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Saturday, October 21, 2006 |
Independent: "On new year's day 1990, three days after becoming president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel looked his people in the eye and spoke to them as no one had done before.
This is what he said. 'The previous regime, armed with its arrogance and intolerant ideology, reduced man to a force of production. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy, stinking machine whose real meaning was not clear to anyone. It could do no more but slowly and inexorably wear itself out, and all the nuts and bolts too.'
That perfectly defines the true tyranny, where the state takes all liberty and bends each individual will to its own purpose. And here is the interesting thing that Havel put his finger on: no matter how brutal or ruthless the regime, the act of depriving people of their freedom starts the stopwatch on that regime's inevitable demise. What he was saying was that in modern times a state can only thrive in the fullest sense when individuals are accorded maximum freedom.
The inescapable fact is that we have a Prime Minister who repeatedly makes the point that civil liberties arguments are not so much wrong as made for another age. We have a Government that has ignored the Rule of Law, reduced rights and has steadily moved to increase the centralised power of the state at the expense of the individual."
12:29:19 PM 
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Open letter to the American people:
"We draw up this bill of high crimes and misdemeanors not only multitimes manifest but continuing, to the great harm, and maiming of this Republic, whereby we urge that the current President, Vice-President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of the Interior be impeached, removed from office, and rendered subject to prosecution for crimes against both the domestic and international order at trials by a jury of their peers, the ordinary citizens of the United States of America.
Wherefore, we list the wrongs inflicted upon us:
1. Waging war by lies, distortions, and a secret agenda;
2. Basing domestic policy on various grandiose usurpations of both the Legislative and Judicial functions;
3. Suspending basic rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights and in Common Law;
4. Refusing to carry out the express intent of legislation by invoking the expediency of sign-off statements;
5. Misusing the Armed Forces, and subjecting troops to retaliatory punishment by an Enemy;
6. Creating new enemies, and destroying American prestige with aggressive, hegemonic, and destabilizing policies;
7. Subverting the freedom of the press with paid propaganda disguised as open journalism;
8. And in general, exercising an Incompetence so willful that its consequences may take generations to repair.
THEREFORE DO WE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES SEPARATE OURSELVES FROM OBEDIENCE TO SUCH UNLAWFUL AUTHORITY, EXCEPT AS CONTINGENT UPON SUCH TIME AS THEIR IMPEACHMENT, REMOVAL, AND TRIAL,
in the trust we still have in the wisdom of the Founders and in the courage of the Legislative and the Judiciary to document and to pass judgment, and to rectify the CRIMINAL wrongs enumerated.
Herewith we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
12:12:19 PM
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Samples from the Armed Madhouse audio-book by Greg Palast.
And some musical remixes.
Iraq: the real story, a video that shows us that the Iraqi Army and the US troops are enemies.
AbuAardvark: "Al-Hayat reports that American officials have been talking in Amman to representatives of Jaysh al-Islami (The Islamic Army), the largest armed faction of the Sunni insurgency. A senior leader of Jaysh al-Islami told al-Hayat that the Americans had responded positively to its call for negotiations."
HuffingtonPost: "Leaks from a U.S. task force headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III are contributing to the widespread sense that the Bush administration is preparing for a course correction in the coming months.
The options cited most frequently in Washington include the partition of Iraq into three ethnic- or faith-based regions, and a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, with some remaining in neighboring countries to deal with major threats. [Note to Huffington readers: When Democrats propose these ideas, they're called 'cut and run.']
Another scenario is being discussed - and taken seriously in Iraq - by many of Iraq's leading political players, under which the U.S.-trained army would overthrow struggling Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and replace him with a strongman who would restore order while Washington looks the other way (emphasis added).
Who could such a strongman be? Saddam's tied up in a trial for his life, but it seems his ability to hold down ethnic violence while in power is looking like an appealing role model for a future leader of Iraq. It's not quite bringing democracy to the Iraqi people, but maybe he'll get the trains - or the electricity - to run on time."
Bush's 'Democracy project' has completely failed, simply because democracy was not the issue. Not in Iraq, not in Afghanstan.
"'Afghanistan after democracy: the untold story through photographic images' is the story of suffering of the Afghan people. This book exposes the lies of the Bush administration about the post-Taliban Afghanistan, and the disaster brought upon Afghanistan by the United States of America and her allies. It exposes democracy as the buzz word for the neocolonial adventure of the US. The claim of reconstruction in Afghanistan is nothing but a total fraud. It exposes the failure of the US government at all levels in Afghanistan. Finally, it exposes the genocide committed by the US government through the use of uranium weapons and the consequences of these weapons of mass destruction particularly congenital deformities."
WashingtonPost: "Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba."
12:02:54 PM
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