I'll ask SONY & ERIK the following questions:

1. What country profits most from the drug war? (MOST is the key word)


2. What country has invaded S.American countries on numerous occasions, and occasionally overthrown their governments?


3. What country will benefit most from the Iraq war?


4. What country will likely benefit most from Iran's subjugation?


5. What country has the biggest investment in warfare potential and is waiting for an excuse to use that offensive power?


6. Has the USA Govt proved it is willing to manipulate the media to get the excuses it wants to take military action? (Or did we find WMD's in Iraq? Did I miss an important report?)


7. What does 'Toosh Shet Let Et Pu' mean?

Quoting Glenn's comment to Sony's post & my comments:
jeez, you actually answered those questions? I thought they were rhetorical...
I'm on this BLOG to exchange ideas & info. Maybe Sony or Erik (or someone else) will inform me, open my eyes to new ways of understanding world phenomena. Or vice versa. Who knows? Actually, Alien does and the Hifumus does, on occasion, influence my take on situations.
anyway, i don't actually believe that sitting around idle will actually solve anything. you know we humans can't resolve anything without spilling blood.
Interesting angle -- spill blood b/c sitting around idle is ineffective.
It's this kind of bizarre logic that, if the Iranians used it also, inspires terrorism, jyhad, and war. Perhaps Glenn's being sarcastic -- but I don't think Sony & Erik were. They're ready to launch bombs against the bad guys (no doubt just like thosee 'bad guys' want to attack who they fear as the 'bad guys').

Doesn't anyone on this BLOG subscribe to concepts like "low road & high road", and that the low road involves using violence to achieve your ends, and the high road involves using your brain & negotiation/social skills? It's always a trip to see how quickly the concepts that ground modern society get chucked out the window as soon as people become afraid. Frightened people become willing to give up their own rights and their neighbors' as well.

You know, Iran and other countries are allowed to hate the USA. That's not a crime. Giving $$$ to back terrorists is criminal, but the USA does the same thing -- even in those countries! So can the USA legitimately enforce criminal acts AND do the same acts at the same time?

When violence appears a reasonable option to you, perhaps it is YOU that lacks in reason.

I believe that the most dangerous country in the world is the USA. Dangerous to whom? To anyone that's not IN the USA now, and over time the USA (corps + govt + military) will likely be violently oppressing it's own lower and middle-class Americans as well.

Do you think El Salvador fears Iran or the USA more? What about S.America, do they fear Iran or the USA more? Is Iran gouging those countries for interest payments on loans they can't repay, and threatening to take over their ports if they default? Did Iran invade Panama & throw their leader in jail?

At least when Erik disagrees (near the bottom), it's a pretty good barometer for me that I'm on the correct path. (Almost said Right, but that would be inaccurate.)

I'm sure he feels similarly? HA HA

Ari, To respond to a question about wiping out a country, beheading gays, and imposing 14th century Islamic caliphate under penalty of death by a wearisome recantation of Bush criticism demonstrates poor reading comprehension, logical analysis and other basic aptitude skills. All I detect in your writing is untrammeled confirmation bias: everything confirms Bush is a bad guy.

OK, so stipulated, he sucks, now please: What should be done about Iran? Non-responsive answers include what happened before (e.g. 9/11, PATRIOT Act, the Shah, etc), who's in charge of US policy, Karl Rove etc. Responsive answers might include: do nothing, bomb them, sanction them, let the Euros handle it, etc.

Bonus questions, and please answer without comparative descriptions (I'll do the same for your questions):

1. Did over 5 million Jews die in the Holocaust?
2. Should the people who orchestrate bombings of Israeli civilians be punished by lenghty prison terms?
3. Did a dozen Arabs operating under instructions from Arab terrorists fly planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and cause the death of over 3,000 Americans?
4. Was Bin Laden's videotaped statement that he orchestrated the 9/11 attacks genuine or fabricated?

Erik asked me, specifically:

Q1: Do you believe that President Bush knew about and supported the 911 attacks?

Q1: I think he knew and others in the 'defense depts' (aka military) knew. (It's not just me btw, there's ImpeachBush.Org, and CrooksAndLiars Blog, among MANY other groups.)
Did Bush support the attack? I'm not sure & lack direct evidence saying he did explicitly support it. Part of me thinks that it was a high level conspiracy (of Energy Corp Influence + Military + Govt) hoping to bring about Martial Law, and Bush knew there'd be an attack of some sort which could be used to begin a reactionary war vs mid east (general 'terrorists' w/o any precise defintion) to expand US Empire, and begin an international system of torture and oppression unlike anything modern America could've imagined to prevent organized counterattacks. I don't have any way of knowing if Bush was involved in the planning. My guess is he gave the OK for 'something' and then allowed that 'something' to happen.
Don't you remember the Anthrax mail-bombings (on abortion clinics & politicians)? From the Wash Post, "The anthrax attacks took place just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." What happened to the follow up on those, btw? (read the link to find out)
Part of me thinks perhaps this conspiracy theory's too broad, and that Bush knew there might be SOME kind of attack, but deliberately delayed in responding -- unless he personally was threatened -- b/c it was all 'upside' for his organization.
Slogan --> War is terrorism with a bigger budget.

The Israeli secret service (Mossad) knew about the attack prior and tried to inform Bush multiple times. If they knew, why wouldn't the US know? Esp since Bush had the briefing in his hands days before the attack?
Slogan --> Knowledge is ignorance.


Q2: And I have a hard time believing that YOU think that otherwise normal people who work for the US government would participate in a mass murder of US citizens. I mean, you really believe that? Really?

Q2: I would hope 'NORMAL' Americans would not participate in murder of American citizens too, however history suggests otherwise. We can look at the Civil War as the first major American vs American (red vs blue, North vs South) battle. Or looking only at the US Govt, many historians believe the US was aware of the Pearl Harbor attack but took no action so it could get involved in the war. You could look at various labor strikes where lethal force was used by govt-backed strike-breakers. There are other examples of the US allowing Americans to die when it could have done otherwise, such as New Orleans recently.
Most people think New Orleans was a fluke. I don't, I believe that Bush Jr knew that his response was too delayed and would ultimately be inadequate. It's just like his response to the Tsunami in Malaysia, the genocide in Darfur, the Earthquakes in Afghanistan & India, and so on. And the Right Wing solution to the drug epidemic is a drug war, where the USA can violate international law and also incarcerate millions of non-violent Americans on drug charges. What ever happened to that Gary Webb CIA Drug Conspiracy thing, btw?
(Haliburton engineers supposedly went to New Orleans prior to the hurricane to make rebuilding plans, and I heard stories on the radio from black aid workers who went to New Orleans and heard many witnesses give accounts of hearing blasts before the levies broke. Another 'unlikely conspiracy' or another blatant screwing prior to Haliburton cashing in on BILLIONS in no-bid reconstruction contracts?)

Bush is not a humanitarian president, and his organization is clearly focussed on the following: consolidating corporate power and lessening govt oversight, growing the military, tax cuts for the wealthy, weakening 'socialist' public programs, shrinking the middle class, expanding poverty.
Slogan --> Freedom is slavery.

If you watch True Majority's Oreo Video, it shows clearly where the U.S. public $$$ are going --> into 'Defense'.
(I write 'defense' in partial quotes b/c it's a propagandistic term, loaded with spin (or DoubleThink for Orwell fans). I chose to call that topic Military or Offense. (If Football 'defense' was like our 'defense', the opposing offensive team would all be killed in a game. Our 'defense' does not consist of blocking an offense, but rather pro-actively attacking would-be attackers. If THIS philosophy counts as 'defense', if we all practiced that individually there'd be BUCKETS of blood on the streets.)
Slogan --> War is peace.

My personal powerful pics of NYC protestors at the site of the former WTC, Mar '06.

If you don't see we don't get truth on TV, you may not spot truth -- when it's in your face.




I'm open to comments, please tell me what you think about these pics? Personally, I believe G.Bush and the CIA were aware of the attack -- and possibly supported it.

I think the military is NOT worried about being attacked, only that if we ARE attacked that it be a big media event, otherwise, the MilIndustComplex may not be able to increase their revenue flow or use their power. (And how many times did we see the WTC get hit by a plane, again?) How did G.Bush know so quickly that it was Bin Laden? What happened to the Pentagon & how come the FBI confiscated local video footage so quickly? There's a lot of big question makes re: those events.

I just re-read 1984. In that book it was Goldstein, and in our world it's Bin Laden. But isn't Bush friends w/the Bin Ladens? Crazy how close reality is to that book!!!

Cool time-changing UnderBelly music video.
Watched it while reading about REVision FX. Love that name, of course. :)
Anyone has a copy of that stuff, lemme know plz.
And that includes the new Adobe Premiere Suite. Probably have to buy a new PC to use it, but it's cool.

Oh, and my response to Sony's Chavez story post.
Summarized: Is Chavez so bad compared with Bush?

And my response to what should the USA President do in the face of evil?

May 2006 Atlantic has an article on the talented Mr. Chavez, subscription only. I never trust any leader who's appraoch to the constitution's prohibition against additional terms is to amend the constitution. Especially twice. Especially after serving time in prison for engineering a military coup against a democratic government. Then, the money quote:

...he has led the country in a more authoritarian direction only slowly, carefully calibrating his repressive measures so that they are too incremental to trigger popular outrage. When his opponents describe the prevailing atmosphere, they begin with the “Tascón List.” In 2003 and 2004, petitions circulated demanding referenda to recall the president—just the sort of people-empowering action enshrined as a right in the 1999 constitution. Soon thereafter, a list of the petitioners’ names and national identification numbers mysteriously appeared on the Web site of a pro-Chávez congressman named Luis Tascón. The government began denying these petitioners passports, government contracts, and public welfare. Two years ago, in a statement that he later recanted, the health minister brashly declared that any ministry employee who signed the list would be fired, “because [the petition] is an act of terrorism.”

Media intimidation has begun as well. The Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, passed in 2004, allows the government to suspend stations that “promote, defend, or incite breaches of public order or that are contrary to the security of the nation.” The law has cowed the television networks, once devoted to dropping rhetorical napalm on the regime. Venevision, once a particularly notorious anti-Chavista bastion, is now known as the Disney Channel, for its increasing abundance of cartoons and bland newscasts.

By adding twelve new chairs to the twenty-seat supreme court, and packing them with loyalists, Chávez has begun to domesticate the courts as well. He proudly presented the new jurists like a trophy at the opening of the court’s 2006 session. With the president in attendance, the robed justices rose to their feet and began to sing a favored chant of their benefactor: Uh, ah, Chávez no se va” (“Uh, ah, Chávez is not leaving”).

Of course, blasting the US generates predictable results:

This anti-American bent has helped make Hugo Chávez a hero of the international Left—a title that he has aggressively courted. Long before he took over the presidency, Chávez planned Bolivarian congresses bringing together Latin America’s indigenous movements and leftist parties. As president, he has built a public-relations machine to woo Americans and Western Europeans of a certain sensibility. His government has placed self-promotional ads in The New Yorker and The New York Times. He has hired staff from Global Exchange, which helped organize the massive protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999, to run a Venezuelan Information Office in Washington.

This outreach has turned Caracas into a refugee camp for socialists displaced since the tumultuous events of 1989. Chávez’s presidential palace harbors French and American activists. Marta Harnecker, the Chilean Marxist who wrote the seminal defense of the Cuban revolution, has an office there, too. Chávez routinely holds court with star academics and activists—from the anti-war icon Cindy Sheehan to Princeton philosopher Cornel West to the British essayist Tariq Ali—who return from Venezuela announcing the marvels of Chavismo, his amalgamation of anti-Americanism, Bolivarian independence, and Castro-tinged socialism. “We in the United States [hear] so many lies about President Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution,” West declared in January. “This revolution is real.”

I encourage you to read the whole article, which is not as pointed as these quotes.

Geo-Political Query.

The democratically elected leader of one country swears to wipe another democracy off the map and murder every last one of its inhabitants; unabashedly aspires to create an empire out of neighboring sovereign states; admittedly funds groups that blow up women and children to send a message; enforces capital punishment against gays and other marginalized human beings, and corporaal punishment against women who show their face; and just announced he has enriched Uranium (the first step to a nuclear bomb).

What should a US president do? (Gaze at your navel, let Europeans appease, ruminate on past sins, fix blame instead of fix problem, are common answers.)

Erik & Sony's Current bets

Erik and I have many bets that inevitably get lost and forgotten in our 10,000 emails. I am dedicating this entry to memorializing them all.

$50 each:
1. Bombing Iran (U.S. or client state in middle east): o/u is July 2008
Erik optimistically takes the UNDER

2. Laker Playoff Victories 2006: o/u = 2 1/2
Hodur Optimistically Takes OVER (the first round is till 7 games I hope)

3. Tim Worrell saves 27 games for the SF Giants 2006.
Erik takes the OVER

4. Net negative loss suffered by Congressional Republicans in upcoming midterm elections (2006): o/u = 12 1/2 (15 is a loss of control)
Hodur takes Under.

5. Wygals squeeze out third kid: o/u July 15, 2008.
Erik takes the OVER

Its cool to see this place is alive again. Can't wait to catch up