OF IMMIGRATION AND IRAN

Wall off the border? Can they be for real? Free countries have no need to be fortified by walls (and this "virtual wall" sounds like a boon for a Bush-crony security company--Stratesec, perhaps?). If they build a damn wall between us and Mexico, that will be concrete (pun intended) proof that we are not free.

Don’t forget, walls have a dual function–they may keep others out, but they can also keep you in.

What we need to do is what Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis said on the Majority Report Monday night, which is what I had been thinking. We need to stop just treating the symptoms (i.e., illegal immigration) and treat the disease itself, which is Mexico’s disastrous economy that makes immigrants need to come here in the first place. But that’s not what the corporatists want. And the corporatists tend to get what they want, which is a steady source of cheap labor–i.e., the illegals, which drives down the price of labor of workers in this country (bigger supply of labor means employers pay less for it).

But if they do build a wall, a friend of mine pointed out that there’s a good bet that there will be illegals helping to build it.

Iran and ran and ran

I can’t find out much about what’s going on with the Iran oil bourse. I thought it was supposed to have opened on March 20. But I haven’t googled it lately. I’ll do that after I get these thoughts down.

Read this piece by Joseph Cirincione about how he now thinks that war with Iran is more or less inevitable whereas he used to think it was unlikely. As I read it, it occurred to me that the Bushies have nothing to lose by attacking Iran. The “Commander-in-Crony” will be gone in 2009 and will not have to deal with any of the repercussions personally.

It’s like the Bush quote I wrote about a few days ago–when asked by Bob Woodward how he thought history would view the Iraq war, his response was that no one can know that with the implication being that it doesn’t really matter to Bush because “we’ll all be dead.” Similarly, one can imagine Bush and Rove’s feeling about Iran, a bigger deficit, or anything else they might be able to wreck before 2009 as being the same–they’ll be out of office and won’t have to deal with it, so what do they care what happens?

Their only concern is keeping, consolidating, and projecting power, regardless if it starts WW III.

Lagniappe

Check out this thread that I replied to about the Iraq war...it's not spectacular or anything, just gives some idea what we're up against...

BUSH IS MAKING PROVING HE'S A LIAR TOO EASY

For example, here is Dear Leader on March 8, 2003 (downingstreetmemo.com has done superb work on this stuff):

“We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force.”

And that lie of his was told after the Jan 31, 2003 Bush/Blair meeting that was detailed in a document released today, in which

Bush made clear to Blair that he was determined to invade Iraq without the
second United Nation resolution, "or even if international arms inspectors
failed to find unconventional weapons," writes Don Van Natta, Jr. after
examining the memo written about the meeting by Blair's top foreign policy
adviser David Manning. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the
military planning," Manning wrote in the memo. "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president, according to Van Natta.

So in January 03 Bush has "penciled in" March 10 as the date to begin the illegal invasion of Iraq, yet states in address two days before on March 8 that he's trying to avoid war. He was in fact doing the exact opposite at the moment he spoke those words on March 8--he was rushing like a madman into an ill-advised, illegal war that has killed or wounded 15,000 + U.S. troops and by his own estimate, at least 30,000 Iraqi civilians.

Unbelievable.

Simply unbelievable.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Americans are taught that our leaders don't do. Oh, leaders of other countries engage in this kind of deceitful treachery, but not our leaders, oh no sir. You see, America is a morally superior democracy, which is what a filthy shithole like Iraq needs to be.

How can anyone with a single iota of common decency or self-respect or respect for the Constitution or faith in the Presidency still support this liar? George W. Bush is the antichrist, if there is such a thing.

Just A Reminder

And here's a scary story about Bush planning the Iraq war 3 months after 9/11, in which Bush reveals why he doesn't care about what havoc his policies have wrought and will wreak:

Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

That single quote goes a long way toward summarizing so much that is wrong with the Bush presidency, and indeed the entire neocon/Christofascist Republican worldview. And that worldview is horrific, to say the least.

The most disturbing part, of course is that "we'll be dead". Who is "we"? I'm pretty sure that by "we" he wants us to think he's merely referring to himself, his evil henchmen, Bob Woodward, etc. But what if that's not the "we" he's referring to? What if, by "we", he means the American people? As in, history will not judge his war because there will be no historians (or anyone else, for that matter) to pass judgment after the nuclear holocaust he's going to unleash before the 2008 election.

Will his daughters be dead? Will any grandchildren he may end up having be dead? Do you see what I'm saying? Does he really not care what happens in the future simply because he'll be dead? Is that his "positive vision" for our country?

His answer to Woodward's question is the worst possible answer. It's the absolute wrong answer.

When the wrong answer is the right answer

Yet it's the right answer to the corporatists, to the globalizationists, the hasten-the-Second-Coming fundamentalists. Their attitude is "eat, drink and be merry" for tomorrow "we'll all be dead," in Bush's words. And of course by "eat, drink and be merry" they mean "accumulate wealth above everything else, use up the earth's natural resources, pollute whatever we feel like, enrich ourselves at all costs, be self-righteous and self-aggrandizing, and put profit over people."

In other words, Bush was expressing their creed to perfection--who cares who gets hurt by what we're doing right now because we'll all be dead when the chickens come home to roost (in the form of cuts in or elimination of social services, terrorism, poverty, default on the debt, another great depression, war, famine, pestilence, etc.).

What a great president, though. Wouldn't you just really like to have a beer with ol' G.W.?

AND NOW WE'RE IN YEAR FOUR

Just thinking about the third anniversary of the Iraq war. Weren't we told that the "war on terror" was a "different kind of war?" Why yes we were, by the Commander-in-Chief-of-screwing-things-up, on August 22, 2005:

Like the great struggles of the 20th century, the war on terror demands every element of our national power. Yet this is a different kind of war. Our enemies are not organized into battalions, or commanded by governments. They hide in shadowy networks and retreat after they strike. After September the 11th, 2001, I made a pledge, America will not be -- will not wait to be attacked again. We will go on the offense and we will defend our freedom. (Applause.)

This thought just crossed my mind again recently--if this war is so different, why are we fighting it like every other war we've ever fought?

The Lobby

You've got to at least browse Raimondo's column today. It's a good and informative summary of the so-called "Israel Lobby" and how U.S. fealty to Israel is detrimental to our foreign policy. If you have the time and energy, you might want to read the synopsis from the authors themselves here. Here are a couple of paragraphs that stood out to me, precisely because this is a side of Israel you don't often hear about:

Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’

Good Night and Good Luck

Finally watched it tonight. Just substitute "terrorism" every time they say "Communism" and it reflects today's media/political climate so perfectly it's palpable.

And here's my latest letter to the editor:

Bush should be impeached


Let's say, just for argument's sake, that the United States had a president that had done all of the following:

1. Held office at the time of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

2. Admitted to a program of spying on American citizens without warrants, in clear violation of U.S. law.

3. Began a war of aggression against a country that had never attacked us, in violation of all international laws and norms.

4. Detained American citizens without charge or representation, in violation of U.S. law.

5. Sanctioned torture of prisoners in violation of international laws and norms.

6. Began his first term in office having lost the popular vote and then been installed by a one-vote difference in the Supreme Court.

7. Created the biggest deficit in the history of the country.

8. Oversaw an increase in poverty every year he was in office.

If we had such a president, any rational person would conclude that that president would need to be impeached and removed because he was a danger to the continued existence of America as a constitutional republic, regardless of his party affiliation, family name or professed belief in God and freedom. As it happens, we do have a president that has done these things, and his name happens to be George W. Bush.

Calling for the impeachment and removal of George W. Bush is not "Bush-bashing" or "hating Bush." It is the proper response to any president - Democrat or Republican - who abuses power, ignores the Constitution and wages unjust war.

Clinton Kirby,

Hattiesburg

INSTEAD OF RAISING THE DEBT CEILING...

...maybe we could undo the tax cuts...

Is this why the Iranian oil bourse won't "break the buck?"

Or is it because the buck is already broken?

Seriously, what will it take for people to realize that things like abortion and homosexuality don't matter for shit, and things like tax-cutting our way into oblivion while simultaneously waging unjust wars do, and then vote accordingly?

We are so fucked...

THE WAY TO FIGHT A "WAR ON TERROR"...

...is to stop waging wars to improve "investor confidence" (see previous post). The way to fight terror, to which Marty Kaplan alluded today, is to stop antagonizing other countries and peoples through subversion of their elections, propping up their oppressors, valuing their resources over their well-being, and so forth.

Here's what Kaplan said:

Realize that the war on terror is also a positive struggle for the world's hearts and minds, not an Oedipal vendetta, and not an excuse to shred the Constitution.

It's simple common sense.

THE NEXT WAR WILL BE FOUGHT TO PRESERVE "INVESTOR CONFIDENCE"...

So the restoration of "investor confidence" is the main objective in dealing with Iran? Mr. Straw seems to be tipping his hand a little more than he probably means to with this statement...

'The result of Iran putting itself beyond the pale in the international community has been a serious damage to investor confidence,' he said.
'The Iranian stock exchange, which is actually quite busy normally, has declined significantly.'
'There's been a flight of capital out of the country and even more worrying for the regime, the brightest and the best of Iranians continue to leave the country in large numbers.'

But it's good that he did, because it exposes the true face of economic imperialism...I haven't read the full text of his remarks, so I'm not exactly sure which investors are losing confidence, but I assume he means Western investors. And God knows that Western investors should not have their confidence shaken--it is their God-given right to be able to maximize profit at the expense of all else, especially at the expense of the rights of non-Westerners.

This is what's wrong with the world, friends--the profit motive uber alles.

IMPEACH THE LYING CORPORATE GREEDHEADS

Finally getting to watch the Harper's forum on "Is There A Case For Impeachment?" on C-Span 2. It's very inspiring--Elizabeth Holtzman pointed out that the move for impeachment has to come from the public, like it did in the case of Nixon...

The Congress doesn't want to deal with impeachment, so they have to be forced into it...

So let's force them, shall we? We should ask ourselves every day, "what am I doing to help cause the impeachment of George W. Bush?" And forget the fact that it's a guy named "George W. Bush." If the President's name was "Franklin Roosevelt" and the person that bore that name had done these things:

1. Presided over the worst terrorist attack in American history
2. As a result of that attack, rammed through a law that removed civil liberties of American citizens
3. Began a program of spying on American citizens without warrants in clear violation of U.S. law
4. Made a case for war against a country that never attacked us by distorting, exaggerating, and outright lying about that country
5. Began a war of aggression against a country that had never attacked us, in violation of all international laws and norms
6. Detained American citizens without charge or representation, in contravention of U.S. law and the U.S. Constitution
7. Tortured prisoners in contravention of international laws and norms
8. Oversaw the worst labor market since the Great Depression
9. Began his first term in office having lost the popular vote and being installed by a one-vote difference in the Supreme Court
10. Created the biggest deficit in the history of the country
11. Repeatedly gave tax cuts to the wealthy while poverty has increased every year he's been in office

And that's just of the top of my fucking head...write letters to the editor, organize marches, play benefit concerts, hold signs up in noonday traffic, write your representatives, write books, make speeches, organize forums, put signs in your yard, talk to your friends, neighbors, fellow church members, wear T-shirts, get bumper stickers...Let's do this!!!

And so forth and so on...

PLANNED PARENTHOOD VS. DROPOUTS (and a letter)

There is but one Planned Parenthood office in the entire state of Mississippi, and it's right across the highway from my neighborhood. Apparently, post-Katrina, their caseload has doubled...

But you know those fun-lovin' Republicans--screw what the needs of women are...family planning is for witches, and all that...

And could this be the reason why Mississippi falls for this fascist crap? And might there be fewer dropouts if Planned Parenthood had an office in every county? Y'know, so teenage mothers don't drop out of school to take care of children that they shouldn't have in the first place?

And a letter to the editor of mine appeared in the Hattiesburg American today...here's a representative quote:

This just goes to show that those of us who oppose the war are not crazy, and we're not alone. In fact, we're in the right and we're in the majority. As of this writing, only 34 percent of the country approve of the job Bush is doing, and only 30 percent approve of his immoral, unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even 72 percent of our troops say we should leave Iraq within a year.

GLAD I'M A PEPSI MAN...

Today I saw two things I never thought I'd see in Republican-occupied Hattiesburg, the antiwar protest I mentioned below, and this sticker on a Coke machine on the USM campus.














The smaller print says "For crimes in Colombia and India www.cokejustice.org"...

THE FIRST WEDNESDAY OF EVERY MONTH...

...from noon til 1 these peace activists display signs at the corner of Hardy St. and Hwy. 49...

I talked to this woman, who is from Jackson.














She told me a New Orleans evacuee was with them that had a sign saying "Make Levees, Not War." I didn't get their names.

Then I talked to William, a former Army medic (81-85) who now does organic farming--blueberries and pecans--on 18 acres in Magee.















He was there with his wife Lynn, who worked the other side of the street.















I have never seen a protest even this small in Hattiesburg. That's not to say there haven't been others, perhaps I just didn't see them. But they said they've been coming to that corner every month since September--right on!

I asked William about the reaction (and he said the first amendment was the only permit he needed and he had talked to a Hattiesburg city official who told him no permits were needed anyway) from drivers and he said that a lot of them "get it half right"--they only hold up their middle finger when the peace sign takes two fingers...

Sorry about the quality of the pictures...It was pretty bright outside and my cell phone camera was having a hard time with the light...but you get the idea..

Let's make plans to be there with them a month from now...or even more often, if possible...

KATRINA, WHAT HAST THOU WROUGHT?

That's the question Dubai Bush is probably asking himself as he fans himself in the Indian heat. The 34% approval president tried, days after Katrina, to deflect some of the criticism of the federal government with his patented "aw shucks" fake-Texan routine by saying "Gee whiz, who'da thunk the levees would be breached..." And now the AP is actually putting in work that puts the lie to such a statement...

How unpopular does this Bush have to get before the Republicans will take up the Conyers Call and drive him out of office? Does he have to get down to Dick Cheney levels? Sheesh...

GOODBYE CIVIL LIBERTIES...

...been nice having you. The Patriot Act will be renewed shortly despite the valiant efforts of our hero Russ Feingold. And then my home state of Mississippi is working toward following South Dakota's miserable lead in outlawing abortion in ALL cases except for when the life of the mother is in danger.

Life sure is grand here in the land of the restricted and the home of the cowardly...are we gonna let this bullshit go on?