Beyond The Fringe

As reported at Now Public, the United Stupids have denied a visa to one of the recent Lancet Iraqi death study researchers, Dr. Riyadh Lafta, who will instead present his talk in Canada.

An Iraqi medical school professor will talk about the death count in Iraq after the 2003 invasion: causes, types of victims, categories of violence, and other health indicators.

Dr. Riyadh Lafta will be in North America to collaborate with University of Washington colleagues on a research project to document elevated levels of pediatric cancers in Basra, Iraq. The project was conceived as part of a sister university relationship between Basra Univ and the UW. The research project is supported by a grant from the Puget Sound Partners, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative.

Dr. Riyadh Lafta, who teaches medicine at Baghdad’s Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine, co-authored the October 2006 Lancet article that estimated more than 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the the American-led invasion in 2003.

Lafta will speak at a public gathering at Simon Fraser University’s Wosk Centre (580 W Hastings in downtown Vancouver BC) on Friday, April 20, at 7 pm.

His talk will be video cast to the UW’s Kane Hall at the same time with the opportunity for interactive audience participation.

Dr. Lafta will be a guest of Simon Fraser University, in part because the U.S. State Department would not issue him a visa to come to the United States.

The public is welcome at either location.

For more information:
Tim Takaro, MD, MPH, Simon Fraser Faculty of Health Sciences
ttakaro at sfu dot ca
604-268-7186

Amy Hagopian, PhD, UW School of Public Health
hagopian at u dot washington dot edu
206-616-4989, 685-3676 or Ian Maki 206-543-6020

The ABC records the members of the Coalition of the Gobbling’s infantile reactions to the Lancet study:

GEORGE W. BUSH: I don’t consider it to be a credible report.

JOHN HOWARD: I don’t believe that Johns Hopkins research, I don’t.

(more…)

This story from the UK Independent, on the 600,000 and more Iraqi casualties slaughtered by the Coalition of the Gobbling, received pathetically little coverage in the dailies.

As it’s such a significant and horrific admission on the part of the United Kooks, we’ll help air the facts some more. The Coalition of the Gobbling is certainly way ahead of Saddam’s efforts at this stage and is not looking like letting up. But what the hell - when the West kills en masse, it’s only collateral damage and a necessary side effect of creating “democracy” - yet when some tinpot dictator created and coddled by the West till he’s served his purpose does it, it’s genocide.

British backtrack on Iraq death toll
By Jill Lawless

British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.

The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.

The study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. The study estimated that 601,027 of those deaths were from violence.

The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95 per cent certain that the real number of deaths lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636.

The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was disputed by some experts, and rejected by the US and British governments. But the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as “robust” and “close to best practice”. Another official said it was “a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones”.

At a two day summit in Riyadh aimed at pushing the Arab peace plan for Israhell and Palestine, in a significant about face, the Sauds have rounded on the incompetent Coalition of the Gobbling warmongers.

Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is a close US ally, slammed Wednesday the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh.

“In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war,” Abdullah said.

He also said that Arab nations, which are planning to revive a five-year-old Middle East peace plan at the summit, would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

What will be the reaction of the United Stupids to such impudence? The original neocon plan called for the transformation of the middle east using Saudia as a pivot to democratise the region, with Egypt the eventual prize. Saudia is thus throwing a big spanner in the works by projecting its power and biting the hand that feeds it.

Saudi leaders are keen to promote the beleaguered Sunni cause in Iraq, which is presently endangered by overwhelming Shite power, including within the Shite dominated and United Stupids’ backed puppet Iraqi government. The summit is expected to adopt a resolution calling for more power sharing with the former Sunni elite.

The Iraqi government has immediately dug in its heels, telling the Sauds they

did not need a “diktat” from the Arabs on how to amend its constitution and boost national reconciliation.

The Arab League wants to resume negotiations with Israhell, offering normalisation for acceptance of terms including withdrawal of all land occupied in 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state and return of Palestinian refugees.

Despite mutterings from Israeli officials about the Arab plan being a “starting point”, it is likely that rightwing Israhelli zealots who, with the support of Doodoo bush and the Israhelli first lobby, will insist on retaining lands they have stolen through warfare. Acceptance of the right of return of refugees driven from their land in the Nakba catastrophe in 1948 is seen by the Israhelli rightwing, religious nuts and fanatical settler movement as tantamount to destruction of their pariah apartheid state, despite the clear legal basis for such return under international law.

At the summit, Hamas is calling for an end to the western boycott of Palestine and is seeking financial support from the Arab states to the tune of $2.7b.

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal projected firmness, warning Israhell

not to expect any further diplomatic overtures, telling a British newspaper: “What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done.”

“If Israel refuses [the plan], that means it doesn’t want peace and it places everything back in the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers, but in the hands of the lords of war.”

And that, my friends, will suit the Netanyahooites and religious zealots down to the ground, to the detriment of Israhell’s future security and prosperity.

The Coalition of the Gobbling has now set the scene for massive exploitation by its vampirish associates of Iraq’s oil without so much as a murmur from the Iraqi puppet government.

The law is set to be approved in March.

On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s cabinet in Baghdad approved the draft of the new Iraqi oil law. The government regards it as “a major national project”. The key point of the law is that Iraq’s immense oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy “Federal Oil and Gas Council” boasting “a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq”. That is, nothing less than predominantly US Big Oil executives.

The law represents no less than institutionalized raping and pillaging of Iraq’s oil wealth. It represents the death knell of nationalized (from 1972 to 1975) Iraqi resources, now replaced by production sharing agreements (PSAs) - which translate into savage privatization and monster profit rates of up to 75% for (basically US) Big Oil. Sixty-five of Iraq’s roughly 80 oilfields already known will be offered for Big Oil to exploit. As if this were not enough, the law reduces in practice the role of Baghdad to a minimum. Oil wealth, in theory, will be distributed directly to Kurds in the north, Shi’ites in the south and Sunnis in the center. For all practical purposes, Iraq will be partitioned into three statelets. Most of the country’s reserves are in the Shi’ite-dominated south, while the Kurdish north holds the best prospects for future drilling.

The approval of the draft law by the fractious 275-member Iraqi Parliament, in March, will be a mere formality. Hussain al-Shahristani, Iraq’s oil minister, is beaming. So is dodgy Barnham Salih: a Kurd, committed cheerleader of the US invasion and occupation, then deputy prime minister, big PSA fan, and head of a committee that was debating the law.

But there was not much to be debated. The law was in essence drafted, behind locked doors, by a US consulting firm hired by the Bush administration and then carefully retouched by Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund, former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz’ World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. It’s virtually a US law (its original language is English, not Arabic).

Scandalously, Iraqi public opinion had absolute no knowledge of it - not to mention the overwhelming majority of Parliament members. Were this to be a truly representative Iraqi government, any change to the legislation concerning the highly sensitive question of oil wealth would have to be approved by a popular referendum.

In real life, Iraq’s vital national interests are in the hands of a small bunch of highly impressionable (or downright corrupt) technocrats. Ministries are no more than political party feuds; the national interest is never considered, only private, ethnic and sectarian interests. Corruption and theft are endemic. Big Oil will profit handsomely - and long-term, 30 years minimum, with fabulous rates of return - from a former developing-world stalwart methodically devastated into failed-state status.

Once the insurgents, guerillas and Iraqi public become aware of the impending oil rape by the Coalition of the Gobbling, it is quite possible that there will be a strategic unification and uprising against the common colonialist enemy which no Doodoo surge will be able to suppress.

The Iraqi prize - its oil - is about to come under Coalition of the Gobbling companies’ control.

… Now comes new evidence of the big prize in Iraq that rarely gets mentioned at White House briefings.

A proposed new Iraqi oil and gas law began circulating last week among that country’s top government leaders and was quickly leaked to various Internet sites - before it has even been presented to the Iraqi parliament.

Under the proposed law, Iraq’s immense oil reserves would not simply be opened to foreign oil exploration, as many had expected. Amazingly, executives from those companies would actually be given seats on a new Federal Oil and Gas Council that would control all of Iraq’s reserves.

In other words, Chevron, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum and the other Western oil giants could end up on the board of directors of the Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council, while Iraq’s own national oil company would become just another competitor.

The new law would grant the council virtually all power to develop policies and plans for undeveloped oil fields and to review and change all exploration and production contracts.

Since most of Iraq’s 73 proven petroleum fields have yet to be developed, the new council would instantly become a world energy powerhouse.

“We’re talking about trillions of dollars of oil that are at stake,” said Raed Jarrar, an independent Iraqi journalist and blogger who obtained an Arabic copy of the draft law and posted an English-language translation on his Web site over the weekend.

More recently from Raed’s blog:

My contacts in the Iraqi government, in addition to some fellow Iraqi bloggers, confirmed that the oil law draft was submitted to the Council of Ministers last week, and is expected to reach to the Council of Representatives (the Parliament) very soon after it gets approved in the Council of Ministers. The law will be considered active in case it gets approved by the parliament.

For a clear analysis of the Coalition of the Gobbling’s proposed endgame for the current episode of the Great Game and its plans for global oil dominance, read William Clark’s stunning article of December 06.

Whorestralia is cursed until Sunday this week by the presence of arch-neocontard Cheney. We are wondering what shennanigans the torturer has up his sleeve prior to the next US election.

It is understood he said Democrats in the US were riding public opposition to the war that could end up prejudicing their leadership credentials. He said the mood could easily shift if there was another terrorist attack.

Bin Laden would benefit immensely from the gungho Repubes winning the next US elections, as unlike the more sophisticated diplomatic Dems, the militaristic Repubes fall into his traps so easily. Thus, whether there’s to be a false flag op (and at this point because of Doodoo’s inveterate deceit, there would be a lot of people suspecting another attack would be just that) or the genuine article, the United Stupid of Vice well knows the lovely game of fear which he has played with his swooning public so successfully in the past.

Torquemada also alludes to his dark desires for future Iranian misadventures, endorsing

… U.S. Republican Senator John McCain’s view that the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran.

“They appear to be pursuing the development of nuclear weapons.”

In his interview with the Australian, the ghoul hinted at possible timing for aggression by the United Stupids.

“You get various estimates of where the point of no return is,” Mr Cheney said, identifying nuclear terrorism as the greatest threat to the world. “Is it when they possess weapons or does it come sooner, when they have mastered the technology but perhaps not yet produced fissile material for weapons?”

Using Whorestralia as a sounding board, Cheney ‘appears’ to be geeing the world up to expect a military response to Iran’s supposed but in fact non-evident plans, ostensibly to further long held evil ambitions for US world hegemony.

Howard conflates Iraq with Iran, jumping on the torturer’s coat tails to paint by numbers the picture of the next imperial ‘enemy’.

“I don’t think there would be a country whose influence and potential clout would be more enhanced in that part of the world than Iran’s would be if the coalition was defeated in Iraq,” Mr Howard said.

“I don’t think you can separate the two.”

“Iran would be emboldened if the coalition was defeated in Iraq.”

“And that would be seen to have occurred if there was a significant coalition withdrawal.”

Yet Doodoo has burned his political capital and credibility in Iraq - its highly unlikely at this juncture that the Dems will permit him to whack Iran without some very convincing (non-manufactured) evidence of real intent by Iran to produce nukes, especially when they are currently attempting to remove Doodoo’s authorisation for the war against Iraq. Neither Russia nor China are keen on military ’solutions’ so the US would need to ignore the UN Security Council unilaterally.

However, if the torturer and his fellow deluded neoziocontards do get their way for more perks and profits for good mates Helliburton etc., the already stretched US would be fighting on three fronts which conceivably would swiftly become several more. US prestige, its economy and hegemony would decline more rapidly, and other economies, including ours, would follow. Al Qaeda would rejoice again as another trap yielded fruit - it would be bolstered with a flood of newly inspired fresh recruits. If Whorestralia supported the US militarily in its brand new adventures, naturally our own security would be further endangered. As our dollar dropped, foreign companies would have a field day buying up our mineral and other resources. Our wages and purchasing power would plummet as inflation and interest rates took off whilst our economy and wealth distribution statistics would lurch toward parity with our third world neighbours.

Gold, silver, oil and other fuels, essential goods and services would do comparatively well.

Little Johnny channels his gruesome hero by taking his usual vicious hard line against 85 Sri Lankan refugee boat people, who are accused of sabotaging their boat motor to avoid being turned back home on the high seas to probable death. Sri Lanka is the country where suicide bombing was invented, with a tripartite conflict going back years between the government, which disappears dissidents, thus provoking hatred and retaliation amongst the locals, insurgents in the south and guerillas in the north.

Read Michael Ondaatje’s “Anil’s Ghost” for sensational insight into the plight of the impoverished locals of Sri Lanka.

With the planned withdrawal of all Danish troops by August 07, the Coalition of the Gobbling will lose another member entirely. Lithuania is considering removing its forces too. Bliar’s concurrent announcement of a reduction in troop numbers by one quarter is greeted with approval from Basrawis. The wily rodent and Bliar spin the troop reduction as success. More likely Bliar can read the writing on the wall and may be looking to avoid further confrontation with an angry local populace which would shred any tattered vestige of a chance he has remaining of claiming justification for the ill-considered Iraqi misadventure. Why were the Brit troops withdrawn and not redeployed to support Doodoo’s surge?

“We welcome any withdrawal of British forces from inside the centre of the city,” said Hakim al-Mayahi, head of the Basra provincial security council, which has had a fractious relationship with the British.

An AFP reporter who visited British forces in Basra and at the airbase last month found both under almost daily mortar attack from militias in the city.

…

“Iraqi forces in Basra are ready and able to ensure security. Every Basrawi wishes to see all British forces leaving at one time not gradually,” he said.

And Razzaq Nasir, a 58-year-old oil worker, was categoric: “There is no need for them. The British forces in Basra are a big problem for the Iraqi forces and for ordinary Basrawis.”

The Whorestralian prime monster, with the repugnant Lon Cheney visit upon us, sticks with his plans to retain the present level of troops and send more military trainers to Iraq and indicates he is considering more troops for Afghanistan, the central battleground of the Great Game and historical graveyard of empires.

But as British columnist Gwynne Dyer noted, Australian leaders long ago realized that the United States is the only country that might be willing to come to their aid in an emergency. Keeping the White House happy is an Australian priority.“If the United States invaded Mars,” Dyer wrote, “Australia would send a battalion along to guard the supply depot.”

Ugh.

Kevvie presses the political advantage:

KEVIN RUDD: If it’s ok in Mr Howard’s view for the Danes to pull out some 460 troops from Iraq, why is it not ok for 520 Australian troops to be brought home to Australia, some time next year?

Well, mate, maybe little Johnny is thinking of all those lovely barbies at Crawford he’d miss out on in his retirement.

Meanwhile, Prodi resigns when the Italian Senate refuses to back his pro-US foreign policy initiatives.

Rome was plunged into political turmoil after Mr Prodi failed to muster enough Senate votes to approve the continuing commitment to Italian troop deployments in Afghanistan and the expansion of a US military base at Vicenza.

Unfortunately Prodi’s resignation and consequent electoral turmoil may prove a gift to the way out there and round the bend Berlusconi camp if Prodi can’t rally support among the multitudinous factions that adorn Italian Parliament.

Devoid of the belated political nous exhibited by Bliar, Doodoo refuses to get the message that Iraqis really don’t want the United Stupids in their country and haven’t for years. Yet according to Cheney, the Dems won’t be able to prevent Doodoo’s surge.

Iraqi woman, Riverbend, horrified by an alleged coverup of rape by the pseudo-democratic Iraqi government and proposed execution of three Iraqi women, points out the COG was defeated long ago:

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse. Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.”

Our embarrassing foreign minister, Downer, has done it again, brazenly out-toadying his lackey leader, lecturing those uncharitable, churlish Europeans and their media who might dare to question the wisdom of the illegal invasion of Iraq, despite Americans questioning it wholeheartedly themselves, both in government and on the street. Shades of Lon Cheney’s “Be careful what you say” post 911 imperial decree.

“In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Alexander Downer urged European politicians to weigh up the consequences of their words before they “leap out there and attack America”.

Mr Downer gave warning that criticism of America’s conduct in Iraq could inadvertently provide an incentive for terrorist attacks.

“People in the West, and not only in Europe, blame America for a suicide bomber in a market in Baghdad,” he said.

“That only encourages more horrific behaviour. Every time there is an atrocity committed, it is implicitly America’s fault, so why not commit some more atrocities and put even more pressure on America?”
….

“The more you can get media denigration of America, the more that the war against terrorism is seen to be an indictment of America, the better for those who started this war.”

Media critical of America is good for those who started the war - the neoziocons? What is Downer trying to propaganderise here? Does he think Al Qaeda somehow started the war in Iraq by waving a magic wand over Bush, Cheney and the rest of the warmongering, psychotic loons?

Unbeknownst to the hapless, witless Downer, his fat foot once more in his mouth, he has given the Iraqi insurgents some wonderful encouragement - according to him, their supposed strategy is a winner. Fat chance that Europeans or the media are going to stop criticising America because of Downer’s abysmal pseudo-logic.

Perhaps in his inadequate amphibian brain, only non-American atrocities count as *real* atrocities and have no logical, reasonable cause at all, or is he automagically blaming the victims, attempting to shift the blame from the actual perpetrators of the war against Iraq? This disconnect is already rife amongst braindead flagwavers - to question the empire, no matter how brutal, self-serving and self-defeating it is, is treasonous - so everything is always someone else’s fault, not the perps’. The simple undeniable fact is that there would not *be* suicide bombers in Baghdad markets if the Coalition of the Gobbling hadn’t stupidly, wilfully and illegally invaded Iraq. Are we meant to forget this by withholding criticism of the fools who deliberately and with malice aforethought created the mess which has engendered such gruesome and ongoing outcomes? To collude with such madness through silence one would have to be mad oneself.

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it - and so the neoziotards are hoping for the next stop already - Iran.

The rampage in Iraq will end when it becomes clear the “surge” and escalated aerial bombings aren’t working either and the Americans leave, as the Iraqis have wanted for years and as now the overwhelming majority of Americans also want, regardless or in spite of further loss of imperial face. And *that*, with any luck, will discourage the disgraceful warmongers from further misadventurism for fun and profit in the region for quite some time.

My response to a person who shall remain nameless on reading this blog, albeit that he now claims he was in a drunken state.

> stocks ? this is not informed speculation. this is not speculation.
>this is propaganda.

Perhaps you might attempt to point out specific logical fallacies and errors of fact rather than drawing such a long bow and diminishing at the outset your potential for successful argument.

> when i read drivel like this then i know how easy it is
> to make a hamas.

As you may know, Hamas is considered by some to be the by product of the first Israhelli invasion of Lebanon. The goddess forbid you should be so effective.

Yet Hamas became the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people … now if the US govt is so keen on creating democracy, why aren’t they assisting Hamas? and why are the best mates and confidants of the Bush crime family, the tyrannical Sauds?

Rhetorical questions with obvious answers.

Hamas is now a convenience for Israhell which can be used and scapegoated in the same way Arafat was used … to justify putting off a peace settlement whilst their hideous illegal ghetto wall is completed around their illegal settlements and more land is grabbed.

(more…)

Brzezinski, grand master of the Great Game and unrepetant original architect of the rise of Bin Laden and Afghanistan mess, has thrown the book at the mad chimp, warning that he is seeking a pretext to whack Iran. Ironic really considering Brzezinski’s own Machiavellian manipulations.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration, delivered a scathing critique of the war in Iraq and warned that the Bush administration’s policy was leading inevitably to a war with Iran, with incalculable consequences for US imperialism in the Middle East and internationally.Brzezinski, who opposed the March 2003 invasion and has publicly denounced the war as a colossal foreign policy blunder, began his remarks on what he called the “war of choice” in Iraq by characterizing it as “a historic, strategic and moral calamity.”

“Undertaken under false assumptions,” he continued, “it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean principles and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.”

Brzezinski derided Bush’s talk of a “decisive ideological struggle” against radical Islam as “simplistic and demagogic,” and called it a “mythical historical narrative” employed to justify a “protracted and potentially expanding war.”

“To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.

Most stunning and disturbing was his description of a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran.” It would, he suggested, involve “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” [Emphasis added].

This was an unmistakable warning to the US Congress, replete with quotation marks to discount the “defensive” nature of such military action, that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext for an attack on Iran. Although he did not explicitly say so, Brzezinski came close to suggesting that the White House was capable of manufacturing a provocation—including a possible terrorist attack within the US—to provide the casus belli for war.

More of Brzezinski’s testimony here …

Libby is on the block.

Yet, even as Bush was professing his curiosity and calling for anyone with information to step forward, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized the declassification of some secrets about the alleged Iraqi nuclear program and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters.

Bush’s behind-the-scenes role came into clearer focus later with the release of a court document citing testimony from Libby, who claimed Bush approved the selective release of intelligence in July 2003 to counter growing complaints that Bush had hyped evidence about Iraq’s pursuit of yellowcake uranium in Niger.

Libby testified that he was told by Cheney that Bush had approved a plan in which Libby would tell a specific New York Times reporter about the CIA’s secret analysis, according to a court filing by special prosecutor Fitzgerald.”

Impeachment soon, surely?

The zookeepers have let Georgie the ape run rampant again. Instead of learning from his mistakes, the chimp is now compounding them, adding more troops to the raging civil war in Iraq.

And now he is raising the antes and threatening Iran and Syria, wrongly accusing them of fuelling the insurgency and terrorists. When one considers that Bush is supporting the Shiite dominated Iraqi parliament, does he think Iran (Shiites) would really be supplying Sunnis?

One can have no other conclusion except that the chimp is completely insane and this is his last ditch attempt to save his name in history. It won’t work - Iraqis want the United Stupids out.

The zookeepers - the despicable Christian/Zionist/Wahhabi neocons and corporate moguls who manipulate the chimp all have their own variously crazy, selfish greedy interests at heart and not the welfare of American or Middle East citizens.

Perpetual war suits the wealthy - and the Sauds, who have recently invested in much gold, will be most happy to see both their new acquisitions and the price of oil rise with the uncertainty that comes with imperial madness.

The United Stupids kidnapping Iranian diplomats at an Iraqi consulate is a clear provocation and act of war. No reaction much from the Iranians - they know the game being played. Juan Cole’s commentary is interesting.

As we predicted, following the madman’s rant, the POG and oil rose and the USD dropped, and resources rose markedly on Friday to match.

Fortunately we are already stoked to the brim with lovely, cheaply acquired preciouses which should thrive nicely in the coming week. This week we accumulated more THXO. THX is way overdue for an upgrade. Phil Crabbe exercised a stack of options at 47.5 leading us to think that he expects a large premium on that price within the near future. Additionally, THX is not going ahead with its U spinoff which means oppies will now be back in favour. We haven’t converted any of ours, though many may have.

We have also bought into a stunning little company, AWS, which has been refinanced by Westpac to expand with its water device stores across Australia. This could have very significant potential given the timing for water awareness, the company’s recently opened new stores and handsome increases in sales already experienced. A 2006 profit of $1m plus is forecast, which should lead the sp over 10c, making our investment a multibagger in a very short period.

We also acuumulated more of our dead cert, EVZ, which is due some news about more contracts with big companies, and more INL which sp should improve soon with news about zinc concentrate shipments and initial profitability estimates.

An exciting week to come! RRS still hasn’t announced its JV, but news on that should be very soon, with President Muse alluding to foreign mining investment the other day. We expect our holdings in NWR, NWRO, GAU, CTO, CQT, NAV, NAVO, SAU, TRF, TRFO and even BAR to soar.

We’ll take a profit from some of them and buy back later in a couple of months.

When will Americans wake up to the subversion and manipulation of their country by the Zionist ratbags?

The power of think tanks to shape public discussion and ultimately public policy was demonstrated before the Iraq war when public perceptions concerning Iraq were informed by a well-funded network of think tanks connected in many intimate ways to a pro-Israel political lobby that actively supported Bush’s Iraq policy.

The same actors are already marshaling against the report and the report’s subdued yet explicit linking of wider Middle East problems with Iraq:

“There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.”

The report directly connects Israel to Iraq in a way that unsettles Israel’s supporters, stating,

“The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict…”

Because of this, we already see, among others, Israel and its foreign policy advocates in America piling on criticism. Some are starting to deconstruct the report as a defeatist document produced by a spineless liberal establishment.

The critics have something in common, a high regard for Israel and the notion that Israeli foreign policy objectives are always the same as US foreign policy objectives.

In the case of Iraq, this equation is patently false. The United States is suffering from Bush’s adventure in Iraq and Israel is benefiting from the chaos resulting from it.

This report deserves to be read and discussed rather than blithely dismissed. The critics may howl, yet none dare call it treason.”

With Karpinski willing to testify, happily Rummie’s future looks very bleak. Karma is sweet.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison’s former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain’s El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

“The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: “Make sure this is accomplished”,” she told Saturday’s El Pais.

Horrifying footage of pathological US soldiers taunting Iraqi children with bottles of water - clean water is in very short supply in Iraq because of the bombing of water treatment plants by the septics and lack of rebuilding since. Why aren’t these depraved monsters in jail?