chickens coming home to roost...

Ponder this sequence of events:

[1] 1980s: The US strongly supports Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, thereby trying to screw Islamic fundamentalists in Iran. Islamic fundamentalists learn to hate America.

[2] During the same period, the US strongly supports the same brand of Islamic fundamentalists in their fight against the USSR's occupation of Afghansitan. Islamic fundamentalists learn guerilla warfare from the Americans and the British.

[3] 1991: The US and Britain trash Iraq.

[4] 1991 to present day: American military bases in Saudi Arabia seen as an affront to Islam by the fundamentalists.

[5] As we speak: Iraq disintegrates into civil war.

[6] 2003 to present day: Islamic fundamentalists benefit strategically from the disintegration of Iraq.

[7] Since the Seventies: Islamic fundamentalists see America as an imperialist occupier in the Middle East.

And this new idea of an Islamic fundamentalist super-state? Well, guess what! That idea mainly got fuelled by the threats posed to Islamic fundamentalism by America's machiavellian machinations in the Middle East.

But there's another dimension to analyse here: The Israeli/Palestinian conflict (and America's strong support of Israel), and its role in radicalising Arabs to the point where they found Islamist fundamentalist extremism attractive.

You have to ask yourself, do the Americans have any idea how to deal with Islamic fundamentalist extremism in the Middle East? I think not, because everything they've done to date has manufactured more support for the extremists from within the Muslim world.

But to fully understand the causes for the radicalisation of Islam, you need to broaden your gaze and analyse the cumulative effects on Islam, over the last 90 years, by the machinations of Britain, America, Israel and the USSR.

Often, when people go nuts, someone has driven them to it...

onya (again), peter...

Peter Tinley, an ex-SAS officer has cheered me up again...

On the ABC's Difference Of Opinion this week he pointed out that Iraq was stable under Saddam Hussein and, in positing the possible outcome of the Iraq war, he said that it was likely that Iraq would again be ruled by a strongman (diplomatic speak for "dictator".)

So, if Peter Tinley turns out to be right, what was the point of the war, other than manufacturing a whole lot of dead bodies and destroying Iraq's infrastructure?

Peter first cheered me up back in November 2006.

book blogging...

Books arrived today...

From Amazon.com:

Shoveling Fuel For A Runaway Train - by Brian Czech

From Clouston & Hall (academic remainders):

Torture and Truth - America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror - by Mark Danner

State of War - the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration - by James Risen

Al-Qaeda - the Terror Network that Threatens the World - by Jane Corbin

What We've Lost - How the Bush Andminstration has curtailed freedoms, ravaged the environment, and damaged America and the World - by Graydon Carter

Now, as soon I can manage to keep an attention span of more than twenty minutes, I might just manage to read these in the next two years.

poisoning young minds...

Joshua Key is a US Army deserter living in Canada. He served in Iraq and deserted rather than go back there. He has written a book The Deserter's Tale. Here is a snippet from Key's ABC Lateline interview with Tony Jones:

TONY JONES: We'll talk about some of the details in a moment, but let me take you back to your account of basic training. Because it's here you argue your minds were poisoned. Could you describe to us just how you were taught, what people were saying to you about Iraqis and Muslims?

JOSHUA KEY: You know of course they were never called Iraqis or Muslims, they were always used in derogatory terms as hajis, habibs and so on. I would say it was definitely a form of dehumanising. I mean, if you see something - that effect all the time - they were never referred to as civilians or Iraqis or Muslims.

TONY JONES: You say of the training that you were told that all Muslims were terrorists, that all Muslims were responsible for September 11. Were people actually saying that to you specifically?

JOSHUA KEY: Yes, and then I got it to the term that instead of being, what would you say, not guilty until proven guilty, I would say to us it's “they're guilty till they're proven innocent”, to us all Muslims were terrorists. That's the way we were taught and it's the way we conducted our business.

I still remember clearly the way our minds were similarly poisoned in order to "condition" us to hate the Vietnamese, so as to make us want to go there and kill them. We were told lies, half truths, and pure propaganda about why the war was necessary. We were endlessly fed derogatory, dehumanising language about the Vietnamese by our instructors. They were not Vietnamese, or human beings, they were "gooks" or "slope heads" or "nogs".

It's widely known that there is a branch of the military called Psy Ops (Psychological Operations). The purpose of Psy Ops is to f*ck with the enemy's mind.

What is less widely understood is that the whole process of recruiting and basic training is a Psy Ops type of thing too, designed to first f*ck with the civilian's mind in order to get him/her to join, and then to f*ck with the trainee's mind to get them to sufficiently hate "the enemy" in order to want to kill them.

It's all just one big mind f*ck designed to turn nice young people with good intentions into political killers. And they call it "serving your country". That's just another lie on top of a whole stinking pile of lies.

And that is why one should not blame the service personnel for taking part in a war. They are victims of mind control methodology as evil as that of the worst religious cults, blindly believing they are saving the world. Forgive them, for they know not what they do...

But don't EVER let the bastards who sent them there off the hook. THEY are the real war criminals. I'm talking about YOU, John Winston HoWARd !!! (And your Liberal party predecessors who "sold" me the Vietnam war back in the sixties !!!)

bloggers block...

Bloggers block... What a terrible feeling, just sitting there, hour after hour, just staring at a blank screen. Rigor mortis preventing your fingers from dancing on the keyboard. Tragic innit?

WHAT WAS THAT!!!!

Oh, nothing...

Just a stray thought...

Couldn't possibly blog about stray thoughts...

Gotta find MEANINGFUL ones...

Only the best for THIS blog...

Hmmm...

Still can't blog a thing...

Gee blogging's hard...

Don't know how these bloggers do it, really...

Must be right old geniuses, them...

Ah well, maybe I'll just quit then...

Not really cut out for it...

Genetic flaw perhaps...

[yawn]

I think I'll go to bed now. Maybe I'll dream of blogging, or summut...

oops... sorry... mistake...

So there I was, driving down the highway, a fraction over the speed limit, when the cops pull me over... Quick as a flash, I said "Sorry officer, it was a mistake." Well, I still got a ticket... Not to be deterred, I opted to contest it in court... "Your Honour, it was a mistake" I plead. Bad luck. I was found guilty. End of story. So, that's what happens if you're a mere citizen...

Now... If you're a politician... Whole new ball game...

You can consign three million Vietnamese to death in a war which, forty years later, you admit "was a mistake"...

You invade Iraq based on a pack of lies, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and when cornered, mutter stuff like "we made a mistake"...

Back to Joe Citizen... If I kill one person, I cannot weasel out of it by claiming it was all "just a mistake".

So how come politicians can be the architects of war (mega-mass-murder) and weasel out of it with throw-away lines like "we made a mistake"?

Why are they not held to account for the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of lives they liquidate with their decisions, yet you and I get booked for speeding...

Answer me that !!!

VIVA LA REVOLUCION !!!

that was a bit extreme...

The previous post, now deleted, was too offensive even by my slack standards so I've deleted it.

Apologies to anyone who was offend by it.

I just lost the plot completely with extremists. In particular, muslim extremists. So much so, I became a bit extreme.

the rich have kids and the poor have abortions...

For GS... ;-)

From the Washington Post:

The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury item, one that only the well educated and well paid are interested in.

A Bible-belt corollary of this could be "the rich are Christians, the poor are heathens". They're not too far from having such an "epiphany"... They're already peddling the crap that if you're poor there's no one to blame but yourself... Jesus is spinning in his grave... Jesus was, after all, first and foremost, a communist.

But we know that such capitalist claptrap is not restricted to that vile inversion of Jesus's teachings which has become known as "Christianity". "New Age" thinking shares this view. As does the cult of "Positive Thinking".

It's all part of the crap which says that "everyone can win". That's pure propaganda. It obscures the fact that in a competitive environment of n competitors, only 1/n can win. The rest, to varying degrees, lose. And capitalism is all about creating a competitive environment.

So now, over-population issues devolve into a world in which the rich get to marry and have the "legitimate" kids, and the poor get to be demonised for rearing "bastards" or having abortions...

Totally unrelated of course, but I remember a time, circa 1986, when I made the firm and binding decision not to have any kids on the basis that (a) I could not afford to give them the lifestyle I thought they deserved, and (b) I would make a lousy father anyway. I think I've proven myself right on both counts. Countless unborn kids are thanking me profusely for making such an enlightened choice... The applause of the unborn is deafening...

GS, do you still think you have the luxury of conveniently side-stepping the difficult issue of over-population, knowing, as you do, that the default outcome is that the rich get to call the game? ;-)

breaking free of the IMF...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a wonderful, benevolent monetary outreach program designed to help the developing world, right?

Bzzzzzzt. "Wrong!" says a whole gaggle of Latin American countries...

The motivation for cutting ties (with the IMF) has been explicitly political. The Latin American electorate is fed up with policies like privatization and curtailed social spending; these policies, hallmarks of IMF "neoliberalism," have hit the countries' poor majorities hardest.

Excerpted from Latin America Unchained - by Mark Engler

And a big Hooray for Hugo Chavez.

(Inspired by a blog post by Antony Loewenstein)

I like this guy...

On his first day as CEO, Ricardo Semler fired sixty percent of all top managers.

And on the sixth day, he created a school:

...a space of socially mixed classes, freedom and democracy as the grounds for the formation of the balanced citizen, the individual able to learn how to learn, to take responsibility for his/her own choices and to determine the course and scope of his/her education. As equal members of a democratic community, the students are actively involved in the events of daily life.

censorship...

What's with so many blogs these days having comment moderation enabled?

I tell you what it's NOT about... It's not about blocking spam. I don't see any spam.

I suspect it's about keeping the censorship secret.

What do I mean? I mean, if I see a comment on my blog which I feel I really must delete, by the time I do so, there's a pretty good chance someone's already seen it and therefore I risk being asked about why I deleted it. This way I can be held accountable to the readers. But with comment moderation enabled, I can make your comment disappear and no one knows I'm doing it.

It must be very appealing to blogging fascists...

bugger...

Bilegrip is shutting up shop...

Let's all give in to the bastards and quit. That'll teach 'em! Not...

Yeah... I'm a tad angry....

do you know what this is?

This creature is living in our garage, and I'd like to know what it is...

Postscript: If you've been reading the comments, you'll know that with Davo's help I've determined that it's a Southern Leaf-tailed Gecko. Well, here's a bit of synchronicity: My partner and I do a bit of volunteering with the local Bushcare group (she, because she's a wonderful person, I, because she cajoles me to go along as a form of therapy). Today, I came across a bumper sticker put out by this group and its logo is... yes... you guessed it... The Southern Leaf-tailed Gecko!!! I swear I was not aware of this before today... Spooky...

butterflies...

Have you ever watched a butterfly flit from flower to flower?

Reading blogs is a lot like that.

Here are two flowers worth a butterfly's flit:

http://mybluepuzzlepiece.blogspot.com/

http://argumentsnoonecanwin.blogspot.com/index.html

And a book worth a look:

Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train

The War On Terror - US victory in Iraq...

On 23 February 2007, US and Iraqi forces raided the head offices of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW), the country's national trade union center. They arrested one of the union's security staff (later released unharmed), destroyed furniture, and confiscated a computer and fax machine. And then they did it again two days later, causing further damage to the union headquarters. http://www.labourstart.org/iraqraid

Now THAT's what I call "liberating" Iraq...

YANKEE GO HOME !!!

blending in with the pot plants....

I'm watching a TV program about lightning, right?

They're showing me how the 45th Weather Squadron advises NASA on lightning activity threats to their launch programs.

The 45th Weather Squadron provides comprehensive weather service to America's space program at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and NASA Kennedy Space Center.

So?

Well, here these dudes were, in a high-tech control room; in a serious office environment, right? In a concrete jungle...

Why were they all wearing camouflage fatigues?

Like, the pot plants might mount an attack?

D'oh !!!

the talibanisation of afghanistan...

You know, you learn lots by skimming Wikipedia...

The problems started with Nur Mohammed Taraki . He wanted to drag Afghanistan, an Islamist state, kicking and screaming into the 20th century via the secular politics of the communist persuasion. He had the Russians as his major international political ally. The Islamists (read that to mean the vast majority of political players) were feeling very threatened, and repression against him and other leftists began. Bloodbath time.

He staged a coup, and he and his communists took over in 1978. "Reform" of the Afghani Islamist culture and tradition commenced, big time, in the form of brutal suppression. Dear reader, you would have loved him. He was your kind of man... Progressive, enlightened, ... and brutal. A leftist-inspired bloodbath ensued.

Taraki was also responsible for introducing women to political life. A prominent example was Anahita Ratebzad, who was a major Marxist leader and a member of the Revolutionary Council. Ratebzad wrote the famous New Kabul Times editorial (May 28, 1978) which declared that Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country....Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention.

But the Islamists, especially the hard liners, were having none of it, and serious repression (we're talking mass-murder here, dear reader) was needed to stay in power. In 1979 Taraki asked the Soviets to send ground troops, but the Russians told him "we believe it would be a fatal mistake to commit ground troops... if our troops went in, the situation in your country... would get worse." An astute assessment. Pity they didn't remember this a few months later...

Despite this statement Taraki negotiated some armed support - helicopter gunships with Russian pilots and maintenance crews, 500 military advisors, 700 paratroopers disguised as technicians to defend Kabul airport, also significant food aid (300,000 tons of wheat). Brezhnev still warned Taraki that full Soviet intervention "would only play into the hands of our enemies - both yours and ours."

And then shit happened. In the usual form. Political in-fighting. Taraki was assassinated and a dude by the name of Hafizullah Amin took over.

Amin began unfinished attempts to moderate what many Afghans viewed as an anti-Islam regime. Promising more religious freedom, repairing mosques, presenting copies of the Qur'an to religious groups, invoking the name of Allah in his speeches, and declaring that the Saur Revolution was "totally based on the principles of Islam." Yet many Afghans held Amin responsible for the regime's harshest measures.

Amin started a purge of his opponents, including Soviet sympathisers . Bloodbath time again.

The Soviets, unhappy with the deaths of their loyal minions, and the fact that Amin was getting too friendly with the Americans, and against their own earlier better judgment, invaded on 24 December 1979. The Soviets had marched into their own Vietnam. Bloodbath time again.

The radicalisation of the Afghani Islamists was now almost complete. The finishing touches were delivered by way of the CIA funding, training and arming any fundamentalist Islamist group willing to kill Soviets. The front organisation for all of this was Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, the ISI. Bloodbath time again.

And so the fundamentalist Islamists, soon to morph into the Taliban, and with huge American aid, and with the help of one of the CIA's own Saudi pin-up boys, Osama bin Laden, reclaimed Afghanistan and began "the restoration of Islamic values". Bloodbath time again.

But... Osama had as much of a problem with American meddling in Islamic lands, as he did with the Soviets, and he put his CIA training to excellent use. Eventually even on American soil. Bloodbath time again.

Stupid bin Laden... He failed to understand that the Americans were never going to take that lying down, and Afghanistan, always the central piece in The Great Game, was now considered fair game. Bloodbath time again.

And the bloodbath continues. America is now trying, desperately, to pull off what the Russian Empire could not, what the British Empire could not, what the Soviet Union could not - namely, to get the Afghani people to submit to foreign intervention and control, either directly, or through the installation of a puppet government.

Based on history, I don't like their chances...

I'm gutted...

Just finished watching Osama, a movie by Siddiq Barmak.

It left me shattered and confused.

Shattered by the story and confused about how the world should respond to this.

As film reviewer Doug Anderson puts it:

Outside intervention seems necessary but, historically, such actions seem only to add to the despair of people such as Osama and her mother.Is it enough just to acknowledge that this is happening? How can a religion be hijacked and preached with such venom that even those who believe in it find themselves sickened? This is happening right now. Is it enough for us just to realise it?