By Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet. Posted December 31, 2009.
Monopoly capitalism exemplifies everything that’s gone wrong with American politics, and we need to do something about it — soon.
I had a chance to speak to Lynn about just how bad things are — and what we might be able to do about it. Lynn’s new book, Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, from Wiley Press, will be out in January.
Source: http://www.deism.com/deism_vs.htm
Obama supporters forget that when all is said and done, Obama is just another politician.
This article shows he’s proving that he is nothing but a politician by doing more than any other president to mix religion and government, especially through giving tax-dollars to religious organizations.
A New Role for Religion in Obama’s White House
Faith has played a larger role in Obama’s White House so far than in any other president’s
By Dan Gilgoff, Posted July 1, 2009
The conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush was the most faith-based president in recent history, by a long shot. Citing Jesus as his favorite philosopher and Billy Graham as a mentor, Bush won evangelical voters in numbers not previously seen. In office, he launched a controversial office of faith-based initiatives and consulted religious leaders in developing science policy. Bush routinely opened cabinet meetings with prayer and acknowledged conferring with “a higher father” before going to war in Iraq.
How remarkable, then, that religion might be playing an even bigger role in Barack Obama’s administration. While Bush invited megapastor Rick Warren to low-key White House functions, Obama had him deliver the invocation at his internationally televised inauguration. Bush encouraged White House prayer groups, but Obama begins public rallies with the recitation of a White House-commissioned prayer. Obama has quickly expanded Bush’s faith-based initiatives to include an advisory council of religious leaders weighing in on matters as diverse as abortion and Middle East peace. “This administration has used faith more overtly than any other in its first hundred days,” says Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “That includes Bush.” But rather than appeal mostly to evangelicals as Bush did, Obama is reaching out to a broad spectrum of believers and nonbelievers.
Early decisions. He is carving out a bold new role for faith in the White House, which aides say aims to dial down the decades-old culture wars. The project may wind up drawing more religious voters into the Democratic fold. But it also threatens to alienate the Democratic base, which polls show is much less religious than the GOP’s. Given the important role that religion and church-based organizing have played in Obama’s own biography, though, the president is unlikely to abandon his quest for a middle way for faith in government and politics. “My sense is that these efforts give a fairly accurate portrait of what the president really believes,” says John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Some conservative Christians worry he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I think that’s overblown.”
Obama’s most substantive move on religion so far has been launching his own version of Bush’s faith-based initiative office, tasked with helping religious groups get federal dollars for social service projects for the needy. Less than one month into office, while presiding over two wars and a struggling economy, Obama took time to roll out his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Its expanded mission includes reducing the need for abortion, promoting responsible fatherhood, and facilitating interfaith dialogue, particularly with the Muslim world. While giving the office more influence, the Obama team has strived to placate its secular critics by pledging greater accountability. “We’re not judging success by the amount of money that flows out,” says Joshua DuBois, the office’s executive director, “but by how we’re helping those most in need: the number of folks who received mortgage counseling or have been trained for jobs.”
But in a sign of how politically fraught the faith-based office is, the administration has delayed making the most contentious decision surrounding it: whether to allow religious groups to hire only fellow believers with federal funds, as they could under Bush. “This is the 800-pound gorilla,” says Americans United’s Lynn. “Bush’s office completely disregarded the separation of church and state, and nobody sees any change from that yet.” Resolving the issue is an early test of Obama’s ability to bring the culture wars’ two sides together.
Differing opinions. The other big test on that score is whether the office can succeed in its goal of reducing the need for abortion while avoiding new limits on abortion rights. The faith-based office is partnering with the White House Council on Women and Girls to find common ground among abortion-rights opponents and supporters around abortion reduction. “If these policies are enacted and the number of abortions actually declines, it would really help the president because he’d have a tangible result,” says the Pew Forum’s Green. “The pro-life community would have a much more positive view of the Democrats and might work with them more on issues like poverty.” If the administration fails to deliver on abortion reduction, however, cultural conservatives who helped Obama win in red states like Indiana and North Carolina may abandon him in 2012.
As it works to bring religious leaders and concerns into the policymaking process, the administration has probably paid even closer attention to faith-based symbolism and messaging. Gay rights groups and liberals pressured Obama to rescind his inaugural invitation to Warren because of the pastor’s support for a gay marriage ban in California. Obama’s refusal sent a clear message to evangelicals and other cultural conservatives that he respected their values. And in announcing he would lift federal limits on embryonic stem cell research by executive order, a move that riled religious conservatives, Obama laid out a faith-based rationale. “As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering,” he said, citing the research’s potential to yield cures for debilitating diseases. Like Bush, Obama included religious leaders at his signing ceremony on embryonic stem cell research.
Such overtures are unlikely to gain the support of most white evangelicals, 73 percent of whom backed John McCain last November. But they may win some over and will very likely appeal to political moderates from other faith traditions, especially Roman Catholics, whom Obama won last year. That kind of stagecraft can also help prevent the evangelical animus that plagued Bill Clinton in the second half of his administration and John Kerry in the 2004 election. “This administration understands that they can’t actively antagonize religious groups or be seen as insensitive to religious concerns,” says Southern Baptist Convention public policy chief Richard Land, who has worked with presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. “They get that in a way that the John Kerry and Howard Dean wing of the party don’t.” This helps explain why Land, a religious conservative who was close to the Bush White House, gets regular phone calls from DuBois, Obama’s faith-based office director.
The administration’s sensitivity on faith is also evident in the types of messages it avoids. When he reversed the Mexico City policy, a ban on federal funds for family planning providers abroad who offer or support abortion, Obama did so quietly, on a Friday evening. When Clinton lifted the same ban shortly after his 1992 election, he scheduled it on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, inflaming anti-abortion groups (George W. Bush reinstated it). “Obama’s something of a puzzle to evangelicals who don’t like some things he’s done on abortion but can’t bring themselves to hate him,” says William Martin, author of With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America.
But whether Obama can bring together a diverse coalition of ordinary Americans to get past the culture wars is the question. So-called values issues are among the deepest dividing lines in the electorate. Many antiabortion groups have already attacked Obama’s abortion-reduction plan as all talk. Liberal groups, meanwhile, recently blasted the administration for inviting former Indianapolis Colts Coach Tony Dungy, who endorsed a gay marriage ban in Indiana, to join the faith advisory council. Dungy, an evangelical, declined the offer, citing scheduling conflicts with council meetings. For now, such setbacks are unlikely to deter Obama. As someone who said last year that he prays “to be an instrument of God’s will,” the president appears to be operating as a true believer.
“But while public programs like Medicare and Medicaid are subject to strict reporting requirements—making it easier to detect abuses—private companies aren’t subject to the same oversight.”
Suzy Khimm, 12-31-09
When it comes to health care fraud, Medicare scams have recently elicited some of the greatest public outrage and political attention. But private-sector fraud and abuses may also be proliferating within the current system–perpetrated not only by providers, but also by insurance companies and corporate suppliers themselves.
In a report documenting these alleged abuses—which I mentioned in my earlier post on Medicare fraud—researchers from George Washington University claim that the “most serious health care fraud is not the result of small schemes, but instead flows from large-scale misconduct by major industry actors.” Earlier this month, for instance, the American Medical Association was awarded a $350 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group, having accused the company of using a database that was intentionally rigged to allow insurers to shortchange out-of-network reimbursements to doctors—which would also force patients to pay more in out-of-pocket expenses. The AMA lawsuit was closely linked to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s yearlong investigation into UnitedHealth, which paid out $50 million in January to settle allegations that it manipulated its Ingenix database.
And it’s not just insurance companies who are accused of bilking customers and providers on a massive scale. The GWU report cites a $350 million class-action settlement this year with McKesson, a wholesale drug distributor accused of a “racketeering enterprise” to inflate the prices for prescription drugs. Likewise, Congress launched an investigation last month to determine whether Big Pharma artificially inflated wholesale drug prices in advance of the industry cutbacks proposed in the pending reform bill.
But while public programs like Medicare and Medicaid are subject to strict reporting requirements—making it easier to detect abuses—private companies aren’t subject to the same oversight. And though the current reform bill imposes new regulations on private insurers, as well as anti-fraud prevention and enforcement measures across the system, private industry still won’t be required to disclose the same data designed to keep public programs honest. (The public insurance option in the House bill is subject to the same anti-fraud and abuse protections as Medicare, but the legislation doesn’t apply these requirements to the private plans inside or outside of the exchange.)
Cont. http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/are-corporate-insurers-defrauding-the-public
No wonder so many people are willing to try or try to blow themselves up….we deserve exactly what we get for allowing our supposed representatives in the U.S. Government to use our money for everything, everyone and any country other than America.
Story:
Judge Dismisses Charges in Blackwater Shooting
31 Dec 2009 3:49 P.M. ET
A federal judge dismissed all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards charged in a deadly Baghdad shooting. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said Thursday that the Justice Department overstepped its bounds and wrongly used evidence it wasn’t allowed to see. He said the government’s explanations have been contradictory, unbelievable and not credible. Blackwater contractors were hired to guard State Department diplomats in Iraq. Prosecutors say the guards fired on unarmed civilians in a busy intersection in 2007, killing innocent people.
Cont. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126229226969112429.html
US pledges $16 bn for training Afghan security forces (1) [so they can kill more US soldiers] (2)
Source: Citizens For Legitimate Government – http://www.legitgov.org
31 Dec 2009
The United States has pledged $16 billion to spend on training and equipping Afghanistan’s army and air force, but the country needs more to build a force that can guarantee stability, an Afghan army official said on Wednesday… Part of the US cash is likely to cover planned spending on over 150 aircraft — including helicopters, and reconnaissance, combat and transport planes. [See: Soldier killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan 21 Dec 2009.] (3)
Fake History, and the myth that the United States was founded originally as a “Christian Nation”, is now being taught in hundreds of schools across America. Please click here to help Talk To Action Fight Fake History
IN 2004, The Texas Republican Party platform declared the United States to be a “Christian nation”. Christian nationalism is probably the driving ideology of the Christian right, and that ideology rests on a falsified version of history that tens of millions of Americans believe to be true.Falsified history, asserting that the US was founded as a “Christian nation” and that the founders intended the separation of church and state principle to keep government out of religion but not vice-versa, has become shockingly widespread:
It is being taught at hundreds of US high schools, through an elective Bible class curriculum, it gets taught in the US Army’s Junior ROTC curriculum, it gets showcased in an exhibit from the US Library of Congress, blasted from talk radio, broadcast by PBS, pushed by many religious broadcasters as a matter of course, distributed appended to Bibles given US troops, spread via Christian homeschooling curriculum taught to hundreds of thousands of students (at least), and promoted via a blizzard of videotapes, works of dubious and brazenly falsified American history….. on and on (I’m sure the full list of vectors for fake history is longer still).
This post concerns that problem and introduces readers to one historian, Chris Rodda, who rightfully deserves to be called a hero for writing Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version Of American History, and for her ongoing 15 part series at Talk To Action debunking falsified American history from the Christian right.
By Frederick Clarkson
The Public Eye Magazine – Spring 2007
The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in American history. The idea that America’s supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement. No understanding of the Christian Right is remotely adequate without this foundational concept.
But the Christian nationalist narrative has a fatal flaw: it is based on revisionist history that does not stand up under scrutiny. The bad news is that to true believers, it does not have to stand up to the facts of history to be a powerful and animating part of the once and future Christian nation. Indeed, through a growing cottage industry of Christian revisionist books and lectures now dominating the curricula of home schools and many private Christian academies, Christian nationalism becomes a central feature of the political identity of children growing up in the movement. The contest for control of the narrative of American history is well underway.
History is powerful. That’s why it is important for the rest of society not only to recognize the role of creeping Christian historical revisionism, but our need to craft a compelling and shared story of American history, particularly as it relates to the role of religion and society. We need it in order to know not how the religious Right is wrong, but to know where we ourselves stand in the light of history, in relation to each other, and how we can better envision a future together free of religious prejudice, and ultimately, religious warfare.
We’ve seen how religious beliefs (and other ideologies) inspire people to view others as subhuman, deviant, and deserving of whatever happens to them, including death. It is the stuff of persecution, pogroms, and warfare. The framers of the U.S. Constitution struggled with how to inoculate the new nation against these ills, and in many respects, the struggle continues today. The story goes that when Benjamin Franklin, a hometown delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, emerged from the proceedings, people asked him what happened. His famous answer was “You have a republic, if you can keep it.” To “keep it” in our time, we must appreciate the threat and dynamics of Christian nationalism, and the underlying historical revisionism that supports it. Then we can develop ways to counter it.
Meanwhile, the historical revisionist narrative has been fully integrated into the “biblical worldview” of a wide theological and political spectrum of the Christian Right. Christian nationalists include such familiar figures as Left Behind novelist Tim LaHaye, as well as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy and James Dobson, and the late theologian R.J. Rushdoony.
Indeed, the general approach Rushdoony outlined has become widely accepted among Christian nationalists, specifically that God actively intervenes in and guides history, and that God’s role can be retroactively discerned, from creation to the predestined Kingdom of God on Earth. Historical events described as “God’s providence” are then interpreted in terms of what God must have been up to. This is how Rushdoony arrives at what he called Christian history, based on “Christian revisionism.”1
Here are a few examples of how Christian nationalism and revisionism permeate the Christian Right and affect American political life. They should lend a sense of urgency to the project of contending for the story of the origins of American democracy and the rights of individual conscience.
=-=-=
Four short accessible books that go a long way towards the development of a mainstream narrative of the development of the role of religion in American history are:
Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, Harper & Row, 1987.
Franklin T. Lambert, The Founding Fathers and The Place of Religion in America, Princeton, 2003.
Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State, W.W. Norton, 2005.
Barry Lynn, Piety and Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom, Harmony Books, 2006.
| Jesus Meets Einstein In Little Rock: You Don’t Have To Be A Genius To Understand The Bill Of Rights |
Rob Boston, 12-15-09
Ah, Christmas! The time of year when our thoughts turn to decorated holiday trees, presents, eggnog and Albert Einstein.
Wait a minute – Albert Einstein?
Yep, the theoretical physicist and all-around super-genius has become an official part of the holiday season, at least in Arkansas. Einstein will appear in a Solstice display at the state capitol in Little Rock, thanks to a recent ruling by a federal court.How did this come about? A private, non-profit group for years has erected a Nativity scene on the grounds of the capitol. It consists of the traditional figures from the New Testament story inside a wooden structure.
In years past, the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers has requested permission to erect its own display, described as a celebration of the Winter Solstice. It features “freethinkers” like Einstein, Bill Gates and Eleanor Roosevelt and a sign reading, “As the old year passes and a new year is born, we reflect on that which has passed and hope for a better tomorrow. May the light of reason be a beacon to a brighter future for us all.”
Arkansas officials rejected the display in 2008 and this year. Secretary of State Charlie Daniels called it inconsistent with other decorations at the capitol. Backed by the Arkansas ACLU, the Freethinkers sued and won.
Tod Billings, president of the Freethinkers, told the Associated Press that members of his group never sought to have the Nativity scene removed, they just wanted the same right of access to public space.
“We just wanted the freedom to be included in the holiday celebrations publicly, just like anybody else can do if they fill out the appropriate paperwork,” Billings said.
This decision is especially appropriate right now because today is Bill of Rights Day. On Dec. 15, 1791, the Virginia legislature ratified the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, becoming the 11th state to do so. That action officially added the Bill of Rights to our Constitution.
In 1941, the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation declaring Dec. 15 “Bill of Rights Day.” Admittedly, the holiday tends to get lost in the pre-Christmas frenzy, and that’s a shame. All Americans would do well to pause today and reflect on the rights and freedoms enshrined in the first 10 amendments to our Constitution – and better than that, commit themselves to defending those freedoms.
Holiday Haranguers: Religious Right Tells America To Celebrate Christmas Its Way Or Get Out
By Rob Boston, December 24, 2009
I did an interview last week with TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). The network was interested in getting my thoughts about U.S. Rep. Henry Brown’s resolution promoting Christmas.
I told CBN I didn’t think much of it. I pointed out that if you want a deeply religious experience at this time of year, you’re bound to be disappointed looking for it at city hall, public schools or the U.S. Congress. I recommended going to church for that.
I’ve told several reporters this year that, whether the Religious Right likes it or not, the character of Christmas is changing in America. Increasing religious diversity, the popularity of “do-it-yourself” spirituality and other factors are affecting all aspects of the culture, Christmas included.
Some in the Religious Right have responded to this by hunkering down and arrogantly insisting that Christmas belongs to them, and they will determine how it is to be celebrated. On Dec. 22, Robertson went on a tear about the need to preserve the religious character of Christmas and warning interlopers to stay away.
“It isn’t somebody else’s holiday! This is our holiday! This is a Christian holiday!” Robertson ranted on his “700 Club.”
Yet that same CBN story cited an interesting statistic. It referenced an unnamed poll taken this month that found that “66 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, while 20 percent celebrate it as a secular holiday.”
War Weariness, Military Heft, and Peace Building
H. Patricia Hynes
While post-war Japan and Germany invested in peacetime education, infrastructure, capital and manpower, the United States “committed to the military establishment and especially to the developing of increasingly exotic weaponry. By some estimates as much as a third of all American engineering and scientific talent was so employed through the 1980s.”
~ John Kenneth Galbraith
A Journey Through Economic Time: A Firsthand View
Americans generally tune into their country’s military in times of war. Otherwise, the heft of U.S. militarism is largely unnoticed. Recent polls find that more than 50% of Americans disapprove of the nearly eight year war in Afghanistan, now spread to Pakistan. However, this ad-hoc sentiment – the wearying of a current war — will scarcely plumb the depths of the U.S. military reach into culture, economy, global geography, and outer space. That is, unless the call to end this war also confronts the metastasis of U.S. militarism and generates peace-building efforts.
War mirrors the culture of a country. U.S. militarism – from its training, tactics, and logistics to its reasons for going to war and its weapons of war — is distinctly shaped by core elements of American identity. These determining cultural forces are, according to military historian Victor Davis Hanson: manifest destiny; frontier mentality; rugged individualism and what he calls a “muscular independence”; unfettered market capitalism; the ideal of meritocracy (no matter what one’s class, one can rise to the top in the U.S. military); and a fascination with machines, modernity, and mobility. All converge to generate bigger, better and more destructive war technology. He adds that the integration of military into society is smoothed through the GI bill for housing and education and the Second Amendment right to bear arms. www.thenewatlantis.com/ publications/military-technology-and-american-culture
Popular culture is another frontier for military manifest destiny. The next time you watch a war movie, check the credits. In late December 2008, USA Today published an article on the filming of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, www.usatoday.com/life/movies/ news/2008-12-28-transformers-main_N.htm, a film which glorifies the pyrotechnics of jetfire fights, massive explosions from bombs, and the amassing of troops and armored vehicles for planetary war. Hollywood partnered with the Department of Defense, which provided resources, approved the script, and saw the film as a morale booster for enlisted soldiers. In the high-spirited, feel-good description of the war film-in-process, the writer raves about real soldiers returned from Iraq and Afghanistan who are natural actors on set because they know how to handle advanced weapons and react like warriors under attack. And as DOD hoped – the soldier actors’ morale was over the top. After all, they are on the winning side of a good guy/bad guy global war of the U.S. military against alien robots. Apparently DOD has been consulting with Hollywood on making war movies – “with generous loans of equipment, troops, consultants and weaponry in return for script ‘supervision’ – since the silent era.” www.tomdispatch.com/post/175107
Given American cultural values, what is the future of American warfare? According to Hanson, two models of war will predominate. Small-scale rapid and nimble war will involve killing from a distance with drones or unmanned aerial vehicles and, likely, robots on the battlefield (permitting war anywhere on the globe without U.S. fatalities). For larger conflicts, U.S. military power is strategically positioned on every continent and on all the seas. More than seven hundred overseas bases with about ½ million soldiers, civilian contractors and families in 130 countries are listed by the Department of Defense in its “Base Structure Report.” Others estimate the number of overseas bases to be more like 1000. (1) The bases trace an arc from the Andes to North Africa across the Middle East to Indonesia, the Philippines and North Korea, sweeping over all major oil resources. Each of a dozen U.S. aircraft carriers located tactically across the globe contains more war planes than whole air forces of most countries.
The proposed U.S. 2009 DOD defense budget lines up pretty symmetrically with this military outlook for the 21st century: Military “muscular independence” for big wars and military mobility and remote battlefield technology for small wars. In a nutshell, the two models of future wars meet the American cultural preference for war: kill from a distance, kill swiftly with overkill, kill others but spare American lives, kill alone whenever possible because coalitions are messy.
Written by William D. Hartung
It’s been a good decade for the Pentagon. The most recent numbers from Capitol Hill indicate that Pentagon spending (counting Iraq and Afghanistan) will reach over $630 billion in 2010. And that doesn’t even include the billions set aside for building new military facilities and sustaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
But even without counting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense budget has been moving relentlessly upward since 2001. Pentagon budget authority has jumped from $296 billion in 2001 to $513 billion in 2009, a 73% increase. And again, that’s not even counting the over $1 trillion in taxpayer money that has been thrown at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if those wars had never happened, the Pentagon would still be racking up huge increases year after year after year.
And perhaps most disturbing of all, the Pentagon budget increased for every year of the first decade of the 21st century, an unprecedented run that didn’t even happen in the World War II era, much less during Korea or Vietnam. And if the government’s current plans are carried out, there will be yearly increases in military spending for at least another decade.
We have a permanent war budget, and most of it isn’t even being used to fight wars — it’s mostly a giveaway to the Pentagon and its favorite contractors.
By Fidel Castro
I want to insist on how unfair and outrageous were the remarks of the Prime Minister of the UK and the Yankee attempt to impose as the Summit Accord a document that was at no time discussed with the attending countries.
The Fear Decade
By Ted Rall
Home of the free and the brave. Live free or die. Shoot first; ask questions later. Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out. These were the mottos of a brash, impetuous, audacious-to-a-fault nation. That nation is dead.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24293.htm
Afghan Civilians Handcuffed And Killed By US Occupation Forces: Report
By Jerome Starkey In Kabul
American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24290.htm
RELATED:
Afghanistan has demanded that foreign troops responsible for the killing of 10 civilians be handed over to the custody of the government.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115054§ionid=351020403
Afghan civilian death prompts anti-US rallies:The protestors chanted “death to Obama” and “death to foreign forces.” The demonstrators also torched a US flag and an effigy of US President Barack Obama. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115051§ionid=351020403
Source:
Graphic Shows Complexity Of US Counterinsurgency In Afghanistan
First Posted: 12-22-09 10:28 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/22/graphic-shows-complexity-_n_401338.html
For a good example of how difficult it will be for the US military to regain the momentum in Afghanistan, check out this graphic, (1) on the military counterinsurgency (aka COIN) strategy.
=-=-=
The great Afghan spaghetti monster
December 20, 2009
The graphic from the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looks like a tangled ball of multicolored yarn, or perhaps it is the military’s depiction of the all-powerful, all-knowing Flying Spaghetti Monster…
Whatever the case, it documents the complex relationships between Tribal leaders, soldiers, aid workers, drug dealers, militants, ethnic groups, government leaders, etc.
“For some military commanders, the slide is genius,” wrote NBC’s Richard Engel, “an attempt to show how all things in war – from media bias to ethnic/tribal rivalries – are interconnected and must be taken into consideration. It represents a new approach to war fighting, looking beyond simply killing enemy fighters. It underscores what those fighting wars have long known, that everything matters.”
“But for others,” Engel writes, “the diagram represents a fool’s errand that the United States has taken on in the name of national security. Detractors say the slide represents an assault on logic, an attempt to jam a square peg into a round hole. They say the concept of occupying a foreign nation to protect security at home is expensive, time consuming, ineffective and ultimately leads to the ‘spaghetti logic’ of the slide. They say this slide is what happens when smart people are asked to come up with a solution to the wrong question.”
1. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/2009/December/091202/091203-engel-big-9a.jpg
Cont. http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/kabul/2009/12/the-great-afghan-spaghetti-monster.html
Bob Sesca, December 30, 2009 03:42 PM
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s public relations apparatus was firing on all cylinders Wednesday morning, with the release of a predictable statement about the failed Underpants Bomber fracas. And by “public relations apparatus” I mean “cable news and Politico.”
Needless to say, Cheney is well-qualified to take an authoritative posture when it comes to terrorism. After all, he and his little buddy “kept us safe” from terrorist attacks for eight years, right? Other than the worst terrorist attack in American history, of course, along with the Anthrax Attacks, the Beltway Snipers, the thousands of terrorist attacks on our contractors and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the attacks on our allies in London and Madrid, Cheney did a fine job keeping us safe (more about this in my book). Good job, Mr. Cheney!
So it wasn’t any surprise when Cheney stopped thumbing through Uncle Billy’s misplaced $8,000 long enough to fire off a few words about the failed Underpants Bomber attempt and the Obama administration’s response. And since Dick Cheney is a very serious terrorism expert — mainly because more Americans died in terrorist attacks on his watch than any other vice president ever — the media gobbled it up, practically unchallenged.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/republican-hypocrisy-on-t_b_407459.html
John Yoo: Obama Is A Continuation Of Bush On Executive Powers
Sam Stein, First Posted: 12-31-09 01:21 PM – Updated: 12-31-09 01:35 PM
In his new book, former Bush administration attorney and infamous torture memo collaborator John Yoo favorably argues that President Barack Obama is wielding executive powers in the same manner as his White House predecessor.
Titled “Crisis and Command,” Yoo’s 500-plus-page work looks at the evolution of presidential powers from Washington to Bush, but with an afterword added for the current White House occupant. Few people have theorized as much about the limits of the powers granted to the presidency under the constitution (though, in Yoo’s case, much of that theorizing went into figuring out how to stretch or defy those limits). And, in his writing, the current U.C. Berkeley law professor insists that Obama has — due to the challenges of elected office — shunned the anti-Bush posture he struck as a presidential candidate.
“President Obama has come to have more in common with the ends of the Bush administration’s terrorism policies than did Candidate Obama,” Yoo writes. “It should be clear, further, that this would not be possible were it not for a broad view of presidential power.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/31/john-yoo-obama-is-a-conti_n_408441.html
DCCC Chair: GOP Opposition To National Security Funds Will Be Issue In 2010
Sam Stein, 12-31-09 11:01 AM
Democratic leadership in Congress is pledging to make Republican votes against key national security and defense funding measures a feature in the upcoming congressional elections, following the botched Christmas Day terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound airliner.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-M.D.) told the Huffington Post on Wednesday that it was the committee’s duty to ensure that, come 2010, the American people are aware that House Republicans opposed a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill that included funding for airport security.
The 2010 appropriations bill contained Transportation Security Administration funding for explosives detection systems and other security measures — it was opposed by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) among others.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/31/dccc-chair-gop-opposition_n_408229.html
Over the past decade, we’ve made a point of publishing the articles that reorient the way you think about the liberal agenda.
The Prospect began 20 years ago with a mission to rethink ideas about public policy and thereby restore plausibility and persuasiveness to American Liberalism. Then it was a quarterly out of Princeton, New Jersey, now, it’s a monthly with a lively Web site.
Over the past decade, we’ve made a point of publishing the articles that reorient the way you think about the liberal agenda.
Here are 10 of our best (and most prescient) suggestions:
The global financial system is in need of more oversight. (2001)
The rush to war in Iraq was dangerous and misguided. (2002)
The Internet will become a Democratic organizing tool. (2003)
Las Vegas is organized labor’s Shangri-La. But the rest of America … (2004)
Are Democrats using the wrong arguments to defend reproductive rights? (2004)
Not only should we reform health care … we should think about a public option. (2005)
The real glass ceiling for women is not at the workplace but at home. (2005)
Is racial targeting the best way to close the education achievement gap? (2007)
The second wave of AIDS: black and Southern. (2008)
About that public option: It’s not as important as comprehensive, good, reform. (2009)
–The Editors
Obama was right to take on a wide range of tough problems, and no one should be shocked at the obstacles in his path.
by Paul Starr, 12-24-09
As Barack Obama ends his first year in office, there is much talk about disillusionment with the president among progressives. The litany of complaints is obvious: unemployment still at 10 percent, economic policies unduly favorable to Wall Street, the surge in Afghanistan, compromises on health care, the failure to close down Guantánamo, and a general inability to bring about the transformative change that Obama spoke of during his campaign.
Policy has certainly not moved as fast or as far as many of us would like. But perhaps because I never shared the political fantasies about Obama in the first place, I don’t feel let down, and I don’t think other liberals should. No president was about to turn the country around on a dime — the structure of our government doesn’t allow it. And anyone who paid attention to what Obama said as a candidate about specific matters of policy would have realized he wasn’t the lefty some imagined and others feared.
…..along with nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Sudan, Russia and Sri Lanka, are places where, the Pew Forum says, religious people are routinely discriminated against or persecuted — and not through just a few snarky comments.
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Canada is among the most religiously tolerant countries on the planet. We have the same “low” level of religious hostility as Poland, Nicaragua and Spain
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…the U.S. does not do quite as well as Canada in the Pew survey. That’s based on FBI reports of more than 1,500 acts a year of religious hatred, as well as the regular harassment or worse of all groups in the country, including Muslims, black Protestants, Jews, Catholics, atheists and Sikhs.
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“It is not an exaggeration to say that the right-wing in this country has declared war on government.”
We need to better understand the indispensable roles that government plays in our society, and we need to come to the defense of this unfairly maligned institution.
Why do we need to stand up for government? Because for decades, this valuable institution has been unfairly attacked and maligned by right-wing forces in this country. To make matters worse, parts of the mainstream media have eagerly joined in this government bashing. Hardly a day goes by on Fox News without one their conservative commentators gleefully lambasting “wasteful” social programs, “ridiculous” regulations, and the “socialist” politicians who support those “stupid” things.
Until now, those who have been attacking government have been doing a much better job than the few who have been trying to defend it. For example, Republicans have been waging their anti-government campaign on two fronts. First has been the attack on specific government programs, from welfare and Medicaid to environmental protection and business regulation. Second, and perhaps more important, has been the effort to delegitimize government itself – to convince Americans that government is a bad thing that should be limited whenever possible.
Unfortunately, many centrist and liberal politicians have been fighting back on only one front. They tried, during the Bush administration, to defend particular public sector programs from attack, including Social Security and environmental protection. But until recently, they have not been aggressively defending the idea that government itself is valuable and beneficial. They have not been making the positive case for a healthier and more active public sector.
Actually, it was worse than that. Beginning in the 1980s, some Democrats beat a retreat away from the notion that government is good. They routinely reinforced anti-government stereotypes by focusing on its negative aspects, such as complaining about government waste. Many also supported damaging tax cuts and ill-considered deregulation efforts. And some Democratic candidates even joined Republicans in running against Washington and “big government” in their election campaigns. Consider the words uttered by Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of The Union Address: “We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there’s not a program for every problem. … The era of big government is over.” These kinds of statements inadvertently added legitimacy to the right-wing crusade against government. One conservative journal, the Weekly Standard, was so excited about Clinton’s statement that they declared on their front cover “We’ve Won!”
Clearly many centrist and liberal lawmakers understood the valuable and indispensable role that government plays in our society, but many seemed to believe that if they too jumped on the anti-government band-wagon, this would take the issue away from the conservatives. But this strategy utterly failed. It only added fuel to the anti-government fire that Republicans had been stoking for years. Far from abandoning this issue, the right only pressed harder in their efforts to delegitimize government and reduce liberal programs.
It is important to see that this Democratic retreat represented an enormous change from the more positive attitude toward government – even big government – that was common in the earlier parts of the twentieth century. Then, many politicians and members of the public embraced big government as the only thing that could counter-balance the power of big business, prevail over the big foreign threats of fascism and communism, and solve big societal problems like economic depressions, racism, and environmental pollution.
Fortunately, the election of Barack Obama seemed to signal an end to the liberal retreat from government. He has portrayed himself as a champion of government and has pledged to reinvigorate the public sector. He understands that we still face big problems as a society – problems that only big government can solve. These include our financial crisis, global warming, persistent poverty, an ongoing healthcare crisis, an unsafe food supply system, vastly unequal educational opportunities, a deteriorating infrastructure, and a looming pension crisis. And the American public seems to increasingly appreciate the vital role that government programs can play in confronting these difficulties.
But despite these hopeful signs, it is clear that the battle over government is not over. While the Republicans are presently in retreat on the national level, they still control many state and local governments and continue to pursue an agenda of cutting taxes and slashing government services. And even in Congress, many conservatives continue to espouse the gospel of small government and they have opposed the President’s effort to revive the economy, improve education, promote renewable energy, etc.
So there is still a need to make vigorous and reasoned case for government. It is crucial to continue to make the argument, as this website does, that government has a vital and indispensable role to play in improving the lives of all Americans – that government is good.
Government Id Good
An Unapologetic Defense of a Vital Institution
A web project of Douglas J. Amy, Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College
Long speculated concerns that the Israeli military has been harvesting organs from battlefield casualties has been recently confirmed by officials, and is our top story in this most recent edition of ATS News. Our anchor, Johnny Anonymous, covers several angles of this highly-charged and confirmed conspiracy theory, that includes the naming of those involved and admitted time frames of the “body snatching.” Additional stories include the largest global corporation you’ve never heard about and their ties to major global governments, a new global currency acked by the UN, additional research into the Norway spiral, recent investigations into William Shakespeare, and more
By Shamus Cooke
On Sunday in Iran, mass protests were drowned in blood by government authorities; at least ten reportedly have been killed with hundreds injured. The events have been given ample coverage in the U.S. media, with the intention of further demonizing Iran’s repressive government. Absent in the American media are the deeper implications of the protests, which, to anyone paying close attention, constitute a powerful revolutionary movement.
This movement has grown exponentially in a very short period of time. Although only beginning in June over allegations of voter fraud, the movement is now endorsed by millions of combative Iranians, demanding “death to the dictator,” while they waive an Iranian flag that’s missing the Muslim insignia. Massive demonstrations in the streets and university campuses have directly confronted police repression and in some cases have overcome it. The New York Times describes a scene found only in instances of revolution:
“There were scattered reports of police officers surrendering, or refusing to fight. Several videos posted on the Internet show officers holding up their helmets and walking away from the melee, as protesters pat them on the back in appreciation. In one photograph, several police officers can be seen holding their arms up, and one of them wears a bright green headband, the signature color of the opposition movement.” (December 27, 2009).
Over the last decade, something has happened in America. We are afraid to engage in dialogue about peace. Maybe it was the horrible attacks on 9/11 that made us fearful to advocate peace. Or perhaps we have been intimidated by the constant beat of the right wing drums that somehow proclaim peace as a goal is unpatriotic or unrealistic. What is clear the word “peace” has fallen out of fashion except for the annual holiday cards.
For most of my life, even among the most distinguished diplomats, peace was a desirable goal and there was no fear about embracing it. War was always an unnecessary evil but sadly, today peace is viewed as useless rhetoric from the fringe. Even while accepting the most prestigious award for peace in the world, the Nobel Peace Prize, our president felt compelled to make his acceptance about “just wars.” One would have hoped just for one day the speech could have been about ‘peace’ and the urgency to embrace the concept.
More than ever before, now is the time for the word ‘peace’ to become a serious part of our governmental and personal lives.
The world is wracked with devastation from wars and tribal conflicts. Our country is at war in two nations. In Africa, the conflict in the Congo continues to grow to the largest war of this generation with near six million dead, 75% of the women raped and children enforced into military service. In Darfur, hundreds of thousands have been killed or forced into refugee camps. Somalia has ceased to exist as a nation state and the fighting is non-stop. Even India is having major unrest in its eastern and central sectors. The list goes on and on.
Cont. http://www.davidmixner.com/2009/12/whats-happen-to-peace.html
LGBT History: Back to the 1600′s!
2009-12-28
Deep within a New York Times story, “His Specialty? Making Old New York Talk in Dutch” by Danny Hakim, is a bit of delicious LGBT history. We get a rare glimpse that gays were very much part of the making of this nation and heroes to boot. Mr. Charles Gehring has spent most of his life translating documents from the early years in New York from Dutch to English. The result has been a fascinating insight to the influence of the Dutch on our early years. One that has often been overlooked.
In The Times story was this piece of LGBT history and just might be the earliest record of a LGBT person in America:
Cont. http://www.davidmixner.com/2009/12/lgbt-history-back-to-the-1600s.html
Dick Cheney is attacking the POTUS again, during a time of war no less:
“Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of “trying to pretend we are not at war” with terrorists, pointing to the White House response to the attempted sky bombing as reflecting a pattern that includes banishing the term “war on terror” and attempting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.”
Yes, it is all Obama’s fault for using different terminology and attempting to close a facility from which the Cheney administration released the alleged plotters of the failed Detroit plot. But more importantly, let us not forget that the biggest terrorist attack in US history happened on Dick Cheney’s watch, despite countless warnings from at least 11 nations and our own CIA.
Moreover, Cheney’s immediate response to the 9/11 attacks was to first have meetings on attacking Iraq. (see 9/11 dates in this timeline).
Cont. http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2009/12/dick-cheney-needs-a-reminder-911-on-his-watch.html
By Stephen F. Eisenman
In a recent article entitled “The Penal State in an Age of Crisis” (Monthly Review, June 2009), Hannah Holleman, Robert W. McChesney, John Bellamy Foster, and R. Jamil Jonna sought to account for the surprising stability of civilian government spending (non-defense government consumption and investment) as a percentage of GDP during a period, roughly 1970 to the present, when the power of capital over labor increased, inequality grew, and cuts in government programs for the poor and working class continued more or less without abatement.1 One solution to the paradox, the authors persuasively argued, was the growth in spending for “the penal state,” a political regime marked by the mass incarceration of the poor and the vulnerable who posed risks to the stability of the prevailing economic and social order.
Indeed, the incarcerated population of the United States has grown markedly in the last three decades, from approximately 221 per 100,000 of population in 1980, to 762 per 100,000 in 2008. The United States now has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world (over six times higher than Britain’s or China’s and twelve times higher than Japan’s), an incarcerated population of 2.3 million, and a total correctional population (in prison or jail, or on probation) of 7.3 million.2 In other words, civilian government spending has remained constant during a period of capitalist-class consolidation, in part because an increasing proportion of that expenditure has gone to maintaining a penal state that disciplines the poor. One might add that the line of division between civilian and military spending during this period has become increasingly blurred, and that the same national security rationales for increasing the latter were marshaled for the former. Maintaining or augmenting what is euphemistically called a “strong defense” has, over the past four decades, become a core civilian priority.
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
This fact is very powerful evidence of the ever-increasing penetration of commercial image-projection within everyday life in the United States. No wonder TV addiction continues to worsen, (1) despite the appalling awfulness, narrowness, and fourth-rate derivateness of the vast majority of commercial-media content. (Spongebob, “Squid on Strike,” being a major exception!)
→Overall, marketing continues to grow faster (and decline later and less) than its advertising sub-component. Ad Age reports that, while ad agency revenues shrank by 9.7 percent in 2009, those of “marketing services” firms fell by only 2.4 percent.
Cont. http://www.consumertrap.com/2009/12/ad-age-annual.html
HUMANITARIAN IMPERIALISM
Using Human Rights to Sell War
by Jean Bricmont
Translated by Diana Johnstone
“Jean Bricmont’s provocative and carefully argued book deserves to be widely read and debated in the progressive, ecological, peace, and human rights movements. It may not be the last word on this subject but the issues Bricmont raises cannot be ignored.”
—Alan Sokal, Professor of Physics, New York University
Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world’s leading economic and military powers—above all, the United States—in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks. The criteria for such intervention have become more arbitrary and self-serving, and their form more destructive, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Iraq. Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the large parts of the left was often complicit in this ideology of intervention-discovering new “Hitlers” as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.
Jean Bricmont’s ‘Humanitarian Imperialism’ is both a historical account of this development and a powerful political and moral critique. It seeks to restore the critique of imperialism to its rightful place in the defense of human rights. It describes the leading role of the United States in initiating military and other interventions, but also on the obvious support given to it by European powers and NATO. It outlines an alternative approach to the question of human rights, based on the genuine recognition of the equal rights of people in poor and wealthy countries.
Timely, topical, and rigorously argued, Jean Bricmont’s book establishes a firm basis for resistance to global war with no end in sight.
About the Author: JEAN BRICMONT is professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, Belgium. He is the author of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science (with Alan Sokal) and other political and scientific publications.
