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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Friday, October 30, 2009

30 Oct - Wars and Politics

Stick in the mudImage by janusz l via Flick
 
The United States wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven to be beyond stupid and cruel. The motives behind each war have been clear for some time. Iraq may possess the largest oil reserves on the planet after Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan must be a key player in a long planned, complex Central Asian pipeline network for oil and natural gas as well. The massive oil corporations fully intend to extend the Age of Oil as long as possible, regardless of the consequences to the planet’s economy and ecology. Talk aside, we see nothing but cooperation and collaboration from the major sovereign states of the world for whom the question is not ‘If’ but ‘How’.




AFGHANISTAN: U.S., NATO Forces Rely on Warlords for Security
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49056
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has acknowledged that U.S. and NATO ties with warlords have been a cause of popular Afghan alienation from foreign military forces. But the policy is not likely to be reversed anytime soon, because U.S. and NATO officials still have no alternative to the security services the warlords provide.

A report published by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University in September notes that U.S. and NATO contingents have frequently hired security providers that are covertly owned by warlords who have "ready-made" private militias which compete with state institutions for power.

The report cites examples of major warlords or their relatives or allies who have been contracted for security services in four provinces.  

Scheer: Obama's Meaningless War
http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Scheer_Obamas_Meaningless_War-1 

There is no indication that any of the contending forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, are interested in bringing Al Qaeda back.

Meaningless is the right term for the Afghanistan war, too, because our bloody attempt to conquer this foreign land has nothing to do with its stated purpose of enhancing our national security. Just as the government of Vietnam was never a puppet of Communist China or the Soviet Union, the Taliban is not a surrogate for Al Qaeda. Involved in both instances was an American intrusion into a civil war whose passions and parameters we never fully grasped and could not control militarily.
  There is no serious evidence that the Taliban instigated the 9/11 attacks or even knew about them in advance. Taliban members were not agents of Al Qaeda; on the contrary, the only three governments that financed and diplomatically recognized the Taliban--Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan--all were targets of bin Laden's group. 

POLITICS-US: Pro-Israel Group's Money Trail Veers Hard Right
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48946 

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (IPS) - StandWithUs - an "organization that ensures that Israel's side of the story is told" - has become increasingly aggressive in challenging the "pro-Israel" credentials of moderate Jewish-American groups, going so far as to suggest that receiving money from Arab donors and supporters of Human Rights Watch undermines a group's commitment to Israel and peace.
But an IPS investigation into the tax records of the donors to StandWithUs, which professes to be ideologically neutral, found a web of funders who support organisations that have been accused of anti-Muslim propaganda and encouraging a militant Israeli and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

Some of these organisations have tied the origins of Palestinian nationalism to Nazi ideology, and suggested that a vast Muslim conspiracy - in a similar vein to the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion - is mobilising to undermine the U.S. constitution and impose Sharia law.

StandWithUs, known in its tax filings as the "Israel Emergency Alliance", unleashed a flurry of faxes to 160 lawmakers on Oct. 16 expressing concern over their plans to attend the J Street conference, "Driving Change, Securing Peace", in Washington from Oct. 25-28. 



Reality's Pro-Obama Bias, Continued...
http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/10/realitys_prooba.html#comments


  RIGHTS: Karen Fear Military Offensive Near Planned Dam in Burma
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49086
With the annual monsoon rains ending, there is a growing fear among the Karen ethnic minority living along military-ruled Burma’s eastern border of a dry season offensive. The most vulnerable are villagers residing in the vicinity of the controversial Hat Gyi dam.

The Burmese military will use its proxy force, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), to target the area along the Salween River that is essential to the Hat Gyi dam, environmentalists and human rights activists told IPS.

Besides driving out the unarmed Karen civilians, the offensive will also target the fifth brigade of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), currently camped along the Salween River, which flows past the border that Burma shares with Thailand, they added.

The KNLA is the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), which has been waging Asia’s longest separatist struggle—since 1949—to carve out an independent state for the Karen minority in Burma, also known as Myanmar. The DKBA is a breakaway group, splitting from the KNU in 1995 and joining forces with Burma’s oppressive regime.

"The attacks in the fifth brigade area to defeat the KNU and clear the area for the dam will result in thousands of Karen fleeing across the Thai border as refugee," said David Thakerbaw, vice president of the KNU. "It will lead to more human rights violations, adding more suffering to what the people have already endured."

Truth to Power

An Unconstitutional Nobel
Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, the emolument clause, clearly stipulates: "And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State."
The five-member Nobel commission is elected by the Storting, the parliament of Norway. Thus the award of the peace prize is made by a body representing the legislature of a sovereign foreign state.

Too Big to Fail: Why The Big Banks Should Be Broken Up, But Why The White House and Congress Don't Want To
http://accesstoinfo.blogspot.com 
The right idea is to break up the giant banks. I don't often agree with Alan Greenspan but he was right when he said last week that "[i]f they're too big to fail, they're too big." Greenspan noted that the government broke up Standard Oil in 1911, and what happened? "The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that's what we need to do." (Historic footnote: Had Greenspan not supported in 1999 Congress's repeal of the Glass Stagall Act, which separated investment from commercial banking, we wouldn't be in the soup we're in to begin with.)



"I watched the last several elections in the United States very closely. I tend to watch mainly American news, because I don't like to watch Canadian news and hear what Allan (Gregg) and everybody else is saying about me. So my hobby is to watch politics elsewhere,"
http://accesstoinfo.blogspot.com/2009/10/canadian-prime-minister-stephen-harper.html


 
5 BIG Lies...In No Particular Order

1. WE CANNOT AFFORD ANOTHER WAR. Sure we can. Our President understands that raising tax revenues is key to the economic and political survival of his regime. The best way to get people to fork over their money is to convince them that it's the patriotic thing to do. War with Iran? War in Pakistan??? Sure!! "Party on Wayne. Party on Garth."

2. THE ECONOMY IS GROWING. No it's not. The Fed is borrowing and printing enough $$$ in the short term so as to present the illusion of growth. Truth is, the trench is growing. The economy is dying. "You're in the pit of despair. Don't even think about trying to escape."

3. THE RECESSION IS OVER. Ya, because the actual and true measure of government expenditure - ummmm, debt - has gone from roughly 20% of GDP in 2007 to over 50% in 2009. You can run from the truth, but you cannot hide. "Badges!!? We don't need no stinking badges!!"

4. WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY. Tell me another. We may elect our political officials, but our system is anything but democratic. Our supposed political democracy hides this reality. All states that employ irredeemable currencies by governmental fiat are by their very nature undemocratic. Why? Because the political leadership of the nation is able to control the population through serial manipulations of the money supply. The public has no check on the state's power because the state in essence controls access to money - and access to food and shelter and energy, etc. Democracy??? Not so much. "We are men of action. Lies don't become us."

5. WE WILL RECOVER EVENTUALLY. Nope. It's this simple. Virtually all of our economic "growth" over the past two decades has been funded by debt. Growth as we have come to know it is done. There's simply too much debt in the system. Productive capacity - and consumptive capacity - are maxed. They're beyond maxed. And yet in order to maintain global political and economic stability, we need growth. Massive growth. 4-5% per annum growth in the USA, 8+% growth in China and India. But there is nowhere left to grow. The laws of physics and mathematics - and capacity - all demand contraction. And of course contraction means an explosion of global poverty, unemployment and unrest. Recovery??? Sorry. "I'm going to have to rely on the kindness of strangers!"


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