Letter Never Sent

Damn, damn, damn. I did it again. I had an entire entry ready and then I accidently opened another page. I tried to hit ‘back’ and everything was gone. *groan* I do that way too much. Note to self: save often.

Anyway, I posted a link the other day to an article which describes the buildup of a longterm US military presence in Afghanistan. This is hardly surprising to anyone with eyes and ears. The whole of the war on terrorism is nothing but a pretext for expanding American power, influence, and dominance over the rest of the world. The machiavellian US Establishment finds Afghanistan a particularly tasty morsel for a number of reasons.

First and foremost are the immense reserves of fossil fuels including oil and vast supplies of natural gas. This would be an obvious boon to Bush’s owners who run the US oil and energy industries. Secondly, Central Asia has enormous strategic importance for the US war machine. Afghanistan is right in the middle of where the US would like to have a foothold. Afghanistan shares a tiny border with China who they would like to keep an eye on. It shares a border with Iran who the US would like to keep pressure on. Also an American presence in Afghanistan would create a nice expanding box around Russia with NATO pushing in from the west. Russia, I might add, has significant quantities of natural resources which American business would love to have control over. It’s an offer they can resist. The WTC attack was merely the perfect excuse. No nation would dare to openly criticize this move lest they then become accused of harboring ‘terrorists’ and end up becoming a target of this war. This is the modus operandi of the US. They used the same strategy during the Cold War in their fight against ‘communism’. Anyone who didn’t knuckle under was branded as supporting communism and would then be subject to US interference. This could include assassination, invasion, and subversion. All this under the name of freedom.

The New York Times has an article about this as well.

“Even as the air war in Afghanistan wanes and American-backed forces hunt down pockets of Al Qaeda and Taliban resistance there, the United States is preparing a military presence in Central Asia that could last for years, military officials say.”

This presence is to go with the new puppet government of Afghanistan. At the very least, if you deny the ruthless aims of the United States you cannot deny the fact that this recent action has led to large-scale destabilization in the region and to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, most of them women and children. It is likely that other governments will seize upon this idea and start their own wars against ‘terror’. In fact, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, and Israel have already done so.

The US Government must be somewhat concerned by all this talk of civilian casualties. They’ve got Afghan-born US envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, a former adviser to oil giant Unocal, out pushing the US message:

“The envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, said that “you have to weigh the risks of ending the conflict prematurely with the costs [innocent lives] of continuing it,” adding, “I have no doubt, on balance, that we will continue until we achieve our goals.”

Is the United States a terrorist organization? The definition of terrorism: “terrorism n : the systematic use of violence as a means to intimidate or coerce societies or governments” You be the judge.

Welcome to the Fatherland. This article recaps some of the incidences of in which the government has violated the protection of the 1st amendment by routinely humiliating and intimidating people. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t feel intimidated.

Political dissent can bring federal agents to your door:

“All of this speaks to the new McCarthyism, where political dissent is being equaled to treason,” Mr. Steinhardt says. “It’s a very frightening trend: that people are doing nothing more than expressing the very freedoms that we are fighting to preserve – and find themselves with the FBI at their door.”

“WASHINGTON: US military planners are preparing for a long stay in the region around Afghanistan, confirming fears about the Americans digging themselves in like in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War. American warplanes will begin arriving at an air base being built in Kyrgyzstan as early as next week in what could be the first prolonged US military presence in the former Soviet Union, a senior Pentagon official said on Thursday.

Ostensibly, the moves will allow US forces to keep looking for terrorists in Afghanistan. But the presence of US troops in the back yards of Russia and China for the long haul could cause worry to the regional countries. That the region offers the world’s largest oil and gas reserves after the Middle East gives credence to the conspiracy theories about larger US designs in the region.”

Bush Cronies Getting What They Paid For: The Rollback of Pollution Standards
Bush’s treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, was the CEO of Alcoa, one of the worst abusers of pollution standards in Texas. This is really no surprise. What a bunch of dirty rats.

“Environmental groups have been equally vehement in their support of the current regulations, saying that any relaxation would amount to the biggest rollback of the Clean Air Act since its passage 30 years ago. In addition, the attorneys general from some states in the Northeast, which often bear the brunt of pollution from industrial plants in the Midwest, plan to gather here on Tuesday to protest any changes in the regulations.”

This is not an altogether bad article and contains some interesting information on the case of Robert Hanssen. That is, if you can get past the trite psychoanalysis and the unnecessary Jerry Springer-like detail about Hanssen’s sexual proclivities. One thought I had while reading this is that fucked-up people work for the FBI. They’re either swinging-dick, beer-swilling goons or they’re straight-laced, religious freaks who get off on twisted sexual stuff. Yes, we’re in good hands.

Bush’s Enron Ties: Enron-gate?

Shortly after taking office, President Bush waged a battle against the imposition of federal price controls in California that allowed Enron to price-gouge consumers by extending the energy crisis in California, costing the state billions of dollars. Enron reported increased revenues of almost $70 billion from the previous year.

Bush also resisted attempts to crack down on Enron’s utilization of its 847 offshore subsidiaries in countries with lax banking-regulation laws. The consumer-rights watchdog organization Public Citizen alleges that some of these offshore havens helped Enron defraud its stockholders.

Moreover, while Sen. Gramm was working the Congress to pass legislation favorable to Enron (and collecting nearly $260,000 in campaign contributions from the company), his wife Wendy Gramm first was chairperson of a regulatory committee overseeing Enron’s business activities and later a paid member of that company’s board of directors. Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million, according Public Citizen. Sen. Gramm has announced his decision not to seek reelection for another term in the senate.

Brave New Web by Michael Connor of The Austin Chronicle:

When it comes to the Internet, the potential dangers suddenly seem to outweigh the benefits. McCullough forecasts grim consequences of this current trend. “I think the so-called ‘controllers of wealth and power’ have decided that this plaything [the Internet] is a sharp instrument that children shouldn’t be allowed to run and play with. The most positive aspect of it will be taken away. We will once again be relegated to the role of passive consumer instead of active citizen.”

It’s still about the oil, but I guess that doesn’t matter does it? Civilian casualties do not matter. Shredding the constitution does not matter. The fact that this is nothing but a war to promote the interests of the American establishment and the goal of American corporate-military global hegemony.

Bush Names Oil Firm Advisor as Afghan Envoy:

As an adviser for Unocal, Khalilzad drew up a risk analysis of a proposed gas pipeline from the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. He participated in talks between the oil company and Taliban officials in 1997, which were aimed at implementing a 1995 agreement to build the pipeline across western Afghanistan.

Unocal was the lead company in the formation of the Centgas consortium, whose purpose was to bring to market natural gas from the Dauletabad Field in southeastern Turkmenistan, one of the world’s largest. The $2 billion project involved a 48-inch diameter pipeline from the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border, passing near the cities of Herat and Kandahar, crossing into Pakistan near Quetta and linking with existing pipelines at Multan. An additional $600 million extension to India was also under consideration.

More innocent blood spilt in Afghanistan:

“The bombing is very intense and very heavy. Many people have died. The United States should stop bombing. They are all civilians in this area,” Tani tribe elder Ghazi Nawaz Tani was quoted as saying.

The Bush drug discount card for the elderly gives old people small savings So this is how they take care of a serious problem? Either have a government provide real assistance or let the free market dictate the price. Something needs to be done. Patents for essential medications are a burden on the people who can least afford it. Drug patents should be 2-3 years at most if at all.

The U.S. media is ignoring the killings of more than 4000 civilians in Afghanistan in the dispicable ‘war on terrorism’. That’s about 200+ tons of human blood, bone, and gristle. People with children, and families who they cared about. If you had sympathy for the people who died in the World Trade Center then how could you not have sympathy for the people who died at the hands of our own military? I think the main difference is that Americans care about the WTC victims more because they realize that in some way it is possible for they themselves to be the victims of inhumanity. I think most of the outrage and anger over the attacks stems from this point and can be the only explanation for the lack of consideration for others who have had their life’s reduced to blood and rubble.

Thanks to Politechbot I found real audio of Lawrence Lessig on the Diane Rehm Show. Lessig, a Stanford law professor, is the author of The Future of Ideas and is on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (donate to them!) which fights in court to help maintain our online freedom. He talks about the bleak future of the internet that is certain if people do not fight to keep their freedoms. He also goes into some of the problems that powerful copyright and patent law has caused in restricting innovation and freedom. At one point, Hilary Rosen of the RIAA phones in and tries to get the music industry’s message across.

Transferrable copyrights will kill the culture of the United States. While copyright is necessary in some degree to safeguard the livelihood of artists and creators, perpetual and transferrable copyrights and patents will strangle the cultural exchange and the natural process of building on the work of others. Ideas should not be commodified.

I have finally migrated from blogger. I was very happy with them, but it is time I stood on my own two feet. Especially if they decide to start charging for their wonderful service or if they have server trouble I won’t be left out in the cold unable to update the site. The site now uses Movable Type which thus far seems to be an excellent, free package. Kudos to them. All of the files are stored on my space and I have complete control over almost every aspect. It was not all that difficult to set up. It took me a few hours to get everything set up exactly the way I wanted it. I still have to get the rest of the pages to go with this one as they use a different design. The eventual goal is to redesign the site so that I only have to change a few things to completely change the look.

Keeping Hitler Alive from David Grenier:

The first pretext given is that we are protecting Iraq’s neighbors. Rarely does the U.S. media report that all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran (who was at war with Iraq through the 80s) and Kuwait condemn the U.S. bombing raids and call for a lifting of sanctions in Iraq. The second pretext given is that we are protecting the Kurds in Northern Iraq, which as shown above is simply not true. Not only do we allow the Turks to attack the very Kurds we are protecting, but we may have covertly delivered the Kurdish leader Ocalan to them. Turkey was reluctant to let the United States and Britian use their air bases to bomb Iraq. They were also searching for Ocalan who they claimed was a terrorist. Suddenly Ocalan shows up in Nigeria and is arrested, flown to Turkey, tried and condemned. The U.S./UK bombing went on as planned. Now it’s possible that Turkey has an international spy network with offices in Nigeria, or it’s possible that the CIA flushed out Ocalan in exchange for the use of Turkish military facilities. We probably won’t know for decades.