(556 Obama-dumping days until 2012 election-Hugh's Obama's Scandals List)
Wow, I thought the biggest hit to social humanists was when the “two Americas” populists of John Edwards’ campaign had their call to a moral high ground silenced when their passionate and articulate for political ethics leader was found guilty of cheating on his cancer-stricken and dying wife.
That sucker punch to human and social rights advocates seems like nothing upon reading the breathtaking headlines about Gaddafi’s alleged capacity for evil -- mandating mass rape and supplying Viagara to his fighters. A veritable HITLER ... IF the story is true.
Protesting the US and NATO waging an illegitimate war with Libya certainly has become far more awkward for myself as a feminist and peace activist.
I don’t know a lot about Gaddafi. In the best reports he is a very troubling and dangerous-sounding man. But we are all relentlessly saturated with corporate media propaganda daily. Hard to figure it all out, and dig out reality in this say-anything post-Bush but still neocon powered Obamaworld of gamesmanship, not truth and honor.
Whether Gaddafi is such a demon or not, I want to call out his demonization as one of propagandized convenience by his fellow US and NATO human demons.
I pray to God Gaddafi is not capable of ordering mass rape and supplying his troops with Viagra to protect his embattled position by the US and NATO and their super-toys. If he is, so be it. If U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice whom I know little about is not lying then she should speak up. If she is lying, she is one more soul-less sell-out of which we have all witnessed hundreds. Lying for political advantage has become a celebrated art form in the Western world. Obama the star.
Whatever the reality of Gaddafi, it does not excuse the anti-human crimes of my own country.
Rape is horrifying.
So is sitting in a quiet, air-conditioned room in Nevada, sipping a Diet Coke behind a console, incinerating human targets halfway around the globe, many who are women and children. Easy as playing a computer game. Then such institutional murderer clocks out at 5pm, say, to go home, hug his or her wife or husband and kids and have a nice dinner. That is horrifying to me, too. The surreally hypocritical, American way of war. Neater, cleaner, slicker, without conscience. Without much attention from the corporate-controlled media and ostrich American public. Without objection, also, by the “we need the armament profits” sociopathic Congress and administration.
My advocacy for peace in Libya I stand by. For the avoidance of the shock and awe of the US and NATO Military Industrial Security Complex. Against the, you know, “only tool in the foreign policy arsenal is the proverbial hammer” insanity. I call out the arrogance of attacking a sovereign African nation. I stand against the pre-emptive fascistic land and resource and finance grabbing of the Western super-powered bullies. I stand against the apparent racist genocide happening by factions of the West-supported Libyan rebels.
Again, I don’t know much about Susan Rice, but I can’t help remembering Obama environmental hireling Carol Browner gushing out incredibly optimistic (a/k/a friggin’ lying) statistics on the NewsHour last year to a dumbfounded Judy Woodruff that Mother Nature and those now benignly reduced dispersants had practically cleaned up over three-quarters of the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico is a toxic chemical soup. But Browner was on the NewsHour dispensing her own thick koolaid soup. And a facially doubting Judy Woodruff offered her no serious challenge. How did Woodruff end that particular segment? Something like, “We’ll leave it there for now.” Well, look at their pbs sponsors, after all. No wonder Jon Stewart is so refreshing. Willing to Jack Benny slap his cheek and call out the liars.
You know, some lies are so big they deserve their own five stages of grief.
You can accuse me of not having my own evidence re Gaddafi. I don’t. I just read the headline sported by aol last night. But I needed to respond as I wait for more facts and evidence.
I do have my gut feelings from a lot of disillusionment and profound disenfranchisement by the dark powers that are spending my tax dollars and killing in my name. I do know I have the utmost disgust and distrust of my own government’s leadership. So they just may be capable of using an African American woman, Susan Rice, and once again the supposed hallowed halls of the UN to drop the A-Bomb of a PR LIE in an America with the mass media corporate-controlled as an obliging echo chamber, a friggin’ propaganda fog machine against facts and reality, to protect a shamelessly craven anti-citizen government pimped by the same corporations running the media and arranging these profiteering gratuitous craven wars.
The US couldn’t accuse the Libyan government forces of rape in general because the surreally violent nature of war escalates sexual violence and the US is certainly no angel in preventing sexual violence among its ranks, think Blackwater but also the regular military. The government protects agents of atrocity, sexual or otherwise. Denies or minimizes the plights of the victims. I remember was it Dahr Jamail once declaring that 1 in 3 American female military recruits was likely to be sexually attacked during her period of commission. And then there are the particular foreign US and Western puppet war lords, “our” bastards they are endearingly called, CIA-assets, and their regimes which have such primitive double standards for men and women, and that any infractions by their enslaved women are met with barbaric and even deadly consequences.
“Pragmatically” speaking, folks (as both Bush and Obama patronizingly like to call us) human rights not really a biggie in geo-political relationships any more. Profits and power over people. Jim Hightower cracked once upon a time it was "them" as the top dogs and "us" as the bottom dogs. Now we are the hydrants!
Will the Gaddafi humongous rumor help Obama win in 2012? Now that is really what is significant. Right?
My gut says, they -- the sociopaths wreaking financial and military havoc on the world right now -- are capable of this ultimate whopper of a lie. But even if it isn’t a lie. They are still soulless. Their destructiveness. The questionability of the rebels they are supporting in which there is a lot more evidence than Rice has re rapes for genocidal racist atrocities against other Africans.
The rights and plights of women, always popular for propaganda. Such a compelling hook, isn’t it? As our government dismantles American women's rights under our very noses. And what about the years of rape as a tool of war and intimidation in Darfur? The poor women trying to gather firewood the BBC would report on, not so much American news outlets. Where was R2P then? Where were these supposed HUMANITARIAN nations then?
I guess the US was too busy protecting the women of Afghanistan and Iraq in those days. HAH!!!!
I have wondered about the US torturing foreign women and children. The American media and public have no stomach for such things, that is, actually hearing about them. How could that level of atrocity be true? Our pen-light flashlight press would never go in that direction for sure. One would think that such American institutionalized evil would be impossible. After all, there are the Geneva Conventions. Oh, wait a sec. They don’t seriously exist any longer,
According to the American rules of military engagement in the Middle East 360 degree rotational fire is considered a legitimate response to the sound of any enemy fire power, even if the US soldiers are in the middle of a village square. 360 degree rotational fire. The elderly, women, children .... and even, yes, the men who have a right to survive in their own homelands ... should beware.
Hmmmmm. “Why don’t they like us?”
Back to this recent uber-demonization of Gaddafi as a HITLER. Is this a rumor to justify US and NATO’s own militarized cravenness and enable them to up the ante on this now stale-mated faux-humanitarian intervention (a/k/a imperialistic war)? They had to come up with a pretty big whopping sin that would provide instant outrage to a truly apathetic American citizenry. They found it.
Definitely PR Hardball. But a convenient enflaming reality about Gaddafi and Libya? Or a monster lie from their own “pragmatic” hearts of darkness?
I hope time will tell ... the truth.
And no matter what Gaddafi is, I am getting kinda tired of Obama et al. hiding behind the “lesser of two evils” rationale. Aren’t you? Let’s face it. The bar isn’t very high, is it now?
[cross-posted at correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
In a "just" world this would read like a rant, but in our new world, inverted, justice perverted, it reads like a clear eyed shout of disbelief.
I'm shouting along with you.
Your brief portrait of the faceless joystick drone pilots an acid etched allegory... of unpardonable shame and shamelessness ~
I'm shouting along with you.
Your brief portrait of the faceless joystick drone pilots an acid etched allegory... of unpardonable shame and shamelessness ~
well said, ii. appreciate the validation. a shame and shamelessness paradox, indeed. what karmic price for all of us, from all this sustained zombie-dom and authoritarian enthrallment. numbness has its own ferocious inertia, useful to ego-driven power addicts and their co-addict cronies.
thanks for accompanying shout. my hope comes from the theory of the 100 monkeys. know it? once the 100th monkey grasps the truth, then it spreads to the whole monkey nation. I think during the Viet Nam era the 100th monkey might have been Walter Cronkite. (we had folk songs then that opened the heart. what will it take today?)
thanks for accompanying shout. my hope comes from the theory of the 100 monkeys. know it? once the 100th monkey grasps the truth, then it spreads to the whole monkey nation. I think during the Viet Nam era the 100th monkey might have been Walter Cronkite. (we had folk songs then that opened the heart. what will it take today?)
Maybe Rice just has it confused - maybe she really mean to write about all the female GIs in the US army that are raped by their superior officers and then dishonorably discharged when they try to file complaints against them.
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