Whispers from the Wild

The term “Pro-Choice” means that by its definition you’re for the legal right to choose something.  However, that has been spun by the anti-abortionists, to mean “we’re pro choosing FOR you, we aren’t pro you choosing yourself if your choice contradicts our beliefs”.

Anti abortionists don’t like the fact that what they are contains the word “anti”.  It has negative connotations, and they don’t like that.  Those sorts of people don’t like to think there might be ANYTHING negative about themselves.  So they twist it around, they call it “Pro Life” when in fact it isn’t.

With our first child less than 50 days from arriving (assuming he’s on time) I find myself with a new anger towards these people.  Andrea and I have discussed this at length, under what circumstances we would consider or rule out an abortion.  We both agree that it’s nobodies business except the parents, and it annoys me to see these right wingnuts saying that because they personally believe abortion is a sin, everyone else – regardless of circumstances – has to abide by their decision.

One of the things they deride the eastern world for is lack of choice given to women.  It’s barbaric, these wingnuts complain, while at the same time they’re trying to pass laws in the US that would prohibit abortion even in cases of rape.  That, to me, is the ultimate barbarity – to ban a woman that has been raped from having an abortion because some wingnut believes it’s a sin.  To sentence that woman to 18 years of looking daily at a reminder of her rape, just because some wingnut believes it’s a sin to have an abortion.

So for goodness sake, you anti-abortionist crowd – at least TRY to be honest.  You’re not “pro-life” because you’d keep something or someone alive when their quality of life wasn’t worth living.  You’re ANTI-ABORTIONIST.  Deal with it.

So let’s have a brief recap.

Russia invades Georgia.
Russia decides “mission accomplished” and agrees to a ceasefire
Russia refuses to withdraw until “the security situation is better”
Russia refuses to set a “timetable for withdrawal”

Sound familiar?

Well, okay, so the US never agreed to a ceasefire, but aside from that the parallels are astounding. Almost as astounding as the hypocrisy from John Bush and George McCain, both of which insist in a virtually impossible manner to separate, that Russia must immediately withdraw. The fact they both ignored Russia when it suggested the US withdraw from Iraq seems to have passed them by.

There’s been a lot of talk recently – mostly on Faux Noise – about Russia somehow being removed from the UN permanent security council for its disobedience to American interests. That will never happen. Why? Because both Russia and China – who are both permanent security council members – are worried about US aggression, both weaponwise and economical, and for Russia to be kicked off the council will require a yes vote from all the other members. While it’s unlikely that China would specifically veto the measure, their yes vote would also be required, and I can’t see that happening. Their abstention from the vote would cause it to be defeated, they HAVE to agree for it to be approved. They don’t need to veto it in order to stop it.

Living in Canada we get a lot of American TV shows and it never ceases to amaze me how many things start with “world”. There’s things like “World Baseball Series”, “World Wrestling Entertainment” and even “Worlds Wildest Police Chases”. The latter program I was watching a few nights ago. Did it have a single incident from outside the US? No. The inference is clear. The US is the world. Even though it isn’t.

We’ve also got Bush ranting on about how “the free world” is disgusted by Russia’s actions. Erm, excuse me, Mr Guantanamo Bay, Mr “imprison anyone without rights by declaring them an ‘enemy combatant’” president – what the hell do YOU know about “the free world”? You’ve taken the US from a democracy to a police state… kindly don’t lecture other people about what the “free world” would and wouldn’t do. Sure, Tibet is a stain on China, and Georgia a stain on Russia, but you CANNOT ignore the fact that both Guantanamo Bay and the internationally ILLEGAL invasion and occupation of Iraq are and continue to be a stain on the US. What makes you think you can lecture others about the “free world” and what it thinks when you continue to promote such suppression of freedom as this?

So yes, China will continue to occupy Tibet. They’ll probably say it’s “for their national protection”. Russia will continue to occupy Georgia, and will refuse to set a “timetable for withdrawal”. And both of these will continue to sound all too familiar – because they’re EXACTLY what the American Neoconservatives are doing in other parts of the world.

Years and thousands of lives after invasion, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has just released a new message to the people of Iraq:

Rebuild your OWN damn country.

From the BBC:

A senior US government auditor has called for American funding of Iraqi reconstruction projects to end.

Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said Iraq was likely to earn more than $70bn (£35bn) in oil revenues in 2008.

This, he said, meant the government was capable of funding reconstruction projects itself.

This is absolutely abominable.  A country invades another country in violation of international law, bombs the crap out of it, executes its president, brings corruption and mercenaries who are above the law and when they can’t do much more damage they turn around and say “Now it’s up to you to repair the damage we’ve done.”

It doesn’t matter to him that the money has been wasted because of Bush cronies crowding around to cream off the money.  It doesn’t matter to him that the corruption is due to no-bid contracts awarded to crooks and liars such as Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater.  All that matters to him is that Iraq’s oil revenue should be used to repair the damage.

Newsflash – you bomb a country illegally, it’s your responsibility to fix the damage.  How the hell does he get to say it’s now all Iraq’s fault?  The poor Iraqi people have been kicked when they are down so much, I’m not surprised they want to not reknew the US mandate to stay in their country.

Sadly you couldn’t make this crap up

Obama wants to withdraw troops within 16 months.  McCain says that’s wrong, because… well, because McCain says so.

Maliki says that he agrees with the plan, and even embraces it.  McCain says that’s wrong, because… well, because McCain says so.

Most Americans agree that the focus of the war on Terror should be Afghanistan, not Iraq.  McCain says that’s wrong, because… well, because McCain says so.

Is this all McCain has?  “Because I think this, everyone else is wrong”?   Sounds even more like he’s following in the steps of Bush.

McSame indeed.

When Bush came for the Al-Qaeda’s,
I remained silent;
I was not Al-Qaeda.

When they locked up the terrorists,
I remained silent;
I was not a terrorist.

When they came for the political activists,
I remained silent;
I was not a political activist.

When they came for the unpatriotic,
I remained silent;
I was not unpatriotic.

When they came for me,
There was no one left to speak out.

Is it corny to take a well known poem about those who didn’t speak out against the nazis and paraphrase it for today’s America? Not really. The associated press reports:

On June 23, 2003, Bush declared al-Marri an enemy combatant, which stripped him of those rights. Bush wrote that al-Marri possessed intelligence vital to protect national security. In his jail cell in Peoria, however, he could refuse to speak with investigators.

A military brig allowed more options. Free from the constraints of civilian law, the military could interrogate al-Marri without a lawyer, detain him without charge and hold him indefinitely. Courts have agreed the president has wide latitude to imprison people captured overseas or caught fighting against the U.S. That is what the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is for.

But al-Marri was not in Guantanamo Bay.

“The president is not a king and cannot lock people up forever in the United States based on his say-so,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer who represents al-Marri and other detainees. “Today it’s Mr. al-Marri. Tomorrow it could be you, a member of your family, someone you know. Once you allow the president to lock people up for years or even life without trial, there’s no going back.”

But most worryingly is the governments reason. From the same article:

The full appeals court is reviewing that decision and a ruling is expected soon. During arguments last year, government lawyers said the courts should give great deference to the president when the nation is at war.

“What you assert is the power of the military to seize a person in the United States, including an American citizen, on suspicion of being an enemy combatant?” Judge William B. Traxler asked.

“Yes, your honor,” Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre replied.

This is just what the Nazis did. They imprisoned those whose philosophy differed. They send them to concentration camps. They put them to death.

We now have lawyers for President Bush standing up in court and saying that the kind of behaviour everyone is horrified over when the Nazis did it is fine for President Bush purely because his country is at war. We now have an attempt to say that Bush can, at any time, without justification, strip someone of all rights and imprison them without charge or appeal for the rest of their lives, just because he believes they’re an “enemy combatant”.

Of course it’s not just Bush. It’s the government as a whole. If you make the wrong enemy, you get the equivalent of a 21st century witch hunt. How is a person imprisoned without access to any evidence against them, supposed to know how to defend themselves from their accusers? Answer: They’re not. Burn the witch. America is a Christian country.

While right wing blogs like this one trot out pseudo-military hymns (while its authors still dodge actively serving themselves) and are happy to fall in line, America strays further and further from being a “land of the free” and closer and closer to being a land where the illusion of freedom can only be maintained by saying and doing the “right patriotic” thing at the right time. Albeit a few decades late, we are finally reaching George Orwell’s vision, in a land where the populace blinds itself to the changes rather than let go of a long dead dream of what their country once was.

How long will people stay silent? Until Bush comes for them?

From the BBC:

An audit of some $8bn (£4bn) paid to US and Iraqi contractors has found that almost every payment failed to comply with US laws aimed at preventing fraud.

In one instance, $11m was paid to a US company without any record of what goods or services were provided, the US defence department audit said.

US spending of another $1.8bn in seized Iraqi assets was also poorly handled.

Why does this not come as a surprise?

Bush and his partners in crime don’t WANT accountability.  They make a nice little earner from backhanders from “appreciative” companies allowed to screw the American taxpayer by charging the taxpayer $50 for a can of soda and $5 for a toilet roll.  We all know how it works, a politician turns a blind eye to corruption and the company gives that politician an “appreciation donation”.  And it’s rife in Iraq.  Always has been in this war.

Yet try and hold them accountable, and suddenly it’s all “Executive Priviledge” and “can’t see these documents on the grounds of national security”.

It’s quite deliberate fraud on a massive scale.  Fraud against the American taxpayer, and fraud against “appropriated” money belonging to the citizens of Iraq.  Far from being liberators, the Republicans have turned America into a gigantic defrauding scam, a kind of Nigerian 419 scam of international proportions.  Taking Iraq’s money and paying it to contractors who did everything they could to avoid using it for the purposes it was meant for, and everything they could to line their own pockets with it.  They are so corrupt they aren’t even spending the money on the US Marines’ health and safety, leading to a number of Marines dying needlessly in their own showers because safety isn’t an issue for these contractors.  If it comes to a choice between safety and cost, they’ll choose cost every time.

So much for “support the troops”.

Many jobs that used to be done by the corps of engineering have been taken from them and given to contractors, and in almost all these cases instead of the efficient, complete job the army corps of engineering would have done the end result has been a half finished, half assed, double charged job that in many cases wouldn’t pass inspection in the US and hasn’t been up to the job it’s supposed to do.  How is this efficiency?  Granted, it’s draining on resources for the army to rebuild what it’s destroyed, but that’s part of the job and part of the purpose of the corps of engineering.  Instead the jobs have been given to contractors who the average American probably wouldn’t trust to resurface their car drive, and all because these contractors have known the right politician to bribe.  And it’s all taken place under the Corruptor-In-Chief “Preznident” Bush.

This is getting ridiculous.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

Source: Reuters

Firstly, America has absolutely NO jurisdiction over any other part of the world. With its opting out of the international court of justice (in case said court wants to prosecute members of the Bush administration) America has declared that no organisation or country can override its own supreme court, so what the hell does America think it’s doing trying to dictate to other countries?

Secondly, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. America is reliant on OPEC’s oil. There is still a misconception that OPEC’s reliance on America as a customer is far worse than America’s reliance on OPEC as a supplier. This was once the case, but not any more. OPEC has China, Russia, Japan and the EU as customers. Yes, it will hurt if there is an economical war between OPEC and America, but it won’t destroy OPEC. It will, however, destroy America.

Thirdly, I’ve heard it often trumpeted “When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold”. Well, not any more. The US economy isn’t #1 in the world any more, and it is seriously reliant on countries like Saudi Arabia keeping selling their oil in US dollars, trading in US dollars and most importantly pinning its currency to the US dollar. If it decides to go with the stronger Euro, America is screwed. Already, if someone in Saudi Arabia coughs about depinning the currency the US has to be rushed to hospital with severe financial respiratory distress.

Fourth, how do they intend to enforce this? Which part of “f*** you Mr Bush” which is basically what Saudi Arabia said the last time Bush went cap in hand to beg for cheaper oil, don’t they understand? So an American oil company successfully sues OPEC in the US courts – who’s going to enforce it?

And last but not least, the “support the troops” mantle so apparently important to Republicans is harmed spectacularly here. If they piss Saudi Arabia off so much that it unpins its currency and starts trading oil in the stronger Euro, that leaves all the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan stranded, as there isn’t either enough oil for fuel to fly that many home, or enough money to charter other people to do it (since the dollar would become worthless in days if Saudi Arabia, and OPEC, decide to ditch the US Dollar.

This is really a huge sign of the way America has become; litigious and blame-shifting. That it would appear to be a solution to sue someone else still comes as a more palatable option than trying to find alternatives to the reliance on oil, speaks volumes about how America has buried its head in the proverbial sand.

And to put icing on the cake, the only really stupid piece of legislation that really deserves Bush’s threatened veto and it looks as if they would override it. You couldn’t make this stuff up…

Make more pictures for your blog

It’s uncanny…

For what is probably the fifth time in the last fortnight, the BBC reports President Bush is uptalking the collapsing economy again.

President George Bush has attempted to restore confidence in the US economy, amid the deepening financial crisis.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York the President acknowledged that growth had slowed but said that the economy is basically sound.

He said the economy was “obviously going through a tough time.”

The problem is, no matter how much he denies recession is here, that doesn’t change the truth. And the truth is that years of financial mismanagement and corporate greed has driven America over the edge of the financial precipice and into a recession that’s going to outlast the Bush administration.

Predominantly the Iraq war is the worst drain on finances, given as it is top priority, priority over domestic spending and domestic future investment. When you drop a bomb, the cost of that bomb is gone. When you fire a bullet, the cost of that bullet is gone. But right across the board there is mismanagement; tax cuts when finance needs to be raised, corporations like Halliburton still allowed to tender – and win – large no-bid contracts even though they’re now based off-shore and don’t pay taxes to America. Pallets of US Dollars shipped to Iraq that then vanish without trace. Pentagon money vanishing that they can’t account for. The list goes on and on.

Bush is finally waking up to the terrifying fact that he isn’t going to be able to prop up the economy long enough to get out of office and blame the economic crash on the Democrats. The economy is already crashing, and – like many other things in his administration – now he’s facing a real, genuine crisis, he doesn’t know what to do about it.

The by now infamous tax rebates are his only apparent plan and he is refusing to accept the possibility that this plan may not work. The difficulty, as I’ve written before, is that the plan relies on the consumer using this money as disposable income and spending it, thereby putting it back into the economy, on luxury goods. That isn’t the reality at all. The reality is that most people are in debt, most have mortgage worries, and the vast proportion of people are going to use this money either for debt repayment or for saving against future mortgage or debt troubles. This means that money disappears as well, from an economic point of view – but more importantly it means that if it isn’t put back into the economy, this plan is doomed to failure.

And since President Bush doesn’t seem to have a ‘plan B’ this leaves a massive uncertainty about how bad the recession is going to be. Even if US firms refuse to see it, foreign investors haven’t, and it’s their reluctance to prop up Bush’s years of failed policy that’s speeding up the implosion.

Yet still he stands up time and time again, trying to reassure people that everything is going to be alright. Well, Mr President, I’ve got news for you. It’s NOT alright. It hasn’t been alright for many years. It’s time to plan on how to get out of the recession, not keep stubbornly arguing that you’re not in it. Nobody minds you getting wet feet, but please don’t drag the rest of the economy down into the cold depths with you.

UPDATE: Clearly the market isn’t taking any notice of what President Bush is saying. The stock market fell again sharply on the news of Bear Sterns woes.

No matter who wins the US Presidential election, there is a LOT of work for him/her from day one.  In their sheltered, foxnews-fed environment, many Americans don’t realize just how bad things are.  So here are just a few things that need to be urgently addressed the moment the new President is sworn in.

1. How America is seen by the rest of the world.  Now I’ve read the right wing blogsforhat(r)ed site for some time, and the right wing definately believe in their own superiority.  Regularly they scoff at what Europe thinks about them, and they don’t care what the rest of the world thinks either.  They seem to think there is two kinds of human on this planet, Americans and everyone else, and Americans are simply a more advanced kind of human.  Unfortunately, Bushco and the neocon foreign policy have reflected that during this decade, and whenever they’ve wanted something, they’ve taken it, over the dead bodies of anyone who got in their way.  That kind of thing destroys America’s standing in the world.  For America to mean anything other than “those damn trigger happy yanks who love invading other countries in the name of protecting their own country” to much of the rest of the world, the next President has got their work cut out for them undoing close to a decade of Bush and Neocon destruction.
2. Let’s get this straight.  It does matter what other countries think about 9/11.  American honesty is assessed on that.  And the bulk of non-US people I’ve spoken to believe 9/11 was an inside job based on the scientific evidence they’ve seen.  Calum Douglas hasn’t ever been proved wrong in his Flight 77 black box recorder investigation video, the only thing the pro-official story crowd can think to say is that the black box wasn’t the one from Flight 77.  Should it turn out that Bush and Cheney were complicit in 9/11 then this means they have lied to the American people and got away with it, and continue to get away with it.  If they can kill 3,000 US Citizens with impunity, other countries are not going to feel safe about what they could do if they felt like invading someone else.
3. America IS in recession.  The sooner that’s openly admitted, the sooner it can be tackled.  You can’t remove the disease by simply treating the symptoms on their own, and no matter how much President Bush stands up like King Canute and says “There’s no recession” – that doesn’t make it so.  McCain would like to cut taxes, and therefore domestic spending, even further.  The dollar is falling rapidly, and other countries are only going to carry the US so far before they bail.  Having spent years lobbying the government for no interference, the US Banks suddenly are lining up in Washington for government handouts to save them from their irresponsible lending and consumerism.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better, the only question is how much worse.  And that depends on being honest about the situation and working to deal with it realistically.
4. Which brings me nicely to the topic of foreign wars.  Bush and Cheney have had their pride hurt by the mess in Iraq, and now they don’t want to lose face by admitting they were wrong invading.  That’s all it’s about, now, pride.  It’s obvious Iraq isn’t going to just sign over its oil, another amendment to that bill was once again defeated in the Iraqi parliament.  Meanwhile, the war is costing  a fortune.  So far, for a war predicted to cost 60 billion dollars, Bush and Cheney have borrowed from other countries one trillion dollars.  And that’s only so far.  And only the direct monetary cost.  That doesn’t take into account the human cost, which is another 4,000 US soldiers killed and 26,000 wounded, the latter who will be a drain on the economy through healthcare.  The next president has got to stick a plug in this economic hole or any attempts at clearing up the huge recession Bush and Cheney are leaving behind them is screwed from the start.
5. Domestic Spending – You know things are bad when even what Michael Moore says about something is true.  The American healthcare system, in common with many other aspects of domestic spending, is collapsing. The private insurance companies such as Blue Cross are further fleecing the US population to line their own coffers, and dumping anyone who actually needs to claim, and the Republican party seems fine with that, for the sole reason that the government isn’t interfering.  The fact is, the government can’t afford to interfere, it doesn’t have the money to run anything on this scale itself, because it’s spending it on wars and on tax cuts to the rich.
6. Which do you prefer?  Tax and spend, or borrow and spend?  Because Bush is doing the latter.  The money he’s “giving back” in rebates this year isn’t going to save the economy, because – at his urging – we’ve all been borrowing to spend.  Now the housing market is plummeting, and most peoples houses aren’t worth the cost of the mortgages, the banks are still demanding those mortgages be paid.  That’s where the bulk of this “giving back” money will go – to paying debt.  Or to saving, for those in a position to do so.  Average Joe isn’t waiting to rush out and buy new miscellaneous consumer ‘stuff’ when he gets his money, he’s going to be trying to make it last as long as possible, and rightly so.  Since Bush is relying on this money being pumped back into the direct economy, that leaves no plan B when it fails to happen.  Which means the next President is going to have to deal with that mess too.

When you look at it, all things considered, the next President really doesn’t stand a chance.  It will take a miracle to pull America out of the mire Bush is planning to leave it with when he leaves office, and with his foreign policy alienating much of the rest of the world… miracles are going to be harder to come by than Presidential honesty.