The Freeway Blogger strikes again!

An brilliant piece of agitprop!

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Beetle Ghraib

Update: This is from a satire site. Check it out quickly before Beetle’s lawyers shut ‘em down!

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Kulak’s Woodshed

Kulak’s Woodshed is a great little club in North Hollywood CA, where singer songwriters can play. It’s all volunteer and run on a shoestring and donations. In a novel idea, they broadcast all their shows live on the Net, and archive many of them.

The City of LA, in their infinite idiocy, has decided Kulak’s needs to shell out something like $10,000 in fees in order to keep going. They need money for their worthy labor of love to continue. You can donate via PayPal. Do it now!

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Pentagon admits Iraq methods violated Geneva Convention

Which makes them war criminals, right?

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Nick Berg: Down the rabbit hole.

Nick Berg link to Zaccarias Moussaoui

U.S. officials say the FBI questioned Berg in 2002 after a computer password Berg used in college turned up in the possession of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative arrested shortly before 9/11 for his suspicious activity at a flight school in Minnesota.

The FBI said they “dismissed the connection between Berg and Moussaoui as nothing more than a college student who had been careless about protecting his password.”

But in the wake of Berg’s gruesome murder, it becomes a stranger than fiction coincidence.

However

But the three FBI visits suggest American authorities were concerned about more than Berg’s well-being. They may have had their own suspicions about what the young American was doing in Iraq.

Two e-mails Berg sent to his family and friends show he traveled widely and unguarded throughout Iraq, an unsafe practice rarely done by Westerners

Ahem, anyone traveling “widely and unguarded” in Iraq now is either a fool or well protected. From the Iraqi blogs I read, even Iraqis are nervous about travel. And why were there three FBI visits to his parents?

DailyKos reposted my article on the video, here’s some of the comments to their post.

Ever see a chicken with it’s head cut off?
It runs around frantically for a few seconds headless. A human who is traumatized - crushed, beheaded, etc  shakes violently especially in the legs while the nerves convulse. Then it shuts down. I didn’t see the video but was any of this evident? If not it’s a fake.

I did see the video. He didn’t twitch that I could see.

He was dead at the time of the decapitation.
“Dead people don’t bleed.”
—

As a digital media artist, the first thing I usually look for is accuracy, but that took several times of viewing the video.
However, after viewing it several times, it did not pass the test, it looked completely fake to me - and I was shocked that NO ONE has EVEN questioned this until now….
—

Why does the government insist Berg wasn’t in custody when their own consul said he was?

Why does CIA say it’s Zarqawi even though the speaker doesn’t have a Jordanian accent?

Why does CIA say it’s Zarqawi even though the figure doesn’t appear to have a fake leg, as Zarqawi does (according to the government’s own claims)?

My take. The conditions of his death are way murky. Much more needs to be known about him, like why he was wandering all over Iraq while the FBI was questioning his parents in the US. Why was he held by Iraqi forces? Why is the US saying they didn’t hold when it’s clear they did?

In my opinion, he was dead before he was decapitated.

Extreme revolutionary theory posits deliberately enraging the other side, assuming they will over-react, and thus drive more people to your side. Under this theory, they would want Bush re-elected, because this would increase stress and polarization in America, as well as cause more repression by the Bushies worldwide. This is precisely what a dedicated revolutionary would want, to create a crisis where revolution could happen.

<putting tinfoil hat on>
Some have implied it was a counter-operation, that Berg was murdered by US military or forces friendly to it to draw heat away from the prisoner photos and build support for the US. If so, it failed completely. I mean, if you were a US soldier in Iraq now, would you feel more secure about going outside now? I didn’t think so…
<taking tinfoil hat off>

As an aside, what the US sees as a gruesome act, is in the culture in the Middle East. Didn’t say I condoned it, just that it’s in the culture.

Saudi Arabia publicly beheaded 52 men and 1 woman for murder, rape, sodomy and drug offences in 2003.

Under extreme Sharia law, amputation of hands and feet, as well as stonings can occur.

Before we get too pious, let’s remember the US executes people too, often in ways others find grotesque and medieval.

To sum up: The beheading was a deliberate political act by extreme revolutionaries trying to provoke the US into an insane escalation of violence. It also sent US forces in the area a clear message. Just how crazy do you want to get, Uncle Sam?

Which leads to my next point.

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“The retreat of American empire is underway”, Pat Buchanan

(I linked to this yesterday, and for the first time ever, am linking to the same article two days in a row. I’m re-printing most of it. Read the whole thing. It’s quite amazing. And on-target.)

“The neoconservative hour is over. All the blather about “empire,” our “unipolar moment,” “Pax Americana” and “benevolent global hegemony” will be quietly put on a shelf and forgotten as infantile prattle.

America is not going to fight a five- or 10-year war in Iraq. Nor will we be launching any new invasions soon. The retreat of American empire, begun at Fallujah, is underway.

With a $500 billion deficit, we do not have the money for new wars. With an Army of 480,000 stretched thin, we do not have the troops. With April-May costing us a battalion of dead and wounded, we are not going to pay the price. With the squalid photos from Abu Ghraib, we no longer have the moral authority to impose our “values” on Iraq.

Bush’s “world democratic revolution” is history.

Given the hatred of the United States and Bush in the Arab world, as attested to by Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, it is almost delusional to think Arab peoples are going to follow America’s lead.

It is a time for truth. In any guerrilla war we fight, there is going to be a steady stream of U.S. dead and wounded. There is going to be collateral damage – i.e., women and children slain and maimed. There will be prisoners abused. And inevitably, there will be outrages by U.S. troops enraged at the killing of comrades and the jeering of hostile populations. If you would have an empire, this goes with the territory. And if you are unprepared to pay the price, give it up.

The administration’s shock and paralysis at publication of the S&M photos from Abu Ghraib tell us we are not up to it.

For what is taking place in Iraq is child’s play compared to what we did in the Philippines a century ago. Only there, they did not have digital cameras, videocams and the Internet.

Iraq was an unnecessary war that may become one of the great blunders in U.S. history.

Why are we so hated in the Middle East? Three fundamental reasons:

1. Our invasion of Iraq is seen as a premeditated and unjust war to crush a weak Arab nation that had not threatened or attacked us, to seize its oil.

2. We are seen as an arrogant imperial superpower that dictates to Arab peoples and sustains regimes that oppress them.

3. We are seen as the financier and armorer of an Israel that oppresses and robs Palestinians of their land and denies them rights we hypocritically preach to the world.

<Bush> should declare that the United States has no intention of establishing permanent bases in Iraq, and that we intend to withdraw all U.S. troops after elections, if the Iraqis tell us to leave. Then we should schedule elections at the earliest possible date this year.

The president should also offer to withdraw U.S. forces from any Arab country that wishes us to leave.

A presidential election is where the great foreign-policy debate should take place over whether to maintain U.S. troops all over the world, or bring them home and let other nations determine their own destiny. Unfortunately, we have two candidates and two parties that agree on our present foreign policy that is conspicuously failing.”

PS Rumsfeld says, failure is now possible

“For the first time in public, a somber Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld raised the possibility yesterday that the U.S. mission in Iraq could fail”

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And in the midst of a world going mad

Aging octopus finds love at last!

It looks like J-1 is in love. After meeting the very fetching and slightly younger Aurora, he changed color and his eight arms became intertwined with hers. Then, the two retreated to a secluded corner to get to know each other better.

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Lynndie England: I was ordered to ’stand there, hold this leash, look at the camera,’

Ra’Shadd <Lynndie’s lawyer> said they were intelligence officers who took over command of the prison from military officers and preyed on the naivete of young patriotic soldiers — telling them their participation could help stop roadside bombings that were killing their colleagues.

“I was instructed by persons in higher rank to ’stand there, hold this leash, look at the camera,’ and they took picture for PsyOps (psychological operations),” England said in her TV interview.

She also, of course, seemed to be enjoying herself way too much.

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