Wake Up Call

Intrusive Thought: From My Lai to Torture, Part IV

2012-01-27T16:48:00.000-05:00

Intrusive Thought: From My Lai to Torture, Part IV

Why Bush NEEDS a Third Term ...

2008-03-10T11:32:00.001-04:00

By NanceGreggs

(… or why McCain needs one – same dif.)

I hope you have all seriously considered the things that Mr. Mission Accomplished has yet to do, and the dire consequences if he is forced to leave office in January 2009 before being allowed to complete his tasks.

Here are my Top Twenty Reasons why Bush should be allowed another term to finish what he’s started:

20. We are literally minutes away from complete victory in Iraq. I know we’ve been hearing this for five years, but this time it’s really true!!!

19. Sure we have millions of Americans who are homeless, bankrupt, uninsured – but do we have enough?

18. Bush has brought the economy to the edge of the cliff – shouldn’t he be allowed to kick it completely over the side before he leaves office?

17. The end of the Bush “presidency” will lead to massive job losses in the Burnable-Bush-Effigy industry, the “Impeach Now” sign-making business, and the “Off to the Hague” T-Shirt Manufacturers Union.

16. While most Bush inner-circle cronies have made their millions, some have not yet been awarded government consultancy contracts – can’t we wait until they get their fair share?

15. A new president might not award no-bid contracts to companies like Halliburton. Just what is Dick Cheney supposed to live on should that happen? Is it really fitting that a former VP end his days subsisting on Caviar-Helper?

14. The cost of education will skyrocket due to US kids having to learn English as opposed to what’s been passed-off as English for the last seven years.

13. Comedians and monologue writers will no longer have easy access to jokes that virtually write themselves every time Bush opens his mouth.

12. There are still Iraqis who are alive – and they’re screwing up our ability to steal their oil.

11. US cities could be over-run by homeless billionaires if the tax-cuts aren’t made permanent.

10. Photographers could suffer serious injury if the carefully-staged photo-op, attended by hand-picked crowds, becomes a thing of the past.

9. Having to revert to the Constitution and the rule of law could adversely affect the livelihood of history revisionists.

8. Seeing a presidential approval rating that surpasses 20% might be too jarring a change for many citizens.

7. DC paper-shredders could find themselves on the unemployment line, along with IT workers with expertise in erasing WH emails, videotapes of interrogations, etc.

6. The great sport of waterboarding could lose its audience share.

5. Yes, we’ve pissed-off millions of people world-wide – shouldn’t we stay the course until every last person is pissed-off?

4. A new administration could decide that our vets actually deserve the very best of treatment upon their return – just where is that money supposed to come from?

3. All right, big deal, so we lost one US city due to failure to mitigate the damage caused by a natural disaster – don’t we have plenty of cities? Shouldn’t we be in a position to get rid of a few more before it’s too late?

2. Isn’t insisting on an AG who remembers stuff an affront to the memory-impaired everywhere?

And the Number One Reason for giving Bush a third term:

1. Sure, we as a nation are fucked – but shouldn’t we forge ahead until we are Unequivocally the NUMBER ONE most fucked-up nation EVER in the history of mankind?

Why should the Greatest Nation on Earth settle for being second best?

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/356

Troops Die While Bureaucrats Blunder: The Fight Against Red Tape

2008-03-01T08:04:00.001-05:00

Paul Rieckhoff @ 11:24 am
February 28, 2008

Time and time again, we’ve seen troops and veterans suffering at the hands of an inept government bureaucracy. Wounded troops have been forced to repay their enlistment bonuses. Amputees fell through the cracks at Walter Reed. And 400,000 veterans are still waiting months (and even years) for their disability benefits.

Well, here we go again:

Christopher M. Simmance helped keep the peace as an American Soldier in the Middle East, but when he returned home and later suffered a breakdown, he was turned away from the VA hospital because the government didn’t acknowledge his overseas duty.

The whole story is here. Overall, at least 2,000 veterans across the country are struggling to correct mistakes on their military records - mistakes that have cost some of them their jobs and their health care coverage. The wait to correct these errors can stretch for as long as three years. In the meantime, the veteran is not eligible for any of the services or benefits to which they are entitled.

But the battles against the bureaucracy are not only fought by the wounded.

Army Sgt. Kendell Frederick, who had tried three times to file for citizenship, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq as he returned from submitting fingerprints for his application.

There are roughly 7,200 service members or veterans waiting on their citizenship applications, despite a 2002 pledge from the Bush administration to fast track paperwork for immigrant members of the U.S. military. They have to wait months, and sometimes years, for their applications to navigate lengthy background checks, misplaced paperwork, confusion about deployments, and a plethora of other bureaucratic obstacles.

Troops in Iraq getting shot at right now are also bearing the burden of bureaucracy. Our slow acquisitions process and the inadequate oversight of military procurement can have dire consequences for troops in theatre:

Casualties could have been reduced by half among Marines in Iraq if specially armored vehicles had been deployed more quickly in some cases.

That’s according to a new blockbuster report to the Pentagon.

This is just unacceptable. For every bureaucratic snafu and oversight failure, there are thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans paying the price-with their lives and limbs. That’s why Government Accountability is so important, and why we have included it as one of the five key areas of IAVA’s 2008 Legislative Agenda.

But accountability isn’t very popular in Washington right now. The fate of one of our successes from last year’s Legislative Agenda has just been thrown into jeopardy. The 2008 National Defense Authorization Act established a new Wartime Contracting Commission to investigate fraud and waste by defense contractors. But in his signing statement, President Bush has objected to this new “Truman Commission” on the grounds that it might tie his hands as Commander-in-Chief.

Senator Webb, a decorated Vietnam veteran whose son served in Iraq, championed the new commission, and has sworn the commission will go forward. He rammed it home on the Senate floor stating:

“If the Administration would like to explain to us what their constitutional issue is with a piece of legislation that the President has just signed, we would be happy to hear that. In the meantime, we are moving forward with this Commission. It is vitally important to accountability in the government, and I’m very proud to have introduced it. We are marching forward.”

Troops and veterans will be marching alongside Senator Webb on this. And we need the American people to do the same.

Posted in full with author's permisssion.

Originally posted at iava.org: http://www.iava.org/blog/2008/02/28/troops-die-while-bureaucrats-blunder-the-fight-against-red-tape

Winter Soldier fundraiser in Somerville 3/7/2008

2008-02-28T01:44:00.000-05:00

Veterans for Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade

in partnership with

O2 Yoga

Present

Winter Soldier II Fundraiser

Where: O2 Yoga
288 Highland Ave
Somerville, MA

When: Friday, March 7, 2008

Time: 8:15 - 9:30PM

Please come and help O2 Yoga and Veterans for Peace support the Winter Soldier II hearings March 13th to 16th in Washington D.C. Veterans and civilian survivors of both conflicts will give public testimony and eye witness accounts of what is really happening on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is a fundraiser, please bring your checkbooks.

Speakers - Iraq Veterans: Liam Madden and Carlos Harris

Gold Star Family: Carlos and Melida Arrendondo

A short film, Winter Soldier II will be shown.

Namaste

Mimi Loureiro, Owner O2 Yoga

Winter Soldier fundraiser in Essex 3/2/2008

2008-02-28T01:43:00.000-05:00

F U N D R A I S E R

FOR

W I N T E R S O L D I E R H E A R I N G S

Sunday, March 2nd, 3pm

First Universalist Church

57 Main Street, Essex, MA

Keynote Speaker: Andrew Bacevich, Boston University

Professor of History and International Studies

Featured Speaker: Iraq Marine Veteran Liam Madden

Music by Pat Scanlon • Short DVD by IVAW • Light refreshments

*****

Help us support the Winter Soldier hearings

March 13th to 16th in Washington DC

where recent US combat vets will testify on

what is really happening in Afghanistan and Iraq

Sponsored by the Samantha Smith Chapter Veterans for Peace

and the North Shore Coalition for Peace and Justice

Contact: Paul Brailsford: (978) 356 7671

The plan for what comes after Iraq

By Andrew J. Bacevich

February 24, 2008

THE ISSUE that ought to occupy center stage in the 2008 presidential campaign is not US policy toward Iraq but US policy after Iraq. "After" in this context does not mean that Iraq is now receding in America's rearview mirror; the conflict there will continue for years to come. "After" means that, like it or not, dealing with the war's consequences will rank near the top of the next president's agenda.

more stories like this

One such consequence is this: the United States finds itself without a set of viable and morally coherent principles to guide decisions regarding the use of force.

The United States once adhered to principles that were both sound and eminently straightforward. As recently as the 1970s and 1980s, the so-called Vietnam syndrome exercised a restraining influence. Americans saw military power as something to be husbanded. The preference was to use force as a last resort, employed to defend vital interests. Overt aggression qualified as categorically wrong.

After the Cold War, enthusiasm for precision weapons and a brief infatuation with "humanitarian interventionism" eroded those principles. During the 1990s, the use of force, usually on a small scale, became increasingly commonplace. The lessons of Vietnam lost their salience. Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which prompted the Bush administration to jettison those lessons in their entirety.

In their place, the administration substituted a breathtakingly ambitious new framework. Through the use of preventive war (the Bush doctrine) the United States set out to transform the greater Middle East (the freedom agenda), thereby liberating the people of the Islamic world and preventing further terrorist attacks. Rather than a last resort, force became a preferred instrument. Given the right motives, aggressive war became justifiable and even necessary.

Two key assumptions underlay this approach. The first was that US troops were unstoppable: once committed into action, US forces could be counted on to deliver a quick, decisive, and economical victory. The second assumption was that the greater Middle East was ripe for change, with liberal values providing the antidote to the pathologies afflicting the region.

Events have now demolished these assumptions. Except when fighting on its own terms, the United States military has proven itself unable to deliver quick, decisive, and economical victories. Within 18 months of the terrorist attacks, President Bush initiated two major wars. Years later, despite the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars and the loss of thousands of lives, those wars continue, with no end in sight. The president will bequeath both of them to his successor. Bluntly, the Bush doctrine hasn't worked as advertised.

Similar problems beset the freedom agenda. Efforts to democratize Iraq and Afghanistan have produced not effective and legitimate governments, but quasi-permanent dependencies. In the West Bank and Gaza, American insistence on free and fair elections delivered power to Hamas. In Lebanon, elections enhanced the standing of Hezbollah. Rather than alleviating pathologies, democracy has accentuated them.

Although the White House may pretend otherwise, the Bush doctrine and the freedom agenda have failed their trials. That failure is definitive. Only the truly demented will imagine that simply trying harder will produce different results - that preventive war against Iran, for example, will hurry that nation down the path toward Western-oriented liberal democracy. The collapse of the Bush doctrine and the freedom agenda leaves a dangerous void.

In the place of defective principles regarding the proper role of force, we now have no principles at all. Nothing in the presidential campaign thus far suggests that any of the candidates is aware of this problem. Regardless of the election's outcome, however, it will be incumbent upon the next president to replace the Bush doctrine and its corollary.

This will be no easy task. Yet the place to begin is with a candid recognition of just how far Americans have strayed from the path of wisdom and prudence since persuading themselves that the lessons of Vietnam no longer applied.

A first step might be to enshrine a new Iraq syndrome to serve the same purposes today that the Vietnam syndrome did after that failed war, reminding us that power has limits, curbing the reckless impulses of our politicians, warning against those who promise peace while sending young Americans to fight in distant lands.

The Iraq syndrome ought to begin with this dictum: never again. This time we need to mean it.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book "The Limits of Power" will appear later this year.

Let's talk a bit about money

2008-02-27T08:33:00.000-05:00

Did you know the 2009 military budget is $735,700,000,000? No shit.

Hmmmm. I wonder why that is so. . .

F-22 Raptors cost $355,000,000 a pop.

F-35 Lightnings cost $239,000,000 a pop.

C-17 Globemasters cost $202,000,000 in 1998 dollars.

Littoral Combat ships cost over $600,000,000 each.

The new national security cutter costs $536,000,000.

MRAPs cost at least $1,000,000 a pop.

BTW, the F-22s had to go into the shop for corrosion repairs, the F-35 still has not flown above 40,000 feet, the C-17 assembly line is getting shut down in 2009, the Littoral Combat ships have increased in cost by 300%, the Deepwater program is on the ropes, and the US Military uses 340,000 barrels of oil a day.

You're probably scratching your head asking "Huh? Where did he get those numbers?" I post daily at democraticunderground in the Veterans forum.

$705,700,000,000

2008-02-17T06:33:00.000-05:00

Ya gotta give the DoD credit for balls. They ask for more than $700 billion in their 2009 budget, and then four days later ask for another $30,000,000,000. http://tinyurl.com/ynwj5b

The toys are starting to get expensive: F-22s at $355,000,000 a pop, F-35s at $239,000,000 a pop, Virginia class submarines at $2,500,000,000 a pop, DDG destroyers at $3,300,000,000 to $5,000,000,000 a pop. The list goes on and on and on.

Deepwater program failures trashed the Coast Guard hopes for a replacement fleet. Admiral Allen's been on a propaganda tour trying to get more $$$.

The F-35 still cannot fly above 40,000 feet.

B-2s need $71,700,000 worth of display upgrades.

The Navy's LCS program is out of control. Instead of costing $220,000,000 a ship, the estimated cost is now $600,000,000 a ship. The Navy canceled two of the four ships ordered.

So back to the budget. The additional $30,000,000,000 makes the 2009 defense budget $735,700,000,000. That's almost 3/4 of a trillion dollars..

How much longer can we afford to do this?

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan

2008-02-15T10:38:00.001-05:00

Here's an 18 minute clip of Winter Soldier from the IVAW site. Watch it.

http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/video

Gathering of Awesome!

2008-02-09T11:36:00.000-05:00

http://www.ivaw.org/node/2470

by Jonathan de Wald | Mon, 02/04/2008 - 6:01am

Have you heard of these guys? Man, they blow my mind! I've never seen so much patriotism confined to one website: http://gatheringofeagles.org/. How do they contain all that kick-ass patriotism with such a small amount of bandwidth? I thought I was a patriot: driving my Ford F350 all drunk, wailing on my wife, getting tattoos of bald eagles and Confederate battle flags, and then these guys come along and BOOM! I get to see, first-hand, what a real bad-ass American hero looks like. I thought I was supposed to go to the gym and get all muscular. Or learn how to fight. Nope! To judge from the physiques and prêt-à-porter attire of the Eagles, all I need is regular access to a buffet and some straight-leg Wranglers to attain that patriotic chic.

So now I'm on a pretty strict regimen of steak, Miller High Life and seasonal sales at Farm and Fleet. I'd say that makes me the most patriotic red, white and blue bad-ass on my block. There's some dude next door with a sign that insists "MARRIAGE = MAN + WOMAN" in his front yard, but I've never seen him scream at 110-pound Code Pink gal until he was at the threshold of breaking an assault law, so I'm pretty sure he's a homo. Probably his mom's a Democrat. Might as well be Viet Cong!

Well, my fellow patriots, I'm glad you let me get all Francis Scott Key on your asses. It's just, when it gets all patriotic up in here with some Lee Greenwood pumping in the background, everybody's saluting, totally waving the Stars and Stripes all up in your face and I can feel the eagles soaring, I'm glad to know where they gather: in internet forums where liberal concepts like "grammar" and "veracity" have no place.

http://www.ivaw.org/node/2470

Friday's Flick: Bush Noir

2008-02-09T10:02:00.000-05:00

By NanceGreggs

The minute he walked into the Oval Office, I knew he was trouble. I’d seen the type before. All the cowboy swagger in the world couldn’t hide that east coast preppie smirk – just another wisenheimer whose only passing acquaintance with “work” was having to haul his heinie down to the bank once a week to cash his allowance check.

Well, I can’t say I wasn’t curious about the kid. And a couple of rounds for the press boys at the local ginmill loosened a lot of tongues – just like four fingers of the good stuff always does.

The story was pretty much what I’d expected. Turns out the only way the mutt ever held down a job was when his daddy’s pals sunk a pile of simoleons into some fly-by-night business that couldn’t find oil in Texas – no joke.

The more I found out, the more obvious it was that the kid’s whole family, for all their high-falutin’ ways, had more skeletons in their closet than a grave-robber with amnesia. Yeah, there was plenty of dirt there – the kind that gets swept under the rug when you have enough doe-ray-me to buy yourself a top-of-the-line Bissell.

Anyways, the way I heard it, it didn’t take too long before this Bush kid starts hitting the bottle on a regular basis, along with finding a new use for that silver spoon that was danglin’ from his gums the day he was born. But eventually the kid starts smelling the draft, so Daddy Big Bucks calls in a couple of IOUs, and faster than you can down a sarsaparilla and pop some Sen-Sen, Junior’s got himself a cushy fly-boy job states-side while his buddies are bein’ shipped off to ‘Nam.

But here’s where the story gets interestin’. Turns out that years later, this Bush kid winds up as a duly-elected president – the duly-elected part being somewhat suspect, if you’re a stickler for the fine print – and he comes waltzin’ into the White House like he owns the joint.

The minute I set eyes on the gang he was gallivantin’ with, I knew the whole bunch was up to no good.

His sidekick, Big Dick Cheney, was the kinda guy who would shoot his best friend in the face, then send some doll-face out to talk to the coppers while he finished off the pitcher of highballs.

Then there was that stuck-up dame, Condi – a real sourpuss if ever I saw one, always actin’ like those pricey pumps at the end of her gams made her better than the rest of us workin’ stiffs.

And Rumsfeld – yeah, I’d grown up with kids like him back on the east side. Always trying to act the tough guy – ya know, kinda like the kids who beat him up for his pocket money every day of the week and twice on Sunday, just ‘cause they could spot a sissie a mile away. Turns out the guy’s into torture – as long as it’s some other poor schmuck on the hurtin’ end of the rubber hose. Thing is, you just know that every time this Rummy kid got told to strip down to his skivvies in gym class, you could hear him bawlin’ for his mama clean over to the next school district.

But the dead giveaway was the bunch of snot-noses the Bush kid thought were his pals – a collection of know-nuthin’ crumb-bums with names like Billy “The Kid” Kristol, Paulie “The Comb” Wolfowitz, Dickie “The Dickless” Perle.

You know the type – the kinda guys that talk big about how the other guy should do his bit for Uncle Sam, while the only action they ever seen was wavin’ goodbye to the dumb grunts down at the pier before headin’ over to some swank “eatery” to discuss the horrors of war over a plate of two-inch-thicks and a bottle of brandy.

So the Bush kid starts runnin’ the country, and before you know it, there are two buildings downtown that wind up being a hole in the ground while he’s parked in a classroom reading a kids’ picture book, lookin’ for all the world like when the Good Lord was handin’ out brains, he thought He said “trains”, and he missed his.

Before too long, he’s got us involved in some cockamamie war he can’t win, and whadda-you-know-joe, the hoodlums that just happen to be his best pals are rakin’ in the moolah like it’s goin’ outta style.

In the meanwhile, our fightin’ boys are tryin’ to dodge the bullets while drinking water that ain’t fit to spit in, courtesy of the same Big Dick’s former company that just happened to get moved to the front of the line when the taxpayers’ greenbacks got handed out by the fistful and nobody was botherin’ to count.

A hurricane hits New Orleans and while el presidente, fresh off one of those vacations he’s always on because you can’t expect a kid who grew up like he did to work more than eleven days a year, is out in the kitchen with Dinah, strumming on the ol’ banjo while people are dyin’ – which don’t make no neverminds by him, because they’re the type that he only ever seen at the country club when they was waitin’ tables and parking cars.

So we wind up with a country in debt up to its eyeballs, the G-men are spying on US while the back-room boys are swindlin’ the country outta billions, ya can’t get a job with a good ol’ US of A company unless you move to India, ya can’t buy your kid a train set for Christmas unless he’s immune to lead poisoning, the air ain’t fit to breathe, you can’t afford to fill up the Buick unless you’re the heir to a fortune – and on top of everything else, no one seems to have noticed that living in Capital City is the number one cause of being tetched in the brain, because nobody knows nuthin’, nobody sees nuthin’, and nobody remembers nuthin’.

And if you’re cooling your heels waitin’ for the press boys to drop a dime on the whole kit-‘n-caboodle, head on over to the soda shop and run a tab on the egg-creams, ‘cause you’re in for a long wait.

So now it’s time for this over-aged frat-boy to pack his kit-bag and head out on the next bus departing for points unknown, while an entire country rolls up its sleeves and yells, “Say, I’d like to learn this kid a lesson he’ll never forget!”

I wouldn’t give this Bush kid’s buddies more’en an ice-cube’s chance in hell to win another election, fair-and-square – and I’m talking about the fair-and-square we used to live by, back when a two-cent-plain went for two cents and Sunday’s sermon wasn’t about who to vote for.

But that’s just one dame’s opinion – for what it’s worth. And these days, it seems to be worth more ‘en that swamp land these no-good palookas are still hawkin’ on every street corner, too dumb to notice that this time around, nobody’s buyin’.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/342

Overseas outsourcing: You get what you pay for

2008-02-07T06:21:00.000-05:00

By Mary Shaw
February 05, 2008

A recent report from the Labor Department indicated that U.S. employers cut 17,000 jobs in January of this year. According to the Associated Press, this was "the first such reduction in more than four years."

Many of the job cuts were in manufacturing and "a variety of professional and business services."

I think it is no coincidence that these areas have seen a lot of U.S. jobs transferred to India, China, and other countries where the labor is much, much cheaper. Apparently, U.S. corporations care more about profits than the welfare of their employees.

Apparently, they also care more about profits than safety. This is evidenced by so many chilling accounts of unsafe American-named products imported from China -- everything from children's toys to toothpaste.

You get what you pay for.

And, apparently, they care more about profits than human rights. Many manufacturing facilities overseas are notorious for their use of sweatshops, horrific working conditions, and slave labor.

You get what you pay for.

All this so that U.S. corporations can rake in huge profits, and reward their CEOs with obscene salaries.

You get what you pay for? No, these CEOs get what others have paid for -- with blood, sweat, and tears.

And it's not just the low-level manufacturing jobs that are moving overseas. As the Labor Department's report noted, various professional and business services were also affected.

Chances are, if you have made a phone call for customer service in the past few years, particularly technical support, the representative who answered your call likely had an Indian accent. I have spoken with countless frustrated folks who gave up on getting their questions answered since they couldn't even make out the words that their rep was saying. I am not a xenophobe, but a customer service representative should have the necessary skills to make himself understood to his audience.

You get what you pay for.

I have a friend who worked as a technical writer for a Philadelphia area software developer. She thought her job was safe. After all, good technical writing must be very clear and unambiguous, and written using uncompromising standards of clarity. One of the rules of international technical writing is that you always write in your native language, or translate documentation into, not out of, your native language. Nevertheless, my friend's employer traded her in for her Indian counterparts. The resultant user guides, technical specs, and help screens were subpar, to say the least. But that didn't seem to matter to the corporate execs. Because it was all so affordable.

You get what you pay for.

Remember the American dream? It's looking more and more as though it, too, has been outsourced.

You get what the CEOs are willing to pay for.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at home.att.net/~maryshawonline/: http://home.att.net/~maryshawonline/article-2008feb05-overseasoutsourcing.html

While us peons were distracted, our masters have brought back Debt Bondage

2008-02-06T08:27:00.000-05:00

By arendt

Historical peonage

Peonage is a system where laborers are bound in servitude until their debts are paid in full. Those bound by such a system are known, in the US, as peons. Employers may extend credit to laborers to buy from employer-owned stores at inflated prices. This method is a variation of the company store system, in which workers are exploited by agreeing to work for an insufficient amount of goods and/or services. In these circumstances, peonage is a form of unfree labor. Such systems have existed in many places at many times throughout history.

Modern views

According to Anti-Slavery International, "A person enters debt bondage when their labor is demanded as a means of repayment of a loan, or of money given in advance. Usually, people are tricked or trapped into working for no pay or very little pay (in return for such a loan), in conditions which violate their human rights. Invariably, the value of the work done by a bonded laborer is greater that the original sum of money borrowed or advanced."

At international law

Debt bondage has been defined by the United Nations as a form of "modern day slavery" and is prohibited by international law. It is specifically dealt with by article 1(a) of the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery 1956. It persists nonetheless especially in developing nations, which have few mechanisms for credit security or bankruptcy, and where fewer people hold formal title to land or possessions. According to some economists, for example Hernando de Soto, this is a major barrier to development in those countries - entrepreneurs do not dare take risks and cannot get credit because they hold no collateral and may burden families for generations to come.

Where children are forced to work because of debt bondage of the family, this is considered not only child labor, but a worst form of child labor in terms of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 of the International Labour Organization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage

I hate to burst the bubble of all those people who honestly believe that putting electing a Democratic president and veto-proof Congress is going to bring back social justice in America.

The sub-prime mortgage mess piles on top of usurious credit card rates and fees to create a perfect storm of peonage, not only for poor Americans, but also for the increasingly large percentage of the formerly middle class Americans who effectively have no assets.

The new Bankruptcy Laws (thanks Joe Biden, Senator - MBNA) are the chains and padlocks that will keep the new peons from fleeing - as if there were any jobs in America to which they might flee.

Welcome to debt peonage America, where children are locked into big box stores overnight to do shelf stocking, where single mothers get on buses to be bussed fifty miles away to work for chump change - as a condition of receiving welfare.

Welcome to credit-aholic America, where the credit card companies are throwing cards at teenagers, college students, people just out of bankruptcy. Give them a taste, sell them a little blow, and pretty soon you have a full-blown debt addict who will pay off for decades to come.

And rules? "We don need no steenking rules!" The credit companies change the terms and conditions on cards, retroactively, whenever they please. To the victims of this scam, it must be like being in the infamous Marion, IL Supermax prison. In that hell-hole, arbitrary, unannounced rule changes are discovered by being punished for not knowing about them - all as a part of psychological warfare to break the resistance of prisoners.

To cover all the flavors of peonage, we have the "company store" - the seller of first and last resort in Corporate America. Its where the non-urban peons HAVE TO go to spend the money. Essentially, all the small businessmen in small towns have been put out of business, and their holdings consolidated into the giant latifundia - I mean big box stores - that now employ all those former entrepreneurs.

Wal-Mart's Brave New World

I was visiting my mother who was, at that time, living in one of the poorer regions in the piney backwoods of Florida, a place not much different from Chapman, or Oroville or any of the locales characterized by poverty, drug traffic, lack of opportunity and the panoply of social problems that have become increasingly common throughout the land.

During the course of the visit, I noticed that my mother's old TV seemed about to expire, so I decided to buy her a new one. The only place such a purchase could be made, however, was at a Wal-Mart store some 15 miles from where she lived.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/12629 /

WalMart is the new company store, where most of what is on offer is inferior, Chinese-made crap. And, except for the loss-leader items, its caveat emptor, suckers.

--------

I weep for America. It is financially doomed, but it goes about its increasingly pathetic business like it was still 1950. While it has a "gut feeling" that corporate deregulation and outsourcing are at the root of all the economic trouble, it is so collectively brainwashed that it continues to fall for the same old Libertarian /neoliberal bunkum over and over - the "ownership society", "trickle down", "tax cuts for the rich".

The media brainwashing machine keeps the emotional volume on "high" for economically irrelevant distractions like gay marriage or evolution or birth control. If it didn't, or if they "tuned out", some of these new peons might be able to focus on that emotion that would, under normal circumstances, have long since been heard: these guys are crooks, and we are going to put them in jail.

If that happened, we soon wouldn't have peons (or is that the "peed on"s).

----

That's OK, nothing to hear here. You all can go back to that wonderful campaign hoopla. You can listen to a candidate roster that has absolutely no intention of doing anything about the new peonage - except to make sure it continues. A celebrity will visit you and dazzle you. Vote. Belong. Consume and reproduce.

arendt

Note: given this is Super Tuesday night, this will sink like a stone. Consider it counter-programming for those who don't give a shit about this meaningless spectacle.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/arendt/137

Super Tuesday

2008-02-04T19:49:00.000-05:00

If I were still amongst the living, my thinking on this day would be as follows: There are 4 realistically viable choices left.

CLINTON: She is an insider's insider, attracts all kinds of big $$$ (always with strings attached), is no friend of the anti-war movement and I don't think our nation needs another DYNASTY.

ROMNEY: This guy is a phony ASS...., a big war supporter, who when asked by a reporter why his 5 sons (of military service age) were not partaking of the war he so strongly supports-, after a withering stare, replied that his sons were "serving their country by helping me get get elected president"!

McCAIN: This guy scares the hell out of me! Here we have a Viet Nam Vet, who most surely should know better, strongly supporting the Cheney/Bush criminal fiasco and the"Surge"in Iraq, stating something to the effect "If it takes a hundred years, we should complete THE MISSION(???)"? Didn't he ever ask himself the question while in the "Hanoi Hilton" prison or later "What did all my pain,suffering and misery do for me or my country?" and then say to himself "If I can, I should do anything in my power to stop any more f....d up wars from ever happening again!" But then I could never understand "ring knocker"(academy grads) 'thinking'. Perhaps, as that geat military thinker/stategist Karl Rove intimated, McCain"s time as a POW affected his logic circuity. Or,mostlikely, BIG M.I.C.$$$$ has affected his integrity! What ever the reason(s), as I said, this guy scares the hell out of me!!!

Lastly,OBAMA: Seems by far the "lesser of the evils" (isn't THAT the American way) and who knows, you may get lucky!Wouldn"t it be ironic, if an African/American restored DEMOCRACY to The Facist Plutocrcy of America?!

WTFU,AMERICA!

S.D.B

I Will Not Be Moved

2008-02-04T06:10:00.000-05:00

By NanceGreggs

Long before the infighting, the name-calling, the mindless bashing ever got a foothold, I had already chosen my candidate. I am not now, nor will I be in future, persuaded away from my choice, nor will I be insulted or bullied into changing my mind.

My candidate is the one who ends up winning the nomination and has a (D) behind their name. They have my vote, and my support.

Of course, I, like everyone, had my preference going in. But when it was clear that the majority of my fellow Democrats preferred someone else over my personal choice, I accepted that. I don’t think they are stupid or ill-informed; they simply had a different choice, perhaps based on different criteria than my own.

So be it. As long as their choice has a (D) behind their name, I’ll abide by the ultimate majority decision that is made by my fellow party members. That’s based on my wanting a Democrat in the White House; it is also based on the overwhelming fact that I, unlike some people, do not believe that I know what’s best for everyone, and therefore anyone who disagrees with me is clearly wrong.

I will not be moved by the Nostradamus factor; those who know we’ll lose in November if Hillary is the nominee, along with those who know we will lose if it’s Obama. And one can’t help but notice the irony: the listen-to-me-because-I-KNOW prophets are equally assured that they can predict the future – even though they are predicting completely different outcomes.

I will not be moved by the childish bickering between the pro-Hill and pro-Obama factions, which has gone from one ridiculous outburst to another. “Hillary supporters are pro-war and just don’t care about their country.” “Obama supporters obviously want us to lose in November.” Yes, that’s right. Millions of Democrats across the country are meeting in secret, choosing the candidate they are most hopeful will continue the debacle in Iraq and/or cost us the White House. Glad you figured that one out, Einstein.

Let’s not discuss how important it is to rid ourselves of Republican rule when there are more pressing things to focus on – like handshakes that did or didn’t happen. Let’s not concern ourselves with future Supreme Court nominees – better to wind up with another Scalia than elect a Democrat who might have snubbed someone – and, of course, let’s base the truth and/or the implications of that alleged snub on the MSM talking hairdos’ take on things, because it just doesn’t get any more reliable than that.

So while the Clinton-Obama virtual fisticuffs continue unabated (as they no doubt will), I will stand firm in my choice: last man or woman standing with the all-important (D) gets my vote – unequivocally, and without ‘holding my nose’.

In the end, it’s (D) v (R), and in the bitter fray that this place has become over the past few months, I have never forgotten who the enemy is.

As for those who refuse to vote for that man or that woman based on their ‘principles’, I am sure that if we get another four-to-eight years of a Republican in the White House, those same people will comfort themselves knowing that their personal agenda was far more important than the wellbeing of the nation and its citizenry.

Most of all, I will not be moved by those touting the idea that given the two candidates we're left with, there’s no difference between US (the Dems) and THEM (the GOP). If that is what you honestly believe, I hope you will give serious consideration to becoming an equal-opportunity whiner, whereby you post that same sentiment on Republican message boards for a while. If there's no difference between US and THEM, shouldn't you be giving them fair warning as well? That would seem only fair - and I’m sure there are many here who would welcome the break from your belly-achin’.

A Democrat in the White House, with a strong Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. It’s the only thing that matters now – and if you don’t believe that, think long and hard about the alternative – because if that doesn’t give you nightmares, you obviously don’t understand what’s at stake.

I believe, especially after the last seven-plus years, that I do understand what’s at stake – and I plan to vote accordingly.

That's why the nominee with the (D) is getting my vote, and my support, without question. It will be interesting to see which of the two remaining candidates wins the battle - but ultimately, when it comes down to our (D) versus their (R), it should be obvious that there's a lot more riding on who wins the war.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/340

Connection between State-Sponsored Terror, Corporate Greed and Economic “Shock Therapy”

2008-02-04T06:04:00.000-05:00

By Time for change

The relationship between state-sponsored terror, corporate greed and economic “shock therapy” represents perhaps the most fundamental evil of our times. I believe that it goes a very long way towards explaining why so much of the world’s population is impoverished today. It is no accident. Third World nations have to a very large extent been kept down by external human forces who seek to profit from the labors of the poor.
Naomi Klein, in “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, thoroughly explores this issue in a manner that clarifies it like nothing else I’ve ever read.

Her book begins with Chile in the 1970s, where U.S. complicity in the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, had as perhaps its main goal the putting into practice of Milton Friedman’s economic theories, developed at the University of Chicago. These theories, when put into practice in several countries over more than three decades, have served primarily to increase the wealth and power of the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else. They represent the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism referred to in the title of Klein’s book.

It is essential that these phenomena be understood by enough people in order to enable successful efforts to be taken against them. Otherwise massive human catastrophes will continue to accumulate to the point where world civilization as we know it will be wiped out.

The rise of the Pinochet torture regime in Chile

The Nixon administration hated the idea of Salvador Allende being in power in Chile. Whether that was for ideological reasons or because he represented a roadblock to U.S. corporate interests is not entirely clear. Perhaps there is no real distinction between those two motivations. Anyhow, William Blum, in his article, “A Concise History of US Global Interventions, 1945 to the Present”, explains what the Nixon administration did about their problem:

Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for the Washington power elite… (Allende) respected the constitution and became increasingly popular. After sabotaging Allende’s electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970 despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government… undermining the economy and building up military hostility.

Consequently, the U.S. government collaborated with the Chilean military to overthrow Allende and install Augusto Pinochet. Naomi Klein explains what happened next:

The generals knew that their hold on power depended on Chileans being truly terrified…The trail of blood left behind over those four days came to be known as the Caravan of Death. In short order the entire country had gotten the message: resistance is deadly… In all, more than 3,200 people were disappeared or executed, at least 80,000 were imprisoned, and 200,000 fled the country.

The use of economic shock therapy in Chile following the 1973 coup

Milton Friedman’s disciples, who are known as “The Chicago Boys”, after the University of Chicago where they learned their economic theories, had been working hand in glove with Pinochet for some time before the actual coup took place. So they were plenty ready to put their theories into place as soon as Pinochet came to power. Klein describes how that worked out:

In 1974, inflation reached 375 %. The cost of basics such as bread went through the roof. At the same time, Chileans were being thrown out of work because Pinochet’s experiment with “free trade” was flooding the country with cheap imports… Unemployment hit record levels and hunger became rampant… Chicago boys argued that the problem didn’t lie with their theory but with the fact that it wasn’t being applied with sufficient strictness.

So Friedman flew to Chile to visit Pinochet himself, and he advocated even harsher measures. Eventually he convinced Pinochet to fully institute his “reforms”:

Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy – tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation… It was the most extreme capitalist make-over ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a “Chicago School” revolution… Friedman predicted that the speed, suddenness and scope of the economic shifts would provoke psychological reactions in the public that “facilitate the adjustment”. He coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic “shock treatment.”

This caused even more severe distress for the Chilean people. But eventually, 15 years after he came to power, the economy “stabilized”.

The so-called Chilean economic “miracle”

It is of course important to those who profit from Chicago School economics to make people believe that they work. Hence the so-called Chilean economic “miracle”. Klein thoroughly debunks that argument:

Three decades later, Chile is still held up by free-market enthusiasts as proof that Friedmanism works. When Pinochet died in December 2006, The New York Times praised him for “transforming a bankrupt economy into the most prosperous in Latin America”.

Pinochet held power for 17 years. The country’s period of steady growth that is held up as proof of its miraculous success did not begin until the mid-eighties – a full decade after the Chicago Boys instituted shock therapy…

In 1982, despite strict adherence to Chicago doctrine, Chile’s economy crashed… The situation was so unstable that Pinochet was forced to do what Allende had done…

It’s clear that Chile never was the laboratory of pure free markets that its cheerleaders claimed. Instead it was a country where a small elite leapt from wealthy to super rich in short order… bankrolled by debt and heavily subsidized (then bailed out) with public funds. Chile under Pinochet and the Chicago Boys was not a capitalist state featuring a liberated market but a corporatist one… What Chile pioneered under Pinochet was an evolution of corporatism: a mutually supporting alliance between a police state and large corporations… to wage all out war … on the workers. That war – what many Chileans understandably see as a war of the rich against the poor and middle class – is the real story of Chile’s economic “miracle”.

By 1988, when the economy had stabilized and was growing rapidly, 45% of the population had fallen below the poverty line. The richest 10% of Chileans, however, had seen their incomes increase by 83%. Even in 2007, Chile ranked as one of the most unequal societies in the world…

The spread of economic shock therapy to other Latin American countries

Since the experiment in Freidman’s economics worked out so well in Chile, some other Latin American dictatorships decided to give it a try. Klein describes this process:

The Chicago School counterrevolution quickly spread. Brazil was already under the control of a U.S. supported junta… Friedman traveled to Brazil in 1973, at the height of that regime’s brutality, and declared the economic experiment a “miracle”. In Uruguay the military had staged a coup in 1973 and the following year decided to go the Chicago route…. The effect on Uruguay’s previously egalitarian society was immediate: real wages decreased by 28% and hordes of scavengers appeared on the streets… Next to join the experiment was Argentina in 1976, when a junta seized power from Isabel Peron. That meant that Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil – the countries that had been showcases of developmentalism – were now all run by U.S. backed military governments and were living laboratories of Chicago School economics.

U.S. complicity in the rise of dictatorships in Latin America

The above noted article by William Blum describes how the United States intervened in twelve different South and Central American countries during the Cold War including Guatemala, Costa Rica, British Guyana, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The main purpose of these interventions was to facilitate changes to regimes that were friendlier to the United States (and in almost all cases less friendly to the indigenous populations of those countries.) For this purpose, we developed the School of the Americas, which was used to train native personnel in the techniques and ideology of insurgency and counter-insurgency.

This article on reasons to shut down the School of the Americas (SOA) provides a good description of what was involved, and can be summarized as follows:

It describes numerous atrocities committed by graduates of SOA, which are consistent with the SOA curriculum. While SOA torture manuals have been withdrawn and SOA has changed its name, the content of the torture manuals has not been repudiated, and some of the worst abusers continue to be honored as guest instructors for U.S. courses.

School of the Americas training is oriented to support the military and political status quo in each country, which places the U.S. in opposition to any who seek free speech to discuss problems, alternative means to solve problems, or democratic means to change governments. More specifically, the enemy is identified as the poor, those who assist the poor, such as church workers, educators, and unions, and certain ideologies such as “socialism” or “liberation theology”. All of this just to make sure that Communists or “leftists” don’t get a foothold in any of these countries.

Here are some specific examples of U.S. intervention in Latin America, as described by Blum:

Brazil

President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes. He took an independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries… His administration passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside of the country… He promoted economic and social reforms… In 1964 he was overthrown in a military coup which had covert American involvement and indispensable support. The official Washington line was: Yes, it’s unfortunate, but still, the country has been saved from Communism. For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship which Latin Americans have come to know and love were instituted… peasants’ homes were burned down… disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and depravity of torture…. Brazil became one of the United States’ most reliable allies in Latin America.

Uruguay

The 1960s was the era of perhaps the… least violent Robin Hood like urban guerillas the world has ever seen…. A team of American experts arrived to supply the police with all the arms… etc. they needed; to train them in assassination… to teach methods of torture … It was all out war against the Tupamaros…

Ecuador
John Perkins, in “The Secret History of the American Empire - Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth”, talks about the destruction of vast areas of Ecuador’s rain forests, the transformation of rivers into cesspools, and the disappearance of several animal species in Ecuador as the result of a $1.3 billion oil pipeline constructed there. He notes that for every $100 of oil taken from the Amazon forests, $75 goes to the oil companies, $18 goes to pay off the debt, and only $3 goes to the people who need the money the most. Since 1968, the nation’s debt grew from a quarter billion dollars to $16 billion, poverty level grew from 50% to 70%, and under- or unemployment grew from 15% to 70%.

There was a brief interlude, however. In 1979 Ecuador elected its first President, after a long line of dictators. Jaime Roldos came to the Ecuadorian presidency promising to put his peoples’ interests above the interests of the oil companies, and he did in fact stand up against the oil companies. In May, 1981, shortly after warning foreign interests that they would be asked to leave his country if their plans didn’t benefit his people, he died in a helicopter crash, widely believed in Latin America to be the work of the CIA. Roldos was replaced by a man who was compliant with U.S. wishes, and it was all downhill for Ecuador from there.

In 2003, Perkins came back to Ecuador to try to prevent a war that he held himself partially responsible for provoking. This would be a war fought against indigenous Ecuadorians against the Ecuadorian Army assisted by U.S. Special Forces advisors, on behalf of oil companies who accused an indigenous community of taking its workers hostage, as an excuse for war. Lawyers who represented the indigenous community in an effort to get the oil companies off their land had recently died in a plane crash.

Operation Condor
Operation Condor was a conspiracy between several Latin American dictatorships, whereby they provided mutual assistance to each other to help themselves maintain power. Patrice McSherry describes the background and basic methods for the operation:

In the 1960s and 1970s, populist, nationalist, and socialist movements emerged throughout the class-stratified nations of Latin America, challenging the entrenched privileges of local oligarchies as well as U.S. political and economic interests. In this context, U.S. national security strategists and their Latin American counterparts began to regard large sectors of these societies as potentially or actually subversive…. During these years, militaries in country after country ousted civilian governments in a series of coups… and installed repressive regimes….

Condor was a covert intelligence and operations system that enabled the Latin American military states to hunt down, seize, and execute political opponents across borders. Refugees fleeing military coups and repression in their own countries were "disappeared" in combined transnational operations. The militaries defied international law and traditions of political sanctuary to carry out their ferocious anticommunist crusade…

Security forces in Latin America classified and targeted persons on the basis of their political ideas rather than illegal acts. The regimes hunted down dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, intellectuals, students and teachers – not only guerrillas.

And McSherry describes the evidence for U.S. complicity in the operation:

Recently declassified documents add weight to the thesis that U.S. forces secretly aided and facilitated Condor operations. The U.S. government considered the Latin American militaries to be allies in the Cold War, worked closely with their intelligence organizations, and promoted coordinated action and modernization of their capabilities. As shown here, U.S. executive agencies at least condoned, and sometimes actively assisted, some Condor "countersubversive" operations.

The relationship between state-sponsored terror and economic shock therapy

A major theme of Klein’s book is that economic shock therapy is very unpopular with the vast majority of a country’s population. The reason for that is quite straight forward: It does great damage to the vast majority of people, while providing huge profits for a small proportion of the country’s population, as well as for enterprising foreigners who take advantage of the situation.

Orlando Letelier was a former Chilean ambassador to the United States under Allende. He explained in a letter to The Nation why the violent terror of the Pinochet regime and its economic policies were necessarily very closely related. Klein describes that letter.

He pointed out that “this particularly convenient concept of a social system, in which ‘economic freedom’ and political terror coexist without touching each other, allows these financial spokesmen to support their concept of ‘freedom’… Letelier went so far as to write that Milton Friedman, as “the intellectual architect and unofficial adviser for the team of economists now running the Chilean economy,” shared responsibility for Pinochet’s crimes… The “establishment of a free ‘private economy’ and the control of inflation a la Friedman,” Letelier argued, could not be done peacefully. “The economic plan has had to be enforced, and in the Chilean context that could be done only by the killing of thousands, the establishment of concentration camps all over the country, the jailing of more than 100,000 persons in three years… Regression for the majorities and ‘economic freedom’ for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin.” There was, he wrote, “an inner harmony” between the “free market” and unlimited terror.

Less than a month later, Pinochet received some confirmation of those assertions. On September 21, 1976, he died from an explosion of a remote controlled bomb in his car in Washington, D.C. Investigation pinned the assassination on a senior member of Pinochet’s secret police, who was later convicted of the crime in a U.S. federal court. The assassins had been admitted to the U.S. on false passports with the knowledge of the CIA.

The initiation of economic shock therapy without the use of violence or terror

Though the use of violence and terror is a very useful way to get a population to accept economic shock therapy, it isn’t necessarily the first choice of method. For one thing, it cast suspicion on Friedman’s economic theories: If economic shock therapy is always accompanied by violence and terror, what does that say about its legitimacy as an economic policy? Also, the use of violence and terror pose certain risks. And, they give the regime a bad name. When word got out about the tactics of the Pinochet regime it developed a very bad reputation in many quarters, and it had to put up with a great deal of criticism and ostracism. So it is often or usually better to utilize nonviolent ways for achieving economic oppression.

John Perkins, in “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, explains how the system often works, from the perspective of an insider who formerly did the dirty work that he describes in his book. Perkins explains that economic hit men (EHM) are paid by U.S. corporations to develop economic projections for major development projects in third world countries. Their projections are supposed to predict substantial economic growth and thereby justify huge loans from international lending institutions. The money from the loan then is immediately funneled into U.S. oil, engineering or construction companies (which is a precondition of the loan) to develop their projects.

The problem is that the projects often or usually benefit only the country’s wealthy and powerful elite, who are represented by the very government that arranged the loan. If all works out well for the involved corporations, the country is unable to repay the debt, which forces them to be perpetually indebted and consequently ensures their loyalty to the United States. That enforced loyalty ensures that the country’s government will perform favors for us, such as allowing our corporations access to their natural resources, allowing the construction of U.S. military bases on their soil, and the casting of crucial U.N. votes in our favor.

Thus, the huge debts incurred under the system cause great harm to the vast majority of a country’s population, not only because of increased taxes and severe cuts in health care, education and other social services, but also because the projects themselves usually deplete a country’s resources and pollute its environment, often displacing large segments of the population in the process.

If the EHMs are unsuccessful in their efforts to convince a government to play ball, then what Perkins calls jackals are sent in to assassinate or overthrow the uncooperative government officials in question, as was done for example in Iran in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, in Chile in 1973, or in Indonesia in 1965. If that doesn’t work either, then we send in our military, as we did in Panama in 1989 or in Iraq in 1991 and 2003.

Naomi Klein explains that to a very large extent today, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which are both very much under the control of the United States, are instruments which facilitate this process. They loan money to impoverished nations that are desperate for it, imposing conditions on those nations which work to keep the great majority of its inhabitants impoverished indefinitely. The process is something akin to loan sharking or indentured servitude.

The relationship between right wing “free market” ideology and corporate greed

Milton Friedman is usually thought of as an academic professional. Presumably his economic theories are politically neutral and based on economic science rather than politics. He even received a Nobel Prize for his work in economics. But is it realistic to think of Friedman’s theories as academically motivated, well intentioned, and politically neutral? Or is it more realistic to think of him as the head of a vast right wing think tank that has served to the great advantage of the wealthy and powerful while producing human catastrophe for millions of people?

After explaining how the so-called “economic miracle” of Pinochet’s Chile was nothing more than a vast giveaway to the rich, at the expense of the vast majority of Chileans, Naomi Klein asks the following question:

If that track record qualifies Chile as a miracle for Chicago School economics, perhaps shock treatment was really never about jolting the economy into health. Perhaps it was meant to do exactly what it did – hoover wealth up to the top and shock much of the middle class out of existence.

And later in her book, after describing how something similar happened in Russia, she asks:

This points to a nagging and important question about free-market ideologues: Are they “true believers”, driven by ideology and faith that free markets will cure underdevelopment, as is often asserted (and as they claim), or do the ideas and theories frequently serve as an elaborate rationale to allow people to act on unfettered greed while still invoking an altruistic motive? ….

And she describes the dangerous consequences of failing to make the connection between Friedman’s radical theories and the torture regimes that put them into action:

The Chicago Boys’ first adventure in the seventies should have served as a warning to humanity: theirs are dangerous ideas. By failing to hold the ideology accountable for the crimes committed in its first laboratory, this subculture of unrepentant ideologues was given immunity, freed to scour the world for its next conquest. These days, we are once again living in an era of corporatist massacres., with countries suffering tremendous military violence alongside organized attempts to remake them into model “free market” economies; disappearances and torture are back with a vengeance. And once again the goals of building free markets, and the need for such brutality, are treated as entirely unrelated.

Portents for the future

The above paragraph by Klein clearly refers to George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Either Bush decided that the non-violent method of accomplishing his economic goals was not feasible, or else he didn’t want to take the trouble to pursue that method.

Antonia Juhasz, in “The Bush Agenda – Invading the World, One Economy at a Time”, explains the purpose of the invasion and occupation of Iraq as being mainly an economic one. The Foreign Investment Order, issued by the first administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer, provided the legal framework for the invasion of U.S. corporations into Iraq. It provided for the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises, foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, tax-free remittance of all profits, immunity of foreign businesses from Iraqi courts, and much else. As with everything else about the U.S. occupation, these provisions did great damage to the Iraqi people, for the benefit of U.S. corporations. Juhasz describes the effects of privatization of Iraqi industries:

In Bremer’s own words, “Restructuring inefficient state enterprises requires laying off workers.”… Even those workers who still had jobs in Iraq at the time only received… about half of what they made before the war. At the same time, prices skyrocketed.

And with respect to the lack of any constraints on foreign corporations:

U.S. corporations are therefore invited to enter the Iraqi economy, exploit a nation at its most vulnerable point, with no obligation to reinvest in the country at a time when rebuilding Iraq is professed to be the Bush administration’s most vital assignment. U.S. corporations have reaped staggering revenues from their Iraqi operations…

Naomi Klein sums up what Friedman type economic ideology has set in motion:

Chile under Chicago School rule was offering a glimpse of the future of the global economy, a pattern that would repeat again and again (all of which Klein describes in her book) … an urban bubble of frenetic speculation and dubious accounting fueling super-profits and rampant consumerism… roughly half the population excluded from the economy altogether; out-of-control corruption and cronyism; decimation of nationally owned small and medium sized businesses; a huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands, followed by a huge transfer of private debts to public hands. In Chile, if you were outside the wealth bubble the miracle looked like the Great Depression, but inside its airtight cocoon the profits flowed so free and fast that the easy wealth made possible by shock therapy-style “reforms” have been the crack cocaine of financial markets ever since. And that is why the financial world did not respond to the obvious contradictions of the Chile experiment by reassessing the basic assumptions of laissez-faire. Instead it reacted with the junkie’s logic: Where is the next fix?

The people of the United States and the people of the world need to understand this and make it clear to their governments that this type of voodoo economics in no longer acceptable.

Post in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/276

United States Inc. vs. the People

2008-01-28T10:07:00.000-05:00

By Larisa Alexandrovna

January 25, 2008

If retroactive immunity for telecoms passes (as part of FISA bill), then our Congress will finally have declared that the United States is a wholly owned subsidiary of a few mega-companies and that the citizens are without rights or even avenues for redressing grievances. In other words, our government has given us very little choice other than to declare ourselves independent.

Let's first examine why it was that original US colonies declared their independence from king to begin with. Here is the list provided by the founders in the Declaration of Independence. I will put them in bullet points and discuss each briefly:

"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."

How does this apply to this current scandal (among many) regarding domestic spying? Let's look at the particulars. The Vice President and President (Cheney/Bush) have acted as a single royal house that is above the laws of this country. They decided in secret to violate the law and used their power of authority to create a new law to be carried out by agencies under their control. This was done without the consent of Congress and the American people. It was also done against the law of the land and without authorization from the Judiciary.

Moreover, this illegal domestic spying was conducted against US citizens, without a warrant, via the hiring (with public money) of non-government entities (corporations) who charge the public for their service to begin with.

When the public learned of this, they filed legal action against the corporations, rightly so, for breach of contract (service provided to the customer) and criminal conduct. The Vice President and President are now demanding that the public not be allowed to sue these companies (civil) and exempting these companies from the criminal charges - which the White House cannot do in a blanket pardon of a corporation.

This one abuse of power alone violates Fourth Amendment to the Constitution ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.").

This violates the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, particularly the right to due process and self-incrimination ("nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.")

This also violates Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution ("I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.")

Instead of being impeached for their crimes, the Vice President and President are being allowed to violate the law, subvert the Constitution, abuse their authority, and deny the public any forum in which to redress grievances. Instead of these corporations being held accountable by Congress, it now appears that every single company involved will get immunity and retroactively. Congress has now become complicit in the crimes of this administration and is obstructing justice by voting to cover it up.

In other words, we have grounds on which to declare our contract with the government null and void. It has been done before (as noted above) and for the same reasons.

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

As part of this domestic harassment, the Vice President and President have created the Department of Homeland Security, and have used the FBI to demand private information on US citizens without a warrant. The FBI has demanded, for example, private records from 26 Connecticut libraries. When the libraries were unwilling to grant the access, the FBI slapped the librarians with "National Security Letters" making it illegal for anyone to tell Congress, the press, or in any way make public this harassment. Private institutions, medical offices, credit card companies, and US citizens have all been silenced in this way from making public such brazen acts of domestic surveillance, harassment, and even denied the right to redress their grievances by making what was done to them a state secret. This whole set of secret laws, secret policing, secret warrants (when there are any), secret harassment, and secret courts is entirely in violation of not only the laws of the land but also in violation of the very definition of democracy.

As to the Constitution, this violates the First Amendment of the Constitution ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."). Yet they passed the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act. And now are busy debating and likely to pass the FISA bill, which will allow domestic surveillance without a warrant, involving private companies to whom US citizens pay money for services.

This violates the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fight Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, and the Seventh Amendment (see for all of these here).

This also violates Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, as well as Article, Section 8 of the Constitution. (see here).

In other words, Congress has abdicated its powers to an imperial presidency. And will continue to do so with the FISA bill.

We again have grounds on which to declare our contract with the government null and void. It has been done before (as noted above) and for the same reasons.

You get the basic idea, that we are ultimately faced with two choices. Either this FISA bill is the last straw and the passage of it will be grounds to declare the government contract with the people null and void, or we agree to give up our rights completely. Here are some additional reasons listed in the Declaration of Independence as to why our founding fathers declared their contract with the British king null and void. Notice how easily any number of crimes by this administration and Congress (as part of the royal court) can be inserted in substitution for the British monarchy and its legislative co-conspirators:

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

Do you see just how far this has gone? Are we not at the same juncture that our founding fathers were when they declared their contract with the government null and void? If this FISA bill passes with retroactive immunity for corporations in collusion with the government to commit crimes against the people, I would say folks we have to seriously consider a new Declaration of Independence, and we won't even have to change the list of reasons either.

Now, for the latest news on the FISA bill:

"After a January 24 debate in the Senate on amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Senate appears ready to capitulate once again to the Bush administration's agenda of sacrificing liberty for questionable security.

On the day before Congress was slated to take up this issue, Dick Cheney addressed the Heritage Foundation, the most influential right-wing think tank. He was given a thunderous reception, to which he quipped, "I hold an office that has only one constitutional duty - presiding over the Senate and casting tie-breaking votes." But the most powerful vice president in this nation's history was about to strong-arm Congress into doing the administrations' bidding.

Invoking the memory of September 11, 2001 twelve times, Cheney said it was "urgent" that Congress update the FISA law immediately and permanently. Notwithstanding the administration's well-known violations of FISA months before 9/11, Cheney claimed they had used "every legitimate tool at our command to protect the American people against another attack." He omitted the illegal tools the administration has admitted using, that is, Bush's so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and a massive data mining program. FISA makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, for the executive to conduct a wiretap without statutory authorization. The TSP has been used to target not just the terrorists, but also critics of administration policies, particularly the war in Iraq."

So, back to the Declaration of Independence, the only other document that I value as part of the democracy cannon (the other being the Constitution of course), with one minor change on my part below:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the ADMINISTRATION AND THEIR ENABLERS IN CONGRESS is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

No immunity for the telecoms. No one can stand above the law in a democracy. This my friends is patriotism.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at atlargely.com: http://www.atlargely.com/2008/01/united-states-i.html

Bush Surging Into Oblivion

2008-01-28T09:33:00.000-05:00

by Ron Fullwood

http://www.opednews.com

With less than a year left in office, George Bush is scrambling to tie up the loose ends of his presidency and cobble together something he can point to as his legacy, before he leaves town. Faced with the distraction of the election and squeezed by the limited time left in his term, Bush has decided to deploy every available staffer and appointee out into the nation to effect a 'surge' of accomplishments which he can highlight in his presidential library.

All set to give his State of the Union Address Monday night, Bush is already prepared to report 'progress' and successes stretching from his continuing occupation of Iraq, to his reinterpretation of the Constitution and abuse of our democracy back home in the name of 'national security', and in his ability to hold on to the tax breaks the nation's affluent 2% have enjoyed during his presidency, at the miserly expense of the needs of the rest of the nation.

"I will report that over the last seven years, we've made great progress on important issues at home and abroad," Bush said in his radio address this weekend, telegraphing the highlights of his address. "In my speech, I will lay out a full plate of issues for Congress to address in the year ahead," he said.

Undoubtedly, Bush will lead his appeal with a defense of his stewardship of the economy. 'This economy of ours is on a solid foundation," Bush told reporters days before he admitted to himself that immediate action was needed to prop up the declining markets. What the White House and the Emperor's Democratic tailors agreed to was a package of petty bribes to American taxpayers (funded by our foreign debt-holders in countries like Saudi Arabia and China) and a pacifying lump of cash for their corporate benefactors.

Nothing, however will be broached by Bush or his congressional cohorts to address the exploding budget deficit which is forecast to rise to $219 bln in 2008, well over last years deficit total of $163 bln.. Their election year band-aid will only increase pressure on the stifled economy, promising a flood of negative effects for the next presidency as the departing administration removes their finger from the economic dike.

Bush will also be looking to orchestrate a 'surge' of activity surrounding his defense and perpetuation of autocratic occupation of Iraq. His hapless lackey in the Iraqi regime, Prime Minister Maliki, has been openly preparing for over a week for a massive, staged military assault against Sunni communities in Mosul which government leaders have identified as 'al-Qaeda strongholds.' Obviously under Bush's direction, the new Iraqi dictator intends to demonstrate for Americans looking on that his army is capable of the same 'My Lai' type assaults on his countryfolk his U.S. military protectors have conducted; all for the presumed 'political progress' of the Iraqi regime, or for the furthering of Bush's politics back home.

Look at the grand army he's recreated with soldiers originally disbanded by the invaders. Look at how well they strike out at the specter of Bush's al-Qaeda. "We know there's been 'progress' in Iraq because we have a body count of 'insurgents' we killed in our contrived raids."

Lastly, Bush wants to keep a tight lid on the evidence of his illegal domestic surveillance, by pressuring Congress to give his telecommunication accomplices immunity from prosecution for their illegal assistance to an administration which refused to follow the law as they trolled through private phone and e-mail records. The administration insists that no laws were broken, yet, is loath to allow any of the FISA judges to review their handiwork. Bush wants Congress to waive him on as he does his predictable end run around the law, without even showing them the product of the surfing his people did through thousands of confidential records and proving their innocence.

Like the administration's torture bill -- which reached back and granted immunity from prosecution for those who engaged in administration approved torture, in defiance of clear law and regulation prohibiting the actions -- Bush wants a clean slate of approval for the wiretapping abuses his administration arrogantly engaged in, clearly defying the law and their obligation to open their activities for congressional review. All Bush has to do to continue to use wiretapping in his 'terror war', is follow the original FISA law which saw over 90% of the requests which were brought before the panel approved outright.

But, this administration, obviously, has a great deal of their activities they feel a need to conceal from the scrutiny of the American people. All they have left as a defense is Bush in his little, lame, bully pulpit. And, very few Americans are buying the arguments from an administration which has sacrificed over 4000 U.S. service-folk overseas for their political agenda; fostered and fueled a previously non-existent al-Qaeda presence in Iraq with their invasion and occupation; has been caught, red-handed, rifling through our private communications; and has destroyed the nation's economy for average Americans struggling to survive . . . Yet, Bush will try Monday night.

"When I go before Congress on Monday, I will speak more about how we can keep our economy strong and our people safe," Bush said in his weekend address.

I expect very little from Bush about his own responsibility in the decline in all of that. One of the extraordinary initiatives Bush will reportedly announce is an Executive Order directing federal agencies to "ignore" earmarks included in reconciling conference report language, but not in the actual wording of spending legislation. Once again, Bush is set to assume a privilege to ignore the intent of Congress as they do their job of appropriating money from the Treasury. Bush, in typical fashion, will attempt to dictate the intent of laws established by Congress to conform them to whatever he couldn't achieve through the normal legislative process.

That's as good as a legacy as Bush can demonstrate tonight. Bush has achieved an autocratic administration which was able to amass assumed authority through the inability or ineptness of Congress to counter his power-grabs with their own constitutional levers of accountability and justice. Whatever anti-democratic or anti-constitutional constructions he's managed during his tenure will either collapse by attrition in the wake of a change in parties in power, or, will provide a platform for the next generation of corporatist republicans to build their own petty autocracy.

Whatever Bush manages to express in his legacy address Monday night, one thing will be clear. The problems which Bush will claim to be responsive to are results and consequences of his own arrogant disregard of the will of the American people that he put aside his opportunistic militarism abroad and focus on the needs and concerns of Americans at home. The irony of a landmark presidential election to replace Bush -- drowning out his legacy appeal -- should not be lost on even one so ignorant as to escalate and highlight the agenda millions will mass together to oppose with their votes on election day.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at OpEdnews.com: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_080128_bush_surging_into_ob.htm

Dorothy Day and H.L.Menken

2008-01-28T08:38:00.000-05:00

Dorothy Day, a "Catholic Worker" activist and contemporary of mine, summarized the root cause of our nation's predicament when she stated "Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system."

Another contemporary, H.L.Menken, a well known newspaper columnist of our day, took it a step further when he wrote "Nobody ever got poor underestimating the intelligence of the American consumer" [Rove and Goebles really picked up on this one]-WTFU, America

SDB

What A Great Freakin' War!!

2008-01-27T11:19:00.000-05:00

By David Michael Green

What a ding-dong I am!

For months - nay, years! - I've been ranting about how screwed up the war in Iraq has been, and how disastrous have been its consequences.

What a fool I've been! In reality, it's actually turned out pretty great.

That's what I learned when I read William Kristol's recent New York Times piece, "The Democrats' Fairy Tale." In a stroke of thoughtfulness, generosity and uncanny prescience, the Times was kind enough recently to hire Kristol to write a regular column for their op-ed page. I guess that's because Ariel Sharon was unavailable and David Duke was on vacation.

And bless his little heart, Kristol knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Heck, he's the one who got us into Iraq in the first place! He's been telling us for a long time what a cool thing it would be to knock over that tin-pot Saddam Hussein crank, and damned if he didn't convince the president to do it, despite Bush's decades of foreign policy experience.

But it's been a rough couple of years for Ol' Bill, 'cause the whole damn country went into some sort of narcoleptic, apoplectic, pathogenic tizzy about the war, crying fickle and foul at every turn and seeming like all everyone wanted was to end the darned thing. Imagine that. What a bunch of whiney little self-interested twits, squealing like a continent full of Europeans, and utterly failing to see the great wisdom of Young William's Grand Adventure In Mesopotamia. It's really quite nauseating, isn't it?

In his article, Kristol really rips the Democrats, and don't they ever deserve it. Now that Iraq appears to be marginally more peaceful than it was last year at this time, Kristol is angry because, as he puts it: "It's apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge - let alone celebrate - progress in Iraq".

Bill is angry because the Democrats (and the public - but, oddly, he doesn't mention that part) still want to end the war - even though it's been a huge success! They should "celebrate" it, instead! Fortunately, he is clever enough to suss out the real reason for this childish intransigence. It's not, as Hillary put it, because the Iraqis know the Democrats will shut off the supply valve of endless wasted dollars and soon-to-be casualties headed to Baghdad. As Kristol notes, "That is truly a fairy tale. And it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!"

I must admit I've suffered from some of the same confusion as the Dumb Dems, whom I think we can all agree are simply hopelessly naive pacifists intent on allowing our country to be taken over by Very Bad People (of less than fully white complexion) who mean us harm. You know the type I mean, like George McGovern, who flew all those bombing missions during World War II while Little Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Kristol and the rest fought ... valiantly ... in ... Viet ... oh, never mind. Anyhow, that hopeless and dangerous idealism is why, just one year before the Iraq war, every single Democrat in the Congress opposed the invasion of Afghanistan except for ... well, except for ... every single Democrat in Congress other than one. Okay, never mind on that one too.

Look, let's get down to brass tacks here. Kristol just gets it. The rest of us don't. He realizes that in the grand scheme of things - "World War IV" as his pappy likes to call it - what's important is not the big picture, but the very narrowest.

You may think, for example, that promulgating egregious lies in order to shove your way into am Iraq war that no one else wants is stupid and counterproductive, damaging the credibility and interests of the United States, and probably accounting for the lack of allied support in a more credible war in Afghanistan. But Bill Kristol knows better.

You may think that fighting a war that massively drains military, diplomatic and financial resources away from the real enemies of the country in order to pursue a pet project that has nothing to do with those genuine threats would be idiotic and suicidal. But that's 'cause you're not as smart as William Kristol.

You might believe that it was a ludicrous waste of blood and treasure to kill 4,000 Americans and one million Iraqis, while borrowing and spending a trillion bucks (fast going up to two) in order to invade a country that had neither attacked us nor threatened us. And that doing so was an extremely poor choice of resource allocation, especially when we have tens of millions of children doing without healthcare in this country. But if you were a clever neoconservative like Bill Kristol you'd know better.

You might think that wrecking our military and compromising American security over a non-problem - indeed, a problem that people like Bushes and Cheneys and Rumsfelds and Reagans once very much created and encouraged - would be a stupid choice of priorities. But that's only because you don't have the foreign policy insight of someone like Bill Kristol.

And let me guess - I bet you also think that launching a war that brings chaos to a vital and volatile area, and that massively increases the power of an Iran run by radical theocrats was a really, really dumb idea. But if you were Bill Kristol you'd realize that all we need is a third war against an Islamic country, and we can clean up the whole mess all at once!

Or maybe you're like all those American intelligence agencies, who collectively reported last year that the Iraq war was actually creating anti-American terrorists rather than eradicating them. But if you were as smart as Mr. Bill and his Kristol Ball, you'd know that they're all just a bunch of long-haired and bearded blame-America-first left-wing Berkeley rejects running covert ops for the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies. Of course they're going to diss the war! It's going well, and those unpatriotic spooks can't stand that because they hate America!

Maybe you're angry because you think the same American soldiers whom people like George W. Bush are always hiding behind should actually have adequate armor to fight the war they've been thrust into, rather than their families having to hold bake sales to buy it for them. And maybe you also think they should be treated a wee bit better than they have been at Walter Reed (and far beyond) when they come home wounded, or they have to fight harder than in Anbar to get the benefits owed to them out of the military. But what Bill Kristol knows is that you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs! So lighten up on that whole concern-for-the-troops thing already. (Unless you're the president doing a photo-op, of course.)

Don't tell me you're chagrined at the idea that American forces may be in Iraq for another decade, or even for a full "generation". Probably that's just because you or someone you know might have to go fight there. People like Kristol never do, of course, so why should he worry?

Are you angry that well-connected cronies and corporations got rich off this war? That eight billion dollars in cash went completely missing in Iraq? That multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts got paid out for jobs never done? That American soldiers worked and bled and died for peanuts alongside mercenaries making four times as much salary? That we will be paying for this war in interest on loans and expensive treatment of the wounded for generations to come? Yeah? Well Bill Kristol thinks you should get your priorities straight!

Have you somehow come to the conclusion that turning one-fifth of Iraq's 25 million people into either corpses or refugees hasn't exactly been a great liberating service to that country? You know, sorta like when we told them to rise up but then stood by and watched Saddam mow them down. Or when we turned a blind eye to Saddam's use of chemical weapons against his own people, and even protected him from condemnation for those crimes at the UN? Bill Kristol thinks that's because you just don't know the true value of freedom and democracy. Oh, and you put too much emphasis on that whole not-getting-killed thing.

Are you one of those whiney liberals who believe that this war - whether one supported the idea of it originally or not - has been ridiculously mishandled from the beginning? That there were never enough troops sent in? That allowing rampant looting was stupid? That failing to have plans for the occupation of a country of 25 million people constitutes criminal negligence? That firing the Iraqi army was just as idiotic as sending thousands of armed and angry men home unemployed sounds like it would be? That purging the national government and infrastructure of all Baath Party members was a prescription for chaos? That allowing civil war between Sunni and Shiite was disastrous? Yeah, well, Bill Kristol knows better. He understands that what's really important is that the massive levels of violence and pandemonium of these last FIVE years (count 'em) are now possibly slightly lower than the outrageous levels they've long been at, and could conceivably stay that way.

Can't you see the small picture here? Kristol can. I guess that's why he has a New York Times column and you don't. I guess that's why the president listens to his advice and not yours.

Who could blame him for being angry and vituperative toward dangerously silly Democrats who don't see the peril facing our civilization?

Such quibblers! So what if the war was sold on completely fabricated lies, was supposed to be a cakewalk but has now lasted longer than World War II, has divided the country and made the world hate us, has squandered our (borrowed) resources and broken our military, has brought instability to a volatile and crucial region and allowed a real national antagonist to double its power, has diverted our resources from the still-uncaptured guy who supposedly attacked us on 9/11, has become a factory for producing anti-American terrorists, has wiped out over a million innocent people and turned more than four million into refugees? So what if this war has now supposedly been 'saved' by precisely the same strategy that was vehemently rejected by the same people in the beginning?

Let's keep our priorities straight here, people. All that really matters is that we've seen a possible slight improvement in levels of violence in Iraq over the last couple of months (all of which may be due to a host of possible factors, including that there aren't many people left alive to fight there anymore). Get it?

Some people think that burning down your neighbor's house and having your own catch fire as a result is a highly stupid and really criminal thing to do. What neocons like Bill Kristol understand, though - and what naive liberals will never get - is that what really matters is whether you can slightly diminish the rate at which the flames consume those dwellings, five years after starting the fire. That's what's genuinely important - not the ashes where the houses once stood.

If you understood that simple principle, you wouldn't be complaining about this war so much. Rather, you'd be "celebrating" how well it's going.

If you understood this logic, you'd have supported the war from the very beginning, as William Kristol did. (Which of course has nothing to do with his apparent defensiveness about it today, we can all rest assured.)

In fact, if you were as smart as Bill Kristol and the other fine folks who brought you the invasion of Iraq, you'd quit with all your smug complaints, once and for all.

And you'd realize what a great freakin' war this really is!

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at regressiveantidote.net: http://regressiveantidote.net/Articles/What_A_Great_Freakin'_War.html

Bill O’Reilly, Homeless-Veteran Denier

2008-01-27T07:10:00.000-05:00

by Brent Budowsky

January 25, 2008

It was one of the most repellent and revealing spectacles to hear multimillionaire conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly virtually deny the existence of large numbers of homeless vets.

In his scorched-earth attack on John Edwards for calling for help for the homeless veterans living on grates and in poverty, O’Reilly hit a new low that is almost impossible to fully comprehend.

Does O’Reilly not understand that the problem of homeless vets is very severe, and beginning to rise again with the return of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe psychological trauma and physical wounds?

Or is O’Reilly merely using homeless vets as the petty cash of another cheap-shot attack by a right-wing mouthpiece who doesn’t care whether his words are true, to make his point between commercials, from sponsors who should call him on the carpet for this?

Perhaps Mr. O’Reilly can take a first-class flight to Washington, and before he checks in to his four-star hotel, prior to his opining during dinner at a five-star restaurant, he might ask his limousine driver to give him a guided tour of this city, where he would easily find the homeless vets this homeless-vet denier does not know exist.

Let’s forget O’Reilly, part of the freak show cavalcade that now passes for entertainment and news in some outposts on cable television.

The issue is homeless vets, the problem is a moral and patriotic crisis for our generation, and the solution is to give these homeless heroes the love, attention and support they have earned.

In my column this past Tuesday in The Hill, I proposed a very modest profits tax on oil companies that would increase the size of the “stimulus” by adding, among other things, new support for homeless veterans.

At various times, on this site and in columns, I have proposed a Soldier Bond, or Patriot Bond, that would be modeled after the U.S. Savings Bond and raise capital that would support homeless and disabled vets, and wounded troops.

We should do these things. It would be swell if Mr. O’Reilly would lend his loud but not always wise voice to these efforts, but whether he does or not, we as a country and people must do this.

Every one of us should be part of this effort. It is a moral duty of our generation, and we must do so with words that are true, actions that are real, and a patriotic commitment that is shared.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at pundits.thehill.com: http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/01/25/bill-oreilly-homeless-veteran-denier/

January 25, 2008

McCain and "Wasteful Govt.Spending"

2008-01-25T14:41:00.000-05:00

McCain, who parlayed his POW status into a life time on the taxpayers tits, has definitely shown his brain death. As a Viet Vet, who should know better, actively promotes this Criminal Enterprise's Criminal War "If it takes a hundred years"@" $2,083,333.33 per minute" [see unhappycamper below] and in the breath says, as president, he will stop all that"wasteful government spending."

Perhaps, for once, Karl Rove was right when he claimed McCain's time in the "Hanoi Hilton" damaged him to such an extent that he couldn't be trusted to be President!

WTFU,A!

SDB

Let's face facts, shall we? America Sucks

2008-01-25T14:08:00.000-05:00

By MrScorpio

Yep, I said it, we suck.

It isn't hard to figure this out.

It's just that too many of us are too chicken to deal with this fact.

I know that a lot of people will say, "What about Democracy? What about Freedom? What about this? What about that?"

I say that these people obviously haven't been paying attention.

In terms of the strict constructionist, America was supposed to be the safe haven for the white, land owning male... Everybody else was supposed to be an afterthought. Slaves, indigenous people, women and child labor be damned. The history of this nation should never be viewed in terms of the PEOPLE, who overcame adversity and lead the nation to peace and prosperity... That's basically a lie.

The story is one of the privileged few, forcing the disenfranchised many to do their bidding. Twenty million citizens from the great state of Wisconsin didn't sign the NAFTA treaty along with the people of Chiapas and Manitoba... These were men and women, who were the source of real power or the supporters of it. They acted and the people who were most affected by this, or any other such treaty or policy decision had very little say, if any.

The history of America is basically an example of how empires are built, and as of late, how they collapse on themselves. The motto of America should have always been, "We Shit Where We Eat". Which, of course, is never a good thing to do.

You have two histories of America, internal and external. The internal history relates how the rich and powerful few have subjugated the not as rich and powerful many. How most people are dealing with modern day slavery, i.e. the prison industrial complex, economic disenfranchisement and the support for the war machine that affects so much of our external history.

America still is ruled by the rich and powerful few and the tools that use are many. Their strategy is very simple and efficient in its prosecution: Just get the masses of people to not care that they are continually working against their own best interests. Do everything to stop them from noticing that they are shitting where they are eating.

You hear these folks, and there are a lot of them all the time. They say things like, "I'm not a terrorist, so it's ok that my phones or bugged". Or, "Unions are what's bringing down the economy." Or one of my personal faves, "The government should be run like a business." People who utter this kind of crap have successfully turned off their brains and are willing to allow their masters to maintain dominion over them.

Even, when faced with their own economic and political disadvantages, they proudly attach yellow ribbons to their vehicles and pine on about how great "we" are. Talk about reverse projection.

They are the kind of people who shit where eat and are very proud of this fact.

And of course, those captains of industry and their whores in the political arena aren't any better. These are people so blinded by their quest for greed and power, their willing to commit social and economic suicide to get ahead. Just think about every business that fought tooth and nail to change trade policy in this country that outsources manufacturing and offshores money. Look in any paper and you'll see that the major car companies are tanking from lack of sales and are tanking badly.

Did it ever occur to these people that, by moving manufacturing and support to cheaper and less regulated climes, they were undercutting the buying power of a huge chunk of folks that they depended on to buy their cars? Henry Ford may have been an anti-semitic, racist, union-busting egoist along with being a successful industrialist... But one thing he understood, the wages that he paid his employees would eventually put more money in his own pockets. So, he sold a car that he knew that his workers could afford. With his eventual acquiescence to the demands of his organized labor force, the resulting growth of the middle class working population improved living conditions tremendously.

All in all, Henry Ford was dragged kicking and screaming into the realization that it was not a good thing to shit where he ate.

How the Big Three are not realizing this obvious situation as they circle the drain is way beyond my understanding.

About a hundred years ago, during the gilded age of the robber baron, society said enough: The barons where given a choice, either strive to make life better in general for the masses of people, or continue to shit where they ate and be forced to change their ways. Most chose the latter. Thus people whose with names like Rockefeller, Mellon and Carnegie built an infrastructure for culture and learning that we still are benefiting from to this very day.

They were forced to be the exception when the rule was no longer tenable.

The result helped transform America into a country where the original ideal citizen was expanded to include just about all of us into the franchise.

Somehow, we're backing to shitting where we eat and no one has any inclination to change.

On the External Front, America never fails to shit where it eats. I'll just give you a list of people that simplifies my point. A list of dictators supported by the U.S. Government and the corporate elite.

Country Dictator Dates Statistics
Chile Gen. Augusto Pinochet 1973-1990 3000 murdered. 400,000 tortured.
Argentina Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla 1976-1981 30,000 murdered. more
Indonesia Suharto 1965 coup against left-leaning Sukarno,
1975 support of East Timor genocide
500,000 dead after 1965 coup; 100,000-230,000 dead in East Timor; more, more, more.
Guatemala Armas, Fuentes, Montt 1954-
Iran The Shah of Iran
Ayatollah Khomeini was on the CIA payroll in the 1970s in Paris
Egypt Sadat, Mubarak 1978-today
Iraq Saddam Hussein
Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza & sons 1937-1979
Paraguay Stroessner. US supported throughout (state.gov says US has supported Paraguayan development since 1942) ($142M between 1962 and 1975) 1954-1989
Bolivia Col. Hugo Banzer overthrew elected leftist president Juan Jose Torres 1970-
Angola Jonas Savimbi/UNITA (didn't actually win his revolution, but killed or displaced millions) 1975-1989
Zaire Mobutu
Saudi Arabia Saud family
Kuwait a monarchy
Morocco
Tunisia
Algeria
Jordan
Panama Noriega was US-supported for years
Haiti Papa Doc, Baby Doc
Dominican Republic Trujillo, a military dictator for 32 years with US support for most of that time; Belaguer, Trujillo's protege, installed after US Marines intervened to put down an attempt to restore the democratically elected government of Juan Bosch 1930-61, 1965-78
Honduras
El Salvador 1980s
Nepal monarchy since 1948
Cuba Fulgencio Batista pre-Castro
Brazil Gen. Branco overthrew elected president Goulart with US support 1965-67
Uzbekistan Kamirov "The Boiler", $150M from the Bush administration for an air base. 1965-67

source

With things like total war, globalized pollution, tobacco price and trade supports, the undermining to international law and a complete disregard of the basic humanity of other people on this planet, the U.S. is taking a big shit on the whole planet. Just to name a few, of course. Oh, and we brag, and force so much of our "culture" on so many people who can't even imagine to have our frame of reference at all. The concept and definition of "Anti-Americanism" and our response to it has always bothered me... I could spend all day talking about that, but I won't

I'm sure you get the point, so there's no need to extrapolate further. Is there any reason why we shouldn't realize why so many people hate our guts?

One last thing: They easy thing to do would be to blame Bush, or Reagan or the Republicans or whoever. The fact is that these things have happened and they were done in all of our names AND due to the fact that the masses did not stop whatever crimes from occuring, we all share either implicit or explicit blame. When a dropped bomb kills an innocent family, in one way or another, we all share in that event, without regard to our approval or not. We allow the bombs to be built, our taxes fund the costs and those who represent us authorize the deed.

We allow failure to stop it from occurring to be an option.

It's that ugly fact alone, which stipulates why this country sucks.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://tinyurl.com/36mumx

Come On, MSM - Just DO IT!!!

2008-01-25T04:13:00.000-05:00

By NanceGreggs

To say I have a problem with the mainstream TV media’s coverage of the presidential primaries would be a vast understatement. However, since they’re intent on turning politics into a combination horserace/infotainment show, they can at least go whole-hog with the concept – yes, pun very much intended.

Primary season could begin with the candidates from both parties battling it out on Jeopardy! – at least we’d get a glimpse of who knows what, especially with tailored-to-the-task categories like The Economy, The National Debt, Job Outsourcing, and National Security.

It’s bound to keep the voters enthralled. Who doesn’t want to hear McCain choose “Iraq” and have to answer with, “What is a money-sucking quagmire?” if he wants to stay in the game, or watch the hilarity as Huckabee says, “I’ll take Separation of Church & State for a thousand, Alex.”

The popular American Idol format would work well as-is, except the competition would focus on speechmaking rather than singing. Bonus: no need to replace the judges. I’ve no doubt that Simon, Paula and Randy know as much about politics as, say, Wolf, Candy and Russert. While it may seem laughable that candidates be judged on their speechifying’, let’s remember that one G.W. Bush never would have made it past the audition stage. You can almost hear Cowell’s disgust as he states, in his clipped accent, ”That was truly dreadful. Let’s be honest here, George, it is blatantly obvious that you cannot speak English.”

TVs across American would be tuned-in for an entire season of Survivor – Middle-Class America, where contestant candidates are plunked down into a small American town and, stripped of any access to their personal wealth, have to survive by finding a job and an affordable place to live, while facing choices between food and heating oil, or enough gas to get to work and an emergency trip to the dentist. Job outsourced after one week? Bankrupted by a medical emergency? Welcome to Middle-Class America – too bad you didn’t survive!

Of course, there’s always the probability that the GOP candidates could “up” their ratings by appearing on more than one show in a primary season. No doubt Giuliani would wow ‘em on Cheaters, followed by an episode of Cops where he stands in the driveway, shirtless and clutching a can of beer, screaming as the boys-in-blue ‘cuff his best buddy Kerik, and cart him off to the hoosegow.

Cameo appearances on popular drama shows could also boost ratings and score political points, e.g. Fred Thompson portraying a catatonic patient on ER, or Alan Keyes playing a presidential candidate who went missing months ago without anyone noticing on Without a Trace.

And who wouldn’t watch a special reprise episode of Seinfeld featuring Mitt Romney as Elaine's newest love interest who’s got Mr. Peterman selling his combination puffy shirt/magic underwear?

The side-slapping, roll-on-the-floor-laughing possibilities are truly endless, and would undoubtedly have the viewing/voting public not only interested, but mesmerized - and therein lies the problem.

So don't forget to tune-in. You don't want to miss a minute of the hilarious hijinks as the country chooses its next president - one who could make-or-break democracy as we once knew it. And if the entire country goes down in flames, there's always the hope that next season will offer better viewing fare.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/336

$2,083,333.33 a minute

2008-01-24T09:51:00.000-05:00

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us roughly $12,000,000,000 a week, which works out to $2,083,333.33 a minute. Every fucking minute of every fucking day. (1,440 minutes per day, 5,760 minutes per week)

I don't know about you, but I sure could find something useful to do with $2,083,333.33 a minute. Feed the hungry. TAKE CARE OF OUR VETERANS. Schools. Bridges. Health insurance. TAKE CARE OF OUR VETERANS. Social programs. SCHIP.

Instead, we continue to pour money down the rabbit hole. BAE, Lockeed Martin, SIAC, GE, Raytheon, Grumman Northup, Parsons, Halliburton, Blackwater etc. etc.

What is going on is shameful. And wrong.

"Free Lunch"

2008-01-22T08:42:00.000-05:00

"Free Lunch" by David Cay Johnston is subtitled "How the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense and stick you with the tab." In it he cites people like Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, "Dubya" himself etc. ad nauseam. In his own words; "These people use the government as a vehicle to take from the many and give to the few."

Sound familiar? - As in "War is a Racket - A Few Profit the Many Pay" by Smedley D.Butler.

Face it folks, as Bob Dylan wrote in his song, many years ago - "When You Gonna Wake[the Fuck]Up?" "You got gangsters in power and law breakers making the rules"

Too bad we can't program that song into every American's radio alarm!!!

S.D.B.

King: War Cannot Achieve Even a Negative Good

2008-01-21T14:19:00.000-05:00

Monday, January 21, 2008

King: War Cannot Achieve Even a Negative Good

By Juan Cole

Martin Luther King will be honored today throughout America as a champion of racial justice and racial harmony. That is a pivotal legacy for the United States of America, which for 87 long years was built on the lawful enslavement of one race by another, and for another century practiced the lawful Apartheid of Jim Crow.

But he was not the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize only because of his work on civil rights and integration. He was also a profound thinker in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi on peace. Not peace in the abstract, but peace as a practical political tool. Not only peace as a social movement but peace as a method in international relations.

King critiqued the typical use of "peace" by politicians as a distant ideal toward which they are working, even while they bomb and massacre and slaughter. In his Christmas Sermon, December 24, 1967, King made this point:

' And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace.

What is the problem?

They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.'

The reply to such an assertion from politicians, generals and others is that peace as method (rather than as distant ideal) is impractical. That the enemy is deadly and determined and will slaughter us if we attempt to deal with him through the method of peace.

But King came to this conclusion at the height of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union had the US targeted with thousands of nuclear warheads. He came to this conclusion when the Vietnam War was raging. He was not naive. He was not a babe in the woods. He was not an impractical dreamer. He was a seer, and he saw the end of war.

He saw the end of war not because war could never achieve any good. He recognized that it had in recent history accomplished what he called a "negative good," of, say, keeping us from having to live under the jackboot of a tyrant. But the sheer destructiveness of contemporary warfare began to raise doubts in his mind, even as a young man in the late 1950s, as to whether this instrumental use of war to achieve a negative good was any longer possible.

Let us just review American wars since King began to have those doubts. There was Vietnam, where the US lost 58,000 dead and tens of thousands more wounded, where it spent billions and as a result suffered from an inflationary spiral, and where it lost. It did not lose, as the Right fondly imagines, because of a stab in the back by weak-kneed civilian politicians.

The US lost in Vietnam because it fought on the wrong side of history, because it took up a French colonial project of suppressing Vietnamese Left Nationalism. The US killed perhaps as many as 2 million Vietnamese peasants, which surely counts as a genocide, all to no avail, because the war was poorly chosen. Ironically, Dwight Eisenhower had told the French to give up on a similar fruitless war in Algeria, because he could see that it could not be won and risked pushing the Algerians into the arms of the communists. Three or four years later Kennedy began getting us more deeply involved in precisely the same sort of war, succeeding the French. My guess is that it was because the North Vietnamese had already embraced communism; if they had been bourgeois nationalists like the Algerians, even Washington would have had more sense than to get involved. But what that generation of Cold Warriors could not see was that "communism" could often just be a banner for nationalism.

Then there were Reagan's covert wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Afghanistan. Reagan won temporarily in Nicaragua, at the price of running nun-killing death squads. But if you check, you'll see that Daniel Ortega is president of Nicaragua, and left-leaning regimes of the sort Reagan attempted to destabilize are in power in Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil. Reagan's covert wars in Latin America caused a lot of trouble, harmed a lot of people, and had no long term success. In part that is because politics wells up from social and economic conditions, and is not just the creation of some individual an imperial power installs in power.

As for Reagan's Jihad in Afghanistan, it clearly was a world-historical blunder. Had the communists stayed in power in Afghanistan, their regime would probably have just evolved after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 into a Kazakhstan-style state. Not a democracy, but stable enough and with schooling for all and an investment in development.

Instead, Reagan and his Saudi and Pakistani allies funneled the lion's share of their covert war aid to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the most radical of the Mujahidin leaders. They forced the Soviet Union out, and destroyed the Afghanistan communists, but the ultimate result was a) the rise of al-Qaeda and b) the rise of the Taliban.

Reagan won the Afghanistan war, but it was a Pyrrhic victory that came around to bite the US on the posterior on September 11.

So you have to ask whether any of these wars -- Vietnam, Nicaragua, or Afghanistan-- should have been fought. Either we lost, or the victory was temporary, or we contributed to a blowback that hit our society on 9/11.

And of course, then there is the Iraq War.

But first, let's consider what King said about the negative good a war might have accomplished in the past. It is from "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" in Strength to Love, 1958:

' More recently I have come to see the need for the method of nonviolence in international relations.

Although I was not yet convinced of its efficacy in conflicts between nations, I felt that while war could never be a positive good, it could serve as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. War, horrible as it is, might be preferable to surrender to a totalitarian system.

But now I believe that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons totally rules out the possibility of war ever again achieving a negative good.

If we assume that mankind has a right to survive then we must find an alternative to war and destruction. '

And given the dismal record of the failure of US wars since King wrote that in 1958, he may well have been prescient.

The Iraq War failed for many reasons, but one important cause was that contemporary warfare is too destructive to achieve political and nation-building goals. The destructiveness of the US war helped to provoke the various Iraqi insurgencies. The killing of 17 civilians at a protest in Falluja in April of 2003 was the beginning of the end of Falluja. In November and December of 2004, the US military damaged 2/3s of the city's buildings and emptied it of its population, except for the unknown number it killed (hundreds? thousands?)

And for all the subsequent frantic US military actions, the US has not put humpty dumpty back together again, and almost certainly cannot.

The narrative of the warmongers is that war has become ever more precise, ever more useful in achieving specific diplomatic and political goals.

Need to remove a dictator? Well here is some Shock and Awe.

Need to restore human rights? Here, destroy this city to save it.

Fighting terrorism? You just need a hundred thousand more troops with more M16s!

But actually the nonviolent means of dealing with the Saddam Hussein regime turn out to have been completely effective. The United Nations inspections had actually worked, something that no one in the United States or Britain seems to want to acknowledge, even with all we now know. The inspections really did force Saddam to dismantle his WMD programs and destroy his stockpiles. The economic sanctions were useless for regime change. But as a means of destroying Saddam's power to menace his neighbors, they were completely effective. Too effective, to the extent that they ended up harming children and civilians.

The 2003 Iraq War was not necessary if its goal was to remove the Saddam regime as a threat to US or regional security. Iraq had been disarmed and contained.

And, the 2003 Iraq War was not effective if the goal had been to restore civil society and bring democracy. Iraq lacked the essential social and political prerequisites for such a transition, and the US military is a military, not a police force.

Let us consider whether King wasn't right in 1958, and whether contemporary warfare isn't too destructive, too blunt an instrument to achieve even negative good any longer.

Far more al-Qaeda operatives have been busted through good police work than were ever captured on a battlefield. And, the brutality of the Iraq war has created hundreds of little Bin Ladens, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak predicted it would.

Three main sorts of security challenges face the United States.

There is the rivalry with other nuclear powers, where war cannot be used as a tool of diplomacy because it would be far too destructive.

There is conflict between the US and small weak third world annoyances such as Iran. What the Iraq War should have taught us is that elective war is a horrible policy tool for dealing with such conflicts.

And there is the problem of terrorism, which cannot be fought with big conventional militaries. The attempt to do so just provokes insurgencies that grow potentially even more formidable.

Bush and Cheney keep imagining that they are in 1928 or 1942 or 1947. Their mindset is that of the first half of the twentieth century. They are men of the past.

Martin Luther King was a man of the future. He saw clearly that humankind has a choice. It is the choice between continuing to wage war, and surviving as a species. King was also a man in a hurry. He did not have much time. Neither do we.

It is time to wrap up the Iraq War and to, as carefully and deliberately as possible, end the US military presence in Iraq. It is not a Japan or a Germany after WW II, both of which feared the Soviet Union and so could put up with foreign bases as protection. Iraqis fear no one, such that they would accept permanent bases. The Middle East is a postcolonial region inhospitable to the humiliations of foreign domination, which its peoples struggled hard and long to end.

And it is time to take the elective war option off the table, with regard to Iran, and to the Sudan, and to Somalia, and all the others on the Neoconservative hit list.

War does not work. It is too destructive. It creates too much blowback, as with Afghanistan and al-Qaeda. It leaves too much of the city destroyed, that it meant to save, as with Falluja. It cannot midwife rights or democracy, it is too gross, too indiscriminate, too brutal for that purpose. It produces Abu Ghraib and Falluja, not Monticello.

The US needs a defensive military, insofar as it can contribute to protecting us from asymmetrical or conventional challenges. But launching a war against a country that did not attack us, that is immoral and stupid. Let's listen to Dr. King and never do that again.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at juancole.com

Neo-Nero[s]

2008-01-21T13:20:00.000-05:00

"Operation Iraqi Freedom" is all about liberating Iraqi oil from the Iraqis. Any other rationalization is pure BULLSHIT. With that in mind,and mindful of the imminent danger of Global Warming (the primary cause being the burning of oil and related materials) -doesn't the Cheney/Bush regime then become Neo-Nero[s]???

WAKE THE FUCK UP AMERICA!!!

SDB

Letter to Vets for Freedom

2008-01-20T09:39:00.000-05:00

by Clifton Hicks | Mon, 11/05/2007 - 11:47am

“War is a racket, it always has been... a few profit, and the many pay.”

It is every active duty service member and veteran's duty to resist this and any illegal and unconstitutional war. The only true patriots during this dark time in our history are either dead or working to bring the troops home. Just as there is nothing honorable or patriotic about war, there is nothing honorable or patriotic about your organization; you are pro-war, pro-imperialism, pro-lies, and pro-death, you are anti-peace, anti-freedom, anti-military, anti-constitution, and ultimately you are anti-American. Your interests are not those of America and her citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom have learned to hate this war and their corrupt administration, your interests are those of corporate greed, war profiteering, aggression, imperialism, and fascism.

How come nearly every single one of you people that I've seen or read about are Lieutenants and Sergeants? When I look at your little war pictures and read your poorly written bio's my vision is overflowed with images of lazy, incompetent, cowardly Officers with a handful of brain-dead NCO's to do their dirty work, as usual. I wonder where you boys all served? The Green Zone, BIAP, on some spit and polish General's staff perhaps? Or hell, maybe you actually were in combat, maybe you had the pleasure of ordering teenage boys to their deaths for a pack of lies, maybe you gave the orders to kill civilians and imprison the innocent, maybe you got to stand over your soldiers in your clean uniforms and new boots while they toiled to fix all the shit you broke on your last joy-ride mission, maybe you got to get drunk with all your old West Point buddies, laughing and joking all night because you knew nobody could punish you for it, maybe you even payed a couple dollars that night to get your dick wet in your favorite interpreter girl. And then, at the end of your long and glorious deployments, you all got Bronze Stars just for showing up.

Regardless of where you were and what you did over there, you all missed something. You somehow skipped the part where it all came crashing down on you like a ton of bricks and you finally realized, "Holy shit, this war is WRONG!" I don't know how you could possibly have missed that one but you managed to somehow, perhaps you all aught to go back and give it another try. You obviously haven't had your fill of dead children and burning shit, of ringing ears and aching bones, of blood and of tears, of grinding innocent people under you boot heels.

This war will end someday and when that happens it will not be because of your efforts but of mine. I suggest you read the constitution and the bill of rights, I suggest you crack a history book, I suggest you sit down and think long and hard about this war and your roll in it. Assuming that your organization is not completely forgotten and overlooked in years to come, history will prove that you were wrong, that you spread a message of death and fear, and that your logic was horribly flawed.

Peace,

Clifton Hicks
Private, US Army (Ret.)
C Troop, 1-1 Cavalry
Baghdad, Iraq OIF-1

The fog of war crimes: Who's to blame when 'just following orders' means murder?

2008-01-15T08:04:00.000-05:00

by Frida Berrigan | January 8, 2008 - 8:57am

A Marine squad was on a dusty road in Iraq, far from home. Suddenly, a deadly roadside bomb explodes the early morning calm and kills a lance corporal and wounds two other Marines. The mission: tend to the wounded and find those who were responsible ... Or make someone pay? Three sleeping families awaken to the sound of grenades and guns.

By the end of the "operation," 24 people were dead, including three women and six children. Bullets, fired at close range, tore through bodies and lodged deep in walls. A one-legged elderly man was shot nine times in the chest and abdomen. A man who watched the violence from his roof across the road told The Washington Post that he heard his neighbor speak to the Marines in English, begging for the lives of his wife and children, saying, "I am friend. I am good." All the family was killed except one: 13-year-old Safa. Covered in her mother's blood, she reportedly fainted and appeared dead.

In a road nearby lay the bodies of five men-four college students and their driver.

On Nov. 20, 2005, a Marine spokesman reported: "A U.S. Marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another."

The only truth in that statement was that there was a roadside bomb and that a Marine-Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, known as T.J. to the other men in his squad-was killed instantly. The rest was a lie. It took months for the truth to come out, and the search for justice is taking even longer. The 24 Iraqi bodies have since been buried in a cemetery in Haditha, a farming town beside the Euphrates River. But no one-from the commander on down-has been sentenced to prison, and the effort to hold Marines responsible for this crime has focused on a few men who are low on the chain of command.

Geoffrey Corn, a retired lieutenant colonel and a professor at Southern Texas College of Law, says the laws of war work because "for every case of atrocities that we read about, there are thousands of Marines and soldiers who act with restraint."

The Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions were designed as the basis for military conduct in times of war. Three central principles govern armed conflict: military necessity, distinction (soldiers must engage only valid military targets) and proportionality (the loss of civilian lives and property damage must not outweigh the military advantage sought). Among other things, the Geneva Conventions identify grave breaches of international law as the "willful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; willful causing of great suffering; and extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully or wantonly." An examination of the military's actions in the aftermath of Haditha reveals a clear unwillingness to apply these principles.

Whose neck is on the line?

"You stop war crimes by coming down on the ranking officer," says Ian Cuth-bertson, a military historian and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.

"All armies in all wars at all times have committed war crimes," he continues. "The question is: Does command authority condone or stop them? You can't just give an 18-year-old an automatic weapon and tell him, 'Don't shoot prisoners in the head.' You need an officer to rein him in. The officer needs to feel as though his own neck is on the line."

In the case of Haditha, Marines have not put officers' necks on the line. Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, who was in charge of Marines in Haditha in 2005, along with his chief of staff Col. Richard Sokoloski and Col. Stephen Davis, who headed the regimental combat team, all received letters of censure from the secretary of the U.S. Navy. The censure did not strip the men of their rank or salary, but they will be barred from future promotions, which could force them out of the Marines. According to Gary Solis, a military law expert and former Marine, censure is the Marine Corps' most serious administrative sanction.

But, as Cuthbertson points out, the generals are not being censured for letting Haditha happen. They are being punished for not investigating. This is a big difference.

Cuthbertson cites the Allied response to the Malmedy massacre in Belgium as one example of taking war crimes seriously up the chain of command. In 1944, German soldiers killed more than 70 unarmed U.S. prisoners of war. In war crimes trials after Germany was defeated, justice was swift and extended far beyond those who actually pulled triggers. "The commander of the regiment wasn't there. He was found guilty and sentenced to death," says Cuthbertson. "The general of the Army wasn't there. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison."

Unraveling the massacre

In January 2006-a month after the Haditha massacre-an Iraqi journalism student gave Time magazine a video of the bloody aftermath. Taher Thabet shot footage in the homes and at the morgue, recording the carnage in shaky frames. Time passed the footage on to the chief military spokesman in Baghdad, forcing the Marines to launch an investigation. Until the evidence was in their hands (and widely available on the Internet), they appeared ready to accept as truth the flimsy, contradictory account of events cobbled together by the squad leader and his men.

Two months later, the investigation determined that Marines-not insurgents-killed the civilians, and Naval Criminal Investigative Services further concluded that the civilians were deliberately targeted. CNN reported on the investigations on March 16, and Time published a long article on March 27. President Bush, however, did not address the Haditha issue until June 1, when he called the allegations "very troubling for me and equally troubling for our military."

But it took until December 2006 for eight Marines to be charged: four enlisted men with unpremeditated murder, and four officers with dereliction for covering up or failing to report the killings. These indictments helped the Marines create the impression that those responsible for Haditha were rigorously prosecuted. Yet the four charged with murder were not the only four who pulled triggers that day. And the four officers charged in the cover up were not the only four who lied.

In handing down the eight indictments, the Marines also granted immunity to at least seven others who either participated in the killings or tried to hide what the squad had done. The military ultimately offered immunity deals to two of those charged with murder in exchange for their damning testimony. Charges against two of the officers were also dismissed after their "Article 32 hearings," a sort of a half trial, half grand-jury proceeding unique to military criminal proceedings.

At this point, criminal responsibility for 24 murders in at least four separate locations is being placed on two Marines: Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich and Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum. Of their squad of 13, they are the only two who face general court martial for the killings.

Tatum, from Edmund, Okla., is charged with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. His trial date has not been set, but if found guilty of all three, Tatum could face a maximum 19 years in confinement, a dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of pay. During his July 24, 2007 military investigation hearing, the 25-year-old Marine choked back tears, saying, "I am not comfortable with the fact that I might have shot a child. I don't know if my rounds impacted anyone. ... That is a burden I will have to bear."

For his part, Wuterich, the Marine squad leader, was originally indicted with more than a dozen counts of unpremeditated murder, as well as soliciting another to commit an offense and making false official statements, which carry a maximum penalty of imprisonment for life. After his Article 32 hearing in August 2007, Investigating Officer Lt. Paul Ware recommended dismissing 10 murder charges and reducing seven others to negligent homicide. There has not been a determination on that recommendation, and a court martial date has not yet been set. Wuterich told CBS's "60 Minutes": "Everyone visualizes me as a monster-a baby killer, cold-blooded, that sort of thing." On the TV screen, he was handsome, polished and impossibly young looking.

Of the other four charged with the lesser offense of failing to report the incident, or obstructing the investigation-only two remain under indictment. One of them, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, is the most senior U.S. servicemen to face a court martial for action in combat since Vietnam. He is not being charged for allowing the crimes to happen, but for violating a lawful order and willful dereliction of duty for failing to report and investigate the deaths.

In cold blood?

The cases will hinge not on what happened or why, but how: Was it a rage-induced rampage or a by-the-book operation? The answer to that question depends on which side of the gun you're on.

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a former Marine who chairs the Subcommittee on Defense in the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters in May 2006 that the investigations would reveal that "our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

But soldiers are not supposed to kill in cold blood. "War is not a license," wrote Telford Taylor, a lead-prosecutor at Nuremberg, in Vietnam, an American Tragedy. "It does not countenance the infliction of suffering for its own sake or for revenge."

Thabet, the Iraqi journalism student who filmed the aftermath at Haditha, saw rage, telling Time: "They not only killed people, they smashed furniture, tore down wall hangings and when they took prisoners, they treated them very roughly. This was not a precise military operation."

Not so, says Wuterich. "We reacted to how we were supposed to react to our training and I did that to the best of my ability," he told "60 Minutes." "The rest of the Marines that were there, they did their job properly as well. We cleared these houses the way they were supposed to be cleared." Lt. William Kallop ordered Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich to "clear" one of the homes. He was granted immunity from future prosecution in exchange for his testimony.

Another Marine, Lance Cpl. Humberto Manuel Mendoza, who was not indicted, told investigators that he shot at least two people: "I was following my training that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot." Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, whose murder charges were dropped in exchange for his testimony against Wuterich, testified that after riddling dead bodies with automatic fire, he urinated on the head of one corpse. "I know it was a bad thing what I done, but I done it because I was angry T.J. was dead."

'I was just following orders'

Justifying crimes with assertions that "we reacted to how we were supposed to react to our training" is not new. It echoes Befehl ist Befehl-I was just following orders-words Nazi leaders accused of war crimes used to justify their actions. The Nuremberg Tribunals following World War II found many of them guilty, sentencing them to death or life in prison.

The tribunals placed the conscience of the individual above the will of military superiors. "In the military, there is a culture of compliance, fear, blind obedience, silence," says Camilo Mejia, 32, who joined the Army when he was 19 and went to prison rather than return to Iraq. Mejia served in the Florida National Guard and went to Iraq as staff sergeant in 2003. "Behavior is suggested and implied. The expectation is that if everyone else is doing it, you should do it."

At a detention facility in Al Assad, Mejia's unit was responsible for keeping prisoners awake for long periods of time in preparation for interrogation. In an interview, he described their job as "sleep deprivation with loud sounds, mock executions, treating them as sub-humans." His unit performed this long enough to "see that this was a systematic problem from the very top," says Mejia. "They had set the tone and the work. We just followed suit. No one sat us down and said, 'We want you to commit war crimes.' But they communicated what we were supposed to do, and that was war crimes."

In June 2004, Mejia told CBS's "60 Minutes II" about the 12 or 13 Iraqis he and his men killed in Ramadi, mostly civilians caught in the crossfire. "Whether you want to admit it or not to yourself, this is a human being," Mejia. "And I saw this man go down and I saw him being dragged through a pool of his own blood and that shocked me."

In war, Mejia says, "committing war crimes is what you are expected to do."

Hamdaniya

The month after the Haditha massacre became news, the Marines found themselves shamed by another atrocity. On April 26, 2006, Marines based in Hamdaniya dragged Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a 52-year-old man and father of 11 children, from his home in the middle of the night, bound his hands and feet and shot him to death. The Marines' plan was to snatch a suspected insurgent said to be behind a rash of roadside bombings and who had been repeatedly captured but released. When the Marines could not find him, they kidnapped and killed the man's neighbor instead. Later, they stole an AK-47 and staged the scene so that it appeared that Awad was caught while deploying a roadside bomb.

Seven Marines and a Navy corpsman-who became known as the Camp Pendleton Eight-were charged in the case. During the Article 32 hearings, defense attorneys said the Marines' superiors told them they were too soft. They had witnessed their superiors beating Iraqi suspects and felt pressured to be more aggressive in an environment where roadside bombs and attacks were constant and assailants melted in and out of the civilian population. Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington testified that the men were "sick of" their rules of engagement and decided "to write our own rules to keep ourselves alive."

Trent Thomas, a corporal from East St. Louis charged in the case, appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees." When asked if he was ordered to kill Awad: "I really can't say," Thomas responded, but later allowed, "I think your leadership plays a huge factor in what you do. That's all I can say."

Thomas was demoted to private and received a bad conduct discharge.

Only two of the Camp Pendleton Eight remain in prison. Pennington is expected to serve eight years on a 14-year sentence after a plea agreement, and Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins was sentenced to 15 years. But Gen. James Mattis-the same convening authority who made determinations in the Haditha killings-is reportedly considering reducing both sentences.

Abu Ghraib

The world learned about Abu Ghraib from the photos. Piles of naked bodies. A man leashed like a dog. A hooded figure standing on a box with wires hanging from him. A menacing dog inches from a cringing man's face.

Assertions that the torture was the result of sadistic, bored or under-supervised soldiers have been widely discredited. "There is no way that a handful of low-ranking soldiers could have invented techniques all by themselves that, curiously enough, were used at Guantanamo and at other places in Iraq and Afghanistan," says Stjepan Mestrovic, a sociologist at Texas A&M University.

After months of cover-up, the blame was laid at the feet of several low-ranked soldiers, pictured grinning and giving the thumbs-up. Pvt. Lynndie England and Spc. Charles Graner were tried, convicted and sentenced to three and 10 years, respectively. Seven others have been sentenced for abuse at Abu Ghraib.

Only 54 military personnel-a fraction of the more than 600 U.S. personnel implicated in detainee abuse cases throughout Iraq and elsewhere in the war on terror-have been convicted by court martial. And only 40 have been sentenced to prison time, many for less than a year, according to a 2006 analysis by the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project. No U.S. military officer has been held accountable for criminal acts committed by subordinates under the doctrine of command responsibility.

International law limps into the breach

Military prosecutors have won convictions against soldiers and Marines in more than 200 cases of violent crimes, including murder, rape and assault against Iraqi civilians, according to a July 27, 2007 New York Times analysis. In some cases, these convictions may come with severe sentences. Federal prosecutors are said to be seeking the death penalty for former Pvt. Stephen Green, who is accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, as well as slaying her parents and younger sister. He will be tried as a civilian because he was discharged before the crimes came to light. This horrific crime is the subject of Brian de Palma's new movie Redacted.

But seeking the death penalty for Green, sentencing Hutchins to 15 years or court-martialing Wuterich for multiple unpremeditated murders is not the same as seeking justice for war crimes. These three should be held responsible, but the scales of justice are tipped toward scapegoating the convenient foils. They have committed awful and criminal acts, but their guilt cannot be easily separated from those who are the architects of the war.

In November 2006, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a nonprofit legal and educational organization, filed a criminal complaint, asking a German federal prosecutor to open "a criminal prosecution that will look into the responsibility of high-ranking U.S. officials for authorizing war crimes in the context of the so-called war on terror," according to a CCR statement. On behalf of 12 Iraqi citizens whom the U.S. military detained and tortured at Abu Ghraib, the complaint names former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking U.S. officials. The German court dismissed the case in April 2007, ruling that a U.S. court should hear the charges. But CCR-along with other groups-have filed similar charges in Sweden, Argentina and France.

"This is a case of universal jurisdiction," says Belinda Cooper, editor of War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg and a professor of human rights and international law at New York University's Center for Global Affairs, "It's brought under the theory that any country can take jurisdiction of particularly heinous crimes, especially if the country that would normally prosecute them is unlikely to do so." She continues: "But can you imagine Bush being tried in the U.S. or Putin in Russia for, say, torture of detainees during their administrations? The new international criminal court is not going to touch a Putin or a Bush."

While these projects inch forward, soldiers are taking matters into their own hands. In March 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will convene new Winter Soldier hearings, modeled on the February 1971 meetings in a Detroit Howard Johnson's. In the shadow of the My Lai massacre revelations, the hearings provided a platform to more than 125 Vietnam veterans to describe the atrocities they participated in and witnessed. This effort could once again give the United States a chance to listen to soldiers and Marines as they break the silence, hold themselves and each other accountable and demand the same from the architects of the war.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at smirkingchimp.com: http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/11987

You've Been Served

2008-01-13T07:37:00.000-05:00

By NanceGreggs

An Open Letter to: All Politicians, All Corporations, All Media

Our government has become non-responsive to the needs and wants of American citizens, and has followed its own agenda to benefit wealthy individuals and even wealthier corporations. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

The corporations that are handing out pink slips to middle-class workers are the same corporations that are handing out multi-million dollar bonuses to their CEOs. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

The news media no longer even pretends to serve the public interest, but serves only its corporate masters in delivering ‘the news’ as it wants it to be perceived, and not as it actually is. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

Under BushCo, our country has gone from surplus to debt, from world-revered to world-reviled, from a nation that represents freedom to a nation that represents war, torture, and death. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

Our beloved Constitution has been ignored in order to suit an administration determined to put its own insane goals above the sanctity of our democracy. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

Our government has plunged the country into unfathomable debt in order to pursue an illegal and immoral war, whose only ‘success’ has been filling the coffers of the war-profiteers, their family members, their cronies and themselves. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

While the middle-class lose their jobs, their homes, their savings and their health coverage, our government has not ended but encouraged the conditions that have led to this disaster. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

As the accountability of our elected government officials has become a thing of the past, so their blatant corruption has become accepted as the current status quo. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

Billions of taxpayers’ dollars have ‘gone missing’ under the current administration, while billions more have been funneled into the pockets of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Oil and Big Business via no-bid contracts, ‘sweetheart deals’, tax-cuts, and corporate welfare. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

Investigative journalists of integrity, willing to tell the truth at any cost, have been replaced by talking hair-dos, infotainment specialists, and out-and-out lying propagandists. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

As our troops return home as severely wounded veterans without access to financial, psychiatric or medical assistance, our government ignores their plight, and that of their families. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

While the rest of the global community tackles the problems of pollution and climate-change, our nation sticks its head in the sand and dismisses the impact of the consequences. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

As the children of the world surpass our own children in education, skills, and training, our government persists in funding bridges-to-nowhere while ignoring the obvious outcome of under-funding the needs of the next generation of Americans. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

Our elected representatives no longer represent the will of their constituents, nor do they carry out the Constitutional duties they swore to execute, but instead put their personal ‘re-electability’ above all other concerns. We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

As Americans, we have watched our jobs sent to cheaper labor markets in order to increase the ‘bottom line’, we have watched our tax dollars squandered on nonsense, we have watched our neighbors lose their lives in the aftermath of natural disaster because they were too unimportant (poor) to deserve assistance, we have watched a once-great democracy diminished due to the whims of a petulant sociopath too self-absorbed to care about the country he was allegedly elected to govern.

We have watched as our voting process has been reduced to an electronically-hackable joke, while our once-respected media spews talking points instead of focusing on facts that should be publicly exposed and discussed, while our rights and freedoms become not what we are guaranteed under our Constitution but what a group of arrogant, always-proven-wrong PNACers consider to be their idea of how the country should be governed – for the financial benefit of the few and to the detriment of the many.

We see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

The revolution will not be televised. It will not be violent, it will not be sudden. It will move slowly, but inevitably towards what is right, what is just, what is fair. It will not be partisan, but will include Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens – and every other political persuasion one can think of. It will include all pissed-off Americans - and in case you haven't noticed, that's one big fuckin' group, and it's getting bigger by the day.

But it will happen – because we’re mad as hell, and we won’t take it any more. Because We the People have had enough. Because there are more Average Joes than there are politicians, media tycoons, lobbyists, bankers, and corporate CEOs combined.

Because we see what is wrong, and we mean to have it made right.

Consider yourselves on notice. The revolution will happen; that’s a given. And if you'd taken your heads out of your asses once in a while, you would have noticed the fact that it’s already begun, it is unstoppable, and it will place this nation back into the hands of its rightful owners - the citizens of these United States of America.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/330

Twelve More Months of Bush's Ecclesiastic Mideast Mission

2008-01-12T07:42:00.000-05:00

by Ron Fullwood

http://www.opednews.com

Did I see you in the red death jazz of war
losing moths among lost faces,
speaking to the stubs who asked you
to speak of songs and God and dancing,
of bananas, northern lights or Jesus,
any hummingbird of thought whatever
flying away from the red death jazz of war? --Sandburg

Walking where Jesus walked, Bush visited Christ's second home Friday, not far from where the religious figure was said to have fed 'multitudes' with a few fish and a loaf of bread. Bush is traveling in the Mideast, seeking to craft a miracle of his own out of empty, confrontational rhetoric and produce "Mideast peace" for a region which is awash in violence; much of it perpetrated by a growing number of martyrs and militants in resistance to his own bloody, military expansion into Iraq and Afghanistan. "I'm on a timetable," Bush told reporters. "I've got 12 months."

"I believe it's possible - not only possible, I believe it's going to happen - that there be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office," Bush said, despite his failure during the visit to secure any agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians on the issues and concerns raised in November, in Annapolis.

In an interview in Jerusalem with NBC News, Bush was asked if he endorsed the view of republican presidential candidate John McCain that the U.S. would be in Iraq for 100 yrs.. Bush offered that the U.S. could be in Iraq for a decade. "It could easily be that, absolutely," he said.

If you're left to wonder just what the U.S. military would be doing in Iraq during that decade, you can be excused for imagining that the U.S. is actually concerned with reducing its presence in Iraq. You can be excused, as well, for thinking that the recent report of a U.S. military pull-out from Iraq's previously violent Anbar province meant that the administration's final justification for remaining and continuing the occupation, -- defending against 'Iraqi al-Qaeda' -- has been fulfilled and will enable us to withdraw and leave Iraq to the Iraqis. There is still the Iran hook he's used as a fall-back, despite his indifference and inattention at the beginning of his term.

While on his Mideast 'peace' mission, Bush took time out to lash out at his favorite nemesis, as he predictably, but ironically declared the sovereign government of Iran which he's waged a war of intimidation and propaganda against since 9-11, a "threat to world peace."

No matter to Bush that the very Iraqi regime he helped install -- and our troops sacrificed their lives and their livelihoods to defend -- has repeatedly declared their neighbor, Iran, to be a friend and ally, even crediting the Iranians for their cooperation in reducing Iraq's violence by controlling the flow of weapons and weapons material across their border. But, to Bush, Iran represents the only nemesis he can use to justify the continuing, aggressive presence of U.S. troops in the region -- apart from highlighting the original 9-11 terror suspects in Afghanistan/Pakistan which he refuses to apply the bulk of our military resources to capture.

"I want to remind people," Bush said Wednesday in Jerusalem at a press availability with Palestinian Authority President Abbas, "I said then that Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat, and Iran will be a threat," he declared, in reference to a 'nuclear weapons program' that he insists Iran is developing, but, has yet to produce a modicum of proof to counter Iran's denials.

Americans don't need any reminding, at all, about Bush's trumped-up insistence before he invaded Iraq, that the sovereign nation he ultimately overthrew and occupied, "was a threat, is a threat, and will be a threat." We've all been witness to the shifting justifications the administration has used to explain away the lack of any threat to America's national security from Iraq which could remotely be considered credible. Not until his heavy-handed military occupation had fostered and fueled a brand new generation of combatants pledged to resistant violence against the U.S., our interests, and our allies -- who identified and aligned themselves with the fugitive 9-11 suspects -- did Iraq, or the Saddam regime tolerate such chaos and sectarian unrest.

Bush deliberately invited and attracted terror to Iraq with his calls for any and all comers to "bring it on" and "fight us there," far from where the original suspects were allowed safe haven from the bulk of our military forces he diverted to capture his imperialistic prize. In an amazingly revealing moment, during a tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday, Bush, with tears welling up in his eyes, Bush was reported to express his wish that Auschwitz concentration camp was attacked by the allies.

"We should have bombed it," Bush reportedly told the memorial chairman, Avner Shalev, apparently unaware that it was the railroad tracks which should have been targeted, and not a camp full of prisoners, however horrendous the activities in that camp were at the time. Targets around the camp were eventually bombed -- one errant bomb accidentally finding its way into the camp and killing dozens. But, Bush obviously knows better now than Churchill did at the time.

It doesn't pass notice that a World Health Organization study, released this week, estimates that between 104,000 and 223,000 civilians in Iraq died from violence between March 2003 and June 2006. The very act of 'liberating' Iraqis from his manufactured 'threat' to the U.S., the region, and the Iraqis themselves, produced enough violence and death of innocents to seriously undermine any administration claim of 'victory' or 'success' in their nation-building fiasco. Yet this administration still insists to America and the world, that their efforts and posture have been a catalyst for some sort of emancipation from terror, when, the only thing we've been liberated from is the relative goodwill around the world that we enjoyed for decades preceding Bush's assent to office.

As our lame-duck militarist returns home and goes back to work -- deepening our military commitments in the Mideast and ensuring that Iraq always has cause for our troops to stay, for a decade or more -- he'll undoubtedly try and ramp-up the rhetorical attack he's already advantaged himself of after he directed his administration to exploit fears surrounding the hyped 'confrontation' of one of our warships he sent to intimidate the Iranians and some speedboats which didn't warrant even a targeting from the commander of the U.S. vessel.; much less an order to fire on them. Bush, insisted, though, on labeling the confrontation (which took almost 3 days to filter to the top of their agenda and not-so-coincidently dovetailing with his rhetorical assault on Iran) a "provocation."

Bush is a warmonger. There really is no initiative for 'peace' abroad which Bush intends to manage without using his own threat of military force to back up his strident declarations. After standing on the same ground that Jesus, his "favorite philosopher," once stood and (is assumed to have) declared that, "On this rock (Peter?) I will build my Church," Bush may well be tempted to assume that ecclesiastic mission himself, in his own imperialistic design. After all, Bush once, reportedly confided to President Abbas in 2003, that, God had told him to go to war.

"According to Abbas, Bush had said, 'God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.''

"I'm on a timetable," Bush told reporters Friday. "I've got 12 months."

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at opednews.com: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_080111_twelve_more_months_o.htm

"Terrorism"

2008-01-12T07:18:00.000-05:00

Terrorism against the U.S.and it`s "flunky"allies has occured and will continue as long as our bribed [let`s call it really is] officials continue to conduct a"Foreign Policy"on behalf of their corporate sponsors.The brainwashed [thanks to main stream corporate media]American people get to pay for this PIRACY with the blood of our beautiful young people and our national treasure.WAKE THE FUCK UP,AMERICA!!!!

S.B.D.

"War is a Racket" 2008 Update

2008-01-11T08:48:00.000-05:00

To update my 1935 edition, simply substitute the names of Bechtel, Chevron, Halliburton and Lockheed Martin for United Fruit, Standard Oil, Brown Bros. etc., then add three to five zeros to the numbers I used back then!

Voila! S.D.B.

If you've never read The Sandox, I suggest you do.

2008-01-11T03:19:00.000-05:00

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/

Welcome to The Sandbox, our command-wide milblog, featuring comments, anecdotes, and observations from service members currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is GWOT-lit's forward position, offering those in-country a chance to share their experiences and reflections with the rest of us. The Sandbox's focus is not on policy and partisanship (go to our Blowback page for that), but on the unclassified details of deployment -- the everyday, the extraordinary, the wonderful, the messed-up, the absurd. The Sandbox is a clean, lightly-edited debriefing environment where all correspondence is read, and as much as possible is posted. And contributors may rest assured that all content, no matter how robust, is currently secured by the First Amendment. To submit a post, click here

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/

No Sale.

2008-01-11T02:08:00.000-05:00

By Saje Williams

You can't sell peace to war profiteers. Can't do it. They won't buy. You can't sell the truth to habitual liars. They're not interested. You can't sell election reform to those who get what they want with the system in place as it is now. It's just not possible.

You can't sell fair play to a cheater. If they can't guarantee a win, they won't play.

You can't sell equal rights and equal access to a bigot. All the sincerity and all the honesty in the world doesn't matter.

You can't sell reproductive choice and freedom to people who think they have a "God-Given" right to dictate their conscience to other people. It's just not happening.

You can't sell equal justice to those who exist and thrive by pushing injustice.

You can't sell alternative energy to the oil companies, or universal healthcare to the insurance companies. They have no reason to buy it and every reason to oppose it.

You can't sell liberalism to those who've sworn to destroy us. There's no common ground between those who believe in serving all of us and those who have dedicated themselves to serving only a small group of the powerful elite.

It's just not possible. How can we hope to gain ground when they believe EVERYTHING we stand for is simply wrong? When people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and a host of others spend every waking moment trying to think of new ways of marginalizing our message? When powerful and wealthy religious leaders call us evil and those we support "demon-possessed?"

I'm trying to figure out precisely how we're supposed to make peace, how to attain "bi-partisanship" without giving up everything for which we stand.

I know there are those who believe that, somehow, against all evidence to the contrary, there is common ground to be found. We already know we don't see things the same way, that the mechanics of our brains are totally different. So many of them are trapped in an either/or, black/white, right/wrong dichotomy that our perspective might as well be that of a completely alien species to them.

There might actually BE common ground, but I'm not sure how we can find it. We believe peace is possible, they believe it's not. We believe that there's value in a world where everyone can prosper, they believe that prospering is a "God-Given" boon and any failure to do so is proof of God's disfavor or, at best, evidence of a lack of moral character.

What common ground we may have is buried under six inches of swamp water infested with venomous snakes. How long can we afford to stand there waiting for them to meet us there without risking a multitude of snake bites in the meantime?

Yes, there IS the possibility of reaching out to those who have been misguided into thinking that the Republican Party has their interests at heart. But how do we do so when they control nearly every avenue for making that reach?

"Blind taste tests" reveal that a vast majority of Americans actually support progressive goals. Yet somehow in the midst of the so-called "culture war" we can't seem to make the connection between what they say they want and how we can bring it into being.

It's not the middle-of-the-road, triangulated, corporate-friendly centrism that speaks to them. It's far more progressive than that. Yet when we come to do battle with the other side, we don't seem to be able to speak to the attitudes we share. We hide it away, and allow the Republicans, and the complicit corporate media, to define who we are and what we want America to be. We don't strive to define ourselves, and marginalize those with the courage to do so.

And wonder why the collective response of all too many Americans turns out to be "No Sale."

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://tinyurl.com/yrywzk

One year from now

2008-01-11T00:02:00.000-05:00

http://www.ivaw.org/node/2311

One year from now

As we enter 2008, please stop for a moment and consider where we are now, and where we are going. In just over a year, America will have a new President. We will have endured a year of campaign commercials and attack ads. We'll have watched debates devoid of any real discussion of the withdrawal from Iraq that a growing number of Americans now call for. We'll have waited, for yet another year, for our leaders to find a way to say what we know in our hearts: we must leave Iraq.

But what will have changed in the next year that will make that happen?

We must face this fact: we run the serious risk that one year from today we'll be right where we are now, but with another year's worth of casualties, a year’s worth of grieving families, a year's worth of Iraqi anger and suffering built on our occupation of a country we now know was no threat to us. Ending this war in a year is different than ending it now, just as ending it now is different than ending it a year ago, or a year before that. There is a price to pay for every day that we wait.

As a veteran who served in Iraq as a military police sergeant, I see our continued occupation of that country as more than simply a list of numbers. On daily patrols through Baghdad and other cities, your glance darts from one window to the next and you look with suspicion at everyone you pass, waiting to be attacked. Every time you drive, you anxiously scan the roadways and gutters, anticipating the explosion of a roadside bomb that will send burning shards of metal through both vehicles and flesh. Indiscriminate home raids at all hours of the day and night become a common experience, as do the mass detentions of terrified and angry Iraqis. You spend hours at checkpoints, with your finger on the trigger, prepared to make life and death decisions in a country where the line between civilians and combatants is blurred and in constant motion. These things take a toll, on our soldiers, their families, and the Iraqi people.

As members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, we know these things and many of us still face them on a daily basis. Despite what you see on TV, or read in the paper, this is daily life in Iraq.

A year from now, will we have moved any closer to withdrawal? Or will our leaders continue to push such a decision off into the future, where, like so many decisions made by the powerful, the price to be paid rests squarely on the shoulders of the next generation?

We are at a crossroads: we can focus our energy exclusively on an election in which no viable candidate is committed to rapid withdrawal, or we can spend the next year ensuring that whoever takes office, Republican or Democrat, will face a country mobilized to the cause of bringing our troops home.

The veterans and active duty troops of Iraq Veterans Against the War represent the generation that is living with the pain and consequences of our leaders’ daily decision to continue this war. We have watched our closest friends be killed and injured, we’ve seen innocent people dehumanized and destroyed. We are first-hand witnesses and participants of an illegal war and occupation and we are here to tell you that we have had enough.

We have come together, as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, with this message: It is time to put this awful chapter of our history behind us. It is time to do the right thing for the people of Iraq and the people of America. It is time.

We've been here before. In the aftermath of the 2006 elections, the analysts said it plainly: the issue that had brought the Democrats to power was opposition to the war. Hundreds of thousands of people worked phone banks, canvassed their neighbors, made signs, and raised money for that election cycle, but it was not enough to end the war. Why not? The political leadership and the pundits have settled on the excuse that the Democrats don't have enough power in Congress to get it done. But we think it is something else - we have failed to force our leaders into action.

This is not a unique situation in history. Looking back on successful movements, what is the common denominator? Has real change occurred when people relied on politicians to do the right thing, or when a movement of people used their strength to move this country forward?

We propose the second path - organizing Americans to move our leaders to do what must be done. Iraq Veterans Against the War has spent the last year devising a strategy and tactics to bring our troops home. Our plans are not contingent on a particular candidate, or a party, because we're not willing to roll the political dice on something as important as this.

Our strategy is simple: organize the men and women of our armed forces to withdraw their support for the war. Our reason for choosing this strategy is also simple: without the active support of military service members, this war cannot continue. The government has shown that no matter which lever people pull on Election day, they can continue, and even escalate, the war. But without people to drive the trucks, to man the checkpoints, and to go out on nightly raids, no war is possible. Of course, we don't expect to be able to convince the entirety of our armed forces to go on strike, but what percentage of soldiers would need to stand up against this war before our leaders decide that they cannot continue? One percent? Five? We aim to find out.

We're drawing the line, and we're asking you to join us. All over the country, veterans and members of the military are organizing chapters of Iraq Veterans Against the War in cities, in rural areas, and on military bases. Last year at this time, we had eight chapters. Today, we have 37, with more forming all the time. We need your help to support those who are doing this important work on the ground.

We know what our brothers and sisters are going through in Iraq, and we're putting plans in motion to put an end to it. Not a year from now. Not next month. Today.

Peace,
Kelly Dougherty
Former Sergeant, Army National Guard
Executive Director
Iraq Veterans Against the War

http://www.ivaw.org/node/2311

Looking for FDR

2008-01-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

By McCamy Taylor

For over half a century, we have been looking for FDR. Now, during this election cycle, in which we have seen the corporate media take their Two Man Race between Obama and Hillary to the ridiculous extreme of continuing it in the face of John Edward’s second place finish in Iowa, I know why we have not heard from FDR in all that time.

It isn’t because his spirit does not live on in America. FDR's New Deal gave birth to LBJ's Great Society. That in turn is the reason why polls show that Americans are turning away from the "me, me, me" trickle down morality of the Reagan era in order to embrace a more compassionate ethic. Children of the 1960s, who grew up cheering for civil rights and women's rights are now adults, and as adults they honor the same values of individual liberty and justice that they saw championed as kids. Forget pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Americans nowadays are willing to offer a helping hand to their neighbor. Hell, they will even pay more taxes if it means that their neighbors' kids have health insurance.

We are all searching hard for FDR, after seven years of Federalist "Let's roll us back to the Great Depression" bs. The reason we can not find him is because the corporate media has muzzled him.

During the 1950s and 60s they called him a “Red” and silenced him that way. They used the FBI and wiretaps and the tactic of Divide and Conquer to keep opposition leaders weak and jailed and incapable of joining together to effect meaningful change. Sometimes, they assassinated the new FDRs, when they thought they could get away with it. Later, they sent George Bush Senior to Iran to arrange a Hostages for Votes deal, beginning a tradition of elections stolen by manipulation of the Democratic primaries, voter suppression, fraudulent vote tallies and---when that did not work---blatant election theft by the US Supreme Court.

And still we keep looking for FDR, because the economic ills that plagued us earlier in the century---the monopolies, the plight of farmers, rising wealth disparity, credit crises—have not gone away. The farther we get from the New Deal, the worse they have gotten, and the greater our longing for FDR’s voice becomes.

That is why John Solomon did not even wait for the Democratic primary to get underway before he penned his series of articles for the Washington Post that would set up the Edwards is a phony narrative. For the corporations of America and the world, this was an FDR emergency. This was why the media blacklist of John Edwards began when he was still the front runner in Iowa and why the corporate media came up with the “Two Man Race” between Obama and Hillary when the Senator from Illinois was barely a blip. The mainstream media has very sensitive FDR detectors. They can smell populism from miles away.

Here is a radio speech that FDR delivered in the spring of 1932 entitled “The Forgotten Men.”

http://newdeal.feri.org/speeches/1932c.htm

These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Obviously, these few minutes tonight permit no opportunity to lay down the ten or a dozen closely related objectives of a plan to meet our present emergency, but I can draw a few essentials, a beginning in fact, of a planned program.

Snip

Such objectives as these three, restoring farmers' buying power, relief to the small banks and home-owners and a reconstructed tariff policy, are only a part of ten or a dozen vital factors. But they seem to be beyond the concern of a national administration which can think in terms only of the top of the social and economic structure. It has sought temporary relief from the top down rather than permanent relief from the bottom up. It has totally failed to plan ahead in a comprehensive way. It has waited until something has cracked and then at the last moment has sought to prevent total collapse.

It is high time to get back to fundamentals. It is high time to admit with courage that we are in the midst of an emergency at least equal to that of war. Let us mobilize to meet it.

The “snip” is important. FDR does not claim he will lead America to the promised land. He does not make vague statements about being an agent of change. He talks specifics in a calm, cool, rational voice designed to inspire confidence and ease fear. He invites his listeners to join him. He does not condescend. He does not patronize. He speaks as a fellow American, not as Mom (Hillary) or as a Messiah (Obama).

This strategy is terribly effective. An informed electorate is no longer afraid. Once fear is overcome, voters can make rational, sensible decisions at the polls that are based upon their own economic best interests. Plus, they can work together to effect real economic change that improves their communities. This strategy is terrible for groups that rely on fear—like the current Republican Party or certain large corporations. When FDR used this strategy during his long administration, he changed the nation irrevocably—the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s were proof of that.

FDR’s most recent incarnation is John Edwards, and for this the corporations and the news media which they control can not forgive him. They have made every effort to keep Americans from hearing what he has to say. If he is heard, they want it to be through the haze of the media lie “That Edwards is just a rich phony pretending that he cares.” They might have said the same thing about FDR. Since his message is so persuasive—and since it is what so many of us have been searching for---they have done their best to make him the Invisible Candidate, silent, friendless, poor.

The nomination was no cakewalk for FDR, but he did not have it this bad.

http://campaigningforhistory.blogs.nytimes... /

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...

Several powerful people, such as William Randolph Hearst, who would later come to regret his decision, helped him at the nomination convention. I guess the corporate media learned its lesson back in 1932.

If the corporate media has its way, America will never find FDR again. That is why it is so important that we look for FDR on our own. They can deny him equal time on TV and radio, but if we search him out on the Internet and spread the populist message where we find it, the corporate media is SOL.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/117

Veterans' Affairs video in the making

2008-01-10T07:27:00.000-05:00

From the youtube web site:

*Please subscribe and spread the word*

This documentary is about veterans and the various issues that they face when they return from the war. The documentary will focus on the problems that veterans endure when they return from one war only to face a war with bureaucracy. The homeless epidemic among veterans is at a all time high. More than 2/3rd of the people that are homeless are veterans. We lose more veterans a week to suicide than we do in the war.

Veteran's Affairs is a film about facts, no political posturing and surprisingly not a war film. This will give you a better idea of what it means to truly support a military member.

A better quality video is provided at: www.vadocumentary.com

Veterans' Affairs Intro

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NZIpRRUvnFE

Paper nickels

2008-01-09T09:36:00.000-05:00

I was rooting around in a box of old papers last night and got a blast from the past.

Somewhere around 40 years ago, I was stationed in Chu Lai, RVN. Uncle was kind enough to take all my real money and give me Military Payment Certificates or as we usta to call it 'funny money'.

Ever seen a paper nickel?

This sucker's about 1/3 the size of a dollar bill.

I also found a paper dime

and a paper quarter.

About 38 years ago, the United States invaded Cambodia. At the time I had been in country a few weeks, so guess where my skinny ass ended up. You guessed it, I was about 100 meters inside the Cambodian border with a small support team. We fixed everything that didn't fly.

The boys made some good finds; there were shithooks coming in all day long dropping off 'stuff' they had found. We had 100-lb bags of brown rice (which was really tasty & made an excellent alcholic beverage), food, medical supplies, guns, ammo, etc. etc.

I had completely forgotten about it, but I copped this from a generator box.

We had a bit of a wet spell and the booklet got some water damage, but if you can read Chinese:

I also found some old pictures, but think I'll save them for another time.

Peace out,
uhc

Definitions; Liberalism Facism Plutocracy

2008-01-07T11:07:00.000-05:00

Liberalism:Advocacy of works in extension of Democracy
Facism:Corporate control of government and belicose nationalism
Plutocracy:Defacto rule by wealthy criminals

Use these words in a sentence:

The U.S.A.is not a liberal democracy {see above definitions},but rather is a plutocratic,
facist state and that,my friends and fellow veterans{"...against all enemies,foreign and
domestic."}, should piss us off enough to get us and our fellow citizens up off our asses to do whatever needs to be done to get all Americans pissed off enough to throw the bastards the fuck out!

It is all just a game.

2008-01-07T08:15:00.000-05:00

By MN Against Bush

I remember sitting down as a child to play a game called Monopoly. The object of this game was to buy up huge amounts of property, and become such an economic powerhouse that you completely crush your opponents. The object was not to merely have more than your opponents, but to drive them into bankruptcy. You wanted to ensure that if they landed on your property they had to pay you so much money in rent that they would have nothing left.

When your opponent lost everything you were supposed to cheer, you had just destroyed them and that was something to be celebrated. It was just a game they told us, and so we thought nothing of the message this game was actually sending us.

And we thought nothing of it when we watched the corporations play a real game of Monopoly. We watched them buy up all our land, we watched them crush the local businesses, and we saw them put our neighbors into a position in which they could no longer afford to pay their rent.

Those corporations were the winners we were told, they were the ones who worked so hard to put their company on top and those underneath them just did not try hard enough. And so we watched as the small businesses closed their doors because Wal-Mart could offer us more products at a lower price.

We watched as they played Monopoly but we never realized they were playing against us, and so they took multiple turns and we never even got a chance to roll the dice. We lost that game, and now we go to work everyday and get our meager paychecks, our wages driven down because the winners of the Monopoly game decided we weren't worth quite as much as their CEO's condo on Park Place.

And once the Monopoly game ended with us as the losers, the corporations wanted to play another game. This time they pulled out a little game called Risk. This game involved moving little plastic pieces around a world map, trying to defeat the enemy nations. They told us we could watch on TV and moves would be shown to the world, we would be victorious they told us and everyone would cheer our victory.

So we watched on CNN as the lines on the map kept moving, and it showed us how our pieces were being moved strategically into place. Of course when we started the game of Risk they didn't tell us how long it would take for it to end, and so we watched for months and years and people started to figure out that the plastic pieces on the map were not really plastic. They were real people being killed in a real war.

We wanted the game to end. We didn't want to keep playing, but they kept insisting we could not end until someone was victorious. It didn't matter how long the game went on, it didn't matter how many of our units were lost, it didn't matter how much damage we did to the civilians of the “enemy” nation, it was all a game and we needed victory.

But it turns out that even though this game seems to be going on forever, we can start another game while we wait for it to end. This new game they want us to play is called Russian Roulette, and apparently the rules are pretty simple. All we need to do is to simply beat our chests about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iran and then simply pull the trigger as I will demonst.........

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MN%20Against%20Bush/137

And This Lil' Piggy Cried Wee-Wee-Wee ...

2008-01-07T08:11:00.000-05:00

By NanceGgreggs

My Dearest ~~Lil Piggy~~ David Frum:

Re your statement to the NYT that you are terrified that the GOP is heading for defeat:

There are times when only a bold expletive will suffice as a response, and this is one of those times. Where the fuck have you been for the last seven years?

So NOW you’re terrified the Republican party is headed for a meltdown of mammoth proportions? After the conduct of your party for the last seven years, let me tell you what that sounds like – in words simple enough for even you to understand: “I’m terrified that my conviction as a child molester will have a negative impact on my ability to get a job as a playground supervisor.” “I’m terrified that if my girlfriend finds out my last six fiancés went mysteriously ‘missing’, she won’t want to get engaged.” “I’m terrified I’ll get fired from my job as a Portuguese translator when everyone realizes I don’t understand a word of Portuguese.”

Have you, by any chance, just been awoken from a coma? I pose the question because that would be the only plausible explanation for any Republican not knowing that the conduct of their party, and their so-called president, was obviously going to result in what we are now seeing as the consequences.

Did you honestly believe that the out-of-control national debt was going to be a plus for the party that traditionally garners votes by espousing fiscal responsibility? Did you really think that the skyrocketing profits of Big Oil under BushCo were going to go unnoticed by people worried about being able to afford the gas to get to-and-from work? Did you truly believe that the average Joe would never suspect that the government was asleep-at-the-wheel when his kid got sick and his dog died thanks to the poisonous products being welcomed into this country under the administration’s allegedly watchful eye? Did it not occur to you that people who watched a man sit a classroom reading The Pet Goat during a strike on US soil – the same guy who strummed the guitar while NOLA went under – might consider that the the strong-on-national-security WH resident might not be all he’s been cracked up to be?

As a Bush speechwriter, what did you think the impact was going to be when Mr. Decider Guy said he would get Bin Laden dead-or-alive, and later revised it to say that he didn't really think about Bin Laden much any more, being as he was never all that important? And what did you think as you listened to Bush’s speeches delivered in the slurred voice of a drunk sitting at the end of the bar rather than a man of even average intelligence sitting in the Oval Office?

After seven years of a lying buffoon talking like he just landed on the planet, a vice president who doesn’t know what branch of government his office is part of, “Heckovajob” appointees, billions of taxpayer dollars gone missin’ or unaccounted for via no-bid contracts to administration cronies, executive privilege being invoked every time even a modicum of information is sought, an AG who can’t remember anything beyond his own name, complete failure in a war in Iraq that was based on fabrications to begin with, vets living in cardboard boxes on the street, Walter Reed, dead American troops, dead Iraqi civilians, Abu Ghraib, secret prisons, waterboarding, bridges to nowhere, Jack Abramoff and Jeff Gannon, the incarceration of GOP politicians due to blatant corruption, the outsourcing of American jobs, corporate welfare, tax-cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, Macaca moments, pedophiles like Mark Foley being encouraged to run, diaper-fetishists like Vitter being presented as family values politicians, e-coli in our food, lead in our kids’ toys, Enron, sub-prime mortgages, multi-billion-dollar bonuses to CEOs of failed companies, NIE’s completely contrary to administration claims, the devaluation of the dollar against foreign currencies, the rise in unemployment, the increased number of Americans living below the poverty line, and the United States of America becoming the laughing stock of the global community when it talks about freedom and democracy while, at the same time, pretending its own Constitution doesn’t even exist, you have the unmitigated chutzpah to publicly cry like a baby because you never saw it coming.

Oh, woe is you, Mr. Frum – and all of your cohorts who have not only supported but encouraged the very behavior that you now openly worry might ruin your chances in the next election and beyond.

I hope you at least appreciate the irony in the fact that the party that sought to govern by striking fear into the hearts of Americans with the threat of Islamofascists hiding under ever bed have now taken to hiding under their own beds, quaking in fear because the deception, the mis-information and the out-and-out lies have finally caught up with them.

Honestly, Davey, I don’t know how you could possibly not see this coming. Maybe it was your brain-dead reliance on politically-savvy consultants like Kristol and Wolfowitz – who, had they “advised” this poorly for a different organization, would be sleeping with the fishes even as we speak.

So now you’re terrified. Well, I can’t blame you there. If I were a Republican, I’d be terrified too.

I will give you credit for one thing, though, Davey: Up until I saw your recent remarks, I believed that Bush was the most clueless idiot in the country. I still believe that – but your quick ascension to the second place position is something to be marveled at.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/329

My Last Hurrah (at least for a while)

2008-01-07T05:20:00.000-05:00

By Saje Williams

We hear over and over again that "DU doesn't reflect America." Well, no shit. Too damn bad, that is. For the most part, anyway. Too much of America is too wound up wondering who's going to win that night's competition on "Dancing with the Stars" or some such crap, or glued to their couch with a beer in hand watching the latest "big game."

Fucking sports. What an example of pointless mental masturbation spectator sports are.

Hell, there are some people here who seem pretty fucking clueless too. And I don't mean just those who support candidates other than mine. I can accept that different people see things differently. But those who can't or won't understand how important JE's populist message actually is really confuse me. "I'm not really much of a populist."

To me that more or less translates as "I don't give a FUCK about anyone who's not like me."

Do I sound like a judgmental ass? Perhaps.

People accuse Johnny of being "too slick" or "a snake-oil salesman." Well, in this particular case, that so-called "snake oil" is a wonder drug. Because we NEED someone out in front who's willing to take on the corporate control of our country and bust the monopolies we've allowed to form since Teddy took them on back at the beginning of the LAST century.

Even a President can't do it alone. But Johnny's right. The President has a bully pulpit and it would be nice to have one sitting in the White House who was willing to use it for something other than attacking Social Security, the idea of universal healthcare, and trumpeting the (usually bullshit) case for war with anyone he can.

I've said it before that I think any one of our candidates would do all right, and be a damn sight better than what we've had, or what the Repugs have lining up on the other side of the great divide. But the simple fact is that only ONE of the candidates who even has any kind of a shot seems willing to take on the power players directly.

Is he angry? I sure as hell hope so. Because turning the other cheek is a damn stupid thing to do when your adversary is trying to carve you up like a Christmas ham. And make no mistake, that's what's being done to us RIGHT NOW. Every single thing that remains good about America is being chopped apart and passed out to all the "right" people and they're sitting there with their napkins tucked into their shirts and their knives and forks at the ready to dig in and eat America's heart in a couple of big gulps.

In one breath we condemn Congress for rolling over again and again, and in the other we (some of us, at least) condemn Edwards for being "too angry."

I don't think the other candidates are angry enough by a LONG shot. While the big wigs are fighting over the few remaining scraps of meat left on our bones, the last thing we need is a Democratic candidate who's trying to sweet talk them away from the table.

What is it about this that some people just don't get? "I'm not much of a populist?" What, you LIKE seeing people pushed into a corner and eaten by the corporate scavengers because they have no way to fight back? You find that amusing, do you? Or do you just turn away because it has nothing to do with you?

I don't get it. We should ALL be concerned about the invisible and forgotten folks in this country--the homeless vets, the working poor, the kids who are on the edge of death because what they need doesn't do anything to help the bottom line of those who make the decisions. All the people who have no voice because they have no money.

And don't tell me that the preservation of the middle class isn't a major part of this fight. It is. A strong and vibrant middle class is a necessity to help bring people up out of poverty. Without an expanding middle class, there is simply no place for them to go. A shrinking middle class indicates people falling INTO poverty. It's really that simple.

His is a message America desperately needs to hear. "WE ARE BEING EATEN ALIVE." Because we are. This isn't hyperbole. America is being consumed by vast corporate entities so powerful they are like nations unto themselves, though far more diverse in terms of territory. Americans are losing the ability to pass a better life to their children, and entirely too many of us are blissfully unaware of it.

I LIKE Obama's message of hope. I truly do. I think that's necessary too. Doom and gloom isn't going to get us anywhere in the end. But hope without a real dedication to fight isn't going to solve our problems. The cannibals aren't going to set their knives and forks aside because we ask them nicely. We may have to flip a few tables, scatter the place-settings, and chase them from the room for a while.

This is a battle that needs to be waged, and it needs to be waged RIGHT NOW. We cannot timidly edge into it, hoping we can appeal to the conscience of those who aren't fully invested in the gruesome meal they're all set to share.

What really strikes me funny is to see the occasional poster here mention the "class war" in almost Republican terms, as if it isn't being waged whether we participate or not, as if the powerful didn't fire the first shots and aren't busy parceling the rest of us out to consume at their leisure. The class war is here whether we like it or not. This leaves us with only a few choices. We can stand back and hope to ride it out unscathed (unlikely), try to join the currently winning side (possible for some, but hardly a perspective worth of consideration or respect), or take off the gloves, roll up our sleeves, and get ready to do battle.

The way I see it, the last option is the only one worthy of us.

Something needs to change. Desperately. There comes a time when it's time to make a choice and that time is now. We can either choose to fight back, or play dead while they sink their knives into our unprotected flesh.

I know what I mean to do. I aim to misbehave.

In the end it doesn't matter if you believe Edwards means what he's saying. We all know the message is true. He's been in the belly of the beast and he's come out to tell us about it. You can assume that he's just spitting a line--saying what he thinks we want to hear.

That's fine. But we damn well better be listening to the message. He's not crying wolf. Or, if he is, it's because there's a big slavering monster outside looking for the next available snack.

Step lively, or be its next meal. That's the choice we all face.

Deny it at your peril. At ALL our peril.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Mythsaje/237

IVAW Winter Soldier Fundraiser

2008-01-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Veterans For Peace
Liam Madden, Iraq Veterans Against The War

Howard Zinn invites you to:
A House Party Fundraiser for Iraq Veterans Against The War Winter Soldier Hearings

Home of Sev and Louise Bruyn
48 Glenwood Ave.
Newton Center 617–332–1764
Sunday, January 27 at 3 PM

“These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country”
— Thomas Paine

This quote inspired the name for the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) in 1971 of war crimes in Vietnam, for it is the Winter Soldier who is the true patriot. Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) brought together over 100 veterans to testify as to the true nature of the atrocities and war crimes happening in Vietnam.

Now Iraq Veterans Against The War (IVAW) again will make public the testimony of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the Winter Soldiers, as well as Iraqi and Afghan survivors in a public investigation called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan on March 13-16 in Washington D.C.

This will be explosive testimony about events that are rarely if ever covered in mainstream U.S. media. Americans will be aghast when they hear first hand descriptions of what actually has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The budget for this undertaking is large, and Veterans For Peace is organizing house parties around the country to help fund this important event. Excerpts from the film of the original Winter Soldier Investigation will be shown, and WSI participant Joe Bangert, Liam Madden, and Howard Zinn will speak. Please join us for refreshments and conversation, and bring your checkbook and give generously.

If you cannot come but want to donate, send a check made out to IVAW to:

Nate Goldshlag
37 Ottawa Rd.
Arlington, MA 02476

See the IVAW website: http://www.ivaw.org/wintersoldier

Directions to 48 Glenwood Ave. Newton Center

If you take the "T."

Take Green Line D (Riverside) train to Newton Center stop. Follow the sidewalk going up from the tracks on same side as you disembarked and in the same direction as you were riding from Boston. At top of slight hill, with steps, you can cross street (Herrick St.). Continue on same sidewalk path along the tracks to the next street (Cypress). Turn left on Cypress. Cross Braeland (street on the other side of the tracks). Continue on Cypress for a very short half block, then veer to the right at the fork onto Parker St. Walk two rather long blocks on Parker to Glenwood Ave. (The first street on the left is Ridge. The second is Glenwood.) Turn left. You will find 48 Glenwood is the 3rd house on the right. It's green. It is about a 10 minute walk.

By car:

a. From Rt. 128 to Rt. 9.

Heading east on Rt. 9, take the Parker St. overpass exit at about a mile and a half. Turn left on Parker St. Go three blocks, looking on your right. Glenwood Ave. is the third street on the right. Turn right. 48 Glenwood is the 3rd house on the right. b. From Beacon St., (and Centre St.) at Newton Center go south on Centre St. Immediately veer to the left at the fork (Lutheran Church is in center of fork) onto Cypress St. In a short block and a half, veer to the right at the second fork (Cypress goes up a hill) onto Parker. Glenwood Ave. is the second street on the left. Turn left. 48 Glenwood is the 3rd house on the right.

c. By car from Cambridge:

Cross the river, (at any point), go west along Storrow Drive and Soldiers Field Road and Nonantum Rd. (all roads stay close to the river). Just past the big skating rink on the right side of Nonantum Rd there is a left fork that heads up a hill. The road is called Charlesbank Rd.

Stay on Charlesbank Rd for one long block which then makes a sharp left turn and crosses the turnpike. The flow of traffic continues to cross the turnpike again and staying sort of to the left go alongside the turnpike (don’t go ON the turnpike) for another roughly two blocks and turn left to cross the pike for the third time. (Yes, you have crossed the turnpike 3 times in about as many blocks.) After this third crossing there is a stop light. That is Centre St. Turn right on Centre St. and drive about 2 miles to Newton Center, a
large open shopping area at the intersection of Centre and Beacon St..

Cross Beacon Street. Immediately after crossing, veer to the left at the fork (Lutheran Church is in center of fork) onto Cypress St. In a very short block and a half, veer to the right at the second fork onto Parker St. (Cypress goes up a hill). Stay on Parker for two blocks. Glenwood Ave. is the second street on the left. Turn left. 48 Glenwood is the 3rd house on the right.

Is Bush Finished Fighting Terrorists He Created in Iraq?

2008-01-05T10:30:00.000-05:00

by Ron Fullwood

http://www.opednews.com

IT'S the beginning of January, and, this month finds the U.S. commanding general in Iraq satisfied that the Iraqis are going to fill the gaps left by retreating Americans and carry on with the last remaining hook the administration has used to justify their continuing occupation; the routing of 'Iraqi al-Qaeda' which had no foothold in the country at all before Bush invaded.

General David Petraeus (and the White House) has planned the withdrawal of five military units from Iraq, to be completed by July. That withdrawal would only represent the troops numbers of troops provided to effect his "surge." One hundred and thirty-thousand American troops will remain in Iraq indefinitely, stranded without any action by Bush to actually end the occupation. What was really gained by the 900 or so American deaths which occurred in Iraq almost a year after Americans removed Bush's republican majority and replaced them with Democrats pledged to end the occupation?

Petraeus apparently feels the 30,000+ additional troops deployed earlier in the year -- against the demonstrated will of the vast majority of Americans in the November 2006 congressional elections -- weren't as significant a force in the increased military assaults on resistant Iraqi communities as were the Iraqi recruits who make up the new army and police.

"It is very important to remember that our surge is dwarfed by the Iraqi surge that is taking place," Petraeus said during a PR tour for a pool of reporters. ""The official Iraqi security forces has increased by something like 110,000 or so in the past year -- during which (time) our surge was 30,000," along with "70,000 plus concerned local citizens." he claimed.

There is no acknowledgment from the administration of the role of the leader of one of the main militant groups of combatants in Iraq, al-Sadr, earlier in the year, in successfully urging his followers to refrain from attacks and violence. The sectarian divisions which erupted in Iraq following the removal of the controlling rule of Saddam remain the most pernicious intigator of violence in the country, outside of outright resistance to the U.S. occupiers and their enabled Iraqi regime.

Anyway, despite Petraeus' optimism, the numbers of Iraqis who have been trained, equipped, and are regularly reporting for duty has long been in dispute. The WaPo reported Monday, that the U.S. will now allow the Iraqi government to 'set the size' of its army and police forces -- and do the counting and accounting of those Iraq forces, as well.

"While previous reports have listed numbers authorized by the Coalition and provided estimates of numbers on the payroll, the GoI (Government of Iraq) is now responsible for determining requirements and counting personnel," the Pentagon reported, according to the Post. "Therefore, reporting will now reflect GoI statistics."

Yet, the same Pentagon report admits that the Iraqi Interior Ministry hasn't a clue about the actual state of their own military, and doesn't know "how many of the approximately 376,346 employees on the payroll are regularly reporting for duty." Nonetheless, the administration is set to allow the Iraqis to account for the local forces they say we've been waiting for them to muster before our own troops leave.

No matter. No one really believes that this administration was actually concerned with the activities of the 'Iraqi al-Qaeda,' to the extent of the hyperventilated fear-mongering from Bush and his minions throughout last years election season. There wasn't any more than 2-3 percent of the sectarian violence in Iraq which was attributed to al-Qaeda. But, Bush and his White House minions repeatedly conflated the presence of copycat combatants in Iraq who took on the 'al-Qaeda' moniker, with the original terror suspects they've allowed safe haven in Afghanistan since their escape from Tora-Bora some six years ago.

Now, with reports from the Iraqi government this month that over 70% of the 'Iraqi al-Qaeda' have been eliminated, it stretches belief to accept any assertion by the U.S. military or the White House that the al-Qaeda in Iraq -- which Bush repeatedly encouraged to "fight our soldiers there" -- poses any threat at all to the U.S. beyond Iraq's borders. Iraq is nothing but a diversion from the administration's failure to capture and prosecute the 9-11 suspects Bush claimed he wanted "dead or alive."

Few (outside the administration) have actually accepted that the occupied ground the military has gained and held following their "surge" is a valid substitute for their propped-up Iraqi regime's lack of any political progress, which the administration claimed, at the outset, was integral to the increased deployment.

What appears to be shaping up in Iraq is an administration attempt to push off some of the function of our occupying forces to the Iraqis -- which is a good thing for those who want our troops to take on less. But, there hasn't been the same shift in priorities for our forces to Iraqis from those who intend to keep the bulk of them bogged down there, playing nation-builders. Even as Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno is forging an agreement to hire even more 'volunteer' Iraqis to fill the roles of our occupying forces, there is still the prospect of 130,00+ American troops remaining in Iraq through the inauguration in January 2009.

There were 45 Iraqis killed, 56 wounded, just this Tuesday, reminding of the prevalence of violence and it's inevitable persistence in Iraq, despite the best efforts of our military to intimidate and eliminate those who would commit such acts. It was reported this week that over 16,232 Iraqi civilians were killed in 2007. All of that violence and unrest can be laid directly at the foot of Bush and his decision to manufacture a conflict in Iraq and declare (along with his enabling militarist, bin-Laden) the sovereign nation to be the "center" of his terror war.

Now his generals and the administration's minions want Americans to put aside their concerns and outrage over the trillion dollars and the over 3900 U.S. lives lost in Iraq, and focus on the 'success' of their efforts to undo the damage they've done and quell the chaos and resistance they've unleashed with their blustering and blundering imperialism.

"We cannot let up -- they (al-Qaeda) are much more on the defensive right now than they have been in years and that is where we have to keep them," Petraeus told reporters.

Speaking from the unstable ground our nation's soldiers hold, with dubious intent, in Iraq, the general must have been reflecting, more, on the prospect of a shift in focus -- away from the Iraq diversion -- to a return to the actual 'hunt' for the "perpetrators" the original congressional authorization for the use of military force mandated his military to pursue and capture, than he was reflecting on any actual importance in continuing to play whack-a-terrorist with individuals ironically fostered and fueled by the very presence and operation of his occupying army.

He'll continue to hold that gained ground, as long as his commander-in-chief tells him to. But, even as Petraeus develops new justifications and rationales for advancing the gradual, grudging changing of the guard in Iraq, he'll be challenged in his drawdown by the political motivations of the Bush administration to remain engaged in their manufactured conflict until some other administration can assume the responsibility.

It remains to be seen whether the willing architect of the "surge" -- the open defiance of the expressed American will concerning Iraq -- is more interested in defending against any actual threat to the U.S. from the al-Qaeda terror suspects they've allowed freedom in Afghanistan/Pakistan than he is in feathering and cosseting his destabilizing Iraq prize. We'll know, though, just how committed he is to keeping al-Qaeda "on the defensive" by how much he's willing to urge a more rapid exit of our nation's defenders from Iraq.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at opednews.com: http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/opedne_ron_full_080103_is_bush_finished_fig.htm

Frankenstein's Government

2008-01-05T07:26:00.000-05:00

By Saje Williams

Stitched together from the slain corpse of the last actually effective government, the lumbering monster that is the Bush Administration and its Congressional appendages seems to wander aimlessly from disaster to disaster, replacing thoughtful repose and intelligent consideration with a sort of savage bemusement, roaring at its "enemies" and swatting ineffectively at the pitchforks and torches jabbed into its ponderous bulk.

With the dexterity of a creature stitched out of a pile of dead criminals, it lumbers through a terrible war after diplomatic nightmare, unable to right itself far enough to do anything but gaze stupidly at its detractors and mutter "why do you hate America?"

Sure, there may be a mind behind the creature, but that mind stands blinking in astonishment at the sheer gross stupidity of the creature it's set lose, wondering if it would be wise to buy it diapers or shoot it in the back of the head before it kills anyone else.

We don't know precisely who played the role of Dr. Frankenstein in this particular debacle, but we can hazard a guess or two. Grover Norquist, who could be considered the father of the modern neo-con movement, might be such a one. I'm not sure he envisioned how badly his creature might turn out, how many dazzling failures it might achieve before the mob of angry villagers could bring it down. Or maybe it was someone else, someone not as loud, or as visible as the man who would drown government.

Or maybe it was a conclave of would-be political sorcerers, trying to create something wondrous and, instead, created something so terrible and monstrous that they themselves would prefer to distance themselves from its stumbling path of destruction.

Whatever its source, this paragon of mindless destruction, this corpse of a dozen murderers, even now stands in the town square, roaring its rage at its attackers, both infuriated and bemused by those who would bring it down.

We will only tolerate a monstrocity in our midst for so long. We can only tolerate so much death and destruction, and we, like the villagers that hunted down Mary Shelley's man-beast, are consumed with both fear and horror at what walks among us, wearing the form of a man (or government, as the case may be) but is, instead, merely an animated dead thing with no more conscience or concept of self than a machine built to destroy.

And, make no mistake, this monster must fall. Because, unlike Shelley's creature, which was simply bemused and aggressive, this one is truly vicious, and far more dangerous in its fury. If left to its own devices, it would slay all the villagers, and lurch out of town hungry to spread more blood and terror.

I think we've all had enough of that.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://tinyurl.com/ypj2vl

Join Us - January 11 to Shut Down Guantanamo!

2008-01-04T14:27:00.000-05:00

http://www.witnesstorture.org/

Friday, January 11, 2008: The 6 year anniversary of the first prisoners being brought to Guantánamo.

Last year on January 11th, after 500 people processed from the Supreme Court to the Federal court, 150 people risked arrest on behalf of the men in Guantanamo, with 88 being arrested inside the Federal Court in DC. Many of those arrested withheld their identification and took the names of men at Guantanamo. It was a very powerful day, made possible by the contributions of many in the extended Catholic Worker family.

This year, we again are working with many groups on a demonstration in Washington, D.C. The day will begin with a rally at the National Mall co-sponsored with Amnesty International and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture followed by a “prisoner procession” to the Supreme Court. Endorsed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, CodePink, International Federation for Human Rights, Network of Spiritual Progressives, Peace Action, School of the Americas Watch, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International, United for Peace and Justice, War Resisters League, and other groups.

Come to DC or organize a vigil, demonstration or speaker in your own community!

SEE details about Jan 11 schedule of events in Washington, DC.
READ our call to action.
ENDORSE the Jan 11 Day of Action or VIEW list of endorsers.
DOWNLOAD flyers, web buttons, adaptable press release, and more.
FIND housing, food, transportation, legal and other logistical info.
VIEW a list of scheduled Jan 11 events or POST your event to our calendar.
GET tips and ideas for organizing actions. [NEW!]
DONATE and support the Jan 11th mobilization.

http://www.witnesstorture.org/

From War to Peace: Why You Joined VFP

2008-01-04T14:20:00.001-05:00

http://veteransforpeace.org/Why_they_joined_how_to_recruit.vp.html

Leah Bolger

What moved you from being someone who is willing to wage war to someone who now wages peace?

To be very honest with you, I'm not sure I was ever really willing to "wage war." I joined the U.S. Navy in 1980 because I needed a job. In those days women could not be given any combatant billets-we were all lumped into a group called "General Unrestricted Line Officers" or "GURLs" (Can you believe it?!) For the bulk of the time that I was on active duty (1980 to 2000), the U.S. was not involved in combat operations/war with anyone, so I didn't really have to face the moral dilemma of participating in an organization that "waged war." Although I qualified as an "expert" pistol shooter, (it was required in order to be the Duty Officer at several stations), my qualification shooting was the first time I had ever fired a gun, and I'm not sure I could shoot someone if asked to. Throughout my military career, I was pretty much the "odd woman out" politically-when I was a student at the Naval War College, I wrote papers on the value of the United Nations, and conflict resolution.

Why did you join VFP?

While I was on active duty, I believed that I wasn't allowed to join an organization like VFP. I knew I wasn't allowed to protest or speak out against our military policies. Although I believed in the values of VFP, I waited until I had been discharged to join. As our country has become more bellicose and misguided, I have become more outspoken and active with the peace movement. I am involved with several other peace organizations, but I feel that as a veterans' organization, we have more credibility and power in advocating for peace than some other organizations.

What have been your successes in recruiting new members to VFP?

I am very proud to be the founder of Chapter 132, but getting the initial 10 members wasn't easy. Basically, I just did a lot of personal asking. I solicited members from the Benton County Democrats by speaking at a Central Committee meeting and got two members there. One time I saw a group of older men having lunch at a restaurant and I noticed that one of them had a copy of The Nation magazine on the table. I just walked up to them and said: "Hello Gentlemen! My name is Leah Bolger and I am a 20 year veteran of the Navy. I am forming a chapter of Veterans for Peace, and I can tell by your reading material that we may be of like mind...are any of you fellows veterans?" I think three of our members came out of that encounter! After I scraped up the initial 10 and we received our charter, I contacted our local newspaper, the Corvallis Gazette-Times. They did a nice article on us, and advertised our upcoming meeting, at which over 20 people showed up, several of whom joined VFP. I try to get our membership to wear VFP t-shirts, buttons and ballcaps as often as possible, because that frequently will initiate a conversation and an invitation to join. I speak fairly frequently at rallies, vigils, etc., and I have also spoken to two Kiwanis Club chapters. I always identify myself with VFP and invite others (not just vets) to join us. Our chapter frequently sponsors other community events, and we participate in local 4th of July, Veterans' Day, and Holiday parades. We try to keep our name and the VFP logo in the spotlight as much as possible. Additionally, I carry business cards with me with the VFP logo and my contact information. When someone remarks on my button or t-shirt, I give them a card and ask them to contact me.

Pat Tate

What moved you from being someone who is willing to wage war to someone who now wages peace?

I have gone through many transitions in that regard. I was in fact a conscientious objector prior to my reclassification to 1-A and subsequent enlistment to avoid a combat infantry assignment. I had read the writings of Lord Bertrand Russell extensively during the mid-60's and felt that I wanted no part of war. However I was unable to find anyone who could assist me in pursuing CO status and as the draft began to chase me I feared prison more than war.

My conversion to being pro-war came as a part of the US Army basic (brainwashing) training. I became a grudging convert.

I can proudly say that I was fortunate in that I never had to fire directly at the 'enemy'. I was assigned as a "senior field wireman," a job that really did not exist and I actually worked as a supply clerk (scrounger) with the assignment to provide the members of my 105mm Howitzer Battery with minimal basic necessities. I was responsible for getting food and other items to my unit which was split between two Special Forces camps in Da Nang province, near the Cambodian border. Access was by air only.

I learned much about the stupidity of the military and as time progressed determined that, though I would do my basic job, I was unwilling to 'wage war' against any enemy that was not shooting at me first.

By the time of my discharge I was once again ready to take a stand against war. I spoke out within my own unit in Germany, where I was sent after Vietnam and continued to do so upon returning to my home. I did however have PTSD and survival was more of a criteria to me than activism.

It was not until the Iraq invasion started heating up that I felt it necessary to reactivate and hit the streets once again.

Why did you join VFP?

In 1998 I had met Fredy Champagne of Chapter 22 in Garberville CA at an Arts Festival where he was staffing an information table and I was selling pottery. We had a brief conversation and I had my first exposure to VFP. The activities he told me about lay dormant in my memory.

Fredy had told me of his trips to Vietnam to rebuild and heal. At the time of this meeting he was raising funds to take a local Little League team to Cuba. All of his activities were 'illegal', they violated sanctions that the government had imposed, but they spoke deeply to me about how by reaching out a hand in friendship we would find that we have no enemies. I felt that if this was what VFP stood for then it was the group for me.

I joined VFP in April 2003 and as our invasion of Iraq continued I wanted to stop the insanity. Fredy helped me through the infancy of forming Chapter 116 in Mendocino County and has been a valued friend ever since.

What have been your successes in recruiting new members to VFP?

I never hesitated to reach out to other veterans. I partcipate in a local VA sponsored 'PTSD support group' and spoke to my fellow veterans about VFP. Some were resistant to any organization, but over time they have all expressed to me that they see value in what I do. I do not try to convert them, just to give them a regular brush with who we are and what we seek in terms of a future.

Probably though my greatest impact on membership came in 2005 when I took my bus "The White Rose" to the Dallas convention, on to Crawford TX and on again to Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Those actions undertaken by an impromptu group of VFP members raised the name of Veterans For Peace into the national media. No, we were not alone, there were Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families for Peace and Code Pink, just to name a few.

Suddenly though, the media recognized us, Veterans For Peace, we were not willing to follow leaders into unnecessary war. We envisioned a New World Order, not of domination and destruction, but of cooperation and trust.

Fredy Champagne

What moved you from being someone who is willing to wage war to someone who now wages peace?

I joined the US Army in the summer of 1965, before we knew anything abut Viet Nam. I was un-educated about politics at that time in my life. Upon arriving in country (Lai Khe), late 65, I was immediately exposed to the hypocrisy and lies of the war effort. It was apparent our job as a combat infantryman was to slaughter young people like ourselves. Only these people were guilty of nothing more than defending their homeland. I was appalled at the atrocities I observed, and lack of respect for civilian casualties. I was awestruck by the will of the Vietnamese people to stand up to the mightiest military machine the world had ever known, with nothing more than popguns, and win the support of their people. I learned the hard way about imperialism. I survived somehow, came home not very proud, and waged my own war against the system, against the army, against the war. I suffered and struggled many years with severe PTSD and lived in the mountains of Northern California preparing for the next American Revolution.

Why did you join VFP?

I had been organizing a project to take VN veterans back into Viet Nam to do humanitarian aid work on clinics and orphanages and search for healing, hoping to end the Trade Embargo against the Vietnamese. While recruiting vets to go to Vietnam with us, we ran into VFP members in Santa Cruz (Ruben Gomez, Steve Brooks) who influenced me to organize a chapter of our own in Garberville, CA. Our project to build the first medical clinic since the war was built in early 89, and opened on April 1st, 1989 in Vung Tau. Most of the team of 17 veterans on this trip were VFP members from Northern California and Oregon. Out of this project came Chapter 22 of Veterans for Peace. Information on teams of veterans returning to Viet Nam to do humanitarian aid work can be found at the website of the Veterans - Viet Nam Restoration Project at: www.vvrp.org.

What have been your successes in recruiting new members to VFP?

For many years in the late 80s and 90s, my best recruiting tool has been the many trips back and forth to Viet Nam on various projects and peace walks and veterans tours. I met and spoke with a great many veterans and was always able to bring VFP into the conversation. Any organizer that really works out there in the field with veterans can do the same thing, networking at it's best.

Our next most successful recruiting tool has been our beloved "Spirit of Garberville" peace bus that we have owned and operated for many years. We used that bus for many demonstrations, parades, protests, fairs, and events, and trips cross-country from Seattle to Boston, from Ft Benning to So-Cal, to Chiapas, Mexico and back. All of our trips resulted in media coverage, speaking events, and networking with organizations across the country. Our bus was always on the road with slogans, etc. and we were always attracting and meeting new members. Our bus was financed by a yearly sponsorship program that had the names of a dozen or more local businesses, groups or individuals painted on the rear decklid. At about $300 a pop for each per year, our budget usually allowed us to keep our bus up as a chapter project. Exposure, that's it. Our bus and it's traditions have been passed along to the VFP chapter in Eugene, and many thanks to the brave men and women of Oregon who continue to operate this Peace Bus as they continue to wage peace. Every chapter should get a bus, a van, truck or some other prop for use as above. Parades attract a lot of attention, whether you are admited, thrown out, or sucessfully march with the mases. New members see you, think about you, and call or track you down later.

Donald Storing

What moved you from being someone who is willing to wage war to someone who now wages peace?

I was drafted in September 1972 just before starting my last term at M.S.U. I knew carrying a M-16 in Viet Nam didn't have too much positive too look forward to so I enlisted in the USAF under their 90 day delayed enlistment so I could graduate, which I did in December of 1972. I did think about going to Canada, which was somewhat popular at the time, but being a newly-wed, I didn't think it would be fair to my wife to haul to Canada knowing it may be difficult to come back. I have an identical twin brother who was a conscientious objector and went through the hassle of getting his classification. I guess in retrospect I took the easy way out by enlisting. I didn't expect to be in combat so in my own way, back then I justified my decision, I would be relatively safe and out of harms way and not killing anyone. Once I was in and doing my job,which was a telecommunications technical controller, I realized I wasn't directly involved in the killing machine, but I was performing a support function for it. Even back then my comrades knew I wasn't in favor of the war, but I did put up with it for my own sake I guess.

I have always been a follower of Christ, and by virtue of that fact, war in and of itself has been against my personal views. I just can't see how anyone can profess to be a Christian and at the same time suggest that it's possible to condone fighting and killing for political interests. Period. The older and more weathered I get, the stronger I feel about this. I'm now spiritually, economically and socially comfortable enough to voice my opinions public without fear of retribution and I do so. I have been blessed for whatever reason so I believe it is my responsibility to do what I think it right and just even if it does incur the wrath of others. Be that as it may, I sleep like a rock every night knowing I have done what I want to be remembered for, not what was easy or acceptable to the wealthy or those who believe there is some sort of convoluted righteousness in war.

Why did you join VFP?

VFP is a group of men and women who have tasted the wreckage of war and I believe also feel that it is their duty to try to set things on the correct path. By setting an example to the rest of society that saving lives is always better than eliminating them, it has to be our hope than we can change mankind's determination that our own ideas and beliefs are superior to others and war is a way to ensure our own triumph.

What have been your successes in recruiting new members to VFP?

I have been successful in bringing a few people to the VFP family but I try to pass the word by proudly wearing my VFP hats, pins, and tags so everyone can see them. When they ask what they represent, I try to explain the virtues of peace vs. the tragedies of war. I then let them draw whatever conclusions they may glean from the encounter.

Sidney Hollander

What moved you from being someone who is willing to wage war to someone who now wages peace?

We were attacked and I saw no alternative to being drafted in 1944.

Why did you join VFP?

Was a member of American Veterans Committee, a liberal WWII group, which closed as we do indeed. Years later I heard of VFP, local chapter head spoke to our local peace group in the retirement home after 9/11, and it sounded good. I already belonged to other non-vet groups and still do.

What have been your successes in recruiting new members to VFP?

http://veteransforpeace.org/Why_they_joined_how_to_recruit.vp.html

As a kid near Ft. Benning who would go up to Atlanta every weekend to buy a couple of hundred hits

2008-01-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

By Dawggie

of acid to sell on base and the strip (with several friends). But I got to see Janis and Jimmy, Allman Bros free in Piedmont Park...Spirit and Dylan. Great bonuses. At that time you could actually pick juvie marijuana plants in the Chastain and Piedmant Parks.

Then one evening I got a call that the CIA (not FBI) had stopped a group of friends leaving my house for a search and news they were headed my way. My visitors had driven to a grocery store and had given us a three minute warning. I ate 20 hits of Purple Haze that evening and was thankful for low quality. I shit aluminum foil for three days later.

In later years, thanks to TFOA, I found out that I had made Nixon's list. Probably something to do with some in the face protesting here in the SE.

I had protested Lt. Calley's actions in Mai Lai, I successfully dodged the draft... I had long hair and a VW microbus painted like an American flag. Guess they saw me as a redneck terrorist. Actually most of our group were from all over the country and several democratic nations.

Those were fun and frightening years. I spent more han a few nights in jail, was beaten and had my head shaved by a warden or two.

Those years are back. McGovern isn't running.

The Kennedys are still dead. So is Martin.

We need new heroes and none will be without fault.

We need new leaders, and none of them will be without fault.

We need unity and humility to address the greatest good. And that can be without fault.

We may not get our choice of candidate this time or we might. Either way, they will be with fault. We need to vocalize, be louder than the neocons and the evangelicals. We need to let them know we are here, watching and that we care and expct accountability.

There is a very important 12 months ahead and we need to link arms and claim solidarity. There will be no candidates running that we can back 100% but we must choose the closest we can and carry them into office.

We need to win the presidency more now than we have in the last 100 years. It's up to you.

Peace and solidarity. The fate of the whole fucking world may depend on it.

We truly are on a precipice the likes of which as not been seen since the 19th Century.

Dawggie says it so it must be so!

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Dawggie/4

Hey, Guys, It's All Good!

2008-01-03T21:20:00.000-05:00

By NanceGreggs

No matter which of our fine candidates winds up being the nominee, let’s keep in mind the current POTUS – and remember that there’s nowhere to go but UP:

None of the Democratic candidates have ever attempted to find oil in Texas – and failed!

None of the Democratic candidates laugh or giggle when they talk about things like people dying – or the possibility of World War III!

None of the Democratic candidates comes back from a vacation with bruises, scratches – or any other injuries associated with having been falling-down-drunk while they were away!

All of the Democratic candidates know that the earth is more than six thousand years old – and round!

All of the Democratic candidates can pronounce the names of foreign countries – without having to have them written out phonetically!

None of the Democratic candidates have ever been AWOL from military duty – and had to have their records ‘go missing’ in order to cover it up!

None of the Democratic candidates are universally recognized for their famous smirk – nor have any of them been scientifically scrutinized for their uncanny resemblance to lower primates!

All of the Democratic candidates can articulately respond to questions on the issues – and without electronic devices hidden in their jackets!

All of the Democratic candidates are fully cognizant of the Constitution – and are actually intellectually capable of reading it all by themselves!

None of the Democratic candidates rely on people like Bill Kristol for advice – or his uncanny ability to accurately predict the future!

None of the Democratic candidates have had move heaven and earth in order to hide their relationship with people like Jack Abramoff – or Jeff Gannon!

None of the Democratic candidates are the least bit interested in how The Pet Goat ended – and wouldn’t use an attack on US soil as the appropriate time to find out!

All of the Democratic candidates know the difference between a deficit and a surplus – and they don’t have to take off their shoes in order to count as high as twenty!

All of the Democratic candidates are willing and able to swear to uphold the Constitution – and none of them will have to cross their fingers behind their back when they do so!

All of the Democratic candidates are capable of being duly elected – and won’t have to rely on their daddy’s buddies on the Supreme Court to select them!

Good luck to all of our fine candidates – all of whom are actually capable of leading our nation, as opposed to the Idiot who’s been in charge for the last seven years!

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/327

Ten Mistakes I'll Probably Make In 2008

2008-01-03T11:46:00.000-05:00

By Roy Eidelson

Many of us view the calendar's turn from 2007 to 2008 as an opportunity to start anew and to improve upon the year just past. But despite this resolve, it's easy to predict that 2008 will be another year filled with small slips and large blunders. As a psychologist whose work focuses on five core concerns--about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness--that are especially powerful influences in our personal and collective lives, I offer this list of ten mistakes I'll probably make on the way to 2009.

Vulnerability

1. Sometimes, I'll make choices driven too much by safety concerns and too little by other important considerations. Fear will prevent me from carefully weighing alternatives and their likely outcomes--and potentially important opportunities will pass me by.

2. But at other times, I will foolishly and impulsively fail to exercise due caution. This temporary sense of invulnerability will leave me regretful about the consequences of my actions.

Injustice

3. Sometimes, I will confuse what's unfair with what's merely unfortunate; as a result, I'll hold onto unwarranted grievances that leave me brooding and angry, and that distract me from more crucial pursuits.

4. But at other times, I'll fail to recognize or appreciate real injustices, including those that I perpetrate myself. Sadly, this blindness will prevent me from acting to address the many instances of undeserved suffering in the world around me.

Distrust

5. Sometimes, I'll be unnecessarily suspicious of people who actually deserve my trust. These misjudgments will foreclose promising possibilities for collaboration.

6. But at other times, I will be gullible and believe things that are untrue. Even worse, I'll mistakenly place my faith in individuals who will abuse that trust for their own selfish purposes.

Superiority

7. Sometimes, I will wrongly presume to be better than others--convinced that I'm more deserving, that my moral compass is more true, or that my insights are more discerning.

8. But at other times, I'll be consumed by self-doubt and judge myself too harshly. The paralysis that results will prevent me from embracing valuable opportunities.

Helplessness

9. Sometimes, I will err in thinking that my own actions cannot make a difference; I will abandon efforts too soon--or not even try at all. The benefits from greater determination and resilience on my part will never be achieved.

10. But at other times, I'll grossly overestimate my capacity to control events around me. I'll stubbornly persevere and waste precious time and effort that instead could be devoted to pursuits where positive results are attainable.

Admittedly, that's quite a few mistakes. In my own defense, I expect to have lots of company. But knowing that these errors await, we can work harder to recognize them before they ensnare us. And by more carefully analyzing issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness when they arise, we can respond more effectively to the challenges that these concerns will undoubtedly pose in the year ahead. Finally, we should call upon those individuals who hold or seek positions of leadership in 2008 to do much the same—and we should evaluate them accordingly.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at eidelsonconsulting.com: http://www.eidelsonconsulting.com/blog/2007/12/ten_mistakes_ill_probably_make.html

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Roy Eidelson is a psychologist who studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings.

My Ten Favorite Books I read in 2007

2008-01-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

By Time for change

In choosing books for this list I considered the importance of the information contained in them, the quality of the evidence the authors use to make their case, and how easy they were for me to read and understand and enjoy. I feel that my understanding of today’s world was improved a great deal as a result of reading each of the books that I describe in this post. They are discussed here in alphabetical order.

The Bush Agenda – Invading the World One Economy at a Time

“The Bush Agenda”, by Antonia Juhasz, gave me a better understanding of the motives behind the Iraq War, as well as other related aspects of the Bush agenda, than any book I’ve read.

In summary, the Iraq invasion provided a great opportunity for many of George Bush’s wealthy supporters to make millions, billions, or tens of billions of dollars from contracts with the U.S. government to assist in the war effort and the reconstruction of Iraq and through access to Iraqi oil and other resources. A highly related purpose is for the occupation of Iraq to provide a launching site to occupy much of the Middle East, in order to satisfy the Bush administration’s imperial ambitions and acquire access to literally trillions of dollars worth of oil and other resources. The evidence for all this is overwhelming and is summarized in substantial detail by Juhasz.

It begins with Dick Cheney’s secret Energy Task Force meetings, launched just 10 days after he took office, and attended by representatives of many of the corporations who most benefited economically from the Iraq invasion. Minutes of the meeting showed the Task Force recommending to “make energy a priority of our trade and foreign policy” and “support initiatives by Mid-East suppliers to open up areas of their energy sector to foreign investment”.

L. Paul Bremer III, Bush’s appointee as the administrator of Iraq, quickly put into effect 100 orders which facilitated the recommendations of Cheney’s Energy Task Force and plans for the economic transformation of Iraq: All members of the Ba’ath Party and of the Iraqi Army were fired from their jobs without pay, thus putting hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (many who were highly skilled) out of work and paving the way for U.S. corporations to receive billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts; the “Trade Liberalization Policy” provided many benefits to U.S. corporations, devastating Iraq’s businesses and industries in the process; an order for “Prohibited media activity” essentially outlawed any news media criticisms of the Bush administration’s role in Iraq; The Foreign Investment Order provided the legal framework for the invasion of U.S. corporations into Iraq; Americans were placed in numerous key positions; and many other repressive orders were decreed by Bremer, including the granting of criminal and civil immunity for all Americans from Iraq’s pre-existing laws.

Billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts were provided by the U.S. government for reconstruction and security purposes. But while almost all of this money was awarded to Bush and Cheney cronies, the Iraqis were almost totally excluded from the process. Furthermore, the reconstruction effort was a miserable failure, with electricity, potable water, and sewage services remaining far below pre-war levels. Audits of U.S. taxpayer funds found contract files to be unavailable, incomplete, and unreliable, while $8.8 billion from the Development fund for Iraq were completely unaccounted for. Yet none of this interfered with U.S. corporations receiving the full amounts of their contracts plus much more.

And as for U.S. oil companies, Production Sharing Agreements were put in place to ensure their access to Iraq’s oil, that access was multiplied manifold, their profits have skyrocketed since the occupation began, and the Bush administration remains hard at work to ensure that their access to oil increases and becomes permanent.

Juhasz sums up the situation prior to publication of her book:

While violence increases daily in Iraq and the resistance grows, the Bush administration can be confident about a few things. First, the economic restructuring is well in place and moving forward… Second, U.S. corporations continue to earn billions of dollars for work in Iraq and have the potential to earn far more. Third, a government is in place that, while not ideal, is certainly preferable to the previous regime in terms of its willingness to advance Bush administration goals. Fourth, and most important to many, the oil sector has been opened to U.S. corporate access and control… all things considered, Bush’s key political and corporate allies have much to be optimistic about….

As President Bush has repeatedly said, Iraq is only the beginning. In the name of spreading peace and democracy, he has revealed plans to take his administration’s model of imperial-style corporate globalization from Iraq to the rest of the Middle East… Having begun in Iraq, U.S. corporations are once again in the lead, eager to expand their own interests elsewhere…

Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Perhaps the most comprehensive explanation I’ve ever read about the world-wide environmental situation that now confronts us was written by Jared Diamond in “Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” (Chosen as “Best Book of the Year” by The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and others). Diamond’s book describes the environmental causes of past and present failed societies, and compares them with other societies that have succeeded, in order to identify the causes of failed societies. The theme of his book can be summarized as:

Environmental crisis + failure of society to address it == > societal collapse

Diamond’s reason for writing his book is to make the point that we humans have it within our power to either fail to address the problem, which will lead to world-wide catastrophe, or to avoid catastrophe by addressing the problem while we still can. In making this point, Diamond identifies eight environmental causes of the collapse of past societies, and he adds four more that are additionally relevant to our current world.

He defends the relevance of his analogies to the past in many ways. In doing so he notes two extreme and opposite points of view that attempt to minimize the relevancy of those analogies. One is the racist point of view that holds that past failed societies deserved their fate because of their inherent failings as people. The opposite and equally invalid point of view holds that “past indigenous peoples were gentle and ecologically wise stewards of their environment, intimately knew and respected Nature, innocently lived in a virtual Garden of Eden…”

Diamond’s book is almost devoid of present day political content – as illustrated by the fact that George Bush is not mentioned once as a contributing cause to today’s environmental crisis. It’s not that he doesn’t recognize the importance of political factors to the state of our environment. He ends his book by giving an overview of our current situation and concluding that it can go either way, that he is “cautiously optimistic” that we will succeed in addressing our environmental problems, and that it all depends on whether or not we have the “political will” to do so.

Diamond makes his points with a great many examples of failed and successful societies. His examples of failed societies include Easter Island, the Anasazi, the Maya, the Greenland Norse, and the Rwandan genocide, among others.

Diamond summarizes our current situation as follows:

Our world society is presently on a non-sustainable course, and any of our 12 problems of non-sustainability that we have just summarized would suffice to limit our lifestyle within the next several decades. They are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50 years…. Any of the dozen problems if unsolved would do us grave harm… If we solved 11 of the problems, but not the 12th, we would still be in trouble… We have to solve them all.

Thus, because we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the world’s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another within the lifetime of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history, their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability.

Diamond ends his book with his bottom line reason for writing it:

Thus, we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of distant peoples and past peoples. That’s an opportunity that no past society enjoyed to such a degree. My hope in writing this book has been that enough people will choose to profit from that opportunity to make a difference.

The Conscience of a Liberal

Economics is generally a very difficult subject for me to read about and comprehend. Paul Krugman, more than any economist I’ve read, explains economic issues in terms that are easy to understand, along with detailed and referenced explanations for the reasons behind the economic trends that he discusses.

The main theme in “The Conscience of a Liberal” is how “movement conservatism” took over the Republican Party and our country in the early 1980s, made substantial progress in dismantling the New Deal, and produced a degree of economic inequality not seen here since what Krugman refers to as the “Long Gilded Age”, which lasted from the late 1860s to the Great Depression of 1929.

When a political movement that benefits the few at the expense of the many comes to power in a democracy, that demands an explanation. Krugman discusses several explanations for it, but he believes that racist backlash against our nation’s efforts to end racial discrimination provides the main explanation. However, he also discusses the evidence that race as a winning issue for Republicans is now in its last throes.

In the last parts of his book, Krugman provides an overview of the situation now facing us and comments on where he thinks we need to go from here. He concisely spells out the difference between us and our political opponents:

Liberals want to restore the middle-class society I grew up in; those who call themselves conservative want to take us back to the Gilded Age, undoing a century of history. Liberals defend long standing institutions like Social Security and Medicare; those who call themselves conservative want to privatize or undermine those institutions. Liberals want to honor our democratic principles and the rule of law; those who call themselves conservative want the president to have dictatorial powers and have applauded the Bush administration as it imprisons people without charges and subjects them to torture…. with a political strategy that rests, at its core, on exploiting the unwillingness of some Americans to grant equal rights to their fellow citizens – to those who don’t share their skin color, don’t share their faith, don’t share their sexual preferences.

Krugman concludes that movement conservatism does not represent the vast majority of the people of our country, and therefore there is no room for “bipartisan consensus” with them. He explains the futility of compromise with these people and where we need to go from here:

The central fact of modern American political life is the control of the Republican Party by movement conservatives, whose vision of what America should be is completely antithetical to that of the progressive movement. Because of that control, the notion… that we can make progress through bipartisan consensus is simply foolish. To be a progressive, then, means being partisan – at least for now.

The only way a progressive agenda can be enacted is if Democrats have both the presidency and a large enough majority in Congress to overcome Republican opposition. And achieving that kind of political preponderance will require leadership that makes opponents of the progressive agenda pay a political price for their obstructionism – leadership that, like FDR, welcomes the hatred of the interest groups trying to prevent us from making our society better.

Ghost Plane – The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

In “Ghost Plane”, Stephen Grey, Amnesty International Award-Winning Journalist for Excellence in Human Rights Reporting, meticulously documents the illegal and horrendous system of torture and other human rights abuses that George Bush has perpetrated upon the world as part of his so-called “War on Terror”. That system has three major components: Known U.S. operated prisons at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan, where torture and other grave abuses of human rights occur routinely; Secret U.S. prisons throughout the world where similar or worse abuses occur routinely; and worst of all, the program of “extraordinary rendition”, whereby U.S. officials kidnap (or otherwise gather into their custody) men or boys and transport them to prisons in countries where few or no barriers to the most horrendous kinds of torture exist, in full knowledge that those men are likely to be systematically tortured and never released until dead. In his book, copyrighted in 2006, Grey estimates that 11 thousand have encountered such a fate since the onset of George Bush’s “War on Terror”.

Grey makes every effort in his book to avoid exaggeration or any statement that might be seen as an exaggeration. Here are excerpts from his basic description of the U.S. torture program from his introduction:

As I continued my reporting in Washington, I heard whispers that there was something much bigger going on: a system of clandestine prisons that involved the incarceration of thousands of prisoners, not just the few hundred in Cuba. While the president spoke of spreading liberty across the world, CIA insiders spoke of a return to the old days of working hand in glove with some of the most repressive secret police in the world…

Much later, when more pieces of the puzzle were in place, I thought of the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the dissident writer. When he described the Soviet Union’s network of prison camps as a “Gulag Archipelago” he was portraying a parallel world that existed within physical reach of everyday life but yet could remain unseen to ordinary people. After years of persecution, Solzhenitsyn described a jail system that he knew from firsthand experience had swallowed millions of citizens into its entrails. At least a tenth never emerged alive.

The modern world of prisons run by the United States and its allies in the war on terror is far less extensive. Its inmates number thousands not millions. And yet there are eerie parallels between what the Soviet Union created and what we, in the West, are now constructing…

The Gulag was so very vast and extensive, and yet still it could be hidden in people’s minds. Ordinary citizens could persuade themselves that all was normal even as their next-door neighbor disappeared…

How much more than surreal, more apart from normal existence, was the network of prisons run after 9/11 by the United States and its allies? How much easier too was the denial and the double-think when those who disappeared into the modern gulag were, being mainly swarthy skinned Arabs with a different culture, so different from most of us in the West? How much more reassuring were the words from our politicians that all was well?

In the last chapter of his book, titled “Conclusion: Winning the War”, Grey explains how George Bush’s “War on Terror” has only increased the terrorism risk, and he notes that “it is imperative that an informed debate begins on whether the West’s approach, conducted largely in the shadows, is the right one”. Introducing his recommendations for radically changing our approach, Grey says:

I’ve spoken both to those who waged this war – those closely connected to the CIA and the U.S. government – and to those caught up in its operations, including many former prisoners. Despite describing things from different poles, I’ve found that most have described a similar story. Few on either side doubt, for instance, the scale of torture implemented within many of the jails where America has sent its prisoners…

Grey ends his book by noting:

Ignoring human rights helps recruit terrorists, justifies terrorism, and defeats the best thing we have going for us – the fact we stand for something better: for freedom, tolerance, and laws that protect all.

House of War – The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power

“House of War” by James Carroll is a must read for anyone who wants to thoroughly understand the rise and effects of the military industrial complex in our country. Carroll is a former priest and the son of a three star U.S. Air Forces general. Though he maintained a great deal of respect for his father, he nevertheless developed strong anti-war views in his youth – which led to tensions with his father. Though he writes from an anti-war point of view, all of the facts on which he bases his opinions are thoroughly documented. At the same time, his emotional investment in the issues he writes about makes his book all the more interesting.

The main theme of Carroll’s book is that the Pentagon has become a tremendously powerful entity unto itself, beyond the control of anyone, even American presidents. In the last pages of his book he says:

The Pentagon defines America’s reach across the world, and for countless millions that reach is choking… The Pentagon is now the dead center of an open-ended martial enterprise that no longer pretends to be defense. The world itself must be reshaped… The Pentagon has, more than ever, become a place to fear.

Though his book is even-handed from a political standpoint, Carroll is very straight forward and scathing in his description of the irresponsible way that the Bush administration has handled his “War on Terror”:

Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons… was the primary reason given for the Bush invasion of Iraq… Yet the concerns about weapons of mass destruction that justified the attack on Iraq, and may yet do so on Iran, are absurdly misplaced. When it comes to nuclear danger, Washington is by far the graver problem, beginning with its post-Cold War refusal to significantly downsize its own nuclear arsenal… to the Bush administration’s 2003 repudiation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the 2004 deployment of missile defense, which motivated Russia and China to add “hair” to the hair trigger; to the Bush administration’s stated – and unprecedented – readiness to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states… Under Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon embarked in 2002 on the stunning project of developing a new generation of nuclear weapons…

The effect of all this… is to legitimize nuclear-based politics, giving other nations, friend and foe alike, compelling reasons to acquire a nuclear capacity, if only for deterrence, and prompting them to behave in similar ways. That pattern was fully evident in Iran and North Korea, beginning almost immediately after the launching of the Global War on Terror, and the pattern promises to show itself in “nuclear-capable states” like Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Australia, South Africa, and others that long ago renounced nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, Russia, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan are all furiously adding to their nuclear arsenal. The Pentagon has become the engine of proliferation.

We come to what amounts to an ultimate betrayal by the national security establishment of its most solemn obligation, which is to provide for national security. The probing of questions about government failures before September 11, 2001, is meaningless when measured against the new jeopardy into which America was plunged by the war that Bush embarked upon… In late 2003, Donald Rumsfeld said, in an internal Pentagon memo, “We lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the Global War on Terror.” This odd assessment from a secretary of defense… actually reflects the Pentagon’s interest in an open-ended war. Permanent war means permanent martial dominance…

Nemesis – The Last Days of the American Republic

Chalmers Johnson calls “Nemesis” the last of his “inadvertent (non-fiction) trilogy” – a series of three books which were meant to warn Americans of pending catastrophe and the “decline and fall of the American Empire” if they don’t change their ways soon. He never planned to write three volumes, but the first two warnings were ignored so he gave it one last try – though he believes it is probably already too late.

His first book, which I haven’t read, was called “Blowback”, where Johnson warned of retaliation against the United States for the “covert, illegal violence” that we perpetrated abroad for the purpose of overthrowing democratically elected governments of other nations. It was written prior to the 9-11-2001 attacks on our country, but it didn’t receive much attention until after that date. His second book, “The Sorrows of Empire”, which was one of the best books I’ve ever read, warned about the disastrous effects of the monumental militarization of our country. And the focus of his current book can be pretty well ascertained from its subtitle – “The Last Days of the American Republic”.

Johnson explains the consequences of most Americans buying into the myth of a purely good and innocent nation as the victim of a world wide evil conspiracy:

Because Americans generally failed to consider seriously why we had been attacked on 9/11, the Bush administration was able to respond in a way that made the situation far worse…

Then he expands on the disastrous consequences of buying into Bush’s myth by explaining what otherwise could have happened, and what instead did happen.

We could have… won the hearts and minds of populations al-Qaeda was trying to mobilize… avoided entirely contravening the Geneva Conventions covering the treatment of prisoners of war and never have headed down the path of torturing people we picked up almost at random in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. government would have had no need to lie to its own citizens and the rest of the world about the nonexistent nuclear threat posed by Iraq or carry out a phony preventive war against that country.

Instead, we undermined the NATO alliance and brought to power in Iraq allies of the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran. Contrary to what virtually every strategist recommended as an effective response to terrorism, we launched our high-tech military against some of the poorest, weakest people on Earth. In Afghanistan, our aerial bombardment … gave warlordism, banditry, and opium production a new lease on life. In Iraq our “shock and awe” assault invited comparison with the sacking of Baghdad in 1258 by the Mongols. President Bush declared that… you are either with us or against us… His actions would ensure that, in the years to come, there would be ever more people around the world against us….

Overthrow – America’s History of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

In “Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer explores all 14 instances of regime change, overt or covert, by the United States since 1893, including only those episodes where the intended regime change was successful and where the United States played the decisive role, rather than where it acted in concert with other nations or as part of a larger war (as in WW II or the Korean War). The 14 episodes describe regime changes in Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

For most of the regime changes described in Kinzer’s book the results have been catastrophic for the country whose legitimate government we overthrew, often in behalf of a small wealthy elite that profited enormously from gaining access to the resources of the country. Kinzer describes the long term results of the regime changes as well as the motivations behind them and how they were carried out. Here is his description of the long term results from our overthrow of the legitimately elected government of Nicaragua in 1909:

In few countries is it possible to trace the development of anti-American sentiment as clearly as in Nicaragua. A century of trouble between the two nations, which led to the death of thousands and great suffering for generations of Nicaraguans, began when the United States deposed President Zelaya in 1909… Zelaya was the greatest statesman Nicaragua ever produced. If the United States had found a way to deal with him, it might have avoided the disasters that followed…

That terrible miscalculation drew the United States into a century of interventions in Nicaragua. They took a heavy toll in blood and treasure, profoundly damaged America’s image in the world, and helped keep generations of Nicaraguans in misery. Nicaragua still competes with Haiti to lead the Western Hemisphere in much that is undesirable, including rates of poverty, unemployment, infant mortality, and deaths from curable diseases.

The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

“The Shock Doctrine”, by Naomi Klein, is the only book on my 2007 list that I haven’t finished yet. But it is too important to leave off any list.

I believe that this book goes a very long way towards explaining why so much of the world’s population is impoverished today. It is no accident. Third World nations have to a very large extent been kept down by external human forces who seek to profit from the labors of the poor. To a very large extent today, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which are both very much under the control of the United States, are instruments which facilitate this process. They loan money to impoverished nations that are desperate for it, imposing conditions on those nations which work to keep the great majority of its inhabitants impoverished indefinitely. The process is something akin to loan sharking or indentured servitude. Since the governing elites of those nations usually profit from the deal, they have some motivation to play along with it.

The underpinning for the whole system is right wing economic ideology of the type first put forth by Milton Friedman. Since the rules of the game are so painful to the vast majority of a country’s inhabitants, various methods have had to be developed to keep the population in line. Sometimes that involves martial law and widespread kidnappings, executions, disappearances and torture, as under Pinochet in Chile. But many other methods have been developed as well, and often financial pressures or threats are enough to do the job. Taken as a whole, Klein terms these methods “shock therapy” – a therapy that is brutal enough to make a person or a population docile enough to go along with what they’re told to do. This is how she describes the beginnings of it in the introduction to her book:

Friedman first learned how to exploit a large-scale shock or crisis in the mid-seventies, when he acted as adviser to the Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Not only were Chileans in a state of shock following Pinochet’s violent coup, but the country was also traumatized by severe hyperinflation. Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy – tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation… It was the most extreme capitalist make-over ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a “Chicago School” revolution… Friedman predicted that the speed, suddenness and scope of the economic shifts would provoke psychological reactions in the public that “facilitate the adjustment”. He coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic “shock treatment.” In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or “shock therapy,” has been the method of choice. Pinochet also facilitated the adjustment with his own shock treatments…

It is also important to note here that Klein’s book exhibits an interesting parallel with two books written by John Perkins – “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” and “The Secret History of the American Empire – Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption” (also excellent books, but I didn’t have room for them on this list). Klein and Perkins write about very much the same phenomenon and reach very similar conclusions. The difference is that while Perkins bases his account mainly on his personal experiences and observations, Klein takes a wider view of the situation and bases her conclusions on extensive research and investigation.

It is worth quoting John Perkins here on his summary of how the system works:

We build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs (Economic hit men) provide favors...

Static – Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back

Amy Goodman is one of our country’s most valuable journalists. Any time I read a book that deals with issues of substantial importance to our country and our world, it turns out that Amy Goodman has interviewed the author on her radio program, “Democracy Now”.

“Static” was written by Amy and her brother, David Goodman. The book is a scathing but accurate and very well documented critique of journalism in our country today. It describes how much of the “news” we receive today is more akin to corporate propaganda than it is to news. Related to that, it also describes how the Bush administration goes to great lengths to control the news that Americans receive and suppress news that it feels threatened by.

Here is the Goodman’s description of some things the Bush administration has done to suppress news of the Iraq War, especially related to American atrocities:

The Al Jazeera offices in Afghanistan and Basra were bombed by American planes, and two of its correspondents have been imprisoned on unspecified terrorism charges… Al Jazeera’s journalists are not the only ones under siege. The Iraq War has been among the deadliest conflicts ever for journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that by mid-2006, over 100 journalists and media assistants had been killed in Iraq while doing their jobs. By comparison, 66 journalists lost their lives over the course of the 20-year-long Vietnam conflict. More than half of those killed in Iraq were Iraqi and other Arab journalists. Fifteen journalists have been killed by U.S. fire…

Journalists also risk arrest while reporting on the war in Iraq: In 2005 alone, U.S. forces arrested seven Iraqi journalists “for prolonged periods without charge or the disclosure of any supporting evidence,” according to CPJ. All were eventually released, and no charges were ever filed. CPJ concluded that the Pentagon has “displayed a pattern of disregard when confronted with issues involving the security of Iraqi journalists and citizens.”…

In an extraordinary attack on the press, the U.S. military declared in April 2004 that there could be no peace for Fallujah unless Al Jazeera abandoned the city … In August 2004, the U.S.-backed Iraqi government ordered Al Jazeera’s Baghdad bureau closed.

The take home message of the book is:

Now, with lives and freedoms on the line, we need a media that cuts through the lies and fakery that obscure the truth. A media that is fiercely independent. Unembedded. Journalists that works to inform, not to deceive. The soldiers and civilians in harm’s way in Iraq deserve no less. The citizens of the devastated and abandoned Gulf Coast are counting on it. And the people shackled in America’s secret gulags cry out for it. Free speech is democracy’s last line of defense. We must demand it. Defend it. And most of all, use it – now.

Takeover – The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy

There isn’t much more to say about Charlie Savage’s “Takeover” other than that it is an excellent and thoroughly documented story of every major step the Bush/Cheney administration has taken to subvert our Constitution for the sake of increasing their own power. His conclusion:

The expansive presidential powers claimed and exercised by the Bush-Cheney White House are now an immutable part of American history… The importance of such precedents is difficult to overstate. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once warned, any new claim of executive power, once validated into precedent, “lies like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes.

Sooner or later, there will always be another urgent need.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/263

Welcome Former Republicans!

2008-01-03T07:52:00.000-05:00

By Saje Williams

I know you're angry. We're all angry. They sold you a pig in a poke and it turns out that such things as "fiscal conservatism" and "family values" were little more than marketing slogans in stead of an example of truth in advertising.

I won't even say "I told you so." It just wouldn't be fair. It's difficult enough for people to accept the fact that they've been deceived and everything of value in their life either threatened or simply taken away by the swift fingers of a practiced con artist.

They told you that it would be good for you for their rich friends to get huge tax breaks, that it would "trickle down" to put more money in your pocket. In ALL our pockets. But it didn't. Because the ultra-rich tend to hoard money rather than spend it. Another couple thousand dollars in the hands of someone who already has nearly everything he or she could have ever wanted isn't going to find its way back into the economy. It's going to be stashed away, or, worse yet, used to pay for the airfare to go on a fabulous ski vacation in the Swiss Alps.

If YOU were to get a few thousand dollars, how would YOU spend it? On things you need, right? It would slip through your fingers like sand and you'd be left wondering where it went. But we know where it went. It went back into the economy, buying goods and services that help out your neighbors.

That's the way this sort of thing works. WE, the People, the workers and consumers, are what drive the economic machine. Without our labor, and our daily purchases, the machine grinds to a noisy halt.

You've been assured time and time again that the icons of the "conservative" movement had your back. They'd look out for you and your family. They practiced "family values" and, to prove it, launched an aggressive war against the very notion of "gay rights."

But you know what's a far more crippling attack on your family than a couple of gay people trying to survive an often inhospitable world? I'll tell you.

Lack of healthcare. Having to put yourself in debt up to your eyebrows to afford a badly needed operation.

The price of gas. It's difficult to get by when you have to pay an arm and a leg for fuel just to get to and from work. Meanwhile, the oil companies are laughing all the way to the bank, not only because they're making record profits, but because they're getting tax breaks from the government they neither need, nor deserve. Did you know that when Bill Clinton left office, the price of a gallon of gas was less than half of what it is now?

Underfunded education. Your kids are going to school and being taught how to pass tests, not how to acquire and process information effectively. Your kids are being expected to go into the job market and compete in a world market where nearly every other industrialized nation in the world has an education system many times superior to our own. Tuition rates are so high that just to get a decent college education can put a person deeply in debt for years to come. And there's no guarantee that they'll ever be able to get a job doing what they went to school for. Unless they come out a doctor, or a lawyer, they could just as easily find themselves working in a convenience store after graduation because all the jobs they thought were waiting for them have been shipped overseas.

Deregulation. They sold America a bill of goods, saying that all the regulations controlling how Big Business operates were actually harmful to the economy because it interfered with their ability to make a profit. Except, well, those same regulations kept lending institutions from making inadvisable loans to people without the ability to pay them back. They prevented unscrupulous credit agencies from preying on your college-age children, telling them that they could go out and buy anything they wanted and worry about the bill later. Except they didn't tell them that one misstep would send the interest rates skyrocketing. They didn't tell them that people who actually PAID off their cards at the end of the month fell into the undesirable customers category. The credit card companies WANT people who can't pay their bills.

And it gets better. How about a war we can't find a way out of, with a price tag in human suffering and cold hard cash that makes your head spin? Torture done in our names, upon human beings who have never been convicted of any crime, who have been denied even the most basic right to defend themselves in a court of law.

I know it's easy to try to blame everything on Bush, saying to yourself "well, he's not really a conservative."

Only one problem with that argument. Until things started going so terribly wrong, nearly every "conservative" icon, both inside and outside of government, was cheering everything this administration was doing. It wasn't until things started going wrong that they tried to distance themselves from Bush.

The problems that are facing the United States at this juncture are the product of what's generally known as "conservative" ideology. Except, well, frankly, none of these people are in any way "conservative." They're not trying to conserve anything, but, instead, return the nation to a time and place that never existed, or, if it did, was the next thing to hell for everyone not a member of the monied elite. They're regressive, not conservative. They think that America will be a better place if things went back to the way they were before the LAST time they crashed the economy.

They want to return to what Teddy Roosevelt called "the gilded age," a time when industrial robber barons wielded so much power that the government itself couldn't hope to rein them in. A time when THEY called the shots, and the citizens of the country were so much disposable labor. But now, we're not even that to them. We're a MARKET. Someplace to sell the goods they pay pennies on the dollar to make in other countries across the globe, where they can treat the workers however they like.

These are people for whom any notion of morality can only apply to OTHERS, not themselves. That is how they can condemn certain behaviors in public, yet practice the same behaviors behind closed doors. They make the rules for US to follow, but have no intention of following them themselves. It's their version of the Golden Rule. "He with the gold, rules."

I, for one, welcome you all you truth-seeking former Republicans with open arms. Because you're choosing to take the first steps toward truth. Toward the realization that they DON'T have your best interests at heart, and their public face is in no way reflective of their private personas. That the only thing you are to them is a nameless, faceless vote. Someone they've tried to train to respond to specific stimuli.

But you're not a dog, conditioned to come running with a mouthful of drool when you hear the bell ring. You're a human being, and you've seen through their bullshit. That's why you're here.

Sure, compared to the Republicans, the Democratic Party may seem a bit chaotic and more than a little scattered. The fact is, we don't have a unifying agenda like they do. We see things differently. We have a philosophy that says that government should give more than it takes, that government should protect the little guy first, that government belongs to We, the People, rather than They, the Corporations.

People like you and people like me.

And, in the end, that makes a world of difference.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://tinyurl.com/25ue28

Hey America- 9-11 is over--git yer shit together already, JESUS!

2008-01-03T07:44:00.000-05:00

By Philosoraptor

What the fuck are you smoking America? Jesus, wake up already will ya? Snap the fuck out of your nine eleven induced stupor and focus will ya for Christ's sake? Are you drunk, stoned, over-medicated or over entertained? Shall we just stand there and die rather than do something?

And the answer comes back, 'hey hotshot, why don't YOU do something'? What are YOU doing to fight tyranny besides bitch and moan into the ethernet at strangers? Don't ask me, I am totally clueless and not proud to admit it.

Look at our nation. We are an embarrassment, from our president down. We should all be ashamed of ourselves, but we're too proud for that. Did nine eleven do all this? Is THAT what turned us all into zombies and robots? What mass mind control trick is preventing us from doing what we are constitutionally duty bound to do? What junkie sickness makes us paralyzed to act against these monsters? Just look at us, are we THAT powerless? How can we even hold our heads up anymore?

Did nine eleven scare you? Did it change you forever? Did it make you into a different person than you were on nine ten? Or is the truth worse? Is the truth that you don't even want to talk about nine eleven? Maybe that you are tired of talking about and thinking about the war that nobody can stop or 'win'? Maybe you're just waiting it out till things get better on their own?

The world is looking at our nation with increasing alarm, wondering what the fuck our problem is, and wondering why we don't 'do something' about it. If you look at America as if it were a single person, that person is in serious need of medical attention, physical and mental, that person is suffering a severe type of psychosis induced by trauma and stress and addiction. Uncle Sam is on a crash course for a full blown nervous breakdown.

Sure nine eleven was an awful thing, and it hurts to remember it, and it hurts to think about it, and its scary to think of it happening again, and its easy to imagine that our government can protect us, and its comforting to pretend that our elected officials know what's best for us. But for Christ's sake, look what we've allowed ourselves to become because of it.

Look how they've exploited the horror of nine eleven, and still are, constantly, yet at the same time they never show the men and women leaping from the flames to their deaths, they never show the horrible re-runs of the towers collapsing, they know we don't want to talk about it, we don't want to see it or think about it, we don't want to be reminded that the man who supposedly did it is still out there, un-captured.

They never show us the 4000 dead U.S. Soldiers, they never show us the uncountable thousands of dead Iraqis, and they never show us the torture tapes or the billions of bucks in profits they are making from all that murder and death, ALL BECAUSE OF NINE ELEVEN. They are fucking with our heads big time, and we stand around like we're in the checkout line at Walmart, as if this were all perfectly normal.

For Christ's sake America, pick yourselves up, brush yourselves off, and start the fuck all over again will ya? And SOON.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://tinyurl.com/2ewvkq

Let's Toast to Ten Good Things About 2007

2008-01-02T03:59:00.000-05:00

by Medea Benjamin | December 31, 2007 - 10:46am

As we close this year on the low of Congress giving Bush more billions for war, and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, let's remember some of the year's gains that can revive our spirits for the New Year. Here are just ten.

1. With the exception of the White House, this has been a banner year for environmental consciousness and action. Al Gore and the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize. Green building and renewable energy have exploded. Congress passed the Green Jobs Act of 2007, authorizing $125 million for green job training. Over 700 U.S. mayors, representing 25 percent of the U.S. population, have signed a pledge to reduce greenhouse gases by 2012. Illinois became the 26th state to require that some of the state's electricity come from renewable sources and Kansas became the first state to refuse a permit for a new coal-fired power plant for health and environmental reasons. That's progress!

2. On the global environmental scene, the Bush dinosaurs were tackled head on. When the US delegation at the UN climate change conference in Bali tried to sabotage the negotiations, the delegate from tiny Papua New Guinea threw diplomatic niceties to the wind and said that if the U.S. couldn't lead, it should get out of the way. Embarrassed by international and domestic outrage, the U.S. delegation buckled, and the way was cleared for adopting the "Bali road map." Although it is a weak mandate, it lays the groundwork for a stronger climate agreement post-2012 when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocols ends.

3. Imagine living in a waste-free urban society? Well, it's no longer a utopian dream but a well-thought-out plan for India's state of Kerala. The plan to be "waste-free" within five years includes waste prevention, intensive re-use and recycling, composting, replacing unsustainable materials with sustainable ones, training people to produce these materials, and providing funds for setting up sustainably run businesses. The ground-breaking plan, spearheaded by a local grassroots movement, demonstrates how citizen groups can advance pioneering policies to heal the planet.

4. While the war in Iraq rages on, a new war was stopped. The specter of war with Iran loomed large throughout the year, with Washington accusing Iran of killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq and being a nuclear threat. Then in December came the National Intelligence Estimate showing that the Bush administration knew all along that Iran had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003. It exposed the Administration claims of an Iranian threat as unjustifiably inflated, and the winds of war were suddenly subdued. Nothing is guaranteed, but a U.S. military attack on Iran is less likely now than it was earlier in the year.

5. This year also brought a decrease in tensions with North Korea. Hostilities flared after North Korea successfully conducted a nuclear test in 2006. But the Bush administration, bogged down in Iraq and pushed by international pressure, agreed to negotiate. Following a series of six-party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S, on March 17, 2007, an historic agreement was reached. North Korea agreed to shut down its main nuclear facility and submit a list of its nuclear programs in exchange for fuel and normalization talks with the U.S. and Japan. During this age of raw aggression, it is a welcome example of putting diplomacy first.

6. The Iraqi people have little to celebrate, but there was one important victory for the people this year. Remember how the Bush administration and Congress were insisting that the Iraqi Parliament pass a new oil law? Touted as a way to "share oil revenue among all Iraqis", the oil law was really designed to transform the country's currently nationalized oil system to one open to foreign corporate control. But opposition was fierce inside Iraq, especially from the nation's oil worker unions. In a rare sign of independence from Washington and concern for domestic opinion, the Iraqi Parliament withstood intense U.S. pressure and refused to pass the oil law.

7. In early 2007, few Americans had heard of the private security company Blackwater. By year's end, Blackwater had become infamous for the killing of civilians in Iraq. The radical privatization of our military to corporations like Blackwater that are accountable to no one was exposed for all to see. This frightening process is still well under way, with more private contractors in Iraq than soldiers, but at least the issue has now entered the public dialogue. And Blackwater has received such a black eye that it's unlikely to get a new Iraq contract when the present one expires in May.

8. One victory on both the war and environmental fronts came in Australia, where Labor Party's Kevin Rudd beat conservative John Howard to become Prime Minister. Howard was an enthusiastic backer of George Bush's disastrous war on terror, from defending the Guantánamo prison and extraordinary rendition to sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Howard also joined Bush in refusing to ratify the Kyoto Agreement, arguing it would cost Australians jobs. After assuming office on December 3, Kevin Rudd immediately signed the Kyoto agreement and he has promised to remove Australia's combat troops from Iraq by mid-2008.

9. Sometimes a loss is a win. Hugo Chavez had initiated a constitutional referendum that would have, among other changes, scrapped term limits. His immediate acceptance of a razor-thin margin of defeat before all the votes were even counted showed his democratic colors and made it a lot harder for Bush and the corporate media to label him a dictator. Despite the loss, Chavez remains extremely popular, especially among the poor and working class in Venezuela. And throughout Latin America, the historic transformation led by progressive leaders like Chavez continues to blossom.

10. Last but not least, this year saw the resignation of some of Bush's closest allies in government. Donald Rumsfeld resigned as Secretary of Defense, Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General, and Karl Rove as Deputy Chief of Staff. Best of all, we can give thanks that we only have ONE YEAR left of the criminal, war-mongering, constitution-shredding, rights-violating, torture-sanctioning Bush Administration! It's just GOT to get better than this!

So here's a toast to a green future, diplomacy, and surviving the last throes of the Bush regime. Que viva 2008!

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at smirkingchimp.com: http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/11825

Aw, Come On, Guys - It's a New Year

2008-01-01T07:53:00.000-05:00

By NanceGreggs

As we approach this new year – the last year of Bush’s, uh, presidency – I think it’s time we stopped lying to the Bushbots who are, if you will, in their last throes. With only a handful of them left, let’s admit to all of the untruths that have brought their numbers down to a dwindling few …

Let’s admit that Bush actually rushed to action on the morning of 9-11. It should seem obvious by now that the librul media made a tape-loop of three seconds of footage of him reading The Pet Goat, and made it look like he sat there like a jerk, doing nothing but staring off into space.

Enough of the lies about those WMDs – which, as we all know, were found stockpiled throughout Iraq in plain sight, along with mobile chemical labs and drones that could drop those chemical weapons on unsuspecting nations within minutes – a news story that went unreported, along with the hundreds of hours of footage of our troops being greeted with sweets and flowers.

Let’s own up to the fact that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were the work of a few bad apples. The United States does not torture. Let’s admit that that’s why the alleged ‘torture tapes’ had to be destroyed – because the American public would be disheartened to see how enemy combatants are coddled by the reborn-again-in-Christ president and his administration.

And let’s drop the BS about how badly things are going in Iraq and Afghanistan, please. The ‘good news stories’ are just too plentiful to report; that’s why you never hear about them in the MSM.

Admit it – no one supports the troops more than G.W. Bush and the Republicans. The Walter Reed incident was a hoax dreamed-up by Democrats – probably the same ones who sent anthrax to themselves in the mail.

All of our wounded soldiers are getting excellent care – and those who say different are just lying, along with those who insist they have been sent into combat under-equipped. Billions of dollars have been spent on contracts with fine corporations like Halliburton, whose profits have actually plummeted because they spend every cent on supplying our troops with the best of everything.

And isn’t it time to let go of the lies we have all perpetrated about the economy being in the toilet? Just look at the year-end bonuses the CEOs of major corporations have been awarded. Surely they wouldn’t be paying themselves that kind of money if the companies they oversee didn’t have a surplus of profits to throw around.

The devaluation of the US dollar? A rumor started by world economists – undoubtedly in cahoots with those so-called scientists who keep themselves busy photo-shopping pics of polar ice melting, when they’re not busy suppressing evidence that the earth is indeed only six thousand years old.

For the sake of all that is holy, let’s stop pretending that things like war and torture weren’t part of Jesus’ teachings all along. And damn those Bible suppressors who have refused to acknowledge the second half of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus clearly stated that the warmongers shall be the first to enter the Gates of Heaven.

The national debt? Okay, guys, enough is enough. Can’t we just admit that the people on our side made that shit up to get the other side’s knickers in a twist? We all know that we don’t owe anybody a dime – in fact, we’re so rollin’ in dough, it’s time to support more tax cuts for the wealthy just so the government doesn’t have all of that cash lyin’ around.

The NIE’s that show that Iran has no viable nuke program? Ha, ha, ha – yeah, brought to you by the same jokesters who say our meddling in the Middle East has actually increased anti-American sentiment around the world, and made us more vulnerable. Let’s just state the obvious: every last one of them is on the Democratic payroll, coerced into saying things that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Let’s face it, folks, our worst lies have been aimed at the personal quirks of our esteemed leaders. Dick Cheney? Okay, who among us hasn’t shot a friend in the face and expected an apology from them? Bush’s nonsensical speeches? We have all known since day one that he happens to be contemporaneously translating ancient texts into English as he speaks – so let’s stop pretending that things like “putting food on your family” aren’t brilliant quotes from ancient Sanskrit that just happen to lose something in translation.

Alberto Gonzales? As fine a legal mind as we will ever see grace the AG’s office – the man can actually remember what wasn’t discussed at meetings he never attended. Time to get off this guy’s back and give him his due, don’t ya think?

Condi Rice? Ever notice how the world brightens up when she shows up – not the country she happens to be in at the time, but the rest of the world?

Karl Rove? Let’s finally admit that we’ve been denigrating this fine American for no apparent reason, along with the others who have departed political life to spend more time with their families, just because we can’t stand to see good people speaking the truth and are not satisfied until we hound them into resigning.

As for the PNACers like Billy Kristol, let’s just own up to the fact that he and his buddies have been right all along, and if it wasn’t for that consistently lyin’ mainstream media, the world would know exactly how accurate their predictions have been.

Come on, guys, it’s a new year. It’s time to admit to the Bushbots that their support for this regime has been right-on-the-money from the beginning, and if it wasn’t for all the lies we’ve told about this administration, they’d be millions strong, instead of being down to eleven people.

The truth is that the country is doing better than ever, the economy is soaring, our traditional allies can’t wait for us to start another war just so they can get in on the action, the national debt doesn’t exist, the only reason our education system looks so bad is because the other nations’ kids are cheating on the tests, and if you’re worried about bridges collapsing for lack of maintenance – hey, we’ve got so much money to spend, we can actually afford bridges to nowhere!

So it’s time to stop the lies, the innuendo, the smears and the propaganda. Here we are, seven years in, and all is right with the nation and the world.

It’s enough to make the Bushbots stand up and yell, “Hey, we told you so!” But somehow I think they’re just too gracious to do that.

Happy New Year to all – and let’s keep our miserable political fabrications down to a minimum in ’08, shall we? I think the Bushbots may actually have caught on to our lyin’ ways…

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally poated at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/324

M. Collins: Forget the Torture Tapes

2008-01-01T07:40:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, 1 January 2008, 11:39 am
Opinion: Michael Collins

M. Collins: Forget the Torture Tapes

Caravaggio
Michael Collins
“Scoop” Independent News
Washington, D.C.

There’s a reflexive tendency to think the worst of the Bush-Cheney administration when scandals like the torture tapes emerge. This tendency is well justified.

This administration’s defining moment was the Iraq invasion. Over time, it caused death to 1.2 million civilians and the injuries of 1.1 million noncombatants. Just last week we found out that there are now five million orphans in Iraq.

How can the administration and their enablers ever top that? Why shouldn’t we expect the worst immediately when we hear yet another accusation of criminal or unethical conduct?

Destroying torture tapes pales by comparison to these tragedies, all a result of the illegal invasion:

Opinion Research Group Sept. 2007
Iraqi anti corruption board Dec 15, 2007

Have you heard or read that 9% or Iraq’s population is either dead or injured to date due to the 2003 invasion? This is rarely addressed by U.S. media or politicians.

The announcement that 19% of Iraq’s population now consists of orphans hasn’t hit mainstream media’s radar yet. This shocker seems destined for the same fate as the death and injury figures.

Snuff Tapes and One Dead Terrorist Dominate Coverage

Odd isn’t it? All this emphasis on the CIA’s destruction of Abu Zubaydah torture tapes instead of the pervasive and ongoing human loss and suffering visited on Iraq by Bush and Cheney?

Let’s take a quick look at the tape controversy and see if there’s some relationship to the dismissal and denial of the infinitely larger outrage.

Abu Zubaydah was either a terrorist kingpin or a seriously disturbed individual with multiple personality traits. He either provided a wealth of information or he was a useless informant. His torture was conducted either with or without the full knowledge of Bush-Cheney. The destruction of the torture tapes was either approved by Bush-Cheney in advance or it became known to them after the fact. We’re either seeing a major cover up or flawed White House public relations in the wake of Rove’s departure.

By applying “the law of subsumption,” (i.e., thinking the worst of Bush-Cheney is almost always correct given prior performance) this side show can be wrapped up promptly.

Bush and Cheney were desperate to justify their disastrous Iraq adventure. There were no WMDs, there never had been any connection between Saddam and 911, and the excuse of bringing democracy to Iraq had no legs. Why are we there? How do we explain the Iraqi resistance? What if the people discover it was really all about oil?

Simple and Grotesque at the Same Time

A justification for this insanity was both essential and time-critical. Voila! We’ve captured Abu Zubaydah! Isn’t he a top al Qaeda operative?

But there was a deal killer right from the start. The FBI’s top al-Qaeda expert, Dan Coleman, didn’t mince words: "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality." In Zubaydah’s long term diary, he named his personalities: “’hani 1, hani 2, and hani 3,’ - a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego.” Coleman’s CIA counterpart came to the same conclusion. (This is all documented by Ron Suskind in The One Percent Solution.)

This analysis was quickly discarded and replaced by a self serving political fantasy. The key al-Qaeda operative was now in custody! A fourth personality was created for Zubaydah when Bush described his special prisoner as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."

Bush blew the war that never should have been. He was desperate. Abu Zubaydah experienced the very worst timing in his life and wound up as a key excuse for the program of illegal detention and torture. Next outrage.

Who knows why they taped the torture? What difference does it make? How much more evidence do we need to demonstrate the absolute betrayal of the United States by a cult of supreme narcissists? We can grasp that these are “high crimes” even if our elected representatives can’t.

The relationship between this “key operative’s” story and the media and political blackout about the death and suffering of millions may be this simple. Keep people involved in appalling minutiae and avoid the larger charges which nearly everyone would see as an utter outrage.

In a sense, it’s the same strategy employed by the media and politicians in presidential campaigns. Never mention the real problems, the overwhelming challenges. Keep it focused on “experience,” the “horse race,” polls, and who apologized to whom. But never address the salient issues. That would be telling.

I Still See Dead People

As interesting as all this tape business is, what difference does it make in the larger context - the tragedy that is and will continue to be Iraq? The thought of five million orphans in a nation of 26 million people is simply too appalling to fully comprehend. An equivalent number in the United States would be 57 million orphans. Can you imagine that?

Video taping torture, the destruction of evidence, and the exact role of the White House in the entire affair are indicative and emblematic of the larger problems. These acts represent a gruesome metaphor. But it’s just more of the same outrageous behavior we’ve seen for years.

The overriding crime is over a million deaths plus the suffering and abandonment of millions more, all due to a foreign policy based on lies and deception. This was done against the prevailing views of the military and the people of the United States.

Millions of Iraqi civilians are dead, suffering and abandoned.

How will they vote in their new democracy?

END

Permission to reprint in part or whole with attribution of authorship and a link to this article

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0801/S00011.htm

Slap that yellow ribbon on your SUV

2007-12-31T08:35:00.000-05:00

By MN Against Bush

Do you want to show your support of our troops? Well it is simple to do, simply slap a yellow ribbon on your SUV and you can show just how much you appreciate watching those troops get their limbs blown up in the war that you sit at home and watch on Fox News for entertainment.

If you show off your ribbon you will be showing our troops plenty support, and you can feel comfortable defending keeping them in Iraq for years to come. You don't have to worry about the fact that many of them want nothing more than to be able to go home and be with their families, you can just pretend that the best way to support them is to keep them there longer. You can sit and watch as they are forced to kill and be killed in a war that many of them don't even support, because as long as you say you support the troops you can put them through whatever hell your ideology creates.

It doesn't matter that many of the young men and women who are in the military are there because they enlisted on the basis of misconceptions. Here they were being pummeled with television ads showing the members of our armed forces being promoted to hero status, and assured them that if they would only enlist they could be a hero too. Everybody wants to be a hero, and so many people listed out of a great sense of civic duty. But they were never shown what it is really like to be in the military in those ads. They never showed images of people having their friends blown up by bombs in those ads, they never showed a child crying when they learned their daddy was killed, they never showed the people who came back from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, they were only showed the hero worship. Many people wanted be heroes, but once they signed on the dotted line there was no going back. All of a sudden they were being sent into an illegal war and being forced to fight for a lie. If they backed out they would be sent to prison and have their lives destroyed, and so their families were ripped apart and they were forced to fight for the lie.

They fought for the lie in large part because they had no choice and were lied to about the reality of war. And they watched helplessly as their friends get killed, they watched helplessly as civilians died needlessly, and they watched helplessly as the blood squirt from the stump that remained of their leg after they got too close to a roadside bomb. And then they were they sent off to be treated for their injuries within the confines of the mold encrusted walls of Walter Reed.

But you can forget about all that, because all it takes to support the troops is to slap that yellow ribbon on your SUV. If you say you support the troops then you can go right ahead and vote for politicians that will cut their benefits, extend their tours, and get them sent home in coffins. As long as you have the yellow ribbon you can excuse anything.

So drive around with your yellow ribbon, watch your Fox News, and pump your fist wildly in the air as you scream "USA! USA! USA!" As long as you pretend to be really enthusiastic about supporting the troops you don't have to worry about bringing them home from the war they are being killed off in.

Are you proud to be an American right now or what?

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MN%20Against%20Bush/134

An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement From Iraq Veterans Against the War

2007-12-30T06:07:00.000-05:00

http://www.ivaw.org/node/2257

An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement From Iraq Veterans Against the War

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the quagmire known as the invasion/occupation of Iraq, many of us feel a need to mark this occasion with an appropriately momentous show of resistance. For the past few months, IVAW has been organizing "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan." From March 13-16, 2008, we will assemble the largest gathering of US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan in history, as well as Iraqi and Afghan survivors, to offer first-hand, eyewitness accounts to tell the truth about these occupations — their impact on the troops, their families, our nation, and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Winter Soldier will require IVAW's full attention and organizing capacity leading up to and during the event.

We would like to have as many people as possible attend the event and we are making arrangements to provide live broadcasting of the hearings for those who cannot hear the testimony first hand, as space will be limited. We ask all of you to help us to spread the message of the testimony, raise funds, and get more veterans and GIs involved.

We have been inspired by the tremendous support that the movement has shown us and we believe the success of Winter Soldier will ultimately depend on the support of our allies and the hard work of our members. Because Winter Soldier will provide a unique venue for those who experienced war on the ground to expose the truth and consequences of the "War on Terror" to the nation and the world, we are requesting that, from March 13-16, the larger anti-war movement call no national mobilizations and that there be no local protests or civil disobedience actions in Washington, DC.

Some leaders of the movement have expressed a desire to have a mass assembly to mark the fifth anniversary. Some have expressed support for a concert/rally. IVAW would support any events that do not interfere with the Winter Soldier hearings, our strategy, or goals. We would encourage our members to continue participating in events of the larger movement to end the occupation of Iraq, as we acknowledge both the significance and the necessity of such actions for movement building. IVAW will also arrange to make available copies of the Winter Soldier transcript highlights to support the various efforts of the antiwar movement.

We are thankful for your enduring support of IVAW and Winter Soldier. Let us all continue to think strategically and act in a spirit of cooperation.

In solidarity,
Iraq Veterans Against the War

IVAW Board of Directors
Camilo E. Mejia
Jabbar Magruder
Margaret Stevens
Phil Aliff
Jason Lemieux
Adam Kokesh
Liam Madden
Anita Foster
Jose Vasquez

Winter Soldier Organizing Team
Aaron Hughes
Fernando Braga
Adrienne Kinne
Perry O'Brien
Martin Smith
Lily Hughes
Amadee Braxton

For detailed information on how your organization can support Winter Soldier please write to: wintersoldier@ivaw.org

http://www.ivaw.org/node/2257

Hi

2007-12-23T04:56:00.000-05:00

Hi:
Just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Rick Hassett. AKA; Reddog. Just joined the blog and will be posting from time to time. I'm a member of VFP/Smedley and currently at the Coatesville, Pa. Vet's Hospital in residential treatment for PTSD. (19 months in Vietnam).

Will be blogging as to my experiences here in the future.

For now, Best Regards and Very Happy Holidays,

Rick Hassett (Reddog)

Eventually, that Fat Lady IS Definitely Gonna Sing!

2007-12-21T02:13:00.000-05:00

By NanceGreggs

The disastrous production of BushCo, a minor opera best known for its collection of ear-grating contradictions and cacophonous lies, is about to end as all operas do.

The Fat Lady will assume center stage, and will belt a tune that can be heard with clarity all the way to the back of the balcony, signaling an end to the nightmarish extravaganza whose aftertaste will be as bitterly remembered as the outlandish price of admission.

After an expenditure of billions of taxpayers’ dollars on sets, props and costumes rather than a script of style and substance, the cast is already rushing to the nearest backstage exit, hoping to escape a more-than-irate audience demanding a refund on their tickets.

In fact, some haven’t even waited for the last curtain call, but have already snuck out into the alley behind the theater, claiming a suddenly-remembered need to quit the bright lights of show-biz in order to spend more time with their families.

But the fact is that in this soon-to-close show, the Fat Lady is none other than Lady Justice, and as emaciated and weak as she has become – having been bound, gagged and tortured backstage during the entire run of the BushCo debacle – she is ready, willing, and more than able to take the stage and regale the world with her finale.

After the frustration of the last seven years, as the crimes of this administration have mounted and become more blatantly obvious with seemingly no end in sight, it is understandable that so many have adopted a never gonna happen attitude when it comes to imagining that these criminals will finally get their just desserts.

But Lady Justice has her fan base and, when all is said and sung, she will not be deterred from – you should pardon the expression – bringing the House down.

We have seen this phenomena before – the concentration camp inmates who never thought they’d see justice done, but who, after years of dashed hopes and no basis for any real anticipation, watched the Nuremberg trials unfold, saw Eichmann twitching in the prisoner’s dock, saw those who had haunted their nightmares, suddenly humiliated and frightened, stand trial at long last.

This will happen. Lady Justice may not be as swift to act as we would hope, and after years of the silence imposed by her captivity, it may take some time for her voice to regain its traditional strength.

But she will sing again and, when she does, there will be no corner of the stage dark enough for the guilty to hide. Slowly but surely, the house lights are being turned up, and the rats are becoming increasingly uneasy about the alleged security of their hidey-holes.

The audience has turned, and they have turned with a vengeance. For some, the turning point came well into the first act; for others, it is the last scene, now in progress, that will prompt them to rush to the ticket office, waving their playbills and demanding to see the show they had been promised, and not the one they had been duped into sitting through, no less paying for.

Shredded documents, missing taxpayer dollars, deleted hard-drives, contradictory statements, claims of executive privilege, secrecy due to alleged national security interests, corruption, escalating debt, cronyism, malfeasance, sex, lies and erased videotapes – and the fact that the country has nothing of value to balance the losses it has sustained due to all of the above – is a scene about to explode on the stage in a display of fireworks bound to dazzle those still left in their seats, not to mention capturing the attention of the so-called MSM critics who hailed this bomb as an unabashed hit since opening night.

So be patient, my fellow opera attendees. The Fat Lady WILL sing, and when she clears her throat and opens her mouth, the whole world will hear the sweetness of her dulcet tones – which will sound all the sweeter after such a long absence from her rightful place on the stage.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/320

A Boondocks Chapter Christmas at Fort Bragg

2007-12-20T09:38:00.000-05:00

http://www.ivaw.org/node/2230

Brownies Will Get You Five to Ten
A Boondocks Chapter Christmas at Fort Bragg
By Jason Hurd

On the morning of December 17, 2007, Steve Casey and I awoke bright and early at the Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Steve and I had driven nearly three hundred miles from our home-base in Asheville, North Carolina to distribute holiday gift bags to the wonderful servicewomen and men stationed at our nation's busiest military post--Fort Bragg. Our friends and supporters in Asheville stuffed nearly three hundred small lunch bags full of holiday cards, chocolates, cookies and home-made brownies. The gift bags had a humble feel to them: brown paper lunch sacks with the tops folded down, green and red ribbons, a copy of our newsletter Sit-Rep stapled to the outside and a small sticker that said, "To: A Warrior, From: IVAW." Our mission was to ensure that these bags--each made with love and kindness--got into the hands of our deserving soldiers.

With gift bags in hand, Steve and I drove to Fort Bragg's Mini Mall and set up a small collapsible table to distribute the bags from. We taped two large poster boards to the front of the table; one said, "Happy Holidays From Your Fellow Veterans," and the other proclaimed, "We Love Our Service Women and Men." Immediately, Steve and I began handing the packages to soldiers as they exited the Mini Mall. I greeted each soldier by saying, "Hello. My friend and I are veterans and we are giving holiday gift bags to our soldiers to show our appreciation for your service. Thank you and happy holidays." Nearly every soldier I spoke with replied with a large smile, "Thank you very much. I'm glad there are people like you doing this. Happy holidays to you too!" Within an hour, Steve and I had given out nearly one hundred and fifty bags. In that time, only one soldier reacted negatively toward us; every one else seemed extremely pleased.

Around one o'clock in the afternoon, a female manager who worked for the Army and Air Force Exchange Services (AFFES) came out of the Mini Mall and said, "Hey guys I'm glad your giving out packages to soldiers, but you can't do this on Fort Bragg without a permit." I replied, "Great! Where do we get a permit?" The manager explained where we needed to go, and we began packing up shop to go get our permit. That's when the Military Police showed up. Three MP's--SSG Netwig, PFC Murray and PVT Garren--approached us and began questioning us about our gift bags. SSG Netwig glared at a copy of Sit-Rep and said, "I'm going to keep my personal opinion out of this, but you are disrupting the order and discipline of my post." I explained that we were on our way to get a permit for our bags and we had no intentions of disrupting the order and discipline of Fort Bragg. SSG Netwig replied that we had offended a lot of people with our bags (which was news to Steve and I) and that he would not allow us to continue distributing them.

At that moment, a Special Forces Captain (apparently one of the people we had offended) approached SSG Netwig and spoke with him privately. Immediately, SSG Netwig said that we were going to the Provost Marshall's office to answer questions.
"Are we being arrested?" I said.

"No. But you are being detained," SSG Netwig replied.

At that moment, the MP's shoved Steve and I against their patrol car, searched us, handcuffed us and placed us in the patrol car like criminals. They drove us away leaving a box of gift bags on the trunk of Steve's car. In the back of the patrol car, I looked at Steve and said, "Don't worry, this is a good thing--trust me." "OK," Steve said. SSG netwig drove us to the Provost Marshall's office where, after being searched a second time, we spent the next four hours as detainees. One investigator told Steve that Fort Bragg is a conservative post and that anti-war views were in the minority. The officers separated Steve and I and began questioning us. I asked four times to make a phone call so that I could consult with an attorney; the officers denied my right each time. A criminal investigator entered my room.

"Are you affiliated with any other groups besides IVAW?" he asked.

"No, I am not, " I replied.

"How did you and this Steve guy meet?"

"Look," I said, "I'm not going to continue answering questions without consulting an attorney."

"But you aren't under arrest. You're merely detained and we are trying to have a friendly conversation with you," the investigator said.

"I feel like like it is in my best interests to consult with an attorney before continuing," I replied.

Then the investigator and officers walked out leaving me alone in the room. Against my captor's wishes, I began text messaging the Quaker House and IVAW members to let them know what was happening (the officers had mistakenly left my phone). Immediately, the investigators began receiving calls from every peace activist from North Carolina to Philadelphia urging them to release Steve and I. The MP's knew they had a situation on their hands.

Before we knew it, an investigator apologized to Steve and I for the inconvenience and released us. The investigator informed us that we just needed to get a permit for future activities of this nature. Two young MP's escorted Steve and I back to our car and we talked about Iraq on the way. One of the young MP's said, "Yeah, fuck Iraq. I hate that place. I had friends die there. I don't ever want to go back." We pulled up to Steve's car and rubbing the cuts on our wrists from the handcuffs, we saw the perfect ending to our day. The box of gift bags was still sitting atop Steve's trunk and some passerby had written on it the following:

"Hi, I heard what happened. Listen up cops, politicians, and OVER EGOTISTIC DRAMA QUEEN SENIOR NCO'S AND OFFICERS! Many friends in my platoon DIED BRUTALLY for the First Amendment. We have the right to peaceful protest, damn you! Why did you arrest these guys? To all ya'll who don't believe in: freedom of speech, press, council, religion, assembly, and petition...GO TO HELL!! Sincerely, A concerned passerby and witness to the arrest of protesters."

So much for being the minority.

uhc comment: I can't tell you how proud these guys make me feel. Rock on, Brothers!

http://www.ivaw.org/node/2230

Bush's Democrats on Iraq

2007-12-20T09:31:00.000-05:00

by Ron Fullwood

http://www.opednews.com

A day after 21 Democrats folded in the face of republican demands that they approve more money for Bush's Iraq occupation, it's been predicted that enough House Democrats are now willing to abandon last week's insistence that Iraq funds be tied to a commitment to set an end date to the aggression and will reportedly accept the Senate capitulation which allows Bush to dip into our treasury once more and continue his open-ended militarism (most say they reject) with impunity.

In an unusual procedure, the House will take up the Iraq portion of the omnibus spending bill today and is expected to give Bush and the republican minority in Congress more rope in Iraq in exchange for compromises on veterans spending and other Democratic priorities republicans have been hindering with their unyielding opposition and obstruction.

The obvious question for Democrats who are allowing these funds to advance, and allowing Bush to (again) sidestep the majority of congressional opposition to his occupation, is, what obligation do these Democrats feel they have to the overwhelming majority of voters who demanded an end to the Iraq occupation last November with their votes replacing the republican majority with Democrats who pledged they would stand in the way of Bush's arrogant disregard of our collective will? Where has our Democratic majority demonstrated the same unyielding opposition and obstruction to Bush's widely unpopular stance on Iraq that republicans have managed since they assumed the majority we provided them?

At every point where Democrats were to hold the line on their demands (our demands) for a timetable or a mere commitment that Bush bring our troops home by a date certain, Democrats have done nothing but posture, and then, bend; albeit in increments of funding that they insist are 'bridge funds' for the troops while they wait for Bush and his republicans to relent. Amazingly (and many say predictably), those Democrats who have continued to give our lame-duck commander more rope for his occupation are still dealing with the administration and their republican enablers as if they've actually demonstrated honesty, or even good faith, in their characterizations of the quagmire, or in their justifications for keeping our troops bogged down there.

Where is any of the political reconciliation Bush and his republicans promised forthcoming from the Iraqi regime which over 3800 of our nation's defenders have fought and died to support and defend? It's an insult to anyone who has assumed any honesty or good faith from this administration that their Secretary of State is busy, right now, at the dawn of the House capitulation, begging the Maliki regime to clean up their political act and make nice with their sectarian rivals for their hapless U.S. audience and save their congressional supporters' political faces.

Where is the assurance that Iraqis will assume any of the 'security' tasks that the administration and their republicans now insist are tantamount and have precedence over the "room" Bush argued earlier this year our troops were providing Iraqis for their political reconciliation? The only demonstrated results of Bush's unilateral, increased occupation (which Democrats have funded right along with the deployment) have been from our troops' ability to kill thousands of Iraqis they claim are either 'insurgent' or terrorist.

There is no more of a 'threat' to America from resisting Iraqis than there was from the non-existent Iraqi WMDs Bush and his minions claimed threatened the U.S. as they argued for the invasion at its outset. Six years into the diversion from the pursuit of the original, 9-11 terror suspects in Afghanistan to "fight terrorists there," in Iraq, there has been no diminution of individuals openly committed to violence against the U.S., our allies, or our interests abroad. In the administration's own intelligence reports there are repeated warnings that Bush's reckless militarism in Iraq has actually fostered and is fueling resistant violence, rather than stifling it, as the administration and their supporters have claimed in their justifications to continue.

Where are these supporters of giving Bush more money to continue in Iraq getting the intelligence that justifies continuing? If they're still relying on the administration's word on Iraq then they're settling for less than half-truths. None of the administration's shifting justifications for continuing in Iraq contain any acknowledgment of the years of squandering of lives in Iraq or any acknowledgment or understanding of their own complicity in the unrest and chaos which their invasion and occupation has unleashed.

The politicians, here and in Iraq, are merely shaving off the edges of their disintegrating coups and constructing little barriers to scrutiny - and for Bush and his republicans, to hold back the accountability that our votes in the next election intend to bring to bear on their autocratic abuses of power and assumed authority. In the Senate yesterday, and in the House today, a determinate number of Democrats elected to tear down the administration's petty obstructions are expected to abandon their opposition (again) and allow Bush another shred of cover on Iraq.

Democratic presidential aspirants who actually are employed to confront Bush behind their elected positions in Congress - Dodd, Obama, Biden, Clinton - didn't even bother to show up and vote. Bush supporter, republican John McCain did, to wage the administration fight against any limiting amendments.

Sen. Clinton, who co-sponsored an amendment to the bill which would set a date for withdrawal, but failed to show up and vote, said today on Fox & Friends morning news that she's "focusing on the "vision that I have for America" and "what I would do to hit that ground running on that very first day." It would be infinitely more productive if she just focused on the job at hand, instead.

Sen. Obama, who also failed to show up and debate or vote, gave an Iraq speech earlier in the week in which he railed against politicians who "feared looking weak and failed to ask hard questions." Why wasn't he on the Senate floor, asking those "hard questions" and providing that "strength" he says he expects?

These absent politicians can claim to be opposed to the funding, but they all chose to distance themselves from the accountability of a recorded vote. Who really knows what their fine words of opposition actually mean if they don't even take advantage of the elevated platforms of office they've been gifted with and hold today?

But, there is no opposition to be found at all from those Democrats who vote to allow this omnibus bill to advance with Iraq money buried inside. They can try and convince themselves and others that they voted to protect the interests of soldiers already deployed, but we know, from the Majority Leader's own mouth, that there are more than enough funds already allocated to keep Bush in business in Iraq until March. "What they're trying to do is hold the whole government hostage to this crazy money for Iraq," Reid was quoted in the WSJ just last week. "All we're trying to do is to swallow hard and give him enough for the military and keep the government open," he said.

Well . . . he and the others who allowed these funds for Iraq to advance may have 'swallowed hard,' but they capitulated and gave Bush his 'crazy money' for Iraq anyway. They're under Bush's bloody heel. They might as well be the opposition we elected them to put down. In the case of Iraq, they are the opposition.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at opednews.com: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_071219_bush_s_democrats_on_.htm

Don't think about them.

2007-12-20T08:42:00.000-05:00

By MN Against Bush

Don't think about them.

Don't think about the Iraqi civilians who are being blown to bits by the weapons that your tax dollars have paid for. In order to truly understand the situation in Iraq you have to listen to the reports from the generals on the ground, after all they would never try to spin anything. So don't worry about all the dead civilians because the generals are telling you everything is going just fine, just so long as you ignore the missing limbs of the soldiers who are coming back.

Don't think about the child that does not have health care. Just remember those buzz words "socialized medicine", then you can easily look away from the sick child who is unable to see a doctor because her family can't afford to pay for it. After all just think of the harm that socialized medicine would do to the wallets of insurance industry CEOs. Much better to look away from the dying kid and focus your sympathy on those poor HMOs who would suffer if they did not make big profits.

Don't think about those people who are sitting in a secret prison overseas and being tortured by our government. Just remember 9/11. That makes it much easier to ignore the fact that our government is running prisons which are not subject to oversight by human rights groups and the prisoners are almost exclusively of one race (Arab) and one faith (Islam). Just ignore those other times through history when people of a minority religious group were treated under a different set of laws and imprisoned without charges. That is all irrelevant because all of that stuff happened before 9/11. After 9/11 the world became a very different place. In our post 9/11 world we have to trust our leaders who are just trying to protect us from another 9/11 that would be even bigger than 9/11. Did I mention 9/11?

Don't think about the man who will be sleeping on the streets tonight because his minimum wage job can not pay the rent. Just think about that tax-cut that the really rich people got, because maybe, just maybe that wealth will trickle down to the homeless guy. After all, wouldn't you expect that the CEO of Halliburton sees a lot of potential business coming from that homeless guy that is sleeping in the gutter? There is just so much incentive for the CEOs of military contractors and oil industry executives to watch their wealth trickle down to the poor. So go ahead and praise wasteful government spending in social services and praise our trickle-down your leg tax cuts for the rich, it makes it much easier to avoid thinking about the poor if you just think about the extremely wealthy.

So don't think about dead civilians, don't think about poverty, don't think about the people in those secret prisons, don't think about the child without health care, because if you think about them you would be engaging in partisan politics. If you want to develop an informed opinion just listen to our completely non-partisan pundits, they will tell you what opinions you should hold. It is very clear that our pundits are clearly focused on the issues that matter, John Edwards' haircut, Al Gore's electric bill, Hillary Clinton's cleavage, Barack Obama's middle name, Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton, and OJ Simpson. So just forget about all those completely irrelevant issues like Iraq, health care, election fraud, and warrantless wiretapping and focus on what really matters. The fact that Britney Spears' little sister is pregnant.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MN%20Against%20Bush/130

Corporate Media Means No Real News

2007-12-19T07:43:00.000-05:00

Mon, 12/17/2007 - 22:34 — dlindorff

Over this weekend and by noon today, 82,000 Americans signed a petition sponsored by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) and two other members of the House Judiciary Committee, Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), calling on that committee and its chairman, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to begin immediate hearings on Rep. Dennis Kucinich's bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.

There was no report in the nation's corporate media on the three Judiciary Committee members' call (they are three senior members of the House Democratic Party), and no report on the remarkable public response to their petition.

As always when the story involves impeachable crimes by the Bush administration, the corporate media have been silent, devoting their pricey news minutes and their precious column inches to meaningless stories about the twin horseraces for the presidential nomination, which themselves have blacked out any word of the main crowd-pleasers in those campaigns: Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Kucinich.

Impeachment is the elephant in the room. Everyone knows that this country is being run by a criminal syndicate that has rigged elections, hidden its knowledge of the 9-11 attacks, lied the country into war, plotted to out an important CIA undercover operative and then obstruct a criminal investigation into that treasonous act, subverted most of the articles of the Bill of Rights, emasculated the Congress and the Courts (which it has also shamelessly packed with shameless hacks), betrayed veterans, surrendered a major American metropolis to the devastation of a hurricane, plotted to enable the declaring of martial law, tortured kidnapped and killed people in violation of international law and obstructed efforts to deal with the unprecedented crisis of global warming for an unconscionable seven years.

But the media won't allow any talk of holding this administration to account. It's not just that we are being told that the only power and duty we as citizens have is to vote once every two or four years (after which we are supposed to shut up and consume), but that we are not to be told about, or are being encouraged not to talk about these larger crimes that are occurring, and worsening, day by day.

Impeachment isn't just off the table in the Congress. It is off the table in the media and thus in public discourse.

This is intolerable. It is only because of the alternative media that those 82,000 citizens knew of and signed onto Rep. Wexler's courageous call for impeachment hearings on Kucinich's equally courageous bill.

We as citizens should not just be haranguing our representatives to demand that they support impeachment hearings. We should be picketing our local news organizations and deluging them with calls and letters demanding that they stop the censorship and report the news honestly without fear or favor, as they are supposed to do.
______________________
Here follows a letter I just sent to the ombudsman at the New York Times:

Dear Public Editor:

How can it not be news that last Friday, three senior, respected members of the House Judiciary Committee, six-termer Robert Wexler (D-FL), leading hispanic member Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and floor leader Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), publicly called on the House Judiciary Committee to begin immediate hearings on Dennis Kucinich's bill to impeach VP Dick Cheney?

On Friday, Wexler announced that he was setting up a webside, asking for 50,000 people to sign on in support of his call for impeachment hearings. By the end of the first day, he had 53,000 signatures and as of today, just three days after the site was established, there were 77,300 signatures, rising by the second.

There has been no report on this development in the impeachment story in the NY times, which is nothing short of astonishing.

I also hear from Wexler's office that the Times rejected an op-ed submission written by the three congressmembers explaining their decision.

While of course the opinion page editors have the right to make what choices they like about what runs, they have elected to run rather obscure opinion pieces by politicians, often on positions that the editors don't even disagree with. Here is a case of a perspective that is not shared by the editors, by three real players in the debate, and they don't deem it worthy of seeing print?

As author of the book The Case for Impeachment, which was published by the mainstream publisher St. Martin's Press in 2006, and which, after selling a respectable 20,000 copies, went to paperback, all without receiving a review or mention in the NY Times, or for that matter in any mainstream newspaper in the country, I am well aware that the impeachment movement, which has seen over 100 cities and towns and one state senate (VT) vote out resolutions calling for impeachment, and which is a key demand voiced at every major anti-war demonstration, is being completely blacked out by the major media, including the Times.

As a 34-year veteran, award-winning journalist, a former Times contributor, a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a two-time Journalism Fulbright Scholar, and the author of a well-regarded book on impeachment, I find the whole thing unconscionable, especially considering the incredible amount of ink--and high-dudgeon editorials--that were expended on the ridiculous Clinton impeachment less than a decade ago.

Your paper should do a better job of covering the news, and should stop covering up the news.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at http://thiscantbehappening.net/: http://thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/83

Until We Meet Again !!!

2007-12-18T08:32:00.000-05:00

http://www.iwo.com/heroes.htm

Yes, Tony, There is a War on God

2007-12-18T07:11:00.000-05:00

By NanceGreggs

An open letter to Tony Snow:

With respect to your recent remarks at Oklahoma Christian University, I am in agreement with your assessment that there is indeed a War on God in our country. And you should know, having worked for the president, the administration, and the party that launched that war, and continue to wage it on a daily basis.

From day one of Bush’s catastrophic tenure in office, God has been treated by George and the GOP like a commodity to be bought and sold, a stick with which to prod Christians and other believers into accepting things like torture, and a blindfold to be placed over the eyes of those who can be most easily led astray with false promises and empty rhetoric.

“God”, or your party’s version thereof, is no longer the creator, but the destroyer of those who worship him differently, or seek his blessings in a language other than ours.

He is no longer the God whom Moses sought out on the mountain; he has been replaced by the Golden Calf your party fashioned out of valueless trinkets, like lies and a lust for money. And as for those Ten Commandments – Thou Shalt Not Kill, Thou Shalt Not Steal, etc. – they apparently now come complete with signing statements and can be rescinded as is convenient.

He is no longer the Christ who threw the money-changers out of the Temple, but is now the Guardian of the Greedy, the Protector of the Profiteers, the patron saint who sheds His Golden Light upon the Golden Parachute and its recipients.

In other words, your god is safe, my friend. It’s the true God who has been taking a bashing.

Last Friday, you stated that you “loved being on a stage where you could say the word God”. Tell us, Tony, when and where have you been prevented from saying that word? Is this part of that infamous persecution of Christians we keep hearing about? Surely a seasoned newsman like yourself must have the horrific details of this endless persecution – why don’t you share them with us?

You see, Tony, unlike you, I can actually cite the instances where God is no longer allowed to be mentioned in this country.

You can’t mention that God the All-Loving wouldn’t condone torture, or waging a war that kills innocents for the sake of oil.

You can’t mention that God the Creator expects stewardship of the earth, regardless of how deeply protecting the environment cuts into corporate profits.

You can’t mention that the Son of God admonished his followers to help the needy, the sick, the hungry, the homeless, because spending tax dollars on social programs to accomplish that end would result in less money for the weapons manufacturers, and the war-profiteers.

You can’t mention that doing God’s work on earth means looking out for someone other than yourself – at least not to Republicans, whose credo is “I’ve got mine, and everyone else is none of my concern.”

And if you really want to know about people who can’t say the word God in this country, ask a Muslim. Sure, they can pray to Allah (and that’s God, in case you didn’t know, Tony) in an airport, as long as they don’t mind the risk of getting thrown off their flight – or worse.

And then of course there is the “War on Christmas”, that great battlefront situated right smack-dab in the middle of Consumerism, USA, where – according to your ilk – good Christians can demonstrate the true meaning of Jesus’ birth by emptying their wallets in stores that say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays.

Having been raised with the old Jesus – you know, the one you people have abandoned – I seem to remember being taught that the true spirit of celebrating Christ’s birth was to be found in giving rather than receiving, and a sharing with the less fortunate.

I recall being told by the good nuns at school to remind my parents to donate to food banks and homeless shelters in observance of the Lord’s birth.

Funnily enough, I don’t remember a word about running up their credit cards only at the right stores as being an appropriate way to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace – but, hey, maybe that’s just me.

But I can’t argue with your initial point, Tony. The War on God is as blatantly obvious as the “Spend Your Money Here” banners that hang over Nativity scenes at the local mall. It’s as in-your-face as the photographs from Abu Ghraib.

It is fueled by the deceit of fabricated intelligence that leads a nation into war-for-profit, by the corporate greed that infiltrates our society and buys our government officials, and by the godless apathy that allows citizens to go hungry, homeless, and without medical care while wealthy individuals and corporations are given tax breaks paid for by working-class Americans.

Yes, there IS a War on God, Tony. And if you truly have a problem with that, you might try NOT being one of its most outspoken warriors.

Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/319