The Trouble is ...

The News: Ever the runner for Capital, in an article on oil wealth, the New York Times reports that :

“In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez is pouring oil proceeds into a socialist revolution, creating free health care, free education and cheap food; enabling heavy public spending that has helped fuel four years of economic growth.

“The trouble, said Theresa Paiz, a Latin American director for the Fitch ratings agency, is that “it’s not really clear how the money is invested.” Mr. Chávez’s government is steering large chunks of money to development funds and state owned companies not subject to audits.”

The trouble is that The Fitch is just another pimp for Big Plunder. Ever hear The Fitch whining about the transparency of the Seven Sisters? How about sub prime lend n’ sell? Well ... let’s hear what The Fitch has to say about that:

" As earlier discussed, Fitch is in the process of reviewing its rating methodology and model assumptions for all new issue CDO ratings.

"For CDOs collateralized by structured finance securities, the review includes a reassessment of subprime vintage performance and associated loss severity and correlation. Also, and more broadly, Fitch is reviewing its core VECTOR modeling assumptions and methodology that could impact ratings of all CDOs, including corporate bond or corporate loan collateral.

In other words, our transparency champion really could give two hoots about clarity when it comes to Big Plunder... at least not until it turns out that what everyone thought was the deep cookie jar turned into a deep end meat grinder and the financial equivalent of blood and bits was splattered all over the damn place.

Of course, The Fitch wasn’t particularly troubled when Chiquita Banana Co. invested monies into hiring gangs of “guards” to murder Indian laborers and farmers. Nor was The Fitch hand wringing for transparency when Presidente Salinas steered large chunks of state owned Teléfonos de México to a pal for a pennies on the peso... making Carlos Slim the richest man in the world.

As recounted by the Arizona Republic (2007/11/7) Slim, “searches for businesses that are undervalued, infuses them with cash and uses the size of his holdings to overwhelm the competition.” (Got that? “undervalued”) "[I]n 1990, Slim made one of his most controversial purchases.

“The Mexican government was auctioning off several state-owned enterprises, including Teléfonos de México, the state-run telephone company, also known as Telmex. Slim and his partners, ... paid $1.76 billion for a 20 percent controlling stake. ...Since then, the market value of Telmex stock has rocketed from $7.39 billion to $41.2 billion. ..."

[Remember ... “undervalued”]

"Members of the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party alleged that Slim underpaid for Telmex and demanded that then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari be impeached for negligently selling Telmex at less than market value. A congressional committee, controlled by Salinas' party, later found no evidence of wrongdoing, ... "

No kidding! But where was The Fitch? In fact where was the Times? Transparency was apparently no big deal when the people -- the real people -- of a country were being murdered or ripped off on a colossal scale.

Instead the Times manages to find some “trouble with” a president who is using oil proceeds for “free health care, free education and cheap food” No, No, NO! Much better to have the money go into some oligarch’s off shore sink hole to be spent on keeping his polo ponies and pedicured bitches in style.

I read the Times in the afternoon. I couldn't bear to puke with my morning coffee.

©Barfo, 2007

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The Trouble is

The NY Times explains its "trouble" with Hugo Chavez

When Puppets get Puppity.

It was all kind of funny... Pakistan’s general gone mufti re-attached his shoulder boards, sacked n’ stacked his supreme court and suspended elections all -- he insisted -- in order to protect his eight year long “transition to democracy” against assorted terrorist threats.

Anticipating the anguished howl that indeed hit the heavens over Washington, Musharaff was ready with a bunch of handy quotes from Saint Lincoln.

“I would at this time, Musharraf said, “venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln, specially to all my listeners in the United States. As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during that time of crisis, and this was to preserve the Union… towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary power, he trampled individual liberties.

"His justification was necessity and explaining his sweeping violation of Constitutional limits he wrote in a letter in 1864, and I quote, ‘My oath to preserve the Constitution imposed on me the duty of preserving by every indispensable means that government, that Nation of which the Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the Nation and yet preserve the Constitution?’”

Musharraf went on to quote Lincoln, as political surgeon:

“By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save life but a life is never wisely given to save a life.”

Mussolini couldn't have said it better.

Leaping forward, Musharraf took a page from President Nixon and groused about an “activist judiciary” that was bringing the nation to wrack and ruin.

What Musharraf most likely did not know was that somewhere between 25% to 33% of listeners in the United States still consider “the Original Gorilla” to have been a bloody tyrant. And with good reason. Lincoln subverted the rule of law and for much the same reasons invoked by all state idolaters .

In the 1864 letter from which Musharraf quoted, written but ten days before his assassination, Lincoln expressed his conviction that his oath to “preserve the constitution” was really an oath “to preserve that nation of which the Constitution was the organic law.” By that handy-dandy inversion Lincoln could justify violating the Constitution he had sworn not to violate.

The appeal to “the Nation” or “das Volk” or “the Motherland” is always the same. It is the Golden Calf for which tyrants everywhere justify their violation of law. And if laws can be overridden in order to protect the ultimate, supreme good of "the State"... who is a mere limb to complain when he is sacrificed on doctor's orders for the good of the All?

The difficulty with this appeal, at least in so far as the United States is concerned, is that “our nation” is indisputably the creature of the constitution -- not the other way around. Not only are we a nation of laws we are a nation born of constitutional law. Without that birth certificate there is no United States; and that is why the United States is the most quintessentially liberal country ever to have existed. It is the creature of contract.

Musharraf's uppity act was wilder still if it is borne in mind that he merely applied the same raison d’etat that the present administration itself uses to suspend constitutional liberties, and to do away with judicial review: “to protect the Uhmur’can People from turrurism.” The Pakistani leader hardly needed to have gone so far back as Lincoln. He could have quoted Imbecile's nominee for Attorney General, who just the week before informed the Senate that the president was not necessarily bound to observe the law if he determined he was defending the country.

And so, the Administration was reduced to howling an impotent protest against a puppet that was getting all strings tangled by doing what the puppet handler itself was doing with it other hand on another stage.

Damn! They just don’t make puppets like they used to.

©Barfo, 2007

Let Them Light Candles

AS reported by news media around the world, Israel decided several days ago to interrupt fuel and electricity supplies to Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks on Israel -- actually on the township of Sderot, 1 kilometer from the Gaza border. In view of the Palestinian attacks on innocent civilians, Israel’s intermittent power cut seemed to bespeak a super human patience and forbearance. Why God Himself could hardly be as mild in his judgements. Inconvenient? Well Let them light candles!

But there is always the “fine print”. Overlooked in all the blather about electricity cut offs was the following, courtesy of the New York Times:

"Israel said Sunday day that they had begun reducing fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip and had closed one of the two crossings through which food, medicine and other supplies pass into the area. ... As a result, only limited supplies of basic goods are allowed to enter the strip, and all exports of produce are prohibited. ...

"[According to a government spokesman,] the number of trucks of food and other goods entering Gaza will be reduced to roughly 55 trucks a day from 100 to 120, “We will allow in the minimum amount of food and medicines necessary to avoid a humanitarian crisis,” he said.”

A fifty percent reduction in food supplies? On a per-capita basis that boils down to a starvation diet. The “humanitarian crisis” Israel labors hard to avoid means what? The avoidance of “mass death”? But wait, what do starvation diets lead to?

Perhaps one could take a page from Raphael Lemkin’s seminal work “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” According to Lemkin, who coined the term, genocide operated on cultural, social, economic and biological levels. Lemkin writes:

“The destruction of the foundations of the economic existence of a national group necessarily brings about a crippling of its development, even a retrogression.”

The physical debilitation and even annihilation of national groups in occupied countries is carried out mainly in the following ways:

1. Racial Discrimination in Feeding. Rationing of food is organized according to racial principles throughout the occupied countries. "The German people come before all other peoples for food," declared Reich Minister Göring on October 4, 1942. In accordance with this program, the German population is getting 93 per cent of its pre-war diet, while those in the occupied territories receive much less: in Warsaw, for example, the Poles receive 66 per cent of the pre-war rations and the Jews only 20 per cent.

2. Endangering of Health. The undesired national groups, particularly in Poland, are deprived of elemental necessities for preserving health and life. This latter method consists, for example, of requisitioning warm clothing and blankets in the winter and withholding firewood and medicine. . . . Such measures, especially pernicious to the health of children, have caused the development of various diseases.

Lemkin’s schema of genocide has not been fully incorporated into international law. Nevertheless, it provides a cogent framework for analyzing genocidal policies from sociological and ethical perspectives. Cutting back on food deliveries in Gaza is strictly analogous to the General Gouvernement’s food “policies” in occupied Poland.

To argue that such measures are “reprisals” against a so-called barrage of rocket attacks on civilian Sderot is simply beside the point. International law prohibits indiscriminate reprisals. The whole purpose of the prohibition is precisely to put limits on the kinds and degrees of retaliation allowed. The limitations presuppose that there is something to retaliate over in the first place. To argue that the “right to retaliate” wipes away limits is simply to wipe away international law itself.

Precisely that kind of “they-started-it” argument was rejected at Nuremberg. The Nazi leveling of Lidice, in Czechoslovakia, was done in response to the unlawful, indisputably terrorist murder of Heydrich, the duly appointed administrator of those occupied territories. What made the Nazi response to that and other partisan acts of sabotage and murder a crime was not that retaliation was not allowed, but rather that the retaliation employed was excessive and indiscriminate, if not altogether an excuse to engage in counter-terror over and above deterrence and extermination over and above lawful reprisal.

Israel's trail of tu quoque’s can ultimately only lead back to the inceptional fact that European Zionists sought to colonize and invade a land that was not theirs by any genealogical or mythological stretch. That aside, the you started it gambit doesn’t work because the “its” are neither militarily nor morally equivalent.

Palestinians and Israelis are engaged in a conflict over land. But in this conflict, Israel -- among the world’s foremost military powers -- holds all the cards. It has control of Gaza’s borders. It has control of Gaza’s finances. It has control of Gaza’s air space. It has control of Gaza’s electricity and power. It has control of all entry and exit into Gaza. When democratic elections produced results Israel did not appreciate, it simply resorted to economic strangulation. No Indian Reservation was so controlled as Gaza whose only historical analog in recent memory are Lodz and Warsaw -- and, like Lodz and Warsaw , Gaza is one if not the most crowded places on earth. To claim some kind of moral equivalence from such state of inequality is simply perverted.

All animals will resist their capture and imprisonment. The human animal is no different. It is entirely natural that Palestinians, not wanting to live under Israeli domination, should resist. One should not expect otherwise . To self-righteously intone that they ought not to resist is to dress up in flimsy moral tissue a demand for abject and acquiescent submission.

Gazan resistance is in fact puny and pathetic. They cannot inflict any real damage on Israel. The facts bespeak the inequalities. According to Human Rights Watch, since 2005 there have been 2,700 Q’assam rocket attacks “into Israel”. The holocaustian horror conjured up by such a phrase qua headline is that of Jerusalem, O Jersualem recoiling under a barrage of missiles. Reading the usual zionist histrionics, one might think that a new “holocaust” was in the making. But these “missiles” (jumbo firecrackers really) have a range of a few kilometers and no more. In fact, just about the only place they can hit is the border village of Sderot. Human Rights Watch reports that as a result of these 2,700 attacks four Israeli civilians have been killed and 75 injured.

Contrast these “horrendous” casualties with the almost daily reports of 9, 5, 17, 23, 4, ...... Palestinians killed in some Israel counter-action. We have gotten so accustomed to the daily reports of Palestinian dead that no one pays attention. Adding insult to injury, these dead are brushed aside as “collateral damages”. Israel routinely has some low level corporal announce that Israel was targeting a “military installation” and oooops ... just happened to blow up the surrounding civilian neighborhood. Needless to say, the “military installation” is the rooftop from which the Q’assam rocket was allegedly fired.

Who the hell is the one taking the punches here? Any moron can see that it’s the Palestinians who are hemorrhaging. How the hell does it all add up here? Very simply this: Palestinians and Israelis are trading punches. In this wretched game of retaliation, Israel consistently gets in the better and more bloody punch. So be it. But now comes Israel decked out in the usual sack cloth and ashes and says that in addition to its regime of retaliatory collateral damage it has decided that it “has to” further retaliate by putting all of Gaza under a starvation regimen.

Shit by any other name stinks just as bad; and putting an entire civilian population on a “minimal” allotment of food and medicine qualifies as genocide.

©Barfo, 2007

Links
07/10/30 Israel Restricts Gaza Crossing as Firing Persists - New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/world/middleeast/29mideast.html?pagewanted=print

Rafael Lemkin on Web:
http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/index.htm

Human Rights Watch Reports
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/iopt0707/1.htm#_Toc170198335

Mr. Depravity To Spew More Sulfur

Our Depraved Imbecile is scheduled to throw an official temper tantrum before a crowd of Cuban hysterics, White House staffers announced today. According to the New York Times, Mr. Depravity will warn Cuba, in stern and unbending terms, that he will not accept a transfer of power from Fidel to Raul Castro. Of course, the transfer occurred last year. But never mind.

No. No. No. I won’t have it. I demand you listen to me. LISTEN TO ME!!

Imbecile is expected to demand that Cubans continue to resist the Castro regime, as they most certainly must have been doing for the past 60 years.

His Depravity is expected to blather that “while much of the rest of Latin America has moved from dictatorship to democracy” Cuba “continues to use repression and terror to control its people” who have “suffered economically” as a result of Castro’s rule.

No. No. No, you depraved fuckwad, Cuba has suffered economically as a result of a US imposed embargo (aka siege) designed to strangle and starve.

No. No. No, you diarrhea drooling sack of shit, the ones who terrorized their people were US imposed scum like Videla who tossed kids out helicopters, Stroessner who walled up people alive and Pinochet who had women waterboarded and bottle-raped.

It is certainly true that about half of Latin America has moved from US backed dictatorships to US extorted neo-liberal sell-offs. Either way, half the continent continues to live lives of no-win, economic struggle and deprivation while the even less fortunate, the bands of ragged kiddie orphans wandering through Foochimori’s Lima, struggle to find enough sniffing glue to dull the hunger pains.

It is true that, as a communist state, Cuba does not permit capitalist multi-party democracy, that it has curtailed dissent and, at times, imprisoned opposition that went no further than words. At worst, such a record would put Cuba politically on par with a number of Latin-American "democracies" and many others as well. The difference is that the Cuban leadership works for the people's health, education, housing and welfare as best it can; whereas beneath Mr.Depravity's spew of liberal slogans -- odious on account of the policies to which they have been prostituted -- is the naked aim to turn Cuba into yet another third world cesspool where human beings can toil for $1.00 a day and be reduced to picking for scraps on festering garbage heaps.

While the smirking punk may congratulate himself on his pimping for corporate brutality and greed; the other half of Latin America has had enough of Hell’s Nostrums, Murkan style democrapcy and malignant US corporations bankrolling murderous bands of White Guard thugs. That half, is closing US bases, sending the IMF packing, founding its own development bank and elaborating economic polices and social programs that actually help their fellow human beings.

May Batista’s snarling exiled Ferengi gag -- and gag deeply -- on Mr. Depravity's sulfurous fuming.

©Barfo, 2007

Yet Another Revolting Week (14-21 October 2007)

In what has become a never ending cycle of grotesquerie, the week began with a nominee for Attorney General struggling not to condone torture and ended with the Vice President urging an attack on Iran. In between, the world was fetted with the Imperial Imbecile threatening World War III now that France can once again be counted as an ally.

Simulated Mistakes Worse than Sin

Given the Supreme Court’s je suis trop fatigué performance the week previous, it could hardly come as surprise that the wannabe Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the Nation (CLEON) would sound the trumpet for Imperial Prerogative while palavering excuses for torture. Testifying before Congress, former federal Judge Mukasey imperfectly suggested that torture was a “sin” while dribbling marbles over whether “waterboarding” constituted torture. Mukasey just couldn’t figure it out. After all waterboarding only “simulates” the feeling of drowing; and since the “subject” is not actually drowning it can’t be all that bad, right? Well gee..... why don’t we just interrogate victims by feeding them chocolate coated brandy bon bons?

The fact is (for those blessed with the most minimal inferential faculties) that waterboarding “simulates” drowning by cutting off air-flow. There is no other way to simulate drowing. None. And, for all who have experienced it, a lack of airflow is extremely painful causing the body to convulse with all desperate force to locate and get air. Does it really make a goddam bit of difference whether the deprivation of oxygren occurs because your nose and mouth are “blocked” or your head is dunked under water? No, it does not. And most humans will talk -- and talk anything -- if only because it gives them a chance to get air.

Credit where credit is due. Senator McCain expressed incredudilty at Mukasey’s slithering response. Hanoi taught McCain something, that’s for sure.

In old days “simulated drowining” was called dunking. It was done (judicially of course) to witches in New and Olde England. At some point in the late 18th Century, the practice came to be condsidered a national disgrace -- a disguting barbarity of which we were ashamed. We were taught, then, that mankind -- at least the civilized portion of it -- had progressed and that this sort of thing was no longer tolerated. We could point to the Eighth Amendment which prohibted cruel and unusual punishment even for those who were convicted of something -- the authors of the Bill of Rights evidently considering it superfluous to state that torture of the presumptively innocent was also prohibited.

Given his excuse-making for dunking, Mukasey’s avowed condemnation of torture didn’t float very well. According to Mukasey, the infamous Brybee Memo from the Office of Legal Counsel condoning torture was “worse than a sin, it was a mistake.” A “mistake” is worse than a “sin”? Is that the kind of idolatrization of expediency that passes for a “moral construct” in the U.S. government? One is left to suppose that Mukasey regards the the Crucifixion of Christ as a tactical error. Well... dunkings, hangings, “three-meals and a Koran “ (Mukasey’s describption of Guantanamo’s human kennels) are certainly stepping stones.... Jay Brybee is now a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and there is no mistaking that Mukasey will be confirmed as CLEON.

The Kick-Ass Duo -- Yeeeeeehaw!

While Mukasey was entertaining the Senate with his moral low-wire acts, His Imbecility was appalling the rest of the world with his belligerent blatherings. Perhaps Imbecile was simply trying to show friendliness to our new-found, old ally, La Belle France which has, it would seem, joined in the war against terror sans frontiers.

The election of Nikolas Sarkozy as president of France was generally seen as signalling a raprochement with Washington. Sarkozy’s subsequent appointment of Bernard Kouchner as Foreign Minister could only be seen as an accouchement with the zio-con war hawks in Washington. That Kouchner was openly partial to Israel was one thing; that he not too subtly threatened Iran with war was quite another.

Is it at all surprising that imbeciles rush in where devils are backpedaling out of ? Kouchner’s Jolly Roger was hauled down almost as quickly as it had been run up. To keep it down, Vladmir Putin seized the occasion of this week's conference of Caspian Sea Nations to rebuke Kouchner’s “‘misunderstood” remarks. “We should not even think of making use of force in this region,” Mr. Putin declared. That in turn brought a rebuke from Imbecile himself who took to his podium to declare that Iran was threatening Israel and “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having [the] knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

No one in the mudia saw fit to ask who the hell “you” was. Perhaps Imbecile meant Helen Thomas sitting in the front row? Anyone who can connect dots could see that “you” was none other than erstwhile soul-mate “Puti.” The threat was not directed so much at Iran as it was at Russia. Oh that’s just great. Goes to show Imbecile really has balls.

The dismal week ended fittingly enough with the Administration’s Albrecht emerging from his subterranean cave to scowl and growl and threaten Gotterdamerung should Iran get the fabled ring of nuclear power. Speaking to the converted at the pro-zionist Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an ever-grimacing Cheney said, “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” To this end, Cheney threatened that the U.S. and other nations were “prepared to impose serious consequences” on Iran.

Although Virginia Senator Jim Webb stated last week that a military strike on Iran, was Cheney's “fondest pipe dream”, the subservient Anglo-Murkan press repeatedly intoned that “The vice president made no specific reference to military action.” But Cheney did not need to say the boogeyword -- certainly not to this audience of war-mongering zionist hawks. It is often the case that to understand the speaker one has to understand the audience, and Cheney’s audience on Sunday was none other than the Israeli promoted war-on-Iran crowd. A wink and a slur would do for them.

While Cheney’s scowling could perhaps be viewed as a “downward correction” of Imbecile’s far greater threat, the core question that has to be asked is what kind of criminal madmen could fondly pipe dream about igniting a regional holocaust, to say nothing of World War III? Does the stunted, infantilized Murkan consciousness even grasp the destruction and suffering such words signal?

Resorting to its tried and trite savant mode, the New York Times reported with detachment that the Bush-Cheney remarks were viewed as ratcheting up the diplomatic rhetoric in what is apparently a game of “hold-me-back!” What ought to be remembered is that war whoops usually lead to war.

©Barfo, 2007

A Misprint !

The News: It was announced today (18 October 2007)that AeroMexico had been sold at auction to the Barrazas business group at Banamex (Mexico's Pseudo National Bank). A "misprint" in the auction rules resulted in other bidders' bids being placed two minutes past the deadline and therefore disqualified. Grupo Barrazas had been a major financial supporter of Quisiling Calderon's bid for the presidency which itself was put on auction last year, although the bid amount was not disclosed until today.

The Note: This reminds me of the scene from I Claudius, in which Tiberius and his astrologer break into uncontrollable laughter upon being told that Marcellus died in a "boating accident".

Banamex is owned by Citigroup which is no doubt overjoyed with Mexico's new found democracy.

©Barfo, 2007
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Supreme Shame.

This week, the United States Supreme Court covered itself with indelible, shame. It prostrated itself before the Imperial Executive's invocation of raison d'etat and denied judicial view to a German litigant who had sued the C.I.A. for kidnapping, false imprisonment and torture.

It would be unright to say that with "a stroke" the Supreme Court undid the very principle of legality upon which this country was founded. The Court was so utterly supine that its "act" of declining to hear an appeal from a lower court dismissal of the suit consisted in assuming a posture of complete judicial passivity and indifference to its own raison d'etre. A crown agent all but walked into the Atrium of Justice, pronounced two words and the court vanished itself like so much water receding into sand.

There was a time when every eighth grader understood that judicial review was the sole bulwark against the evil of secret state security courts like the dreaded Star Chamber. What made the Star Chamber infamous was not that it was irregular or arbitrary. On the contrary, like any inquisitorial court, the Chamber was governed by precise procedures designed to insure the reliability of its judgements. Except, that is, for those special procedures later embodied in the Fifth and Sixth amendments of the Bill of Rights which have been considered necessary to insure fundamental notions of fairness.

What procedures? Nothing more than the right against self-incrimination, the right to be informed of the charges, the right to confront and examine one’s accusers, the right to produce evidence in self-defense and the right to a speedy, full and fair hearing with the assistance of counsel in open court.

Why "fundamental"? Because the justness and necessity of these rights is either self-evident or it is not. These rights are "axiomatic" because they cannot be proved right or wrong. They comprise the Constitutional Faith on which this country was founded. There are arguments that can be made -- and that have been made even by certain Harvard and Yale professors -- in favor of secret proceedings, interrogations in the dark and torture. They are even "reasonable" arguments based practical calculations of risks and benefits. But, for all that, they are not "what we are about." And "what we are about" -- as a People of a certain political faith -- is reflected in the Bill of Rights and the principle of Judicial Review.

There was a time when every eighth grader had read the story of Lord Coke's confrontation with King James I when the Chief Justice approached the Throne and announced that the King himself was subject to the Law. James grew "mightily wroth" and moved to strike Coke who was ushered away. But it was a judicial shot across the bow of executive power. Three years later, in 1610, Coke handed down the decision in Dr. Bonham's Case. The problem in that case was that Bonham was not much of a doctor and had been tried, convicted and fined by the Royal College of Physicians for practicing without a license. Coke and two other judges ruled that the College could not act as a judge in a case in which it was also a party, even if Parliament had given it the "right" to do so. In rendering judgement, Coke announced that "the common law doth control Acts of Parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be void ... as when an Act of Parliament is against Common right and reason, or repugnant...." By "the common law" Coke unmistakably meant the judiciary. As Chief Justice Marshall would put it near two hundred years later, in Marbury v Madison, "It is emphatically the province of the judiciary to say what the law is."

"What the law is..." is not a question of mere legality. After all, in Bonham's Case Parliament had passed a law authorizing his trial and conviction by the College of Physicians. But for Coke that was not enough because, in his view, that law was "against Common right and reason." To say as much was something of a judicial pun or feint of pen. Because it would have been logically nonesense to state that a law was illegal, Coke subordinated the common law to something higher -- to something he called "common reason". It is this subordination of legality to higher, concepts of due process, reason and fairness that is the foundation of Anlgo-American constitutionalism, and this subordination of law to reason necessarily entails an ultimate subordination of the Executive to the Judiciary.

Later in his career, after consistently making life difficult for his sovereign, Lord Coke went on to draft the Petition of Right one of a long line of English antecedents to the US Bill of Rights. Building on the principles announced in Magna Carta, Coke declared that all men -- not only Lords, Barons and Peers of the Realm -- had a right against arbitrary state actions and exactions. The petition declared unconstitutional certain actions of the king, such as levying taxes without consent, housing soldiers in homes, setting up martial law, and having men imprisoned, disinherited or put to death "without being brought to answer by due process of law."

Lord Coke's career illustrated that judicial review, constraint on executive power, constitutionalism and individual rights, are all strands in one seamless garment. Each implies the other and without any one the fabric unravels. Ultimately, these principles protect our right to breathe free and unshadowed by fear -- fear of unwarranted arrest, night-time detentions, renditions to dark and unknown places and torture. It was not for nothing that the bronze doors to the Supreme Court depict Lord Coke barring King James from sitting as a Judge.

Not for nothing? This week, a crown agent, in effect, pushed through these very doors and with two words -- "National Security" -- barred the Justices from sitting as Judges and denied a man the right to have his case heard in court. This was a case in which the United States Government violated every known principle of "due process" by abducting, imprisoning and torturing a man without even telling him why and on what basis it was subjecting him to such a nightmare. Like all tyrants, the Government condoned itself with the usual spew about safety and necessity. And hiding in their Mausoleum of Justice, Coke's wretched descendants did nothing. There will doubtlessly be those legal hacks who will try to explain away the Court's judicial decadence by blathering about "ripeness of issues" or the need to await the "appropriate vehicle" in the "correct procedural posture." Bullshit.

Tuesday October 9th was a funereal day for the little that was left of five hundred years of constitutionalism. Odious in the eyes of those who apprize liberty, the scum on the court have earned their place in the gutters of history.

©Barfo, 2007

Islam Hate is Quite Acceptable in Polite Society

The News: The National Iranian American Council is calling on the Bush administration to dismiss a Pentagon official who told a visiting foreign delegation "I hate all Iranians." Debra Cagan, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs made the comment last month during an official meeting with British MPs.

The Note: Somebody has been feeding at the trough of the New York Post and Sun. Isn't it wonderful to know that "our" military is in the hands of cool, dispassionate professionals? And isn't it curious that the UK's PC-censors were so quick to ignore Cagan's incitement to race hate?

©Barfo, 2007

A Golden Excuse for War

The News: Interviewed on DemocracyNow.org General Wesley Clark, revealed the following policy discussions in the aftermath of 9/11:

"About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, 'Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second.' I said, 'Well, you're too busy.' He said, 'No, no.' He says, 'We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq.' This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, 'We're going to war with Iraq? Why?' He said, 'I don't know.' He said, 'I guess they don't know what else to do.' So I said, 'Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al Qaeda?' He said, 'No, no.' He says, 'There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.' He said, 'I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments.' And he said, 'I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.' So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, 'Are we still going to war with Iraq?' And he said, 'Oh, it's worse than that.' He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, 'I just got this from upstairs'--meaning the Secretary of Defense's office--"today." And he said, 'This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.' I said, 'Is it classified?' He said, 'Yes, sir.' I said, 'Well, don't show it to me.' And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, 'You remember that?' He said, 'Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!'"

The Note: Well then.... how much oil does Syria, Lybia, Somalia, the Sudan and Lebanon have? Not much. This decision indicates it was not a war for oil. What for then? Was ot because they really did not know what else to do except invade a bunch of Muslims countries? Or was it that they thought that whoever did 9/11 it had to be a terrorist organization from or in at least one of those countries and so, bomb 'em all! Or....or... it was all a Zionist plot from the start. Everyone of those countries (except perhaps Somalia) has been in Israel’s sights for some time.

©Barfo, 2007
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Zio-Con Rampage against Arabic

The News: The announced plan to open an Arab language institute has provoked an outraged reaction from Jewish-Zionist tabloids in New York City. Counterpunch reports that "the anti-Arabic campaign is being spearheaded by notable reactionaries such as Daniel Pipes and Alicia Colon, as well as newspapers in the Big Apple including the New York Post and New York Sun " who argue that the Kahil Gibran Institute will be a breeding ground for terrorism.

Daniel Pipes, a long-time ardent neo-con zionist has written a series of editorials in the NY Sun asserting that "Islamic institutions, whether schools or mosques, have a pattern of extremism and even violence." He argues that "learning Arabic in-and-of-itself promotes an Islamic outlook," as "Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage." Pipes feels that the teaching of Arabic may lead to "moral decay," since "Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam,..."

In another Op-Ed for the NY Sun, Alicia Colon argues that it "utter madness" to allow an Arab language institute to open "considering that five years after September 11, ground zero is still a hole in the ground and we're bending over backwards to appease those sympathetic to individuals who would destroy us again."

According to Pipes, the head of the Gibran Institute committed an egregious act of "gratuitous apology for suicide terrorism," by explaining that the word "intifada" meant "throwing off a yoke". The New York Post went further labelled the explanation an act of "warmongering"

The Note: Like Anti-Jew aktions, Anti-Islam hate-campaigns are scooped from the same offal and not surprisingly the arguments and metaphors are the same. We learn that the Muslim, like the Jew, is an infective bacillus who causes moral decay and who secretly aims to destroy "us". We learn that a language is inherently vicious and gives rise to a special and toxic "Jewish outlook" and "Jewish way of thinking" that must be rooted out. Oooops... Did I say "Jewish"? Sorry. I meant "Islamic".

Nor should anyone think that these polemics are merely the ravings of two hysterical Jews on the lower east side. The following web-site banners evidence that they are pen-soldiers in a well honed cadre of political operatives.

"Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. "

&

"JWR contributor Alicia Colon is a columnist for The New York Sun, a paper that every pro-Israel, pro-democracy New Yorker should be buying. Comment by clicking here. "

A curious kind of "democracy" that outlaws a language as "inherently" treasonous.

©Barfo, 2007
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AIPAC Implants Electrodes in Giuliani's Cranium

The News: Writing in Foreign Affairs, Republican candidate and former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani has come out against the creation of a Palestinian state. Giuliani writes the U.S. should oppose Palestinian statehood because it would inevitably encourage terrorism. Giuliani also says he would consider talks with Iran but left open the threat of weakening Iran’s economy and military action.

The Note: It is extremely difficult to conceptualize the mental processes at work in this derangement. It is less difficult to understand who is pressing the buttons. At least we know that Foreign Affairs deserves a rack next to National Enquirer at the Wal-Mart check out.


©Barfo, 2007
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Domestic Constabulary Forces take Shape

The News: Deputy Attorney General Craig Morford: "It's very important to emphasize that cases like this one are central to the United States government's efforts to neutralize the threat posed by terrorists and those who support them. I also want to mention that this particular case has long demonstrated the importance of integrating intelligence and traditional law enforcement tool in order to protect and to preserve national security and I think it stands as a great example of what can be accomplished when those things are combined."

The Note: Back in late 1970's when the FISA Court was first established it was considered essential to keep traditional law enforcement and intelligence radically separate in order protect national constitutionalism. It was understood that once the two functions and hitherto distinct objectives were fused, limits on ordinary law enforcement would succumb to the demands of secret operations and foreign intelligence. At that point, the combined intelligence-enforcement services become constabulary forces, just like the ones we have in Iraq. [See Constabulism ] At the same time, the fusion produces a terminological inflation whereby ordinary crime (which presents only a minor threat to society) and terrorism (which potentially could present a major threat) also become mentally fused. It was not ex nihilo that in totalitarian states people end up getting Gulag'd or shot in the neck for stealing a bar of soap.

©Barfo, 2007
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The Four Pillars of Terrorism

The News: An FBI report released yesterday has identified four steps in the process of radicalization: pre-radicalization, self-identification, indoctrination and jihadization. Pre-radicalization, it said, “describes an individual’s world — his or her pedigree, lifestyle, religion, social status, neighborhood and education — just prior to the start of their journey down the path of radicalization.” Self-identification, it said, marks the point where people begin to explore militant Islam “while slowly migrating away from their former identity.” Personal crises — such as losing a job or suffering from racism — can serve as a catalyst for this “religious seeking,” the report said. While people can move gradually through the early phases, over two or three years, they can pivot quickly toward violence, the report said. The Internet, it said, can enable them.

Mark J. Mershon, assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York office, did not attend yesterday’s briefing. Stephen Kodak, an F.B.I. spokesman in Washington, said, “We have no comment on the report." Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, chairman of the homeland security committee, said the report’s analyses, while similar to those of other studies, were a “breakthrough” in antiterrorism efforts.

The Note: So... any of these “junctures” can serve as probable cause for a police investigation?

©Barfo, 2007

And now, Exit Controls

The News: New Anti-Alien regulations have gone into effect. Under the most significant change, disclosed earlier this week, many employers could be required to fire employees who used false Social Security numbers. At the same time, federal officials would crack down on companies employing substantial numbers of illegal immigrants.

Administration officials told members of Congress on Thursday night that they would speed up construction of fences along the Mexican border, hire more Border Patrol agents and detain more of the immigrants caught illegally crossing the border.

Administration officials also said they would try to match up records of the arrival and departure of non-citizens entering and leaving the United States. Members of Congress say this exit- control system, required under a 1996 law, is essential to securing the nation’s borders, but many lawmakers say the administration has been slow in carrying out the law.

In addition, administration officials said they would train more state and local law enforcement officers to help enforce federal immigration laws. Since 2002, the federal government has trained more than 300 police and correctional officers. But members of Congress say the administration could do much more.

Administration officials said they were also planning to step up efforts to arrest and deport illegal immigrants who were members of street gangs. And they said federal agents would fan out across the country to hunt down “alien fugitives” who had been ordered to leave the United States but failed to comply.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, has repeatedly urged the administration to take action against such “alien absconders.” Under a 1986 law, employers must ask job applicants for documents to verify that they are United States citizens or immigrants authorized to work here.

The Note: I've always said, a wall has two sides. Ça commence, alors.

©Barfo, 2007
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Solzhenitsyn calls for Honesty in Self-Reflection

The News: Alexander Solzhenitsyn discussed his lates work in an interview with Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Your recent two-volume work "200 Years Together" was an attempt to overcome a taboo against discussing the common history of Russians and Jews. These two volumes have provoked mainly perplexity in the West. You say the Jews are the leading force of global capital and they are among the foremost destroyers of the bourgeoisie. Are we to conclude from your rich array of sources that the Jews carry more responsibility than others for the failed Soviet experiment?

Solzhenitsyn: I avoid exactly that which your question implies: I do not call for any sort of scorekeeping or comparisons between the moral responsibility of one people or another; moreover, I completely exclude the notion of responsibility of one nation towards another. All I am calling for is self-reflection.

You can get the answer to your question from the book itself: "Every people must answer morally for all of its past -- including that past which is shameful. Answer by what means? By attempting to comprehend: How could such a thing have been allowed? Where in all this is our error? And could it happen again? It is in that spirit, specifically, that it would behoove the Jewish people to answer, both for the revolutionary cutthroats and the ranks willing to serve them. Not to answer before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God. Just as we Russians must answer -- for the pogroms, for those merciless arsonist peasants, for those crazed revolutionary soldiers, for those savage sailors."

The Note: Ho, ho, ho... this two headed hydra talks sounds a tad like Vienna Days...

©Barfo, 2007

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U.S. Seeds Love Throughout the World

The News: According to Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, the damage wrought by the secret prisons, renditions and torture-like interrogations is still tremendous. According to Wilkerson, the US administration had arrested an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 suspects over the past year. Eighty-five percent of them were innocent, according to Wilkerson. "We really have created a mess here. A terrible mess. This has been incredibly damaging."

The Note: Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You are ignoring Bush's assurances that "our nation is generous and compassionate." By the way, throughout the 1930's the entire Nazi concentration camp population never exceeded 30,000.

©Barfo, 2007
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Success of Security Measures Not to Be Measured by Their Success

The News: President Bush pronounced, "Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy's ability to get a car-bombing into the evening news," he said. "No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street. In places like Israel, ....

The Note: The story here isn’t that bush said Iraq should be like Israel but that he’s admitted that “security measures” are useless.

©Barfo, 2007
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New Testament on Net alleged to violate Constitution

The News: Truthout reports that, "At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic." The accusation was made by "the nonprofit watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state..." [ Hmmmm...] The Officers Christian Fellowship Neighborhood Study Guides were written by Major George Kuykendall, and actually [!!! ] quote portions of the New Testament, including a passage from Galatians that asserts Paul was persecuted by the Jews. [No!] A spokeman for the group denied any anti-semitism and stated that the fellowship was simply discussing the texts as they appeared in the New Testament. "But for Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the religious teachings are not only blatantly anti-Semitic, but he believes disseminating it over the Internet tramples upon the Constitution."

The Note: Disseminating the New Testament over the internet violates the Constitution? Amazing! What sort of twisted thinking contorts itself to that conclusion? The Gospel is "anti-semitic" and ergo translates into a violation of the Establishment Clause? Plus ça change. It’s all a dissimulation in service of an ethnical cause.

©Barfo, 2007
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Fruit from a Poisonous Tree

The News: Uri Avneri,the socialist and peace-activist Israel journalist writes:

"Concerned friends recently e-mailed me some hair-raising quotes from a statement by Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of the settlers and the entire religious Zionist camp. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the rabbi decreed that it is impermissible to have compassion with the civilian population of Gaza if that imperils Israeli soldiers. His son, Shmuel, interpreted this decree on behalf of his father: if the killing of 100 Arabs is not sufficient to stop the launching of Qassam rockets at Israel, then 1000 must be killed. And if that is not sufficient, then 10,000, and 100,000 and even a million. All this to stop the Qassams, which in all the years have not succeeded in killing a dozen Jews.

"What is the connection between this "religious" view and the God who (in Genesis 18) promised not to destroy Sodom if 10 righteous people could be found there?

"What is the difference between this moral perception and that of the Nazis who executed 10 hostages for every German soldier killed by the resistance?

"The rabbi's decree did not arouse any reaction. There was no outcry, neither from his flock nor from the general public. The number of rabbis who publicly support such methods has risen to the hundreds. Most of them come from the settlements. This is a "religious" outlook that grew up in the poisoned atmosphere of the occupation, a religion of occupation. It shames the Jewish religion, present and past.

"No wonder that a person with a strong religious conscience, Avraham Burg, former Speaker of the Knesset and Head of the Jewish Agency, this week renounced Zionism and demanded to abolish the definition of Israel as a Jewish State."

The Note: No wonder that there are those of us who thought that the idea of a Jewish state was poisoned seed all along.

Avneri also points out that the occupation is destroying the Israeli Army. Yep; just as it is destroying the Ah'murkan.

©Barfo, 2007