December 19, 2008
Teh Gloryus Internets
February 09, 2008
New from Brave New Films
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A little Madison Avenue humor to drive home the points about how much the occupation of Iraq costs the average American family and how Republicans are offering up more of the same:
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A little Madison Avenue humor to drive home the points about how much the occupation of Iraq costs the average American family and how Republicans are offering up more of the same:
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September 25, 2007
Syriana
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My recent viewing of the film Syriana (you know - the “Hollywood liberal elite” take on the web weaved by governments and the global oil industry) provides me with some insight to better informed reading of John Nichols’ article Blackwater, Oil and the Colonial Enterprise in last week’s edition of The Nation
Before I get to that, a word about Syriana. It is a fictional account indeed, but as George Clooney said, the players made the film from the heart as opposed to a paycheck being the prime motivator. “This is not a left v. right problem,” Clooney says in the DVD bonus footage. “This is a problem that everyone of us is going to have to come to terms with.”
Washington Post neo-con columnist Charles Krauthammer criticized the film for anti-American views, saying “Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.” As neo-cons go you could do much worse than a sharp guy like Krauthammer, but for me his indictment only seals the film as accurately portraying the mess that is oil politics.
So Nichols begins by saying that the recent revocation of private military contractor Blackwater’s license by the Iraqi government is the tip of the iceberg. The fact that Blackwater personnel are already back to guarding U.S. State Department convoys in Baghdad confirms what Nichols calls the great truth of the U.S. occupation of Iraq: “This is a colonial endeavor no different than that of the British Empire against which America’s founding generation revolted.”
Alas, even if congressional oversight finally steels up and clamps down on Blackwater, that’s one down, 140 to go as far as private firms contracting with the U.S. government for work in Iraq, and that means the misadventures of King George (the younger, not the III) continue past his reign of insane membrane. Maybe it’s time for Iraq to pass their own Patriot Act and round up these money-grubbing mercenary assholes and put them in Abu-Ghraib for terrorizing and killing innocent Iraqi civilians.
Fewer Americans are foolish enough at this point to deny that this war is about oil. In the industrialized world’s race to see who can use up the most first, it’s about a shitload of money for the power players who control the supply. Now, the people’s power lies in reducing the demand, but rest assured there are conspiracies in force to thwart that at every turn, whether in attempts to poo-poo conservation and environmental efforts or to stymie the development of alternative fuels. Greed is the only way to describe it. You can add ignorance of the plight of future generations to that, but it’s essentially the same thing.
The second half of Nichols’ article goes into some details about a shady deal in the works with Bush administration benefactor Ray Hunt, CEO of Hunt Oil Company in, you guessed it, Texas. The parallels to the fictional account in Syriana (a term used by Washington think-tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East) are astounding.
Nichols writes:
Ohio Congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, oh so appropriately a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has asked committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) to launch an investigation into the Hunt Oil deal. Kucinich wants to determine the effect the deal will have on the oil revenue sharing plan, the role the Bush administration may have played in the Hunt-Kurdistan deal, and attempts by the White House to privatize Iraqi oil.
“The Bush Administration desires private control of Iraqi oil, but we have no right to force Iraq to give up control of their oil,” Kucinich declared on the floor of the House this week. “We have no right to set preconditions to Iraq which lead Iraq to giving up control of their oil. The Constitution of Iraq designates that the oil of Iraq is the property for all Iraqi people.”
It seems the Bushies are content to have the playing field in the Middle East be as uneven as it is here. When are these elites going to realize that such a bogus, patrician attitude toward capitalism and democracy just won’t fly?
Vote for Kucinich in 2008!
My recent viewing of the film Syriana (you know - the “Hollywood liberal elite” take on the web weaved by governments and the global oil industry) provides me with some insight to better informed reading of John Nichols’ article Blackwater, Oil and the Colonial Enterprise in last week’s edition of The Nation
Before I get to that, a word about Syriana. It is a fictional account indeed, but as George Clooney said, the players made the film from the heart as opposed to a paycheck being the prime motivator. “This is not a left v. right problem,” Clooney says in the DVD bonus footage. “This is a problem that everyone of us is going to have to come to terms with.”
Washington Post neo-con columnist Charles Krauthammer criticized the film for anti-American views, saying “Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.” As neo-cons go you could do much worse than a sharp guy like Krauthammer, but for me his indictment only seals the film as accurately portraying the mess that is oil politics.
So Nichols begins by saying that the recent revocation of private military contractor Blackwater’s license by the Iraqi government is the tip of the iceberg. The fact that Blackwater personnel are already back to guarding U.S. State Department convoys in Baghdad confirms what Nichols calls the great truth of the U.S. occupation of Iraq: “This is a colonial endeavor no different than that of the British Empire against which America’s founding generation revolted.”
Alas, even if congressional oversight finally steels up and clamps down on Blackwater, that’s one down, 140 to go as far as private firms contracting with the U.S. government for work in Iraq, and that means the misadventures of King George (the younger, not the III) continue past his reign of insane membrane. Maybe it’s time for Iraq to pass their own Patriot Act and round up these money-grubbing mercenary assholes and put them in Abu-Ghraib for terrorizing and killing innocent Iraqi civilians.
Fewer Americans are foolish enough at this point to deny that this war is about oil. In the industrialized world’s race to see who can use up the most first, it’s about a shitload of money for the power players who control the supply. Now, the people’s power lies in reducing the demand, but rest assured there are conspiracies in force to thwart that at every turn, whether in attempts to poo-poo conservation and environmental efforts or to stymie the development of alternative fuels. Greed is the only way to describe it. You can add ignorance of the plight of future generations to that, but it’s essentially the same thing.
The second half of Nichols’ article goes into some details about a shady deal in the works with Bush administration benefactor Ray Hunt, CEO of Hunt Oil Company in, you guessed it, Texas. The parallels to the fictional account in Syriana (a term used by Washington think-tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East) are astounding.
Nichols writes:
The new “production sharing agreement” between Hunt Oil and the Kurdistan Regional Government puts one of the administration's favorite firms in a position to reap immeasurable profits while undermining essential efforts to assure that Iraq's oil revenues will be shared by all Iraqis. Hunt's deal upsets hopes that Iraq's mineral wealth might ultimately be a source of stability, replacing the promise of economic equity with the prospect of a black-gold rush that will only widen inequalities and heighten ethnic and regional resentments.
The Hunt deal is so sleazy - and so at odds with the stated goals of the Iraqi government and the U.S. regarding the sharing of oil revenues - that even Bush has acknowledged that U.S. embassy officials in Baghdad are deeply concerned about it. What Bush and Cheney have been slow to mention is the fact that Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, says the deal is illegal.
Ohio Congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, oh so appropriately a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has asked committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) to launch an investigation into the Hunt Oil deal. Kucinich wants to determine the effect the deal will have on the oil revenue sharing plan, the role the Bush administration may have played in the Hunt-Kurdistan deal, and attempts by the White House to privatize Iraqi oil.
“The Bush Administration desires private control of Iraqi oil, but we have no right to force Iraq to give up control of their oil,” Kucinich declared on the floor of the House this week. “We have no right to set preconditions to Iraq which lead Iraq to giving up control of their oil. The Constitution of Iraq designates that the oil of Iraq is the property for all Iraqi people.”
It seems the Bushies are content to have the playing field in the Middle East be as uneven as it is here. When are these elites going to realize that such a bogus, patrician attitude toward capitalism and democracy just won’t fly?
Vote for Kucinich in 2008!
September 19, 2007
They "report," we must cry
September 16, 2007
We knew it all along, dude
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Archer, interim lordgodking of LawyerWorldLand, has come out of the wonk closet, at least for this and that post on the cost of the Iraq war. Go read them - he has promised not to jeer and throw things.
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Archer, interim lordgodking of LawyerWorldLand, has come out of the wonk closet, at least for this and that post on the cost of the Iraq war. Go read them - he has promised not to jeer and throw things.
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Labels: Archer, Iraq, madness, shit sandwich, terms of enragement, war
August 19, 2007
Free and other things that freedom isn't
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I was quite moved by this video* that D-Cup posted over at Politits. Viewer discretion is advised for some disturbing images included, but I heartfully recommend checking out her succinct post on what we as a nation may be facing for our children.
The actions of our government are unconscionable. They are a disgrace for a nation that considers itself the bastion of freedom at home and purports to be the defenders of the same abroad.
I hope the tide can be turned, and pledge now to act upon ways in which I can make a difference for my son. I hope it could be done short of revolution, but if not the most likely option for most of us not willing to kill (and preferring not to die) for our beliefs will be to shag ass out of this place.
* And if you are so inclined, embed this at your place and pass the word along. Thanks.
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I was quite moved by this video* that D-Cup posted over at Politits. Viewer discretion is advised for some disturbing images included, but I heartfully recommend checking out her succinct post on what we as a nation may be facing for our children.
The actions of our government are unconscionable. They are a disgrace for a nation that considers itself the bastion of freedom at home and purports to be the defenders of the same abroad.
I hope the tide can be turned, and pledge now to act upon ways in which I can make a difference for my son. I hope it could be done short of revolution, but if not the most likely option for most of us not willing to kill (and preferring not to die) for our beliefs will be to shag ass out of this place.
"Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down"
* And if you are so inclined, embed this at your place and pass the word along. Thanks.
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Labels: gummint, Iraq, rants, violence inherent in the system, war
June 13, 2007
ARWARWARWARWARWARWARWARWARWARWARW
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Here are some random thoughts (I thought about apologizing to any readers who don’t give a crap, but then as they say, "if you’re not enraged, you’re not paying attention").
The bottom line, politically, is that the Bush administration has mismanaged this war beyond repair. I am a from-the-starter and was scratching my head at the split from Afghanistan to go start up Iraq. The neo-cons persuaded the president to go for it, and have gotten it wrong from square one.
In retrospect I believe that, since Iraq was a decision that few (including Congress) seemed willing to turn back from, we should've instituted the draft. The spirit was there to build up the forces necessary, but then we would've needed leaders who knew what the fuck to do with the mightiest army on the planet. My best guess is that Rumsfeld and Bush, even if they truly believed in the WMD theory, knew that invasion was a half-baked plan but simply hoped that we, as the hand of the Almighty, would prevail. When I say our leaders squandered a lot of goodwill in the world, I hear it argued that if other countries can't stick with us beyond just the sympathy phase of 9-11, then fuck 'em. But if we had leaders who were really looking out for the security of the citizens, I think we would be pursuing a much wiser spending of $430 billion (so far), with the world on our side and Al-Qaeda on the run if not already vanquished. I don’t know - is this naïve?
I am officially tired of the phrase is “freedom isn’t free.” It gets bandied about nearly as much as “they hate our freedoms” and “we fight them there blahblah...” I was recently reading excerpts from Ronald Reagan’s White House diaries. He wrote that after the terrorist truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, a father of one of the deceased asked him whether what we were in Lebanon for was worth his son’s life. The president did not write about what answer he may or may not have given. Leaders send the rank and file to die “for our freedom.” I put that in quotes because, while no grave decision is cut and dried, since World War II the U.S. has been cowboying about with military and covert operations with nary a care for how the big boot of karma will come back around to swiftly kick our ass. The use of our military strength to enforce political views has cheapened the lives of citizens who’ve become soldiers, ostensibly to protect our country from physical threat. Such is the case again in Iraq, so when people say “freedom isn’t free,” if the time and place is appropriate I try to remember to say “I agree,” then ask them if they think what we’re there for is worth the cost of lives of parents, brothers, sisters or friends. When it comes to that aspect of our freedom, I’d like to see our nation economize a lot more.
Here are some random thoughts (I thought about apologizing to any readers who don’t give a crap, but then as they say, "if you’re not enraged, you’re not paying attention").
The bottom line, politically, is that the Bush administration has mismanaged this war beyond repair. I am a from-the-starter and was scratching my head at the split from Afghanistan to go start up Iraq. The neo-cons persuaded the president to go for it, and have gotten it wrong from square one.
In retrospect I believe that, since Iraq was a decision that few (including Congress) seemed willing to turn back from, we should've instituted the draft. The spirit was there to build up the forces necessary, but then we would've needed leaders who knew what the fuck to do with the mightiest army on the planet. My best guess is that Rumsfeld and Bush, even if they truly believed in the WMD theory, knew that invasion was a half-baked plan but simply hoped that we, as the hand of the Almighty, would prevail. When I say our leaders squandered a lot of goodwill in the world, I hear it argued that if other countries can't stick with us beyond just the sympathy phase of 9-11, then fuck 'em. But if we had leaders who were really looking out for the security of the citizens, I think we would be pursuing a much wiser spending of $430 billion (so far), with the world on our side and Al-Qaeda on the run if not already vanquished. I don’t know - is this naïve?
I am officially tired of the phrase is “freedom isn’t free.” It gets bandied about nearly as much as “they hate our freedoms” and “we fight them there blahblah...” I was recently reading excerpts from Ronald Reagan’s White House diaries. He wrote that after the terrorist truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, a father of one of the deceased asked him whether what we were in Lebanon for was worth his son’s life. The president did not write about what answer he may or may not have given. Leaders send the rank and file to die “for our freedom.” I put that in quotes because, while no grave decision is cut and dried, since World War II the U.S. has been cowboying about with military and covert operations with nary a care for how the big boot of karma will come back around to swiftly kick our ass. The use of our military strength to enforce political views has cheapened the lives of citizens who’ve become soldiers, ostensibly to protect our country from physical threat. Such is the case again in Iraq, so when people say “freedom isn’t free,” if the time and place is appropriate I try to remember to say “I agree,” then ask them if they think what we’re there for is worth the cost of lives of parents, brothers, sisters or friends. When it comes to that aspect of our freedom, I’d like to see our nation economize a lot more.
Labels: Bush, giant douche, Iraq, politix, rants, shit sandwich, war
May 28, 2007
Memorial Day
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I had to work today, which pissed me off, and then I felt guilty about such a shallow take on Memorial Day. I was reminded this morning about how grateful I should be for those who gave their lives (or are otherwise gone) in defense of our wonderful nation. And regarding our current situation in Iraq, we should open our minds to what the other side thinks, be it pro-war or not, in order that the pain of loss be more easily reconciled. It was suggested that we devote a small bit of our time today to find out about a deceased American soldier and reflect on their sacrifice.
In a way National Public Radio beat me to the punch, except that the fellow they reported on is still alive. My feelings of being pissed off returned, but this time with the force of indignation toward our leaders who have wasted precious lives on their fool's errand. So today I choose to remember the sacrifice of Peter Mohan and his wife Anna, a couple in their 20s who married just before Peter went to Iraq with the Army. He has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and in the report the couple talks about how PTSD almost destroyed their marriage. Perhaps Memorial Day would be better served, at least in part, by remembering those lives that were very different before they went to serve their country.
Listen to The Rest of Their Story at NPR
I had to work today, which pissed me off, and then I felt guilty about such a shallow take on Memorial Day. I was reminded this morning about how grateful I should be for those who gave their lives (or are otherwise gone) in defense of our wonderful nation. And regarding our current situation in Iraq, we should open our minds to what the other side thinks, be it pro-war or not, in order that the pain of loss be more easily reconciled. It was suggested that we devote a small bit of our time today to find out about a deceased American soldier and reflect on their sacrifice.
In a way National Public Radio beat me to the punch, except that the fellow they reported on is still alive. My feelings of being pissed off returned, but this time with the force of indignation toward our leaders who have wasted precious lives on their fool's errand. So today I choose to remember the sacrifice of Peter Mohan and his wife Anna, a couple in their 20s who married just before Peter went to Iraq with the Army. He has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and in the report the couple talks about how PTSD almost destroyed their marriage. Perhaps Memorial Day would be better served, at least in part, by remembering those lives that were very different before they went to serve their country.Listen to The Rest of Their Story at NPR
April 10, 2007
Bush-At-Warisms
click HERE to embiggenJanuary 13, 2007
Surgin' for disaster
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I've been hearing, and of course contributing just a teensy bit to, a lot more vitriol on Iraq since President Bush announced what most everyone knew he would - SURGE! The Chief's call-up won't even bring troop levels to the mark they were at in Jan. 2005 (160,000), a turning point when his approval ratings crossed under the majority line. From then on the numbers would slide as more Americans began realizing the disaster he and the neocons had crafted. Now, for all but the worst of his sycophantic and deluded 35-or-whatever percent approvers, the mistake that was made is obvious.
If people are sounding a bit pissed, you ain't heard/seen and soon read nothing yet. Check out Scott Thill's recent HuffPo column entitled Bush to U.S. - Go Fuck Yourselves , which makes the article's R-rating quite obvious.
Here is an excerpt, where Thill tells the troops:
Yeah, I'd say he's pissed.
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I've been hearing, and of course contributing just a teensy bit to, a lot more vitriol on Iraq since President Bush announced what most everyone knew he would - SURGE! The Chief's call-up won't even bring troop levels to the mark they were at in Jan. 2005 (160,000), a turning point when his approval ratings crossed under the majority line. From then on the numbers would slide as more Americans began realizing the disaster he and the neocons had crafted. Now, for all but the worst of his sycophantic and deluded 35-or-whatever percent approvers, the mistake that was made is obvious.
If people are sounding a bit pissed, you ain't heard/seen and soon read nothing yet. Check out Scott Thill's recent HuffPo column entitled Bush to U.S. - Go Fuck Yourselves , which makes the article's R-rating quite obvious.
Here is an excerpt, where Thill tells the troops:
So the next time the president is about to give a speech, turn it off. It doesn't have anything to do with you anyway, and if you ask Joe Biden, neither does the Democratic takeover of Congress. While your elected representatives sit and write long-winded backslappers about all they will do in 100 hours, and the days after those hours come to nothing, you're going off to the heated armpit of hell to die for nothing. Enjoy the ride, and make sure to leave a clearly defined will. The crumbs will be small and coveted here back home, as the environment warms and the recession gears up.
Yeah, I'd say he's pissed.
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Labels: Iraq, politix, vitriol
