Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I now have my copy - with its irresistible endorsement "simply indispensable" - Henry Kissinger - and will proceed to read and review ...

But given the size of it and the density of Bobbitt's writing, it'll take a while - Shield of Achilles was about the same size (and same 100 pages of endnotes) and took me around ten days as I recall.

When you have a colony you can take what you want, yes? Besides, as the Yanks have now spent the equivalent of what their oil bill would have been for the next 50 years on the Iraq War, the plan is greater than we thought.

Throw in the usual profiteering that war brings to a handful of chosen corporations - this time by Dick Cheney (that even has conservative Patrick J. Buchanan bemoaning that the US taxpayer has been ripped off as never before).

What more proof do you need? You simply do not build an embassy that is a city within a city, fully functioning on its own without outside needs that consists of apartment and office blocks, shopping plazas and recreation centres spread over 150 acres when you plan to hand over control of a country to a bunch of Iraqi politicians.

God - even you should be able to see that in between browsing the web for Green Weekly publications and offending Pilger and Chomsky writings.

I mean what the hell do you think it was about - WMDs?

And get ready - Iran will be bombed before Obama or Hillary get to the White House. We live in more dangerous times than ever before. These guys are serious and they are nuts.

Michael de Angelos: "It's all a giant con - simply a land grab just like the old days when they said the Red Indians were scalping and raping white women."

That's funny. I thought it was an "oil grab". But then that was back in the days when alligators were eating babies in the Ninth Ward.

All we have is a manufactured war to place Iraq as an American colony between Israel and Iran. And Israel with its estimated 200 nuclear weapons isn't scared of a soul.

It's all a giant con - simply a land grab just like the old days when they said the Red Indians were scalping and raping white women. Terrorism is the buzz word to frighten the Christian folk and their kiddies.

(Speaking of which, what was the result of the bizarre raid that happened two days ago while I was abroad and I read an outrageous statement from police that the reason was "to send a message"? ... talk about Nazi tactics.)

It works every time and it doesn't mattter how many hundreds of thousands of people die - it's a means to an end. You heard John Howard say it when he was PM - he sleeps soundly at night even though he is partly responsible for the deaths of thousands. When people have reached that stage, anything and everything is possible.

"...should Iran start anything with Israel there will be millions of Iranians becoming martyrs withis 24 hours".

Alan, are you reflecting in this the comment that I read so many times on the New York Times talkboards, before they closed them down, that Israel would have no problem with unleashing nuclear fire power that would destroy the whole world?

If so, I understand that the majority of Israelis would disagree with you.

I’m trying to remind people that we spend $1.9 billion every single day on the Pentagon. So if one asks for $1.5 billion dollars for five years mosquito net coverage [to prevent Malaria] for all of Africa, that’s not outlandish, that’s less than one day’s Pentagon spending. You could ask for a few hundred million dollars for something and keep in mind that we spend $1.14 million every minute at the Pentagon. We’re taking a military approach that isn’t working and then complaining that we have no money to solve the problems of people dying of extreme poverty. I think there is a much better way.-Jeffrey Sachs in the Santa Barbara Independent.

The US sends nearly $2 billion a day on war and has no money to solve the problems of extreme poverty. If we continue to invest in war and not peace we will reap what we sow.

I know of only one time in the whole Bush administration where President Bush even refers to the Millennium Development Goals: September 14, 2005 at the United Nations because I happened to be there. He’s probably said “the war on terror” thousands of times, and he only said “Millennium Development Goals” once, so how can people know?

Of course, I want people to know despite the diversion of attention in Washington. I’m trying through my books to nudge that process along, but I think it would be good if we had national leadership that helped the American people to understand what has been signed in our name, what could be done, and what we are not doing. I’m hoping to see the Millennium Development Goals in the inaugural address of the next President. That to me would be a marker that we are back in the real partnership process.

If we want to put and end to wars in the 21st Century we must first tackle poverty. The Millennium Development Goals put forward at the UN have committed the affluent nations to fight extreme poverty.

Americans are largely naïve and misinformed about what people in Pakistan are like and how they think. If you ask a woman in a rural village about 9/11, the Twin Towers, Iraq, TSA, Homeland Security, B52s, she will not know what you are talking about. But she will be able to tell you that one in three babies dies before the age of one and she wants her children to get an education.

Everyone who is in this region knows that the most important thing for peace is building relationships. Chris wrote saying, “The thirst for education here is palpable. After 30 years of war, the people want a better future.”

What is amazing is that it is easy to get the Army to approve a $100,000 smart bomb to try to kill four Taliban soldiers, but they’ll deny a $2,000 request for a bridge that might serve an entire region and help make it much easier for the people to get their goods to market.

We need to invest in peace not war.

This is funny. You might recall me back on October 6, 2007 in the Preventing terrorrism.  Where do we begin?  thread advising investing in  copies of John Pilger's latest "documentary" called The War on Democracy in which John gets an extended intervew with a ranting, raving Hugo Chavez?

That was because anything John approves of is bound quickly to become a complete and utter embarassment to him and his followers, and the "documentary" would be quickly withdrawn form public view.

I see...I won't be there myself, but I know some who may be interested, so will pass it on.

Is this address sufficient?

David R: ah yes - well it is if you look further down at the bit that says "If you are planning to attend this event and would like details on how to get here and what time to arrive, please refer to Coming to an event at LSE".

The LSE Old Theatre was the venue for several of the more memorable events of my adolescent life, from great concerts (Fairport Convention & Jethro Tull, Hawkwind, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Osibisa, Arthur Brown ...) to interminable SU meetings when I was General Secretary in 1969-70, which was at least a political education even if I wasn't going to many maths lectures. 

The US House of Representatives, in a surprise and largely symbolic move, has defeated legislation to fund the war in Iraq for another year.

But it also sent the Senate a controversial troop withdrawal plan that will give that chamber an opportunity to restore the money for waging the conflict, which is deeply unpopular with the public.

With a large group of anti-war Democrats voting against giving the Pentagon $US162.5 billion to keep fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through mid-2009, the House defeated the measure by a vote of 149-141.

It will be interesting to see if the elected government or the generals will win the battle. If democracy means anything in the US, surely this must mean the end of the Iraq war.

Food for thought:

For the third year in a row, the attendees at this Kansas City event were all dressed up with no place to go to encounter a real bioterror attack. One PowerPoint slide after another, in endless progression, focused on the threats that everyday world commerce, with an assist from Mother Nature, poses to foods, crops, and animals. There were plenty of dark predictions, and plenty of ideas about how to set things right. All it will take, it seems, is more government intrusion in your life and more corporate control over your food.

Now if anybody would like to pay my fare . . . .

But then London! This time I'd not be back!

I'd be on the plane. Meanwhile I know a couple of people (one a script agent) who might care to go and report for us.

Would that such a talk could be netstreamed. It's about time that this line of reasoning became more commonplace, and was weighed against recent UK/US/Australian government activities. ASAP, IMHO, before the dirty bomb meme becomes the 9/11 of the next stage.