Sunday, August 29, 2004

Posted here Sunday, August 29, 2004 at 4:45:52 PM     You might want to compare Ron Reagan's esquire article against Bush http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/040729_mfe_reagan_2.html with Bush's speech today in West Virginia. www.c-span.org  tape not yet up. I watched it this afternoon. Teflon, but very active, speaks to the isolation of peripheral America, and he was at home. Family, security, go for it. Hard to know how cynical it is, but he seemed very convinced and convincing. Try to catch one of these speeches, and I'll see if I can get a URL for the tape. On the other side, there was a Jewish organizations opening this morning, and it was so pro Israel US, as though there is no question. Mayor Blomberg said "Israel and the United States are the same thing."  He quoted Ed Koch, "There is only one issue, so Bush is getting my vote." The reality of power and lives at stake lead to weird uses of language, weird alliances. All these can be seen on replay this evening late. check schedule.     ********

Posted here Sunday, August 29, 2004 at 12:01:45 PM     The new spy episode is very complex, but thre is an emerging picture. Juancole and www.Juancole.com has a very extensive summary article. Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers. posted by Juan @ 8/29/2004 06:38:11 AM ********

Posted here Sunday, August 29, 2004 at 11:53:34 AM     As see it, Bush inherited the probelms did not cause them, but he did make them worse by style. Much of the current world problem: environment, inrequality, globalization as a force of arbitrage, and terror, are deep in the cold war aftermath and Reagan, Bush, Carter and Clinto all made their contributions to the un-solving of this emerging world deterioration. Will a Kerry style make a difference as he tries to handle social security, shrinking econmy, and the global inequalities of power or money that create terrorism? I certainly hope so. We can expect the next weeks to be a white water of charges and counter charges in the slide towards the election.  Take a large view and don't get caught up in self righteousness. Its a trap.   In Iraq , good to read it all.. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/international/middleeast/29province.html?hp=&;pagewanted=print&position= American efforts to build a government structure around former Baath Party stalwarts - officials of Saddam Hussein's army, police force and bureaucracy who were willing to work with the United States - have collapsed. Instead, the former Hussein loyalists, under threat of beheadings, kidnappings and humiliation, have mostly resigned or defected to the fundamentalists, or been killed. Enforcers for the old government, including former Republican Guard officers, have put themselves in the service of fundamentalist clerics they once tortured at Abu Ghraib. In the past three weeks, three former Hussein loyalists appointed to important posts in Falluja and Ramadi have been eliminated by the militants and their Baathist allies. The chief of a battalion of the American-trained Iraqi National Guard in Falluja was beheaded by the militants, prompting the disintegration of guard forces in the city. The Anbar governor was forced to resign after his three sons were kidnapped. The third official, the provincial police chief in Ramadi, was lured to his arrest by American marines after three assassination attempts led him to secretly defect to the rebel cause. ********