1. “Obama Sells Out to the Neocons
Obama vows that he will “finish the job” in Afghanistan to the cheers of warmongering neoconservatives but the simple question is: at what cost, Mr. President? How many more billions will be spent? How many more U.S. service members will perish or suffer serious injuries? And how many more innocent civilians need to die or be maimed in this endless military occupation/nation-building project? The administration refuses to answer those tough questions but it appears they are already planning to increase troop levels well into 2011.”
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/2405-obama-sells-out-to-the-neocons
2. “UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files
Terror squad arrest over model rocket
The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record.
His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his computer files.
The 33-year-old man, originally from London, is currently held at a secure mental health unit after being sectioned while serving his sentence at Winchester Prison.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/
3. “The Thanksgiving of the Fantasticals
A Day of Rule breaking, and Spontaneous Mirth
When we used to do Thanksgiving as cross-dressing and insulting authority:
Thanksgiving was a Northeastern regional commemoration until Abraham Lincoln promulgated it as a national holiday in 1863, and it was celebrated in lots of different ways. One of those ways was for young men to dress up as women or in fantastic costumes and promenade, and mug, and make fun of authority. It was a “masculine escape” from the family, an opportunity to break rules and be outlandish. In our increasingly regimented national security state, we could do with some of that old Thanksgiving cheekiness, though we need both sexes now.
Thanksgiving in the nineteenth century in some parts of the country was a combination of Eddie Izzard (cross-dressing), Lady Gaga (wild costumes and breaking conventions), and Jon Stewart (mirthful insults directed at high political authority). Some historians suggest that the homey, nuclear-family Thanksgiving meal was a reaction against all this public rowdiness. Alas, so successful a reaction that the carnivale side of the holiday has been erased from public memory
…
If only present-day Americans were not so apathetic and timid that they gave up the most basic rights enshrined in our Constitution almost without a fight just because Dick Cheney sneered at them and muttered something about national security — if only they showed some spunk and dared break social conventions and get uppity in the cause of personal liberty rather than that of corporate perquisites from time to time– now that would be something to be thankful for.”
4. “Tony Blair told ‘days before Iraq invasion’ WMD had been dismantled
Iraq inquiry: Tony Blair told ‘days before invasion’ WMD had been dismantled – Telegraph
What I remember is that knowledgeable inspectors and expatriate Iraq scientists were saying this all through 2002 and into early 2003.
Here is Imad Khadduri’s piece from that winter: “Iraq has no N-weapons, claims expatriate scientist 06/01/2003. (Via my posting, at the time at IC.
Bush, Cheney, Blair and the gang knew they were lying. They were just confident that they could run out the clock on the truth.”
5. “Everyone Knew that Iraq Didn’t Have WMDs
Everyone knew the WMD claims were fake.
For example, Tony Blair – the British Prime Minister – knew that Saddam possessed no WMDs. If America’s closest ally Britain knew, then the White House knew as well.
And the number 2 Democrat in the Senate -who was on the Senate intelligence committee – admitted that the Senate intelligence committee knew before the war started that Bush’s public statements about Iraqi WMDs were false. If the committee knew, then the White House knew as well.
But we don’t even have to use logic to be able to conclude that the White House knew.
Specifically, the former highest-ranking CIA officer in Europe says that Bush, Cheney and Rice were personally informed that Iraq had no WMDs in Fall 2002 (and see this).”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/11/everyone-knew-that-iraq-didnt-have-wmds.html
6. “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
It’s not often that the intersection of history and contemporary events pose such a startling and chilling lesson as does the contemplation of the murder of JFK on November 22, 1963 juxtaposed with the situations faced by President Obama today. So far, at least, Obama’s behavior has mirrored Johnson’s, not Kennedy’s, as he has escalated the war in Afghanistan by 34,000. One can’t but help think that the thought of JFK’s fate might not be far from his mind as he contemplates his next move in Afghanistan.
Douglass presents a very compelling argument that Kennedy was killed by “unspeakable” (the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s term) forces within the U.S. national security state because of his conversion from a cold warrior into a man of peace. He argues, using a wealth of newly uncovered information, that JFK had become a major threat to the burgeoning military-industrial complex and had to be eliminated through a conspiracy planned by the CIA – “the CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it” – not by a crazed individual, the Mafia, or disgruntled anti-Castro Cubans, though some of these may have been used in the execution of the plot.
Why and by whom? These are the key questions. If it can be shown that Kennedy did, in fact, turn emphatically away from war as a solution to political conflict; did, in fact, as he was being urged by his military and intelligence advisers to up the ante and use violence, rejected such advice and turned toward peaceful solutions, then, a motive for his elimination is established. If, furthermore, it can be clearly shown that Oswald was a dupe in a deadly game and that forces within the military/intelligence apparatus were involved with him from start to finish, then the crime is solved, not by fingering an individual who may have given the order for the murder or pulled the trigger, but by showing that the coordination of the assassination had to involve U.S. intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA . Douglass does both, providing highly detailed and intricately linked evidence based on his own research and a vast array of the best scholarship.
We are then faced with the contemporary relevance, and since we know that every president since JFK has refused to confront the growth of the national security state and its call for violence, one can logically assume a message was sent and heeded. In this regard, it is not incidental that former twenty-seven year CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, in a recent interview, warned of the “two CIAs,” one the analytic arm providing straight scoop to presidents, the other the covert action arm which operates according to its own rules. “Let me leave you with this thought,” he told his interviewer, “and that is that I think Panetta (current CIA Director), and to a degree Obama, are afraid – I never thought I’d hear myself saying this – I think they are afraid of the CIA.” He then recommended Douglass’ book, “It’s very well-researched and his conclusion is very alarming.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16273
7. What a viciously stupid man:
“John Bolton is the prototypical right-wing pseudo-tough-guy: cheering on every war he can find without ever getting near any of them. And as usual for this strain of play-acting, chest-beating warrior, all of the belligerence and craving of vicarious power masks a deep and pitiful cowardice. That is often the principal purpose of warmongering from a distance. Yesterday, Bolton — on “Washington Times Radio” — revealed that he is so petrified of Terrorists that he would not feel safe in New York City during the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and would not even allow his family there
…
The cowardice on display here is difficult to overstate — and to behold without being ill. I lived in Manhattan on 9/11 and for many years thereafter. For weeks — even months and years after that attack — it was widely assumed that New York would be a likely target for another attack, but I never heard a single New Yorker — not one — talk about fleeing the city or hiding their family in some faraway place. During the 2004 election, New Yorkers voted for the candidate who wanted to treat Terrorism like a law enforcement problem over the pseudo-tough-guy “war president” by a margin of 80-20. The fears engulfing Bolton and which he’s attempting to infect the country with are found almost exclusively among this species of war-mongers obsessed with flamboyant — and very public — rituals where they proclaim their own “strength” and “courage.”
John Bolton and his comrades love to run around accusing anyone who doesn’t want to wage more wars of being an “appeaser“ and “surrendering“ to Terrorists, but Bolton’s cry here is the ultimate, definitive surrender: I’m too scared of the Terrorists to go about my normal life. I’m too petrified even to have my family in the same city as a terrorist trial. We can’t adhere to our normal political system because the Terrorists will kill us all.
…
All over the world, countries have put terrorists on trial in their largest and most important cities — London, Madrid, Mumbai, Denpasar (the capital of Bali). That’s because their countries weren’t flooded by meek, frightened little men like John Bolton who want to send their fellow citizens to bomb and invade as many countries as they can find in order to conceal and compensate for the suffocating cowardice revealed by both his life and these comments. It’s a natural human instinct to try to prove to the world that one possesses exactly those characteristics which one most lacks — which is why right-wing warriors of the type represented by John Bolton are so desperate to prove their Churchillian courage and resolve, always from the safest and most risk-free distances.
Quite related to all of this, Brad at Sadly, No examines what he calls American elites’ “nationalist narcissism. They believe not only that America has the right and the duty to be the ‘dominant’ country in the world, but that every other country in the world should be talking forever about how wonderful we are.” It’s not hard to understand the source of their need to constantly have affirmed what Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman this week calls “our special destiny” as he frets that Obama is failing to salvage it by not keeping the U.S. at the Center of the World. It’s the same need that makes John Bolton and his comrades endlessly try to prove to the world how tough and brave they are even as they hide from and cower before Terrorists. There are many reasons why America is a country perpetually at war, but this warped and broken psychological state — weak and frightened individuals cheering on faraway wars as a means of feeling tough and strong, all justified by our own Supreme Specialness — is one of the leading causes.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
8. “Get Ready for the Obama/GOP Alliance
With President Obama pushing a huge troop escalation in Afghanistan, history may well repeat itself with a vengeance. And it’s not just the apt comparison to LBJ, who destroyed his presidency on the battlefields of Vietnam with an escalation that delivered power to Nixon and the GOP.
There’s another frightening parallel: Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, who accomplished perhaps his single biggest legislative “triumph” — NAFTA — thanks to an alliance with Republicans that overcame strong Democratic and grassroots opposition.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24064.htm
9. “Several months ago, CNN published the results of a couple of disturbing polls about Americans and their religious beliefs. The first found that more Americans are rejecting religion and thus, according to CNN, America is becoming “less Christian.” The second, a Pew survey of only 742 mostly white evangelical Protestants, revealed that more than six in 10 of them believe that torture is often or sometimes justified.
More than six in 10? What this says about those claiming to be God’s own is that perhaps they should use their Bibles for more than “thumping.” Because not one in 10 — not one in 10 thousand — not one in 10 million — Christians believes that torture can ever be justified. Ever.
Anyone who has paid attention to the growing number of evangelical zealots over the past couple of decades must be aware that there is a growing chasm between Religion and Christianity. Today, the term, “religious Christians” is nothing if not oxymoronic. It seems when folks become apocalyptic frothing-at-the-mouth religious, they ultimately stray from the light and life of Christianity, while descending deeper into the darkness and death of Religion.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24056.htm
10. “Any would-be rogue, hawking vengeance towards her own campaign and grievance against the mass media, unified by absurd tall tales, invites parallels to like-minded rogues. Sarah Palin is indebted to Richard Nixon (for ruthless ambition, dishonesty), Joe McCarthy (moral crusades, dishonesty), Dubya (cheerleading, unfitness, dishonesty), and Dick Cheney (demagoguery, dishonesty). On the positive side, Palin parallels Oprah (celebrity, showmanship), Evita (melodrama, populism), Carrie Prejean (sexy rule breaking), and Annie Oakley (folksy spunkiness, defying critics).
Even beyond winning elections, Sarah Palin wants stardom; her book overtly embraces show personalities; and instinctively, she goes for glitz and duplicity (even lying, to believe McCain and staff).
But when did truth (or reality) impede show business, establishing Palin’s best spiritual mentor as no other than P.T. Barnum, the 19th Century circus barker and con man, whose outlandish publicity triumphs became the “Greatest Show on Earth,” aptly Barnum and Bailey Circus. Palin’s circus obeys Barnum’s model, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Plus adages, “If you hesitate, some bolder hand will stretch out before you and get the prize” and “Without promotion something terrible happens . . . Nothing!”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24062.htm
