"It's not about oil.  It's not about oil."

But we're taking their oil. And not just to finance reconstruction.

Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of the Iraqi occupation, made that clear back in July when he declared that Iraq needs to accept foreign investment and privatization of its oil before a permanent government is put in charge of the country. In other words, democracy is welcome only after the most important economic decisions for the future of Iraqis have been decided for them.

You’d think that such a blatant rejection of democracy and obvious grab at Iraq’s oil would attract more notice. Bremer made it clear that corporations have priority over people in Iraq, and that the U.S. occupation plans to ensure that.

Our occupation of Iraq has an eerie similarity to another intervention in the Middle East that occurred 50 years ago--the CIA-British coup that ousted Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh and installed the infamous Shah of Iran.

So when Arab nations greet our rhetoric of creating democracy with suspicion or outright derision, we’ve earned it. Iranians struggled

Just wanted to say I was really impressed with the Farm Aid article by Harvey Wasserman.  It really rang true to me at each turn and I was also at almost everything he explained.  

If you'd like some pictures to go along with the article I've got some posted at:

www.funtigo.com/kelvs

Check under "Farm Aid 2003 Keeper."

On September 10, opening day of the Fifth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization, Lee Kyung Hae, leader of the Korean Federation of Advanced Farmers Association, climbed the fence that separates the excluded from the included and took his life with a knife to the heart.  

"I am 56 years old, a farmer from South Korea who has strived to solve our problems with the great hope in the ways to organize farmers' unions," Lee read from a statement minutes before his death. "But I have mostly failed, as many other farm leaders elsewhere have failed."

Earlier this year, Lee staged a one-man hunger strike in front of WTO headquarters in Geneva. He was ignored. Here in Cancun he marched with more than 15,000 farmers, indigenous people, and youth wearing a sandwich board that read "The WTO Kills Farmers." When the protesters reached the point where they could go no farther, he plunged a knife into his heart. He was pronounced dead in a Cancun hospital just miles from where WTO Ministers deliberated on how to promote the same agricultural trade that drove Lee, and hundreds more farmers in Korea, India, and other developing countries,

Bob - I just read your article on voting technology and the CIA www.counterpunch.org/fitrakis09082003.html. I've been covering this issue for the past year.  Here is an excerpt of a speech I gave this past Sunday at a forum I hosted in Philadelphia.

"The boards of many of these companies are dominated by top donors to the Republican Party, former high ranking military officers, and several ex-CIA directors. The CIA directors include: James Woolsey, Bobby Ray Inman, and John Deutch, and as mentioned before, Robert Gates and Frank Carlucci. The CIA, it should be remembered, has a decades-long track record of assisting in the brutal overthrow of democratically elected governments around the world."

I've collected a lot of stuff and put it on my webpage www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm. Help yourself.

Again, good work.

Shocked and awed, I was today, as I read the news of Americas way.
I wasn't reading the traditional sources, this info was from new discourses.
I read about the U.S.A., thier actions are different than what they say.
With forked tongues they speak, about the sanctity of life.
Careful my friend, behind thier back is a knife.
The richest of the world are controlling thier hand.
Life isn't important, what we want is your land.
But only if oil, or diamonds, or riches, are found
underneath, they'll come dig thier ditches.
They'll come with thier bombs, thier guns, and thier planes.
They'll blow up, they'll shoot down, they'll kill, and they'll maim.
They'll say its for justice, for honor, for right.
God gave them this mission, God gave them thier might.
Thier news outlets glitter with glee, at this show.
They use catchy phrases and righteous slogans, you know.
They weave all thier lies, they distort the truth.
They don't show the horror, the slaughter of youth.
How many civilians did we kill today?  
Ah who cares, they should'nt have been in the way.