Letter Never Sent

Military and defense — 1 comment
16
May 02

Pampered American thugs unhappy with guerrilla tactics

I really enjoyed reading this article in the Washington Post on the frustrations that American soldiers are experiencing trying to fight Afghan guerrillas. These well-fed, kevlar-wearing American soldiers sound like a bunch of spoiled crybabies. It really tickled the funny bone to hear them cuss and complain about ‘adversaries’ who don’t wear uniforms and pesky ‘rules of engagement’ that prevent them from shooting whoever they like.

Sitting under a tree a little later, eating a Meal Ready to Eat (MRE), the unit’s chief NCO, Sgt. Maj. Jim Smith, spotted a group of shepherds in the distance. “There was a bunch of Habibs over there a few minutes ago,” he said, using the soldiers’ name for Afghans. “I bet I could take down four with my M-4 and two more with my 9 millimeter before they could chamber a round. What do you think?”

The soldiers demonstrated the casual racism and hatred common to the US military by reducing the Afghan people to ‘Habibs’ as they quaintly call them. This is the ‘gook’ or ‘jap’ of the new conflict.

I enjoyed hearing how stupid most of our hired killers are. It confirms personal experience. I know that with people like this there is hope for a future without American military oppression because despite the overwhelming technological and financial advantages of the US in the end decisions will be made by macho morons like these.

“Ah, this sucks,” Smith sighed. “Didn’t get to kill nobody and they still got to fire their rocket.”

Then he posed the ultimate question to the group. “When have we completed our mission in Afghanistan?”

No one had an answer.

I can’t believe I waste my taxes on crap like this. We need to have the military building roads or doing something useful.

General — Comments Off
16
May 02

Watch This

Watch the Greg Palast BBC video exposing the US participation in the US coup. This video is staggering. The evidence is coming out that the US directly aided the Venezuelan plotters. The US funded assassination plots against Chavez by Colombian paramilitaries, the US military assisted by jamming cell phone communications, and used surveillance to track Chavez’s movements. Remember Venezuela is the LARGEST exporter of oil to the United States.

Greg Palast’s website

General — Comments Off
16
May 02

Advanced Warning of American Treachery

I haven’t been doing a good job of keeping up with the US-led Venezuelan coup. Then the other day Heather sent me a great link to a story in the Guardian by investigative journalist Greg Palast which had some information I had never heard about. Evidently, the secretary general of Opec, Venezuelan Ali Rodriguez, had advanced warning of the American coup attempt which allowed Chavez and his allies to take measures against it. This is amazing!

The Opec chief warned Mr Chavez that the US would prod a long-simmering coup into action to break any embargo threat. It was likely to act on April 11, the day a general strike was due to start.

It was Venezuela which shattered the oil embargo of 1973 by replacing Arab oil with its own huge reserves.

The warning – revealed by a Newsnight investigation to be shown on BBC2 tonight – explains the swift and safe return of Mr Chavez to power within two days of his April 12 capture by military officers under the direction of the coup leader, Pedro Carmona.

Until now, it was unclear why Mr Carmona – who had declared himself president – and the military chiefs who backed the coup surrendered without firing a shot.

The answer to the mystery, Newsnight was told by a Chavez insider, is that several hundred pro-Chavez troops were hidden in secret corridors under Miraflores, the presidential palace.

Juan Barreto, a leader of Mr Chavez’s party in the national assembly, was with Mr Chavez when he was under siege.

Mr Barreto said that Jose Baduel, chief of the paratroop division loyal to Mr Chavez, had waited until Mr Carmona was inside Miraflores.

Mr Baduel then phoned Mr Carmona to tell him that, with troops virtually under his chair, he was as much a hostage as Mr Chavez. He gave Mr Carmona 24 hours to return Mr Chavez alive.

Escape from Miraflores was impossible for Mr Carmona. The building was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of pro-Chavez demonstrators who, alerted by a sympathetic foreign affairs minister, had marched on it from the Ranchos, the poorest barrios.

Mr Chavez told Newsnight that, after receiving the warning from Opec, he had hoped to stave off the coup entirely by issuing a statement to mollify the Bush adminstration. He pledged that Venezuela would neither join nor tolerate a renewed oil embargo.

But Mr Chavez had already incurred America’s wrath by slashing Venezuelan oil output and rebuilding Opec, causing oil prices to nearly double to over $20 a barrel.

His opponents had made it clear that they would not abide by Opec production limits and would reverse his plan to double the royalties charged to foreign oil companies in Venezuela, principally the US petroleum giant Exxon-Mobil. The US government’s panic over the calls for an oil embargo, made public by Iraq and Libya on April 8 and 9, also explains what Venezuelans see as the state department’s ill-concealed and clumsy support for the coup attempt.

Mr Chavez told Newsnight: “I have written proof of the time of the entries and exits of two US military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters – their names, whom they met with, what they said – proof on video and on still photographs.”

Last month the Guardian reported a former US intelligence officer’s claims that the US had been considering a coup to overthrow the Venezuelan president for nearly a year.

Politics — Comments Off
16
May 02

Jury-nullification and you

From here:

So, you thought you would help the cause by going out and registering to vote on election day. You’ve been patting yourself on the back ever since,until the day you got called up for jury duty. Now you’re asking yourself, why in the world did you do it? Nobody wants to serve juror duty, right? I mean, you may actually have to send someone to jail, or something worse, and regardless of the charges, you’ll be aiding and abetting our unfair justice system. Right?

Wrong! This may be the best opportunity you’ll ever get to directly make a difference. Jurors not only have the duty to decide guilt or innocence, but also the “equity”, or “inequity”, of the law for which the defendant is accused. This means you have the RIGHT to acquit a defendant based upon YOUR ideas of right and wrong, fairness, and your own conscience. If you feel that the laws against marijuana possession are unjust and unfair, and you are summoned for jury duty to determine the fate of someone accused of possession, then it is your RIGHT to vote for acquittal, regardless of the judge’s instructions.

General — Comments Off
12
May 02

Studs Terkel selections

Will the circle be unbroken,
By and by, Lord, by and by.
There’s a better home awaiting
Far beyond the starry sky.

-old hymn, sung by Doc Watson

You can read a few parts from Studs Terkel’s book Will the Circle Be Unbroken? here courtesy of the Atlantic Monthly.

Personal — Comments Off
12
May 02

Upgraded

I upgraded to Movable Type version 2.11. So far, so good. I really like MT. Very easy to use and install and works well.

General / Personal — Comments Off
10
May 02

Celine Dion Sucks, as if you didn’t already know

Celine Dion’s new craptastic album will not only kill your ears it will kill your iMac. People who tried to play the new Dion album on their iMac had to send them back to the shop because somehow the copy-protected cd has the tendency to completely fuck up the computer.

FatChuck’s has a very good list of copy-protected, corrupted CD’s. DO NOT BUY ANY OF THESE CD’s. Doing so only plays into the hands of corporate media barons. It’s no surprise that 100% of the bands who have copy-protected CD’s also happen to produce incredibly awful music. I guess it’s music in that when you play it in a CD player it will make sounds, but otherwise it has no resemblance to music.

General — Comments Off
10
May 02

The Fish Wars

Funny page:Today, on automobiles all over America, the Fish Wars are raging. On a typical day an early morning commute can turn into a near-religious holy war as Jesus Fish cuts off Darwin Fish, Darwin Fish evolves to make the exit ahead of Jesus Fish, Jesus Fish invokes divine intervention to prevent Darwin Fish from finding the last parking spot. It’s a never ending battle and Americans are joining the fray and choosing sides at unprecendented rates.

History — Comments Off
10
May 02

Fascists From the 50’s

I know people think the word ‘fascist’ gets tossed around frequently by people of the libertarian/anarchist persuasion, and I am especially guilty of this. However, in this case it is appropriate. What else would you call a group who rule in the name of the people but who hatch plans to murder Americans in order to further a political, nationalist agenda?

According to the book in this article, beginning in 1959 the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Military drew up plans which “included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.” The goal, of course, was to overthrow the dangerous communist leader, Fidel Castro.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

Code named Operation Northwoods, these plans also involved blaming any potential disasters occurring during the launch of the first American manned space flight on Castro.

These signed plans were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, by Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer in March 1962. Apparently they were rejected by the civilian leadership. However, the military continued to mastermind ‘pretext’ plans to lead a US overthrow of Cuba through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.

The thing that really gets me is that Americans today are naive or stupid enough to believe anything the government, especially the military tells them. The military and intelligence bureaucracies in general are pyramid organizations controlled by corrupt Machiavellian-types. They operate in secret without public accountability. We know that they consume trillions of dollars in public funds, but we never know what they do. Now we know a little more of what they’re up to. A little more that can be added to the long litany of criminality that we do already know about: assassinations, lies, deception, inhumanity, injustice, and corruption. Who knows what will come out in another 40 years? Is there any reason to believe anything has changed? Given the recent history of crimes suggested in the Enron scandal, the Florida election fraud, and the botched coup in Venezuela, I don’t think so.

the old stuff