Thursday, August 18, 2011

Lessons of two wars: We will lose in Iraq and Afghanistan

Lessons of two wars: We will lose in Iraq and Afghanistan By Stephen M. Walt

A sad, but accurate and correct, commentary on the state of the invasion of the Middle East.

One thing about the reader comments is that Zionist protagonists are still coming up with clever things to say to obfuscate the situation.

It's a funny thing about words and language, that people can argue absolutely anything. Tell an arguer that the sky is blue and he'll jump all over it to prove it's not blue at all.

In order to understand and sort out the truth of matters, to the extent it can be done at all, one has to think and discern the underlying, fundamental attitude of the arguer. In the case of the military invasion of the Middle East, the Neocon/Zionist arguments for launching the invasion, the attitude was to protect and advance Israel's interests, although this was never publicly stated and had to be discerned by deduction, it was true then and remains true to this day.

America has been massively duped by this gang, and the sooner we realize this and boot them out of power, the sooner we can begin to make amends for the damage they've caused.

Which brings me to the next article of note:

Rick Perry and the Neocons by Philip Giraldi


"During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Israeli military officers and diplomats had free access to Feith’s offices and those of his boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Both had been investigated earlier in their careers on suspicion of passing secrets to Israel — Feith in 1982, Wolfowitz in 1978. Analysts working for Feith who were not uncritically supportive of the U.S.-Israel relationship were weeded out. Feith’s sympathies were scarcely secret. In 2003, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice commented after a Feith presentation, “Thanks, Doug, but when we want the Israeli position we’ll invite the ambassador,” while Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson described Feith “as a card-carrying member of Likud.” "


Pew Research Evidence Corporate Media Connived to Ignore Ron Paul by Kurt Nimmo

Look at the chart leading this article

"Ron Paul’s message of liberty and restoration of the republic is so unpopular with the corporate media, they decided to spend more time and effort covering Donald Trump, who is not even a candidate. He also trails far behind Sarah Palin, who is not a candidate."


Ron Paul may not be perfect, but he's nailed foreign policy, and those Americans who listen to him support him enthusiastically. But he's bucking the system, and for that he's paying the usual price - as you can so plainly see by the chart and the story in this article.



Bill




Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed ...

Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed by the Top 0.1 Percent Hoarding the Country's Wealth By David DeGraw

"Given modern technology and wealth, American citizens should not be living in poverty. The statistics demonstrate that we now live in a neo-feudal society. In comparison to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population, who are sitting on top of tens of trillions of dollars in wealth, we are essentially propagandized peasants.

The fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are struggling to get by, while tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within a small fraction of the population, is a crime against humanity."


Bill

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Israel Lobby Dominates Congress, Media Covers it Up

Israel Lobby Dominates Congress, Media Covers it Up by Alison Weir

I have written the following response to Alison Weir's article. I've posted it here because I don't wish to have something I've spent hours (indeed, years) preparing to slide into oblivion after the short life span of a comment to an article. This matter is far too important for such a fate.

Alison:

Looking at reader comments so far, it appears that people responding to this article have either missed the point you're making, or they don't want to talk about it.

Bill Moyers and Tavis Smiley discussed this very effect tonight on Smiley's program. Moyers spoke about a recent study that concluded people will simply ignore facts that don't match their beliefs. This very situation is a perfect example of this effect.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart Alison, for having the courage to write about the linkage between politics and media. I presume you are well aware of the dearth of people willing to discuss these facts and their consequences, no matter how crucially important they are to our country and the world.

Zionist power is not only the elephant in America's living room, but the most destructive force that ever existed. Zionist philosophy, partially expressed in the Neocon PNAC Statement of Principles and the teachings of Leo Strauss - now implemented - has already brought America to it's knees and now threatens to get unimaginably worse if we can't stop them. It's an incredible and bizarre story, but it's true. People have shunned me for saying it over the years, but these days it's taken on a ring of truth that can no longer be ignored.

For decades I've observed the situation you describe in depth: the massive degree of control the Zionists have over Congress and our information supply (being the mass media in all it's forms), and, of course, banking. Perhaps there are other areas similarly controlled, but these are the major players I've identified.

I've argued, intensely on occasion, about my concern for this power with anyone who would listen, only to discover people would not listen, no matter how well the case was presented. I've been ostracized by family, friends and co-workers not over the truth of the argument, but because they simply didn't want to hear it. But knowledge is a strange thing, because once you know something, you can't unlearn it. This particular knowledge has tormented me for years.

Some people are saying that only a revolution will oust the gang running Washington (and I'm throwing the media in because they are 2 sides of the same coin, the propaganda machine and the politicians).

I believe I have a better solution. Since I'm in the technology arena, I see it can be used to develop a money-free election system using the Internet and open source programmers around the world. Such a system will allow voters to first develop the list of issues that really matter to them, it would allow anyone to be a candidate for office, it would collect candidate and voter positions on the issues, and then help the voter to match his/her interests with the candidates, based on the issues.

The underlying premise is that we have no shortage of great people who are more then willing to do the right thing as our representatives - but the election system we have today actually keeps them from running. We need to reverse this situation as quickly as we possibly can.

As it happens, I have the knowledge, experience and skills to create the system I envision, and if I live long enough, and it's not done by someone else, I plan to do exactly this. I will relish demonstrating my program to folks at M.I.T. (my favorite college) while I ask they why they haven't done it or better.

Please keep talking until people start to listen. People like you, Bill Moyers, Amy Goodman, Chris Hedges, and others are smarter and better writers then I. I know because I have been presenting on exactly this problem for decades now and have been stone-walled at every turn. It's hurt employment and self-employment tremendously, even family relations. But I simply cannot turn my back on "fact based knowledge", as Bill Moyers put it tonight.

I'm going to take the liberty to feel somewhat vindicated by your article, which pinpoints a very specific application of this control and clearly begs questions about other applications. A short list of other dupings of the America people include from the USS Liberty, Rachel Cory, Gaza, etc., and then there is the Whopper, the Big Kahuna, the most disastrous thing that ever happened to America: the military invasion of the Middle East.


Update: See The war without end is a war with hardly any news coverage by John Hanrahan for a similar story, this one on (the lack of) war reporting in Afghanistan, which includes links to further stories.

"The Pew Charitable Trust reported in January that for all of 2010 only 4 percent of the news hole in the nation’s newspapers was devoted to war news originating either in Afghanistan or the United States. (The ongoing war in Iraq fared even worse, with 1 percent coverage in 2010.)

More recently, in a July 18-24 survey, the Afghanistan war scored so low in coverage that it didn’t show up on the chart, meaning it was below 3 percent, after being at 5 percent the previous week. "
Bill

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The economy: the real choices

The S&P Downgrade By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS


"What I have explained can be comprehended within existing ways of thinking. Within this way of thinking, as the debt ceiling imbroglio made clear, the policy choices are between eliminating Social Security and Medicare or eliminating wars and low tax rates on the mega-rich in order to eliminate the annual budget deficits that are threatening the dollar’s exchange value and enlarging the national debt.

...

Spending must be reined in, and the only obvious chunk of spending that can be cut without throwing millions of Americans into the streets is the wars."



Bill

Our Troops do NOT Protect Our Freedom and We Should Stop Thanking Them for Doing So

Our Troops do NOT Protect Our Freedom and We Should Stop Thanking Them for Doing So by Jesse Richard

"There is no honor in volunteering to go anywhere in the world and kill anybody you are told to, without question, without historical background and without verifying the stated reasons for doing so."

Economists, Experts: US Is Bankrupt, Second Severe Recession Imminent by Steve Watson

“It seems to me it’s physically, humanly impossible for the U.S. to ever pay off its debt ,” Rogers said. “They can roll it over and continue to play the charade, but the U.S. is bankrupt.”

Rogers’ opinion was seemingly echoed by ratings agencies S&P and Moody’s today, as they warned that the US could be downgraded again before 2013.

S&P Executive John Chambers told Fox News that a partial reason for Friday’s downgrade was due to the fact that the US political system has proven itself to be “dysfunctional”.

“I think that’s a good word.” Chambers said. “We got to a position where we were within ten hours of having a major cash flow problem. This is not what happens in other countries.”

“Even before the financial crisis, the fiscal path was unsustainable: an ageing population combined with extravagant social security commitments suggested either the need for massive tax increases or draconian spending cuts,” said King.


Bill

Friday, August 5, 2011

So many lies

The Decision to Bomb Hiroshima By GAR ALPEROVITZ

Read this story for a relatively simple and straight-forward account of one of the greatest stories the American people have ever been duped about.

Now consider the military invasion of the Middle East and it's inevitable course, and ponder which is the greater crime.


Bill

Thursday, August 4, 2011

When did the American empire start to decline?

When did the American empire start to decline? By Stephen M. Walt

"But no strategy is so bad that somebody else can't make it worse. And that is precisely what George W. Bush did after 9/11. Under the influence of neoconservatives who had opposed dual containment because they thought it didn't go far enough, Bush adopted a new strategy of "regional transformation." Instead of preserving a regional balance of power, or containing Iraq and Iran simultaneously, the United States was now going to use its military power to topple regimes across the Middle East and turn those countries into pro-American democracies. This was social engineering on a scale never seen before. The American public and the Congress were unenthusiastic, if not suspicious, about this grand enterprise, which forced the Bush administration to wage a massive deception campaign to get them on board for what was supposed to be the first step in this wildly ambitious scheme. The chicanery worked, and the United States launched its unnecessary war on Iraq in March 2003. "


Bill

Rick Perry Abuses His Office for Israel

Rick Perry Abuses His Office for Israel by Philip Giraldi

This article tears into Rick Perry (gov of Texas).

It ends with:

"I have to question how a man of so little moral character as Rick Perry gets to be governor of a large state in the first place, but that is perhaps a discussion for another place and another time. If the people of Texas were seriously concerned about the Constitution and civil liberties, they would remove him from office for his attempt to criminalize the actions of a group of innocent citizens. When a government believes itself to be empowered to go after its own people on trumped-up charges, watch out. When it does so on behalf of a foreign government, all kinds of warning flags should be going up. That no one in the media or punditry seems to care is a tribute to the grip that Israel and its friends have over politics in the United States. And that is precisely why I and other contributors to Antiwar.com keep raising the issue of Israel. Its tight embrace and the policies that it forces on the sheep in Washington are central to what is wrong with us as a nation. Until we loosen that hold, we will continue to stumble and fall, and we will have the presidents that we deserve, possibly including Rick Perry."


From reader responses:

- "What Motivated the 9/11 Hijackers? See testimony most didn't!:
http://tinyurl.com/911motivation "

- "One has to read former Republican Congressman Paul Findley's 'They Dare to Speak Out' (the third edition) book as well. And 'The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy' by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (scroll down to the link for the Dutch documentarty at: http://tinyurl.com/mearsheimer)"

Bill

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

War and Debt

War and Debt By MICHAEL HUDSON

"The present rise in U.S. Treasury debt results from two forms of warfare. First is the overtly military Oil War in the Near East, from Iraq to Afghanistan (Pipelinistan) to oil-rich Libya. These adventures will end up costing between $3 and $5 trillion. Second and even more expensive is the more covert yet more costly economic war of Wall Street against the rest of the economy, demanding that losses by banks and financial institutions be passed onto the government balance sheet (“taxpayers”). The bailouts and “free lunch” for Wall Street – by no coincidence, Congress’s number one political campaign contributor – cost $13 trillion."


Imperial Psychosis: We Pour Trillions into Empire While Gutting Programs Americans Depend On
By Tom Engelhardt

"Put another way, for months Americans have been focused on raising that debt ceiling, as onscreen countdown clocks ticked away to disaster. In the process, few have asked the obvious question: Isn’t it time to lower America’s war ceiling?"

Meet the Right-Wing Hatemongers Who Inspired the Norway Killer By Max Blumenthal

In case you're wondering where Anders Hans Breivik got his insane ideas.


Bill