Bhutto's assassination

The world continues to unravel under George Bush's savage US leadership.

The vast chain of events unleashed by his abysmally cock-eyed response to 9/11 now includes the death of Benazir Bhutto, his lame, preemptive, red-flag-raising, apology of an excuse notwithstanding "she knew that her return to Pakistan earlier this year put her life at risk."

And such aftershocks of his administration's excesses will continue to be felt in America and the world.

Only a goliath-sized Democratic leader of Jimmy Carter's moral stature and Bill Clinton's intellectual grasp can possibly mop and clean up the debacle GWB leaves behind - Hillary, Obama, Edwards, know and be clear now, you have to be in it for the tough long haul, not just the photo-ops.

War criminals take their cue from the US!

Interesting thought raised by Mary-Jane Deeb on PBS NewsHour (re. the Algerian bombings, http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/2007/12/12/20071212_algiers28.mp3) on 12/12, when responding to a question put to her by Margaret Warner on the extent of support to Islam in Algeria. According to Mary-Jane, and I'm paraphrasing, "the support is variously estimated at 15-30%, but

• only a minority commit violent acts,
  
• others may support violent action but not themselves kill,
  
• yet others may give money for Islamic causes but do not want to know what these people are doing, and then
  
• you have some who are neutral, and
  
• finally at the other end of the spectrum those who are actually critical' of these actions"

This distribution bears a remarkable similarity to opinions on Waterboarding, destruction of those tapes by the CIA, or for that matter, any of the other brazenly criminal political events that have taken place in our country in the recent past and been aped in various parts of the world (remember we set ourselves as the 1st world, the leader, torchbearer, the gold standard, but that's another story in there..)

We could say for example

• there are just a minority who actually participate in waterboarding, torture, wars of aggression (___name your crime) like 'Bush/Cheney and their minions' (love that phrase, heard it on the snippet on 'Climate change hearings' on PBS yesterday),
  
• there are others who approve of such behavior but look the other way,
  
• there are still others who give money for such right-wing neo-con causes that support these activities,
  
• others who are neutral (the apathetic public), and then
  
• there are those who are critical but probably afraid to speak out, and
  
• lastly there are brave souls who are critical and do speak out...

Just being an armchair political scientist I would hazard a guess that this same distribution (the old Bell curve) of support for all kinds of political causes can be found in all parts of the world - Afghanistan, erstwhile Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon... YET, YET.. we have bombed two countries out of shape, and are blithely pondering annhilation of a third using the proclivities of the small violent minority in these countries for despicable causes, scapegoating in the process entire nations, cultures and religions as being EVIL, while we keep excusing ourselves of one atrocity after another conducted by our violent minority by saying - oh those were the bad apples in Abu Ghraib, oh this was a military error in the white phosphorous gassing of Faluja, oh that third was just enhanced military questioning while giving swim lessons...

And when you think that their violent minority consists of "non-state" actors, mostly disabled, disillusioned, handicapped out-of-work dregs of their society (http://disabilitytechnews.anhnses.com/archives/150 ), while our violent minority consists of the supposedly lawful (I say, supposedly, remembering the Bush/Gore tug-of-war) representatives of our government that have managed to hijack our systems of checks and balances and have wrapped the flag around themselves and their criminality, then you can understand the enormity of the world's problems!

Barry Bonds, Alberto Gonzales and Perjury

It makes me want to PUKE!

We have spilt the blood of close to 4,000 of the brightest and best US military, with another 50,000-plus permanently physically wounded (loss of toes and fingers not counted!), uncounted mental casualties, bombed, slaughtered, raped, rendered homeless refugees of upto 85 to 655 thousand Iraqi dead (depending upon who’s doing the counting), another 2 million Iraqi wounded and displaced and YET - YET, the various commissions relating to the intelligence gathering or failure thereof, Abu Ghraib, NSA, FISA, CIA torture, Attorney purges (related and unrelated to the war) have been systematically lied to both by ex-Attorney General and White House personnel, false stories planted and leaked, key evidence has been suppressed lost, stolen, shredded, disks wiped clean, WH personnel have refused sub poenas, the President and the ex-Attorney General have both claimed loss of memory on specific questions, the President and the VP have consistently refused to appear under oath…

I have been diligently following these stories even though I lack a degree in law, politics, or have no degree in sewage cleansing, but I blinked for a second and the next thing I hear is - Barry Bonds is indicted on perjury!

I’m sorry I don’t understand sports; so I don’t understand what it is that he did that was even one-tenth as bad as the story I’d been following the past 7 years! Can someone please explain to me how this country can spend resources on a baseball commission to study the extent of drug abuse amongst players, list players who do not appear before the commission as drug abusers by default for non-appearance, and indict on perjury those who have appeared but claimed innocence when that is exactly what this country’s President, VP, ex-AG, and the entire WH gang have been doing for the past 8 years!!

Oh, thank you, I forgot that’s why you need a Harvard Law degree and an MBA! Poor Barry Bonds!

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442_pf.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003