Moscow June 21, 2002: - So who's next on the Bush team's hit list? Besides Iraq, of course. It's abundantly clear that the Chickenhawk-in-Chief and his corporatic cronies will be slapping hot iron all over Saddam Hussein just as soon as the poll numbers are right. The whole saucy crew have been on a sustained propaganda offensive for weeks, methodically preparing the public to accept the wholly un-American notion of aggressive war. Those droopy invertebrates known as Congressional Democrats are already on board, so it's body bags for Baghdad any day now. Collateral damage, here we come! But we all know that the Righteous Runner-Up has a broader vision for the world. A world in which no banker has to go to bed hungry -- or even slightly peckish -- in any of the homes he owns. A world in which no multimillionaire corporate trough-feeder -- like, say, the treasury secretary, the defense secretary, the secretary of state, the secretary of the Army, the national security advisor, the White House chief of staff, the president and vice president of the United States, etc. -- has to sacrifice even one single penny of unearned profit to clean up the land and air he has despoiled with his noxious evacuations. A world where bribery, tax evasion, capital flight, money laundering, false accounting and fraud are protected by law and rewarded by government. A world where the manufacture and use of even the deadliest weapons have been loosed from the profit-choking constraints of international treaties and sworn agreements. A world where even the poorest women -- or rather, only the poorest women -- are free to die in a pool of their own blood, liberated from an enervating dependence on basic health care in childbirth, all to serve the maniacal misogyny of religious extremists allied with unelected rulers. A world in which every government has the power and duty to strip away the outmoded and unproductive regulations that once protected its natural resources, its national economy, its working people, its poor and elderly, its schools and hospitals, its way of life, even the very air that it breathes and the water that it drinks from unfettered exploitation by small bands of predatory elites.
It's a bold and far-reaching agenda, this quest to remake the world in the image of a profoundly ignorant pipsqueak frat boy and his fellow barons in the New Feudalism that is engirdling the earth. But President Pip has publicly committed the full might of the United States to this cause; he certainly won't be content with just mopping up the Iraqi mess left behind by the feudal baron whose title he has inherited. So who will next feel the glint of his -- dare we say it? -- global eye? Well, if you're the betting type, you might want to lay some good money on Brazil, the largest jewel in the Bush family's traditional fiefdom of Latin America. It seems those southern silly-billies have drawn the ire of the Great White Father in Washington -- and his paymasters on Wall Street -- by giving the presidential candidate of the (gasp!) Workers' Party a 20-point lead in the polls. At the moment, Luis Ignacio da Silva -- or "Lula," as he is universally called -- is thrashing the candidate of the ruling right-wing coalition, which has been hobbled by a series of -- what else? -- corruption scandals. Lula is leery of Bush's proposed pan-American "free trade zone," which would subject the entire hemisphere to the "Washington consensus" cult of Enron-style "deregulation," Chubais-style "privatization" and the NAFTA-style "liberation" of powerful business interests from national laws governing commerce, zoning, the environment, even the judiciary. Instead, the Workers' Party wants to increase public investment in the national infrastructure -- such trifles as sewers, roads, education, health and small-scale agriculture -- while lowering interest rates to help the country's ailing industrial base, a move backed by many Brazilian business leaders and long-term foreign investors. The party's "moderate and efficient" administration of the local and state governments it already controls has been praised by that Bolshevik terrorist tract, The Financial Times.
But all this is so much tinkling brass to the Bush Regime and its cream-skimming cronies. Infrastructure? Sewers? Get real. All they want are high-interest yields on sweetheart deals pimped for them by government bagmen. (That is the textbook definition of "globalization," isn't it?) And oh yes -- slavish devotion to the foreign policy dictates of His Pipness. It seems that here, too, Lula falls short: he favors "an independent foreign policy" -- i.e., he might want to pay a visit to Cuba sometime, just like Jimmy Carter. So when Lula began soaring in the polls, the White House went to work, through its proxy armies on Wall Street. Major firms (and Bush donors) like Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch took time out from their various Enron entanglements and criminal investigations to sniffily downgrade Brazil's investment rating -- citing Lula's potential victory as the reason. The move -- derided as a mistake by the Financial Times and others -- sent the Brazilian stock market tumbling, destroying millions of dollars in local investments. This economic terrorism by the Bush regime is just the opening salvo in a dirty war that will doubtless continue until the October election. The regime may have fumbled its first attempt at a foreign coup -- the ham-handed farce in Venezuela -- but Brazilians should take little comfort in that. As we saw in November 2000, when these boys set their minds to it, they know how to gut a democracy. (G-8 is mockery on Russia)
Moscow June 7, 2002: - While the lumbering giants of the American media make their clumsy bows of obeisance to the presidential paymaster filling their corporate goodie bags with tax-cut candy and merger massage oil, a few snippets of unsalted truth about the real world continue to spill from the croker sacks of the lean and hungry provincial papers. Last week, it was the Savannah Morning News unearthing an attempted terrorist bombing by a U.S. soldier in the gaterous moral swamp of Jeb Bush's Florida. This week, it's the Ithaca Journal in upstate New York, bringing news of Big Brother Georgie's old-fashioned approach to warfare: Ordering soldiers to kill women and children. This revelation -- entirely unremarked by the larded lords of the Fourth Estate -- came in a homely profile of young Army Private Matt Guckenheimer, just returned to the bosom of his family after a tour of service in Afghanistan. While recounting some of his experiences during the much ballyhooed "Operation Anaconda," Guckenheimer artlessly spilled what was surely meant to be a secret order from his superiors. "We were told there were no friendly forces," Guckenheimer said. "If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them." Here is that article
Let that sink in for a moment: American soldiers were told to kill women and children. "Specifically." To kill a child. To put a bullet in the brain of, let's say, a 2-year old girl. To hold the barrel of a rifle to her tiny temple and pull the trigger. To watch as the tender plate of her skull, the delicate bones of her face, her large bright inquisitive eyes were all obliterated in a burst of red mist. "We were told specifically to kill them." "Women and children." "To kill them." So that's the kind of warfare being waged by those notorious two cowards, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. When their own generation was on the firing line, in Vietnam, both men ardently supported the war -- but disdained to fight in it. For his part, Cheney was too busy with his long bootlicking rise to power: "I had other priorities," he has loftily proclaimed. Meanwhile, Bush's daddy got his drink-addled little boy a cushy stateside berth in the Texas National Guard -- but even then, Junior couldn't stick it. He bugged out for an entire year of his duty -- desertion in wartime, a capital offense, if you're not rich and well-connected. Fortunately, his service records for that period were "scrubbed" by General Daniel James, former head of the Texas National Guard, who is now head of the entire nation's Air National Guard -- courtesy of his appointment by a grateful George W. Bush. Now these two armchair warriors, Bush and Cheney, ensconced safely behind the greatest phalanx of personal protection ever seen in history, are sending out a new generation of young people to kill and die. Like their predecessors in the Vietnam War, they are twisting the faith and idealism of patriotic young soldiers and turning them into instruments of murder. And for what? Certainly not to "bring the perpetrators of Sept. 11 to justice," the ostensible purpose of the war. Those perpetrators are still roaming free -- and are even more dangerous than ever, according to Cheney himself. No, the main reason why Private Guckenheimer and his comrades are being ordered to murder women and children could be found last week in a headline buried in yet another obscure province of the American Empire -- a brief business story from the BBC: "Afghan Pipeline Given Go-Ahead." Here is that article
(Murder Incorporated): - And there is more of this to come; much, much more. For even as Private Guckenheimer was making his quiet revelations, the Commander-in-Chief was loudly proclaiming a brand-new military doctrine for the United States: Sneak attacks -- like Pearl Harbor, like Sept. 11. Speaking at West Point military academy, Bush first praised the soldiers in Afghanistan "who have fought on my orders." ("We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them.") He then announced that from henceforth, the United States will "impose preemptive, unilateral military force when and where it chooses," the Washington Post reports. For the first time in its history, the United States is now openly committed to offensive military aggression against any perceived threat designated by its leaders, the unelected White House occupant told the cadets. Bush said that "60 or more nations" presently lie under this dread edict -- and all are potential targets of his "kill the women and children" orders. What's more, Bush said this new military bellicosity will be accompanied by aggressive diplomacy aimed at forcing other nations to adopt American values -- that is, the Enron-style "crony capitalism" foisted on the United States by a corrupt elite and their political bagmen. Bush called this pustulant system -- now suppurating before our eyes, as corporation after corporation, including Cheney's own Halliburton, are caught cooking their books -- "the single surviving model of human progress." So there you have it. Just like bin Laden -- another unelected leader who claims divine sanction for his actions -- Bush will send his forces to strike without warning at anyone he believes is an enemy. Just like bin Laden, Bush considers innocent women and children to be legitimate targets of his holy wrath. And just like bin Laden, he seeks to impose his own limited, barbaric world view on other nations, for his own power and profit. What quadrant of hell is hot enough for such men?
Private Guckenheimer tries to smooth out his story some time later, but nothing will change the facts of the above scripture reading, and the long murderous, plundering, dictatorial yet sanctified "Christian" history of the United States!! Look at just some of this here!
Last week in these pages, we reported on the admission by an American soldier that he and his comrades had been ordered to kill women and children during "Operation Anaconda" in Afghanistan earlier this year. "We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them," Army Private Matt Guckenheimer told the Ithaca Journal last month. Guckenheimer has since qualified this disturbing revelation. Perhaps shaken at seeing his words in cold print (or shaken by someone who saw his words in cold print), Guckenheimer wrote a letter to the Journal modifying his remarks. He now says the soldiers were ordered to kill only those women and children who showed unspecified manifestations of "hostile intent." Here is that letter The orders did note that even "very young children" (of unspecified age) were being trained as soldiers by the heathen Mohammedans, and so could not be "just dismissed as noncombatants," said Guckenheimer. "But this does not mean we were ordered to kill noncombatants such as babies." Well, thank God for that. It is indeed a saving grace that U.S. ground forces were actually not ordered to kill babies. That would be a very serious breach of military protocol -- everyone knows the killing of babies and other innocent parties is reserved for the launchers of "smart bombs," "daisy cutters," B-52s, CIA drones and other purveyors of faceless, long-range death. Glad we could clear that up.
Moscow November 23, 2001: - Are you a terrorist? If you don't know, you'd better find out fast. Because Uncle Sam's made a list and he's checking it twice -- "40 to 50 countries" targeted for possible "U.S. action," according to America's securely-located vice president, Dick "Chicken Hawk" Cheney. As the man says, a hard rain's a-gonna fall. So here's a simple test to check your moral worthiness and see if you can escape God's -- sorry, Bush's -- all-devouring wrath. Have you ever gone out for a beer and bought a Stella Artois instead of a Bud? Then you, my friend, have engaged in a conspiracy to cause "adverse effects" to the economy of the United States. And that makes you one of the evildoers. So says the great Oval Object in his latest executive order, in which he grants himself the power to have anyone he designates as a terrorist to be tried by secret military tribunals and executed without appeal. Bush's dread edict -- which of course takes effect without any input from that useless appendage of a bygone era, the U.S. Congress -- covers anyone who "causes, threatens to cause" or even "has as their aim" to cause "adverse effects" on, among other things, the American economy or U.S. foreign policy.
As always, Bush alone retains the right to decide who is and who is not a terrorist, just as he alone decides what constitutes an "adverse effect" on the United States. Could be a bomb, a boycott, a protest, a tariff -- or the wrong beer: it's his call.The edict gives him the power to seize any non-U.S. citizen, in any country on earth, and to subject him or her to secret summary justice. There is no outside check or oversight of this exercise of universal dominion, and no legal recourse for the accused -- not even to the laws of their own country. Never has a single person in the history of the world laid claim to such absolute power -- and commanded the military might to back it up. For we should also note that Bush now has the authority to launch attacks against any nation he chooses, at his own discretion, without a vote by Congress or that other withered appendage, the United Nations. And if you don't like it, pal, you can tell it to the judge. The military judge. Just before he puts a bullet in your brain.
But what about malcontents in what Bush now calls "the Homeland?" Hey, we got it covered. The U.S. government now has the power to prosecute any public expression of dissent as an act of "domestic terrorism," thanks to the super-duper new "U.S.A. Patriot" Act passed, in the dead of night, by Congress late last month -- a law which most of the dangling legislative appendages freely admit they never read before the vote.Under the new law, you are a "domestic terrorist," subject to 25 years in prison, if you engage in acts intended to "influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion." Which is, of course, the very definition of public protest: the attempt to force policy changes on reluctant governments through an unsettling display of popular will. In this case, the Imperial Executive has delegated power to his most faithful minion: Attorney General John Ashcroft. It is Ashcroft -- the only senator in U.S. history to be rejected by voters in favor of a dead man -- who will now define the limits of freedom in America. And Ashcroft -- a prissy religious crank like his boss -- has gone about his task with Christian zeal. (After all, your true believers know there is a higher law than that secular humanist rag, the constitution.) For example, just last week, Ashcroft stripped prisoners of the ancient right to confer with legal counsel in private, conferring upon himself the power to monitor any such conversation whenever he sees fit.This also applies to people being held without any charge at all -- and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, in that category now. We don't know the exact number, because Ashcroft no longer tells anyone -- including the Appendages -- how many people he's holding, or why he's holding them, or who they are, or where they might be, or what he's going to do with them. But not to worry; he's taking good care of his nameless captives. Why, only one has died in custody so far. At least that we know about. Because Ashcroft's not telling.
The terrorist attacks on American liberty are coming so fast these days you can't keep track of them all, and so your inundated Eye is reduced to making mere lists of a few recent developments: Bush insiders begin pushing the idea of using regular Army troops to "keep order" among the general populace -- the kind of thing that once drove terrorist leaders like George Washington and Patrick Henry to violent rebellion. A rightwing group founded by the vice president's wife, Lynn Cheney, issues a list of dozens of academics it considers "short on patriotism" for making critical comments about American policy. The group plans more "naming and shaming" of individuals who are "out of step" with the "Homeland." Ashcroft orders the interrogation of an additional 5,000 young Arab men who entered the country legally during the past two years. With a straight face, Ashcroft denies singling out anyone on the basis of race, creed, or national origin. And finally, some good news: Billy Bush, radio DJ and the president's first cousin, finds work after being canned by a small Virginia radio station for low ratings. He's been hired by CNN.
September 14th, 2001: - America is reeling from a day of air-terror, which has devastated New York and left the Pentagon in flames. While two hijacked planes crashed into New York's World Trade Center, a third dived down on the Pentagon in Washington -- the hub of US imperialism’s war-machine. The attacks, which have left thousands dead, sent share prices plummeting across the world while gold and oil soared. The United States is only now coming to terms with Tuesday's stunning assault on the symbols of American wealth and might. The film of the hijacked aircraft smashing into the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center and their complete collapse within hours matched by scenes of the Pentagon ablaze have flashed round the world.
Governments were quick to send their condolences to the United States and condemn the instigators including virtually all the Arab leaders including the Palestinians. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat expressed his shock at this "unbelievable and terrible" attack and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) issued repeated denials of involvement following a bogus claim made to the Arab Gulf media soon after the attacks. The DFLP and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) have made it clear they had no hand in the attacks. DFLP Central Committee member Ali Badwan said, "Our policy calls for focusing Palestinian efforts against the Israeli occupation forces and the armed Zionist settlers. We are not concerned with any actions outside the Palestinian territories. Our legitimate struggle is directed against the Israeli enemy and the settler cliques". And a PFLP leader said "Naturally the United States' position regarding our conflict with Israel is totally biased in favour of Israel but we have nothing to do with these aircraft attacks because our military battle is against the Zionist enemy". Maher al Taher, a member of the PFLP Politburo, added "We, as nationalist Palestinian forces, are launching our struggle on our land against the Zionist aggressors".
Iraq was the exception. That Arab country faces daily Anglo-American air-raids and a cruel blockade, which has claimed the lives of over a million and a half civilians through medical, and food shortages. "The American rulers... practiced great harshness against humanity until the situation exploded," was how one front-page editorial of a major daily, Al Iraq, put it. "The attacks against US Federal buildings were a natural reaction to the American rulers' hegemony, deception and foolishness." This was echoed in other Iraqi papers and their radio and television. And on the Arab street, in the slums and the refugee camps, many felt that the Americans were at last tasting the violence, destruction and death so long inflicted on them by US imperialism and its regional puppets. Some took to the streets to rejoice. Others pointed out that the root cause of the violence was American policies in the Middle East. Sheikh Yassin, the leader of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood Hamas told the press that "no doubt this is a result of the injustice the US practices against the weak in the world". And a representative of Islamic Jehad (Holy War) in Gaza said: "What has happened in the United States today is the consequence of American policies in this region."
No-one has claimed responsibility for the attacks but Washington is already pointing the finger at Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi businessman, who heads a militant Islamic order based in Afghanistan blamed for previous attacks on US installations. But the leader of the militant Islamic sect has denied all involvement in the attacks. According to Iran's Islamic Republican News Agency: "A leading Pakistani Urdu-language daily quoted him as saying in an exclusive statement issued to the paper through one of his aides that the attack was a reaction from the world's oppressed people against their oppressors. The statement, in Arabic, was read out for the paper by an unnamed representative of bin Laden. When told that most of the victims were innocent, bin Laden's aide said, "Muslims who are being killed in Palestine every day are also innocent. Why is their innocence not being taken into consideration?" He said the United States has been supplying arms to Israel against the Palestinians and that innocent people in Palestine are being killed daily with missiles provided by the United States. "The struggling Palestinians are being bombarded with US F-16 planes. There is no power to hold the United States responsible for this" he said. He vowed to continue to work to help the suppressed people of Palestine and rid them of Jewish subjugation. Osama said that although he did not have atomic bombs and missiles yet his conviction and resolve is as strong and unshakeable as rocks. "The United States will not be able to achieve its goal by eliminating me, because there are hundreds of Osamas now" he was quoted as saying. The Arab millionaire added that US hostility towards Taliban was not due to his presence, rather they want to set up their bases in this country and find Taliban an impediment in their way. Osama also rejected his involvement in the attack on Afghan commander, Ahmed Shah Masood, and offered his good offices for reconciliation between the warring factions of that country. He said that he was tired of the fighting in Afghanistan. "If this war comes to an end, we will be in a position to assist our oppressed brethren in Kashmir and Afghanistan," he added. Osama bin Laden heads a militant Islamic order, Al-Qaeda (The Base) which has considerable influence with the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan. Bin Laden, who made a fortune in the construction industry in Saudi Arabia, comes from the puritanical, fundamentalist Arabian Islamic tradition. In 1980 he went to Afghanistan to support the anti-communist rebels and set up a militia with CIA support. But he broke with US imperialism after the Americans sent troops to Saudi Arabia in the prelude to the Gulf War of 1991. Al Qaeda wants all foreign troops out of Arabia and the Zionists out of Palestine. The US government says Al Qaeda militants are responsible for waves of attacks on Americans in recent years.
President Bush is vowing vengeance and no-one knows when US imperialism will lash out. But the Palestinians fear that they, as usual, will bear the brunt of imperialism's anger. General Sharon, the Israeli premier, is posing as chief mourner to stake his claim for more backing in his own terror war against the Palestinian Arabs. This week he sent the troops into the Palestinian city of Jenin, in a foray, which has left more dead on both sides. The timing was clearly aimed at scuppering any hope of any early meeting between Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Resistance is continuing unabated with further bombings deep inside the Zionist entity and armed clashes between Palestinian guerrillas and Israeli army and Zionist settler gangs every day. The "hawks" in Sharon's coalition Cabinet -- virtually all of them as far as the Palestinians are concerned" -- are pushing for the re-occupation of the autonomous zones to drive Arafat back into exile and smash the regular Palestinian police and the resistance militias. It is a recipe for war. The brutal treatment of the Palestinian Arabs and the denial of their legitimate rights since 1948 by Israel and its imperialist masters have been the root-cause of all the tension in the Middle East. Imperialism, which plunders the oil riches of the region, believes that the only way cheap crude oil supplies can be guaranteed is by keeping all the Arabs weak and divided and the Palestinians in the gutter. The consequences of this policy has been six major Middle East wars and a state of almost continuous conflict and most of the victims were Arabs. Now the conflict is spreading far beyond the parameters set by imperialism and the confines of the Middle East!
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