The events of 1982—the Israeli invasion of Lebanon being one of the most disastrous as well as the most gruesome operations in recent history—did not come as much of a surprise to those who had followed Sharon's career.

A notorious unit under his command had been responsible for the mass slaughter of the inhabitants of Qibya, a village in the then-Jordanian West Bank, in 1953.

He had gone on to be one of the most promiscuous participants in the lawless attack on Egypt, in collusion with the most reactionary circles in Britain and France, in October of 1956. After 1967, he was a particularly brutal enforcer of the occupation in Gaza.

In politics as well as in the military field, he was a brutal, blustering demagogic opportunist. Very few people, however, noticed one element of that opportunism.   more »

Under George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their assorted advisers, acolytes, and zealots, a virtual cult of unconstrained presidential power has been constructed, centered on the figure of Bush himself.

While much has been made of feverish Christian fundamentalist support for the President, the real religious fervor in this administration has been almost singularly focused on the quite un-Christian attribute of total earthly power.

Typical of the fierce ideologues and cultists now in the White House is Cheney's new Chief of Staff David Addington. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank described him this way back in 2004 (when he was still Cheney's "top lawyer"):

[A] principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects... a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts[,] Addington also led the fight with Congress and environmentalists over access to information about corporations that advised the White House on energy policy.

He was instrumental in the series of fights with the Sept. 11 commission and its requests for information...

Even in a White House known for its dedication to conservative philosophy, Addington is known as an ideologue, an adherent of an obscure philosophy called the unitary executive theory that favors an extraordinarily powerful president.

   more »

An insidious tyranny is being imposed across the world. For all his troubles in Iraq, Bush has carried out the recommendations of a Messianic conspiracy theory called the "Project for a New American Century".

Written by his ideological sponsors shortly before he came to power, it foresaw his administration as a military dictatorship behind a democratic façade: "the cavalry on a new American frontier" guided by a blend of paranoia and megalomania.

More than 700 American bases are now placed strategically in compliant countries, notably at the gateways to the sources of fossil fuels and encircling the Middle East and Central Asia.

"Pre-emptive" aggression is policy, including the use of nuclear weapons. The chemical warfare industry has been reinvigorated.

Missile treaties have been torn up. Space has been militarised. Global warming has been embraced.

The powers of the president have never been greater. The judicial system has been subverted, along with civil liberties.   more »

Alongside the minutiae that made for interesting reading of the recent Newsweek piece by Thomas and Wolffe, “Bush in the Bubble,” a complementary thought did cross my mind.

What if we, the American citizenry, are the ones living in a bubble… isolated, clueless, without a clear fit in the world’s puzzle?

Neither ideas nor ideologies are to be blame for the current state of affairs, for our imprisonment in the bubble.

Americans are not captive of religion, but of religious quacks; they are not captive of free enterprise, but of predatory capitalists; they are not captive of some repressive form of government, but of corrupt politicians that milk the ideals of democracy for their own selfish ends.

When it comes to foreign policy, most politicians of the two acceptable denominations, aided by a “respectful” self-censured mainstream press, have pushed us into a bubble by instilling in us, in soft tones at times and vociferously on occasions, the need for dominance over other people in the world.

Thus, America’s three-prong foreign policy that spells empire: protection for Israel- under any and all circumstances; protection for our commercial colonialism- to maintain our so-called “standard of living” [“standard of consumption” would be more apropos].   more »

Television reports suggested that Mr Sharon was partially paralysed and that his life was in serious danger. "It looks very bad. I don't know if he will recover," a senior political source told the Reuters news agency.

A DESPISED FIGURE AMONG ARABS

Pan-Arab satellite television broadcasters beamed out largely straightforward, nonstop live coverage early Thursday from outside the hospital where Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - a particularly despised figure among Arabs - struggled for his life.

But a radical Palestinian leader in Damascus, the Syrian capital, called Sharon's health crisis a gift from God.

"We say it frankly that God is great and is able to exact revenge on this butcher. ... We thank God for this gift he presented to us on this new year," Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Syrian-backed faction Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small radical group, told the Associated Press.

He said Sharon's legacy would be one of huge damage inflicted on the Palestinian people.   more »

In December, the International Monetary Fund, in exchange for giving a loan of $685 million to the Iraqi government, insisted that the Iraqis lift subsidies on the price of oil and open the economy to more private investment.

As the IMF said in a press release of December 23 [1], the Iraqi government must be committed to “controlling the wage and pensions bill, reducing subsidies on petroleum products, and expanding the participation of the private sector in the domestic market for petroleum products.”

The impact of the IMF extortion was swift and brutal.

“Since the Dec. 15 parliamentary election, fuel prices have increased five-fold, mostly because the outgoing government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari has cut subsidies as part of a debt-forgiveness deal it signed with the International Monetary Fund,” the Los Angeles Times [2] reported on December 28.

“The move has shocked Iraqis long accustomed to hefty subsidies of gasoline, kerosene, cooking gas, and other fuels.”   more »

4 JANUARY

Bush's Megalomania

Maureen Dowd: Jack Abramoff Stars in "Dollars for Democracy"

40 Ways They Fuck Us Up

Iraq: Bush Pulls Plug on Reconstruction

Political Washington: "The Big Sleazy"

Cindy Sheehan Takes Her Antiwar Cry to Europe

The CIA Knew in September 2002...Iraq Had No WMD

Abramoff: Super-Sleaze Lobbyist