Musings, perspectives, rants

Before anyone starts glorifying the leader as a man of peace, let's look into his past and review his actions and beliefs.

"I don't know something called International Principles. I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child's existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With one hit I've
killed 750 Palestinians (in Rafah in 1956). I encourage my soldiers to rape Arabic women and girls as the Palestinian women is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody tells us what we shall do but we tell others what they shall do."

- Ariel Sharon, In an interview with General Ouze Merham, 1956

He directed a massacre at the village of Qibya in 1953, in which his men destroyed whole houses with their occupants ­men, women and children ­still inside.  He invaded Lebanon in 1982, in which his army laid siege to Beirut, cut off water, electricity and food supplies and subjected the city's hapless residents to weeks of indiscriminate bombardment by land, sea and air.  He facilitated the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and in all about 20,000 people ­ almost all innocent civilians ­ were killed during his Lebanon adventure.

"Extrajudicial assassinations, mass home demolitions, the construction of hideous barriers and walls, population transfers and illegal annexations ­ these were his stock in trade as 'a man of courage and peace'."
Sharon's "painful sacrifices" for peace may have involved Israel keeping less, rather than more, of the territory that it captured violently and has clung to illegally for four decades, but few seem to have noticed that it's not really a sacrifice to return something that wasn't yours to begin with."

Source: Saree Makdis, Los Angeles Times

I get sick of Americans proclaiming their country as a land of liberty and free speech.  Not only because they say it as if it's the only country in the world in which you can voice your opinions, but also because it's rapidly becoming a lie.

Here's a tale to help dispel the myth.

"James Moore is an Emmy-winning former television news  correspondent and the co-author of the bestselling, Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove  Made George W. Bush Presidential. He has been writing and reporting from Texas  for the past 25 years on the rise of Rove and Bush and has traveled extensively  on every presidential campaign since 1976.  This author was placed on the no fly list. Two points: there's  nothing you or I  can do to help him but make this public, and two- we are  all targets here. Excerpt, Link and horror story on the flip.

"I made it a point to arrive very early at the airport. My reservation was confirmed before I left home. I went to the electronic kiosk  and punched in my confirmation number to print out my boarding pass and  luggage tags. Another error message appeared, "Please see agent."  I did. She took my Texas driver's license and punched in the relevant information to her computer system. "I'm sorry, sir," she said. "There seems to be a problem. You've been  placed on the No Fly Watch List."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm afraid there isn't much more that I can tell you," she explained.  "It's just the list that's maintained by TSA to check for people who might  have terrorist connections."
"You're serious?"
"I'm afraid so, sir. Here's an 800 number in Washington. You need to call  them before I can clear you for the flight."
Exasperated, I dialed the number from my cell, determined to clear up what  I was sure was a clerical error. The woman who answered offered me no more  information than the ticket agent.
"Mam, I'd like to know how I got on the No Fly Watch List."
"I'm not really authorized to tell you that, sir," she explained after  taking down my social security and Texas driver's license numbers.
"What can you tell me?"
"All I can tell you is that there is something in your background that in  some way is similar to someone they are looking for."
"Well, let me get this straight then," I said. "Our government is looking  for a guy who may have a mundane Anglo name, who pays tens of thousands of  dollars every year in taxes, has never been arrested or even late on a credit  card payment, is more uninteresting than a Tupperware party, and cries after  the first two notes of the national anthem? We need to find this guy. He  sounds dangerous to me."
"I'm sorry, sir, I've already told you everything I can."
"Oh, wait," I said. "One last thing: this guy they are looking for? Did he  write books critical of the Bush administration, too?"
I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the  official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information.  Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There  were 35,000 Americans in that database last year. According to a European  government that screens hundreds of thousands of American travelers every  year, the list they have been given to work from has since grown to 80,000."
_Totalitarianism_
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore%20branded_b_13272.html)
This  should make you scared and pissed at the same time. If it
doesn't, check your pulse. "

Hear, hear.
 

During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988 the US armed one side and then the other to ensure that neither became dominant.  The death toll was over 400,000 thanks to US arming both sides and prolonging the war.

Iran and Iraq's human rights violations were not unique in the region - Israel and Saudi Arabia are just as bad.

In 1989 Iran started making moves towards greater liberalisation and political pluralism, reducing its support for radical Islamic movements.  But the United States increased its hostility toward the Iranian revolution.  In 1995 Clinton prohibited all American trade.  Various sanctions and anti-Iranian measures were stricter during Clinton's term than during the regime's most repressive and extremist period in the 1980s.  Iranian moderates fighting for greater political openness and better relations with the west were punished.  US policy so offended nationalist sentiments that hardliners found more support.  There is no legal basis for sanctions.  Efforts to subvert the Iranian government are contrary to international legal conventions recognising sovereign rights and principles of nonintervention.

The US linked Iran with acts of terrorism, military threats and subversion without showing any evidence.  The US exerted pressure on the Saudi government to implicate Iran in the 1996 bombing in Dharan, but Saudi investigators found no such link.  The US has refused to present evidence in an international forum to prove its allegations.

Iran has been reducing its military spending due to chronic economic problems - it is barely one third of what it was in the 1980s when it received arms from the US.

In 1998 Iran came close to going to war against Afghanistan's Taliban regime in response to the regime's repression against the country's Shiite minority.  Iran accepted nearly 2 million Afghan refugees throughout the period of war in Afghanistan.  Iran has always strongly opposed Al Qaeda.  In 2002 Bush gave a stern warning to Iran not to interfere in Afghanistan's internal affairs - ironically after US interference and heavy bombing.  Bush alleges that Iran allowed Al Qaeda members to seek sanctuary (which is unlikely considering their stand against Al Qaeda) but has refused to show evidence.

The US will continue to demonise Iran in the next step towards an invasion in the 'war against terror'.  The only terrorists are the Americans who fling allegations around as justification for aggression, but without providing evidence.

Information taken from "Tinderbox".

People have short memories, even if they were once aware of some facts behind events.  Take Iraq and Iran, for example, who the US government choose to demonise.  People believe the reasons given for American aggression towards them - use of chemical weapons, aggression towards neighbouring countries, human rights abuses, etc.  But many people choose to ignore, forget or are just not aware of the history of the region.

So, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Kurds - in 1988.  The US government of the time chose to ignore it.  They weren't particularly concerned about repression of Kurds.  In fact they supported Iraq's acquisition of the materials necessary.  In the 1980s the US government supplied the Iraqi government with much of the raw materials necessary for chemical and biological weapons.  But any use of such weapons was not of any particular concern to the Reagan administration.  Reagan killed the introduction of the Prevention of Genocide Act in 1988.

Iraq's military was significantly stronger in the 1980s than it was before the latest invasion by US forces.  Why, in 1997, was Iraq suddenly an intolerable threat when it had only a tiny percentage of its former military capability?  When Iraq was a potential asset, its potential threat was downplayed.  When Saddam refused to kowtow to the US, its much lesser threat was exaggerated.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inspects laboratories, factories and arsenals and oversees the destruction of any chemical weapons.  The director, Jose Bustani, raised the number of signatories in 1997 from 87 to 145.  The US raised objections over Bustani's insistence that the OPCW inspect US chemical weapons facilities and were critical of his efforts to get Iraq to sign the convention.  If Iraq had signed the convention and inspectors failed to locate evidence, it would weaken American claims that Iraq's chemical weapons' development needed a pre-emptive attack to counter the 'threat'.  Needless to say, the US government put pressure on countries to oust Bustani. 

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was opposed by the Arab league but they wanted to avoid war and keep it as an inter-Arab concern.  They got very close to convincing Iraq to withdraw.  But the States decided to send in large numbers of American troops as a 'deterrent' to Iraq's possible invasion of Saudi Arabia.  Iraq was not interested in invading Saudi Arabia - it had no territorial claims and only increased the number of troops in Kuwait after US forces arrived in the region.  (Interestingly, Bin Laden denounced Saddam Hussein.)  There was no attempt to negotiate on the part of the Americans.  Iraq's 'choice' was to capitulate without negotiation or be crushed.  Sanctions would not be withdrawn even if Iraq withdrew from Kuwait.  So why withdraw if Iraq had nothing to gain?  The US rejected a series of peace overtures by French, Soviets and Yemenis, wanting a massive military response instead. 

Four weeks after bombing began, Iraq accepted a Soviet peace deal in full.  The US rejected it, wanting to continue war.  Even when Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, the US pursued the retreating soldiers.  Tens of thousands of Iraqi troops had withdrawn 36 hours before the first allied forces reached Kuwait.  Retreating Iraqi soldiers and civilians were slaughtered.  The death toll was put at about 100,000.  The Kurds and Shiites meanwhile launched a rebellion against Saddam, but the US did nothing to support them, standing by while thousands were killed.

"The US led military response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait turned Saddam Hussein from aggressor to defender and from bully to hero in the eyes of much of the Arab world."  The Arab world was offended at the war's 'overkill', the heaviest bombing campaign in the history of war, attacking roads, bridges, factories, irrigation systems, power stations, water works, government offices.. going way beyond what was sufficient to rid Iraqi forces from Kuwait.  As a result more Arabs were hostile to the United States.  Can you blame them?  The United States is the warmonger.

Taken from "Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the roots of terrorism", an excellent background to the present situation.

A postscript on my entry about the student who said federal agents visited him about a book he had on Mao. (See my entry under Big Brother).  Apparently the student concerned was lying.  I just found another independent source which stated the following:

"There were too many  inconsistencies and he threw up roadblocks every time I tried to pin him down and have him give me an independent means to confirm something ... plus, he  embellished the story," making it more and more complicated and making it harder  and harder to confirm information.  Mr Nicodemus spoke with his  editors, and we suspected that the student was lying. We decided to hold the  story so we could do some more checking.  The next day, as the student's story  began to ravel, the student admitted to his professors that he had made the  whole thing up. He ducked our reporter's attempts to reach him. "

Still, it is a cautionary tale on both sides - not to believe everything you read, but also to be aware of what can happen.  It is enough that Bush authorised the monitoring of phone calls and emails of Americans contacting anyone in a foreign country.  That, in itself, is an outrage, and one of my online contacts stopped contacting me a while ago, fearing this would happen.

Kinda ironic don't you think?  That Bush accuses Iraq of producing and threatening to use nuclear and chemical weapons.  The States are the biggest stockpiler of nuclear weapons and they're the ones using chemical weapons (again).  Just shows the reasons for the 'war' are utter bullshit.

US lied about chemical weapons in Iraq

I didn't know about the napalm (or more accurately, mark 77). 

The lies issuing from the White House are phenomenal and yet people (idiots?) still support Bush and the rest.  They must be people who don't read.  The article above illustrates this with the following:

"In May this year, she (Ann Clwyd) wrote to the Guardian to assure us that reports that a "modern form of napalm" has been used by US forces "are completely without foundation. Coalition forces have not used napalm -- either during operations in Falluja, or at any other time." How did she know? The British foreign office minister told her. Before the invasion, Clwyd travelled through Iraq to investigate Saddam's crimes against his people. She told the House of Commons that what she found moved her to tears. After the invasion, she took the minister's word at face value, when a 30-second search on the internet could have told her it was bunkum. It makes you wonder whether she really gave a damn about the people for whom she claimed to be campaigning."

How can people just accept someone's word?  Are they so naive?  Wake up, people.  Use the brain you were born with and stop being sheep.

A nice list from alternet on overhyped and underrated stories for 2005:

2005 Media Follies

Problems with the last template so a change.

More on the Big Brother theme - just a brief article at alternet:

Big Brother Bush

If only he would be impeached.  No-one, it seems, has the guts to or they've been paid off or threatened.  The world will only get worse while these control-freaks are in power.