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The Great Gusher in the Gulf is a political, not simply an economic and environmental, crisis. “No amount of public disgust at BP has moved Obama to behave as if he is beholden to the majority that elected him – for the simple reason that he is not.”
“The overlapping American mega-crises of Katrina, the Crash of 2008, the Great Gusher in the Gulf are ‘both the products and the illuminators of the wholly corrupt relationship’ between Capital and government.”
The United States can no longer engage effectively in “nation-building” in the one place on Earth it has a right and duty to do so: at home. These are the lessons of the 2010 Gulf oil catastrophe, the 2008 financial meltdown and the 2005 Katrina horror – disasters that history will rightfully conflate as symptomatic of the fundamental crisis of the rule of Capital. The U.S. has become a company town of speculative and extraction enterprises whose social and physical geography the rulers relentlessly appropriate, monetize and despoil – all with obscene abandon.
At the core of the 100 or so activists that gathered in New Orleans for an Emergency Summit to Stop the Gulf Oil Catastrophe, last weekend, were veterans of the ravages of Disaster Capitalism following Hurricane Katrina. They had seen up close how Capital and its servants at all levels of government organized themselves as a public-private mob to drive Black and poor people from the city. They were witnesses to the crafting of a corporate consensus that the exiled poor should have no rights that conflicted with the imperatives of Capital – no right to return, no right to reclaim their lives, no rights that cannot be superseded by the claims and ambitions of the oligarchs. They had watched as finance Capital’s urban gentrification agenda was near-instantaneously put on fast-forward in New Orleans to ensure the permanent purging of the poor. A kind of perverse anthem seemed to rise from each corporate celebration of the city’s imminent and profitable rebirth: “Free the land – of Black people!”
“The U.S. has become a company town of speculative and extraction enterprises whose social and physical geography the rulers relentlessly appropriate, monetize and despoil.”
Now the land and bayous and sea are made hostile to all life by the depraved indifference of voracious extractors who monetized, securitized and derivitaized the Gulf’s most deeply buried oil deposits years before the accursed Deepwater Horizon rig made its last, fatal thrust. The super-deep reservoirs of the Gulf were sold and their oil futures already leveraged to finance yet more assaults on man and nature, even before President Obama’s flip-flop on off-shore drilling in August, 2008, when he had the Democratic nomination in the bag.
Such world-shaping dealings have nothing to do with you and me, nothing to do with notions of democracy, because democracy does not exist in the United States, where finance capital and its extracting, hoarding, manipulating energy cousin, rule. There is no evidence of democracy anywhere that counts – not in the $14-plus trillion transferred directly to Wall Street, mostly by the quasi-public Federal Reserve, while the real economy in general and Black America in particular were stripped and gutted. No notions of an American social compact could deter the ruling class from acting out its pathologies on its own citizens when Katrina presented the opportunity. And no amount of public disgust at BP has moved Obama to behave as if he is beholden to the majority that elected him – for the simple reason that he is not.
Every element of the American political process is firmly in the hands of the oligarchy. The public only became aware of Barack Obama’s existence after he had been thoroughly vetted by corporate mechanisms of all kinds, including but by no means limited to the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council (see Bruce Dixon, Black Commentator, June 5, 2003). Obama’s informal – but quite binding – “contracts” with the oligarchs were concluded before he set foot in the U.S. Senate. The public was the last to know that the obscure politician Obama had become a “viable” prospect by corporate acclimation in the only “race” that counts – the early, business fund-raising contest. (The corporate consensus included BP, which gave Obama more money than any other candidate, and Wall Street, which was even more generous to the Nation’s First Black President.)
“Finance capital and its extracting, hoarding, manipulating energy cousin, rule.”
The U.S. government is divorced from the people because it is a creature of Capital. The three recent mega-crises are both the products and the illuminators of that wholly corrupt relationship. It is, therefore, quite logical that the activists of the Emergency Summit to Stop the Gulf Oil Catastrophe appear to direct their demands to both BP and Obama:
1) Stop oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Full compensation, retraining and new employment, including public works, for all affected, 2) The government and entire oil industry must allocate all necessary resources to stop and clean up the spill, prevent oil from hitting shore, protect wildlife, treat injured wildlife, and repair all devastation. Full support, including by compensation, must be given to peoples’ efforts on all these fronts and to save the Gulf. 3) No punishment to those taking independent initiative; no gag orders on people hired, contracted, or who volunteer; those responsible for this crime against the environment and the people should be prosecuted. 4) Full mobilization of scientists and engineers. Release scientific and technical data to the public; no more lying and covering up. Immediately end use of dispersants; full, open scientific evaluation of nature and impact of dispersants. Fund all necessary scientific and medical research. 5) Full compensation for all losing livelihood and income from the disaster. 6) Provide necessary medical services to those suffering health effects of the spill. Protect the health of and provide necessary equipment for everyone involved in clean up operations. Full disclosure of medical and scientific studies about the effects of the oil disaster.
No Nation-Building, Here
We are living in the late stages of overwhelming dominance (hegemony) of finance capital – and, secondarily, the oil and gas money-machines. It is a period characterized by destruction of the domestic manufacturing base and frenzied predation of the public sector. The mission of Capital’s servants in government is, therefore, to assist Wall Street and the energy sector in the fastest possible conversion of natural and social resources to private exploitation.
Those among the public and media that still harbor the illusion that government is there to serve the people, despite seeing so much evidence to the contrary, speak of a national “malaise,” a loss of purpose, a temporary failure or flaw in the national character. What nonsense! What we are witnessing is the destructive behavior of a predatory class that sees its future in trillion-dollar derivative bets; commodification of every conceivable resource (food, water, air?) and manipulation of every commodity market; privatization of every possible state function (schools, safety nets); constant expansion of the “market” in the maintenance of empire; and the “primitive accumulation” of the spoils of war.
“What we are witnessing is the destructive behavior of a predatory class.”
For such a class, there is no room, rhyme or reason for anything resembling domestic nation-building, and they will not assign their servants in government to any such project. Worse than simply being on their own, the people face the same oligarchic enemy at the commanding heights of both the public and private sectors: the Democrat and the banks, the Republican and Big Oil, and vice versa – and all of them aligned with the military complex.
The pace of disaster-making is quickening in America, which indicates something very much like “the end is near.”
Maybe these overlapping pyrotechnics of horror – Katrina, the Crash of 2008, the Great Gusher in the Gulf – are necessary to teach Americans the nature of class war, that it is, indeed, hell. At any rate, the oligarchs can be counted on to accelerate the processes of their own demise. It is up to the people to save themselves, through organizing; there are no guarantees.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
responsibility for your own actions. When will President Obama. How many years will it take before you will get off this Bush kick. Do you know how embarrassing that is to him, to constantly and relentlessly blame this on the former president. It makes it look like we have a first grader in charge... hummmmmmmm, perhaps we do.
Please give me a statute of limitations so you libs will take a drink of 'shut the hell up' on this stuff so we can move forward, together, as a country.
1. Regardless of whether you believe anyone should be talking about Sarah Palin, the woman is a leader in the Republican party, and could, by a fluke of nature, end up president some day. So it's important to report on her inanities, if only to keep people informed of what a lightweight nut she really is.
2. The media has, to a larger part, accepted that Palin is a nut. Sure, they report on her every move, because they have to, but at the same time they're loathe to examine her comments and hold her responsible for them. Had a leader of the Democratic party - an aspiring presidential candidate, no less - compared George Bush to Hitler, it'd be the end of their career. Now we have dingbats like Palin, and even GOP members of Congress, making the comparison with impunity. At some point, the media needs to stop reporting what Republicans say, and start analyzing it for the extremist, and dangerous, rhetoric it actually is.
Officials in the Afghan government said that private security firms form a big threat to security in the country
The Afghan government and the US are concerned about a lack of transparency in the international contracts by which security firms are paid, which result in chaos in the country, the spokesperson for the Afghan president said.
The spokesman for President Karzai, Wahid Omar, sees private security firms behind the security concerns.
Meanwhile, a report published by the US Congress claimed that part of the US military budget in Afghanistan goes to the Taliban’s and insurgents’ pockets.
In the report, the US Congress says that the US forces in Afghanistan can pay millions of dollars for security of their logistic convoys in a week, but the money flows to the Taliban’s pocket as bribe.
While confirming the comments made by the Afghan government, the former Higher Education Minister-turned Taliban member Arsalan Rahmani said that private security firms are afraid of taking risks so they give bribes at the crossing locations controlled by the Taliban.
"This is a reality when convoys carrying foreign forces’ goods cross an area controlled by the Taliban. The security contractors split some of the money taken from the contract with the Taliban," said Rahmani.
On Wednesday, PoliticalCorrection.org first highlighted Rep. Louie Gohmert's (R-TX) endorsement of Thomas Sowell's argument that President Obama is like Hitler because of the BP escrow fund. Now, Sarah Palin is hyping Sowell's outlandish comparison on Twitter:
If you pay attention to the Right, you might think there are large Islamic armies occupying a few majority-Christian countries these days instead of the other way around. If their rhetoric didn't justify real-world violence, one could say conservatives have become entertainingly unhinged when it comes to Islam. Here's a blurb for Mark Steyn's ominous-sounding book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It:
Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are. And Liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides Sharia law doesn't violate the "Separation of Church and State," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on Gay Rights in favor of the much safer charms of Polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying...
Hey, it could happen! Bloggers have uncovered General David Petraeus embracing "the jihadist rhetoric of Islamic anti-Semitism," a nefarious plot by the Obama administration to transmit Islamic messages at an international nuclear summit, a similar plan by Food Network star Rachael Rae in cahoots with Dunkin Donuts and a plot by MasterCard to finance Islamic terrorism through those credit card fees. Perhaps most alarming, however, was a sinister scheme by devious Muslims to infiltrate the highest levels of government by applying for low-level internships in Capitol Hill offices. Only the tireless diligence of brave far-Right lawmakers like Reps. Sue Myrick (R-NC), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Trent Franks (R-AZ), and Paul Broun (R-GA) kept them from achieving their goals.
Yes! there is ALL the embedded links here that proves this insanity from teabaggers AND IS being spread by these looney whacktards!
Don't ya just hate it when someone talks about a MORAL justicication for war...I mean, what a waste of time - we have superior military hardware and we're gonna use it, damn it, even if it's against countries that did/do nothing to the US.
And as far as our border states are concerned, you/I know well that until corps refuse to hire illegal immigrants, they will continue to pour over our borders.
it's great to have the most recent "quote" from 60 years ago....
Charles Wilson, Chairman of the Board of General Electric and Truman appointee to head the Office of Defence Mobilization, in a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association, 1950
Sen. Alfred Beveridge
from when?? 1900?
Between 1898 and 1934,
....aaaaah, more current events....
so....I guess what you are trying tell me is that it's the Obamacrats way of exacting more social justice upon the nation....
June 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- A few weeks ago the Jewish Chronicle published a list of Jewish MPs in the UK parliament. It named 24 in total, encompassing 12 Conservatives, 10 Labour, and two Liberal Democrats. Author and peace activist Stuart Littlewood elaborated on these figures and presented the following analysis:
“The Jewish population in the UK is 280,000 or 0.46 per cent. There are 650 seats in the House of Commons so, as a proportion, Jewish entitlement is only three seats. The conclusion is pretty obvious. With 24 seats, Jews are eight times over-represented. Which means, of course, that other groups must be under-represented, including Muslims…If Muslims, for instance, were over-represented to the same extent as the Jews (i.e. eight times) they’d have 200 seats. All hell would break loose.”
A question must be raised here. Why are Jews overwhelmingly over-represented in the British parliament, in British and American political pressure groups, in political fundraising and in the media?
Haim Saban, the Israeli-American, multibillionaire media mogul offers the answer. The New Yorker reported this week that at a conference last fall, Saban described his pro-Israeli formula, outlining “three ways to be influential in American politics…make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.”
As I have mentioned many times before, there is no such a thing as Jewish conspiracy. It is all done in the open. In front of TV cameras from all over the world, listed Israeli Propaganda Author as well as British Foreign Secretary David Miliband gave the Israelis a green light to operation Cast Lead, suggesting in Sderot that “Israel should, above all, seek to protect its own citizens.” Miliband, in practice, made us all complicit in a colossal war crime committed by Israel. Staunch Zionist Lord Levy funded the Labour party when this party launched a criminal war that intended to erase the last pocket of Arabic resistance to Zionism. He also wasn’t at all shy about it. In the media, shameless Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen enthusiastically advocated the same criminal war in the name of ‘moral interventionism’. Nick Cohen also founded the Euston Manifesto ‘think tank’ to support dubious Neocon ideologies on this side of the pond.
Levy, Cohen, Aaronovitch, Miliband are all in line with Saban’s formula: influence, donations, think tanks, media. Yet they don’t necessarily know Saban, and may never even have heard about the Zionist media mogul. It isn’t necessary. The fact is, Saban didn’t invent anything himself. His formula is deeply brewed in the Judaic religious tradition, Jewish culture and ideology.
United Against Purim
The Book of Esther is a biblical story that is the basis for the celebration of Purim, the most joyous Jewish festival. The book tells the story of an attempted Judeocide, but it also tells a story in which Jews manage to change their fate by means of political influence. In the story, the Jews do manage to rescue themselves and even to mete revenge, all through an infiltration into the corridors of power.
It is set in the third year of Ahasuerus, and the ruler is a king of Persia usually identified with Xerxes I. It is the story of a palace, a conspiracy, an attempted Judeocide and a brave and beautiful Jewish queen (Esther) who manages to save the Jewish people at the very last minute.
In the story, King Ahasuerus is married to Vashti, whom he repudiates after she rejects his offer to 'visit' him during a feast. Esther was selected from the candidates to be Ahasuerus's new wife. As the story progresses, Ahasuerus's Prime Minister Haman plots to have the king kill all the Jews without knowing that Esther is actually Jewish. Esther, together with her cousin Mordechai saves the day for their people. Esther warns Ahasuerus of Haman's murderous anti-Jewish plot. Haman and his sons are hanged on the fifty cubit gallows he had originally built for cousin Mordechai. As it happens, Mordechai takes Haman's place, becoming the Prime Minister. Ahasuerus's edict decreeing the murder of the Jews cannot be rescinded, so he issues another edict allowing the Jews to take up arms and kill their enemies, which they obviously do.
The moral of the Biblical story is rather clear. If Jews want to survive, they had better make their way into the corridors of power. They had better bond to the rulers of the world. With Esther, Mordechai and Purim in mind, AIPAC, Levy, ADL, David Milliband, Saban and the notion of 'Jewish power' all appear to be an embodiment of a deep Biblical, tribal and cultural ideology.
However, here is the interesting twist. Although the story is presented as an historic tale, the historical accuracy of the Book of Esther is largely disputed by most modern Bible acholars and historians. The lack of any clear corroboration of between any of the details of the story with what is known of Persian History from classical sources is what has led scholars to come to the conclusion that the story is mostly, or even totally fictional.
In other words, though the Jewish moral is clear, the attempted genocide is fictional. Seemingly, the Book of Esther sets its (Jewish) followers into a collective Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It transforms a fictional fantasy of ‘destruction’ into a vivid ‘ideology of survival’. And indeed, some read the story as an allegory of quintessentially assimilated Jews who discover that they are targets of anti-Semitism, but are also in a position to save themselves and their fellow Jews.
The Book of Esther exists to form a coherent exilic tribal identity. It is there to plant an existential stress. It introduces the Holocaust mentality. Furthermore, it fixes the conditions which turn the Holocaust into reality. In hermeneutic terms, the text shapes the reality. In practice, it is the fearful mind the sets itself into a tragic trap of self-fulfilling prophecy. The Shoa ideology matures into a real event.
Interestingly enough, the Book of Esther (in the Hebrew version) is one of only two books of the Bible that do not directly mention God (the other is Song of Songs). As in the case of Zionist secular ideology and the Holocaust religion, in the Book of Esther it is the Jews who believe in themselves, in their own power, in their uniqueness, in their sophistication, in their ability to influence, in their ability to take over kingdoms, and in their ability to save themselves. The Book of Esther is all about empowerment. It conveys the essence and metaphysics of Jewish power, as described by Haim Saban and performed by AIPAC.
Zionism and Democracy
Zionists seem to love democracy. The Jewish state outrageously claims to be ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’. Israel’s supporters around the world also advocate conflicts in the name of ‘democracy’. Why do they love democracy so much? I guess that the answer is devastatingly simple. Democracy is the ideal political platform for the Zionist influence merchant.
Democracy in its current state, especially within the English-Speaking world, is a political system that specializes in positioning inadequate, unqualified and dubious characters in leading positions. Two democratically elected leaders launched the illegal war in Iraq. Two democratically elected leaders marched the west into a financial disaster.
Running a state is not an easy task. It surely takes some talent and training. In the past, our elected political leaders were experienced politicians who had achieved something in their lives, whether in academia, industry, military or the financial world. In the past, our candidates for premiership had a curriculum vitae to share with us. Apparently this is not the case anymore. Time after time we are left with a ‘democratic choice’ to give our vote to one or another laughable young failure. Time after time we see rising political ‘stars’, people have really achieved nothing in their lives, and who are unqualified to run even a corner shop, let alone a state.
You may want to ask yourself what qualification Blair or Bush possessed before they took the wheel in their hands. What experience does David Cameron have at his disposal in order to rescue Britain from total disaster on every possible front (financial, Iraq, Afghanistan, education, NHS and so on)? What kind of experience does David Miliband bring with him in the bid for the Labour premiership? The answer is none. Our lives, our future and the future of our children are in the hands of ludicrous, clueless characters. This may explain why Britain ended up with a hung Parliament. Not a single leader in this country could convince the public that he had the talent, the integrity or even just a seed of true leadership.
But here is the news. As much as our elected leaders are totally clueless, the Sabans, the Lord Levys and the Wolfowitzes know exactly what to do. The Jewish religion, culture and ideology provides its followers with a narrative that saves us of the democratic limbo. The Sabans of this world are far from being amateurs or clueless; they know exactly what to do. They have been doing it for three thousand years. They are the followers of Mordechai and Esther. The Sabans of the world know how to translate the moral of Purim into British and American practice.
Stuart Littlewood seems to wonder why Jews are over-represented. With Purim in mind, we may be able to suggest an answer. We are dealing here with an exilic cultural setting that preaches for lobbing, influence and control. Shaping politics, media and thoughts is the true meaning of the Book of Esther. Saban was either just genuine or foolish enough to admit it in public. However, the absence of a Book of Esther within the heart of Muslim or Hindu culture may explain why other marginal migrant groups in Britain are adequately and proportionally represented in British politics and media. Moreover, it is unlikely that this will change soon. As opposed to most minorities and marginal identities in the West, Judaism is an exilic national religion and the Jewish identity is a product of tribal indoctrination. This may explain why emancipated Jews who live in Britain for generations as seculars still operate within Jewish political and social settings, and under Jewish political banners.
It is not a secret that a few Jews out there are very gifted. It is also rather obvious that some Jews are amongst the leading contributors to the humanist and universal discourse. However, this is not something we can say about Haim Saban, who openly desires to influence American foreign policy by means of donations, think tanks and media control. Similarly, David Milliband, who struggled to amend British universal Jurisdiction to make it easy for Israeli war criminal visit his kingdom, should not be regarded as a great humanist either. Nick Cohen, who founded the Euston Manifesto, a think tank that promotes Zionist interests within British intellectual culture, cannot be regarded as an ethical icon. Amazingly enough, they all did it in the open.
If we care about peace and about our future generations, we must be brave enough to connect the dots. The Mordechais and Esthers within our media, intellectual and political life must be confronted. We must unite against Purim. If the Labour party still carries any ethical responsibility, it should put David Milliband in his place. If our parties want us to believe in their agendas, they had better learn to say “NO” to Zionist money and Jewish proxy donators. If our media outlets want us to believe in their ‘impartiality’, they had better identify the enemy within. How many Iraqis will need to die before the penny drops? How many peace activist should die in high seas before we all say ‘NO more’? How many British workers will need to lose their jobs, homes and hopes before we can allow ourselves to say “NO” to Zionist wars and their advocates in our midst?
"If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular," a senior adviser to head of NATO ops in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal (via Rolling Stone)
June 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- FUBAR: Military slang for: Fu#ked Up Beyond All/Any Repair/Recognition. FUBAR also has a close military acronym: SNAFU: Situation Normal All Fu#ked Up.
FUBAR and SNAFU can be traced back to WWII—you know that war. That’s the war (the last constitutionally declared by Congress) that, along with the US Civil War, is the war that is held up as the shining example of the goodness, nay GREATNESS of the United States of America. The war where we freed the entire planet of fascism, Nazi-ism, imperialism and made the world safe for FREEDOM (and freedom’s Siamese Twin: DEMOCRACY)!
So, if the people who were actually in the trenches were recognizing the war, even the GREAT ONE was FUBAR—then we have only gone rapidly downhill from there. Even Marine Major General Smedley Butler (War is a Racket) pointed out that the “War to end all Wars” (WWI) just led to WWII and after he passed away in 1940: Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, the First Gulf War and now our stains in the Middle East. As a matter of fact, since WWII, we have NEVER been at peace.
The SNAFU over the Rolling Stone article where Stanley is openly and disrespectfully critical of Obama, Biden, Ambassador Eikenberry and others is indicative of a few things to me:
First of all, there is a little known aspect of this developing story: McChrystal was given final approval over the version of the story that appeared in the Rolling Stone—a person that achieves the elevated status in the elite world of McChrystal’s rarely rises to the top without knowing the rules and without knowing how to play the game. And trust me, this is a “game.” Does anyone believe that this story was a surprise to anyone in the Obama regime, or to McChrystal? No, obviously it wasn’t—so why now?
Secondly—with a cataclysm off of our very shores that is further proof that our Military-Corporate Complex is not equipped to handle catastrophes—this SNAFU proves that the Military-Corporate Complex is not even equipped to handle wars. The Empire is crumbling, and it’s crumbling even faster than I would imagine than I predicted—so I have to celebrate the news that just demonstrates how FUBAR things are in Afghanistan. Of course, the stats of civilian deaths (yeah, right—we are protecting civilians) and NATO and US troop deaths are there. There can be no disputing facts. No matter how much one wants to think that Obama is “better than Bush” or is “better than McCain” really has to look no farther than these hard-core facts.
All of this posturing and speechifying is nothing but a distraction from the fact that our economy is FUBAR, the Gulf of Mexico is FUBAR, the wars are FUBAR and Wikileaks is set to come out soon with another video of a bombing incident that killed over 100 civilians in Afghanistan and was covered up. When Obama appointed McChrystal to this job, he knew that he had already covered up the murder of Spc. Pat Tillman.
Also, on the heels of the Marjah Offensive (“bleeding ulcer” according to McChrystal), the Kandahar offensive is approaching and with June already being a deadly month, things will only get worse.
Thirdly, of course McChrystal is offering himself up as the sacrificial lamb of the FUBAR Empire. Already, I am getting Democrats emailing me and telling me that it is “wonderful” that McChrystal is resigning because he “made Obama send more troops to Afghanistan.” Again—are you serious? Obama made gave top billing to the fact that he was going to send more troops to Afghanistan, as a campaign promise. When the “leak” came out that McChrystal wanted more troops near the end of 2009, all that did was give Obama the political space to do what he promised to do all along. “See, I didn’t really want to send more troops to a mission that was FUBAR from the beginning, but my top-ranking General in the field made me!”
“As the Iraq war winds down, Obama said, he wants to see troops redirected to Afghanistan. He said the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda was a war ‘we have to win’ and repeated his call for two more combat brigades in Afghanistan to counteract "deteriorating" conditions.” (LA Times July 16, 2008).
The problem is—and has been for decades—the Military-Corporate Complex. However, if we want valid change, we also have to look deeper.
Five months shy of two years ago, many of you went to the polls and voted for Obama because you were from mildly disappointed to wildly angry at the Bush administration. I get that emotion—I do. But even I realized that Bush was not THE problem, but only A problem. The real problem is the system that keeps killing our children and the children of other nations and cultures. It has been doing it from the beginning of our time and it will be doing it until our end if we don’t recognize that an Empire exists to feed on others to enrich, empower and give itself health. We cannot be a healthy society when we live in an Empire—no matter who sits on the throne.
The wars are FUBAR—the Empire is FUBAR. Even in the beginning it was a system for the elite. Now, we are not only the down trodden, but the trodden on. Trampled on, but not defeated yet.
Peace of the Action is calling you to come to Washington DC to confront the bleeding ulcers in the Gulf and in the Middle East and Asia. We also have to confront and come to terms with the fact that we are an Empire and it will be good in the long-term if it crumbles—and we are already feeling the gross-effects of the collapse in our homes and communities—conditions in the economy and ecology will undoubtedly get far worse before they get better, but if we deal with these issues as a caring community—not as a class at war with itself—we can, and shall overcome.
Peace of the Action is also calling on all troops of good conscience to refuse to participate in these international war crimes against humanity—please don’t allow yourself to be used as a token in this elitist game of destruction and death for profit! It’s far better to pay consequences for being a conscientious objector, than to be dead at a very young age—or to kill innocent people.
"We are the ruling race of the world. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . . He has marked us as his chosen people. . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples." : Sen. Alfred Beveridge
= "I firmly believe that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary for our defense or essential for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it." : Sen. Orville Platt of Connecticut 1894.
= "Between 1898 and 1934, the Marines invaded Cuba 4 times, Nicaragua 5 times, Honduras 7 times, the Dominican Republic 4 times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico 3 times and Columbia 4 times," Washington has intervened militarily in foreign countries more than 200 times."
= "If the people are not convinced (that the Free World is in mortal danger) it would be impossible for Congress to vote the vast sums now being spent to avert danger. With the support of public opinion, as marshalled by the press, we are off to a good start. It is our Job - yours and mine -- to keep our people convinced that the only way to keep disaster away from our shores is to build up America's might." -- Charles Wilson, Chairman of the Board of General Electric and Truman appointee to head the Office of Defence Mobilization, in a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association, 1950
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/06/25/a_historic_year.html Now that Democrats have agreed on a Wall Street reform bill, President Obama is set to have an incredible year of accomplishments. He's already signed major health care reforms into law and is more than likely to have energy/climate change legislation on his desk later this year. Not since FDR has a president done so much to transform the country.
First Read: "The agreement -- and the likelihood that Obama will sign it into law -- is yet another reminder about how much the White House and the Democrat-controlled Congress have done in the past year and a half (stimulus, health care, Wall Street reform, perhaps energy). You can't say this is a Do-Nothing Congress; Then again, Republicans would argue it's a Do-Too-Much Congress."
Mike Allen: "Two legs of the triple crown: This means President Obama will sign health reform and Wall Street reform within four months of each other. Plus there's the likelihood he'll get some sort of energy-climate bill by year's end -- an astounding year."
When it rains....it pours..........OIL. It's fitting that a society who loves oil so much, that they are willing to look the other way as our country kills millions of people in order to steal it from them, should be showered with its blessings.
.....oooooh, pleeeeeeze....the two of you are....Democrats! and, it shows.....
If you were that concerned about "bloodshed"..."non-people", you might show some concern about your fellow citizens in our southern border states....their lives are being disrupted and some physically injured....some caught in the violence and killed....
but, that's ok with you, right?
you welcome the influx of people at the expense of the US citizens....
now, according to you, Americans are the evil ones in the mid east....and, they are the total "innocents".......
why are we always at fault according to you?
Hmmmm....I see a pattern.....no solutions....just incessant whining and criticism....
The rationalization by Warhawks to kill millions in order to bring "freedom" to the rest is vacuously hollow. If bringing "freedom" to people was ever in their minds the slaughter in Rwanda would never have happened. The truth is they react like Pavlovian dog to the call of war. They are controlled by fear and undirected frustration which welcomes any opportunity provided by an Imperialistic state to lash out at any enemy so named by that state and in doing so, play into the larger agenda of actually relinquishing their freedom without ever firing a shot in its defense.
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. – Anonymous, circa ?
10:09 AM A tropical storm brewing off the Central American coast has a 70% chance of forming into a hurricane within 48 hours, with one computer model indicating it could head into the Gulf of Mexico where BP (BP -4.1%) has a flotilla of ships trying to clean up the oil spill.
Exactly - "It is also easy to justify war when only hated political leaders are discussed: "Saddam Hussein", "Ahmadinejad", "The Taliban"..."the civilian population, always the main victims in war, are treated as nonpeople". Once our pols created a boogeyman in Iraq, it worked as planned - many were more than willing to treat Iraqi civilians as "nonpeople".
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (Hardcover). Do You Want to Stop America's Endless Wars for Empire and the Military Industrial Complex?
By Andrew Bacevich
An essential book for progressives who are weary and angry at the wasted dollars spent on pursuing the last gasps of the American "Empire."
Special BuzzFlash price for advance order out on July 7th.
Andrew Bacevich is a leading expert on how the doomed pursuit of American hegemony through wars for resources in the new century are destroying our ability to progress forward as a nation.
From Publishers Weekly:
"U.S. Army colonel turned academic, Bacevich (The Limits of Power) offers an unsparing, cogent, and important critique of assumptions guiding American military policy. These central tenets, the "Washington rules"--such as the belief that the world order depends on America maintaining a massive military capable of rapid and forceful interventions anywhere in the world--have dominated national security policy since the start of the cold war and have condemned the U.S. to "insolvency and perpetual war." Despite such disasters as America's defeat in Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis, the self-perpetuating policy is so entrenched that no president or influential critic has been able to alter it. Bacevich argues that while the Washington rules found their most pernicious expression in the Bush doctrine of preventive war, Barack Obama's expansion of the Afghan War is also cause for pessimism: "We should be grateful to him for making at least one thing unmistakably clear: to imagine that Washington will ever tolerate second thoughts about the Washington rules is to engage in willful self-deception. Washington itself has too much to lose."
“To say that Washington Rules is a breath of fresh air in the debate over U.S. foreign policy would be like comparing a zephyr to a hurricane. Writing with Force-Five fury, Andrew Bacevich lays bare the dogmas and shibboleths that have animated national security doctrine for the last half century and produced an Orwellian nightmare of permanent war in the name of permanent peace. This passionate, often discomforting book brings rare clarity to a subject of urgent importance for all Americans.”
—David M. Kennedy, author of Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
“Against a national strategy gone astray, Bacevich offers a unique combination of rigorous analysis and emotion-powered protest. May it be widely read, may it disenthrall us from the academic generals, militant academics, and cynical politicians who insist that we must invest blood and treasure in mud-brick Afghan villages, while China invests in advanced technology.” —Edward N. Luttwak author of The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire
“‘Washington Rules’ is the author's shorthand for the American conviction that we always represent the good and the pure in international affairs. His powerful book clearly demonstrates how threadbare this idea has become.” —Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback Trilogy and Dismantling the Empire
The last time America found itself in a budget debate pitting domestic priorities against war expenditures, Richard Nixon was in the White House and David Obey was the youngest member of Congress—an antiwar liberal whose insurgent campaign unexpectedly vaulted him into the House seat vacated by the hawkish president’s new defense secretary. In those dark days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Obey was still learning his way around Washington, it was the guns of Vietnam and the Cold War versus the butter of the Great Society and the War on Poverty—and despite Obey’s protests, guns won the day.
“President Nixon issued a call to counterrevolution at home,” summed up Time magazine in 1973, noting that while the Republican administration was increasing the Pentagon budget, it was proposing the “abolition or deep cutting of more than 100 federal grant programs that have benefited the unemployed, students, farmers, veterans, small businessmen, the mentally ill and tenants in federally aided housing.”
The resulting body bags and cuts to homeland investment were, of course, devastating—which is why it is fitting that Obey is choosing to end his congressional tenure where he started it: presciently on the side of butter in a 21st-century reprisal of the ancient debate. And this time, the Wisconsin Democrat’s seniority puts him in a far more powerful position to press his case.
Over the last decade, Obey has been methodically campaigning against the Iraq War and the endless Afghanistan occupation, saying their rationales are weak, their prosecution inept and their deficit-financed costs unaffordable in the face of unmet domestic needs. For years, he has valiantly championed bills to legislate withdrawal timetables and war surtaxes. Now, with President Obama defiantly pushing a plan to boost Afghan war funding at the potential expense of economic aid on the home front, Obey has deftly replaced the scalpel strokes of proactive legislation with the blunt force of filibuster.
According to Politico, Obey last week “drew a direct link between war funding and progress on domestic priorities” with his announcement that as Appropriations Committee chairman, he will “withhold action on the war funds until there (is) some resolution on a major economic relief bill extending jobless benefits.”
Like clockwork, the move was met with hypocritical hysteria. The same Republican Party that bewails deficits responded with a letter asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to champion the deficit-exploding war funding bill in order to avoid “undermining” the military. Gates, despite having just called for defense spending cuts, obediently complied—and on Republicans’ insipid terms that perniciously question war critics’ loyalty to our soldiers.
“Gates to Congress: Stalling on War Funding Will Hurt U.S. Troops,” read the Fox News headline after he publicly echoed the GOP demands.
The Nation’s Chris Hayes has written that such tripe boils down to “You’re either with the war or you are against the troops”—and as the bloated Pentagon budget proves, that message has thwarted Obey for most of his life.
Until, perhaps, now.
Yes, just as Obey prepares to retire, there are signs that his crusade is winning converts. For instance, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn is using his position on President Obama’s deficit commission to focus attention on Pentagon profligacy. Similarly, Politico reports that “key tea party players (are) expressing a willingness to put the Pentagon budget on the chopping block.” And rank-and-file congressional Democrats, once cowed by war proponents’ saber rattling, are increasingly echoing Obey’s rhetoric.
Whether or not the cacophony stops the Pentagon’s latest blank check is less important than Obey having finally rekindled an honest discussion about guns and butter. In a storied 41-year career of venerable accomplishments, that is the most profound achievement of all.
David Sirota, a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee, is the author of the best-selling books “Hostile Takeover” and “The Uprising.” He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com or follow him on Twitter @davidsirota.
As Obama continues to show a political tin ear on the oil spill -- having a nice Saturday of golf while his spokesman mocks BP CEO Tony Hayward for going yachting -- the role of this clique in advising the president becomes a bigger question, with Jarrett the biggest question mark of all.
What qualifies this lawyer who spent her career in Chicago politics and managing a local real estate development company to advise the president, by his own admission, on virtually every important decision he makes? A woman who was never elected and who first met Obama in 1991 when she interviewed his future wife for a job takes on a Rasputin-like quality in a mistake-prone administration.
It emerged this week in the corruption trial of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich that Emanuel was in touch with Blagojevich aide John Harris just before the 2008 presidential election, according to Harris's testimony, seeking to get Jarrett appointed to Obama's soon-to-be-empty Senate seat. It was, we can now see, an early indication of the heavy-handed methods Emanuel would employ in interfering with Pennsylvania and Colorado contests this year.
There have been those from the beginning who warned that Obama's election would bring Chicago-style politics to the White House, but it was easy to overhear those warnings amid the ceaseless talk of change.
The Obama White House is adept at deflecting blame. Remember it was Obama himself who said he is ultimately responsible for handling the Gulf oil spill and then just days later expressed his frustration on national television at not knowing whose "ass to kick" at BP.
So it's not likely that the inner core of advisers will volunteer to go, or that the president, who prizes them precisely for their loyalty, will volunteer them to go.
Breaking up that old Obama mob Will midterm losses chase away Chicago aides?
Well just another lie on your part. If you actually did bother to do any searches on the subject you would see that I voted for him in the primary to keep Hillary off the ticket.
that's the exact same thing I just posted
you voted for Obama because Limbaugh thought Obama would be the weaker opponent to McLame and the wacko from Wasilla
Well just another lie on your part. If you actually did bother to do any searches on the subject you would see that I voted for him in the primary to keep Hillary off the ticket. Fortunately some of us live in a state where we are not forced to vote for the same party in the general election as we did in the primary. Your post is nothing but another personal attack in my view.
"yes, we know why you voted for Obama in the TX primary
because "dear leader" Limbaugh told you to
how'd that strategy work out for the Limbaugh dittoheads?
The good news? Nobody has to pretend anymore that Gen. Stanley McChrystal knew how to fix Afghanistan within a year. The bad news? Now we’re supposed to pretend that Gen. David Petraeus does.
President Obama was absolutely right to sack the preening McChrystal, whose inner circle, as portrayed in Rolling Stone magazine, had all the seriousness and decorum of a frat house keg party. And it was a brilliant political move to turn to Petraeus, who is made of purest Teflon. Critics who might have been tempted to blast the president for changing horses in midstream can hardly object when he has given the reins to the man who averted a humiliating U.S. defeat in Iraq.
Note, however, that I didn’t credit Petraeus with “winning” in Iraq. He didn’t. What he managed to do was redeem the situation to the point where the United States could begin bringing home its combat troops. If the Obama administration’s aims in Afghanistan are recalibrated to accommodate objective reality, then Petraeus can succeed there, too. But this means that the general’s assignment should be a narrow one: Lay the groundwork for a U.S. withdrawal to begin next summer, as Obama has pledged.
After relieving McChrystal of his command Wednesday, Obama called in his national security team and read the riot act. No more bickering, sniping, backbiting or name-calling, the president ordered. Play nice.
But all the comity in the world doesn’t resolve the essential tension between those who believe our goal in Afghanistan should be defined as “victory” and those who believe it should be defined as “finding the exit.” Two thousand years of history are on the side of the “exit” camp, and the fact is that at some point we’re going to leave. The question is how much time will pass—and how many more young Americans will be killed or wounded—before that inevitable day comes.
McChrystal, who designed the counterinsurgency strategy being attempted in Afghanistan, didn’t disguise his opposition to administration officials such as Vice President Biden, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who questioned whether the strategy could work. Petraeus is far too good a politician to fall into that trap. He won’t allow any daylight between himself and the civilian leadership.
But ultimately, there’s going to be no way to avoid the central question: What kind of Afghanistan will we leave behind?
One answer would be that we have to leave in place a durable, functional central government that has full legitimacy and control within the nation’s borders. This would provide the United States with a reliable ally in a dangerous region, and also ensure that Afghanistan would never again be used as a launching pad for attacks by al-Qaeda. But to get the country to that point, given where it is now, could take a decade or more of sustained, concentrated attention. It would mean not just defeating the Taliban but molding the regime of Afghan president Hamid Karzai into a reasonably honest, effective government. This would be a tall order even if Karzai were a stable, consistent, loyal partner. Does anybody believe that’s what he is?
A better answer would be that it’s enough to leave behind an Afghanistan that no longer poses a serious threat to the United States or its vital interests. Nation-building would be the Afghans’ problem, not ours.
Petraeus was successful in Iraq because he realized that he couldn’t create an Athenian democracy in Baghdad. But the highly imperfect Iraqi government is light-years beyond what the general is likely to be able to achieve in Kabul. Even after the war, Iraq was left with modern infrastructure, a highly educated and sophisticated population, and a sizable percentage of the world’s proven oil reserves. Afghanistan has none of these advantages. The political culture is stubbornly medieval; the populace is poor, uneducated and wary of foreign influences. Afghanistan does have great mineral wealth, apparently, but no mining industry to dig it out and no railroads to get it to the marketplace.
In recent testimony before Congress, Petraeus was less than definitive when asked about Obama’s July 2011 deadline. Because he has such credibility and standing in Washington, his view on when we can begin to leave Afghanistan will be more important than McChrystal’s ever was. I hope that by putting Petraeus in charge of the war, President Obama hasn’t consigned us to a longer stay. His comments Thursday seem to indicate this possibility.
Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.
yes, we know why you voted for Obama in the TX primary
because "dear leader" Limbaugh told you to
how'd that strategy work out for the Limbaugh dittoheads?
LMAO!
Right below is an article from Rush Limbaugh titled "Pimp Yourself to Vanquish Hillary?" where he suggests "Republicans in Texas, pimp yourselves for a day and vote Obama in the Texas primary."
This in my opinion confirms what I have been saying that Rush Limbaugh and partisans like him in the GOP want Barack Obama to win the Democratic primary because they know that he will be the easier candidate to beat in the general election: http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/14734
Who's exempted from 'fix' for Supreme Court campaign finance ruling? The House passed the Disclose Act Wednesday. The act addresses the Supreme Court ruling that struck down campaign finance spending limits on corporations. But some organizations, like the NRA, are exempt. The bill faces a tough fight in the Senate. The House vote Wednesday to impose new disclosure requirements for corporations that fund campaign ads was a nail biter, with the last few votes eked out in overtime, 219 to 206. But the road in the Senate – and to the president’s desk – could be tougher still. The bill, known as the Disclose Act, aims to “fix” a recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down limits to corporate spending on election campaigns. House Democrats called the campaign-finance decision “a threat to democracy.”
In anticipation of a surge in special-interest spending to influence the 2010 midterm elections, the bill requires corporations – profit or nonprofit – to disclose their spending on campaign ads. In addition, corporate CEOs must appear in the ads they finance, and nonprofits must disclose their top donors.
Some corporations – those accepting TARP bailout funds, federal contractors, or foreign corporations such as BP – would be banned from spending on US elections altogether.
“Voters have a right to know when they see an ad going on with a nice-sounding name – the Fund for a Better America – they have a right to know who is paying for it. They have a right to know if BP is paying for it. They have a right to know if any corporation or big-bucks individual is paying for it, because it's a way to give them information to access the credibility of the ad,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland, who chairs the campaign arm of the House Democratic caucus and who led the floor fight for the bill. Special deal for the NRA
But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle balked at a special deal that House sponsors worked out with the National Rifle Association – the lead opponent of the bill – that exempted the NRA, as well as other nonprofit giants such as AARP and the Sierra Club, from new disclosure requirements.
“They are auctioning off pieces of the First Amendment in this bill … if you’re on the lucky side,” said Rep. Dan Lungren (R) of California, in a floor speech opposing the bill. “The bigger you are, the stronger you are, the less disclosure you have.”
Even Democrats supporting the legislation said they regretted the concessions to the NRA and others with memberships over 500,000.
“I wish there had been no carve-outs, but I understand the difficulty in getting the bill passed,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D) of California. “It’s an effort to overcome a very considerable obstacle to passage,” he added, noting the NRA’s decision to drop its opposition after the exception was written into the draft bill.
Many nonprofits not included among those exempted from new requirements also oppose the bill.
“The bill requires more disclosure of smaller, newer, more controversial organizations than it does of larger, more established organizations. That’s the thing that really rankles here,” says Michael Macleod-Ball, chief legislative and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “That kind of imbalance in a regulatory regime is unfair.”
Next, the bill moves to the Senate, where Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York has a similar disclosure bill pending. Senate leaders say that passing the bill is a priority. But the Senate has been mired in partisan gridlock for months, and Democrats need at least one Republican vote to break a filibuster.
“It’s definitely a priority," said Senate majority leader Harry Reid, after Thursday’s House vote. “I can bring it up, but I need a Republican to pass it.” Minutes earlier, Senate Republicans (and one Democrat) had voted as a bloc to derail a bill to help the jobless, extend tax breaks, and help fiscally stressed states. McCain's role in campaign finance reform
The most likely Republican prospect, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, led a long legislative battle together with Sen. Russ Feingold (D) of Minnesota to pass historic campaign finance legislation in 2002 that limited how much corporations and unions can spend to influence elections. Those limits were scrapped by a controversial US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission in January.
But McCain says he will be no part of advancing a bill that requires more disclosure of corporations than it does of labor unions. “It’s no surprise that Democrats craft a bill that favors their supporters,” he said, after the House vote.
President Obama urged the Senate to move quickly to pass the bill.
“The House bill is not perfect – I would have preferred that it include no exemptions,” said Mr. Obama, in a statement after the House vote. “But it mandates unprecedented transparency in campaign spending, and it ensures that corporations who spend money on American elections are accountable first and foremost to the American people.”
Sociopaths have little regard for the feelings of others and manipulate others in order to get what they desire. The term "sociopath" is no longer used in psychology and psychiatry, and the disorder is now called "antisocial personality disorder." People who have this disorder often have no sense of right or wrong. People with antisocial personality disorder perceive the world differently than most people do and may not have the range of feelings that others have. Because they cannot relate to others, they have no trouble lying or violating the rights of other people in order to achieve their goals. Some of these people are very charming and adept at manipulating others, while others may use violence or intimidation to get what they want.
Million Iraqis Killed, Maimed, Tortured, Displaced—Think That Bothers War Boosters?
This article was originally published by AlterNet.
In 1970 a Lao villager who had survived five years of U.S. bombing wrote: "In reality, whatever happens, it is only the innocent who suffer. And as for the others, do they know all the unimaginable things happening in this war? Do they?"
Do we? And if we did know about the innocent men, women and children our leaders kill, would it matter? Does it matter that those who justified the Iraqi invasion in the name of the people of Iraq have largely ignored their unimaginable suffering under U.S. occupation, as more than 5 million civilians have been murdered, maimed, made homeless, unjustly imprisoned and tortured—and millions more impoverished? Would war supporters serve themselves and their nation if they wrote about both the humanity and suffering of, say, just 10 Iraqi victims—and sought to convey how each represents at least 500,000 more? Is the suffering our leaders inflict on innocent civilians relevant to deciding whether to support our present war-making in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Would it matter if the N.Y. Times had run daily profiles and photos of Iraqi civilian victims since 2003, as it did of U.S. victims after 9/11?
Such questions are raised by Christopher Hitchens’ recently published best-selling memoir, Hitch-22, in which he proudly claims to have helped cause the invasion of Iraq as the most prominent of a group of war hawks ("by which political Washington was eventually persuaded that Iraq should be helped into a post-Saddam era, if necessary by force”), but entirely ignores the human cost that followed. No one spoke more eloquently of the Iraqi people’s suffering before the invasion. Thus his indifference to it since has been striking.
The key issue is not what this reveals about Hitchens’ soul but about America’s. His memoir epitomizes one of the most chilling phenomena of our time: a growing “nonhumanity” in which our leaders and their supporters claim to wage war on behalf of a foreign people but are largely indifferent to their suffering. (Full disclosure: when Hitchens was writing his book about Henry Kissinger, he interviewed me about Kissinger’s mass murder of Laotian rice-farmers.)
Citizens take on no more solemn role than when they convert a personal opinion into the political act of publicly promoting violence by their nation’s leaders. Debating health care, gay marriage or Wall Street reform is one thing; promoting policies that wind up killing innocent human beings quite another. Whether they acknowledge it or not, those advocating war assume a moral responsibility for its innocent victims. Or, more plainly, they have their blood upon their hands.
This blood can be easily justified in a hypothetical case of "humanitarian intervention," e.g. imagining that Bill Clinton had successfully used military force to stop the Rwandan genocide. It is also easy to justify war when only hated political leaders or groups are discussed: “Saddam Hussein,” “Ahmadinejad,” “the Taliban” – and the civilian population, always the main victims in war, are treated as nonpeople. But an honest evaluation of war in a case like Iraq requires a far more serious moral calculus.
The Immensity of Iraqi Civilian Suffering
Taking seriously one’s responsibility for promoting war in Iraq requires more than simply listing the war’s human benefits, such as removing the genuinely evil Saddam, increased power for the long-suppressed Kurds and Shiites, limited movement toward free elections, a parliamentary democracy and free press. Such benefits must be weighed against the suffering of millions of innocent Iraqis, including:
—Nearly 5 million refugees: “Counting both internal and external refugees, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that nearly 5 million of Iraq’s population of 24 million have been uprooted during the conflict,” the N.Y. Review of Books reported on May 13, 2010. This is the equivalent of 60 million Americans by percentage of population. Five-hundred thousand are homeless squatters within Iraq, whose "settlements all lack basic services, including water, sanitation and electricity and are built in precarious places—under bridges, alongside railroad tracks and amongst garbage dumps" according to Refugees International in March 2010. The emigration of 2-3 million Iraqis to refugee camps in Syria and other Mideast countries decimated Iraq’s educated middle class, with some daughters forced to become prostitutes and sons menial laborers just to keep their families alive.
—Hundreds of thousands dead and wounded: Estimates of dead civilians range from 100,000 documented cases by Iraq Body Count, which acknowledged in October 2004 that “our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or recording” to over one million by a John Hopkins University group. A basic rule of thumb in war is that for every person killed, two have been wounded.
—Tens of thousands of innocents imprisoned, many tortured: In an article headlined "In Iraq, A Prison Full of Innocent Men," the Washington Post reported that "100,000 prisoners have passed through the American-run detention system in Iraq," that Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi says that "most of the people they detain are innocent,” but that prisoners are not permitted to prove their innocence. Conditions have been even worse in the secret torture chambers run for five years by General Stanley McChrystal, from which all outside observers including the Red Cross have been excluded. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently reported that "72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process—after years of being in a cage without charges—have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained." Countless innocent Iraqis have been regularly tortured.
—Millions more who lack jobs, electricity, water and health care: Reuters reported on June 6 that "according to government statistics cited by the ICRC (the Red Cross), one in four of Iraq’s people does not have access to safe drinking water." The unofficial unemployment rate is estimated to be as high as 30 percent, security is shaky, the entire non-oil economy decimated. "As recently as the 1980s, Iraq was self-sufficient in producing wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, and sheep and poultry products. Its industrial sector exported textiles and leather goods, including purses and shoes, as well as steel and cement. But wars, sanctions, poor management, international competition and disinvestment have left each industry a shadow of its former self," the N.Y. Times has reported. It also reported on June 20 that “(Basra’s) poorer neighborhoods, by far the majority, often have just one hour of electricity a day, a situation not uncommon in Baghdad and other regions. The temperature in Basra on Saturday was 113 degrees.”
War advocates are correct, of course, that much of the responsibility for this suffering rests with Iraqi and Al-Qaeda extremists who have no compunction about inflicting civilian casualties. But this in no way absolves them and the U.S. of their own responsibility for Iraqi civilian suffering, both directly from U.S. war-making and indirectly by the U.S. failing to meet its legal responsibilities as an occupying power to provide security for the civilian population.
Nonhumanity, Not Inhumanity
U.S. leaders killed large numbers of civilians during World War II, of course, in an earlier age of "inhumanity" marked by the depredations of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. But they did so relatively openly. They did not claim, for example, that only “enemy insurgents” were killed at Dresden, and Americans relatively soon learned what had happened at Hiroshima.
It was only as U.S. leaders constructed America’s first global empire after 1945— increasingly waging secret, massive, illegal and unconstitutional bombing campaigns in countries like Laos and Cambodia, refusing to even acknowledge the countless civilian deaths they caused throughout Indochina, failing to help rebuild it after the war, and supporting savage local dictators and policies destroying local economies around the world—that they created a new age of "nonhumanity." By now U.S. leaders’ Third World victims—whom they have neither acknowledged nor made amends for—number in the tens of millions.
We have entered a new Orwellian age in which continuous "fighting ... takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at," and its innocent victims are simply airbrushed out of history. Nothing symbolizes this nonhumanity more than U.S. leaders’ use of the term “collateral damage” to refer to millions of innocent human beings who have as much right to their lives as those who so mercilessly snuff them out. Generals Tommy Franks and Colin Powell say "we don’t do civilians" when asked how many civilians they kill, and their countrymen are so indifferent to civilian murder that no one even asks why not. Who is in a better position to discover how many innocent men, women and children U.S. leaders kill, and help them avoid further civilian murder? The only act more nonhuman than not caring is killing civilians in the first place.
U.S. indifference to civilian suffering is particularly noticeable in the case of "liberal war hawks" who justified the Iraq invasion on humanitarian grounds but then largely ignored its human costs as much as conservatives who do not even claim concern for the civilians they destroy. Slate, for example, asked an online panel of 10 such folks in March 2008—when civilian victims were in the millions—to explain how they had gotten the Iraqi war wrong.
While all but one (Christopher Hitchens: "How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I Didn’t") acknowledged error, and a number expressed pain over civilian suffering, the reasons listed for their mistakes included misjudging "Bush’s sense of morality," "I wanted to strike back," "I believed the groupthink," “I didn’t realize how incompetent the Bush administration could be,” and the "the self-centeredness and sectarianism of the ruling elite."
All failed to acknowledge their own moral blindness in failing to imagine what millions of their fellow Americans clearly saw: the havoc that the U.S. war-machine would inevitably wreak on innocent Iraqi civilians whatever its stated intentions or claimed benefits.
U.S. Responsibility For Civilian Suffering in Iraq
One of the panelists – the diplomat Phillip Carter—did, however, make a key point. After explaining how a former Iraqi law professor he worked with was presumably killed by Al-Qaeda, Carter wrote, "I felt guilty for not doing more to protect him. I felt guilty for not doing more … to make Iraq safe.” His words point to the considerable U.S. responsibility for post-invasion civilian suffering, whether caused by its own troops or others. An occupier assumes not only moral but legal responsibility for ensuring the safety of civilians in the zones it occupies. By both disbanding the Iraqi army and not using its own forces to maintain law and order U.S. leaders failed that responsibility, which was thus not merely a “mistake” but a war crime.
And America bears an even greater responsibility for the direct suffering it has caused. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian explored U.S.-inflicted civilian suffering by interviewing 50 American veterans who had fought in Iraq.
Their book Collateral Damage reports how U.S. soldiers, unprepared for urban warfare and understandably terrified, have regularly killed, wounded, arrested and humiliated countless Iraqi civilians—at checkpoints, by driving recklessly in convoys, in early morning searches, and by firing indiscriminately in response to IEDs and enemy fire. "The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder," Hedges writes. "Human beings are machine-gunned and bombed from the air, automatic grenade launchers pepper hovels and neighbors with high-powered explosive devices, and convoys race through Iraq like freight trains of death." U.S. soldiers also revealed how, though this behavior violated official rules of engagement, the rules were ignored and required reports either not filed or falsified.
Collateral Damage and the N.Y. Review of Books article cited above illustrate another key point: Americans can report on civilian suffering if they choose. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius has written that "when you see my byline from Kandahar or Kabul or Basra, you should not think that I am out among ordinary people, asking questions of all sides. I am usually inside an American military bubble." But there is nothing stopping him and other war supporters from leaving their bubbles to report on the civilian suffering they helped produce, any more than the N.Y. Times is prevented from taking Iraq’s civilian dead as serious as American ones.
Christopher Hitchens’ Memoirs: A Textbook Case of Non-Humanity
Chris Hedges’ concern for post-invasion civilian suffering contrasts sharply with Hitchens’ memoirs. Ample time has passed for Hitchens to provide a moral reckoning of the human costs and benefits of the invasion, and to apologize to both Iraqi victims and the millions of antiwar Americans whose concerns about post-invasion civilian suffering have proven so much more accurate than his own—and whose personhood he so demeaned with epithets like "moral imbeciles," "noisy morons," "overbred and gutless," "naive" and "foolish."
Hitchens’ memoirs provide a textbook case of nonhumanity. For while proudly bragging of helping cause the invasion, he does not even mention let alone acknowledge responsibility for the civilian suffering to which it led.
He writes movingly, for example, of a fine young American, Mark Daily, who volunteered to fight in Iraq partly because of Hitchens’ pro-war writings and died heroically protecting his fellow-soldiers. But Hitchens does not mention even one of the countless Iraqis who did not volunteer to have their lives destroyed following the invasion he claimed would help them. He properly befriended Daily’s parents, but does not discuss a single Iraqi parent among hundreds of thousands whose loss is equally great.
And he does not even mention the overall scale of Iraqi civilian suffering under U.S. occupation: 5-10 million murdered, maimed, homeless, unjustly imprisoned, tortured and impoverished innocent civilians have all been consigned to the dustbin of his – and America’s —history.
Ignoring post-invasion civilian suffering, of course, also allows Hitchens to avoid his and America’s responsibility for it. He instead admits and then excuses himself for far smaller errors, e.g. writing that "it is here that I ought to make my most painful self-criticisms ... What I should have been asking Wolfowitz was `does the Army Corps of Engineers have a generator big enough to turn the lights of Baghdad back on? … But, not being a professional soldier or quartermaster …I rather tended to assume that things of this practical sort were being taken care of.”
The Iraqi people’s post-invasion agony is also trivialized by Hitchens’ ongoing attempts to blame the “left" for Saddam’s crimes because they failed to rally to his call to invade and occupy Iraq. By that logic any people who hate their leader but do not support being invaded and occupied indefinitely by U.S. troops are responsible for their own misery.
But, in any event, it is obvious that pre-invasion issues are entirely separate from his and America’s responsibility for the unspeakable civilian horror that has followed it. As Iraq Body Count has noted, “Amnesty International… estimated that violent deaths attributable to Saddam’s government numbered at most in the hundreds during the years immediately leading up to 2003. Those wishing to make the "more lives ultimately saved" argument will need to make their comparisons with the number of civilians likely to have been killed had Saddam Hussein’s reign continued into 2003-2004, not in comparison to the number of deaths for which he was responsible in the 1980s and early 1990s.”
We have words to describe the act of seeking moral acclaim for helping an individual whose life one harms – “hypocritical” or “shameless” come to mind. But we lack even the thought-category to describe claiming moral credit for aiding an entire people while ignoring one’s responsibility for the broken lives of millions of them.
Many Americans may find themselves called upon to invent such words in coming years, as the mentality that has treated millions of foreigners as nonpeople increasingly affects American lives at home.
Nonhumanity Abroad, Nonhumanity At Home
In today’s interconnected world, the West ignoring its civilian victims is increasing both terrorism and mass displacements of political and economic refugees. Increased terrorism and anti-illegal immigrant hysteria threaten American lives, political chaos and increasing police-state measures such as the wiretapping of U.S. citizens and Arizona’s recent immigration law. U.S. leaders’ nonhumanity abroad is increasingly affecting domestic security at home.
The most fundamental question for Americans is whether they too will be treated as nonpeople by U.S. elites should America now be entering a period of long economic decline and resulting political instability—as has already occurred for those homeowners tricked out of their life savings by Wall Street. Will America respond to hard times as it did in the 1930s by expanding the safety net, taxing the rich and spending to combat unemployment? Or will its elites move to secure their own wealth and respond to the protests this will inevitably create with harsh measures?
Any American who tries to look at U.S. leaders from the perspective of a Lao refugee, an innocent Iraqi prisoner, a Haitian slum-dweller or a Helmand housewife terrorized at the prospect of the next U.S. offensive, can only shudder at such questions.
California Welfare Recipients Gamble at Taxpayer Expense
Good Morning Right-Wing Patriots, Good Morning Angry Left-Coast Beverage Workers,
Yet another reason California is totally boned, the ATM machines at California Casinos take welfare cards.
California welfare recipients are able to use state-issued debit cards to withdraw cash on gaming floors in more than half of the casinos in the state, a Los Angeles Times review of records found.
The cards, provided by the Department of Social Services to help recipients feed and clothe their families, work in automated teller machines at 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms, the review found.
"America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined."
Obama’s Tripling of the National Debt in Pictures
This Tuesday the White House released their Mid-Session Review admitting they made a $2 trillion miscalculation in the size of the federal deficit that President Barack Obama’s borrow and spend policies would inflict on our nation. Heritage senior policy analyst Brian Riedl details the carnage:
* While President Obama claims to have inherited the 2009 budget deficit, it is important to note that the estimated 2009 budget deficit has increased by $400 billion since his inauguration, and the whole point of the “stimulus” was to increase deficit spending to nearly $2 trillion based on the unproven notion that would it alleviate the recession. * The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001. * In 2009, Washington will spend $30,958 per household–the highest level in American history–and under President Obama’s budget, the figure will rise above $33,000 by 2019. * The White House brags that it will cut the deficit in half by 2013. The President does not mention that the deficit has nearly quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it in half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush. * The public national debt–$5.8 trillion as of 2008–is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined.
And as we learned recently many Libs. are just fine with Obama's runaway spending and think he should have spent more...... These are likely the same people who keep writing checks because there are checks in the check book.
According to Massachusetts favorite mincing pederast, the Federal Government has never ever over-regulated anything or interfered with economic activity through pointlessly overzealous bureaucratic interference.
Rep. Barney Frank on government regulations: "The general fear that the banking members, that we're going to over regulate on behalf of consumers is a fantasy unrelated to any human experience. The federal government has never done that."
The Federal Government never over-regulates? Really, Aunt Barney? Tell that to the oil skimmers in Lousiana who got sent back to port so bureaucrats could count life jackets. Tell that to the barrier builders in the Gulf Coast who were prevented from saving fish and wildlife by the bureaucrats at the Fish and Wildlife service.
For that matter, tell it to the banks that the Federal Government forced to give loans out to politically favored groups that had no chance of paying them back, which is a big part of the reason we're in this economic mess.
"Is that why you never ever choose defend your failured Republican Presidents? You CAN"T! Your bums just keep on screwing up and the Reps. " Tinner, we went over this yesterday. You should stop repeating your lies and drop the attacks.
10. # constitutes a personal attack, which is defined as:
* Posting harassing or otherwise objectionable content about another member; * Calling another member names; * Not staying on topic with the current investment discussion, but instead focusing on an individual member;
The Real party of NO I wonder what 0bama and the Dems. are hiding??????
GOP fails in effort to get documents on alleged job offers
WASHINGTON — House Republicans failed in a push Wednesday to force the release of White House documents related to potential job offers made to two Democratic Senate primary challengers, Andrew Romanoff in Colorado and Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania.
The Resolution of Inquiry failed on a party-line vote in the House Judiciary Committee, 15-12, leaving Republicans with a diminishing set of options as they try to force a wider investigation into White House efforts to entice Democratic challengers out of two key Senate races.
In the debate before the vote, Democrats insisted administration officials have already addressed the issues sufficiently and pointed to more pressing problems of concern to voters, including the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
But Republicans insisted there are still unanswered questions in both cases.
They want to know whether the White House Counsel's Office signed off on job discussions between White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina and Romanoff that took place the day after the former Colorado House Speaker filed paperwork to run against Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet.
Republicans say the contact is potentially a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal government employees from engaging in political activity while on the job, defined as activity directed at the election or defeat of a candidate.
In the Sestak case, Republicans say they want to know whether former President Bill Clinton was used as an intermediary in offering Sestak a high-profile but unpaid position because a more direct approach had been already ruled out as a potential violation of the federal law.
"That would show right there the White House was very cognizant of the gray line they were toeing and tried to get around it," said Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who sits on the Judiciary Committee.
"If everything was aboveboard and nothing inappropriate happened, then why oppose the release of additional information?" Bardella said.
Republicans have been frustrated in attempts to keep the issue in front of voters, and the failed committee vote Wednesday scratches one more option off the list.
The party is still hoping for an investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, which is in charge of enforcing the Hatch Act, a violation of which can lead to the removal of federal employees from their jobs.
Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., sits on the House Judiciary Committee but left before the vote. Polis spokeswoman Lara Cottingham said her boss had to attend a session of the Rules Committee and that he was opposed to the GOP amendment. www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_15362648?source=rss
Is that why you never ever choose defend your failured Republican Presidents? You CAN"T! Your bums just keep on screwing up and the Reps. just can't get enough of them. Those who can't learn from the past are DOOOOOOOOOM to fail time after time...............and the Reps. have made it a ART!
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