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Topics - Michael Tee

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376
3DHS / Alien Values
« on: January 02, 2007, 07:57:16 PM »
Vincent Bugliosi's book on the O.J. trial was pretty hard on Marcia Clark.  According to Bugliosi, Marcia placed a lot of reliance on O.J.'s prior assault or assaults on Nicole, which - - as truly horrifying and over the top as they may have seemed to her - - were NBD to the largely female, black members  of the jury.

It seems to me that something like that is playing itself out in Iraq today - - Saddam, the torturer, the murderer, Saddam the suppressor of free speech and free elections and civil rights - - is somehow not viewed with the same sense of horror and repugnance in his own country as he would be in the U.S.A.  In effect, in expecting the Iraqi people to reject what Saddam stood for and support democracy instead, (assuming, for the sake of argument, that that is really what the American policy is all about in Iraq) the American people are as foolish in their own way about Iraq as Marcia Clark was about her jury.

It should be obvious by now that the Sunni people are going to reject any solution to the constitutional crisis of Iraq that does not give them more or less the same degree of disproportionate power that they had under Saddam Hussein, and further that they have the firepower and the resolution and the support to frustrate any and all alternative solutions.  Similarly, the Shi'a are not going to back down from their new-found ability to dominate the country under tthe rules of a "majority wins" "democratic" government.  Stability is going to come, if at all, when one of the two competing sides so completely whips the other that the loser is forced into pretty much the same box that the Shi'a occupied under Saddam.

Frankly, the U.S. choices boil down to supporting the Sunni, effectively replacing the old Ba'athist regime with a new regime and a new Saddam if they "win" - - or supporting the Shi'a, and winding up with a government which will always be to a greater or lesser degree dependent on Iranian goodwill.  If they win.

The real catch was in the "if they win."  The fact is, they can't kill enough of the fighters on either side so the struggle could tie them up for the next decade at least.  They couldn't subdue Viet Nam, admittedly a tougher foe, in ten.   They simply cannot afford a long haul.   The logical solution - - withdrawal - - is unacceptable simply because it paints a clear picture of failure and "loser" on  the "President" who so often assured the American people that regardless of the actual facts they were seeing every night on their TV screens, things were really going well in Iraq, steady progress was being made, just "not as fast" as America had hoped.

It's too bad it is not a chess game.  In chess, the player who can see that his position is hopeless will simply concede defeat and tip over his king.  Too bad there's no one in America with the power and the prestige to call the game over for the country and tip over Mr. Bush.

377
3DHS / Have you stopped beating your wife?
« on: December 27, 2006, 11:39:48 PM »
BT raised a great have you stopped? question with is "Is violent radical Islam worth stopping in its tracks?" 

I'll bet somewhere in the Middle East, an Islamic BT is asking his wavering friends if violent American militarism is worth stopping in its tracks.

I like the question, I like the technique.

Is violent gangsta rappin worth stopping in its tracks?  It's "violent" that makes the whole thing work of course, and it's gotta have a minimal level of credibility.  "Violent" gangsta rap is unconvincing.  It isn't violent enough.  "Violent" radical Islam needs some associations to cement the relationship; car-bombing is good.  What's good about car-bombing is that it's basically anarchic, anyone can do it without government approval or financing, whereas it takes a whole government to fund an airstrike or a naval bombardment.  If a government is behind the carnage, it's subliminally OK, daddy has approved it, whereas the car-bomber, shit, now that's one scary dude, the out-of-control id in action, the free agent.


378
3DHS / Hey it's after 2:00 AM
« on: December 27, 2006, 03:08:17 AM »
Anyone who's still up posting and lives in this (EST) time zone is SICK!!!

379
3DHS / Merry Christmas to all in the group.
« on: December 25, 2006, 01:06:15 AM »
All the best for Christmas and the New Year to all of you, your families and your friends.

Michael Tee.

380
3DHS / The Death of American Imperialism
« on: November 30, 2006, 09:59:56 AM »
This opinion piece by a former editor of the Toronto Star's editorial page ties it all together nicely - - the bastards can't get away with that shit any more.  The writing's on the wall.

Harper looking at obsolete vision of world [Harper is Stephen Harper, the dip-shit Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, elected through a fluke because of financial scandal involving our former Liberal government]
Nov. 30, 2006. 01:00 AM
HAROON SIDDIQUI


As Stephen Harper takes satisfaction in the NATO decision to free up a few more troops for deployment in southern Afghanistan, Canada seems oblivious to a major reassessment underway in Washington and elsewhere away from the military and cultural confrontations with the Muslim world.

The Pope is making amends in Turkey, dropping his long-standing opposition to its entry into the European Union.

George W. Bush is in Jordan to try and find a political way out of Iraq, where the U.S. military engagement has now lasted longer than it did inWorld War II.

His host in Amman, King Abdullah, wants him to help avert a potential civil war in Lebanon, as well as the humanitarian crisis in the Israeli Occupied Territories. The same message was conveyed to Dick Cheney Saturday by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who said the Arab-Israeli dispute is "the core issue" in the Middle East.

On all three fronts, Washington needs the help of Syria and Iran — something the Iraqi government already understands. Baghdad has just normalized relations with Damascus after a 24-year break, and has been paying heed to Tehran.

All this is the exact opposite of what the Bush neo-cons had in mind in launching their war of choice on Iraq. A major oil producer and developed Arab state would be in American hands.

Arabs, Palestinians in particular, would be more amenable to American and Israeli dictates, as would Iran and Syria, the patrons of Hezbollah, Hamas and other anti-Israel militias.

Lebanon, too, now represents the opposite of what Israel had envisaged in invading and pulverizing it last summer. The pro-Western Siniora government is teetering, pushed by the pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which is also said to be training Shiite militias in Iraq.

It is these failed American-Israeli policies that Harper has committed Canada to. While he took pride in boarding Bush's sinking ship, the president is being counselled to bail out, and quickly.

A bipartisan Congressional commission, co-chaired by Jim Baker, the veteran diplomat and Republican troubleshooter, is likely to recommend that Bush enlist regional help in managing the crises roiling the Middle East.

Jimmy Carter has already called for the same.

In interviews for his latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the former president is also rejecting the accepted wisdom (endorsed by Harper as well as the main Liberal leadership candidates) that it's the Palestinians — Hamas, in particular — who are to blame for the lack of progress.

"There hasn't been one day of substantive peace negotiations in the last six years," Carter said in one interview. "You can't say the election of Hamas interferes with the peace efforts, because no peace effort has been going on."

He noted that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestine interlocutor favoured by both Israel and the U.S., was not called upon to negotiate when he was prime minister nor has he been since being elected president.

"The oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories is horrendous," Carter said. "It is one of the worst cases of oppression that I know of now in the world.

"The Palestinians' land has been taken away from them. They now have an encapsulating or an imprisonment wall being built around what's left of the little tiny part of the holy land that is in the West Bank. Gaza is surrounded by a high wall. There's only two openings in it, one into Israel, which is mostly closed, the other into Egypt. The people there are encapsulated. And the deprivation of basic human rights among the Palestinians is really horrendous."
In another interview, Carter said:

"A minority of Israelis are perpetrating apartheid on the Palestinian people. It's not based on race. It's not a racist inclination. It is a desire for Palestinian land. Contrary to the United Nations resolutions, contrary to the official policy of the U.S., contrary to the Quartet's so-called road map, contrary to a majority of Israeli people's opinion, this occupation and confiscation and colonization of land in the West Bank is the prime cause of the continuation of violence."

Meanwhile, the United Church of Canada is urging Harper to condemn the killing of almost 500 Palestinian civilians since July, and to call for an end to the siege of Gaza. And Italy, Spain and France last week urged a ceasefire and the resumption of Arab-Israeli talks.

The ceasefire has since come about and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has wisely signalled his willingness to negotiate.

To summarize: A consensus is emerging that:

The Israelis cannot beat the Palestinians into abject surrender, nor stop the Iranians and Syrians from aiding Hamas and others.

The U.S. does not have enough troops to fix Iraq, and that even if it did, the time is well past a military solution.

NATO cannot defeat the Taliban by force alone, as the United Nations top official in Afghanistan said recently and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf had concluded earlier.

The fragile nature of Lebanon requires a regional consensus.

The only way forward to a new world order is to abandon the recklessness of the last five years, which has caused much havoc and harmed Israeli and American interests. Harper, and hence Canada, would be ill-served by an ideological loyalty to a vision of the world that may already be obsolete.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiq@thestar.ca.


381
3DHS / Carter Blasts Israeli Oppression
« on: November 29, 2006, 10:23:02 PM »
I caught this on Larry King last night.  MSM seems to have buried it pretty well.  What else is new?

from
http://paulmalouf.blogspot.com/2006/11/cnn-jimmy-carter-interview-on-larry.html

<< . . . the oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli forces in the occupied territories is horrendous. And it's not something that has been acknowledged or even discussed in this country. . .

<<KING: Why not?

<<CARTER: I don't know why not.

<<You never hear anything about what is happening to the Palestinians by the Israelis. As a matter of fact, it's one of the worst cases of oppression that I know of now in the world. The Palestinians' land has been taken away from them. They now have an encapsulating or an imprisonment wall being built around what's left of the little tiny part of the holy land that is in the West Bank. . . >>





382
3DHS / Borat - second thoughts
« on: November 18, 2006, 12:58:46 PM »
I decided it was just as stupid to avoid a film because it was over-hyped as to avoid it because of bad reviews.  See for yourself and decide.  So I took the missus last night, or she took me, and wound up as by far the oldest people in an audience that seemed exclusively 22 and younger.

It was pretty funny.  Gross, as expected, but I've seen worse.  Overall, it was sweet and sad, a kind of note I never really expected, a happy ending and a flattering but true-to-life portrait of the American people - - their friendliness, openness, hospitality but also their insularity and hair-trigger belligerence.  The acting was pretty good, camerawork so-so, but the film was supposed to be a documentary produced by a couple of Kazakhs, so maybe that's why.

Only one couple walked out.  It's worth seeing.

383
3DHS / Bionic Hornets
« on: November 18, 2006, 12:43:45 PM »
<<JERUSALEM (Reuters) -        Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

<<The flying robot, nicknamed the "bionic hornet," would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said.>>

Somehow I thought of "Blade Runner."  The concept is truly amazing.  The Israelis are far-sighted in their designs, a little short-sighted in their applications.  Just as rocketry devolved downwards from the Jupiter and Saturn missiles to the Qassam, can you imagine the havoc a few of these little suckers could wreak in the halls of Congress, smuggled into America with the loose change in the pockets of some immigrant or tourist?  [Who'd have to exercise extreme caution not to jiggle his change]   On second thought, it wasn't "Blade Runner" I should have thought of, it was "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."


384
3DHS / No real change coming
« on: November 14, 2006, 09:20:49 PM »
Kind of depressing.  Here's an article from brickburner.org (http://brickburner.blogs.com/) entitled "A Progressive Sweep?" which compares the members and numbers of the CPC (Congressional Progressive Caucus) with the New Democrats and the Blue Dog Democrats.

I know that names don't mean much anymore.  Hell, what's a Democrat anyway?  But when Frank (the author of the article) points out that over half of the CPC support Murtha's call for redeployment (as compared to, say, bringing them all home) you gotta wonder what is so "progressive" after all.

Here's an example of the kind of "winds of change" we can expect to blow through the halls of Congress in 2007:

<<Like their leader Nancy Pelosi, the CPC’s members also overwhelmingly support Israel and remain committed to the neo-con principles underlying Bush's war on terror . . . >>

In short, it's a long haul ahead for those Arabs still fighting for their land and their freedom.  We all know the basic principles of Bush's war on terror - - studiously avoid any examination of the real sources of enmity between Arab radicals and America; stick with the tried and true "They hate us for our freedoms."  (as if any of them really gave a shit whether women can drive on the Interstate or not) and invent reasons (which don't even have to be plausible) to attack and occupy any Arab country with a large enough supply of oil under its sand.

Well, it's a unipolar world and apparently a uni-party Republic - - looks like the world is in for a lot of this shit.

385
3DHS / Simplistic Reasoning
« on: November 08, 2006, 10:21:29 AM »
I wanted to say something about this in the course of a thread "The Evidence Is In," but really it's a bit of a side issue so I figured I'd open a new thread for it.

I came down kind of hard on sirs for his reasoning that Saddam would have turned over nukes or other WMD to terrorists "because he's a gambler."  I don't want to make it personal to sirs, he provided the example of simplistic reasoning but probably half of America subscribes to it, or more accurately is misled by it, and I feel kind of bad because I might have been excessively harsh in my response. 

We're probably all guilty of simplistic reasoning at some point, but at its most dangerous form, it's deliberately used by militarists and neo-colonialists to whip up a fear, a paranoia, about the intentions of others by use of stereotypes, not necessarily racial or ethnic, but character stereotypes:  he's a madman, so he can do this; he's a gambler, so he would have done that.  And a lot of poor dumb schmucks buy into it because they don't bother to use the basic logical testing processes that they were born with.

First of all, everybody's a gambler to some extent, or a bit of a madman (say "irrational" if "madman" is too much to swallow) so these characterizations are not always useful.  But more typically, somebody will read a book review or an article about, say, Hitler or Napoleon, where some form of the comment "reckless gamble" or "inveterate gambler" is made.  It's an apt description for somebody who bets the farm on a certain policy or offensive, often in circumstances of extreme desperation with few other alternatives open.  In Hitler's case, gambling or reckless risk-taking, was a hall-mark of his career from his rise to power to his early years in office to his attack on Russia and finally the Battle of the Bulge.  But a careful examination of each of the episodes shows that while risk was common to all of them, the circumstances were widely different.  In his earliest gambles (the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, for example,) Hitler risked his own life and his comrades', but as they were all front-line combat veterans, the risk was not one that was completely foreign to them, they must have calculated the odds and as long as they weren't suicidal, decided to take the chance.  In Hitler's early days of political power, the risks that he took in reversing the strictures of the Treaty of Versailles were basically that he would be forcefully rebuffed, not that he would bring total disaster on the entire nation.  Attacking Russia before he had finished off Great Britain seemed like a deadly gamble, but by this point Hitler was playing against time - - the inevitable entry of the U.S.A. into the conflict, which would have left him with a two-front war in any event; it seemed better to start the conflict while Russia was still arming itself, when he had the chance of delivering a knock-out punch.  And the Battle of the Bulge, which was a gamble born of sheer desperation, when the Allied armies were closing in on him from all directions.

So although it's loosely correct to call Hitler a gambler, the word is meaningless.  He took calculated risks, and usually when he was running out of alternatives or had little to lose.

To call Saddam a gambler is, in the first instance, just not true.  A gambler would have invaded Kuwait without first consulting the U.S.  Would have initiated the Iran war without tying down any help from the U.S.  Would have confronted the U.S. militarily in Kuwait.  Saddam did none of these.  He made some bad decisions, and in each case, the stakes were relatively tolerable - - military defeat. 

In none of their "gambles" did Hitler or Saddam face any serious risk of total nuclear anihilation, which is the risk that Saddam would have faced had he given WMD to terrorists who then used them on the US.  Usually even "gamblers" who make lots of crazy bets would pass this one up.  If they took the bet, it would only be because it promised some enormous benefit.  What possible benefit could Saddam derive from such a gamble?  That two or three cities in the US would be taken out, leaving the rest of the infidel giant unharmed and enraged?  THAT'S the gamble he would have taken?  Two or three American cities in return for ALL of Iraq and all of its people, Saddam and his loved ones included?

To merely state the stakes is to reveal the absurdity of the argument.  But people buy it.  Why?  Saddam "is a gambler."  Period.  End of story.  All gamblers are equally insane and all will court nuclear anihilation for trivial benefits.  Happens every day.  Not.  Well, try madman.  Saddam is a "madman."  And a gambler.

The problem is, in order for Bush to be justified, Saddam has to be some kind of threat.  Saddam ISN'T a threat to the U.S.A.  Couldn't be a threat to the U.S.A.  He represented a nation of about 23 million, the U.S. 300 million of the most heavily armed people on the face of the earth, with unlimited nukes.  The concept is ludicrous.  But it has to be created and sold.  And that's where those labels come in - - "madman;" "gambler."  It's as if, for some people, all rational thinking stops once the label appears.  That was my basic beef.  And I'm sorry if I appeared to be a little testy in stating it.


386
3DHS / Good morning!
« on: November 08, 2006, 09:35:12 AM »
And it really IS a good morning, isn't it!  It feels like a long nightmare is starting to fade away.  The American people have spoken and they've done themselves proud.  Too bad about the Senate, but nothing's perfect and there's still a lot of good work to be done.

Probably the best thing that will emerge immediately from this stunning repudiation of Bush and his lies and crimes is that the image of America in the eyes of the world (not that this was ever important to Bush and his ilk) will shine much brighter today.  A Republican win would have signalled that the people endorse the crimes and atrocities of the Bush administration, that all are equally guilty.  This is a loud NO! to all of that (and to the endemic corruption of the Republican Party as well - - the Toronto Star's Tim Harper reported that 3/4 of the exit poll showed that corruption and the war were of equal significance to the voters) and a reminder to the world that for every crypto-fascist troglodyte there is an American like Lanya, like terra, like Brass and XO and JS and Knute whose head is on straight and whose moral compass never wavered.

Congratulations America!  You're on the road back to recovery in every way - - physical, spiritual, moral.  There's still a Presidency and a Senate to take back, but it'll happen.

387
3DHS / Will the Last Man Out of the Tunnel Please Turn Off the Light?
« on: November 08, 2006, 02:28:55 AM »
Anybody wanna try estimating the date of first troop withdrawals?  The date of the last helicopter flight out of Sai . . ., oops, out of Baghdad?

388
3DHS / You can fool all of the people some of the time . . .
« on: November 07, 2006, 11:38:20 PM »
Looks like some chickens are comin home to roost.

389
3DHS / The Choice Was Never Clearer
« on: November 06, 2006, 10:13:02 PM »
Tomorrow you can vote for or against the Bush administration.  In reality that's what it  boils down to.

You can vote for an incumbent who:

1.  launched a war of aggression against a country that did not attack first and posed no real threat of ever doing so;

2.  is responsible personally for the deaths of 600,000 Iraqis, 3,000 Americans (more than were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks) and the wounding of abut 15,000 more Americans and an uncounted number of Iraqis.  The scale of human suffering caused by this one man and his corrupt administration is literally unimaginable.

3.  lied and lied repeatedly and shamelessly in his justification for this war, in the "progress" that was supposedly being made in this war, and as to the motivations of any and all Americans who opposed this war.

4.  brought the U.S.A. to its lowest point ever in public esteem in every corner of the globe, both as to its moral stature (it has become synonymous in the eyes of the world with torture and assassination, kidnappings, midnight knocks at the door, rape and murder) and even as to its military clout (North Korea, Iran and even Venezuela have  openly mocked the U.S.A., basically telling the whole country to go fuck itself.)

5.  abandoned the City of New Orleans to its fate, played golf and air guitar on vacation down on the ranch while American citizens, the elderly and the black, were literally drowning in shit.

I could go on about the record deficits, the attenuation of the armed forces, the failures to capture Osama bin Laden or to pacify Afghanistan, but to tell you the truth, those are minor failings - - the major failure of this administration is an abysmal moral failure - - they have lied, they have tortured, they have - - there is no better word for this - - they have murdered.  Hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings have died at their hands.  Atrociously.  Bombed.  Burned alive.  Torn apart, mothers in front of their children, children in front of their mothers.

This is not the time to ask, "What would the Democrats have done differently?"  The fact is, nobody knows what the Democrats would have done differently or IF they would have done differently.  A point has been reached - - long ago - - when a moral imperative demands that any person with even a shred of human decency left in him or her will say, Enough!  We cannot and will not be a party to this any longer.  The stench of this moral decay is just too much for us to bear. 

You can't hide any more behind the empty speculation of how bad the Democrats will be or would have been or might become.  A stinking leprous rot has settled in on your institutions of government and it has to be cleaned out.  Now. Sometime in the next 24 hours.

390
3DHS / Torture & Murder by the Bush Administration in Iraq
« on: November 06, 2006, 01:39:25 AM »
http://www.thousandreasons.org/get_article.php?article_id=329

from the website of One Thousand Reasons

Bush has just green-lighted the Shi'ite death squads which torture and murder Sunnis at random.  The death squads were created by American "advisors" under the plan known as the Salvador Option.

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