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AlterNet: Chomsky: Bush & Cheney Always Saw Iraq as a Sweetheart Oil Deal

Tags: iraq, oil, chomsky on 2008-07-12 -All Annotations (0) -About

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"There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract," Andrew E. Kramer wrote in the New York Times.
For U.S. planners, it is imperative that Iraq remain under U.S. control, to the extent possible, as an obedient client state that will also house major U.S. military bases, right at the heart of the world's major energy reserves.
That these were the primary goals of the invasion was always clear enough through the haze of successive pretexts: weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's links with al Qaeda, democracy promotion and the war against terrorism, which, as predicted, sharply increased as a result of the invasion.
Last November, the guiding concerns were made explicit when President Bush and Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, signed a "Declaration of Principles," ignoring the U.S. Congress, the Iraqi parliament and the populations of the two countries.
The declaration left open the possibility of an indefinite long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq that would presumably include the huge air bases now being built around the country, and the "embassy" in Baghdad, a city within a city, unlike any embassy in the world. These are not being constructed to be abandoned.
In Washington propaganda, the spoiler to U.S. domination in Iraq is Iran. U.S. problems in Iraq are blamed on Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sees a simple solution: "Foreign forces" and "foreign arms" should be withdrawn from Iraq -- Iran's, not ours.
In the United States, the Democrats are silenced now because of the supposed success of the U.S. military surge in Iraq. Their silence reflects the fact that there are no principled criticisms of the war. In this way of regarding the world, if you're achieving your goals, the war and occupation are justified. The sweetheart oil deals come with the territory.

Best Free CD / DVD Burning Software | Gizmo's Tech Support Alert

Tags: cd burner, audio, software, audio software on 2008-07-12 and saved by3 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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Amazon.com: Buddha Chillout: MP3 Downloads: Various Artists

Tags: no_tag on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About

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IRC Americas Program | A Primer on Plan Mexico

Tags: Free Trade, americas, SPP, NAFTA, Mexico on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Howard Zinn: Anarchism Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word | Democracy and Elections | AlterNet

Tags: anarchism, political theory on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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But never forgetting that no matter who gets into office, the crucial question is not who is in office, but what kind of social movement do you have. Because we have seen historically that if you have a powerful social movement, it doesn't matter who is in office. Whoever is in office, they could be Republican or Democrat, if you have a powerful social movement, the person in office will have to yield, will have to in some ways respect the power of social movements.
I will vote, but always with a caution that voting is not crucial, and organizing is the important thing.
The term anarchism has become associated with two phenomena with which real anarchists don't want to associate themselves with. One is violence, and the other is disorder or chaos. The popular conception of anarchism is on the one hand bomb-throwing and terrorism, and on the other hand no rules, no regulations, no discipline, everybody does what they want, confusion, etc. That is why there is a reluctance to use the term anarchism. But actually the ideas of anarchism are incorporated in the way the movements of the 1960s began to think.
There is one central characteristic of anarchism on the matter of means, and that central principle is a principle of direct action -- of not going through the forms that the society offers you, of representative government, of voting, of legislation, but directly taking power. In case of trade unions, in case of anarcho-syndicalism, it means workers going on strike, and not just that, but actually also taking hold of industries in which they work and managing them.
I would say, as far as means go, the idea of direct action against the evil that you want to overcome is a kind of common denominator for anarchist ideas, anarchist movements. I still think one of the most important principles of anarchism is that you cannot separate means and ends. And that is, if your end is egalitarian society you have to use egalitarian means, if your end is non-violent society without war, you cannot use war to achieve your end. I think anarchism requires means and ends to be in line with one another. I think this is in fact one of the distinguishing characteristics of anarchism.
I think our first step is to organize ourselves and protest against existing order -- against war, against economic and sexual exploitation, against racism, etc. But to organize ourselves in such a way that means correspond to the ends, and to organize ourselves in such a way as to create kind of human relationship that should exist in future society. That would mean to organize ourselves without centralize authority, without charismatic leader, in a way that represents in miniature the ideal of the future egalitarian society.

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Photo Essay: 30th Anniversary of Mass Arrests at Seabrook, NH, Anti-Nuclear Rally

Tags: nukes on 2008-07-04 -All Annotations (0) -About

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MotherJones.com | News

Tags: nukes, energy_crisis, environment on 2008-06-09 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Internet Archive Search: collection:opensource_audio AND firstTitle:D

Tags: audio, music_downloads, mp3, Grateful Dead, opensource audio on 2008-06-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Is Madhyamaka Buddhism Really the Middle Way?

Tags: buddhism, dharma, emptiness, Nagarjuna, Madhyamaka on 2008-05-19 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Buddhist
practice is fundamentally about change. That is, Buddhism is about
transforming—by means of ethical conduct, meditation, ritual, mindfulness
and so forth—unskilful mental events into skilful mental events.
If entities were not empty—if
they possessed an independent existence unaffected by any alterations
in other things—they would be unchanging and unchangeable. And, thus,
if we were autonomously existing beings, we would be unable to gain
enlightenment, or indeed to make any spiritual progress at all. We
would be stuck, spiritually speaking, with the way we are at present.
The teaching of emptiness is actually an affirmation
of the dynamic interconnectedness of all things.
In other words, the whole world of dependently
originating entities is simply a phantasm, a show, a mental creation,
a mere appearance. So, the absence of inherent existence, the emptiness,
of all things in the final analysis means, for Madhyamaka, not simply
that all things dependently originate. It means, furthermore that
all these dependently originating things are mere mental fabrications.
A tree, for instance,
may exist independently of the mind even though it is dependent on
numerous external conditions and components for its existence. An
entity is not necessarily simply a concept, entirely reducible to
the intrinsic and external factors on which its existence depends.
Arguably, an entity may be a mind-independent
reality, but nevertheless depend for its existence on a variety of
external conditions and essential components.
This disagreement
about the meaning of emptiness entails, or is entailed by, quite divergent
and incompatible understandings of Madhyamaka philosophy. On the one
hand, there is the understanding of Madhyamaka as asserting that reality
is simply the lack of inherent existence of all entities. On the other
hand, there is the understanding of Madhyamaka as advocating, in addition,
a further Reality—the higher emptiness—which is quite beyond all conceptual
and linguistic categories. It is undefinable and indescribable. Madhyamaka
understood in this latter way is, it might be argued, not nihilism
for, even if the conditioned world is envisaged by them as totally
fabricated, there is for the Maadhyamika an entirely unfabricated
Unconditioned Reality. However, it might be objected that such a version
of Madhyamaka simply combines nihilism with regard to the fabricated,
conditioned world with an eternalistic belief in a permanent and blissful
nirvaa.na. If this objection
is correct, far from treading the Middle Way, such a Maadhyamika appears
to fall into both extreme views simultaneously.