Murder Inc. has got nothing on the West Wing.
As of the latest Obama anti-constitutional ‘thou SHALT kill relentlessly and mercilessly’ development, I’m becoming convinced neither did Hitler’s Germany.
According to Bill Van Auken of wsws, Obama is developing a new system to codify and STREAMLINE extrajudicial assassinations. He is calling it a “Disposition Matrix.”
Did you know IBM was a serious help to Hitler’s record-keeping of his vast number of victims and prisoners during the Holocaust years?
A new database is necessary apparently for the Nobel Peace Prize winner to organize the ever-growing names of intended targets for world-wide extrajudicial assassination by him from his White House, especially right now in Pakistan, but in no way exclusively.
Obama apparently has concluded drone-annihilating people is a nifty way to permanently punish some foreigners and terrorize so many more whom our country is not “officially”, even illegally officially, at war with. No torture or indefinite detention muss and fuss. Just clean and mean, well, maybe clean only if you are, say, 7000 miles away where the joy stick of death is operated from. Not so much clean to those targeted, of course, or witnessing the horror, but what the hey, what do they matter to Mr. Nobel Peace Prize?
Obama can also use the drones assassination program to punish troublesome Americans, as well. Obama is so-to-speak “drone-flying” in the face of our Constitution and the Magna Carta of 900 years ago, that Van Auken supplies, maintained that “no person could be put to death or imprisoned ‘except by the lawful judgment of his equals or the law of the land’.” One of the most profound and important rights we have -- HAD -- as American citizens.
I repeat:
One of the most profound and important rights we have -- HAD -- as American citizens.
With the corporatization of America one has to consider if a drone death-warrant or the still useful death squad on the ground "hit" is determined for an individual or group not for threatening the welfare of American citizens in any way, but more likely threatening U.S. CORPORATE PROFIT-MAKING INTERESTS ANYWHERE ON THE GLOBE. “US interests” stopped having anything to do with most of us a long time ago.
It used to be the physical welfare of American citizens our leaders took a serious oath to protect. Now it is corporate “legal” persons with their sociopathic wills and agendas our Congressional, executive and judicial representatives accommodate at EVERY turn. International corporate agendas serviced by our U.S. military -- our military enabled by an obscene number of our tax dollars and the blood of our overly-trusting mostly young adult children who serve as cannon fodder.
American and foreign blood has been and is being spilled, billions of gallons of blood, for corporate illegitimate aggrandizement globally by the Post-Morality, “might makes right” halls of American power. The halls of power occupied now by what so many deluded citizens CELEBRATE as a “lesser evil” president as they fight hard for him to continue on as leader of our FORMER representative democracy. Romney promises to be as bad, admittedly.
So many apparently due-process-less targeted enemies are on Obama’s horizon, foreign or American, thanks to to the advice of intelligence and military advisors. So many enemies to be torturously annihilated by U.S. unmanned armed aircraft or by black ops death squads that a database must be established. Obama as Van Auken stresses is “institutionalizing” his illegitimate, “extra-judicial assassination” program.
IN YOUR FACE, AMERICA!!!
(PLEASE, OPEN YOUR GOD-DAMNED EYES, AMERICANS!)
Obama is, incidentially, announcing this chilling expansion of assassinations one and a half weeks before the election. Wow! Talk about hubris. Talk about arrogance. Talk about confidence. Talk about adding the American voter as an "in the know" accessory and enabler of mass murder!
I suppose it is savvy of him. Obama the political gamesman, NEVER statesman. The announcement of his new deadly -- literally -- database is slickly introduced amidst the crony-hysteria around the specter of a Romney presidency.
I’m thinking Obama is one of the most diabolical people on the face of the earth. To me he is the "American Judas" with all those pseudo-left apostles minimizing ANYTHING he deigns to do. He’s even gotten American celebrities/heros working on his election behalf. Springsteen. Ellsberg.
You guys all right with this mass assassination thing?
Once again the amiably telegenic Obama contributes even more to the normalization of executive high crimes and misdemeanors as his team Democrat promoters remain deaf in a “bell jar” of stunning conscienceless-ness, lost to anti-Republican, anti-Romney hysteria. As they also oblige Obama, helped by a propaganda corporate media, by ignoring third parties who have serious and committed plans to re-institute democracy to America. Who are calling out the profound anti-constitutionality and immorality of Obama's choices.
This latest fresh hell from Obamaworld deserves serious citizen exploration AND attention though it is not getting it.
The intended targeted deaths perpetrated by the drone aircraft, incidentally, as recently reported by Pakistan’s prime minister, are only approximately 20% of those who are actually killed by the surreal and swooping drone raids. 80% of the victims are INNOCENT civilians. A ratio clearly okay with our blood-lusting commander in chief. An added consequence for any survivors of the vicious ambushes from the sky is to leave the civilian community in a “permanent state of terror” reminds Van Auken. No skin off Obama’s nose. But consider the burning skin as well as innards of his many anonymous and/or demonized and often INNOCENT victims.
A familiar M.O. for the drone attacks (for the joy stick wielders safely 7000 or so miles away) is hovering the craft nearby for a brief amount of time after a deadly strike, then returning it to the scene and annihilating any "good Samitarians" trying to help the survivors or collecting the bodies of the dead. Barack, is this what you call a “surgical” strike in your ever-expanding useful vocab of mendacity?
Van Auken mentions that during Obama’s third debate on foreign policy he “bragged about bringing alleged culprits 'to justice'" (and “Romney vowed to ‘kill them, take them out of the picture.’")
Obama, ever the overachiever, is earnestly ramping up the rate of deaths by assassination. If you are old enough you may remember the scene from the wonderful old Disney movie, Fantasia. Remember the “Sorcerer’s apprentice” segment when Mickey Mouse, an “aspiring magician,” "oversteps his limits" and the results are ramped up chaos of “battling brooms” and “endless buckets of water”? But in Obama’s case, make them buckets of blood.
Is he trying to win the war on terror one drone victim at a time?
If Obama is looking for a terrorist there must be a mirror handy in the elegantly furnished, drone-free zone White House, I’m thinking.
Just below is part of an excerpt I posted on the comment thread of my blog “Commander-in-Chef Obama to Serve Boiled Frogs or Lame Duck?” as well as the threads of two fellow bloggers last week.
I had no idea the fear and sarcasm I voiced within the comment would manifest itself within the course of a week. Even I didn’t see this acceleration of droning assassination coming so fast!
The fact that every Tuesday Obama sits at a table with a stack of resumes of the supposedly most bad-ass terrorists in the Middle East which probably means the ones most nationalistic and unhappy with their country being turned into a failed state by the greedy and lying US/NATO and Israel and Mr. Obama decides who will be droned for THIS WEEK!
No due process. Just this horrible heat sucking the air out of your lungs in an excruciating death. Yup. Obama gets to play God -- or Caesar. Life and death. Doesn't matter if you are American, either. It is supposed to matter especially, but somehow that is part of the lesser evil blank check he is being given by the terrified ones of Romney.
So, the resumes are provided by our intelligence agents. And of course, they never get anything wrong. Well, maybe the WMDs mistake that caused approx. 1 million Middle Easterners to die and over 3 million to be displaced, but that was just one little mistake dontchaknow. And the guys in Gitmo and detention black sites all over the world. Our operatives never detained or tortured anyone not deserving of being detained and tortured. Screw the Geneva Conventions btw. And some of those guys will die imprisoned, their only way to escape, because our government sure wouldn't want them blabbing how they were innocent and embarrassing any of the important top echelon.
So you don't think maybe this every Tuesday ritual might desensitize one and he might keep escalating the death numbers as he checks off who is to be killed since it is KILLER TUESDAY.
snip
Obama no longer has just a bully pulpit. He has a killer pulpit!
I repeat the money question of that comment:
So you don't think maybe this every Tuesday ritual might desensitize one and he might keep escalating the death numbers as he checks off who is to be killed since it is KILLER TUESDAY.
There I was speculating on if Obama’s insanely troubling weekly killing rituals might escalate to such profound desensitization within him for him to addictively and exponentially expand the numbers of drone assassinations to more and more human beings, now mostly but not exclusively Middle Eastern. Strikes against those who thwart his imperialist and killing-addict’s will for a U.S.-dominated new world order.
I was right and it has come so very fast!
Obama has taken it upon himself -- violating the U.S. Constitution’s mandate -- to expand his presidential job description to “assassinator.” We thought we were in horrifying waters dealing with Bush’s “decider” identity to wage pre-emptive wars and institute a torture program, etc. Obama takes the Bush-style colossally evil aggression and sadism farther.
MUCH FARTHER EVEN THAN BUSH/CHENEY!
"WHAT?????", you who are still enthralled with Obama may ask incredulously! Or those of you who still defiantly and ridiculously label Obama the too soft, namby-pamby, bleeding-heart liberal socialist! Dear God!
Come on, libby. Bush/Cheney? Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Indefinite Detention. Massive secrecy and coverup. Stop exaggerating by comparing Obama to their heart of darkness programs.
Reality for anyone willing to exit the “psuedo left’s” bell jar of Obama lesser-evil loyalty horrifies!
Obama is resorting more and more to secret drone-striking annihilations. Like the drone annihilation of Anwar-Awlaki, the New Mexican cleric, in Yemen in 2011. An American. Assassinated per presidential order. Sans formal charges. Sans exploration of said charges in a court of law.
Apparently Obama conflates HIS rubber stamp on the drone kill lists as “due process.” What an obscene level of hubris, arrogance and illegality!
Two weeks after Awlaki’s drone-assassination, his sixteen year old son was also droned, along with the son’s 17-year old cousin.
Really? That was necessary to Obama and his secret murdering operatives, too?
People have the right to ask what exactly Awlaki had done that warranted the Obama death sentence.
Also, they ask, what the hell had the son and his cousin done to be murdered? What had THEY done to warrant their Obama et al. executions? What thoughts and utterances of those kids especially necessitated Obama and his military and intelligence advisors to KILL THEM! Turn them into the proverbial “bug splats” in DESENSITIZED AND GALLOW’S HUMOR military drone parlance.
Those kids assuredly had RAGE against the U.S. for the massive deaths caused by the American military war machine over so many years. So many tragic deaths within family and social networks. I bet the son was heartbroken as well as enraged at the annihilation of his father only two weeks earlier. Little knowing how soon his own end would come.
Is that the criteria for being droned by Obama in Obama’s hubristic world as executioner? Rage at American policies seals a doomed fate?
No wonder Obama needs a database for enemies of the U.S. warmachine, whether foreign or domestic. And the more he drones on, the bigger that database will grow!
Ever hear of JSOC? Pronounced jay-sock. I get a chill just typing the letters. This Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command along with CIA paramilitary operatives and commandos have contributed their substantial powers, exercised under profound and craven secrecy as much as possible (which is not that hard anymore thanks to our corporate lap-dog mainstream media). This dark covert team Van Auken labels “the President’s Army” and an “industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.”
Aside from Obama, the other main figure we as citizens should be focusing our eyes on regarding this anti-constitution, anti-humanity drone/black ops assassination program is John Brennan.
Van Auken explains that pre-inauguration Obama was eager to name John Brennan as the new CIA director. But Obama had to surrender this appointment since, after all, Obama was being heralded as the champion of hope and change, and Brennan, alas, had been such a strong and dark part of the Bush administration. He was implicated as a major agent of the Bush torture, indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, etc. programs.
According to Van Auken, The Washington Post declares that Brennan today has even more power in the Obama administration than the present director of the CIA. Consider, while Brennan has Obama’s ear he is NOT accountable, as the director of the CIA is, to the legislative branch.
Van Auken writes of how bound up the Obama administration is in MURDER, BRUTALITY, and EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESSION.
Van Auken writes of the INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF STATE ASSASSINATION.
The Republican and Democratic Parties BOTH are TOTALLY ON BOARD with this horrifying policy.
Will you be, too? Endorsing it with your vote for either legacy party’s candidate? Will you become an accessory to mass assassinations? One of the newest members of America’s MURDER, INC.?
Four years ago Obama made a discomforting and telling joke threatening the Jonas Brothers with predator drones. I didn’t laugh then, and I sure as hell am not laughing now.
[cross-posted on correntewire]
------------
No rat-basta*ds - at least there's a snip for me to recognize the blogger.
Let all who find "SNIPs" an affront, be aware, they are here to stay. Of course serendipitously my post by Paul Craig Roberts raises serious questions about domestic drones.
Merrily we drone along, drone along, my fair lady. OOOPs is that supposed to be "roll along?" With all the fairy tales on open sewer, I can't even get the lyrics from musical plays right.
Please forgive my despicable lack of decorum on a VERY SERIOUS matter.
" . . .Obama administration is in MURDER, BRUTALITY, and EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESSION."
How many comfortable brownshirts does that burst the delusional bubble in which they dwell?
Likely none. I can hear them now: "That's my story and I'm sticking to it"
Bravo, Libby - You certainly DO rock!
-R-
Let all who find "SNIPs" an affront, be aware, they are here to stay. Of course serendipitously my post by Paul Craig Roberts raises serious questions about domestic drones.
Merrily we drone along, drone along, my fair lady. OOOPs is that supposed to be "roll along?" With all the fairy tales on open sewer, I can't even get the lyrics from musical plays right.
Please forgive my despicable lack of decorum on a VERY SERIOUS matter.
" . . .Obama administration is in MURDER, BRUTALITY, and EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESSION."
How many comfortable brownshirts does that burst the delusional bubble in which they dwell?
Likely none. I can hear them now: "That's my story and I'm sticking to it"
Bravo, Libby - You certainly DO rock!
-R-
Since nobody else in this site seems terribly perturbed over this absolute power. I am glad someone is screaming about it. Nevertheless I would be most interested in a way to stop it. Whatever I concede to the wisdom of electing Stein to the presidency the reality does not suggest much hope in that direction. So how do we stop this international murder? A recent poll seems to indicate Americans highly approve of it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daphne-eviatar/the-drone-war-may-be-popu_b_1917292.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daphne-eviatar/the-drone-war-may-be-popu_b_1917292.html
I don't think Obama will win - I think potential Democratic voters will stay home in droves. If he does, reinvigorating the campaign to impeach him needs to be our number one priority. If he loses, he needs to be referred for prosecution for war crimes.
Although I agree Obama deserves impeachment, the only basis for that seems, if recent history is any value, to be sexual misbehavior. Murder and mayhem and undeclared wars and immense financial corruption seem of minor consequence in this savagely primitive society of the USA. Sexually Obama seems well behaved.
Libby,
I very much fear that only the choir can hear your words. I think I may have some idea why that should be.
I made a comment on one of Mark's recent blogs that might apply here. May I insert it? (NOTE: It has been very slightly altered)
...........
Mark,
It has been said, by someone obviously much wiser than I, that "the best way to keep the slaves happy is to convince them that they are free."
The American people (Canadian too) have been convinced that their choice of ruling party/leader guarantees that they live in a democracy. To be comfortable in their own skin they MUST believe this.
But this implies that what their government does is done with their approval - in effect, done by them. Now this is unfortunate because most citizens of our countries are fine decent people. They KNOW that they would never do the things you mention. That leads them to BELIEVE that their government would never do so either.
We are taught, almost from birth, and with varying degrees of subtlety, to choose belief over reason or facts. Religion plays a big part in this brainwashing. But no matter where it originates, it is incredibly effective. Our citizens simply ignore the facts, such a those presented here and elsewhere, and don't believe such things are really happening. Those few who do accept the truth of expose's such as this, are often of a mind-set where they see this as a 'good' thing and in line with their thought that North America ought to rule the world; by whatever means necessary.
All in all, this results in an apparently apathetic population. I don't think that they are as apathetic as they seem. They are, however, conditioned to go into a state of stupor when the facts are presented to them. They just become paralyzed mentally. They hit 'delete' and then 'shut down.' It's a Pavlovian response - they have no control over it. Their minds just cease operating.
It is not that they want to be sheeple - it's that they cannot be anything else. Those few who have escaped this conditioning have difficulty understanding this process. It didn't effect us, so how can it have such a profound effect on our fellow citizens?
This is our challenge. To awaken others. To counter that deep, deep conditioning so that they may face the truth about what is happening.
I don't know about you, but I, for one, haven't a clue as to how to go about this.
I wish I did.
.
I very much fear that only the choir can hear your words. I think I may have some idea why that should be.
I made a comment on one of Mark's recent blogs that might apply here. May I insert it? (NOTE: It has been very slightly altered)
...........
Mark,
It has been said, by someone obviously much wiser than I, that "the best way to keep the slaves happy is to convince them that they are free."
The American people (Canadian too) have been convinced that their choice of ruling party/leader guarantees that they live in a democracy. To be comfortable in their own skin they MUST believe this.
But this implies that what their government does is done with their approval - in effect, done by them. Now this is unfortunate because most citizens of our countries are fine decent people. They KNOW that they would never do the things you mention. That leads them to BELIEVE that their government would never do so either.
We are taught, almost from birth, and with varying degrees of subtlety, to choose belief over reason or facts. Religion plays a big part in this brainwashing. But no matter where it originates, it is incredibly effective. Our citizens simply ignore the facts, such a those presented here and elsewhere, and don't believe such things are really happening. Those few who do accept the truth of expose's such as this, are often of a mind-set where they see this as a 'good' thing and in line with their thought that North America ought to rule the world; by whatever means necessary.
All in all, this results in an apparently apathetic population. I don't think that they are as apathetic as they seem. They are, however, conditioned to go into a state of stupor when the facts are presented to them. They just become paralyzed mentally. They hit 'delete' and then 'shut down.' It's a Pavlovian response - they have no control over it. Their minds just cease operating.
It is not that they want to be sheeple - it's that they cannot be anything else. Those few who have escaped this conditioning have difficulty understanding this process. It didn't effect us, so how can it have such a profound effect on our fellow citizens?
This is our challenge. To awaken others. To counter that deep, deep conditioning so that they may face the truth about what is happening.
I don't know about you, but I, for one, haven't a clue as to how to go about this.
I wish I did.
.
(PLEASE, OPEN YOUR GOD-DAMNED EYES, AMERICANS!)
You ought really to follow your own advice in this regard, Libby. You have gotten past the point of being out of control.
I do congratulate you for posting so courageously about our government and its officials when you are so certain it and they can be reasonably compared with Hitler and the German regime of World War II. It must be very gratifying to be that brave!
You ought really to follow your own advice in this regard, Libby. You have gotten past the point of being out of control.
I do congratulate you for posting so courageously about our government and its officials when you are so certain it and they can be reasonably compared with Hitler and the German regime of World War II. It must be very gratifying to be that brave!
mr. willfully ignorant, himself, appears, and yes, fRANK it IS gratifying to be that brave, something you would know NOTHING about with your head in the sand attitude and actions (or more rightly lack of action), other than perpetually blindered ignorance and hectoring of those who wish to see outside your self-imposed box.
My comment is echoed repeatedly concerning fRANK's illness on a site where people have gotten to know fRANK better than that of his inane ranting on open sewer; able?know.com, where he has posted over 16,000 posts; one attractive reason to remain with this sinking vessel, where he's posted a fraction of that.
My comment is echoed repeatedly concerning fRANK's illness on a site where people have gotten to know fRANK better than that of his inane ranting on open sewer; able?know.com, where he has posted over 16,000 posts; one attractive reason to remain with this sinking vessel, where he's posted a fraction of that.
Sky, I am honored to be quoted by You, abridged or altered in any way You see fit, at any time and at any place.
Thanks for your comments. Will be back later to individually comment!
FWIW!!!! This from Glenn Greenwald's guardian blog:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list
"As I noted yesterday, Afghan officials reported that three Afghan children were killed on Saturday by NATO operations. Today, reports CNN, "missiles blew up part of a compound Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, killing three people - including one woman" and added: "the latest suspected U.S. drone strike also injured two children." Meanwhile, former Obama press secretary and current campaign adviser Robert Gibbs this week justified the US killing of 16-year-old American Abdulrahaman Awlaki, killed by a US drone in Yemen two weeks after his father was, on the ground that he "should have a far more responsible father".
SO THIS IS WHY AWLAKI'S SON WAS KILLED. BECAUSE HE WAS SIMPLY HIS SON? DEATH BY BIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION! THIS IS MOTIVATION FOR ASSASSINATION OF AN AMERICAN YOUTH? THE FATHER'S ASSASSINATION WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL ALONE, BUT THEN THE ASSASSINATION OF THE SON AND THE SON'S COUSIN? libby
continuing greenwald's quote:
"Also yesterday, CNN profiled Abu Sufyan Said al-Shihri, alleged to be a top al-Qaida official in Yemen. He pointed out "that U.S. drone strikes are helping al-Qaida in Yemen because of the number of civilian deaths they cause." Ample evidence supports his observation.
"To summarize all this: the US does not interfere in the Muslim world and maintain an endless war on terror because of the terrorist threat. It has a terrorist threat because of its interference in the Muslim world and its endless war on terror."
Also consider this from glenn in same article:
"That people are now dying at Guantanamo after almost a decade in a cage with no charges highlights just how repressive that power is. Extend that mentality to secret, due-process-free assassinations – something the US government clearly intends to convert into a permanent fixture of American political life – and it is not difficult to see just how truly extremist and anti-democratic "war on terror" proponents in both political parties have become."
And this from Greenwald:
"The creepiest aspect of this development is the christening of a new Orwellian euphemism for due-process-free presidential assassinations: "disposition matrix".
snip
"This was all motivated by Obama's refusal to arrest or detain terrorist suspects, and his resulting commitment simply to killing them at will (his will). [Greg] Miller quotes "a former US counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix" as explaining the impetus behind the program this way: "We had a disposition problem."
[ WHY DOES THAT RESONATE THE SAME AS THE "FINAL SOLUTION"?]
"The central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed – "It is the keeper of the criteria," says one official to the Post – is, by itself, rather odious. As Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts noted in response to this story, the ACLU has long warned that the real purpose of the NCTC – despite its nominal focus on terrorism - is the "massive, secretive data collection and mining of trillions of points of data about most people in the United States".
"In particular, the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and analyzed. This includes "records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records" – "literally anything the government collects would be fair game". In other words, the NCTC - now vested with the power to determine the proper "disposition" of terrorist suspects - is the same agency that is at the center of the ubiquitous, unaccountable surveillance state aimed at American citizens.
"Worse still, as the ACLU's legislative counsel Chris Calabrese documented back in July in a must-read analysis, Obama officials very recently abolished safeguards on how this information can be used. Whereas the agency, during the Bush years, was barred from storing non-terrorist-related information about innocent Americans for more than 180 days – a limit which "meant that NCTC was dissuaded from collecting large databases filled with information on innocent Americans" – it is now free to do so. Obama officials eliminated this constraint by authorizing the NCTC "to collect and 'continually assess' information on innocent Americans for up to five years".
snip
"It doesn't require any conspiracy theorizing to see what's happening here. Indeed, it takes extreme naiveté, or wilful blindness, not to see it.
"What has been created here - permanently institutionalized - is a highly secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two functions: (1) it collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search warrants, and (2) creates and implements a "matrix" that determines the "disposition" of suspects, up to and including execution, without a whiff of due process or oversight. It is simultaneously a surveillance state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, .
"The Post's Miller recognizes the watershed moment this represents: "The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic." ...
snip
"To understand the Obama legacy, please re-read that sentence. As Murtaza Hussain put it when reacting to the Post story: "The US agonized over the targeted killing Bin Laden at Tarnak Farms in 1998; now it kills people it barely suspects of anything on a regular basis.""
end of quotes
I'm thinking re fascism -- with Obama and his administration and "his arbitrary will to kill" we are there. As Glenn above quotes, "this is a watershed moment." And Obama's disclosing this to us before an election is significant and frightening. Those enabling Obama or Romney are colluding with war and domestic murderous oppressors. They are on board with Obama's profound anti-constitutional policies. As I shared on Mark's blog, they say that sliding into fascism goes really quickly at the final stage! We are there!!!
best, libby
FWIW!!!! This from Glenn Greenwald's guardian blog:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list
"As I noted yesterday, Afghan officials reported that three Afghan children were killed on Saturday by NATO operations. Today, reports CNN, "missiles blew up part of a compound Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, killing three people - including one woman" and added: "the latest suspected U.S. drone strike also injured two children." Meanwhile, former Obama press secretary and current campaign adviser Robert Gibbs this week justified the US killing of 16-year-old American Abdulrahaman Awlaki, killed by a US drone in Yemen two weeks after his father was, on the ground that he "should have a far more responsible father".
SO THIS IS WHY AWLAKI'S SON WAS KILLED. BECAUSE HE WAS SIMPLY HIS SON? DEATH BY BIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION! THIS IS MOTIVATION FOR ASSASSINATION OF AN AMERICAN YOUTH? THE FATHER'S ASSASSINATION WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL ALONE, BUT THEN THE ASSASSINATION OF THE SON AND THE SON'S COUSIN? libby
continuing greenwald's quote:
"Also yesterday, CNN profiled Abu Sufyan Said al-Shihri, alleged to be a top al-Qaida official in Yemen. He pointed out "that U.S. drone strikes are helping al-Qaida in Yemen because of the number of civilian deaths they cause." Ample evidence supports his observation.
"To summarize all this: the US does not interfere in the Muslim world and maintain an endless war on terror because of the terrorist threat. It has a terrorist threat because of its interference in the Muslim world and its endless war on terror."
Also consider this from glenn in same article:
"That people are now dying at Guantanamo after almost a decade in a cage with no charges highlights just how repressive that power is. Extend that mentality to secret, due-process-free assassinations – something the US government clearly intends to convert into a permanent fixture of American political life – and it is not difficult to see just how truly extremist and anti-democratic "war on terror" proponents in both political parties have become."
And this from Greenwald:
"The creepiest aspect of this development is the christening of a new Orwellian euphemism for due-process-free presidential assassinations: "disposition matrix".
snip
"This was all motivated by Obama's refusal to arrest or detain terrorist suspects, and his resulting commitment simply to killing them at will (his will). [Greg] Miller quotes "a former US counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix" as explaining the impetus behind the program this way: "We had a disposition problem."
[ WHY DOES THAT RESONATE THE SAME AS THE "FINAL SOLUTION"?]
"The central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed – "It is the keeper of the criteria," says one official to the Post – is, by itself, rather odious. As Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts noted in response to this story, the ACLU has long warned that the real purpose of the NCTC – despite its nominal focus on terrorism - is the "massive, secretive data collection and mining of trillions of points of data about most people in the United States".
"In particular, the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and analyzed. This includes "records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records" – "literally anything the government collects would be fair game". In other words, the NCTC - now vested with the power to determine the proper "disposition" of terrorist suspects - is the same agency that is at the center of the ubiquitous, unaccountable surveillance state aimed at American citizens.
"Worse still, as the ACLU's legislative counsel Chris Calabrese documented back in July in a must-read analysis, Obama officials very recently abolished safeguards on how this information can be used. Whereas the agency, during the Bush years, was barred from storing non-terrorist-related information about innocent Americans for more than 180 days – a limit which "meant that NCTC was dissuaded from collecting large databases filled with information on innocent Americans" – it is now free to do so. Obama officials eliminated this constraint by authorizing the NCTC "to collect and 'continually assess' information on innocent Americans for up to five years".
snip
"It doesn't require any conspiracy theorizing to see what's happening here. Indeed, it takes extreme naiveté, or wilful blindness, not to see it.
"What has been created here - permanently institutionalized - is a highly secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two functions: (1) it collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search warrants, and (2) creates and implements a "matrix" that determines the "disposition" of suspects, up to and including execution, without a whiff of due process or oversight. It is simultaneously a surveillance state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, .
"The Post's Miller recognizes the watershed moment this represents: "The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic." ...
snip
"To understand the Obama legacy, please re-read that sentence. As Murtaza Hussain put it when reacting to the Post story: "The US agonized over the targeted killing Bin Laden at Tarnak Farms in 1998; now it kills people it barely suspects of anything on a regular basis.""
end of quotes
I'm thinking re fascism -- with Obama and his administration and "his arbitrary will to kill" we are there. As Glenn above quotes, "this is a watershed moment." And Obama's disclosing this to us before an election is significant and frightening. Those enabling Obama or Romney are colluding with war and domestic murderous oppressors. They are on board with Obama's profound anti-constitutional policies. As I shared on Mark's blog, they say that sliding into fascism goes really quickly at the final stage! We are there!!!
best, libby
This from an article by Chris Floyd:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32878.htm
(sky, I gotta get to the linking instructions, sorry. so busy right now!)
"To be fair -- and by all means, let us be fair with these butchers -- the term 'disposition' is also stretched to cover a multitude of sins: kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention, turning captives over to proxy torturers. But it is worth remembering that all of these dispositions -- including the murders, wholesale and retail -- involve "alleged" terrorists, terrorist "suspects," people who have found themselves, for whatever reason (or no reason at all) on one of the innumerable "lists" gathered by whatever method (or no method at all) by the many fatly-funded agencies now involved in "counter-terrorism."
"But that's not all, not by a long shot. These codified murders are also being inflicted on people who are not on any list whatsoever: their names, affiliations, beliefs, intentions -- indeed, their dispositions -- are completely unknown to those who kill them. They are the faceless targets of "signature strikes," which allow American death squads to kill people based on "patterns of activity" which may -- or may not -- signal some possible malign intent -- or none -- toward someone -- or no one -- somewhere -- or nowhere. This rigorous process rests entirely on in the magical mind-reading abilities of drone jockeys ogling a computer screen. If the armchair warrior doesn't like the cut of someone's jib, then he squeezes his joystick and turns the stranger into "bug splatter," to use the term favored by our bold defenders of civilization.
"Like last year's NY Times piece that first detailed the murder racket being run directly out of the White House, the new Washington Post story is replete with quotes from "senior Administration officials" who have obviously been authorized to speak. Once again, this is a story that Obama and his team WANT to tell. They want you to know about the murder program and their strenuous exertions to make it permanent; they are proud of this, they think it makes them look good. They want it to be part of their legacy, something they can pass on to future generations: arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder.
"Perhaps this fact should be borne in mind by all those anguished progressives out there who keep telling themselves that Obama will "be different, that he will "turn to the left," if we can only get him a second term. No; the legacy of arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder is the legacy he wants. It is the legacy he has been building, with remarkable energy and meticulous attention to detail, day after day, week after week, for the past four years. This is what he cares about. And it is this -- not jobs, not peace, not the environment, not equal rights for women and ethnic and sexual minorities, not the poor, not the middle class, not education, not infrastructure, not science, not diplomacy -- that he will apply himself to in a second term. (Along with his only other political passion: forging a "grand bargain" with Big Money to gut the remaining shreds of the New Deal.)"
end of quote
OBAMA IS PROUD OF THIS!!! HE WANTS IT KNOWN!!! HE IS SO LOST TO THE KILL-ADDICTION. ARE PEOPLE SO LOST TO THE ILLUSION OF OBAMA -- SO ENABLING OF HIM AS A KILL ADDICT -- THEY WILL GIVE HIM FOUR MORE YEARS TO WREAK DEATH AND "DISPOSITION" HORRORS ON INNOCENT HUMANS ABROAD AND -- MAKE NO MISTAKE -- AT HOME? EVEN BEYOND THE NIGHTMARE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!
Forgive the caps, but this stuff is serious!
best, libby
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32878.htm
(sky, I gotta get to the linking instructions, sorry. so busy right now!)
"To be fair -- and by all means, let us be fair with these butchers -- the term 'disposition' is also stretched to cover a multitude of sins: kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention, turning captives over to proxy torturers. But it is worth remembering that all of these dispositions -- including the murders, wholesale and retail -- involve "alleged" terrorists, terrorist "suspects," people who have found themselves, for whatever reason (or no reason at all) on one of the innumerable "lists" gathered by whatever method (or no method at all) by the many fatly-funded agencies now involved in "counter-terrorism."
"But that's not all, not by a long shot. These codified murders are also being inflicted on people who are not on any list whatsoever: their names, affiliations, beliefs, intentions -- indeed, their dispositions -- are completely unknown to those who kill them. They are the faceless targets of "signature strikes," which allow American death squads to kill people based on "patterns of activity" which may -- or may not -- signal some possible malign intent -- or none -- toward someone -- or no one -- somewhere -- or nowhere. This rigorous process rests entirely on in the magical mind-reading abilities of drone jockeys ogling a computer screen. If the armchair warrior doesn't like the cut of someone's jib, then he squeezes his joystick and turns the stranger into "bug splatter," to use the term favored by our bold defenders of civilization.
"Like last year's NY Times piece that first detailed the murder racket being run directly out of the White House, the new Washington Post story is replete with quotes from "senior Administration officials" who have obviously been authorized to speak. Once again, this is a story that Obama and his team WANT to tell. They want you to know about the murder program and their strenuous exertions to make it permanent; they are proud of this, they think it makes them look good. They want it to be part of their legacy, something they can pass on to future generations: arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder.
"Perhaps this fact should be borne in mind by all those anguished progressives out there who keep telling themselves that Obama will "be different, that he will "turn to the left," if we can only get him a second term. No; the legacy of arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder is the legacy he wants. It is the legacy he has been building, with remarkable energy and meticulous attention to detail, day after day, week after week, for the past four years. This is what he cares about. And it is this -- not jobs, not peace, not the environment, not equal rights for women and ethnic and sexual minorities, not the poor, not the middle class, not education, not infrastructure, not science, not diplomacy -- that he will apply himself to in a second term. (Along with his only other political passion: forging a "grand bargain" with Big Money to gut the remaining shreds of the New Deal.)"
end of quote
OBAMA IS PROUD OF THIS!!! HE WANTS IT KNOWN!!! HE IS SO LOST TO THE KILL-ADDICTION. ARE PEOPLE SO LOST TO THE ILLUSION OF OBAMA -- SO ENABLING OF HIM AS A KILL ADDICT -- THEY WILL GIVE HIM FOUR MORE YEARS TO WREAK DEATH AND "DISPOSITION" HORRORS ON INNOCENT HUMANS ABROAD AND -- MAKE NO MISTAKE -- AT HOME? EVEN BEYOND THE NIGHTMARE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!
Forgive the caps, but this stuff is serious!
best, libby
The victors write history. Today's POTUS is light years beyond Hitler - in fact, his current powers are the Führer's wet dream - and yet, since we are "the good guys," everyone just assumes that everyone Obama kills had it coming. And if not, well, everyone knows that life isn't fair. And neither is death. In fact, considering these are (mostly) foreigners, and Muslims to boot, I'd be surprised if anyone in America actually did give a damn about this.
I can't wait to see how Americans will react to drones hovering and buzzing over their own neighborhoods. Whether or not they protest will be the litmus test of our democracy.
Rated.
I can't wait to see how Americans will react to drones hovering and buzzing over their own neighborhoods. Whether or not they protest will be the litmus test of our democracy.
Rated.
frightening, not unexpected
I will be voting for Romney as the "lesser of two evils" in the full knowledge that those in power will not change a bit. Just will make them need to shuffle dialogue a bit.
-R-
PS- None of the Above is a needed option
I will be voting for Romney as the "lesser of two evils" in the full knowledge that those in power will not change a bit. Just will make them need to shuffle dialogue a bit.
-R-
PS- None of the Above is a needed option
For what it's worth, if Obama actually gives the go decision for drone strikes then at least he's taking responsibility for those decisions... past presidents from McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt to FDR/ IKE/ JFK, Reagan/Bush, Clinton and Bush/Cheney have authorized assassinations and exterminations with "plausible deniability." Throughout the buckets of blood that paint the conflicts of the 20th Century, only Harry Truman had the balls to say, "The buck stops here."
mark, must leave for work soon but thank you for lead off and acknowledging how surreally cavalier the Obama administration is in doling out death.
Obama's answer to the past horror of the Bush regime's torture and detention programs is simply KILLING ALL. Killing ALL SUSPECTS just for being suspects and judging from the track record of non-accountability for the guilty and persecution of those calling for it most earnestly this does not bode well for any of us! The guilty become those who are calling out Obama, not those committing heinous anti-humanity acts.
Obama has been getting away with crimes against humanity. High crimes and misdemeanors. He didn't hold Bush accountable so he could do them himself.
There is a very human inhuman stage of desensitization when frustration and conscience-lessness takes over -- psychic numbing -- when heinous behaviors can be perpetrated on other human beings -- by a person or persons (and easier when group think cronyism enables the sociopathy) who become disconnected from a moral sensibility.
The amoral stinking group think of the war addicts in Washington. The amoral stinking group think of a robber class of corporatists, politicians and media hot shots who are so entrenched in their own bubble of narcissism and disdain for any of the non-privileged that they are capable of mass murder and enabling mass suffering for their own profiteering or just to flex their power.
The bigger the horror sadly the harder it is for people to attribute the responsibility for it to the right people. Especially if the sociopaths lie and posture winning personalities!
And for the enablers of blatant cruel sociopathy ... I am at a loss to fathom them!
best, libby
Obama's answer to the past horror of the Bush regime's torture and detention programs is simply KILLING ALL. Killing ALL SUSPECTS just for being suspects and judging from the track record of non-accountability for the guilty and persecution of those calling for it most earnestly this does not bode well for any of us! The guilty become those who are calling out Obama, not those committing heinous anti-humanity acts.
Obama has been getting away with crimes against humanity. High crimes and misdemeanors. He didn't hold Bush accountable so he could do them himself.
There is a very human inhuman stage of desensitization when frustration and conscience-lessness takes over -- psychic numbing -- when heinous behaviors can be perpetrated on other human beings -- by a person or persons (and easier when group think cronyism enables the sociopathy) who become disconnected from a moral sensibility.
The amoral stinking group think of the war addicts in Washington. The amoral stinking group think of a robber class of corporatists, politicians and media hot shots who are so entrenched in their own bubble of narcissism and disdain for any of the non-privileged that they are capable of mass murder and enabling mass suffering for their own profiteering or just to flex their power.
The bigger the horror sadly the harder it is for people to attribute the responsibility for it to the right people. Especially if the sociopaths lie and posture winning personalities!
And for the enablers of blatant cruel sociopathy ... I am at a loss to fathom them!
best, libby
The incredible shift toward the "right" in the major political philosophy of the US, over the last 50 or 60 years is frightening.
Ike got America involved in Viet Nam in the fifties. He was, by many people of that time, considered a war-monger of monstrous proportions. Yet, he'd likely be to the "left" of Obama's modern Democratic Party's policies.
I wonder if people understand why and how all American political attitudes have shifted so very much rightward.
My take on this is that both Political Parties are totally amoral. They have not even one "principle" that they won't dishonour if they think that doing so will gain them power. They will take any stance that gets them votes. In this desperate, sick, unconscionable lust for power, no price is too high for them to pay.
They've sold their souls to Big Money.... all versions of Big Money. If it's represented on Wall Street then it owns politicians who are only too happy to sell out to them for the money to get the votes that bring them to positions of power.
American citizens are conditioned, from birth, with the attitude that they are "exceptional". This conditioning obviously works very well indeed. As is proved by the vast majority of the American population accepting this notion with little doubt in their minds. Subtly included along with that idea is the idea that the government of America can do no wrong and ought to rule the world.
Any thoughtful person, and there are quite a few in the US, can see that Americans are merely human beings just like every other person on this planet. They have no mandate to be the policeman of the world nor the 'leader' of anyone but themselves.
The people of any nation, including the US, tend to largely support their nation when its government gets that nation involved in a war - or a number of wars. They tend to believe their government when it tells the what "bad and evil" guys those "foreign" weirdos are and how it is imperative that "we" go over there and "straighten them out."
This attitude shows up in American elections. People tend to vote for those they see as able to accrue power. Not just the power to invade and dominate other nations, but also the power to rule the American nation with firmness and harsh treatment of anyone seen as "not one of us".
People have consistently installed governments that have taken to themselves more and more power. Those governments, to get votes, have found that the voters will reward relatively small shifts to the political 'right" with election to office.
Obama and the Democrats are now to the right of where Eisenhower and his Republicans were in the fifties. And the Republicans are so far "right" that it can be said, with uncomfortable accuracy, that Hitler himself might approve of them.
So long as voters are conditioned to support aggressive ideas and actions by their government they will continue to vote for the party and politician who promises them more of the same.
I see no way out of this Catch-22 situation.
I wish I did.
.
Ike got America involved in Viet Nam in the fifties. He was, by many people of that time, considered a war-monger of monstrous proportions. Yet, he'd likely be to the "left" of Obama's modern Democratic Party's policies.
I wonder if people understand why and how all American political attitudes have shifted so very much rightward.
My take on this is that both Political Parties are totally amoral. They have not even one "principle" that they won't dishonour if they think that doing so will gain them power. They will take any stance that gets them votes. In this desperate, sick, unconscionable lust for power, no price is too high for them to pay.
They've sold their souls to Big Money.... all versions of Big Money. If it's represented on Wall Street then it owns politicians who are only too happy to sell out to them for the money to get the votes that bring them to positions of power.
American citizens are conditioned, from birth, with the attitude that they are "exceptional". This conditioning obviously works very well indeed. As is proved by the vast majority of the American population accepting this notion with little doubt in their minds. Subtly included along with that idea is the idea that the government of America can do no wrong and ought to rule the world.
Any thoughtful person, and there are quite a few in the US, can see that Americans are merely human beings just like every other person on this planet. They have no mandate to be the policeman of the world nor the 'leader' of anyone but themselves.
The people of any nation, including the US, tend to largely support their nation when its government gets that nation involved in a war - or a number of wars. They tend to believe their government when it tells the what "bad and evil" guys those "foreign" weirdos are and how it is imperative that "we" go over there and "straighten them out."
This attitude shows up in American elections. People tend to vote for those they see as able to accrue power. Not just the power to invade and dominate other nations, but also the power to rule the American nation with firmness and harsh treatment of anyone seen as "not one of us".
People have consistently installed governments that have taken to themselves more and more power. Those governments, to get votes, have found that the voters will reward relatively small shifts to the political 'right" with election to office.
Obama and the Democrats are now to the right of where Eisenhower and his Republicans were in the fifties. And the Republicans are so far "right" that it can be said, with uncomfortable accuracy, that Hitler himself might approve of them.
So long as voters are conditioned to support aggressive ideas and actions by their government they will continue to vote for the party and politician who promises them more of the same.
I see no way out of this Catch-22 situation.
I wish I did.
.
jan, thanks for commenting and will check out your link. It is indeed international murder. And the campaign by media and politicians to stifle those who are addressing it like Stein and others is horrifying.
the boiled frog phenomenon continues, but Jan, the pot is bubbling and boiling and should be noticeable even by the incrementally warmed at this point I would think.
I remember in the 60s the slogan was ENOUGH. What is ENOUGH for the pseudo left? I don't want to begin to call them left. We are at the point of unmistakable American "nazism". Well, have been here but now the administration feels so safe it doesn't have to hide it much except with chilling Orwellian terminology. Will the MSNBC crowd keep on preaching anti-Repub hysteria when we should have anti-Dem and anti-Repub hysteria and organize as a people!!! Will Ellsberg and Springsteen and the enablers at this eleventh hour still not get it???? Get the public back into their pens!!!
Jan, I don't know what to tell you. We keep rippling the truth and morality as best we can. Trying to get that 100th monkey to comprehend the horror so the whole monkey nation will comprehend it.
"learned helplessness" thy name is the US.
best, libby
the boiled frog phenomenon continues, but Jan, the pot is bubbling and boiling and should be noticeable even by the incrementally warmed at this point I would think.
I remember in the 60s the slogan was ENOUGH. What is ENOUGH for the pseudo left? I don't want to begin to call them left. We are at the point of unmistakable American "nazism". Well, have been here but now the administration feels so safe it doesn't have to hide it much except with chilling Orwellian terminology. Will the MSNBC crowd keep on preaching anti-Repub hysteria when we should have anti-Dem and anti-Repub hysteria and organize as a people!!! Will Ellsberg and Springsteen and the enablers at this eleventh hour still not get it???? Get the public back into their pens!!!
Jan, I don't know what to tell you. We keep rippling the truth and morality as best we can. Trying to get that 100th monkey to comprehend the horror so the whole monkey nation will comprehend it.
"learned helplessness" thy name is the US.
best, libby
Stuart, this "lesser evil" mantra is so mighty here! And romney and ryan are so scary. But Obama criminality must be called out for us to survive as a country and as a planet. It is a fascistic scenario, even less covert now!
Obama's disclosing this for his macho image? how deluded he must be. Can citizens really have no empathy on this scenario so brutal? We see foreign peoples as simply elements of a video war game our leadership gets to play with such relish and recklessness? As a dimension of this video game will turn more and more in a domestic direction.
Obama must lose to break the terrible hold he has on the US citizenry for committing evil and getting away with it on a colossal level!
best, libby
Obama's disclosing this for his macho image? how deluded he must be. Can citizens really have no empathy on this scenario so brutal? We see foreign peoples as simply elements of a video war game our leadership gets to play with such relish and recklessness? As a dimension of this video game will turn more and more in a domestic direction.
Obama must lose to break the terrible hold he has on the US citizenry for committing evil and getting away with it on a colossal level!
best, libby
thanks, sky. you go right to the heart of darkness with your profound comment.
i wish i had time right now to give your comment the time and thought it deserves. this societal phenomenon of unbelievable authoritarian following despite so much evidence of evil.
I know Arthur Silber is writing about it and relating it to the "good Germans" and i want to follow up on his strong and moral blogs. He has been calling out Obama since get go.
I know Scott Peck has written extensively about the incredible power of group think re the My Lai massacre and just how many were involved in the perpetration and/or the coverup, who didn't even see it as evil or worth reporting.
The Milgram experiments, if an authoritarian doctor-seeming person (having a white coat after all) demands you deliver a disabling shock to an anonymous human being you are conditioned (yes, sky, that is the word -- Alice Miller writes about this conditioning and examines what in the German background made people such good Germans to naziism) (re with Milgram exp. 6 out of 10 people it used to be) to deliver said shock unless a strong force of will and conscience helps fight the enthrallment and one says NO! (We need those 4 out of 10 people to get pro-active!)
Sky, i keep thinking, okay, Obama has really jumped the shark on this one. FINALLY. And then I see people in my real life, not only on the blogs, so totally unplugged from the horror of reality it is stunning. I try to talk about it and they push away. They shut down. I shut down myself too readily. We all just hurtle forward like we're being helplessly carried in a ferocious streaming river heading for the rocks and the falls!!!
to be continued! thanks!
best, libby
i wish i had time right now to give your comment the time and thought it deserves. this societal phenomenon of unbelievable authoritarian following despite so much evidence of evil.
I know Arthur Silber is writing about it and relating it to the "good Germans" and i want to follow up on his strong and moral blogs. He has been calling out Obama since get go.
I know Scott Peck has written extensively about the incredible power of group think re the My Lai massacre and just how many were involved in the perpetration and/or the coverup, who didn't even see it as evil or worth reporting.
The Milgram experiments, if an authoritarian doctor-seeming person (having a white coat after all) demands you deliver a disabling shock to an anonymous human being you are conditioned (yes, sky, that is the word -- Alice Miller writes about this conditioning and examines what in the German background made people such good Germans to naziism) (re with Milgram exp. 6 out of 10 people it used to be) to deliver said shock unless a strong force of will and conscience helps fight the enthrallment and one says NO! (We need those 4 out of 10 people to get pro-active!)
Sky, i keep thinking, okay, Obama has really jumped the shark on this one. FINALLY. And then I see people in my real life, not only on the blogs, so totally unplugged from the horror of reality it is stunning. I try to talk about it and they push away. They shut down. I shut down myself too readily. We all just hurtle forward like we're being helplessly carried in a ferocious streaming river heading for the rocks and the falls!!!
to be continued! thanks!
best, libby
Alan, thanks so much for this powerful comment!!! You write:
"The victors write history. Today's POTUS is light years beyond Hitler - in fact, his current powers are the Führer's wet dream - and yet, since we are "the good guys," everyone just assumes that everyone Obama kills had it coming. And if not, well, everyone knows that life isn't fair. And neither is death. In fact, considering these are (mostly) foreigners, and Muslims to boot, I'd be surprised if anyone in America actually did give a damn about this"
There is such a lack of moral conscience in most of our citizens I am stunned. Such a lack of willingness to begin to pay attention. As so many fine writers into the psychology of this phenomenon of EVIL (Scott Peck calls it evil -- names it as evil -- evil is live spelled backwards, in fact) explain, this is not about INTELLIGENCE. The dots are there to be connected obviously but so many intelligent people won't address them and are repelled when asked to. There is something else going on. As Sky said above, a horrifying conditioning. A cronyistic collective decision to stay cozily morally lazy and apathetic. Scott Peck says evil is laziness to the nth degree!
Good people doing nothing. Incrementalism of desensitization. Narcissism on steroids. We are now hurtling in America to full out fascism. DUHHHHH!!! is the state most are in. Team Dem hysterical that Obama won't win who is still the de facto savior though people say they are more realistic and just being pragmatic! NOW WE HAVE A GIFT TO RECOGNIZE HOW DEPRAVED US POLICY IS AND .... crickets??????? WTF??????
This is a nightmare we have to wake up from as a nation!
best, libby
"The victors write history. Today's POTUS is light years beyond Hitler - in fact, his current powers are the Führer's wet dream - and yet, since we are "the good guys," everyone just assumes that everyone Obama kills had it coming. And if not, well, everyone knows that life isn't fair. And neither is death. In fact, considering these are (mostly) foreigners, and Muslims to boot, I'd be surprised if anyone in America actually did give a damn about this"
There is such a lack of moral conscience in most of our citizens I am stunned. Such a lack of willingness to begin to pay attention. As so many fine writers into the psychology of this phenomenon of EVIL (Scott Peck calls it evil -- names it as evil -- evil is live spelled backwards, in fact) explain, this is not about INTELLIGENCE. The dots are there to be connected obviously but so many intelligent people won't address them and are repelled when asked to. There is something else going on. As Sky said above, a horrifying conditioning. A cronyistic collective decision to stay cozily morally lazy and apathetic. Scott Peck says evil is laziness to the nth degree!
Good people doing nothing. Incrementalism of desensitization. Narcissism on steroids. We are now hurtling in America to full out fascism. DUHHHHH!!! is the state most are in. Team Dem hysterical that Obama won't win who is still the de facto savior though people say they are more realistic and just being pragmatic! NOW WE HAVE A GIFT TO RECOGNIZE HOW DEPRAVED US POLICY IS AND .... crickets??????? WTF??????
This is a nightmare we have to wake up from as a nation!
best, libby
Frank, the database matrix scares me as a citizen and an individual shitless.
toritto -- thank you!
jmac, cold comfort to know how many of our lauded historical presidents were the catalysts for heinous acts that caused massive suffering of human beings! we seem to be de-volving not evolving at this point. have we learned nothing from watching during the Bush years the corruption and criminality of Orwellian proportions already escalate so that now when Obama is continuing and escalating those escalated Bush crimes he is given a pass because of his amiable media personality and bullshit about the pragmatism of realpolitiks -- we are so cynically passive so many of us or tuned out -- and we are overwhelmed with propaganda bullshit by a corporate media that will not give an inch any more to real moral perspective and those voicing it trying to get a sane and moral national conversation going.
You break my heart every time you "yes but ..." me about Obama, btw!
best, libby
jmac, cold comfort to know how many of our lauded historical presidents were the catalysts for heinous acts that caused massive suffering of human beings! we seem to be de-volving not evolving at this point. have we learned nothing from watching during the Bush years the corruption and criminality of Orwellian proportions already escalate so that now when Obama is continuing and escalating those escalated Bush crimes he is given a pass because of his amiable media personality and bullshit about the pragmatism of realpolitiks -- we are so cynically passive so many of us or tuned out -- and we are overwhelmed with propaganda bullshit by a corporate media that will not give an inch any more to real moral perspective and those voicing it trying to get a sane and moral national conversation going.
You break my heart every time you "yes but ..." me about Obama, btw!
best, libby
matt stoller has an incredible piece about obama and arguing with Obama progressives upstairs at salon.
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/
Quoting:
So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.
The above is a chart of corporate profits against the main store of savings for most Americans who have savings — home equity. Notice that after the crisis, after the Obama inflection point, corporate profits recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs, whereas home equity levels have remained static. That $5-7 trillion of lost savings did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did. Also notice that this is unprecedented in postwar history. Home equity levels and corporate profits have simply never diverged in this way; what was good for GM had always, until recently, been good, if not for America, for the balance sheet of homeowners. Obama’s policies severed this link, completely.
This split represents more than money. It represents a new kind of politics, one where Obama, and yes, he did this, officially enshrined rights for the elite in our constitutional order and removed rights from everyone else (see “The Housing Crash and the End of American Citizenship” in the Fordham Urban Law Journal for a more complete discussion of the problem). The bailouts and the associated Federal Reserve actions were not primarily shifts of funds to bankers; they were a guarantee that property rights for a certain class of creditors were immune from challenge or market forces. The foreclosure crisis, with its rampant criminality, predatory lending, and document forgeries, represents the flip side. Property rights for debtors simply increasingly exist solely at the pleasure of the powerful. The lack of prosecution of Wall Street executives, the ability of banks to borrow at 0 percent from the Federal Reserve while most of us face credit card rates of 15-30 percent, and the bailouts are all part of the re-creation of the American system of law around Obama’s oligarchy.
The policy continuity with Bush is a stark contrast to what Obama offered as a candidate. Look at the broken promises from the 2008 Democratic platform: a higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and labor protections in the FAA bill. Each of these pledges would have tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush, and then went back on his word because these promises didn’t fit with the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision. For sure, Obama believes he is doing the right thing, that his policies are what’s best for society. He is a conservative technocrat, running a policy architecture to ensure that conservative technocrats like him run the complex machinery of the state and reap private rewards from doing so. Radical political and economic inequality is the result. None of these policy shifts, with the exception of TARP, is that important in and of themselves, but together they add up to declining living standards.
While life has never been fair, the chart above shows that, since World War II, this level of official legal, political and economic inequity for the broad mass of the public is new (though obviously for subgroups, like African-Americans, it was not new). It is as if America’s traditional racial segregationist tendencies have been reorganized, and the tools and tactics of that system have been repurposed for a multicultural elite colonizing a multicultural population. The data bears this out: Under Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every dollar. That’s right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress. And it’s not strictly a result of the financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.
This is the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional, it is the modern American order, and it has a certain equilibrium, the kind we identify in Middle Eastern resource extraction based economies. We are even seeing, as I showed in an earlier post, a transition of the American economic order toward a petro-state. By some accounts, America will be the largest producer of hydrocarbons in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This is just not an America that any of us should want to live in. It is a country whose economic basis is oligarchy, whose political system is authoritarianism, and whose political culture is murderous toward the rest of the world and suicidal in our aggressive lack of attention to climate change.
Many will claim that Obama was stymied by a Republican Congress. But the primary policy framework Obama put in place – the bailouts, took place during the transition and the immediate months after the election, when Obama had enormous leverage over the Bush administration and then a dominant Democratic Party in Congress. In fact, during the transition itself, Bush’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson offered a deal to Barney Frank, to force banks to write down mortgages and stem foreclosures if Barney would speed up the release of TARP money. Paulson demanded, as a condition of the deal, that Obama sign off on it. Barney said fine, but to his surprise, the incoming president vetoed the deal. Yup, you heard that right — the Bush administration was willing to write down mortgages in response to Democratic pressure, but it was Obama who said no, we want a foreclosure crisis. And with Neil Barofsky’s book ”Bailout,” we see why. Tim Geithner said, in private meetings, that the foreclosure mitigation programs were not meant to mitigate foreclosures, but to spread out pain for the banks, the famous “foam the runway” comment. This central lie is key to the entire Obama economic strategy. It is not that Obama was stymied by Congress, or was up against a system, or faced a massive crisis, which led to the shape of the economy we see today. Rather, Obama had a handshake deal to help the middle class offered to him by Paulson, and Obama said no. He was not constrained by anything but his own policy instincts. And the reflation of corporate profits and financial assets and death of the middle class were the predictable results.
The rest of Obama’s policy framework looks very different when you wake up from the dream state pushed by cable news. Obama’s history of personal use of illegal narcotics, combined with his escalation of the war on medical marijuana (despite declining support for the drug war in the Democratic caucus), shows both a personal hypocrisy and destructive cynicism that we should decry in anyone, let alone an important policymaker who helps keep a half a million people in jail for participating in a legitimate economy outlawed by the drug warrior industry. But it makes sense once you realize that his policy architecture coheres with a Romney-like philosophy that there is one set of rules for the little people, and another for the important people. It’s why the administration quietly pushed Chinese investment in American infrastructure, seeks to privatize public education, removed labor protections from the FAA authorization bill, and inserted a provision into the stimulus bill ensuring AIG bonuses would be paid, and then lied about it to avoid blame. Wall Street speculator who rigged markets are simply smart and savvy businessmen, as Obama called Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, whereas the millions who fell prey to their predatory lending schemes are irresponsible borrowers. And it’s why Obama is explicitly targeting entitlements, insurance programs for which Americans paid. Obama wants to preserve these programs for the “most vulnerable,” but that’s still a taking. Did not every American pay into Social Security and Medicare? They did, but as with the foreclosure crisis, property rights (which are essential legal rights) of the rest of us are irrelevant. While Romney is explicit about 47 percent of the country being worthless, Obama just acts as if they are charity cases. In neither case does either candidate treat the mass of the public as fellow citizens.
Now, it would not be fair to address this matter purely on economic grounds, and ignore women’s rights. In that debate with Ellsberg, advocate Emily Hauser insistently made the case that choice will be safe under Obama, and ended under Romney, that this is the only issue that matters to women, and that anyone who doesn’t agree is, as she put it, delusional. Falguni Sheth argued that this is a typical perspective from a privileged white woman, who ignores much of the impact that Barack Obama’s policies have on women, and specifically women of color. And even on the issue of choice, you could make a good case, as she does, that there’s less of a difference between Obama and Romney than meets the eye.
Sheth’s piece is persuasive. Barack Obama is the president who hired as his lead economic advisor Larry Summers, a man famous for arguing that women are genetically predisposed to being bad at math. Unsurprisingly, Anita Dunn, a White House adviser, later called the Obama White House a “hostile work environment” for women, in large part because of the boys club of Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers. Obama is the president who insisted that women under 17 shouldn’t have access to Plan B birth control, overruling scientists at the FDA, because of his position ”as a father of two daughters.” Girls, he said, shouldn’t be able to buy these drugs next to “bubble gum and batteries.” Aside from the obvious sexism, he left out the possibility that young women who need Plan B had been raped by their fathers, which anyone who works in the field knows happens all too often. In his healthcare bill, Obama made sure that government funds, including tax credits and Medicaid that are the key to expanding healthcare access to the poor, will be subject to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits their use for abortion. It’s not clear what will happen with healthcare exchanges, or how much coverage there will be for abortion services in the future.....
... Stoller goes on. worth the read!!
best, libby
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/
Quoting:
So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.
The above is a chart of corporate profits against the main store of savings for most Americans who have savings — home equity. Notice that after the crisis, after the Obama inflection point, corporate profits recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs, whereas home equity levels have remained static. That $5-7 trillion of lost savings did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did. Also notice that this is unprecedented in postwar history. Home equity levels and corporate profits have simply never diverged in this way; what was good for GM had always, until recently, been good, if not for America, for the balance sheet of homeowners. Obama’s policies severed this link, completely.
This split represents more than money. It represents a new kind of politics, one where Obama, and yes, he did this, officially enshrined rights for the elite in our constitutional order and removed rights from everyone else (see “The Housing Crash and the End of American Citizenship” in the Fordham Urban Law Journal for a more complete discussion of the problem). The bailouts and the associated Federal Reserve actions were not primarily shifts of funds to bankers; they were a guarantee that property rights for a certain class of creditors were immune from challenge or market forces. The foreclosure crisis, with its rampant criminality, predatory lending, and document forgeries, represents the flip side. Property rights for debtors simply increasingly exist solely at the pleasure of the powerful. The lack of prosecution of Wall Street executives, the ability of banks to borrow at 0 percent from the Federal Reserve while most of us face credit card rates of 15-30 percent, and the bailouts are all part of the re-creation of the American system of law around Obama’s oligarchy.
The policy continuity with Bush is a stark contrast to what Obama offered as a candidate. Look at the broken promises from the 2008 Democratic platform: a higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and labor protections in the FAA bill. Each of these pledges would have tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush, and then went back on his word because these promises didn’t fit with the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision. For sure, Obama believes he is doing the right thing, that his policies are what’s best for society. He is a conservative technocrat, running a policy architecture to ensure that conservative technocrats like him run the complex machinery of the state and reap private rewards from doing so. Radical political and economic inequality is the result. None of these policy shifts, with the exception of TARP, is that important in and of themselves, but together they add up to declining living standards.
While life has never been fair, the chart above shows that, since World War II, this level of official legal, political and economic inequity for the broad mass of the public is new (though obviously for subgroups, like African-Americans, it was not new). It is as if America’s traditional racial segregationist tendencies have been reorganized, and the tools and tactics of that system have been repurposed for a multicultural elite colonizing a multicultural population. The data bears this out: Under Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every dollar. That’s right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress. And it’s not strictly a result of the financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.
This is the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional, it is the modern American order, and it has a certain equilibrium, the kind we identify in Middle Eastern resource extraction based economies. We are even seeing, as I showed in an earlier post, a transition of the American economic order toward a petro-state. By some accounts, America will be the largest producer of hydrocarbons in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This is just not an America that any of us should want to live in. It is a country whose economic basis is oligarchy, whose political system is authoritarianism, and whose political culture is murderous toward the rest of the world and suicidal in our aggressive lack of attention to climate change.
Many will claim that Obama was stymied by a Republican Congress. But the primary policy framework Obama put in place – the bailouts, took place during the transition and the immediate months after the election, when Obama had enormous leverage over the Bush administration and then a dominant Democratic Party in Congress. In fact, during the transition itself, Bush’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson offered a deal to Barney Frank, to force banks to write down mortgages and stem foreclosures if Barney would speed up the release of TARP money. Paulson demanded, as a condition of the deal, that Obama sign off on it. Barney said fine, but to his surprise, the incoming president vetoed the deal. Yup, you heard that right — the Bush administration was willing to write down mortgages in response to Democratic pressure, but it was Obama who said no, we want a foreclosure crisis. And with Neil Barofsky’s book ”Bailout,” we see why. Tim Geithner said, in private meetings, that the foreclosure mitigation programs were not meant to mitigate foreclosures, but to spread out pain for the banks, the famous “foam the runway” comment. This central lie is key to the entire Obama economic strategy. It is not that Obama was stymied by Congress, or was up against a system, or faced a massive crisis, which led to the shape of the economy we see today. Rather, Obama had a handshake deal to help the middle class offered to him by Paulson, and Obama said no. He was not constrained by anything but his own policy instincts. And the reflation of corporate profits and financial assets and death of the middle class were the predictable results.
The rest of Obama’s policy framework looks very different when you wake up from the dream state pushed by cable news. Obama’s history of personal use of illegal narcotics, combined with his escalation of the war on medical marijuana (despite declining support for the drug war in the Democratic caucus), shows both a personal hypocrisy and destructive cynicism that we should decry in anyone, let alone an important policymaker who helps keep a half a million people in jail for participating in a legitimate economy outlawed by the drug warrior industry. But it makes sense once you realize that his policy architecture coheres with a Romney-like philosophy that there is one set of rules for the little people, and another for the important people. It’s why the administration quietly pushed Chinese investment in American infrastructure, seeks to privatize public education, removed labor protections from the FAA authorization bill, and inserted a provision into the stimulus bill ensuring AIG bonuses would be paid, and then lied about it to avoid blame. Wall Street speculator who rigged markets are simply smart and savvy businessmen, as Obama called Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, whereas the millions who fell prey to their predatory lending schemes are irresponsible borrowers. And it’s why Obama is explicitly targeting entitlements, insurance programs for which Americans paid. Obama wants to preserve these programs for the “most vulnerable,” but that’s still a taking. Did not every American pay into Social Security and Medicare? They did, but as with the foreclosure crisis, property rights (which are essential legal rights) of the rest of us are irrelevant. While Romney is explicit about 47 percent of the country being worthless, Obama just acts as if they are charity cases. In neither case does either candidate treat the mass of the public as fellow citizens.
Now, it would not be fair to address this matter purely on economic grounds, and ignore women’s rights. In that debate with Ellsberg, advocate Emily Hauser insistently made the case that choice will be safe under Obama, and ended under Romney, that this is the only issue that matters to women, and that anyone who doesn’t agree is, as she put it, delusional. Falguni Sheth argued that this is a typical perspective from a privileged white woman, who ignores much of the impact that Barack Obama’s policies have on women, and specifically women of color. And even on the issue of choice, you could make a good case, as she does, that there’s less of a difference between Obama and Romney than meets the eye.
Sheth’s piece is persuasive. Barack Obama is the president who hired as his lead economic advisor Larry Summers, a man famous for arguing that women are genetically predisposed to being bad at math. Unsurprisingly, Anita Dunn, a White House adviser, later called the Obama White House a “hostile work environment” for women, in large part because of the boys club of Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers. Obama is the president who insisted that women under 17 shouldn’t have access to Plan B birth control, overruling scientists at the FDA, because of his position ”as a father of two daughters.” Girls, he said, shouldn’t be able to buy these drugs next to “bubble gum and batteries.” Aside from the obvious sexism, he left out the possibility that young women who need Plan B had been raped by their fathers, which anyone who works in the field knows happens all too often. In his healthcare bill, Obama made sure that government funds, including tax credits and Medicaid that are the key to expanding healthcare access to the poor, will be subject to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits their use for abortion. It’s not clear what will happen with healthcare exchanges, or how much coverage there will be for abortion services in the future.....
... Stoller goes on. worth the read!!
best, libby
I also deplore the fact that Obama seems to be in agreement with a policy of assassinating foreign leaders, if the Pentagon decides they are a pain in the ass. The drone strikes, they were supposed to be a vast improvement over Bush's carpet bombs. It seems that they aren't much of that, and something worse, because they're using them so much. Way to many drones! They say that Air Force pilots are miffed at all those gamer types, taking over the whole show. Obama should take a moral stance against all this indiscriminate killing, that is for sure. He got Obama-- but I wouldn't call it ethical. The United States would benefit vastly if we acted with morality. Release the people in Guantanamo. Make an end to anything resembling torture. Take the criminals to justice. All this, and more, that we don't want to think about. The cynicism behind all these things, that is what is dragging the United States into the stinking refuse heap of history.
Oops! I never thought I would do that. I wrote Obama, and meant Osama. Woe is me.
Somehow I missed your post when it came out.
I had many of the same feelings when I read the WaPo article, and put some of them down in a picture:
https://twitter.com/BartHKreps/status/261284634485207040/photo/1/large
As the days have gone by, and there has been almost no mainstream comment on the disposition matrix, I can't help but think of Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil". High-tech killing, especially killing by those with nearly supreme power of those with almost no power, is soothingly routinized with careful record-keeping, and then it doesn't seem outrageous: the banality of evil.
I had many of the same feelings when I read the WaPo article, and put some of them down in a picture:
https://twitter.com/BartHKreps/status/261284634485207040/photo/1/large
As the days have gone by, and there has been almost no mainstream comment on the disposition matrix, I can't help but think of Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil". High-tech killing, especially killing by those with nearly supreme power of those with almost no power, is soothingly routinized with careful record-keeping, and then it doesn't seem outrageous: the banality of evil.
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