An Alternative to IMF and World Bank Dominance
- by Stephen Lendman
10/29/07
In July, 2004, the IMF and World Bank commemorated the 60th anniversary of their founding at Bretton Woods, NH to provide a financial framework of assistance for the postwar world after the expected defeat of Germany and Japan. With breathtaking hypocrisy, an October, 2004 Development Committee Communique stated: "As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Bretton Woods Institutions....we recommit ourselves to supporting efforts by developing countries to pursue sustainable growth, sound macroeconomic policies, debt sustainability, open trade, job creation, poverty reduction and good governance." Phew.
In fact, for 63 hellish years, both these institutions achieved mirror opposite results on everything the above comment states. From inception, their mission was to integrate developing nations into the Global North-dominated world economy and use debt repayment as the way to transfer wealth from poor countries to powerful bankers in rich ones…
full article
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
UAW Sellout at GM and Chrysler
- by Stephen Lendman
10/22/07
The September and October United Auto Workers (UAW) GM and Chrysler agreements are just the latest examples of union leadership surrender and betrayal. It's an ominous sign of labor's plight and clear indication of what's ahead - more for business, less for workers, and no relief in sight with union bosses out for themselves and more allied with business and imperial interests than their own rank and file.
American civilization and labor historian Paul Buhle sees organized labor today in a state of collapse, and labor author Robert Fitch says "American workers are like owners of a family car whose wheels fell off long ago. Each family member (must rely) on their own two feet; they scarcely remember what it was like being able to ride together." Who can dispute it with union membership down from its post-war 1950s high of 34.7% to the lowest private sector level in over 100 years at 7.4% today. In addition, inflation-adjusted wages are stagnant or falling, benefits are being slashed, and Fitch says conditions in the garment and meatpacking industries are as bad today as the ones muckrakers like Upton Sinclair exposed a century ago in his book "The Jungle."
He blames it on union corruption at the top in different forms - leaders on the take, siding with business, getting big salaries and fancy perks and more concerned with their own welfare than the interests of their members….
full article
10/22/07
The September and October United Auto Workers (UAW) GM and Chrysler agreements are just the latest examples of union leadership surrender and betrayal. It's an ominous sign of labor's plight and clear indication of what's ahead - more for business, less for workers, and no relief in sight with union bosses out for themselves and more allied with business and imperial interests than their own rank and file.
American civilization and labor historian Paul Buhle sees organized labor today in a state of collapse, and labor author Robert Fitch says "American workers are like owners of a family car whose wheels fell off long ago. Each family member (must rely) on their own two feet; they scarcely remember what it was like being able to ride together." Who can dispute it with union membership down from its post-war 1950s high of 34.7% to the lowest private sector level in over 100 years at 7.4% today. In addition, inflation-adjusted wages are stagnant or falling, benefits are being slashed, and Fitch says conditions in the garment and meatpacking industries are as bad today as the ones muckrakers like Upton Sinclair exposed a century ago in his book "The Jungle."
He blames it on union corruption at the top in different forms - leaders on the take, siding with business, getting big salaries and fancy perks and more concerned with their own welfare than the interests of their members….
full article
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Did Nancy Pelosi Commit a Crime?
by Richard L. Franklin
10/20/07
Consider the following: Nancy Pelosi has in fact admitted to having knowledge of the Bush-Cheney program of illegal warrantless eavesdropping initiated by Bush immediately after assuming office. She apparently learned of this soon after Bush initiated it. She therefore has quite possibly known about it since before 9/11. By not reporting criminal actions by Bush, Pelosi has made herself blatantly guilty of a serious crime.
The crime I speak of is known as 'misprision of felony'. According to the prestigious 'Black's Law Dictionary', it is defined thusly:
'Misprision of felony: Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, is guilty of the federal crime of misprision of felony.' 18 U.S.C.A. & 4.
Pelosi has brazenly admitted to having concealed ongoing illegal acts by members of the Bush administration for several years. She defends this by claiming she was simply following proper protocol in not revealing criminal actions that the president had told her he was committing. The president, after all, had told her of his illegal acts while she was a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Pelosi claims she therefore could not properly reveal this to law enforcement or to her colleagues in the House. Her sense of etiquette in this case might be in some twisted way correct, but her sensitivity to the laws of the United States and provisos of the US Constitution is egregiously lacking.
The fact that she deemed it a matter of honor to conspire with the president to keep his illegal acts secret is a form of blatant sophistry. Her concealment of a crime is itself a crime. Consider that Mafiosos also consider it a matter of honor to never rat on their associates. They may call their silence a matter of honor, but that does not make their silence legal or honorable by normal societal standards.
Since Bush and Pelosi have been de facto partners in crime, it is crystal clear why Pelosi dictatorially removed impeachment of Bush and Cheney from any consideration by the Democratic controlled House. She never has offered a coherent or believable reason for her obstinacy in this matter. I believe we now know the reason.
I suggest we all write letters to our local FBI branches asking them if they plan to initiate an investigation of Pelosi's admitted misprision of felony. If not, then why not? The FBI has a huge file of form letters used to reply to citizen's questions; however, I guarantee you they won't have an appropriate reply for this question.
We should also take note of the fact that the victims of warrantless, illegal spying by Bush and associates have had their civil rights seriously violated; so we can only hope the ACLU also will have something to say about Pelosi's de facto silent collaboration in those violations.
Mr. Franklin is the author of 'The Mythology of Self Worth'.
10/20/07
Consider the following: Nancy Pelosi has in fact admitted to having knowledge of the Bush-Cheney program of illegal warrantless eavesdropping initiated by Bush immediately after assuming office. She apparently learned of this soon after Bush initiated it. She therefore has quite possibly known about it since before 9/11. By not reporting criminal actions by Bush, Pelosi has made herself blatantly guilty of a serious crime.
The crime I speak of is known as 'misprision of felony'. According to the prestigious 'Black's Law Dictionary', it is defined thusly:
'Misprision of felony: Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, is guilty of the federal crime of misprision of felony.' 18 U.S.C.A. & 4.
Pelosi has brazenly admitted to having concealed ongoing illegal acts by members of the Bush administration for several years. She defends this by claiming she was simply following proper protocol in not revealing criminal actions that the president had told her he was committing. The president, after all, had told her of his illegal acts while she was a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Pelosi claims she therefore could not properly reveal this to law enforcement or to her colleagues in the House. Her sense of etiquette in this case might be in some twisted way correct, but her sensitivity to the laws of the United States and provisos of the US Constitution is egregiously lacking.
The fact that she deemed it a matter of honor to conspire with the president to keep his illegal acts secret is a form of blatant sophistry. Her concealment of a crime is itself a crime. Consider that Mafiosos also consider it a matter of honor to never rat on their associates. They may call their silence a matter of honor, but that does not make their silence legal or honorable by normal societal standards.
Since Bush and Pelosi have been de facto partners in crime, it is crystal clear why Pelosi dictatorially removed impeachment of Bush and Cheney from any consideration by the Democratic controlled House. She never has offered a coherent or believable reason for her obstinacy in this matter. I believe we now know the reason.
I suggest we all write letters to our local FBI branches asking them if they plan to initiate an investigation of Pelosi's admitted misprision of felony. If not, then why not? The FBI has a huge file of form letters used to reply to citizen's questions; however, I guarantee you they won't have an appropriate reply for this question.
We should also take note of the fact that the victims of warrantless, illegal spying by Bush and associates have had their civil rights seriously violated; so we can only hope the ACLU also will have something to say about Pelosi's de facto silent collaboration in those violations.
Mr. Franklin is the author of 'The Mythology of Self Worth'.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Nobel Hypocrisy
- by Stephen Lendman
10/18/07
Alfred Nobel was a wealthy nineteenth century Swedish-born chemist, engineer, inventor of dynamite, armaments manufacturer and war profiteer who remade his image late in life by establishing the awarding of prizes in his name that includes the one for peace. This most noted award was inspired by his one-time secretary and peace activist, Bertha von Suttner, who was nominated four times and became the first of only 12 women to be honored.
Since it was established in 1901, the Peace Prize was awarded to 95 individuals and 20 organizations. Some recipients were worthy like Martin Luther King, Jane Addams and Albert Schweitzer but too many were not including this year's honoree. Al Gore joins a long list of past "ignoble" recipients like warrior presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and supporter of rogue regimes Jimmy Carter. He's also among the likes of genocidists Henry Kissinger and three former Israeli prime ministers - Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin - along with former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who never met a US-led war he didn't love and support. So much for promoting peace and what this award is supposed to signify. More on this below.
Almost anyone can be nominated for the prize and look who were but didn't get it - Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and more recently George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Rush Limbaugh laughably. In contrast, one of the most notable symbols of non-violence in the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, was nominated four times but never won. More recently, anti-war activist Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, now known as Voices for Creative Nonviolence, got three nominations but was passed over each time for less deserving candidates. Her "reward" instead was to be sentenced in 2004 to three months in federal prison for crossing the line into Fort Benning, Georgia in protest against the School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation that's commonly called "the school of assassins."
full story
10/18/07
Alfred Nobel was a wealthy nineteenth century Swedish-born chemist, engineer, inventor of dynamite, armaments manufacturer and war profiteer who remade his image late in life by establishing the awarding of prizes in his name that includes the one for peace. This most noted award was inspired by his one-time secretary and peace activist, Bertha von Suttner, who was nominated four times and became the first of only 12 women to be honored.
Since it was established in 1901, the Peace Prize was awarded to 95 individuals and 20 organizations. Some recipients were worthy like Martin Luther King, Jane Addams and Albert Schweitzer but too many were not including this year's honoree. Al Gore joins a long list of past "ignoble" recipients like warrior presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and supporter of rogue regimes Jimmy Carter. He's also among the likes of genocidists Henry Kissinger and three former Israeli prime ministers - Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin - along with former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who never met a US-led war he didn't love and support. So much for promoting peace and what this award is supposed to signify. More on this below.
Almost anyone can be nominated for the prize and look who were but didn't get it - Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and more recently George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Rush Limbaugh laughably. In contrast, one of the most notable symbols of non-violence in the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, was nominated four times but never won. More recently, anti-war activist Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, now known as Voices for Creative Nonviolence, got three nominations but was passed over each time for less deserving candidates. Her "reward" instead was to be sentenced in 2004 to three months in federal prison for crossing the line into Fort Benning, Georgia in protest against the School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation that's commonly called "the school of assassins."
full story
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
In The Kingdom Of Fear
By Sheila Samples
10/16/07
"You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared"
~~Warren Zevon, Hunter S. Thompson
My friend Bernie says since Democrats won the Congress, George Bush reminds him of a cartoon where this destructive Texas jackrabbit was careening headlong down a path, his eyes riveted on a rabbit hole in the distance. A tortoise, sunning himself at the side of the path, looked behind the rabbit where a baying pack of dogs, in hot pursuit, was gaining on him. The tortoise smiled. The poor bunny was in a race for his life. As he shot by, the tortoise called out lazily, "Think you'll make it?" The rabbit, looking neither to the right nor left, shot back desperately -- "I gotta make it..."
Bernie says Bush is running scared. So scared he's "pantin' like a lizard..."
Pantin' like a lizard? Hah. Having been raised in New Mexico with me, Bernie should know that Bush is panting because, well, that's what lizards do...Especially the venomous gila monsters, who are fun to chase, but only a fool would try to catch one. That's why the few Democrats out there who appear to be chasing Bush are, in reality, just trotting along in his wake. I suspect they fear the holocaust he is capable of inflicting if they catch him.
For six long years, Bush has "water-boarded" all who oppose him -- especially those in Congress -- with a steady stream of 9-11. Each speech is laced with visions of 9-11 -- 9-11 horror just over the horizon, 9-11 around each corner, 9-11 behind each tree. "Fear Itself" is the only option on the Bush-Cheney table, and they have used it relentlessly, not only to wage genocidal war in order to gain control of the world's resources, but to seize dictatorial power and to control the quivering masses. Constant and repetitive warnings and false-flag alerts, evidence of plotters and planners skulking among us, hateful ideologies swirling above us like mushroom clouds -- is it any wonder our elected representatives, once inside the Kingdom of Fear, lose all sense of direction, the ability to reason?
In his new book, "The Assault on Reason," former vice president Al Gore shines the light of truth upon this Orwellian prison of fear in which we are held captive. In fact, Gore says more in his Introduction than most people can manage to get across in an entire book. He says there is a "connection between the withdrawal of reason from the public sphere and the resulting vacuum that is filled by fear, superstition, ideology, deception, intolerance, and obsessive secrecy as a means of tightening control over the information that a free society needs to govern itself according to reason-based democracy."
Bernie says that sounds good, but as far as he's concerned, they're all just a bunch of spineless hypocritical weasels. "Something ain't right here," Bernie said. "These Democrats are different from the ones we sent up there. We elected them to do the two things they promised to do -- stop the massacre in Iraq and impeach the shallow, warmongering fool who lied us into his greedy war. They've been there nearly 11 months and they refuse to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their treasonous lies or the massive destruction that gets worse every day. Blood keeps gushing from the sands of Iraq. Bodies keep piling up."
Bernie glared at me as he headed for the door. "Are they really scared, or are they just playing politics?" he asked. "Either way -- how do they sleep at night -- how in the hell do they sleep at night?"
If I knew the answer to that question, I'd know why my hero, Sen. Russ Feingold, gave a speech on the floor of the Senate in early October wherein he urged his peers to take a stand and insist the $150 billion war-funding bill include a timeline for beginning to withdraw troops because, he said, "There have been more than 3,600 killed in Iraq..."
I was aghast. Perhaps Feingold overslept that morning. Had he bothered to check, he would have discovered that, as he spoke, more than 3,800 of our soldiers and marines had been killed. He might even have mentioned the more than 37,000 injured and more than 21,000 suffering from disease and other medical problems. No matter how you stack them, that's a lot of bodies piling up...
I'd know why another of my heroes, Rep. John Conyers, who had been out there hugging the peerless David Swanson and the courageous Cindy Sheehan -- holding meetings in basements, whipping up articles of impeachment -- suddenly shut up, backed off, and dove under his desk when the polls closed. Freaked out -- after 21 terms in Congress!
I don't know if House droid Nancy Pelosi experiences fear; if she sleeps, or even blinks, but her strident insistence that she alone is the Decider on impeachment is a power grab indicating either her ignorance of, or contempt for, the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 leaves no wiggle room, but is a mandate -- "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
Pelosi's mantra that "impeachment is off the table" mirrors Bush's 9-11 broadside, and is clear evidence that she is far more concerned with politics than with the faceless, invisible bodies that keep piling up because of her inaction. In a recent interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Pelosi said she is determined that Bush will not escape his legacy. "This war is Bush's war and it's Cheney's war. And now," she said, smacking her lips in delight -- "this war is the Republican's war..."
So there you have it. When Pelosi and other members of Congress were sworn in after the 2006 election, 2,761 American uniformed military had been slain. In the ensuing 11 months, while Democrats were caving in, kissing ass, and giving Bush everything he demanded to expand his war, an additional 1,072 of our young men and women have perished. With 13 months remaining for this administration, one must wonder how many more innocent Iraqi citizens and American military must die in order for Pelosi to write Bush's legacy with their blood...
If Democrats in Congress actually read that document which they swore to "support and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic," they would know that any member of the House can start impeachment proceedings by (are you listening, Rep. Dennis Kucinich?) merely tossing a resolution in the hopper for referral to the appropriate committee.
There is good reason for Americans to be scared, for as George Orwell said, "It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continous...The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects."
It's them against us -- a greedy corporate cabal protected by a cruel and sinister Dick Cheney and Bush, a vicious, brainless jackass who endowed himself with "wonder-working" masturbatory power to torture and kill at will.
I once read that the Constitution is our birth certificate. If we are to remain a legitimate republic and escape this Kingdom of Fear, we must impeach both of these illegitimate warmongers. We must resist being fatigued into compliance with murder and into relinquishing our freedoms.
As Hunter S. Thompson wrote so succinctly just prior to the 2004 elections, "We are down to nut-cutting time," and, again, with Warren Zevron, Thompson admonished -- "If you can't run, walk...If you can't walk, crawl...But don't look down...It's a long, long fall."
Let us begin.
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
10/16/07
"You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared"
~~Warren Zevon, Hunter S. Thompson
My friend Bernie says since Democrats won the Congress, George Bush reminds him of a cartoon where this destructive Texas jackrabbit was careening headlong down a path, his eyes riveted on a rabbit hole in the distance. A tortoise, sunning himself at the side of the path, looked behind the rabbit where a baying pack of dogs, in hot pursuit, was gaining on him. The tortoise smiled. The poor bunny was in a race for his life. As he shot by, the tortoise called out lazily, "Think you'll make it?" The rabbit, looking neither to the right nor left, shot back desperately -- "I gotta make it..."
Bernie says Bush is running scared. So scared he's "pantin' like a lizard..."
Pantin' like a lizard? Hah. Having been raised in New Mexico with me, Bernie should know that Bush is panting because, well, that's what lizards do...Especially the venomous gila monsters, who are fun to chase, but only a fool would try to catch one. That's why the few Democrats out there who appear to be chasing Bush are, in reality, just trotting along in his wake. I suspect they fear the holocaust he is capable of inflicting if they catch him.
For six long years, Bush has "water-boarded" all who oppose him -- especially those in Congress -- with a steady stream of 9-11. Each speech is laced with visions of 9-11 -- 9-11 horror just over the horizon, 9-11 around each corner, 9-11 behind each tree. "Fear Itself" is the only option on the Bush-Cheney table, and they have used it relentlessly, not only to wage genocidal war in order to gain control of the world's resources, but to seize dictatorial power and to control the quivering masses. Constant and repetitive warnings and false-flag alerts, evidence of plotters and planners skulking among us, hateful ideologies swirling above us like mushroom clouds -- is it any wonder our elected representatives, once inside the Kingdom of Fear, lose all sense of direction, the ability to reason?
In his new book, "The Assault on Reason," former vice president Al Gore shines the light of truth upon this Orwellian prison of fear in which we are held captive. In fact, Gore says more in his Introduction than most people can manage to get across in an entire book. He says there is a "connection between the withdrawal of reason from the public sphere and the resulting vacuum that is filled by fear, superstition, ideology, deception, intolerance, and obsessive secrecy as a means of tightening control over the information that a free society needs to govern itself according to reason-based democracy."
Bernie says that sounds good, but as far as he's concerned, they're all just a bunch of spineless hypocritical weasels. "Something ain't right here," Bernie said. "These Democrats are different from the ones we sent up there. We elected them to do the two things they promised to do -- stop the massacre in Iraq and impeach the shallow, warmongering fool who lied us into his greedy war. They've been there nearly 11 months and they refuse to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their treasonous lies or the massive destruction that gets worse every day. Blood keeps gushing from the sands of Iraq. Bodies keep piling up."
Bernie glared at me as he headed for the door. "Are they really scared, or are they just playing politics?" he asked. "Either way -- how do they sleep at night -- how in the hell do they sleep at night?"
If I knew the answer to that question, I'd know why my hero, Sen. Russ Feingold, gave a speech on the floor of the Senate in early October wherein he urged his peers to take a stand and insist the $150 billion war-funding bill include a timeline for beginning to withdraw troops because, he said, "There have been more than 3,600 killed in Iraq..."
I was aghast. Perhaps Feingold overslept that morning. Had he bothered to check, he would have discovered that, as he spoke, more than 3,800 of our soldiers and marines had been killed. He might even have mentioned the more than 37,000 injured and more than 21,000 suffering from disease and other medical problems. No matter how you stack them, that's a lot of bodies piling up...
I'd know why another of my heroes, Rep. John Conyers, who had been out there hugging the peerless David Swanson and the courageous Cindy Sheehan -- holding meetings in basements, whipping up articles of impeachment -- suddenly shut up, backed off, and dove under his desk when the polls closed. Freaked out -- after 21 terms in Congress!
I don't know if House droid Nancy Pelosi experiences fear; if she sleeps, or even blinks, but her strident insistence that she alone is the Decider on impeachment is a power grab indicating either her ignorance of, or contempt for, the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 leaves no wiggle room, but is a mandate -- "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
Pelosi's mantra that "impeachment is off the table" mirrors Bush's 9-11 broadside, and is clear evidence that she is far more concerned with politics than with the faceless, invisible bodies that keep piling up because of her inaction. In a recent interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Pelosi said she is determined that Bush will not escape his legacy. "This war is Bush's war and it's Cheney's war. And now," she said, smacking her lips in delight -- "this war is the Republican's war..."
So there you have it. When Pelosi and other members of Congress were sworn in after the 2006 election, 2,761 American uniformed military had been slain. In the ensuing 11 months, while Democrats were caving in, kissing ass, and giving Bush everything he demanded to expand his war, an additional 1,072 of our young men and women have perished. With 13 months remaining for this administration, one must wonder how many more innocent Iraqi citizens and American military must die in order for Pelosi to write Bush's legacy with their blood...
If Democrats in Congress actually read that document which they swore to "support and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic," they would know that any member of the House can start impeachment proceedings by (are you listening, Rep. Dennis Kucinich?) merely tossing a resolution in the hopper for referral to the appropriate committee.
There is good reason for Americans to be scared, for as George Orwell said, "It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continous...The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects."
It's them against us -- a greedy corporate cabal protected by a cruel and sinister Dick Cheney and Bush, a vicious, brainless jackass who endowed himself with "wonder-working" masturbatory power to torture and kill at will.
I once read that the Constitution is our birth certificate. If we are to remain a legitimate republic and escape this Kingdom of Fear, we must impeach both of these illegitimate warmongers. We must resist being fatigued into compliance with murder and into relinquishing our freedoms.
As Hunter S. Thompson wrote so succinctly just prior to the 2004 elections, "We are down to nut-cutting time," and, again, with Warren Zevron, Thompson admonished -- "If you can't run, walk...If you can't walk, crawl...But don't look down...It's a long, long fall."
Let us begin.
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
Monday, October 15, 2007
Socialist revolution also means gender equality
By Marcelo Colussi.
Translated into English for Axis of Logic by Iris Buehler and revised by James Hollander, Tlaxcala
Oct 12, 2007, 03:46
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_25337.shtml
How many women do you think got beaten up today by their partners? And how many men? How many women do you think had to be hospitalized today because of these beatings? And how many men have gone through the same thing?
How many women do you think have had to “pay favors” today to male superiors in an organization? How many men have experienced this with female bosses or superiors? Worldwide, what image do you think is more commonly used today in billboard advertising, TV ads, photos, etc.: half naked women to promote some product, or male bodies?
Who do you think are more often cheated on today by their respective partners: men or women?
Of all deals that might have been done today –sales of houses, cars, properties, purchases of shares, sales orders in international business, etc.– who would have more often signed on the dotted line as the new owners or authorized representatives: men or women?
How many men do you think have visited a brothel today when celebrating their bachelor’s party on the eve of their wedding? And how many women may have slept with a man who is not her future husband to celebrate theirs?
How many female babies have been subjected to amputation of the clitoris today to keep them from enjoying sexual pleasure as an adult?
Do you think any man in the world has suffered something similar today?
On a worldwide scale, how many men do you think have received their salary today as presidents, ministers, deputies, generals, admirals, brigadier generals, company managers, factory managers or conductors of a symphony orchestra? And how many women?
Do you think there were more women or more men will have gone home drunk today, kicking open doors and insisting on having sex even though their partners may not feel like it?
How many men do you think have today abandoned women who told those men that they were pregnant by them? In contrast, how many women do you think have abandoned their new-born son or daughter?
Who do you think have worked longer hours today, including both housework and non-housework: women or men?
And who you think have been more vehemently condemned by the priests of the different world religions as impure, diabolical, impious, sinners and blasphemers: women or men?
We men who are reading this and giving the right answers don't need to feel guilty. Or, at least, we don't need to flagellate ourselves to atone for our sins. That would certainly be of no help: it would only cause even more work for our women, for they would be the ones who would certainy cure our wounds and serve us our meals in bed, so we would only be causing them more problems. But it actually is a good thing to adopt a truly critical attitude: being a revolutionary does not mean putting on a shirt with the image of Che Guevara printed on it. Being a revolutionary is much more than that. Thus, the point is not to nurture a feeling of guilt for the ancestral sexism that constitutes us: the point is to discuss it in order to not to continue practicing it.
Within the Left - and we must acknowledge this – a generally male chauvinist attitude has predominated. But we must insist: this sexism is not due to some “sexist, partriarchal” essence of which we men are somehow carriers genetically. To the contrary, it is the many millennia of culture that weighs us down. Who said it would be easy to free ourselves from this burden?
In any case, if we take the matter of "being revolutionaries", of "being socialists" with any seriousness, then at least we must consider in depth every one of the questions posed above. What antidote should be opposed to male chauvinism? Guilt or self-accusation will not do: we just need to begin questioning it. Maybe we won’t achieve a different view of the problem –if we do, it would be all for the better– but our descendants certainly will. Is it really possible to be truly revolutionary without putting our machismo up for discussion?
Until well into the twentieth century, the issue of demanding women’s rights was practically a taboo among the left throughout the world. "Petty-bourgeois vice" was one of the most common terms used to name it. Whether it was "a distraction from the true class problem", "a secondary task", or "a problem that would be solved anyway once the triumph of socialism has been achieved,” it was in fact never part of the basic values in either revolutionary theory or in revolutionary practice.
But the time has now come to correct that mistake.
Although it is true that the topic has already been on the table for quite some time and that there actually have been major steps forward, sexism continues to be a pending issue on our agenda. For all of us, both the Right and the Left. Just to illustrate it with a very clear example: in "civilized" Europe –where women are not being circumcised or publicly stoned if accused of adultery, where they are not compelled to keep their head covered or remain silent when men are speaking– household violence by men continues to be the second cause of injuries and death among the female population. Although it is true that we have made advances, there's still so much left to do. Including –and maybe more than anything else– within the ranks of the Left, precisely because the Left is supposed to take the lead when it comes to the domain of ethics.
Half of the world population is female; therefore an improvement in the condition of women –always at a disadvantage to men, regardless of their socio-economic situation– would already mean in itself an enormous advance in the distribution of rights and benefits among all human beings. It may be true that the exploitation of women –because this is the problem: women live in a relation of subjugation to men– is of a different nature than the exploitation of the working class at the hands of the owners of the means of production (who, to be sure, are in mostly men). But abolishing that exploitation, starting to modify it and calling it into question could have an absolutely revolutionary value in the long run.
Socialist revolution is not only about improving the economic position of the huge masses of dispossessed; it also means ending each and every form of injustice. And gender inequality is one of the worst forms of injustice. If you think I'm wrong, then just ask the women.
Original Source in Spanish: Revolución socialista también es igualdad de géneros
Tlaxcala- Iris Buehler and James Hollander are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Translated into English for Axis of Logic by Iris Buehler and revised by James Hollander, Tlaxcala
Oct 12, 2007, 03:46
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_25337.shtml
How many women do you think got beaten up today by their partners? And how many men? How many women do you think had to be hospitalized today because of these beatings? And how many men have gone through the same thing?
How many women do you think have had to “pay favors” today to male superiors in an organization? How many men have experienced this with female bosses or superiors? Worldwide, what image do you think is more commonly used today in billboard advertising, TV ads, photos, etc.: half naked women to promote some product, or male bodies?
Who do you think are more often cheated on today by their respective partners: men or women?
Of all deals that might have been done today –sales of houses, cars, properties, purchases of shares, sales orders in international business, etc.– who would have more often signed on the dotted line as the new owners or authorized representatives: men or women?
How many men do you think have visited a brothel today when celebrating their bachelor’s party on the eve of their wedding? And how many women may have slept with a man who is not her future husband to celebrate theirs?
How many female babies have been subjected to amputation of the clitoris today to keep them from enjoying sexual pleasure as an adult?
Do you think any man in the world has suffered something similar today?
On a worldwide scale, how many men do you think have received their salary today as presidents, ministers, deputies, generals, admirals, brigadier generals, company managers, factory managers or conductors of a symphony orchestra? And how many women?
Do you think there were more women or more men will have gone home drunk today, kicking open doors and insisting on having sex even though their partners may not feel like it?
How many men do you think have today abandoned women who told those men that they were pregnant by them? In contrast, how many women do you think have abandoned their new-born son or daughter?
Who do you think have worked longer hours today, including both housework and non-housework: women or men?
And who you think have been more vehemently condemned by the priests of the different world religions as impure, diabolical, impious, sinners and blasphemers: women or men?
We men who are reading this and giving the right answers don't need to feel guilty. Or, at least, we don't need to flagellate ourselves to atone for our sins. That would certainly be of no help: it would only cause even more work for our women, for they would be the ones who would certainy cure our wounds and serve us our meals in bed, so we would only be causing them more problems. But it actually is a good thing to adopt a truly critical attitude: being a revolutionary does not mean putting on a shirt with the image of Che Guevara printed on it. Being a revolutionary is much more than that. Thus, the point is not to nurture a feeling of guilt for the ancestral sexism that constitutes us: the point is to discuss it in order to not to continue practicing it.
Within the Left - and we must acknowledge this – a generally male chauvinist attitude has predominated. But we must insist: this sexism is not due to some “sexist, partriarchal” essence of which we men are somehow carriers genetically. To the contrary, it is the many millennia of culture that weighs us down. Who said it would be easy to free ourselves from this burden?
In any case, if we take the matter of "being revolutionaries", of "being socialists" with any seriousness, then at least we must consider in depth every one of the questions posed above. What antidote should be opposed to male chauvinism? Guilt or self-accusation will not do: we just need to begin questioning it. Maybe we won’t achieve a different view of the problem –if we do, it would be all for the better– but our descendants certainly will. Is it really possible to be truly revolutionary without putting our machismo up for discussion?
Until well into the twentieth century, the issue of demanding women’s rights was practically a taboo among the left throughout the world. "Petty-bourgeois vice" was one of the most common terms used to name it. Whether it was "a distraction from the true class problem", "a secondary task", or "a problem that would be solved anyway once the triumph of socialism has been achieved,” it was in fact never part of the basic values in either revolutionary theory or in revolutionary practice.
But the time has now come to correct that mistake.
Although it is true that the topic has already been on the table for quite some time and that there actually have been major steps forward, sexism continues to be a pending issue on our agenda. For all of us, both the Right and the Left. Just to illustrate it with a very clear example: in "civilized" Europe –where women are not being circumcised or publicly stoned if accused of adultery, where they are not compelled to keep their head covered or remain silent when men are speaking– household violence by men continues to be the second cause of injuries and death among the female population. Although it is true that we have made advances, there's still so much left to do. Including –and maybe more than anything else– within the ranks of the Left, precisely because the Left is supposed to take the lead when it comes to the domain of ethics.
Half of the world population is female; therefore an improvement in the condition of women –always at a disadvantage to men, regardless of their socio-economic situation– would already mean in itself an enormous advance in the distribution of rights and benefits among all human beings. It may be true that the exploitation of women –because this is the problem: women live in a relation of subjugation to men– is of a different nature than the exploitation of the working class at the hands of the owners of the means of production (who, to be sure, are in mostly men). But abolishing that exploitation, starting to modify it and calling it into question could have an absolutely revolutionary value in the long run.
Socialist revolution is not only about improving the economic position of the huge masses of dispossessed; it also means ending each and every form of injustice. And gender inequality is one of the worst forms of injustice. If you think I'm wrong, then just ask the women.
Original Source in Spanish: Revolución socialista también es igualdad de géneros
Tlaxcala- Iris Buehler and James Hollander are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
The politics of absolute power
By Philip S Golub
http://mondediplo.com/2007/10/05absolute
Le Monde Diplomatique
October 2007
The Bush administration is a case study in how a small elite representing minority interests can seize power and then use fear and nationalism in a political mobilisation to achieve authoritarian goals. When he came to power in 2000 Bush had no democratic legitimacy. He had lost the popular vote to Al Gore and had been given the presidency by a questionable Supreme Court decision to stop a vote recount in Florida. For many constitutional scholars, the Bush victory amounted to a “constitutional coup, an unlawful accession to power” (1).
Although Al Gore conceded to Bush to avoid a constitutional crisis, the presidency was tainted by illegitimacy. Given the balance of forces – the Republicans lost control of the Senate in July 2001 – many analysts expected political paralysis, hence a modest presidency in domestic and international policy.
The opposite happened. From the start the Bush White House strove to remove constraints on its sovereign action. In the domestic sphere, rather than governing from the centre as expected, it engaged in adversarial politics designed to polarise society, and launched a sustained effort to reduce the rights secured by women and minorities during the 1960s and 1970s. Karl Rove, Bush’s political adviser who has now resigned, invented this strategy to mobilise and unify conservatives, fracture the Democrats and create a permanent Republican majority.
Internationally, the Bush administration began the methodical deconstruction of the rules-based order and of the institutions of global governance. In the months before 9/11 it announced its intention to withdraw from the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, arranged the failure of the additional Protocol on Biological Weapons that was due to be signed in July 2001, and sought to block the creation of the International Criminal Court.
There is continuity between these early actions and the attack on the United Nations, international humanitarian law and domestic civil rights after 9/11. The double agenda of the ultranationalist right was much amplified after the attacks, which lifted usual domestic constraints and opened the way for an extraordinary concentration of power and the drive for empire. Soon after 9/11 the former defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that it had created the “kind of opportunity offered by World War II to refashion the world” (2).
Since the attacks, the administration has claimed limitless powers to overturn international law and domestic constitutionalism. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – who, like Rove, was forced to resign this September – was a key figure making the case for unbounded executive power. As White House Counsel from 2001 to 2005, Gonzales wrote the infamous torture memos, arguing that the president had the inherent authority to override international law.
The domestic and international dimensions of the authoritarian effort are inseparable: the war in Iraq, framed as part of a timeless and boundless global war on terror, sustained the White House claim for permanent emergency powers at home.
The departure of these figures highlights the weakening of the administration, which since November 2006 has lost control of both houses of Congress. Yet the White House still holds critical levers of foreign and security policy. It has suggested that the US will remain in Iraq for 50 years and has recently succeeded, yet again, in having Congress pass a bill that violates basic freedoms (3).
Notes:
(1) Jack Balkin, “The die is cast”, Balkinization, 17 March 2003, balkin.blogspot.com/2003_03_16 _balkin_archive.html. See also Jack Balkin and Sanford Levinson, “Understanding the Constitutional Revolution”, Virginia Law Review, vol 87, no 6, October 2001; and Bruce Ackerman, “Anatomy of a Constitutional Coup”, London Review of Books, vol 23, no 3, 8 February 2001.
(2) Interview in The New York Times, 12 October 2001.
(3) The Protect America Act 2007 was passed by both houses of Congress this summer; it gives the government wide powers of surveillance of information and terrorism without judicial control.
Rice decries power-hungry chief executive with unchecked authority
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/055873.php
Talking Points Memo
10.13.07
I genuinely believe Condoleezza Rice has no idea why so many of us would find this ironic.
The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so much central authority that the power-grab may undermine Moscow's commitment to democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.
"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development," Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.
"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament....
http://mondediplo.com/2007/10/05absolute
Le Monde Diplomatique
October 2007
The Bush administration is a case study in how a small elite representing minority interests can seize power and then use fear and nationalism in a political mobilisation to achieve authoritarian goals. When he came to power in 2000 Bush had no democratic legitimacy. He had lost the popular vote to Al Gore and had been given the presidency by a questionable Supreme Court decision to stop a vote recount in Florida. For many constitutional scholars, the Bush victory amounted to a “constitutional coup, an unlawful accession to power” (1).
Although Al Gore conceded to Bush to avoid a constitutional crisis, the presidency was tainted by illegitimacy. Given the balance of forces – the Republicans lost control of the Senate in July 2001 – many analysts expected political paralysis, hence a modest presidency in domestic and international policy.
The opposite happened. From the start the Bush White House strove to remove constraints on its sovereign action. In the domestic sphere, rather than governing from the centre as expected, it engaged in adversarial politics designed to polarise society, and launched a sustained effort to reduce the rights secured by women and minorities during the 1960s and 1970s. Karl Rove, Bush’s political adviser who has now resigned, invented this strategy to mobilise and unify conservatives, fracture the Democrats and create a permanent Republican majority.
Internationally, the Bush administration began the methodical deconstruction of the rules-based order and of the institutions of global governance. In the months before 9/11 it announced its intention to withdraw from the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, arranged the failure of the additional Protocol on Biological Weapons that was due to be signed in July 2001, and sought to block the creation of the International Criminal Court.
There is continuity between these early actions and the attack on the United Nations, international humanitarian law and domestic civil rights after 9/11. The double agenda of the ultranationalist right was much amplified after the attacks, which lifted usual domestic constraints and opened the way for an extraordinary concentration of power and the drive for empire. Soon after 9/11 the former defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that it had created the “kind of opportunity offered by World War II to refashion the world” (2).
Since the attacks, the administration has claimed limitless powers to overturn international law and domestic constitutionalism. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – who, like Rove, was forced to resign this September – was a key figure making the case for unbounded executive power. As White House Counsel from 2001 to 2005, Gonzales wrote the infamous torture memos, arguing that the president had the inherent authority to override international law.
The domestic and international dimensions of the authoritarian effort are inseparable: the war in Iraq, framed as part of a timeless and boundless global war on terror, sustained the White House claim for permanent emergency powers at home.
The departure of these figures highlights the weakening of the administration, which since November 2006 has lost control of both houses of Congress. Yet the White House still holds critical levers of foreign and security policy. It has suggested that the US will remain in Iraq for 50 years and has recently succeeded, yet again, in having Congress pass a bill that violates basic freedoms (3).
Notes:
(1) Jack Balkin, “The die is cast”, Balkinization, 17 March 2003, balkin.blogspot.com/2003_03_16 _balkin_archive.html. See also Jack Balkin and Sanford Levinson, “Understanding the Constitutional Revolution”, Virginia Law Review, vol 87, no 6, October 2001; and Bruce Ackerman, “Anatomy of a Constitutional Coup”, London Review of Books, vol 23, no 3, 8 February 2001.
(2) Interview in The New York Times, 12 October 2001.
(3) The Protect America Act 2007 was passed by both houses of Congress this summer; it gives the government wide powers of surveillance of information and terrorism without judicial control.
Rice decries power-hungry chief executive with unchecked authority
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/055873.php
Talking Points Memo
10.13.07
I genuinely believe Condoleezza Rice has no idea why so many of us would find this ironic.
The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so much central authority that the power-grab may undermine Moscow's commitment to democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.
"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development," Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.
"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament....
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
why I’m not polite
Ah, Malkin continues her stalking...
by Larisa Alexandrovna on October 09, 2007
http://www.atlargely.com/2007/10/ah-malkin-conti.html
Some of you might recall that Michelle Malkin's (uber shiksa pretending to support Israel) stalking and harassment of a college chancellor Denice Denton drove the woman to commit suicide. After Malkin decided to take it upon herself to post all the private information of Denton, the chancellor began getting calls with death threats, and all sorts of Malkin-type freedom of expression. Malkin did not stop at Denton of course, she put up every piece of information about the private lives of students on campus. I can only imagine how she would have reacted if her children were subjected to the stalking and death threats that these people got.
Ah, but why end there? Malkin and the Malkinites (my pet nickname for the fascist group thuggery of her followers) now have decided to go after a sick 12 year old child.
[…]
Rush Smears 12-Yr Old: ‘They Filled His Head With Lies Just As They Have Some Of These Soldiers’
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/09/rush-limbaugh-on-graeme/
October 9, 2007
Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted the right wing has been orchestrating a coordinated effort to smear a 12 year old recipient of SCHIP. These conservatives have been propagating baseless “facts” to suggest that young Graeme Frost was actually a rich kid being pampered by the government.
Rush Limbaugh has joined in the smear campaign. On his radio show yesterday, Rush introduced his hit job on Graeme by saying, “I had some rudimentary information on this two weeks ago, and it wasn’t enough for me to trust going with. But since then, it has been verified, and most of it’s been verified by a ‘Freeper’ at Free Republic.” Apparently, a posting by a “freeper” is all Rush needs for confirmation.
[…]
……
These are just a couple of the reasons that I’m an in-your-face activist. I left polite years ago. Since Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism” to today’s right-wing nutjobs, I have yet to hear one of them refute the facts in any discussion. No. They go right to slurs and character assassination. And ain’t a one of them with the clankers to stand up and say it to their victims faces. They hide behind their anonymity, and their radios.
So, how to answer them? I give it right back, except that I’m face to face with them. And I’ll take THEIR arguments and logic (such as it is), turn it back on them, and humiliate them in front of their friends and families. I’m not nice, you’re right. These people don’t deserve nice.
For a quick for instance, and very apropos to the SCHIP discussion. When they start flailing about over “socialized medicine”, I ask them how much they paid for the street we’re standing on.
by Larisa Alexandrovna on October 09, 2007
http://www.atlargely.com/2007/10/ah-malkin-conti.html
Some of you might recall that Michelle Malkin's (uber shiksa pretending to support Israel) stalking and harassment of a college chancellor Denice Denton drove the woman to commit suicide. After Malkin decided to take it upon herself to post all the private information of Denton, the chancellor began getting calls with death threats, and all sorts of Malkin-type freedom of expression. Malkin did not stop at Denton of course, she put up every piece of information about the private lives of students on campus. I can only imagine how she would have reacted if her children were subjected to the stalking and death threats that these people got.
Ah, but why end there? Malkin and the Malkinites (my pet nickname for the fascist group thuggery of her followers) now have decided to go after a sick 12 year old child.
[…]
Rush Smears 12-Yr Old: ‘They Filled His Head With Lies Just As They Have Some Of These Soldiers’
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/09/rush-limbaugh-on-graeme/
October 9, 2007
Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted the right wing has been orchestrating a coordinated effort to smear a 12 year old recipient of SCHIP. These conservatives have been propagating baseless “facts” to suggest that young Graeme Frost was actually a rich kid being pampered by the government.
Rush Limbaugh has joined in the smear campaign. On his radio show yesterday, Rush introduced his hit job on Graeme by saying, “I had some rudimentary information on this two weeks ago, and it wasn’t enough for me to trust going with. But since then, it has been verified, and most of it’s been verified by a ‘Freeper’ at Free Republic.” Apparently, a posting by a “freeper” is all Rush needs for confirmation.
[…]
……
These are just a couple of the reasons that I’m an in-your-face activist. I left polite years ago. Since Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism” to today’s right-wing nutjobs, I have yet to hear one of them refute the facts in any discussion. No. They go right to slurs and character assassination. And ain’t a one of them with the clankers to stand up and say it to their victims faces. They hide behind their anonymity, and their radios.
So, how to answer them? I give it right back, except that I’m face to face with them. And I’ll take THEIR arguments and logic (such as it is), turn it back on them, and humiliate them in front of their friends and families. I’m not nice, you’re right. These people don’t deserve nice.
For a quick for instance, and very apropos to the SCHIP discussion. When they start flailing about over “socialized medicine”, I ask them how much they paid for the street we’re standing on.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Murderous Mummery:
Marching Into Nightmare With General Petraeus
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 08 October 2007
From Reuters: Petraeus steps up accusations against Iran
The U.S. military commander in Iraq stepped up accusations over the weekend that Iran was inciting violence there and said Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad was a member of the Revolutionary Guards Qods force. Washington accuses Iran's Revolutionary Guards' elite Qods force of supporting militias who have attacked U.S. troops.... General David Petraeus, speaking at a U.S. military base about 20 miles from the Iranian border on Saturday, said Iran was giving militia groups advanced weaponry and guidance.
"They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers," Petraeus told a group of reporters when asked if the Iranian government was responsible for killing U.S. troops. Petraeus did not say how he knew Iran's ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, was a Qods force member, but he appeared to suggest the envoy was not under the U.S. military spotlight because he was a diplomat. "The ambassador is a Qods force member," Petraeus said.
If this is true, then why has the United States not already declared war on Iran? In what alternative universe would Washington allow another nation to direct attacks that kill U.S. troops without responding? To revert to the Hitler-era analogy that the Bush Regime is so fond of evoking in regard to Iran, what would the United States have done in 1938 if Nazi Germany had been arming, training, funding and directing deadly assaults on American troops from, say, Mexico? [Of course, in those days, the Bush family would have profited handsomely from such attacks, as the current president's grandfather and great-grandfather, Prescott Bush and George Walker, were heavily invested in the Nazi war machine. But plus ca change, as they say: Bush's family has also feasted on the blood money pouring out of L'il Georgie's rape of Iraq in our brave new century.]
In any case, if what this Fox News propagandist in military drag says is actually true, then by their own lights, both he and his Leader are trembling little cowards, afraid to respond to military aggression from the big bad Persians. What Petraeus did on Saturday was to admit that he and Bush are allowing Iran to kill Americans -- although no doubt the little puppet and his Oval Office string-pullers believe that such talk makes them look tough. But if we were to take them at their word -- and only the most dim-witted, knuckle-dragging fool would do that (take a bow, Washington Post pundits!) -- they have condemned themselves as sniveling pants-wetters, cowering in the face of a murderous bully.
But of course, the drag artist is not telling the truth. He is asserting as unassailable fact accusations which have never been substantiated, not even by the Regime's own intelligence agencies -- whose bar for "confirming" provocative intelligence is, as we all know, preternaturally low. Petraeus doesn't intend for his words to be taken seriously -- that is, not in the real world, where military attacks by one nation on another lead to an immediate response. No, his words are intended for the media echo chamber, where they will bounce around in the midst of all the other mind-obliterating noise, with a few key scraps falling into the mix: "Iran" -- "killing Americans" -- "Qods" -- "Iran" -- "killing Americans" -- "Qods." That's all they want -- and that's all they need -- to get across. They certainly don't want anyone to pay close attention to the details of the patter they're putting out. They just want a few keywords to filter into the battered public consciousness, because these are the elements they will invoke when the time comes to launch their own unprovoked military agression against Iran: "Iran's Qods Force is killing Americans, and we must, reluctantly, retaliate. Therefore, tonight I have ordered a series of air raids on Qods Force bases in Iran...."
And hey: "Qods" sounds a lot like "al Qaeda," doesn't it? That gives you extra traction in the echo chamber -- more bang for the propaganda buck.
But as we noted here a couple of weeks ago, Petraeus' patter is more than a PR exercise laying the groundwork for an upcoming aggressive war; it's also a projection of the military aggression that the Bush Regime is conducting against Iran, "providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed" many Iranians. We quoted Scott Ritter on the subject then, and he's worth re-quoting here:
But fiction often mirrors reality, and in the case of Iran’s Quds Force, the model drawn upon by the U.S. military seems to be none other than America’s own support of anti-Iranian forces, namely the Mujahedin el-Khalk (MEK) operating out of U.S.-controlled bases inside Iraq, and Jundallah, a Baluchi separatist group operating out of Pakistan that the CIA openly acknowledges supporting. Unlike the lack of evidence brought to bear by the U.S. to sustain its claims of Iranian involvement inside Iraq, the Iranian government has captured scores of MEK and Jundallah operatives, along with supporting documents, which substantiate that which the U.S. openly admits: The United States is waging a proxy war against Iran, inside Iran. This mirror imaging of its own terror campaign against Iran to manufacture the perception of a similar effort being waged by Iran inside Iraq against the U.S. has been very effective at negating any Iranian effort to draw attention to the escalation of war-like activities inside its borders.
That the American people are being set up to approve -- or to at least countenance with distracted docility -- another round of mass murder is beyond question. And the fact that many people believe that only an unconstitutional military insurrection against the lawless civilian government will stop this new war shows just how far through the looking glass America has gone. Our living nightmare grows deeper and more lurid with each passing day.
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 08 October 2007
From Reuters: Petraeus steps up accusations against Iran
The U.S. military commander in Iraq stepped up accusations over the weekend that Iran was inciting violence there and said Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad was a member of the Revolutionary Guards Qods force. Washington accuses Iran's Revolutionary Guards' elite Qods force of supporting militias who have attacked U.S. troops.... General David Petraeus, speaking at a U.S. military base about 20 miles from the Iranian border on Saturday, said Iran was giving militia groups advanced weaponry and guidance.
"They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers," Petraeus told a group of reporters when asked if the Iranian government was responsible for killing U.S. troops. Petraeus did not say how he knew Iran's ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, was a Qods force member, but he appeared to suggest the envoy was not under the U.S. military spotlight because he was a diplomat. "The ambassador is a Qods force member," Petraeus said.
If this is true, then why has the United States not already declared war on Iran? In what alternative universe would Washington allow another nation to direct attacks that kill U.S. troops without responding? To revert to the Hitler-era analogy that the Bush Regime is so fond of evoking in regard to Iran, what would the United States have done in 1938 if Nazi Germany had been arming, training, funding and directing deadly assaults on American troops from, say, Mexico? [Of course, in those days, the Bush family would have profited handsomely from such attacks, as the current president's grandfather and great-grandfather, Prescott Bush and George Walker, were heavily invested in the Nazi war machine. But plus ca change, as they say: Bush's family has also feasted on the blood money pouring out of L'il Georgie's rape of Iraq in our brave new century.]
In any case, if what this Fox News propagandist in military drag says is actually true, then by their own lights, both he and his Leader are trembling little cowards, afraid to respond to military aggression from the big bad Persians. What Petraeus did on Saturday was to admit that he and Bush are allowing Iran to kill Americans -- although no doubt the little puppet and his Oval Office string-pullers believe that such talk makes them look tough. But if we were to take them at their word -- and only the most dim-witted, knuckle-dragging fool would do that (take a bow, Washington Post pundits!) -- they have condemned themselves as sniveling pants-wetters, cowering in the face of a murderous bully.
But of course, the drag artist is not telling the truth. He is asserting as unassailable fact accusations which have never been substantiated, not even by the Regime's own intelligence agencies -- whose bar for "confirming" provocative intelligence is, as we all know, preternaturally low. Petraeus doesn't intend for his words to be taken seriously -- that is, not in the real world, where military attacks by one nation on another lead to an immediate response. No, his words are intended for the media echo chamber, where they will bounce around in the midst of all the other mind-obliterating noise, with a few key scraps falling into the mix: "Iran" -- "killing Americans" -- "Qods" -- "Iran" -- "killing Americans" -- "Qods." That's all they want -- and that's all they need -- to get across. They certainly don't want anyone to pay close attention to the details of the patter they're putting out. They just want a few keywords to filter into the battered public consciousness, because these are the elements they will invoke when the time comes to launch their own unprovoked military agression against Iran: "Iran's Qods Force is killing Americans, and we must, reluctantly, retaliate. Therefore, tonight I have ordered a series of air raids on Qods Force bases in Iran...."
And hey: "Qods" sounds a lot like "al Qaeda," doesn't it? That gives you extra traction in the echo chamber -- more bang for the propaganda buck.
But as we noted here a couple of weeks ago, Petraeus' patter is more than a PR exercise laying the groundwork for an upcoming aggressive war; it's also a projection of the military aggression that the Bush Regime is conducting against Iran, "providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed" many Iranians. We quoted Scott Ritter on the subject then, and he's worth re-quoting here:
But fiction often mirrors reality, and in the case of Iran’s Quds Force, the model drawn upon by the U.S. military seems to be none other than America’s own support of anti-Iranian forces, namely the Mujahedin el-Khalk (MEK) operating out of U.S.-controlled bases inside Iraq, and Jundallah, a Baluchi separatist group operating out of Pakistan that the CIA openly acknowledges supporting. Unlike the lack of evidence brought to bear by the U.S. to sustain its claims of Iranian involvement inside Iraq, the Iranian government has captured scores of MEK and Jundallah operatives, along with supporting documents, which substantiate that which the U.S. openly admits: The United States is waging a proxy war against Iran, inside Iran. This mirror imaging of its own terror campaign against Iran to manufacture the perception of a similar effort being waged by Iran inside Iraq against the U.S. has been very effective at negating any Iranian effort to draw attention to the escalation of war-like activities inside its borders.
That the American people are being set up to approve -- or to at least countenance with distracted docility -- another round of mass murder is beyond question. And the fact that many people believe that only an unconstitutional military insurrection against the lawless civilian government will stop this new war shows just how far through the looking glass America has gone. Our living nightmare grows deeper and more lurid with each passing day.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Afghan women speak
News & Letters, October 2001
http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2001/Oct/rawa_10-01.htm
From the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), on the terrorist attacks in the U.S.:
On Sept. 11, 2001 the world was stunned with the horrific terrorist attacks on the United States. RAWA stands with the rest of the world in expressing our sorrow and condemnation for this barbaric act of violence and terror. RAWA had already warned that the United States should not support the most treacherous, most criminal, most anti-democracy and anti-women Islamic fundamentalist parties because after both the Jehadi and the Taliban have committed every possible type of heinous crimes against our people, they would feel no shame in committing such crimes against the American people whom they consider "infidel". In order to gain and maintain their power, these barbaric criminals are ready to turn easily to any criminal force.
But unfortunately we must say that it was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged. In the similar way, as is clear to all, Osama Bin Laden has been the blue-eyed boy of CIA. But what is more painful is that American politicians have not drawn a lesson from their pro-fundamentalist policies in our country and are still supporting this or that fundamentalist band or leader. In our opinion any kind of support to the fundamentalist Taliban and Jehadies is actually trampling democratic, women's rights and human rights values.
If it is established that the suspects of the terrorist attacks are outside the U.S., our constant claim that fundamentalist terrorists would devour their creators, is proved once more.
The U.S. government should consider the root cause of this terrible event, which has not been the first and will not be the last one too. The U.S. should stop supporting Afghan terrorists and their supporters once and for all.
Now that the Taliban and Osama are the prime suspects by the U.S. officials after the criminal attacks, will the U.S. subject Afghanistan to a military attack similar to the one in 1998 and kill thousands of innocent Afghans for the crimes committed by the Taliban and Osama? Does the U.S. think that through such attacks, with thousands of deprived, poor and innocent people of Afghanistan as its victims, it will be able to wipe out the root-cause of terrorism, or will it spread terrorism even to a larger scale?
From our point of view vast and indiscriminate military attacks on a country that has been facing permanent disasters for more than two decades will not be a matter of pride. We don't think such an attack would be...the will of the American people.
The U.S. government and people should know that there is a vast difference between the poor and devastated people of Afghanistan and the terrorist Jehadi and Taliban criminals.
While we once again announce our solidarity and deep sorrow with the people of the U.S., we also believe that attacking Afghanistan and killing its most ruined and destitute people will not in any way decrease the grief of the American people. We sincerely hope that the great American people could DIFFERENTIATE between the people of Afghanistan and a handful of fundamentalist terrorists. Our hearts go out to the people of the U.S..
- Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
September 14, 2001
CNN BREAKING NEWS
America Strikes Back: Attack on Afghanistan
Aired October 7, 2001 - 15:55 ET
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0110/07/bn.07.html
A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan:
http://tmars.iwarp.com/theMagazine/archive/07/070106-Afghanistan.pdf
http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2001/Oct/rawa_10-01.htm
From the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), on the terrorist attacks in the U.S.:
On Sept. 11, 2001 the world was stunned with the horrific terrorist attacks on the United States. RAWA stands with the rest of the world in expressing our sorrow and condemnation for this barbaric act of violence and terror. RAWA had already warned that the United States should not support the most treacherous, most criminal, most anti-democracy and anti-women Islamic fundamentalist parties because after both the Jehadi and the Taliban have committed every possible type of heinous crimes against our people, they would feel no shame in committing such crimes against the American people whom they consider "infidel". In order to gain and maintain their power, these barbaric criminals are ready to turn easily to any criminal force.
But unfortunately we must say that it was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged. In the similar way, as is clear to all, Osama Bin Laden has been the blue-eyed boy of CIA. But what is more painful is that American politicians have not drawn a lesson from their pro-fundamentalist policies in our country and are still supporting this or that fundamentalist band or leader. In our opinion any kind of support to the fundamentalist Taliban and Jehadies is actually trampling democratic, women's rights and human rights values.
If it is established that the suspects of the terrorist attacks are outside the U.S., our constant claim that fundamentalist terrorists would devour their creators, is proved once more.
The U.S. government should consider the root cause of this terrible event, which has not been the first and will not be the last one too. The U.S. should stop supporting Afghan terrorists and their supporters once and for all.
Now that the Taliban and Osama are the prime suspects by the U.S. officials after the criminal attacks, will the U.S. subject Afghanistan to a military attack similar to the one in 1998 and kill thousands of innocent Afghans for the crimes committed by the Taliban and Osama? Does the U.S. think that through such attacks, with thousands of deprived, poor and innocent people of Afghanistan as its victims, it will be able to wipe out the root-cause of terrorism, or will it spread terrorism even to a larger scale?
From our point of view vast and indiscriminate military attacks on a country that has been facing permanent disasters for more than two decades will not be a matter of pride. We don't think such an attack would be...the will of the American people.
The U.S. government and people should know that there is a vast difference between the poor and devastated people of Afghanistan and the terrorist Jehadi and Taliban criminals.
While we once again announce our solidarity and deep sorrow with the people of the U.S., we also believe that attacking Afghanistan and killing its most ruined and destitute people will not in any way decrease the grief of the American people. We sincerely hope that the great American people could DIFFERENTIATE between the people of Afghanistan and a handful of fundamentalist terrorists. Our hearts go out to the people of the U.S..
- Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
September 14, 2001
CNN BREAKING NEWS
America Strikes Back: Attack on Afghanistan
Aired October 7, 2001 - 15:55 ET
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0110/07/bn.07.html
A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan:
http://tmars.iwarp.com/theMagazine/archive/07/070106-Afghanistan.pdf
Thursday, October 04, 2007
‘Capitalism and Freedom’ Unmasked
- by Stephen Lendman
10/4/07
http://tmars.iwarp.com/theMagazine/archive/07/lendeman071004.html
An era ended November 16, 2006 when economist Milton Friedman died. A torrent of eulogies followed. The Wall Street Journal mourned his loss with the same tribute he credulously used when Ronald Reagan died saying "few people in human history have contributed more to the achievement of human freedom."
[…]
Rarely had so much praise been given anyone so undeserving in light of the human wreckage his legacy left strewn everywhere.
[…]
He was a vocal opponent of trade unions, claimed they were "of little importance (historically in advancing) worker (rights and gains) in the United States," and ignored clear evidence to the contrary…
[…]
For Friedman, we're on our own, "free to choose," but unequally matched against corporate giants and the privileged with their advantages. The rest of us are unequally endowed and governed by the principle, "To each according to what he and the instruments he owns produces," in a savage world where economic freedom trumps all other kinds. This was right from Friedman's 1962 laissez-faire manifesto, "Capitalism and Freedom," that's long on free market triumphalism and void on its effects on real people. He opposed social or any market-interfering democracy, an egalitarian society, government providing essential services, workers free from bosses, citizens from dictatorship and countries from colonialism. Instead, he perversely promoted economic freedom as a be-all-and-end-all, limited government, and profit-making as the essence of democracy. He supported unfettered free markets with political debate confined to minor issues unrelated to the distribution of goods and services he wanted left to the free-wheeling marketplace.This was Friedman's best of all possible worlds with people in it no different than disposable commodities and government not obligated to fulfill its minimum constitutionally-mandated function as stated in the Preamble and Article I, Section 8. It's that "The Congress shall have power to....provide....for (the) general welfare of the United States" - the so-called welfare clause Friedman believed conflicted with "capitalism and freedom" and our "freedom to choose" that ranked above the law of the land for him.
[…]
full article
10/4/07
http://tmars.iwarp.com/theMagazine/archive/07/lendeman071004.html
An era ended November 16, 2006 when economist Milton Friedman died. A torrent of eulogies followed. The Wall Street Journal mourned his loss with the same tribute he credulously used when Ronald Reagan died saying "few people in human history have contributed more to the achievement of human freedom."
[…]
Rarely had so much praise been given anyone so undeserving in light of the human wreckage his legacy left strewn everywhere.
[…]
He was a vocal opponent of trade unions, claimed they were "of little importance (historically in advancing) worker (rights and gains) in the United States," and ignored clear evidence to the contrary…
[…]
For Friedman, we're on our own, "free to choose," but unequally matched against corporate giants and the privileged with their advantages. The rest of us are unequally endowed and governed by the principle, "To each according to what he and the instruments he owns produces," in a savage world where economic freedom trumps all other kinds. This was right from Friedman's 1962 laissez-faire manifesto, "Capitalism and Freedom," that's long on free market triumphalism and void on its effects on real people. He opposed social or any market-interfering democracy, an egalitarian society, government providing essential services, workers free from bosses, citizens from dictatorship and countries from colonialism. Instead, he perversely promoted economic freedom as a be-all-and-end-all, limited government, and profit-making as the essence of democracy. He supported unfettered free markets with political debate confined to minor issues unrelated to the distribution of goods and services he wanted left to the free-wheeling marketplace.This was Friedman's best of all possible worlds with people in it no different than disposable commodities and government not obligated to fulfill its minimum constitutionally-mandated function as stated in the Preamble and Article I, Section 8. It's that "The Congress shall have power to....provide....for (the) general welfare of the United States" - the so-called welfare clause Friedman believed conflicted with "capitalism and freedom" and our "freedom to choose" that ranked above the law of the land for him.
[…]
full article
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
For The People Of A Forsaken Republic
A Q and A
Addressing the origins of the Who's-Your-Daddy Nation
by Phil Rockstroh
October 02, 2007
"We must become the change we want to see."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"In any case, I hate all Iranians."
--Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates
How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout -- enough! -- then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation's citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.
Over the last three decades, the authoritarian right has risen to create the nation they have been longing for since their humbling by the Watergate scandal. After being subdued and humiliated by the mechanisms of a free republic, the right has turned the tables -- and subdued and humiliated the republic. If the trend continues, all but unchallenged and unabated, we might as well replace the torch held aloft by Lady Liberty with a taser.
How could it come to this? How did so many US citizens grow so apathetic, oblivious, if not flat-out hostile to the tenets of a free republic?
The authoritarianism inherent to the structure of multi-conglomerate corporatism is antithetical to the concept of the rights and liberties of the individual. Most individuals -- bound by a corporation's secrecy-prone, hierarchical values -- will, over time, lose the ability to display free thinking, engage in civic discourse, and even be able to envisage the notion of freedom.
This is true, from the florescent light-flooded aisles of Wal*Mart to the insular executive offices of Haliburton to the sound stages of CNN and Fox News. Under the prevailing order, reality, for the laboring class of the corporate state, has become debt slavery; in contrast, the simulacrum of reality, in which, the striver class exists, is a milieu defined by obsessive careerism. Under the hegemony of corporatism, freedom might as well be fairy dust. It only exists in an imaginary land, not the places one arrives by way of one's morning and evening commute.
In addition, economically, by way of decades of financial chicanery, perpetrated by the nation's business and political elite, we are eating our seed crop, and the consequences of this harvest of deceit have left the people of the US, intellectually and spiritually malnourished.
As a result, many attempt to sate the keening emptiness and mitigate the chronic unease by gorging themselves on the Junk Food Jesus of End Time mythology, which is a belief system wherein corporeal events and actions (personal and collective) have no lasting consequence because even the human body is to be cast aside, like a junk food wrapper, when the cosmic CEO decides to make the earth a part of his heavenly franchise.
Accordingly, the corporate state requires modes of being that evince obliviousness and obedience (the defining traits of the US consumer) on the part of the majority of the populace. Ergo, the rise of both Christian consumerists and the vast apparatus of the right-wing propaganda matrix that dominates news cycles via the electronic mass media.
All coming to pass, as George W. Bush -- the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification -- is rocked to sleep by his handlers cooing preposterous tales of how history will place him in the pantheon of those men whose greatness was unrecognized by the shallow and petty minds of their own era.
When, in fact, Bush, whose ruinous wars of aggression, deficit-ballooning tax breaks for the wealthy, and policies of crony capitalism (that enabled the economy-decimating, easy credit banking scams of the present) displays the character traits of a man ridden with severe psychological trauma; his attempts to tamp down immense inner turmoil, by means of his grandiose bearing, his absolute certitude regarding his own infallibility, and his bullying behavior, have resulted in an exteriorizing of his pathologies on a global scale, and this is playing out ugly, for all concerned.
Why do the people of the nation (for the most part) slouch, slack-jawed and passive, before this assault upon their collective integrity and personal dignity?
For generations, the ephemeral dazzle of pop culture paternalism and tabloid Manichaeism, as confabulated by advertising and public relations hacks and corporate news courtesans, has overwhelmed gravitas, history, even self-awareness. As all the while, shallow opportunists have been elevated to the status of pundits, experts and sages. Withal, the present system generously rewards those individuals who have mastered the art of impersonating human traits and responses in utterly contrived environments. As a whole, the majority of the populi have come to garner information about the world at large, and, worse, their own self-image, from a medium where phoniness is a treasured commodity, while authentic human traits and responses are banished to a beggar's road.
Is it any wonder that the media types who thrive in these artificial settings have come to define authenticity as being only those attributes that appear authentic on television? Apropos, if you ask these "media personalities" about the shortcomings and corruption of the present system, they will plead the careerist's Nuremberg Defense ... of only being a stormtrooper obeisant to the "bottom line."
Fantasy alert: One would hope that if one were to descend down a ladder constructed of these layers upon layers of bottom lines, one would arrive in a Hell reserved for those possessed with such shameless cupidity.
Reality redux: Yet as much as the human heart might yearn for such outcomes, there will never arrive the terrible majesty and bitter reckoning of anything resembling Judgement Day, heralded by celestial trumpets and legions of naked and cowering sinners; instead, in human affairs, there arises dire exigencies that can no longer be ignored nor explained away. The arrival of such a moment for the US is nearly at hand.
When a nation manifests a mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, in combination with uncheck power emanating from an insular and arrogant elite, a golden age of peace and plenty is as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami. As sure as a village of desperate fools who devour their seed crop, a nation that refuses universal health care to its children -- yet rushes to the aid of its parasitic class of wealthy "speculators" and "investors" from the consequences of their own greed-besotted, fiscal debacles -- is doomed.
This is the classic pattern of collective immolation experienced by a nation when power and privilege is increasingly consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. In essence, this is the key to the conundrum paralyzing the leadership of the Democratic Party: In a culture in which an individual's worth is determined by the degree one can be exploited by the corrupt interests that control both the private and public sector, the public at large has little value to the political establishment ... That is: other than, every few years, being bamboozled for their votes in the sham spectacles known as the US electoral process, a scam mostly financed, hence controlled, by the aforementioned big money interests.
In sum, this is the reason the Democratic Party feels little allegiance to their base. In turn, the political classes themselves are only of value to the big money corporate elite, because, by their delivery of staggering amounts of pork, massive tax cuts, and the passage of desired anti-regulatory legislation, they serve as their errand boys.
Moreover, the corporate control of congress is a microcosm of US society as a whole. Accordingly, the increasingly corporatized, ever more submissive people of the US should be termed, the Who's-Your-Daddy Nation.
Yet, since life does not exist in stasis, within this hierarchy of deceivers and dupes, we will gnaw at one another's ankles until the whole pathetic pyramid collapses.
All around us, we can feel the shoddy structure starting to sway and buckle. Axiomatically, the value of the dollar is collapsing like the smooth facade of a con man called-out by a group of wised-up marks. At present, in the wake of the bust in the housing market, repo men are retracing the tracks of real estate grifters who fleeced legions of wishful thinkers who brought the American dream and now only possess the misery of debt slavery.
One would think the time for insurrection has arrived -- that, at long last, an awakened and enraged public would rise up and foreclose on these reprobates and ne'er-do-wells squatting in the White House and skulking through Congress. The power and privilege of the corporately controlled elite of Washington should be repossessed like the Lexises of Atlanta real estate agents and the oversized pickup trucks of Tucson contractors, confiscated in the wake of the collapse of the housing market. Foreclosure signs and repossession notices should festoon the whole of official Washington.
Turn about would be fair play. Since, the rise of Reaganism, the financial sector has been engaged in selling off the assets of the nation's public sector to the highest bidders. It is amazing that, at this point, this klavern of kleptocrats haven't yet torn from the walls and absconded with all the copper plumbing fixtures and fittings on Capitol Hill.
Is a turnaround possible?
If we wake-up and smell the jackboot. From the miasma of right-wing media propaganda, to the proliferation of predatory capitalism, to the corruption and cupidity of the prison industrial complex, to the pandemic of police brutality and the trampling of the rights of the accused, to perennial civilian shooting sprees, to the muzzling of descent, to the rise of the national surveillance state, to the use and acceptance of torture as state policy, to the adoption of an unlawful, immoral foreign policy doctrine that promotes policies of perpetual war, one is forced to conclude that bullying, and deferring to bullies, has become the dominate mode of being in the US.
Remedy: In order to turn this trend around, the people of the US must begin to acquire the anti-authoritarian traits of empathy and engagement. The gaining of empathy alleviates the pathological need to be a bully, while social and political engagement mitigates feelings of powerlessness that authoritarian bully-boys, such as Bush, Cheney, Giuliani, et al., exploit.
In short, remedial human lessons for the US population, in general, and for the corporate and political classes, in particular.
Let us start the process by having a period of grief and repentance for the death and suffering that our government, in our name, has inflicted on the people of Iraq. This should be done as the US begins the process of a complete military withdrawal from their decimated nation, and the bestowing of economic reparations upon the millions of Iraqis who have suffered under the brutal machinations and murderous mayhem unloosed by our country's contemptible invasion and occupation.
To do so, might save the people of our next target, Iran (as well as ourselves) a world of grief.
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 phil@philrockstroh.com
Visit Phil's website, http://philrockstroh.com/
Addressing the origins of the Who's-Your-Daddy Nation
by Phil Rockstroh
October 02, 2007
"We must become the change we want to see."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"In any case, I hate all Iranians."
--Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates
How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout -- enough! -- then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation's citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.
Over the last three decades, the authoritarian right has risen to create the nation they have been longing for since their humbling by the Watergate scandal. After being subdued and humiliated by the mechanisms of a free republic, the right has turned the tables -- and subdued and humiliated the republic. If the trend continues, all but unchallenged and unabated, we might as well replace the torch held aloft by Lady Liberty with a taser.
How could it come to this? How did so many US citizens grow so apathetic, oblivious, if not flat-out hostile to the tenets of a free republic?
The authoritarianism inherent to the structure of multi-conglomerate corporatism is antithetical to the concept of the rights and liberties of the individual. Most individuals -- bound by a corporation's secrecy-prone, hierarchical values -- will, over time, lose the ability to display free thinking, engage in civic discourse, and even be able to envisage the notion of freedom.
This is true, from the florescent light-flooded aisles of Wal*Mart to the insular executive offices of Haliburton to the sound stages of CNN and Fox News. Under the prevailing order, reality, for the laboring class of the corporate state, has become debt slavery; in contrast, the simulacrum of reality, in which, the striver class exists, is a milieu defined by obsessive careerism. Under the hegemony of corporatism, freedom might as well be fairy dust. It only exists in an imaginary land, not the places one arrives by way of one's morning and evening commute.
In addition, economically, by way of decades of financial chicanery, perpetrated by the nation's business and political elite, we are eating our seed crop, and the consequences of this harvest of deceit have left the people of the US, intellectually and spiritually malnourished.
As a result, many attempt to sate the keening emptiness and mitigate the chronic unease by gorging themselves on the Junk Food Jesus of End Time mythology, which is a belief system wherein corporeal events and actions (personal and collective) have no lasting consequence because even the human body is to be cast aside, like a junk food wrapper, when the cosmic CEO decides to make the earth a part of his heavenly franchise.
Accordingly, the corporate state requires modes of being that evince obliviousness and obedience (the defining traits of the US consumer) on the part of the majority of the populace. Ergo, the rise of both Christian consumerists and the vast apparatus of the right-wing propaganda matrix that dominates news cycles via the electronic mass media.
All coming to pass, as George W. Bush -- the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification -- is rocked to sleep by his handlers cooing preposterous tales of how history will place him in the pantheon of those men whose greatness was unrecognized by the shallow and petty minds of their own era.
When, in fact, Bush, whose ruinous wars of aggression, deficit-ballooning tax breaks for the wealthy, and policies of crony capitalism (that enabled the economy-decimating, easy credit banking scams of the present) displays the character traits of a man ridden with severe psychological trauma; his attempts to tamp down immense inner turmoil, by means of his grandiose bearing, his absolute certitude regarding his own infallibility, and his bullying behavior, have resulted in an exteriorizing of his pathologies on a global scale, and this is playing out ugly, for all concerned.
Why do the people of the nation (for the most part) slouch, slack-jawed and passive, before this assault upon their collective integrity and personal dignity?
For generations, the ephemeral dazzle of pop culture paternalism and tabloid Manichaeism, as confabulated by advertising and public relations hacks and corporate news courtesans, has overwhelmed gravitas, history, even self-awareness. As all the while, shallow opportunists have been elevated to the status of pundits, experts and sages. Withal, the present system generously rewards those individuals who have mastered the art of impersonating human traits and responses in utterly contrived environments. As a whole, the majority of the populi have come to garner information about the world at large, and, worse, their own self-image, from a medium where phoniness is a treasured commodity, while authentic human traits and responses are banished to a beggar's road.
Is it any wonder that the media types who thrive in these artificial settings have come to define authenticity as being only those attributes that appear authentic on television? Apropos, if you ask these "media personalities" about the shortcomings and corruption of the present system, they will plead the careerist's Nuremberg Defense ... of only being a stormtrooper obeisant to the "bottom line."
Fantasy alert: One would hope that if one were to descend down a ladder constructed of these layers upon layers of bottom lines, one would arrive in a Hell reserved for those possessed with such shameless cupidity.
Reality redux: Yet as much as the human heart might yearn for such outcomes, there will never arrive the terrible majesty and bitter reckoning of anything resembling Judgement Day, heralded by celestial trumpets and legions of naked and cowering sinners; instead, in human affairs, there arises dire exigencies that can no longer be ignored nor explained away. The arrival of such a moment for the US is nearly at hand.
When a nation manifests a mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, in combination with uncheck power emanating from an insular and arrogant elite, a golden age of peace and plenty is as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami. As sure as a village of desperate fools who devour their seed crop, a nation that refuses universal health care to its children -- yet rushes to the aid of its parasitic class of wealthy "speculators" and "investors" from the consequences of their own greed-besotted, fiscal debacles -- is doomed.
This is the classic pattern of collective immolation experienced by a nation when power and privilege is increasingly consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. In essence, this is the key to the conundrum paralyzing the leadership of the Democratic Party: In a culture in which an individual's worth is determined by the degree one can be exploited by the corrupt interests that control both the private and public sector, the public at large has little value to the political establishment ... That is: other than, every few years, being bamboozled for their votes in the sham spectacles known as the US electoral process, a scam mostly financed, hence controlled, by the aforementioned big money interests.
In sum, this is the reason the Democratic Party feels little allegiance to their base. In turn, the political classes themselves are only of value to the big money corporate elite, because, by their delivery of staggering amounts of pork, massive tax cuts, and the passage of desired anti-regulatory legislation, they serve as their errand boys.
Moreover, the corporate control of congress is a microcosm of US society as a whole. Accordingly, the increasingly corporatized, ever more submissive people of the US should be termed, the Who's-Your-Daddy Nation.
Yet, since life does not exist in stasis, within this hierarchy of deceivers and dupes, we will gnaw at one another's ankles until the whole pathetic pyramid collapses.
All around us, we can feel the shoddy structure starting to sway and buckle. Axiomatically, the value of the dollar is collapsing like the smooth facade of a con man called-out by a group of wised-up marks. At present, in the wake of the bust in the housing market, repo men are retracing the tracks of real estate grifters who fleeced legions of wishful thinkers who brought the American dream and now only possess the misery of debt slavery.
One would think the time for insurrection has arrived -- that, at long last, an awakened and enraged public would rise up and foreclose on these reprobates and ne'er-do-wells squatting in the White House and skulking through Congress. The power and privilege of the corporately controlled elite of Washington should be repossessed like the Lexises of Atlanta real estate agents and the oversized pickup trucks of Tucson contractors, confiscated in the wake of the collapse of the housing market. Foreclosure signs and repossession notices should festoon the whole of official Washington.
Turn about would be fair play. Since, the rise of Reaganism, the financial sector has been engaged in selling off the assets of the nation's public sector to the highest bidders. It is amazing that, at this point, this klavern of kleptocrats haven't yet torn from the walls and absconded with all the copper plumbing fixtures and fittings on Capitol Hill.
Is a turnaround possible?
If we wake-up and smell the jackboot. From the miasma of right-wing media propaganda, to the proliferation of predatory capitalism, to the corruption and cupidity of the prison industrial complex, to the pandemic of police brutality and the trampling of the rights of the accused, to perennial civilian shooting sprees, to the muzzling of descent, to the rise of the national surveillance state, to the use and acceptance of torture as state policy, to the adoption of an unlawful, immoral foreign policy doctrine that promotes policies of perpetual war, one is forced to conclude that bullying, and deferring to bullies, has become the dominate mode of being in the US.
Remedy: In order to turn this trend around, the people of the US must begin to acquire the anti-authoritarian traits of empathy and engagement. The gaining of empathy alleviates the pathological need to be a bully, while social and political engagement mitigates feelings of powerlessness that authoritarian bully-boys, such as Bush, Cheney, Giuliani, et al., exploit.
In short, remedial human lessons for the US population, in general, and for the corporate and political classes, in particular.
Let us start the process by having a period of grief and repentance for the death and suffering that our government, in our name, has inflicted on the people of Iraq. This should be done as the US begins the process of a complete military withdrawal from their decimated nation, and the bestowing of economic reparations upon the millions of Iraqis who have suffered under the brutal machinations and murderous mayhem unloosed by our country's contemptible invasion and occupation.
To do so, might save the people of our next target, Iran (as well as ourselves) a world of grief.
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 phil@philrockstroh.com
Visit Phil's website, http://philrockstroh.com/
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Greenspan's Dark Legacy Unmasked
- by Stephen Lendman
10/1/07
[...]
...the man who engineered the largest ever stock market bubble and bust in history through incompetence, timidity, dereliction of duty, and subservience to the capital interests he represented at the expense of the greater good and a sustained sound economy he didn't worry about nor did Wall Street.
For firms on the Street and big banks, he could do no wrong and was above reproach for letting them cash in big and then get plenty of advance warning when to exit. Most ordinary investors weren't so fortunate. They're not insiders and were caught flat-footed by advice from market pundit fraudsters and the most influential one of all in the Fed Chairman. Just weeks before the market peak in January, 2000, he claimed "the American economy was experiencing a once-in-a-century acceleration of innovation, which propelled forward productivity, output, corporate profits and stock prices at a pace not seen in generations, if ever."
It was hype and nonsense and on a par with famed economist and professor Irving Fisher's remarks just before the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression when he claimed economic fundamentals in the country were strong, stocks undervalued, and an unending period of prosperity lay ahead. It took a world war a decade later, not market magic, for them to arrive, but before it did Fisher kept insisting in the early 1930s recovery was just around the corner. It's the same way Wall Street touts operate today on gullible investors who even after they've been had are easy prey again for the next con.
[...]
full article
10/1/07
[...]
...the man who engineered the largest ever stock market bubble and bust in history through incompetence, timidity, dereliction of duty, and subservience to the capital interests he represented at the expense of the greater good and a sustained sound economy he didn't worry about nor did Wall Street.
For firms on the Street and big banks, he could do no wrong and was above reproach for letting them cash in big and then get plenty of advance warning when to exit. Most ordinary investors weren't so fortunate. They're not insiders and were caught flat-footed by advice from market pundit fraudsters and the most influential one of all in the Fed Chairman. Just weeks before the market peak in January, 2000, he claimed "the American economy was experiencing a once-in-a-century acceleration of innovation, which propelled forward productivity, output, corporate profits and stock prices at a pace not seen in generations, if ever."
It was hype and nonsense and on a par with famed economist and professor Irving Fisher's remarks just before the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression when he claimed economic fundamentals in the country were strong, stocks undervalued, and an unending period of prosperity lay ahead. It took a world war a decade later, not market magic, for them to arrive, but before it did Fisher kept insisting in the early 1930s recovery was just around the corner. It's the same way Wall Street touts operate today on gullible investors who even after they've been had are easy prey again for the next con.
[...]
full article
Monday, October 01, 2007
don’t worry, keep shopping
Blackwater Eyes Domestic Contracts in US
by Dina Temple-Raston
Morning Edition, September 28, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14707922
[…]
It is that lack of oversight and accountability that has Walker and others concerned about Blackwater's intention to take their private security operation domestic. The company has met with leaders in several states to offer their security services in the event of a natural disaster. In California, they have suggested earthquake relief. In New York, they offered help in case of terrorist attack.
Their thinking is simple. The Iraq war won't last forever, so if the company wants to stick around, it needs an alternate business plan. Work here at home is one solution.
"From a capitalist point of view it is brilliant," said Walker. "You want to diversify your market to diversify your downside risk. But do you really want someone diversifying this service? This is hired gun service. And you are going to diversity this among the 51 jurisdictions in the U.S.? This makes me really nervous. This is not a good thing."
[…]
October 01, 2007
Republicans ask Waxman to postpone Blackwater hearing
Seven House Republicans have urged Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) to postpone a hearing about Blackwater USA until the State Department and a separate commission report on the most recent incident involving the North Carolina-based security firm in which Iraqi civilians were killed.
The Republicans sent Waxman a letter Friday, urging him to reschedule a Tuesday hearing into Blackwater's role protecting U.S. government officials in Iraq.
They want Waxman to postpone the hearing until the State Department and the U.S.-Iraq Joint Commission unveil their own separate reports about a Sept. 16 shooting in the Mansour district of Baghdad in which nine Iraqi civilians were reported killed and another 15 were wounded.
"We are just as interested in discovering what occurred during the most recent Blackwater incident, but for that to happen, we need to have all the facts available, which includes the outcome of the ongoing investigations by the Department of State," the lawmakers wrote. "We feel it would be irresponsible for the committee to rush to judgment until all the facts are considered."
The Republicans include Reps. Dan Burton of Indiana, Christopher Cannon of Utah, Darrell Issa of California, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, John Mica of Florida, Mark Souder of Indiana and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.
Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince was expected to testify Tuesday along with three State Department officials. The Iraqi government revoked the firm's business license after the most recent shooting.
Last week, the Oversight Committee released incident reports faulting the security firm, in part, for a separate ambush in March, 2004, where four guards were killed and later burned in what became a pivotal event in the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
10.01.07 -- 3:13PM
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/054723.php
Still More Blackwater Goodness
Back in December, when a drunk Blackwater contractor blew away one of Iraqi VP Adel Abdul Mehdi's bodyguards, an official with State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security decided to low-ball the financial compensation for the man's family so as not to give an incentive for Iraqis to "try to get killed to set up their family financially."
The initial suggestion from Embassy personnel of $100,000 to $250,000 was lowered to $15,000 to the man's family.
10.01.07 -- 2:55PM
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/054718.php
Parody Surge Hits Mil Contractors in Iraq
A few days ago the State Department released what it called a "first blush" report on the Blackwater incident in Baghdad, a report which largely exonerated the Blackwater personnel involved.
I noted at the time that "first blush" was something of an understatement since the report was based exclusively on statements the State Department took from Blackwater operatives on the scene. In other words, the Blackwater employees who did the shooting gave State an account that largely exonerated themselves. A truly shocking development.
But it seems that I was behind the curve on the level of caricature and self-parody that is the military contracting biz in Iraq these days.
The report was written out of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the folks who hired Blackwater to provide security for US diplomats in Iraq. But it turns out that the State Department employee who interviewed the Blackwater folks and wrote the report, Darren Hanner ... well, he wasn't a State Department employee. He was another contractor from Blackwater.
So yes, you've got that right. We've now reached what can only be called the alpha and the omega of contracting accountability breakdown ridiculousness. We're outsourcing our investigations of Blackwater to Blackwater.
see also:
Blackwater: The Confidential Iraqi Incident Report
By Kevin Peraino
Newsweek
Updated: 9:21 a.m. ET Sept 30, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21064094/site/newsweek/
by Dina Temple-Raston
Morning Edition, September 28, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14707922
[…]
It is that lack of oversight and accountability that has Walker and others concerned about Blackwater's intention to take their private security operation domestic. The company has met with leaders in several states to offer their security services in the event of a natural disaster. In California, they have suggested earthquake relief. In New York, they offered help in case of terrorist attack.
Their thinking is simple. The Iraq war won't last forever, so if the company wants to stick around, it needs an alternate business plan. Work here at home is one solution.
"From a capitalist point of view it is brilliant," said Walker. "You want to diversify your market to diversify your downside risk. But do you really want someone diversifying this service? This is hired gun service. And you are going to diversity this among the 51 jurisdictions in the U.S.? This makes me really nervous. This is not a good thing."
[…]
October 01, 2007
Republicans ask Waxman to postpone Blackwater hearing
Seven House Republicans have urged Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) to postpone a hearing about Blackwater USA until the State Department and a separate commission report on the most recent incident involving the North Carolina-based security firm in which Iraqi civilians were killed.
The Republicans sent Waxman a letter Friday, urging him to reschedule a Tuesday hearing into Blackwater's role protecting U.S. government officials in Iraq.
They want Waxman to postpone the hearing until the State Department and the U.S.-Iraq Joint Commission unveil their own separate reports about a Sept. 16 shooting in the Mansour district of Baghdad in which nine Iraqi civilians were reported killed and another 15 were wounded.
"We are just as interested in discovering what occurred during the most recent Blackwater incident, but for that to happen, we need to have all the facts available, which includes the outcome of the ongoing investigations by the Department of State," the lawmakers wrote. "We feel it would be irresponsible for the committee to rush to judgment until all the facts are considered."
The Republicans include Reps. Dan Burton of Indiana, Christopher Cannon of Utah, Darrell Issa of California, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, John Mica of Florida, Mark Souder of Indiana and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.
Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince was expected to testify Tuesday along with three State Department officials. The Iraqi government revoked the firm's business license after the most recent shooting.
Last week, the Oversight Committee released incident reports faulting the security firm, in part, for a separate ambush in March, 2004, where four guards were killed and later burned in what became a pivotal event in the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
10.01.07 -- 3:13PM
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/054723.php
Still More Blackwater Goodness
Back in December, when a drunk Blackwater contractor blew away one of Iraqi VP Adel Abdul Mehdi's bodyguards, an official with State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security decided to low-ball the financial compensation for the man's family so as not to give an incentive for Iraqis to "try to get killed to set up their family financially."
The initial suggestion from Embassy personnel of $100,000 to $250,000 was lowered to $15,000 to the man's family.
10.01.07 -- 2:55PM
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/054718.php
Parody Surge Hits Mil Contractors in Iraq
A few days ago the State Department released what it called a "first blush" report on the Blackwater incident in Baghdad, a report which largely exonerated the Blackwater personnel involved.
I noted at the time that "first blush" was something of an understatement since the report was based exclusively on statements the State Department took from Blackwater operatives on the scene. In other words, the Blackwater employees who did the shooting gave State an account that largely exonerated themselves. A truly shocking development.
But it seems that I was behind the curve on the level of caricature and self-parody that is the military contracting biz in Iraq these days.
The report was written out of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the folks who hired Blackwater to provide security for US diplomats in Iraq. But it turns out that the State Department employee who interviewed the Blackwater folks and wrote the report, Darren Hanner ... well, he wasn't a State Department employee. He was another contractor from Blackwater.
So yes, you've got that right. We've now reached what can only be called the alpha and the omega of contracting accountability breakdown ridiculousness. We're outsourcing our investigations of Blackwater to Blackwater.
see also:
Blackwater: The Confidential Iraqi Incident Report
By Kevin Peraino
Newsweek
Updated: 9:21 a.m. ET Sept 30, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21064094/site/newsweek/
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