Archive for August 22nd, 2006


Our 14-year-old president

[Bush] can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides.

Dubya is becoming a national embarrassment. That such stories are now being leaked is further proof of his long, slow slide to becoming irrelevant and ignored. Even former supporters are turning against him.

If you missed it, former Republican member of the House and now MSNBC pundit Joe Scarborough recently ran a clip of Bushisms subtitled “Is Bush an idiot?”

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Israeli stoners against Hizbullah

These would be getting-high stoners, not throwing-rocks stoners.

Some Israeli hashish smokers are now boycotting hash from Lebanon in the belief that doing so will hurt Hizbullah funding.

So they’ll now be insisting their hash comes from Iran, Syria, or Iraq instead?

Besides, ahem, as one who has been there, if there’s not much supply in town, you’ll buy whatever is available and not be choosy where it comes from.

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Protest Lite

Kerry just called Lieberman the new Cheney. Tough words, I suppose, and Republicans certainly have wasted no time cozying up to Holy Joe. All this is because of the supposed “anti-war” candidate, Ned Lamont, who is so ferociously anti-war that his position on the Lebanon war is the same as Lieberman’s. Wow, sign me up for his anti-war crusade.

And what are we hearing from Kerry and other supposedly progressive Democrats about the Lebanon invasion and neocon plans to attack Iran? Crickets. Lots of them. But no protest. Just like during the build-up to the Iraq war, Democrats were complicit every step of the way.

Now that polls show 61% of the public opposes the Iraq war, Beltway Democrats are pretending they are anti-war too. But they aren’t. They just want to hoover up votes in November by pretending to be with the populace. If they genuinely opposed the war, they’d be launching filibusters to block funding for the war, they be giving angry speeches from the floors of Congress. Yet all we get from Democrats are those damned crickets again.

But then, that’s always been one of the historical roles of the Democratic Party, to siphon off genuine protest and render it meaningless. Sure, if the Democrats take one or both Houses in the fall it’ll be a major victory for the left and the probable end of the dementia of the neocons. Just don’t expect any of the wars to end or even lessen - until the people force them to end, that is.

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Uprising in Oaxaca

Mexico teachers grab Oaxaca radio stations, shot at

State resorts to dirty war tactics in Oaxaca, struggle intensifies

At the center of the struggle is the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), a coalition of trade unionists, revolutionary Marxists and progressives came into being in June 2006.

The APPO was formed largely as a result of increased militancy by striking teachers and supporters who were attacked by state police on June 14 in Oaxaca’s capital. On that date, 15,000 workers beat back around 3,000 riot police. Since then, the teacher’s movement has grown into a popular movement demanding the ouster of Oaxaca’s governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and calling into question Mexico’s neoliberal policies that oppress workers, women and Indigenous people.

Since then, they’ve blockaded streets, seized radio stations, and mostly shut the capital down. While this rebellion predates Lopez Obrador challenging the outcome of the recent presidential election, the two movements have been growing off each other, steadily increasing in size and determination.

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Sri Lanka civil war returns

US authorities just arrested 8 for conspiring to buy surface-to-air missiles and assault rifles for the Tamil Tigers as well as trying to bribe US officials to get the Tigers removed from the list of terrorist organizations.

The ceasefire in that country has broken down almost completely, with major offensives happening now on both sides. Truce monitors have pulled back after the Tigers ordered all observers from Europe out of the country by Sept. 1.

Their civil war is now over two decades old, with tens of thousands already dead. Yikes.

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