Politics 101: Know the Difference between WE and THEY

WE didn't do this. THEY did this.

Apologies for writing something personal, but this is a special anniversary for me.

I was born in 1957, so I was six years old when President Kennedy was assassinated. At the time, I didn't even  know what the word "assassinated" meant, much less understand what it meant that this particular President had been assassinated. But I saw how the news affected my parents, and all the other adults, and I realized I needed to start paying attention to the news -- and especially to politics, which previously had seemed boring. 

In 1968, when Senator Kennedy was assassinated, I was only eleven, but I had been paying close attention for five years. I knew what "assassinated" meant, and I knew what it meant that this particular Senator had been assassinated. To the country, and to the world, it meant that we were destined for a long and horrible war. For me personally, it meant if I didn't get out of the United States in the next seven years, my life would be in danger. 

9/11 @ 20: It Could Have Been So Much Worse!

Fortunately, the collapse of the twin towers
was "an ordinary thing to have happened".
If it were unusual for skyscrapers to
collapse in this way, some troubling
questions might have been raised.

For those who were alive on September 11th, 2001, the events of the day seemed horrible beyond measure. But with the sober perspective that comes from two decades of hindsight, we're bound to admit that things could have turned out much worse, in countless ways.

For instance, even though only two of the seven buildings that made up the World Trade Center complex were hit by airplanes, all seven suffered heavily. Early media attention focused on the "collapse" of Buildings 1 and 2. And later we learned that Building 7 had also "collapsed". But until recently, only a few dedicated researchers were aware that Buildings 3, 4, 5, and 6 were also destroyed on the same day. Nowadays, thanks to the exceedingly free flow of information that we currently enjoy, most people know all about this.

And in light of these facts, we must accept an unpleasant truth: Rogue airliners can do infinitely more damage than we previously thought. To be honest, we ought to be grateful that the impacts of those two airplanes hitting those two buildings didn't destroy all of Wall Street, or most of Manhattan, or half of New York State, or a significant portion of the Eastern Seaboard. We're lucky that none of these things happened, because clearly if they had, we would be in much worse shape than we are now.

Wikileaks: US Ambdassador Called Pakistani Military Instructors "Naive" And "Biased"

Anne Patterson, former US Ambassador to Pakistan

The following is old news at best, possibly fictional, and from sources of dubious, if any, integrity. But it is still of some interest to a cold blogger who begs your forebearance as we explore...  

The Pakistani daily Dawn says that according to Wikileaks, in 2008, Anne Patterson, who was then US Ambassador to Pakistan, wrote a memo in which she described instructors at Pakistan's National Defence University (NDU) as "naive" about and "biased" against the USA.

Dawn says Ambassador Patterson attributed this "bias" to the "distance" that had crept in between Pakistani and US military officers following "the discontinuation of the IMET (International Military Education and Training) programmes" during the years when Pakistan was under sanctions because of having developed nuclear weapons.

Dawn quotes the memo which quotes a US army officer, Col. Michael Schleicher, who attended a course at NDU, and who, according to the cable, told Ambassador Patterson:

"One guest lecturer – who is a Pakistani one-star general – claimed the US National Security Agency actively trains correspondents for media organisations. Others thought the CIA was in charge of US media (and that MI-5 was in charge of the BBC)."

And not only that, but:

Students in the junior course ... shared "many of the biases prevalent in the Muslim world, including a belief the US invaded Iraq for its oil and that 9/11 was a staged 'Jewish conspiracy,'"

You can see the bias right away, can't you? Everybody who has done honest research has found that the staged conspiracy of 9/11 was not entirely "Jewish." It contained "Christian" elements as well. And so, of course, does the continuing torrent of nonsense about it.

The problem, according to Dawn, according to Wikileaks, according to Ambassador Patterson, was that the Pakistani military had been been insufficiently propagandized, although she would never think to express herself in such terms. But clearly this is her understanding, and clearly this is why she wrote:

"We need, in particular, to target the 'lost generation' of Pakistan military who missed IMET opportunities..."

The word 'target' is particularly apt in this context.

Ambassador Patterson also wrote, according to Wikileaks:

"Given the bias of the instructors, we also believe it would be beneficial to initiate an exchange program for instructors..."

An exchange program would double the propaganda benefit, of course, because the Pakistani instructors would be whisked off to be indoctrinated in the US, leaving their students to be indoctrinated by visiting Americans.

It goes without saying that if and when all this indoctrination came to pass, the Pakistani military would be even more naive with respect to the United States, and even more biased -- but for rather than against, which after all is the only thing that matters to the masters of the American Empire.

And then, diplomatic tensions would be eased, because future ambassadors would write cables in which Pakistani military officers were all well-informed about American actions and motives, and loyal and keen supporters of the American Imperial Project as well.

The properly trained Pakistanis would have been instructed never to admit that the NSA would be negligent if it failed to actively train correspondents for media organisations; that the CIA would be aghast if it lost charge of the US media; that the Bush-Cheney administration would have lost the support of its "base" had it failed to invade Iraq for its oil; and that MI5 would go ballistic if the BBC ever admitted the obvious truths about these things, or explained to its viewers exactly why Britain came along for the ride.

And then, if the IMET programmes could continue for long enough, eventually nobody in the Pakistani military would ever again be "naive" or "biased" enough to give voice to any of this, or any of the other truths about America which are, shall we say, politically inconvenient to acknowledge.

This is what we would call "winning hearts and minds." And it's a shame that the US neglected to keep the propaganda machine running on the Pakistani military during the sanctions, because had it done so, hoaxes such as the big one nine and a half years ago, and the almost-as-big one earlier this month, would have been a good deal easier to sell.

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'Genetic Damage' In Fallujah: The BBC Reports

Before

The BBC has posted a video report from veteran war reporter John Simpson, concerning children growing up in Fallujah and the genetic damage inflicted on them by the depleted uranium ammunition so generously expended in defense of their freedom and democracy (and to make them an ally!) by the most righteous of all possible superpowers.

True to form, the BBC runs the phrase 'genetic damage' in quotes, as if it weren't real but only alleged -- and without doubt the allegations would have been made by conspiracy theorists whose twisted minds have been warped against BBC and its excellent, impartial coverage, ever since 9/11.

People who cannot handle reality were stunned when the BBC scooped the world's media in reporting the destruction of World Trade Center's Building 7, (WTC-7), a 47-story skyscraper many people still haven't heard of, which suddenly turned to dust and broken twisted steel on the afternoon on September 11, 2001.

American media -- and the 9/11 commission -- have been criticized for not reporting the amazing disintegration of this building at all. But the BBC reported the "collapse" before it happened. Some people have gone to excessive lengths to try to make something incriminating out of this excellent reportage.

During

For its part, the BBC says it wasn't part of any conspiracy, just a fluke. So it's probably also a fluke that the video either sits and spins, or says

"This content doesn't seem to be working. Try again later".

Well, of course.

The BBC web page says:

Cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality are all increasing in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, which saw fierce fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents, a new survey says.

Still one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, doctors have been reporting a large number of birth defects since the 2004 offensive.

John Simpson reports.

But that cold snippet of text was all I have been able to get [until later: see the update below].

After

The page was listed as "2nd most watched" when I first loaded it, but that's changed too, and rightly so, since a

20ft oak sculpture in the heart of Dartmoor national park is due to be pulled down despite a Facebook campaign to save the giant sculpture of a chair.

Thus the truth about horrible crimes burns itself into the consciousness of the multitudes.

Or, as Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Iraq is a democracy and an ally instead of an enemy of America.

It's remarkable the extent to which our bountiful leaders will go to make friends and instill democracy, is it not?

After

According to the Rational Optimist:

America believes ... that it would be a desirable thing if the world did become more democratic, and backward nations did become more like us. We regard that as our own national interest, and in the interests of those other nations as well. As John F. Kennedy said, “We seek not the worldwide victory of one nation or system, but a worldwide victory of men.” [And women.] And, with admittedly many zigs and zags, that is the essence of American foreign policy.

I can't tell you how relieved I am to have somebody so rational and so optimistic telling us what America believes, and what is the essence of American foreign policy.

After

When American cities look like this, we will know we have arrived -- the backward nations of the world will finally be just like us, and all mankind will enjoy the blessings of a democratic Paradise on Earth.

After

But in the meantime, the video is now available, and some of the details and images are indeed chilling.

It was only possible [for BBC reporters] to stay [in Fallujah] a few hours, but in that time we found large numbers of children with serious birth defects.

Some had six or more fingers on each hand. Many had tumors which affected their spines. There was plenty of evidence of brain damage. Some of the cases were too dreadful for us to show.

BBC decides what's fit to show, and what's too dreadful. Thus the truth about horrible crimes burns itself into the consciousness of the multitudes.

Nonetheless, BBC reports, the spectrum of genetic damage in Fallujah is similar to what was found in Hiroshima, but much, much worse.

This could be something serious. But then again, as the BBC report notes:

American legislation makes it extremely difficult for foreigners to sue the US government over acts of war.

So ... perhaps I'm too realistic ... but it's not possible for me to imagine all the uproar over this most recent revelation of state-sponsored made-in-America horror lasting more than about 15 or 20 minutes.

Currently top of the BBC most watched list: Archeologists unearth Neolithic henge at Stonehenge!

Do you see what I mean?

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Truth Is Fiction: Peace Prize Fits Obama Like A Velvet Glove

War Is Peace in Orwell's 1984, and the same is true here and now.

In addition, Truth Is Fiction, as demonstrated in Barack Obama's selection as Nobel Peace Prize winner, and as elucidated in the New York Times, which says: "Surprise Nobel for Obama Stirs Praise and Doubts"

“The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world,” the Nobel committee chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland, said in Oslo after the announcement. “And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

Clearly this was one of those unaccountable moments when the list of possible answers was so long that the list itself seemed to disappear. But that's not the first time this has happened to the Nobel committee.

This is the same "Peace Prize", we may remember, that was given to Henry Kissinger, who at the time, as Richard Nixon's Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, was directing a massive American bombing campaign against Southeast Asia, part of a "war effort" that killed at least two million people and led directly to the deaths of at least two million more, not to mention damage to the survivors and their countries. Southeast Asia was only one of Kissinger's killing fields. And Kissinger is only one of the war criminals who have won this "Peace Prize".

With his mythical "withdrawal" from the war crimes in Iraq, his aggressive escalation of the war crimes in Afghanistan, his instigation of more war crimes in Pakistan, and his continuation of the war crimes in Somalia, Barack Obama has clearly "done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world" -- certainly much more than anyone on a list so long it seems to disappear.

Similarly, the list of Obama's efforts in support of the atrocities begun under the George W. Bush administration is a long one. And it must have disappeared as well, since nothing of it is ever mentioned in mainstream news reports.

By going to court to keep evidence of torture secret, for example, Barack Obama has inscribed his own name on the list of American war crime enablers -- a list so long no one can find it anywhere. And this list dates back much further than the Bush/Cheney years, back to a history that seems too awful to be countenanced, most of which has apparently evaporated.

But it's not just about Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. The list of countries not currently occupied but still under threat of American force is a long one, and some of the names on it are certainly victims of American interference: Iran, for example, Venezuela, Honduras, Russia, China... The list goes on and on but -- curiously -- it also seems to be invisible whenever the official historians are around.

War Is Peace. Truth Is Fiction. And the fabric of reality is threadbare. Before it vanishes entirely, let us make a few hasty notes:

As the tale of WMD in Iraq clearly demonstrates, the USA is currently engaged in a state-sponsored program of mass murder for fun and profit. One might say the USA is a state-sponsored program of mass murder for fun and profit. Enormous fun for the rubes. Enormous profit for those who pull the strings. Enormous pain and suffering, death and destruction for the rest -- in numbers so large they can't even be seen.

To become a "leader" of the USA, one must excel at the game of politics. Politics in general is the pursuit of power -- normally above all else, inevitably to the exclusion of all else. And politics in the USA is primarily -- or entirely -- the pursuit of power over a state-sponsored program of mass murder for fun and profit.

As the USA is still nominally a democracy, American politics necessarily involves doing one thing while saying another -- constantly, eternally, as a matter of course. And, for structural coherency if nothing else, the pinnacle of this murderous and deceptive power structure must house the mother of all murderous lies. Thus, a Peace Prize for a War Criminal is not only warranted and predictable, but altogether fitting and proper. It's amazing that American presidents don't get Nobel Peace Prizes every year.

None of this depends on Barack Obama personally, or any aspect of his background, or any member or members of his staff. The same could be said of any President in your lifetime who wasn't assassinated in office -- and anyone else who has risen to the top of the system. Indeed, the same could be said of the system itself. And the system is -- and was designed primarily to be -- self-perpetuating.

We appear to be headed for more of the same unless and until we can change the system. And we appear to have no way to change it.

To wit: What are our resources? What are our obstacles? Who are our friends? Who are our enemies?

Speaking of enemies -- enemies of peace, enemies of truth, enemies of humanity -- it is quite clear, is it not, that the Nobel committee is one of them. And so is the New York Times. And so is the president of the United States.

But then, how much of this is news?

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Home Improvement, Post-9/11; Part I: Wood Chips Tell A Sad Story

I've just finished helping a friend set up some new flower beds and trim them with a border of wood chips.

It's a good way to mulch, with recycled organic matter blotting out weeds on the way to becoming plant food.

We used 12 cubic yards of chips. That's not a lot by industrial standards, but it took us two days to put those chips where we wanted them.

And while we were doing that, I was playing around with a few numbers...

There are 3 feet in a yard and therefore there are 3x3x3 = 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard. We moved 12 cubic yards or 12x27 = 324 cubic feet of wood chips.

That's enough to cover a path 3 feet wide, 4 inches thick, and 324 feet long.

On a football field, such a path would extend from one end zone to the other.

There are 12 inches in a foot and therefore there are 12x12x12 = 1728 cubic inches in a cubic foot.

We moved 324 cubic feet or 324x1728 = 559,872 cubic inches of wood chips.

That's about half a million cubic inches of chips.

Picture a cubic inch: it's about the size of a golf ball. You can hold it between your thumb and forefinger. You can put it in your shirt pocket.

Remember that cubic inch; hold on to that image. Now let's get hypothetical...

If each cubic inch of wood chips were worth two dollars, the chips on that path -- three feet wide, four inches thick, from one end zone to the other -- would be worth about a million dollars. Even with inflation, a million is still a very large number.

If each cubic inch of wood chips were worth a million dollars, the chips on that path would be worth about $500 billion, which is roughly the size of the Pentagon's annual operating budget, not including black-budget programs or additional appropriations for actual wars, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Think of this: A million dollars per cubic inch. Three feet wide; four inches thick. One end zone to the other. Year after year after year. And that's just for standard operations.

Clandestine acts of terrorism and overt wars of aggression cost extra, of course.

How much extra? Look at it this way: If each cubic inch of wood chips were worth two hundred thousand dollars, the chips on that path would be worth about $100 billion, roughly as much as congress just approved to keep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan going until the end of September!

And that's just the cost to America. It's a pittance compared to the cost borne by the rest of the world.

And how much is that? Consider Iraq:

If each cubic inch of wood chips represented three people killed, at least six others injured, and nine more refugees, the chips on that path -- four inches thick, three feet wide, from one end zone to the other -- would show just some of the damage we have done to Iraq.

The people of Iraq, if you recall, never attacked us, never intended to attack us, and never could have done us any damage even if they had wanted to. That didn't matter to the president who started the war, it doesn't matter to the president who is continuing it, and it doesn't matter to the Americans who support it.

We are talking about mass murder of innocent people as a matter of state policy. And there's no reason for it, none at all ... except:

If each cubic inch of wood chips were two million barrels of oil...

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please help to put this article on Scoop's front page!

Too Obvious To Mention: Obama-Era Lies Protect Bush-Era Crimes

Our new transformative president Obama's decision to fight a court order requiring the release of photos depicting the well-documented abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib -- while entirely in character for this transformative new administration -- is being widely described as shameful enough on its own, let alone for a president who portrayed himself as a champion of transparency and accountability in government.

But then again Obama was once a candidate and now he's a president. And when he was a candidate, certain people (like his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright) were portrayed as troublemakers and cast out of the national scene because they dared to point out that Obama was a politician!

Seriously! The campaign pretended the candidate was not a politician. How transparently false is that? Fortunately for Obama, he had to run against a man who was obviously certifiably insane, and a woman who was obviously even crazier. In that respect Obama's victory in the November election was more inevitable than remarkable. So what if he's part black? A green and blue guy could have won that election, if he was a half-decent politician.

And yet somehow it comes as a big surprise that the tales told by a politician when he was a candidate turn out to be false once he gets elected. Thus people are shocked and even mildly disappointed when their man, now in office, turns out to be somewhat different than he was portrayed during the campaign. When will we ever learn? I'll rephrase that: Will we ever learn?

Obama wants to suppress the photos even though their release is required by law, under the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA]. In his defense of his new position, Obama echoes Pentagon claims that the release of the photos would inflame our enemies and endanger our troops. And our old friends, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, have gone so far as to craft legislation that specifically exempts from FOIA any photographs

taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States ...

if the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, determines that the disclosure of that photograph would endanger (A) citizens of the United States; or (B) members of the Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.

Glenn Greenwald has been good on this topic, and so has Chris Floyd. I've read some others on the subject, not as many as perhaps I should have, but then again my eyes aren't what they once were. And they've had their fill. Nonetheless, I do report that in all my travels I have not once seen anyone make any hay via the the following obvious points:

First of all, it's the abuse that enrages and inflames people, not the photos. If we really want to avoid inflaming the rest of the world, the way to do that is to stop abusing people. And that means a lot more than the obvious facts that we have to stop smearing prisoners in excrement and dragging them around on leashes, and that we have to stop raping them or forcing them to engage in other sexual practices, and that we have to stop all the other indecent treatment. But we also have to end the despicable practice of indefinite detention without trial, without a hearing, without any evidence, and without any charges.

Aside from moral questions of right and wrong, there's also the obvious (but apparently unmentionable) fact that it's only propagandized and brainwashed Americans who don't know what's been going on at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and who would be shocked and enraged by the release of the photos. The people in Iraq, for example, and in Afghanistan, and in far too many other countries, know all about the torture that's been happening in the American and American-friendly torture chambers of the world. So how much will they really be inflamed by the photos? And conversely, how much will they be inflamed by the attempt to keep those photos hidden?

Second, if Obama and Graham and Lieberman and their ilk really cared about the safety of "members of the Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States", they would not block the release of the photos, but instead they would vow to end the Bush-era wars immediately, and to quit attacking foreign countries that never did anything to us, never could have, and never even wanted to. But of course they will never do any such thing. They are obviously concerned about the safety of the troops, exactly to the extent that the troops further the goals of empire.

And third, if instead of destroying one country after another, based on one lie after another, the US spent its annual hundreds of billions building roads and schools and hospitals, and water treatment plants and electric generating plants, in one country after another, then "members of the Armed Forces" could go get real jobs, because "employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States" would be viewed outside the United States as friends, not enemies.

It's all so obvious. No wonder nobody mentions it.

What's also obvious is that Obama and the Pentagon don't want to release the photos because of the impact they would have on "the home front", where we're the enemy and the ongoing battle is about control of information.

But here's the rub: what would happen if Americans knew a bit more about what went on during the Bush administration?

Not much, probably. The usual goons would celebrate a few more "Ay-rabs" "getting what they deserve", and the rest of us would hang our heads in shame. But fundamentally nothing would change, not only because most of us don't give a damn, but also because the rest of us have no means by which to change the vicious and corrupt system.

When they hand out the prizes for the most pathetic remnant of a former democracy, we'll be Number One. And that's pretty obvious too.

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Come, Let Us Celebrate The Best Of America, Living And Dead

To honor America and observe Memorial Day, let us now savor a few words from an anonymous AP stenographer, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times:

Obama marks Memorial Day with tribute at Arlington

In brief remarks after he laid the wreath and observed a moment of silence at Arlington, Obama saluted the men and women of America's fighting forces, both living and dead, as "the best of America."

"Why in an age when so many have acted only in pursuit of narrowest self-interest have the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of this generation volunteered all that they have on behalf of others?" he said. "Why have they been willing to bear the heaviest burden?"

"Whatever it is, they felt some tug. They answered a call. They said 'I'll go.' That is why they are the best of America," Obama said. "That is what separates them from those who have not served in uniform, their extraordinary willingness to risk their lives for people they never met."

What kind of people are willing to risk their lives -- and throw away their souls! -- for the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, or Bill Clinton, or George H. W. Bush, or any of their predecessors?

Obama called them "the best"; he forgot to mention that they're also "the brightest".

Obama said he can't know what it's like to walk into battle or lose a child.

"But I do know this. I am humbled to be the commander in chief of the finest fighting force in the history of the world," he said to applause.

This is beneath derision, and it went down swimmingly, of course. I understand completely.

Let's all have big parades to honor our professional and patriotic mass murderers, living and dead!

Let us line the streets to watch the psychopaths and fools -- and those who support the psychopaths and fools -- march by.

Let us complain about how nothing much has changed since the election, how Barack Obama shows the same chicken-hearted reluctance to move that ruined the second Bush-Cheney administration, and how -- despite years of furtive planning -- we still haven't got off our butts and righteously obliterated Iran.

Let us join together and decry the incompetence in the Beltway, which explains why we haven't won yet in Iraq or Afghanistan, and why we may not make any real progress there until after the next election.

Let us weep for the "victims" of the seemingly endless series of "government accidents" which have got us involved in "the wrong wars" at "the wrong times".

But let us never say a word word about the millions of people our heroes have killed over the years; the tens of thousands our heroes have incarcerated and tortured; the tens of millions whose homes and families our heroes have destroyed; the hundreds of millions whose homelands our heroes have violated, overtly or otherwise, and in whose nations "democratic institutions" are allowed to exist only if the "duly elected representatives" find it politically expedient to toe the line.

That's our line, by the way.

So let us celebrate that line, just as we celebrate the psychopaths and fools who enforce it.

Let us wave our flags for those extroardinary people who have made sure -- on our behalf -- that the kids in these pictures, and millions of others just like them, never had a chance.

After all, we wouldn't want to be anti-American, would we?

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First Principles ... or Why I Cannot Support Barack Obama

Let us begin with the fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney were never legitimately elected to the Oval Office: not in 2000, and not in 2004.

In the American system, the authority of our government is based on the consent of the governed. This consent was not earned in either "election".

Therefore, the Bush-Cheney administrations of 2001-2009 were illegitimate, and the policies implemented by these illegitimate administrations are themselves illegitimate. Period.

If somebody steals your credit card and you report the theft, you are not responsible for purchases made on that card after it was stolen. We reported the theft in 2000; we screamed about the theft in 2004; but it did us no good at all.

The most destructive "terrorist attack" that ever took place on American soil occurred during the first Bush-Cheney administration, and it was never legitimately investigated. The story that was told to explain it is not only false; it's impossible.

Therefore the policies implemented as "reactions" to the "terrorist attack of September 11, 2001" would be illegitimate even if they had been enacted by a legitimately elected government. But they weren't.

Furthermore, many of these same policies contravene both national and international law, and for this reason they would be illegal, and indefensible, even if they were enacted by a legitimately elected government in response to a legitimate threat.

But they were not: all these illegal, immoral, and deeply detrimental policies were enacted by an illegitimate government in "response" to a bogus event.

If we had legitimate opposition politics in this country, it would would begin by calling these policies what they are.

And if we had a legitimate successor government, it would begin by repealing every single one of them, holding accountable those responsible for their implementation, and making amends insofar as possible to those who have suffered the most.

In other words, if a legitimate opposition government had taken power in January, American use of torture against "terror suspects" would be history. All the secret prisons would now be closed. There would be no more extraordinary renditions, and no more military tribunals.

Warrantless surveillance would have been stopped. All American troops would have been removed from both Iraq and Afghanistan, including the "defense" and "security" contractors and clandestine special forces. Rather than propping up puppet governments and blackmailing them at the same time, we would now be financing -- but others would be building -- new infrastructure in both countries. We would also be paying reparations on a scale that would make the bank bailouts look like a drop in the ocean.

And the people most responsible for the abomination that America has become would be in prison by now, if they were allowed to remain alive.

But none of this has happened, and none of it is about to happen, soon or ever.

Instead we have a president who has declared that his first priority is the defense of Israel, and a vice president who has declared that during his 36 years in the Senate, no one has been a better friend to Israel than he has.

Why can't we have a president whose first priority is the defense of our own country?

Why can't we have a vice president who is prouder of having befriended his own nation than of having befriended a foreign one?

And why can't we find a single columnist in a single national publication asking questions like these? Because the system is broken.

We know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. We know that the story about the Iraqi WMDs was chosen for "bureaucratic reasons" -- in other words not because it was true but because it was the story we were most likely to believe. We didn't believe it, on the whole. But the war went ahead anyway.

Far more people believed the 9/11 story about Muslim hijackers and Osama bin Laden and skyscrapers "collapsing" due to "impact and fire", but some of us knew it was false on the day, and it has turned out that we were absolutely correct.

And yet the transparently false story about 9/11 has been used to "justify" all manner of abuses, from illegal surveillance to homeland "security", to an endless limitless war against the rest of the world. No matter how obviously false that story is, no matter how many people have learned since then that the story is false, all this has gone ahead anyway.

I cannot support any of it. I cannot support any politician who supports any of it, let alone a president who continues the worst of it. And I cannot support any journalist who supports that president, or who tells those murderous lies.

In my opinion, the people who support Obama now are at least as bad as -- if not much worse than -- the people who supported Bush when he was doing the things that Obama is now continuing, and expanding. It pains me to think of how much time and energy I spent trying to help some of them.

Even George Bush and Dick Cheney never managed to blackmail the Pakistani army into attacking its own people. And the Obama misery is just beginning.

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More Thoughts About The War Between The USA And Pakistan

Since I wrote my recent post about the war between the USA and Pakistan, some questions have come up which have put me in mind of a piece I posted about 18 months ago, featuring some very sharp commentary from a young female Pakistani journalist.

In a column published November 4, 2007, the day after emergency rule was declared in Pakistan, and in the midst of a strict political clampdown, Fatima Bhutto [photo] honored the restriction against ridiculing the President, General Pervez Musharraf, by not mentioning him at all.

But she extended no such courtesy to her aunt, Benazir Bhutto, whose welcome-home convoy had been the stage of an obviously false-flag terror attack. Fatima Bhutto referred to her estranged (but not yet assassinated -- did anybody say "martyred"?) aunt in glowing terms such as "a formerly self-exiled political dynamo" and "the Daughter of the East (read: West)".

Fatima also mocked the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), which granted amnesty to all (read: selected) former politicians. The NRO paved the way for the return of Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari, but denied the same courtesy to another former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was arrested at the airport and deported to Saudi Arabia when he tried to enter Pakistan in September.

The amnesty law, drafted in secret negotiations between Musharraf and Benazir, was brokered by Americans desperate to forge an alliance between Musharraf and Bhutto no matter what the cost to the country, and was proclaimed a step toward civilian democracy. But not everyone was deceived, even before the state of emergency was declared.

Fatima Bhutto's column was published in Pakistan's The News, and it was ostensibly a reaction to Newsweek's October 29, 2007 piece, "Where the Jihad Lives Now", but it covered quite a bit more ground.

The original link is ancient history, but fortunately the piece is not. I've added the photos. In light of what we have learned about Baithulla Mehsud since this piece was written, the text seems to take on a fresh air of overpowering evil. But I don't want to prejudice you against it.

As Fatima Bhutto says, "Let's spend a moment imagining just how spectacular our Iraqi style democratic landscape is going to be."

Iraq redux?

Wither Iraqi style democracy? According to a very ominous cover story in Newsweek, it's here in Pakistan. Newsweek is confident in asserting that 'today no other country on earth is arguably more dangerous than Pakistan'. Not even Iraq. In fact, according to Newsweek Iraq is so 2006, Pakistan is it now; we're the new black. We've managed to kick Iraq off the pages as the world's most horrifying, most destructively precarious country and reclaim the title for ourselves. According to the Newsweek article, Pakistan has 'everything Osama Bin Laden could ask for' including a vibrant jihadi movement, political instability, access to worrisome weaponry, and a lonesome nuclear bomb. The article quotes a now deceased Taliban commander as romantically noting that 'Pakistan is like your shoulder that supports your RPG'. It is swoon worthy stuff really.

While the Newsweek article is no doubt an excited piece of fear mongering journalism, is it actually so far off the mark? Not really. We have recently been brought Iraqi style democracy by a formerly self-exiled political dynamo (remember to say thank you). Our nascent 'democracy' has been shipped over to Pakistan at the behest of delightful Neo-Con masters -- George W. Bush et al. -- and is complete with letters from the United States Senate and phone calls from Condi. If this isn't enough to strike you as eerily familiar, there's more.

Like our own harbinger of 'democracy', Iyad Allawi, the American choice for Iraq's post occupation Prime Minister, was deftly assisted by a Republican lobbying firm in Washington D.C. Allawi's firm spent $340,000 in their campaign to push him as the people's Prime Minister. How much did the Daughter of the East (read: West) spend on her campaign for a glorious return? Democracy does nothing if not advocate transparency and accountability of its public servants, but not in Pakistan where we are a step above the rest thanks to the fact that our criminals are cloaked by the National Reconciliation Ordinance.

Similar to Iraq's foray into Neo-Con democracy, ours has kicked off with a spate of portentous violence. One hundred and forty dead? No problem. That's called collateral damage. They died for democracy, just like the estimated 655,000 dead Iraqis did. As Mistress Condi would say, these are the birthing pangs of democracy. Our Iraqi style democracy will be bloody, but we're being heralded into a new era. That should be a comfort to us. Before we go silently into this good night, it's worth taking a look at our predecessor. Let's spend a moment imagining just how spectacular our Iraqi style democratic landscape is going to be.

The corruption that plagued the Iraqi occupation will be no problem for Pakistan. The US led provisional Authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, managed to 'lose' $8.8 billion dollars worth of funds meted out by the US government by the time they handed power over to a 'democratic' Iraqi government. The Iraqi Central Bank also faced a mysterious cash shortage as millions of dollars disappeared from its vaults. Allawi's government, in time, managed to drain one fund of $600 million dollars, leaving no paperwork behind. What amateurs these Iraqis are. We're set. We have the NRO; there will be no money troubles in Pakistan, the new Iraq.

Poverty? We have that in spades. Figures from 2006 place eight million Iraqis as living on less than $1 a day. Almost 70 per cent of Iraqis are unemployed thanks to Neo Liberal shock therapy economics and some 96 per cent of Iraq's population depends on food rations. In Pakistan we don't have food rations for our poor, we let them starve. Note to self, we'll have to get on that.

Underdevelopment is also something we Pakistanis will beat Iraq at. Who does Newsweek think they're kidding? We've long been worse than Iraq and our successive governments continually pride themselves on doing absolutely nothing about it. More than 500,000 residents of Baghdad are deprived of running water and when they do have access to it, it's not potable due to the fact that 65 per cent of Iraq's water plants have been subject to leaks and sewage contamination. These figures, largely from US Foreign Relations Committee hearings and other independent American sources, offer proof of America's wanton destruction of Iraq. Pre-war Saddam era figures don't even come close.

Households in Baghdad receive on average only two to six hours of electricity a day, largely due to the collapse of Iraq's supply grid after the invasion. Prior to March 2003, Iraq's total power generation was around 4,300 megawatts, after Operation Iraqi Freedom it dropped to 3,700 megawatts. Isn't Neo-Con democracy wonderful? We have so much to look forward to.

A United Nations study of 2005 found that one third of Iraqi children suffer from malnourishment, whereas an Iraqi Health Ministry study of the previous year found that 'easily treatable conditions such as diarrhea' account for 70 per cent of deaths among children. We can match those figures, those brutal figures, and we don't even have a large-scale war going on. Baghdad has nothing on Karachi -- the many million residents of Lyari are routinely denied access to water and electricity. Households across this city in Malir, Ibrahim Hyderi, and Saddar -- you name it -- have always been deprived of these basic rights and not by occupational governments, but by our own 'elected' representatives. Tragically, we choose the very men and women who keep our city's neighborhoods entrenched in poverty. We vote for them. We'll probably vote them in again in 2008. As voters, we Pakistanis are either incredibly forgiving or monumentally stupid.

When Pakistan enjoys the same democracy that Iraq does -- and you know certain people are hanging their careers on this happening -- we won't even need hired armies like Blackwater to come in. Our police out-Blackwater Blackwater. They already behave like private mercenary forces, for hire wherever power and money call them. They do not protect and serve, no, not our police force. They are the protected and they serve only their own interests. Police brutality in Pakistan has raged for many years; Iraqi style democracy won't tame our vigilante cops, only empower them.

The violence is building, it's getting bloodier. Rawalpindi, Dera Bugti, Wana and that's only in the past week. Look at Swat. Once known for its beautiful Buddhist ruins and idyllic Northern beauty, it has been consumed by death and ruin. Just as Najaf and Karbala were overcome, just as Fallujah and Mosul were earmarked for destruction, so has Swat been. And what about those left behind? The victims of this rising violence? Like Cindy Sheehan, the courageous mother who followed President Bush all over the country holding a vigil for her son Casey, killed in the unjust Iraq war, we have our own mothers, wives, and sisters sitting Shiva outside government offices protesting the disappearance of their loved ones. Newsweek was not prescient; truthfully, they're a little late to the party.

As I wrote at the time,

The same could be said for the bulk of the American media, of course. A little late to the party, and with blinders on.

As for the American people, we still haven't even come to the party.

What is going to prevent Iraq-style democracy from taking Pakistan?

What is going to prevent the same thing from taking the USA?

If not us, who? If not now, when?

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Torturing Democracy: A Documentary That Could Put Dick Cheney Out Of Our Misery

Torturing Democracy, an expose of how and why America came to be involved in open large-scale torture of prisoners (many of whom were simply shepherds captured by mountain tribesmen and sold into captivity), is now available for viewing online.

As Scott Horton reported last month, PBS can't find a time slot for this Frontline documentary until January 21, 2009 -- the day after Bush and Cheney are scheduled to leave office.

Horton has reported more recently that this documentary could help to provide "A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney". Why? Because it has the power to change the minds of influential people in denial.

Horton explains:

Gene Burns is one of the nation’s most popular talk radio hosts. For years he has dismissed accounts of torture; America, he has said, does not torture. But last night, after watching Torturing Democracy and realizing that he had not understood how important and serious an issue torture had become, Burns abruptly changed his tune. Here’s a transcript of his remarks.

I now believe that some international human rights organization ought to open an investigation of the Bush Administration, I think focused on Vice President Dick Cheney, and attempt to bring charges against Cheney in the international court of justice at The Hague, for war crimes. Based on the manner in which we have treated prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the manner in which we have engaged in illegal rendition–that is, surreptitiously kidnapping prisoners and flying them to foreign countries where they could be tortured by foreign agents who do not follow the same civilized standards to which we subscribe.

I’ve always said that I’ve thought that even at Guantánamo Bay the United States was careful to stay on this side of torture. In fact, you may recall that on a couple of occasions we got into a spirited debate on this program about waterboarding, and whether waterboarding was torture. And I took the position that it was not torture, that it was simulated drowning, and that if that produced information which preserved our national security, I thought it was permissible.

And then I saw Torturing Democracy.

And I’m afraid, now that I have seen what I have seen, that I was wrong about that. It looks to me, based on this documentary, as if in fact we have engaged in behavior and practices at Guantánamo Bay, and in these illegal renditions, that are violations of the international human rights code.

And I believe that Dick Cheney is responsible. I believe that he was the agent of the United States government charged with developing the methodology used at Guantánamo Bay, supervising it for the administration, and indulging in practices which are in fact violations of human rights.

A large part of the population still credits the Bush Administration’s absurd claim that it never embraced or applied torture to detainees as a matter of policy. Two recent documentaries, Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side (for which I was both a consultant and interviewee) and Sherry Jones’s PBS feature Torturing Democracy investigate the administration’s policies and conduct. Both draw from decision-makers inside the administration and soldiers on the frontline.

The administration did its best to spike both films. Taxi was to be aired on the Discovery Channel, but with Discovery Communications then in the process of going public and facing sensitive SEC clearances, executives apparently decided not to risk provoking the anger of the White House. As I reported elsewhere, PBS also found that it had no network space for Torturing Democracy until January 20, 2009 — the day the Bush Administration decamps from Washington.

Why was the administration so concerned about these two films? The conversion of Gene Burns supplies the answer. No one who sits through these films, I believe, will be able afterwards to accept the official version of events. George Bush has good reason to be afraid of too many Americans watching these documentaries.

George Bush is not the only one who has good reason to be afraid of too many Americans watching these documentaries. And that, in my opinion, is good incentive to watch them -- and to spread the word about them!

So here are those links again:
Torturing Democracy
Taxi to the Dark Side

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Lost In The Land Of Make-Believe

The election of Barack Obama has seemed to many people like a magic trick -- a wish come true, in some cases the wish of a lifetime.

It's a result that seems to confirm their belief that America is still capable of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

Many seem to think that Obama himself can pull a rabbit out of a hat -- or multiple rabbits out of multiple hats -- whenever he wants to.

But there's a nasty surprise in all the magic: Obama is the rabbit, and the trick is on us!

In "The Era of Magical Thinking: SOFA Smokescreens and Presidential Power", Chris Floyd makes some very important points, beginning with this one:

The American media is by and large swallowing the propaganda line that the Iraqi cabinet's acquiescence to a "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA) with the U.S. occupation force means that the Iraq War will be over in 2011.

Not only the mainstream media are swallowing it; many bloggers, on both left and right, are drinking it too: they should know better but then again it's clear that they don't want to.

This will further cement the conventional wisdom that the suppurating war crime in Iraq is now behind us, and the topic will be moved even further off the radar of public scrutiny.

More fiction for more chumps. But who really wants to know the truth? Do you?

Most Americans seem quite happy with "the conventional wisdom".

But as usual, there is a wide, yawning abyss between the packaged, freeze-dried pabulum for public consumption and the gritty, blood-flecked truth on the ground. As Jason Ditz reports at Antiwar.com, the so-called "deadline" in 2011 for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces remains, as ever, an "aspiration," not an iron-clad guarantee. The pace and size of the bruited "withdrawal" will remain, as ever, "conditions-based," say Pentagon and White House officials -- a position long echoed by the "anti-war" president-elect. And as we all know, "conditions" in a war zone are always subject to radical, unexpected change.

Or radical, entirely expected change, as the case may be.

Ditz also hones in on a very important -- and almost entirely overlooked -- point: the ballyhooed "agreement" (which has yet to pass the Iraqi parliament, of course) "just covers the rules of US troops operating in Iraq from 2009-2011, and... nothing would prevent a future deal keeping the troops there past the scope of the SOFA." American negotiators had originally insisted on stating this point explicitly in the text of the agreement, but finally removed it to allow their oft-disgruntled puppet, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to claim, falsely, that the SOFA will at last rid the country of the widely-loathed American presence.

It will not. If, by the end of 2011, America's bipartisan foreign policy elite -- and the profiteers of the vast, interlocking corporate conglomerate that fuels the War Machine -- decide that it is in "the national interest" (i.e., their interests) for the occupation to go on, it will go on. If they feel they have squeezed Iraq dry enough, then they may well move on to greener pastures -- in a newly "surging" Afghanistan, no doubt, and perhaps even Pakistan. But that decision will not be in the hands of the Iraqis.

Indeed. As I have written on more than one occasion, no important decisions are in the hands of the Iraqis.

There appears to be only one way in which the Iraqis could force all the widely-loathed Americans out of their country.

They would have to take over our government.

But it's too late; the Israelis have already taken it over.

Chris Floyd shifts gears, and we go with him:

II.
Of course, going this far into the weeds on the details of the "agreement" ignores the fact that the entire process is actually a brutal sham.

Exactly. I have been reading Cernig at At-Largely on the "negotiations" leading up to this "agreement", and seeing a lot of depth in the weeds but no understanding of the fact, as Chris points out, that "the entire process is actually a brutal sham".

Most recently, in the November 13 piece entitled "Hawks Pressure Obama To Ignore Iraqi Sovereignty", Cernig wrote [my emphasis]:

There's certainly a gap between Obama's campaign promise of 16 months and the 36 months of the SOFA wording, but the hawks are seemingly advocating ignoring that SOFA hard limit too, if "conditions" warrant it. If Obama doesn't stick to that timetable, he has to explain why he's setting the SOFA negotiations and the stated intentions of the Iraqi government during those negotiations - that the US withdraw from urban areas by end 2009 and entirely by 2011, no exceptions or takebacks - aside. That's a no-no, as the US cannot unilaterally go ask for an extension of the UN mandate and expect to get it. A continued presence would then be an absolute infringement of Iraqi sovereignty and make the US presence clearly an illegal occupation. It seems to me that its the folks who are pushing for doing just that who are out of bounds. Not only are they asking to set international law at naught but inviting a massively renewed insurgency.

But when Obama becomes the decider, he won't have to explain anything! That's the interesting thing about the job, remember?

Apart from that, the invasion, destruction and continued occupation of Iraq already qualify as an "absolute infringement of Iraqi sovereignty". "Iraqi sovereignty" has ceased to exist.

International law has already been "set at naught". And five years ago the people who started this war crime were counting the demolition of international law among their greatest victories!

But, according to Cernig, it won't get really illegal unless three more years pass and then the Americans violate the SOFA.

Stunning , isnt it?

Here's Chris Floyd again:

Disregarding for a moment the murderous nature of the Hitlerian war crime perpetrated on Iraq by the American government -- which removes the situation from any kind of "normal" considerations of diplomacy -- what we have here are negotiations dealing directly with the very essence of a nation's sovereignty, and America's continuing, intimate -- and armed -- involvement in that nation's life. It is absurd in the extreme to pretend that this is not a treaty-level matter, requiring full debate and a vote in the Senate, but simply a side issue to be left up to the President's discretion.

The whole thing is absurd, of course.

If it hadn't already killed more than a million people, and destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions of others, it might be somewhat funny -- because it's so twisted. But it's not funny at all.

Bush wiggles away from congressional oversight in starting the war, then wiggles away from any Constitutional-style international treaty as well.

Yet that is the case. Bush makes the deal alone -- after all, as Obama continually reminds us, "we only have one president," and even if he is a twerpish, murdering, nation-gutting son of a bitch, we should all defer respectfully to his judgment.

Alleged judgment, please!

All Obama asks is that any agreement to extend the war crime in Iraq will provide "sufficient protections for our men and women in uniform."

That's it. That's all he asks; that's all he's allowed to care about. And that's all we're supposed to care about, too.

It's a totally psychopathic mindset, where outrageous expressions of destructive power are honored and the suffering of innocent victims is disregarded. But this is the kind of mindset a militaristic nation needs to inculcate in its soldiers. If the country has pretenses to democracy then the militarists need to create an entire nation with this mindset, not simply an army that "thinks" that way.

But this has been happening in the USA for a long time: popular culture worships psychopaths (from shoot-em-up video games that make killing "fun", to allegedly "true crime" documentaries that glorify the serial killers): modern politics, business, the military and the "news media" select for psychopathy; and the best liars get the best jobs.

But in the meantime, "protections for our men and women in uniform" constitute all the reason that could ever be needed for the indefinite continuation of this immense crime against humanity -- to the end of the SOFA, and beyond.

As for "sufficient protections" for the Iraqi men and women -- and children -- out of uniform, who have been killed and displaced by the millions, our singular president and his successor have little to say. As always, they play no part in these high affairs of state.

This is exactly true and it's one of the easiest parts of the puzzle to sort out.

This war crime -- like all war crimes, like all politics -- is a power struggle, nothing more or less.

Do the Iraqi people have any power? No.

Can they vote American politicians out of office? No.

Can they prosecute American soldiers, politicians or pundits for war crimes? No.

So who cares about them? Certainly not the people who are committing this enduring crime.

The Iraqi people simply do not matter at all.

And neither, apparently, do the American people, or their elected representatives.

Two questions here. First, the American people.

Do the American people have any power? No.

Can they vote American politicians out of office? Sometimes. But only under certain conditions.

Can they prosecute American soldiers, politicians or pundits for war crimes? Absolutely not.

So who cares about them?

As for our "elected" representatives, the situation is less clear but no more hopeful.

The combination of rigged elections and corrupt media makes it impossible that we could ever elect a president who actually represented us.

The same combination makes it impossible for any major party to select such a person as a presidential candidate.

Since the Glorious War On Terror began, every prominent politician who has opposed the military-industrial-media complex has been turned, or demolished, or both.

Early in 2004, Howard Dean looked like an anti-war Democratic presidential candidate in the making -- and he was promptly destroyed by extraordinarily slanted "news" coverage of a fairly ordinary, if rousing, speech.

So to the fore stepped John Kerry, a "hero" of the anti-war movement who served in Vietnam and then led the charge against that war. He suddenly started winning primaries despite having almost no personal appeal, and guess what? By the time the nominations had been sealed and the debates rolled around, Kerry's position on the war crime in Iraq was slightly to the right of Bush's: thus Kerry of anti-war stood before the nation and told us with as straight a face as he could manage that we needed more troops, more allies, and more effort, so we could "win" this war crime.

Four years later, the Democrats had made it very clear that seriously anti-war candidates were too "fringe" to be taken seriously, even though upwards of two-thirds of the country supported some variety of anti-war position. So Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich were ignored and barred from debates and so on, while Barack Obama became the candidate of hope and change and even peace!

Obama has embraced all the bogus basics of the Glorious War on Terror; he's made a pledge of undying, unconditional support for Israel; he's even pledged to resume the vain hunt for the dead man who didn't attack us on 9/11. But he has remained a symbol representing hope and change -- just like he represents us, meaning: not at all.

At lower levels of the political ladder, the dynamic is exactly the same, although the dirty tricks are smaller and less visible. Anyone who doesn't toe the party line -- support for Israel, continuation of the Glorious War on Terror, continuing increases in military and homeland security budgets, and so on -- is turned or demolished, or both.

Meanwhile, up on the Hill, we are continually lied to by people who think we know nothing and who are usually right. So Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, was lamenting the other day about how even though the Democrats have increased their majority in the Senate, they still have less than 60 seats.

Reid was implicitly talking about filibuster, and in effect he was saying that if he had greater than 60/40 control of the Senate, the Republicans wouldn't be able to filibuster against a Democratic legislative agenda.

What Reid doesn't want you to think about is this: If the Republicans can stop a Democratic agenda with just over 40 seats, then the Democrats could have done the same thing to Bush for all those years when they had more than 40 seats, and yet they pretended to be helpless.

But all of this is entirely in keeping with our cowed and craven post-Republic era, where in the end, all must yield to the prerogatives of the "commander-in-chief." The constant use of this title as a synonym for "the president" is yet another mark of our democratic degradation. For of course the president is only the commander-in-chief of the armed forces in wartime -- not the military commander of the entire country. It has been astonishing to see the erasure of this distinction not only in the popular mind but also among our powerful elites. It is one of the clearest expressions of the true state of the Union: a nation that has willingly submitted itself to rule by a military junta, surrendering, without a shot, the liberties it once claimed as its very raison d'etre.

Yes! Absolutely! And this is the point -- definitely the main point, and quite possibly the whole point, of the Glorious War on Terror.

Republican strategists have been saying for a long time that American presidents were "weak" if they didn't wage war. Conversely, if a president does wage war, he gets to be commander-in-chief. And if he wages endless war, he gets to be commander-in-chief forever.

So it was no accident that this vicious little twerp, who wasn't legitimately elected in 2000 -- at whom and at whose selection people used to laugh -- stood on a pile of smoking rubble and spoke the famous words:

"An act of war has been declared against the United States."

It didn't make very much sense, and the small amount of sense it did make wasn't true, but the media started talking about how this vicious little twerp was "presidential". And you believed them!

You waved your red, white, and blue flags, and you sang "God Bless America" and you felt something you'd never felt before: Pride. National pride. Pride of purpose. Pride in belonging. Your country was being hijacked, and you were proud to be a part of the hijacking party.

Maybe you personally were not proud. Maybe you personally were not part of the party. But everyone around you was, or nearly everyone.

I wasn't proud. I was sickened. I was utterly horrified, not just at what had happened, but because of what it meant would happen next.

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, one of my neighbors asked me a tough question. "Why don't they stand up and fight?"

The question was tough because I knew he didn't want to hear the answer: "They don't want us to know who they are!"

It was so clear -- it was so obvious! Here were Rumsfeld and Rice and Kissinger and everybody including Bush himself, all sneering and leering and telling us this was the beginning of a war that wouldn't end in our lifetimes!

How would they know that?

Maybe because that's the way they were planning it.

And they planned it well: not perfectly; not perfectly by any means. There are hundreds of holes in their tale. But they planned it well enough to get away with it.

And now we're paying the price -- and we're going to keep paying that price -- for as long as we both shall live.

So now we lurch from election to election, hoping that this time we will get a "good" commander, a benevolent tyrant. Witness the plethora of recent articles in our most august journals, wondering anxiously what Obama will do about the concentration camp in Guantanamo, and the issue of "preventive" indefinite detention, and the torture techniques instituted by Bush, and the secret, warrantless wiretapping of the American people, and the "signing statements" that ignore the Constitutional authority of the elected legislature and impose the arbitrary will of the president, and all the other authoritarian powers now claimed by the Unitary Executive.

It's all a distraction, of course. It's all right up there with the speculation about "the first dog" and whether the president-elect will try to impose his will on the so-called playoff structure of American college football.

The unspoken assumption behind all the stories is that it is up to Obama, alone, to decide these issues. It is he who will now decide how we define torture. He will now decide what's to become of the captives in Gitmo and the other gulag hidey-holes around the world. He will decide whether or not to "re-visit" the spying powers that he voted to give the Executive just a few months ago. And so on down the line.

But the unspoken assumption is a false one; the reality is that Obama won't be allowed to decide anything of the sort. He will be presented as a decider but he has already declared his intention to be the front man of a unification government.

The "unity" Obama will bring will not heal us, of course. It's not designed to do that. We are divided according to any number of criteria: racial, economic, geographical, political, and so on; Obama doesn't intend to do anything about these divides other than possibly proclaim them irrelevant.

The "unity" Obama promises does nothing for the most serious division in America -- between the people who are so enraged over the course America has taken during the past eight years that they have brought Obama to the pinnacle of power, and the people who steered that course.

Obama's administration represents a reconciliation between the two groups. And to a certain extent, it's working. Websites and writers who appeared to stand firmly against the American imperial project have turned out to be merely anti-Bush, and quite satisfied with the "change", even if it is only cosmetic.

Chris Floyd again:

All of the extraordinary hopes now invested in Obama boil down to this: the powerless wish that he will be a "good" king, well-intentioned and masterful, and not a cruel and bumbling ruler like the last "commander."

He may certainly be "masterful". He may avoid "bumbling". But Barack Obama has already shown that he has no intention of being a "good" king.

A good king would never renounce the pastor who taught him this:

Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. Terrorism begets terrorism.

A good king would not resume the costly, deadly and ultimately fruitless, and powerfully misleading search for a dead man.

A good king would never try to pretend that racism isn't "endemic to America"; or that America's problems in the Middle East are caused not by its own actions or the actions of Israel but rather by the "perverse and hateful ideologies of Islam".

Barack Obama has told all these lies, and many more; he has pledged more war against countries that never attacked -- or even intended to attack -- us.

Chris Floyd has the right words for the thoughts going on in the heads of the people who brought Barack Obama to power and now hope he will bring them the "change" that he taught them to "hope" for.

Magical thinking. Cringing and fawning. Looking to the Leader to make everything right. This is the state of American "democracy" today -- even after the historic "transformation" of Election 2008.

I am still amazed at the depth of the self-deception going on, the willingness to be deceived that I see almost everywhere.

Oh well. I deceive myself, too. I know where this is headed. I know what it would take to stop it. I know that's not about to happen, and I know that blogging about it isn't going to make any difference. But I do it anyway.

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