Arthur Silber needs your help. It's as simple as that. One of the most insightful, original, informed and meaningful voices in our political discourse today, Silber must scrape by from month to month on the jagged edge of circumstance, battling ill health with notable courage, surviving on nothing but what his blog can bring in. This is a shameful reflection of how our society regards wisdom and truth: as something to be cut off, unsupported, crushed if possible, and if not -- as in the case of Silber's indomitable spirit -- then marginalized, battered, made to suffer.
In recent weeks, Silber has roared back from a particularly vicious bout that laid him low to write a remarkable string of essays, full of the learning, passion, perception -- and wicked wit -- that is a trademark of his work. Some particularly choice example can be found here: Let the Victims Speak; Why America May Go to Hell; and Cultivate Your Sense of Wonder.
In the latter piece, Silber combines older and new material to speak eloquently about the vision that drives his work:
If I had to select just a single word to express my deepest feeling about the world, and about humankind, it would be that one: wonder. I consider it a measure of how unevolved we are that so many people appear to be capable of that feeling only when they contemplate an imaginary, supernatural plane. It is hardly surprising that our world holds so much unnecessary suffering, when so many people are willing and eager to condemn it to second-rate status in favor of one they've made up out of whole cloth...
I think it highly probable that our circumstances will continue to get significantly worse, although this deterioration may come quickly or comparatively slowly. You may live the rest of your life without seeing the worst of what will happen, or even anything close to the worst -- or you may not. There is no way to know, and the variables are close to infinite. But I say again: it does not have to be this way. Extraordinary events have transpired in history before, and they might again. We need a miracle, but not one delivered to us from a supernatural realm: we require a miracle that we create.
It can happen. Hold on to your sense of wonder; if you do not have a sufficiently strong one, then develop it. For me, it is the most precious resource in the world....
Live in the sense of wonder, and in the world of joy. Take it, feel it and pass it on. That's sometimes all you can do -- for someone, somewhere, one day. It's everything.
I now add that, when you engage in this process, you yourself live ecstatically -- today.
Can we afford to let such a voice fall silent? If you have anything at all to spare, get on over to Silber's site and give what support you can.
Tell me that this doesn't sound like something out of a history of Nazi tactics in World War II:
The rules [of engagement]t explicitly allowed the killing of unarmed Iraqis under certain circumstances...Specifically, the snipers were allowed to shoot unarmed people running away from explosions or firefights....Of course, it's not unusual for innocent people to run from explosions.
Didier, who has since been promoted to captain, said that "if that individual makes contact with you and then breaks contact of their own accord and disarms themselves while they are breaking contact, they are still an engageable target because they are not wounded, nor did they surrender." He explained, "They are only breaking contact so that they can engage coalition forces at a later time." In court, Sgt. Anthony Murphy, one of the snipers who was responsible for a questionable kill, testified that he interpreted this order about breaking contact so they can engage at a later time as: "Engage fleeing local nationals without weapons."
In other words, if an innocent, unarmed Iraqi runs away to seek safety from a suicide bombing, a missile attack or a gunfight -- which any human being would instinctively do -- then he is fair game to be killed by an American sniper.
The excerpt above comes from a story in Salon.com, "Killing by the Numbers," about an "elite" U.S. sniper squad that murdered a captured, unarmed civilian in cold blood. A more detailed excerpt follows below, but I'd like to deal briefly with one ancillary aspect first.
The story expands to talk more generally about the sniper program in Iraq, and is careful -- overly careful -- to emphasize that the snipers responsible for so many "questionable kills" are operating in very stressful conditions: sleep-deprived, sweltering in deadly heat, surrounded by potential "hostiles," at constant risk of attack. All true, of course, but it prompts this simple question: What the hell are they doing there in the first place? Why are they squatting and sweltering in "hides" in a foreign land, looking to kill people who never attacked the United States?
Yes, it is entirely understandable that a soldier subjected to nerve-wracking, physically tormenting conditions might fail to act with reason, patience, judgment and prudence. But is this supposed to be some kind of excuse for crimes committed within the context of a larger crime: a war of aggression, the military invasion and occupation of a foreign country without any provocation? Surely many of the Nazi atrocities were committed by men under unbearable mental and physical strain as well. So what? Were they absolved of their crimes? And more importantly -- were their leaders absolved for instigating the larger crime that engendered these atrocities?
For as the story also shows, the "questionable kills" by American snipers derive largely from the murderous "rules of engagement" they are given by their superiors -- and by the anxiety of their officers to produce big "kill numbers" to appease the bloodlust -- and PR needs -- of the thugs in the White House and their "counterinsurgency genius," David Petraeus.
But let's return to the story of how a sniper squad murdered Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, an Iraqi vegetable farmer, almost one year ago, after he stumbled upon their "hide" on the banks of the Euphrates.
I. George W. Bush and David Petraeus are preparing to make a new Fallujah in Sadr City, home to two million Shiites in Baghdad. Thousands of people are already fleeing the area before the full-scale slaughter and destruction begin. As in Fallujah, the multitudes who cannot escape will be trapped in a "free fire zone", subjected to ruthless bombardment and ground assault. Thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of innocent civilians stand in the shadow of imminent death.
The assault is part of the run-up to the coming attack on Iran -- an attempt to secure the rear of that new front by destroying Iraq's Shiite nationalist forces. It is also part of an on-going effort to eliminate the strongest rival to the Shiite extremists that Bush has installed in office in Iraq, before the conquered land's fall elections.
The preliminary assault on Sadr City has already begun, of course. As the BBC notes, in the last seven weeks around 1,000 people -- most of them civilians -- have already been killed by the Bush-Petraeus "surge" into the area. Petraeus is frantically building high-walled ghettos in Sadr City, slicing neighborhoods in half, sundering families, destroying communities and livelihoods. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is circulating leaflets in Sadr City districts, warning the people to leave -- or else.
This, you understand, is liberation. This is freedom. This is the glorious "surge" to victory. As Tacitus noted:
A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them.... To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of "government"; they create a desolation and call it peace.
That translation of the quote was taken from a remarkable article by David Bromwich in the New York Review of Books, a shattering analysis of the nation's hideous and horrifying moral decay in the Terror War. The title says it all: Euphemism and American Violence. You should read the whole thing, but the conclusion is most apt to our immediate subject here:
"History begins today" was a saying in the Bush White House on September 12, 2001—repeated with menace by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the director of Pakistani intelligence Mahmoud Ahmad—a statement that on its face exhibits a totalitarian presumption. Yet nothing so much as language supplies our memory of things that came before today; and, to an astounding degree, the Bush and Cheney administration has succeeded in persuading the most powerful and (at one time) the best-informed country in the world that history began on September 12, 2001. The effect has been to tranquilize our self-doubts and externalize all the evils we dare to think of. In this sense, the changes of usage and the corruptions of sense that have followed the global war on terrorism are inseparable from the destructive acts of that war.
In the name of tranquilized American people, a new evil is about to externalized upon the bodies of the women and children, the old and sick, the innocent and vulnerable in Sadr City. As the BBC reports:
The authorities in Baghdad say they are preparing for an exodus of thousands of people from eastern parts of the city. Fighting between government and US troops on one side, and Shia militia on the other, has intensified recently. Two football stadiums are on stand-by to receive residents from two neighbourhoods in the Sadr City area...
In the last seven weeks around 1,000 people have died, and more than 2,500 others have been injured, most of them civilians. The fighting so far in Sadr City has been fierce - street to street, and house to house.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is showing a determination to disarm the country's Shia militia groups - particularly the Mehdi Army - that he has never displayed before. However, Iraqi army operations, backed by US ground and air support, have so far failed to overwhelm the Shia militiamen, who are still responding with roadside bombs, sniper fire, mortars and rockets.
The government has distributed leaflets in two key districts of Sadr City, warning people to leave.The speculation is that government forces are preparing for a big push into eastern Baghdad to end the current fighting once and for all. Shortages of water and medical supplies have already made life inside Sadr City extremely difficult.
And this is just the beginning.
II. The story of Fallujah's destruction at Bush's order in mid-November 2004 -- a burnt offering to celebrate his renewal of power -- gives us an intimation of what is about to happen in Sadr City. This is what I wrote, in the Moscow Times, about that assault while it was still going on:
Ring of Fire: The Fallujah Inferno "The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
There is of course no space, nowhere to move or breathe in the sealed chamber of the American Infoglomerate – the vast entanglement of corporate media and government propaganda that smothers the body politic with hysterical outpourings of diversion, drivel and deadening white noise. Here, events occur in a total vacuum: they have no history, no context, no consequences. Stripped of the heft and scope of reality, they can easily be molded and distorted to fit the prevailing political and business agendas. Amnesia, ignorance, confusion and fear are left to rule the day: excellent fuel for the stokers of the inferno, who use the heat to work their alchemical magic – transforming human blood into gold.
"There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable. Smoke is everywhere. It's hard to know how much people outside Fallujah are aware of what is going on here. There are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying are from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens."
This was a voice from the depths of the inferno: Fadhil Badrani, reporter for the BBC and Reuters, trapped in the iron encirclement along with tens of thousands of civilians. It was a rare breath of truth. The reality of a major city being ground into rubble was meant to be obscured by the Infoglomerate's wall of noise: murder trials, state visits, Cabinet shuffles, celebrity weddings – and, above all, the reports of "embedded" journalists shaping the "narrative" into its proper form: a magnificent feat of arms carried out with surgical precision against an enemy openly identified by American commanders as "Satan," the Associated Press reports.
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
What they saw instead were two loudly devout Christians, Bush and Tony Blair, clasping hands and proclaiming that Artica Salim had been torn to shreds in order to fight terrorism – specifically, the terrorism of Jordanian thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The city's alleged refusal to turn over Zarqawi was the ostensible reason for the attack; yet halfway through the assault, with dead civilian bodies already stinking in the streets, Coalition commanders finally admitted the truth: Zarqawi wasn't in Fallujah – and hadn't been there for weeks, perhaps months.
But then, Zarqawi leads a peculiarly charmed life. Three times before the war, U.S. forces were set to kill him and destroy his organization. It wasn't that difficult; after all, he was operating in Kurdish-held Iraqi territory, where the U.S. military had free rein. Yet each time, Bush called off the strike, the Wall Street Journal reports. He needed Zarqawi for his pre-war propaganda, so he could point to an "al Qaeda ally in Iraq" – even though Zarqawi was on Bush's Iraqi turf, not Saddam's. And Bush still needs Zarqawi, or someone like him – a killer whose lurid malefactions obscure the even larger crime that set all these atrocities in motion: an unprovoked aggressive war based on lies, whose only goal is the imposition of a regime that will enrich Bush's cronies while advancing American dominance of the world's resources.
Bush and Zarqawi are mirror-image enemies: foreign terrorists breaking into Iraq to spread indiscriminate death and ruin in pursuit of their brutal visions. Everywhere they go, everything they touch, everyone they draw to their cause becomes inferno.
Arthur Silber has the second part of his powerful "Choosing Sides" series up now: Killing Truth and Hope -- The Fatal Illusion of Opposition. There is little I can add to the insight and eloquence of the piece -- just go read the whole thing, and follow up on the links provided there as well.
But I would like to highlight two particular aspects of the post. First is Silber's succinct description of the "corporate-authoritarian political system" that confronts us at every turn with its soul-crushing, death-dealing power:
This system encompasses every area of our national life....The military-industrial complex -- or what is now often more accurately described as the military-industrial-congressional complex -- is the most significant component of these interrelationships, but there are many other parts. They encompass all major industries, and almost every minor one, as well as many of our educational and cultural institutions....
This system as it exists today consists of innumerable interrelated, constantly moving parts. Countless agencies, commissions and bureaucrats act in concert and on their own to expand their power, and that of government generally. The system has a life of its own; it is its own reason for being. It sustains itself, and it seeks more and more territory for its dominance. The exercise of power and the acquisition of still more power are not directed at the improvement of the lives of "ordinary" Americans, whoever they may be; ordinary Americans are of no interest or concern to the ruling elites, except insofar as their labor and often their lives are necessary for the maintenance of the lives of immense comfort and privilege enjoyed by the powerful. Power is not the means to some other end, although that claim is a crucial element of the extraordinarily successful propaganda so willingly swallowed by the public. Power -- its exercise and maintenance, and the acquisition of still more power -- is the end.
Again, see the original for the several illuminating links provided.
Silber also deals extensively with two important articles by Pam Martens recently published at Counterpunch. (Here and here.) As Silber notes, Martens is a personal admirer of Barack Obama, and believes him to be a more or less sincere tool of forces beyond his control. Yet this does not prevent her from doing what legions of "progressives" -- especially in the blogosphere -- seem congenitally unable to do: look at the reality of the Obama campaign in the face. And Marten's reality-based analysis of the campaign's real nature is absolutely devastating. She shows the true backers of Obama's candidacy:
A Wall Street cartel of financial firms, their registered lobbyists, and go-to law firms that have a death grip on our federal government....Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.
She also exposes the rank hypocrisy of Obama's claim to be free from the influence of the Big Money lobbyists who wield such overwhelming, sinister sway in Washington. This claim is, to put it bluntly, an egregious lie. As Martens demonstrates, Obama's Wall Street backers are also some of the worst, most corrupt lobbyists -- such as Greenberg Traurig, former home of that master criminal of the Bush Regime, Jack Abramoff.
Senator Obama's premise and credibility of not taking money from federal lobbyists hangs on a carefully crafted distinction: he is taking money, lots of it, from owners and employees of firms registered as federal lobbyists but not the actual individual lobbyists. But is that dealing honestly with the American people?
The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in memory. That's not a good thing. Marketing is not even distantly related to democracy or civic empowerment. Marketing is about creating emotional, even irrational bonds between your product and your target audience.
Martens goes on to report that "the Obama campaign has spent over $52 million on media, strategy consultants, image building, marketing research and telemarketing." As Silber says, you should read Martens' articles in their entirety to get the full impact of her facts and analysis.
In his piece, Silber kindly quotes from a post I wrote, in which I noted that the very small differences between the two major parties could have significant effects, because "even minute mitigations in the operation of vast power structures can translate into real benefits for many ordinary people, simply due to the scale on which such structures operate." But Silber goes on to note, quite rightly:
If you choose to support one party over the other because of those "minute mitigations" that "can translate into real benefits for many ordinary people," that's fine -- but intellectual honesty ought to compel you to recognize the great danger you're courting.
He has much more to say on this theme -- again, go read the whole thing -- but it is a point worth stressing again. As I noted in this earlier post ("Disabuse Your Illusion"):
Whether these mitigations of injustice and suffering in certain instances outweigh the cost of participating in – and thereby to some extent legitimizing and perpetuating – a system that inevitably produces injustice and suffering on a massive scale is a question that each person must decide for themselves, in their own individual conscience.
And this question is certainly pertinent in the case of Barack Obama. For by the choices he has made in picking advisers to help him shape his policies, he has given every indication that while his presidency might represent a better management and presentation of the current system, it will in no way overturn or even seriously challenge it on any essential point. In other words – and bearing in mind the type of not-insubstantial mitigations noted above – he will keep doing what Bush has been doing, only more competently, less radically, with a greater care for the long-term viability of the power structure. And what is that structure that Obama seeks to refine and extend? It is an imperial system based on militarism and the exaltation of elitist profit and privilege above all other concerns.
It's your choice. But as Silber says -- "at least be honest about the nature of your choice." Have the courage to do what Martens and Silber are doing, and look reality in the face.
Do you want to know what the entire American political establishment -- Democrat and Republican, conservative and "progressive" -- really stands for? Do you want to know what they all support, whole-heartedly, without the slightest objection or demur? Do you want to see their true vision for the world, behind all the pious rhetoric and poisonous lies? Then look no further; here it is, in the raw:
A leading human rights group on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women. (AP)
"The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured; looting is widespread and entire neighbourhoods are being destroyed," said Michelle Kagari, Africa Programme Deputy Director at Amnesty International, speaking from Nairobi.
Witnesses described to Amnesty International an increasing incidence of Ethiopian troops killing by what is locally termed "slaughtering" or "killing like goats" -- referring to killing by slitting the throat. The victims of these killings are often left lying in pools of blood in the streets until armed fighters, including snipers, move out of the area and relatives can collect their bodies.
In one case, a 15-year-old girl found her father with his throat cut upon returning home from school, after Ethiopian security forces swept through her neighbourhood.
Other cases in the report include:
Haboon, a 56-year-old woman from Mogadishu, who said her neighbour's 17-year-old daughter was raped by Ethiopian troops. When her 13 and 14-year-old sons tried to defend their sister, the soldiers beat them and took their eyes out with a bayonet. The mother fled. It is not known what happened to the boys. This girl is in a coma as a result of the injuries she sustained during the attack.
Guled, aged 32, who said that he saw his neighbours "slaughtered". He said he saw many men whose throats were slit and whose bodies were left in the street. Some had their testicles cut off. He also saw women being raped. In one incident, his newly-wed neighbour whose husband was not home was raped by over twenty Ethiopian soldiers. (Garowe Online)
Ceebla'a, aged 63, from Wardhiigley, said she fled Mogadishu on 15 November 2007 with her young children after some shooting in the area. One day she saw three men leaving their shops being picked up by Ethiopian soldiers for investigation. The next morning she saw the bodies of the three men on the street. One was strangled with electrical wire. The second had his throat cut. The third had been chained ankle to wrist, and his testicles had been smashed. (Amnesty report)
These Ethiopian troops were armed, trained and funded by the Bush Administration, then sent into Somalia as a proxy army for yet another Terror War "regime change" operation in late 2006. American military forces have been directly involved in the operation, on the side of the invaders, throughout the conflict, from the very beginning to this day -- as evidenced by the U.S. missile attack last week that killed at least two dozen civilians in the course of an "extrajudicial" assassination of a Somali insurgent leader.
There has been no objection to any of this from any major figure in American politics. Barack Obama doesn't object to it. Hillary Clinton doesn't object to it. Nancy Pelosi doesn't object to it. It goes without saying that John McCain and the Republicans don't object to these latest war crimes by their blood-drenched leader. The entire Washington power structure has lined up to support this hideous project: military aggression, murder, destruction and rampant atrocity. Somalia -- already one of the world's most fragile and ravaged nations -- is being battered into utter destruction before our eyes....and in our names.
"The human rights and humanitarian situation in Somalia is growing worse by the day. This report represents the voices of ordinary Somalis, and their plea to the international community to take action to end the attacks against them, including those committed by internationally-supported [Transitional Federal Government] and Ethiopian forces."
Security in many parts of Mogadishu is non-existent, and the entire population of Mogadishu bears the scars of having witnessed or experienced egregious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.
"There is no safety for civilians, wherever they run. Those fleeing violence in Mogadishu are attacked on the road and those lucky enough to reach a camp or settlement face further violence and dire conditions."
The American-backed invasion, and the depradations of the American-backed TFG, which was helped into power by Somali warlords in the pay of the CIA, have, inevitably, radicalized opposition forces, some of whom respond with similar brutality. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, violent "regime change" aggression only exacerbates the extremism it purports to combat. And, as in the other Terror War operations, the chaos wrought by the war in Somalia breaks down all vestiges of society and human communion, leaving people prey to freebooting criminal gangs and the ravages of desperation.
In the face of all this deliberately fomented horror -- and its embrace by the entire American political establishment -- it is difficult to regard the U.S. presidential race as anything other than a sickening obscenity, played out on a stage drenched in viscera. "Oh my god, did you hear what Harold Ickes said about Barack?!" "Mercy me, did you hear what those latte-swilling Obamaniks said about Hillary's gas tax plan?!" This is juvenile navel-gazing taken to sinister extremes. I honestly cannot fathom such people, who pretend to care about politics and policy -- yet ignore the unspeakable ruin and suffering that are the reality of our politics, the accepted, bipartisan results of our policies.
Until we have a politics that considers the fate of Haboon and her children to be just as important, just as meaningful, just as real as our own, there will be no end to this cycle of atrocity and terror, no end to ruin and revenge, no real change, no matter who is elected.
(More details from the Amnesty report can be found after the jump.)
Fallujah Revisited: Bush, Petraeus Prepare 'Cleansing' of Sadr City Mother's Day update:
"While reports so far today point to a ceasefire in Sadr City, Saturday night brought no relief to the residents as US forces continued a heavy bombardment of this community of over 2 million people. The independent Voices of Ir...
Shot of Wonder: Supporting Arthur Silber That the species still produces a beautiful spirit, noble heart and luminous mind such as he, demonstrates some hope for us. To help him is a joy and honor.
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe The superficialities which may drive these self absorbed monsters are a matter of no concern. The likelihood that they may change their view of the world and it's peoples to one which is not predicated upon fear, terror and avarice seems highly unl...
The Enduring Legacy of Gerald R. Ford no thanks, Jessica. Obama is a fraud. But please go ahead and vote for him yourself -- and buy a Prius, and put an Obama 08 sticker on it. That's enough to save the world!
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe Chris, have we considered Bush's allowing of [i]einsatzgruppen[/i] tactics may be revenge related, but not in a 9/11 revenge sense. No, I mean something far more personal.
In the early 40's Dubya's grand-father was charged with trading with the ene...
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe DR. RON PAUL has been LOUDLY declaring this for many years, and has been campaigning with this absolute clear guarantee: "I WILL IMMEDIATELY BRING ALL US TROOPS HOME FROM EVERY FOREIGN NATION AND END THESE UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAWLESS FASCIST GLOBAL FOR...
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe I read Arthur Silber's 05/09 post after I made my comment here and I must admit to being ashamed. I agree with everything he said, and I can't believe I spewed despair when Arthur, of all people, had posted a HOPE note the day before. Lord. I AM lost...
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe Message for 'Norterner'-Darpa has being hiding crucial alt energy developments for over 20 years too my certian knowledge,and they are still at it(lepcon).
This is a rather exact copy of the oil mafia control of battery technology that is still keepi...
Lost in the Roar: War Alarms Drowned by Beltway Bloodlust
Friday, 28 September 2007
"I got my hammer ringin', baby, but the nails ain't goin' down." -- Bob Dylan
Hammerblows of truth keep falling on the Bush Regime's propaganda campaign for war against Iran, which has been built up out of allegations so specious and shoddy that they make the manifold deceits of the Attack Iraq carnival look like gospel truth. But far from doing any damage to the engine of death now rolling toward Persia, the hammers are not even being heard above the roar.
Of course, it is actually inaccurate to refer to the "Bush Regime's propaganda campaign." As we have noted here before, the Democratic-led Congress has already overwhelmingly swallowed the Bush case for war – the Senate even accepted the Regime's mendacious casus belli unanimously. And this week, the Democrats went even further in adopting aggression against Iran as their own cause, when a majority of them joined with the obedient goose-steppers of the GOP in support of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which effectively if not officially authorized military action against Iran by declaring the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a "foreign terrorist organization" and tying it to attacks on American soldiers in Iraq. The measure accepted at face value the proven mendacities and manipulations of Bush war propaganda, offering a selection of carefully-filtered testimony from the sainted General Petraeus (whom the Senate has declared literally sacrosanct, with its recent passage of an amendment "strongly" condemning any one who exercises their right of free speech to question "the honor, integrity and patriotism" of "any member of the armed forces" and Petraeus in particular). The Democrats have made it clear where they stand on aggression against Iran: alongside – or even in advance of – the war criminals of the Bush Administration.
(For a devastating take on the latest confirmation of Bush's criminal intent to launch a war of aggression against Iraq – the newly released transcript of the talks between Bush and then-Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar just before the war – see Juan Cole's blistering piece: The War Crime of the Century. One central point of the transcript is Bush's admission that he had turned down Saddam's offer to go into exile – one of several offers Iraq put on the table to avoid war before the invasion, including an offer to hold free, internationally-supervised elections and allow heavily-armed foreign troops to conduct WMD inspections. But Bush wanted war; and the war came. Cole's conclusion is damningly true: "[Bush] had a real offer in the hand, of Saddam's flight. He rejected it. By rejecting it, he will have killed at least a million persons and became one of the more monstrous figures in recent world history.")
Now this is the man whom the Democrats are so slavishly eager to support on Iran. This is the man whose minions they so willingly believe about Iran, having already been lied to in precisely the same fashion about Iraq, by precisely the same kind of honorable, patriotic men of unquestionable integrity. (Colin Powell, anyone?) This is beyond cravenness, beyond cowardice, beyond incompetence, beyond even the most bitterly tragic farce. No, something else is at work here. As we have noted before – echoing the powerful arguments of Arthur Silber – the Democrats are doing this because they want to.
It's the same reason they supported the invasion of Iraq; the same reason they supported Bush's obscene tax cuts for the rich; the same reason they supported the outrageous whitewash of the 9/11 investigation; the same reason they championed the "Bankruptcy Bill" put the screws to working people and the poor; the same reason they supported "Defense of Marriage" bills that legitimize hate and penalize love; the same reason why they rolled over and played dead when not one but two presidential elections were stolen from them. It's because they too, like the Bush and his ilk, worship at the altar of money and power. They too believe that the wealthy and well-connected should order the earth for their pleasure, through war, loot, terror, fraud, rapine – by any means necessary. Their "honor" depends solely on how well they serve this cause, not on how well they uphold their Constitutional responsibilities or live up to the ideas they espouse. (See Silber again for more on this.)
If you oppose aggressive war, if you oppose the unbridled ravages of Money Power, if you stand for the Constitution and the rule of law, then there is no hope to be found in these national Democrats – because they are on the other side. They demonstrate this every day – witness the spectacle at the recent Democratic debate, when the three Establishment-anointed "leading" candidates – Clinton, Obama and Edwards – each said they could not guarantee to stop America's perpetration of the murderous war crime in Iraq by the end of their first term. Think of that. Think of someone watching a vicious thug savagely beating a child, over and over, pounding the child into bloody goo – then declaring that if they chase the thug away and take his place, they will go on beating the child, year after year after year after year.
Similarly, these "serious" candidates refuse to "take any options off the table" in regard to Iran. (Clinton, by the way, voted for Kyl-Lieberman's virtual authorization for aggression; Obama courageously skipped the vote.) Yet as both Gareth Porter and Scott Ritter demonstrate in detail, none of the charges leveled in the amendment – which is of course just a parroting of the Bush Regime's case for war – have been proven; many of them have been disproven. The International Atomic Energy Agency, for example, essentially agrees with Iran's position that the "nuclear case is closed;" after the most exhaustive investigation in the agency's history, the IAEA has "finally assembled enough data to enable them to close the books on the Iranian nuclear program, noting that all substantive questions have been answered and that contrary to the speculative assessments put forward by the Bush administration, it appears that Iran’s nuclear program is, in fact, dedicated to permitted energy-related activities," as Ritter notes.
Once again, something else is at work beneath the public rhetoric. Ritter again, on the charges that Iran's covert Quds Force is directing violence in Iraq:
But fiction often mirrors reality, and in the case of Iran’s Quds Force, the model drawn upon by the U.S. military seems to be none other than America’s own support of anti-Iranian forces, namely the Mujahedin el-Khalk (MEK) operating out of U.S.-controlled bases inside Iraq, and Jundallah, a Baluchi separatist group operating out of Pakistan that the CIA openly acknowledges supporting. Unlike the lack of evidence brought to bear by the U.S. to sustain its claims of Iranian involvement inside Iraq, the Iranian government has captured scores of MEK and Jundallah operatives, along with supporting documents, which substantiate that which the U.S. openly admits: The United States is waging a proxy war against Iran, inside Iran. This mirror imaging of its own terror campaign against Iran to manufacture the perception of a similar effort being waged by Iran inside Iraq against the U.S. has been very effective at negating any Iranian effort to draw attention to the escalation of war-like activities inside its borders.
Ritter also notes the most sinister development growing out of the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to New York: the concentrated, deliberate effort across the Establishment to tie Iran to 9/11. Once again, Hillary Clinton was in the forefront, declaring her horror that the Iranian leader would want to pay his respects at Ground Zero; the "liberal media" giant CBS News weighed in also. Everywhere was heard the refrain "terrorist state, 9/11, terrorist state, 9/11" – the kind of crude hatemongering that even Josef Stalin might have found too blatant. We know that the myth that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 was the clinching argument for many if not most Americans who supported the invasion of Iraq; certainly, it was the chief motivator for the many U.S. soldiers in the invasion force who told admiring reporters that they were there "as payback for 9/11." The same conflation is being used again, against Iran, and is being insinuated and disseminated by the same players: the serious, respectable American Establishment: the federal government, Congress, the Democratic "opposition," the "liberal media," and right on down the gilded line.
And despite intimations that some military brass are resisting a new act of aggression – not out of moral principle, evidently, but on the practical grounds that it might break the already overstrained armed forces – it must be remembered that the chief mouthpieces relaying the Bush propaganda about Iran's direct involvement in Iraq have been…military brass. As we noted here the other day, "the Bush Regime ruthlessly purges officers who question the Leader's maniacal agenda or stand up too strongly for the honor and well-being of their troops." When Bush and Cheney want to pull the trigger, suitable generals and admirals will be found.
The hammers keep ringing from truth-tellers like Ritter, Silber, Porter, Jon Schwarz and others -- but the nails ain't goin' down. And a house held together by nothing but lies cannot stand.
***
Perhaps destroying the military, as presently constituted, is a reason to attack Iran rather than a reason to refrain.
If the public institution disintegrates, it can be replaced by a privatized military which will be even more profitable and even less accountable than the one America has now. Of course, American corporations will not pay for this mercenary force; that will continue to be the responsibility of the taxpayer.
Machiavelli wouldn't have approved, but then he thought war was a political act rather than a financial one.
Um...for some reason, your comment control mechanism is upset that I've used 'RLaing' before.
Well, who'da thunk that of a sudden we'd be ALIVE AND MEWLING during what's turned out to be the higher-exponential acceleration into the black hole of our own "exceptional" nation's self-dissolution. Because this jugger-naught is now being sucked down of its own greedy momentum.
Many of us preterite will surely die in the process. And in the remarkable way of the physics of a black hole, for those who do, there is a solace. For in her/his own point of departure from life's event horizon, she/he will not witness the Timeless Moment of our nation's final suckitude.
But hey -- why whine at the unfolding of the disaster? We have no power: we can only watch and be entertained. Oh, you Good Germans whose forebears suffered through their own nation's self-spun destruction, please help me out: if "schadenfreude" means ironic amusement at another person's dumb misfortune, there must be a term in your most sardonic of languages for ironic amusement at the playing-out of one's own existential misfortune. Pray tell, what is it? I'd like to co-opt it for a new bloggy Nickname.
Truth ?? This Bush administration left that behind long ago. The Democratic congress and the TV networks also. US troops were ejected entirely from Uzbekistan, but we heard nothing about that here. The same fate is ahead of us, I fear. This Bush administration will cook up a bunch of lies, or a fake plot for an attempt to bomb a us ship in the Gulf of Oman, then they will start bombing Iran.
The truth about WMDs. The truth about torture. The truth about Dick Cheney’s oil agenda. The truth about George H.W. Bush, getting paid millions dollars from Carlyle Group, for the prospective stock trading ( before ) September 11th. The truth about the now classified meetings, between Bush and Bin Laden family members. None of that seemed to stop this administration before. Why do you think the truth will stop them now ??
and speaking of Dan Rather, I very much liked Sidney Blumenthal's piece today "Dan Rather stands by his story"
Yes, it seems like that there war with Iran keeps a comin' and a comin' -
and maybe it will get here after all -
but in the interest of truth, justice, and the potentially sentient way, for which seemingly good ideas I am the self-appointed spokesmodel -
it's worth noting that not EVERYONE is completely fooled
here, for example, is David Bromwich's view of Hillary's behavior, at HuffPost:
"With Hillary Clinton, we know where we stand. Yesterday she voted to bring the country a serious step closer to war against Iran. And she did so for the same reason that she voted to authorize the war on Iraq. She thinks the next war is going to happen. She hopes the worst of its short-term effects on America will have died down before the election. She suspects the media and voters will show more trust for a candidate who supported than for one who opposed the war. She wants a ponderous establishment of American troops and super-bases to remain in the Middle East for years to come. If she wins the presidency, she will inherit the command of that army and those bases, and she believes she can manage their affairs more prudently than George W. Bush. Hillary Clinton is consistent. Every move is calculated, her actual intentions are masked, but the total drift is easy to comprehend."
May the Creative Forces of the Universe, if any, stand beside us, and guide us, through the Night with the Light from Above (speaking metaphorically)
So the Democrats support the imperial project of world domination--I mean that's what it is. Looking at Iraq and Iran in isolation is a mistake--this is a project with deep roots. Creating the terrorist "threat" has been a long-time coming and has been carefully planned since the 1980's both in false-flag terms and plain old-fashioned irritate the hell out of people and they'll fight terms.
It is next to useless, though again, because of C. Floyd's style he can be the exception, to go on about the latest outrage, the fascists in power the Democrat's "spinelessness" etc. I think that is a misinterpretation of the situation.
Politicians, journalists and senior bureaucrats are all vetted carefully before they achieve positions of power--the odd person will somehow make it through the system by bucking the system but it is very rare and serious threats from the left seem to have a propensity for dying if they fail to be laughed off the stage by the official organs.
There's nothing to do about the current drift in policy but you need to understand the policy. It is about creating that right-wing bugaboo the "one world government". People laughed and still laugh at those people in the West-central part of this country that go on and on about "one world bovernment", "new world order" and so on but they were right and are right--that is what's happening. Only they fail to see it as a U.S.-centric Imperial government that enfranchises the international elites (a hint of this is in Christopher Lasch's book The Revolt of the Elites)--still, the center of it is in the U.S. oligarchical class with American culture and language as central to organizing the world. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing but that is what the project is and, naturally, those in charge of such a project learn from the master, i.e., Machiavelli.
To answer RLaing, I don't think they want to destroy the military--they want to move it towards a more easily controlled structure that will respond instantly to political and military missions wherein the current military structure is still "bogged down" in regulations, traditions and does not, due to relatively low pay, attract the best. Private armies can attract the best throughout the world not just the U.S. so are at a competitive advantage.
Very well said Chris. And note that Bush expressed confidence to Aznar the Iraq thing would go off without destruction. That's as good as admitting that Saddam constituted no threat whatsoever.
The public, as we know from our little underground electronic mimeograph resistance machine here, is absolutely unimpressed with the war in Iraq and not predisposed to buy into the next war - at least not as a prospective endevour.
Fait accompli, as we know is a different, 'patriotic,' issue.
But, let's take that as a given and still note, despite the exhaustion of both the Military as well as the patience of the public, the next war is more than in the works.
Big Time - as the Lard Husk says.
Yes, here it comes.
I must say that until H. Clinton's vote for war against Iran this week - and I honestly don't see how that amendment can be viewed in any less ominous a frame - I really thought that these crazy wanna-be imperialists had so overreached themselves that we were, to some extent, wallowing in our own scare-stories here. They were expended. They would fade. We were right to be alarmed, but, no. They were fools and 'everyone' knew it.
But that is not the case. This is actually happening. They are subverting the Constitution - delivering the coup de gras, more like - and preparing for total war.
Well.
I really apologize for my multifaceted rants and silly poses and outright breakdowns as I have tried to grapple with this truth over the last few months; sharing way too much of my internal development over the issues right here in this comment section of Mr. Floyd's inestimable education centre. I know this is a citizen's forum, and not Scott-Therapy Central.
But.
I simply never thought I would see this level of evil just passed off by the myriad institutions of a very entrenched, already Imperial, bureaucracy - and what I thought was an active civil society - as simply par for the course. Never thought. Can hardly believe it as I write.
And that means we are witnessing a collective plunge into madness that is indeed on a level with the National Socialist destruction of Germany.
Actually, it is worse. Magna Carta is being pissed on by these thugs. This is the root of the Anglo/Saxon belief in the rule of law: one of the few accomplishments that in any way validates our screwed-up culture, if I have the permission to say so. The right referred to as Habeas Corpus 'was' an achievement that came to fruition over the course of centuries of western government, which in one view, miraculously rescued the elitist Ideals of the Athenian slave-state and Universalized them. For me, a central point.
That is lost, as of this post.
Isn't it?
And with more war, these monsters will cement that counter-revolution. Not 800 years of barbarous redaction; but, arguably, thousands.
It is no wonder I am trashing publicly, like some Burroughs' hallucination, almost unrecognizable to myself.
Continue to tell the truth, Mr. Floyd. I really appreciate your level, self-disciplined perspective, and all the work you do to present it for us.
We're watching the death of the country now, and it must play itself out to the end. I can't describe my own rage, anguish, helplessness, and horror. I'm not Chris! I wish I had his peerless talent: he has taken everything my husband and I, and all of us who love this country, all feel, and given it the most powerful, eloquent voice. I read this piece aloud to my husband, and found myself snarling it out in RAGE! I too fail to understand what has happened to our people. I sometimes wonder if Cheney isn't drugging the population en masse. (sarcasm here, although it would not surprise me if that were the case.) Because we are all in the hands of soulless, heartless madmen and fiends, spawned in the foulest pits of the most atrocious hell imaginable. And nobody does anything to stop the mad rush to destruction. In an earlier piece here, Chis said: "But there's nothing else for it. We must keep sounding the alarm, even in the face of almost certain defeat. What else is our humanity worth if we don't do that? And if, in the end, all that we've accomplished is to keep the smallest spark of light alive, to help smuggle it through an age of darkness to some better, brighter time ahead, is that not worth the full measure of struggle?" That had me in tears, because it's the truth. And it's all we have left.
What they've demonstrated is what many suspected from their previous supineness - that they had no aims different from the Pubs.
We MUST put aside our illusions that the Dems can be awakened from their slumber. This is no slumber. This is active furtherance of policies of Empire and Oligarchy.
We need, not a third party, but a second party. We need the voice of the people - before it's too late.
we know the pol's are corrupt & the press as well. we've been wasting our time with the pol's; must turn our protests on the corrupt press.
the constitution says we can't survive without an independent /free press yet we let them mouth the neocon lies
pol's could care less about us ellecting them. so they loose a few buddy's here or there in an election. they are casualties of war and every pol knows that.
we must silece the war criminals at WSJ. stop their presses and keep their toilet paper rag from hitting the street. lay in front of their trucks, shut down their press, keep their lying whores from getting to work and keep advertisers from supporting the killing of kids.
forget Crawford, Kennebunkport, the whitehouse or capital. hit em where it hurts on wall street.
again, glad to see folks are waking up about Iran (I mean, DUH???)
Good ideas, Kim. As some talking head said yeaterday, Bush and Cheney don't give a rat's ass about their party and next year's election. It's all Iran all the time.
The Juan Cole translation of Bush's February, 2003 meeting with Aznar ranks right up there with the Downing Street memorandum as documentary evidence of a war crime in the making.
Bush even talks openly about the high priority of securing Iraq's oil.
Nowhere is there even a hint that the Bushies feared getting bogged down in bloody urban guerilla warfare once Saddam fell from power.
At another point, Bush estimated there was a 15% chance that Saddam would go into exile or that he would be assassinated, so that Baghdad could be taken by US troops without scarcely firing a shot (and saving US taxpayers $50 billion).
Now, if only the public could somehow get its hands on a transcript or meeting notes from October of 2001, when Mullah Omar and Pakistan offered to send Osama bin Laden off into exile in a neutral country, and the White House blew the offer off because they prefered to start bombing Afghanistan.....
At this point politics is meaningless. Political parties are meaningless. This country will sink into the abyss unless a REAL resistance is built, and the easiest path to making our resistance real is to rally around a public figure who can gain power from our support, spread the message, and gain more support.
As I see it, there is one man who is in that position now - Ron Paul. His support is growing everyday. Even if you don't agree with him on a lot of things, he is the one man who is fighting against the empire in a very real way. I plead with everyone who loves this country and the ideals upon which it was founded to support Ron Paul. He may well be our last best hope.
If he were to be the GOP nominee for president, it would be a "shock and awe" campaign against Washington DC.
J. Schroeder is right, Ron Pal is very possibly the last chance to save the Constitution and American liberty. If any other candidate, Dem or Rep wins, the downward spiral will only become steeper.
* Made Love, Got War: Norman Solomon on Close Encounters with America's Warfare State *
"The warfare state doesn't come and go. It can't be defeated on Election Day," writes media critic Norman Solomon in his new book, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State. Like it or not, it's at the core of the United States - and it has infiltrated our very being." Norman Solomon joins us in our firehouse studio to about the book.
George W. Bush and David Petraeus are preparing to make 
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