We are all familiar with the propaganda drumbeat on China - they have no rights, they can't use the Internet the way they want, their freedom of religion and speech are repressed, they live in a police state. This view misses the point that freedom comes from within, not from without by a grant of rights by a benevolent sovereign. Freedom of thought can never be taken away, it can only be given away.

Case in point, the recent trial of a Chinese cop killer that has captured all the headlines in China. If a person kills a cop in the US, there is no sympathy. Merely the unsubstantiated accusation of such a crime, backed up by obviously cooked up evidence, is enough to have such a person condemned to death, and what's more, condemned by his peers, without sympathy, as the lowest form of life. But in China people are actually asking questions about what the police did to this man to provoke this response. In conflict between human and the state and its violent enforcers, the Chinese sympathies lie on the side of the oppressed human. Where do ours lie and why?

Despite being the beneficiaries of America's Good War, which enjoys broad bipartisan support in the US, and despite being assured by both John McCain and Barack Obama, that their liberation will be escalated next year by about three American brigades, the Afghanis continue to bitch about civilian casualties this, repeated air strikes on villages that. Now Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is ungrateful both for his installation as puppet president and for the generous salary he received as an American oil company exec, is demanding a reevaluation of the status of foreign forces in his country, all because of some silly misunderstanding. While the Afghans aren't acting nearly as uppity as their ungrateful conterparts in Iraq, it is becoming clear that, once again, yet another backward country has failed to appreciate America's greatness and is now starting to reject the hand of generosity reached out to them by the Pentagon. It's the Dominican Republic all over again!

Feel free to read more insults to America after the flip.

I wrote a diary on this on Friday, and it's clear that people want more information on this subject (I know how you feel, every time I'm trying to get breaking interantional news here I feel like I'm breathing inside a closed plastic bag.) Now that the war has entered its final stages, a more complete synopsis is possible and is attempted below. This has been a shameful and bloody mess for all sides, and now that the guns are falling silent, we can expect an upsurge of propaganda from all sides to frame the conflict in the most favorable way to each side. Most importantly, this war has demonstrated how seemingly rational and democratically elected leaders can push their country on an absurd path of destruction, with the people being unable to prevent the impending tragedy.

I read Russian and thought I would give you an update based on Russian sources regarding the situation in S. Ossetia. This information is obviously biased, but it will not be reported in the Western press for hours, so I think it's valuable. I will provide counterpoints from Georgian sources when possible.

It was reported today that Bruce E. Ivins, 62, a top government scientist who was about to be indicted for mailing out antrhax back in 2001, killing five people and paralyzing Washington just in time for the PATRIOT Act vote, has apparently killed himself in an undisclosed manner as a result of the relentless investigation, according to a statement by his lawyer.

The scientist had received the highest medal for civilians in the United States in 2004, but has been suffering from depression, ever since, you know, the government made it clear they were going to put him to death. According to the Los Angeles Times, he died of an overdose of Tylenol. The rumor is that he released the antrhax in order to be able to test his vaccines on humans instead of animals. But now that this bad apple is gone, we can close this case and never think about it again.

Following Obama's trip overseas, the Republicans counterattacked using the one angle on which they think Obama is most vulnerable - by asking the question, how truly American is this strange black man? Does he love America or is he just trying to get into her pants? An obvious point of attack in a racist and xenophobic society from the right wing party.

But what was interesting was the infection vector they chose to use: US soldiers. While McCain's ad attacked Obama for not visiting the wounded troops in Germany, a viral email purportedly from an American officer accused Obama of snubbing the troops during his Afghanistan visit. Which leads me to ask: just how far up is this cult going to go and how far is the left prepared to go down the slope?

There's a video game, not unlike many of the first person shooters, called America's Army. You fight in military formation, you kill terrorists, you get points. It's very popular, and has made its makers a lot of money. Except that this video game was made by the Pentagon to boost recruiting, and it's working great. An informal Army study of the same year showed that 4 out of 100 new recruits in Ft. Benning, Georgia, credit "America's Army" as the primary factor in convincing them to join the military. Sixty percent of those recruits surveyed said they played the game more than five times a week. And a 2004 Army survey found that nearly a third of young Americans aged 16 to 24 had some contact with the game in the previous six months. It also might be a violation of international treaty obligations, at least according to the ACLU, but I'm pretty sure those are non-binding on the US because of the awesomeness of this country.

More on juvenile militarism after the flip.  

A major part of the surge strategy is that the Iraqi government pass certain legislation that is supposed to produce national reconciliation amidst the newfound security.  Some of those laws got passed, others stalled, as a result of a contining standoff between the US backed parties, and this is the big news in Iraq right now, not Obama's visit or the empty promises of the colonial masters.

Follow me after the flip for Byzantine, or rather Babylonian, intrigue and machination.

As many of you probably know, the war in Afghanistan is not going so good. There are many reasons for this, from the low numbers of occupation forces, to the nearly complete lack of understanding of the culture, to the insurgent safe havens across the Pakistan border.

Sadly, Republicans and Democrats have settled on a nearly identical response to the problem. At least 2 new brigades will be sent, with more funds, more cross border operations into Pakistan, and a general browbeating diplomatic offensive will take place in the region. But it is not too late to launch a diplomatic push where it would actually make a difference - with the Taliban themselves. We need to try to understand the local culture and work within it to get al Qaeda, which is as foreign to the region as we are, out, and then get out ourselves.

McCain's Vietnamese captor from the Hanoi Hilton, and future press secretary, has just endorsed him for President.

The endorsement seems to be based less on political principles than on a personal affinity between two old torture deniers.

I guess Obama's not the only one receiving unprompted endorsements from evil foreigners.

More after the flip.

I've been following the expansioin of the war in Afghanistan into Pakistani territory. To recap briefly, Pakistan held elections, and the newly elected national and regional government in the frontier provinces won on a pledge to talk to and make peace with the tribesmen in Pakistan's frontier provinces bordering Afghanistan.  Pakistan has no further intention of killing its own citizens to pleae the US, and, predictably, the US is reacting violently.

Last week a major incursion and air strikes took place into the Pakistan border region, with 11 Pakistani Frontier Corps soliders killed in US airstrikes. The US is still denying this, but at the same time, US puppet Karzai just issued threats to cross the border with the Afghan Army and target Batullah Mehsud, the top Pakistani Taliban leader, and the US launched another strike into Pakistani terrotory, targetting Batullah, while the British have confirmed a large expandion of their Special Forces operations in Pakistani terrority. The sound you are hearing is the US being sucked into a major escalation of conflict with a nuclear Muslim power.

Read on for the Apocalypse Now update.    

I wrote a diary earlier this week about the disputed killing of Pakistani soldiers by a US military air strike in Pakistani territory. At that time, we were only a day out and many conflicting versions were floating around, a few from each side.

Since then, it has become quite clear that the US has embarked on a course of military coercion if not confrontation of Pakistani forces in the Afghan border region, and Pakistan is reacting with outrage. What's more, it is become very clear that the entire frontier region, on both sides of the border, is now fighting as one against the American invasion. While Iraq continues to grab the world's attention, it will be in Afghanistan, as always, where the empire's sword is broken.

Follow me after the flip to hear more muddled tales of a cross border insurgency that knows no end and no beginning.

I have argued before, vehemently and without success, that the Democratic commitment to the continued occupation in Afghanistan, is as criminal as the Republican commitment to the occupation in Iraq. The only difference that I can see is that we had a better excuse to go into Afghanistan, and we are apparently sticking to it after 7 years of a counterproductive occupation.

Today this occupation showed signs of expanding into a cross-border war along the lines of the expansion of US operations during the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia. With the exception that instead of Laos, we are expanding the war into nuclear armed Pakistan.

Follow me after the fold for some Great Game fun.

On this coming Memorial Day, I'm sure we'll see a lot of diaries about how terrible the Iraq War is, how the Bush Administration is a bunch of criminals, what a bastard Bush is for giving up golf, etc. But what we won't see on this site are diaries about how terrible the overall US policy of maintaing a standing army and engaging in systematic wars of aggression, such as Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and so on and on into history. Below is a little incomplete list of various major US military campaigns demonstrating the pattarn of aggression and atrocity exhibited by the US.

I call this day, as I have done before, with little success, for a new focus on what the people's, not the politicians' resposibility is for these wars. Why is it at this point in our history, with all we know about what the military has been used to do in the past, that it is still considered heroic for young men and women to become mercenaries ready to kill for any reason when ordered in any corner of the globe, ready to occupy, ready to imprison, ready to bomb civilian populations, ready to torture and interrogate? Why is this seen as heroic? We need to intverne, we need to educate, we need to oppose to prevent the willing transformation of our fellow citizens into killers.

As the American left continues to loudly, if ineffectively, call for a withdrawal from Iraq, complaining about the lack of progress, the quagmire, the losses of American lives and treasure, the counterproductive conduct of the war which only serves to recruit more terrorists, there is another war raging, a war that has gone on longer with Iraq and with arguably even more pitiful results, as ever widening sections of the country are lost to the insurgent enemy. But this war is the Good War, this is the war we were entitled to fight after 9/11, and a war that the Left wants to see carry through to the winning end. Both Obama and Clinton have pledged to increase our troop presence there, to punish Pakistan for not attacking the bad guys on their side aggressively enough, and to launch unilateral strikes against Pakistan to target cross border Taliban camps. The result is an oxymoron, an anti-war movement that is actually gung ho about one ongoing war even while it claims to oppose another.

What is the reason for this discrepancy and is it justified?

In an interview with Qatar's Al-Watan newspaper, the Syrian President Bashar Assad said something that should really become a bumpter sticker in the US:

The Bush administration does not have the vision or will for the peace process. It does not have anything.

In the same interview, Assad confirmed that both Syria and Israel are ready to relaunch their peace talks on the basis of Israel ceding the Golan Heights, something to whcih Israel has agreed in principle, but they are waiting for the next American administration to mediate the talks, because, well, Bush is an asshole.

The Bush administration, never one to shrink back from a challenge to demonstrate their incompetence, responded by sending CIA Director Michael Hayden, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to breif Congress about just how evil Syria is.

More after the fold.

This may not be a popular topic, but I think it is pertinent this election season, as Obama has taken a leading role in sex offender registration legislation, and now that it has been aplled all over the country, a lot of problems have emerged. It is difficult to discuss this issue, because the crimes involved are so neinous that the perpetrators receive very little sympathy from the public. However, it is precisely in such situation, with a nearly unanimous majority on one side and a despised minority on the other, when democracy can become very oppressive and extreme solutions can take hold.

Sex offender laws exist in nearly every state at this point, and there is also federal legislation. Most felony level offenses having sex as an element, from lewd behavior to child molestation to rape, now carry mandatory lifetime registration, with permanent stigmatization and restrictiosn on where people can live. Many states are also regularly employing civil commitment for offenders whose incarceration term has expired, keeping them in state mental hospitals indefinitely without the need for a sentence from the court. The result is the creation of a permanent institutionally persecuted pariah class.  

More after the flip, with Obama's position on the subject.  

I have been following the Jeremiah Wright story since it was first publicized many months ago.  At the time, Obama decided not to address the beliefs of his pastor and to pretend that the entire history of black nationalism and black liberation theology is a relic of the past, which Obama ignored on a weekly basis.  Now the story is back, and what will Obama do this time?  More of the same slience, of course.  If there is any vestigial racism in this country, then surely the election of Obama will officially end it, thereby eliminating any need to discuss it further or make any additional reforms.  

This is not surprising, Obama is a Democrat and wants to be President of a deeply racist country which does not tolerate talk of its atrocities.  But a historic opportunity is missed, as a black man clearly versed in the philosophy of black liberation, could explain to white America that the African American community still has grievances, that it still feels like the stepchild, that it is hard to be proud of America when you are black.  He can revisit the history of Malcolm X, of Muhammad Ali, and show the general public that there is an ongoing tragedy in our society that has been hushed up, forgotten, and unaddressed.