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GOONS AND THEIR FRIENDS
Ian Buruma on the left’s love of tyrants:
One of the most vexing things for artists and intellectuals who live under the compulsion to applaud dictators is the spectacle of colleagues from more open societies applauding of their own free will. It adds a peculiarly nasty insult to injury.
Stalin was applauded by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Mao was visited by a constant stream of worshippers from the West, some of whose names can still produce winces of disgust in China. Castro has basked for years in the adulation of such literary stars as Jose Saramago and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Even Pol Pot found favour among several well-known journalists and academics.
Last year a number of journalists, writers and showbiz figures, including Harold Pinter, Nadine Gordimer, Harry Belafonte and Tariq Ali, signed a letter claiming that in Cuba “there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959 ...”
Latest goon fawned over by the anti-US left: Hugo Chavez, who at least holds the distinction of being elected. More from Buruma:
The danger of Chavism is not a revival of communism, even though Castro is among its main boosters. Nor should anti-Americanism be our main concern. The US can take care of itself. What needs to be resisted, not just in Latin America, is the new form of populist authoritarianism.
Nice phrase, that. Nice description, too, of so many leftoid stances.
UPDATE. Chavez’s former mistess: “At the rate he’s going, his end can only be violent”.
UPDATE II. Young Chavezniks may be cured by meeting their non-charismatic idol. The UK Telegraph’s Colin Freeman reports from a Vienna anti-globo summit:
Revolutionary fervour, [one activist] said, would wane if the pair waffled on too long. “I heard that when people listened to Chavez’s speeches at the main summit last week, they were quite enthusiastic when he started, but not quite so much by the time he ended.”
And there was no escaping a hefty dose of pamphlets bearing titles such as “The evils of the Anglo-American cultural hegemonic model”. If the organisers had cut their paper use by a third, it would have saved a rainforest or two.
This has to be a joke?
“Last year a number of journalists, writers and showbiz figures, including Harold Pinter, Nadine Gordimer, Harry Belafonte and Tariq Ali, signed a letter claiming that in Cuba “there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959 ...”
Let me guess fluffy bunnies, cuddly ducks, sooky lambs all lie down at the glorious helmsmans feet to hear his wisdom?Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 05 14 at 02:19 AM • permalinkIt’s about time we acknowledged Tariq Ali as a showbiz figure, though…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 14 at 02:22 AM • permalinkHugo’s mouth is over-loading his ass. He can beat his war drum up to a point, but that point isn’t far off for him. Noriega learned this, but of course, the Panama Canal was at stake. Hugo has oil. We need it, but aren’t solely dependent on him. He can rave on for a while, suck up to Castro and drag his “ass licking sycophant” (I’ve been looking for the opportunity to steal that line) Evo Mo along for the ride, for now. But I suspect he’ll keep spinning right up to the point where his army surrenders, and the bullet enters his forehead.
Don’t forget one of Australa’s worst offenders:
During Whitlam’s prime ministership, Australia formally acknowledged the Soviet Union’s sovereignty over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, a policy which was reversed by Fraser’s government. These three Baltic states were incorporated into the USSR as a consequence of the notorious Nazi Soviet Pact of 1939. In a paper delivered at the Australian National University in September 1978, Whitlam said that he doubted “all the stories that appear in the newspapers about the treatment of people in Cambodia”. In other words, three years after Pol Pot’s killing fields began operations, Whitlam remained to be convinced that the communist Khmer Rouge was into mass murder - in the face of all evidence.
So Chavez got his start as a Latin American colonel plotting a coup? That’s just too perfect, isn’t it? I couldn’t have made that up, myself. It’s too obvious.
Anyhow, nobody ought to be surprised to see famous left-wingers worshipping a long-winded narcissistic bore. It’s called making a god in your own image.
Posted by P. Froward on 2006 05 14 at 08:44 AM • permalink“Chavez’s former mistess: “At the rate he’s going, his end can only be violent”.”
Soon, one would hope.
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2006 05 14 at 08:51 AM • permalinkThe almost inevitable outcome for Chavez is that he will likely be deposed by a military coup.
But not before poor old Venezuela is reduced to a shambles.
Posted by JJM Ballantyne on 2006 05 14 at 09:01 AM • permalinkChavez can be a major problem over the near term.
This guy is a pop culture revolutionary. And a loose cannon to boot.
With a Stalin or Castro you get the more traditional hardcore revolutionary. With that comes the more predictable and calculated moves. This bozo could do almost anything at anytime, and probably will.
He is very likely to form some form of solidarity pact Iran-read oil supply.
For those of you so cavalier about his little oil feifdom. Ven. runs stuff close to our West Texas grade oil or “Texas Tea”.
It is very refinable and close. We simply don’t have many sources of easily refinable supply that is close. Mexican oil sucks, for instance. So an Iranian embargo, coupled with Ven. and Nigeria could pose a very serious problem.
Yojimbo — Briefly. An oil embargo would turn Howie Dean into Teddie Roosevelt.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 14 at 12:37 PM • permalinkOf course, it’s the “west” presented by these artists and showbiz types an their work and their lifestyles that inspires the revulsion of the Islamic fundamentalists in the first place.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 14 at 12:41 PM • permalinkRichard:
So very true.
The media-entertainment complex spins a non-stop, one-note narrative of American willainy and wickedness for its audineces. Then holds up its manufactured hatred and bigotry as ‘proof’ of American waywardness.
And you can count on weak-willed American elites, who are more interested in being well-liked than in doing the right thing, to be conned and cowed into pandering to such bigotry.
I love the way liberals are always crying about how the American people are not being asked to sacrifice for the war effort. They want to make life as uncomfortable as possible while the real work gets done.
Chavez is doing exactly that: he whips up his people with dramatic tales of conflict with the evil U.S., demanding sacrifices from his people, in order to furhter his own goals.
If history is any guide, this act will get stale eventually.The press dutifully reports without challenge or comment comments like these from Chavez, hoping that people around the world, who are utterly dependent upon the press for the only picture of America they will ever see, will believe them:
He also said that the US President George W. Bush should be put to trial at the international court of justice for having launched genocide in Iraq. “For all the horror it has created around the globe in the course of the past century, the United States’ war machine should be dismantled, since under the current conditions it is a threat against the entire mankind, particularly against our children.”
Chavez added, “The North American empire is the most cruel murderer regime that has ever come to power in world history and a serious threat for all nations.”
He believes the death of the United States had better taken place in the course of the 21st century, because “otherwise the entire world would face the threat of annihilation.”
But, of course, George Bush’s Axis of Evil label was ‘unhelpful,’ ‘inflammatory,’ ‘unnecessarily provocative,’ etc., etc.
Whether it’s Chavez or Ahmadinejad doing the big-mouthing, count on the the allegedly racist-free Left to practice its ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ by giving a pass to our little brown brothers.
“But I suspect he’ll keep spinning right up to the point where his army surrenders, and the bullet enters his forehead.”
That’s usually how US foreign policy plays out for those who don’t take their orders from Washington, though it usually involves an exploding airplane a la Omar Torrijos.
“Anyhow, nobody ought to be surprised to see famous left-wingers worshipping a long-winded narcissistic bore. It’s called making a god in your own image.”
I much prefer a leader who describes the best day of his presidency as catching a big fishy in a man-made lake, stocked by himself.
“The almost inevitable outcome for Chavez is that he will likely be deposed by a military coup.”
Almost happened remember, except that the coup was about as successful as Bush’s plans to overhaul social security. Gotta hand it to the Bushies, they fail consistently.
“He is very likely to form some form of solidarity pact Iran-read oil supply.”
Already has in a way. Venezuela is unofficially a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Iran is about to become a member in June 15.
Young Chavezniks may be cured by meeting their non-charismatic idol.
Some free advice for Hugo to up his charisma with young lefty-types:
1) Lose some weight. You need to look lean and hungry.
2) Grow a five-day beard. It’s so deliciously insouciant.
3) Be good-looking. In a smoldering, brooding, Matt Dillon way.
4) Wear a beret. It’s artsy and militant at the same time.
5) Go by one name. All the great radical Latin heartthrobs need only one name - Evita, Zapata, Madonna…
6) Be dead. Preferably in a hail of bullets.Cosmo — It’s not just their ideology. It’s them. When Tom Cruise and Paris Hilton are your ambassadors to the world….
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 14 at 03:20 PM • permalink#17 - wow, that’s even more yawnworthy than usual.
Now, if I say to Addamo, “Big fan of Chavez, are ya?”, he’ll say no. Just because a lefty criticizes your critique of a nasty, doesn’t mean they support the nasty. Apparently. Haven’t quite figured that out yet. I think it has something to do with their reflexive need to dispute everything you say, even if they’re not big fans of the thing you’re slamming. They’re kinda like teenagers that way. Well, in most ways, really.
Addamo intrudes to argue in favor of the fascist suckups.
Over the last century the USA has been the enemy of the worst tyrannies in human history, and for the most part the major reason they were overthrown. Militarisms gone mad, the mass-murdering Commies, and the even worse mass-murdering Nazis, all were the enemies the US opposed. Without the efforts of the USA the tyrants would have triumphed.
Since the end of the Cold War the US has used its power not to aggrandize itself but to try to stop mass murder, increase the world’s prosperity by sensible economic and political governance, and feed the hungry. Addamo and his fellow fascist suckups sneer at all this, they prefer the mass murderers. They buy into the self-serving fantasies that people like Chavez and Chomsky peddle denouncing the USA.
You want a world without the USA Addamo? You can see what it will look like. The best alternative is Tibet, tyrannized by foreign conquerers. A common one if the Islamists win a victory over the USA, which the fascist suckups and tyrants like Chavez and Castro want to see, is Taliban Afghanistan. But a lot of the world will look like Darfur. That is the world you anti-Americans wish to bring about. Will it bring you joy?
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 05 14 at 04:22 PM • permalinkStace,
Mass murder gives the leftie fascist suckups a sexual frisson, at any rate when they are not the victims. At that point they suddenly object to what they previously found admirable. The murderousness of tyrants like Castro or Stalin or Mao seems macho and “authentic” to them. This explains the popularity of t-shirts showing that fascistic thug Che Guevara.Chavez and Morales will become even more popu;lar with the leftie fascist suckups in the West once they start with the murder squads and concentration camps.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 05 14 at 04:33 PM • permalinkNo matter what the subject, Addamo always takes the contrarian view, when he doesn’t change the subject altogether. But if you try to pin him down on his support for fascist murderers, he backs off and says well, no, that isn’t what he meant, but...
It’s so predictable, and reveals a person with no real beliefs or ideology beyond trying to wind other people up.
#25, I believe you have it. And when the South American countries start to get really bloody, suddenly the lefties will find something else to get excited about, and pretend they never really supported all that business to begin with, and there’s really nothing going on there, and oh, yeah, it’s all the fault of the U.S. and our military-industrial complex anyway.
Addamo - Some friendly advice, extended in the cause of good fellowship on this Mother’s Day: your points (some of them, anyway), might be taken more seriously if they were not delivered with an almost visible sneer. Are you truly interested in getting people to think of alternative explanations, or are you just poking a hornets’ nest with a stick? And secondly, the gratuitous swipes at Bush are becoming extraordinarily tedious, like (as someone one said in another context) the irritating squeak of a gate on a rusty hinge. The main thing about Chavez is Chavez, not George Bush. We already know what you think of Bush. It would be interesting to know what you think of Chavez qua Chavez, without reference to what appears to be your favorite political hobbyhorse.
And of course, here in the States, our big prestige historical film this year is going to be Sean Penn’s adulation of our own redneck Chavez, the blindingly corrupt faux-populist Huey Long…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 14 at 06:14 PM • permalinkMichael Lonie
‘Over the last century the USA has been the enemy of the worst tyrannies in human history, and for the most part the major reason they were overthrown.”
Am I to assume therefore that Pinochet, Saddam (for over a decade), the Mujahadeen and the Taliban, Mubarak, the Saudi Family, Karimov are just blips on the radar or necessary evils?
“Without the efforts of the USA the tyrants would have triumphed.”
Which tyrants are you talking about? Most of the above are still very much in power.
“Since the end of the Cold War the US has used its power not to aggrandize itself but to try to stop mass murder”
I suppose the secret bombing of Cambodia, the Vietnam war, El Salvador, Panama, Haiti, Honduras and Grenada were also blips on the radar?
Of course I don’t want a world without the USA, just without US intervention. We are already seeing signs of what that might look like. Argentina paid off their loan to the World Bank ahead of time. Venezuela now has a higher literacy rate than most Western countries.
Tibet is a perfect example of Americans double standards, and highlights the hypocrisy of US foreign policy. Tibet doesn’t fall into any of the necessary categories. It has no oil and no strategic importance, which explains why the US have been entirely mute on the subject.
The only people who believe the Islamists could win a victory over the USA are the same people who suffered the decades long paranoia that the Soviets would do so. In fact, most of the trash you read in right wing rags these days read like recycled anti Communist fear mongering paranoia. Islamists control what exactly? Iran? And even then, they are struggling to do so. How do you supposed they are going to control 300 million people, much less even draw a bloody node from the US in a military confrontation?
It is the epitome of stupidity and delusion to suggest the world would become anything like Darfur, a country split along tribal lines. You display as desperate need to convince the world around you that US militarism is holding he world together, when in fact it is doing the complete opposite.
Think about it. Almost every US intervention has been made necessary by failures of the prior intervention.
I have no particular regard for Chavez, other than he fact that he is proposing policies that do not put the interests of the US before those of other countries.Paco,
I take your criticisms in jest, but let’s face it. If you’re going to criticise any political leader, while your own leader is providing the world with a 24/7 freak show, you gotta be prepared for a comment about glass houses.
In the last two weeks, the Bushies were exposed for spying on tens of millions of Americans, have claimed the right to spy on anyone at anytime, and have openly proclaimed immunity from all laws.
He gave bankers the right to draft a “bankruptcy” law. He gave big Pharma companies the chance to re-write a “Medicaid” law. He’s destroyed the public school system via No Child Left Behind because he was a lame student. He’s circumvented over 400 laws with an Imperial presidential decree. He’s hewed towards fascism via illegal wire-taps and offering big-bucks to AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, to just dump their numbers into a big bucket so as to track every friggin’ American’s phone calls.
And here you are, pointing the finger at Chavez for being a dictator?
You don’t find that a tad ironic?
Chavez and Morales will both wind up bullet ridden….populist communists, always have the heart of the people at first…they they wear a tad thin.
The reason leftists love these people, is deep down they are the same person. ‘My rights are fine, fuck yours’. ‘My speech is free, yours isn’t’ “I love all of the Constitution, EXCEPT this part… A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. .
Here’s another example. WaPo reporter Dana Priest, who recently won the Pulitzer for treason, has long been married to Castroite activist William Goodfellow, who, according to Jennifer Verner in “Post Reporter Dana Priest’s Troubling Connections,” May 9, 2006, Accuracy In Media http://www.aim.org/special_report/4557_0_8_0_C/, in 1974 wrote a NYT oped which “served to excuse the genocidal Pol Pot’s forced evacuation of the Cambodian people from the cities.” I vaguely remember it too. Verner says: “The piece was so influential that it is still quoted by Noam Chomsky and his followers to this day. According to Goodfellow, the urban population of Phnom Penh was force marched to the killing fields because the Khmer Rouge believed that more food was available in rural areas—ignoring the evidence that the communist group was engaging in the systematic slaughter of the innocent, in order to create a communist society.”
I haven’t been able to find out how long Dana Priest has been married to the Castroite activist, Khmer Rouge apologist Goodfellow, but they’ve been close at least long enough to spawn twice.
The mere fact that we devastated the nazis and collapsed the commies doesn’t mean that their ilk don’t yet walk among us. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode where you wake up and people are walking around with swastika armbands and the like. An alternate reality? Not at all.
I wonder who Addamo is married to/looking to bang? Besides his own ego, that is.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 05 14 at 07:10 PM • permalinkIn the last two weeks, the Bushies were exposed for spying on tens of millions of Americans…
Are you really so stupid as to believe the spin, or are you willingly suspending your critical faculties?
Hint: the courts long ago (50 years?) decided that phone numbers and times of calls have no expectation of privacy, likening them to the address written on the outside of an envelope.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 05 14 at 07:22 PM • permalinkAddamo: an excellent example of an utterly unimaginative troll.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 05 14 at 07:36 PM • permalinkDummo, read about the cold war, then go back and apologise for saying “the Communists were never a threat”.
Much of the friction within the Communist party in the USSR was to do with the concept of “Communism within one country”.
Lenin and Marx believed it could not exist, that communism must spread or be choked. Stalins view was more along the lines of “We are to weak to take on the capitalists..yet”.
Thats very different to “they were no threat”.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 05 14 at 08:14 PM • permalinkThe only people who believe the Islamists could win a victory over the USA are the same people who suffered the decades long paranoia that the Soviets would do so.
Are you also baffled that prisons are full despite a drop in the crime rate? How about all those paranoids who get their kids inoculated against polio when there’s, like, hardly any cases of polio ever reported?
Too subtle? OK, I’ll be crystal clear - the “paranoids” took a hard line against the Soviet threat and thus defeated it.
OK, I’m done with Addumbass for this thread. He thrives on the attention. I’m not going to let him spoil my afterglow from the Sabres’ magnificent short-handed overtime series win.
Ok, friends, I give up (you’re right El Cid, in re: your #37). I strike my colors. Addamo is so fixated on Bush, he has taken the position that criticism of other individuals - including Castro-wannabes like Chavez - is invalid because Bush is worse than all of them. In fact, he regards such criticism as “ironic”. His utter failure - or rather, refusal - to draw reasonable distinctions between Bush and any dictator or terrorist you care to name, and to give us his take, for example, on someone like Chavez, in 25 words or less (none of which include the word Bush), has marked him as just another lefty ideologue whose world-view is fixed in concrete. It was my mistake to think that there might lurk, behind all the mincing condescension, a mind possibly interested in genuine dialogue. Well, one tries to be charitable, and one is occasionally mistaken in the object of one’s charity. I am done with him.
Most of the leftie trash you read denouncing the War on Terroris warmed-over arguments for appeasing the Nazis and the Soviets. The La-la-land crowd has so little imagination.
Addamo lists supposed American transgressions. All we are looking at there is the fallen nature of the actual world, in which perfection is not to be found. The US cooperated with unpalatable regimes during the Cold War because their help was needed to resist the more dangerous and immediate problem of the Soviet Union and its aspirations to expand (ask the Poles about that if you don’t believe it existed, and also the Afghans). We cooperated with them for the same reason we allied with Stalin’s USSR against the Nazis. The Nazis were the greater and more immediate threat so we allied with the hardly less vicious and evil Stalinist Communism to defeat it. You got a problem with the Nazis being defeated?
Even with Saddam in the 80s there were people arguing that he was less of a threat than Iran, in fact there were people arguing that up to March 2003. So the US “tilt towards Iraq”, persuaded by our “Arab friends”, can be seen as similar to the alliance with Stalin. I did not approve of it at the time, and in retrospect I still don’t. But I did not have the responsibility of guiding the US through the dangerous times of the waning Cold War. Too often lefties refuse to take into account that the political leaders they sneer at have to assume such responsibility. Some shirk it, like Jimmy Carter, and the results are usually disasterous.
Let us look at the Left’s hate object, Pinochet. About four thousand died as a result of his coup and its aftermath. This is a fraction of the numbers woh would have died if the Communists had taken over, as they were preparing to do, just by applying the average percentages of those who die when Commies take over other countries, roughly 5 percent. Pinochet saved Chile from becoming another Cuba, shepherded it to prosperity, and when he was forced out left the country in suitable condition for democracy and freedom. Comparison to Castro, still sitting on his blood-saoked throne, is left as an exercise for the reader. Iran would be lucky to have a Pinochet overthrow the Mullahs before they start a nuclear war, as they propose to do.
World conquest is the jihadis’ goal, they have said so. Capture of major countries will facilitate this goal enormously. The Bush strategy of pitting the big ideas of liberty and prosperity against the jihadis’ big idea of a worldwide caliphate ruled by a totalitarian form of Islam seems to me the best one to head off such seizures. To bad Bush’s critics are too dimwitted, or too blindly partisan, to comprehend such a subtle and sophisticated strategy.
Stay in your cave Addamo, and watch the pretty shadows on the walls. The full light of day is too blinding for you.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 05 14 at 08:29 PM • permalinkLefties like Addamo are Rousseauists in a Hobbesian world. One of the unfortunate by-products of our successful liberal democracies. They’re like middle-class teenagers who resent their parents and the prosperous suburbs they live in (and worked their asses off to provide) and romanticize the ‘hood with all of its colorful, downtrodden, “authentic” denizens.
(Having grown up in the latter, and gone to college with the former, I know the type.)
And there was no escaping a hefty dose of pamphlets bearing titles such as “The evils of the Anglo-American cultural hegemonic model”.
They should be so fucking lucky.
The US, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand… I’d say the Anglo-American cultural model’s got a pretty enviable success rate. Hell of a lot better than the Spanish.
Our leftwing chums believe that since
the WestAmerica is not perfect it is therefore not only just as bad but actually worse than their brave heroes/ freedom fighters/ suicide bombers/ Stalins. They argue- for instance - what right have we to criticise Muslim fundamentalism when Christians were responsisble for the Inquisition and the Crusades? How can we condemn terrorism when America firebombed Dresden? They love moral equivalence, but they take it much further. Not only are we as bad but much much worse AND we are to blame for everyone else’s crimes in the first place. Japan only attacked Pearl Harbour because we wouldn’t sell them iron and oil. Iran only wants nuclear weapons because America is threatening Iranian sovereignty. Mugabe is only a murderous nutcase because of the legacy of colonial racism. Grow up my leftie friends. Take responsibility and do your idols the courtesy of crediting them with free will. Dictators and terrorists might actually be bastards because they like being bastards. It wouldn’t be half so irritating if, as we’ve seen with Sudan, if America were not always the first cause, and the last resort.It’s funny when a leftist energetically criticizes criticism of Chavez without defending Chavez. So blatant, so tactical.
If a leftist really cared about freedom, he’d join in the criticism of Chavez etc., and only then, if really apropos, add complaints about US policy. And regarding Tibet? Wow, China invaded, or reinvaded, (neither the commies nor the previous gov’t ever renounced sovereignty claims over Tibet) back in 1950, when the US hardly even had relations with them (remember Nixon’s opening to Red China?), much less, trade then or for decades after, and China has consolidated its power ever since, killing anywhere from 400,000 to 1.2 million in the Great Leap Forward. The CIA in the 1950s did support an insurrection in a Tibetan area, which was crushed, with tens of thousands of Tibetans killed. The total number of Tibetans in 1953 was reportedly 2.8 million. I wish that it weren’t, but it’s a fait accompli. Tibet up there, past the Himalayas of India, Bhuta, & Nepal, mind you, with China to its east and north, along with more mountains & desert, and the Soviet Union a bit further on. Really accessible for what would be a huge war. And we’re supposed to get a big trade thing going against China over this now? And you didn’t hear a peep from the left about Tibet till after China’s commies capitalist-roaded their economy. Leftist debating tactics are so obvious. They can’t hide their sweet spot for folks like Chavez & Mao. And, jeez, you never heard them complaining about the Soviets’ obvious oil & resource interests in the many countries which they incorporated into their empire. Meanwhile, I’m sure glad we got that Iraqi & Afghan oil. Look how low prices have gotten.
The only people who believe the Islamists could win a victory over the USA are the same people who suffered the decades long paranoia that the Soviets would do so. In fact, most of the trash you read in right wing rags these days read like recycled anti Communist fear mongering paranoia. Islamists control what exactly? Iran? And even then, they are struggling to do so. How do you supposed they are going to control 300 million people, much less even draw a bloody node from the US in a military confrontation?
“The AP is reporting that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently found traces of “highly enriched” (read: weapons grade) uranium at a site linked to Iran’s defense establishment.
Speaking on conditions of anonymity, source at the agency indicated that the finding is preliminary, and more tests are needed to confirm that the uranium is highly enriched. But the report is disturbing, and suggests that Iran may be much further along in its nuclear enrichment efforts than previous thought. Sources told the AP that the traces discovered in Iran “approach” the density of enrichment required for nuclear warheads—90% or higher. Tehran has claimed that it is enriching uranium for nuclear power reactors, which only require a 3-5% density of enrichment.”
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/Addammo (what, you took the name of the guy from BSG?) prates: “In the last two weeks, the Bushies were exposed for spying on tens of millions of Americans, have claimed the right to spy on anyone at anytime, and have openly proclaimed immunity from all laws…
He’s circumvented over 400 laws with an Imperial presidential decree. He’s hewed towards fascism via illegal wire-taps and offering big-bucks to AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, to just dump their numbers into a big bucket so as to track every friggin’ American’s phone calls.And here you are, pointing the finger at Chavez for being a dictator?”
Relax, big boy. No one cares about YOUR phone calls.
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First comes the revolution, then the failure to thrive, followed by disenchantment. Scapegoating and killing of citizens is common. What is there to admire?
For twisted lefties, frustrated by their own ineffectiveness, it must be the power thing.