"The press is the enemy of the people" in North Korea, China, Russia, The Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and other right-wing authoritarian countries (How To Identify The Despotic Minority, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).
The authoritarian right wing president of the USA has the same Orwellian, wrong headed opinion.
He speaks evil of fellow Americans in concert with mass murdering North Korean "ideological lover Kimmy."
His current corrupt leader of the Department of Just Us (DOJ) has evidently cleared the way for Robert Swan Mueller III (RSM III) to speak briefly at the newly evolved Department of Hoaxes (DOH), but to take no questions afterwards, thus, today among other things we will see how much Tweeter has perverted, or not, RSM III.
In other words, we may see whether or not the two years of public criticism, obstruction, and character assassination of the Special Counsel has taken down yet another official.
We already know that it has taken down many American minds who now support Professor Cruel of Trump University (High Percent of GOP Support Trump).
Independence from official conspiracies with foreign governments designed to take away the rights of the citizens (Dept. of Justice Conspiracy - 3) ?
II. Senate Report Answers
The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is currently composed of Senators: Richard Burr, (R-NC) Chairman; Mark Warner (D-VA) Vice Chairman; James Risch (R-ID), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Susan Collins (R-ME), Roy Blunt (R-MO), James Lankford (R-OK), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Cornyn (R-TX), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Angus King (D-ME), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Kamala Harris (D-CA).
The day before "Independence Day" they released a report that was in factual opposition to the House Committee whose chairman forgot how to recuse himself:
"WASHINGTON – Today, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) released the Committee’s unclassified summary of its initial findings on the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian activities in the 2016 U.S. elections. The Committee finds that the overall judgments issued in the ICA were well-supported and the tradecraft was strong. The course of the Committee’s investigation has shown that the Russian cyber operations were more extensive than the hack of the Democratic National Committee and continued well through the 2016 election.
Vice Chair Warner
'The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions,” said Chairman Burr. “The Committee continues its investigation and I am hopeful that this installment of the Committee’s work will soon be followed by additional summaries providing the American people with clarity around Russia’s activities regarding U.S. elections.'
'Our investigation thoroughly reviewed all aspects of the January 2017 ICA, which assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to target our presidential election and to destabilize our democratic institutions,” said Vice Chairman Warner. “As numerous intelligence and national security officials in the Trump administration have since unanimously re-affirmed, the ICA findings were accurate and on point. The Russian effort was extensive and sophisticated, and its goals were to undermine public faith in the democratic process, to hurt Secretary Clinton and to help Donald Trump. While our investigation remains ongoing, we have to learn from 2016 and do more to protect ourselves from attacks in 2018 and beyond.'
The summary is the second unclassified installment in the Committee’s report on Russian election activities."
(Press Release, emphasis added). That comes down to independence from traitorous activity designed to thwart the will of the people expressed by their votes (July 3 2018 Senate Report, PDF).
That can be analyzed from several perspectives within several academic disciplines.
Today, I want to revisit this phenomenon from the perspective of how it hovers always just below the covers in the United States (and nations like the United States).
It is the psychological or social perspective of groups that I am getting at.
According to expert observers, it is a surprisingly common understanding that liberals and conservatives alike are aware of and generally have agreement about:
The photo to the left is a photo of a family in the NAZI governed Germany of long ago.
Have you ever noticed how many "family" words are associated with the concept of "nation" in literature, politics, and government?
A quick check of a few relevant metaphors (forefathers, father of the constitution, Uncle Sam, motherland, fatherland, homeland, father of the nation, founding fathers, mother of the nation, family of nations, etc.) makes me want to look at perhaps the key source-metaphor for this notion:
... a common metaphor, shared by conservatives and liberals alike -- the Nation-as-Family metaphor, in which the nation is seen as a family, the government as a parent and the citizens as children ...
It’s no accident that our political beliefs are structured by our idealizations of the family. Our earliest experience with being governed is in our families. Our parents “govern” us: They protect us, tell us what we can and cannot do, make sure we have enough money and supplies, educate us, and have us do our part in running the house.
So it is not at all surprising that many nations are metaphorically seen in terms of families: Mother Russia, Mother India, the Fatherland. In America, we have founding fathers, Daughters of the American Revolution, Uncle Sam, and we send our collective sons and daughters to war. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the voice of the totalitarian state was called Big Brother.
As George Lakoff discussed at length in his 1996 book, Moral Politics, this metaphorical understanding of the nation-as-family directly informs our political worldview. Directly, but not consciously. As with other aspects of framing, the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness.
(The Nation As Family, PDF). It is important to remember the part of the concept indicating that "the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness", because in this post today we are going to try to take a look at part of that iceberg we can see, which is not only conscious, but is also attached to the bulk that is not conscious.
"The answer came from a realization that we tend to understand the nation metaphorically in family terms: We have founding fathers. We send our sons and daughters to war. We have homeland security. The conservative and progressive worldviews dividing our country can most readily be understood in terms of moral worldviews that are encapsulated in two very different common forms of family life: The Nurturant Parent family (progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative). What do social issues and the politics have to do with the family? We are first governed in our families, and so we grow up understanding governing institutions in terms of the governing systems of families. In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves."
(Understanding Trump, by Dr. Lakoff, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, emphasis added).
When events are seen in ways that indicate "things are going bad," the reactionary members of the populace who hold this strict father world view become sycophants and/or authoritarian followers (Beware of the Sycophant Epidemic, 2).
History tells us that it solves nothing and in fact brings the house down on our heads:
For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica pointed out the ingredients of the DNA of that history, which incidentally, also applies to our current culture's genetic code:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces."
(Previous Post). What remains to be seen is whether the strong man disease will infect enough despots to become "the new normal" (Follow The Immunity - 4).
In the previous post we talked about how the old congress attacked pensions of workers and retired people in a serious way (& Mr. Preznit "compromised").
The new congress (led by the right-wing) on its first day in office, opened up an attack on the Social Security System, which is insurance purchased by Americans with funds withheld from their pay-checks.
Not only that, this attack is mounted against disabled Americans, those who are the most vulnerable:
As one of its first orders of business upon convening Tuesday, the Republican House of Representatives approved a rule that will seriously undermine efforts to keep all of Social Security solvent.
The rule hampers an otherwise routine reallocation of Social Security payroll tax income from the old-age program to the disability program. Such a reallocation, in either direction, has taken place 11 times since 1968, according to Kathy Ruffing of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But it's especially urgent now, because the disability program's trust fund is expected to run dry as early as next year. At that point, disability benefits for 11 million beneficiaries would have to be cut 20%. Reallocating the income, however, would keep both the old-age and disability programs solvent until at least 2033, giving Congress plenty of time to assess the programs' needs and work out a long-term fix.
The procedural rule enacted by the House Republican caucus prohibits the reallocation unless it's accompanied by "benefit cuts or tax increases that improve the solvency of the combined trust funds," as paraphrased by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
In practical terms, the advocacy committee says, that makes the reallocation impossible; it mandates either benefit cuts across the board, which aren't politically palatable, or a payroll tax increase, which isn't palatable to the GOP.
(On Day One, emphasis added). The congressional cowards who did this are also bullies who learned their wickedness from their spiritual mentors who are bereft of the traditional American conscience.
The next thing they want to do is cut taxes for the 1%, the extremely wealthy plutocrats:
"Republicans today are extending their embrace of voodoo economics by wrapping their arms around voodoo scorekeeping. They are changing House rules to be able to cook the books to implement their long-held, discredited notion that tax cuts pay for themselves. I think that former Reagan and George H. W. Bush administration official Bruce Bartlett said it best: 'It is not about honest revenue-estimating; it's about using smoke and mirrors to institutionalize Republican ideology into the budget process.' That's what this is all about." -(NPR) Call it the Brownback effect.
Republicans once idolized Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback as a tax cutting superstar — now he’s a lesson in what not to do.
“It’s a cautionary tale on a national scale … Many of us felt that [Kansas] had been too aggressive,” said Indiana Senate Majority Leader and tax committee chairman Brandt Hershman, who helped GOP Gov. Mike Pence cut corporate taxes last spring. “We all like low taxes … but we have to ensure the stability of a revenue stream to provide basic services that our citizens expect.” -(GOP Doesn't Learn From Sam Brownback's Tax Debacle)
They also want to pass the Oil-Qaeda inspired Keystone XL pipeline bill:
One of the first pieces of legislation on the calendar for the new Congress would give a green light to the Keystone XL oil pipeline. It's been held up by court challenges and a regulatory review for more than six years. Backers hope to change that through legislation, but the White House is threatening a veto ...
In today's post Dredd Blog is warning Americans that plunder is still happening to them (see the video at the bottom of the post for more info).
Basically, pensions of retired people can now be cut by as much as 60% under new laws passed in the "new budget."
If pension overlords think that the pension funds are encumbered (by their bad investments on Wall Street), then they change your life:
The legislation permits deep pension cuts to retirees in certain financially-troubled multiemployer plans. Financially-troubled plans are plans expected to not have enough money to pay 100% of benefits within 15 and, in some cases, 20 years. There are instances where the cuts could be more than 60% of a participant’s benefits. To find out how much your benefits could be cut use this calculator.
The decision to cut benefits is made by plan trustees, who are typically more aligned with active workers and employers than with retirees.
Retirees who are age 80 or over, or who are receiving a disability pension, are not subject to benefit cuts. Retirees ages 75-79 are subject to smaller cuts than retirees under age 75.
How big or small the cuts are for those under age 75 is determined by the trustees. The cuts are subject to certain legal limits, the most important of which is that benefits cannot be cut below 110% of the amounts that the federal pension insurance agency guarantees.
Plan trustees decide how to allocate the cuts. For example, they can cut retirees’ benefits more than those of active workers, and they can decide whether and how much to reduce survivors’ benefits.
Plan trustees are required to reduce the benefits of participants whose employers went out of business (or withdrew from the plan for other reasons without paying all of their obligations) first, before they reduce the benefits of any other plan participants. This will mean that those retirees whose companies went bankrupt will have greater reductions than other retirees.
UPS retirees in the Central States Teamsters plan are given special protection: their benefits are last in line to be cut. This provision is reportedly the result of a last-minute deal that will save UPS an estimated $2 billion that it would otherwise have been contractually be required to pay to its retirees.
There is no provision for automatic restoration of lost benefits if a plan’s funding status improves.
A trustees’ decision to cut benefits can only be reversed by the Department of Treasury, and then only if the Treasury concludes that the decision is based on a determination that is “clearly erroneous.”
Before cutting benefits, the trustees must provide information to all plan members about the cuts, and plans with 10,000 or more participants must appoint a retired plan participant to represent the interests of pensioners. The trustees appoint this representative and can even appoint a trustee or former trustee of the plan.
Plan trustees must allow all participants to vote on cuts before they are
Pirate Blackbeard
implemented. However, this right is largely illusory. First, a majority of all workers and retirees in a plan – not just a majority of the ones who vote – is required to block cuts. Thus, a vote to block cuts fails even if 100% of those voting oppose the cuts, if only 49% of participants actually vote. Moreover, ballots can be distributed by e-mail, which means that retirees who don’t use the Internet might not vote.
Even if all participants vote against cuts, the Treasury Department, in consultation with the Department of Labor and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC, the federal pension insurance program) can override the vote and uphold the trustees’ decision to make cuts if it concludes that the plan’s insolvency would increase the PBGC’s projected liabilities by $1 billion or more.
The insurance premiums that multiemployer plans pay to the PBGC are increased from $13 to $26 per participant per year. In contrast, premiums paid to the single-employer plan program are between $57 and $475 per participant per year.
Retirees, widows, and widowers whose benefits are reduced cannot bring a lawsuit under the federal private pension law, ERISA, to challenge the legality of the reductions.
(Pension Rights Center, emphasis added). If you "[r]etirees, widows, and widowers" don't like the pain you feel when your pension is cut, you can't sue for redress (You Are Here).
And if you get mavericky and begin to do the marching in the streets thingy, first think about what they spent your plundered pension money on, and be careful (Will The Military Become The Police? - 10).
All we citizen journalists can do is inform you, as Dredd Blog has done for free for years (you are welcome).
You have even been warned that psychopaths are running the show, and that they are dangerous to your freedom:
... the U.S. is becoming a Plutonomy – an economy dependent on the spending and investing of the wealthy. And Plutonomies are far less stable than economies built on more evenly distributed income and mass consumption. ...
A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.
The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.
One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a clinical psychopath, the CFA Institute (an investment and financial analysis organization) reports in the latest issue of CFA Magazine. That makes psychopathy 10 times more prevalent among New York’s financial elite than among us plebeians, for which the accepted statistic is a more palatable one in 100. [Update]
In October of 2009 I complained about the hard headed, hard hearted, and hard core right wing politician Netanyahu of Israel (The Supreme Being Netanyahu).
The self-destructive relationship that the U.S. has had with Israel through Netanyahu has been detrimental to peace in the region as well as peace in the world.
In fact, "peace" has become, in this unhealthy relationship, a meaningless word over there and now over here.
About the only government agency that still unconditionally "loves" Netanyahu at all costs is the military NSA ... probably because they use the Mossad of Israel on the intake side of the military NSA's insatiable demented hunger to destroy the privacy of Americans and everyone else by incessantly spying on us all.
So, the souring of the relationship with Netanyahu is an opening for pressure on the Israeli government to listen to the moderates in its populace and in its government:
The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.
This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.
The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.
(The Atlantic, Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations). In past posts on Dredd Blog it has been pointing out that the relationship is not a good one:
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. It has nearly 190 Parties, giving it the largest membership of any arms control treaty in the world. The Treaty comprises legally binding nonproliferation commitments and is the basis for international cooperation on stemming the spread of nuclear weapons. It is widely regarded as the legal and political cornerstone of the nuclear nonproliferation regime and as containing three main concepts or “pillars” – nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. In Prague on April 5, 2009 President Obama said that the basic bargain at the core of the Treaty is sound: “countries with nuclear weapons will move towards disarmament; countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them; and all countries can access peaceful nuclear energy.” The President also called on NPT parties to take steps to strengthen this vital nonproliferation instrument. ... High-level talks between Israel and its Muslim neighbors regarding
a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East have been
canceled by the US and Israel.
A nuclear weapons-free zone has been repeatedly proposed, only to have
Israel – the only state in the region with nuclear weapons – reject
it in favor of maintaining this nuclear monopoly, further
destabilizing the region, and keeping the threat of others’ nukes as a
primary excuse for its militarism.
Diplomats tell the Associated Press that the US, one of the organizers
of the meeting on this latest NWFZ proposal, would likely make a
formal announcement of its cancellation soon, claiming that “the time
was not opportune.”
While Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
has publicly pledged its opposition to nuclear weapons development,
has subjected itself to thorough international inspections, and in
fact has exactly zero nuclear weapons, Israel has done none of the
above and has approximately 200 nuclear warheads. Iran is
being severely punished and threatened with attack, Israel is
supported with unparalleled economic, military, and diplomatic
support.
And if only President Obama could see through the Stalinists that are advising him ... wrongfully.
Well, except for the members whom he appointed on the Privacy and Civil Rights Oversight Board who have ever so recently informed him that the military NSA is batshit crazy, and so is he for supporting their over-the-top, traitorous, unAmerican, and totally Orwellian madness on steroids.
The RNC overwhelmingly voted against these vile military NSA practices:
At it’s annual winter meeting on Friday, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution calling for an investigation into the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance practices. Calling the practice a violation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, the RNC passed the resolution by an “overwhelming majority.”
According to a report from TIME Magazine’s Zeke Miller, the “Resolution to Renounce the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Program” easily passed by just a voice vote.
The resolution “encourages Republican lawmakers to call for a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying.”
It further declares that “the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Regular readers know that Dredd Blog reviews history every once in awhile so we can repeat it.
What?
Yes, if we don't repeat history once in awhile everyone will forget it and it will not be remembered, so we will just repeat it again as if that madness had not happened way back, way, way back, way, way, way back, and also not so far back in the chapters of US history we deny ever existed (Blind Willie McTell News).
Right?
So let's go over this history again so we don't repeat it too many times.
Here is the post from Dredd Blog on this date in the year 2009:
The White House was built by slave labour. But now a daughter, yes a descendant of one of those slaves lives in the White House. Amazing!
Did you know that slaves helped build the White House and the U.S. Capitol? Or that right in front of where Barack Obama is going to take his oath of office used to be a tent city for slaves and workers?
It is enough to inspire Americans to hold out hope over fear.
But, also don't forget the Dredd Blog post about a larger than life percentage of U.S. presidents owning slaves (The Germ Theory - of Government - 7). Everybody's Gotta Live, by Arthur Lee
The toxins in power have lately been brought to the surface in the McTell News, what with all the whistleblowing going on.
The propaganda is mixed together with temper tantrums then thrown all over the "air waves."
One is in the form of a criminal prosecution of Bradley Manning, another is the president not going over to play white house with Putin.
Meanwhile, the portraits of the presidents of earlier times hang on the walls of today's movie set we call the White House.
But the words of those august statesmen who became president are out in the White House garbage cans --along with the left-over caviar and other gifts presented by the epigovernment to the Cypher patrol there festering in the Matrix (The Matriarch of the Matrix - 3).
Anyway, concerning the historical issue of the traditional view of whistleblowers by the early Americans:
On July 30, 1778, the Continental Congress created the first whistleblower protection law, stating “that it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed
"Sweet Meat beats whistleblowing" - Cypher
by any officers or persons in the service of these states.”
Two hundred thirty-five years later, on July 30, 2013, Bradley Manning was found guilty on 20 of the 22 charges for which he was prosecuted, specifically for “espionage” and for videos of war atrocities he released, but not for “aiding the enemy."
(Manning Trial Began 9/11, emphasis added). Wouldn't you say, then, that our recent outlook is a tad bit short of "learning lessons from history?"
Our unseen epigovernment, the unseen 1%, who think they know better than the rest of us --typically reject the wisdom of the ages:
THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure.
Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact
that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty [now 320] million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
...
It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.
(Epigovernment: The New Model, quoting Bernays). The problem is that they do not realize that they are psychopaths, because psychopaths are incapable of that kind of self-reflection:
One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a clinical psychopath, the CFA Institute (an investment and financial analysis organization) reports in the latest issue of CFA Magazine. That makes psychopathy 10 times more prevalent among New York’s financial elite than among us plebeians, for which the accepted statistic is a more palatable one in 100.
(When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 4). And the military, which "makes contact" with the rest of the world in our name, has ruined America's reputation around the world, and is composed of more psychopaths than Wall Street is:
Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by "a few bad apples." But as award‑winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of orders to "kill anything that moves."
Drawing on more than a decade of research in secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time how official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. In shocking detail, he lays out the workings of a military machine that made crimes in almost every major American combat unit all but inevitable.
(The Virgin MOMCOM - 6). What started our "love affair" with older invasions to "get back our oil" (which had somehow flowed under the lands of the Middle Eastern Nations) was a fear-based belief within the heart of one of our wounded warrior western heroes --a belief in the battle of Armageddon:
From the moment he arrived at the Admiralty, a young man of destiny, Churchill started to prepare the fleet for the Battle of Armageddon he believed was inevitable.
...
Then, in 1911, the German Kaiser provoked the Agadir crisis ... Churchill went to the Admiralty and his outlook transformed. He was immediately confronted with the decisive question: to convert the navy from coal to oil ... the "fateful plunge" was made ... in April 1912 ... five oil-burning battleships were approved.
...
It was the Royal Navy which was the impetus for the development of the oil industry in Britain. The problem was supply and the security of that supply. Initially, the British government purchased shares in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, subsequently, British Petroleum [BP].
...
Then, to prevent further disruptions, Britain enmeshed itself ever more deeply in the Middle East, working to install new shahs in Iran and carve Iraq out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire.
Churchill fired the starting gun, but all of the Western powers joined the race to control Middle Eastern oil.
(The Universal Smedley - 2, quoting several books). These and other secrets are well kept, but when they get let loose without official sanction, then all the whistles go off as the command "get the whistleblowers" is barked around the world.
Quite a change from the founding fathers' work which was quoted at the top of this post.
Founding fathers who also said that endless war would destroy our freedoms and build a toxin-infested executive:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.
(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, emphasis added). Who could have foreseen any of this ... I mean it is like global warming and planes crashing into buildings --right?
No, that is not right, that is wrong --dead wrong.
The Hagel and Kerry nominations to Secretary of Defense and State give rise to hope.
Hope that the wretched, warmongering madness of recent neoCon vintage, beginning with Bush II, has some potential of fading into the bad-memory-hole of recent history.
Add to that the rumors that President Obama is contemplating hosting a climate summit, and the optimists among us light up with anticipation:
Barack Obama may intervene directly on climate change by hosting a summit at the White House early in his second term, environmental groups say.
"All oil wells must be painted green."
They say the White House has given encouraging signals to a proposal for Obama to use the broad-based and bipartisan summit to launch a national climate action strategy.
"What we talked about with the White House is using it as catalyst not just for the development of a national strategy but for mobilising people all over the country at every level," said Bob Doppelt, executive director of the Resource Innovation Group, the Oregon-based thinktank that has been pushing for the high-level meeting. He said it would not be a one-off event.
"What I think has excited the White House is that it does put the president in a leadership role, but it is not aimed at what Congress can do, or what he can do per se, so much as it is aimed at apprising the American public about how they can act."
(Guardian). Not a bad idea in the light of 2012 being the warmest year in the contiguous United States by a clear margin:
If you found yourself bundling up in scarves, hats, and long underwear less than usual last year, you weren't alone: 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States, according to scientists with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.2 degrees above normal and a full degree higher than the previous warmest year recorded -- 1998 -- NOAA said in its report Tuesday. All 48 states in the contiguous U.S. had above-average annual temperatures last year, including 19 that broke annual records, from Connecticut through Utah.
“We’re taking quite a large step,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, which has recorded temperatures in the contiguous U.S. for the past 118 years.
Meanwhile, according to award winning economist Joseph Stieglitz the catastrophic damages done by global warming induced climate change are adding up to being the greatest threat to our economic recovery:
In the shadow of the euro crisis and America's fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore the global economy's long-term problems. But, while we focus on immediate concerns, they continue to fester, and we overlook them at our peril.
The most serious is global warming. While the global economy's weak performance has led to a corresponding slowdown in the increase in carbon emissions, it amounts to only a short respite. And we are far behind the curve: because we have been so slow to respond to climate change achieving the targeted limit of a 2C rise in global temperature will require sharp reductions in emissions in the future.
Some suggest that, given the economic slowdown, we should put global warming on the backburner. On the contrary, retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth.
(Guardian, emphasis added). One can see why stopping the oil wars, weakening the strangle hold of Oil-Qaeda, and stopping our ecocidal habits, have some in the climate change community cautiously optimistic.
On this date some years ago in the first post of this series, Dredd Blog considered the dissatisfaction the public had with what the 1% had done during the previous Bush II regime.
We can now reflect, we can now ask ourselves the question "what has the current regime done about all that?"
The answer is: "nothing adequate or satisfactory to the justice demanded because of the despotic practices of all those years."
Anyway, here is the text of that post:
A while back we had a thread about the US losing guns, roses, bombs, money, computers, and who knows what else.
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 pabulum we don't need or want.
A "love affair" with fantasy is as old as ... disappointment?
If DHS listens to this song they may think these guys are gay company "turristttsss" since the meanings of words have changed in only ~45 years.
Sometimes it takes reflection to feel how things are going.
Two years ago on this date Dredd Blog posted a piece concerning whether or not I was being fair to President Obama, who I took up for in the first year of his presidency.
In that post, repeated verbatim below, I indicated that I had not been as critical as some others: Oh to the contrary, I have held my tongue compared to others who voted for him.
Take for example the University Professor, Psychologist and Neuroscientist:
What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.
What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.
The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.
Consider the president's leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there's a conflict, because if there's a conflict, he doesn't want to be anywhere near it.
(Huffington Post, emphasis added). Ouch! That rant goes on and on.
They seem to think they can ramrod their notions down the voters ballot box, a notion that will be tested like it was in the last election when the people rejected that approach.
My criticism of the administration has been exclusively to criticize them for continuing what the people rejected in the election.
For an apologetic in support of all the administration's deeds, and a pro-con comment session afterwards, see this post.
Dredd Blog has been telling the Obama mentors from day one of his administration to throw The W Compass in the trash.
The voting public rejected the W direction, the wrong direction, and have clearly had that mindset for many years now.
For example, 18 months ago, a mere 3 months into the Obama Presidency, Dredd Blog noticed indications of a possible drift in the W direction.
At that time Obama enjoyed a 72% favorability rating and the people polled indicated a drop in the percentage who thought the country was going in the wrong direction.
There was a political euphoria, a tendency to think "we are getting back on track".
Fine, but Dredd Blog was looking out the windshield, looking ahead to where the W direction would take us, and the consequences were clearly predicted way back then:
If that does not happen, the damage that will be done as a result of that failure will not go unnoticed. I expect a 20% drop in popularity when all is said and done.
(What Was Rejected In The Election, emphasis added). Polls yesterday put the current popularity figure at 46%, and even the wrong-direction percentages were way up again.
Yes, Dredd Blog predicted a drop to a 52% popularity figure, but it passed even that, and is 6% worse, yes, down to 46% favoribility, which is even worse than Dredd Blog predicted.
Never-the-less, in yet another W mouth off, V.P. Biden and President Obama seem to be doing a Charlton Heston, saying "you will have to pry this W compass out of our cold, dead hands":
Some progressive critics of President Barack Obama claim the White House’s recent chiding of disenchanted liberals is not about motivating them to vote in November – it's a cynical attempt to blame them for the losses Democrats are expected to suffer in the midterm elections.
The already palpable tensions between Obama and the liberal base rose after the president told Rolling Stone in an interview published online Tuesday that it’s "irresponsible" and "inexcusable" for disillusioned liberals to stay home on Nov. 2 rather than get out and vote for Democratic candidates.
"The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible," Obama said, depicting the high stakes election as a choice between a flawed but forward-thinking Democratic Party and a backwards GOP "that has moved to the right of George Bush."
(Raw Story). He still does not get it, because he thinks the issue is how far right the GOP is, not fathoming the obvious problem, which is that he is following the GOP to the right, so that he is where W was when W was rejected (Bush II hugger John McCain lost big - remember?!).
Obama's defense seems to be "the Tea Baggers are further right than me, so get out and vote for us, otherwise it is your fault".
That has not worked in the past, won't work now, and won't work in 2012 either.
Mr. President, you are expected to act like an adult Democrat who won an election.
McCain / Palin lost because the things W was doing were wrong, the direction W was going was wrong.
The public voted democratic in a big way, clearly voting against the W direction in a big way.
If you believe you are better than others, such that you can do the same things W did but that your Obamaness will make those wrong things right, you suffer from exceptionalism, another Tea Bagger trait of the W sort.
Loose the W compass before you rear-end the Tea Bagger bus.
