TWO STATE/APARTHEID

People that know the realities on the ground know that the two-state solution is no longer possible. The fact is that one state controls all of the land, and it has done so for over 40 years, affirming one people's right to live, marry, work and settle by negating another people's right to do the same, on land that two peoples " not just one " call home.

The situation we"re in now is a situation where there"s a country that rules over more or less equal populations of Jews and non-Jews, and it privileges Jews over non-Jews, it gives rights to Jews over non-Jews. An Apartheid.

Because of the kind of aggressive colonization of the Occupied Territories, it"s no longer possible to separate the two populations, if it ever was.

ISRAEL AFTER BUSH YEARS

clipped from: www.huffingtonpost.com

A politician knows that all they have to do is say that they are for Israel, and against the Palestinians, and they will be deemed a "staunch supporter" of Israel and the campaign money will flow their way.

supporting the status quo is

• the path of least resistanceit

• is also the one that only adds to Israel's security problems--

• and America's declining strategic position in the Middle East.

The (Bush) eight years

• some of the bloodiest in Israel's history.

• A second intifada took over a thousand Israeli lives (and three times as many Palestinians)

• U.S. demand for elections in the West Bank and Gaza brought Hamas to power.

• With the United States abandoning the role of Middle East "honest broker," Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were intermittent and fruitless.

• Today, in the summer of 2008, Israelis see a new frightening form of terrorism manifested by two attacks by bulldozer in the streets of Jerusalem.

• the utter destabilization produced by the Iraq War, which has moved Iraq into Iran's orbit, facilitating Iranian trouble-making and making it more of a threat to Israel than ever before.

mainstream Israelis and Palestinians are almost in full agreement about what peace will look like. If George W. Bush can repeatedly endorse "two states, living side by side in peace and security," his successor can make it happen.


M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy for Israel Policy Forum, an organization supporting US efforts to advance an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Previously, he worked on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for 15 years. He was also a Clinton political appointee at USAID. In the early 1980s, he was editor of AIPACs weekly newsletter Near East Report.

LARRY CRAIG IS BEING "JERKED AROUND" BY HIS "GAS NOZZLE"

SENDING MORE TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN?

---

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski is not on board

---

Brzezinski admitted his own role in funding Afghanistan's Mujahadeen in 1979, thereby "increasing the probability" that the Soviets would invade a tough, demoralizing, mountainous theater for combat.

---

"I think we're literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did.

---

the Soviets were able to delude themselves that they had a loyal army of communist-sympathizers who would transform the country

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the conduct of military operations "with little regard for civilian casualties" may accelerate the negative trend in local public opinion

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He believes Europe should bribe Afghan farmers not to produce poppies used for heroin

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the tribal warlords can be bought off with bribes, with the endgame being the isolation of Al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is "not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon."

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"Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV

---

Asked who he would like to see in a potential Obama cabinet

---

I would say Hagel and [Sen. Dick] Lugar would be very good Republicans [for Obama]."

---

Sen. Joe Biden as a potential Secretary of State

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"keep [Secretary of Defense Bob] Gates in the job for a few months."

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because of the very complexity of the issues, for solutions to become polarized and more extreme

---

Republicans move toward neocon-ish formulas, and Democrats [follow] idealistically escapist formulas. In either case you don't end up with the necessary mix of idealism and realism."

BUSH'S HOPE FOR AN EXTENSION OF HIS THIRD TERM

EITHER WAY ITS WAR, SO WHICH CANDIDATE LOOKS BETTER WITH PETREUS

BARACK OBAMA'S WAR PLAN

Barack Obama ... the political vehicle for a significant shift in the focus of US military aggression from Iraq to Afghanistan and Central Asia...

...who won by tapping into popular antiwar sentiment

He is the leading spokesman for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan and its possible extension into Pakistan...

...while the broad antiwar sentiment of the population is ignored

The race of two candidates...whose discernible foreign policy differences reflect tactical disputes over US imperialist policy, centering on where American military violence should be focused.

Obama’s antiwar posturing...a calculated effort to conflate and subordinate principled opposition to the war to those sections of the political and military establishment whose opposition to Bush’s war policy had nothing in common with opposition to US militarism or the neo-colonial designs of American imperialism.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who considered the invasion of Iraq a strategic blunder...

...a fixation on Iraq, they argued, diverted military and financial resources from more important tasks, including consolidating US power in oil-rich Central Asia.

Obama, made clear in his recent trip to Iraq that he

• supported the US stooge regime and

• as president would maintain an indefinite presence of tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq

• to secure American interests in that country (Oil, bases, Israel)

The Democratic Party and its candidates have subverted and undermined antiwar opposition.

• 2002 congressional elections...kept the issue of the drive to war against Iraq out of the election campaign while it promoted Bush’s lies about weapons of mass destruction and supplied the necessary votes in Congress to authorize the invasion.

• In 2004...Howard Dean’s campaign...initially utilized to channel growing antiwar sentiment...was derailed and shut down by the party leadership and the media. John Kerry ran in the primaries as a critic of the war, sidelined the issue once he had secured the nomination...presented himself as a Vietnam War hero who would wage the war in Iraq more effectively than Bush.
  

• 2006...Democrats again did their best to keep the contest from becoming a referendum on the war...mass turnout of antiwar voters defeated dozens of incumbent Republican congressmen and senators and put the Democratic Party in control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994.

Democratic Congress then proceeded to vote for every war appropriation requested by Bush

Democrats also voted to confirm every top military official nominated by Bush

Democrats succeeded in confusing, demoralizing and dissipating any significant organized expression of antiwar sentiment

the liberal establishment is now set to promote the “right war” in Afghanistan

“Events have conspired to make the strategy

• —set a timetable for shutting down Iraq

• focus attention and resources on the main event in Afghanistan—

the only sane way to proceed....”

NYT Frank Rich chastised McCain for being a year behind Obama in “recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda.”

Democratic Party exploited the political vulnerabilities of a population subjected to

• decades of right-wing propaganda,

• media disinformation and

• the absence of any genuine opposition to political reaction within either of the two parties.

it was rendered indispensable assistance by the milieu of middle-class protest groups, ex-radicals and left liberals who single-mindedly worked to channel the antiwar movement behind the Democratic Party, insisting that no struggle against the war was permissible or legitimate outside the orbit of the two-party system.

United for Peace and Justice and the Nation magazine

• opposed any struggle that sought to mobilize mass antiwar sentiment independently of the capitalist parties and link it to a socialist program to unite the working class against attacks on social conditions and democratic rights.

• they undermined the very movement they purported to lead.

Now Katrina Vanden Heuvel writes,

• “it is troubling that as he shows sound thinking on Iraq, while Obama also continues to talk about escalating the US military presence in Afghanistan.”

• She pleads with the Democratic candidate to “think long and hard” about “extricating the US from one disastrous war and heading into another.”

Commending Obama’s policy in Iraq as “sound” constitutes support for an ongoing US military presence and the permanent reduction of the country to the status of a US protectorate.

Such appeals serve to encourage illusions that he can be shifted by pressure from below to adopt a less militaristic course, and that the Democratic Party or a section of it can serve as a vehicle for peace.

these elements are incapable of making a class analysis of the Democratic Party, one of the oldest capitalist parties in the world.

The Democratic Party has long been the burial ground of movements of popular protest and opposition, from the Populist movement of the 1890s, to the industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be ended, and future wars prevented, only through a decisive and irreparable break with the Democratic Party and the independent mobilization of the American and international working class in a struggle against war and the capitalist system that is its root cause.

MCCAIN'S VIAGRA MONOLOGUES

WILLIAM KRISTOL DELIVERS THE "NEWS" TO GENERAL ODIERNO

from Jim Lobe's Blog

Colonel Pat Lang, the former senior intelligence officer and Middle East expert, is certainly asking the right questions about Bill Kristol’s reference on Fox News today his recent visit to Fort Hood, Texas...

...to talk to Gen. Odierno, who has just been confirmed as...

...Washington’s top military commander in Iraq

...what would Kristol, who reportedly speaks with Sen. John McCain pretty regularly and has long been close to some of McCain’s top foreign-policy advisers (Randy Scheunemann, Bob and Fred Kagan, etc.), tell Odierno about Iraq or military strategy that the general does not already know

...why would General Odierno want to arrange a talk with one of the neo-conservatives’ top polemicists...

Back in the day, The Iraqi Neocon cabal included retired General Jack Keene and the Kagans and their spouses from the American Enterprise Institute teaming up withGrnls Petreaus and his boy Gen. Odierno to produce "The Surge" in reaction to James Baker/Lee Hamilton Iraqi Study Group. "The Surge" was designed to give the illusion of Iraq under control so we could move on to "what real men do" and that is "go to Tehran"

The two military command slots that matter are US Central Command and Commander of Multinationational Forces-Iraq. CentCom controls the theatre from Egypt to Pakistan and has been filled, in the past, with old line military who have no interest or intention of opening up the 3rd Front-Iran, or the 4th Front-Pakistan. The Neocons problem was solved when Admiral Fallows was tossed out of CentCom and replaced with Petraeus. Odierno then took over Petraeus' old post as Commander of Multinational Forces-Iraq. So now, the military positions that matter are filled by the neoconservative's generals who are ready and willing to go to war in Iran or Pakistan or both.

Neoconservatives have now subverted and politicized the command structure of the US military with Petreaus and Odierno. If Obama doesnt toe the line (and he is at least on board for Pakistan and the good war-Afghanistan) then the neocons can push back through the generals. Bush and McCain have already set the groundwork by repeatedly saying that they cannot adjust military war strategy without consulting the Generals in the field.

IRONY WARS: AND THE PRIZE GOES TO...

No one would do such a cover of McCain, playing into the most damaging rumors, but imagine this: a jaunty young John, in his pilot uniform, sitting comfortably and chatting with his Vietnamese captors. Two gorgeous gals serve his every wish. He is smoking a cigar and drinking a martini. In the next room other POWs are being intensively interrogated. Ha ha, Republicans?

Art by Jeremy Glass. See here

THE SURRENDER OF CENTER-LEFT PARTIES

But Milne makes a further point. The rise of neo-fascism in Italy, and elsewhere, is tied to the collapse -- or rather the surrender -- of center-left parties to the pernicious doctrines of the Right. Everywhere, these parties ---

• Democrats in America,

• Labour in the UK, various

• Social Democrats throughout Europe –
  

have turned themselves into pale copies of conservative parties, adopting policies that have

• degraded society,

• destroyed communities,

• entrenched injustice,

• rewarded greed,

• poisoned the earth,

• embraced militarism and aggression,

• inflicted vast suffering on developing nations (through the straightjacket of "market reforms," i.e., corporate-crony welfare),

• subverted democracy,

• diminished liberty and

• gutted the very notion of the common good.

---

the Democrats – and New Labour and other craven centre-left parties – have embraced the Right's agenda of elitist domination, militarism and scorn for the common good because they agree with it.

• Any figures with genuinely "progressive" views have been winnowed out or marginalized by the big money machines that run the parties.

• Such people are always a minority amongst the self-interested factions who vie for domination over a nation's affairs, of course. But there used to be a more substantial minority of such folks in U.S. politics, with enough leverage to sometimes affect national policy and even score some successes.

• But this strain has been almost completely bred out, as we have seen in the latest Democratic Congress – the most reviled and unpopular Congress in American history.]

---

In the current U.S. presidential campaign, we can see this dynamic of center-left collaboration with the Right – which has been going on for almost a quarter-century in America – playing itself out once again. Barack Obama's "surge" to the Right –

• as exemplified by his vote for the tyrannical FISA measure – is just another iteration of this process.

• Likewise, his embrace of the Terror War; true, he wants to do it more "efficiently," and perhaps add a few more targets – in Pakistan, say – but he still wants to do it.

He makes no bones about continuing this militarist project which has already

• killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people,

• bankrupted the national treasury,

• and is now – through the Terror War oil price spike – strangling the entire national economy.
  

All of this – especially the Terror War's continuing brutalization and coarsening of the national ethos – is meet food for neo-fascism to feed upon.

WHY THE "SHADOW GOVERNMENT" HAD JFK MURDERED

JFK had within his reach the financial resources to get elected, and more than enough money and influence to build a solid political machine to assure himself two terms in office,

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JFK wasn’t beholding to the cunning Wire Pullers. He was a free agent. JFK could stand aloof from those contrivers. He didn’t need them.

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JFK had a natural built in electoral constituency--a voting block--who favored his candidacy.

• He was an intellectual, of Irish descent,

• Roman Catholic,

• young and a WWII Veteran, to boot, possessing a hero-like image. And, for the most part,

• large segments of the African-American community felt a special kinship with him.

• The women loved him also. He was charming and better looking than most Hollywood stars of that era.

• Many, too, in the rank and file of the then feisty Labor Movement were attracted to and inspired by his candidacy for the Oval Office.

• The bosses of the Union Movement, with some notable exceptions, like Jimmy Hoffa, were inclined to give JFK the benefit of the doubt.

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For all of the above reasons, JFK was a threat to the Shadow Government. (1) After he was elected, he alarmed them further by showing a strong streak of independent thinking! He consistently put America’s interests first.

---

Jim Marrs

---

In his latest book: “The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America,”

---

“By mid-1963

---

• He was threatening to disband the CIA...

• withdraw U.S. troops from South Vietnam,

• close the tax breaks of the oil-depletion allowances;

• tighten control over the tax-free foreign assets of U.S. multinational corporations...and

• decrease the power of both Wall Street and the Federal Reserve System. In June, 1963, Kennedy ordered the printing and release of $4.2 billion in United States notes, paper money issued through the Treasury Department ‘without paying interest’ to the Federal Reserve System, which is composed of twelve regional banks all controlled by ‘private banks’ whose owners often are ‘non-Americans.’”

---

• JFK also opposed Israel’s nuclear weapons scheme.

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after

---

Lyndon B. Johnson, succeeded to the presidency,

• JFK’s policy towards that controversial Nuke-producing project was reversed.

---

Peter Dale Scott in his tome, “Deep Politics and the Death of JFK,” insisted that

• JFK clearly wanted a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, whether military conditions on the ground allowed it or not. On Oct. 11, 1963, JFK issued “NSAM 263” to that effect. LBJ reversed that directive, too, with “NSAM 273.”

---

Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame, a courageous truth teller, had heard from his then Pentagon boss, John McNaughton, in 1964, that Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense,
and JFK, had an agreement that they would close out Vietnam by 1965.


1. For the purpose of this commentary, the term “Shadow Government” is used to refer to the ultra-criminal entity hidden from public view which orchestrated JFK’s assassination. I am convinced, but I can’t prove in a court of law, that he was murdered as the result of a conspiracy. What the nation witnessed, in my opinion, on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, TX, was nothing less than a coup d’etat.

EHUD BARAK AND NOTES ON THE HEZBOLLAH PRISONER RELEASE

And none of the Western coverage is pointing out the cruel and inhumane role of Ehud Barak in 1978: the man who shot Dalal Mughrabi while she was dead. He pulled her by the hair (only after she died as he would not dare do that to an alive Dalal) and mutilated her body before tearing her shirt off. Such are the sexual perversions of the former prime minister of Israel. And as for the details of the deeds of Dalal and her comrades, don't ever believe Israeli accounts of "enemy" operations. The state consistently lies and consistently fabricates. And that saying from the Babylonian Talmud applies to Israel: the punishment of the liar is that he is not believed even when he tells the truth.

HERE IS A VIDEO OF JOHN WEARING JOE'S HAND UP HIS REAR, PUPPET AND PUPPET MASTER

Oh yea, that's right. USA public opinion has figured out that there is some kind of difference between shias and sunnis so it cant be al-queda. Must be something else, extremist terrorists or something. Whatever.

HERE IS A COUPLE OF PICTURES OF JOHN WEARING JOE'S HAND UP HIS REAR, PUPPET AND PUPPET MASTER

WE THE PEOPLE, ARE ITS NATURAL PREY, AND ITS ONLY TRUE ENEMY

Antifa (in comments) said:

• There will be no prosecutions, nor even any investigations of the crimes of the two Bush terms.

• There will be no payback nor recompense to those deceived, robbed, and killed.

• There will not even be a Truth Commission to simply explore without vengeance an accounting of how our Republic went further afield than even the Third Reich in some ways.

For that would be a farce. That would be asking half the whores in the bordello to sit in judgment of the shocking escapades and easy virtues of the rest. Such a trial couldn't stand up long enough for the opening statements.

The entire Congress, the full House and Senate will need to be dragged before honest investigators and prosecutors and their conduct compared to the written laws of the land, to the oaths of office they took, and to the Constitution they have rendered moot if there is to be an accounting of our failure as a Republic.

Because none of this will ever happen, our nation will slide all the more readily into an authoritarian hell where the corporatist State is what matters, is all that matters, and every citizen is but fodder for its maw.

• From banks and corporations too big to fail it is no step at all to a Federal government too big to fail.

• The only inalienable right left in America is for the Federal government to increase its size, budget, strength, reach, power, purse, armaments, and control.

We, the people, are its natural prey, and its only true enemy.

THE FIFTH COLUMN

I now believe there is a major revolt afoot in the land of the free and the home of the brave and this article is the latest in a long line and is the clearest and bluntest expression of that sea change to date.

http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=13139

There was a time not too long ago when words such as these would dare not be uttered, and censorship and punishment would be swift and complete. The author of this piece is Michael Scheuer. His bio is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer

He is a retired 22 year CIA employee and the author of Imperial Hubris, which is, in my opinion, one of the best books outlining the disaster of the neocon foreign policy and its antecedents.

This sea change began with the publication of Walt and Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and it has continually picked up more steam ever since.

The best blog that I know of that is chronicling (and cheerleading) this change on a daily basis is written by a liberal Jew, Phillip Weiss and found here

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/

Over the last month I have increasing seen the Neocons referred to, in many forums, as “fifth columnists”. This is extraordinarily pejorative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column

In times of imperial and economic collapse scapegoats are sought, but in this case the actual criminals are well known and available to be brought to justice.

Every time I think that this is as far as it will go, it goes a little further.

IRONY WARS

Horsey: A John McCain magazine cover

ISRAEL AND ITS FIFTH COLUMN

Israel and its Fifth Column in this city seek to stampede us into war with Iran. Bush should rebuff them, and the American people should tell their congressmen: You vote for 362, we don't vote for you.

Last week, Mossad's chief, Meir Dagan, was here to make the case for war on Iran. This week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak visits Dick Cheney and maybe Bush. Next week, it is the head of Israel's armed forces.

Some 220 members, a majority, have endorsed House Concurrent Resolution 362. This virtual war resolution "demands" that President Bush initiate a blockade to halt all Iranian imports of refined petroleum products and impose "stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran."

A Democratic House that came to power denouncing the rush to war on Iraq is about to vote to demand that Bush commit an act of war against Iran.

The front men for 362 are liberal Gary Ackerman of New York and conservative Mike Pence of Indiana. But the juice behind them is that of the Israeli lobby AIPAC, which is marching in step with Israel.

BASTILLE DAY

The king must die so that the country can live.

-Maximilien Robespierre

THE BLACK PANTHERS MEETS OSAMA BIN LADEN

The Republican Campaign 2008

HORMUZ

Through this narrow waterway, only 34 km wide, pass the ships that carry between a fifth and a third of the world's oil, including that from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.

MOST OF the commentators who talk about the inevitable American and Israeli attack on Iran do not take account of this map.

Iran dominates the whole length of the Strait. They can seal it hermetically with their missiles and artillery, both land based and naval.

The mighty American navy is menacing Iran - but the moment the Strait is closed, it will itself resemble those model ships in bottles. Perhaps it is this danger that made the navy chiefs extricate the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln from the Persian Gulf this week, ostensibly because of the situation in Pakistan.

IRAN IS now a regional power. It makes no sense to deny that.

The irony of the matter is that for this they must thank their foremost benefactor in recent times: George W. Bush. If they had even a modicum of gratitude, they would erect a statue to him in Tehran's central square.

Today it is already clear that the real American aim (as I have asserted in this column right from the beginning) was to take possession of the Caspian Sea/Persian Gulf oil region and station a permanent American garrison at its center. This aim was indeed achieved - the Americans are now talking about their forces remaining in Iraq "for a hundred years", and they are now busily engaged in dividing Iraq's huge oil reserves among the four or five giant American oil companies.

THE REAL TARGET OF FISA

Submitted July 9, 2008 - 1:31 pm by Steven Hunt

"...FISA campaign a waste of time--given that the US security state already gets the info they want through a variety of channels.

And Greenwald will act totally suprised and outraged when it comes out that the US government is focusing on

• leftists,

• stalwart environmentalists,

• indigenous rights activists,

• socialist, etc.

instead of Islamic 'terrorists'. A cursory review of US history in the past hundred years would inform anyone that the consistent target of the security state are democratically minded insurgents on the left of the spectrum.

I even take it as a given that they moniter this website on a regular basis. Why would I expect anything different than this in a country where the plutocratic elites jealously guard their power?"

THANKS JESSE, NO, SERIOUSLY, THANKS

Submitted July 10, 2008 - 4:01 pm by Vik Murthy

...could Jesse Jackson's remarks being broadcast all over the cable punditocracy today have been scripted and choreographed? Here's my rationale:

1. Jesse Jackson is not stupid, and is the father of an extraordinary loyal Obama backer. He also happens to be Chicago-based, which is big-time Obama country.

2. Jackson was on Fox News when he made the remarks, and had to have known that anything he said was fair game for red meat-seeking tabloid journalists.

3. Jacksons' comments actually crudely play to Obama's advantage ... it reverberates Obama's ability to speak truth even when the truth hurts (I hate to compare this to Clinton's Sista Souljah moment, but that's the best analogy I can come up with), tempers concerns from white Democrats that Obama is beholden to his African-American base and highlights his faith-based initiatives.

4. It neuters any of McCain's perceived momentum or foreign policy advantage over Iran's missile tests by completely co-opting the news cycle.

5. Jackson's delivery of the comments look scripted to me.

THE OLD OBAMA

• supported pulling out of Iraq within 16 months,
• called the D.C. gun ban constitutional,
• backed the subjection of telecom companies to expensive lawsuits for cooperating in the terror surveillance program,
• opposed welfare reform,
• pledged to renegotiate Nafta,
• disavowed free trade and
• was strongly against the death penalty in all cases.

THE NEW OBAMA

• not so much

WORDS FROM DR PHIL

McCain's top economic adviser Phil Gramm tells America to suck it up and stop complaining about the economy:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

Emily Dickinson's insight on how to reach critical mass in overthrowing tyrants:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant -
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind -

JOHN B. JUDIS IN HAARETZ

In 2000, George W. Bush ran as if he, too, was going to be part of the consensus. If anything, he was going to be a little less eager to intervene overseas than his father or Bill Clinton, but no one expected major changes, certainly not with Colin Powell as Secretary of State.

After September 11, however, Bush confounded his critics and supporters alike in the foreign policy establishment by embracing a foreign policy that had been developed by dissenting neo-conservatives in Washington.

Taken as a whole, it represented a break with 60 years of American foreign policy:

• stridently nationalist rather than internationalist,

• contemptuous of international law,

• clothed in the language of American exceptionalism but in fact embracing 19th century German Machtpolitik,

• endowed with what one British journalist once called America's "illusion of omnipotence,"

• and committed to a theory of geopolitics that assumed that the world could be easily shaped by the exercise of American force.

So as we head into the 2008 election, the question is whether the next American president will continue George W. Bush's foreign policy or revert to the kind of foreign policy that America followed from 1940 to 2000.

Of all the leading candidates, the only one who has embraced the neo-conservative vision is John McCain, who since 1998 has been advised by, and followed the approach of, Washington neoconservatives (Those interested in the details might up the profile of McCain I did in The New Republic last year.) In McCain's favor, he does not have the Bush administration or the typical neo-conservatives? contempt for international law. But McCain is also, as one disillusioned Bush supporter told me, a "warrior" who sees the world as a playground in which slights have to be avenged. Witness his recent flip comments about bombing Iran or his proposal to "take out" Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr. So McCain is the major question mark.

On the Democratic side, I can say with some assurance that all the major candidates would attempt to build on the older internationalist foundations of American foreign policy. Their administrations would be sequels to the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations not to the George W. Bush administration

Right Web profile of John McCain

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. Aldous Huxley








"Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." —Lenny Bruce, 1923 - 1966)






"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." - George Orwell








Conspiracies are more common than what the psyop mass media hammered in meaning has led us to think.

When your fiancee is planning to leave you because of a wealthier bloke, or your wive gracefully plots to file for divorce in order to take half of your assets, they are conspiring against you. When your boss considers you are doing a great job but you are outperforming everyone, even him, and sets up a plan to get you out of the way for fear you might put him down, he is conspiring against you.

Even the most famous conspiracy theory is that some cavemen with box cutters were able to kidnap four commercial planes in order to make the world tremble, in the infamous 9-11 attacks.

Even in the current case of GOC trying to sell the story about a conspiracy of the Colombian intelligence against the FARC. Tying loose ends and coming up with another version, is automatically referred to as conspiracy theory, just as mind control puppeteers expect sheeple to claim, in order to ridicule arguments that could set them up against the wall. - Jaime Bustos




Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
- "Chronicle of Young Satan", Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth. - Mark Twain




"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." --H. L. Mencken








"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." –Harry S Truman

ALJAZEERA ON AIPAC

It is said to be the most powerful interest group in Washington DC - but what is the Israel lobby? And how exactly does it operate?

That is the question for this week's Inside USA.

COLOMBIA DEALS SOME PHONY DOPE

This was simply another unilateral prisoner release by FARC, after FARC was called upon by Chávez to release prisoners and following a FARC's track record of unconditional prisoner releases earlier this year, which was hijacked by the Colombian Military

She was being released just in time for the presidential elections and she is probably the only person in Colombia that can defeat Uribe

The Colombian military swooped in and fabricated it into a rescue operation. The complicit western media, especially CNN, is reporting that the prisoner release today was actually a rescue by the Colombia military.

Uribe's political triumph will lead stratospheric ratings both domestically and internationally.

It will lead to an even more intransigent refusal to negotiate for the release of the hostages, and insisting on a military solution including invasions of neighboring countries and assassinations of “high value targets”

It will eclipse the many scandals that Uribe's administration has been battling, such as the buying of votes for a constitutional amendment to allow for Uribe's re-election,

The Supreme Criminal Court condemned a Colombian Congress Member, Yidis Medina, for accepting a bribe.

It will eclipse the high level government connections with right-wing paramilitaries, and those many investigations connecting the Uribe regime to the paramilitaries.

It will blunt the human rights criticisms that have been an obstacle for one of Uribe's principal policy objectives: The Free Trade Agreement

It will shove the trade deal with the US through the Congress which was already boosted in part at least by the Free Trade Agreement with Canada, which was the logic of the Canadian FTA in the first place.



With the rescue of the three US contractors, the Colombian president will now have a debt to collect which will lead to more billions of US taxpayers money on top of billions already spent to the end of repression of the Colombian people

It will leave Uribe and the Colombian government with an even freer hand to repress peasant movements.

It will drowned out the voices of other leaders, including the Polo Democratico, the indigenous movement, the labor movements and outsiders like Chavez, who have long repudiated kidnapping and have worked for a fair and equitable economy for all Colombians

The fact that his regime is based on purchased votes, paramilitary violence, selling the country's assets to multinationals, will be lost in tales of the heroism of an operation that bloodlessly saved an innocent and long-suffering hostage



The only storm clouds threatening an otherwise bright political horizon appear to be emanating from the prize itself.

One hope is that Ingrid herself, like some of the hostages that were freed in rounds of negotiation through Chavez, might provide some perspective in the days to come

Betancourt has announced that she still hopes to serve her country as president.




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...PEOPLE LIKE JOE LIEBERMAN AND THE CROWD OVER AT COMMENTARY

Last week, Joe Klein -- basically out of the blue -- observed that while many advocates of an attack on Iraq (which once included Klein) were motivated by "neocolonial" fantasies or ensuring access to Iraq's oil, many other war proponents were motivated by their allegiance to Israel:




The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives -- people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary -- plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.



Since then, Klein has escalated the provocative rhetoric, writing several days ago:

You want evidence of divided loyalties? How about the "benign domino theory" that so many Jewish neoconservatives talked to me about -- off the record, of course -- in the runup to the Iraq war, the idea that Israel's security could be won by taking out Saddam, which would set off a cascade of disaster for Israel's enemies in the region? As my grandmother would say, feh! Do you actually deny that the casus belli that dare not speak its name wasn't, as I wrote in February 2003, a desire to make the world safe for Israel? Why the rush now to bomb Iran, a country that poses some threat to Israel but none -- for the moment -- to the United States . . . unless we go ahead, attack it, and the mullahs unleash Hezbollah terrorists against us? Do you really believe the mullahs would stage a nuclear attack on Israel, destroying the third most holy site in Islam and killing untold numbers of Muslims? I am not ruling out the use of force against Iran -- it may come to that -- but you folks seem to embrace it gleefully.

AN OCTOBER "SURPRISE" IN JULY

URIBE COULD HAVE ARRANGED THE RELEASE OF BETANCOURT TO HUGO CHAVEZ MONTHS AGO



BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombian spies tricked leftist rebels into handing over kidnapped presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors Wednesday in a daring helicopter rescue so successful that not a single shot was fired.

This would have happened a lot sooner if Uribe had not canceled the humanitarian mediation by President Chavez! He brokered the release of six civilian hostages in January and February of this year.





The United States was involved in the planning of the operation and provided “specific support,” the White House said. But officials there would not describe the nature of that support.

One American official who was briefed on the operation but spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed the intelligence support to Colombia for the mission, but would not provide details.

The American ambassador to Colombia, William R. Brownfield, and the United States combatant commander in the region, Adm. James G. Stavridis, were “engaged in the planning stages,” according to Gordon D. Johndroe, the deputy White House press secretary.

He said that President Bush was kept apprised of the planning and that he called after the rescue to congratulate President Álvaro Uribe, calling him “a strong leader.”



Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, released a statement that said Mr. Uribe and Mr. Santos had briefed him (along with his babysitter, Joe Lieberman) about the operation on Tuesday night, during his visit to Colombia.



BETANCOURT SAYS:
"The people who stayed behind there, I forgive them," Betancourt said of her rebel captors. "Nobody is at fault."

She thanked Uribe, against whom she was running when she was kidnapped, and said he "has been a very good president."

However, she said, "I continue to aspire to serve Colombia as president."

ACCORDING TO THE OFFICIAL VERSION:
a military helicopter camouflaged as belonging to a non government organization picked up the rescued at noon near Guaviare department, in southern central Colombia, bound for San Jose, the capital of this territory, to be later taken to the Tolemaida base.

FOLLOW UP

These guys just routinely board copters in the jungle? Yet they are antigovernment rebels?

Antigov types who use helicopters(sounds like they work closely with the government to some degree) and they take potential political rivals on the left hostage?

FARC running short of the items needed to sustain a movement. Thus it splinters into forms of corruption that mirror the drug trafficing and arms shipment deals that are their staple across regional and international borders.

Possible blowback, the disclosure that she was rescued on an NGO false flag. Now such groups may be targeted to the extent it hedges additional negotiations and progress, it could set those back years to come.

THE APPALLING TRUTH

As much as seven months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Administration was deeply involved in planning and mobilizing for the invasion and military occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the activity was remotely related to Osama bin Laden or counterterrorism of any stripe.

This is the fundamental truth, it is beyond dispute, and it is fully documented.

The incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were premeditated, hegemonic wars of conquest and territorial occupation, to gain the geostrategic control of Middle Eastern energy resources. Bald acts of unprovoked military aggression, they are direct violations of the charter of the United Nations. The wars are therefore international crimes, but they were not undertaken until the horror of September 11, 2001 provided a spectacular smokescreen. A fraudulent label--the “war on terror”—was concocted to disguise the premeditated violence, and it was quickly unleashed.