Tag Archives: War Without End

“the [fake] radicalization of the Muslim-American community”

open quoteRep. Peter King (R-New York) is the kind of in-your-face demagogue that only the state of New York could have elevated to high office. From his perch in the 3rd congressional district, in Long Island, King holds forth like a cruder version of Rudolph Giuliani, if you can imagine it. Yet we don’t have to imagine it, because it will be on full display when Rep. King, in his capacity as chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, presides over hearings on “the radicalization of the Muslim-American community.”

Those hearings portend a circus, in the course of which we’ll be subjected to a very public airing of the malignant views of people like Robert Spencer, Pamela “the shrieking harpy” Geller, and Frank Gaffney, a rogues gallery of anti-Muslimologist “experts” whose hate-filled rantings will further poison the atmosphere of an America itching for a lynching.

Although the neoconservatives were generally discredited in the wake of the Iraq war, when the complete failure of their policies – and prophecies – became all too apparent even to many of them, the dead-enders among them have sought to make a comeback by transferring their war on Muslims from the Middle East to the home front. The Ft. Hood massacre was a godsend to them, and they took full advantage of the opportunity. The “ground zero” mosque controversy was another shot in the arm for this movement, and Rep. King did not disappoint on that front: When it comes to crude bigotry and religion-based divisiveness, we can always rely on King to sink to the occasion, far lower than practically anyone else.

So the hearings will be a farce, a show trial of the Muslim community in which the mere act of putting up a defense gives the prosecution a legitimacy it could never achieve on the merits of the case. Because there is no organized pro-al Qaeda, pro-terrorist tendency in American Islam to speak of, at least so far. Which is why the FBI has had to resort to entrapment in prosecuting alleged homegrown “terrorists.” The last one was a confused Somali teenager, lured by the FBI into planning a bombingclose quote (Read more from original.antiwar.com)

The Panama Deception

The Panama Deception trailer:

open quote21 years ago the US military dropped bombs on the Central American nation of Panama four days before Christmas Eve.

The 1989 US invasion eventually killed an estimated 4,000 civilians and leveled densely populated urban areas. It was vindicated through the notion that then President Manuel Noriega was an imminent threat to Panamanian democracy and American lives.

“Last Friday Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with the United States and publicly threatened the lives of Americans in Panama,” explained former President George H.W. Bush in December of 1989 regarding why the US was invading Panama.

However, journalists and historians insist the real cause for war were maintaining US control of the Panama Canal, Central America and US military bases in Panama.

However, major US media played a key role in selling the invasion to the American people.

Tom Brokaw of NBC reported a week before the war, “The United States declared in effect Panama’s Manuel Noriega is a threat to this country’s national security.”

What wasn’t mentioned that was Noriega had been Washington’s strongman for nearly two decades. While Bush Sr. was head of the CIA, he increased Noriega’s payroll to $100,000 dollars a year.

But as Noriega’s obedience to the US faltered, the US feared losing control of the vital Panama Canal and the closure of its strategically important military bases.

“They demonized Noriega as a means to be able to bomb and attack his country and that is what they did,” said Michael Parenti, an author and political scientist.

“Panamanian deaths were simply not of interest to the major mainstream media. The interest was solely on American deaths. The US media were puppets for this military campaign,” commented Barbara Trent, the director of the academy award winning documentary “The Panama Deception”.

During the making of Trent’s documentary film, she faced barricades from the US military. While filming thousands of refugees living inside plane hangars, military officials tried to detain Trent to prevent her from filming. However, the Panamanian refugees surrounded Trent’s filming crew and they were able to conduct interviews.

One refugee told Trent, “We want to get out of this Goddamn place, we’re tired of this! This is not no democracy! They [US] are worse than Noriega, they are plenty worse!!”

The refugees painted a grim picture that did not reflect in the US media coverage.

“The media stopped acting like the media, and acted as it has done in the Iraq as a cheer leading section,” said Parenti.close quote

U.S. missile-defense test fails over Pacific (again)

open quoteWASHINGTON (Reuters) – A test of the sole U.S. defense against long-range ballistic missiles failed on Wednesday, the second failure in a row involving the system managed by Boeing Co, the Defense Department said.

“The Missile Defense Agency was unable to achieve a planned intercept of a ballistic missile target during a test over the Pacific Ocean today,” Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement. No preliminary explanation of the failure was provided.close quote (Read more from news.yahoo.com)

I am astonished by the number of my old computer science friends working on various military-related projects. They produce no goods and services society voluntarily consumes. They live on money taken away from people by force and threat of force (i.e. taxes). Failure is generally rewarded with bigger budgets. And they starve the private, voluntary sector of the economy of scientific and technological ability.

See also:

Terence Kealey, Science is a Private Good – Or: Why Government Science is Wasteful

PFS 2010 – Terence Kealey, Science is a Private Good – Or: Why Government Science is Wasteful from Sean Gabb on Vimeo.

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If you have a little time, I highly recommend the documentary Power of Nightmares about the constant government propaganda exaggerating threats against us.

Do supporters of Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo really know what he stands for?

open quotemprisoning Liu was entirely unnecessary. If Liu’s politics were well-known, most people would not favour him for a prize, because he is a champion of war, not peace. He has endorsed the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and he applauded the Vietnam and Korean wars retrospectively in a 2001 essay. All these conflicts have entailed massive violations of human rights. Yet in his article Lessons from the Cold War, Liu argues that “The free world led by the US fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights … The major wars that the US became involved in are all ethically defensible.” During the 2004 US presidential election, Liu warmly praised George Bush for his war effort against Iraq and condemned Democratic party candidate John Kerry for not sufficiently supporting the US’s wars:

[T]he outstanding achievement made by Bush in anti-terrorism absolutely cannot be erased by Kerry’s slandering … However much risk must be endured in striking down Saddam Hussein, know that no action would lead to a greater risk. This has been proven by the second world war and September 11! No matter what, the war against Saddam Hussein is just! The decision by President Bush is right!

Liu has also one-sidedly praised Israel’s stance in the Middle East conflict. He places the blame for the Israel/Palestine conflict on Palestinians, who he regards as “often the provocateurs”.close quote (Read more from guardian.co.uk)

The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot

open quoteThe FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who — with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI’s own undercover agents — allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon. Media accounts are almost uniformly trumpeting this event exactly as the FBI describes it. Loyalists of both parties are doing the same, with Democratic Party commentators proclaiming that this proves how great and effective Democrats are at stopping The Evil Terrorists, while right-wing polemicists point to this arrest as yet more proof that those menacing Muslims sure are violent and dangerous.close quote (Read more from salon.com)

I’m liking Glenn Greenwald more and more. Hope Salon doesn’t fire him for telling the truth.

We Who Dared to Say No to War | Thomas E. Woods. Jr.

Favorite parts (though the entire interview is dynamite):

@10:20 – Identification of Atrocity, and absurdity of counter argument “that’s war.”

@ 11:40 – Tom Wood’s paraphrases the surprising pro-war stance of many (but not all) Objectivists: “Collateral damage is not something to be deplored, it’s to be cheered. . . These people live in terrorist countries. . . I mean these people actually use that term, ‘Terrorist Country.’ There’s a nice individualist philosophy for you. . . To defend the good countries, we need to lay utter waste to our enemies. That’s individualism and reason.”

@ 16:30 – Absurdity of military budget.

@ 22:00 – The consequences of the military state.

Israel set to build wings for some 800 F-35s

open quoteIsrael is in talks to build the wings for about a quarter of the United States’s new F-35 stealth fighter aircraft, an Israeli official said on Monday.

Lockheed Martin currently plans to build some 3,200 F-35s costing about $96 million each.

An Israeli official who declined to be named said state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries would build the wings.

“We are in advanced talks for the IAI to produce around 800 sets of wings,” he told Reuters.

Lockheed Martin declined to comment on the details of a possible deal involving the aircraft, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).close quote (Read more from reuters.com)

Why the hell do we need 3,200 Joint Strike Fighters? Can we afford 3,200 Joint Strike Fighters? Would they have stopped the 9/11 attacks? Will they protect my liberties? No, they won’t. In fact, they’ll further violate my liberty, because I’m forced to pay for them with my labor. This is nothing but a transfer of wealth from the American public to the military industries of the United States and Israel.

Time Magazine Exploits Afghan Girl Who Had Her Nose Cut off to Defend Occupation

The cover of the new issue of Time — with its photograph of a young woman whose nose and ears were cut off by the Taliban, accompanied by headline “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan” — is disgraceful on several levels. (The image is here, and no, it’s not pretty; the cover story is here.)

Atrios (here and here) and Greg Mitchell (here) have made the obvious point: um, this happened while we were in Afghanistan. So the proof of how necessary it is for us to protect young women from brutal attacks of this kind is the fact that we couldn’t protect this young woman?

And does anyone at Time know the story of Zahida Parveen? She suffered a similar attack, yet even more brutal: her husband, believing she was having an affair, not only cut off her nose and earlobes but blinded her and beat her while hanging her upside down. Oh, but that took place in Pakistan in 1998. Following Time’s logic, I suppose the U.S. should have invaded and occupied Pakistan to prevent this from happening. (Read more from blogs.alternet.org)

This is so fucking dishonest, and an example of why I find it hard to not hate the mainstream media. They would just as quickly sensationalize the Huge rise in birth defects in Falluja if they could blame it on terrorists.

Gen. Casey: America may be in Iraq and Afghanistan for another decade

The United States may still be in the Afghanistan and Iraq region for another ten years, according to Gen. George Casey.

“The types of conflict that we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think are likely to be fighting here for a decade or so, are focused on the people,” Casey, the army’s Chief of Staff, said Friday night at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival.

“We are not going to succeed in either place by military means alone. You are only going to succeed when the people perceive there is a government represented by their interests, when there is an economy that can give them a job to support their families, when there are educational systems that can educate their family. All those things are essential to the long term success of the military operation.” (Read more from politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

I think the dollar will collapse before then.