NATO: Nanny America Turns Oily

"We had to destroy it in order to save it."

I. Introduction

How did the United States become the Nanny Empire that protects the dirty oil necessary for the destruction of the global climate system and the global ecosystem?

How did the United States become the Nanny Empire that enables, protects, and encourages the minions of Oil-Qaeda, whose business it is to pollute the natural systems that must be healthy and thriving before human civilization can be healthy and thriving?

How did dirty oil become "the lifeblood" of the U.S. economy (The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil), then become the drug used to execute current civilization (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch)?

How can a global theatrical tragedy last so long (The Peak of Sanity - 3)?

And why is Nanny America bombing stuff near Erbil, Iraq ?

All this does sound so very World-War-Two-ish after all:

Notice the following quote from a book, published in 1944, commenting on U.S. exceptional propaganda of that time, aptly describing the McTell News generated perception and concept of a "national enemy":

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.

(As We Go Marching, by John T. Flynn, 1944, page 222). Some experts expect Iraq to "accidentally" become the largest supplier of oil now, since we blundered "accidentally into their oil wells".

(Myth Addiction Is Establishment's LSD - 3). Let's go back to a time before World War I and II when NATO did not exist, and the U.S. was not one of the Nanny States of Oil-Qaeda.

II. Act One

Act One of this theatrical tragedy was the decision of The British Empire to switch from one dirty fossil fuel (coal) to another dirty fossil fuel (oil) to be used in its gunboat diplomacy engines in its Naval Fleet (Viva Egypt - 2, The Universal Smedley - 2).

What made that decision relevant to today's post's title (which includes "NATO" and "Nanny America") is that Britain had plenty of coal under its own land, but the new dirty fossil fuel, oil, was at that time not under the lands of Britain (ibid).

That dirty fossil fuel, oil, was at that time under the lands of the Middle East (ibid).

Therefore, control of the Middle East region became the new Western Foreign Policy (ibid).

III. Act Two

Act Two was World War One --a war among empires:

Before the conflict began, empires ruled the world. The British Empire was at its peak. The Ottoman Empire controlled almost all the Middle East. [The Russian Empire] was run by a czar. The modern ideas of nationalism and owning a passport as we know it today simply did not exist.

By the end of the war, Europe’s power structures had completely changed. The Ottoman Empire broke up, and the Sykes-Picot treaty redrew the Middle East [e.g. Persian Empire] with consequences we deal with today. The Bolsheviks overthrew the czar, and the Soviet Union succeeded the Russian Empire.

(WW I, emphasis added). That oil war, which broke out soon after big oil deposits were discovered in the Middle East, substantially shaped the world today (A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 2).

IV. Act Three

That oil war also led to Act Three, the rise of the U.S. oil-based Empire:

The fighting essentially annihilated European economies, paving the way for the U.S. to become an economic powerhouse. Yet the U.S. was

MOMCOM becomes OIL Nanny

seen as a political teenager. The idea of turning to the Americans to play a decisive role in a global conflict was unheard of before then.

The war effort shattered traditions of daily life. For the first time in history, women en masse left the home and went to work.

However, when women returned from the factories each day, many did not have husbands to return to.

In Britain, for example, nearly 1.2 million women ages 25 to 34 were still not married by 1921 because so many young men died in battle.

(ibid, emphasis added). Thus, Act Three was the U.S. becoming the main fighting force in the oil wars because of the relevant demise of the empires of that time.

It is also why the recent Ukraine crisis involves NATO and the United States:

When Russia seized Crimea in March, it acquired not just the Crimean landmass but also a maritime zone more than three times its size with the rights to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars.

Russia portrayed the takeover as reclamation of its rightful territory, drawing no attention to the oil and gas rush that had recently been heating up in the Black Sea. But the move also extended Russia’s maritime boundaries, quietly giving Russia dominion over vast oil and gas reserves while dealing a crippling blow to Ukraine’s hopes for energy independence.

Russia did so under an international accord that gives nations sovereignty over areas up to 230 miles from their shorelines. It had tried, unsuccessfully, to gain access to energy resources in the same territory in a pact with Ukraine less than two years earlier.

(The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 10). The NATO Nanny pushed Europe in the wrong direction on that one.

V. Act Four

This NATO vs Russia tension is leading to Act Four, which is the cracking and splitting of the interests of Europe from U.S. interests.

Much of that is a result of Russia being a player as a supplier of oil to Europe.

Gabor Steingart (the publisher of Germany’s leading financial newspaper Handelsblatt) writes:

"In view of the events in Ukraine, the government and many media have switched from level-headed to agitated. The spectrum of opinions has been narrowed to the width of a sniper scope. The politics of escalation does not have a realistic goal – and harms German interests.
...
The politics of escalation show that Europe sorely misses a realistic goal. It’s a different thing in the US. Threats and posturing are simply part of the election preparations. When Hillary Clinton compares Putin with Hitler, she does so only to appeal to the Republican vote, i.e. people who do not own a passport. For many of them, Hitler is the only foreigner they know, which is why Adolf Putin is a very welcome fictitious campaign effigy. In this respect, Clinton and Obama have a realistic goal: to appeal to the people, to win elections, to win another Democratic presidency.

Angela Merkel can hardly claim these mitigating circumstances for herself. Geography forces every German Chancellor to be a bit more serious. As neighbors of Russia, as part of the European community bound in destiny, as recipient of energy and supplier of this and that, we Germans have a clearly more vital interest in stability and communication. We cannot afford to look at Russia through the eyes of the American Tea Party.”

(The West On The Wrong Path, emphasis added). One facet of that splitting and cracking is that the Europeans were not willing to join U.S. invasions in recent times.

Germany and Britain have not wanted to get into the bombing of Syria or the new bombing Iraq being done by the dwindling "coalition of the willing."

VI. Conclusion

That is why the U.S. is bombing stuff near Erbil, Iraq on its own (Erbil Oil Conference, The Real Reason The US Is Bombing Iraq, Oil and Erbil).

And why al Maliki is acting out like Karzai had been acting out, before "the ISIS" went all rogue and mavericky to bite the hand that had been feeding it.

NOTE: in this post, the use of the word "oil" can include "natural gas" when appropriate in the context.

The point of this post is to point out a long history of reliance and/or addiction to fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as well as the consequences for so doing.

A "reliance" that can and has morphed into "addiction" and war in times past.

And still can and does, even to the point of "going nuclear" (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch - 2).

---

Long Time Gone, by Crosby Stills & Nash (lyrics here):

---

Iraq's April 30 4th Of July & Iran's Win - 2

Middle Eastern Protesters

Today I am reposting a post of five years ago to show how our foreign policy has been frozen in You Are Here machinations for decades.

It is from July 1, 2009 where the issues of Iraq and Iran were discussed.

The mess is still a mess all these years, dead bodies, dead policies, public anger and endless wars later.

It is like the movie "Ground Hog Day" where we keep waking up the the same old same old every day.

Here is the nostalgic text from that 2009 post:

---

The results of the 8 year war are now in.

Iran won.

Iraq and Iran fought an 8 year war in the 1980's during Saddam Hussein's reign, which ended as a stalemate that cost a million male lives and left a population composed of a majority of women in Iran.

The U.S. backed Saddam Hussein in that war.

When the luv affair with Hussein ended after he invaded Kuwait, and the U.S. later invaded Iraq during Bush II, things began to change.

The Shia radicals who had been expatriated to Iran and elsewhere became activated and they returned to Iraq.

Soon they embedded themselves into the Iraqi government when the Baathists were banned, during the Bremer leadership, soon after the U.S. invasion and at the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Bremer, like Bush II, knew nothing of the Shia v. Sunni dynamics and the religious struggle between them so he, like most Americans, had no idea what was going on in that regard.

Today and back then the Shia of Iraq and Iran are aligned against the Iraqi and Saudi Sunni, and the Kurds to the north care not a lot for either; hence the U.S. has sown the seeds for the future political crop which will not be and is not now pro-American.

The Iraqi April 30 celebrations about the Americans leaving can be compared to the U.S. 4th of July alignment against the British Empire and for U.S. independence from Britain long, long ago.

Nationalism held the U.S. together then, after its independence, and will hold Iraq together for awhile now, but so will closer ties to Iran mixed with a hatred of America they now share.

These types of energies too, however, will wane eventually and those ancient divisions within Iraq will sprout once again, helping the greater problems to return to the surface and blossom.

Shia, Sunni, and Kurd will march again with Shia support from Iran, and with Sunni support from other neighbouring countries.

The U.S. civil war took a long time to develop following the exuberant 4th of July, but it came, and the April 30th Iraqi exuberance will also give way to Iraqi civil war in due time.

But it will not be as bad as the U.S. civil war was.

From an oil baron perspective, all that remains to be seen is whether the oil barons can keep a hold on the Iraqi oil they greedily went for under the oil baron regime of Bush II.

---

The original post is here.

Another Spring of Whores of War

On this date in 2009 the poppies for making heroin were standing tall in Afghanistan once again.

Prior to that the Taliban had eradicated the poppy / heroin trade, which must have angered traffickers in the CIA.

AIG was trafficking in many things in Afghanistan and Iraq, including bail-out money.

An official of the Bush II administration was sent to prison for Iraq money laundering.

Republicans were messing with elections and being criminally prosecuted for it.

War was in every Pentagon official's blood then, so look over the posts at Dredd Blog on this date in 2009, then compare them to what is in every Pentagon official's blood today on the first day of spring:

“Russia has increased its [defence] budget but let me remind you that you have an ally [U.S.eh?] that has a [war] budget ten times larger than the next ten nations in the world,” said Mr Biden.

(Economist, cf. The Blaze). He ended with "may God protect our troops" (Whitehouse Press Office).

They are still singing that God on our Side thingy.

Here are those Dredd Blog posts:

---

First Day of Spring 2009

Spring means different things to different people.

The winter of poppy cultivation had come to Afghanistan shortly before 2001.

On October 7, 2001, military strikes against Afghanistan were launched by the United States and an international coalition that included Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany and France.

The poppy cultivation had been almost completely removed from Afghan culture by the time that the invasion took place.

It did not take long for Afghan poppy cultivation to spring up again. By 2002 the spring of poppy cultivation was returning strong.

By 2006 Afghanistan was leading the world in poppy cultivation once again:

U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press.

(Washington Post). An increase in heroin addiction and drug wars was the inevitable result.

---

AIG Liquidity Corporation & Family

We have been doing a series on the AIG family of corporations. The Banque, the international, and the one in the spotlight.

According to SEC filings, AIG Liquidity Corp. was created in 1992 as a Delaware corporation. It was a subsidiary to AIG.

That SEC filing says all capital stock is initially owned by AIG which was shown as a money making business ("AIG and its consolidated subsidiaries"), an average of 3.53 pct. "ratio of earnings to fixed charges" from 1998 to June 30, 2003.

A later SEC Filing in 2004 repeats those figures, and sets forth PricewaterhouseCooper as experts on that issue. Other online sources show the optimism continued through 2006.

After Greenberg was ousted from the company in 2007 and J.J. Cassano was put in the lead of the financial products division, things began to change.

Cassano, among other things, discontinued the hedging that Greenberg had kept in place. That means that a major shield of protection was removed.

Perhaps Cassano really did believe his own smoke that the shield was not needed:

"It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of [rhyme] or reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions," he told investors.

(Out on the False Front, Daily News link). But it was not too very long before reality burned through the smoke and Moody was downgrading AIG:

New York, September 15, 2008 -- Moody's Investors Service has downgraded the senior unsecured debt rating of American Internation Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) to A2 from Aa3 in light of the continuing deterioration in the US housing market and the consequent impact on the group's liquidity and capital position due to its related investment and derivitive exposures. The company's long-term and Prime-1 short-term ratings were placed on review for possible further downgrade.

(Moody's Notice, pdf). This shows the danger inherent in business propaganda. Those who practice it are eventually caught in its web and they can't get out.

---

Election Officials' Lack of Integrity

In Clay County, Kentucky, the election officials were evidently corrupted by the toxins within power.

A federal grand jury has indicted them for election crimes. A spokesman for the Kentucky state government stated:

“The allegations as detailed in the U.S. Attorney’s indictments, if found to be true, represent a great injustice to the citizens of Clay County. Our office appreciates the U.S. Attorney taking these allegations seriously and working with us to rid our state of election fraud. Our office cooperated with authorities on this matter, including referring voting irregularities from the 2006 primary elections to law enforcement officials. We hope that the judicial system will work expeditiously on this matter so that the dark cloud of suspicion hanging over these elections will not affect future elections.”

(Les Fugate, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State).

Here is a link to the indictment (PDF) which describes the parties and the charges against them.

---

AIG Iraq

From previous articles it is clear that AIG is a company that is not afraid to try new things.

Look at AIG Global Marine @ Iraq for example. Or other AIG endeavors in Iraq.

AIG has advertised that it has extensive capacity to handle many Iraq reconstruction and other financial endeavours.

It is interesting that this information is found on Iraq Coalition Org website:

AIG member companies have the capacity and expertise to handle the insurance needs of contractors and companies doing business in Iraq. There will be a variety of unique coverages needed in this effort. Listed below are some of the core coverages AIG member companies can provide. A more extensive list of products and services can be provided as individually required.

(Iraq Coalition, PDF). It must have worried AIG to know that that area of Iraqi "business endeavours" landed some Bush II officials in prison for a long time:

Bob Stein, the comptroller of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, received the longest sentence of any Bush official (as of yet) - nine years in prison for money laundering, conspiracy and bribery ... some of the money ... was cash in suitcases ...

(BBC, Wikipedia). And they must have been especially concerned to find that their bonus payments of $165 million, which drove the USA crazy, is dwarfed by Iraq reconstruction fraud that would shame even Bernie Madoff:

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.

(British Independent). Yes, to be associated with large scale business endeavors in such a fraud rich environment, especially since they have banks in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Switzerland, was surely something they avoided like the plague.

That may not be the case, however, if the investigation of AIG's charges to taxpayers for federal contractors in Iraq, including KBR of Haliburton / Cheney "fame".

---

The Freedom Is Back In FOIA

President Obama and AG Holder have made it clear that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is once again for real.

In a memorandum sent to all administrative agencies AG Holder said:

A Presumption of Openness

As President Obama instructed in his January 21 FOIA Memorandum, "The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." This presumption has two important implications.

First, an agency should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally. I strongly encourage agencies to make discretionary disclosures of information. An agency should not withhold records merely because it can demonstrate, as a technical matter, that the records fall within the scope of a FOIA exemption.

Second, whenever an agency determines that it cannot make full disclosure of a requested record, it must consider whether it can make partial disclosure. Agencies should always be mindful that the FOIA requires them to take reasonable steps to segregate and release nonexempt information. Even if some parts of a record must be withheld, other parts either may not be covered by a statutory exemption, or may be covered only in a technical sense unrelated to the actual impact of disclosure.

(DOJ Website, Holder Memo, PDF). Ladies and gentlemen, start your inquiries.

---

It is almost sickening to look back at lies and whoredom done in the name of the good people of America, especially when those sick foreign policies are still being implemented by the follow-up Obama Administration.

Searching For Lost Iraq War Memories

I Got 'R Dun Good.

The Bush II mission to start the Iraq war was accomplished about ten years ago.

As we try to remember how the Iraq war happened, we notice that a war of ten years ago is hard to write down as accurate American history.

In fact, just today, MSNBC's Morning Joe had to retract what they had said yesterday, because it was a false history of the Iraq war's beginning (it happens all the time).

They had said yesterday that Nancy Pelosi voted in favor of the Iraq war, but retracted that false statement today (cf The Stark Truth).

They had also republicanized a video, like convicted O'Keefe had done to a video about ACORN, by slicing it up to say the opposite of what Speaker Pelosi had actually said (she voted against the Iraq War Resolution).

If the people had any say in the lead up to that war, or if Pelosi had her way, we would not be trillions of dollars the worse for it, hundreds of thousands dead and wounded, millions displaced, the leaders of Oil-Qaeda with more cash in their international bank accounts, and America's reputation on the skids.

Often Dredd Blog pondered some of the whys of those days leading up to the invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq.

We succeeded in isolating some of the dynamics that were in play behind the scenes:

The book Fortress America, by William Greider, 1998, observes the U.S. military in these terms:

Until more money arrives, the defense apparatus is literally feeding on its own parts, pinching this and that, scrimping here and there, in order to keep the same Cold War force structure in place and the same lineup of new weapons moving through the pipeline of development. During the Cold War era, the military institution acquired a reflexive appetite for growth that it's now unwilling to give up. Instead, it lumbers toward a self-induced crisis of malnourishment, as when an addict's starving body eats its own liver.

(see Fortress America NY Times, 3rd World Traveler, emphasis added). The author observed the military being an addict, which is synonymous with dangerous and aberrant behavior.

Within a very short time after the book was published came 9/11 followed by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The drug of war became the salvation of the military and the weapons industry.

If the critics are correct that the Iraq war had to do with the U.S. addiction to oil, then, we can conclude that the perfect storm did happen, the shadow government took over, and it is here to stay.

(Is There A Shadow Government - 2?, 8/21/09). More recently information has been gathered to appropriately name that shadow government "The Epigovernment."

More than that, since General Wesley Clark also pointed out that a coup had taken place (the military budget doubled), we see the characteristics of an Oil-Qaeda dynamic within that shadowy epigovernment.

In the Dredd Blog series The Peak Of The Oil Wars through The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 8 as well as Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer? through Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer? - 8 we watched as Iraq became the number two oil producer in OPEC.

Finally, we postulated that Oil-Qaeda may be covering up Iraq and Libyan oil shipments to the U.S. military, as well as trying to cover up the approaching peak oil, while attributing "new oil reserves" to tar sands and shale oil (The Peak of The Oil Lies - 5).

There is abundant evidence that the Iraq and Libyan wars were about oil.

But many still ponder the question "Oil-Qaeda would not lie to us would they?"

---

Links to songs about lies here.

---

Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer? - 8

"blundering accidentally into their oil wells"

A couple of years ago we started this series with the post Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer?

Of course it was received with skepticism, because of, among other things, a subtle implied nexus between the Iraq war and the Iraq oil.

Perhaps there was also skepticism because of another, but not so subtle, Dredd Blog series The Peak of the Oil Wars, but Dredd Blog is not the first, nor is any blog today the first, to notice the historical reality of this having been going on for generations:

Notice the following quote from a book, published in 1944, commenting on U.S. exceptional propaganda of that time, aptly describing the McTell News generated perception and concept of a "national enemy":

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.

(As We Go Marching, by John T. Flynn, 1944, page 222). Some experts expect Iraq to "accidentally" become the largest supplier of oil now, since we blundered "accidentally into their oil wells".

(Myth Addiction Is Establishment's LSD - 3). Those who don't see this obvious, no-brainer reality won't see it because either they are not looking, or they have their eyes closed on purpose.

The "chickens may now be coming home to roost" as the old saying goes:

Despite sectarian bombings and political gridlock, Iraq’s crude oil production is soaring, providing a singular bright spot for the nation’s future and relief for global oil markets as the West tightens sanctions on Iranian exports.

The increased flow and vital port improvements have produced a 20 percent jump in exports this year to nearly 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, making Iraq one of the premier producers in OPEC for the first time in decades.

(NY Times). The thing that is most important to note in this sequence of events, is that the oil companies who orchestrate the oil wars have no allegiance to any one nation (see MOMCOM: The Private Parts).

The previous post in this series is here.

Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer? - 7

The Modern Oil Drilling Rig

An old adage was "follow the money" when an investigator wanted to get to the bottom of some perplexing behavior.

To add to the adage list, Dredd Blog, in several related series of posts, has added a new adage "follow the oil."

If you want to know why certain foreign policies stay in place forever, for no apparent reason, follow the oil.

In this series, from the beginning we said the reason for the Iraq war was oil.

As as we hypothetically looked forward, we predicted a time when Iraq was likely to become the number one oil producer, even though it did not hold the greatest reserves, in terms of billions of barrels in the ground.

That Dredd Blog hypothesis is building strength, because Iraq will be the number two producer in OPEC by the end of the year:

Iraq, seeking to more than double oil output by 2015, is poised to overtake Iran as OPEC’s second- largest producer by the end of the year as sanctions hobble crude production in its Persian Gulf neighbor.

Iraq is pumping at the highest rate since Saddam Hussein seized power in 1979, supported by foreign investors such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc (BP/) that are developing new fields and reworking older deposits.

(Bloomberg). Notice that the usual suspects, BP and ExxonMobil, are key culprits who pull the purse strings behind the scene.

A related series is: The Peak of The Oil Wars (see also Secret Afghanistan Underground).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Mother Of All Enemies - 2

In the first post of this series we discussed the great social damage that the U.S. military has done to Iraq.

In that post we discussed the hunger of many Iraqi people, as well as the millions of Iraqi people who have had to flee their homes, the millions of Iraqi people who have had to flee their nation, and the countless who have had to flee for their lives; to Syria and to other nations foreign to those expatriated Iraqis.

Within those Iraqis who could not flee, who have therefore lived through the holocaust of war in Iraq, there is a massive group of women, the size of a city, who have been deprived of not only the everyday life they once had, but have also been deprived of needed loved ones.

Today we focus on a New York Times piece concerning about 900,000 - 1,000,000 widows in Iraq today:

The Iraqi Ministry of Planning estimates that about ... 900,000, are widows. A separate government agency, the Ministry of Women, issued a statement in June putting the figure at one million ... Confronted with so many widows,
the Iraqi government is providing only minimal assistance, equivalent to about $80 a month to those widowed in the recent conflict.

“We expected we would get a lot of help from all sides, the Americans, the Iraqi government,” Ms. Khalaf, who lost her husband in 2007, said in an interview in her trailer. “But the fact is, nobody really cares about us.”

The rusting trailer camp, across from a car lot, represents a social challenge that is not easily remedied — not least because the gender imbalance makes it exceedingly unlikely most widows will remarry.

(NY Times). This is one of many reasons why it is a Mideastern curse to say "may the Americans bring you democracy".

The oil war with Iraq will bring much more wealth to the 1% of MOMCOM, but will bring only more misery to the 99% they lord it over.

---

According to psychologists, as Americans become adults they tend to transfer parental sentiments away from their parents toward the government MOMCOM as a replacement for further parenting.

MOMCOM sends them to places to make heroes out of them, so every 80 minutes one of MOMCOM's parented veterans commits suicide.

NeoConrad & The Boo Dogs - 2

There are some rumors floating around that a democrat on the Kick The Can Down The Road Committee is going to cave to the neoCons.

We seem to have entered the age of Pontius Pilate politicians, with each party having members who are called members of that party in name only (RINO, DINO).

Two years ago on this date Dredd Blog posted the following:

---

Senator Conrad, in his always feigned manner, was on Morning Joe today whining about deficits.

His position is phoney because the greatest cause of the deficits is the warmonger ideology in bed with the plundering of the treasury.

Senator Conrad always votes for war and war spending that cause crippling deficits and loss of financial sovereignty, but is dead set against health care reform that will help future budgets by arresting criminal cost increases.

War welfare is bankrupting the part of the country we call the middle class and the poor, while at the same time it is filling the banks of the robber barons and oil barons with unprecedented plunder.

Rid the government of these types of hypocrites.

The Daze of Yore

On this date two years ago Dredd Blog posted Investigative Word-Factory Daze. Reading it today I somehow get the impression that our culture can't shake some of our addictions:

---

A while back we had a thread about the US losing guns, roses, bombs, money, computers, and who knows what else.

Now daze we seem to be blossoming into investigations.

Investigations about losing money, sense of justice, sense of who we are, and on and on. There are gonna be a lot of books and reports. Lotsa southern comfort.

That is what investigations are designed to do. Deceive the public into thinking the government will handle it.

The government hasn't yet received the memo that since Katrina in the post Bush II world the investigative word game factory is less popular than the chastity belt.

The public knows we have lost our virginity already. Knows we have been screwed badly for years.

The public would like to see some real results, like crooks and liars in jail. Enough of this "where does it hurt" BS.

These investigative word factories are just polluting the air waves with toxic pablum we don't need or want.

---

---

A year ago we celebrated a first for the United States, which was a race through the Garbage Gyre to claim the trophy:

---

Not since 1995 has the venerable America's Cup been won by the United States.

That changed Sunday when a software mogul who runs Oracle did the deed and won the cup for the U.S.A.

We are also winning, so far, the most medals in the winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Awesome!

A side story, unfortunately, is that our America's Cup competitors had to sail through one of The Five Garbage Gyres, those floating continents of garbage now contaminating the oceans of the earth.

We had reported on the first and second gyres, but now we find that there are five of these garbage continents floating out there.

Add to that the Italian Mafia's dumping of large quantities of nuclear poison into the oceans, and it seems like we sail over the oceans as we bring them down.

Are we dangerously fooling around while our Home World dies?

---

Somehow this two-year review reminds me of back to the future.

The currently off course political discourse and practice is contrary to the nation's historical character, indicating a rut, an addiction, a daze which continually spirals downward in ever narrowing circles.

It is the picture of a category five tornado of decline if you will:

Aiming to cut the annual deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, President Barack Obama chose to slash across the board. But the most glaring cuts were not to a bloated defense budget, or to entitlement programs that both parties say are in need of reform. Rather, they were to programs and policies that are at the heart of Obama's personal story.

A former community organizer in Chicago, Obama proposed a 50-percent cut to a $700-million community-service block grant program. A former lawyer who touted his work to improve living conditions for the poor, Obama proposed a sharp cut in energy assistance for low-income families. A graduate-school alumnus who only recently, and quite publicly, was able to pay off his debts, Obama proposed refiguring loan programs so that students would accrue interest even while they're enrolled.

(Against No Odds, emphasis added). The hubris is breathtaking, if not mystical, giving us the glaring image of a flip flop on steroids, induced no doubt by the growing influence of the toxins of power.

It was not too far back when we diagnosed this pathology.

The Circle W Cowboys - 2

In the first episode of this series "The Circle W Cowboys" we expanded upon the theme set forth in "A 'W' On Every Compass Point" to show how a myopic meme complex is born and raised.

The basic idea is that "business as usual" (BAU) status quo ideology permeates the BAU meme complex in Washington D.C.

When a president elect, senator elect, or newly elected House member gets to Washington D.C., following a November election, they are given the compass of the BAU meme complex and told "this is how we do it here".

They actually attend classes and lectures put on by the "leaders", who are actually followers of BAU, to learn how to do MOMCOM politics as usual.

The administration and congress is dutifully following the memes bouncing around the complex, which were also dutifully followed by the previous administration:

1) deficit military spending continues into the stratosphere, 2) big oil is worshipped, 3) the elite wealthy want more tax cuts, 4) the perverted state secrets doctrine rages out against WikiLeaks journalism, 5) the propaganda machine is rebuilt nastier than before, 6) they are increasing and perpetuating the extinction of accountability, and 7) thus the nation continues down the demented side of the slope on the sanity bell-curve.

Today on Morning Joe (MSNBC), Mr. Scarborough mentioned that it is wrong to prosecute those who are exposing government wrongs, who have not taken any oath not to expose such wrongs (in contrast, government folks take an oath not to do wrongs while in office).

Consistent with that, yesterday Mr. Scarborough also disagreed with Rep. King (R-Bullshitistan) that WikiLeaks should be named as a terrorist organization just because the WiggyLeaks journalism is showing the ugly mega-warts on this and several previous administration's derrières.

I certainly agree with Mr. Scarborough because this is nothing more than The Pentagon Papers 2.0, the enhanced version.

The administration in the persona of Secretary Clinton, said one of her counterparts intimated "you should hear what we say about you", as if two dorky ambassadorial failures add up to good ambassador relations.

Do they envision the diplomatic corps of our State Department as the organ for destroying the notion of a kinder, gentler nation, a nation that gets along with its neighbours far and wide, a nation that drags the relationships between nations down into the sewer?

And Attorney General Holder, in true Department of Just Us fashion, gets all veklempt over a binary download, but lets the plunder barons, robber barons, torture freaks, and war criminals give themselves the greatest corporate pay checks and bonuses ever ... from the Treasury even, as the unemployed lose their benefits?

Egads, the BAU meme complex up there in Washington Town has gone all Lady GaGa on Steroids doncha know, with glow in the dark, neon flashing, mickey mouse W compasses aplenty.

Withdrawal of The Meaning Of Combat

One of the classic techniques of MOMCOM propaganda is to change the meaning of words, thereby changing the entire discussion of a subject without doing anything substantial.

The exercise then becomes Shakespearean, a play on words, a play on subject matter, and a play about deceiving the public about what is really happening.

That is where we are concerning the Iraq war, where we have always been, and the mercenary place we are now going to.

The Iraq war was initiated under false pretence after false pretence, the plot changing, thickening and morphing like a jar head politician caught with a hand or two in the cookie jar.

The oil barons of MOMCOM who run the White House and Congress, when it comes to the subject of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, are in word change mode.

They are redefining the term "combat troop" by changing the meaning of "combat".

Under the old dictionary, a "combat troop" was one who initiated incursions into Iraqi cities or neighbourhoods without provocation.

Those "combat troops" are leaving Iraq we are told, to be replaced with troops who have the same gear, same weapons, same mission, but who are not "combat troops".

The reason they are not "combat troops" is that they will not initiate incursions into Iraqi cities or neighbourhoods without provocation, meaning, they will return an attack only when they are fired upon or otherwise attacked.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Dredd Blog has pointed out that those who watch the world oil markets carefully are expecting Iraq to be the number one oil producer in the world in a relatively short time.

The billion dollar "embassy" constructed with money taken from Americans against their will (homes, health care, jobs), is MOMCOM headquarters (but not 'military' budget) for manipulating and managing the Iraqi oil in order to save desperado addict economies from withdrawal pains.

Oh MOMCOM, you are so Shakespearean as you lead civilization into the final death spiral by poisoning the world with your imperialistic delusions and your junkie oil.

The Circle W Cowboys

The compass being used by the Obama Administration, the Congress, and the Judiciary is the W compass.

It has a W at every point.

Things continue in the general W direction, which is to say, we are going in a circle, spiralling out of control downward into demise.

You know the old story about doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result each time the same thing is done.

This blog warned the new Obama - Biden administration not to deceive itself about why they won the 2008 election over McCain - Palin:

The people rejected something.

That subject is all important to understanding what went down, so in the article we answered the question by saying that it was the Bush II status quo mentality and politics that was rejected.

The Bush II regime's despotic ideology does not sit well with Americans, and in fact it does not sit well with humane people across the globe. Not surprisingly then, it was soundly rejected.

(What Was Rejected). In that post I went on to say that I expected a 20% drop in popularity if the W compass was not rejected.

Polls now show that the Obama Administration is loosing favor around the world and at home:

The bad news for Obama doesn't end abroad ... In fact, solid majorities of Americans now disapprove of the way the president is handling almost every major challenge confronting his administration--a complete reversal from only four months ago, when he enjoyed broad public support on the issues ... the public's attitude toward the federal government is as negative today as it was during George W. Bush's second term. Only one in five Americans claims to be "basically content" with Washington, while three of every four describe themselves as either frustrated (52 percent) or angry (24 percent). Anger in particular has reached its highest level since NEWSWEEK first asked the question in 1997 ...

(Newsweek). A solid majority also thinks the nation is headed in the wrong direction, with 26% saying we are headed in the right direction.

Obama Administration officials are beginning to parrot the W cowboys who always took macho glee in "not governing based on polls", which is their way of saying "who gives a damn what the public thinks now that we are in office".

Bring The Economy Home - 2

A recent post, Bring The Economy Home, discussed the abysmal lack of loyalty the Afghanistan government had toward the U.S.

Hey, if the top general there made contemptuous comments about the civilian government in the U.S., why can't Afghan government officials?

Now that the top U.S. general there has been removed of his command, and another put in his place (who agreed to the President's plan to begin to draw down in a year) lets look at the economics.

The cost of 1 U.S. soldier for 1 year in Afghanistan is $1,000,000 according to an article in The Hill.

There are now about 100,000 soon to be 130,000 troops there, so that equates to 2,000,000 jobs paying $50,000 a year here at home (100,000 x $1,000,000 / $50,000).

There are more contractors there who cost more than a soldier, twice as much or so, but lets be conservative and show that those figures convert into 4,000,000 jobs paying $50,000 a year here at home (100,000 x $2,000,000 / $50,000).

Combined that equates to 6,000,000 jobs.

These are only very rough estimates and don't add up to the other figures the government gives us, so they are offered only as an example of errant spending, not exact economics.

Throw in Iraq and 1,000 military bases around the world, and it should become obvious that we should BRING THE ECONOMY HOME.

UPDATE: Read the continuation of this post here, where it is shown that billions of dollars of cash is being flown from Afghanistan to Dubai where corrupt Afghan officials are purchasing real estate with that stolen U.S. taxpayer money.

Oilah Akbar! Oilah Akbar! - 2

The AP is reporting that Iran seized Oil Well # 4 which the Iraqis claim as theirs.

It is a border dispute in theory, but the reality is that it is an addiction dispute.

Drug dealers are very territorial and drug users are very dangerous.

Oil addiction and Copenhagen are linked in the sense that oil addiction is the disaster that is causing the impending climate disaster governments of the world seem too weak to prevent.

Oilah Akbar is the real religion behind all this madness.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Iraq War, Like GITMO, Is Not Over

Remember that war to rid the world of WMD, to rid the world of Al Queda Sadaam, and to bring the purple finger of democracy to those thirsting for its refreshing essences?

The one that only took 90 days and was paid for by Iraqi oil?

The one where the large "Mission Accomplished" banner waived in the breezes of propaganda some 30 days after the invasion?

Guess what, I like the way this man puts it:

As Obama considers adding yet more troops to the near-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq cannot muster sufficient political consensus to organize the elections critical to the departure of 120,000 US troops. The Beltway consensus that Iraq has already been a victory was always more about the Beltway than Iraq, and more about sustaining neo-imperial morale rather than confronting reality. The Beltway doesn't do reality very well. They prefer Palin and "bending the cost curve" and "exit-ramps" and "optics".

(The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan). It still doesn't work to invade sovereign nations, kill hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, run a million out of their own homes to another strange land.

Even if you then color their fingers purple and say "Isn't that better now?"

It still does not work and it never did nor ever will work. It is a crazed fantasy.

The saying in the mideast now, which is a curse, is "may Bush II of America bring democracy to your country".

It is the equivalent to saying "may the south end of a north bound camel breathe upon you my son".

The surge of the failure of the MSM to cover the ongoing Iraq war and its crippling costs to the U.S. economy does not change the picture.

How Much Will Democrats Pay For War?

Obama did not start it

I mean in the upcoming elections, since they have shown, up until this point, that they will pay any amount for war, but very little for domestic needs.

The people have polled against the wars for years now, to no avail. The people overwhelmingly voted the neoCon republican hawks out, to give the democrats a chance to do what the people want.

Nevertheless, the wars continue, now having lasted longer than WW I and WW II combined.

The spotlight is now turning to the democrats and independents to see what they will do.

Will the democrats and independents have the backbone or will to punish the president and the congress if they thumb their noses at them in an escalation of the Afghanistan war, let the time slip on Iraq and GITMO so the both continue, and continue other Bush II policies the people rejected in the election?

We will find out in less than one year. I already know what I will do. But since the government is powerless to do the proper thing since it became infected with the toxins of power, giving rise to the plunder barons, neither your vote nor mine means anything for real any more.

Play It Again Sam

When you see damaging cycles repeating themselves every so often in a society, you can say you "see a pattern" in that society.

In individuals we would call such patterns indications of habit, which in some cases is indication of addiction.

I see a pattern in the sections of our government, which effect certain sections of our election cycles, that seem to be patterns of habitual, addictive behaviour.

In the post Keeping Up With The Jones Addiction, we looked at how the addiction to oil permeates into the prescription drug industry, which is a portion of the health care industry.

It was shown that the oil addiction is an addiction, then, which effects everyone.

A pattern I see developing now is one that begins when we attain a stable and prosperous economy. The people seem to become complacent during that time because they are not worrying about losing homes, jobs, health care, college funds, retirement funds, or similar disasters. Things are ok.

Then republicans use false information about economic and other conditions to win an election. Then the republicans screw things up very badly, so they lose power by being voted out of office.

Democrats just voted in then try to fix the damage while the republicans try to keep them from fixing it, even declaring that they want the president to fail.

The damage being repaired is so bad that it can't be fixed completely or fast enough, so democrats are lucky just to prevent a great, nation killing disaster.

The republicans carp and whine about democrats not fixing the national disaster fast enough, even though it was republicans who brought it upon us.

If the democrats do not patch up sufficiently, if enough people are deceived by the republicans, then the republicans can win in the upcoming election cycle, giving them another opportunity to do even further and deeper damage to the nation.

In a recent post Government A La Carte, we discussed the problem of having choices in an election that do not provide a method of solving the problems the people want fixed.

Ending the expensive, stupid wars is not on the table, not on the news, and not on the a la carte election menu.

The fact that we could build 20 Afghanistan schools for the cost of one soldier there for one year, or what we could do with that money in terms of homes, jobs, or health care at home, is considered irrelevant.

The elected government officials see themselves as The Department of Just Us, leaving the suffering populace out of the equation.

It would seem that more choices, in the form of other political parties with ideas that make more sense, would be one way out of the current debilitating systemic addiction.

NeoConrad & The Boo Dogs

Senator Conrad, in his always feigned manner, was on Morning Joe today whining about deficits.

His position is phoney because the greatest cause of the deficits is the warmonger ideology in bed with the plundering of the treasury.

Senator Conrad always votes for war and war spending that cause crippling deficits and loss of financial sovereignty, but is dead set against health care reform that will help future budgets by arresting criminal cost increases.

War welfare is bankrupting the part of the country we call the middle class and the poor, while at the same time it is filling the banks of the robber barons and oil barons with unprecedented plunder.

Rid the government of these types of hypocrites.

The Stark Truth

There were Senators like Byrd, and House of Representative members like Pete Stark, in the year 2002, who had vision.

But vision was discounted as a kooky thing, and those that had vision were discounted by the dementia congress was suffering from then, and still is.

Where there is no vision the people perish, and the leaders supplant vision with "excuses" and whining.

The Honorable Pete Stark said this about the "AUMF Resolution" before the Iraq disaster happened:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution.

I am deeply troubled that lives may be lost without a meaningful attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with UN resolutions through careful and cautious diplomacy.

The bottom line is I don’t trust this President and his advisors.

Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to the President who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history.

It sets a precedent for our nation - or any nation - to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus.

Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a President who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence.

You know, three years ago in December, Molly Ivins, an observer of Texas politics, wrote: "For an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard. At a guess, to make up for being an upper-class white boy."

"Somebody," she said, "should be worrying about how all this could affect his handling of future encounters with some Saddam Hussein." How prophetic, Ms. Ivins.

Let us not forget that our President - our Commander in Chief – has no experience with, or knowledge of, war. In fact, he admits that he was at best ambivalent about the Vietnam War. He skirted his own military service and then failed to serve out his time in the National Guard. And, he reported years later that at the height of that conflict in 1968 he didn’t notice "any heavy stuff going on."

So we have a President who thinks foreign territory is the opponent’s dugout and Kashmir is a sweater.

What is most unconscionable is that there is not a shred of evidence to justify the certain loss of life. Do the generalized threats and half-truths of this Administration give any one of us in Congress the confidence to tell a mother or father or family that the loss of their child or loved one was in the name of a just cause?

Is the President’s need for revenge for the threat once posed to his father enough to justify the death of any American?

I submit the answer to these questions is no.

Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination.

The Administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion!

Now, wealthy individuals won’t pay. They’ve got big tax cuts already.

Corporations won’t pay. They’ll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans.

Rich kids won’t pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W.

Well then, who will pay?

School kids will pay. There’ll be no money to keep them from being left behind - way behind.

Seniors will pay. They’ll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war.

Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won’t be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war.

Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights.

Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality.

And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women’s rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.

The questions before the members of this House and to all Americans are immense, but there are clear answers. America is not currently confronted by a genuine, proven, imminent threat from Iraq. The call for war is wrong.

And what greatly saddens me at this point in our history is my fear that this entire spectacle has not been planned for the well being of the world, but for the short-term political interest of our President.

Now, I am also greatly disturbed that many Democratic leaders have also put political calculation ahead of the President’s accountability to truth and reason by supporting this resolution.

But, I conclude that the only answer is to vote no on the resolution before us.

(Representative Pete Stark, October 2002, quoted on Daily Kos [they "lost" it so read it here]). Senator Byrd had said the same thing.