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U.S. Foreign Policy: Kill Them All

The reason Israel acts in such infuriatingly violent and brutal ways is that essentially Israel is carrying out U.S. foreign policy. Consider what Alan Nairn wrote on the topic:

Link

Some say the US should admonish Israel for its attack on the Gaza aid ship.

But Israel is not violating US doctrine. Israel is implementing it.

A former US national security chief just said on CNN: "I mean, imagine for a moment if you had videotape of a U.S. Navy SEAL being thrown by civilians off the side of a ship. We would be surprised if not everybody on that ship was killed as a result of that." (CNN, The Situation Room, May 31, 2010).

There were 600 people on that ship. US doctrine, evidently, says: kill them.

Saying this was Frances Fragos Townsend, the former top adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism to US President George W. Bush, and a current member of President Obama's CIA External Advisory Board.

Read the rest.


And oh yes, a Navy Seal, can you imagine? “Hey, that dude knows what he’s doing man, he was special ops!” Oh, you must mean one of those guys who sneaks into Afghanistan villages at three in the morning tosses a hand grenade into the wrong person’s house and murders untold innocents and then runs away in the dark like a slinking hyena. One Navy Seal certainly would be worth the lives of 600 people who volunteered to help starving children in Gaza which was certainly a brave act considering Israel’s Berserker Policy that we saw in action when they destroyed much of Gaza. We will never know how many Palestinians perished in that bloody episode. And let me remind that Israel was using American munitions which is only fitting since they were carrying out American policy.

Townsend also forgets that an American was murdered during the Israeli raid. Unfortunately the 19 year old youth who was first tortured and then executed, or slaughtered like a pig really, wasn’t a NAVY SEAL! What a shame, that’s a bit of bad luck for Dogan. But since Dogan was a mere American citizen many Democratic and Republican Congress-people have cheered Israel’s actions in this matter. Townsend couldn’t give a shit about Dogan, we know that much. So you see, in the greater scheme of things, Obama, his administration, in fact all the Republican and Democratic politicians view you, citizen that you are, as a mere bug, a slug, an ant that can be stepped on, no hard feelings though.

Even the monstrous act of murdering 600 of us, or anyone for that matter, doesn’t even give them a moment to pause. But that shouldn’t surprise you for we all know that millions have perished during the Terror Wars but that is rarely mentioned, especially in politer circles and nobody in our government really cares about the slaughter, they rather revel in it for it gives them an inordinate sense of godhood and indeed Obama has claimed the right to murder any American any time he feels like it without any trial, representation, nor evidence. Obama is a Tyrant and a Monster.

I’ve been saying for some time now that I disagree with those who say an attack against Iran would endanger troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the Iranians who are in danger, they are surrounded by nations harboring American Militants (LOL), okay, American troops. And now, someone else has noticed this rather obvious fact that Iran is painted into a corner.

Link Via Antiwar.com

Iran literally is surrounded by American troops, notes an oil market analyst, Energy and Capital editor Christian A. DeHaemer.

No shit Sherlock.

Not only that, if you read the article which I would if I were you, you will see some disturbing events that point to a possible war with Iran in the very near future. Eleven American warships have passed through the Suez Canal, Israel has nuclear armed submarines off of Iran’s shore, a buildup of American troops along Iranian borders, rumors of an eminent attack on Tehran by Israeli warplanes. None of it sounds good, nothing like a new war to take your mind off the oil endowed Gulf of Mexico.

Unless you are an idiot you will know that leaders always act in ways that benefit them, not us. Obama’s performance with the Gulf blowout is the sound of his presidency doing a belly flop in the Gulf. I doubt the news media will ever uncover Obama’s role in this affair but I think the fact that he has come off as a wimp makes him desperate. And even though attacking Iran is against our best interests Obama just may see it as in his own best interest to attack Iran at this point. We will have to wait and see, notice that we have nothing at all to say in these matters, being dispensable and all. Remember as well that if Israel attacks Iran it was done as part of U.S. policy, that is after all, what we pay Israel to do.

G8 G20 June 2010

The Real News: "G20: Doves on finance reform, hawks on austerity"
Rob Johnson: Real cause of massive debt was caused by finance sector, not people's social programs
.....................................




Russia Today June 25, 2010 : Hundreds of protesters have gathered in one of Toronto's public parks to march against the G-8 and G-20 summits. RT's Lauren Lyster reports from the scene.
..................................................



AFP: Thousands of Canadian police threw a tight security net over eastern Ontario province Thursday as world leaders began arriving for key summits focused on economic recovery and development. Leaders from the Group of Eight leading economies will meet Friday in Huntsville, before joining up with other officials from the Group of 20 developed and emerging nations in Toronto on Saturday and Sunday.

.......................................




CNN: Violence, vandalism rock G-20 protests


CNN:

"These criminals rely on the anonymity of hiding in a larger group of the curious and the naive," he said. At least four police cars went up in flames and smoke during hours of confrontation. Protesters left behind broken windows and graffiti. [Bill]Blair said police used tear gas after warning a group of protesters "engaged in acts of destruction" Saturday.

However, not all encounters between police and protesters were hostile. At one intersection, the crowd danced and chanted, "You're sexy, you're cute, take off your riot suit!"

More aggressive groups of demonstrators moved from intersection to intersection, trying to circumvent police and get to the security fence protecting the summit meeting."The fence is a symbol that they can build a fence and spend a billion dollars on their agenda. Everywhere the protesters went, police were waiting to head them off, in some cases with individual blasts of pepper spray, tear gas and bean bag pellets, according to the summit's security unit.

OK, so they burned four police cars. The video actually makes it seem like they torched just one car, which doesn't strike me as a big deal if nobody was hurt, and naturally one hopes that was indeed the case. I'm guessing the bill for just the hors d'ouerves at the summit would be enough to pay for one or even as many as four Toronto P.D. squad cars, easy. The cameraman seemed less interested in the shirtless guy we glimpse briefly, who looks like he's bleeding, and I note cameraman chose a vantage point behind another person partially blocking the line of sight. (Although to be fair that may have been per police restriction. Maybe the girl standing between the camera and the guy on the ground is also with the authorities.)

see also

Michael Olsen, The Motley Fool, June 17th: "Profit From the BP Debacle and Eurozone Crisis"

Down to the Gulf in Lies

Obama, in his first year opened 53 million acres of offshore oil reserves for lease. This is far more than under George W. Bush.

In 1995 Congress, in collusion with the Clinton Administration, passed the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act designed to encourage oil companies to drill in ocean waters over one mile deep by suspending federal royalties paid by oil companies, up to a certain point. At least that was the theory.

Link

The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Deep Water Royalty Relief Act (DWRRA) directs the Secretary of the Interior to suspend royalties on existing leases in certain deep water areas of the Gulf of Mexico OCS Region when a specific set of conditions are met. Upon receipt of a complete application, the Secretary is to determine whether proposed new production would be economic while subject to the requirement to pay Federal royalties. The DWRRA directs the Secretary to consider in his determination, the increased risk of operating in deep water and costs associated with exploring, developing and producing. Lessees are required to submit a complete application which provides the necessary raw and interpreted data on the field so that such a determination can be made.

According to Jeffry St. Clair (Counterpunch news letter June 16-30, 2010 subscription only) there were triggers built into the lease contracts which meant that when production hit a certain point the company drilling the well was once again responsible for paying royalties. Then, for some reason the triggers that were to be written in the lease contracts vanished from them. Also according to St. Clair this caused the federal treasury to lose an estimated 12 billion dollars in royalties.

Such a deal, to reward the tax payers who pay for oil subsidies the oil companies steal the government blind, and then destroys who knows how much of the Gulf of Mexico. It was and is the corrupt relationship between the MMS, the oil industry, and the Obama administration, compounded by ignoring legally mandated environmental reports and BP’s own culpability by not, shall we say, using the proper safety measures that should have been used which has resulted in a disaster that we still have no clear idea of its true extent or what effects will echo down the coming years.

I have to laugh when I hear people say there is a blackout on the Deep Horizon, there isn’t a blackout, they are just plain lying to you, BP, Obama, and almost everyone else. The most likely scenario from what I have read is that the main break is actually below the surface so that by tossing stuff down the well BP could have made the situation worse. And here is another thing I’ve read, drilling relief wells might not work. So there you go, if the relief wells don’t work or make things worse they still can’t plug the well at the drill point. The oil will just keep escaping I suppose until it runs out.

Here is a typical lie:

Link

"One of the reasons we did not continue with the top kill at higher pressures," Allen said in that June 17 briefing, referring to an unsuccessful effort in May to kill the well by pumping drilling mud into it through its failed blowout preventer, "was a concern that if we increased the pressure too hard it might do damage to the casing and the wellbore. What we didn't want was open communication of any oil from the reservoir . . . to the seafloor and then . . . uncontrolled discharge at that point."

Here is why:

Link

OK let's get real about the GOM oil flow. There doesn't really seem to be much info on TOD that furthers more complete understanding of what's really happening in the GOM.
As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don't feel bad, there is much that doesn't make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there...

First of all...set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc....forget that, it won't be happening..it's done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.

So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?...there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It's really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do...you will see the "sense" behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:

The well bore structure is compromised "Down hole".

That is something which is a "Worst nightmare" conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have "said" a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place...

Read the rest, it’s an eye opener and worth reading.

Here is Obama telling you lies:

Link

"Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills," he added two days later. "They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn't come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore."

Here is Obama’s administration telling you lies:

Top Obama administration officials say that they did an exhaustive job marshaling information for more than a year, and that the president asked what he needed to ask when it arrived at his desk. Anyone, they said, would grow complacent about the safety of offshore drilling after decades without a major spill.

"It's really important to understand you have decades of nothing going wrong," said one senior administration official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity as a matter of White House policy.

"The last time you saw a spill of this magnitude in the Gulf, it was off the coast of Mexico in 1979," a second senior administration official said. "If something doesn't happen since 1979, you begin to take your eye off of that thing.”

Here is why:

Link

The reality is that wherever there’s oil drilling, there’s spilling. U.S. Department of Interior figures reflect 3 million gallons of oil spilled from 1980 to 1999 in the U.S. outer continental shelf offshore drilling program. As to blowouts, there were 18 in wells in the Gulf of Mexico from 1983 up to the eruption at the Deepwater Horizon rig.

And:

Link

Investigators with the U.S. Minerals Management Service raised concerns three years ago about oil rig blowouts associated with cementing wells, noting that accidents were continuing with regularity, most in the Gulf of Mexico.

Though the cause of last week's explosion on the Deepwater Horizon remains under investigation, officials with Transocean have said a blowout within the deep oil well was likely to blame for the deadly blast. At the time of the accident, crews were �cementing,� or installing casing to secure the walls of the well.

A 2007 MMS study found that although blowouts with offshore drilling operations were becoming less frequent, less deadly and less polluting, cementing-associated troubles persisted.

Cementing problems were associated with 18 of 39 blowouts between 1992 and 2006, and 18 of 70 from 1971 to 1991. There were 17 blowouts in the earlier period where contributing factors weren't identified.

Nearly all the blowouts examined occurred in the Gulf of Mexico.

In fact 38 out of 39 were in the Gulf. It was Obama who set the stage for the final act, in fact, the oil flowing into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico is a direct result of Obama misusing his powers as president along with his pal Salazar.

Link

The Obama administration joined BP in quashing environmental challenges to Gulf drilling in 2009 legal actions by Ken Salazar, Obama’s Secretary of Interior. They asked the federal court of appeals in Washington, DC to overturn their decision that blocked new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s outer continental shelf, referring to the same area where the explosion later occurred.

The appeals court partially approved Salazar’s petition, with the condition that the administration produce an environmental impact study for Gulf of Mexico drilling operations. The Obama administration granted BP a “categorical exemption” from producing a legally required environmental impact study and approved its exploration plan for the location of the future spill.

We have been fed nothing but lies since the beginning. They lied about the number of blowouts, they lied about the technology being safe, they lied about just about anything you could imagine in connection with the blowout. It’s good to know the government doesn’t stand for anything other than a tiny whoredom of egg-sucking old turds with more money than they could ever need, the ruling elite.

The newspapers while pretending to cover the story have been covering for Obama the whole time. What mainstream news outlet has shed any light in Obama’s role in this? None that I have seen though I would be happily proven wrong in this instance. The reason is obvious, if it became widely known that it was Obama who enabled this blowout it would end Obama’s career as president.

The Crumbling Empire: Wages of Dominion

Sometimes things are just as they seem which I believe is the case with McChrystal. That McChrystal had earlier received some of the troops he asked for evidently went to his head and led him to later shoot off his mouth seems to be the bottom line. Why he did this I really am not concerned with nor do I think McChrystal is important. What is important is that the war in Afghanistan continues even if no one knows why.

You might recall McChrystal said that Obama wasn’t engaged in the war and if that’s true why are we there? McChrystal also has said that he has seen no sign of al Qaida in Afghanistan. Obama tells us that we are in Afghanistan to fight al Qaida or to keep them from coming back. Yet the Taliban, who by the way are Afghans (remember that thought), really don’t want al Qaida in Afghanistan. Now I’m not a huge fan of the Taliban but they are the only form of government in Afghanistan at this point. Karzai is nothing but buffoon, a sock puppet for the U.S. whose military allows the Mayor of Kabul (he is called that because that’s as far as his authority extends so it’s a joke to say he is the leader of Afghanistan)to stay in “office” which no doubt allows him access to much American money as well.

So I’m looking at all this and what comes to mind is that the empire is truly beginning to crumble. The fact is the U.S. hasn’t really won a war where there was serious opposition since WWII. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan, the use of the vaunted mighty U.S. military has failed again and again. The first so-called Gulf War under Bush’s pops was not a war it was technically a raid, and in fact that’s all it was. The surge in Iraq in the second Iraq invasion under general “It’s Hard to Talk With A Microphone Up My Nose” Petraeus was a fraud where Petraeus actually paid Iraqi fighters not to fight. Petraeus’ job was to make Iraq look better than it actually was until Bush could leave office. Exit Bush, enter The Obama.

While Obama has called Iraq the wrong war, he evidently had accepted that the surge in Iraq had “worked” and apparently thought it would “work” in Afghanistan. Obama’s huge mistake was making Afghanistan the center piece of his foreign policy during his campaign for president. Some had put it down to Obama’s need to appear tough which no doubt is true but what is difficult to understand is why Afghanistan was the chosen vehicle. Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, will now add one more notch to its well notched belt.

There is little doubt in my mind that it was the downfall of the old Communist Russia that led American leaders at that time to begin to plan a campaign for acquiring much of the Middle East through invasion and occupation with the Caspian Basin and the riches in oil and natural gas that reside there being the main target. The quickest way to the Caspian Basin would have been through Iran yet Iraq provided the basis for its own demise when Saddam Hussein, believing it was okay with the Elder Bush, invaded Kuwait. This led to the vicious attack against Iraq, and later to sanctions that were as murderous as any war could be, and finally, rightly perceived as weak from the American assault and sanctions Iraq was chosen to be the first nation to fall to this over arching plan of dominion over the Middle East with 9/11 providing the convenient excuse to do begin this grandiose campaign of conquest.

Nine years later the American Empire is crumbling after wasting what can only be described as an astonishing amount of money and human life on all sides. The war in Afghanistan cannot be won if by winning you mean defeating the Taliban. The more Taliban you kill the more Taliban you create. Generally speaking people have never taken kindly to people invading their country and killing them, not even if the invaders are those ever loveable, gosh golly ma’am, Americans who jes came to hep out, gosh golly, and gee whiz. The war in Iraq is a total failure as well. Nobody in their right mind would ever consider the puppet government as something you could actually call legitimate. Made up of Iraq’s worst and most violent thugs the government is a joke. If the Americans had pulled out the present “government” would have soon disappeared, never to be heard from again.

At this point Iran and the Caspian Basin may be a pipe dream (pun intended) that can never materialize though it is too early to tell. America in its arrogance and hubris squandered American power in two wars that were not only ill-advised but were handled by completely incompetent civilian leadership and completely incompetent military leadership though it should be noted that American generals have never been something to write home about, not that I care for that sort of thing. Of course the crumbling could crumble along for quite some time, who knows. But I would certainly say we are well past the apex of empire and the mad scramble is about to commence. The economy is shot, and it will continue to be shot (you need manufacturing to have an economy, we don’t) which will erode our infrastructure and prevent us from any serious attempt of job creation and from there it’s a vicious cycle that will lead us to the has-been club where we can join the other has-been Caesars now languishing there.

All in all this a good thing, that the empire is crumbling I mean, and I hope it happens fast. It’s the only way we will ever be rid of the military-industrial-scientific-congressionial-presidential-complex because the government is way past where it can be overthrown or “fixed” in any Democratic manner. It is, in fact, completely out of control, yours, mine, not even theirs. American leadership is trapped in a destructive cycle that cannot be broken, even if that was wished for which it isn’t. Britain saw the writing on the walls and ended their empire before it ended them, will America be as smart? Don’t bet on it.

Human Beans and Global Warming

I’m far from convinced that global warming as caused by human beans is actually a fact. That global warming is happening, yes, that I believe. The planet isn’t static for Christ’s sake, continents drift, mountains rise, mountains erode, coast lines change, and all of this changes the weather. The planet itself has gone through several ice ages without our help so what makes you believe that the weather, our climate, should remain static? Clean air is good, we all like it, me too. Clean water—good. Who wants to breathe in mercury? The one constant in the universe is that human beans are conceited beyond anything remotely reasonable, but the climate is anything but constant and never has been. I’m sure Al Gore is real happy to make oodles of moolah from making scary movies about global warming not to mention his connection to the nuclear power industry. If you want to worry about something worry about the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, that’s real, that’s here now.

From the annals of the NYT we bring you the following:

Link

Just a Couple of Guys Grabbing Burgers

So what is it with Ray’s Hell Burger? Could it be winning the White House Burger Battle?

Let’s ask the president of Russia. We know President Obama is a fan.

On a sweltering summer day in Washington on Thursday, President Obama passed on lunch from White House chefs to take his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, across the Potomac to Ray’s, a hamburger establishment in Arlington, Va.

Mr. Obama might almost qualify as a Ray’s regular: he and Vice President Joseph R. “Bite Me” Biden Jr. went there on a surprise lunch run last year.

Mr. Obama had a cheddar and ground Iraqi burger with onions, lettuce, tomato, and bread-and-butter pickles, and a bottle of iced tea to wash it down. Mr. Medvedev also ordered the cheddar and grouind Iraqi burger, but he added jalapenos, onions and mushrooms, and paired it with a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Translators stayed close at hand to keep the conversation going as the two world leaders sat down to eat in shirt sleeves (Mr. Obama even unbuttoned his cuffs). They all walked out afterward to cheers from the other patrons.

The two world leaders evidently worked up an appetite discussing bilateral issues at the White House in the morning; perhaps they decided that a hearty American lunch of dead ground Iraqi would fortify them to face reporters and cameras at a news conference scheduled for the afternoon.

Mr. Medvedev is traveling in the United States this week to promote economic cooperation between the two countries. Even so, Mr. Obama picked up the check.

Goo-goo, gah-gah, goo-goo. Pretty baby! Da-da, ma-ma, goo-goo gah-gah.

McChrystal

Unsurprisingly, McChrystal has been replaced by the fainting prone general “Microphone Up My Nose Petraeus.” The war in Afghanistan is a total wash as it was meant to be or put another way, war is its own justification. However if you change generals it gives the rubes back home a sense that Dear Leader is serious about bringing Afghanistan to some kind of conclusion when the real plan is to keep the wars blowing along at a good clip. There so much money to make on war that we just hate to turn that darned spigot off. It also gives Obama the chance to appear lordly and leader-like which is fairly important when even the mainstream news media wonders what is wrong with Obama and suggests that he is perhaps spineless. In fact, the timing of McChrystal’s crude remarks on the Obama administration couldn’t have been more perfect.

Obama tells us himself that war is more important than any one man.

Link

"War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or a president," Obama said. "

Oh dear, Obama actually spoke the truth, must have been a gaff. Obama tells us right out that next to war, people (That’s you and me) are relegated to a secondary position. Reading between the lines Obama is also telling us we will never leave Afghanistan as long as he is president. The ruling class cheers.

World Views

A young Indian boy was hiking up the mountains near where he lived. As he climbed higher and higher he came to a beautiful lake reflecting the surrounding mountain peaks so he sat down to rest. Presently, he was amazed to see a beautiful creature that appeared to be painted with the colors of the rainbow fly out of the sky and land in the lake. After floating on the surface the creature dove under the water and then popped up again some distance away. When the creature came ashore the boy thought, surely this is a magical creature. It can fly through the sky, float on the water like a boat, swim under the water like a fish, walk on land, and had the colors of a rainbow. Later, the young Indian boy was amazed to learn that this magical creature was called “duck.”

Objective?

In the final analysis it is literally impossible for any human to be completely objective. The science of physics seems to be up against the wall with new theories and no way to prove or disprove them. String theory, the universe born out of a collision with another dimension etc., is all very interesting but it is still theory. Part of the problem with science is that scientists are human beings and as such see the world in strictly human terms. For example astronomers have been measuring distances to stars to see if the universe is open or closed, that is, will it expand forever or will it collapse upon itself, or better yet take the Big Bang theory. What do these two ideas have in common? They are both dependent on the human concept of beginnings and endings. We ourselves are born and then we grow old and die so as being humans we look at the universe in terms of beginnings and endings when the reality may be that beginnings and endings are merely a human construct born of our own limited perceptions. So perhaps asking whether the universe is open or closed may not even be relevant to understanding the world around us. In the end science is perhaps defeated by its own humanity.

The problem of being objective while also being human seems to apply to our everyday lives back here on Planet Earth. Were people being objective when they believed Obama would pull out of Iraq as Jonathan discusses in his post? Were people being objective when they thought Obama would deliver them from the evil of Bush? Were people being objective when they applied bumper stickers to their cars with Obama written on it and a peace symbol for the “O” of Obama? Of course not. People were being emotional and reactionary, “Anyone but Bush” was the theme of the day.

If people were objective regarding Obama they would see that he has taken Bush policy and expanded it,or I should say still expanding it. Obama is actually worse than Bush when it comes to policy but come next election when Obama is defeated, and rightly so,for being a wimp as the entire Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf disappears beneath a deluge of chemical laden oil with a giant gurgle, and along with it a whole bunch of people, he will be replaced with someone who will be worse than both Bush and Obama. Frankly, I’m no longer sure I give a damn what happens in this country, other than I live here, because it is quite possible that Americans deserve Obama and ilk. Decidedly so. But that’s another story.

Actually Paul Craig Roberts puts it nicely:

Link

The other day I saw a young man with a t-shirt with Obama’s image. Under it was the caption, ‘“socialist.” The stupidity of Americans is extraordinary. Wall Street is going to put a socialist in the White House?! If the word under Obama’s image had been “prostitute,” the message would have been on target.

Objectivity? It’s a rare beastie here in the land of the synapsed challenged. Liberals believe Obama is struggling against impossible odds in order to grant their wishes. Conservatives believe that Obama is either a socialist or the anti-Christ. Obama is neither of these things. Obama is a very weak leader who saw an opening and being the consummate opportunist took it, and is now basking in the glory of the presidency. Obama has made it whether his presidency is deemed a success or a failure for Obama is already becoming wealthy on his journey through American politics and afterwards there is the lecture circuit, which is worth millions, and of course the inevitable “book.” Yet there are plenty of rubes who don’t have a pot to piss in who will fly to Obama’s defense at the drop of a hat. Are they insane? Clearly.

Ultimately what Americans fail to realize is that the fabulously wealthy don’t just own the government, they are the government. They don’t call the super wealthy the ruling class for nothing.

Friday, 18 June 2010

above, Dean Baker on The Real News:"Decades of high unemployment likely"



Guernica Magazine,"Obama’s War"
by Tariq Ali, June 2010

I talk about “the surge” because this is something new. This was President Obama’s policy to differentiate himself from the Bush/Cheney Administration. The Iraq war was bad and we were going to pull out. That’s what we were told. But the pullout is not going to happen, in my opinion. They are going to be in Iraq now in these huge crusader-style fortresses for eternity, as they promise us, unless the Iraqis drive us out. The British did it in the forties and fifties and were finally driven out. So whether that happens, we’ll see. But that’s another story. There’s been no withdrawal from Iraq either, except a withdrawal from these towns to these big bases. But that was what was promised—withdrawal from Iraq but escalation in Afghanistan and religious language was used, citing the Cold War rhetoric of Reinhold Niebuhr, of fighting evil, “good versus evil,” that’s how it started. That’s what we are in Afghanistan for, to “fight evil” and of course we can’t leave. That is why we have to send more troops, to stabilize the situation so we can leave. If you want a particularly contorted defense of this position written, I hate to say this, but really written for idiots who know nothing about Afghanistan, I would recommend the article of the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband in the New York Review of Books. It is truly appalling, without understanding what’s going on in the country, bland, one cliché dripping onto the pages after another, but at least saying one thing which is of interest: that we can’t stay there.

Even General Eikenberry has said we can’t stay here forever because the big difference between the situation now and when the U.S. landed is that the occupation itself has made the country angry. You read between the lines or in the lines even, of what the people who go to Afghanistan from the United States say, intelligence, non-intelligence, intelligent journalists, unintelligent journalists, they all come back with one story that no one challenges: the bulk of the people don’t want us there; we have antagonized them. And that is why Eikenberry opposed the surge, because he said if you send in more troops, you kill more civilians, and if you kill more civilians, you antagonize whole new swathes of Pashtuns who join the insurgents and the resistance.

The emphases in red are mine. It's a longish article but well worth reading.[via John Emerson's facebook page.]

John Cole defends Obama from the likes of us; at Balloon Juice


via "Blckdgrd"


Sam Smith, "Liberals in denial"


Beverly Mann, "Oh, but Justice Souter, these days Judging is VERY easy"


via
Rdan at Angry Bear



Reason.com: "Feds: Fatty Meat Is Bad for You. Now Shut Up and Eat Your Government-Provided Fatty Meat"
via Charlie Davis.

[Tim the commenter: Thousands of years from now they will ponder how we constructed those idiotic food pyramids.]

Slick video

via Ethan at 6th or 7th.



I'm beginning to think that blogging may be bad for my psychic health. You read more, make an effort to get better informed and share the fruits of your inquiry, and it seems all you get for your efforts is a more vivid sense of how truly screwed and helpless we are. Not so long ago a friend asked me why I thought so many people invested so much intellectual energy in the distractions of pop culture, and I offered the opinion that it was an act of denial, because it might help people to deal with living in a society that is in a long-term decline and in which ordinary people are essentially powerless to do anything about it. Is this actually true? Naturally I hope not, and that I'm wrong, like the people who predicted an uncontrollable population explosion in the 1970s.

What Rob occasionally talks about regarding the tightening of the internet, appears to be starting down under:

from Time:

"First, China. Next: the Great Firewall of... Australia?",


Is Matthew Yglesias a *&%$in' loon? (via super Avedon)

Two from Naked Capitalism,

One: "Pete Peterson Has Won: Americans Rate Federal Debt as Top Threat"


and the return of debtor's prison.


Booman on lithium(via that wascally Alan Smithee.),

On the other hand, Booman's commenters who call him out, like some of those at Yglesias, are somewhat encouraging. (Especially King Leopold.)

The Stories they Tell

The story we hear from the mainstream news media is that the Deepwater Horizon blowout is an unusual and rare event. An entire McClatchy article was devoted to this idea. I had an extremely frustrating conversation with someone who refused to believe that blowouts were a common occurrence in the Gulf of Mexico. I was asked why it wasn’t in the news. So you see if it wasn’t in the main stream news then it is highly suspect. How ironic that the opposite is actually closer to the truth.

The McClatchy article referred to a MMS report on blowouts where at least it did mention the part of the report warning of blowouts and fire but I saw no mention of the following from the Houston Chronicle:

Link

Investigators with the U.S. Minerals Management Service raised concerns three years ago about oil rig blowouts associated with cementing wells, noting that accidents were continuing with regularity, most in the Gulf of Mexico.

Though the cause of last week's explosion on the Deepwater Horizon remains under investigation, officials with Transocean have said a blowout within the deep oil well was likely to blame for the deadly blast. At the time of the accident, crews were �cementing,� or installing casing to secure the walls of the well.

A 2007 MMS study found that although blowouts with offshore drilling operations were becoming less frequent, less deadly and less polluting, cementing-associated troubles persisted.

Cementing problems were associated with 18 of 39 blowouts between 1992 and 2006, and 18 of 70 from 1971 to 1991. There were 17 blowouts in the earlier period where contributing factors weren't identified.

Nearly all the blowouts examined occurred in the Gulf of Mexico.

It took me all of ten seconds to find the above article that makes a mockery of Obama’s blatant lies that the blowouts are rare and if I could find it on the internet what the hell is wrong with McClatchy? I used to think McClatchy was a bit better than the NYT or the WaPo but I’m beginning to wonder. Actually it seems obvious that they are covering for Obama. Obama was instrumental in pushing through BP’s permit to drill where they are drilling, in an area known for numerous blowouts, at a depth that is unprecedented, by a company with a history of criminal violation of environmental law, in fact Obama granted BP a waiver for a legally required environmental impact study which in light of the MMS report would most certainly have nixed BP’s permit to drill a mile down. McClatchy didn’t mention that either.

Sometimes I wish people were just a little more curious about the stories we are told. I wish people would stop idolizing others who write rather well and start thinking for themselves, form their own opinions, look to corroborate the lies they are told. Sorry about that, just wishful thinking.

At least you can afford shoes

Alejandro González Iñárritu, the marketably avante-gardish Mexican film-maker who directed Amores perros, did the commercial above. I hate to admit I liked this when I saw it at Slate, in spite of many of the things it represents-- commercialism, mindlessly hyperkinetic editing, glitzy phoniness, celebrity worship, and probably a bunch of other things which if pointed out would just belabor the obvious and make this long sentence even longer. But it's still pretty gee-whiz, even if you're not a soccer fan.

(Do you ever wonder if some American bloggers pretend to be to soccer fans just to burnish their geek cred? )

cross-posted at Hugo Zoom.

Obama Twofer

Classic Obama

When people asked for a single payer health plan Obama gave us mandatory purchase of health insurance. When people ask for an international probe into the brutal murders of civilians attempting to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza Obama tells us the probe will focus on the aid workers, the victims.

Link

11 days ago when the world was still reeling from the attack on the civilian aid ship, President Obama had made vague calls to reserve judgment until an international probe into the killings could take place. By this week, he was already making it clear that he was going to make sure that such a probe would not question the Israeli killings at all, but would instead focus on digging up dirt about the aid workers.

Classic Obama!

Oily Little Man

Obama may be tall and elegant but inside he’s just an oily little man. The unmitigated lies coming from Obama’s administration are gushing out even faster than the oil from Deep Horizon which may become known as “Obama’s Bane” instead, but not if Obama can lie his way out of it! According to McClatchy Obama uttered the following:

Link

"Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills," he added two days later. "They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn't come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore."

And then this from those ever famous unnamed and unknown, you guessed it, Obama administration officials (White House cook, groundskeeper, gardener?):

Top Obama administration officials say that they did an exhaustive job marshaling information for more than a year, and that the president asked what he needed to ask when it arrived at his desk. Anyone, they said, would grow complacent about the safety of offshore drilling after decades without a major spill.

"It's really important to understand you have decades of nothing going wrong," said one senior administration official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity as a matter of White House policy.

"The last time you saw a spill of this magnitude in the Gulf, it was off the coast of Mexico in 1979," a second senior administration official said. "If something doesn't happen since 1979, you begin to take your eye off of that thing.”

Actually, what’s important to understand is that everything in the above two quotes is a bald faced lie. Despite what Obama and Obama’s top barber tell us, there have been 18 blow outs in the Gulf of Mexico since 1983.

Link

The reality is that wherever there’s oil drilling, there’s spilling. U.S. Department of Interior figures reflect 3 million gallons of oil spilled from 1980 to 1999 in the U.S. outer continental shelf offshore drilling program. As to blowouts, there were 18 in wells in the Gulf of Mexico from 1983 up to the eruption at the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Well let’s do the math. Hmm, so that’s 18 blowouts minus zero blowouts equals 18 blowouts! Wow, that wasn’t so hard. I mean 18 minus zero equals 18, right? Am I right? Okay let’s go back to the McClatchy article:

"Where I was wrong was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios," he said. "Now, that wasn't based on just my blind acceptance of their statements. Oil drilling has been going on in the Gulf, including deep water, for quite some time. And the record of accidents like this we hadn't seen before."

He also laid some blame on the MMS.

"Prior to this accident happening, I think there was a lack of anticipating what the worst-case scenarios would be. And that's a problem," he said. "And part of that problem was lodged in MMS and the way that that agency was structured. That was the agency in charge of providing permitting and making decisions in terms of where drilling could take place, but also in charge of enforcing the safety provisions.”

It seems odd to me that after a year of claimed careful study of the issue that Obama never heard of the 18 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico since 1983. That’s really hard to believe. In fact, I don’t believe it. The last paragraph is of special interest regarding how it was the responsibility of the MMS for providing permitting and making decisions in terms of where drilling could take place, but also in charge of enforcing the safety provisions when you consider the following:

Link

The Obama administration joined BP in quashing environmental challenges to Gulf drilling in 2009 legal actions by Ken Salazar, Obama’s Secretary of Interior. They asked the federal court of appeals in Washington, DC to overturn their decision that blocked new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s outer continental shelf, referring to the same area where the explosion later occurred.

The appeals court partially approved Salazar’s petition, with the condition that the administration produce an environmental impact study for Gulf of Mexico drilling operations. The Obama administration granted BP a “categorical exemption” from producing a legally required environmental impact study and approved its exploration plan for the location of the future spill.

Naturally you won’t find the above in the mainstream news media who covers for Obama even while pretending to harshly criticize him. A nifty trick that, criticize Obama on something “human” as in to err and nobody is aware of Obama’s duplicity in this matter. Honestly, I don’t know how a person with any scruples at all could say what Obama said and not puke all over their shoes.

Thursday, 10 June 2010

I hope you are digging these creative titles. As you may have noticed, I finally put the new revised blogroll up. It's still a work in progress, as I decided to put the "non-blog blogs" like Black Agenda Report and Counterpunch in a separate second category, which I anticipate I'll be adding more to eventually. If I misspelled your name or your title, let me know. Also, I'm sure I left somebody out while not meaning to, etc.

Speaking of Counterpunch, you should definitely go read "A Hell of Their Own Creation:Does the Ruling Class Really Want to Commit Suicide?" by Charles M. Young. Young deftly connects the rape of the environment by capital to the general societal decline and sense of corruption of the elites many of us have been fumbling about and trying to express. An excerpt:

The panel discussion I most wanted to see (out of 300 or so) was called “The Crisis That Gives the Capitalist Class Nightmares,” because Michael Hudson was speaking. Whenever Hudson writes something, I read it, because he’s one of a tiny number of economists with academic credentials who predicted the present debt crisis. (Apparently not predicting crises is necessary for tenure in most economic departments these days.) At the panel, he explained that when labor is squeezed to the point that it can’t purchase anything, the capitalist is left with nothing to invest in, except more debt, and so we end up with Wall Street creating ever more complicated, ever more leveraged, ever more worthless junk for its gambling habit. When this collapses, as it must, half the hospitals in Latvia (which Hudson advises) have to shut down for lack of funds.

That's from the beginning. The last part of the essay is so darkly poetic I want to travel back in time and space and steal it from him, although I probably shouldn't.

Also see "The method in Israel's madness" by Pepe Escobar, in the Asia Times. Escobar sort of corroborates what I suggested a few days back, so naturally I'm quoting him:

Even US Central Command commander General David “I'm always positioning myself to 2012” Petraeus has been forced to publicly admit that US strategic ally Israel - because of the non-stop colonization of Palestine and the blockade it is enforcing in Gaza - has become an immense burden for US strategic designs.

Russia on the other hand supports the new Turkey, Syria and Iran politico-economic axis.
[…]
Russia - just like Turkey - also wants a fully denuclearized Middle East, which implies a non-nuclear Israel. This will be discussed at the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.

Thus, essentially, Israel fears the new Turkey, Syria and Iran as much as it fears Russian support for it. A new Middle East is being born - and there seems to be only one place for Israel: isolation.

Israel's "mad dog" strategy - conceived by former military leader Moshe Dayan - is not exactly an exercise in fitting in. Even centrist Middle East analyst Anthony Cordesman, an establishment icon at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote an essay under the title "Israel as a Strategic Liability?"

Legitimacy Reconsidered

Yesterday, I wrote about Helen Thomas resigning and today I see Arthur Silber is having a little creative fun with it, plus, I’d like to discuss the article I linked to in my last post where I wrote:

Link

I read today that Helen Thomas resigned because of her statement that the Israeli should get out of Palestine, gasp. Of course the reason Americans are upset is because Thomas was right. This is a moot point since Israel already controls almost every square inch and they are “recognized” by the United States and the rest of the West as a legitimate nation which is all that is actually important when it comes to statehood. That’s why Hillary Clinton always refers to the “International community” by which she means the United States, Britain and Europe mostly who all recognize each other as legitimate for various historical, monetary, and racial reasons, the international community. But you see the international community is an exclusive club which leaves out many nations though perhaps they are the lucky ones.

To me an important point was the so-called “international community” which if you imagine means all nations you imagine wrong. The reason I feel its important is because it is the basis of an agreed upon norm by those who hold power in the most powerful nations as Arthur Silber points out. In Silber’s post where he makes a mockery of a certain tactic used by those defenders of Israel which is if someone says the Israeli should leave Palestine then that is the same as saying all Blacks should go back to Africa, Silber points out with hilarious sarcasm how poor an analogy this is. And in doing so he mentions:

Link (emphasis added by me with apologies to Mr. Silber)

I've heard and read this a huge number of times in the last several days. I am forced to admit that the comparison is staggering in its power. It makes the point with concision, and the historic parallels are overwhelming. To review briefly, and despite the very painful familiarity of these facts: significant numbers of Africans voluntarily, indeed enthusiastically, migrated westward and took over large parts of the eastern seaboard of what was then the United States beginning in the mid-1800s. They were able to do this because they had the unending support in a multitude of forms of the most powerful Nation-States of the time. The Africans claimed that a special dispensation from ... well, something or other ... ordained that the land mass designated by the name "United States" was uniquely theirs. The Nation-States that made possible the Africans' conquest and domination agreed.

Part of that unending support is just the plain fact that Nation-States bestow legitimacy upon each other just by recognizing each other as Nation-States. I suppose that seems obvious once you state it yet how many people ever actually wonder at the source of what we call legitimacy? Not too many I’d wager. When Nation-States commit crimes, as in the Iraq War for instance, the Nation-State that commits such crimes always seeks to legitimatize their criminal actions through various means thus you have things like this article in the New York Times. In the extreme case of Israel you aren’t even allowed to mention that they commit crimes, regularly. Consider this statement:

Link

“The rules have been different for Helen for many years, and only for Helen,” said Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary under George W. Bush who had called on Ms. Thomas to step down. “Helen earned that right, and she was treated differently. And I never minded it. I enjoyed my ideological thrust and parry with Helen, but this is in a category entirely of itself. And sadly she brought this on herself.”

Mr. Fleischer called her retirement “tragic and sad.”

So what the strange case of Helen Thomas boils down to is this important question: Does Helen Thomas have legitimacy? The answer is a resounding “no.” Legitimacy is given so it can be taken away again. Consider what Fleischer said: “Helen earned that right, and she was treated differently. And I never minded it. I enjoyed my ideological thrust and parry with Helen, but this is in a category entirely of itself. And sadly she brought this on herself.”

And yes, the poor and evidently insane Helen Thomas oh-so sadly brought it upon herself. Evidently legitimacy is a fickle finger of fate. But why should assholes like Fleischer be allowed to frame the discussion? I mean, people reading this crap that the NYT prints probably just read right along – “Hm, Helen Thomas, sad, hmm, brought on herself, hmm, Israel good, Helen bad, damn the roast is burning.”

Now let’s look at how the Times slants the story with a damning quote from the Rabbi Nesenoff:

“I recognized her and thought, ‘Oh this is interesting.’ I went and said hello I had told her what we were there for and I had been asking people about Israel,” Mr. Nesenoff said. Mr. Nesenoff said that while he was wearing a baseball cap, both his son and his son’s friend were wearing yarmulkes, which he said he believed Ms. Thomas, whose parents emigrated from Lebanon, could see.
“I couldn’t believe what came out of her mouth,” he said. “I was shocked and hurt.”

This is high hilarity at its best, the New York Times is writing morality plays? And what a tale it is. “Once upon a Time there was a very special journalist named Helen Thomas who was loved by all, even her respected foes. But then one day Helen Thomas lost her mind and said bad things about the magical kingdom of Israel. Now look at Helen, she is despised by all, It’s very sad. The End.”

Thank You Mr. All the News that’s Fit to Print.

Nesenoff sounds like a nut to me, I mean Helen Thomas saw those yarmulkes and you know what that means, ooh. But the NYT really lets the bomb drop with the fact that Thomas’s parents emigrated from Lebanon which of course just explains everything since Lebanon is one of the many nations that Israel likes to attack so naturally, well, you get the picture.

Maybe the NYT is in the wrong business, no, I take that back, writing fairy tales is what the news business is about. But the most noticeable attribute of the NYT article is the total lack of history regarding Israel. In fact there isn’t even one word mentioned regarding Israel’s brutal murder of at least nine persons aboard the Mavi Marmara. And they were just reporting on it the other day! But, as is so often the case with the NYT history either doesn’t exist or is malleable beyond imagination.

In the end “legitimacy” doesn’t mean very much at all other than recognition from one’s partners in crime.

Monday, 7 June 2010

Asia Times, "We are all Gazans Now", Pepe Escobar


BBC[text and video link] "21 Miles Off The Coast of Palestine" (about 43 minutes)

Adam Curtis links to an early 70s documentary about the 1947 passage of the Exodus, which was also intercepted outside territorial waters. The Exodus, carrying Jewish refugees from a port in Marseilles, was intercepted by the British who were enforcing an immigration limit on Palestine. No, this is not the Hollywood film with Paul Newman.


CBS News(AP) "Many Gulf Federal Judges Have Oil Links"

More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows.

Nick of Time

Just when you thought it was safe to go out here comes the New York Times with their latest run for an interception on behalf of Israel. The NYT yesterday said that the people aboard the Mavi Marmara were Islamic Activists (which is just a hop, skip, and jump away from “militant” whatever a militant is). The NYT has done its best to bury the fact that Israel troopers murdered an American citizen insinuating he wasn’t really an American citizen. And today, lo and behold, the FBI managed to arrest two terrorists who were, you guessed it, Islamic.

Link

Two New Jersey men who were bound for Somalia to join an Islamic extremist group and to kill American troops were arrested at Kennedy International Airport late Saturday, federal and local authorities announced on Sunday.

What a stroke of convenient luck for Israel and the U.S.! And since they are Islamic all they have to do is think about killing American troops and they are arrested! Yet Israel’s thugs can shoot an American citizen four times in the head and once in the chest and he’s a hero! So if the NYT gets its way we will forget about the Holy and Do No Wrong Israeli who just butchered an American and we will now focus on the two arrested terrorists who were planning to kill American soldiers.

Attorney General to Arrest Obama

Link

The experts also stress that the Gulf oil spill is unlike any other disaster in the past, greater in its scale — threatening the coastlines of at least four states, and possibly gushing for months — and in the extent of the injuries it has caused. Given those factors, the Justice Department may push to hold individuals accountable.

If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be forceful in our response," the attorney general said at a news conference in Louisiana last week. "There is really nothing off the table."

Link

Without crucial environmental and safety studies, the Obama administration intervened in court to ensure that BP’s Gulf drilling operations would go forward. The administration’s efforts applied specifically to the site run by BP. It exploded on April 26, killing 11 workers and creating an oil slick that is an unparalleled disaster on the Gulf Coast.

The Obama administration joined BP in quashing environmental challenges to Gulf drilling in 2009 legal actions by Ken Salazar, Obama’s Secretary of Interior. They asked the federal court of appeals in Washington, DC to overturn their decision that blocked new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s outer continental shelf, referring to the same area where the explosion later occurred.

The appeals court partially approved Salazar’s petition, with the condition that the administration produce an environmental impact study for Gulf of Mexico drilling operations. The Obama administration granted BP a “categorical exemption” from producing a legally required environmental impact study and approved its exploration plan for the location of the future spill.

Two standards

Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas has received a great deal of criticism for recent comments about Israel, but the comments of someone else involved are at least as offensive.

Asked by Rabbi David Nesenoff if she had “any comments about Israel?” Thomas responded, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” Upon further questioning, Thomas would say that Israelis should go to countries like Germany, Poland and the United States.

Nesenoff, who appears to lead a congregation in Smithtown, New York, put these comments in a brief youtube video and predictably, as well as understandably, there has been outrage. The matter has been picked up on the web by outlets like The Drudge Report (where the current lead is a link to a breitbart.tv page featuring the embedded clip), WorldNetDaily and Mediaite. Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer believes Thomas should lose her job as a columnist for Hearst and the gang of intellectuals on this morning’s edition of Fox & Friends seemed to agree with this sentiment.

Thomas has apologized on her website, helenthomas.org, where she added that “mutual respect and tolerance” are necessary for “peace” in the Middle East. Many will no doubt find her apology weak. Writing on the popular Hot Air blog, Allahpundit sarcastically responds, “I’m satisfied. Who among us hasn’t innocently stumbled into a statement of support for ethnic cleansing when we didn’t really mean it?”

I think Thomas may be sincere. At one point in the video, Thomas is laughing as if she might not literally mean what she is saying. Furthermore, the clip is so short that it is hard to believe that Nesenoff and Thomas did not communicate with each other before and after the depicted exchange. Perhaps this would add context that changes the appearance of her comments. Perhaps not.

More importantly, there is the issue of how highly critical comments about Israelis spur more anger in the popular media of the United States than does Israel’s actual mistreatment of Palestinians or their attack on a naval vessel bringing much needed supplies to Gaza. This is a comparison that I’m sure Dead Horse readers had already made on their own, but this affair does bring one more example of the double standard that exists in terms of what is considered acceptable to say about whom.

Nesenoff operates a website called RabbiLIVE.com. On the main page of this site, one can currently find a commentary by the proprietor that compares those trying to break the Gaza embargo to the oil spewing from Deepwater Horizon. “As the White House and BP scratch their heads trying to figure out what to do about the crap creeping up onto the coast,” Nesenoff writes, “Israel knows exactly what to do.” As far as I can tell, nobody has been angered by this statement.

Perhaps the full contents of the essay are needed to insure that it is clear Nesenoff is talking about:

Sludge At Sea

By Rabbi David Nesenoff

At at recent press conference Helen Thomas, the White House correspondent, chimed in with calling the recent flotilla event a “massacre”, the same words used by the President of Turkey. In a recent interview I had with Thomas on the White House lawn, she aped the mantra of the Iranian terrorist Ahmedinajad as she pleaded for the Jews to leave Israel and go back to Germany and Poland.

Meanwhile as our coast and these poor birds and fish are terrorized by the barrels and globs of oil that threaten our people and plates, the sludge of inhumanity endeavors to slither onto the shores of Israel as well. I’ve seen puddles of spilled gas sometimes at the local pump and I’ve watched Schindler’s List and the Pianist, but the magnitude of sludge has never hit me so strongly as I am witnessing unfold on video in my lifetime.

The videos show blackened birds searching for breath and Israeli children dodging rockets fired from Gaza while Israeli soldiers are beaten, knifed and fired upon. A defenseless dead Jew is acceptable; a Jew who kills in self defense is condemned by the world. The Jew is blown up, rocketed upon, blasted, and beheaded. But the tears are reserved for the birds.

As the White House and BP scratch their heads trying to figure out what to do about the crap creeping up onto the coast, Israel knows exactly what to do.

It doesn’t quite match the poetry of “one Palestinian in the sea equals pollution; all Palestinians in the sea equals solution,” but the thought is there.

Racist Wars

Updated below:

The entire planet, except for Obama, was horrified by the Mediterranean Massacre where among the murdered a young American citizen was shot four times in the head and once in the chest from close range, in other words, an execution. According to the NYT Obama really, really, let Israel have it with the following stern scolding:

Link

“What’s important right now is that we break out of the current impasse, use this tragedy as an opportunity so that we figure out how we meet Israel’s security concerns, but at the same time start opening up opportunity for Palestinians.”

Wow, that was harsh. Not only that but Obama is wrong, it’s not the job of the United States Citizens to figure out how to meet Israel’s security concerns, that’s the Israeli’s job, not ours. And Israel wouldn’t have any security problems if they treated Arabs like human beings because the root cause of Israel’s problems stem from the blatantly racist war against the Palestinians, besides stealing all of their land that is.

Time and again it has been Israel who has torpedoed peace talks though the American press always manages to blame the Palestinians. The reason is simple, the Israeli white ruling class wants all the sand niggers out of the neighborhood as in gone, vanished, deleted. If Israel agreed to peace talks they would have to give the Palestinians some kind of statehood but if they did that, then they would never be rid of the Palestinians. So, no peace talks, no capitulation, no backing down on Israel’s side.

Frankly, I think Israel will get away with it. The Europeans are outraged now but when it comes to money and trade, heartfelt ethics often evaporate and Europe trades with Israel. The United States is wrapped up in Israel from the religious ding-dongs who want Armageddon to the powerful Israeli lobby and a whole lot of re-written history not to mention a nifty arrangement with the military-industrial-complex where Congress sends Israel tax payer money and Israel uses said money to buy American weapons and Obama gets campaign contributions. Pretty nifty all the way around unless you happen to be living in Gaza.

And who is going to stop Israel? We know the U.S. won’t for the various reasons already mentioned. Russia and China? They have their own problems. As long as Israel has U.S. backing Israel is free to act as it wishes. It’s very nice that Americans are paying their taxes so Israeli troopers can shoot them four times in the head and once in the chest, it’s very generous of us.

The war against the Palestinians is a racist war just as is America’s war on terror.

Update:

According to Juan Cole the Israeli hadn’t intended to perpetrate a bloodbath:

Link

Paul McGeough, one of our great war reporters and investigative journalists, has constructed one of the first rounded accounts of the boarding of the Mavi Marmara by Israeli commandos and the way it turned into a game of shooting fish in a barrel. McGeough was on one of the other ships and could see some of the events by moonlight. He then conducted interviews with the aid workers while they were imprisoned in Israel and on the plane to Istanbul. He reveals that an initial attempt to board the Mavi Marmara from an Israeli vessel failed. Then an initial attempt to land commandos on the deck also failed, when the commandos were captured, and some beaten until the captain and others intervened to stop it. Their weapons were confiscated and thrown overboard. At that point live fire was deployed, apparently both by helicopter gunship onto the top deck and by rappelling commandos. Unarmed people were shot between the eyes, shot in the top of the head, shot in the back of the head, shot in the chest, shot in the back, and shot in the legs. Other accounts say the wounded were piled up in a room by the commandos without any first aid and many left to bleed out. Then all the passengers were kidnapped and sequestered and silenced, and the Israelis confiscated and cherry-picked all the video and photos to show one moment of resistance to the first landing and erase all the subsequent murders by Israelis of unarmed passengers.

Fully six of the aid workers killed on the deck were shot by a single out-of-control commando, who is in line for a medal for bravery from Israel. Although he claims that Israeli commandos had already been shot by passengers, the aid workers deny this and since he’d be up on murder charges if he fired on unarmed people, he has a reason to paint the situation as already dire when he began his shooting rampage.

Thursday, 3 June 2010

see addendum below.

In "It hurts to be in love" Avedon writes:

There's one thing that's really changed dramatically since I started this blog, and that's the fact that it is no longer impossible to discuss flaws in Israel's policies without being completely hammered for antisemitism by otherwise rational people. I can remember having huge arguments with friends who did not get that some of the prime movers behind "support" for Israel were right-wing antisemites who actually want to foment a war in the Middle-East that would annihilate Israel; they simply did not see that Israel's increasingly immoderate policies were laying the groundwork for an escalation of hostilities in the region. Most of them no longer stomp on questions about "support" for Israel or criticism of Israel's policies. Now, they, too, want questions answered about why the US continues to encourage Israel's suicidal approach. But, as is so often the case, Americans are way ahead of our "progressives" in Congress.

She adds,

"I'm not always comfortable with the way people talk about fear as if it is in itself always a bad motivator. The problem isn't fear, it's fear of the wrong things (e.g., scary swarthy foreigners or people who look like them) rather than the right things, such as Malefactors of Great Wealth wrecking our lives."

an addendum-JV:

At first I posted the above as all for today because I thought it might generate comments, because initially I didn't know what I wanted to say. I've noticed that a lot of lefty establishment bloggers have been discussing their mystification at Israel's excess, and describing the attack on the flotilla as a blunder. ( a typical example is Jonathan Zasloff, here.)

I don't buy this. Per the Overton window, it occurs to me that the Israeli government chose this strategy because of the negotiations regarding nukes in the mideast, which Israel's neighbors have intelligently forced, and which would put pressure on them to declare their nuclear arsenal, and in turn put pressure on Obama to renounce or at least modify US support for Israel. And maybe even shelve the war on Iran. Monday's hideous event, with Israel coming on defiantly unrepentant and strong at first, gives them the opportunity to soften their stance and eventually, grudgingly, admit a "mistake" after much coaxing by Obama and Hilary. And at that point, asking for Israel to also admit to having a stash of nukes and join the nonproliferation treaty would be pretty fucking ungrateful.

Also:"Can Americans be murdered by the Israeli government with impunity?" (It seems at least one has. (link via X.)

Two of a Kind

I guess an estimated 300 nuclear warheads allows a nation like Israel to do whatever it wishes. Is U.S. support for Israel based on the possibility that Israel might lob one our way some day unless we are nice to them? A government that commits piracy on the high seas, murders unarmed people whose crime was to bring aid to Gaza, the world’s largest concentration camp, would be capable of doing anything and I mean anything.

The problem with writing about Israel is that my own government is actually worse than Israel. It’s a hands down no brainer that the U.S. is nothing but a band of cutthroat pirates, international criminals, thieves and murderers. It’s what we do best, what can I say? Israel is merely a weak echo of us. Israel exists because we send them money. That same money allows them to buy nifty things like those speedboats and helicopters seen in the videos of Israel’s piracy. Without our money Israel would have to act like human beings, they might even have found a way to make peace by now but we insist on supporting their military which allows Israel to act as it does. That’s probably the plan when you consider that our role in the world is to promote chaos. Not anarchy, chaos. In fact, the U.S. and Israel are the two major problems facing the world today, there is no greater threat to world peace than the U.S. and Israel.

Israel does very few things of this sort without first getting permission from the United States. I think it goes without saying that Obama gave Israel the go-ahead for the attack. This explains Obama’s silence except for his pathetic offering of “it’s important to find out the facts.” I would suggest that Obama knows the facts already.

I’m struck by how much more outraged much of the world is to Israel’s attack on the flotilla than I see here in the States. Of course as anthropologists have said, entire nations can be insane, and I think that applies to the U.S. and Israel more than anyone I can think of.