Fueling the military junta that has ruled for decades are Burma's natural gas reserves, controlled by the Burmese regime in partnership with the U.S. multinational oil giant Chevron, the French oil company Total and a Thai oil firm. Offshore natural gas facilities deliver their extracted gas to Thailand through Burma's Yadana pipeline. The pipeline was built with slave labor, forced into servitude by the Burmese military.

The original pipeline partner, Unocal, was sued by EarthRights International for the use of slave labor. As soon as the suit was settled out of court, Chevron bought Unocal.

The Apprentice Dog Whistler

By Josh Fear, a Research Fellow at the Australia Institute, an independent public policy think tank based in Canberra:

The poet Robert Burns, watching a louse crawl around a rich woman's head, was inspired to write a poem that contains a line to the effect that we need to see ourselves as others see us.

I just read a blog by an Arab woman, obviously educated, that is livid with hatred for us for the destruction of Iraq. She dismisses the excuse of those who say they didn't vote for the present administration.

Britsh MPs visiting the Pentagon to discuss America's stance on Iran and Iraq were shocked to be told by one of President Bush's senior women officials: "I hate all Iranians."

And she also accused Britain of "dismantling" the Anglo-US-led coalition in Iraq by pulling troops out of Basra too soon.

The all-party group of MPs say Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs to Defence Secretary Robert Gates, made the comments this month.

America’s hired guns in Iraq have been called ‘the coalition of the billing’, but Blackwater mercenaries are accused of more than just taking the money.

The company, based near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, was co-founded by Erik Prince, a billionaire right-wing fundamentalist. At its HQ, Blackwater has trained more than 20,000 mercenaries to operate as freelancers in wars around the world.

Because an empire must, by definition, rely on coercion and murder, any given day in the rule of empire is immoral and detestable for those who genuinely value liberty and peace. But certain days are worse than others. In terms of what it bodes for our future - and for the future of the world - yesterday was a particularly awful day in the United States Senate, now controlled and led by the imperial Democrats.

If there are any people who still believed that the Democrats would represent a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy, they have no reason to believe it any longer.

There are simply too many instances of absurd foreign policy produced by our government (and others) not too conclude that the production process itself produces continuing debacle. Any history book witnesses the senseless results. A centenarian can look back at two massively engulfing world wars and such other large-scale conflicts as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iran-Iraq War, the French Indochina War, the French-Algerian War, the Russian-Afghanistan War, the Franco-Spanish-Moroccan (Riffian) War, and now the Iraq War.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state."

- Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

George W. Bush delivered his next to the last annual address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday.

Taking the same podium that he used five years ago to condemn the world body to “irrelevance” if it failed to rubber stamp his plans for a war of aggression against Iraq, Bush cast his regime in Washington as the world’s greatest champion of human rights and its most generous and selfless benefactor.

PRIME RATTUS:

Dear “Heather” whoever you are.

Thank you for your aggressive, offensive & unhelpful email letter.

In the first instance, I thought your email was just another unsolicited piece of spam: a bogus attempt to extract valuable information from an unsuspecting user of internet-based services, such as PayPal.

However, after attempting to login to my PayPal account & discovering that it had indeed been frozen without explanation, I’m now 80% sure that your email is the real McCoy.

A bill introduced this week by Australia's Parliament would give the Australian federal police the power to control which sites can and cannot be viewed by Australian Web surfers.

Introduced on Thursday, the bill--titled the Communications Legislation Amendment (Crime or Terrorism Related Internet Content) Bill 2007 - would empower the federal police to alter the "blacklist" of sites that are currently prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Let's take a trip down memory lane.

Bow your heads and raise the white flags.

After facing down the Third Reich, the Japanese Empire, the U.S.S.R., Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein, the United States has met an enemy it dares not confront - the American private health insurance industry.

With the courageous exception of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic candidates have all rolled out health "reform" plans that represent total, Chamberlain-like, appeasement. Edwards and Obama propose universal health insurance plans that would in no way ease the death grip of Aetna, Unicare, MetLife, and the rest of the evildoers.

THE PRESIDENT:

“Good evening. In the life of all imperialistic military empires, there come brief, fleeting moments that decide the direction of a multinational corporation masquerading as a democratic nation, and reveal the character of its blue-blooded aristocrats, conniving religious hucksters and corrupt, back-slapping robber barons.

We have now been suspended in such a moment for over six calendar years.