The art of propaganda

by twit

The AFP got a photo from the Iranian government “the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, on Wednesday,” with a teensy alteration…

Top, the image that Agence France-Presse obtained from Sepah News on Wednesday. Below, another image that The Associated Press received from the same source on Thursday.

and the next day, the Associated Press got an almost-the-same image from the Iranian government…

The Coming War with Iran

by twit

It looks like President Bush has had a hard-on for an invasion of Iran for awhile now. Way back on April 17, 2006, Seymour Hersh writes for the New Yorker:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped.

He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.”

He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Indeed. But it may have something to do with the practice of “stovepiping,” described by Seymour Hersh on February 11, 2008:

It is possible that Israel conveyed intelligence directly to senior members of the Bush Administration, without it being vetted by intelligence agencies. (This process, known as “stovepiping,” overwhelmed U.S. intelligence before the war in Iraq.)

That’s right. The Bush Administration is so competent in the arts of war and intelligence gathering, they apparently often bypass the regular sources and methods to collect the information they then use to implement their policy goals.

This all sounds so damn familiar…

Condoleezza Rice is “just very supportive” of Hezbollah

by twit

Slog points this bit out from a June 17, 2008 article by the NYT:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon on Monday, the first by a senior American official since an agreement last month that handed decisive new powers to Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that the United States considers a terrorist organization.

Ms. Rice met with government leaders from both the government majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition …

but there’s so much more!

“Congratulations,” Ms. Rice said as she shook hands with President Michel Suleiman, the former army chief who took office last month, filling a post that had been vacant for six months. “We are all just very supportive of your presidency and your government.”

The Moral High Ground doesn’t live here anymore

by lestro

Today’s NY Times contains a story titled “A Year Under Hamas Alters Life in Gaza” about how things have changed in the Gaza strip since Hamas, the terrorist group, took over control of the territory from Fatah, a former terrorist group, by shooting their opponents in the knees and tossing them off buildings.

The US and Israel reacted immediately, of course, attempting to isolate the people and force them to turn on the new leaders by cutting them off from the world.

But, as anyone who has ever read “Animal Farm” knows, isolation only makes it easier for the leaders to control the situation, as now they control the flow of information as well as the means of government, becoming providers for the people. Especially now that goods like food and fuel are scarce and Hamas controls everything being smuggled into the country (which is everything) through tunnels from Egypt.

And that taxes it, of course. It’s like the mob back in the prohibition days, controlling every aspect of business because of a failed policy on the part of the controlling authority (in this case, the US and Israel).

So not surprisingly, life isn’t good. The Israel and American blockade surely doesn’t add to the quality of life, but inside the fences, the religious fundamentalists get to rule over the territory like their own, private West Texas compound.

the twit reads the news

by twit

whoops: Those levees they had thought would hold the Des Moines river back have breached. Total evacuation has been ordered and is well underway in affected areas due to the coordinated efforts of the earlier voluntary evacuations and the police going door-to-door before dawn to wake and assist the people still there. The BBC has video from Cedar Rapids.

damn: Tim Russert is dead. Long live Tim Russert:

What we hope to do in this campaign is recognize there are big differences on big issues between John McCain and Barack Obama – the war in Iraq, Iran, Social Security, taxes. You don’t need to get into this other stuff. If it does surface, then I think the mainstream media has an obligation not to just instinctively put it out there without vetting it.

wow: Protests in Tibet continue, including a report about a monk using a sword to defend himself from officials attempting his arrest and then managing to escape into the mountains before 200 Chinese officers arrived.

First they came for the rappers…

by loadz

At first, it was hip hop, but it all finally makes sense, now that we know it is heavy metal hair, Jewish-American conspiracies and 2-Pac that cause homosexuality in Iranian youth.

via the Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project

I’m glad someone finally connected all this together.

Cyber G.ho.st. breaks down real world walls

by lestro

According to the New York Times, there is a team of Palestinian and Israeli coders who are working together on creating a new web-based personal computer that will allow people to log in to their own virtual harddrives from any internet connection.

Despite the differences between their people and the walls put up to stop them, the programmers are working toward a common vision and goal.

They trade ideas through a video hookup that connects the West Bank office with one in Israel in the first joint technology venture of its kind between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Start with the optimistic parts, Mustafa,” Gilad Parann-Nissany, an Israeli who is vice president for research and development, jokes with a Palestinian colleague who is giving a progress report. Both conference rooms break into laughter.

The goal of G.ho.st is not as lofty as peace, although its founders and employees do hope to encourage it. Instead G.ho.st wants to give users a free, Web-based virtual computer that lets them access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection. G.ho.st, pronounced “ghost,” is short for Global Hosted Operating System.

“Ghosts go through walls,” said Zvi Schreiber, the company’s British-born Israeli chief executive, by way of explanation…

Bush foreign policy advice is like weight loss tips from those fat twins on the scooters

by lestro

Today the President in all his wisdom chided those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals.”

It is being perceived as a shot at Obama, for his (amazingly Christian, something you’d think our born-again crusader of a president would know) view of talking with our enemies in an attempt to resolve the issue by not having to start a multi-billion dollar, never-ending war.

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Mr. Bush said.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”

We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

What a son of a lame duck bitch he is.

we taught them everything they know

by lestro

Well, we’ve done a heckuva job in Iraq and have obviously trained the Iraqi leadership to the absolute best of our leadership’s abilities, as apparent by the Iraqi push into Basra last week that stirred up the Mahdi army:

… interviews with a wide range of American and military officials also suggest that Mr. Maliki overestimated his military’s abilities and underestimated the scale of the resistance. The Iraqi prime minister also displayed an impulsive leadership style that did not give his forces or that of his most powerful allies, the American and British military, time to prepare.

“He went in with a stick and he poked a hornet’s nest, and the resistance he got was a little bit more than he bargained for,” said one official in the multinational force in Baghdad who requested anonymity. “They went in with 70 percent of a plan. Sometimes that’s enough. This time it wasn’t.”

As the Iraqi military and civilian casualties grew and the Iraqi planning appeared to be little more than an improvisation, the United States mounted an intensive military and political effort to try to turn around the situation, according to accounts by Mr. Crocker and several American military officials in Baghdad and Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A leader with good intentions and bad advice who went lumbering into a battle with no exit strategy and a vastly underestimated sense of the insurgency that was waiting for them?

why does that sound familiar? oh yeah.

But the comparisons don’t end there.

our surge can beat up your surge

by lestro

With all the talk about the great effectiveness of “the surge” in Iraq, one little important bit of evidence is always left out when discussing the reduction in violence: the Mahdi Army’s decision to lay low since last summer.

However, this week Moktada al-Sadr - a guy who went from a terrorist who needed to be killed into a political leader we deal with - decided to reassert himself:

Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who commands the Mahdi Army and initially called for a suspension of his militia’s activities in August, called on Monday called for a nationwide civil disobedience campaign, beginning in Baghdad, in response to what his followers say is an unwarranted crackdown.

and what happened?  all hell broke loose.

birthday parties for unjust wars

by twit

Five years ago I watched the war start on CNN. It had been frustrating then to see how limited the news coverage was of the protests that were taking place in DC and around the country at the time. On the ground, they were huge. On the news, not so much.

Five years ago we didn’t have the internets like we do now, but today, after visits to the main organizing sites and finding no blogs, no updates few updates, no recent press releases or video, I see a missed opportunity here. It looks like whatever fragmentation is happening with the organizers of the protests, it translated into fragmented coverage on the internets and in the news.

so what the hell happened?

100 Years Is OK With Me

by squishmael

Please don’t interpret this as a commitment of support on my hairy part, but, in specific regards to the ‘100 years’ statement that Hill and Barry have been riding, I don’t think it’s all that bad as explained by CNN. I, too, think that a 100% pull-out could have some notable consequences. In fact, I would have to say that having some very-limited presence there is the responsible way to go. Getting to the point where our presence is peaceful and not prompting innocent civilians to be killed as a result of suicide bombers’ actions in reaction to our presence, however, is a very dim-lit road.

People may ignore the war in favor of the elections

by twit

and the Pew Research Center reports that Iraq was the focus of only two percent of news coverage from January 28 through February 3, 2008.

But Iraq has a way of calling attention to itself:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two journalists working for CBS News have gone missing in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the company said in a statement.

“All efforts are under way to find them and until we learn more details, CBS News requests that others do not speculate on the identities of those involved. CBS News has been in touch with the families and asks that their privacy be respected,” CBS News said in a statement.

via drudge

welcome to the future

by twit

From The Jerusalem Post on Jan 23, 2008:

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crossed into Egypt from Gaza on Wednesday after gunmen destroyed about two-thirds of the Gaza-Egypt border wall. Most of the Gazans returned after stocking up on food and other basic supplies that have become scarce due to the blockade imposed on the territory by Israel.

UN personnel said they estimated the number of Palestinians who entered Egypt to be 350,000.

Via McClatchy, this is a 2005 pic of the wall that was knocked down:

and this is a pic of the wall in January, 2008:

UPDATE: From the Guardian on Jan 26, 2008:

Egyptian soldiers in riot gear deployed water cannon and rolls of barbed wire yesterday as they started to close the Gaza/Egypt border, turning back the thousands of Palestinians who have flooded across.

But even as some gaps in the wall were being closed, Palestinians used a bulldozer to puncture another section of the seven-mile border. Several thousand people still crossed in both directions. One crane was set up by the border at Rafah to bring over goods more quickly - particularly cement and fuel, which are scarce in Gaza.