Failure

Today is Saturday, 29 August 2009.

On this date in 2005, hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, et al.

W. Bush, apostle of “anything gov’ment does is bad”, flew over the horrors, smirking.

This summer, my friend Kyle, daughter of my friends S and K., worked in a nonprofit program to re-build.

Government didn’t fail: it was made to fail.

Proud Yet?

Today is Friday, 28 August 2009.

Let us set aside for a moment the sufferings of millions of Afghanis, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands, inflicted by decades of cynical American political manipulation.

Let us consider that today the monthly death toll of American military in the Afghan Conquest set a new record (45 dead), eclipsing the record set only last month.

(Only last month? What is wrong with this picture?)

Are W. Bush, Dick Cheney, etc., and all who supported them, proud yet that they ignored re-building Afghanistan so they could “conquer”, that is, destroy, Iraq?

Slam dunk two for two!

Red Square at Noon

Today is Tuesday, 25 August 2009.

At noon on this date in 1968, eight Soviet citizens sat on an ancient stone speaker’s platform in Red Square, and unfurled small banners protesting the Soviet-bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia, which had occurred on 21 August.

The eight were assaulted and arrested by KGB, and, after a farcical trial, sentenced to prison for the “crime” of exercising the free speech granted to them by the Soviet Constitution.

One banner proclaimed: “For your freedom and ours”.

By contrast, one of the more popular slogans at health care town-halls in the past few weeks has been: “Get the government out of Medicare!”

Since Medicare is, by its very nature in law, a single-payer health care system, funded by taxpayers and administered by the Federal government, this slogan epitomizes the ignorance with which many dabble in this important issue. It would seem asinine, were it not so dangerous to public discourse and life.

Would that many more Americans had the decency to become truthfully informed, as to facts and values, as had the Eight of Red Square at Noon, to whom all honour.

Iran

Today is Wednesday, 19 August 2009.

On this date in 1953, CIA overthrew Modhammed Mosaddeq, prime minister of the last democratic government in Iran, and reinstalled Reza Pahlavi’s dictatorship. Like his father who preceded him in tyranny, Pahlavi had been a Nazi sympathizer prior to the British-Soviet occupation in 1941.

That went well, yes?

The three criminals most responsible for the coup were President Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and CIA director Allen Dulles. By bringing back Pahlavi, they created the conditions which would later lead to theocratic dictatorship.

The same trio also authored the overthrow of the democratic government in Guatemala, and the establishment and growth of the Diem family dictatorship in South Vietnam (both 1954).

While at Oklahoma State University in the 1970s, I knew many Iranian students (OSU had helped establish and nurture the Iranian agricultural and mechanical university). Many were active in resisting the Pahlavi dictatorship, and it was my privilege to be their comrade in that struggle. Unfortunately, since they were centrist to left in politics, I was unable to keep in touch after they returned to Iran, since that would have endangered them with SAVAK, the secret police, and later with the secret police of the theocratic dictatorship.

I think often of the sad fates which must have befallen many of them.

According to most reports, despite the half-century of sufferings inflicted on Iran by USA/USE imperialism, many, and perhaps most, Iranians persist in affection for the American people and much of American culture. It is shameful that large numbers of Americans continue to wallow in the excrement of race and religious hatred of Iran and Iranians.

Kind of Blue

Today is Monday, 17 August 2009.

On this date in 1959, Miles Davis released the album, Kind of Blue.

Why We Fight?

Today is Sunday, 16 August 2009.

Why We Fight was a series of propaganda films produced by the American government during World War Two.

Were similar films to be produced today, one doubts the reasons we fight would include a law making Afghanistan safe for husbands to starve their wives if their wives refuse to have sexual intercourse.

The original law would have allowed husbands to rape their wives. The replacement, which has taken effect, is surely a blatant attempt by President Hamid Karzai (corrupt warlord whose brother runs the family heroin business) to curry favour with woman-hating male voters in Thursday’s presidential election.

The contemporary status of Afghanistan as a failed- and narco-state can be traced to both the USSR and the USA/USE. The Soviet Politburo made a fatal error when it invaded Afghanistan in order to ensure a friendly regime on its southern border. Carter made a fatal error when he asininely proclaimed that the invasion was one of the great struggles of the Cold War, and committed the USA/USE to reverse it.

Reagan made a fatal error in spending billions of taxpayer dollars in funding religious fundamentalist resistance. H.W. Bush made a fatal error in deserting the country after the Soviets withdrew in 1989, which led to prolonged civil war, the rise of the Taliban, and the latter’s allowing al-Queda basing privileges.

W. Bush made a fatal error in conquering Afghanistan on the cheap, since he wished to reserve the bulk of the American military for the conquest of Iraq, and a further fatal error by refusing to attempt nation-building.

Whether the Obama regime has any better solution than more war on behalf of a corrupt "government" remains to be seen.

Certainly, Afghanistan has a very long sad history of murderous conflict. But reality: our – and this includes me – tax dollars made it a million times worse.

In any case, do any American parents or spouses wish to see their loved ones be maimed or killed, that Afghan husbands may torture and murder their wives?
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Details at this BBC story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8204207.stm

Right-Wing Cruelty

Today is Friday, 14 August 2009.

For the past week, I’ve enjoyed very severe pain in my right hip, and haven’t felt much like writing. Not to worry: it only hurts when I walk, sit, stand, or breathe, and it’s simply the arthritis I’ve experienced for 37 years. The treatments available are, alas, worse in their long-term side-effects than the condition.

It may be a pain near the ass, but it won’t kill me.

What many Americans suffer from, at any given moment, will, however, kill them. And the right-wing fabricators and propagandists of fictional Obama-created government “death panels” are hell-bent on insuring that, when everyone’s time comes, there’s as much pain as possible to suffer.

The Obama administration has no more proposed euthanasia and “death panels” than Jews ever kill or killed Gentile children to make Passover matzo. What the administration proposes is increased access to measures meant to manage and ease the sufferings associated with severe illnesses and dying.

Golly: wouldn’t that earn the Hitler seal of approval?

How to determine the contents of living wills. How to effectively execute them. How to choose and appoint medical proxies, who can make decisions when the ill person is incapable. How to evaluate and choose pain treatment regimens. How to evaluate and choose hospice care.

All the conveniences of Auschwitz, yes?

There’s far more than enough evidence to disprove the blood libel against Jews, and yet some anti-Semites still choose to believe it. There’s far more than enough evidence to disprove the “death panel” lie, and yet some still choose to believe it.

In each case, “willful ignorance” is too weak an explanation. In each case, reason blinded by hatred and lust for power trumps reality. In each case, the intended result is more suffering.

“Death panelers” aren’t pathetic kooks: “death panelers” are cruel and eager servants of evil.

In Memory: Nagasaki

Today is Sunday, 9 August 2009.

Today is International Day of the World's Indigenous People.



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On this date in 1962, Hermann Hesse died.

On this date in 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned as President.

Burning Down the House ...

Today is Saturday, 8 August 2009.

Based on a mere 50 years of detailed studies, radical Obama-loving anti-Creationistic “scientists” at the U.S. Geological Survey, all of whom pretend to have been born in Hawaii, but all of whom were actually born in Albania, Kenya, and the Moon, have found that the world’s glaciers are melting at a rate faster than predicted by even the most pessimistic climatological models.

Only the pagan socialistic fools who believe the Earth is (relatively) round believe that global warming caused by human beings is the culprit. (And remember: all this relative/relativity stuff was invented by JEW Albert Einstein.)

The real cause: the rise in human bodily temperature caused by global excitement at the imminent Second Coming.

Or, at least, that’s how the cold scientific facts might be spun by the senator from Predatory Petroleum, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma.

From CNN (reference below): "A 50-year government study found that the world's glaciers are melting at a rapid and alarming rate. The ongoing study is the latest in a series of reports that found glaciers worldwide are melting faster than anyone had predicted they would just a few years ago ... Since 1959, the U.S. Geological Survey, which published the study on its Web site, has been tracking the movements of the South Cascade glacier in Washington and the Wolverine and Gulcana glaciers in Alaska. The three glaciers are considered "benchmarks" for the conditions of thousands of other glaciers because they're in different climate zones and at various elevations.”

Thanks to human-induced global warming, the glaciers are melting and both polar ice packs are melting.

Global warming will cause flooding of low-lying areas and drastic changes in precipitation patterns. The resultant famines and population movements will result in increased poverty, social unrest, and wars.

Human suffering on a scale never before seen.

Burning down the house.

Our house.
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CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/07/global.warming/index.html

USGS study: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3046/
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On this date in 1974, Richard M. Nixon announced he would resign as President the next day.

Other than dying, the best thing he ever did.

China: The Good News Is ...

Today is Friday, 7 August 2009.

A very disturbing article in today’s The New York Times reports that banks in China, acting on government instructions, set a record for January to June lending: $1.1 trillion.

Most loans went to state infrastructure projects and large government-owned enterprises. These are precisely the types of loans which have been historically plagued by high levels of graft and embezzlement.

State financial corruption has been endemic in China for decades, even though major culprits are regularly executed. (Just today, the BBC reported the execution of the former head of Capital Airports Holdings, which owns 30 airports, including Beijing’s. He’d been convicted of stealing $12 million from public coffers and accepting $4 million in bribes.)

Dumping the trillion dollars into the Chinese economy did succeed in keeping up the pace of growth of the economy, at 7.1% for January to June. (It’s generally accepted that China’s economy must grow by a minimum of 6-8% a year in order to merely keep pace with the growing population and increasing hunger for consumer goods, and thus containing social unrest within manageable levels.)

Historically, Chinese government policies have favored investment in and growth of export-oriented production, and not production for domestic consumption. With the world mired in the worst recession since 1945, it’s increasingly difficult to see how this model can be maintained over the long term, or even the middle term.

Widespread social dissatisfaction, turmoil, and even rebellion would not be good news in a country of 1.3 billion people, for the world and particularly for the Chinese people. It would also be very bad karma for the USA/USE, given the American addiction to financing domestic consumption by borrowing from China.

The good news: the Chinese leadership has staved off immediate disaster. The bad news: the Chinese leadership suffers from the same economic lunacy as American ride-the-market-into-hell yoyos.
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Complete article is well worth reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/business/global/07yuan.html?_r=1&ref=business
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On this date in 1964, Congress passed the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution", stampeded by false information provided by the Johnson regime, and leading to the massive escalation of the Indochina War, and millions of needless deaths.

In Memory: Hiroshima

Today is Thursday, 6 August 2009.



"An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind.

Tomorrow ...

Today is Wednesday, 5 August 2009.

On this date in 1963, The Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water was signed by the United Kingdom, U.S.S.R., and USA/USE.

On this eve of Hiroshima Day, we do well to remember that all reductions to date of the nuclear arsenals of the USA/USE and Russia/USSR amount to little more than a bad joke. Each empire has given no indication that they wish to reduce nuclear forces below the level required to exterminate all life on the planet. Yet the leaders of each have always demanded great credit.

It’s as if Hitler had abolished all extermination camps, except for those required to murder all Jews, Slavs, Romany, etc., and then demanded praise for his humanity.

A Resounding "YES!" to War Crimes

Today is Tuesday, 4 August 2009.

A July poll by Quinnipiac University released today found that 61% of Americans surveyed believed that the USA/USE Government “did the right thing” in conducting atomic war on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of more than 500,000 Japanese, mostly civilians, was called “wrong” by 22%; 16% were undecided. The margin of error was 3%.

I’m hardly surprised. Many, if not most, Americans have fallen for the falsehood that the American government had estimated that 1,000,000 American servicemen would die if Japan were to have been invaded. In fact, this number was concocted in 1947 by McGeorge Bundy, who was co-writing the memoirs of the wartime Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. The latter couldn’t recall the estimated number, and the government refused him access to the actual estimate.

My personal evaluation is that Bundy fabricated the number for two reasons: to rationalize the mass killings of civilians, a war crime, and to sensationalize, in order to sell more books. As national security adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Bundy would later be a prime architect of the escalation of the Vietnam/Indochina War, in which more than 6,000,000 would be slaughtered.

Bundy later came to “regret” his actions, though not enough to deliver himself to prison.

The Crime of Slavery

Today is Saturday, 1 August 2009.

On this date in 1619, the first consignment of African slaves is delivered to Jamestown, Virginia.

From Bob Herbert's column in today's The New York Times:

"The very first lesson that should be drawn from the encounter between Mr. Gates and the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, is that Professor Gates did absolutely nothing wrong. He did not swear at the officer or threaten him. He was never a danger to anyone. At worst, if you believe the police report, he yelled at Sergeant Crowley. He demanded to know if he was being treated the way he was being treated because he was black."

"You can yell at a cop in America. This is not Iran. And if some people don’t like what you’re saying, too bad. You can even be wrong in what you are saying. There is no law against that. It is not an offense for which you are supposed to be arrested."

"That’s a lesson that should have emerged clearly from this contretemps."

"It was the police officer, Sergeant Crowley, who did something wrong in this instance. He arrested a man who had already demonstrated to the officer’s satisfaction that he was in his own home and had been minding his own business, bothering no one. Sergeant Crowley arrested Professor Gates and had him paraded off to jail for no good reason, and that brings us to the most important lesson to be drawn from this case. Black people are constantly being stopped, searched, harassed, publicly humiliated, assaulted, arrested and sometimes killed by police officers in this country for no good reason."

"New York City cops make upwards of a half-million stops of private citizens each year, questioning and frequently frisking these men, women and children. The overwhelming majority of those stopped are black or Latino, and the overwhelming majority are innocent of any wrongdoing. A true “teachable moment” would focus a spotlight on such outrages and the urgent need to stop them."

Many white Americans still cannot forgive Blacks for the crime of slavery.
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Mr. Herbert's complete column is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion