Well, of course...

Conservatives gain in Iran polls

From Aljazeera

Conservative politicians in Iran have won a parliamentary majority after two rounds of elections, according to final results.

They had won a majority of the 208 seats decided in the first round of voting in March for the 290-member assembly.

When you make ceaseless warlike noises at a population they rally 'round the flag and the hardliners. Duh.

All this noise is electing a slate of whackadoos that will make Ahmadinejad and his crowd look like the Merry Pranksters. The state dept knows this of course. Every time Bush or McCain blast off about the evil power of Iran, it embellishes the prestige of the hardline Shia heavies in the Iranian government.

So the question is... why Bush on the side of the fiendish Ayatollahs?

Why is John McCain is aiding the terrorists?

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It Begins...

When Walamart is rationing rice, well...

All Options Are On The Table

Meanwhile, back in Mesopotamia Iraqi terrorist leader Fawzi Tarzi threatened the US with total war if the US does not cease the current round of aerial bombardments in Baghdad.

Oh, my mistake. Fawzi Tarzi is not a terrorist leader, Fawzi Tarzi is a member of the Iraqi parliament. In any event he delivered an ultimatum to the US: Knock it off, or all options are on the table.

"Let it be known that disbanding the Mehdi Army will mean the end of [Prime Minister Nuri] al-Maliki's government, and therefore the siege of Sadr City and Shula should end immediately or all options are open to us," Tarzi said. "There is a fierce military and media campaign and a dirty political conspiracy planned and supported by the occupier against the Sadr trend."

Tarzi called on humanitarian organizations and the world media to visit Sadr City to see what he described as a "humanitarian tragedy." The Baghdad neighborhood is plagued with "random airstrikes and raids," which are causing a deteriorating humanitarian situation, he said.
More than 400 people have died and 1,300 have been wounded in the attacks, Tarzi said, citing hospital figures.

Also on the warpath this weekend, Muqtadah Al-Sadr issued what he called the "last warning" yesterday, and of course whoever or whatever al Qaeda in Iraq is these days, they just declared open war on US forces and the Awakening Councils.

So that's the climate into which Condi was secretly parachuted on Sunday. The US and Iraqi forces are so in control of things that not only was Baghdad screwed down and everyone curfewed behind their own neighborhood giant concrete walls, but the entire *Green Zone* itself was declared closed.


"Such good progress!" is the report we can expect from Ms. Rice upon her return.

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Trojan Horse Journalism

Just in case there were any diehard true believers left who think there is still a shred of truth in government/media information campaigns--at least in regard to such important matters as torture and murder and aggressive war on innocent populations-- a valuable primer on Geroge W. Bush's propaganda catapult appears in Sunday's New York Times. Excerpted below, but read the whole thing.

To the public, these men [retired US generals] are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. [emphasis mine -ed]

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

While this is not a fresh category of news to anyone with half a functioning brain, it is finally and irrefutably laid out documented by the NYT.

Yup. Thank goodness we don't live in a society where the government lies, and curtails civil rights, keeps secret torture chambers, violates the Geneva convention and US law, and lines it's pocket spending all our money on weapons, and commits heinous war crimes and... oh, never mind.

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Inflation Is Everybody's Problem

Well, you'd think so. It is your problem and it is my problem but it is clearly not everybody's problem...


To the rich fucks who's game the rest of us are stuck playing it just means they're going to have to screw money out of us faster to remain as obscenely rich as they are now. Sure, and then some because they should be compensated for the time it will take them to order someone to think up new ways to do it. These are busy people. Their time is valuable. And of course we have to be screwed another hundred and forty-three percent on top of that because clearly they need to make a reasonable profit or they can't stay in business. We are not communists, after all.

No no, quite the contrary. But the economy is strong. Bush says so, so I wouldn't worry. Sure the dollar's worth half what it was when the war started. That's just temporary. Yeah. Good old American Spirit will fix it. Don't short the greenback just yet. Nah. Wait until you need a wheelbarrow full to buy a mouldy potato.




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C.I.A. ran LSD experiments on unsuspecting civilians

Groucho on acid and much, much more..




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Like Iraq? You're gonna *love* Iran

Just saw an interesting snuff film on CNN.

It was infrared footage supposedly shot recently from a UAV flying over what we're told is Baghdad. The video shows white blobs walking around in a group of six or so and some of them appear to be carrying things. It could have been women with shovels or brooms but we are told it was insurgents with Iranian weapons. The footage ends with the little blobs being blown to smithereens by a heroic Hellfire missile.

Nothing unusual there. But the voiceover was something else.

What we see here is insurgents influenced by Iran. It is believed that these weapons are from Iran, recently imported into Iraq from Iran and that Iranians have been training the insurgents in Iranian techniques. These insurgents go to Iran and are trained in the use of these Iranian weapons, then come back from Iran to attack Americans with these deadly Iranian made Iranian weapons from the Iranian terrorist bases in Iran. Sources say more deadly Iranian weapons are appearing from Iran and Iranian terrorists are...

They're selling you another war. And you stunned fucks are going to buy it.

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Good. He's dead.

Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes

When you heard about the death of Charlton Heston, I'm sure your reaction was the same as mine: what the hell kind of name is "Charlton"?

Every one of his movies was sensationalist moronic crap. He was decorated by George W. Bush who muttered something about freedom and hung a gold albatross around his neck. He was a bad actor and a puffed-up and relentless shill for a industry who's number one product is death. Yup. At Smith & Wesson, death is job one.

US foreign policy is all about guns and weapons in general of course. To have a successful business you need a product and a market for the product. The US produces weapons. Very expensive weapons. Weapons so expensive that only other countries can afford them. So the US has divided the world into consumer nations. Everyone consumes US weapons. It's more American than Coca Cola. And it makes foreign policy very easy. There are good countries and bad countries. Both consume US weapons, but here is the difference. The "good" foreign countries consume the weapons by buying them from the US "for defence" and the bad countries of course consume the weapons from the pointy end. In other words the good countries are allowed to exist as long as they pay their protection money. If they stopped paying and were to somehow become bad countries... Nice little country you got goin' here. Be a shame if something were to happen to it. Yup, a shame. A government with a nice country like this ought to be thinkin' about protectin' it, don't ya think?

Yes, a foreign policy genius like Dyba would of course worship a great American Hero like Charlie Heston who is remembered for playing a succession of imaginary supermen in overproduced Hollywood farces that the president of the United States believes were documentaries. Of course he wants to associate with a steely-jawed he-man who bravely stands up for the "rights" of gun owners (like they were oppressed pilgrim refugees). He is proud to shake the hand of such a fine American. He would applaud a man bold enough to lead a pro gun rally in the shadow of Columbine. Dubya admires his dedication to the cause of freedom, a "great partiot" as it proclaims on the NRA website. Such a man is what America is all about: a vain, stupid bully, proudly ignorant and armed to the teeth.

So he's dead. Can we pry the fucking gun out of his cold dead hands now?

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The Fall of Baghdad

Are you sure this is a good idea?

Next Wednesday is the fifth anniversary of the Fall of Baghdad. The insane president of the United States will go on tv next Wednesday and tell six impossible lies just clearing his throat before he reads another ridiculous fairy tale off the TelePrompTer screen and spends twenty minutes angrily pounding the lectern about progress in Iraq.

He has done this many, many times of course, but this time it may fall a little flat with the audience. This time he will have a very hard act to follow. Hours before he wakes up that morning Muqtada al-Sadr will have reminded the entire world that he can snap his fingers and a million people will march wherever he tells them too. TPM has the story.

Yes. al Sadr announced his plan in advance today, and Dubya and his gang will have a week to brood about it. And because of course Iraq is a democracy now as Dubya never tires of telling everyone, democratic demonstrations are protected by the Iraqi constitution. Hoist by his own rigged petard. The "government" in Iraq says no problem, we're all democratic here. As long as it is peaceful, they stressed, though what they or even the US military would do or even *could* do if a MILLION Iraqis decided to turn un-peaceful all at once was not described.

Sadr was also quite clear on what his million people will be thinking as they march peacefully along:

"The time has come to express your rejections and raise your voices loud against the unjust occupier and enemy of nations and humanity, and against the horrible massacres committed by the occupier against our honourable people," said a statement released by Sadr's office in the holy city of Najaf.

I can't wait to see how hard Dubya is going to have to buff that turd to call it a shining apple of free democracy in action, a demonstration of what wonderful things the US can accomplish with a three trillion dollar orgy of destruction and death, and a testament to the wisdom and greatness of George W. Bush.

We'll see on Wednesday I guess.


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Official US Torture Memo (not an April Fool's Joke unfortunately...)

John Yoo: Torture is self defense.

Torture was approved in the US in 2003.

Torture was approved in the US in 2003 and CNN is running stories about April Fools Jokes? Talking Points Memo, at least, is on it.

According to the US Justice Department torturing prisoners is an acceptable form of self-defense, unless you defend yourself to the point where "it shocks the conscience".

I guess he meant if it shocked the conscience to the point of the conscience's major organs failing. Or does it mean desecrating the shattered corpses or something?

I guess we can safely ignore any holier-than-thou bullshit from our American friends from now on, eh?

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Success!

Sweet, sweet success! Yes, that's what Al-Maliki is proud to announce today, after he had his ass handed to him by the Sadrists who only called off a complete revolution at the urging of Iran.

Al-Maliki said he had decided to implement a seven-point programme in Basra following "the stability and success of the security plan which achieved the aim of imposing law in the city and restoring normalcy".

The new plan includes (without noting any irony or contradictions whatsoever) boosting security forces in Basra by recruiting 10,000 new troops, restoring services, imposing a strict check on vehicles without licences, building new houses for the poor and turning government-owned palaces into tourist destinations.

God willing, of course.