The 25th summit of NATO was held in Chicago.
What did it mean? I mean REALLY mean for us bottom and captive 99 percenters in the U.S. and in the world at large?
The propaganda paint job of the Obama regime is that NATO countries are doing mutual strategizing particularly to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan.
The craven corporate media stenographers and, in my humble opinion, even more craven team Democrat faux-progressives, with their wing of the corporate media machine who will do anything to keep Obama in the seat of power in 2012, are spinning, spinning, spinning reality to keep the citizenry passive and denying. To minimize the fascism escalating in this country and the genocide perpetrated by the bullying and/or bullied members of NATO and especially the US spreading into more and more countries.
According to Pepe Escobar the Secret Service “locked down” the city of Chicago. Iraq-style concrete barriers, battalions of police in riot gear, “extraction teams” to “snatch and grab pinpointed protesters” and what Escobar calls an “Orwellian guest star” the “LRAD” (long-range acoustic device -- a sound CANNON).
This is how Glen Ford wrapped up the police state fascism that unfolded so disturbingly under our very noses in Chicago arranged by our give-me-a-break NOT lesser of two evils Democratic (capital NEVER small d) President Obama:
If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress.
With dignitaries on hand from the more than 50 countries that have done Washington’s bidding in Afghanistan, there will be lots of opportunities for the feds to invoke their new powers to put demonstrators in prison for up to ten years if they set foot on property containing any person under the protection of the Secret Service. That could include huge chunks of the city. And, of course, who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators. Thanks to the preventive detention without trial legislation signed into law by President Obama this past New Year’s Eve, every American has lost her Constitutional right to due process of law. Which means that a reconfigured and far more principled U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.
Patrick Martin of wsws gives the specifics of the Chicago crackdown on Americans of conscience trying to exercise their rights of free speech and assembly:
Chicago was effectively shut down for four days, Friday through Monday, not by the protesters, never more than 5,000 people, but by a huge mobilization of police and paramilitary forces who frequently outnumbered the demonstrators. The entire area around McCormick Place, site of the summit, was under lockdown.
• Police arrested well over 100 demonstrators in the course of the week, including more than 60 Sunday, a day of tense confrontations in which police continually vented their hostility towards the demonstrators, who were opposing the US-NATO war in Afghanistan and other imperialist military interventions.
• The violent dispersal of the protesters late Sunday afternoon was entirely one-sided, as described by the Chicago Sun-Times—a staunchly pro-police tabloid—which headlined its account, “Riot Gear Cops Rain Down Blows on Protesters.” The beatings were so widespread and indiscriminate that one of the newspaper’s own reporters was among those bloodied. At least 25 demonstrators were injured, with a dozen requiring hospital treatment.
• Most ominously, five protesters were arrested in police raids targeting individuals supposedly preparing “terrorist” attacks on the NATO summit. The same two informants fingered all five men, after the undercover cops had circulated widely among the protesters looking for anyone they could instigate or entrap.
The charges of “conspiring to commit domestic terrorism during the NATO summit,” brought before the Cook County Circuit Court, are a deliberate attempt to intimidate opponents of the US-NATO war in Afghanistan and other imperialist military interventions either under way or being planned by the Obama administration.
Patrick Martin goes on to put the Chicago crackdown into perspective as the escalation of fascism by our corporate-driven governmental leadership:
The Chicago frame-ups of antiwar protesters follow in the footsteps of previous provocations: last month’s arrest of five Cleveland-area Occupy protesters on similarly trumped-up charges; the systematic police violence against Occupy encampments last fall and winter; the FBI raids on the homes of antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago in the fall of 2010.
They are part of a broader assault on democratic rights being carried out by the Obama administration, which has gone even further than the Bush White House in erecting the scaffolding of a police state. Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the president the right to order the military detention, without trial, of anyone he designates as a terrorist threat, including US citizens. Obama has sharply increased targeted assassinations of alleged terrorists, including the murder of US citizens, and openly defended the president’s supposed unilateral “right” to do so.
Both big business parties are systematically shredding the Bill of Rights and stripping the American people of their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
These heavy-handed measures expose the fraudulent character of the claims by Democratic and Republican politicians that American imperialism is on the side of “democracy” and “freedom” when it wages wars against countries that possess vast reserves of oil and natural gas, or occupy strategic locations adjacent to such resources.
America is the most heavily policed of the industrialized countries. The combined forces of repression—local and state police, the military, the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the vast apparatus of the Department of Homeland Security, the endless armies of private security personnel—number in the many millions.
Glen Ford passionately and concisely reviews the situation for all of us managing to exit the fog of Obama and media spun mendacity, not just minimization:
Since the emergence of the Occupy movement, last October, millions of Americans have come to understand what Latin American peasants have always known: that the nexus of war in the world is Wall Street, and the Pentagon is its servant – as is the White House and most of the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. War is waged for the purpose of global economic subjugation and, therefore, peace can only be won by dethroning the financial bad guys: the Lords of Capital. So, much of the peace movement now sees itself as an expression of the 99 Percent, against the warlike and greedy 1 Percent.
Once that lesson is learned, it cannot be shouted out by police sound-blasters.
President Obama has made skillful use of NATO, to make it appear that he is not a go-it-alone cowboy, like George Bush. Obama has drawn closely to his side the old imperialists of Europe, who looted and pillaged the earth for five hundred years, establishing the planetary racial hierarchy that has only recently begun to crumble. The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital. The Global One Percent can only be maintained in power by the U.S. war machine. Ultimately, the world needs only one thing from the American people: that they dismantle the machine.
Bill Van Auken of wsws calls out the obscene propaganda coming from Obama and his merry cartel of international gangsters especially considering the kind of tragic shape Afghanistan is ACTUALLY in thanks to American and NATO corporate-driven imperialism:
The official declaration on Afghanistan issued from the NATO summit in Chicago on Monday speaks of a country “on its path toward self-reliance in security, improved governance, and economic and social development,” where “the lives of Afghan men, women and children have improved significantly” over the past decade of US-NATO occupation.
It promises an “irreversible transition” from the US-led war to a situation in which “Afghan forces will be in the lead for security nation-wide” by the middle of next year. And it envisions the emergence of a “peaceful, stable and prosperous Afghanistan” that will “contribute to economic and social development in the wider region.”
Readers unfamiliar with the tone and rhetoric of such NATO documents can be excused for rubbing their eyes in disbelief. What country are they talking about?
The claims about Afghanistan emerging as a “prosperous” and “stable” nation are as preposterous as the pretense that the Afghan government is providing improved security, governance and development.
This is a country where over half the population lives below the official poverty line, and 30,000 children die every year from the ravages of malnutrition. Surveys continue to rank Afghanistan as one of the world’s ten poorest countries and the worst country on the planet to be a mother, given the astronomical rates of maternal and infant deaths. The unemployment rate has remained at roughly 40 percent since the US invasion of October 2001. A meteoric rise in emigration is a sure measure of deteriorating social conditions, with three times the number of Afghans fleeing their country in 2011 compared to four years earlier.
As for attributing “improved governance’ to the US-backed puppet Hamid Karzai, his government is universally recognized as one of the most corrupt on the planet, with a thin layer of warlords, crooks and crony capitalists pocketing billions of dollars in aid money. This wholesale and shameless graft has earned Krazai’s regime the hatred of the Afghan people while generating popular support for resistance to the foreign occupation that keeps him in office.
A recent series of high-profile attacks in the center of the capital have called into question even the old characterizations of Karzai as the “mayor of Kabul.” The tripling of the number of US troops deployed in Afghanistan under Obama has succeeded only in spreading what the Pentagon describes as a “robust” insurgency throughout the country.
As for the Afghan puppet security forces taking the “lead” in June of 2013, as recently as February the deputy commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, admitted that only one percent of Afghan army and police units are capable of operating independently. And even this tiny handful of units depends on US forces for intelligence and logistics as well as fire support. The Afghan military possesses neither an air force nor artillery.
The rosy declaration issued in Chicago makes no mention of the steady rise in so-called “green on blue” killings, the shooting of US and other NATO troops by their supposed Afghan allies, which has devastated morale among the occupation troops. Nor, for that matter, does it even hint at the occupation’s endless series of atrocities, from a US soldier massacring 17 civilians, to American troops urinating upon and desecrating corpses of slain Afghans, to aerial bombardments and special operations “night raids” claiming the lives of entire families.
The rhetoric about an “irreversible transition” followed by a “decade of transformation,” supposedly beginning in 2014, is meant to convince the public in the US—where polls show barely one quarter of the population supporting the war in Afghanistan—and in Europe that, as Obama put it, “the Afghan war as we understand it is over.”
Van Auken asserts that Obama et al. are bare-faced liars about a winding-down transition phase and that a new and even bloodier and more ruthless phase of the War in Afghanistan is beginning. Van Auken predicts that between now and 2014 the combat operations of the US and NATO will be “a near-genocidal campaign to exterminate popular resistance.”
A report issued on the eve of the Chicago summit by the Center for National Policy, formerly chaired by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, suggests what is to follow. It calls for keeping indefinitely in Afghanistan—and certainly for the ten years that are covered by the strategic partnership agreement signed by Obama and Karzai earlier this month—some 30,000 troops, three quarters of them American, under special operations command. They are to be backed by “fire and air support.” Working “in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency,” they will continue the “direct action campaign” against insurgents in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This force is to maintain control of three strategic bases—Kandahar Air Field, Camp Bastion/Leatherneck in Helmand Province and Bagram Air Field
In other words, the “transition” is to more killing on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, more bombings, more night raids and more drone attacks. The aim, in what NATO leaders referred to as “the age of austerity,” is to prosecute the carnage more cheaply, under conditions where the US alone is spending some $10 billion a month on the war.
Obama is pursuing the same strategic goals as his predecessor, George W. Bush. Under the cover of the so-called global war on terrorism, US imperialism is determined to secure permanent bases in a country that borders both China and Iran, as well as the oil-rich region of Central Asia. The country is viewed within US ruling circles as a strategic launching pad for new and bloodier imperialist wars to come.
Since Obama came into office in 2009, thanks in large measure to popular hostility to the war policies of the Bush administration, 1,350 US soldiers and Marines have been killed, along with untold thousands more Afghan and Pakistani civilian men, women and children. Hundreds of billions more dollars have been expended on the nearly eleven-year war.
Finally, this is what Dennis Kucinich had to say in a May 21st statement about NATO and its summit:
“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not a benevolent organization. NATO is not about the North Atlantic and it’s not about our collective defense.
“NATO is a cost-sharing organization that finances aggressive military action. By hiding behind the claim that the organization provides for ‘common defense,’ NATO allows us to wage wars of choice under the guise of international peacekeeping. The most recent example was the unconstitutional war in Libya where NATO, operating under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians, instead backed one side in a civil war and pursued a policy of regime change.
“Today, NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago to discuss the future of Afghanistan. The talks are being billed as discussions of plans to end the war. The war in Afghanistan is not ending. These talks are simply about financing the next phase of the war.
“The Strategic Partnership Agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan commits us to the country for at least another decade, despite public support for the war being at an all time low. The United States will pay for half of the estimated $4.1 billion per year cost of supporting 352,000 Afghan army and police officers. Afghanistan’s contribution will be $500,000. The rest will be financed by our ‘NATO partners.’ It is not surprising that support for the war among NATO members is waning, with France threatening to pull out its troops by the end of this year.
“Our participation in NATO comes at a great financial cost to the U.S. We contribute the majority of funds for NATO’s common budget, including 25% of the military budget. Between fiscal years 2010 and 2012 alone, we contributed more than $1.3 billion to NATO’s military budget. We also incur significant costs through the deployment of our forces in support of NATO missions. According to The Atlantic, the war in Libya cost the United States $1.1 billion.
“NATO was originally founded to provide a strategic counterbalance to the Soviet Union. Its founding purpose no longer exists, but NATO continues to circumvent the authority of the United Nations and to provoke other nations. NATO is an anachronism. Instead of trying to bolster the organization, we should begin serious discussions to dismantle it.”
Obama and the entire Democratic Party as the lesser of two evils? I don’t think so. Obama didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize but I admit he deserves something akin to an Academy Award for his profoundly undeserved trust-me persona that has sped us down the slope of fascism even faster than our previous low-life president, GWB, managed to. If more and more Americans don’t wake up and get proactive in taking on what Kevin Zeese calls the F-O-G, “forces of greed”, the momentum of fascism and genocide will continue to escalate. Our "acting" president and the rest of the international cartel of F-O-G are playing serious hardball. Time for us American citizens to listen to our consciences and not the craven and insidious propaganda pouring out of the mouths of our corporate-driven governmental and big media puppets and decide if we want to go down "denying" or rise up "uniting and fighting" to RESTORE democracy to America and save our global family from ongoing devastation. Neither corporate legacy party wants democracy restored to us 99 percenters or peace to our planet. They are lost to the evil capitalist profits-over-people matrix. No argument here such a fight is a profound and challenging one.
[cross-posted on correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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Lib, so far as I know we've never had democracy in this country, except in some local communities. They say when elephants fight the ants get trampled. I say it's the same when elephants and asses fight.
The problem is if the protesters are right then we all have blood on our hands - which is the reality (and why the sight of them causes so much anguish). It's about what people always do: run away from responsibility in the hopes of escaping it. It's becoming bloody endemic!
Time for us American citizens to listen to our consciences and not the craven and insidious propaganda pouring out of the mouths of our corporate-driven governmental and big media puppets and decide if we want to go down "denying" or rise up "uniting and fighting" to RESTORE democracy to America and save our global family from ongoing devastation.
Same general question I have asked you in the past, Libby…and which you have never answered.
Give me a list of every civilization ever to exist on this planet that has enjoyed significantly more freedom of expression and general liberty than Americans do right now.
Give me a list of every country now on the planet whose citizens enjoy significantly more freedom of expression and general liberty than Americans do right now.
And to show you I will not ask of you that which I will not do myself, here is my list:
f.
Same general question I have asked you in the past, Libby…and which you have never answered.
Give me a list of every civilization ever to exist on this planet that has enjoyed significantly more freedom of expression and general liberty than Americans do right now.
Give me a list of every country now on the planet whose citizens enjoy significantly more freedom of expression and general liberty than Americans do right now.
And to show you I will not ask of you that which I will not do myself, here is my list:
f.
It was planned and accounted that there would be large scale protests. Even the local Tampa police chief went as an observer and many of the so called special units went to train there to be prepared for the RNC here in Tampa Bay during August.
I almost felt nauseous watching as the police did everything but high five each other on the fact that large scale mass arrests did not take place. Or the fact that the police presence was so large that the police forces seemed to outnumber the protesters.
Coming soon to a large city near you: America's Police State.
Loaded and ready to make sure we all toe the line, or else...
Soon coming here. I can wait forever...
I almost felt nauseous watching as the police did everything but high five each other on the fact that large scale mass arrests did not take place. Or the fact that the police presence was so large that the police forces seemed to outnumber the protesters.
Coming soon to a large city near you: America's Police State.
Loaded and ready to make sure we all toe the line, or else...
Soon coming here. I can wait forever...
""..........or rise up "uniting and fighting" to RESTORE democracy to America......""
What democracy would this be?
.
What democracy would this be?
.
Lib, not trying to be cynical but has there been a single day since 1896 when the US and or European military were not overtly or covertly engaged in some form of combat or occupation somewhere in this sad sorry world? If some knows, please let me know so that I can mark that day on my calendar.
I guess all we can do is exactly what you are doing, Libby, telling exactly as it is. For the first time in decades, Americans are seeing clearly that they are being lied to. They aren't buy Obama's spin, but oppose the war in Afghanistan in unprecedented numbers. An increasing number are starting to see that ordinary Americans are powerless - that all the power likes in Wall Street. The repressive legislation and police state tactics are all a rehearsal for a popular insurrection that the US military-intelligence complex believes is inevitable.
Fantastic post. Thank you.
Frank - Bolivia is the first one that comes to mind.
The problem with trying to come up with others, is that the U.S. does everything in its power to restrict freedom and liberty in other countries that are striving for it by propping up corrupt dictators, overthrowing non compliant leaders, or send in the military muscle to get their way. Any freedom and liberty we have is at the expense of others.
The problem with trying to come up with others, is that the U.S. does everything in its power to restrict freedom and liberty in other countries that are striving for it by propping up corrupt dictators, overthrowing non compliant leaders, or send in the military muscle to get their way. Any freedom and liberty we have is at the expense of others.
“who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators”
Exactly Libby you better be careful!
There is no excuse for Obamas police state or the NDAA bill that was written under Obamas oversight. As you say Obama is a fascist, a fascist that would make even Dubya blush. That’s why he was deployed in Dubya’s wake because they knew he would have no scruples at all. Obama just does what he is told. You need to vote for Paul if you want any chance of restoring the Republic. Maybe he would even tell you the truth about Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton just tried when she told you we are responsible for India's security.
As far far as Afghanistan is concerned let me clarify your “Green on Blue” murders first. Since May 2007, when they started keeping records, 76 NATO soldiers have been killed and an undisclosed number wounded in 46 recorded “deliberate attacks” by Afghan Security Forces and there was one or two last week so you can push that number up a bit.
http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7155:playing-the-game-in-afghanistan-dead-americans-dead-goats-and-half-a-million-gunmen-on-the-loose.
We cannot just leave Afghanistan Libby and if you knew the truth about the situation I doubt you would condone doing so. I will be posting on it soon enough and I hope you read it. I did four months of research helping my daughter write a paper which she has been invited to present before some Congressional Committee. I won’t post until she does (she is being recalcitrant). My research changed my whole point of view on Afghanistan.
The Pashtun made their intentions perfectly clear when not one month after Britain left the Indian sub continent they attacked Kashmir. Do you know what the Rohilla States were? Uttar Pradesh with a population of over 200 million people. It was taken away from the Pashtun by a combined force of British, Sikhs, Shia's, and Hindus in an apocalyptic battle in 1774. Well it is the Pashtuns endgame to reclaim it and avenge the genocide committed against them. The saying revenge is a dish best served cold is not a saying of the Sicilian Mafia as we have been told but an ancient Pashtun proverb. The only law the Pashtun have ever known is their own Pakhtunwali. And the first precept of Pakhtunwali is every insult must be avenged by killing.Yes the Pashtun wants India back and that includes Pakistan too. He has even invented his own religion called Deobandism to do so. The Taliban which means student in Pashto, the ancient language of the Pashtun, is composed almost entirely of Pashtun and they are sore because Dubya refused to deal with them on account that he knew how savage they are. Blame Ronald Reagan the incompetent moron and some coked out Texas yahoo. They sure showed those commies didn't they. Those commies were holding the Pashtuns in check protecting over a billion people. You my friend, and me, and every other American are responsible for unleashing the Pashtun menace upon the Indian sub continent. This is no Vietnam we are obligated to stay there or we will be responsible for a bloodbath that will make the Nazi's look like the Red Cross. Every historian knows that the Pashtun cannot be totally defeated short of complete genocide and Genghis Khan tried that and it didn't work. In fact when it comes to war the Pashtun are almost super human. Many believe the Pashtuns are the legendary Aryan's (in Sanskrit ārya).The Rig Veda refers to the Pakthas along with the Jadu, Kuru, Sivas, and Bhalanases, as the frontier tribes that fought unsuccessfully against King Sudās in the Battle of the Ten Kings. Some scholars debate this and consider it just a linguistic mistake that Pakthas and Pashtun sound similar but the Pashtun people themselves are firmly convinced, even naming Afghanistan's air line; Ariana Afghan.
The Pashtun have never been completely defeated in battle Libby. Not by Alexander the Great. They rebelled against his heirs and ended up overrunning the entire sub continent and forming the Kushan Empire. Not by Genghis Kahn whose expeditionary force they wiped from the face of the earth and fought each other over the ownership of a horse before the invading Mongol body's were cold. Not by the British Empire whom they defeated 3 times over a span of 200 years. And not by the Soviet Union. Its our turn Libby Reagan volunteered us for this duty. All you can do is fight a holding action against them and they have made sure that they have thoroughly integrated themselves all over India and Pakistan. They were responsible for over a thousand killings in the city of Karachi last year alone. The Pashtun have another saying: me against my brother, my brother and me against my cousins, and my brother my cousins and me against the world!
In case you think the women are any different I will leave with a little poem written over a hundred years ago:
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
An' the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your right an' blow our your brains.
An' go to your Gawd like a solider."
Rudyard Kipling, Barrack-room Ballads, 1892
Exactly Libby you better be careful!
There is no excuse for Obamas police state or the NDAA bill that was written under Obamas oversight. As you say Obama is a fascist, a fascist that would make even Dubya blush. That’s why he was deployed in Dubya’s wake because they knew he would have no scruples at all. Obama just does what he is told. You need to vote for Paul if you want any chance of restoring the Republic. Maybe he would even tell you the truth about Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton just tried when she told you we are responsible for India's security.
As far far as Afghanistan is concerned let me clarify your “Green on Blue” murders first. Since May 2007, when they started keeping records, 76 NATO soldiers have been killed and an undisclosed number wounded in 46 recorded “deliberate attacks” by Afghan Security Forces and there was one or two last week so you can push that number up a bit.
http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7155:playing-the-game-in-afghanistan-dead-americans-dead-goats-and-half-a-million-gunmen-on-the-loose.
We cannot just leave Afghanistan Libby and if you knew the truth about the situation I doubt you would condone doing so. I will be posting on it soon enough and I hope you read it. I did four months of research helping my daughter write a paper which she has been invited to present before some Congressional Committee. I won’t post until she does (she is being recalcitrant). My research changed my whole point of view on Afghanistan.
The Pashtun made their intentions perfectly clear when not one month after Britain left the Indian sub continent they attacked Kashmir. Do you know what the Rohilla States were? Uttar Pradesh with a population of over 200 million people. It was taken away from the Pashtun by a combined force of British, Sikhs, Shia's, and Hindus in an apocalyptic battle in 1774. Well it is the Pashtuns endgame to reclaim it and avenge the genocide committed against them. The saying revenge is a dish best served cold is not a saying of the Sicilian Mafia as we have been told but an ancient Pashtun proverb. The only law the Pashtun have ever known is their own Pakhtunwali. And the first precept of Pakhtunwali is every insult must be avenged by killing.Yes the Pashtun wants India back and that includes Pakistan too. He has even invented his own religion called Deobandism to do so. The Taliban which means student in Pashto, the ancient language of the Pashtun, is composed almost entirely of Pashtun and they are sore because Dubya refused to deal with them on account that he knew how savage they are. Blame Ronald Reagan the incompetent moron and some coked out Texas yahoo. They sure showed those commies didn't they. Those commies were holding the Pashtuns in check protecting over a billion people. You my friend, and me, and every other American are responsible for unleashing the Pashtun menace upon the Indian sub continent. This is no Vietnam we are obligated to stay there or we will be responsible for a bloodbath that will make the Nazi's look like the Red Cross. Every historian knows that the Pashtun cannot be totally defeated short of complete genocide and Genghis Khan tried that and it didn't work. In fact when it comes to war the Pashtun are almost super human. Many believe the Pashtuns are the legendary Aryan's (in Sanskrit ārya).The Rig Veda refers to the Pakthas along with the Jadu, Kuru, Sivas, and Bhalanases, as the frontier tribes that fought unsuccessfully against King Sudās in the Battle of the Ten Kings. Some scholars debate this and consider it just a linguistic mistake that Pakthas and Pashtun sound similar but the Pashtun people themselves are firmly convinced, even naming Afghanistan's air line; Ariana Afghan.
The Pashtun have never been completely defeated in battle Libby. Not by Alexander the Great. They rebelled against his heirs and ended up overrunning the entire sub continent and forming the Kushan Empire. Not by Genghis Kahn whose expeditionary force they wiped from the face of the earth and fought each other over the ownership of a horse before the invading Mongol body's were cold. Not by the British Empire whom they defeated 3 times over a span of 200 years. And not by the Soviet Union. Its our turn Libby Reagan volunteered us for this duty. All you can do is fight a holding action against them and they have made sure that they have thoroughly integrated themselves all over India and Pakistan. They were responsible for over a thousand killings in the city of Karachi last year alone. The Pashtun have another saying: me against my brother, my brother and me against my cousins, and my brother my cousins and me against the world!
In case you think the women are any different I will leave with a little poem written over a hundred years ago:
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
An' the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your right an' blow our your brains.
An' go to your Gawd like a solider."
Rudyard Kipling, Barrack-room Ballads, 1892
Frank,
Here's a question for you:
Give us a list of President Obama's accomplishments implementing a progressive agenda.
Here's a question for you:
Give us a list of President Obama's accomplishments implementing a progressive agenda.
Leeds with all due respect, you're barking up the wrong tree, here.
fRANK NEVER answers question, but always demands others do so.
Earlier this week, I became curious as to why fRANK was only posting here ~twice a day so I googled him and found him out on a site called able2know, where he's posting anywhere from fifteen to twenty posts a day doing what he says he loves to do: I love to argue and am proud to have been banned from three boards, so far.
Myles Spicer wrote an incredibly pithy analysis of the futility of the Afghan "campaign" entitled "This war is nuts; what am I missing?" about a week ago,
to which fRANK replied in his typically smarmy way: "As I said, Miles, I do not know what it is, but I suspect the thing you are missing is: We, the people, want things to be just the way they are…or we are allowing the government to suppose that is what we want."
so I checked polling on Afghanistan and found that for the past year or more, regardless of who took the poll, no less than 60% of the people want this war ended now, and as the year proceeded that number, now approaches 70%.
As for his comments here regarding freedom, I googled "freedom index" and unsurprisingly Scandinavia dominated most of the top spots with america coming in, depending on the poll, somewhere between 20th and as low as 47th depending on the poll and the parameters.
While Libby was STUDYING history, politics and dedication to FACTS, fRANK was hard at work learning how to make a rum and coke, a gin and tonic, and a scotch on the rocks.
fRANK remains the most willfully ignorant person I have ever encountered anywhere.
fRANK berated.
Libby rated for continuing the excellence this blog shows from its inception through to this very day..
fRANK NEVER answers question, but always demands others do so.
Earlier this week, I became curious as to why fRANK was only posting here ~twice a day so I googled him and found him out on a site called able2know, where he's posting anywhere from fifteen to twenty posts a day doing what he says he loves to do: I love to argue and am proud to have been banned from three boards, so far.
Myles Spicer wrote an incredibly pithy analysis of the futility of the Afghan "campaign" entitled "This war is nuts; what am I missing?" about a week ago,
to which fRANK replied in his typically smarmy way: "As I said, Miles, I do not know what it is, but I suspect the thing you are missing is: We, the people, want things to be just the way they are…or we are allowing the government to suppose that is what we want."
so I checked polling on Afghanistan and found that for the past year or more, regardless of who took the poll, no less than 60% of the people want this war ended now, and as the year proceeded that number, now approaches 70%.
As for his comments here regarding freedom, I googled "freedom index" and unsurprisingly Scandinavia dominated most of the top spots with america coming in, depending on the poll, somewhere between 20th and as low as 47th depending on the poll and the parameters.
While Libby was STUDYING history, politics and dedication to FACTS, fRANK was hard at work learning how to make a rum and coke, a gin and tonic, and a scotch on the rocks.
fRANK remains the most willfully ignorant person I have ever encountered anywhere.
fRANK berated.
Libby rated for continuing the excellence this blog shows from its inception through to this very day..
Thank you for your comments which I will appreciate now for a bit. I am on the road these days visiting family out west and have limited access to computer. I am missing my open salon perusal time and hope to make up for lost time soon! best, libby
Matt, good point there. How long has our actual democracy been circling the bowl (decades and decades?) in this capitalism-corporatism-captured country that has been oppressing many externally and internally for so long as too many of us have been lost in the fog of lazy and/or naive exceptionalism. I think things are so extremely obscene at this point that there should be mass outrage. There is MORE outrage, but nothing compared to what it should be. Massive amounts of denial and minimization which I see comes from the insidious mass media that points its tiny controlling pen light on issues and frames them the way the corporate overlords want them framed! Elephants and asses fighting is a powerful and distressing image. I don't like feeling like an ant trampled by either species. Pete Seeger said to think globally and act locally. Sounds like a worthy invitation to walk the walk along with talking the talk of reform. best, libby
Matt, good point there. How long has our actual democracy been circling the bowl (decades and decades?) in this capitalism-corporatism-captured country that has been oppressing many externally and internally for so long as too many of us have been lost in the fog of lazy and/or naive exceptionalism. I think things are so extremely obscene at this point that there should be mass outrage. There is MORE outrage, but nothing compared to what it should be. Massive amounts of denial and minimization which I see comes from the insidious mass media that points its tiny controlling pen light on issues and frames them the way the corporate overlords want them framed! Elephants and asses fighting is a powerful and distressing image. I don't like feeling like an ant trampled by either species. Pete Seeger said to think globally and act locally. Sounds like a worthy invitation to walk the walk along with talking the talk of reform. best, libby
AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent -- This is so on point I am going to repeat it! It makes me think, too, of that comment on why people believe lying sociopaths. The bigger the whopper the more credibility it has, because who would have the audacity to make up such a colossal lie people ask themselves. It is too much for them to wrap their sense of horror around. So people enable and the sociopaths and the enablers all look so in control and rational and those of us living in daily horror and outrage are accused of being the unbalanced and overly emotional ones! What a set up. Reminds me of the IF poem.
Anyway, thanks for this comment!!!! How many millions had to die in Vietnam and Cambodia as reality seeped through denial and status quo-ism!!! With very denied second and minute more people suffer and die.
"The problem is if the protesters are right then we all have blood on our hands - which is the reality (and why the sight of them causes so much anguish). It's about what people always do: run away from responsibility in the hopes of escaping it. It's becoming bloody endemic!"
Anyway, thanks for this comment!!!! How many millions had to die in Vietnam and Cambodia as reality seeped through denial and status quo-ism!!! With very denied second and minute more people suffer and die.
"The problem is if the protesters are right then we all have blood on our hands - which is the reality (and why the sight of them causes so much anguish). It's about what people always do: run away from responsibility in the hopes of escaping it. It's becoming bloody endemic!"
Frank, the basic freedom the American people seem to enjoy, a large majority, but not as large as the media would like to have us believe, is the freedom to ignore oppression and exploitation by our government leaders on US citizens and hapless citizens of other countries trying to live out our and their lives in security and independence and we let Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and DC as powerful operatives for the corporate overlords push us to be chronic reactors or rolled-over spiritually dead zombies with consumer-identities rather than citizen-identities. If you are looking for lists re US citizen welfare ask why we are ranked only 37th by the WHO. That is telling. The sanctity of a citizen's physical well being doesn't count for much by our supposed governmental REPRESENTATIVES. They sure stopped representing us a long time ago. An average American life is cheap to the ruling class elite. Class elitism prevails in the United States to more and more obscenely extreme degrees. Americans who are not economically drowning right now choose to keep on their blinders and go after the messengers of reality. imho. Frank, you never explain why Obama is throwing out our bill of rights. Why should we be robbed of due process? Why should he have the right to assassinate Americans? Why should he have the right to detain anyone any time for any length of time? That is how a dictator behaves not the president of a republic! Please answer those basic questions. libby
Losing access to computer for now! Will finish responses tonight. THANKS AGAIN!!! best, libby
Saludos libby, I remember when it was a lot lonelier on this comment thread.
See... (?) a little concentrated passion does go a long way. A correct argument not quite enough... but grows with the child's buried intuition disinterred (from the adult mind) by the logical passions. Your passion brings definition back to the speech act, discourse and language, as it was droned and summarily dismissed by a generation of "thinkers" now with both feet in death's door jamb.
Otherwise, it is just another game of Magister Ludi, one more Infinite Jest... and we suffering, perhaps already dead, onlookers.
What use is a gun, if a tongue is useless? What use a bullet in the chamber, to a brain that is mindless and a body senseless?
Alarming days
See... (?) a little concentrated passion does go a long way. A correct argument not quite enough... but grows with the child's buried intuition disinterred (from the adult mind) by the logical passions. Your passion brings definition back to the speech act, discourse and language, as it was droned and summarily dismissed by a generation of "thinkers" now with both feet in death's door jamb.
Otherwise, it is just another game of Magister Ludi, one more Infinite Jest... and we suffering, perhaps already dead, onlookers.
What use is a gun, if a tongue is useless? What use a bullet in the chamber, to a brain that is mindless and a body senseless?
Alarming days
Libby, I understand your passion…and I honor and respect it. But my challenge still stand.
Give me a list of every civilization ever to exist on this planet that has enjoyed significantly more freedom of expression and general liberty than Americans do right now.
Give me a list of every country now on the planet whose citizens enjoy significantly more freedom of expression and general liberty than Americans do right now.
Someone offered Bolivia (!) as a response. Bolivia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices
Economic freedom – Mostly unfree
Press freedom – Noticeable problems
Democracy freedom – Hybrid regime (only authoritarian regime is lower)
United States rated mostly free; Satisfactory situation; full democracy in those categories.
BOTTOM LINE:
Most people who have lived on the planet have lived in conditions much, much worse than the conditions under which we live…and I would love to have a list of all the people who have lived under significantly better conditions.
I suspect none!
As for current day conditions, I am sure some countries now in existence can be considered better…but NOT significantly so.
I understand and appreciate your feelings on this, but you are overstating the case for what we are…and what we are becoming. And, respectfully as possible, the shrill nature of your protests are not helping to make the situation better….and may very well lead to conditions that will make the situation MUCH worse.
We are over 300,000,000 people living in very free conditions with more personal freedom that almost anyone has ever enjoyed.
If anyone here thinks there have been populations who have lived in significantly freer conditions than we enjoy, bring them forward for discussion. If anyone here thinks there have been populations who have lived with significantly more personal freedom than we enjoy right now…bring them forward for discussion.
Same thing for populations now in existence...any you think live in significantly freer conditions, with significantly greater personal freedom than we...let's talk about them.
I honestly do not think you, Libby, or anyone else here can do that.
Once again, with all the respect in the world, show me that I am wrong.
Give me a list of every civilization ever to exist on this planet that has enjoyed significantly more freedom of expression and general liberty than Americans do right now.
Give me a list of every country now on the planet whose citizens enjoy significantly more freedom of expression and general liberty than Americans do right now.
Someone offered Bolivia (!) as a response. Bolivia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices
Economic freedom – Mostly unfree
Press freedom – Noticeable problems
Democracy freedom – Hybrid regime (only authoritarian regime is lower)
United States rated mostly free; Satisfactory situation; full democracy in those categories.
BOTTOM LINE:
Most people who have lived on the planet have lived in conditions much, much worse than the conditions under which we live…and I would love to have a list of all the people who have lived under significantly better conditions.
I suspect none!
As for current day conditions, I am sure some countries now in existence can be considered better…but NOT significantly so.
I understand and appreciate your feelings on this, but you are overstating the case for what we are…and what we are becoming. And, respectfully as possible, the shrill nature of your protests are not helping to make the situation better….and may very well lead to conditions that will make the situation MUCH worse.
We are over 300,000,000 people living in very free conditions with more personal freedom that almost anyone has ever enjoyed.
If anyone here thinks there have been populations who have lived in significantly freer conditions than we enjoy, bring them forward for discussion. If anyone here thinks there have been populations who have lived with significantly more personal freedom than we enjoy right now…bring them forward for discussion.
Same thing for populations now in existence...any you think live in significantly freer conditions, with significantly greater personal freedom than we...let's talk about them.
I honestly do not think you, Libby, or anyone else here can do that.
Once again, with all the respect in the world, show me that I am wrong.
Mission, thanks for your comment! The Chicago scenario was sadly reminiscent of the accepted by too many New Yorkers Gestapo tactics of the police under Bloomberg at Zuccotti Park having given the occupiers was it 17 minutes of warning before running them out and confiscating and/or destroying their property in the wee hours of the morning! Media was not at all disturbed by the police state aggression. Bloomberg paternalistic and arrogant took his media bows. Out-numbering the Chicago protesters is certainly a way to go by the Obama police thugs. All that zero tolerance military role modelling. The "surge" M.O. isn't just used abroad, is it? The veterans who ceremoniously turned back their medals from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars deserve attention and respect. For Obama and the Dems to help the Republicans demonize and encourage the suppression of the anti-war citizens of this country is one more horrifying insult and betrayal of the bill of rights. best, libby
toritto, I am praying for protesters and residents of Tampa at the end of August.
50,000 Repubs coming to town for convention, how many thousands for lock down security, ominous hurricane season and the Ron Paul variable to add to excitement. Throw in the gun-toting.
Would be nice to have an administration and media that do not consider the promoters of peace "domestic insurgents." Geeeeeeez!
Thanks for visiting. I am still traveling and hope to hang out more at open salon again soon! best, libby
50,000 Repubs coming to town for convention, how many thousands for lock down security, ominous hurricane season and the Ron Paul variable to add to excitement. Throw in the gun-toting.
Would be nice to have an administration and media that do not consider the promoters of peace "domestic insurgents." Geeeeeeez!
Thanks for visiting. I am still traveling and hope to hang out more at open salon again soon! best, libby
sky! thanks for visit! relatively speaking, I am talking about the "broken democracy" by an administration that eliminates due process and enables a rogue divine right of assassination to a dictator-faux-prez. that locks up ethical and courageous whistleblowers instead of perpetrators of grotesque ethical and legal wrongs, enables white collar criminality along with torture perpetrators, war criminals, and privacy invaders.
Capitalism and the continuing deregulation by pimped out politicians (undaunted by the economic crisis unbelievably -- Dodd/Frank a joke) has ensured profound and now seeming total corruption of our three branches of government steadily over the last 3 decades. Obama and the Dems tragically never had any serious intention of changing the direction of the fall of this republic in 2008. Lying rat bastards of the Dems working with outright rabid rat bastards of the Republicans working for corporate overlords who put profits over people, who treat human lives here and abroad more and more cheaply. The FORCES OF GREED have become so rampant and so ruthless it is incredible most citizens still are watchers not participants of the OWS movement, and are not stampeding for a third party that cannot be bought. 5 global mega-conglomerates control the media messaging and they aren't delivering reality. We are so susceptible to "the status quo is fine" propaganda, the "identify with the aggressor elite" pr spin. The swamp/quicksand is treacherously deepening. We live in a spiritual dark age! Something has to give and I am wishing more than trusting it will be citizen numbness -- a paradigm shift to partnership and cooperation among citizens, among the 99 percent to not be divided up and conquered by the sociopathic ruling class elite. Why can't people wake up and smell the oppression???? best, libby
Capitalism and the continuing deregulation by pimped out politicians (undaunted by the economic crisis unbelievably -- Dodd/Frank a joke) has ensured profound and now seeming total corruption of our three branches of government steadily over the last 3 decades. Obama and the Dems tragically never had any serious intention of changing the direction of the fall of this republic in 2008. Lying rat bastards of the Dems working with outright rabid rat bastards of the Republicans working for corporate overlords who put profits over people, who treat human lives here and abroad more and more cheaply. The FORCES OF GREED have become so rampant and so ruthless it is incredible most citizens still are watchers not participants of the OWS movement, and are not stampeding for a third party that cannot be bought. 5 global mega-conglomerates control the media messaging and they aren't delivering reality. We are so susceptible to "the status quo is fine" propaganda, the "identify with the aggressor elite" pr spin. The swamp/quicksand is treacherously deepening. We live in a spiritual dark age! Something has to give and I am wishing more than trusting it will be citizen numbness -- a paradigm shift to partnership and cooperation among citizens, among the 99 percent to not be divided up and conquered by the sociopathic ruling class elite. Why can't people wake up and smell the oppression???? best, libby
Barack Obama made a brief mention of the protest in response to a question during his sheltered visit and he said something along the lines that those that were behind closed doors and shut off from the protests were having a good time and the protest that were going on and that the protest should be allowed in a free county. He didn't address one issue that is being mentioned now has any of the other high profile media outlets done so.
If Obama is the lesser of two evils it is only slightly and it is only because they chose someone that is so fanatical. If we chose the lesser evil after all the times this choice hasn't worked before it would be submission to tyranny.
BTW feel free to give Frank a homework assignment if it suits your purposes.
If Obama is the lesser of two evils it is only slightly and it is only because they chose someone that is so fanatical. If we chose the lesser evil after all the times this choice hasn't worked before it would be submission to tyranny.
BTW feel free to give Frank a homework assignment if it suits your purposes.
jmac, thanks for visiting! Your point is taken but you have to admit like the scene of the "Socerer's Apprentice" in the old Disney Fantasia movie, things are escalating to an extraordinary and tragic degree. All those years of hearing about the "domino theory" of communism, US/NATO ruthless imperialism is where evil domino pushing lies today. US/NATO interests are pro-corporate NOT pro-humanity, in fact, ANTI-HUMANITY!!!
Your comment sent me looking for those who are more qualified than me to make a historical argument to you. One article I want to cite is by Ann Wright who I have had the honor of meeting in NYC after the flotilla tragedy. Here is part of her testimony as to why she resigned from the army after the invasion of Iraq and how incredibly dangerous Obama administration foreign policy is for us citizens as well as the world community!
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/05/we-have-to-keep-agitating/#more-44620
"Ann Wright is a retired Army Reserve colonel and 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She served as a diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. In March 2003, she made headlines when she resigned from the State Department to show her opposition to the invasion of Iraq. She is a co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience."
"Ann Wright: I was in the military for 29 years –13 years on active duty and 16 years in the reserves, and then another 16 years while I was in the State Department as a U.S. diplomat. So I was a part of the system under seven different presidents, from Lyndon Johnson all the way to George Bush Jr.
"I didn’t believe in, or agree with, all the policies of all these administrations. I disagreed with many of them, but I never resigned. I always found other things I could work on that I felt were not harming people. It was only at the end of my government career that I finally resigned over something, because there were plenty of things I could have resigned over earlier, but I didn’t. I held my nose about them, like most government employees do.
"The tipping point for me was the decision of the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq. They used the excuse of weapons of mass destruction. I didn’t believe them. We all knew that there had been two no-fly zones over the country over a period of 10 years. There had been quarantine, a blockade around the country, and there had been endless inspections for weapons of mass destruction.
"On top of that, the UN inspectors, most of whom were U.S. intelligence agents, didn’t find anything, or the few weapons they found they destroyed. But, in general, the consensus of the international community was that there were no weapons of mass destruction left in the country.
"So I just didn’t believe what the Bush administration was saying. When Colin Powell gave that lengthy address to the General Assembly in February 2003, I remember sitting in our embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. I watched it on live TV with all of our staff around, because we all realized that this was a momentous event, and we knew that our lives would again be changing if the U.S. decided to invade and occupy Iraq.
snip
When I finally resigned, I ended up writing what I’ve been told was the longest resignation letter in the history of the State Department. It’s about three pages long and it not only talks about the war in Iraq, but other concerns about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the Bush administration’s lack of effort to engage North Korea, and its unnecessary curtailing of civil liberties under the Patriot Act.
"When I resigned, I got over 400 e-mails from friends and colleagues in the State Department and other agencies saying, “You’re doing the right thing. We wish we could resign, but we’ve got kids in college, mortgages, you know, the whole financial thing.” But there are plenty of people in the government I think that have retired early and with severe cases of ulcers from having had to go through all of the horrors of the Bush administration.
snip
"AW: Everyone was hoping for a real change from what George Bush had dished out during his eight-year reign. But let’s remember that even during the campaign, candidate Obama did tell us that he felt the Afghanistan war was a good war, and he intended to escalate it. On that bad promise he’s delivered, but on many other good ones he has not.
"He’s not closed Guantánamo. We still have the military commissions trying a few prisoners in Guantánamo. Virtually nobody has been released during the Obama administration, or even put on trial — these people are in imprisoned with no hope of resolution of their cases.
"On the issue of curtailing of civil liberties, it’s worse under the Obama administration. Whistleblowers are getting the worst of the raw deals — six people have now been charged with espionage for revealing classified information that shows government malfeasance and criminal acts.
"I’ve been very disappointed and displeased with Obama’s tenure. Like many other people, I have been challenging those policies, and writing and speaking and having endless vigils out in front of the White House. I, like many others, have gone to protest the president at various events, disrupting them over a variety of issues and getting arrested, just as we did under the Bush administration.
"How to deal with the Obama administration has been a big debate in the movement. At our recent Veterans for Peace convention, we had a long and good discussion about whether we should call for the impeachment of President Obama as we had called for the impeachment of President Bush. While we were hesitant to come out against the first Black president, after we laid out all the evidence we decided that we had no choice but to call for Obama’s impeachment.
"AW: I think his escalation of the war in Afghanistan is perhaps his worst decision. He’s caused a huge number of civilian casualties, wasted a tremendous amount of money on sweetheart deals for private contractors, and enabled enormous amounts of corruption among Afghan businessmen as well as in the Afghan government itself.
"Many of these Afghan corporate and governmental elites are part of the warlord class. We’re training and equipping their militias in the police and army. They will be there to fight not for the country of Afghanistan, but for the warlords to whom they belong.
"Obama has decided to extend his patronage of the corrupt Afghan elite with this new 10-year strategic pact. He’s supposedly closing the door in Afghanistan as he supposedly had closed the door in Iraq. This is all, in fact, a public relations ploy. Behind the supposedly closed door, the U.S. is spending billions of dollars in Iraq and there will be billions for the next 10 years in Afghanistan.
"AW: Obama sees China as a rising rival, a huge economic powerhouse as well as a regional military power with the largest land army in the world and with an increasingly advanced air force and the navy. As you said, he wants to contain it.
"He and the Congress are whipping up anti-Chinese rhetoric here in the U.S. Just recently the administration denounced the Chinese for building their first aircraft carrier. This is pure hypocrisy. The U.S. already has 14 of them. And for the first time, the Chinese have one, and they talk about it as that’s the greatest threat to all of the world.
"That’s not to absolve the Chinese government of its problems and its own bad policies. But the U.S. should not be adding them to the “axis of evil.” This pivot to Asia will only push China into a corner and may lead them to do something that will give the excuse for the U.S. to make even more hostile policies.
"And the U.S. pivot seems almost designed to provoke China. Obama has increased the military to military relationships with the Philippines. We still have a huge number of soldiers stationed in Okinawa in Japan.
"He’s opened a new base for 2,500 Marines in Australia and an airfield that will be dedicated toward big Global Hawk drones that can stay indefinitely in the air for surveillance in Asia. And in South Korea, we still have over 30,000 troops and he’s pushing for a new naval base in a pristine place called Jeju Island. Obama wants that to be the homeport for Asia’s part of America’s worldwide missile defense system.
"This last decision is very significant since it will increase tensions with not only the Chinese but also Russians. The missile shield in Europe as well as the new one proposed for Asia is one of the reasons that Putin did not attend the G8 meeting. He wanted to send a signal that he is going to be putting more and more pressure on the U.S. to stop this missile defense system. Otherwise, he’s going to put one in, too, which will not be good for world security.
"AW: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones are an easy, clean way for the U.S. to wage war. You don’t have to have your own military on the ground. These drones are capable of flying long distances, they can be refueled in the air, and they can do the dirty work of the U.S. without any American’s life being risked.
"They are automating warfare. Some of these drones are as large as the 727 and can carry payloads that are enormous. They can put big bunker buster bombs under these things and fly them over and just drop wherever they want.
"But this new automated military will not, in fact, protect American lives. Just like traditional military actions or missile strikes, drone warfare will inevitably precipitate blowback. We’ve already seen attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates specifically in response to drone attacks. So, the administration’s claim that these are the safest things that we could be using isn’t true.
snip
"AW: First of all, we have to be very watchful of what the Obama is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is he has not really ended the U.S. domination over either of those countries. The U.S. has hoards of American private contractors in each of those countries, and many of them are private security firms who have every bit as much firepower as the U.S. military.
"Beyond that, the U.S. has increased its bases throughout the Middle East. We don’t even know the total number of bases, outposts, runways and landing strips in Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We do know that there are CIA and U.S. military bases in Yemen. There’s a huge base in Qatar. There are, I think, seven bases now in Oman.
"In Africa, the U.S. has established a military base in Somalia. They are using various alibis to justify increased military presence throughout the continent. The U.S. is sending the military into Ethiopia all the time. We have U.S. military forces in Kenya. And then we have U.S. Special Forces in Uganda to supposedly to go after Kony. Well, you can be sure that once they’re in, they’ll never leave.
"Over in Mali and West Africa, the U.S. always has what they call mobile training teams, groups of Special Forces that will come in and do specialized training for militaries. That’s their way to establish relationships between senior leaders of the military, to try to get some sort of compatibility with the military in case the U.S. decides it needs to go in there. So the U.S. has a large number of small groups of military all over Africa.
"In Asia, the U.S. pivot against China is ratcheting up tensions throughout the region. We have Special Forces in the Philippines, down in the island of Mindanao that are using drones and have assassinated 11 people already. And there are members of the Philippine government and legislature, their parliament, who are outraged about what’s going on.
"Walden Bello, one of the wonderful international activists and member of the Philippine parliament, has already written to his government saying, “What’s going on? These are things you’re doing without any consultation — allowing U.S. military and armies, military operations that are killing Filipino people.”
"And then, of course, we have many U.S. military forces in Korea, Japan and Okinawa. We’ve had a large naval base down in Singapore for a long time. We do have military to military relationships now with Vietnam, with Laos, Cambodia. So, the U.S. has its tentacles everywhere and, depending on who gets out of line, the U.S. may put great military as well as economic pressure on that country. And the U.S. will use the global “war on terror” to declare its right to go anywhere, anytime, do anything.
snip
"AW: Well, to be vigilant, to be vocal, to be on the streets, to keep after the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t let them fade out of view. And one can use a variety of levers on it, because we’ve got to have some hook to make the public aware. In Iraq, we have to call attention to the issue of private contractors and the numbers that are there — who they are and what they’re doing — and also where U.S. oil companies are and what sort of contracts they’ve got there.
"And in Afghanistan, we will be seeing war sponsored by the U.S. well after 2014. We have to debunk the idea that U.S. forces will be leaving behind an independent country. I think that the next 10-year period we will see U.S. forces there in large numbers fighting Taliban, conducting night raids and drone strikes, and violating the sovereignty of Pakistan. We should also watch out for U.S. using its power to control pipeline routes in the region as well as exploit the natural resources of Afghanistan.
"Pakistan will likely be the most volatile of all of the areas. What the U.S. is doing there just has the potential to be a greater catastrophe than even Afghanistan. The U.S. is killing untold numbers of people with drones and essentially thumbing its nose at the Pakistani government, which has pleaded with us to stop because of the reaction that they are getting from their own people.
"I mean it could explode in just so many horrific ways. People are furious with the U.S. The U.S. embassy in Pakistan has already been burned twice over the past decades.
"We really have to follow what the U.S. is up to in Asia and the Pacific. We have to be watchful of the rhetoric of the administration and do everything we can to tamp it down, to call the hand of the government.
"We also need to keep agitating against the occupation of Palestine. We need all sorts of international citizen activism to highlight the illegal settlements in the West Bank, the apartheid wall, and the treatment of Palestinians within Israel and the blockade of Gaza. I think that campus activists have played a key role doing all sorts of things like building walls to bring home what the apartheid structure of Israel is like.
snip
"Finally, we need to keep the pressure on the American government and the Israeli government to stop any drive to war against Iran. We really need to pester the hell out of the Obama administration on this rhetoric that they’ve been saying about Iran developing weapons of mass destruction.
"I mean we’ve heard all of this before. These same allegations against Iraq lead me to resign my post. Instead we should be encouraging them to talk with Iran. We should be in dialogue, not in military confrontation."
Your comment sent me looking for those who are more qualified than me to make a historical argument to you. One article I want to cite is by Ann Wright who I have had the honor of meeting in NYC after the flotilla tragedy. Here is part of her testimony as to why she resigned from the army after the invasion of Iraq and how incredibly dangerous Obama administration foreign policy is for us citizens as well as the world community!
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/05/we-have-to-keep-agitating/#more-44620
"Ann Wright is a retired Army Reserve colonel and 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She served as a diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. In March 2003, she made headlines when she resigned from the State Department to show her opposition to the invasion of Iraq. She is a co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience."
"Ann Wright: I was in the military for 29 years –13 years on active duty and 16 years in the reserves, and then another 16 years while I was in the State Department as a U.S. diplomat. So I was a part of the system under seven different presidents, from Lyndon Johnson all the way to George Bush Jr.
"I didn’t believe in, or agree with, all the policies of all these administrations. I disagreed with many of them, but I never resigned. I always found other things I could work on that I felt were not harming people. It was only at the end of my government career that I finally resigned over something, because there were plenty of things I could have resigned over earlier, but I didn’t. I held my nose about them, like most government employees do.
"The tipping point for me was the decision of the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq. They used the excuse of weapons of mass destruction. I didn’t believe them. We all knew that there had been two no-fly zones over the country over a period of 10 years. There had been quarantine, a blockade around the country, and there had been endless inspections for weapons of mass destruction.
"On top of that, the UN inspectors, most of whom were U.S. intelligence agents, didn’t find anything, or the few weapons they found they destroyed. But, in general, the consensus of the international community was that there were no weapons of mass destruction left in the country.
"So I just didn’t believe what the Bush administration was saying. When Colin Powell gave that lengthy address to the General Assembly in February 2003, I remember sitting in our embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. I watched it on live TV with all of our staff around, because we all realized that this was a momentous event, and we knew that our lives would again be changing if the U.S. decided to invade and occupy Iraq.
snip
When I finally resigned, I ended up writing what I’ve been told was the longest resignation letter in the history of the State Department. It’s about three pages long and it not only talks about the war in Iraq, but other concerns about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the Bush administration’s lack of effort to engage North Korea, and its unnecessary curtailing of civil liberties under the Patriot Act.
"When I resigned, I got over 400 e-mails from friends and colleagues in the State Department and other agencies saying, “You’re doing the right thing. We wish we could resign, but we’ve got kids in college, mortgages, you know, the whole financial thing.” But there are plenty of people in the government I think that have retired early and with severe cases of ulcers from having had to go through all of the horrors of the Bush administration.
snip
"AW: Everyone was hoping for a real change from what George Bush had dished out during his eight-year reign. But let’s remember that even during the campaign, candidate Obama did tell us that he felt the Afghanistan war was a good war, and he intended to escalate it. On that bad promise he’s delivered, but on many other good ones he has not.
"He’s not closed Guantánamo. We still have the military commissions trying a few prisoners in Guantánamo. Virtually nobody has been released during the Obama administration, or even put on trial — these people are in imprisoned with no hope of resolution of their cases.
"On the issue of curtailing of civil liberties, it’s worse under the Obama administration. Whistleblowers are getting the worst of the raw deals — six people have now been charged with espionage for revealing classified information that shows government malfeasance and criminal acts.
"I’ve been very disappointed and displeased with Obama’s tenure. Like many other people, I have been challenging those policies, and writing and speaking and having endless vigils out in front of the White House. I, like many others, have gone to protest the president at various events, disrupting them over a variety of issues and getting arrested, just as we did under the Bush administration.
"How to deal with the Obama administration has been a big debate in the movement. At our recent Veterans for Peace convention, we had a long and good discussion about whether we should call for the impeachment of President Obama as we had called for the impeachment of President Bush. While we were hesitant to come out against the first Black president, after we laid out all the evidence we decided that we had no choice but to call for Obama’s impeachment.
"AW: I think his escalation of the war in Afghanistan is perhaps his worst decision. He’s caused a huge number of civilian casualties, wasted a tremendous amount of money on sweetheart deals for private contractors, and enabled enormous amounts of corruption among Afghan businessmen as well as in the Afghan government itself.
"Many of these Afghan corporate and governmental elites are part of the warlord class. We’re training and equipping their militias in the police and army. They will be there to fight not for the country of Afghanistan, but for the warlords to whom they belong.
"Obama has decided to extend his patronage of the corrupt Afghan elite with this new 10-year strategic pact. He’s supposedly closing the door in Afghanistan as he supposedly had closed the door in Iraq. This is all, in fact, a public relations ploy. Behind the supposedly closed door, the U.S. is spending billions of dollars in Iraq and there will be billions for the next 10 years in Afghanistan.
"AW: Obama sees China as a rising rival, a huge economic powerhouse as well as a regional military power with the largest land army in the world and with an increasingly advanced air force and the navy. As you said, he wants to contain it.
"He and the Congress are whipping up anti-Chinese rhetoric here in the U.S. Just recently the administration denounced the Chinese for building their first aircraft carrier. This is pure hypocrisy. The U.S. already has 14 of them. And for the first time, the Chinese have one, and they talk about it as that’s the greatest threat to all of the world.
"That’s not to absolve the Chinese government of its problems and its own bad policies. But the U.S. should not be adding them to the “axis of evil.” This pivot to Asia will only push China into a corner and may lead them to do something that will give the excuse for the U.S. to make even more hostile policies.
"And the U.S. pivot seems almost designed to provoke China. Obama has increased the military to military relationships with the Philippines. We still have a huge number of soldiers stationed in Okinawa in Japan.
"He’s opened a new base for 2,500 Marines in Australia and an airfield that will be dedicated toward big Global Hawk drones that can stay indefinitely in the air for surveillance in Asia. And in South Korea, we still have over 30,000 troops and he’s pushing for a new naval base in a pristine place called Jeju Island. Obama wants that to be the homeport for Asia’s part of America’s worldwide missile defense system.
"This last decision is very significant since it will increase tensions with not only the Chinese but also Russians. The missile shield in Europe as well as the new one proposed for Asia is one of the reasons that Putin did not attend the G8 meeting. He wanted to send a signal that he is going to be putting more and more pressure on the U.S. to stop this missile defense system. Otherwise, he’s going to put one in, too, which will not be good for world security.
"AW: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones are an easy, clean way for the U.S. to wage war. You don’t have to have your own military on the ground. These drones are capable of flying long distances, they can be refueled in the air, and they can do the dirty work of the U.S. without any American’s life being risked.
"They are automating warfare. Some of these drones are as large as the 727 and can carry payloads that are enormous. They can put big bunker buster bombs under these things and fly them over and just drop wherever they want.
"But this new automated military will not, in fact, protect American lives. Just like traditional military actions or missile strikes, drone warfare will inevitably precipitate blowback. We’ve already seen attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates specifically in response to drone attacks. So, the administration’s claim that these are the safest things that we could be using isn’t true.
snip
"AW: First of all, we have to be very watchful of what the Obama is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is he has not really ended the U.S. domination over either of those countries. The U.S. has hoards of American private contractors in each of those countries, and many of them are private security firms who have every bit as much firepower as the U.S. military.
"Beyond that, the U.S. has increased its bases throughout the Middle East. We don’t even know the total number of bases, outposts, runways and landing strips in Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We do know that there are CIA and U.S. military bases in Yemen. There’s a huge base in Qatar. There are, I think, seven bases now in Oman.
"In Africa, the U.S. has established a military base in Somalia. They are using various alibis to justify increased military presence throughout the continent. The U.S. is sending the military into Ethiopia all the time. We have U.S. military forces in Kenya. And then we have U.S. Special Forces in Uganda to supposedly to go after Kony. Well, you can be sure that once they’re in, they’ll never leave.
"Over in Mali and West Africa, the U.S. always has what they call mobile training teams, groups of Special Forces that will come in and do specialized training for militaries. That’s their way to establish relationships between senior leaders of the military, to try to get some sort of compatibility with the military in case the U.S. decides it needs to go in there. So the U.S. has a large number of small groups of military all over Africa.
"In Asia, the U.S. pivot against China is ratcheting up tensions throughout the region. We have Special Forces in the Philippines, down in the island of Mindanao that are using drones and have assassinated 11 people already. And there are members of the Philippine government and legislature, their parliament, who are outraged about what’s going on.
"Walden Bello, one of the wonderful international activists and member of the Philippine parliament, has already written to his government saying, “What’s going on? These are things you’re doing without any consultation — allowing U.S. military and armies, military operations that are killing Filipino people.”
"And then, of course, we have many U.S. military forces in Korea, Japan and Okinawa. We’ve had a large naval base down in Singapore for a long time. We do have military to military relationships now with Vietnam, with Laos, Cambodia. So, the U.S. has its tentacles everywhere and, depending on who gets out of line, the U.S. may put great military as well as economic pressure on that country. And the U.S. will use the global “war on terror” to declare its right to go anywhere, anytime, do anything.
snip
"AW: Well, to be vigilant, to be vocal, to be on the streets, to keep after the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t let them fade out of view. And one can use a variety of levers on it, because we’ve got to have some hook to make the public aware. In Iraq, we have to call attention to the issue of private contractors and the numbers that are there — who they are and what they’re doing — and also where U.S. oil companies are and what sort of contracts they’ve got there.
"And in Afghanistan, we will be seeing war sponsored by the U.S. well after 2014. We have to debunk the idea that U.S. forces will be leaving behind an independent country. I think that the next 10-year period we will see U.S. forces there in large numbers fighting Taliban, conducting night raids and drone strikes, and violating the sovereignty of Pakistan. We should also watch out for U.S. using its power to control pipeline routes in the region as well as exploit the natural resources of Afghanistan.
"Pakistan will likely be the most volatile of all of the areas. What the U.S. is doing there just has the potential to be a greater catastrophe than even Afghanistan. The U.S. is killing untold numbers of people with drones and essentially thumbing its nose at the Pakistani government, which has pleaded with us to stop because of the reaction that they are getting from their own people.
"I mean it could explode in just so many horrific ways. People are furious with the U.S. The U.S. embassy in Pakistan has already been burned twice over the past decades.
"We really have to follow what the U.S. is up to in Asia and the Pacific. We have to be watchful of the rhetoric of the administration and do everything we can to tamp it down, to call the hand of the government.
"We also need to keep agitating against the occupation of Palestine. We need all sorts of international citizen activism to highlight the illegal settlements in the West Bank, the apartheid wall, and the treatment of Palestinians within Israel and the blockade of Gaza. I think that campus activists have played a key role doing all sorts of things like building walls to bring home what the apartheid structure of Israel is like.
snip
"Finally, we need to keep the pressure on the American government and the Israeli government to stop any drive to war against Iran. We really need to pester the hell out of the Obama administration on this rhetoric that they’ve been saying about Iran developing weapons of mass destruction.
"I mean we’ve heard all of this before. These same allegations against Iraq lead me to resign my post. Instead we should be encouraging them to talk with Iran. We should be in dialogue, not in military confrontation."
Stuart, thanks for visit! Yes, you do give me hope. More and more of us are coming to recognize the horrifying crap that has been going on behind the veil of "American exceptionalism denial." The matrix woven now so tightly by the corporate overlords is so terrible and formidable and yet should be making it harder and harder to deny the spiritually dark age we are in. Where is the bottom before a profound paradigm shift to humanism (and reality), partnership and cooperation (from the pyramidal top patriarchal power and control and greed addiction) occurs among the majority of Americans who need to catch up with what most of the rest of the world knows, the US is a rogue and international war criminal nation now giving more and more of its own citizens a taste of what the US has been doing internationally for decades and decades as jmac reminds us. best, libby
Alaska Progressive, thanks for visit and insight. The colossal "faux-humanitarian-intent" bullshit hides a US eager and willing to back oppressive regimes for corporate economic interests. Big media so willing to push the propaganda since corporate sponsorship rules faux-communication. best, libby
Jack, thanks for responding! You speak profound wisdom re Obama when you write:
"There is no excuse for Obamas police state or the NDAA bill that was written under Obamas oversight. As you say Obama is a fascist, a fascist that would make even Dubya blush. That’s why he was deployed in Dubya’s wake because they knew he would have no scruples at all. Obama just does what he is told."
I see Jill Stein of Green Party as fulfilling my wishes for the US rather than Ron Paul, though I am glad he is stirring it up with his anti-war stance for sure!!!
I am interested in what you will be writing about Afghanistan, but feel that our backing the corrupt warlords and Karzai is enabling the quagmire still, "ethnic quicksands" we are entering and not for humanitarian intent, but economic intent. Also, the anti-humanism US military patriarchy continues to ice out the women of Afghanistan who were used as one of the pretexts for becoming involved in militarism against it. What bullshit that was! Still trotted out for emotional propaganda!
Jack, here are excerpts from a blog I did a while ago FWIW:
http://www.correntewire.com/everything_u_need_2_know_re_afghan_war_but_r_2_depressed_2_ask#more
"Malalia Joya is a brave, legitimately bitter and articulate Afghanistan woman. She writes:
"But after a decade, Afghanistan still remains the most uncivil, most corrupt, and most war torn country in the world. The consequences of the so-called war on terror has only been more bloodshed, crimes, barbarism, human rights, and women’s rights violations, which has doubled the miseries and sorrows of our people.
"Joya relates that during these ten “bloody” years, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed by occupation forces and terrorist groups. She discloses that during Obama’s administration civilian death tolls increased by 24% and that per the Afghanistan Right Monitor in 2010, 7 civilians were killed everyday.
"Joya doesn’t buy the U.S. and NATO assertion that they plan to leave Afghanistan by the middle of 2014. The building of permanent bases over there certainly belies such a promise. The war lords of Afghanistan and the US and NATO-enabled corporate war lords have found amoral common cause. She writes:
"They will not leave our country soon. They are there for their own strategic regional and economic interests. That is why they want to change Afghanistan into a military and intelligence base in Asia.
"Eric Margolis inventories ten years of violence in Afghanistan:
"All the claims made about fighting “terrorism and al-Qaida,” liberating Afghan women and bringing democracy are pro-war window dressing. CIA chief Leon Panetta admitted there were no more than 25-50 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan. Why are there 150,000 US and NATO troops there?
"Washington’s real objective was clearly defined in 2007 by US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher: to “stabilize Afghanistan so it can become a conduit and hub between South and Central Asia – so energy can flow south.”
"The Turkmenistan-Afghan-Pakistan TAPI gas pipeline that the US has sought since 1998 is finally nearing completion. But whether it can operate in the face of sabotage remains to be seen.
"Margolis produces his own sobering statistics. 10 years in Afghanistan has cost us $450 billion, 1,600 dead and 15,000 seriously wounded soldiers. Each of our soldiers costs $1 million per year. The CIA employs 80,000 mercenaries there as well, and that black ops budget is of course SECRET.
"As for leaving any time soon, why is Obama building the BIGGEST EMBASSY IN THE WORLD in Kabul? A “fortress” costing $800 MILLION (how the 99% of America could use that as a bail-out for their own lives -- do the math -- incredibly each of us 99% of the over 300 million Americans could be given an incredible $2 million plus a piece if this obscenely massive embassy were not built!!!! Can you wrap your mind around that?). The embassy, according to Margolis, will employ 1,000 personnel and “a small army of mercenary gunmen.”
"Margolis also declares that the United States is “now the proud owner of the world’s leading narco-state and deeply involved with the Afghan Tajik drug mafia.”
"Worse, US-run Afghanistan now produces 93% of the world’s most dangerous narcotic, heroin. Under Taliban, drug production virtually ended, according to the UN. Today, the Afghan drug business is booming. The US tries to blame Taliban; but the real culprits are high government officials in Kabul and US-backed warlords.
"A senior UN drug official recently asserted that Afghan heroin killed 10,000 people in NATO countries last year. And this does not include Russia, a primary destination for Afghan heroin.
"After so much carnage and destruction of quality of life of the Afghan War survivors, both troops and Afghan citizenry and Afghanistan heroin recipients globally, the US has not come seriously close even to its own amoral profit-making strategic aims. In fact, it is likely that this war is lost, though chronic media and governmental mendacity would never allow that reality be acknowledged.
"Margolis:
"Washington’s goal was a favorable political settlement producing a pacified Afghan state run by a regime totally responsive to US political, economic and strategic interests; a native sepoy army led by white officers; and US bases that threaten Iran, watch China, and control the energy-rich Caspian Basin.
snip
"Meanwhile, Washington has been unable to create a stable government in Kabul. The primary reason: ethnic politics. Over half the population is Pashtun (or Pathan), from whose ranks come Taliban. Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities fiercely oppose the Pashtun. All three collaborated with the Soviet occupation from 1979-1989; today they collaborate with the US and NATO occupation.
"Most of the Afghan army and police, on which the US spends $6 billion annually, are Tajiks and Uzbek, many members of the old Afghan Communist Party. To Pashtun, they are bitter enemies. In Afghanistan, the US has built its political house on ethnic quicksands.
"We are pouring massive American blood and money, ten years plus, along with even more massive amounts of Afghanistan blood into “ethnic quicksands.”
"Matthew Rothschild in “End the Afghan War”:
"General John Allen, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told CBS’s 60 Minutes: "Well, the plan is to win. The plan is to be successful. And so, while some folks might hear that we're departing in 2014 as a result of the Lisbon Conference and the process of transition, we're actually going to be here for a long time," Allen said.
"What is “winning” going to look like? There is no way the United States is going to “win” unless it engages in genocide because the U.S.-puppet government in Kabul is corrupt and extremely unpopular, and the Taliban has a large base of support among the people.
"The Afghan War has become Obama’s War. He tripled the number of U.S. troops there (if John McCain had done that, imagine the outcry among Democrats?), and for all his talk of withdrawing troops, the United States is on a pace to have between 60,000 and 70,000 troops in Afghanistan by Election Day—nearly twice as many as when Obama took office.
"The underlying reasons those troops are there have nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Rather, they have to do with controlling oil pipeline routes to the Arabian Sea, surrounding Iran, and putting military bases on the western edge of China.
"But Obama has never leveled with the American people about these reasons because they aren’t sufficient to persuade us to keep paying for this war in our blood and treasure.
"And now he’s pulling a lethal switcheroo by preparing to stay beyond 2014.
"“Genocide” is the unspoken but seemingly bottom-line solution for the US and NATO to arrive at their corporate agendas. How long will we, the 99% disenfranchised and marginalized citizenry, enable that covert plan with our collective indifference?
"In “Afghanistan's Energy War” Shukria Dellawar and Antonia Juhasz address in detail the energy and mining privatization/exploitation happening to Afghanistan by predatory corporations thanks to their colluding imperialist governments:
"But while the effort to transform Iraq’s oil sector has played out on a fairly public international stage, no such attention has been focused on Afghanistan. Compared to Iraq, Afghanistan’s populace remains poorly educated, its civil society and public sector workforce underdeveloped, and its government not only weak and challenged by corruption, but also lacking in both energy sector expertise and infrastructure. Under such circumstances, a radical redesign of the nation’s energy development model cannot take place in a manner that ensures fairness, equity, sustainability, or safety.
snip
"Unknown to most Afghans, in January 2009 the government implemented a new Hydrocarbon Law that transforms its oil and natural gas sectors from fully state-owned to all but fully privatized. In April 2011, the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines launched the first of what it expects to be “several tenders for Afghanistan’s oil and gas resources over the next few years.”
snip
"The Norwegian government recently concluded an analysis of Afghanistan’s hydrocarbons, finding that “most Afghans express a high level of suspicion about the motives and intentions of neighboring countries and, increasingly, also of the international community. Further, “[M]any Afghans point out the risk of a lack of political willingness to ensure that such benefits [from hydrocarbon development] will have a fair distribution.”
"If you are still with me (and as depressed as I am by all of this at the end of 10 years of obscenely amoral and incompetent futile warfare) Brian Terrell writes of the nightmare of the Bagram prison situation in Afghanistan:
" After gutting its own constitution in the name of a “war on terror,” the United States is now adding to the injury and insult of a brutal occupation by demanding of the Afghan government that it pledge to be as lawless as the U.S., to continue our oppression of its people in our absence before we will give them sovereignty over their own judicial system.
snip
"The number of Afghans detained at Bagram has tripled over the past three years to more than 2,600 and the new construction will raise the capacity to 5,500 prisoners. Capt. Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the U.S. task force that oversees detention operations in Afghanistan, told the Post that the expansion was necessary to “accommodate an increase in the number of suspected insurgents being detained as a result of intelligence-based counter- terrorism operations, which we conduct with our Afghan partners.”
"Many of those held at Bagram have been there since the U.S. occupied the former Soviet air base in 2001, and some two thirds of prisoners there have not been charged with or convicted of any crime. Corruption is rampant in Afghan courts and among police there as it is in many other places but the major fear of the United States is not that the Afghan courts will not function according to their constitution and accepted norms of law, but that they will. In order for Afghanistan to take sovereignty over its own judiciary and prison system, the Afghans must first fix the “cracks of an undeveloped legal system” and adopt essential “reforms,” including adoption of the U.S. practice of detaining suspected insurgents indefinitely without trial.
"Included among the “weaknesses” of Afghan law that the United States needs to see addressed is a guarantee that a prisoner in Afghanistan must be formally charged with a crime within three days or be released. To be convicted of a crime, Afghan law requires that evidence against a defendant be presented in open court and that hearsay evidence and evidence gained by torture be excluded. (How primitive is that!) Such protections exist, on paper at least, in most countries, and the U.S. Constitution guarantees these rights as well.
snip
"Just as with the detainees held for these past ten years at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo in Cuba, few of those held at Bagram would be convicted in a fair trial. Most have been captured on the strength of tips by informers and other hearsay and with no forensic evidence. “Right now,” a senior U.S. official is quoted in a January 30, 2011 article published in the Guardian, “if we turned them over to the Afghans tomorrow, they'd be in a position, under their laws and their constitution, that they may be released.”
"While the number of prisoners held at Guantanamo is slowly decreasing, the number of those held at Bagram is skyrocketing, due to increased “intelligence-based counter- terrorism operations,” a euphemism for what are more accurately called night raids. The Open Society Foundations and The Liaison Office in Kabul released a report on September 19, “The Cost of Kill/Capture: Impact of the Night Raid Surge on Afghan Civilians.” In their Executive Summary, the reports’ authors state, “Nighttime kill and capture operations (“night raids”) by international military have been one of the most controversial tactics in Afghanistan. They are as valued by the international military as they are reviled by Afghan communities. Night raids have been associated with the death, injury, and detention of civilians, and have sparked enormous backlash among Afghan communities. The Afghan government and the Afghan public have repeatedly called for an end to night raids.”
"This report cites a sharp escalation in raids that has “taken the battlefield more directly into Afghan homes sparking tremendous backlash among the Afghan population.” While civilians not directly participating in hostilities are supposed to be protected from such attacks by the Geneva Conventions, these raids are often “heavily (if not primarily) motivated by intelligence gathering.” One U.S. military officer responsible for authorizing night raids explained, “If you can’t get the guy you want, you get the guy who knows him.” Often in night raids, all male adolescent and adult members of a household or even of a whole village are bound and held, and techniques such as masked informants giving thumbs up or down, noting who has a beard or who lacks the calloused hands of a farmer, are used to decide who is taken to a U.S. base for further questioning. Such are the “intelligence-based counter- terrorism operations” that are taxing the capacity of the U.S. prison at Bagram.
"American dominos falling across the globe, shock and awe dominos ensuring lawlessness and perpetual violence. Afghanistan is one more example of how hammering, hyper-militarized faux-democratic America is not spreading genuine democracy globally but ZEALOUSLY discouraging it, especially in its puppet victim state."
I will be especially attentive re the Pashtuns in trying to get to the full truth re Afghanistan because of your stance. To be continued, this discussion.
best, libby
"There is no excuse for Obamas police state or the NDAA bill that was written under Obamas oversight. As you say Obama is a fascist, a fascist that would make even Dubya blush. That’s why he was deployed in Dubya’s wake because they knew he would have no scruples at all. Obama just does what he is told."
I see Jill Stein of Green Party as fulfilling my wishes for the US rather than Ron Paul, though I am glad he is stirring it up with his anti-war stance for sure!!!
I am interested in what you will be writing about Afghanistan, but feel that our backing the corrupt warlords and Karzai is enabling the quagmire still, "ethnic quicksands" we are entering and not for humanitarian intent, but economic intent. Also, the anti-humanism US military patriarchy continues to ice out the women of Afghanistan who were used as one of the pretexts for becoming involved in militarism against it. What bullshit that was! Still trotted out for emotional propaganda!
Jack, here are excerpts from a blog I did a while ago FWIW:
http://www.correntewire.com/everything_u_need_2_know_re_afghan_war_but_r_2_depressed_2_ask#more
"Malalia Joya is a brave, legitimately bitter and articulate Afghanistan woman. She writes:
"But after a decade, Afghanistan still remains the most uncivil, most corrupt, and most war torn country in the world. The consequences of the so-called war on terror has only been more bloodshed, crimes, barbarism, human rights, and women’s rights violations, which has doubled the miseries and sorrows of our people.
"Joya relates that during these ten “bloody” years, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed by occupation forces and terrorist groups. She discloses that during Obama’s administration civilian death tolls increased by 24% and that per the Afghanistan Right Monitor in 2010, 7 civilians were killed everyday.
"Joya doesn’t buy the U.S. and NATO assertion that they plan to leave Afghanistan by the middle of 2014. The building of permanent bases over there certainly belies such a promise. The war lords of Afghanistan and the US and NATO-enabled corporate war lords have found amoral common cause. She writes:
"They will not leave our country soon. They are there for their own strategic regional and economic interests. That is why they want to change Afghanistan into a military and intelligence base in Asia.
"Eric Margolis inventories ten years of violence in Afghanistan:
"All the claims made about fighting “terrorism and al-Qaida,” liberating Afghan women and bringing democracy are pro-war window dressing. CIA chief Leon Panetta admitted there were no more than 25-50 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan. Why are there 150,000 US and NATO troops there?
"Washington’s real objective was clearly defined in 2007 by US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher: to “stabilize Afghanistan so it can become a conduit and hub between South and Central Asia – so energy can flow south.”
"The Turkmenistan-Afghan-Pakistan TAPI gas pipeline that the US has sought since 1998 is finally nearing completion. But whether it can operate in the face of sabotage remains to be seen.
"Margolis produces his own sobering statistics. 10 years in Afghanistan has cost us $450 billion, 1,600 dead and 15,000 seriously wounded soldiers. Each of our soldiers costs $1 million per year. The CIA employs 80,000 mercenaries there as well, and that black ops budget is of course SECRET.
"As for leaving any time soon, why is Obama building the BIGGEST EMBASSY IN THE WORLD in Kabul? A “fortress” costing $800 MILLION (how the 99% of America could use that as a bail-out for their own lives -- do the math -- incredibly each of us 99% of the over 300 million Americans could be given an incredible $2 million plus a piece if this obscenely massive embassy were not built!!!! Can you wrap your mind around that?). The embassy, according to Margolis, will employ 1,000 personnel and “a small army of mercenary gunmen.”
"Margolis also declares that the United States is “now the proud owner of the world’s leading narco-state and deeply involved with the Afghan Tajik drug mafia.”
"Worse, US-run Afghanistan now produces 93% of the world’s most dangerous narcotic, heroin. Under Taliban, drug production virtually ended, according to the UN. Today, the Afghan drug business is booming. The US tries to blame Taliban; but the real culprits are high government officials in Kabul and US-backed warlords.
"A senior UN drug official recently asserted that Afghan heroin killed 10,000 people in NATO countries last year. And this does not include Russia, a primary destination for Afghan heroin.
"After so much carnage and destruction of quality of life of the Afghan War survivors, both troops and Afghan citizenry and Afghanistan heroin recipients globally, the US has not come seriously close even to its own amoral profit-making strategic aims. In fact, it is likely that this war is lost, though chronic media and governmental mendacity would never allow that reality be acknowledged.
"Margolis:
"Washington’s goal was a favorable political settlement producing a pacified Afghan state run by a regime totally responsive to US political, economic and strategic interests; a native sepoy army led by white officers; and US bases that threaten Iran, watch China, and control the energy-rich Caspian Basin.
snip
"Meanwhile, Washington has been unable to create a stable government in Kabul. The primary reason: ethnic politics. Over half the population is Pashtun (or Pathan), from whose ranks come Taliban. Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities fiercely oppose the Pashtun. All three collaborated with the Soviet occupation from 1979-1989; today they collaborate with the US and NATO occupation.
"Most of the Afghan army and police, on which the US spends $6 billion annually, are Tajiks and Uzbek, many members of the old Afghan Communist Party. To Pashtun, they are bitter enemies. In Afghanistan, the US has built its political house on ethnic quicksands.
"We are pouring massive American blood and money, ten years plus, along with even more massive amounts of Afghanistan blood into “ethnic quicksands.”
"Matthew Rothschild in “End the Afghan War”:
"General John Allen, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told CBS’s 60 Minutes: "Well, the plan is to win. The plan is to be successful. And so, while some folks might hear that we're departing in 2014 as a result of the Lisbon Conference and the process of transition, we're actually going to be here for a long time," Allen said.
"What is “winning” going to look like? There is no way the United States is going to “win” unless it engages in genocide because the U.S.-puppet government in Kabul is corrupt and extremely unpopular, and the Taliban has a large base of support among the people.
"The Afghan War has become Obama’s War. He tripled the number of U.S. troops there (if John McCain had done that, imagine the outcry among Democrats?), and for all his talk of withdrawing troops, the United States is on a pace to have between 60,000 and 70,000 troops in Afghanistan by Election Day—nearly twice as many as when Obama took office.
"The underlying reasons those troops are there have nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Rather, they have to do with controlling oil pipeline routes to the Arabian Sea, surrounding Iran, and putting military bases on the western edge of China.
"But Obama has never leveled with the American people about these reasons because they aren’t sufficient to persuade us to keep paying for this war in our blood and treasure.
"And now he’s pulling a lethal switcheroo by preparing to stay beyond 2014.
"“Genocide” is the unspoken but seemingly bottom-line solution for the US and NATO to arrive at their corporate agendas. How long will we, the 99% disenfranchised and marginalized citizenry, enable that covert plan with our collective indifference?
"In “Afghanistan's Energy War” Shukria Dellawar and Antonia Juhasz address in detail the energy and mining privatization/exploitation happening to Afghanistan by predatory corporations thanks to their colluding imperialist governments:
"But while the effort to transform Iraq’s oil sector has played out on a fairly public international stage, no such attention has been focused on Afghanistan. Compared to Iraq, Afghanistan’s populace remains poorly educated, its civil society and public sector workforce underdeveloped, and its government not only weak and challenged by corruption, but also lacking in both energy sector expertise and infrastructure. Under such circumstances, a radical redesign of the nation’s energy development model cannot take place in a manner that ensures fairness, equity, sustainability, or safety.
snip
"Unknown to most Afghans, in January 2009 the government implemented a new Hydrocarbon Law that transforms its oil and natural gas sectors from fully state-owned to all but fully privatized. In April 2011, the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines launched the first of what it expects to be “several tenders for Afghanistan’s oil and gas resources over the next few years.”
snip
"The Norwegian government recently concluded an analysis of Afghanistan’s hydrocarbons, finding that “most Afghans express a high level of suspicion about the motives and intentions of neighboring countries and, increasingly, also of the international community. Further, “[M]any Afghans point out the risk of a lack of political willingness to ensure that such benefits [from hydrocarbon development] will have a fair distribution.”
"If you are still with me (and as depressed as I am by all of this at the end of 10 years of obscenely amoral and incompetent futile warfare) Brian Terrell writes of the nightmare of the Bagram prison situation in Afghanistan:
" After gutting its own constitution in the name of a “war on terror,” the United States is now adding to the injury and insult of a brutal occupation by demanding of the Afghan government that it pledge to be as lawless as the U.S., to continue our oppression of its people in our absence before we will give them sovereignty over their own judicial system.
snip
"The number of Afghans detained at Bagram has tripled over the past three years to more than 2,600 and the new construction will raise the capacity to 5,500 prisoners. Capt. Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the U.S. task force that oversees detention operations in Afghanistan, told the Post that the expansion was necessary to “accommodate an increase in the number of suspected insurgents being detained as a result of intelligence-based counter- terrorism operations, which we conduct with our Afghan partners.”
"Many of those held at Bagram have been there since the U.S. occupied the former Soviet air base in 2001, and some two thirds of prisoners there have not been charged with or convicted of any crime. Corruption is rampant in Afghan courts and among police there as it is in many other places but the major fear of the United States is not that the Afghan courts will not function according to their constitution and accepted norms of law, but that they will. In order for Afghanistan to take sovereignty over its own judiciary and prison system, the Afghans must first fix the “cracks of an undeveloped legal system” and adopt essential “reforms,” including adoption of the U.S. practice of detaining suspected insurgents indefinitely without trial.
"Included among the “weaknesses” of Afghan law that the United States needs to see addressed is a guarantee that a prisoner in Afghanistan must be formally charged with a crime within three days or be released. To be convicted of a crime, Afghan law requires that evidence against a defendant be presented in open court and that hearsay evidence and evidence gained by torture be excluded. (How primitive is that!) Such protections exist, on paper at least, in most countries, and the U.S. Constitution guarantees these rights as well.
snip
"Just as with the detainees held for these past ten years at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo in Cuba, few of those held at Bagram would be convicted in a fair trial. Most have been captured on the strength of tips by informers and other hearsay and with no forensic evidence. “Right now,” a senior U.S. official is quoted in a January 30, 2011 article published in the Guardian, “if we turned them over to the Afghans tomorrow, they'd be in a position, under their laws and their constitution, that they may be released.”
"While the number of prisoners held at Guantanamo is slowly decreasing, the number of those held at Bagram is skyrocketing, due to increased “intelligence-based counter- terrorism operations,” a euphemism for what are more accurately called night raids. The Open Society Foundations and The Liaison Office in Kabul released a report on September 19, “The Cost of Kill/Capture: Impact of the Night Raid Surge on Afghan Civilians.” In their Executive Summary, the reports’ authors state, “Nighttime kill and capture operations (“night raids”) by international military have been one of the most controversial tactics in Afghanistan. They are as valued by the international military as they are reviled by Afghan communities. Night raids have been associated with the death, injury, and detention of civilians, and have sparked enormous backlash among Afghan communities. The Afghan government and the Afghan public have repeatedly called for an end to night raids.”
"This report cites a sharp escalation in raids that has “taken the battlefield more directly into Afghan homes sparking tremendous backlash among the Afghan population.” While civilians not directly participating in hostilities are supposed to be protected from such attacks by the Geneva Conventions, these raids are often “heavily (if not primarily) motivated by intelligence gathering.” One U.S. military officer responsible for authorizing night raids explained, “If you can’t get the guy you want, you get the guy who knows him.” Often in night raids, all male adolescent and adult members of a household or even of a whole village are bound and held, and techniques such as masked informants giving thumbs up or down, noting who has a beard or who lacks the calloused hands of a farmer, are used to decide who is taken to a U.S. base for further questioning. Such are the “intelligence-based counter- terrorism operations” that are taxing the capacity of the U.S. prison at Bagram.
"American dominos falling across the globe, shock and awe dominos ensuring lawlessness and perpetual violence. Afghanistan is one more example of how hammering, hyper-militarized faux-democratic America is not spreading genuine democracy globally but ZEALOUSLY discouraging it, especially in its puppet victim state."
I will be especially attentive re the Pashtuns in trying to get to the full truth re Afghanistan because of your stance. To be continued, this discussion.
best, libby
friends, losing access to computer for now. more traveling. to be continued later! best, libby
Needless to say, fRANK will NEVER address the questions posed by LeedsJr, but instead posts more passive-aggressive interrogations of Libby.
A man like fRANK who claims bush never tortured would never consider any words written by an organization such as Amnesty International. They are after all part of his delusional professional left, now dubbed the fringe left.
Furthermore this is a guy who prior to his dismal stint in the air force took the pledge to honor and defend the Constitution, and then went about his duties in the "ever dangerous" UK - PFFFFT!
Amnesty International (for those reading the thread, not for fRANK as the words and concepts contained in the report are way above his comprehension level) Annual Report 2011:
"United States Of America
Forty-six people were executed during the year, and reports of excessive use of force and cruel prison conditions continued. Scores of men remained in indefinite military detention in Guantánamo as President Obama’s one-year deadline for closure of the facility there came and went. Military commission proceedings were conducted in a handful of cases, and the only Guantánamo detainee so far transferred to the US mainland for prosecution in a federal court was tried and convicted. Hundreds of people remained held in US military custody in the US detention facility on the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. The US authorities blocked efforts to secure accountability and remedy for crimes under international law committed against detainees previously subjected to the USA’s secret detention and rendition programme.
On 22 January, President Obama’s one-year deadline for closure of the Guantánamo detention facility passed with 198 detainees still held in the base, about half of them Yemeni nationals. By the end of the year, there were still 174 men held there, including three who had been convicted under a military commission system which failed to meet international fair trial standards."
SNIP
"In April, the Pentagon released the rules governing military commission proceedings. The new manual confirmed that the US administration – like its predecessor – reserved the right to continue to detain individuals indefinitely even if they were acquitted by military commission."
SNIP
"Hundreds of detainees were held in the newly constructed US Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP) on the Bagram air base in Afghanistan; the DFIP replaced the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in late 2009. For example, about 900 detainees were being held in the DFIP in September. Most of them were Afghan nationals, taken into custody by coalition forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The US authorities stated that the DFIP would eventually be transferred to the control of the Afghan authorities “for incarceration of criminal defendants and convicts”, and that “transitioning operations” would begin in January 2011.
Amnesty International and other organizations wrote to the US Secretary of Defense in June raising concerns about allegations that detainees held in a screening facility at Bagram air base had been subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, including prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures."
SNIP
"There continued to be an absence of accountability and remedy for the human rights violations, including the crimes under international law of torture and enforced disappearance, committed as part of the USA’s programme of secret detention and rendition (transfer of individuals from the custody of one state to another by means that bypass judicial and administrative due process) operated under the administration of President George W. Bush.
In his memoirs, published in November, and in a pre-publication interview, former President Bush admitted that he had personally authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” for use by the CIA against detainees held in secret custody. One of the techniques he said he authorized was “water-boarding”, a form of torture in which the process of drowning a detainee is begun.
On 9 November, the US Department of Justice announced, without further explanation, that no one would face criminal charges in relation to the destruction in 2005 by the CIA of videotapes made of the interrogations of two detainees – Abu Zubaydah and ‘Abd al-Nashiri – held in secret custody in 2002. The 92 tapes depicted evidence of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including “water-boarding”, against the two detainees."
SNIP
"Fifty-five people died after being struck by police Tasers, bringing to at least 450 the number of such deaths since 2001. Most of the deceased were unarmed and did not appear to present a serious threat when they were shocked, in some cases multiple times. The cases continued to raise concern about the safety and appropriate use of such weapons."
SNIP
"Prison conditions
There were complaints of cruel conditions for prisoners held in long-term isolation in super-maximum security units. Complaints included ill-treatment of prisoners held in the federal system under Special Administrative Measures."
SNIP
"Right to health – maternal mortality
Hundreds of women continued to die from preventable pregnancy-related complications. Wide disparities persisted in access to good quality health care based on race, ethnicity, immigration or Indigenous status, geographical location and income. There were calls for federal and state governments to take all necessary steps to improve maternal health care and outcomes, and eliminate disparities.
SNIP
"Children’s rights
On 17 May, the US Supreme Court ruled that the imposition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a non-homicidal crime on a perpetrator who was under 18 at the time of the crime violated the constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment. The majority noted that support for this conclusion came in the fact that the USA was the “only Nation that imposes life without parole sentences on juvenile nonhomicide offenders”. The majority also noted that Article 37(a) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) prohibits life imprisonment without the possibility of release for crimes committed by anyone under 18 years old.
On 14 October, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on the USA to ratify the CRC, the USA and Somalia being the only two countries not to have done so."
SNIP
http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/usa/report-2011
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"
A man like fRANK who claims bush never tortured would never consider any words written by an organization such as Amnesty International. They are after all part of his delusional professional left, now dubbed the fringe left.
Furthermore this is a guy who prior to his dismal stint in the air force took the pledge to honor and defend the Constitution, and then went about his duties in the "ever dangerous" UK - PFFFFT!
Amnesty International (for those reading the thread, not for fRANK as the words and concepts contained in the report are way above his comprehension level) Annual Report 2011:
"United States Of America
Forty-six people were executed during the year, and reports of excessive use of force and cruel prison conditions continued. Scores of men remained in indefinite military detention in Guantánamo as President Obama’s one-year deadline for closure of the facility there came and went. Military commission proceedings were conducted in a handful of cases, and the only Guantánamo detainee so far transferred to the US mainland for prosecution in a federal court was tried and convicted. Hundreds of people remained held in US military custody in the US detention facility on the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. The US authorities blocked efforts to secure accountability and remedy for crimes under international law committed against detainees previously subjected to the USA’s secret detention and rendition programme.
On 22 January, President Obama’s one-year deadline for closure of the Guantánamo detention facility passed with 198 detainees still held in the base, about half of them Yemeni nationals. By the end of the year, there were still 174 men held there, including three who had been convicted under a military commission system which failed to meet international fair trial standards."
SNIP
"In April, the Pentagon released the rules governing military commission proceedings. The new manual confirmed that the US administration – like its predecessor – reserved the right to continue to detain individuals indefinitely even if they were acquitted by military commission."
SNIP
"Hundreds of detainees were held in the newly constructed US Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP) on the Bagram air base in Afghanistan; the DFIP replaced the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in late 2009. For example, about 900 detainees were being held in the DFIP in September. Most of them were Afghan nationals, taken into custody by coalition forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The US authorities stated that the DFIP would eventually be transferred to the control of the Afghan authorities “for incarceration of criminal defendants and convicts”, and that “transitioning operations” would begin in January 2011.
Amnesty International and other organizations wrote to the US Secretary of Defense in June raising concerns about allegations that detainees held in a screening facility at Bagram air base had been subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, including prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures."
SNIP
"There continued to be an absence of accountability and remedy for the human rights violations, including the crimes under international law of torture and enforced disappearance, committed as part of the USA’s programme of secret detention and rendition (transfer of individuals from the custody of one state to another by means that bypass judicial and administrative due process) operated under the administration of President George W. Bush.
In his memoirs, published in November, and in a pre-publication interview, former President Bush admitted that he had personally authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” for use by the CIA against detainees held in secret custody. One of the techniques he said he authorized was “water-boarding”, a form of torture in which the process of drowning a detainee is begun.
On 9 November, the US Department of Justice announced, without further explanation, that no one would face criminal charges in relation to the destruction in 2005 by the CIA of videotapes made of the interrogations of two detainees – Abu Zubaydah and ‘Abd al-Nashiri – held in secret custody in 2002. The 92 tapes depicted evidence of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including “water-boarding”, against the two detainees."
SNIP
"Fifty-five people died after being struck by police Tasers, bringing to at least 450 the number of such deaths since 2001. Most of the deceased were unarmed and did not appear to present a serious threat when they were shocked, in some cases multiple times. The cases continued to raise concern about the safety and appropriate use of such weapons."
SNIP
"Prison conditions
There were complaints of cruel conditions for prisoners held in long-term isolation in super-maximum security units. Complaints included ill-treatment of prisoners held in the federal system under Special Administrative Measures."
SNIP
"Right to health – maternal mortality
Hundreds of women continued to die from preventable pregnancy-related complications. Wide disparities persisted in access to good quality health care based on race, ethnicity, immigration or Indigenous status, geographical location and income. There were calls for federal and state governments to take all necessary steps to improve maternal health care and outcomes, and eliminate disparities.
SNIP
"Children’s rights
On 17 May, the US Supreme Court ruled that the imposition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a non-homicidal crime on a perpetrator who was under 18 at the time of the crime violated the constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment. The majority noted that support for this conclusion came in the fact that the USA was the “only Nation that imposes life without parole sentences on juvenile nonhomicide offenders”. The majority also noted that Article 37(a) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) prohibits life imprisonment without the possibility of release for crimes committed by anyone under 18 years old.
On 14 October, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on the USA to ratify the CRC, the USA and Somalia being the only two countries not to have done so."
SNIP
http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/usa/report-2011
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"
"Reporters Without Borders (RWB) is a French-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press and freedom of information. This organization, which has consultant status at the United Nations., was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008. English speakers also commonly refer to the organization by its French name, Reporters Sans Frontières, or its French acronym, RSF. Its head office is in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. According to its own mission statement, Reporters Without Borders
"defends journalists and media assistants imprisoned or persecuted for doing their job and exposes the mistreatment and torture of them in many countries.
fights against censorship and laws that undermine press freedom.
PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2011-2012
1. Finland
Norway
3. Estonia
Netherlands
5. Austria
6. Iceland
Luxembourg
8. Switzerland
9. Cape Verde
Denmark
12 Sweden
13 New Zealand
14 Czech Republic
15 Ireland
16 Cyprus
Jamaica
Germany
19 Costa Rica
20 Belgium
Namibia
22 Japan
Surinam
24 Poland
25 Mali
OECS
Slovakia
28 United Kingdom
29 Niger
30 Australia
Lithuania
32 Uruguay
33 Portugal
34 Tanzania
35 Papua New Guinea
36 Slovenia
37 El Salvador
38 France
39 Spain
40 Hungary
41 Ghana
42 South Africa
Botswana
44 South Korea
45 Comoros
Taiwan
47 united states of america
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html
"defends journalists and media assistants imprisoned or persecuted for doing their job and exposes the mistreatment and torture of them in many countries.
fights against censorship and laws that undermine press freedom.
PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2011-2012
1. Finland
Norway
3. Estonia
Netherlands
5. Austria
6. Iceland
Luxembourg
8. Switzerland
9. Cape Verde
Denmark
12 Sweden
13 New Zealand
14 Czech Republic
15 Ireland
16 Cyprus
Jamaica
Germany
19 Costa Rica
20 Belgium
Namibia
22 Japan
Surinam
24 Poland
25 Mali
OECS
Slovakia
28 United Kingdom
29 Niger
30 Australia
Lithuania
32 Uruguay
33 Portugal
34 Tanzania
35 Papua New Guinea
36 Slovenia
37 El Salvador
38 France
39 Spain
40 Hungary
41 Ghana
42 South Africa
Botswana
44 South Korea
45 Comoros
Taiwan
47 united states of america
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html
As I've mentioned previously, fRANK has found his comments to be met with less than resounding acclaim, on Open Salon, so he's retreated to a forum, where he posts fifteen or twenty times a day: able2know.com
@LeedsJR
As I've, also mentioned before, fRANK demands answers to his questions, but doesn't deign to answer those posed to him. This is NOT
a phenomenon limited to OS, but an integral facet of his "character":
joefromchicago
Reply Fri 25 May, 2012 03:24 pm@Frank Apisa,
"We've already gone over this, Frank: you can't expect me to answer your questions if you don't extend to me the same courtesy. We'll take this in sequence: I have questions already outstanding. You answer those, then I'll answer yours."
ZacheryTaylor, You've suggested that fRANK be given a homework assignment.
Thu 24 May, 2012 03:46 pm
@tsarstepan,
"Some day, Tsar, I gotta tell you about my addiction to comic books"
Perhaps, he could search his comic books to see if he can locate the countries mentioned in my post above.
@LeedsJR
As I've, also mentioned before, fRANK demands answers to his questions, but doesn't deign to answer those posed to him. This is NOT
a phenomenon limited to OS, but an integral facet of his "character":
joefromchicago
Reply Fri 25 May, 2012 03:24 pm@Frank Apisa,
"We've already gone over this, Frank: you can't expect me to answer your questions if you don't extend to me the same courtesy. We'll take this in sequence: I have questions already outstanding. You answer those, then I'll answer yours."
ZacheryTaylor, You've suggested that fRANK be given a homework assignment.
Thu 24 May, 2012 03:46 pm
@tsarstepan,
"Some day, Tsar, I gotta tell you about my addiction to comic books"
Perhaps, he could search his comic books to see if he can locate the countries mentioned in my post above.
leedsjr, thanks for reading and commenting!
hey mark! good to see you. compelling statistics and appreciate your investigation. the vast denial happening in this country is horrifying. the divide up and conquer use of the Dem vs. Repub gamesmanship played out by the corporate media is a master ruse to keep the citizenry from uniting and addressing the real crimes against humanity here and abroad!!! frank is not alone, sadly, mark. he represents a very strong and stubborn segment of our status quo is safer than survival of the bill of rights and a sustained welfare of much of the population and improvement of the welfare of others here and abroad who know the score and who have been fighting to cope with economic and social and legal terrorism in this country. Soon I hope to do a blog about the insane numbers of those incarcerated in this country and what an outrageous and inhumanely cruel nightmare that is! best, libby
hey mark! good to see you. compelling statistics and appreciate your investigation. the vast denial happening in this country is horrifying. the divide up and conquer use of the Dem vs. Repub gamesmanship played out by the corporate media is a master ruse to keep the citizenry from uniting and addressing the real crimes against humanity here and abroad!!! frank is not alone, sadly, mark. he represents a very strong and stubborn segment of our status quo is safer than survival of the bill of rights and a sustained welfare of much of the population and improvement of the welfare of others here and abroad who know the score and who have been fighting to cope with economic and social and legal terrorism in this country. Soon I hope to do a blog about the insane numbers of those incarcerated in this country and what an outrageous and inhumanely cruel nightmare that is! best, libby
Inverted Interrobang, thanks for visiting and commenting!!
Alarming days ... years ... decades, indeed.
Appreciate your comment! Validation of pitting morality against the gamesmanship bullshit one more time. Especially appreciate:
"Your passion brings definition back to the speech act, discourse and language, as it was droned and summarily dismissed by a generation of "thinkers" now with both feet in death's door jamb."
[good use of the verb "drone", for sure, ii!]
"Otherwise, it is just another game of Magister Ludi, one more Infinite Jest... and we suffering, perhaps already dead, onlookers."
"What use is a gun, if a tongue is useless? What use a bullet in the chamber, to a brain that is mindless and a body senseless?"
Powerful poetic messaging!
The spiritual path is simple, basic, safe, empowering, renewing. All it requires is emotional courage and mindFULness.
I keep thinking of the theory of the 100 monkeys. Once the 100th monkey recognizes the truth, the truth spreads like wildfire thruout the monkey nation. The truth is out there. When our fellow human monkeys are ready for it. Dear God let it be sooner rather than later!
best, libby
Alarming days ... years ... decades, indeed.
Appreciate your comment! Validation of pitting morality against the gamesmanship bullshit one more time. Especially appreciate:
"Your passion brings definition back to the speech act, discourse and language, as it was droned and summarily dismissed by a generation of "thinkers" now with both feet in death's door jamb."
[good use of the verb "drone", for sure, ii!]
"Otherwise, it is just another game of Magister Ludi, one more Infinite Jest... and we suffering, perhaps already dead, onlookers."
"What use is a gun, if a tongue is useless? What use a bullet in the chamber, to a brain that is mindless and a body senseless?"
Powerful poetic messaging!
The spiritual path is simple, basic, safe, empowering, renewing. All it requires is emotional courage and mindFULness.
I keep thinking of the theory of the 100 monkeys. Once the 100th monkey recognizes the truth, the truth spreads like wildfire thruout the monkey nation. The truth is out there. When our fellow human monkeys are ready for it. Dear God let it be sooner rather than later!
best, libby
Frank, our nation-house is in flames and you are advising to turn on the air conditioning! That is what it appears to me. Granted you are not alone, due to the amoral distractingness of the corporate media of the oligarchy and the betrayal of governmental officials pimped out to said oligarchy who have sold us citizens out to such a surreal degree by now.
You are playing the Rove game with me, Frank. Accusing me of not addressing questions when it is you who is not answering the basic questions. What say you about the gutting of the bill of rights? How can you have freedom without them.
As one of my quotees above said, the scaffolding of fascism is being built, Frank. More and more of us will be robbed of our freedom ... many presently are ... in this country. As for the millions of innocent people dead, maimed, devastated for "American interests" which "interests" have nothing to do with citizen welfare but power and profits for oligarchs with human lives and suffering the easy collateral damage the global sociopathic overlords are willing to risk.
best, libby
You are playing the Rove game with me, Frank. Accusing me of not addressing questions when it is you who is not answering the basic questions. What say you about the gutting of the bill of rights? How can you have freedom without them.
As one of my quotees above said, the scaffolding of fascism is being built, Frank. More and more of us will be robbed of our freedom ... many presently are ... in this country. As for the millions of innocent people dead, maimed, devastated for "American interests" which "interests" have nothing to do with citizen welfare but power and profits for oligarchs with human lives and suffering the easy collateral damage the global sociopathic overlords are willing to risk.
best, libby
zachd, thanks for your visit. Obama's la-dee-dah rhetorical lip service to freedom when he is bottom line, once again as quoted above, earnestly building -- finishing -- the SCAFFOLDING of fascism.
Obama at the helm is more helpful now to the overlords than a Republican against whom the progressive and so-called progressives would unite. I think the overlords will put their thumb on the scale for Obama in 2012. Our elections are as effective as those in banana republics. We could have gone for a third alternative party, but apparently exiting amoral quicksand is change the majority can't believe in.
I will support the Green Party that does not enable evil, faux-lesser or otherwise.
best, libby
Obama at the helm is more helpful now to the overlords than a Republican against whom the progressive and so-called progressives would unite. I think the overlords will put their thumb on the scale for Obama in 2012. Our elections are as effective as those in banana republics. We could have gone for a third alternative party, but apparently exiting amoral quicksand is change the majority can't believe in.
I will support the Green Party that does not enable evil, faux-lesser or otherwise.
best, libby
Mark, so grateful to the homework you have done for consciousness raising for this thread! I would like to address so many of your points but am losing access to computer once again for now. You clearly show how much reality and truth and EVIDENCE exists to outrage and unite a betrayed citizenry. I keep thinking about the adage about the bigger and more obscene the lies and crimes, the harder it is for people to wrap their minds and hearts around the reality of it all. "That is just too awful to be true. And look at so and so on MSNBC. They seem so comfortable with what Obama is doing. And he has such a nice personality and such an appealing CELEBRITY!" Codependent media cronyism is insidious.
Still away on my trip. Will be back to open salon soon I hope.
Thanks again! best, libby
Still away on my trip. Will be back to open salon soon I hope.
Thanks again! best, libby
Frank, our nation-house is in flames and you are advising to turn on the air conditioning! That is what it appears to me. Granted you are not alone, due to the amoral distractingness of the corporate media of the oligarchy and the betrayal of governmental officials pimped out to said oligarchy who have sold us citizens out to such a surreal degree by now.
You are playing the Rove game with me, Frank. Accusing me of not addressing questions when it is you who is not answering the basic questions. What say you about the gutting of the bill of rights? How can you have freedom without them.
As one of my quotees above said, the scaffolding of fascism is being built, Frank. More and more of us will be robbed of our freedom ... many presently are ... in this country. As for the millions of innocent people dead, maimed, devastated for "American interests" which "interests" have nothing to do with citizen welfare but power and profits for oligarchs with human lives and suffering the easy collateral damage the global sociopathic overlords are willing to risk.
Libby…you and I enjoy more freedom than probably 99.999999999% (admittedly just an estimate) of all the people who have ever lived on planet Earth. Sorry you have such a poor opinion of the freedoms you enjoy, but that is something with which you must deal. I am not trying to change your mind, I am merely calling attention to the fact that it is ludicrous to lament the sad state of freedom in this country in as many diatribes and screeds as you do—as often as you do.
But you are free to speak your mind with as much distaste for America and its leadership as you want…and so I hope and expect you will continue to do so. In fact, it kinda proves my point.
You are playing the Rove game with me, Frank. Accusing me of not addressing questions when it is you who is not answering the basic questions. What say you about the gutting of the bill of rights? How can you have freedom without them.
As one of my quotees above said, the scaffolding of fascism is being built, Frank. More and more of us will be robbed of our freedom ... many presently are ... in this country. As for the millions of innocent people dead, maimed, devastated for "American interests" which "interests" have nothing to do with citizen welfare but power and profits for oligarchs with human lives and suffering the easy collateral damage the global sociopathic overlords are willing to risk.
Libby…you and I enjoy more freedom than probably 99.999999999% (admittedly just an estimate) of all the people who have ever lived on planet Earth. Sorry you have such a poor opinion of the freedoms you enjoy, but that is something with which you must deal. I am not trying to change your mind, I am merely calling attention to the fact that it is ludicrous to lament the sad state of freedom in this country in as many diatribes and screeds as you do—as often as you do.
But you are free to speak your mind with as much distaste for America and its leadership as you want…and so I hope and expect you will continue to do so. In fact, it kinda proves my point.
Frank, our nation-house is in flames and you are advising to turn on the air conditioning! That is what it appears to me. Granted you are not alone, due to the amoral distractingness of the corporate media of the oligarchy and the betrayal of governmental officials pimped out to said oligarchy who have sold us citizens out to such a surreal degree by now.
You are playing the Rove game with me, Frank. Accusing me of not addressing questions when it is you who is not answering the basic questions. What say you about the gutting of the bill of rights? How can you have freedom without them.
As one of my quotees above said, the scaffolding of fascism is being built, Frank. More and more of us will be robbed of our freedom ... many presently are ... in this country. As for the millions of innocent people dead, maimed, devastated for "American interests" which "interests" have nothing to do with citizen welfare but power and profits for oligarchs with human lives and suffering the easy collateral damage the global sociopathic overlords are willing to risk.
Libby…you and I enjoy more freedom than probably 99.999999999% (admittedly just an estimate) of all the people who have ever lived on planet Earth. Sorry you have such a poor opinion of the freedoms you enjoy, but that is something with which you must deal. I am not trying to change your mind, I am merely calling attention to the fact that it is ludicrous to lament the sad state of freedom in this country in as many diatribes and screeds as you do—as often as you do.
But you are free to speak your mind with as much distaste for America and its leadership as you want…and so I hope and expect you will continue to do so. In fact, it kinda proves my point.
You are playing the Rove game with me, Frank. Accusing me of not addressing questions when it is you who is not answering the basic questions. What say you about the gutting of the bill of rights? How can you have freedom without them.
As one of my quotees above said, the scaffolding of fascism is being built, Frank. More and more of us will be robbed of our freedom ... many presently are ... in this country. As for the millions of innocent people dead, maimed, devastated for "American interests" which "interests" have nothing to do with citizen welfare but power and profits for oligarchs with human lives and suffering the easy collateral damage the global sociopathic overlords are willing to risk.
Libby…you and I enjoy more freedom than probably 99.999999999% (admittedly just an estimate) of all the people who have ever lived on planet Earth. Sorry you have such a poor opinion of the freedoms you enjoy, but that is something with which you must deal. I am not trying to change your mind, I am merely calling attention to the fact that it is ludicrous to lament the sad state of freedom in this country in as many diatribes and screeds as you do—as often as you do.
But you are free to speak your mind with as much distaste for America and its leadership as you want…and so I hope and expect you will continue to do so. In fact, it kinda proves my point.
I am talking the talk while I can, Frank. Folks a lot braver and more committed to truth than either one of us are risking a lot more and suffering from the "scaffolding" of fascism already. Do I have to be thrown away into a detention center for the balance of my days to make you take me seriously about the loss of due process and the assassination and surveillance presumptions of a police state your Obama has enforced in this country? I doubt even then you would ever admit to being wrong and have a nice neat cap to put on such a fate for any of us fighting for truth and reality and empathy in this country. I am seriously economically hurting, Frank, if that brings you any comfort. I know many who are physically and cconomically hurting. How lucky you must be to not be negatively impacted by Obama's and the one percenters' betrayal of America to so smugly assert how good we all have it here. Yeah, we are not the DIRECT victims of violent military genocide right now though the military matrix is sucking up the taxpayer dollars. So, you still have not answered my question about the gutting of the bill of rights. Not a big issue for you apparently.
libby
libby
I thought of responding to the moronic conclusion "proves my point," but knew You could do it better and with more class.
Smug is the right word, and this clown actually took an oath to support and defend the constitution.
Admit to being wrong??? This clown still has his post up with the name of his lord and savior spelled barak (sic). He's too busy writing letters concerning whether cats should be leashed or unleashed to edit his own errors (even when pointedly made aware of them).
Deign to EVER answer any questions - well You can see what others (and there are numerous other such posts) on the main board he frequents have to say about that.
Smug is the right word, and this clown actually took an oath to support and defend the constitution.
Admit to being wrong??? This clown still has his post up with the name of his lord and savior spelled barak (sic). He's too busy writing letters concerning whether cats should be leashed or unleashed to edit his own errors (even when pointedly made aware of them).
Deign to EVER answer any questions - well You can see what others (and there are numerous other such posts) on the main board he frequents have to say about that.
I am seriously economically hurting, Frank, if that brings you any comfort. I know many who are physically and cconomically hurting.
Why would your economic hurt ever bring comfort to me, Libby? Why must you consider me to be that petty…just because I disagree with you?
I take your word that you are hurting seriously economically…and I feel horrible for you and for all the others who are feeling the pangs caused by the excesses of unbridled capitalism.
I want that to change…and I consider working in a direction which will end up with Republicans being in power (which is what you are doing) to be foolish.
How lucky you must be to not be negatively impacted by Obama's and the one percenters' betrayal of America to so smugly assert how good we all have it here.
I AM negatively impacted by our economy. But to make it seem that we are a fascist state, as you often assert we are, is an absurdity. We are freer than most people on this planet right now…and freer by far than most people who have ever lived on this planet.
Wake up; recognize that is so; and acknowledge it.
I am talking the talk while I can, Frank. Folks a lot braver and more committed to truth than either one of us are risking a lot more and suffering from the "scaffolding" of fascism already.
Very brave of you, Libby. Imagine, speaking your mind as forcefully and often as you do…here in America. What a brave person you are to take such a chance!
So, you still have not answered my question about the gutting of the bill of rights.
I don’t really have to, Libby. You do it each time you post the stuff you post. All the people here who rush in to agree with you do it when they post. They wouldn't dare do it if the rights were not still in place...rock solid.
But continue to post your assertions about your disgust with America and its leadership…and our loss of rights and freedom…BECAUSE it is a free country, Libby, and you can do it without fear of reprisal or retaliation.
Why would your economic hurt ever bring comfort to me, Libby? Why must you consider me to be that petty…just because I disagree with you?
I take your word that you are hurting seriously economically…and I feel horrible for you and for all the others who are feeling the pangs caused by the excesses of unbridled capitalism.
I want that to change…and I consider working in a direction which will end up with Republicans being in power (which is what you are doing) to be foolish.
How lucky you must be to not be negatively impacted by Obama's and the one percenters' betrayal of America to so smugly assert how good we all have it here.
I AM negatively impacted by our economy. But to make it seem that we are a fascist state, as you often assert we are, is an absurdity. We are freer than most people on this planet right now…and freer by far than most people who have ever lived on this planet.
Wake up; recognize that is so; and acknowledge it.
I am talking the talk while I can, Frank. Folks a lot braver and more committed to truth than either one of us are risking a lot more and suffering from the "scaffolding" of fascism already.
Very brave of you, Libby. Imagine, speaking your mind as forcefully and often as you do…here in America. What a brave person you are to take such a chance!
So, you still have not answered my question about the gutting of the bill of rights.
I don’t really have to, Libby. You do it each time you post the stuff you post. All the people here who rush in to agree with you do it when they post. They wouldn't dare do it if the rights were not still in place...rock solid.
But continue to post your assertions about your disgust with America and its leadership…and our loss of rights and freedom…BECAUSE it is a free country, Libby, and you can do it without fear of reprisal or retaliation.
Jurists, generally agree that fRANK's lord and savior has minimally violated the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 8th, amendments; but fRANK is never wrong and his comics; thousands of them; justify an opposing position from the failed bartender.
Furthermore Reporters Without Borders were derelict in their duties when ranking america under obama as #47 in the world, as they failed to consult with the creature who was never wrong about anything in his wretched life.
A TOTAL failure in all endeavors of his life - a waste of oxygen that could be used to sustain, many forms of life, that of which fRANK is not member to.
Furthermore Reporters Without Borders were derelict in their duties when ranking america under obama as #47 in the world, as they failed to consult with the creature who was never wrong about anything in his wretched life.
A TOTAL failure in all endeavors of his life - a waste of oxygen that could be used to sustain, many forms of life, that of which fRANK is not member to.
Frank, unbridled capitalism, you got it. Do you think Obama is applying any serious bridles? Jobless recovery means the 99% do not recover but drown from the escalating economic terrorism, the 1% enjoy their obscene ever-escalating profits. Bain contributed more to Obama than McCain in 2008 so the Bain attacks are one more Obama hypocrisy of countless hypocrisies. Lots of people economically hurting Frank other than me. I don't think you are necessarily petty about my plight, I think you are obtuse about the plight of so many of us. You and the Obama enablers. Obama in his lesser evil power will give out larger crumbs than the Republicans do you presume and we should bow down and give thanks for this? That is as good as it gets in America? I, by the way, don't believe the Obama crumbs will be bigger. I think Obomney is running and either way the election turns out the country is screwed. The sad thing is the lack of spirit in the majority to even try to do something serious about it.
mark, frank is among a serious majority of enablers of Obama's fascism-building. It is not the power and control addicts who are the most dangerous in societies, it is the countless authoritarian following enablers who support their power. The more the Obama administration reveal and wise and REAL commentary call out the Obama regime's true fascist colors the more ferocious the denial among the enablers. Why Alanon was created. It is a pathology, this codependency, as ferocious psychologically as addictions. So it goes.
mark, frank is among a serious majority of enablers of Obama's fascism-building. It is not the power and control addicts who are the most dangerous in societies, it is the countless authoritarian following enablers who support their power. The more the Obama administration reveal and wise and REAL commentary call out the Obama regime's true fascist colors the more ferocious the denial among the enablers. Why Alanon was created. It is a pathology, this codependency, as ferocious psychologically as addictions. So it goes.
p.s. Frank, you still have not answered my question about why you do not find the gutting of the bill of rights by Obama seriously troubling.
Will never forget the day sociopathic fRANK said he loves You, Libby (nauseas thinking about that); however such "heartfelt" undying love will never result in the OS clown responding directly to questions directed at him.
Reason: although the nowhere man has never been wrong in all his wretched life, he knows not how to answer questions.
Direct questions disturb the few remaining misfiring neurons in his near-empty cranium and cause him to retreat to his home turf; able2know where he is accorded the respect of a bat-sh*t crazy uncle who hides in the upstairs closet.
There is one good thing one can say about fRANK, and that is he has been unable to produce any offspring, thereby ending his malicious, malevolent, and fetid lineage.
Reason: although the nowhere man has never been wrong in all his wretched life, he knows not how to answer questions.
Direct questions disturb the few remaining misfiring neurons in his near-empty cranium and cause him to retreat to his home turf; able2know where he is accorded the respect of a bat-sh*t crazy uncle who hides in the upstairs closet.
There is one good thing one can say about fRANK, and that is he has been unable to produce any offspring, thereby ending his malicious, malevolent, and fetid lineage.
p.s. Frank, you still have not answered my question about why you do not find the gutting of the bill of rights by Obama seriously troubling.
Any chance that could be because I do not think Barack Obama has “gutted the Bill of Rights”…nor even attempted to “gut” the Bill of Rights?
Your frequent use of hyperbole leaves me cold, Libby…and your never-ending cries about the sky falling are tiring.
Barack Obama…AND the congress…have made some moves to try to keep our country safe (moves it appears a majority of Americans want) during a time of dangers the founding fathers could not even have imagined.
The moves have not gutted the Bill of Rights.
I cannot answer why I find the gutting of the bill of rights by Obama seriously troubling, Libby, because I do not think it has happened. It is a straw man of your creation, Libby…and I simply tolerate your straw man construction rather than find it troubling.
Any chance that could be because I do not think Barack Obama has “gutted the Bill of Rights”…nor even attempted to “gut” the Bill of Rights?
Your frequent use of hyperbole leaves me cold, Libby…and your never-ending cries about the sky falling are tiring.
Barack Obama…AND the congress…have made some moves to try to keep our country safe (moves it appears a majority of Americans want) during a time of dangers the founding fathers could not even have imagined.
The moves have not gutted the Bill of Rights.
I cannot answer why I find the gutting of the bill of rights by Obama seriously troubling, Libby, because I do not think it has happened. It is a straw man of your creation, Libby…and I simply tolerate your straw man construction rather than find it troubling.
fRANK was so involved with his comic books, that he failed to note the loss of habeas corpus and posse comitatus.
he doesn't believe in Reporters without borders. he doesn't believe Amnesty International. he doesn't believe bush's admissions of torture.
What does he believe in? he believes in a straw man; the straw man in charge of directing the few misfiring neuron on that blob on his neck that he really thinks is a head.
Pre-Neanderthalian men had far superior knowledge than OS's class clown.
he doesn't believe in Reporters without borders. he doesn't believe Amnesty International. he doesn't believe bush's admissions of torture.
What does he believe in? he believes in a straw man; the straw man in charge of directing the few misfiring neuron on that blob on his neck that he really thinks is a head.
Pre-Neanderthalian men had far superior knowledge than OS's class clown.
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