November 21, 2008

1.  “Although Obama brought some progressives on board early in his campaign, his foreign policy team is now dominated by the hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990s. This has been particularly true since Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the Democratic primary, freeing many of her top advisors to join Obama’s team.

…

Amid the euphoria over Obama’s election and the end of the Bush era, it is critical to recall what 1990s U.S. foreign policy actually looked like. Bill Clinton’s  boiled down to a one-two punch from the hidden hand of the free market, backed up by the iron fist of U.S. militarism. Clinton took office and almost immediately bombed Iraq (ostensibly in retaliation for an alleged plot by Saddam Hussein to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush). He presided over a ruthless regime of economic sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and under the guise of the so-called No-Fly Zones in northern and southern Iraq, authorized the longest sustained U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam.

Under Clinton, Yugoslavia was bombed and dismantled as part of what Noam Chomsky described as the “New Military Humanism.” Sudan and Afghanistan were attacked, Haiti was destabilized and “free trade” deals like the North America Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade radically escalated the spread of corporate-dominated globalization that hurt U.S. workers and devastated developing countries. Clinton accelerated the militarization of the so-called War on Drugs in Central and Latin America and supported privatization of U.S. military operations, giving lucrative contracts to Halliburton and other war contractors. Meanwhile, U.S. weapons sales to countries like Turkey and Indonesia aided genocidal campaigns against the Kurds and the East Timorese.

…

A few have worked with the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, whose radical agenda was adopted by the Bush/Cheney administration. And most have proven track records of supporting or implementing militaristic, offensive U.S. foreign policy. “After a masterful campaign, Barack Obama seems headed toward some fateful mistakes as he assembles his administration by heeding the advice of Washington’s Democratic insider community, a collective group that represents little ‘change you can believe in,'” notes veteran journalist Robert Parry, the former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter who broke many of the stories in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.”

http://www.alternet.org/story/107666/?page=1

2.  “Senator James Inhofe has revealed that Henry Paulson was behind the threats of martial law and a new great depression prior to the passage of the bailout bill, having made such warnings during a conference call on September 19th, around two weeks before the legislation was eventually approved by both the Senate and Congress.
As we reported at the time, on October 2, Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman gave a stunning speech on the House floor during which he decried the fact that, “Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day, another couple of thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.”

…

Paulson, who demanded no oversight. Paulson, who insisted more powers be given to him. Paulson, one of the irresponsible gamblers who caused this bullshit in the first place, was behind the threat which coerced the bailout, which in turn has further enriched his irresponsible elitist friends on Wall Street, yet hasn’t done Jack Squat for the average American.

Paulson has no conscience. Paulson should be extracted from the Treasury Department secretaryship. He should be thoroughly investigated. If what he has done isn’t criminal, then the laws must be changed and made retroactive, like they did with telecom immunity for illegal spying. Then they need to convict him, take all his assets and lock him up for the rest of his time on this planet.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/18584

3.  “The conservative movement has gone badly astray over the last eight years. It’s not just the idea of preventive war and nation-building in Iraq. It’s the arrogant assumption that Washington can dictate to any nation in any circumstance in any region and the foolish unwillingness to balance competing interests. Even more fundamental, the US government’s principal foreign policy objective has gone from defending America to engaging in social engineering. Bush/McCain conservatives have exhibited the sort of arrogant delusions so characteristic of Wilsonian liberalism. As the conservative movement regroups from its well-deserved defeat, it needs to rediscover America’s more restrained foreign policy tradition. The Right should meet the likely interventionist liberalism of Barack Obama not with the warmongering neoconservatism of the last eight years, but the republican detachment, focused on both peace and prosperity, of the more distant past.

http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=13795

4.  “And this week Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen – the man President-elect Obama plans to call into the Oval Office as soon as he arrives – wheeled it into place and launched it like a missile aimed at the heart of Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan for US combat troops in Iraq. It may not sound like much, but believe me, it is. The Chairman simply said, “We have 150,000 troops in Iraq right now. We have lots of bases. We have an awful lot of equipment that’s there. And so we would have to look at all of that tied to, obviously, the conditions that are there, literally the security conditions? Clearly, we’d want to be able to do it safely.” Getting it all out safely, he estimated, would take at least “two to three years.”
…
The Washington Post reports that, should Obama continue to push for his two brigades a month draw-down, a civilian-military “conflict is inevitable,” and might, as the Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss suggests, even lead to an Obama “showdown” with the military high command in his first weeks in office.
In a nutshell, the Pentagon’s argument couldn’t be simpler or more red-bloodedly American: We have too much stuff to leave Iraq any time soon. In war, as in peace, we’re trapped by our own profligacy. We are the Neiman Marcus and the Wal-Mart of combat. Where we go, our “stuff” goes with us – in such prodigious quantities that removing it is going to prove more daunting than invading in the first place. After all, it took less than a year to put in place the 130,000-plus invasion force, and all its equipment and support outfits from bases all around the world, as well as the air power and naval power to match.

…

Irony hardly covers this one. The Bush administration may have succeeded in little else, but it did embed the US so deeply in that country that leaving can now be portrayed as the profligate thing to do.”

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13794

5.  What horrible news:

“Hillary Rodham Clinton has decided to give up her Senate seat and accept the position of secretary of state, making her the public face around the world for the administration of the man who beat her for the Democratic presidential nomination, two confidants said Friday.”

6.  Good:

“The US Departments of State and Defense have informed companies that provide the over 160,000 contractors employed in Iraq that the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), once it goes into effect, will strip them of the broad legal immunity for crimes that they now enjoy, and they will be subjected to the Iraqi legal system.
…

The Iraqi government has long made stripping contractors of their legal immunity a high priority, spurred on by high profile incidents of unprovoked killings, such as the September 2007 killing of 17 civilians by Blackwater employees.”

Iraq Pact Spells End to Contractors’ Immunity

7.  Terrible – Russia should refuse to permit this:

“Russia to Allow NATO to Ship Supplies Across its Territory

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed an agreement today allowing Spain to use its territory to send supplies to Afghanistan for NATO’s military operation there. The Russian Foreign Ministry has also reported that it will allow Germany to use Russian railroads to ship supplies to troops.”

Russia to Allow NATO to Ship Supplies Across its Territory

8.  Unbelievably harsh:

“19 year-old Army private Tony Anderson was court martialed Monday and sentenced to 14 months of confinement and given a dishonorable discharge from the military for “desertion with intent to avoid hazardous duty” and “disobeying a lawful order.” The young soldier refused to deploy to Iraq in July of this year on the grounds of conscientious objection to war.”

http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/641/1/

9.  “But John Brennan is a different matter.  To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet’s closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as “enhanced interrogation techniques” and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction.  Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due process rights for all detainees, ending rendition, restoring safeguards on surveillance powers).  Appointing John Brennan to a position of high authority would be to affirm and embrace, not repudiate, the darkest aspects of the last eight years.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

10.  “How Bush Tried to Bring Down Evo Morales
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia
Evo Morales is the latest democratically elected Latin American president to be the target of a U.S. plot to destabilize and overthrow his government. On Sept. 10, 2008, Morales expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, declaring that “he is conspiring against democracy and seeking the division of Bolivia.”
…
In fact, the Bolivia coup attempt was a conscious policy rooted in U.S. hostility toward Morales, his political party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the social movements that are aligned with him.

“The U.S. embassy is historically used to calling the shots in Bolivia, violating our sovereignty, treating us like a banana republic,” says Gustavo Guzman, who was expelled as Bolivian ambassador to Washington following Goldberg’s removal.
…
Then on Nov. 1, Morales released a bombshell by announcing the indefinite suspension of the activities of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Bolivia, and the expulsion of the 37 DEA agents from the country
…
Bolivian intelligence also discovered seven security houses run by the United States “that carried out political espionage,” including telephone surveillance of political, police and military authorities.

The DEA and its 37 agents were expelled from the country. The Bolivian government appropriated what amounted to a DEA military arsenal, including airplanes, boats, ground transport vehicles, communications equipment and one thousand M-16 machine guns.

The civic coup has failed. No longer able to turn to the U.S. embassy, the opposition is in disarray, with the leading right-wing party split into four factions. The referendum on the constitution will likely be approved by a wide margin. Evo Morales has rallied the social movements and the country to break U.S. historic domination of Bolivia.

Washington, D.C., Morales is hoping to open up a dialogue with the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama that will lead to a restoration of full trade relations, a recognition of Bolivia’s right to determine its own policies on drugs, agrarian reform and gas nationalization, and mutual respect between the two nations.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21278.htm

11.  “With the economy wheezing on its back like on 80-year-old ex-miner in a forest fire, many have predicted that Christmas 2008 will not be a bumper year for toy retailers. But Nikon Ebbsfleet, head of the British Toy Association, disagrees.

“There are many reasons for toy manufacturers to be optimistic” said Ebbsfleet. “The housing market has shown a slight upturn, inflation rates have been lowered to combat the recession, but most importantly children are solipsistic, screaming bundles of Id that want their desires met immediately. A parent may as well kick an umbrella at the clouds to stop it raining as get between a bawling infant and the toy it wants.”

Ebbsfleet listed his predicted best-sellers for Christmas 2008.

1: Dubai Island
Following the runaway success of Tracy Island in 1992, Mattel have updated the concept for the 21st century. Dubai Island recreates all the thrills of vulgar, excessive opulence for 8-12 year olds. In the hotel concert room, a miniature Celine Dion belts out “My Heart Will Go On” at the push of a button to a crowd of lovingly-recreated despots, faded rock stars and their marble-eyed model girlfriends.

Kids can have fun trying to smuggle gay hotel guests past the armed guards at reception and jolt with delight as the scale model 15’ high electric fence keeps out those pesky poor locals!
(Accessories, such as jewel-encrusted dolphins for the swimming pool, start at £1.8M)

2: Knifeys
From the makers of Heelys come Knifeys, the fashion footwear that comes with a kick! Available in a range of funky, colourful designs, Knifeys are the comfortable new way to make your mark at school, in the playground or at home. Just shift your weight to your heels and a durable, six inch, Teflon-coated hunting blade will deploy from the front of the shoe, making you the king of the cool kids. Tip your weight forward and the patented design cleans the blade as it retracts back into the sole of the shoe. Your folks, your friends and the police will be none the wiser!

3: Credit Crunch Monopoly
All the fun of the original, with a contemporary twist of global financial meltdown. The Old Kent Road still costs £60, but now so does everything else. You start with houses on every property, and the object of the game is to manage to get around the board three times without having all of them repossessed.

Choose your board piece carefully, too. Pick the car and you’ll soon be in financial trouble as each move costs you an extra £10 congestion charge. Choose the top hat and you’ll find yourself ducking the bricks thrown at you by anti-capitalist rioters.

There a dozens of other updates to look out for, from the “Get Out Of Jail On A Technicality” card to “You Won 2nd Prize In A Beauty Contest – Get Date-Raped By A Portugese Premiership Footballer In A Hotel Room” in the ‘Chance’ pile.”

http://pushjelly.blogspot.com/2008/11/christmas-toy-bestsellers-announced.html

hasEML = false;