No Subtlety Here

Phillipe F. "I want to let the whole stinking world know that I HATE BUSH AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION." No subtlety here! C'mon, don't hold back, what are you trying to say?

Do you see Congress doing anything about anything?

HELL NO.

They are too busy sucking George Bush's fucking cock and taking turns bending over to take it in the ass.

Let me get this straight, are you saying you don't like George Bush and the congress isn't any better?

I want to let the whole stinking world know that I HATE BUSH AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. We have a system that is totally screwed and meant to help only the rich. The system or systems I speak of are Medicare and Social Security, and they are screwed up because the rich don't give a shit about it, because they are loaded and the dirty poor have nothing to lose, but all those in the middle are jolly well fucked.

Pretty much. Are you saying you hate the Bush Administration?

My wife has lupus. If she gets sick and can't work we can only have a certain amount of assets, that is to say NONE. We have to live off of 200 dollars a week while the fucking government nit-picks everything we do. All our hard work will be for NOTHING because if we have too much life insurance or retirement then we magically make too much money and the powers that be do not give a fuck about us. To them all we are is a statistic.

Seriously: didn't Stalin once say something like "one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." The Bush Administration is more Stalinist than Nazi in that both are ruled by paranoia. Everything else is neglected to those interests whose profit is maintaining the myth of invincibility. Ego rules everything, and its system reflects that sad reality.

This pisses me off to a new level, because I spent my whole fucking life paying into this system, everybody pays into this system, and they get fucked by the same system that is supposed to help them. Yes, fucked! Do you see Congress doing anything about anything? HELL NO. They are too busy sucking George Bush's fucking cock and taking turns bending over to take it in the ass. Our country is going to turn into Nazi Germany if it isn't already. So, if all you fuckers out there still think we have rights, take a closer look.

I guess I know. It mostly made for a good laugh.

Another Failed State

William S. Lind: Legitimacy, Toujours Legitimacy. More on the further decline of the state concept and another failed (proto-)state, and its implications for 4GW theory.

Mostly Gone

Goodbye to the City on the Hill. It's been mostly gone awhile anyway.

Scam

Michael Moore's latest scam: Exploiting other people's misery for profit. Concerning propaganda as art by a capitalist preaching socialism. Let the government directly control health care? So you're saying the same bunch who are running us into the ground should take health care along for the ride? For proof, just look at the ongoing Veteran's Administration scandal. And anyway, there are alternatives for low incomes (as I know from past experience): go to a public hospital/clinic (many go to the emergency room), and then don't pay the bill. By law (not to mention the Hippocratic oath), at a public hospital, you must be treated. (Even a private hospital must treat immediate conditions.) You might wait, but you will (eventually) at least get mostly that which the rich get with their private insurance. What are they going to do, take away what you don't own by suing you?* If you're poor (or just living paycheck-to-paycheck), government health care would mean you get less as the congress/administration diverted its funding for another war or banking crisis. The rich would still get what they are getting now: including Michael Moore. Socialism should never come from above. Anyway you look at it, the poor get screwed; in some systems, it's just worse. The only exceptions are when people do things for themselves.

*Rather than a civil matter, The government could potentially make non-payment a petty or even criminal matter (see the US student loan and tax systems for examples).

Typical

The Bumbling Envoy. Typical.

Swords

Pakistani traders put £80,000 bounty on Rushdie's head. It's all about swords.

Top Targets Fled Before U.S. Push, Commander Says. As if they were going to stick around.

Chavez warns major oil firms. I weep.

The West Chooses Fatah, But Palestinians Don't.

Iraq rises up failed states index.

Interesting History

William S. Lind: Some British Thoughts on Maneuver Warfare. Interesting history.

Paul Craig Roberts: The Reign of the Tyrants is at Hand. Fascism has nothing on them.

Another Maximum Advantage

Newly Empowered Democrats Draw Wrath of Voters. They were sent to do one thing and couldn't do it. They've shown just how worthless their party is for anything that matters.

Another Maximum Advantage.

The Pentagon V. Peak Oil. When machines run everything.

A Big If

If We Can Keep It. A big If.

The Enemy's New Tools in Iraq. Sharing the bombs.

Bush's economy is poverty stricken, bleeding jobs and ready to crash. And those are its good points.

Why there is no Palestine?

Why there is no Palestine?:

1. Because Israelis can't decide what they want.

Polls have shown that a clear majority of Israelis wants to see an end to the occupation. But history - and the craters of Katyushas and Qassams - indicate that a clear majority of Israelis, and an absolute majority of their leaders, are unwilling to take the potentially catastrophic risks of ending the occupation unilaterally.

Moreover, suspicious of the Palestinians' ultimate intentions and fearful of the social consequences of expelling West Bank settlers, the public shows little inclination to seek a diplomatic solution.

We no longer want to pay the price of occupation, but we have become convinced that the price of ending it is far higher.

2. Because Palestinians cannot decide what they want.

For decades, the Palestinians had no need to decide what they wanted. Israel shunned their representatives, dismissed their aspirations, settled their lands, and imprisoned and otherwise hunted down their leaders.

The occupation was more than simply the address for all complaints, the explanation for all disappointments, the diagnosis for all pain. It was also the excuse for indefinitely delaying debate over the character of a future independent Palestine.

Ironically, the hope of statehood was kept alive through the very darkest periods of occupation. More recently, however, as Gaza drowns in civil war and blood feud, Palestinians have begun to wonder if they will ever have a state at all.

To be able to move toward statehood, Palestinians must decide how they themselves stand on the bedrock issues of the conflict. Fundamentally, they must decide if they wish to make a final peace with Israel, or press for a Palestine to supplant it.

3. Because neither side is willing to abide by peace agreements.

Each side has banks of researchers assembling evidence that the other side consistently violates the explicit terms of signed peace accords. The evidence, on both sides, is conclusive.

4. Because we are, all of us, better at vengeance than we are at forgiveness.

For both sides, it is the first rule of politics: Peace is politically dangerous, if not lethal. War, or at least talk of war, is the safer default setting.

This is similar to, but not the same as:

5. Because we love our extremists too much.

Both sides have a profound sentimental attachment to the militants, extremists and hardliners in their midst. We see them as the keepers of the pure flame, the ideologically untarnished, remnants of a more straightforward era. We also suffer from them, as the minority whose actions intentionally thwart the possibility of peace for the majority.

On the Palestinian side they may be gunmen or suicide bombers or their dispatchers; on our own, hilltop youth or those suffering from Temple Mount delusions.

We tolerate them, we subsidize them, we admire them, we arm them, we forgive them their trespasses, we allow them to live outside our own laws - and, in return, they ruin our lives.

6. Because the policies of both sides play directly into the hands of extremists on the other.

Hamas is Hamas because of Israel. And no group in the Holy Land has done more to bolster the Israeli far right than Hamas.

7. Because the Muslim world wants its Palestinians to suffer.

The Muslim world grants the Palestinians fortunes in lip service, and little else of value. The Palestinians are much more valuable to them as valiant, pathetic symbols of victimhood. The Palestinians are to the Muslim world as the wretched refugees of Gaza once were to the Palestinian leadership. Their image can act as lightning rods for unrest, turning domestic political discord into anger against Israel.

8. Because the West now sees them as terrorists.

All terrorism, like all news, is local. The moment Muslim terrorists strike a Western city, the Twin Towers, the Underground, the Madrid depot, Palestinian resistance turns overnight to terrorism, in the local journalistic vernacular. Thanks largely to Al-Qaida, the West has changed its definition of Palestinian resistance, from defense of the innocent to targeting of the innocent.

9. Because Arafat lied to them.

While Yasser Arafat was signing agreements with Israel, he was letting his people know in hints and winks and exhortations that they would in the end have everything they wanted. Refugees would return to their homes in Israel proper. Jerusalem's Old City would return to Muslim sovereignty. The armed struggle would tip the balance.

There is also the lie inherent in the rule of corruption which Arafat fostered, sapping critical resources, undermining public confidence and crippling efforts at responsive governance.

10. Because they cannot stop themselves.

There is no one to put an end to civil war. There is no spiritual authority, there is no governmental authority, there is no military authority.

11. Because some of the best people in Palestine are leaving.

And because some of the people who cannot leave are unable to think about anything else.

12. Because each side takes it for granted that its side is clearly, morally, objectively in the right, and that the other side is nothing but wrong.

A fool's paradise turns out to be better than no paradise at all.

13. And because the Holy Land is the world capital of wishful thinking.

Deep down, both sides secretly believe that they will get what they wanted all along, whether it's Greater Israel or Greater Palestine, complete sovereignty over Jerusalem or the right of return.

After a century of struggle, the Palestinians deserve better. The Palestinians deserve a nation. But after a century of struggle, they now face their worst test since 1948.

Their ship of state needs a painful refitting, and a radical and perhaps terrifying change of course. As a people, the Palestinians are now facing their matriculation. If they can address their long list of problems head on, they can return to the path of independence. But skip the problems, or get them wrong, and Palestinian nationhood may be just one more dream dying in the dust in Gaza.

Yes!

How currency devaluation destroys wealth. Yes!

Abbas sacks Hamas-led government. Like it means anything.

Samarra Fallout; Surge not Working. Of all the places to not to guard, why would it not be the remains of that mosque?

Too Good To Be True

Obama's Siren Song. Too good to be true.

Math Analogy

William S. Lind: The Perfect (Sine) Wave. I sure do like using math analogies to illustrate failure.

Guantanamo Trials Unfair: Nuremberg Prosecutor. He ought to know fascism when he sees it.

Hamas launches new Gaza attacks. All out civil war.

Turkey not done with the Kurds. No surprise there.

Corruption, Incompetence and Neglect

New Orleans Disaster Blamed On Decades of Bad Decisions. (The full report, “The New Orleans Hurricane Protection Systems: What Went Wrong and Why,” can be found at www.asce.org.) Forty years of corruption, incompetence and neglect. I was told by someone who worked for the corps that past federal policy was to assign flood control dollars to regions with higher real estate values. New Orleans did not "V.E."

Speak Now, Or Forever Watch Your Back

Another bloody week as Mexico's drug war rages. South of the border war and the complete sequence for the DNA and mRNA of a Chinese Goose variant of H5N1 (bird flu virus) via Global Guerrillas. He knows his subject.

Speak Now, Or Forever Watch Your Back. The location is interesting.

Hear, Read

Hear and Read about a tax revolt from inside their compound. Via Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: New Media Tactics in New Hampshire.

http://www.randomwebsite.com/

Go to http://www.randomwebsite.com/. I got This and This.

Turkey denies Iraq incursion report. Sure.

Al-Qaeda spark for an Iran-US fire And the big loser: the American People.

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is Not Necessarily My Friend

William S. Lind: A Perspective on Anbar.

Excerpt:

Al-Qaeda has made a classic insurgency blunder. It is attempting to enforce its locally unpopular, Salafist brand of Islam in Sunni regions before it has won the war and consolidated power. In so doing, it has alienated part of its base, an error that can prove fatal. Worse, it seems unable to change course and adopt a "broad front" strategy, perhaps because the Salafist fanaticism of its fighters will not allow it to.

Equally real is the American attempt to capitalize on al-Qaeda's blunder. General Odierno's order allowing local cease-fires shows genuine learning on our part. In Anbar, the Marine Corps seems to have done what successful counter-insurgency requires and adopted a policy of de-escalation, though one may wonder to what degree it is successful in getting the troops to do that.

At the same time, if we look at these developments through the lens of Fourth Generation theory, they may mean less than we would hope them to. In Fourth Generation war, there is not one opponent, but a vast kaleidoscope of players, whose relationships to each other change constantly. Each player may, at any given time, be at war with a number of other players, not just one. Alliances tend to be short-term and purely tactical. The fact that some Sunni groups are fighting al-Qaeda does not mean they accept our presence, much less our now-avowed intention to keep forces in Iraq for half a century as in Korea. The Post quoted the mayor of the Sunni Baghdad suburb that rose against al-Qaeda as saying, "But if the Americans interfere, it will blow up, because they are the enemy of us both, and we will unite against them and stop fighting each other."

In other words, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend (or ally). Anyone truly believing otherwise (as opposed to just saying) is either a tool or a fool. The lines between fanaticism, realism and "useful idiots" are thus drawn. The blur between is an attraction not unlike a moth to flame.

Propaganda On Propaganda

Patrick Cockburn: An Interview with Moqtada al-Sadr. Iraq's future.

Guantanamo pair charges dropped. Setback for fascism.

Iran retells the story of Nazis and Israel on state television. Propaganda on propaganda.

Crisis of Credibility

The Last of the Texas Outsiders. On Ron Paul and the crisis of potential crisis of credibility regarding the US political system. The mass media discredits itself.

Fate

William S. Lind: The Folly of Maximalist Objectives.

Excerpt:

Now, it seems, the Bush Administration insists on extending the folly of maximalist objectives from total war into cabinet wars, and moreover into cabinet wars it is losing (or more accurately has lost). In public, it blathers on about democracy for Iraq, a war objective that reaches beyond maximalism into pure fantasy. In private, its real objectives, unchanged since long before the war began, are no less disconnected from reality. It seeks an Iraq that is a willing American satellite, a bottomless source of oil for America's SUVs, a permanent site for vast U.S. military bases from which Washington can dominate the region, and an ally of Israel. The skies will be darkened by winged swine long before any of these objectives are attained.

Such is the fate of those seeking Maximum Advantage in all Things?

Battle rages on Lebanon camp edge.  Another war.