I wanted to discuss how years of inflammatory, often violent, rhetoric from the far Left walked us all right up to the moment in Tucson where liberal hate led to liberal violence in one horrific afternoon. I wanted to point out how the incessant drumbeat of rage from Democrat Party outlets like MSNBC and Daily Kos was laying a welding torch to the gunpowder of Leftist anger. I wanted to expound on the fact that the endless “Worst person in the world” ranting from MSNBC’s Zen master of hate Keith Olbermann, with the defamatory efforts of his “mini-me,” the appallingly angry Rachel Maddow, would ultimately drive one of their brainless acolytes to the edge of insanity.
Last week, on January 3, The Guardian published a scathing Op-Ed by James Richardson blaming WikiLeaks for endangering the life of Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the democratic opposition in Zimbabwe. Richardson -- a GOP operative, contributor to RedState.com, and a for-hire corporate spokesman -- pointed to a cable published by WikiLeaks in which American diplomats revealed that Tsvangirai, while publicly opposing American sanctions on his country, had privately urged their continuation as a means of weakening the Mugabe regime: an act likely to be deemed to be treasonous in that country, for obvious reasons
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This accusation against WikiLeaks was repeated far and wide.
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There was just one small problem with all of this: it was totally false. It wasn't WikiLeaks which chose that cable to be placed into the public domain, nor was it WikiLeaks which first published it. It was The Guardian that did that. In early December, that newspaper -- not WikiLeaks -- selected and then published the cable in question.
Zimbabwe is to investigate bringing treason charges against the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and other individuals over confidential talks with US diplomats revealed by WikiLeaks.
Jacob Appelbaum -- the WikiLeaks volunteer who was detained and interrogated for hours and had his electronic goods seized the last time he attempted to re-enter the U.S., and who was told that this would happen each time he left the country and came back -- indeed encountered similar treatment on Sunday when he returned home from Iceland. This time at the Seattle airport, he was again detained, questioned, and had his electronic goods taken -- all without a warrant -- though this time he purposely traveled without a laptop or cellphone (the only item he had with him was a memory stick onto which he embedded the Bill of Rights). Appelbaum recounted his ordeal yesterday on Twitter, and BoingBoing has collected his narration here.
In a wide-ranging interview with Russell Simmons, Fox News's Roger Ailes remarked that he'd told his employees to "shut up, tone it down" and "make your argument intellectually."
Yeah, Rog. I think that’s what we call closing the barn door after the horse has gone.
In spite of the call for moderation, Ailes also defended Fox News employee Sarah Palin and her use of gun terminology in political discourse.
Uh-huh.
And, you too, Pat.
Former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan called on Palin and others to "tone down the rhetoric."
"I’d give everybody the advice to tone down the rhetoric and to get away from the military or the armed metaphors," he told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough Monday.
[P]olitical liberties are meaningless if they're conditioned on obeisance to political power or if citizens are frightened out of exercising them in any way that matters.
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The U.S. Government plainly wants any genuine critics to feel fear, and is willing to use any means -- no matter how lawless and extreme -- to induce it.
[The attack on Falluja] was one of the most horrific events of the still-unfolding act of aggression in Iraq. Presented in the U.S. press as an old-fashioned, gung-ho, WWII-style "battle," it was in fact a mass slaughter, largely of trapped civilians; almost all of the "terrorists" and "insurgents" in the city had long escaped during the months-long, oddly public build-up to the assault. It seemed clear that the intent was not to quash an insurgent nest, as stated, but to perpetrate an act of condign, collective punishment -- primarily against civilians -- in order to terrorize the rest of Iraq into submission.
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. ...
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
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The wanton, unnecessary destruction of Fallujah is one of the central stories of our time. Yet it is almost entirely forgotten, especially among the people in whose name this vast crime was committed. But the marks of this atrocity live on in its victims. Over the holidays, while America's high and mighty were making merry, yet another detailed study was released confirming a major spike in birth defects in Fallujah following the attack.
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The new report follows on the harrowing findings reported by the BBC and The Independent (but strangely omitted from the American media) in mid-2010.
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US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
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[Falluja is a] city whose birth defect rate is 11 times the world average. A city where children are suffering from cancers "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors" -- indeed, where the increase in leukemia is far greater than among the first victims of American WMD. [...] O where are our great American progressives, who stood so tall and proud against the American war machine when it was led by an embarrassing vulgarian, but now occupy themselves with handwringing and bead-counting about the political fortunes of his bloodstained predecessor, now perpetrating his own mini-Fallujahs week after week against defenseless villagers in Pakistan?
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I have written about Fallujah over and over for a long time. In many respects, these stories are like the ones I've written about the American-abetted horrors in Somalia: no one gives a damn. Well, I don't give a damn that no gives a damn. I'm going to keep ringing this bell until my arm falls off. We -- Americans -- have committed and countenanced a great evil in Iraq. I can't change that -- and it's obvious that I cannot prevent the "continuity" of such hellish atrocities by the progressive Peace Laureate now in the White House, and by whatever similar blood-soaked poltroon comes to lead the never-ending Terror War for Loot and Power after him. But by god I will not let it be said that I stood by and failed to bear witness to this raging filth.
"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
I will not forget Artica Salim. I will not forget Fallujah. I will not "move on." I will not become part of the inferno. – Chris Floyd
I have never felt that aggressive about bearing witness - more like beating a drum knowing that I’m probably the only one hearing it, and wondering if that’s just masochistic . But from the inception of the atrocity of the attack on (laying waste to, really) Falluja, I felt a specially intense despair about the loss of any sense of morality on the part of my countrymen in particular, but also the world in general. At that point, I began keeping a blog devoted to that special Hell, and I must say I am indeed still amazed at the lack of attention paid it, even in light of the continuing reports of the condition of the people there. At the time, it was used as a source of pride and a rallying point for the pretense that our soldiers are over there protecting our freedom here. Once that was spent, we had no more use for it.
Perhaps if each American adult had to adopt, raise, and care for one child orphaned or afflicted by the war, we’d make our government stop.
Never mind the protracted violence, embedded corruption, absent infrastructure and 90% illiteracy that afflicts Afghanistan .
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According to a fantastic (my carefully chosen adjective) article in Business Week magazine, General David H. Petraeus is inviting international corporations such as, General Electric, Daimler, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Honeywell International and Boeing for more than a Pentagon-funded look-see. He's trying to sell corporate bosses on Afghanistan as a virginal investors' land of opportunity.
The Red Cross says the siege [by Israel of Gaza] has led to a steady rise in chronic malnutrition among the 1.5 million people living in the strip. According to the UN, 80 per cent of the population is dependent on foreign aid and 61 per cent is classified as "food-insecure"; it also says 90 per cent of the water supplied to residents is not suitable for drinking.
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Have things changed since the global outcry over the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla? In November, a report released by 21 different charities and human rights groups, including Oxfam, Amnesty and Save the Children, concluded that there has been "little improvement" for the people of Gaza since Israel announced it was easing the blockade in June 2010. John Ging, director of UN operations in Gaza, agreed. "There's been no material change for the people on the ground here in terms of their status, the aid dependency, the absence of any recovery or reconstruction, no economy." He added: "The easing, as it was described, has been nothing more than a political easing of the pressure on Israel and Egypt."
Wikileaks cables released by the Guardian show that US officials considered the notion of moving against the anti-whaling activists via tax policy, on behalf of the Japanese government, as part of a compromise whereby Japan would reduce its whaling. The US plan fell through when the UK opposed it in the EU.
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Although we all admire social activists such as Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., one has to remember that what they did was defined as illegal by the governments of their time. Their activism redefined the legal. I am afraid that the US National Security State, with its enormous power, wealth and technological sophistication, may be gradually making social activism harder and harder, with all the totalitarian implications of that change. Despite their aggressive tactics, the anti-whaling activists have not been even charged with doing anything illegal, so why would the USG intervene against them?
As we are constantly admonished to do by Dear Leader.
Two steps forward, one step back. Or two steps back, one step forward, depending on where you stand.
Obama's Afghanistan report shows troop withdrawal can begin in July.
A status report on the Afghanistan war will show that the U.S. can start withdrawing troops in July, and hand over security responsibility to the Afghans by 2014, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today.
The US will send an additional 1,400 Marines to Afghanistan in anticipation of intensified fighting in the spring as winter snow melts and fighters return form havens in Pakistan. The unexpected announcement came as the British defense secretary said that anticipated British troop pullouts this year were not a guarantee.
[W] ith barely seven months to go before July 31 - the date by which President Barack Obama has promised to start bringing home some of the 97,000 US troops serving in Afghanistan - the reinforcements may be interpreted by some in Washington as a ruse to keep the numbers stable, while seeming to be honouring the withdrawal timetable.
Oh, those mountebanks! Plug your ears. They probably said the same thing when Obama surged the troops by 30,000 waaaaaay back in December.
[L] et me note that Obama made very clear that he purportedly intends to extricate us from Central Asia by involving us in increasingly complex ways in the affairs of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you think that is a glaringly obvious contradiction, you're entirely correct. How exactly do you leave that region of the world more quickly by involving yourself in ever more complicated and numerous ways? The answer is that you don't.
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If you think we're leaving this part of the world any time soon, or perhaps even in your lifetime, you'll believe anything.
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In large part, the danger represented by Obama arises from the fact that Obama's election gutted whatever effective opposition might have existed. To their eternal shame, the Democrats never opposed Bush in any way that mattered -- but at least the possibility of opposition had not been obliterated entirely. In the near term and probably for longer, that possibility now appears to have been extinguished.
It's simple and FREE! Every phone you donate will help increase the amount of talk time we're able to provide to our troops!
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Donated cell phones are sold to a company that recycles them. The money we receive from recycling cell phones is used to purchase calling cards that we send to troops in need.
It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. -- John Andrew Holmes
There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. -- Molly Ivins
[War] is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket]. ... It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives ... It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. -- Major General Smedley Butler
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. -- Albert Einstein
"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." -- James Thurber
One of the fun aspects of Empire is how many ironies it creates. -- Glenn Greenwald
I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. -- Molly Ivins
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. --George Orwell
I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. –- Howard Zinn
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. --Upton Sinclair
If we're the greatest country in the world, then maybe we could have the greatest government. -- Lewis Black
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. -- Aristotle
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. -- H.L. Mencken
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
-- James Madison, 4th President of the United States
No nation builds a wall out of strength. They build it out of fear. -- Michael Flynn
They call it The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin
Texas justice is Texas justice. -- Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokeswoman
When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, “Except in wartime.” -- George McGovern
Sometimes I go about with pity for myself, and all the while Great Winds are carrying me across the sky.
~Ojibway saying
