Time for Change

The latest econ news for the US says that we have seen a 3.5% increase. Like Lee Corso would say "not so fast my friend". Lets us imagine several possibilities for this increase:
1. Corporate gains with an increase in the rich getting richer and investing money thus increasing the stock market and the economy
2. Borrowing of money from China, a booming economy. Because China has loaned so much money it would seem they have a keen interest in getting their return.
3. War in Iraq. Anytime there is a war it produces jobs for various things all funded by the government or given tax breaks, etc.

Those are only three of a long list. I am no economist but like Webb said in his response State of the Union speech, do not fallow how Wall Street does but rather fallow Main Street.
We are the only developed country in the world with no form of universal health care or even at least coverage for the lower class. The burrows in New Orleans were quickly forgotten and left to be re-developed by more affluent house owners, turned into parks or left as shanty towns for the poor to worry about on their own. This is only a few of the growing problems and separation between rich and poor.

I want to talk about living in a State of Fear. Browsing through the TV last night I stopped on Fox News (always a good laugh) to hear Bill O'Riley calling the Vermont newspaper that called for the impeachment of Bush and CO. pure propaganda created by the liberal media. Mr. O'Riley claimed that Bush has made America safer and their has been no attacks on US soil for 5 1/2 years. BUT.....what liberties do we have to give up for us to be so safe on US SOIL. Shall we let BUSH destroy are democracy and liberties. Bush went to war on false pretenses and has put the US armed forces in the biggest quagmire since Vietnam. If the war on terror was so important why didn't we send 100K troops to Afghanistan instead of Iraq.
This all be said, we as Americans must come together and wage protest against this war and administration and demand are rights for all, back! It is true that there are many of with the same opinions the various blogs or newspapers, etc. but I think it is time for us to some out of are offices and into the streets to show we really want change.

I have not talked about key issues that the Bush admin has forgotten, falsified or wrongly justified: Global Warming, Separation of Church and State, Space Agency, Stem Cell, etc. but these items are not forgotten yet the opposite just not mentioned in this short argument.

Last...I fully support the troops and no way think they are doing a bad job. I have nothing but the utmost respect for all of the men and women of the armed forces. It is the suits that put them in the desert that I do not agree with and this is why we need another plan! Not just internationally but domestically as well!

The time is now!

Ty Wolosin

This is a message I started on facebook....please spread the word:

I think it is about time that we college democrats or independents (or any one for that matter) put together some sort of rally across campuses (or cities) throughout the US on a specific date, against the war in Iraq. It has to start some time and somewhere...and it is about time for us to take action. Bush continues to disregard what the majority of America thinks and the democrats are to worried about who will be the next president. Lets show them that we want change NOW!

The Power of One

By Jim Austin

"The authority to kill U.S. citizens is granted under a secret finding signed by the President,,,"

This cheery note was included in a newspaper article written by John Lumpkin of the Associated Press. The article goes on to say that the CIA will only kill us if they think we are members of Al Qaeda.

01/29/07 "ICHBlog" -- - Just what the hell is a "secret finding?" Sounds like George was hunting for Easter eggs in the Rose Garden and found an authorization to kill American citizens under a birdbath.

I don't want to be an alarmist but you realize what this means right? It means that you or I or any citizen of this country can be snuffed out like a birthday candle on the say so of the CIA, or the FBI, or I presume anyone who can convince the President that someone is a member of Al Qaeda. Wow, if Nixon had thought of this one his enemies list could have been a lot shorter.

That Canadian bureaucrat who called Bush a moron was wrong. He may talk like a moron but he knows what he wants and he won't let a little thing like our Constitution stand in his way.

Under his gentle guidance a man named Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has been held in a military jail for the past seven months without being allowed to see a lawyer.

The CIA dropped a bomb on the head of an American in Yemen recently. He wasn't the target but he was hanging with a suspected Al Qaeda leader so tough souvlaki for him, I guess.
LINK

Inflation and War Finance

By Ron Paul

The Pentagon recently reported that it now spends roughly $8.4 billion per month waging the war in Iraq, while the additional cost of our engagement in Afghanistan brings the monthly total to a staggering $10 billion. Since 2001, Congress has spent more than $500 billion on specific appropriations for Iraq. This sum is not reflected in official budget and deficit figures. Congress has funded the war by passing a series of so-called "supplemental" spending bills, which are passed outside of the normal appropriations process and thus deemed off-budget.

This is fundamentally dishonest: if we're going to have a war, let's face the costs-- both human and economic-- squarely. Congress has no business hiding the costs of war through accounting tricks.

As the war in Iraq surges forward, and the administration ponders military action against Iran, it's important to ask ourselves an overlooked question: Can we really afford it? If every American taxpayer had to submit an extra five or ten thousand dollars to the IRS this April to pay for the war, I'm quite certain it would end very quickly. The problem is that government finances war by borrowing and printing money, rather than presenting a bill directly in the form of higher taxes. When the costs are obscured, the question of whether any war is worth it becomes distorted.

Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank have a cozy, unspoken arrangement that makes war easier to finance. Congress has an insatiable appetite for new spending, but raising taxes is politically unpopular. The Federal Reserve, however, is happy to accommodate deficit spending by creating new money through the Treasury Department. In exchange, Congress leaves the Fed alone to operate free of pesky oversight and free of political scrutiny. Monetary policy is utterly ignored in Washington, even though the Federal Reserve system is a creation of Congress.
LINK

Missteps by Iraqi Forces in Battle Raise Questions

By MARC SANTORA

Published: January 30, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 29 —Iraqi forces were surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the ferocity of an obscure renegade militia in a weekend battle near the holy city of Najaf and needed far more help from American forces than previously disclosed, American and Iraqi officials said Monday.

They said American ground troops — and not just air support as reported Sunday — were mobilized to help the Iraqi soldiers, who appeared to have dangerously underestimated the strength of the militia, which calls itself the Soldiers of Heaven and had amassed hundreds of heavily armed fighters.

Iraqi government officials said the group apparently was preparing to storm Najaf, a holy city dear to Shiite Islam, occupy the sacred Imam Ali mosque and assassinate the religious hierarchy there, including the revered leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, during a Shiite holiday when many pilgrims visit.

LINK

Does not sound like be are taking a back seat to the action or seem like the Iraqi security forces can handle the insurgancy. When will Bush get the damn point that he is wrong.

NY Times: Bush signs landmark executive order increasing power over federal agencies

RAW STORY
Published: Monday January 29, 2007
President George W. Bush has given his administration a boost in how the government regulates key issues such as civil rights and the environment, RAW STORY has learned The New York Times will report on its Tuesday front page.

The President "signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules that the federal government develops to regulate public health, safety," privacy and other issues, writes Robert Pear for the Times.

Pear reports that "in an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Bush said that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee" who will monitor the creation of process and procedures and the associated documentation.

"The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency," Pear writes, "to analyze the costs and benefits of new rules and to make sure they carry out the president's priorities."

Excerpts from the Times article follow...LINK

January 29, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

The Sum of All Ears

By PAUL KRUGMAN

For those hoping for real action on global warming and energy policy, the State of the Union address was a downer. There had been hints and hopes that the speech would be a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, with President Bush turning conservationist. But it ended up being more of a Nixon-bombs-Cambodia moment.

Too bad: the rumors were tantalizing. Al Hubbard, the chairman of the National Economic Council, predicted “headlines above the fold that will knock your socks off in terms of our commitment to energy independence.” British officials told the newspaper The Observer that Mr. Bush would “make a historic shift in his position on global warming.”

None of it happened. Mr. Bush acknowledged that climate change is a problem, but you missed it if you sneezed. He said something vague about fuel economy, but the White House fact sheet on energy makes it clear that there was even less there than met the ear.

The only real substance was Mr. Bush’s call for a huge increase in the supply of “alternative fuels.” Mainly that means using ethanol to replace gasoline. Unfortunately, that’s a really bad idea.

There is a place for ethanol in the world’s energy future — but that place is in the tropics. Brazil has managed to replace a lot of its gasoline consumption with ethanol. But Brazil’s ethanol comes from sugar cane.

In the United States, ethanol comes overwhelmingly from corn, a much less suitable raw material. In fact, corn is such a poor source of ethanol that researchers at the University of Minnesota estimate that converting the entire U.S. corn crop — the sum of all our ears — into ethanol would replace only 12 percent of our gasoline consumption.

Still, doesn’t every little bit help? Well, this little bit would come at a very high price compared with the obvious alternative — conservation. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that reducing gasoline consumption 10 percent through an increase in fuel economy standards would cost producers and consumers about $3.6 billion a year. Achieving the same result by expanding ethanol production would cost taxpayers at least $10 billion a year, based on the subsidies ethanol already receives — and probably much more, because expanding production would require higher subsidies.

What’s more, ethanol production has hidden costs. Even the Department of Energy, which is relatively optimistic, says that the net energy savings from replacing a gallon of gasoline with ethanol are only the equivalent of about a quarter of a gallon, because of the energy used to grow corn, transport it, run ethanol plants, and so on. And these energy inputs come almost entirely from fossil fuels, so it’s not clear whether promoting ethanol does anything to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

So why is ethanol, not conservation, the centerpiece of the administration’s energy policy? Actually, it’s not entirely Mr. Bush’s fault.

To be sure, at this point Mr. Bush’s people seem less concerned with devising good policy than with finding something, anything, for the president to talk about that doesn’t end with the letter “q.” And the malign influence of Dick “Sign of Personal Virtue” Cheney, who no doubt still sneers at conservation, continues to hang over everything.

But even after the Bushies are gone, bad energy policy ideas will have powerful constituencies, while good ideas won’t.

Subsidizing ethanol benefits two well-organized groups: corn growers and ethanol producers (especially the corporate giant Archer Daniels Midland). As a result, it’s bad policy with bipartisan support. For example, earlier this month legislation calling for a huge increase in ethanol use was introduced by five senators, of whom four, including presidential aspirants Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, were Democrats. In a recent town meeting in Iowa, Hillary Clinton managed to mention ethanol twice, according to The Politico.

Meanwhile, conservation doesn’t have anything like the same natural political mojo. Where’s the organized, powerful constituency for tougher fuel economy standards, a higher gasoline tax, or a cap-and-trade system on carbon dioxide emissions?

Can anything be done to promote good energy policy? Public education is a necessary first step, which is why Al Gore deserves all the praise he’s getting. It would also help to have a president who gets scientific advice from scientists, not oil company executives and novelists.

But there’s still a huge gap between what obviously should be done and what seems politically possible. And I don’t know how to close that gap.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

If people are interested in seeing pictures of my trip to Paris, check out the link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tywolosin

Sunday: 373 Iraqis, 5 GIs Killed; 166 Iraqis Injured; US Helicopter Shot Down

Updated at 3:25 p.m. EST, Jan. 28, 2007

In Iraq, at least 373 Iraqis were killed or found dead today and another 166 were injured in various attacks during the festival of Ashura. Three more American servicemembers were killed in separate incidents, and a U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two more soldiers as well.

The U.S. military reported that a Marine died from wounds he received during combat in Anbar province. Roadside bombs killed a soldier and an MP in separate incidents north of Baghdad as well. Also, a U.S. helicopter was shot down near Najaf; no details about casualties were released.

In Najaf, several clashes are taking place. Police are reporting that about at least 250 gunmen and three Iraqi soldiers have been killed and 21 soldiers have been injured. As many as 300 gunmen may have been killed in the clashes. Also, a U.S. helicopter supporting Iraqi forces was shot down as well. Many pilgrims heading to Karbala for the holy festival of Ashura are in the area.

LINK

Fears of ‘spillover’ in region

By Guy Dinmore in Washington

Published: January 28 2007 20:07 | Last updated: January 28 2007 20:07

Iraq is rapidly sliding into an all-out civil war that is likely to spill over into neighbouring countries, resulting in mass deaths and refugee flows, serious disruption of Gulf oil supplies and a drastic decline in US influence in the region.

This grim forecast is set out in Things Fall Apart, a 130-page report released on Monday by the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy that also recommends how the US might contain the disastrous consequences of “spillover”.

The Washington think-tank distils what it says are the lessons learned from other civil wars, laying out the case histories of Afghanistan, Congo, Lebanon, Somalia and Yugoslavia.

Kenneth Pollack, a former Clinton administration official and CIA analyst who co-authored the report with Daniel Byman, told the FT they were looking for a “Goldilocks solution” – somewhere between “stay the course” and “getting all out”.

LINK to entire article

Lawmakers call for Bush impeachment, NM

By Deborah Baker / Associated Press

SANTA FE (AP) -- Two New Mexico lawmakers have introduced a measure calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

State Sens. John Grubesic of Santa Fe and Gerald Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque, both Democrats, said the resolution is a serious effort to try to trigger impeachment proceedings.

New Mexico, where lawmakers are meeting until March 17, would be the first state to pass the resolution, they said.

The measure alleges that Bush and Cheney conspired with others to intentionally mislead Congress and the public about the threat posed by Iraq in order to justify the war.

It also cites the administration's warrantless wiretapping program and alleges the torture of prisoners and the denial of constitutional rights to enemy combatants.

''This is not a publicity stunt,'' Ortiz y Pino told a cheering crowd at a rally at the Capitol on Tuesday. ''This is action that we can take, and it's an opening for the citizens to act.''

Ortiz y Pino said lawmakers in their 60-day session are grappling with the effects of resources at the national level being diverted from human needs and used instead for warfare and oppression.

''We simply cannot carry out the business of the Legislature with that shadow, that pall, hanging over us,'' he said.

Grubesic told the crowd that by introducing the resolution, ''we created a ripple. Your voice is going to turn it into a tidal wave, hopefully.''

The state Democratic Party, at a meeting in March, adopted a call for Bush's impeachment as part of its platform. Party chairman John Wertheim said at the time it stemmed from ''perceived abuses of power and corruption in the Bush administration.''

Nationally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has made it clear she will not entertain efforts to pursue impeachment.

A state can't mandate impeachment, but impeachment charges from a state can be forwarded to the U.S. House of Representatives and referred to the House Judiciary Committee, according to impeachment advocates.

Your Local Police Force Has Been Militarized

By Paul Craig Roberts

01/24/07 "ICHBlog" -- -- In recent years American police forces have called out SWAT teams 40,000 or more times annually. Last year did you read in your newspaper or hear on TV news of 110 hostage or terrorist events each day? No. What then were the SWAT teams doing? They were serving routine warrants to people who posed no danger to the police or to the public.

Occasionally Washington think tanks produce reports that are not special pleading for donors. One such report is Radley Balko’s “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America” (Cato Institute, 2006).

This 100-page report is extremely important and should have been published as a book. SWAT teams (Special Weapons and Tactics) were once rare and used only for very dangerous situations, often involving hostages held by armed criminals. Today SWAT teams are deployed for routine police duties. In the US today, 75-80% of SWAT deployments are for warrant service.

In a high percentage of the cases, the SWAT teams forcefully enter the wrong address, resulting in death, injury, and trauma to perfectly innocent people. Occasionally, highly keyed-up police kill one another in the confusion caused by their stun grenades.

LINK

Off the Rails: Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union

By Greg Palast

01/24/07 "ICHBlog" -- There was that tongue again. When the President lies he’s got this weird nervous tick: He sticks the tip of his tongue out between his lips. Like a little boy who knows he’s fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat. In his State of the Union tonight the President did his tongue thing 124 times — my kids kept count.

But it wasn’t all rat-licking lies.

Most pundits concentrated on Iraq and wacky health insurance stuff. But that’s just bubbles and blather. The real agenda is in the small stuff. The little razors in the policy apple, the nasty little pieces of policy shrapnel that whiz by between the appearances of the Presidential tongue.

First, there was the announcement the regime will, “give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers.” In case you missed that one, the President is talking about creating a federal citizen profile database.

There’s a problem with that idea. It’s against the law. The law in question is the United States Constitution. The Founding Fathers thought the government had no right to keep track on a citizen unless there is evidence they have committed, or planned to commit, a crime.

But the Founding Fathers didn’t imagine there were millions and billions of dollars to be made by private contractors ready to perform this KGB operation for the Department of Homeland Security, tracking each and every one of us to keep tabs on our “status.”

These work databases will tie into “voter verification” databases required by the Help America Vote Act. And these will tie to the databases on citizenship and so on.
Will Big Brother abuse these snoop lists? The biggest purveyor of such hit lists is Choice Point, Inc. – those characters who, before the 2000 election, helped Jeb Bush purge innocent voters as “felons” from Florida voter rolls. Will they abuse the new super-lists? Does Dick Cheney shoot in the woods?

There were several other little IEDs (improvised execrable policy devices) planted in the State of the Union. Did you catch the one about doubling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? If you’re unfamiliar with the SPR, it is supposed to be the stash of oil we keep in case the price of crude gets too high.

LINK

More for war, less for human needs

By LeiLani Dowell

Published Jan 25, 2007 1:47 AM

President George Bush used both sides of his mouth during his annual State of the Union address on Jan. 23.

On one side, he attempted to assure the ruling class that he had their best interests in mind. On the other, he offered paltry and contradictory promises of “security” to working people in the United States, all in generalities and hyper-patriotic, “us against them” terms. The speech was designed to appear like Bush was conceding to the mass opposition that has been reflected on the streets and in the November elections; however, nothing in the content of his speech indicates that.

What was most obvious was that, despite this posturing, Bush has every intention to continue the hugely unpopular, illegal, and horrific war against the Iraqi people, sending even more troops and spending even more money on the endeavor. In a tired refrain, Bush urged that “America must not fail in Iraq, because ... the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching.”

The first issue in Bush’s address was balancing the federal budget, which he declared would be done “without raising taxes.” No doubt this means what it has meant in the past—that the filthy rich will continue receiving tax breaks while the rest of us have to pay for the war.

Incidentally, no mention was made during the 50-minute speech about the war budget. The next day, the chair of the House Budget Committee, Rep. John Spratt, announced that increasing costs for the Iraq war are likely to nullify improvements in the federal deficit that have been predicted by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO claims that without increased war spending, the budget would reach a surplus by 2012, but only if Bush’s tax cuts—for the rich—are ended by the end of 2010. (Associated Press, Jan. 24)

As for the “war on terror,” Bush announced that “we must take the fight to the enemy.” This unveiled threat was directed at Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah, the leading group in Lebanon’s resistance movement. Bush declared the administration’s intention to “continue to speak out” against Cuba, when in reality the United States has imposed a blockade on the socialist country for the past 46 years and funded outright terrorist activities and organizations against it.

LINK

Our mercenaries in Iraq

The president relies on thousands of private soldiers with little oversight, a disturbing example of the military-industrial complex.

By Jeremy Scahill, JEREMY SCAHILL is a fellow at the Nation Institute and the author of the forthcoming "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army."
January 25, 2007

AS PRESIDENT BUSH took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither "civilians," as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina — Blackwater USA.

The company made headlines in early 2004 when four of its troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Fallouja — two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge. That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Fallouja and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day.

Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. On Tuesday, one of the company's helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad's most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater's $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company's initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men's bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of "the fog of war."

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war's privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy — the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

LINK

Large Rally Planned Saturday on Mall
Organizers Oppose Increase in Troops and Plan to Seek Withdrawal Deadline

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 25, 2007; B06

Tens of thousands of peace advocates from across the country are expected in Washington on Saturday for an anti-war rally that could be among the biggest since the war in Iraq began, organizers said yesterday.

They said the rally on the Mall, followed by a march near the Capitol, will target President Bush's intention to send more troops to the Iraq war.

The president's policy is "fight, war, occupation, death, destruction, spend our tax dollars," Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the umbrella group that is one of the main organizers of Saturday's events, said at a media briefing.

Citing what she called "this devastating debacle of lies and horror," Cagan said: "The people of this country have had it. This Saturday, January 27, on the heels of the Bush administration's decision to send another 21,000 U.S. troops into Iraq, hundreds of thousands of people from all across this country will come to this capital city to make it clear."

The marchers are calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq and the beginning of "an orderly, speedy and safe" withdrawal of troops, said Hani Khalil, a spokesman for the group. They want dates announced for the start of troop withdrawal as well as a specific deadline for its completion, he added.

United for Peace and Justice describes itself as a coalition of 1,400 local and national organizations. Among them are the National Organization for Women, United Church of Christ, the American Friends Service Committee, True Majority, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, CodePink, MoveOn.org, and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

Among the featured speakers will be Vietnam War-era protester Jane Fonda, according to the organizers. Others include actors Danny Glover, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, and Carlos Arredondo, who in 2004 set himself on fire after learning of the death in Iraq of his Marine Corps son, Alexander.

The rally is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. at the east end of the Mall, at Third Street and Madison Drive NW, the organizers said. The march is to kick off at 1 p.m.

The route and march permits were being finalized yesterday, the National Park Service said. Cagan said organizers want to march from the Mall north on Louisiana Avenue to Union Station, then south on Delaware Avenue to the Capitol.

LINK

Cynical Speech Highlights Sad State of the Union
By Joe Conason

If America’s need for substantial leadership were not so grave, we might find some dark amusement in George W. Bush’s latest attempt to escape his own political quagmire. Sinking to Nixonian levels of public distrust and disdain in most polls, and facing a Democratic Congress, he tried to shift the focus to health care, climate change and educational reform in his annual address to Congress.

As his Presidency enters its twilight years, Mr. Bush evidently wishes he could revisit the sunny days of “compassionate conservatism,” when gauzy proposals and happy talk so easily beguiled so many voters.

His problem is that we have heard all this before, and we know him too well by now.

Every year in his State of the Union address, he feigns deep concern over the same issues that he emphasized this year. He always urges independence from foreign oil, rapid development of alternative-energy sources, effective use of conservation and improvement of the environment. (Remember his “switch grass” biofuel program from last year?) He always promises more affordable health care that will become available to more of the uninsured and their children. He always says that public education must be made more effective and higher education should be made more affordable.

The chances are that few, if any, of the proposals advertised in his speech will actually arrive on Capitol Hill as legislation—or that he will even bother to mention them again, unless he recycles the same ideas next year. For most of these programs and promises are old half-measures, with little saliency and even less support. They are desperate cries for approval from a President who has permanently forfeited the popularity he once brandished like a weapon.
LINK

'Leader of the Free World' Blathers On...

It strikes me how little of Bush's bullshit

I can actually stomach as time goes on

It's like THC, which builds up

in the bloodstream so that it takes less

and less exposure to achieve the narcotic effect

True to form, the Congress gives yet another

grim and unsmiling standing ovation,

snapping dutifully to attention at

the mention of supporting our troops,

at least until their post-traumatic stress-ridden,

DU-soaked, limbless bodies are shipped home

It strikes me how little of George Bush's bullshit I can actually stomach as time goes on. It's a little bit like THC, which builds up in the bloodstream so that it takes less and less exposure to achieve the narcotic effect.

Or more like the Monty Python sketch, where the funniest joke imaginable was translated only one word at a time into German to be used as a secret weapon against the Nazis.

One translator accidentally translated an entire phrase and spent several months in hospital.

But it only takes a glimpse, or rather, a whiff, to get the full effect of the Mouthpiece of Empire's unschooled blather to see where this is all heading.

No surprise, the train is headed off the tracks, and we had all better jump out now, mug the brakeman, or follow headlong off the cliff.

The Boy in the Bubble speaks in what may be the most hermetically sealed bubble of all, the US Congress: "I ask you to support our troops in the field, and those on their way."

The pointed reference to 'those on their way' combined with all the references to what Iraq 'must' do, is enough insight, as if any more were needed, to show that our unhinged Dear Leader is off the reservation and out hunting reality on his own.

Another reference pops into mind, this time of General Jack Ripper's message as read by Buck Turgeson in Dr. Strangelove.

I've sent the wing to attack the Russians, "and you sure as hell won't stop them now!" We will prevail, in the purity of essence of our natural fluids.

True to form, the Congress gives yet another grim and unsmiling standing ovation, snapping dutifully to attention at the mention of supporting our troops, at least until their post-traumatic stress-ridden, DU-soaked, limbless bodies are shipped home, with or without the superpathogen cooked up in army field hospitals.

How did these guys ever get away with making fun of the Politburo for so long? I see a bunch of paunchy old white guys barely stirring from their catatonia long enough to rubber stamp the diktats of other paunchy old white guys, all a bit too sclerotic to dance even at their own War Party.

What exactly is it that the opposition has to contribute? A stream of useless nonbinding resolutions and handwringing rhetoric aimed at blunting the "mandate" they got from a war-weary public on November7?

Throwing Jimmy Carter under the bus for having the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it is the land-grab of Palestinian territory and decades of abuse that lies at the center of the mideast conflict? Silly malaise-ridden Jimmy. He must be an anti-semite.

Bellicose, if confusing, musings from the party chairman about how Iran is the real threat, rather than Iraq? Translation: if Democrats were in power, we would have kept our powder dry to launch a murderous rampage against a totally different country!

Congress could stop this insanity in a minute, despite all the crocodile tears about the power they don't have. And here we go into election season: a fresh crop of sharp-elbowed overachievers with money to raise, asses to cover, and focus groups to please.

Don't count on this crowd to stop the impending hell of ever expanding war.

Their pockets are lined with the same cash that keeps the war machine humming. Impeachment is the only real remedy for a president who thinks he is above the law. But of course, that isn't in the cards, or even "on the table."

Nancy Pelosi's house must be a mess, strewn as it is with things that are "off the table." No, I'm afraid that hope is a scarce commodity at this point. But it could be the state of the union and the bourbon talking.

Maybe we'll scrounge up some hope before there's nothing left to do but grab hold, like Slim Pickens, and ride the missile all the way down. Daniel Patrick Welch @ People's Voice

LINK VIA RADICALLEFT.NET

Obama: The Democratic Messiah?

by Joel S. Hirschhorn

What a wonderful political distraction is Senator Barack Hussein Obama. What continues to amaze me is how our bipartisan obstacle to true political competition continually creates illusions of change and reform. Thus it keeps a grip on Americans' hope for the future, and preempts public support for more profound political change. Is Obama just another example of how our corrupt political system ingeniously creates candidates to keep hope alive? Is the self-professed progressive Obama the real thing? Is he something other than a conventional politician? I have read many of his speeches and other statements. I applaud his upbeat rhetoric, but few policy details are given.

Joseph Sobran opined that "the Democrats are looking for a political messiah, and many of them think they've found one in Illinois's junior senator, Barack Obama. And Obama is, without question, a very charming, intelligent, and impressive young man who is, moreover, catnip to the press corps." Cal Thomas made the good point that many Americans look at presidential candidates as political messiahs. He said Obama "can also play dual roles of messiah figure and one of the Wise Men." And he astutely asked: "Have political 'messiah figures' become false gods?"

In truth, none of the current presidential hopefuls have obtained the political messiah mantle as much as Obama has.

Yet I remain skeptical. Is he willing to do whatever it takes to become President? In our diseased political system, whatever-it-takes-candidacy produces screw-the-public-politics-as-usual. Here are some things that would truly impress me about Obama's uniqueness, and that would support viewing him as something other than just another opportunistic politician – albeit with a race, good looks, anti-Iraq war, and intelligence advantage.

First and foremost, I would be deeply impressed if Obama soon committed to taking campaign contributions only from individuals and only in small amounts, say no greater than $50. Because if he raised the huge amount of money necessary for a competitive presidential campaign – say $100 million – from the usual sources, then he will inevitably become (assuming he is not already) corrupted.

Second, his voting record in the Senate shows a strong allegiance to labor and teacher unions, according to data from Project Vote Smart. These groups can be hugely important sources of big campaign money. I would like to hear Obama explicitly pronounce policy positions that show he is not a lackey of organized labor.

Third, he has supported the views of the Population Connection, better known by its former name: Zero Population Growth.. One of its core positions is: "The only acceptable solution to the population problem is through expanding educational, advocacy and service efforts that lower birth rates." Additionally, for the United States it advocates "efforts to conserve energy and natural resources and improve efficiency, eliminate our 'disposable society' lifestyle, and use the best possible technology to protect the natural and human environment." I would be impressed if Obama spoke out about the compulsive consumerism hallmarking U.S. culture. And if he solidly supported higher gasoline taxes and stricter vehicle mileage standards to promote less driving and gasoline use. Besides favoring abortion rights and backing the interests of Planned Parenthood, what else does he support to cut global population growth?

LINK

Only Impeachment Can Prevent More War

By Paul Craig Roberts (via information Clearing House Blog)

01/22/07 "ICHBlog" -- --Everyone knows that Bush’s Iraq “surge” will not work. Even the authors of the plan, neoconservatives Frederick Kagan and Jack Keane, have emphasized that the plan cannot work with any less than an addition of 50,000 US troops committed to another three years of combat. Bush is only adding 40% of that number of troops, and Defense Secretary Gates speaks of the operation being over by summer’s end.

On January 18 a panel of retired generals testifying on Capitol Hill slammed Bush’s surge plan as “a fool’s errand.” Even the easily bamboozled American public knows the plan will not work. Newsweek’s latest poll released January 20 shows that only 23% of the public support sending more troops to Iraq and that twice as many Americans trust the Democrats in Congress than trust Bush.

A majority of Americans (54%) believe Bush to be neither honest nor ethical, and 57% believe that Bush lacks “strong leadership qualities.”

Nevertheless, Bush defended his surge plan, telling a group of TV stations last week, “I believe it will work.”

Bush is correct that it will work--indeed, the surge is working. We have to be clear about how the plan works. It does not mean that
21,500 more US troops will bring order and stability to Iraq. The surge is working, because it is deflecting attention from the Bush Regime’s real game plan.

The real game plan is to orchestrate a war with Iran and to initiate wider conflict in the Middle East before public and military pressure forces the Bush Regime to withdraw US troops from Iraq.

Two US carrier attack groups have been deployed to the Persian Gulf. US missile systems are being sent to oil producing countries to counter any incoming missiles from Iran should any survive the US attack. Israeli pilots have been training for an attack on Iran. US war doctrine has been changed to permit pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries. US attack aircraft have been deployed at bases in Turkey. A neocon admiral who attends AIPAC events has been made commander in chief of US forces in the Middle East. Obviously, the ground war in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the focus of the Bush Regime’s new military deployments. The Bush Regime is focused on attacking Iran.

LINK

Marine Corps will ask thousands to come back

By Gordon Lubold - Staff writer for Marine Corps Times
Posted : Friday Jan 19, 2007 22:23:02 EST

The Marine Corps plans to ask up to 100,000 former Marines released from the ranks since September 2001 whether they would like to come back.

Speaking at the Pentagon on Friday, Lt. Gen. Emerson Gardner, the Corps’ deputy commandant for programs and resources, said many of those Marines had either hinted that they’d like to have re-enlisted at the time they got out or were told outright that no slots were available in which they could re-enlist.

“In the past, we’ve had a number of people who have desired to re-enlist in a particular job specialty, and, unfortunately, there is not enough room in the Marine Corps to keep them on, so we have released them from active duty,” Gardner said.

“But anecdotally, we’re all familiar with people that have gotten out of the Marine Corps, and you talk to them a year or two later and they say, ‘You know, if I had to do it over again, I sure would like to have stayed,’ ” Gardner said.

“We’re going to offer them that opportunity. Our commandant will make a call to arms and see what number of those 100,000 would be willing to come back on active duty,” Gardner said.

He did not detail how those Marines would be notified or asked to come back, but he indicated that given the Corps’ intention to grow by more than 20,000 Marines over the next five years, the initiative could come in handy.

The Corps has about 180,000 Marines, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced last week that it would grow by about 22,000 people at a rate of about 5,000 per year to a total end strength of 202,000 by 2012.

The Army, which stands at about 507,000 soldiers, will grow to about 547,000 over the next five years, or by about 8,000 per year.

The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2006

Click HERE to see List

The first three are from the road trip through Washington, crossing over the Columbia.
The fallowing six are from Whistler or Blackcomb Moutain in Whistler, British Columbia.

Via MSNBC

Manual to allow executions based on hearsay

Pentagon plan for detainee trials could spark fresh bipartisan debate

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has drafted a manual for upcoming detainee trials that would allow suspected terrorists to be convicted on hearsay evidence and coerced testimony and imprisoned or put to death.

According to a copy of the manual obtained by The Associated Press, a terror suspect's defense lawyer cannot reveal classified evidence in the person's defense until the government has a chance to review it.

The manual, sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday and scheduled to be released later by the Pentagon, is intended to track a law passed last fall by Congress restoring President Bush's plans to have special military commissions try terror-war prisoners. Those commissions had been struck down earlier in the year by the Supreme Court.

LINK

How do we explain

that segment of US society which,

through suspension of all critical faculties

and indifference to the truth,

defies logic and evidence by

supporting the war against Iraq

The Iraq War and the American Peasant Mentality:

There is a major segment of quiet peasants

who believed uncritically what they were told

and supported the war by their compliance

I am speaking of a peasant state of mind

A large segment of American society seems utterly brainwashed, accepting the 'truth' relentlessly fed to them. They desperately want to believe the slogans about the "Land of the Free", the "American Way", "Only in America" and "American Democracy".

I would suggest that this is a throwback to the 'peasant' mentality. You do what you're told. You believe in what you're told to believe. You're passive, conditioned and easily led.

The peasant is a type who has disappeared from Western Europe with excellent effects both socially and politically.

The American peasant however has a lot to answer for. This is most vividly shown in the public's judgment about the rightness of the Iraq war where views are sharply divided between Europe and America.

The historical peasant was an agricultural worker who was poor, uneducated and usually worked so hard he had no time or energy for anything else. Any opinions or judgments that such a man might make would necessarily be of poor quality.

In America, the land of plenty, opportunity and electronic information which has never seen a peasant class of this sort, how can the peasant possibly exist and indeed be blamed for his judgments?

I wish to discuss here one strand, but an important one, of many that made the Iraq war possible.

Others for example are those of the Rumsfelds who were in it for the money, the Condoleezza Rices and Colin Powell who were careerists and the Richard Perles together with sundry Zionist supporters and collaborators for whom Saddam was their worst enemy.

We can easily understand them and their self-interests. Everyone got what s/he wanted except for Colin Powell whose unwise United Nations performance in identifying mobile chemical factories will make him a joke far beyond his lifetime.

I am not concerned about these. I am interested in the major segment of quiet peasants who believed uncritically what they were told and supported the war by their compliance. I am speaking of a peasant state of mind.

We cannot blame our historical peasant for poor judgment or lack of knowledge. He cannot help his position. The American peasant has no such excuse.

The infallible test for identifying a peasant is whether he believed that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attack. It is an unarguable fact, widely known for years, that Saddam was not behind it, yet large numbers of Americans to this day think that he was.

In linking Saddam with 9/11, President Bush simply lied, for reasons that seemed good to him, but his lies are not my concern.

I am concerned that he never produced evidence and it was widely publicised at the time that there was no such evidence, yet much of the country believed him.

The highest proportion of believers were, and still are, Fox News viewers. Fox News, the principal channel to assert a link between Saddam and 9/11, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a Zionist supporter.

From a Zionist perspective, that was clever misinformation, aimed at an audience that would accept it. But why would anyone accept it?

Only by suspension of all critical faculties, curiosity about American society, the wider world and indeed, one's information provider. I would also add indifference to the truth, which is crucial in matters of warfare and the lives of men.

The American peasant cannot protect his country as he believes he is doing because by his indifference, ignorance and credulity he cannot differentiate truth from falsehood.

He is as indistinguishable from our traditional peasant as if we were to take that worthy individual, dress him in a suit, sit him for the day before a television screen showing Fox News in a suburban house with new car in the garage then in the evening, ask his opinion on world events.

How can this be?

I am doubtless gathering up accountants and computer programmers together with McDonalds workers and the odd soya farmer of a few thousand acres who owns a barn full of machinery, two or three cars and sends his children to university.

You might say in objection that many of these are highly qualified people with highly developed vocational skills, so they cannot be peasants.

I reply that such skills and qualifications are irrelevant; they relate only to earning money rather than knowledge of the wider world.

Our traditional peasant had excellent vocational skills as anyone knows who has tried ploughing a field behind a horse, making cheese, salami or maintaining an orchard.

Our Americans are not poor, you might object.

They are men and women of substance, churchgoers, even pillars of their communities. True, but they behave as if they are poor since their possessions and money, which are the envy of most of the world, are not enough.

They are not preoccupied with producing goods for survival as our traditional peasant is; they are preoccupied with gaining goods and money far beyond a good standard of living.

They live in virtual villages where, if they have leisure from their efforts to escape their self-defined poverty, they associate with others who have similar village interests.

Unaware that their nation expends its wealth, the lives of its soldiers and the lives of uncounted hundreds of thousands of Iraqis half a world away on the basis of lies and deception. This is peasant behaviour.

I do not know the underlying cause of this phenomenon; nor can I suggest a remedy. Perhaps many Americans believe their own slogans about the "Land of the Free", the "American Way", "Only in America" and "American Democracy".

Perhaps it is because, having never suffered invasion and occupation, they cannot empathize with those whom they regularly invade.

Of course, there are many Americans who are as knowledgeable and sophisticated as anyone anywhere and who genuinely believe that an American life is as valuable as an Iraqi life.

I place the responsibility on them to bring their naïve compatriots to an understanding that their behaviour has disastrous consequences for millions of fellow humans who are suffering and dying in other parts of the world.

Ultimately, they endanger America and themselves. Christopher King @ ICH

Bush's legacy: The president who cried wolf

Olbermann: Bush's strategy fails because it depends on his credibility

SPECIAL COMMENT

By Keith Olbermann

Anchor, 'Countdown'

Updated: 9:05 p.m. CT Jan 11, 2007

Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me” — only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake ... in Iran.

Only this president could extol the “thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group,” and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — “engage Syria and Iran” — and transform it into “threaten Syria and Iran” — when al-Qaida would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

And to Iran and Syria — and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq — we must look like a country run by the equivalent of the drunken pest who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy’s friends, “Ok, which one of you is next?”

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer “what are you thinking?,” but rather “are you thinking at all?”

“I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended,” you said last night.

And yet — without any authorization from the public, which spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November’s elections — without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party, including Sens. Sam Brownback, Norm Coleman and Chuck Hagel, are fleeing for higher ground) — without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do — you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America’s behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.

Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq that even a majority of serving personnel are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war.

It is so weary that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq will be on their second tours or their third tours or their fourth tours — and now you’re going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?

Who is left to go and fight, sir?

Who are you going to send to “interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria”?

Laura and Barney?

The line is from the movie “Chinatown” and I quote it often: “Middle of a drought,” the mortician chuckles, “and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!”

Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq, and the president wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria.

Maybe that’s the point — to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish this latest war strategy is, (strategy, that is, for the war already under way, and not the one on deck).

We are going to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad and 4,000 more into Anbar Province to give the Iraqi government “breathing space.”

In and of itself that is an awful and insulting term.

The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered, to give “breathing space” to a government that just turned the first and perhaps the most sober act of any democracy — the capital punishment of an ousted dictator — into a vengeance lynching so barbaric and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority, that it might have offended the Ku Klux Klan of the 19th century.

And what will our men and women in Iraq do?

The ones who will truly live — and die — during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a “year ahead” that “will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve”?

They will try to seal Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad where the civil war is worst.

Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other, but rather they can focus anew on killing our people.

Because last night the president foolishly all but announced that we will be sending these 21,500 poor souls, but no more after that, and if the whole thing fizzles out, we’re going home.

The plan fails militarily.

The plan fails symbolically.

The plan fails politically.

Most importantly, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility.

You speak of mistakes and of the responsibility “resting” with you.

But you do not admit to making those mistakes.

And you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist toward Iran and Syria.

In fact, when you briefed news correspondents off-the-record before the speech, they were told, once again, “if you knew what we knew … if you saw what we saw … ”

“If you knew what we knew” was how we got into this morass in Iraq in the first place.

The problem arose when it turned out that the question wasn’t whether we knew what you knew, but whether you knew what you knew.

You, sir, have become the president who cried wolf.

All that you say about Iraq now could be gospel.

All that you say about Iran and Syria now could be prescient and essential.

We no longer have a clue, sir.

We have heard too many stories.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the director of national intelligence over to the State Department because he thought you were wrong about Iran.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.

Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture.

They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories.

They are now fertilizer, indeed.

The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care.

I read this list last night, before the president’s speech, and it bears repeating because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context.

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America.

Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control.

Last night he promised to embed them in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD.

Mobile labs.

Secret sources.

Aluminum tubes.

Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary:

Because Saddam was a material threat.

Because of 9/11.

Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaida. Terrorism in general.

To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases.

Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.

Because — 439 words in to the speech last night — he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

To get Muqtada Al-Sadr. To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the generals told him to. He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government “de-Baathified.”

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. He gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us: America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throes.

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it’s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points:

The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam. A provisional government, a charter, a constitution, the trial of Saddam. Elections, purple fingers, another government, the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: We would be greeted as liberators — with flowers;

As they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about “stay the course.”

We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And, last night, that to gain Iraqis’ trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was al-Qaida, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

He told us the war would pay for itself. It would cost $1.7 billion. $100 billion. $400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night’s speech alone cost another $6 billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military. You have lost the Congress to the Democrats. You have lost most of the Iraqis. You have lost many of the Republicans. You have lost our allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your “fellow citizens” you just sent to their deaths.

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next president has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Is Bush’s War Winding Down or Heating Up?

The Coming Attack on Iran

By Paul Craig Roberts

01/08/07 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Most Americans believe that Bush’s Iraqi misadventure is over. The occupation has lost the support of the electorate, the Congress, the generals and the troops. The Democrats are sitting back waiting for Bush to come to terms with reality. They don’t want to be accused of losing the war by forcing Bush out of Iraq. There are no more troops to commit, and when the “surge” fails, Bush will have no recourse but to withdraw. A little longer, everyone figures, and the senseless killing will be over.

Recent news reports indicate that this conclusion could be an even bigger miscalculation than the original invasion.

On January 7 the London Times reported that it has learned from “several Israeli military sources” that “Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry denied the report.

The Times reports that “Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.”

In other news reports (http://www.today.az/news/politics/34565.html) Israeli General Oded Tira is quoted as follows: “President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure.”

General Tira gives the Israel Lobby the following tasks: (1) “turn to Hilary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran,” (2) exert influence on European countries so that “Bush will not be isolated in the international arena again,” and (3) “clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran.”

Israel’s part, General Tira says, is to “prepare an independent military strike by coordinating flights in Iraqi airspace with the US. We should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of air bases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran.”

LINK

Narrowcasting Hate

Jan 9th at 2:57 am by tas

Here’s some things to ponder from a recent Matt Taibbi column at Rolling Stone, “Keep on Hatin’“:

Some say that networks like CNN have struck back by presenting the news with “personal flair” or “attitude”; others believe that the Fox ratings dip (a 21 percent decline in total viewers compared with the last quarter of 2005) is just a reflection of viewer sentiment toward a flailing White House that is closely tied in the public imagination to Rupert Murdoch’s information empire. […]

Sadly, this is bullshit, and we all know it. What happened this year was not an abatement of the Fox phenomenon. It was a super-acceleration of the Fox era. This idea that what Fox is selling is a specific policy or ideology is a myth that is going to be furthered in every corner of the media landscape. What Fox has been selling in the last ten years is a formula for building and retaining a mass media demographic. The formula is Blame, Hate, Coalesce: You address the widest possible political demographic, blame their problems on a numerically smaller group, and then you solidify the collective identity of the first group by feeding them a regular and addictive diet of warnings and dire threats to their existence. […]

What everyone seems to now forget is that Fox’s blame game works in reverse as well. When you demonize a certain group, you not only build the collective identity of your own target market, you build a sense of collective identity among your chief demographic’s enemies as well. […]

Thus, after a time, a media strategy aimed at coalescing a broad middle under a paranoid umbrella against a smaller common enemy has the effect of backing said enemies into their own paranoid corner, where they in turn are ripe to be seized and eaten by some other canny media predator using exactly the same tactics.

That’s what’s happening now. When I go to a bookstore now, I don’t see any relief from the same basic Blame, Hate, Coalesce strategy Murdoch started rolling half a generation ago. I just see it working in reverse. We had Bernie Goldberg’s 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America and now we have Keith Olbermann’s The Worst Person in the World: And 202 Strong Contenders. We had Bill O’Reilly’s Culture Warrior and we now have Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O’Reilly. We had Ann Coulter’s Godless, which in turn spawned Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter and Soulless: Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church of Hate and even the inspired I Hate Ann Coulter! by Anonymous. You had Rush’s The Way Things Ought to Be and the way things are according to Al Franken, which is that Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. [tasnote: The Limbaugh/Franken books Taibbi cites actually came out before there was a Foxnews, though that doesn’t drastic much from his point.] For those who don’t want to buy all the new liberal books, you can get it all in one volume in The I Hate Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity. . . Reader: The Hideous Truth About America’s Ugliest Conservatives, edited by Clint Willis. […]

It is amazing to me that people can walk into a bookstore, see a pair of books whose titles begin with I Hate… , and still believe that the two books are different, simply because the politics of one are conservative and the politics of the other are liberal. Even though it is astoundingly obvious, I’m beginning to think that the vast majority of Americans will not realize until it is too late that this is the same shit.

Give Taibbi’s column a full read, no matter what side of the political fence you’re on. One question it brings to my mind is whether or not we’re being duped to turning against each other because of capitalism. Foxnews is successful not because it captivates a whole nation, but because it uses a great marketing strategy called narrowcasting. To be a hit on cable, as far as advertisers are concerned, a show has to hover around 500,000 viewers — not exactly a huge qualification in a nation of 300 million people, most of whom have a television in (at least) their living room. Foxnews programs like The O’Reilly Factor have managed to get over two million viewers, a figure that makes advertisers orgasm with glee, and Foxnews has accomplished this not by being a news organization but by targeting a rightwing audience. Throwing objectivity to the wind, Foxnews will air the news that their target audience wants to hear. Instead of feeding their viewers the truth, Foxnews gives them more of the same… Which is exactly what you expect a network to do for a target audience with, say, a sitcom like “Friends”. The problem is that, often, the news isn’t pretty, isn’t simple, and it doesn’t support your beliefs. You can’t narrowcast actual news, it just is.

In short, Foxnews is peddling hate because there’s an audience for it, so they know they’ll make a buck. As Taibbi points out, there’s a negative reaction to this and we’re all living through it:

We are being split up into rigid camps and kept doped up on fear, hate and invective. At the end of 2006 we are a country without life-threatening economic or political problems whose population is utterly consumed with paranoia, divided into two insoluble groups, with each genuinely afraid of being exterminated by the other.

Isn’t that a bit fucked up? Does this political divide exist simply because ole Rupert wants to make a buck?

Who benefits from escalating chaos in Iraq?

By Rep. Ron Paul

01/05/07 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Saddam Hussein is dead. So are three thousand Americans.

The regime in Iraq has been changed. Yet victory will not be declared: not only does the war go on, it's about to escalate. Obviously the turmoil in Iraq is worse than ever, and most Americans no longer are willing to tolerate the costs, both human and economic, associated with this war.

We have been in Iraq for 45 months. Many more Americans have been killed in Iraq than were killed in the first 45 months of our war in Vietnam. I was in the U.S. Air Force in 1965, and I remember well when President Johnson announced a troop surge in Vietnam to hasten victory. That war went on for another decade, and by the time we finally got out 60,000 Americans had died. God knows we should have gotten out ten years earlier. "Troop surge" meant serious escalation.

The election is over and Americans have spoken. Enough is enough! They want the war ended and our troops brought home. But the opposite likely will occur, with bipartisan support. Up to 50,000 more troops will be sent. The goal no longer is to win, but simply to secure Baghdad! So much has been spent with so little to show for it.

Who possibly benefits from escalating chaos in Iraq? Neoconservatives unabashedly have written about how chaos presents opportunities for promoting their goals. Certainly Osama bin Laden has benefited from the turmoil in Iraq, as have the Iranian Shi'ites who now are better positioned to take control of southern Iraq.

Yes, Saddam Hussein is dead, and only the Sunnis mourn. The Shi'ites and Kurds celebrate his death, as do the Iranians and especially bin Laden – all enemies of Saddam Hussein. We have performed a tremendous service for both bin Laden and Ahmadinejad, and it will cost us plenty. The violent reaction to our complicity in the execution of Saddam Hussein is yet to come.

Three thousand American military personnel are dead, more than 22,000 are wounded, and tens of thousands will be psychologically traumatized by their tours of duty in Iraq. Little concern is given to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed in this war. We've spent $400 billion so far, with no end in sight.

This is money we don't have. It is all borrowed from countries like China, that increasingly succeed in the global economy while we drain wealth from our citizens through heavy taxation and insidious inflation. Our manufacturing base is now nearly extinct.

LINK

Mission Iran

Israel will not tolerate Iran going nuclear and military sources say it will use tactical strikes unless Iran abandons its programme. Is Israel bluffing or might it really push the button?

By Uzi Mahnaimi in New York and Sarah Baxter in Washington report

01/07/06 "The Times" -- -- In an Israeli air force bunker in Tel Aviv, near the concert hall for the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, Major General Eliezer Shkedi might one day conduct operations of a perilous kind. Should the order come from the Israeli prime minister, it will be Shkedi’s job as air force commander to orchestrate a tactical nuclear strike on Iran.

Two fast assault squadrons based in the Negev desert and in Tel Nof, south of Tel Aviv, are already training for the attack.

On a plasma screen, Shkedi will be able to see dozens of planes advance towards Iran, as well as the electronic warfare aircraft jamming the Iranian and Syrian air defences and the rescue choppers hovering near the border, ready to move in and pluck out the pilots should the mission go wrong.

Another screen will show live satellite images of the Iranian nuclear sites. The prime target will be Natanz, the deep and ferociously protected bunker south of Tehran where the Iranians are churning out enriched uranium in defiance of the United Nations security council.

If things go according to plan, a pilot will first launch a conventional laser-guided bomb to blow a shaft down through the layers of hardened concrete. Other pilots will then be ready to drop low-yield one kiloton nuclear weapons into the hole. The theory is that they will explode deep underground, both destroying the bunker and limiting the radioactive fallout.

The other potential targets are Iran’s uranium conversion facility at Isfahan — uncomfortably near a metropolis of 4.5m people — and the heavy water power reactor at Arak, which might one day be able to produce enough plutonium to make a bomb. These will be hit with conventional bombs.

In recent weeks Israeli pilots have been flying long-haul as far as Gibraltar to simulate the 2,000-mile round trip to Natanz. “There is no 99% success in this mission. It must be a perfect 100% or better not at all,” one of the pilots expected to fly on the mission told The Sunday Times.

The Israelis say they hope as fervently as the rest of the world that this attack will never take place. There is clearly an element of sabre-rattling in their letting it be known the plan exists and that the pilots are already in training. But in the deeply dangerous and volatile Middle East, contingency plans can become horrible reality.

LINK

Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Germany
Experts Suggest the CIA, Not Kim Jong-il, is Counterfeiting Dollars
“Sources allege that the CIA prints the falsified 'Supernotes' at a secret facility near Washington to fund covert operations without Congressional oversight.”

The American secret service, the CIA, could be responsible for manufacturing the nearly-perfect counterfeit 50 and 100-dollar-notes that Washington pins on the terror regime of North Korea. The charge comes after an extensive investigation in Europe and Asia by the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung of Frankfurt, and after interviews with counterfeit money experts and leading representatives of the high-security publishing industry.

The U.S.-dollar forgeries designated "Supernotes," which are so good that even specialists are unable to distinguish them from genuine notes, have circulated for almost two decades without a reliable identification of the culprits. Because of their extraordinary quality, experts assume that some country must be behind the enterprise.

The administration of George W. Bush officially accused Pyongyang of the deed in the autumn of 2005, derailing Six-Party Talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. Since then, tensions on the Korean Peninsula have increased considerably. America charges that North Korea is financing its rocket and nuclear weapons program with the counterfeit "Supernotes."

North Korea is one of the world's poorest nations and lacks the technological capability to produce notes of such high quality. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung, North Korea is at present unable to even produce the won [the North Korean currency]. The sources, which do not wish to be identified, allege that the CIA prints the falsified "Supernotes" at a secret facility near Washington to fund covert operations without Congressional oversight.

AMERICANS ARE SHOPPING WHILE IRAQ BURNS
by Bob Herbert, New York Times

The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City - where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs - and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.
A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. "All I can tell you," said a Wal-Mart employee, "is that they were fired up and ready to spend money."
There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.
Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman's proposal - it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. - but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war.
With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut, said: "I definitely don't know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don't even think about the war. They're more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday's test."
His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. "No, definitely not," he said. "None of my friends even really care about what's going on in Iraq."
This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.
According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure.
In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: "The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or 'honor killings.' Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives."

LINK to rest

Quagmire of the Vanities

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The only real question about the planned “surge” in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional.

Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks they’re cynical. He recently told The Washington Post that administration officials are simply running out the clock, so that the next president will be “the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof.”

Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for his research on irrationality in decision-making, thinks they’re delusional. Mr. Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon recently argued in Foreign Policy magazine that the administration’s unwillingness to face reality in Iraq reflects a basic human aversion to cutting one’s losses — the same instinct that makes gamblers stay at the table, hoping to break even.

Of course, such gambling is easier when the lives at stake are those of other people’s children.

Well, we don’t have to settle the question. Either way, what’s clear is the enormous price our nation is paying for President Bush’s character flaws.

I began writing about the Bush administration’s infallibility complex, the president’s Captain Queeg-like inability to own up to mistakes, almost a year before the invasion of Iraq. When you put a man like that in a position of power — the kind of position where he can punish people who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, and base policy decisions on the advice of people who play to his vanity — it’s a recipe for disaster.

Consider, on one side, the case of the C.I.A.’s Baghdad station chief during 2004, who provided accurate assessments of the deteriorating situation in Iraq. “What is he, some kind of defeatist?” asked the president — and according to The Washington Post, at the end of his tour, the station chief “was punished with a poor assignment.”

On the other side, consider the men Mr. Bush has turned to since the midterm election. They constitute a remarkable coalition of the unwilling — men who have been wrong about Iraq every step of the way, but aren’t willing to admit it.

The principal proponents of the “surge” are William Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. Now, even if the Joint Chiefs of Staff hadn’t given the surge a thumbs down, Mr. Kristol’s track record should have been reason enough to ignore his advice. For example, early in the war, Mr. Kristol dismissed as “pop sociology” warnings that there would be conflict between Sunnis and Shiites and that the Shiites might try to create an Islamic fundamentalist state. He assured National Public Radio listeners that “Iraq’s always been very secular.”

But Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kagan appealed to Mr. Bush’s ego, suggesting that he might yet be able to rescue his signature war. And am I the only person to notice that after all the Oedipal innuendo surrounding the Iraq Study Group — Daddy’s men coming in to fix Junior’s mess, etc. — Mr. Bush turned for advice to two other sons of famous and more successful fathers?

Not that Mr. Bush rejects all advice from elder statesmen. We now know that he has been talking to Henry Kissinger. But Mr. Kissinger is a kindred spirit. In remarks published after his death, Gerald Ford said of his secretary of state, “Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend.”

Oh, and Senator John McCain, the first major political figure to advocate a surge, is another man who can’t admit mistakes. Mr. McCain now says that he always knew that the conflict was “probably going to be long and hard and tough” — but back in 2002, before the Senate voted on the resolution authorizing the use of force, he declared that a war with Iraq would be “fairly easy.”

Mr. Bush is expected to announce his plan for escalation in the next few days. According to the BBC, the theme of his speech will be “sacrifice.” But sacrifice for what? Not for the national interest, which would be best served by withdrawing before the strain of the war breaks our ground forces. No, Iraq has become a quagmire of the vanities — a place where America is spending blood and treasure to protect the egos of men who won’t admit that they were wrong.