This is a terrific story about the collapse of empire, the degradation of the citizens of our country, the brutality of the U.S. government in its quest to steal the resources of all the world, expand the empire, plunder, pillage, ignore and destroy families, women, babies. What a disgrace.
There is a woman named Alexis Hutchinson who is a cook in the Army. She is also a single mother with a baby, an infant under the age of one. She was ordered to deploy to Afghanistan but did not get on the flight because she had no one to take care of her baby while she was overseas. She told her superiors before the flight that she had a sudden problem with finding care for her baby. The Army told her tough luck, stick the kid in foster care, but get her ass on the plane.
Hutchinson explained that her mother had originally agreed to take the baby, but at the last minute decided she simply could not do it. Hutchinson's mother, the baby's Grandma, was already caring for three other family members who have health problems. Isn't that just so typical of modern America? When people have problems or get sick, it all falls on the women to care for them, usually with no help whatsoever from the government. And now, when a woman with an infant who's not even a year old suddenly has no one who can take her baby while she's gone, the military tells her to stick the kid into institutional care. With strangers.
What does the military care about babies, anyway? Who exactly is it that we've been killing in Iraq and Afghanistan? It certainly includes lots of babies. So don't look to the military for compassion or support for the babies of the world.
Hutchinson has been arrested by the military. She's being held on a base. They took the kid away from her, too, and put the baby into some institutional care facility on the base. Think about that for a minute. The military arrested this young woman, 21 year old woman, and took away her infant son and stuck him into some military institutional facility. Any reason mom couldn't keep the kid, other than to torture her? Finally, they let grandma take the baby, at least for now. I'm surprised they didn't deploy the kid, too.
As soon as the mom got an attorney, the military started backing down from their position. Now they say they would never force a single woman with an infant to stick the baby into institutional care. Now they say that.
It turns out that Grandma had originally said she could keep the baby. But life has a way of piling up on all of us, even the grandmas in this country. And now Grandma's own mother got sick, so she's taking care of her, and her sister got sick, so she's taking care of her too. Grandma also has another daughter who has special needs, and she has to take care of her too. In order to get by, Grandma runs a daycare out of her home. Poor Grandma, sounds like she's got a tough life. Ultimately, Grandma realized she could not take on an infant on top of everything else. Who can blame her? Well, actually, the U.S. Army can. Suck it up Grandma, Uncle Sam is holding your daughter in jail, so either you take the baby or they'll stick it in a home with a bunch of strangers.
I'm thinking of Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks was a poor black woman who worked for a living every day, and every day she would get on the public bus at the end of the day for a long ride home, and every day she would have to go to the back of the bus, behind some line they drew on the floor, and if there were no seats in the back of the bus then she had to stand the whole way home, even if there were empty seats in the front of the bus. Black people were not allowed in the front of the bus.
I'm thinking of Rosa Parks, and I'm wondering if this young Army woman was white, and her little baby was white, whether anybody in the U.S. military would have thrown this young woman into jail and taken her baby away from her, whether they would have told her to stick him in foster care. I'm just thinking that some babies, white babies, are cared for. But the non-white babies are too often considered disposable. Just like their mothers are.
And all of this for what? To pursue an ongoing war against the people of Afghanistan for reasons nobody can articulate. Four airplanes were hijacked in the U.S. on 9/11 2001 mostly by people from Saudi Arabia, funded by rich people from Saudi Arabia. And in response, W and Cheney invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Not Saudi Arabia. We have now been in Afghanistan for over eight years. For what?
Originally, we were going to go get bin Laden, but then W allowed bin Laden to escape and go into Pakistan, where he has been left alone. Most of his supporters left Afghanistan too. So then we decided that we weren't just looking for al Queda, we were now going to fight against "Insurgents." That means anybody who opposes having the U.S. military occupy their country. But who wouldn't? Nobody wants to be occupied by a foreign power.
And the young lady whose baby they've taken away, the young lady they've thrown in jail and traumatized and humiliated, the young lady they are threatening to give a harsh prison sentence, what was the imperative nature of her assignment in Afghanistan? She's a cook.
And now, the Congress has just voted to send another $46 million to Columbia, of all places, to begin sprucing up just one of seven military bases the U.S. is taking over inside that country for the purpose of -- get this -- fighting against terrorism. One military representative has admitted that the U.S. plans to occupy Columbia, in seven permanent bases, and use that as the jumping-off point to attack all the other countries in South American who do not please the Empire, countries that are considered to be anti-American, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (lots of oil there), Evo Morales in Bolivia, Nicaragua, all the countries that are entering into their own trade agreements for their mutual benefit. What's wrong with these people? Don't they realize that they are just colonies of the U.S., that they have no rights?
Poor Ms. Hutchinson. Poor women and babies everywhere, poor people, poor world. The U.S. military is on the march intent on expanding its Empire to every country in the world. We're doomed. Where is our Rosa Parks? Where are our leaders who can inspire the citizens of this country to demand an end to this madness, to sit down or stand up or march or do something. When an empire begins stealing women's babies, and murdering other women's babies, isn't that enough to rouse the citizenry?
The last time I was on Laura Flanders's GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest -- some Washington, D.C., "progressive" -- argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn't know anything about Afghanistan.
When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don't know any better.
When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.
Let's set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people's countries is to impose democracy on them. Let's assume we're imposing the rule of elite experts. Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.
It's like we're in a Saturday morning kids scifi show... the goodguy robot (in this case MSNBC) is telling us that the Repubs are getting ready to attack the Senate's vote on a Health Care Plan any way they can.
To start with, more than one of the Repub Senators (led by Lamar Alexander - R, TN) have called for new "Town Hall" meetings, like the ones the House members had in August - and it looks like the groups of lobbyists are ready to bus the same people in.
Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers' health by such companies. Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it comes to stopping our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our citizens are less clear how to go about it.
Why is it that every time we elect "peace" candidates we defund the peace movement, stop calling for an end to wars, and limit our demands exclusively to opposing war escalations?
In 2006 we voted into Congress the candidates who looked most likely to end the war in Iraq. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done. Then we mildly urged them not to escalate the war they'd been elected to end, and they escalated it anyway.
Eight years of slaughter, and not so much as a hint at what a "victory" would look like. It's gotten to the point where even polls by Fox News show a majority of Americans against escalating the war in Afghanistan, and polls by more honest organizations show a majority wanting to bring home the troops that are there now.
But our so-called representatives in Congress are reluctant to "interfere" with their own primary Constitutional responsibilities, and the so-called executive whom they've given free reign is undecided about whether to listen to us or the military. There's no time like the present to "go out there and make him do it."
The new film "Virtual JFK" is marketed as the story of the Vietnam War had John F. Kennedy not been killed. I expected a fantasy account of what might have been, and this led me to expect the following problem with the story: If Kennedy was killed because he would not fight a war in Vietnam, then supposing him to have survived Dallas would simply have left him in danger of assassination at each ongoing instant in the drama. We would have had to constantly fantasize Kennedy back to life through the course of such a movie.
Michael Vick, the football player who's all over the news, should have tortured humans instead of dogs. Then we would have been told to overlook it for the sake of moving forward. Better yet, he should have killed humans rather than only torturing them. Then we would have been told next to nothing about it at all. It might have been reported, but it wouldn't have become a hot topic, an echo-chambered story to be dismissed only after a great deal of hand-wringing. It certainly would not have interfered with watching football games.
If Attorney General Eric Holder creates a special prosecutor for torture but forbids him or her to prosecute the lawyers who facilitated torture or the top officials who ordered it, proposing to go after only torturers who exceeded the limitations outlined in the lawyers' memos, what are the risks?
I am strongly in favor of an investigaton or prosecution of the Bush/Cheney administration. One resource that I would recommend is www.AfterDowningStreet.org.
The best start would be a bi-partisan truth commission, modelled on the 9/11 commission. As we push for that, let us make every effort to suspend judgment. That is, if we say "Bush is a criminal, but we can't convict until we prosecute, so let's prosecute as a formality", then we sound like this is a partisan witch hunt, such as what Kenneth Starr did to Clinton. If we proceed with that approach, and fail to convict, then there will be a big PR backlash in favor of Bush and against the prosecutors. And even if we do convict, the appearance of partisan bias may still make it look like an unjust conviction.
Instead, let us say: "There have been serious allegations against Bush, Cheney, and others. Let us conduct an independent, bi-partisan investigation. If Bush is innocent, his name will be cleared. If he is guilty, he will face the legal consequences." Of course, no matter how far we bend over backwards to be fair, objective, and bi-partisan, the far right (Rush, Hannity, Beck, and so on) will scream and yell about bias. But it should be possible to do an investigation in a way that about 90% of the American people will agree is fair.
I believe that there are several serious charges to consider. The most serious charge is brought by former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, in his book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder". Bugliosi alleges that Bush knowingly lied to get us in to war in Iraq, and should therefore be tried for the murder of over 3,000 American troops who died there. Bugliosi also goes to great lengths to distinguish the actions of Bush from the actions of other presidents who have sent American soldiers to die in foreign wars; the main difference is that the other Presidents believed their actions to be justified, and did not lie to the American people about the reasons for war.
Another of the charges against Bush is war crimes. If the acts of torture carried out in Abu Ghraib were not abberations carried out by "a few bad apples", but were ordered by the Bush administration, then the Bush administration has broken various American and international laws. Likewise, it is known that waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" have been used in Gitmo, and that these were authorized by the Bush administration. If waterboarding is torture, and if torture is a serious violation of U.S. and international laws, then again the Bush administration deserves prosecution.
Another crime connected to Gitmo is the treatment of prisoners of war and terror suspects. Americans can be held by the government as crime suspects, but they must be charged with a crime, and given a lawyer and a trial. Jose Padilla was held without charge or trial for over three years.
Anyway, the above list should be a good starting place. I am not even a lawyer, and I created the list above from my memory of headlines and with the help of a few minutes of internet research. Each of the alleged crimes listed above deserves investigation, and if supported by the facts, several of them may deserve prosecution. And all of that should be supported by a majority of Americans. If done correctly, an investigaton of the Bush administration is both good policy and good politics.
There are a million and one things that people can do to try to end the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and to prevent new ones in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to close U.S. military bases in dozens of other nations around the world. Certain people are skilled at or interested in particular approaches, and nobody should be discouraged from contributing to the effort in their preferred ways. Far too often proposals to work for peace are needlessly framed as attacks on all strategies except one. But where new energy can be created or existing resources redirected, it is important that they go where most likely to succeed.
Though the Pentagon finally took responsibility for the Afghan civilian deaths in last month's Farah province airstrikes, we're only seeing minor adjustments toward a deeply flawed military strategy in need of a complete overhaul.
Late last week, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said US troops were responsible for civilian casualties in the May 4 airstrike, during which B-1 bombers unleashed three 2000 lb bombs and five 500 lb bombs on a village compound, killing up to 140 Afghan civilians. Following Mullen's admission, Gen. Stanley McChrystal announced plans to limit the use of these deadly airstrikes in populated areas. Meanwhile, McChrystal will also issue orders in the coming days to disengage from combat whenever possible in order to reduce the number of civilian casualties. According to McChrystal's spokesman, Rear Admiral Greg Smith, "Even if you are receiving fire from a structure, the first question you have to ask is: 'Can I de-escalate the situation by removing my force or relocating it'?"
Shouldn't commanders on the ground have been asking themselves this question all along? And why has it taken military leaders this long to restrict airstrikes to more uninhabited areas? Either McChrystal's plans signal a genuine shift in military strategy, or we're just seeing a PR maneuver on McChrystal's end--an attempt to save face because the soaring civilian death toll could quickly become inversely proportionate to the war's popularity. I'm betting on the latter, considering McChrystal's predecessor, Gen. McKiernan, tried a similar tactical shift last year when US airstrikes resulted in an inordinate number of civilian deaths. As I noted last week, this could easily be part of the Pentagon's plan to take greater control of the media narrative regarding the war.
Either way, it's time for action, and just in time for Afghanistan Exit Action Day.
In May 2005 we launched AfterDowningStreet.org to publicize the Downing Street Minutes. By June we'd had great, if fleeting, success. During the following months and years, mountains of new memos and statements emerged on the Iraq War lies, many of them more damaging than the Downing Street documents. But increasingly nobody cared, because evidence of crimes was less interesting once Congress had dropped the pretense that it might take action. The single most powerful, and yet largely ignored, document yet to emerge, might, now in 2009, finally, produce results. And, of course, it is our friends over in England who are, as always, two steps ahead of us.
We've been lobbying the Department of Justice all these months without realizing that the key to justice lay in the Department of the Interior, and specifically in the National Park Service, which has told activist Steve Lane he will be prosecuted if he attempts to demonstrate waterboarding at Thursday's anti-torture rally in Washington, D.C. The permit for the rally reads "Waterboarding exhibit will not be allowed for safety reasons."
Why do so many Americans pretend that we are all children? There seems to be a tinkerbell theory prevalent in parts of our country. A belief that if we pretend we are children, and have child-like beliefs and aspirations, then we can fool the world, and everyone will think we are innocent. We can go out during the day and rape, pillage and plunder in our business activities, but go home at night and watch a child's movie or cartoon for "family" time, and we will become pure again. We can go out in our religions and condemn and hate and advocate the killing and murder of anyone who does not believe as we do, but then if we bow our heads in prayer: voila, innocent as the newborn babe. We can steal elections, try to enslave and oppress whole groups inside our country, lie, cheat, and steal in trying to get "our" politicians into office, but then put on some nice clothes and show up for the party, and pretend to just be just some sweet kids out for fun.
Oh yeah. It's not a film. It's not an "animated" film. It's a cartoon. I'm sick of seeing a listing for what is called a "movie," but then the description further down explains it is an "animated feature." No. It's a cartoon. We're not all children, and we adults may choose to go see real movies -- the kind with actors in them -- as opposed to simply watching cartoon-drawings created by some middle-aged pedophiles who always draw the little girls as having tiny waists and very large buttocks. What is it about those animators anyway? Do they have to be perverts to get the job. It's like that whole scoutmaster issue.
This whole Christian Nation is the same thing. Slimey, Scummy, Smarmy, Despicable People walk around with these huge crucifixes hanging around their necks, telling everyone "Jesus Christ Is My Personal Savior," gloating, bragging, telling the world that they are superior human beings, God has saved them, their miserable, corrupt, lazy, self-centered narcissistic lying cheating sacks of crap. And they think that some divine being touched them with a magic wand, like a fairy godmother, and now they are "saved," and soon they will have pretty little wings and float through the air with all the other nice people. You know what's the weirdest part about this whole Christian thing? Jesus's whole teaching was about helping the less fortunate. But American Christians never do anything for anybody else. Ever. They don't have to: they're saved!
It's the oddest thing, you let some guy duck your head into a swimming pool and you come out with some life-time pass that excuses you from ever having to do anything to help another person. It's like people get those "I'm a Friend Of The Police" decals for their cars, and they can speed or park in a handicapped zone forever because they kicked-back a few bucks to the cops. Because American Christianity is all "internal" -- it's unrelated to actions. "I believe," and therefore I'm saved. No action required. If you have sentiment, you are saved. If you tear up when someone says God, or Jesus, you are saved. If you walk right over the starving bodies of poor people in your town, and don't bother to help them, but you loudly sing some religious song on Sunday, you are saved. It's exactly the type of absurdity that only a child could believe.
Our economy is in a depression. Please, let's not spar, we're not children. It's a depression. Or worse. Our economy has collapsed. The truth of the severity is being hidden from us by our politicians, the media, and the Corporate Dictators that run everything. They don't want us to know just how bad it is. So they lie. They turn the entire government over to some criminal Insiders from Wall Street, and let them give billions of dollars of my money to Wall Street and to the Banks. And they sing us lullabies at night, and tell us "there there, lay down your head, don't you fret, everything will be okay." Yeah, like I'd trust somebody from Wall Street. Or the government. Wall Street is in charge. I am saved.
Millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Millions of jobs have been ripped out of this country and sent to third world countries because the Corporations can use slave labor in those other countries. Those jobs are not coming back. Unless, that is, we cancel the "free" trade agreements and bar any imports of products from any American business that has taken its jobs elsewhere. Which is what we should do. When they tell us that globalization is good -- that's another lie, a story for children. "It's good that your job has gone away. Trust us." "Globalization" just means that millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and will never again in their life have steady work or a living wage.
The "new" government has made its priorities clear. First they announce that the U.S. War Against The Middle East will go on for decades, and will require billions more in funding. So our military can serve as personal muscle for the Oil Corporations as they go about the middle east and steal all the resources. Bush went after Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama sees him those two then raises on Pakistan and (possibly by fomenting instability in) Iran. Who's next?
Second, the "new" government announces that they have given billions more of our money to Wall Street. The same people who have stolen our pensions, destroyed our economy, are rewarded by being given hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
Next, they announce: Oops, no more money, we have to tighten our belts, no jobs programs, no healthcare, no education assistance, no retraining, no nothing for the citizens of this country. We can't afford it. All our money has been given away to the wealthiest people in this country, the criminals who have stolen everything from the rest of us. And for war. Much of our money goes to war, more war.
That's the "change" government of Obama. Because it's really not Obama in charge. It's the Corporations. And it's the Democrats in Congress, probably the most corrupt (by dollar amount of bribes taken) group of politicians who ever existed in the world. "Our" Democrats. Sell-outs and traitors to a person.
Now we hear the Obama administration and the Democrats explaining, setting the table for why we don't need any help for the citizens of this country. No jobs programs, no healthcare, no retraining, no education, nothing. But that's okay, we don't really need it because: THERE ARE GREEN SHOOTS RISING FROM THE GROUND, SHOWING THEIR LITTLE BABY FACES, GREETING THE SUN OF THE NEW MORNING. http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/200...
Just like in a cartoon. I'm surprised they don't have a soundtrack in the background with a dog playfully barking, birds singing, a soft breeze blowing: shoots, there are green shoots everywhere, we are saved.
Shoots? That's it? Should we make Shoot Soup? Try to live off of that?
I hate to be the one who blows up the mirage, but I don't see no stinkin' shoots. I see millions of Americans who are unemployed, millions more have lost their savings and pensions, millions have lost their homes or will soon lose their homes, millions have no healthcare, millions have no future. And all the while their overcrowded neighborhoods receive less social service support, and are saturated by guns, drugs and violence. Shoots? I don't see no stinkin' shoots.
And now we learn, to cap off this disgusting cartoonish propaganda system, that the Re-Virgin movement has again reared its ugly head. Yes, Sarah Palin's daughter who had a child out of wedlock, the Republican definition of slut, whore and tramp, she can be saved again and become a virgin again. Thank God. I was fearful in a time of the complete collapse of our economy and destruction by corruption and rot of our government, in a time when our country is being turned into a brutal war machine attacking the whole world in quest for empire, that we might actually have to learn to live with the possibility that adult females past a certain age are not virgins. And furthermore, that adult men should keep their noses out of women's private business, and stop obsessing over their desire to have sex with little girls. Virgins.
I've never heard a woman carry on about wanting to have sex with a virgin male. I have heard of 40 year old American businessmen going to Thailand and "renting" a 10-year-old girl to have sex with because they really wanted to have sex with a virgin. Which, I guess in their mind, if they are really just a little child, a cartoon figure, they can look at themselves as the nice, clean-faced young boy with a nice clean-faced young girl, see the whole episode as a "crush," an innocent affection for a sweet little girl. Although I personally see it as rape and perversion. But then again, I've never been a fan of "annimated" features, preferring real movies with actors instead.
I'll take my reality straight-up. Harsh as it may be.
Here's my idea: the people of the United States should do what the people of Iran are doing. Get out in the streets and shut the whole place down, either throw every single politician out of office and start over again, or force them to start working for us instead of for the Corporations.
If absolute power creates absolute corruption, then the only logical response to absolute corruption is to absolutely shut everything down and start all over again. This bus is driving off the cliff.
$100 billion more in wartime spending. That's what Congress is hellbent on approving despite valiant efforts from a growing number of Progressives led by FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher to derail this legislation's passage in the House. $100 billion, and for what? To bring more troops to Afghanistan without an exit strategy? To further US foreign policy that fails to address the humanitarian needs of the world's third poorest country? To escalate military operations that directly result in Afghan civilian casualties?
Recently, Anand Gopal, who has been covering the war in Afghanistan for The Christian Science Monitor, dispelled the myths about troop escalation at the America's Future Now Conference in Washington, DC. The reality, Gopal grimly assessed, is that more troops will mean more incidents of violence. More troops will also mean the need for more airstikes, which, as you can see in the sobering trailer for part four of Rethink Afghanistan, will mean more civilian casualties.
Bored Obama Wants A New War: North Korean Ships To Be Assaulted By U.S. Navy. (Pot Calls Kettle Black).
Back in the early days of the presidency of John F. Kennedy, the Soviet Union was believed to be hauling missile parts to Cuba, so they could be an imminent threat to our nation 90 miles offshore (U.S. Propaganda) or so Cuba could defend its new revolution against the threatened and anticipated attacks and invasion from the U.S. (Cuba Propaganda). So we got what became known as the Cuban Missile Blockade, and the world held its breath as two superpower nation poised on the edge of war. Terrible times.
Cuba's position was borne out in time, as the U.S. repeatedly attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro, to murder civilians, set loose paid terrorists to try to blow up civilian airplanes and create chaos in the country so it would be softened up for a U.S.-sponsored coup, embargoed, boycotted, set up an entire radio network designed to barrage the people of Cuba with crazy propaganda to destabilize the country, and provided millions of dollars every year to a group of old, lazy, Cuban-expatriotes in Florida who spend most of the year sitting around the private "social" clubs crying about the good old days when they were goons for the Mafia, and go out once a year and parade around the block with signs saying "Cuba Libre!." All the young kids cheer because they think these old guys mean "Drinks all around."
Even now, almost 50 years after the Cuban Revolution threw out the Mafia and the U.S. Criminals and Corporations, our government still will not allow me to go to Cuba on a vacation. It's "too dangerous." A tiny island, a poor people, subject to 50 years of the wrath of the biggest military nation in the world. What a disgrace.
But however you view history, the fact is that Cuba is very close to the U.S., and certainly it is understandable that the U.S. would not have wanted nuclear weapons set up there and pointed at Florida. Although personally I've never really liked Florida, so I'm ambivalent on the subject at best.
What other really stupid and dangerous policies did our government adopt back in the post-war years of anti-communist hysteria? Among other things, we sent U.S. military troops into Korea, and engaged in a long, ultimately pointless war against the North Koreans. We never left. We divided the country in two, cut off and embargoed, blockaded North Korea, watched for decades as a large percentage of their population starved to death, and issued routine propaganda releases saying it's their own fault.
The U.S. attacked what became North Korea almost 60 years ago and has been essentially poised on the border ever since ready to pounce at a moment's weakness. No wonder North Korea is ruled by such a militaristic government: they've been under threat from the largest military in the world for over 60 years. Who benefits from this insanity? The Corporations, the Defense Industry. Nobody else.
Now President Obama, pursuant to the Bush/Cheney/Obama theory of American Empire, has decided that the U.S. has the right to "confront" any ship anywhere in the world, stop it, threaten to attack it, inspect it, control it, without any apparent restrictions at all. This is an assault -- a threat of a battery. The battery would be any unlawful or unwanted "touching," such as having U.S. military people board a ship in international waters without the consent of the ship's captain. We are so arrogant and so illegal in everything we do. Laws have no effect on our government at all. Aren't we behaving just like the pirates we condemn? Except that we've got bigger ships? And bigger guns?
Laws? What laws? Laws were meant to be broken.
The reason for the new U.S. policy of using our Navy as one big Pirate System to control all the international waters is because North Korea has, or may get, or may be shipping in, "arms" or nuclear technology. Not 90 miles from our coast anymore. The new American Empire provides that we have the absolute right to control every person and every country in the entire world. Think about it. What would we do if some other nation threatened to assault our ships in international waters? What better way to start a war.
I'm going to start calling this the Bush-Obama Regime. What change?
See article in today's New York Times, "U.S. to Confront, Not Board, North Korean Ships," by David E. Sanger, link below.
"The Obama administration will order the Navy to hail and request permission to inspect North Korean ships at sea suspected of carrying arms or nuclear technology, but will not board them by force, senior administration officials said Monday." ...
The United Nations is providing the legal support for these acts by the U.S.
"The planned American action stops just short of the forced inspections that North Korea has said that it would regard as an act of war. Still, the administration's plans, if fully executed, would amount to the most confrontational approach taken by the United States in dealing with North Korea in years, and carries a risk of escalating tensions at a time when North Korea has been carrying out missile and nuclear tests. " ...
"Mr. Obama's aides have said that while the new president is willing to re-engage in either the talks with North Korea and its neighbors, or in direct bilateral discussions, he will not agree to an incremental dismantlement of the North's nuclear facilities. "
What would happen if North Korea said they are willing to discuss anything with the United States, but only after the U.S. permanently ends its wars in the middle east, removes their troops, and renounces their aggressive designs on that region? Unconditional demand to negotiations: "Mr. Obama, Tear Down Those Wars." Who, after all, is the proven aggressor and war-monger in this story?
I'm not saying the North Korean government is an agent of peace. But as of today, the biggest warmonger in the world, the one that has killed the most people and is the biggest proven threat to other nations and to peace, is the United States. Not North Korea.
President Obama wants billions more of our taxdollar money.
Not to create jobs.
Not to provide healthcare to Americans.
Not to help our teachers and cops and firefighters to keep their jobs.
Not to increase unemployment compensation or pay for the healthcare for the un- and underemployed.
Not to fund daycare for working parents.
Not to pay for Americans to get such simple (but expensive) tests as mammograms and colonoscopies, which could save thousands of lives every year if only Americans could afford the tests.
Not to give jobs to the newly-unemployed auto workers, not to convert the auto factories into new green industries, not to create economic zones and employment education and training programs for our most-devastated regions like the Rust Belt.
Not to fund organic farms to stop agri-business with their Frankenstein laboratory-manufactured food-stuff which is taking over the world and probably will kill us all.
Not to provide flu shots for all of us. Not to fund the world Aids programs, as President Obama promised he would when he took office.
Not to provide medical care for injured vets, or jobs for those whose tours of duty are over.
Not to fund the international war crimes tribunal that we should be conducting right now to have investigations, hearings, prosecutions, imprisonment of every person from the Bush administration who participated in starting the war of aggression against Iraq, and all those who directed, authorized, approved, ratified torture.
Not to fund the financial crimes tribunals that we should be conducting right now to seize the assets of every person who worked on Wall Street during the past 10 years, arrest them, prosecute them, throw them in prison to rot for the rest of their useless and despicable lives.
Nope.
President Obama wants more money for more wars.
And he wants to send $100 Billion of U.S. Taxpayer Money to his friends, the Eurotrash who run Europe's version of Wall Street.
I call it the "War-And-Eurotrash-Bailout-Bill."
Just like our Wall Street Criminals need multi-million dollar bonuses to pay for their summers in the Hamptons, so too the Eurotrash Financial Criminals need multi-million dollar bonuses to pay for their summers at Lake Como. Maybe while he was in Paris last week, Obama learned that simply nobody stays in Paris in August, so returned to the states with a renewed sense of urgency about the need to send $100 Billion of U.S. Taxpayer Money to his Eurotrash friends in Europe.
Think I'm kidding? See the articles below.
Firedoglake has a link to some key representatives that people should call and urge to vote against this combo War-And-EuroTrash-Bailout-Bill. The site is a little confusing, but I think if you just call any of those representatives and ask them to vote against this bill, you would be helping to stop it.
http://action.firedoglake.com/...
No money for the Eurotrash. And you know what? Let's just end the wars and bring the troops home. Do we have to go so deep in debt trying to help the oil corporations destroy the entire middle east that we will all, for generations, sleep in gutters and beg for crumbs. Are the Democrats as insane as the Republicans were? Do all Americans need to die for Empire, in service of the Corporate Dictatorship? I'm sick of it. End the Wars. Now, not ten years from now. Now.
The International Monetary Fund ("IMF") is like a financial hitman that serves the corporate dictatorships of the U.S. and Western European countries in trying to take over all the resources of the world. Basically they are an arm of the uber-rich and are used to help set up puppet regimes and dictatorships to steal everything from local populations, turn over the resources of a country to western corporations, and charge obscene amounts to bankrupt the country and leave the people poor and helpless.
Now President Obama is trying to sneak through a big give-away of U.S. taxpayer money to the IMF. But he does not want a stand-alone bill that just says: "Steal Money From Americans, Send It To Eurotrash." Instead, he snuck this provision inside a new War Funding Bill. Trying to sneak it through. Supposedly the money would go to the IMF which would turn around and immediately give it to the biggest financial institutions in Europe -- European Wall Street -- to bail out their billionaire Eurotrash. With our money.
More money for war. More money for the rich. Nothing for working people.
"The Next Big Taxpayer Bailout? IMF Could Get Hundreds of Billions for European BanksBy Mark Weisbrot"
June 8, 2009, Firedoglake
"The bailout of private banks and financial institutions has become a touchy political issue in the United States, ever since President Bush's Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson asked Congress for a $700 billion dollar blank check last September."
"Now the Obama administration is asking the Congress for $108 billion for the International Monetary Fund. This was in accordance with a plan that the administration has helped organize to raise $500 billion in additional funds for the IMF. This would add to the approximately $200 billion that the IMF has on hand, $100 billion in gold reserves, and another $250 billion that the Fund will create in its own currency. These are enormous sums of money that the IMF has never come close to before. "
"What is all this money for? There is an answer staring us in the face from the financial press: European banks."
Notice how every single economic move by the big boys since Clinton got into office consists of looting and plundering the U.S. -- taking all the money out of our country, leaving us with nothing. Hedge funds (secret private banks for rich people), "offshore" private equity funds, secret Swiss bank accounts, major companies moving all their investments into third world countries. I'm beginning to think they're getting ready to nuke us -- not North Korea, but "our" people. Why else are they stealing all our money and leaving us with nothing?
Let the Eurotrash steal from their own people, just like the Wall Street Criminals steal from us. I'm sick of this betrayal by all our politicians and even more sick of bail-outs for the rich and powerful. And I'm really tired of these wars.
Here is a face of the war in Afghanistan. Najibullah, an air raid victim from the Malwand district of Kandahar, points to where three bombs shattered his home during a recent US airstrike. His message to President Obama: Withdraw US forces from Afghanistan at once. "They're going to leave anyway," Najibullah says. "It's better for them to leave Afghanistan on their own terms now rather than later. To leave our country voluntarily. We're all deformed, people are missing fingers. Look at my finger." He points to a missing index finger on his right hand. "Some people are missing eyes, some people are missing legs. Some are missing their arms. They destroyed the whole nation."
This exclusive footage, which Brave New Foundation released today as part of the soon-to-be-released fourth segment of Rethink Afghanistan, stands as an unflinching testament to the rampant devastation wrought by recent US airstrikes in Afghanistan. It should be seen by everyone who attempts to write off the civilian casualties of this war with the dehumanizing phrase "collateral damage." It should be seen by everyone in Congress considering whether to escalate this quagmire with $96.7 billion in supplemental wartime spending. And it should be seen by Gen. Stanley McChrystal as he submits his review of US strategy in Afghanistan--the fifth review this year--and tries to pretend the war in Afghanistan is not a quagmire that's destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians like Najibullah.
