ch.annel2-i.s-n.ow-a.ngry

But this really gets me. From the Wall St. Journal:  

As the scale of the economic crisis becomes clear and comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s are tossed around, there is a very real danger that America could succumb to the feeling that we no longer have the luxury of worrying about distant lands, now that we are confronted with a “real” problem that actually affects the lives of all Americans. As we consider whether various bailout plans help Main Street as well as Wall Street, the subtext is that both are much more important to Americans than Haifa Street.

One problem with this emotion is that it ignores the sequel to the Great Depression — the rise of militaristic Japan marked by the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, both of which resulted in part from economic dislocations spreading outward from the U.S. The inward-focus of the U.S. and the leading Western powers (Great Britain and France) throughout the 1930s allowed these problems to metastasize, ultimately leading to World War II.

Is it possible that American inattention to the world in the coming years could lead to a similarly devastating result? You betcha.

Do people really still believe there are countries out there that want to attack us for being us, and not for us killing people day in day out in foreign countries? The only security situation this chump describes is one of our own making. He forgot to mention the rampant inflation (a loaf of bread cost in the billion of Deutschmarks at the time), and ultra-liberal lassiez-faire democracy that was prevalent in Germany at the time. Also, he forgot to mention the absolutely insanity of Hitler - as bad as al Qaeda may be, at least they have only called to wipe out our way of life - not our entire race.

And I’ll tell you this - once we stop giving al Qaeda an excuse to attack us (i.e. not fucking around in middle eastern countries’ affairs we have no business being in anyway) they’ll have a really hard time convincing people to go die for them. “Kill the great satan! They drink lattes and drive cars!” “But, praise allah, why should we die for them to not drink coffee?” “They… dress funny!”

I mean, think about how hard it is to get your average citizen to vote. It takes a lot to get a guy to kill himself to kill you, they have to really think there is something at stake. Once we stop militarily intervening, what could they possible have to recruit with?

Why is Sen. McCain doing this? There are many answers to that question: the economic crisis and Wall Street bailout have fostered a cultural climate in which populist appeals resonate even more than usual; Gov. Palin embodies the kind of false populism upon which the politics of rage necessarily rests; and Sen. McCain himself is very angry that a younger black man might best him for the office that he, Sen. McCain, has coveted his entire adult life. More than any of that, though, the politics of rage works for the Republican Party. It has since the era of President Nixon and Gov. Wallace. If working-class white people were to stop voting against their class interests, this would fast become a one-party nation. And so Sen. McCain taps into deep wells of hatred, the lifeblood of modern Republicanism.

But as Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds us, this hate has both a history and consequences:

Somewhere, slumbering in this country, there are men who aren’t clued in that this whole ‘terrorist’ thing is mere strategy. They have guns, and all their lives they’ve wanted to be famous. Don’t give them a reason. This is still America. We are never that far from the past.

One wonders if Sen. McCain, as megalomanical a politician as we have seen in many years, understands the forces he has unleashed. Indeed, the politics of rage consumed Gov. Wallace and not his enemies; his career effectively ended when an assassin’s bullet lodged in his spine, paralyzing him during the 1972 campaign. One hopes that this grim chapter in our history will not repeat itself, that the anger bubbling just beneath the surface of our politics will not claim another victim.

Excellent read. Highly recommended. It doesn’t often occur to me that people take seriously what Impalin/McCain have to say.

VIA BOSTON

It used to be that we’d see every few days, some news of deaths somewhere perpetrated by terrorist groups, women and children killed.  Now, it’s news of deaths perpetrated by the U.S. military, women and children killed. 

AP sez to me:

The federal government is telling emergency managers to be on the lookout for fake emergency and commercial vehicles, as security tightens in the two cities hosting this year’s presidential conventions.

For about $2,000 someone can use a computer, color printer, typewriter, barcode label printer, an electric tool for cutting and an engraving pen to fake vehicle identification numbers, stickers and titles.

The Secret Service does not have any specific information about these cloned vehicles being used for surveillance or terrorist purposes at the Democratic convention in Denver and the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn., Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said. But the agency is aware of this type of potential threat, Zahren said.

The FEMA bulletin cites examples over the past few years in which 18-wheelers were disguised as Wal-Mart trucks and were eventually impounded. For instance, in 2006, Texas authorities stopped a fake Wal-Mart truck that was carrying 3,000 pounds of marijuana and about 450 pounds of cocaine, according to a report on cloned vehicles issued earlier this year by the Florida state intelligence fusion center.

First things first, I think people will have more to worry about from government spies on their ‘anti-American activities’ than terrorist spies. Also, engraving pens are really fucking hard to use, you’d need a computer controlled engraving machine to reach the quality of VIN engraving on a vehicle.

And it’s more likely that the Wal-Mart truck was a real one that was supposed to be importing cheap goods from Mexico, with the cheapest hire subsidized by drug money. Also, I like how their best examples of this are small-time crime like drug smuggling (because, let’s face it, 3000 lbs of pot and 450 lbs of coke would fuel San Francisco for under an hour) from two years ago.

And, lets face it, if we weren’t funding or providing harsh military repression in already fucked up countries, we wouldn’t have to worry about ‘terrorist’ attacks.  This is nothing more than election year pandering to try to muscle the GOP back into the national hardass spotlight.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: On October 2, 2002, a week after John Rizzo, the acting CIA general counsel, visited Gitmo, a second senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was chief counsel to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, went to Guantanamo, attended a meeting of Gitmo staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from Gitmo, who a couple of weeks earlier had attended that training given at Fort Bragg by instructors by the SERE school.

While the training—excuse me, while the memo remains classified, minutes from the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those minutes clearly show that the focus of the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees.When the Gitmo chief of staff suggested at the meeting that Gitmo “can’t do sleep deprivation,” Lieutenant Colonel Beaver, Gitmo’s senior lawyer, responded, “Yes, we can—with approval.” Lieutenant Beaver added that Gitmo, quote, “may need to curb the harsher operations while the International Committee of the Red Cross is around.”

Mr. Fredman, the senior CIA lawyer, suggested that it’s, quote, “very effective to identify detainee phobias and to use them” and described for the group the so-called “wet towel” technique, which we know as waterboarding. Mr. Fredman said, quote, “It can feel like you’re drowning. The lymphatic system will react as if you’re suffocating, but your body will not cease to function,” close-quote.

And Mr. Fredman presented the following disturbing perspective of our legal obligations under our anti-torture laws, saying, quote, “It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

“If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.” How on earth did we get to the point where a senior US government lawyer would say that whether or not an interrogation technique is torture is, quote, “subject to perception” and that if, quote, “the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong”? The Gitmo senior JAG officer Lieutenant Colonel Beaver’s response was: “We will need documentation to protect us.”

Once again the DemocracyNow!  bitches have scooped Western Civilization’s media on this subject.

On another note I like to harp about, Barak Hussein Obama Yomamadroid has done something weird (an my spellcheck only likes the Hussein part of his name. hmm.) with his presidential campaign - observe:

…by showing that he could raise large sums from small donors — 47 percent of the $263 million Mr. Obama received has come in amounts of $200 or less — Mr. Obama has made the argument that he has achieved online what the public finance system has been unable to do. And he has been freed from the necessity of spending countless hours fund-raising.

…the use of the Internet to raise campaign money at least plays into the spirit of campaign finance reform, some analysts said, and possibly does more to rein in the influence of big donors and special interests than 30 years of restrictions imposed by federal law.

If you look at the graphic on that NYT article, you’ll see that if you put the bar at $500 donation the percent jumps to 55%. McCain on the other hand only has 31% donating $500 or less - which candidate is more likely to support YOU, majority America who has less than $200 to spare for anything right now? Of course, back on DemNow!, you’ll find Nader talking trash on Obama AND McCain - and unlike both of them, he doesn’t take a penny of corporate or PAC money.  Obama is so crazy-sauce popular, he could probably dump all the PAC and Corp money and still win for President - however, that would be a bad idea - look where it gets Nader. I’m not saying it’s not honorable and the actual right thing to do, however he should do it after he wins office. Think about this for a second - sure, that’s a lot of money he wouldn’t have to campaign with, but those PACs and Corps currently supporting or at least hedging their bets with some support for Obama in hopes for future kindness might take the return of the money as a signal that he will be ‘against’ him and take that money to McCain or otherwise turn it against Obama. What would really be great is taking the Corp/PAC sums and giving them to African aids charities or support for orphan Iraqi children etc.

Nader is probably the only candidate I’ve heard in any of my readings both mentioning and quoting the US Constitution [and isn’t that a word fraught with meanings]:

Doesn’t the Constitution start with “We the people”? 

Nader criticizes Obama yet praises two possible VP picks for the Obaminator.

Barack Obama really now has to be examined very carefully. He has worn out the word “change.” We now want to know what change is involved. And it’s quite clear that he is a corporate candidate from A to Z. In his voting record, he voted against reform of the Mining Act of 1872, which gives away our hard rock minerals. He voted for a terrible class-action restriction law that the corporations wanted him to vote for. He, in many ways, has disappointed people who had greater hopes for him. He’s voted for reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. He refuses to even discuss—he’s vigorously against impeachment of Bush and Cheney. He won’t even support his colleague Senator Russ Feingold motion to censure the Bush administration for systemic repeated illegal wiretaps. He—you know, he’s letting the corporate-dominated city of Washington, the corporations who actually rule us now in Washington, determine his agenda. And that does not augur well.

AMY GOODMAN: What do think of Chuck Hagel as a vice-presidential running mate—yes, the Republican senator—for Barack Obama, one of the names that’s being bandied about?

RALPH NADER: Well, he thinks for himself. And that’s about the best you can expect of a politician these days. Senator Jim Webb, Senator Chuck Hagel, they think for themselves. They’re not robotic minds. They’re not completely monetized minds. And they’re Vietnam veterans. So, in today’s politics, that puts them forward.

Nader is also the only one talking sense on Iran that I’ve seen.

Iran has not invaded anybody in 250 years. Yet it’s obviously frightened. It’s surrounded by the US military west, south, east. It’s been labeled “Axis of Evil” by Bush, who invaded Iraq after he labeled them “Axis of Evil.” We have Special Forces, according to Sy Hersh, that go in and out of Iran. What are they going to do? They talk very belligerently nationally, but they’re really scared. I mean, we supported Saddam Hussein, logistically and with materiel, in invading Iran, which took a half a million Iranian lives. They remember the shooting down of their civilian airliner years ago.

I guess if your choice is still Giant Douche or Shit Sandwich, you might as well reach for a cookie even if you fail. Good stuff. After reading his positions, I’ll vote Nader.

The evidence is very clear that while young American soldiers, who never even had a chance to live out their dreams, were being blown to pieces by roadside bombs in Iraq, George Bush was having fun and living life, enjoying life to the very fullest. I’m talking about running, bicycling, joking with friends, slapping backs, dancing and swiveling his hips like Elvis to blaring music, eating his hot dogs and blueberry pies, almost always seeming to be in the very best of good spirits.

But throughout this hell on earth that George Bush created, the evidence is very, very clear that with over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children and babies and 4,000 American soldiers dying horrible violent deaths and hundreds of thousands of their survivors crying out hysterically and having no way to cope with the unspeakable horror of it all and having nightmares over what happened, George Bush—the evidence is very, very clear—smiled through it all. In fact, you look at a photograph of Bush and six or seven other people—they’re all smiling—who has the biggest smile on his face? George Bush.

Well, in my book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, I set forth an airtight legal case against George Bush that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that George Bush took this nation to war under false pretenses, on a lie, in Iraq, and therefore, under the law, he is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American soldiers in Iraq fighting his war, not your war or my war or America’s war, but his war.

Read it. Buy the book. Borrow the book. Download the book. Educate yourself, arm yourself with knowlegde.

coordinated bombings blamed on al Qaeda…

the bombing was the work of al Qaeda in Iraq and that it knew the cell leader who was responsible.

rebel against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda…

So, wait, who are they again?

 On Monday, two blasts in central and eastern Baghdad killed 19 people despite tightened security for the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But I thought everything was quiet during Ahmadinejad’s visit, at least according to the articles from the other day.

Oh well, have some history of the violence in Islam that al Qaeda crib their notes from.

Odierno also said he was not surprised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was able to move around without security problems during his two-day visit to Baghdad as the groups that often target high-profile visitors are Iranian-backed.

“Over the last 12 months, every time a visitor would come from the United States, we’d either foil a rocket attack or the rocket attack happened. And guess what? That’s because it was being done by Iranian surrogates,” Odierno said.

Bullshit. Bullshitbullshitbullshit. It’s because WE FUCKING INVADED AND RUINED THEIR COUNTRY AND IRAN DID NOT! When we can’t get conditions better than Saddam, an ‘evil’ dictator, had things 5 years after we’ve hung him, we serious fucked up, and the fact that Americans are hated their and Iranians, who have never invaded Iraq (in fact, the opposite happened a while back), are not hated there.

Shocking, I know.

Update: Should have read the whole article first. Found more factual slants.

Ahmadinejad’s visit was the first to Iraq by an Iranian president since the two countries fought an eight-year war in the 1980s in which 1 million people were killed.

Since Saddam’s US-backed invasion and Iran’s US-backed counter to that. The US backing, of course, they lied about. They also used banned chemical weapons, made with knowledge we partially supplied, along with other countries we favor.

He also said U.S. forces in Iraq continued to find many deadly armor-piercing munitions which the U.S. military says come from Iran, but he could not tell whether Iran had slowed the flow of those weapons.

Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, said the United States expected Iraqi leaders to convey to Ahmadinejad “the necessity of stopping this lethal flow of equipment”.

What about all the weapons and ammo we have ‘lost’ in Iraq?

Now I know.

The book chronicles the CIA-backed 1953 overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government after Iran nationalized its oil industry.

Our oil thirst pretty much created terrorism. Actually, Britain’s. The company, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, that later became BP was the one stealing all of Iran’s oil and paying them a pittance. They said “Hey, we are a wretched nation! We need that money!” So they took it back. The we overthrew their democracy and re-instated a dictator. Then they overthrew our dictator and since then we’ve branded them a terrorist nation.

Actually, it was at this time that Aramco, the Arab American Oil Company, came into Saudi Arabian, and their deal was a fifty-fifty split, so 50 percent for the country that has the oil and 50 percent for the company that comes in and builds the refinery. That had the air of fairness that ordinary people could understand, but the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company would not give in one inch. And that just made the Iranians more and more radical.

They imposed a crushing economic embargo on Iran. They required all their oil technicians to leave. Many of them wanted to stay in Iran and work for the nationalized company. The British wouldn’t allow this. So, since they had been very careful not to train anyone how to run the oil refinery, any Iranians, that was the end of the possibility of oil refining. Just in case the Iranians could figure out how to extract any oil, the British imposed a naval embargo around the port, where oil is exported from in Iran. The British took Mosaddeq to the United Nations, they took him to the World Court, both unsuccessfully. The British were arguing that the Iranian oil industry was their private property and that Mosaddeq had stolen it from them. That was their complaint, but they failed to get any redress in international fora.

So then, the only thing that Prime Minister Churchill could think of to do was to ask Harry Truman, the American president, to do this job for us: Can you please overthrow Mosaddeq, because we don’t have anyone in Iran now that can do it? And Truman said no. Truman believed that the CIA could be a covert action and intelligence-gathering agency, but he never wanted it to get involved in overthrowing governments.[!]

Too bad we have a “democracy.” The next POTUS, well, actually, one of his un-elected cronies, was the mastermind of the US coup of Iran.

Dwight Eisenhower took office. John Foster Dulles became his secretary of state. And Dulles had spent his whole adult life working as a lawyer for giant international corporations. And the idea that a country should be able to get away with nationalizing such a big company, such a big corporate resource, was, as Dulles very well understood, a great threat to the system that he had been representing all his life, the system of multinational enterprise. And he realized that it was in the interest of the United States, as he saw them, to make sure that no such example could be set. So the new administration, the Eisenhower administration, reversed the policy of the Truman administration. They agreed to send a CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, to Iran in the summer of 1953.

Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy Roosevelt.

Just very briefly, so we placed the Shah back on his peacock throne. The Shah ruled with increasing repression for twenty-five years. His repression set off the explosion of the late 1970s, what we call the Islamic Revolution. That revolution brought to power a clique of fanatically anti-American mullahs. That revolution also inspired radicals in other countries, like next-door Afghanistan, where the Taliban came to power and gave shelter to al-Qaeda with results we all know. That instability in Iran that followed that revolution also led Iran’s great enemy next door, Saddam Hussein, to invade Iran. That not only set off an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, but it also brought the United States into its death embrace with Saddam. We were the military allies of Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War, and we were supplying Saddam with military intelligence, with Bell helicopters that he used to spray gas on Iranian positions. President Reagan sent a special envoy twice to Baghdad to negotiate with Saddam and ask him how we could help him. And, of course, that envoy was Donald Rumsfeld. So that instability set off by that revolution also led the United States into the spiral in Iraq that brought us to the point where we are now.

Lesson learned? Nah, we’ll probably do it again, and less peacefully than a coup, this time we’ll roll in with bombs. If you read the article you’ll find out that the CIA and Mossad (Israeli CIA) were involved with the Iranian secret police that brutalized the country in between our coup and the second overthrow of the Shah in ‘79.