on me, but not on my goddamn Religion!"
-----------------
Defenders of democracy have asserted that most people are better off under majoritarian regimes, because each person supposedly knows and promotes his own interests best.

In fact, most people are irrational in this respect--so majoritarian regimes have no intrinsic superiority over all other types of regime--though they (like almost every other kind) are superior to monster regimes like those run by Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot--or to completely anarchic societies such as the Baghdad our meddling has produced.
 
US AMBASSADOR K. ADMITS US COULD STAY IN IRAQ TOO LONG! UnitedPress

He now thinks our main function is to prevent the civil war in Iraq from involving outside Sunnis/Shia. (Yet we're not moving GIs to borders !)

GIs in Baghdad went from 40k to 55k, but slaughter has increased.

Of course he blames Syria & Iran for trouble in Iraq. Ho-hum.

He worries that alQaeda will take over [SunniArab] 'part' of Iraq, turn it into a terrorist base.
So we'd better make up with secular Saddamite insurgents, put them in control of S/A region, help them wipe out their Islamist allies.

But this would further show Shia that we are against them--unless we pave the way for ministate Shialand--unhappily, a ministate allied with Shia Iran !

He worries that Kurds will give up on Iraq. Kurds long ago gave upon Iraq !
 
OIL UP TO $76 A BARRELon Thursday: because of Israel/Lebanon, Nigerian rebels, AND worry that Bushies might attack Iran. Bloomberg

RESULTS? More riches for hostile Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Also, China will use more coal, endangering the whole human race.
 
LTR TO ROCKYMTNNEWS : One Jim Kutsko calls Democrats intolerant for rejecting Sen.Lieberman's support for the bloody, goofy Iraq war. Apparently Kutsko is using a new definition of tolerance:
"Live and let kill."
~ Wednesday, July 12, 2006
 
DEVALUING LIFE VS. DEVALUING CONSENT:
Earlier, I refuted Nat Hentoff's claim that our present devaluation of life stems from the RoeVs.Wade decision. [RMtnNews]

In answer, one John Gleason [ RMtnNews ] cleverly switches from the subject of devaluing life (one's own or another's) to the issue of who gets to consent to risking his life. He says in the cases I mention (the Viet war, auto carnage, high murder rates), the person is doomed by choices of his own--whereas the 'unborn child' facing abortion has no choice.

Firstly, the unrich guy drafted into the army and killed in Vietnam had no choice; neither did the Viet sprayed with napalm. The person who dies from breathing in auto pollution had no choice,nor did the one murdered. Gleason calls these deaths 'the attrition due to life'. But this 'attrition' is due to American choices, not to 'life'--and they signify that we have devalued life for a long, long time.

Secondly, of course, embryos killed in early abortions are NOT unborn children; they are prehuman, not fully human. (NO religous leader has suggested that the aborting woman and her abortionist be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit manslaughter, let alone murder. This talk of 'killing unborn children' is not serious. )
 
UnitedArabEmirates have $23 billion in reserves, mostly now in dollars.
(Such an arrangement benefits US economically, and costs other countries.)
UAE plan to move 10% of their reserves into EUROS. alJazeera

(Some say that real Bushie gripe vs. Iran is NOT their nuclear power development, but their plan to set up a 'bourse' (oil trading post) where countries don't have to buy huge amounts of dollars.
But if this idea catches on, MANY economies will pull this switch. We can't bomb them all.)
 
alMaliki says Iraqis face their 'last chance' for inter-sect peace. Usually when a poohbah talks like that, the last chance for peace has come & gone. Opposing sides are hunkering down for open war. WashPost

Over 4000 Iraqi casualties from intersect violence since 20 May, inauguration of alMaliki's 'unity' government--perceived by all as useless. 60 killed on Tues,11Jy. SeattlePI (Often in this situation, the wounded are worse off than the dead.)
----------------------
The only solution: a quick partitition, with minorities in each region fleeing before the majority turns on them. 3 ministates: Kurdland (already seceded), Shialand in the South, and Sunni/Arab/land in between.
 
US BLAMES IRAN, SYRIA FOR KIDNAPPING ISRAELIS: Westfall
Bushies are constantly looking for excuse to bomb Syria, Iran. They don't need an excuse; who would stop them ? And no excuse they give would convince anyone.

If they don't bomb Iran, it will be because for once they are sensible enough to fear the consequences, not because they doubt their justification.
 
STRANGE LEAD: A story in REUTERS had a strange, propagandistic lead paragraph.
The story said that US general told Rumsfeld in Iraq that SUNNI militants were stoking the awful sectarian violence. "A counter to that are Shiite death-sqads.."

But the lead paragraph says that the general said that SHIITE DEATH SQUADS ARE FUELLING a surge in communal violence. !! Either the writers can't read their own story--or they're counting on readers who take in only the first paragraph.

Bushies now seem to be turning against the supermajority of Shiites, trying for reconciliation with Saddamite Sunni insurgents. When they prattled about 'democracy' for Iraq, one rumor says THEY DIDN'T KNOW that Shia were 60% of population !

Now suddenly they realize that, either with Shia dominating an 'all-Iraq' government, or (more likely) with Shia totally controlling their independent ministate--in either case, the ultimate winner of this loony conflict is our hated enemy IRAN, whose archenemy Saddam we have imprisoned; and Iran will have a Shia ally, rich in oil, next-door.

For one reason or another, Bushies are lusting to bomb Iran all to hell. But not only does threat of disrupting world oil market make them hesitate. There is also the fact that if Iran had nothing to lose, they could help the Sunni insurgents SLAUGHTER the 130,000 GIs in Iraq !

Just as stationing thousands of GIs in South Korea has provided hostages N.K. could destroy, so also stationing over 100k GIs in Iraq has provided Iran with hostages to deter our attack.
~ Tuesday, July 11, 2006
 
SCARCE OIL/GAS: A POLITICAL WEAPON NYTIMES
Europe gets one-third of its natural gas from Russia, thru pipelines built in spite of objections from Reagan's US.

Now US is encouraging long, long pipelines that would connect the world with non-Russian providers, pipelines that will NOT go thru Russia.

Iraq insurgents and Nigerian rebels have shown how easy it is to sabotage lengthy pipelines.
 
VENEZUELA RESERVES OF NATURAL GAS: 150 TRILLION CU.FT. UnitedPress
Rt-wing govt. of COLOMBIA will cooperate to pipe gas from V. toC.
If pipe could be extended thru Columbia, gas could reach the sea, to be sold in Asia.

US is dependent on V. oil & gas--Chavez isn't being absurd when he says he fears US attack.
He's arming all his citizens, buying thousands of Kalashnikovs (risking anarchy). It would be counter-productive for Bushies just to BOMB V. And they have used up all their troops in Iraq, Afghanistan !
 
BAGHDAD AS SEEN BY 'SECURITY FORCES': REUTERS

"These fighters are sponsored by the Shia or Sunni parties in Assembly: the Mehdi or the Badr or the (sunni) Islamic Party. I arrest them, and they are released the next day."

"I see cars full of heavily-armed men. I can't stop them; they never fail to aim their guns at me."

One guy fired into the air; I said something, and he pointed the gun at me, saying: 'I am the State'.
 
SIX HUNDRED INDIAN CASUALTIES FROM 7 TRAIN-BOMBS: Bloomberg
[Later estimates: 900 ]

What motivation? Indians will blame Pakistan. Someone wants to trigger a 4th war between India & Pakistan. In such a war (now nuclear) Pakistan cities will certainly perish. Who would benefit from this? Perhaps the Islamist terrorists: they may resent the (fairly ineffective) help Musharref has been giving the US in routing out Taliban.

If the secular state of Pakistan were gravely wounded, Islamists would have more leeway to use Pakistan territory as terrorist base--much of the population would be sympathetic (unless they realized that the devastation was deliberately caused by Islamists !)

This illustrates a crucial point about the present-day terrorists: not only do they NOT NEED 'harboring' by a state, they actively oppose the 'godless' governments who govern middleEast countries. What does this imply for US govt.?

Our Pentagon has only one real talent: bombing and shelling targets with high explosives from a safe distance. As such, Pentagon threatens only national states, NOT INDIVIDUAL TERRORISTS (united only by common motivation, organized perhaps in loose cells. These cells can't be 'decapitated'--insurgent attacks have INCREASED since we 'got' Zarqawi.) Bombing suspected terrorist sites usually results in enraging the relatives of innocent victims of these bombings, recruiting new terrorists !

So Pentagon is fairly useless in our conflict with terrorists. Yet we shovel $10 to this white elephant for every $1 going toward (porous) Homeland Defence !

Bushies brag about reduced deficit expected. Then the gross Pentagon budget (over $400 billions a year, with only $100 billions annually paying for Iraq war !) looms even larger as the main cause of our federal budget problems.
 
IRAQ SLAUGHTER CONTINUES TUESDAY, in spite of 50,000 govt & US troops brought in to stop it. Shia legislator blames Americans. "They're either incompetent or not-caring. It's their [security] plan; problem is not the nature of the troops, it's the will of the troops." LATIMES

Presumably he thinks Yanks have bent over backwards to prevent attacks on Sunnis. Indeed, so far, most attacks have been vs. Shia, and most casualties are Shia.
~ Monday, July 10, 2006
 
MEALY-MOUTHED KERRY: As President, he'll pull out GIs from Iraq IF our allies pitch in to help out.
Al Jazeera. What allies do we have left? We broke it, we bought it.
 
ON WHAT BELIEF DO THESE MEN AGREE? ColinPowell, John Kerry,Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Frank Carlucci? That our government is now dysfunctional. UnitedPress
A new book itemizes the self-inflicted wounds, and tells what needs to be done.
But there's no indication that our government, our business leaders, or our people have any intention of doing such things.
 
IRAQ TO ASK UN TO END GI IMMUNITY: US is in Iraq under a SecurityCouncil mandate, providing for legal immunity for GIs from Iraq prosecution. But several murders by GIs have been alleged recently, and US top command has reproached lower marine officers for not investigating the slaughter at Haditha. So officials in the 'Iraq Unity Government' are preparing to ask UN to end this immunity.

In the most outrageous recent incident (the planned conspiracy among 5 GIs to rape a girl and kill her and her family--they burned her body). US said she was 25 years old, but 'documents available to Reuters' say she was FOURTEEN ! REUTERS

Insurgents showed on TV pictures of mutilated bodies allegedly of 2 GIs, in revenge for this US atrocity.

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