Would You Buy a Nuclear War from This Man?

I want to nuke 'em, I want to nuke 'em NOW!

No? Well, congratulations! You already have! He's convinced Sweet Oxy-Condi to tag along on the nuke bandwagon, and pretty soon you, O Taxpayer of Little Faith, will be the proud owner of your Very Own Nuclear War! With that country about which I'm sure you know a whole hell of a lot, and for whom you feel the utmost ire & enmity, Iran!

Here's a slightly edited and worth-perusing excerpt from the "DownsizeDC" group, normally a libertarian group that endorses Ron Paul, is not so hot about socialized medicine, but really has it on the money on a number of issues, including the Department of Homeland Security and Patriot Act, two "Essentially Cheney" creations that really express his line of thinking ... and the American taxpayers are the catwalk!

Here's an area where both left, right, and middle may agree: duh... going to Armageddon and killing civilians unnecessarily is NOT a good policy.

"URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!

Subject: The immediate mortal danger of attacking Iran

There is increasing evidence that President Bush intends to bomb Iran. This would . . .

• Reverse the progress we have made with Iranian public opinion

• Further entrench the "hardliners" in the Iranian regime

• Further radicalize the Muslim population across the Middle East

• Recruit countless numbers of new terrorists
• Place us in a state of irreversible war with Iran and its people
• Threaten oil shipments from the Persian gulf

(Why would a Big Oil Administration want to threaten oil shipments?? Must be something even Bigger than Big Oil!)

(Regarding "radicalizing" - unlike the writer, I believe this is really alienating Muslims from a sense of free participation in world events, the response to which is to take action to "participate" from the "outside" - which is where they have been pushed. It becomes a case of Us vs. Them - and guess who started this? Us, of course! it's not "blowback" - it's just participation by those who are denied participation - by force, on both sides...)

The combined impact would be to destabilize the entire region, fostering bin Laden's goal of creating radical Islamist regimes throughout the area. Most chilling is the potential impact on Pakistan. If Pakistan's population becomes further radicalized because of U.S. attacks against Muslims the result could be the creation of an Islamist regime. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons, and elements of Pakistan's security service has close ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, dating back to the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

If President Bush bombs Iran the result could be exactly what he thinks he's trying to prevent -- nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. In addition, bombing Iran could slow that country's nuclear program, but it would not stop it. The Iranians could just begin again, with more secure underground sites, just like the Nazis did in response to allied bombing during World War II.

What would we do then? Use nuclear weapons? Vice President Cheney is said to already favor this!


There is nothing to be gained by bombing Iran, and everything to be lost. And yet, there are more and more reports that President Bush plans to attack Iran before he leaves office.


Worse yet, he already has Congressional authorization to do so because of the loose wording of previous war authorizations resolutions.


The whole world is at the mercy of President Bush's notoriously bad judgment, unless ALL OF US take action to constrain him. There is something we can do, in the short term, to stop an attack, and many things we can do in the long term to stabilize the situation and bring lasting security.In the short term . . .

• We must demand that Congress pass a resolution prohibiting an attack


• We must demand this of the Democrats even if the Republicans would resist


• We must focus extreme pressure on Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid


• We must work to turn key Republicans in the House, and especially the Senate


• We must recruit more people to apply more pressure
  

Even if all we got was a majority vote in the House, because the Republicans blocked action in the Senate, that might be enough to stay the President's hand.

For the long term . . .We must compel Congress to recognize the truth of what Congressman Ron Paul and official reports of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon assert. Blowback against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is the main problem, which means pullback is the answer.


We must eliminate our footprint in Islamic countries. When we do that the process of radicalization will recede. This is the best path to peace and security for the American people. Specifically . . .

• We should exit Iraq, leaving the surrounding Islamic countries to create a settlement there


• We should renounce pre-emptive war and regime change, and adopt a policy of retaliatory deterrence
  
• We should recognize the government of Iran and establish formal relations with it


• We should apologize directly to the Iranian people for the 1953 C.I.A. coup and our support of the Shah


• We should lift trade sanctions on Iran to foster civil society there as a balance against extremism
  

Many facts form the basis of our proposals . . .We have a history of regime change in the Middle East, and especially Iran. We overthrew a democratic and secular Iranian government in 1953, and established the tyrannical Shah. The Iranians remember this. We have also just changed the regime in Iraq and placed Iran on the same target list.

Given these facts . . .You would want a nuclear weapon too, if you were part of the Iranian government!

We must take every possible step to make the Iranian regime feel secure, no matter how much we may dislike their form of government. It is possible . . .

• The Iranian government has repeatedly said that the main thing it wants from the U.S. is respect


• The Iranians have offered to defund Hezbollah as part of a broader settlement with the U.S.


• The Iranians have offered to help us against the Taliban in Afghanistan, which they also dislike


• The Afghanistan government favors Iranian aid against the Taliban, but we have blocked it.


• Our government has repeatedly snubbed Iranian overtures. We must stop doing this.

We recognized and negotiated with the Communists in China and the Soviet Union to good result, and we can do the same with the Iranians. We must remove the MOTIVATION for the Iranian government to develop nuclear weapons, and give them strong incentives for peaceful relations!

We must also bolster our relationship with the Iranian people. They have come to dislike their own government and are tending to have a neutral or even positive opinion of the U.S. After the 9-11 attack Iranians flooded the streets, demonstrating in support of America.

Bombing Iran would once again make us the enemy in the eyes of the Iranian people, when instead we could restore and foster their good opinion of us. It is important to repeat that we can do this by . . .

• Taking Iran off our enemies list
  
• Apologizing loudly and publicly for the 1953 coup and our support of the Shah


• Lifting trade sanctions!

Trade sanctions do not work. They cripple civil society and permit oppressive regimes to blame their own failings on foreign powers. They are counterproductive. We should end the sanctions unilaterally and bring Iran into the world community.
We have it in our power to enhance the peace and security of the whole world. All we have to do is stop provoking people. This does not mean that the radicals will stand down, but it does mean that the process of radicalization will slow, and perhaps even stop. But first . . .We must prevent an attack on Iran. Here's what we need to do . . .

• Send a message to Congress demanding a resolution prohibiting an attack


• Call the offices of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and demand a vote on this issue


• Call Nancy Pelosi at this number: 202-225-4965


• Call Harry Reid at this number: 202-224-3542
  
• If one or more of your Senators are Republicans, call them too

Pelosi and Reid are blocking a vote on this issue because they're afraid of appearing soft. We must give them the courage to do the right thing. Republicans in the Senate are the key to getting a vote in that chamber. We must make them fear public opinion. * Send your message to Congress*

Note: There are many movements against bombing Iran, notably also Gen. Wes Clark's. Why don't these all join together in one big anti-bombing bloc??????

Iraq Slaughter Surpasses Rwanda Massacres

This just popped up on the radar. Let's pray it wormholes into the public consciousness and conscience. Another reason to work hard for withdrawal. Complete, total withdrawal. And a complete and total reversal of the anti-democracy efforts of the Bush Administration, which include, among other crimes, insanely wild warmongering.

New Poll Reveals:
September 2007 - More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered
In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.

Previous estimates, most noticeably the one published in the Lancet in October 2006, suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths).

These findings come from a poll released today by O.R.B., the British polling agency that have been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005. In conjunction with their Iraqi fieldwork agency a representative sample of 1,461 adults aged 18+ answered the following question:

- Q - How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.

None 78% One 16% Two 5% Three 1% Four or more 0.002%

Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003.

Detailed analysis (which is available on our website) indicates that almost one in two households in Baghdad have lost a family member, significantly higher than in any other area of the country. The governorates of Diyala (42%) and Ninewa (35%) were next.

The poll also questioned the surviving relatives on the method in which their loved ones were killed. It reveals that 48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance.

This is significant because more often that not it is car bombs and aerial bombardments that make the news – with gunshots rarely in the headlines.

As well as a murder rate that now exceeds the Rwanda genocide from 1994 (800,000 murdered), not only have more than one million been injured but our poll calculates that of the millions of Iraqis that have fled their neighbourhoods, 52% have moved within Iraq but 48% have crossed its borders, with Syria taking the brunt of refugees.

And for those left in Iraq, although 81% may describe the availability of basic groceries such as bread and fresh vegetables as “very/fairly good”, more than one in two (54%) consider them to be “expensive”.

Note: The opinion poll was conducted by O.R.B. and the survey details are as follows: •Results are based face-to-face interviews amongst a nationally representative sample of 1720 adults aged 18+ throughout Iraq.
•The standard margin of error on the sample size is +2.4%
•The methodology uses multi-stage random probability sampling and covers fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq. For security reasons Karbala and Al Anbar were not included. Irbil was excluded as the authorities refused our field team a permit.
•Interviews conducted August 12th – 19th 2007.
•Full results and data tabulations are available at www.opinion.co.uk/newsroom.aspx
•O.R.B. are full members of the British Polling Council and abide by its rules

Bush-Petraeus Spin Job Undercuts Admiral Fallon's Command

Not to mention the consensus of many other officers and military people on the ground in Iraq, and overseeing the whole War Operation, the global empire military enterprise dubbed "Global War on Terror", which is turning into "Global Terror Farming Operation".

If you're gonna have a war, at least let it be run by warriors, or military people. That's one more thing the Bush administration did NOT do, which has led to the total Disaster called the Iraq War. The latest in a long line of fiascos is Gen. Patraeus and the Surge Spinsters. No, they're not spin doctors, which would imply a certain level of expertise, not to mention human concern. Spinsters. They're on their own, they can't have children, and nobody wants to hook up with them. Welcome to Club Surge.

Here in this Club you have to say "My War, Right or Wrong". Now that's a new spin on patriotism. Now we have Admiral Fallon, the top dog on the ground in Iraq, in other words, Commander of CENTCOM, the superior, I repeat, superior officer over Gen Patraeus, saying the surge is a failure, it was wrong to begin with, and Patraeus is... well, let's hear it from the man in charge himself:

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

That extraordinarily contentious start of Fallon's mission to Baghdad led to more meetings marked by acute tension between the two commanders. Fallon went on develop his own alternative to Petraeus's recommendation for continued high levels of U.S. troops in Iraq during the summer.

The enmity between the two commanders became public knowledge when the Washington Post reported Sep. 9 on intense conflict within the administration over Iraq. The story quoted a senior official as saying that referring to "bad relations" between them is "the understatement of the century".

Fallon's derision toward Petraeus reflected both the CENTCOM commander's personal distaste for Petraeus's style of operating and their fundamental policy differences over Iraq, according to the sources. The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.

If you have the two top leaders in a war at complete odds with one another, and the one whose decision is taken is the underling, then you've got trouble. Real, bad trouble. Again, this means the Commander in Chief is basically using an officer lower in the command chain to circumvent his superior in order to spin out his own pet policy. It's not what Petraeus thinks is right. It's what Petraeus thinks is expedient to his own enhancement. It's called "ass-kissing." That is, Patraeus' spin job. But what Bush did is called "subordination", I believe.

Military guys, give me a clue. What do you call this messing with the chain of command? Is it the job of the Commander in Chief to not only set goals, but to set how those goals are to be achieved even though the consensus on the ground says otherwise? That's what military dictators do with their armies.

I used to think we were different.
"A Republic, if you can keep it." (Ben Franklin.)
Not with Bush and his like-minded "ass-kissers" in power.

We torture, that they may torture

Bridgethought of the Day: Action speaks louder than spin.

An important piece in Democracy Now!'s website entitled "UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour: The U.S. War on Terror is Constantly Being Used by Other Countries as Justification for Torture and Other Violations of International Human Rights Laws" shows another sinister consequence of our foreign policy of War Without Reason, War Without End:

"Torture, arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention in violation of right tocounsel, incommunicado detention, any country that wants to equip itselfeither through legislation or just through its practices with these kind oftools uses the example of the United States," Louise Arbour tells DemocracyNow! "If I try to call to account any government, privately or publicly, fortheir human rights records, the first response is: first go and talk to theAmericans about their human rights violations." ...

Louise Arbour is a former Supreme Court Justice in Canada, she is perhaps best known as the chief prosecutor of war crimes for the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
In 1999, she indicted Slobodan Milosevic for genocide and crimes against humanity when he was still the president of Yugoslavia. This marked the first time a sitting head of state was indicted by an international court. ...

Arbour states in an interview with Amy Goodman: "There are claims all over the world that the human rights agenda is a carrier of Western values." But "we see this very, very severe, profound attack on the very concept of universality of rights. " An attack coming, of course, from the United States, from the Bush-Cheney pro-torture camp.

She sees the root cause of instability and war worldwide, including terrorist attacks, as being the "severe inequalities in access to wealth or wealth distribution" within & between countries and regions. Now there's an assessment I can bank on! At least someone is telling the truth. And, she says, "at the end of the day we have a very unjust, very unfair world and very few institutions that permit a peaceful forum to address these issues."

Wtih our client states Saudi Arabia, a veritable mountain of human rights abuse, and Egypt, ditto, and of course, Israel - need I elaborate? is it not intuitively understood yet? - there should be no surprise that the marginalized and disenfranchised are attacking. But to view them as "fascist" is a complete cop-out, a conspiracy-theorist's wormhole. And a bold lie.

She adds that " I think the current US place in the world is perceived as so adversarial to many aspirations, particularly in the Arab world, that I think it jeopardizes the capacity of the United States to carry the message that I don't doubt the US is still very committed to." She notes the U.S.'s long-standing commitment to human rights, democracy, freedom, and, to a lesser extent, social justice. But she condemns "renditions", the policy of kidnapping and punishing terror suspects without due process of law as "completely" undermining the legal framework that protects are protected against illegal activities.

When Amy Goodman brought up "the US ambassador to the United Nations at the time, John Bolton, criticized your remark, saying, “I think it’s inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we’re engaged in in the war on terror with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers,” Arbour responds that " I think, as the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner, not only I have the right, it is actually my mandate to ensure the safeguard -- I’m the guardian of the Convention Against Torture." She states that her opinions are based on the "obvious" and openly known facts regarding torture and the principles against its use.

Well, first, let’s make very clear: the United States is not a signatory to a lot of important international human rights treaties and conventions. Now, in a lot of cases, the US would say, “Well, we don't need to ratify these treaties. Our domestic laws are even superior in terms of their level of protection.” But, again, the signal that it sends, I think, is very problematic, when the US is one of a handful -- I think maybe just two countries -- that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for instance, CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women."

When asked about what effect U.S. policies have had on other countries, Arbour says it's used as a justification for others to do what we do: "the same thing: recourse to torture, arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention in violation of, you know, right to counsel -- incommunicado detention, essentially. Any country that wants to equip itself, either through legislation or just through its practices with these kinds of tools, uses the example of the United States.
The other consequence, of course, is, if I try to call to account any government, privately or publicly, for their human rights records, the first response is, “First go and talk to the Americans about their human rights violations. Then come and talk to us.” This is invariable, accusing me -- and generically me, my office -- of bias by being, quote, “soft on the US” and very hard on others who have less means and less ability to comply with their obligations. So that’s the cultural landscape in the advancement of human rights in the context of the war on terror."

Actions, in other words, speak louder than spin.

Pretty soon it looks like we'll be moving toward the direction of Egypt: you can dance all night, drink till you're smashed, eat till you explode, but please ... let the government do whatever it wants, torture, kidnap, assassinate, invade, pollute, violate, whatever ... power to the executive, entertainment to the People!

Unless some People stop spinning and start taking action. People who never torture. Ever.

Cruelty to Children, thanks to U.S. foreign policy

Bridgethought of the Day: Democracy is not cruel, inhuman, or invasive. If actions speak louder than words, and they do, what does it say about us to the rest of the world? Our "democracy" is just another codeword for "hypocrisy." Or so it looks to everyone outside Island America. You can't bring democracy by force.

Case in point: the War in Iraq, and its devastating effect on children there.

Don't get self-righteous so fast, dems. In this eye-opening article on Dahr Jamail's website, you can listen to the Clinton Administration's own Madeline Albright in one of her many compassion-free moments:

By now Iraq has seen a generation of children pass with just survival a
major issue. During the period of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in the
1990s, more than half a million children died, according to the United
Nations.

In 1996, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright was asked by
Lesley Stahl on the CBS ླྀ Minutes' show if she thought the price of half a
million dead children was worth it. She replied, "I think this is a very hard
choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

Worth it? And so, apparently, is the Iraq War and its untold millions of refugees, dead, hungry, thirsty, homeless, and virtually everything BUT democratized. Gee, didn't know democracy could be so cruel. But for a good cause! Democracy! Half a million dead children? Worth it!

And so Bush-Cheney just continues to fight the good fight, continue the dream. The casualties? Children...

Ahmed Ali's scathing article about how U.S. operations in Baquba have robbed children there of their childhood, describes how in Iraq:

According to an Oxfam report on Iraq released Jul. 30, "92 percent of
children had learning impediments that are largely attributable to the current
climate of fear. Schools are regularly closed as teachers and pupils are too
fearful to attend. Over 800,000 children may now be out of school, according to
a recent estimate by Save the Children UK -- up from 600,000 in 2004."
The
Oxfam report also said that child malnutrition rates in Iraq have risen from 19
percent before the invasion in 2003, to 28 percent. "More than 11 percent of
newborn babies were born underweight in 2006, compared with 4 percent in
2003."

Not to mention the lack of toys, free time, safety or security ... so what can children in Iraq do in their "spare time" using energy gained from sparse rations? What else do people do in Iraq now that the U.S. invaded?

According to an L.A. Times Article, "More children are doing the bombings and killings in Iraq."

Boys, some as young as 11, now outnumber foreign fighters at U.S.
detention camps in Iraq. Since March, their numbers have risen from 100 to 800,
said Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, the commander of detainee operations.

And with perhaps 2 million + refugees coming out of Iraq, what does the future exactly hold for Iraqi children?

Democracy? Yeah, right.

Ye Shall Know Them by Their Detainees

Bridgethought of the Day: Every person has intuition planted in his heart, allowing him to distinguish truth from falsehood. It's the politician's job to black that out. That's why war should never be waged by politicians. Like Bush, Cheney, and their DOD appointees. Military leaders do better when they follow their "gut feeling", aka intuition. Too bad they have to follow a lying, conniving, & not-very-intuitive Vice Commander-in-Chief. (The CiC is just a pen-wielder.)

Here is an important report from Dahr Jamail's website:

The number of detainees held by the U.S. military has increased by more than 50 percent since the U.S. administration announced the surge six months ago, bringing the detainee population to at least 24,500, according to U.S. military officers in Iraq. The officers have said the detainee population was 16,000 in February of this year.



John Sifton, researcher for Human Rights Watch, told reporters Aug. 24 that "the allegations of abuse are far worse for Iraqi facilities than for those detainees in U.S. custody. It is difficult to know the Iraqi detainee population. There are both official and unofficial Iraqi detention systems."
Sifton said Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations "have concerns about a 50 percent increase in detainees because it is 50 percent more people at risk of having been arbitrarily detained or, worse, of being handed over to Iraqi officers who might subject them to torture."
Sifton added that there are no reliable numbers provided by the Iraqi government on the number of detainees, and that the U.S. military will not provide the numbers either.
"My three sons were selling vegetables in Baghdad at the wholesale market when Americans took them away over a year ago," 55-year-old Saadiya from the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad told IPS. "We learned three months later that they were taken to Bucca prison near Basra. They were only farmers, and now they are listed as terrorists just because they are Sunni."
Stories like this are recounted all over the western areas of Iraq, where Sunni Arabs are the dominant population.
"A roadside bomb exploded near our house and killed three Americans," Sumaya, a woman from the Dora area of southwest Baghdad told IPS. "Then American tanks came with hundreds of soldiers and arrested over 30 men from the neighbourhood, including my husband. We were asleep when the blast occurred at 5 am, and it was curfew hours, but they still wanted us to tell them who did it. Now I have to work and feed my four children."

"A force from the Ministry of Interior took 45 men from our village nine months ago and we still do not know their whereabouts," Farhan Abbas told IPS. Abbas is from Youssufiya, 25 km south of Baghdad, and was visiting Baghdad in hope of finding information about the people detained from his neighbourhood.
"We lost hope for them because when we went to the ministry to ask about them, they denied their arrest and told us it must be the militias dressed in uniform," said Abbas. "We argued that the force came in the ministry's vehicles, but they told us to get lost or else they would arrest us too."
Two vice-presidents of Iraq, Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shia with the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, and Tariq al-Hashimi of the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front, recently visited Camp Cropper, a U.S. military detention centre near Baghdad International airport.
Al-Sharqiya television reported that while Mehdi did not talk to detainees, Hashimi talked with several of them at length and promised that their cases would be looked into shortly.
"You are better off here than outside," Hashimi said to the detainees. "It is much safer here than outside, believe me."
"What a wonderful deputy president we have," Ahmad Ali from Ramadi who was visiting Baghdad told IPS. "He thinks people are better off in jail than at home."
The Iraqi Accord Front withdrew from Maliki's government Aug. 1 because several of their demands had not been met. The first was release of at least 80 percent of the detainees who are believed to be innocent.
(*Ali, a correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, a U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)

With this kind of "surge side effect", what does it say about our purposes there? We are trying to round up Sunnis, then complain because Iraq is being dominated by Iran-friendly Shi'aa.

We keep hearing that the Maliki government is not handling their nation properly, that the alienation of the Sunnis is due to his weakness. But it is the Americans who are causing the failure of the Maliki government - and no one else! They are detaining people without due process, and yet they talk about how they are creating and promoting democracy. Pure hypocrisy. This is the biggest load of BS ever shoveled on our nation, the nation of sheep.

But don't worry... Remember, Cheney is watching over you... that sheep may safely graze...

Bigger Towers, Bigger Crimes: Dubai a "model" for the Mideast?

"Utopia II: Built by Slaves, Enjoyed by Businessmen"

Bridgethought of the Day: Just when you think you're getting somewhere, someone has to go and tell everybody how you got there. Another good reason to watch your step...

Human Rights Watch has come out with a report on the abuse of workers who build the famous towers in Dubai that is downright horrifying. At the same time, Dubai is having something of a "coming out" party, both as a potential high tech business mecca and tax shelter, according to an article by Michael Kanellos, editor at large at CNET News.com. Although Mr. Kanellos' source, Ghazi Benothman, a Senior Associate with Crosslink Capital, says "there's almost no poverty," the Human Rights Watch report, as discussed in a piece by Rafia Zakaria, tells a shocking and very different story:

"Workers in the Gulf States face some of the most horrendous work environments on the planet. Forced to work sixteen- to twenty-hour days in debilitating heat, without any vacation for years and with compensation withheld for months on end, the Dubai construction workers eke out an existence devoid of any dignity or freedom. Living at the mercy of the employers, who literally "own" their employment visas and hence their freedom of movement, these modern day slaves are unable to leave any employer for fear of deportation.

The employers, on the other hand, can, like the Pharoanic rulers of Egypt, easily trade them for cheaper workers or sell them via trading their employment contracts to other companies."

But it gets worse ...

"In addition to the restricted freedom of movement, companies in the UAE, both large and small, often refuse to pay these workers since few legal enforcement mechanisms exist to force them to do so. According to the Report, Al-Hamed Development and Construction, a company worth over $300 million dollars and one of the fastest growing construction companies in the world, failed to pay 7000 of its construction workers in 2005-2006. The smaller companies are also notorious for absconding or simply closing up shop without paying their workers.The fact that the construction workers are "guests" without equivalent legal rights that would enable to contest such actions without fears of reprisals, further entrenches their status as slaves in a society that surely treats them as such. In addition, most workers still owe debts to their handlers and so cannot return without wages to pay them off; so they are caught in a vicious circle of persecution."

Most of the workers are Pakistani, Indian, Sri-Lankan and Bangladeshi, and other Asian nationalities. The Arabs of Dubai behave in a way that reveals their totally un-Islamic racism . These workers are treated as human chattel, slaves. It reminds me of the attitude of Sudanese Arabs in Darfur. This ugly side of Sunni Muslims must be faced-down - by other Sunni Muslims, those with a conscience. Those with no allegiance to corrupt governments, such as the Saudi government.

Their "mainstream" position certainly doesn't look deserved from a human rights standpoint. What message are they trying to convey? Did they never hear that superiority is not attained by hubris or fantasy? And on the flip side, what are the "rebels" trying to say that can only be written in the blood of the unguilty? When did al-Qaeda ever unseat a dictator? Well, at least they are egalitarian - Asians welcome alongside Arabs...

On the other hand, while Dubai is showcased as a "model" for Middle Eastern "development" and "cooperation", this is all greased by plenty of liquor and, of course, prostitution and oil money splurged by "fun-starved Saudis" and Kuwaitis for their "entertainment" on the abuse of children as jockeys and the abuse of young women, many of them Russian, as prostitutes. Although much of this is in fact illegal (with the exception of alcohol), enforcement is slim to rare, probably mostly for appearances.

This only feeds into the constant refrain that the so-called "war" between the West & Islam is actually a cultural war between those who drink alcohol and engage in non-marital sex and "show some skin", to those nasty Islamists who emphatically do not, and are willing to fight for a world where these things are kept to a minimum. The "West" sees it as a war between "backward" ways, always using the example of cutting off hands as a punishment for theft, stoning to death for adulterers (not common, since even in the strictest sense, it requires 4 uninvolved male - or 8 female - eyewitnesses), wearing head coverings for women, and of course, that favorite one about "jihad", wildly & widely thought to mean "cutting off heads of infidels NOW". Even Christiane Amanpour went to great lengths to show how difficult and disturbing it can be to wear those head-coverings, while in fact, it could take about 10 seconds to pull on a "Taliban-strength" hijab, much less time than the most perfunctory hairdo.

Both sides exaggerate the nefarious intent of the other, and when they attempt to bridge the gap, you get people from the Islamic world falling all over themselves to baptize themselves in buckets of corruption and imitation Westernism meeting slick-looking but basically unaware businessmen from the West with dollar signs in their brains more than willing to overlook the side effects of this awkward version of cultural detente. After all, human oppression, be it in China or the Middle East, is all in a day's work. And somewhere in the thick of it all, ominously, lies the long shadow of Halliburton and its godfather, Dick Cheney.

But Divine intervention may be on the way. They say very tall buildings may actually cause or trigger earthquakes in places where none were before. So how long is this history's tallest manmade structure going to last? And what do you think it symbolizes?

Will the Surge bring success? Does Hell bring Paradise?

Remember Madeline Albright's "collateral damage"? She was referring to the millions of children in Iraq suffering, or killed, as a result of the sanctions imposed on Iraq during the Bush I and Clinton years. Children were just "collateral". The important thing was the sanctions. "Get tough". Now, of course, with a full-scale invasion and takeover going on in the most mindless, ill-planned manner conceivable, the same victims, Iraqi children, Iraqi families, are suffering beyond imagination. Wow. The surge is really working, isn't it? But for whom? Not Iraqis surely! And I don't see what most Americans are getting out of it, either.

Even that supposed "winner" in the Iraq War Fiasco, Dick Cheney, That Halliburton Guy, is losing too. If Bush's ratings are low, Cheney's are even lower. The whole Republican Party is sinking in the sludge and blood of Iraq. Goodbye, and good riddance. So why can't they say goodbye to Iraq? Isn't it already a bloodbath?

Yeah, but do the Dems have any guts either? Are they going to fall into the trap of fear, fear of that Huge Gigantic Sci-Fi Enemy - the Middle East Islamic Terrorist People Hordes? From what we can observe, from the rubber stamped surveillance bill and the lukewarm attempts to dampen the fire of the Surge, the Dems look like politics as usual - trying to placate imagined fears rather than take courageous stands.

Like the stand on behalf of disenfranchised people, the lost, the refugees, the children, the women, the war victims. Are our policies doing so much more harm than good, that the whole middle east, that democracy itself, that the hope for anything positive to come out of this, would increase if we just withdrew - the sooner the better? Why do we think we're right - or have the right - to remain in Iraq? Is it Superpower Hubris in action?

Here is an extremely important news article from http://dahrjamailiraq.com/ that can help open our eyes to the nature and scope of what is really going on.

Between the Two Rivers, Lack of Water Kills
Inter Press Service
By Ali al-Fadhily*

BAGHDAD, Aug 17 (IPS) - The collapse of Iraq's infrastructure has created a worsening water crisis that is killing untold numbers of Iraqis. Iraq, with its famous Tigris and Euphrates rivers that run the length of the country, is now unable to provide drinking water to most of its people.

"The two rivers are still there, great as they always were, and flowing all through the year," chief engineer Ahmad Salman of the Baghdad Water Authority told IPS. "Yet Iraqis are thirsty, and we are ashamed of being engineers in the service. We have simply failed to provide our people with half of the drinking water they need."

Much of the country is suffering severe lack of water, and the small quantities supplied are not good for human use.

"I analysed the water supplied by the water authority, and the result was shocking," Dr Ibrahim Ali, a laboratory owner in Baghdad told IPS. "It is definitely not good for human consumption, and every time we analyse it we find something new that might, in time, cause death."

The doctor added, "Various kinds of bacterial pollution and germs we are finding can be as dangerous as biological weapons."

Iraqi hospitals are full of people with illnesses due to the unsafe water. Doctors at several hospitals confirmed to IPS that water is one of the worst causes of diseases, especially among children, and that some of children had died of water-borne diseases compounded by a severe lack of medicines.

These problems are exacerbated during the summer when both the quantity and quality of water are at their lowest.

"One of the reasons for this lack of water is lack of electric power and fuel for generators," a member of a local municipal council in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "We have got tired of raising our needs for the water stations because our ministers and their leaders are busy fighting over chairs so that they make as much money as possible before they are thrown away."

U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker acknowledged to reporters Jul. 19 that Baghdad residents were receiving on average only one hour of electricity a day. Before the U.S.-led invasion, Baghdad residents received 16-24 hours of electricity daily. Without electricity, water cannot be pumped to homes.

A report released Jul. 30 by the international agency Oxfam and NCCI, a network of aid organisations working in Iraq, said that eight million Iraqis, nearly one in three, were in dire need of emergency aid.

The report, 'Rising to the Humanitarian Challenge in Iraq' said that 70 percent of Iraqis are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50 percent in 2003, the year the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was launched. About 80 percent of Iraqis lack effective sanitation, the report said.

According to the Oxfam report, "child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 percent before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 28 percent now." Lack of potable water is at the root of most such conditions.

"It is corruption more than anything else," an engineer at the Baghdad Water Authority, who did not wish to be named, told IPS. "The authority is full of corruption from bottom to top, and there is no way to improve the situation unless the political situation is improved by removing these corrupt officials."

An IPS correspondent was advised not to go to the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources in the face of a danger of being kidnapped by security men at the ministry.

"It is another weapon that the Americans are killing us with," 62-year-old Abu Mahmood, a carpenter from Baghdad told IPS. "No water means diseases that lead to slow, but certain death. They did it to us at the time of sanctions and now it is their chance to do it again without firing bullets and making scandals."

Few Iraqis see hope under the present government. "The problem is that we do not have a government like any other country," Baghdad resident Nabhan Mukhlis told IPS. "We should just stop complaining and surrender to the death penalty that was issued the day Americans decided to invade our country."

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)

©2004-2007 Dahr Jamail.

Goodbye, Rove: A White Elephant Bites the Dust

Bridgethought of the Day: You can't go forward in reverse. You might just turn to a pillar of salt.

****
They say an elephant never forgets. They didn't say you can't forget him. Yet there's a moment of sadness, oddly enough, as if some great sea monster just beached himself. Watching him lifeless on the sand, no more the terror of the waves, no more devouring innocent seal calves, no more children scattering at the sight ... just an old, overweight man with glasses. It's oddly touching. Suddenly, he's a human, tears well up, his voice breaks, and the power wafts out like a deflating mattress.

Is this only a small victory or the culmination of a long campaign to wrest power from the autocrats? Or is it another sign of Cheney-Bush failure, of the Republicans' last gasp, of the self-demise of the neocons? Rove is not alone.

The whole political infrastructure of what has become the conservative movement has crossed its own wires or messed up their sonar receptors. They just don't get what's on the airwaves anymore.

People wanted less government intrusion, more freedom. They got a police/prison/security state, complete with Big Brother watching, and hemorrhaging wars ... and more taxes, less service.

People wanted more free enterprise. They got stifling giant corporate takeovers and mergers.

People wanted fair elections, fair news coverage, more participation. They got rigged elections, a media propaganda machine that avoids real news, and blocked participation.

They wanted to stop crime. They got more prisoners, more criminals, more prisons, and more crime.

They wanted more free speech. They got mindless word wars and endless smear, sneer, & snivel.

They wanted bridges, and they got walls. Walls and wars ad infinitum.

We've been waiting so long for this requiem, to see that elephant finally bite the dust.

Rove-think is dead. Long live the doves.

A handshake from Israel is a Kiss of Death

Bridgethought of the Day: If a nation keeps repeating lies and enforcing belief in them, and refuses to air the truth, what does that do to Democracy? What does it do to truth when the collective psychology around us teaches us to avoid that "evil danger"?

Here is an article about the truth in the Middle East, sad but real, and how the core issue between Israel and Palestine is twisted for American consumption. American protoplasm, take note: use your minds, will ya...

When Olmert and Abbas shake hands
Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from Deheisheh refugee camp, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 10 August 2007

What will follow their handshake?: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the West Bank city of Jericho, 6 August 2007.

On Monday, Israeli occupation Authority Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and occupied Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas once again met and shook hands, each promising respective constituents that a so-called "peaceful solution" is near. Olmert "agreed" that cooperation between Israel and the PA will expand, something that is not lost on the millions of occupied Palestinians who continue to suffer each day as many other things expand beneath their feet -- the settlement colonies, the apartheid wall, the egregious acts of violence and oppression enacted by the Israeli occupation military.

What does an expansion of cooperation between the PA and Israel mean when the prisons of the foreign occupier, the nuclear state, are filled to the brim with Palestinian political prisoners, as many as 12,000 people who are tortured and broken and humiliated?

An expansion of cooperation comes with Abbas' capitulation to Olmert's designs of an ethno-centric state for Jews only, whose second-in-command, Avigdor Lieberman, is an unashamed proponent of ethnic cleansing from Moldovia who consistently demands that all Arabs be "transfered" or wiped out. An expansion of cooperation is called for as Mahmoud Abbas' private militia continues to beg Israel for arms and power moves against the democratically-elected Hamas party, like a kid asking a rich man for a few pennies to buy candy.

An expansion of cooperation means more whittling away of the rights of the Palestinian people. It means the further dispossession of land and farms and freedom and time and money and childhoods. It means the only true "solution" -- one state, for every person, and a respect for human rights and the Palestinian right of return -- continues to be further away from realization.Meanwhile, as Abbas thanks Olmert for scraps, life here on the ground continues to worsen and sour.

The Israeli military death squads are scooping people up in Nablus and throwing them in prison camps. Or shooting them. Or dropping bombs on them in Gaza. Or sealing off entire villages with the apartheid wall. Or making them wait in the blistering hot sun at some of the 450 checkpoints.

Yes, thank you, Olmert.A friend here in Dheisheh posed this question with a glint in his eye: What will happen when Abbas' constituents, the millions of Palestinians who see right through his capitualtions, go to back to the polls and re-elect Hamas? What will he do then?

Nora Barrows-Friedman is the senior producer and co-host of Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio, and also reports for InterPress Service in Europe. Her website is http://electronicintifada.net/v2/norabf.com.

Infrastructure, Infrastructure...wherefore art thou, Infrastructure?

When nation-building meant building our nation, not everybody else's ... when "homeland security" meant taking care of what makes a nation secure, such as investing in economic stability, peaceful relations with the rest of the world, fair and just social support systems such as health care, welfare, education and "justice" systems (aka "corrections", now simply "collective social revenge") ... when bridges were symbolic of what made our nation great ...

Ah, in those halcyon days, the days when Ike Eisenhower led a Republican Party that invested in such things, and warned against a "military-industrial complex", and actually believed the word "conservative" had some relationship with the root "conserve" ... In those days, the idea that American would invest its lion share of resources in a profligate, nation-gutting killing machine that makes mucho bucks for the ever-consolidating Executive Puppetmaster would have been inconceivable.

Now, instead of diplomacy, we have a war without borders against an enemy without a state and it feeds the bleed .. A collapsing bridge in Minnesota is a symbol in so many ways, down to the good hearts and self-sacrifice of the people it collapsed on.

The Cheney-Bush Executive Warlord Group (CBEWG) invaded Iraq - and finally Cheney admitted it was an "invasion" not a "liberation", casually to Larry King - and that Group displays a singular proficiency at destroying everything it touches, from Iraq and its neighbors to those who joined them, such as Tony Blair.

Before, Sunni and Shi'a lived together in peace - in Lebanon, where they shared a government; in Saddam-ruled Iraq before the invasion (albeit with oppression and unfairness); and between such countries as Iran and Saudi Arabia. If there was animosity, it was not widespread violence. Both groups attend the Hajj in Makkah every year without sectarian incident. This is really a card of potential division used by non-Muslims to divide Muslims when it suits their interests. And it certainly suits U.S. and Israeli interests to divide Muslims in the Middle East, both to gain a hand on oil resources and to solidify their own power/influence in the area.

And now the CBEWG killing machine has invaded the Middle East full force and set it on fire. A real damned mean conflagration, burning bodies and souls.

Halliburton wins. Cheney loses no sleep. In his world, there is no conscience for homo sapiens. He's Republican, and all's well with the world. He's comfortable. His interests are being served. Larry King asks him what about all this #%$&#^$% ??? What about all the dead people, the poisoned water supplies, the oppression? Cheney tells the world he's cool with it. And he's very, very cool indeed.

The new Republicans have redefined lots of things, among them infrastructure. It does NOT mean roads, bridges, pipelines, dams, electric grids, that sort of thing - let alone schools, hospitals, health care, a break for small businesses and free enterprise. No, those are NOT a part of Republican Infrastructure. The New Republicans have a new "road map" for Infrastructure: it means prisons, Bradley fighting vehicles, fighter planes, armored Humvees, military hardware of all kinds, and of course, guns and other weaponry, and did we forget bombs, grenades, military-grade computers, battlefield electronics, UAV's, and of course, prisons and prison complexes ... and whatever it takes to keep those warzones going, and... oh, tax breaks for Big Business ... and, uh... oil rigs, yes! That's Republican Infrastructure!

Note this Republican Redefinition for Infrastructure is applied in Iraq - talk about even-handed! Yes, they have none of "old-think liberal" infrastructure, such as power grids - theirs is shot, literally - or hospitals - what hospitals now? - or of course, clean potable water or anything that could assist in its transport. Water, electricity, health care - that's damn liberal stuff, and who needs it anyway? If we can't provide it for our own citizens, let's bomb everyone else's! That way we'll get more Republican Infrastructure. Where you have a choice between war and prison. "Go to war or go to jail!" That's the latest in recruiting bait. What a great motive! Those soldiers must be really feeling that freedom fight down to the last 130 degree F moment.

Republicans, in their war on crime (everything worth anything, they figure, must be a war on something), are busy building more and bigger prisons and prison complexes to house everyone, citizens and non-citizens. Guilty or not, here you go! Immigration used to be considered a "civil" matter - imagine the gall! People having the criminal intent of entering this country from some damn foreign country have got to be stopped! Criminalize it now! They all are criminals and want amnesty, like those jerks at Amnesty International. How are we going to fill all those prisons and create those create prison industry jobs without creating more crimes!

Instead of better power grids or telecommunications systems, let's work on surveillance because with all those wars God knows who will try to destroy us and take revenge, so we'll create a government so gigantic, so top-heavy, it will make Big Brother Watching You look like nurserycams. And all because we need more and more protection and security. We do not need freedom. It is a dangerous world, and freedom is to blame for all of that.

Republican Infrastructure means the "social infrastructure" of executive privilege taken to include martial law. And what do you know about martial law? Well, judging by Mubarak's Egypt which has run on it since he took office, it's really, really bad for infrastructure. The "liberal" kind, that is, like sewers, tap water, roads, and power grids. But the biggest casualty is freedom. Do you really want all those good-hearted heroes to live in this Republican future? Well... don't just sit there pining over it, Juliet ...

Axis of Global Warming: Axis of Evil - Planetary Defenders, Arise!

If you didn't think Bush-Cheney and his international cronies who have a stake in the oil industry, among other things (doesn't the oil feed his war horses?), are going to fight tooth and nail against the IDEA of global warming, as a buffer against the action they do not want the international community to take on their client polluter-industries, well ... welcome to planet Mars...

For those of you who still prefer Earth as a planet of residence, there's a great movement going on against Bush's latest tactic - an international, grand-scale tactic - against planet Earth and its defenders, whom he views as "enemies" of his international police force/oil-profit force/ world-domination scheme. Of course, his gain is the planet's loss. So they have a Plan: it's called the Axis of Global Warming.

Note the name, so apropos: "Axis" as in WWII "Axis Powers" and his own term "Axis of Evil." Yes, he's finally upfront - this is truly an Evil plan, if evil means destructive.

Then, linked with "Global Warming" as it is, the name literally implies "Axis of those determined to bring about global warming in spite of all efforts against it - by denying it, doing nothing about it, and letting it just happen." But we can, and MUST do all we can to stop them.

Enter Avaaz, an organization with many people but a low budget and a few (9) doing all the fancy footwork, or office work, as the case may be. They also have a plan - work hard against Bush-Howard's plan to fast-forward pollution and back-pedal safeguards for the planet - in their own words:

"There's a new threat to progress on climate change -- and it could undermine all of the work we've done so far. President Bush and his allies have recognized that the the movement against climate change is too powerful to be directly confronted. So Bush, Australia's John Howard, and a small group of other high-pollution governments are using back-channel pressure to build a bloc of countries--call it an "Axis of Global Warming"--that plans to sabotage the negotiations on a binding climate treaty.

"It's an extraordinary danger.They must be stopped. And we've got a plan to do it. We're laying plans for a massive, country-by-country pressure campaign to block the Axis of Global Warming--and we need your help to make it work.

A donor has pledged to match all contributions up to 100,000 Euros. Can you donate now to help save the planet?https://secure.avaaz.org/en/axis_of_warming/b.php/?cl=15435385

There's strength in numbers--already this year, half a million of us have taken climate actions with Avaaz. We've run television ads, delivered massive petitions, marched in the streets and flooded governments with email messages. Now, if enough of us can contribute 50, 20 or even 1 Euro, we'll have the resources to take all of these tactics to a new level--and add some spectacular new ones.

Our strategy is simple: expose Bush's plan, and help citizens in "swing countries" like Japan and Canada to pressure their governments not to join the Axis of Global Warming. Bush can only succeed if he rallies enough governments to join his side. But if we show these governments that there's a price to be paid for abandoning the planet, people power can prevail.The next five months are key. Here are the most critical moments:

September: Australia's John Howard hosts the Asia-Pacific APEC summit, gathering leaders of 21 countries including the US, China, Japan, Russia, and Canada. We need to shame the Axis of Global Warming, disrupt their alliance-building and persuade the swing voters to stay strong for a UN process--and we're working with Australian campaigners GetUp on a spectacular plan to spoil Bush and Howard's party in Sydney.Then we'll burst into the UN Secretary-General's emergency session on climate change--100 heads of state invited, and your voice will be heard there too.

October/November: a "Major Emitters" conference of the biggest polluters, called by Bush after the G8 meeting in June. This is likely to be the public unveiling of Bush's plan. In the lead-up, we'll empower Avaaz members in each of our countries, pressing national leaders to commit publicly to a real deal--and reject Bush’s game.

December 3-14: UN-led negotiations begin in Bali, Indonesia for a global climate change treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. This is the big one: the key to ending the climate crisis. We'll be there in force, virtually and for real. Every nation gets a voice in Bali--and because we have members in every nation, so do we. Avaaz will work outside and inside to influence the negotiations as they happen, day to day and hour by hour. These are the moments that will define whether the climate crisis can be stopped -- and our ability to influence them together will be determined in part by our resources.

For example, we need:
25,000 Euros to build tools enabling Avaaz members to directly contact their leaders--tools capable of sending millions of messages to hundreds of governments in a dozen languages, fast.
8,000 Euros to mount a major stunt at the Asia-Pacific summit in Sydney, grabbing the attention of leaders and the media

5,000 Euros each to buy full-page newspaper ads in key "swing voter" countries like Japan, Canada or China.

Avaaz has a lot of members, but a small staff--currently just nine people, working from five cities on three continents. We're laser-focused on squeezing every bit of impact we can from every Euro or dollar we spend. This is a David and Goliath struggle, the people of the world versus the Axis of Global Warming--and we simply can't afford to lose. Can you help, by donating whatever you can?

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/axis_of_warming/c.php/?cl=15435385

Climate change is a threat that affects us all. But it's also an opportunity to build a different kind of world, where each of us recognizes our connections, and our responsibility to each other.Imagine looking back, twenty years from now, and remembering how we won. Remembering the moment when citizens from every nation joined to save our planet and ourselves."

The Solution to Iraq: US out, Bring in the Brazilians

Let's face it. The U.S. can't shoot straight. If there's a job to do, like say, freedom-fightin', we bungle it. We've got the most expensive, technically advanced superpower military on the rock, and we're sinking fast in a little simple quicksand put out by backwater "insurgents" armed with 3rd rate outdated, even handmade weapons (IED's)... And the sinkhole keeps on pullin'. And Iraq keeps on degenerating. Democracy? Get out of my face...

Where's the solution? Ask U.S. pundits, and you hear "there's no solution...we need 50 years..." Ask Iraqis & you hear "Let's get out before we all die..." Ask Brazilian soccer coaches, & you get "Iraqis are great team players- it's a win-win!" Now who would you choose to problem-solve?

And so it was. It didn't stop the bombs or the war. But it did stop the lies, the despair, and the hatred. Even for one glorious day, Iraq was a country again, populated by people who are worthwhile, people with dignity & dreams, people with a future... With a great soccer team. And the Asia Cup. No Shi'a, no Sunnis, no Kurds, no sectarian animosity. Just countrymen. Who'd have imagined it?

Not the Bush administration, certainly. So Republicans, now that you got your war you wanted, you can plan your exit strategy, since the war isn't doing any good. But before you leave, send in the Brazilians...

I think they've got something there.

Let's Rename the Iraq War, Charley

Bridgethought of the Day: If someone else said it better, just listen.

So please read this column by Charley Reese - which says it all. Yes, we should rename that ugly war the Republican War. And then elect a Democratic administration to get us out.

Iraq's Health Care Hell

With all our concern about health care in this country, and of course, our troops, who receive health care insofar as it serves the War Purpose, a not-so-high-minded cross between statistics repair (making less deaths show up) and soldier repair (getting the same guys operational and on the battlefield), we are almost entirely ignoring the ghastly state of health care in our "fiasco"-oriented "model democracy-in-waiting" state, Iraq.


Of course, that follows in the dreaded, obfuscated world of Human Compassion, a netherworld to neocons wherein reside residual liberals whom Ann Coulter continuously plies with verbal emasculation attempts. So we, the American War & Profit Machine, ignore it.


But for those of you sufficiently weaned from Coulter's freeze-dried emotion-free machomonied teat to still retain working tear ducts and a 4-chamber heart (the old-fashioned kind), it might be valuable to know the depths to which our VP's war has sunk the National Entity formerly known as Iraq.


This great article on Dahr Jamail's website paint a horrific picture - one all should have to see for enough time to sink in, to savor in those blase hours Wii'd away from gadgets, muzik, & DVD's, a pinch of the real world we have helped create and for which We the People should blame, hassle & impeach those leaders responsible.


Baquba Denied the Healing Touch
Inter Press Service

By Ahmed Ali

BAQUBA, Jul 25 (IPS) - Diyala General Hospital in the provincial capital Baquba has been hit by severe lack of supplies amid ongoing attacks by militants.
Located 50km northeast of Baghdad, the city of Baquba has become known now for both the huge U.S. military operations and the presence of al-Qaeda.
The shortages coupled with a lack of basic infrastructure have left the largest hospital in Diyala province short of supplies, and staffed by terrorised doctors often unable to do their job.
Diyala General Hospital, built in the 1970's, was never adequately resourced since the devastating Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and the dozen years of economic sanctions since the early 1990s.

When the U.S.-led occupation began in April 2003, administrators promised reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq's healthcare system. It never came. This hospital, like countless others in Iraq, is in a far worse condition today than even during the sanctions period when more than half a million Iraqi children died from malnutrition, disease and lack of adequate healthcare.

The problems appear to begin and end with lack of security.

"One day, a number of Iraqi army casualties caused by a suicide car bomb were brought to the hospital by a military patrol," Mohammed Ali, a 39-year-old orthopaedic surgeon told IPS. "The soldiers began to insult the staff, and hit two physicians after ordering them to leave other patients and treat the wounded soldiers first."

Doctors announced a strike, Ali said. "A few days later the head of the physicians syndicate called an end to the strike after intervention by the mayor."

But doctors have continued to face abuse, Nasseer Adil, a 42-year-old pathologist told IPS. "It has become very normal that any person can come and insult anyone in the hospital."
Over time, the abuse and threats have driven many doctors to leave their job, and when they can, the country.

"The staff members began to come to work intermittently, and sometimes we could hardly see one physician in the whole hospital," Haleem Kareem, a 46-year-old receptionist at the hospital told IPS.

Dr Ahmed Shibad, a 30-year-old orthopaedic surgeon, fled the hospital for Syria four months ago after he said he received death threats from Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. forces.

During an interview with IPS in Damascus in May he said, "The Iraqi forces who regularly came into the hospital to order us around and abuse us were supported by the American military. The American soldiers watched the Iraqis do this to us, and this is another reason why I left."

By October 2006, 18,000 Iraqi doctors, over half of all doctors in Iraq, had fled the country, according to a report by Radio Free Europe.

Now many people in Baquba go to private clinics in hope of better treatment and security. But while the main hospital offers free treatment, private clinics can be expensive.

Violence continues to plague the Baquba hospital. "The fighters used to attack Iraqi army soldiers who used to bring their casualties and bodies to the hospital," Hadi Sadeq, a 40-year-old official in the emergency unit told IPS. "For this reason staff quit, and people in need of treatment stopped to come."

Complicating matters further has been corruption within Iraq's Ministry of Health in Baghdad.
The ministry, which has been run by officials loyal to Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has been accused of favouring Shia areas in Iraq. Baquba, a mixed area, has been considered a Sunni area by the ministry.

Doctors at Diyala General Hospital told IPS they believe that the Heath Ministry has hindered the supply of medical equipment and supplies to their hospital for sectarian reasons.
"The Diyala director-general of health was kidnapped in the building of the Health Ministry itself, and was later killed in Sadr city," Majid Ibrahim, a 48-year-old ophthalmologist told IPS. "It is a well-known incident, admitted even by the health minister, Dr Ali al-Shamary."
A hospital worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS that lately the government has been trying to increase protection for the hospital but that "unfortunately, the guards are all Shia."

(*Ahmed, a correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.)

Why There's No Mideast Peace: Square One is for Hanging

Bridgethought of the Day: Killing your enemies doesn't make peace. Winning a war isn't a solution. Peace is organic - war requires oversimplification. Peace is about a lot of little real struggles not being bulldozed by gigantic, possibly pointless, fantastic battle. The bigger the power, the more they like the latter.

Square One in the Alpha-Omega of Mideast Peace always begins between Palestine & Israel. The Palestinians were pushed out by the Zionist movement, who routed Palestinians from their own land by force to make room for a well-armed invasion of what were essentially foreigners. The whole thing has been re-written to suit the Israelis and presented over years to Americans and "Westerners" in a pro-Zionist light, any thoughts to the contrary being relegated to the devil called "anti-Semitism". Saeb Erakat, the prominent Palestinian negotiator, once (many years ago) put that argument to the test in his eloquent remark during a public discussion, "I am Semite."

In the excellent article by Tony Karon, he says,

"Hamas deputy head Abu Marzook recently made clear in the Los Angeles Times, not because of some religious absolutism but because, for Palestinians, Israel's creation in 1948 meant their violent dispossession. Hamas believes it is being ordered to legitimize this dispossession before negotiations can even begin, and it refuses to do so.
The fact that Fatah did eventually recognize Israel -- and got so little in return -- has cost the organization dearly on the Palestinian street. Nine months into the Western financial blockade that followed Hamas' election victory, a survey conducted by the Western-funded Palestinian Center for Social and Political Research found 54% of Palestinians dissatisfied with Hamas' performance in power and only 40% ready to vote for it again. Nonetheless, when asked whether Hamas should recognize Israel in order to get the siege lifted, 67% said no. "

Square One begins with Palestinians asking for a legitimate and autonomous state. Not too much to ask. Then they ask for "right of return" which means that those who were deprived of their lands way back when can now have the right to return to the Homeland of Palestine. Israel staunchly refuses this, using an argument that more or less the US government used in dealing with the native American populations in places such as South Dakota. "You just can't go back home now - too much has changed." But unlike native Americans, Palestinians don't really have "reservations" even - just places they live in as refugees or immigrants. And in reverse, where did Israelis get a superior right to live there and create a multi-million-person-strong refugee population roaming the world with no country?

Israel then asks to be recognized unconditionally. As you can read above, this too is a non-starter. They want security, but the pride issues always come first. Beforessecurity, before peace.

Now here's another issue. Who's got the power? Who calls the shots? The Israelis. Who's the underdog? Who is oppressed? Who is struggling to simply survive in the meanest sense? The Palestinians. In this situation, who bears the onus of responsibility to take the first risk, the first step, the first gamble? The stronger of the two: Israel. They've been hemming & hawing on this since... Square One. They've hung every Palestinian leader there since Day One. Every step toward peace is always a non-starter. As long as the power are powerful, there's no motive to be a risk-taker. Why lose it when you got it? Why take a chance?

Then, as Mr. Karon explains,

"The Arab autocrats whose presence is now required whenever Bush puts on one of his no-clothes shows recognize themselves in Abbas' predicament. They, too, have precious little to show their people in return for allying with Washington. Their citizenry, too, has watched them stand by helplessly as Washington has sanctioned and encouraged the systematic trampling of the Palestinians, the pulverizing of Lebanon, and the chaotic destruction of Iraq (which now produces a 9/11-equivalent death toll at least every few weeks). Those citizens, too, see that only the Islamists seem willing to stand up to the U.S. and Israel.

The autocrats, too, beg and plead with Washington to enforce a two-state solution based on Israel's 1967 borders and face the same smug dismissal of their concerns or the same meaningless ritual endorsements.

How many times do they have to be reminded by administration officials that President Bush was the first American leader to publicly call for a Palestinian state? Of course, he was also the first to formally endorse Israel's right to the massive settlements built in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law. "

With this background of oppression of most Arab and Muslim people by their own oppressive regimes backed by the U.S. & Western powers, it should be no surprise that they feel no love or trust for the US who has only showed them tyranny, never democracy or freedom, and who have only encouraged the dictators that oppress them. The one supposed "freedom fight" against Saddam Hussein looks more like a power-grab or oil-grab gone bad with "democracy" only as a cover story, one very very thin and unbelievable with zero credibility. Actions always speak stronger than words.


So Hamas takes over Gaza. It forms a threat. For the first time, Israel makes concessions. It's only a show, but it is something, I guess. But nobody really means or intends to do anything. Except Hamas, whose bloody takeover took everyone by surprise, but appears to the people in Gaza to at least have bolstered their pride, at least commanded a little respect. And since Israel offers nothing in the way of food, jobs, hope, or being treated as human beings with families, respect is a very big thing. Israel, take notice: R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find out what it means to me - and every other Palestinian.

Then there's another bad issue - the Palestinian government and leadership itself is so corrupt, visibly corrupt and unjust, that it's far short of inspiring. The Hamas alternative looks better than the Fatah rich guys living off the largesse or God knows who while the rest of the people struggle right out there on the edge of existence.

I don't know what the solution really is, but it's not being found on Square One. It would help if both sides looked at the issue from the standpoint of being from the same species sharing resources on the same planet. Maybe then the movements toward negotiations, or what is left of such movements, would be less suicidal. But then, the responsible parties ain't gonna move until someone pushes them right there over the edge.

Oversimplify, oversimplify. Human beings are so damn complicated. And so is peace. So try using that internal organ stuck between the ears.

Democracy 101: We the People are Asleep at the Wheel

Bridgethought of the Day: Vigilance has to be a collective action - there's just too much for one person to see. One more argument for real democracy. Something the U.S. could use more of...

A movement to "Downsize DC" has been launched that cuts across party and other "invisible" lines. One of the most valuable aspects of this movement is the impetus to actually force our "representative" Congress to represent us - while doing their job - by actually reading, and discussing, the bills they pass which ultimately affect our lives more than we may realize. Unfortunately for us, many in power understand how Americans are too busy conducting their own lives to pay much attention to what Congress is doing. And what they are doing is not necessarily what it looks like.

For example, On July 11, Congress passed the Food and Drug Administration Administration Act (you read that correctly), which ran to an astonishing 308 pages. Health freedom advocates warn that this bill will turn the FDA into a public-private partnership with the ability to develop and patent drugs on its own.

They further warn this bill will jeopardize our access to vitamins and other nutritional supplements that compete with Big Pharma. But only forty minutes were allowed for debate, and amendments could not be proposed or considered. Instead of questioning this process, Congress rubber-stamped the bill with only 16 votes against it.

How many of the 403 who voted "yea" blindly followed the advice of lobbyists and Congressional leaders? How many then patted themselves on the back for "protecting" the American people from supposedly "dangerous" foods?

How many, if they actually read the bill, would have been appalled by some of the provisions, and demanded full debate and amendments? How many would have worked to defeat the bill?

We'll never know, because right now members of Congress aren't even required to read and understand the bills they pass. But when they rubber-stamps bills, they're not representing us. They may look busy, but they're not actually doing the job they were elected to do.We can change this. We can force Congress to pass the Read the Bills Act and make them do their job. You can learn more about the Read the Bills Act here.

We are actually responsible about this, too. It's not enough to simply vote for Representatives. We have to have a look at what they are doing, and what we really need and want to be done. And if we are supposed to be their bosses, it doesn't help that we don't seem to know or care what the hell they are doing. What happens when the driver falls asleep at the wheel?

You get Cheney-Bush, and the Constitution is about to crash. Will somebody start swerving away from that cliff???

Island America Meets the Killing Fields

Bridgethought of the Day: Hell on earth has a life of its own, like cancer, impervious to the needs or nature of its unwilling host. Welcome to the consequences of invasion. We are building a killing field.

Dahr Jamail, the great reporter on Iraq, has written an article describing the current situation in Iraq as having created schizophrenia - social schizophrenia - from living in two diametrically opposite worlds: the killing fields in Iraq, which have gone from horrors-come-true to gruesome constant survival failures; and the "Disneyland" bubble-world of the United States, or what I call "Island America". Here, as he so eloquently put it, we can simply mouseclick to another web page, essentially "eliminating" the "disturbance" of what really is going on in Iraq, and go back to our creature comforts and entertainment, distanced by this huge moat.

"In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory.
In Iraq things have grown exponentially worse since then. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% "lack effective sanitation." This from Mr. Jamail's own experience. But you can sense more from an excerpt from an email sent to a friend of his from her friend in Iraq:

"I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. "

This insightful article is prefaced by Tom Englehardt's reference to a breaking story in The Nation on how American soldiers in Iraq are both traumatized by the situation there and at the same time some of them are committing atrocities against civilians. You need to read it to really grasp all the consequences of our unnecessary and horrific decision to invade Iraq to "liberate" and "democratize" them against their will. Do we blame the soldiers or first blame the criminals in office who sent them there and then botched their mission by typical bureaucratic mismanagement and political lie-mongering?

Everything else I was thinking about came to a standstill when I read these articles. We are sitting here in comfort while on the other side of the world is hell on earth - made in the USA, planned and executed from the remote control comfort of America - Island America - nole mi tangere.

Immigration & Lou Dobbs' "I have a nightmare" Speech

Bridgethought of the Day: When the going gets emotional, the emotional get lost.

Two facts you must know, and know well:
Immigration is not just an "emotional hot-button issue" rated Rx, it is all about emotions. Those emotions are, to wit: a) fear; and b) terror.

Lou Dobbs has always been The Bastion of sound, sane, reliable, reasonable, & conservative advice on the one subject of prime concern among all conservatives, i.e., Money.

Add 1 + 2 and you get: 3. A blithering fool.

Yes, fear also has its chemistry - powerful stuff, that - and the neocons, as well as the traditiocons and establicons, are the alchemists, providing you plenty of fears to gnash your virtual teeth on well into the 43rd Century. But fortunately, they're saving you the $ & trouble by working hard to bring you Armageddon long before that - say, 2012 by my ... ah.. calculations.

But enough blabbering. Let's get right to the blithering, which, according to the price tag on Paris Hilton's trip-to-jail photo, is what we value most. You see, what turned our Financial Stability Hero, Lou Dobbs, into Hearts on Fire is Immigration, and almost everything morally wrong and disgusting emanates therefrom.

People give credit to our Congress in Inaction for the failure to come up with a solution to the Immigration Hot-Button Issue, but we should never dismiss the unfailing efforts of the tireless and indefatigable Lou Dobbs to deprive George Bush of even One Final Success to offset the failure of his War Without End Amen Policy.

His stirring "I Have a Nightmare" Speech certainly sets the stage for all Americans to work up a fear so intense it almost, but not quite, rivals the much-touted Fear of Death and Fear of the death of loved ones by starvation, or their torture by poverty and other disasters that are behind much of the "illegal aliens"' fight for legality, aka Immigration. So without further ado, here are some excerpts:

"I have a nightmare... that millions of illegal aliens are getting a free ride - and we're paying for it - instead of paying for the wars and weapons systems to which we, as a free society, are entitled... I have a nightmare ...

"That rampant illegality by illegal aliens will spill over and cause hard-working law-abiding citizens to rebel against the rampant injustice of it all, and break the law... starting with the laws enforcing taxes to be paid to the IRS...

"I have a nightmare ... that illegal aliens are taking countless jobs from law-abiding legal citizens, who are forced against their will to live as couch potatoes, drinking beer and watching 70's reruns when, were all illegal aliens eliminated by simply enforcing existing laws and building a 2,000-mile-long wall visible from space, those same couch potatoes could instead be breaking their backs picking potatoes in the fresh methane-infused air and living in squalid metal shacks so they could send a few measly dollars to their wives and kids in Chicago and Cincinnati where they can better fend off druglords and ... pay their taxes - instead of being sent down to Mexico and subsidizing a free ride for hungry women and children who pay no taxes to the United States... I have a nightmare...

"That illegal aliens are bringing more and more leprosy into this country and other horrifying diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, bubonic plague, and amebas, to name a few. .. and instead of spending more tax-n-spend liberal cash on health and human services, we could be spending them, as we should be, on more weapons systems, international war adventures, and cool killing games that we call "international policy" and "saving the world for democracy"... I have a nightmare...

"That the minimum wage will be reduced to $1.60/hour... that crowds of people will gather in the streets of ... of Boise, Idaho, and Cleveland, Ohio ... singing "Cielito Lindo" at soccer games ...the streets of America will be filled with people hawking Virgin Mary statuettes and a strange white cheese we can't understand that will give us diarrhea ... that honest, hard-working Americans will have to learn the meaning of "uprimez el ocho", whatever that means - I for one, have no intention to ever know what it means ... our children will experience the horrors of being - gag - bilingual ... and the water supply will have amebas ... I have a nightmare...

"That the IRS will go bankrupt, forcing us to resort to dealing with world problems on the cheap, with diplomacy ... I have a nightmare ...

"That without sufficient tax revenue, we'll be forced to outsource the entire President's cabinet, just to make ends meet ... and these, my friends, are the nightmare possibilities:

• The office of Secretary of State could be outsourced to the Dalai Lama;



• The Secretary of Treasury could be outsourced to the Sultan of Brunei - which, on the up side, could be a boon to gold futures, and perhaps the luxury auto industry;



• The Secretary of Defense could be outsourced to, imagine it, Kim Jung Il;



• The Secretary of the Interior could be outsourced to Prince Albert of Monaco;



• The Secretary of Labor could end up outsourced to Hugo Chavez;



• Secretary of Health and Human Services would be outsourced, probably, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;



• The Justice Department could be run by the Hague, or Amnesty International;



• The Secretary of Energy would be outsourced to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia or even King Abdullah, whichever shows up first;



• The Secretary of Commerce would be outsourced to a Wal-Mart/China Consortium;



• NASA would have to be outsourced to Bert Rutan and Richard Branson; and



• The CIA would be run by the Mossad with secret black funding by unknown billionaires.

"I said, I have a nightmare... and if you read the Immigration Bill, you too would have nightmares... because everything in it is all about legalizing the illegal and inalienating the alien, and that's disgusting, because it's just plain wrong, financially unsound, and will destroy our tax base, and destroying our economy... instead of building more prisons and barbed wire and walls to protect our way of life and our American institutions of baseball and transfat pie and freedom fries and whataburgers that have no relationship with Austria..."

Fortunately, no one, not even Lou Dobbs, not even the U.S. Congress, not even, of course, Bush or his administration, has read the Immigration Bill because it's just too damned long... so it's lose-lose for the people who are dying in an effort to feed their families on the side of the border that has rampant millionaires flicking their cigarettes on hundred dollars bills just for laughs, or who think a gold-plated toilet isn't gross, as long as the Sultan of Brunei approves, just so long as those growing ranks of over-the-top rich folks don't get burned, let the aliens die, and keep them, certainly, illegal. Because it's legal to be cold-hearted and self-indulgent, certainly - but fighting for life in the desert is punishable by death, banishment, or an eternal place in the nightmare of Lou Dobbs...

So which fear wins in the Fear Wars, fear of death or the problems of poverty for one's family, or fear of alien cultures and free rides? We report, you decide, but remember...

Fear the snear.