Two rights

If two wrongs don't make a right, what to do two rights make? In a practical sense, try to imagine a world where President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner enact a compromise that both cuts entitlement spending and eliminates the Bush II tax cuts for the super rich. Heck, they could even eliminate the alternative minimum tax as part of the same compromise. At that point, all Obama would have to do would be ease off the crackdown against job seeking immigrants, and bring the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and it would be 1995 all over again economically.




A dream? More than likely, knowing Washington, D.C., it is a mirage. The devil is in the details. The Clarion Content favors cuts in entitlement benefits (especially for prescription drugs), gradually raising the minimum age for Social Security benefits, reinstating the estate tax on estates worth more than $5 million, higher marginal tax rates on the highest income brackets, lowering and simplifying corporate taxes, along with a libertarian immigration policy.

In backwards order, no one in Washington D.C. has the guts or the political capital to address immigration policy. Obama would have been far better served to start there rather than with health care policy. Bush II was going to produce a benevolent immigration policy towards Latinos before 9/11. His failure to do so afterward is one of the great tragedies of his administration.

Lowering and simplifying corporate taxes, lots of folks in D.C. claim to support this one, yet somehow it never happens. This is the second biggest factor, after structural adjustment, for the current unemployment malaise. Lowering corporate taxes incentivizes job creation.

Higher marginal taxes on the richest of Richie Rich's and bringing back the estate tax for the very wealthy. Somehow the upper crust and their lobbyists always manage to turn this into a populist issue. At first amazing, the narrative of American capitalism has now absorbed this myth so completely and seen it defended so assiduously that to tax the rich is to attack the very basis of freedom.

Social Security is the 3rd rail and entitlement benefits are the next-door neighbors. Is anyone in D.C., even President Obama, brave enough to touch the 3rd rail of American politics? Has anyone heard from Representative Paul Ryan since he mentioned cutting Social Security and other entitlement benefits?

We know that no politician who falls anywhere on the political spectrum between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich has the guts to say that Bush II's wars of choice have been colossal wastes that have devoured American blood and treasure, but now are sunk costs. Osama is dead. No one can force Afghanistan to cohere without a totalitarian government.¹ Withdraw already.

But much like the "big" budget deal itself, that is probably just a dream that will disappear into the daily grind of realpolitik.


¹ In Iraq, America has fucked up so badly that the best play now may be to be to keep the troops there lest Iran station its tank divisions on the border of Saudi Arabia. So even though the Clarion has long advocated withdrawal from Iraq, and three, separate, new, nation-states, we may be beginning to lose faith in the viability of that option.

Bush II's failures

Bush and Rummy alone in the Oval Office

The litany of King George the II's failures is colossal. However, as the brilliant policy analysts over at George Friedman's Stratfor point out, any list of the impacts of Bush II's disastrous blunders would be incomplete without mentioning how his pointless, self-indulgent, avenge my father's failures, war in Iraq led America to ignore developments in Russia.

During the reign of King George the II, as American blood and treasure were being thrown overboard directly into the Persian Gulf, when Saddam was being replaced with civil war and instability, and the price of oil (read: unleaded gasoline) was shooting into the stratosphere, Russia took a turn for the worse. Bush the II, clown prince that he was, rather than being focused on global political stability or the global economy, wanted an easy triumph, thus, an offensive war against what was perceived to be the most topple-able of his ludicrous axis of evil.¹

What did that cost strategically in Russia and its sphere of influence?

Statfor says, "This gave Russia a window of opportunity with which to accelerate its crackdown inside (and later outside) Russia without fear of a Western response. During this time, the Kremlin ejected foreign firms, nationalized strategic economic assets, shut down nongovernmental organizations, purged anti-Kremlin journalists, banned many anti-Kremlin political parties and launched a second intense war in Chechnya."

This loss of focus on the big geostrategic picture cost reformers and potential democrats behind former Iron Curtain dearly. While King George the II was making Faustian bargains with the dictators of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, to support his was war of choice, Putin was able to claim he was doing the same with the vile dictator of Belarus and a range of puppets in the Ukraine, Georgia and Chechnya.² The loss of United States credibility made it tremendously difficult for America to have any leverage to resist Putin's Machiavellian scheming.

Ahhhh, King George the II... Will America ever recover from your reign? Sadly, it is debatable.


¹Grouping Iraq, Iran and North Korea demonstrated Bush II and his policymakers had the foreign policy vision of a five year-old on the playground. "We are the good guys. You are the bad guys. Now it's war..."

²The United States's resources and credibility to support political reformers in Ukraine and Georgia was badly hampered by war in Iraq. In Chechnya, Bush the II's lumping of all nominally Muslim freedom fighters under the label of terrorist, put America on the side of the dictator against the freedom of the people.

More of the same

We saw another signal that Osama bin Laden's apparent assassination is not going to change much of anything this morning. Both ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today show, neither of which we watch frequently, went directly from stories about bin Laden's death to commercials featuring the chairman of Exxon Mobil.

Aren't those two on the same side, trying to bleed America to death?

Is this a redux?

New dog, old tricks?

We can't believe how many times in the last two years we have had to ask the same question?!? How different is Barry Obama from King George the II?

Despite the craven slobbering of the Obama apologist crowd, the facts are he represents more continuity with George Bush II than we ever expected. This today from The Hot Air Archives,

"Obama’s new Afghanistan ambassador is... Bush’s old Iraq ambassador... That would be Ryan Crocker, of course. Please don’t confuse him with David Petraeus, Obama’s top Afghanistan commander who used to be … Bush’s top Iraq commander. Or with Robert Gates, Obama’s Secretary of Defense who used to be … Bush’s Secretary of Defense.

Gates, of course, is stepping down in a few months. At this rate, I wonder if O will replace him with Rumsfeld."

Oh wait, no we forget, Obama's policy is more nuanced. He is using more remote control drones to shoot missiles into Pakistani villages...

As the author of the Hot Air piece notes, the only saving grace of this appointment would be if it is political cover for the President to back away from his dangerously foolish pledge to keep United States troops on the ground in Afghanistan until 2015. The Clarion Content has long held that there is no political center with which to form a congruent Western style State in Afghanistan. There is no more right or reason to prop up a Hamid Karzai than there is a Muammar Gaddafi or a Bashar al-Assad. (Barry and Hillary are backing only one of those other two, this month.)

Egypt's presumed revolution

As we warned in these pages last month, there was no revolution in Egypt. All the protestors in Tahir Square were able to accomplish was regime change. They got old Hosni Mubarak out and insured that his fat cat son would not succeed him as ruler. The state apparatus did not change. The military remained in charge. Events yesterday in Cario continued to underline this dramatic and disappointing reality.

According the Washington Post, "Angry anti-government demonstrators returned to Tahrir Square late Saturday, some declaring that they were ready to face martyrdom, less than a day after Egypt’s military rulers used force to break up a protesters’ camp in the place where their revolution began. Angry anti-government demonstrators returned to Tahrir Square late Saturday, some declaring that they were ready to face martyrdom, less than a day after Egypt’s military rulers used force to break up a protesters’ camp in the place where their revolution began."

On the ground in Egypt, it is evident that the regime is being run by the same ilk as it has been for more than fifty years, military statists. This is why demonstrators refuse to simply fade away.

Read the whole ugly story here in the Washington Post.

Of course, the regime is backtracking and putting a PR cover into play.

New spy plane?

Amateur skywatchers have tracked down America's latest spy plane the X-37B. The plane which looks like a miniature version of the space shuttle is pictured above this column. It is unmanned and flown remotely. According to Wired, "The X-37B has generated intense interest, long before it ever left the ground. Boeing originally developed the twenty-nine foot ...craft... Then, the military took over in 2004, and the space plane went black. Its payloads were classified, its missions hush-hush."

Why it has such a cargo sized hold has been a matter of intense speculation. Space observers have tracked the plane following its second launch into orbit last week. Reportedly, "The X-37B is traveling in a slightly elliptical orbit more than 200 miles up, swooping from 43 degrees north latitude to 43 degrees south." According the expert Wired talked to, Brian Weeden, a former Air Force Space Command officer, now with the Secure World Foundation, the X-37B is orbiting around the fat middle of the planet, flying over the Middle East, Africa, and much of China, giving up global coverage, but getting more frequent passes. The orbit suggests that the space plane is spying.

Presidential Irony

How bitter is the irony of Obama playing Nixon to Bush II's LBJ in the Middle East? In this scenario Bush's Dad is Kennedy, cautiously engaging in Iraq the same way Kennedy was only willing to dip America's toes into Vietnam. Bush I let the Shi'ites get massacred by Saddam because he was unwilling to commit to a drive on Baghdad. The follies of the son have shown this was the more prudent, if less moral, policy.

Here is Obama, following Bush II's LBJ, after a disastrous War with a massive cost of blood and treasure, he is married to staying the course. But why, Mr. President? For Nixon, the answer was ideological, but Obama is a pragmatist.

Iraq has yet to form a government and civil war is never more than a moment away. Afghanistan is mired in corruption and warlordism. In Pakistan, the United States is on the side of the anti-democrats. America is on the side of the dictators in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Bahrain, too, yet Colonel Quaddafi must go? Alas and alack.

Where is the administration's analysis for maintaining a massive, resented, military presence in Afghanistan? What about supporting an independent Kurdistan? A democratic Pakistan? Why support the status quo in Yemen and Bahrain?

Much like we would have voted for McGovern over Nixon, we should have gone Kucinich or Paul over Obama.

Obama and Libya

One more reality check for all the Obama apologists shoveling the bullshit filled buckets labeled "Change". The Obama administration, over Congressional objections, had been pushing a $77 million deal to provide at least 50 refurbished armored troop carriers to Moammar Gadhafi's army. Congress had stalled the deal which would have benefited the massive multinational arms dealer, BAE.

This is different from what King George the II was up to how? Rhetorically? We are supposed to take solace in although the Obama administration is more of the same, he at least denies that he is on the side of the dictators and the huge companies that profit from their existence? Isn't that actually worse? At least, we, the People, knew where George Bush II stood. He made no bones about the fact that he was screwing the little guy into the ground to help the Kenneth Lays of the world. The Associated Press reports, "General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman were among companies listed as attending the 2008 and 2010 Libya Defense and Security Exhibition in Tripoli."

BAE is a British firm with a United States subsidiary, BAE Systems, Inc., listed in 2010 as the nation's 12th largest government contractor. It is headquartered in Rockville, Md. It is a classic case of the rotten junction of politics, money and the military industrial complex. The company's board is chaired by former Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command; former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, an Obama foreign policy mentor; and former Bush administration Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff.

Some change, Mr. President. Obama spouts a lot of rhetoric, then sells arms to Libya anyway, while green lighting tax relief for the very richest Americans. Nice work, Barry

What happened in Egypt...

The Clarion Content is not a fan of seeing United States foreign policy conducted on a strictly pragmatic calculus. We do, however, support a pragmatic understanding of how events on the world stage play out. That is to say, sometimes foreign policy's motives have to be idealist, but interpretations of outcomes and results must be realist.

It is through this lens that we want to note that we strongly agree with George Friedman and Strafor's analysis of events in Egypt in recent weeks.

The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had. This has caused worldwide shock and awe...We do not want to be killjoys now, since everyone is so excited and happy. But we should point out that, in spite of the crowds, nothing much has really happened yet in Egypt. It doesn’t mean that it won’t, but it hasn’t yet.

An 82-year-old man has been thrown out of office, and his son will not be president. The constitution and parliament are gone and a military junta is in charge. The rest is speculation.

The great majority of the Western media is running around foolishly asserting that there has been a revolution. This wild overclaim only shows the distortion between their hype-skewed lens and events on the ground. The Wikipedia entry on these events, for example, is hyperbolically headed, "Egyptian Revolution of 2011."

Egypt and King George's olive branch

Mubarak and Condi yuk it up...

Remember the heady days in the middle of the reign of King George II, when a moment of calm, a lull, an eye in the maelstrom of Iraq's civil war, allowed the mad king to dream of democratic contagion. It was argued for a moment that like so many of Kissinger's dominoes the dictatorships of the Middle East were going to morph into peaceful bucolic multi-party democracies. There was the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, that; that is going well. There was also the full-court press on Egyptian President Hosni Murbarak who made just enough of the right noises to pass the muster of Condi Rice. A sad sack herself, she will go down in history as a world-class dupe.

Sadly, the Obama Administration represents continuity within the American Empire rather than fundamental change, as things stand, Veep Joe Biden is now playing the Condi role. Unfortunately, the fire brigades brought in during the mad reign of King George the II, as they did in so many other places, threw fuel, rather than water, on the fire. Egypt has gone from smoldering to smoking. Faux moves toward democracy gave Murbarak what he thought was cover to attempt to squash and imprison leading voices of dissent and plurality. There were no real changes or democratic accommodations. Mubarak, and more importantly the people of Egypt, fully expect his son to succeed him under the status quo ante. America has ignored, to its detriment, any moderates within the powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

Today a full-fledged uprising grips Egypt. Stock market worldwide are tumbling in response. Gold and crude oil prices are soaring.

What a wonderful world.

Bomb a nuclear weapons program?

There is more than one way to bomb a nuclear weapons program, as the CIA and Mossad showed today, allegedly. Twin blasts in Iran killed a top nuclear scientist and maimed another today; unidentified motorcycle riders sped past their vehicles in different parts of the capital Tehran attaching bombs to the windows which detonated seconds later.

Right out of a movie.

Thanks to our friends at Rantburg for the heads up.

The War in Iraq, reflections

John McCain could not have done any worse...or two sides of the same coin

The Clarion Content is not usually a big fan of Frank Rich of the New York Times Op-Ed page. While well meaning, we feel like, on occasion, Rich overclaims his case to the detriment of the point he is trying to make. Since we are often guilty of the same, perhaps we are more troubled by this habit than most of his audience.

This past week, however, in light of President Barry Obama disgusting and shameful speech given shortly after United States troop strength in Iraq was cut to only 50,000, Rich penned a gem. He quoted Boston University professor of history and international relations Andrew Bacevich, who as a West Point-trained officer served in Vietnam and the first gulf war and whose son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007. The Pentagon under Obama is rebranding Operation Iraqi Freedom as Operation New Dawn — a “name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid." But despite Obama's, Cheney's and Bush II's attempts to whitewash history, the reality is far different.

Bacevich continues, "common decency demands that we reflect on all that has occurred in bringing us to this moment...The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget."

Rich reminds us of the obvious fabrication, even at the time, of Rummy's pet attack dog, Paul Wolfowitz. Iraq's oil revenue was going to pay for the costs of the war to the American taxpayer. After over 100,000 deaths, over a trillion dollars of American tax dollars and one global crash later, dear readers, you should read the whole Rich article.

Find it here.

Some Olive branch

In the vast array of lies told by King George the II and his advisers it is easy to sometimes forget a few. One of the whoppers that Bush-Cheney brought to us, not quite as patently false as the Iraqi's have uranium cake, but perhaps more politically significant, was that America's invasion is bringing peace throughout the region. Look at the knock on effects, places like Lebanon are being becoming peaceful and democratic.

It seems hard to believe but once upon a time, Lebanon was referred to as the Switzerland of the Middle East. It was looked upon as beacon of multi-cultural, pluralistic statehood. Of course, that was gone back in the Reagan era, long before King George even got the silver spoon out of his mouth. However, he and Dick had the temerity to claim that invading Iraq had once again led to multi-ethnic, inter-religious peace in Lebanon.

That was lie was put to bed a couple years ago when Israeli and Hezbollah fought a war in southern Lebanon. The Bushies and their delusional friends claimed that because this was a war prosecuted by Hezbollah and that all that needed to happen was for the right government to be put in place in "democratic" Lebanon and peace would flower.

Of course, multiple offensive wars against fellow Muslims helped continue the process of radicalizing the entire state, insuring the next war Israel fights in Lebanon will not only be against Hezbollah, but also against the army of the state of Lebanon. Well done, a-holes.

We saw a little precursor earlier this month. According to the Debka file, "By its cross-border sniper attack on Israeli forces Tuesday, August 3, which provoked a major clash, the Lebanese Army laid down a new fact of life in the Middle East: The next war against Israel will be fought - not only by the Hezbollah militia, but by the Lebanese army. Its mission has been merged with the radical objectives of the Iran-backed terrorist group."

Wait, no olive branch? We thought King George the II's other Middle East achievements brought peace and multi-party democracy to Lebanon?

The Debka File continues, "The border tensions brewing for weeks on the Lebanese-Israel border boiled over...into a heavy exchange of cross-border fire. Lt. Col. Dov Harari, 45, from Netanya, brigade commander of the eastern Lebanese border sector, was killed on Israeli soil...Lebanon reported three soldiers and one civilian killed in heavy Israeli retaliation.

When the shooting started, the Israeli officers were watching Israeli soldiers clearing brush on their side of the border near Kibbutz Misgav Am opposite the Lebanese village of Adeisseh to clear the line of vision for surveillance cameras. The UN later confirmed that it had been given due notice of the work and had informed the Lebanese government in advance.

The incident escalated when Israel opened up with tank, artillery and helicopter fire and the Lebanese brought in mortars and RPGs."

Wow, we had been told by Dick and his King that Lebanon was another of those places that benefited from their offensive war in Iraq.

Maybe not so much.

Scene from another angle

The country of Vietnam marked thirty-five years since the end of war by staging a re-enactment of the fall of the Saigon. There, of course, it was viewed as the liberation of Saigon. Tens of thousands of people gathered in front of the former presidential palace residence to watch a play recounting the history of the country from ancient times to when the North's tanks smashed through the gates of the presidential palace, leading to the surrender of the southern government. This was probably not something much noticed by policymakers in the Obama administration, but perhaps it should have been.

The BBC noted in its coverage that the Vietnam War claimed the lives of three million Vietnamese and more than 60,000 US soldiers. This puts paid to all the ludicrous reports from Iraq and Afghanistan about the number of insurgents killed or captured. Read that again, the United States killed three million of theirs to losses of only 60,000 of its own troops, a ratio of more than 50 to 1. The lesson United States policymakers must draw: ultimately it was their country. Like the French before them, America's occupying troops were inevitably going to leave at some point. The Vietnamese knew this, they could simply outlast United States desires. Furthermore, they did not have anywhere else they could go.

This is just as true in Iraq and Afghanistan. Violent dissent can and will outlast American soldiers, because those soldiers will inevitably eventually leave. Afghanis already learned this lesson with the Soviets. The Iraqis learned it from the British. Nor do the Afghanis and Iraqis have anywhere else to go. Afghani refugees are being turned back from Australia. Iraqi refugees, even those who served the Armed Forces, are being denied the right to immigrate to America. If one knows their enemy will eventually leave, and one has no or very limited options to leave oneself, why submit to the external attempt to impose a way of life? By geographical fiat, the battle of wills is one-sided.

The BBC reports that Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet said in a speech at the ceremony, "The country's status in the international arena has been lifted while its people's lives increasingly improved." They note, "Vietnam remains under communist rule and the government keeps tight control over politics and the media. But its economy has improved dramatically since the war, and diplomatic relations have resumed with the United States."

This outcome and this lesson has already been absorbed by the leadership and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. The key issue is whether or not it has been absorbed by the Obama administration. There is no amount of blood and treasure that is sufficient enough to win when the enemy knows that your norms inherently dictate that you will eventually leave. American can out kill them by 50-1 and it will not be enough. They live there and have nowhere else to go. It is not a question for Obama of being more resolute, the enemy already perceives, if not him, then somebody else, somebody must eventually withdraw the troops. They will out last America, they have outlasted much more despotic conquerors. And America is not pure enough to claim to have changed hearts and minds. There has been too much collateral damage.

As the irascible Molly Irvins once said, "Let's get out of Iraq before we kill more Iraqis than Saddam did." To the Clarion Content, that means asap. And please, oh pragmatist President Obama, cross-apply this lesson and let America make all due haste to withdraw from Afghanistan as well.

Iraq, tensions continue to burble

Iraq is still living with intense sectarian tensions as a slew of coordinated bombings in Baghdhad reiterated yesterday. Initial estimates say that sixty-nine people were killed in bombings, mostly in the predominately Shi'ite neighborhood of Sadr City, but also elsewhere including a Sunni part of the city. In recent months bombing frequency has started to rise again from one fatal incident every couple of weeks to one deadly incident per week. Iraqi elections await a recount and that result could refire the low intensity conflict that has reigned since King George the II decided fulfilling his father's unfinished mission was more important than the welfare of his country (let alone his empty promise to uphold and defend the American Constitution).

Iraq: Still no peace

map from globalsecurity.org

Despite the claims of the United States military's propaganda machine, Iraq still simmers. This week saw two major spasms of violence. Their differences underlined the multifaceted nature of the on-going conflict. As the Clarion Content has warned many times previously, Iraq is riven in multiple ways. It has fissures and cracks beyond the most discussed; Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurd. In addition to religion and ethnicity, sectarian, tribal, economic and class tensions among others pressure Iraq.

The first outbreak of horrifying violence was a series of nighttime raids that saw twenty-five people killed. The Los Angeles Times reports gunmen methodically made their way through four homes and killed 25 people in the rural, farming Hawr Rajab district south of Baghdad. They say that, "Many of the victims had been part of the U.S.-backed Awakening movement, Sunni Arab paramilitary groups..." This is the sort of violence that was an epidemic at the height of the Iraqi civil war. In the wake of last months disputed elections this type of assault and intimidation is especially troubling.

The Awakening program was ended when it was co-opted into the Iraqi government's security forces. The surviving Sunni villagers fear that the Shi'ite dominated security forces won't protect them. They tell the Times that many Sunnis Awakening members have been shuffled out of the government's security apparatus and into the bureaucracy. The current government has also arrested the former leader of the Awakening in the area and barred him from running for parliament, accusing him of being a high-ranking member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, despite the fact that the old regime executed some of his immediate relatives.

The Clarion Content has always believed that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. We mean, score settling never ends things, it only leaves the other side thirsting for revenge. This is why the cycle of violence has to be transcended to be ended.

The other more widely reported awful incident of violence in Iraq was seven massive bombs that hit apartment buildings across the Iraqi capital, Baghdhad, killing at least 35 people and wounding more than 140 on Tuesday. The targeted areas are heavily populated by Shiites; some neighborhoods that were bombed had seen fierce sectarian cleansing of Sunnis who used to live there.

The Christian Science Monitor reports American and Iraqi officials blamed Al Qaeda in Iraq, the mostly homegrown Sunni Muslim extremist group, for the attacks. The Monitor notes that residents who live near the sites of the explosions said that they thought that the recent violence was a result of Iraq's post-election political wrangling.

One local resident was quoted, "Why is Iraqi blood being used as a means of political pressure? Those innocent people were working for their families, and the politicians are using us for their political interests. I'm sure the situation will get even worse. We can feel it from the statements from the politicians on TV."

This coordinated bombing is an attack on the social order. It is not targeted, vengeance killing as the night time raids in the Hawr Rajab were. Its victims are more random, broader. It is an effort to destabilize the government and demonstrate its lack of control. This type of violence attempts to undermine the belief of the average Iraqi that civil society is functioning and can function in Iraq.

Both of these incidents demonstrate the likelihood of on-going conflict in Iraq because they show there are so very many rifts and rents in the fabric of what the West calls Iraq. This is of course without even mentioning the unresolved issue of Kurdish independence, which has been dealt with neither by American policymakers nor the Iraqi state.

Bay Bridge nightmare

We were warning you, dear readers, just a few days ago about the massive backlog of infrastructure work America must do. Everything from bridges, to highways, to water mains are falling apart in this country and need a massive capital re-investment. Tragically, the repair work that could and should be done is trading off with America's wars and efforts at nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq. America is pouring the Cold War dividend into the sands of the Near and Middle East where it will disappear without a trace. The central example of failing and old infrastructure we used in this most recent article was the Bay Bridge from Oakland to San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the on-going infrastructure story of the Bay Bridge, the construction and repair issues, caught our attention again this morning in a most horrifying manner. The driver of a Safeway Grocery eighteen-wheeler perished driving the Bay Bridge late last night. He and his eighteen wheel truck plunged to their demise at one of the new S-curves caused by the on-going construction and repair work. According the California Highway Patrol, there have been more than 42 crashes in the curved area since it opened barely two months ago. This was the first fatality. About 3.30am last night, the driver attempted to negotiate the S-curve at too high a speed. He lost control of the truck, plunged through the safety railing, and crashed 200 feet below into Yerba Buena Island, spilling gasoline and produce over a wide area. The driver was pronounced dead at the scene.

Read the whole chilling story here in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Huge explosions rock Iraq

This time they were big enough to catch the attention of the Western media. Two huge car bombs exploded near the central Baghdad compound known as the Green Zone. The BBC is reporting that as many as 90 people may be dead, as many as 265 may be wounded. The force of the explosions was so great that it was felt miles away by their correspondent.

Stability in Iraq exists in name and statistics compiled by Western invaders only. In a dangerous sign of things to come, the Shi-ite spokespeople of the Iraqi government immediately blamed either al-Queda or former Baathists, two groups neither united nor allied, other than in their virulent opposition to the Shia minority running the State.

Smoldering

The violence in Iraq continues unabated. Since America sliced off the tentacles of authority maintained by the ghastly dictator Saddam Hussein no one, and no one group, has been able to regain control of the state.

Violence smolders on, and tragically those allied with the forces of peace and reconciliation are among those most often targeted.

We at the Clarion Content feel a duty to continually remind our readership about this story because of the lack of play it receives in the Amerikkan media now that American soldiers are no longer frequent victims.

Iraq violence spirals on

Despite the American media's loss of interest, despite the Nobel committee's premature award to President Obama, violence continues to mar the day-to-day lives of Iraq citizens, over 100,000 of whom have perished in King George the II's, Dick's and Don's foolish war.

The quieting of the media din has created a false perception in America that things are getting better in Iraq. Unfortunately not true, the reality is America has created the conditions for a vicious civil war that it can do nothing about. There are no safe places in Iraq to hide. Last week during Vice-President Joe Biden's visit there were mortar attacks launched into the ostensibly safest place in Iraq, the heavily fortified Green zone, home of the palatial, Kremlin-esque, United States embassy. Ironically, the bumbling Biden was one of the first to recognize and admit the inevitability of a split in an Iraqi state drawn on a map with little or no consideration of tribal, ethnic and religious divisions.

The chaos is spreading its net wider daily as the United States prepares to drawn down its forces. Fallujah where so many United States servicemen valiantly gave of their lives has seen a recent spike in violence, as competition for control with the central government flares.


Note: It took less than 30 minutes to find the links for this post to ten different incidents of tragic violence in Iraq in the last two weeks. None were in American media sources.