1. More military lies. What a surprise:
“The Army says it exceeded its 2009 recruiting goals. But the numbers are very fishy.
Whatever the theory, many reporters assumed the numbers mean that more young men and women are joining the military.
In fact, however, fewer people joined the Army this year than last year. The Army exceeded its recruitment goals not because recruitment went up but rather because recruitment goals were lowered.
…
It is, in other words, not the case that high unemployment or a new public spirit is leading more young men and women into the Army. It’s not the case that more young men and women are going into the Army at all.
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The secretary of defense ordered, and Congress authorized, an expansion in the size of the Army. But the Army reduced the recruitment goal—and reduced the retention goal. The size of the Army is in fact shrinking. It may look as if it’s growing—the Pentagon report gives the impression it’s growing—but it’s growing only in comparison with the officially set goals. What the report leaves out is that those goals have been lowered, in some cases dramatically. Is the Army engaging in deliberate deception? Did someone lower the goals so that it looked like the Army was doing much better, when it was really doing a little worse?”
http://www.slate.com/id/2232548/
2. “Why Liberals Kill
The left may be pressuring President Obama to exit Afghanistan. But their heroes—from FDR to JFK—promoted U.S. involvement in more wars than all modern GOP presidents combined.
Should President Barack Obama continue his escalation of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it will be the liberal thing to do.
What too few Americans realize—especially the president’s anti-war supporters, who accuse him of betraying liberal or “progressive” values—is that if he accedes to General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan and intensifies the drone attacks in Pakistan, he will follow squarely in the footsteps of the great liberal statesmen he has cited as his role models. Though opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cheered loudly when Obama spoke reverentially in his campaign speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy, those heroes of the president promoted and oversaw U.S. involvement in wars that killed, by great magnitudes, more Americans and foreign civilians than all the modern Republican military operations combined.
What should be even more troubling to those who call themselves progressives but oppose the current wars: Obama’s motivations for pursuing them are rooted in the central tenet of progressivism, enunciated by his idols, that the American national government is responsible for the reform and uplift of those “we” deem to be living below “our” standards, and that “they” must be protected from their oppressors. Obama’s role models followed the logic of that moral calling to the ends of the earth.
…
The trinity of evangelism, large government intervention, and global transformative aspirations was revived, ironically, in the Republican administration of George W. Bush. It is well-documented that the so-called neoconservatives in and around the Bush administration identify with the very same presidents Obama admires. Indeed, their No Child Left Behind program mandating standardized testing in public schools, use of enhanced executive powers, and “regime-change” foreign policy were anathema to traditional, “paleo” conservatives.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-17/why-liberals-kill/
3. “Barring George W. Bush from Canada: Time for the Law to Step in
Why bother doing this, is a question often asked of efforts to have George W. Bush barred from Canada or prosecuted for torture once he arrives. Being questioned, is not the quality of the overwhelming evidence of Bush’ involvement in torture (and other war crimes and crimes against humanity), but rather the power of Canadian law to either prevent or punish torture and other crimes committed by the Bush administration.
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The protestors think it is necessary to enforce the law against Bush, to hold him and others accountable. Both common sense and history tell them that enforcement is necessary in order prevent further crimes. The Canadian government, backed up by the RCMP and municipal police, plan instead to welcome Mr. Bush to Canada. The RCMP, alone, plan to spend upwards of $500,000 to protect Bush during his October visit from the protests of those calling for the proper enforcement of the law.
Protestors are beginning to ask—are they, politicians and police—breaking the law by refusing to enforce it? Can we charge them? Certainly both the government and police are giving the message that, at least in Canada, George W. Bush will be immune, not accountable: that he will be welcomed, not barred.
Protestors fear that by providing even temporary immunity to Bush, Canada offers licence to other leaders to commit torture and other war crimes and to do so with immunity. Protestors fear that by so doing, Canadian officials tacitly encourage other states to commit the very crimes that Canada has agreed to vigorously and effectively prevent and punish wherever they occur. These crimes include torture, murder, unlawful confinement, denial of a fair trial, enforced disappearances, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury, extensive destruction and appropriation of property, unlawful deportation or transfer. In order to combat impunity for these crimes and to ensure justice for victims, Canada has agreed that these crimes, “…must not go unpunished and that their effective prosecution must be ensured by taking measures at the national level…” and also that, “…it is the duty of every state to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes.”
The protestors want that commitment honoured and the laws passed in furtherance of the commitment to be enforced: our government and law enforcement officials apparently refuse to do so. Instead they appear poised to bypass the law and use law enforcement resources to shield Bush and other suspects from accountability while they are in Canada.
We hope the law wins. We think that our collective survival depends on it.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15733
4. Why do they hate us? It ain’t at all about our freedoms:
“Note, too, the vast gap between how Americans perceive of their actions (mere “aberrations”) and how so much of the rest of the world perceives of it, especially those in the targeted regions. So much of this disparity is explained by a basic lack of empathy: imagine if every American spent just a day contemplating how they’d react if some foreign army from a Muslim nation invaded and bombed the U.S., occupied the country for the next several years with 60,000 soldiers, killed tens of thousands of citizens here, set up secret prisons where they disappeared Americans for years without charges or even contact with the outside world, imposed sanctions that blockaded food and medicine and killed countless children, invaded and ransacked our homes at will, abducted Americans and shipped them halfway around the world to island-prisons, instituted a worldwide torture regime, armed their allies for attacks on other Western nations, and threatened still other invasions.
Do you think Americans might be seething with rage about that, wanting to kill as many of the people from that country as possible? Wouldn’t it be rather obvious that the more that was done to Americans, the more filled with hatred and a desire for violence they would be?”
…
And the same writer on the ludicrous War On Drugs:
“The failure of the drug war and criminalization schemes is so glaring that, despite its previously taboo nature (taboos enforced by the U.S. in various ways), it is being rapidly acknowledged around the world. Even though the paper I wrote for the Cato Institute on Portugal’s success with decriminalization was published almost six months ago, I now receive more invitations than ever to present the paper, especially at meetings of government officials and policy makers in Latin America, because almost every country in the region is now actively re-considering its criminalization approach to drug policy. Even a modest willingness on the part of the U.S. government to pursue or even tolerate alternative approaches could play a major role in accelerating that process, as countries in virtually every region of the world have long been coerced by Washington to maintain strict criminalization approaches and to embrace the destructive Drug War model.
The War on Drugs is the pernicious precursor to the War on Terror in so many ways, beginning with the relentless erosion of civil liberties; endless expansions of federal powers of detention, surveillance and militarized involvement in other countries; and a general pretext for remaining in an endless “war” posture. Anything that moves even a little bit towards abandoning the orthodoxies which sustain it should be applauded. And whatever else is true, being free of gun-wielding DEA agents is a real benefit for people with serious illnesses and those who provide them with medical treatments prescribed by their physicians.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
5. “Corporate Supremacy and the Rape of a Human Girl
Now that we have reached the point where Republicans can argue with a straight face that rape should be overlooked in favor of corporate protectionism maybe this will change.
I think American businesses are waking up to the excesses of the extremist assault on democracy. When all the courthouses are closed, they can’t get their business-to-business contracts enforced.
I fear, though, that in many places progressives and their allies are stuck in old habits and personal grudge matches. Moderate business Democrats should finally understand that lawyers did not cause any of the policy problems they care most about: the collapse of public education, support for higher education, a safe environment, a predictable regulatory environment. Progressive advocacy groups should wake up, too. When the public is sealed out of courthouses and capitols, all their earnest work for the environment, civil rights and health care will come to nothing.
It is a sign of our moral confusion that we are forced to have a conversation about whether a woman who has been gang-raped can go to court against her assailants. It is altogether disagreeable that we have to have it with inhuman entities that want us to grant them legal superiority in laws meant for humans.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23745.htm
