letting 'democracy' flow ...

IMF Approves Loan for Iraq
Let the Oil Drilling Begin
by Joshua Frank
www.dissidentvoice.org
December 27, 2005


The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $685 million loan for Iraq on December 24. Now the country’s war torn economy will be fully integrated into the global economy -- indefinitely. The reconstruction of Iraq will soon be open to even more industrialized nations and interests.

Iraq will not be sovereign or independent in the near future, even if President Bush says so. The country’s financial future will instead be dictated by a new colossal economic occupation, complete with ground forces, tanks, foreign military bases and the like -- all thanks to the United States, Britain and the IMF.

The new loans will soon be the focus of Iraq's future "economic stability." Of course, the desire to capitalize on war’s misfortunes is at the heart of this occupation, as well as the IMF’s gracious assistance. This is undoubtedly what the Bush administration and their allies have wished for all along.

"This arrangement will underpin economic stability and help lay the foundation for an open and prosperous economy in Iraq," Treasury Secretary John Snow said in an announcement shortly after the loan was approved. Translation: Iraq will soon be open for business.

Now the IMF will be able to dictate how best Iraq can pay back its ever increasing debt, putting its recovery in the hands of others, while the US reaps the benefits. If it's to pump millions more barrels of oil every year, Iraq will be forced to do it. And in fact, increased oil production is at the heart of the IMF’s plan for Iraq.

In a statement released last week, the IMF reported that Iraq’s new government planned to allocate resources next year to expanding oil production as part of a broad economic scheme put forward by the IMF, with the hope of putting Iraq’s economy on an upward trajectory. In other words, Iraq will be forced to start drilling for more oil.

And of course democracy will never be truly attainable or even really wished for by the IMF and their wealthy investors -- the country will just become another playground for imperial endeavors and capitalist greed. So much for independence, for no country is truly free and democratic when placed under the boot of the industrialized world. Markets consistently undermine democracy when motivated by self-interests, and Iraqi citizens are not likely to benefit in any real terms under the IMF’s new loan package, which will be divvied out over the next 15 months.

Don’t believe for a minute that Iraq will be able to shake off globalism's ravenous greed anytime soon -- even if US troops are redeployed. Capitalism's tentacles are now fully attached to Babylon, as if they weren’t already, and the oil will be flowing shortly. Even if US troops are redeployed, or god forbid, brought home, the occupation of Iraq will nonetheless continue.

Imposing economic guidelines by the use of force may now be globalization’s new motto. Iraqis have had no say in whether or not they wanted to be invaded, occupied, or forced to succumb to the IMF’s every whim.

Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, just published by Common Courage Press. You can order a copy at a discounted through Josh’s radical news blog at: www.brickburner.org.

iran wins iraqi election ?

Iran won big in Iraq vote, expert says

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Iran has won a major victory in the Dec. 15 elections in Iraq, a U.S. expert told a Pakistani newspaper.

Robert Dreyfuss, author of "Devil's Game," a new book that holds the United States the principal architect of Islamist extremism because of its misguided policies, told the Pakistan Daily Times that the "last hope for peace" in Iraq was lost with the victory of the Shiite religious coalition.

He described the victorious Shiite coalition as "a fanatical band of fundamentalist Shiite parties backed by Iran, above all to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)," the Daily Times said in a report published Wednesday.

The coalition would create a "theocratic bastion state in its southern Iraqi fiefdom and use its power in Baghdad to rule what's left of the Iraqi state by force," Dreyfuss said.

Dreyfuss told the paper that he could see no "silver lining" in the situation, nor any chance for peace talks among Iraq's factions, or international mediation. There was no centrist force that could bridge the factional or sectarian divides in Iraq, he said. The next step, he predicted, would be civil war.

'bush-spin-lies'

bush-spin-lies
at the heart of
his appeal
a question of
are you thinking
people ?
that what
you hear
is
brain-poo
made
no sense
ca-ca
policy of
igoring
their own
long
lip
serviced
credoes
now
no law
in the 'jungle'
at all
and straussian
daymares
take place
bidding us
goodnight
and goodbye
to what
all these
dreams ago
we hoped
we really were
or could
one
day
really
be

before
no god
no shame
no laws
no judgement
to stay
their bloody hands
before
no judge
to try
their crimes

now
the victor is he
who most
determinedly
carries
his agenda
bares his teeth
and firepower
with
greatest
effacacy
it's he
who dies
with the most
collected toys
no matter
the price
in human terms
they are animals
shaven apes
who speak--

'bush-spin-lies'
to kill
and
to steal
and
to justify
what is justifiable
only if

is true
what straussians
spin
that
there is
above
us
only
empty
sky
and
no
light
contained
within ?

"NPR and the cult of the prestigious co-signers"-- or --" Talking heads co-sign 'bush-spin-lies' lowballing iraqi death count"

About a week or so ago after a televised speech to rally sagging support for his disaster in iraq , president dub was asked if he knew how many iraqis had died in the american invasion and occupation .

his reply was "about 30,000" . a figure that was televised and basically went unchallenged by american media-- NPR , national public radio , even went as far as to immediately broadcast afterwards a 'co-signing' of that ridiculously low estimate by agreement of some professional talking head from "the prestigious brookings institute ."

i have been an "on and off" listener to npr since the prelude to the first gulf war and once thought it a fairly good source of information--but of late --beginning especially after npr failures to ask the important questions concerning the republican theft of the 2000 'election' and then the 9-11-01 attacks ,the 2003 iraq-invasion and more recently the blatant theft of election 2004 --as well as our own personal experience described here in these chronicles of being held "cut-off" on the air by one of their syndicated "phone-in your questions/comments program" hosts while trying to shed light on bush-crimes concerning the "plame-gate/treason" scandal --after all this , i'd have to say their refusal to seek or allow honesty concerning hard issues has left me more than a little 'disappointed' with NPR .

these circumstances have forced 'us at deskRat' to regard them as merely a 'liberal-sounding' voice of a controlled lapdog media--barking when the rightwing says to --but never challenging the parameters set by the right-wingnuts to control the debate and its outcomes...


what is meant by that , is this : "lancet"-- the british medical association publication said 14 months ago that based upon a survey taken among iraqi families by physicians treating the victims in that country that at least 100,000 iraqis had ALREADY been killed during the invasion and occupation --mostly by the Us air war--an air war that continues to this day in iraq --as quietly as it is kept by media --iraqis --in large part civilians , are being killed probably at this moment by missiles , bombs and bullets from american planes and helicopter gunships --as part of the battle against the determined and increasingly sophisticated insurgency .

the Lancet figure of 100,000 iraqi dead was admittedly the LOWEST estimate --they asserted that the data collected from the survey had led to projections anywheres from 100,000 to 285,000 iraqis dead as a result of the bush-war ...AND THAT WAS WAS 14 MONTHS AGO ... before the war crimes such as the nazi-like assault on fallujah took place--an assault that included the US usage of chemical weapons that kill indescriminately , on areas containing civilian populations --in particular the use of napalm and white phosporous chemical substances that burn and kill whatever living beings --animal or human , that they come in contact with...


Look for an increase in reliance on american air-power to subdue iraq --especially as more of the over-extended Us ground forces in iraq are drawn down in numbers and pulled back to base --while policing duties fall more and more into the lap of the lapdog iraqi forces the americans are training --"occupier's dogs"-- we believe, is how the locals 'endearingly' refer to these iraqi troops .

that 'endearment' is in large part what 'we observers at deskRat chronicles' believe will doom this american attempt at "iraqi-zation" of this imperial war to a similar fate suffered by "vietnamization" during the vietnam war that went before it --a Us-economy-busting american military defeat at the hands of the local resistance --a resistance fighting what they see as a war of national liberation againist an illegal , immoral , imperialist occupation of their country designed by the imperialists and their war-industrialist-petro-chemical puppet-masters , to steal natural resources .


But to refocus on the original task here : george bush was unexpectedly asked at a recent propaganda-op , if he knew how much iraqi blood was on his hands in the course of his and the multi-national oil-garchy's unprovoked war on iraq --a war launched to grab control of the world's 2nd largest known energy reserves --shore up the dollar versus the euro as the currency that the world's oil will be purchased in -- to weaken arabstates in efforts to balkanize the region in the interests of an expansion-minded right-wingnut zionist war-faction ruling israel , and of course to position a future energy-hammerlock on the growing economic power of india and china .

bush --true to character --lied and gave a low-ball figure of 30,000 dead iraqis when other estimates , in particular, the one made by Lancet 14 months ago , report more than 3 times that amount of people have been killed by the Us invasion and occupation .

in fact , Lancet went with their low figure -- their LOWEST --MOST CONSERVATIVE estimate , when ---100,000 minimum to 285,000 iraqi dead --was the range...

npr and the rest of the 'mainstream mutts'--the media acting as lapdogs for the bush administration-- again blindly accepting 'bush-spin-lies' --again ignored Lancet reports to the contrary and brought in a "brookins institute" talking-head-expert to co-sign the 'bush-spin-lies' that the blood of only 30,000 murdered iraqis is on the hands of george bush and those in his criminal administration ...

miami passenger shooting--a case of 'american dad' ?

(fox tv)

"Stan works for the CIA in Langley, Virginia, and is always on the alert for terrorist activity. Stan will go to extremes to protect his beloved America from harm – as evidenced by the terror-alert color code on his fridge, and his frequent knee-jerk reaction of shooting holes in the toaster whenever the toast pops up"

Federal sky marshals shot to death a man on a plane because he was acting erratically and the federal shooters claimed he said he had a bomb .another 'terrorist on an airplane' story-- of course the news headlines were "full of it".

turns out the unlucky victim wasn't a bin laden devotee after all and merely was bi-polar and going through an episode of his illness while off his medication -- "an unfortunate occurance but at least americans know that they are protected from terrorism" ..."our airlines and skies are safe"--"isn't it wonderful to live in a free country where EVERYONE--except those rich enough to travel on charter planes, of course-- has the right to be shot dead in an airport by the very people your tax dollars pay to protect you" ..."i'd rather be shot dead by a sky marshal than murdered by some filthy ,freedom-hating , foreign terrorist any day --at least i'd know that i died in a democracy" --bull bull bull ...blah blah blah...bull blah... bull blah...etc... etc...etc ... ad nauseam..."


so NOW , it comes out that no one heard the dead man say 'bomb' EXCEPT the guys who shot him dead ? basically it seems the poor man was unstable and had a panic/anxiety attack and started running off the plane --an airliner IS a relatively cramped ,tiny space where--after you and your carry-on luggage have both ALREADY BEEN THOROUGHLY SEARCHED -- you have to sit like sardines for a few hours --close enough technically, to where you're breathing in other people's farts--apparently the poor victim couldn't handle it and started acting out---the 'sky marshals'--probably out of boredom from four years of intensive training and never a chance to use it-- panicked --"oh god , finally a terrorist--thank you !" , over-reacted and shot him dead--like in england where after the subway bombing they shot the brazilian guy in the head because he was running to catch the train that was pulling out of the station--two more great victories in the war on terror --al qaeda must be trembling in their boots--or more accurately , trembling in their leather socks and tearing their hair out at such crippling setbacks to their 'organization'--and why did the police put a shotgun to the witness' head --to refresh his memory about whether or not he heard the 'b-word' ?

now if only the pilots and stewardesses were armed , they could have gotten in some target practice too...



" Freeze Osama ! that disguise doesn't fool me ! "--- has american dad stan captured a terrorist while trying his hand at sky marshal service ?

"Please officer ,no need to unholster your weapon . please don't kill me ,sir . i really did not say ' i'll shoot at you '. i have a cold and forgot to take my cold medicine this morning. it was just a sneeze you heard-- as in ' Aahhttchoo ! '

perhaps a more appropriate response to the situation might possibly be ' gesundheit ' , or ' salud ' , or ' god bless you ' --so please stop pointing that freekin glock at my head , you freekin moron ! "




Dec 9, 6:28 PM EST

Passengers Didn't Hear Alpizar Say 'Bomb'

By CURT ANDERSON / www.1010WINS.com
Associated Press Writer

MIAMI (AP) -- The airline passenger shot to death by federal marshals who said he made a bomb threat was agitated even before boarding and later appeared to be desperate to get off the plane, some fellow travelers said.

One passenger said he "absolutely never heard the word 'bomb' at all" during the uproar as the Orlando-bound flight prepared to leave Miami on Wednesday.

Federal officials say Rigoberto Alpizar made the threat in the jetway, after running up the plane's aisle from his seat at the back of the jetliner. They opened fire because the 44-year-old Home Depot employee ignored their orders to stop, reached into his backpack and said he had a bomb, according to authorities.

Alpizar's brother, speaking from Costa Rica, said he would never believe the shooting was necessary.

"I can't conceive that the marshals wouldn't be able to overpower an unarmed, single man, especially knowing he had already cleared every security check," Carlos Alpizar told The Orlando Sentinel.

Some passengers said they noticed Alpizar while waiting to get on the plane. They said he was singing "Go Down Moses" as his wife tried to calm him. Others said they saw him having lunch and described him as restless and anxious, but not dangerous.

"The wife was telling him, 'Calm down. Let other people get on the plane. It will be all right,'" said Alan Tirpak, a passenger.

Some passengers, including John McAlhany, said they believe Alpizar was no threat to anyone.

Family of Man Shot by Air Marshals Talks

McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker who was returning home from a fishing trip in Key West, said he was sitting in Seat 21C when he noticed a commotion a few rows back.

"I heard him saying to his wife, 'I've got to get off the plane,'" McAlhany said. "He bumped me, bumped a couple of stewardesses. He just wanted to get off the plane."

Alpizar ran up the aisle into the first-class cabin, where marshals chased him onto the jetway, McAlhany said.

McAlhany said he "absolutely never heard the word 'bomb' at all."

"The first time I heard the word 'bomb' was when I was interviewed by the FBI," McAlhany said. "They kept asking if I heard him say the B-word. And I said, 'What is the B-word?' And they were like, 'Bomb.' I said no. They said, 'Are you sure?' And I am."

Added another passenger, Mary Gardner: "I did not hear him say that he had a bomb."

Officials say there was no bomb and they found no connection to terrorism.

Witnesses said Alpizar's wife, Anne Buechner, had frantically tried to explain he was bipolar, a mental illness also known as manic-depression, and was off his medication.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness called on the Air Marshal Service and other law enforcement agencies to train officers if they don't already in responding to people with severe mental illness.

Others said Alpizar's mental health didn't matter while marshals were trying to talk to him and determine if the threat was real.

Shooting to maim or injure - rather than kill - is not an option for federal agents, said John Amat, national operations vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which includes air marshals in its membership.

"The person was screaming, saying he would blow up the plane, reaching into his bag - they had to react," Amat said.

"The bottom line is, we're trained to shoot to stop the threat," said Amat, who is also a deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service in Miami. "Hollywood has this perception that we are such marksmen we can shoot an arm or leg with accuracy. We can't. These guys were in a very tense situation. In their minds they had to believe this person was an imminent threat to themselves or the people on the plane."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the two air marshals appeared to have acted properly when they shot to kill.

Both air marshals were hired in 2002 from other federal law enforcement agencies and were placed on administrative leave, said Brian Doyle, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Miami-Dade Police were investigating and the medical examiner's office was performing an autopsy on Alpizar, who was from Costa Rica but became a U.S. citizen years ago. He lived in Maitland, an Orlando suburb.

Neighbors said the couple had been returning to their home from a missionary trip to Ecuador. Buechner works for the Council on Quality and Leadership based in Towson, Md., a nonprofit organization focused on improving life for people with disabilities and mental illness, the organization said in a statement.

David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said he thinks the shooting may prove more "reassuring than disturbing" to the traveling public his organization represents. "This is a reminder they are there and are protecting the passengers and that it is a seriously deadly business," he said.

Armed police boarded the aircraft after the shooting, with some passengers in hysterics. McAlhany said he remembers having a shotgun pressed into his head by one officer, and hearing cries and screams from many passengers aboard the aircraft after the shooting in the jetway.

"This was wrong," McAlhany said. "This man should be with his family for Christmas. Now he's dead."

---
Associated Press writers Andrew Bridges, Mark Sherman and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington; Mike Schneider and Travis Reed in Orlando; and Jessica Gresko and Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this story.

"in tha news "

*looking at the news this week , you wonder why do the bushites call it "free press" when just as they did here in the states with bought-off journalists like sex escort jeff gannon and sellout , bought-negro armstrong williams , they obviously paid iraqi "reporters" to write propaganda articles clearly slanted in the bushites favor--if it is ’free press’ , why do the bushites insist on always paying for it ?

to that travesty of blatant hypocrisy add the fact that halliburton is making a fortune ($12 billion in usa taxpayer dollars already ?) subcontracting the job of feeding and cleaning up after usa troops to a company that imported africans from sierra leone to iraq to work for 45 cents per hour ,12 hour shifts , six to seven days a week . http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051201-030751-2473r

a capitalist ’globalist’ formula in its purest form :

a. secretly promote civil wars (ethnic conflicts ) in africa to drive down the price of raw minerals , like diamonds for instance (back in the 1500s it was slaves--war captives--sold to be field hands--stolen labor on stolen lands-- instead of today’s diamonds )

b. as the africans slaughter each other and their nations degenerate into chaos you sit back and from your cold war era of obsolete weapons stockpiles ,sell arms and set up ’private companies’ to rent military expertise to the rebels AND at the same time to the african government they are fighting against , while publicly condemning the violence you are constantly feeding from both sides--violence that would itself most likely subside without your continuous supply of weapons and ’experts’ in "organization" , psychological warfare , logistics and ’training’ .

c. when both sides are exhausted and finally the fighting dies down , but the ethnic hatreds that you helped stir up, live on as a permanent barrier to national unity in the regions of africa--use the economic desperation of these same africans and hire them on as the cheapest labor--illegal mexicans in the usa won’t even work for 45 cents an hour--inmates in usa prisons can make that much

d. put these desperate africans to work feeding and cleaning up after your troops in iraq as you try to crush an insurgency that stubbornly refuses to capitulate to the fact that you want their oil and you want control of their land and are willing to kill , spread lies and terror--spread depleted uranium dust , drop white phosporous and other chemical agents on civilians and exploit old ethnic hatreds while arming and training local militias in order to accomplish your goals .

e. like the old "triangular atlantic slave trade" that promoted wars , an arms race and three centuries of catastrophe in africa , while providing western capitalism with the slaves and the cheap labor capitalism needs to maintain its consistent rate of profits , the corporations make big money at every corner of the triangle--the more things change-- the more they resemble elements of the past--elements surprisingly similar to those that created this american ’empire’-- with stolen labor on stolen , bloodsoaked land

each human life is only made up of so much time and the resulting physical energy that each human body can generate . as we reach adulthood , each human becomes distinctly more aware of this fact of human physiology .

remember that people do not willingly undervalue their precious time or their physical energy ---labor is ’cheap’ only to the degree that it is also desperate-- why are so many people KEPT desperate ? ...so they will work 6 days a week , 12 hour shifts for 50 cents an hour ---d sekou

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/politics/01propaganda.html?hp&ex=1133499600&en =3af8aaf9fa1cb0bc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

December 1, 2005
U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers
By JEFF GERTH and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - Titled "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq," an article written this week for publication in the Iraqi press was scornful of outsiders’ pessimism about the country’s future.

"Western press and frequently those self-styled ’objective’ observers of Iraq are often critics of how we, the people of Iraq, are proceeding down the path in determining what is best for our nation," the article began. Quoting the Prophet Muhammad, it pleaded for unity and nonviolence.

But far from being the heartfelt opinion of an Iraqi writer, as its language implied, the article was prepared by the United States military as part of a multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends, military contractors and officials said.

The article was one of several in a storyboard, the military’s term for a list of articles, that was delivered Tuesday to the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm paid by the Pentagon, documents from the Pentagon show. The contractor’s job is to translate the articles into Arabic and submit them to Iraqi newspapers or advertising agencies without revealing the Pentagon’s role. Documents show that the intended target of the article on a democratic Iraq was Azzaman, a leading independent newspaper, but it is not known whether it was published there or anywhere else.

Even as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media, the Pentagon is paying millions more to the Lincoln Group for work that appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism.