POST 91 a&b

POST 91a

DIARY 101908
Typing my master's thesis that I MUST defend next semester...BUt opened SATTV to check on programs!I really wanted to watch the complete LAWRENCE OF ARABIAwhich at full-lentgh runs up to 3 hours?!StarMovies shows film about two men lost in the wildernessof Alaska? or some northern American setting,SHowed a "U.S. ARMY FIRST-AID" manual we used to have in BATANGAS...Snow & lone men lost in wilderness often remind me of "TO BUILD A FIRE"short story we studied in high school...
One of the characters had weak will & the other stronger guy had to motivate him in fighting/killing a bear. They succeeded in this endeavor with the latter practically "saving" the former...Then this weak willed guy tried to kill the other guy but ended up fallinginto a bear trap in the ground & had to be rescued & taken cared of by the "protagonist"In the end he died from his wounds but was able to say "Sorry"... But I did not see the beginning & mid-part...A nice film about the HUMAN CONDITION worth watching... UNLIKE most films shown on TV...We were taught in H.S. English course that stories had a STRUCTURE:a PLOT, SETTING, CHARACTERs in CONFLICT etc etcI think some movies do not follow this traditional structure.But I was raised/trained in this "theory"NOw I wonder how other people who did not learn it - How would they CREATE or INTERPRET stories whether literary or on film...
I hvae always wondered if there still are human beings who have not been PROGRAMMED,whose minds have not been INFECTED by movies & TV... How do they THINK?...

POST 91b
From my files in some CD's I burned in the past...JUST SEEK THE INTERNET FOR THE ORIGINAL SOURCES.I like the author's STYLE: BRIEF & STRAIGHT-TO-THE-POINT...You see, I'M TOO BUSY TO THINK...

These articles were written TWO YEARS AGO when the HOT ISSUE then was the "IRAQ WAR, AFGHANISTAN" ETCNOW, It's ALREADY OCTOBER 2008 &the CURRENT ISSUE is the "GLOBAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE"

GIVEN THAT AMOUNT OF TIME TO DO SOME "THINKING" about WORLD EVENTS,WHAT DO YOU THINK NOW ABOUT THESE ARTICLES?

I limit the possibilities to just THREE (3):
- 50% TRUTH 50% LIES ("So-So")
- 100% TRUTH (= 1)
- 100% LIES (= 0)

So what I'll do is just submit this questionnaire to as many people as feasible as a form of MASS SURVEY. Then I publicly announce the FINAL RESULT as THE TRUTH?!?!?!(This is the "SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC" CONCEPTION OF TRUTH!!!) If according to a scientifically reliable SURVEY that 69% of human beings believe thatthe earth is FLAT, then the TRUTH is that the earth is FLAT!!! BUT THEORIES OF TRUTH are TOO PHILOSOPHICAL & definitely NOT for MASS CONSUMPTION...
THERE IS MASS STUPIDITY THERE IS NO MASS INTELLIGENCE...

1st ARTICLE
March 14, 2006
WHY DID BUSH DESTROY IRAQ?
by Paul Craig Roberts

March 20 is the third anniversary of the Bush regime's invasion of Iraq.U.S. military casualties to date are approximately 20,000 killed, wounded, maimed, and disabled.Iraqi civilian casualties number in the tens of thousands.Iraq's infrastructure is in ruins.Tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed.Fallujah, a city of 300,000 people, had 36,000 of its 50,000 homes destroyed by the U.S. military.Half of the city's former population are displaced persons living in tents.
Thousands of Iraqis have been detained in prisons, and hundreds have been brutally tortured.America's reputation in the Muslim world is ruined.
The Bush regime expected a short "cakewalk" warto be followed by the imposition of a puppet government and permanent U.S. military bases.Instead, U.S. military forces are confronted with an insurgencythat has denied control over Iraq to the U.S. military.Chaos rules, and civil war may be coming on top of the insurgency.
On March 9, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the man who has been totally wrong about Iraq,told Congress that if the unprecedented violence in Iraq breaks out in civil war,the U.S. will rely primarily on Iraq's security forces to put down civil war.
What Iraqi security forces? Iraq does not have a security force.The Shia have a security force, the Sunnis have a security force, and the Kurds have a security force.The sectarian militias control the streets, towns, and cities.If civil war breaks out, the "Iraqi security force" will dissolve into the sectarian militias,leaving the U.S. military in the middle of the melee.
Is this what "support the troops" means?
President Bush's determination to remain in Iraqdespite the obvious failure of the attempted occupationputs Bush at odds with the American public and with our troops.Polls show that a majority of Americans believethat the invasion of Iraq was a mistakeand that our troops should be withdrawn.An even larger majority of the troops themselves believethey should be withdrawn.

Yet Bush, who is incapable of admitting a mistake,persists in a strategic blunder that is turning into a catastrophe.

Bush's support has fallen to 34 percent.

The war's out-of-pocket cost to date is approximately $300 billion – every dollar borrowed from foreigners.Economic and budgetary experts have calculated that the ultimate cost of Bush's Iraq war in terms of long-term care for veterans,interest on borrowed money, and resources diverted from productive uses will be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.

What is being achieved for this enormous sacrifice?
No one knows.

Every reason we have been given for the Iraqi invasion has proved to be false.Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.Reports from UN weapons inspectors, top level U.S. intelligence officials, Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill,and leaked top-secret documents from the British cabinet all make it unequivocally clearthat the Bush regime first decided to invade Iraq and then looked around for a reason.

Saddam Hussein had no terrorist connection to Osama bin Laden and no role in the 9/11 attack.Hussein was a secular ruler totally at odds with bin Laden's Islamist aims.Every informed person in the world knew this.

When the original justifications for the U.S. invasion collapsed,Bush said that the reason for the invasion was to rid Iraq of a dictator and to put a democracy in its place.Despite all the hoopla about democracy and elections,no Iraqi government has been able to form, and the country is on the brink of civil war.Some Middle East experts believe that violence will spread throughout the region.

The brutal truth is that America's responsibility is extreme.We have destroyed a country and created political chaos for no reason whatsoever.

Seldom in history has a government miscalculated as badly as Bush has in Iraq. More disturbingly, Bush shows no ability to recover from his mistake.All we get from our leader is pigheaded promises of victory that none of our military commanders believe. Our entire government is lost in confusion.One day Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld tell usthat we are having great success in training an Iraqi militaryand will be able to begin withdrawing our troops in a year.The next day they tell us that we will be fighting the war for decades.

Bush's invasion of Iraq was a mistake.Bush's attempt to cover up his mistake with patriotism will ultimately discredit patriotism.
America has to be big enough to admit a mistake and bring it to an end.

2nd ARTICLE
September 26, 2006
WHY BUSH WILL NUKE IRAN
by Paul Craig Roberts

The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons,because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescuetheir goal of U.S. (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East.

The U.S. has lost the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Generals in both war theaters are stating their need for more troops.But there are no troops to send. Bush has tried to pawn Afghanistan off on NATO, but Europe does not see any point in sacrificing its blood and money for the sake of American hegemony. The NATO troops in Afghanistan are experiencing substantial casualties from a revived Taliban, and European governments are not enthralled over providing cannon fodder for U.S. hegemony.

The "coalition of the willing" has evaporated. Indeed, it never existed. Bush's "coalition" was assembled with bribes, threats, and intimidation. Pervez Musharraf, the American puppet ruler of Pakistan, let the cat out of the bagwhen he told CBS' 60 Minutes on Sept. 24, 2006, that Pakistan had no choice about joining the "coalition." Brute coercion was applied. Musharraf said Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage told the Pakistani intelligence director that "you are with us" or "be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age."Armitage is trying to deny his threat, but Dawn Wire Service, reporting from Islamabad on Sept. 16, 2001, on the pressure Bush was putting on Musharraf to facilitate the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, stated:"'Pakistan has the option to live in the 21st century or the Stone Age' is roughly how U.S. officials are putting their case."

That Musharraf would volunteer this information on American television is a good indication that Bush has lost the war. Musharraf can no longer withstand the anger he has created against himself by helping the U.S. slaughter his fellow Muslims in Bush's attempt to exercise U.S. hegemony over the Muslim world. Bush cannot protect Musharraf from the wrath of Pakistanis, and so Musharraf has explained himself as having cooperated with Bush in order to prevent the U.S. destruction of Pakistan:"One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did."Nevertheless, he said, he refused Bush's "ludicrous" demand that he arrest Pakistanis who publicly demonstrated against the U.S.: "If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views."

Bush's defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's defeat by Hezbollah in Lebanon have shown that the military firepower of the U.S. and Israeli armies, though effective against massed Arab armies, cannot defeat guerillas and insurgencies. The U.S. has battled in Iraq longer than it fought against Nazi Germany, and the situation in Iraq is out of control.The Taliban have regained half of Afghanistan. The king of Saudi Arabia has told Bush that the ground is shaking under his feetas unrest over the American/Israeli violence against Muslims builds to dangerous levels. Our Egyptian puppet sits atop 100 million Muslims who do not think that Egypt should be a lackey of U.S. hegemony. The king of Jordan understands that Israeli policy is to drive every Palestinian into Jordan.

Bush is incapable of recognizing his mistake. He can only escalate. Plans have long been made to attack Iran. The problem is that Iran can respond in effective ways to a conventional attack.Moreover, an American attack on another Muslim country could result in turmoil and rebellion throughout the Middle East. This is why the neocons have changed U.S. war doctrine to permit a nuclear strike on Iran.

Neocons believe that a nuclear attack on Iran would have intimidating force throughout the Middle East and beyond.Iran would not dare retaliate, neocons believe, against U.S. ships, U.S. troops in Iraq, or use their missiles against oil facilities in the Middle East.
Neocons have also concluded that a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran would show the entire Muslim worldthat it is useless to resist America's will. Neocons say that even the most fanatical terrorists would realize the hopelessness of resisting U.S. hegemony. The vast multitude of Muslims would realize that they have no recourse but to accept their fate.
Revised U.S. war doctrine concludes that tactical or low-yield nuclear weaponscause relatively little "collateral damage" or civilian deaths, while achieving a powerful intimidating effect on the enemy. The "fear factor" disheartens the enemy and shortens the conflict.
University of California Professor Jorge Hirsch, an authority on nuclear doctrine,believes that an American nuclear attack on Iran will destroy the Nonproliferation Treaty and send countries in pell-mell pursuit of nuclear weapons.We will see powerful nuclear alliances, such as Russia/China, form against us. Japan could be so traumatized by an American nuclear attack on Iran that it would mean the end of Japan's sycophantic relationship to the U.S.
There can be little doubt that the aggressive U.S. use of nukes in pursuit of hegemony would make America a pariah country, despised and distrusted by every other country. Neocons believe that diplomacy is feeble and useless,but that the unapologetic use of force brings forth cooperation in order to avoid destruction.
Neoconservatives say that America is the new Rome, only more powerful than Rome. Neoconservatives genuinely believe that no one can withstand the might of the United Statesand that America can rule by force alone.
Hirsch believes that the U.S. military's opposition to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has been overcome by the civilian neocon authorities in the Bush administration. Desperate to retrieve their drive toward hegemony from defeat in Iraq,the neocons are betting on the immense attraction to the American public of force plus success. It is possible that Bush will be blocked by Europe, Russia, and China, but there is no visible American opposition to Bush legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons at the behest of U.S. hegemony.

It is astounding that such dangerous fanatics have control of the U.S. government and have no organized opposition in American politics.

ADDENDUM:
Two HOMEWORK QUESTIONS
-IS THE GlobFinCol the result of IRAQ WAR? OR is there NO CONNECTION whatsoever between the two?
-Given the latest news about AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN (U.S. bombings & unallowed intrusion) & even IRAq & IRAN, what would you do if you were a military commander in either side of the fence there?...

OH JEEZ, I FORGOT... SOME people are UNABLE to form the CONCEPT or make any sense of HYPOTHETICAL(s) [= What IF_]... How LUCKY I am for having this ability despite my BRAIN SIZE (= 50% smaller than SHAQ's& slightly bigger than a GORILLA's)!!!!!!! It pays to study...

To ALL IRAQis & IRANians:Why not just settle on a COMPROMISE between your countries since the names "IRAQ" & "IRAN" DIFFER by only ONE LETTER?I HEREBY PROPOSE A NEW NAME FOR A NEW UNIFIED COUNTRY IN THAT AREA:
"IRAO" OR "IRAP"... (Don't ask me about its FLAG!)

I guess this will only lead to further TROUBLE (which would be beneficial to the TRIBE of BLAIR & BUSH!) since definitely IRANians would prefer IRAO & IRAQis would prefer IRAP...THEIR REASON: The spelling is much closer to home... HAR!

SERIOUSLY, One Last Question:
HOW DO GENUINE NATIVE IRAQis & NATIVE IRANians CALL THEIR RESPECTIVE "NATIONS"?

TMNP