Mickey Z

"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you're making progress." - Malcolm X

Another Election Day approaches and I’m reminded of something the late Pakistani dissident, Eqbal Ahmad said about Noam Chomsky in the book, Confronting Empire (2000): “He (Chomsky) has never wavered. He has never fallen into the trap of saying, ‘Clinton will do better.’ Or ‘Nixon was bad but Carter at least had a human rights presidency.’ There is a consistency of substance, of posture, of outlook in his work.”

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Angie Riedel

The presidential election is only a matter of days away now. I wish I could say there is reason to be optimistic that it will bring an end to the reign of greed and destruction of the bush regime. The reality is that there is little to be optimistic about.

A new president will not herald the changes we want and so desperately need. There will be no more than a changing of faces that will still tell us lies. We will still have a king instead of a leader. He will still act as though the constitution is somewhere between optional and flat out objectionable.

We will still have a government that is separated from us, that asserts a right to be above us and to rule over us with two separate sets of laws. The laws for themselves forgive every felony and lie, and excuse every wrongful death, theft and trespass. The laws for us forgive nothing, excuse nothing, and mete out brutal punishments and imprisonment even before crimes have been committed. ― We will still be held hostage by, and held accountable for the mental midgetry of our disconnected elites. We will still have multimillionaire legislators and multimillionaire White House denizens who's services are already pre-purchased by people whose interests are in direct conflict with our own.

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Jean Bricmont

One can understand why some people might have sincerely thought that the Iraq war would be a "cakewalk". First, consider WW2 ; the US mercilessly bombed Germany and Japan, including their civilian populations, then occupied those countries militarily, imposing almost total control. Yet, today, Germany and Japan are among the world’s most faithful allies of the US. How deep this alliance really is and how long it will last remains to be seen, but for the moment it is a reality.

Now, consider the Cold War. Remember that, once upon a time, governments from Poland to Bulgaria were hostile to the US. Now, they want nothing more than integration into Nato, advanced US anti-missile shields and participation in the occupation of Iraq. Or consider, even more surprisingly, Vietnam, where US investors are now welcomed with open arms, while, in a not so distant past, the US was ferociously bombing Vietnam, killing millions of people and poisoning the environment. Even after the bombing of their little country in 1999, the Serbs behaved as desired, by voting out Milosevic and by accepting, at least for a while, pro-Western governments approving implicitely if not explicitely the bombing of their own country.

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