Disrespect in Life and Death

U.S. Soldiers Burnt Bodies of Captured Taliban Fighters

This news on Afghanistan - an Australian TV program has aired footage of U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters. The program also aired footage of a U.S. Army psy-ops unit caught on tape broadcasting news of the burning to local residents. The message read : "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burnt. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be... You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Taliban but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are." On Wednesday the Pentagon announced it would investigate the incident.

Guantánamo Detainees Tortured, Force-Fed, Induced to Vomit

Meanwhile at Guantanamo Bay, detainees are accusing guards and medical officials of mistreating prisoners taking part in a camp-wide hunger strike. Detainees said large feeding tubes were forcibly shoved up their noses and down into their stomachs, with guards using the same tubes from one patient to another. The force feedings reportedly resulted in prisoners vomiting up "substantial amounts of blood." The detainees say no sedatives were provided during these procedures, which they allege took place in front of U.S. physicians, including the head of the prison hospital. The accusations were made to New York-based attorney Julia Tarver of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Tarver says one client told her "now after four years in captivity, life and death are the same."


©Barfo, 2005

Vapid Abstractions

The News: Several of Miers' writings have been lampooned, such as a 1997 letter to Bush in which she declared that "Texas is blessed" because Bush was governor, and a column she wrote for the Texas Bar Journal in the early 1990s that conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks called a "relentless march of vapid abstractions" whose "quality of thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian."

The Note: Sounds like a typical California appellate decision.


©Barfo, 2005

Getting Into (or Out of) the Axis of Evil

The News: An article in the Guardian by Richard Norton-Taylor claims that Bush told Blair, prior to the invasion of Iraq, that " he "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan," The claim was based on the note of a telephone conversation between the two men on January 30 2003.) The article goes on to state that the US and Pakistan latter made kissie-poohs.

The Note: A number of people have pointed to Saudi Arabia as the Bete Grise of this whole affair. The oil connection seems to clinch it for this crowd. I myself have never believed it. While I have never been able to rule out some sort of oil-connection, I have always fingered Israel. That is the one hypothesis that is simplest and makes consistent sense.

This story further confirms my hypothesis. Saudi Arabia has never ceased to be within Zionist cross-hairs. One only has to recall the ruckus raised by the U.S. Jewish establishment against the sale of AWACs to that country. In contrast Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons hardly gets a peep. One will notice that Pakistan has decided to recognize Israel and to engage in "dialog" and blah blah. In other words, Pakistan has been sufficiently neutralized (from the Israeli point of view).

©Barfo, 2005

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Learning Helplessness

The News: Progressive Magazine's Barbara Ehrenreich writes: "It is too soon to say what the results of this first-ever experiment on humans will be. Animals subject to "non-contingent" punishments and rewards‹i.e., those unconnected to any prior choices or behaviors‹tend to get a little psychotic. In a classic study undertaken by psychologist Martin Seligman, dogs subjected to unavoidable shocks for no reason at all developed a condition called "learned helplessness," and lost the ability to avoid future shocks even when avoidance was possible. Similarly with rats: After being subjected to undeserved torments, they simply give up and huddle in a corner of their cage.

And never doubt for a moment that our leaders are capable of conducting such experiments on humans. Jane Mayer revealed in the July 11 New Yorker that Seligman's results with tortured dogs have been of interest to the military and may have influenced the bizarre treatment of "enemy combatants" in various detention spots around the world. Not to mention the fact that being held indefinitely without charges is itself a supremely non-contingent punishment.

I'm not saying "we're all in Guantánamo now," or anything as melodramatic as that. Most of us, after all, enjoy infinitely more comfortable day-to-day living conditions than those offered to detainees. But we are all being subjected to the same sort of experiment‹and will be until we overcome our "learned helplessness" and get up on our hind legs again.

The Note: What kind of human scum, would "experiment " that way with a dog or a rat. If he's so damn curious why doesn't he have the decency to test it out on the brats of his loins? On the other hand, maybe he just takes after the Great Malevolence in the Sky. After all, Life itself seems to be a sequence of non-contingent punishments. I for one feel pretty helpless.

©Barfo, 2005
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"Reaganism was about Ideas"

The News: Saith David Brooks, " Yeah. I don't have anything against her, from everything I know she's a wonderful woman. But the conservative movement was built on a certain set of identity for itself: That ideas have consequences, that arguments really matter, that you win the war of ideas, that you form these organizations like the Federalist Society, this conservative legal organization, and that you win the war of ideas and that Reaganism was about ideas, and that even Bush, the war on freedom was about ideas." (PBS)

The Note:  Oh sure... why the Reagan Admin. was a just a Great Books seminar led by Mortimer J. Adler. Ah yes, another intelectudrool on the New York Times.

©Barfo, 2005

The News: Larry Diamond a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution has written a book entitled "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.'' Speaking of Bush Diamond said, "He fails to acknowledge his own strategic blunders and failures ... that have enabled Iraq to become a cesspool of terrorist activity.''

The Note: Cute. As if the effort (bungled or not) was to be "bring democracy to Iraq"..... I suppose it depends on what ya mean by a zone of democratic peace


©Barfo, 2005,

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Drivel

The News: The Pentagon claims to have obtained a tactics letter from the deputy head of AL Qaeda. "In the missive, Zawahiri apparently warns tactics such as the killing of hostages and bombings of mosques may alienate the "Muslim masses," Pentagon spokesman, Mr Whitman, said." (BBC)

The Note: Oh sure. IslamoFundies run around blowing up mosques. If we apply the A=C rule, this means that it's the US which is behind the bombing of mosques. "

-o0o-

The News: In this letter [i.e. internal Pentagon memo], Whitman talks about believing that the eventual governance of Iraq must include the Muslim masses, and that they are at risk of alienating those," he [Whitman] told reporters. (BBC)

The Note: What Islamic "extremist" would not believe that the "eventual" government in Irak had to include "muslim masses"? Is this something a muslim would naturally and normally say? Would Bush say something like "eventually" any government in the US would "have to" include Christians?

What a lot of crap.


©Barfo, 2005

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What We Get to Take Back

News in a Note: Let me see if I got Al Gore right. We gotta take back TV from the corporations but not do anything about the corporations themselves. We gotta make sure corporations don't confiscate the internet but not do anything about the corporations themselves. There are giant bullies running amok in the "market place" and so we should all learn to duck and dodge with great agility. Thank you Al. Just what we needed. More false consciousness masquerading as a solution.

©Barfo, 2005

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El Imperio Terrorista

La Noticia: Los terroristas son malvados pero no locos". La frase es del presidente Bush quien en su última aparición pública ha afirmado que los malvados "utilizan el conflicto en Irak como una excusa para intimidar al mundo y tienen como objetivo establecer un imperio radical islámico que se expanda desde España hasta Indonesia". La fórmula del hombre más poderoso del planeta contra semejenate "peste" es muy clara: "Sólo hay una respuesta efectiva: nunca daremos marcha atrás, nunca cederemos y nunca aceptaremos menos que una victoria completa".

"Estamos haciendo frente a una ideología radical con un claro objetivo, el de esclavizar naciones e intimidar a todo el mundo", según Bush, quien insistió en que "ningún acto nuestro provocó la furia de los asesinos" y ningún gesto de calma cambiará sus planes de seguir matando.

Commentario: Ota vez: la acusación revela la confesión.


©Barfo, 2005
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The Sounds of Peace

The News: The U.S. is pursuing a major assault in western Iraq. At least 3,500 U.S. troops are taking part in two separate offensives. Operation River Gate was launched at the start of the holy month of Ramadan. It marks the biggest U.S. offensive in western Iraq this year. Blasts from U.S. warplanes and helicopters lit up the sky during the fighting. Today, 42 Iraqis were reportedly killed .

Col. Stephen Davis, commander of Marine Regimental Combat Team 2, is warning residents in western Iraq that the U.S. will be there for a while. He told a crowd of Iraqis "We're not going anywhere... Some of you are concerned about the attack helicopters and mortar fire from the base. I will tell you this: those are the sounds of peace."

The Note:

©Barfo, 2005

Constabulism at Home

Items

Prisoners have told Human Rights Watch Inmates that correctional officers have beaten, kicked and hit them while they were shackled. They also say that officers sprayed the walls with chemicals and forced inmates to hold their faces against the sprayed walls. When some inmates became ill and vomited, officers wiped their faces and hair in the vomit.

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According to the Associated Press, the bodyguards were American employees of the private security firm DynCorp. The company has been contracted by the U.S. State Department to protect Alexandre, the unelected interim president of Haiti. Alexandre took power after the coup that toppled Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. The journalists were beaten as they tried to cover the event.

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The Justice Department confirmed on Monday that it will investigate the FBI killing of Puerto Rican independence leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios. The killing has sparked widespread outrage in Puerto Rico. On Sept. 23, over 100 FBI agents surrounded the house of the 72-year-old Ojeda Rios. After he was shot, the FBI let him lie wounded in his house for nearly a day during which time he bled to death.

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The Senate Intelligence Committee has approved new legislation that would allow Pentagon intelligence operatives to collect information from U.S. citizens without revealing their status as government spies. According to the Los Angeles Times, the bill would end a long-standing requirement that military intelligence officers disclose their government ties when approaching any U.S. citizen in the United States.

Comment: More Boot in the Face. With astonishing rapidity, the thuggery practiced as policy abroad has rebounded at home. The image of Abu Grahib and house batterings in Irak will be the image of Amurka at home. It is that way because for decades the U.S. has been cultivating the pestilential virus of thuggery on the streets of its ghettos, in the corridors of its prisons and in its courts with a wink and a nod from judges whose tongues are black from bootlicking.

©Barfo, 2005

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Life under Constabulism

Items:

Meanwhile the U.S. is launching another major offensive in western Iraq near the Syrian border. About 1,000 U.S. troops backed by attack helicopters and tanks raided the town of Al-Qaim on Saturday. At least 12 people were killed. The U.S. claims the offensive is needed to root out fighters connected to Al Qaeda. Over the past month the U.S. has repeatedly attacked Sunni strongholds displacing thousands of Sunnis, just weeks ahead of the October 15 vote on the constitution.

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A U.S. military report has confirmed that Knight Ridder journalist Yasser Salihee was killed by an American sniper in June but claimed the shooting was justified. Salihee was shot as he was driving in western Baghdad. He was then left lying dead in his car, splattered with blood. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists U.S. troops have killed at least 13 journalists in Iraq since the war began.

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The former Muslim chaplain at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay has revealed in a new book that military authorities knowingly created an atmosphere in which guards would feel free to abuse prisoners. James Yee said the prison's commanding officer - Major General Geoffrey Miller -- would regularly incite anger toward the prisoners. Miller would later oversee the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. For Yee, the book also discusses his imprisonment. In 2003 he was arrested and jailed on suspicion of espionage. The case proved groundless.

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Military contractor Boeing and its partner Bell Helicopter have been forced to apologize after they published a magazine ad that depicted U.S. Special Forces troops rappelling from an Osprey aircraft onto the roof of a mosque. The ad reads "It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell." The ad also states: "Consider it a gift from above." The Council on American-Islamic Relations had criticized the ad saying it deepens concerns that the so-called war on terror is a war on Islam.

Comment: Well that's about an accurate thumbnail of life in the ZioCon World Order

[Items from DemNow.Org]

©Barfo, 2005
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Still Not Getting It

News: Two articles in today's Counterpunch complain of US government thuggery. In "The Great Green Scare" Jeffery St.Clair denounces an FBI unhinged that prosecutes, destroys and assassinates objects of its political wrath. In "Condi Rice- Gunslinger" Paul Craig Roberts rails against an unhinged and belligerent US that sanctimoniously wreaks war, havok on happless countries.

Notes Both St. Clair and Roberts are still arguing from a political point of departure and, as a result see absurdities and contradictions. They have yet to realize that there is no contradiction because this is not a political or even a rational matter. It is very simple. "The image of the State in 1984, is that of a boot in the face."

• Incidentally, Roberts says outright that the U.S. does Israel's bidding. Three dribbles in a week on this taboo is equivalent to a torrent.

Echoes of Jabotinisky

The News: US forces have launched a new offensive in western Irak. "They say Operation Iron Fist - the latest in a series of assaults in the area - will tackle infiltration and destroy the insurgents' haven." (BBC)

The Note: Iron Fist? Iron Wall, Iron Will, Iron Arm, Iron Hand -- from whom have we heard such language before?

©Barfo, 2005
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