Islamophobia: A Well-Financed Phenomenon

Read about it here!

Chris Hedges: Obama is a "Poster Child for the Death of the Liberal Class"

Chris Hedges: Obama is a "Poster Child for the Death of the Liberal Class"

Hedges is dead-on right about everything. In the early 1990's, I began to say, "Scratch a Liberal, find a Reactionary" and to self-identify as a Leftist, not a Liberal. Why? Because Liberals are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Attorney: Swedish Case is a "Holding Charge" to Get Julian Assange Extradited to U.S.

Attorney: Swedish Case is a "Holding Charge" to Get Julian Assange Extradited to U.S.

As it turns out, according to legal counsel for Assange, he has not been charged with a sex crime in Sweden; he is only wanted for questioning. Moreover, the matters concerning which he is wanted for questioning do not involve rape or molestation as reported by the government-supine major media outlets (including state-run radio, NPR) but are misdemeanor sex charges for which no jail time would be required (were Assange actually charged, tried, and found guilty by a Swedish tribunal).

Breadlines In Our Future

All the “fiscal conservatives” in government these days seem to be quite perfectly content with deficit financing wars-without-end. If their economic theories are right, their policies can only lead to economic disaster. Do they not believe their own theories? Are they closet Keynesians? WTF?

At some point—tomorrow, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, in 6 months, whenever—the Chinese government may well decide that it cannot continue to park so much capital with the US treasury; it may decide that those hundreds of billions of dollars are needed back home or that some other opportunity makes more economic sense for the People's Republic. When that day arrives, the whole house of cards that is the U.S. economy comes crashing down.

The criminals who run this country have to know that they are operating on borrowed time. What are they thinking? It is truly difficult to imagine. Perhaps they are hoping that, if they amass enough wealth in the short term, they’ll be able to buy their way out of anything when the proverbial shite hits the fan. Or, perhaps, more likely, they're just not thinking at all.

I see breadlines in our future: from the District of Columbia all the way to Beijing.

U.S. Facing Global Diplomatic Crisis Following Massive WikiLeaks Release of Secret Diplomatic Cables

U.S. Facing Global Diplomatic Crisis Following Massive WikiLeaks Release of Secret Diplomatic Cables

The Latest Outrage

As the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize travels throughout Asia selling large quantities of weaponry and invoking the memory of Mahatma Gandhi in his speeches, I am reminded of Malcolm X's distinction between the "field negro" and the "house negro."

Barack Obama is clearly in "da house."

His betrayal of people of conscience could not possibly be more complete.

And he appears to have no shame whatsoever.

Such is the latest outrage; the monstrous evil we face.

A charismatic tool recruited from the under-class to divide people of conscience and good will from one another. Divide and conquer.

The militarist juggernaut moves forward, all cylinders pumping.

Full speed ahead.

And Obama, the "blessed peacemaker," at the wheel.

Twitter, Facebook, and social activism: newyorker.com

Twitter, Facebook, and social activism: newyorker.com

Malcolm Gladwell has done his homework. Real change will have to come the old-fashioned way: by means of the general strike.

Once Again...

the American electorate has returned to the polls to re-arrange the deck-chairs on the Titanic.

It would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

The revolution will not be televised--or tweeted, for that matter.

And it certainly will not come through the ballot box.

Resist. Refuse. Renounce.

It's the system, stupid.

Take the red pill and subvert the Matrix!

The only place where authentic change is possible in these Orwellian States of Amnesia is the street.

History has clearly shown that the general strike is the only effective weapon in the people's arsenal.

If you want authentic change, you must demand an end to the tyranny of Democan-Republicrat hegemony.

And, no, the Tea Party movement offers no hope in that direction.

In the immortal words of Diogenes of Sinope, "Deface the currency!"

We must scrap the existing system and start anew.

The three virtues of the revolutionaries we need are: imagination, magnanimity, and courage.

Begin by forming mutual aid societies. Go off the grid. Find ways to reduce your Federal taxable income--if you actually make enough to pay taxes to the Feds. Starve the military industrial complex in any way you can.

Friends don't let friends join the military.

Become skilled in the use of the weapons of the weak.

Organize your life in such a way as to make palpable, in all of your relations with your fellow human beings, the Invisible Whitmanian Republic.

Read the works of Raoul Vaneigem and Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson.

Think about your next move...

Mid-Term Elections 2010

Oh how the chickens have come home to roost! The Obama Administration rolls into office on a tidal wave of popular demand for change and, in turn, delivers up the same old same old. Who would have thought, listening to Obama's campaign rhetoric, that his first term would look an awful lot like Bush's third term?

I don't know about your phone, but mine has been ringing off the hook: Democratic Party operatives are calling to plead with me to get out the vote (in other words, to bail them out once again). And what is their argument for why I should lift a finger to assist the Party that has repeatedly stabbed the Left (such as it is in this country) in the back? You guessed it: those Tea Party Loonies might actually get elected.

And, indeed, they just might. And God help us if they do.

Ken Buck, far-right candidate for Senate in Colorado, wants to privatize Social Security. Why? Besides the obvious reason that, to do so, would give Wall Street the biggest bonus since...well...the recent bank bailouts, Buck and his fellow neo-fascists hate Social Security because it is a government program THAT WORKS. What a stick in the eye for those who embrace the dogma that no government program can ever work--except those that transfer the wealth of this country from the poor and middle class into the coffers of the richest 2%.

Medicare and Medicaid are also embarrassments to the far-right: the success of Medicare is such that it is entitled to be extended universally to every American of any age. Had Obama not sold health care reform to the highest health care industry bidders in the Summer of '08, Medicare could be your health insurance (and mine) today.

Oh, but let's not remind ourselves of the crimes of the past...Pay no attention to that militarist behind the curtain! Let's move forward into the future!

What future? Increasingly, the future looks like the dystopia that Tea Partiers are salivating over: the Great Rich White Revanchement a.k.a. the "Reagan Revolution."

Yes, indeed. As White Folk study the demographic trends, they become ever more firm in their resolve to seize power now and finish the job of disenfranchising the poor and people of color that Reagan started--flashing his trademark grin.

Now, I have nothing against White people. Some of my best friends are White people. I myself come from a long line of them.

But enough is enough.

Will I vote come Election Day? Yes I will.

Will Democratic candidates receive my votes? Yes they will.

Will I be voting for anyone? Not on your life. I will be voting against the Party of Naked Greed and Fear. Unfortunately, that means my votes will inure to the benefit of the Party of Fig-Leafed Greed and Fear.

But such is the sorry state of politics in these Orwellian States of Amnesia, 2010.

Entrapment or Foiling Terror? FBI's Reliance on Paid Informants Raises Questions about Validity of Terrorism Cases

Entrapment or Foiling Terror? FBI's Reliance on Paid Informants Raises Questions about Validity of Terrorism Cases

Anyone who has seen the workings of the "criminal justice system" in the United States from the inside and recognizes it for what it is, i.e., an incredibly expensive and inefficient bureaucracy that preys upon the poor, uneducated, and people of color in order to control them for the benefit of the white majority, will have no doubt as to the actual workings of "homeland security" and the "war on terror"...

This Troubled Land: A Brief Political Memoir [Alternative Title: "It's The Government, Stupid."]

My first decade on this planet was the turbulent 1960's. Folk Music: Guthrie, Seeger, Dylan, Baez; Viet Nam; Civil Rights; Protests; Riots; Political Assassinations; Rock n' Roll...

1970: Tin soldiers and Nixon coming...

The '72 election saw the emergence of my political consciousness (I was 12 years old at the time). I became excited about McGovern; I truly felt that we were at a turning point in American history. My politically conservative father told me that a McGovern presidency would ruin the country. I learned to keep my instinctive Leftism quiet.

The summer of '73: I was glued to the Watergate Hearings on T.V. Until John Dean testified, I was certain that no President of the United States--not even Richard Nixon--would involve himself in such criminality.

August 1974: Nixon's resignation and the malaise of political disillusionment. The hand-off of the Oval Office to Ford and the subsequent pardon of Nixon had a very bad smell.

1975: The United States withdraws from Viet Nam. I meet refugees from the South who fled with U.S. troops.

1976: I became excited about Carter's candidacy and announced to my father that I wished to volunteer at his local campaign office. My father grounded me. I learned again to keep my instinctive Leftism quiet.

1977: When the Carters strolled hand-in-hand down Pennsylvania Avenue after the Inauguration, I felt a new day was dawning.

1980: Three years into the Carter Presidency, I had concluded that Carter was all symbolism, no reality: a Democrat who talked Left but governed Right. The malaise of political disillusionment returned. When Ted Kennedy announced his insurgent run for the Democratic nomination, I supported him (I still wear my blue and white "Kennedy '80" button from time to time). As I watched Carter pull the levers on the Democratic Party Machine to undermine Kennedy's bid, I registered as an Independent. In the General Election that Fall, I voted for third party candidate John Anderson.

At the time, I thought it inconceivable that the American people would actually send a B-movie actor and detergent peddler to the White House, but send him they did. The malaise of political disillusionment turned to cynicism (in the popular meaning of that term). I welcomed the rise of Punk.

1984: The Democratic Party nominated good old Fritz Mondale. Mondale was a great, old-style liberal, but it seemed obvious to me that he was unelectable. It was as though the Democratic Party was in denial that the 1980 election ever took place.

During the 1980's, I began to work out my libertarian thinking. I characterized my politics then as "fiscally conservative, socially liberal." My instinctive Leftism was tempered by an equally instinctive distrust of government. By the end of Reagan's second term, any promises that his Administration had made about "getting government off the backs of the American people" were undeniably empty. Under Reagan, the size of the Federal government mushroomed; his Administration was filled with criminals and he appeared to be increasingly out of touch with reality.

1988: The Democratic Party nominated Michael Dukakis. I so wanted Dukakis to offer an alternative to Bush, Sr. But when he unveiled his campaign slogan as "competence," I knew he had no ideas. My cynicism began to evolve into Cynicism: a Hellenistic ethical stance that holds human society deeply suspect, if not in contempt.

1990: My politics could be summed up in the phrase: "A pox on both your houses."

1992: A nominal Democrat, I voted for Jerry Brown against Bill Clinton in the Pennsylvania primaries. I voted for Clinton against Bush in the General Election because the thought of Republicans in the White House for 16 consecutive years nauseated me. But I wouldn't trust Clinton as far as I could throw him.

1993: A pivotal year in my political maturation. In February, I watched with horror as the Clinton Administration presided over the slaughter of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. It was crystal clear to me from that moment on that Clinton was another Democrat who would talk Left and govern Right.

Later in the year, a friend invited me to see a film called "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media." My immediate reaction was a combination of perplexity, anxiety, and hopelessness. If Chomsky is correct, I said to myself, the game is over. At that point, however, I was deep into Tolstoy, reading everything I could get my hands on. I then began to read Chomsky's political writings. Now that I was introduced to openly anarchistic political thought, I was able to see how subtle forms of anarchism had always attracted me: from the lives of Diogenes of Sinope and Jesus to the poetry of Walt Whitman and his spiritual heir Henry Miller. There was no turning back. I was a Left Libertarian and remain one to this day.

In 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader. I did so in Pennsylvania confident that Gore would win the Commonwealth and that my protest vote would not result in a George W. Bush presidency. I was no fan of Al Gore--beholden as he was to the Clintons--but the thought of W in the Oval Office made my ulcer burn. I regarded him then, and regard him still, as an imbecile son of privilege.

My calculation about the results in Pennsylvania was on the money. As it turned out, however, the Bush family did not need Pennsylvania as long as they could steal Florida. I watched the theater of the corrupt unfold over "hanging chads" and scoffed. The Democrats put up a tepid resistance in the courts and the Supremes voted along party lines. It looked to me as if everything was proceeding according to plan--for both parties. This is how Washington works.

I did not allow myself any outrage over the fraudulent results of the 2000 election. After all, how much damage could W really do? I predicted four years of farcical bumbling, some great Saturday Night Live skits, and then W's hasty retirement to work on his Presidential Library.

9/11 and W's "bull-horn moment" were not on my radar. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the psychopathology of American political life became only too apparent. The Culture of Fear that white Americans have been nursing like a bad seed throughout the country's history bloomed once again and bore its bitterest fruit since McCarthyism. The present reality of this country (the Orwellian States of Amnesia) has never been so deeply opposed to the invisible Whitmanian republic that I hold in my heart.

And now, as Barack Obama mysteriously enacts Bush's third term, nothing surprises me. What will be, will be. I take no pleasure in the death of the American republic and the rise of the National Security State, but I am nothing more than a spectator. In 2005, I began to read Tacitus in earnest. There is some cold comfort in knowing that others have found themselves in similar straights. And cold comfort is better than no comfort at all.

Here's the Skinny on the Time Magazine "Why We Can't Leave Afghanistan" Cover Story

Ann Jones on "War Is Not Over When It's Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict"

Time to RE-BUILD the WTC Mosque that Terrorists Destroyed on 9/11

Otherwise, the terrorists won...

The "Ground Zero" Mosque Debacle

No one should have to apologize or feel guilty for a crime that (1) they had nothing to do with and (2) has victimized them as much as anyone else in this country. Should Jews who lost family members in the Holocaust demand that the churches in Jerusalem be torn down since most (if not all) of the German soldiers responsible for sending Jews to the gas chambers in the camps were Christian? By what stretch of logic do Muslims, including those who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center on 9/11, share a collective guilt by association with the perpetrators of that crime?

The only thing that is driving this controversy, in my view, is the bad faith of its proponents. The crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan have not changed the world for the better. The economy continues to limp along. Health care "reform" has changed nothing. People are feeling sorry for themselves and looking for someone to blame. The "Ground Zero" mosque debacle is part of the prevailing psychopathology of everyday life in the heart of the Empire. Bigotry ought not to be dignified as a form of "sensitivity." It is time for the opponents of the proposed Islamic Center (and its lukewarm supporters, like one BHO) to buck up and turn their ire upon the true enemies of this country: the militarized corporatocracy that runs it.

AMAZING

After doing their level best to counter the disclosures of WikiLeaks and stoking war fever and Islamophobia (see August 16, 2010 post below), the editors of Time offer themselves to the American public as honest brokers.

Sorry. I'm not buying it.

Obama Admin Claims End to Combat Operations in Iraq, But Iraqis See Same War Under a Different Name

Obama Admin Claims End to Combat Operations in Iraq, But Iraqis See Same War Under a Different Name Iraq today is the dystopic wet dream of the militarized corporatocracy. The US replaces an independent strong-man with a dependent strong-man and calls it "liberation." The US "embassy" in Baghdad is clearly not an embassy at all but command central for our on-going war against the Iraqi people. And the Obama Administration is entirely complicit.

WikiLeaks vs. The War Industry

Old Bill Hearst is reputed to have said, "Furnish me the photos and I'll give you the war." The story about Hearst's role in whipping up public support for the Spanish-American war may well be apocryphal, but the point that the media plays a powerful part in shaping public perceptions of the War Industry's activities is not to be doubted.

Judging by the decision of Time Magazine's editors to run this photo on their August 9, 2010 cover, I think that it's fair to say that the recent postings by WikiLeaks has the War Industry nervous. Not that they are in any real danger of seeing their projects in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere scuttled but, as this editorial decision suggests, they are taking no chances.

By exposing the fact that US forces and their corporate allies are quite capable of committing atrocities against the peoples they claim to be liberating or protecting, WikiLeaks has attempted to jump-start public debate about the on-going war effort. Unlike WikiLeaks, major media outlets in the US have worked very hard to keep any such debate minimized, marginalized and, at all costs, contained.

Had the editors of Time wished to see the American public take WikiLeaks' exposures seriously, they could have published a cover story with photos depicting the mangled bodies of Afghan women and children after a US drone strike. Or they could have reproduced photos that one can find on the internet of American servicemen and women with their faces obscured by camouflage war-paint or strategically smudged out as they gang rape and sodomize Iraqi women. One assumes that such photos are taken by US military personnel for their own enjoyment and proudly published on the net by the culprits themselves--otherwise, why do they take steps to disguise their identities?

At any rate, Time clearly chose a different route.

I do not contest the magazine's right to publish the photo which "graces" the August 9, 2010 cover; but I do question the timing. Since 2001, the Afghan war has been portrayed by its proponents as the "good" war. The US War Industry is determined that it continue to be imagined in that way. Never mind the fact that, whenever and wherever there is war, atrocities occur on all sides. We are asked to politely turn away from the atrocities committed by our own soldiers and to focus instead upon those committed by our declared enemies. As if anyone who objects to the Afghan War believes that the Taliban are a bunch of boy scouts.

The criminals responsible for disfiguring Time's August 9th cover model ought to be apprehended, fairly tried, and punished. Some of the questions that the American public ought to be asking itself are these: whose responsibility is it to stop criminal activity in Afghanistan? Is it possible that the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan is an aggravating factor in the culture of violence that has racked that country since the US fought its proxy war against the Soviets there in the 1980's?

The evidence suggests that the presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil has done little to damage the Taliban's appeal to the general Afghan populace and, in fact, has even helped to improve their image since they were driven from power in 2001. Indeed, before the US invasion in 2001, the Taliban were doing an excellent job of discrediting themselves in the eyes of Afghans--what with their brutal methods of social control and their inability to assuage the sufferings of the Afghan people due to poverty and drought.

The US invasion in 2001 turned the Taliban from an idealistic but inept and often savagely cruel government into an anti-occupation insurgency. "Re-branded" (to use the current War Industry jargon) as such, the Taliban has been winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans ever since.

Time's August 9, 2010 cover is an attempt by a media outlet ally of the militarized corporatocracy that runs our government to protect its Afghan brand: we're there to save Afghan women. If, on occasion, some of those women are collaterally slaughtered or sodomized, well, it's a small price to pay.

For what? That's another question we are not supposed to ask.

Time's editors understand only too well how a single picture is worth a thousand words. And with WikiLeaks dumping millions of leaked words onto its web-site--words that require careful thought, interpretation, and deliberation--the most swift and effective reply is to publish a photo that will short-circuit thought, interpretation, deliberation and, instead, induce a visceral reaction: LOOK AT WHAT THESE CRIMINALS HAVE DONE! WE MUST NOT PULL OUT!

But what about the crimes our own soldiers and mercenaries have committed against the Afghan people?

SILENCE.

STONEWALL.

NOT A WORD (and most certainly) NOT A PHOTO.

Mark Twain defined a patriot as the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

Time's August 9, 2010 cover doesn't just holler; it screams like a banshee. But the realities of the Afghan War and the US role in it cannot be adequately assessed by the American public amid such media noise.

Which is precisely the effect Time's editors were hoping for.

Little Town of Bethlehem

New film, coming soon...

Andrew Bacevich on Afghanistan War: "The President Lacks the Guts to Get Out"

Andrew Bacevich on Afghanistan War: "The President Lacks the Guts to Get Out"

This is the first time I've encountered Bacevich, but I'd say he's about 99% right about everything (plus or minus a 1% margin of error).

Howard Zinn

Friend of the People, enemy of the State.

Who Are the True Enemies of Democracy?

The U.S. military opposes democracy. It is not itself a democracy and its contempt for democratic processes is amply illustrated by its consistent obstruction of the free-flow of information about its activities to the American people--to whom it is, in theory, responsible. Consequently, we must depend upon the consciences of insider whistle-blowers--true American patriots and heroes--to inform us about the wars being prosecuted in our names. Thank God for those whose consciences remain awake amid the conscience-numbing experience of military service.

The Social Construction of Reality

The only verifiable content to the phrase "al-Qaeda" is this: that it is the name given to the official conspiracy theory endorsed by the United States government to justify its imperialistic wars in the first decade (and counting) of the 21st century.

Through its repetition by government officials and by what passes for journalism in the present crisis of democracy, this phrase has become ubiquitous and its meaning, i.e., the official conspiracy theory, has achieved the status of "common knowledge."

But to be perfectly candid, talk about "al-Qaeda" is the semantic equivalent of talk about the devil: what is said has the form of an explanation, but the only real content is that bad things happen.

"Al-Qaeda" is just another hot-house tomato on display in the consumerist wasteland of the American political imagination. Yes, there's some color and sheen and a pulpy substance when dissected, but nothing really worth ingesting.

And yet, like the monolithic presence of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, we cannot seem to live without it. Americans cannot seem to discover themselves without reference to some villainous "other" (first it was the native peoples, then it was the British, then the Barbary pirates, and then the Africans we had enslaved and then...and then...and then...).

I have lately become much interested in Rabbi Michael Lerner's argument that Americans must (finally) learn to fashion a positive, hopeful image of themselves and of the world. He expresses this argument in theological language. It is time, he says, for Americans to give the image of the Right Hand of God (God as warrior and avenger of wrong) a rest, and to take the Divine (however conceived) by the "left hand." The God of peace and compassion and love for one's fellow human being.

Quixotic you say? Well, yes, perhaps...But no more Quixotic than prosecuting wars against the devil. And far less destructive.

Top Secret America, part 3

If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

Top Secret America

The 2nd installment from the Washington Post.

From Today's Washington Post Article on the Militarized Corporatocracy

Here's my favorite part: "Contract analysts are often straight out of college and trained at corporate headquarters. When hired, a typical analyst knows very little about the priority countries — Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan — and is not fluent in their languages. Still, the number of intelligence reports they produce on these key countries is overwhelming, say current and former intelligence officials who try to cull them everyday."

These are the bricks that compose our socially constructed "knowledge" of al-Qaeda etc. Volumes are written by people who have no real understanding of the worlds they are writing about. But when you are composing fiction, liberties may be taken. At least novelists have to put their stuff out for public scrutiny--but not these authors; they are anonymous and the public is prohibited from scrutinizing their work (national security, my friends). We can't "protect" our democracy if the people really know what's going on...

"Top Secret America" _Washington Post_ Investigation Reveals Massive, Unmanageable, Outsourced US Intelligence System

"Top Secret America" _Washington Post_ Investigation Reveals Massive, Unmanageable, Outsourced US Intelligence System The Orwellian States of Amnesia/militarized corporatocracy...It's all here...

Top-secret America: A hidden world, growing beyond control - The Denver Post

Top-secret America: A hidden world, growing beyond control - The Denver Post Manufacturing consent 24/7 on the tax-payer's tab...

Freedom Without Socialism...

is a recipe for gross and rampant inequities. Socialism without freedom is terror and tyranny. There is only one alternative...

Workers Solidarity Alliance

Read about it here.

Michael Moore on His Life, His Films and His Activism

Michael Moore on His Life, His Films and His Activism God bless Michael Moore!

Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone on the Story that Brought Down Gen. McChrystal and Exposed Widening Disputes Behind the U.S. Debacle in Afghanistan

Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone on the Story that Brought Down Gen. McChrystal and Exposed Widening Disputes Behind the U.S. Debacle in Afghanistan

The fraud, the corruption, the violence of the American militarized corporatocracy is not the fault of a rogue few languishing on the bottom rungs. It is systemic and begins at the top. Gen. David Betrayus is just Gen. McChrystal with a more bureaucratic demeanor...

The Task Ahead

The debacle of the failed American republic presents us with a formidable task: nothing less than the redemption of the American spirit.

That spirit has been corrupted by the turn it has taken through the cancerous side of what Harold Bloom has termed the American Religion.

For Bloom, the American Religion is Janus-faced; and he traces both faces back to Emerson's vision.

For we find in Emerson both the prophet who admonished us that "things are in the saddle and ride mankind" as well as the build-a-better-mousetrap-and-hitch-your-wagon-to-a-star promoter of American can-doism and exceptionalism.

The ideology of American exceptionalism is, without question, the most lethal and pernicious ideology abroad on the planet today. "Just because other Empires proved toxic for the peoples they conquered, doesn't mean ours will..."

The cock-eyed optimism of the Emersonian vein has permitted well-meaning individuals caught up in the sway of the militarized corporatocracy that runs this country to commit violence and fraud on a scale never before witnessed in the history of the world.

The task before us, then, is this: to revivify the atrophied portion of the Emersonian vision--the Emerson who admonished us all for our acquisitiveness, our compulsive reduction of all things to commodity.

The question we must ask ourselves before attempting to undertake such a task, however, is this: how late is the present hour? Is there sufficient time allotted us for so Herculean a task, or ought we to abandon this ship of fools and seek shelter and solace in a world apart?

And if we answer the latter, where is that world?

Dear President Obama:

You knew, or had reason to believe, when you chose Gen. Stanley McChrystal as your "man in Afghanistan," that this was the same Gen. Stanley McChrystal responsible for the Pat Tillman cover-up. I quote from the Rolling Stone article that has set your blood to boiling:

After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn't read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman's death. "If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," he wrote, it could cause "public embarrassment" for the president.

"The false narrative, which McChrystal clearly helped construct, diminished Pat's true actions," wrote Tillman's mother, Mary, in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk. McChrystal got away with it, she added, because he was the "golden boy" of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine days after Tillman's death, McChrystal was promoted to major general.

And now the chickens have come home to roost. Tell me, Mr. President, what were you thinking when you decided to entrust the future of roughly 30 million Afghans (not to mention the war you have chosen to promote against a counter-imperialist insurgency) to the hands of a known perpetrator of fraud?

In the immortal words of Crates of Thebes: "A man should study philosophy until he sees in generals nothing more than donkey drivers."

When, Mr. President, did you think would be the right time to begin to call upon your common sense?

Fire McChrystal. Turn him over to the Justice Dept. Begin the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In short: Do the right thing.

["The Runaway General" by Michael Hastings appears in Rolling Stone 1108/1109 from July 8-22, 2010].

FDR on his foes: “I Welcome Their Hatred”

FDR on his foes: “I Welcome Their Hatred”

The Consequences of the Loss of Leftism in American Political Life

It is almost unimaginable that I would find myself moved to write a brief blog entry on the consequences of the loss of Leftism in American political life; but, in the United States in the first decade of the 21st century, political and historical literacy has reached such a low ebb that one finds the terms "socialism" and "fascism" employed as synonyms in our popular discourse...And I doubt we've reached the bottom of the abyss of ignorance...

We must begin, then, with a definition of Leftism. Put simply: Leftism is the fundamental presumption that a primary function of a national government (if not THE primary function of such government) is to build and maintain an effective social welfare infrastructure for the benefit of its citizenry. In practice this means that it is the duty of the government to protect individuals--especially the weak and disadvantaged--from the predations of social groups.

Now, most governments around the world--including despotic ones--will at least give lip service to this notion and/or establish bureaucratic structures ostensibly designed to put it into action. And in many countries there are still active groups of citizens who advocate (even openly agitate) that their government conduct its business in accordance with this fundamental presumption.

The United States has earned the distinction of being one of the few countries on the planet where this presumption is exposed to open scorn by government officials as well as by individuals and groups in the private sector.

Today in the U.S., the fundamental presumption is that the national government's primary function is to recruit, train, and maintain a military apparatus which it deploys to protect and further the financial interests of private corporations.

Indeed, the militarized corporatocracy in the United States finances the political class which, in turn, invests a majority of the financial yield obtained from the population at large through taxation back into the corporatocracy through the military branch of the national government. It is a self-sustaining economic loop. If the weak and disadvantaged wish to benefit in some way from this economic loop, they must ally themselves in some fashion with its constituent actors.

It is not coincidental, therefore, that the economic crisis generated by the private banking sector has proved to be a boon for military recruitment.

In ancient Rome, when the Republic was replaced by the Empire, a similar socio-economic process has been observed:

"In Rome's early days the army was a militia composed of citizen-farmers who went back to their fields as soon as a campaign was over. However, the responsibilities of empire meant that soldiers could no longer be demobilized at the end of each fighting season. Standing forces were required, with soldiers on long-term contracts. [During the time of ] Cicero's childhood the great general Caius Marius supplemented and largely replaced the old conscript army with a professional body of long-service volunteers. When their contracts expired, they wanted to be granted farms [the economy of the ancient world was built upon an agrarian base whereas our modern economy is built upon an industrial one that is evolving into a post-industrial one] and where they could settle and make livings for themselves and their families. Their loyalty was to their commanders, whom they expected to make the necessary arrangements, and not to the Republic." Anthony Everitt, Cicero (Random House, 2003), p. 17.

Such are the consequences of the loss of Leftism in American political life. Republic is replaced by empire; civilian rule a mere show. We live today under the dictatorship of a militarized corporatocracy.

The Errors of Helen Thomas

Perhaps it was an error; perhaps she simply assumed that the unspoken cultural rule of courtesy permitting the elderly greater leeway when it comes to expressing their opinions would apply to her--she is, after all, 89 years old.

But whatever prompted Helen Thomas to freely express her opinion on the Israel/ Palestine conflict, she learned right quick that the document of the Constitution itself (as amended) and the Supreme Court decisions protecting political speech have little purchase in this country where the state of Israel is concerned.

Oh, sure, she didn't break any laws when she said what she did. No agent of the government will come knocking on her door with a warrant for her arrest. So, in that sense, Helen Thomas's right to express her political opinion has been safeguarded by the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps we should all take a moment to pat ourselves on the back.

But since when is legality the applicable yardstick in American politics? The Bush regime showed little regard for the Constitution, the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions. It's like Richard Nixon told David Frost: when the President does it, it's not illegal--some of us are actually old enough to remember a time when Nixon's view offended a majority of Americans. Evidently, that time has past.

So patting ourselves on the back (or stroking some less mentionable part of our anatomies) because we live in a great country where the Helen Thomases of the world can freely express their political opinions without legal repercussions is to be willfully blind to the real consequences in this country of expressing political opinions that the ruling elite find repugnant. For her "crime-think," Helen Thomas has been retired in disgrace.

And so it goes in these Orwellian States of Amnesia.

Just Another Day At the Office

The genius of the corrupt Existing Order is not to be underestimated.


By allowing EVERYTHING to be published on-line, one must search diligently, indeed, inexhaustibly, to find ANYTHING IN PARTICULAR published on-line.


In this manner, the internet siphons off dissent and buries it.


People like myself are permitted to blog on endlessly about the Cosmodemoniac Empire’s daily outrages and, in that way, we blow off steam while effecting no tangible change to the way things are run. The Existing Order remains intact and rakes in another $ 100,000,000,000 while steam-rolling the lives of another 1,000,000 innocents.


Just another day at the office.

1% Peace Army

Interesting Site.

Of Poetry, Prophecy, and History

In 1968, the poet Robert Bly wrote:

America is still young herself, and she may become something magnificent and shining, or she may turn, as Rome did, into a black dinosaur, the enemy of every nation in the world who [sic] wants to live its own life. In my opinion, that decision has not yet been made.

Bly, American Poetry, (1990): 254.

Four decades earlier, another American poet, Robinson Jeffers was less optimistic:


While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;
and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly
long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught – they say –
God, when he walked on earth.

Of the two, I would say Jeffers had the better sense of history.

But even today, we find an important historian like Chalmers Johnson (whose trilogy chronicling the most recent phase of American imperialism--Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire; The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic; Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic--belongs on the book-shelf of every true American patriot) pretends to be exposing the recent loss of our republic.

Even those willing to acknowledge publicly the true state of affairs are incapable of admitting that the insights they retail as news are, in fact, several generations stale.

One could cite the Monroe Doctrine of 1823; the doctrine of Manifest Destiny expounded in the 1840's; the U.S. annexation of the Philippines in 1898; Theodore Roosevelt's corollary to the Monroe doctrine announced in 1904, etc.

To the poorly educated American, such milestones are the stuff of ancient history.

But those who know better ought to be more candid.

The American republic has been legendary for longer than it was a reality--if, in fact, it ever was a reality.

Perhaps the book to read now is Clay Jenkinson's Becoming Jefferson's People: Re-Inventing the American Republic in the Twenty-First Century.

A worthy book, were it not for the fact that it was written two centuries too late.

Read It And Weep

Amazon.com Review
Since September 2001, the United States has "undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible," writes Chalmers Johnson. Unlike past global powers, however, America has built an empire of bases rather than colonies, creating in the process a government that is obsessed with maintaining absolute military dominance over the world, Johnson claims. The Department of Defense currently lists 725 official U.S. military bases outside of the country and 969 within the 50 states (not to mention numerous secret bases). According to the author, these bases are proof that the "United States prefers to deal with other nations through the use or threat of force rather than negotiations, commerce, or cultural interaction." This rise of American militarism, along with the corresponding layers of bureaucracy and secrecy that are created to circumvent scrutiny, signals a shift in power from the populace to the Pentagon: "A revolution would be required to bring the Pentagon back under democratic control," he writes.
In Sorrows of Empire, Johnson discusses the roots of American militarism, the rise and extent of the military-industrial complex, and the close ties between arms industry executives and high-level politicians. He also looks closely at how the military has extended the boundaries of what constitutes national security in order to centralize intelligence agencies under their control and how statesmen have been replaced by career soldiers on the front lines of foreign policy--a shift that naturally increases the frequency with which we go to war.
Though his conclusions are sure to be controversial, Johnson is a skilled and experienced historian who backs up his claims with copious research and persuasive arguments. His important book adds much to a debate about the realities and direction of U.S. influence in the world. --Shawn Carkonen

Rouse up, O Young Men of the New Age!

"Rouse up, O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the Camp, the Court, and the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental, and prolong corporeal war..." --William Blake.

WikiLeaks releases video of slaughter in Iraq

WikiLeaks releases video of slaughter in Iraq

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The Thomas Jefferson Hour » Home

The Thomas Jefferson Hour » Home

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In this week's show, Clay Jenkinson calls for a new American revolution. Well worth the time it takes to listen to...

Amazing speech by a U.S. military vet...

Tying the U.S. war effort to racist class war.

"Our President Is Deceiving the American Public": Pentagon Papers Whistleblower on President Obama and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

"Our President Is Deceiving the American Public": Pentagon Papers Whistleblower on President Obama and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

The greatest living American patriot on the Obamafication of the Iraq and Afghan wars...

As Obama Visits Afghanistan, Tavis Smiley on Rev. Martin Luther King and His Opposition to the Vietnam War

As Obama Visits Afghanistan, Tavis Smiley on Rev. Martin Luther King and His Opposition to the Vietnam War

Pay attention to Cornel West's comments on the differences between MLK and BHO.

Comedy or Farce?

This week's episode of Theater of the Corrupt: Historic Health Care "Reform" has been a fascinating one to watch.

Obama (whose Presidential stagecraft has been far less inspired than his campaign stagecraft) turns in an almost convincing performance as the embattled President, struggling against the forces of regression to achieve an historic victory for the American people.

The Republican and conservative Democrat "opposition", on the other hand, who clearly won this round, have put on an Academy Award worthy performance, playing the "outraged losers."

Those audience members still drunk from the delicious Obama-flavored kool-aid served during the Presidential campaign will no doubt view this week's episode as a comedy.

The few members of the audience who have gone cold turkey from the kool-aid and have finally sobered up will recognize the true genre of this week's episode: farce.

A Sobering Assessment of Obama's "Historic" Health Care Legislation

From the WSWS.

Political News Worth Celebrating:

French Leftists rise up!

It's Time to Play...

DUELING CONSPIRACY THEORIES!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOKDlUoeQHI&feature=related

The proposition that Al-Qaeda is a global terrorist network constitutes a conspiracy theory. The question then becomes, which conspiracy theory do you prefer? And why do you prefer one over the other? I have always assumed that the 9/11 Commission was constituted to protect the Federal government--as opposed to, say, interrogate what evidence the Federal government failed to destroy in the immediate aftermath of the events. But my presumption has been that the cover-up (which is standard operating bureaucratic procedure) was designed to conceal incompetence--i.e., "sins of omission." Professor Zarembka's questions raise the issue of "sins of commission." Since Dick Cheney is convinced that water-boarding is an effective way to produce credible testimony, perhaps it is time to strap him to a gurney for questioning. 9/11 and the War On Terror have made him fabulously wealthy...Coincidence?

"Revolution Time"

When Sarah Palin talks about "the big ideas," it is time to get nervous. Really nervous. Ms. Palin wouldn't know a big idea if it bit her on the behind. That said, she is right about "revolution time." The problem is that she is absolutely clueless as to the kind of revolution that this country needs. In fact, Palin and her fellow Tea-Partiers would send this country ever deeper into the clutches of the Imperial Presidency and the National Security State. She wants to take the Rovian politics of jingoism and fear to a whole new level. She inveighs against Washington as Bush II did (as he cynically layered on new levels of "national security" bureaucracy) and as Ronald Reagan did before Bush II--while, again, expanding with naked cynicism, corporate entitlement programs at the federal level as no one, not even FDR, had done.

Palin is simply the latest shill for the Neo-Fascist revanchement of white folk who are angered whenever anyone in government suggests to them that God did not give them the world as a private fiefdom to do with as they please.

Good manners and good taste would suggest that people of average intelligence and above simply ignore Palin and her fellow Tea-Partiers--as you would ignore the tantrums of any spoiled child in an effort to avoid giving it the attention it craves. The only problem with such an approach is that it also ignores one of the most insistent facts of American political life in the early 21st century: the perception on the part of many Americans that our government operates independently of the will of the people.

This is not an inaccurate perception. And the emotions it generates are not come by dishonestly. Palin and the TP's are tapping into that perception and those emotions and, like the German National Socialist Party of the 1930's, are prepared to use democratic processes in their bid for power. If they succeed in their quest, it will only be because people of good will turned a blind eye to the pain they are feeling.

People of good will must acknowledge that pain. It is the pain that comes from disillusionment--a disillusionment that owes a great deal to the hopes that the Obama campaign raised in the hearts and minds of many Americans: that, at last, authentic change was on its way to Washington.

It is time for people on what passes for this country's "Left"--despite what they tell themselves, Liberals are not Leftists--to stop making excuses for the Obama Administration. It is time to put down the kool-aid jug and admit to ourselves that, once again, our hopes and dreams for a better America have been betrayed. Barack Obama is not an easy person to dislike. Don't even try. Continue to think well of him and to wish him and his family all the best. At the same time, abandon the illusion that he will somehow come through for us all. That is not his project and it is not his historical role.

Obama's role in American history is to present the American people with the opportunity to wake up and recognize that he was the last, best hope we had for working for change through the system. The disappointment that is the Obama Administration must serve as our wake-up call that the system is broken. We are ruled by a militarized corporatocracy that insinuated its way into power during the Second World War and that has spent the last half century or so strengthening its position. That corporatocracy is not only the enemy of American democracy, it is the enemy of the people of the world. It has co-opted our political parties, turned our elections into mere referenda of its policies, shifted the wealth of this great nation into its own treasuries, made a mockery of our system of justice, and turned what ought to be open discussion on the issues of the day into a cynical theater of the corrupt--where stooges like Palin and Bush strut their poor hour upon the stage to the detriment of us all.

And, if that weren't enough, the corporatocracy rules by fear and violence. The Fourth Estate, which it all but owns, is its willing accomplice in this tyranny. The Pentagon, the F.B.I., and the C.I.A. serve as its private militia. "Homeland security" is its domestic spy-network. The police and the courts do its bidding. And we, the "citizens" of this country, are but pawns in its game.

You will not hear this kind of talk from Palin and the T.P.'s. They're too busy genuflecting to the flag and cultivating a nostalgia for a white Protestant triumphalism (both religious and political) that is completely out of touch with the material realities experienced by the rest of the world. This is what our dear Sarah means when she refers to the "big ideas." She is dangerous.

But Palin is only as dangerous as the rest of us permit her to be. The antidote to Palin and her ilk is a real, live, Left that offers an alternative vision to the American people of what this country has to offer its own citizens and to the world: bread and roses. But bread and roses will not come to any of us by working through a broken system. It will come if and when we, the people, take to the streets, en masse, employing the time-tested methods of the non-violent general strike, and demand a Constitutional convention, a multi-party parliamentary system, and a social democracy.

A better world awaits if and only if we the people can find within ourselves the political will to act as if we believe that the prerogative for self-governance is our birthright as human beings. We can choose Palin's jack-boot revolution, where the rich get richer and the middle class cheers them on because Jesus loves them and, besides, what's better than a "happy meal" for lunch and a shopping spree at Wal-Mart? Or we can choose the sort of revolution that has actually produced stable, wealth-producing democracies in other parts of the world: where all the people can afford to see whatever doctor they wish and to live in a decent home, to have their children educated in safe and intellectually challenging schools, and not fear that, after a lifetime of toil, they will spend their old age in poverty.

We trusted Obama. We had better not trust Palin. The time has come to begin, at last, to trust ourselves.

"America's Secret Afghan Prisons": Investigation Unearths New US Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan

"America's Secret Afghan Prisons": Investigation Unearths New US Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan

"Why do they hate us?"

SOTU

It is truly unfortunate that when we finally elect a human being to the Presidency we have to witness his public struggle to assert his integrity in a role that all but precludes it. I don't think Obama really believes Obama anymore. He's just mouthing empty promises and lies.

Michael Moore on Haiti, the Supreme Court Decision on Corporate Campaign Financing, and Why He Calls the Democrats "Disgusting"

Michael Moore on Haiti, the Supreme Court Decision on Corporate Campaign Financing, and Why He Calls the Democrats "Disgusting"

MICHAEL MOORE STOPS DRINKING THE KOOL-AID, SOBERS UP, AND TAKES OFF THE GLOVES WITH THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION!

The Supreme Court Takes Off the Gloves

I say it's about time that our money-choked political system is simply handed over to naked, predatory capitalism. I mean, all this pretentious talk about government of, by, and for the people keeps the population feeling as though it’s in control. Now we can openly declare that we have government of, by, and for the militarized corporate plutocracy, and when we vote, all we are really doing is ratifying what the corporations have already decided. As Rabelais said on his death-bed: “Draw the curtains, the farce is over.”

From now on, democracy takes place in the streets.

Sure, I’d hoped for better things—I have children. And I fear it’s going to get ugly. But it’s always darkest before the dawn.

Be of good cheer, and get ready to march.

If You Can't Elect a Democrat in Massachusetts....

The good people of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts have voted against their collective self-interest by sending a Republican to the Senate. But like most physical suicides, this act of political suicide is a cry for help. It is time to dismantle the two-party system. In the meantime, take a moment to rub this loss in the faces of the Democratic Party leadership and demand that they return to the health care reform drawing board--lest in 2010 we find ourselves back where we were in '94 with another Republican contract ON America.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968

King's speech, "Beyond Vietnam," delivered at Riverside Church one year before his murder, was the occasion on which he went public with the connections he had made between MILITARISM, CAPITALISM, and RACISM. Once he had the audacity to do that, his fate (like the fates of the Kennedy brothers) was sealed.

The Plebiscite Is Just A Placebo

Leo Tolstoy pointed out this paradox a century ago: democracies are, in his view, more tyrannical than monarchies for the simple reason that the subjects of a monarch understand themselves as the subjects of a monarch whereas the citizens of a democracy believe that the fact that they cast ballots every so often makes them the rulers of their own destinies. But the plebiscite is just a placebo! The election of Barack Obama regrettably illustrates Tolstoy's point. On Wednesday, January 13, 2010, Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman reported that:

A new analysis estimates President Obama received over $20.1 million in healthcare industry donations during his 2008 campaign. The Center for Responsive Politics says Obama’s health industry donations nearly tripled Republican rival John McCain, who pulled in an estimated $7.7 million.

When the American people voted for Barack Obama in November 2008, they believed that they were voting for authentic health care reform (single payer or government option) among other things. What they did not know was that the Obama campaign had already sold the future of health care reform to the industry that he was elected to overhaul.

The Obama Administration will go down in American history as the emblem of the manner in which the militarized corporate plutocracy thwarts the popular will by means of the ballot box.

The political responsibility of people of conscience in this country is, henceforth, to eschew the placebo of the plebiscite and to work outside of the tightly crafted political system to build a viable Left that will force concessions from the ruling class.

It is the only option the ruling class has left us.

The Difference Between a Leftist, a Liberal, and a Neo-Con:

A Leftist will condemn water-boarding as torture and, on that basis, will refuse to participate in its use and advocate that the practice be abandoned once and for all.

A Liberal will condemn water-boarding as torture and on that basis advocate that the practice be abandoned once and for all--then look the other way while the practice continues and feel conflicted about the difficult decisions that must be made in the "real world."

The Neo-Con will not condemn water-boarding, will refuse to recognize it as torture, and will advocate its use in the difficult situations that occur in the "real world."

I am a Leftist, not a Liberal. And certainly not a Neo-Con.

No Liberal will bring authentic "real world" change to this country. For that, we need to build a viable Left.

Join a Socialist party today.

The Machine Is Set On "Kill"

Allan Nairn sums up the on-going crisis that is the Obama Presidency in this interview with Amy Goodman.

They Don't Call Him "O-Bomb-A" For Nothing

What did he think was going to happen?