Yew will explowd in a few minutes

Brief update on this one. It turns out I'm not the only one who heard the "threat" broadcast to American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin... er… Straights of Hormuz this weekend and immediately thought "Prank Caller." Apparently the voice on the broadcast--whose "heavily accented English" sounds closer to Mr. Burns than farsi speaker--remains unidentified, but there's good reason to believe it was sent anonymously by someone in a remote location, broadcasting on the Bridge to Bridge channel without authorization: the fact that the voice sounds completely different from the Iranians who hailed the ship earlier, the lack of background noise from what is supposed to be a speedboat on the high seas, and just the overall stupidity of hailing a warship fifty times your size with a threat. The source was probably a heckler on a tanker somewhere (maybe one of the ships that appears on the horizon in the Pentagon video?) who heard U.S. warships warn off a bunch of small boats on the Bridge channel and decide to fuck with their heads.

In other news, President Bombsalot this week has once again demonstrated his endless capacity for cognitive dissonance:

In public, President Bush has been careful to reassure Israel and other allies that he still sees Iran as a threat, while not disavowing his administration's recent National Intelligence Estimate. That NIE, made public Dec. 3, embarrassed the administration by concluding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003, which seemed to undermine years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush and other senior officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

I don't suppose this is particularly surprising seeing how "reality" has never been a particularly large component of Dubya's foreign policy. Well, for any of his policies come to think of it. What's worrisome is that although his "vision" for the world is based on menagerie of insipid fantasies, the bombs he drops on people because of those fantasies are all too real.

Maybe that radio heckler was onto something? Seems like we're basically just a few minutes away from Bush getting us all blown up.

The Surge is Working. We’re Kicking Ass. War is Peace.

Reflections on a Sick Puppet Show
What the hell kind of man did Diebold put into office? Everything he touches seems to blow up, fall apart, or otherwise disintegrate in a chorus of gnashing teeth. The Bush Effect seems to manifest in everything from the American economy to Wolf Blitzer’s manhood, and precious few things survive an encounter with this life-sucking black hole of a man who reaps misery and destruction everywhere he goes.

Seems somebody forgot to explain this fact to Shattar Abu Risha, who found out the hard way the price of making a Deal with the Dubya. The late puppet-warlord of the Anbar Salvation front was relatively unknown here in the United States, but was already a household name for Iraqis in Anbar Province (well, in the same sense that “Al Capone” is a household name for people in Chicago). But we also know that Dubya never meets in person with anyone who isn’t either in his pocket or somehow on board with his “vision” of the universe, so what exactly does that say about Abu Risha’s motives?

Well, before you answer that, what does everyone else say about Abu Risha?

According to Captain Martin Wohlgemuth:

“Sattar Abu Risha, a living legacy in his own right. He's probably better known as Lawrence of Arabia to the Americans. His legacy is what allowed this to happen in a lot of different places. And it’s happening in Amiriya, they've got freedom fighters. In Abu Ghraib, they’ve got some freedom fighters. And they all say it's generally because of that, because he was first one to really do it. The major sticking point is trying to get the government of Iraq to buy into groups of armed Sunnis so close to Baghdad.”

Yep, he’s the Uniter, the guy who brings all the freedom fighters together. Wonderful guy!

According to Yahoo news:

Abu Risha's killing — just 10 days after his meeting with Bush — dealt a blow to one of the few success stories in U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq. The tribal leader brought together Anbar sheiks into an alliance against extremists, after years of American failure to tame flash points such as Ramadi and fallujah.

I guess we’re lucky to have such a valuable ally.

Sort of. According to Time Magazine before his inevitable death:

So what sort of a deal could the U.S. strike? General Odierno, an Iraq veteran with a reputation for cold-eyed realism, has cited the military's partnership with formerly anti-American tribes in the restive Anbar promise. There, U.S. Marines have supported a coalition of tribes, known as the "Anbar Salvation Front," fighting al-Qaeda. The group's leader, Sheikh Sattar al-Risha, is ostensibly cooperating with the U.S. and Iraqi forces to drive out the foreign fighters who make up much al-Qaeda's ranks in Iraq. And since the alliance has been in effect, the number of attacks against U.S. forces in Anbar has halved.

But that's only part of the picture. Sheikh Sattar, whose tribe is notorious for highway banditry, is also building a personal militia, loyal not to the Iraqi government but only to him. Other tribes — even those who want no truck with terrorists — complain they are being forced to kowtow to him. Those who refuse risk being branded as friends of al-Qaeda and tossed in jail, or worse. In Baghdad, government delight at the Anbar Front's impact on al-Qaeda is tempered by concern that the Marines have unwittingly turned Sheikh Sattar into a warlord who will turn the province into his personal fiefdom.

Exactly the kind of person who deserves American tax dollars! Just ask Ali Suleiman from the Dulaim confederation (the largest tribal organization in Anbar), who described Abu Risha as a "traitor" who "sells his beliefs, his religion and his people for money," and suggested that Abu Risha is essentially a disaster-capitalist who specializes in highway robbery, oil smuggling, gun running, ransom kidnapping, blackmail... with a resume like this, Abu Risha might as well work for Halliburton.

Given his reputation, Sheikh/Warlord Abu Risha’s death is probably the least surprising thing that’s happened in Iraq in the past eighteen months. Almost as unsurprising is the fact that the Imperialist intelligentsia has already gone out of its way to blame it on Al Qaida. Apparently, the idea of America’s pet-gangster being bombed by his own men is an image that pokes too large a hole in the already-sinking ship of General Betrayus’ credibility. But then, when you think back to some of those one hundred and ninety thousand missing weapons the U.S. was supposed to give to the Iraqi Military... well, you get the idea.

And then the treasonous little kissass has the nerve to sit in front of congress and talk about the success of Dubya's "troop surge". How is this supposed to work, exactly? The Surge was supposed to create "breathing room" for the Iraqi Government to make adequate progress; instead, the al-Maliki Government met 7 out of 18 benchmarks. It was supposed to create room for a reconciliation process that could end (or at least reduce) sectarian violence; instead, the death toll has actually climbed every week since the Surge began. And for the icing on the cake: the most that General Betrayus has to show for the surge is having sold a bunch of weapons to a vicious Sunni gangster with delusions of grandeur, and even that dubious success has just come to a calamitous end.

Now the Iraqi People want our troops to leave (79% of them at last check), and wouldn't you know it, so do the American people in pretty much the same proportions. To most of us, it's plainly obvious what's going on here: Dubya's just gambled away our entire life savings at the blackjack table, and now he's about to bet the house and car. He says he's got a system now, he says he can turn it around with a couple more hands. Finally got a good deck, says Dubya, and tosses the car keys on the table.

No more bets, George. We've had enough for one century.

Comprehensive Immigration Problem

So I'm new to the whole blogger thing. I don't know why I didn't do this ten years ago, it really couldn't be simpler. It's journalism in its most pure form: collect your facts, collect your thoughts, put them together where everyone else can see them. For damn loudmouth pink-commie-bastard like yours truly, that pretty much comes naturally. As for the latest facts I've collected: President Bush, in his infinite wisdom, has thrown what's left of his credibility behind "Comprehensive Immigration Reform." Critics on the right and the left have both complained that the new bill pretty much offers amnesty to every illegal immigrant who was in the country before January 1st, 2007. That's mostly based on their interpretation of the new Z visa the bill introduces. Basically, the CIR bill does three things: it (1) creates a guest worker program for immigrants who are, at this moment, outside the United States (2) ends Chain Immigration and streamlines the backlog on green cards and (3) provides a "fraud proof" Z visa to 12 million illegal immigrants who are then allowed to remain inside the United States pretty much indefinitely.

It's Number 3, actually, that's got everyone so up in arms. If the bill goes through, then twelve million illegal immigrants inside the United States before January 1st can stay exactly where they are, and they won't get sent out of the country just on the basis of being non-citizens. The Lou Dobbs crowd like to call this "Amnesty" for illegals. Every bill, measure and movement in American politics has some sort of buzz word that acts as a rallying cry for its opponents; in this case, the word is Amnesty.

But as the bill's supporters are quick to point out, the Z Visa wouldn't actually give them amnesty. And they're right, it most certainly doesn't. Amnesty is what happens when the government guarantees that a certain crime will not be prosecuted at any time in the future. The twelve million people who are guilty of entering the United States illegally will not have that guarantee. What the Z Visa actually provides--at least on paper--is probation. That means all twelve million illegals suddenly become slightly legal, provided they hold a steady job and stay on the right side of the law.

When the Lou Dobbs crowd complains about Amnesty (I'm a fan of Dobbs, to tell you the truth), they're missing this in the big picture. The Bush Administration and its corporate allies don't want amnesty either; if that were the case, those twelve million illegal immigrants would instantly become twelve million American Citizens, complete with voting rights, organization, and their own internal agenda driven by a common cultural background. The Bush Regime wants amnesty the way Jefferson Davis wanted the abolition of slavery, and all for most of the same reasons: illegal immigrants are a godsend to the "economy" (the politically correct term for "corporate profit"), not because they're taking jobs Americans won't do, but because they're taking pay cuts Americans won't accept and working in conditions Americans won't tolerate. The less Doll and Tropicana have to pay their workers, the more money they get to keep on a carton of orange juice. And no, lower wages does not mean cheaper orange juice; capitalism doesn't work that way.

Bush is all for the Z Visa because it provides his corporate sponsors with exactly what their fat wallets depend on: a cheap, desperate, controllable labor force. The bill would instantly create a brand new quasi-legal working class at the bottom of the economic ladder with no votes, no power, no constitutional rights to speak of. The "path to citizenship" offered by this bill puts them on the bottom of an already backlogged waiting list of legal immigrants waiting for their green cards.

As for what this will do to America, that depends on who you ask. The Bush Regime's economists and corporate sponsors have visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads: as wages (and therefore, production costs) plummet, corporate profits skyrocket, and the Invisible Hand squeezes out a few extra drops to trickle down to the Middle Class. The rich get richer, the poor get screwed, the mediocre remain irrelevant. We haven't had a socioeconomic strata layered so perfectly since the good-old-days when black people--slaves or otherwise--were doing all those jobs that White Americans wouldn't do. And maybe corporate America has the right idea reverting back to its old sharecropping, bullwhipping, human exploitative ways... in Bush terms, twelve million slaves picking cotton fourteen hours a day will always be better for the economy than twelve million unionized workers picking cotton eight hours a day at ten bucks an hour.

The good news is, Latinos aren't nearly as oblivious to class difference as your average WASP. As much respect as I have for the Lou Dobbses of the world, it's a painful fact that Middle Class isn't in the firing line of corporate America; the ruling elites of this country depend on the middle class to be their first line of defense against the working class, whom they've always been at war with, and always will be. After all, the corporate CEO with the eight-figure income never gets shot by a disgruntled employee; he's too busy hiding behind Bobby from IT.

There are already plenty of reasons to protest the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, besides the fact that Bush thinks it's a good idea, and even besides fact that the C.I.R. Act will immediately create a powerless labor caste ripe for corporate exploitation. One of the most pressing reasons--at least to me--is the reason from history: in over two hundred years since this country was founded, nothing positive or meaningful has ever come out of an act or a movement that promised "reform." American didn't fight a civil war over "slavery reform," the labor movements of the 1920s didn't shut down their factories demanding "corporate reform," women didn't fight for the right to vote on a platform of "suffrage reform," and the Civil Rights Movement didn't gain national support by demanding "social and legal reform." In America's peculiar history, "reform" is what happens when the Federal Government replaces a broken system that does a certain thing with a completely new system that does the exact same thing. We do have an immigration problem in America, but it's going to take alot more than some token reform legislation to fix it.