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Washington's
Realities Illuminated and Exposed
"I've never heard
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the
light came pouring in."
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 Mark
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- Phone: 202
Number2 (202 686-2372) - Bio
57%
believe the Iraq War was 'Not Worth It'. And 42%
believe if the President lied about the war he should be impeached!
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"Colin Powell, Have you no shame?"
- Univ Photographer, Univ of Buffalo yesterday
Thu
- 20 Oct - SHAMELESS WASHINGTON
FRACTURING AT THE TOP: With Colin Powell's former Chief
of Staff at the  State
Department and long-time friend breaking ranks and viciously
assaulting the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush 'cabal' in public yesterday,
it's more clear then ever that we have a government exploding from
within not witnessed here since the second-term Nixon
days. Colonel Wilkenson unloaded
on the 'cabal' at the New American Foundation in downtown
Washington yesterday. Then Colin
Powell himself raced forward to salute one more time last evening,
once again trying to deflect the attacks on those he so dutifully
served. As a black man there is the inescapable Uncle Tom ring to
things, no matter how few dare to say so in public.
Noteably Wilkenson did comment about how 'loyalty to country' should
trump loyalty to government or personal career -- but apparently after
all those years of Pentagon saluting and being a token black man at the
highest levels of white power in Washington Powell just doesn't get
it...even now (see 14 Oct).
Meanwhile Mahmoud
Abbas is in town to get his marching orders, more money, more CIA
help...and just about anything the Americans can think of to keep him
in power against Hamas. But the more they embrace him the more
there is fear about the 'kiss of death'...
Wed - 19 Oct - JUSTICE DENIED and IMPERIALISM
ASSAULTED:
In 1982 after an assassination attempt the brutal ruthless Saddam
Hussein had maybe 150 Iraqi men and boys arrested, tortured and
killed. For
that today he f inally goes on
trial. In 1982 after very public American promises to
protect
Palestinian refugees in Israeli-invaded Lebanon, the brutal and
ruthless Ariel Sharon coordinated the massacre of thousands of
defenseless Palestinian woman and children by the Christian Lebanese
Phalange fighting on Israel's side. Though an official Israeli
Commssion of Inquiry found Sharon 'indirectly responsible' and
recommended he never again serve in government Sharon is today the
Prime Minister of Israel. More recently in 1988 Saddam
Hussein ordered chemical weapons used on the Kurdish city of Hallabjah
and many thousands of civilians were horribly killed. But
Saddam is not being tried for this more horrendous crime, and that may
be because Saddam was not only then the ally of the United States but
the weapons he used were purchased from, and the money he used to do so
came from, the U.S. and other western countries. Selective crimes
and prosecutions make the trial of Saddam Hussein that begins today
more than problematical. And what is taking place today in
heavily occupied by American troops Baghdad is hardly to be considered
justice.
Meanwhile brigades are training in Venezuela, Iran,
and Syria for anticipated U.S. attacks if further CIA 'regime-change'
efforts fail, as they did in Iraq for more than a decade.
Two days after he probably watched Louis Farakhan
denounce U.S. imperialism in front of the U.S. capitol -- along with a
far milder and much more diplomatic Prime Minister of Jamaica who
himself followed Fidel Castro's man, Ricardo Allarcon, from Havana -- Robert
Mugabe of Zimbabwe lashed out at the U.S. and Great Britain from a
U.N. forum in Rome. Hugo Chavez did much the same from the
rostrum of the General Assembly at the U.N. in New York last
month. Mugabe's ruthless and abominable policies in his own
country notwithstanding, these are speeches deserving of being read and
the underlying realities need to be far more openly discussed and
debated.
Tue
- 18 Oct - Washington Smelling,
Bumbling, Fearing: Everywhere there are so many
forms of duplicity and corruption now in official as well as unofficial
Washington. Finally Judith Miller is being exposed for what
she really has been for some time -- an on-the-take and on-the-make agenda-driven deceitful 'journalist' propagating shit
loads of neocon disinformation through the lead pages of the NYTimes causing so much harm to
world affairs, to her newspaper, and finally so deservedly to
herself. It's time journalistic complicity and corrupting
connections to big power, big money, and special interest lobbies were
themselves the subject of some big media investigations.
"Commanders
had sought to play down the role of the U.S. military
in the
referendum, portraying the vote as a critical step in the transfer
of
authority to Iraqi forces. But when the day finally arrived...it showed
precisely the reverse: how the U.S. military remains an
all-encompassing
presence in Iraq's political process."
The
purging and coveruping at the CIA is ongoing and far more important
at th end of the day than JudyGate. From the White House, State
Department and Pentagon it's one distortion and misrepresentation after
another -- I'm purposefully choosing the most charitable expressions
for the dastardly realities. Nearly every day now if one
carefully reads even the Washington
Post it's one scandal, lie, corruption seeping out after
another. Sunday
on the front page for instance there was the sorry tale of one of
Washington's top lobbyists exposing -- in a way rarely done in such
detail -- the legalized legislative corruption and the miserable
campaign finance 'system' that have so badly undermined government
credibility and American democracy. As for Iraq the
American imposed Constitution, with the American military pretending
to be 'invisible', has already partitioned the country in reality
if not yet on the map, with an escalating civil war already the
result. A generation ago the Americans did much the same in
Southeast Asia killing 50,000+ of their own and many millions of
'gooks' in those days...all based on the gross lies, deceptions, and
hubristic imperialism now recreated even worse than before.
As for Christian Evangelist Harriet Miers, now that
we know she thinks George Bush was 'the greatest governor ever' in
Texas, not to mention 'the smartest person she's ever known', such
stupidities ought to be enough for everyone to conclude this is a woman
not up to the Supreme Court job regardless of her views, assuming she
has them, about specific Constitutional issues. As I said quite
some time ago now the likelihood is Ms. Miers will find one way or
another to pull out of this mess before she is subjected to a
ruthlessly grueling public dissection. But then, who knows, she
just might conclude that if Clarence Thomas could get through it all
with such terrible embarrassments so can she. For the sheer
spectacle of it all let's hope she does come to the fight...and then
let's pray she gets knocked out before the bell
sounds.
INSULTING CHINA
Mon
- 17 Oct - Insulting
China + the real CIA scandals:
At last check the Communist Party still ruled in the world's most
populous country. Even so the Americans are intent on rubbing
more salt into the 'defeat of communism' with a new Washington monument
near Capitol Hill. They haven't however chosen a replica of
the Berlin Wall, or for that matter of Sputnik or the U-2. The
haven't chosen anything relating to the Soviet Union of old at all in
fact. They've instead chosen the "Goddess
of Democracy" to cast in bronze.
Now the "Goddess", otherwise known as
Lady Liberty, was a crude Statue of Liberty off-shoot. It was
erected by protesting students in 1989 in Tianamen Square. That's
in the heart of Beijing. It was destroyed in a ruthless bloody
suppression which history records as one of the dark moments of
resurgent post-Cultural Revolution China. Yet at last check a big
portrait of Mao
and lots of big red flags continue to fly over Tianamen, regardless of
the pretentions and presumptions of Evangelical Neocon Crusading
Washington. And just who is on course to defeat whom in
this contempoary world of ours is not very clear at all anymore.
Meanwhile, Washington is all abuzz about the
MillerGate/CIAgate Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame affair that is threatening
to bring down the top Presidential and Vice-Presidential aides Rove and
Libby. As tintillating interesting as this buzz is it's really
quite a sideshow masking the purging, the expanding, and the
covering-up that is actually redefining the CIA's role in world affairs
and in American foreign policy for some time to come. With the
agency on a big-time hiring and infiltrating binge more and more all
Americans abroad -- and many right here at home -- are going to be
suspect...and treated accordingly. Read
more...even if I do have to refer to a Wash Times Op Ed in this
case.
HOW
MANY MEETINGS DID MILLER HAVE WITH ROVE, SCOOTER, NEOCONS ABOUT IRAQ?
Sun
- 16 Oct - Washington and Middle
East Exploding: Now we learn that neocon
Israeli-connected NYTimes journalist Judy Miller had at least three
private meetings with the Vice-President's Chief of Staff, including a
private two-hour breakfast at the St. Regis two blocks from the White
House, about the Ambassador  Wilson-wife-WMD-CIA
scandal. But the real
question that should be asked and answered in view of the role
Miller, the NYTimes, and top
officials in the Bush Administration jointly played in stacking the
deck with lies to push the invasion/occupation of Iraq is HOW MANY PRIVATE MEETINGS did Miller
have with leading Bush/Cheney/Pentagon/CIA officials in the months
leading up to the Iraq invasion and which lead to all the disingenuous
and deceitful and falacious stories published in the NYTimes at that crucial period of
history.
The Bush/Cheney Administration has never been
more unpopular nor more afraid. It's all about power and politics
in Washington, not really about 'terrorism' or 'demoracy' or
'freedom'...all disengenuous conceptual smokescreens in
fact. Iraq is effectively partitioned in reality even if
one name still remains on the map -- escalating ongoing civil war is
the most likely future now. The two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is essential over; apartheid
the actual reality and escalating civil war more and more likely
there as well.
Today on ever-more-fearful
PBS another leading neocon and Israeli-appologist, Ben Wattenberg of
AEI (American Enterprise Institute), interviewed his own boss who
heads up AEI, and did quite a job of whitewashing and obscuring the
realities of the Neocon conservative corporate-sponsored AEI
think-rank that has played such a role in hyping and promoting
Bush/Cheney policies, as well as masking and obscuring the important
think-tank phenomena in Washington. The program Think-Tank is
itself another of the increasingly inadequate and right-wing programs
on PBS, the result of a withering right-wing assault on the once far
more independent public network. Wattenberg himself is getting
olding and more bumbling as he goes, was clearly unwilling and maybe
unable, to ask really serious and probing questions with his follow-ups
pathetic when even existent.
A few days ago the Bush propaganda machine was
publicly exposed more than usual. The Persident had been
portrayed having an improptu discussion with troops in Iraq by
sattelite hook-up. But shortly after it was touted and
squeezed for political gain a video emerged of the scripting, coaching,
and set-up of questions and answers that took place with the troops
prior to the discussion with the President.
Sat
- 15 Oct - Abdullahs of Arabia
and the CIA: The al-Saud Dynasty knows from whence
it came, and knows who keeps it in power and in sub-control. It's
a complicated subject of course but at the end of the day the answer is
the CIA. And with so many advisers, public relations types,
and former diplomats and agents on the Saudi American payroll in
Washington the explanation for why King Abdullah 'chose' a prominent
American Jewish journalist for his first television interview as King
is not such a mystery really. The other Abdullah of course is the
Hashemite King of Jordan, even more directly tied to and kept in power
by 'the company', 'the agency', you know who. The following
from a very concerned observant reader in Florida about the Barbara
Walters interview with Abdullah of Arabia broadcast on ABC's 20/20 last
evening. I'll have abit to say about my own trip with Barbara to
Egypt nearly twenty years ago later this:
As I watched
Barbara Walter's interview with King Abdullah, I was reminded of what
is so wrong with U.S media, why Americans are so
misinformed with regard to our history of involvement in the Middle
East and why the world views us with such distrust!
In tonight's segment, Barbara Walters
placed a great deal of emphasis on the repression, subjugation and
general mistreatment of women in Arab
countries. In short, it was more of the same negative images of
Arab peoples which are so pervasive in this society.
Images which have helped reinforce the many
negative stereotypes and made it impossible for serious dialogue and
cross-cultural understanding to occur between Americans and Arabs.
What I found interesting (if not appalling!)
during this interview, was the fact Ms. Walters neglected to mention
both Karen Hughes and Mrs. Bush's visits to the Middle East.
Visits in which both Ms. Bush and Ms. Hughes received an earful from
Arab women for the negative images of them and Arabs in general
presented by U.S media as well as the wars in Iraq and a foreign policy
which has created enemies for generations to come.
But perhaps what was most telling was that
at the end of the interview, the host asked Ms. Walters if Arabs
(specifically in Saudi Arabia) were influenced by American
television. She commented on the number of television sets (34)
that were located in the Palace and that U.S television has had a
profound effect of Arabs. At the end of her comment, the host
chimed in with "maybe we can make a difference (in reference to
creating change in Arab culture)".
Not only did I find these comments
condescending and arrogant, but also a grossly overvalued image of
America in the region and an outright denial of reality!
International research and opinion polls world wide consistently show
an increasing hostility of the U.S not only in Arab countries, but
African, Asian, Latin American and European countries as well.
Until we face up to our actions and take a
serious approach to correcting behaviors which, have resulted in these
negative opinions of this country at the international level, world's
anger of us will continue to persist if not worsen.
The only way that these changes are going to
occur is if, our political leadership and our media become willing to
assume their responsibilities and somehow find the moral courage to
tell us the truth about ourselves!
Timothy Stinson
Miami Lakes, Florida
"Make no mistake about it,
information is a weapon...
Information
dominance. Defining the future."
- Northrup Grumman Ad on WTOP Radio this
morning
Fri
- 14 Oct - Incestuous, Inbred,
Controlling Washington: More and more the war corporations,
the profiteering oil conglomerates, and the
government-sponsored-and-or-manipulated think-tanks, NGOs, and 'private
organizations', are collectively attempting to dominate and control the
major media, especially in so far as how Washington is covered.
Owning and controlling the means of information has become a
sub-category of owning and controlling the means of production.
Crafting and hyping, spinning and projecting 'the message' has become
more and more an integral part of policy formulation and implimentation
in corporate Washington.
When a few thousand of the well-healed Washington insiders gathered
last night at the Washington Hilton this too was a part of the
ever-expanding increasingly incestuous Washington game -- one filled
with incessant self-congratulations, with awards exchanged with each
other, and with making sure the darker and much more truthful side of
contemporary affairs both at home and abroad remain heavily fogged from
view. Last night at the Hilton it was the Black
establishment's turn to pay
tribute to themselves, proclaim they are indeed significantly helping
the
desperately ill and dying on the African continent, and annoint one of their own,
former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, as Africare's great
'humanitarian' champion. No matter that just the day before an
astounding poll revealed that just 2% of American Blacks approve
of the policies of the regime General Powell not only served, but the
one for which he so disastrously prostrated himself in front of the
whole world at the United Nations Security Council. Indeed
you know that political incest and
inbreeding have reached rather unconscionable levels in Washington when
there's the blatant and unchallenged 'chutzpah' to give a
'humanitarian' award to a man like General Powell. True, he's
quite
a salesman and showman. True he knows how to politically dance
the
two-step. True he has projected himself as far more personable
than many of the others around him. But after all there's a grim
and bloody historical record and result to what Powell and his have
actually done and to what Powell, even after being pushed out of Foggy
Bottom, continues to front for as he did again last evening.
Ironically, upon leaving the Hilton dinner and driving home up
Connecticut Avenue I found myself behind a late model SUV with a
prominent bumper sticker (the picture on the right, Powell is on the
left) proclaiming 'ReDefeat Bush'. I found myself
actually laughing out loud...but sighing
inside.
MIERS NOMINATION, CHENEY INDICTMENT, and IRAQ could sink BUSH/CHENEY
REGIME
Thu
- 13 Oct - Bush/Cheney
CIA/Pentagon Deceptions and Manipulations Everywhere:
From Washington to Iraq the
heavy-handed propaganda orchestrated from official Washington and
associated groups and organizations has never been more
extensive. But even so, and despite so much money and
effort, the poll numbers for the Washington officials have rarely been
more ominous -- at home as well as abroad. Amazingly,
'astoundingly' according to NBC Meet the Press Host Tim Russert, only
2% of Black Americans -- that's
right 2% it's not a misprint -- approve of the way George Bush
is leading the country. Overall only 39% of all Americans
approve.
Things are so bad for Bush Washington now that unprecedented low poll
numbers are resulting in unprecedentedly controversial Presidential
steps. A few days ago (see 11 Oct) there was the 6am rather corny
TV photo op in Khakis on the Today
Show. But earlier today things reached a new unprecedented
low level. With the Harriet Miers confirmation in doubt, and with
the Bush/Cheney Presidency now on the line, for the first time in
anyone's memory a President said in public he had selected a Supreme
Court nominee because of religion!
Just weeks ago the White House was loudly and repeatedly insisting that
a person's religion was off-limits when talking about the Supreme Court
and the confirmation process. Now, facing a humiliating
defeat that would in essence mark the effective end of the Bush/Cheney
Presidency, Bush
himself came forward to applaud his lawyers religion -- which, by
the way, is for many Americans a rather far-right extreme
Evangelicism...you know, the the born-again, Apacalypse-coming,
Left-behind kind of thing which also includes a kind of near-fanatical
adherence to 'life at conception' and rabbid anti-abortionism.
It still seems hard to imagine this really happening next year, BUT it
now does seem possible the Democratic party could take control of the
House, and at least narrow the gap in the Senate. And if
such a reversal of political fortunes should really occur with the
Bush/Cheney administration unable to reverse the harshly negative
polls, the whispered talk of impeachment might quickly become much more
mainstream and primetime.
 Wed
- 12 Oct - 'Don't Worry Be Happy'
Bush Assures Gullible VIP Palestinians:
Gullible indeed for they have been sold such lies and tricks for so
long by so many...now with George Bush handing out lots of meaningless
reassurances and the VIP on-the-take Palestinians sitting in their
assigned seats. Especially when it comes to Bush, words and
photo-ops and gestures are all he's really got to offer. And so
he and his
keep right on going with the political-historical charade bringing
about so much death
and destruction and hatred as a result. The latest 'impromptu'
White House meeting last week with 'Palestinian Authority' types
was first reported yesterday. While these VIP types were serving
the Bush
Administration's needs in Washington their weakman, Mahmoud Abbas, was
getting stood up stood up again by Ariel Sharon in the
shriveled/cut-to-pieces homeland -- the guns and bombs, the fences and
walls, speaking the actual apartheid realities that the Americans have
not only brought about but paid for and covered up.
As for the involvement
of Karen Hughes in all this here's a bit of what has been said
about her recent 'listening tour' -- her first and only visit ever to
the Middle East by the way.
"Painfully
clueless . . . pedestrian . . . vapid . . . gushy." Arab News
"The marquee clown [in] America's
circus diplomacy . . . total ineptitude . . . total disconnect." Al-Jazeerah
"Preachy, culturally
insensitive, superficial PR blitz." USA Today
"Faux
Pas Trifecta; saying too much, saying the wrong thing, saying anything
at all." Washington Times
op-ed page
"Non-answers,
canned message,
macabre." Los Angeles Times
"Fiasco,
lame attempt at bonding." Slate.com
As for Bush's
overall credibility, these quotes today from a Washington Times story about the
White House selling of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court sum things
up. The
Palestinian VIPs should, but with past history the guide won't, take
note:
"I don't know anybody who is buying
what the White House is selling here," said one Republican
staffer.
"They're putting out a bunch of positive rhetoric, but they're not
putting any substance behind it," said another.
Miserable U.N. Failures:
Disaster
after disaster - most recently the worst earthquake disaster since the
U.N.'s founding - the world organization just can't seem to get its
act together. If ever there was something the 'United
Nations' should have come forward to prepare for and coordinate it's
natural disasters -- especially those that occur in the poorest and
most needy areas of the world. Yet 60 years after being founded
the U.N. is hardly involved in any serious and independent way, always
falling back on the pathetic excuse that 'we can only do what the
member states let us and tell us'.
Tue
- 11 Oct - Bush at
6am:
When George Bush is up at 6am dressed in khakis, wife Laura giving him
the nods and cues, very much acting as the 'Twit' he is -- to quote
Kurt Vonnegut again (see 9 Oct) -- you know he's in the biggest
trouble
of his Presidency. There he was this morning hammer in his
pocket pretending to be a workman building a house in the devastated
areas he so badly neglected and mismanaged until his poll numbers
skydived on him. There he was this morning bright and early on
the Today Show from Louisiana speaking and gesturing more twit-like
than usual in fact as it was all live and semi-spontaneous for maybe 10
minutes or so. But if the polls don't start bouncing back, if
Iraq continues to explode (regardless of 'election' outcome on
Saturday), if Rove and/or Libby or underlings are indicted in
CIAgate/IRAQgate, and maybe if something further 'unexpected' should
happen, we better all fear what a wounded and bleeding Bush/Cheney
White House might try to do in this world sooner rather than later.
BUSH DEPRESSED AND DRINKING?
Mon
- 10 Oct - White House
Depression:
If indicted Karl Rove, a.k.a. 'Bush's Brain', and the key political
operative in Bush Washington, will have to leave the
White House...and that just might push the President over the edge.
Add to what to expect in the weeks ahead the growing possibiity
that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers may
well be forced to withdraw rather than attempt to stand up to murderous
questions in a Senate hearing. On her own things would be dicey
enough, but following so soon after John Roberts it's hard to imagine
her coming out very well with so many knives out to get her.
Meanwhile rumors
of collective chaos and depression in the Bush/Cheney White House,
and in the Oval
Office itself, are growing in visibility and credibility. At the
same time more
and more the 'rumors' about striking
Iran seem to be taking on a life of there own even as other
whispers
of a Bush
Booze Crisis escalate. Back in 1973 a beleaguered Nixon
White House set up mechanisms of control and double-check so that a
drinking and
increasingly paranoid President could not ignite World War III -- with
Henry Kissinger monitoring and the Secretary of Defense himself
alerting the Chiefs that he personally had to verify any orders that
might come from the Commander-in-Chief. More
soon.... This Washington crisis is hardly over...it
is in fact really just beginning.
BUSH THE "TWIT" -
HAMAS
TAKEOVER?
Sun
- 9 Oct - Bush the "TWIT":
Kurt Vonnegut (remember him from SlaughterHouse Five, et.
al.?) showed  what you can do when
you're 83, just about finished, and decide to have your say. On
PBS during Prime-Time in fact on Friday eve Vonnegut in fact summed
up
things with our God-instructed President with a single word, uttered
quite a few times in fact...he's
a "twit".
And it took Vonnegut only a few more words to describe the bleak
realities of our current American polity - sham democracy indeed.
Vonnegut is as close to a modern-day Mark Twain as we're ever going to
get.
Meanwhile the contradictions inherent in
U.S./Israeli policies in the Middle East are becoming more evident as the days go on. The civil
war in Iraq is now well underway; indeed it's no longer likely the
country can hold together other than maybe on the map, though the
Americans will insist they did all they could with the
Washington-imposed Constitution said to be the best that was
possible. In Palestine as well civil war lurks more than
ever -- something the Israelis have tried for years to bring about and
now with Bush's help, masked by all his duplicitously sanctimonious
rhetoric about a false 'Palestinian State' -- it is nearly
here. Palestinian
groups in Gaza came together yesterday (see picture above) for a rare
joint Press Conference letting it be known, however obliquely, that if
the U.S., Israel, and P.A. push any further for civil war they will get
it with all the popular opposition groups united in an alignment
against them. Meanwhile weak and corrupted Mahmoud Abbas,
who still must appear in public with pictures of Arafat to maintain his
marginal legimacy (see picture to right also yesterday), has been
put on notice many times by his own, but never so publicly, and never
with the situation so near ignition. In Washington a
private newsletter is circulating saying that private the U.S.
government is warning on Capitol Hill and elsewhere that a Hamas
take-over of the U.S.-Israeli established and funded 'Palestinian
Authority' is now possible, maybe even likely.
Sat
- 8 Oct - Bush's Stupid Veto
Threat:
The political wobbliness of the current
Bush/Cheney/Rove White House is evident in
many ways these days, but never more than the meaningless and rather
stupid 'veto' threat in the past few days. With a Senate
vote of
90 out of a 100 in favor, for the White House to publicly threaten
to
veto the Pentagon spending bill over an anti-Abu Ghraib anti-torture
anti-prisoner abuse provision is a remarkably sloppy
blunder. True the White House is still hoping to
manuever things on Capitol Hill in conference committee to either
water-down or eliminate the
anti-torture provision; but even so doing it in public in such a way
while at the same time sending Karen Hughes to the Middle East to
'repair' America's image shows how confused and bumbling the Bush team
is at this point, even after so many years of practice. Like a
boxer in the ring hit from many sides -- still standing,
but noticeably dizzy -- the Bush Presidency itself is now at
stake. With
Iraq deadlocked in quasi-civil war, more indictments of top Bush/Cheney
officials looming, just 37% of the public now approving of Bush's
reign, a major challenge from the right over Harriet Miers the
President's friend for the Supreme Court, and the national budget way
out of wack -- another big
hurricane, or terrorist success, or further oil price escalation, or
political scandal
-- could do more than just neuter what's left of the Bush/Cheney
Presidency; such could even bring down the current Washington Regime or
alternatively push it to light the fuse for a much bigger yet Middle
East imbloglio.
 Fri
- 7 Oct - God, Bush, American
Hubris Extraordinaire:
"Imagination run amok" says one federal
official about the latest NYC "subway alert" that began last night with
a prime-time press conference. Sooner or later of course
something somewhere will happen, whether in a subway or movie theatre
or restaurant, and they will say "we told you so". Meanwhile a
huge expenditure of manpower and money is draining American resources
for "security" and causing growing alarm and confusion from the
public. When the next blowup does come after all the steps taken
and money spent to prevent it, the public's confidence will be further
eroded and the
cycle will start all over again at an even more heightened
level.
George Bush 2003: 'I am driven
with a
mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and
fight these
terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me
'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I
did... And
now, again, I
feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get
the Palestinians their state and
get the Israelis their security, and
get peace in the Middle East'.
And, by God, I'm gonna do it."
George Bush 2005:
"We're facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives:
to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world."
Meanwhile the BBC is once again exposing for
the world the realities of
the Bush/Cheney/Neocon/Evangelical regime -- this time it's the Bush-God connection.
Of course the Bush White House quickly jumped in to say oh
no...but then we all have known for a long time now that something
basic is quite wrong with the psyche of GB and with the purist
crusading zealotry of his confounding regime,
haven't we? Meanwhile GB's big
speech yesterday at what is called the National
Endowment or Democracy -- one of the original Reagan-Era Neocon
creations funded by Congress -- didn't talk directly about God
personally...but from what we can tell he was definitely thought to be
there in spirit if not in person.
Actually though you've got to sympathize
a bit with this particular American President, a man so limited in so
many ways yet a man holding such power for eight long years.
First of all he did in fact tell us more than once as he campaigned for
the office that he had personally found Jesus Christ and been 'saved'
by him. And then, in rare moments of reflection, surely GW must
continually wonder how in the world he could ever have become the
President of the American Empire were it not for special devine
intervention on his behalf.
Thu
- 6 Oct - WAR Industry
Propaganda: If we had a really mature and more
honorably decent country in world affairs the war industries (yes let's
call them what they really are) would be prevented from propagandizing
like a 'Ministry of Information and Thought Control' -- at least they
would be prevented from deducting their considerable and growing
'public affairs advertising' expenses from their taxable income and
double-dipping, not to mention double-dupping, the citizens of this
terribly misguided quasi-partial-democracy.
But then we have a very different kind of country in
reality than is self-image; not to mention the great reluctance by so
many to talk about in public what is really going on. Not to
mention further how fewer and fewer serious big-media ways there are
for those who do understand what is happening and who are willing/able
to speak up about it have even in this age of the internet -- with the
major news media itself now largely owned and controlled by the same
big multinational conglomerates, including many of the same big war
industries.
For instance just turn on Washington's biggest
talk radio WTOP like at drive time and its a non-stop barrage of
war industry advertising/sloganeering. "Defending freedom and
safegarding our nation" rants Raytheon; and a few minutes later
"Controlling the skies, Defining the future" comes Northrupt
Grumman.
Oh yes, a few weeks ago I just happened to
notice at the Washington Convention Center that even the Congressional
Black Caucus was enlisted at their annual convention this year --
Northrupt Grumman provided customized backpacks, complete with both CBC
and NG logos.
"You will have stories to cover --
Iraqi elections and suicide bombers,
biological threats
and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you
vacation, the aspens will already
be turning. They turn in clusters,
because their roots connect them. Come back to work -- and life."
- Neocon Scooter from Cheney's
Office to Neocon Judy of the NYTimes
Wed
- 5 Oct - Neocon Washington
Journalists - The Strange Case of Judy Miller: Everything about the Judy Miller case
gets stranger and stranger -- with the letter from VP Cheney's Chief of
Staff Lewis Libby to Judy now topping the cake. Seems Scooter is
at pains to remind Judy -- and to do so in such a public however
confusing and deniable way -- that their roots are all
intertwined. Might he be suggesting that if he and his go down
she and hers do so as well? Whatever, the really big thing
about Miller and her NYTimes
is not really what's so much in the news at the moment; rather it is so
much what is not. In the built-up to the Iraqi
invasion/occupation the big issue was WMD. And now we are just
learning how buddy-close was the Miller relationship to the top
Washington neocons, how much they used her, and she them, to propagate
the false information about WMDs that made the war possible and which
hood-winked the U.N., and how much her editors at the NYTimes, along with the publisher
most recently seen arm and arm with Judy departing from jaill, did
nothing to step in and prevent this egregious violation of journalistic
standards and integrity for which they have yet to explain not to
mention atone in a serious way. As for the official
Washington take on all this read this punches pulled take from David
Ignatius on the Op
Ed pages of the Washington Post today.
Tue
- 4 Oct - Regime Change Fever in
'Titanic' Washington: Even as the U.S. and Israel
feverishly
conspire to 'regime change' in Damascus and Tehran and Beirut -- the
predicament of the Bush/Cheney regime grows more precarious in
Washington all the time. Some think this lessens the chance
of escalating warfare in the Middle East; others like myself conclude
that the weaker and more troubled the Neocons and Evangelicals feel the
greater the likelihood that soon after the 2006 mid-term election the
Pentagon and CIA will be further unleashed to enforce the 'New World
Order' that still eludes the American Empire and the Israeli
interlocutors. Last year no less an establishment figure
than Harlan Ullman, now at CSIS, put forth the Titanic analogy, warning
that those in power are heading toward a major crash and maybe sinking
-- for Titanic here is not in reference to great strength but rather to
the super-ship thought to be invinceable until in sunk in
hours Just yesterday in fact no less a figure than
the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan years, and
a former editor of the Wall Street Journal, had
the following to say about the Bush/Cheney White House:
[according to] one White
House aide: "It’s like working in an insane asylum. People walk around
like they’re
in a trance. We’re the dance band on the Titanic, playing out our last
songs to people who know the ship is
sinking and none of us are going to make it. If POTUS [that's
President of The United States for non-insiders]
is on the road, you can breathe a little easier," says an aide.
Otherwise it is one temper tantrum after another
from Bush, whose "cakewalk war" has turned into interminable conflict,
whose idiocy in diverting funding for
New Orleans’ levees to war in Iraq was disastrous for the famous city,
and whose Social Security privatization
has been rejected by the electorate.
Mon
- 3 Oct - U.S. Twists Occupied
Iraq and Palestine Toward Greater Civil War: One
has to say 'greater' at this point because the civil wars the Americans
have brought through their invade-and-occupy, divide-and-rule,
kill-and-rebuild imperialistic adventures are already well
underway. Soon they may erupt into still far more bloody
affairs even as the crusading Americans carefully prepare their next
conquests -- Iran, Syria, North Korea, Lebanon (Hezbollah), and
Palestine (Hamas). Read about breaking developments in Palestine
-- where the Israelis and Americans are doing all they can to crush
Hamas and promote the P.A. --
then about Iraq -- where the latest geremandering
of the political process may yet cause both a Sunni and a Shi'ite
revolt -- then about what is being planned -- as the big
prize, Iran, is manuevered into the Pentagon/CIA target-sites.
Fearing their imposed constitution may
collapse, and even at the risk
of igniting an even more brutal civil war, the U.S. pro-consul
Ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, has now pushed
further to
ensure his Constitution will not be defeated in the electoral ruse
his own country the U.S. devised and imposed. And while
we're at it add a little
extra context as India is drawn in to American designs in
the subcontinent area and Japan is pushed to re-arm and prepare for
military conflict in the Asian theatre.
Meanwhile Washington prepares for a major
escalation of its own political warfare that still has the potential to
sidetrack the Neocon determination to pursue their 'New World Order',
and even the potential to bring the Bush/Cheney/Neocon/Evangelical
regime to its knees. It is quite possible now that this
month one or both of the highest officials, Karl Rove at Bush's side
and Lewis Libby at Cheney's, may be indicted in CIAgate,
pushing this scandal to a greater danger level than Contragate and
Irangate ever reached in
the Reagan second term. Then, if just one branch of the
Congress should pass into Democratic hands next year the political
blood-letting could start spilling over the rampart floodgates of
Washington just as
the waters poured over the faulty New Orleans levees.
Sun - 2 Oct - PENTAGON
PROPAGANDA BLITZ: The propaganda blitz expanded
today on the corporate network talk shows, with very little, hardly
any, serious counter-analysis. General George Casey, the top dog
4-star,
was featured on ABC's "This Week", and General John Abizaid, another
4-star was featured on NBC's "Meet The Press".
The White House
is worried more than ever with all the political crises they already
face and new ones still likely soon -- so the Commander-In-Chief has
ordered the
senior Generals onto TV to spread the good news -- including General
Petraeus and his "we're doing so much so well" slide-show at Princeton
yesterday.
Washington Meltdown
Delay, Bush, Frisk, FEMA Brown
Unshown: Rove, Libby, Cheney
Sat
- 1 Oct - Princeton Bows
Bigtime to Washington: With a big public relations blitz
underway Washington's most presentable senior imperialist neocons found
a suitable
Ivy League university interlocutor at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School
this weekend; and they cashed in big time. The school's new
dean, Anne- Marie Slaughter, is herself a kind of smiling stealth
neocon
-- though considerably more accomplished than former SAIS Johns Hopkins
Dean Paul
Wolfowitz at pretending otherwise. Slaughter orchestrated and
choreographed this Washington political rape of Princeton; and she did
so so successfully that few of
the gathered alumni even understood what was happening right
in front of their eyes. In less than 24-hours Princeton
provided
a major P.R. coup to no less than Secretary of State Condi Rice,
Homeland
Security Secretary Mike Certoff, and top General David Petraeus -- recently of Fallajuh infamy --
each of whom spewed forth big-time with more polished than ever verbage
and none of whom were
challenged in any serious way, Slaughter personally making sure of
that. Worst of all, at one of America's major universities
at this crucial time in history,
not a single significant independent academic, journalist or
historian -- or even a serious political analyst for that matter --
not
one, was invited to speak at the Wilson School's 75th
anniversary which featured this Rice-Chertoff-Petraeus
trio. Said
one of Princeton's tenured Professors about the intellectually sordid
affair -
"Slaughter is hopeless and what has happened to the Woodrow
Wilson School is terribly tragic and maddening." One
long-time astute journalist commented upon hearing the line up:
"There's no other major university in the country, certainly not
Harvard or Stanford or Berkeley, that would have allowed this kind of
thing to happen as Princeton did - how shameful!".
Thu
- 29 Sept - Royal
Hashemites On Parade: The political hacks have taken over
just about all the Washington international affairs centers and
think-tanks.... Read
More...
Wed
- 28 Sept - Dan Rather's
Chilling but Unheard and Unheeded Warning: Former
CBS News Anchor Dan Rather,
like his predecessor
Walter Cronkite, is now free to speak his mind.... Read More...
It's really about IRAQ - CIAgate is
a sideshow
FLU QUARENTINE - ELECTION SCAMMING
Sat - 15 Oct - Bush/Cheney
CIA/Pentagon Deceptions and Manipulations Everywhere:
As always with Bush things come mixed with other agenda
items. So with the aftermath of Katrina, and the foretaste
of bird-flu the Bush/Cheney/Neocons have raised the specter of military
rule and martial law in an unprecedented way in the USA.
The photo op of Bush at 'Northern Command' Pentagon Headquarters in
Colorado as follow-on Hurricane Rita hit was meant to fix for the
public the idea that the military ...
Expanding
semi-secret preparations to regime change, one way or
another, in Tehran and Damascus, remain very much the planning underway
at the CIA and Pentagon, and American blood, treasure and credibility
continue to drain more and more away continually weakenign the American
Empire no matter what those in charge of it in Washington claim.
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Washington,
modern-day Rome,
has evolved since World War II into an amazingly hubristic,
nationalistic, militaristic, and politically incestuous corporate
town. The two parties that
control the capital continually hand out considerable favors and
financial rewards
to
themselves and partners -- dealing ostracism, vilification, and
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everyone else who won't sing the same jingoistic tunes. When it
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policy issues the two parties can now be considered in reality a
fairly unified Imperial Party pursuing with crusading zealotry a
worldwide Manifest Destiny-inspired
ideology. BlogWashington's daunting task
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Mark
A. Bruzonsky
NYU Law School - JD,
Root-Tilden Scholar / Woodrow
Wilson School of International
Affairs, Princeton Univ - MPA
Past
Associations:
Washington Rep World
Jewish Congress / Ed Worldview Magazine (New
York) / Ed Middle
East Magazine (London)
Middle East Consultant - Woodrow
Wilson Inter Center for
Scholars Smithsonian., National Geographic, Congressional Quarterly
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Mark@Bruzonsky.com
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