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Annals of Liberation: Bush Surge Accelerates Assault on Iraq Academics

‘Security Forces’ Rob Baghdad Academics (Sunday Times)

One of the most curious, and ominous, aspects of life in the Bush gang’s Babylonian satrapy has been the continual, unrelenting and clearly deliberate targeting of Iraq’s academics, intellectuals, technicians – basically, anyone who might be capable of independent thought and action, transcending the sectarian, ethnic and tribal cliques empowered by Bush’s aggression, and outside the control of the occupiers and their sycophants as well.

The sectarians,

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Untamed Atrocity: “Creative Destruction” at Work in Baghdad

Car Bombs Kill at Least 60 at Baghdad Market (New York Times)

The intent of bombings such as this is clear: someone is trying to draw out the Shiite militias – specifically, the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, the only powerful armed faction in Iraq that maintains a quasi-independence from the Americans, the Iranians, the Ayatollah Sistani and the Maliki government.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cannot simply attack the Mahdi Army directly as part of the “dazzling” surge he

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A Man in Full: Bush’s Sexual Fantasies About Bin Laden

The Angry Arab unearths this insight into the true mindset of America’s oh-so-Christian commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, from a Haaretz review of a new biography of Bush’s soulmate and mentor, Ariel Sharon. Like a DNA sample from a spittlefleck, this little glimpse of Bush gives us the man in his entirety, in his essence: the empty bluster of an impotent drunk; the ineradicable vulgarity of the fratboy mentality; and the uncontrollable sexual panic of a harshly repressed psyche expressing its thwarted nature in fantasies of rape and

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Picture Perfect: The Greedy Goons of Troon

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I think this photo accompanying the New York Times story about rich old bastards in the Arizona town of Troon (guess they dropped the “Pol” from the name) dodging taxes at the expense of children’s education pretty much says it all. Here’s a portrait of an Authentic American Type, the ham-handed, pork-bellied “I got mine so screw you, buddy” backbone of the Republican Party.

A School District With Low Taxes and No Schools
(New

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Tortured Past: It Didn’t Start With Dubya

As the Bush Regime hurtles toward its Dubyadämmerung in 2008, with the distinct possibility of a Democratic administration taking its place, it becomes increasingly important to remind ourselves of the bipartisan nature of the policies that the Bushists have promoted so ruthlessly during their time at the top. The only thing radical about Bush-Cheney statecraft has been the brazenness and crudity with which they have pursued long-standing goals and practices of the American Establishment. While it is certainly true that even a

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Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq

This story was published at Truthout.org.

I. Paint it Black
Imagine a city torn by sectarian strife. Competing death squads roam the streets; terrorists stage horrific attacks. Local authority is distrusted and weak; local populations protect the extremists in their midst, out of loyalty or fear. A bristling military occupation exacerbates tensions at every turn, while offering prime targets for bombs and snipers. And behind the scenes, in a shadow world of double-cross and double-bluff, covert units of the

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Coin of the Realm: The Elite’s Long History of Corruption and Betrayal

Same as it ever was: elitist fat-cats – sorry, well-connected, respectable businessmen – playing both sides to skim the rich, red cream of blood money sluicing through the backrooms of governments at war. You can see it today in Congressional hearings on the gargantuan corruption of George W. Bush’s criminal rampage in Iraq – but it was there in the very beginning, as Mark Scaramella of the Anderson Valley Advertiser reports in a terrific piece in CounterPunch: Our Founding War Profiteers. It’s an excellent, detailed slice of our

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Ersatz Apocalypto: Slaughter and Spin in the Battle for Najaf

*This is my latest piece for Truthout.org.*

I. Rashomon in Babylon
It has been cast as a ferocious battle against a mighty opponent: a fanatical “apocalyptic cult” storming the holy city of Najaf with hundreds of warriors led by a self-proclaimed Islamic Messiah, their fren
zy quelled only at the last moment by a massive intervention of American firepower. But as with

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