Revolution

Endy- I know I told you I was working on an expository piece about prison reform for the publication produced by the inmates at the prison where I work (it's called the Paper Soldier, and it's a monthly written and edited by the inmates- any given month it may have articles having to do with life inside, resettlement resources, poetry, short stories, artwork).

But today, I read the news from Iraq:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L08143797.htm,

which gave a short outline and breakdown of all the lives lost over the past week-end. When you see it broken down and outlined, it somehow makes it more clear just what a toll this war is taking on the country that people are still trying to live and raise their children in.

And it put me in mind of the following quotes:

"We saw the lightening and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped."
Harriet Tubman

"Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives: he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defent himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing." Joseph de Maistre

"If you have a gun, you can go out and shoot one, two, three, five... people. But if you have an ideology and stick to it, thinking it is the absolute truth, you can kill millions." Thich Nhat Hanh

"When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her." Oscar Wilde


This image, though beautiful to me in the context in which it was taken, reminds me of what I envision we will be left with, when/if the violence is ever over.

One night just over a week ago I ended up sleeping out in the rain. Nothing to get worked up about - I've done crazier things while drunk - but the result has been some sort of chest infection, fever, exhaustion and a complete disinterest in writing. (I won't be doing that again)

As you can see, I'm on the mend - although still knackered
Of anyone wants to contribute here = please do

thanks - talk to you later
Endy



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Thank you for your post, Rebecca.

That is a beautiful picture - but feels lonely, like a 'hiatus' - maybe between The End and The Beginning...

I hear you. News from Iraq is grim and seems to get worse every day. Now that the returning troops are starting to speak out, there's going to be an awful lot more for our two countries to face up to. As far as I can see, we can come out of this with the barest shred of honour - or with none at all.

Here is something hopeful…. something I read about that gave me hope… something truly brave - and fantastic, in a way.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/11/2440/

Thanks again, Rebecca

Peace
E

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Naima,

I'm glad the siege is over, but not really sure what's happened.. if you read this, hope you're okay -take care

Peace
Endy


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I was wondering where you were, Endy.
So take extra good care of yourself & get well soon, hear?

Would you fancy some home-made soup? There's plenty here!

I'll wake up Scottie and get him to beam me down

Tell me it's vegetable

Hope you are feeling better, endy.

OK, vegetable it is!

No leaving the table till every last drop is gone, hear? :wink:

sleep first, though

thanks, Olga - talk to you later

Thanks Edgar - yeah I'm on the mend, I'm sure.
Gona get some sleep now - speak again soon

Sweet dreams, Endy.

Hello Endy
how do you do?...(hopefully better)
I'm okay! yeah! over... I guess (but maybe not completely...you know---always the damn aftermath! oh well!)
Am taking care...you do the same

Thank you for letting me know, Naima

Keep safe - and keep writing, won't you?

Peace
Endy

TALKING PEOPLE 16/7/07
by Endymion


Today I learned that one of my favourite political writers (in terms of inspiration) - Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com … is also in fact a contributing editor for 'The American Conservative' and the author of "Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement."



I should have guessed Raimondo was a Conservative, because he has always included within his major writing, red font links to smaller news articles, often pointing out how the US government is not only trashing American traditions on the major scale (the constitution, for instance) but also in smaller, quieter ways, that get overlooked. many are unheard of on the British news.
Bush has started to 'change' certain longstanding American traditions that should not be his (as an impostor) to change-
Here's an example I found today, while reading Justin Raimondo's July 13, 2007 article

July 13, 2007
Is War With Iran Inevitable?
Yes.

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11276

The very first link, found in the article above and highlighted as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (second line) took me here, to CBS News...

>>>>

War 'Slogans' On Troops' Graves?
Unlike Past, Soldiers' Gravestones Can Include Pentagon Op Names


The gravestones of fallen Americans buried at Arlington National Cemetery during the Iraq war era show a change in style from earlier conflicts. (AP)

Nadia and Robert McCaffrey, whose son Patrick was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ended up on his government-supplied headstone without family approval.

"I was a little taken aback," Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he saw the operation name on his son's tombstone. "They certainly didn't ask my wife; they didn't ask me." He said Patrick's widow told him she had not been asked either.

"In one way, I feel it's taking advantage to a small degree," McCaffrey said. "Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact."

The owner of the company that has been making gravestones for Arlington and other national cemeteries for nearly two decades is uncomfortable, too.

"It just seems a little brazen that that's put on stones," said Jeff Martell, owner of Granite Industries of Vermont. "It seems like it might be connected to politics."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/24/national/main793188.shtml

Okay, so now I'm asking myself all sorts of questions about my own beliefs and politics. Because I too see something disgraceful about Bush's unfeeling use of dead soldiers to promote his legacy of bull-****. Not to mention the hypocrisy of the words chosen to promote this war. But it is more than that - there is also an underlying sense of somehow failing to respect the immense sacrifice of men who died in the First or Second world war and who have only a place name - Africa, Italy, France, Germany or wherever it was that they died for their country, on their gravestone.
We all know why they died.
No bull-**** lies or explanations need be added to their name.
All Bush has done, is make the graves of soldiers who die in Iraq stand out as 'different' to the rest.
And he's got that right.

When he no longer rules the world - I hope that someone with integrity and respect, has the headstones replaced with the traditional - where there will be read only one word needed to explain everything - Iraq

So, I am a traditionalist… rebel
How the hell does that work?

And I've been reading (and 90% agreeing with) a Conservative anti-war campaigner for over a year now.
Has the world really turned upside-down?


Some important articles from Justin Raimondo
July 11, 2007
Sheehan's Rebellion
Cindy Sheehan to take on Nancy Pelosi: some advice for a would-be candidate

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11269


June 20, 2007
Nihilism and Neoconservatism
Brothers under the skin

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11163


February 26, 2007
America's Alliance With bin Laden
We're playing the Sunni card in the Middle East - and that means playing footsie with al-Qaeda

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10580

May 28, 2007
Why Are We in Iraq?
Don't bother examining a folly, advised Ayn Rand - ask yourself only what it accomplishes…

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11035


(Ending extract -Justin Raimondo)

"Remember that pro-American, pro-liberal, Westernizing revolutionary movement that was supposed to sweep the entire region as U.S.-occupied Iraq emerged as a beacon light to Arab democrats? It never happened. What did happen was precisely what the CIA - and various antiwar commentators, such as myself - predicted: a nationalist reaction that combines religion with hatred of foreign occupiers and embodies a clerical authoritarianism that is the furthest thing from democratic liberalism imaginable.

The new turn in America's Middle East military and political strategy, described as "the redirection" by Seymour Hersh in his latest article in The New Yorker, is based on the idea of a new threat from the emerging "Shi'ite crescent" - a vaguely crescent-like Shi'ite "caliphate" extending from Beirut to Tehran and down into Basra, where the Shi'ites are preparing to set up a semi-autonomous Shia state. We are, in short, playing the Sunni card in an effort to further divide the Middle East and make it more amenable to American - and Israeli - designs.

Which is why I have to laugh when I hear criticisms from the Democrats and the growing number of antiwar Republicans in Congress who complain that we don't belong in Iraq any longer because, you know, it's a civil war. This is largely seen as an unintended consequence of the American invasion - but what if it was intended?

It would, after all, make perfect Bizarro "sense." If, instead of trying to build a stable, democratic Iraq, you're trying to wreak as much destruction as possible and turn Arab against Arab, Muslim against Muslim, and the Kurds against everyone else, then the invasion and occupation of Iraq was the right thing to do. And please don't tell me that none of these dire consequences - blowback, for Rudy Giuliani's benefit - were known or predicted in advance. The recent release of the much-awaited "phase two" [.pdf] of the Senate Intelligence report - detailing prewar assessments of what was likely to occur in Iraq if we invaded - shows we knew all along what would happen. Yet we went ahead and invaded anyway.

As Ayn Rand once put it, don't bother to examine a folly - ask yourself only what it accomplishes. If we look at the public reasons for the Iraq war, it is clear that none of these have been accomplished, nor are they likely to be achieved in the near or even distant future. Iraqi "democracy" is a bizarre mutation of clerical domination, unimaginable corruption, and rule by death squads, and those "weapons of mass destruction" have returned to the netherworld of the neoconservative imagination from whence they emerged onto the front page of the New York Times.

If, on the other hand, we look at what is actually happening in Iraq, and throughout the region, we can discern the real goals of the invasion, and they are two: a civil war in the Muslim world (check!) and the positioning of U.S. military forces for a confrontation with the next victim of the regime-change game: Iran (check!).

This Memorial Day, then, while you're contemplating the 3,500 American dead, the tens of thousands of wounded (many of them horribly), not to mention the 650,000 Iraqi victims of U.S. state terrorism, you might wonder if Bush and his neocon advisors lose any sleep at night over what everyone else has deemed their huge "failure" in Iraq. The answer is: certainly not. They sleep deeply, and with a satisfied smile on their faces, because, as far as they're concerned, their mission has been accomplished."

I'm including here the link to The American Conservative - not because I'm thinking of turning tory - but because I think their 'ABout Us' page (link at top) is well worth a read. Here they explain that contrary to popular belief, most traditional conservatives do not agree with what's happening in the Middle East

http://www.amconmag.com/

Impeach Now
Or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy
[/b]

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

07/17/07 "ICH ' -- -- Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.

Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.

Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered.

William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is "praying for a terrorist strike" to save the party from electoral wipeout in 2008.
Chertoff, Cheney, the neocon nazis, and Mossad would have no qualms about saving the bacon for the Republicans, who have enabled Bush to start two unjustified wars, with Iran waiting in the wings to be attacked in a third war.

The Bush administration has tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the terrorist fear factor by infiltrating some blowhard groups and encouraging them to talk about staging "terrorist" events. The talk, encouraged by federal agents, resulted in "terrorist" arrests hyped by the media, but even the captive media was unable to scare people with such transparent sting operations.

If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive" at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush's declaration of "national emergency" and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.

A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media as a vindication of the neoconsevatives' Islamophobic policy, the intention of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose is to eliminate any resistance to Israel's complete absorption of Palestine into Greater Israel.

Think about it. If another 9/11-type "security failure" were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist threats and that he has "a gut feeling" that America will soon be hit hard?

Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that "between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public's (sic) going to have a very different view of this war."

Throughout its existence the US government has staged incidents that the government then used in behalf of purposes that it could not otherwise have pursued. According to a number of writers, false flag operations have been routinely used by the Israeli state. During the Czarist era in Russia, the secret police would set off bombs in order to arrest those the secret police regarded as troublesome. Hitler was a dramatic orchestrator of false flag operations. False flag operations are a commonplace tool of governments.

Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging "terrorist" attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?

Only a diehard minority believes in the honesty and integrity of the Bush-Cheney administration and in the truthfulness of the corporate media.

Hitler, who never achieved majority support in a German election, used the Reichstag fire to fan hysteria and push through the Enabling Act, which made him dictator. Determined tyrants never require majority support in order to overthrow constitutional orders.

The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown. Are coming "terrorist" events of which Chertoff warns and Santorum promises the means for overthrowing our constitutional democracy?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: [email protected]

Suicide blast hits Pakistan rally

An apparent suicide bomber has struck in the heart of Islamabad, killing at least 15 people.
Tuesday's attack happened at a rally in support of Pakistan's suspended chief justice.
Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was on his way to address thousands of supporters when the bomb detonated amid the gathering crowd.

The inspector-general of police, Iftikhar Ahmad, told Al Jazeera that it was "most probably" a suicide bombing.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/34EC4895-B7CD-42FD-8D53-3E229768CD91.htm

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This is just too awful. The interior ministry said at least 15 were killed and 44 injured

Before we know where we are Pakistan will be forced into a civil war.
And while the world sits back and waits for it t happen.
Of course, the US couldn't care less if every Muslim country in the world has a go at itself before they do... there's enough evidence to suggest that Mr Bush and his heavies are racists - even nazis - but here in Britain we have huge Pakistani comunities and of couse... there is a risk that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of the desperate.

Naima - if you read this - keep your wits about you and however tough it gets, keep yourself alive - so that one day you can write about it all, and make a fortune : )

Take Care
Peace
Endy




When is it ever going to end?

I'm sorry you have to see this **** happen, Naima

Published on Monday, July 16, 2007 by Associated Press
Robot Air Attack Squadron Bound for Iraq
by Charles J. Hanley

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It's outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there's no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.



The arrival of these outsized U.S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected "soon," says the regional U.S. air commander. How soon? "We're still working that," Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview.

The Reaper's first combat deployment is expected in Afghanistan, and senior Air Force officers estimate it will land in Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring. They look forward to it.

"With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home," North said.

The Associated Press has learned that the Air Force is building a 400,000-square-foot expansion of the concrete ramp area now used for Predator drones here at Balad, the biggest U.S. air base in Iraq, 50 miles north of Baghdad. That new staging area could be turned over to Reapers.

It's another sign that the Air Force is planning for an extended stay in Iraq, supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S. ground troops are drawn down in the coming years.

The estimated two dozen or more unmanned MQ-1 Predators now doing surveillance over Iraq, as the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, have become mainstays of the U.S. war effort, offering round-the-clock airborne "eyes" watching over road convoys, tracking nighttime insurgent movements via infrared sensors, and occasionally unleashing one of their two Hellfire missiles on a target.

From about 36,000 flying hours in 2005, the Predators are expected to log 66,000 hours this year over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.

At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator. Its size - 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan - is comparable to the profile of the Air Force's workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.

While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons - or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs.

"It's not a recon squadron," Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central Command's air component, said of the Reapers. "It's an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability."

"Kinetic" - Pentagon argot for destructive power - is what the Air Force had in mind when it christened its newest robot plane with a name associated with death.

"The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system," Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September.

General Atomics of San Diego has built at least nine of the MQ-9s thus far, at a cost of $69 million per set of four aircraft, with ground equipment.

The Air Force's 432nd Wing, a UAV unit formally established on May 1, is to eventually fly 60 Reapers and 160 Predators. The numbers to be assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan will be classified.

The Reaper is expected to be flown as the Predator is - by a two-member team of pilot and sensor operator who work at computer control stations and video screens that display what the UAV "sees." Teams at Balad, housed in a hangar beside the runways, perform the takeoffs and landings, and similar teams at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, linked to the aircraft via satellite, take over for the long hours of overflying the Iraqi landscape.

American ground troops, equipped with laptops that can download real-time video from UAVs overhead, "want more and more of it," said Maj. Chris Snodgrass, the Predator squadron commander here.

The Reaper's speed will help. "Our problem is speed," Snodgrass said of the 140-mph Predator. "If there are troops in contact, we may not get there fast enough. The Reaper will be faster and fly farther."

The new robot plane is expected to be able to stay aloft for 14 hours fully armed, watching an area and waiting for targets to emerge.

"It's going to bring us flexibility, range, speed and persistence," said regional commander North, "such that I will be able to work lots of areas for a long, long time."

The British also are impressed with the Reaper, and are buying three for deployment in Afghanistan later this year. The Royal Air Force version will stick to the "recon" mission, however - no weapons on board.

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Honestly, where do these idiots come up with names like 'the Reaper' ???? and 'Predator Pilot'

Are we meant to be impressed? Or horrified Or what??- and btw, what the f*ck are the US going to bomb in Iraq?
That's right, folks.....
These are for IRAN - make no mistake.

It occurs to me, that as Iraq hasn't and never did have an airforce, it is the perfect theatre in which to stage a few murderous 'tests' ....

Yo! Beam me up Scottie - and double quick - the human race has gone f*cking nuts.

Harming Civilians is a War Crime
by Cindy Sheehan

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/17/2589/


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Just Another Day in Iraq: 100 More Fathers, Mothers, Sons and Daughters Killed
by Patrick Cockburn


"The US is caught in quagmire of its own making. Such successes as it does have are usually the result of tenuous alliances with previously hostile tribes, insurgent groups or militias. The British experience in Basra was that these marriages of convenience with local gangs weakened the central government and contributed to anarchy in Iraq. They did not work in the long term."

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/17/2587/


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Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 by Reuters
CIA Dissenters Aided Secret Prisons Report: Author
by Marcin Brajewski

BRUSSELS - Dissident U.S. intelligence officers angry at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped a European probe uncover details of secret CIA prisons in Europe, the top investigator said on Tuesday.

Swiss Senator Dick Marty, author of a Council of Europe report on the jails, said senior CIA officials disapproved of Rumsfeld's methods in hunting down terrorist suspects, and had agreed to talk to him on condition of anonymity.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/17/2586/

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Pull troops out now and stand up to Bush, inquiry tells Brown

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Published: 16 July 2007

British troops should be pulled out of Iraq even though the violence is likely to get worse, a cross-party commission has told Gordon Brown.

The commission co-chaired by Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, called for an end to offensive military operations by British forces and a "clear exit strategy".

The findings stepped up the pressure on the Prime Minister to seek a change of policy on Iraq at his forthcoming summit with President Bush. The report said the UK should "actively and urgently ... pursue changes of policy from our allies".

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2773189.ece


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"Look into the faces of these poor people....Look hard: the glazed-over eyes, the fixed, robotic smiles...
These are supporters of the administration of George W. Bush."

The Rant - Tom Degan
http://tomdegan.blogspot.com/

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Bush Government to Poor Voters: We Don't Want You to Vote

Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

Rights and Liberties: The Justice Department is pressuring 10 states to purge their voter rolls, while states are ignoring laws to help low-income Americans register to vote.



http://www.alternet.org/rights/56957/

Yes Endy, I'll be alive....I'll watch it happen...helplessly!

oh and:



well Not really like that...
First we'll kill each other...then the dear Taliban bro's that are all over the country will help us kill us...then it'll be Mr Bush *all hail* ( ) to the rescue!!! Then the real bombs can take care of whatever's left/....

How about it?

When will it end? Let's see... Don't see an end to this...it's been happening for ever and will be happening for ever! Cuz some of us just aren't humans!!!

oh yeah! you're right... the human race HAS gone fuckin nuts! (only i never saw them in a humanly position so i don't know if it was ever different)

for got to end it....

Good day
and peace! keep waiting for it!

You have every right to be angry

I'm very sorry Naima, if it helps you at all to know it.

I wish I could say something to make it all seem less
terrible - but I'm not going to patronize you.

War is terrible and no one deserves it's pain