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We Don't Want Obama to Make Bush's Policies Succeed; We Want New Policies
Posted by Leslie Savan, TheNation.com on October 30, 2009 at 6:15 AM.
Even without George W. Bush's debut in Fort Worth as a motivational speaker (see Stephen Colbert swoon over the speech here), this past week has been full of reminders of 43. On Wednesday, President Obama walked out onto the North Lawn of the White House to plant a tree where, one year earlier, Bush had tried to plant a Scarlet Oak. Bush's tree "didn't take," so Obama shoveled a few symbolic spadefuls of dirt over the roots of a Linden tree, asked assembled reporters whether it looked nice, and walked back into the Oval Office.
Sometime after midnight, 44 caught a quick helicopter ride out to the Dover Air Base to stand, wind-whipped and slender, as the bodies of 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan were off-loaded from a C-17 in their flag-draped coffins. It was the first time in eight years of war that a President has greeted our returning dead. Obama flashed a neat, palm-down right-hand salute, which cameras recorded matter-of-factly, as if images of respect for the returning dead were an everyday affair.
When Glenn Beck says the Obama presidency is all about "reparations," he's insinuating that the President wants to lavish government goodies on blacks while stealing from whites. But this is how the Obama camp perceives reparations: Obama is indeed going about repairing things his predecessor bungled, it is truly an appalling mess to clean up, and they don't want to hear criticism of how he "holds the mop." Obama is doing his level best, they say, to restore the national honor, and if we give him enough time he will bring the bloom back to American policy.
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In the U.S., Veterans Come Home From War Only To See Relatives Executed By the State
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on October 27, 2009 at 1:16 PM.
Editor's note: Reginald Blanton was executed on Tuesday, Oct. 27th, pronounced dead at 6:21pm.
28-year-old Reginald Blanton is scheduled to die tonight in Texas, despite the very real possibility that he is innocent. This morning, his brother, Andre Bios, appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss his brother's impending execution.
Bios is an Iraq vet; he served in the 1991 Gulf War. Speaking to Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Bios described the cruel irony of having devoted himself to supposedly defending democratic ideals on behalf of his country, only to have his brother sentenced to die at the hands of the state:
Amy Goodman: Andre, you’re about to visit your brother. Are you going to be, if in fact he is executed, one of the witnesses to the execution?
Andre Bios: Yes, I am. It was one of the things that I did not want to do, but he has been requesting over and over again for me to be there ...
And the reason why I didn’t want to witness what was getting ready to happen to my brother is because it’s like a slap in my face from my own country, you know? His constitutional rights were violated, but yet I can go overseas and fight in another country to uphold peace, liberty, for them to have, but I can’t uphold peace, liberty and equality for my own brother.
Years ago, I had the opportunity to work alongside Monique Matthews, also a veteran, and the sister of Ryan Matthews, an African American teenager who was sentenced to death in Louisiana for a crime that he didn't commit. Ryan was exonerated in 2004, but I can still remember the sense of betrayal in his sister's voice as she described the hypocrisy -- and the racism that led to his wrongful conviction.
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Honduras's 'Bloodless Coup': What You're Not Seeing on TV
Posted by Avi Lewis, Al Jazeera English on October 27, 2009 at 7:43 AM.
This video is a trailer for the Fault Lines' coverage of the coup in Honduras. Watch Part One and Part Two of the full version of Fault Lines: 100 Days of Resistance.
I arrived in Honduras one week after ousted president Manuel Zelaya returned to begin his long spell of internal exile in the Brazilian embassy. With my crew from Fault Lines on Al Jazeera English TV, I went straight from the airport to a funeral. A week later, on our last night of filming, we attended another funeral. The first was for a 24-year-old woman, the second for a 50-year-old schoolteacher, and both active in the resistance to the coup. According to their families, both were killed for it.
The coup regime in Honduras is winning. Tepid pressure from the Obama administration is making it easy for the de facto government to run out the clock until the highly compromised elections in just five weeks. Whether or not international observers bless that vote, a new government will take power in Honduras and declare the stain of the coup removed, democracy restored. Absent the kind of meaningful sanctions Washington has so far been unwilling to impose, the status quo will triumph: the backers of the coup will go unpunished.
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. mainstream media is not reporting the story of what is really going on in Honduras. The de facto government and its backers invested $400,000 (that we know of) in bipartisan lobbying, and succeeded in implanting a deeply distorted narrative of events -- a nouveau cold war story starring Hugo Chávez as puppet master and Zelaya as marionette. Meanwhile, the voice of the social movement struggling to reform its country's constitution in the second poorest nation in the hemisphere has been all but ignored.
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Saudi Woman Journalist Sentenced to 60 Lashes For Working On Show That Talked About Sex
Posted by , AlterNet on October 26, 2009 at 9:30 AM.
Reuters reports:
A Saudi court sentenced a female journalist to 60 lashes in a case brought after a Lebanese television channel she worked for aired the sex confession of a Saudi man, the reporter and a lawyer said.
Rosana, 22, who did not want her full name disclosed, said a court in Jeddah convicted her on Saturday on grounds that the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. she worked for did not have proper authorization to operate in the Islamic kingdom.
The ruling follows the sentencing by the same court of Mazen Abdul-Awad to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes earlier in October after he appeared on an LBC show and talked about his sexual exploits.
The show has sparked a public outcry in the U.S. ally, one of the world's most conservative countries, where clerics have wide-ranging influence and control.
"I had nothing to do with Mazen Abdul-Jawad's show. The verdict was just because I cooperated with LBC," the female journalist told Reuters.
LBC is a popular channel in Saudi Arabia, and many Saudis tune in to its Western-style entertainment programs and talk shows.
Read more here.
New Website Tracks Your Congressional Reps' Moves On Afghanistan
Posted by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, TheNation.com on October 26, 2009 at 8:40 AM.
President Obama will soon make what could be the defining decision of his presidency. The course he chooses in Afghanistan will tell us a lot about the kind of country we will become during his administration.
We have already been fighting in Afghanistan for twice as long as we fought in World War II. In fact, the United States and its NATO partners have had more than 40,000 troops in Afghanistan since 2006 and have spent more than $300 billion on military and civilian operations. At this perilous moment, as we attempt to recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the last thing we need is a "surge" of 40,000 more troops to fight on behalf of a corrupt and unpopular Afghan government.
Security in the United States and the region depend not on this misguided surge, but on commonsense counterterrorist and homeland security measures: extensive intelligence cooperation, expert police work, border control, and the surgical use of special forces to disrupt imminent attack when needed.
What is hopeful is that the majority of Americans have turned against the war.
The Nation's special issue on Afghanistan -- Obama's Fateful Choice -- published [last] week, takes on the rationale for escalation, challenges the White House to explore a broader range of options, and offers alternatives, including an exit strategy. The issue also offers ways to get involved to oppose this misguided and dangerous policy.
One new effort was launched today by five national peace advocacy groups representing hundreds of thousands of Americans -- a project called NoEscalation.org. The website tracks whether Members of Congress have taken a stand against troop escalation, and lists their phone numbers so constituents can call and ask their legislators to oppose it.
The website is created by CodePink, Just Foreign Policy, Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, and Voters for Peace. The groups are urging Americans to report back to NoEscalation.org about their conversations with Congressional offices.
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Oil Tycoon: Our Troops Died ... We're "Entitled" to Sweet Contracts in Iraq!
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 23, 2009 at 10:48 AM.
After all that, it looks like the Iraqis are cutting some big deals to develop their massive oil wealth -- but with the mushy Europeans and the damn Chi-coms!
Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told a Washington conference on Wednesday that his government was happy with the energy auction it held earlier this year. The auction was the first chance for foreign oil firms to compete for Iraqi oil since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
BP and the Chinese oil company CNPC were the only firms to win a contract in Iraq's bid round this summer, the first chance for foreign oil firms to compete for Iraqi oil since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Seven other oil and gas fields failed to attract bidders on the terms Iraq offered.
But a consortium headed by Italy's ENI (ENI.MI: Quote, Profile, Research) said last week it signed a deal to develop the giant Zubair field for a remuneration fee of $2 a barrel. At Iraq's oilfield auction in June, the consortium refused to go below $4.40 a barrel.
Another consortium headed by Exxon is still in the running for one project, but that doesn't mollify hedge-fund gazillionaire -- and natural gas honcho -- T-Boone Pickens. He's none-too-happy:
Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.
[...]
"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."
[...]
"We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," Pickens said.
Nothing new -- In August T-Boone called on the administration to "demand" oil contracts from Iraq before considering a withdrawal ($$). But it is an unusually brazen admission that many energy bigs did in fact consider "blood-for-oil" to be a straightforward deal.
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Insane Neocon to Ron Reagan: Your Father Would Be Ashamed
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 23, 2009 at 9:46 AM.
Right-wing pundit Frank Gaffney was on MSNBC's "Hardball" yesterday, debating U.S. policy in Afghanistan with Ron Reagan. It didn't go well, but the heated exchange was really only part of the problem. (thanks to reader W.B. for the tip)
After Reagan rejected the neocon approach to the conflict, Gaffney made things personal. "Your father would be ashamed of you," Gaffney told Reagan. The former president's son replied, "You better watch your mouth about that, Frank."
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Obama to Karzai: Thanks for Admitting You're Crooked
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on October 20, 2009 at 4:30 PM.
Barack Obama will have to do some awfully embarrassing things as president. The whole pardoning the turkey thing on the eve of Thanksgiving comes to mind. And then there's the taking John Boehner seriously thing -- an admittedly impossible task that must be undertaken as perhaps the most thankless burden of the republic.
On the scale of exceptionally embarrassing White House duties, however, few moments will rival the point on Tuesday when the president found himself hailing the commitment of accused election-fraudster Hamid Karzai to "ensuring a credible process for the Afghan people which results in a government that reflects their will."
Karzai, the imposed viceroy, er, president of Afghanistan whose supporters engaged in massive fraud in order to "win" the country's recent election, has agreed to participate in a November 7 runoff election with Abdullah Abdullah – the most resilient survivor of the Karzai team's chicanery.
Obama, who is heavily invested in the fantasy that Karzai is a legitimate leader and that the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan will somehow develop popular support there (or in the United States), knows that the Afghan president is no democrat.
But the American president must pretend that Afghanistan is a functional republic that meets internationally-accepted standards with regard to voting, counting and reporting results.
That's not the case. Independent agencies and analysts have confirmed that fraud was so widespread that it was unreasonable to claim Karzai -- or anyone else -- had one.
Karzai's association with election fraud and corruption has made it harder for U.S. officials to proceed with plans to ramp up the occupation by sending in more troops and transforming a classic military presence into a more permanent project.
So Karzai had to agree to at least go through the motions of participating in a real election.
And when he did, Obama hailed a man who stands accused of orchestrating a massive effort to thwart democracy as someone whose "constructive actions established an important precedent for Afghanistan's new democracy."
Obama's precise statement went like this: "While this election could have remained unresolved to the detriment of the country, President Karzai's constructive actions established an important precedent for Afghanistan's new democracy. The Afghan constitution and laws are strengthened by President Karzai's decision, which is in the best interests of the Afghan people."
The "yuck factor" was high.
But it got higher when Obama praised Karzai for helping to foster "such a vibrant campaign."
It is, of course, true that Obama is not the first American president to have to pretend that a local bad guy who got caught red handed was some kind of statesman.
Still, having to speak well of Karzai is a lot -- arguably too much -- to ask.
And if Obama has any sense of the region -- or of the trouble his Afghanistan initiative is in -- he had to be hoping that Karzai and his henchmen would refrain from obvious lawbreaking in the second round.
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Key Figure in AIPAC Spy Scandal Interrupts Sentence to Call for Regime Change in Iran
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 20, 2009 at 3:15 PM.
Last week, it was John Bolton advocating -- or kinda-sorta advocating -- a nuclear first strike on Iran at a GOP-affiliated conference on "ensuring peace." This week, the ironic-crazy continues with Larry Franklin -- the former defense official who pled guilty to 3 counts of criminal conspiracy for handing classified documents to Israeli officials and representatives of AIPAC -- arguing for regime change in Iran in the prestigious pages of Foreign Policy magazine.
Franklin was working in the Pentagon's infamous Office of Special Plans under Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith at the time he was busted. He and his defenders say he was just trying to circumnavigate the DoD bureaucracy when he gave the documents to AIPAC officials -- that he thought they could get his "concerns" about what he thought was the Bush administration's soft touch on Iran to Elliot Abrams, a fellow-traveller at the National Security Council. So while prosecutors said Franklin knew that the classified info he disseminated "could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation," the AIPAC-approved party-line is that he was a victim of his ideological opponents' "criminalization" of the kind of horse-trading in tidbits of information that's routine in DC foreign policy circles.
Even if one accepts that account -- recall that he also slipped info to an Israeli official directly -- it says quite a bit about our foreign policy establishment when a Pentagon employee would think a lobbyist for AIPAC was the best conduit he had to his superiors in the White House.
Anyway, now he takes to the pages of one of the country prestigious foreign policy journals to claim that the months of turmoil following the Iranian elections somehow vindicates his actions. "Still serving my 10-month sentence," he writes, "I take little solace in the knowledge that my concerns were justified." (Sounds dramatic, but Franklin, who faced up to 25 years behind bars, got a slap on the wrist -- 13 months in jail which were later reduced to 10 months under house arrest.)
It's also unclear why the events of recent months absolve him of his crimes. Franklin says his goal was to "shake the foundations of Iran's mullahcracy," but all parties in the disputed election support the basic structure of Iran's "mullahcracy." And if he's just saying that the tainted vote proved the regime in Tehran to be generally cruel or corrupt, it's not like it enjoyed a good reputation in DC foreign policy circles at the time anyway.
But of course, the larger point of the column is to urge us all to finally follow his advice and overthrow the damn regime already ...
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Under U.S. Pressure, Karzai To Accept Run-Off Election
Posted by , Democracy Now! on October 20, 2009 at 6:45 AM.
Under heavy pressure from the Obama administration, Afghan President Hamid Karzai appears set to concede today that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election. But the path to resolving the political crisis remains uncertain. Officials said Karzai was moving toward accepting the findings of a United Nations audit that stripped him of nearly a third of his votes. This leaves Karzai below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah. The New York Times reports some Obama administration officials are now quietly pushing for Karzai and Abdullah to form a coalition government to avoid a runoff altogether. Earlier today Abdullah called for the formation of an interim government to shepherd the country through the winter if it’s too difficult or dangerous to organize a runoff in the coming weeks. Meanwhile the Times of London reports Afghanistan's security chiefs have been ordered to make emergency preparations for a second round of voting. United Nations spokesperson Aleem Seddique said the international community is ready to assist with the run-off.
Aleem Seddique: "Preparations are already well underway for a run-off, all the voting materials that are required to conduct a run-off are now in country, distribution will begin next week if the Independent Election Commission announces the need for a run-off, so on the part of the United Nations we are standing ready to assist the electoral authority of this country to conduct that run-off, if it's required."
Husband Joins Army So Cancer-Stricken Wife Can Get Health Care
Posted by Zaid Jilani, Think Progress on October 20, 2009 at 5:30 AM.
One of the worst tragedies of the recession has been people losing their health insurance because they lost their job. Nearly 14,000 Americans lose their insurance every day. Wisconsin father Bill Caudle was laid off from his job at a plastics company in March 2009, which resulted in his family losing their employer-subsidized health care coverage. This put the family in an especially precarious position, because Bill's wife, Michelle, was an ovarian cancer patient. After months of unsuccessfully looking for work, Caudle did the only thing he could to get his wife chemotherapy -- he joined the Army:
Bill needed a job. He needed health benefits. [...]
The Army would solve their health coverage problem. In years past he would have been too old, but in 2005 the age limit for enlistment was increased from 35 to 40, and a year later it was raised again to 42. The tradeoff would be his absence from home.
In the end, although he risked leaving Michelle to fight cancer on her own, Bill chose the Army. He signed on for a job as a signal support systems specialist, a soldier who works with communications equipment.
"Seventy percent of the reason is for the insurance," said Bill’s mother, Marguerite Hemiller. "He told me, 'I've always wanted to do something for my country and I have to help Michelle.'"
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Spell "Quagmire" A-F-G-H-A-N-I-S-T-A-N
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 19, 2009 at 2:11 PM.
There are few pundits quite as dishonest as the WaPo's Jackson Diehl, so who knows if his concern-trolling on behalf of our European allies is even true:
As the president and his National Security Council privately debate whether to send tens of thousands of troops to war, America's European allies watch with a mixture of anxiety and anguish. They know that if the deployment goes forward, they will be asked to make their own difficult and politically costly contributions of soldiers or other personnel. But they are, if anything, even more worried that the American president will choose a feckless strategy for what they consider a critical mission. And they are frustrated that they must watch and wait -- and wait and wait -- for the president to make up his mind.
To back his contention, he cites Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, then fleshes it out with the words of a "senior commander in one European army," "the words of one ambassador" and "another ambassador." So there are two Europeans whose quotes are perfectly inline with Diehl's personal preference for more military force in Afghanistan. And apparently, they basically represent a continental consensus:
European governments bought in to Obama's ambitious plan to pacify Afghanistan when he presented it in March. Unlike the U.S. president, they mostly haven't had second thoughts. By and large they agree with the recommendations developed by the commander Obama appointed, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who says that unless the momentum of the Taliban is broken in the next year, the war may be lost.
Even if we buy his story, it's worth noting that Diehl's never met a foreign war he didn't like and was naturally far less sympathetic to European sensibilities when most of those in the Old Country vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq.
Now he's become so preoccupied with the idea that the Yur-peans may think us wobbly -- and perhaps less-than-manly -- if the Obama administration chooses not to escalate the conflict that he doesn't bother to argue why we should.
He doesn't articulate what success in Afghanistan might look like, and he takes it as a given that more troops would finally give NATO forces the upper hand.
But that is anything but a sure thing ...
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Hillary Clinton Gives "Shameless Pitch" for Crooked Corporation in Russia
Posted by Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports on October 19, 2009 at 9:50 AM.
On a recent visit to Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was there to deliver a "shameless pitch" to the start-up Russian airline Rosavia to sign a major contract with Boeing to purchase a new fleet of aircraft from the U.S. aerospace giant. "This has been a consistent commitment on the part of the United States Government here in Moscow to promote this, because it really does illustrate very powerfully what we can do together," Clinton said during an October 13 visit to Boeing Design Center Moscow. She said the Export-Import Bank of the United States "would welcome an application for financing from Rosavia to support its purchase of Boeing Aircraft, and I hope that on a future visit I'll see a lot of new Rosavia-Boeing planes when I land in Moscow."
Boeing is the leading aerospace company in the world and a major U.S. defense contractor. Overall, it is the third largest U.S. government contractor with some $24 billion in annual federal contracts. The company does more than $60 billion in annual sales.
Boeing is also a major recidivist corporate crook.
Since 1995, Boeing has paid $1.5 billion in fines to settle more than 30 instances of misconduct, according to the non-partisan Project on Government Oversight. According to POGO, these include multiple violations of the Arms Export Control Act, including selling defense technology to Russia and China showing "blatant disregard" for State Department directives. According to POGO, Boeing settled cases with the U.S. government for:
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Cindy McCain Bankrolled Conference That Called for Ban on Mercenaries
Posted by Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports on October 16, 2009 at 8:30 PM.
A little-publicized U.S. Naval Academy conference named after Senator John McCain and bankrolled by his wealthy wife, Cindy, issued a call earlier this year for the U.S. government to ban the use of armed private security contractors like Blackwater in U.S. war zones, stating bluntly, "contractors should not be deployed as security guards, sentries, or even prison guards within combat areas."
"[T]he use of deadly force must be entrusted only to those whose training, character and accountability are most worthy of the nation's trust: the military," reads the executive summary of the U.S. Naval Academy’s 9th Annual McCain Conference on Ethics and Military Leadership, which was held in April at the Annapolis Naval Station. "The military profession carefully cultivates an ethic of 'selfless service,' and develops the virtues that can best withstand combat pressures and thus achieve the nation's objectives in an honorable way. By contrast, most corporate ethical standards and available regulatory schemes are ill-suited for this environment."
In 2001, Cindy McCain, who may be worth as much as $100 million, first endowed the McCain conference "in honor of her husband" with a $210,000 gift that was specifically intended to fund conferences that would "bring together key military officers and civilian academics responsible for ethics education and character developments."
According to the Fall 2009 newsletter, "Taking Stock," published by the U.S. Naval Academy's Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership -- the host of the McCain Conference -- among the speakers at the 2009 event was none other than Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater. Prince’s company is the most infamous of those engaged in the type of armed activity explicitly condemned by the conference's leadership.
The executive summary released by the McCain conference was recently highlighted in a report completed on September 29 by the Congressional Research Service on the use of private contractors. That report said that the U.S. is "relying heavily" on armed contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and suggests their use could continue to rise. The report also states that misconduct and the killing of civilians by armed security contractors "may have undermined U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Despite the fact that the McCain conference, which publicly advocated against the use of armed contractors in combat areas bears Sen. McCain's name and was bankrolled by his wife, when it has come to making this a major issue on Capitol Hill, the Arizona Senator has been largely silent. In 2007, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Jan Schakowsky introduced the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, which sought to do precisely what the McCain conference called for two years later: to ban the use of mercenaries in U.S. war zones. McCain did not endorse or co-sponsor that legislation, which would certainly have benefited from his support (neither did then-Senator Barack Obama). Responding to a reporter's question on the campaign trail in July 2008 about whether he believed that U.S. troops and not private guards should protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, McCain said, "I'd like it, but we don't have enough. Yes, and I'd love to see pigs fly, but it ain’t gonna happen.”
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To Profit-Driven Contractors: All Rape Cases Must Go Before the Law, Period
Posted by Sady Doyle, Comment Is Free on October 16, 2009 at 1:30 PM.
Say, here's a concept: if you act to keep violent criminals out of jail, you are probably not working in your country's best interests, and shouldn't be called upon to defend it. It's a notion that was passed into law recently, with U.S. senator Al Franken's amendment to the defense appropriations bill stating that military contractors which prohibit their employees from taking rape and sexual assault cases to court would not receive funding or contracts from the U.S. government.
The impetus for the bill -- and the resistance against it -- sheds light on how rape can be excused or minimized and how the interests of corporations can take priority over human life.
In Baghdad in 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones claims, she was gang-raped by her colleagues at KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton. Her injuries, including torn pectoral muscles, tearing of her vagina and anus and ruptured breast implants, were confirmed by a physician, who said they were consistent with rape. He then handed the rape kit over to her employer, KBR. And KBR, according to Jones, locked her in a storage container, posted an armed guard outside of her door and denied her food and water.
The rape kit given to KBR disappeared, not to be seen again until 2007. When it resurfaced, it was missing doctors' notes and photographs -- which, along with the fact that Jones was drugged and could identify only one of her assailants, effectively annihilated her chances in a criminal case. KBR also denied her the right to take them even to a civil court, saying that what had been done to her was a mere "personal injury in the workplace," and could -- according to her contract -- be resolved only by arbitration.
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Arianna Huffington Calls On Biden to Resign: She's Wrong
Posted by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, TheNation.com on October 16, 2009 at 11:30 AM.
I admire Arianna Huffington. She is a strong, bold voice in our media firmament. But in the last few days, she has advanced an idea which, in my view, is wrong. She is urging Vice President Biden to resign if the Obama administration ignores his proposal to concentrate on counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Arianna argues that by doing so, Biden would be following in the hallowed tradition of US officials, like Elliot Richardson and Cyrus Vance, who resigned for reasons of principle. Richardson resigned after refusing to fire Archibald Cox; he did so to uphold the rule of law and to prevent the presidential abuse of power. Cyrus Vance resigned to protest the attempted military rescue of American hostages in Iran, which he believed jeopardized diplomatic and peaceful efforts to win their release.
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John Bolton Speaks to Young Republicans About "Ensuring Peace" ... Advocates Nuclear First Strike on Iran
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 15, 2009 at 1:37 PM.
Years ago I had a writing instructor who was very unhappy with the use of cliché. There are many crimes a writer can commit, but using a lot of trite references, he'd repeat again and again, reflected a poor and lazy intellect.
To say something is Orwellian or straight out of 1984 certainly fits that bill. But what's a guy supposed to do when John Bolton -- our former ambassador to the freakin' UN -- goes to a conference (sponsored by the University Young Republicans and Chicago Friends of Israel, natch) called "Ensuring Peace," and says stuff like this (via Daniel Luban)?
“Negotiations have failed, and so too have sanctions,” Bolton said, echoing his previously-stated belief that sanctions will prove ineffectual in changing Tehran’s behavior. “So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”
Emphasis is Luban's. I think the Great Mustache of Crazy's statement isn't quite as clear cut as Daniel. But, as he goes on to note, even in its ambiguity, it is significant to the degree it shifts the parameters of the debate:
Bolton made clear that the latter option is unacceptable... While Bolton coyly refused to spell out his conclusion, the implications of his argument were clear. If neither negotiations, nor sanctions, nor deterrence are options, then by his logic the only remaining option is for “Israel…to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program.”
Of course, it is nothing new for Bolton and his neoconservative allies to threaten an Israeli strike against Iran. But Bolton’s use of the “n-word” is, I believe, new for him, and marks a significant rhetorical escalation from the hawks. An Israeli strike, nuclear or otherwise, without U.S. permission remains unlikely. But as it often the case, I suspect that Bolton’s intention is less to give an accurate description of reality than it is to stake out positions extreme enough to shift the boundaries of debate as a whole to the right.
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Hardline Jewish 'Vigilantes' Mount Anti-Miscegenation Patrols in Israel
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 14, 2009 at 11:00 AM.
NPR had this eye-opening tale on Monday ...
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
There is a new enemy for some Israelis: Romance between Jewish women and Arab men, and vigilantes have banded together to fight it. The vigilante groups are walking the streets and towns across Israel. The largest and most notorious is in the Jewish settlements that have sprung up in and around traditionally Arab East Jerusalem. Sheera Frenkel joined one of the groups on patrol.
SHEERA FRENKEL: The small, white hatchback swings into a nearly deserted parking lot and does a quick look around. It's just after 10:00 at night, and the lot is clearly a prime destination for a teenage date night in the settlement of Pisgat Ze'ev. But David, a 31-year-old who lives here, is out for a different kind of prowl.
DAVID: (Through translator) Go down to that parking center. Stop, stop, one minute. That's them over there. Check if there is a Jewish girl in that car over there.
FRENKEL: Every night, David, who asked not to be called by his real name, patrols this and other neighboring Jewish settlements. His mission is to find Arab-Jewish couples and break up their dates.
DAVID: (Through translator) My heart hurts every time I see a Jewish girl with an Arab. It's extremely upsetting. I asked myself: How did we get to this situation? How did we descend to this level? It is a serious step backwards, in our eyes.
FRENKEL: David is the leader of a group of vigilantes that goes by several names, including Fire For Judaism and Love of Youth. They say they number between 30 and 40 men and patrol the streets each night. Officially, they're on the lookout for any mixed couples, but T.S.(ph) a member of the group who often serves as David's driver, says the problem lies solely with Arab men dating Jewish girls.
Because Israel is the only democracy anywhere and the Palestinians are treated soooooo much better than Arabs anywhere else in the world, this all seems perfectly alright.
As Elections Approach, Iraq Flexes Its Political Muscle in Iran
Posted by Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation on October 14, 2009 at 6:00 AM.
Several top Iraqi politicians have been making the rounds in Iran lately, getting support from Tehran in advance of elections scheduled in Iraq for January. Among the politicians: Ammar al-Hakim, the son of the late Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the former Iraqi prime minister who leads a breakaway faction of the Islamic Call (Dawa) party in Iraq.
Their tour, which reflects Iran's intimate relationship to many Iraqi politicians, is a sign that Iran is paying close attention to Iraqi politics. Over the summer, top Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Leader, urged Shiite Iraqis to re-unite into a unified movement for the elections. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who leads another faction of Dawa, initially wanted to join the Shiite bloc, but he demanded too much as a condition for joining, and he eventually opted out. The new Iraqi bloc includes Hakim's ISCI, the Sadrists, Jaafari's Dawa faction, and other Shiite groups. (Maliki still maintains close ties to Iran, however.)
The issue of Iran's influence in Iraq is critical for President Obama's policy toward both countries. The ongoing US talks with Iran, if they make progress, could create space for Iran and the United States to work together on stabilizing Iraq in 2010, when at least 70,000 US troops are scheduled to leave Iraq. But if the US-Iran talks falter, Iran could use its influence in Iraq to create conflict, greatly complicating the planned US pullout. And, of course, if the US-Iran conflict escalates toward confrontation and war, Iran can use its military, intelligence, and political power in Iraq to inflict casualties on American troops there.
Last week, Hakim -- himself a cleric -- visited several top Iranian ayatollahs in Qom, including Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi and Ayatollah Ali Safi Golpayegani, both relative hardliners in the Iranian spectrum. Shirazi told Hakim that "security in Iraq and Iran are inseparable," and he issued a not-so-veiled criticism of US allegations that Iran supports violent Shiite groups that attack US forces, according to the Tehran Times, saying,
"I am surprised to hear some countries saying Iran helps terrorists in Iraq, while Iraq's peace and security is our security and the two countries are not separable."
The Tehran Times added:
"The ayatollah also warned that the enemy is promoting Iranophobia and Iraqophobia, expressing hope that the two countries could thwart the enemy's efforts through joint cooperation."Everyone should be aware of the enemy's plots and this fact that the enemy is greedy about Iraq, he added."
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Former Bush General Defends DADT: "Gays Can Serve In the Military; They Just Can't Serve Openly"
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on October 12, 2009 at 8:00 AM.
In his speech to the Human Rights Campaign, President Obama pledged to "end" the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. That comment was the subject of a debate [Sunday] morning on NBC's Meet the Press. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) expressed his support for Obama's position, but emphasized that it needs "buy-in from the military." Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers struck a different note:
HOST: Do you have an opinion about whether it's time?
MYERS: Well, I take some exception with what Senator Levin said because gays can serve in the military; they just can't serve openly. And they do. And there's lots of them. And we're the beneficiary of all that.
Levin rolled his eyes after hearing Myers’ remark. Gen. Barry McCaffrey said "there's no question it's time to change the policy." Asked for his thoughts, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) avoided making any clear statements. Watch it:
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The Stupidity of "Zero-Tolerance": 6-Year-Old Suspended For Bringing Food Utensil to School
Posted by Allison Kilkenny, True/Slant on October 12, 2009 at 7:00 AM.
NEWARK, Del. -- Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother's fiancé by his side to vouch for him.
Zachary’s offense? Taking a Cub Scout utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about joining the Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary now faces 45 days in the district's reform school.via It’s a Fork, It’s a Spoon, It’s a … Weapon? -- NYTimes.com
When great tragedy happens in this country (say, planes flying into towers or two young men shooting up their high school,) Americans typically react in the following fashion:
The list applies to the post-9/11 hysteria, but it also applies to post-Columbine America. "Zero-tolerance" policy arose from the string of shooting sprees in American high schools. As usual, schools did not thoughtfully analyze what kind of school environment (complete with hierarchical sects and rampant bullying) is inspiring such horrific shootings. Rather, schools followed steps 1 through 5, and opted for a hyper-totalitarian state within a state where children are all treated as suspects, including little Zachary Christie.
Really, Delaware? The six-year-old is going to shank someone with his Swiss Army knife? Such overzealous, reactionary policies distract from the very real problems in schools: low test scores, budget cuts, bullying, and so on.
In Going Postal, author Mark Ames looks at the phenomenon of school and workplace shootings in America, but rather than assigning blame to obvious (and incorrect) targets like Marilyn Manson, Ames digs deeper. He proposes that modern workplace and school violence emerged soon after Reaganomics began in the 1980s when the wealth divide widened, and Reagan did everything in his power to support his friends, the CEOs of corporations, while screwing the workers. The result is a corporate culture where Americans work harder for longer hours for less. They have no job security, are buried in debt, and occasionally one of them snaps and shoots their co-workers.
Ames argues -- quite convincingly -- that schoolyard and office massacres are modern-day slave rebellions. The overly oppressive and exploitive nature of hyper-Capitalism, the neutering of unions, and the overall degradation of employees, neighborhoods, communities, and society have resulted in a culture of fear and violence. While Bowling For Columbine blamed the guns, Ames blames the culture, which includes reactionary policies like "Zero tolerance" that end up hurting innocents like Zachary while the real causes of our sick society go untreated.
Even if one doesn't buy the "Blame Reagan" theory, Ames's solution of treating the sickness, and not just the symptoms, is compelling enough to warrant some kind of implementation. The opposite approach, which is the current "solution" of treating workers and students like suspects, is an excellent way to breed more paranoia, fear, and violence. If kids weren't ready to snap before, a day of bag inspections, metal detector, and locker searches guarantees they’ll at least hate their schools if not harbor fantasies of putting down their oppressors.
Furthermore, the problem goes deeper than the workplaces and schools. The culture itself is sick, which is why America has a military budget that is almost as much as the rest of the world’s defense spending combined, and is over nine times larger than the military budget of China, and yet Americans feel more afraid, and more paranoid, than ever. Everyone is against us, we're told. Everyone hates our freedom, and our amazing culture. China wants to overtake us. The entire Middle East wants us dead. Europeans laugh at us, and think we’re stupid. Emperor Penguins are plotting something. Canada is about to attack.
And then there's Iran. Don't even get us started on Iran.
Until Americans decide to break this addiction to "The List," this cycle of irrationality will continue into the foreseeable future. Sadly, it doesn't seem as though Americans or their politicians remember the catastrophic mistakes that led to the invasion of Iraq because they’re repeating the exact same behavior with Iran. Let's consult "The List." Are American’s freaking out? Check. Do they believe what the loudest politicians tell them (namely that Iran is an imminent threat to the US)? Check. Are they participating in a reactive hyper-totalitarian government policy? According to the Pew Research Center, a strong majority -- 61% -- of Americans say that it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action. Check.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Into What Dark Hole Has Dick Cheney Crawled?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 9, 2009 at 4:23 PM.
Within two weeks of President Obama's inauguration, Dick Cheney said the new chief executive would likely get us killed. "When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," the former vice president said.
David Corn today raises a point that bears repeating: given the Obama administration's successes on counter-terrorism, where'd Cheney go?
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama visited the National Counterterrorism Center outside Washington and declared that "because of our efforts" al Qaeda and its allies have "lost operational capacity." He cited recent arrests of terrorist suspects in Colorado, New York, Illinois, and Texas, asserting that these actions have made the nation safer. Afterward, his critics responded with ... silence. Since Obama was sworn in, conservative hawks, led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pounding the president for being weak on national security, accusing him of leaving the country vulnerable to another catastrophic attack. But this chorus of scaremongers tends to go mute when the Obama administration scores apparent counterterrorism successes. Cheney, for instance, hasn't said anything publicly about the arrest last month of Najibullah Zazi, the Denver airport shuttle driver, and others accused of planning an al Qaeda bombing operation.
Nor have Cheney and his amen corner acknowledged other gains in the fight against al Qaeda.
If Bush/Cheney had put together the kind of successful counter-terrorism record we've seen over the last nine months, I suspect we'd be hearing quite a bit about it from Republican officials and their allies.
According to Nexis and Google searches, Cheney has made no public comment about the killing of any of these militant leaders and operatives. Nor have Cantor, Steele, or any other Republican leader. Nor have Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Certainly, it may be difficult for elected officials to discuss explicitly attacks not officially recognized by the White House, but none of these leading conservatives have acknowledged that the Obama administration has been racking up what are considered successes -- arrests at home, attacks overseas -- in the fight against al Qaeda and its allies.
Shouldn't these guys be reminding us right about now about how counter-terrorism only works through torture and lawlessness?
Where'd all the bravado and cheap shots from the Cheney gang go?
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What a Great Day to be a Sane Person ... Thanks Nobel Committee!
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM.
When I glanced at my newsreader this AM, I had a thought no doubt shared by many: what a great day to read right-wing blogs!
As Addie noted below, the wing-nuts haven't disappointed in serving up a steaming helping of crazy (the Taliban are none too happy about Obama's win either).
But, wait! Even some liberals are wringing their hands over this unexpected win for the president, given that he's embroiled in two Bushian occupations at present. Doesn't this just feed into the right's narrative about Obama being all flash and no substance? Worse yet, doesn't it call the Nobel Prize's objectivity into question?
To which, I have two words: Henry Kissinger. Haven't taken the prize seriously since he won it, and wasn't putting much weight on it now. They obviously gave Obama the prize for A) beating McCain and sending the neocons back to stew at the American Enterprise Institute for at least a few years, B) his Cairo speech and C) not being George Bush. Which is all worthy of an award of some sort, whatever the new administration's faults.
More to the point, this may bring about Peak Wing-nut*, unleashing a massive torrent of incredibly batty commentary for those of us living in the real world to mine and enjoy for days and weeks to come.
So, sit back, relax, and watch the heads explode.
Adding: this is what I mean -- here's Bill Kristol arguing that McCain should have won it for being such a tireless supporter of the Iraq war. That's comedy gold.
Also, the Freepers! Oh, what a day!
*Their joke.
War, What Is it Good for? Iraq to Deal Oil in Euros
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on October 9, 2009 at 5:33 AM.
You may remember that among the million and one reasons why we may have "really" gone into Iraq was this one, embraced mostly by alleged conspiracy theorists and silly leftists who thought that the invasion might have something to do with oil and the dollar:
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- A U.N. panel on Monday approved Iraq's plan to receive oil-export payments in Europe's single currency after Baghdad decided to move the start date back a week.
Members of the Security Council's Iraqi sanctions committee said the panel's chairman, Dutch Ambassador Peter van Walsum, would inform U.N. officials on Tuesday of the decision to allow Iraq to receive payments in euros, rather than dollars.
Today, there is a lot of chatter about this:
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.
Nobody knows for sure that this is happening, but if it is, it's a profound change, and one that may have simply been put off by our little six year adventure in the middle east.
Ian Welsh unpacks what this would mean for all of us over at C&L. Shorter Ian: for a lot of reasons, "it will hurt."
Whistleblower on Afghani Election: One in Three Votes for Karzai Were Fraudulent
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on October 8, 2009 at 12:38 PM.
The top U.S. envoy to the UN in Afghanistan was fired after he accused the head of the mission of covering up massive fraud in the presidential election. Peter Galbraith alleges that nearly one out of three votes for incumbent Karzai were fraudulent.
30 GOP Senators Vote to Defend Gang Rape
Posted by Charles Lemos, MyDD.com on October 8, 2009 at 11:16 AM.
It is stunning that 30 Republican members of the United States Senate would vote to protect a corporation, in this case Halliburton/KBR, over a woman who was gang raped. The details from Think Progress:
In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job." (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Afghanistan Survey Suggests More Americans Resigned to "Endless War"
Posted by Byard Duncan, AlterNet on October 6, 2009 at 4:25 PM.
The results of a recent poll on Afghanistan are troubling, to say the least. It seems as though a majority of Americans are convinced there can be no definitive end to the war in Afghanistan -- that is, neither a “win” nor a “loss.” From CQ Politics:
Majorities of American adults think the war in Afghanistan cannot be won and that its most likely conclusion would be no conclusion at all, according to a poll by Clarus Research Group conducted Oct. 1-4.
Sixty-eight percent of the respondents said the United States will not win or lose the war which will go on without resolution, Clarus said.
At its face, this statistic is unclear: Are Americans more exasperated about Afghanistan than ever before? Are we more complacent? What does it mean that these results coincided closely with yesterday’s announcement from the White House that there are no plans whatsoever to withdraw from Afghanistan?
It might be helpful to pay very close attention to the wording of the findings. The initial logical somersault (Afghanistan’s “most likely conclusion would be no conclusion at all”) isn’t so confusing when given the context of recent foreign policy precedents. War without conclusion, after all, is no longer a contradiction in terms. It’s an endgame. In fact, open-endedness and ambiguity seem to be the two main propellants of so-called “modern” war.
This is why the initial statistic about ordinary Americans -- not politicians, not generals; ordinary people -- is so chilling. The numbers don’t just mean that we’re confused about Afghanistan (though many of us are); they mean we’ve resigned ourselves to a dangerous re-definition of warfare as a concept -- a redefinition that, unfortunately, the current administration seems reluctant to disassemble.
Greenwald Film on Afghanistan Destroys the Logic of the War, Leading the New York Times to Whine
Posted by Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports on October 5, 2009 at 3:00 PM.
Perhaps more than any other major corporate news outlet, The New York Times played a central role in promoting the Bush administration's fraudulent case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The "reporting" of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon basically served as a front-page fiction laundering factory for Dick Cheney’s fantasy of a “mushroom cloud” threat from Saddam Hussein looming on the immediate horizon, topped off with a celebratory slice of yellowcake. More recently, the paper’s propagandists, William Broad and David Sanger, have aimed their sights on reporting dubious claims about Iran’s nuclear program.
Readers of the Times, therefore, should take with a huge grain of weaponized salt the paper’s “review” of Robert Greenwald’s new documentary, Rethink Afghanistan. With no sense of the painful irony of writing such jibberish in the Times, reviewer Andy Webster declares that the film could "use balance, something in short supply here:"
At an almost breathless pace that leaves little room for reflection, Mr. Greenwald presents a flurry of sights, voices and figures, many of them compelling but all reflecting his point of view. A historical summary is fleeting. What appears, again and again, are terrifying images of children: dead, hideously maimed or, in one instance, almost put up for sale by a frantic civilian in a refugee camp. Military engagements, it seems, are messy and claim innocent lives.
If it takes Greenwald's "point of view" to see the human costs of the U.S. war in Afghanistan in the form of deformed, maimed and dead civilians, then his film should be required viewing for anyone purporting to support the war.
Anyone who has actually seen the film knows that a string of former top intelligence officials, perhaps most significant among them the former head of the CIA's Counter-terrorism Center, Robert Grenier, are heard meticulously deconstructing the dominant justifications for the continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. What does Grenier know? Oh, he was just the CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he was one of the Agency’s top officials planning the U.S. invasion. Grenier, along with former CIA operative Robert Baer and other former intelligence officials, rebut in detail the claim that the war in Afghanistan is about fighting al Qaeda or making America safer, which Baer says bluntly in the film is “just complete bullshit.” The film also features Graham Fuller, the former CIA station chief in Kabul. (Click here to watch this part of the film)
I guess the Times would have been satisfied if the film did not also include extensive analysis from Anand Gopal, the Afghanistan correspondent of that famed leftist, anti-war rag, The Wall Street Journal. "Al Qaeda and the Taliban are groups with completely distinct ideologies and goals," Gopal says in the film. The Taliban, he says, has as its central goal "to kick out the Americans." Greenwald's film would presumably have been more “objective” in the Times’s eyes if it had included the analysis of, say, Steve Coll, whose definitive book on al Qaeda, Ghost Wars, won the Pulitzer. Oh, right, Coll is a major voice in Greenwald's film.
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The Human Cost of War: The Images the Corporate Media Doesn't Want You to See
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on October 5, 2009 at 2:30 PM.
This past weekend, AlterNet had the privilege of hosting a screening of Robert Greenwald's important new documentary, Rethink Afghanistan, in New York City. It was just one of several screenings to kick off an impressive nationwide campaign by Brave New Films to spread a crucial message about the war in Afghanistan: This is not the "good war" as we have been told by so many for so long. This is a losing battle, and it is costing us dearly: in billions of dollars, in thousands of lives, and in the eyes of the rest of the world.
And of course, it is costing the people of Afghanistan more than anyone. Perhaps one of the most jolting things about watching the film is seeing image after terrible image of civilian suffering: desperate families mired in refugee camps, pain-stricken schoolgirls attacked with acid by the resurgent Taliban, countless injured men, women and children who are the "collateral damage" from errant U.S. bomb strikes. It is a punch-to-the-gut reminder of just how sanitized this war -- which Obama has always called the "right front" of the so-called war on terror -- has been.
Of course, if you're the New York Times, these very images, which have the power to awaken people to the human cost of war, are actually proof of a slanted agenda on the part of the filmmaker. "At an almost breathless pace that leaves little room for reflection, Mr. Greenwald presents a flurry of sights, voices and figures, many of them compelling but all reflecting his point of view," writes NYT film reviewer Andy Webster in a dismissive 250-word review today.
"Mr. Greenwald's documentary has no time to approach an opposing view with sympathy or understanding for its concerns," he concludes.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
U.S. Fails to Make Top 10 in Quality of Life Index, or Why Right-Wingers Really Hate the U.N.
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 5, 2009 at 9:00 AM.
Now we know why right-wingers from Phyllis Schlafly to Mike Huckabee hate the United Nations: the international body founded by our great nation consistently fails to recognize our Number-One, ass-kicking, towel-head-drubbing greatness.
Take, for instance, the U.N.'s newly-released Human Development Index, which measures quality of life in 182 nations. The United States, often referred to as the world's richest nation, didn't even make the top 10. We came in at 13, which is surely a numerological conspiracy designed to bring us even worse luck than we've had lately, what with job numbers shrinking and a communist in the White House.
In fact, we were beat by France (ranked 8th), for cryin' out loud -- a nation of Arab-coddling croissant-eaters. You know it had to be rigged. And Red Canada fourth place, with its government-taken-over Soviet health-care system!
Sure, it's easy to claim a higher quality of life when you live in a place like France, where you get 30 days of paid vacation every year. Never mind that their productivity numbers nearly equal ours. Where's the index for rugged individualism and personal responsibility? How good do ya think them Frenchies would do on that, huh?
They just don't have the stuff to accept a shorter life expectancy and crappy health care. (The lifespan for African-Americans in the former French city of New Orleans is about the same as that of people living in North Korea.)
But, hey, they're not who we mean when we talk about Americans, anyway. I don't want your damn pinko health care. And keep your hands off my gun. Oh, and, U.S. outta the U.N., dammit!
Neocon Insanity: Abrams Says Iranians Would Be Fine with an Attack on Their Country
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on October 3, 2009 at 2:25 PM.
This afternoon, Elliott Abrams, Deputy National Security Adviser under President Bush, appeared on Fox News to discuss U.S. policy towards Iran. Abrams pled guilty to misleading Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal under Reagan and handled Iran policy under Bush.
When asked if any recent President has had “a successful strategy with Iran,” Abrams implicitly admitted his own decades-long failure. “No, I don’t think we’ve really had any successful strategies with Iran,” Abrams responded. “And you know, meanwhile they’ve been building up their nuclear program and missile program.” But Obama recently established the first high-level diplomatic engagement with Iran in 30 years, which produced results quicker than expected.
But Abrams, “the neocon’s neocon,” still clings to his long-running desire to bomb Iran. And to justify his view that military action against Iran is the prudent course, Abram told Fox News that the Iranian people would accept it:
FOX: 59 percent of respondents to our Fox News poll say that force should be used. How would Tehran react to that?
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George Galloway: The Hawks Are Circling Over Iran
Posted by George Galloway, Comment Is Free on October 2, 2009 at 3:14 PM.
By coincidence, I was in the very hotel in Geneva as the world's media descended for the next day's talks on Iran. Judging by the excited war-babble of the Fox, Sky and CNN correspondents, the scene was set for a showdown.
The cold war with Iran, warmed up by the Pittsburgh moment when the US, Britain and France "revealed" the existence of a "secret" Iranian nuclear facility in Qom (in fact declared by Iran a full year before they were required to under the IAEA rules), seemed set to go nuclear – metaphorically, one hopes.
In fact, by the end of the day both the US and Iranian foreign ministers were hailing the outcome as "productive" (Clinton) and "constructive" (Mottaki). You could almost feel the disappointment among the fox-hole journalists and in the British, French and German camps.
Most media reaction, including the BBC's, to news that Iran had revealed a second facility was ominously reminiscent of their mendacious complicity over Iraq. Sober interventions by the head of the international nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, that there was no evidence of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapons programme were brushed aside. The testing by Iran of a missile within its borders was treated as if the Kaiser had ordered a Zeppelin over Edwardian London.
On full parade was Britain's post-empire arrogance, which treats a sophisticated state as an errant child in need of a good slap from an authoritarian parent.
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DeMint Thumbs Nose at U.S. Policy, Meets with Illegitimate Coup Government in Honduras
Posted by Andrea Nill, Think Progress on October 2, 2009 at 12:37 PM.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has announced that he will be visiting Honduras today to meet with the de facto regime of acting Honduran President Roberto Micheletti in sheer defiance of the position taken by the US government and international community. Not a single nation has recognized Micheletti’s government, but Washington Note’s Steve Clemons explains that DeMint is intent on taking Honduran matters into his own hands:
Jim DeMint is acting on behalf of, in cahoots with, and against the foreign policy of the United States of America in encouraging post-coup Honduran government officials defy the United States. He is encouraging a political leadership which has no legitimacy and which not recognized by other democracies in the region — while the ousted President makes cell phone UN General Assembly statements from a couch-bed in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.
The Logan Act forbids “unauthorized citizens” from negotiating with foreign governments. In a 1936 Supreme Court ruling, Justice Sutherland wrote that “the President alone has the power” and “the Senate cannot intrude, and Congress itself is powerless to invade it.”
Since former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was seized by the military at gunpoint and exiled in his pajamas back in June, the Obama administration — together with the United Nations, European Nations, and the Organization of American States — has collectively addressed the delicate political situation in Honduras by putting pressure on Micheletti’s government to reach a peaceful and democratic solution. So far, the US has cut all non-humanitarian aid to the de facto government and revoked the visas of all civilian and military officials who backed the June 28 coup. The Obama administration is also making a deliberate effort to repair critical relations with Latin America by reversing Washington’s “historic tendency” of welcoming and backing coups waged against democratically-elected leaders, such as Zelaya, who are critical of the U.S.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) attempted to block approval of DeMint’s self-described “fact-finding trip,” citing the defiant role DeMint has taken in attempting to alter US policy on Honduras by brazenly blocking the confirmations of Arturo Valenzuela, Obama’s nominee to be assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, and Thomas A. Shannon Jr., the nominee to be ambassador to Brazil. However, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) interfered and appealed to the Defense Department to provide an airplane for DeMint and his delegation, which the Pentagon allowed. DeMint will be joined by US Reps. Aaron Schock (R-IL), Peter Roskam (R-IL), and Doug Lamborn (R-CO). Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) will be visiting Honduras on Monday. Ros-Lehtinen and the congressmen plan on meeting with Micheletti, members of the Honduran Supreme Court, election officials, and Honduran business and civic leaders. However, they are snubbing Zelaya who recently returned to Honduras and took refuge in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.
Perhaps the public relations firm Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates — which Micheletti’s regime hired to “bolster its image in Washington” — helped convince DeMint to overlook the fact that Micheletti has suspended constitutional guarantees to civil liberties, including freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. Meanwhile, the U.N. Human Rights Council has unanimously called for an immediate end to all human rights violations in Honduras on behalf of the de facto government.
Diary from Kabul: Activists in Afghanistan Face Unimagineable Challenges
Posted by Jodie Evans, CODEPINK Women for Peace: Action Blog on October 1, 2009 at 12:56 PM.
The following is the third entry from CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans' diary on the peace group's trip to Afghanistan. To learn more about CodePink's delegation to Afghanistan, click here.
I end this day feeling the total lack of possibility—a rare feeling as I live by the motto that in God all things are possible. I go to each meeting hoping to turn the rock over and learn what can be offered into the bounty of need and lack we witness with every step and breath. And yet…
What we do find are beautiful, amazing, passionate, heartful people doing work for those in need against all odds here—odds that are tremendous. It makes me feel so inadequate. These women and men are courageous beyond anything we can ever touch in the US. As activists working for the greater good, our lives are not in danger each day. However, here, the people we’ve met who are doing good work have had their lives have been threatened or they have lost members of and sometimes almost their entire family. The amount of patience and ingenuity they need to get even the most simple thing done is beyond my comprehension. They have all created something small and tireless, but with the quarter of a trillion dollars we have spent on Afghanistan in the last 8 years, it makes you want to cry with anger and ask if this if this is all there is to show for it? It is a strange convergence of so much need and so much waste.
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