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Will the Last “Progressive for Obama” Please Turn Out the Lights?

12/09/2009

Leaving Obamalandby BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The U.S. peace “movement,” much of which “comes and goes” as often as Boy George’s “Karma Chameleon,” has finally discovered that its presumed perch in Barack Obama’s tree was untenable, if not wholly imaginary. To be sure, “Progressives for Obama” and other assorted delusional groupings were always squatters in the Obama camp – but they were the only ones who didn’t know it. How embarrassing it would have been, back during the campaign, had the lost little lefties realized that Obama’s imperial soul mates were laughing at them from a disdainful distance, knowing full well the path their bought-and-paid-for president would soon be traveling. How would the Obama peacenik groupies have preserved their sense of self-worth – much less their arrogant smugness – had they realized the absolute contempt in which they were held by their hero’s funders and packagers – and no doubt by the Object of Adulation, himself?With the president’s hearty embrace on December 1 of not only current U.S. aggressions in South Asia but the entirety of the glorious rise of U.S. global hegemony since the end of World War Two, it should now be clear to even the most dense among self-styled “progressives” that Obama was never worth a damn. To Obama, the world-terrorizing nuclear arms race against the Soviets, the savage assaults on countries emerging from colonialism, the death of millions in the quest to make the world safe for corporations, the spread of the global drug trade under management of U.S. intelligence services – all this can be summed up as: “The United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades, a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.”

Obama lives and breathes American Manifest Destiny – which means, as a non-white person, he is profoundly mentally unbalanced. But any lefty worth her/his salt should have known that. Obama’s yearly talks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the regional equivalent of the Council on Foreign Affairs, were models of imperial-speak, totally consistent with his West Point performance. Beginning years ago, he repeatedly declared that, as president, he would draw a line in the sands (or mountains) of Afghanistan – which is something only militarist, imperialist pigs draw in other people’s countries. He warned everyone that, under the Bin-Ladin-Might-Be-There Doctrine, he would refuse to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan. And he has ceaselessly lied about his actions and intentions in Iraq – a key qualification for the job of imperial U.S. president.

Still, there seems to be a soggy cloud hanging over some self-styled anti-war circles, as if Obama’s most recent display of rabid war mongering, American Manifest Destiny-ism was a tragedy for and betrayal of the “movement.” And I suppose that those confused souls who believed that they were doing “movement” work while engaged in Obama groupy-ism for the last several years, might feel that some kind of tragedy had occurred. And they might be right, in that the absence of an anti-war movement during the campaign years undoubtedly encouraged Obama in his warlike proclivities. As a result, hundreds of thousands will undoubtedly die, because American “progressives” forsook their duty to humanity for reasons no more defensible than those a teenage girl would give for following a shallow but “hot” celebrity around from city to city.

Let’s make it plain: Obama didn’t do anything to the “movement.” Most especially, he did not fool anyone in the “movement.” Rather, people who claimed to be in the “movement” fooled themselves and then proceeded to fool lots of other people into thinking that Obama-work was “movement”-work – when events have shown it was the opposite.

A huge number of “movement” notables should be deeply humbled and, to varying degrees, ashamed at their lemming-like susceptibility to Obama’s…what? The two-year near-silence in the anti-war “movement” is proof, not of Obama’s Svengali-like powers (his imperialism is actually quite transparent), but of profound weaknesses in the “movement,” itself (which is why I’ve been putting the term in quotes).

I have a hunch that the worst of the paralyzing Obama-effect on “movement” politics is finally over – due mainly to Obama’s insistence on remaining true to the logic of imperialism and refusal to toss his groupies on the Left a straw to cling to, any further. [I hope you’re right Gary but what I’ve been seeing suggests we have a ways to go]

There is no need to name-the-names of the politically prodigal ones, many of whom are returning to some kind of oppositional activism [promoting Western supremacy and mass starvation of those that can’t afford the “costs” of the contrived AGW agenda in Copenhagen perhaps] now that their erstwhile idol is in full-spectrum war mode. Far better to quote Cynthia McKinney, the former Georgia congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, whose engagement with struggle is a constant:

“We have now reached the point where those who make and interpret current events think they can make us believe that war is for peace, ignorance is strength, slavery is freedom, and lies are the truth. Well, we know the truth, and we will not rest until every drone is stopped and no more bombs are dropped. We will not rest until peace is won. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said there comes a time when we do what we must because our ultimate measure is not where we stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where we stand at times of challenge and controversy. At this time of challenge, we are clear: we will not give up and we will not stop.”

There are many “movement” notables who, in fact, did try in the recent past to peddle a banker’s best friend as a man of the people, a proponent of “race-neutrality” as an ally of oppressed minorities, and an imperial invader and occupier as something resembling a man of peace. Hopefully, they will make up for past misconduct and bad judgment through prodigious feats of activist productivity, including plenty of shouting at the White House on Saturday.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

December 9, 2009 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

US silent on missing Iranian case

Press TV – December 9, 2009 06:02:02 GMT

After Iran said Washington and Riyadh are responsible for the abduction of an Iranian researcher in Saudi Arabia, the US State Department refuses to make any comment on the matter.

“We are aware of the Iranian claims,” department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters on Tuesday. “I have no information on that.”

“I’m not going to say anything else,” he insisted.

Shahram Amiri, a researcher at the University of Malek Ashtar, went missing in the Saudi holy city of Medina while on a pilgrimage visit earlier this year.

He is among several Iranian nationals who Tehran says have been illegally detained by the US authorities.

On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki accused the US of abducting the researcher.

“Based on evidence that we have at our disposal, the Americans had a role in kidnapping Shahram Amiri,” Mottaki said.

“Therefore, we expect the US government to return him,” he added.

Earlier Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast told Press TV that authorities in Riyadh have sent Amiri off to the United States.

Mehman-Parast said 11 Iranian nationals are currently held in detention in US prisons, adding that “Shahram Amiri is one of these detainees.”

The US revealed earlier in December that Amir-Hossein Ardebili, an Iranian national who went missing in Georgia two years ago, was being held in a prison in Philadelphia.

The Georgian government handed him over to the US authorities in 2008.

December 9, 2009 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

US-Japan talks on base row stalled: Tokyo

December 9, 2009

* Japanese foreign minister says Washington-Tokyo relations ‘are somewhat shaky’
* Unclear when next talks will be held

TOKYO: US-Japanese talks on resolving a festering row over an American military base have been put on hold until Tokyo clarifies its position, Japan’s foreign minister said on Tuesday. Relations between the two sides “are somewhat shaky”, Katsuya Okada told a press conference, adding that “it shouldn’t be that way”. The open question of where to relocate an Okinawa island Marine Corps airbase has soured Washington-Tokyo ties since a new centre-left government took power in Japan in September.

Unclear: Both sides have agreed to regular talks on the issue, but no new date was set after the most recent meeting on last Friday, Okada told reporters. “We don’t know when the next talks will be held,” he said, adding however that the talks “have not ended”.

The conservative Sankei daily has reported that US Ambassador John Roos, in his talks with Okada and Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, “turned red with anger and raised his voice” over slow progress in resolving the dispute. Japan’s centre-left government under Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has rankled US officials by announcing a review of a 2006 pact under which the airbase would be moved from a city area to a coastal region of Okinawa. The US side is pushing for the existing plan to be implemented, saying it needs the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station to be relocated as planned.

Hatoyama has left open the possibility of moving the base off the island or even out of the country, to lighten the burden on Okinawa, which hosts more than half of the 47,000 US troops based in Japan. He has said he would like to meet US President Barack Obama at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen to discuss the issue. Former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, who worked under former president George W Bush, warned in a Tokyo forum on Tuesday, “I really worry that an agreement that took 10 years to negotiate might unravel.” afp

December 9, 2009 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak

COP15: A Haitian delegation during second-day session at the Bella center in Copenhagen

Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol‘s principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”.

A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:

• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;

• Weaken the UN’s role in handling climate finance;

• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.

“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process,” said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.

Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for Oxfam International, said: “This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting. On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed.”

Hill continued: “It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks.”

The text was intended by Denmark and rich countries to be a working framework, which would be adapted by countries over the next week. It is particularly inflammatory because it sidelines the UN negotiating process and suggests that rich countries are desperate for world leaders to have a text to work from when they arrive next week.

Few numbers or figures are included in the text because these would be filled in later by world leaders. However, it seeks to hold temperature rises to 2C and mentions the sum of $10bn a year to help poor countries adapt to climate change from 2012-15.

December 8, 2009 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Yes, This Health Care Bill Really is Worse Than Nothing

Here Come the Apologists

By HELEN REDMOND
December 8, 2009

Already defenders and apologists for the Democrat’s health care legislation are busy at work. In the next few weeks they will be working overtime to persuade, cajole, shame and ruthlessly attack if necessary, anyone opposing health care legislation. They’ll reserve special hysteria, invective and contempt for those of us who continue to support a single-payer, national health care system. And because it is the holiday season, we will be called heartless health care Grinches and silly, single payer, Bernie Sanders Scrooges. There will be accusations: “If you don’t support health care reform legislation, you support the status quo.” Implicit in the indictment is single-payer advocates, with their pie-in-the-sky idea that health care is a human right for all, will be responsible for the continued impoverishment and immiseration of the American people if a bill doesn’t pass.

Joshua Holland [has] begun the onslaught.

In a piece posted on AlterNet November, 24th titled, “Is the House’s Health Bill Really Worse than Nothing?” Holland attacks Dr. Marcia Angell, author, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and a leader of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP.) Dr. Angell opposes the House bill and believes it’s “worse than nothing.” For that she earns the disdain of Joshua who just can’t accept there isn’t something in the bill worth supporting, even though he agrees with her trenchant criticism of the bill’s gaping defects. He claims she ignores the “primary thrust of the legislation” which for Holland is “the fact that the House legislation would do quite a bit for millions of real Americans struggling through a very real health care crisis.” “Real” Americans, a “real” health care crisis? The insinuation is Angell, and by affiliation PNHP, isn’t operating in the real world of real suffering if they don’t support whatever bill Congress delivers to the Oval Office for a signature. That’s interesting. An organization of 16,000 doctors that conducts research on major aspects of the health care crisis and have been on the frontlines for real reform for decades doesn’t understand what’s real?

Holland argues Angell negates her original thesis when she writes, “The bill has a few good provisions (expansion of Medicaid, for example) but they are marginal.” It doesn’t. Her central contention is even with an expansion of Medicaid and a few other “good” provisions, the bill is a bomb because on balance, it entrenches the power and profits of the private insurance industry – the source of the health care crisis.

This isn’t the first time an expansion of Medicaid has been offered as a partial panacea for the health care crisis. And it has to be said: It isn’t necessary to create a huge, complex and expensive piece of national legislation in order to expand the Medicaid Program. Any state can decide at any time to change eligibility rules and insure more residents (Massachusetts did in 2006.) But the overall trend has been the opposite.

According to a study published in the Annals of Family Medicine, “Medicaid programs in all 50 states implemented cost-savings strategies, including benefit reductions, cost sharing and tightened administrative rules during the recent economic downturn.” Medicaid operates within the dysfunctional, multi-payer health care system and has suffered from an expand-contract cycle since its inception. It’s a favorite target for blame-the-victim politicians who want to get poor people off welfare (and health care) and into the workforce with no health care. Under the Clinton Administration’s “welfare reform,” hundreds-of-thousands of mostly women and children lost Medicaid coverage. The Medicaid program is not an entitlement or a right. An onerous redetermination is done every year in most states. And in fact, losing Medicaid coverage for a variety of reasons is the norm.

It’s true – the expansion of Medicaid would help millions of low-income Americans, but for how long? Expansion of Medicaid is a short-term, incremental fix, not a permanent one. And that should be the goal of legislation – a permanent fix to the health care crisis so there is no longer a health care crisis.

Holland thinks the subsidies are “rather generous.” It’s curious he isn’t asking these questions: If the government were truly reforming health care, why would millions of people need subsidies? Shouldn’t the cost of coverage come down so much its affordable without government assistance?

Here’s the conundrum – if you support subsidies to help people buy insurance and the expansion of Medicaid, you are forced to support the transfer of billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of the investor-owned insurance industry and a mandate that criminalizes and punishes people. You also have to accept the Stupak Amendment and the denial of health care to millions of undocumented workers.

There are more poison pills to swallow. Holland thinks it’s fine insurance will still be linked to employment – tell that to the millions who are unemployed and being laid off by the thousands every day. In the House bill, if employers offer insurance, they must pay at least 72.5 percent of the premium for individuals and 65 percent for families. That’s too low and gives companies who pay a higher percentage an incentive to shift costs onto employees until they hit the government-mandated limit. Workers will then be dumped into the insurance exchange because it will be cheaper for employers and once there, because of the mandate, forced to buy stripped down plans with no limits on premiums.

Currently, there are over twenty-five million people underinsured. The majority of people who declared medical bankruptcy started out with insurance. That is the wave of the future. The government will claim more people are insured and technically they will be, but are you really insured if you have a $5000 deductible, high co-pays and less than one-hundred percent coverage for hospitalizations, expensive medication and diagnostic tests?

And what about the much ballyhooed public option which was supposed to keep the rapacious insurers honest and give millions quality, inexpensive health care that Joshua argued for at the expense of advocating for single-payer which he is a supporter of? Eviscerated, not robust at all, and what Paul Krugman now calls “medium-strength.” It’s not even that. The “progressive” Democrats abandoned Holland and his ilk and voted in favor of the bill after they swore not to if it didn’t contain a robust public option with rates tied to Medicare. These are the same “regressive” Democrats that voted in favor of the Stupak Amendment. Holland argues if the final legislation contains Stupak it can’t be supported. But if “Progressive-Regressive” Democrats voted for it the first time, they will vote for it a second time because they don’t have the spines to stand up to President Obama, or for abortion rights.

Toward the end of his assault on Dr. Angell’s position, Holland writes, “…drawing the line at the House bill is privileging ideology over getting something done in the short-term, however imperfect it might be overall.” But that is precisely the problem. For decades short-term, imperfect reforms are offered that inexorably lead right back to the crisis. Then more short-term, imperfect reforms are offered and the cycle continues. Instead of attacking the privileged ideology of for-profit, corporate controlled health care, Joshua attacks single-payer ideology and argues to abandon it in order to get something, anything done.

Single-payer supporters also reject his false choice of “trying to push for the best package possible or leaving a disastrous status quo in place…” The not so subtle message is if a bill doesn’t pass we will be responsible for the disastrous status quo that is the state of health care in this country. Sorry Joshua, but that responsibility will rest with the Obama Administration that at every turn placated the profit hungry, parasitic insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

And if a bill does pass this year, we can hurry up and wait 4 years because that’s when it will be enacted! So, disastrous status quo for 4 more years, then in 2013 implementation of a disastrous bill that will continue to leave 20 million uninsured. I can hardly wait.

Helen Redmond, LCSW, is a medical social worker in Chicago. She can be reached at redmondmadrid@yahoo.com. She blogs at http://helenredmond.wordpress.com

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December 8, 2009 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Imperial Democrats Line Up for War

by John V. Walsh – December 08, 2009

In a scene replicated all over the country, a small, dispirited crowd protested on Boston Common following Obama’s West Point declaration of more war on the unfortunate people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama intends to out-Bush Bush on Af-Pak, which has finally thrown some cold water on his supporters.

The large printed placards ordered up for the demo called for an end to the war on Af-Pak, but only three scraggily handmade signs mentioned Obama. The speeches ordained by the organizers also made scant mention of Obama, with two exceptions, one from Vets Against the War and another from Military Families Speak Out. When one guy took advantage of an open mike, not readily yielded to him, to criticize both Obama and the antiwar leadership of United for Peace and Justice, “Progressive” Democrats of America, and their bedfellows, there was a quiet over the crowd. It was the only speech without at least token applause. One could only wonder where this “movement” was headed next.

A clue came if one listened to the buzz on the sidelines. It was all about another election, the Democratic Party primary today to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy. Each of the candidates has taken up an antiwar mantra as the polls have shown that the people of Massachusetts want no more of this game of empire in Central Asia. Michael Capuano, congressional representative from the Cambridge/Somerville/Boston area, had the early lead in establishing his antiwar bona fides, since he did vote against the Iraq war in his early days in Congress. But is he really a dove? Are Democrats with antiwar constituencies like Capuano’s in Cambridge genuinely against war and empire? The answer is no, and every now and then a vote comes along that shows how it all works.

One such crucial vote came in the winter of 2007, shortly after the Democrats took control of the House in the 2006 elections on a tidal wave of antiwar sentiment. Bush was at that time requesting another supplement for the wars on Central Asia, and the Democrats had inserted a dreaded “timeline” into the appropriation bill. This led the Republicans to vote against the bill, and if they were joined by enough Democrats, then funding of the wars would end at that moment: a golden opportunity if ever there was one. Faced with this potential debacle, Nancy Pelosi scrambled to get all the Democrats to vote for the bill to fund the war. Every vote was needed. What did Capuano do? What did other “antiwar” Democrats of the Massachusetts delegation do? The entire delegation voted for the bill, as Pelosi instructed, including Michael Capuano, James McGovern, Barney Frank – every member of the the most “liberal” delegation in Congress. There were only nine Democrats who stood up to Pelosi that day, including Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters, Lynne Woolsey, and Barbara Lee. If the bill had had only one more opponent, the funding would have been cut off, so close was the vote. But that lone vote did not materialize from Massachusetts. So the funding bill passed, and the war was alive and well.

That is the way the game is played. So long as the war machine does not need the votes of congressmen with strong antiwar constituencies, these representatives are free to cast a vote to mollify their voters. But when the chips are down and every vote is needed, the charade is called to a halt and these counterfeit progressives cast their votes as instructed by Pelosi or whatever gauleiter happens to be in charge at the moment. Thus the empire rules by demanding loyalty to one of the two War Parties over the will of antiwar constituents. Of course, this emerges even more clearly in presidential elections, when each and every Democrat, even the nine mavericks of winter 2007 – Kucinich, Woolsey, Waters, et al. – line up to dutifully support pro-war candidates such as Kerry or Obama.

As the late Eugene McCarthy pointed out in 1968 in the snows of New Hampshire, drawing on the words of Daniel Webster, wars of empire continue because the people’s “representatives” put loyalty to party over loyalty to the people and to principle. Thus the Vietnam War ground on, and thus does the U.S. empire’s deadly game in Central Asia continue.

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December 8, 2009 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Is President Obama an Enemy of the Jews?

By Sami Jamil Jadallah • Dec 7th, 2009 at 9:31 

obama aipac

Even before he was elected president, Barack Obama faced relentless and vicious attacks of mainstream American Jewish organizations and leadership with claims of being Muslim in secret, of lacking the born American credential among many other claims, including being anti-Israel even though as a senator he was one of the most ardent supporters of Israel and always voted in favor of Israel on all bills drafted by AIPAC and passed by the US Senate.

I think it is necessary here to inform the readers that the Jewish community and leadership of Chicago were the early sponsors and mentors for then local politician Obama, with Penny Pritzker of the “Hyatt Hotels” as key supporters together with Joan Harris-Leading the well known Chicago philanthropists, Lestor Crown of the Jewish Federation, David Axelrod who managed Obama’s win of the White House to the president’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the son of an Israeli member of the Jewish terrorist group “Irgun”, in addition to key support from Hollywood moguls the likes of Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffery Katzenberg, and not withstanding the testimony of Alon Pinkas of the Jerusalem Post  “Obama’s voting record on issues pertaining to Israel is impeccable” to be seconded by Haaretz US correspondent Shmuel Rosner “Obama supports Israel, period”.

This attack continued after his election and recently this attack became more and more vicious after his speech in Cairo and after his demands  (which he quickly withdrew and retreated from) that Israel freeze its programs of settlements building in Palestinian occupied territories.  Such attacks are spearheaded by senior members of Netanyahu’s Likud party and their supporters and influential and powerful sponsors in the in the United States among mainstream Jewish leadership and organizations, whose power and influence go beyond formulations of US foreign policy and goes to domestic issues through the stranglehold they have over members of Congress.

Israel officials like Minister Limor Livnat labeled Obama’s administration as “terrible”, with Yossi Naim head of the Beit Aryeh regional council threatening Obama with his declaration ”I announce to you Obama: You won’t be able to stop us”.  With many leading Israeli and American Jewish leaders charging that Obama by his calls for freezing Israeli settlements is promoting “ethnic cleansing of Jews and jeopardizing Israeli security”. It seems Israeli security is built on land theft.

The Jewish settlers’ leadership and their political and financial sponsors within mainstream American Jewish community and in Congress are spearheading the anti-Obama campaign.  An American Jewish leadership and community that is never grateful to the United States for half of century of political, military, financial and legal support that enabled Israel to commit the kinds of crimes it is committing on a daily basis since the ‘67 War, committing war crimes in Gaza and in Lebanon, with the use of cluster and phosphorous bombs on civilian targets and using American-supplied weapons to bomb and kill civilian targets, with the United States providing the Veto power that so far has enabled Israel to get away with murder and violations of international and humanitarian laws.

Not only does the United States provide political and legal cover for Israeli crimes, it also allows and in fact supports the illegal settlements and criminal settlers through tax exemptions of American Jewish organizations, groups, individuals even synagogues that fund the criminal and terrorist activities of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem.  One of the key Israeli organizations that receives US tax exempt funds is “The Task Force to Save the Nation and the Land” which gave cash awards of NIS 20,000 to each Israeli soldier who lifted signs that read, ”The Shimshon Battalion does not evict from Homesh” a month ago at the Western Wall, gave NIS 1,800 to solider Tzach Kortz for shooting a Palestinian near Kiryat Arba and that gives NIS 1,000 each day to every soldier who publicly demonstrates their opposition to Israeli evacuations from the West Bank, gives NIS 1,000 for each day soldiers spend in military prisons for disobeying orders of military commanders that comes to dealing with Jewish settlers. The list goes on and on with hundreds of American Jewish groups, rich and powerful business leaders supporting the Israeli Jewish settlers’ movements and the crimes and terror they commit on a daily basis against the people of Al-Khalil/Hebron, against Palestinian towns and villages burning and uprooting centuries-old olive trees, poisoning water wells and killing of livestock, not to mention killing and murdering of Palestinian villagers.  This is in contrast to the microscopic scrutiny that mosques, Muslim and Arab charities are subjected to on a daily basis from US law enforcement agencies.

The failure of the United States government to enforce its laws related to export of and use of American weapons against civilian targets and its failure to look into and revoke the tax exemption statutes of many of the American Jewish organizations that actively support and fund Jewish terrorism in Palestinian territories shows that President Obama is not an enemy of the Jews but a very good friend of Israel and its criminal policies in the Occupied Territories, otherwise he could order his attorney general to look into and investigate funding of Jewish settlers’ groups and organizations, perhaps issue executive orders that revoke tax exemption status of American Jewish organizations that fund and sponsor Jewish terrorism.

However all of that support by the Obama’s administration is never enough to satisfy power and political greed of the American Jewish leadership and community. They have succeeded in derailing the nomination of Chaz Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council citing his “anti-Israeli leanings” and now are after former senator Chuck Hagel as President Obama’s intelligence aid and his lack of being pro-Israel. It seems and in the words of Natsha Mozgovaya writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community”.  That is the way it is in the United States, what really counts are Israel and the American Jewish community and the hell with the United States and its national and security interests. The litmus tests of public service in the United States is not loyalty to the US or long-term service but loyalty to Israel and its supporters in the United States, supporters and sponsors who corrupted our election laws and financing, corrupted both the executive and Legislative branch and are now on the way to corrupting the judicial branch and perhaps undermining and corrupting the soul of our nation’s strength; the United States Constitution.

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December 7, 2009 Posted by | Aletho News, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

SOFA agreement heralds US troop and missile deployment in Poland

December 4, 2009

WARSAW (AFP) – The United States and Poland have drawn up an accord regulating the stationing of US troops in Poland, the defence ministry said Friday, opening the way for the deployment of US Patriot missiles.

The accord was given the final backing of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk Friday and will be signed in Warsaw next Thursday, ministry spokesman Robert Rochowicz told AFP.

“Talks on the accord to allow a US military presence in our country have been concluded with success,” he said.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is a pre-requisite to setting up a US ground-to-air missile base in Poland. US officials say deployment should start in 2010.

During an October visit to Warsaw by US Vice President Joe Biden, Tusk said his country was ready to join a new US anti-missile system in central Europe.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said the United States wants to deploy SM-3 missiles in Poland and the neighbouring Czech Republic in 2015.

Gates’ announcement came after President Barack Obama scrapped a plan agreed in 2008 to install a controversial anti-missile shield system in the two countries.

The shield, promoted by president George W. Bush when he was in office, had angered Russia which considered it a threat to Russian security.

The Patriots and SM-3s are part of the new system proposed by the United States.

December 6, 2009 Posted by | Aletho News, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Neocons Get Warm and Fuzzy Over ‘War President’

“Obama will have more than doubled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he became president”

by Eli Clifton, December 05, 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan for a 30,000-troop surge and a troop withdrawal timeline beginning in 18 months has caught criticism from both Democrat and Republican lawmakers.

But a small group of hawkish foreign policy experts – who have lobbied the White House since August to escalate U.S. involvement in Afghanistan – are christening Obama the new “War President.”

The response to Obama’s Tuesday night speech at West Point has largely been less than enthusiastic, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle finding plenty in the administration’s Afghanistan plan that fails to live up to their expectations. Republicans have hammered the White House on Obama’s decision to begin a drawdown of U.S. forces in 18 months, while Democrats largely expressed ambivalence or dismay over the administration’s willingness to commit 30,000 more soldiers to a war seen by many as unwinnable and costly at a time when the U.S. economy is barely in recovery from the global financial crisis.

The White House’s rollout of the 30,000 troop surge did little to convince an already skeptical Congress, but foreign policy hawks who have accused the president of “dithering” in making a decision on Afghanistan are praising the administration’s willingness to make the “tough” commitment to escalate the U.S. commitment in the war in Afghanistan.

Indeed, their approval of the White House’s decision to commit 30,000 troops is the culmination of a campaign led by the newly formed Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).

FPI held its first event in March, titled “Afghanistan: Planning for Success,” and a second event in September – “Advancing and Defending Democracy” – which focused on counterinsurgency in combating the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The newly formed group is headed up by the Weekly Standard’s editor Bill Kristol; foreign policy adviser to the McCain presidential campaign Robert Kagan; and former policy adviser in the George W. Bush administration Dan Senor.

Kagan and Kristol were also co-founders and directors of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a number of whose 1997 charter members, including the elder Cheney, former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and their two top aides, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Paul Wolfowitz, respectively, played key roles in promoting the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Bush’s other first-term policies when the hawks exercised their greatest influence.

The core leadership of FPI has waged their campaign in countless editorials and columns published in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Weekly Standard.

These articles have often been highly critical, at times suggesting that Obama’s unwillingness to give Gen. Stanley McChrystal the 20,000 to 40,000 troops requested in his September report to Defense Secretary Robert Gates amounted to “dithering” and projected U.S. weakness to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and U.S. allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Senor described himself as “pleasantly surprised” and “quite encouraged by the president’s decision” in a Republican National Committee sponsored conference call.

“It seems to me that Obama deserves even more credit for courage than Bush did, for he has risked much more. By the time Bush decided to support the surge in Iraq in early 2007, his presidency was over and discredited, brought down in large part by his own disastrous decision not to send the right number of troops in 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006,” wrote Kagan in the Washington Post on Wednesday.

“Obama has had to make this decision with most of his presidency still ahead of him. Bush had nothing to lose. Obama could lose everything,” Kagan concluded.

The theme of heralding Obama as a stoic decision-maker in the face of an administration and Congress that seek to “manage American decline” – as Kagan wrote – was also echoed by Bill Kristol in the Washington Post on Wednesday.

“By mid-2010, Obama will have more than doubled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he became president; he will have empowered his general, Stanley McChrystal, to fight the war pretty much as he thinks necessary to in order to win; and he will have retroactively, as it were, acknowledged that he and his party were wrong about the Iraq surge in 2007 – after all, the rationale for this surge is identical to Bush’s, and the hope is for a similar success. He will also have embraced the use of military force as a key instrument of national power,” wrote Kristol.

The heralding of Obama as “A War President” – which was the title of Kristol’s article in the Washington Post – is a striking change of tone from some of the same pundits who were vociferously attacking the administration for every major policy initiative as recently as last week.

“Just what is Barack Obama as president making of our American destiny? The answer, increasingly obvious, is… a hash. It’s worse than most of us expected. His dithering on Afghanistan is deplorable, his appeasing of Iran disgraceful, his trying to heap new burdens on a struggling economy destructive. Add to this his sending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for a circus-like court trial,” wrote Kristol in the Nov. 23 edition of the Weekly Standard.

“The next three years are going to be long and difficult ones for our economy, our military, and our country,” he wrote.

The hawkish Wall Street Journal editorial board – which on Sept. 10 suggested that Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize because he sees the U.S. “as weaker than it was and the rest of the planet as stronger,” and on Sept. 18 described the administration’s decision to scrap a missile defense agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic as following “Mr. Obama’s trend of courting adversaries while smacking allies” – also exhibited a noticeable change in tone in praising the White House’s decision to surge troop levels.

“We support Mr. Obama’s decision, and this national effort, notwithstanding our concerns about the determination of the president and his party to see it through. Now that he’s committed, so is the country, and one of our abiding principles is that nations should never start (much less escalate) wars they don’t intend to win,” said the Journal’s editorial board on Wednesday.

The board’s qualified endorsement of the White House’s war plan seems to reflect both the Republican concerns that Obama may use the 18-month deadline as an excuse to withdraw from Afghanistan before the Taliban and al-Qaeda are defeated and foreign policy hawks – such as those at FPI – who are pleased with the administration’s decision to commit more fully to the war in Afghanistan.

Hawks, such as Kagan and Kristol, may have to argue in 18 months for an extension of the withdrawal deadline but in similarly worded statements they both expressed confidence that this would not be a problem.

“If we and our Afghan allied partners are succeeding [by July 2011], the timing [of the withdrawal] may make sense. If we aren’t it won’t. It will not be any easier for Obama to embrace defeat in 18 months than it is today,” wrote Kagan in the Washington Post in response to concerns about the timeline for withdrawal.

“[T]he July 2011 date also buys Obama time. It enables him to push off pressure to begin withdrawing, or to rethink the basic strategy, for 18 months. We’ve come pretty far from all the talk about off ramps at three or six-month intervals in 2010 that we were hearing just a little while ago,” Kristol wrote on the Weekly Standard’s blog on Tuesday.

For hawks like Kristol, Kagan, and Senor who have been calling for a surge in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan since August, Obama’s announcement on Tuesday night was a high-point in their campaign of op-eds, columns, and conferences, to push the Obama White House in the direction of an escalation in Afghanistan.

Kristol concluded his blog post on a confident note.

“In a way, Obama is now saying: We’re surging and fighting for the next 18 months; see you in July 2011. That’s about as good as we’re going to get.”

(Inter Press Service)

December 5, 2009 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Rejecting Westocentrism

December 1, 2009

By Bouthaina Shaaban

In a meeting with a distinguished group of female Philippines journalists (editors, op- ed writers, major TV hosts) in Manila last week, I found out that their questions about the Arab world, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the conditions in Palestine, Iraq and Iran, are based on information obtained from western media. I saw the surprise on their faces when I rephrased their questions from an Arab, or rather realistic, view of events on the ground, and as lived by the peoples of these countries. A short while after the beginning of the meeting, I discovered that the journalists, who cannot be described as hostile to Arab rights and causes, do not know anything about the Arab perspective of any of the issues covered by western media which base their coverage on the Israeli versions of reality, terminology and view of things.

The first question was how I would compare the condition of Arab women with the achievements of western women in terms of rights, independence and freedom. I was also asked whether all Arab women still wear all-covering gowns and about the ratio of men who marry more than one wife. When a well-known political editor asked about our position towards Iran’s nuclear activities and the problems the west is facing with Iran, I asked her whether she knew that Iran was a signatory of the NPT which allows it to possess nuclear knowledge and peaceful nuclear power, while Israel is not a signatory of the NPT, possesses over 200 nuclear heads, occupies Arab land by force and kills Palestinians and expels them from their villages and cities on a daily basis and builds settlements on the ruins of Palestinian homes, history and civilization.

There was no question about the Gaza blockade which has turned into a policy of genocide in the 21st century which, South African lawyers acknowledge, has become worse than the apartheid that prevailed in South Africa in the 20th century. Neither was there a question about the Goldstone report and the thousands of crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, nor on secret Israeli jails which have within their walls 3,000 Palestinians since 2000 and in which extremely serious crimes against Palestinian prisoners are committed under international silence. Lawyers and the ICRC are not even allowed to know where the prisons are. Israeli occupation troops use the most brutal methods of torture against prisoners, including physical abuse and rape. There were no questions about Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes on a daily basis, building settlements on the ruins of these homes and turning the Palestinians into refugees on and outside their land. There were no questions about the effects of the American occupation of Iraq which left over a million widows and more than two million orphans.

While I tried to answer questions with information and facts about Arab rights and the crimes committed by Israel since 1948 against Arabs as a result of a Zionist settler strategy, targeting intellectuals in Iraq and the disasters caused to the country as a result of brutal occupation, I acknowledged to the journalists that I do not blame them for the lack of facts in their questions because western media are the only conduit between east and west,

I wondered about what we all know about Afghanistan, for instance, and what is happening in it and in Pakistan except through western media. What do Arabs know about China, India and Russia; and what do these countries know about Arabs except through western media? In a moment of real dialogue, we agreed that this is the most dangerous thing about the international condition in the modern age. We also agreed that changing this reality should be a priority for countries of the east and the south.

For instance, can one imagine that the most popular books in the International Islamic Book Fair, held in New Delhi recently, were about divorce, terrorism and banking? If we take into account that most of these books have been written either in the United States or the United Kingdom, we realize the danger of reproducing the western evaluation and image of Islam and Muslims themselves, which means that they look at themselves, at their religion and culture in a western mirror.

What are we supposed to make of Barbie wearing the veil and chador on her 50th anniversary in a charity auction in Florence, Italy. The rationale of the exhibition was that it was essential for girls throughout the world to feel free to express their real image. The fact of the matter was enhancement of the image of the veil and chador as the only image for Muslim women, reducing them to an appearance considered by the west an evidence of injustice to women in the Muslim world and their inability to be effective, respectable members of their society.

Talking about the importance of cultural dialogue and the ignorance which characterizes people’s understanding of their civilizations and the events taking place on their land, Philippines specialists pointed out that Spanish colonialism which lasted over 300 years left no clear cultural influence which forces dependence on Spanish culture [apparently Catholicism was not considered], while American colonialism, which lasted only 50 years, left cultural, educational and institutional dependence which is difficult to break. It can be argued that neo-colonialism in the 21st century is cultural and western by nature, and that the Arabs, who, in the past, gave the world extremely important discoveries in all sciences are the most prominent victims of this colonialism. The Arabic language is being subjected to unprecedented neglect, and local intellectual production which expresses the Arab condition and Arab issues in an attractive manner is at its lowest level.

Regional groupings could be one of the effective responses to ‘westrocentrism’; and communication between these groupings in the future will be the real breakthrough out of westrocentrism and replacing it at least with a multi-polar world where countries of the world restore their status, sense of importance and their contribution to the progress and prosperity of humanity. ASEAN has lifted visa restrictions between its member states and opened up free trade and active economic, cultural and political exchange between its countries. Latin American countries are setting up a cultural, economic and political space resistant to American hegemony which used to consider the countries of Latin America its backyard. Most countries of the world are waking up from their fascination with the English language and are restoring the prestige of their local languages in education and the production of culture and knowledge. Look at Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, receiving Iran’s president despite western ire against this step which is a clear expression of self confidence and independence of western hegemony.

The question is: when will the Arabs see that their salvation lies in cherishing and protecting their language and producing science and knowledge in this language. And when will they see that creating a regional bloc with the Arabs as a major player is the only salvation of the Arab future and integration into the new world order in which the countries of Asia and Latin America are gaining real independence intellectually, scientifically, politically and economically.

There is no doubt that real independence lies in abandoning the western mirror in which we misconceive ourselves and, instead, in communicating with others who share our goal in order to produce a future in which all components of human civilization flourish far away from westrocentrism based on extermination of indigenous peoples, pillaging the wealth of the planet for the benefit of western countries and pushing the rest of humanity into the cycle of poverty and inactivity.

The thousand-mile-trip starts with one step; and the first step is to break this mirror and look instead in the color of the soil of our countries and the faces of our children, and expressing ourselves in our language and putting trust in our thought, causes and our capability to be real contributors to the prosperity of humanity and to the protecting of human freedom and dignity.

Bouthaina Shaaban is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates. She is also a writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. She has been the spokesperson for Syria and was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She can be reached through nizar_kabibo@yahoo.com
Source

December 2, 2009 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Obama’s exceedingly familiar justifications for escalation

December 1, 2009

By Glenn Greenwald
source

In order to prepare Americans for Obama’s Afghanistan escalation speech tonight at West Point (at least he’s not wearing a fighter pilot costume), White House officials have been dispatched to speak to the media (anonymously, of course) to preview all of the new and exciting aspects of the President’s plan. As a result, media accounts are filled with claims that there are major changes ordered by Obama that will transform our approach there.

But to anyone with a memory that extends back for more than a few weeks, all of this seems anything but new. In December, 2007, George Bush delivered a speech to the nation announcing his escalation in Iraq — that one only 20,000 troops, compared to the 30,000-40,000 Obama has ordered for Afghanistan. It’s worthwhile to compare what Obama officials are excitedly featuring as new and innovative ideas with what Bush said; I’m not comparing the Iraq and Afghan escalations: only the rhetoric used to justify them.

ABC News: “While tomorrow night’s speech will have many audiences … a senior administration official tells ABC News one key message will resonate with all of them: ‘The era of the blank check for President Karzai is over. . . The president will talk about, this not being ‘an open ended commitment’…” Bush:

I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people — and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act.

The Afghan leader has heard our ultimatum and understands it (“The president was described as heartened to hear that Karzai spent much of his inaugural address discussing corruption”). Bush:

The Prime Minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: “The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of their sectarian or political affiliation.”

The Afghan government will have strict benchmarks they must meet (Gibbs: “the new strategy will include many of the same benchmarks, but with ramifications to US support to Karzai and his government if they are not met”). Bush:

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

We’re going to ensure that Afghan troops are trained to provide the security which the country needs (Gibbs: “the goal and the purpose of the strategy is to train an Afghan national security force, comprised of an Afghan national army and a police that can fight an unpopular insurgency in Afghanistan so that we can then transfer that security responsibility appropriately back to the Afghans”). Bush:

Our troops will have a well-defined mission: To help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs. . . . We will help the Iraqis build a larger and better-equipped army — and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq.

We’re going to have a strategy based on funding and strengthening local leaders (“much of it will be targeted at local governments at the province and district level, and at specific ministries, such as those devoted to Afghan security”). Bush:

We will give our commanders and civilians greater flexibility to spend funds for economic assistance. We will double the number of provincial reconstruction teams. These teams bring together military and civilian experts to help local Iraqi communities pursue reconciliation, strengthen moderates, and speed the transition to Iraqi self reliance.

If we don’t escalate, Al Qaeda will get us (“The focus of the new strategy, sources say, will be going after al Qaeda and affiliated extremists”). Bush:

As we make these changes, we will continue to pursue al Qaeda and foreign fighters. Al Qaeda is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar Province. Al Qaeda has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital. A captured al Qaeda document describes the terrorists’ plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring al Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq’s democracy, building a radical Islamic empire and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.

We must fulfill our moral responsibility to stand with the Afghan people. Bush:

From Afghanistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories, millions of ordinary people are sick of the violence and want a future of peace and opportunity for their children. And they are looking at Iraq. They want to know: Will America withdraw and yield the future of that country to the extremists — or will we stand with the Iraqis who have made the choice for freedom?

Obama’s decision came only after serious and careful deliberations on all the competing options (ABC: “The decision comes after months of discussions and deliberations with the president’s national security team”). Bush:

Our new approach comes after consultations with Congress about the different courses we could take in Iraq. Many are concerned that the Iraqis are becoming too dependent on the United States — and therefore, our policy should focus on protecting Iraq’s borders and hunting down al Qaeda. Their solution is to scale back America’s efforts in Baghdad or announce the phased withdrawal of our combat forces. We carefully considered these proposals. And we concluded that to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear that country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale. Such a scenario would result in our troops being forced to stay in Iraq even longer, and confront an enemy that is even more lethal. If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home.

To keep the asthetics the same, we even have Michael O’Hanlon leading the way, as always, providing the Serious Expertise to justify further war.

This is all to be expected. Ostensible justifications for war are more or less universal, as is the familiar mix of fear, claims of moral necessity (and superiority), and appeals to patriotism and military love that are always hauled out to justify their continuation and escalation. Beyond that, Bush’s escalation was based on many of the same counter-insurgency dogmas in which Obama’s escalation is grounded, designed by many of the same people. So it’s anything but surprising that it all sounds remarkably similar. And it’s possible that once we hear the actual speech, rather than the White House’s coordinated depiction of it, that there will be new elements.

Still, this pretense that Obama spent months carefully deliberating in order to devise some new and exotic thought pattern about the war seems absurd on its face. At least if his top aides are to believed, what he intends to say tonight should sound extremely familiar.

* * * * *

In The Guardian yesterday, the courageous Malalai Joya — who might actually deserve the Nobel Peace Prize — explains why escalation and ongoing occupation are so devastating for her country.

And on that note: Obama is scheduled to receive his Nobel Peace Prize next week in Oslo. No matter your views on Afghanistan, and no matter your views on whether he deserved the Prize, is there anyone who disputes that there is some obvious tension between his escalating this war and his receiving this Prize? Unless one believes that War is Peace, how could there not be?

UPDATE: The most bizarre defense of Obama’s escalation is also one of the most common: since he promised during the campaign to escalate in Afghanistan, it’s unfair to criticize him for it now — as though policies which are advocated during a campaign are subsequently immunized from criticism. For those invoking this defense: in 2004, Bush ran for re-election by vowing to prosecute the war in Iraq, keep Guantanamo opened, and privatize Social Security. When he won and then did those things (or tried to), did you refrain from criticizing those policies on the ground that he promised to do them during the campaign? I highly doubt it.

December 2, 2009 Posted by | Aletho News, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

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