EMPIRE HEAD-LINES

Petraeus: Iraq Security Improved, but `Fragile, Reversible’
There is a method to it, a scheme that leaches,
Oozing ugliness from the general’s lips.
It burns my anxious ears and disbelieving eyes.
I hear Gaspar Noe’s `Irreversible’,
See the weight of its cruel cacophony.


Olympic Torch Arrives in the U.S.
Not a moment too soon.
Come, light! Come, ember!
Make your way to the crown of La liberté éclairant le monde,
Reaching out, extend thy transporters bough;
With oily rag, ignite the world’s puddled iron torch.

Clashes along Olympic torch route
Joined together torch through London, game afoot
Ire captures sober flame, hurls down its host
Nineteen nations to go


China jails outspoken activist over Tibet views
Dissident jailed for using tongue
Shackled of seditious idioms
U.S. speechless

Al-Sadr calls for million-Iraqi rally against U.S.
One million liberated flora marching
To our one hundred forty thousand
More than enough blooms


NATO backs Bush's European Missle Shield
Again with the ideas shielding pragmatism
Roar of incoming freedom haters
Hiss of outbound liberators

Destroying Torture Tapes - Freeing themselves from serious legal trouble
A shrieking pale
Is and shall be the ghosts haunting the masters of this
Frame by frame

McCain warns of Iraq genocide
And there he was
Hunched like a sniper, crowd of microphones, a glazed, suffering face
Of one who knows not where they are

Bush lauds pace of Iraq progress
Something is missing
Which explains such optimism, his legendary dim sightedness
I say this as it would be shameful not to mention his strengths

US Declares War on Iran

Washington is now making the most ruthless use of its dollar hegemony against Iran. It just declared war on the entirety of Iran's banking system and will blackmail China, Europe, Japan, et al. to cut off Iran financially.

(1) the March 20 advisory [of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a unit within the US Treasury Department] represents a US declaration of war by sanctions on Iran and a sanctions threat to the international banking community, (2) the US has various unilateral financial sanctions measures at its command in the form of executive orders and Patriot Act Section 311 and (3) the BDA-North Korea sanctions were, at least in retrospect, a test run for Iran.

If the US succeeds, an international quarantine on Iran's banks would disrupt Iran's financial linkages with the world by blocking its ability to process cross-border payments for goods and services exported and imported. Without those linkages Iran is unlikely to be able to engage in global trade and commerce. As 30% of Iran's GDP in 2005 was imports of goods and services and 20% was non-oil exports (World Bank and other data), a large chunk of Iran's economy would shrivel up. The repercussions will be painful and extend well beyond lost business and profits. For example, treating curable illnesses will become difficult. According to an Iranian health ministry official, Iran produces 95% of its own medicines but most pharmaceutical-related raw materials are imported. (John McGlynn, "The March 20, 2008 US Declaration of War on Iran," MRZine, 24 March 2008)

Make no mistake: this economic war is a strategy pursued by both Democrats and Republicans, realists and adventurists alike: Daniel Dombey, "Senators Urge Formal Sanctions," Financial Times, 6 March 2008.

The dollar hegemony is declining (cf. Jeffrey Frankel, "The Euro Could Surpass the Dollar within Ten Years," Vox, 18 March 2008; Wolfgang Münchau, "This Crisis Could Bring the Euro Centre-stage," Financial Times, 23 March 2008), but will it decline fast enough for the Iranians?

The ruling clerics of Iran are able leaders who have run their country with a surer hand than leftists would have, but this presents them with the greatest challenge since Saddam Hussein, backed by the West, invaded Iran -- perhaps even a greater challenge, since at least the richest third of Iranians are not made of the same stuff as those who made the revolution and defended Iran's sovereignty in the eight-year-long war.

Oh Do Shut Up

Iran needs to "confess" to running a past nuclear weapons program or its claims of cooperating with a U.N. investigation of its past clandestine activities will be a sham, the chief U.S. envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday. In Washington, meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tehran must do even more to end present U.N. sanctions and avoid new ones — halt uranium enrichment and related activities that could make the ingredients for a bomb.

Fantastically illogical, astronomically arrogant and just plain batshit warmongeringly insane. But y'know persistent & dedicated and they wrote 'bomb' result! So they have that going for them. Empires don't expand themselves people.