http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8606
(NUMEROUS Supporting Links at Source URL)

February 27, 2006

Moment of Truth

Neocons jump ship

by Justin Raimondo

One has only to look at the headlines coming out of Iraq to see that the moment of truth has arrived: the Iraqi government is warning of an "endless civil war"; mosques across Iraq, including the "Golden Mosque" in Samarra, were targeted in a wave of sectarian attacks, and 60 were killed in just one day, including two U.S. soldiers; and the Pentagon is reporting that not a single Iraqi battalion can stand on its own, while insurgent attacks are at an all-time high. Heck, even George W. Bush is admitting that everything is not coming up roses.

Not Bill Kristol, however: according to the little Lenin of the neocons,

"We have not had a serious three year effort to fight a war in Iraq, as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out."

And all this time you thought American troops were fighting and dying in a deadly serious way. Alas, you were wrong, because, you see, the Bush administration was never serious about implementing the neocon agenda of "liberating" the entire Middle East by force of arms. The fact that they are even talking about getting out – standing down as the Iraqis stand up, as the president puts it – is proof enough of that. The neoconservatives' goal has never been to end the war, but to extend it. All this time, they have been urging the administration "Faster, please!" – yet the slowdown is perceptible, and, given the present brick wall we have run up against, bound to become more noticeable. There is now a bipartisan consensus that the war in Iraq – or at least our direct involvement in it – must be allowed to run down. Where the "debate" – if it can be called that – takes place is around the question of just how to accomplish that.

In their extremism on this question, the neocons stand out, isolated and alone: No pasaran! Like the Third Period Stalinists of the 1930s, however, their allies and sympathizers are having a hard time swallowing the party line, and there are significant defections in the ranks. The most important is William F. Buckley, Jr., the former enfant terrible of the conservative movement and founder of National Review magazine, the literary hub of right-wing activism since the late 1950s. In a piece for NR, the "pope" of the American Right declared:

"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. … Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols."

The fabric of Iraqi society is crumbling in the grip of America's iron fist, an eventuality predicted in this space and by anyone with even a perfunctory knowledge of the region. And now that the inevitable has come to pass, all the former optimists, the beaters of the war drums, are pounding out a different tune. The air is filled with their confessions, their disappointment, their regrets, melding with the anguished cries of the wounded and dying on the battlefields of Iraq in a melody of pain and remonstrance. Buckley consoles himself with the thought that a few uniquely evil and powerful "ice men" are responsible for frustrating the "latent" desire of the Iraqis to turn their country into a replica of Kansas. After all, who could have known that what Buckley calls the "postulates" wouldn't work in this case? As he puts it:

"One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.

"The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymakers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.

The first postulate is based on – what? The answer is: nothing. Neither the history of the region, nor the proximity of Iraq to Iran, is taken into account by this axiom, which seems merely a projection of the American penchant for normalcy. In universalizing characteristics that may perhaps be unique to Americans, we have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of our hollow "victory" and visited ruin upon our own interests and prestige, wrecking an entire country in the process.

I question the reality of the second postulate: according to various accounts of the internal policymaking debate during the run-up to the invasion, no one in the government predicted the insurgency, let alone devised a plan for coping with it. They all thought it would be, as one neocon apparatchik enthused, a "cakewalk." Since Buckley was complicit in that delusion, and allowed his magazine to be taken over by the devotees of this fever dream, he is in no position to recognize any of this, and, besides, the question is now what to do about it:

"The administration has, now, to cope with failure. It can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia. The failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that violence and antidemocratic movements always prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail – in the absence of interventionist measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are not prepared to take? It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn't work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism."

In short: keep the faith. The Democratist faith, that is. Just because the Iraqi experiment in social engineering has imploded into what one American general calls the worst strategic disaster in our history is no reason to abandon the interventionist dogma that we can and should export "democracy" at gunpoint. Buckley's phraseology masks the real issue: while the failure in Iraq doesn't prove that "violence and anti-democratic movements always prevail," what it does prove is that interventionism leads to unintended and potentially horrific consequences – and that the "blowback" from our efforts is likely to prove deadlier and far costlier than staying home and minding our own business in the first place.

We are losing, avers Buckley, on account of our humanitarianism, embodied in our reluctance to use such "interventionist measures" as were deployed against Hitler and Hirohito: we are not quite ready, in short, to punish those ungrateful and rebellious objects of our "liberation" by duplicating the bombing of Dresden or the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kristol would call this faintheartedness, and the lack of these sorts of measures lies behind his imputation of a lack of "seriousness" on the part of the U.S. Buckley quails at such a prospect, but Kristol doesn't flinch from implicitly calling for mass murder. It is the main difference between "mainstream" conservatism and its mutant offspring of the neoconservative persuasion.

Speaking of mutant offspring, the neocon theoretician Francis Fukuyama, whose famous thesis that capital-H History has "ended" was the leitmotif of neoconservative thought in the early 1990s, has also defected from the ranks of the War Party, albeit proclaiming his own innocence in the process. Without so much as mentioning that his name adorned the various joint statements put out by the neocons in the run-up to war, he now seeks to separate himself from the implosion of the neoconservative vision in Iraq and the disaster unfolding:

"As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shi'ite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point."

The only proper reaction to this is: Now he tells us?

Like Buckley, there is no acknowledgment of his own personal error or responsibility, no apology for misleading his readers and those who took – and still take – him seriously. There is only an effort to save the "postulates" that regulated their delusionary dogma. Fukuyama stands in fear of a recent Pew poll that portends a return by the American people to "isolationism," defined by the pollsters as a policy of "minding our own business." Heaven forfend that such a commonsense policy should ever prevail! The mere prospect has Buckley and Fukuyama on the barricades, poised to defend the interventionist faith.

After naming neoconservatism as the one political tendency most responsible for leading us down the path to war – albeit not naming himself as prominent among them – Fukuyama avers:

"The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a 'realistic Wilsonianism' that better matches means to ends."

It is hard to see how one could "overmilitarize" the invasion of Iraq: when Fukuyama signed statements, including newspaper advertisements, calling for the U.S. to invade, what, exactly, did he have in mind? That kind of excuse-making exudes the isolation of these Deep Thinkers from the actual material reality of the policies they recommend. This is what we mean by "chickenhawks" – not necessarily those who, like Dick Cheney, "had other priorities in the '60s than military service," but those who lack the courage to face the reality of the policies they are advocating.

There is much more to be said of Fukuyama's disingenuous and highly self-exculpatory non-confession, but that will have to wait for another day. Let us cut to the chase, however, and examine his own explanation for the split in the neoconservative ranks that has now separated him from his erstwhile comrades. It all began, he writes, with a misunderstanding and misapplication of his "End of History" thesis:

"'The End of History,' … presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support."

When Fukuyama published his "endist" piece in The National Interest, he was congratulated by, I think, Irving Kristol for importing Hegel into the discussion of foreign policy. Now the neocons have good reason to regret that particular innovation: it has given their schismatic protégé the ideological cover he needs to slink away from the scene of the crime, leaving them to take all the blame. The forces of capital-H History, says Fukuyama, move with imperceptible slowness: the Leninist Kristol (Junior) and his neocon cadre were too impatient, too militaristic, too Bolshevik in their methods. Leave it to Fukuyama and more mild-mannered Mensheviks like Buckley to cobble together a more "realistic Wilsonianism" that will serve the War Party in its future endeavors.

The problem with neoconservatism – which is, today, almost exclusively concerned with foreign policy issues – is not its means but its ends. Aside from being doomed to failure, the very idea of America as a "benevolent world hegemon" is inherently subversive of the national character and our system of constitutional limited government. At this point, the Buckley-Fukuyama project of saving neoconservatism from itself has probably come too late to have any appreciable effect on the American peoples' reconversion to the dreaded doctrine of "isolationism." The neocons cannot save their discredited and bloodstained ideology; they can only save certain individual neocons from spending a good deal of time behind bars. And I can see that Fukuyama, at any rate, while renouncing neoconservatism, has joined the effort to save one of its chief practitioners – one Scooter Libby – from being sent from the White House to the Big House.

In the end, these guys are sticking together in the knowledge that if they don't, they will most certainly hang together.

"...Chertoff turns out to have his sticky fingers in every wedge of the post 9-11 American pie..."

http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva02252006.html

Weekend Edition
February 25 / 26, 2006

Outsourcing National Security

Chertoff Strikes Again

By LILA RAJIVA

President Bush has approved a deal selling control of six major U.S. Ports to an Arab company, Dubai Ports World, for $6.8bn. DP World, a state-owned business based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), bought out London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. which runs major commercial operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.(1)

This has the two parties in an upside down tizzy with the Democrats screaming about national security and foreigners and the Republicans - at least of the free trader sort - hurling back epithets about anti-Arabism and racism.

It's enough to make one take to....well, port ...

Port Whine:

The free traders mutter peevishly that behind this port-entous row is only a host of misunderstandings.

The ports will not be owned by the Dubai company, they point out. Only the contracts to manage them will go to it. And many of the top executives at DP World are American. So are the port workers. The US Coast Guard and US Customs Service will still be in charge of security, as they are at all US ports. The management change won't affect that..

They point out also that there was nothing secretive about the deal. In fact, it was widely covered in the media because of a bidding war between DP World and a Singapore owned company. And they note that it's not unique. China and Singapore already run terminals at Los Angeles and Oakland respectively.

Dubai is an ally of the United States. Doesn't that count?

And what about free trade? What happens to US competitiveness if we can't get the best companies to work here?

Finally, according to Homeland czar, Michael Chertoff, DP World passed all the US security requirements. Doesn't that matter? (2)

Port Holes:

No, says Republican Representative Peter King, of New York. US regulatory requirements "relate entirely to how the company carries out its procedures, but it doesn't go to who they hire or how they hire people." (3)

And anyway, what are those security requirements, Mr. Chertoff? Can we the people take a peek?

But Brer Chertoff isn't talking because, says he, the information is classified and can only be divulged to Congress at secret hearings.

Oh....like those torture pictures.....

But for the rest of us plebs, here's some unclassified, quite public information that might help Mr. King in his reflections on the im-port of ex-porting security...

The UAE was the home of two of the hijackers involved in the 9-11 attacks. The FBI found that the UAE's banking system filtered much of the money used for the operational planning before the attacks and that many of the hijackers traveled to the United States through the UAE. (4)

Dubai is the base (with Saudi Arabia) for the Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadist group that is implicated in numerous terrorist attacks in India.(5)

A key figure in the illegal acquisition of nuclear weapons by A. Q. Khan - the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb--was B.S.A. Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman living in Dubai whom President Bush himself called Dr. Khan's "deputy and chief financial officer and money launderer." Tahir set up a front company, SMB Computers, and reportedly placed an order for centrifuge parts with a Malaysian company, claiming they were for the oil and gas industry. The actual order was said to have been placed by a British company in Dubai in which Tahir had a partner. (6)

And, the UAE is not only - at the very minimum - the backdrop for nuclear smuggling, it is also implicated in the traffic of South Asian youngsters into domestic slavery. The Bush administration has made the traffic of human beings a big priority. Then why bring a state-owned company from a country with this record right to our shores ? (7)

And now, a senior DP World executive (director of operations for Europe and Latin America), David C. Sanborn of Virginia, has become the new administrator of the Maritime Administration of the Transportation Department. (8)

Does any of this pass the smell test?

Talk about giving terrorists safe ... er ... harbor.

Port-o-Reekin':

Actually, forget the Arabs. The resume of the principal American running this show isn't exactly a confidence builder.

Michael Chertoff was one of the leading architects of the Bush Administration's legal strategies in the War on Terror. It was he who authorized the detainment of thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants - including Middle Eastern Jews--without charges. (9)

As head of the DOJ's criminal division, Chertoff was the one who advised the CIA how far to go in interrogations. (10) We now know how far that was. Apparently it's quite kosher for innocent bystanders snatched up at random in street sweeps to be stripped, savaged by dogs and sodomized, but a company owned by a state elbow-deep in terrorist money laundering is absolutely the only one we can consider when it comes to watching the gateways to the country.

And here's another tidbit: Chertoff was the co-author, along with Viet Dinh, of the USA PATRIOT Act that became law on October 26, 2001. (11) That's right. Keeping tabs on obscure peace activists, spying on Joe Citizen's summer reading at the library, and monitoring your Internet chat buddy in Europe - that's all fair game. But for god's sake, respect the right to compete in the US market of one of the leading perches of world-wide jihad.

And the plot thickens.....

Chertoff turns out to have his sticky fingers in every wedge of the post 9-11 American pie.

It was he who supervised the 9-11 investigation. Chertoff was the senior Justice Department official on duty at the F.B.I. command center right after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was he who identified the terrorists with almost miraculous speed and linked them instantaneously to Osama bin Laden and it was he who pushed to meld into a seamless whole, domestic surveillance and foreign espionage - which until then had been kept strictly apart.(12)

And while in charge of the 9-11 investigation, it was Chertoff who defended Dr. Magdy el-Amir, a prominent New Jersey neurologist at the center of a terrorist web in Jersey City, alleged to have siphoned millions straight to Osama. Chertoff, it is said, may have shielded el- Amir from criminal prosecution. (13)

It was Chertoff who called the shots in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9-11 suspects, a trial which some experts believe was an important step in an effort to subject federal trials to "ad hoc exemptions of whatever laws (be they constitutional, criminal code, or rules of procedure) that will suit their purposes" and whose long term goal is to "cripple and dismantle the federal courts as we know them." Remember that Chertoff is a member of the Federalist Society, a far-right group rabidly intent on dismantling civil protections at home and discarding international law abroad. Moussaoui and even his attorneys were not allowed to receive all the documents pertinent to the case because of "national security" interests; witnesses were allowed to appear in court behind screens; and for the first time in history a Fourth Circuit hearing was closed. All this fits into a larger pattern of "secret warrants (or no warrants), secret hearings denying bail, secret trials, and now secret appellate court arguments. Next, we can expect the Supreme Court to be closed..." (14)

Finally, keep in mind that it was Chertoff on whose watch the Katrina relief effort was so badly botched. At the time, he even had the gall to assert that no one had ever predicted a disaster of this magnitude when in fact warnings had issued for years from experts and government agencies, including FEMA itself, which identified a Katrina-type disaster as one of the three most likely to hit the US. (14)

Shades of the 9-11 warnings.

With citizens like these, why worry about swarthy foreigners?

Orchestrated anti-Muslim propaganda all over the media; yet another Osama tape threatening an attack on the US; escalating threats of sanctions against Iran ... and now contractors cozy with terrorists at our gates.....doesn't this all sound so familiar?

Forget DP World. What we need is an investigation into Michael Chertoff.


Lila Rajiva is a free-lance journalist and author of "The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American media," (Monthly Review Press). She can be reached at: lrajiva@hotmail.com


(1) "Arab firm to oversee 6 US Ports," Ted Bridis, AP, February 11, 2006.

(2) "Chertoff Defends Arab Firm Control of US Ports," MSNBC February 19, 2006

(3) "More Objections to Port Takeover by Arab Entity," AP, February 20, 2006

(4) National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch7.htm

(5) "Why terrorists struck Bangalore," B. Raman, Rediff.com, December 28, 2005. See also, International Terrorism Monitor: Paper No. 8 - Terrorist Strike in Bangalore, B. Raman, South Asia Analysis Group, December 29, 2005.

(6) "On the trail of the black market bombs," BBC, February 12, 2004.

(7) "Far From The Finish Line," Azmat Abba, Herald, June 2005 describes the abuse of underage camel jockeys.

(8) Bridis, AP, Feb, 11, 2006.

(9) "Amid Praise, Doubts About Nominee's Post-9/11 Role," Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia, Washington Post, January 31, 2005.

(10) "Confirmation hearings open for Homeland Security nominee," Mimi Hall, USA TODAY, February 1, 2005

(11) "Homeland top job to Patriot Act architect," AFP, January 13, 2005.

(12) "Crackdown," Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker, November 5, 2001.

(13) "Trail of Terror," Chris Hansen and Ann Curry, NBC's Dateline, August 2002. For Chertoff's role, see The Record (Bergen County, NJ) December 11, 1998.

(14) "Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's Top Gremlin," Elaine Cassel, Counterpunch, June 11, 2003.

http://dissidentvoice.org/Feb06/Drolette24.htm

Well, I Was Wondering Whose Government It Was

by Mark Drolette

February 24, 2006

Even a blind Bush produces a kernel of truth once in a while.

While trying to defend the selling off of yet another piece of what little remains of America -- the port operations deal with the United Arab Emirates -- George W. said: “The more people learn about the transaction that has been scrutinized and approved by my government, the more they’ll be comforted that our ports will be secure.” (Associated Press, Ted Bridis, 02/23/06)

Didja catch the error? Of course you did, because, unlike Dubya, you know a thing or two about how our system works. You know, like checks and balances, laws, that sort of thing.

He said “my” government.

Oops -- his bad. What he really meant to say, of course, was “Dick and Daddy’s government.”

So this is where we are now, though it was really inevitable: With a slip of the forked tongue, Bush has let the cat out of the bag and let us all know, in no uncertain terms, that he views himself as emperor, king, the chosen one, above it all. It’s his government, his country, his world.

Only the little people follow the law.

Really, though, it wasn’t an error he said it, even though it was. Lest I continue in this vein and start sounding like the very vermin I am criticizing, what I mean to say is that no one, no how, no way who knows even a rudimentary thing about the Constitution and the structure of the United States government would ever make such an error. And a real president, or a decent fake one, even? Never. EVER. It just wouldn’t happen.

So, then, yes, it was a boo-boo in the sense that if Dubya had enough of a brain to realize his statement might not play well even in Peoria, hindsight might tell him he goofed with his Freudian slip. This is why it is good to be King George: he doesn’t make mistakes, so he needn’t worry about yucky stuff like self-awareness.

But, no, it wasn’t a mistake in the sense that Bush really believes it is his government. And why wouldn’t he? After all, he IS the chosen one. Chosen by people like Poppy Bush and Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, in conjunction with the invaluable aid of choosing mechanisms like the Supreme Court and electronic voting machines.

As for the Constitution, he and his gang have clearly demonstrated they all view America’s most hallowed document as but a musty old albatross. In fact, I’d bet good money Bush has never even read it. For one thing, to him it’s just a “goddamned piece of paper.” For another, it’s a goddamned piece of paper with words on it, and we all know how hinky he gets when he has to try to tackle those things.

It has been kind of fun, though, watching the fascist Republicans (redundant) try to wrap their warped brains around this whole UAE-ports thing. Here’s their very leader, the infallible, resolute, “decisive” (love that one; Golden Gate jumpers are decisive, too), commander-in-chief, the one whose jackboots they have slavishly licked for over four years, the one in whose name they have joyfully, rabidly labeled all Muslims and Arabs (and dissenters) as terrorists, just doin’ only what comes natural-like for a Bush -- making another buck (or several million) for himself or close pals, all other considerations be damned -- and suddenly these sickophants are left standing, to paraphrase an old friend, full-face into the wind with their zippers down and their Cheneys in their hands.

Excuse me while I giggles a bit.

I think the whole slimy mess can be summed up simply:

American port operations in any foreign hands: bad idea.

Slamming the deal just because Arabs are involved: bad form.

Selling anything to a foreign government with terrorist connections: bad news.

I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again: The jackals controlling America are interested in two things and two things only: power and profits. Power and profits. Power and profits. Two P or not two P; that is never in question. (With apologies to Will S.)

And the Bush family is the worst of the lot. If there’s anything anywhere they want, they genuinely feel entitled to it and will do anything -- anything -- to make sure they get it now or will have access to it later. There’s not a single one of ‘em worth a spit, either, yet their sense of privilege is astounding, and their contempt for anyone who is not in their classless class complete.

The entire Bush clan, going back generations, is shot through with corruption and utter immorality, and the snow job they’ve done on the American public for decades while stealthily selling or stealing the country’s resources -- OUR resources -- is one for the books. Filled with rap sheets.

It’s almost perversely refreshing, then, that Dubya, in his own clueless way, is openly talkin’ ‘bout my gov-gov-government. Because it sure ain’t ours anymore and hasn’t been for a very long time and won’t be again, either, unless we find a way to yank America back from the death grip he and his fellow looters have on it.

We can only hope that when/if that happens, we’ll still own some pieces of it.


Mark Drolette is a political satirist/commentator who lives in Sacramento, California. He can be reached at: mdrolette@comcast.net. Copyright © 2006 Mark Drolette.

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=243
(Supporting Links at Source URL)

Askariya Mosque Bombing: Another Milestone on the Straussian Neocon Road to Total War

Thursday February 23rd 2006, 9:57 am





Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a darling of the Council on Foreign Relations, tells the corporate media the “insurgents are trying ‘everything’ to foment civil war as reprisal attacks followed yesterday’s bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, sacred to Shiite Muslims,” according to Bloomberg. “Anti-democratic forces have tried everything to push the country into a civil war and sectarian violence.” On the latter, Zebari is absolutely correct, although the “extremists” are not Saddam partisans but rather agents and operatives of the Straussian neocons.

Tariq al-Hashemi, leader of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, released a statement spelling out the obvious: Iraqis should not be “dragged [into] a civil war as nobody will win,” nobody that is except the Jabotinsky Zionists in Israel and the Straussian neocons in the United States who are determined to destroy Islamic and Arab society and culture. Unfortunately, both Sunni and Shia Iraqis are falling for the latest provocation, killing each other in numbers and fomenting warfare between religious sects, as Muslims in Europe and across the Middle East and Africa fell for the Jyllands-Posten cartoon provocation engineered by the Straussian neocons, thus convincing many Europeans and Americans that Muslims have a violent predisposition. As if one cue, James Jeffrey of the State Department blamed “al-Qaeda in Iraq” and its dead leader, Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, for the bombing, thus following the Straussian neocon script and putting the incident in a propaganda context the masses will understand.

It still remains unexplained why Sunni “insurgents” would bomb a sacred mosque containing the remains of Imam Ali al-Hadi, who died in 868 A.D., and his son Imam Hassan al-Askari, who died in 874 A.D, both descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Obviously, this is a calculated attack on a Shia pilgrimage site, designed to enrage the Shia and pit them against the Sunni, a completely boneheaded move on the part of the Sunni resistance since it will create far more problems for them than it will solve. In fact, Shia mobs have already attacked Sunni mosques, murdered imams, and are likely in the process of slaughtering random Sunnis on Baghdad street corners. Logic in Bushzarro world dictates that in order to unite Iraq and eject the foreign invaders, the resistance must first enrage and alienate the majority of the people in the country, who are Shi’ites. Of course, in America and Europe, increasing numbers of people believe Arabs and Muslims are irrational and dangerously emotional and thus the unlikely prospect Sunni “insurgents” blew up the al-Askari Golden Mosque in Samarra is not only plausible for them, it is the only acceptable explanation.

As well, from a strategic perspective, a religious civil war in Iraq makes perfect sense as the Straussian neocons prepare to attack Iran. If the Sunnis and Shia are busy killing each other, it will be more difficult to rally them to fight against the Anglo-American forces in Iraq, especially after the planned shock and awe campaign against Iran, now considered inevitable. In fact, it is not unreasonable to consider the bombing of the Imam ‘Ali al-Hadi and Imam Hasan Al-’Askari mosque in Samarra as a milestone on the road to total war in the Muslim Middle East, a bellwether ominously indicating the decimation of Iran is on schedule, as the Straussian neocons, firmly in control of foreign policy, will not abandon their long held desire to foment a “clash of civilizations” and usher in decades of strife and misery and thus nudge the world a bit closer to the horrific prospect of nuclear Armageddon.

ABSTRACT FROM SPACEWAR.COM: "Google Inc. has banned SpaceWar.com, a news site covering military space. Reasons for the ban by Google are unclear. The company did not communicate with Space.TV Corp., the owner of SpaceWar.com, prior to its action, and Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment. Space.TV Corp is consulting with legal advisers in the United States and Australia, where production of the company's Web sites is conducted. We consider the ban a violation of the recently enacted US-Australia Free Trade Agreement."

http://www.spacewar.com/

February 24, 2006

resistance is never futile

CYBERWARS

Google Inc. Bans Australian-based Military Space News Website

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Gerroa, Australia (SPX) Feb 24, 2006

Google Inc. has banned SPACEWAR.COM, a news site covering military space. Reasons for the ban by Google are unclear. The company did not communicate with Space.TV Corp., the owner of SPACEWAR.COM, prior to its action, and Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Google Inc.'s preferred method of banning a site is to delist its primary domain URL - www.spacewar.com - from the Google search index. Google also can reduce a site's page rank, or eliminate it entirely, as it has done to SpaceWar.com.

SpaceWar.com is owned and operated by Space.TV Corp., a Delaware registered company that publishes a range of space, science and technology Web sites.

In operation since the mid 1990s, the Space.TV network enjoys a monthly audience of more than 1 million visitors to its sites - with more than 100,000 monthly visitors to SPACEWAR.COM.

Google Inc in the wake of pressure from the Chinese government has begun blocking access to various websites deemed unfriendly to the "Boys From Beijing" (TM).

At this stage we have no evidence to suggest this is the reason why Google has banned SPACEWAR.COM. The lack of any forewarning that SPACEWAR.COM was operating in violation of Google's increasingly strict search engine compliance requirements, however, leads us to suspect the ban is politically motivated.

Google Inc.'s corporate mantra is "Do No Evil." Obviously, this is not true given Google's willingness to submit to the censorship requirements of the Chinese government.

Space.TV Corp is consulting with legal advisers in the United States and Australia, where production of the company's Web sites is conducted. We consider the ban a violation of the recently enacted US-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

Following a previous search engine compliance issue with Google, the Space.TV Corp. board of directors voted to remove and delete all links and pages that may have fallen within the area of practices deemed unacceptable by Google.

Our effort to achieve network-wide compliance with Google's requirements was completed in mid-January, and Google's army of Web robots was advised of this effort to comply.

Google Inc. is mostly operated by robotic systems agents with a brick wall between its human customers and human workers.

The only method of contacting a human at Google Inc is via its AdWords business, where Google's human employees will happily sell you an advertising package to get your site listed in its top-of-page sponsored links section.

What makes this case even more interesting is Space.TV Corp, decided in November 2005 to convert 90 percent of its advertising inventory base to Google's AdSense program, which enables publishers to run Google context-based text ads.

As a result, Space.TV Corp. now receives over 50 percent of its advertising revenue from Google, and this figure is forecast to rise to 80 percent by April.

Space.TV Corp is obviously now reconsidering its position as a Google Ad Sense partner site.

However, Google is has become ow the dominant advertising network for owner operated sites, and its competitors come a very poor second in terms of available advertIsing inventory. Essentially, Web sites such as those operated by Space.TV Corp. have little choice but to run Google AdSense text ads.

The only other network advertising available in any significant volume comprises ads for Smiley Icons and ScamWare Scanning Software, which we removed almost entirely from our network sites in November 2005.

We have done our best to provide a network of news sites that are informative and diverse in opinion, and free to readers.

As President of Space.TV Corp. and the nominal publisher of our network of news sites, I am deeply concerned by the implications of Google banning SPACEWAR.COM.

We consider Google's action as an attempt to dictate what information will appear on Web sites, and what links will be allowed between Web sites. If true, this constitutes a gross abuse of market power, and it should cause our political leadership in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia to investigate fully the business operations of Google Inc.

We are deeply concerned about retaliatory action by Google Inc. against our company and its various Web sites. In recent months, we have bet the business on Google advertising revenues, which has left us dangerously exposed to major revenue losses should Google cancel our AdSense contract, and delay payments and/or sue us for going public.

We ask that you communicate your concerns about Google's action in banning SPACEWAR.COM by contacdont_use_thisocal political representatives using the enclosed form letter. We also ask that you to communicate your concerns to Google's public relations officials via the following email address: press@google.com.

Simon Mansfield

President and Publisher Space.TV Corporation

Contact Details
Simon Mansfield
Publisher
Australian Office
02-4234-3841
simon@spacedaily.com


----------------


Writing To Your Senator or Political Representative

Please use a version of the following letter:


YOUR LETTER HEAD OR CONTACT DETAILS

RE: Google Blacklists worlds leading space and defense news website, www.spacewar.com

Dear Honorable Senator/Congressman/MP ......,

I am writing to ask you to investigate Google Inc's abuse of market power to destroy competition and squash free speech in America, Australia, Europe and Canada.

One of my regular news sites on the Internet - SPACEWAR.COM has been blacklisted by Google Inc. for reasons unknown.

Please visit www.spacewar.com and ask yourself if Google should hold the power to quash competition and free speech, ESPECIALLY since Google's market position is so dominant and important to the United States. The google index now feeds data to Microsoft and Yahoo and their blacklisting is not singular to the google index, but in reality reaches the very core of the market place.

Google is not a school project anymore, the index IS the American economy and the larger Internet economy throughout the world. It's regulation within the marketplace is of global importance and integral to the future economic prosperity of my country. Yours sincerely,

Your Name

Your Address

Your Phone number


--------------------

Readers can obtain contact details for their senators, congressman or political represenative via the following links organized via nations here:

Please also CC a copy to the Google press office at: press@google.com --

- US Senators:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

- US Congressman:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/

- Australian Senators:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/senators/index.htm

- Australia MPs
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/index.htm

- Canadian Readers can contact their political representatives here:
http://canada.gc.ca/directories/direct_e.html

- UK MPs and Lords can be found via here:
http://www.parliament.uk/directories/directories31.cfm

- Citizens of EU member nations can also contact European Parliament representatives via here and choosing your language of choice
http://europa.eu.int/

Again make sure you CC all email letters to Google Press Office at: press@google.com


---


ADDENDUM...

GOOGLE search 'Spacewar.com' nets the following search response:

"Sorry, no information is available for the URL spacewar.com"

'Find web pages from the site spacewar.com...'

"Your search - site:spacewar.com - did not match any documents."

ONLY pages that mention SpaceWar.com remain at this time; i.e. 'Find web pages that contain the term "spacewar.com"'

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&sa=G&q=%22spacewar.com%22

Sooo, it's not like they were never in the system... EOTS