Ironymous

We're Number 47!

2012-01-28T15:41:00.000-06:00

According to Reporters Without Borders, what caused the US to plunge from 20th place last year, up there with ther likes of Ireland, Germany, Belgium and Japan, down to 47th this year, was the way reporters were treated by police as they tried to cover the Occupy Movement that began last September.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/27/we-are-the-champions-of-the-world/

Cornel West: Monarchy, Slavery, Oligarchy

2012-01-27T21:21:00.000-06:00

HT: http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.

Celebrating Slaughter

2012-01-26T12:31:00.000-06:00

http://www.counterpunch.org

by LAURA FLANDERS

The grades for the president’s State of the Union are in and the critics have been kind. In fact, it’s chilling to see just how few hits the President takes for couching his entire address in unqualified celebration of the US military.

Speaking of the troops, Obama began: “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations.”

Post-show pundits on cable news praised the president’s comfort with his Commander in Chief role but none saw fit to mention recent news of marines urinating on Afghan corpses, say, or Staff Sgt Wuterich walking free after participating in the killing of 24 unarmed men women and children in Haditha. Accompanying Obama’s next phrase, “Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example,” no one thus far has played the vile video. The critics have been kind.

The President chose to celebrate the military; the press chose not to raise a peep about the spread of militarism, yet US targets proliferate — abroad – with unmanned drones assassinating unconvicted suspects in innumerable undeclared wars. And militarism spreads at home. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act makes indefinite military detention without charge or trial a permanent feature of the American legal system. It’s kind of the critics not to mention that – or his four-year-old pledge to close Guantanamo, and to restore the “rule of law.”

“They’re not consumed with personal ambition… They work together,” continued the president (again, speaking of the troops.) There are surely plenty of troops who would disagree. The tally is long of commanders and pigeon hawk commanders-of-commanders who’ve dodged responsibility, fingered underlings and permitted rank-and-file “bad-apples” to take the heat for US war crimes.

“Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn a thing or two from the service of our troops,” the President concluded.

There are indeed things we can learn; things that many US troops have begged us to learn in fact. Namely, that war dehumanizes the killer and the killed, and that war tactics have a habit of spreading from the war zone to the home. Successive generations have told us that military recruiters lie, and that “rules of war” exist only in legal minds. (Ninety percent of casualties in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were civilians.) Troops have begged us to learn just what we are celebrating when we celebrate “winning” and war.

Clearly we have yet to learn.

LAURA FLANDERS is the host of The Laura Flanders Show coming to public television stations later this year. She was the host and founder of GRITtv.org. Follow her on Twitter: @GRITlaura.

Speaking Perpetually To The Political Wind: Why Obama’s Words Lack Authority

2012-01-26T12:16:00.001-06:00

Saman Mohammadi

Infowars.com

...

II. A Crumbling State of The Union: A Deep Crisis of Confidence Is Chipping Away At The President’s Political Authority

A real leader stands by his words, and fulfills his promises. Obama’s words lack authority because they lack purity, sincerity, and substance. As a result, Obama does not have any personal authority. And it doesn’t help that the authority of the Oval Office, which Bush had already damaged extensively, has totally faded away in Obama’s first term.

The office of the presidency is a shadow of what it once was. It attained its profoundest depths at the height of the Cold War in the Cuban Missile Crisis during John F. Kennedy’s presidency. Since then, it’s been a long slide down. After Kennedy’s assassination by the CIA, the Agency has casted a dark cloud over the White House.

If Obama were a real despot with legions of men under him who were directly loyal to him then he wouldn’t need a pure and true voice to sway the people. If he were a real despot the force of arms would do all the talking for him and his authority would be evident for all to see like Caesar’s in his day.

But although Obama signs dictatorial legislation like the NDAA and grants himself the power to have anyone on the planet killed, he is no Caesar. Obama is not a dictator in the traditional sense. He does not possess the masculine strength or natural charisma to be one. Obama has not built himself up to the highest public position of power in the United States.

Instead, Obama was installed in power like a political software virus by the globalist authoritarian oligarchs to serve as a will-less robot and advance their secret agenda of global tyranny and global mass death of human populations.

...

...Obama is not an intellectual. He only pretends to be one in order to contrast himself from the previous retarded president.

...

The world can only hope that “the last best hope of earth” finds its way out of the darkness of ignorance in 2012 and rejects the superficial leadership offered by President Obama along with his fellow Republican traitors who remain silent on the death of America.

Read the whole thing: http://www.infowars.com

Saman Mohammadi is the writer and editor at The Excavator Blog

When Good Presidents Go Bad

2012-01-26T10:59:00.000-06:00

"I get angry because betrayal by the “good guys” for whom I have ended up voting has become the norm."

http://www.truthdig.com

Lying About the Harlem Protest Against Obama

2012-01-25T09:32:00.000-06:00

by Glen Ford

It’s not enough that President Obama has Wall Street in his back pocket – or, is it the reverse? – but he also has loyal operatives among what passes for the Left. Daily Kos, In These Times and Democracy Now! misrepresented, and miscounted, last week’s Occupy Harlem-led protest at the Apollo Theater. In These Times writer Allison Kilkenny took a step backward in time, treating white Occupy Wall Street demonstrators like “outside agitators” for protesting Obama in Harlem. “Kilkenny doesn’t think Black progressives have the right to ask white and Latino progressives to attend Black-led demonstrations in Black neighborhoods.”

more: http://blackagendareport.com

Olds: Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In"

2012-01-24T18:17:00.001-06:00

by FRAN SHOR

Caroline Kennedy’s New York Times op-ed endorsement of Senator Barack Obama alludes to the idealism and inspiration unleashed by her father during his presidency and its resonances in the Obama campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Yet, beyond inspirational leadership, the question about who we are and how we are bound together to make "change we can believe in" requires both historical illumination and social grounding.

In the case of the presidency of JFK, it should be remembered that in his campaign against Richard Nixon he often attacked Nixon and the Eisenhower Administration from the right on national defense issues, even going as far as fabricating a so-called missile gap that had emerged between the US and the Soviet Union. Although not behind all of the planning for the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy did give half-hearted support to the operation. (The belief by many of these Bay of Pig veteran Cuban exiles and their rogue CIA handlers of a Kennedy betrayal may have led to the tragic blowback in Dallas in November 1963.) His macho cold-war posturing in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 almost resulted in a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union had it not been for the willingness of Khrushchev to back down. However, as a consequence, Kennedy developed into a more willing partner for nuclear disarmament.

Kennedy was also a very reluctant convert to civil rights, often appointing conservative federal judges to appease senior-ranking Southern Congressional Democrats. When the Freedom Riders gained international prominence in 1961 in their heroic efforts to integrate interstate travel in the Deep South against vicious racist violence, JFK and RFK’s first concern was what damage such confrontations were doing to the US global reputation. After initially trying to stop further Freedom Rides, RFK attempted to negotiate some limited, but ultimately ineffective, protection for the non-violent integrated group of bus riders. Moreover, it wasn’t until thousands of teenage African-Americans were being beaten, bitten by police dogs, and battered by fire hoses in Birmingham in May 1963 that JFK was moved to envision real civil rights legislation. In his most eloquent statement on the black freedom struggle, Kennedy addressed a national audience about the "moral issue" confronting the nation" "It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated."

Shortly after Kennedy finished his moving speech, Medgar Evers, the dynamic leader of the Mississippi NAACP, was shot down in his driveway. Obviously, there were those who were not prepared to grant any equal rights and equal opportunities to African-Americans. Throughout the rest of the 1960′s, however, blacks and other minorities struggled for those rights, not just to expand the dreams of JFK and MLK, but to give meaning and dignity to the demands for equality. RFK found his own prophetic voice in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. King, harnessing the hopes of a younger generation desirous of an end to racial injustice and to a lethal and immoral war. But only two months after Dr. King’s murder, RFK was assassinated, ending for many the hope for real change.

Now, we are witnesses to the "audacity to hope" from Barack Obama. Obama claims that he wants to enlist us, like the Kennedys before him, in a crusade for "change we can believe in." Certainly, he has awakened a desire for something different, something better, as noted by Caroline Kennedy and numerous others from pundits to politicians to people on the street. Whether he can become an inspiring instrument for real change is open to question. What is clear, however, is that, like the Kennedys before him, he can never become that instrument unless there are massive social movements for change as there were in the 1960′s.

Those movements did not, in fact, meld all of us together in some mystic chords of memory or imagined transcendent ideals. It took the courageous efforts of millions of ordinary citizens, willing to take on the power structure and its machinery of exacting repression, which pushed JFK and RFK into taking leadership on the important moral and political issues of the day. It is instructive that Obama invites such efforts with soaring, albeit overblown, rhetoric, appropriating in the process the slogan of one of the most vital movements of our day: "Si, se puede–Yes, we can!"

But can we? Do those of us working in our local trenches to stop the war, oppose economic and social injustice, and achieve some kind of environmental sustainability have the capacity to come together not behind a candidacy but for the larger cause of fundamental social change? Some of us will be distracted by the siren songs of electoral campaigns, the media circus of spectatorship, and the illusions of third party politics. However, if we want "change we can believe in," we have to mount sustained organizational efforts to challenge those in power and those who would lead us to a new Camelot. If we are on the verge of a new era, a new frontier, let us be the ones to lead and let those who would lead us try to catch up.
http://www.counterpunch.org

FRAN SHOR teaches in the History Department at Wayne State University. He is an activist with numerous groups for peace and social justice.

Contemplating Bush's Fourth Term

2012-01-24T08:56:00.004-06:00

The State of Obama's 2008 Promises

By David Swanson

...

Obama gave speech after speech promising that ending the war in Iraq would be his first act in office: "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."
...

Candidate Obama swore he would not rewrite laws with signing statements. He promised huge advances in transparency and openness. He promised support for whistleblowers. He would fix NAFTA, not duplicate it in more countries. The Bush tax cuts would end. A President Obama would not launch a war without Congress. Obama Version .08 was a horrible, horrible candidate, and yet he made dozens of promises that have been tossed aside, making him now even worse -- unless one chooses to accept as credible the same promises again.
...

Obamapologists will tell you about good intentions and Republican resistance in Congress, and yet Obama came in with a large Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, and a Democratic leadership in the Senate willing to circumvent the filibuster-everything-60-vote-requirement when and only when it chose to, and chose to do what Obama instructed. Obama met in secret with the health insurance big whigs and insisted that the healthcare bill not include even a token pretense of a movement away from their control. Now who's getting "taken to the bank"?

By September 2009 it was clear enough, even pre-Peace Prize, where President Obama was heading. I then wrote an article called "Bush's Third Term." It still accurately describes the state of the promise of Obama and of Obama's forgotten promises.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/the-state-of-obamas-2008-promises

Tennessee Tea Party: 'References To Slavery Should Be Removed FromTextbooks'

2012-01-23T10:17:00.003-06:00

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”

http://thinkprogress.org

Corporate Media

2012-01-23T09:20:00.001-06:00

Corporate Media Long Ago Abandoned Reporting the Truth: Stenography is Their Game

ROBERT PAPPAS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Editor's Note: Robert Pappas is the writer, director and narrator of the acclaimed "Orwell Rolls in His Grave," which is available through Truthout. In "Orwell Rolls," Pappas reveals a devastating portrait of a corporate media that long ago abandoned ferreting out the truth.

In a recent commentary that kicked up a lot of astonished reaction, New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane's recently asked, without irony, if a reporter should actually be challenging claims of politicians and asking questions that might reveal lies and mistruths? In essence, he was asking if New York Time's "reporters" should be other than stenographers.

Brisbane wrote, "I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about."

Judging from the public's reaction to Brisbane's column, one question among many, is, "how did Brisbane get that stupid (or perchance, uniformed)?" One incredulous reader asked, "Is this a joke?"

That same thought popped into my mind one morning in March 2001. I was interviewing the anchor of FOX's morning show "Good Day New York." He had worked for the Associated Press, NBC and now Fox News for more than 30 years.

I brought up a story I thought should be looked into and asked him why I hadn't seen it reported.

He said, straight-faced, "Oh you're talking about enterprise reporting - there are times when a reporter might do that."

"Enterprise reporting" seems to occur infrequently.

The term refers to digging into something or "asking a question" outside the scope of the highly managed way news stories are reported on a given day; the same stories which will be mirrored on every major network, cable news channel, news radio, and in the national newspapers around the country on that day.

The FOX anchor smoothly implied that my question was really not particularly relevant. I thought "is he joking, or is it me who doesn't get it?"

I had been introduced to this FOX Anchor by his cousin, an old friend of mine, at a holiday dinner. Turned out we had both been brought up in Parkchester in the Bronx. We ended up at his apartment over-looking Lincoln Center till 4 AM on that night.

Now on this day in 2001 I was taping at that apartment, partly because FOX doesn't allow outside interviews of its Journalists on its corporate premises.

Watching his non answers, I realized: "He knows. He has to play dumb."

At the end of the editing process, I used little of the interview in "Orwell Rolls in His Grave".

In the scene that did make the cut - his expression tells the story.

The phrase that fits is called "self censorship." Most TV journalists will not keep a high profile job for very long in the Corporate News Media unless playing dumb becomes as second nature as driving a car.

In numerous stories or particular lines of inquiry, unspoken boundaries are drawn and the reporters know them. A certain term used is: "There's no interest in that story".

Who's not interested?

Renowned Media Professor Robert McChesney explained how this methodology of journalism came about. "In 1850, if a Governor said something stupid the reporter would say I'm not goin to print that, it's stupid. But as journalism tried to legitimize itself, there came to be a reliance on official sources."

What that means is that people in power became the assignment editors of journalism, if they don't want to talk about something

it's almost impossible for the reporter "to bring it up"

The result is that the media narrative can be manipulated. A certain source, often a tainted one, can propel a story into the mainstream. Consider the run up to the Iraq war, the media repeats the story yellowcake uranium, or an image, mushroom cloud and...

If those in power want to kill a story the technique is simply not to discuss it.

Vincent Bugliosi - the Charles Manson prosecutor who wrote the best-selling book "Helter Skelter," and then wrote a book on the Supreme Court's decision to stop the vote counting in the 2000 election - told me: "Whenever I write a new book, all the networks have me on.

"With this book on the Supreme Court decision to stop the recount in Florida," he told me many years ago after it was released, "none of them called".

Have any of the networks ever done an anniversary special on the Supreme Court 's decision to stop the vote counting in Florida, in the 2000 Presidential Election? An historic event, a court decision that was footnoted as "not to be used as legal precedent". Think the public might be interested in what actually happened?

Or how about a program on the episode of the vote recount itself, about the questions raised and the lessons learned?

The corporate media "is not interested in that story." The fact that the 5-week episode of the Florida Recount could be successfully relegated to the memory hole was the precedent. It showed what you can get away with when you control the questions, and the judiciary.

But if the public is interested in a story, won't the prospect of advertising dollars associated with such programming make the networks broadcast those stories?

Normally, large numbers of prospective viewers (manna to advertisers) drives programming. But in this case, that programming would inherently pose very basic questions, and not giving these questions a platform and voice is even more important than advertising revenue.

This is the paradox which proves intent.

The "anchors" and "wise pundits" will then titter: "The Nation went through a lot, what is the public value of dragging us through this or that story again"

Really? Are you joking?

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13277

Elite Fraud: Criminogenic Environments

2012-01-22T15:46:00.000-06:00

Criminogenic Environments, Bubbles and Financial Crises

http://www.correntewire.com

Sun, 01/22/2012 - 1:04pm — lambert

These points can't be made too often.

Obama for President of Israel?

2012-01-22T05:58:00.000-06:00

by Joshua Blakeney

http://www.veteranstoday.com

In a week when a pro-Israel media venue, the Atlanta Jewish Times, contemplated the pros and cons of a Mossad assassination of the U.S. president, Barack Obama, the Obama election campaign has chosen to reiterate the forty-fourth president’s unambiguous allegiance to Israel in the form of a toe-curling video.

Viewers of this perplexing video would be forgiven for thinking that Obama was reliant on votes from Israeli citizens and was thus including them as potential supporters in his campaign for the upcoming November 2012 presidential election.

Whilst Obama does not rely on votes from Israeli citizens (other than the occasional dual-citizen), he does rely on weighty campaign donations from U.S.-based supporters of Israel as well as endorsements from the Zionist influenced U.S. media.

Richard Cohen in a 2006 Washington Postarticle reported that Democratic presidential candidates rely on Jewish sources for 60% of donations from private sources. This figure is cited by University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer and Harvard’s Stephen Walt in their seminal text The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Mearsheimer and Walt, 2007, pg 163)

A recent Gallup Poll indicated that 4 in 10 of American Jews disapprove of how Obama is doing his job which might further explain why the Obama administration would feel it necessary to disseminate such an ignominious video.

The video offers evidence to support the thesis advanced by many such as James Petras, Jonathan Cook, Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Sneigoksi, Kevin Barrett and others that the “Zionist tail is wagging the American dog” when it comes to U.S. Middle East policy. As Petras has put it, the American Empire is now a “colonized Empire.”

N.B. – Viewers might consider having a puke-bag ready prior to watching this video:

Olds: Obama's First Act as President Elect

2012-01-21T17:29:00.000-06:00

This is what I like about the Internet. You keep sailing it long enough and you can fill in all the gaps in your memory. Here is something I have wondered about. I was not on the Internet at the time and not able to follow the developments closely. But I had a feeling it went something like this:

The current economic depression --- and that's what it is, a depression ---- came to a head just as Obama assumed office. In September of 2008, just before the election, George Bush was unable to get his $3 trillion bankster bailout bill through a Democratic dominated Congress. Bush summoned president-in-waiting Obama to DC, where Barack worked the phones for a week, convincing enough Democrats to change their votes and support the Bush bailoiut so banksters would indeed get paid for crashing the economy. After assuming office, Obama gave the Wall Street casinos an extra $15 trillion, quintupling down on the Bush bailout, the most massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in human history. The Obama administration hasn't found a single big bankster or mortgage fraudster to prosecute in three years.
http://blackagendareport.com/content/black-america-paralyzed-powerless-irrelevant-year-4-obama-era

A Reluctance to Prosecute

2012-01-21T06:20:00.000-06:00

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/is-this-why-they-wont-prosecute-top-justice-officials-represented-big-banks.html

Well, I shouldn't be surprised. Their attitude towards the alleged crimes of the previous administration had already revealed a reluctance to even investigate.

The Irony is so Ironically Ironic: Presidential Racism

2012-01-20T09:38:00.001-06:00

"We can't even claim racism. When a white president imposes policies that disproportionately hurt the black community, we can shout RACISM! When a black president does it we shout RA..YOU GO, BROTHER!"

-nomad

Well, I'd certainly vote for him!

2012-01-20T08:54:00.000-06:00

Not for president. For American Idol.

Irony of the day

2012-01-18T06:59:00.000-06:00

Obama to Accept Dem Nomination at Bank of America Stadium

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/01/17/terrible-optics-watch-obama-to-accept-dem-nomination-at-bank-of-america-stadium/

But at least he's not crazy!

2012-01-18T06:45:00.000-06:00

from: http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2012/01/ordinary-evil-i-just-admit-that-youre.html

...
When the ruling class of the United States pisses on the entire world and on every human being who is not among those who are privileged and powerful, some Marines pissing on three dead bodies is barely worthy of notice. To be sure, it remains thoroughly sickening, but it is a third-order crime. The first crime is that the Marines are in Afghanistan; the second crime is that they are there to murder human beings. All our public energies are devoted to the crime of least significance, while the meaning and significance of the first two remain unchallenged.

The real killer in Santorum's remarks -- in more ways than one -- is contained in the second paragraph. Read those comments again:

And if people say, "Well, you can't go out and assassinate people," well, tell that to Awlaki. Okay? We've done it. We've done it for an American citizen. We can certainly do it for someone who's producing a nuclear bomb that can be dropped on the state of Israel or provides a nuclear shield for a country that will spread terrorism with impunity and change the face of the world.

You may view Santorum as a murderer without conscience on the basis of his "hope" that the U.S. Government has instituted a program of assassination. You might argue that Santorum is a genocidal killer in embryonic form when he maintains that the U.S. can "go out and assassinate people" (and Rick: so much for your "sanctity of human life," buddy) -- for one obvious implication of his remarks is that the U.S. Government can murder any and all of those human beings it regards as "threats" to our "security." Why, if the government determines that ten thousand, or a million, or even, say, six million people constitute a serious threat to our "national security," the U.S. Government can kill them all!

"We've done it," Santorum says. He's right. I well understand that the one form of argument that is absolutely prohibited in our public debates is to identify the meaning of a principle. Nonetheless, for the ten or twelve of you who resist the fatal corruptions of our "public discourse," I state that the "legitimacy" of wide-scale murder, even of millions of human beings, is the the meaning of the operative principle.

But -- and here's the additional killer in Santorum's remarks -- note where Santorum correctly locates the "justification" for his view: the murder of al-Awlaki, an American citizen. Santorum is a "crazy" Republican nutjob, right? He's not the one who ordered the murder of al-Awlaki. You know who did: the "enlightened," "nuanced," Nobel Peace Prize-winning Democrat in the White House. Many liberals and progressives claim to be sickened and terrified by the prospect that some "crazy" Republican might be the next president -- and they forbid themselves to acknowledge that it is a Democratic president who has provided the moral sanction and "justification" for what could, in principle, become a genocidal, worldwide campaign of murder.

But at least he's not crazy!

...

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’S FULL BODY OF WORK SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED IN MEMORIAL QUOTE

2012-01-16T12:33:00.000-06:00

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, Washington, D.C.

By Greg Thrasher, VOD Washington DC Bureau contributing editorplaneidea@msn.com

January 15, 2012

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has ordered a correction to a badly mangled quotation from Martin Luther King Jr. inscribed in granite on the Tidal Basin memorial to the slain civil rights leader.

Salazar has told the National Park Service to consult with the memorial foundation and the King family and to report back to him within 30 days with a plan to fix the carved excerpt. Yet for many this is not enough. Instead of just some minor clerical repairs to the quotation additional quotes and words that reflect the total work of MLK, which included a focus on racial injustice must be a part of the National Park Service’s repairs to the monument.

The future of Black youth is still gravely imperiled by racism, poverty, destruction of public education, police brutality and mass incarceration

What many people don’t know is that presently none of the quotes on the King memorial mention race nor any words about King’s body of work in America’s civil rights movement. King’s work which encompassed major protests against racial injustice and inequality are not reflected nor present as quotes on the King Monument. To officially ignore the core work of Dr. King is not only a national disgrace but almost Orwellian in construction and design. This omission of Dr. King’s civil rights legacy is an affront to the holiday and the King Memorial.

It is shocking to discover that this was deliberate and intentional to not insert any verbiage or words, quotes which recognize the real life work and mission of MLK. This deliberate omission of acknowledgment of King’s body of work in the arena of racial justice reflects a contempt in part for Black Americans . The mission of MLK encompassed more than a kum ba ya cultural drive feeling. MLK’s work was all about racial injustice as well as concerns about the poor and ending the war in Vietnam.

Instead of minor clerical repairs to the King Memorial is it is incumbent that the King Memorial reflect authentic truth and the reality of King’s life and body of work. We must demand a complete portrait of MLK on his memorial not a pc driven almost censored view of the truth about the mission of MLK.

From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam”

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.”

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech:

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/01/15/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-s-full-body-of-work-should-be-recognized-in-memorial-quote/#comment-18227

Hope 2012

2012-01-15T09:31:00.001-06:00

What a difference four years makes.

Irony of the Week

2012-01-14T04:20:00.000-06:00

I'm Confused: It's Okay to Kill Afghanis, But Not Okay to Urinate on the Bodies?

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13261

I'm in a reminiscing frame of mind.

2012-01-13T07:16:00.000-06:00

Here is something from my diary at the time. Before I started bloviating:

I understand why a lot of people are thrilled by Obama's victory. It is, after all, the most amazing political feat in American history. But it is not quite the revolution it seems. It has been heralded as a triumph for black people, but it is merely the triumph of a black individual; so far. And a unique kind of black individual at that - a biracial; the mulatto. One whose family history does not include the experience of slavery. The people who went through that crucible have still not been justified.

To his credit Obama has been a community activist and married into the African American community. This seems to indicate that his heart is in the right place. But up till this point his rhetoric has been designed to distance himself from traditional African American concerns. He ran a non-racial campaign. No one can blame him for that. It is the only way a black person could have won. But that's not really a triumph for black Americans. The political agenda has always excluded us. Obama has signaled in his campaign that civil rights [for blacks] is not on the agenda. It could be [I thought] that this distancing from black issues was a ploy to get elected.

Now that he is elected, the real Obama is being revealed. So far the signs don't look promising. His appointees suggest a conventional outlook, rather than the change he trumpeted. Rahm Emanuel may not be Mossad as the more radical critics suggest, but he certainly has a Zionist family background. And Hillary Clinton...represents the political centrism of the Bill Clinton era. His other appointees are Clinton retreads as well. These are not good omens. Instead of electing Thurgood Marshall we may have elected Clarence Thomas.

“we don’t know how to market a movie like this.”

2012-01-12T08:32:00.000-06:00

George Lucas worries Hollywood doesn’t support black films

By Jacqueline Trescott

George Lucas, the influential creator of the “Star Wars” films, has added his voice to the perennial concern that Hollywood doesn’t care about black films.
Tuskegee Airmen attend the "Red Tails" premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater Tuesday in New York City. (Mike Coppola - GETTY IMAGES)

In a series of interviews in recent days Lucas has said he himself had to bankroll “Red Tails,” a movie 23 years in the making about the Tuskegee Airmenopening Jan. 20. Lucas invested $93 million of his own money for the making and distribution of the film, according to “Speakeasy,” a blog of the Wall St. Journal.

Now he’s a principal promoter, taking his case to Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” Monday night.

Lucas blamed the reception to an “all-black cast” without any white headliners for the roadblocks he encountered within Hollywood. “It’s because it’s an all-black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all,” said Lucas. The response he got Lucas told Stewart was “we don’t know how to market a movie like this.”

“Red Tails’’ is essentially a World War II drama centering on the fighting record of the black airmen known by their training base, Tuskegee. It stars Cuba Gooding, Jr., Terrence Howard, David Oyelowo, Michael B. Jordan and Ne-Yo.

Furthermore, in an interview with USA Today, Lucas said he feared that if this film, with its strong story and lauded producer, failed, it might hurt other projects of black filmmakers.

The real Airmen have been a fount of celebrations and information for researchers, particularly in Washington, where a number still live. Their accomplishments are noted in the National Air and Space Museum andone of their training planes was donated last summer to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, due to open in 2015.

http://www.washingtonpost.com

After 10 Yrs of Gitmo Injustice, US Detainees Arriving When?

2012-01-12T04:55:00.000-06:00

by libbyliberal

First a bit of positive news from Andy Worthington, Brit investigative journalist and champion of due process for the Gitmo detainees and author of The Guantanamo Files. (Worthington was a featured speaker in a World Can’t Wait forum on Sunday in NYC.) If former President George W. Bush travels outside the borders of the United States to a foreign country, upon his arrival there is a good chance he immediately will be arrested for war crimes, particularly the perpetration of TORTURE! This is why George Bush canceled a recent trip to Switzerland.

You see, outside the “U.S. bubble” of conscience-less denial, minimization, indifference or (“we are always the good guys”) naivete, there are millions of non-Americans who grasp the depth of the international war crimes perpetrated by the USWarMachine. People who actually have a sense of moral justice. Well, it is understandable they would be more aware, since THEIR moral radar is not constantly jammed by a prevaricating and distracting US corporate mass media.

Foreign peoples are coming to recognize the mass defiling of the sanctity of human lives by the heart of darkness leadership of this once constitutional republic. Many foreigners questing for democracies of their own have woken up to the loss of suchdemocracy in the United States, woken up so much faster to the tragedy than the U.S.‘s own citizenry.

More: http://www.correntewire.com

Can Blacks Criticize Barack Obama?

2012-01-10T10:56:00.000-06:00

http://www.voxunion.com/can-blacks-criticize-obama/
by Ruby Sales

Do We Believe that a Black President is above critique even when he stands aloof from the human rights of ordinary people here and abroad? Tell me it is not so!

I just read a post that Tavis Smiley was uninvited to speak at an annual Martin Luther King, Jr. luncheon in Peoria, Illinois because of an organized protest by Black members of a book club. As I read this post, my stomach sank and a deep pool of sadness flowed throughout my body. After ruminating through my deep angst, sorrow and righteous indignation, I must boldly say that I am aghast at their aggressive demonizing, silencing and blackballing of Smiley because he is critical of the policies and stances of President Obama. I am aghast that I have not heard the thunder of these Black voices roaring over the fact that Newt Gingrich is speaking at a major NAACP event after he made the racist comment that Blacks should seek jobs rather than welfare. I am aghast and indignant that I do not hear them rising up and blackballing the White masters of redistricting maps that dissipate the meaning and power of our votes. I am deeply disturbed that I have not seen them uniting the power of their voices to challenge and blackball local politicians in Chicago whose policies and public rhetoric push Black youth into rivers of systemic injustice that drown far too many of them. President Obama can speak for himself, but what about our youth who are vulnerable and powerless in these turbulent waters. Who defends and speaks for them?

Where have we come on our journey for freedom and democracy when we believe that a Black President is above critique? When we silence speech and blackball people who speak out, we are dancing on a slippery slope that leads us further toward fascism.

I have heard the argument that Tavis Smiley is an awful person. I don’t know if he is insufferable, vain or mean spirited. Nor do I care because his personal defects are not the issue. The point is that they should not determine his right to speak and be heard in a democracy. The constitution does not limit a person’s right to speak based on character. If that were the case, many people would not be holding the microphone at Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations. And the truth of the matter is Smiley is not the problem. He does not have the power to diminish poverty, racism or any other assaults on our human rights. Vicious and personal assaults on Tavis Smiley turn our gaze away from interrogating the President on issues that matter to us and on issues that he can impact through his speeches and public policy leadership.

It is ironical that these African Americans chose a celebration of Martin Luther Jr. to blackball and silence Tavis Smiley because of his political critique of a Black leader who like all other leaders should be held accountable for his deeds and policies. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be aghast and would vehemently and eloquently stand on the side of democracy and Smiley’s right to speak out without being demonized, blackballed or isolated. Listen to King’s words on Black leadership in his article, “Black Power Defined”:

And so we have to create leaders that embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles that we can applaud with an enthusiasm that allows us to rally support for them based on confidence and trust. We will have to demand high standards and give consistent, loyal support to those who merit it. We have to be a reliable constituency for those who prove themselves to be committed political warriors on our behalf.

We must learn to refuse crumbs from the big-city machines and steadfastly demand a fair share of the loaf. When the big-city politicians demur, we must be prepared to act in unity and throw our support to such independent parties or reform wings of the major parties as are prepared to take our demands seriously and fight for them vigorously.

King knew and warned us that power does not trickle down to the bottom. Nor is a trickle the object of our long struggle for freedom. This includes the struggles of White progressives. Nothing changes as MLK, Jr. knew until We the People use the power of our voices and our actions to create mutual alliances that eradicate systemic injustice; the systemic injustice that robs us of our voices and shares of the fruits of the world that our hands help build. The future of the nation is in our hands, not in the hands of the President.

Do we really believe that President Obama has heard the cries of the systemic sufferings of Black people and our brothers and sisters everywhere? Are we supporting him based on merit or based on color? Are we called to protect the Presidency of President Obama or are we called to demand power, justice, regard and action for the people?

In balance, I must say to Tavis Smiley and the organizers of this event that a speaking fee to Tavis Smiley of $37,500 and his accepting it is obscene and stands over and against the life and values of MLK, Jr. I am deeply disturbed that my brother and sister veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement/Civil Rights Movement who fought to change the soul of this country are rarely asked to speak on this day, and rarely if ever are they offered such speaking fees. Their voices are sidelined as many of them struggle to economically survive in a society that overlooks them in favor of big names in popular culture who are the beneficiaries of the hard work of these veterans. I offer my protest and in the name of my movement brothers and sisters I say stop your shameless profiteering of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Freedom Movement.

In addition to asking freedom fighters to speak, why not give a donation to the SNCC Legacy Project, Veterans of Hope, The History Makers or Historically Black colleges from which many freedom fighters came?

Ruby Nell Sales is a highly-trained, experienced, and deeply-committed social activist, scholar, administrator, manager, and educator in the areas of Civil, Gender, and other Human Rights. She is a co-director of the Spirit House Project.

PLANTATION BLOGS

2012-01-09T10:20:00.000-06:00

from DREAM AND HUSTLE
TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS AND LIFESTYLE SPOT FOR URBAN ENTREPRENUERS

Plantation blogs such as The Root, The Grio and Black Voices are owned by corporate entities who do not have accountability or social responsibility towards the best interest of the African-American demographic they are targeting. In fact, what we notice is these plantation blogs are blatantly more interested in advancing propaganda that promotes a liberal/Boule status quo that we supposed to subscribe to or look up to or admire or whatever.

In addition, we realize these plantation blogs are establishing a pattern where they will not address issues regarding President Obama record of signing into law or enforcing existing laws that adversely affect African-Americans and Hispanics.

...

How the Plantation Blogs Are Structured

If you look at the plantation blogs, they have a structured pattern on the news and information they are providing African-Americans. Let’s break down the type of stories these plantation blogs are targeting the African-American mass with.

...

Liberal and Democratic Party Propaganda. These are stories that appear to attack the Republican Party and people involved with the conservative movement and try to paint them as the “bad guy” of African-American problems. The truth is the problem is not the GOP stepping down on Black people, the real problem is ineffectual like the Rev. Al Sharpton and others are not stepping up to progress empowerment in the Black community. These characters are bought and paid for by the Democratic Party, plain and simple to get the so-called “Black vote” during elections.

They Hate Us! Now Tell Us How You Feel About It. This is the story of the cop who shot someone Black or someone used the n-word or a racial slur trying to provide some kind of shock/fear value. Historically, these types of stories were designed to keep fear instilled into Black people so we can cower under the powers that be. Notice these stories are just written to say it happened but don’t have any plan of action to prevent it from happening again – because they want to keep writing these kind of stories for just the shock value.

Oh My God! Headlines. These are the Boule-written stories that attempt to poke fun at urban/poor Black culture that self-hating Blacks tend to enjoy. These are the ones where they start with an “Oh My God!” type of headline like “Outrageous!” or “Oh No She Didn’t!” or “Shocking!” and then show someone poor or from the hood wearing something that looks outside the norm. Or show a clip of a Youtube video of someone Black doing something considered “ghetto”. These are stories manufactured by self-hating and Boule uppity Blacks who are looking down on the rest of the Black people and reinforcing their uppityness.

Celebrity Voyeurism. These are stories where they trying to focus on someone and write stories about them. These are your reality TV personas, your Black celebrities and other people. The articles always seem to focus on their personal lives such as them dating, marrying and divorcing or them being involved in a fall of grace such as running out of money or going to jail or similar type events. Then the losers go in on the comment board section and provide their two-bit opinion on the matter of someone else lives who are living in the public domain.

Solution – Get off the Plantation Blogs!

African-Americans are going through extremely serious issues right now and the data is there to prove it is going on in real time. There are laws being put in place, unfair judicial processes being put into place and numbers being reported by the government showing the trends that are going on in our community. All of this stuff is being done under President Obama administration and cannot be disputed.

I hope as a result of bringing these issues to light that we truly understand that we have some people among us who are more interested in promoting a status quo over promoting the best interest of our people. These are the same people who say “President Obama is the president of America, not Black America” and don’t realize they are admitting they self-hate their own people because that is exactly what that statement implies.

These plantation blogs are ran by corporations who want to keep us in check and prevent independent Black bloggers from having a dominant voice in our community. This is why these plantation blogs like The Grio, The Root and Black Voice promote ignorance and worthless opinions and not a path to progress and empowerment.

However, we cannot stop these plantation blogs from being sponsored by corporations but African-Americans can stop sponsoring and co-signing these plantation blogs. I do not recommend boycotting these blogs, in fact, I would recommend using up their bandwidth and keep their expenses going up. The thing we brothas and sistas should keep in mind is to look at ourselves and what’s going on around us and not rely on these plantation blogs for information.

You are what you consume – if you want to be an entrepreneur and learn how to make moves then you will be reading something like Harvard Business Review instead of some Dream and Hustle knock-off, real talk. If you want real information about President Obama and what he is really doing for us, you would be going to White House official web site and the government official web site to read exactly what is going on instead of have others like Al Sharpton “narrate” to you what they want you to hear.

Real talk, Black people got real problems and these plantation blogs are not in our best interest. Focus on getting real information to empower oneself so we can start moving towards a real path to progress and prosperity among our people.

Read the whole thing: http://www.dreamandhustle.com/are-plantation-blogs-defending-president-obama-more-than-serving-the-best-interest-of-brothas-and-sistas/

HT: http://subrealism.blogspot.com/

And 2012 Promises to Be a Doozy!

2012-01-08T11:29:00.000-06:00

"Look what we’ve seen transpire in the past few weeks: The NDAA Bill which imposes virtual martial law on America now includes censorship-freak Lieberman’s disgusting Enemy Expatriation Act. And now they just rolled out the Bureau of Counter-terrorism that admittedly wants to tightly network the policing and surveillance activities of the entire flipping world!
All this while FEMA camps are openly staffed for some unknown reason, drones are employed on American soil, and Homeland Security gets an upgrade to start random checkpoints around the country!" alien-transformers-descend-on-america/

At the same time we seem to be preparing for war with Iran. Can you believe it?

globalresearch

Goodbye 2011

2012-01-06T15:54:00.000-06:00

So, just to recap the recap: (Year End Review)

1. 2011 begins with this prescient article: 2011: AMERICANS TAKE BACK THEIR COUNTRY FROM PSYCHOPATHIC, ORWELLIAN FASCISTS, by Carl Herman, announcing the most important development of the year: a political reawakening. It is sort of the meta-story of the year.

2. The second major story could be seen as the counterpart to the political reawakening, an overriding issue, at the very least: the coordinated attack on Social Security and Medicare. Both the good cop Democrats and the bad cop Republicans are conniving to cut them. It's been in the works from the beginning of the Obama administration.

3. Like the political reawakening, the third major story of the year was announced at the beginning; yet another overriding theme: murder and assassination.

4. I also became aware of the psychopathology of a significant portion, perhaps a majority, of our leadership: men-or-beast.

5. The fifth major story was the Co-opting of the legacy of Martin Luther King.

6. Another major theme: the Obama deception. The betrayal is blatant. The main questions are why, hence the examination of his background story; and why his supporters, particularly the black ones, still rally around him.

7. Apparently I must add "The Democratic Party Must Die". Not a major story. Not an event. Just something that revealed itself as events unfolded. Call it the failure of the Democratic Party.

8. That failure leaves us defenseless against the corporatization of America and the 8th "story". Creeping fascism.

The Other Vampire Squid

2012-01-06T12:14:00.000-06:00

BlackRock's Surprising Reach into the US Economy

by Eileen Appelbaum

While attention has been focused on the activities of that great vampire squid, Goldman Sachs, investment firm BlackRock has been quietly taking over the American economy. In a presentation scheduled for 2:30 pm on Saturday, January 7 at the Labor and Employment Relations Association meetings at the Palmer House in Chicago, Professor Gerald Davis of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business documents the extensive reach of BlackRock. Aided by the growth of defined contribution pension plans and abetted by the weakness of other financial services firms, notably Barclay’s, during the financial crisis, BlackRock catapulted into first place in 2011 among the top holders of large blocks of shares of publicly-traded companies in the US. With $3.5 trillion in assets under management that they invest on behalf of their clients, the company has become the world’s largest investor. BlackRock manages assets for institutions such as pension funds and mutual funds, and its iShares business is popular with both retail investors and hedge funds who delegate all proxy votes for their iShares to BlackRock.

Professor Davis: “Prospects for control of corporations by financial institutions have never been this high in a century.”

Among Professor Davis’ startling findings:

Ownership of US corporations is no longer highly dispersed.
In 2011 BlackRock held a 5% stake in 1,803 US listed companies. This is almost triple second place Fidelity’s 677 companies and more than triple third place Vanguard’s 524 companies.
As a result of changes in the nature of equity markets – the growth of exchange traded funds (ETFs) and the decline in the number of new firms going public (IPOs) – the number of publicly-traded corporations has dropped by half since 1997 to about 4,300 listed US companies in 2011.
Under new proxy rules adopted by the SEC in August 2010 that allow long-term shareholders’ that own at least 3% of a company’s shares to nominate directors, BlackRock will likely be eligible to nominate directors at well over half of all publicly-traded corporations in the US by 2013.

Professor Davis concludes: “Prospects for control of corporations by financial institutions have never been this high in a century.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/06

Irony of the Year: 2011

2012-01-05T15:37:00.000-06:00

Black caucus chair: We’d ‘be marching on the White House’ if not for Obama

"If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,"

Buying Congress

2012-01-05T13:04:00.000-06:00

How do corporations control the government? Here's an example of how it works:

...the big players boast about it: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, front outfit for a consortium of corporations, has bragged on its website about outspending everyone in Washington, which is easy to do when Chevron, Goldman Sachs, and News Corp are writing you seven-figure checks. This really matters. The Chamber of Commerce spent more money on the 2010 elections than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined, and 94% of those dollars went to climate-change deniers. That helps explain why the House voted last year to say that global warming isn’t real.
It also explains why “our” representatives vote, year in and year out, for billions of dollars worth of subsidies for fossil-fuel companies. If there was ever an industry that didn’t need subsidies, it would be this one: they make more money each year than any enterprise in the history of money. Not only that, but we’ve known how to burn coal for 300 years and oil for 200.
Those subsidies are simply payoffs. Companies give small gifts to legislators, and in return get large ones back, and we’re the ones who are actually paying.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog

2011 and the Corporatization of America pt. 2

2012-01-04T11:45:00.000-06:00

I'm guessing the key corporate takeover was the media. The news media in particular, but the entertainment industry as well. Each one of us knows firsthand how the popular culture, TV, movies, etc. shapes our world view and informs (instructs) our opinions. We are what we watch. That is why such a high premium is paid for TV commercials and media advertising. But in the 21st century this powerful media influence on the public has gone a step further. As the ownership of mainstream news media has been consolidated in the hands of a few; these few corporations become the gateway and controllers of the flow of information to the American public (who-owns-media). At the same time, MSM has vacated its charge of independent reporting and subordinated itself to the government, in name of national security. That trend had been present in the news media all along, but with 911 it was greatly increased. As my recent forays into alternate media reveals, MSM has become little more than government propaganda, as likely to hide news stories as to report them. They have become the method by which the government, in obeisance to its corporate donors, shapes public opinion.

And of course the corporate agenda permeates black America. Here Bruce A. Dixon, blackagendareport, describes the influence of one of these corporate sponsors.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been a key player in the drive to privatize public education. Gates Foundation staff helped write the guidelines for the Obama Administration's Race To The Top program, under which states and school districts, in order to receive any federal education funds at all, had to hire consultants, often from the same Gates Foundation to write the detailed plans for closing thousands of neighborhood public schools, implementing high stakes testing and turning teachers into the cowed, insecure and casual WalMart style workforce preferred by private, often for profit charter school operators.So how did the National Urban League become the mouthpiece and cheering section for corporate experiments on black school children at home and the hijacking of the global food system in Africa? The answer is that like the NAACP, the National Committee on Black Civic Participation, the National Council of LaRza, the National Conference of Black State Legislators and even the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the Urban League is now and has for some time past been completely dependent on corporate donations to keep going. Those that pay the bills, call the shots. http://ironymous.blogspot.com/2011/08/corporate-funding-of-black-leadership.html

2011 and the Corporatization of America

2012-01-03T07:12:00.000-06:00

Midyear Ralph Nader reminds us/me that it is not just the corporatist President and the corporatist Congress that is marching this nation towards fascism, but the corporate Supreme Court. Let's see now, what's the definition of fascism again? Doesn't it have something to do with the merger of government and corporation. That is, in addition to that right wing authoritarian thing?

Five Supreme Court Justices--Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy are entrenching, in a whirlwind of judicial dictates, judicial legislating and sheer ideological judgments, a mega-corporate supremacy over the rights and remedies of individuals. http://ironymous.blogspot.com/2011/07/corporate-supreme-court.html

Also midyear was that tour de force political manipulation kabuki, the debt ceiling showdown. It is thoroughly analyzed here as a clandestine attack on the social safety net on behalf of the corporatocracy: barack-obama-and-debt-crisis.

...that's the purpose of a modern political “crisis:” to engineer the enactment of measures on behalf of elites that normal political processes would not allow.

Welcome to the future, where a black president has been the indispensable anchor player in the con game that ended the New Deal and Great Society.

Then came the inauguration of the Martin Luther King Memorial, which more closely resembled a further enshrinement of corporatism than a memorial to the great civil rights leader. The choice of a Chinese artist for the project was curious. I think it was no accident that the artist chosen was renowned for his statist images of authority, such as his monument to Mao Zedong. (communist-created-statue-to-honor-king).

It's almost as if the monument was designed to subvert the legacy of Martin Luther King, not commemorate it. The image of Dr. King is being used to legitimize in the eyes of the American people the corporate state. The image is used by the government to influence public opinion. Remember the Pentagon's claim that King would support the war in Afghanistan? In fact our current President uses the oratory style of King to sell his policies to the American people.

So, just to recap: (Year End Review)

2012-01-01T16:12:00.000-06:00

1. 2011 begins with this prescient article: 2011: AMERICANS TAKE BACK THEIR COUNTRY FROM PSYCHOPATHIC, ORWELLIAN FASCISTS, by Carl Herman, announcing the most important development of the year: a political reawakening. It is sort of the meta-story of the year.

2. The second major story could be seen as the counterpart to the political reawakening, an overriding issue, at the very least: the coordinated attack on Social Security and Medicare. Both the good cop Democrats and the bad cop Republicans are conniving to cut them. It's been in the works from the beginning of the Obama administration.

3. Like the political reawakening, the third major story of the year was announced at the beginning; yet another overriding theme: murder and assassination.

4. I also became aware of the psychopathology of a significant portion, perhaps a majority, of our leadership: men-or-beast.

5. The fifth major story was the Co-opting of the legacy of Martin Luther King.

6. Another major theme: the Obama deception. The betrayal is blatant. The main questions are why, hence the examination of his background story; and why his supporters, particularly the black ones, still rally around him.

Chart of the Year

2012-01-01T12:33:00.000-06:00

In December of last year, I thought Obama had committed the ultimate offense to traditional Democratic concerns. He extended the Bush tax cuts; the primary cause of the massive debt and impending depression. It was a capitulation to the greed of the richest one percent of our citizenry.

But I was wrong. I had no idea he intended to cut Social Security and Medicare.The dept ceiling con unfolded in July: Surely this would be the unkindest cut of all. Especially for blacks, the disproportionately impoverished. These cuts would hurt the black community more than any other segment of the population. I anticipated a chorus of protest and criticism from the black community in opposition to this development. I was wrong again. True, there were some brief flashes of irritation but after the shock wore off a week or so later, blacks continued to support Obama, and his increasingly noxious policies, in overwhelming numbers.

Lesser-Evilism Is Like Boiling Frogs

2012-01-01T09:11:00.000-06:00

And that was the year that was. 2011. By midyear I was calling for the death of the Democratic Party. It has failed, and the embodiment of that failure is Barack Obama. You're fired, Democrats, as far as this constituent is concerned. And I demand a truly liberal/progressive party. I want to sue you for fraud and force you to pay restitution by funding the establishment of a new party. The good cop bad cop routine that you and the GOP have got going must come to an end. The left wing of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, must die! If I had to sum up everything I've posted here this year in a single sentence, that phrase does it. That is the conclusion I have drawn from the material I have reviewed here. Sure, I'm specifically angry at Obama, but he's just the current playa. If it had not been him, it would have been some other neo-liberal shill. "Don't hate the playa, hate the game." It's the game that must be changed, not just the President. This lesser-evilism of support for Obama, Clinton and their ilk can only have one end. Fascism. Every rightward tick of the Overton window, every rightward leaning not-as-evil-as-Republicans Democratic administration brings us closer to that fate.

click to embiggen

The Democratic Party Must Die

2011-12-31T19:38:00.000-06:00

In June I reprised my "The Democratic Party Must Die" theme. Ever since Obama's first year in office it has become apparent to me that the Democratic Party has exhausted its progressive utility. Obama, or someone like him, with a majority in Congress, is the best the Democrats is capable of delivering. A neo-liberal and, as far as policy is concerned, an old-fashioned Republican. Obama is indeed the best they can do and, the evidence is in. There is precious little liberal about this administration. That means the party's liberalism is defunct and it's time for progressives to abandon it. Not form a third party. Form a new second party. There is room for only one second party, therefore in order for a new progressive party to emerge, -say it with me- the Democratic Party must die. Abandon it. No, confiscate its resources, as penalty for fraud and gross negligence, and use them to build the new progressive party. Here's the way I put it in 2010:

Voting for Democrats is not a remedy. The Democratic party must be reformed. Or it must die and make room for a genuine opposition party. Since its clear that a third party cannot succeed, keep the two party system. Just replace the Democrats. http://ironymous.blogspot.com/2010/10/democratic-party-must-die.html

This year I found a few folks who seem to agree with me.

Ironymous: The Democratic Party Must Die: Rocky Anderson

Ironymous: The Democratic Party Must Die: Lambert
Jul 31, 2011
The public watched the elite and leaders of both parties rush to the rescue. The government saved irresponsible executives who bankrupted their own companies, hurt many people and threatened the welfare of the country. ...
http://ironymous.blogspot.com/

Ironymous: Time for a Progressive Party:Lindorf
Jul 21, 2011
Let's start by saying that if the Democratic Party ever had a soul, it was sold long ago to the Evil Ones who run corporate America, and especially the horned legions on Wall Street. But the point Greenwald makes is a ...
Ironymous: The Democratic Party Must Die: Hamsher
Jul 07, 2011
But where George Bush failed, Obama will probably succeed. Which means we're watching another casualty here: Democracy. Or at least, the illusion that we live in a democratic society. The public, regardless of party, ...
http://ironymous.blogspot.com/
Ironymous: The Democratic Party Must Die: Kimberley
Jul 06, 2011
That lesser of two evils argument now has almost no meaning. Not only is Obama keeping the country in a perpetual state of war, but at the first sign of Republican ...
http://ironymous.blogspot.com/
Ironymous: The Democratic Party Must Die: Hedges
Jul 04, 2011
"We must follow the path Nader forged, attempting to sway enough people with conscience to sever themselves permanently and unequivocally from the mainstream and especially the Democratic Party." ...
http://ironymous.blogspot.com/

The Year End Review: Birth of an Assassi-Nation

2011-12-31T16:23:00.000-06:00

So anyway, there I was, in the Spring of this year looking suspiciously at Obama's background. His policies were so antithetical to his stated intentions I felt he had to be a Trojan horse of some sort. Either that or he is the most inept president in modern history. Unless, of course his achievements are valorized to Republican goals. In that case he is doing quite well. He has, in effect adopted Republican policies and been very successful in implementing them. He is certainly the best Democratic president the GOP ever had. But given his background story, or the lack of it, he may turn out to be not just a Republican pretending to be a Democrat, but a Trojan horse of an even more sinister sort.

Straightaway, mere days after releasing the much anticipated birth certificate, the White House launched a predictably controversial operation to kill Osama bin Laden. I don't know if it was designed to divert attention away from "the birth certificate" and from the larger issue of the president's background, but that is exactly what it did. The attention of the American public was now completely captivated by the circumstances surrounding Osama's death.

I don't know what they're watching here exactly. No one seems to know. But from the looks in the eyes of our military and intelligence leaders, they're watching something awesome. Of great portent. Indeed, whatever it is specifically, it is the birth of an awesome new attitude. One in which assassination is normalized. This is the slippery slope that has already led to the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. This is the slippery slope by which we have now become the Assassi-Nation.

Speaking of Obama's Work History

2011-12-29T09:35:00.000-06:00

Jul 26th, 2010 by stuartbramhall

Who Did Obama Work for in Chicago?

From Webster Tarpley Barrack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography

Obama’s “official” biography reveals that he first gained public prominence in Chicago as the first chairman of the board of the “liberal” Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). However his first job out of law school was with the right leaning Business International Corporation, which was exposed in 1977 by the New York Times (on 12/27/77) as a front company for the CIA. Former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leader Carl Oglesby asserts in his recent biography (Ravens in the Storm) that BIC’s main goal was to infiltrate Left and student groups for US intelligence.

After leaving BIC, Obama became a civil rights lawyer and involved himself in a number of “progressive” foundations like CAC. However Tarpley, who examines the funding and specific activities of these foundations, questions the genuineness of their progressive credentials. All the evidence suggests they actually played a “gatekeeper” or “counterinsurgency” function similar to the programs McGeorge Bundy pioneered as head of the Ford Foundation (see July 21 blog).

McGeorge Bundy’s Toxic Legacy

In fact CAC itself, where Obama was a board member for six years (three years as chair), appears to have replicated Bundy’s 1968 strategy to pit minority boards (in Chicago they were called Local School Councils) against the New York City teachers’ unions. As Tarpley discovered, the campaign to give LSC’s the power to fire teachers and several hundred school principals – was championed, not by grassroots minorities groups, but by business interests headed by Thomas Ayers. Ayers, by coincidence, happens to be the father of Obama’s pal the former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. Tom Ayers also has impeccable corporate credentials, which include heading Commonwealth Edison for seven years in the seventies, and serving on the board of General Dynamics, Searle, Chico Pacific, Zenith, Northwest Industries, First National Bank of Chicago and the Chicago Tribune.

This may possibly explain his son Bill Ayers’ “magical ability” to secure foundation funding. Ayers wrote the grant to secure Annenberg funding for the CAC and he credits himself as one of its co-founders. He was also influential in getting his buddy Barack Obama, a 34 year old with no educational credentials whatsoever, appointed as CAC’s first chairman, for which he received an annual salary of $70,000 (in addition to the substantial income from his law practice).

By Obama’s own admission, the project on which CAC spent $100 million was unsuccessful. It not only failed to improve the educational achievement of black students, but also to meet “soft” targets, such as “self image,” “personal efficacy,” school attendance and persistence. What the CAC did accomplish, very successfully, was to drive a wedge between minority parents and the teachers unions when they could have united to block extensive federal and state educational cutbacks. It also threw Chicago schools into such chaos (deliberately it seems) that they became ripe for school privatization efforts, championed by the same elite business lobby that pushed through the 1988 School Reform Act (creating the Local School Councils).

Terrorist Bill Ayers’ Magical Transformation

This raises the tricky question of how Obama’s pal Bill Ayers transformed himself from a bomb making terrorist to a tenured Professor of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and an pre-eminent education reformer. Tarpley, like other authors and researchers, alleges the Weather Underground was actually a US intelligence creation, formed with the specific objective of infiltrating and shutting down SDS. This view is substantiated by FBI documents that came to light 1973 revealing the role of agent provocateurs in infiltrating and instigating much of the violence attributed to the Weathermen – which Ayers used to have his weapons and bomb making charges dismissed.

Former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche has always alleged that the Weather Underground was funded by left “gatekeeping” foundations and think-tanks, specifically the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Policy Studies (founded in 1963 by an aide to McGeorge Bundy) and the Institute for Social Research. However as Tarpley points out, it has proven impossible to corroborate LaRouche’s charges without access to government and foundation archives, which at this point are closed to public scrutiny.

Nevertheless considerable circumstantial evidence supports these allegations. First and foremost is the striking “coincidence” that many of the Weather Underground leadership were, like Bill Ayers, the sons and daughters of wealthy members of the corporate elite. Second is the report of contemporary SDS members that the Weathermen, who did no fundraising to speak of, appeared to have unlimited funds to spend on organizing and military style training. Third are their classic (successful) Cointelpro style tactics in destroying SDS. And last the troubling question of how Bill Ayers can openly brag about his terrorist activities in his 2002 book Fugitive Days – and yet instead of facing the death penalty for conspiracy to commit murder, enjoys status and privilege as a tenured Professor of Education.

Andrew Murphy’s recent guest blog on Harry’s Place updates and lends further support to the scenario Tarpley lays out in his 2008 Barrack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography.

http://hurryupharry.org/index.php?s=andrew+murphy&x=0&y=0

http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2010/07/26/who-did-obama-work-for-in-chicago/

Quote of the Day

2011-12-29T04:57:00.000-06:00

"Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals."

http://www.washingtonpost.com

Quote of the Day: Why the GOP Primary Is a Clown Show

2011-12-28T14:22:00.000-06:00

'In sum, how do you demonise Obama as a terrorist-loving secret Muslim intent on empowering US enemies when he has adopted, and in some cases extended, what was rightwing orthodoxy for the last decade? The core problem for GOP challengers is that they cannot be respectable Republicans because, as Krugman pointed out, Obama has that position occupied. They are forced to move so far to the right that they render themselves inherently absurd."

glenn_greenwald

The issue of President Obama's background

2011-12-26T14:13:00.000-06:00

So, in anticipation of semi-archiving this blog, it consequentially develops that this year's summary becomes a summary of the past three years. My three years before the mast, so to speak. It is time to -as Barack Obama might say- pivot in my orientations. It becomes necessary that I redirect my efforts towards a new set of priorities.

Let's see. Picking up where I left off last month on the Year End Review, I had just (not) gone Birther. The issue of President Obama's background, I concluded, was an important area to investigate. The birth certificate was just one part of the inquiry that I felt was warranted. This president's family, work and education background is conspicuous, precisely because there is so little known about it and, as I have so recently come to learn, at least one of the things he told us about himself is false. In addition he seems to have had multiple identities. That fact combined with the fact that he would have had to have been thoroughly vetted by the Secret Service, suggests that he himself is or was a secret government agent of some sort. The idea is not so far-fetched. We have had former CIA personnel as president before. (Shudder). This would be different, though. If Obama is connected to the CIA or other secret service organization, he has chosen not to disclose it. If such is the case it would seem to me to be unconstitutional. Keeping it secret ought to be a crime. Or at the least misconduct warranting impeachment. Obama needs to reveal details of his background in order to assure his complete autonomy from any other governmental agency. That is why this issue, a much broader one than the "Birther" issue proper, is important.

To quell the controversy, revived during Donald Trump's short-lived presidential campaign, the Obama administration produced this curious object:

It was taken as final proof of the president's American citizenship. And that would have been fine, as far as it goes. But in addition, its sudden revelation raised other questions. Why had it been withheld so long from public examination? And why was its authenticity not unimpeachable? Apparently, it has certain anomalies that suggest to some it is a fraud (infowars). I make no judgement on that issue. But even if I take it to be authentic it still does little to fill in the background history of Obama. Of much more importance are his adult health records, his school records and his work history.

Question of the Day: What Kind of People Are We?

2011-12-26T08:24:00.000-06:00

"...Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently said, “As difficult as [the Iraq war] was … I think the price has been worth it, to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world.”
Setting aside the sheer arrogance and insensitivity of this statement, it is worth asking if we are even capable of determining what price is worth hundreds of thousands of human lives (in Iraq) or the deaths of dozens of innocent civilians (in Libya)? Are we gods with the moral authority to determine who will live and who will die? If not, then what business do we have proclaiming what is “worth” the deaths of people halfway around the world? More importantly, what business do we have killing (or causing the deaths of) those people in the first place? New Year’s is a traditionally a time for reflection; I hope that each of us will consider these questions and ask ourselves what kind of people we want to be."

http://original.antiwar.com/nkramer/2011/12/25/are-we-gods/

At This Point, This Is a Rhetorical Question

2011-12-22T15:05:00.000-06:00

Is There a Limit to Black Tolerance of Obama's Police State, Assassinations and Wars?

by Glen Ford

In my political circles, we used to go through the rhetorical exercise of asking each other, What does President Obama have to do to irretrievably alienate his core of supporters? What horrific atrocity would Obama have to commit, that would cause him to lose his solid Black base?

The problem with this little game of What If, was that Obama kept upping the ante, with one outrage after another, each more nightmarish than the last. What if he put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block? Obama promptly did that, two weeks before taking the oath of office. So we had to pick another hypothetical Obama act that might constitute a deal-breaker with Black America. How about: What if the First Black President launched an all out military attack on Africa? Seven months ago he did just that, in Libya, following up with a huge intensification of the cruelest war in the world, against Somalia, and the assignment of U.S. Special Forces to central Africa.

It was becoming evident that there was no line of civilized behavior that Obama would not cross in service of corporate empire at home and abroad. And yet, his core supporters had still not reached their limits of tolerance for the man in whom they had invested so much hope in 2008.

Now, with preventive detention the law of the land and political assassination official U.S. policy, Obama is poised to enter the realm of the unthinkable – a future of pure horror in which there is no rule of law. When a president can lock up or kill whomever he chooses, without formal charge or trial, the rule of law ceases to exist. The finality of that verdict is not mitigated by the fact that George Bush also believed, as does Obama, that U.S. law already implicitly gave presidents the power to indefinitely detain.It is now codified– a law that negates the rule of law.

Obama’s guiding hand finessed the legislation through Congress, anointing this president and those who come after with the power to lock up American citizens for life without trial, or even being charged. Obama has given President Gingrich or President Romney or President Palin those powers – the same powers Egyptian generals have used to imprison thousands of protesters in military jails. Obama expresses sympathy for an Arab Spring while presiding over a dark American winter. This is his historical contribution: the evisceration of the Constitution as we had previously understood it, a far deeper mark on the historical record than breaking the White House color bar.

If there is any constituency for preservation of the rule of law, it must be Black America, a people whose lives on this continent began in the perpetual incarceration of slavery and who today comprise one out of every eight prison inmates on the planet, and whose political prisoners from a previous generation of struggle still languish behind bars. Is Black love of the idea of a Black president so perverse, that it would tolerate – or even celebrate! – a man who gives himself and his successors the power to imprison and kill at will?

Enough of this nonsense about greater and lesser evils. When it comes to murdering the Constitution, Barack Obama is a champion evil-doer.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/there-limit-black-tolerance-obamas-police-state-assassinations-and-wars

RAP NEWS X - #Occupy2012

2011-12-22T14:34:00.000-06:00

Here's the script, via http://snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.com/

There is no threat to Earth in twenty twelve. All the talk about a doomsday is a big hoax.

Hello, I’m Robert Foster, your faithful host, streaming another episode on the frequency of Juice News infused with a healthy dose of sanity.

Good morning, viewers, tune in, gather round as we delve into a Rap News update for the year two thousand and twelve.

We report that the world wide ebb and flow of history is now plain and evident:

Occupations have stormed fortress Walls, with-in-tents and taken up residence; leaks and revelations have led to revolutions, a deluge of ferment.

Ladies and gentlemen, if twenty-eleven was a prelude, a portent of things to come, then it’s dramatically clear we’re in for a massive year.

And to interpret these interesting times, we have General Baxter here.

But we’ll start with our resident expert, Terrence Moonseed. Terrence, what does this year mean as you see it?

Oh, Boy! Twenty Twelve on the News Feed You’d better listen up, Robert, cause I got a lot of phenomenal knowledge and I wanna be dropping it, finally the news is choosing to report truth on a proper topic!

You’ll never stop me from hollering. Brace yourselves, cos I’m getting ready to send in the requisite academic medicine heaven sent querulent evidence never settling when I’m grabbing a hammer and smashing the Nephilim.

This is the time for humanity’s ascension. The fifth sunset in line with precession and the Mayans’ calendar prediction on December twenty one, this world will rise in unison, from its prison into the fifth dimension and the highest of wisdom.

But as we’ll see, it’s the catalyst for a whole catalog of catastrophes calamities, as we reach the Terrencendental McKennical singularity.

~ What will all this mean for the fate of humanity?

~ It means the fiends that seek to deceive and keep us weak’ll reach a state of apogee.

And it means that people cease the capacity for endless atrophy that as a planet we rise from apathy and challenge the Draconian powers-that-be

~ Who are they?

~Aliens, parasites, they’re among us, keeping us trapped in captivity.

~ General, your say?

~ Now, I don’t know what planet he’s inhabiting but what the hippy is saying is accurate; forget the wacky analogy. Look around at the world, and you’ll see it’s already actually happening right here on Earth, where human slaves are trying to rise to take on the great elite, and take to the streets world-wide against corporate entities which have taken on human form.

~ Protesting in New York, Portland, Spain, Greece and distant Melbourne

~ Tent monster morons, homos, drummers, drug addicted freaks

~ They say they’re protesting to demand justice, and dignity

~ Seriously? I read in The New York Times quite the contrary they lack clear demands, they just want to live for free and get sympathy in fact the only clear demand they’ve ever made is for some pepper spray in the effing face.

Then they bitch and complain. But it’s just a food product, essentially. I take it daily, with my favourite drink: Bloody Mili-tary

~ hmm. perhaps speaking directly with the protesters would be wiser, so we now cross live to Liberty Plaza; hello?

~ Hello, fellow citizens of the world wide web. We’re Livestreaming Global Revolution direct in hi-tech

~ The precariat is revolting, what can we expect to happen next?

~ Let me get on the human megaphone, yo, mic check

~ Mic check

~ the ninety nine percent

~ ninety nine percent

~ have one demand to present

~ present

~ expressed clear

~ expressed clear the regime of alien corporations ends here.

~ Are you the leader?

~ No. We are a movement of free thinkers, without hierarchical structure

~ we’re a movement of free thinkers

~ Shut up!

~ I’ve got to ask if you’re for free information, why the mask?

~ because I am but an idea, whose time has arrived at last and you can shoot a person, but ideas are bulletproof

~ huh! prove it’s true!

~- As you wish…

We are Anonymous.

We are legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not… umm.. what was it?

I know it… We do not forgive, we do not…

~ Forget! ~ oh, yeah.

Expect us.

~- General? Terrence? Could this be the global shift that will avert apocalypse?

~ Nonsense. ~ Although, I admit, I’m pro #Occupying policies

~ Wait, I expected you to say that #Occupy should cease…

~ Cease?! We’ve been #Occupying for centuries, on land, sky and seas We #Occupied North America, #Australia and #Hawai’i and if you’ve forgotten, it’s ’cause we also #Occupy History our buddies have #OccupiedTerritories; we’ve #OccupiedAfghanistan and Iraq and this year’s plan is to hashtag #OccupyIran

~ Pah, wars and invasions, that’s what people are #Occupying against!

~ If you’ve benefitted from #Occupation, then you’re in the 1%.

But why stop there? Twenty twelve is a time of attainment. First we’ll #OccupytheElection and the next President’s brainstem. And as soon as Earth is spent, we’ll #OccupytheMoon, with spaceships. Then #Mars, and then we’ll brutally #OccupyUranus.

~ Heinous! The only planet we actually have to worry about is Nibiru!

~ Nibiwho?

~ Nibiru! The Planet X of fear and doom it’s due to smash right into our system

~ Oh!

~ causing mass extinction

~ Whoah!

~ bi-polar shifting

~ So, is this fact or Science Fiction?

~ No! it’s Zachariah Sitchin who decrypted Sumerian myths and showed that we were cloned to mine gold by alien illuminati

~ We are the slaves of aliens?

~ Yes! The Annunaki! And they’re coming soon!

~ No, we’re coming and we’ll #OccupyNibiru, too!

~ I’m confused… are we the aliens? And if that’s true, are we due to spread peace or war throughout the Milky Way?

~ We’ll bring love and light.

~ We’ll bring pepper spray.

~ Well, dear viewers it’s probable that getting consensus on this issue is impossible therefore we went to call on the honourable, venerable, Great Oracle O Prophet, Seer, All-Knowing Chomsky thank you for manifesting here.

~ No problem.

~ We seek your sage advice and better wisdom for instance, how can we stop terrorism?

~ There’s a simple method.

~ What is it?

~ Just stop participating in it.

~ So which in your opinion is the most significant threat to world peace?

~ Our ignorance.

~ I see, and how can we defeat this at last?

~ Turn off your TVs for a start

~ The media at large do seem to paralyze hypnotically, divide, distract, and atomize and cause us to be brainwashed and servile. Your thoughts?

~ That’s not controversial.

~ Well, we should thank you, O Oracle for guiding and leading us.

~ Not at all, Robert but I’m no oracle or leader. I’m just a linguistics teacher

~ Alas, the time has arrived to end this episode; much is left to be known but we’ll strive to analyze events as twenty twelve unfolds:

Will we see Aliens, popular awakening, mass insurrection? divine intervention or, who knows… maybe even a true democratic election?

We’d settle for any one of them!

For this grand human experiment seems to be sleepwalking towards a social, ecological and existential reckoning and with GM seeds in the soil, droids deployed, peak oil threatening.

This year’s headline: will we avoid the precipice, or dive off the edge of it.

Whatever your preference, creed, conspiracy or party membership. Our fate could depend on what we want twenty twelve to represent this date that we’ve subconsciously identified as our collective, self-imposed deadline for correcting our way of life.

With so much energy aligned on this point in time, with all that we are, and could be, potentially on the line.

Could this be our final meeting point, prior to the rising or turning of the tide?

The clock is already ticking, see you next time–on the other side.

Olds: Obama Was Not a Constitutional Law Professor

2011-12-21T09:36:00.000-06:00

Q: Was Barack Obama really a constitutional law professor?

A: His formal title was "senior lecturer," but the University of Chicago Law School says he "served as a professor" and was "regarded as" a professor.

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/obama-a-constitutional-law-professor/

[The above parsing of the facts, of course, is bullshit. I post this because before now I thought it was true. The MSM fed us a lot of propaganda to get this guy elected. Or rather they rubber-stamped a lot of propaganda.]

Quote of the Day

2011-12-21T09:22:00.001-06:00

The nation cannot bear two parties representing plutocratic power.

http://www.truthdig.com

Quote of the Day

2011-12-20T20:03:00.000-06:00

Dear DEAR President Obama,

Now that you have signed the National Defense Appropriation Act into law giving yourself the power to arrest and imprison any American indefinitely, I want to tell you how very very very very very sorry I am for all those nasty things I wrote about you.

veteranstoday.com

Better Late than Never, But a Lot Worse than What Was Promised

2011-12-16T14:54:00.000-06:00

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank. " - Candidate Barack Obama, October 27, 2007.

He probably meant "It's the last thing I'll do in my first term".

The Dismantling of the Constitution Is Almost Complete

2011-12-16T13:26:00.000-06:00

Set Your Doomsday Clock to 11:51

By David Swanson

The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police state. The doomsday clock of our republic just got noticeably closer to midnight, and the fact that almost nobody knows it, simply moves that fatal minute-hand a bit further still.

I'm not referring to the “doomsday” predicted by Leon Panetta should military spending be scaled back to the obscenely inflated levels of 2007. I'm talking about the complete failure to keep the republic that Benjamin Franklin warned we might not. Practices that were avoided, outsourced, or kept secret when Bill Clinton was president were directly engaged in on such a scale under president George W. Bush that they became common knowledge. Under President Obama they are becoming formal law and acceptable policy.

Obama has claimed the power to imprison people without a trial since his earliest months in office. He spoke in front of the Constitution in the National Archives while gutting our founding document in 2009. So why not pick the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights to further codify its elimination? President Obama has claimed the power to torture "if needed," issued an executive order claiming the power of imprisonment without trial, exercised that power on a massive scale at Bagram, and claimed and exercised the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. Obama routinely kills people with unmanned drones.

As Obama's Justice Department has broken new ground in the construction of state secrecy and immunity, the Bush era advancers of imperial presidential power have gone on book tours bragging about their misdeeds. One can expect the next step to involve serious abuse of those who question and resist the current bipartisan trajectory.

So what does the latest bill do, other than dumping another $660 billion into wars and war preparation? Well, it says this:

"Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force."

In other words, Congress is giving its stamp of approval to the unconstitutional outrages already claimed by the president. But then, why create a new law at all? Well, because some outrages are more equal than others, and Congress has chosen to specify some of those and in fact to expand some of them. For example:

"Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war."

And this:

"The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following: (1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force."

Jon Stewart explained when those detained without trial under the law might be released: “So when the war on terror ends, and terror surrenders and is no longer available as a human emotion, you are free to go.”

An exception for U.S. citizens was kept out of the bill at President Obama's request.

So why did Obama threaten to veto the bill initially and again after it passed the Senate? Well, one change made by the conference committee was this:

"The Secretary of Defense President may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if the Secretary President submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States."

The reference here is to military tribunals. The President – that is, the current one and future ones – need not hand someone over even to a military tribunal if . . . well, if he (or she) chooses not to.

President Obama wanted a bill that limited him in no way, and he is likely to issue a law-altering signing-statement that further removes any offensive limits on absolute tyrannical power. This type of signing statement is another example of something done secretly by Bush, exposed, turned into a temporary scandal, denounced by candidate Obama, then utilized by President Obama, formally established by executive order, and now more or less accepted by everyone as the norm.

That is what will happen with trial-free imprisonment and assassination as well. And the presidents who engage in these practices will be from both major political parties. So readers should weigh the acceptable crimes and abuses of the good tyrants on their team against the risk of presidents from the other team doing the same. Of course, this team loyalty is the main reason the streets of Washington are not filled with protesters. The corporate media believes that outrages agreed to by both parties are not news. Many Democrats believe any power a Democratic president wants he should have, even though all of his successors will have it too. And many Republicans back whatever comes out of a Republican House of Representatives.

A large majority of Republicans in the House voted to eviscerate our Bill of Rights, and the Democrats split 93 to 93. In the Senate both parties overwhelmingly voted "Aye."

If ever there was a time to build an independent, principled movement based in activism rather than elections and to put a few more minutes back on the doomsday clock, this is it. While Obama's decision not to veto this bill has discouraged many, at RootsAction we've continued demanding a veto because we think the Constitution should be upheld and improved, not dismantled. If signed into law, we will demand that this elimination of our rights be repealed by Congress or overturned in court, and we will use that campaign to educate the public about what just happened.

David Swanson is a campaigner for http://rootsaction.org and the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."

This content is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

At Last, a Progressive Alternative to Obama

2011-12-15T20:04:00.000-06:00

I certainly hope so. Cause if there isn't, I'm sitting this one out.
http://www.counterpunch.

Obama at Fort Bragg: A hypocritical embrace of a criminal war

2011-12-15T14:22:00.000-06:00

by Bill Van Auken

... ...Washington is doing its best to maintain its grip on Iraq, replacing uniformed troops with an army of up to 17,000 under the nominal direction of the US State Department. It is to include a force of 5,500 private mercenary security contractors, a massive CIA station, and Special Operations troops operating covertly out of uniform. Tens of thousands of US troops are being kept in place across Iraq’s border in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf, while the US Navy and the US Air Force remain in control of the country’s coastlines and airspace. ... Obama referred to the “heavy cost of this war,” citing the nearly 4,500 US troops killed and the more than 30,000 wounded. Yet, he suggested, it was worth it, because nearly nine years of war had led to a “moment of success.” “Now Iraq is not a perfect place,” he said. “It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” Missing from this narrative was any reference to the cost that the US war imposed on its unwilling victims, the Iraqi people. According to credible estimates, these costs include a million Iraqi lives. Some four million people were driven from their homes, forced to flee the country or become internal refugees. Basic infrastructure was smashed, leaving masses of the population without adequate access to electricity, clean water and other basic necessities of life. A country of 30 million has been left with 4.5 million orphans, some 600,000 of them living in the streets. There are an estimated 1.5 million widows in the country, 10 percent of Iraq’s female population. The poverty rate has risen from 15 percent before the war and occupation to 55 percent today, with a quarter of the population living in extreme poverty. The United Nations gives the unemployment rate at 28 percent, while others suggest that the share of the population without real jobs is closer to 50 percent. ... Nine years of US war and occupation have indeed left Iraq less than “a perfect place.” What is perhaps most stunning about what is being billed as Obama’s keynote speech on the end of the Iraq war is his complete inability to present even the semblance of a coherent explanation of why the US went to war in the first place. ... In his cynicism, Obama may think that the American people do not remember how the US got into Iraq. He may reassure himself that they have no alternative in any case, given that both Democrats and Republicans are fully implicated in this criminal war of aggression. The lying and glorification of the Iraq war—which gave the world the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the siege of Fallujah, the massacre in Haditha and countless other war crimes—is not just a matter of electoral calculations. Obama is compelled to defend this war because its original aims—the use of military might to offset the decline of American capitalism through the armed occupation of the world’s key energy producing regions—are still pursued by the US ruling elite. With all the talk about the ending of a decade of war, the downward spiral of US and world capitalism is creating the conditions for global military conflagrations that will eclipse the crimes committed by American militarism in Iraq. Read the whole thing: http://www.globalresearch

Oh the Irony: The Kool-Aid Is Poisoned But Let's Keep Drinking

2011-12-15T09:07:00.000-06:00

Baraka on Obama

I still thought it was a respite, but there’s been so many times where he’s been able to do things and then backed off, like that thing with [Henry Louis] “Skip” Gates getting busted. Obama said it was stupid, then he backed off it. They arrested a guy, a Harvard professor, on his own doorstep. That’s stupid. And obviously racist. But to back away from that with some kind of “let’s go drink beer together,” that’s what began to turn me away from him.
I’ve got to support him to the extent I can, but at the same time I’ve got to criticize him.

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com

American Fascism

2011-12-14T18:11:00.000-06:00

Freedom Rider: Is America Fascist?

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“Our entire system fits that description and we see it in the decisions made by Barack Obama and the rest of American political leadership.”

When George W. Bush served as president I and other commentators often dropped the dreaded “F bomb” when describing him and his administration’s policies. It was easy to think of Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rice as fascist evil doers. They plotted and carried out acts of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti and established a system of military detention in Guantanamo and sites around the world. The Patriot Act was founded on their watch and with it the erosion of all our constitutionally based civil liberties.

While those criticisms were on target, I now admit to being somewhat mistaken in the final assessment. It wasn’t just Bush and company who were fascistic in their policy making. Our entire system fits that description and we see it in the decisions made by Barack Obama and the rest of American political leadership.

How else would one describe a country that is ruled by a small core of super wealthy individuals? The rich, the 1% in Occupy Wall Street parlance, decide who will serve as president and who will be elected to the Senate, and to the House of Representatives, and gubernatorial offices across the country. They make sure that their needs are met, while actively undermining the needs of the 99%. Bank bailouts, housing bubbles and high unemployment are all indicators of the lack of democracy in the country that lays claim to the word it no longer recognizes.

While the rich get even richer, the foreign policy empire-building begun under Bush has continued unabated in the Barack Obama administration. Thedestruction of Somalia has accelerated and the United States is not content to just kill human beings. Those who survive are denied food and other aid as a result of America’s insatiable desire for domination. Troops may be leaving Iraq, but Obama has come up with new ways to take out foreign leaders who fall out of favor with Washington.

“Bank bailouts, housing bubbles and high unemployment are all indicators of the lack of democracy in the country that lays claim to the word it no longer recognizes.”

Without sending a single soldier, the United States and other NATO countries laid waste to Libya, killed its president and thousands of others, and installed a new regime. This feat was carried out with full approval of the corporate media, congress and even people who protested Bush’s war against Iraq. If that isn’t fascism, nothing else is either.

The terror which the president directs towards people in the rest of the world will soon have the potential to be directed against every American citizen. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was recently passed by both the Senate and the House. This bill, which authorizes military spending, also has a provision which will permit the president to place any American citizen under indefinite military detention and to do so without charge or trial. The Democratically controlled Senate voted overwhelmingly, 93 to 7, in favor of this effort to end any semblance of democracy. If Bush had attempted such an openly tyrannical measure, Democrats might have called it fascism, but they will do no such thing as long as their party is in power. That too is a hallmark of tyranny and despotism. Any true opposition to the power structure is silenced and marginalized, and allegedly different interests support the same ends.

The Obama administration, adept at spin and trickery, appears to look like the good cop, claiming that the president will veto the NDAA legislation because of the detention provision. Unfortunately for the president and his spin meisters, his true intent has been revealed. Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services committee, reports that the Obama administration insisted on keeping the language which permitted American citizens to be detained by the military without trial.

“The United States and other NATO countries laid waste to Libya, killed its president and thousands of others, and installed a new regime.”

“Senator Levin told Congress recently that under the original wording of the National Defense Authorization Act, American citizens were excluded from the provision that allowed for detention. Once Obama’s officials saw the text though, says Levin, ‘the administration asked us to remove the language which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section. '“

The “F word,” fascism, conjures up images of Hitler and Mussolini but that simplistic notion prevents a thorough examination of the direction our country is taking. We may be able to vote periodically, but the decisions are made long before we get to our local polling site. The candidates may claim to bring hope and change, but they are the candidates precisely because they have promised to do no such thing. One can debate the nomenclature used to describe our political system, but it is clearly undemocratic, even when Democrats rule.
http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-america-fascist

Oh the Irony: No One Is Person of the Year

2011-12-14T08:45:00.000-06:00

Time's Person of the Year is 'The Protester'

DASHIELL BENNETT

Time magazine has chosen the vague and non-committal "The Protester" as its "Person of the Year."The announcement was made this morning on The Today Show (via Business Insider)

Time's editor Rick Stengel said the Protester was chosen, “For capturing and highlighting a global sense of restless promise, for upending governments and conventional wisdom, for combining the oldest of techniques with the newest of technologies to shine a light on human dignity and, finally, for steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century." Very lofty.

The initial gut reaction on Twitter seems to be one of derision, as Time has gone with a faceless human mass instead of picking a single person (like Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi who Time mentions in the story and is widely acknowledged as the person who set off the "Arab Spring.") In 2006, Time chose "You" (with a mirrored cover) to much disappointment. They also once picked the personal computer as "Machine of the Year" and Earth as "Planet of the Year," proving that it should probably just be "Story of the Year" if they aren't going to acknowledge an actual person. By not picking any one individual, they've basically chosen no one.

Here's the full cover, which was designed by Shepard Fairey:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/12/times-person-year-protester/46170/

Obama: Wall Street Did Nothing Illegal

2011-12-13T09:45:00.000-06:00

And I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I want to sell you.

It was Obama who required the Indefinite Detainment Bill INCLUDE U.S. Citizens

2011-12-12T11:32:00.000-06:00

Sherrie Questioning All

Well now we know, for those who have been holding out “hope” that Obama will veto the 1031 Indefinite Detainment Bill against holding U.S. Citizens without rights to a trial or lawyer or charges for the rest of their lives…. It was Obama who required the bill have the language of U.S. Citizens being held without rights in the bill! The only reason he would veto it, is because it does not give him the absolute power as he wants!

Obama wants absolute Dictatorial Powers and the Senate gave it to him? I posted some of his Lies during his campaign. Especially the ones about the Rights of the People, closing Gitmo and standing up for the Constitution.

Here is Senator Levin on the floor of the Senate revealing it was Obama himself who Demanded U.S. Citizens be part of the Indefinite Detainment Bill!

Please send this video to your State Representatives, especially those Republican held states – maybe they will have morals and protect their state citizens from this. I know…. it is doubtful – but we still have to try, in my opinion.

Stop calling this an “election.”

2011-12-12T08:32:00.000-06:00

...

The only problem: however strange all this may be, it’s not, at least in the old-fashioned sense, an election nor does it seem to have much to do with democracy. The fact is that we have no word for what’s going on. Semi-democracy? Unrepresentative democracy? 1% democracy? Demospectacracy?

...

So stop calling this an “election.” Whatever it is, we need a new name for it.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/

2011: The Year of the Assassi-Nation (Addendum)

2011-12-09T16:33:00.000-06:00

The Face of the Killer Who Is Your President

Arthur Silber

December 8, 2011

The killer said:

"Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement," the president fired back at an impromptu news conference at the White House.

"Or whoever’s left out there," he added. "Ask them about that."

Watch the video at the link provided above. It's instructive, particularly Obama's expression when he adds, "Or whoever's left out there." He speaks of murder, yet the words are breezy and casual: this is a murderer so used to killing that he talks of his past and future victims interchangeably, and in terms of approximation. Just "whoever's left out there." He wants to be sure you know he'll order all of them killed in time. His face is expressionless, the eyes dead. This is a man without a soul in any healthy, positive sense. He murders -- and he's proud of it.

More than a million innocent Iraqis were murdered as the result of the United States' criminal war of aggression on that country. Obama has heralded America's "success" in Iraq as "an extraordinary achievement."

The continuing murders in Pakistan and Afghanistan are so numerous and so regular that they barely merit notice for more than a few days, at least as far as the United States government and most Americans are concerned. Over the recent Thanksgiving weekend, the United States government murdered at least 25 Pakistanis. (NATO and the U.S. government are indistinguishable in any matter of importance, in any matter of murders of this kind.) Pakistan is deeply angry and unhappy. The United States government and Obama are concerned only to the extent that Pakistan's unhappiness might interfere with the U.S.'s intention to dominate and control that part of the world. The U.S. government and Obama aren't particularly upset about the murders, but about the strategic problem that might result from the murders.

On the same weekend: "Six children were among seven civilians killed in a NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Thursday." The story has already fallen into the well of forgetfulness. It must be the case that incidents like this occur at least once a day given the number of military operations ordered by the Murderer-in-Chief and carried out by those who follow his orders. Perhaps only one innocent person is killed. "Only" one. Perhaps we should ask "whoever's left out there" what that one loss signifies.

Earlier in November, there was this story:

Last Friday, I met a boy, just before he was assassinated by the CIA. Tariq Aziz was 16, a quiet young man from North Waziristan, who, like most teenagers, enjoyed soccer. Seventy-two hours later, a Hellfire missile is believed to have killed him as he was travelling in a car to meet his aunt in Miran Shah, to take her home after her wedding. Killed with him was his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan.

Over 2,300 people in Pakistan have been killed by such missiles carried by drone aircraft such as the Predator and the Reaper, and launched by remote control from Langley, Virginia. Tariq and Waheed brought the known total of children killed in this way to 175, according to statistics maintained by the organisation I work for, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

...

Unless the CIA can prove that Tariq Aziz posed an imminent threat (as the White House's legal advice stipulates a targeted killing must in order for an attack to be carried out), or that he was a key planner in a war against the US or Pakistan, the killing of this 16 year old was murder, and any jury should convict the CIA accordingly.

These are only a few of the stories we know about, and only from a very brief period of time. Countless other murders take place all over the world, and we can only gather the dim outlines of what is occurring. This is not to mention numerous lesser acts of cruelty and violence, many of which will alter lives in searing ways, for all the desolate years to follow.

Consider:

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries.

...

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command [SOCOM] spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence -- in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

...

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

No minimally decent human being would choose to have anything whatsoever to do with a government which systematically engages in acts of this kind. This is true of anyone who is part of the national governing apparatus, or wishes to be. It is most especially true of anyone who wishes to become president. Even if a person declares his or her absolute commitment to ending all of this, it is impossible for one person to do it. The massive bureaucracy of death which carries out these acts was erected over decades; all such bureaucratic monstrosities take on lives of their own. It will not be dismantled by a single individual overnight, or even in a matter of months or probably years. That means the murders will go on.

It may be that at some point this machinery of death will be brought down comparatively quickly. If that happens, it will not be the result of one person's actions, but of calamitous events on a momentous scale: widening war, catastrophic natural disasters, widespread financial collapse, and/or massive social unrest and violence. In the meantime, a reverence for life demands that we see the Death State exactly for what it is -- and walk away to the fullest extent we can.

That is not the course Barack Obama chose. He wanted to be, he now is the Murderer-in-Chief. He is proud of his achievement.

Thus, the words I wrote over five years ago continue to hold a relevance and meaning that fill me with the deepest despair. I desperately wish that I had never had cause to compose this passage, and that I did not feel compelled to repeat it now:

If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer -- a murderer who is sane and fully aware of the acts he has committed -- can remain steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of remorse, you should not wonder any longer.

The United States government is such a murderer. It conducts its murders in full view of the entire world. It even boasts of them. Our government, and all our leading commentators, still maintain that the end justifies the means -- and that even the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents is of no moral consequence, provided a sufficient number of people can delude themselves into believing the final result is a "success."

...

We can appeal all we want to "American exceptionalism," but any "exceptionalism" that remains ours is that of a mass murderer without a soul, and without a conscience. ... It is useless to appeal to any "American" sense of morality: we have none. It does not matter how immense the pile of corpses grows: we will not surrender or even question our delusion that we are right, and that nothing we do can be profoundly, unforgivably wrong.

Source

Jay -Z: Most People With A Conscience Wouldn’t Mind Paying More In Taxes

2011-12-09T11:38:00.000-06:00

By Tanya Somanader on Dec 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm

More and more of America’s wealthy are coming out in support of paying their fair share in taxes. Two dozen millionaires came to Capitol Hill recently simply to say, “tax me.” Now, multiple Grammy Award-winning hip hop artist Jay-Z is joining the chorus. “I wouldn’t mind paying more taxes if it went to the things that really mattered,” he told CNN, adding that, if the money goes towards health care, education, and to help people, “most people with a conscience, with some integrity, and moral fiber wouldn’t have any problem paying more taxes.” Watch it:

The “99 problems” artist also applauded the 99 Percent. “I think it is saying a lot all over the world that people can get their voice out there and fight for a better world, education and health care, and poverty. There’s so many different fights that we must take on,” he said. “It’s good. It’s a good thing that young people are getting out and getting their voice heard.”

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/09/386142/jay-z-taxes-more/

The Racial Wealth Gap

2011-12-08T09:18:00.000-06:00

submitted by bostonreview

From “The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold,” a report by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy. For more on this, read Prudence L. Carter’s “The Double Binds of Economic and Racial Inequality” (part of our “Occupy the Future” package).

Moral Relativism

2011-12-06T07:16:00.000-06:00

George Orwell on the Evil Iranian Menace

BY GLENN GREENWALD

The U.S. has long had Iran virtually encircled as a result of the American occupation of Afghanistan on Iran’s Eastern border, its invasion of Iraq on its Western border, its NATO ally Turkey hovering on Iran’s Northwestern border, some degree of military relationship with Turkmenistan on Iran’s Northeastern border, and multiple U.S. client states sitting right across the Persian Gulf (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, where the massive U.S. Fifth Fleet is stationed). Additionally, some combination of the U.S. and Israel has bombarded Iran with multiple acts of war over the last year, including explosions onIranian soil, the murder of numerous Iranian nuclear scientists (in which even one of their wives was shot), and sophisticated cyberattacks. Meanwhile, top American political officials from both parties are actively demanding that an Iranian revolutionary cult be removed from the list of Terrorist organizations (just coincidentally, they’re all on the cult’s payroll). In the past decade, the U.S. and/or Israel have invaded, air attacked, and/or occupied Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (to say nothing of the creation of a worldwide torture regime, a system of “black site” prisons around the world to which people were disappeared, and a due-process-free detention camp in the middle of the Caribbean Ocean where many people remain encaged for almost a full decade without charges). During this same time period, Iran has not invaded, occupied or air attacked anyone. Iran, to be sure, is domestically oppressive, but no more so — and in many cases less — than the multiple regimes funded, armed and otherwise propped up by the U.S. during this period. Those are all just facts.

But — despite all of these facts — all Serious people in the U.S. know that Iran is the Aggressor, the Modern Nazis, a True Menace, while the U.S. and Israel are its innocent peace-loving victims. Today, Iran claims that it took down an American drone flying over its country (either by shooting it down or overtaking its control system). Iran has made similar claims before, but this time the U.S. admits it last week lost a drone flying over what it claims was Western Afghanistan (not Eastern Iran). Between the intense wall of secrecy behind which the U.S. government operates and the less-than-reliable nature of the pronouncements from both governments, we’ll likely never know what happened for sure. In any event, this is yet another case of increased tensions between the two nations, and it’s thus time for yet another round of Those Evil, Provocative, Aggressive Iranians (because, of course, no peace-loving nation — such as the U.S. — would ever dare shoot down an Iranian drone if it flew over their soil; in fact, just imagine the massive retaliatory response that would be triggered if Iran were found to be flying drones over American soil, let alone simultaneously killing U.S. scientists, causing explosions on U.S. soil, backing U.S. Terrorist groups, and launching cyber attacks on U.S. nuclear facilities, all while occupying Canada and Mexico with more than 150,000 troops). In light of these belligerent U.S. actions and threats — along with seeing how the U.S. treats countries without a nuclear capability versus those who have one – nothing is more rational than Iran’s wanting a nuclear weapon.

Given the extensive violence and aggression the U.S. has perpetrated, andcontinues to perpetrate, on numerous countries in that region, one might think that not even our political culture could sustain the propagandistic myth that it is Iran that is the aggressor state and the U.S. that is its peace-loving victim. But, of course, one who thought that would be completely wrong. Not only is it a widespread belief, but it’s virtually mandated orthodoxy. But none of that should be at all surprising or confusing, given that 66 years ago, George Orwell — in his 1945 Notes on Nationalism — explained exactly the warped form of thinking that creates this mindset:

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency.Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

I’ve cited that passage before, but it really does explain so very much (and that form of thinking extends beyond nationalism to all tribal loyalties). It’s how a country that has repeatedly invaded, occupied, bombed, and killed civilians in numerous other nations over the last decade can look at a country that has done little or none of that (but has been practically surrounded by all that aggression) and be convinced:they are the Evil aggressors and must be stopped at all costs.

UPDATE: One other point: whenever you dare to suggest a comparison between the United States of America and whatever country happens to be the New Hitlers of the moment, you get accused of moral relativism. That has always struck me as so bizarre, because moral relativismactually refers to precisely what Orwell described: “Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.” As Rudy Giuliani said when asked if waterboarding is “torture”: “It depends on who does it.” That is moral relativism.

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/04/george_orwell_on_the_evil_iranians/

Presidential Pardons Heavily Favor Whites

2011-12-05T13:51:00.000-06:00

Presidential Pardons

Shades of Mercy

Driving While Black

2011-12-05T09:39:00.000-06:00

Black drivers in Milwaukee are stopped seven times as often as white drivers

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - A black Milwaukee driver is seven times as likely to be stopped by city police as a white resident driver, a Journal Sentinel analysis of nearly 46,000 traffic stops has found.

Similarly, Milwaukee police pulled over Hispanic city motorists nearly five times as often as white drivers, according to the review, which took into account the number of licensed drivers by race.

Police also searched black drivers at twice the rate of whites, but those searches didn't lead to higher rates of seized weapons, drugs or stolen property.

The review found that the disparities spanned all seven police districts.

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com

911: Ignorance Is Strength

2011-12-04T16:03:00.000-06:00

Missed the Memo: We Are In a Depression

2011-12-04T08:56:00.000-06:00

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/10/the-prevailing-debate-among-economists-and-historians-is-whether-the-world-economy-faces-the-great-depression-of-the-1930s-or-the-long-depression-of-the-1870s.html