Bad American

The speech (the meat of the issue starts around the 13 minute mark and hits it at the 17 minute mark):

When it comes to Barack Obama, I’m not merely disappointed anymore. Now I’m scared.

From Paul Joseph Watson in Infowars

Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has called for a “civilian national security force” as powerful as the U.S. military, comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but compared by one journalist to the Nazi Hitler Youth.

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” Obama told a Colorado Springs audience earlier this month.

Hmm. Now I don’t tend to stop at one source when I see something as shockingly provocative as this.

So I found this in the usually reliable Federal Times. Apparently the idea wasn’t Obama’s but Robert Gates’ which might explain why Obama is toying with the idea of keeping him on in his administration:

Hey Peaceniks, you really think Barack Obama isn’t every bit the militarist that Bush and McCain are?

Associated Press

Contending that the U.S. is not pursuing a sound strategy for keeping Americans safe, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Tuesday that fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan would be his top priority after ending the war in Iraq.

“This is a war that we have to win,” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery at the International Trade Center in Washington.

So I wonder how many progressives really feel like suckers for going goo goo over Barack.

The more I look at this country, it’s economy and political process, the less hope I see for us. The lights are going out all over America and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Alternet by LA Times

Hedges gets it.

The law, passed under the guise of national security, ostensibly targets people outside the country. There is no question, however, that it will ensnare many communications between Americans and those overseas. Those communications can be stored indefinitely and disseminated, not just to the U.S. government but to other governments.

This law will cripple the work of those of us who as reporters communicate regularly with people overseas, especially those in the Middle East. It will intimidate dissidents, human rights activists and courageous officials who seek to expose the lies of our government or governments allied with ours. It will hang like the sword of Damocles over all who dare to defy the official versions of events. It leaves open the possibility of retribution and invites the potential for abuse by those whose concern is not with national security but with the consolidation of their own power.

As I have written before ad nauseum, ALL of these post 9-11 measures have NOT been enacted to ‘keep us safe from the terrorists.’ They have been designed to drag this once free country into the maw of totalitarianism.

But most Americans, seriously, are too dense to understand this. Too brainwashed, too invested in the Matrix, too afraid to think for themselves.

Even the right wingers who go on and on about the ‘gubmint’ interfering in their lives in a myriad of ways have no problem metaphorically spread-eagleing themselves on command to that same ‘gubmint’ every time it demands fawning obsequiousness to ‘protect them.

I haven’t met a conservative yet that didn’t have this giant blind spot in their logic/thinking. I think perhaps its because so many of them are, at core, authoritarians.

This may sound naive of me, but I’m actually starting to believe that the White House nutbar may indeed attack Iran. I seriously didn’t believe Bush and his minions were that colossally stupid to actually do it, but it seems as though events are beginning to spin out of control.

AP: Iran Test Fires More Missiles in the Gulf

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran test-fired more long-range missiles overnight in a second round of exercises meant to show that the country can defend itself against any attack by the U.S. or Israel, Iranian state television reported Thursday.

The weapons have “special capabilities” and included missiles launched from naval ships in the Persian Gulf, along with torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles, the broadcast said. It did not elaborate.

In the American media this is being spun as a provocative act. It is anything but. The Iranians are, like any cornered animal, merely showing their teeth: if they go down, there will be collateral damage done to the attackers. If a nation were subjected to the day in and day out provocations that the Iranian regime has been subjected, one could argue they would have done far more than launch a few missiles.

But the Iranians understand that they must not strike the first blow. They also must understand that any attempt to defend itself or retaliate once attacked by the US or Israel, will be painted as a dastardly act of aggression by the American press, doing the bidding of their governmental and corporate masters, of course.

Iran is in a no win position here. The best they can do is what they are doing - dancing diplomatically while demonstrating that they will not be rolled over as cheaply as the Iraqis - and, hope that saner heads prevail.

At the point we’re at now, sanity seems to be checking out.

AP: Rice Warns Iran US Will Defend Israel

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran on Thursday that the United States will not back down in the face of Iranian threats against Israel.

Iranian officials have strongly suggested the country’s missile test on Wednesday was itself a warning to Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel has left that option open.

“We are sending a message to Iran that we will defend American interests and the interests of our allies,” Rice said at the close of a three-day Eastern European trip.

As if.

Can anyone point to any threats of Iran against Israel? And please let’s not haul out that mistranslated quote about wiping Israel from the map by Ahmadinejad. I’m talking about specific military threats against Israel by the Iranian government or military forces.

And of course, Rice’s stance and that of the administration, somehow presupposes that Israel needs our help defending itself against the Iranians. This, from a country with over 200 nuclear warheads and a sophisticated and highly trained air force and defense apparatus (largely funded and equipped by the US).

Why must American blood flow for a country that is more than capable of defending itself?

AFP: Obama wants diplomacy(?) McCain wants sanctions

Here’s what Obama said yesterday:

“Through its nuclear program, missile capability, meddling in Iraq, support for terrorism, and threats against Israel, Iran now poses the greatest strategic challenge to the United States in the region in a generation,” he said in a statement.

“It’s time to offer the Iranians a clear choice between increased costs for continuing their troubling behavior, and concrete incentives that would come if they change course.

“The threat from Iran’s nuclear program is real and it is grave. As president, I will do everything in my power to eliminate that threat, and that must begin with direct, aggressive, and sustained diplomacy.“

Translation: up the threats. But these assumptions Obama makes are never questioned. Who ‘meddled’ in Iraq first? The USA. And the proof of Iranian ‘meddling’ has been sketchy at best. But the USA reserves the itself the right to meddle in the affairs of other sovereign nations as if ordained by God. And we neither understand nor care why we are hated in the Middle East. It’s easier to demonize a who region and dehumanize their populations using racist appeals than act as an honest broker that respects the rights of self-determination for other peoples.

And no one questions whether the Iranians, or any other nation, has an intrinsic right to develop a nuclear weapons program. Is Iran’s nuclear program any more or less dangerous than Pakistan’s or India’s? Or North Korea’s? Do we need to remind people of the only nation in the world that ever used nuclear weapons against civilian population centers?

And, oh by the way, as Kurt Nimmo reports, the US is using terrorists to ‘meddle’ in Iran:

According to Pakistan’s former Army Chief, retired General Mirza Aslam Baig, the U.S. supports the Jundullah terrorist group and uses it to destabilize Iran. Baig knows what he is talking about, as he was on the inside track when the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI created al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Both Baig and former ISI chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul were part of the Darul Uloom Haqqania Islamic conference held near Peshawar on January 9, 2001, significant because the conference was hosted by CIA asset Osama bin Laden. Baig rubs elbows with Pakistan’s ruling oligarchs, so he knows something about what goes down in South and Central Asia and the Greater Middle East.

“He said that the US is providing training facilities to Jundullah fighters–located in eastern areas of Iran–to create unrest in the area and affect the cordial ties between Iran and its neighbor Pakistan,” reports Iran’s Press TV. “The intelligence agencies of the coalitional forces are very active in Afghanistan and work against the interests of Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia in the region, he said as quoted by Pakistan Daily newspaper.”

In other words, the neocons are busy at work on their plan, active now for well over a decade, to foment chaos in the region and ultimately reduce it to a smoldering ruin. Iran has long figured prominently on the neocon hit list.

IHT: Oil Will Soar if Iran Attacked

VIENNA: The head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries warned Thursday that oil prices would see an “unlimited” increase in the case of a military conflict involving Iran, because the group’s members would be unable to make up the lost production.

“We really cannot replace Iran’s production - it’s not feasible to replace it,” Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, said in an interview.

Iran, the second-largest producing country in OPEC, after Saudi Arabia, produces about four million barrels of oil a day out of the daily worldwide production of close to 87 million barrels.

Close to 87 million barrels. Note that figure hasn’t budged in three years. If my memory serves me, worldwide production briefly hit 88 mbd and that was it. Neither the Saudis, nor anyone else in OPEC can make that figure budge upward.

Now what would happen to the US economy, in such a scenario, that gasoline went to $10 a gallon overnight?

And yet, in the face of economic catastrophe, the madmen of Washington and Tel Aviv are still pushing for an attack on a nation that has not committed an act of war against either side.

Tell me who are the insane ones?

Reuters from Infowars

WEST POINT, New York (Reuters) - Climbing ropes and crawling in the mud under barbed wire, dozens of American high school kids at an unusual summer camp vied to see who could get most dirty as they tackled an Army obstacle course.

And as they ran between obstacles in the woods, the kids shouted Army chants. Asked by a cadet if they were motivated, they shouted back in unison: “Motivated, motivated, downright motivated. Ooh, aah, ooh, aah, I want to kill somebody.”

How nice. These are children - high school age. We talk about how Muslims radicalize their children to hate at a young age. And here we are. But our hate and bloodlust is right. Right?

Kathleen Engle, 16, from Fairfield, California, said she had looked into the Peace Corps and other options but decided on the military.

“I was in fifth grade when 9/11 happened and that’s when I decided the best thing I could do for my country was this,” she said, playing a video game called “America’s Army.”

“I guess it’s going to be hard to kill someone, but if that’s your job and that’s what our commander tells us we need to do, I’m going to do that in order to protect my country.”

Don’t ever underestimate the job that our controlled media can do on young minds. She knows nothing about the Downing Street Memo. She knows nothing about the discrepancies about what really happened on 9-11. All she knows is that her country respects military service above all else and if her commander tells her to kill, she’ll kill - no questions asked.

If you don’t think this is scary as shit, you’re living in a world I don’t want to be.

The rest of the article is full of more delusional and brainwashed kids who actually think that they’d be doing something grand and noble and greater than themselves. They should be reading what General Smedley Butler said about war being a racket - but thanks to American education, they’d lack the historical perspective and command of the language to understand what they were reading.

In short they are the perfect cannon fodder - mis-educated, thrill seeking, obedient, ignorant.

Articles like this must bring smiles to the faces of people like Dick Cheney who would never have volunteered to put ass on the line in Vietnam because, as he said, he “had other priorities.” There will be cannon fodder for future adventures of empire as long as children can be infused with the same bullshit that have lured people for generations.

We pledge in peace by farm and town
 The Queen they served in war,
And fire the beacons up and down
 The land they perished for.

"God Save the Queen" we living sing,
 From height to height 'tis heard;
And with the rest your voices ring,
 Lads of the Fifty-third.

Oh, God will save her, fear you not:
 Be you the men you've been,
Get you the sons your fathers got,
 And God will Save the Queen.

-- A. E. Housman

David DeBatto in ICH

Who is David DeBatto?

David DeBatto is a former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, Iraqi war veteran and co-author the “CI” series from Warner Books and the upcoming “Counter to Intelligence” from Praeger Security International.

The gist of what may be:

Just after the first waves of U.S. bombers cross into Iranian airspace, the Iranian Navy, using shore based missiles and small, fast attack craft sinks several oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, sealing off the Persian Gulf and all its oil from the rest of the world. They then mine the area, making it difficult and even deadly for American minesweepers to clear the straits. Whatever is left of the Iranian Navy and Air Force harasses our Navy as it attempts minesweeping operations. More U.S casualties.

The day after the invasion Wall Street (and to a lesser extent, Tokyo, London and Frankfurt) acts as it always does in an international crisis – irrational speculative and spot buying reaches fever pitch and sends the cost of oil skyrocketing. In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iran, the price of oil goes to $200.00 - $300.00 dollars a barrel on the open market. If the war is not resolved in a few weeks, that price could rise even higher.  This will send the price of gasoline at the pump in this country to $8.00-$10.00 per gallon immediately and subsequently to even higher unthinkable levels.

If that happens, this country shuts down. Most Americans are not be able to afford gas to go to work. Truckers pull their big rigs to the side of the road and simply walk away. Food, medicine and other critical products are not be brought to stores. Gas and electricity (what is left of the short supply) are too expensive for most people to afford. Children, the sick and elderly die from lack of air-conditioned homes and hospitals in the summer. Children, the sick and elderly die in the winter for lack of heat. There are food riots across the country. A barter system takes the place of currency and credit as the economy dissolves and banks close or limit withdrawals. Civil unrest builds.

The police are unable to contain the violence and are themselves victims of the same crisis as the rest of the population. Civilian rule dissolves and Martial Law is declared under provisions approved under the Patriot Act. Regular U.S. Army and Marine troops patrol the streets. (here, DeBatto is assuming there are enough of these troops around to do the job - ed.) The federal government apparatus is moved to an unknown but secure location. The United States descends into chaos and becomes a third world country. Its time as the lone superpower is over.

It doesn’t get any worse than this.

Then the first Israeli bomber drops its nuclear payload on Tehran.

Don’t say you weren’t warned. And, by the way, I hate to break it to some of you but there is nothing in recorded history or the Bible, for that matter, that exempts America from the maladies and misfortunes that befall every empire, especially one with the hubris this country has.

Good comment from Matthew Rothschild in The Progressive

Obama said it “firmly reestablishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance.”

But the ACLU notes that the bill “permits only minimal court oversight. The FISA Court only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what, or where will actually be tapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment.”

What’s more, in the incredibly rare instances where the FISA Court denies a warrant to the President, under the new bill the President can go ahead and do the wiretapping anyway while the appeals process continues, a process that the ACLU says can take two months.

Russ Feingold calls the idea that this is a good compromise “a farce” and “political cover.”

Says Feingold: “Anybody who claims this is an OK bill, I really question if they’ve even read it.”

Has Obama?

If not, that’s a problem.

And if he has, and still approves of it, that’s an even bigger one.

Glenn Greenwald in Salon:

It’s either that he “chickened out” or — as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin asserts and Digby wonders — Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he’ll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives — and I don’t know (or much care) what they are — Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush’s executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of “Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights.” Note that the very first line of Obama’s statement warns us that we face what he calls “grave threats,” and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good. Making matters worse still, what Obama did yesterday is in clear tension with an emphatic promise that he made just months ago. As the extremely pro-Obama MoveOn.org notes today, Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, back in in September, vowed that Obama would “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.” MoveOn believes Obama should be held to his word and is thus conducting a campaign urging Obama to do what he promised — support a filibuster to stop the enactment of telecom amnesty.

And here from MS Bellows in HuffPo: Obama: In the Inspector General We Trust:

Dennis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, said in a conference call this morning that legislation expanding presidential power to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications is acceptable to Senator Obama because the United States Inspector General will ensure accountability.

In other words, the Obama campaign’s position is now that the duty and power to protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, now resides primarily not with the President, not with the Congress or the Courts, but with a bureaucrat created by administrative law whose job is to conduct internal investigations of government agencies.

What I find particularly distressing is that there are, apparently smart people who are so emotionally invested in Obama as the black JFK that they are overlooking this rape of the Constitution.

Like this commenter from Huffpo:

pdohan See Profile I’m a Fan of pdohan

French News Agency

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hearings for terror suspects before US military tribunals in Guantanamo are going ahead despite a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed detainees have a right to challenge their detention in a civilian court.

Legal experts had described the high court’s decision as the death knell of the special tribunals created by President George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress to try “war on terror” suspects.

But Justice Department chief Michael Mukasey said the controversial tribunals at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba would continue their work and last week, two preliminary hearings were held as scheduled.

You were expecting, perhaps, that the Bush gang of criminals would respect any law that they disagree with? Please. You don’t live in that kind of country any more. You know, one with a ‘rule of law.’

You know, if the Bush criminal gang ignores laws it doesn’t agree with, why can’t we?

This quote:

In a recent broadcast Bill O’Reilly called War Inc., the new film starring John Cusack, Marissa Tomei and Hillary Duff, “propaganda”.

brought Brother Bill Cusack to HuffPo to comment on the audacity of a propagandist calling the kettle black. The conclusion he reaches:

The crucial facts are all represented in War Inc.’s satire, Mr. O’Reilly; they’re just presented in a way that reveals a side of reality not commonly seen in other media outlets, most especially yours. The fact that War Inc. does not shine a flattering light on some of the real world results of neo-con ideology does not make it propaganda. It makes it opinionated if not entirely objective. And personal. That’s allowed.

The purpose of the film is not to fully articulate all points of view, which it cannot possibly do, but to frame neo-con ideology in light of the Iraq war. That in and of itself is a whole lot to cram into a feature length film, perhaps too much. Yet, despite its limitations, War Inc. is far more ideologically inclusive and far reaching than anything presented by Fox News, which sees the world and everyone in it as either loving or hating America, or roughly through the eyes of an especially dull child.

Bill O’Reilly is free to be proud of the mess in Iraq and see in it proof of America’s unfailing nobility, just as others see grievous but correctable mistakes. Dissenting opinion, however, is not propaganda, and some times, all personal bias aside, as in the case of War Inc., it’s richly satisfying.

Dissenting opinion is not propaganda. Well.

Actually, we could construct another definition, one in which movies act as propaganda ONLY if they are produced or in some way materially aided by governments or corporations.

John Cusack himself weighs in here on Alternet.

And yet, after viewing War Inc., I would have to say that it is no disgrace to view the film as propaganda - in fact, it’s damn good propaganda.

It suffers, however, sometimes as a film, which provides enough cover for mainstream critics to pan the film, lest they’re credentials as loyal Americans be questioned.

Let’s dispense with the major problem with the film straightaway - Hillary Duff. Yes, her accent is awful and yes, her scenes in the movie drag the picture down and kill the pacing. I understand, however, which many critics do not, why her character was in the movie - she represents the decadence of Western (or American) culture in the Middle East (and her character is exploited in this regard). That’s a hell of a big burden for any actor to carry and Moore does the best she can. But she’s the fundamental flaw in the film for not being as big as the part. Perhaps as she matures as an actor, some day she will.

But beating up on Duff and some of the other technical aspects in the film and plot miss the gigantic pluses of this film.

Again, don’t expect mainstream critics to be fair to War, Inc. They know who signs their paychecks and what the neighbors might think of them. I have no such qualms.

Where this film succeeds admirably is it’s almost surrealistic portrayal of the madness of attempting to turn a Middle Eastern country into a ‘democracy’ by gunpoint. This reviewer compared it favorable to Brazil, which I would agree with.

And John Cusack does an admiral job of lacing the mountain of lies that go into propping up such an obscenity. Sometimes it’s funny, other times it’s wince inducing - which is what John Cusack and co-writers Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser obviously wanted.

All the horror, all the bullshit lies, all the death, hate and profit are portrayed here in blindingly accurate satire; a comedic carnival of horrors with no shortage of barkers vying for your attention.

John Cusack plays corporate hit man Brand Hauser with a good deal of the elan that went into his hit man portrayal in Grosse Pointe Blank. He’s hired by the former Vice President of the US (Dan Aykroyd who gives orders while taking a shit - not kidding) to kill a oil magnate (Lyubomir Neikov as Omar Sharif) who is constructing a oil pipeline in the mythical (?) state of Turaqistan. The pipleline will cut out the usual players, in this case, America’s favorite (and best connected) war and pillage outsourcer Tamerlane, who has been given the contract for forcing ‘democracy’ in Turaqistan.

Yes, you can think ‘Halliburton’ all you want - Cusack won’t care.

Hauser’s cover is organizer of a trade show that will auction off Turaqistan’s assets to the highest capitalist bidders (where have we heard that before?). While doing that he has to supervise the wedding of an international pop star (Duff as Yonica Babyyeah and no, I’m not making these names up) to the spoiled brat son of the local puppet ruler - their names require a little knowledge of pig latin to get the joke.

Sister Joan Cusack chews the carpet quite nicely as his aide. I wish she could have been given a little more to do in the movie, however.

It gets pretty complex to say the least. You’ve gotta pay attention to literally every minute of this movie.

What I found most interesting are Cusack’s take on capitalistic exploitation of the situation in the Middle East. The tanks that Tamerlane uses to subjugate the people (one poster has an man smiling with the slogan: “we are building happiness”) are festooned with advertisements including, not ironically The Financial Times.

Watch - some day it will happen.

And then the “viceroy” of Turaqistan (Ben Kingsley in a wonderfully evil role) speaks to Hauser from behind a screen that shows the faces of famous American ‘heroes’ and right wing political figures morphing into one another. It’s disturbing and illuminating at the same time.

Some critics have complained the symbolism and politics are heavy handed but I disagree. For the average audience, one needs to be blunt at times to get the message across and in this case, the surrealism of the imagery goes a long way toward driving home Cusack’s ideas on many levels.

Despite the hammering this film is taking from the mainstream establishment critics and it’s quite limited release in the land of the free, expect that many decades from now, if we’re still alive and allowed to watch films like “War, Inc.” that this movie will be heralded as a gem of a political movie and dissected in political science classes.

When I claim, as I have in other posts, that right-wingers (neo-fascists) are champing at the bit to ’settle accounts’ with ‘lib’ruls’ I’m not indulging in fantasy. In the following audio clip, talk show host Michael Reagan asks that people sending videos to soldiers in Iraq, and one person in particular, be killed. Listen:

The story behind the audio from Infowars

Now imagine if a LIBERAL talk show host (all eight of them) said that some right winger in the public eye should be “taken out and shot.”

I post these as a warning to all progressives, protesters and other free-thinking people in this county: be forewarned. If there is another ‘coalescing event’ in the near future, there will be people out there, people you may even know, who may be coming for you. I’m not kidding.