The Iraqi resistance may merely want the Americans and other westerners out of Iraq, but bin Laden’s goal is more ample: to rid the entire Middle East of “crusader” influence. Though bin Laden is an unapologetic religious fundamentalist, it is his nationalist “foreign policy” that gains him as many supporters among the Arab masses as his strong beliefs in the infallibillity of the Koran.
BY PEPE ESCOBAR
The ultimate nightmare for White House/Pentagon designs on Middle East energy resources is not Iran after all: it’s a unified Iraqi
resistance, comprising not only Sunnis but also Shi’ites.
“It’s the resistance, stupid” - along with “it’s the oil, stupid”.
The intimate connection means there’s no way for Washington to
control Iraq’s oil without protecting it with a string of sprawling
military “super-bases”. Continue reading ‘It’s the Resistance, Stupid’
By character and class consciousness Pelosi is simply reacting to events as the wealthy bourgeoise she is. If revolution and true defiance to the status quo will come they won’t come from creatures ensconced in privilege.
TAKE ONE: A VIEW FROM THE LEFT
House Speaker Pelosi lashes out at antiwar protesters
By Patrick Martin \ Dateline: 15 October 2007
Crosspost with the World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org, which originated the article.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in Washington, normally maintains a public display of sympathy towards the mass opposition to the war in Iraq—an opposition which propelled the Democrats into control of the House and Senate in the congressional elections last November. Continue reading ‘THE DEMOCRATS’ BETRAYAL—TWO UNUSUAL TAKES’
By Jim Holt
London Review of Books
Editors’ Note: The LRB and Holt are British mainstream liberals, conservative at times, a position Cyrano is certainly not comfortable with nor endorses. But this article presents a plausible explanation for what otherwise would have to be a case of historically unprecedented and criminally insane meddling in the affairs of another nation. But the fact this analysis posits a rational scenario for this murderous war is not exactly comforting.
Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’. Continue reading ‘It’s the Oil —hard lessons in realpolitik’
The poisoner in chief, for an already repugnantly poisoned nation.
By Black Agenda report (BAR) editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Dateline: Wednesday, 03 October 2007
A famous old English song is titled, “The World Turned Upside Down.” Such appears to be the insane vantage point through which the Bush regime, and many ordinary citizens, view reality: in reverse. U.S. media and politicians behave as if they are already at war with Iran, a nation that has been brutalized over generations by Americans, but whose president spoke of world peace and an end to “dark plots” during his visit to this country. Deafened and blinded by arrogant, ignorant, unthinking hatred, Americans responded with venom in quantities toxic to all rational thought. The Poisoner-in-Chief, George Bush, has made great strides in turning much of the nation into a Cuckoo’s Nest. Continue reading ‘Freedom Rider: Ahmadinejad Sane, Bush Crazy’
“Don’t wait up for me, darling.” Bush patting one of his European concubines in crime.
By Bill Van Auken | 29 September 2007
A solidarity post with World Socialist Web Site
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE FEBRUARY 2003 discussions between US President George W. Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar published Wednesday by Spain’s largest daily, El Pais, provides fresh documentary confirmation of what is already a widely known historical fact. That is: the Bush administration was determined to wage a war of aggression to conquer Iraq and was not about to allow international law or compromise settlements to interfere with its long-planned invasion. Continue reading ‘The Bush-Aznar tapes: glimpse of a gangster preparing for war’
Vacant-brained Fred Thompson and his GOPer trophy wife. One of the most baffling things about evil is that it often assumes attractive packages.
BY MATT TAIBBI | Dateline: Sep 24 2007
I can say exactly when I first knew that Fred Dalton Thompson is dangerous. It is 12:07 p.m. on Sunday, September 9th, in Manchester, New Hampshire, just outside a restaurant called Chez Vachon. Thompson has just served up another mumbling, noncommittal tour through a packed diner of breakfasting locals, sitting glumly through the requisite this-sure-is-great-coffee shot. Then, once the needed photos are banked, the lumbering B-list character actor — who plays a video called “The Hunt for Red November” at every campaign stop and sells buttons that, in an unsettlingly McLuhanian twist, pimp him as the “Law and Order candidate” — tries to make a quick beeline back to his bus. But a cheeky local TV reporter shouts at him before he can reach the door. Continue reading ‘Fred Thompson: Desperate Republicans Cheer for a Reagan Wannabe’
Giuliani—as phoney as a man in drag.
BY BILL CURRY | Dateline: September 24, 2007 The Huffington Post
Rudy Giuliani is slipping, if not quite sliding away. In early polls he led Hillary Clinton and every Democrat and was pulling away from the Republican pack, having benefited much from John McCain’s gracious decision to set himself on fire.
Back then the smart money–and it’s a wonder they still call it that– fretted that Hillary was ‘unelectable’. Today she beats Rudy in every poll. Among Republicans he’s again in a dead heat, this time with B-list TV celebrity Fred Thompson. Continue reading ‘Grand Illusion’
Few contemporary American politicians incarnate the false promise of liberalism as well as Democrat Hillary Clinton (along with husband Bill, the master opportunist “triangulator.”) If Hillary were to gain the White House, the Clintons would constitute another dynasty in presidential politics, and although rabidly denounced by the insane and hypocritical US rightwing punditocracy as wild leftists, in international terms they barely merit the label of mild “centrists.”
BY SUSAN ROSENTHAL
Dateline: September 17, 2007 CROSSPOST AT AUTHOR’S BLOGSITE: SUSAN’S BLOG
Part I (September 17) discussed the deepening conflict between the rulers and the ruled and the disagreements within the elite on how to address the nation’s problems. Part II (below) compares liberal efforts to preserve the system with socialist efforts to replace it. Continue reading ‘America in Crisis, Part II: The Liberal Challenge and the Prospects for Socialism’
A creature of the system, a “mechanic” who knows how to work the machine, Bill Clinton has made a career of phoney populism all his life. He has successfully fooled a great may people while remaining sturdily on the center-right, what Beltway insiders like to call “the Third Way.” Unfortunately, fronting for a decomposing but still murderous capitalism is not the way to cure what ails America.
By David Nasaw
Dateline: Sunday, September 23, 2007 [Reproduced under Sec 17, US Code]
This piece suggested by and in simulpost at makingthemaccountable.com
“Giving,” Bill Clinton’s folksy first-person tour of worthy causes and the good people who support them, is so relentlessly upbeat that only the most churlish professor would say a discouraging word about the book. But the former president is so intent on celebrating 21st-century philanthropy — and highlighting his and Hillary’s role in promoting “the explosion of private citizens doing public good” — that he blithely ignores a hard reality: Philanthropy and democracy don’t get along nearly as seamlessly as “Giving” would have us believe. Continue reading ‘We Can’t Rely on the Kindness of Billionaires’
Sheehan friends and relatives in demonstration in Virginia. Cindy presents a HUGE problem to the system’s apologists: a person of unshakable conviction who is firmly “on the left.” So far efforts at character assessination have failed, but should she gain public office, the most likely tack will be to kill her credibility with faint praise, suggesting she’s too “naive” about the world, she’s a one-trick pony, and so on. Media whores have their work cut out for them with Cindy.
BY CINDY SHEEHAN Dateline: September 19th, 2007
I am consistently amazed at things that right-wing nut jobs throw at me to justify their support of an unjustifiable war. Seriously, when you watch Generals, Ambassadors, Senators and Congress Reps and pundits who still cheerlead for a miserable, failed and murderous policy you can almost see the skepticism in their eyes, too. They know they are lying for their masters now, if they, like George and Dick didn’t always know they were lying. Continue reading ‘At What Price, Safety?’
