Giordano Bruno: do not comply, Salvador Option, Condi, Weinberger, Ralph Peters, Elizabeth Kolbert, Sean Preston

riverbendblog

>وزارة الدفاع تدعو المواطنين الى
عدم الانصياع لاوامر دوريات الجيش والشرطة الليلية اذا لم تكن برفقة
قوات التحالف العاملة في تلك المنطقة

"The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by American coalition forces working in that area."

lrb
. ‘I am not leaving my home,’ he said. ‘The police commandos arrested 15 people from here last night including the local baker. I am sitting here in my house with a Kalashnikov and 60 bullets and if they come for me I am going to open fire.’

messopotamian
Everybody is wearing the same uniforms. Whole sections of the city have virtually fallen to gangs and terrorists, and this is sepecially true for the "Sunni" dominated neighborhoods. People and businesses are being robbed and the employees kidnapped en mass in broad daylight and with complete ease as though security forces are non-existent, although we see them everwhere.
I don't know anymore what can be done to rescue the situation. At least, those who are supposed to be in positions of responsibility should stop lying and painting a false picture. It has to be admitted that the city is under siege and has become the front battle line. Emergency measures have to be put in place immediately, otherwise as everbody in Baghdad knows, the whole city is going to fall soon.
[nb messopotamian is Pro-Invasion "that great liberation day in April of 2003." ]
He says:
"terrorism gravitated towards Baghdad and its surrounding “Sunni Belt” of villages and farms, Mahmoudiya-Iskandariya-Latifiya etc. to the South; Tarmiya, Mshahda, Taji in the North; Nahrawan and the road to Dialla in the East and of course Abu Ghraib and the approaches to the Anbar in the west. These outskirts of Baghdad are the source of the worst sectarian atrocities that we have seen lately and the source of the corpses dumped daily in Baghdad these days." - which is odd since the impression we otherwise get is that (Shia?) death squads are dumping Sunni corpses, Evidently the "Salvador Option" [terrorise everyone with death squads ofgrotesque brutality]comes with (deliberate?) confusion

socialistworker 28 March 2006: the return of solidarity
Up to one and a half million workers struck in Britain. Three million workers, students and young unemployed demonstrated in 150 towns and cities across France.
Britain’s biggest strike since the 1926 General Strike shocked New Labour and the bosses this Tuesday. Strikers and activists sent in their reports of the pensions strike from around the country
[Here in Aus the obese gas belchers slumber, while worse worker laws, and worse migrant laws carry on...]

abc 30Mar06 Kays Juma, 72, was apparently driving near a convoy of four-wheel-drives in Baghdad, when security guards opened fire and killed him.
Professor Juma spent much of each year living in Iraq, where he taught at university.
....unconfirmed reports that an Australian security guard was responsible for the shooting, but the manager of the security firm has said that the employee involved in the incident was not Australian.

informationclearinghouse Pilger gets upset:
On March 27, Channel 4 News broadcast a relatively long piece on Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela. On Channel 4's website you get a flavour: “He is in danger of joining a rogue’s gallery of dictators and despots — Washington’s latest Latin nightmare.”
This was a piece seemingly written by the US State Department, although Channel 4's Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, appeared on screen. It was one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen, qualifying as crude propaganda.

us.news.yimg images dont last...
CondiToon

consortiumnews 26Mar06..
In a world where might did not make right, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and their key enablers would be in shackles before a war crimes tribunal
...."If you really believe that the only thing that happened on 9/11 was people flew airplanes into buildings, I think you have a very narrow view of what we faced on 9/11," Rice said. "We faced the outcome of an ideology of hatred throughout the Middle East that had to be dealt with. Saddam Hussein was a part of that old Middle East. The new Iraq will be a part of the new Middle East, and we will all be safer." [what ya mean "we" house nigger?]
..It goes well beyond waging "preemptive" or even "predictive" war. Rice is asserting a U.S. right to inflict death and destruction on Muslim countries as part of a social-engineering experiment to eradicate their perceived cultural and political tendencies toward hatred.
______________________________________________________________________________satiricalpolitical
..lead story in the March 27th New York Times:
American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents who for nearly the past three years have been branded the gravest security threat.

032906 ..former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who died on March 28 .. In 1992, he was one of six defendants in the Iran-Contra scandal who received Christmas Eve pardons from President George H.W. Bush .. ..If Bush had not granted those pardons, Weinberger would have gone on trial in early 1993 facing perjury and obstruction charges, a courtroom drama that could have changed how Americans perceived key figures from the Reagan administration,
including Colin Powell and President Bush himself..... In the early-to-mid 1980s, Ronald Reagan had sought to avoid a head-on clash with Congress ..using cutouts like Israel to ship missiles to Iran and White House aide Oliver North to funnel supplies to the contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua.
..Among the likely star witnesses would have been Colin Powell, who would have faced the dilemma of risking perjury or admitting that he participated in a violation of the Arms Export Control Act in the missile shipments to Iran in 1985.
..Though Reagan was declaring publicly "that America will never make concessions to terrorists," privately he ordered precisely that..
In July 1985,..Iran wanted 100 TOW missiles to be delivered through Israel, according to Weinberger's notes. Reagan gave his approval..
.... Weinberger began pressing for other military equipment to go to Iraq, which was then engaged in a bloody war with Iran. ..
.."Saw Colin Powell - re Italian Agosta [sic] helicopters," Weinberger scrawled, "try to let them sell to Iraq."

Tom Tommorrow
thismodernworld
washingtonpost
the offensive Tom Toles cartoon

Someone shouts: (drag the Wahhabi,” while another describes him as a (bastard.” They pause a moment to search for a wire, then they dump him on the side of the road. Another militiaman suggests they bury him. (What do you mean bury him?” the gang leader snaps back with indignation. (Leave him here to the dogs.” Then they joke about his underwear and cover the corpse with a cardboard.
Note that life looks absolutely normal in the surroundings. You can see children running about, stores open, religious holiday flags and even a traffic jam. Perhaps Ralph Peters will happen to drive by with an American army patrol and enjoy the scene of children cheering for the troops, while wondering where his civil war is, dude.
nypost realclearpolitics
This guy Ralph Peters rides around embedded with USA troops ,and complains that no-one attacks them, so this must mean there isnt a civil war. And he complains that journalists dontsee the real Iraq. I hope he gets a shaped charge right up his embedded arse.

healingiraq washingtonpost one week in Baghdad

timesonline [Ken L on the USAnina ambassador to England] This new ambassador is a car salesman and an ally of President Bush. This is clearly a political decision."
Later, he was even more forthright, telling ITV’s London Today: "It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiselling little crook."

lefty blogs scaramoucheblog lefarkins huffingtonpost

Elizabeth Kolbert Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
WN: You talk about David Rind's work -- predicting rampant drought conditions afflicting much of the continental United States within 50 years if greenhouse gas emissions continue at business-as-usual levels.
Kolbert: (In the book) he says that, "I wouldn't be surprised if by 2100 most things are destroyed." But he's certainly a very cool guy, not a hysterical person. He's a scientist, and he's just looking at the evidence.
Kolbert: People much more expert than I will tell you that we are in the middle of what is probably a mass extinction. People will say that the evolution of large vertebrates, of which we are one, that's just over.

March 22 — Stimulants like Ritalin lead a small number of children to suffer hallucinations that usually feature insects, snakes or worms, according to federal drug officials, and a panel of experts said on Wednesday that physicians and parents needed to be warned of the risk.
The panel members said they hoped the warning would prevent physicians from prescribing a second drug to treat the hallucinations caused by the stimulants, which one expert estimated affect 2 to 5 of every 100 children taking them.