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{ An Autopsy of Democracy }

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Labor Day Executive Excess report: Oil and Defense CEOs Pocket the Spoils


"
. . . . . . . .
Since the “War on Terror” began, CEOs at the top 34 military contractors have enjoyed average paychecks that are double the compensation they received in the four years leading up to 9/11.

The new Executive Excess report surveys all publicly held U.S. corporations among the top 100 defense contractors that had at least 10 percent of revenues in defense. These 34 CEOs combined have pocketed almost a billion dollars since 9/11 — enough to employ more than a million Iraqis for a year to rebuild their country.

In 2005, defense industry CEOs walked off with 44 times more pay than military generals with 20 years experience, and 308 times more than Army privates.
. . . . . . . .
"


Not that this is surprising -- everyone knows this intuitively. But it's nice (that's not at all the right word, but you know what I mean) to have the actual numbers to demonstrate it.

As far as the hiring of a million Iraqis -- unless I'm even worse at math than I thought, we'd only be paying them $1000 per year; which seems like worse than slave wages, does it not? Still, assuming for the sake of argument that $1000 American per year is actually a decent wage for Iraqis: what does that say about the $350 Billion we've spent thus far on the Iraq war? Well, it says that we could have instead employed 1 million Iraqis to rebuild (and defend) their country for 350 years.

Hell, if nothing else we could just pay them double in exchange for not attacking us -- which, I grant you, would only bring us peace for 175 years. But, still, that's something. In fact, I'm fairly confident that within that time we would probably even be able to figure out an exit strategy -- and then, Hurray! Mission Accomplished!

Or maybe instead of spreading it out over 350 or 175 years, we could have simply said, "Here: here is $350 Billion for you. Use it to fix everything that we've destroyed. We're going home now. Enjoy your country and your freedom. You're welcome."

Hmmm . . .

No, you're right. That wouldn't benefit American Corporations sufficiently.

Nah, better to buy bullets, bombs, and body bags, I think.



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Monday, August 21, 2006

Bush respectfully disagrees with the "Democrat Party"


The timing on this couldn't have been more perfect. Just finished watching the "Colbert Report" with guest Geoffrey Nunberg -- about his book "Talking Right," and how the right wing have successfully manipulated language to misinform and to control debate.

After which I flip channels briefly, and I hear Bush talking about Iraq and how "some in the Democrat Party would like to see us leave," etc. etc.

That may or may not mean anything to you, and probably seems trivial -- but it's actually pretty alarming, if you're familiar with this particular tactic.

If you don't get it, just think about it or look into it or whatever. There's a subtext there, and it's an intential insult. I'll just say that it's the equivalent of saying "Repuglickers" instead of "Republicans." The only people you normally hear use it -- and they use it consciously and consistenly -- are the really really extreme right-wing fundamentalist fascist types like Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, etc.

All of whom fit perfectly into the Bush Cabal -- true, so why am I surprised?

Good point. I guess I'd just never heard Bush use the term -- and he's been around for a while now.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that he'll start using it from now on -- or at least during election season. Keep your ears peeled.

According to Wikipedia, every Republican president has used the term; and "The context has usually been negative--but not always, as when President George W. Bush declared, during a visit to Georgia that he was traveling 'with proud members of the Democrat Party.'" (Gee, that's not biased or anything -- of course when Bush used it, he meant no harm -- He's Just A Good Ol' Boy, He Doesn't Mean Any Harm . . .")

But as MediaMatters recently noted:

"
"among those of the Republican persuasion," the use of " 'Democrat Party' is now nearly universal" thanks to "Newt Gingrich, the nominal author of the notorious 1990 memo 'Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,' and his Contract with America pollster, Frank Luntz." While Hertzberg noted that Luntz "road-tested the adjectival use of 'Democrat' with a focus group in 2001" and "concluded that the only people who really dislike it are highly partisan adherents of the ... Democratic Party," he also wrote that Luntz had told him recently that "[t]hose two letters ['ic'] actually do matter," and that Luntz "recently finished writing a book ... entitled 'Words That Work.' "
"


Do they "work" to manipulate and control people's perceptions? Dunno. If nothing else, it's apparently a fun way for Republicans to say "Fuck You, You Dirty Rotten Rat Bastards" without actually coming out and saying it?

—ungeziefer




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Daily Kos: Beautiful Dead Girls


"
We hear a lot about beautiful dead girls in the US media. Here are some that we haven't heard about much. Their smiles haven't been plastered over the supermarket tabloid press, and they're not likely to be.
. . . . . . . .
"



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Friday, August 18, 2006

Kurds flee homes as Iran shells Iraq's northern frontier


This is one of the most interesting stories I've come across in a long time. Amidst the growing perception that there's some kind of "clash of civilizations" emerging, tradition vs. modernity or East vs. West or Christianity/Zionism vs. Islam or Us vs. Them or Good vs. Evil or whatever . . . it's important to remember how complex things are.

We already know that Iraq (now magically transformed from "Evil Enemy" to "Great Democracy") is allying closely with Iran. But now Turkey (our ally) is working with (or competing with?) Iran (our hated enemy) to attack the Kurds (our friends, but enemies of Turkey -- also in this case considered "terrorists" by the State Department and the EU, etc.) in Iraq . . .

I don't really understand it and don't know what to say about it. But things are messy and are only going to get messier . . .

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Kurds flee homes as Iran shells Iraq's northern frontier



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Bush Must Negotiate to Make America Safer, Say Former Generals


Jesus, I hate these military types. They're all pansy-ass pinko commy liberal terrorist-loving cowards and traitors who hate America and only want to give aid and comfort to the enemy and make us lose by cutting and running and let the world become One State Dominated by Islamic Fascism because they hate Jesus. Pussies.

"
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 17 (OneWorld) - Twenty-one former generals and high ranking national security officials have called on United States President George W. Bush to reverse course and embrace a new area of negotiation with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. In a letter released Thursday, the group told reporters Bush's 'hard line' policies have undermined national security and made America less safe.

Of particular concern for the generals was increased saber rattling between Washington and Tehran over the development of an Iranian nuclear program.

"We call on the administration to engage immediately in direct talks with the government of Iran without preconditions to help resolve the current crisis in the Middle East and to settle differences over an Iranian nuclear program," their letter read.

"An attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for security in the region and U.S. forces in Iraq," they argued. "It would inflame hatred and violence in the Middle East and among Muslims everywhere."

In a telephone news conference Thursday morning, the former security officials took particular aim at the Bush Administration's policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists or with states that support them.

"That seems strange since Ronald Reagan was willing to negotiate with the Soviets even though they were the 'Evil Empire," said retired Lt. General Robert Guard, who served as special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War and now works at the non-profit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. "One wonders why George Bush can't negotiate with the Axis of Evil."

The generals further argued that the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq is at least partially responsible for Iran's drive to develop a nuclear program.

"When you announce an axis of evil of three countries and invade one and then say that Iran should take that as a lesson, it does seem that it may give them an incentive to do precisely what they don't want them to do," Guard said, "develop a nuclear weapon."

Former director of Policy Planning for the State Department, Morton Halperin, said the same goes for North Korea. The more belligerent the Bush Administration behaves, he said, the faster North Korea will work to develop nuclear weapons.

"The North Koreans want to talk to us directly," said Halperin, who now works for the Washington, DC-based Center for American Progress. "Their concern is about getting security assurances from us and about getting diplomatic recognition. We should not be afraid to talk to our opponents."

At the White House, Bush's spokesperson Tony Snow dismissed the letter.

"In a political year people are going to make political statements, including retired generals, and they're perfectly welcome to," Snow told reporters at his daily briefing. "It's an important addition to the public debate. But we're also--the president is a guy who has got real responsibility here. Now, I've got to tell you, just given to what I said...in response to the sort of ongoing cost of promoting freedom around the globe, do you not think a president will do everything in his power to succeed? And the answer is, yes. He's not sitting around saying, boy, I'm stubborn, I'm going to stick with it.

"That's not the way the president is," Snow said, insisting the Bush administration is planning policy changes while declining to offer specifics.

But the generals who signed the letter say Bush has been stubborn, and a poor student of history.

General Joseph Hoar, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Military Central Command under presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, said the George W. Bush administration would be advised to remember the French occupation of Algeria, which lasted 134 years.

Nationalist rebels launched an insurgency against the French in 1954. After eight years of insurgent bombings and counter-terrorism operations, France was finally forced to quit Algeria in 1962.

Hoar says like the Battle of Algiers the current war on terror is a war of ideas.

"Until we get away from the idea that we can solve these problems through the use of military force and begin to change the political problems causing discontent by providing security and services, we're not going to win this war," he said.

"



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Thursday, August 17, 2006

Lebanon's pain grows by the hour as death toll hits 1,300


By Robert Fisk

0817/06 "The Independent" -- -- They are digging them up by the hour, the swelling death toll of the Lebanon conflict. The American poet Carl Sandburg spoke of the dead in other wars and imagined that he was the grass under which they would be buried. "Shovel them under and let me work," he said of the dead of Ypres and Verdun. But across Lebanon, they are systematically lifting the tons of rubble of old roofs and apartment blocks and finding families below, their arms wrapped around each other in the moment of death as their homes were beaten down upon them by the Israeli air force. By last night, they had found 61 more bodies, taking the Lebanese dead of the 33-day war to almost 1,300.

In Srifa, south of the Litani river, they found 26 bodies beneath ruins which I myself stood on just three days ago. At Ainata, there were eight more bodies of civilians. A corpse was discovered beneath a collapsed four-storey house north of Tyre and, near by, the remains of a 16-year old girl, along with three children and an adult. In Khiam in eastern Lebanon, besieged by the Israelis for more than a month, the elderly village "mukhtar" was found dead in the ruins of his home.

Not all the dead were civilians. At Kfar Shuba, dumper-truck drivers found the bodies of four Hizbollah members. At Roueiss, however, all 13 bodies found in the wreckage of eight 10-storey buildings were civilians. They included seven children and a pregnant woman. Ten more bodies were disentangled from the rubble of the southern suburbs of Beirut - where local people claimed they could still hear the screams of neighbours trapped far below the bomb-smashed apartment blocks. The Lebanese civil defence organisation - almost as brave as the Lebanese Red Cross in trying to save lives under fire - believe at least three families may be trapped in basements deep below the wreckage.

Ignoring the dangers of unexploded ordnance, several Lebanese Shia Muslims returned to their destroyed homes to retrieve personal belongings - including family snapshots and albums that contain the narrative of their lives - only to fall between gaps in the broken apartment blocks and plunge dozens of feet into the darkness beneath. Among the last to die only minutes before the UN ceasefire came into effect was a child who was found in her dead mother's arms in Beirut.

How many of these dead would have survived if George Bush and Tony Blair had demanded an immediate ceasefire weeks ago will never be known. But many would have had the chance of life had Western governments not regarded this dirty war as an "opportunity" to create a "new" Middle East by humbling Iran and Syria.
"


Good thing this story is regarded as insignificant by the media. (Oh, sorry -- the guy who killed a child ten years ago may have been caught -- guess we'll have to cover that 24/7 for a week or two . . .)

(O.K. -- MSNBC did have Seymour Hersch on. If only Chris Matthews would have let him get a word in edge-wise, that would have been something, at least.)

And I have to say thank God for Jimmy Carter -- who, unlike Howard Dean and pretty much every other Democratic leader, is at least willing to state the obvious. (I guess when you're not in office you have freedom of speech again, and do not have to bow down [or bend over] for AIPAC) :

"I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no."

Gee, yeah, ya think?

What's sad is that this is practically heresy in this country -- not in Israel, just here.



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Thursday, August 10, 2006

Hizbullah, Zionism and the Ideology of late Imperial America


". . . . . . . .
Today, the bustling streets of Haret Hreik are gone. Where families lived and thrived, struggled and laughed, is an emptiness of rubble –the bombed ruins of a greedy imperial war that stops at nothing. Today Lebanon stands behind Hizbullah. The Lebanese have become the bitter, cheering on-lookers of the resistance which lobs its out-dated missiles relentlessly across the border as the Israeli war machine refuels again and again. But US precision guided bombs, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, unmanned aerial drones, drones to guide the bombs, helicopters armed with missiles, F-16s, gun ships and state-of-the-art armed and trained ground forces with night vision surveillance and combat goggles have succeeded in uniting far more than the Lebanese behind the daring defiance of Hassan Nasrallah.

Sixteen years of civil war, of murderous sectarian acrimony, of inter-ethnic killing, suspicion and paranoia and today –after 28 days of hell unleashed upon it by the arrogant racism of a militant and ideological Zionism— 89% of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims, 80% of its Christians, 80% of its Druze and 100% of its Shiite populations support Hizbullah’s resistance against Israel and the United States.
. . . . . . . ."



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Saturday, August 05, 2006

"My Goodness . . . A Dickens Of A Time"


Quote of the week:

"I have never painted a rosy picture . . . and you'd have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I've been excessively optimistic." -- Donald Rumsfeld

(This one's not bad, either) :

"What I worry about is we're playing a game of 'Whack A Mole' here." -- John McCain



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False storylines pervade media coverage of upcoming elections


When all I can do is clench my fists and grind my teeth, thank christ for MediaMatters, who consistently bring clarity to what we all know but don't have the time or resources to prove, and continue to dispell the obscene and absurd "Liberal Media" myth.



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More books on the stolen presidential election of 2004


Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)
by Mark Crispin Miller


The Crisis of American Democracy: The Presidential Elections of 2000 and 2004
by David North


Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count
by Steve Freeman, Joel Bleifuss


Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, Harvey Wasserman


How the Gop Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008
by Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman



—ungeziefer




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Thursday, August 03, 2006

The "Sane Republican Of The Year Award" goes to . . . Chuck Hagel


"The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now. President Bush must call for an immediate cease fire. This madness must stop." -- Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), on the current Middle East crisis

I encourage you to read the whole speech. It's intelligent, even-handed, and wise. (Usually I'm just hoping for sane.)

—ungeziefer




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Sick Joke


Night of Death for Lebanese

O.K., we'll stop the slaughter for a couple days -- just kidding! Thanks, I'll be here all week! Or maybe two or three . . .

That might as well have been what Olmert said to Lebanon this week:

"On Monday, the first day of a temporary suspension of Israeli airstrikes, dozens of people emerged, squinting in the searing sun at a scene of destruction so complete that they barely understood what they were looking at. Their town had been crushed, its very heart torn out and pulverized into a chalky dust.
. . . . . . . ."


For Lebanese, Calm Moment to Flee Ruins

And then . . .

"As Israel poured soldiers and artillery shells into southern Lebanon, it vowed Monday to press ahead with its war on Hezbollah and made a number of airstrikes after promising a 48-hour pause in its air campaign.

“The fighting continues,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. “There is no cease-fire, and there will not be any cease-fire in the coming days.”

Israel promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday that it would halt air operations for two days, except to respond to “imminent threats,” like rocket-launching teams, and to support ground forces.

Ms. Rice said she had accepted Israel’s explanation for resuming airstrikes barely 12 hours after the suspension was announced.
. . . . . . . .

Meanwhile, Hezbollah held its fire, with the Israeli Army counting only three mortar shells landing in Israel on Monday and no rockets, compared with a record 156 rockets launched on Sunday and about 100 daily before.
. . . . . . . ."



Israel Pushes On Despite Agreeing To Airstrike Lull


"We cannot be expected to negotiate or discuss anything else while the ruthless, pitiless sword of the Israeli war machine continues to drip with the blood of innocent women and children." -- Prime Minister of Lebanon, Fouad Siniora, at the UN

See! You can't negotiate with these "terrorists"! A ceasefire won't do any good! Um, no -- they're simply saying that if you stop bombing us, we'll talk. (Seems pretty reasonable to me.) Israel stopped, and Hezbollah stopped. That very brief ceasfire could have lasted -- but obviously Israel didn't want that, because then when they started bombing again they would naturally look like the aggressor; better just to keep the bombs falling -- that way you can still claim to be "defending yourself" against the Hizbollah rockets.

What pisses me off most about the news reporting on this crisis is how fast history gets revised. It's almost universally reported now (even on Air America at times) that Israel was "attacked" by Hezbollah and "responded" in order to "defend itself." Ed Schultz is constantly yelling about how "Hezbollah was launching rockets into Israel -- what the heck is Israel supposed to do, anyway? What would YOU do?" Etc. Yes, it's true that Hezbollah "started it" by killing a few Israeli soldiers and capturing two others. Which side of the border it was on (which is important) is unclear; but in any case that was (at least ostensibly) the provocation that Israel was responding to. (Though, again, it has been documented that Israel was looking for an excuse to invade anyway. But put that aside.)

However: when you hear reporters talking about Israel "responding" to the rocket fire, they're quite simply lying. All this started because of the capture of TWO FUCKING SOLDIERS -- after which Israel began air strikes, and Hezbollah responded in kind (if by "in kind" we mean "with puny rockets, rather than F-16's, bombs weighing several tons, hellicopter gunships, tanks, guided missiles, and quite possibly chemical weapons").

In short, YES Israel was provoked. But if you think that justifies killing hundreds of innocent women, children, and elderly people (not to mention "military-aged males," who are all cynically presumed to be "militants") -- you are quite simply deranged. All of this could have been prevented with a prisoner swap. (It's estimated that as many as 20,000 Palestinians have been rotting in Israeli jails for years -- but I guess that's not "kidnapping.") Furthermore, Israel didn't even TRY to negotiate, to work with the Lebanese government, or U.N., or the European Union, or even the U.S. -- let alone with Hezbollah.

So, yes, I condemn both sides for the unnecessary killing. But I'm not going to support this senseless destruction and slaughter just because the perpetrators happen to be Jewish.








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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Daily Kos: 9/11 Deception by Pentagon Suspected by Officials


"
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.

. . . . . . . .

"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."



Senator Dayton: NORAD Lied About 9/11



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