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Showing posts with label Social Issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Issues. Show all posts
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Stan Goff, Feral Scholar - "There are some obstacles, the greatest being the attitude that we should give Obama a chance before we start hectoring"
Before everyone gets TOO enthusiastic...
This Viral Video appeared during the election campaign.
It pretty much sums up the problem:
"We have some serious evils in our faces right now; and if we are going to confront them, then we need to list them, organize against them, and make that opposition felt in the principalities and powers.Excerpted from the comments:Big pharma.
Big food.
Big war.
Big oil.
Big banks.
Big prisons.
And the big-dick culture of me-first domination and revenge.
I have a litmus test, if anyone is interested.
Let’s see if Guantanamo is closed in the first month of the new administration."
Susan/catlady:Obama’s transition website, change.gov, is set up for citizens to make suggestions to the new administration.There are several pages under “Agenda,” listing current policy.
A search for “Guantanamo” comes up zilch.
A Look Under the Hood at the (Potential) Obama Administration
7th November 2008, 05:35 am
by Stan
[Hat tip to Lisa… this one merits a post.]
By Joshua Frank
November 06, 2008 — - Tuesday’s celebration hangovers have finally started to wear off, and the pieces are beginning to fall into place. Change will be coming to Washington in January, but it is difficult to decipher what form it will take. Early clues, however, suggest that Barack Obama’s administration will prove unlikely to alter the fundamental political machinery that has led us into war and economic turmoil. Below is a brief summary of Obama’s potential choices for a few key roles in his administration.
Chief of Staff
Obama’s key White House position will go to Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois. While Emanuel knows his way around the corridors of Washington, qualifying him in the traditional sense, this alone doesn’t mean he’s the guy you want drawing up Obama’s policy papers day after day.
For starters, Emanuel is a shameless neoliberal with close ties to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), even co-authoring a strategy book with DLC president Bruce Reed. Without Emanuel, Bill Clinton would not have been able to thrust NAFTA down the throats of environmentalists and labor in the mid-1990s. Over the course of his career, Emanuel’s made it a point to cozy up to big business, making him one of the most effective corporate fundraisers in the Democratic Party. He’s also a staunch advocate of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
Emanuel’s shining moment came in 2006 as he helped funnel money and poured ground support into the offices of dozens of conservative Democrats, expanding his party’s control of the House of Representatives. Emanuel, who supports the War…
FULL
Stan: The best analog we have in history here is the administration of FDR, where the president was compelled by the perils of increasing popular discontent to provide the space for popular power. It was a development paradigm, eg, the TVA, so there is an ecological apsect to this that is completely and critically different.
Barring the revolutionary transformation of society in one fell swoop, the system is going to require some duct tape and bailing wire to hold it together for the time being, or folk will literally starve. This will likely require a Keynesian intervention of some kind (or it all goes over a cliff, and Obama’s administration is counted by history as more of the same shit). Key here is a public works jobs program; and if we don’t fight like crazy for one that focuses on reparing biospheric damage, then shame on every one of us.
Just as urgently, however, we have to rebuild an antiwar movement worthy of its name.
There are some obstacles, the greatest being the attitude that we should give Obama a chance before we start hectoring.
That’s dead wrong… immoral in fact.
Every day that these occupations go on is a terrible sin; and our silence and forebearance are forms of complicity.
In Full @ Feral Scholar
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Meanwhile, In America - And It Came To Pass They Prayed to God For Cheap Gasoline - Die Tageszeitung Germany Via Watching America
In a deep sotto voce:
"And it came to pass"
"And it came to pass"
Praying to GodFor Cheap Gasoline
By Karin Deckenbach
Translated By Ron Argentati
August 15, 2008
Source: Die Tageszeitung, Germany
As usual, the world’s most powerful nation exaggerates: First, gas was ultra-cheap at $1 a gallon. Now it’s super-expensive at $4.40 a gallon. When one considers that the average American drives 20,000 miles a year and their beloved monstrous SUVs only get about 7.4 MPG, it was obvious something had to be done.And it came to pass that Rocky Twyman, leader of a Washington church choir, stood in front of a filing station and prayed. "God is the only one we can turn to at this point," Twyman prayed at the pump. "Our leaders don't seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring." Anyone who wished to follow his example-–and this was broadcast far and wide on American television--was advised to keep it simple: "God, deliver us from these high gas prices," Twyman said. "That's all they have to say." But Twyman quickly added a couple of secular tips: "People have to walk more, leave their cars at home, and carpool," he said.
Gone were the believers. Trying to get around without a car isn’t practical in a country where there aren’t even any sidewalks in the suburbs. In rural areas, there are only long-distance buses, and even in a big city like Los Angeles there’s no subway. The fact is, many commuters now avoid getting stuck in traffic jams by hitchhiking on those freeway lanes designated for two or more passengers per vehicle only.
Just a couple of months ago, congress set new fuel efficiency standards for the auto industry by mandating a fleet average of 35 MPG by the year 2020.
Meanwhile, a popular new sport has developed: “hypermiling.” Brake as little as possible, shift into neutral as often as possible, draft the vehicle ahead of you, turn off your built-in refrigerators and rooftop floodlights-–the internet is brimming with such tips to save fuel. All these things so people won’t have to sell their over-sized Ford Ranger Pick-ups (there’s no market for them now, anyway) and meanwhile, sales of hybrid models have tripled within a year.
Dealers react to the crisis with typical American marketing gimmicks: in Virginia, a supermarket promised free gasoline vouchers at their grand opening. Expectant customers had already created a tent city in front of the store the night before the event. In Nevada, a bordello enticed customers with promises of discount gasoline, although no customers would admit to taking advantage of the offer. The fast-food chain “Five Guys” offered to give customers 6 gallons of free gasoline for every 100 hamburgers they ate. If they haven’t exploded in the meantime, they’re probably still driving today.
But maybe Rocky Twyman’s prayers did manage to help. In June, Americans drove 12.2 billion miles less than the same period the previous year, a reduction of about 4.7 percent. Just like that, the USA was able to lower its crude oil consumption over the first six months of the year by 800,000 barrels a day as compared to 2007.
See? It worked.
Source, and link to original in German:
Thanks For Stopping By
Sunday, December 9, 2007
BushWars Inc. - We Finance Weapons For EVERYONE! No Money Down... EZ Payment Plan!
From the USG Open Source Center translation of "an article from an opposition Afghanistan newspaper alleging that Washington it (sic) deploying Pakistani tribal levies against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.":
"When the White House attacked Afghanistan in 2001 and occupied this country, it dispersed the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah in the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia. In the second phase, it maintained direct contacts with the senior leaders of this group. Therefore, America has been using Al-Qa'idah as a tool since the symbolic and self-made event on 11 September 2001."
What part of this doesn't the American public understand? The U.S. Government is backing almost EVERYONE'S insurgencies in the Middle East. Even organizations that have goals diametrically opposed to the stated 'needs & goals' of U.S. foreign policy.
Two examples: Hersh: U.S. Funds Being Secretly Funneled To Violent Al Qaeda-Linked Groups
New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the single most explosive element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups.
Hersh says the U.S. has been pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.
Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of three Sunni jihadist groups who are connected to al Qaeda but want to take on Hezbollah.
Historically:
"During his stint as NATO Supreme Commander (1997-2000), Wesley Clark was in permanent liaison with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Under Wesley Clark's command, NATO directly sponsored a terrorist paramilitary army, with links to Al Qaeda and the trans-Balkan narcotics trade."That from GlobalResearch. More about AQ, NATO and the West on their site.
Lets not forget the PKK and affiliated Kurdish rebels (BushCo WILL abandon them again too... already have.): Professor Cole on the topic
John Robb @ Global Guerrillas on the topic: How to bait Turkey Into A Regional War...
What we have going on globally are 'Straw' insurgencies. I mean... If we can't make peace with them... sell/give them weapons and money through back channels that destabilize their region, give them enough local social control to allow their group a modicum of western media coverage, and maybe NEXT YEAR (or the year after that...) we can make a boogey-organization out of their actions and cut one of those AC-130 gunships and a DynCorp air crew loose from the Horn of Africa (or the Colombian drug wars) to supress them, an organization we initially allowed to prosper.
Here's a writeup one of the (Weapons/Logistics) movers & shakers... Central Asia, Middle East, Africa.
Victor Bout, the Russian Mobster/Former KGB officer whose Bosnian airline 'vanished' 200,000 AK-47s in Iraq which the Pentagon/CPA contracted for shipment to the Iraqi Security Forces: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Bout
All General Petraus had to say about that was essentially... 'The bookkeeping was bad'.
Petraeus blames bookkeeping for missing weapons
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Bookkeeping problems are to blame for the inability to account for nearly 200,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said late Tuesday.
In Full @ Stars & Stripes
Bout has worked for the U.N., NATO in Kosovo (the KLA connection?), AND the Taliban.
Extrapolate!...At some point in recent history, Osama bin-Laden's buddies flew Victor Bout's air transport network.
We're dealing $$$ with the world's 'finest' thugs in the name of some dysfunctional 'democracy'. An affluent 'democracy' so dysfunctional & callous that can't even willingly supply housing for it's own disabled homeless INCLUDING veterans of their nasty little wars.
Perhaps this is what the government has in mind for our Veterans:
Just add weapons and send 'em back into action.
Just like they do when they've seen one too many of their buddies blown to bloody mush and have to be medicated into submission.
Las Vegas Sun:
September 06, 2007
Rushed back to the front
Experts: A depressed soldier on a potentially dangerous drug needed more time
By Ed Koch and Mary Manning
A Las Vegas Army infantryman who was prescribed Prozac for depression and several weeks later killed himself in Iraq should have undergone at least three months of observation before returning to normal duties, psychiatrists and other medical experts said in interviews Wednesday.
Family and friends of Pfc. Travis Virgadamo say he told them he was prescribed daily doses of 12.5 milligram s of the anti depressant Prozac beginning in July. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound last Thursday outside of Baghdad, the military said.
Medical experts interviewed by the Sun said anyone given prescription anti depressants should be watched carefully and kept out of high-stress duty for at least three months. In Full
More thugs, American thugs... Blackwater... Not just killers of 'in-the-way' Iraqi civilians but implicated in the smuggling of CPA Glock pistols to the Kurdish PKK and onward into the Turkish underworld.This is one of the secretive parts of Henry Waxman's Blackwater investigation we may NEVER hear about again.
"Officials in Washington said the smuggling investigation grew from internal Pentagon and State Department inquiries into U.S. weapons that had gone missing in Iraq. Turkish authorities protested to the U.S. in July that they had seized American arms from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels." Dead WaPo Archive Link. Google returns nothing
Another take @ McClatchy:
A former Blackwater employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigation includes a look at whether Blackwater shipped weapons from its Moyock headquarters to Iraq hidden in pallets wrapped tightly in shrink wrap.
.
.
"In December, the prosecutors obtained guilty pleas from two former Blackwater employees, Kenneth Wayne Cashwell of Virginia Beach, Va., and William Ellsworth "Max" Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C. The men and their lawyers either refused to comment or did not return calls.
The court files are stingy on details of the crimes..."
"...the federal (Nb. criminal) investigation of Blackwater is proceeding behind closed doors," In Full via archive.today
[Update May 18 2014... A Blackwater official responsible for running guns to Syria's 'rebels' is named. Odds are it was one of the names mentioned in the Waxman investigation]
It's called feeding the voracious maw of the military industrial complex.
The only major "industrial industry" left in America.
You can thank twenty or more years of federal job non-creation negligence for this outcome.
The government's motto for all those years?
"The private sector will provide".
They did... for their corporate friends.
Meanwhile, Detroit and other American cities are becoming ghost towns.
We need a reality check here people.
FoMoCo sells a few cars...
But the REAL $$$ is in Hydrogen powered military UAVs.
I'll bet you wish they spent those R&D bucks on H-powered Excursion SUVs...
...But they won't. Unless the American people DEMAND IT.
That would require Americans to actually DO SOMETHING besides watching '24' & L.A. Law re-runs on the tell-unh-vision.
It will require MORE than simply voting for the hand-picked (just like Iraq) candidates offered up for U.S. presidency.
Truly unlikely, which leaves us rather permanently 'screwed' into war, and rumors of war...
--Da' Buffalo
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