September 22, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THUG NATION

Under the Bush administration, detaining or killing people is easier than diplomacy. We know that Bush avoids protests by using so-called "Free Speech Zones." In several instances during this administration people have been forced to leave Bush events because they dared to wear a message on a T-shirt opposing the administration. Things in Iraq are dramatically worse. The rules of engagement basically give carte blanche to American forces to execute anyone who is deemed a threat, even if that person is unarmed. This article by Robert Parry is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Besides the periodic controversies over U.S. military killings of unarmed Iraqis and Afghanis, the Bush administration also is facing a challenge from the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki over the U.S. Embassy’s reliance on Blackwater security contractors despite their reputation as crude and murderous bullies.

On Sept. 16, Blackwater gunmen accompanying a U.S. diplomatic convoy apparently sensed an ambush and opened fire, spraying a busy Baghdad square with bullets. Eyewitness accounts, including from an Iraqi police officer, indicated that the Blackwater team apparently overreacted to a car moving into the square and killed at least 11 people.

“Blackwater has no respect for the Iraqi people,” an Iraqi Interior Ministry official told the Washington Post. “They consider Iraqis like animals, although actually I think they may have more respect for animals. We have seen what they do in the streets. When they’re not shooting, they’re throwing water bottles at people and calling them names. If you are terrifying a child or an elderly woman, or you are killing an innocent civilian who is riding in his car, isn’t that terrorism?” [Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2007]

THE DISASTER OF FREE MARKET CAPITALISM

This article is a discussion of Naomi Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine and what is called "disaster capitalism." There is strong evidence that the wave of predatory capitalism we see now is guaranteed to produce a series of disasters, including war, inequality, and environmental degradation. This article by John Gray is at www.alternet.org:

As Klein sees it, the social breakdowns that have accompanied neo-liberal economic policies are not the result of incompetence or mismanagement. They are integral to the free-market project, which can only advance against a background of disasters. At times, writing in a populist vein that echoes her first book No Logo, published seven years ago, Klein seems to suggest that these disasters are manufactured as part of a deliberate policy framed by corporations with hidden influence in government. Her more considered view, which is also more plausible, is that disaster is part of the normal functioning of the type of capitalism we have today: "An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, ecological or financial. The appetite for easy, short-term profits offered by purely speculative investment has turned the stock, currency and real estate markets into crisis-creation machines, as the Asian financial crisis, the Mexican peso crisis and the dotcom collapse all demonstrate."