Most Americans Do Not Favour Attacking Iran

According to a new poll (pdf) from Public Agenda

(ht2 Think Progress)

The poll though does reveal the war on terror is an asssumed reality although most favour non military responses and a multilateral approach

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Now for some interpretations of the polling-

Neoliberal economics have created apathy that there is any alternative

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And domestic propaganda has convinced many (colonialism sells!) that the violence is not due to the invaders

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But the overwhelming majority do favour withdrawal

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Disturbingly though 36% support torture (call me pessimistic for not celebrating that is a reduction, there’s still 36%!)-

The hysteria and paranoia unleashed and utilised through the WaronTerror ™ still doing it’s job for war criminals and their supporters, the poll question makes the connection between terrorists and torture, a telling sign of the success of this propaganda. Please also note-‘sometimes’.

So some broad good news shown in this survey but culturally many signifiers (the poll itself, the choice of language and questions, is quite revealing. The assumption America should be doing things in other countries goes without question, the imperialism implicit) of a culture shifted by the Bush regime towards a highly propagandised, branded and manipulated terrain, largely by the enthusiastic cooperation of the corporate media who never met an imperial war they didn’t like.

Darfur an Atrocity, Iraq…erm that’s different.

The Bush administration considers the ongoing violence in Darfur as an act of genocide and has taken a tough position against Sudan. However, it continues to reject calls to sign the international treaty that established the ICC.

Activists said Wednesday their campaign for justice in Darfur has drawn enormous support from well-respected and prominent individuals, including Nobel laureates Professor Jody Williams and human rights defender Shirin Ebadi.

“If a man kills one person, rapes one girl, or burns down one mosque, we expect that the law should respond,” said Ebadi. “Why should this be different when hundreds of civilians are killed and many women raped?”

It’s no wonder after all if they were subject to the ICC well…Iraq would be evidence of genocide and other war crimes. Darfur is the way war criminals show they are ‘concerned humanitarians’ to the media while they pursue the exact same practices elsewhere. By making it an isolated cause it strips it of meaning and the pattern of global criminality…Darfur, Iraq, Somalia, Congo, Gaza, Burma.

Well Duh!

HARTFORD, Conn. – A 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver and lies motionless on a busy city street as car after car goes by. Pedestrians gawk but do nothing. One driver stops briefly but then pulls back into traffic. A man on a scooter slowly circles the victim before zipping away.

The chilling scene — captured on video by a streetlight surveillance camera — has touched off a round of soul-searching in Hartford, with the capital city’s biggest newspaper blaring “SO INHUMANE” on the front page and the police chief lamenting: “We no longer have a moral compass.”

“We have no regard for each other,” said Chief Daryl Rob

One witness, Bryant Hayre, told the Courant he didn’t feel comfortable helping Torres, who he said was bleeding and conscious.

Yeah who thought committing the supreme war crime and enthusiastically legalising torture would make people less humane as a culture (and of course cities are more focussed environments for interaction).

Stop Acting Surprised, This Is Not News

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

Just more detail on the plan we have known about for a while. Overall this was also always inevitable given the pillaging and balkanisation of Iraq and the resistance to it. The Democrats may also be relatively happy with this, it removes their culpability for withdrawal, or to be more precise not withdrawing, both parties are imperialist. They could stop this, halt all cooperation in both Houses and impeach the President, but as they have continually passed funding for the occupation it is perhaps naive to think they will not be relived to have this issue put beyond their policy reach. The permanent bases in a colonial Iraq (or Empire by any other name…. as Rafael puts it) will also inevitably lead to an attack on Iran. This is the future that is looming, don’t bother acting surprised. Stop pretending this is not obvious to excuse inaction as government funds are depleted and prevailing neoliberalism dictates that in order to maintain this empire services must be further privatised, welfare spending is cut and the markets are further deregulated. Wealth and social inequalities will rise and rise, more prisons, more police, more surveillance, more torture and the very planet that is our life support system being compromised by the massive dirty oil conflicts, the US military’s huge inefficient use of oil in pursuit of finite resources for an outdated technology based on fossil fuels.

Raytheon 9 Do The Limbo

This is the state of play via those in the know-

Today, the Raytheon 9 were acquitted on the charge of affray. The trial in relation to the remaining charges of criminal damage has been adjourned pending an appeal. The appeal is being held as quickly as possible and a gagging order in relation to the issues under appeal is in place to preserve the integrity of the trial. Just as soon as we have any further definite news, the Raytheon 9 website will be updated.

So they are doing well but not absolutely all the way, so pray, wish, cross your legs and fingers, sacrifice goats (ok don’t do that) or whatever to help them win outright. You can send a message of support to resistderry@aol.com

nb. I have removed the previous post about the Raytheon 9 so as not to endanger (even slightly) their case.

Sauce For The Goose

Colombia’s Uribe refuses to rule out third term. Uribe, elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006 after Congress passed a constitutional amendment allowing a second term, is flirting with running again in 2010. This would require another change in law. “We seek to assure the re-election of Democratic Security and investor confidence,” Uribe told local radio when asked if he would like to run again, declining to endorse allies such as Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos who are possible candidates.

But of course when Chavez does it it’s an evil dictator, but Uribe is all investor confidence ‘n’ shit. The real difference is Chavez is not a former drug kingpin, backer of death squads & rightist, but…he is a filthy lefty so of course the corporate media have to report on him like the apocalypse is around the corner with everything he does but Uribe…well butter wouldn’t melt in his coke addled union killing mouth.

The Empire’s new scam to retake ‘its backyard’ is secessionist agitation–

Analysts say that underlying the autonomy movement, which is spearheaded by the rightwing business and political elites who governed Bolivia for decades, is the question of control and use of resources like natural gas, farmland, iron ore, water and forests. The aim of the leftwing Morales administration is to distribute the revenues from the eastern provinces’ natural gas reserves and other sources of wealth more evenly, in order to improve the living conditions of the country’s indigenous people, most of whom live in appalling poverty.

and the return of the fourth fleet-

After 58 years, the United States Navy will reactivate the Fourth Fleet, which will be in charge of patrolling Latin American waters. The fleet had been deactivated following the end of the Second World War, but starting July 1st of this year, U.S. naval forces will have a high level command specifically dedicated to supervising the projects of its units in Latin America and the Caribbean.

and Uribe is central to providing a localised base for these destabilising scams and a bulwark against the ‘pink tide’, are these on Washington’s shopping list (hey Obama, just say No!)-

— weaken and destroy FARC-EP and ELN resistance; under Clinton in 1999, Plan Colombia was launched to do it; the Uribe government’s March 1 attack against the FARC-EP camp was part of it; all regional aggression has Washington’s stamp on it, especially when Alvaro Uribe is involved; he’s the Bush administration’s closest regional ally and willing co-conspirator;

— neutralize Evo Morales in Bolivia as well, divide the country, and create a parallel state in its resource-rich provinces;

— use these successes to “checkmate” Chavez and Ecuador’s Raphael Correa; take further measures to do it; use Uribe’s military and gunboat diplomacy after the Fourth Fleet becomes active July 1 – after a 60 year hiatus and no regional threat to warrant it;

— since taking office in 2001, the Bush administration targeted Venezuela for regime change; it extended the timeline after its April 2002 coup failed; it made destroying Colombian resistance more urgent so Washington could use the country unimpeded as a launching platform against Chavez much like Honduras in the 1980s against Nicaragua’s Sandinistas; the scheme is vintage Washington; it’s still unfolding; it involves waging a “widespread offensive against Chavez and the Bolivarian forces from 2008 – 2009;”

— regime changes in Bolivia and Ecuador will follow; in Bolivia “through separatism, the Trojan Horse of the Constituent Assembly and the 2006 formation of CONFILAR” – an International Confederation for Regional Freedom and Autonomy; in Ecuador by fostering discontent in the CONAI indigenous movement and weakening the government through destabilization; also by stoking secessionist stirrings in Guayas, the country’s most affluent province.

After all the Empire has Alvaro’s back-

Remember all of those Colombian paramilitary leaders who were exposing the connections between Alvaro Uribe’s administration and right-wing terrorist groups? They were all extradited to the U.S. in the middle of the night, where they will be tried for drug trafficking…and nothing else.

“Claudia Lopez, an independent investigator who helped uncover the paramilitary-political scandal fears criminal cases against politicians will now end: ‘They’ve taken away all the witnesses,’ she said Tuesday.”