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“George W. Bush — the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification”

Addressing the origins of the “who’s is your daddy” nation

By Phil Rockstroh

“We must become the change we want to see.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“In any case, I hate all Iranians.” –Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates

How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout — enough! — then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation’s citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.

Over the last three decades, the authoritarian right has risen to create the nation they have been longing for since their humbling by the Watergate scandal. After being subdued and humiliated by the mechanisms of a free republic, the right has turned the tables — and subdued and humiliated the republic. If the trend continues, all but unchallenged and unabated, we might as well replace the torch held aloft by Lady Liberty with a taser.

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Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life!

October 1, 2007

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org

If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who?

I used to give thought to what historical time and place I would like to have lived in. Europe in the 1930s was usually my first choice. As the war clouds darkened, I’d be surrounded by intrigue, spies omnipresent, matters of life and death pressing down, the opportunity to be courageous and principled. I pictured myself helping desperate people escape to America. It was real Hollywood stuff; think “Casablanca”. And when the Spanish Republic fell to Franco and his fascist forces, aided by the German and Italian fascists (while the United States and Britain stood aside, when not actually aiding the fascists), everything in my imaginary scenario would have heightened — the fate of Europe hung in the balance. Then the Nazis marched into Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland … one could have devoted one’s life to working against all this, trying to hold back the fascist tide; what could be more thrilling, more noble?

Miracle of miracles, miracle of time machines, I’m actually living in this imagined period, watching as the Bush fascists march into Afghanistan, bombing it into a “failed state”; then Iraq: death, destruction, and utterly ruined lives for 24 million human beings; threatening more of the same endless night of hell for the people of Iran; overthrowing Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti; bombing helpless refugees in Somalia; relentless attempts to destabilize and punish Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Gaza, and other non-believers in the empire’s god-given mission. Sadly, my most common reaction to this real-life scenario, daily in fact, is less heroic and more feeling scared or depressed; not for myself personally but for our one and only world. The news every day, which I consume in large portions, slashes away at my joie de vivre; it’s not just the horror stories of American military power run amok abroad and the injustices of the ever-expanding police state at home, but all the lies and stupidity which drive me up the wall. I’m constantly changing stations, turning the TV or radio off, turning the newspaper page, to escape the words of the King of Lies and the King of Stupidity — those two twisted creatures who happen to occupy the same humanoid body — and a hundred minions.

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By Peter Chamberlin

9/30/07

“To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That’s just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them.”

—Michael Parenti, author http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Fascism.html 

All of us who read these pages, on this side of the Internet, are stuck on the same unanswerable question: How can we stop this new war against Iran, before the “decider” pulls the trigger? The closest that anyone can come to an answer is expressed in the idea of rousing the American majority to take democratic action to oppose this rapidly approaching heinous act of pure evil. This leads to the question of “how?” Because Americans have been raised in a controlled illusory environment (which has been fabricated by decades of corporate/government brainwashing), like rats in cages, and because of the very effective “filtering” system on all public communications systems, it is practically impossible for the “Paul Reveres” of the Internet to awaken the town.

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“They were out for blood. They didn’t want the holocaust denier to speak in the first place. He was a sponsor of “terror,” unlike, of course, the United States and its 160,000 troops plus mercenaries in Iraq. Also, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an anti-Semite because he did not approve of the state of Israel, which had inhaled Palestine, as the Nazis had the ghettos of Lodz, Krakow and Warsaw, not to mention most of Europe.”

COMMENTARY By Jerry Mazza

Online Journal Associate Editor | Dateline: Sep 26, 2007

[The Ahmadinejad visit to New York provided the media and its associated political class with yet another feeding frenzy to exercise their well developed talent for high-handed hypocrisy. Obviously it helps when the target is long preceded by and shrouded in obstinate ignorance and consequent confusion in a culture where history is only of peripheral interest, and where vociferous Zionism has a de facto chokehold on almost all critical institutions—from Congress to the media, and certainly academia. It also doesn’t help matters much that the Iranian leader—like most US imperial targets—is scarcely adept at juggling the symbols of American propaganda, and is often quite skilled at shooting himself in the foot. Like many smaller-power leaders who stand in defiance to probably the most hypocritical empire on record, they do not seem to fully understand the importance of communicating clearly and forthrightly with the US public above and through the curtain of thick distortions certain to be deployed by the corporate media and professional politicians (two sides of the same coin). And therein they miss fine opportunities to neutralize at least some of the poison being continuously spread around by these agents of imperial propaganda as they character assassinate the leaders and cultures marked for eventual physical attacks. It’s high time these leaders made an effort to understand and master this very special but essential language that could—up to a point—lessen the probabilities of such an attack.—Eds.]

As I walked up Broadway towards Columbia University, a dozen blocks from my apartment, I was amazed to see crowds of students cramming into the campus, protesting outside the gates, and ample numbers of New Yorks finest, who already had locked down the campus to anyone who didn’t have a student ID card. Eureka, it almost felt like the Columbia protests (riots) of 1968.

But then students were battling a military-oriented think tank from the Rand Corporation, starting in 1967. Discovery of the Institute for Defense Analyses presence in 67 and 68 lit the firecracker for SDS’s (Students for a Democratic Society) anti Vietnam War campaign. Also, too many armed forces recruiters on campus fanned the BOOM to come.

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By John Hanks

9/17/07

After the filth murdered the Wellstones, I knew that we were under a Nazi regime and that soon we would all be dead. At that point I just assumed I was dead, like any experienced combat soldier. I put signs in my car windows that say “Bush ordered 911″ or “Republicans Return to Their Own Vomit”, etc. Since I live in Wyoming, I figured that I would be murdered in short order, but so far I’m fine, after 4 years of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. If you put good hateful signs in your windows, you outflank the crook media, and cell phones often do the rest.

The only way to counter demoralization, which is the stock and trade of the filth, is to cultivate a black and intelligent hatred. Anger is an exhausting weakness and just an expression of demoralization. But, hatred is an instinctual reaction to those who would like to kill you. Republicans are full of hatred because they know that liberals would like to revoke their license to steal. That is why they don’t have to think except in terms of slogans.

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By Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York

Sunday September 16, 2007

The Observer | GUARDIAN Unlimited [U.K.]

The man once regarded as the world’s most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was ‘largely’ about oil.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir - out tomorrow in the US - Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: ‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.’

In The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, he is also crystal clear on his opinion of his last two bosses, harshly criticising George W Bush for ‘abandoning fiscal constraint’ and praising Bill Clinton’s anti-deficit policies during the Nineties as ‘an act of political courage’. He also speaks of Clinton’s sharp and ‘curious’ mind, and ‘old-fashioned’ caution about the dangers of debt.

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“Six years after September 11, 2001 what we do have is what might be expected when revenge is pursued rather than justice. Pain, death, grief and anger. Fear, reactionary decisions, and rhetoric aimed at factionalizing a nation.”

By Rowan Wolf

9/15/07

On September 11, 2001 a series of horrendous events happened. Planes brought down two buildings of the World trade Center complex in New York City; the Pentagon was hit; and another crashed in a Pennsylvania field. It was a shock to the systems and psyches of the people of the United States and the world. It has been repeated more times than I can count the “world changed forever.” Personally, I think that is a grandiose claim, but it set in motion a series of decisions and events that continue to the present.

Bush reportedly “joked” after 9/11 that he had “hit the trifecta.” His choices after that event have ruined the lives of millions, and drug the United States into the dubious honor of being a rogue nation.

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The debate about whether Americans should stay or leave Iraq after four years of brutal occupation is surreal because it continues to be underwritten by enormous lies. Plain and simple, the US elites invaded Iraq to rob that nation at gunpoint of its major resource, oil, and all the current foot-dragging is simply to accommodate stateside politics to the ensuing debacle, while clinging to some “solution” that might provide a fig leaf for an indefinite US military presence in that region. The essay we reproduce below is an excellent dissection of the principal lies feeding the confusion, as usual with ample complicity on the part of the corporate media, which through shoddy work, or cynical collaboration, effectively prolongs the agony of Iraq. The evidence that the mass media are not doing their job is everywhere. Just consider for a moment the following astonishing facts—astonishing in their sheer obscenity when put in the context of so much want and misery in the world, and that most Americans never heard of them— collected by Doug Henwood for one of his remarkable essays, and published back in 2003:

“LIGHTNESS”

In the early days of the war, when things weren’t going so well for the “coalition,” it was said that the force was too light. But after the sandstorm cleared and the snipers were mowed down, that alleged lightness became a widely praised virtue. But that force was light only by American standards: 300,000 troops; an endless rain of Tomahawks, JDAMs, and MOABs; thousands of vehicles, from Humvees to Abrams tanks; hundreds of aircraft, from Apaches to B-1s; several flotillas of naval support - and enormous quantities of expensive petroleum products. It takes five gallons of fuel just to start an Abrams tank, and after that it gets a mile per gallon. And filling one up is no bargain. Though the military buys fuel at a wholesale price of 84¢ a gallon, after all the expenses of getting it to the front lines are added in, the final cost is about $150 a gallon. That’s a steal compared to Afghanistan, where fuel is helicoptered in, pushing the cost to $600/gallon. Rummy’s “lightness” is of the sort that only a $10 trillion economy can afford.

Wrap your mind around those little facts before you read the rest of the indictment.—Eds.

BY JOHN TIRMAN, AlterNet

Originally Posted on November 28, 2006

The escalating violence in Iraq’s civil war is now earning considerable attention as we pass yet another milestone — U.S. occupation there, in two weeks, will exceed the length of the Second World War for America. While the news media have finally started to grapple with the colossal amount of killing, a number of misunderstandings persist. Some are willful deceptions. Let’s look at a few of them:

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“The total of dead and displaced comes to 20 percent of the Iraqi population. If this is not fanaticism on the part of the Bush administration, what is it? Certainly it is not reason, tolerance, and deliberation.”

BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Dateline: September 5, 2007

President Jimmy Carter was demonized for pointing out in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that there are actually two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Distinguished American scholars, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have suffered the same fate for documenting the excessive influence the Israel Lobby has on US foreign policy.

Americans would be astonished at the criticisms in the Israeli press of the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinians and Arabs generally. In Israel facts are still part of the discussion. If the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, could replace Fox “News,” CNN, New York Times and Washington Post, Americans would know the truth about US and Israeli policies in the MIddle East and their likely consequences.

On September 1, Haaretz reported that Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which represents 900 Congregations and 1.5 million Jews, “accused American media, politicians and religious groups of demonizing Islam” and turning Muslims into “satanic figures.”

Rabbi Yoffie is certainly correct. In America there is only one side to the issue. An entire industry has been created that is devoted to demonizing Islam. Books abound that misrepresent Islam as the greatest possible threat to Western Civilization and seek to instill fear and hatred of Muslims in Americans. For example, Norman Podhoretz proclaims “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism.” Daniel Pipes shrieks that “Militant Islam Reaches America.” Lee Harris warns of “The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West.”

Think tanks have well-funded Middle East programs, the purpose of which is to spread Islamophobia. Fear and loathing pour out of the Middle East Forum and the American Enterprise Institute.

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By Stephen Lendman

9/7/07

Administration rhetoric is heated and the dominant media keep trumpeting it. It signals war with Iran of the “shock and awe” kind - intensive, massive and maybe with nuclear weapons. Plans are one thing, action another, and how things play out, in fact, won’t be known until the fullness of time that may not be long in coming. For now, waiting and guessing games continue, and one surmise is as good as another. The more threatening they are, the less likely they’ll happen, or at least it can be hoped that’s so.

It’s not media critic, activist and distinguished professor emeritus Edward Herman’s view. He writes “the situation now is even more menacing than we faced in 2002-2003 when the Bush gang was readying us for the invasion (and) occupation of Iraq. There is strong evidence that Bush-Cheney and company are about to attack Iran (and) the groundwork is being set with a flood of propaganda, helped by the media and Democrats.” It may be “his last (crazed) hope for immortality” and possible attempt to revive “Republican strength through this classic maneuver of cornered-rat politicians.”

Most frightening is that the Bush administration doesn’t have enough of a bad thing and may want more of it. This time, however, the stakes are incalculable, the risks over the top, and the chance for success (from an American perspective) almost nil if post-WW II history is a good predictor. Distinguished historian Gabriel Kolko notes in all its conflicts since 1950, America never lost a battle and never won a war. It’s a world class bumbler, never learns from its mistakes, and only succeeds, in Kolko’s words, in making an “unstable world far more precarious” than if it left well enough alone.

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