Saturday, August 28, 2010

The Fake Military Withdrawal

The Fakest Military Withdrawal Imaginable in Iraq By Ramzy Baroud

"So what if the US army downgrades its military presence in Iraq and re-labels over 50,000 remaining soldiers? Will the US military now stop chasing after perceived terrorist threats? Will it concede an inch of its unchallenged control over Iraqi skies? Will it relinquish power over the country's self-serving political elite? Will it give up its influence over every relevant aspect of life in the country, from the now autonomous Kurdish region in the north all the way to the border with Kuwait in the south, which the jubilant soldiers crossed while hollering the shrieks of victory?"

Does it really take a genius to know that this isn't going to end well for our troops (and our nation)? Hostility towards the occupier has existed since the start of the invasion, not to mention what we did to them before the invasion with the embargo. I've seen Pew reports showing the vast majority clearly demand occupier leave. Why is this so hard for us to understand? Can't we imagine foreign troops on our streets? If not, maybe now is a good time to think about it.

The way it's really going to go down, as I see it, wouldn't be a Vietnam style rout, nor will it resemble the Alamo. It will be unique, and very bad, because we have so many big guns and so many people willing to use them.

Eventually our troops will leave, that much is clear. We know it and the Iraqi's know it. Question is whether they will take this opportunity to show off their tribal zeal and affinity by hurting and embarrassing the occupier in the last stages of the occupation, when on the ground troop strength is so low. I think they will.

Imagine it gets down to the embassy, and it's under siege, taking fire daily. What would the Neocons do? Send troops back in? No. Pull out? Maybe, but maybe the warmongers will decide to have a field day with the Big Guns?

The important understanding here is that the Neocons bet our farm on their crusade to establish military authority in the Middle East. They have no plans on withdrawing our military until they complete this mission. If our troops were to be pulled out of the Middle East, Israel would be left surrounded by enemies. The Neocons and their friends in our information supply, the media, aren't going to let that happen. They'll come up with all kinds of stories, excuses, great things to say, etc., but that war is far from over.


Bill








Bill

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Mass Assassinations - and what it means

Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America's Military Strategy in the Muslim World By Fred Branfman

"The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America's military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people. Conducting assassination operations throughout the 1.3 billon-strong Muslim world will inevitably increase the murder of civilians and thus create exponentially more "enemies," as Gen. McChrystal suggests -- posing a major long-term threat to U.S. national security. This mass assassination program, sold as defending Americans, is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come. General Petraeus must be replaced, and the U.S. military's policy of direct and mass assassination of Muslims ended.

...

The U.S. has conducted assassination programs in the Third World for decades, but the actual killing -- though directed and financed by the C.I.A. -- has been largely left to local paramilitary and police forces. This has now has changed dramatically.

...

The notion that a handful of U.S. military and CIA officials have the right to unilaterally and secretly murder anyone they choose in any nation on earth, without even outside knowledge let alone oversight, is deeply troubling to anyone with a conscience, belief in democracy, or respect for international law. It was precisely such behavior that made the Gestapo and Soviet secret police symbols of evil.

...

Both the "Underwear" and the "Times Square" bombers attributed their attempts to blow up Americans to their anger at the drone strikes. While Americans were saved by their incompetence, the U.S. may not be so lucky the next time, and the time after that. One thing is crystal clear: inflaming anti-American hatred throughout the Muslim world can only exponentially increase the numbers of those committed to killing Americans."


Quoted more then usual from this article, but this is a powerful line of thinking which has been on my mind for some time, so I'm pleased to see it so well articulated. Please read the entire article - and think about it!



Bill

Monday, August 23, 2010

Look at what we're done

U.S. Occupation of Iraq More Than Doubles Poverty, Sickness -- Leaves Country a Total Disaster By Adil E. Shamoo

"Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq."

"This is What Success Looks Like" By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"The only reliable definition of “success” in any of the United States’ martial enterprises is the effective destruction in economic, social and environmental terms of the target country. That certainly happened in Iraq and is a process far advanced in Afghanistan."

The Iraq Legacy: Tell It Like It Is by Medea Benjamin

"With the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, the administration, the military and the media are trying to put a positive spin on this grim chapter of U.S. history. It would certainly give some comfort to the grieving families of the over 4,400 soldiers killed in Iraq if their sacrifices had left Iraq a better place or made America safer. But the bitter truth is that the U.S. intervention has been an utter disaster for both Iraq and the United States."

Bill

Friday, August 20, 2010

The Iraq Debacle: The Legacy of Seven Years of War

The Iraq Debacle: The Legacy of Seven Years of War by Iraq Debacle Coalition

Please read this brief and concise evaluation of the Iraq invasion and recommendations.

I sincerely - 100% - believe that the best course of action is to prosecute Bush for murder. This trial will peel open the layers of the scheme and the cast of perpetrators

Presidents flying blind By Andrew J. Bacevich

"We've been conditioned to trust presidents, but as recent history shows, they're often clueless too. Can Obama admit error and stop trying to tell us, and Afghans, what's best for Afghanistan?"

An excellent thought-provoking article

The War in Iraq Has Entered a New Stage of Public Relations by Dennis Kucinich

"This is not the end of the war; this is simply a new stage in the campaign to lull the American people into accepting an open-ended presence in Iraq. This is not an honest accounting to the American people and it diminishes the role of the troops who will put their lives on the line. This is not fair to the troops, their families or the American people."

Bill

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Exposing the propaganda machine

How propagandists function: Exhibit A By Glenn Greenwald

The Israel Lobby Swims The Atlantic by Grant Smith

Deceptive Economic Statistics By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

"If the government will lie to you about Iraqi weapons of mass production, Iranian nukes, why won’t they lie to you about the economy?

...

Wherever one looks--food stamps, home foreclosures, bankrupted states, mounting joblessness, the message to long-suffering Americans from “their government” is the same: go eat cake, while we fight wars for Israel that enrich the military/security complex and while we bail out banksters whose annual incomes are in the tens of millions of dollars and up."

These are a few current articles on the propaganda and deceit that defines and shapes the world around us. If google a bit, you can find more. Of course you wouldn't find them in the mainstream media, which is the whole point.

The effect of this propaganda is absolutely stunning. With millions of people believing the lies manufactured by this gang, we continue to waste precious lives and staggering sums of money on their lost cause crusade for military authority in the Middle East.

Ask yourself this question: how can so many people be so duped for so long?


Bill

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Noam Chomsky: The Real Reasons the U.S. Enables Israeli Crimes and Atrocities

Noam Chomsky: The Real Reasons the U.S. Enables Israeli Crimes and Atrocities By Kathleen Wells

I wouldn't selectively quote from this interview because it needs to be read in it's entirety (it's not that long) to get a feel for what's being said.


PTSD

I'm sitting here with a huge pain in my ribs, having fallen - no jumped - out of bed in the middle of the night after another nightmare. This time it was a grenade that fell on the grass next to me. I had to move quickly, and I did - out of the bed and onto the floor, with a crash the woke me right up - and in pain.

I wouldn't say this happens all the time, but I've noticed a pattern. It seems whenever I'm "riled" about something, the odds are greatest that night I'll have one of these nightmares. What riles me? America's behavior, at home and abroad. I simply can't believe what I'm seeing. It makes me feel terrible, and my psyche reacts with these nightmares.

When I returned from Vietnam and was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1970, I had no way of knowing at the time that so many years later I'd be in this position. I guess it either took that long for the whole thing to sink in, or current events added to it with the results I'm seeing and feeling today.

In any case, it's terrible.


Lock 'Em Up By MICHAEL YATES

Justice, no INjustice, is what this article is all about.

And I wonder why my psyche is so revolted.


Bill











Bill

Thursday, August 12, 2010

The Rubin Con Goes On

The Rubin Con Goes On By Robert Scheer

"The corruptions of journalism were on full display when CNN’s Fareed Zakaria turned to Robert Rubin this past Sunday for advice on how to fix the financial crisis that he, as much as anyone, caused. I was trapped on a treadmill in front of an overhead television and unable to turn the thing off in time to avoid this assault on my mental and physical health.

...

There is much more, and I haven’t even touched on Rubin’s shameful role in Enron’s shenanigans. Enough said, though, to question not only Zakaria’s journalism but, far more important, Barack Obama’s leadership in first turning to Rubin as a key campaign adviser and then putting his disciples in charge of the U.S. economy.
"


Wolf Blitzer’s Panic Room


" “The Situation Room” is a familiar venue for the kind of hysteria and nonsense that has become the hallmark of television news, so it comes as no surprise that host Wolf Blitzer and a cohort of CNN’s loudest Chicken Littles have declared Social Security at “the final tipping point” and “broke” despite $2.5 trillion in reserves and a bright future."


Groundhog Day: The Neocon Version by Ron Forthofer

"Evidently the neocons' contempt for the U.S. public knows no bounds. They seem to think that we have already forgotten the role they played in building support for the attack on Iraq."

Bill

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Solving 9/11 - The Deception That Changed The World

Solving 9/11 - The Deception That Changed The World by Christopher Bollyn

Public opinion is such a powerful force that even when confronted with undeniable truth, the resistance is like a concrete wall. A good example occurred recently when I pointed out (again) to a programming community that the word "virus" is absolutely incorrect, and the truth is these are attacks by organized criminals. But these words, this truth, fell on deaf ears, to underscore that perception, not truth, rules.

It's highly frustrating to be right and ignored.

But this matter is small potatoes compared to the biggest, grandest and most powerful perception in the world today: the role of Zionists in American foreign policy.

Please take the time to read this online book. Maybe it will convince you that more investigation needs to be done, or not, but unless you've already been following this "back story", this will definitely be an eye-opener.


Bill

Monday, August 9, 2010

Leading to war

Leading to war - see where the truth lies

If you care about America, you really should watch this 72 minute compilation of video clips that clearly document Bush and his Neocon handlers as they lied at every step of the way leading to the invasion of Iraq, and ask yourself why Bush isn't on trial for murder yet.

Please pay particular attention to the extremely clever wordsmithing provided by the Neocon gang to twist and distort the truth at every turn. It was all so masterfully manipulated that only with the benefit of hindsight and these videos of the perpetrators themselves doing what they did, can we see the manipulation for what it was.


Bill

Friday, August 6, 2010

The Next War

The Next War by Robert Koehler


"A little-discussed adjunct to the military-industrial complex is the entertainment industry, which, in the 50 years since Eisenhower issued his plea for awareness, has burrowed deep into the American and global psyche, turning violence into an ever more exhilarating abstraction. Thus the announcement of each virgin war generates a wave not of horror but excitement.

"A culture of killing and violence has become embedded in human consciousness," writes Michel Chossudovsky. This means that World War III, perhaps set off by a U.S. invasion of Iran, is possible."

Bombing Iran By WILLIAM BLUM

"Would it have mattered if the Bush administration had fully believed Iraq when it said it had no WMD? Probably not. There is ample evidence that Bush knew this to be the case, as did Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate just how psychopathic his two adversaries were. Bush was determined to vanquish Iraq, for the sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for expanding the empire, though it hasn't all worked out as the empire expected; for some odd reason, it seems that the Iraqi people resented being bombed, invaded, occupied, and tortured."

... Now Israel presses Washington relentlessly to do the same to Iran — not that the US necessarily needs much prodding — primarily because Israel is determined to remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East; this despite Iran telling the United States and the world many times that it is not building nuclear weapons. But if Iran is in fact building nuclear weapons, we have to ask: Is there some international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not?

Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered

This article uncovers a conspiracy to manipulate Digg. I don't follow Digg, but I get the idea. Reading this story doesn't come as a surprise since our information supply has been so manipulated for so long, but it is evidence of one such effort.

Here's a missive quoted at the end of the article, by one of the ringleaders to the gang:

"To all of our new group members: We are really happy you have joined us at DiggPatriots! Please remember this is a group that we are trying to keep below the radar. Please do not disclose this group’s existence to anyone outside the group on Digg or elsewhere. The longer we can keep this group on the down low, the better. I know you probably aready knew that, but I wanted to make sure we are all on the same page as far as the keeping this group from being exposed to the public.
-Ron AKA ChronicColonic"


An observation: our information supply is so thoroughly compromised and so dripping wet with warmonger propaganda that when intelligent people do stand up and speak the truth, their writing comes across very powerfully. Take this article as an example.


Why the U.S. Won't Cut Ties with Israel, No Matter How Extreme Its Government Gets By Phyllis Bennis


This article is followed by many user comments that deserve reading.


Let Them Eat Cake By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

" ... Today in the American Superpower, one of every six Americans is living on food stamps.

The Great American Superpower, which is wasting trillions of dollars in pursuit of world hegemony, has 22% of its population unemployed and almost 17% of its population dependent on welfare in order to stay alive.

The world has not witnessed such total failure of government since the final days of the Roman Empire. A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain.

And the American sheeple remain acquiescent."


Bill

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Net neutrality: a buzzword that's duping us

Net neutrality: a buzzword that's duping us by Bob Sullivan

If you care about the Internet, this is an article you should read.

Having said that, my opinion:

1. First part is to understand the cost of the Internet. When everything is said and done, the components of the cost are the wires and the computers. The cost of this "infrastructure" is negligible compared to the total cost we're seeing. I don't know the numbers, but my guess is that the wires and computers cost a tiny fraction of the actual total cost, that is: the total cost is hugely inflated by lawyers, the gov't and everyone else who gets their hand into the cookie jar - most of them not needed at all, once the rules are worked out.

2. The rules should be created by people who understand the business but are heavily inclined to make the Internet a service provided by/for/of the people, not the gov't, the lawyers or the companies, who are needed, but incidental and should be kept in their place at all times.

3. There should be a "no-spam" list, like the "no-call" list, which punishes offenders who don't check the no-spam list before sending spam.

4. The only monitoring/tracking of the Internet should be for specific court-ordered cases.

5. Bandwidth hogs should pay extra, as they do today for electricity, but the average person should get what 80% get without penalty. It's the "outliers" in the top 20% range that are the hogs - make them pay extra, but leave the rest of us alone.


Bill

Monday, August 2, 2010

A Lesson from "Inception"

A Lesson from "Inception": How the Right-Wing and Corporate Media Brainwash Americans By David Sirota

"The illusions spread by both the right-wing and corporate media are deftly presented as fact; can we ever wake up?"

...

The conservative media dreamland, for instance, ensconces its audience in an impregnable bubble -- you eat breakfast with the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, you drive to the office with right-wing radio, you flit between Breitbart and Drudge at work, you come home to Fox News. The ideas bouncing around in this world -- say, ideas about the Obama administration allegedly favoring blacks -- don't seem like propaganda to those inside the bubble. With heavily edited videos of screaming pastors and prejudice-sounding USDA officials, these ideas are cloaked in the veneer of unchallenged fact, leaving the audience to assume its bigoted conclusions are completely self-directed and incontrovertible."


This is a particularly well-written piece that matches my study and observations exactly. Well worth your time to read this to see what's happening to America.

Can we stop it? The election process is about the only thing we can do. Move the election process to the Internet, and take most of the money out of the process. We need are people who actually represent us, and this simply couldn't happen while the rich and powerful hold the gates to Congress.

How God-Awful does our (the have-nots) world have to get before we do something?

There is one thing that people can do: support and encourage Vincent Bugliosi's quest to put Bush on trail for murder.

Such a trial will go to the root of the people and events that took place to make that invasion happen, and when the big picture of information is assembled, it will either prove or dis-prove the theory that the gang referred to as the Neocons, with it's heavy partnership with AIPAC and media friends conspired to defraud America into launching that invasion under false pretenses when there were in fact a list of reasons that AMericans didn't know about.

What happened wasn't the result of one man and one mistake, it took an entire organization to pull off something that big. Very lucky for us, all of their lies and propaganda has been preserved for study, in archives I'm sure exist somewhere. Maybe one of the institutions we pay for, like the NSA, has this stuff all in it's mountain somewhere. With this information and some good software, it wouldn't take too long to assemble a mountain of evidence that reveals exactly how their plan to establish military authority in the Middle East was carried out.

We've got to pull our troops out of the Middle East and Korea. We're not the world's policeman. There is a United Nations that needs to do all it can to avert war and provide emergency assistance. If the UN didn't resolve the Israel/Palestine issue because Congress is packed with lackeys, replace the lackeys.

And we've got a lot of apologizing to do, and amends to make, for the suffering that's been inflicted on millions of people in our name.

How to Dismantle the American Empire Before This Country Goes Under By Andrew J. Bacevich


"First, the purpose of the U.S. military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests.

...

Second, the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America.

...

Third, consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense.

Americans today must reckon with a contradiction of gaping proportions. Promising prosperity and peace, the Washington rules are propelling the United States toward insolvency and perpetual war. Over the horizon a shipwreck of epic proportions awaits. To acknowledge the danger we face is to make learning -- and perhaps even a course change -- possible. To willfully ignore the danger is to become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear."

This is another powerful article that's well worth your time to read.


Bill