MSNBC reports that beginning Monday, March 10th 2008, only cars built in 1998 — none older and none newer — can be legally imported into Mexico. Car dealers were given notice only a month ago.

Thank the Mexican Association of Automobile Distributors. They’re the ones who came up with that new rule.  They say it was needed to “stop the accelerated conversion of our country into the world’s biggest automotive garbage dump.”

Texan car dealers are not very happy right now.

Well, whaddaya know?!

After losing 11 primaries in a row, last night Hillary won in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island.

That means she still has a chance to become the Democratic presidential nominee. And it means the American people will have to suffer through what feels like another 200 debates between Hillary and Obama. Oh joy!

There’s been a new viral video making the rounds lately. It’s a music video in support of Barak Obama, called Yes We Can.  It features a bunch of celebrities repeating sentences from some of Obama’s speeches.

No wonder the kids are going crazy for him. That video really is quite inspirational.

Oh, and McCain has his very own video now, too. Not quite so inspirational though It’s more… uhmm, what’s the word I’m looking for here… scary?!

Prices for flat-screen TVs have come down significantly over the past few years. Finally not only early adopters can afford to buy a high-tech TV. We decided to test two fairly inexpensive LCD HD TVs and compare them. Both are available at Buy.com.

Toshiba 19HLV87 - Price: $423.92

The Toshiba has a 19 inch screen with a resolution of 1440 by 900 pixels. As an added bonus it has a DVD player built in. The remote is easy to use and the buttons are exactly where they should be to make finding them in the dark easier.

Westinghouse SK26H520S (refurbished) - Price: $339.99

Buy.com often has great sales of refurbished (used) equipment. This is an excellent way to buy electronics that might otherwise be out of your price range. Refurbished doesn’t neccessarily mean that the item was defective. It could have been returned for any number of reasons. Before being sold as “refurbished” the item is tested by the original manufacturer (and repaired if necessary.)

The 26″ Westinghouse LCD TV we ordered worked perfectly and was virtually indistinguishable from a new TV. Compared to the Toshiba 19″ screen, the 26″is significantly bigger and offers a much better viewing experience. The picture also appeared to be crisper.

And since most people nowadays already own one or more DVD players, the built-in DVD player in the Toshiba really didn’t add all that much value in my opinion.

Considering the Westinghouse has a bigger, crisper picture and you probably already own a DVD player anyway, you are much better off buying the 26″ Westinghouse for $339 rather than the 19″ Toshiba.

Following a recent CNBC debate among the Republican presidential candidates, the network polled the audience asking the obvious question, “Who won?” After 7000 televotes were counted, Paul had an overwhelming margin of 75%. Paul supporters were livid that the network not only took the poll down but also all evidence of it on CNBC’s web site. http://www.cnbc.com/id/21257762/site/14081545/?site=14081545

Perform a search for Paul on You Tube and you’ll find hundreds, if not thousands of links to every possible Ron Paul bit of minutia. Browse through Digg, and what you’ll find is a loyal cadre of Paulies downplaying anything negative of the candidate, and promoting everything positive, no matter of how minor.

Recent polling gives Paul, at best, 5% of the Republican vote, with more realistic numbers in the 2% range. http://www.pollingreport.com/wh08rep.htm Paulies claim a conspiracy behind the low numbers, one driven by a media fearing a Paul nomination. Yet, when given the opportunity, Paul supporters flock to online polls as a virtual flash mob, mercilessly flooding these polls with multiple phony votes.

So, what could we expect from a Paul nomination? Is this a reflection of a true movement or is it simply a virtual attempt at controlling the election?

The Dikin Medal was founded in 1943 in the UK (where else!) as the highest award for valor any animal can receive.
To date, only 54 have ever been given, to 35 pigeons, several dogs and 1 cat amongst them.
Now a Sparrow should be added to this role of honor, for unparralled accuracy on crapping on the Chimp - but also for good taste.
Rumor has it that this avian assassin flew all the way from Iran to drop his load.

by Paul Craig Roberts

As everyone except for a dwindling band of Bush supporters now knows, the U.S. is in a terrible situation in Iraq from which it cannot extract itself. For Bush and Cheney, their own pride and delusion are more compelling than U.S. casualties, the destruction of Iraq and its people, and the inflaming of sectarian strife and anti-American violence throughout the Middle East.

Congress is complicit in the great strategic blunder. Republican flag-wavers led Americans like lemmings into the abyss. The Democrats have already abandoned the electorate that gave them control of Congress six months ago in the false hope that the Democrats would corral the White House moron and lead America out of the abyss.

Like the Republicans, the Democrats serve the few special interest groups that benefit, or believe that they benefit, from the war. By now we all know who these groups are: the oil industry, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby, AIPAC. This contrived war, based on lies and deception, serves no other interest.

There is no longer any question whatsoever, not a single sliver of doubt, that Americans were deceived into this disastrous war. The president of the United States lied to the American people, as did the vice president, the national security adviser, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the deputy secretary of defense, the undersecretary of defense, and every neoconservative in the Bush administration, think tanks, and media.

The fact that the American people were lied to and deceived does not absolve them from blame. The lie was transparent, the logic nonexistent, the true facts available and easy to discover.

America failed because the American people failed. The American people failed because their self-righteousness and hubris made them easy saps for deception.

Even now after five years of a disastrous policy, Republicans cannot accept the facts about the U.S. invasion and failed occupation of Iraq. At the recent “debate” between Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina, Rep. Ron Paul dared to tell the truth. Paul said that our difficulties in the Middle East are “blowback” from our government’s determined attempts to exercise hegemony over the Middle East.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, a person who sank so low as to frame innocents while serving as U.S. attorney in order to boost his name recognition, played the self-righteous card to extreme. How dare Ron Paul suggest that U.S. policy toward Muslims has anything whatsoever to do with attacks on the U.S.! With all the outrage he could muster, Giuliani asked Paul “to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”

The thunderous applause from the Republican audience to Giuliani’s put-down of the only honest person present underlines that the Republican Party is incapable of leadership to end a futile and lost war that under international standards is a war crime, an unprovoked, naked aggression based entirely on lies, deception, and a secret agenda.

At other times, the Republican audience applauded in support of torture and greeted John McCain’s protest against the practice with cold silence.

In the opening years of the 21st century the Republicans have made it clear that they are willing to sacrifice the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to wage “war against terrorism.” This willingness makes the Republican Party a more dangerous threat to Americans than Muslim terrorists. Muslim terrorists cannot destroy our country’s reputation, trash our civil liberties, and wreck our system of accountable government, but the Republican Party has done a thorough job of it.

The Democratic Party is complicit in the Republican Party’s crimes, but unlike the Republican electorate, the Democratic electorate does not support the occupation, the domestic police-state measures, and the Bush administration’s decision to send more combat troops to Iraq. Although none of the current front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination are independent of the special interests that benefit from the war, it might still be possible for a Democrat to emerge who will represent the Democratic electorate instead of the special interests.

Republican support for Bush’s contrived war against Iraq has diminished the Republican Party. Intelligent and decent people have abandoned the party, which has morphed into a Brownshirt Party with which fewer people are willing to be associated. The diminished Republican ranks will make it difficult for the party to steal any more elections.

If we are fortunate, Republicans will complete their self-destruction before they extinguish the Constitution and destroy America.

Project Censored has released this year’s list of most important stories censored by the mainstream media:

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US
#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo
#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy
#7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act
#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians
#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed
#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines
#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup
#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US
#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner
#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court
#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda
#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story
#19 Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever
#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem
#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers
#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed
#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe
#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year
#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

Today’s book recommendation comes from The Nation:

Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush by Barry Lando.

Sanctions were the weapon of mass destruction used against the Iraqi people to starve and reduce them to a Third World level of poverty.

Lando’s work opens our eyes to one of the most tragic episodes in the lengthy, sorry history of “Western” dealings with Iraq. He offers a well-researched account of Iraq’s external (and, to a lesser extent, internal) history since the British carved that unlikely state out of the moribund Ottoman Empire in 1919.

History doesn’t change much as he invokes Col. T.E. Lawrence’s well-known injunction of that moment: “The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour…. We are today not far from disaster.”

The British preferred Winston Churchill’s imperial ambitions. We chose Bushes, a Clinton and their respective entourages. Either way, disaster was not far behind. Iraq floats on a sea of oil, reputedly with the world’s third-largest reserves. The Great Powers naturally have been drawn to it, but they have cared nothing for the country that might nominally exist.

While we’re on the subject of western colonialism, take a look at this article from The Guardian:

Delhi, 1857: a bloody warning to today’s imperial occupiers

A century and a half after the Indian mutiny, echoes of the arrogance and lies that sparked insurgency could not be clearer

Before long the insurgency had snowballed into the largest and bloodiest anticolonial revolt against any European empire in the 19th century. Of the 139,000 sepoys of the Bengal army, all but 7,796 turned against the British. In many places the sepoys were supported by a widespread civilian rebellion.
There is much about British imperial adventures in the east at this time, and the massive insurgency it provoked, which is uneasily familiar to us today. The British had been trading in India since the early 17th century. But the commercial relationship changed towards the end of the 18th, as a new group of conservatives came to power in London, determined to make Britain the sole global power. Lord Wellesley, the brother of the Duke of Wellington and governor general in India from 1798 to 1805, called his new approach the Forward Policy. But it was in effect a project for a new British century. Wellesley made it clear he would not tolerate any European rivals, especially the French, and planned to remove any hostile Muslim regimes that might presume to resist the west’s growing might.

The Forward Policy soon developed an evangelical flavour. The new conservatives wished to impose not only British laws but also western values on India. The country would be not only ruled but redeemed. Local laws which offended Christian sensibilities were abrogated - the burning of widows, for instance, was banned. One of the East India Company directors, Charles Grant, spoke for many when he wrote of how he believed providence had brought the British to India for a higher purpose: “Is it not necessary to conclude that our Asiatic territories were given to us, not merely that we draw a profit from them, but that we might diffuse among their inhabitants, long sunk in darkness, the light of Truth?”

The British progressed from removing threatening Muslim rulers to annexing even the most pliant Islamic states. In February 1856 they marched into Avadh, also known by the British as Oudh. To support the annexation, a “dodgy dossier” was produced before parliament, so full of distortions and exaggerations that one British official who had been involved in the operation described the parliamentary blue book (or paper) on Oudh as “a fiction of official penmanship, [an] Oriental romance” that was refuted “by one simple and obstinate fact”, that the conquered people of Avadh clearly “preferred the slandered regime” of the Nawab “to the grasping but rose-coloured government of the company”.

The reaction to this came with the great mutiny, or as it is called in India, the first war of independence. Though it reflected many deeply held political and economic grievances, particularly the feeling that the heathen foreigners were interfering with a part of the world to which they were alien, the uprising was consistently articulated as a defensive action against the inroads missionaries and their ideas were making in India, combined with a generalised fight for freedom from western occupation.

Although the great majority of the sepoys were Hindus, there are many echoes of the Islamic insurgencies the US fights today in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Delhi a flag of jihad was raised in the principal mosque, and many of the resistance fighters described themselves as mujahideen or jihadis. There was even a regiment of “suicide ghazis” who vowed to fight until they met death.

Events reached a climax on September 14 1857, when British forces attacked the besieged city. They proceeded to massacre not only the rebel sepoys and jihadis, but also the ordinary citizens of the Mughal capital. In one neighbourhood alone, Kucha Chelan, 1,400 unarmed citizens were cut down. Delhi, a sophisticated city of half a million souls, was left an empty ruin.

The emperor was put on trial and charged, quite inaccurately, with being behind a Muslim conspiracy to subvert the empire stretching from Mecca and Iran to Delhi’s Red Fort. Contrary to evidence that the uprising broke out first among the overwhelmingly Hindu sepoys, the prosecutor argued that “to Musalman intrigues and Mahommedan conspiracy we may mainly attribute the dreadful calamities of 1857″. Like some of the ideas propelling recent adventures in the east, this was a ridiculous and bigoted oversimplification of a more complex reality. For, as today, western politicians found it easier to blame “Muslim fanaticism” for the bloodshed they had unleashed than to examine the effects of their own foreign policies. Western politicians were apt to cast their opponents in the role of “incarnate fiends”, conflating armed resistance to invasion and occupation with “pure evil”.

Yet the lessons of 1857 are very clear. No one likes people of a different faith conquering them, or force-feeding them improving ideas at the point of a bayonet. The British in 1857 discovered what the US and Israel are learning now, that nothing so easily radicalises a people against them, or so undermines the moderate aspect of Islam, as aggressive western intrusion in the east. The histories of Islamic fundamentalism and western imperialism have, after all, long been closely and dangerously intertwined. In a curious but very concrete way, the fundamentalists of all three Abrahamic faiths have always needed each other to reinforce each other’s prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the others.

Tags: oil iraq war web of deceit neo-colonialism pnac project for a new american century

A great documentary narrated by Ed Asner: