Antiwar.com Blog

….here are some great stories from links stuck near the bottom of the front page of Antiwar.com:

Anti-US Tunes Big Hits in Iraq:

The story is a bit frightening. Some of the lyrics call for continued resistance:

“The men of Fallujah are men of hard tasks,” Mr. al-Jenabi sings in a dialect decipherable only to people in the Sunni Muslim heartland cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. “They paralyzed America with rocket-propelled grenades. May God protect them from [U.S.] airplanes.”

Despite the fact that, as Dan Senor, a spokesman for the coalition points out “any sort of public expression used in an institutionalized sense that would incite violence against the coalition or Iraqis,” the cassettes and CDs are selling well.

Iraq’s Dinar Gives Greenback a Run for Its Money:

The new “Bremer dinar” — recently made the official fiat currency of Iraq — has become quite popular, especially with respect to the U.S. dollar. The huge influx of U.S. dollars has had little effect on those demanding dinars:

Ahmad Salman Jaburi, the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Iraq, said last week that “this indicates that people are demanding the Iraqi currency, which is really flattering for us … This is now a currency that people want to hold.”

Cheney ‘Waged Guerrilla War’ on Blair Attempt to Get UN in on Iraq

A new biography of Tony Blair claims that

Mr Cheney’s opposition to UN involvement left Mr Blair uncertain whether Mr Bush would go down the UN route until he uttered the relevant words in his speech to the UN general assembly in September 2002. One Blair aide remarked: “[Mr Cheney] waged a guerrilla war against the process . . . He’s a visceral unilateralist”. Another agreed: “Cheney fought it all the way – at every twist and turn, even after Bush’s speech to the UN.”

It’s an affront to every cynical bone and iconoclastic nerve in my body, but here goes: Jeremy Scahill kicks ass. Read this interview with Wesley Clark and tell me I’m wrong. Jeremy Scahill for the White House (press corps)!

Your moment of Zen, courtesy of John Ashcroft:

Weapons of mass destruction, including evil chemistry and evil biology, are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States, but also to the world community.

Think Ashcroft just let that slip? He has already used the phrase at least three times in public:

Sept. 10, 2002:

But we have seen that the terrorist community has done research in biological — evil biology, evil chemistry, in the dispersion of radiological contaminants and the like, and those have been the subject of previous endeavors.

Sept. 11, 2002:

Well, I believe it was this network [CNN] that came forward with something like 60 hours of tape of training, and thousands of individuals that went through the training, and the interest in biological — evil biology and evil chemistry.

Sept. 2, 2003:

I believe that we’ve already found a number of things that are very troublesome. Things that relate to the development of the evil chemistry and evil biology that could be very dangerous to mankind.

What about fundamentalist loons? Do they pose any risk?

Part of Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional

The AP reports:

“For the first time, a federal judge has declared unconstitutional a section of the USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations.”

No column today because of an appallingly absentminded screw-up on my part, but there will be something this week. Who knows? Maybe my shtick will play better on a Wednesday.

In lieu of anything original, I recommend two articles by up and coming writers. Both are from student newspapers, which is encouraging; also, you probably wouldn’t come across them in your normal reading. The first is from an acquaintance of mine at Louisiana State University, Ryan Merryman, who demonstrates that Baton Rouge is not without hope: “Republican Right’s Forgotten Brethren.”

The second is from David Mackey of the Auburn Plainsman: “Earth’s Ruin Complete, Mars Next.” (Link courtesy of Libertarian Jackass.)

Support young writers! We’ll need good jobs to pay down the Bush deficit!

Before there was the “empire of bases” there was classical imperialism with its empire of colonies. Some of the US elite (political, cultural, and financial), from the Mugwumps to Mark Twain to billionaire (in current dollars) Andrew Carnegie, energetically lobbied for the rejection of this policy.

How long will today’s elite tolerate a policy of corporatist military kleptocracy?

Eleven days ago VP Cheney, speaking at a World Affairs Council event in Los Angeles, described the Bushies’ plan to expand the empire of bases in preparation for decades of war. Cheney claimed that this is necessary due to the war on terrorism, but it’s actually the same plan that he and other Bushies signed on to in 1997, when the US was still aiding international jihad. Yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland he presented a “conciliatory” version of the speech but, in the word’s of Newsweek‘s Fareed Zakaria, “the speech fell flat”:

“You see, a funny thing has happened around the world over the past two years. While the war on terrorism has dominated headlines, the great engine of globalization has kept moving, rewarding some, punishing others, but always keeping up the pressure by increasing human contact, communication and competition. For almost every country today, its primary struggle centers on globalization issues—growth, poverty eradication, disease prevention, education, urbanization, the preservation of identity.

“On all these, America is now largely silent. ‘It’s not that we don’t worry about terrorism,’ a head of government (of a pro-American country) said to me. But for him, as for other leaders, it’s not how he sees the world: ‘I have to grapple with a different set of issues. And I have the feeling that the United States has gone off into its own universe and cannot hear or say anything to me about my problems.’ There is a disconnect between America and the world.

“Of all the leaders who attended this meeting, no one could be more concerned with terrorists than President Musharraf of Pakistan. They have, after all, repeatedly threatened his life. Yet his schedule of private meetings, which were mainly with businessmen, reveal his priorities: investment, growth and development. Turkey has recently suffered terrorist attacks. But Prime Minister Erdogan wanted to impress on his audience Turkey’s determination to meet the European Union’s criteria for membership. Both leaders are showing flexibility on longstanding political disputes (Kashmir and Cyprus) because they realize that these are obstacles to their most important goal: modernization. …

“Developing nations that once feared globalization are beginning to learn how to use it to their advantage—sometimes ganging up during trade negotiations. Others cleverly combine populist measures with pro-growth policies. Thus Vladimir Putin jails oligarchs, yet opens up parts of Russia’s economy. Brazil’s Lula and Thailand’s Thaksin speak of solidarity with the people even as they liberalize the economy. Most important, China is gaming the global capitalist system to its benefit—devoting immense resources and brainpower to its negotiations on trade, commerce and business law.

“While Washington worries about traditional problems of empire—disorder on the periphery—there is a new globalizing world slowly taking shape, in search of leadership.”

At the same meeting, billionaire George Soros said, “Under the pretence of waging a war on terror, Bush embarked on forcing US supremacy on the world,” and promised to add to the $US12.5 million he’s already spent on the anti-Bush campaign.