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May 17, 2008
If you want a glimpse of what could well be America's future, take a look at China's present, as reported by Naomi Klein:
Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American “homeland security” technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen.
This is a sobering and disturbing article on many levels, not the least of which is that it is based not on some imaginary world like 1984, but a real one, and one that American and global corporations helped build.
Decades ago, during the height and gloom of the Cold War, I was taught that capitalism and communism would converge, with the best of both systems blended together and the worst filtered out. But no one described it like this:
[In Shenzhen,] I often have the feeling that I am witnessing not some rogue police state but a global middle ground, the place where more and more countries are converging. China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).
The China Klein describes is a neocon's dreamworld. Said a former military intelligence officer Klein interviewed:
George W. Bush would do what they are doing here in a heartbeat if he could.
In fact, Bush and his buddies have already set us well on our way down that road.
Long article, but well worth it.
Posted on 05/17/08 by
abi
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May 16, 2008
Osama bin Laden, the man who hates us for our freedoms, has increasingly been emphasizing another more reality-based justification for Islamic jihad against the West. In an audio recording commemorating Israel's 60th anniversary and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland, bin Laden said:
We will continue, God permitting, the fight against the Israelis and their allies ... and will not give up a single inch of Palestine as long as there is one true Muslim on earth.
It looks to me like calling the War on Terror the Long War is on the optimistic side.
Posted on 05/16/08 by
abi
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May 15, 2008
Sixty years ago yesterday, David Ben-Gurion declared the rebirth of the state of Israel. After being driven out of their homeland thousands of years before, and after the horrific nightmare that had just ended in Germany and occupied Europe, it must have been an unimaginably exhilarating moment for Jews everywhere.
One day later, and sixty years ago today, Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel. Palestinians who were caught between the armies — hundreds of thousands of men, women, children — fled or were driven out of their homeland. When the fighting finally ended in 1949, the Palestinians who left were barred from returning.
So as Israelis celebrate their 60th anniversary, Palestinian refugees — now several million of them — remember May 15, 1948, as the day their homes and their world were taken away from them, and the day their catastrophe began.
Today, the right of return seems unrealistic, impossible to accomplish. But back in 1949, that was not the case. So why were these people kept from returning to their rightful homes within the state of Israel? According to Israeli historian Benny Morris:
Israel "would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. There was no choice but to expel that population."
It's simple mathematics. A large and growing Palestinian population was a threat to a Jewish-majority state. And in 1948-1949, with the deep scars of the holocaust so fresh and still so painful, the Jews had already lost far too much, and there was far too much to gain. Never Again, they pledged, and who could blame them.
The Israeli declaration of independence names the holocaust "catastrophe" as "another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State." It's a compelling moral argument even today, and in 1948 it was many times more so.
But I can't help thinking that at some point in the future, maybe just dozens of years from now, or maybe thousands, the fortunes of these two unfortunate peoples will be reversed, and it will be the Palestinians who pledge Never Again, and end their "catastrophe," at the expense of the Jews, by "solving the problem of its homelessness" and establishing a Palestinian state, with a Palestinian majority, in what is now called Israel.
And who could blame them?
Posted on 05/15/08 by
abi
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 But that's what American politics is all about, isn't it?
McCain the Magnificent predicts:
Sen. John McCain envisions that by 2013, the Iraq War will be won but the threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan won't yet be eliminated, even though Osama bin Laden will have been captured or killed.
Who's the wiseguy who gave McCain the Magic 8-Ball?
This kinda reminds me of another prediction of victory that was, purely coincidentally, also tied to a presidential term:
Posted on 05/15/08 by
abi
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May 11, 2008
 Is Hillary Clinton pandering to racist voters? We've all seen this statement by now:
Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.
Pandering? Playing the race card? You betcha. But the Boston Globe's Derrick Jackson goes even further:
There is no way you can say in the same sentence, "hard-working Americans, white Americans," without diminishing black Americans as lazy.
Proving once again that Hillary Clinton, and hubby Bill, will say and do absolutely anything to get what they want. It's time for them to get off the stage for good.
While the Clinton campaign tries to spin her desperate statement away, SNL has a more accurate depiction of it. It's a pretty funny bit, until you realize how true it is.
Posted on 05/11/08 by
abi
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May 09, 2008
A must read by Amy Goodman about America's war against journalists in general and Al-Jazeera in particular. A snippet:
"U.S. warplanes bombed Al-Jazeera’s bureau [in Kabul, destroying it]...In spring 2003, the U.S. dropped four bombs on the Sheraton hotel in Basra, Iraq, where Al-Jazeera correspondents—the only journalists reporting from that city—were the lone guests. Another Al-Jazeera staffer showed his ID to a U.S. Marine at a Baghdad checkpoint, only to have his car fired upon by the Marines. He was unhurt. That can’t be said for Tareq Ayyoub, an Al-Jazeera correspondent who was on the roof of the network’s bureau in Baghdad on April 8, 2003, when a U.S. warplane strafed it. He was killed."
The MSM duly reported these incidents when they occurred, but quickly dropped them. Why? Why did the media meekly let these attacks pass into oblivion? Why didn't they consider these attacks as attacks against them, personally and professionally? Why didn't they react with outrage?
I guess they got the message.
Posted on 05/09/08 by
abi
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May 08, 2008
 Hillary Clinton could be the answer to the energy crisis. If we could just harness whatever it is that fuels her enormous ego, we could run our cars and heat our homes forever.
Any normal candidate would have gracefully dropped out of the race after Tuesday's decisive loss in North Carolina and within-the-margin-of-error victory in Indiana. But not the Energizer Ego. Nothing — and I mean nothing — is going to stand in the way of what she considers rightfully hers.
And that's why I have this sickening feeling in the pit of my gut that she's going to win the nomination after all, mathematics be damned. The Obliterator knows very well that the nomination is in the hands of the party insiders — the superdelegates, not the voters. That's who she has to win over, and a good many of them are beholden to the Clintons, or afraid of them.
I heard a commenter today on NPR paraphrasing Clinton's main pitch to the superdelegates — his voters (African-Americans) will vote for me in November, but my voters (white, working class, not college educated - but the key word being white) won't vote for him.
Don't count the Energizer Ego out just yet.
Posted on 05/08/08 by
abi
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May 04, 2008
Mary Gade, regional administrator of the EPA's midwest office, was forced to resign last week for the unpardonable sin of doing her job — to wit, requiring Dow Chemical to clean up the dioxin it had dumped into the environment around its Midland, Michigan plant for most of the last century.
The dumping of the toxic compound was so extensive that in once section of Saginaw, about 50 miles from Midland, dioxin levels were found to be "the highest amount ever found in the U.S."
Dow claims the dioxin levels are the result of forest fires and wood-burning fireplaces, but area resident Kathy Henry knows better:
"Dow's role seems pretty obvious," [she said,] pointing to samples showing dioxins levels of 2 ppt [parts-per-trillion] upstream from the plant and 3,400 ppt at a park below the plant.
Mary Gade stood up to the Goliaths of Dow and this corrupt administration, and she paid the price. What do you suppose the chances are that someone with her integrity and courage will take her place?
Posted on 05/04/08 by
abi
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May 03, 2008
...or have you ever been — a Muslim?
That's what the Jerusalem Post wants to know about Barak Obama. The evidence they cite ranges from the foggy memories of folks who knew him as a child in Indonesia, to this:
In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936-1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
Not quite a Perry Mason Moment, is it?
And who can forget Hillary Clinton's impassioned defense of Obama when 60 Minutes asked her if Obama was a Muslim:
KROFT: You said you’d take Senator Obama at his word that he’s not…a Muslim. You don’t believe that he’s…?
CLINTON: No. No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know.
Between the ages of 6 and 10, Obama went to school in Indonesia, where he probably was required to read the Koran now and then. Living for those four years in a country whose chief religion is outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition doesn't make Obama unfit to be president. But it does say something unkind about those who insinuate that it does make him unfit.
Posted on 05/03/08 by
abi
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This explains a lot - the participants in the Lincoln/Douglas debates, according to Fox News:
With its well-deserved reputation for accuracy in reporting, I guess Fox can be excused for missing the minor details that the Douglass in the picture spelled his name with two Ss, not one, and is also...um...black.
Posted on 05/03/08 by
abi
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May 02, 2008
Earlier today, the US released Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj from Guantanamo after six and a half years of imprisonment, without trial.
His crime — refusing to spy on fellow Al Jazeera employees.
Hard-asses to the bitter end, the US still considers al-Hajj an enemy combatant. According to an anonymous US official (who was no doubt too embarrassed to give his name), al-Hajj was "not being released [but simply] being transferred to the Sudanese government."
But Sudan has no intention of participating in the charade or punishing this man further:
Sudan's justice minister told Al Jazeera that al-Hajj was a free man and would not be arrested or face any charges.
Hmmm...justice minister, eh? We ought to get us one of those.
Posted on 05/02/08 by
abi
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