Nipping and Tucking on Both Coasts, by Maureen Dowd, discerns little difference between America's twin power centres - Washington and Hollywood:

There is a crash of ideologies between the country's two most self-regarding and fantasy-spinning power centers.

The Bush crowd cringes away from gay cowboys spooning, gay authors flouncing, transgender babes exploring and George the Dashing Clooneying in movies about the glories of free speech and the dangers of oilmen influencing policy.

But as I looked around Vanity Fair's slinky Oscar party on Sunday night, it struck me that the bellicose Bushies do share a presentation aesthetic with Tinseltown's trompe l'oeil beauties:

You see no furrowed brows, no regretful winces, no unflattering wrinkles, no admissions of imperfection, no qualms about puffing up what you really have, no visible signs of hard lessons learned, and no desire to confront reality in the mirror.

Both The Bush Regime and Tinseltown are in the same business. Bush hides the reality with a macho veneer. The film industry protects us from the truth by offering endless escapism.   more »

With good news stories out of Baghdad in such short supply that the coalition recently resorted to paying the local press to feature them, our government's reaction to the theft of two foreign office satellite phones seems baffling in the extreme.

To recap briefly: two of the devices went missing in Iraq at a time no one seems able to pinpoint, and it was only after bills of £594,000 had been run up that the FO discovered they had been used to run sex phonelines and betting scams. Bewilderingly, this is being treated as some kind of embarrassment.

Yet what more encouraging indicator is there that Iraq is embracing the civilised western values Messrs Bush and Blair were so anxious to impose on it than news that the fledgling democracy has already evolved to this advanced stage of what we might call late capitalism:

Namely, a highly developed adult entertainment industry, and the spirited drive to induce gambling problems in the populace?

Freedom-wise, forget hearts and minds. Everyone knows groins and pockets is where it's at. Downtown Baghdad naturally has yet to reach the heights - or indeed the depths - of the San Fernando valley, the Los Angeles suburb known as the pornography capital of the world and which contributes billions of tax dollars a year to the US kitty.   more »

No one should have been surprised that when President George Bush declared his global war on terror he also swore to get Osama bin Laden in this fashion : “I want justice. And there’s an old poster out west I recall, that said, ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive.’”

Of course, that “poster” came not from any real experience he had in the west, but directly from the thrilling cowboy films of his childhood. So did his John Wayne-like urge to “hunt” the terrorists down, or “smoke ’em out,” or “bring ’em on”.

From that same childhood undoubtedly came the president’s repeated urge to dress up in an assortment of commander-in-chief military outfits, much in the style of a GI Joe action figure.” (Think: doll.)

It’s visibly clear that the president has long found delight, actual pleasure, in his war-making role, as he did in his Top Gun, “mission accomplished” landing on that aircraft carrier back in 2003.

It’s not surprising either that a critic who spent real time up close and personal with top Bush administration figures, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, would accuse the president of “cowboyism”.   more »

PROUD TO BE A WESTERN DISSIDENT

Remember, Big Brother is watching, listening and reading. In light of the illegal surveillance they are conducting at the behest of their incompetent, rogue, and murderous Commander-in-Chief, I am dedicating this essay to the NSA.

To George Bush, Dick Cheney, Daniel Pipes, and their soulless war-mongering compadres, I proudly admit that I support the Palestinians (and their democratically elected Hamas leaders) in their struggle against their brutal Israeli oppressors.

In fact, consider me a member of the so-called Fifth Column identified by Pipes. I abhor virtually all of the foreign and domestic policies the Machiavellian disciples of Strauss have implemented through wielding their ill-gotten power and influence.

However, the United States is as much my country as it is theirs. I fully intend to remain here and work persistently against them by continuing to tenaciously pursue human rights and social justice for humanity, not simply for a select few in the United States and Israel.

Quoting the eloquent and infamous words of the incredibly articulate Mr. Cheney, I say, "Fuck you!" to their malignant cabal.   more »

A high-level leak has revealed that God is "furious" at Tony Blair's attempts to implicate him in the bombing of Iraq. Sources close to the archangel Gabriel report him as describing the Almighty as:

"Hopping mad ... with sanctimonious yet unscrupulous politicians claiming He would condone their bestial activities when He has no way of going public Himself, owing to the MMW agreement" (a reference to the long-established Moving in Mysterious Ways concordat).

Mr Blair went public about God on Michael Parkinson's TV show.

"If you have faith about these things," he said, "then you realise that judgment is made by other people. If you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

As is customary with Mr Blair's statements, it's rather hard to tease out what he is actually saying; but the gist is clearly that if God didn't actually tell him to bomb Iraq, then the Almighty would certainly agree it was the right thing to do.

"If Tony Blair thinks his friendship with George W Bush is worth rubbing out a couple of hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children, then that's something he can talk over with me later," said God.   more »

BUSH'S FINAL PROPAGANDA CARD: STAGING AN 'OSAMA' CAPTURE

In the latest attempt to salvage his political scalp with an empty propaganda performance, George W. Bush paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he posed and gloated with co-conspirator/puppet/US intelligence asset Hamid Karzai.

“Liberated” Afghanistan, like “liberated” Iraq, is a hell of the Bush administration’s creation.

Bush then declared that he is “confident bin Laden will be brought to justice” and that “we've got U.S. forces on the hunt for not only bin Laden but anybody who plots and plans with bin Laden.”

Could Bush/Rove’s next trick be a spectacular “Bush gets Osama” event, similar to the never-authenticated arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “arrests” of other Al-Qaeda co-conspirators, or the farcical arrest and trial of former US intelligence asset Saddam Hussein?

Such a deception would temporarily slow a right-wing neocon mutiny, and silence congressional Democrats, who accuse Bush/Cheney of “not doing enough” to stop “terrorists," failing to “make us safe," failing to arrest Osama, and failing to “really” conduct the “war on terrorism."   more »

The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior.

Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities.

I'd like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much.

We don't hear of any suicide bombers being stopped before they blow themselves up. We don't hear of anybody stopping a mosque getting blown up.

We're not hearing of death squads all being arrested. Something is going very, very wrong in Baghdad. Something is going wrong with the Administration.   more »

7 MARCH

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