Category: Politics

Stunning words from the mainstream


Paul Craig Roberts is a maverick of sorts, ever since he left the Reagan administration and began writing editorials about current events.  He still reflects fondly on Reagan, the conservative most modern day conservatives like to pattern themselves after, but speaks disdainfully of GW Bush and the people who surrounded him, calling them ‘brownshirts with the same level of intelligence and morals as Hitler’s enthusiastic supporters.’ Amen to that.  However, he has written a damning editorial on the war on terror, written by the way, at about the same time as Dick Cheney’s rather high treasonous remarks, which speaks volumes on how that war has been carried out and whether it’s real.  I’d like to produce exercepts of it below. He does a far better job of saying it than I ever could.

According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.

If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.

The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion.

There were no al Qaeda in Iraq until the Americans brought them there by invading and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who kept al Qaeda out of Iraq. The Taliban is not a terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan under Muslim law. The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are the Americans Bush sent to Afghanistan to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet state on the Afghan people.

Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little remains of Palestine after Israel’s illegal annexations. Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same sense that the Israeli government and the US government are terrorist organizations. In an effort to bring Hamas under Israeli hegemony, Israel employs terror bombing and assassinations against Palestinians. Hamas replies to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual rockets.

Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial expansion.

The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorist organizations” for no other reason than the US is on Israel’s side of the conflict. There is no objective basis for the US Department of State’s “finding” that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. It is merely a propagandistic declaration.

The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists for Fox “News” are forever claiming that Iran arms the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents and Hamas. But where are the arms? To deal with American tanks, insurgents have to construct homemade explosive devices out of artillery shells. After six years of conflict the insurgents still have no weapon against the American helicopter gunships. Contrast this “arming” with the weaponry the US supplied to the Afghans three decades ago when they were fighting to drive out the Soviets.

The films of Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza show large numbers of Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging out the dead and maimed, and none of these people are armed. A person would think that by now every Palestinian would be armed, every man, woman, and child. Yet, all the films of the Israeli attack show an unarmed population. Hamas has to construct homemade rockets that are little more than a sign of defiance. If Hamas were armed by Iran, Israel’s assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers.

The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed.

The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated arms to the Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. These assertions are propagandistic justifications for killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.


American academics stand up to be counted


Joining a growing list of people who are protesting the Israeli genocide in Gaza, American members of academe have come out to call for a cultural boycott of Israel, with five goals it wants to achieve.

“Refraining from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions that do not vocally oppose Israeli state policies against Palestine,” “promoting divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions,” and “supporting Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.”

The group’s press release continues,

“We believe that non-violent external pressure on Israel, in the form of an academic, cultural and economic boycott of Israel, can help bring an end to the ongoing massacres of civilians and an end [to] the occupation of Gaza and Palestine” — with “Palestine” referring to the West Bank land occupied by Israel since the 1967 war

explained David Lloyd, a professor of English at the University of Southern California.  I am glad to see Americans joining in the initiative and I note that they very clearly say they are interested ina  non-violent form of protestation, not something that is designed literally to exterminate the Jewish state.  What this boycott is asking for is a modification of Israeli behavior that will ensure its existence as well as that of its neighbors, the Palestinians.  It is NOT a zero sum game but you can expect the Israelis will portray it that way.

My heroes of the day


I want to congratulate two men who took a principled  stand at the risk of their careers and even their lives when you look at who they are and what they represent, to categorically denounce positions taken that were detrimental to the people suffering in Gaza.

Tayyip Erdogan, whose country Turkey is trying to get admitted into the European Union as well as NATO probably jeopardized those chances when he made an impassioned plea at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland against the Israeli aggression and genocide in Gaza.  He criticised the audience of international officials and corporate chiefs for applauding Peres’s emotional defence of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead. Not sparing any measure, Erdogan said what needs to be said to an Israel that seems to think it is above reproach.  You can view his comments, translated into English, here

Imagine all the things in store for Turkey now that he, its prime minister, did what he did?  Threats will be made against the country’s application to the world bodies it wants to enter, as well as against Erdogan himself and the usual cries of anti-semitism will come from every corner of the world, but the substance of his remarks, that Israel engaged in wholesale slaughter of a population, much like that which occured between Turkey and Armenia which will be thrown in Erdogan’s face, will be ignored.  Nevertheless, kudos for Tayyip Erdogan for being principled.

My other hero is Mohammad Baredei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who said a BBC decision not to air an aid appeal for victims in Gaza violates the rules of basic human decency which are there to help vulnerable people, irrespective of who is right or wrong.  The BBC said it wasn’t airing the appeal because, now hold on to your seats, it would get in the way of their objectivity in covering the events in Gaza.  Several other channels in England aired the appeal, but the BBC and SkyNews, owned by James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch, *ahem* refused to do so.  As a result Baradei has cancelled planned interviews with the BBC, without mentioning how long such a boycott would last.  Kudos to him as well.  He too chose principle over political expediency, taking a position in light of today’s news which is necessary to stem the Israeli juggernaut that refuses to accept any criticism or consequences of and for its actions.   Here is the highly milquetoast ad the BBC refused to air.

America’s Iran jones


What is it with US policy makers that they have to go off and antagonize Iran at every chance they get, even when it’s not necessary?  Two threads have appeared in news stories today centered around Iran with this trend as if to anticipate and undermine what Obama is going to say in a letter he’s putting together to send to that country’s leaders.

Before getting onto those two themes, let me say I’ve always been distressed at how government has this seamy undercurrent that works to under cut what official Washington is doing, and both the official and unofficial seem to like the give and take in this relationship of setting, revising, ignoring, cancelling policy.  It would seem to me once you get  your marching orders from the CiC you take them and run with them, not go off and rub his nose in them with your own pronouncements, but that’s what it seems Robert Gates, Defense Secretary has done.

When U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates accused Iran of “subversive activity” in Latin America Tuesday, it raised the question whether he is trying to discourage President Barack Obama from abandoning the hard-line policy of coercive diplomacy toward Iran he has favored for nearly three decades.

In his Senate armed services committee testimony Tuesday, Gates said Iran was “opening a lot of offices and a lot of fronts behind which they interfere in what is going on.” Gates offered no further explanation for what sounded like a Cold War-era propaganda charge against the Soviet Union.

Gates has made no secret of his skepticism about any softening of U.S. policy toward Iran. In response to a question at the National Defense University last September on how he would advise the next president to improve relations with Iran, Gates implicitly rejected what he called “outreach” to Iran as useless.

Gates’ 1992 sabotage of the Bush plan for reciprocating Iran goodwill relied in part on making public charges against Iran that created a more unfavorable political climate in Washington for such a policy.

It will be interesting to see what Obama’s reaction to all this political posturing Gates is making so early in the Administration’s efforts towards rapprochement with Iran. We will  be able to take measure of Obama depending on his response; if he lets Gates continue with his “subversive” activity he can be viewed as a weak President undeserving of a second term, the nation’s trust, or respect of his “underlings”.  If he kicks Gates out so soon after asking him to stay on as Defense Secretary he’ll find himself facing criticism for not being a stable administrator or able to hold his people in check, preferring to give in to his impetuous side and getting rid of them whimsically.  The perfect damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The second salvo against Obama comes from of all places the Likud party’s boisterous and wrong Benjamin Netanyahu who says the Iranian nuclear weapons are more a problem than the global economy.  Netanyahu is great for hyperbole, probably something he picked up as a result of his public school education in Cheltenham, Pa. back in the day.  This we expect from Bibi who likes to somehow challenge the masculinity of America’s leaders by questioning their ability to take on his enemies for his benefit.  Using his typical adroit slight of foot maneuvers he turns everything that has to deal with anything into Iranian nukes.

Asked about achieving peace in Gaza, Netanyahu swiftly turned his answer to Iran, which he said is in a “100-yard dash” to get nuclear weapons.

*snip*

“We have had two wars with two Iranian proxies in two years and Persia has now two bases on the eastern Mediterranean,” said Netanyahu, referring to this month’s brutal fighting in Gaza against Hamas and Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“I think we are going to have to deal with neutralizing the power of the mother regime,” he said. “The Hamas stronghold would be about as important, if Iranian power was neutralized, as Cuba was when the Soviet Union became irrelevant.”

What Netanyahu doesn’t tell you about his metaphor  is while the Soviet Union became irrelevant because American ideas triumphed a military dictatorship without the US having to fire a single shot at the Soviet Union, Iran’s leadership and in fact all of that country has to be laid to waste militarily, according to the Netanyahu school of thought in order for his enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, to become irrelevant. Typical.  In any event, this kind of bluster is to be expected from this quarter, and Obama would do well to ignore it and press on with his agenda, not that of an intractable and petulant “ally”.  Unfortunately, he can’t so easily dismiss Netanyahu, and if Gates continues with his own agenda as well, it might be even more difficult.  Bush may be gone, but the neocons are still lurking and haven’t given up hope of re-establishing themselves in policy making  positions or of somehow influencing policy.

Israel’s existence is not in question


In the minds of the Arab world, Israel exists and will exist and they are no threat to Israel.  The problem is Israel is a threat to its neighbors; inspite of that there has been a muted response from Israel’s enemies.  Juan Cole offers a translation of Ayatollah Sistani’s comments on the Israeli aggression and even I am shocked at how mild mannered it is.

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

The beloved Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip have, since noon yesterday, been subjected to a vicious attack and to continual strikes that have resulted so far in hundreds of victims being martyred or wounded.

This assault comes after a suffocating blockade to which this oppressed people has been subjected for several months. It had resulted in the creation of harsh humanitarian conditions as a result of lack of food, medicine, fuel and other necessities of daily life for the citizens.

Mere verbal expressions of condemnation and disapproval of what is being done to our Palestinian brethren in Gaza, and of solidarity with them, mean nothing before the immensity of this horrific tragedy to which they are being subjected.

The Arab and Muslim worlds are called upon, more than at any past time, to take practical steps in order to stop this continual aggression and to break this cruel blockade that has been imposed on that proud people.

We ask God, the Exalted, the All-Powerful to take the hands of all and lead them to that wherein lies goodness and righteousness. Verily, he is the All-Hearing, the Gracious.

Meanwhile, while everyone in corporate American media seems to hedge reporting on the massacre taking place in Gaza, Israeli media seems to have a more realistic handle on the catastrophe raging around their corporate media’s head.

Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: “Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn’t be provoked into anger… Not that the bully’s not right – someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!”

Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon,the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation “Cast Lead” is only in its infancy.

poignantly poised Gordon Levy in Haaretz.  With pretty good moral clarity, Tom Segev writes:

It is admittedly impossible to live with daily missile fire, even if virtually no place in the world today enjoys a situation of zero terror. But Hamas is not a terrorist organization holding Gaza residents hostage: It is a religious nationalist movement, and a majority of Gaza residents believe in its path. One can certainly attack it, and with Knesset elections in the offing, this attack might even produce some kind of cease-fire. But there is another historical truth worth recalling in this context: Since the dawn of the Zionist presence in the Land of Israel, no military operation has ever advanced dialogue with the Palestinians.

 

even though his conclusion is somewhat flawed and undermines what preceeded it.  What’s important is these ideas found their way in mainstream publications in Israel, yet aren’t even remotely mirrored here in the States. I could surmise that’s an indication of the moral strength of certain elements of Israeli media which is greater than their American counterparts. Honestly, I can’t account for the differences in reporting, but the American media is not doing any service to its customers by keeping them in the dark about Israeli trangessions, and our politicians are not working in the best interests of our country when they excuse the faults of a regime hell bent on death and destruction usually ending at our expense.

The Republican Epiphany


It’s a bit too late and dishonest, but it’s now being said that Bush is a socialist.  Progressives and people on the left have been saying the same thing but were excoriated for it, accused of being traitors and in so many words told to leave their country.  However, the signs of Bush’s socialist leaning tendencies have been apparent since 911.  That marked the beginning of big government, although that may not quite be the “big government” Republicans now have in mind.

“We can’t be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms,” said Solomon Yue, an Oregon member and co-sponsor of a resolution that criticizes the U.S. government bailouts of the financial and auto industries.

What seems to have particularly drawn the Republicans’ ire is the financial bailouts and that indeed should be enough to upset EVERYONE within the borders of the US.  The Republicans however, are responsible for the mechanism behind the bailouts and how it works.  Although the country has been in a recession for over a year, the Bush Administration made the economy a priority only within the last 6 months and hurried initiatives through Congress, much like they did after 911, scaring all who opposed them with dire political consequences (this was an election year) as well as economical ones for the country.  In that kind of atmosphere all felt obliged to give the Administration what it asked for, but this is how Bush has worked throughout his two terms, turning every issue into a national crisis which could only be solved through the immediate and direct involvment of Government.  At every turn Democrats and Republicans participated in this turns towards “socialism” and very few people, except those on the fringe, complained.

Now, Republicans are claiming Bush is a socialist? Bush is NOT the target of this resolution being mulled within the RNC, rather it is Obama.  In fact the resolution itself won’t be considered until after Obama takes office, but what party officials want to do is tie Obama to Bush’s policies and plaster the “socialist” pejorative to the Democrats to use against them in ’12.  Republicans are quite happy with the big government they voted in during the last eight years and they know much of what they instituted will not be rescinded.  Government rarely if ever gives back power, and Bush has done a very good job of handing Democrats hot button issues that are irreparable in the short term so Republicans can position themselves as a “viable” opposition party….much like the Democrats did in ’06, and regain control of the executive and legislative.  Why anyone would want to be President under these circumstances is beyond me.

So the Bush is a socialist accusation is only window dressing to ensnare the Dems who will be forced to defend what transpired during Bush’s term, because once government gives, they can’t taketh back, while they, Republicans argue what they indeed voted for is no good and irrelevant.  A neat political trick.

Obama under the Zionist lobby’s thumb


What’s going on?  First we have Martin Indyk who as far as we know has not been picked to be in an Obama administration making a statement that ‘ Israel can no longer expect “blank cheques” ‘ from America?!  On whose authority does a regular, or in Indyk’s case a highly irregular citizen of the US make such a statement?    Did he say that hoping to be appointed to something in Obama’s government, or was he merely testing the waters for his real bosses at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy to see how  such a statement would be received in America?

The real kicker is Obama’s pledge to attack Iran with nuclear weapons should it attack Israel first, that coming on the heels of pronouncements by the deputy director of national intelligence and chairman of the National Intelligence Council’s Thomas Fingar that Iran has not diverted low-enriched uranium produced at a facility at Natanz, 160 miles south of Tehran, to weapons use, and that Iran did suspend its nuclear program back in 2003 at a time when that country was making peace overtures to the US.  So why does Obama want to pick a fight with Iran now and make the most war mongering Administration in American history seem like a peaceful one?  Perhaps politicians can’t accept the premise Iranians aren’t making nuclear weapons because its unfathomable a country could keep its promise all the while US lawmakers continue to lie about Iranian intentions?

America’s Wars of Self-Destruction


I like Chris Hedges.  I have been reading his work since I first blogged about a book he wrote on the Iraq war entitled Collateral Damage. He has written a piece with the title seen above, a few excerpts I would like to post here.

War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate. The poison of war courses unchecked through the body politic of the United States. We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We embrace the dangerous self-delusion that we are on a providential mission to save the rest of the world from itself, to implant our virtues—which we see as superior to all other virtues—on others, and that we have a right to do this by force. This belief has corrupted Republicans and Democrats alike. And if Barack Obama drinks, as it appears he will, the dark elixir of war and imperial power offered to him by the national security state, he will accelerate the downward spiral of the American empire.

Obama and those around him embrace the folly of the “war on terror.” They may want to shift the emphasis of this war to Afghanistan rather than Iraq, but this is a difference in strategy, not policy. By clinging to Iraq and expanding the war in Afghanistan, the poison will continue in deadly doses. These wars of occupation are doomed to failure. We cannot afford them. The rash of home foreclosures, the mounting job losses, the collapse of banks and the financial services industry, the poverty that is ripping apart the working class, our crumbling infrastructure and the killing of hapless Afghans in wedding parties and Iraqis by our iron fragmentation bombs are neatly interwoven. These events form a perfect circle. The costly forms of death we dispense on one side of the globe are hollowing us out from the inside at home.

The corporate forces that control the state will never permit real reform. This is the Faustian bargain made between these corporate forces and the Republican and Democratic parties. We will never, under the current system, achieve energy independence. Energy independence would devastate the profits of the oil and gas industry. It would wipe out tens of billions of dollars in weapons contracts, spoil the financial health of a host of private contractors from Halliburton to Blackwater and render obsolete the existence of U.S. Central Command.

There are groups and people who seek to do us harm. The attacks of Sept. 11 will not be the last acts of terrorism on American soil. But the only way to defeat terrorism is to isolate terrorists within their own societies, to mount cultural and propaganda wars, to discredit their ideas, to seek concurrence even with those defined as our enemies. Force, while a part of this battle, is rarely necessary. The 2001 attacks that roused our fury and unleashed the “war on terror” also unleashed a worldwide revulsion against al-Qaida and Islamic terrorism, including throughout the Muslim world, where I was working as a reporter at the time. If we had had the courage to be vulnerable, to build on this empathy rather than drop explosive ordinance all over the Middle East, we would be far safer and more secure today. If we had reached out for allies and partners instead of arrogantly assuming that American military power would restore our sense of invulnerability and mitigate our collective humiliation, we would have done much to defeat al-Qaida. But we did not. We demanded that all kneel before us. And in our ruthless and indiscriminate use of violence and illegal wars of occupation, we resurrected the very forces that we could, under astute leadership, have marginalized. We forgot that fighting terrorism is a war of shadows, an intelligence war, not a conventional war. We forgot that, as strong as we may be militarily, no nation, including us, can survive isolated and alone.

Cheney indicted


It’s no longer news, but I applaud the action done by a south Texas grand jury, because hopefully it will stop Cheney’s profiting from the rendition of foreign detainees to private penal institutions in which he has invested.  No doubt Cheney knows that Guantanamo Bay will be closed by Obama….let’s certainly hope so, so in order to keep the business of torture alive and well and profitable Cheney has invested in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers.  Detainees at Guantanamo Bay when closed will have to go some place and what better place for them to go than a place set up by the former Administration to continue the same policy of torture and human rights abuses.  The only way to stop such illegal activity is to throw Cheney in jail and divest him of his holdings in Vanguard.  It is almost the same as with Halliburton, given no bid contracts by an Administration that started a needless war by a vice president who was once a major office holder in that company. I’m glad the people of some state have decided enough is enough.  It’s even more ironic it’s the home state of the equally nefarious law breaker George W. Bush.  Perhaps the good folks in the state of Texas are finally getting back at  Cheney for  shooting a hunting partner in the face back in 2006.

Sarah Palin, terrorist


palin-iiThe Republican Party is certifiably insane.  If they don’t kick Sarah Palin out of their party they will truly be a party for the kooks and idiots of our day.  It wasn’t enough they foisted Palin’s appointment on John McCain a guy with enough issues of his own, they then gave her prominence throughout the campaign, or rather she took it and ran with it, all the while inserting her foot in her mouth every other step of the way.  Now comes word from the US Secret Service that Palin’s campaign rhetoric was responsible for a spike in the number of death threats against Obama.

In more than one instance, a campaign rally crowd has shouted out “kill him” or used other inflammatory remarks before or during a Palin appearance and the occurrence of such utterances was enough to get the McCain campaign to ask Palin to tone it down! Palin’s selective use of terrorist is enough to make anyone jump through hoops, but her interpretation probably includes Obama, judging by her reaction to crowds at her campaign stops where she seemingly does nothing to cool down their anti-Obama outbursts which some said among them the press included ‘kill him’!  The lady is a loony and needs to be put in the appropriate bin.  Let’s hope even Alaskans are spared her demagoguery.  Oh, and hat tip to Du’Gas’ blog.

Like father like son?


rahmemanuel_tinyBenjamin Emanuel put his son in a little bit of hot water.  Rahm is one of the US congressmen representing a district of Chicago, which happens to be the home of one of the largest concentrations of Muslims/Arabs in the US, but that didn’t stop his dad, Ben from making statements like,

“Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”

Rahm, to his credit, did the right thing by apologizing to Arab-Americans and saying he’d like to meet with a representative of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee at some point in the future.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is Emanuel’s lame apology statement which included this caveat: “These are not the values upon which I was raised or those of my family.” Umm, Rahm….this is your father we’re talking about.  If you weren’t raised with his values then who raised you?  It’s clear what Emanuel the father expressed is what he and millions of others like him expect from Rahm’s appointment and that no doubt Rahm will deliver, that “he will influence the President to be pro-Israel” and there’s every reason to be believe Obama will be possibly the best friend Israel has had in the White House in a very long time.  He’s surely politically savvy enough to know the implications of his appointment of Emanuel to the post despite all the political baggage it brings, if in fact Obama was responsible for that pick at all, and it was surely meant to send a sign to all concerned that he would indeed by pro-Israel, but at least Rahm the son made the appearance of trying to smooth over his dad’s rough, blatant comments.  In the end however one must remember, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

Encourage KKK membership


With news like this the Klan can be eliminated just by asking people to join.  This goes way beyond bizarre.  Groups like this will be dogs barking at the heels of the Obama administration and their protestations will be carried by corporate media far and wide.  I’d like to see all those who clamored for the Patriot and Military Commission Act to call such groups terrorists and illegal enemy combatants, even though I still propose Guantanamo Bay be closed.  Of course that won’t happen but perhaps we’ll get lucky and get them to decimate their ranks by their own stupidity.

Change?


Obama TransitionI found it more than a little curious that one of the first appointments Obama wants to make to his staff is that of Chief of Staff pick Rahm Emanuel.  The Obama campaign said it wanted change and no one wants to see change more than people in the Middle East.  The Palestinian/Israeli conflict has essentially gone ignored by the Bush Administration, but the killing between the two tribes has not abated at all.  Now comes Emanuel, the son of a former Irgun gang member who as an American citizen volunteered to serve in the Israeli military during the time of the first Gulf war when Itzhak Shamir was prime minister who will serve as chief of staff for Obama.  That means he controls the information the President receives, who gives it, etc.  It’s a very powerful position. Let’s hope his appointment is not Obama’s version of ‘neo-con lite’.

I was wrong-anyone care to join me?


In an earlier blog I called this election for McCain.  Tonight I’m having crow for dinner.  Congratulations to the victor President elect, Barack Obama.  He has a daunting task ahead.  We should all do what we can to help him.

eatingcrow

It doesn’t get worse than this


I was speechless when I read this.  People who the government claims aren’t “evil doers” and have essentially done nothing wrong face the possibility of staying in jail the rest of their lives because of OUR mistake?

Seventeen Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantánamo Bay will be informed on Monday that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed.

No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations.

*snip*

Last month a federal judge ruled that the men should be freed. “They were on freedom’s doorstep,” said Willett. “The plane was at Gitmo. The stateside Lutheran refugee services and the Uighur families and Tallahassee clergy were ready to receive them.” However, the justice department appealed against the ruling and Willett claims this will put the men into a potentially endless limbo.

I suppose the federal government thinks 17 Chinese muslims will pollute the gene pool of the US….or maybe carry out the jihad it has already acknowledged they had no part in, or maybe we’re just too dumb to say ‘we were wrong’.  People of good faith have appealed to the government to let these men go free and have stepped up to take responsibility for them, but evidently that’s not good enough.  Christians, Muslims, Americans, Chinese have all said they will sponsor these men, who are guiltless according to our own government and whose only crime is “being” to help them settle in this wide, expansive, generous land of ours and our government has said no!

The Neocon’s coup within the US government


The attack on Syria was the neocon’s way of asserting their position of dominance within the US government.  It was a signal to the winner of next week’s election that the winner would have to deal with the neocon’s reality of foreign policy and not with any campaign promises, and that reality is there will be no reconciliation with the Syrian government ever and that US troops will not leave Iraq anytime soon.  I disagree with fellow blogger Xymphora who seems to think Obama’s supposed imminent victory means a demise of neocon control over government, but I do agree with Xymp’s statement that ‘peace is the death of zionism’, hence why else would America attack a government that has shown a willingness to be at peace with its neighbors and America’s allies, unless that ally (Israel) doesn’t want peace.  The excuse that the attack was against infiltrators into Iraq from Syria has also been thoroughly discounted.

A top US commander Thursday voiced optimism US troop levels could be cut substantially in western Iraq particularly after provincial elections in the former insurgent stronghold.

Marine Corps Major General John Kelly, who commands the 25,000 US troops in the west, said the tally of security incidents had fallen so low as to be “almost meaningless now.”

“So I would say that I’m very optimistic that we could start to reduce numbers,” he said.

In fact, one could view this attack as a shot across the bow of certain elements within even the military that talk of troop reductions and stability are not consistent with the program of instability and perpetual war that has fueled both the Israeli government and now our own.

There is the possibility that whoever was killed was an enemy to both Syria and the US and as such was a targeted assassination agreed upon by both parties.  As with so much about Mid East occurrences that will never be known; however the message is that the US is in Iraq to stay, regardless of the Maliki government’s decision on the SOFA agreement that for the moment is dead.  That reality has been foisted on the winner of Tuesday’s election whether he likes it or not.

Fomenting Unrest in Iraq


The SOFA, status of force agreement, between the US and Iraq is in jeopardy of not being ratified by the Iraqi government, which has repeatedly asked US forces to leave Iraq, and as a result violence in that country has intensified despite the success of the “surge”. So in order to get the Iraqis to see the necessity of keeping US forces on their soil, the neocons have set about destabilizing Iraq’s neighbors. This latest violation of international law also allows the neocons who want to destabilize all Arab states makes it difficult for whoever becomes President to even talk to the Arabs who along with the rest of the world are outraged over this latest attack on Syrian territory.

Palin is not helping matters


More than one person has said the choice of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate was enough to convince them not to vote the Republican ticket.  That fact has been emphasized by a Washington Post article which states, ‘Perceptions of Palin grow increasingly negative’.

In polling conducted Wednesday and Thursday evenings, after the disclosure that the Republican National Committee used political funds to help Palin assemble a wardrobe for the campaign, 51 percent said they have a negative impression of her. Fewer, 46 percent, said they have a favorable view. That marks a stark turnaround from early September, when 59 percent of likely voters held positive opinions.

The declines in Palin’s ratings have been even more substantial among the very voters Republicans aimed to woo. The percentage of white women viewing her favorably dropped 21 points since early September; among independent women, it fell 24 points.

It was an insult to the electorate for McCain to choose Palin. It was a sexist choice; he wanted someone who looked photogenic next to him, physically attractive even if she had nothing intellectually to offer. However saying that you are voting for a pair of legs in a skirt is not the politically correct thing to say. Realizing they are being played the people are voicing their disapproval.

In reality Palin is her own worse foe, or enemy.  Public gaff after the next seems to follow her everywhere she goes, from the trooper gate scandal to being ill prepared for media interviews to revelations that the RNC has spent money for clothes she claims were off the rack but are really tailor made, etc. she is dogged by missteps and inaccuracies that are too easily documented.

Ashley Todd and the McCain campaign-working together to deceive you the voter!


More and more details are emerging about Ashley Todd and her role in the McCain campaign and the campaign’s role in dissemenating the false story about her being attacked. This unfortunate young woman was used by elements in THE REPUBLICAN PARTY who are heartless and deceitful to the brim and didn’t mind destroying her personal integrity or taking down America in their quest for power.  How else do you explain how this young woman was used by McCain Pennsylvania campaign communications director Peter Feldman who was out hyping details of her story before they were even known by any but the victim and the police?

Long before any facts about the Ashley Todd case had been established, McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director told reporters the alleged attacker had told the woman, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

This notion that Todd was a campaign volunteer has also been as quickly eliminated. In an effort to distance themselves from her, College Republican National Committee’s Executive Director Ethan Eilon said, “We have terminated her effective today. Obviously, we had know(sic) idea she was making this story up.” There might be some truth to that because as most campaigns do, organizations are formed that are interconnected but at the same time independent enough in order to guarantee plausible deniability, but first news reports claim Todd was working on the Pennsylvania campaign’s as a phone operator volunteer which probably put her in some sort of contact with Feldman, the communication’s director.

In that capacity and as a “volunteer” she was not working for the CRNC, which was actually paying her to work for them at some point in the campaign.  She was on loan as it were to the campaign.  I assert that Feldman sexually intimidated and harassed this young woman into making up this story for obvious political reasons.  Not being able to say how she received her injuries is significant, especially the black eye, and shows she’s still in denial, protecting someone (the person who battered her perhaps) or hiding something about this strange story. Perhaps it was Feldman’s attempt to give meaning to a relationship he fully manipulated in some perverse way for his candidate, McCain.

Unfortunately, the media should pursue this story to see just how far it reaches into the McCain campaign, but it won’t, and to be fair, doing so would not be in the best interest of this young woman’s mental health.  However, it would expose the depths at which the “system” has gone to exacerbate the adversarial aspects of political campaigning to the detriment of the “political process”. At the very least, however, Feldman should join Ashley Todd in jail for workplace harassment and John McCain should insist on no less.  Don’t expect that to happen.