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AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS
Sunday – December 3, 2006
~Favorite
Quotes~
ARCHIVE
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As The World Squirms
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Commentary Etc.
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Music/Music-Videos
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August 30, 2006
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September 2, 2006
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October 17, 2006
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October 18, 2006
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October 21, 2006
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October 23, 2006
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October 24, 2006
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October 25, 2006
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October 28, 2006
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November 5, 2006
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November 6, 2006
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November 9, 2006
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November 13, 2006
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November 14, 2006
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November 15, 2006
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November 19, 2006
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November 21, 2006
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November 26, 2006
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November 29, 2006
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November 29, 2006 (SPECIAL: An
open letter to the American People from Iranian President Ahmadinejad)
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December 3, 2006
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General
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September 9,
2006: “No More Lies! What Really Motivated The 9/11 Hijackers? (Video)
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British MP
George Galloway Speaks Out On Israel, Hezbollah And ‘Zionist State
Terrorism’ (Video)
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Palestine & Lebanon: Watch
The Destruction! (Video)
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Saddam
Hussein: “Thanks For The Memories”, He Was Always Washington’s Man –
Always! (Video)
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Iraq, The
Real Story – BBC Newsnight Report (Video)
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9/11 -
Selective Memory –Parody (Animation)
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 9/11
Vendetta – Past, Present & Future (Video)
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Don’t
Shut-Up, Stand-Up!
(Video)
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Classic George Carlin Rant – Trenchant and
Profane - Caution,
‘colorful’ Use of Profanity and Much Truth (Spoken)
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Keith Olbermann: The ‘Murder’ of
Habeas Corpus (Video)
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Bush's "Comma" Comment
On Iraq (Video)
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Keith
Olbermann: Military Commissions Act, A Special Comment (Video)
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“Bring ’Em Home” – Bruce Springsteen’s New
Antiwar Anthem (Music-Video)
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September 4, 2006:” John The
Revelator”- Depeche Mode (Music-Video)
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‘Fascist Christ’ - Todd Rundgren
(Music-Video)
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‘Right Now…’
(Music-Video)
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Bush-Blair “Endless Love”
–Parody (Music- Video)
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“Mamas Don’t
Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Pages” (Music)
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‘Whatever Happened To Peace On Earth’ – Willy
Nelson’s New Antiwar Anthem (Music)
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Michael Kountouris, Greece
“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure
wind.”
~George Orwell~
Hezbollah has
been demanding a bigger share in the cabinet that
would give it
the power to veto government decisions.
Million march
in Beirut for Hezbollah
The demonstrators accused the
government, which has supported international calls for Hezbollah to
surrender its weapons, of being run by the US embassy. "Down with
Feltman's government!" was a popular chant, referring to Jeffery
Feltman, the US ambassador.
The Financial Express – Bangladesh
12.3.06
(Excerpt)
Earlier in the day, the
anti-government crowds stretched as far as the eye could see in every
direction, filling Riad al-Solh and several adjacent streets, and clogging
the roads connecting downtown Beirut with the Shia suburbs south of the city
that are Hezbollah's support base. Police estimated the flag-waving crowd at
around 800,000 people, while Hezbollah claimed that one million, almost a
quarter of Lebanon's population, turned up.
The demonstrators accused the government, which has supported international
calls for Hezbollah to surrender its weapons, of being run by the US embassy.
"Down with Feltman's government!" was a popular chant, referring to
Jeffery Feltman, the US ambassador.
Patrick Chappatte, the Geneva daily
"Le Temps", the Sunday edition of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung,
weekly cartoon for the
International Herald Tribune.
~ VIDEO: Jimmy Carter on ‘Hardball’ ~
America’s 39th president is
concerned that the U.S. Israel Lobby has dangerously perverted Washington’s
Mideast foreign policy and supported Israel in the imposition and maintenance
of a Palestinian ‘Apartheid’
APARTHEID
Israelis adopt what South Africa dropped
By John Dugard*
The Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
11.29.06
(Excerpt)
The Palestinian territories — East Jerusalem, the West Bank and
Gaza — have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Although
military occupation is tolerated and regulated by international law, it is
considered an undesirable regime that should be ended as soon as possible.
The United Nations for nearly 40 years has
condemned Israel's military occupation, together with colonialism and
apartheid, as contrary to the international public order.
In principle, the purpose of military occupation is
different from that of apartheid. It is not designed as a long-term
oppressive regime but as an interim measure that maintains law and order in a
territory following an armed conflict and pending a peace settlement.
But this is not the nature of the Israeli
occupation of Palestine. Since 1967 Israel has imposed its control over the
Palestinian territories in the manner of a colonizing power, under the guise
of occupation. It has permanently seized the territories' most desirable
parts —
the holy sites in East Jerusalem, Hebron and Bethlehem and the fertile
agricultural lands along the western border and in the Jordan Valley —
and settled its own Jewish "colonists" throughout the land.
Israel's occupation
of the Palestinian territories has many features of colonization. At the same
time it has many of the worst characteristics of apartheid. The West Bank has
been fragmented into three areas —
north (Jenin and Nablus), center (Ramallah) and south (Hebron) —
which increasingly resemble the Bantustans of South Africa.
Restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by a rigid
permit system enforced by some 520 checkpoints and roadblocks resemble, but
in severity go well beyond, apartheid's "pass system." And the
security apparatus is reminiscent of that of apartheid, with more than
10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons and frequent allegations of torture
and cruel treatment.
Many aspects of Israel's occupation surpass those of
the apartheid regime. Israel's large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes,
leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted
assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid
South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites.
Following the worldwide anti-apartheid movement, one
might expect a similarly concerted international effort united in opposition
to Israel's abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians.
Instead one finds an international community
divided between the West and the rest of the world.
The Security Council is prevented from taking
action because of the U.S. veto and European Union abstinence.
And the United States and the European Union, acting in collusion with
the United Nations and the Russian Federation, have in effect imposed
economic sanctions on the Palestinian people for having, by democratic means,
elected a government deemed unacceptable to Israel and the West. Forgotten is
the commitment to putting an end to occupation, colonization and apartheid.
In these circumstances, the United States should not be
surprised if the rest of the world begins to lose faith in its commitment to
human rights. Some
Americans —
rightly —
complain that other countries are unconcerned about Sudan's violence-torn
Darfur region and similar situations in the world.
But while the United States itself maintains a
double standard with respect to Palestine it cannot expect cooperation from
others in the struggle for human rights.
John Dugard is a South African law professor teaching in
the Netherlands. He is currently Special Rapporteur (reporter) on Palestine
to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Angel
Boligan, El Universal, Mexico City, Mexico
Stephen
Cambone, "Rumsfeld's Enforcer," to Resign
New
York Times ( via Reuters)
12.1.06
(Excerpt)
Stephen Cambone, the US Defense Department's top intelligence official and a
person known as the "henchman" to outgoing defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, will resign on December 31, the Pentagon said on Friday. Cambone is
widely regarded as one of the architects of post-war Iraq planning, which has
proved to be
disastrous.
Pale Fire and
London Fog
Chris
Floyd
Empire
Burlesque
12.1.06
(Excerpt)
Everyone knows that Russian exile
Alexander Litvinenko was killed by radiation poisoning in London last month.
But beyond that bare fact, almost nothing is clear about the case. The
truth has disappeared, probably forever, into the shadowlands - that murky
confluence of crime, violence, money and politics where so much of the real
business of the world is conducted. However, an examination of some of the curiously
overlooked aspects of the affair might send at least a few shafts of light
into the cloud of unknowing that has enveloped Litvinenko's death.
Of course, one of the chief obstacles in assessing the
situation is the fact that almost everything we knew about the case for weeks
was spoon-fed to the media by the most elite PR operation in Britain.
Almost from the moment that Litvinenko fell ill, he disappeared behind a
phalanx of handlers paid for by his patron,
Boris
Berezovsky, the fugitive
Russian billionaire and shadowlands operator par excellence. To handle - and
generate - the publicity surrounding the incident, Berezovsky
called on his old friend Baron Bell of Belgravia,
who, back when he was just plain old Tim
Bell, served as the private propaganda chief for Margaret Thatcher, as Sourcewatch
reports. The baron has also flacked for
disgraced media mogul Conrad Black, disgraceful media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and the Coalition
Provisional Authority [CPA], the mechanism set up by the Bush administration to eviscerate
Iraq.
(Speaking of the CPA, UK
investigators now say they've found traces of Polonium 201, the radioactive
isotope believed to have killed Litvinenko, in the London offices of Erinys,
a private security company. As I noted in Counterpunch back in December 2003,
Bush's CPA gave Erinys's Iraqi branch - formed
as a joint venture with business cronies and family members of big-time
shadowlander Ahmad Chalabi - $80 million to guard oil pipelines in the
conquered land. This has grown into an armed force of 16,000 men - something
of a militia, one might say. The freebooters also bagged big money riding
shotgun for Halliburton and Bechtel in those palmy CPA days of yore. And as
the Guardian reports, Erinys is also active in Russia. You pull at one string
in the shadowlands, and a whole tangled nest of other dark business starts shaking
somewhere else.)
The leaping lord's PR shop has also represented Ukraine
President Viktor Yushchenko, another victim of a spectacularly ham-handed
poisoning laid at the Kremlin's door. Yet another client was former Russian
President Boris Yeltsin, whose "miraculous" 1996 election victory -
in the face of single-digit approval ratings - was engineered by a small
group of oligarchs who were later given carte blanche to plunder Russia's
state-owned enterprises and vast natural resources for private profit. The
acknowledged leader of this clique - which had muscled its way to riches and
power in the brutal, Hobbesian free-for-all that characterized the Yeltsin
years - was of course a certain Boris Berezovsky.
Is Putin Being
Set Up?
Patrick
J. Buchanan
The
American Cause
11.28.06
(Excerpt)
PARIS – Whoever poisoned Alexander
Litvinenko had two goals: a long and lingering death for the KGB defector and
pointing a finger of accusation for his killing right in the face of Vladimir
Putin.
Which leads me to believe Putin had
nothing to do with it.
In an assassination, one must ask: Cui bono? To whose
benefit? Who would gain from the poisoning of Litvinenko?
Certainly not Putin. Litvinenko's
death puts him, the Kremlin and the KGB, now the FSB, under suspicion of
having reverted to the terror tactics of Stalin, who commissioned killers to
liquidate enemies like Leon Trotsky, murdered in Mexico in 1940.
What benefit could Putin conceivably
realize from the London killing of an enemy of his regime, who had just
become a British citizen? Why would the
Russian president, at the peak of his popularity, with his regime awash in
oil revenue and himself playing a strong hand in world politics, risk a
breach with every Western nation by ordering the public murder of a man who
was more of a nuisance than a threat to his regime?
Litvinenko:
Case closed
Frank
Flynn
The
Irish Bulletin – Blogspot (Ireland)
11.30.06
(Excerpt)
It seems that days before the
poisoning of the former KGB agent hit the headlines, Russia and the government
of the United Kingdom (I stress the government, not any particular person
within that structure) were preparing to sign an extradition treaty,
guaranteeing mutual co-operation in transferring criminal elements from one
country to the other, as the need arises.
Of
course, top of that extradition list would be one Mr. Boris Berezovsky, who
is wanted by the Russian authorities for a variety of crimes. Facing the dock
for looting Russia of billions - ostensibly for the benefit of his
"motherland" of Israel - it's clear that the former oligarch, a
close friend of Blair, Bush and co., needed a distraction - and quickly. The Russians were fully aware of this from the beginning, thus
explaining their calm, collected approach to the contrived "East-West
crisis".
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
President George W. Bush at the NATO meeting in Riga, Latvia,
where Afghanistan was a priority. (
Peter Andrews/Reuters )
NATO Rebuffs
Bush on Troops for Afghanistan
IHT
11.29.06
(Excerpt)
RIGA, Latvia: Leaders of the 26 NATO
nations failed to agree Wednesday on President Bush's demand that member
countries with troops in Afghanistan lift their restrictions on how the
troops are used. Those rules keep some soldiers from operating in the most
dangerous part of the country.
Oliver Schopf, Austria, Der Standard
Powell: Iraq
in Civil War, Accept It
Reuters
11.29.06
(Excerpt)
DUBAI, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Former U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday Iraq had descended into
civil war and urged world leaders to accept that "reality".
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An extraordinarily prescient TV interview with General Norman
Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy National Security Advisor to Former
President George Bush Sr.
Why Invading Iraq Was A Very Stupid Idea…
(Click on blinking dot above for video)
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