Author: ghandi

I have reposted this from Atlantic Free Press – and it’s quite the tale – as once again Murray is testing Freedom of Speech in the UK (he took the Secrecy Act on last time). He has been shut down by litigation aimed at his hosting company (not himself) which resulted in termination of the account. Thousands of bloggers around the world have united in protest, buzzing not only about the situation but also reposting Murray’s original post. This, of course is totally backfiring on Usmanov, his High Street legal team (Schillings) and Fasthost – the hosting company itself.

Plenty more after the jump…
BLOG POST THAT STARTED THE STORM:

Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman, is a Vicious Thug, Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist

by Craig Murray

[Editor’s Note: Craig Murray, former United Kingdom Ambassador to Uzbekistan, author of the book, Murder in Samarkand: A British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror, and contributor to Atlantic Free Press has recently had his personal blogging site – as well as a number of sites not owned by him and on the same server, taken down by his U.K. hosting company due to pressure from Schillings, a high-powered London Law firm, on behalf of Uzbeki Alisher Usmanov – the latest Russian billionaire to move to the United Kingdom. Usmanov’s lawyers have gone after the host of Murray’s site rather than Craig Murray himself. It seems they would prefer not to have Murray on the stand in a courtroom. Usmanov is allegedly livid –  as it has been leaked that he was not a political prisoner at all, but rather a hard-nosed criminal.

We at Atlantic Free Press feel that bloggers, hosting companies and Internet publishers cannot operate if they are bullied by rich plaintiffs.

Defamation law in the United Kingdom, asinine as it is – needs reform. Mistakes on blogs can easily be sorted –  particularly where they permit commenting which allows postings to be criticised, facts corrected, and arguments opposed. Rather than arm-twisting legal tactics.

However, Usmanov, the nouveau riche thug that he is, chose to throw money at his lawyers to shut down those who dare to legitimately criticise him and has now gotten his hands full and learned what the power of the Internet really is. THOUSANDS of blogger’s have rallied to support Craig and those who have been taken out by Usmanov’s high priced lawyers at Schillings (whose reputation, backed up on their website by the laughable case studies currently being mocked across the “blogosphere”, is now at stake). Too bad they did not do enough research nor care to notice that other well-known political figures were on the same servers as Craig and were also pulled – including prospective candidate for London mayor Boris Johnson. Now it’s now gone viral on the Net and is being picked up in the mainstream media.

Mr Eugenides sums it up:

If you can be silenced for calling a businessman a crook, then you can be silenced for calling a politician a crook, too. Then it’s everyone’s problem.

We have chosen to reprint Murray’s original post in full below and posted an earlier article on the subject here.]

I thought I should make my views on Alisher Usmanov quite plain to you.

You are unlikely to see much plain talking on Usmanov elsewhere in the media because he has already used his billions and his lawyers in a pre-emptive strike. They have written to all major UK newspapers, including the latter:

“Mr Usmanov was imprisoned for various offences under the old Soviet regime. We wish to make it clear our client did not commit any of the offences with which he was charged.  He was fully pardoned after President Mikhail Gorbachev took office. All references to these matters have now been expunged from police records . . . Mr Usmanov does not have any criminal record.”

Let me make it quite clear that Alisher Usmanov is a criminal.

He was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail. The lawyers cunningly evoke “Gorbachev”, a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed. That is completely untrue. Usmanov’s pardon was nothing to do with Gorbachev. It was achieved through the growing autonomy of another thug, President Karimov, at first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and from 1991 President of Uzbekistan.

Karimov ordered the “Pardon” because of his alliance with Usmanov’s mentor, Uzbek mafia boss and major international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov. Far from being on Gorbachev’s side, Karimov was one of the Politburo hardliners who had Gorbachev arrested in the attempted coup that was thwarted by Yeltsin standing on the tanks outside the White House.
Usmanov is just a criminal whose gangster connections with one of the World’s most corrupt regimes got him out of jail. He then plunged into the “privatisation” process at a time when gangster muscle was used to secure physical control of assets, and the alliance between the Russian Mafia and Russian security services was being formed. Usmanov has two key alliances. he is very close indeed to President Karimov, and especially to his daughter Gulnara. It was Usmanov who engineered the 2005 diplomatic reversal in which the United States was kicked out of its airbase in Uzbekistan and Gazprom took over the country’s natural gas assets. Usmanov, as chairman of Gazprom Investholdings paid a bribe of $88 million to Gulnara Karimova to secure this.

This is set out on page 366 of Murder in Samarkand. Alisher Usmanov had risen to chair of Gazprom Investholdings because of his close personal friendship with Putin, He had accessed Putin through Putin’s long time secretary and now chef de cabinet, Piotr Jastrzebski. Usmanov and Jastrzebski were roommates at college. Gazprom Investholdings is the group that handles Gazproms interests outside Russia, Usmanov’s role is, in effect, to handle Gazprom’s bribery and sleaze on the international arena, and the use of gas supply cuts as a threat to uncooperative satellite states.

Gazprom has also been the tool which Putin has used to attack internal democracy and close down the independent media in Russia. Gazprom has bought out — with the owners having no choice — the only independent national TV station and numerous rgional TV stations, several radio stations and two formerly independent national newspapers. These have been changed into slavish adulation of Putin. Usmanov helped accomplish this through Gazprom.

The major financial newspaper, Kommersant, he bought personally. He immediately replaced the editor-in-chief with a pro-Putin hack, and three months later the long-serving campaigning defence correspondent, Ivan Safronov, mysteriously fell to his death from a window. All this, both on Gazprom and the journalist’s death, is set out in great detail here. Usmanov is also dogged by the widespread belief in Uzbekistan that he was guilty of a particularly atrocious rape, which was covered up and the victim and others in the know disappeared. The sad thing is that this is not particularly remarkable.

Rape by the powerful is an everyday hazard in Uzbekistan, again as outlined in Murder in Samarkand page 120. If anyone has more detail on the specific case involving Usmanov please add a comment. I reported back in 2002 or 2003 in an Ambassadorial top secret telegram to the Foreign Office that Usmanov was the most likely favoured successor of President Karimov as totalitarian leader of Uzbekistan.

I also outlined the Gazprom deal (before it happened) and the present by Usmanov to Putin (though in Jastrzebski’s name) of half of Mapobank, a Russian commercial bank owned by Usmanov. I will never forget the priceless reply from our Embassy in Moscow. They said that they had never even heard of Alisher Usmanov, and that Jastrzebski was a jolly nice friend of the Ambassador who would never do anything crooked.

Sadly, I expect the football authorities will be as purblind. Football now is about nothing but money, and even Arsenal supporters — as tight-knit and homespun a football community as any — can be heard saying they don’t care where the money comes from as long as they can compete with Chelsea. I fear that is very wrong. Letting as diseased a figure as Alisher Usmanov into your club can only do harm in the long term.

List of bloggers covering this story

Curious Hamster, Pickled Politics, Harry’s Place, Tim Worstall, Dizzy, Iain Dale, Ten Percent, Blairwatch, Earthquake Cove, Turbulent Cleric (who suggests dropping a line to the FA about Mr Usmanov), Mike Power, Jailhouse Lawyer, Suesam, Devil’s Kitchen, The Cartoonist, Falco, Casualty Monitor, Forever Expat, Arseblog, Drink-soaked Trots (and another), Pitch Invasion, Wonko’s World, Roll A Monkey, Caroline Hunt, Westminster Wisdom, Chris K, Anorak, Mediawatchwatch, Norfolk Blogger, Chris Paul, Indymedia (with a list of Craig Murray’s articles that are currently unavailable), Obsolete, Tom Watson, Cynical Chatter, Reactionary Snob, Mr Eugenides, Matthew Sinclair, The Select Society, Liberal England, Davblog, Peter Gasston Pitch Perfect, Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe, Lunartalks, Tygerland, The Crossed Pond, Our Kingdom, Big Daddy Merk, Daily Mail Watch, Graeme’s, Random Thoughts, Nosemonkey, Matt Wardman, Politics in the Zeros, Love and Garbage, The Huntsman, Conservative Party Reptile, Ellee Seymour, Sabretache, Not A Sheep, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, The People’s Republic Of Newport, Life, the Universe & Everything, Arsenal Transfer Rumour Mill, The Green Ribbon, Blood & Treasure, The Last Ditch, Areopagitica, Football in Finland, An Englishman’s Castle, Freeborn John, Eursoc, The Back Four, Rebellion Suck!, Ministry of Truth, ModernityBlog, Beau Bo D’Or, Scots and Independent, The Splund, Bill Cameron, Podnosh, Dodgeblogium, Moving Target, Serious Golmal, Goonerholic, The Spine, Zero Point Nine, Lenin’s Tomb, The Durruti Column, The Bristol Blogger, ArseNews, David Lindsay, Quaequam Blog!, On A Quiet Day…, Kathz’s Blog, England Expects, Theo Spark, Duncan Borrowman, Senn’s Blog, Katykins, Jewcy, Kevin Maguire, Stumbling and Mumbling, Famous for 15 megapixels, Ordovicius, Tom Morris, AOL Fanhouse, Doctor Vee, The Curmudgeonly, The Poor Mouth, 1820, Hangbitch, Crooked Timber, ArseNole, Identity Unknown, Liberty Alone, Amused Cynicism, Clairwil, The Lone Voice, Tampon Teabag, Unoriginalname38, Special/Blown It, The Remittance Man, 18 Doughty Street, Laban Tall, Martin Bright, Spy Blog The Exile, poons, Jangliss, Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From?, Imagined Community, A Pint of Unionist Lite, Poldraw, Disillusioned And Bored, Error Gorilla, Indigo Jo, Swiss Metablog, Kate Garnwen Truemors, Asn14, D-Notice, The Judge, Political Penguin, Miserable Old Fart, Jottings, fridgemagnet, Blah Blah Flowers, J. Arthur MacNumpty, Tony Hatfield, Grendel, Charlie Whitaker, Matt Buck, The Waendel Journal, Marginalized Action Dinosaur, SoccerLens, Toblog, John Brissenden East Lower, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Peter Black AM, Boing Boing, BLTP, Gunnerblog, LFB UK, Liberal Revolution, Wombles, Focus on Sodbury…, Follow The Money, Freedom and Whisky, Melting Man, PoliticalHackUK, Simon Says…, Daily EM, From The Barrel of a Gun, The Fourth Place, The Armchair News Blog, Journalist und Optimist, Bristol Indymedia, Dave Weeden, Up North John, Gizmonaut, Spin and Spinners, Marginalia, Arnique, Heather Yaxley, The Whiskey Priest, On The Beat, Paul Canning, Martin Stabe, Mat Bowles, Pigdogfucker, Rachel North, B3TA board, Naqniq, Yorkshire Ranter, The Home Of Football, UFO Breakfast Recipients, Moninski , Kerching, e-clectig, Mediocracy, Sicily Scene, Samizdata, I blog, they blog, weblog, Colcam, Some Random Thoughts, Bel is thinking, Vino S, Simply Jews, Atlantic Free Press, Registan, Filasteen, Britblog Roundup #136, Scientific Misconduct Blog, Adam Bowie, Duncan at Abcol, Camera Anguish, A Very British Dude, Whatever, Central News, Green Gathering, Leighton Cooke

Over the past weekend, bloggers – as a collective – have proven that they truly are players in the war of ideas. Now – underlying layers – which have been blanketed from the masses by corporate and government enslaved media can be disseminated by hundreds of thousands of online social networks that are only a few bytes removed from one another.

Media guru and electronical anthropologist Marshall McLuhan brilliantly predicted this in his 1967 work – “The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects”. It’s close to 40 year ago that McLuhan coined the term “the global village.”

“…Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. ‘Time’ has ceased, ‘space’ has vanished. We now live in a global village…a simultaneous happening.”… “Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay.”

…Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication…. The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement. It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media. Anxiety is, in great part, a result of trying to do do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools, with yesterday’s concepts.

from McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967)

Want to know what’s really going on behind the scenes as the American war on Iraq spirals to its fiery conclusion? Ask someone who knows, who moves among the top players, who has been there, on the  bloodstained ground, in the gold-plated palaces: Paul William Roberts.  The intrepid Senior Writer for Atlantic Free Press, is  back with his latest report on the American debacle and Iraq’s agony.  His piece, Decline and Fall: America in Retreat, is packed with the insider dope and savage wit that characterizes all his work. Get over to Atlantic Free Press now and read the whole thing, after a taste of these excerpts:

According  to the Iraqi newspaper Al- Quds al-Arabi, James Baker, the Bush  family’s Mr. Fixit, recently met with one of Saddam Hussein’s lawyers  in Amman, Jordan, and told him that the former deputy prime minister of  Iraq, Tariq Aziz, would be released from detention by December in order  to negotiate with the US on behalf of factions of the Iraqi resistance  movement still controlled by old Ba’ath Party leaders. Sources in  Jordan tell me that the first stage of such negotiations has indeed  already taken place. Two weeks ago, Aziz was whisked from his jail cell  and, along with other representatives of Iraq’s Sunni Resistance, taken  for three days’ of secret discussions in Amman with senior US  officials. It is heartening to note that this course of action was  advised by the Atlantic Free Press three weeks ago. Aziz and his  colleagues are currently discussing America’s proposals with the  divisional resistance leadership, whose response and counter-offers  they will present to Washington early next month.

Jordan’s  Crown Prince Hassan tells me, furthermore, that Condoleeza Rice made a  personal appeal to the Gulf Cooperation Council last month to act as  intermediaries between the US and the armed Sunni resistance, not  including Iraqi al-Qaeda leaders. Rice evidently joked during the  closed-door meeting that “if Donald Rumsfeld could hear me now he would  wage war against me fiercer and hotter than he waged in Iraq…”

Iraqi  Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki was evidently unable to accept these  proposals, or so I am told, because his office ties him institutionally  to the Shia parties, which view any concessions to the Sunni as a  religious betrayal. Iraqi Shia Muslims believe their moment in history  has arrived and they have finally thrown off a millennium of Sunni  domination. Most chickens still remain in their eggs, however, so  counting them may be misleading. The view in Washington is that  Al-Maliki’s usefulness has ended, and a political coup is now underway  to oust him and reorganize his regime along lines more amenable to a  revival of America’s old bias toward Sunni Arabs. In the Situation  Room, the situation always has room for change, and two opinions are  better than one even when they’re mutually contradictory.

  Along  with burying Al-Maliki in Quisling’s Graveyard, some of the Pentagon’s  less repentant serial killers feel that cranking up the battle of  Baghdad a notch would make an even better prelude to withdrawal, since  it might help prevent US troops being picked off like lame antelope by  a triumphant resistance….

  In  this, as in all Middle Eastern political poker these days, Teheran  holds better cards than Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, or Baghdad. While  state media ply us with tales of Iran’s profligacy as chief arms  merchant to violent dissent, the real story is that of Iran’s  restraint. There were larger shoulder-launched missiles to supply  Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon – ones capable of reaching every city in  Israel – yet Teheran chose not to make them available. There is an  awful lot more that the Iranian military could provide to Iraqi  resistance groups, too, yet to date it is the Russians, via Syria, who  have provided most of the weaponry….

The  real power in Teheran is an oligarchy linked to oil and interwoven with  senior clerics yet essentially secular in its goals. Your media don’t  bother you with this reality, however, for reasons best known to  themselves. To retain the status quo, however, the oligarchs must  placate the impoverished masses with a myth of spiritual warfare in  which Iran fights for God against Satan….At least no one in Teheran’s  corridors of power actually believes this yarn, though, while  Washington is infested with religious psychopaths who seriously (or  rather comically) think they’re up against a guy with horns who has set  himself up as the Competition.

by Chris Floyd

Did you see her and want her so bad, that young, forbidden fruit? Did she once smile nervously at the checkpoint, and you thought it was just for you? Did you come on strong the next time around, flash a little money maybe, or lay a syrupy line on her that you got from a phrasebook? What did she do – recoil? Look away? Look disgusted? Look blank? What did she do to bring on the big hurt from a big, tough man like you?

So you planned it all out. You cased the house, you reconnoitred. You got your buddies in on it – or were they in from the start, did they make a play too, were they too turned away by this haughty Arab bitch, this piece of trash from a shitheap town in a shitheap country filled with nothing but lazy, lying, murdering towelheads? Somebody like that thinks they’re too good to give it up to you? You liberated her goddamned country, for Christ’s sake, and now she won’t even put out? That dog won’t hunt. Hell no. You and your pals had to teach her a lesson. You had the power, you had the guns, you were Americans; who was going to stop you?

So you set up the mission. You knew how to do it. How many houses had you raided before? Dozens, hundreds – who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? You went in an d got her, you did what you wanted to her. You shoved the other hajjis into the next room, put a gun on them, then got down to business. Did your buds take a turn? Everybody get a taste? Or maybe you’d already ruined her before they got a chance – beat her, tore her, pounded her into goo? Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? At some point, she just wasn’t worth it anymore. No fight left in her. Laid there like a limp rag. Passed out maybe.

So you took out your gun, you took out your power, you took out the thing that makes you an American – a real person, a human being — instead of a walking piece of shit like everyone else in that godforsaken hellhole of a country, you took it out and you shot her in the head. One shot, clean kill. Did you say anything? Crack a joke? “Not tonight, honey, I’ve got a headache.” Or did you just stand there and curse her, puking your self-righteous rage all over her dead body?

Who took charge after that? Was it you, or one of the others? It all started moving so fast, like a dream ha d been broken – or maybe this was the dream? Maybe it was all a dream, the whole fucking thing, from day one, all of it nothing, happening to nobody, going on nowhere, never. But the smell was real, you couldn’t get away from it, that wet smell, meat and guts in a slime of blood. It filled your nose, filled up your whole head behind your face, it lined your throat, coated your skin. And if the smell was real, then the whole thing….

Move, fast, now! The hajjis in the other room: no witnesses, goddamn it! Who’s this, the mother? Head shot, head shot, down. Who’s this old bastard? Father, brother? Who cares? Head shot, head shot, in the face, down. And what’s this? Oh for Christ’s sake, how old is she? Six? Seven? Eight? What are you going to do, wait till she grows up and comes looking for your ass? Catch her, goddamn it, just shoot, shoot! Down.

Now burn the other one. Yeah, the bitch in the other room. Set her on fire and get the hell out. Report terrorist activity. The Sunni bastards in the area. Secure the perimeter. Get your fucking story straight and keep your fucking mouth shut. We’re home free. Home free….

***
Is that how it went down? Does it still feel good? They got two of your brothers from the same platoon later, chopped off their heads. Reckon that was payback? Now the squealers are coming out. It’s in the goddamned papers. The brass are going to throw you to the dogs. They can be big men, they can rape whole countries, kill tens of thousands — but just let some grunt try to get a little on the retail side, and all hell breaks loose. It just ain’t fair.

Well, buddy, what can we say? You should have your fun last year, when there wasn’t an election. Nobody would have paid a blind bit of notice. And you should have called in an airstrike, not that half-assed burning job – nothing buries evidence like a 500-pound bomb.

The only thing now is to get a good military lawyer. The ones they got working for those Gitmo goobers seem like top-notch shysters – they just beat Bush at the Supreme Court, so try to get one of them. Then just hunker down. If you can string it out long enough, Bush’s media brigades can start working the refs for you, muddying the waters, smearing your accusers, providing the proper context, invoking 9/11. (And speaking of 9/11, isn’t that what it’s really all about? Isn’t that what you were really doing when you raped that girl and shot her in the head and burned her body and killed her family – defending our country from those who attacked us on that tragic day? What you did was justice, damn it, not a crime! Just like the whole war.) Meanwhile, Rummy will pull the insider strings to water things down to a wrist-slap somewhere along the line – after the elections.

So don’t sweat it, brother. You and your pals might be home free yet.

UPDATE: Ex-GI Charged in Slaying of 4 and Rape in Iraq. (NYT) Uh-oh. Too late for at least one of the marauders; he was already de-mobbed, and is now in the hands of civilian prosecutors. Uncle Rummy’s gonna have to cut you loose, compadre. Sure, he’s signed direct orders for the deaths of thousands of civilians every bit as innocent as that family you massacred — but then, he’s an Ivy League man, a corporate chieftain, a respected public servant, and you are just another hick from the sticks. Let this be a lesson to all the cannon fodder out there: don’t get above your raising, don’t emulate your betters. Law is for the lowly, not the great and good.

We are looking for some talented dissident writers with a unique and strong voice… who would like to be part of the Empire Burlesque editorial team.

No, we can’t pay at this time – our site currently operates at a loss. All we can offer is the opportunity to become an integral and internal part of the site as well as offer a byline at Empire Burlesque – and Googlenews – when and if your work passes the editorial eye of Floyd.

We are looking for anyone with a keen eye for the high crimes and low comedy that flies below the radar of the mainstream media. And for people who have a good understanding of journalistic principles. Those who wish to specialize in tracking specific areas would be particularly welcome, especially subjects that are greatly neglected in the public eye — such as Africa, Latin America, India, China, poverty in the United States, "following the money" behind Congressional legislation and government contracts to dig out fat-cat cronies and beneficiaries of our corporate welfare state, the struggle of women for equality around the world, the Israel/Palestine, human rights and other legal and constitutional issues, tracking the religious right — anything that you have a passion for exploring. Generalists are welcome too, of course.

But we are looking for news, hard facts, not simply opinion — although certainly your beliefs in equality, social justice, tempering power with the rule of law and other ideals will and should inform your writing.

If you are interested in becoming a contributor to Empire Burlesque please email the webmaster Richard Kastelein at expatforums@gmail.com

Not Chris Floyd … no – the other guy.

So far Paul William Roberts and Mike Whitney have signed on. As well as a few other writers.

From 1998 to 2000, Floyd, an American expat from Tennessee, was the editor of Science & Spirit, an Oxford quarterly journal dealing with the contentious relationship between science and religion. His work there included interviews with such thinkers as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Frans de Waal, V.S. Ramachandran and others. He also worked with contributors from around the world – Islamic scientists, Jewish theologians, militant atheists, Nobel Prize-winning physicists, and authors such as Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Lisa Jardine, A.N. Wilson, John Polkinghorne and others.

Reproduced in full by Floyd’s webmaster and publisher, Richard Kastelein – who posts as Ghandi at myleftwing, Eurotrib and here. And no, we don’t like being Swiftboated – so I am posting this here as we are not allowed to participate at DK.

Original blog post from Empire Burlesque – www.chris-floyd.com

Last week, I was banned from contributing to Daily Kos, apparently for criticizing the Democratic cave-in on Peeper Hayden’s CIA nomination a bit too forcefully. At least I think that was the reason; maybe they just didn’t like the cut of my jib, I don’t know. This banishment to Kossack Siberia is a matter of no great importance, of course, neither to the wider world nor to me, but as the shunning was accompanied by several ugly and false personal accusations against me (and our webmaster here, Richard Kastelein, who was also banned), I thought I would take this opportunity to respond. I wouldn’t want to let swift-boatian slanders enter the public record unchallenged. (Although I suppose I could emulate the exquisite timing of John Kerry, and make a bold stand in my own defense – two years from now.)

Anyway, for anyone interested in this admittedly esoteric subject, the response can be found after the jump.

After the banning, I asked DK if I could respond to the lies and insults of some of the site’s commenters. This request wasn’t granted, but below is the reply I would have posted.

Correcting Some Misapprehensions
As a very occasional diarist on Daily Kos, I seem to have stepped into a controversy that has left me puzzled. I honestly could not figure out why such an uproar had arisen over a short diary that I posted following the overwhelming Senate vote to confirm Gen. Michael Hayden, the operator of the Bush Administration’s covert campaign against the privacy of American citizens, as CIA director. Having thought a bit about the situation, I decided that it sprang largely misapprehensions by some Kos readers — and on my part as well. This is an attempt to correct some of those misapprehensions.

First, I’d like to address the accusation that I’m some kind of “troll,” that I “love being derogatory to Democrats,” etc. This charge is incomprehensible to me. I don’t feel I have to prove my bona fides to anybody in this regard, but perhaps in these overheated days, I do. I published my first piece attacking right-wing Republicans in 1978 — before many of commenters here were even born, I’m sure. I first attacked, in print, the rise of the fanatical, politicized “Christian Right” and its growing symbiosis with the Republican Party in 1982. For almost 30 years, I have been denouncing, in print, in public, this nightmare hard-right movement that has slowly consumed our Republic and now reached its apotheosis in the Bush II administration. To those readers who accuse me of being a troll, of “loving to be derogatory to Democrats,” I can only say: what have you been doing to combat the right-wing for the past 30 years? When did you start speaking out against it, putting your neck on the line in public? Or do you confine yourself only to snarky web comments, under pseudonyms, against anyone who offends your refined sensibilities?

And one more word to those accusers: I support the constitutional Republic of the United States before any political party. And although I have never voted for any candidate who wasn’t a Democrat — and this will be my 30th* year of voting — when I see the leadership of the Democratic Party acting in ways that aid and abet the destruction of the Republic, then by God, I will denounce them for it, and make no apologies for doing so.

Second, I’d like to address the Jason Leopold controversy, since that was drawn into the accuasations against me and probably contributed to the banning as well. In this regard, let me first clear up the quite frankly stupid accusations about me and Rich Kastelein (Ghandi). Rich is the webmaster at the blog I write, Empire Burlesque. He emailed me about the Jason Leopold controversy at Kos; I sent him a response, then did a quick comment, buried miles deep on an existing Kos thread that I thought was an appropriate venue. Maybe it was the wrong thread, I don’t know, or maybe I should have put it in a diary; I could never really get a firm grasp on the somewhat Byzantine court etiquette at DK. (But then again, as an American living in England, I have a hard time getting a firm grasp on the social niceties here as well.)

But that’s it. That’s the extent of the “pseudo-lefty conspiracy” that was bruited by some Kos commenters, who came up with a new axis of evil: Leopold, Kastelein and Floyd. According to these febrile minds, Rich and I are actually one person, deviously posting under separate names, all to do the bidding of the Great Satan in Santa Monica, Leopold, acting as his “sock puppets.” One excitable commenter even suggested that both Rich and I were fictitious creatures, fronts being used by Leopold himself.

I’m sorry these anonymous snark-puppies got themselves all het up, but none of this is true.
I simply wrote my own opinon of the Leopold matter. I’ve never met Jason Leopold, know him only by his work. And my comments dealt solely with his story about the Rove indictment and what I believe is the overreaction to it. Let me state it again: It seems to me that even in the worst-case scenario for the Leopold story, all you would have is that an investigative reporter got burned by his sources. This happens to every reporter; even Sy Hersh has been burned spectacularly on a few occasions. Again, the level of anger and personal animus at Leopold is incomprehensible to me. If the sources were wrong, either unwittingly or deliberately, then the story was wrong. This is an occupational hazard of journalism. Why this should result in such vitriolic personal attacks on Leopold is something I can’t fathom.

Also, every single element of the Plame story and the Fitzgerald investigation has played out very slowly, with the truth emerging only months, even years later. Why should we assume that the denial of Rove’s lawyer simply settles the matter? Why not let it play out and see what happens? Why this rush to pillory an investigator just because his story made some very powerful people uncomfortable for a minute or two? Yet the Kos FAQ now ranks Leopold with Lyndon LaRouche. I have to say — and it gives me absolutely no pleasure to say it — that some of these reactions remind me of old-time Soviet campaigns against someone who has departed from the established line. It was never enough simply to disagree, or to criticize in a rational fashion (e.g., “I think Jason has overstepped the mark here; perhaps his sources haven’t given him reliable information; let’s hold our fire on this story until we can learn more”); no, the target had to be personally smeared, banished, erased from the discourse. Maybe this doesn’t bother other people, but it bothers me.

Anyway, that’s the extent of the “conspiracy.” Rich told me about the Leopold controversy; I posted my own, honest opinion of the affair, made no claims of secret insider knowledge about it; indeed, based most of my comment on what I considered to be the worst-case scenario: that Leopold was wrong. And I offered these opinions – as I have done for 30 years – in my own name, aboveboard, in public. For this, I’ve been transformed into a “troll,” a conspirator, a pseudo-lefty (whatever the hell that is), a sock-puppet controlled by nefarious forces, etc. This isn’t political discourse or honest debate; this is childish nonsense.

But perhaps I’m in the wrong. And I mean that sincerely. Perhaps I have been laboring under a misapprehension about the nature and purpose of the Kos community. I assumed that Daily Kos was a community devoted to dissent against the status quo — against the manifold depredations of the Bush Regime, and also against the prevailing attitudes of quietism, corporatism and collusion that have characterized the Democratic leadership in general during the Bush years. Indeed, Kos himself and the larger DK community have earned a reputation as offering a viable alternative to the outmoded and obviously unsuccessful DLC philosophy. Therefore, based on these assumptions — which I believe are sound — I further assumed that my style of dissent against these same Bush depredations and Democratic failings would be welcome in the Kos community. Not that I expected or wanted everyone to agree with me on every point, but I never thought that either the style or the content of my writings would be considered beyond the pale.

Of course I recognize the need for monitoring comments, diaries etc. on a blog to weed out unacceptable material; I do that myself at my blog. I guess I’m just a bit surprised at where the lines of unacceptability are being drawn these days at Daily Kos.

Again, all this may be down to misapprehensions on my part. As it turns out, it’s obvious that the Kos community wishes to hew to a much more centrist line, in tone and content, than I was aware of. This is a perfectly legitimate line to take. I suppose that my material and style were too strident (as a devoted centrist would see it) to fit in well with the goals of the Kos community, which seem to me to be aimed more at making practical changes in the Democratic Party. Again, a worthy goal.

But I personally am not a party activist. I’m not even a political activist. I don’t have any ideological line to push, secretly or otherwise. I don’t have any “agenda” at all, beyond wanting the government to quit committing so many goddamned crimes in my name, and a rather wan hope that maybe one day society can become more just and enlightened. The old Emersonian ideals still seem good to me. I write when something moves me — often to outrage, but sometimes to hope or inspiration. I write to try to figure out what’s going on in the world, to articulate my understanding of the world for myself and then convey this articulation to others, if I feel it might have some resonance, make some connection, be of some benefit by adding to the weight of dissent against political crime and folly. To borrow Eliot’s phraseology, I write to contribute my fragment to shore up against the ruins. That’s it.

If the way I do this was somehow injurious to or incompatible with the larger interests of the Kos community, then I guess I should be banned. Again, I only started cross-posting some of my material on Kos because I thought that perhaps my fragments might be simpatico with the folks there; since that’s not the case, I’ll simply continue to write elsewhere, and wish Kos and the Kossacks all success in whatever they seek to do.

*CORRECTION: I prematurely aged myself in the draft I posted earlier, referring to my 4oth year of voting. I must have been feeling my arthritis when I wrote that.*

I thought I might let you know that the ad you are carrying (as are we) is rather dodgy. Atrios noted it as well.

From Chris at Empire Burlesqe

Media Citizen alerts us — and many other blogs — to the fact that the ad at the right for “www.dontregulate.org” is in fact a classic piece of astroturf: a fake “grass roots” campaign that is actually fronting for Big Telcoms like AT&T and BellSouth, who are trying to destroy one of the foundations of Internet freedom, “Net Neutrality” and replace it with a two-tier system that puts corporate favorites on the fast track and shunts all the rest of the rabble onto the horsepath to hobble along as they may. (Yes, this is the group that former Cli nton mouthpiece Mike McCurry is shilling for.) So in the interest of free inquiry and all that, feel free to peruse their ad — but know that they are trying to play with your head in a most cynical fashion. Go to MediaCitizen for the full story: Telcos Seek to Deceive Bloggers with Cartoon.

Though Chris Floyd (American Moscow Times columnist and author) and I from Empire Burlesque are not the most interactive Kos and Booman members and relative newbies – we were struck by the call from STOP George in his diary "ACTION ALERT: Qwest, ALONE, says, “No!” to domestic spying." enough to buy the name thankyouqwest.org on Thursday.

As the technical end of the partnership, my idea was to create an quick WordPress (Open Source) site that would not only centre as a point of praise in the form of posting ‘thank you’ comments (such as thankyoustephencolbert.org) but also act as a links clearinghouse for the netroot buzz on Qwest and the NSA story. I was able to purchase the name and get the site up within hours.

Within a day (last night) I was on the phone with Newsday technology staffer Richard J. Dalton Jr.- who interviewed me on the site for a half an hour. He couldn’t quite get over the fact he was speaking to someone in Holland who was not American. There are a number of us who participate in the progressive movement online that don’t carry the same passport and I suppose we all have our own reasons.

Then lo and behold I woke up this morning to find the stats full of links from the NYT’s where we were included in an article on former Qwest chief Joseph P. Nacchio, and the rapid turnabout of his reputation since it was revealed that he refused to play ball with the NSA.

One blogger even created a Web site, www.thankyouqwest.org, praising the company for its decision not to cooperate with the government’s surveillance plan.

And it the interview appeared in Newsday.

Bloggers also have expressed their support, and Richard Kastelein, a Web designer based in the Netherlands, created thankyouqwest.org, which commends the company as the only holdout and declares: “Qwest customers are safe.”

Kastelein said he started the site “because it’s about time someone stood up. Qwest has had a lot of bad press during the past few years and its fair share of problems. But they certainly deserve kudos for not buckling under to the heavy-handed tactics of the Bush administration.”

Kastelein’s praise and reference to “bad press” capture the two faces of Qwest: the defender – of privacy – and the defendant – in securities litigation.

Earlier the site was also covered in the Salt Lake Tribune

“By Thursday afternoon, a Web site had gone up called thankyouqwest.org, which encouraged visitors to contact the company’s chief ethics officer to express their appreciation for so-called “NSA-free” phone service.”

And in Seattle’s The Stranger who bill themselves as Seattle’s Only Newspaper.

That Didn’t Take Long. This new web site thanks Qwest for not turning over its customers’ phone records to the NSA

As neither Chris nor I expected the site to have think kind of impact – he didn’t do the copy… I did which is why it’s not in the more prosaic style associated with Empire Burlesque. He’s going to do a rewrite sometime today (I hope).

At thankyouqwest.org, we make it clear where the ‘roots’ of the idea for the site came from.

Members of Daily Kos formed an action group to push people to recognize the gravity of Qwest’s action.

This site is part of that action.

I know some at don’t agree with giving Kudos to Qwest due to alleged poor service and prior business problems but as orthogonal put it oh so well in the action thread.

Who cares why Qwest stood up?

I DON’T CARE why Qwest, in the face of what had to be enormous government pressure, didn’t cave in.

I’m JUST GLAD they did the right thing.

If I have to put up with some MINOR INCONVENIENCE to keep my SACRED LIBERTIES, that’s a small price to pay.

The Founders pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to secure those rights for all Americans. I think I can at least put up with an unresponsive DNS server.

These are our rights, our children’s POSTERITY we’re trying to protect. Many Americans have given their lives for these rights.

If we don’t reward Qwest for taking the right stand, we’re telling the neo-cons and the world that America prefers having a dial tone over its LIBERTY.

The neo-cons are watching to see which we care about more. We need to show them we stand for Liberty, or we’ll just encourage more of their encroachments.

As for the blogads? We decided to put them in to drive up our numbers and make our current advertisers happy, yes. And its also good for blogads in general.

Like most ‘almost’ A-list bloggers, we operate at a loss and blog for the love of it with the feeling we are part of the solution on the path to political change in the United States. Which is not only important to the majority of Americans, but also to the world. The current American Republican government is doing everything it can to dismantle American democracy internally and internationally vis a vis ignoring International Law. And it is creating a disastrous situation in the Middle East that resonates for all of humanity.

Hideous Kinky: Moral Nullity as Normality in Pentagon Plans

Written by Chris Floyd  

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=615

Imagine growing up in a family where every day, father raped daughter, mother tortured son, brother abused brother, sister stole from sister, and the whole family murdered neighbors, friends and passing strangers. Imagine the underlying assumptions about life that you would adopt without question in such an atmosphere, how normal the most hideous depravity would seem. If some outsider chanced to ask you about your family’s latest activities, you would spew out perversions as calmly and unthinkingly as a man giving directions to the post office.

This state of unwitting confession to monstrous crime has been the default mode of the American Establishment for many years now. Government officials routinely detail policies that in a healthy atmosphere would shake the nation to its core, stand out like a gaping wound, a rank betrayal of every hope, ideal and sacrifice of generations past. Yet in the degraded sensibility of these times, such confessions go unnoticed, their evil unrecognized – or even lauded as savvy ploys or noble endeavors. Inured to moral horror by half a century of outrages committed by the “National Security” complex, the Establishment – along with the media and vast swathes of the population – can no longer discern the poison in the air they breathe. It just seems normal.

And so it was again this week when the Washington Post outlined the Pentagon’s plan to put dirty war – by death squad, by snatch squad, by secret armies, subversion, torture and terrorism- at the very heart of America’s military philosophy. Not defense against declared enemies, not deterrence of potential foes, but conducting “continuous” covert military operations in countries “where the United States is not at war” is now the Pentagon’s “highest priority,” according to the new “campaign plan for the global war on terror” issued by Donald Rumsfeld.
What’s more, the plan makes it clear that Rumsfeld, far from being politically vulnerable – as portrayed in the ludicrous kabuki of the Establishment media – has in fact been exalted above every other institution and official of the U.S. government, with the exception of the twin tyrants in the White House, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The Pentagon warlord has been given carte blanche to send the 53,000 secret soldiers of the Special Operations Command into any nation he pleases, to undertake any mission he pleases, without Congressional approval, legal restraint, or the authority of the target nation’s U.S. ambassador. Thus America’s diplomats, the ostensible representatives of the nation abroad, have been reduced to mere frontmen, pathetic beards for black ops savaging the laws, sovereignty and citizens of their hosts.

The “campaign plan” is the culmination and codification of an ad hoc array of progams and powers that Bush has doled out to Rumsfeld over the years, including a series of executive orders signed after the 2004 election that essentially turned the world into a “global free-fire zone” for the Pentagon’s secret armies and proxy foreign militias, as a top Pentagon official told Seymour Hersh. “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys,” another Bush insider said. Yet another courtier compared it to the glory days of the Reagan-Bush years: “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” The overriding ethos of the plan is, like its progenitors Bush and Rumsfeld, brutally simple: “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want,'” an intelligence official explained to Hersh.

Perhaps most ominously, the plan makes copious preparations for expanding the range of the terror war even further. The trigger for these new actions is another terrorist strike on American soil. Oddly enough, the Bush Faction considers such an unspeakable horror as an “opportunity,” Pentagon officials told the Post; it would provide a “justification,” they said, for hitting already targeted individuals, groups and states that for various political reasons have not yet been subjected to what Bush likes to call, in his bloodthirsty parlance, “the path of action.”

But perhaps this is not so odd. After all, even as the poisonous smoke was still rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center in September 2001, Bush giddily declared that “through my tears, I see opportunity.” We now know exactly what he saw: the opportunity to launch the long-determined invasion of Iraq, even though he knew that his stated reasons for the war were false, as Tyler Drumheller, the CIA’s top man in Europe before the war, noted this week. Drumheller told CBS that his team had direct intelligence from Saddam’s inner circle confirming Iraq’s dearth of WMD – intelligence backed up by multiple sources — but the White House told him it didn’t matter. They had decided on war and “were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy” – the formula for falsehood revealed in the “Downing Street Memos” uncovered in 2004. Predictably, this latest smoking gun evidence of the most heinous war crime imaginable – launching a war of aggression based knowingly on a false and manufactured threat (the precise equivalent of Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939) – was instantly deep-sixed by the Establishment media, like all the other proofs of the Regime’s criminal perfidy that have surfaced briefly over the years.

But of course this is not the only malevolent “opportunity” seized by the Bush Regime. Since October 2002, following up on deep-delving investigative work by William Arkin, we’ve been tracking another “opportunistic” endeavor: the Pentagon’s plan to foment terrorism by infiltrating terrorist groups and militias and goading them into action – i.e., commiting acts of murder and destruction – in order to “flush them out” for counterattacks or use them to advance American policy in targeted states, including “justification” for U.S. military intervention or occupation. (More details can be found here and here.) Perhaps some of Rumsfeld’s infiltrators were “riding with the bad boys” who struck in Dahab, Egypt this week. With unrestricted black ops now ascendant, we can never know for sure. But we do know that each act of terror only enhances the power of the ever-expanding national security complex, entwining it in a mutually beneficial embrace with violent extremists everywhere.

Rumsfeld’s “campaign plan” is itself a blueprint for state terrorism, an open license to break any and every law on earth and inflict mass human suffering on a global scale. Yet the only controversial aspect of this sinister program noted by the Post was the potential turf battles it might spark within the national security bureaucracy. Not a single question was raised about the morality or legality of the undertaking; the Pentagon’s assertion that only “bad guys” would be hit was simply swallowed whole – despite the glaring fact that tens of thousands of innocent people have already been killed or falsely imprisoned in the so-called “war on terror.”

But this depravity passes without comment, without recognition. It’s just normal, you see. It’s the way we were raised.

Chris Floyd/This is an extended version of a column appearing in the April 28 edition of The Moscow Times.

Divide et Impera
Hoover Institution, Winter Issue 2006
http://www.hooverdigest.org/061/henriksen.html

The Really Real “Long War”
Empire Burlesque, April 19, 2006
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=603&Itemid=1

The Hidden History of America’s War on Iraq
Synthesis/Regeneration, Winter 2003
http://www.greens.org/s-r/30/30-03.html

Declassified Files Confirm US Collaboration With Nazis
San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 7, 2001
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0508-05.htm

Documents From the Phoenix Program
The Memory Hole, May 2003
http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/

Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran
New York Times, April 16, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

The Hidden History of CIA Torture
TomDispatch.com, Sept. 9, 2004
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1795

The CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam
Ralph McGehee, Feb. 19, 1996
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/operation_phoenix.htm

U.S. Senate Review of Operation Phoenix,
United States Senate, Feb. 17 to March 19, 1970
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/phoenix-scfr-19700217.html

Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
http://mass-multi-media.com/CRV/#sec10

Project X, Drugs and Death Squads
Consortium News, 1997
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost19.html

Phoenix Project: It’s How We Fought the War
Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2001
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0503-02.htm

The Phoenix Program Revisited
CounterPunch, May 15, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine05152004.html

The Gentlemanly Planners of Assassinations
Slate.com, Nov. 1, 2002
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073470

‘I Killed Innocent People For Our Government’
Sacramento Bee, May 16, 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/051804A.shtml

The Doctrine of Atrocity
Village Voice, May 11, 2004
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0419/turse.php

The Kissinger Telcons
National Security Archives, May 26, 2004
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/index.htm#chile

Regarding Henry Kissinger: A Panel on the Making of a War Criminal
Harpers, Feb. 22, 2001
http://www.harpers.org/online/kissinger_forum/kissinger_forum.php3?pg=1

Heir to the Holocaust: Prescott Bush, $1.5 Million and Auschwitz
Clamor Magazine, May/June 2002
http://www.clamormagazine.org/features/issue14.3_feature.html

Iraqgate: Confession and Coverup
Consortiumnews.com, May/June 1995
http://www.fair.org/extra/9505/iraqgate.html

Gulf War Crimes
Salon.com, May 15, 2000
http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2000/05/15/hersh/index.html

CIA Admits ‘Tolerating’ Contra Drug Trafficking
Consortiumnews.com, June 8, 2000
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html

Promoted by Steven D.

It is nowhere written that the American empire goes on forever.

Why We Fight is a provocative new documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Eugene Jarecki (The Trials of Henry Kissinger) and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival which is now posted at Empire Burlesque for viewing (via Google).

Named after the series of short films by legendary director Frank Capra that explored America’s reasons for entering World War II, Why We Fight surveys a half-century of military conflicts, asking how – and answering why – a nation of, by and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a government system whose survival depends on an Orwellian state of constant war.
Why We Fight features interviews and observations by a “who’s who” of military and Washington insiders including Senator John McCain, Gore Vidal, and Dan Rather. Beginning with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s prescient 1961 speech warning of the rise of the “military industrial complex,” Why We Fight moves far beyond the headlines of various American military operations to the deeper questions of why America seemingly is always at war. What are the forces – political, economic, and ideological – that drive us to clash against an ever-changing enemy? Just why does America fight?

Jarecki interviews people from all parts of the machinery: a grandmother who pushes missiles around a factory floor but confesses she would rather work in a toy factory, an optionless youngster signing up for the army, a Vietnamese immigrant who escaped one war and now designs bunkerbusting bombs for another, the fighter pilots who proudly delivered the first strikes in a preemptive war, a Pentagon officer who has become entirely disenchanted with the military, and a retired cop who struggles to reconcile his grief for the son he lost on 9/11 with the realization that he has been duped by the administration’s lies. Also among the talking heads are William Kristol and Richard Perle.

Unforgettable, powerful and at times disturbing.

Written by Chris Floyd   

Thursday, 30 March 2006

Once again we must take up the cudgels for President George W. Bush, who is being increasingly maligned for his alleged lack of strategic vision in Iraq. This chorus of petty carping from partisan dead-enders has been exacerbated of late by all the hand-wringing media reports about “civil war” breaking out among the ungrateful beneficiaries of the president’s selfless crusade for peace and enlightenment in the Middle East.

These charges are, as always, pure bunkum. As we have often noted here before, Bush is pursuing a remarkably effective “win-win” strategy in Iraq, a highly flexible vision that is even now ripening to fruition. The savage militias, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, sectarian hatred and gruesome tortures that are turning Iraq into a howling moonscape of fear and chaos are but precision tools in the artful hands of the Leader, as he patiently crafts the ultimate victory.
The war aims of the Babylonian Conquest have always been obvious to anyone who concentrates on the operational reality of the action and ignores the ludicrous cornball about democracy and security that Bush dishes out to gull the rubes back home into giving up their blood and treasure on behalf of his tiny, tyrannical elite. The reality clearly shows that Bush had three primary objectives in launching the invasion. First and foremost was the transfer of large portions of the national wealth of Iraq – and the United States – into the coffers of his political cronies, corporate backers and family members. (Also here.) Second was the frantic acceleration of the long-running, bipartisan militarization of America, which is now almost wholly dependent on war and rumors of war to keep its heavily-mortgaged economy afloat. Third was planting a permanent military presence in Iraq to “project dominance” over the strategic oil lands and serve as staging areas for further operations in regime change and political extortion as needed. (“Nice little country you got there, Abdul; too bad if something, like, happened to it – you savvy? Now howzabout signing that free trade agreement already?”)

None of these aims have been harmed in the slightest by Iraq’s death spiral into civil war. The Bush Faction’s war profiteering and fraud – on a scale surpassing anything ever seen in world history – has fueled a ruthless political machine that despite its growing unpopularity with the American people now controls all three branches of government and has overthrown the Constitution, openly declaring that its leader is beyond the reach of “judicial review, congressional oversight or international law,” as the Washington Post reported – rather belatedly – this week. Swollen by the swag of aggressive war, the elite interests represented by the Bush Regime – oil, military-related industries and predatory venture capitalists like the Carlyle Group – have had their already inordinate sway over American society and policy increased by several magnitudes. They will remain ascendant for decades to come, no matter what happens in Iraq, or in any U.S. election.

Indeed, the murderous chaos that will inevitably spill across the region, and the world, from the collapse of Iraq will only mean more boffo box office for the fearmongers and warmongers of the Bush Faction – and even greater feasting for their oil barons, already gorged on record-breaking profits after just three years of bloodshed. The whack-a-mole “Long War” gleefully envisioned by the Pentagon will thus be extended indefinitely, bringing more militarization, more draconian “war powers,” and further destruction of those pesky civil rights and constitutional liberties that hinder the elites in their exercise of raw power.

Civil war also enhances the prospect of permanent U.S. bases. The Sunni minority, once the most vociferous opponents of American occupation, now look – vainly – to U.S. forces as their last-ditch protection against the deadly militias of the Shiite majority. The Shiite-led government relies on U.S. military might to prop up the rickety state system imposed by American guns. The Kurds – busy ethnically cleansing their own enclave, as the WP reports, and imprisoning people for criticizing the corruption of Kurdish leaders, as the LAT reports – are happy for the Americans to plant vast, minatory fortresses down south to keep the troublesome Arabs in line. And so the permanent bases are being sunk deep into Iraqi soil; the Pentagon has already “authorized or proposed almost $1 billion” for bases in 2005-06, The Associated Press reports.

And if Iraq cracks apart completely – the “three-state solution” proposed by Leslie Gelb, doyen of that bastion of bipartisan Establishment wisdom, the Council on Foreign Relations – why, so much the better. It will be much easier to wangle basing agreements, oil deals, insider investments and those all-important arms contracts out of weakened mini-states struggling for survival than from a strong, unified nation looking out for its own interests.

As the gates of hell blow open in Iraq, the marvelous adaptability of Bush’s strategy becomes apparent. When the promised “cakewalk” did not materialize, Bush shifted to the near-genocidal fury of the Fallujah assault and the systematic tortures of Abu Ghraib. When these tactics failed to quell the resistance, Bush gave the Pentagon the greenlight to arm, infiltrate and manipulate militias and terrorist groups, even to the point of goading them into action, the New Yorker reports. [See also “Fear Up Harsh.”] If you can’t have cake, then chaos might serve your turn just as well.

Civil war looks like a profitable gambit for now – except for all the pointless suffering, of course. But Bush has never cared about that. A true visionary, he keeps his eyes on the prize, on the only kind of “victory” he has ever sought in Iraq: loot and domination for his ruthless clique. Whatever happens next, they’ve already won.

A version of this column appears in the March 31 edition of The Moscow Times .

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque