by Mary Pitt
7/30/07
The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat;
'Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink!
The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
Appeared to know as sure as fate
There was going to be a terrible spat.
(I wasn't there; I simply state
What was told to me by the Chinese plate!)
- Eugene Field, Yale Book of American Verse
While watching the CNN/you tube debate, the first thing that came to mind was this children's poem from so long ago. The Democratic Presidential campaign has once again come down to this: the on-lookers, the reporters, and the media pundits have decided that the primary election is to be a two-horse race without regard for the opinion of the people. No matter how well any of the other candidates may appeal to any of the public, they insist that the only true contest is between the two candidates of their choice. It's as if the other candidates are all part of the anonymous bric a brac, only there as background for the two objets d'arte to which the media wish to draw arrention.
The gingham dog went "bow-wow-wow!"
And the calico cat replied "mee-yow!"
And the air was littered for an hour or so,
With bits of gingham and calico,
While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place
Up with its hands before its face,
For it always dreaded a family row
(Never mind: I'm only telling you
What the old Dutch clock declares is true!)
In respone to the youtube question, "Would you talk to people like Ahdemenadejad, Chavez, and Castro?" Senator Obama responded with an enthusiastic and spontaneous "Yes!" (As you know, puppies, whether or not made of gingham, are only too happy to greet anyone who is willing to pay them attention.) Senator Clinton, in typical kitty fashion, sniffed and responded that the President of the United States could not risk talking to just anybody without knowing exactly what is to be expected as the result.
The Chinese plate looked very blue.
And wailed, "Oh, dear! What shall we do!"
But the gingham dog and the calico cat
Wallowed this way and tumbled that,
Employing every tooth and claw
In the awfullest way you ever saw--
And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!
(Don't fancy I exaggerate--
I got my news from the Chinese plate!)
Shortly thereafter, the words "naive" and "experienced" were hissed by Senator Clinton to which Senator Obama later barked "Bush/Cheney-lite". The political atmosphere has been changed from one of all good friendly Democratic colleagues to open warfare between the leaders of all the polls and the talking heads on TV have been having a great time at their expense, (and taking odds on the winner?) Almost daily, the air waves are full of the latest barbs to be exchanges between the two.
However, the innocent electorate should use their memories to recall the campaign which took place only three years ago. In it, Dr. Dean and Sen. Edwards were deemed to be the "favorites" in early polls and the media pundits were having a great time in promoting the rivalry between them and comparing them to the old "retreads" who had run so many times before. Many of us were comfortable with the siutation when the media suddenly decided that they were not happy with the apparently inevitable outcome and, just before the first big election, chopped a cheer by Dr. Dean from one of his speeches, isolated it, and re-played it ad nauseum, using it to brand Dr. Dean as being a "hot-head" and not fit to serve.
Next morning where two had sat
They found no trace of dog or cat;
And some folks think until this day
That burglars took the pair away!
But the truth about the cat and pup
Is this: they ate each other up!
Now what do you really think of that!
(The old Dutch clock it told me so,
And that is how I came to know.)
The American electorate can only stand and wait to see the outcome of this media-inspoired spat to see if either of these candidates is able to survive. We yearn for the possibility that one of them or another, should they yield to the inevitable and "eat each other up", will be the candidate that we can elect and that he or she will restore the reputation of the United States as a peace-making power. It shouldn't be asking too much for it to be someone with sufficient intelligence to prevent them from poking hornet's nests with a stick while armed only with a fly-swatter! In addition, the final choice must be one who can recognize and correct the damage done to every citizen and every level of government by the current administration.
Our only hope, in the event these two candidates should cancel each other out, is that there are others in the field who might, actually, be as good or better administrators of our suffering nation than either of them. Governor Richardson and Senator Byden each have superior experience and knowledge regarding foreign affairs and international policy, while a person with the knowledge and instincts of Sen. Edwards and Rep, Dennis Kucininch would be excellent keepers of our domestic reconstruction. If you just plain adore the shock of white hair on the head of Senator Dodd, you would also be pleased with the result of his many years in public service and his dedication to the cause of a stable and peaceful nation and world.
It would be in our own interest to demonstrate to the "talking heads" that we are not at all interested in the "horse race". We are not here to set or break records by electing the "first woman" or the "first black man" to the Presidency. The media must be shown that we, if not they, regard this election as a serious affair and not as a game, as they have treated the woebegotten war in which our children are still being destroyed. Being "good press" does not necessarily mean choosing a good President. They are only concerned with headlines and air time rather than the good of the nation and the restoration of our once-envied way of life, and it is our responsibilty to ignore, if we must, their silly games. Otherwise, we will be like the old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate, merely re-hashing another dubious election and trying to analyze what went wrong.
Mary Pitt is a septuagenarian Kansan, a free-thinker, and a warrior for truth and justice. She is non-partisan but steeped in true patriotism and pride in being an American and a loving daughter of the Founding Fathers.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Iraqis letting the occupiers down again.
Monday, July 30, 2007
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2007/07/iraqis-letting-occupiers-down-again.html
What other country could so torture another country, so devastate it, so thoroughly plunder and destroy it for over a decade, and yet have thousands of people still saying "well, hell, maybe they'll do a better job with Darfur"? Take a look at this. I think there might have been a short time, maybe for the first twelve months of the occupation, where Bush's supporters would still have ironised about how happy-go-lucky life was under Saddam, but we should have heard the last of that. The statistics in the Oxfam-NIIC report describe a cruel and callous asset-stripping operation. We knew about the refugees, the attacks on women, the SPC death squads, the torture chambers (that, remember, were actually worse after Abu Ghraib), the arbitrary imprisonment of tens of thousands, the shooting up at checkpoints, the bombing of housing estates, the deliberate destruction of water and power facilities, the attacks on hospitals, the black and decker punishment, the dawn raids, the sport killing and raping, the proliferation of mass graves, the slave labour, the curfews, the biometric lockdown, the subjection of Iraqi cities to blitzkrieg then military fascism. One could have guessed that people were also starving to death, and dying from preventable disease, and suffering from mental trauma. But here are the statistics: 43% of Iraqis are in absolute poverty; 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished; 32% of internally displaced persons who need food rations can't get them; 70% of Iraqis don't have adequate water supplies; 80% don't have effective sanitation; 4 million Iraqis are in dire need of humanitarian assistance (no, not that kind, get the damned finger off the trigger); and 11% of new born babies are underweight.
The causes of this are fairly straightforward: a violent occupation has driven out about forty percent of professional Iraqis, destroyed much of the infrastructure in which they were able to work, frustrated transport of people and goods, terrorised communities and disrupted the provision of basic services like schooling; the country has been privatised and purchased, with the effect of massively increasing unemployment since about half of the Iraqi labour force had been employed in the state sector prior to the occupation; the billions of US tax dollars that were supposed to be for 'humanitarian assistance' have been handed over to political clients, mercenaries and rent-seekers (Ahmed Chalabi is predictably one of the big levers used in this, having been placed in charge of the Supreme Contracts Committee in 2005); the cut tariffs and flat taxes have reduced state income even more than it might have been; the main institutions of the state welfare structure were attacked and squeezed to near genocidal effect under sanctions, hollowed out by 'de-Baathification', and then transferred to patrimonial control; such state-run organisations as are functioning are often leased out or contracted under memoranda of understanding, thus further transferring potentially huge amounts of Iraqi government resources to private entities; everything that is built and rebuilt (after a good bombing campaign, usually) is run within the public-private hybrid that characterises the state-capitalist extortion of Iraq, so that all the profits accrue to Halliburton, all the liabilities accrue to the puppet regime, and all the costs are borne by the public. Were it not for the presence of several thousands of NGO organisations in Iraq, the situation would be a great deal worse than it is.
There might, who knows, be another epidemiological survey of Iraq released next year. If the above statistics are correct, a third of the population of Iraq is at risk of dying from starvation, never mind the much more frequent causes of death such as gunfire and aerial bombardment. One estimate that models the Lancet's statistics on IBC trends suggests that close to a million are probably dead already, in addition to the death rates that one would have expected under Saddam and sanctions. Yet, the death rate had a doubling time of one year in the Lancet study. That is, if it was 3.2 per thousand on year, it was 6.6 per thousand the next, and 12 per thousand the following year. If organised violence has slowed down over the last year, then it is possible that slightly less than a million have died as a result of the occupation to date. If the rate of increase stayed the same, then there were 24 deaths per thousand this year, which would add roughly 650,000 to the total, meaning an excess death rate of 1.2m. I don't know how much the rate of violence can potentially increase, but if the same trend held until 2010, then the death rate would be approximately 10 million.
Still, the teleprompter continues to give both Democratic and Republican candidates the following line in some variation: "can't win ‘em all, better luck next time, Iraqis let us down".
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2007/07/iraqis-letting-occupiers-down-again.html
What other country could so torture another country, so devastate it, so thoroughly plunder and destroy it for over a decade, and yet have thousands of people still saying "well, hell, maybe they'll do a better job with Darfur"? Take a look at this. I think there might have been a short time, maybe for the first twelve months of the occupation, where Bush's supporters would still have ironised about how happy-go-lucky life was under Saddam, but we should have heard the last of that. The statistics in the Oxfam-NIIC report describe a cruel and callous asset-stripping operation. We knew about the refugees, the attacks on women, the SPC death squads, the torture chambers (that, remember, were actually worse after Abu Ghraib), the arbitrary imprisonment of tens of thousands, the shooting up at checkpoints, the bombing of housing estates, the deliberate destruction of water and power facilities, the attacks on hospitals, the black and decker punishment, the dawn raids, the sport killing and raping, the proliferation of mass graves, the slave labour, the curfews, the biometric lockdown, the subjection of Iraqi cities to blitzkrieg then military fascism. One could have guessed that people were also starving to death, and dying from preventable disease, and suffering from mental trauma. But here are the statistics: 43% of Iraqis are in absolute poverty; 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished; 32% of internally displaced persons who need food rations can't get them; 70% of Iraqis don't have adequate water supplies; 80% don't have effective sanitation; 4 million Iraqis are in dire need of humanitarian assistance (no, not that kind, get the damned finger off the trigger); and 11% of new born babies are underweight.
The causes of this are fairly straightforward: a violent occupation has driven out about forty percent of professional Iraqis, destroyed much of the infrastructure in which they were able to work, frustrated transport of people and goods, terrorised communities and disrupted the provision of basic services like schooling; the country has been privatised and purchased, with the effect of massively increasing unemployment since about half of the Iraqi labour force had been employed in the state sector prior to the occupation; the billions of US tax dollars that were supposed to be for 'humanitarian assistance' have been handed over to political clients, mercenaries and rent-seekers (Ahmed Chalabi is predictably one of the big levers used in this, having been placed in charge of the Supreme Contracts Committee in 2005); the cut tariffs and flat taxes have reduced state income even more than it might have been; the main institutions of the state welfare structure were attacked and squeezed to near genocidal effect under sanctions, hollowed out by 'de-Baathification', and then transferred to patrimonial control; such state-run organisations as are functioning are often leased out or contracted under memoranda of understanding, thus further transferring potentially huge amounts of Iraqi government resources to private entities; everything that is built and rebuilt (after a good bombing campaign, usually) is run within the public-private hybrid that characterises the state-capitalist extortion of Iraq, so that all the profits accrue to Halliburton, all the liabilities accrue to the puppet regime, and all the costs are borne by the public. Were it not for the presence of several thousands of NGO organisations in Iraq, the situation would be a great deal worse than it is.
There might, who knows, be another epidemiological survey of Iraq released next year. If the above statistics are correct, a third of the population of Iraq is at risk of dying from starvation, never mind the much more frequent causes of death such as gunfire and aerial bombardment. One estimate that models the Lancet's statistics on IBC trends suggests that close to a million are probably dead already, in addition to the death rates that one would have expected under Saddam and sanctions. Yet, the death rate had a doubling time of one year in the Lancet study. That is, if it was 3.2 per thousand on year, it was 6.6 per thousand the next, and 12 per thousand the following year. If organised violence has slowed down over the last year, then it is possible that slightly less than a million have died as a result of the occupation to date. If the rate of increase stayed the same, then there were 24 deaths per thousand this year, which would add roughly 650,000 to the total, meaning an excess death rate of 1.2m. I don't know how much the rate of violence can potentially increase, but if the same trend held until 2010, then the death rate would be approximately 10 million.
Still, the teleprompter continues to give both Democratic and Republican candidates the following line in some variation: "can't win ‘em all, better luck next time, Iraqis let us down".
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Something Happened on 9-11
By Sheila Samples
7/29/07
Strange how something happens and you're unaware that it "registers" with you. Later, perhaps, something will trigger that buried memory and things begin to fall into place.
Something happened on 9-11.
The day began with CNN's Wolf Blitzer frantically reporting that planes had smashed into Buildings 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center. They stood there, so tall that the smoke billowing from their upper floors could be seen for 20 miles. The scene was shocking, grisly, and the horror was broken only by the further news that a plane had rammed into the Pentagon. Death and destruction everywhere. Happening now -- right before our eyes.
In an amazing "Breaking News" alert, CNN Pentagon reporter Jamie McEntyre shot down Blitzer's "plane hit the Pentagon" report. McEntyre said flatly, "Although it may appear that way, from my close-up inspection, there is NO evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only pieces left are small enough you can pick them up in your hand. There are no pieces lying around that would indicate a plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon."
Whoop! Happening now...Quick! Back to Ground Zero...Just in time to see WTC 2, then WTC 1, sink eerily into their own footprints -- tons and tons of cement blasting instantly into a fine powder, rolling majestically through the streets like an Iraqi sandstorm. Anyone who had ever seen one -- even one -- controlled demolition knew without a doubt what he had just witnessed.
But no time for that -- yet another plane had rammed into a Pennsylvania field with such force there was just a smoking pit at the site with the debris scattered over an eight-mile area...
But wait! Don't ask! Still happening now! We're treated to yet another controlled demolition display when WTC 7, struck by no plane, inexplicably collapsed in exactly the same fashion as the first two buildings.
Within hours, CNN had pinned this four-pronged attack on our "homeland" on Saudi billionnaire and former CIA operative Osama Bin Laden, and was parading the photographs of 19 terrorists -- 15 from Saudi Arabia -- non-stop across our TV screens. Never mind that in the ensuing weeks, most of them were found alive and well and minding their own business in various parts of the world. For now, they are vicious killers, four of them wannabe pilots who flunked out of flight school, and conveniently left their flight manuals in their cars at the airport.
Then, according to Blitzer, these amazing Boeing stunt pilots, armed with deadly box cutters, evaded multiple layers of airport security, outsmarted the entire intercept and identification operations of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and destroyed 2,974 innocent human beings.
It wasn't long until McEntyre, his feet back on the ground and marching orders in hand, responded to Blitzer's question about his earlier comments -- "Web sites often take statements out of context, such as the exchange from CNN, in which I, myself appear to be questioning whether a plane really hit the building. In fact, Wolf," McEntyre continued, while rapidly pulling my trigger, "I was answering a question about an eyewitness account that a plane had crashed short of the Pentagon, and I was making the point that, no, not near the Pentagon. The only plane that crashed was at the Pentagon."
That's what happened on 9-11. Throughout the day, Blitzer narrated each step over and over again -- a grisly, staccato date-rape drug seared into our national consciousness... unimaginable heartbreak...horror like none we've ever seen before...devastating grief...incredible force of crashing airplanes...unbelievable horror...people running for their lives in desperation through massive debris...Stay tuned -- dramatic new pictures of people being swallowed by the smoke and flames...happening now...
By the time the sun set, our absentee president concluded his day-long zig-zag dash from one hidey-hole to another, and was back at the helm of this shaken nation whose citizens, thanks in large part to CNN, were in the throes of universal post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). That evening, in his address to a paralyzed world, Bush, leaving no doubt he was answering the call of the Almighty, declared war on the terrorists. That evening, Bush, and those like Dick Cheney who control him, began waging war on the terrified.
With the enthusiastic support of CNN, Bush has relentlessly used the singed flesh of the people slaughtered on 9-11 to justify the monstrous lies that took us into war, and the lies that keep us there. Since that day he has ruled through signing statements and Executive Orders, setting himself above the US Constitution, the Justice System, the entire government. He IS the law -- the Decider, the Privileged Executive, the Tyrant.
Some say one branch of our corporate mainstream media is neither better nor worse than the other branches. I disagree. Perhaps it's because CNN is the Ministry of Truth's chief operative, panting for war, death, and profit, lying -- "catapaulting Bush's propaganda," -- while portraying itself as "The Most Trusted Name in News." Or maybe it's just when the Mockingbirds come home to roost, they all seem to light on the CNN branch.
CNN is very adept at transmitting fear and lies, fradulent polls, and false-flag alarms over and over and over again to cover up the crimes, treason and mass murder committed by the Bush administration. Blitzer rigidly controls what is aired -- spun -- on CNN as news in his "Situation Room" in the late afternoon and evening. The rest of the 24-hour cycle is spent in news-team giggling, vacuous coverage of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and sex predators on the MySpace website. Did you know that yesterday there was an explosion in Dallas, a truck turned over in North Carolina, peanuts can kill you, obesity is contagious, and a cat roaming the halls of a nursing home points out who is next to die?
But this absurd little Machiavellian fool and the servile CNN courtiers who obediently spin his stupid slogans fail to realize that our freedom is not theirs to destroy. Our children are not Bush's, as political philosopher Etienne de la Boetie so eloquently wrote in 1552-1553, "to be led into his battles, to be delivered to butchery, to be made the servants of his greed and the instruments of his vengeance."
Something happened on 9-11 -- something so horrible that the American people acquiesced for a time in their own subjection.
They will not succumb to their own destruction. Enough is enough.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net
7/29/07
Strange how something happens and you're unaware that it "registers" with you. Later, perhaps, something will trigger that buried memory and things begin to fall into place.
Something happened on 9-11.
The day began with CNN's Wolf Blitzer frantically reporting that planes had smashed into Buildings 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center. They stood there, so tall that the smoke billowing from their upper floors could be seen for 20 miles. The scene was shocking, grisly, and the horror was broken only by the further news that a plane had rammed into the Pentagon. Death and destruction everywhere. Happening now -- right before our eyes.
In an amazing "Breaking News" alert, CNN Pentagon reporter Jamie McEntyre shot down Blitzer's "plane hit the Pentagon" report. McEntyre said flatly, "Although it may appear that way, from my close-up inspection, there is NO evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only pieces left are small enough you can pick them up in your hand. There are no pieces lying around that would indicate a plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon."
Whoop! Happening now...Quick! Back to Ground Zero...Just in time to see WTC 2, then WTC 1, sink eerily into their own footprints -- tons and tons of cement blasting instantly into a fine powder, rolling majestically through the streets like an Iraqi sandstorm. Anyone who had ever seen one -- even one -- controlled demolition knew without a doubt what he had just witnessed.
But no time for that -- yet another plane had rammed into a Pennsylvania field with such force there was just a smoking pit at the site with the debris scattered over an eight-mile area...
But wait! Don't ask! Still happening now! We're treated to yet another controlled demolition display when WTC 7, struck by no plane, inexplicably collapsed in exactly the same fashion as the first two buildings.
Within hours, CNN had pinned this four-pronged attack on our "homeland" on Saudi billionnaire and former CIA operative Osama Bin Laden, and was parading the photographs of 19 terrorists -- 15 from Saudi Arabia -- non-stop across our TV screens. Never mind that in the ensuing weeks, most of them were found alive and well and minding their own business in various parts of the world. For now, they are vicious killers, four of them wannabe pilots who flunked out of flight school, and conveniently left their flight manuals in their cars at the airport.
Then, according to Blitzer, these amazing Boeing stunt pilots, armed with deadly box cutters, evaded multiple layers of airport security, outsmarted the entire intercept and identification operations of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and destroyed 2,974 innocent human beings.
It wasn't long until McEntyre, his feet back on the ground and marching orders in hand, responded to Blitzer's question about his earlier comments -- "Web sites often take statements out of context, such as the exchange from CNN, in which I, myself appear to be questioning whether a plane really hit the building. In fact, Wolf," McEntyre continued, while rapidly pulling my trigger, "I was answering a question about an eyewitness account that a plane had crashed short of the Pentagon, and I was making the point that, no, not near the Pentagon. The only plane that crashed was at the Pentagon."
That's what happened on 9-11. Throughout the day, Blitzer narrated each step over and over again -- a grisly, staccato date-rape drug seared into our national consciousness... unimaginable heartbreak...horror like none we've ever seen before...devastating grief...incredible force of crashing airplanes...unbelievable horror...people running for their lives in desperation through massive debris...Stay tuned -- dramatic new pictures of people being swallowed by the smoke and flames...happening now...
By the time the sun set, our absentee president concluded his day-long zig-zag dash from one hidey-hole to another, and was back at the helm of this shaken nation whose citizens, thanks in large part to CNN, were in the throes of universal post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). That evening, in his address to a paralyzed world, Bush, leaving no doubt he was answering the call of the Almighty, declared war on the terrorists. That evening, Bush, and those like Dick Cheney who control him, began waging war on the terrified.
With the enthusiastic support of CNN, Bush has relentlessly used the singed flesh of the people slaughtered on 9-11 to justify the monstrous lies that took us into war, and the lies that keep us there. Since that day he has ruled through signing statements and Executive Orders, setting himself above the US Constitution, the Justice System, the entire government. He IS the law -- the Decider, the Privileged Executive, the Tyrant.
Some say one branch of our corporate mainstream media is neither better nor worse than the other branches. I disagree. Perhaps it's because CNN is the Ministry of Truth's chief operative, panting for war, death, and profit, lying -- "catapaulting Bush's propaganda," -- while portraying itself as "The Most Trusted Name in News." Or maybe it's just when the Mockingbirds come home to roost, they all seem to light on the CNN branch.
CNN is very adept at transmitting fear and lies, fradulent polls, and false-flag alarms over and over and over again to cover up the crimes, treason and mass murder committed by the Bush administration. Blitzer rigidly controls what is aired -- spun -- on CNN as news in his "Situation Room" in the late afternoon and evening. The rest of the 24-hour cycle is spent in news-team giggling, vacuous coverage of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and sex predators on the MySpace website. Did you know that yesterday there was an explosion in Dallas, a truck turned over in North Carolina, peanuts can kill you, obesity is contagious, and a cat roaming the halls of a nursing home points out who is next to die?
But this absurd little Machiavellian fool and the servile CNN courtiers who obediently spin his stupid slogans fail to realize that our freedom is not theirs to destroy. Our children are not Bush's, as political philosopher Etienne de la Boetie so eloquently wrote in 1552-1553, "to be led into his battles, to be delivered to butchery, to be made the servants of his greed and the instruments of his vengeance."
Something happened on 9-11 -- something so horrible that the American people acquiesced for a time in their own subjection.
They will not succumb to their own destruction. Enough is enough.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Tales of Angst, Alienation and Martial Law:
Roasting Marshmallows on the American Reichstag Fire to Come
by Phil Rockstroh
7/26/07
In this summer of angst and grim foreboding about what further assaults against common sense and common decency the Bush Administration might inflict upon the people of the world, how many times during the day do those of us — still possessed of mind, heart and conscience — take pause, hoping we’ve seen the worst of it, then, fearing we haven’t yet, attempt to push down the dread rising within us, so that we might simply make it through the day and be able to rest at night? Accordingly, those who have been paying attention are aware that the outward mechanisms of martial law are in place. We shudder knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency. In addition, the knowledge nettles us that a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American empire’s version of the Reichstag fire.
Moreover, a closer look would reveal that the inner processes by which an individual begins the act of acceptance of authoritarian excess — the mixture of chronic passivity, boredom, low grade anxiety and unfocused rage inherent in the citizens/consumers of the corporate state that primes an individual for fascism — have been in place for quite some time within the psyches of the American populace, both elites and hoi polloi alike. Although, don’t look for torch-lit processions thronging the nation’s streets and boulevards; rather, look for a Nuremberg Rally of couch-bound brownshirts. Instead of ogling the serried ranks of jut-jawed SS soldiers, a contemporary Leni Riefenstahl would be forced to film chubby clusters of double-chinned consumers saluting the new order with their TV remotes. In the contemporary United States, the elation induced by the immersion of one’s individual will to the mindless intoxication of the mob might only be possible if Bush seized dictatorial control of the state while simultaneously sending out to all citizens gift certificates to Ikea.
After the catastrophes spawned by the rise of European fascism in the 1930s, a number of brilliant, original thinkers (including Hannah Arendt, Roberto Freire, Wilhelm Reich, and R. D. Laing) set out to study the phenomenon in order to learn how future calamities might be prevented. Although the methodologies and conclusions of these thinkers varied, each noted that alienation and dehumanization festered at the core of the death urge of fascism.
Nowadays, in contrast, the elites of the corporate media have proven themselves useless in this regard, believing, as they do, they constitute the thin line between the rabble at large (me and you) and the chaos begot by freedom. At present, mega-churches attract alienated suburbanites. Right wing talk show hosts misdirect their listeners alienation towards so-called illegal “aliens” and exploit their audience’s sense of powerlessness (created by the rigged system of corporate capitalism) against elitist liberals (who themselves, ironically, benefit from the present system and who only want to change it to the degree that their own privilege will not be affected. In other words, not at all).
Combine the above with the American character trait of being hostile towards introspection and it becomes evident that the present disaster has been building for quite a while now. And it can (and most likely will) get worse — far worse.
Most Americans alive today have been trained since birth to adapt to and serve the corrupt corporate structure by means of the shunning of critical thinking and have been conditioned to be in constant (empty) motion or in the thrall of mass media distraction. We have been taught that passivity is for losers, yet we find ourselves nearly powerless before the corporate/consumer/military/police/entertainment state. In this way, we serve our corporate masters; it serves the corpocracy that the lower orders refuse meaningful self-awareness. If one were to glimpse one’s own illusions, then it follows one might begin to question collective delusions — and this would upset the social order.
Those who have studied the dangers of authoritarian rule have advised us to be wary of people who carry an inner emptiness. Of course, these unfortunates yearn for the void to be filled. But with their hearts and minds mortared closed — what makes it through the self-constructed prison is loud, stupid, and fascistic. At present, what penetrates is: Fundamentalist Sermons on Armageddon; violent video games; the empty spectacle of steroid-induced professional sports hype; the lethal fantasies of American exceptionalism; the exercise in Rock and Roll imperialism that U.S. foreign policy has become. In short, all the banal Sturm und Drang necessary to pierce those protective walls and penetrate the pervasive inner emptiness.
When the people of a culture have been conditioned to worship power — but feel powerless — there’s trouble ahead. The elites must displace the public’s rage by a demagogic sleight-of-hand such as the demonization of marginalized groups. In the US, we’ve been inundated by years of state and commercial propaganda that has degraded and demonized the country’s permanent underclass by the labeling of them as welfare parasites and career criminals.
It has been noted that the mindset, methods, and procedures of America’s punitive, profit-driven prison-industrial complex was a prototype for the systemic cruelty of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; furthermore, it is a given that those institutional affronts to human decency will have served as prototypes for the methods and procedures that will be practiced upon those who are swept-up in the purges and detainment mania following the declaration of martial law in the United States.
We push this knowledge away from us, fearing we will be paralyzed by its crushing implications. Worse, what is nearly impossible to admit is, most likely, the system crushed us long ago. Apropos, R. D. Laing averred that being able to adapt and function within an insane, authoritarian system renders one for all practical purposes insane — only insane in a manner acceptable to a power mad ruling elite.
This is the knowledge we push down, every hour of everyday. Otherwise, we would be driven to admit outright that the system has crushed our individual hopes, aspirations and yearnings. We must, at all costs, keep these feelings concealed; otherwise, we might be compelled to contemplate what we have forsaken, what passions and truths we have traded away for the false sense of security that the corporate order offered us when we tacitly agreed to surrender what was most sacred, vital and alive within us. One psychological manifestation of this phenomenon is the incessant chanting of that mantra of the American corporate workforce: “I’m not my job. I’m not what I do all day long.”
For a moment, meditate on the calamity implicit in such a sentiment. Because If we cannot locate and engage our true selves during our waking hours — then who the hell are we anyway? This is a profoundly troubling circumstance. Moreover, if we’ve condemned our daylight selves to a void of non-being, what then remains of us?
We experience this dislocation of the life force as a sense of nebulous dread. Everything, these days, the architecture and accoutrements of our lives seems so fragile and unreal; it feels as if everything could just fly apart, at any given moment. The world and our place in it seems so flimsy: an empire built of eggshells; it could all shatter in an instant.
Living on credit, the house of cards of the real estate market, jobs evaporating, most of us languishing only a couple of paychecks away from ruin: The empire is coming undone. As it is, it seems the nation is only being held together with hydrogenated fat, wheat gluten, over-extended credit and particle board. Ergo, there is one law the lawless Bush administration and their keepers from the plundering class cannot flout: the second law of thermodynamics. They won’t be able to claim executive privilege to avoid the consequences of negative entropy.
In a similar vein, we, the underlings of empire, stand helpless before the prevailing madness. Individual reason rarely acts as a countervailing force to stem a drowning tide of cultural cognitive dissonance. Because the more epic and all-compassing the mistake, the more epic and all-encompassing come the rationalizations, the scapegoating and the compulsion for do-overs. If the surge isn’t working as fantasized, then we’ll double-dog surge you and then bomb Iran. If police state tactics fail to alleviate a sense of anxiety, then we must construct more detainment camps, more maximum security prisons, enact more federal death penalty statutes. “Bring back the electric chair; being put to sleep, like stray pets, is too good for the traitors,” the mob will rage. That’s the solution, but (cognitive dissonance being what it is) we need to go bigger — we need an electric sofa — yet, bigger still — an electric dining room set! “Aahh … the smell of deep-fried dissidents in the morning.”
And over the smoking corpses, let us pray. We need to pray for … what? … more prayer. These prayers would work, the homicidally faithful will insist — if every single doubter was induced to drop to their knees and pray. Hence, we need prayer in the public schools. We need prayer on public transportation. We need prayer in public restrooms!
Animus, ignorance, and magical thinking are a tragic mix — and I’m afraid that vintage of mind is the hideous wine of our times. The social criteria that gives rise to fascism is in place in the U.S. and those in positions of power have a strong interest in seeing things remain that way. All we can do is what folks (a minority) have always done … exile or resistance.
In my opinion, both are honorable. The other options are varying degrees of “little Eichmann[ism]” — Ward Churchill’s much scorned, career purge-inducing — but never-the-less accurate phrase. If one does the “soul work,” to appropriate archetypal psychologist James Hillman’s term, it is still possible to resist complicity. Training yourself to avoid lying for provisional gain is a time honored means of prevented alliances with exploitive assholes. They will avoid you, fire you, curse your name from the darkness of their inner abyss — but this will solve the problem of dependence on them — and you’ll be forced to live by other means. Generally, one is more adaptable than one believes.
Keep yourself as healthy and as sane as possible: we’re going to need you around after the inevitable collapse of the present system. Also, beware of those reductionist demons of the mind who diminish the soul-making possibilities of “mere” words. The acts of writing and reading are seen as passive; to crackpot realists, these activities seem useless, unproductive — the feckless indulgences of a class of the thin-wristed effete.
Accordingly, Americans have all but ceased reading. Worse, they displace their feelings of self-loathing borne of their own corporately induced passivity upon writers and thinkers. If the tenets of democratic discourse are to survive, it is imperative that writers and thinkers begin to engage in a passionate defense of themselves against the kvetching armies of crackpot realists that have encircled and laid siege to our collective hearts and minds.
But don’t expect to be lauded with praise for the effort. It’s doubtful our adversaries will be moved by our entreaties. There cannot be a rapprochement with reality for those who have never had a relationship with it in the first place. Yet verbal imagery and depth-inducing insights are the DNA of compassionate engagement. It is not a coincidence that George W. Bush is an inarticulate oaf. Conversely, there are many things in this world that require being touched by words, for there are occasions when words alone can suffice to take us deep and lift us up and serve to ameliorate our alienation.
It is in this spirit that I offer the words above to you; I’m traveling light; they’re all I’m carrying with me, at this late hour, in these dark and dangerous times.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at philangie2000@yahoo.com.
by Phil Rockstroh
7/26/07
In this summer of angst and grim foreboding about what further assaults against common sense and common decency the Bush Administration might inflict upon the people of the world, how many times during the day do those of us — still possessed of mind, heart and conscience — take pause, hoping we’ve seen the worst of it, then, fearing we haven’t yet, attempt to push down the dread rising within us, so that we might simply make it through the day and be able to rest at night? Accordingly, those who have been paying attention are aware that the outward mechanisms of martial law are in place. We shudder knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency. In addition, the knowledge nettles us that a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American empire’s version of the Reichstag fire.
Moreover, a closer look would reveal that the inner processes by which an individual begins the act of acceptance of authoritarian excess — the mixture of chronic passivity, boredom, low grade anxiety and unfocused rage inherent in the citizens/consumers of the corporate state that primes an individual for fascism — have been in place for quite some time within the psyches of the American populace, both elites and hoi polloi alike. Although, don’t look for torch-lit processions thronging the nation’s streets and boulevards; rather, look for a Nuremberg Rally of couch-bound brownshirts. Instead of ogling the serried ranks of jut-jawed SS soldiers, a contemporary Leni Riefenstahl would be forced to film chubby clusters of double-chinned consumers saluting the new order with their TV remotes. In the contemporary United States, the elation induced by the immersion of one’s individual will to the mindless intoxication of the mob might only be possible if Bush seized dictatorial control of the state while simultaneously sending out to all citizens gift certificates to Ikea.
After the catastrophes spawned by the rise of European fascism in the 1930s, a number of brilliant, original thinkers (including Hannah Arendt, Roberto Freire, Wilhelm Reich, and R. D. Laing) set out to study the phenomenon in order to learn how future calamities might be prevented. Although the methodologies and conclusions of these thinkers varied, each noted that alienation and dehumanization festered at the core of the death urge of fascism.
Nowadays, in contrast, the elites of the corporate media have proven themselves useless in this regard, believing, as they do, they constitute the thin line between the rabble at large (me and you) and the chaos begot by freedom. At present, mega-churches attract alienated suburbanites. Right wing talk show hosts misdirect their listeners alienation towards so-called illegal “aliens” and exploit their audience’s sense of powerlessness (created by the rigged system of corporate capitalism) against elitist liberals (who themselves, ironically, benefit from the present system and who only want to change it to the degree that their own privilege will not be affected. In other words, not at all).
Combine the above with the American character trait of being hostile towards introspection and it becomes evident that the present disaster has been building for quite a while now. And it can (and most likely will) get worse — far worse.
Most Americans alive today have been trained since birth to adapt to and serve the corrupt corporate structure by means of the shunning of critical thinking and have been conditioned to be in constant (empty) motion or in the thrall of mass media distraction. We have been taught that passivity is for losers, yet we find ourselves nearly powerless before the corporate/consumer/military/police/entertainment state. In this way, we serve our corporate masters; it serves the corpocracy that the lower orders refuse meaningful self-awareness. If one were to glimpse one’s own illusions, then it follows one might begin to question collective delusions — and this would upset the social order.
Those who have studied the dangers of authoritarian rule have advised us to be wary of people who carry an inner emptiness. Of course, these unfortunates yearn for the void to be filled. But with their hearts and minds mortared closed — what makes it through the self-constructed prison is loud, stupid, and fascistic. At present, what penetrates is: Fundamentalist Sermons on Armageddon; violent video games; the empty spectacle of steroid-induced professional sports hype; the lethal fantasies of American exceptionalism; the exercise in Rock and Roll imperialism that U.S. foreign policy has become. In short, all the banal Sturm und Drang necessary to pierce those protective walls and penetrate the pervasive inner emptiness.
When the people of a culture have been conditioned to worship power — but feel powerless — there’s trouble ahead. The elites must displace the public’s rage by a demagogic sleight-of-hand such as the demonization of marginalized groups. In the US, we’ve been inundated by years of state and commercial propaganda that has degraded and demonized the country’s permanent underclass by the labeling of them as welfare parasites and career criminals.
It has been noted that the mindset, methods, and procedures of America’s punitive, profit-driven prison-industrial complex was a prototype for the systemic cruelty of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; furthermore, it is a given that those institutional affronts to human decency will have served as prototypes for the methods and procedures that will be practiced upon those who are swept-up in the purges and detainment mania following the declaration of martial law in the United States.
We push this knowledge away from us, fearing we will be paralyzed by its crushing implications. Worse, what is nearly impossible to admit is, most likely, the system crushed us long ago. Apropos, R. D. Laing averred that being able to adapt and function within an insane, authoritarian system renders one for all practical purposes insane — only insane in a manner acceptable to a power mad ruling elite.
This is the knowledge we push down, every hour of everyday. Otherwise, we would be driven to admit outright that the system has crushed our individual hopes, aspirations and yearnings. We must, at all costs, keep these feelings concealed; otherwise, we might be compelled to contemplate what we have forsaken, what passions and truths we have traded away for the false sense of security that the corporate order offered us when we tacitly agreed to surrender what was most sacred, vital and alive within us. One psychological manifestation of this phenomenon is the incessant chanting of that mantra of the American corporate workforce: “I’m not my job. I’m not what I do all day long.”
For a moment, meditate on the calamity implicit in such a sentiment. Because If we cannot locate and engage our true selves during our waking hours — then who the hell are we anyway? This is a profoundly troubling circumstance. Moreover, if we’ve condemned our daylight selves to a void of non-being, what then remains of us?
We experience this dislocation of the life force as a sense of nebulous dread. Everything, these days, the architecture and accoutrements of our lives seems so fragile and unreal; it feels as if everything could just fly apart, at any given moment. The world and our place in it seems so flimsy: an empire built of eggshells; it could all shatter in an instant.
Living on credit, the house of cards of the real estate market, jobs evaporating, most of us languishing only a couple of paychecks away from ruin: The empire is coming undone. As it is, it seems the nation is only being held together with hydrogenated fat, wheat gluten, over-extended credit and particle board. Ergo, there is one law the lawless Bush administration and their keepers from the plundering class cannot flout: the second law of thermodynamics. They won’t be able to claim executive privilege to avoid the consequences of negative entropy.
In a similar vein, we, the underlings of empire, stand helpless before the prevailing madness. Individual reason rarely acts as a countervailing force to stem a drowning tide of cultural cognitive dissonance. Because the more epic and all-compassing the mistake, the more epic and all-encompassing come the rationalizations, the scapegoating and the compulsion for do-overs. If the surge isn’t working as fantasized, then we’ll double-dog surge you and then bomb Iran. If police state tactics fail to alleviate a sense of anxiety, then we must construct more detainment camps, more maximum security prisons, enact more federal death penalty statutes. “Bring back the electric chair; being put to sleep, like stray pets, is too good for the traitors,” the mob will rage. That’s the solution, but (cognitive dissonance being what it is) we need to go bigger — we need an electric sofa — yet, bigger still — an electric dining room set! “Aahh … the smell of deep-fried dissidents in the morning.”
And over the smoking corpses, let us pray. We need to pray for … what? … more prayer. These prayers would work, the homicidally faithful will insist — if every single doubter was induced to drop to their knees and pray. Hence, we need prayer in the public schools. We need prayer on public transportation. We need prayer in public restrooms!
Animus, ignorance, and magical thinking are a tragic mix — and I’m afraid that vintage of mind is the hideous wine of our times. The social criteria that gives rise to fascism is in place in the U.S. and those in positions of power have a strong interest in seeing things remain that way. All we can do is what folks (a minority) have always done … exile or resistance.
In my opinion, both are honorable. The other options are varying degrees of “little Eichmann[ism]” — Ward Churchill’s much scorned, career purge-inducing — but never-the-less accurate phrase. If one does the “soul work,” to appropriate archetypal psychologist James Hillman’s term, it is still possible to resist complicity. Training yourself to avoid lying for provisional gain is a time honored means of prevented alliances with exploitive assholes. They will avoid you, fire you, curse your name from the darkness of their inner abyss — but this will solve the problem of dependence on them — and you’ll be forced to live by other means. Generally, one is more adaptable than one believes.
Keep yourself as healthy and as sane as possible: we’re going to need you around after the inevitable collapse of the present system. Also, beware of those reductionist demons of the mind who diminish the soul-making possibilities of “mere” words. The acts of writing and reading are seen as passive; to crackpot realists, these activities seem useless, unproductive — the feckless indulgences of a class of the thin-wristed effete.
Accordingly, Americans have all but ceased reading. Worse, they displace their feelings of self-loathing borne of their own corporately induced passivity upon writers and thinkers. If the tenets of democratic discourse are to survive, it is imperative that writers and thinkers begin to engage in a passionate defense of themselves against the kvetching armies of crackpot realists that have encircled and laid siege to our collective hearts and minds.
But don’t expect to be lauded with praise for the effort. It’s doubtful our adversaries will be moved by our entreaties. There cannot be a rapprochement with reality for those who have never had a relationship with it in the first place. Yet verbal imagery and depth-inducing insights are the DNA of compassionate engagement. It is not a coincidence that George W. Bush is an inarticulate oaf. Conversely, there are many things in this world that require being touched by words, for there are occasions when words alone can suffice to take us deep and lift us up and serve to ameliorate our alienation.
It is in this spirit that I offer the words above to you; I’m traveling light; they’re all I’m carrying with me, at this late hour, in these dark and dangerous times.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at philangie2000@yahoo.com.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
disruption
sure doesn't seem to take much to cause disruptions.
ABC News building evacuated in D.C.
7/26/07
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_re_us/abc_news_evacuation_1
WASHINGTON - A building housing the Washington bureau of ABC News was evacuated Thursday because of a suspicious envelope containing a white powdery substance, District of Columbia authorities said.
D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Alan Etter said there was no note or address on the small envelope. No one has reported any medical symptoms, he said.
Firefighters and police were on the scene trying to determine whether the packet poses a threat, and the downtown building was evacuated as a precaution, Etter said.
Game in bag prompts airport evacuation
7/26/07
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_re_us/airport_evacuated_6
LONG BEACH, Calif. - A suspicious item in checked luggage that prompted the evacuation of a terminal at Long Beach Airport on Thursday turned out to be an electronic game, authorities said.
Several hundred people were evacuated from the terminal for about 90 minutes and five arriving aircraft were held on the tarmac until the all-clear was given.
Transportation Security Administration screeners spotted the suspicious item while X-raying a checked bag around 9:30 a.m., agency spokeswoman Jennifer Peppin said.
The item turned out to be a handheld electronic game board in a "raw form" that showed its wiring, she said.
The passenger worked for "some sort of game or toy company," she added.
Firefighters, police and a bomb squad were called to the airport, about 25 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.
Bomb Squad Blows Up Suspicious Device
July 24, 2007 10:03 AM EDT
http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=6828414
EAST TOLEDO -- Things are back to normal in an east Toledo neighborhood after a suspicious device was found on a railroad bridge. The call first came in around 4:00pm.
Police say some one found the device on a rail bridge near the grain elevators run by The Andersons and ADM. It appeared to be a cooler with wires and some sort of antenna sticking out of it.
Police evacuated a 5-block area of east Toledo, including the Starboard Side condominiums, which are near the bridge. They also shut down Miami Street from Bassett to Navarre, and stopped river traffic from the I-75 overpass to the High Level Bridge.
"Yeah, it was the right call to shut it down," said Joe Jarvis, a stranded boater who was blocked by the river closure. "You don't know what it was or anything, so if they thought it was a bomb, it was the best thing to do, is to shut it down."
After Norfolk Southern and Toledo Police investigators walked out on the bridge, the bomb squad decided to place a small charge next to the device, and blow it up. With a puff of white smoke and a loud "boom," the device exploded around 6:50pm.
The detonation went as planned, and no one was hurt. Police are investigating, and hope whoever put that possible research project there, will come forward. "If it's not illegal, it probably wasn't using really good judgment," said Lt. George Kral of the Toledo Police.
"You put something like that on a major railroad bridge that crosses a river, may want to re-think that without telling somebody," Kral added.
The Coast Guard helped block river traffic. The FBI was also called in to investigate, because the device was on a bridge.
Michigan Ave. reopens after package scare
By Jeremy Gorner Tribune staff reporter
3:52 PM CDT, July 19, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070719michigan-closure,0,7256332.story
The contents of a suspicious package found in the 100 block of North Michigan Avenue were deemed safe this afternoon and the block was reopened, Chicago police said.
The road was closed to traffic at about 1:30 p.m. while police bomb and arson detectives investigated the package found on the street.
Detectives determined the package was not harmful shortly before 3 p.m., and the strip was reopened, Officer JoAnn Taylor said. She did not know what was in the package.
Unattended salad prompts courthouse alert
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
By Gabrielle Banks, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07198/802294-100.stm
A salad left unattended in a bag under a restroom sink prompted the closing of the Grant Street entrance to the Allegheny County Courthouse and the evacuation of county Chief Executive Dan Onorato's office for about an hour this afternoon.
Bomb sniffing dogs were sent into the ladies room after a paper bag was spotted about 1:20 p.m.
Officials said a salad was found in the bag, and the alert was lifted by 2:20 p.m.
Officers said their actions were a precaution. Other entrances remained open and courts remained in session, but a second office, that of the controller's payroll division, also was evacuated.
ABC News building evacuated in D.C.
7/26/07
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_re_us/abc_news_evacuation_1
WASHINGTON - A building housing the Washington bureau of ABC News was evacuated Thursday because of a suspicious envelope containing a white powdery substance, District of Columbia authorities said.
D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Alan Etter said there was no note or address on the small envelope. No one has reported any medical symptoms, he said.
Firefighters and police were on the scene trying to determine whether the packet poses a threat, and the downtown building was evacuated as a precaution, Etter said.
Game in bag prompts airport evacuation
7/26/07
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_re_us/airport_evacuated_6
LONG BEACH, Calif. - A suspicious item in checked luggage that prompted the evacuation of a terminal at Long Beach Airport on Thursday turned out to be an electronic game, authorities said.
Several hundred people were evacuated from the terminal for about 90 minutes and five arriving aircraft were held on the tarmac until the all-clear was given.
Transportation Security Administration screeners spotted the suspicious item while X-raying a checked bag around 9:30 a.m., agency spokeswoman Jennifer Peppin said.
The item turned out to be a handheld electronic game board in a "raw form" that showed its wiring, she said.
The passenger worked for "some sort of game or toy company," she added.
Firefighters, police and a bomb squad were called to the airport, about 25 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.
Bomb Squad Blows Up Suspicious Device
July 24, 2007 10:03 AM EDT
http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=6828414
EAST TOLEDO -- Things are back to normal in an east Toledo neighborhood after a suspicious device was found on a railroad bridge. The call first came in around 4:00pm.
Police say some one found the device on a rail bridge near the grain elevators run by The Andersons and ADM. It appeared to be a cooler with wires and some sort of antenna sticking out of it.
Police evacuated a 5-block area of east Toledo, including the Starboard Side condominiums, which are near the bridge. They also shut down Miami Street from Bassett to Navarre, and stopped river traffic from the I-75 overpass to the High Level Bridge.
"Yeah, it was the right call to shut it down," said Joe Jarvis, a stranded boater who was blocked by the river closure. "You don't know what it was or anything, so if they thought it was a bomb, it was the best thing to do, is to shut it down."
After Norfolk Southern and Toledo Police investigators walked out on the bridge, the bomb squad decided to place a small charge next to the device, and blow it up. With a puff of white smoke and a loud "boom," the device exploded around 6:50pm.
The detonation went as planned, and no one was hurt. Police are investigating, and hope whoever put that possible research project there, will come forward. "If it's not illegal, it probably wasn't using really good judgment," said Lt. George Kral of the Toledo Police.
"You put something like that on a major railroad bridge that crosses a river, may want to re-think that without telling somebody," Kral added.
The Coast Guard helped block river traffic. The FBI was also called in to investigate, because the device was on a bridge.
Michigan Ave. reopens after package scare
By Jeremy Gorner Tribune staff reporter
3:52 PM CDT, July 19, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070719michigan-closure,0,7256332.story
The contents of a suspicious package found in the 100 block of North Michigan Avenue were deemed safe this afternoon and the block was reopened, Chicago police said.
The road was closed to traffic at about 1:30 p.m. while police bomb and arson detectives investigated the package found on the street.
Detectives determined the package was not harmful shortly before 3 p.m., and the strip was reopened, Officer JoAnn Taylor said. She did not know what was in the package.
Unattended salad prompts courthouse alert
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
By Gabrielle Banks, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07198/802294-100.stm
A salad left unattended in a bag under a restroom sink prompted the closing of the Grant Street entrance to the Allegheny County Courthouse and the evacuation of county Chief Executive Dan Onorato's office for about an hour this afternoon.
Bomb sniffing dogs were sent into the ladies room after a paper bag was spotted about 1:20 p.m.
Officials said a salad was found in the bag, and the alert was lifted by 2:20 p.m.
Officers said their actions were a precaution. Other entrances remained open and courts remained in session, but a second office, that of the controller's payroll division, also was evacuated.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
read this
Once upon a time in Iraq... Money makes the world go around
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Dream
July 23, 2007
http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2007/07/once-upon-time-in-iraq-money-makes.htm
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Dream
July 23, 2007
http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2007/07/once-upon-time-in-iraq-money-makes.htm
Monday, July 23, 2007
Saving A President
- by Stephen Lendman
7/23/07
[...]
On July 7, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum appeared on the Hugh Hewitt radio program. He was introduced by the host as "one of our favorite Americans," leaving no doubt where Hewitt stands. Santorum came to skewer his former colleagues' lack of resolve to stay the course in Iraq, no matter how hopeless things are on the ground. But he took the opportunity to go further by suggesting that "confronting Iran (is) an absolute lynchpin for our success in that region," that 9/11 taught us "Islamists" must be confronted, that they want to "conquer that region of the world (and) will soon end up on our doorstep (if not stopped, and that) between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen (to shape) "a very different" (public view) of this war....because....of some very unfortunate events (coming) like we're seeing unfold in the UK."
Does Rick Santorum know something the public doesn't, and was he given permission to leak it on-air? Another clue came July 10 from DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. He practically told a Chicago Tribune editorial board meeting another major terrorist attack is coming later this summer because he has a "gut feeling" about a period ahead of increased risk. Basing his assessment on undisclosed intelligence (as always) and earlier "terrorist patterns in Europe," he added "Summertime seems to be appealing to them (and) We worry that they are rebuilding their activities. I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk."
Chertoff then appeared on a number of TV programs to itemize his "gut feeling" factors, including taking full advantage of the likely staged June 29 London car bomb discoveries and June 30 follow-up Glasgow airport incident that may have only been an unfortunate accident. With no credible evidence backing his claims, Chertoff, nonetheless, said "Europe could become a platform for an attack against this country." The UK incidents may, in fact, have been staged to stoke fear in Britain and here in advance of a major homeland terror event to come.
[...]
full article here
7/23/07
[...]
On July 7, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum appeared on the Hugh Hewitt radio program. He was introduced by the host as "one of our favorite Americans," leaving no doubt where Hewitt stands. Santorum came to skewer his former colleagues' lack of resolve to stay the course in Iraq, no matter how hopeless things are on the ground. But he took the opportunity to go further by suggesting that "confronting Iran (is) an absolute lynchpin for our success in that region," that 9/11 taught us "Islamists" must be confronted, that they want to "conquer that region of the world (and) will soon end up on our doorstep (if not stopped, and that) between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen (to shape) "a very different" (public view) of this war....because....of some very unfortunate events (coming) like we're seeing unfold in the UK."
Does Rick Santorum know something the public doesn't, and was he given permission to leak it on-air? Another clue came July 10 from DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. He practically told a Chicago Tribune editorial board meeting another major terrorist attack is coming later this summer because he has a "gut feeling" about a period ahead of increased risk. Basing his assessment on undisclosed intelligence (as always) and earlier "terrorist patterns in Europe," he added "Summertime seems to be appealing to them (and) We worry that they are rebuilding their activities. I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk."
Chertoff then appeared on a number of TV programs to itemize his "gut feeling" factors, including taking full advantage of the likely staged June 29 London car bomb discoveries and June 30 follow-up Glasgow airport incident that may have only been an unfortunate accident. With no credible evidence backing his claims, Chertoff, nonetheless, said "Europe could become a platform for an attack against this country." The UK incidents may, in fact, have been staged to stoke fear in Britain and here in advance of a major homeland terror event to come.
[...]
full article here
Friday, July 20, 2007
how long before the bush is uprooted?
Plame Case Thrown Out;
National Security Imperilled
by Juan Cole
Friday, July 20, 2007
http://www.juancole.com/2007/07/plame-case-thrown-out-national-security.html
A federal judge has thrown out the lawsuit of Valerie Plame Wilson against Bush administration figures Irv Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, Richard Bruce Cheney, and Richard Armitage. She sued them for conducting a campaign to out her in the press as an undercover operative and so ruining her career.
The judge interpreted Cheney Inc.'s outing of Plame as just politics and something to be expected of political office-holders. That is, he believed their story that they were just defending themselves politically from what they saw as a Central Intelligence Agency attempt to smear them and their Iraq War. He admitted that their methods were "unsavory."
It is a ruling about the jurisdiction of the court and so something technical in the law about which I don't feel qualified to comment. Just as a citizen, I cannot understand how committing what was essentially an act of treason (or trying very hard to) can be seen as part of the ordinary political duties of incumbents.
The judgment will be appealed to the Supreme Court, but given the coloration of that court, one hardly expects the justices to rule against Bush-Cheney.
But the world has a kind of karma, and the United States will be punished for what Cheney Inc. did to Plame Wilson.
Think about it. She worked against nuclear proliferation, including with regard to Iran,with a "non-official cover" (NOC). She was an undercover operative with extremely sensitive duties.
So what are the big security challenges facing the United States in the next decade? They include the regrouping of al-Qaeda and the threat of nuclear proliferation.
What the United States therefore needs most to secure our country is smart, knowledgeable, skilled and dedicated counter-terrorism and counter- proliferation professionals. Without such persons, we are in danger of being hit hard by smart, knowledgeable, skilled terrorists.
But here is the problem. If you are a NOC, you are living a lie. Your very identity as CIA would potentially put everyone around you in danger, especially your friends, contacts and the agents you are running in foreign countries. You yourself could easily be assassinated on a trip abroad if your identity became known.
So you would depend for your survival and for the survival of your friends and contacts on the US government's willingness and ability to keep your identity secret. If you thought that the vice president might casually betray your identity if he thought it politically convenient to do so, you'd be crazy to put yourself in that position.
So, we've had the Plame Wilson affair, the profound hostility of Cheney Inc. to the reality-based CIA (for not going along with its fantasy machine), the Cheney project of blaming CIA director George Tenet for his own mistakes with regard to Iraq, and the changes and rotations in top personnel. Competent Middle East analysts like former Deputy Director of Intelligence Jami Miscik have been forced out.
So ask yourself, how many really smart competent people are going to volunteer to follow in Valerie Plame Wilson's footsteps and take all those risks for a job that does not pay all that well, knowing that the Cheney sorts might at any moment ruin their lives for petty political reasons?
So Bush and Cheney have deeply damaged recruitment, morale and efforts among our counter-terrorism agencies at the same time that their greedy and duplicitous occupation of a major Arab Muslim country, Iraq, is generating a new terrorist threat against the American homeland. They are creating the perfect storm.
So the judge threw out the lawsuit. But we will all be paying the damages.
Bush-Cheney have disarmed us and galvanized the enemy. They are traitors, and if something happens to America, it will be in some important part their fault.
Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings
White House Says Hill Can't Pursue Contempt Cases
By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 20, 2007; A01
Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902625.html
Bush’s assertion of executive power:
The logic of presidential-military dictatorship
By Joe Kay
16 July 2007
At President Bush’s July 11 press conference [July 12] a significant exchange took place that has received very little media attention. Edwin Chen, who writes for Bloomberg.com, asked Bush, “How hard is it for you to conduct the war without popular support? Do you ever have trouble balancing between doing what you think is the right thing and following the will of the majority of the public, which is the essence of democracy?”
Bush’s response was to emphasize the role of the military as a counterweight to public opinion. He outlined a concept of presidential power that upholds the military as a critical “constituency” rising above, and placed in opposition to, the American people. On this basis, Bush sought to justify a policy that has been clearly repudiated by the general population—not only in opinion polls, but also in the November 2006 midterm elections…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/bush-j16.shtml
Disregard subpoenas, Justice Dept says
The opinion raises questions over whether Bush officials would be prosecuted for not cooperating in probe of U.S. attorneys firings.
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
July 12, 2007
WASHINGTON — In a broadly worded legal opinion, the Justice Department has concluded that President Bush’s former top lawyer, and possibly other senior White House officials, can ignore subpoenas from Congress to testify about the firings of U.S. attorneys.
The three-page opinion raises questions about whether the Justice Department would prosecute senior administration officials if Congress voted to hold them in contempt for not cooperating with the investigation into the firing last year of eight top prosecutors.
The opinion was prepared this week by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in response to questions from former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers, who was subpoenaed to testify today before the House Judiciary Committee. Miers told the panel in a letter faxed Tuesday night that she would not appear, citing the Justice memo and advice from the White House…
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-usattys12jul12,1,7117374.story
Pentagon Rebukes Sen Clinton on Iraq
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer
7/19/07
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon told Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton that her questions about how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda.
In a stinging rebuke to a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded to questions Clinton raised in May in which she urged the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of American forces.
A copy of Edelman's response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman wrote…
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CLINTON_IRAQ?SITE=CALAK&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Go to Iraq and fight, Mr President
Bush’s latest choice of scapegoat — Hillary Clinton — boggles the mind
By Keith Olbermann, Countdown
July 19, 2007
It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons, of history.
A country — a government — a military machine — can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday. It can get thousands of its people killed. It can risk the safety of its citizens. It can destroy the fabric of its nation.
But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain or even gain power.
The Bush administration has opened this Pandora’s Box about Iraq. It has found its scapegoats: Hillary Clinton and us.
The lies and terror tactics with which it deluded this country into war — they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.
The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place — the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process — that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.
The criminal lack of planning for the war — the total “jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly” tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein — that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.
The utter, blinkered idiocy of “staying the course,” of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time, and a third and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed — the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake — that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.
The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total “Alice Through the Looking Glass” quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault!
The fault, brought down, as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter by a nearly anonymous undersecretary of defense, has tonight been laid on the doorstep of... Sen. Hillary Clinton and, by extension, at the doorstep of every American — the now-vast majority of us — who have dared to criticize this war or protest it or merely ask questions about it…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19859124/
National Security Imperilled
by Juan Cole
Friday, July 20, 2007
http://www.juancole.com/2007/07/plame-case-thrown-out-national-security.html
A federal judge has thrown out the lawsuit of Valerie Plame Wilson against Bush administration figures Irv Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, Richard Bruce Cheney, and Richard Armitage. She sued them for conducting a campaign to out her in the press as an undercover operative and so ruining her career.
The judge interpreted Cheney Inc.'s outing of Plame as just politics and something to be expected of political office-holders. That is, he believed their story that they were just defending themselves politically from what they saw as a Central Intelligence Agency attempt to smear them and their Iraq War. He admitted that their methods were "unsavory."
It is a ruling about the jurisdiction of the court and so something technical in the law about which I don't feel qualified to comment. Just as a citizen, I cannot understand how committing what was essentially an act of treason (or trying very hard to) can be seen as part of the ordinary political duties of incumbents.
The judgment will be appealed to the Supreme Court, but given the coloration of that court, one hardly expects the justices to rule against Bush-Cheney.
But the world has a kind of karma, and the United States will be punished for what Cheney Inc. did to Plame Wilson.
Think about it. She worked against nuclear proliferation, including with regard to Iran,with a "non-official cover" (NOC). She was an undercover operative with extremely sensitive duties.
So what are the big security challenges facing the United States in the next decade? They include the regrouping of al-Qaeda and the threat of nuclear proliferation.
What the United States therefore needs most to secure our country is smart, knowledgeable, skilled and dedicated counter-terrorism and counter- proliferation professionals. Without such persons, we are in danger of being hit hard by smart, knowledgeable, skilled terrorists.
But here is the problem. If you are a NOC, you are living a lie. Your very identity as CIA would potentially put everyone around you in danger, especially your friends, contacts and the agents you are running in foreign countries. You yourself could easily be assassinated on a trip abroad if your identity became known.
So you would depend for your survival and for the survival of your friends and contacts on the US government's willingness and ability to keep your identity secret. If you thought that the vice president might casually betray your identity if he thought it politically convenient to do so, you'd be crazy to put yourself in that position.
So, we've had the Plame Wilson affair, the profound hostility of Cheney Inc. to the reality-based CIA (for not going along with its fantasy machine), the Cheney project of blaming CIA director George Tenet for his own mistakes with regard to Iraq, and the changes and rotations in top personnel. Competent Middle East analysts like former Deputy Director of Intelligence Jami Miscik have been forced out.
So ask yourself, how many really smart competent people are going to volunteer to follow in Valerie Plame Wilson's footsteps and take all those risks for a job that does not pay all that well, knowing that the Cheney sorts might at any moment ruin their lives for petty political reasons?
So Bush and Cheney have deeply damaged recruitment, morale and efforts among our counter-terrorism agencies at the same time that their greedy and duplicitous occupation of a major Arab Muslim country, Iraq, is generating a new terrorist threat against the American homeland. They are creating the perfect storm.
So the judge threw out the lawsuit. But we will all be paying the damages.
Bush-Cheney have disarmed us and galvanized the enemy. They are traitors, and if something happens to America, it will be in some important part their fault.
Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings
White House Says Hill Can't Pursue Contempt Cases
By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 20, 2007; A01
Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902625.html
Bush’s assertion of executive power:
The logic of presidential-military dictatorship
By Joe Kay
16 July 2007
At President Bush’s July 11 press conference [July 12] a significant exchange took place that has received very little media attention. Edwin Chen, who writes for Bloomberg.com, asked Bush, “How hard is it for you to conduct the war without popular support? Do you ever have trouble balancing between doing what you think is the right thing and following the will of the majority of the public, which is the essence of democracy?”
Bush’s response was to emphasize the role of the military as a counterweight to public opinion. He outlined a concept of presidential power that upholds the military as a critical “constituency” rising above, and placed in opposition to, the American people. On this basis, Bush sought to justify a policy that has been clearly repudiated by the general population—not only in opinion polls, but also in the November 2006 midterm elections…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/bush-j16.shtml
Disregard subpoenas, Justice Dept says
The opinion raises questions over whether Bush officials would be prosecuted for not cooperating in probe of U.S. attorneys firings.
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
July 12, 2007
WASHINGTON — In a broadly worded legal opinion, the Justice Department has concluded that President Bush’s former top lawyer, and possibly other senior White House officials, can ignore subpoenas from Congress to testify about the firings of U.S. attorneys.
The three-page opinion raises questions about whether the Justice Department would prosecute senior administration officials if Congress voted to hold them in contempt for not cooperating with the investigation into the firing last year of eight top prosecutors.
The opinion was prepared this week by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in response to questions from former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers, who was subpoenaed to testify today before the House Judiciary Committee. Miers told the panel in a letter faxed Tuesday night that she would not appear, citing the Justice memo and advice from the White House…
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-usattys12jul12,1,7117374.story
Pentagon Rebukes Sen Clinton on Iraq
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer
7/19/07
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon told Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton that her questions about how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda.
In a stinging rebuke to a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded to questions Clinton raised in May in which she urged the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of American forces.
A copy of Edelman's response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman wrote…
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CLINTON_IRAQ?SITE=CALAK&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Go to Iraq and fight, Mr President
Bush’s latest choice of scapegoat — Hillary Clinton — boggles the mind
By Keith Olbermann, Countdown
July 19, 2007
It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons, of history.
A country — a government — a military machine — can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday. It can get thousands of its people killed. It can risk the safety of its citizens. It can destroy the fabric of its nation.
But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain or even gain power.
The Bush administration has opened this Pandora’s Box about Iraq. It has found its scapegoats: Hillary Clinton and us.
The lies and terror tactics with which it deluded this country into war — they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.
The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place — the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process — that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.
The criminal lack of planning for the war — the total “jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly” tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein — that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.
The utter, blinkered idiocy of “staying the course,” of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time, and a third and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed — the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake — that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.
The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total “Alice Through the Looking Glass” quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault!
The fault, brought down, as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter by a nearly anonymous undersecretary of defense, has tonight been laid on the doorstep of... Sen. Hillary Clinton and, by extension, at the doorstep of every American — the now-vast majority of us — who have dared to criticize this war or protest it or merely ask questions about it…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19859124/
Thursday, July 19, 2007
The Militarization and Annexation of North America
- by Stephen Lendman
Besides the Bush administration's imperial aims and permanent war on the world, add the one at home below the radar. Its weapons include the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of state power and control. They target the people of three nations slowly becoming one headquartered in Washington. That's the apparent aim of those in power here wanting one continent, "indivisible" minus old-fashioned ideas like "liberty and justice for all" we used to believe in when, as kids, we recited our "Pledge of Allegiance." They now have a whole new meaning. They're just words drummed into young minds hoping they'll still believe them when they're old enough to know better.
There may be a greater scheme for the planet ahead, but this article only focuses on what we know about and how it's unfolding so far. It has a name, in fact, several, but they all aim for the same thing - one nation, indivisible, where three sovereign ones once stood, headquartered in Washington.
read more
Besides the Bush administration's imperial aims and permanent war on the world, add the one at home below the radar. Its weapons include the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of state power and control. They target the people of three nations slowly becoming one headquartered in Washington. That's the apparent aim of those in power here wanting one continent, "indivisible" minus old-fashioned ideas like "liberty and justice for all" we used to believe in when, as kids, we recited our "Pledge of Allegiance." They now have a whole new meaning. They're just words drummed into young minds hoping they'll still believe them when they're old enough to know better.
There may be a greater scheme for the planet ahead, but this article only focuses on what we know about and how it's unfolding so far. It has a name, in fact, several, but they all aim for the same thing - one nation, indivisible, where three sovereign ones once stood, headquartered in Washington.
read more
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
America Has No Surplus Democracy to Export
by Ahmed Amr / July 18th, 2007
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/america-has-no-surplus-democracy-to-export/
George Bush just gave another vulgar performance in the remodeled James S. Brady Press Room. As usual, he stayed on message — like a vacuum cleaner salesman who touts his machines as the only weapons capable of winning the ‘eternal war on dust.’
With a straight face, Bush blamed General Tommy Franks for the disastrous post-invasion plan. Apparently, Franks was awarded the Medal of Freedom for giving us bum advice on troop requirements for stabilizing Iraq. Without missing a beat, Bush went on to declare that he would resist making decisions based on public opinion polls or even the advice of GOP senators. Rather, he would leave future decisions to his new general — David Petraeus.
I can’t remember the last time the president bothered to visit Iraq. And yet he speaks with such authority about what our Mesopotamian oil colony looks like four years after his unilateral war of aggression.
If we take Bush at his word, the entire quagmire is nothing more than a rumble between the marines and Al Qaeda — a battle that will determine the survival of Western Civilization. Bush made over 30 references to al-Qaeda during the press conference. Can it be that the decider can’t differentiate between Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Bin Laden’s cells in Afghanistan? Is it possible that he actually subscribes to the infantile notion — faithfully propagated by a complicit press corps — that we are fighting the same enemy responsible for the carnage of 9/11?
Who renewed the president’s license to spin the same batch of manufactured intelligence he used to market the invasion to gullible and traumatized Americans? And where in the constitution does it say that Rupert Murdoch has that authority?
Bush keeps pulling the same canard out of the same neo-con hat even though his own intelligence services have consistently determined that the Mesopotamian insurgency is predominantly made up of Iraqis that choose to resist the American occupation. He should know that the members of ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ constitute but a small fraction of the insurgents. And there is no debating the fact that Iraqi insurgents have limited their activities to Iraq. Among the tens of thousands of Iraqi detainees only an insignificant minority are non-Iraqi Arab ‘foreigners.’
As usual, Bush painted his imperial enterprise as a noble effort to spread the blessings of democracy. Now that Iraqis can vote, two thousand Iraqis vote with their feet every day and choose wretched exile in Syria, Jordan, Egypt or any other place that will give them sanctuary. Two million have already made the journey to an uncertain future away from the familiar surroundings of their native land. Another two million are internally displaced by the ethnic cleansing that was ignited by the invasion.
If Bush would bother to ask them why they fled — they would inform him that they are fleeing Maliki’s death squads and the militia infested security forces being trained and armed by the American military.
Bush rarely mentions the plight of these refugees and their agony doesn’t register on American radar screens. It takes the unique talent of the mass media murdochrats to make a non-issue out of a massive exodus that dwarfs the epic flight of Vietnamese boat people after the collapse of the Saigon government. In a magnanimous act of generosity, the United States has taken in two hundred Iraqis. That works out to one Green Card for every thousand refugees.
In a country of twenty five million, hundreds of thousands have been killed and maimed. The official policy of the United States is not to count them. Unfortunately for Bush, It’s a little more difficult to hide the 3600 American soldiers that have perished in a war we never had to fight.
Today’s Iraq is a contender for the number one spot on the ‘failed states’ list. Virtually every Iraqi has lost family members, friends and neighbors in the killing fields of Mesopotamia. Every morning, mutilated bodies are dumped in the streets of Baghdad. Suicide bombers are a daily occurrence. Tens of thousands of detainees are in the custody of the merciless sectarian security forces.
Nothing works. Reconstruction efforts have been abandoned. Parents don’t send their kids to school. Infant mortality claims one of every five children under the age of five. Unemployment is at 70%. Electricity is a memory. Oil production is below pre-war levels and the price of a barrel of oil has tripled since the invasion.
In a country that floats on oil, drivers line up for hours to fill their tanks. Sectarian gangs and common criminals stalk the population and fear is a permanent state of mind. And to think it only costs ten billion dollars a month to create so much suffering, chaos and despair. Five years into the occupation, the Pentagon is boasting about controlling half of Baghdad even as the Green Zone comes under regular mortar attacks. And the Iraqi parliamentarians who aren’t already living in London, Syria or Jordan are getting ready for their month long summer vacation.
In the north, the Turks are threatening to attack the Kurds. In the south, the British have withdrawn their forces to the Basra airport. Brown is just waiting for the perfect moment to sneak out the back door. Behind, the British will leave a virtual theocracy dominated by the militias of Moqtada el Sadr and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — a group that was recruited, financed, trained and given sanctuary by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
According to recent polls, eighty percent of Iraqis want the American occupation to end and seventy percent of Americans would be happy to oblige them.
None of this matters to the president. When it comes to owning up to the consequences of his criminal war, George’s psychopathic indifference is off the mental health charts. The man is determined to walk away with a ‘victory’ that will allow him to posture as the reincarnation of Winston Churchill.
What possible outcome could justify the harm inflicted on the Iraqi people? How can one even imagine a final chapter in this quagmire that would compensate for the loss of American and Iraqi blood and treasure? What exactly is left to win?
The most remarkable thing about this man is that he appears to be genuinely satisfied with his dismal record. George is still infatuated with George. In the course of his pathetic performance during the news conference, he couldn’t resist the temptation to act like a clown and crack a few jokes. It’s no sweat off of his back how much blood flows out of other people’s veins.
It isn’t likely that George will ever admit losing this debacle of choice. So, it will be left to others to lose the war for the president. To paraphrase Georges Clemenceau, ending this war is too important to leave to the generals or George Bush.
The bottom line is that we can either wait for the next president to do him the honors or stop funding his illegal war. Dealing with the messy consequences will be left for the Iraqis to sort out. Perhaps massive American reparations can help heal the wounds and restore a fraction of what we have destroyed.
Even if Congress doesn’t act, Maliki and his sectarian parliamentary thugs might invite Bush to pack up and leave at the end of the year by simply refusing to renew his United Nations mandate. Maybe that’s why Bush continues to portray Maliki as a young democrat. It will make it that much easier to spin the inevitable withdrawal as compliance with the wishes of a ‘democratic and sovereign state.’
Any way you cut it, this vicious American imperial venture in the Gulf is about to end. And if we can’t impeach Bush for his WMD lies and the horrific results — then we will be left with solid proof that America has no surplus democracy to export. We can either impeach Bush and Cheney or suffer irreparable damage to our political heritage of being a nation of laws.
Ahmed Amr is the editor of NileMedia.com. He can be reached at: Montraj@aol.com.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/america-has-no-surplus-democracy-to-export/
George Bush just gave another vulgar performance in the remodeled James S. Brady Press Room. As usual, he stayed on message — like a vacuum cleaner salesman who touts his machines as the only weapons capable of winning the ‘eternal war on dust.’
With a straight face, Bush blamed General Tommy Franks for the disastrous post-invasion plan. Apparently, Franks was awarded the Medal of Freedom for giving us bum advice on troop requirements for stabilizing Iraq. Without missing a beat, Bush went on to declare that he would resist making decisions based on public opinion polls or even the advice of GOP senators. Rather, he would leave future decisions to his new general — David Petraeus.
I can’t remember the last time the president bothered to visit Iraq. And yet he speaks with such authority about what our Mesopotamian oil colony looks like four years after his unilateral war of aggression.
If we take Bush at his word, the entire quagmire is nothing more than a rumble between the marines and Al Qaeda — a battle that will determine the survival of Western Civilization. Bush made over 30 references to al-Qaeda during the press conference. Can it be that the decider can’t differentiate between Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Bin Laden’s cells in Afghanistan? Is it possible that he actually subscribes to the infantile notion — faithfully propagated by a complicit press corps — that we are fighting the same enemy responsible for the carnage of 9/11?
Who renewed the president’s license to spin the same batch of manufactured intelligence he used to market the invasion to gullible and traumatized Americans? And where in the constitution does it say that Rupert Murdoch has that authority?
Bush keeps pulling the same canard out of the same neo-con hat even though his own intelligence services have consistently determined that the Mesopotamian insurgency is predominantly made up of Iraqis that choose to resist the American occupation. He should know that the members of ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ constitute but a small fraction of the insurgents. And there is no debating the fact that Iraqi insurgents have limited their activities to Iraq. Among the tens of thousands of Iraqi detainees only an insignificant minority are non-Iraqi Arab ‘foreigners.’
As usual, Bush painted his imperial enterprise as a noble effort to spread the blessings of democracy. Now that Iraqis can vote, two thousand Iraqis vote with their feet every day and choose wretched exile in Syria, Jordan, Egypt or any other place that will give them sanctuary. Two million have already made the journey to an uncertain future away from the familiar surroundings of their native land. Another two million are internally displaced by the ethnic cleansing that was ignited by the invasion.
If Bush would bother to ask them why they fled — they would inform him that they are fleeing Maliki’s death squads and the militia infested security forces being trained and armed by the American military.
Bush rarely mentions the plight of these refugees and their agony doesn’t register on American radar screens. It takes the unique talent of the mass media murdochrats to make a non-issue out of a massive exodus that dwarfs the epic flight of Vietnamese boat people after the collapse of the Saigon government. In a magnanimous act of generosity, the United States has taken in two hundred Iraqis. That works out to one Green Card for every thousand refugees.
In a country of twenty five million, hundreds of thousands have been killed and maimed. The official policy of the United States is not to count them. Unfortunately for Bush, It’s a little more difficult to hide the 3600 American soldiers that have perished in a war we never had to fight.
Today’s Iraq is a contender for the number one spot on the ‘failed states’ list. Virtually every Iraqi has lost family members, friends and neighbors in the killing fields of Mesopotamia. Every morning, mutilated bodies are dumped in the streets of Baghdad. Suicide bombers are a daily occurrence. Tens of thousands of detainees are in the custody of the merciless sectarian security forces.
Nothing works. Reconstruction efforts have been abandoned. Parents don’t send their kids to school. Infant mortality claims one of every five children under the age of five. Unemployment is at 70%. Electricity is a memory. Oil production is below pre-war levels and the price of a barrel of oil has tripled since the invasion.
In a country that floats on oil, drivers line up for hours to fill their tanks. Sectarian gangs and common criminals stalk the population and fear is a permanent state of mind. And to think it only costs ten billion dollars a month to create so much suffering, chaos and despair. Five years into the occupation, the Pentagon is boasting about controlling half of Baghdad even as the Green Zone comes under regular mortar attacks. And the Iraqi parliamentarians who aren’t already living in London, Syria or Jordan are getting ready for their month long summer vacation.
In the north, the Turks are threatening to attack the Kurds. In the south, the British have withdrawn their forces to the Basra airport. Brown is just waiting for the perfect moment to sneak out the back door. Behind, the British will leave a virtual theocracy dominated by the militias of Moqtada el Sadr and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — a group that was recruited, financed, trained and given sanctuary by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
According to recent polls, eighty percent of Iraqis want the American occupation to end and seventy percent of Americans would be happy to oblige them.
None of this matters to the president. When it comes to owning up to the consequences of his criminal war, George’s psychopathic indifference is off the mental health charts. The man is determined to walk away with a ‘victory’ that will allow him to posture as the reincarnation of Winston Churchill.
What possible outcome could justify the harm inflicted on the Iraqi people? How can one even imagine a final chapter in this quagmire that would compensate for the loss of American and Iraqi blood and treasure? What exactly is left to win?
The most remarkable thing about this man is that he appears to be genuinely satisfied with his dismal record. George is still infatuated with George. In the course of his pathetic performance during the news conference, he couldn’t resist the temptation to act like a clown and crack a few jokes. It’s no sweat off of his back how much blood flows out of other people’s veins.
It isn’t likely that George will ever admit losing this debacle of choice. So, it will be left to others to lose the war for the president. To paraphrase Georges Clemenceau, ending this war is too important to leave to the generals or George Bush.
The bottom line is that we can either wait for the next president to do him the honors or stop funding his illegal war. Dealing with the messy consequences will be left for the Iraqis to sort out. Perhaps massive American reparations can help heal the wounds and restore a fraction of what we have destroyed.
Even if Congress doesn’t act, Maliki and his sectarian parliamentary thugs might invite Bush to pack up and leave at the end of the year by simply refusing to renew his United Nations mandate. Maybe that’s why Bush continues to portray Maliki as a young democrat. It will make it that much easier to spin the inevitable withdrawal as compliance with the wishes of a ‘democratic and sovereign state.’
Any way you cut it, this vicious American imperial venture in the Gulf is about to end. And if we can’t impeach Bush for his WMD lies and the horrific results — then we will be left with solid proof that America has no surplus democracy to export. We can either impeach Bush and Cheney or suffer irreparable damage to our political heritage of being a nation of laws.
Ahmed Amr is the editor of NileMedia.com. He can be reached at: Montraj@aol.com.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Will a Total Suppression of the Left Ultimately Ruin Our Planet?
by Richard L. Franklin
7/16/07
To construct my argument for this rather dismal possibility, I want to take us back to the late 30s and the rise of Nazism. As Hitler went about building his military machine and making his intentions patently clear, two potential obstacles to his plans were a possible military detente of England, France, and the Soviet Union plus Germany's almost total lack of the resources necessary to complete the building of his huge war machine. Germany was stunningly bereft of necessary natural resources. Unlike previous great wars when nations only needed 'blood and iron', war now required a plethora of materials that were nowhere to be found in Germany.
These materials were available in abundance to the Soviet Union, the US, and the British Empire, either within their own boundaries or within states that were within the orbit of their imperial control. America alone was producing 70% of the world's oil. The Middle East had not yet arrived as a petroleum giant, and was only producing 7% of the world's oil needs. In any case, even this small oil production in the Middle East was controlled by giant British, American, and Dutch corporations.
To say that more than blood and iron were now needed to wage modern wars is a huge understatement. Rubber and gasoline were still important, but a huge range of other materials had become just as essential. Modern steel was vastly more complicated in its sundry alloys than simple iron was. To create the various forms of steel needed for the machinery of war, a state needed supplies of less available metals such as chromium, antimony, tungsten, nickel, cobalt, vanadium, mercury, titanium, and molybdendum --- the latter being essential for creating the cutting tools needed to manufacture the weapons of war. The US had a virtual monopoly over the latter metal. Of course, the wheels of war still ran largely on rubber, but the German landscape was not exactly replete with rubber trees. The Brits, on the other hand, controlled much of the world's rubber supplies with its huge fleet of warships and a large merchant marine fleet.
So how did Hitler manage to garner huge amounts of all these needed materials? Simple. He was the darling of the most powerful corporations of the capitalist world. His violent hatred of any form of communism or democratic socialism made him a beloved icon for the great overlords of capitalism. They would see to it that both he and Mussolini would not go lacking for any of the critical materials needed to build the Nazi war machine. In short, Hitler's hatred of the left was the key to his membership in an international club of corporate fascist capitalists.
Consider the following symbolism. Henry Ford, who all but worshipped his friend Adolph, kept a bust of Hitler on his desk, something that often startled visitors to the inner chamber of one of the world's greatest capitalists. As for the office of Herr Hitler, visitors were often surprised to see a life size portrait of Henry Ford adorning the wall. One can scarcely exaggerate the weight of this symbolism.
As a result of the admiration of Hitler by the ruling industrial aristocracies of England and America, war materials poured undeterred into Germany, allowing Hitler to nearly complete his vast military machine by roughly 1940. Not only that, he often obtained huge supplies of materials on credit dispensed by the capitalist corporations of the West.
Some excellent historians believe a signed mutual defense pact between the English, French, and Russians would have stopped Hitler cold in his military plans. In fact, Hitler was terrified of such a potential pact between Russia and England. He knew he could never engage in his acts of territorial invasion if it meant unleashing the dogs of war at a time when he faced formidable enemies on both fronts and was also burdened with the controlling of newly occupied territories.
Churchill understood this, but his views were suppressed by the appeaser Chamberlain, who never took Hitler as seriously as Churchill did. Chamberlain also was far more sensitive to the views of the ruling aristocracy of England than the more realistic Churchill. The man who would one day lead his country to victory strongly favored a mutual defense pact between England and Stalin despite his dislike of the murderous Stalin. He understood that Stalin was a despot of enormous proportions, but Churchill also was a practitioner of Realpolitik.
He correctly surmised that Hitler would not have embarked on his various territorial adventures in Europe if it meant going to war simultaneously with Russia on one front and the English and French on the other front. Keep in mind this hugely important fact: in 1938, Hitler's war machine was far from being completed. He needed another two or three years of feverish activity to complete it.
The blind hatred of Russia by the ruling classes of England made the very thought of a pact with Russia anathema. They were basically blinded to the realities of the world situation by their greedy, mindless, capitalistic prejudices. The myopic love of numerous American capitalists for Hitler and Mussolini permitted a vast selling of key materials the Nazis sorely needed to complete their war machine. The blind hatred of any socialist state, democratic or otherwise, led the ruling class of England to steadfastly block the signing of a pact with Stalin, an agreement Stalin would have been happy to sign onto. As you know, he eventually settled for a second best 'solution' and signed a pact with Hitler. Ironically, it is sometimes said that it was Russia that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany, thusly adding weight to Churchill's foresight and the myopia of the British ruling aristocracy.
A fanatical hatred of any socialist system combined with a quasi-religious admiration for almost any predatory capitalist system has dictated the foreign policy formulations of America ever since day one. We are told we must hate Castro because he is an allegedly brutal dictator. Of course, that is not the true reason. The American oligarchy loved Fulgencio Batista, even though he was a dictator of immense cruelty. Comparatively speaking, Batista was satanic, while Castro and Guevara were near saints in any comparison.
Batista, however, was a close friend and caretaker of the landed aristocracy of Cuba, the American megacorporations, and the American Mafia. What the American ruling class hates about Cuba is not Fidel Castro. Their hatred is a passion about the entire socialist experiment that has succeeded despite the enormous obstacles put in place by the US and nearly a half century of US terrorism constantly thrown against that little island (i.e Operation Mongoose).
The more obvious manifestations of hatred for the left by America's ruling corporate caste has been the virulent hatred of left wing reformers such as Michael Moore. The hatred oozes out steadily in many forms from the oil megacorporations, the automobile industry, the insurance industry, the Democratic Leadership Council, the PNAC cabal, and the corporate media cartel --- just to mention a few of the rabid haters of the left.
All of which brings me to this question. Will these fanatical haters of nearly all forms of socialization actually end up destroying the planet? Will a recklessly capitalistic Empire America ultimately make the planet unlivable through global warming? How about disaster via a spread of hitherto unknown, incurable tropical diseases as the planet warms? How about the right wing passion for making new weapons of war capable of wiping out massive populations? On a smaller scale, how about the clouds of depleted uranium poisons now drifting from the Middle East over England in a kind of ironic payback? Who knows what the guys are bottling nowadays at Fort Detrick, one of the most fearsome, feckless, and fanatical defenders of Empire America? Could there be a Dr. Strangelove walking the corridors of that immense factory of death? Will hatred of the left and all they stand for eventually lead to the flooding of major cities such as New York City, London, and so on, through global warming? Frankly, I don't like the looks of a future controlled by leaders of the same ilk as a Bush or a Blair or a Howard, and so forth.
Try to imagine a world in which the socializing of solutions for human problems was the rule rather than the exception. Imagine a world in which the hypothetical social contract that was once so deeply delved into by the greatest of the Enlightenment thinkers had prevailed in the real world. Imagine the world that one of the most hated figures of the left once upon a time poignantly sang about:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
- John Lennon
(Mr. Franklin is the author of 'The Mythology of Self Worth')
7/16/07
To construct my argument for this rather dismal possibility, I want to take us back to the late 30s and the rise of Nazism. As Hitler went about building his military machine and making his intentions patently clear, two potential obstacles to his plans were a possible military detente of England, France, and the Soviet Union plus Germany's almost total lack of the resources necessary to complete the building of his huge war machine. Germany was stunningly bereft of necessary natural resources. Unlike previous great wars when nations only needed 'blood and iron', war now required a plethora of materials that were nowhere to be found in Germany.
These materials were available in abundance to the Soviet Union, the US, and the British Empire, either within their own boundaries or within states that were within the orbit of their imperial control. America alone was producing 70% of the world's oil. The Middle East had not yet arrived as a petroleum giant, and was only producing 7% of the world's oil needs. In any case, even this small oil production in the Middle East was controlled by giant British, American, and Dutch corporations.
To say that more than blood and iron were now needed to wage modern wars is a huge understatement. Rubber and gasoline were still important, but a huge range of other materials had become just as essential. Modern steel was vastly more complicated in its sundry alloys than simple iron was. To create the various forms of steel needed for the machinery of war, a state needed supplies of less available metals such as chromium, antimony, tungsten, nickel, cobalt, vanadium, mercury, titanium, and molybdendum --- the latter being essential for creating the cutting tools needed to manufacture the weapons of war. The US had a virtual monopoly over the latter metal. Of course, the wheels of war still ran largely on rubber, but the German landscape was not exactly replete with rubber trees. The Brits, on the other hand, controlled much of the world's rubber supplies with its huge fleet of warships and a large merchant marine fleet.
So how did Hitler manage to garner huge amounts of all these needed materials? Simple. He was the darling of the most powerful corporations of the capitalist world. His violent hatred of any form of communism or democratic socialism made him a beloved icon for the great overlords of capitalism. They would see to it that both he and Mussolini would not go lacking for any of the critical materials needed to build the Nazi war machine. In short, Hitler's hatred of the left was the key to his membership in an international club of corporate fascist capitalists.
Consider the following symbolism. Henry Ford, who all but worshipped his friend Adolph, kept a bust of Hitler on his desk, something that often startled visitors to the inner chamber of one of the world's greatest capitalists. As for the office of Herr Hitler, visitors were often surprised to see a life size portrait of Henry Ford adorning the wall. One can scarcely exaggerate the weight of this symbolism.
As a result of the admiration of Hitler by the ruling industrial aristocracies of England and America, war materials poured undeterred into Germany, allowing Hitler to nearly complete his vast military machine by roughly 1940. Not only that, he often obtained huge supplies of materials on credit dispensed by the capitalist corporations of the West.
Some excellent historians believe a signed mutual defense pact between the English, French, and Russians would have stopped Hitler cold in his military plans. In fact, Hitler was terrified of such a potential pact between Russia and England. He knew he could never engage in his acts of territorial invasion if it meant unleashing the dogs of war at a time when he faced formidable enemies on both fronts and was also burdened with the controlling of newly occupied territories.
Churchill understood this, but his views were suppressed by the appeaser Chamberlain, who never took Hitler as seriously as Churchill did. Chamberlain also was far more sensitive to the views of the ruling aristocracy of England than the more realistic Churchill. The man who would one day lead his country to victory strongly favored a mutual defense pact between England and Stalin despite his dislike of the murderous Stalin. He understood that Stalin was a despot of enormous proportions, but Churchill also was a practitioner of Realpolitik.
He correctly surmised that Hitler would not have embarked on his various territorial adventures in Europe if it meant going to war simultaneously with Russia on one front and the English and French on the other front. Keep in mind this hugely important fact: in 1938, Hitler's war machine was far from being completed. He needed another two or three years of feverish activity to complete it.
The blind hatred of Russia by the ruling classes of England made the very thought of a pact with Russia anathema. They were basically blinded to the realities of the world situation by their greedy, mindless, capitalistic prejudices. The myopic love of numerous American capitalists for Hitler and Mussolini permitted a vast selling of key materials the Nazis sorely needed to complete their war machine. The blind hatred of any socialist state, democratic or otherwise, led the ruling class of England to steadfastly block the signing of a pact with Stalin, an agreement Stalin would have been happy to sign onto. As you know, he eventually settled for a second best 'solution' and signed a pact with Hitler. Ironically, it is sometimes said that it was Russia that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany, thusly adding weight to Churchill's foresight and the myopia of the British ruling aristocracy.
A fanatical hatred of any socialist system combined with a quasi-religious admiration for almost any predatory capitalist system has dictated the foreign policy formulations of America ever since day one. We are told we must hate Castro because he is an allegedly brutal dictator. Of course, that is not the true reason. The American oligarchy loved Fulgencio Batista, even though he was a dictator of immense cruelty. Comparatively speaking, Batista was satanic, while Castro and Guevara were near saints in any comparison.
Batista, however, was a close friend and caretaker of the landed aristocracy of Cuba, the American megacorporations, and the American Mafia. What the American ruling class hates about Cuba is not Fidel Castro. Their hatred is a passion about the entire socialist experiment that has succeeded despite the enormous obstacles put in place by the US and nearly a half century of US terrorism constantly thrown against that little island (i.e Operation Mongoose).
The more obvious manifestations of hatred for the left by America's ruling corporate caste has been the virulent hatred of left wing reformers such as Michael Moore. The hatred oozes out steadily in many forms from the oil megacorporations, the automobile industry, the insurance industry, the Democratic Leadership Council, the PNAC cabal, and the corporate media cartel --- just to mention a few of the rabid haters of the left.
All of which brings me to this question. Will these fanatical haters of nearly all forms of socialization actually end up destroying the planet? Will a recklessly capitalistic Empire America ultimately make the planet unlivable through global warming? How about disaster via a spread of hitherto unknown, incurable tropical diseases as the planet warms? How about the right wing passion for making new weapons of war capable of wiping out massive populations? On a smaller scale, how about the clouds of depleted uranium poisons now drifting from the Middle East over England in a kind of ironic payback? Who knows what the guys are bottling nowadays at Fort Detrick, one of the most fearsome, feckless, and fanatical defenders of Empire America? Could there be a Dr. Strangelove walking the corridors of that immense factory of death? Will hatred of the left and all they stand for eventually lead to the flooding of major cities such as New York City, London, and so on, through global warming? Frankly, I don't like the looks of a future controlled by leaders of the same ilk as a Bush or a Blair or a Howard, and so forth.
Try to imagine a world in which the socializing of solutions for human problems was the rule rather than the exception. Imagine a world in which the hypothetical social contract that was once so deeply delved into by the greatest of the Enlightenment thinkers had prevailed in the real world. Imagine the world that one of the most hated figures of the left once upon a time poignantly sang about:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
- John Lennon
(Mr. Franklin is the author of 'The Mythology of Self Worth')
Plan Iraq - Permanent Occupation
- by Stephen Lendman
7/16/07
Congress is back from its July 4 break and with it more bluster and political posturing on changing course to keep things the same, including everything not working in place. It's the same old scheme, back again, to fool enough of the people all the time and most all of them long enough to move on to the next change of course mission shift starting the whole cycle over again. Even the blind can see the hopelessness of staying the course in Iraq. Aside from its lawlessness and immorality, pushing on with a failed effort qualifies as a classic definition of insanity - continuing the same failed policies, expecting different results.
The only sensible, honorable option is a full, speedy withdrawal along with providing multi-billions for Iraqis to rebuild what we destroyed and have no intention restoring now or ever beyond what's needed for permanent occupation. The only other honorable option is owning up to what no one in Washington or the major media will do - that the Iraq and Afghan conflicts are illegal wars of aggression making those responsible for them in the administration and Congress war criminals warranting prosecution for their crimes.
That won't happen nor will the administration and Congress do anything more substantive than say one thing and do another. It's been an unbroken pattern since 9/11, and especially on Afghanistan and throughout the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Both wars were sold through lies and deceit. They're based on a fictitious "outside enemy" threat without which no "war on terrorism" could exist, and no imperial foreign wars could be waged.
They're possible only by scaring the public enough to believe the threat is still real, and "Enemy Number One" Osama bin Laden (recruited through Pakistan's ISI as a CIA asset in the 1980s) and Al-Queda represent it. So with Saddam gone and no WMDs found, staying the course is vital to the nation's security even when, in fact, the truth is the opposite, crying wolf's wearing thin, and selling snake oil solutions get harder to do. But schemers keep trying with complicit Democrats as much part of the scam as Republicans and Bush loyalists, dwindling down to a precious hard line few but still around in key positions making noise.
With "the walls of Jericho" crumbling around him as the world's most hated man and the ship of state listing badly, a pathetic caricature of a president keeps pleading for more time. He claims it's needed to head off the threat of "mass killing on a horrific scale" in Iraq and plenty at home as well. He then continues using the same timeworn line that the war can be won, the "surge" is working, give it a chance, and withdrawing will be disastrous. Be more patient, and we'll know more in September we're told.
read more
7/16/07
Congress is back from its July 4 break and with it more bluster and political posturing on changing course to keep things the same, including everything not working in place. It's the same old scheme, back again, to fool enough of the people all the time and most all of them long enough to move on to the next change of course mission shift starting the whole cycle over again. Even the blind can see the hopelessness of staying the course in Iraq. Aside from its lawlessness and immorality, pushing on with a failed effort qualifies as a classic definition of insanity - continuing the same failed policies, expecting different results.
The only sensible, honorable option is a full, speedy withdrawal along with providing multi-billions for Iraqis to rebuild what we destroyed and have no intention restoring now or ever beyond what's needed for permanent occupation. The only other honorable option is owning up to what no one in Washington or the major media will do - that the Iraq and Afghan conflicts are illegal wars of aggression making those responsible for them in the administration and Congress war criminals warranting prosecution for their crimes.
That won't happen nor will the administration and Congress do anything more substantive than say one thing and do another. It's been an unbroken pattern since 9/11, and especially on Afghanistan and throughout the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Both wars were sold through lies and deceit. They're based on a fictitious "outside enemy" threat without which no "war on terrorism" could exist, and no imperial foreign wars could be waged.
They're possible only by scaring the public enough to believe the threat is still real, and "Enemy Number One" Osama bin Laden (recruited through Pakistan's ISI as a CIA asset in the 1980s) and Al-Queda represent it. So with Saddam gone and no WMDs found, staying the course is vital to the nation's security even when, in fact, the truth is the opposite, crying wolf's wearing thin, and selling snake oil solutions get harder to do. But schemers keep trying with complicit Democrats as much part of the scam as Republicans and Bush loyalists, dwindling down to a precious hard line few but still around in key positions making noise.
With "the walls of Jericho" crumbling around him as the world's most hated man and the ship of state listing badly, a pathetic caricature of a president keeps pleading for more time. He claims it's needed to head off the threat of "mass killing on a horrific scale" in Iraq and plenty at home as well. He then continues using the same timeworn line that the war can be won, the "surge" is working, give it a chance, and withdrawing will be disastrous. Be more patient, and we'll know more in September we're told.
read more
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Three Little Words
by Mary Pitt
7/15/07
There are three words that strike fear into the hearts of modern-day politicians. They are not obscene or distasteful to any ethnic group but saying any one of them in the context of the day's news will cause an instant and infectious breathing spasm on the part of any of all the bought-and-paid-for pros of either party. Like the Lord's Prayer to a ghost, a cross to Dracula, or a silver bullet to a werewolf, any of them will empty a political caucus room in ten seconds flat.
The first word is RATIONING. Speak it and watch the pols scatter like roaches! We may sweat and fear while they maneuver to find ways to keep us content while the oil companies pick our pockets, but you will never hear the word in our time. Oldsters among you may recall that the Iran conflict first arose not during the Carter administration but in that of Richard Millhouse Nixon. When the walls of Watergate started caving in around him, he had already ordered the government printing office to prepare ration books in response to the gas "shortage" which plagued us for years. After Nixon's impeachment, the plan was dropped by Gerald Ford but the threat alone was enough to put the problem on the back burner for a while. Once Reagan took office, OPEC was back in the driver's seat and prices began to rise sharply.
I am not saying that John Q. Public would be thrilled with the idea but it would not take long until crude oil prices begin to spiral. It would not really be necessary to actually DO it, just the threat would take the steam out of OPEC's sails and cause a sense of cooperation to bloom forth. If, instead of cajoling us to conserve, drive less, and bear the burden, just one proposal by a member of Congress or a whiff of a suggestion by anyone in the administration would cause OPEC's attention to sharpen like the tread of the principal outside a classroom door. But it will not happen because too many of the "blind trusts" probably contain oil company stocks and too many Congressmen have an offer for a job as a lobbyist in their back pocket, just in case they lose an election.
The second word is IMPEACHMENT, which Nancy Pelosi says is "not on the table". Lord knows there are plenty of grounds to impeach both Bush and Cheney but, although a majority of the people would support it, only a few in Congress have the guts to advocate for it. Their reasons are vague and unformed. "It would be bad for the country", "it would interfere with our concentration on other problems", and "there isn't time to ram it through before their term is up anyway". A cynic would suggest that the real reason nobody wants it to happen is because they hope to be in a position of power and they simply wouldn't want it to happen to them as they claw their own way to the top.
President George W. Bush and his vice-President, Richard Cheney, have scoffed at the laws of our nation and, in opposition to our Constitution, have gathered to themselves powers that no other President has ever claimed to have and that we certainly do not want any future President to presume to possess. The only way to demonstrate to these men and to any future office-holder that this behavior is intolerable is to impeach both of them before their term ends and to remove them from office prematurely. If we do not, they will have established a precedent that will allow any future President with imperial ambitions to become an actual dictator at will and will greatly imperil the rights and freedoms set forth in our Constitution.
The third and most deadly word of all which simply "must" remain unspoken is the dread D word! D stands for DRAFT and for it to be even breathed in the Halls of Congress would create such an uproar throughout the land and cause the speaker to be sent to the dungeons. We all know that it was more than foolhardy when, against the advice of the ground commanders, we invaded Iraq with less than half the force which we used just to push Iraq back out of Kuwait. Later Mr Rumsfeld would say that we "go to war with the Army we have, not the Army we might wish we had or the Army we might have someday". However, there was not an all-out effort to increase our military numbers other than to secretly hire international mercenaries in equal numbers at a cost greatly in excess of the amounts necessary to increase, through a draft, the numbers of our own forces.
Meanwhile, our National Guard, our so-called "second line of defense", those men of the community charged with responsibility to protect American civilians are being ground into the desert sands in interminable service while the "homeland" drowns, burns, or blows away in the absence of our traditional rescuers. While the Guard families are torn apart by the extended absences, constant fear, and numbing deprivation, other young men blithely enjoy their college years without a care in the world as the President enjoins us to "go on with our lives and go shopping". (Does he really believe that we have nothing else to do?) If the cowboys and oil men who presently inhabit the White House really believe that we are in a world-wide War Against Terrorism, they should demonstrate the courage of their convictions by telling the American people the truth and build a large enough force to accomplish the task.
At the start of World War II, we had practically no Army and, after Pearl Harbor, no Navy at all. But, with the institution of the draft we soon had a military that could defeat both Germany and Japan. And we did in less time than we have spent in Iraq! Yet when asked what the citizenry could do to support the troops Our Fearless Leader urged us to "go shopping and live your lives as usual". We watched as the military was supplemented by the National Guard, made up of people who had either served their military obligation or viewed this enlistment as the acquisition of a second job. Instead, they have lost their lives, their arms, their legs, and their sanity in the filth of the battlefield by "indefinite detention" and rotated back again and again until they come home either in a body bag or on a stretcher.
I have grandchildren whom I do not want to see go to war. But if a war is worth fighting, it is worth fighting right. That would mean going in with adequate force, overwhelming the enemy, establishing order quickly, and getting it settled so that our men and women can come home where they belong. Meanwhile, our National Guard will be available to handle disasters on the home front as they were designed to do. It is easy to blame George Bush & Company but Congress must share the blame. If they really believe that we are engaged in a war of world-wide scope, they should inform the President that they are going to institute a draft so that we will have personnel to replace those who are worn out by year after year of unwinnable war in intolerable conditions. The Democratic Governors should order their National Guard troops home where they are sorely needed.
In each threat of exorbitant gasoline prices, the R word should roar through the halls and committee rooms of Congress, the I word should be back "on the table", and the D word should be used if the troops are not ordered and enabled to either win or come home. And if we have to RID ourselves of the President and quite a few oblivious Congressional representatives, so be it. The American people are demanding action. They want an either/or decision and they want it now. The only comment I can think of as a message to Congress comes from the old Bowery Boys movies, "Hit 'em, ya bum! You got the wind wid ya!"
Mary Pitt is a septuagenarian Kansan, a free-thinker, and a warrior for truth and justice. Huzzahs and whiney complaints may be sent to mpitt@cox.net
7/15/07
There are three words that strike fear into the hearts of modern-day politicians. They are not obscene or distasteful to any ethnic group but saying any one of them in the context of the day's news will cause an instant and infectious breathing spasm on the part of any of all the bought-and-paid-for pros of either party. Like the Lord's Prayer to a ghost, a cross to Dracula, or a silver bullet to a werewolf, any of them will empty a political caucus room in ten seconds flat.
The first word is RATIONING. Speak it and watch the pols scatter like roaches! We may sweat and fear while they maneuver to find ways to keep us content while the oil companies pick our pockets, but you will never hear the word in our time. Oldsters among you may recall that the Iran conflict first arose not during the Carter administration but in that of Richard Millhouse Nixon. When the walls of Watergate started caving in around him, he had already ordered the government printing office to prepare ration books in response to the gas "shortage" which plagued us for years. After Nixon's impeachment, the plan was dropped by Gerald Ford but the threat alone was enough to put the problem on the back burner for a while. Once Reagan took office, OPEC was back in the driver's seat and prices began to rise sharply.
I am not saying that John Q. Public would be thrilled with the idea but it would not take long until crude oil prices begin to spiral. It would not really be necessary to actually DO it, just the threat would take the steam out of OPEC's sails and cause a sense of cooperation to bloom forth. If, instead of cajoling us to conserve, drive less, and bear the burden, just one proposal by a member of Congress or a whiff of a suggestion by anyone in the administration would cause OPEC's attention to sharpen like the tread of the principal outside a classroom door. But it will not happen because too many of the "blind trusts" probably contain oil company stocks and too many Congressmen have an offer for a job as a lobbyist in their back pocket, just in case they lose an election.
The second word is IMPEACHMENT, which Nancy Pelosi says is "not on the table". Lord knows there are plenty of grounds to impeach both Bush and Cheney but, although a majority of the people would support it, only a few in Congress have the guts to advocate for it. Their reasons are vague and unformed. "It would be bad for the country", "it would interfere with our concentration on other problems", and "there isn't time to ram it through before their term is up anyway". A cynic would suggest that the real reason nobody wants it to happen is because they hope to be in a position of power and they simply wouldn't want it to happen to them as they claw their own way to the top.
President George W. Bush and his vice-President, Richard Cheney, have scoffed at the laws of our nation and, in opposition to our Constitution, have gathered to themselves powers that no other President has ever claimed to have and that we certainly do not want any future President to presume to possess. The only way to demonstrate to these men and to any future office-holder that this behavior is intolerable is to impeach both of them before their term ends and to remove them from office prematurely. If we do not, they will have established a precedent that will allow any future President with imperial ambitions to become an actual dictator at will and will greatly imperil the rights and freedoms set forth in our Constitution.
The third and most deadly word of all which simply "must" remain unspoken is the dread D word! D stands for DRAFT and for it to be even breathed in the Halls of Congress would create such an uproar throughout the land and cause the speaker to be sent to the dungeons. We all know that it was more than foolhardy when, against the advice of the ground commanders, we invaded Iraq with less than half the force which we used just to push Iraq back out of Kuwait. Later Mr Rumsfeld would say that we "go to war with the Army we have, not the Army we might wish we had or the Army we might have someday". However, there was not an all-out effort to increase our military numbers other than to secretly hire international mercenaries in equal numbers at a cost greatly in excess of the amounts necessary to increase, through a draft, the numbers of our own forces.
Meanwhile, our National Guard, our so-called "second line of defense", those men of the community charged with responsibility to protect American civilians are being ground into the desert sands in interminable service while the "homeland" drowns, burns, or blows away in the absence of our traditional rescuers. While the Guard families are torn apart by the extended absences, constant fear, and numbing deprivation, other young men blithely enjoy their college years without a care in the world as the President enjoins us to "go on with our lives and go shopping". (Does he really believe that we have nothing else to do?) If the cowboys and oil men who presently inhabit the White House really believe that we are in a world-wide War Against Terrorism, they should demonstrate the courage of their convictions by telling the American people the truth and build a large enough force to accomplish the task.
At the start of World War II, we had practically no Army and, after Pearl Harbor, no Navy at all. But, with the institution of the draft we soon had a military that could defeat both Germany and Japan. And we did in less time than we have spent in Iraq! Yet when asked what the citizenry could do to support the troops Our Fearless Leader urged us to "go shopping and live your lives as usual". We watched as the military was supplemented by the National Guard, made up of people who had either served their military obligation or viewed this enlistment as the acquisition of a second job. Instead, they have lost their lives, their arms, their legs, and their sanity in the filth of the battlefield by "indefinite detention" and rotated back again and again until they come home either in a body bag or on a stretcher.
I have grandchildren whom I do not want to see go to war. But if a war is worth fighting, it is worth fighting right. That would mean going in with adequate force, overwhelming the enemy, establishing order quickly, and getting it settled so that our men and women can come home where they belong. Meanwhile, our National Guard will be available to handle disasters on the home front as they were designed to do. It is easy to blame George Bush & Company but Congress must share the blame. If they really believe that we are engaged in a war of world-wide scope, they should inform the President that they are going to institute a draft so that we will have personnel to replace those who are worn out by year after year of unwinnable war in intolerable conditions. The Democratic Governors should order their National Guard troops home where they are sorely needed.
In each threat of exorbitant gasoline prices, the R word should roar through the halls and committee rooms of Congress, the I word should be back "on the table", and the D word should be used if the troops are not ordered and enabled to either win or come home. And if we have to RID ourselves of the President and quite a few oblivious Congressional representatives, so be it. The American people are demanding action. They want an either/or decision and they want it now. The only comment I can think of as a message to Congress comes from the old Bowery Boys movies, "Hit 'em, ya bum! You got the wind wid ya!"
Mary Pitt is a septuagenarian Kansan, a free-thinker, and a warrior for truth and justice. Huzzahs and whiney complaints may be sent to mpitt@cox.net
Friday, July 13, 2007
What Lies Beneath:
Privileged Grotesques, Ordinary Monsters and the Iraqi Deathscape.
by Phil Rockstroh
July 12th, 2007
At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted due to the fact that he didn’t deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as “the mission” doesn’t drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves.
How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction to describe it?
I’m afraid it’s come to that: We are a people whose psyches have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to imperial power and personal entitlement. (Imagery of Smurfs and Teletubbies won’t rise to the analogy, albeit as terrifying as those demons of hell-bound cuteness are.)
The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and displaced rage — all the distortions of national character inherent in privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters.
A narcissist’s actions are monstrous because his only love is the image of himself wielding control and power. (Does this remind you of anyone, perhaps someone who struts about in a flightsuit — someone prone to proclaiming himself “the decider” — someone who grows intoxicated to the point of becoming insensate from a whiff of his own pheromones as he swoons in macho-narcissistic self-worship?)
And what about the everyday monsters, those who feel nothing — not outrage, not remorse, nor sorrow — by the conscience-devoid attempt made by our vampiric leaders to sustain “our way of life” on Iraqi blood? Are you not a monster as well when you feel nothing before immense human suffering? If you are impervious to, grown inured of, or have chosen to remain ignorant of the agony of the Iraqi people, then you might as well join the ranks of the undead — because the distant landscape of corpses in Iraq and Afghanistan matches your internal deathscape.
In short, our empire’s dependence on the resources (the life’s blood) of others renders us a nation of vampires. Moreover, the corporatist character (our national character) is defined by the vampire’s trait of taking, never giving. Accordingly, what do the big monsters at the top take from us, the little monsters?
To name one: our time, the precious hours of our finite lives. The corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment, reflect on all the hours of life you’ve wasted away — in office cubicles, in commuter traffic jams, in the addictive pursuit of consumer dreck, or simply numbed-out and exhausted, rendered inert from the incessant, soul-sucking stress of the corporate state.
The corporatocracy devours our time and, like the charges of a vampire, has made us dependent and slavish in return. In our bloodless enslavement, we lose the vitality borne of existing within life’s inherent mysteries and grow estranged from the deep resonances of participation mystique.
How does one begin to take back one’s soul from these elitist usurpers? Start with this: The ebullient skepticism engendered from calling out soul-numbing, self-serving authoritarian lies.
In an era as perilous as ours, it’s imperative we act with utmost urgency. Yet, tragically, the exigencies of our age are being played out against a panorama of longer, more stressful work hours, superficially ameliorated by a mass media culture comprised of ceaseless trivia and mindless distraction.
This pathology began years ago when our ancestors offered up their life’s blood to the early corporatists of the Industrial Age. Henry Ford was a gray ghoul who measured out our flesh with his productivity-measuring stopwatch; he was a cunning practitioner of the black art of convincing human beings they’re mere cogs in an inhuman machine. It was only a short trudge from there through history’s slaughterhouse to Adolf Eichmann, insulated within his vampire’s coffin of cold calculations that shielded him from the horrific implications of the system of mechanized extermination he devised.
The corporate vampire’s creed is defined by ruthless efficiency; the fear of a “loss of productivity” is the driving force of the death machine. The system is so ruthless and inhuman that it must conceal its true face, hence the rise of the telegenic undead known as the corporate media. Do not look to them to report the facts of our condition: After all, a mirror can’t reflect the image of a vampire. A vampire is empty to the core; therefore, there is nothing to reflect.
Furthermore, his emptiness is the progenitor of his destructive nature. Rather than face himself, his appetite for death will devour all in its path: rain forests, Arctic glaciers, the people of Iraq, the hours of your life, as well as your inner being.
It is the force that holds Democratic politicians in the thrall of their own fecklessness, because they answer to the same blood-sucking, corporate masters as the rest of us. Quite simply, they’re afraid of their bosses, too. The Washington Beltway is a version, in miniature, of the entire soul-dead American corporacracy. The careerist politicians within the Beltway are afflicted with the same diminution of choice — the same hyper-attenuation of the will to freedom — as the rest of us.
And what remains for us? An existence (or lack thereof) within this hierarchical hellscape of narcissists. What sort of a pathetic mode of being is this, a life shackled to the service of a monstrous system wherein one must evince the obsequies of a vampire’s bloodless lackeys?
To reverse this situation: Now is the time to drag the lies of the corporate state into the sunshine where they will writher to dust. We are not powerless: We live in a world where our collective, hidden intentions are made manifest by our outward actions. This is why Gothic — even B movie — metaphors are not an overwrought description of our present condition. Ergo, by the vehicle of cultural collaboration, we are a nation of world-destroying, B movie monsters — we are a hack-scripted, second-billed feature at the drive-in movie of existence — a laughed-off-the-big-screen of the cosmos, box-office poison of a people.
We are soul-sucking creatures of kitsch. Flesh-eating zombies of conformity. Road-rage werewolves. Right-wing, talk show demons whose wrathful voices rage into empty air. Hungry ghosts wandering the aisles of supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurant chains and the food courts of shopping malls. We are: The Fat, Mindless Blobs That Ate the Planet.
To survive, first, we must find the monster within, then drive a stake through its heart.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at philangie2000@yahoo.com.
by Phil Rockstroh
July 12th, 2007
At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted due to the fact that he didn’t deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as “the mission” doesn’t drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves.
How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction to describe it?
I’m afraid it’s come to that: We are a people whose psyches have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to imperial power and personal entitlement. (Imagery of Smurfs and Teletubbies won’t rise to the analogy, albeit as terrifying as those demons of hell-bound cuteness are.)
The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and displaced rage — all the distortions of national character inherent in privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters.
A narcissist’s actions are monstrous because his only love is the image of himself wielding control and power. (Does this remind you of anyone, perhaps someone who struts about in a flightsuit — someone prone to proclaiming himself “the decider” — someone who grows intoxicated to the point of becoming insensate from a whiff of his own pheromones as he swoons in macho-narcissistic self-worship?)
And what about the everyday monsters, those who feel nothing — not outrage, not remorse, nor sorrow — by the conscience-devoid attempt made by our vampiric leaders to sustain “our way of life” on Iraqi blood? Are you not a monster as well when you feel nothing before immense human suffering? If you are impervious to, grown inured of, or have chosen to remain ignorant of the agony of the Iraqi people, then you might as well join the ranks of the undead — because the distant landscape of corpses in Iraq and Afghanistan matches your internal deathscape.
In short, our empire’s dependence on the resources (the life’s blood) of others renders us a nation of vampires. Moreover, the corporatist character (our national character) is defined by the vampire’s trait of taking, never giving. Accordingly, what do the big monsters at the top take from us, the little monsters?
To name one: our time, the precious hours of our finite lives. The corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment, reflect on all the hours of life you’ve wasted away — in office cubicles, in commuter traffic jams, in the addictive pursuit of consumer dreck, or simply numbed-out and exhausted, rendered inert from the incessant, soul-sucking stress of the corporate state.
The corporatocracy devours our time and, like the charges of a vampire, has made us dependent and slavish in return. In our bloodless enslavement, we lose the vitality borne of existing within life’s inherent mysteries and grow estranged from the deep resonances of participation mystique.
How does one begin to take back one’s soul from these elitist usurpers? Start with this: The ebullient skepticism engendered from calling out soul-numbing, self-serving authoritarian lies.
In an era as perilous as ours, it’s imperative we act with utmost urgency. Yet, tragically, the exigencies of our age are being played out against a panorama of longer, more stressful work hours, superficially ameliorated by a mass media culture comprised of ceaseless trivia and mindless distraction.
This pathology began years ago when our ancestors offered up their life’s blood to the early corporatists of the Industrial Age. Henry Ford was a gray ghoul who measured out our flesh with his productivity-measuring stopwatch; he was a cunning practitioner of the black art of convincing human beings they’re mere cogs in an inhuman machine. It was only a short trudge from there through history’s slaughterhouse to Adolf Eichmann, insulated within his vampire’s coffin of cold calculations that shielded him from the horrific implications of the system of mechanized extermination he devised.
The corporate vampire’s creed is defined by ruthless efficiency; the fear of a “loss of productivity” is the driving force of the death machine. The system is so ruthless and inhuman that it must conceal its true face, hence the rise of the telegenic undead known as the corporate media. Do not look to them to report the facts of our condition: After all, a mirror can’t reflect the image of a vampire. A vampire is empty to the core; therefore, there is nothing to reflect.
Furthermore, his emptiness is the progenitor of his destructive nature. Rather than face himself, his appetite for death will devour all in its path: rain forests, Arctic glaciers, the people of Iraq, the hours of your life, as well as your inner being.
It is the force that holds Democratic politicians in the thrall of their own fecklessness, because they answer to the same blood-sucking, corporate masters as the rest of us. Quite simply, they’re afraid of their bosses, too. The Washington Beltway is a version, in miniature, of the entire soul-dead American corporacracy. The careerist politicians within the Beltway are afflicted with the same diminution of choice — the same hyper-attenuation of the will to freedom — as the rest of us.
And what remains for us? An existence (or lack thereof) within this hierarchical hellscape of narcissists. What sort of a pathetic mode of being is this, a life shackled to the service of a monstrous system wherein one must evince the obsequies of a vampire’s bloodless lackeys?
To reverse this situation: Now is the time to drag the lies of the corporate state into the sunshine where they will writher to dust. We are not powerless: We live in a world where our collective, hidden intentions are made manifest by our outward actions. This is why Gothic — even B movie — metaphors are not an overwrought description of our present condition. Ergo, by the vehicle of cultural collaboration, we are a nation of world-destroying, B movie monsters — we are a hack-scripted, second-billed feature at the drive-in movie of existence — a laughed-off-the-big-screen of the cosmos, box-office poison of a people.
We are soul-sucking creatures of kitsch. Flesh-eating zombies of conformity. Road-rage werewolves. Right-wing, talk show demons whose wrathful voices rage into empty air. Hungry ghosts wandering the aisles of supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurant chains and the food courts of shopping malls. We are: The Fat, Mindless Blobs That Ate the Planet.
To survive, first, we must find the monster within, then drive a stake through its heart.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at philangie2000@yahoo.com.
Down in the Flood:
The Senate's Blank Check for War on Iran
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Empire Burlesque
As you may know -- unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course -- yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to.
The bipartisan Senate resolution – the brainchild (or rather the bilechild) of Fightin' Joe Lieberman – affirmed as official fact all of the specious, unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks on the American forces now occupying Iraq. The Senators appear to have relied heavily on the recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon that stovepiped unchallenged Pentagon spin directly onto the paper's front page. As Firedoglake points out, John McCain cited the heavily criticized story on the Senate floor as he cast his vote.
It goes without saying that all of this is a nightmarish replay of the run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq: The NYT funneling false flag stories from Bush insiders. Warmongers citing the NYT stories as "proof" justifying any and all action to "defend the Homeland." Credulous and craven Democratic politicians swallowing the Bush line hook and sinker.
To be sure, stout-hearted Dem tribunes like Dick Durbin insisted that their support for declaring that Iran is "committing acts of war" against the United States should not be taken as an "authorization of military action." This is shaky-knees mendacity at its finest. Having officially affirmed that Iran is waging war on American forces, how, pray tell, can you then deny the president when he asks (if he asks) for authorization to "defend our troops?" Answer: you can't. And you know it.
This vote is the clearest signal yet that there will be no real opposition to a Bush Administration attack on Iran. This is yet another blank check from these slavish, ignorant goons; Bush can cash it anytime. This is, in fact, the post-surge "Plan B" that's been mooted lately in the Beltway. As you recall, there was much throwing about of brains on the subject of reviving the "Iraq Study Group" plan when the "surge" (or to call it by its right name, the "punitive escalation") inevitably fails. Bush put the kibosh on that this week ("Him not gonna do nothin' that Daddy's friends tell him to do! Him a big boy, him the decider!"), but that doesn't mean there isn't a fall-back position – or rather, a spring-forward position: an attack on Iran, to rally the nation behind the "war leader" and reshuffle the deck in Iraq.
Of course, the United States is already at war with Iran. We are directing covert ops and terrorist attacks inside Iran, with the help of groups that our own government has declared terrorist renegades. We are kidnapping Iranian officials in Iraq and holding them hostage. We have a bristling naval armada on Iran's doorstep, put there for the express purpose of threatening Tehran with military action. The U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly passed measures calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. And now the U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Iran is waging war on America, and has given official notice that this will not be tolerated. It is only a very small step to move from this war in all but name to the full monty of an overt military assault.
We've said it before and we'll say it again: there is madness at work here. There is no other word for it. As I noted a few years ago:
Now draw these dangerous streams together, and you have a portrait of the blunt and brutal group-mind at work in the leadership of the world's most powerful nation. The folly, fantasy and death-fetish of the Bush Regime -- long evident to anyone who cared to see -- were finally "revealed" in the mainstream media recently by the quasi-official Establishment oracle, Bob Woodward. His latest insider portrait, Plan of Attack, offers -- in the usual, easily-gummed pabulum form -- a few tastes of the bitter truth behind the Regime's mad, ruinous war crime in Iraq.
The corrosive nihilism at the heart of the enterprise ate through the gaudily-painted surface most tellingly in a single anecdote. Woodward asks George W. Bush how he thinks history will regard his adventure in Iraq. Bush, gazing out the window, shrugs and waves the question away. "History, we don't know," he says. "We'll all be dead." No fine, faith-filled talk here about God and Jesus and the immortal soul responsible for its actions throughout all eternity -- the kind of zealous patter Bush favors in public statements. This was just the cold, rotten, meaningless core of his grand vision: "We'll all be dead." So who cares? Après moi, le deluge.
Who would have thought the floodwaters of this death vision would have risen so high again so soon? Yet here they are again, beating against the gates.
UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz points out that all of the Senate's Democratic candidates for president voted for Lieberman's Iran War amendment: Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, and Joe Biden. Just in case you were expecting a saner foreign policy after the 2008 election.
UPDATE II: Meanwhile, George Milhouse Bush wants to make one thing perfectly clear: even in the highly unlikely (if not totally impossible) event that the Senate grows a rudimentary spine and tries to place the slightest obstacle in the way of a military attack on Iran, the Commander Guy will peremptorily veto it and instigate the mass murder anyway.
Spencer Ackerman at TPM Cafe found this gem of arrogant defiance in "a little-noticed letter from the White House to Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee." The main subject of the letter was a similar vow to veto any restrictions on Bush's ability to continue his war crime in Iraq. The passsage concerning Iran might seem redundant now, after the Senate's vote on Lieberman's "Persia delenda est!" measure, which puts a gun in Bush's hand and screams for him to pull the trigger, but the President is obviously taking no chances.
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Empire Burlesque
As you may know -- unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course -- yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to.
The bipartisan Senate resolution – the brainchild (or rather the bilechild) of Fightin' Joe Lieberman – affirmed as official fact all of the specious, unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks on the American forces now occupying Iraq. The Senators appear to have relied heavily on the recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon that stovepiped unchallenged Pentagon spin directly onto the paper's front page. As Firedoglake points out, John McCain cited the heavily criticized story on the Senate floor as he cast his vote.
It goes without saying that all of this is a nightmarish replay of the run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq: The NYT funneling false flag stories from Bush insiders. Warmongers citing the NYT stories as "proof" justifying any and all action to "defend the Homeland." Credulous and craven Democratic politicians swallowing the Bush line hook and sinker.
To be sure, stout-hearted Dem tribunes like Dick Durbin insisted that their support for declaring that Iran is "committing acts of war" against the United States should not be taken as an "authorization of military action." This is shaky-knees mendacity at its finest. Having officially affirmed that Iran is waging war on American forces, how, pray tell, can you then deny the president when he asks (if he asks) for authorization to "defend our troops?" Answer: you can't. And you know it.
This vote is the clearest signal yet that there will be no real opposition to a Bush Administration attack on Iran. This is yet another blank check from these slavish, ignorant goons; Bush can cash it anytime. This is, in fact, the post-surge "Plan B" that's been mooted lately in the Beltway. As you recall, there was much throwing about of brains on the subject of reviving the "Iraq Study Group" plan when the "surge" (or to call it by its right name, the "punitive escalation") inevitably fails. Bush put the kibosh on that this week ("Him not gonna do nothin' that Daddy's friends tell him to do! Him a big boy, him the decider!"), but that doesn't mean there isn't a fall-back position – or rather, a spring-forward position: an attack on Iran, to rally the nation behind the "war leader" and reshuffle the deck in Iraq.
Of course, the United States is already at war with Iran. We are directing covert ops and terrorist attacks inside Iran, with the help of groups that our own government has declared terrorist renegades. We are kidnapping Iranian officials in Iraq and holding them hostage. We have a bristling naval armada on Iran's doorstep, put there for the express purpose of threatening Tehran with military action. The U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly passed measures calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. And now the U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Iran is waging war on America, and has given official notice that this will not be tolerated. It is only a very small step to move from this war in all but name to the full monty of an overt military assault.
We've said it before and we'll say it again: there is madness at work here. There is no other word for it. As I noted a few years ago:
Homo sapiens is the only species that dreams of its own total demise. Our brief history of conscious thought is replete with vivid scenarios of the end of life on earth....Religion has produced most of these -- giddy, voluptuous nightmares of universal extinction, usually by fire, at divine order. A favored remnant is always saved in such tales, of course, but only after being transformed into some different, higher order of being. The gross human body -- that bleeding, fouling, endlessly replicating sack of earth -- is gleefully consigned to eternal oblivion. It seems that some ineradicable nihilism pervades us, like a virus, now dormant, now flaring: something in us that wants to die, to be done with the long, overhanging doom of mortality -- and to take the world with us. Our grandiose visions of the future seem to hide, at their core, a secret, desperate anxiety about the profound meaninglessness of existence -- an anxiety that often disguises itself in elaborate fantasies of the afterlife, in dreams of "dominance" for one's "own kind" (nation, tribe, faith, race, ideology, etc.), or in the eroticizing of death, war and destruction. Instincts for preservation, sentiments of affection, the drive for pleasure -- from the most basic bodily urges to the most sublime creations and apprehensions of the intellect -- act as counterweights to this dark virus, of course. They provide for most of us, most of the time, enough fragments of meaning -- or at least sufficient distraction -- to get on with things, without too much resort to world-engulfing visions or the extremes of nihilistic anxiety. On the individual level, the calibration of these competing impulses can be intricate, subtle, ever-shifting, because the individual mind is so complex and all-encompassing, yet also so enclosed, so unlockably private as well: an infinitely supple tool for managing the conflicts and contradictions of reality. But on the broader level -- species, nation, group -- human consciousness is, of necessity, a far more blunt and brutal instrument. There, our brain-fevers and anxieties rage more virulently, lacking the counterweights of individual feeling and the quick, intimate responsiveness of the private mind. In the group-mind, the fantasies that root in the muddy fear of meaninglessness can emerge full-blown. Thought and discourse are reduced to broad strokes, slogans, codes and incantations, with little correspondence to reality. Awareness of this tendency can mitigate some of its effects; but the group-mind's fundamental falsity and irreality almost invariably infects the thoughts and actions of group leaders -- and eventually many of the group members as well. Thus we can sometimes say, not entirely metaphorically, that nations "go mad," hurtling themselves toward ruin, embracing self-destruction, lusting for violence and death, sick with nihilism -- although this sickness is always painted in the colors of patriotic fervor or religious zeal, or both… |
Now draw these dangerous streams together, and you have a portrait of the blunt and brutal group-mind at work in the leadership of the world's most powerful nation. The folly, fantasy and death-fetish of the Bush Regime -- long evident to anyone who cared to see -- were finally "revealed" in the mainstream media recently by the quasi-official Establishment oracle, Bob Woodward. His latest insider portrait, Plan of Attack, offers -- in the usual, easily-gummed pabulum form -- a few tastes of the bitter truth behind the Regime's mad, ruinous war crime in Iraq.
The corrosive nihilism at the heart of the enterprise ate through the gaudily-painted surface most tellingly in a single anecdote. Woodward asks George W. Bush how he thinks history will regard his adventure in Iraq. Bush, gazing out the window, shrugs and waves the question away. "History, we don't know," he says. "We'll all be dead." No fine, faith-filled talk here about God and Jesus and the immortal soul responsible for its actions throughout all eternity -- the kind of zealous patter Bush favors in public statements. This was just the cold, rotten, meaningless core of his grand vision: "We'll all be dead." So who cares? Après moi, le deluge.
Who would have thought the floodwaters of this death vision would have risen so high again so soon? Yet here they are again, beating against the gates.
UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz points out that all of the Senate's Democratic candidates for president voted for Lieberman's Iran War amendment: Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, and Joe Biden. Just in case you were expecting a saner foreign policy after the 2008 election.
UPDATE II: Meanwhile, George Milhouse Bush wants to make one thing perfectly clear: even in the highly unlikely (if not totally impossible) event that the Senate grows a rudimentary spine and tries to place the slightest obstacle in the way of a military attack on Iran, the Commander Guy will peremptorily veto it and instigate the mass murder anyway.
Spencer Ackerman at TPM Cafe found this gem of arrogant defiance in "a little-noticed letter from the White House to Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee." The main subject of the letter was a similar vow to veto any restrictions on Bush's ability to continue his war crime in Iraq. The passsage concerning Iran might seem redundant now, after the Senate's vote on Lieberman's "Persia delenda est!" measure, which puts a gun in Bush's hand and screams for him to pull the trigger, but the President is obviously taking no chances.
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