Why Don't We Listen to Those in The Know?

Most Americans who actually know something about the Middle East -- including fluency in its languages -- are appalled by the ease with which AIPAC and its allies in the endless wars movement have duped our media into once again shilling for a wrongful war over there.

The idea that Iran is developing a nuclear war capability -- absolutely false, and even the U.S. and Israeli intelligence factories admit it -- is being repeated nolo contendere on front pages and TV broadcasts every day.

AIPAC (the American Israel Political Action Committee) waved its magic checkbook again this week, and again a horde of our politically powerful, led by Dr. Kidglove himself, rushed to toady up  to them at their meeting in Washington. Kidglove fell all over himself assuring the assembled Jewish hawks that he was covering Israel's ass. The nub of what he said was that the only issue dividing Israel and the U.S,. is not whether to bomb bomb bomb Iran, but when. Let's wait a while, he urged his friend, Bibi Netanyahu. A nuclear Iran just isn't acceptable, so let's do the big bombing thing before there is such a thing as a nuclear Iran.

Never mind that this is an even more bellicose stance than that of the Bush administration, which Democrats used to decry.  Never mind that it's unprovoked, preemptive war, which is an international crime.  Never mind anything other than the relentless, obscenely profitable war industry, a worldwide alliance of which AIPAC is only one very visible part.

Chris Hedges, journalist and author, has lived and worked in the Middle East as  bureau chief and correspondent.  He spoke to the "Occupy" protesters outside the AIPAC meetings last weekend and this is what he said:

What is being done in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, is a pale reflection of what is slowly happening to the rest of us. It is a window into the rise of the global security state, our new governing system that the political philosopher SheldonWolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” It is a reflection of a world where the powerful are not bound by law, either on Wall Street or in the shattered remains of the countries we invade and occupy, including Iraq with its hundreds of thousands of dead. And one of the greatest purveyors of this demented ideology of violence for the sake of violence, this flagrant disregard for the rule of domestic and international law, is . . . AIPAC. . . . AIPAC does not speak for Jews or for Israel.

I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in Iraq, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance, and uses its power to deny popular will. And yes, it is a regime that appears determined to build a nuclear weapon, although I would stress that no one has offered any proof this is occurring. I have spent time in Iranian jails. I was once deported from Tehran in handcuffs. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the United States to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember Iran arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country. Iran never shot down one of our passenger jets, as did the USS Vincennes—nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels—when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorist strikes within the United States, as our intelligence services and the Israeli intelligence services currently do in Iran. We have not seen five of our top nuclear scientists since 2007 murdered on American soil. The attacks in Iran include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and “targeted assassinations” of government officials and other Iranian leaders. What would we do if the situation were reversed? How would we react if Iran carried out similar acts of terrorism against us?

Juan Cole is professor of history at the University of Michigan; recognized throughout the world as an expert on the Middle East, where he has lived, studied and taught; author of several peer-reviewed books and a translator of Arabic and Persian languages.  He writes:

Returns in Iran’s 9th parliamentary election since the 1979 revolution show that Ahmadinejad's lay populists have taken a drubbing,  and that hard line supporters of clerical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are ascendant. A week and a half ago, in a major policy speech, Khamenei said:

“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

It has been alleged that Ahmadinejad is a mass-murdering hard liner, seeking nuclear weapons with which to destroy Israel. This puzzling emphasis on Ahmadinejad comes despite the president’s relative lack of power in the Iranian system. The commander in chief of the armed forces is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Who sets nuclear policy? Ali Khamenei. In Iran, the “president” is more like a vice president (think Joe Biden) than a real executive. Ahmadinejiad could noit even fire an intelligence minister (Haidar Moslehi) he disliked. Khamenei reinstated him.

(Now) Khamenei’s hand has been significantly strengthened. And he has signalled to the Iranian people yet again that he won’t use that strength for belligerent purposes or to pursue a nuclear warhead, which the Iranian ayatollahs consider a tool of the devil– since you can’t deploy it without killing large numbers of civilian non-combatants.

So despite the consistent anti-nuclear position of the most powerful man in Iran; because of the mistranslation of a non-policy statement he made about the Netanyahu regime several years ago; despite the fact that on the ground inspections in Iran by the international nuclear inspection teams found no evidence of an Iranian weapons program; despite the fact that whatever nuclear technology Iran has (enrichment of uranium at far less than weapons levels) was sold to them by the United States 40 years ago; because the media and Congress and the White House eagerly buy the lies and misrepresentations of AIPAC, the United States now has an official policy that is perilously close to unilateral, preemptive war on another sovereign nation.  What madness!

That's the very word -- "madness" -- used by William O. Beeman, yet another world-recognized Middle East expert and academic, who is chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. Beeman points out that the former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, has called an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”  AIPAC, says Beeman, "has a completely unrealistic view of the interests of Israel. They reflect only the views of its most rabid right-wing politicians.”

Unless a great many more Americans wake up to what Hedges, Cole, Beeman and others are telling us, we'll soon be pasting those plastic ribbon decals on our SUV's to "Support Our Troops" in yet another unwinnable, unspeakable, illegal, immoral and devastating war in the Middle east.

When will they ever learn?

Beware of Yanks Bearing Gifts of 'Democracy'

Neal Shine, the nonpareil city editor of the Detroit Free Press, used to say of certain politicians: "He has the reverse Midas touch: everything golden that he touches turns to shit."

Paul Craig Roberts, the former Nixon administration official who has become one of the most enlightened foreign policy critics in these parts, points out in a recent post how the reverse Midas touch applies to the United States role in the Middle east.

Syria has a secular government as did Iraq prior to the American invasion. Secular governments are important in Arab lands in which there is division between Sunni and Shi'ite. Secular governments keep the divided population from murdering one another.

When the American invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard set by the US after WWII, overthrew the Saddam Hussein secular government, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'ites went to war against one another. The civil war between Iraqis saved the American invasion (but) the consequence of the US invasion was not democracy and women's rights in Iraq, much less the destruction of weapons of mass destruction which did not exist as the weapons inspectors had made perfectly clear beforehand. The consequence was to transfer political power from Sunnis to Shi'ites. The Shi'ite version of Islam is the Iranian version. Thus, Washington's invasion transferred power in Iraq from a secular government to Shi'ites allied with Iran.

Now Washington intends to repeat its folly in Syria.Washington's hostility toward Assad is hypocritical. On February 26, the Syrian government held a referendum on a new constitution for Syria that set term limits on future presidents and removed the political monopoly that the Ba'ath Party has enjoyed.

The Syrian voter turnout was 57.4%, matching the voter turnout for Obama in 2008. It was a higher voter turnout (despite the armed, western-supported rebellion in Syria) than in the nine U.S. presidential elections from 1972 through 2004. The new Syrian constitution was approved by a vote of 89.4%. But Washington denounced the democratic referendum and claims that the Syrian government must be overthrown in order to bring democracy to Syria.

Washington's allies in the region, unelected oil monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have issued statements that they are willing to supply weapons to the Islamist rebels in order to bring democracy -- something they do not tolerate at home -- to Syria.

For Washington "democracy" is a weapon of mass destruction. When Washington brings "democracy" to a country, it means the country's destruction, as in Libya and Iraq. It doesn't mean democracy. Libya is in chaos, a human rights nightmare without an effective government.

Washington installed Nouri al-Maliki as president of Iraq. He lost an election, but remained in power. He has declared his vice president to be a terrorist and ordered his arrest and is using the state police to arrest Sunni politicians. Syria's Assad is more democratic than Iraq's Maliki.

Or, to paraphrase a character in Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo, "Declared Democracy on 'em, eh? Didn't know we wuz even mad at the rascals." 

It's a Grim Choice That Confronts Progressives This Election

Progressive voters are stuck with Hobson's choice in the 2012 Presidential election and most of us don't like it.

Voting Republican is an even worse choice.  A lawyer friend said he will "hold my nose" and vote to re-elect Obama.  My conscience won't let me do that because of his dismal, possibly criminal, record on civil liberties, torture, detention, rendition and war. I will cast my protest vote for the Green candidate, because I can in good conscience endorse that party's platform.

But that isn't an easy choice to make.  I suspect that many progressives will refuse to support Obama with money this time around, yet will vote for him in November.

The actor and social justice activist, Mike Farrell, who contributed to the 2008 Obama campaign, refused to do so this year.  When the campaign asked him why, this is what he told them:

Frankly, I hope President Obama wins re-election because I fear what will happen to this country if the Republicans control the White House as well as Congress.  But I am sickened by many of the decisions the President has made, particularly as regards foreign affairs and what falls under the rubric of  'national defense.'

I despise the use of drones and believe the practice of using a "war" rationale to kill "terrorists," including American citizens, without any attempt at due process is destroying any semblance of the law-abiding, international law respecting, human-rights honoring nation we pretend to be.

In addition, since you asked, Iran poses no problem to the U.S. and whatever concern it creates for Israel is exaggerated beyond reason by Netanyahu and the right-wingers in his coalition.  For our President to bow to the whims of the Israeli leadership because of domestic political concerns is embarrassing and demeaning to our country.  It also serves to further alienate us from parts of the world that see us as Israel's sponsor and henchman in maintaining the illegal and counterproductive occupation of the people of the West Bank and the ongoing attempt to crush those in Gaza.

The President's caving on the issue of settlements was an embarrassment that painted a clear and unfortunate picture of the power dynamic between himself and Netanyahu.

I cling to the belief that President Obama is a good, decent and principled man, but his lack of willingness to stand up when courage and principle require it is disheartening.  I want to see the man lead.

Mike Farrell

That is an excellent summary of the progressive voter's dilemma in 2012 and, unfortunately, it applies not only to the President but also to his party and most of its candidates as well.

For example, to the unanimous applause of progressives, the consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren is seeking the U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts that once belonged to Ted Kennedy.

Now, some progressive writers are expressing concerns that she, like so many others in the Congress to which she aspires, has fallen into the hawkish clutches of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which literally dictates the failed American policy in the Middle East, and wants the U.S. to join in an attack on Iran.

The following paragraph on her campaign website is particularly bothersome:

As a United States Senator, I will work to ensure Israel’s security and success.  I believe Israel must maintain a qualitative military edge and defensible borders. The United States must continue to ensure that Israel can defend itself from terrorist organizations and hostile states, including Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others.

If I were a Massachusetts voter, I would probably cast my ballot for Warren, hoping that in office she would moderate her position on Israel and Palestine, much as, say, Dennis Kucinich modified his position on women's rights to make their own health choices.

But, like Mike Farrell, I am dismayed that it is the progressive voter who has to compromise his principles by voting for the lesser of evils. We of the left have effectively surrendered control of the political vocabulary and process to the extreme far right.

And that's a damned shame.

Speaking as One Infiltrator to Another . . .

I almost turned back at the machine gun nest; the weapon was (or seemed to be) pointed directly at me.

Whistling past the graveyard, I forced myself to walk into the Essex Wire Co,. plant outside Jackson, MI.

As the newest editorial employee of the Detroit Free Press, I had been deemed likeliest to succeed at penetrating the security around the Essex plant to apply for a job inside as a scab worker.  The company, a major supplier to the auto industry, had risked taking a strike in union-powerful Michigan; violence ensued and Gov. George Romney called out the National Guard.  Hence the machine-gun nest.

I got the job, despite my fumbling with the manual dexterity test.  I used my real identity but a made-up job history.  My real job inside the plant was to determine if Essex had used an infamous professional strike-breaking firm then based in Mississippi to continue operating when the union workers walked out. This would have been a violation of state labor law at the time.

On my first day at work, I tried to balance learning the intricacies of machines that could sever limbs with learning something about my co-workers without arousing suspicions about my motives.

After work, the moment my borrowed, clunker car left the employee parking lot, it was tailed by a pick-up truck with a bed full of armed union pickets.  I was losing the race to the Interstate when a state police car came out of hiding and placed itself between me and my pursuers.

The next day, Gov. Romney announced that his staff had brokered an end to the strike.  My spy mission was over. But I was reminded of my brief career as an infiltrator when Peter Gleick, chairman of a scientific society ethics committee, acknowledged using deception to obtain and make public the documents proving the climate science fraud of the infamous right-wing Heartland Institute. Gleick posed as a member of the institute's board.

He resigned as chairman of the American Geophysical Union's ethics committee after disclosing how he obtained the Heartland documents.

I have been a longtime follower and critic of Heartland and its science whores, like the Infamous Idsos. And so I applauded the release of the purloined documents, which were much more damning of the denier side than the trove of stolen e-mails from British climate scientists that came to be known as "Climategate."

"I deeply regret my actions in this case," Gleick said when he resigned from the ethics panel.  If I had found proof of violations of the state labor laws in that Essex plant, and written about them in the Free Press, I'd have had no such ethical qualms. I know all the "ends justify the means" arguments pro and con, as did, say, the Chicago Tribune editors and reporters who bought a Loop tavern to "sting" extortion plots by a ring of corrupt cops.

Journalists and scientists, in my opinion, have obligations to higher truths than those the ethicists purport to be defending in their criticisms of Gleick, who said he was motivated "by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous,  well-funded and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists." Fossil fuel profiteers like the Koch Brothers fund outfits like Heartland to protect and increase their obscene wealth, at the expense of the environment that sustains life on this planet.

Rick Santorum's whacky "Earth should serve man, not the other way around" theology to the contrary notwithstanding, climate change is one of the most important issues confronting mankind at this moment.  The very survival of the planet and its life forms is at stake.

I come to praise Peter Gleick, not to bury him.

Lesbians! Feminists! COMM-unists! The Sky Is Falling!

From Anne Gregory of the Ft. Wayne, Ind., Journal Gazette, via onetime Girl Scout Fleabane, comes the following text of a letter from Indiana state Rep. Bob Morris, R-Fort Wayne, to fellow lawmakers.

* * *

February 18, 2012
Members of the Republic (sic) Caucus
Dear Fellow Representatives:

This past week I was asked to sign a House Resolution recognizing the 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouts of America. After talking to some well-informed constituents, I did a small amount of web-based research, and what I found is disturbing. The Girl Scouts of America and their worldwide partner, World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), have entered into a close strategic affiliation with Planned Parenthood. You will not find evidence of this on the GSA/WAGGGS website—in fact, the websites of these two organizations explicitly deny funding Planned Parenthood.

Nonetheless, abundant evidence proves that the agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts, which is quickly becoming a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood instructional series and pamphlets are part of the core curriculum at GSA training seminars. Denver Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley of Denver last year warned parents that "membership in the Girl Scouts could carry the danger of making their daughters more receptive to the pro-abortion agenda."

A Girl Scouts of America training program last year used the Planned Parenthood sex education pamphlet "Happy, Healthy, and Hot." The pamphlet instructs young girls not to think of sex as "just about vaginal or anal intercourse." "There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!" it states. Although individual Girl Scout troops are not forced to follow this curriculum, many do. Liberal progressive troop-leaders will indoctrinate the girls in their troop according to the principles of Planned Parenthood, making Bishop Conley's warning true.

Many parents are abandoning the Girl Scouts because they promote homosexual lifestyles. In fact, the Girl Scouts education seminar girls are directed to study the example of role models. Of the fifty role models listed, only three have a briefly-mentioned religious background – all the rest are feminists, lesbians, or Communists. World Net Daily, in a May 2009 article, states that Girl Scout Troops are no longer allowed to pray or sing traditional Christmas Carols.

Boys who decide to claim a "transgender" or cross-dressing life-style are permitted to become a member of a Girl Scout troop, performing crafts with the girls and participate in overnight and camping activities – just like any real girl. The fact that the Honorary President of Girl Scouts of America is Michelle Obama, and the Obama's are radically pro-abortion and vigorously support the agenda of Planned Parenthood, should give each of us reason to pause before our individual or collective endorsement of the organization.

As members of the Indiana House of Representatives, we must be wise before we use the credibility and respect of the "Peoples' House" to extend legitimacy to a radicalized organization. The Girl Scouts of America stand in a strong tradition that reflects with fidelity the traditional values of our homes and our families. The tradition extends from coast-to-coast and back through the past one hundred years. That said, I challenge each of you to examine these matters more closely before you extend your name and your reputation to endorse a group that has been subverted in the name of liberal progressive politics and the destruction of traditional American family values.

I have two daughters who have been active in the Girl Scouts of Limberlost Council in Northeastern Indiana. Now that I am aware of the influence of Planned Parenthood within GSA and other surprisingly radical policies of GSA, my two daughters will instead become active in American Heritage Girls Little Flowers organization. In this traditional group they will learn about values and principles that will not confuse their conservative Hoosier upbringing.

Respectfully,
Bob Morris

     * * *
Respectfully?

Grassroots Press: A Hike Made in Hell

My friends at Grassroots Press (http://www.grass-roots-press.com/) have posted an account by a constituent of a mythical hike with the Worst Congressman in History, Stevan Pearce (R-NM).

Pearce, who is owned by the oil, gas and ATV industries, opposes protection of southern New Mexico's magnificent mountain and high desert canyon country by designating them wilderness areas, despite a series of public hearings that disclosed overwhelming public support of the notion.

Here's what Greg Lennes of Las Cruces had to say on the Grassroots Press website:

Congressman Pearce accepted my invitation to enjoy a scenic hike to Fillmore Canyon in the beautiful tranquil Organ Mountains. We met at the trail-head. He was dressed in his hunting camouflage with a Remington 7600 pump action thirty-ought-six rifle. He also had a Dan Wesson 445 Revolver. I was startled and asked him why he accepted my invitation. He stated that he wanted to show me the illegals and Mexican cartel members hiding in the mountains.  As we walked he railed against the Bureau of Land Management calling them all “kooks.”

Our first stop was the La Cueva cave where Mr. Pearce commented that the hermit, Agostini-Justiniani was killed by the Mexican cartel during a drug deal. I mentioned that this happened in 1869. He responded he had a reliable source in two former long retired border patrol agents.

When we arrived at the stunning Fillmore Canyon waterfall, Mr. Pearce expressed his worry that we were walking into a trap. He pulled out his Wesson. Then I heard a gun firing at a nearby bush, and a yellow-billed dropped dead. As I looked at Mr. Pearce he had his Remington repeatedly shooting at the upper reaches of the canyon. A dune sagebrush lizard fell on his head. Pearce yelled that they are coming to get us and it’s time to leave or face death.

When we finally returned to our vehicles, Mr. Pearce lectured me that this should be a lesson to me that we can’t designate the Organ Mountains as a wilderness area. Instead he said he will propose to the Congress the closing of the mountains to all civilians and deployment of the National Guard to remove all the criminal elements concealed in the Organs. I woke up questioning if this was reality or a nutty nightmare.

Mr. Lennes's uncanny verisimilitude has only one flaw:

In real life Mr. Pearce would not have hiked: he'd have driven a big, snarling, smokin' ATV which might even have torn up the nest of the last remaining burrowing owl in the entire region.

After all, this is the guy who said we shouldn't use the abundant wind of the southwest to solve our dependency on fossil fuel (where he made his fortune).  Why?

"Aesthetics," he said.  "Some people think wind towers are ugly."

We Used to Toss These Guys Into Asylums and Throw Away the Key

Since the Republicans are swimming in money, they ought to use some of it to hire a team of psychiatrists to test Rick Santorum.

The party's rank file (sic) deserve to know just how insane this guy is.

His crazy religious prattle is one thing.  I'll leave it for clergymen and theologians to parse.

But his comments -- in Detroit of all places! -- in defense of the widening income gap raise questions about whether he should be running around loose, let alone running for the presidential nomination of the GOP.

Here is some of what he said:

“I’m not about equality of result when it comes to income inequality. There is income inequality in America. There always has been and, hopefully, and I do say that, there always will be.

“We should celebrate (it) like we do in the small towns all across America — as you do here in Detroit. You celebrate success. You build statues and monuments. Buildings, you name after them. Why? Because in their greatness and innovation, yes, they created wealth, but they created wealth for everybody else. And that’s a good thing, not something to be condemned in America.”

Detroit has the highest poverty rate of any major city in this economically troubled nation.  It has the highest unemployment rate.  It has 90,000 vacant homes and buildings.  Some of them are public schools less than 10 years old.  It has closed more than half its schools. (Rick thinks that's just fine.  Public education, he says, is antiquated and useless.) That Santorum would choose this city as the forum for his paean to the growing gap between very rich and very poor -- with fewer and fewer people in between -- is the essence of insanity.

Who dresses this guy in the morning?  No wonder they put sweater vests on him; they're easier to manipulate than, say, a straitjacket.

Rick's utter nonsense was reported by the stenographers who pose as journalists these days as if it had some legitimacy --as if it were news.

Of course these same stenographers have ignored virtually simultaneous warnings by qualified academicians and scientists that U.S. income inequality threatens our very continued existence as a free nation.  The warnings come not from Keynesians like Paul Krugman and Simon Johnson, who have been shouting the alarms for years.  They come from center-right straight shooters like Francis Fukuyama, senior fellow at Stanford’s Center on Democracy.

Fukuyama wrote an essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled, The Future of History: Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the Middle Class?  His answer: probably not.

His chilling prognosis:

There are a lot of reasons to think that inequality will continue to worsen. The current concentration of wealth in the United States has already become self-reinforcing: the financial sector has used its lobbying clout to avoid more onerous forms of regulation. Schools for the well-off are better than ever; those for everyone else continue to deteriorate. Elites in all societies use their superior access to the political system to protect their interests, absent a countervailing democratic mobilization to rectify the situation. American elites are no exception to the rule.  (Emphasis mine.)

In a functioning democracy, it is the role of government to impose that countervailing force on the economy.  The force is called regulation.

It is not a dirty word, although idiots like Santorum would make it so, along with "liberal."

Two things can save this country:

1. A return to liberal democratic government that properly regulates powerful business and financial interests.

2. Locking up the likes of Rick Santorum before they really hurt someone.

Payroll Tax Deal Isn't a Good Deal for Workers

Come all you young workers and listen to me:
Don't hang your affections on the payroll tax tree.
For the thieves will still rob you and take what you have;
They'll postpone the theft till you're closer to the grave.

* * *

So the Congress has reached an apparent "compromise" on the payroll tax "issue." Tighten your sphincter and keep the vaseline handy.

Kidglove will tell you it's a win for the common wage-earner.  Nonsense.  It was the best he could do, politically, to inject some quick money into the economy. 

The fair way would have been to take more from those who have more and use it for job-creating public works.  That is, end the Bush tax cuts for the very rich and make them pay something closer to their fair share of what it takes to operate this country.

Yes, it's the same old 1% v. 99% battle.  The 1% owns the pols of both parties who are making the decisions, young workers, that will affect you for the rest of your lives.

Here's how it works: the financial industry -- the same folks who gave you deregulation, sub-prime mortgages, the bursting of the housing bubble and the Great Recession -- covets the huge sums the government is collecting to pay for Social Security and Medicare.  It's your money.  But if the Republicans could "privatize"  Social Security, you'd turn it over to the Too Big to Fail Crowd to "invest" for you.  Wall Street bonuses would get bigger, Wall Street "investment" scams would become more lurid, and everyone would suffer except the One Percenters.

So far, at least, the thieves haven't been able to push privatization through even the bought-and-paid-for Congress.  The thieves still have to get re-elected, and they're afraid that Social Security and Medicare are  too popular to do away with at this time.  So they're building a bogeyman.  Having already stolen what used to be our trust fund by shifting Social Security into the general revenues, they're now playing mirror games with the accounting process to project Social Security going broke sometime in the relatively near future.  "We've got to 'save' Social Security," they're telling us, "by taking it out of the hands of the government."  They want to give your money to Wall Street, instead.

Now comes the "payroll tax" deal. It simply hands you today some of the money you've been putting aside for your retirement tomorrow. The Kidglove crowd contends that it will make the economy better by putting more spending money in your pocket -- roughly $83 a month for middle-level American workers.  With food and fuel costs skyrocketing, the likelihood is that most of you will spend the extra money.  So the economy will in fact get a bit of a short-term stimulus. 

But the loss of half of your contributions to your future Social Security and your future Medicare will be noticed in a very short time by those in power who have long wanted to do away with "entitlements" for workers.  "Aha!" they will say.  "We told you so!  Social Security is going broke even faster than we feared!  We've got to privatize it now in order to save it." This logic reminds me of the famous episode in the Vietnam war where an American commander said, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

But it's the inevitable outcome of the Kidglove regime's cave in and apply a band-aid strategy, which ultimately plays into the hands of the Republicans and their One Per Cent constituency.

You're going to need that vaseline.





.

These Are the Damned Fools Who Will Prod Us into War

It really is "the gang that couldn't shoot straight," this gaggle of whackos, nincompoops and used-car hustlers Israel has enlisted to to do terrorism that can be blamed on Iran.

The clumsiness of its ill-trained surrogates must irritate the hell out of the Mossad's real pros. In fact, the performances by the the goofballs tasked with "justifying" Israel's forthcoming war on Iran are fooling nobody, except possibly Joe Liebermann and the rest of the AIPAC-owned pols in Congress.

Take, for example, the recent botched bombings in India, Georgia and now Thailand.  For two days Israel has thundered about this "evidence" that Iranian "terrorists" have targeted "Israelis and Israeli interests."  The U.S. media promptly became an echo chamber for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. On NBC last night, Brian Williams and Jim Miklaszewski were so het up about the Iran "threat" that I ran outside and scanned the skies for Persian missiles.  Only the U.S. Fifth Fleet, they warned me, stands between Iran and "the rest of the world."

In Washington, a State Department briefing called attention to  Monday's incidents in India and Georgia, and ominously connected them to recent "Iranian-sponsored" and "Hezbollah-linked" plots to attack Israeli and Western interests in Azerbaijan and Thailand.

Never mind that Will Hartley, chief terrorism expert at Jane's in London, said the attacks in India, Georgia and Thailand "have all been highly amateurish, and lack the sophistication that would normally be expected from an operation executed by either Hezbollah or Iran's own external operations wing, the Quds Force."

Never mind that a Thai government official said "we need more analysis" to determine who was behind the attack in Bangkok and whether Iran was involved.

Israeli media also reported that Mossad teams are in Bangkok and New Delhi to investigate the recent explosions. What chutzpah!  Imagine if Iran had sent Quds teams into Oklahoma City when the federal building was bombed!

One of the "terrorists" in Bangkok blew off his own damned leg! And we thought the Texas hustler was a nutso for laying a ton of hit money on a guy who was under cover for  United States narcs in a drug investigation. If this is the quality of "spy" and "terrorist" Iran is siccing on Israel and "the rest of the world," where's the "threat?"  Bring the Fleet home and wait for Iran to self-destruct.

Ah, but Bibi Netanyahu and his buds in Congress are in no mood to wait .  An Israeli journalist reported -- probably accurately -- that Bibi's government wants to start obliterating Iran no later than April.  If that happens, you can bet Washington will be "all in" by May.

"USA! USA!  USA! .  . . "Support Our Troops!" . . . "United We Stand!" . . .

Dr. Kidglove and the Lords Bishop

And so the Captain Courage mask comes off, revealing once again the real occupant of the Oval Office, Dr. Kidglove.

Caving in characteristic fashion, he is thumbing his nose at women's health rights and doing the Obama Flip Flop on the requirement that all employer health plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women.

Religious employers were outraged by the rule, even though it exempted  churches and houses of worship. Republicans, responding to the powerful lobbying force of the Roman Catholic bishops organization, clamored against requiring Catholic organizations to violate church teachings and long-held beliefs against contraception. Never mind that a majority of Catholic women quietly ignore the teachings and practice birth control anyway.  How dare that Kenya-born Muslim in the White House encourage women to make their own decisions in these matters!  This is a Christian nation!!

Frequent Commenter Fleabane shared this from Daily Kos:

My Dear Lord Bishop:

(I just assume you prefer the medieval title). I sat in the pew on Sunday morning recently and listened with interest to your letter warning of the threat to religious liberty posed by the Obama administration's recently announced rules regarding mandated coverage for contraception and other health care procedures you find distasteful.

 I have to say I found it to be the most brilliant letter from you regarding the Church's social teaching since the one last year about the rights of workers (in Indiana and Wisconsin) to bargain collectively.

What's that you say? You wrote no such letter? I could have sworn that a couragous leader such as yourself . . . .Oh well, never mind. I must be thinking of your forceful letter endorsing an end to capital punishment consistent with the church's longstanding teaching regarding the sanctity of human life. ... You never wrote such a letter? 

I must have in mind the letter all the bishops had read at mass prior to the invasion of Iraq condemning that war as unjust consistent with the Pope's statement and the Church's Just War doctrine. ... You say the bishops never authored such a letter?

(Perhaps) I have in mind the letter from just this past Sunday with its profound and moving acknowledgment of the pain caused by the sexual abuse scandal and it's solemn promise to remove from service those implicated in the scandal as well as a commitment to compensation and healing for the victims. What?!? . . . You didn't write that one either. 

Frankly, my Lord Bishop, I'm getting tired of only hearing from you on behalf of right wing talking points. There is much that is inspiring, humane and progressive in the Church's social teaching tradition, but . . .you might find that people paid more attention if you did not appear so partisan. . .

To which your Pianist can only add the suggestion that some day you might want to talk about your tax exemption, Lord Bishop, which calls for NON-partisanship.  Another letter you'll never write.

Obama's Drone War: Immoral and Indefensible

A lawyer friend who intends to "hold his nose" and vote to re-elect President Obama has failed to persuade me to do the same.

I'll admit, the Follies Bizarre that is the Republican nomination process had me wavering.

But I've just spent hours poring over a remarkable bit of British journalism by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism based at City University, London. (http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/) It provides the most penetrating and thoroughly-researched examination yet of the United States program of Death by Drone.

It makes a powerful case that Barack Obama is as guilty as George Bush and Dick Cheney of war crimes.

It renewed my conviction that I cannot, in good conscience, vote for Obama.

The Bureau is an independent, non-profit organization of journalists dedicated to providing "high quality investigations" to supplement mainstream journalism.  It often works in partnership with other news organizations such as the BBC, The Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, Le Monde and the Sunday Times of London, its partner in the drone investigation.  It operates under extremely strict rules of sourcing, cross-checking and evaluating data. Thus the following numbers are, if anything, understated:

Total reported killed by U.S. drones in Pakistan:  2,383 - 3,019; civilians reported killed: 464 - 815; children reported killed: 175;  total reported injured: 1,149-1,241.  Total U.S. strikes: 312; total strikes ordered by the Obama administration: 260.

The bureau found found evidence, including eyewitness accounts,  that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners.

Apparently the administration got wind of what was coming from the Bureau.  Just a few days before its report came out, the President himself spoke publicly for the first time about the once super-secret drone war. He said the drones are used strictly to target terrorists, rejecting what he called "this perception we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly."  He insisted that "drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists trying to go in and harm Americans."

Oh?

In North Waziristan in May of 2009, the report said, a group of Taliban militants was preparing to cross the nearby border into Afghanistan to launch an attack on US forces. But a CIA drone flying overhead fired its missiles into the Taliban group, killing at least a dozen people. Villagers  tried to retrieve the dead and injured. As rescuers clambered through the rubble to assist the victims, two more missiles slammed into them, killing many more. At least 29 people died in total. Many of them were Taliban, but six ordinary villagers also died that day, identified by Bureau field researchers as Sabir, Ikram, Mohib, Zahid, Mashal and Syed Noor (most people in the area use only one name). Regarding the second strike, Naz Modirzadeh, associate director of the program on humanitarian policy and conflict research (HPCR) at Harvard University, said "each death (in this episode) is illegal. Each death is a murder."

Between May, 2009 and June, 2011, at least fifteen attacks on rescuers were reported by credible news media. For three months a team of local researchers employed by the Bureau sought independent confirmation of these strikes. They have found credible, independently sourced evidence of civilians killed in ten of the reported attacks on rescuers. In five other reported attacks, the researchers found no evidence of any rescuers – civilians or otherwise – killed. The researchers were told by villagers that strikes on rescuers began as early as March 2008, although no media carried reports at the time. The Bureau is still seeking testimony relating to nine additional incidents.

If the rescuers had been wearing Red Cross or Red Crescent identification, their slayings would clearly be war crimes under the Geneva conventions. 

Even John A. Rizzo, the infamous CIA general counsel who helped create the rationale for torture in the Bush regime, and who was kept on when Obama took office, has used the term "murder" in reference to the drone war.

Never mind the legal nit-picking.

Anyone who purports to have an iota of concern about morality, justice and human rights must withhold his vote from the man who is ultimately responsible for tactics like these.

Barack Obama is unfit to lead my country.  I will vote for the Green Party nominee in 2012.

Fight 'em There Rather Than Here: Act III

Here's the latest on the run-up to our war with Iran:

James Clapper, the former general who heads our spying operations, was up on Capitol Hill Monday to brief the geniuses who make our laws.

He said:

. . . Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.

- Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons, making the central issue its political will to do so. These [technical] advancements contribute to our judgment that Iran is technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, if it so chooses.

- We judge Iran’s nuclear decision making is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran.

In short, not much new.

But I picked up the local paper yesterday and its headline on the Clapper testimony read: "Iran Willing to Attack on US Soil."  Whoa!   Boil the oil; the Hun is at the gates!  Can this be so?  Eric Schmitt, the New York Times: "In prepared testimony, the Obama administration’s top intelligence official said that Iran has become more willing to carry out attacks inside the United States."  Egads!  Hide the women and children.

What's the basis for this? The following paragraph in Clapper's testimony:

The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials—probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime.

Plot? Assassinate?  Wait, wait, I remember.

Last October, Attorney General Eric  Holder announced that  U.S. agents had foiled  a plot allegedly directed by elements of the Iranian government to murder the Saudi Ambassador to the United States with explosives while the Ambassador was in the United States.  FBI Director Robert Mueller said the criminal complaint charged Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, a naturalized U.S. citizen holding both Iranian and U.S. passports, and Gholam Shakuri, an Iran-based member of Qud, an Iranian black ops outfit.

Arbabsiar was said to have met with Shakuri from the Spring of 2011 to October 2011 to plot the murder of the Saudi Ambassador, and arranged to hire a Mexican drug cartel member to murder the Ambassador using explosives. But the hitman turned out to be a double-agent working for the DEA within the cartel.  Our guys nabbed Arbabsiar at the border when he attempted to enter Mexico to make a down payment on the $1.5 million price of the assassination.

Hoo boy!  Hot stuff!

U.S. officials said that it was "more than likely" that Iran's topmost officials, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and General Qassem Suleimani, approved the plot but acknowledged this was based on  speculation rather than hard evidence: "It would be our assessment that this kind of operation would have been discussed at the highest levels of the regime."

A number of experts on Iran and the Middle East weren't buying this gang that couldn't shoot straight "plot." Alizera Nader, an analyst at the Rand Corporation, found it"difficult to believe." Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said, "There is simply no reasonable rationale  for Iran working any plot, no matter where located, through a non-Muslim proxy such as Mexican drug gangs."  “This plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures,” said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who worked at the White House during the 1979 Iranian revolution and hostage crisis. He characterized working with "an amateur" and the Mexcan drug crowd  as "sloppy," and added:  “Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted for utter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft.”  One expert suggested that Arbabsiar was actually looking for a drug deal with the cartels, trading Afghan opium for cartel money.

So who, indeed, is this "amateur," Arabsiar?

A Texas used car dealer, described by his former business partner as "sort of a hustler. . . likable, but a bit lazy. . . He's no mastermind . . .I can't imagine him thinking up a plan like that. "

Would you buy a new war from this guy?

Perhaps you already have.