In Tuesday's snapshot, we addressed the xenophobia in the New York Times' "China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom" and you can also see Zachary Keck (The Diplomat) and Ivan Eland (Antiwar.com) for two others refuting the xenophobic claims.
The thing about xenophobic claims is that it makes some people want to call them out. It makes others want to right the record. Press TV went digging and came up with a report about some Americans profiting from the war and the oil. They note Peter Galbraith but that's old news for most Americans. Of greater interest would probably be this section:
A report by Kurdistan’s Lvin Magazine
published in February documents the involvement of several retired US
generals and politicians in Kurdish oil deals. Those named include Jay
Garner, a retired US army lieutenant general. He was appointed in 2003
as the director of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian
Assistance for Iraq. James Jones, a former US national security advisor
and a retired US marine corps general. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US
ambassador to the United Nations under President George Bush. He was
also a US ambassador to Iraq. And former British Prime Minister, Tony
Blair.
Though little damage could be done to Zalmay Khalilzad's image -- at this rate a bust for kiddie porn would be a step up for Khalilzad -- but Jay Garner's never gotten the criticism many who did far less have. In part because Jay's made himself so available for the fairy tale projects like Charles Ferguson's No End In Sight. War Hawks (on the right and left) could -- and many did -- join hands over that documentary which doesn't argue the Iraq War was illegal or even wrong. No, the film argues that the Iraq War just wasn't well planned -- it, in effect, advocates for more such wars, just better planned. The one that's most uncomfortable for Barack is James Jones who served as his National Security Advisor from January 2009 to October 2010.
It'll be interesting to see whether the same 'concern' results from this news. Will there be a New York Times piece? Will all the reactionaries from Donald Trump to Jon Stewart scream themselves silly as they did last week over China?
Of course not.
The organization PEN e-mailed the following alert:
Back in 2002, John Poindexter proposed a "Total Information
Awareness" program to spy on everybody, including all American
citizens, complete with a creepy totalitarian logo. The American
people were repulsed, Congress defunded the idea in 2003, and they
dropped it, or so we thought.
Instead they just went ahead and did everything they planned on doing
anyway, except in total secrecy. There was another protest during the
Bush administration when it came to light that wiretaps capable of
capturing the totality of U.S. phone communications had been placed
in telecom switching centers. It did not even slow them down,
probably because most Republicans were too partisan to complain.
Now we learn that under the cheerleading of President Obama, these
eavedropping functions have been extended to virtually all the
biggest internet hubs.
Don't Spy On US Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1118.php
The New York Times published a scathing editorial last night.
The New Yorker magazine made the critical point that capturing
so-called metadata is at least as bad as, and may be worse than,
listening to individual phone calls or reading individual emails. If
anything, metadata is a more efficient way to track every movement
and association of every American citizen without exception. Indeed,
the same datataps in place can listen to all the content as well, all
in total secrecy, and who's to stop them?
We are. If only you will speak out now. Demand that our government
stop its rampant abuse of government secrecy to perpetrate the most
pervasive eavesdropping outrage in American history.
Don't Spy On US Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1118.php
And after you submit the action page above, we invite you to request
the beautiful, new "Don't Spy on US" bumper sticker we rush designed
overnight, and will get printed and shipped as fast as we can. As
with all our policy message stickers you can have one for no charge,
not even shipping, just by submitting the form.
"Don't Spy on Us" bumper stickers:
http://www.peaceteam.net/all_bumper_stickers.php
Of course, if you can make a donation of any amount, that is what
makes it possible for us to send free stickers to anyone who cannot
make a contribution right now.
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
Contributions to The People's Email Network are not tax-deductible
for federal income tax purposes.
You may know PEN because of Suzanne Nossel. (I actually have nothing to disclose. I've never met Nossel.)
Suzanne's been targeted by whack jobs twice. First up, Jodie Evans. The gold digger from CODEPINK -- whom money will never wash clean -- attacked Suzanne for heading Amnesty because she . . .
Well that's the problem with Jodie Evans. When she's not lying, she's not coherent. Madeline Albright had some idiotic campaign (I do know Mad Maddie) and Evans tried to link Nossel to it. The charge was that Nossel was supporting the Afghanistan War. Evans couldn't make a case for her charges but that was her allegation against Nossel.
Was Nossel right or wrong, what did she actually do, what was she actually saying? Maybe Jodie can get sober and try writing again?
In the meantime, Jodie and CODEPINK pimped for the Iraq War. Scott Horton (Antiwar.com), October 8, 2009:
Imagine my shock at seeing this story in the Christian Science Monitor describing the new, post-trip-to-Afghanistan-position of Code Pink’s co-founder and most famous leader, Medea Benjamin.
"’We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but
we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline,’ says Benjamin.
‘That’s where we have opened ourselves, being here, to some other
possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of
the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, ‘If the
U.S. troops left the country, would collapse. We’d go into civil
war.’ A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider
that.’"
"Did you just read that right?" said one half of my brain to the
other. Is this reporting accurate? Has Code Pink turned pro-war?
Well, the interview took place, as scheduled, and this is the result:
Use the link to hear the interview or read the transcript. Then ask yourself why Jodie Evans thinks she has any high ground to stand on with regards to Afghanistan.
Reza Fiyouzat called Jodie and CODEPINK out at Dissident Voice in November 2008 for a number of reasons including the support of Barack which led Jodie to reply in the thread that they had criticized Hillary Clinton! That's what whores do, they go after a Secretary of State and refuse to call out a sitting president. Paola called her out quickly:
As regards Obama, code pink enthusiastically supported him and
ecstatically hailed his election as a a victory for the peace movement:
These are your own words from your website:
Like the rest of the world, CODEPINK is emboldened by Sen. Barack Obama’s victory in a historic presidential election.
The victory came through the hard work of millions within the
progressive peace and justice movement within the past six years,
bolstered by a values shift among the majority of Americans and their
growing demand and faith in change — including an end to war. It is a
victory for the movement and inspiration for further change!
“Americans have stood up to say they know the cost of war in lives,
dignity and money,” said Jodie Evans, CODEPINK cofounder. “Being against
war is the winning decision. They are ready for change. War is so
over.”
http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=4508
And this is obama’s official website:
http://answercenter.barackobama.com/cgi-bin/barackobama.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=130&p_created=1176309944&p_sid=iR7ileYi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiwyJnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz
Who are Senator Obama’s bundlers?
Raising from $50,000 to $100,000: [...]
Jodie Evans (Los Angeles, CA)
Well, you don’t like Clinton. So what? You supported Obama all the same.
I Need Attention Benjamin took 5 years to heckle Barack and then gave interviews where she never called him out. Because I Need Attention needs a lot of attention.
More recently, Chris Hedges -- who put the false link between Iraq and 9-11 on the front page of the New York Times in October 2001 with a story that was laughable when it was published and has only exploded in his face since -- wrote one of the self-rightoeus columns he's so famous for doing when he can attack a woman. He referred to her time at Amnesty and called her a pawn. (At least he got it right that she's not with Amnesty. The last week in May, Sarah Flounders went on Black Agenda Radio and was raging against Nossel and her position at Amnesty -- apparently unaware that Nossel left in January.)
Chris got nasty the way he does on women and raged that he was leaving PEN and not coming back, he was taking his toys and going home.
I don't know Suzanne Nossel. But I do know she's got a strong column entitled "Obama's Surveillance State." And note that it's "Obama's Surveillance State," not "the Obama administration" or "Hillary Clinton" or any of the other childish and immature tactics CODEPINK and Chris Hedges use.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
i hate the war
the ballet
