have a very merry yalda, please pass the sanctions...,
2006-12-25 11:07:52
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Here, see: we invaded Iraq jus...,
2006-12-30 10:13:23
death of a lover of nachos and football:
Gerald Ford, midwife to the Iranian nuclear programme, 1913-2006.
Along with escalating US support for a plutonium fuel cycle in Iran, Mr. Ford supported Suharto's invasion of East Timor. I'm not sure if being particularly soft-spoken is enough to excuse the record of a man who signed the warrant for the massacre of 200,000 innocent people and the illegal conquest and occupation of their nation for 30 years.
It wasn't until the presidency of George W. Bush that people seemed to come around to thinking maybe Ford wasn't that bad. By 2001 fat bastards like Ted Kennedy were handing Ford trophies for what is referred to as "healing" the nation after Watergate and Vietnam by criminally obstructing justice and pardoning Richard Millhouse Nixon. Were any "healing" in evidence it might be worth consideration, but as we saw during the last presidential election we must cling to the master narrative that the third of the country that believes we should never have left Vietnam continues to "divide us".
The far more consequential and necessary healing for the shattered nations of Indochina was refused first by Gerald Ford, who precipitated a quarter century of further American obstruction of their healing by all manner of denial and continued assault. By just one recent example: refusing to release full data we had of land mined by unexploded ordinance from the US assault until 2000.
This winter has been especially generous in the natural deaths of so much of the old Pinochet gang. Gerald Ford, in continuing Nixon's support for the new dictatorship and false denials of our involvement in the coup, may be counted as an equal party to that nightmare.
We regret his untimely, natural passing before meeting justice at human hands. Our deepest condolences go out to all his victims and their survivors.
