My Point

Today is Tuesday, 22 March 2011.

What many suspected at the time the Conquest of Iraq began has for some time been confirmed: that the “intelligence” about WMDs was a cruel, callous, and cynical poisoned stew of half-truths, willful misinterpretations of ambivalent evidence, and outright lies. That “planting democracy” was merely a smokescreen for the enduring neoconservative ambition to create a comprador oil state in the Middle East.

One could today ask the people of Iraq a variation of Reagan’s famous question during the 1980 presidential election debate: “Are you better off now…?”

A brutal Sunni-based dictatorship has been replaced by a brutal Shiite-based dictatorship. Government is even more corrupt. Public services are even more degraded. Air conditioners, satellite dishes, and computer games are more widely distributed, while income disparities are greater.

By the warped standards of some, the people of Iraq are “free”, whatever that might mean amid the realities of their actual circumstances.

I hope for the day when the likes of W. Bush, Condi Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld stand trial at The Hague for waging a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Happy Now?

Today is Monday, 21 March 2011.

M. Gaddafi has never led a legitimate government of Libya. He and his “crew” (in the Mafia sense) seized power as military gangsters, and have, as military gangsters, repressed and exploited Libyans for more than forty years. They are simply Gambinos with gaudy costumes.

As such, Gaddafi has never been an anti-colonialist or a socialist. His laughable "masterpiece", The Green Book, is bunkum worthy of a leader of the Tea Partei. My copy is in a box somewhere, but this excerpt from Wikipedia is a fine example of the quality of his “thought” (in official translation).

"If one group of people wears white clothes in mourning and another group puts on black, the sentiment of each group will be adjusted according to these two colours, i.e., one group rejects the black colour on such an occasion while the other one prefers it, and vice versa. Such a sentiment leaves its physical effect on the cells as well as on the genes in the body. This adaptation, will be transmitted by inheritance. The inheritors automatically reject the colour rejected by the legator as a result of inheriting the sentiment of their legator. Consequently, people are only harmonious with their own arts and heritage. They are not harmonious with the arts of others because of heredity, even though those people, who differ in heritage, speak a single common language."[

WTF, as they say on Twitter.

People are dying, and I can’t be happy about that, even, for very long, the deaths of the wicked. At least, however, The Gaddafi crime family has been halted just before they overran Benghazi and began mass executions.

I hope that the bombings and no-fly zone will create conditions in which Gaddafi’s subordinates overthrow the regime, send him and his sons to The Hague for trial, cede power to the civilian opposition, and return to their barracks.

I fear, however, that the indifference and dawdling of the Obama regime may lead to stalemate.

2011 - 2003 = 8

Today is Saturday, 19 March 2011.

Anniversary of the beginning of the USA/USE Conquest of Iraq in 2003.

And what a pleasure, for the people of Iraq.

Betraying the Libyans

Today is Friday, 18 March 2011.

Why is the Obama regime coddling Gaddafi?

The regime can’t argue that is was caught by surprise and is scrambling to catch up with events. After all, the Pentagon has for decades spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to identify possible politico-military situations and outline responses. Once Tunisia began boiling over, the relevant documents would have been on the front burner.

Certainly, the Obama high command is not so naïve as to assume that the Libyan Peron, with more than 40 years of murder and repression to his credit, would meekly board a plane and fly away. After all, its War Secretary, the odious Robert Gates, is a life-long practitioner of state terror as career CIA.

And yet, the Obama regime piddled about, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into supporting a no-fly zone. And now, while the regime has Security Council authorization in hand, Gaddafi is still butchering, and no bombs are falling. The infrastructure could have been in place, and should have been in place, so that the intervention could begin within minutes. Instead, Obama today styled in front of the cameras, jawboning.

It is difficult to come to any other conclusion than this: that for Obama, like any good capitalist imperialist liberal, the national security ambitions of the American empire are far more precious than the lives of mere foreigners of colour.

"We Bring Good Things to Life"

Today is Thursday, 17 March 2011.

For almost four decades, it’s been public knowledge that General Electric's boiling-water nuclear reactors had a critical design flaw, and might easily fail. gE had to have known this since the beginning.

These are the reactors now failing in Japan.

“In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen — a situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.” [*]

GE promoted this design because it was cheaper and easier to build, thus more marketable, and presumably yielding a higher profit margin.

Once again, private profit elevated above public welfare produces catastrophe.

It’s sickeningly ironic that GE’s long-time corporate motto was, “We Bring Good Things to Life”.

I salute the Japanese workers who are risking their lives in this entirely-avoidable tragedy.
______________________________________

* http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=tom%20zeller%20jr&st=cse

The Shiv Out

Today is Monday, 14 March 2011.

The two century dictatorship of the political gangster Khalifa family in Bahrain is in peril from a majority of its citizens. The Saudi family dictatorship has dispatched troops to assist the dictatorship in its continuing repressions.

As a prime USA/USE partner, Bahrain houses, for fine annual “payments” to the Khalifa crime family, the Fifth Fleet of the Navy of the USA/USE.

The Obama regime, classic Imperialist “Liberals”, may be expected to support the Khalifa and Saudi crime families to the point that their fall seems inevitable, as the Obama regime did with Mubarak.

More blood on your hands, Obama.

More blood on your hands, Republican leadership, who support such crime, and hypocritically pretend to believe that Obama is a bleeding-heart “wuss”.

When push comes to shove, Obama has the shiv out, in support of American imperialism, as do the hard-right Republicans.

Obamacares?

Today is Saturday, 12 March 2011.

Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, accused of providing taxpayer-paid-for files to WikiLeaks, is being tortured.

Every night, at the USA/USE Marine "detention" center at Quantico, Virginia, Manning is stripped naked for the night, because he's under "prevention of injury watch".

If the authorities believe he's a suicide risk, why have not they transferred him to a medical facility?

1) The government believes he's a suicide risk, and they are refusing him medical care, and torturing him.

2) The government doesn't believe he's a suicide risk, and they're torturing him.

Obama says: “With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.”

I always trust the torturers at the Pentagon.

Obamacares.

Happy 28th, To a Lady

Today is Thursday, 10 March 2011.

Happy 28th birthday to the daughter of my Good Friend.

A poem for your day.

“Marching Song”

A beautiful vision
As I then thought
In my five years aged.

Armored,
The soldiers marched,
Air thronged with song.

Too late,
I recalled,
My mother said:
“Watch,
Don’t do”.

Demand a No-Fly Zone

Today is Wednesday, 9 March 2011.

I seldom endorse military violence, particularly by the USA/USE, but I endorse enforcement of a no-fly zone in regard to the Gaddafi regime military.

It is true, of course, that the ability to project such force is the result of the gross misguided priorities in Federal government spending. However, this will remain the case for the foreseeable future, whether or not such a project is undertaken. It would be nice to see, for once, such power deployed in an attempt to stop state terror, instead of foster it.

I’m well aware that civilian casualties could result, but I believe it certain that more will result if the Gaddafi crime family is allowed free rein to employ planes and helicopters.

The Obama regime’s attitude is reprehensible: that action should not be taken, because no “vital” American national security interest is at stake. I can’t help but be reminded of Kissinger’s take on the plight of Soviet Jewry: that, were the Soviets to begin murdering Jews, it “might” be of humanitarian concern, but it didn’t concern American interests.

I hope you will join me in bombarding The White House with messages demanding a no-fly zone.

International Women's Day

Today is Tuesday, 8 March 2011.

Today is the 100th celebration of International Women’s Day.

I notice that a disproportionate share of the relevant coverage on CNN has focused on the conditions under which women live in Muslim-majority nations. (A less-loaded term than “the Muslim World”.)

I’ve seen no mention of the constant attempts at repression of women in the Christian-majority nation known as the USA/USE, perpetrated by con-servatives who damn the idea of the Federal government to require people to buy health insurance, but worship the notion that the Federal government should own and control women’s bodies.

Shouldn’t these “manly” con-servatives at least be consistent, and demand Federal government ownership and control of the bodies of males? For example, ought not any male who impregnates a female out-of-wedlock be automatically castrated? Shouldn’t all males who refuse to meet minimal standards of support and nurture for children they father, be automatically imprisoned and castrated? Why aren’t the con-servatives talking about this form of recidivism? Why shouldn’t, for that matter, the Federal government control which females that males may impregnate?

Sauce for the goose…

At the end of day, any argument in favour of oppression and exploitation, whether justified by appeals to deity, or anything else, is crap. Wicked, wicked crap.

Happy International Women's Day!

Huckabee: Racist

Today is Wednesday, 3 March 2011.

Having read more of Mike Huckabee’s squalid rant about Obama, it’s obviously much more wicked than I realized.

What The Huck opines that Obama’s anti-colonialism and anti-Americanism are a result of his childhood in Kenya, and his exposure to the aftereffects of the Mau Mau rebellion against the British. Hello? Against precisely which colonial empire does Huck fancy the Coup of ’76 was mounted? Were anti-colonialists such as Washington, Adams, and Jefferson actually proto-anti-Americans?

WTH seems not to be stupid or institutionable, so I can only conclude that he means this rant to be a sly way to distribute the poison of birther racism. As such, I can only conclude that Huckabee is morally unfit for any office of public trust, and should be, symbolically at least, run out of public life on a rail.

What The Huck?

Today is Wednesday, 2 March 2011.

1.

Presumed Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee claims that Obama's "childhood in Kenya" is responsible for things such as his "liberalism" and attitude toward the British. A Huckabee spokesperson clarifies that he "misspoke".

However, in that case, What The Huck would have said that Obama's Indonesian childhood was responsible for his attitude toward the Dutch.

No matter that most of Obama's childhood was spent in the USA/USE.

2.

We all owe a humongous debt of gratitude to Congressional Republicans and Teabaggers: they won't shut down the Federal government until at least 18 March, since they get to cut a whopping $4 billion from the Federal budget.

These are the same folks who supported Reagan and the Bushes when they incurred 2/3 of the National Debt. Also the same folks who supported W. Bush's failed attempt to conquer Iraq, which will cost taxpayers at least $1 trillion, and very possibly as much as $3 trillion.

Can they say "Fiscal responsibility"? I knew they couldn't.

3.

When making financial comparisons across time, it's always essential to adjust for inflation.

For example, headlines are trumpeting the alleged skyrocketing price of airfares. In fact, adjusted for inflation, current average airfares on American airlines are roughly 20% lower than in 2000.

Similarly, hucksters pushing ownership of gold in TV ads claim that the precious metal is selling at all-time highs. In fact, adjusted for inflation, gold prices peaked in 1980.

If you've never read the slender classic, How to Lie With Statistics, by Darrell Huff (1954), now would be a good time.