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“Be thankful that you do not have to suffer Dubya’s massive crushing karmic burden”

Be thankful you’re not Dubya
Craving more juicy reasons to offer up profound gratitude this T-day? Try a few of these
Mark Morford, SF Gate, November 26, 2003

This Thanksgiving, as you sip the wine and hug the family and toast the friends and hoard the stuffing and curse the airport security, remember to give thanks you are not G.W. Bush. Hey, it’s important.

1) Be thankful that you do not have to suffer Dubya’s massive crushing karmic burden, as wrought by inflicting heaps of environmental disaster and vicious unnecessary war and a stunning string of lies lies lies like a firehose of giblet gravy splattered all over the planet.

For it really is all too plain: G.W. Bush is one of the most reviled and openly disrespected major world leaders in modern history. America has never been so embarrassed and reluctant to send a president abroad. We cringe when the man takes the stage. We offer humiliated apologies to our former allies, and to the 200,000 Bush/war protesters in London, just last week.

In Bush“s defense, it cannot be easy to be so undeservedly powerful, yet so bumbling and inarticulate and globally loathed for your abhorrent policies and hollow corporate agenda and baffled doofus manner. This Thanksgiving, be grateful you are not him.

2) Thanks, you might want to give, that you are not Iraqi. Be grateful you did not go from brutal scowling despot who at least kept the damn lights on to brutish occupying army no one asked for that is right now laying waste to whatever remains of your once semi-proud oil-rich nation.

Give thanks, furthermore, that you are not one of the estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed to date by U.S. forces, not to mention one of the untold tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers who were hammered by our million pounds of billion-dollar ordnance in the first few days of the massacre. Be grateful you are not dead in the name of American political and petrochemical profiteering.

3) Give thanks you are not a member of the much-abused U.S. military. Sad but true. Be grateful you are not right now suffering that sickening sinking feeling that you are not, in fact, protecting America from any sort of marauding terrorists, or defending our honor, or our way of life, or guarding innocents from swarthy evildoers and nonexistent WMDs. . .

4) Be grateful BushCo“s ratings are slipping lower than an SUV”s mpg rating, and there is only one year left until he joins his father as one of those embarrassing historical footnotes, a jagged scar on the heart of a wary America that other countries point to in years to come and say wow that“s a nasty scar where”d you get that, and we reply, George W. Bush, and they go, oh my God, that’s right. So sorry. . . .

The official Selective Service web site notes that $28 million is being spent next year to have the draft ready for activation within 75 days by March 31, 2005:

Strategic Goal 1: Increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the Manpower Delivery Systems (Projected allocation for FY 2004—$7,942,000)

. . . Strategic Objective 1.2: Ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 56 State Headquarters, 442 Area Offices and 1,980 Local Boards are operational within 75 days of an authorized return to conscription. . . .

Strategic Goal 2: Improve overall Registration Compliance and Service to the Public (Projected allocation FY 2004—$8,769,000) . . .

Strategic Goal 3: Enhance external and internal customer service (Projected allocation for FY 2004—$10,624,000) . . .

Strategic Goal 4: Enhance the system which guarantees that each conscientious objector is properly classified, placed, and monitored.(Projected allocation for FY 2004—$955,000) . . .

Among the performance goals for 2004: “Prepare and conduct an Area Office Prototype Exercise which tests the activation process from SSS Lottery input to the issuance of the first Armed Forces Examination Orders.” Also “Ensure 90% of people tested are capable of implementing activation procedures” and “Answer correspondence in less than 10 days.”

At Democratic Underground, interpretation by Dems Will Win:

They are reducing draft activation time to 75 days from the current 7–8 months. The first draft lottery according to this official document could be June 15, 2005.

Question: why does a dormant agancy need to be ready to answer all correspondence in 10 days?

They said “no plans” yet they are conducting nationwide exercises far beyond what is needed for a dormant agency. This is really a plan to get the whole system ready for activation within the 75 days prescribed, although Congress must authorize the actual activation. They are trying to stop this discussion by saying “no plans,” making everybody think it’s off the table. They just mean Bush has “no plans” to ask Congress at this time. Yet on April 1, 2005, according to this he could ask for activation and have it in 75 days.

Also draft boards reported being “unexpectedly” asked during summer training sessions to fill the Board vacancies (salon.com from a Philly draft Board member).

Also Rumsfeld’s leaked memo said “long hard slog” and “we have not made any truly bold moves yet”—and that was after Iraq and Afghanistan.

They are even making sure the Alternative Service is all exercised and ready to go within 75 days of March 31, 2005.

This is called Performance improvement but it looks exactly like a readiness action. They are bringing the whole system up to 90%+ operational capability after 30 years of dormancy. Obviously, with a war on terror this could be considered prudent (although you don’t need a draft to catch Osama Bin Laden and several thousand al-Qaidas). Then why did they scrub the Draft Board notice? Why not say up front we are filling the Draft Boards and gearing up the system in case the President needs it to fight the war on terror?

Congress would of course have to approve, supposedly after a Joint Session by the President where he could easily say “we are not going to cut and run” (same was said in Vietnam). By March 31, 2005, the draft may only be 75 days away.

Also see further interpretation and discussion in a second Democratic Underground thread

Coincidentally, news of problems in recruitment and retention by the U.S. Army Reserve came out Monday in Army Reserve battles an exodus by Robert Schlesinger of the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON | The U.S. Army Reserve fell short of its re-enlistment goals this fiscal year, underscoring Pentagon fears that the protracted conflict in Iraq could cause a crippling exodus from the armed services.

The Army Reserve has missed its retention goal by 6.7 percent, the second shortfall since fiscal 1997. It was largely the result of a larger than expected exodus of career reservists, a loss of valuable skills because such staff members are responsible for training junior officers and operating complex weapons systems. . . .

With extended deployments and increasingly deadly attacks by Iraqi guerrillas, Defense Department officials are scrambling to combat a broader downturn in retention and recruitment that they fear is on the horizon.

The U.S. Army, the primary service deployed in Iraq, is offering re-enlistment bonuses of $5,000 for soldiers serving there. The Army National Guard is extending an official thank-you to members by arranging services to honor returning soldiers. The Massachusetts National Guard is offering rewards ranging from plaques to NASCAR tickets to members who lure recruits. And throughout the branches, recruitment advertising is up and programs are being launched to make the military seem more family-friendly.

The Army also is resorting to a policy called “stop loss” that allows the Pentagon to indefinitely keep soldiers from leaving the service once their time has expired. The policy, used during war, is designed to prevent staffing shortfalls in key sectors. . . .

The Army, which oversees the bulk of troops in Iraq, is not the only branch of the armed services facing hardships in recruitment and retention because of the Iraq war.

Air Force Major Joe Allegretti, chief of the Defense Department’s Joint Recruiting Advertising Program, cited a poll of youths conducted from April through June in which half said the war in Iraq made them less likely to join the military, and only one-third said it made them more likely to join. . . .

BushCo planning a new war—on Cuba?

Outrageous, atrocious--there are just no adjectives strong enough to describe the absolute incompetence and shameful, misguided, short-sighted decisions and actions of the neocon buffoons--to wit: The Bush plan for Cuba, by Sharmini Peries in the Nov. 22–Dec. 5, 2003 Frontline:

Foregrounding the 2004 United States election campaign, President George W. Bush announced on October 10 before a gathering of anti-Castro Cuban-American constituents at a ceremony in the White House’s Rose Garden that the U.S. administration was planning to bring down President Fidel Castro’s Cuban government. In the statement, Bush officially directed his Secretary of State Colin Powell and Cuban-born Housing Secretary Mel Martinez to chair a panel that would “plan for the happy days when Castro’s regime is no more. . . . The transition to democracy and freedom will present many challenges to the Cuban people and to America, and we will be prepared.”

Bush’s announcement, which came on the 135th anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban war of independence from Spain, was timed to raise the temperatures among anti-Castro Americans and urge them to join the Bush-Powell plan against Cuba. Speaking from Washington on behalf of the world’s conscience, the U.S. President justified plans for corrective measures in Cuba as necessary, stating that Castro had acted in “defiance and contempt with a new round of brutal oppression that outraged world conscience.”

. . . the Bush administration has been planting a series of pre-invasion-type tactics for Operation Free Cuba. With a view to gaining support for this invasive venture, to test the waters, and to identify friends and foes in Latin America, Colin Powell spoke to the delegates of the Organisation of American States (OAS) about the U.S. plans for Cuba on June 9, 2003 . . . Powell classified Castro’s as “the only totalitarian dictatorship existing in the hemisphere” Powell audaciously assumed that there is an ideological conflict between President Castro and his people. He said: “We have come too far not to continue the journey and help the people of Cuba ultimately to achieve a democratic system where they can decide who their leaders will be through a free, open democratic process.” . . .

The challenge here is to decipher if this announcement is a part of the long-standing historical diatribes, agitation and aggression by the U.S. towards Cuba. Or is it a surge of new hostility under way for Latin America in general, and Cuba in particular, from the Bush administration? . . .

By now it is clear that the U.S.’ continued slander of President Castro as a fanatic, totalitarian dictator is no different from their accusations against Saddam Hussein. In the latter case they managed to convince their allies and most U.S. citizens. And they may do it again in Castro’s case. Nevertheless, what is the real angst that the U.S. has about Cuba? There is only one answer—Cuba’s resilience. . . . Cuba has stood tall against American dominance of the world for well over four decades. It had taken the leadership mantle in the Non-Aligned Movement to oppose the war on Iraq and to lead the struggle against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Finally, it survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. Further, Cuba has rallied social movements and their intellectuals behind its efforts. . . .

The respect that Fidel Castro has earned in resisting U.S. efforts to annex the Latin American continent is phenomenal. Cuba has without doubt been a huge blow to the American ego.

What then is in reserve for the U.S. if it continues this aggression beyond covert operations in Cuba? The Bush administration will have to contend with the U.S. Congress and the Senate, and also an ever-growing resilience in Latin America itself. Large, influential nations such as Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela are supported by populations that have clearly articulated a growing resistance to U.S. economic, military and political dominance in their countries and in the region. . . .

I predicted last week that BushCo’s visit to Britain would be a disaster. During that visit, here in the U.S. the media was careful always to mention that “polls show support for President Bush among a majority of Britons” or some such tripe, that the protests and demonstrations were by a dissatisfied—and “eccentric-looking” for the most part—few. Despite this facade, a different image is depicted by Eric Margolis in Sunday’s Toronto Sun:

. . . In spite of the royal welcome in a nation that increasingly resembles a giant theme park for American tourists, many Britons were appalled by the visit. They greeted Bush and his preposterously bloated entourage, worthy of Kublai Khan, with about as much warmth as they did the Spanish Armada.

Tony Blair, Bush’s de facto foreign minister, salaamed and scraped with unctuous zeal before the visiting Emperor of the West. But at least the Queen summoned up enough pride to refuse White House demands that heavily armed U.S. agents be granted full legal immunity to shoot down threatening Britons. . . .

These remarks are embedded in Margolis’ brilliant Mr. President, oil isn’t worth dying for:

NEW YORK—President George Bush should heed the wise old New York garment district maxim: “First loss, best loss.”

Translated from New Yorkese, this means when you get into a bad deal, bail out fast. The longer you stay in and refuse to face reality, the more you will end up losing.

That, alas, is just what Bush is doing in Iraq. Better he had gone to the garment district for hard advice instead of the regal photo op in London thrown for him by Queen Elizabeth and her dysfunctional family.

. . . the White House, seeing its pre-election popularity dropping fast, is desperately seeking some way out of the Iraqi hornet’s nest into which it so foolishly stuck its thick head.

Facade of power

Bush just announced—shades of Richard Nixon—that the Iraq war would be “Iraqized.” A facade of political power will be handed over to an Iraqi government. But U.S. troops will stay on for years for “security.” What happens if the “independent” Iraqi regime tells U.S. forces to leave? A speedy regime change, no doubt.

The Pentagon plans to build three major bases in Iraq from which to police the central Mideast and guard America’s new imperial oil lifeline from Central Asia, down through Afghanistan, to the West.

Ironically, if the U.S. hunts down and murders Saddam, the Shia will rise up and demand an Islamic republic—just what the White House seeks to avoid.

Any free vote in Iraq will produce the same result. Maybe that’s why Saddam has not yet been found. So take Bush’s calls for Arab democracy with much salt. The only truly free vote held in the Arab world—most of which is controlled by the U.S.—brought to power in Algeria a moderate Islamic government. It was promptly overthrown by the army, with backing from the U.S. and France.

But Bush dares not withdraw American troops from Iraq so long as the elusive Saddam stays alive. Imagine a triumphant Saddam mooning Bush from “liberated” Baghdad. The Democrats would make falafel of the president.

. . . “We just can’t cut and run,” said Bush in London, trying to sound Churchillian. Why not? The best way to get the U.S. out of this quagmire is to follow France’s sage advice: bring in a UN-run government as a fig leaf, declare victory, and pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, chaos will ensue. But Iraq and Afghanistan are in chaos now, and terrorism, as we saw in Istanbul last week, still rages.

. . . Immediate retreat saves $100 billion-plus. Iraq and Afghanistan are not worth the lives of one more American or Canadian soldier, nor more wear on overstretched U.S. forces. Withdrawal will damp down raging anti-Americanism around the globe.

Time to end the megalomania, paranoia and crazy biblical geopolitics that drove the U.S. into these profitless conflicts.

Mr. President, be a real mensch and a true patriot by admitting you were wrong, and just get out.

P.S. It’s cheaper to buy oil than to conquer it.

As timely evidence of just why we are conquering rather than buying, The Center for Public Integrity has just released a detailed report on Iraq reconstruction contracts, summarized and linked on my U.S. wars and foreign policy page.

“The official homecoming of the ‘war on terror’”: coordinated, repressive and violent response to FTAA Miami protests

The war on dissent
Heavy-handed police and propaganda tactics brought Baghdad to Miami
Naomi Klein, The Globe and Mail, November 25, 2003

. . . Small, peaceful demonstrations were attacked with extreme force; organizations were infiltrated by undercover officers who then used stun guns on activists; busses filled with union members were prevented from joining permitted marches; dozens of young faces were smashed into concrete and beaten bloody with batons; human rights activists had guns pointed at their heads at military-style checkpoints.

. . . From an activist perspective, the protests were disappointingly small and almost embarrassingly obedient, an understandable response to weeks of police intimidation.

Listening to the incessant roar of helicopters and the march of police boots, I couldn't shake the feeling that something new was going on. It felt less like we were the targets of this operation than the target practice, unwitting extras in an elaborate military drill. . . .

With the activists recast as dangerous aliens, Miami became eligible for the open tap of public money irrigating the “war on terror.” In fact, $8.5 million spent on security during the FTAA meeting came directly out of the $87-billion President Bush extracted from Congress for Iraq last month—a fact barely reported outside of the Miami press.

But more was borrowed from the Iraq invasion than just money. Miami police also invited reporters to “embed” with them in armoured vehicles and helicopters. As in Iraq, most reporters embraced their role as pseudo-soldiers with unsettling zeal, suiting up in ridiculous combat helmets and brand-new camouflage flak jackets.

The resulting media coverage was the familiar wartime combination of dramatic images and non-information. . . .

We can expect much more of these tactics on the homeland front. Just as civil liberties violations escalated when Washington lost control over the FTAA process, so will repression increase as the Bush crew faces the ultimate threat: losing control over the White House.

Already, Jim Wilkinson, director of strategic communications at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar (the operation that gave the world the Jessica Lynch rescue), has moved to New York to head up media operations for the Republican National Convention. “We're looking at embedding reporters,” he told the New York Observer of his plans to use some of the Iraq tricks during the convention. “We're looking at new and interesting camera angles.”

The war is coming home.

Mark my words: Bush’s upcoming visit to Britain is going to be a colossal disaster. On one hand, he will be traveling with a retinue worthy of an emperor, with

. . . 250 members of the Secret Service, 150 advisers from the National Security Department, 200 representatives of other government departments and 50 political aides.

There will also be approximately 100 journalists travelling with him. There are also his personal chef, personal assistants, four cooks, medics and the presidential 15-strong sniffer dog team.

One person who always travels with Mr Bush is the military aide who carries his “nuclear briefcase.” The aide, an army colonel, will have his own room at Buckingham Palace.

It is not revealed if Mr or Mrs Bush will have stylists with them, although the First Lady may be well-advised to do so, having become the butt of uncharming remarks in America about her fashion sense. But they will both bring extensive wardrobes with them ready for a state banquet or a trip around Sedgefield.

To transport this vast caravan, Mr Bush will use Air Force One and Two, both 747s, and a third chartered passenger jet. C17 Globemaster cargo aircraft are believed already to have flown over his motorcade, including the armoured limousines that he always takes with him abroad. . . .

But Bush is despised in Britain and will be greeted with monumental protests:

. . . the leader of the country that Blair insists is our closest ally is about to receive the most torrid reception ever to greet a foreign dignitary on British shores. It’s predicted that up to 100,000 people will be out on London’s streets to protest at Bush’s presence. All police leave has been cancelled, and Scotland Yard and the US secret services charged with protecting the President are trying to agree how much of London should be sealed off to prevent demonstrators—and possible terrorists—from getting a sight of him.

. . . in Iraq—as in most other things, the average American assumes—the British are our friends. Imagine the shock, then, when they see surging crowds, burning flags and (unless police step into ban it) a giant effigy of the Great Leader being toppled, à la Saddam, in Trafalgar Square.

It is not only Bush the Chickenhawk warmonger and promoter-in-chief of the great illusion about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction who they will be denouncing. It is also Bush the ignorant, self-righteous Christian warrior, Bush the smirking executioner and Bush the believer in one law for America and another for everyone else. . . .

His administration is the most radical of modern times. It has rammed through huge tax cuts, and run up the biggest deficits in US history in the name of supply-side ideology. By tilting those cuts towards the very rich, he has widened the disparities of US society.

Rarely is there any serious attempt to engage with critics, just the fait accompli, and the implication that, in time of war, opposition is akin to giving succour to the enemy. Bush wants to pack the courts with doctrinal right-wing judges; if he could, he would roll back a woman’s right to choose even further than the ban on partial birth abortion he signed into law last week.

And all this done with a certainty ill-befitting a man with scant knowledge of the world’s complexities, and a quite scary lack of curiosity about what makes other people and other cultures tick. . . .

So virulent is the dislike for Bush in Britain that a concerted Bare Your Bums campaign has been in the works for some time leading up to this visit. Initial hopes were that “Georgie will hear of the unwelcome reception that awaits him and decide to stay at home”:

George Bush is unlikely to walk around the streets kissing babies because of the large number of people that wish to blow him up. However, a “Brits love Bush” photo-op of happy crowds greeting the man may be in the offing and it’s vitally important that we rob him of such a lucrative propaganda device. . . .

There are several levels of involvement to suit a number of personal situations and comfort levels. They are listed below. . . .

For the President of the United States of America to be mooned by British citizens while on a state visit with the Queen of England—you almost have to feel sorry for him. Almost, but not quite.

“It was not bad intelligence. It was much more. It was an orchestrated effort.”

USAF Colonel (Retired) Sam Gardiner has written an independently researched, highly readable and extremely important 56-page report on deliberate propagandizing, strategic influencing and psyops by BushCo prior to their war: Truth from these Podia (PDF), “Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II”

. . . My research suggests there were over 50 stories manufactured or at least engineered that distorted the picture of Gulf II for the American and British people. . . .

I’m not writing about a conspiracy. It is about a well run and networked organization. My basic argument is that very bright and even well intentioned officials found how to control the process of governance in ways never before possible. . . .

Standing back from the details of the stories, the strategy of strategic influence and marketing emerges. . . .

[For example,] In November 2001, the White House Coalition Information Center initiated an effort to highlight the plight of women in Afghanistan. Jim Wilkinson, who was working with the Center at the time, called this effort “the best thing we’ve done.”

When he said it was the best thing they’ve done, it was not about something they did. It was about a story they created. It was about story. It was story. Story was most important. . . .

What we saw in the Afghanistan effort were patterns that would continue through Gulf II. It was designed to “build support.” It was not a program with specific steps or funding to improve the conditions of women. . . .

The other pattern in the Afghanistan family campaign that is important is the close coordination between the White House and Number 10 Downing Street. The coordination was so close that Laura Bush and Cherie Blair used almost the same phrase in speeches only separated by three days. The message was coordinated in the Afghanistan campaign. It would be coordinated for Gulf II. . . .

In a postscript, Gardiner, in his folksy way, chastises the American people:

I think the materials point to problems in the way newspapers did their job during the war. Why don’t they react immediately that they need to do some self-appraisal? I think one could take the stories I have highlighted and ask some direct questions. How was it that the Washington Post took classified information on the Jessica Lynch story and published it just the way the individual leaking it in the Pentagon wanted? Why did the New York Times let itself be used by “intelligence officials” on stories? Why did the Washington Times never seem to question a leak they were given? Why were newspapers in the UK better than those in the U.S. in raising questions before and during the war? . . .

I pain for our democratic process when I find individuals not angered at being deceived.

This is the kind of thing I like to print out and "accidentally" leave in waiting rooms, libraries, buses and fast-food joints. It is also an excellent piece to send to Congress people and newspaper editors

For an excellent overview of Gardiner’s report, see Around the Bend, a 4-part commentary by Earth Island Institute editor Gar Smith.

Horse at the gates of Troy?

The billionaire philanthropist George Soros announced this week that defeating Bush is “the central focus of my life” and he is donating $5 million to MoveOn.org.

As welcome as this gift is, we must tread cautiously around George Soros. A little research reveals dubious connections with neocon corporations, particularly Carlyle Group and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), as outlined in this important and link-filled Democratic Underground discussion. Within that thread, this excellent summary by Zhade:

George Soros owned a third of Harken after Harken purchased Soros Oil, which happened after Arbusto was bailed out by Spectrum 7, which Harken later acquired. Harken, of course, had "extensive ties" with BCCI. Worth noting is that, according to Greg Palast, one of Harken's board members, Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, accompanied Iran-Contra weapons dealer and middleman Adnan Khashoggi to “a meeting with Saudi billionaires and Al-Qaeda's financial arm. In essence, Palast claims the Saudis paid protection money to the terrorists.”

Soros invested $100 million with the Carlyle Group.

Last December he was tried—and convicted—in a French court for insider trading.

He's financed a lot of members of what research is revealing may be a corporate-controlled “Parallel Left” media.

He sits on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, which also includes Vin Weber (chairman for the National Endowment for Democracy, which according to the New York Times “funneled more than $877,000 into Venezuela opposition groups in the weeks and months before the recently aborted coup attempt” last year), John Deutch (on the board of Citigroup, Raytheon), Robert E. Rubin (director and chairman of the executive committee of Citigroup, on the board at Ford Motors), and Andrew Young (director for Archer Daniels Midland and the CAPPS-loving Delta), among others.

For a detailed look at Soros, read George Soros: Prophet of an “Open Society”. He's not the white knight some of the higher-ups would want us to believe.

British Government No Match for George Soros (scroll down) details how he shattered the British pound in 1992:

. . . During the weeks before the massive sell-off of the British pound, George Soros was busy exchanging seven billion US dollars for German Deutschemarks.

When the time was right he moved in fast, selling the British pound. As the pound fell the Deutschemark rose, creating huge profits for Soros. . . . As soon as news of this got out the other professionals followed suit.

The onslaught was overwhelming and too much for Norman Lamont, the then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In an attempt to halt the slide Lamont resorted to selling some of Britain's gold reserves. He put up interest rates three times during one day, but this was still no match for the professionals. . . .

In addition, these unflattering comments appear in an analysis of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank that includes Soros in its board of directors, included this past March in a Centre for Research on Globalisation article, Eleventh hour lies mount as war approaches:

George Soros. Billionaire super investor, philanthropist. According to a penetrating analysis by Heather Cottin (CovertAction Quarterly, Fall 2002), Soros, a leading member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Carlyle Group, plays a major role in “tightening the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order while promoting his own financial gain,” Soros’ Open Society, which routinely funds “alternative Left groups” has been linked to the CIA.

Just as Soros announced his gift to MoveOn, the Moscow office of his foundation was “left paralysed” after a raid:

. . . 50 camouflage-clad men seized [Open Society Institute] Moscow offices and removed computer records and archives.

Yekaterina Geniyeva, the head of Soros’s Open Society Institute in Russia, told journalists yesterday that the raid, ordered by the building's owner ostensibly because of a dispute over rent, appeared to be politically motivated.

The raid, at about midnight on Thursday, came just days after Soros publicly criticized the jailing of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky as “persecution” that would force business to submit to the state. . . .

“The Soros foundation has been stripped bare. There is nothing left but the walls. We will try to resurrect our activities but we cannot be certain when,” Geniyeva said.

The foundation is involved in promoting civil society and the development of democratic ideas, chiefly in former Soviet bloc countries.

Khodorkovsky, the former boss of oil giant Yukos, has been in jail since October 25 on seven charges including fraud and tax evasion. . . .

It has been pointed out that “Soros is angry not at Bush’s aims—of expanding Pax Americana and making the world safe for global capitalists like himself—but with the crass and blundering way Bush is going about it.”

By making U.S. ambitions so clear, the Bush gang has committed the cardinal sin of giving the game away. For years, Soros and his NGOs have gone about their work extending the boundaries of the ‘free world’ so skillfully that hardly anyone noticed. Now a Texan redneck and a gang of overzealous neo-cons have blown it.”

Soros’ way is to use a few billion dollars, some NGOs and a “nod and wink from the U.S. State department” to bring down foreign governments that are “bad for business” to seize a nation’s assets, and even get thanked for your ‘benevolence’.”

He does indeed appear to be “one mafia don running out another” and “the horse at the gates of Troy,” as Tinoire puts it so well in post #140, “Soros IS a Neo-con.” Best to keep a very close eye on George Soros. This Russian stuff is not something I feel qualified to comment on, and I'm only beginning to learn about the diabolical BFFI/Carlyle Group/Bush Family Evil Empire network. There is something distinctly donnish, beneath the surface and on a global scale, about Soros’ doings.

Check out Al Gore speaking on freedom and security on November 9:

. . . President Bush is claiming the unilateral right to do that to any American citizen he believes is an “enemy combatant.” Those are the magic words. If the President alone decides that those two words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment. . . .

Now, if it wants to, the federal government has the right to monitor every website you go to on the internet, keep a list of everyone you send email to or receive email from and everyone who you call on the telephone or who calls you . . .

Starting two years ago, federal agents were given broad new statutory authority by the Patriot Act to “sneak and peak” in non-terrorism cases. They can secretly enter your home with no warning—whether you are there or not—and they can wait for months before telling you they were there. And it doesn’t have to have any relationship to terrorism whatsoever. It applies to any garden-variety crime. And the new law makes it very easy to get around the need for a traditional warrant—simply by saying that searching your house might have some connection (even a remote one) to the investigation of some agent of a foreign power. Then they can go to another court, a secret court, that more or less has to give them a warrant whenever they ask. . . .

. . . it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.

In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.

In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.

The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know, by Livia Corona, Fast Company, December 2003

. . . By selling a gallon of kosher dills for less than most grocers sell a quart, Wal-Mart may have provided a service for its customers. But what did it do for Vlasic? The pickle maker had spent decades convincing customers that they should pay a premium for its brand. Now Wal-Mart was practically giving them away. And the fevered buying spree that resulted distorted every aspect of Vlasic's operations, from farm field to factory to financial statement.

Indeed, as Vlasic discovered, the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us “every day low prices.” It’s the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart. . . .

Commentary on a BushCo directive banning traditional military ceremonies and media coverage of the return of the bodies of U.S. soldiers:

Don’t Mention the Dead
Gary Younge
The Guardian/UK, November 7, 2003

. . . “We’re now encountering deaths at rates we haven’t seen since Vietnam,” says David Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations, “and I think it’s important for the country to hear from the president at times like these and for the families to know. I think the weight is on the side of clear expression,” he told the New York Times. . . .

“You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda,” says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington’s American University. “Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defense has ever undertaken in this country. Casualties are a very important media football in any war [and] this is a qualitative change.”

. . . For the first time since war in the television era, the sight of flag-covered caskets arriving to the salute of military colleagues and the tears of mourning relatives are no longer part of the national narrative. Bush has not attended the funeral of a single soldier slain in the war and refers to the casualties only in general terms. . . .

The bald numbers of the death toll dominate political debate and public disquiet. But the human impact behind those statistics has been scattered to communities throughout the country. The bodies travel from a global conflict to local crises without apparently touching the national consciousness. Even on a regional level the deaths receive scant attention. . . .

“This is the fifth soldier in Flint to have died,” says Ken Palmer, a reporter for the Flint Journal, “and the third since the president declared the war was over. The first couple had a real impact. But now I think people are becoming numb.”

Yesterday, Cary Brassfield [father of 22-year-old Army Spc. Artimus Brassfield, killed by mortar fire in Iraq on October 24th] woke up to the news that two more soldiers had died in Iraq and the administration promise that its campaign in Iraq will be unrelenting. “The ones that are speaking do not have the same stakes that we have,” says Artimus’s father. “They have their political careers. But our homes are being torn apart.”

An important and eloquent piece by Tom Engelhardt, author of The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War) on why we must leave Iraq:

The time of withdrawal
TomDispatch.com, October 31, 2003

. . . Invade Texas, invade Iran, invade China, invade Albania, invade Lebanon, invade Iraq—name your place, in fact—and you better not assume there won’t be resistance. Someone always resists. That single sentence sums up the last two centuries of global history.

Empires invariably think that it’s they who are bringing civilization and progress in their train and that only the barbarians, the terrorists, the bitter-enders resist for fear of being thrown onto that dust heap of history. But history is, as it turns out, filled to the brim with barbarians, terrorists, and bitter-enders, not to speak of enraged ordinary people who have seen their friends and relatives die, who feel the discomfort—which has only grown more psychologically unbearable over the last century—of watching well-armed, well-paid foreigners walk with impunity across their lands. They do resist, exactly as Texans would. Afterwards perhaps they fall on each other’s throats. Such things are unpredictable. . . .

Sooner or later, regimes of occupation withdraw or collapse. Or both. In our times, it seems, ever sooner. Even the Soviet Union didn’t make it past one long human lifetime. Of course, we’ve never been in a single hyperpower version of an imperial world before. But I think it might be possible to start into the subject of withdrawal from Iraq by saying one thing: There’s a great deal of “hype” in that “hyperpower.” American power has been distinctly over-hyped. . . . Yes, militarily, our power is awesome and no other country can come close to matching it in conventional war settings. But it is most powerful withheld. As Iraq shows, once we commit ourselves to action, we are likely to find ourselves strangely overmatched. The irony here is that what an Iraqi military of 400,000 couldn’t hope to do, relatively small groups of ill-armed men and women are doing.

Having taken Iraq, eager to nail down its resources, to establish an imperial “democracy” as well as a string of permanent military bases there, and then drive a policy dreamt up inside Washington“s Beltway directly through the Middle East, the sole Great Power on this planet, issuing documents on Global Domination till the end of time, without a Great Rival, playing a Great Game with no one, and in an Arms Race of one (but still developing plans for ever higher-tech weaponry for future decades), nonetheless finds itself driven by a modest if growing resistance movement in Iraq. The president of the greatest power on Earth is being forced by events in “5% of Iraq” to call in his advisers for endless meetings, shake up the structure of his administration, hold sudden news conferences, offer new and ever more farfetched explanations of American actions, and backtrack on claims—all because of Iraqi resistance.

. . . Sooner or later, the time of withdrawal will be upon us. Some of us would like it to be sooner, not later. . . .

Why we must leave Iraq

. . . The United States has long been involved with Iraq and the record doesn’t make for pleasant reading. The CIA had a hand in Saddam Hussein’s rise and the success of the Baath Party. The Reagan administration supported Saddam during the years of some of his worst crimes because he seemed a reasonable, if somewhat shaky bulwark against the evil Shi’ite regime in Iran. The first Bush administration, having decided not to march on Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War (during which we slaughtered possibly tens of thousands of Iraqis), despite full command of the skies over Iraq, proceeded to look the other way while Saddam crushed a Shi’ite uprising (itself filled with bloody revenge killings). . . .

Though we arrived in Iraq speaking the language of liberation (in English only) and most Iraqis were relieved initially to have the sanctions regime and the war ended as well as a horrendously abusive regime gone, we did not arrive as liberators. Though almost all of the above had largely been forgotten by Americans and could barely be found in our media, it was certainly in the minds of many Iraqis, who had to assume, on the basis of the historical record, a distinct self-interestedness on our part. . . .

When thinking of withdrawal, it’s important to remember that it was never a concept in the Bush administration’s vocabulary. Despite all those years of Vietnam “lessons” and Colin Powell’s “doctrine” which said that no military action should be undertaken without an “exit strategy” in place, Bush’s boys had no exit strategy in mind because they never imagined leaving. . . . there was no greater signal of our long-term intentions than our dismantling of the Iraqi military, and their planned re-creation as a lightly armed border-patrolling force of perhaps 40,000 with no air force. Put that together with the four permanent bases we began building almost immediately and you know that we were expecting to be Iraq’s on-site military protector into the distant future.

Iraq itself was to be the lynchpin of an American empire of bases that was to extend from the former Yugoslavia to Uzbekistan, right across the “arc of instability” which just happened to coincide with the major oil lands of this Earth. . . . This is what “liberation” truly meant.

So when considering withdrawal, you can’t think only of Iraq. When occupying it, the Bush administration had far larger fish to fry. They had a global no-exit strategy of domination they wanted to put fully in place. . . .

What is bad now for us—and for the Iraqis—will only be worse later. The resistance will be greater, more organized, and more determined. Our allies, both within and without Iraq, ever more distant; American troops more isolated, angry, and embattled; money in shorter supply; military morale lower; and the antiwar movement here stronger. . . . And if “staying the course,” toughing it out, only makes a bad situation worse, then withdrawal when it comes, as it will, will only be that much harder and the results only that much more catastrophic for all parties concerned.

Let me sum up in four sentences:

History, long term and more recent, is not on our side.

We are a war-making and an occupying force, not a peacekeeping force.

We never planned to leave Iraq.

Time is against us.

Or to boil all this down to a sentence: We are not and never have been the solution to the problem of Iraq, but a significant part of the problem.

. . . Let us offer Iraq genuine help, reconstruction aid, and support of all sorts afterwards, possibly indirectly through groups whose interests can’t be mistaken for ours. But our troops are an occupying army. They can’t keep the peace. They are the war.