Month: July 2008

Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column


I have had my ups and downs with American media since 911.  In some ways it has given us great human interest stories that deal with the heroism of everyday people who felt a duty to their fellow man and rose to the heights of human potential, but American media has done all that while keeping us in the dark about what our government is doing in our name, what it plans to do, and in many ways complicit in government’s illegality.  Robert Scheer of The Los Angeles Times, once said, “This has been the most shameful era of American media. The media has been sucker-punched completely by this administration.”  While the analogy is a good one, it’s incomplete:  The media was sucker punched because it led with its chin.  The media hasn’t resisted attempts to be a mouthpiece for the Administration, rather it has been a willing accomplice, and the message that compliance was absolutely necessary, was delivered by a military government that made it perfectly clear, especially during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that dissent from media would not be tolerated.  Bullying outlets with “access” or allowing climates where media outlet representatives were in seriously jeopardy of death, government has made it clear it wants absolute power to control the message passed on to its citizens. We blogged about one such example here, where people who wanted the public to see the true casualties of war were denied oand  fired from their jobs.

I have always felt media’s role in promulgating, cheerleading, and supporting the Iraq war bordered on criminality, despite their cries of self-cleansing to absolve themselves of that image and while not saying that Bill Moyers has spoken in a piece that I liked very much and which I want to excerpt here.

Our media institutions, deeply embedded in the power structures of society, are not providing the information that we need to make our democracy work. To put it another way, corporate media consolidation is a corrosive social force. It robs people of their voice in public affairs and pollutes the political culture. And it turns the debates about profound issues into a shouting match of polarized views promulgated by partisan apologists who trivialize democracy while refusing to speak the truth about how our country is being plundered.

*snip*

These organizations’ self-styled mandate is not to hold public and private power accountable, but to aggregate their interlocking interests. Their reward is not to help fulfill the social compact embodied in the notion of “We, the people,” but to manufacture news and information as profitable consumer commodities.

Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent at the same time that it enhances the power of the state and the privileged interests that the state protects. And nothing characterizes corporate media today more than its disdain toward the fragile nature of modern life and its indifference toward the complex social debate required of a free and self-governing people.

*snip*

Across the media landscape, the health of our democracy is imperiled. Buffeted by gale force winds of technological, political and demographic forces, without a truly free and independent press, this 250-year-old experiment in self-government will not make it. As journalism goes, so goes democracy.

Mergers and buyouts change both old and new media. They bring a frenzied focus on cost-cutting, while fattening the pockets of the new owners and their investors. The result: journalism is degraded through the layoffs and buyouts of legions of reporters and editors.

*snip*

…we needed to know the truth about Iraq. The truth could have spared that country from rack and ruin, saved thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and freed hundreds of billions of dollars for investment in the American economy and infrastructure.

But as reporters at Knight Ridder – one of the few organizations that systematically and independently set out to challenge the claims of the administration – told us at the time, and as my colleagues and I reported in our PBS documentary Buying the War, and as Scott McClellan has now confessed, and as the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed in June, the Bush administration deceived Americans into supporting an unprovoked war on another country. And it did so using erroneous and misleading intelligence – and with the complicity of the dominant media. It has led to a conflict that, instead of being over quickly and bloodlessly as predicted, continues to this day into its sixth year.

We now know that a neoconservative is an arsonist who sets a house on fire and six years later boasts that no one can put it out. You couldn’t find a more revealing measure of the state of the dominant media today than the continuing ubiquitous presence on the air and in print of the very pundits and experts, self-selected message multipliers of a disastrous foreign policy, who got it all wrong in the first place. It just goes to show, when the bar is low enough, you can never be too wrong.

The dominant media remains in denial about their role in passing on the government’s unverified claims as facts. That’s the great danger. It’s not simply that they dominate the story we tell ourselves publicly every day. It’s that they don’t allow other alternative competing narratives to emerge, against which the people could measure the veracity of all the claims.

Back in the day, our parents would gather the morning paper, sit down for breakfast, read and discuss what they found in that one publication.  Now, that simply isn’t enough.  Because the media no longer feels the responsibility to inform the public in the true sense of the word inform, it is up to each person to get the information they need from as many sources as possible in order to make knowledgeable opinions about what is going on in the world around them.

Israeli occupation worse than apartheid


It all started back in November, 1975 when the cry went out from the UN that zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination and that cry has been resonating ever since. For those who live under Israeli occupation it is no secret their lives are a living hell, but now others who have lived under similar conditions are stepping forth to say what the Palestinians are living under is even worse than their former oppression. One of the more prominent among them Bishop Desmond Tutu has spoken out against Israeli apartheid as early as 2002, when he said,

“it (Israeli treatment of Palestinians) reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.”

More recently another group of people back from a visit to the occupied territories has said the same thing, that Israeli occupation is worse than South African apartheid ever was. That should come as no surprise as Israel and South Africa had warm relations during the early ’70s and ’80s with some even speculating that Israel was responsible for South Africa’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. A pariah state such as South Africa could only find allies in states equally oppressive towards its indigenous citizens and the fact that Israel counted itself such an ally is telling. Life for Palestinians in occupied Palestine when witnessed without the Israeli filter is a study in the art of oppression. Let us hope their struggle will also parallel the struggle of South Africans with the conclusion being a free, sovereign and viable Palestine.

Quote of the day


Perhaps this maybe a feature of the blog, like the No Comment photo editorial which is posted without any accompanying script.  I may add a line or two about today’s quote which I ran across from Undernews’ July 10 edition.

To say I’ve been disappointed in Obama is an understatement.  His vote granting telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution for bowing to the pressure of a menacing federal government really bothered me. It appears it bothered others too.  I’ve also been frustrated with his position on the Iraq war and his inability to stand up to the Islamphobes who are tailing him and his campaign.  So I post the quote and give a hat tip to Undernews.

Obama, the corporate-owned Democrat Party, and the corporate media are performing their roles perfectly: taking the energies of dissent in the U.S. and steering them into a dead end.

Propelling the propaganda, part deux


The US administration has asked Americans to sacrifice their lives to fight the war on terror, while it tries to keep them deprived of information particularly about the failures of that war. The leaders are smart enough to remember the lessons from the Vietnam war in terms of how to spin war while keeping enthusiasm high for warmongering, but they weren’t smart enough to keep us out of a losing proposition. Any and all images which depict the human suffering of the war are kept out of the media because such images tend to evoke the emotions that are as self-preserving, instinctual as self defense because this administration, in fact the federal government of the United States is consumed with the notion of war and it needs all able bodied people it can muster to fight, even when that fight is not in the best interest of the people.

So, the news that people want to bring to America that truly reflects the costs of war has to be suppressed. What I found interesting about this story of the public affairs director of Arlington Cemetery was even after she secured the permission of the families of those being buried in Arlington, the Army tried to limit access to such funerals even though such limitations were baseless. I love how people want your enthusiasm, your patriotism, but only on their terms. Support the troops has been the battle cry for this war, yet the reality is so much more different. Hiding behind empty slogans is not characteristic of a great Republic, but rather of a banana republic.

Divine Revenge


Islamophobes would have you believe such a headline as the one above would issue from the hearts and minds of Muslims, but today’s news highlights that is not the case. Phony wars bring out the worse in a society; the realization that lives are being sacrificed and lost for anything less than a noble cause sometimes brings on a certain blood lust that is difficult to satisfy. Fringe elements pop up and take center stage for their 15 minutes of fame only to be moved out by someone or something more sinister and diabolical or stupid and dangerous.

So this news about a group of Christians who are celebrating the death of an Army specialist because war casualties are divine revenge for America tolerating gays and lesbians should come as no surprise in an America consumed with death, destruction and the war on terror. It didn’t help that Army specialist that she was pregnant when she was killed, not on a distant battlefield, but rather the one on/in the homefront. Ironies are all over the place with this story. Westboro Baptist Church proclaims God Hates the US military, contrary to the claims of others that the US military is on a mission to stamp out evil, or words to that effect, uttered by the President. (One of the ironies then is that the most proselytizing Army in America’s history is viewed by some as antithetical to Christian morality?) But according to Westboro, God hates everything about America including California.

It’s no doubt this is a fringe group of Christians, but they speak what other more main stream Christians probably feel. I know I’m using the term “mainstream” loosely. Many of America’s finest Christian leaders have said things that are in close proximity to what appears on Westboro’s website. Fortunately, there are no cries from anyone calling for Christiandom to reject the obscene theology of this group of heretics, like there are whenever something is done by people calling themselves “Muslims” or done in the name of “Islam”. When such atrocities are done with an Islamic favor, no amount of denial or denouncement done by any number of Muslims is enough to satisfy the racism that paints Islam with the broad brush of the actions of just a very few. So that’s the other irony I take from this news story. Somehow, people are reasonable enough to understand Westboro is a house of cards, a church of kooks, and the best way to deal with them is to laugh at them, or ignore them, and move on as a society, not getting obsessed with them. I have had my laugh at them; take a look at their website and you will too, I hope.

Onward Christian soldiers


While browsing the news a couple of items caught my attention. Fellow blogger Xymphora has talked consistently about the war for the Jews being carried out in Iraq and which ultimately will take place in other areas of the Middle East. I see the connection in bits and spurts of news coming from that part of the world, and this latest news really underscores what Xymphora says. Many American soldiers are beginning to see the senselessness of the war in Iraq, the unholiness of murder, and since WMDs were not found in Iraq many understand fighting there is not self defense, as they were led to believe when they signed up and went there. Many have turned to suicide, others to drugs, others to religion and some as the story linked to above away from religion. What I found interesting about young Jeremy Hall’s conversion was his statement that the United States military has become a Christian organization and therefore he has found himself at the brunt end of it’s anger just as the Iraqi Muslims he was fighting. He’s been discharged and is now suing the Defense Department.

It was the Defense Department’s policy wonks, notably Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Dov Zakheim, Doug Feith, et.al who lied the United States into fighting the Iraqis and the American military on the ground saw first hand the reality that Iraq was NOT a threat to America. To some who served there, Iraq became an ‘atrocity producing situation’, something we’ve written about here at Miscellany101 and it stands to reason; people have figured out the lie and it’s frustrating trying to rationalize the irrational. The WOT, or the war for the Jews, however is being fought on many fronts and the other bit of news which caught my attention is Juan Cole’s piece in Salon which talks about the Justice Deptartment’s new policy that will profile Muslims just because of their religious beliefs. Yes, Muslims must take their place as the dispossessed on the American landscape, just like the Indians, women, Africans, Japanese and others before them but it’s still troubling that after so many examples in American history, government has yet to learn that it functions best when it’s an instrument which enhances human potential by removing barriers not by erecting them.

Misinformed culture


I received a panicked priority email from a friend that contained this news story of a Pakistani man who killed his daughter who wanted to get out of an arranged marriage. Of course the Islamophobes have seized on this story to denigrate the presence of Muslims in this country. I have yet to hear of the thousands of cases where this has happened, if indeed this is a religious custom, and not a cultural one but it will be trumpeted as what Islam stands for by the “crazies”. The idea of “arranged marriages” seems to be widespread among Muslims and non Muslims alike from certain parts of the world. Witness the Indian neighbor in the article who was in an arranged marriage himself

Anand Mehta, who is from India, lives nearby. He is in an arranged marriage as well. While he is happily married, Mehta understands the staunch cultural stigma against divorce.

“People in our community take it a step further; if your marriage doesn’t work out, there’s no way out of it,” said Mehta, who came to the U.S. more than 20 years ago.

What I find most troubling, besides the loss of a life that had the right under her religion to negotiate her marriage in the way she saw fit, is the notion by some that their customs supersede the principles of their religion and of the society in which they live. No doubt the father of that family thought moving to America offered he and his family better opportunities, meaning there was something in his own country that was lacking or that he needed to get away from. What he failed to realize, or is indifferent about, is his actions are both wrong religiously and socially, and he will have to pay the price for his crime. That became incumbent on the society, holding people accountable for their behavior, the moment he chose to set foot on American soil.

Iraqi prime minister rebuffed


Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for a timetable for withdrawal of US forces from his country, which the Pentagon reacted to immediately in essence telling him they’ll do whatever they please, whenever  they please in Iraq.  Such rejections have been made continuously by all branches of government, from the executive to the legislative and the military,  throughout the US occupation of Iraq.  What I found interesting however, is the play on words response from the Pentagon reacting to Iraqi concerns about the the US-Iraqi security pact under negotiations.

Whitman (Pentagon spokesperson) said the United States had made clear “that we have no long term desires to have forces permanently stationed in Iraq.”

Here you can find a very nice description of how deceptive the above statement from the Pentagon spokesman is.  Among the points made were these:

Iraqi officials quickly figured out that the real significance of the draft’s wording on access to military bases was that it contained neither a time limit on access to Iraqi bases nor any restrictions on the U.S. to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security”.

Authorization for such operations was called “temporary”, but the absence of any time limit makes that seemingly reassuring term meaningless as well.

The Bush administration’s renunciation of “permanent bases” was a ploy to lull the key committees of the U.S. Congress on an issue which had aroused many Democratic critics of the war, who had repeatedly used that term in demanding a legal commitment on the issue.

The Iraqis don’t understand minutae, or nit-picking as we call it, so the subtleties of US wording might go completely over their heads.  They can however cause problems by denying the US an agreement before the end of 2008 when the UN mandate for US troops in Iraq ends, and that’s why the US is so desperate to conclude an agreement before that time.  Stay tuned!

POV on Obama’s Muslim “problem”


A very well written editorial on Obama’s senseless way of dealing with critics who call him a “Muslim” in an attempt to negatively influence the campaign. The writer of this piece does such a good job expressing my own sentiments that I’ll let his words speak for me:

I WISH Barack Obama were a Muslim. Better that than having supercilious staffers whisk women in Islamic head scarves out of photo-ops. Better that than telling Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the nation’s first Muslim congressman, not to come help Obama in Iowa and North Carolina.

Better that than wooing red states by wobbling before the modern equivalent of the Red Scare. In his year-and-a-half-long run for president, Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but no mosque. This has the musty feel of light-skinned African-Americans passing for white, paranoid over daylight visits from dark-skinned relatives.

Obama’s campaign has been far more inclusive than John McCain’s. Yet as of late, Obama’s handlers are so bent on passing their biracial, binationally-raised man as a pure-blooded American – a new commercial plays up his “values straight from the Kansas heartland” – that they are reinforcing the perception that Muslim Americans are impure.

Asked what he would say to Obama if he had the chance, Bilal Kaleem, executive director of the Boston chapter of the Muslim American Society, said, “It’s a tough question, and it’s sad that it’s a tough question. . . . I would suggest that he might have to do the same thing [on Islam] that he did on race. He addressed it head-on in a landmark speech. He gave his speech in a mature way. If he could speak in the same way to that, it could be inspiring for our country and the world.”

It is understandable why Barack Hussein Obama and his handlers suffer from PTSD – post-traumatic smear disorder. Political woodpeckers hammer falsehoods from the right. Fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, when asked whether Obama is a Muslim, tackily peeped, “there is nothing to base that on, as far as I know.” Despite nearly hitting the third rail over his former Christian pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, only 58 percent of Americans think Obama is a Christian, according to a Newsweek poll in May.

It has been so outrageous that Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, an independent and a Jewish American, said the “whisper campaign” was “wedge politics at its worst.” Kaleem said of Obama, “We feel sympathy for him because it’s not just him who should be called out; it is also the people in the media and politics who made a cottage industry out of him being a wolf in sheep’s clothing and that all Muslims are subversive.”

But the sympathy may be short-lived as Obama’s “Fight the Smears” part of his website has some Muslims feeling betrayed by an over-the-top effort to denounce every Obama-is-a-Muslim claim as a “lie” and saying, “Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.” How about something like, “Senator Obama is a Christian who, having lived in the world’s largest Muslim country [Indonesia], having traveled in Pakistan and having many Muslim friends, appreciates American pluralism like no other candidate in US history”?

A more positive approach by Obama of affirming Muslims while affirming his Christianity actually fits the nation’s values. A new Pew Research survey finds Americans more open than ever to a range of religious viewpoints. Muslim Americans themselves, according to a 2007 Pew survey, are “largely assimilated, happy with their lives,” and “decidedly American in their outlook, values, and attitudes.”

This obviously all came together for Ellison’s election, as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has noted that his district has more Lutherans than Muslims. Ellison this week told The New York Times about Obama, “A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way.”

A lot of Muslims are waiting because, seven years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an undercurrent of suspicion remains. In the 2007 Pew survey, a third of Muslim Americans said that within the last year, they had either been treated with suspicion, called offensive names, profiled by police, or even attacked. Kaleem, a graduate of MIT, said he sometimes is asked during grant proposals how radical his group is.

“In a way,” Kaleem said, “it is good that these missteps have come out in public so we can start talking about the undercurrent, which is the real issue.”

Obama himself has said “Christians and people of other faiths lived very comfortably” with each other when he lived in Indonesia. It is time for him to live comfortably with Muslims in his campaign.

In a 2006 trip to Chad, Obama issued the Muslim greeting for peace. A wise Obama would say “assalamu alaikum” at home, too.

A troubling development


I read this article and my jaw hit the floor!

The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

*snip*

Among factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person’s race or ethnicity. Law enforcement officials say the policy would help them find terrorists before they strike.

“We don’t know what we don’t know. And the object is to cut down on that,” said one FBI official.

It might not be the same as making someone wear a yellow star of David, or bringing them to a congressional committee to answer questions about their supposed loyalty but it’s pretty close to that.  One only needs to be a Muslim American with a funny sounding name, who owns, legally, a firearm and be the target of an FBI probe.  Such a description applies to folks like me and several million others who have done nothing wrong.  This hearkens back to the sorry days of American history when people were persecuted because of the ideas they held, the color of their skin and now possibly their religious preference or ethnic origin.  As Yogi Berra once said, this is like deja vu all over again.

A shot across the bow


Iraq is the neighbor of Iran and that fact is not lost on those in power in Iraq, despite the “reassuring” presence of American soldiers.  Exerting what little they have left of their sovereignty, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nur al-Maliki recently said:

he was concerned about military pressure aimed at Iran regarding the country’s nuclear activities, adding he would not permit U.S. forces to use Iraqi land, airspace and waterways as a means for attacking states in the region.

He said the Mideast is in a “fragile” state and “fomenting tension in the region and pushing for military action against Tehran could wreak havoc on the entire region, including Iraq.”

It’s quite possible Maliki is using his objection to the US attacking Iran from Iraqi soil as a negotiation tool for the stalled  US/Iraqi security agreement .  Even though the last NIE on Iran stated unequivocally that Iran had stopped its weapons program in ’03 and was at least 10 years from being able to make a nuclear device, a preemptive strike is almost certain to get the Iranians to hasten those estimates considerably.

Catapulting the propaganda on Iran


I’m surprised this article found its way into print on the pages of the Washington Post, but here it is, detailing how one CIA operative was forced to change reality to suit the propaganda of the Bush administration. Nothing new here, however, and it certainly won’t stop the drum bets for war, but it is a reference for future, ‘I told you so’ statements.

A former CIA operative who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb.

The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time.

The former operative alleged in a 2004 lawsuit that the CIA fired him after he repeatedly clashed with senior managers over his attempts to file reports that challenged the conventional wisdom about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Key details of his claim have not been made public because they describe events the CIA deems secret.

The consensus view on Iran’s nuclear program shifted dramatically last December with the release of a landmark intelligence report that concluded that Iran halted work on nuclear weapons design in 2003. The publication of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran undermined the CIA’s rationale for censoring the former officer’s lawsuit, said his attorney, Roy Krieger.

“On five occasions he was ordered to either falsify his reporting on WMD in the Near East, or not to file his reports at all,” Krieger said in an interview.

The stupidity of media reporters or what a dumbass!


Has anyone read this rather strange article by a reporter who fancied himself a supporter of the WOT? He wanted to experience what it felt to undergo waterboarding to decide for himself and presumably his readers whether it constitutes torture. Well surprise, surprise. He thinks it does or at least constitutes the “language” of torture. (huh?) No doubt this is print media’s version of TV feature or soft news. Waterboarding has been declared torture for centuries, whether we want to admit it or not, so Hitchins isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know but it appears this was Hitchens’ mid life crisis where he wanted to experience, a rite of passage into senior adulthood. This desktop warrior couldn’t help but reiterate his support for those who do the hard job of torture, however, and his words of support for what they do brought on the gag reflex in me as if I myself was being waterboarded. Respectfully, Mr. Hitchens’ article is nothing more than the ramblings of a mad man who needed to fill space for his magazine.

The war on terror+humanitarian relief=the war on Islam and chaos of muslim societies


I have always been perplexed by the war, either militarily or psychologically the US is waging in places like Somalia and Sudan. Two of the poorest countries in Africa and the world, I just can’t understand what threat these two pose to the greatest military power in the world. I have heard the rhetoric, ‘America is fighting the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here’, kind of explanation, but what terrorists are they talking about? Shadowy ‘al-Qaeda’ figures seem to be all they can come up with in the assault on Somalia. Take this for instance.

The US has been engaged in a long, low-profile struggle with Islamist forces in Somalia, reported The Christian Science Monitor. A March 3 missile strike against the southern Somali town of Dobley was aimed at preventing violent Islamist militants from taking root in Somalia and spreading through East Africa. Some observers are concerned such efforts could generate greater anti-US sentiment. Islamist groups are regrouping in Somalia, some with more formal ties to al-Qaeda than in the past, says one security observer on the Counterterrorism Blog. The most important group, says Douglas Farah, is Al Shabab. Mr. Farah, citing a US State Department statement. Al-Shabaab is a violent and brutal extremist group with a number of individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda. Many of its senior leaders are believed to have trained and fought with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Somalia has seen intermittent conflict since two separate colonies gained independence from Britain and Italy in 1960, uniting into one country. Historians say tribal and ethnic conflicts fought over access to resources, including water and pastoral country, once fought with bows and spears are now fought with AK-47s.

The US has had a rather undistinguished history with Sudan as well, having attacked Sudan during the Clinton administration for what was later found to be a mistake, when the pharmaceutical plant Al-Shifa was bombed in 1998.

Kroll Associates’ investigation of the U.S. missile attack had apparently demonstrated the sheer vacuum of evidence allegedly linking the facility or its owner to international terrorism, chemical weapons production, and Osama Bin Laden. As the Washington Post reported: “Because of a cupful of soil, the U.S. flattened this Sudanese factory. Now one of the world’s most respected labs, and some of Washington’s most expensive lawyers, say Salah Idris wasn’t making nerve gas for terrorists, just ibuprofen for headaches.”According to the New York Times although “senior national security advisers [had] described Al Shifa as a secret chemical weapons factory financed by bin Laden”, “State Department and CIA officials [now] argue that the government cannot justify its actions.” Rather than manufacturing chemical weapons, the al-Shifa plant “made both medicine and veterinary drugs, according to U.S. and European engineers and consultants who helped build, design and supply the plant.”

At first glance one might think such actions were/are being undertaken by a federal government which seeks to divert public attention from more pressing issues with regard to its policies, foreign or domestic. In the Sudan incident, many critics on the right and the left cried immediately that the bombing in Sudan was undertaken at a time when Clinton was dealing with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and this was his attempt to relieve himself from that spotlight. Today the US is upset with the way the Sudan is handling its domestic policy in Darfur, a western province of that country, and wants to intervene. The way US officials and others are doing that is quite amusing; claiming they have the best interests of the black, African, Muslim people of Darfur, Sudan the US wants humanitarian aid delivered even under force of arms. By raising the specter of “genocide” which means countries can respond militarily without violating treaties, laws or international agreements, to save the lives of those threatened, the US is insisting on a military presence in the Sudan. But what’s the point of it all? In a word, OIL with a twist. Oil, Israel and Logistics= OIL.

Sudanese oil is found in areas not affected by the conflict in Darfur, notably the southern region of Sudan. That part of the country was plagued with a civil war with the central government for over 20 years, but now there is peace in south Sudan, so what happens after that? Fighting breaks out in the western province of Darfur and with it cries by governments and celebrities alike, people on the right and on the left of the political spectrum to “intervene” to stop the fighting, and with force if necessary. Nevermind that the humanitarian crisis in Sudan doesn’t really exist, or that such calls to action in support of Darfur weren’t made during the 20+ years of the southern Sudanese conflict, what’s important is an excuse is needed to justify a military presence which like the one in Iraq is designed to worsen an already bad crisis, and allow for the eventual exploration of OIL under western auspices. Because of it’s strategic location on the “horn of Africa”, USAFRICOM, responsible for U.S. military operations in and military relations with 53 African nations – an area of responsibility covering all of the African continent was formed on the initiative of the African Oil Policy Initiative Group in or about the same time as cries for intervention in Darfur were raised in the corporate media. At the same time, civil war in Somalia and the US backing of Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia took place to the south of Sudan. None of this is coincidental.

The timeline under which these things happened is clear when viewed against the backdrop of what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, two places where large, vast oil reserves have been the target of large oil companies for a very long time. Current US policy in those two places of the world is also driven by oil interests. The reason for “picking” on these two poor, underdeveloped countries is quite simply about the natural resources that lie underneath their territory. That has always been the dilemma between the west and the east since the development of the modern west; how to meet its growing demands for the earth’s natural resources controlling and dominating those resources in faraway lands while appearing to all concerned to be benign about such manipulation. The pretext for war, i.e. fighting terrorism, or providing humanitarian relief, whereby the citizens of the “west” are made to feel the necessity of sacrificing their sons and daughters to go fight and die in these distant lands has been the job of spokespersons (in and out of government), celebrities and the corporate media. Such lies have done a lot to incite fervor and support for this ideal. It is still inexcusable that the largest and mightiest military power in the world sees the need to destroy underdeveloped countries and essentially defenseless people under such transparent guises.

Obama acolytes


You’ve got to give it to the American people.  They are generally warm hearted, fair minded people who don’t like to see others being picked on…..generally.  There are some notable exceptions in the history of the US that won’t get mentioned here, but what did catch my eye was this article where people are saying they won’t allow others to malign Obama’s Muslim heritage, by taking on one of his name for themselves.  This is in response to the far rights assault on Obama  amid the atmosphere of a really paranoid America  fed a continuous diet of fear and loathing of any and all things Islamic.  Nevermind  the fact  that Muslims have been an integral part of  American society almost since the beginning of this country and like everyone else have become contributing, productive members of this society, neocons continue to make it seem as if being Muslim is something one should fear and of which one should be ashamed.  Uh-oh say some who support Obama and I say kudos to you.  I only wish your candidate had the same courage as you and would assert openly ‘it is inaccurate to say I am a Muslim, but it is not a smear to say so.’

U.S. May Be Attacked In 2009


Actually the above is more a plea than a statement. You can almost hear the neocons begging someone to hear the call and respond.  If you’ve ever talked to one or are one yourself notice how they appeal to one’s courage, misplaced or missing, or their masculinity when confronted with someone with whom they disagree; inciting one to irrational anger and outbursts to get one to a desired goal, violence or chaos.  It’s worked really well, and with all the media attention and movies which focus on violence perpetuated by Muslims, both the real and imagined, it’s quite natural some Muslims would think those are the appropriate responses to assaults on their “honor”, “dignity”, etc.  Of course if Muslims don’t respond the way neocons urge them on too, they, the neocons,  can always dust off their tried and true old Osama bin Laden extensive video collection and send it to the nearest compliant media outlet to air at the appropriate time in order to scare the masses to act in a certain manner.

What is significant is the way in which neocons are able to manipulate the reaction and response of Muslims  by pushing certain buttons, or emphasizing issues they know will get the kind of response they want to highlight.  The Danish cartoon depiction of the last Prophet is an example.  Not much has been said about the re-release of those cartoons because they didn’t elicit the type of volatile images the West has been so quick to highlight. It’s unfortunate that a group of people are so predictable and that their reaction, natural though it may seem to them (i.e.Muslims) is used against them, but this is just one of the many tactics neocons use in their fight against Islam.   Pronouncements such as the one made by Senator Lieberman should be viewed cunningly and warily by the Muslim world for the hidden messages it tries to plant and the reactions it hopes to illicit.