by Anthony Ioven
 Remember when a marketing campaign terrorized Boston a few months ago? Well the other day, terror struck again — this time, in the frightening form of a faulty fax that cut off the bottom half of the transmission:
About 15 small businesses in a shopping plaza were evacuated for about three hours, including a day care center with about 30 children...
All this because personnel at a local bank went all to pieces when they received a fax with a cartoon image of a bomb drawn on it. But gee, how can you blame them for calling the cops, because after all, they also received "a suspicious package delivered by a customer around the same time."
No mention of why the package appeared suspicious or what it contained. Hopefully it contained a fresh change of underwear for the bank's hysterical employees.
by Anthony Ioven
There are a lot of painful and discouraging truths in Cindy Sheehan's letter to America, not the least of which is this:
[W]hen I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used.
The Democratic party and partisans on the left have allowed the tail to wag the dog — victory for the party and the "cause" has become all important, overshadowing the principles that these "liberals" supposedly stand for.
There is little difference between Democrats and Republicans because both answer to the same gods of money, power, and self-interest. And if you think we'd be out of Iraq if John Kerry became president in 2004, consider this:
Senator John F. Kerry voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002 after weighing the political ramifications and being told by his future campaign manager that he would never be elected president in 2004 unless he sided with President Bush on the issue, according to a forthcoming book by Kerry's former strategist.
Continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils just perpetuates this corrupt system. We won't get our country back until we are willing to make fundamental changes in our political process.
by The Guests of 604
Andrew Bacevich, on the death of his son in Iraq and the reasons for it:
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove — namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.
Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.
...
Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. ... It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.
This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.
And it will continue to work this way — against us — until we take the money out of politics.
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A commenter recently pointed out to 604 how lucky Palestinian refugees are, and how proudly they bear their refugee status:
Palestinians are probably the most cosseted people in history. They have the longest lives and the highest birth rate in the Arab world.
Palestinians are the first people in history whose "refugee" status is hereditary. Officially passed on from father to son.
The commenter is no doubt correct, and longtime observers like Robert Fisk should be ashamed of themselves for false and misleading posts like this:
The catastrophe of [the Palestinians'] eviction and flight from Palestine in 1948, their near-destruction in the Lebanese civil war, their cruel suffering at the hands of Israeli invaders — the massacre of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 where 1,700 were slaughtered — and now this [battle at the Nahr el-Bared camp], have sealed these people into a permanent prison of suffering.
Lucky bastards...
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Soccerdad's "defense" of the Dems:
So spare me all the crap about Dems being cowards or not having a strategy. Its time for people to wake up look at the history and realize that the democratic leadership does not represent the antiwar sentiment in the US.
And that's the best we can say about the Democratic leadership. They're not spineless. They're just slimeballs who exploit and then ignore those credulous souls who count so heavily on them. I'm afraid that to be a Democrat these days is to be a true believer and an enabler.
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And speaking of the champions of the working man and woman, the Democrats finally beat an increase in the minimum wage out of the Republicans, for the first time in a decade. And all it took was giving George Bush another hundred billion towards his war for oil. I wonder how many invasions the Dems would have to bankroll to win single-payer health insurance?
by Anthony Ioven
The other day in a speech before the House, Jim McDermott warned of history repeating itself in the Middle East:
The history is worth knowing.
In 1953, the United States and United Kingdom launched Operation Ajax, a covert CIA operation to destabilize and remove the democratically elected government of Iran, including then Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.
Why? Oil.
...
For two decades, we propped up the Shah against the will of the Iranian people. It was all about controlling Iran. It still is. Today, ABC News is reporting exclusively that this President has authorized a new covert CIA plot to bring down the Iranian government.
...
Overthrowing Iran in 1953 was all about oil. Invading Iraq was all about oil. And the new secret plot against Iran is all about oil.
Oil is the only benchmark this President and Vice President want, and they will keep American soldiers fighting and dieing [sic] until an oil law is passed in Iraq that gives western oil companies control of the spigot.
No doubt he's just another nutty conspiracy theorist. It's so much more comforting to believe they hate us for our freedoms.
by Anthony Ioven
WMDs. Links between Saddam and al Qaeda. Nigerian yellowcake. Spreading freedom and democracy.
It was all bullshit. It was always about oil.
Remember this picture? It was taken during the mayhem shortly after Baghdad fell,  when Iraqis were looting everything from art museums to weapons arsenals, virtually without resistance.
According to a news report from that time, "the only building US forces seemed genuinely interested in protecting was the Ministry of Oil."
There it was. The evidence was right before our eyes — the focus of our post-invasion concerns, and the reason for the war itself. But it was almost as though the connection was too obvious. The administration couldn't be that blatant about its reasons for taking us to war, could it?
Turns out they could. And today, a post on AfterDowningStreet.org underscored the obvious yet again:
Thursday, May 24 the US Congress voted to continue the war on Iraq. They called it "supporting the troops." I call it stealing Iraq’s oil—the second largest oil reserves in the world. The "benchmark" or goal the Bush administration has been working on furiously since the US invaded Iraq is the privatization of Iraqi oil. Now they have the US Congress blackmailing the Iraqi Parliament and Iraqi people: no privatization of Iraqi oil, no reconstruction funds.
Looks like the mission may be accomplished after all.
by Anthony Ioven
Derision is the weapon of choice of unscrupulous shills who know a serious threat to their pet agendas when they see one. And it works pretty well to keep the timid and semi-informed in line. Dennis Kucinich is neither.
The claim [that the Iraq war is about oil] has brought Kucinich derision within his own Democratic Party. Leaders reject the suggestion that they would help "privatize" Iraqi oil. And Republicans dismiss him altogether, with Republican Party spokesman Dan Ronayne saying, "It sounds like congressman Kucinich is trying to get noticed with a nutty conspiracy theory."
Today Kucinich explained a bit about his nutty conspiracy theory to Democracy Now:
It’s really not too well known on Capitol Hill [!], but the benchmarks that the administration has been insisting upon, and now the benchmarks are in the Warner amendment that will be included in this legislative process that will keep us in Iraq, include a provision that insists that the Iraqi government pass a hydrocarbon act. The benchmark says it’s about equitable sharing of revenues. That’s three lines, vaguely worded lines, in a thirty-three-page document that’s all about the restructuring of the Iraq oil industry to permit multinational oil corporations to take over 80% of Iraq’s oil. I mean, this is a criminal action that is going on here, and we ought to be standing up against it and challenging it. We have no right to take Iraq’s oil or to facilitate the acquisition of Iraq’s oil on behalf of multinational corporations. [Indignant emphasis mine.]
Ever wonder why a straight-shooter like Kucinich isn't considered a serious candidate for president? Clearly, Kucinich isn't afraid to risk being ridiculed by the shills. But he's not the target — we are.
by Anthony Ioven
As the world yawns:
Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers committed "serious human rights abuses" against the Palestinians in 2006, mostly with impunity, Amnesty International said in its annual report issued Wednesday.
If you're keeping score:
In the Palestinian territories, Israeli air and artillery strikes killed some 650 people, half of them unarmed civilians and including some 120 children, "a three-fold increase compared with 2005."
...
Palestinian militant groups killed 21 Israeli civilians, including one child, half the figure of the previous year and the lowest since the intifada flared in September 2000.
But rockets fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israel saw a "significant increase" compared with the previous year and killed two civilians.
And during the month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer, Amnesty accused both Israel and Hezbollah of conducting "indiscriminate" attacks on civilians:
[B]oth Hezbollah and Israel committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes.
So, who's the new American Idol, anyway?
by Anthony Ioven
You've heard it before, and you'll hear it again:
Dems Cave
This most recent capitulation is over the deadline for pulling troops from Iraq. But the spineless wonders nevertheless put on a brave face and claimed victory by keeping "benchmarks with consequences" in the bill. Ohhh, I'll bet Cheney's scared.
Meanwhile, those ubiquitous (and anonymous) "US officials" are claiming that Iran will orchestrate a large summer offensive against us in Iraq, with the intention of driving us out. The official-with-no-name calls it a "very dangerous course for [the Iranians] to be following":
They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government].
It looks like the administration is itching for an excuse to attack Iran, and all that stands between us and that new madness is the Dems...
by Anthony Ioven
Thought for the day, from digby:
I do believe it was Jesus who said, if you aren't entrepreneurial enough to go online and comparison shop for the best emergency room you deserve to be dumped in a gutter to die. Or maybe it was Newt Gingrich. It's so hard to tell the difference.
And as an aside, if there truly is a God in heaven, Jerry Falwell is having that difference burned into him, for all eternity.
by Anthony Ioven
Growing up in the America of the 50s and early 60s, I had no doubt that America was not only the greatest of all nations, but that its well deserved supremacy among nations was assured far into the future.
But a few decades later, there are troubling signs that the American Century is all but over, and that in fact, our great nation may already be fast-forwarding towards the fate of all once-great nations.
I'm talking about signs like waging unjust wars of aggression. An increasing reliance on mercenaries to fight those wars. Torture. A willingness to abandon our most fundamental principles. Deep class divisions.
And now Congress is likely to pass a law to allow something that, to me, epitomizes a nation in serious decline — a guest worker program.
The idea of importing "guest" workers is offensive on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start. It creates an entirely new underclass in America. It keeps wages for American workers artificially low. It takes jobs away from hundreds of thousands of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. It swells the ranks of Americans who live in poverty. And it stretches the gap between rich and poor to potentially dangerous levels.
Don't think for a minute that Congress is considering this law out of compassion for poor foreign workers. This is exploitation, pure and simple.
by Anthony Ioven
Today is the day Palestinians commemorate al Nakba, the catastrophe, which began the day after Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948:
In the months surrounding that date, Jewish forces expelled, or intimidated into flight, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians. A living, breathing, society that had existed in Palestine for centuries was smashed and fragmented, and a new society built on its ruins.
Palestinians who fled their homes and land within the new State of Israel were not allowed to reclaim them, and they and their descendants remain refugees to this day. According to the UN, there were over four million Palestinian refugees in 2002. They are among the poorest people on the planet.
Americans are amazingly indifferent to their suffering. Instead of the sympathy and compassion we would feel for any other victims of injustice on this scale, we seem to regard these people with impatience. Just get over it. Accept it and move on.
But would you?
by The Guests of 604
 The Mayor of 9/11 has just aborted his presidential aspiration while it was still just a gleam in his eye:
Giuliani Defends Stance on Abortion
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The Baghdad surge is working, but not quite the way the Bush brain trust hoped:
In the first 11 days of this month, there have already been 234 bodies — men murdered by death squads — dumped around the capital, a dramatic rise from the 137 found in the same period of April.
There have been tens of thousands of Iraqi disappeared since liberation.
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This is why politics makes me sick:
What is at play [with the war funding bills] is party politics...
The Democratic Party’s goal is to strengthen its position for the 2008 Congressional elections. The key concern is the Senate, where Democrats currently have a majority of only one. In the 2008 elections, 33 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. Of these 33 seats, Republicans currently hold 21 and Democrats hold only 12. “We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war,” argues Senator Reid.
There will be a price for congressional party politics taking priority over ending the war. It will be paid by the people of Iraq.
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While Americans yawn over our inability to transform our sick health care system from a private, market-based system to a public, medicare-style one, here's what happens when a government transforms its health care system the other way:
Chinese hospital staff face attacks amid high prices and dubious care
China's healthcare system — once almost free — is now one of the most market-oriented in the world.
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Is there any world figure more irrelevant than the pope? The infallible one talks tough on issues like divorce and abortion, and the flock just ignores him. The other day, the pope agreed that Mexican politicians who voted to legalize abortion "should rightfully be considered excommunicated." Later, however, his handlers softened the statement.
Oh, and good luck with this:
Pope, in Brazil, urges youth to shun sex, drugs
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Robert Reich cracked me up the other morning when I heard him read this on NPR:
Now that the tax-writing committees of congress are taking a look at this giant loophole, they’re besieged by private-equity partners who are, of course, screaming: No! You can’t do this to us! If you treat the money we’re making as compensation, you’ll reduce our incentives! We won’t work as hard if we’re taking home only 60 million dollars a year instead of 80 million! And that will cripple the American economy.
The sad thing is, though, we fall for that nonsense every time.
by Anthony Ioven
...is another man's freedom fighter. And in our eyes, CIA-trained Luis Posada Carriles is a freedom fighter.
Responsible for a series of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997, and arrested for masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane that killed all on board, Posada is today a free man and enjoying life as an illegal alien in the United States:
So for now, Posada’s a free man — even though the administration has sufficient evidence to arrest him for his role in either the 1976 airliner bombing or the 1997 Havana bombings. For that matter, Posada easily could be detained under Section 412 of the Patriot Act, which calls for the mandatory detention of aliens suspected of terrorism.
In 1998, Posada told the NYT (PDF) that the civilian casualties in the hotel bombings were "sad," but that he sleeps "like a baby."
If all this sounds eerily familiar, it should. We’ve heard the same callous justifications for terrorism from Bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
And by the way, Venezuela wants Posada extradited back to that country, where he escaped from jail awaiting trial for the airline bombing. But a US judge refused to extradite him — out of fear that Posada might be tortured there.
How quaint.
by Anthony Ioven
I don't think the following opening sentences of a particularly blunt post by The Corporate Reporter are the least bit overstated:
The Corporate Democratic Party is into snuff politics. The target this month—single payer, Medicare for all. The motive—protect the corporate health insurance industry.
Strong stuff. I mean, isn't the Democratic party supposed to be protecting the people and not the health insurers?
Not even close.
On May 7th, a group calling itself the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform (CAHR) held a press conference in DC. "Nearly 40 of the nation's top business leaders and largest employers" stood "shoulder to shoulder" with lawmakers like Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who introduced a bill this year called The Healthy Americans Act (PDF).
CAHR is an unholy alliance if there ever was one, joining representatives of the party of FDR and LBJ with civic-minded, altruistic organizations like Cigna HealthCare, PacifiCare, Aetna, and Blue Shield of California.
You can read about CAHR here, in a perfectly objective PharmaLive press release.
On its web site, CAHR boasts of "Core Principals" that seek a Market-Based Healthcare System and Universal Coverage with Individual Responsibility. Hmmm, where have I heard that before?
Oh yeah, right here in Massachusetts, with its new universal mandatory health care law.
CAHR and the Massachusetts law are nothing more than a way of putting a new shine on an old, unwieldy, inefficient, and bottom-line-obsessed system of private health care. In fact, it's a way of preserving that system while pretending to reform it.
Oh, and speaking of the new Massachusetts law, I've already cited some of its many failures — like higher than expected premiums, annual deductibles, lifetime caps, and requiring around 200,000 insured residents to buy more insurance while exempting around 60,000 uninsured residents from having to buy any insurance at all.
And today's Boston Globe reports the latest embarrassment for Massachusetts' celebrated law. The state fines all but the smallest employers that do not pay a "fair and reasonable" amount towards their workers' health insurance, or that have employees who regularly require charity care that is subsidized by the state. By the end of the current fiscal year (June 30), the state expected to collect $95 million in these fines. That money would then go towards health-care subsidies for low-income residents.
But the actual amount that will be collected by the end of the fiscal year is somewhat lower — in fact, $95 million lower. Not a penny of this money has been collected, or will be by June 30.
The state is claiming that lower-than-expected costs (the effect of the steady evisceration of the law noted above) will offset this uncollected cash. Excuse me if I have a hard time believing it.
In any case, next year is a different story:
But in fiscal 2008, the drop in revenue and increases in costs mean taxpayers will pay nearly $125 million more than expected, according to a Globe analysis of proposed budgets for next year.
Amazing. Taxpayers subsidizing employers for not insuring their employees — this is "universal health care" that only a Republican could love. And friends, it may soon be coming to a government near you.
by Anthony Ioven
I can't find the link, but I'm sure that George Bush has said in the past that if the Iraqi government asks us to leave, we'll leave.
Well, it appears the Iraqis might be preparing to pop the question.
A majority of members of the Iraqi parliament has signed a petition supporting a timetable for US withdrawal. But whether the petition can force a vote on the matter is an open question, given "loopholes" in the laws. Besides, so many members of parliament have fled the liberated Iraq that it's sometimes difficult to gather a quorum.
Still, this could be embarrassing. While Democrats and Republicans in the US fall all over themselves strutting their stuff before the cameras over timetables (in an orgy of showboating that aims to climax every two months), the Iraqi lawmakers just might stand up while ours are just standing around, talking trash.
That is, if enough Iraqis actually show up to vote.
But suppose they do vote, and they tell us to get the hell out of their country. Would we?
by Anthony Ioven
According to a real "commander guy," one who heads four of the five US brigades involved in the Baghdad surge, we can expect an increase in US casualties over the next three months:
There are going to be increased (U.S.) casualties during this surge because we're taking the fight to the enemy.
This is one commander guy who knows what he's talking about. On Sunday, 8 US soldiers were killed in Baghdad and in Diyala province, and two Marines where killed Saturday in Anbar province.
And what did the surge accomplish today?
Across the county, 95 Iraqis were killed or found dead on Sunday, including 11 Samarra policemen and the Samarra police chief.
Meanwhile on Sunday, a Sunni leader in parliament complained that Sunni "participation in this so-called national unity government is weak and marginalized and our ministers have no authority to serve Iraq or its people."
Wonderful.
And in the aftermath of the Baghdad marketplace bombing:
In one mini-bus, a mother and her two daughters were dead, the children still clutching their teddy bears. Sprawled on the road was a bleeding pregnant woman, shrapnel piercing her belly.
And survivors asked, "Where is the security plan? Where is the Maliki government?"
And in the US, while the administration and the Democrats in Congress continue their political pissing contest while posturing for the cameras, I have to ask: Where is the sense of outrage? Where is the sense of shame?
by Anthony Ioven
Call it a calculating (but brilliant) political move by Hillary Clinton if you must (and I must), but still, her joint call (with Robert Byrd) to "sunset" the 2002 Congressional war authorization makes great sense:
Clinton and other advocates of revoking the war authorization contend it's no longer relevant to the situation in Iraq.
The authorization, which passed the Senate by 77-23, contains several paragraphs denouncing the regime of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It authorizes force to defend the United States against "the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and to enforce all relevant U.N. resolutions against Iraq.
Saddam has been executed, the new Iraqi regime has declared itself a U.S. ally and the U.N. resolutions demanding Iraq's disarmament are moot.
"The October 2002 authorization to use force has run its course. It is time, past time, to decommission this authorization and retire it to the archives," Byrd said.
Works for me...
by Anthony Ioven
And if that's not enough to make you sick, this certainly will.
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UpdateAmerica.com
604.UpdateAmerica.com
May's Posts
Boo II
The Tail Wagging the Dog
All About Oil, Part II
All About Oil
Make a Difference – Challenge a Shill
No Moral High Ground Here
Withdrawal Deadline Withdrawn
But at Least It Ain't Socialized Medicine
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Deal With It
One Man's Terrorist...
First, Do No Harm
And Don't Let the Door Slam You in the Ass...
'Where Is the Security Plan?'
Authorization Expired
Unhappy Anniversary
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