Government Propaganda? Not Here, Surely -- Must Be Chinese!

William Blum:

The Washington Post recently ran a story about how the Chinese people largely support the government suppression of the Tibetan protesters. The heading was: "Beijing's Crackdown Gets Strong Domestic Support. Ethnic Pride Stoked by Government Propaganda."

He's not kidding: here's the link.

Blum writes:

The article spoke of how Beijing officials have "educated" the public about Tibet "through propaganda".

Indeed. Here's Edward Cody in the Washington Post:

In the West, the name Tibet has long evoked unspoiled Himalayan landscapes, cinnamon-robed monks spinning prayer wheels and a peace-loving Dalai Lama seeking freedom for his repressed Buddhist followers.

Here in China, people have embraced a different view; they regard Tibet as a historical part of the nation and see its sympathizers in the West as easily fooled romantics. Thanks to government propaganda, but also to ethnic pride, most Chinese see the Dalai Lama and his monks as obscurantist reactionaries trying to split the country and reverse the economic and social progress that China has brought to a backward and isolated land over the past 58 years.

The violent protests by Buddhist monks and other Tibetans that exploded in Lhasa on Friday, therefore, have generated widespread condemnation among the country's majority Han Chinese. In street conversations, Internet discussions and academic forums, most Chinese have readily embraced the government's contention that the violence resulted from a plot mounted by the Dalai Lama from his exile headquarters in India.

Blum again:

Imagine the Post or any other American mainstream media saying that those Americans who support the war in Iraq do so because they've been educated by government propaganda. ... Ditto those who support the war in Afghanistan. ... Ditto those who supported the bombing of Yugoslavia. ... Ditto scores of other US invasions, bombings, overthrows, and miscellaneous war crimes spanning more than half a century.

Can you imagine? Internet discussions where people speak out in favor of war crimes? Street conversations? Academic forums?

Cody says the people are even urging the government to be more vicious:

Against that background, the Communist Party has met with broad popular approval in vowing to crack down on the rioters -- most of whose victims were Han Chinese -- and in qualifying the "impudent" Dalai Lama as a "master terror maker" who has hoodwinked the West with his appeals for peace. While the rest of the world invokes the Beijing Olympics and advises restraint, Chinese specialists and the public have urged the government to move decisively...

And it all seems so familiar ... Are we sure we don't have any propaganda here?

Blum again:

A recurring theme of Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency has been that she has more of the right kind of experience needed to deal with national security and foreign policy issues than Barack Obama. The latest play on this is her advertisement telling you: It's three a.m. and your children are safe and asleep; but there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing; something really bad is happening somewhere; and voters are asked who they want answering the phone. Of course they should want Hillary and her marvelous experience. (If she's actually explained what that marvelous experience is, I missed it. Perhaps her near-death experience in Bosnia?)

Typical of Clinton's growing corps of conservative followers, the Washington Times recently lent support to this theme. The right-wing newspaper interviewed a group of "mostly conservative retired [military] officers, industry executives and current defense officials", who cite Mr. Obama's lack of experience in national security.

And so it goes. And so it has gone for many years. What is it with this experience thing for public office? It was not invented by Hillary Clinton. If I need to have my car repaired I look for a mechanic with experience with my particular car. If I needed an operation I'd seek out a surgeon with lots of experience performing that particular operation. But when it comes to choosing a person for political office, the sine qua non consideration is what their politics are. Who would you choose between two candidates -- one who was strongly against everything you passionately supported but who had decades of holding high government positions, or one who shared your passion on every important issue but had never held any public office? Is there any doubt about which person almost everyone would go for? So why does this "experience" thing keep coming up in so many elections?

A recent national poll questioned registered voters about the candidates' "approach to foreign policy and national security". 43% thought that Obama would be "not tough enough" (probably a reflection of the "experience" factor), while only 3% thought he'd be "too tough". For Clinton the figures were 37% and 9%. The evidence is overwhelming that decades of very tough -- nay, brutal -- US policies toward the Middle East has provoked extensive anti-American terrorism; the same in Latin America in earlier decades, yet this remains an alien concept to most American voters, who think that toughness works (even though they know it doesn't work on Americans -- witness the reaction to 9/11).

John McCain, who is proud to have dropped countless bombs on the people of Vietnam, who had never done him or his country any harm until he and his country invaded them, who now (literally) sings in public about bombing the people of Iran, and who tells us he's prepared to remain in Iraq for 100 years, is still regarded as "not tough enough" by 16% and "too tough" by only 25%. What does it take to convince Americans that one of their leaders is a bloody psychopath? Like the two psychos he may replace. How has 225 years of our grand experiment in democracy wound up like this? And why is McCain regularly referred to as a "war hero"? He was shot down and captured and held prisoner for more than five years. What's heroic about that? In most other kinds of work, such a record would be called a failure.

Winston Churchill said that "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." And if that doesn't do it for you, try a five-minute conversation with almost any American politician. This thing called democracy continues to be used as a substitute for human liberation.

One parting thought about Obama: Is he prepared to distance himself from Rev. Martin Luther King as he has from his own minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright? King vehemently denounced the Vietnam War and called the United States "the most violent nation in the world". Like Wright, he was strongly condemned for his remarks. As T.S. Eliot famously observed: "Humankind can not bear very much reality."

Blum gives his readers quite a few things to think about. Here's a sampling:

Expressing elementary truths about the oppression of the poor by the rich in the United States runs the risk of being accused of "advocating class warfare"; because the trick of class war is to not let the victims know the war is being waged.

What do the CEOs do all day that they should earn a thousand times more than schoolteachers, nurses, firefighters, street cleaners, and social workers? Re-read some medieval history, about feudal lords and serfs.

The campaigns of the anti-regulationists imply that pure food and drugs will be ours as soon as we abolish the pure food and drug laws. ...

The more you care about others, the more you're at a disadvantage competing in the capitalist system.

To say that 1% of the population owns 35% of the resources and wealth, is deceptive. If you own 35% you can control much more than that.

How could the current distribution of property and wealth have emerged from any sort of democratic process? ...

Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good. ...

Communist governments take over companies. Under capitalism, the companies take over the government. ...

How much reality can you bear?

Read the rest here.

Obama's Lies Are Better! (And The Sniper Who Fired At Hillary And Chelsea In Bosnia Was Virtual)

Reuters:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday she made a mistake when she claimed she had come under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996 while she was first lady.

In a speech in Washington and in several interviews last week Clinton described how she and her daughter, Chelsea, ran for cover under hostile fire shortly after her plane landed in Tuzla, Bosnia.

Several news outlets disputed the claim...

... and right away, too! -- not five years later (or never!), like they do when some people make "mistakes" ... and they found some video, which

... showed Clinton walking from the plane, accompanied by her daughter. They were greeted by a young girl in a small ceremony on the tarmac and there was no sign of tension or any danger.

... as expected.

"I did make a mistake in talking about it, you know, the last time and recently," Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania where she was campaigning before the state's April 22 primary. She said she had a "different memory" about the landing.

She's delusionial.

"So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I'm human, which, you know, for some people, is a revelation."

What is she implying? We used to think she was perfect? Or is she saying "I can't be a monster because monsters don't make mistakes"?

Then she tried to change the subject:

"This is really about what policy experience we have and who's ready to be commander in chief. And I'm happy to put my experience up against Senator Obama's any day."

Right. Exactly. Let's talk about experience: How many times has Senator Obama been shot at in Bosnia?

But that's not what this is really about. It's about who can tell the most convincing lies.

And Obama is winning!

Why? His lies are also contradicted by video evidence...

Watch Jeremiah Wright preaching for racial equality:

Now watch Hillary Clinton grouping (and implicitly equating) Jeremiah Wright with Don Imus -- who, as you may recall, got in trouble for doing exactly the opposite!

How's that for reality-reversal?

Now watch Jeremiah Wright preaching about America's role in the world:

Read what he said, and consider carefully how much of it is true and how much is false:

“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

What did Barack Obama say about all this?

... the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity ...

Here's the rub: Are the major TV networks and the other candidates going to tell the truth that discredits Obama? Are they going to dig up video of all the countries we have invaded and bombed and destroyed? Are they going to start talking about all the terrorism we have deliberately fomented? Are they going to talk about all the death squads we've set up? Are going to select juicy clips and play them every 15 minutes, all day and all night until we scream? Are they going to say:

Hold it! Obama lied, too!! Jeremiah Wright wasn't wrong after all! We have released a few chickens. Maybe they did come home to roost on 9/11!

Violence does beget violence! Of course it does -- how could it not? Hatred does beget hatred! And how can we deny that terrorism begets terrorism?

Are they going to say that? Are they going to say any of that? In other words: Are we serious here? Of course not.

Even independent investigative journalists wouldn't do something that.

Makes ya proud ta be a murkin, don' it?

New Study finds No Link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda

Conspiracy theorists have been saying for years that there was no link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda; that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were antagonists; that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of 9/11. It may not seem like a big deal, since after all Saddam [seen here in a sandbagged bunker] is now dead, and the attacks of 9/11 happened a long time ago. But these assertions are at odds with statements made repeatedly by the president, the vice president, many other White House officials, and other supporters of the ongoing war in Iraq.

As you may recall, two main reasons were given to "justify" the American invasion and subsequent occupation of a defenseless oil-rich country. One of them was an alleged tie between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, possibly evidenced by a purported meeting between an Iraqi intelligence official and the putative lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta.

The other reason, of course, was Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. The president, in one of his most delightful moments of levity, has admitted that this claim was only a joke.

And now the claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda, long challenged by opponents of the war, has been thoroughly debunked in a comprehensive study made by -- no! not another conspiracy theorist! -- the Institute for Defense Analyses, under contract with the Pentagon itself.

We weren't supposed to see the report. We weren't even supposed to see the press release announcing the release of the report. Well, guess what?

ABC News (of Australia) carried this story from AFP:

No link between Saddam and Al Qaeda: Pentagon

A detailed Pentagon study confirms there was no direct link between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda network, debunking a claim US President George W Bush's administration used to justify invading Iraq.

The US administration tried to bury the release of the study, limiting distribution of the report and making it available only at individual request and by mail - instead of posting it on the internet or handing it out to reporters.

Indeed. But that lame attempt failed dismally -- and here's the report, a 94-page PDF, courtesy of ABC (US) News via TPM via Gandhi!

The AFP report from Australia continues:

Coming five years after the start of the war in Iraq, the study of 600,000 official Iraqi documents and thousands of hours of interrogations of former Saddam Hussein colleagues "found no smoking gun between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qaeda," said the study, quoted in US media.

Other reports by the blue-ribbon September 11 commission and the Pentagon's inspector general in 2007 reached the same conclusion but none had access to as much information.

"The Iraqi Perspective Project review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism" and "state terrorism became a routine tool of state power" but "the predominant target of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens," said a summary of the Pentagon study.

Mr Bush, US Vice President Dick Cheney and top aides have insisted there were links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, citing the alleged ties as a rationale for going to war in Iraq.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Mr Bush said in June 2004.

Can we talk about impeachment now? Can we talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity? How about some justice? How about some restitution?? How about some punishment????

Oh no! It's not possible, because we live in a democracy and we have a choice: We can have John McCain and troops in Iraq for another hundred years; or we can have Hillary Clinton and troops in Iraq forever; or we can have Barack Obama and be very very nice to everyone you meet and hope it will all work out fine in the end.

Tom Toles: The Audacity Of Hate

Former donkey vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who now supports Hillary Clinton, has everything all figured out. And she is "absolutely not" about to apologize for saying how it is.

According to the LA Times,

Ferraro, the first woman to be on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate in either party, ignited a controversy when she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance that: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman [of any color] he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

And now she's saying

"My comments have been taken so out of context and been spun by the Obama campaign as racist," she said on ABC's "This Morning America." "That, you know is doing precisely what they don't want done -- it's going to [divide] the Democratic Party and dividing us even more."

Here's some background on Ferraro, from the article in the Daily Breeze:

Born in 1935, Ferraro was a teacher, a lawyer and member of the Queens County District Attorney's office prior to being elected to the U.S. Congress in 1978, representing New York's 9th District. But it was the presidential campaign of 1984 that thrust her into the national spotlight, when Ferraro was chosen to be Walter Mondale's running mate. The campaign lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.

After two failed attempts to gain a seat in the United States Senate, Ferraro was appointed ambassador to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights during the Clinton administration. From 1996 to 1998 she appeared as co-host of the political television show "Crossfire." Currently, Ferraro is a senior managing director of the Global Consulting Group, a corporate public relations firm.

Despite suffering from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer that limits her energy, Ferraro said she is committed to keeping up an active speaking schedule and doing everything she can to help the Clinton campaign.

"I'm on Hillary's finance committee. I've done a fundraiser for her here at my firm. And I went and worked the phone banks before Super Tuesday. I have to tell you, this is a very emotional campaign for me," Ferraro said.

Very emotional indeed.

When the subject turned to Obama, Clinton's rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Ferraro's comments took on a decidedly bitter edge.

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

"I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he's going to be able to put an end to partisanship," Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. "Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship - that's the way our country is."

So there's the context.

Vote for Hillary because she will divide the country.

Not that any of this matters in the least, but I thought you might be interested.

Apologize And Resign: Obama Adviser Pays Heavy Price For Telling The Truth

Samantha Power [photo] lost her cool the other day and uttered a glaringly obvious truth about Hillary Clinton, describing her as a "monster" who will do anything to win.

Astute observers have known this for a long time. But astute observers are not welcome in the Obama camp, where fantasy reigns supreme. Thus,

Mr Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, said the remarks were not in keeping with the senator's views: "Senator Obama decries such characterisations, which have no place in this campaign."

And that's the end of the line for Samantha Power.

Hillary Clinton, as you may realize, has been relentless in lowering the bar that allegedly restrains her and the sleaze-mongers running her campaign.

Thus she finds it perfectly acceptable to say, over and over, in public:

"I know I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House, I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House, and Senator Obama has a speech that he made in 2002."

That's ok, you see. Nothing wrong with that, is there? A donkey candidate endorsing an elephant over a fellow donkey? You see that all the time, don't you?

Well, you'll never see anything like that from the Obama camp. Or almost never.

Why? Obama's campaign -- just like the campaigns he's campaigning against -- is based on a lie. And that means that -- just like those other campaigns -- it must constantly be embellished with more lies. And all the candidate's horses and all the candidate's men (and women) must continue to tell those lies, come what may.

For some candidates, this is a pragmatic approach. They do it because it works. But Obama's chosen a bad lie, and now his lie has him trapped, and he can't abandon it without showing his entire campaign to have been false.

Obama started out selling warm fuzzies, and that means he and his aides have to keep on selling those warm fuzzies -- and never a cold prickly.

Hillary herself can throw cold pricklies at Obama all she likes. But if anybody who so much as volunteers for Obama says anything cold and prickly about Hillary, an apology and a resignation are in order.

As for the substance of the argument, here's James Fallows:

I have reached the point of wanting to scream every time I hear about the primacy of "experience," knowing how skillfully the 46-year old Bill Clinton waved that argument away when it was used against him 16 years ago by a sitting President who simply dwarfed him in high-level experience. But to pose it in a form that is poison for the party should Obama be the nominee??? To produce a clip that the McCain campaign could run unedited every single day of a campaign against Obama? That is something special.

It sure is. Yours to enjoy, right here, at the frozen blog.

Politics: Power and Principle, in That Order!

"I'm a politician," runs the old joke, "and I have principles."

Wait! That's not the punchline!

"If you don't like my principles," the joke continues, "that's OK. I also have other principles."

~~~

"Where do you stand on disenfranchisement?" runs my newer coda.

"Disenfranchisement of whom?" the politician inquires.

"Millions of voters?"

"Well, that all depends on who I'm workin' for!"

~~~

Hope Yen for the AP: Clinton Aide Changes Mich., Fla. Stance

Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign who voted to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates last year, now is arguing against the very penalty he helped pass.

In a conference call Saturday, the longtime Democratic Party member contended the DNC should reconsider its tough sanctions on the two states, which held early contests in violation of party rules. He said millions of voters in Michigan and Florida would be otherwise disenfranchised — before acknowledging moments later that he had favored the sanctions.

Ickes explained that his different position essentially is due to the different hats he wears as both a DNC member and a Clinton adviser in charge of delegate counting. Clinton won the primary vote in Michigan and Florida, and now she wants those votes to count.

"There's been no change," Ickes said. "I wasn't acting as an agent for Mrs. Clinton. We stripped them of all their delegates in order to prevent campaigns to campaign in those states. ...Those were the rules, and we thought we had an obligation to enforce them."

And now we have no obligation to enforce them anymore because we need the votes.

Beautiful!

Stream Of Unconscious

If you turn off your mind, relax and float downstream ... and just read for a while ... the Wall Street Journal can explain how the Democratic primary in South Carolina just might change the face of racial politics in the South forever, since Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are trying such different strategies.

Clinton is using an old-style political machine, trying to scoop as many endorsements as possible from political leaders and media types and preachers; Obama is using a grass-roots campaign to mobilize an entirely different group of people, or so the WSJ wants me to believe.

They may be right. But they lost me when they started talking about poor blacks looking to their preachers for "both spiritual and political guidance". White people don't do that, of course. Not since 2004, anyway.

Meanwhile, in an effort destined to earn even more ... um ... credibility ... said Journal carries a piece from Norman Podhoretz called "Stopping Iran", in which he argues -- quite falsely -- that hardly anybody disputed the 2005 NIE which said Iran was racing to build nuclear weapons.

Podhoretz also asserts that Iran has no need for nuclear power since it has all that oil.

Let's see, now: If I had all that oil, and it was selling for $100 a barrel, with no sign of a price decrease ever ... Would I rather sell it ... or burn it? Hmm, that's a tough one. Podhoretz would burn it, obviously. Apparently he doesn't understand the value of money. So he argues that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear technology.

And it seems to me I've heard that one before. Have you? It's funny how Podhoretz doesn't seem too concerned about the entirely credible allegations made by Sibel Edmonds, who says US government insiders were selling nuclear secrets to the highest bidder on the black market, and much more.

Actually, no one in the US media seems much concerned about that; they're more interested in a hypothetical threat than evidence of any actual crimes, especially with crimes as serious as these -- crimes committed by powerful people who could ruin your reputation!

Naturally, the Democratically controlled Congress can't find time to look into it either, since their feckless leader, Henry Waxman, is so busy chasing down a chump who last played in the big leagues five years ago so he can find out what the chump knows about some illegal injections of steroids.

Illegal injections of cash are far less interesting to our bought-and-sold friends in the political/media circus, who don't give a damn about a million dead Iraqis but can't stop writing about one dead Marine.

So this is post-democratic America in its embryonic form: stupid; distracted; cut adrift from reality; corrupt to the bone; fighting a one-sided war of choice and bragging about it; and torturing people until they get mad at us.

And then, if they get mad enough to want to hurt us, we're morally obliged to torture them again, aren't we?

The Post-Democratic Process: Rupert Murdoch "Knew" NH Exit Polls Were "Wrong" About Hillary!

Gandhi, my Australian friend, wants to know how much Rupert Murdoch knew in advance about Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire surprise:

The editor of Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper, Rebekah Wade, yesterday told a House of Lords communications committee that Rupert Murdoch called her at 1.30am on the day of the New Hampshire primaries to warn her that the exit polls were wrong.

There has been heated speculation in the blogosphere that Hiliary Clinton's win in New Hampshire was rigged. And everybody is well aware that Murdoch favors Clinton in 2008.

So was Murdoch just (a) hanging on the wires, keeping a close eye on results, and checking that his UK morning editions didn't stuff up? Or was (b) he in on the vote rigging and controlling the story he wanted to see in print?

If you answered (c) we'll probably never know, you are probably right.

I was offline at the time and couldn't have rigged it for her even had I wanted to. I didn't participate in the exit poll, either, and I don't know what happened there.

If you know something, please share.

From One Little Hitler To Another

Elvis Costello was in the news the other day.

Yeah, Elvis Costello, whose broken-hearted love song, "Alison", brought him into the London punk limelight and brought us its key phrase, "My Aim Is True" ...

Elvis Costello, whose "Armed Forces" remains one of the most powerful anti-military sets ever recorded ...

that Elvis Costello...

... that Elvis Costello showed woeful ignorance of American politics (or something much more sinister -- I shudder to think!) when he performed at Hillary Clinton's 60th birthday party last weekend.

It nearly broke my cold heart.

Elvis

sang "Happy Birthday Mrs. President" and [...] raucous versions of hit songs including "Pump it Up,"

according to Reuters.

And even if it breaks my heart again to say it, I have something to say to Elvis Costello.

Pump It Down!, Elvis.

Your aim was false that time!

His aim was a lot better when he was writing "Armed Forces", so let's hope it was only a momentary lapse.

This one's called...

Two Little Hitlers

Why are we racing to be so old?
I'm up late pacing the floor, I won't be told
you have your reservations, I'm bought and sold
I'll face the music, I'll face the facts,
even when we walk in polka dots and checkered slacks,
bowing and squawking, running after tidbits,
bobbing and squinting, just like a nitwit,
two little hitlers will fight it out until
one little hitler does the other one's will
I will return, I will not burn
down in the basement

I need my head examined; I need my eyes excited
I'd like to join the party but I was not invited
you make a member of me, I'll be delighted
I wouldn't cry for lost souls; you might drown
dirty words for dirty minds, written in a toilet town
dial me a Valentine, she's a smooth operator
It's all so calculated, she's got a calculator
she's my soft-touch typewriter and I'm the great dictator
two little hitlers will fight it out until
one little hitler does the other one's will
I will return, I will not burn

a simple game of self-respect
you flick a switch and the world goes off
nobody jumps as you expect
I would have thought you would have had enough by now
you call selective dating for some effective mating
I thought I'd let you down, dear, but you were just deflating
I knew right from the start: we'd end up hating
pictures of the merchandise plastered on the wall
we can look so long as we don't have to talk at all
you say you'll never know him; he's not a natural man
he doesn't want your pleasure; he wants as no one can
he wants to know the names of all those he's better than
two little hitlers will fight it out until
one little hitler does the other one's will
I will return, I will not burn
I will return, I will not burn

You can listen to "Two Little Hitlers" here -- and if you ignore the first few seconds and don't look at the artwork, it's not too bad. (BTW this track features some awesome fretless bass from Bruce Thomas -- just about perfect, IMO.)

Even though my heart is broken, I shouldn't be too critical of Elvis.

Billy Crystal performed at Hillary's birthday party, too.

And he's American.

He should know better.

Mike Gravel: Senate Democrats Were Elected To End A War, Not Start A New One

Here's Mike Gravel on the Democratic front-runners, from Huffington Post via Dandelion Salad:

Hillary Clinton was either misinformed or economical with the truth in Wednesday night’s debate when she responded to my challenge to her by saying the Senate’s resolution earlier in the day on Iran was designed to permit economic sanctions against individual members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

She and her staff should know the United Nations Security Council on March 24 already slapped economic sanctions on individual Guard Members. Like the Red Army in China, Iran allows Guard commanders to own and run private companies. Security Council Resolution 1747, which the United States voted for, froze financial assets held outside Iran on the seven military commanders, including General Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr and six other admirals and generals.

I know of no law dictating the State Department must first designate individuals or groups as terrorists before sanctions can be imposed on them. Dozens of countries have been under U.S. unilateral sanctions that are not designated as terrorist. The U.S. first imposed sanctions on Iran in 1979 over the hostages, not terrorism. The only possible purpose of the Senate resolution asking the State Department to designate the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization is to set it up for military attack in George Bush’s war on terror.

As Virginia senator Jim Webb valiantly said in the Senate, the United States has never before designated the military services of a sovereign state a terrorist group. Indeed, though there is international dispute over the definition of terrorism, there is little disagreement on the legal point that terrorists are non-state actors who target civilians, i.e., never members of a government. Governments can be guilty of war crimes, but not terrorism. And the resolution talks about attacks on American troops, not civilians.

The hypocrisy of Hillary and the 75 other senators who called for more unilateral sanctions on Iran, was exposed Monday by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier who said, according to Spiegel Magazine, that American companies are violating existing U.S. sanctions by surreptitiously doing business with Iran through front companies in Dubai.

Joe Lieberman wrote the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq that was passed with Democratic support on October 11, 2002. Lieberman’s new resolution setting up a Bush-Cheney invasion of Iran passed by 76 to 22 with Democratic backing on September 26, 2007. These are two dates that will live in infamy in the 21st century. Led by Senator Clinton, it was another sad day for the Senate and for Senate Democrats, who were elected to the majority in November in order to end a war, not start a new one.

I like Mike.

Bob Koehler: 'Disciples Of Yossarian'

I don't link to Bob Koehler often enough. Bob's an editor for Tribune Media Services in Chicago, and he writes a weekly column as well. I know him (in the virtual way) through the pro-democracy movement, and he's always been really friendly and generous. [As a blogger dealing with a mainstream media person, I can't deny I love that reaction. And yes, I have had other sorts of reactions from other mainstream people, but let's not go there just now.]

I don't know much about Bob's editing because who can tell what he's worked on? His weekly columns are so carefully crafted I can tell he's a stickler for detail. And I love that about him too. Most of all I love his writing. Bob Koehler kicks butt in a direct and heartfelt way every week, and sometimes (like this week) he really gets rolling, and then he's even more fun to read, in my slightly frozen opinion. Anyway...

This week Bob sticks his foot even further than normal up the butt of the monster Ike warned us about, with a piece whose theme features the central character of my favorite novel ever ever ever. So in addition to linking to Bob's site, I feel compelled to repost his column in full, and to scribble a frozen little introduction for it, a reasonable facsimile of which follows:

The summer before my senior year in high school, I got sick and was more or less bedridden for six weeks, time I spent reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the same book. After a month and a half I had read it seven times and I believe it had re-routed the connections in my brain because after my six weeks alone with Catch-22, I never again saw anything in quite the same way, ever ever ever.

If you haven't read Catch-22, you're missing a treat and a half; briefly: it's about a WWII American bomber squadron attacking Italy. The central character, Yossarian [played by Alan Arkin in the Mike Nichols film -- see top photo], hates flying missions but does it anyway (not that he has any choice) and whenever he reaches the number of missions required to complete a tour of duty (therefore supposedly earning a trip home) Colonel Cathcart raises the number of missions! Oops! There's a catch! It's a "Catch-22".

But that's not the only catch.

Doc Daneeka tells Yossarian he can get out of flying if he's crazy. But there's a catch -- another Catch-22: Anybody who doesn't want to fly in a war is obviously not crazy, so Yossarian must be sane and therefore he has to keep flying.

It turns out that "Catch-22" covers an enormous category of insanities. Any rule or regulation that generates contradictions (and contradictions abound in this very carefully crafted work of ironic fiction) is called a "Catch-22".

Not to spoil any endings, but: After reading it seven times in a row, I decided to model my life after Orr, one of Yossarian's buddies, who pledged "to live forever or die in the attempt". Orr used to crash on virtually every mission, and claimed Yossarian was crazy for not wanting to fly with him.

The author of this massively twisted tale of life in the Air Force, Joseph Heller, thus became and still remains my favorite American novelist ever ever ever, with the possible exception of Mark Harris, of whom we spoke quite a while ago here. Most of the people I know who love Catch-22 are lukewarm (at best) about most of Heller's other work, all of which I consider top-notch, so I am in a very small minority to praise Heller so highly. But then again, as I've said, I was sick, and my synapses were rearranged.

On a minor side note, I must say it frosts my already frozen rump to be accused of anti-Semitism, (as all 9/11 truth-seekers are, not to mention all those who are in any way critical of Israel!), when some of the people I love the most (both online and in real life) are Jewish, and especially when I would crawl for miles over broken glass to meet the Jewish-American novelist Joseph Heller -- but most unfortunately Joe Heller passed away in 1999.

Sigh. RIP Joe Heller.

I apologize for the ramble but on the other hand I thought you might be interested.

This week's column from Bob Koehler brought all that back to mind, and much more too.

DISCIPLES OF YOSSARIAN

By Robert C. Koehler | Tribune Media Services

Following on the heels of his flirtation with violent “decisiveness” toward Pakistan, Barack Obama got twisted up even further in the conflicting loyalties that complicate the lives of Democratic presidential candidates and the people who vote for them. Pretty soon the other candidates were in there with him, like cats in the yarn.

After declaring in a speech last week that he might order military strikes on Pakistan border areas to take out suspected al-Qaida camps, he was asked by an AP reporter if he’d use nuclear weapons against al-Qaida in Pakistan.

I pause here a moment to ponder the insanity of this question, or what I might call the “Yossarian moment” it produces, referring, of course, to Joseph Heller’s notorious central character in the World War II novel “Catch-22,” whose everyman sanity stood in constant amazed contrast to the routine insanities of war, like people all the time trying to kill each other. This is a Yossarian moment on steroids, reporter to almighty-deity-in-chief wannabe: When killing thine enemies, sir, would you be inclined to take ’em out 50,000 at a swath? A hundred thousand? A million?

We’ve been thinking the unthinkable for 62 years now, so long that only a dazed disciple of Yossarian, apparently, stumbles today on the idea that “the button” is still — still! — within human reach. Otherwise, our horror over this, or at least the media’s horror, has worn down over the decades to a smooth sense of normalcy.

Yossarian’s ... I mean Obama’s ... response was illuminating — a burst of idealism, uncensored, unsophisticated, uncompromised. One might even suppose he spoke as “himself”: “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” he said.

Then, uh-oh, the Presidential Candidate took over, quickly adding the preposterous caveat: “... involving civilians.”

What? Non-civilian mass slaughter only? On its face, this is arguably the dumbest comment to date of the 2008 presidential campaign. But it’s also much more than that. It’s a sudden, stunning glimpse at the Truth About Presidential Campaigns: that the front-running candidates, the big-time players, the ones who might actually capture their party’s nomination, are only nominally running for president of the United States — president, that is, of that unruly mob of 300 million struggling, unpredictable and possibly peace-craving souls out there, including you and me.

In point of fact, they’re running for president of the Establishment — the power structure, the interlocking status quo of economic and geopolitical interests that knows what it wants and sets the parameters of policy: the war machine, in short; the military-industrial-media complex.

“Let me scratch that,” Obama went on. “There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

Close call! Idealism off the table.

But it didn’t end there. Not quite. The painfully “presidential” Hillary Clinton, who, we can be certain, has been sand-blasted free of every last embarrassing protrusion of “it takes a village” idealism over the last 15 years, was asked to weigh in. “Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons,” she said, laying out the rules of the game.

“Presidents, since the Cold War, have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace,” she went on. “And I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.”

Joe Biden, a second-tier rival for the nomination, had to be more succinct. Channeling the invisible powers a U.S. president must serve, he pronounced Obama “naive,” the ultimate condemnation. Let’s move on, shall we?

Well, no, let’s not. This fleeting moment in the making of a presidential candidate is a sobering reality dunk for every last unreconstructed disciple of Yossarian in the bleachers, or for every disciple of Albert Einstein, who famously observed: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

Those of us who believe in a genuinely peace-rooted, nuke-free, disarmed future — who believe that violence doesn’t work and see this confirmed almost daily in the headlines (190,000 AK-47s and other U.S.-distributed weapons missing in Iraq, many of which are almost certainly being used against us) — must take note. No leading U.S. politician is on our side or ever will be until we succeed at crashing the party.

The paradoxes of today’s violence may be strangling the future as we look on, but they’re so easily ignored by servants of the status quo, who will grab any irrelevant historical precedent (the Cold War is over, Hillary) to justify the continuation of the highly profitable myth that peace must gorge itself on blood.

~~~

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can send him email at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at Common Wonders dot com.

© 2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Thanks again, Bob. You Rock! And thanks to Joe Heller too.

One last tangent: I once met a youngster who told me his first name was Yossarian. I didn't believe it at first but the guy who introduced us knew the family and swore it was true. Yossarian started to explain the origin of his name, and seemed relieved to find out no extended dissertation was necessary. He said, "I'm named after a character from a book." I said, "Of course!" He said, "Catch-22 is my dad's favorite book." I said, "No kidding!" And that was the end of that.

Yossarian turned out to be a very impressive 14-year-old. Sharp, quick, funny, very well-informed, the works. I haven't seen or heard of him in a long time, and I have no idea how he's doing but I certainly wish him well.

Please forgive me for a moment...

Hey Yossarian: if you read this, send me some email, will you?

Edwards, Hillary Looking For 'A More Serious Debate' ... Without The Anti-War, Pro-Impeachment Gadflies

Steve Huntley in the Chicago Sun-Times:

[John] Edwards and [Hillary] Clinton [...] at Thursday's NAACP Presidential Forum in Detroit [...] didn't know their post-debate conversation was being picked up by Fox News microphones.

Edwards walked up to Clinton at her podium and said, "We should think about at some point ... maybe some time in the fall, we'll try to have a more serious debate with a smaller group of people."

Clearly agreeing, Clinton said, "We've got to cut the numbers of these, because they are just being trivialized."

"And they're not serious," Edwards answered. "They're not serious."

The Fox video shows Edwards walking away and Clinton following and saying, "I think there was an effort by our campaign to do that, but it somehow got detoured. We've gotta get back to it."

Then in a moment of high comedy, one of the targets of their plot, Kucinich, walks by and Clinton shakes his hand. The Ohio congressman is still in the picture frame as Clinton tells Edwards, "Our guys should talk."

Beautiful! And even

after learning that the conversation had been caught on an open microphone, Edwards' office said he was not trying to limit who participates in the forums. Nonsense. That was exactly what he was trying to do ...

Incredible! Even after being caught on network television saying one thing, they come out with a new spin: He wasn't trying to do what he was obviously trying to do.

Steve Huntley thinks it's a brilliant idea:

Look, it was good to have all the contenders on stage in the first couple of debates. But now we've seen Gravel whack Clinton over her husband's support of free trade and we've heard a couple of GOP wannabes explain why the theory of evolution isn't real.

They've had their time in the spotlight, and these forums need to start focusing on the policies and views of the candidates who actually have a shot at winning.

LV has much more, including the video, at his blog.

Support For Obama Eroding Fast At The Checkout Counter

The folks at CafePress dot com have been learning to read our future in the sales of bumper stickers and the like:

Since November of 2004, we have been tracking the strength of the different potential Democratic nominees for President in 2008 through a simple alternative measure: the number of bumper stickers, campaign buttons, posters and t-shirts that we sell in support for each of the Democratic contenders in the 2008 race. Instead of the weak and changeable indicator of an opinion given over the telephone to a stranger, our own system for tracking candidates measures the kind of support that counts - whether Americans are willing to spend money to show their support for a particular candidate in a public way. That kind of strong commitment turns into donations, and later turns into votes.

And they have noticed something mighty peculiar going on:

Obama Erodes in the Face of the Other

The following is the percent share of sales of our Election 2008 gear in the past week, for each candidate who garnered at least a 1% share of sales:

Barack Obama: 30.2% (last week: 46.8%)
Hillary Clinton: 14.2% (last week: 13.6%)
Al Gore: 13.2% (last week: 10.4%)
Bill Richardson: 14.5% (last week: 6.8%)
Mike Gravel: 9.0% (last week: 2.7%)
John Edwards: 7.7% (last week: 2.9%)
Dennis Kucinich: 6.8% (last week: 4.1%)
Joseph Biden: 1.9% (last week: 8.7%)
Others: 2.5%

This chart looks extremely volatile! Obama led Hillary by 33% last week, and now his lead is only half that. Support for Joe Biden has dissolved, support for Bill Richardson and John Edwards has more than doubled, and -- get this! -- support for somebody else has more than tripled, compared to the previous week.

Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel has [...] eclipsed media-designated “major candidate” John Edwards and “major candidate” Joseph Biden. Gravel has more experience in government than John Edwards, and no smaller amount of tact than Joseph Biden. Will the Gravel surge continue? Is Mike Gravel a new significant protest candidate? I don’t know.

Just wait till the former Senator asks Hillary who she wants to nuke! Then you'll know...

Is that great? It’s a change, that’s for sure.

It certainly is. And given where we are and what direction we're going, amolst any change at all would be an improvement.

Even better, we are part of it. Or at least we can be if we want to.

Mike Gravel For President!

Bring Back Freedom Fries: France Rejoins The Axis Of Evil

"Results" from the French presidential "election" are in and once again the Fascist takeover of Paris has been bloodless.

ABC News got the headline just about right with "Pro-U.S. Candidate Wins French Presidency", but they fell into the mud with the sub-head: "Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy Triumphs over Socialist Challenger" Note the tone of the opening few paragraphs:

Tonight Nicolas Sarkozy's "motorcade" looked more pop star than presidential. With the results just in announcing him the winner of the France's toughly-contested run-off for president, Sarkozy took a victory lap around Paris. The paparazzi did their best to keep up.

Sarkozy's route took him past the Arc de Triomphe and up the Champs-Elysees, right past the Elysee Palace, France's White House, where he will take up residence in 10 days time. All the while, scooters and motorcycles gave chase carrying France's famously aggressive photographers.

Without saying anything blatantly rude, David Wright manages to evoke Pythonesque revulsion: So the victors celebrated like cheese-eating pig-dogs? What else did we expect? We wave our private parts in their general direction!

But it comes as no surprise that Wright veers off in a different direction, landing in the mud again, stuck singing the lines we've come to expect of our so-called "mainstream" media.

Sarkozy's commanding victory is a strong mandate for change. The central theme of his campaign was "la rupture" -- a clean break with the past.

He is vowing to shake things up here.

Aha! So this is the new standard, apparently.

If you're a imperialist warmonger with globalist or tyrannical tendencies, the so-called news media are happy to call you a conservative, in which case 51% is considered a solid victory. And 53% is a landslide -- a solid mandate for radical change, or, if the incumbent wins, an "accountability moment" bestowing "political capital" on the winner.

It doesn't matter if the "election" is completely unverifiable, run on hackable machines which favor one candidate over the other, and it doesn't matter if the "final result" cannot be confirmed in any way. The reported numbers are sufficient, and the mandate for radical change is empowered, and that's the way it is, in bushzarro world, where people shall not have the power to influence their very own futures, especially if they happen to live in a democracy.

And that's why it was ok that the media coverage of the campaign was one-sidedly ruthless, with the so-called news media sharing every trivial detail of Ségolène Royal's allegedly private life, while refusing to report anything about Sarkozy's personal life, which appears to be in shambles!

If all this reminds you of John Kerry, the supposedly opposition candidate who tried to outflank Bush on the right[!] while being ripped mercilessly for his service service in combat, while W got a free pass after apparently going AWOL from the National Guard, then you may understand French better than you think.

And as you've probably guessed by now, this Sarkozy fellow is dangerous:

Sarkozy has dreamt his whole life of this moment. A former interior minister under French President Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy has long held ambitions to lead his country. He may be short in stature -- about the size of Napoleon Bonaparte -- but he is known here as a tough leader, a force to be reckoned with.

And guess what? His opponent was dangerous too, what we might call a "right-of-center socialist" -- something like Hillary Clinton with good hair, if you get my drift. Roundly supported by people whose interests she apparently has no interest in serving, purportedly reviled by those who share her beliefs to a remarkable and frightening extent, and yada yada...

So for all intents and purposes, even though this is a very damaging loss, and even though it reeks of a fish-market, the general drift of France toward tyranny was established long before the French "electoral process" produced the final pair of presidential "candidates".

Very sad, but apparently quite true, my friends.

And the average French voters have no idea what's hit them.

Most of them probably don't even know that they've been hit!

There's No Left Left!

It's funny how one thing can lead to another, and how sometimes you don't get what you need -- until you need it!

In the comment thread of yesterday's post about Robert Kagan, we sort of accidentally got talking about Glenn Greenwald, and that started me thinking (again) about Left and Right (and a few other things too), and I finally found a way to express a few thoughts which have been in the back of my mind for a long, long time, hoping for an opportunity to get out. In light of this long-awaited breakthrough, I hope you'll forgive me if I recycle some of what I wrote yesterday.

~~~

I think we make a big mistake when we try to model politics as a one-dimensional continuum. A more realistic model might be n-dimensional, where n is the number of issues on the table.

But that still wouldn't account for the fact that there are usually more than two ways to lay out the options for each issue. In other words, even single-issue politics doesn't usually fit on a one-dimensional continuum.

Start dealing with multiple issues simultaneously and it gets messy fast, even with a relatively small group of people. Expand it to include hundreds of millions of people and the paradigm doesn't fit in the slightest.

Therefore, classifying everything in terms of Left and Right doesn't add clarity to the discussion -- in fact, by trying to collapse the infinite variety of humanity into a single dimension, it destroys clarity. But that's how most people "understand" politics.

In the USA, for reasons which go way back in the national history, the entire Left-Right continnum has been dragged so far to the Right that now there's no Left left.

The so-called "centrist" Democrats are, by any reasonable standard, very far-Right, and most of the so-called "liberal" Democrats are at best moderately-Right.

What used to be called the Center, still passes for Center in most European countries, and would be considered slightly Right of Center in most of Latin America, is not even part of the continuum anymore.

But hardly anybody talks about this. And when they do, they catch a lot of flak. So apparently we weren't supposed to notice.

~~~

Stranglely (or maybe not!), while I was struggling to find those words, Ohmy News of Korea was publishing an opinion piece in which Lee Roberts absolutely nails it:

The United States, which proclaims itself a democracy, is the only developed country on the planet with a political spectrum that lies entirely right of center. There is no left wing, or even centrist position in the political public domain. Even the first-ever "socialist" Senator, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is no more than a moderate liberal when his political skin is scratched. The bulk of the Democratic Party is equivalent to the Christian Democrat movement in European terms, and would find themselves on the right wing of the Tory party in the United Kingdom (or the right wing of Blair's New Labor, which now dominates the right axis of Britain's political spectrum). Bill Clinton would not have nurtured a friendship with a genuine representative of labor, and found in Blair a kindred spirit, someone who transferred his allegiance without a blink to Bush. He was able to do so because there are very few fundamental disagreements between America's two parties.

Neither party is willing to cut back on corporate excesses; neither party will confront the insurance industry and give America a national health system; neither party disagrees with the aims of hegemony in the Middle East; both oppose progressive movements in Latin America and elsewhere; both believe deeply in American empire and domination; both are dedicated to the continued growth in America's nuclear arsenal. The Democrats are no more outraged [than the Republicans] by the slaughter of more than half a million innocent civilians in Iraq, or the thousands in Lebanon. Both parties are totally committed to the aims and goals of Israel and opposed to any concessions to the Palestinians. As I write, it has been announced that Pelosi and her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid, will make a bipartisan display of unity in support of Israel, by appearing alongside Dick Cheney at the March meeting of the ultra-reactionary American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC has dominated American foreign policy for decades, strengthened since 2000 by the Project for a New American Century, the Bush shadow cabinet, which drew up the blueprints for American empire and the conquest of Iraq and Iran.

None of the Democratic candidates for the presidency, with one exception, is committed to any fundamental change. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have only a whisper of difference between them and both are dedicated to the maintenance of corporate America. The exception is Dennis Kucinich, who having no other serious political party with which to affiliate continues with a tiny band of centrists, to push the Democrats into genuine opposition, to no avail.

There's a lot more, and it's very good. And Lee Roberts catches some flak, too, in the comments thread, mostly (ok -- all!) from people who (I have to say it) seem so out of touch with reality that they cannot even imagine that what they've just read might possibly be true.

It is indeed a very sad situation. But it is not without its opportunities.

In "Debating a Neocon", Stan Goff, describing his debate (shortly after the 2004 "election") with Patrick Clawson, wrote:

In every case, I agreed with him that Democrats wanted to attack Iraq, too, and that they had attacked it as often as possible throughout the eight-year administration of Bill Clinton­ who by the way had killed more Iraqis than George W. Bush. I also pointed out that Democrats, not Republicans, were the most vocal in calling for a return of military conscription, and that Kerry not only said he wouldn't withdraw from Iraq, but that he would expand the troop numbers making him the Lyndon Baines Johnson of Southwest Asia. Not only that but any smart Democrat right now would be whooping for joy that they won't get the next four years [2004-2008] hung around their necks, because the forces in motion­ including maybe stagflation and the deepening defeat in Iraq are bigger than either party of the rich.
...

One might think the audience was put off by all this; that the conservatives were offended when I called George W. Bush "Dick Cheney's meat puppet," or worse, that those who had desperately voted Kerry would be offended by my speaking the unspeakable about him being another bourgeois war-candidate.

Not so. People on both sides were anxious to talk after the debate, asking for references and links to some of the information, seeming suddenly stimulated to ask new questions in the face of information to which many had obviously never been exposed. They weren't angry. They seemed almost relieved, like they'd been locked in and suddenly found a key.

I could be wrong -- I've been wrong once before! -- but I think the same is true today, only more so.

We have all sorts of keys, but they won't do us much good unless we share them.

Tarpley: Beware The Ides Of March -- Mobilize Now!!

Stop Sectarian Squabbles
Stop Moping
Time To Mobilize Against World War III

by Webster Tarpley, author of "911 Synthetic Terror"

[from Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth; edited slightly for clarity, emphasis added]

We are very close to a nuclear attack on Iran, meaning a Middle East regional war and a slide towards thermonuclear World War III. Beware the Ides of March, and the New Moon a few days later, the favorite time for Anglo-American sneak attacks. Stop wasting your time with sectarianism - it gets you nowhere. Compared to the world catastrophe now in sight, these petty quarrels sink into microscopic significance.

Putin's Munich Wehrkunde speech is a clear warning that we are on the brink of general war - worse than the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. This is Putin's War Warning.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 1 explicitly warns that terrorist actions inside the US are being prepared which will be blamed on Iran -- for use as pretexts to attack Iran within the framework of a multi-step neocon war scenario. (Zbig wants WWIII via an attack on Moscow, not Teheran -- that is his objection.) This means a new 9/11 with WMD: it will be MIHOP, state-sponsored, false flag, synthetic terrorism, for those who still do not get that crucial point.

We urgently require united front action by the 9/11 truth movement to accomplish the following:

1. Take back the airwaves. Call in to C-SPAN, Larry King, Limbaugh, Ed Shultz, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc. to cite Zbig's warning that the Cheneyacs are preparing a new 9/11 war provocation. Inoculate people not be stampeded. Ridicule the 9/11 myth being conjured up once again by Republicans like Boehner today in the House.

2. Form 9/11 truth squads and confront the 25+ declared presidential candidates on this same issue. Top priorities: Hillary the hypocrite warmonger, McCain the butcher, and Mr. 9/11, Giuliani. Challenge them to condemn new 9/11, attack on Iran, film them when they refuse to. Easiest to do in New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina, but possible and necessary everywhere. Two people ask questions, a third runs the camcorder or cell phone camera. Send results to youtube, 911blogger, 911truthsquads.com. Don't let them dodge the life and death questions. We are the new alternative media, as Time mag told us.

3. Start a weekly demo to protest the new 9/11 fakery and the wider war with Iran and Syria. Start now with whatever you have. Then build it from week to week. Go for visibility. Invite the peace movement and all persons of good will to attend. Get the media. A series like this in Leipzig, Germany in 1988-89 went from 10 people to 250,000 people and what amounted to a national general strike, bringing down the East German communist regime. Maybe it is our turn to get lucky too.

4. The neocons have wars plans; we need war plans of our own. Every group in every city needs to have a pre-arranged meeting point for a protest demo when the false flag provocation goes off, and then on the first day that war starts. In Washington, we all know that if the new 9/11 goes off and/or the bombs begin to fall, we go to Lafayette Park at the White House and say no to the new neocon insanity. Get pictures of protestors saying no to national suicide on the evening news, to counterbalance the hysteria. Make sure a sympathetic antiwar local reporter is briefed and won over in advance. In the first hours, there will be a titanic struggle to control and manipulate the popular mind. Get ready to act effectively at the drop of a hat.

For the medium and longer term: Get ready to turn the imperialist world war into a new era of human progress.

WGT

Please share this message as widely as possible.

Stop Cheney's Nuclear Sneak Attack On Iran!

More good stuff from Webster Tarpley via Reprehensor at 911 Blogger dot Com:

The Cheney faction is steadily moving towards a nuclear sneak attack on Iran. All military assets necessary for this catastrophic war crime will shortly be in place, and all signs point towards an attack in February or March – in particular, beware the Ides of March.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former NSC Director in the Carter administration, delivered this warning to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 1:

“If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”

This means that Cheney’s controllers are preparing a new, false flag, state sponsored synthetic terrorist provocation using WMD or new Gulf of Tonkin fraud to use as a pretext for their aggression against Iran.

It will likely be a new 9/11, in just the same way that the original 9/11 was a deliberate provocation by the US defense establishment and rogue intelligence forces designed to unleash the war of civilizations – including Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and other states. It is high time to understand this reality.

Brzezinski, for his own reasons, has issued an extraordinary high-level warning of the ongoing treason of the invisible government – which must be probed by Congress.

Cheney’s nuclear aggression will entail Iranian retaliation which will spell the end of the modern world as we have known it. The situation of the US forces in Iraq will become critical – they may well face encirclement and decimation – a Stalingrad on the Tigris.

Russian President Putin on Feb. 10 delivered a dramatic warning in Munich, Germany that the neocon fascist madmen running the US government have brought World War III clearly into view. Because of Bush’s illegal drive for a unipolar world, the present situation is more dangerous than it was at any point during the Cold War, Putin warned.

Stop Bush’s Iran war! Come to Lafayette Park Saturdays 1 PM starting Feb. 17.

Reprehensor adds:

(Tarpley issued this call to action today, informed by Brzezinski's warning to the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee on February 1st. Brzezinski's warning follows Congressman Ron Paul's warning on January 11 that "a contrived Gulf of Tonkin type incident may well occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran." Now, even Bush's former National Security Council Director for Iranian and Persian Gulf Affairs from 2001 to 2004, Hillary Mann, has joined the pretext-warning club, saying that "they're trying to push a provocative accidental conflict. They're pushing a series of increasing provocations against the Iranians in, I think, anticipation that Iran will eventually retaliate".)

STOP CHENEY’S NUCLEAR SNEAK ATTACK ON IRAN
STOP CHENEY’S NEW 9/11 WAR PROVOCATION

EMERGENCY ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE BETWEEN LAFAYETTE PARK AND THE WHITE HOUSE
SATURDAYS 1 PM

DON’T NUKE IRAN FOR CHENEY’S NEW 9/11
For more information, go to http://dc911truth.org

James Adomian's State of the Union Address for 2007

James Adomian is back with his fantastic Bush impression and another pre-emptive satirical strike on this year's State of the Union address. And the Democratic response at the end is hilarious!

Written by James Adomian
Directed by David Guy Levy

George W. Bush -- James Adomian
Dick Cheney -- David Hoffman
Nancy Pelosi -- Patty Wortham
Hillary Clinton -- Susan Deming
Barack Obama -- Wyatt Cenac

... a fabulous treat for those who haven't already seen this at Larisa's place ...