Anh em cùng một dân tộc lại trở thành kẻ thù, vì ai?

Một thập niên hàn gắn giữa hai miền bán đảo Triều Tiên thế là đi đứt. Chính quyền "dâng chủ" Hàn Quốc đã có một tổng thống khôn nhà dại tây lên nắm quyền, và như vậy anh em họ sẽ tiếp tục kình chống nhau tới muôn đời và Mỹ tiếp tục vỗ đùi khoái chí!

Cũng nên nói đến cách miêu tả sự việc dưới đây của CNN. Bên thay đổi chính sách TRƯỚC, có những hành động khiêu khích TRƯỚC là Nam Hàn, nhưng cách viết của họ làm người ta có cảm tưởng Bắc Hàn mới là bên khiêu khích!

Thật buồn cười một chính quyền dâng chủ khôn nhà dại tây như Nam Hàn đuổi dân mình đi ra chỗ khác lấy đất xây căn cứ quân sự cho bố Mỹ mà lại dám lên giọng nhắc nhở Bắc Hàn về "nhân quyền"!

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N. Korea: South making a 'mess' of nuke talks

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea's media criticized South Korea's new president for the first time since his inauguration in a blistering rebuke, warning Tuesday that Seoul's pro-U.S. policies could lead to "irrevocable catastrophic consequences."

The lengthy article in the North's main Rodong Sinmun daily came amid a series of provocations by the communist nation that have stoked tensions on the divided peninsula.

Last week, North Korea test-fired missiles and ejected South Korean officials from a shared industrial zone. Over the weekend, a North Korean military commentator threatened to turn the South into "ashes" in a pre-emptive strike, responding to comments by a South Korean military commander that Seoul could target suspected North Korean nuclear sites if there were signs of a pending attack from Pyongyang.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has said he will ask more in exchange for aid to the North.

The North's moves were aimed at swaying new conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak from taking a tougher stand on his communist neighbor.

On Tuesday, the North called Lee a "conservative political charlatan" in the newspaper commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. It said the South should not meddle in ongoing international nuclear talks that include the U.S. by demanding disarmament as a precondition for North-South cooperation.

Lee "is making a mess of the process to denuclearize the peninsula," the newspaper said.

The two Koreas have made unprecedented strides toward reconciliation under a past decade of liberal presidents, holding the first summit between the North and South in 2000 and reconnecting transportation links across their heavily armed frontier. That has happened despite the two Koreas remaining technically at war, after the three-year Korean War ended in a 1953 cease-fire that has never been replaced with a peace treaty.

Lee has said he will demand more in exchange for South Korean aid to the impoverished North and his government is not shying from criticizing Pyongyang's alleged human rights abuses.

The North Korean newspaper said "Lee's seizure of power created a thorn bush in the way of the inter-Korean relations," and warned he "should not misjudge the patience and silence so far kept by" the North.

"The Lee regime will be held fully accountable for the irrevocable catastrophic consequences to be entailed by the freezing of the inter-Korean relations and the disturbance of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula due to its sycophancy towards the U.S. and its moves for confrontation with the North," the commentary said, without giving specifics.

The South Korean president's office will determine how to react after analyzing the North Korean commentary, spokesman Lee Dong-kwan told reporters, according to his office.

John Pilger - The 'good war' is a bad war

Link
Trích dịch nội dung của nguyên bản:
Marina là một thành viên trong Hội Phụ Nữ Cách Mạng Afghanistan, viết tắt là RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan). Cô này là nhân chứng cho chính sách đạo đức giả của phương tây ở Afghanistan.
Lý do chính thức mà Mỹ đưa ra để tấn công Afghanistan vào tháng 10, 2001 là để "tiêu hủy cơ sở hạ tầng của al-Qaeda, thủ phạm của vụ 9/11". Nhưng những phụ nữ của tổ chức này cho rằng không đúng. Họ nói: "Theo kinh nghiệm, chúng tôi nhận ra rằng Mỹ không muốn đánh bại Taliban và al-Quaeda, vì nếu làm như vậy họ không còn lý do ở lại Afghanistan để làm việc thực hiện mục tiêu chính trị, kinh tế, quyền lợi chiến lược trong vùng.
Có những bằng chứng thuyết phục cho rằng kế hoạch cho cuộc chiến này đã được soạn thảo hai tháng trước ngày 11/9/2001. Và lý do thúc ép nhất đối với Washington không phải là mối liên hệ giữa al-Qaeda và Taliban mà là sự mất dần ảnh hưởng của Taliban cho những nhóm vũ trang khác ít được tin cậy (đối với Mỹ) hơn.
Vì trước đó chính quyền Clinton đã ký một hợp đồng đường ống dẫn dầu với Taliban, nên nếu nhóm này mất quyền kiểm soát đất đai thì kế hoạch phải thay đổi.
Kế đến bài này nêu lên vài vụ thảm sát dân thường mà quân đội Anh-Mỹ đã gây ra bằng không kích. Nếu nạn nhân là người lớn thì họ gọi là Taliban, nếu là con nit thì họ đổ một phần lỗi cho Taliban.
Một ví dụ là một thị trấn tên Musa Qala, phía nam Afghanistan, bị ném bom từ độ cao bằng B-52, thị trấn này trở thành gạch vụn khi quân đội của chính quyền bù nhìn vào "giải phóng" nó.
Trước ngày Mỹ đánh vào Afghanistan, Taliban đã ngăn chặn thành công việc sản xuất thuốc phiện. Một viên chức Liên Hiệp Quốc ở Kabul đã gọi đây là một "phép lạ thời hiện đại". Nhưng sau khi Mỹ và NATO vào, họ đã tưởng thưởng công lao hợp tác và ủng hộ chính quyền "dân chủ" của Tổng Thống Kazai cho nhóm quân sự Liên Minh Miền Bắc bằng cách để họ trồng lại thuốc phiện từ năm 2002. 28 trên tổng số 32 tỉnh của Afghanistan đã trồng lại thuốc phiện. Kết quả là ngày nay, 90% giao dịch thuốc phiện trên thế giới được bắt nguồn từ Afghanistan. Một báo cáo của chính phủ Anh cho thấy 35,000 trẻ em ở nước Anh đang dùng thuốc phiện.
Thủ tướng Anh Tony Blair nói rằng: "Người dân Afghanistan, chúng tôi nhận lãnh sứ mạng này. Chúng tôi sẽ không bỏ đi ... Chúng tôi sẽ đưa ra phương cách thoát khỏi nghèo đói là sự hiện hữu khốn khổ của các bạn". Tác giả John Pilger nghĩ về câu nói này khi ông ta đang đứng xem một đám trẻ đang chơi đùa trong một rạp chiếu phim đổ nát. Những trẻ em này mù chữ nên không đọc được tờ giấy cảnh cáo dán trên tường rằng có bom cluster chưa nổ nằm trong đống gạch vụn.
Sự có mặt lâu dài của Anh-Mỹ ở Afghanistan không những đã làm cho người nước này lo ngại mà đã ảnh hưởng sang cả Pakistan. Để kết thúc, tác giả nhắc đến một cuộc thăm dò ý kiến của dân Pakistan, họ muốn chính quyền nước này đàm phán cho một nền hòa bình trong khu vực chứ không muốn đóng vai một con cờ trong ván cờ lặp lại của một ông quan toàn quyền người Anh, Lord Curzon, thời thế kỷ 19.
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I had suggested to Marina that we meet in the safety of the Intercontinental Hotel, where foreigners stay in Kabul, but she said no. She had been there once and government agents, suspecting she was Rawa, had arrested her. We met instead at a safe house, reached through contours of bombed rubble that was once streets, where people live like earthquake victims awaiting rescue.

Rawa is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which since 1977 has alerted the world to the suffering of women and girls in that country. There is no organisation on earth like it. It is the high bar of feminism, home of the bravest of the brave. Year after year, Rawa agents have travelled secretly through Afghanistan, teaching at clandestine girls’ schools, ministering to isolated and brutalised women, recording outrages on cameras concealed beneath their burqas. They were the Taliban regime’s implacable foes when the word Taliban was barely heard in the west: when the Clinton administration was secretly courting the mullahs so that the oil company Unocal could build a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian.

Indeed, Rawa’s understanding of the designs and hypocrisy of western governments informs a truth about Afghanistan excluded from news, now reduced to a drama of British squaddies besieged by a demonic enemy in a “good war”. When we met, Marina was veiled to conceal her identity. Marina is her nom de guerre. She said: “We, the women of Afghanistan, only became a cause in the west following 11 September 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorise, yet they hold seats in [Hamid] Karzai’s government. In some ways, we were more secure under the Taliban. You could cross Afghanistan by road and feel secure. Now, you take your life into your hands.”

The reason the United States gave for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 was “to destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11”. The women of Rawa say this is false. In a rare statement on 4 December that went unreported in Britain, they said: “By experience, [we have found] that the US does not want to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse to stay in Afghanistan and work towards the realisation of their economic, political and strategic interests in the region.”

The truth about the “good war” is to be found in compelling evidence that the 2001 invasion, widely supported in the west as a justifiable response to the 11 September attacks, was actually planned two months prior to 9/11 and that the most pressing problem for Washington was not the Taliban’s links with Osama Bin Laden, but the prospect of the Taliban mullahs losing control of Afghanistan to less reliable mujahedin factions, led by warlords who had been funded and armed by the CIA to fight America’s proxy war against the Soviet occupiers in the 1980s. Known as the Northern Alliance, these mujahedin had been largely a creation of Washington, which believed the “jihadi card” could be used to bring down the Soviet Union. The Taliban were a product of this and, during the Clinton years, they were admired for their “discipline”. Or, as the Wall Street Journal put it, “[the Taliban] are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history”.

The “moment in history” was a secret memorandum of understanding the mullahs had signed with the Clinton administration on the pipeline deal. However, by the late 1990s, the Northern Alliance had encroached further and further on territory controlled by the Taliban, whom, as a result, were deemed in Washington to lack the “stability” required of such an important client. It was the consistency of this client relationship that had been a prerequisite of US support, regardless of the Taliban’s aversion to human rights. (Asked about this, a state department briefer had predicted that “the Taliban will develop like the Saudis did”, with a pro-American economy, no democracy and “lots of sharia law”, which meant the legalised persecution of women. “We can live with that,” he said.)

By early 2001, convinced it was the presence of Osama Bin Laden that was souring their relationship with Washington, the Taliban tried to get rid of him. Under a deal negotiated by the leaders of Pakistan’s two Islamic parties, Bin Laden was to be held under house arrest in Peshawar. A tribunal of clerics would then hear evidence against him and decide whether to try him or hand him over to the Americans. Whether or not this would have happened, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf vetoed the plan. According to the then Pakistani foreign minister, Niaz Naik, a senior US diplomat told him on 21 July 2001 that it had been decided to dispense with the Taliban “under a carpet of bombs”.

Acclaimed as the first “victory” in the “war on terror”, the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 and its ripple effect caused the deaths of thousands of civilians who, even more than Iraqis, remain invisible to western eyes. The family of Gulam Rasul is typical. It was 7.45am on 21 October. The headmaster of a school in the town of Khair Khana, Rasul had just finished eating breakfast with his family and had walked outside to chat to a neighbour. Inside the house were his wife, Shiekra, his four sons, aged three to ten, his brother and his wife, his sister and her husband. He looked up to see an aircraft weaving in the sky, then his house exploded in a fireball behind him. Nine people died in this attack by a US F-16 dropping a 500lb bomb. The only survivor was his nine-year-old son, Ahmad Bilal. “Most of the people killed in this war are not Taliban; they are innocents,” Gulam Rasul told me. “Was the killing of my family a mistake? No, it was not. They fly their planes and look down on us, the mere Afghan people, who have no planes, and they bomb us for our birthright, and with all contempt.”

There was the wedding party in the village of Niazi Qala, 100km south of Kabul, to celebrate the marriage of the son of a respected farmer. By all accounts it was a wonderfully boisterous affair, with music and singing. The roar of aircraft started when everyone was asleep, at about three in the morning. According to a United Nations report, the bombing lasted two hours and killed 52 people: 17 men, ten women and 25 children, many of whom were found blown to bits where they had desperately sought refuge, in a dried-up pond. Such slaughter is not uncommon, and these days the dead are described as “Taliban”; or, if they are children, they are said to be “partly to blame for being at a site used by militants” – according to the BBC, speaking to a US military spokesman.

The British military have played an important part in this violence, having stepped up high-altitude bombing by up to 30 per cent since they took over command of Nato forces in Afghanistan in May 2006. This translated to more than 6,200 Afghan deaths last year. In December, a contrived news event was the “fall” of a “Taliban stronghold”, Musa Qala, in southern Afghanistan. Puppet government forces were allowed to “liberate” rubble left by American B-52s.

What justifies this? Various fables have been spun – “building democracy” is one. “The war on drugs” is the most perverse. When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001 they had one striking success. They brought to an abrupt end a historic ban on opium production that the Taliban regime had achieved. A UN official in Kabul described the ban to me as “a modern miracle”. The miracle was quickly rescinded. As a reward for supporting the Karzai “democracy”, the Americans allowed Northern Alliance warlords to replant the country’s entire opium crop in 2002. Twenty-eight out of the 32 provinces instantly went under cultivation. Today, 90 per cent of world trade in opium originates in Afghanistan. In 2005, a British government report estimated that 35,000 children in this country were using heroin. While the British taxpayer pays for a £1bn military super-base in Helmand Province and the second-biggest British embassy in the world, in Kabul, peanuts are spent on drug rehabilitation at home.

Tony Blair once said memorably: “To the Afghan people, we make this commitment. We will not walk away . . . [We will offer] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.” I thought about this as I watched children play in a destroyed cinema. They were illiterate and so could not read the poster warning that unexploded cluster bombs lay in the debris.

“After five years of engagement,” reported James Fergusson in the London Independent on 16 December, “the [UK] Department for International Development had spent just £390m on Afghan projects.” Unusually, Fergusson has had meetings with Taliban who are fighting the British. “They remained charming and courteous throughout,” he wrote of one visit in February. “This is the beauty of malmastia, the Pashtun tradition of hospitality towards strangers. So long as he comes unarmed, even a mortal enemy can rely on a kind reception. The opportunity for dialogue that malmastia affords is unique.”

This “opportunity for dialogue” is a far cry from the surrender-or-else offers made by the government of Gordon Brown. What Brown and his Foreign Office advisers wilfully fail to understand is that the tactical victory in Afghanistan in 2001, achieved with bombs, has become a strategic disaster in south Asia. Exacerbated by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the current turmoil in Pakistan has its contemporary roots in a Washington-contrived war in neighbouring Afghanistan that has alienated the Pashtuns who inhabit much of the long border area between the two countries. This is also true of most Pakistanis, who, according to opinion polls, want their government to negotiate a regional peace, rather than play a prescribed part in a rerun of Lord Curzon’s Great Game.

Biểu tình ở Okinawa

Không thấy chính quyền Mỹ và Nhật đáp ứng nguyện vọng của dân Okinawa trả lại đất cho họ khi cả mấy ngàn người biểu tình đòi hỏi. Nhưng khi một vài anh Chí Phèo dâng chủ ở Việt Nam ọ oẹ là chính quyền Mỹ nhảy dựng lên như là đỉa phải vôi ngay! Thật kỳ lạ!

Không thấy Mỹ tự lên án mình và chư hầu chà đạp lên nhân quyền của dân bản xứ để thống trị thiên hạ.

Không thấy đại sứ Mỹ, hay dân biểu Mỹ như Loretta Sanchez lặn lội sang thăm hỏi tìm hiểu nguyện vọng của mấy ngàn người này, mặc dù chuyện này có dính dáng trực tiếp đến nước Mỹ! Trong khi bà này lại rất rảnh, đòi sang Việt Nam cho bằng được để thăm hỏi một vài anh Chí Phèo, mặc dù chuyện Chí Phèo ăn vạ ở Việt Nam chả có dính dáng gì đến nước Mỹ cả!

Rõ ràng mấy chữ "vi phạm nhân quyền" chỉ áp dụng cho những nước không chịu làm chó tay sai cho chính quyền Mỹ mà thôi.

Chủ Nhật 23/3 khoảng 6.000 người Okinawa biểu tình chống chính quyền Nhật và Mỹ về sự hiện diện của căn cứ Mỹ ở đây. Thị trưởng Okinawa, Mitsuko Tomon, nói: "Mỗi lần chúng tôi biểu tình, họ lại chà đạp lên tiếng nói của chúng tôi và những vụ việc ghê tởm lại tiếp tục xảy ra."

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Jackson Browne - Lives In the Balance

Những công ty trục lợi nhờ chiến tranh đã đẩy nước Mỹ và thế giới vào những cuộc chiến dai dẳng khó có hồi kết. Những công ty này làm giàu trên xương máu của hàng triệu người trên khắp thế giới và chính phủ Mỹ chỉ là công cụ của họ.

Những người Mỹ có lương tâm luôn lên án những hành động làm giàu dã man này. Nhưng họ có lương tâm thì lại không có tiền! Mà tiền núi của đại tư bản mới là thứ có ảnh hưởng quyết định đến chính sách của nước Mỹ cho nên những người Mỹ có lương tâm này chỉ có thể kêu gào trong vô vọng và các công ty trục lợi nhờ chiến tranh vẫn ung dung tiếp tục làm giàu từ cuộc chiến này cho tới cuộc chiến khác. Trong đó có công ty Dow Chemical, công ty sản xuất Napalm và Agent Orange và nhiều thứ hóa chất khác nữa dùng trong chiến tranh ở Việt Nam.

Lyrics:

LIVES IN THE BALANCE

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.
You hear one thing again and again
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the President the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

(c) 1986 SWALLOW TURN MUSIC, ASCAP

Chân Dung Tổng Thống Mỹ

Bush được biết tới ở Mỹ cũng như khắp nơi trên thế giới là một người có trí tuệ thấp kém qua những phát biểu và hành động ở nơi công cộng, nhưng vì là con trai trưởng của một dòng họ có ảnh hưởng chính trị và kinh tế ở Mỹ và Châu Âu, Trung Đông từ thời ông nội là Prescott Bush, là một cậu ấm được sinh ra với cái chìa khóa vàng đeo ở cổ nên con đường danh vọng đã được cha ông đắp bồi thẳng tắp.

Ở tuổi đi lính vào đúng thời chiến tranh ở Việt Nam, Bush "may mắn" vào được Vệ Binh Không Quân Bang Texas với tỉ lệ 25% trong bài kiểm tra năng khiếu không quân. Theo tờ Boston Globe, sau khi tốt nghiệp ở Yale vào lúc căng thẳng nhất của cuộc chiến ở Việt Nam, 1968, Bush được Ben Barnes, chủ tịch Hạ Viện Texas, gọi điện thoại gửi gấm vào một chỗ mà thanh niên thèm thuồng lúc đó là Vệ Binh Quốc Gia. Nơi chỉ cần trình diện 24 ngày cuối tuần và 15 ngày làm nhiệm vụ thực sự trong một năm! Ông Ben Barnes này nói rằng ông ta làm việc đó vì lời nhờ vả của một người bạn của gia đình Bush.

Cho dù dễ dàng như vậy Bush cũng vắng mặt như thường và không bị kỷ luật gì cả! Xem bài chi tiết ở đây.

Nghe Bush nói chuyện có thể biết ngay rằng Bush là một người chậm trí, NHƯNG thật thần kỳ là ông này có hai bằng về sử học ở Yale và bằng MBA ở Harvard! Một người có thể buột miệng lầm lẫn hay hoàn toàn không biết Africa là một châu lục chứ không phải là một quốc gia! Và dùng những từ ngữ tiếng Anh bình thường bị sai lầm đến mức tệ hại ngớ ngẩn!

Các nhà dân chủ vẹt đem chuyện con ông cháu cha ở Việt Nam ra để đổ lỗi cho một chế độ, làm như đó là đặc sản của Việt Nam. Không một ai trên thế giới này bằng lòng với chuyện con ông cháu cha, ngay cả đối với một số ít con ông cháu cha! Nhưng đấu tranh với những bất công trong xã hội phải cần tất cả hoặc đa số mọi người tham gia thì mới có kết quả. Kẹt cái là con người thích làm tòng phạm hơn cho nên xã hội nào cũng có đầy dẫy bất công.

Bush là một thí dụ con ông cháu cha (cronyism) điển hình ở Mỹ. Điều này thì chủ Mỹ không dạy nên mấy con vẹt không biết nói theo.

Những nhà lãnh đạo chính trị được biết đến bởi những câu nói hay, súc tích, tràn đầy ý nghĩa, nhưng Bush lại được biết đến với những câu nói ngớ ngẩn, ngu ngơ, và dốt nát!

Dưới đây có một tổng hợp những lời phát biểu loại đó của Bush. Thí dụ như một câu thành ngữ rất thường nghe ở Mỹ là: "Lừa tôi được một lần, anh là kẻ đáng trách; lừa tôi được lần thứ hai, tôi mới là kẻ đáng trách!" (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!) Một câu nói logic đơn giản như vậy ngay cả đứa con nít còn thuộc mà ông ta còn không thể nói trơn tru thì có thể lo gì tới chuyện mâu thuẫn trong thiên hạ?!

Và do đó Bush cũng đã chứng minh được rằng nền "dân chủ" Mỹ là một vở rối chính trị vĩ đại không có hồi kết. Các con rối khác nhau thay phiên ra diễn nhưng những người điều khiển trong hậu trường thì vẫn thế, không có gì thay đổi cả.

Dân Mỹ đã chán chê màn rối này rồi nên thường chỉ có 50% đi bầu cho mấy con rối liên bang và 33% cho rối tiểu bang thôi.

Đáng buồn cho Việt Nam là vẫn còn có một đám đông dại tây bị họ lừa cho ăn bánh vẽ, xem múa rối hoài mà vẫn tiếp tục bị lừa E-V-E-R-Y-T-I-M-E. Đời cha bị lừa truyền tiếp xuống cho đời con. Như vậy còn lâu Việt Nam mới là hổ là rồng!

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George W Bush - American Idiot

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Bush's Quotes

50. "I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here." —at the President's Economic Forum in Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

49. "We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease." —Gothenburg, Sweden, June 14, 2001

48. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.'' —Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

47. "We both use Colgate toothpaste." —after a reporter asked what he had in common with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Camp David, Md., Feb. 23, 2001

46. "Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. I mean, you're a — you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004 (Watch video)

45. "I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves." —Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2003

44. "I'm the commander — see, I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." —as quoted in Bob Woodward's Bush at War

43. "I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport." —Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 2001

42. "The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself." —Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29, 2003

41. "I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. It's pretty darn strong. I mean, the people see a better future." —Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2004

40. "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." —discussing the Iraq war with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson, as quoted by Robertson

39. "I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft." —presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004 (Watch video)

38. "Haven't we already given money to rich people? Why are we going to do it again?" —to economic advisers discussing a second round of tax cuts, as quoted by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, Washington, D.C., Nov. 26, 2002

37. "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." —Trenton, N.J., Sept. 23, 2002

36. "After standing on the stage, after the debates, I made it very plain, we will not have an all-volunteer army. And yet, this week — we will have an all-volunteer army!" —Daytona Beach, Fla., Oct. 16, 2004 (Watch video)

35. "Do you have blacks, too?" —to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2001

34. "This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." —as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002

33. "I got to know Ken Lay when he was head of the — what they call the Governor's Business Council in Texas. He was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994. And she had named him the head of the Governor's Business Council. And I decided to leave him in place, just for the sake of continuity. And that's when I first got to know Ken and worked with Ken." —attempting to distance himself from his biggest political patron, Enron Chairman Ken Lay, whom he nicknamed "Kenny Boy," Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2002

32. "It is white." —after being asked by a child in Britain what the White House was like, July 19, 2001

31. "I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah." —at a White House menorah lighting ceremony, Washington, D.C., Dec. 10, 2001

30. "For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it." —Philadelphia, Penn., May 14, 2001

29. "I don't know why you're talking about Sweden. They're the neutral one. They don't have an army." —during a Dec. 2002 Oval Office meeting with Rep. Tom Lantos, as reported by the New York Times

28. "You forgot Poland." —to Sen. John Kerry during the first presidential debate, after Kerry failed to mention Poland's contributions to the Iraq war coalition, Miami, Fla., Sept. 30, 2004

27. "I'm the master of low expectations." —aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

26. "I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things." —aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

25. "I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe — I believe what I believe is right." —Rome, Italy, July 22, 2001

24. "We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates." —Washington, D.C. Oct. 4, 2001

23. "People say, how can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil? You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you." —Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

22. "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it…I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet….I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't — you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one." —President George W. Bush, after being asked to name the biggest mistake he had made, Washington, D.C., April 3, 2004

21. "The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." —explaining why high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy, Annandale, Va., Aug. 9, 2004

20. "My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire." —radio address, Feb. 24, 2001

19. "You know, when I was one time campaigning in Chicago, a reporter said, 'Would you ever have a deficit?' I said, 'I can't imagine it, but there would be one if we had a war, or a national emergency, or a recession.' Never did I dream we'd get the trifecta." —Houston, Texas, June 14, 2002 (There is no evidence Bush ever made any such statement, despite recounting the trifecta line repeatedly in 2002. A search by the Washington Post revealed that the three caveats were brought up before the 2000 campaign — by Al Gore.)

18. "See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." —Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003

17. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." —State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003, making a claim that administration officials knew at the time to be false

16. "In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard." —repeating the phrases "hard work," "working hard," "hard choices," and other "hard"-based verbiage 22 times in his first debate with Sen. John Kerry

15. "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." —Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 2001

14. "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." —Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

13. "But all in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me." —summing up his first year in office, three months after the 9/11 attacks, Washington, D.C., Dec. 20, 2001

12. "I try to go for longer runs, but it's tough around here at the White House on the outdoor track. It's sad that I can't run longer. It's one of the saddest things about the presidency." —interview with "Runners World," Aug. 2002

11. "Can we win? I don't think you can win it." —after being asked whether the war on terror was winnable, "Today" show interview, Aug. 30, 2004

10. "I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." —Washington, D.C. June 18, 2002

9. "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." —to a group of Amish he met with privately, July 9, 2004

8. "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." —speaking underneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003

7. “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories … And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." —Washington, D.C., May 30, 2003

6. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!" —President George W. Bush, joking about his administration's failure to find WMDs in Iraq as he narrated a comic slideshow during the Radio & TV Correspondents' Association dinner, Washington, D.C., March 24, 2004

5. "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." —Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000

4. "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002 (Watch video)

3. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." —Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004 (Watch video)

2. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 (Watch video)

1. "My answer is bring them on." —on Iraqi insurgents attacking U.S. forces, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003

'Chúng tôi sống trong một cơn ác mộng', Ali, một cư dân Baghdad

Năm năm sau ngày Mỹ-Anh và băng đảng chư hầu tấn công Iraq để đem "tự do, dân chủ, nhân quyền" đến cho dân Iraq thì đã có đến hàng trăm ngàn người chết vì bom đạn và thương tật, hàng mấy triệu người mất nhà cửa hoặc phải bỏ đi tị nạn ở những nước láng giềng. Những người còn sống sót và ở lại thì đang sống trong một cơn ác mộng không biết chừng nào mới thoát ra được.
Dưới đây là câu chuyện của một cư dân Baghdad với phần mở đầu như sau:
"Ở đại đa số những thành phố trên thế giới, một người có thể được chúc mừng khi họ sống sót sau một vụ đánh bom. Ở Baghdad, những câu chuyện thoát chết như vậy có thể tìm thấy ở mọi góc phố."
Ali là một họa sĩ và là một sinh viên trường nghệ thuật ở bắc Baghdad. Bản thân anh này từng sống sót qua ba vụ đánh bom khi được tác giả viết bài phỏng vấn.
Anh ta có hai người bạn sống chung nhà tên là Mamdouh và Sarmad đã bị chết trong một vụ nổ bom đó.
Trong khi đó thì lợi nhuận của năm hãng dầu lớn nhất của phương tây tăng từ 40 tỉ USD lên 120 tỉ USD kể từ 20-3-2003!
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'We live in a nightmare. Death and carnage is everywhere' Ali, Baghdad resident
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Baghdad The Guardian, Thursday March 20 2008
In most cities of the world a person might expect to be feted for surviving a single bomb attack. In Baghdad, survival stories can be found on every street corner.
Ali is a painter and a student at the academy of art in north Baghdad. A few years ago he moved to the Baghdad suburb of Karrada, where many artists live because of its art market.
When I meet him, Ali is limping slightly. A white bandage protrudes from the sleeve of his striped jumper, and he frequently drops his left shoulder so that his arm rests on his thigh. These are the only outward signs of the injuries he sustained in the previous week.

A resident stands amid the aftermath of a bus explosion in Karrada, in Baghdad. Photograph: Khalid Mohammed/AP

In a shy, soft voice Ali tells me how he had been standing with a friend in Karrada when a bomb went off at the side of the road. "I heard an explosion very close by," he says. "I saw smoke and chaos and people screaming. I saw my friend Hassan, who was running and carrying a child who had lost an arm. I saw a nice-looking girl - the Karrada girls, you know how beautiful they are. She was dead. And I saw a girl who had only one eye.
"I couldn't bear it," he tells me. "I started to scream and cry.
"Then suddenly there was another explosion. This time, you know, I didn't hear much, I just saw a tall column of orange fire a few metres away from me and then smoke. I didn't know what had happened, but the people who had run over to tend the injured from the first bomb were now lying on the street screaming.
"I stood there in the middle of it all. I saw people picking bodies up and carrying them. A police car arrived and the police started to fire bullets in the air. I ran away and hid at the entrance of a shop. When a woman saw me, she started screaming. There was blood on my arm and on my leg." A friend of Ali's stopped a passing ambulance and helped him into it. Inside, he found a man whose face was black from burns and whose shoulder was covered with blood. A younger man was bleeding from his legs. "When he tried to lift one of them it bent not at the knee but from the middle of his thigh," Ali says. "He was screaming, 'Fix my leg! Fix my leg!' "
At the hospital, Ali and the others sat in a corridor waiting to be treated by the overstretched medical team. "There were children there who were all red," he remembers. "It looked as if they had no faces, they were so covered with blood."
After waiting a while he was transferred to another hospital, where a doctor examined him. "The doctor told me I just had two bits of shrapnel in my arm and leg," Ali says. "He asked me why I was crying. I told him it wasn't for myself but for all the boys and girls around me."
The doctor took out what looked like pliers and asked Ali to look away. "He got the first bullet out, but the second didn't come so easily and I screamed."
After Ali has finished telling me this story I look around at his immaculately clean apartment. On one side of the room are a pile of paintings. He points at three small ones hanging on the wall, a mixture of orange and red splashes. "These are my attempts at surrealism," he says.
"Immediately after the war, I had a strong feeling of optimism. I was sure the Saddam era wouldn't come back, we had money and were spending all the money.
"But then the conspiracy theories started. I began hearing my brothers and friends say the Americans were here only for the oil, and after that I would go to bed and lie awake thinking how much oil they were stealing from me. Now I don't care if they steal the money, I am so tired."
"I ask myself why life in Iraq is so cheap. We are living in a nightmare. It is like there is a camera recording us and by its light we see images of death and carnage everywhere. The Iraqi have good hearts, but we are living in a state of hysteria."
This is Ali's second apartment. His first was blown up. On a mobile phone he shows me grainy video footage of smoke mixed with broken furniture. There are some muffled sounds and then I make out someone shouting: "Are you OK? This is a mortar. We're getting shelled."
In fact it was a car bomb, Ali says.
He shared that flat with two other friends, Mamdouh and Sarmad. "They were the best people in the world. Mamdouh and I would listen to [the Arab singer] Fairuz and paint all night.
"The night before that bomb, Mamdouh told me he felt guilty he hadn't done any work for so long. He told me he would go out for breakfast early in the morning.
"I stayed in the flat, sleeping. Then I heard the first explosion. It was at the end of the street. I went to the window to look, and then as I was walking back the second bomb went of, just under my window."
Emotional
As Ali ran down the stairs, he saw someone who lived on the first floor wrapped in a blanket. He was dead. "I asked if anyone had seen Mamdouh and Sarmad. They told me no one had seen them. I was crying in the street . A few hours later a friend called me and told me that Sarmad was dead and Mamdouh was in hospital."
Ali went to the hospital. His eyes and voice are calm - as usual - while he recounts the scene. "He was lying on a bed there in the Kindi hospital, there was a filthy smell all around, the smell of urine. He looked like Mamdouh, but he was like someone else ... he smiled and I smiled back, but I felt a great pain in my heart." Two days later, Ali tells me, Mamdouh died.
"We came, his friends, me and Hassan and Hadi, and washed him and put him in a shroud. You know I am too emotional. I cry very quickly. For six months I didn't talk to anyone, I was just sad and silent.
Ali loves Arabic calligraphy and has studied it for many years. Now, he says, all he writes are the black mourning signs for his dead friends, which, according to Iraqi custom, he hangs in the street.

Sự Cần Thiết của Dâng Chủ

Dâng Chủ là một trong những điều kiện quan trọng nhất để các nước đế quốc tiếp tục làm cha thiên hạ. Phong trào giải phóng dân tộc của các nước trong Thế Giới Thứ Ba đã chấm dứt 400 năm xã hội Dâng Chủ mà thực dân ban bố cho nhân loại, dẫn tới việc quốc hữu hóa tài nguyên từ tay của thực dân tây phương. Iraq đã quốc hữu hóa dầu hỏa của mình từ năm 1972. Bốn công ty dầu khổng lồ ở Mỹ và Anh đã bị đá ra khỏi cái giếng dầu lớn thứ hai trên thế giới này từ lúc đó. Họ lúc nào cũng thòm thèm cái chỗ béo bở này.

Ông Saddam Hussein tức tối vì bị Mỹ chơi khăm trong cuộc chiến 1991 nên vào những năm sau của thời bị LHQ cấm vận (do Anh-Mỹ đầu têu), ông ta đã ký trước những hợp đồng lớn với Nga, Trung Quốc, và Pháp trước cặp mắt thèm thuồng của các công ty Anh-Mỹ, chuẩn bị cho thời hậu cấm vận. Lúc đó cả thế giới đang lên án hành động bao vây cấm vận dã man này và nó không thể kéo dài hơn được nữa vì Iraq đã đáp ứng đầy đủ những yêu cầu đặt ra. Ông này cũng dám đổi ngoại tệ mua bán dầu thành đồng Euro thay vì Dollar vào năm 2000 nên đây là là giọt nước cuối cùng làm tràn ly! Nếu Anh-Mỹ mà không chiếm "lại" cái mỏ dầu Iraq và treo cổ Saddam Hussein thì làm sao còn mặt mũi đứng trên giang hồ làm đại ca nữa?

Mỹ chiếm Iraq và nghiễm nhiên tự trở thành "người giám hộ", quản lý những giếng dầu ở Iraq! , những công ty được cho là "thân thiện" đã giành được những hợp đồng béo bở với lợi nhuận lên đến hàng trăm tỉ trong những thập niên tới. Anh-Mỹ đã giành được quyền khai thác dầu trong tay của Saddam Hussein + Nga, TQ, Pháp với danh nghĩa "giải phóng" Iraq, mang "dân chủ" đến cho dân Iraq. Như vậy là chiến phí để cướp mỏ dầu là do tiền thuế chung của toàn dân Mỹ. Nhà băng cho mượn trước để kiếm lời. Các công ty dầu và sản xuất súng đạn, thiết bị hậu cần của Anh-Mỹ được hưởng nhiều nhất mà không cần bỏ vốn tài trợ mấy trăm tỉ chiến phí và không cần đổ máu!

Hiến Pháp mới năm 2005 của Iraq là do Mỹ ảnh hưởng và làm cố vấn, trong đó có những ngôn ngữ bảo đảm vai trò của các công ty nước ngoài. Đó là nền Dâng Chủ mà Mỹ muốn - chính quyền Mỹ phải đóng vai trò chính trong việc soạn thảo hiến pháp giống như đã làm ở Nam Hàn và Nhật! Trong đó Mỹ chính thức làm cha thiên hạ!

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Oil in Iraq

Iraq has the world’s second largest proven oil reserves. According to oil industry experts, new exploration will probably raise Iraq’s reserves to 200+ billion barrels of high-grade crude, extraordinarily cheap to produce. The four giant firms located in the US and the UK have been keen to get back into Iraq, from which they were excluded with the nationalization of 1972. During the final years of the Saddam era, they envied companies from France, Russia, China, and elsewhere, who had obtained major contracts. But UN sanctions (kept in place by the US and the UK) kept those contracts inoperable. Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, much has changed. In the new setting, with Washington running the show, "friendly" companies expect to gain most of the lucrative oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in the coming decades. The Iraqi constitution of 2005, greatly influenced by US advisors, contains language that guarantees a major role for foreign companies. Negotiators hope soon to complete deals on Production Sharing Agreements that will give the companies control over dozens of fields, including the fabled super-giant Majnoon. But first the Parliament must pass a new oil sector investment law allowing foreign companies to assume a major role in the country. The US has threatened to withhold funding as well as financial and military support if the law does not soon pass. Although the Iraqi cabinet endorsed the draft law in July 2007, Parliament has balked at the legislation. Most Iraqis favor continued control by a national company and the powerful oil workers union strongly opposes de-nationalization. Iraq's political future is very much in flux, but oil remains the central feature of the political landscape.

Okinawa, Một 'Hàng Không Mẫu Hạm' Không Thể Chìm của Mỹ

Okinawa là đảo lớn nhất nằm trong quần đảo Ryukyu phía tây nam nước Nhật, là một vương quốc có văn hóa, ngôn ngữ riêng cho đến khi bị sát nhập vào Nhật vào năm 1879.
Sau khi Nhật thất trận ở thế chiến II, Okinawa nằm dưới sự kiểm soát của Mỹ cho tới năm 1972. Sau đó "được" trở thành...một hàng không mẫu hạm rẻ tiền cho...Mỹ!

Okinawa có diện tích khoảng 1.200 km2 (so với TP HCM là 1760 km2), nhưng có tới 37 căn cứ quân sự của Mỹ, chiếm 20% diện tích đảo này cho 20.000 lính Mỹ, phần còn lại cho 1,3 triệu dân Okinawa!
Như vậy ai mới là chủ nhà đây?!
Lính Mỹ, là người nước ngoài, nhưng không hoàn toàn nằm dưới luật pháp của nước sở tại mà được che chở bởi một thỏa thuận gọi là SOFA. Nếu phạm luật sở tại sẽ không bị bắt trừ khi nào bị tòa án buộc tội chính thức! Nhưng nếu không bắt giam được thì là sao mà điều tra rồi buộc tội đây?!
Bây giờ đã sang thế kỷ 21 mà vẫn còn luật pháp kiểu thực dân ở hai nước được cho là "văn minh" nhất thế giới thì kể cũng lạ!
Dưới đây là một bài tin tức-bình luận về tình trạng đảo và người Okinawa bị lính Mỹ và chính quyền Mỹ rape trong gần 63 năm qua.
Vào nhà người ta chiếm đất, người ta không thích đuổi mình đi mà mình không chịu đi cứ ở lì mà còn hãm hiếp người ta nữa như vậy có phải là vi phạm nhân quyền không nhỉ? Sao không thấy chính quyền Mỹ lên tiếng tố cáo mình vi phạm nhân quyền nhỉ?
Chỉ có một cách giải thích, đó là chính quyền Mỹ không coi dân Okinawa là người, cũng như tất cả hàng triệu người khác khắp nơi trên thế giới đã và đang bị chính quyền, các công ty bán độc phẩm, và binh lính Mỹ chà đạp lên nhân quyền của họ.
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The 'rape' of Okinawa By Chalmers Johnson
It all seemed deadly familiar: an adult, 38-year-old US Marine sergeant accused by the Okinawan police of sexually violating a 14-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl. He claims he did not actually rape her but only forcibly kissed her, as if knocking down an innocent child and slobbering all over her face is OK if you're a representative of the American military forces. The accused marine has now been released because the girl has refused to press charges - perhaps because he is innocent as he claimed or perhaps because she can't face the ignominy of appearing in court.

Let us briefly recall some of the other incidents since the notorious 1995 kidnapping, beating and gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by two marines and a sailor in Kin village, Okinawa. The convicted assailants in that outrage were Marine Private First Class Roderico Harp, Marine Private First Class Kendrick Ledet and Seaman Marcus Gill. Other incidents of bodily harm, intimidation and death continue in Okinawa on an almost daily basis, including hit-and-run collisions between American troops and Okinawans on foot or on auto bikes, robberies and assaults, bar brawls and drunken and disorderly conduct.

On June 29, 2001, a 24-year-old air force staff sergeant, Timothy Woodland, was arrested for publicly raping a 20-year-old Okinawan woman on the hood of a car.

On November 2, 2002, Okinawan authorities took into custody Marine Major Michael J Brown, 41 years old, for sexually assaulting a Filipina barmaid outside the Camp Courtney officer's club.

On May 25, 2003, Marine Military Police turned over to Japanese police a 21-year-old lance corporal, Jose Torres, for breaking a 19-year-old woman's nose and raping her, once again in Kin village.

In early July 2005, a drunken air force staff sergeant molested a 10-year-old Okinawan girl on her way to Sunday school. He at first claimed to be innocent, but then police found a photo of the girl's nude torso on his cell phone.

After each of these incidents and innumerable others that make up the daily police blotter of Japan's most southerly prefecture, the commander of US forces in Okinawa, a Marine Corps lieutenant general, and the American ambassador in Tokyo, make public and abject apologies for the behavior of US troops.

Occasionally the remorse goes up to the Pacific commander-in-chief or, in the most recent case, to the secretary of state. On February 27, Condoleezza Rice said, "Our concern is for the girl and her family. We really, really deeply regret it." The various officers responsible for the discipline of US troops in Japan invariably promise to tighten supervision over them, who currently number 92,491, including civilian employees and dependents. But nothing ever changes. Why?

Because the Japanese government speaks with a forked tongue. For the sake of the Okinawans forced to live cheek-by-jowl with 37 US military bases on their small island, Tokyo condemns the behavior of the Americans. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda called the recent assault "unforgivable" and demanded tighter military discipline. But that is as far as it goes.

The Japanese government has never even discussed why a large standing army of Americans is garrisoned on Japanese territory, some 63 years after the end of World War II. There is never any analysis in the Japanese press or by the government of whether the Japanese-American Security Treaty actually requires such American troops.

Couldn't the terms of the treaty be met just as effectively if the marines were sent back to their own country and called on only in an emergency? The American military has never agreed to rewrite the Status of Forces Agreement, as demanded by every local community in Japan that plays host to American military facilities, and the Japanese government meekly goes along with this stonewalling.

Once an incident "blows over", as this latest one now has, the pundits and diplomats go back to their boiler-plate pronouncements about the "long-standing and strong alliance" (Rice in Tokyo), about how Japan is an advanced democracy (although it has been ruled by the same political party since 1949 except for a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union), and about how indispensable America's empire of over 800 military bases in other people's countries is to the maintenance of peace and security.

As long as Japan remains a satellite of the United States, women and girls in Okinawa will continue to be slugged, beaten and raped by heavily armed young Americans who have no other reason for being there than the pretensions of American imperialism. As long as the Japanese government refuses to stand up and demand that the American troops based on its territory simply go home, nothing will change.
Chalmers Johnson in the author of the Blowback Trilogy - Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007).

Bao Giờ Nước Mỹ Biết Tự Làm Báo Cáo Nhân Quyền Cho Chính Mình?!

Từ đầu thập niên 70, khi mà Nixon vừa ném bom bừa bãi điên cuồng bằng B-52 xuống miền bắc Việt Nam trong hai chiến dịch Linebacker I và II; sau khi thả bom trải thảm "bí mật" trên đất Cambodia làm chết khoảng 600,000 thường dân, thì bộ ngoại giao Mỹ "chính thức nhận lĩnh trách nhiệm lên tiếng cho tiêu chuẩn nhân quyền quốc tế" - dĩ nhiên là do chính mình tự trao cho mình! ! Theo website của Bộ Ngoại Giao Mỹ.

Hàng năm Mỹ làm báo cáo nhân quyền và lợi dụng cái mồm to có một không hai của mình vùa la lối, vừa chỉ trỏ đánh phủ đầu những cái gai trong mắt của mình. Nhưng không biết vì vô tình hay cố ý, (lại không thể nhịn cười được nữa!), Mỹ quên không bao giờ nhắc đến vấn đề vi phạm nhân quyền trên khắp thế giới của chính mình, mặc dù nếu nói về thả bom trải thảm, chất độc hóa học bừa bãi trên đầu người ta thì trên thế giới này không có ai dám làm như Mỹ cả!

Chính quyền Mỹ lo cho tự do, dân chủ, nhân quyền của người dân Việt Nam bị Cộng Sản chà đạp đến mức họ đã phải thả một lượng bom lớn đến nỗi hơn 30 năm sau vẫn chưa nổ hết! Thả một lượng chất độc hóa học nhiều đến nỗi mà qua 3-4 thế hệ sau vẫn còn tàn phá con người một cách khủng khiếp. Nếu họ không thể gom dân về thành phố sống lây lất làm cu li, đĩ điếm phục vụ cho lính Mỹ thì họ phải giết cho sạch chứ nhất định không để dân rơi vào tay Cộng Sản!

Tội ác trên hết là cho đến ngày hôm nay họ vẫn chối bỏ trách nhiệm, nói quanh nói co, cãi chày cãi bứa, và mặt dạn mày dày tiếp tục dõng dạc dạy đời thiên hạ! Làm "báo cáo nhân quyền" moi móc chửi bới người ta rồi lại tự cho mình là "khách quan"!

Và khủng khiếp hơn nữa là vẫn có một đám người Việt dại tây vào hùa với chính quyền Mỹ ca bài ca tự do, dân chủ, nhân quyền trước mặt nhân dân Việt Nam! Làm như thể nếu không có chính quyền Mỹ dạy đời thì người ta không biết nhân quyền của mình đang bị chà đạp vậy!

Việt Nam vì có cái đám người khôn nhà dại tây này nên đã bị ngoại bang bắt làm nô lệ đè đầu cưỡi cổ, làm cẩu nô tài lâu như vậy thì cũng là chuyện hiển nhiên.

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Agent Orange: Federal Court Sides Against Vietnam Vets, Vietnamese People

Even as the costs of the Iraq war pile up, the human costs of the Iraq war continue to ripple out. On Friday, a federal appeals court rejected an effort by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange to reinstate claims that U.S. companies (including Monsanto and Dow) committed war crimes by making the toxic chemical defoliant used in the Vietnam War.

Incredibly, the three judge panel ruled that Agent Orange was not used as a weapon of war against human populations.

"It is significant that plaintiffs nowhere allege that the government intended to harm human beings through its use of Agent Orange," the three-judge panel said.

This, even though the National Cancer Institute reported as early as 1966 that Agent Orange caused birth defects in mice and rats. Other studies conducted during the war showed that even "vanishingly small" amounts of dioxin in an animals diet could cause cancer. Researchers also found that lower concentrations of dioxin produced the same effects as higher concentrations, but merely took longer to do so. As these studies continued to show the damaging, toxic effects of Agent Orange, the spraying continued.

All of this is documented in an excellent 1994 report by the federal Institute of Medicine.

In a separate opinion, the appellate court also said companies are protected from lawsuits brought by U.S. military veterans or their relatives because the law protects government contractors in certain circumstances who provide defective products.

All in all, a good day for Dow and Monsanto and a bad day for the Vietnamese people and US war veterans.

Lawyers for the Vietnamese government and US veterans groups are vowing to appeal their case to the US Supreme Court.

The Secret Gorvernment - Transcript

Dưới đây là transcript của video clip dài 22 phút của entry trước.

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Transcript

THE SECRET GOVERNMENT – The Constitution In Crisis

Bill Moyers, Secret Government, PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) 1987

Moyers: “The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the legitimate institutions of government. Presidents have turned to them when they can’t win the support of the Congress or the people, creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our Constitution. Just imagine that William Casey’s dream came true. Suppose the enterprise grew into a super-secret, self-financing, self-perpetuating organization. Suppose they decided on their own to assassinate Gorbachev or the leader of white South Africa. Could a President control them and what if he became the enterprise’s public enemy Number One? Who would know? Who would say no?”

“The history of our secret government.”

“World War II was over. Europe lay devastated. The United States emerged as the most powerful nation on earth. But from the rubble rose a strange new world, a peace that was not peace and a war that was not war. We saw it emerging when the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe. The Cold War had begun.”

Winston Churchill: “An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe.”

Moyers: “The Russians had been our ally against the Nazis, an expedient alliance for the sake of war. Now they were our enemy. To fight them we turned to some of the very men who had inflicted on humanity the horrors of Hitler’s madness. We hired Nazis as American spies. We struck a secret bargain with the devil.”

Erhard Dabringhaus: “One that I know real well is Klaus Barbie. He was wanted by the French as their number one war criminal and somehow we employed a man like that as a very secretive informant.”

Moyers: “Erhard Dabringhaus was employed in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps and assigned to work with Nazi informants spying on the Russians. One of them was Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon', who had tortured and murdered thousands of Jews and resistance fighters. The Americans did not turn Barbie over to the French when they finished with him. They helped him escape to Bolivia. Other top Nazis were smuggled into the United States to cooperate in the war against the new enemy.”

“So began the morality of the Cold War. Anything goes. The struggle required a mentality of permanent war, a perpetual state of emergency. It had met a vast new apparatus of power that radically transformed our government. Its foundations were laid when President Truman signed into law the National Security Act of 1947.”

Admiral Gene La Rocque: “Now that National Security Act of 1947 changed dramatically the direction of this great nation. It established the framework for a national security state.”

Moyers: “Admiral Gene La Rocque rose through the ranks from Ensign to become a Strategic Planner for the Pentagon and now heads the Center of Defense Information, a public interest group.”

Admiral Gene La Rocque: “The National Security Act of ‘47 gave us the National Security Council. Never have we had a National Security Council so concerned about the nation’s security that we’re always looking for threats and looking how to orchestrate our society to oppose those threats. National Security was invented, almost, in 1947, and now it has become the prime mover of everything we do as measured against something we invented in 1947. The National Security Act also gave us the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Moyers: “This is the house the Cold War built – the CIA. The core of the new secret government. Its chief legitimate duty was to gather foreign intelligence for America’s new role as a world power. Soon it was taking on covert operations, abroad and at home. As its mission expanded, the CIA recruited adventuresome young men like Notre Dame’s 'All American,' Ralph McGehee.”

Ralph McGehee: “I look back to the individual that I was when I joined the agency. I was a dedicated Cold Warrior who felt the agency was out there fighting for liberty, justice and democracy and religion around the world. And I believed wholeheartedly in this. I just felt proud every day that I went to work because I was out at the vanguard of the battle against the international evil empire – international Communist evil empire.”

Moyers: “Iran, 1953: the CIA mounted its first major covert operation to overthrow a foreign government. The target was the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. He held power legitimately, through his country’s parliamentary process and he was popular. Washington had once looked to him as the man to prevent a Communist takeover. But that was before Mosaddeq decided that the Iranian state, not British companies, ought to own and control the oil within Iran’s own borders. When he nationalized the British run oil fields, Washington saw red.”

“The Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and his brother Alan, Director of the CIA, decided with Eisenhower’s approval, to overthrow Mosaddeq and reinstate the Shah of Iran. The mobs paid by the CIA, and the police and soldiers bribed by the CIA, drove Mosaddeq from office.”

Newscaster: “Crown Prince Abdullah greets the Shah as he lands at Baghdad airport after a 7-hour flight from Rome.”

Moyers: The King of Kings was back in control and more pliable than Mosaddeq. American oil companies took over almost half of Iran’s production. U.S. arms merchants moved in with $18 billion of weapons sales over the next 20 years. But there were losers.”

Kenneth Love (former New York Times reporter): “Nearly everybody in Iran of any importance has had a brother, or a mother, or a sister, or a son, or a father, tortured, jailed, deprived of property without due process. I mean an absolutely buccaneering dictatorship in our name that we supported. SAVAK was created by the CIA!”

Bill Moyers: “SAVAK, the Shah’s Secret Police, tortured and murdered thousands of his opponents. General Richard Secord and Albert Hakim, whom we met earlier, were among those who helped supply the Shah’s insatiable appetite for the technology of control. But the weapons and flattery heaped by America on the Shah blinded us to the growing opposition of his own people. They rose up in 1979 against him. “Death to the Shah!” they shouted. “Death to the American Satan.”

Kenneth Love: “Khomeni is a direct consequence and the hostage crisis is a direct consequence, and the resurgence of the Shi’a is a direct consequence of the CIA’s overthrow of Mosaddeq in 1953.”

Moyers: “Guatemala 1954. Flushed with success America’s Secret Government decided another troublesome leader must go. This time it was Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected president of Guatemala. Philip Roettinger was recruited from the Marines to join the CIA team.”

Colonel Philip Roettinger (Ret.) U.S. Marine Corps: “It was explained to me that it was very important for the security of the United States that we were going to prevent a Soviet beach-head in this hemisphere, which we have heard about very recently of course, and that the Guatemalan government was Communist and we had to do something about it.”

Moyers: “President Arbenz had admired Franklin D. Roosevelt and his government voted often with the American position at the United Nations. But in trying to bring a new deal to Guatemala, Arbenz committed two sins in the eyes of the Eisenhower administration. First, when he opened the system to all political parties he recognized the Communists too.”

Roettinger: “Well, of course there was not even a hint of Communism in his government. He had no Communists in his Cabinet. He did permit the existence of a very small Communist party.”

Moyers: “Arbenz also embarked on a massive land reform program. Less than 3 per cent of the land owners held more than 70 per cent of the land. So Arbenz nationalized more than 1 ½ million acres, including land owned by his own family and turned it over to peasants. Much of that land belonged to the United Fruit Company, the giant American firm that was intent on keeping Guatemala, quite literally, a banana republic. United Fruit appealed to its close friends in Washington, including the Dulles brothers, who said that Arbenz was openly playing the Communist game. He had to go.”

Roettinger: “This was sudden death for him. There was no chance of him winning this fight because of the fact that he had done this to the United Fruit Company. Plus the fact, that he was overthrowing the hegemony of the United States over this area. And this was dangerous, it [would] not be tolerated. We couldn’t tolerate that.”

Moyers: “From Honduras, the same country that today is the Contra staging base, the CIA launched a small band of mercenaries against Guatemala. They were easily turned back. So with its own planes and pilots the CIA then bombed the capital. Arbenz fled and was immediately replaced by an American puppet, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.”

Roettinger: “He overturned all of the reformist activities of President Arbenz. He gave the land back to the United Fruit Company that had been confiscated. He took land from the peasants and gave it back to the land owners.”

Bill Moyers: “The CIA had called its covert action against Guatemala, Operation Success. Military dictators ruled the country for the next 30 years. The United States provided them with weapons and trained their officers. The Communists we saved them from would have been hard pressed to do it better. Peasants were slaughtered. Political opponents were tortured. Suspected insurgents were shot, stabbed, burned alive or strangled. There were so many deaths at one point that coroners complained they couldn’t keep up with the work load. Operation Success.”

Roettinger: “What we did has caused a succession of repressive military dictatorships in that country and has been responsible for the deaths over 100,000 of their citizens.”

Moyers: “Success breeds success, sometimes with dreary repetition. Mario Sandoval Alarcon began his career in the CIA’s adventure in Guatemala. Today he’s known as the Godfather of the Death Squads. In 1981, after lobbying Ronald Reagan’s advisors for military aid to Guatemala, Sandoval Alarcon danced at the Inaugural Ball.”

“Richard Bissell, another veteran of the Guatemalan coup, went on to become the CIA’s Chief of Covert Operations. I looked him up several years ago for a CBS documentary. Cuba, 1961, seven years after Operation Success in Guatemala, Bissell was planning another CIA covert operation.”

Newscaster: “The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro.”

Moyers: “On April 17, 1961, Cuban exiles trained by the CIA at a base in friendly Guatemala landed on the southern coast of Cuba, at the Bay of Pigs. The U.S. had promised air support, but President Kennedy cancelled it. The invaders, left defenseless, surrendered. Seven months after the disastrous invasion, Kennedy delivered a major foreign policy address.”

President John F. Kennedy: “We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crisis.”

Moyers: “The President was not telling the truth. Even as he spoke, his administration was planning a new covert war on Cuba. It would include some of the dirty tricks the President said we were above. The Secret Government was prepared for anything.”

Moyers interview with Richard Bissel: “At one time, the CIA organized a small department known as Executive Action, which was a permanent assassination capability.”

Bissel: “Well, it wasn’t just an assassination capability. It was a capability to discredit or get rid of people, but it could have included assassination.”

Moyers: “And it did. There were at least eight documented attempts to kill Castro. He says there were two dozen. And there was even one effort to put LSD in his cigars. To help us get rid of the Cuban leader, our Secret Government turned to the Mafia just as we once made use of Nazis. The gangsters included the Las Vegas Mafioso John Roselli, the Don of Chicago, Sam Giancana, and the Boss of Tampa, Santo Traficante.”

“If I read you correctly you are saying it is the involvement in the Mafia that disturbed you and not the need or decision to assassinate a foreign leader.”

Bissel: “Correct.”

Moyers: “It is a chilling thought made more chilling by the assassination of John Kennedy. The accusations linger. In some minds, the suspicions persist of a dark unsolved conspiracy behind his murder. You can dismiss them, as many of us do. But knowing now what our Secret Government planned for Castro, the possibility remains. Once we decide that anything goes, anything can come home to haunt us.”

“Vietnam, 1968: American soldiers are fighting and dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia. But the Vietnam War didn’t start this way. It started secretly off the books like so many of these ventures that have ended disastrously. The CIA got there early, soon after the Vietnamese won their independence from the French in 1954. Eisenhower warned that the nations of Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes if the Communists, led by Ho Chi Min, took over all Vietnam. To hold the line, we installed in Saigon a puppet regime under Ngo Dinh Diem. American-trained commandoes were used to sabotage bus and rail lines and contaminate North Vietnam’s oil supply.”

“President Kennedy sent the Green Berets to Vietnam and turned to full scale counter-insurgency. He had once said that Vietnam was the ultimate test of our will to stem the tide of world Communism. By the time of his death, there were 15,000 Americans there. They were called “Advisors.” The secret war was leading only to deeper involvement and more deception.”

President Lyndon Johnson: “It is my duty to the American people to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States, to take action and reply.”

Moyers: “This President was not telling the truth either. The action at the Gulf of Tonkin was not unprovoked. South Vietnam had been conducting secret raids in the area against the North and the American destroyer, ordered into the battle zone, had advanced warning it could be attacked. But Johnson seized the incident to stampede Congress into passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. He then used it as a blank check for the massive buildup of American forces.”

“April, 1965: Two battalions of Marines land in South Vietnam. The first of more than 2 ½ million Americans to fight there with no Congressional declaration of war. The dirty little war that began in secret, is reaching full roar. Free-fire zones, defoliation, the massacre at My Lai, napalm, and the CIA’s Operation Phoenix to round up, torture and kill suspected Viet Cong.”

Ralph McGehee: “We were murdering these people, incinerating them.”

Moyers: “Ralph McGehee was there for the CIA and helped set up South Vietnam’s secret police.”

McGehee (Notre Dame "All American"): “My efforts had resulted in the deaths of many people and I just – for me it was a period when I guess I was – I considered myself nearly insane – I just couldn’t reconcile what I had been and what I was at the time becoming.”

Moyers: “Many of the secret warriors in Southeast Asia had no such doubts or regrets. Some of the team that later joined the Iran-Contra enterprise, helped to run the secret war in Laos. As General Richard Secord later put it, 'Laos belonged to the CIA.' Looking back, it is stunning how easily the Cold War enticed us into surrendering popular control of government to the National Security State. We’ve never come closer to bestowing absolute authority on the President. Setting up White House groups that secretly decide to fight dirty little wars, is a direct assumption of the war powers expressly forbidden by the Constitution.”

“Not since December, 1941, has Congress declared war. Since then, we’ve had a police action in Korea, advisors in Vietnam, covert operations in Central America, peacekeeping in Lebanon and low intensity conflicts going on right now from Angola to Cambodia. We’ve turned the war powers of the United States over to, well we are never really sure who, or what they’re doing, or what it costs, or who is paying for it. The one thing that we are sure of is that this largely secret global war carried on with less and less accountability to democratic institutions, has become a way of life. And now we are faced with a question brand new in our history. Can we have the permanent warfare state and democracy too?”

Congressional hearings: “A shellfish toxin – "

Moyers: “In 1975 as the war in Vietnam came to an end, Congress took its first public look at the Secret Government. Senator Frank Church chaired the Select Committee to study government operations. The hearings opened the books on a string of lethal activities. From the use of electric pistols and poison pellets, to Mafia connections and drug experiments. And they gave us a detailed account of assassination plots against foreign leaders and the overthrowing of sovereign governments. We learned, for example, how the Nixon administration had waged a covert war against the government of Chile’s president, Salvador Allende, who was ultimately overthrown by a military coup and assassinated.”

Senator Church: “Like Caesar peering into the colonies from distant Rome, Nixon said the choice of government by the Chileans was unacceptable to the President of the United States. The attitude in the White House seemed to be – if in the wake of Vietnam, I can no longer send in the Marines, then, I will send in the CIA.”

Moyers: “This remains for me the heart of the matter. The men who wrote our Constitution, our basic book of rules, were concerned that power be held accountable. No party of government and no person in government, not even the President, was to pick or choose among the laws to be obeyed. But how does one branch of government blow the whistle on another? Or how do the people cry foul when their liberties are imperiled, if public officials can break the rules, lie to us about it, and then wave the wand of national security to silence us?”

“Can it happen again? You bet it can. The apparatus of secret power remains intact in a huge White House staff operating in the sanctuary of presidential privilege. George Bush has already told the National Security Council to take more responsibility for foreign policy which can of course be exercised beyond public scrutiny. And a lot of people in Washington are calling for more secrecy, not less, including more covert actions. This is a system easily corrupted as the public grows indifferent again, and the press is seduced or distracted. So one day, sadly, we are likely to discover once again that while freedom does have enemies in the world it can also be undermined here at home, in the dark, by those posing as its friends. I’m Bill Moyers. Good night."