Don't Blame the Manchurian Candidate

Those who would throw brickbats at McCain for dumping his wife and the mother of his children after getting out of prison, then marrying some rich bitch who would further his political career, should remember that after five of indoctrination at Communist hands he was merely doing what he'd been programmed to do. It's the Communists' next post-hypnotic suggestion, we ought worry about.

(Maybe Bush really was in the Air National Guard and got shot down over VietNam. How else to explain both Vietnam and China experiencing such never-before-seen prosperity as they have under Bush's leadership?)

McCain and Keating fooled you once

Remember Lincoln Savings? When McCain and Keating fooled you the first time, it was shame on them. If you let them fool you again, then shame on you.

It's all about the oil, stupid

http://www.truthout.org:80/article/time-iraq-war-oil-profits-taxes

http://www.truthout.org/article/time-iraq-war-oil-profits-taxes-part-ii

McCain the Manchurian Candidate

Those who've seen either version of the film, The Manchurian Candidate, or who've read the book, know that it concerns a G.I. taken prisoner in the Korean War who is brainwashed by the Chinese. Does the same plot apply to an airman taken prisoner in the Vietnamese War who is brainwashed by the Chinese? Those familiar with McCain's platform know that the answer is "yes." His desire to perpetuate the disasterous policies of the Bush-Cheney government which have left hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work or on the military dole can only further push America into a major depression leaving us vulnerable to a takeover by Beijing.

Even the American military are divided, some top officers believing that the threat posed by the Chinese can only result in still larger budgets and others who believe that things may already have gone too far and we can only lose such an encounter. Do the 35% of the U.S. population who remain Bush loyalists really want to serve as slaves when the Chinese arrive? Or do they picture themselves serving as overseers in a slave economy?

Why The Media Demands A Single Candidate

"Clinton should step down," read the headlines. "She should step down," repeat the columnists, the talk show hosts and TV's talking heads.

But why? At least three answers underlie this latest dictate of the Media's bosses, an oligarchy of a few very rich men. Their reasons are not generally publicized, but a trip to the 13th floor and an insertion into the mind of one of the privileged few revealed all.

"Stop Edwards: Too often when the Democrats are divided, they've settled on a compromise candidate. Senator Edwards is no compromise. He's little more than a communist, an #$% robin hood, and he'll cost this country a fortune. (O.K., so all #$% politicians cost taxpayers a fortune; this latest #$% has left the U.S. bankrupt; but at least he left my off-shore accounts alone.)

" Trim costs: Having to send out two teams of reporters and cameramen is costing us a fortune. (Note to self for future reference: We could save even more if there were only a single party. We could cut back on our political donations, too.)

"Admittedly, we'll lose some money in the short run, since the audience for the Democratic convention will drop off to nothing. (Come to think of it, we don't actually get paid for showcasing those conventions, it's just another of those worthless public services we do to show our hearts are in the right place. Could we drop them from our schedule entirely?) But in the long run, once the public starts to ignore the conventions, we can get back to electing a candidate the way it ought to be done, in a room full of cigar smoke and good old boys."

Phillip Good, formerly known as #6 of the Berkeley Barb, is the author of Common Errors in Statistics (and How to Avoid Them).

Civil War in Ecuador?

Now that the President of Ecuador has ejected a US airbase, we can count on the CIA doing another Kenya or another Congo, depending on whether they sponsor a civil war or an assassination.

Boycott Beijing Sponsors

Please Boycott the sponsors of Beijing Olympic games.

Send our athletes, but fans stay home.
Don't travel to China.
Avoid purchasing Chinese-made goods.
Don't purchase Samsung, Coca-Cola, Lenovo, or GE products.

How Republican appointees spend your money

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040908O.shtml

What's the difference between Moslems and the U.S. Military?

What's the difference between Moslems and the U.S. Military?
In Iraq, there isn't any as far as women are concerned. See

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040908J.shtml

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040208N.shtml

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040408M.shtml

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030308H.shtml

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031508Y.shtml

Want a Job? Benefits? Join the Military

Under Bush, the nation has launched the largest program of welfare for the otherwise unemployable. (And by not enforcing the laws against illegal immigrants, Bush has assured that few citizens will have any other choice than to enlist.)

Read

The Volunteer Army: Who Fights and Why?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21201

Why Kenya?

Kenya suffered in the previous century under British tyranny, why is the U.S. now involved? Demonstrating its dissatisfaction with President Mwai Kibaki's administration, the U.S. backed Kenya's political opposition, and, when they failed to win the election, supplied the arms that underlie today's atrocities. But why? Kenya has no oil and poses no economic threat to the United States. But readers of Chalmer Johnson's Nemesis will understand that the US wants an air base there (here, there and everywhere). Kibaki (sensibly) refused to allow the camel's nose in his country's tent. He wants to play hardball does he? So we give him hardball. I don't like us.

The Wages of Peace

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031708O.shtml
Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier write for The Nation: "The economic consequences of Iraq run even deeper than the squandered opportunities for vital public investments. Spending on Iraq is also a job killer. Every $1 billion spent on a combination of education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure investments creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than the same money going to Iraq. Taking the 2007 Iraq budget of $138 billion, this means that upward of 1 million jobs were lost because the Bush Administration chose the Iraq sinkhole over public investment."

And For Vice-President, the nominee is ...

Bush's selection of Cheney as is his vice-president was a stroke of genius as it made Bush assassination proof. We use this same criteria in advising Obama to select Edwards as his vice-president with Janet Napolitano, the Governor of Arizona, as a possible alternative, while for Clinton, the choice of Obama as her VP is obvious.

US Cannot Manage Contractors in Wars, Officials Testify on Hill

With even more U.S. contractors now in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. military personnel, government officials told Congress yesterday that the Bush administration is not prepared to manage the contractors' critical involvement in the American war effort.

At the end of last September, there were "over 196,000 contractor personnel working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Jack Bell, deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness.

Contractors "have become part of our total force, a concept that DoD [the Defense Department] must manage on an integrated basis with our military forces," he also said in prepared testimony for a hearing yesterday of the Senate homeland security subcommittee. "Frankly," he continued, "we were not adequately prepared to address" what he termed "this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors."

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, and William M. Solis, director of defense capabilities and management for the Government Accountability Office, testified that not enough trained service personnel are available to handle outsourcing to contractors in the wars.

Solis said a military officer with a Stryker brigade deployed in Iraq had told the GAO about a contractor that had mishandled security screenings of Iraqis and foreigners. In the end, Solis said, the officer used his own personnel to accomplish the task, diverting staff from "their primary intelligence gathering responsibilities."

Retired Army Gen. David M. Maddox, who has studied the contracting effort in Iraq as a member of an Army-appointed commission, said in his statement that it "has not fully recognized the impact of a large number of contractors" and "their potential impact to mission success."

Maddox said the Army had five general officer positions for career contracting professionals in 1990 but has none today. The two-star general who runs the Joint Contracting Command for Iraq/Afghanistan, Maddox said, is an Air Force officer.

Maddox added that 3 percent of Army contracting personnel are active-duty and that the acquisition workforce shrunk by 25 percent from 1990 to the end of fiscal 2000. While the contracting workload has increased sevenfold since 2000, he said, about half of the military officers and Army civilians in the contracting field "are certified for their current positions."

Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), the subcommittee's chairman, noted that the Defense Contract Audit Agency has reported that $10 billion of about $57 billion in contracts for services and reconstruction in Iraq "is either questionable or cannot be supported because of a lack of contractor information needed to assess costs." He added that more than 80 separate criminal investigations are underway involving contracts of more than $5 billion.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a subcommittee member who has investigated the contract issue during her trips to Iraq and Kuwait, stressed that "if people are not fired or demoted or if there is not a failure to promote in the military because of massive failure of appropriate oversight and management, things will not change."

But when she asked Bowen and Solis if they knew of anyone who had been fired or denied promotion because of contracting mistakes disclosed in more than 300 reports over five years, they said they knew of none.

By Walter Pincus
The Washington Post -------

Bush economic stimulus

Bush administration vs U,S, veterans

7 ex-POWs, pilots who were shot down and brutalized by Saddam Hussein's regime, are suing the Iraqi government for damages.

The Bush administration is denying their lawsuit, claiming that the money would place a financial burden on the Iraqi government and strain the relationship between Iraq and the United States.

Is this administration more loyal to a corrupt foreign government than to our own troops who were prisoners of war?

This administration has no shame, loyalty or compassion for those who are fighting to protect our country.

Mike Lockridge

Mission Viejo

Thoughts on Tubing a Shallow Jungle Stream

Went tubing between the rocks of a shallow river lined with scratchy trees. Fun, but wasted a lot of energy avoiding obstacles. Feel I could do a lot better if I had a chance to do the river run again with some knowledge of what lay ahead. Feel the same way about my life.

Purpose of the Iraq War

1. Re-elect Bush so he could continue to enrich the rich and impoverish the American Middle Class.


2. Put war profits in the hands of Bush supporters.
• Purchasing defective equipment meant that replacements would be needed.
• Abolishing testing meant more defective equipment could be purchased.
• 
  

(Note that the overall effect of these and other developments was to further enrich the rich and impoverish the American Middle Class.

3. Continue to train Americans as torturers.
4. Seize Iraq oil supplies and privatize them.
5. Privatize Iraq and destroy Iraqi middle-class in the process.

· As in Chile after 9/11/73,weaken will of people to resist changes by overwhelming display of military might, torture, and destruction of basic services. (Note Iraq was chosen as focus of attack rather than Iran or Syria as it was known to have no significant weapons. FN)

· Privatize water system, electricity, telephones, airline, (some 200 firms in all) and all state assets.

· Replace Iraqi-owned businesses with multi-nationals.

a. Foreign companies could now own 100% of Iraqi assets

b. Investors could take 100% of Iraq profits out of country without paying tax.

· Introduce flat-tax of 15% to replace corporate tax of 45 percent.

· Eliminate tariffs on foreign imports (and put domestic industries at risk).

· Introduce a new currency (printed in Britain)

· Privatize Iraq education system.

a. Pay foreign think tanks to develop

b. Print new text books abroad

Never mind that under Saddam, 89% of Iraqi’s were literate, while under New Mexico Governor Richardson only 46% are.

For still more on the privatization of Iraq and the use of torture by the U.S. see, The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.

The Road to Guantãnomo

“If you wish to rule a people, you must first convince them that they are only fit to be ruled. On the first day, they will laugh. On the second, they will protest. On the third, they will be convinced.”

19^th Century Philippine proverb

For six years now, Marines have been passing through Guantãnomo Bay learning the art of torture. What can our government be preparing for?

Perhaps, I lack empathy as well as understanding of my government’s motives. For my immediate reaction on watching the film, The Road to Guantãnomo, was to rail at the waste of tax payer money Guantãnomo Bay is.

The film traces the actions of three young Britons of Pakistani descent who travel to Pakistan in October 2001 ostensibly to attend a friend’s wedding, only to spend the next three years as detainees in Guantãnomo, where they are both tortured and witnesses to torture. The film won an award for its director in 2006 at the Berlin Film Festival and is available today on DVD.

While in Pakistan, waiting for the wedding day, the threesome, bored, decide to bus to Afghanistan just to see what’s happening. An analogy would be the Pump House gang heading up from La Jolla to the outskirts of Watts in the mid 1990's to view the burning buildings. An alternate and less charitable point of view is the three went to Afghanistan specifically to join up with the Taliban in a Moslem jihad. Either way, they fail to make contact with the Taliban and never hold a weapon. Regardless, they are captured by the Northern Alliance and turned over to the Americans who then send them to US-occupied Cuba for extended detention.

Why were they held in Guantãnomo for three years? What could be learned from them that could not be learned in three months or three days?

The objectives of torture (barred by the Geneva convention) are short term, immediate. “Where is the bomb? When is it set to go off?” Yet the torture of the three Britons continued for a three-year period without yielding any tangible results, not that there have been tangible results from the interrogations of any of the other prisoners held at Guantãnomo.

When torture was used by the Nazi’s as well as by the Chilean Military after the U.S. backed coup which toppled the Chilean government in September 1970, its objective was to find out the names of other opponents to the regime, as well as to bring pleasure to the torturers, of course. Used by the Americans at Guantãnomo Bay, its sole function appears to be training torturers for future employment.

In the film, the “torture” practiced at Guantãnomo is not all that different from the harassment integral to Marine bootcamp and in some ways resembles the practices used in retraining a “boot” who deliberately shoots himself in the foot. No slivers of bamboo are applied under the fingernails, no “waterboarding” is shown. But other Guantãnomo prisoners have described having an electric shock device applied to their genitals (Jumah al-Dossari) and abroad US Soldiers have used beatings, waterboading, and electroshocks.

The face-to-face interrogation methods depicted in this film are laughable. It is one thing to make the American public believe there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it is quite another to convince an individual that he’s the one standing next to Bin Laden in a photograph.

Which leaves the question: Just what are the Bush Administration and the American Military up to in Guantãnomo? Are they preparing for mass arrests here at home? Sometime in the coming year, can I look forward to being plucked off the street, hauled to the nearest football stadium and held there until I reveal the names of all my neighbors who are Democrats or Greens?

Torture is nothing new as far as the U.S. is concerned. When 9/11 witnessed the U.S.- sponsored assassination of Chilean President Allende, representatives of the U.S. military were immediately on hand to advise the Pinachot dictatorship as it tortured and disappeared some 3,200 Chileans, imprisoned 80,000 others, and drove 200,000 more from their native land. Subsequently, U.S. military personnel were to train the torturers of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

What is unique about the torturers of Guantãnomo Bay is that for the first time large number of Americans, not Chileans or Argentineans or Brazilians or Nicaraguans, are being trained in the art of torture. Feel free to protest or laugh according to your nature. Either way, after the Democrats fail to rescue the American economy from the bottomless pit into which it is descending, January 1 2009 will mark the fascist takeover.

Priorities