Disasters, military and economic

From John Emerson at Seeing the Forest (my emphasis):

". . . Seymour Hersh has reported that the Bush administration plans to begin air attacks and covert actions against Iran this year, with the goal of toppling the Islamic regime. Bush himself has made it clear that he believes that the voters have given him a blank check, and that his critics (left, right, and center) are now irrelevant. I think that we can count on these attacks as a done deal. (The 'Salvador option' we recently heard about might also still happen, though it might very well have just been a smokescreen. Even the Social Security reform he's been talking about might just have been intended to distract us from his big international plans.)

These new attacks are presumably just the second stage in the multi-nation plan Wolfowitz spoke about right before the war. In other words, we can plan to be at war for five to twenty years.

The Army and Guard are already being pushed to the limit. Thus, there will have to be a draft. But in order for there to be a draft, anti-war groups and spokesmen will have to be marginalized and crushed. So those of us who are anti-war should prepare to be called traitors and cowards with an intensity that we haven't seen so far. Ann Coulter is soon going to go completely mainstream.

As long as the wars are going reasonably well, they will be almost impossible to oppose. A lot of so-called moderates decided last November 2 to take another chance on Bush, and if they change their minds now it won't make a damn bit of difference. A big chunk of the Democratic Party will try to curry favor by supporting the new wars, too, but that won't do anyone any good either. The Democratic hawks won't be able to bring the whole party with them - and anyway, why would the voters want to switch hawks in midstream? Bush is going to be in the driver's seat for some time.

As soon as the Iran phase starts, all of our criticisms of what happened before will be forgotten (if they haven't been already.) This is what Suskind's source meant when he talked about 'creating reality'. By using the power of the Commander in Chief to completely change the ball game, Bush is going to make a big chunk of recent political discussion permanently inoperative.

I always hated the complacency of the people who smirkingly bragged about being 'reality-based'. They missed the point of what had been said. Democrats figure out what past reality was like, and assume that future reality will be pretty much the same. Republicans figure out how future reality will be different from past reality, and then ask themselves what they can do to change and exploit this new reality. And they win that way."

It has become fashionable every few months to rely on small signs in Washington and proclaim that the rule of the neocons is over, but nothing could be further from the truth. Their essential plan continues completely unopposed, and there is no prospect that Bush will even attempt to rein them in. The sole impediments to what amounts to a World War against Islam and much of the rest of the world are logistical, not political. Their immediate problem is that they are suffering from an extreme case of the shorts in the troop department, as there are still a few adults in the Pentagon who insist on having sufficient troops around in readiness to fight any war of necessity that might come up, in between the neocon wars of choice. That explains Wolfowitz' extreme haste in wanting to pull American troops involved in tsunami relief out of Asia (presumably whatever secret military deliveries they have made under cover of the relief efforts have already been made), the new PNAC order to American politicians for an increase in American troop levels (with the unstated requirement for a draft), and ideas being floated that the attacks on Iran and Syria will take the form of aerial bombardments rather than Iraq-style occupations (I'm not sure how they'll spin the idea that aerial bombardments bring 'freedom', but rest assured they will), with the Iran job actually being subcontracted to Israel (appropriate, don't you think?). If Iraq hadn't proven to be such a quagmire, there is no doubt that new wars would have started already. While the neocons are consumed with plotting war after war, the American ecomony continues to deteriorate. The Chinese, who are desperately trying to get somebody in the Bush Administration to pay attention to the American economic problem, have had to resort to making a public announcement of their lack of confidence in the American dollar (something central bankers never do, particularly if they are holding massive amounts of these rapidly depreciating dollars). This is their vain attempt to find someone in the Bush Administration who would help them let the dollar down in an orderly way that won't ruin the American economy and the golden goose of the consumer demand of Americans for cheap Chinese consumer goods. When it comes to responsible economic policies, no one in the Bush Administration is at home. Americans find themselves in the odd position that their only hope is that their economy tanks sufficiently quickly to save them from the warmongering stupidities of their own government. Unfortunately, they'll probably get both the wars and the ruined economy.

Operation Mockingbush

In the light of recent revelations that the Bush administration has been secretly paying right-wing 'journalists' to shill for Bush administration policies - and since they have paid some right-wing journalists, and can't be trusted to reveal the total number that are on the payroll, can you now trust any right-wing journalist? - it is worth remembering the CIA's Operation Mockingbird (see here and here and here and here and here and this interesting thread). Bought journalism is not new. Blogs are no salvation as they have also been corrupted. Everything is spin. Don't believe anything (except what you read here).

Cliff Baxter, again

The suicide of Enron executive Cliff Baxter hasn't quite gone away:

"City officials apologized to the widow of a former Enron executive for losing photographic negatives from the investigation of his suicide, and agreed to pay her $250,000 if the pictures ever become public."

and:

"Whalen and the city had agreed in 2002 that a 900-page police report on Cliff Baxter's death could be released but that certain photographs and a few documents would be withheld and then destroyed in 2004. Sugar Land officials destroyed the documents as agreed, but about 100 negatives could not be found."

Souvernirs? Fear that someone might want to take a long look at the photos before they were destroyed? Or just the same general incompetence that so often leads to false findings of suicide? I've written about this 'suicide' . . . .

Douglas Feith

Here is a really excellent mini-bio of Douglas Feith from Kurt Nimmo's really excellent blog. It will be interesting to see if Feith had to walk the plank because he was the Bush Administration point man in the AIPAC treason scandal, and the neocons decided he had to go before his slow rotting ruined the whole barrel of treasonous neocon Zionist apples. Feith's 'want to spend more time with my family' excuse is a sure sign that something deep is behind his departure, particularly since Rummy and Wolfie are more firmly ensconced than ever.

Joseph K. in Iraq

Pepe Escobar on the Iraqi election:

"Of 1 million eligible expatriate voters, only 10% will actually vote. There are no Sunni Arab candidates (in part because the US military killed - or jailed - many Sunni party and tribal leaders). For any Iraqi in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Turkey, it will be impossible to cross the border and vote: borders will be closed for three days. Inside Iraq there will be curfews - and even traffic will be blocked. Half of all candidates have already withdrawn. And there will be no international monitors. As the names of the roughly 7,700 candidates on 80 party coalition lists are still unknown on the eve of polling day, no wonder the word on Baghdad's streets is that 'the Americans gave us the first secret elections in history'."

The term 'secret ballot' in Iraq means it is a secret who you are voting for! In Kafka's great fictional work 'The Trial', no one will tell Joseph K. what he is accused of. In George Bush's great fictional work 'The Iraqi Election', no one will tell the people of Iraq who they are voting for. It's the ideal election, the election that the Powers That Be would like to see everywhere. Escobar continues with the $280 billion - and climbing - question:

". . . if the whole neo-conservative rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was to facilitate the expansion of greater Israel and control a key energy source in the Middle East, how is it possible for Washington to even envision a retreat? The Pentagon has already announced that it is ready to keep at least 120,000 troops in Iraq for the next two years, under two pretexts: to train Iraqi security forces and to fight the guerrilla war. President George W Bush has spelled it all out: the US will not be leaving Iraq any time soon because he has interpreted his re-election as a confidence vote. Ask Vice President Dick Cheney (although he won't answer): the whole point of the US in Iraq is long-term domination over Arab oil."

Hersh lays it on the line

Seymour Hersh is on fire:

"Let's all forget this word 'insurgency'. It's one of the most misleading words of all. Insurgency assumes that we had gone to Iraq and won the war and a group of disgruntled people began to operate against us and we then had to do counter-action against them. That would be an insurgency. We are fighting the people we started the war against. We are fighting the Ba'athists plus nationalists. We are fighting the very people that started - they only choose to fight in different time spans than we want them to, in different places. We took Baghdad easily. It wasn't because be won. We took Baghdad because they pulled back and let us take it and decided to fight a war that had been pre-planned that they're very actively fighting."

and (my emphasis; note that the 'cult' Hersh refers to is centered around Cheney-Rumsfeld, which makes the revelations, prompted by Hersh's work in the first place, of Rumsfeld's new personal Pentagon dirty-tricks intelligence agency established by crazed Zionist Stephen A. Cambone and crazed Christian Zionist Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, and the fact that the Pentagon is officially, despite the Posse Comitatus Act, operating domestically, all the more frightening):

". . . the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease. It does say something about how fragile our Democracy is. You do have to wonder what a Democracy is when it comes down to a few men in the Pentagon and a few men in the White House having their way. What they have done is neutralize the C.I.A. because there were people there inside - the real goal of what Goss has done was not attack the operational people, but the intelligence people. There were people - serious senior analysts who disagree with the White House, with Cheney, basically, that's what I mean by White House, and Rumsfeld on a lot of issues, as somebody said, the goal in the last month has been to separate the apostates from the true believers. That's what's happening. The real target has been 'diminish the agency.' I'm writing about all of this soon, so I don't want to overdo it, but there's been a tremendous sea change in the government. A concentration of power."

and, much like the almost secret bombing of Iraq by Britain and the United States that took place in the years of the 'no-fly zones', an amazing revelation hidden by the fact that the journalists in Iraq who are supposed to be covering the war are cowering under their beds in their hotel rooms (my emphasis):

"Since we installed our puppet government, this man, Allawi, who was a member of the Mukabarat, the secret police of Saddam, long before he became a critic, and is basically Saddam-lite. Before we installed him, since we have installed him on June 28, July, August, September, October, November, every month, one thing happened: the number of sorties, bombing raids by one plane, and the number of tonnage dropped has grown exponentially each month. We are systematically bombing that country. There are no embedded journalists at Doha, the Air Force base I think we're operating out of. No embedded journalists at the aircraft carrier, Harry Truman. That's the aircraft carrier that I think is doing many of the operational fights. There's no air defense, It's simply a turkey shoot. They come and hit what they want. We know nothing. We don't ask. We're not told. We know nothing about the extent of bombing. So if they're going to carry out an election and if they're going to succeed, bombing is going to be key to it, which means that what happened in Fallujah, essentially Iraq - some of you remember Vietnam - Iraq is being turn into a 'free-fire zone' right in front of us. Hit everything, kill everything. I have a friend in the Air Force, a Colonel, who had the awful task of being an urban bombing planner, planning urban bombing, to make urban bombing be as unobtrusive as possible. I think it was three weeks ago today, three weeks ago Sunday after Fallujah I called him at home. I'm one of the people - I don't call people at work. I call them at home, and he has one of those caller I.D.'s, and he picked up the phone and he said, 'Welcome to Stalingrad.' We know what we're doing. This is deliberate. It's being done. They're not telling us. They're not talking about it."

and, after comparing My Lai to Abu Ghraib, and a discussion of the effect of the brutality on the soldiers, and all the horribly wounded Americans, and the fact that those in the military are going to start to question what is going on in Iraq:

"Another salvation may be the economy. It's going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick. And the third thing is Europe - Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there, collective action against us. Certainly, nobody - it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit - our - we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here. But he could get through that. That will be another year, and the damage he’s going to do between then and now is enormous. We're going to have some very bad months ahead."

Solid predictions. Do you want to believe the warmongers, who say that everything is just swell, or Hersh, who puts it on the line with some clear predictions? Who is your money on? There's more content in this little interview than you would get if you read every word in the disgusting American press for the last four years. You can tie the new cult neatly into the real problem with Gonzales as attorney general, that Gonzales gave Bush a legal opinion essentially saying that Bush was bound by no law in doing what he wanted to do. As Tom Engelhardt writes:

". . . the legal theory that first came to light in the 'torture memos' that emerged from the White House Legal Counsel's office - that, in his role as commander-in-chief in 'wartime,' the President was essentially unfettered by Congress or the courts and could act as he wished - turns out to reach way beyond the issue of torture. Yes, Rumsfeld's Pentagon had trumped the CIA and was once again expanding its turf. It was now to be the armed intelligence and diplomatic spearhead of an ever-more militarized government; but at least as important was the urge that lurked behind this development - to free the President of all accountability, all democratic fetters, all those balancing powers so familiar to high-school students in any civics class. What this represents is a strikingly expansive imperial definition of 'freedom.'"

The speed with which the United States had fallen into fascism, under the guidance of an American Imperialist/Zionist/Christian Zionist cult, is remarkable.

A few murders

A few murders:

1. Prominent Indonesian human rights activist Munir Said Thalib was murdered on September 6 by arsenic poisoning while on a Geruda Airlines flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam. The poison was probably in a dish of fried noodles served on the plane. Since he was the only victim, the crime should be easy to solve. After dragging their feet as long as possible, Indonesian authorities finally began an investigation. It is widely believed that the Indonesian military was behind the assassination, and thus very unlikely that the truth will come out. A pilot who was on the same flight seems to be the main patsy suspect (there is a hint that Munir was guided into a business class seat even though he only had an economy ticket, and that this seat change may have been part of the plot).


2. A nuclear research scientist from St. Louis, John Mullen, was murdered on June 29 by a massive single dose of arsenic. It took local authorities five and a half months to officially determine the cause of death. Mullen had retired from McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in 1999, but remained active as a consultant for the successor corporation, Boeing.


3. On January 7, the body of Jeong H. Im - a protein chemist who could introduce himself by saying 'I'm Im' - was found in a burning car in a parking garage in Columbia, Missouri, the victim of multiple stab wounds. This wouldn't be much of a story, except that he was another in the long list of dead microbiologists. It's not that they're dead, it is the many bizarre, violent and odd ways in which they died. We don't have enough information to distinguish the conspiracy from the coincidence, but it seems likely that at least some of these deaths are connected to the scientific research they were doing. The nature of the deaths also appears to carry some sort of warning. It would be interesting to know what microbiologists themselves think that warning is about.

American atrocity exhibition

These pictures (with great bitter captions referring to the inauguration; for the straight captions of what happened, see here) of Iraqi children reacting to the cold-blooded murder of their parents by American troops - the yellow 'support our troops' ribbons should be speckled with blood - will become some of the iconic images of the American attack on Iraq (I think the fourth picture in the series - the third in the BBC series - is one of the greatest war pictures ever taken), along with the girl with the missing foot and the torture martyr of Abu Ghraib (more torture pictures here, and let's not forget who is really responsible, Mr. Star of David). I know it is impossible for Americans to believe, but these rag-heads actually feel emotions. Enjoy the oil!

The 2004 American Presidential election

Here is the single best thing I've read on the jaw-dropping record of vote suppression and vote fraud which constituted the last American Presidential election. All Americans who care about their country ought to memorize it. Needless to say, it does not come out of the United States - where the state of democracy is considered to be perfect - but from an English professor from a small city in southern Ontario. Careful analysis of voting in Ohio and across the country - not to mention the completely crooked Ohio 'recount' - makes the conclusion inescapable: Kerry won, and the only reason he is not President was a systematic campaign by the Republicans to steal the election. Pious commentators who call themselves progressives or Democrats who glibly state that Bush won and it's time to move on are simply uninformed - and you'd think they would care enough to make themselves informed - or are lying, to themselves or to everybody else.

I recently referred to the example of polling results in Auglaize County in western Ohio. In that county, voter turnout increased by 3911 people from the 2000 election. Bush received 3779 more votes than he got in 2000; Kerry picked up 557 more votes than Gore got in 2000 (there were other, minor candidates, so the numbers don't quite add up). Bush received essentially all the votes from the increased voter turnout, at a time when Bush was an extremely unpopular incumbent. It is simply not possible. There are allegations that a former employee of Election Systems and Software had unauthorized access to the main computer that counted the votes, allegations which went nowhere. This is the same pattern that occurred all over the United States on voting day, but particularly in the key states of Florida and Ohio.

The 2004 election is the culmination of forty years of American conspiracy starting with the murder of JFK, with the failure to investigate each conspiracy leading directly to the next one. When Earl Warren decided he had to lie to the American people about who was really responsible for the death of JFK, he set in motion a series of head-in-the-sand bad decisions that continue up to today. The consistent lack of courage in facing its demons has left the United States in a bit of a pickle, as it now faces an almost inconceivably bleak future of theocratic leadership, disastrous economic policies, and a never-ending series of wars.

The pomegranate

Not that long ago I visited an exhibit of antiquities from the Palestine including the now infamous pomegranate. Though tiny, it is a very impressive object, and had on it an inscription which was used to connect it to Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. It has been determined that the inscription is a forgery and the pomegranate had nothing to do with the temple (the Israeli archeologists of integrity who pursued this matter deserve congratulations). While visiting the exhibit, my suspicious mind noticed a hidden thread of propaganda, particularly with respect to the existence of King David. King David's historical existence is regarded as being of the utmost importance to Zionists trying to assert a claim over the lands of the Palestinians. While there is no real evidence that he even existed, and if he did he was likely a local chief of no importance, and it is impossible to understand why the existence of such a small-time leader thousands of years ago creates any claims to lands today, the exhibit made a great deal of attempting to prove the historical existence of King David. King David and the pomegranate are examples of the misuse of archeology in the Zionist quest for Greater Israel. From The Guardian:

"The discovery of a Temple-era pomegranate, in particular, was always going to provoke excitement. The pomegranate is a deeply resonant fruit in Judaism that, according to the Bible, was used as a decorative motif in Solomon's temple. There is a Rabbinic reference to its seeds, which in legend always number 613 - one for each of the commandments of the Bible. One Israel museum press officer explains the effect of seeing such relics: 'It is very exciting, very emotional, very Jewish feelings,' she says. 'Any time you see something like this, it feels very special because you can see your roots.'

It underlines the intense political significance that antiquities, particularly Biblical-era artefacts, attain in Israel, where discoveries of ancient sites or relics can be claimed by particular groups as proof of their historic claim to a particular piece of land. Early Zionism was enthusiastic in promoting Bible-era relics - they cemented the Jewish connection to the land, and were seen to give credence to the new state of Israel: ancient facts on the ground, if you like. It is telling, suggests Dr Shimon Gibson, archaeology professor at the Albright Institute, Jerusalem, that the Joash stone emerged at around the same time - early 2003 - that Palestinian leaders were becoming more vociferous over the 'alleged' Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. The stone's inscription describes repair works to the Jewish temple at Jerusalem. 'Those who forged, if that is what they did, would be trying to identify key spots of interest to Israel at that moment,' he says. 'One of those is, of course, the Temple Mount, because in any deal made with the Palestinians, the status of Jerusalem and who controls the holy places is one of the key things that will be on the table.'"

We see exactly the same abuses with Christian connections to the Holy Land. Every year, usually around Christmas, some archeologist gets his name in the papers by claiming, with no real evidence, that he has discovered some site named in the New Testament. This excites the Christian Zionists and serves the propaganda purposes of those trying to create Greater Israel. Biblical archeology is one of the greatest crocks of shit in the world today, a crock topped with a very ornamental pomegranate.

Ukrainian coup

There is an amazing article in the New York Times describing the coup d'etat by which Yushchenko won the Ukrainian election. Of course, since the 'good' guy won, the New York Times can't call it a coup, but we can read between the lines. The coup plotters were senior officials with the Ukrainian intelligence agency, the S. B. U.:

"The officers funneled information to Mr. Kuchma's rivals, provided security to opposition figures and demonstrations, sent choreographed public signals about their unwillingness to follow the administration's path and engaged in a psychological tug-of-war with state officials to soften responses against the protests.

Ultimately, the intelligence agencies worked - usually in secret, sometimes in public, at times illegally - to block the fraudulent ascension of Mr. Yanukovich, whom several of the generals loathe. Directly and indirectly, their work supported Viktor A. Yushchenko, the Western-oriented candidate who is now the president-elect."

Remember General Smeshko, the head of the intelligence agency who is supposed to have poisoned Yushchenko at lunch? Well, it turns out that Yushchenko went back for seconds:

". . . General Smeshko left the meeting with Mr. Kuchma and headed to a S.B.U. safe house in Kiev for a secret liaison with Mr. Yushchenko, the opposition leader.

The meeting had self-evident ironies. Mr. Yushchenko, nearly incapacitated after being poisoned by dioxin in the summer, a crime that remains unsolved, had publicly linked the poisoning to a meeting with General Smeshko and another S.B.U. general.

Now he wanted another talk. The group met in a tiny room, behind a drawn yellow curtain, and ate fruit. Present were General Sarnatskyi, General Smeshko and General Romanchenko, as well as Mr. Yushchenko, Mr. Ribachuk and another Yushchenko ally.

Two agreements were struck, both sides say.

Mr. Yushchenko requested more security for his campaign. General Smeshko agreed to provide him eight specialists from the elite Alpha counterterrorism unit - a highly unusual step - and to arrange former S.B.U. members to guard the campaign.

Then the group also agreed that the S.B.U. must publicly show that it was on the side of the law, not a candidate - an implicit message the agency was unwilling to abuse power for the premier.

As the meeting ended, Mr. Yushchenko, who is an amateur artist, gave General Smeshko one of his landscape paintings. The spy chief and the opposition leader embraced."

Did Yushchenko think the Ukrainian spies weren't capable of poisoning fruit? Or was the whole poisoning story a crock of apples? It appears that the Ukrainian intelligence agency saw what was likely to happen eventually, and decided to side with the man who could bring them the most money working the kind of corruption intelligence agencies are famous for. They'll get a nice chunk of all the European and American capital that will now temporarily flow into the Ukraine.

WMD/CBS timeline

WMD/CBS timeline:

1. Sometime in December: Duelfer stops turning over rocks in Iraq and officially concludes there are no weapons of mass destruction.


2. Late December (reported on in early January): CBS News president Andrew Heyward visits White House communications director Dan Bartlett, presumably to abjectly apologize for daring to commit the crime of lese-majesty by reporting on King Georges's AWOL war record, and to negotiate whose heads will have to be served up to atone.


3. January 10: After the release of the Boccardi/Thornburgh report (the contents of which CBS knew on December 29), CBS fires the four employees who dared to do their jobs (the specific heads that rolled were presumably part of the Heyward-Bartlett meeting, and allowed Heyward to keep his job).


4. January 12: The WMD story is reported about a month late, based on an admission made by the White House.

The non-story of the CBS firings, which dominated American news and discussion for days, was neatly used to cover the huge story - almost completely ignored - that George Bush lied to the American people, Congress, and the world in order to start a war which has turned into a debacle for the United States. The White House, which presumably needed the cooperation of the disgusting American media, delayed the WMD story just enough to have it completely covered by the CBS story.

Iraqi election

The American pseudo-election to be held in Iraq consists of the usual back-room created 'lists' of candidates which the voters are supposed to choose from. This is the modern version of elections foisted on people by political scientists who fear that democracy cannot be served if the voter has any chance of knowing what he or she is voting for. The fillip in the Iraqi election - and here is where it starts to become surreal - is that most of the choices on the lists are afraid to reveal their names for fear of being killed. The only people whose names will be shown are those closely connected to the American security apparatus, or those rich enough to be able to be surrounded by bodyguards. Talk about a pig in a poke! How can it possibly be called an election when you don't even know who it is you are voting for? Never fear, because the crack Canadian team of election monitors is on the case, fresh from certifying that the highly questionable Ukrainian election was completely fair. Unfortunately, because Iraq is a scary place, they will be monitoring its fairness from, uh, Jordan. I hope they have good binoculars!

Israeli demographics and the AEI

A study by the American Enterprise Institute - and one might ask why it up to them to commission it - has determined that there really is no Israeli demographic problem, as the number of Palestinians and their rate of growth have been grossly overstated. You know this has gotta be right, as some of the worthies involved in the new report are Yoram Ettinger, a consultant to members of Israel's Cabinet and Knesset, and Brig. Gen. (Ret.) David Shahaf, former Head of the Civil Administration in the West Bank. Caroline Glick, writing in the Jerusalem Post, is beside herself with joy at the news, and concludes that there is no longer any reason to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. She writes:

"While Hamas has placed its emphasis mainly on the terrorist aspect of the post-modern battlefield, the PLO has placed an equal emphasis on the psychological component of the war. In fact, it could be said in retrospect that the greatest single victory the PLO has scored in its 46-year-old war with Israel was the publication of a single report in 1997. That report, 'Demographic Indicators of the Palestinian Territory, 1997-2015,' is based on a census carried out by the PA's Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in 1997. It projects that the Arab population west of the Jordan River will by 2015 outnumber the Jewish population."

and:

"The entire 117-page report can be accessed on-line at www.pademographics.com. Given that it shows that the government's current policies are based in large part on an uncritical acceptance of fraudulent data whose purpose was to demoralize us into capitulating to our post-modern foe, hopefully Olmert and Sharon will take a look at it."

Post-modern foe! I know that this is a radical idea, but why doesn't someone - say the UN - hold a census to find out the real numbers. You know why that's not going to happen? Because Israel is terrified that the Palestinians already outnumber the Jews in Greater Israel.

Ray's aliases

Annual link to a classic article on the assassination of Dr. King. As far as I know, 'Raoul' is still alive. Philip Melanson's book The Murkin Conspiracy remains one of the most amazing works of research in conspiracy theory ever written. From a website called Seize the Night, a summary of some of Melanson's work:

"But the best and spookiest evidence of a conspiracy consists of Ray's use of sophisticated aliases during the months leading up to the assassination and directly thereafter.

All four of Ray's aliases have one very crucial connection: they were names of real people living in close proximity to one another in Toronto, Canada. But Ray visited Toronto only once in his life: while on the lam, just after King was assassinated. Yet he had been using several of the false identities months before the assassination. How had Ray come by these names? Typically, Ray's explanations have been evasive.

Melanson tracked down the Canadians, and the scenario he details in his 1989 book, The Murkin Conspiracy, is downright chilling. Months before the assassination, Ray was using the alias, 'Eric Starvo Galt.' Melanson discovered that, during the same period, the Toronto man named Eric Galt was signing his middle name, St. Vincent, as 'St. V.,' scribbling lopsided circles for the periods, so that the full name looked to the uninitiated like 'Eric Starvo Galt.' In an impressive bit of detection, Melanson found that at some point, the real Eric St. Vincent Galt changed his signature, and began signing documents and personal checks as Eric S. Galt. At about the same time, the recidivist American crook James Earl Ray changed his alias to 'Eric S. Galt.' And this was months before Ray's first and only visit to Toronto!

There were other uncanny parallels between Ray and the Canadians whose names he apparently filched - especially Galt. Ray bore a striking resemblance to Galt. Both had scars above their eyes. In fact, the other Canadians also had facial scars. Four months before the assassination, Ray - the two-big holdup man - underwent plastic surgery, which modified his 'very distinctive pointy nose,' according to Melanson, and made him look even more like the real Galt. Moreover, the Canadian Galt was a skilled marksman who often toted guns in his car to and from the shooting range and who had visited cities of the American South frequented by Ray.

Melanson's point is very persuasive: These parallels cannot possibly be coincidences. Was someone trying to draw attention to these four hapless Canadians? In fact, that's just what happened. During the search for King's assassin, they became unwitting victims of Ray's aliases. At the time of 'the greatest manhunt in history' Galt saw his name blazoned in banner headlines. Had the FBI not identified Ray's prints on the rifle, the innocent Galt would almost surely have become the prime suspect.

What was the point of this sophisticated legerdemain with Ray's aliases? According to Melanson, Galt was the key. 'Galt was more than simply a cover: He was man who could be implicated in the crime, at least temporarily, while Ray made his escape.' The other two Canadians lived conveniently near Galt, and police might erroneously conclude that the real Galt had stolen his three 'aliases' from them. In short, the unsuspecting Galt was set up to be the 'wrong man.'

The parallels 'were surely the result of conspiratorial planning rather than coincidence,' concludes Melanson, adding that 'This was beyond the capacities of a small-time loser like Ray.'

Melanson argues that the conspirators probably selected Galt and cribbed his vital stats by gaining access to his top-secret security clearance file. For Galt was an employee at a Canadian defense firm working on a classified missile project for the U.S. military. His file was kept by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The CIA routinely trades information with the RCMP, raising the possibility that American intelligence had a hand in Ray's elaborate odyssey - and the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr."

Small-time hood Ray could not possibly have set up this incredibly complex system of Toronto aliases, so he must have had help. That help must have had access to files kept by the RCMP, a fact which considerably narrows the field of possible conspirators. Melanson's research on the parallel change in signatures of Galt and Ray has to go in the Hall of Fame of conspiracy research.

Arafatization of Abbas two

As I predicted, Sharon has ordered all Israeli government officials to cut ties with the Palestinian Authority until Mahmoud Abbas takes steps to curb terrorism. This is based on exceedingly vague ties alleged to extend from the Palestinian Authority to those responsible for Thursday's terrorist attack. The arafatization of Abbas has begun. The only surprise is that Sharon didn't even wait a week to ensure that he has no 'negotiating partner'. Here is Genesis 15:18 from the Jewish Bible:

"In that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: 'Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates;'"

and 1 Kings 5:1 (the 'River' is the Euphrates):

"And Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the River unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt; they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life."

The reason for the settlements in the West Bank - what they call Judea and Samaria - is obviously not to stop terrorism, as it only encourages a reaction from the Palestinians. It is to begin the process of claiming the land promised to Abram and once ruled by Solomon. The 'logic' that requires the theft of the West Bank from the Palestinian people inescapably also requires the extension of Greater Israel from Egypt to the Euphrates. Everything, and I mean everything, that the current government of Israel does is directed towards the Project of creating Greater Israel, beginning with seizing Judea and Samaria. If Abbas is a 'negotiating partner' the Project is ruined, as the State of Palestine will stop everything in its tracks. Therefore, it is necessary to find an excuse not to negotiate with him. The World can watch the Project continue until it causes a world war, world-wide economic catastrophe, and millions of deaths, or it can put a stop to it now by forcing Israel to start to act in good faith towards a negotiated settlement.

Britain's Bush

Mark Thatcher screws up miserably, should have gone to jail for a long time, and gets completely off the hook thanks to his mother, making him the George Bush of Great Britain. The next obvious step is for Thatcher to become Prime Minister.

Lord Lucan's politics

Lord Lucan, who in 1974 accidentally murdered his children's nanny while trying to murder his wife in the dark - don't you hate when that happens? - then disappeared, and has not been heard from since, turns out to have been part of a group of like-minded aristos in early 1970's Britain who were considering a fascist coup. From an article by Martin Bright:

"One biographer, Patrick Marnham, said: 'Seen from the Clermont Club [Lucan's favourite gambling haunt], the country was starting to resemble the less stable years of the Weimar Republic. Sir James Goldsmith began to develop his theory of "the Communist infiltration of the Western media". Over the smoked salmon and lamb cutlets, the talk turned to the pros and cons of a British military coup.'

It may seem difficult to believe now, nearly eight years into the most secure Labour government in British history, but across the country pockets of the traditional ruling class were preparing for military action. General Sir Walter Walker, former commander of allied forces in northern Europe, formed the Concerned Citizens' Vigilante Association to stamp out Communism in Wiltshire, and Colonel David Stirling, founder of the SAS, invited volunteers to join his 'strike-breaking army' to crush the unions.

According to former MI5 officer Peter Wright, a group of his colleagues, including Margaret Thatcher's mentor Airey Neave, began discussing a political coup. According to Wright, they believed that the Labour government had been infiltrated by the KGB and should be overthrown. He also claimed they were backed by a right-wing financier. Goldsmith always denied he put the money behind the group or discussed MI5 matters with former intelligence officers."

While the British toffs just talk and dress up in funny clothes, the Americans get down to work and have one coup after another. Lucan may very well still be alive, as my guess is that the kind of upper-class twits of the year who were his friends wouldn't be able to resist the lure of easy tabloid money to tell his story as soon as he was dead.

It will be very interesting to see what happens when the Iraqi freedom fighters' technological development of roadside bombs - what the Pentagon calls 'improvised explosive devices' and probably the most important development in recent years in the fight against tyranny - is introduced to Israel.

Aceh bin Laden t-shirts

Allan Nairn tells Amy Goodman that the Indonesian military is using transport planes - planes for which Colin Powell has announced the U. S. would be supplying spare parts, ostensibly as they would be used to deliver tsunami relief aid - to fly members of Islamic militant groups associated with both bin Laden and the Indonesian government to Aceh, where the militants will be used in the ongoing repression of the people of Aceh by the Indonesian military. Some of the militants are passing themselves off as residents of Aceh while wearing shirts with pictures of bin Laden on them (see also here). This is being depicted in images delivered to the American people, all in an effort to mislead Americans into thinking that their aid is helping followers of bin Laden. Presumably the goal is to lead to the American political decision to cut such aid to the people of Aceh (see also here). Isn't the world a complicated place? The Indonesian government, by restricting access of relief workers to parts of Aceh, using the excuse that the presence of separatist militants makes these areas too dangerous to enter, is actually using the tsunami as part of its campaign against the people of Aceh. This is a classic example of the misuse of the specter of Islamic militants, used simultaneously as instruments of repression and as a propaganda game directed at the United States.

Asian Tsunami

Here is a good summary of the technical aspects of the American tsunami warning system, or rather, non-warning system. On a completely unrelated note, here is a quote from an article by Andre Gunder Frank on the state of the American economy:

"So, far beyond Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all the terrorists put together, the greatest real-world threat to Uncle Sam is that the inflow of dollars dries up. For instance, foreign central banks and private investors (it is said that 'overseas Chinese' have a tidy trillion dollars) could any day decide to place more of their money elsewhere than in the declining dollar and abandon poor ol' Uncle Sam to his destiny. China could double its per capita income very quickly if it made real investments at home instead of financial ones with Uncle Sam. Central banks, European and others, can now put their reserves in (rising!) euros or even soon-to-be-revalued Chinese yuan. Not so far down the road, there may be an East Asian currency, eg a basket first of ASEAN + 3 (China, Japan, South Korea) - and then + 4 (India). While India's total exports in the past five years rose by 73%, those to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) rose at double that rate and sixfold to China. India has become an ASEAN summit partner, and its ambitions stretch still further to an economic zone stretching from India to Japan. Not for nothing, in the 1997 East Asian currency and then full economic crisis, Uncle Sam strong-armed Japan not to start a proposed East Asian currency fund that would have prevented at least the worst of the crisis. Uncle Sam then benefited from it by buying devalued East Asian currencies and using them to buy up East Asian real resources, and in South Korea also banks, at bargain-basement reduced-price fire sales. But now, China is already taking steps toward such an arrangement, only on a much grander financial and now also economic scale.

A day after writing the above, I read in The Economist (December 11-17, 2004) a report on the previous week's summit meeting of ASEAN + 3 in Malaysia. That country's prime minister announced that this summit should lay the groundwork for an East Asian Community (EAC) that 'should build a free-trade area, cooperate on finance, and sign a security pact ... that would transform East Asia into a cohesive economic block ... In fact, some of these schemes are already in motion ... China, as the region's pre-eminent economic and military power, will doubtless dominate ... and host the second East Asia Summit.' The report went on to recall that in 1990, Uncle Sam shot down a similar initiative for fear of losing influence in the region. Now it is a case of 'Yankee Stay Home'."

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If China and Japan can get over their long-standing fight over who runs Asia, and can add Korea and India to the mix, the United States can kiss its sorry ass goodbye.

Salvador and the rake's progress

You have to wonder why the American government is using Newsweek to float its musings on the desirability of applying in Iraq the model of Reagan-era American support for death squads in El Salvador. The CIA/Pentagon/Mossad appears to be doing something like this already, and it seems odd, given the many objections that could be raised, both practical and moral, that we would be seeing the airing of this particular dirty laundry in public. Unfortunately, since September 11 Americans seem to have a limitless ability to tolerate and even endorse positions that would have been considered beyond the pale only a few years ago. The Bush Administration has successfully employed this method of gaining implicit public endorsement for extreme positions over and over again. Who would have thought that a demon like Gonzales would have even been considered to be American attorney general, let alone largely sail through his confirmation hearing? Every time something completely outrageous is revealed or proposed - attacking an unthreatening sovereign country based on obvious lies, 'shock and awe', torture at Abu Ghraib, cold-blooded murders by sadistic American troops - not only does this pass with muted criticism, but there is a loud and well-publicized group of Americans who actively rejoice in the evil that Americans do. This tolerance for evil is growing, and is exemplified by Daniel Pipes' suggestion that the United States establish a gulag for all its Muslim population (Pipes doesn't actually go quite that far, but his implication is completely clear). I doubt very much that Pipes is serious about this, but it forms part of the ongoing Zionist campaign to vilify all Muslims in the minds of Americans - if you need to consider concentration camps for them, Muslims must be bad, right? - so Israel can continue to steal Muslim lands. Those who oppose Muslim internment camps must be bleeding-heart liberals who support such quaint ideas as human rights, civil liberties, and the terms of the American Constitution. Pipes' article was published in the New York Sun, and I'm sure that historians could find a lot of similar articles advocating much the same thing in German newspapers of the 1930's. The unthinkable now has enough respectability in the United States to be published in the newspapers. Where will it all end? Each outrage forms the basis for the next. The Pentagon knows it can float its most extreme ideas without any fear of any real objection. It now has an implied endorsement for the proposed policy, which will no doubt come in useful when the predictable disastrous consequences come home to roost and Americans belatedly ask questions of those responsible.

Abbas arafated

Within hours of the confirmation of the election of Mahmoud Abbas to lead the Palestinians, Ariel Sharon urged Abbas to end terrorist attacks and to dismantle Islamic militant groups (Sharon may have even tried to limit the scope of a meeting with Abbas to discussions of security cooperation). Since Abbas has no more ability to restrain the militants than Arafat had, we can see how Abbas is being immediately set up in exactly the same way that Arafat was. There will be much talk of how the election of Abbas will finally give Israel that elusive 'negotiating partner', and that peace is just around the corner. Once a few 'terrorist' incidents occur, however, the Israelis will sadly conclude that Abbas is just another Arafat, and clearly not a 'negotiating partner' as his failure to restrain the militants indicates that he really doesn't want peace. Noam Chomsky presents a masterful history of the Israeli propaganda lie that the Palestinians never wanted to negotiate with Israel, an amazingly successful lie given the quantity of evidence to the contrary and the fact that it makes absolutely no sense for the Palestinians not to want to negotiate. Once the Israeli-American propagandists turn Abbas into Arafat II, the Israelis will celebrate not having to negotiate - and the continuation of the Project of building Greater Israel - in their traditional way by shooting a few Palestinian children, knocking down a few hundred Palestinian houses, building some more of the Wall, expanding the illegal settlements, and receiving a few more billion dollars of American taxpayer money.

Shrimp tsunami

The real conspiracy behind much of the damage caused by the tsunami: commercial, and often illegal, shrimp farming, which has destroyed large portions of protective shoreline mangrove forests.

Gary Webb's motorcycle

If Gary Webb was assassinated, was the theft of his motorcycle connected with the assassination? Maybe it was part of a plan to create an excuse to have him meet with someone in a convenient location on the pretense that he could recover the motorcycle. Had that plan been used, his death would have been labeled an unsolved murder. Or maybe the conspirators thought they could find a source of Webb's handwriting in some place on the motorcycle. Once they had a source of his writing, experts could fake an excellent suicide note. The existence of a suicide note seems to have a mesmerizing effect on police, coroners, and would-be conspiracists. It is little wonder that the highest caliber of assassin - and Webb would rate the best - would ensure that a high quality suicide note was found. The note concludes the issue for almost everybody except those who have a particular reason to be careful, and those people get a clear message from the two shots to the head. It is little wonder that there aren't any investigative journalists left. They are all either dead or scared away.

The Salvador option

From Newsweek (my emphasis):

" . . . one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called 'snatch' operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK."

If you really wanted to start a civil war in Iraq and World War III in the Middle East - and the neocons do - this would be the way to do it. Paying a group of terrorists from one ethnic group to target insurgents from another ethnic group, not to mention their 'sympathizers' - which presumably covers the entire Sunni population of Iraq - is simply insane. They talk about the model of El Salvador, a completely immoral operation, but one with fairly limited repercussions outside of El Salvador. They should really be thinking of the model of Afghanistan, where similar American meddling to use insurgents to fight the Cold War led directly to the creation of al Qaeda and international Islamic terrorism (a result not displeasing to the neocons, who use it as their chief propaganda weapon to make their case for American neocolonial wars, not to mention to make the general case for Israeli state terrorism). Actually, it is fairly clear that someone, if not the CIA/Pentagon, then Israel, is already up to this kind of dirty trick, attempting to ensure both that Iraq is broken up into non-threatening statelets and that the United States is drawn, on behalf of Likudnik and arms dealer and warmonger interests, into a World War in the Middle East.

Why no tsunami warning?

From an article debunking the crazy tsunami theories found on the internet:

"The Free Internet Press, which claims to offer 'uncensored news for real people', has an article saying the US military and the US State Department received advanced warning of the tsunami, but did little to warn Asian countries.

America's Navy base on the Indian Ocean jungle atoll of Diego Garcia was notified and escaped unscathed, it said, asking 'why were fishermen in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand not provided with the same warnings?'.

'Why did the US State Department remain mum on the existence of an impending catastrophe?,' author Michel Chossudovsky pondered.

'Probably because fishermen in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand don't have multimillion dollar communications equipment handy,' one respondent said as readers posted angry replies."

Ah, but of course they do. Fishermen have cell phones, which gives them access to multimillion dollar communications networks. The cellphone penetration throughout the whole area of the disaster was such that if SMS messaging had been used to give a warning, tens of thousands of lives might have been spared. The U. S. had enough time to notify its naval base on Diego Garcia. Why did it not make even the slightest attempt to notify anyone else? Even a partly successful attempt would have saved many lives, particularly in coastal cities and resorts. The advantages of the tsunami to the United States:

1. it further weakens the 'Asian tigers', countries whose success was an embarrassment to the American rapacious model of world development;


2. it provides lots of opportunities for friends of the Bush Administration to enrich themselves in lucrative 'emergency' supply contracts for the rescue mission;


3. it gives American ships an excuse to be in places they would not otherwise have an excuse to be, and plenty of opportunity to unload whatever cargo they might later find useful around the Indian Ocean; and


4. it provides the chance for an ostentatious show of American goodwill which can be used in the propaganda campaign to restore the image of the United States in the world.

How the RIGHT killed JFK

For all you old-school 'buffs' out there, here is an interesting thread on the Kennedy assassination entitled "How the RIGHT killed JFK". The article linked to later in the thread, "The Attempted Coup Against FDR" by Barbara LaMonica, is also worth reading. The right wingers trying to undo FDR's reforms are still hard at work on the same project, with Bush's plans to destroy social security just the latest attempt to return to those halcyon days before FDR.

The poisoner's art

I've only seen one post on the internet suspicious of the convenient death of Bob Matsui. The other posters in the thread dumped all over the idea (with the exception of this very interesting post). But think about it for a minute. Matsui was gearing up to be the point man for the Democrats in challenging Bush's plans for social security 'reform', a process which amounts to putting old people on the ice floe. The financial services industry will make billions and billions and billions of very easy dollars if Bush gets away with this. This is quite possibly the biggest windfall in American history, particularly useful now as the money to be made bilking investors in the U. S. stock markets is likely to dry up. These kind of people would torture their grandmothers to death for a nickel. Why would anyone have any trouble believing that they wouldn't put up a few hundred thousand to buy the services of a world class poisoner? The rate of return on that investment - which is how these people view the world - would be enormous. Mysterious blood diseases which attack extremely quickly seem to be the state of the poisoner's art . . . think Arafat. Watch the Democrats now fold up, as always, like a cheap suitcase. By getting rid of Matsui, the plutocrats not only removed a huge obstacle, they also sent a warning to others.

European Anti-Semitism

Tony Judt has written a fine article (or here or here) on the systematic abuse of the term 'anti-Semitism' by Americans and Zionists in referring to Europe:

". . . whereas most Europeans believe that the problem originates in the Middle East and must therefore be addressed there, the ADL and many American commentators conclude rather that there is no longer any difference between being 'against' Israel and 'against' Jews: i.e., that in Europe anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have become synonymous. But that is palpably false. Some of the highest levels of pro-Palestinian sympathy in Europe today are recorded in Denmark, a country that also registers as one of the least anti-Semitic by the ADL's own criteria – and the ADL has worked harder than anyone to propagate the image of rampant European anti-Semitism. Another country with a high level of support for the Arabs of Palestine is the Netherlands; yet according to the ADL the Dutch have the lowest anti-Semitic quotient in Europe, and 83 percent of Dutch citizens believe the government should take a role in combating anti-Semitism.

In other words, some of the most widespread pro-Palestinian and even anti-Zionist views are to be found in countries that have long been – and still are – decidedly philo-Semitic."

and:

"It is the policies of Israeli governments, especially in the past two decades, that have provoked widespread anti-Jewish feelings in Europe and elsewhere. This may seem absurd, but there is a certain tragic logic to it. Zionists have always insisted that there is no distinction between the Jewish people and the Jewish state. The latter offers a right of citizenship to Jews anywhere in the world. Israel is not the state of all its citizens, much less all its residents; it is the state of (all) Jews. Its leaders purport to speak for Jews everywhere. They can hardly be surprised when their own behavior provokes a backlash against ... Jews."

and (my emphasis):

"What, then, is to be done? Those of us who take seriously the problem of anti-Semitism – but who utterly reject the suggestion that we ourselves are in danger of sympathizing with anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism – must begin by constructing and defending a firewall between the two. Israel does not speak for Jews; but Israel's claim to speak for Jews everywhere is the chief reason that anti-Israel sentiments are transposed into Judeophobia. Jews and others must learn to shed inhibitions and criticize Israel's policies and actions just as they would those of any other established state."

There is racist hatred everywhere, but Europe is doing as good a job as anyone has ever done in dealing with it. The only reason we hear so much about the supposed rise of European anti-Semitism is because it is part of the ongoing propaganda war of the Zionists to continue the racist and criminal activities of the State of Israel (and whenever you hear about the Holocaust it is just more public relations spin to cover up the abuse of Arabs who had nothing to do with it). The way things are headed, the Jewish people are going to be around a lot longer than Israel, and many people are going to be sorry that they allowed the Zionists to misuse and manipulate charges of anti-Jewish hatred in order to further their evil goals. To show how ridiculous the Zionist position is becoming, Germany is considering putting restrictions on the ability of Jews from the states of the former Soviet Union to immigrate to Germany. Despite the fact that they would be welcomed with front page news stories, not to mention free housing paid for by American dollars on Palestinian land, Jewish people are voting with their feet and choosing to live in the country of the Holocaust. These Jews know where the real anti-Semites live.

Was Matsui Wellstoned?

Democratic Rep. Bob Matsui has died. From the CNN report (my emphasis):

"In a statement announcing Matsui's death, his office disclosed that the congressman was diagnosed several months ago with Myelodysplastic Syndrome, a rare stem cell disorder that reduces the body's ability to produce red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets."

and:

"As senior Democrat on the subcommittee on Social Security, Matsui gave every impression during the final few weeks of his life of being eager to lead the opposition to President Bush's plans to establish personal retirement accounts as part of a general overhaul of the program."

Was Matsui Wellstoned?

The unpopular winner

I'm wondering when the cognitive dissonance in the brains of those Americans who can't admit that the American election was rigged will cause their heads to explode. The exit polls all showed that Kerry won (by the way, the raw exit poll data has been suppressed). There are thousands of known incidents of vote suppression and vote fraud. Many votes were collected on computers expressly set up to ensure that a proper recount is impossible. Despite this, the key state of Ohio is doing everything possible to avoid having its legally required recount. Now we find out that mere weeks after an election in which George Bush supposedly received the largest number of votes ever received by a Presidential candidate, surpassing even the sainted Reagan, Bush will have the lowest job approval rating in the last 80 years of any President at the time of his inauguration! Eric Boehlert writes:

"According to an analysis posted on the Gallup Web site in mid-November, Bush's current 53 percent approval rating 'is actually the lowest of any of the last seven presidents who won a second term in the first poll conducted after their re-election.' Right after securing their second terms, Bill Clinton received a 58 percent approval rating, Ronald Reagan 61 percent, Richard Nixon 62 percent, Lyndon Johnson 70 percent, Dwight Eisenhower 75 percent, and Harry Truman 69 percent.

Not only is Bush's 50 percent approval rating dismal for a two-term president, it's arguably the worst for any president about to be sworn into office. The only other modern-day president with such shaky approval ratings immediately following an election win was Reagan. According to a January 1981 Gallup poll, his job approval rating stood at just 51 percent. (Since Gallup began polling in 1937, Bush and Reagan are the only two presidents to take office with job approval ratings that low.) The difference between Reagan and Bush, though, was that Reagan's disapproval rating at the time was just 13 percent. Today, Bush's negative rating hovers in the 40s."

This result is described by presidential historian Richard Shenkman as "astonishing". We distinguish the 'reality-based' world from the Bushian world of mythology by the existence of possible facts which could disprove our beliefs. In the real world, we test our beliefs. If there are no possible facts which could refute our beliefs, those beliefs are mythology. Given what we know about the election, what possible set of facts would cause those who think it fairly reflected the will of the electorate to change their minds? Americans are so keen to continue to believe their collective mythology, including the part that the United States is a democracy, that they refuse to admit the reality of facts staring them in the face. Kerry won. In fact, it was Kerry who received the largest number of votes ever received by a Presidential candidate. Democrats who want to completely re-make their party in order to be elected would be smarter to spend their efforts ensuring that the election system is fair and is seen to be fair. Kerry didn't lose the election. It was stolen from him.

NEDFABB

Jonathan Steele, inspired by the blatant American manipulation of the election process in the Ukraine, asks some good questions about the newest kind of American neocolonialism, 'electoral interventionism':

"As with 'humanitarian interventionism', which was much debated in the 90s, 'electoral interventionism' needs to be thrashed out. Why is so much of it selective? Why do western governments (for they are the prime interferers) that claim to be fostering democracy take only one side, rather than being above the fray? Why are only certain countries picked? Georgia, but not Azerbaijan. Serbia, but not Croatia. Zimbabwe, but not Egypt."

We can never lose sight of the fact that the main culprit in the manipulation of democracy, the Orwellian-monikered National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - which should really be called the National Endowment for Dictatorship Friendly to American Big Business (NEDFABB) - was set up by the Reagan Administration in the wake of the many scandals involving the CIA in the 1960's and 70's. It was no longer possible to use the CIA to manipulate the governments of other countries, a process well documented by William Blum, so NEDFABB was set up to do the same sorts of things in a seemingly kinder, gentler form. Don't be fooled by the name. They're a bunch of thugs. Hijacking a country by stealing its election is just as bad as the old fashioned CIA method of assassination (a technique now apparently limited to domestic use).

No tsunami warning

The United States government knew about the risk of the Asian tsunami with sufficient time to notify countries which might have been in danger, but did nothing. The jocular excuse goes along the lines that they didn't have Thailand in their rolodex. Conspiracy theorists know that the Asian meltdown of the late 1990's was engineered by the U. S. using its agent the IMF in order to put a stop to the embarrassing success of the Asian model of economic development. This model, based on Japanese experience, combines capitalism with a strong guiding hand of the government, and allows for very high rates of relatively non-exploitative growth in directions which favor public policy goals of the government. Its huge success was the main threat to the American 'free trade' model of raping and pillaging, and had to be stopped. Was the failure to warn just part of the same geopolitical war? Providing relief also provides the excuse for a massive American military encroachment into the area, including the movements of aircraft carriers. The movements of these ships always have political significance, and may constitute a military threat or warning, so a benign excuse to move them may be welcome to American strategists. Much military material can also be moved under cover of providing relief supplies. In this regard, I leave you with an interview with U. S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty conducted by David T. Ratcliffe concerning Prouty's experiences in Japan in 1945:

"The next day I went down to the harbor and met the harbormaster. Okinawa had been absolutely loaded with supplies for the invasion of Japan. It had been planned that 500,000 men would invade Japan and we had stock-piled what we call a '500,000 Manpack.' That's enough equipment, medicine, radios, everything, for 500,000 men for a certain fixed period of time. I wish I could tell you, but it's probably a month, or two months, something like that.

Ratcliffe: 500,000 men.

Prouty: A '500,000 Manpack' of supplies had been stacked up there on Okinawa. Now of course that wasn't all that would go into the invasion, because ships that had been preloaded for the invasion would also come in. But anyway, on Okinawa there was an enormous amount of equipment. And all of a sudden it was being reloaded on trucks, put back on transport ships, and sailing out to sea.

The first thing I asked the commander was, 'Is this all going back to the United States?' He said, 'No. We don't want any of that back. Anything that isn't going to be used is going to be junked.' He said, 'This is going to Hanoi in Indochina.' And he said, 'Actually about half is going to Indochina.'

At that time, that didn't have the same impact on me that it would have today. I've since learned that when it got to Hanoi - to the harbor of Haiphong - it was turned over to the representatives of Ho Chi Minh. We gave this equipment to Ho Chi Minh, who was with our own Army, with General Gallagher of the U.S. Army. We were equipping his people so they could help us round up renegade Japanese - and this would be their way of arming and putting together their original army in North Vietnam.

Now this was September 2, 1945. Also on that date, by another coincidence, with the American Army General Gallagher standing beside him and OSS representative Lou Conein there, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam. He established the national independence of that country on that same date that the Japanese signed the surrender.

It's an historic date, because it marks the beginning of our entry on the ground in Vietnamese affairs, which lasted from 45 until '75. Most historians don't use that 20-year period from '45 to '65, when our Marines finally landed on the shores of Vietnam. They forget that we were there for 20 years before that."

Watch out for something big and military to happen in Asia.

20 Amazing Facts

20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA. I think the most amazing fact is that the fellow in charge of counting the votes in Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, is the Bush-Cheney campaign chairman for Ohio, just as the woman in charge of counting the votes in Florida in 2000, Katherine Harris, was the Florida Bush-Cheney campaign chairman in that race! How the hell does that sort of thing happen? Did you know that when Americans play the popular game called American football - a much less exciting version of the game called Canadian football, developed apparently to make it easier for bookmakers - the quarterback for one of the teams also serves as the referee?