Rally in Jena on September 20th
On September 20th, Mychal Bell--the first of the Jena 6 to be convicted--is scheduled for sentencing. If the District Attorney has his way, Mychal will face 22 years in prison. It's a horrifying moment for Mychal, his parents, and the rest of the Jena 6 families. It's also a perfect time for those who can to come to Jena, in person, and stand with them. Thousands of people across the country have already signed up to come to Jena. Please join us on Sept. 20th
Part of 'Jena 6' conviction dropped; charges reduced
By Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune September 5, 2007HOUSTON
Ruling in a racially charged case that has drawn scrutiny from national civil rights leaders, a judge in the small central Louisiana town of Jena on Tuesday partially vacated the conviction of a black teenager accused in the beating of a white student while the district attorney reduced attempted murder charges against two other black co-defendants.Judge J.P. Mauffray threw out a conspiracy conviction against Mychal Bell, granting a defense motion that Bell's June trial was improperly held in adult court and should instead have been conducted as a juvenile proceeding.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
A Little Music For Ya!
I have had a love affair with this musician for a lot of years and thanks to YouTube I have been able to find live performances that give a small glimpse into his talent. From Frank Zappa to backing his neice Rachelle Ferrell, he never disapoints. Here is one of my favorites George Duke. You see I am not just politics!
Brazilian Love Affair
George Duke Live at the NSJF 2001
Rachelle Ferrell - I can explain (live)
He is not playing on this one but
I had to include his niece. Enjoy! More from her later.
Clarke/Duke Project "Heroes"
george duke love reborn
Always there(Casino Lights Live)
Brazilian Love Affair
George Duke Live at the NSJF 2001
Rachelle Ferrell - I can explain (live)
He is not playing on this one but
I had to include his niece. Enjoy! More from her later.
Clarke/Duke Project "Heroes"
george duke love reborn
Always there(Casino Lights Live)
The Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq
The Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq
Fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is the last big argument for keeping U.S. troops in the country. But the military's estimation of the threat is alarmingly wrong.
By Andrew Tilghman
09/09/07 "Washington Monthly"
In March 2007, a pair of truck bombs tore through the Shiite marketplace in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, killing more than 150 people. The blast reduced the ancient city center to rubble, leaving body parts and charred vegetables scattered amid pools of blood. It was among the most lethal attacks to date in the five-year-old Iraq War. Within hours, Iraqi officials in Baghdad had pinned the bombing on al-Qaeda, and news reports from Reuters, the BBC, MSNBC, and others carried those remarks around the world. An Internet posting by the terrorist group known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) took credit for the destruction. Within a few days, U.S. Army General David Petraeus publicly blamed AQI for the carnage, accusing the group of trying to foment sectarian violence and ignite a civil war. Back in Washington, pundits latched on to the attack with special interest, as President Bush had previously touted a period of calm in Tal Afar as evidence that the military's retooled counterinsurgency doctrine was working. For days, reporters and bloggers debated whether the attacks signaled a "resurgence" of al-Qaeda in the city.
Yet there's reason to doubt that AQI had any role in the bombing. In the weeks before the attack, sectarian tensions had been simmering after a local Sunni woman told Al Jazeera television that she had been gang-raped by a group of Shiite Iraqi army soldiers. Multiple insurgent groups called for violence to avenge the woman's honor. Immediately after the blast, some in uniform expressed doubts about al- Qaeda's alleged role and suggested that homegrown sectarian strife was more likely at work. "It's really not al-Qaeda who has infiltrated so much as the fact [of] what happened in 2003," said Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the Naval War College who served as an Army political adviser to the 3rd Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar until shortly before the bombing. "The formerly dominant Sunni Turkmen majority there," he told PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer soon after the bombing, "suddenly ... felt themselves having been thrown out of power. And this is essentially their revenge."
A week later, Iraqi security forces raided a home outside Tal Afar andarrested two men suspected of orchestrating the bombing. Yet when the U.S. military issued a press release about the arrests, there was no mention of an al-Qaeda connection. The suspects were never formally charged, and nearly six months later neither the U.S. military nor Iraqi police are certain of the source of the attacks. In recent public statements, the military has backed off its former allegations that al-Qaeda was responsible, instead asserting, as Lieutenant Colonel Michael Donnelly wrote in response to an inquiry from the Washington Monthly, that "the tactics used in this attack are consistent with al-Qaeda."
This scenario has become common. After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq. (In July, for instance, at Charleston Air Force Base, the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times.)
By now, many in Washington have learned to discount the president's rhetorical excesses when it comes to the war. But even some of his harshest critics take at face value the estimates provided by the military about AQI's presence. Politicians of both parties point to such figures when forming their positions on the war. All of the top three Democratic presidential candidates have argued for keeping some American forces in Iraq or the region, citing among other reasons the continued threat from al-Qaeda.
But what if official military estimates about the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq are simply wrong? Indeed, interviews with numerous military and intelligence analysts, both inside and outside of government, suggest that the number of strikes the group has directed represent only a fraction of what official estimates claim. Further, al-Qaeda's presumed role in leading the violence through uniquely devastating attacks that catalyze further unrest may also be overstated.
Having been led astray by flawed prewar intelligence about WMDs, official Washington wants to believe it takes a more skeptical view of the administration's information now. Yet Beltway insiders seem to be making almost precisely the same mistakes in sizing up al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Despite President Bush's near-singular focus on al-Qaeda in Iraq, most in Washington understand that instability on the ground stems from multiple sources. Numerous attacks on both U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians have been the handiwork of Shiite militants, often connected to, or even part of, the Iraqi government. Opportunistic criminal gangs engage in some of the same heinous tactics.
The Sunni resistance is also comprised of multiple groups. The first consists of so-called "former regime elements." These include thousands of ex-officers from Saddam's old intelligence agency, the Mukabarat, and from the elite paramilitary unit Saddam Fedayeen. Their primary goal is to drive out the U.S. occupation and install a Sunni-led government hostile to Iranian influence. Some within this broad group support reconciliation with the current government or negotiations with the United States, under the condition that American forces set a timetable for a troop withdrawal.
The second category consists of homegrown Iraqi Sunni religious groups, such as the Mujahadeen Army of Iraq. These are native Iraqis who aim to install a religious-based government in Baghdad, similar to the regime in Tehran. These groups use religious rhetoric and terrorist tactics but are essentially nationalistic in their aims.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq comprises the third group. The terrorist network was founded in 2003 by the now-dead Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (The extent of the group's organizational ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda is hotly debated, but the organizations share a worldview and set of objectives.) AQI is believed to have the most non-Iraqis in its ranks, particularly among its leadership. However, most recent assessments say the rank and file are mostly radicalized Iraqis. AQI, which calls itself the "Islamic State of Iraq," espouses the most radical form of Islam and calls for the imposition of strict sharia, or Islamic law. The group has no plans for a future Iraqi government and instead hopes to create a new Islamic caliphate with borders reaching far beyond Mesopotamia.
The essential questions are: How large is the presence of AQI, in terms of manpower and attacks instigated, and what role does the group play in catalyzing further violence? For the first question, the military has produced an estimate. In a background briefing this July in Baghdad, military officials said that during the first half of this year AQI accounted for 15 percent of attacks in Iraq. That figure was also cited in the military intelligence report during final preparations for a National Intelligence Estimate in July.
This is the number on which many military experts inside the Beltway rely. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution who attended the Baghdad background briefing, explained that he thought the estimate derived from a comprehensive analysis by teams of local intelligence agents who examine the type and location of daily attacks, and their intended targets, and crosscheck that with reports from Iraqi informants and other data, such as intercepted phone calls. "It's a fairly detailed kind of assessment," O'Hanlon said. "Obviously you can't always know who is behind an attack, but there is a fairly systematic way of looking at the attacks where they can begin to make a pretty informed guess."
Yet those who have worked on estimates inside the system take a more circumspect view. Alex Rossmiller, who worked in Iraq as an intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, says that real uncertainties exist in assigning responsibility for attacks. "It was kind of a running joke in our office," he recalls. "We would sarcastically refer to everybody as al-Qaeda."
To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."
It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics.
The first instructive set of data comes from the U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In March, the organization analyzed the online postings of eleven prominent Sunni insurgent groups, including AQI, tallying how many attacks each group claimed. AQI took credit for 10 percent of attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias (forty-three out of 439 attacks), and less than 4 percent of attacks on U.S. troops (seventeen out of 357). Although these Internet postings should not be taken as proof positive of the culprits, it's instructive to remember that PR-conscious al- Qaeda operatives are far more likely to overstate than understate their role.
When turning to the question of manpower, military officials told the New York Times in August that of the roughly 24,500 prisoners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (nearly all of whom are Sunni), just 1,800—about 7 percent—claim allegiance to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, the composition of inmates does not support the assumption that large numbers of foreign terrorists, long believed to be the leaders and most hard-core elements of AQI, are operating inside Iraq. In August, American forces held in custody 280 foreign nationals—slightly more than 1 percent of total inmates.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence's much larger estimates of the insurgency—200,000 fighters—INR's estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. This year, the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, "the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number."
How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."
So how did the military come up with an estimate of 15 percent, when government data and many of the intelligence community's own analysts point to estimates a fraction of that size? The problem begins at the top. When the White House singles out al-Qaeda in Iraq for special attention, the bureaucracy responds by creating procedures that hunt down more evidence of the organization. The more manpower assigned to focus on the group, the more evidence is uncovered that points to it lurking in every shadow. "When you have something that is really hot, the leaders start tasking everyone to look into that," explains W. Patrick Lang, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former head of Middle East intelligence analysis for the Department of Defense. "Whoever is at the top of the pyramid says, 'Make me a briefing showing what al-Qaeda in Iraq is doing,' and then the decision maker says, 'Aha, I knew I was right.'"
With disproportionate resources dedicated to tracking AQI, the search has become a self-reinforcing loop. The Army has a Special Operations task force solely dedicated to tracking al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Defense Intelligence Agency tracks AQI through its Iraq office and its counterterrorism office. The result is more information culled, more PowerPoint slides created, and, ultimately, more attention drawn to AQI, which amplifies its significance in the minds of military and intelligence officers. "Once people look at everything through that lens, al-Qaeda is all they see," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who also worked at the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. "It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Ground-level analysts in the field, facing pressures from superiors to document AQI's handiwork, might be able to question such assumptions if they had strong intelligence networks on the ground. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case. The intelligence community's efforts are hobbled by too few Arabic speakers in their ranks and too many unreliable informants in Iraqi communities, rendering a hazy picture that is open to interpretations.
Because uncertainty exists, the bar for labeling an attack the work of al-Qaeda can be very low. The fact that a detainee possesses al-Qaeda pamphlets or a laptop computer with cached jihadist Web sites, for example, is at times enough for analysts to link a detainee to al-Qaeda. "Sometimes it's as simple as an anonymous tip that al-Qaeda is active in a certain village, so they will go out on an operation and whoever they roll up, we call them al-Qaeda," says Alex Rossmiller. "People can get labeled al-Qaeda anywhere along in the chain of events, and it's really hard to unlabel them." Even when the military backs off explicit statements that AQI is responsible, as with the Tal Afar truck bombings, the perception that an attack is the work of al-Qaeda is rarely corrected.
The result can be baffling for the troops working on the ground, who hear the leadership characterizing the conflict in Iraq in ways that do not necessarily match what they see in the dusty and danger-laden villages. Michael Zacchea, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves who was deployed to Iraq, said he was sometimes skeptical of upper-level analysis emphasizing al-Qaeda in Iraq rather than the insurgency's local roots. "It's very, very frustrating for everyone involved who is trying to do the right thing," he said. "That's not how anyone learned to play the game when we were officers coming up the ranks, and we were taught to provide clear battlefield analysis."
Even if the manpower and number of attacks attributed to AQI have been exaggerated—and they have—many observers maintain that what is uniquely dangerous about the group is not its numbers, but the spectacular nature of its strikes. While homegrown Sunni and Shiite militias engage for the most part in tit-for-tat violence to forward sectarian ends, AQI's methods are presumed to be different—more dramatic, more inflammatory, and having a greater ripple effect on the country's fragile political environment. "The effect of al-Qaeda has been far beyond the numbers that they field," explains Thomas Donnelly, resident fellow for defense and national security at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "The question is, What attacks are likely to have the most destabilizing political and strategic affects?" He points, as do many inside the administration, to the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara, a revered Shiite shrine, as a paramount example of AQI's outsize influence. President Bush has laid unqualified blame for the Samara bombing on al-Qaeda, and described the infamous incident—and ensuing sectarian violence—as a fatal tipping point toward the current unrest.
But is this view of AQI's vanguard role in destabilizing Iraq really true? There are three reasons to question that belief.
First, although spectacular attacks were a distinctive AQI hallmark early in the war, the group has since lost its monopoly on bloody fireworks. After five years of shifting alliances, cross-pollination of tactics, and copycat attacks, other insurgent groups now launch equally dramatic and politically charged attacks. For example, a second explosion at the Samara mosque in June 2007, which destroyed the shrine's minarets and sparked a wave of revenge attacks on Sunni mosques nationwide, may have been an inside job. U.S. military officials said fifteen uniformed men from the Shiite-run Iraqi Security Forces were arrested for suspected involvement in the attack.
Second, it remains unclear whether the original Samara bombing was itself the work of AQI. The group never took credit for the attack, as it has many other high-profile incidents. The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein. (His right-hand man, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, was also a former military intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army.) Key features of the bombing did not conform to the profile of an AQI attack. For example, the bombers did not target civilians, or even kill the Shiite Iraqi army soldiers guarding the mosque, both of which are trademark tactics of AQI. The planners also employed sophisticated explosive devices, suggesting formal military training common among former regime officers, rather than the more bluntly destructive tactics typical of AQI. Finally, Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency. Frank "Greg" Ford, a retired counterintelligence agent for the Army Reserves, who worked with the Army in Samara before the 2006 bombing, says that the evidence points away from AQI and toward a different conclusion: "The Baathists directed that attack," says Ford.
Third, while some analysts believe that AQI drafts Baathist insurgents to carry out its attacks, other intelligence experts think it is the other way around. In other words, they see evidence of native insurgent forces coopting the steady stream of delusional extremists seeking martyrdom that AQI brings into Iraq. "Al-Qaeda can't operate anywhere in Iraq without kissing the ring of the former regime," says Nance. "They can't move car bombs full of explosives and foreign suicide bombers through a city without everyone knowing who they are. They need to be facilitated." Thus new foreign fighters "come through and some local Iraqis will say, 'Okay, why don't you go down to the Ministry of Defense building downtown.'" AQI recruits often find themselves taking orders from a network of former regime insurgents, who assemble their car bombs and tell them what to blow up. They become, as Nance says, "puppets for the other insurgent groups."
The view that AQI is neither as big nor as lethal as commonly believed is widespread among working-level analysts and troops on the ground. A majority of those interviewed for this article believe that the military's AQI estimates are overblown to varying degrees. If such misgivings are common, why haven't doubts pricked the public debate? The reason is that alternate views are running up against an echo chamber of powerful players all with an interest in hyping AQI's role.
The first group that profits from an outsize focus on AQI are former regime elements, and the tribal chiefs with whom they are often allied. These forces are able to carry out attacks against Shiites and Americans, but also to shift the blame if it suits their purposes. While the U.S. military has recently touted "news" that Sunni insurgents have turned against the al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar Province, there is little evidence of actual clashes between these two groups. Sunni insurgents in Anbar have largely ceased attacks on Americans, but some observers suggest that this development has less to do with vanquishing AQI than with the fact that U.S. troops now routinely deliver cash-filled duffle bags to tribal sheiks serving as "lead contractors" on "reconstruction projects." The excuse of fighting AQI comes in handy. "Remember, Iraq is an honor society," explains Juan Cole, an Iraq expert and professor of modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. "But if you say it wasn't us—it was al-Qaeda—then you don't lose face."
The second benefactor is the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, often the first to blame specific attacks on AQI. Talking about "al-Qaeda" offers the government a politically correct way of talking about Sunni violence without seeming to blame the Sunnis themselves, to whom they are ostensibly trying to reach out in a unity government. On a deeper level, however, the al-Maliki regime has very limited popular support, and the government officials and ruling Islamic Dawa Party feel an imperative to include Iraqi troubles in the broader "global war in terrorism" in order to keep U.S. troops in the country. In June, when faced with increasingly uncomfortable pressure from the Americans for his failure to resolve key political issues, al-Maliki warned that Iraqi intelligence had found evidence of a "widespread and dangerous plan by the terrorist al-Qaeda organization" to mount attacks outside of Iraq.
Elsewhere within the Shiite bloc of Iraqi politics, Moqtada al-Sadr has his own reasons for playing up the idea of AQI. "The Sadrists want to overstate the role of al-Qaeda in a way to emphasize on the 'foreignness' of the current problem in Iraq; and this easily fits their anti-occupation ideology, which seems to gain more popularity among Shia Iraqis on a daily basis," said Babak Rahimi, a professor of Islamic Studies and expert in Shiite politics at the University of California at San Diego.
Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain eager to take credit for the violence in Iraq, despite the bad blood that existed between bin Laden and AQI's slain founder, al-Zarqawi. They've produced a long series of taped statements in recent years taunting U.S. leaders and attempting to conflate their operations with the Sunni resistance in Iraq. "They want to bring this all together as a motivating tool to encourage recruitment," said Farhana Ali, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.
The press has also been complicit in inflating the threat of AQI. Because of the danger on the ground, reporters struggle to do the kind of comprehensive field reporting that's necessary to check facts and question statements from military spokespersons and Iraqi politicians. Today, for example, U.S. reporters rarely travel independently outside central Baghdad. Few, if any, insurgents have ever given interviews to Western reporters. These limitations are understandable, if unfortunate. But news organizations are reluctant to admit their confines in obtaining information. Ambiguities are glossed over; allegations are presented as facts. Besides, it's undeniably in the reporter's own interest to keep "al- Qaeda attacks" in the headline, because it may move their story from A16 to A1.
Finally, no one has more incentive to overstate the threat of AQI than President Bush and those in the administration who argue for keeping a substantial military presence in Iraq. Insistent talk about AQI aims to place the Iraq War in the context of the broader war on terrorism. Pointing to al- Qaeda in Iraq helps the administration leverage Americans' fears about terrorism and residual anger over the attacks of September 11. It is perhaps one of the last rhetorical crutches the president has left to lean on.
This is not to say that al-Qaeda in Iraq doesn't pose a real danger, both to stability in Iraq and to security in the United States. Today multiple Iraqi insurgent groups target U.S. forces, with the aim of driving out the occupation. But once our troops withdraw, most Sunni resistance fighters will have no impetus to launch strikes on American soil. In that regard, al-Qaeda—and AQI, to the extent it is affiliated with bin Laden's network—is unique. The group's leadership consists largely of foreign fighters, and its ideology and ambitions are global. Al-Qaeda fighters trained in Baghdad may one day use those skills to plot strikes aimed at Boston.
Yet it's not clear that the best way to counter this threat is with military action in Iraq. AQI's presence is tolerated by the country's Sunni Arabs, historically among the most secular in the Middle East, because they have a common enemy in the United States. Absent this shared cause, it's not clear that native insurgents would still welcome AQI forces working to impose strict sharia. In Baghdad, any near-term functioning government will likely be an alliance of Shiites and Kurds, two groups unlikely to accept organized radical Sunni Arab militants within their borders. Yet while precisely predicting future political dynamics in Iraq is uncertain, one thing is clear now: the continued American occupation of Iraq is al-Qaeda's best recruitment tool, the lure to hook new recruits. As RAND's Ali said, "What inspires jihadis today is Iraq."
Five years ago, the American public was asked to support the invasion of Iraq based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to al-Qaeda. Today, the erroneous belief that al-Qaeda's franchise in Iraq is a driving force behind the chaos in that country may be setting us up for a similar mistake.
Andrew Tilghman was an Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper in 2005 and 2006. He can be reached at tilghman.andrew@gmail.com.
Fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is the last big argument for keeping U.S. troops in the country. But the military's estimation of the threat is alarmingly wrong.
By Andrew Tilghman
09/09/07 "Washington Monthly"
In March 2007, a pair of truck bombs tore through the Shiite marketplace in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, killing more than 150 people. The blast reduced the ancient city center to rubble, leaving body parts and charred vegetables scattered amid pools of blood. It was among the most lethal attacks to date in the five-year-old Iraq War. Within hours, Iraqi officials in Baghdad had pinned the bombing on al-Qaeda, and news reports from Reuters, the BBC, MSNBC, and others carried those remarks around the world. An Internet posting by the terrorist group known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) took credit for the destruction. Within a few days, U.S. Army General David Petraeus publicly blamed AQI for the carnage, accusing the group of trying to foment sectarian violence and ignite a civil war. Back in Washington, pundits latched on to the attack with special interest, as President Bush had previously touted a period of calm in Tal Afar as evidence that the military's retooled counterinsurgency doctrine was working. For days, reporters and bloggers debated whether the attacks signaled a "resurgence" of al-Qaeda in the city.
Yet there's reason to doubt that AQI had any role in the bombing. In the weeks before the attack, sectarian tensions had been simmering after a local Sunni woman told Al Jazeera television that she had been gang-raped by a group of Shiite Iraqi army soldiers. Multiple insurgent groups called for violence to avenge the woman's honor. Immediately after the blast, some in uniform expressed doubts about al- Qaeda's alleged role and suggested that homegrown sectarian strife was more likely at work. "It's really not al-Qaeda who has infiltrated so much as the fact [of] what happened in 2003," said Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the Naval War College who served as an Army political adviser to the 3rd Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar until shortly before the bombing. "The formerly dominant Sunni Turkmen majority there," he told PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer soon after the bombing, "suddenly ... felt themselves having been thrown out of power. And this is essentially their revenge."
A week later, Iraqi security forces raided a home outside Tal Afar andarrested two men suspected of orchestrating the bombing. Yet when the U.S. military issued a press release about the arrests, there was no mention of an al-Qaeda connection. The suspects were never formally charged, and nearly six months later neither the U.S. military nor Iraqi police are certain of the source of the attacks. In recent public statements, the military has backed off its former allegations that al-Qaeda was responsible, instead asserting, as Lieutenant Colonel Michael Donnelly wrote in response to an inquiry from the Washington Monthly, that "the tactics used in this attack are consistent with al-Qaeda."
This scenario has become common. After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq. (In July, for instance, at Charleston Air Force Base, the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times.)
By now, many in Washington have learned to discount the president's rhetorical excesses when it comes to the war. But even some of his harshest critics take at face value the estimates provided by the military about AQI's presence. Politicians of both parties point to such figures when forming their positions on the war. All of the top three Democratic presidential candidates have argued for keeping some American forces in Iraq or the region, citing among other reasons the continued threat from al-Qaeda.
But what if official military estimates about the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq are simply wrong? Indeed, interviews with numerous military and intelligence analysts, both inside and outside of government, suggest that the number of strikes the group has directed represent only a fraction of what official estimates claim. Further, al-Qaeda's presumed role in leading the violence through uniquely devastating attacks that catalyze further unrest may also be overstated.
Having been led astray by flawed prewar intelligence about WMDs, official Washington wants to believe it takes a more skeptical view of the administration's information now. Yet Beltway insiders seem to be making almost precisely the same mistakes in sizing up al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Despite President Bush's near-singular focus on al-Qaeda in Iraq, most in Washington understand that instability on the ground stems from multiple sources. Numerous attacks on both U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians have been the handiwork of Shiite militants, often connected to, or even part of, the Iraqi government. Opportunistic criminal gangs engage in some of the same heinous tactics.
The Sunni resistance is also comprised of multiple groups. The first consists of so-called "former regime elements." These include thousands of ex-officers from Saddam's old intelligence agency, the Mukabarat, and from the elite paramilitary unit Saddam Fedayeen. Their primary goal is to drive out the U.S. occupation and install a Sunni-led government hostile to Iranian influence. Some within this broad group support reconciliation with the current government or negotiations with the United States, under the condition that American forces set a timetable for a troop withdrawal.
The second category consists of homegrown Iraqi Sunni religious groups, such as the Mujahadeen Army of Iraq. These are native Iraqis who aim to install a religious-based government in Baghdad, similar to the regime in Tehran. These groups use religious rhetoric and terrorist tactics but are essentially nationalistic in their aims.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq comprises the third group. The terrorist network was founded in 2003 by the now-dead Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (The extent of the group's organizational ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda is hotly debated, but the organizations share a worldview and set of objectives.) AQI is believed to have the most non-Iraqis in its ranks, particularly among its leadership. However, most recent assessments say the rank and file are mostly radicalized Iraqis. AQI, which calls itself the "Islamic State of Iraq," espouses the most radical form of Islam and calls for the imposition of strict sharia, or Islamic law. The group has no plans for a future Iraqi government and instead hopes to create a new Islamic caliphate with borders reaching far beyond Mesopotamia.
The essential questions are: How large is the presence of AQI, in terms of manpower and attacks instigated, and what role does the group play in catalyzing further violence? For the first question, the military has produced an estimate. In a background briefing this July in Baghdad, military officials said that during the first half of this year AQI accounted for 15 percent of attacks in Iraq. That figure was also cited in the military intelligence report during final preparations for a National Intelligence Estimate in July.
This is the number on which many military experts inside the Beltway rely. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution who attended the Baghdad background briefing, explained that he thought the estimate derived from a comprehensive analysis by teams of local intelligence agents who examine the type and location of daily attacks, and their intended targets, and crosscheck that with reports from Iraqi informants and other data, such as intercepted phone calls. "It's a fairly detailed kind of assessment," O'Hanlon said. "Obviously you can't always know who is behind an attack, but there is a fairly systematic way of looking at the attacks where they can begin to make a pretty informed guess."
Yet those who have worked on estimates inside the system take a more circumspect view. Alex Rossmiller, who worked in Iraq as an intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, says that real uncertainties exist in assigning responsibility for attacks. "It was kind of a running joke in our office," he recalls. "We would sarcastically refer to everybody as al-Qaeda."
To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."
It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics.
The first instructive set of data comes from the U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In March, the organization analyzed the online postings of eleven prominent Sunni insurgent groups, including AQI, tallying how many attacks each group claimed. AQI took credit for 10 percent of attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias (forty-three out of 439 attacks), and less than 4 percent of attacks on U.S. troops (seventeen out of 357). Although these Internet postings should not be taken as proof positive of the culprits, it's instructive to remember that PR-conscious al- Qaeda operatives are far more likely to overstate than understate their role.
When turning to the question of manpower, military officials told the New York Times in August that of the roughly 24,500 prisoners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (nearly all of whom are Sunni), just 1,800—about 7 percent—claim allegiance to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, the composition of inmates does not support the assumption that large numbers of foreign terrorists, long believed to be the leaders and most hard-core elements of AQI, are operating inside Iraq. In August, American forces held in custody 280 foreign nationals—slightly more than 1 percent of total inmates.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence's much larger estimates of the insurgency—200,000 fighters—INR's estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. This year, the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, "the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number."
How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."
So how did the military come up with an estimate of 15 percent, when government data and many of the intelligence community's own analysts point to estimates a fraction of that size? The problem begins at the top. When the White House singles out al-Qaeda in Iraq for special attention, the bureaucracy responds by creating procedures that hunt down more evidence of the organization. The more manpower assigned to focus on the group, the more evidence is uncovered that points to it lurking in every shadow. "When you have something that is really hot, the leaders start tasking everyone to look into that," explains W. Patrick Lang, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former head of Middle East intelligence analysis for the Department of Defense. "Whoever is at the top of the pyramid says, 'Make me a briefing showing what al-Qaeda in Iraq is doing,' and then the decision maker says, 'Aha, I knew I was right.'"
With disproportionate resources dedicated to tracking AQI, the search has become a self-reinforcing loop. The Army has a Special Operations task force solely dedicated to tracking al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Defense Intelligence Agency tracks AQI through its Iraq office and its counterterrorism office. The result is more information culled, more PowerPoint slides created, and, ultimately, more attention drawn to AQI, which amplifies its significance in the minds of military and intelligence officers. "Once people look at everything through that lens, al-Qaeda is all they see," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who also worked at the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. "It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Ground-level analysts in the field, facing pressures from superiors to document AQI's handiwork, might be able to question such assumptions if they had strong intelligence networks on the ground. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case. The intelligence community's efforts are hobbled by too few Arabic speakers in their ranks and too many unreliable informants in Iraqi communities, rendering a hazy picture that is open to interpretations.
Because uncertainty exists, the bar for labeling an attack the work of al-Qaeda can be very low. The fact that a detainee possesses al-Qaeda pamphlets or a laptop computer with cached jihadist Web sites, for example, is at times enough for analysts to link a detainee to al-Qaeda. "Sometimes it's as simple as an anonymous tip that al-Qaeda is active in a certain village, so they will go out on an operation and whoever they roll up, we call them al-Qaeda," says Alex Rossmiller. "People can get labeled al-Qaeda anywhere along in the chain of events, and it's really hard to unlabel them." Even when the military backs off explicit statements that AQI is responsible, as with the Tal Afar truck bombings, the perception that an attack is the work of al-Qaeda is rarely corrected.
The result can be baffling for the troops working on the ground, who hear the leadership characterizing the conflict in Iraq in ways that do not necessarily match what they see in the dusty and danger-laden villages. Michael Zacchea, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves who was deployed to Iraq, said he was sometimes skeptical of upper-level analysis emphasizing al-Qaeda in Iraq rather than the insurgency's local roots. "It's very, very frustrating for everyone involved who is trying to do the right thing," he said. "That's not how anyone learned to play the game when we were officers coming up the ranks, and we were taught to provide clear battlefield analysis."
Even if the manpower and number of attacks attributed to AQI have been exaggerated—and they have—many observers maintain that what is uniquely dangerous about the group is not its numbers, but the spectacular nature of its strikes. While homegrown Sunni and Shiite militias engage for the most part in tit-for-tat violence to forward sectarian ends, AQI's methods are presumed to be different—more dramatic, more inflammatory, and having a greater ripple effect on the country's fragile political environment. "The effect of al-Qaeda has been far beyond the numbers that they field," explains Thomas Donnelly, resident fellow for defense and national security at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "The question is, What attacks are likely to have the most destabilizing political and strategic affects?" He points, as do many inside the administration, to the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara, a revered Shiite shrine, as a paramount example of AQI's outsize influence. President Bush has laid unqualified blame for the Samara bombing on al-Qaeda, and described the infamous incident—and ensuing sectarian violence—as a fatal tipping point toward the current unrest.
But is this view of AQI's vanguard role in destabilizing Iraq really true? There are three reasons to question that belief.
First, although spectacular attacks were a distinctive AQI hallmark early in the war, the group has since lost its monopoly on bloody fireworks. After five years of shifting alliances, cross-pollination of tactics, and copycat attacks, other insurgent groups now launch equally dramatic and politically charged attacks. For example, a second explosion at the Samara mosque in June 2007, which destroyed the shrine's minarets and sparked a wave of revenge attacks on Sunni mosques nationwide, may have been an inside job. U.S. military officials said fifteen uniformed men from the Shiite-run Iraqi Security Forces were arrested for suspected involvement in the attack.
Second, it remains unclear whether the original Samara bombing was itself the work of AQI. The group never took credit for the attack, as it has many other high-profile incidents. The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein. (His right-hand man, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, was also a former military intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army.) Key features of the bombing did not conform to the profile of an AQI attack. For example, the bombers did not target civilians, or even kill the Shiite Iraqi army soldiers guarding the mosque, both of which are trademark tactics of AQI. The planners also employed sophisticated explosive devices, suggesting formal military training common among former regime officers, rather than the more bluntly destructive tactics typical of AQI. Finally, Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency. Frank "Greg" Ford, a retired counterintelligence agent for the Army Reserves, who worked with the Army in Samara before the 2006 bombing, says that the evidence points away from AQI and toward a different conclusion: "The Baathists directed that attack," says Ford.
Third, while some analysts believe that AQI drafts Baathist insurgents to carry out its attacks, other intelligence experts think it is the other way around. In other words, they see evidence of native insurgent forces coopting the steady stream of delusional extremists seeking martyrdom that AQI brings into Iraq. "Al-Qaeda can't operate anywhere in Iraq without kissing the ring of the former regime," says Nance. "They can't move car bombs full of explosives and foreign suicide bombers through a city without everyone knowing who they are. They need to be facilitated." Thus new foreign fighters "come through and some local Iraqis will say, 'Okay, why don't you go down to the Ministry of Defense building downtown.'" AQI recruits often find themselves taking orders from a network of former regime insurgents, who assemble their car bombs and tell them what to blow up. They become, as Nance says, "puppets for the other insurgent groups."
The view that AQI is neither as big nor as lethal as commonly believed is widespread among working-level analysts and troops on the ground. A majority of those interviewed for this article believe that the military's AQI estimates are overblown to varying degrees. If such misgivings are common, why haven't doubts pricked the public debate? The reason is that alternate views are running up against an echo chamber of powerful players all with an interest in hyping AQI's role.
The first group that profits from an outsize focus on AQI are former regime elements, and the tribal chiefs with whom they are often allied. These forces are able to carry out attacks against Shiites and Americans, but also to shift the blame if it suits their purposes. While the U.S. military has recently touted "news" that Sunni insurgents have turned against the al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar Province, there is little evidence of actual clashes between these two groups. Sunni insurgents in Anbar have largely ceased attacks on Americans, but some observers suggest that this development has less to do with vanquishing AQI than with the fact that U.S. troops now routinely deliver cash-filled duffle bags to tribal sheiks serving as "lead contractors" on "reconstruction projects." The excuse of fighting AQI comes in handy. "Remember, Iraq is an honor society," explains Juan Cole, an Iraq expert and professor of modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. "But if you say it wasn't us—it was al-Qaeda—then you don't lose face."
The second benefactor is the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, often the first to blame specific attacks on AQI. Talking about "al-Qaeda" offers the government a politically correct way of talking about Sunni violence without seeming to blame the Sunnis themselves, to whom they are ostensibly trying to reach out in a unity government. On a deeper level, however, the al-Maliki regime has very limited popular support, and the government officials and ruling Islamic Dawa Party feel an imperative to include Iraqi troubles in the broader "global war in terrorism" in order to keep U.S. troops in the country. In June, when faced with increasingly uncomfortable pressure from the Americans for his failure to resolve key political issues, al-Maliki warned that Iraqi intelligence had found evidence of a "widespread and dangerous plan by the terrorist al-Qaeda organization" to mount attacks outside of Iraq.
Elsewhere within the Shiite bloc of Iraqi politics, Moqtada al-Sadr has his own reasons for playing up the idea of AQI. "The Sadrists want to overstate the role of al-Qaeda in a way to emphasize on the 'foreignness' of the current problem in Iraq; and this easily fits their anti-occupation ideology, which seems to gain more popularity among Shia Iraqis on a daily basis," said Babak Rahimi, a professor of Islamic Studies and expert in Shiite politics at the University of California at San Diego.
Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain eager to take credit for the violence in Iraq, despite the bad blood that existed between bin Laden and AQI's slain founder, al-Zarqawi. They've produced a long series of taped statements in recent years taunting U.S. leaders and attempting to conflate their operations with the Sunni resistance in Iraq. "They want to bring this all together as a motivating tool to encourage recruitment," said Farhana Ali, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.
The press has also been complicit in inflating the threat of AQI. Because of the danger on the ground, reporters struggle to do the kind of comprehensive field reporting that's necessary to check facts and question statements from military spokespersons and Iraqi politicians. Today, for example, U.S. reporters rarely travel independently outside central Baghdad. Few, if any, insurgents have ever given interviews to Western reporters. These limitations are understandable, if unfortunate. But news organizations are reluctant to admit their confines in obtaining information. Ambiguities are glossed over; allegations are presented as facts. Besides, it's undeniably in the reporter's own interest to keep "al- Qaeda attacks" in the headline, because it may move their story from A16 to A1.
Finally, no one has more incentive to overstate the threat of AQI than President Bush and those in the administration who argue for keeping a substantial military presence in Iraq. Insistent talk about AQI aims to place the Iraq War in the context of the broader war on terrorism. Pointing to al- Qaeda in Iraq helps the administration leverage Americans' fears about terrorism and residual anger over the attacks of September 11. It is perhaps one of the last rhetorical crutches the president has left to lean on.
This is not to say that al-Qaeda in Iraq doesn't pose a real danger, both to stability in Iraq and to security in the United States. Today multiple Iraqi insurgent groups target U.S. forces, with the aim of driving out the occupation. But once our troops withdraw, most Sunni resistance fighters will have no impetus to launch strikes on American soil. In that regard, al-Qaeda—and AQI, to the extent it is affiliated with bin Laden's network—is unique. The group's leadership consists largely of foreign fighters, and its ideology and ambitions are global. Al-Qaeda fighters trained in Baghdad may one day use those skills to plot strikes aimed at Boston.
Yet it's not clear that the best way to counter this threat is with military action in Iraq. AQI's presence is tolerated by the country's Sunni Arabs, historically among the most secular in the Middle East, because they have a common enemy in the United States. Absent this shared cause, it's not clear that native insurgents would still welcome AQI forces working to impose strict sharia. In Baghdad, any near-term functioning government will likely be an alliance of Shiites and Kurds, two groups unlikely to accept organized radical Sunni Arab militants within their borders. Yet while precisely predicting future political dynamics in Iraq is uncertain, one thing is clear now: the continued American occupation of Iraq is al-Qaeda's best recruitment tool, the lure to hook new recruits. As RAND's Ali said, "What inspires jihadis today is Iraq."
Five years ago, the American public was asked to support the invasion of Iraq based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to al-Qaeda. Today, the erroneous belief that al-Qaeda's franchise in Iraq is a driving force behind the chaos in that country may be setting us up for a similar mistake.
Andrew Tilghman was an Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper in 2005 and 2006. He can be reached at tilghman.andrew@gmail.com.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Greetings, America!
To quote The Onion's Jim Anchower, Hola, amigos. What up? I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya. If you've read any MSM today, (and fortunately for me, I know some Americans read nothing else) you may have heard that I'm going to be releasing a video next week on the anniversary of 9-11. First of all, let me say that I'm the first dead guy to ever release a new video. Pretty amazing stuff, eh? If you don't believe I'm dead, then you have to believe that the allegedly most powerful military force in the world has been unable to find me after 6 years, yet they say I'm still living in a cave! For those of you who think I'm alive, you'll just have to wait for the video. But I will offer a few of my thoughts. First of all, let me say that I have discovered a weapon of mass deception! ABC News is reporting that my beard is now black, unlike in past videos and pictures where my beard was streaked with gray. The answer is simple; my stylist, who does a wonderful job of making sure I have perfectly white pajamas to wear, (not easy when living in a cave!), turned me on to Just For Men. That stuff really works! The chicks are willingly lifting their veils for me and I don't even have to die to be with virgins!
Enough about me. I want to know how you Americans are doing. From what I've been hearing, things don't sound so good since 9-11-01. With the record rate of home foreclosures and the subprime mortgage debacle, your economy looks to be headed downhill. The war in Iraq must be costing a pretty penny too, with US forces there at an all time high. Too bad your government has to spend all your tax money on bullets instead of insuring your children's health and feeding your homeless. Sounds like the land of the free isn't so free anymore either. I hear my buddy Bush signed the Military Commisions Act of 2006, thereby casting aside your Constitution and the principle of habeas corpus, which protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment. The MCA also gives the president absolute power to designate enemy combatants, and to set his own definitions for torture. Bush has perfected the examples set by some Middle East countries. It doesn't matter anymore what the majority of Americans want, Bush and his "elected representatives" press on with their agenda. I may be flattering myself, but maybe he and his Dad learned some things about governing people from me back when I used to get all that CIA money and support.
I don't want to give the whole video away, but let me just say that in the last six years, your Government has done more to opress and restrict you American people than I ever could have dreamed. Those planes flying into the WTC were nothing compared to what has happened to your country since, or what is yet to come. Be sure to see my video. I promised GW I'll be extra, extra scary. He needs all the help he can get.
Enough about me. I want to know how you Americans are doing. From what I've been hearing, things don't sound so good since 9-11-01. With the record rate of home foreclosures and the subprime mortgage debacle, your economy looks to be headed downhill. The war in Iraq must be costing a pretty penny too, with US forces there at an all time high. Too bad your government has to spend all your tax money on bullets instead of insuring your children's health and feeding your homeless. Sounds like the land of the free isn't so free anymore either. I hear my buddy Bush signed the Military Commisions Act of 2006, thereby casting aside your Constitution and the principle of habeas corpus, which protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment. The MCA also gives the president absolute power to designate enemy combatants, and to set his own definitions for torture. Bush has perfected the examples set by some Middle East countries. It doesn't matter anymore what the majority of Americans want, Bush and his "elected representatives" press on with their agenda. I may be flattering myself, but maybe he and his Dad learned some things about governing people from me back when I used to get all that CIA money and support.
I don't want to give the whole video away, but let me just say that in the last six years, your Government has done more to opress and restrict you American people than I ever could have dreamed. Those planes flying into the WTC were nothing compared to what has happened to your country since, or what is yet to come. Be sure to see my video. I promised GW I'll be extra, extra scary. He needs all the help he can get.
Sincerely,
Osama " The Bogeyman" Bin Laden
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Another Angle 6 - September - 2007
Ron Paul Thunders NO!
Ron Paul @ Republican Fox Debate 9-5-07
Hannity Lies To Discredit Ron Paul After Debate
The REAL Rudy
Staging Nukes for Iran?
I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.
Then he told me something I had not heard before.
Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don’t know, but it is a question worth asking.
Ron Paul @ Republican Fox Debate 9-5-07
Hannity Lies To Discredit Ron Paul After Debate
The REAL Rudy
Staging Nukes for Iran?
I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.
Then he told me something I had not heard before.
Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don’t know, but it is a question worth asking.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
“They wanted them poor niggers out of there.”
“They wanted them poor niggers out of there.
”Published August 29th, 2007 in Articles
New Orleans two years afterby Greg Palast
[Thurs August 30] “They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that’s just the bottom line.”
It wasn’t a pretty statement. But I wasn’t looking for pretty. I’d taken my investigative team to New Orleans to meet with Malik Rahim. Pretty isn’t Malik’s concern.
We needed an answer to a weird, puzzling and horrific discovery. Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing “Blackwater” badges: “Try to go into your home and we’ll arrest you.”
These aren’t just any homes. They are the public housing projects of the city; the Lafitte Houses and others. But unlike the cinder block monsters in the Bronx, these public units are beautiful townhouses, with wrought-iron porches and gardens right next to the tony French Quarter.
Raised up on high ground, with floors and walls of concrete, they were some of the only houses left salvageable after the Katrina flood.
Yet, two years later, there’s still bars on the windows, the doors are welded shut and the residents banned from returning. On the first anniversary of the flood, we were filming this odd scene when I saw a woman on the sidewalk, sobbing. Night was falling. What was wrong?
“They just messing all over us. Putting me out our own house. We come to go back to our own home and when we get there they got the police there putting us out. Oh, no, this is not right. I’m coming here from Texas seeing if I can get my house back. But they said they ain’t letting nobody in. But where we gonna go at?”
Idiot me, I asked, “Where are you going to go tonight?”
“That’s what I want to know, Mister. Where I’m going to go - me and my kids?”
With the help of Patricia Thomas, a Lafitte resident, we broke into an apartment. The place was gorgeous. The cereal boxes still dry. This was Patricia’s home. But we decided to get out before we got busted.
I wasn’t naïve. I had a good idea what this scam was all about: 89,000 poor and working class families stuck in Homeland Security’s trailer park gulag while their good homes were guarded against their return by mercenaries. Two decades ago, I worked for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Even then, the plan was to evict poor folk out of this very valuable real estate. But it took the cover of a hurricane to do it.
Malik’s organization, Common Ground, wouldn’t wait for permission from the federal and local commissars to help folks return. They organized takeovers of public housing by the residents. And, in the face of threats and official displeasure, restored 350 apartments in a destroyed private development on the high ground across the Mississippi in the ward called, “Algiers.” The tenants rebuilt their own homes with their own sweat and their own scraps of cash based on a promise of the landlords to sell Common Ground the property in return for restoring it.
Why, I asked Malik, was there this strange lock-out from public housing?
Malik shook his dreds. “They didn’t want to open it up. They wanted them closed. They wanted them poor niggers out of there.”
For Malik, the emphasis is on “poor.” The racial politics of the Deep South is as ugly as it is in Philadelphia, Pa. But the New Orleans city establishment has no problem with Black folk per se. After all, Mayor Ray Nagin’s parents are African-American.
It’s the Black survivors without the cash that are a problem. So where New Orleans once stood, Mayor Nagin, in connivance with a Bush regime more than happy to keep a quarter million poor folk (i.e. Democrats) out of this swing state, is creating a new city: a tourist town with a French Quarter, loose-spending drunks, hot-sheets hotels and a few Black people to perform the modern version of minstrel shows.
Malik explained, “It’s two cities. You know? There’s the city for the white and the rich. And there’s another city for the poor and Blacks. You know, the city that’s for the white and rich has recovered. They had a Jazz Fest. They had a Mardi Gras. They’re going to have the Saints playing for those who have recovered. But for those who haven’t recovered, there’s nothing.”
So where are they now? The sobbing woman and her kids are gone: back to Texas, or wherever. But they will not be allowed back into Lafitte. Ever.
And Patricia Thomas? Patricia found work sweeping up tourists’ vomit and beer each morning at a French Quarter karioke joint. Not much pay, no health insurance, of course. A few months ago, Patricia died - in a city bereft of health care. New Orleans has closed all its public hospitals but for one “charity” make-shift emergency ward in an abandoned department store.
And the one bright star, Malik’s housing project? The tenants’ work was done this past December. By Christmastime, they received their eviction notices - and all were carried out of their rebuilt homes by marshals right after the New Year, including a paraplegic resident who’d lived in the Algiers building for decades.
Hurricane recovery is class war by other means. And in this war of the powerful against the powerless, Mr. Bush can rightly land his fighter plane in Louisiana and declare that, unlike the war in Iraq, it is, indeed, “Mission Accomplished.”
”Published August 29th, 2007 in Articles
New Orleans two years afterby Greg Palast
[Thurs August 30] “They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that’s just the bottom line.”
It wasn’t a pretty statement. But I wasn’t looking for pretty. I’d taken my investigative team to New Orleans to meet with Malik Rahim. Pretty isn’t Malik’s concern.
We needed an answer to a weird, puzzling and horrific discovery. Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing “Blackwater” badges: “Try to go into your home and we’ll arrest you.”
These aren’t just any homes. They are the public housing projects of the city; the Lafitte Houses and others. But unlike the cinder block monsters in the Bronx, these public units are beautiful townhouses, with wrought-iron porches and gardens right next to the tony French Quarter.
Raised up on high ground, with floors and walls of concrete, they were some of the only houses left salvageable after the Katrina flood.
Yet, two years later, there’s still bars on the windows, the doors are welded shut and the residents banned from returning. On the first anniversary of the flood, we were filming this odd scene when I saw a woman on the sidewalk, sobbing. Night was falling. What was wrong?
“They just messing all over us. Putting me out our own house. We come to go back to our own home and when we get there they got the police there putting us out. Oh, no, this is not right. I’m coming here from Texas seeing if I can get my house back. But they said they ain’t letting nobody in. But where we gonna go at?”
Idiot me, I asked, “Where are you going to go tonight?”
“That’s what I want to know, Mister. Where I’m going to go - me and my kids?”
With the help of Patricia Thomas, a Lafitte resident, we broke into an apartment. The place was gorgeous. The cereal boxes still dry. This was Patricia’s home. But we decided to get out before we got busted.
I wasn’t naïve. I had a good idea what this scam was all about: 89,000 poor and working class families stuck in Homeland Security’s trailer park gulag while their good homes were guarded against their return by mercenaries. Two decades ago, I worked for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Even then, the plan was to evict poor folk out of this very valuable real estate. But it took the cover of a hurricane to do it.
Malik’s organization, Common Ground, wouldn’t wait for permission from the federal and local commissars to help folks return. They organized takeovers of public housing by the residents. And, in the face of threats and official displeasure, restored 350 apartments in a destroyed private development on the high ground across the Mississippi in the ward called, “Algiers.” The tenants rebuilt their own homes with their own sweat and their own scraps of cash based on a promise of the landlords to sell Common Ground the property in return for restoring it.
Why, I asked Malik, was there this strange lock-out from public housing?
Malik shook his dreds. “They didn’t want to open it up. They wanted them closed. They wanted them poor niggers out of there.”
For Malik, the emphasis is on “poor.” The racial politics of the Deep South is as ugly as it is in Philadelphia, Pa. But the New Orleans city establishment has no problem with Black folk per se. After all, Mayor Ray Nagin’s parents are African-American.
It’s the Black survivors without the cash that are a problem. So where New Orleans once stood, Mayor Nagin, in connivance with a Bush regime more than happy to keep a quarter million poor folk (i.e. Democrats) out of this swing state, is creating a new city: a tourist town with a French Quarter, loose-spending drunks, hot-sheets hotels and a few Black people to perform the modern version of minstrel shows.
Malik explained, “It’s two cities. You know? There’s the city for the white and the rich. And there’s another city for the poor and Blacks. You know, the city that’s for the white and rich has recovered. They had a Jazz Fest. They had a Mardi Gras. They’re going to have the Saints playing for those who have recovered. But for those who haven’t recovered, there’s nothing.”
So where are they now? The sobbing woman and her kids are gone: back to Texas, or wherever. But they will not be allowed back into Lafitte. Ever.
And Patricia Thomas? Patricia found work sweeping up tourists’ vomit and beer each morning at a French Quarter karioke joint. Not much pay, no health insurance, of course. A few months ago, Patricia died - in a city bereft of health care. New Orleans has closed all its public hospitals but for one “charity” make-shift emergency ward in an abandoned department store.
And the one bright star, Malik’s housing project? The tenants’ work was done this past December. By Christmastime, they received their eviction notices - and all were carried out of their rebuilt homes by marshals right after the New Year, including a paraplegic resident who’d lived in the Algiers building for decades.
Hurricane recovery is class war by other means. And in this war of the powerful against the powerless, Mr. Bush can rightly land his fighter plane in Louisiana and declare that, unlike the war in Iraq, it is, indeed, “Mission Accomplished.”
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Blood in the Water: Katrina and the Death of the Common Good
Blood in the Water: Katrina and the Death of the Common Good
Written by Chris Floyd
This week we remember the destruction of New Orleans: an "act of God" aided mightily by the perfidy of man. As Greg Palast revealed this week, the Bush White House knew that the levees were breaking -- and deliberately failed to inform emergency officials in the city and state. His source was Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the LSU Hurrican Center, "the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.
"Why would the Bush Regime keep mum as the flood waters were cracking the levees? The answer, says Palast, is simple: Money. Loot. Scratch. Long green. From Palast's piece on Buzzflash:
Why on earth would the White House not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there? The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God -- but a catastrophic failure of the levees is an act of Bush. Under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage -- and the deaths -- a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, "these people must be compensated.
"The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi River levees to withstand known dangers -- or pay the price when they fail. Indeed, that was the rule applied in the storms that hit Westhampton Dunes, New York, in 1992. There, when federal sea barriers failed, the floodwaters wiped away 190 homes. The Feds rebuilt them from the public treasury. But these were not just any homes. They are worth an average of $3 million apiece -- the summer homes of movie stars and celebrity speculators.
There were no movie stars floating face down in the Lower Ninth Ward nor in Lakeview nor in St. Bernard Parish. For the 'luvvies' of Westhampton Dunes, the federal government even trucked in sand to replace the beaches. But for New Orleans' survivors, there's the aluminum gulag of FEMA trailer parks. Today, two years later, 89,000 families still live in this mobile home Guantanamo -- with no plan whatsoever for their return.
And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay? I spoke with van Heerden in his university office...He said, "Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line.
"And the brutal beat goes on. Scott Horton at Harper's has some inside dirt on the gigantic boondoggle that has followed in the wake of the killer storm: the "reconstruction" effort that, just as in Iraq, Bush has turned into a massive trough of corruption for his swinish cronies. And none are more literally swinish than the fat-faced swill-master Haley Barbour, the longtime GOP bagman now serving as Mississippi's governor. As Horton notes, Barbour has managed to wangle a vastly disproportionate share of federal reconstruction aid for his state, which suffered far less damage than Louisiana:
Yes, why exactly was the recovery money so disproportionately funnelled to Mississippi? Might it, perhaps, have to do with the governor of Mississippi, former Republic National Committee chair Haley Barbour? Was he doing a good job for Mississippi, or was he doing a good job for Haley Barbour?
In any event, Haley Barbour played an impressively influential role throughout this process. About six months after Katrina, I was at a dinner party with a recently resigned Homeland Security official who told me that there were enormous corruption issues surrounding the contracting process. He said he what he had seen was so disconcerting and the attitude of his boss (who now figures as a candidate to be attorney general) was so permissive, he had decided to leave rather than be tarred with it. One name figured in that discussion: Haley Barbour. More recently, I have been dealing with some professionals down in the southeast who deal regularly with FEMA for contractors. “Word was, if you wanted work, you had to see one of Barbour’s nephews or Joe Allbaugh—they really run the show.” How could that be?
Timothy Burger at Bloomberg has been digging very deep into Barbour’s remarkable good fortune in the government contracts area.
Many Mississippians have benefited from Governor Haley Barbour’s efforts to rebuild the state’s devastated Gulf Coast in the two years since Hurricane Katrina. The $15 billion or more in federal aid the former Republican national chairman attracted has reopened casinos and helped residents move to new or repaired homes.
Among the beneficiaries are Barbour’s own family and friends, who have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from hurricane-related business. A nephew, one of two who are lobbyists, saw his fees more than double in the year after his uncle appointed him to a special reconstruction panel. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in June raided a company owned by the wife of a third nephew, which maintained federal emergency-management trailers.
Meanwhile, the governor’s own former lobbying firm, which he says is still making payments to him, has represented at least four clients with business linked to the recovery.
(Firedoglake has more on the cornucopia of corruption here.)
Bush himself returned to the scene of the crime this week, flying down to New Orleans to preen and prance and pose as the city's saviour. It was a sickening spectacle, but what else is new? And what else can you say? There were some who thought at the time that the destruction of New Orleans and the subsequent looting of the national treasury by Bush cronies making big bucks from the unrelieved suffering of the vulnerable would be some kind of turning point in American politics. But as with the recent resignation of Alberto Gonzales, and the election of 2006, and all the other such "turning points," the drowning of New Orleans had no real political effect. Bush has gone from strength to strength, extending his tyranny and his looting, and his re-ordering of American society for the benefit of a rapacious elite and the makers of war.
I will have more on Bush's triumph soon. In the meantime, below is an excerpt of the piece that I wrote after the levees broke. Nothing has changed from that day to this.
"The river rose all day,The river rose all night.Some people got lost in the flood,Some people got away all right.The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemine:Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline."Louisiana, Louisiana,They're trying to wash us away,They're trying to wash us away…."-- Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927.
The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level.
Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of the storm and its devastating aftermath: "those who chose to stay behind." Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.It is obvious that the vast majority of those who failed to evacuate are poor: they had nowhere else to go, no way to get there, no means to sustain themselves and their families on strange ground. While there were certainly people who stayed behind by choice, most stayed behind because they had no choice. They were trapped by their poverty - and many have paid the price with their lives.
Yet across the media spectrum, the faint hint of disapproval drips from the affluent observers, the clear implication that the victims were just too lazy and shiftless to get out of harm's way. There is simply no understanding - not even an attempt at understanding - the destitution, the isolation, the immobility of the poor and the sick and the broken among us.
This is from the "respectable" media; the great right-wing echo chamber was even less restrained, of course, leaping straight into giddy convulsions of racism at the first reports of looting in the devastated city. In the pinched-gonad squeals of Rush Limbaugh and his fellow hatemongers, the hard-right media immediately conjured up images of wild-eyed darkies rampaging through the streets in an orgy of violence and thievery.
Not that the mainstreamers ignored the racist angle. There was the already infamous juxtaposition of captions for wire service photos, where depictions of essentially the same scene - desperate people wading through flood waters, clutching plastic bags full of groceries - were given markedly different spins. In one picture, a white couple are described as struggling along after finding bread and soda at a grocery store. But beneath an almost identical photo of a young black man with a bag of groceries, we are told that a "looter" wades through the streets after robbing a grocery store.
Almost all of the early "looting" was like this: desperate people - of all colors - stranded by the floodwaters broke into abandoned stores and carried off food, clean water, medicine, clothes. Perhaps they should have left a check on the counter, but then again - what exactly was going to happen to all those perishables and consumer goods, sitting around in fetid, diseased water for weeks on end? (The mayor now says it could be up to 16 weeks before people can return to their homes and businesses.) Obviously, most if not all of it would have been thrown away or written off in any case. Later, of course, there was more organized looting by criminal gangs, the type of lawless element - of every hue, in every society - whose chief victims are, of course, the poor and vulnerable. These criminal operations were quickly conflated with the earlier pilferage to paint a single seamless picture of the American media's favorite horror story: Black Folk Gone Wild...
The whole piece can be found here: The Perfect Storm. I followed that with this piece in CounterPunch, No Direction Home:
"How does it feel?
Written by Chris Floyd
This week we remember the destruction of New Orleans: an "act of God" aided mightily by the perfidy of man. As Greg Palast revealed this week, the Bush White House knew that the levees were breaking -- and deliberately failed to inform emergency officials in the city and state. His source was Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the LSU Hurrican Center, "the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.
"Why would the Bush Regime keep mum as the flood waters were cracking the levees? The answer, says Palast, is simple: Money. Loot. Scratch. Long green. From Palast's piece on Buzzflash:
Why on earth would the White House not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there? The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God -- but a catastrophic failure of the levees is an act of Bush. Under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage -- and the deaths -- a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, "these people must be compensated.
"The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi River levees to withstand known dangers -- or pay the price when they fail. Indeed, that was the rule applied in the storms that hit Westhampton Dunes, New York, in 1992. There, when federal sea barriers failed, the floodwaters wiped away 190 homes. The Feds rebuilt them from the public treasury. But these were not just any homes. They are worth an average of $3 million apiece -- the summer homes of movie stars and celebrity speculators.
There were no movie stars floating face down in the Lower Ninth Ward nor in Lakeview nor in St. Bernard Parish. For the 'luvvies' of Westhampton Dunes, the federal government even trucked in sand to replace the beaches. But for New Orleans' survivors, there's the aluminum gulag of FEMA trailer parks. Today, two years later, 89,000 families still live in this mobile home Guantanamo -- with no plan whatsoever for their return.
And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay? I spoke with van Heerden in his university office...He said, "Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line.
"And the brutal beat goes on. Scott Horton at Harper's has some inside dirt on the gigantic boondoggle that has followed in the wake of the killer storm: the "reconstruction" effort that, just as in Iraq, Bush has turned into a massive trough of corruption for his swinish cronies. And none are more literally swinish than the fat-faced swill-master Haley Barbour, the longtime GOP bagman now serving as Mississippi's governor. As Horton notes, Barbour has managed to wangle a vastly disproportionate share of federal reconstruction aid for his state, which suffered far less damage than Louisiana:
Yes, why exactly was the recovery money so disproportionately funnelled to Mississippi? Might it, perhaps, have to do with the governor of Mississippi, former Republic National Committee chair Haley Barbour? Was he doing a good job for Mississippi, or was he doing a good job for Haley Barbour?
In any event, Haley Barbour played an impressively influential role throughout this process. About six months after Katrina, I was at a dinner party with a recently resigned Homeland Security official who told me that there were enormous corruption issues surrounding the contracting process. He said he what he had seen was so disconcerting and the attitude of his boss (who now figures as a candidate to be attorney general) was so permissive, he had decided to leave rather than be tarred with it. One name figured in that discussion: Haley Barbour. More recently, I have been dealing with some professionals down in the southeast who deal regularly with FEMA for contractors. “Word was, if you wanted work, you had to see one of Barbour’s nephews or Joe Allbaugh—they really run the show.” How could that be?
Timothy Burger at Bloomberg has been digging very deep into Barbour’s remarkable good fortune in the government contracts area.
Many Mississippians have benefited from Governor Haley Barbour’s efforts to rebuild the state’s devastated Gulf Coast in the two years since Hurricane Katrina. The $15 billion or more in federal aid the former Republican national chairman attracted has reopened casinos and helped residents move to new or repaired homes.
Among the beneficiaries are Barbour’s own family and friends, who have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from hurricane-related business. A nephew, one of two who are lobbyists, saw his fees more than double in the year after his uncle appointed him to a special reconstruction panel. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in June raided a company owned by the wife of a third nephew, which maintained federal emergency-management trailers.
Meanwhile, the governor’s own former lobbying firm, which he says is still making payments to him, has represented at least four clients with business linked to the recovery.
(Firedoglake has more on the cornucopia of corruption here.)
Bush himself returned to the scene of the crime this week, flying down to New Orleans to preen and prance and pose as the city's saviour. It was a sickening spectacle, but what else is new? And what else can you say? There were some who thought at the time that the destruction of New Orleans and the subsequent looting of the national treasury by Bush cronies making big bucks from the unrelieved suffering of the vulnerable would be some kind of turning point in American politics. But as with the recent resignation of Alberto Gonzales, and the election of 2006, and all the other such "turning points," the drowning of New Orleans had no real political effect. Bush has gone from strength to strength, extending his tyranny and his looting, and his re-ordering of American society for the benefit of a rapacious elite and the makers of war.
I will have more on Bush's triumph soon. In the meantime, below is an excerpt of the piece that I wrote after the levees broke. Nothing has changed from that day to this.
"The river rose all day,The river rose all night.Some people got lost in the flood,Some people got away all right.The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemine:Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline."Louisiana, Louisiana,They're trying to wash us away,They're trying to wash us away…."-- Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927.
The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level.
Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of the storm and its devastating aftermath: "those who chose to stay behind." Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.It is obvious that the vast majority of those who failed to evacuate are poor: they had nowhere else to go, no way to get there, no means to sustain themselves and their families on strange ground. While there were certainly people who stayed behind by choice, most stayed behind because they had no choice. They were trapped by their poverty - and many have paid the price with their lives.
Yet across the media spectrum, the faint hint of disapproval drips from the affluent observers, the clear implication that the victims were just too lazy and shiftless to get out of harm's way. There is simply no understanding - not even an attempt at understanding - the destitution, the isolation, the immobility of the poor and the sick and the broken among us.
This is from the "respectable" media; the great right-wing echo chamber was even less restrained, of course, leaping straight into giddy convulsions of racism at the first reports of looting in the devastated city. In the pinched-gonad squeals of Rush Limbaugh and his fellow hatemongers, the hard-right media immediately conjured up images of wild-eyed darkies rampaging through the streets in an orgy of violence and thievery.
Not that the mainstreamers ignored the racist angle. There was the already infamous juxtaposition of captions for wire service photos, where depictions of essentially the same scene - desperate people wading through flood waters, clutching plastic bags full of groceries - were given markedly different spins. In one picture, a white couple are described as struggling along after finding bread and soda at a grocery store. But beneath an almost identical photo of a young black man with a bag of groceries, we are told that a "looter" wades through the streets after robbing a grocery store.
Almost all of the early "looting" was like this: desperate people - of all colors - stranded by the floodwaters broke into abandoned stores and carried off food, clean water, medicine, clothes. Perhaps they should have left a check on the counter, but then again - what exactly was going to happen to all those perishables and consumer goods, sitting around in fetid, diseased water for weeks on end? (The mayor now says it could be up to 16 weeks before people can return to their homes and businesses.) Obviously, most if not all of it would have been thrown away or written off in any case. Later, of course, there was more organized looting by criminal gangs, the type of lawless element - of every hue, in every society - whose chief victims are, of course, the poor and vulnerable. These criminal operations were quickly conflated with the earlier pilferage to paint a single seamless picture of the American media's favorite horror story: Black Folk Gone Wild...
The whole piece can be found here: The Perfect Storm. I followed that with this piece in CounterPunch, No Direction Home:
Let's be clear about one thing. Nothing that has happened in the past week -- the mass destruction in the Mississippi Delta, the obliteration of the city of New Orleans, the murderous abandonment of thousands of people to death, chaos and disease will change the Bush Administration or American politics at all. Not one whit. The Bush Administration will not reverse its brutal policies; its Congressional rubber-stamps will not revolt against the White House; the national Democrats will not suddenly grow a spine. There will be no real change, and the bitter corrosion of injustice, indifference and inhumanity that is consuming American society will go on as before....
Just as the media have always overhyped Bush's popularity, they are now overhyping the "political crisis" he is supposedly facing. There is no political crisis whatsoever, if by "political crisis" you mean something that will cause Bush to alter his policies....This is what you must understand: Bush and his faction do not care if they have "the consent of the governed" or not. They are not interested in governing at all, in responding to the needs and desires and will of the people. They are only interested in ruling, in using the power of the state to force their radical agenda of elitist aggrandizement and ideological crankery on the nation, and on the world....
None of this will change because of what happened in New Orleans. If these people could be touched by suffering and injustice, by death and destruction, by corruption and incompetence, then they would not be where they are today. If there was a viable opposition in the American Establishment to Bush's policies, it would have stood up long ago. Like the people left behind in New Orleans, we're all on our own, "with no direction home.
"How does it feel?
Monday, August 27, 2007
JUST ANOTHER SAND NIGGER
JUST ANOTHER SAND NIGGER
Malcom Lagauche
Malcom Lagauche
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has not had a good month. Pressure is mounting daily for his ouster and also for the dismembering of Iraq.
U.S. politicians are openly calling for a change in the Iraqi leadership. They are not ambiguous. Democrat Senators Hilary Clinton and Carl Levin have been in the forefront of calling for al-Maliki’s ouster.
Al-Maliki has struck back. According to the article "Iraq PM Hits Out at Critics," published by Al-Jazeera News on August 26, 2007:
The Iraqi prime minister has replied to his U.S. and European critics by making criticisms of his own, including the ongoing killing of Iraqis by U.S. soldiers.
At a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday, Nuri al-Maliki singled out Hilary Rodham Clinton and Carl Levin, both Democratic senators, saying they should "come to their senses."
Al-Maliki said: "There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hilary Clinton and Carl Levin." …
… Al-Maliki appeared stung by the recent series of critical statements about the government, including one from George Bush, the U.S. president, who said he was frustrated that al-Maliki had failed to make progress on political benchmarks.
In addition to the daily calls for al-Maliki’s demise, many pundits are calling for the dismembering of Iraq. Senator Joseph Biden has advocated the partitioning for years. Lately, he has spoken even louder on the subject.
For years, Ralph Peters, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, has been calling for the breakup of Iraq. In July 2003, he wrote: "The Iraq we’re trying to herd back together consists of three distinct nations caged under a single bloodstained flag."
It is in vogue for "experts" to knock the Iraqi people for not getting their act together in forming the "new democratic Iraq" that the U.S. supplied them. Now, everything is their fault. According to the sick and twisted logic of U.S. politicians, the U.S. did Iraq a favor and the Iraqis have not been forthcoming in thanking the Americans. "Our commitment is not open-ended" is the statement of the day.
The stooges in Baghdad who were put in power by the U.S. are now being threatened by their benefactors. It is unbelievable that they did not see this coming.
Prior to 2003, these quislings, mostly living outside Iraq, thought they would have a free ride in returning to their country of birth. How idiotic. All they had to do was look at the treatment of Iraq under Saddam to notice common themes: the U.S. treats all Iraqis as stupid, ignorant people who can not get along. No amount of counterattack is strong enough to change this ethnocentric behavior.
Subtle changes have occurred along the way, only to revert to the original assessment of Iraqis. Before March 2003, all Iraqis were bad. They were savage animals. Then, after the invasion, we started to see a few "good Iraqis" spring up.
For a while, there was propaganda that spoke of the differences between "good Iraqis" and "dead-enders." All that talk is gone now. To the U.S. government, and much of its citizenry, Iraqis are dysfunctional and ignorant. There is no longer a line dividing the good from the bad Iraqis.
Only a fool would not have seen the bigotry thrust on Iraq prior to the March 2003 invasion and not have concluded that this was Arabaphobia at its worst. The same cliches and statements used against Iraqis under the Ba’ath government are now used against Iraqis of all persuasions.
Even al-Maliki has seen that what was promised is not what was delivered. Despite all the bluster about Iraq now running its own affairs, the shots are called in Washington. If the U.S. administration wants al-Maliki out, he will be gone. There are many means available, including assassination. In the early 1960s, the president of South Vietnam was assassinated by CIA operatives. He had outlived his usefulness. Don’t count out assassination as a means of getting a new prime minister in Iraq.
A few months ago, al-Maliki publicly stated that U.S. troops were no longer needed in Iraq. Within 48 hours, he was in Washington, D.C. In front of the worldwide press corps, he emerged from a back room with George Bush. Al-Maliki’s head was pointing downward as he and Bush approached the podium. Bush then said there may have been a misunderstanding but all was well again. Al-Maliki was handed a piece of paper from which he read a statement in English proclaiming that U.S. troops should stay in Iraq indefinitely. He had experienced his trip to the woodshed.
Unless he is even a bigger fool than I thought, al-Maliki must realize that he and each and every Iraqi are nothing more than sand niggers to the U.S. government and public. He thought he was pulling a fast one on the people of Iraq, all the time assisting his new allies in Washington. In fact, he was used by the administration and is in the process of being chewed up and spit out.
The U.S. conned the Iraqi collaborators who assisted in bringing "democracy" and "freedom" to Iraq. Shortly before the bogus Iraqi elections of January 30, 2005, the American Forces Press Service published an article titled, "Upcoming Elections Represent 'Historic Moment,’ Iraqi Minister Says." According to the piece:
Iraq’s January 30 elections mark "the beginning of the end of miseries and difficulties that the people of Iraq have endured for so many decades," Iraq’s interim deputy prime minister told Pentagon reporters today during a videoconference from Baghdad.
Hindsight shows that the deputy prime minister (Barham Sali) was slightly off in his prediction.
Let me turn to a quote made by Dr. Abbas Khalaf, Saddam Hussein’s personal Russian/Arabic translator. On November 3, 2006, he was interviewed by CTV’s Moscow bureau. The subject of the interview was the current Iraq of violence and destruction compared to Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Khalaf stated:
You could agree or disagree with him, but now even those who were secretly against him are saying he understood us better than we understand ourselves.
Saddam Hussein had understood for years that the U.S. would eventually invade Iraq and try to destroy every aspect of the country that opposed U.S. hegemony. Al-Maliki should have taken notes when Saddam spoke. His assessment was not only for Ba’athist Iraq, but for any government Iraq would field in the future.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Another Angle 25 - August - 2007
ANOTHER ANGLE
News others won't tell you
History was made on this day:
1886 - Kentucky State College (now University), chartered in May,1886 as the State Normal School for Colored Persons and only the second state-supported institution of higher learning in Kentucky, is founded in Frankfort, Kentucky. It will become a land grant college in 1890..
NATIONAL:
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE FOR JUSTICE TO BE SERVED
"While this sentence can never repair the suffering and loss brought by these heinous acts of racial violence, it will hopefully bring some closure to the families of Henry Dee and Charlie Moore who have waited decades for justice," said Wan Kim, US assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
Remembering Roger Stone Fondly
Village Voice readers may remember the Republican operative from Wayne Barrett's reporting on Stone's secret role in Al Sharpton's Presidential Campaign in 2004 or how Stone exploited his Bush administration contacts to make millions in the Indian gaming industry after he fomented the "'Brooks Brothers mob' that shut down the Miami-Dade recount in 2000."
blackagendareport.com - The Struggle to Free the Jena Six
The nooses were hung after a Black student asked permission to sit under a tree that had been reserved by tradition for white students only. In response to the three nooses, nearly every Black student in the school stood under the tree in a spontaneous and powerful act of nonviolent protest. The town's district attorney quickly arrived, flanked by police officers, and told the Black students to stop making such a big deal over the nooses, which school officials termed to be a "harmless prank."
The NAFTA Superhighway
The proposed highway is part of a broader plan advanced by a quasi-government organization called the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” or SPP.
The SPP was first launched in 2005 by the heads of state of Canada, Mexico, and the United States at a summit in Waco. The SPP was not created by a treaty between the nations involved, nor was Congress involved in any way. Instead, the SPP is an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments. One principal player is a Spanish construction company, which plans to build the highway and operate it as a toll road. But don’t be fooled: the superhighway proposal is not the result of free market demand, but rather an extension of government-managed trade schemes like NAFTA that benefit politically-connected interests.
Intelligence report at odds with U.S. policies on Iraq
The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate has effectively discredited the dominant American hypothesis of the past seven months: that safer streets, secured by additional troops, would create enough political calm for Iraq's leaders to reconcile. They have failed to do so in part, suggests the report, which was released Thursday, because the security gains remain too modest to reverse Iraq's dynamic of violence and fear. Baghdad after all, remains a place where women at the market avoid buying river fish for fear that they've been eating bodies.
Police State! Congress authorizes domestic spying
It’s the law of the land now and it was enacted with the open complicity of the Democratically-controlled Congress.
Pentagon's New Drug Weapons
While the CIA and military drug experiments of the 50s and 60s might be written off as just a phase they were going through, a new report from the Bradford Nonlethal Weapons Research Project shows that the interest in psychoactive substances has continued right up until the present day.
While We Slept, America Has Gone Fascist
A brief summary of presidential directives, executive orders, and congressionaly approved bills that where signed into law over the last 40+ years.And no, this isn't a bunch of conspiracy nonsense. They are simply facts.
INTERNATIONAL:
Iran's Happy Jewish Population A Big Problem For Israel
Why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?
Mugabe: When a cheer jars the West, rings farthest
Sadc has re-stoked the African sentiment ahead of Portugal, itself the setting for the EU-Africa Summit. And it’s not accidental that the western envoys who expressed shock at Mugabe’s popularity are from Lisbon. They know what they will be up against should they ever buckle to British fears of the potential hazard of a Brown accidental hand-shake with the "coarse" Mugabe in a dimly lit Lisbon corner.
Castro: American materialism threatens human existence
He used the latest of his “Reflections of the Commander in Chief” columns to lambaste American capitalism, quoting a former Russian defense official who says the world must stand up to the United States and its money-grubbing ways.
“Commercial advertising and consumerism are incompatible with the survival of the species,” Pres. Castro wrote in the essay titled “Hard and Obvious Realities” and published in Cuba’s two leading state-controlled newspapers.
'Castro dead' rumours send Miami wild
IRAQ:
Report: Muqtada al-Sadr says Iraq's government is near its end
"The prime minister is a tool for the Americans, and people see that clearly. It will probably be the Americans who decide to change him when they realize he has failed. We don't have a democracy here, we have a foreign occupation."
Sadr pledges to work with UN if it replaces US, Britain in Iraq
Yazidis fear further attacks
The Yazidis, who are primarily Kurdish, follow a pre-Islamic faith which instills belief in God the creator and respects the Biblical and Quranic prophets.The main focus of their worship is Malak Taus, the chief of the archangels. Because Malak Taus is sometimes wrongly identified as Satan, the Yazidis have been branded devil worshippers, and suffered intermittent persecution as a result.
No Iraqi ever called me a nigger.
I was reading somewhere how the number of blacks signing up for military service has reduced over the years; and honestly, I couldn't be happier. It seems that since the year 2000, black enlistment in the military has been reduced by at least a third. The numbers don't lie, and the news media has just now started to pick up on this beautiful phenomenon.
OP-ED:
What would Garvey do? -- August 2007
Marcus Garvey said, “Look for me in the Whirlwind.” Today that Whirlwind has come in the form of Kemet World, and it is taking the country by storm.
China Is Not The Problem
Clearly, it is a mistake for the US government and economists to think of the imbalance as if it were produced by Chinese companies underselling goods produced by US companies in America. The imbalance is the result of US companies producing their goods in China and selling them in America.
A Boycott Of Israel: Something Has Changed
"I am Ahmed Hamzeh, street entertainer," he said in measured English. "Over there, I played many musical instruments; I sang in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and because I was rather poor, my very small son would chew gum while the monkey did its tricks. When we lost our country, we lost respect. One day a rich Kuwaiti stopped his car in front of us. He shouted at my son, "Show me how a Palestinian picks up his food rations!" So I made the monkey appear to scavenge on the ground, in the gutter. And my son scavenged with him. The Kuwaiti threw coins and my son crawled on his knees to pick them up. This was not right; I was an artist, not a beggar . . . I am not even a peasant now." "How do you feel about all that?"
The 13 Illuminati Satanic Bloodlines
ECONOMY:
Worse Than 1929
Brace yourself for the insolvency crunch
Why? Because trust had collapsed to such a degree that players with a lot of cash no longer believed it safe to leave wealth in bank accounts, or the money market funds of brokerage companies - (exposed as they are to short-term commercial paper and subprime CDOs). This did not occur after 9/11, or in the heat of the October 1987 crash. Nor did was there such a banking panic in October 1929. (it hit in August 1931). If you think this is of no importance, or that this will pass swiftly, you have a strong nerve.
Sub-prime crisis is the edge of a financial hurricane
The US sub-prime is just the leading edge of a financial hurricane. For far too long, no-one seemed to care if borrowers would be able to service their debts: borrowers themselves seemed not to care; lenders seemed not to care; and investors in the packages of mortgage loans created by banks and sold to institutions such as pension funds seemed not to care. In short, there was a global credit bubble.
SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY:
Time Travel Machine Outlined
Unlike past ideas for time machines, this new concept does not require exotic, theoretical forms of matter. Still, this new idea requires technology far more advanced than anything existing today, and major questions remain as to whether any time machine would ever prove stable enough to enable actual travel back in time.
The Best Videogame With Women Warriors and Hot Cross Buns Ever
For those of us accustomed to the stale world of videogame stereotypes—macho male characters, cut-and-dried storylines, a decided lack of culinary interest—Atlus’ role-playing game, Odin Sphere, serves up some pretty mixed messages, and a lot of fresh air.
FOOD&DRINK:
Preserving Our Past, One Jar at a Time
Take advantage of summer's bounty by choosing fresh, firm fruits and vegetables versus overly ripe, bruised or damaged ones.
PEPPER JELLY
Very easy to make. Be sure to wash and then boil jars and lids fo 15 minutes before filling. Then air dry them on a rack... do not use a towel or the like to dry! Also a general rule of thumb is to put hot product into hot jars and cold into cold.
ENTERTAINMENT:
Chamillionaire - Hip Hop Police/Evening News
The Success and Undoing of Vee-Jay Records
In 1953, Vivian and James Bracken from Gary, Ind., borrowed $500 from a pawnbroker to start a record company. Thirteen years later, Vee-Jay Records became the country's biggest independent, black-owned record label, and for a time, it was bigger than Motown.
Vee-Jay was even the Beatles' first American label.
Trumpeter Terence Blanchard Performs Live in 4A
Last year, Blanchard captured the devastation of his hometown in his film score for Spike Lee's documentary, When the Levees Broke. Blanchard also appeared in front of the camera, taking an emotional journey back to the city to find his childhood home destroyed.
Blanchard continues his story on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with his latest CD, "A Tale of God's Will (a requiem for Katrina)."
Kanye, Eve Answer Gay Rumors
Both Kanye West and Eve have come out recently to address gay rumors that have followed them throughout their careers.
Seventh Annual Salsa Congress Brings the Moves Back Home
As a Haitian gentlemen said at the Club Cache salsa night on a recent Thursday, the best thing about salsa today is that you can go just about anywhere in the world and find people to dance with. During the New York Salsa Congress, you don't have to go around the world. The salsa world is coming here, coming home.
Ted Nugent Goes Off On Obama And Hillary!
HUMOR?:
Homey the Clown (In Living Color)
Brother Daman Wayans in the early days.
News others won't tell you
History was made on this day:
1886 - Kentucky State College (now University), chartered in May,1886 as the State Normal School for Colored Persons and only the second state-supported institution of higher learning in Kentucky, is founded in Frankfort, Kentucky. It will become a land grant college in 1890..
NATIONAL:
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE FOR JUSTICE TO BE SERVED
"While this sentence can never repair the suffering and loss brought by these heinous acts of racial violence, it will hopefully bring some closure to the families of Henry Dee and Charlie Moore who have waited decades for justice," said Wan Kim, US assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
Remembering Roger Stone Fondly
Village Voice readers may remember the Republican operative from Wayne Barrett's reporting on Stone's secret role in Al Sharpton's Presidential Campaign in 2004 or how Stone exploited his Bush administration contacts to make millions in the Indian gaming industry after he fomented the "'Brooks Brothers mob' that shut down the Miami-Dade recount in 2000."
blackagendareport.com - The Struggle to Free the Jena Six
The nooses were hung after a Black student asked permission to sit under a tree that had been reserved by tradition for white students only. In response to the three nooses, nearly every Black student in the school stood under the tree in a spontaneous and powerful act of nonviolent protest. The town's district attorney quickly arrived, flanked by police officers, and told the Black students to stop making such a big deal over the nooses, which school officials termed to be a "harmless prank."
The NAFTA Superhighway
The proposed highway is part of a broader plan advanced by a quasi-government organization called the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” or SPP.
The SPP was first launched in 2005 by the heads of state of Canada, Mexico, and the United States at a summit in Waco. The SPP was not created by a treaty between the nations involved, nor was Congress involved in any way. Instead, the SPP is an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments. One principal player is a Spanish construction company, which plans to build the highway and operate it as a toll road. But don’t be fooled: the superhighway proposal is not the result of free market demand, but rather an extension of government-managed trade schemes like NAFTA that benefit politically-connected interests.
Intelligence report at odds with U.S. policies on Iraq
The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate has effectively discredited the dominant American hypothesis of the past seven months: that safer streets, secured by additional troops, would create enough political calm for Iraq's leaders to reconcile. They have failed to do so in part, suggests the report, which was released Thursday, because the security gains remain too modest to reverse Iraq's dynamic of violence and fear. Baghdad after all, remains a place where women at the market avoid buying river fish for fear that they've been eating bodies.
Police State! Congress authorizes domestic spying
It’s the law of the land now and it was enacted with the open complicity of the Democratically-controlled Congress.
Pentagon's New Drug Weapons
While the CIA and military drug experiments of the 50s and 60s might be written off as just a phase they were going through, a new report from the Bradford Nonlethal Weapons Research Project shows that the interest in psychoactive substances has continued right up until the present day.
While We Slept, America Has Gone Fascist
A brief summary of presidential directives, executive orders, and congressionaly approved bills that where signed into law over the last 40+ years.And no, this isn't a bunch of conspiracy nonsense. They are simply facts.
INTERNATIONAL:
Iran's Happy Jewish Population A Big Problem For Israel
Why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?
Mugabe: When a cheer jars the West, rings farthest
Sadc has re-stoked the African sentiment ahead of Portugal, itself the setting for the EU-Africa Summit. And it’s not accidental that the western envoys who expressed shock at Mugabe’s popularity are from Lisbon. They know what they will be up against should they ever buckle to British fears of the potential hazard of a Brown accidental hand-shake with the "coarse" Mugabe in a dimly lit Lisbon corner.
Castro: American materialism threatens human existence
He used the latest of his “Reflections of the Commander in Chief” columns to lambaste American capitalism, quoting a former Russian defense official who says the world must stand up to the United States and its money-grubbing ways.
“Commercial advertising and consumerism are incompatible with the survival of the species,” Pres. Castro wrote in the essay titled “Hard and Obvious Realities” and published in Cuba’s two leading state-controlled newspapers.
'Castro dead' rumours send Miami wild
IRAQ:
Report: Muqtada al-Sadr says Iraq's government is near its end
"The prime minister is a tool for the Americans, and people see that clearly. It will probably be the Americans who decide to change him when they realize he has failed. We don't have a democracy here, we have a foreign occupation."
Sadr pledges to work with UN if it replaces US, Britain in Iraq
Yazidis fear further attacks
The Yazidis, who are primarily Kurdish, follow a pre-Islamic faith which instills belief in God the creator and respects the Biblical and Quranic prophets.The main focus of their worship is Malak Taus, the chief of the archangels. Because Malak Taus is sometimes wrongly identified as Satan, the Yazidis have been branded devil worshippers, and suffered intermittent persecution as a result.
No Iraqi ever called me a nigger.
I was reading somewhere how the number of blacks signing up for military service has reduced over the years; and honestly, I couldn't be happier. It seems that since the year 2000, black enlistment in the military has been reduced by at least a third. The numbers don't lie, and the news media has just now started to pick up on this beautiful phenomenon.
OP-ED:
What would Garvey do? -- August 2007
Marcus Garvey said, “Look for me in the Whirlwind.” Today that Whirlwind has come in the form of Kemet World, and it is taking the country by storm.
China Is Not The Problem
Clearly, it is a mistake for the US government and economists to think of the imbalance as if it were produced by Chinese companies underselling goods produced by US companies in America. The imbalance is the result of US companies producing their goods in China and selling them in America.
A Boycott Of Israel: Something Has Changed
"I am Ahmed Hamzeh, street entertainer," he said in measured English. "Over there, I played many musical instruments; I sang in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and because I was rather poor, my very small son would chew gum while the monkey did its tricks. When we lost our country, we lost respect. One day a rich Kuwaiti stopped his car in front of us. He shouted at my son, "Show me how a Palestinian picks up his food rations!" So I made the monkey appear to scavenge on the ground, in the gutter. And my son scavenged with him. The Kuwaiti threw coins and my son crawled on his knees to pick them up. This was not right; I was an artist, not a beggar . . . I am not even a peasant now." "How do you feel about all that?"
The 13 Illuminati Satanic Bloodlines
ECONOMY:
Worse Than 1929
Brace yourself for the insolvency crunch
Why? Because trust had collapsed to such a degree that players with a lot of cash no longer believed it safe to leave wealth in bank accounts, or the money market funds of brokerage companies - (exposed as they are to short-term commercial paper and subprime CDOs). This did not occur after 9/11, or in the heat of the October 1987 crash. Nor did was there such a banking panic in October 1929. (it hit in August 1931). If you think this is of no importance, or that this will pass swiftly, you have a strong nerve.
Sub-prime crisis is the edge of a financial hurricane
The US sub-prime is just the leading edge of a financial hurricane. For far too long, no-one seemed to care if borrowers would be able to service their debts: borrowers themselves seemed not to care; lenders seemed not to care; and investors in the packages of mortgage loans created by banks and sold to institutions such as pension funds seemed not to care. In short, there was a global credit bubble.
SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY:
Time Travel Machine Outlined
Unlike past ideas for time machines, this new concept does not require exotic, theoretical forms of matter. Still, this new idea requires technology far more advanced than anything existing today, and major questions remain as to whether any time machine would ever prove stable enough to enable actual travel back in time.
The Best Videogame With Women Warriors and Hot Cross Buns Ever
For those of us accustomed to the stale world of videogame stereotypes—macho male characters, cut-and-dried storylines, a decided lack of culinary interest—Atlus’ role-playing game, Odin Sphere, serves up some pretty mixed messages, and a lot of fresh air.
FOOD&DRINK:
Preserving Our Past, One Jar at a Time
Take advantage of summer's bounty by choosing fresh, firm fruits and vegetables versus overly ripe, bruised or damaged ones.
PEPPER JELLY
Very easy to make. Be sure to wash and then boil jars and lids fo 15 minutes before filling. Then air dry them on a rack... do not use a towel or the like to dry! Also a general rule of thumb is to put hot product into hot jars and cold into cold.
ENTERTAINMENT:
Chamillionaire - Hip Hop Police/Evening News
The Success and Undoing of Vee-Jay Records
In 1953, Vivian and James Bracken from Gary, Ind., borrowed $500 from a pawnbroker to start a record company. Thirteen years later, Vee-Jay Records became the country's biggest independent, black-owned record label, and for a time, it was bigger than Motown.
Vee-Jay was even the Beatles' first American label.
Trumpeter Terence Blanchard Performs Live in 4A
Last year, Blanchard captured the devastation of his hometown in his film score for Spike Lee's documentary, When the Levees Broke. Blanchard also appeared in front of the camera, taking an emotional journey back to the city to find his childhood home destroyed.
Blanchard continues his story on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with his latest CD, "A Tale of God's Will (a requiem for Katrina)."
Kanye, Eve Answer Gay Rumors
Both Kanye West and Eve have come out recently to address gay rumors that have followed them throughout their careers.
Seventh Annual Salsa Congress Brings the Moves Back Home
As a Haitian gentlemen said at the Club Cache salsa night on a recent Thursday, the best thing about salsa today is that you can go just about anywhere in the world and find people to dance with. During the New York Salsa Congress, you don't have to go around the world. The salsa world is coming here, coming home.
Ted Nugent Goes Off On Obama And Hillary!
HUMOR?:
Homey the Clown (In Living Color)
Brother Daman Wayans in the early days.
Just a Little Music for Ya!
This is the first of the music entries. We will put together these mini concerts every Saturday. This one featuring one of the greatest of all time Miles Davis. Not just great because of his musical ability, but for his leadership. This man changed the course of music history repeatedly. From Be-Bop to Cool to infusing Jazz and Hip Hop. Check It!
Miles Davis & John Coltrane- SO WHAT
Two of the greatest together.
The Miles-Davis-Tapes, 1967
Miles Davis & John Coltrane- SO WHAT
Two of the greatest together.
The Miles-Davis-Tapes, 1967
Tutu (live) Miles Davis
Miles Davis - Miles in Paris 1/10
Miles Davis - Miles in Paris 2/10
Make sure you play both. Recorded during the 10th Paris Jazz Festival - 3rd November, 1989 in Zenith. All I can say is... Kenny You are a Bad Ass!! This entire concert is here on the tube.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Another Angle 27 - July - 2007
ANOTHER ANGLE
News others won't tell you
NATIONAL:
Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour
Hagee stressed the need for a preemptive military attack on Iran to "prevent a nuclear holocaust" as he introduced Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to thunderous applause from the crowd. Lieberman compared Hagee to Moses and pointed out a visiting Rick Santorum as a "worker for what is good in our society."
Gonzales Probed, Rove Subpoenaed
Hopefully it's an anal probe!
Activists pressuring Georgia to free Genarlow Wilson
The NAACP is also calling for the ouster of the Douglas County District Attorney, David McDade. Genarlow Wilson’s case is steadily gaining national attention, as Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, in his address at a NAACP convention held in Detroit July 12, made mention of the disparity between Mr. Wilson’s case and the commuting of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison term.
FBI to recruit thousands of covert informants
The FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants.
Guard numbers on border to be halved
As I have told many, there will be no legalization or amnesty. If They make the Hispanics legal then they have to pay them. Then they have to work under the rules that WE set up.
No more seven workers for the price of one. No more working 16 hours a day.
Baboon Hunting Season Open
Bush's executive orders read like the most diabolical sci-fi novel and outline such a drastic surgery to the US that it should be enough to start an exodus. But, of course, the yank doesn't read, apart from thick-font tabloid headlines, and it's unlikely any of the Bush media whores are going to cover this, as the pro-US vacuous tit-bouncing lip-inflated bimbos have lied for the last at least 7 years 24/7. So don't expect any serious awakening of the sleeping giant genitally-mutilated baboon here.
Obama Tries to Turn Clinton Words on Her
INTERNATIONAL:
Pakistan test-fires nuclear-capable cruise missile
IRAQ:
New U.S. Embassy rises in Iraq
"It's all for them, all of Iraq's resources, water, electricity, security," said Raid Kadhim Kareem, who has watched the buildings go up at a floodlighted site bristling with construction cranes from his post guarding an abandoned home on the other side of the Tigris River. "It's as if it's their country, and we are guests staying here."
Slave labor used to contruct U.S. Embassy In Baghdad.
Download Play
OP-ED:
Conservative blog: It's time to take Fredo fishing
No, Alberto Gonzales should not be offed. Let me repeat that: No one should kill, wound, or even try to temporarily inconvenience the life functions of the current Attorney General of the United States. But the man President Bush calls "Fredo"--was a Presidential nickname ever more apt?--should at long last be invited to spend more time with his family. Much more time. He should be a Soccer Dad, a Harry Potter Dad, a Couch Potato, Sleeping Late In The Morning The Better To Avoid Any Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings He Might Accidentally Stumble Into Dad, a Dad who doesn't leave the Gonzales family compound for any reason whatsoever without legions upon legions of intelligent adults accompanying him in a supervisory capacity.
Voice of the White House July 19, 2007
The Democrats are pussy-futting around, enraging the electorate who elected them to stop the crazy Bush from further manic bloodshed. Recruitment has tanked, the Surge is a total flop, Republicans are hysterical with fear and about 30% of the staff has quit the Monkey Palace with more desertions planned. I still think the only thing to do is to impeach both Bush and Cheney but the Democrats are too frightened and too busy looking for more lobbyist money to be worth more than a pinch of sour owl shit.”
Clarence Thomas: a Lost Cause – Part II
It is ironic that Thomas would rule out the use of race in all but the most extreme circumstances when he has advanced all the way to the Supreme Court largely because of his race.In their book, “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas,” Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher observe: “Every Thomas employer, from Danforth, who gave him his first job, to President George H.W. Bush, who nominated him to the Supreme Court, chose Thomas at least partly because he is black. Race is a central fact of his meteoric rise, and Thomas has alternately denied it and resented it –all the way to the top.”
ECONOMY:
Rethink the old Slavemaster-Slave relationship
It appears that integration has only meant the surrendering of our dollars to others so that they can enhance their lives while our businesses close and our problems remain unattended. We must look like a very foolish people in the eyes of others who nurse themselves to economic strength on our earnings and then abandon us and ridicule us as they advance and leave us further behind. We need to turn constructively inward, pool our resources intellectually and financially, and begin to build a future for ourselves and our children. We must patronize ourselves, as others patronize themselves.
SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY:
More Apple "IPhone" Security Flaws Exposed by "Globalist" Security Company
HEALTH&FITNESS:
FDA ANNOUNCES PLAN TO ELIMINATE VITAMIN COMPANIES
Within this 800 page rule the FDA states, “We find that this final rule will have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.... Establishments with above average costs, and even establishments with average costs, could be hard pressed to continue to operate.
FOOD&DRINK:
Roasted Zucchini and Radishes
Radishes, when roasted, lose their bite and perfectly complement the mellow sweetness of cooked zucchini.
ENTERTAINMENT:
In Hurricane Katrina's surreal backwaters
Around the block from the corner of Forstall and Galvez in the Lower Ninth Ward, a ragtag armada of pirogues, sailboats and motorboats stripped of their engines sit on a dusty curb. Though they may have once been used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to rescue flood victims, their next cue will be as props for "Black Water Transit," a Hollywood "post-Katrina gunrunning thriller" once slated to star Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis, now set to feature Lawrence Fishburne and Karl Urban. Production workers have also built a "wrecked" house from the ground up at this desolate corner in the city's hardest-hit neighborhood.
'Cavemen' Series Gets a New Criticism: It's Racist
As the show's pilot episode began circulating in Hollywood, so did a new round of criticism: that Cavemen trafficked in the very racial caricatures it was supposed to be lampooning. By depicting the Cro-Magnons as good dancers, great athletes and grand sexual partners, the show's detractors argued, Cavemen was using black stereotypes for cheap racist laughs. "We finally get to laugh at all the stereotypes in the world directed at cavemen, without feeling guilty," wrote one Hollywood blogger.
HUMOR?:
This Modern World
News others won't tell you
NATIONAL:
Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour
Hagee stressed the need for a preemptive military attack on Iran to "prevent a nuclear holocaust" as he introduced Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to thunderous applause from the crowd. Lieberman compared Hagee to Moses and pointed out a visiting Rick Santorum as a "worker for what is good in our society."
Gonzales Probed, Rove Subpoenaed
Hopefully it's an anal probe!
Activists pressuring Georgia to free Genarlow Wilson
The NAACP is also calling for the ouster of the Douglas County District Attorney, David McDade. Genarlow Wilson’s case is steadily gaining national attention, as Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, in his address at a NAACP convention held in Detroit July 12, made mention of the disparity between Mr. Wilson’s case and the commuting of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison term.
FBI to recruit thousands of covert informants
The FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants.
Guard numbers on border to be halved
As I have told many, there will be no legalization or amnesty. If They make the Hispanics legal then they have to pay them. Then they have to work under the rules that WE set up.
No more seven workers for the price of one. No more working 16 hours a day.
Baboon Hunting Season Open
Bush's executive orders read like the most diabolical sci-fi novel and outline such a drastic surgery to the US that it should be enough to start an exodus. But, of course, the yank doesn't read, apart from thick-font tabloid headlines, and it's unlikely any of the Bush media whores are going to cover this, as the pro-US vacuous tit-bouncing lip-inflated bimbos have lied for the last at least 7 years 24/7. So don't expect any serious awakening of the sleeping giant genitally-mutilated baboon here.
Obama Tries to Turn Clinton Words on Her
INTERNATIONAL:
Pakistan test-fires nuclear-capable cruise missile
IRAQ:
New U.S. Embassy rises in Iraq
"It's all for them, all of Iraq's resources, water, electricity, security," said Raid Kadhim Kareem, who has watched the buildings go up at a floodlighted site bristling with construction cranes from his post guarding an abandoned home on the other side of the Tigris River. "It's as if it's their country, and we are guests staying here."
Slave labor used to contruct U.S. Embassy In Baghdad.
Download Play
OP-ED:
Conservative blog: It's time to take Fredo fishing
No, Alberto Gonzales should not be offed. Let me repeat that: No one should kill, wound, or even try to temporarily inconvenience the life functions of the current Attorney General of the United States. But the man President Bush calls "Fredo"--was a Presidential nickname ever more apt?--should at long last be invited to spend more time with his family. Much more time. He should be a Soccer Dad, a Harry Potter Dad, a Couch Potato, Sleeping Late In The Morning The Better To Avoid Any Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings He Might Accidentally Stumble Into Dad, a Dad who doesn't leave the Gonzales family compound for any reason whatsoever without legions upon legions of intelligent adults accompanying him in a supervisory capacity.
Voice of the White House July 19, 2007
The Democrats are pussy-futting around, enraging the electorate who elected them to stop the crazy Bush from further manic bloodshed. Recruitment has tanked, the Surge is a total flop, Republicans are hysterical with fear and about 30% of the staff has quit the Monkey Palace with more desertions planned. I still think the only thing to do is to impeach both Bush and Cheney but the Democrats are too frightened and too busy looking for more lobbyist money to be worth more than a pinch of sour owl shit.”
Clarence Thomas: a Lost Cause – Part II
It is ironic that Thomas would rule out the use of race in all but the most extreme circumstances when he has advanced all the way to the Supreme Court largely because of his race.In their book, “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas,” Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher observe: “Every Thomas employer, from Danforth, who gave him his first job, to President George H.W. Bush, who nominated him to the Supreme Court, chose Thomas at least partly because he is black. Race is a central fact of his meteoric rise, and Thomas has alternately denied it and resented it –all the way to the top.”
ECONOMY:
Rethink the old Slavemaster-Slave relationship
It appears that integration has only meant the surrendering of our dollars to others so that they can enhance their lives while our businesses close and our problems remain unattended. We must look like a very foolish people in the eyes of others who nurse themselves to economic strength on our earnings and then abandon us and ridicule us as they advance and leave us further behind. We need to turn constructively inward, pool our resources intellectually and financially, and begin to build a future for ourselves and our children. We must patronize ourselves, as others patronize themselves.
SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY:
More Apple "IPhone" Security Flaws Exposed by "Globalist" Security Company
HEALTH&FITNESS:
FDA ANNOUNCES PLAN TO ELIMINATE VITAMIN COMPANIES
Within this 800 page rule the FDA states, “We find that this final rule will have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.... Establishments with above average costs, and even establishments with average costs, could be hard pressed to continue to operate.
FOOD&DRINK:
Roasted Zucchini and Radishes
Radishes, when roasted, lose their bite and perfectly complement the mellow sweetness of cooked zucchini.
ENTERTAINMENT:
In Hurricane Katrina's surreal backwaters
Around the block from the corner of Forstall and Galvez in the Lower Ninth Ward, a ragtag armada of pirogues, sailboats and motorboats stripped of their engines sit on a dusty curb. Though they may have once been used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to rescue flood victims, their next cue will be as props for "Black Water Transit," a Hollywood "post-Katrina gunrunning thriller" once slated to star Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis, now set to feature Lawrence Fishburne and Karl Urban. Production workers have also built a "wrecked" house from the ground up at this desolate corner in the city's hardest-hit neighborhood.
'Cavemen' Series Gets a New Criticism: It's Racist
As the show's pilot episode began circulating in Hollywood, so did a new round of criticism: that Cavemen trafficked in the very racial caricatures it was supposed to be lampooning. By depicting the Cro-Magnons as good dancers, great athletes and grand sexual partners, the show's detractors argued, Cavemen was using black stereotypes for cheap racist laughs. "We finally get to laugh at all the stereotypes in the world directed at cavemen, without feeling guilty," wrote one Hollywood blogger.
HUMOR?:
This Modern World
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