Free Iraq

Upside To The Bailout
For instance:
1. An early proposal that would have allowed Wall Street executives to literally eat 100 million Americans has been discarded as "politically unfeasible."
 

A Nation of Masochists
 

Keiser: US dollar "backed by bananas"
 

Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle
 

There Is No Fix
 

Financial crisis: Default by the US government is no longer unthinkable
 

Stupider than Shit: ... Let me remind you of something that no Democrats and none of their defenders wants to be reminded of: the Iraq catastrophe. The Democrats have had the biggest "oversight" mechanism in the world -- or to be precise, in the Constitution -- since early 2007. The Democrats could have cut off all funding for this criminal war and occupation. They will not do it.

They could have impeached Bush, Cheney and several more of the leading criminals. They will not do it.

Add in the pattern the Democrats followed in the FISA debacle, with regard to the Military Commissions Act, and on a host of other questions, and you see what the Democratic opposition is worth. In a word: nothing.
 

Welcome to the Asylum
 

Government Takeovers: Another Weapon, and a Truly Fearsome One
 

Global Financial Meltdown
 

Mushroom Cloud over Wall Street
 

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
 

For The Love Of Money
When Corporations Rule the World
 

Video (2 hr.), Spooks, Hoods & The Hidden Elite
 

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

( #1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation )

( # 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq )
 

$13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says: While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone."

He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.
 

When Refusing to Kill Has a Higher Sentence Than Murder: In the five and one-half years of the US occupation of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed by US military personnel at checkpoints, during convoy movements and during operations to find the "enemy." In the half-decade of US military presence in Iraq, a very small number of US military personnel and an even smaller number of CIA and contractors have been charged with manslaughter or murder in these deaths. The deaths of most civilians are counted in the "costs of war." A few dozen military have been court-martialed on allegations of mistreatment, manslaughter and murder of Iraqi civilians. With a very few exceptions, most who were court-martialed have been acquitted. Those who were convicted have generally served light sentences.

This week we see again that punishment is less for murdering four Iraqis than for refusing to participate in a war that many citizens, and many in the military, see as a crime against the peace - a war crime.
 

Peace in Iraq is an Option
Le Feyt Declaration: by International Anti Occupation Network [ . . . ]
The Iraqi anti-occupation movement -- in all its expressions -- in defending the Iraqi people is the only force empowered to ensure democracy in Iraq. Across the spectrum of this movement it is agreed that upon US withdrawal a temporary administrative government would be charged with two tasks: preparing the ground for democratic elections and reconstituting the national army. Upon completion of these tasks the administrative government would disband, leaving decisions regarding reparations, development and reconstruction to a sovereign and freely elected Iraqi government in a state of all its citizens without religious, ethnic, confessional or gender discrimination.

All laws, contracts, treaties and agreements signed under occupation are unequivocally null and void. According to international law and the will of the Iraqi people, total sovereignty of Iraqi oil and all natural, cultural and material resources rests in the hands of the Iraqi people, in all its generations, past, present and future. Across the spectrum of the Iraqi anti-occupation movement all agree that Iraq should sell its oil on the international market to all states not at war with Iraq, and in line with Iraq's obligations as a member of OPEC.

The 2003 US invasion was and remains illegal and the law of state responsibility demands that states refuse to recognize the consequences of illegal state acts5. State responsibility also includes a duty to restore. Compensation should be paid by all state and non-state actors that profited from the destruction and plundering of Iraq.

The Iraqi people are longing for long-term peace. On the basis of the 2005 Istanbul conclusions of the World Tribunal on Iraq6, and in recognition of the tremendous suffering of the aggressed Iraqi people, the signatories to this declaration endorse the abovementioned principles for peace, stability and democracy in Iraq.

The sovereignty of Iraq rests in the hands of its people in resistance. Peace in Iraq is simple to attain: unconditional US withdrawal and recognition of the Iraqi resistance that by definition represents the will of the Iraqi people.

We appeal to all peace loving people in the world to work to support the Iraqi people and its resistance. The future of peace, democracy and progress in Iraq, the region and the world depends on this.

Please circulate this statement widely

(See statement for
- Members of the International Anti-Occupation Network, and
- International figures committed to ending the occupation and working for a sustainable peace in Iraq.)
 

Remembering Edward Said Five Years On
 

From King David Hotel in Palestine to Marriott Hotel in Pakistan
 

Studies in Conformity, Generating Consensus, and Why You Are Not Adults: Insofar as the economic crisis is concerned, I will remind you of the relevant context in exceedingly brief terms. In my rude post the other day, I emphasized that the fundamental flaw in all the "solutions" offered is that those solutions are offered to "fix" a problem that cannot be fixed. To understand this basic point, you require only three sentences from Mike Whitney's analysis. Here they are:

This cycle [in the market] will persist until the bad debts are accounted for and written off or until the exhausted dollar-system collapses altogether.

And:

In truth, there is no fix for a deleveraging market any more than there is a fix for gravity. The belief that massive debts and insolvency can be erased by increasing liquidity just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.

This is the truth that almost no one will accept.

Denial of the truth envelops our culture like a suffocating fog. People desperately need to understand the consequences of denial of this kind. It is profoundly damaging, and it kills. I have written at length about our national narcissism, and how that narcissism allows us to deny the immense crime the U.S. government has committed in Iraq. You would think the fact that our government has murdered well in excess of one million innocent people would be front page news every day. Of course, you would be wrong. You might prefer to believe that, since the murder continues as I write this, as it will continue tomorrow and for years to come, there might be one or two decent and humane individuals in Washington who are working ceaselessly to make the slaughter stop. And you might like to think that many Americans would be outraged that our military continues to occupy a nation that we have entirely destroyed, and that Americans would demand that the destruction and death cease immediately.

To return to the economic crisis in particular, I first repeat the single most important point: the consequences we are now seeing are irrevocable and unavoidable. The bad debts must be accounted for and written off. A problem of massive bad debts and insolvency is not a problem of liquidity. This truth means one thing in terms of the "solutions" proposed: a massive bailout of insolvent financial institutions which includes keeping the bad debts in the system still longer is precisely the wrong action to take. It will not solve the problem, for this problem cannot be solved. But it will accomplish one goal: it will postpone the problem to another day, and it will make the problem worse, and it will cause still greater damage.
 

Phasing In the Audacity: This crisis is a godsend for Obama. Not only that'll help him get elected, but then his entire presidency can become a giant "phase-in." He can phase in the sick, the poor, and the guy who lost his home. Let's hope he can phase in the rain, too, so no one gets too wet in Tent City.
 

US generals planning for resource wars

88 page .pdf file -
2008 Army Modernization Strategy
(pg. 69)
Operational Needs Statements confirm that
commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan require:
- Increased Lethality
- Improved Survivability
- Increased Intelligence Surveillance and
Reconnaissance
- Networked Battle Command
- Enhanced Logistics
 

Coming Attractions: War Without End, Amen
 

U.S. Troops In Homeland “Crowd Control” Patrols From October 1st: U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq will be carrying out homeland patrols in America from October 1st in complete violation of Posse Comitatus for the purposes of helping with “civil unrest and crowd control” - which could include dealing with unruly Americans after a complete economic collapse.
 

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson
 

White House Admits It Drew Up Bailout Months Ago
 

Get Out the Pitchforks and Lighted Torches: Protest at Wall St. This Thursday at 4 p.m.
When: 4pm Thursday, September 25!
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.
Why: To say we won’t pay for the Wall Street bailout
 

Pictures: “Lego Block” Prison Cells Readied In Utah
 

Echoes Of Iraq War: White House Claims Bailout Will Pay For Itself
RICHARD PERLE, Chair of Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board: “Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.” [7/11/02]

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, Deputy Defense Secretary: “There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” [3/27/03]

ARI FLEISCHER, White House press secretary: “Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.” [2/18/03]

LAWRENCE LINDSEY, White House economic adviser: “The likely economic effects [of a war in Iraq] would be relatively small…. Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits.” [9/16/02]

(Iraq, you have failed us!!!)
 

Bush & McCain Blackmail America With Economic Terrorism
 

Russia, Venezuela in new pacts, 'counterweight' to US cited: Earlier this month, Russia dispatched a pair of Tu-160 strategic bombers to Venezuela followed by a naval flotilla led by the nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser Peter the Great, one of the largest warships of its kind.

The Russian warships were to take part in joint manoeuvres with the Venezuelan navy in a part of the world that the United States has traditionally regarded as its backyard.
 

The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President, Former Treasury Secretary, Head of the Congressional Budget Office and Leading Economists All Slam Bailout
 

Prestigious Group of 192 Economists - Including Nobel Prize Winners - Slams Bailout
 

US Bailout in Chaos, WaMu Is Biggest Bank Failure
 

Meanwhile . . .
Peres: U.S. has no choice but to save world from Ahmadinejad (Oh???!!!)
 

Washington Mutual: The Biggest Bank Meltdown in US History
 

House Dems Shelve Iran ‘Naval Blockade’ Bill for Now (Is it possible - POSSIBLE??? - that AIPAC influence wains?)
 

Six years in Guantanamo: Sami al-Haj, an Al Jazeera cameraman, was beaten, abused and humiliated in the name of the war on terror. He tells our correspondent about his struggle to rebuild a shattered life
 

Pakistan Investigating US Marine Activity Inside Marriott Hotel Days Before Huge Bombing: According to the accounts, several witnesses, including Pakistani government officials, described seeing a US embassy truckload of steel boxes unloaded while all entrances to and from the hotel were locked down at around midnight on the 16th September.

The cases were not taken through security scanners in the hotel’s lobby, but were shifted directly to the fourth and fifth floors, the same floors that fire broke out on after the truck bombing on Saturday.
 

Truth and War Mean Nothing at the Party Conferences: Reality can be detected . . . by applying the Orwell Rule and inverting public pronouncements and headlines, such as "Aggressor Russia facing pariah status, US warns," thereby identifying the correct pariah; or by crossing the invisible boundaries that fix the boundaries of political and media discussion. "When truth is replaced by silence," said the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "the silence is a lie."

Understanding this silence is critical in a society in which news has become noise. ...

... [A]n American invasion of Pakistan is under way, secretly authorized by President Bush. The "change" candidate for president, Barack Obama, had already called for an invasion and more aircraft and bombs. The ironies are searing. A Pakistani religious school attacked by American drone missiles, killing 23 people, was set up in the 1980s with CIA backing. It was part of Operation Cyclone, in which the US armed and funded mujahedin groups that became al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The aim was to bring down the Soviet Union. This was achieved ... .

It is a war of the world. In Latin America, the Bush administration is fomenting incipient military coups in Venezuela, Bolivia, and possibly Paraguay, democracies whose governments have opposed Washington's historic rapacious intervention in its "backyard." Washington's "Plan Colombia" is the model for a mostly unreported assault on Mexico. This is the Merida Initiative, which will allow the United States to fund "the war on drugs and organized crime" in Mexico – a cover, as in Colombia, for militarizing its closest neighbor and ensuring its "business stability."

Britain is tied to all these adventures – a British "School of the Americas" is to be built in Wales, where British soldiers will train killers from all corners of the American empire in the name of "global security."

None of this is as potentially dangerous, or more distorted in permitted public discussion, than the war on Russia. Two years ago, Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian Studies at New York University, wrote a landmark essay in the Nation which has now been reprinted in Britain.* He warns of "the gravest threats [posed] by the undeclared Cold War Washington has waged, under both parties, against post-communist Russia during the past 15 years." He describes a catastrophic "relentless winner-take-all of Russia's post-1991 weakness," with two-thirds of the population forced into poverty and life expectancy barely at 59. With most of us in the West unaware, Russia is being encircled by US and NATO bases and missiles in violation of a pledge by the United States not to expand NATO "one inch to the east." The result, writes Cohen, "is a US-built reverse iron curtain [and] a US denial that Russia has any legitimate national interests outside its own territory, even in ethnically akin former republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. [There is even] a presumption that Russia does not have full sovereignty within its own borders, as expressed by constant US interventions in Moscow's internal affairs since 1992 . . . the United States is attempting to acquire the nuclear responsibility it could not achieve during the Soviet era."

This danger has grown rapidly as the American media again presents US-Russian relations as "a duel to the death – perhaps literally." ...

*Stephen Cohen's article, "The New American Cold War," is reprinted in full in the current issue of the Spokesman, published by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
 

A shattering moment in America's fall from power: In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.
 

Who is Putting "Intense Pressure" on Bush and Congress to Pass the Bailout? (Excellent question)
 

Blackmail, A $5 Trillion Price Tag, and A Criminal Government
 

Lawmakers Reach Accord on Huge Financial Rescue: Full details of the plan were not immediately available.
 

Ron Paul: You Cannot Place Value Into Assets That Are Worthless
 

$1 Quadrillion of Unregulated Debt At Core of Coming Derivatives Crisis
 

Bush Proves Karl Marx Right About 'Capitalism'
 

Video (7 min.) US Economic Collapse = US Government = Financial Terrorists
 

(Why does Al-Jazeera perpetuate this nonsense?)
 

Video (3 min.) Was Bin Laden A CIA Agent?...
 

Vampire Tales! With Pictures!
 

Rice admits officials approved 'harsh interrogation techniques'
 

Republican and Democratic Congress Members Sound the Alarm: Tyranny is Here
 

Bush rescues Wall Street but leaves his soldiers to die in Iraq: ... Mercifully for the presidential candidates, they don't have to debate the hell-disaster of Iraq any more, nor US-Israeli relations, nor Exxon or Chevron or BP-Mobil or Shell. George Bush's titanic if mythical battle between good and evil has transmogrified into the conflict between good taxpayers and evil bankers. Phew! No entanglement in the lives and deaths of the people of the Middle East. Until the elections – barring another 9/11 – they are yesterday's men and women.

Of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict no longer gets a look into the debate. McCain's visit to the Middle East and Obama's visit to the Middle East – in which they outdid each other in fawning to the Israeli lobby (Obama's own contribution surely earning him membership of the Knesset if not entry to the White House) – are safely in the past. Without any discussion, Israeli and US officials held a three-day security-technology forum in Washington this month which coincided with an equally undebated decision by the dying Bush administration to give a further $330m in three separate arms deals for Israel, including 28,000 M72A7 66mm light anti-armour weapons and 1,000 GBU-9 small diameter bombs from Boeing. Twenty-five Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets are likely to be approved before the election. The Israeli-American talks were described as "the most senior bilateral high-technology dialogue ever between the two allies". Nothing to write home about, of course.

Almost equally unreported in major US papers – save by the good old Washington Report – was a potential scandal in good old Los Angeles to which Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently returned after a $225,000 junket to Israel with three council members and other city officials (along with families, kids, etc). The purpose? To launch new agreements for security at Los Angeles international airport. Council members waffled away on cellphones and walked out of the chamber when protesters claimed that the council was negotiating with a foreign power before seeking bids from American security services. One of the protesters asked if the idea of handing LAX's security to the Israelis was such a good idea when Israeli firms were operating security at Boston Logan and Newark on 9/11 ... .
 

With All Eyes on the Bailout, House Passes Trillion-Dollar Defense Bill
 

The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic Attack as Bailout Goes Bust: ... [I]t is good to see the icy beads of panic dotting the brows of elites who have inflicted and/or countenanced so much death, destruction, terror and degradation in the past few years. Today they have suffered a very rare defeat in the relentless, remorseless class war they have been waging against us for decades. And that it is something to celebrate -- at least for one night.
 

Paulson to Try Again
 

When is a holocaust not a holocaust? When the perpetrators call it a victory. ... [W]hile there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq -- now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation -- we must keep in mind that thanks to this lovely little war more than half the population of Iraq is either dead, crippled, traumatized, confined in overflowing American and Iraqi prisons, internally displaced, or in foreign exile.

No American should be allowed to forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything -- their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge.
 

We sit atop a economic volcano, the only question being: How thin the crust?
 

Good going, Evelyn. Some of those links are worthy indeed. Thanks! :)
 

Bruno: Thank you for the feedback.
 

"It" has been passed by the House.
 

The New American Century: Cut Short By 92 Years - There's trouble ahead. The multi-polar world is about to collide head-on with the "faith-based" unipolar world and millions are bound to suffer. But there is no doubt about the final outcome. The geopolitical plates are shifting inexorably away from Washington. America's ability to wage war will steadily erode as capital and resources dry up. Its only a matter of time before the war machine sputters to a halt and the troops return home. When the killing stops, a truly new world order will begin.
 

"Grand Larceny" on a Monumental Scale: Does the Bailout Bill Mark the End of America as We Know It?
 

The Iranian President Makes More Sense Than Bush, McCain or Obama: ... The day the foreign bankers turn off the credit spigot to the US Treasury, American arrogance will be tamed.
 

Has Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State?
 

Democratic Congressman: Representatives Were Threatened With Martial Law In America Over Bailout Bill: “There are those in high positions who know that if they don’t allow this bill to pass, that there are people behind the Bush Administration who will force them to pass it or kill them…”
 

Shock and Awe: Bipartisan Beltway Terrorists Launch Economic 9/11 on the American People: [quoting Arthur Silber]
Just as it is not possible for an individual to restrict what constitutes a fundamental psychological methodology to only one area of his life, so a ruling class will not employ one approach in foreign policy while dealing with matters of domestic politics in a radically different manner. In any case, the U.S. ruling class never had such a desire: in one way or another, other nations would be made to submit to the demands of the U.S. government -- and the same is true for U.S. citizens. The citizens of America will do exactly as the ruling class demands -- or else. As far as the ruling class is concerned, you have as little reason to complain as the murdered Iraqis do: the ruling class only wishes to improve your life. The ruling class acts only on your behalf, and "for your own good."
 

South Africa: The Liberation's Betrayal (With pain I acknowledge believing every word written here by John Pilger to be true.)
 

The Bush Doctrine & The 9/11 Commission Report: Both Authored by Philip Zelikow
 

The Fleecing of America