Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Iran: Margaret

by Margaret Kimberley

It is happening. The plans for the Bush administration to begin mass murder of the Iranian people have been put in motion. The plot was stalled temporarily by the National Intelligence Estimate report released last fall, a report which said that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Bush and Cheney were thrown off their game, but not by much and not for long. They were inconvenienced but ultimately took the small set back in stride because they both knew they had nothing to worry about.

They know that the press will report what they say without criticism or analysis. They know that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have said that all options are on the table with Iran. They know that European nations like France have publicly stated their allegiance to Bush vis a vis Iran. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also bowed to Bushian bullying and declared that Iran must not be allowed to become a nuclear power. Now Germany has joined the hall of shame. German Chancellor Angela Merkel groveled before the Israeli Knesset and essentially promised not to protest when Israel assists America in creating an Iranian holocaust. Apparently German sins of genocide against the Jews can only be expiated by complicity with an Israeli genocide.

When historians write about the catastrophes that struck the world in 2008, events that have taken place in March of 2008 will surely loom large. The worldwide economic meltdown finally became impossible to deny, with the Federal Reserve using the workers’ dime to bail out a major investment banking firm, Bear Stearns. Dick Cheney traveled to Iraq, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, making sure his nefarious plans went off without a hitch. John McCain claimed that Iran was the home of al Qaeda, the bogeyman that sends already trigger happy Americans on blood thirsty rampages. Democrats who had the power to stop Bush in his tracks, once again pledged to do nothing.

In 2007 both the Senate and House passed resolutions that backed war with Iran. Impeachment, the one weapon Congress could use to stop further war making, is ignored and forgotten by John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary committee.

In recent days Conyers said he would begin impeachment hearings, but only if Bush attacks Iran. Apparently not enough human beings have been killed by Bush and the body count needs to grow exponentially before Conyers will lift a finger. On the other hand, the two-faced Congressman says he fears impeachment because it will hurt the Democrats in the upcoming November election. So it seems he will do nothing, no matter how many people die because of the crimes committed under the Bush regime.

The attack on Iran is an open secret, but Americans, like a wronged spouse, are the last to know. Dick Cheney must have told the Saudi princes of his intended evil doing because Saudi Arabia is planning for "the probabilities of leaking nuclear and radiation hazards in case of any unexpected nuclear attacks in Iran. . . " Saudis know the deal, while John and Jane Q. Public are still in the dark.

What will the Democrats do when Iranians are nuked? When Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni recently visited the United States, Obama gave her a phone call and told her she shouldn’t worry about an Obama administration. He said all the right things, that Israel has a right to defend itself (kill Palestinians whenever it wants) and agreed that Iran was an evil nation that shouldn’t have the nuclear weapons that Israel has had for decades. So much for change.

The saber rattling and furtive Dick Cheney meetings are just the tip of the iceberg. The worldwide economic crisis is pushing the war agenda more than any other factor. Black Agenda Report said as much nearly one year ago.

“Ultimately, the parasitic class can only maintain its rule by force. Manufacturing nothing, creating no value except on paper, they must finally call upon the Armed Forces to impose their unearned advantage on the planet. Such was the logic of March, 2003. The Great Offensive failed, but the contradictions that compelled the captains of finance capital to order their political servants to wage war, remain - and are in fact more acute than four years ago. They must wage war, again, to fight their way out of the box.”

Every bail out of an investment bank is an omen of an oncoming worldwide financial calamity, but it is also an omen of more American aggression. The Obama/Clinton fight for the nomination is a sorry side show spectacle. In any case, the new war will help John McCain more than it will help the Democratic nominee. Even if the Democrat should win, both Obama and Clinton have stated that they too believe in maintaining America’s empire. Bush’s wars won’t end with a Democratic administration.

In the space of just five years, our nation will be waging another war of aggression and we will all be accessories after the fact. Our country may have also entered into a depression, so we will be poor criminals too. To use an expression coined by Poppy Bush, we will be in deep doo doo. Cheer up though. We won’t be in as much trouble as Iranians. Many of them will soon be dead.
_______

About author

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BA R. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley' maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com. More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.

Vote Result

The aircraft carrier Abe Lincoln departed for the Middle East Mar 13th and picked up the rest of her attack group at Pearl Harbor a day or so ago, the Truman is already there and looking at her deployment she will be there for another two or three months, the Nimitz is in the western Pacific off China and the Kitty Hawk sailed from Japan about a week ago supposedly to Taiwan as a show of strength during the upcoming Presidential elections there. The Kitty Hawk is scheduled to be taken out of service later this year and a few months ago sailed to the Indian Ocean for joint exercises with Indian forces.

If either the Kitty Hawk or Nimitz head for the Middle East look out.

I think that...

there were people who truly believed that the NIE report that Ms. Kimberley references in her story would stay the Ghoulish Gang's hands. I was not one of them. I'm not claiming any special insight or anything. I just truly believe that if there is true evil in present day USA it is embodied, first and foremost, by all members of the Bush regime and the oligarchs who are pulling the strings. The complicit Congress (including current members Clinton, Obama and McCain) runs a close second.
Tangent Alert: I don't think any country should have nuclear weapons. That being said, why do we and other Western nations, plus Israel, get to run around saying that Iran can't have any? Just curious...

The answer to your tangential question is quite simply......

....the Iranians would only use nuclear weapons to advance things like evil and islamofascism.

The USA would only use nuclear weapons to advance things like goodness and soft little puppies (see hiroshima/nagasaki circa 1945. Are there lots of puppies in japan? I rest my case).

Other western nations would only use nuclear weapons as a faux deterrent against similarly armed competitor nations, who may decide one day to beat them up and steal their lunch money.

Commander bunnypants would use nookyular weapons to cut brush in crawford, explode frogs asses, punish the stupid poor folks... you know, entitled fratboy kinda shit.

S

FOOL ME TWICE

This is the same stuff the Chimp was peddling about a year ago, and it scared me to DEATH at the time. I was considering accepting all the credit card offers I was getting in the mail, and maxing them out, just enjoying the 90 days or so I had to live.
THIS AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN. bush has lost has magic genie of "terra!", congress, even though unbelieveably WIMPY, is NOT neutered, and the rest of the WORLD would turn on us.
NOT EVEN THE SMIRKING CHIMP HIMSELF IS STUPID ENOUGH TO TRY THIS AT THIS STAGE IN THE GAME.

_______

"I am obviously wrong" Rush Limbaugh Oct 19, 2006

But

CHeney is not stoopid but he's evil enough!

_______

eclipsedpreboomer/RU Cognizant

Imbeciles on the War Path

Of course it is happening. It has been planned from the very beginning. Iran was always the target. Yet, what Americans don’t see, as this plot takes its course, is that America has also been set up. It has been baited and is now well on course towards taking itself out.

No one in this world will shed a tear when that happens.

In its arrogance and hubris, America has been carefully drawn towards that line, which it is about to cross when it attacks Iran with nuclear weapons, when the world will pull the plug on the last, remaining, failed superpower. America’s fate will not be far removed from what befell Bear Stearns this past week. But it will occur on a national, massive scale, as has never been seen before in the history of this world. America will go down at $0.50 a share.

And it will be well deserved. There is a price to pay for idiocy.

Perhaps this is the best way to end it all. Let the U.S. and Israel attack Iran with nuclear weapons. Watch it happen and then witness as the entire world turns its back on the perpetrators of the Iranian genocide. Stupid as the Americans are, they never even realised that they were being set up as fools.

What better way to take them down? Let them take themselves down.

As they discuss whether Hillary ducked in Bosnia or not.

Conyers

She should back off on Conyers. If he opposes impeachment it means that he has an honest tactical disagreement on the issue and cannot be two faced. He gave favorable interviews in both Fahrenheit 9-11 and Sicko.

Case in point

Oh, goody!

Let's all agree that Conyers was tactically honest and Hillary called for impeachment.

For the truth shall set you free...

Would somebody please tell

Would somebody please tell me?

At what point, if it hasn't been reached already, will the free countries of the world look at and fear the United States the way they once did Nazi Germany?

Or do I really not want to know?

The Fear

You really don’t want to know.

Let’s pretend you didn’t ask and I’ll pay for the next round.

Drowning the Sorrows

Listen to the music play, although it is a cabaret...

but

“We're catching bullets in our teeth
It's hard to do but they're so sweet
And if they take a couple out
We try to work things out

We catching bullets with our
Heads and hearts and all the darkest parts of us
It's strange to find such light
In such endless night”

“Bullets” - Tunng

Link to “Bullets”, Tunng: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI1NgFYJCN4

Kind regards,

GR

well, GR, we got about 225

well, GR,

we got about 225 or so good years out of the old gal before she turned into a clunker and died on us. at least we've got our memories. let's be grateful for that.

didn't quite last as long as

didn't quite last as long as the Egyptians, Romans, or Brits, did it? But we did leave behind the eternal contribution to the global culture with our heart rendering "always low prices. always" and "mission accomplished"

Missiles flying into Saudi Oil Centers?

Missiles flying into Saudi Oil Centers?
Japan and Asia going into instant Depression?
Venezuela stopping oil shipments to protest?
Oil hitting $200 a barrel (at least ) and staying there for months?

Nope, I'd bet it doesn't happen. I wouldn't, however, bet too much.

Cheney"$200.00 a barrel for oil? BONUS!"

"Oil hitting $200 a barrel..."

What do you think Exxon/Mobil's profit from THAT would be?
CheneyBushCo and their buddies in the awl bidness are rock hard and dripping at the thought.

_______

I've got values but I don't know how or why.

Who's next?

"Venezuela stopping oil shipments to protest?"

They're next on the agenda. After all they're a (conveniently oil rich) "state sponsor of terrism" just like Iraq and Iran.

Merkel's "groveling" before the Knesset

Yes! Germany has a difficult relationship with Israel. Since, thanks to us, an Israel state had become necessary, since, thanks to us, hundreds of thousands of Israelites didn't feel safe anymore in countries they had, til then, called their homeland, Germany is the last country on earth to look on now, when somebody threatens - again - a Jewish homeland.

This might look strange to some, but that's called accepting responsibility for your deeds. How you act on this responsibility is open to discussion (in Germany as well. That's why Merkel got asked by German politicans to take the chance and mention Palistine too), but at least we try.

So that's mostly what Merkel's "groveling" had been about. Yes, she called the Iran nuclear program a threat. And yes, she said that if Israel should get threatened by war, Germany would act. However, she did not give a green light - hidden or openly - for Israel to just bomb away at Iran. Actually, she was mentioning her belief in diplomatic actions and, if necessary, sanctions against Iran. That's a far cry from telling someone to go ahead with nuking Iran!!!

Merkel got a historical chance when she had been allowed to speak at the Knesset. She took that chance and danced on a tightrope. Her "groveling" included not just a call against Hamas' attacks, but a soft spoken plea for peace among Israel and Palastine as well, mentioning that for peace difficult compromises will be necessary - for everybody. Anybody, who expected Merkel to speak in front of the Knesset about Jewish wrongdoings or "war-mongering" has a strange idea where it comes to diplomatic relations of any kind, let alone those among Germany and Israel!!

Sorry, but if you consider such a diplomatic balance act as "groveling", you've watched too many cowboy movies!

_______

Iraq: it's not a "war", it's not a "fight", it's a WAR CRIME - and crimes cannot be won!

Mountains rather get eliminated by a single ant than by the rumor that they cannot be eliminated. (Bert Brecht)

I have a problem

With the lack of sane heads speaking out and getting heard regards attacking Iran. Fallon is gone and supposedly we are all supposed to believe that with his removal the evil forces of annihilation are back in control.
Are we to believe that Bush and company has removed the one impediment in Fallon so this administration can 'continue' a 'plan'?
Now I am just as much up on what PNAC is all about and all the signers of that document wanted. But am I supposed to think that there is a greater urgency to attack Iran? Perhaps because Democrats take power in a short number of months?
Do I have to read anguish in writers words that show the possibility that checks and balances are gone.
This is maybe justifiable panic talk. But I don't believe it completely to the point that I am with little chicken screaming the sky is falling.
We chimpsters had ho problem predicting the war on Iraq if Bush got in power. Spelled out in detail what will happen. It was all said here.
But now we are talking about having a whole lot of insane people going after Iran and there are no checks against them. Do you know what you are saying and further do you know what you are willing to admit to?
I gave the writer an 8 because I share her scare.
TJ

How was dinner last night fatass proud American?

Last Updated: 12/02/2008 15:51

4 million Iraqis struggling for food - UN

Four million Iraqis are struggling to feed themselves, and 40 per cent of the country's 27 million people have no safe water, the UN said today.

Iraq has annual economic growth of around 7 per cent, according to UN estimates, and a national budget of €33 billion, buoyed by oil exports of 1.6 million barrels per day.

But insurgency and sectarian attacks have displaced more than two million people and left nearly twice as many hungry.

"Four million Iraqis cannot guarantee they're going to have food on their table tomorrow," the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, David Shearer, said as he unveiled a €182 million appeal to donor governments for 2008.

The United Nations says the number of displaced people has roughly doubled since 2006 to nearly 2.5 million. High unemployment has left many others unable to feed themselves.

The Iraqi government said it would for the first time give €27.5 million from its own coffers to the aid appeal.

© 2008 ireland.com

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON

How to ensure a 100-year war continues ...

The Tribulations of Iraq's Oil Industry Due to the Ambiguity of the Constitution

Walid Khadduri Al-Hayat - 16/12/07//

Among the many humanitarian and political crises that Iraq is currently experiencing, there is a vital economic problem that will have a negative impact on the country's economic course over the foreseeable future. This problem is having an affect today, and it is represented by the vagueness surrounding the constitutional articles that deal with the management of Iraq's oil and gas resources.

A well-known American writer famous for his articles in which he advocates the partition of Iraq is actually the person who edited these articles before dictating them word by word to the committee to draft the flawed Constitution at the time, and the contradictory texts were unable to be modified. It was clear to Iraqi experts that these provisions would lead to chronic problems in Iraq's oil industry. This is not only because of the division of tasks and activities among governorates and regions, on the one hand, and the Oil Ministry and National Oil Company, on the other, but also because of the deliberate vagueness in the distribution of tasks and responsibilities among these parties.

Proof of the poor quality of these oil industry-related provisions can be attested to by the memorandum recently issued by 80 Iraqi oil experts to the Speaker of Parliament, in protest at the Regional Kurdistan Government's signing of contracts for production participation with foreign firms prior to the Iraqi Parliament's endorsement of the Oil Law.

Moreover, there is the open dispute between the media and the Parliament between the minister of oil, Hossein Shahristani, and the RKG. The minister affirms that he did not permit firms to sign contracts with the RKG to work in other Iraqi regions and that he did not approve the export of oil from Kurdistan, while the regional government is demanding the minister's ouster; the minister says openly that he is supported in his stance by the prime minister and the Cabinet.

The danger of this unprecedented initiative in the Arab world is the weakening of the central government's influence. More importantly, it will open up the way for international oil companies to take advantage of the limited experience of institutions in Iraq's provinces in negotiating with oil companies backed by international lawyers, accountants and geologists. Meanwhile, the institutions in Iraq's governorates lack the minimum level of this expertise. Of course, this defect raises questions about the transparency of these contracts.

The points of dispute can be summarized by three basic items. First, there is the scope of the regions and governorates' prerogatives in negotiating and signing exploration and development contracts with international companies for periods of time of approximately 25 years, with the advice or knowledge of the Ministry of Oil.

The vagueness and contentiousness in interpreting the Iraqi Constitution have been deliberate, and have led, as expected, to the appearance of these disputes, although it wasn't expected that things would move so quickly, and that division would break out among key allies in today's Iraqi regime. The problem lies in signing important oil contracts by some governorates for 20 or 25 years, saddling the country with international economic agreements without the knowledge of experts and officials at the Oil Ministry, or even their advice and input. It is very likely that these contracts, about which the Oil Ministry was unaware when they were negotiated, will weaken the country's future negotiating position. We should note that the Kurdistan Region contains a very small percentage of Iraq's petroleum reserve, while 90 percent is located in the governorate of Basra. Thus, we can imagine the losses to be incurred by Iraq if Basra and the southern provinces follow the present course of Kurdistan.

The second item that has created a problem for the future of the Iraqi oil industry involves the need to sign production sharing agreements. In fact, most of the world's oil countries have adopted this type of contract, although they are implemented in unexplored regions; these contracts grant oil companies the right to own a part of the reserve and a high percentage of the profits, since the companies assume the risks of not finding any oil and spend millions of dollars on exploration.

In most oil countries, this type of contract is considered an incentive by international companies. In Iraq, regarding what has taken place in Kurdistan up till now, which has provoked considerable criticism and confusion, is the granting of these contracts in regions where discoveries have been made, where there are signs of petroleum, and even a little production. Therefore, the element of geological risk is almost nil for international firms that have signed this type of contract.

We don't know why these companies were granted production sharing agreements in the absence of any geological risks. The fear in Iraq in particular involves the entire country, where there are dozens of regions with known indications of oil and even facilities, which means huge financial losses for Iraq, beyond what the country has already incurred up to now.

The third item is that one of the contracts that has been signed, with Hunt Oil from the US, covers areas outside the Kurdistan region, which fall in the Nineveh (Mosul) governorate. This has increased fears about the Ministry of Oil's lack of a role in the negotiations regarding the details of the agreements and the disputes that these contracts will generate; some of these disputes go beyond the borders of a province or region. These problems will lead to huge financial losses for Iraq due to the delay in exploring a certain region and developing it for years, until a legal decision settles the dispute, not to mention the legal costs and the local political disputes that will result from problems of this kind.

We hope that the dispute between the Oil Ministry and the Kurdistan Region will be sent to the Iraqi Constitutional Court to be settled as soon as possible, to reduce the resulting losses. We also hope that Iraq's political parties will find the necessary courage to put the country's interest ahead of narrow calculations and review these articles before their consequences spread and millions of dollars are lost annually due to disputes that will arise, and that have already started to surface.

*Dr. Walid Khadduri is an expert in energy affairs.

Why We Resist, Chris Hedges

There just way too many comments I have on this to comment at all. I think this a fantastic essay.

I will just add think that progressives have made a HUGE mistake not making global ties with other activists; that's part of the problem being in the belly of the beast; the characteristics of the abuser get taken up by the resisters as well - but much of this can be attributed to the decade of MacCarthyISM and the role of Nazis in the CIA who did so much damage with Operation Paperclip.

Veeger

posted on Dec 10, 2007

AP photo / Bela Szandelszky

Thousands of Hungarian demonstrators form a glowing peace sign in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square to mark the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. Too few Americans, Hedges argues, have taken action against war.

By Chris Hedges

The refusal to pay my taxes if we go to war with Iran, and the portion of my taxes spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if we do not cut off funding for these two conflicts, is not a means. It is an end. I do not know if my refusal, and the refusal of others, will be effective in halting these wars. All I know is that it is worth doing. The alternative, a complacency bred from cynicism and despair, is worse. Refusing to actively resist injustice and flagrant violations of international law, refusing to attempt to turn back the tide of American tyranny, is surrender. It is the death of hope.

Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience can no longer tolerate abuse and despotism. They are carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are few in number and dismissed by the cynics who hide their fear behind their worldliness. Resistance is about affirming life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality. We remember and honor the names of those who, solitary when they began, defied their age. Henry David Thoreau. Jane Adams. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Mahatma Gandhi. Milovan Djilas. Andrei Sakharov. Martin Luther King. Václav Havel. Nelson Mandela. It is time to join them. They sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, meant to defy authority. When the dissident Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi prison to the gallows, his last words were ”this is for me the end, but also the beginning.”

Bonhoeffer, who returned to Germany from Union Theological Seminary in New York to fight the Nazis, knew that most of the citizens in his nation were complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death. He affirmed what we all must affirm. It did not mean he avoided death. It did not mean that he, as a distinct individual, survived. But he understood that his resistance, and even his death, was an act of love. He fought for the sanctity of life. He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative. His defiance condemned his executioners.

"Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence,” Thoreau wrote in ”Civil Disobedience” after going to jail for refusing to pay his taxes during the Mexican-American War. “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”

Those who recognize the injustice of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a war with Iran, who concede that these wars are not only a violation of international law but under the post-Nuremberg laws are defined as criminal wars of aggression, yet do nothing, have forfeited their rights as citizens. By allowing the status quo to go unchallenged they become agents of injustice. To do nothing is to do something. They practice a faux morality. They vent against war on the Internet or among themselves but do not resist. They take refuge in the conception of themselves as moderates. They stand on what they insist is the middle ground without realizing that the middle ground has shifted under us, that the old paradigm of left and right, liberal and conservative, is meaningless in a world where, to quote Immanuel Kant, those in power have embraced “a radical evil.”

"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate,” King wrote from another era as he sat inside a Birmingham jail. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

This lukewarm acceptance, this failure to act, is the worst form of moral cowardice. It cripples and destroys us. When Dante enters the “city of woes” in the “Inferno” he hears the cries of “those whose lives earned neither honor nor bad fame,” those rejected by heaven and hell, those who dedicated their lives solely to the pursuit of happiness. These are all the “good” people, the ones who never made a fuss, who filled their lives with vain and empty pursuits, harmless no doubt, to amuse themselves, who never took a stand for anything, never risked anything, who went along. They never looked too hard at their lives, never felt the need, never wanted to look.

We face a crisis. Our democratic institutions are being dismantled. We are headed for a state of perpetual war. We are paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative. There are hundreds of thousands who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This number would be dwarfed by a war with Iran, which could ignite a regional inferno in the Middle East. Not a lot is being asked of us. Compare our potential sacrifices with what is being inflicted on and demanded of those trapped in the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon, perhaps, Iran. Courage, as Aristotle wrote, is the highest of human virtues because without it we are unlikely to practice any other virtue. Once we find courage we find freedom.

TAGS: abuse activism afghanistan civil disobedience funding hedges iran iraq peace resistance rights taxes war

Wars to Watch Out For Time to do a bakesale! 2008 will bring us an abundant crop of overseas crises

by Justin Raimondo

As we approach the new year, a fresh crop of overseas crises threatens to spring up, like mushrooms after a rain, and the prospects for peace on earth, this holiday season, are dimmer than ever. Iraq: First up on the agenda is, of course, the war in Iraq, which, we are told, is going swimmingly. The much-touted statistics that we're being fed by the War Party and its media enablers sound good, but if you look at them a bit closer, the illusion begins to dissipate. The downturn in violence that we're hearing so much about is largely due to the fact that the ethno-religious cleansing of contested regions of Iraq has been completed, for the most part: in Baghdad, for example, the Shi'ites have driven the Sunnis out, with the help of the U.S.-supported "police" and the Iraqi "army" – which are really just Shi'ite death squads. They've shed all the blood they can, at least for now: give them a moment to catch their collective breath, however, and the sectarian killings will recommence with gusto. Similarly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malikihails the "return" of "7,000 families" to Baghdad as proof positive that the "surge" is working, but the reality is that, as Juan Cole points out, the many tens of thousands who fled to Syria are now being forced by the Syrian government to leave, which explains the great "return." They're being kicked out of Damascus, and they're not allowed into the U.S., so where else are they supposed to go? The emerging hotspot in Iraq is Kurdistan, which has been relatively peaceful until this point – but only because the ruling parties have kept such a tight lid on internal dissent, ruthlessly suppressing their critics and growing fat on U.S. and Israeli aid. The lid is about to blow off the pot, however, due to two factors: first, terrorist attacks in Turkey carried out by guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which many Turks suspect is funded and managed by the U.S. and the Kurdish regional government, and second, a provision in the Iraqi constitution that requires a referendum to decide who gets the oil-hub city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by the Kurds and the Iraqi central government. As I have said before on several occasions, the Kurds are the most disruptive and unpredictable factor in the Iraqi jigsaw puzzle, which virtually ensures that the state smashed by U.S. force of arms almost certainly cannot be put back together again, no matter how much glue – in the form of U.S. troops and subsidies – is poured into the breach. Virulent Kurdish nationalism, unleashed by the American invasion and empowered by U.S. and Israeli aid and arms, is on the march, and every nation in the region is going to be negatively affected. It isn't going to be pretty, as the Turks have discovered to their sorrow and growing anger. Iran: It seems like virtually unanimous opposition from the U.S. military has lessened the possibility of a war being launched by this White House any time soon, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it. Admiral Fallonanda number of other military figures have spoken out against a new war in the Middle East, pointing to the overstretch of our resources and the near-impossibility of mobilizing an effective fighting force while we're bogged down in Iraq, but realism was never the neoconservatives' strong point and that isn't stopping them from pushing their agenda. The president, as I've pointed out before, is the most radical neocon of them all – or, at the very least, a fervent fellow traveler – and it really is up to him. Certainly the Kyl-Lieberman resolution gives him the legal and political tools to do it, since it can be seen as merely an extension of the original post-9/11 authorization to go to war against "terrorists." If the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are "terrorists" and are actively killing American soldiers in Iraq, as Kyl-Lieberman avers, then the resolution in tandem with the post-9/11 legislation gives ample legal cover to an administration hell-bent on war with Iran. Lebanon: Recent incursions by the Israelis over Lebanese airspace could prefigure another Israeli invasion, this time to prevent Hezbollah and its Christian allies from displacing the increasingly unpopular and beleaguered "pro-Western" government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. All factions are arming themselves, and the country looks ready to slide into yet another civil war, which would almost certainly provoke intervention by several outside interests, including the U.S. and/or Israel. Lebanon is the Balkans of the Middle East: a spark struck there could ignite the whole region. Syria: I've been keeping a close watch on developments in Syria for years, in the belief that this is really the focal point of Israeli interests. Syria, after all, is where the Palestinian factions have been headquartered, and it is the front-line state that has provided support to the Palestinian resistance struggle. For more on Syria as an Israeli target of opportunity, read the now famous "Clean Break" scenario painted by prominent neocons now in high positions in the U.S. government. Naturally, the Israelis have wanted to take out the Syrians, but they have lacked the capacity to do so. Now, as in the case of Iraq, it could be that the Americans are going to do the job for them. There's been a lot of anti-Syrian rhetoric coming out of this White House, and our State Department has done everything but cut off diplomatic relations with Damascus: we have no ambassador presently in Syria, only low-level diplomatic personnel. Sanctions are hurting the always precarious Syrian economy, the Kurds are busy stirring up trouble, and now there's this news from Nation columnist Eric Alterman: "I got a letter the other day from a faculty member at the University of Maryland's overseas division in Europe. UM is the primary university providing classes for U.S. service members abroad. Here it is: "'The reason that I am writing today is to inform you of something rather unsettling. Last weekend, we had a Europe-wide faculty meeting at our headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany. At that meeting, we were told that the U of MD military education contracts will be expanding soon to Iraq, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Djibouti, and other locations in the Middle East and Africa. This comes as no surprise. "'What is startling is that the U.S. military has also asked us to prepare a bid for educational programs in IRAN and SYRIA (and, oddly enough, France – where we have had no presence since NATO was expelled in 1967 – probably a function of the new conservative government there). We will be bidding on an education contract to these locations at the end of November. "'This is a truly ominous development. The U of MD overseas program follows the military around the world – thus clearly the contingencies for an occupation of several Middle Eastern countries is not only being contemplated, but actually set up.'" That Israeli air strike at what was supposedly a Syrian "nuclear facility" portends something, but as to whether it's a U.S.-Israeli invasion is an open question. In my own view, it's not a matter of if, but when. Somalia-Ethiopia: This was supposed to be war as it should be fought, according to the War Party here on the home front. Why, those no-nonsense Ethiopians, who have no sissy-liberal compunctions about collateral damage, would soon make short work of those pro-terrorist Somalis, but there's just one problem. The Ethiopians aren't winning. You'll remember how the neocons trotted out the old Stalinist eggs-omelet argument, in a new guise, but now we have to ask: where's the beef? Expect this latest front in our perpetual "war on terrorism" to degenerate further, as the Ethiopian regime faces increasing opposition on the home front, where its program of repression and ethnic supremacism is not only alienating large sectors of Ethiopian society and provoking a new civil war, but also further impoverishing one of the poorest nations on earth. Addis Ababa can't even keep its own house from falling to pieces, so it's no surprise that their Somali sock puppets are at each other's throats. Another factor that could throw the rapidly deteriorating region into the spotlight is the resumption of Ethiopia's endless war with Eritrea. The U.S. has sided with the Ethiopians in the ongoing Ethiopian-Eritrean dispute, giving aid and diplomatic cover to the neocon dictator Meles Zenawi's dreams of a "Greater Ethiopia," but we may well have picked the wrong horse in that fight. The Eritreans are a fierce and proud people who have successfully fought off Ethiopian attempts to incorporate them into "Greater Ethiopia" for centuries, most recently in the late 1990s, a conflict in which 70,000 perished. Of course, the U.S. has no interest in helping the thug Zenawi subjugate his neighbors, who have clung tenaciously to their thin strip of territory on the shores of the Red Sea since independence was won from Ethiopia in 1993. The Russian periphery: I have long believed that the next stage in the neocons' bid for empire will be a rapidly escalating assault on the remnants of Russian influence in the former Soviet Union – dressed up as yet another crusade for "democracy," Washington-style, launched by the U.S. This has so far been a political effort, typified by the various "color revolutions" that erupted in the post-Soviet periphery, from the Rose Revolution in Georgia to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution led by Viktor Yushchenko. These efforts are apparently stalled, and even suffering from a determined rollback led by nationalist forces, and the next phase is likely to be a series of low-level proxy wars between Russian-backed nationalists and U.S.-backed "democrats." There are a number of theaters where hostilities could break out, but I'll just cover the hottest hotspots: Georgia: As President Mikheil Saakashvili deflowers his own revolution and shuts down the opposition media, he could well try to divert attention away from his political problems by ginning up a fresh conflict with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are protected by Russian troops and regional militias. Saakashvili, the great "democrat," is busy charging anyone who opposes him with being a pawn of the Russians (and therefore guilty of treason), but the West is calling on him to restore civil liberties – and, in an apparent effort to propitiate his Western benefactors, he has lifted some restrictions and called new elections. Widespread and growing opposition to his strong-arm tactics, even among many of his former supporters, spells political trouble for Saakashvili and his corrupt cohorts, however – and an appeal to Georgian ultra-nationalism (which was always the real ideological motivation of the Rose Revolutionaries) would bolster him in the polls and provide a much-needed distraction, at least from the ruling party's point of view. In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, expect the U.S. to do what they have done for the duration of Georgia's political crisis: proffer unconditional support to Saakashvili. With Russia aiding and giving political and diplomatic support to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians, and the Americans letting loose a flood of military aid to Tbilisi, this could be the first theater of actual conflict in the new cold war. Kosovo – again!: The irony of this is all too apparent to longtime readers of Antiwar.com. Virtually alone among opponents of imperialism in the U.S., we opposed the American "liberation" of Kosovo and considered U.S. support for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – a gang of drug-smuggling thugs whose control of the European heroin trade subsidized their terrorist activities against the people of Kosovo and neighboring countries – to be a war crime. As it turned out, it was the Clintonian precursor to the American sponsorship of Iraqi exile groups, such as Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, whose ersatz "intelligence" helped lie the American people into war. It is only fitting that this hotspot should get hotter even as presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claims Kosovo as a model for what we ought to have done in Iraq. The problem in Kosovo is that the "liberation" led to a reign of terror by the KLA, which burned Serbian Orthodox churches, terrorized the remnants of Serbian communities, and demanded immediate independence. On this latter demand, they managed to be contained by their NATO and U.S. allies, but that pot is about to boil over as Hashim Thaci, KLA militant and candidate of the grievously misnamed "Democratic Party," takes the presidency. Ever since the "liberation," the KLA was kept out of power by the prestige of Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League of Kosovo, but Rugova's death from cancer in 2006 paved the way for the thuggish Thaci to seize power – and he has. A unilateral declaration of independence by the Thaci regime would not necessarily lead to fighting in the region, although there is that possibility. The real danger is that it will set off a chain reaction in Moscow, which will then encourage its allies in the various regions of the Russian "near abroad" to issue similar declarations: Abkhazia, Adjara (site of a Russian military base), Ossetia, and certain sections of Moldova could be granted diplomatic recognition by Russia and its allies, on the grounds that what's good for the Kosovar goose in good for the Abkhazian-Adjarian-Ossetian-Transnistrian-Gagauzian gander. This could set off a whole series of proxy wars, with the Russians backing the breakaway republics and the Americans standing with their super-centralizing satraps, such as Saakashvili. With the arms-control treaties pioneered by Reagan and other U.S. presidents now discarded, and the Russians chafing over a missile-defense system installed in the Czech republic and Poland supposedly because of an imminent danger of an Iranianattack, this new development is particularly dangerous. The ultimate goal of the War Party is "regime change" in the Kremlin: they long to put another one of their stooges, along the lines of Boris Yeltsin, in the drivers' seat. The problem with Yeltsin was that he couldn't stay sober long enough to do Washington's bidding. And now there is no plausible rival to the wildly popular Vladimir Putin, who has put the country back into some semblance of order. Their solution: declare Putin to be the reincarnation of Stalin and announce the death of "democracy" in the former Soviet Union. This would pave the way for a resurgence of aid to "democratic" organizations inside Russia, funneled covertly as well as overtly, and a slowly escalating series of trade sanctions designed to cripple the Russians economically, or at least make them feel the sting of Western wrath. All in all, a rather grim outlook for 2008, and all the more reason to support Antiwar.com – which, now that I mention it, seems to be lagging at the moment. Our winter fundraising effort, coming as it does between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, is being extended this year – and we need your help more than ever. That's because war clouds are currently gathering on the horizon in nearly every direction, and we're busy as all get-out just trying to keep up. Add to that the increased difficulty in raising funds this time around, due to a number of factors beyond our control, such as the worsening economy and the start of the political season, and you can see why we're experiencing a bit of a problem at the moment. Look, I don't want to push the panic button quite yet, but we don't have a lot of cash reserves to fill the gap between expected contributions and the depressing reality of a shortfall. We need your contribution today – or else I can't guarantee that we'll be here at the end of this year, at least in our present, comprehensive form. Cut back on Antiwar.com when the prospects for peace are so dark? That's the last thing we need to do, but we'll have to do it if we don't make our fundraising goal of $70,000. It's as simple as that. I don't know what I have to do to communicate the seriousness of the situation we face. All I know is that for a decade we've been turning to you, our readers and supporters, for the funds we need to keep going, and you've always come through. Now, we need your support more than ever – and we're asking that you come through once again. At a time of constant war, the need for Antiwar.com has never been greater. Are you really going to let this day, this moment, go by without contributing?

Find this article at: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11930

I'm speechless - this picture speaks volumes

Edited on Mon Nov-12-07 03:47 PM by shance

I guess the rich, privileged, draft dodging Yale and Harvard boys have had enough of all the "free speech garbage" , I guess because people are beginning to wake up to who the real enemies are.

Look at the men being arrested - men who fought and sacrificed in a war, unlike the Yale/Harvard boys who did everything they could to avoid active duty. Ironically now the ones who were used by the good ole rich boys are now the ones being arrested for protesting what we all should be protesting.

Oh and Happy Veteran's Day.....


The article:


More than a dozen members of an antiwar veterans group were arrested yesterday as they protested the exclusion of their message from Boston’s Veterans Day parade.Members of Veterans for Peace lined up in front of a podium at City Hall Plaza holding antiwar placards, as color guards from Massachusetts military units and JROTC bands from across the state filed into Government Center for a ceremony, sponsored by the American Legion, to honor veterans after the parade. Some protesters wore gags, which they later said symbolized the fact that, while they were permitted to march in the parade, they were prevented from carrying signs opposing the war in Iraq.

“We were exercising our First Amendment rights,” said Winston Warfield of Dorchester, a member of the group. “The First Amendment protects free speech, even when you don’t agree with what’s being said.”

When Boston police asked the demonstrators to move from the front of the podium so that the Veterans Day services could continue, they refused. As the Boston Firemen’s Band played The Marine Hymn, several protesters were placed in plastic handcuffs and led away.

“Our free speech and civil rights are being abridged here,” said Nate Goldschlag, a Vietnam-era veteran who was among those standing in front of the podium. “We are veterans, too, and we should be allowed to express our opposition to this war.”

© 2007 Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/12/18... /

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON at 8:06 AM

Labels: antiwar, free speech, Iraq .War, photos, veterans
For the comments, go to
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/11/im-speechless-this-picture-speaks.html

A little late, but real good - BuZh, HiLIARity prepare for new adminstration

Note the reference to Henry Paulson. I did post one about one of his federalist society guyz just recently. They are real young and easy to PUSH AROUND!!

From The Sunday Times

October 7, 2007

George Bush smooths path for Hillary

Sarah Baxter

BUSH administration officials are paving the way for a smooth transition to a possible Democratic presidency as Hillary Clinton consolidates her position as the overwhelming favourite to win her party’s nomination for the 2008 election.

Clinton has powered her way to the top of the Democratic pack, establishing a 33-point lead in one poll last week over Barack Obama, her nearest rival.

She raised $7m more than Obama in the last quarter and attracted more individual contri-butors than the Illinois senator, proving her popularity with grassroots Democrats.

With Clinton looking the near-inevitable nominee, Bush officials intend to hold her to her promise to be tough on defence and national security. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, is hoping to establish a bipartisan consensus on defence that will last beyond next year’s election.

Related Links

• Bush’s torturers follow where the Nazis led

In the clearest sign of a shift in gear, Gates is to appoint John Hamre, a former official in President Bill Clinton’s administration, to chair the Defense Policy Board once led by Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative advocate of the invasion of Iraq. The board’s job will be to prepare for the transition to a new administration in 2008, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

Hamre, who was Bill Clinton’s deputy defence secretary in the 1990s, has been highly critical of the conduct of the war on terror. In The Washington Post last year he wrote: “The policies that led to Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, secret renditions and warrantless wiretaps have undermined America’s towering moral authority.”

In common with Gates, Hamre is sceptical about the value of the Iraq troop surge. He recently served on a bipartisan commission on Iraq chaired by James Jones, the former Nato commander. In evidence to Congress last month, Hamre said: “Absent political reconciliation, it’s hard to see how this [the war] ends well.”

However, Hamre, who heads the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, also argued that America “will be hurt if we crawl out or run out of Iraq”. He believes the next president should maintain a vital but scaled-down presence in the country in order to oversee the training of Iraqi security forces and to “direct operations against known bad guys”.

Lawrence Korb, a defence expert at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, described Hamre’s imminent appointment as a “brilliant move” which would mark a dramatic break with Perle’s era. “Most people think the next president will be a Democrat and Gates, who has been around for a long time, believes it is his job to ensure that national security is not affected,” Korb said.

Clinton has been sidestepping calls to pull US troops out of Iraq if she wins, sticking to a broader promise to begin a phased withdrawal. In a recent television interview, the New York senator refused to state that all US combat troops would leave Iraq by the end of her first term in office. She voted in the Senate last month to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organisation.

Perle believes that Clinton might be prepared to order military strikes against Iran if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes Tehran’s nuclear programme to the brink. “If President Clinton is informed in March 2009 that we’ve got ironclad intelligence that if we don’t act within the next 30 days it’s going to be too late, I wouldn’t begin to predict what she would do,” Perle said. “Nobody wants to act before it is absolutely essential . . . but things can change very quickly.”

Perle is generous about the appointment of Hamre, arguing that the Defense Policy Board has a tradition of bipartisanship. “He’s an experienced professional and a very good choice,” Perle said, noting that George W Bush had kept on George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, as CIA chief after winning the 2000 election.

Bush believes Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and has privately advised her not to voice antiwar rhetoric on Iraq that she may come to regret, according to a new book, The Evangelical President, by Bill Sammon. “It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East . . . they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”

The Treasury, under Henry “Hank” Paulson, has also been appointing Democrat supporters to senior positions. Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, reported that Paulson last week named Eric Mindich, a leading Democratic fundraiser, for a key role as an adviser on financial markets. One Republican in the Bush administration wrote disapprovingly in an e-mail: “This leads some to wonder whether this Treasury has become the preplaced Hillary Clinton team.”

Clinton’s domination of the Democratic field may prompt her leading opponents to sharpen their rhetoric against her. So far the contest with Obama and John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, has been remarkably civil.

Edwards upped the ante against Clinton last week by attacking links between Mark Penn, her senior adviser and poll-ster, and Blackwater, the private security firm that was accused of recklessly killing 11 Iraqi civilians last month. “We don’t want to replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats,” he said.

Edwards and Obama have rarely criticised Clinton directly by name, but David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager, said his candidate would rather show a “common purpose to our politics rather than divisiveness and political point-scoring”.

It was too soon for Clinton’s coronation, Axelrod said: “How-ard Dean had plenty of momentum in the fall of 2003, when everyone was anointing him the Democratic nominee. I’m happy if the Clintons want to do victory laps in October; I’ll take ours in January and February” when the primary votes are counted.

Obama is still hoping to win the Iowa caucus, where Edwards is also performing well. Michelle Obama, his wife, who will be visiting Britain on a fundraising mission next week, let slip recently: “If Barack doesn’t win Iowa, it’s just a dream.”

Obama upset traditional voters last week by saying that he was against shows of patriotism, such as wearing a pin lapel of the American flag. “I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest,” he said. “Instead I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great.”

Peggy Noonan, President Rea-gan’s former speechwriter, said the Clintons had the Democratic party in a trance. She wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “The Bushes are wired into the Republican money-line system; the Clintons are wired into the Democratic money-line system. For two generations now they have had the same dynamics in play . . . Is this good for our democracy, this air of inevitability?”

Read John Hamre's biography here

Tactics of WAR cannot be fought by engaging on WAR!!

From a gmail email:

Layla Counts the Costs

The author of this article is an Arab Iraqi woman that moved to Jordan and Syria. She claims to have been abused and humiliated by a bunch of American soldiers a couple of years ago, and indeed a lot of witnesses in all camps attest to organized gang rape going on regularly by all types of powers in the region, as it does in every war I suppose.

Anyway, this author is one of the best out there when it comes to counting the costs of this insane resource war.

Ever since the very first shot was fired, I was claiming that this war can''t be won by America. A war on terrorism makes no sense. Terrorism is a tactic of war used in every major war by both sides. How can we win a war against a tactic of war? And by the way, this tactic called "terrorism" is being employed by our own side against our own people and against innocents in all of the resource wars we are fighting right now. So how can we fight against a tactic of war the we employ ourselves? Obviously, the war on "terrorism" is a farce, a false claim. The real issue is war profits and resource consolidation. That is the only thing that makes sense when you ask "who benefits" and "who profits" and "follow the money"... you know, questions that any common sense person could ask.

Remember the optimism of the Americans on the day of invasion? Victory was declared just a short time after by GWB on an warship. And now, most Americans want us out, most Iraqis want us out but the big corporate interests want the war to go on and so we have all presidential candidates with the single exception of a guy named Ron Paul asking for more war, continuation of war, profitable delays and a call for an ultra-slow pull out of the war profit machine. Everyone in our government wants to represent the oil using monopoly and that includes all industries and all financial institutions bar none. Oil is our system and we are oil based people. To keep us from stealing oil in today's situation of peak oil is to ask the impossible. The raid on the US treasury continues as war profits mount and the resource war continues as oil contracts are handed out like hotcakes to multinational global energy interests. Meanwhile, the killing and displacement of innocent women, children, old people, and young men of the resistance is speeding past twenty percent of the country. Various statistical surveys have been done on that issue. The only peer reviewed one is the Lancet Survey, indicating far more than official figures reported (no surprise there). Beyond the numbers of course is the crime.

So here is Layla, counting the costs of this war like few others are able to do out there in la-la land.

====================

Flying Kites....

Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

October 12, 2007 I really don't know what is going on here... The other day was Pink and today it is Pastel colors. Not a fitting time of the year for pastel colors. After all, it is the beginning of Autumn, with its golden brown, rusty red and dying green... But pastel colors have been obsessing me...ever since those pink and red taints. Maybe because it is the Eid, the feast that marks the celebration of the end of our fasting month, Ramadan. I remember the Eid in Baghdad, what used to be the Eid... We have a tradition for the Eid, we must wear something new. I remember young and old saving that new piece, that untouched garment, for the Eid. I remember the little boys and girls dressed in their new clothes, laughing as they rock on their swings, as they cry with joy on their merry-go-rounds... Eating "shaar al Banat" or "ghazl al Banat" as some may call it. You know, that fluffy hair-like sugar, dyed in pastel colors, that feels like cotton in your mouth, wrappped around a wooden stick and glues all over your face and leaves your tongue colored in pastel...pink, green, blue, yellow and...white. I also remember the conversations... "Baba, baba, shoof, anee helwa?" - Daddy, daddy look, am I pretty? would ask a little one raising her eyes to her dad. Showing off her new pastel colored dress and the pastel ribbons in her hair... "Mama, mama, shofee shlon atayerhom"- Mom, mom, look how I can make it fly! would shout a little one to his mother, pointing his finger to his brand new kite made of pastel colored paper... And the father would respond "Hadha shlon Jamal" - What beauty you are. Or, the mother would say "Shater, ibnee, enta shater" - Clever my son, you are clever. I can still hear their giggles, their laughs and their shouts of excitement... I can still see the joy in their shining innocent eyes, their funny faces, their tender smile... I can still feel their hugs, their wet kisses smelling of candies and their warm little heads on my shoulder, when tired from too much running around...tired from too much play. I am lucky to have such memories. I am lucky to have witnessed them. Today's children in Iraq are either too scarred or will not live to remember or... are already dead. Only two days ago, 11 little ones were severly wounded by a mortar attack. Yesterday, 9 little ones were killed in a so called counter-insurgency attack by your brave boys. Today, at least 2 little ones were blasted away when a bomb placed in a toy cart exploded in their curious little faces...on the day of the Eid. Our little ones are nothing but appetizers for you. Your anti-pasti, your hors d'oeuvres...The more, the merrier... In the name of Liberty. In the name of Democracy. In the name of Freedom. In the name of the o' so civilized West that you are. For 13 years, our little ones suffered, our little martyrs...Over half a million died as a result of your o' so civilized sanctions, while you were watching... Thirteen fucking years and you watched, in silence, tasting your hors d'oeuvres in front of your TV screens. Thirteen years of a deafening, utter silence. Silence from the so called left and anti-war clowns. Silence from the international community. Silence from the so-called Islamic Ummah. So silent, that the silence turned into a lullaby of agonies that you can still hear in the mass graves of our little ones. So silent, that they have slept, never to wake up again...A murderous lullaby. The little ones who survived, experienced their final liberation in 2003. God damn you. God damn you. That is all I can repeat for now. I will have to stop. I need to regain my composure. Recompose what you have decomposed... Am back... The composed, rational, polite Arab woman...I am now wearing my satin gloves, lest your sensitivities get ruffled... But let me ask you something, are you as ruffled by an average of 40'000 little ones killed each year because of an occupation carried out in your name, with your money, under your "benevolent" eyes ? 40'000 is the conservative estimate figure from the 2006 U.N Human rights report. The real figure for 2006 is much higher. Way higher. And am not counting the orphans in the thousands... Only yesterday, a new report warns of an ever-deepening humanitarian crisis, never seen before, since World War II...And I say, it is much worse than what this report states. Come and see our overflowing morgues and find our little ones for us... You may find them in this corner or the other, a little hand poking out, pointing out at you... Come and search for them in the rubbles of your "surgical" air raids, you may find a little leg or a little head...pleading for your attention. Come and see them amassed in the garbage dumps, scavenging morsels of food... Well over half of our little ones are under nourished or dying from disease. Cholera, disentery, infections of all sorts.... Under nourished does not mean on a diet like your fat little kids. It means not having food to eat. It means cannot find food to eat. It means starved. Come and see, come.... See them being trafficked, raped, sold and "finally" killed by your brave boys. The "final solution." Remember that one ? It was not so long ago...Except this time it is carried out by the "greatest Democracy on earth." And if you are too sensitive to such scenes, and your stomach can't take it, even though your hands and pockets contribute daily to it, come and search for them in the alley ways of Damascus, Amman or Cairo... Search for them, hiding behind walls. Find them selling or begging in street corners. Look for them behaving like a 40 year old adult, fending for a whole family... Come and see... The other day, I overheard a 6 years old saying to her mother, "I want to die." Just in case one of your bullets does not get to her, you have ensured that she will finish it off herself... Come and see them stutter, hear them shout at night during their sleep and see their wet beds... This is no lost innocence. This is a raped innocence, a murdered innocence... Raped and murdered by you. I will net let you off the hook that easily. I guess you know me by now. As for the little assholes (I guess am losing my composure again) who call me a whining Arab bitch, let me not wish the same on your children... Because by God, if I did, you would strangle yourselves in grief and...remorse. An article in Haaretz states that the Holocaust is still affecting the granchildren of the survivors...and that is well over 60 years, later. How many decades, centuries would it take our surviving little ones to get over being freed by "Democracy" ? In the meantime, the little survivors of your Holocaust, those who were born under your bombs, under your occupation, under your destruction, in your ghettoes, in your prisons, in your new Iraq, and who have known nothing else but you, their primal "caretaker", if they ever make it to adulthood, will bear witness on the day of Eid... They, who have not known the Spring, Summer, of their lives. They who have witnessed nothing but the cold of the Winter. The coldness of Death... They will remember, as I am doing now, the blown up cart of toys, the overflowing morgues, the rubbles of their homes, the mortars falling on their heads, the noise of explosions squatting their ears, their sisters and brothers in pieces, in front of their very eyes... They will remember it, like some ugly melody, like some ugly lullaby...you lulled to them during their "liberated" childhood... And those who have not and will not survive your "Liberation", will be flying high above like the pastel colored balloons of the Eid, like the kites made of pastel colored paper, like some white feather plucked from an innocent Dove... Only to fall on the ground like dying, dried up, Autumn leaves... Painting: Iraqi artist, Mohanad Al-Hayali.

:: Article nr. 37163 sent on 13-oct-2007 15:32 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=37163

Link: arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2007/10/flying-kites_12.html