Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, left, poses for a photo Nov. 9, 2009, with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., before sitting down for talks on regional security issues. Barak was supposedly a target for assassination by the Iranians. Can we get more inflammatory? (DoD photo by R. D. Ward/Released)
For months, Iran faced baseless accusations. They include:
the spurious US Saudi ambassador assassination plot; charges about developing nuclear weapons; being the “world’s leading state sponsor of terror,” according to AIPAC; targeting Israeli officials in India, Georgia, and Thailand; and planning Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s assassination, according to The Israel Project citing Kuwait’s Al Jarida newspaper.
All of the above don’t pass the smell test. Charges are baseless on their face. Yet major media scoundrels headline them for days. In the process, they heighten tensions for belligerent intervention. Read more…
Once in a blue moon, which is still far too often, one encounters the lie that Nazism was a manifestation of the left. A quick way to refute this myth is to note that Nazism’s immediate tasks upon taking power were destroying the German Communist Party, sending communists and socialists to concentration camps, banning unions, and resolving Germany’s business-labor arbitration crisis to the exclusive benefit of business. Nazism protected private property and improved conditions for profit, and the Nazis of course ultimately launched a genocidal crusade against the “JudeoBolshevist” Soviet Union. Purveyors of the Left-Nazism fallacy generally take the term “National Socialism” at face value, overlooking that this oxymoron was intended to lure members of the German left to a political party that saved capitalism through substituting national “racial” consciousness for class consciousness. Read more…
Even establishment liberals like Moyers are now despairing of “American democracy”. Doesn’t that tell us something?
Steve Forbes, one of the members of the plutocratic problem (and unapologetic about it.) "When you got it, flaunt it, baby."
Watching what’s happening to our democracy is like watching the cruise ship Costa Concordia founder and sink slowly into the sea off the coast of Italy, as the passengers, shorn of life vests, scramble for safety as best they can, while the captain trips and falls conveniently into a waiting life boat.
We are drowning here, with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges detonated by the owners and manipulators of capital. Their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. Nothing can stop them. Not the law, which has been written to accommodate them. Not scrutiny — they have no shame. Not a decent respect for the welfare of others — the people without means, their safety net shredded, left helpless before events beyond their control. Read more…
BY PAUL SWEEZY & HARRY MAGDOFF THE EDITORS OF MONTHLY REVIEW
As we write in early May (this piece, written by the editors, appeared in Monthly Review in June 1972—Eds), the long-expected crisis stemming from the collapse of Nixon’s Vietnamization policy has burst upon the world.How it will be resolved is still unknown, and anything that might be written on the question would certainly be overwhelmed by events long before it could be published. But it does seem an appropriate time to try to improve our understanding of the forces at work, especially one of the most elusive of these forces which has taken on enormous significance at this stage of history, i.e., the thought processes of those responsible for making U.S. policy. What are their preconceptions and prejudices? What are their aims, ambitions, hopes? How do they think they can get what they want? What is, or is likely to be, their reaction to failure? These are some of the questions that immediately come to mind. And while there are obviously no simple or uniformly valid answers, there is a great deal of relevant evidence at hand which ought to be carefully examined and weighed. In what follows we shall focus mainly though not exclusively on one piece of such evidence, the recently published autobiographical memoir by General Maxwell Taylor, who for many years was at the very center of the events which led up to the present crisis. Read more…
Editor’s Note: Although the empire managers may not know it or accept it (certainly not accept it!), the American hegemon, the world’s chief defender of inequality, is heading for an implosion caused by the very structural forces and dynamic that one day assisted its rise. The capitalist system, the engine for the global empire, has reached a point of wholesale dysfunction. And NONE of the crises besetting it can be fixed by measures or policies drawn from within the capitalist playbook. What’s more, the systemic disease—very advanced at this point—is magnified by the planetary disease: humanity in its corruption and folly has finally assaulted and is killing the biosphere, and literally all that lives. As such, this is without a doubt the first ecopolitical crisis in history, and the prospects for remedial action are not good.
In this presentation, Chris Hedges addresses many of the problems we confront. We can only hope that the Occupy people are listening. —PG
Weeks after Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges filed suit against President Obama in Federal District Court for egregiously violating the U.S. Constitution by signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the US military has been conducting joint exercises with city police departments. An LAPD press release states:
The Los Angeles Police Department will be providing support for a joint military training exercise in and around the great (sic) Los Angeles area. This will be routine training conducted by military personnel, designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements.
NDAA, as the bill signed into law by Obama on New years Eve has come to be called, allows the indefinite military detentions of US citizens without charge or trial.
If you notice a heavy military presence around downtown Los Angeles this week, don’t be alarmed — it’s only a drill.
The military deployed a Black Hawk, a helicopter that has served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and four OH-6 helicopters. According to Truthout.org, at one point they flew just above the US Bank building downtown.
Hedges in an interview with Democracy Now speculated that, since the national security establishment, NSA, FBI and other agencies charged with protecting the country against terrorists actually lobbied against the NDAA, the true impetus for it was the fear among corporate elites of an expanding Occupy Wall Street movement this summer.
Hedges said:
“And I think, without question, the corporate elites understand that things, certainly economically, are about to get much worse. I think they’re worried about the Occupy movement expanding. And I think that, in the end—and this is a supposition—they don’t trust the police to protect them, and they want to be able to call in the Army.”
This month Occupy DC continued to press Congress with the message of getting the influence of money out of politics. Reuters reported on Jan. 17th:
“Demonstrators from the Occupy movement rallied at the Capitol and congressional office buildings on Tuesday to protest against the influence of money on lawmakers….Occupy protesters from around the country who gathered on the Capitol’s rain-soaked lawn carried signs saying, “Face it liberals, the Dems sold us out,” “Congress for sale” and “Banksters of America.”"
The influence of money on the political process has been well-researched and documented by citizen watchdog organizations such as MAPLight.org. In a report relating to the TARP bank bailouts MAPlight.org found that congressmen who voted for TARP, the “Troubled Assets Relief Program,” received nearly 50 percent more in campaign contributions from the financial services industry (an average of about $149,000) than congressmen who voted no.
As Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces Obama must sign off on all deployments and exercises. This would seem to apply especially to deployments as politically sensitive as those in direct violation of the spirit of Posse Comitatus, the post-Civil War law intended to bar the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. This is a role for which the National Guard was designed in case of emergencies.
Blackhawk standard armaments, two M240H machine guns.
In his lawsuit against Obama and the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA,) also known as the Homeland Battlefield Bill, Hedges charges in Count I of the official complaint:
The Homeland Battlefield Bill, §1031(C)(1) authorizes the indefinite detention, imprisonment and incarceration of U.S. citizens and other “covered persons” in the United States, including persons such as Plaintiff, without trial or judicial recourse in violation of the U.S. Constitution, Amendment V.
The congressional drive to pass provisions which allow for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial was accompanied by wording in the bill which Congressman Justin Amash called “carefully crafted to mislead the public.”
This Friday, Feb. 3, is the Nationwide NDAA Congressional Protest. The event’s Facebook page states:
Americans across the country will gather outside congressional offices Feb. 3rd from noon to 7 p.m. to protest NDAA 2012 (H.R. 1540). You will find your protest location by looking to see how your congressmen voted. Look below – under house and senate. There is also a link so you can find the address to your congressman’s local office where your protest will take place.
A number of recall campaigns have begun against congressmen and senators who voted in favor of NDAA, as well as other state-level actions which challenge and seek to nullify the detention of Americans provisions. In Virginia, legislators in the House of Delegates have filed House Bill 1160 (HB1160) which “Prevents any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency or the armed forces of the United States in the investigation, prosecution, or detainment of a United States citizen in violation of the Constitution of Virginia.”
(b) COVERED PERSONS.—A covered person under this section is any person as follows:
(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.
(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
COMMENT: “Substantial support” of an “associated force” may imply citizens engaged in innocuous, First Amendment activities. Direct support of such hostilities in aid of enemy forces may be construed as free speech opposition to U.S. government policies, aid to civilians, or acts of civil disobedience. Rep. Tom McClintock opposed the bill on the House floor saying it: “specifically affirms that the President has the authority to deny due process to any American it charges with “substantially supporting al Qaeda, the Taliban or any ‘associated forces’” — whatever that means. Would “substantial support” of an “associated force,” mean linking a web-site to a web-site that links to a web-site affiliated with al-Qaeda? We don’t know.”
(c) DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR.—The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following:
(1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
(2) Trial under chapter 47A of title 10, United States Code (as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 (title XVIII of Public Law 111– 84)).
(3) Transfer for trial by an alternative court or competent tribunal having lawful jurisdiction.
(4) Transfer to the custody or control of the person’s country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.
(d) CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
(e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.
COMMENT: “Existing law” is Fourth Circuit in Jose Padilla.
Section 1022 “(b) APPLICABILITY TO UNITED STATES CITIZENS AND LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS”:
(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.
COMMENT: Even if US citizens are not “required” to be detained by the military in terrorism cases, it is still “allowed.”
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It’s really up to you. Do your part while you can. •••
There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience. Read more…
While in previous crises shorter work hours were discussed as a measure to combat growing unemployment, an astonishing feature of the current economic downturn from 2007 on was that work time reductions were nowhere on the political agenda. Not even in France and Germany, the champions of shorter work hours, both introducing a partial 35-hour week in the face of high unemployment in the 1980s and 1990s, was this the case. This is the more remarkable as temporary short-time working applied during the crisis in several European countries actually proved that shorter hours are a viable tool to prevent unemployment (even if still leaving mounting inequalities from capitalism still in place).
[1]
While European capital welcomed short-time work during the initial phase of the crisis, employers quickly reinstated their demand for longer hours and more flexibility when growth started to pick up again in 2010. In a number of countries, governments even announced an extension of the retirement age as part of a series of austerity measures adopted to limit the budget deficits caused by the crisis. A lower retirement age and the introduction of early retirement were used in the 1980s to create employment opportunities for younger workers. In a complete reversal of earlier arguments, workers are now expected to work longer and more years to keep their jobs and receive a pension. Read more…
Revolutionary Violence vs Institutionalized Violence
"There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror - that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves..." —Mark Twain, writing about the French Revolution.
Make creeps like Kissinger
and Palin miserable.
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