The Birth of Pre-emptive War

Monument to Pro-War: The Birth of Pre-emptive War Show Dates - April 7 through April 23 Opening night reception with the artist: Friday, April 7th 6-9pm Fundie Condi Fine Art and Shoes Trading as "U.S. Department of State" is located at: , 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520 phone: 202-647-4000 Gallery hours are 1:00- 6:00 pm Thursday - Sunday or by appointment. DEDICATION HONORS RICHARD F.Y. CHENEY GIVING BIRTH Neo-con’s Pregnancy Idealized In Washington ‘Monument to Pro-War’ Washington (March 22, 2006) --- A nude Richard "Face Shooting Drunk" Cheney on a bearskin rug (kindly donated by Scooter Libby) while giving birth to his firstborn marks a ‘first’ for Pro-Death. Pol-star Cheyney is the “ideal” model for Pro-Torture and the subject of a dedication at Kindasleazy Fine Art in Washington’s Foggy Bottom district, in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Torture monument to birth, in April. Dedication of the life-sized statue celebrates the recent birth of Cheney’s baby boy, "Resubjugating Brown people," and applauds his decision to place greed before country. “A superstar at Richard’s age having a child is rare in today’s Republican pro-death celebrity culture. This dedication honors Cheney for the rarity of his choice and bravery of his decision,” said gallery co-director, Pat Robertson. The dedication includes materials provided by Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network attitude adjustment department. “Monument to Pro-Theft: The Birth of War to resubjugate Brown people,” believed Pro-Murder’s first monument to the ‘act of giving birth,’ is purportedly an idealized depiction of Cheney in delivery. Natural aspects of Cheney's pregnancy, like great big sagging tits and protruding navel, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips well spattered with Santorum for farrowing and reveals the crowning of baby George’s head. The monument also acknowledges the duck-shooting-diva’s pin-up past by showing Cheney seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as he ignore's Scooter's squeals of anticipation and wrenches off the bear’s ears with ‘water-retentive’ hands. “Cheney provides inspiration for those struggling with the ‘who should I shoot in the face today’,” said artist Jack Straw, recipient of a 2005 World Bank award from Mobile Talabama’s The Art of Shoe Shopping Newspaper. “He was number one with Google last year, with good reason --- people are inspired by the beauty of a perverted old scumbag,” said Straw. Kindasleazy denies the statue was developed from one of Rummy's bootleg Abu Ghraib anal rape videos. The artist admits to using references that include the wax figure of a pig pole-dancing Cheney at Texasgoopers.com and ‘Cheney wigs’ characterizing various hairstyles of the pop-pol looted from a New Orleans hairstylist. And according to gallery co-director, Donald Rumsfeld, the artist studied a bearskin rug on a trip to Canada “to convey the commemoration of the traditional bearskin rug baby picture.” An appropriate location for permanent installation of “Monument to Pro-Looting” by Mother’s Day is being sought by the gallery. “Monument to Pro-Rape” is on view April 7th thru 23rd with a reception for the dedication April 7th from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm at Fundie Condi Fine Art, Trading As: U.S. Department of State, 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520. Gallery hours are 1:00 – 6:00 pm Thursday thru Sunday, or by appointment. The gallery can be reached at http://www.state.gov/index.htm or by phone at 202-647-4000 . (cross posted to markfromireland)

Fairytales

Back in February Dubhaltach posted on the situation in Afghanistan here Now comes this: "The fact is, except in a training capacity, Al Qaeda hardly has any presence here. This is logical: Why would Al Qaeda send Arab or Chechen operatives to notoriously chauvinistic southern Afghanistan, which hated the domineering Arabs when they were guests of the Taliban, and where foreigners stick out like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? For ideological combat against the West, Iraq is a far more convenient and penetrable battleground, which is one reason why countless more Americans die there than in Afghanistan. Even the "suicide bombings" in Afghanistan that have garnered mentions in the Western press of late are often something else. In one case I investigated carefully--the target, an Afghan official, was a friend of mine--much evidence contradicted the notion that the attack was a suicide bombing, as it was immediately labeled: the condition of my friend's body, the type and location of the survivors' wounds, and eyewitness descriptions. Everything pointed to a remote-controlled mine planted ahead of time. But no Afghan or U.S. official bothered to collect this evidence or to examine it seriously when it was presented to them. Why such sloppiness? Because the terrorist suicide bombing explanation suits everyone. Americans are comfortable spending their resources searching for the Al Qaeda bogeyman; the real perpetrators take cover behind the Al Qaeda label; and Afghan officials are absolved of complicity or incompetence and the responsibility to properly investigate. The steadily worsening situation in southern Afghanistan is not the work of some ineffable Al Qaeda nebula. It is the result of the real depredations of the corrupt and predatory government officials whom the United States ushered into power in 2001, supposedly to help fight Al Qaeda, and has assiduously maintained in power since, along with an "insurgency" manufactured whole cloth across the border in Pakistan--a U.S. ally. The evidence of this connection is abundant: Taliban leaders strut openly around Quetta, Pakistan, where they are provided with offices and government-issued weapons authorization cards; Pakistani army officers are detailed to Taliban training camps; and Pakistani border guards constantly wave self-proclaimed Taliban through checkpoints into Afghanistan. [snip] This state of affairs is so bewildering that Kandaharis have reached an astonishing conclusion: The United States must be in league with the Taliban. They reason that America, with its power and riches, could bring an end to the "insurgency" in a month, if it so chose. They figure that America remains a close and munificent ally of Pakistan, the country that is sponsoring the "insurgency," and so the continuing violence must be a deliberate element of U.S. policy. The point is not whether there is any factual basis for this notion, it's that everyone here believes it. In other words, in a stunning irony, much of this city, the Taliban's former stronghold, is disgusted with the Americans not because of their Western culture, but because of their apparent complicity with Islamist extremists. A closed circuit of shortsighted policies has brought the United States to this pass: All other goals, such as democracy and reconstruction, have been consistently subordinated to the obsession with Al Qaeda, despite lip service to the contrary. Until U.S. decision makers change course and take responsibility for the situation they have created; until they demand accountability from the provincial officials they ushered into power; until they provide material support to those Afghans brave enough to assist them; until they react as strongly to the death of a respected Afghan official as to a grenade lobbed at a military convoy, the ring of fear will continue to close in on Kandahar, until, as residents are now predicting, the city is at war again. Sarah Chayes runs Arghand, a cooperative business in Kandahar, where she has lived since late 2001. She was a Paris-based reporter for National Public Radio from 1997-2001." [Emphasis mine - mfi] You can read the whole thing here. markfromireland

Women and Children First

Whenever I go to the USA I'm always shocked at the dire level of poverty in the country. The USA government itself admits that one sixth of its children live in poverty. I've been stopped by children and asked for food. Not even money for food just food. This photograph taken yesterday Thursday March 30, 2006 is of a mother holding her sick child as she begs on the streets of Baghdad. I've previously published photographs of Iraqi children scavenging in garbage dumps for food. When Bush and his corrupt government said they wanted to remake Iraq in America's image they were, for once, telling the truth. Go home and stay there most Iraqis believe that Saddams's regime was better than what America and her allies have managed to do in their racist colonial takeover of Iraq. That is a uniquely shameful achievement. Well done. markfromireland

Jill Carroll Released Rejoice - but remember

(Jill Carroll helping to prepare traditional food at the home of Iraqi friends. Photo dates from 2005 and was released by her family. Click the graphic to see full size.) "Abducted Carroll released in Iraq US journalist freed almost four months after being abducted at gunpoint on Baghdad street. BAGHDAD - US journalist Jill Carroll has been released almost 12 weeks after being abducted at gunpoint on a Baghdad street, Sunni politician Tariq al-Hashimi said on Thursday. "She is free and is with me right now," Hashimi said, but did not give further details. The journalist, who was freelancing for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was seized on January 7 in the Iraqi capital by armed men who shot dead her interpreter. Her release came a week after US and British forces rescued three other Western hostages who had been held captive in Iraq for almost four months and followed an appeal by her twin sister Katie on Wednesday. Hashimi said Carroll, 28, did not wanted her pictures to be taken by the media. Carroll had appeared in three videos broadcast on Arab television since she was seized while she was on her way to meet Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi at his office in Baghdad. Carroll's captors set numerous deadlines threatening to kill her if US-led forces failed to release all female detainees in Iraq. "It has been nearly two months since the last video of my sister was broadcast. We have had no contact with her nor received any information about her condition," Katie Carroll had said in her appeal on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television. "I've been living a nightmare, worrying if she is hurt or ill. There is no one I hold closer to my heart than my sister and I am deeply worried wondering how she is being treated. No family should have to endure having their loved one taken away from them in this way," she said. She said her sister, who lived in Iraq for three years, "has many Iraqi friends, and respects their culture. My sister has always had special praise for the strength and resilience of Iraqi women and mothers. "I also hope that those with Jill have come to know her - that they recognize what a wonderful person she is and realize that they can show the world that they are merciful to an innocent woman by returning her safely home to us," she said. Last Thursday, the three aid workers from the Christian Peacemaker Teams - Canadians Harmeet Sooden, 32, and Jim Loney, 41, and Briton Norman Kember, 74 - were found together in a house in western Baghdad. They were bound, but the house was otherwise empty and not a shot was fired. Their US colleague Tom Fox, seized with them in Baghdad on November 26, was slain three weeks ago and his body found dumped in the city. At least 430 foreigners are known to have been taken hostage in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion, a US diplomat said in Baghdad earlier this month. They include around 40 US nationals, some of them Iraqi-Americans. " Source: Middle East Online As we celebrate Jill Caroll's release let us remember that her interpeter Allan Enwiya's widow is mourning her husband who was murdered during Jill Caroll's abduction. That thousands of Iraqis are being kidnapped, tortured, murdered, orphaned , made homeless. That journalists in particular are being targetted. Let us also remember the families of those soldiers in the armies of occupation who have had members of their family killed, wounded, mentally scarred. Rejoice yes, but keep the pressure up. I'll leave the last word to a gracious and courageous woman who has undergone a terrible ordeal: markfromireland

For One Old Brit In Particular

Enjoy

Shadow of a Gunman

"There is an ugliness that can be made beautiful, and there is an ugliness that can only be destroyed, and this is part of that ugliness." - Sean O'Casey. "Shadow of a Gunman" Act 2. Leave Iraq Now.

Aromatic, Joyful, Singing

This is Shad Mohammed, she's a six year old girl from Baghdad. On Monday March 27th 2006 she became an orphan. "Shad" is a contraction, a nickname, her full given name could be either "Shadha" which means "Aromatic," or Shadiya which means "Singing, as in 'Singing for Joy' " or perhaps Shadmani which means "Joy or happiness." Either way she was given her name by two people in joy and love and happiness that she'd been born and nurtured her as best they could. Look carefully at her. She's been dressed with care and love by her parents, her hair has been dressed, and now she's covered in blood and being comforted by a neighbour. Look at her face - the poor child is numb. So would you be if the two most important people in your world had just been killed in front of you. God help her when the numbness wears off. I doubt if her life is going to be aromatic, or joyful, or one with much singing in it for a hell of a long time. She is now an orphan in an impoverished society being callously and wantonly ripped apart by the "Multi National Coalition." Her prospects are grim. Her parents were killed in an attack by what the Western media obediently taking their cue from US and UK military spokesmen refer to as "insurgents." We'll probably never know who killed her parents. Or why. They were just more "collateral damage" as is Shad. Whoever murdered her parents was doing just what George W. Bush his corrupt henchmen and his ally Tony Blair wanted them to do. The blood covering this child is on their hands quite as much, if not more, as on hands of the men who murdered Shad's parents. markfromireland

Who is this child and why is he holding a photograph?

This child's name is Ali Fadhil. He is holding a photograph of his dead brother Hussein Fadhil. Mourning their murdered brother Hussein along with Ali are his brothers Mohammed (second left,) Yusuf (third left,) and Ibrahim (second right.) Hussein was killed by a bomb as he walked into his school via it's front gate. Last Sunday, Sunday March 26th 2006, Hussein Fadhil became "collateral damage" in the civil war deliberately being fomented by the United States of America in Iraq. The current American government is responsible for first starving Hussein Fadhil's country. Then making up lies to invade it. Now they are brutally tearing it apart. Hussein Fadhil was thirteen years old when he was murdered. Look at the photograph again. Do you notice how Ali and his brothers have brown skin, brown eyes, and dark hair? Do you notice how Ali's head is covered. Oh well, he is brown and a raghead - so Ali is not a real human being at all and neither was his brother. Because he is brown (and a raghead) it is perfectly fine for the corrupt incompetent and racist Bush administration to wreck his country and start a civil war there. Once America was a force for good. Now it is a force for evil. The same as it has been in all its colonial wars. Colonialisnm is always evil. America fought its first war so that it could stop being a colony. You still have the chance to be a force for good again there's one first step: Leave Iraq now. Go home and stay there.

"Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding"

Enveloped in a sentiment, a sound that rushes over me. Engage an impulse to pretend I have a faith as pure. Not forgetting what it means to dream. Indulging everything. Entertaining thoughts that I've the strength of those I yearn to be. Cheers and tribute greet the saviours. Reckless thoughts survive. Anachronistic and impulsive. And what will happen? Will I dream? I am too scared to close my eyes. For a second please hold me. None can change in me these things that I believe. But I don't know what happens now. I am too scared to close my eyes Legion (Anachron)

Children of Abraham - Death in the Desert

Children of Abraham - Death in the Desert This is a must watch flash presentation Click here to view Hat tip - commenter Bob at "Today in Iraq" Did American Marines murder 23 Iraqi civilians? If you read this article in the UK Independent the answer to that question is seems to be "yes." The last paragraph which reads as follows: "There appears to be a distinct pattern of misinformation," complained Lt-Col Johnson. "This is another clear sign of that happening, making allegations for the sake of prompting media reporting and attempting to discredit coalition operations. This is a pattern we've seen the terrorist-backed insurgency use repeatedly." My heart is breaking for poor Lt-Col Johnson - no really … Then there's this from the UK Times: Iraqis killed by US troops ‘on rampage’ THE villagers of Abu Sifa near the Iraqi town of Balad had become used to the sound of explosions at night as American forces searched the area for suspected insurgents. But one night two weeks ago Issa Harat Khalaf heard a different sound that chilled him to the bone. Khalaf, a 33-year-old security officer guarding oil pipelines, saw a US helicopter land near his home. American soldiers stormed out of the Chinook and advanced on a house owned by Khalaf’s brother Fayez, firing as they went. Khalaf ran from his own house and hid in a nearby grove of trees. He saw the soldiers enter his brother’s home and then heard the sound of women and children screaming. “Then there was a lot of machinegun fire,” he said last week. After that there was the most frightening sound of all — silence, followed by explosions as the soldiers left the house. Once the troops were gone, Khalaf and his fellow villagers began a frantic search through the ruins of his brother’s home. Abu Sifa was about to join a lengthening list of Iraqi communities claiming to have suffered from American atrocities. According to Iraqi police, 11 bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the house, among them four women and five children aged between six months and five years. An official police report obtained by a US reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers said: “The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people.*” [snip] The problem for the Pentagon is that every new incident involving civilian deaths triggers a new wave of anti-American fervour. Last week Jalal Abdul Rahman told this newspaper about the death in January of his 12- year-old son Abdul. It was a Sunday evening and father and son were driving home after buying a new game for the boy’s PlayStation. They were a few hundred yards from their home in the Karkh neighbourhood of Baghdad when — according to Rahman — US forces opened fire on the car, killing Abdul. Soldiers approached the car and told Rahman he had failed to stop when ordered to do so. Rahman said he had never heard an order to stop. The soldiers searched the car and, as they departed, they threw a black body bag on the ground. “They said, ‘This is for your son,’ and they left me there with my dead son,” he added. Rahman claimed he had had nothing to do with the insurgency until that moment. “But this is America, the so-called guardian of humanity, and killing people for them is like drinking water. I shall go after them until I avenge the blood of my son.” Yes truly my heart is breaking for poor Lt-Col Johnson - it must be so difficult to repeat the stuff he repeats and keep a straight face. … * Quote from the attribution to the Knight Ridder story: "Three Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondents contributed to this report. Their identities are being withheld for security reasons." I wonder who they're afraid of do you?

Some incidents

Here are just a few of today's "incidents" in Iraq from various agencies. Gunmen opened fire at the car of Mohammed Amin Mohammed, judge of Al-Karkh Criminal Court, in the Al-Horria area of Baghdad. The judge was seriously wounded and he was rushed to Al-Kathimiya Hospital for treatment. In northeastern Baaquba, Ismail Elwan head (equivalent to deputy mayor) of Al-Wajihiya District survived an attmpt on his life when an improvised explosive device targeting his motorcade blew up wounding three of his bodyguards. In northeastern Baaquba gunmen killed an Iraqi policeman and a family member. In Kirkuk a bomb planted in front of Al-Muqdad police chief Adel Zain Al-Abdeen's, blew up as he was leaving his house to go to work. He escaped unharmed. Othere weren't so lucky: A 13-year-old schoolboy was killed by a roadside bomb as he walked to school in Basra. Two schoolboys aged 12 and 15 were killed by a bomb at a checkpoint in Baaquba. A bomb outside their home in Baghdad wrecked this Shi'ite family's home. (You can tell they're Shi'ite by looking at the picture they've managed to salvage it's of Imam Hussein. Click the image to see the larger version if it's not clear from the thumbnail.) I wonder how that child will feel about the people who invaded his country and then did their best to carve it up by fannning the flames of sectarianism when he grows up. Sectarianism wasn't a major issue in Iraq before the US and it's allies occupied the place. At least this child survived this time let's hope he survives the next. Leave. Update MIL-IRAQ-SWEETS-EXPLOSIVES Iraqi authorities warn of exploding candy distributed by gunmen in Baghdad BAGHDAD, March 26 (KUNA) - Iraqi Ministry of State for National Security on Sunday warned of touching explosive-packed candy bars found on Baghdad streets. The ministry said that unknown gunmen threw candy bars that contain explosive materials nearby schools and residential areas in Yarmouk Neighborhood. It cautioned citizens against touching these candy bars, asserting that the first layer of which contained cocoa, while the second layer contained explosives. (end) mhg. fhd Comment : If true this is a trick learnt from the Russians when they occupied Afghanistan. KUNA tend to be reliable I don't have any reason to doubt this report. mfi