In recent days, heated policy discussions in Washington have largely focused on two topics: a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan and health care legislation. Both a troop escalation and health care legislation carry significant price tags: roughly $100 billion and $80-$100 billion a year respectively. (It should be noted that health care reform, unlike a troop surge, would cut the deficit.)
In his New York Times column today [ed: Thursday], columnist Nicholas Kristof asks why hawks claim health reform is “fiscally irresponsible” while enthusiastically supporting a troop surge in Afghanistan, given the fact that fixing our broken health care system is, unlike a troop surge, essential to the health and well-being of Americans:,_but_won%27t_help_americans_get_decent_health-care
In recent days, heated policy... more
NOTE : I KNOW THIS IS EMBARASSING TO THE HILT FOR A NATION THAT PRIDES ITSELF ON BEING HOME OF THE BRAVE & FREE BUT REALITY REARS ITS UGLY HEAD; WHAT CAN I SAY BUT PLEASE RATIONALIZE THE DIGNITY NEEDED TO ACCOMPLISH THIS MISSION BY REMEMBERING THAT GOLDEN RULE WE ARE ALL SUPOSE TO APPLY AS A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF OUR HUMAN NATURE ? YOU KNOW THAT PESKY…”DO UNTO OTHER” STUFF !
Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals.
These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.
The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations - including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards - detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.
Because each of the people on this list should be nonviolently protested everywhere they go (more on that below), I have organized them by location. Please post updates on where they are as comments ;)
CALIFORNIA
1. John Yoo: Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California, with house at 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley, (but a lawyer with the Pennsylvania bar from which he should be disbarred and would be if enough people demanded it) counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote this memo promoting presidential power to launch aggressive war, and claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war, and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result. Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone's child. Yoo has been confronted in his classroom: video, and defended by the Washington Post, and again confronted in the classroom.
Additional collaborators:
2. Robert J. Delahunty, Yoo colleague, should be disbarred in NY
3. Patrick F. Philbin, Yoo colleague, Deputy, should be disbarred in D.C. and MA
4. Jay Bybee: federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, headquartered in San Francisco, California (but Bybee based in Las Vegas), counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by helping Yoo draft the memo linked above. He signed not only torture memos but also a memo purporting to legalize illegal and unconstitutional wars. BYBEE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. He works, among other places, at the James R. Browning Courthouse, 95 7th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, - This is a giant marble building in the center of the city represented in Congress by the Speaker of the House.NOTE : I KNOW THIS IS EMBARASSING TO THE HILT FOR A NATION THAT PRIDES ITSELF ON BEING... more
(WASHINGTON) — After his capture, Saddam Hussein told the FBI that he falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.
Saddam also dismissed Osama bin Laden as a "zealot," said he had never personally met the al-Qaida leader and that the Iraqi government didn't cooperate with the terrorist group against the U.S., according to FBI interview notes made public by the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute.From the article:
(WASHINGTON) — After his capture, Saddam Hussein told the FBI... more
Remember… Capitalism is the exploitation of men by men.
Socialism is the opposite!
AL-LE-GO-RY (nothing to do with All Gore btw ;)
noun, plural -ries.
1.a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another.
Greek philosopher Plato in his work “The Republic” uses the ‘Allegory of the Cave’ to illustrate how humans can be imprisoned by what they perceive and how shadows on the wall’s cave replaces reality. Imagine coming out to the light and seeing reality. In other words, embraced education & philosophy and become enlightened by it!
Hence this little comedy ditty, designed to illustrate our shortcomings when, as ghoulish & former FBI emperor J. Edgar Hoover said… "The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists." Edgar should know for he was one sick sad fuck himself with more murderous, racist & mob skeletons in his closet than anyone in America’s history. Strangely enough he is still considered a hero by the institutions and most people.
Why would one prohibit black slaves to learn how to read?
Is the dumbing down of America irreversible?
Why did arm dealers & war profiteering corporations bought up so many media
outlets?
Why is thinly veiled pro-war propaganda spewed upon us 24-7 by the mighty Wurlitzer ? http://current.com/items/89801957_halliburton-kbr-stealing-us-blind.htm
BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier opened fire on fellow troops Monday, killing five before being taken into custody, the U.S. command said. The shooting occurred at Camp Liberty, a sprawling U.S. base on the western edge of Baghdad near the city's international airport and adjacent to another facility where President Barack Obama visited last month.BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier opened fire on fellow troops Monday, killing five before... more
How many innocent civilians will die before the US changes its approach to this war?
US drone bombings have reportedly killed 687 Pakistani civilians since 2006. During that time, US Predator drones carried out sixty strikes inside Pakistan, but hit just ten of their actual targets. http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=21440
"Since 2006, we've killed 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders using drone strikes; in the same time period, we've killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area. The drone strikes are highly unpopular. They are deeply aggravating to the population. And they've given rise to a feeling of anger that coalesces the population around the extremists and leads to spikes of extremism. ... The current path that we are on is leading us to loss of Pakistani government control over its own population."
Seems like war’s profits are so engaging that keeping them lowly populace enraged, thereby creating brand new & hate filled enemy combatant by the truckload is top priority. Pushing this unstable region closer to collapse seems to be the goal. Will the cavalry arrive in time ? Stay tuned for this narrative to conclude in more death, misery & profits ! http://current.com/items/89697631_killing-civilians-business-as-usual.htm
This now perpetual war of civilization needs to fuel our war machine, economy & empire.
Are we made any safer from this brilliant action ?
The leader of the Taliban’s Pakistan wing is threatening to attack areas in the United States in response to American drone attacks that have killed hundreds of people. Baitullah Mehsud made the threat as he took responsibility for an attack on a police academy in Lahore. http://pkpolitics.com/2009/04/02/lahore-under-attack/
“Wipe him out !” shouts the chorus so 5 meaner, tougher obscurantist mofo’s can take his place & threaten even more the way of life & freedom we long to bestow on them poor unwilling civilian victims !
Meanwhile back at the ranch…
A Predator drone pilot described that basically his experience of fighting in the Iraq war was getting in his Toyota Corolla, driving to work, then for twelve hours he puts missiles on targets, then commutes back home, and within twenty minutes he’s talking to his son at the dinner table.
He is engaging in combat. But he’s doing it from 7,000 miles away. And then, at the end of the day, he goes to a PTA meeting or takes his kid to soccer practice. It’s a whole new experience of war, a new concept of a warrior. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/6/wired_for_war_the_robotics_revolution
Some still raise a doubt & a question or two... they get arrested ;)
Whoa, now wait a cockeyed minute here… A French & Russian expression in one headline !!!??? Have I just lost 95% of the perennial red blooded American’s attention ? (as if all un-Americans are what …green blooded & part of the reptilian invasion of 2012 ; ) !!!???
You’re not stupid, they just talk to you that way ;)
Puns & wise cracks aside, a “fait accompli” is…
[fe tA-kawN-plee] .French. An accomplished fact; a thing already done: The enemy's defeat was a fait accompli long before the formal surrender.’
…and a “leitmotiv ”…
leit·mo·tiv / Etymology: German Leitmotiv, from leiten to lead + Motiv motive
1 : an associated melodic phrase or figure that accompanies the reappearance of an idea, person, or situation especially in a Wagnerian music drama
2 : a dominant recurring theme
So now that close to 100% of readers went elsewhere for their hard earned entertainment buck, let me get straight to the point about… The Politics of « Fait Accompli » : An American Leitmotif ;)
Why define a “reality” based justification when one can just “make it so” and explain later with whatever comes to mind. One can always fabricate “facts” that fits the action already taken later on.
Torture induced rationalization anyone ?
Make it so ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pU1Z98xIXo&feature=channel_page
Let’s say…oh, the invasion of Irak, shall we ?
Once the boots are on the ground, it’s fuckin’ too late to be all pissy & apologetic about it all, isn’t it ? It is our duty to support our troops… deleted uranium poisoning & all ! It is our duty, to “shut up” & put up, we are told ! Stand by our man, what ever child chewing monster he is ! Just follow orders like a good German ! Blast the lessons of WW2, the Nuremberg trial & centuries of soaked blood human history. We have a war to win ! Take no prisoner, unless you want to torture them ! Gun-ho diplomacy, mercenaries, false fag operations & a good old mediated carrot & stick routine will do wonder on those pesky public opinion polls. We do what has to be done, now deal with it mofo !
In other words… Do the deed and wonder & negotiate about the fallout later. A by-partisan whitewash will do fine. Only bleeding heart leftists will have time to notice anyway while the rabble has their collective nose to the grinder of economic survival. The masses are rendered poor, demoralized & frightened and therefore, they’ll think that perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders & hope for the best ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JLc5dqZCOU&feature=channel_page
We are being “terrorized” into inaction after being “terrorized” into their self-fulfilling appropriated grander “American century” plan ! http://www.newamericancentury.org/
The same goes for torture, spying on US citizens, fraudulent bailouts, 9-11, racist penal system, CIA’s coverts operations, Mossad spies, private armies, franken-food… you name it, its always the same device, the “leitmotiv” of American politics.
After $1.3 billion in government contracts and controversy over the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians, Blackwater Worldwide is moving on. The powerful military corporation has no plans to slow down after what has been an extraordinarily profitable decade.
"The greatest threat to our world and its peace comes from those who want war, who prepare for it, and who, by holding out vague promises of future peace or by instilling fear of foreign aggression, try to make us accomplices to their plans." - Hermann Hesse
We knew, well some of us did, ( http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/ ) but now a new book describes the process in all its abject misery. And please remember this is all happening RIGHT NOW while we are all collectively taken to the cleaners…
PRATAP CHATTERJEE: $25 billion in the last five years has gone to Halliburton, now Kellogg Brown & Root, their subsidiary, in Iraq, to be able to build the bases for American soldiers and to do this war. They get a guaranteed profit; these contracts are cost plus. So whatever Halliburton, or now Kellogg Brown & Root, do in Iraq, they are going to get two percent. In Bosnia, it was seven percent, nine percent. Doesn’t matter how much they charge, they are guaranteed—how much is spent, they’re guaranteed to get a profit. They never make a loss. And so, for them, this is—you know, it’s gravy, in some ways, because whether Obama withdraws from Iraq or continues there, they’re going to get the contract to supply the military.
Obama's point is, I will make them more accountable. I mean, in his legislation he’s promoted, he has never said that he’s going to withdraw the contractors. And in a sense, this is actually quite important, making them accountable, because this has not happened. I mean, the Iraq war, is—you know, there’s so much waste, so much incompetence there. and—
In Afghanistan it’s exactly the same thing. I was just there in November for three weeks, and you have the same thing. You have, you know, troops who sit behind tanks, living on bases like Bagram, where you have, once again, workers from KBR who supply them with food and clean the toilets and that sort of thing. And nobody’s watching them, partly because—when I was in Kuwait, I asked one of the commanders there, I said, “I can prove to you that this particular subcontract by this company PWC was awarded—you know, should never have been awarded, because they lied on the paperwork. The drivers they hired from Fiji didn’t know how to drive these big reefers. You know, why are they here?” He said, “It doesn’t matter to me. It matters to me now that the soldiers are being fed.” I said, “Will you question this contract? Will you question?” He says, “No, not at all, because in order for me to send my troops into battle, I need to feed them, and I need to make sure that they’re taken care of, and KBR provides that service.”
"We are watching a poorly staged rendition of Wag the Dog , interpreted for the morbidly stupid and performed by the criminally insane." - Jules CarlysleWe knew, well some of us did, ( http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/ ) but now a new book... more
Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire talks about how the private mercenary firm Blackwater USA is expanding its projects to include domestic services, which could be disastrous if they act as they've acted in Iraq.
“Most people know the basic facts behind the Blackwater story. They may have read a few facts about how that mercenary organization was started by a phenomenally rich multimillionaire inheritance baby named Erik Prince. For decades, Prince’s daddy wooed all of his political friends by spreading millions of dollars around to conservative think-tanks and ultra-right religious infrastructures that helped shape the now floundering neo-con revolution.
Today, the Prince family’s private army numbers about 25,000 strong. They have their own inventory of aircraft, tanks, helicopter gunships, amphibious assault crafts and ammunition stashes that rival the armies of many Third World countries.
Soldiers enlisted in the US military get paid about $70 a day to put themselves in harm’s way while Mr. Prince’s private family soldier is paid around $1,500 a day for the same risks.
The numbers of Prince family mercenaries have mushroomed in these last eight years. Each of the mercenaries know they cannot be court-martialed when they break the law. And to this day, the lawyers for the Prince family soldiers are still arguing that these mercenaries can’t be prosecuted under traditional criminal and civil US Statutes.
Dwight Eisenhower made it clear on numerous occasions that no military machine should ever be allowed to gain independent unchecked power in America. Eisenhower developed his fears of unchecked military power at a time that he could not even visualize an entity as creepy and unregulated as this Prince private army.
Private armies were rare in the US during Eisenhower’s service as a soldier. And that was at a time when America’s public military had shown that it was capable of winning two World Wars without the help of American mercenaries.
As you might expect, the congressmen and advocacy groups that are trying to shut Blackwater down are being branded as un-American, unpatriotic liberals by the Prince family loyalists. But they would need to roll Eisenhower into that list of unpatriotic objectors.
They would also need to add the names of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to their list of un-American types. Both of them also warned us about the unchecked expansion of a military of any kind, public or private.
Washington put it this way: “Overgrown military establishments under any form of government are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”
As I write this column, Blackwater is using part of the billion plus dollars they have been paid in mostly no-bid contracts to expand what they call their domestic operations division. That part of Prince’s private army will be able to defy the 130-year old policy of posse comitatus that says that a standing military may not carry out active operations on US soil.
More than a few of those so called un-American congresspeople have voiced concerns that Blackwater has reached a level of overgrown and unchecked power that make them capable of overpowering the military of many of the world’s governments. Blackwater spokesmen tell us that their mercenaries operate under a pledge of strict loyalty and patriotism. But take time to follow the story about this mercenary group and you will wonder who or what entity actually benefits from that loyalty pledge.”Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire talks about how the private mercenary... more
Next week, "change is coming to America," as President George W. Bush wraps up his tenure as one of the worst American presidents ever. He wasn't able to accomplish such an ignominious feat all by himself, however; he had a great deal of help along the way. The Progress Report heralds the conclusion of the Bush 43 presidency by bringing you our list of the top 43 worst Bush appointees. Did we miss anyone? Who should have been ranked higher? Let us know what you think.
1. Dick Cheney -- The worst Dick since Nixon. The man who shot his friend while in office. The "most powerful and controversial vice president." Until he got the job, people used to actually think it was a bad thing that the vice presidency has historically been a do-nothing position. Asked by PBS's Jim Lehrer about why people hate him, Cheney rejected the premise, saying, "I don't buy that." His top placement in our survey says otherwise.
2. Karl Rove -- There wasn't a scandal in the Bush administration that Rove didn't have his fingerprints all over -- see Plame, Iraq war deception, Gov. Don Siegelman, U.S. Attorney firings, missing e-mails, and more. As senior political adviser and later as deputy chief of staff, "The Architect" was responsible for politicizing nearly every agency of the federal government.
3. Alberto Gonzales -- Fundamentally dishonest and woefully incompetent, Gonzales was involved in a series of scandals, first as White House counsel and then as Attorney General. Some of the most notable: pressuring a "feeble" and "barely articulate" Attorney General Ashcroft at his hospital bedside to sign off on Bush's illegal wiretapping program; approving waterboarding and other torture techniques to be used against detainees; and leading the firing of U.S. Attorneys deemed not sufficiently loyal to Bush.
4. Donald Rumsfeld -- After winning praise for leading the U.S. effort in ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001, the former Defense Secretary strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq and then grossly misjudged and mishandled its aftermath. Rumsfeld is also responsible for authorizing the use of torture against terror detainees in U.S. custody; according to a bipartisan Senate report, Rumsfeld "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees."
5. Michael Brown -- This former commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association was appointed by Bush to head FEMA in 2003. After Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, Brownie promptly did a "heck of a job" bungling the government's relief efforts, and was sent back to Washington a few days later. He was forced to resign shortly thereafter.
6. Paul Wolfowitz -- As Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2005, Wolfowitz was one of the primary architects of the Iraq war, arguing for the invasion as early as Sept. 15, 2001. Testifying before Congress in February 2003, Wolfowitz said that it was "hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself." Wolfowitz eventually admitted that "for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction," as a justification for war, "because it was the one reason everyone [in the administration] could agree on."
7. David Addington -- "Cheney's Cheney" was the "most powerful man you've never heard of." As the leader of Bush's legal team and Cheney's chief of staff, Addington was the biggest proponent of some of Bush's most notorious legal abuses, such as torture and warrantless surveillance, and is a loyal follower of the so-called unitary executive theory.The version with all the damning links is here : http://pr.thinkprogress.org/
Next... more
“When he takes office on the 20th, he will inherit a vast apparatus. That afternoon, he will become the world’s number one arms dealer. He will become the world’s number one trainer of paramilitaries. If he doesn’t immediately give an order to say “Stop, no more support for forces that kill civilians,” he—probably on that day, civilians will be killed by bullets, by shrapnel, with Obama’s name on it. That’s the choice he has to make.” - ALLAN NAIRN
Right now in Gaza, it’s US shrapnel that is tearing the bodies of so many civilians there. The US ethic has been to say, “It’s OK. The law does not apply to us.”
AMY GOODMAN: We had you on a little while ago talking about the advisers to the presidential candidates. At the time, it was Hillary Clinton, it was Barack Obama. Now, Barack Obama has chosen the people he wants to constitute as his cabinet. Quick thoughts?
ALLAN NAIRN: He’s continued Gates at the Pentagon. He’s talking about Jim Steinberg for the number two in the State Department under Hillary Clinton. Steinberg is someone who was involved in the decision-making and has openly defended the bombing of the Shifa pharmaceutical plant, which was one of the main pharmaceutical suppliers and evidently caused massive civilian suffering. Obama, by all indications, is continuing the longstanding US policy of backing the killing of civilians if the US feels it is necessary. The system works on autopilot. If he does not stand up on the first day and say he is stopping it, it will continue, and he’ll be responsible.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for example, he’s saying he will close Guantanamo.
ALLAN NAIRN: That’s good. Right now liberals and Democrats are focused on the twists that Bush added to this system, US people directly involved in torture, Guantanamo, the chain of CIA secret prisons. Assume Obama shuts all that down. Then we’re just back to where we were before Bush, which was the US backing forces that kill civilians in dozens of countries around the world and torture being carried out with US support, except the torture is done by the local forces that the US is training and supplying. In El Salvador, for example, the CIA would give courses to members of the National Guard, the National Police and the Treasury Police. They would do the torture. The CIA people would stand in the next room. They would watch. They would slip in questions. So, if we go back to that system, is that—that doesn’t make any difference to the person being tortured, whether the hand that wields the razorblade is an American hand or a local hand. The problem is the torture itself.
Bloomberg says proportionalism is stupid, it’s “ridiculous.” Osama bin Laden would agree. This is the ethic of terrorism. By that standard, does that mean that the Palestinians are now allowed to start killing Israelis at the ratio of 100-to-1? Israel is now killing 100 Palestinians for every Israeli. Does that mean, with 600 Palestinians dead, there should now be 60,000 Israelis dead? And since Bloomberg rejects proportionalism entirely, that’s a license for Palestinians to kill all of Israel, to kill all of America, for everyone to kill everyone. This is the ethic and the logic of terrorists, and this is the ethic and the logic that still, unfortunately, governs the rulers of the United States. And Mayor Bloomberg was simply stating what is commonplace thinking. And unless Obama rejects that on his first day, the US will continue killing civilians. It’s right there in front of us. It’s right there in the statements. It’s right there in the actions. It’s there in the bodies of people who were torn up by American munitions. We’ve got to see it and stop it.Obama has a choice.
“When he takes office on the 20th, he will inherit a vast... more
Humor is the politeness of despair said the optimist !
This being said….
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Groucho Marx
Now that’s Marxism we can all believe in ;)
Can 2009 be any worst ?
Let’s frigin’ hope it won't has pointed President O.
"I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." Barack Obama / The Audacity of Hope
OK, I'LL BITE... YOU WANT CHANGE ?
DON'T JUDGE POLITICIANS ON WHAT THEY SAY BUT ON WHAT THEY DO !
Meanwhile… Ask a Palestinian for size !
Here’s my suggestion for our collective resolution for 2009…
CITIZENS 2.0 : PLAYERS NOT CHEERLEADERS !
So here’s my own personal favorite TOP 5 offering to Current for 2008…
Information is power, they say, so don’t be surprised when it is repressed or censured for it is a lot easier to abuse a nation of village idiots.
"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself" - Joseph Pulitzer
Meanwhile…
"We are watching a poorly staged rendition of Wag the Dog , interpreted for the morbidly stupid and performed by the criminally insane." - Jules Carlysle
As the world marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a new report from The New America Foundation finds that U.S. arms transfers are undermining human rights, weakening democracy and fueling conflict around the world. http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/u_s_weapons_war_2008_0
The report finds that of the top 25 U.S. arms recipients in the developing world during 2006/07, more than half (13) were either undemocratic governments or regimes that engaged in major human rights abuses. Transfers to these countries totaled more than $16.2 billion in 2006/07.
In addition, of the 27 nations engaged in major armed conflicts in 2006/07, more than two-thirds (20) were receiving arms and training from the United States.
U.S. arms transfers are undermining human rights, weakening democracy and fueling conflict around the world. U.S. arms sales reached $32 billion in 2007, more than three times the level obtained when President Bush first took office.
"It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchal society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects, and its object is not victory, but to keep the very structure of society in tact." - George Orwell, from 1984
"Not only has the Bush administration been arming questionable regimes, but they have been using our tax dollars to make it possible," During the Bush years, the United States disbursed over $108 billion in security assistance funding, nearly $40 billion of which was for programs that did not even exist when George W. Bush took office in 2001. All of these new programs are authorized and implemented by the Pentagon, and all of them are markedly less transparent and accountable than traditional security assistance programs supervised by the State Department.
Amongst the U.S. arms clients profiled in the report are:
• India and Pakistan, which are in an increasingly tense standoff over the role of Pakistani nationals in the recent terror attacks on Mumbai;
• Georgia, whose ongoing tensions with Moscow in the wake of Russia's recent invasion will be a top issue for the incoming Obama administration;
• Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of small arms destined for the country's security forces have gone missing;
• Israel, where the use of U.S.-supplied cluster bombs in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon has sparked controversy;
• Nigeria, where recent violence between Christians and Muslims in the north of the country claimed over 400 lives;
• Thailand, which is engaged in a longstanding war against separatist movements in its southern region even as it has undergone its third change in government in three years; and
• Colombia, where State Department claims of improvements in human rights have been belied by an ongoing campaign of murders against trade unionists and human rights activists.
"We must repudiate the structure of economic privilege and the tyranny of war makers" - George McGovern 1975
Meanwhile...
"We are watching a poorly staged rendition of Wag the Dog , interpreted for the morbidly stupid and performed by the criminally insane." - Jules CarlysleAs the world marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,... more
Da Londra Peter Tatchell, portavoce di OutRage! ha dichiarato ieri che nella mattinata, in un negozio di barbiere a Baghdad, è stato ucciso il ventisettenne coordinatore del movimento gay iracheno Bashar, ucciso dalle milizie religiose... continuaDa Londra Peter Tatchell, portavoce di OutRage! ha dichiarato ieri che nella... more
Bobby Kennedy Jr., Rev. Jesse Jackson and I invite you to join us to co-sponsor the voter guide, “Steal Back Your Vote.”
Your organization, group, website, radio program - we need you to add your name, your heart, your effort to prevent a repeat of 2000 and 2004.
Steal Back Your Vote lays out the Six Ways They’re Stealing the Election – and the Seven Ways you can Steal It Back. It’s a 24-page downloadable graphic guide - an investigative comic book. It’s non-partisan, it’s humorous, it’s harrowing and it’s helpful.
And we need your name on it. The non-partisan guide’s initial sponsors include Voto Latino, Operation Rainbow/PUSH, Progressive Magazine and VoteRescue; individual sponsors include troubadour Willie Nelson and Code Pink’s Annie Nelson.
It won't cost your group a dime - but it does require a commitment to get out the word to your members or audience on the practical ways to protect your ballot from the vote-rustlers.
You know Bobby’s work. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blew the lid off the Theft of 2004 in his masterful Rolling Stone article. Many of you know me for my BBC television report that exposed Katherine Harris' "fake felon purge" of Black citizens in 2000.
Now RFK Jr. and I have teamed up to investigate THE THEFT OF 2008.
We can bring in your group for you gratis thanks the generosity of the Puffin Foundation, The Nation Institute, Threshold Foundation and the Palast Investigative Fund.
Jim Hightower and Air America’s Clout! have joined.
How about YOU?
To sign on as a group or media co-sponsor, we don’t require your money. We do expect your ACTIONS.
Just take these two steps:
#1. Respond with a “yes” to StealBackYourVote@GregPalast.com Tell me how you want to be listed. If you have a logo and a link we’ll put them on our website, StealBackYourVote.org
#2. Go to www.StealBackYourVote.org and you’ll find excerpts from the Voter Guide - you can grab them to post on your own website. Click here to get the first story in the guide - "Night of the Living Vote Snatchers." Illustrated by graphic gonzos Ted Rall, Lukas Ketner and Troubletown's Lloyd Dangle.
Take the ‘toons. Later, we'll send you a link to put on your site to allow your members, readers or listeners to download the guide. For now, they can sign up for its release.
If you can’t officially sponsor, you can still post a page or two from the voter guide comic book.
When we launch in two weeks, we'll send you a link for your site and a note to send to your lists. Your readers/members/listeners can then download the complete guide for a donation of as little as a dollar.
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Reverend Jackson has asked me to pass on these words: "We've marched too long, worked too hard, and died too young to let them steal our vote. For Dr. King, for Mandela, for Medgar Evers, for Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner - download it and fight back!"
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." - Noam Chomsky
Either does Paul Craig Roberts. Craig was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.
I'll leave him do the talking...
Why do the American people and “their” representatives in Congress continue to tolerate a criminal Bush Regime that uses lies and propaganda to mask its acts of naked aggression, war crimes under the Nuremberg standard?
Why does the rest of the world continue to receive political representatives from a war criminal government?
REALLY… DEFINE ?
The illegal use of napalm and other chemical weapons
CHECK!
Intentionally torturing and abusing detainees
CHECK!
Blocking aid convoys
CHECK!
Killing unarmed civilians, including shooting into family homes
CHECK!
Western leaders are also guilty of many other violations of the Geneva Convention, the Charter of the United Nations, the Nuremberg Charter, International Law and the Constitution of the United States, including crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.
CHECK!
Be more specific !
(a) Crimes against Peace:
Namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing:
(b) War Crimes:
Namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity:
(c) Crimes against Humanity:
Namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
Just a hint : Before you export democracy, try having it at home !
" People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."- James Baldwin
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blew the lid off the Theft of 2004 in his masterful Rolling... more
“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.” — George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States
Oceania (commonly called the US and Britain) is at war with Afghanistan / Iraq. Oceania has always been at war with Afghanistan / Iraq.
Eurasia (commonly called Russia, Pakistan, etc.) is allied with Oceania in war against Afghanistan. Eurasia has always been allied with Oceania.
US Congressman Charlie Rangel has been arguing for a return of military conscription (“The Draft”) as—so he tells the public— a way of reducing war.
It's not easy to capture someone killed the year before—until you harness the power of Ingsoc. When you've got Ingsoc on your side, though, it's so easy that the US did it again.
Three cheers for Homeland Security drone patrols!
In order to fight terrorism, we must cause it, says Donald Rumsfeld.
It's okay that there were no “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq; that's not why we went to war. It's equally okay that there are so many of them in Oceania.
The Nobel prize committee has been considering nominating George Bush and Tony Blair for their prestigious Peace prize.
Just like in 1984's Room 101, the Miniluv operations in Guantánamo Bay were authorized to “exploit[] a prisoner's phobias, sometimes using muzzled dogs in interrogations.” Doubleplusgood!
According to the Bush administration, the Duelfer report which conclusively showed that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq actually justifies the war in Iraq.
“Protecting [an] Islamic cultural center” involves fighting a war inside it, as the New York Times on the Web shows.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell
"We are watching a poorly staged rendition of Wag the Dog , interpreted for the morbidly stupid and performed by the criminally insane." - Jules Carlysle
“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about... more
"A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain" - Anatole France
PRIVATIZE THE PROFITS & SOCIALIZE THE LOSS * Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Mussolini said that fascism is quite simply the corporate state. This story ends all speculation that we are living in a fascist empire where it is impossible to determine where corporations end and government begins and vice-versa. Disaster Capitalism triumphant !
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." - Ian Williams Goddard
Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had. - Chris Hedges
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis." - Umberto Eco "A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to... more
