Casino Nation

by Jackson Browne

In a weapons producing nation under Jesus

In the fabled crucible of the free world

Camera crews search for clues amid the detritus

And entertainment shapes the land

The way the hammer shapes the hand

Gleaming faces in the checkout counter at the Church of Fame

The lucky winners cheer Casino Nation

All those not on TV only have themselves to blame

And don't quite seem to understand

The way the hammer shapes the hand

Out beyond the ethernet the spectrum spreads

DC to daylight, the cowboy mogul rides

Never worry where the gold for all this glory's gonna come from

Get along dogies, it's coming out of your hides

The intentional cultivation of a criminal class

The future lit by brightly burning bridges

Justice fully clothed to hide the heart of glass

That shatters in a thousand Ruby Ridges

And everywhere the good prepare for perpetual war

And let their weapons shape the plan

The way the hammer shapes the hand

So what's the plan if we get slammed again by terrorists?

According to Philip Giraldi, writing in the new issue (not online) of the American Conservative, it's to nuke Iran:

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

By the way, the American Conservative is Pat Buchanan's magazine.

Oh, and if that doesn't shake you up a bit, segue into this:

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s lovefest visit to Tehran on Sunday, where he laid a wreath on the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini and hailed what he called “a new chapter in brotherly ties” between Iran and Iraq. Now, by all rights, this should have been a major story in the U.S. Here you have the leader of the new government we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars creating in Iraq making very nice with the terror-funding and nuke-building mullahs in Iran. So this is what our soldiers are putting their lives on the line for -- a budding alliance between fundamentalist theocracies? (And yesterday’s news about the Iraqi constitution being based on fundamentalist Islamic principles, including curtailing women’s rights only confirms these fears) Surely that’s front page news, right? Not in America.

(A tip of the MJ hat to Molly Ivins for this last item)

In my wildest dreams

Making Haiti Safe for Democracy

In the shitstorm of disinformation over our incursions in Iraq, the latest American invasion of Haiti, which began in February, 2004, has largely gone unreported by the spineless, mainstream press. In addition to direct brutality at the hands of U. S. troops, the people of this long-suffering Afro-Caribbean nation have once again had the thugs employed by drug lords and sweat shop operators unleashed upon them. Victem have included septegenarian artists, 13 year-old students (whose only crime was being photographed handing flowers to deposed President Aristide), and journalists seeking to report on the collusion of the U.S. government with the Haitian right-wing elite in staging this latest coup d'etat. Meanwhile, the daily press tells us that Aristide voluntarily left the country.