1. “Three Weeks in September is a forthcoming documentary film that deals with the deadly health effects, emotional issues, and financial burdens that are now plaguing tens of thousands of 9/11 First Responders.
In the days and weeks that followed the terrible events of September 11th, 2001, thousands of volunteers from across the United States descended upon Ground Zero to volunteer in the search of “The Pile”. Reassured that the air quality was safe by both the Federal Government through statements issued by the EPA, and the Government of New York City, these brave men and women toiled night and day in the toxic fumes of the rubble. Now seven years later, most of them are sick, many of them are dying, and too many are already dead.
To add insult to their injuries, many have found themselves having to fight for the medical treatments they now need to battle their afflictions. Amid a mass of bureaucratic red tape and corporate policy roadblocks, these forgotten heroes are living the 9/11 nightmare daily.
And you’ve probably never heard a word about any of this before… “
http://www.911blogger.com/node/19725
2. “However much we invoke 9/11 as our rationale for perpetual war, the task of preventing another such attack is to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda’s attempts to penetrate outside remote areas, such as Pakistan’s tribal areas. Rather than launching a full-scale invasion and occupation of the region, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to throw a cordon around the area, to quarantine it? As a justification for what promises to be an even more costly military intervention, in terms of both human and material resources, this is awfully – embarrassingly – thin.
They told me to give Obama a chance, that he’s just gotten into office and it takes time to effect real change: yes, well, that approach may have had some credibility in the beginning, but now that we’re approaching the end of the first 100 days and our new president has made his first major foreign policy pronouncement, the time to give Obama the benefit of every doubt is over. What he is proposing is more than a mere “surge” – it is a rising tsunami of unimaginable proportions, one that will make the Iraq war seem like a minor swell.“
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/03/29/af-pak-fever/
3. And more:
“It’s time, as a start, to stop calling our expanding war in Central and South Asia “the Afghan War” or “the Afghanistan War.” If Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke doesn’t want to, why should we? Recently, in a BBC interview, he insisted that “the ‘number one problem’ in stabilizing Afghanistan was Taliban sanctuaries in western Pakistan, including tribal areas along the Afghan border and cities like Quetta” in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.
And isn’t he right? After all, the U.S. seems to be in the process of trading in a limited war in a mountainous, poverty-stricken country of 27 million people for one in an advanced nation of 167 million, with a crumbling economy, rising extremism, advancing corruption, and a large military armed with nuclear weapons. Worse yet, the war in Pakistan seems to be expanding inexorably (and in tandem with American war planning) from the tribal borderlands ever closer to the heart of the country.
These days, Washington has even come up with a neologism for the change: “Af-Pak,” as in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations. So, in the name of realism and accuracy, shouldn’t we retire “the Afghan War” and begin talking about the far more disturbing “Af-Pak War”?”
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=14475
4. “Cheney War Crimes: Just Look at the Statute
President Obama needs to tell Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Dick Cheney, right now, for war crimes.
Just look at the statute, Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code, Section 2441. It says that someone is guilty of a war crime if he or she commits a “grave breach of common Article 3” of the Geneva Conventions. And then it defines what a grave breach would be.
One such breach is torture, or the conspiracy to commit torture, which Cheney was clearly in on, as when he repeatedly defended waterboarding and talked about the need to go to the “dark side” Here’s the language from the statute: “The act of a person who commits, or conspires to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.”
…
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” said Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.), in the preface to the Physicians for Human Rights report, “Broken Laws, Broken Lives”. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
That question is now firmly on Obama’s desk.
And if he continues to dodge it, he’ll make a sick joke of the pious claim that we are a nation of laws, not men.“
http://www.progressive.org/wx032409.html
5. Assholes:
“No change now on gays in military: Gates
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates Sunday ruled out an imminent change in the “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy on gays in the military, saying President Barack Obama believes the Pentagon has “a lot on our plates right now.”
Gates comments in an interview on Fox television were in response to an assertion by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs in January that Obama would end the ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military.“
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090329/pl_afp/usmilitarygaysgates
6. “Cole in Salon: Obama’s Domino Theory
My column in Salon.com is out, “Obama’s domino theory,” in which I worry that “The president sounds like he’s channeling Cheney or McCain — or a Cold War hawk afraid of international communism — when he talks about the war in Afghanistan.”
Excerpt:
‘[Obama's] latter-day domino theory of al-Qaida takeovers in South Asia is just as implausible as its earlier iteration in Southeast Asia (ask Thailand or the Philippines). Most of the allegations are not true or are vastly exaggerated. There are very few al-Qaida fighters based in Afghanistan proper. What is being called the “Taliban” is mostly not Taliban at all (in the sense of seminary graduates loyal to Mullah Omar). The groups being branded “Taliban” only have substantial influence in 8 to 10 percent of Afghanistan, and only 4 percent of Afghans say they support them. Some 58 percent of Afghans say that a return of the Taliban is the biggest threat to their country, but almost no one expects it to happen. Moreover, with regard to Pakistan, there is no danger of militants based in the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) taking over that country or “killing” it. ‘
Read the whole thing.“
http://www.juancole.com/
7. “Real Journalism Versus “Professional Journalism”
Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, created the concept of “professional journalism”. What is professional journalism, you may ask?
Renowned veteran journalist John Pilger summarizes it as follows:
Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called “professional journalism” was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment-objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, “entirely bogus”.
For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories-domestic and foreign-you’ll find they’re dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable exception. Think of the role Judith Miller played in the New York Times in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based on lies. Yet, Miller’s parroting of official sources and vested interests was not all that different from the work of many famous Times reporters, such as the celebrated W.H. Lawrence, who helped cover up the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945. “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin,” was the headline on his report, and it was false.Consider how the power of this invisible government has grown. In 1983 the principle global media was owned by 50 corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just 9 corporations. Today it is probably about 5. Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them. This concentration of power is not exclusive of course to the United States. The BBC has announced it is expanding its broadcasts to the United States, because it believes Americans want principled, objective, neutral journalism for which the BBC is famous. They have launched BBC America. You may have seen the advertising.
The BBC began in 1922, just before the corporate press began in America. Its founder was Lord John Reith, who believed that impartiality and objectivity were the essence of professionalism. In the same year the British establishment was under siege. The unions had called a general strike and the Tories were terrified that a revolution was on the way. The new BBC came to their rescue. In high secrecy, Lord Reith wrote anti-union speeches for the Tory Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and broadcast them to the nation, while refusing to allow the labor leaders to put their side until the strike was over.
So, a pattern was set. Impartiality was a principle certainly: a principle to be suspended whenever the establishment was under threat. And that principle has been upheld ever since.
And as Newseek’s Evan Thomas admits in a new article:
By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring….
“If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am). . . .”
Virtually all mainstream reporters are “establishment” journalists like Thomas. This is just another way of saying “professional” journalists in the sense Bernays used that term.
(This does not mean that everyone who makes their living through journalism is a sell-out. Some people do make some or all of their income as journalists and alternative news site operators, but aren’t afraid to question those in power.)“
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/03/real-journalism-versus-professional.html
8. “Where’s Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?
The former governor of New York might have some rocky moments in his confirmation hearings, but if Obama really wanted to police Wall St – which of course he doesn’t – he’d replace current SEC chief Mary Schapiro with Eliot Spitzer. Schapiro is another Wall Street toady who believes that the markets can regulate themselves. As the head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, she stood by while the financial giants increased their leverage to unsustainable levels and spread their derivatives-contagion to every part of the system.
Schapiro also missed the Madoff scandal, the auction-rate bond fraud, the blow up at Lehman Brothers, and the mortgage meltdown. She was blindsided at every turn. Her dismal performance as a private-sector regulator proves that she’s the wrong person for the job. Even the far-right Wall Street Journal has lambasted Schapiro. In an article titled “Obama’s pick to head SEC has record of being a Regulator with a Light Touch” the WSJ relayed this revealing anecdote:
The Financial Services Institute, a trade group, was meeting, and Ms. Schapiro addressed the crowd about Finra’s efforts to fight frauds aimed at senior citizens. Frank Congemi, a financial adviser, asked what Finra was doing to regulate “packaged products” such as complex mortgage securities. Mr. Congemi says that Ms. Schapiro replied: “We have rating agencies that rate them.” The credit-rating agencies, by this time, were being heavily criticized for having given triple-A ratings to mortgage bonds that became unsalable as foreclosures rose.
Mr. Congemi says that at the May 7 meeting he retorted: “What is that going to do to markets and people’s trust when these things go to zero?” He says Ms. Schapiro replied that she couldn’t answer hypothetical questions. (Wall Street Journal, Obama’s pick to head SEC has record of being a Regulator with a Light Touch”)
This story sums up Schapiro’s do-nothing attitude perfectly. She’s doomed to follow in the footsteps of her feckless predecessor, Christopher Cox, who stuck his head in the sand while the five biggest investment banks levered up to 30 to 1 and brought the whole global house of cards crashing to earth. Schapiro will undoubtedly torpedo any effort to police the markets or to bring charges against any of the Wall Street Godfathers.
…
If the Obama team was serious about defending the little guy and restoring confidence in the markets, then a real bulldog has to run the SEC. But since the real objective appears to be keeping the same basic power-structure in place at all costs; the present course will do just fine. One unmistakable sign of imperial decline is the inability to make critical changes when the country’s future depends on it. “
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12960
9. “Mysteries of logical reasoning
(1) Anyone who favors marijuana legalization just wants to get high without being hassled, and anyone who favors drug decriminalization generally is or wants to be a drug user.
(2) Anyone who opposes a return to alcohol prohibition is almost certainly an out-of-control drunk.
(3) Anyone who cares about gay marriage or advocates for equal rights for gay couples is a closet homosexual who just wants to have sex with people of the same gender. The only reason anyone would care about that issue is if one wants to have gay sex.
(4) Anyone who believes in free speech rights for Communists obviously opposes private property ownership and craves Stalinism. Anyone who believes in free assembly rights for neo-Nazis secretly admires Hitler.
(5) Anyone who believes abortion should be legal just wants to have reckless sex without consequences.
(6) Anyone who advocates habeas corpus rights for accused terrorists or who opposes torture harbors sympathy for Islamic extremism and approves of indiscriminate violence against civilians.
(7) Anyone who opposes unrestrained government surveillance must be doing bad things in private that they want to hide.
(8) Anyone who believes in the freedom to practice a certain religion is probably an adherent of that religion and is motivated by a desire to practice it without interference.
Why is most everyone capable of understanding the egregious, illogical stupidity of propositions (2)-(8) — based on the bleedingly obvious premise that one can advocate the freedom to do X for reasons other than a desire to do X — while so many people embrace the equally illogical and stupid reasoning of proposition (1) as though it so self-evidently true that it requires no discussion?“
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
10. “Obama’s Attack on the Middle Class
If the tax rate on a multi-million dollar annual income goes up by 5 percentage points, the cutbacks won’t really affect the lifestyle. But for the $250,000 gross income group, it means no prospect of private schools and Ivy League education for the children, who will be attending state colleges with the rest of the non-rich.
Obama is attacking the only income class that has any independence– the upper middle class professionals. The real rich are few in number and seldom present any opposition to government. Recently, the New York Times reported (March 23, 2009) that the 400 richest Americans’ “share of the nation’s total wealth has nearly doubled to more than 22 percent.” The average income of the 400 richest Americans is $263 million annually. That is 1,052 times the income of the “rich” $250,000 income.
What the Obama administration is really doing is taxing ordinary people in order to bail out the super rich. The 95% of Americans who get the tax cut will find that it is offset many times by the depreciation in the dollar and the raging inflation that will result from monetizing the multi-trillion dollar budget deficits made necessary by the bailouts of the banksters.
In the United States, government has become expert at manipulating both left-wing and right-wing ideologies. It keeps those on both ends of the spectrum set at each other’s throats in order to ensure the government’s continuing independence from accountability.
Historically, the definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor. Serfs were not free, because they owed their feudal lords, the government of that time, a maximum of one-third of their labor. Nineteenth century slaves were not free, because their owners could expropriate 50% of their labor.
Today, no American is a free person. The lowest tax rate, not counting state income, property tax and sales tax, is 15% Social Security tax and 15% federal income tax. The “free American” starts off with a 30% tax rate, the position of a medieval serf.
In medieval Europe, when tax rates reached beyond 30%, serfs rebelled and killed their masters. “
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22313.htm
11. 283 bases in Iraq:
“The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq
283 Bases, 170,000 Pieces of Equipment, 140,000 Troops, and an Army of Mercenaries:
With last week’s announced escalation of the war in Afghanistan, including an Iraq-like “surge” replete with 4,000 more U.S. troops and a sizable increase in private contractors, President Barack Obama blew the lid off of any lingering perceptions that he somehow represents a significant change in how the U.S. conducts its foreign policy.
In the meantime, more reports have emerged that bolster suspicions that Obama’s Iraq policy is but a downsized version of Bush’s and that a total withdrawal of U.S. forces is not on the horizon.
In the latest episode of Occupation Rebranded, it was revealed that the administration intends to reclassify some combat forces as “advisory and assistance brigades.” While Obama’s administration is officially shunning the use of the term “global war on terror,” the labels du jour, unfortunately, seem to be the biggest changes we will see for some time.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22318.htm
12. “The Sycophantic Culture
Have American culture, two political party government and institutions become sycophantic?
Once an adult takes his or her place within an organization, public or private, the dynamics of human interaction and reaction begin based as much on human emotions, weaknesses and biases than on fairness, objectivity and merit. The expression, “go along to get along” is almost an unsaid national slogan for many Americans. A sycophant is “a person who seeks favor by flattering people of wealth or influence” according to Webster’s New World Dictionary. Sycophants do not make waves or criticisms.
A sycophant will never criticize or correct his superiors, being careful to be fawningly pleasant. The stakes are high: paychecks, pay raises and promotions. Government itself easily makes the people subservient with its power of force always at the ready. George Washington said government was not reason or logic, but force. The threat of a police state which is often denied or rejected by the mainstream media is nonetheless a real prospect given ever more stringent laws and immense resources allocated for security at the state and national levels, fostering sycophancy and subservience. Too often Americans may confuse criticism with impoliteness.
…
Do government and the educational system consciously remove critics and embrace sycophants? Has group think become a euphemism for sycophancy? Are our strongest potential leaders removed early in the educational process in order to maintain the status quo? Is society often left with those whose skills include sycophancy and pandering? Politicians excel in pandering by constantly telling the American people how great a country they have without creating and establishing meaningful and beneficial change in government programs, for example, in forestalling the current economic meltdown now confronting the nation.
Any society and its military is as only as good as its ability to not only perceive the truth but also use it as its basis for action. A nation of sheep is bred by sycophants. The sycophants are more a danger to society by creating failure than critics who often point the way to human progress and understanding.
Critics, not sycophants, will lead us away from dead ends to the reality of the world we desperately need to comprehend.“
