Opinione

Blogging from China not allowed

2012-01-24T01:27:00.000-05:00

Although I have tried several ways around the Chinese filters, I am unable to post any blogs from China. This is disappointing because my living and working experience in China has been very favorable and rewarding.

As a political scientist, living and working in China is allowing me to gather data for a future paper related to Chinese/American relations.

The change of Barack Obama from a Dove to a Hawk

2011-05-17T12:45:00.005-04:00

In a 2007 interview with The Boston Globe, candidate Barack Obama said "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation”

At the time Obama gave that speech to The Boston Globe, Mr. Obama was a political candidate running for office exploiting the prevailing anti-war feeling of the public after four years of war in Iraq and six years of war in Afghanistan. However, on March 19, 2011 President Obama unilaterally authorized the United States to attack Libya on humanitarian grounds, absent any threat to the U.S. and without approval from Congress.

The change in Barack Obama from a political candidate championing the republican principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution to a powerful executive unilaterally using military force, illustrate how every president since the end of World War II has succumbed to an unofficial set of rules in Washington DC pertaining to U.S. military power known as the Washington Consensus. The decision by Barack Obama to unilaterally authorize a military attack on Libya, continue the war in Afghanistan and fail to close the military gulag in Guantanamo Bay, clearly illustrates how Barack Obama has embraced and maintained the Washington Consensus of power projection, a global military presence, and interventionism as the preferred method to achieve American foreign policy goals and objectives.

Explained in eloquent and perfunctory style by Andrew Bacevich in his book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, the professor of international relations at Boston University and a former retired Lt. Colonel of the U.S. Army informs his readers that the Washington Consensus is a belief that the United States - and the United States alone - should lead, save, liberate and ultimately transform the world. Like most Presidents since the passing of The National Security Act in 1947, since becoming president, Barack Obama has succumbed to the powerful interests that form the National Security State and in the process stymie the republican principles of the Constitution and continue to enable the existence of an Imperial Presidency.

Very similar to days when monarchs like Louis XIV of France and his court of generals, bishops, and other First Estate aristocrats began to seek to fight “limited” wars that declining empires often fight for pride and prestige, first estate elites in America have supported and waged several limited wars is such places as Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq. Like the First Estate elites in the Court of Louis XIV, the United States has increasingly fought these limited wars with a professional army, supported by mercenary soldiers.

William Astore, a retired Lt. Colonel and professor of history perspicaciously wrote in a recent TomDispatch article:

In the eighteenth century, France was the superpower of Europe with a military that dwarfed those of its neighbors. And who dictated France’s decisions to go to war? The answer: the king, his generals, and his courtiers at the Court of Versailles. In the twenty-first-century, the U.S. celebrates its status as the world’s “sole superpower” with a military second to none. And who dictates its decisions to go to war? Considering the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya, the answer is no less obvious: the president, his generals, and his courtiers within the vast edifice of Washington’s national security state.

France’s “enlightened” wars were fought by professional armies and mercenaries, directed by a unitary executive who did as he pleased, and endured by the lower orders who had no say (even though they provided the brawn and blood). Similarly, our twenty-first century masters plunge us into their version of enlightened wars and play their version of global chess matches.

The analogy can be pushed further. In pre-revolutionary France, the First and Second Estates (the clergy and the nobility) constituted less than 2% of the population but controlled nearly all of France’s wealth and power. Their unholy alliance kept the Third Estate (everyone who wasn’t a churchman or a noble) under their collective thumb.

Now, consider the United States today. Our equivalent to the First Estate would be the clergy of finance and banking (the religion of the almighty dollar). Look for them in their houses of worship on Wall Street. Our Second Estate equivalent would be the movers and shakers inside Washington’s Beltway. Look for them in the White House, the Pentagon, Congress, and on K Street where the lobbyists for the First Estate tend to congregate. The unholy alliance of these two estates leaves the American Third Estate -- you and me -- with the deck stacked against us.

A close reading of the Declaration of Independence reveals a proto-republic’s contempt for wars waged by kings, such as Louis XIV, who often used the lower classes as cannon fodder, in order to pursue their own power and prestige. By giving the more pluralistic Congress the power to declare war, the founders of the Constitution intended to check the power of the executive and its tendency to abuse military power for personal prestige and political gain. A prominent example of how an executive can use the military for its own personal prestige and political gain was the the May 2, 2003 media event of President G.W. Bush landing aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The recent killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and the bump in the polls for Barack Obama is the most recent example of how the executive branch often benefits the most from military power and the brawn and blood expended by the members of the military.

While the esoteric terms of an Imperial President and a National Security State may be contentious to most Americans who only have a superficial understanding of the U.S. Constitution, the terms explains how Presidents and non-elected elites in Washington DC, who are a part of the Dept. of Defense, CIA, State Department and Dept. of Homeland Security, habitually subvert the checks and balances of power enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Since the passing of the National Security Act in 1947 and the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, the executive branch has habitually used the CIA as its own private army and the members of the all volunteer force with contempt and disdain. This is clearly evident with service members enduring multiple year tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the rest of the population goes on with their own lives with little attention to the sacrifices of the men and women in the U.S. military.

First used to destabilize and overthrow god-less Communist governments in Iran in 1953, to Vietnam in the 1960s to central and South America in the 1970s and 1980s, the CIA is now being used to fight god crazed terrorists in the Middle East and south central Asia.

The continuing drone attacks authorized by Barack Obama in Pakistan by the CIA, confirms that Mr. Obama is no different than every Imperial President who has held the executive branch of government since the end of World War II.

Although most political pundits ridicule the campaign slogan of change by Barack Obama in 2008, in all truthfulness, Barack Obama did change. He changed from an idealistic leader attempting to challenge the entrenched interests of the National Security State, to a pragmatic politician obeying the decade’s long rules of the Washington Consensus. This was quickly confirmed when Barack Obama nominated two former defense lobbyists for the number two and number three positions at the Pentagon in January 2009 and recently confirmed again with his appointment of General Petraeus to the CIA and the transfer of the former head of the CIA to the Pentagon.

Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta

2011-05-12T13:32:00.000-04:00

One of the latest books to be added to Il Principe’s library is the 2002 book, Dreaming War, by Gore Vidal.

Like most Americans, Il Principe was not familiar with Gore Vidal due to the wide-ranging media blackout that Vidal has faced in America. Although Mr. Vidal has written over 20 novels, in addition to several plays and essays including his much acclaimed first novel Williwaw, Vidal has been widely blacklisted and shunned by the American main stream press.

The blacklisting of Gore Vidal by the American main stream media is very similar to the way Beppe Grillo is blacklisted in Italy. Understanding how the control of the media in Italy by Silvio Berlusconi has helped the mafia tainted media mogul remain the leader of that country for most of the past 15 years, the blacklisting of Noam Chomsky, and Gore Vidal in America helps to explain why the United States is still in a perpetual war in Afghanistan and Iraq nearly 10 years after terrorist attacks in September 2001.

Starting as far back as 1948 when he suffered the consequences of bringing a gay novel before a wide audience, the blacklisting has largely continued over the last few decades due to Vidal’s talent and aptitude to deconstruct the lies that power tells us.

Similar to other notable intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky who are fiercely critical of American foreign policy and the actions of the US government, Gore Vidal has been largely confined to foreign outlets such as TheTimes Literary Supplement. In stark contrast to dishonest flag waving patriots most Americans are familiar with like Glenn Beck, a former rodeo clown and an individual who never finished college, Gore Vidal has been largely shunned by media outlets who profess to be fair and balanced. When the rare exception does occur and Vidal appears on CNN or some other US media infotainment media outlet, Vidal is often introduced as “a dissenting patriot”, or “a nostalgist of the lost republic”.

In the chapter Meandering towards Armageddon , Vidal offers a tongue in cheek rebuttal to these critics and in particular ,the usually even-handed New Yorker magazine author Louis Menand ,who wrote a October 2002 article entitled “Faith, Hope and Clarity: September 11th and the American Soul,”. Using the normally even handed Menand as the focal point in the essay, Vidal disproves many of the popular misperceptions used by corporate America and national security state surrogates who try to portray Noam Chomsky and other critics of the Afghanistan War and the subsequent war in Iraq as being "anti-American" or an America hater.

Using the analogy of Nazis in Germany imprisoning anyone why spoke out against Adolf Hitler as being a Germany hater, Vidal writes:

“Professor Menand’s problem is that although he is no doubt some sort of scholar, he is not used to reading anything that might contradict what he thinks he already knows. What Chomsky and I have in common is an interest in public matters and a fascination with the lies that power tells us, lies we deconstruct, lies which also fascinate and affect- a number of our countrymen who do read seriously. There’s nothing more to it than that”.

The collection of essays in Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta may be too controversial for some readers. However, for readers who are suspicious of the corporate main stream press and the perpetual war the political elites have forced upon the American people, the collection of provocative and thoughtful essays by one of America’s great literary dissenters will be a refreshing bit of truth and clarity.

The Rare Earth policy of Deng Xiaioping

2011-05-10T00:00:00.006-04:00

In the book, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, historian and former Republican Party strategist Kevin Phillips skillfully explains how as the wealth of the rich in America has grown, so has its control over government ; making politics a hostage of money. As the recent Wall Street bailout of 2008 and other government bailouts over the last 30 years vividly demonstrate, average honest hard working Americans have been regularly betrayed by politicians more focused on their own short term political careers and doing the bidding of their corporate and wealthy masters, while the long term health of the country has declined to the point where America is now a debtor nation and the status of the US Dollar as the reserve currency for the world is now being questioned.

One of the most vivid examples of how both American politicians and business leaders have turned America from a country of production and a creditor nation, to a country of consumption and a debtor nation , was to allow and even facilitate the national economic policies of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1986. It was in that year that Deng Xiaoping set out to acquire and master a group of 17 rare earth elements that would be essential in the 21st century world economy.

Having not enough domestic oil reserves to meet future demand and not inclined to build an enormous and expensive blue water navy to challenge American dominance of the Persian Gulf, Chinese officials, under the direction of Deng Xiaoping, quietly set out to acquire and gain a market share in rare earth elements such as neodymium, samarium, and dysprosium.

Unlike political leaders in America who were and still are more concerned about their own short term political careers and the short term profits of their political donors , Chinese leaders like Deng Xiaoping from as far back as 1986 planned for long term economic growth and sustainability, with an eye on a post peak oil and post fossil fuel based world economy.

Similar to the way in which American business owners first moved manufacturing centers from New England and mid west states of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, to lower cost southern states in America during the 1990s and 2000s, American business leaders then moved or sold their companies to foreign countries. More concerned about profit, rather than a commitment to the community where many American manufacturing centers were once located, American companies like Magnequench in Indiana which produced rare earth products like neodymium, samarium, and dysprosium, sold their plants and equipment to foreign investors.

Perhaps no greater example of how the migration of American jobs and manufacturing to foreign countries like China has undermined and weakened America is to look at a plant in Valparaiso, Indiana which used to produce rare earth elements for the US military, but now is now home to a doggie day care center.

For a more in depth look at the rare earth policy of Deng Xiaoping and the control of rare earth elements used by the US military by the Chinese, you can read this Bloomberg News article.

The lack of foresight by American officials to identify the future strategic use of rare earth elements like neodymium, samarium, and dysprosium in the production of 21st century renewable energy products like hybrid-electric cars and wind turbines has allowed the Chinese to become the leading producer of wind turbines in the world.

While the Chinese are happy to control 97 percent of the world supply of neodymium, the Chinese probably did not expect how easy it would be to corner the market of a key component in renewable energy products.

While the elements are not as rare in nature as the name implies, they are difficult to find in profitable concentrations, expensive for Western producers to extract and often laced with radioactive elements. China has been able to dominate the market because it has been able to produce the elements more cheaply, with fewer environmental restrictions than its competitors, and allowed to buy American manufacturing equipment and companies.

Contrary to what many Americans may be told by fear pedaling politicians influenced by defense corporations and unable to see the world beyond their self absorbed bubble of Washington DC, the Chinese government rare earths priority policy did not have the intention to undermine the American defense industry, American national security, or the American economy.

Corporate greed and the politicians influenced by the wealthy elites in American business are far more responsible for undermining American national security and the long term strength of the American economy.

Why more Americans often believe a lie more than the truth.

2011-05-02T18:56:00.001-04:00

While the media dutifully focused on the story of President Obama releasing his birth certificate, the far more interesting and politically important story of racial discrimination by US Immigration officials towards President Obama’s father in 1961 was under reported or not reported at all.

Didn’t read about the subtle and almost institutionalized conspiracy against President Obama’s father? That just underscores how the failure of the media to give more attention to a factual story like the discrimination faced by Obama’s father, rather than the mythical story of President’s Obama birth certificate, is why more Americans often believe a lie more than the truth.

If the now discredited “birthers”, had to have a representative, there couldn’t be a more suitable candidate than Donald Trump. This wealthy two time divorced real estate aristocrat and Vietnam War draft dodger is the ideal representative for the “birthers”. As is often the case in contemporary American politics, the political issue of the birth certificate was a smoke and mirror tactic to keep Americans distracted from more important issues such as the never ending war in Afghanistan, corporate tax evasion by companies such as General Electric, and the continuing economic polarization between the rich and poor in America.

Trump however is just the latest personification of the long standing relationship that wealth and democracy has had in American history and the ability of the few to dominate the many. When James Madison was asked during the founding of the republic how any business could get done in Congress with so many conflicting interests in such a large country as America, Madison took the line that oligarchy’s iron law always obtains: A few people always run the show, and keep if they can in the family.

Uncomfortable for most Americans to admit and unthinkable for opinion making national news organizations to critically analyze, American leaders, often people coming from wealth and privilege (i.e. Kennedy, Bush, Kerry, Romney in the modern era), have a long record of deceiving the American public in order for the few to continue to dominate the many.

Since the end of World War II and the creation of the national security state, the domination of the few over the many has been driven by imperial goals and to maintain the hegemony of the United States in the international system. The recent birth certificate debate was another smoke and mirror tactic by political elites and their surrogates to avoid drawing attention to America’s long term relationship supporting authoritarian leaders around the world and the use of National Security State apparatus agencies like the CIA to overthrow governments in Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, Chile, etc.

If you have trouble believing or supporting that statement, just ask yourself if Bush and Cheney ever found those pesky weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or if the Gulf of Tolkien was a valid reason for the political elites in America to escalate the war in Vietnam? Perhaps Gore Vidal, a novelist, essayist, playwright, and provocateur whose career has spanned six decades, said it best in his 2002 book Dreaming War.

“The American global empire rests on a number of Presidential lies that our court historians seldom dare to question. It would seem that Hitler got it about right when it comes to human credulity: the greater the lie, the more apt it is to be believed”.

With those kinds of statements, it is no surprise that Gore Vidal is described as a provocateur by his admirers on the left and as an America hater by his opponents on the right. Like other intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, who has been largely blacklisted from the American media, Gore Vidal believes that that the United States should return to its Jeffersonian roots, stop medalling around in the affairs of other nations, and the private affairs of its citizens.

If the main stream media and infotainment cable news outlets reported on the discrimination that President Obama’s father faced during his time at Harvard, perhaps more Americans would be reminded how status quo elites often hide behind lies and false allegations to pursue alternative agendas. One of the recently declassified I.N.S documents reveal how even the supposed liberal Harvard University practiced a subtle form of discrimination towards President Obama’s father when it wrote, (the university) is "going to try to cook something up to ease him out”.

The failure of the main stream media to give more attention to the treatment that Barack Obama’s father received in 1961, allows patrician elites and their surrogates like Donald Trump to cook up more false stories in order to distract the average American from more important issues.

High Speed Rail Lines Instead of Short Haul Airline Flights

2011-04-18T22:36:00.006-04:00

Unlike America, where political leaders and decision makers are often corrupted by special interests who oppose high speed rail, political leaders and officials in other countries are expanding high speed rail passenger service. The latest example comes from the European Union where EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas recently announced a series of transportation goals which included the phasing out of carbon emitting automobiles in city centers by 2050 and replacing short haul airline flights with high speed rail links between all the major cities in Europe.

While the goal of banning all gasoline powered automobiles in city centers will be achieved by market forces when consumers buy more hybrid and all electric motor vehicles in the coming decades, the expanded rail service and elimination of short haul flights between major cities in Europe will be the most politically challenging. In stark contrast to the United States however, where the Florida governor recently cancelled a high speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa, European leaders are at least offering ideas at how to offset the negative effects of increasing prices of petroleum, while at the same time looking at ways to make their transportation infrastructure more efficient and less dependent on fossil fuel based energy sources.

Supported by statistics which reveals that a new high speed rail line recently opened between Madrid and Barcelona now has over 50% of the market share of travel between those two cities, EU Transportation commissionerSiim Kallas and other EU policy makers have evidence that consumers are more willing to take a high speed train as opposed to a short haul airline flight.

Although the recent data showing that high speed rail commands over 50% of the market share between Barcelona and Madrid may be attributed to the increase in airfares as a result of the recent rise in oil prices, the increase in market share for the high speed rail line could also be a sign that more consumers prefer the benefits that rail service offers over airline service. Part of the reason why European discount airlines like Easy Jet and Ryan Air are able to offer such low air fares is due to the fact that these airlines fly into smaller airports located sometimes a half hour outside the city center, and charge for nearly every service including using the aircraft toilet.

In addition to the benefit of arriving and departing from a city center and having to pay to use the toilet, rail service also includes the benefits of avoiding the ever increasing security procedures associated with airline travel, travel delays as a result of inclement weather and the flexibility to buy a ticket at short notice without paying a high premium as is the case with airline tickets.Furthermore, rail service does not limit the amount of carry-on bags, is more comfortable than low cost airline seating, and is better for the environment and is a source of new long term job creation.

With the price of oil at 107 dollars a barrel and not expected to go below 100 dollars for the foreseeable future, , it appears that European Union leaders are doing more to prepare for a post peak oil world economy than American political leaders.

By offering the consumer more than just two options of either purchasing an airline ticket or driving a car, high speed rail based travel between two cities can be less expensive, offer the consumer more flexibility, and create more long term jobs for local communities.

A journey in the hell around Fukushima

2011-04-15T20:20:00.001-04:00

Italian blogger and political activist Beppe Grillo has long been a critic of nuclear power. As one can imagine, the recent nuclear accident triggered by the March 11th tsunami has given Mr. Grillo even more reason to criticize nuclear power.

In a recent blog posting entitled, Fukushima Level 7 Incident, Italy’s most popular blogger shared a YouTube video of a Japanese film crew traveling towards the Fukushima Nuclear Power Station.

Documenting their journey through the earthquake damaged terrain with hand held Geiger counters, the crew encounters herds of stray dogs, cattle, and even a stray pit bull as they journey through abandoned towns.

Jon Stewart Pitches US Hypocrisy in ‘Freedom Packages’ Infomercial

2011-03-22T21:06:00.000-04:00

The Daily Show - America's Freedom Packages
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Quiz

2011-03-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

One of the best right of center media outlets is The Economist Magazine.

In addition to the pragmatic and level headed political analysis offered in The Economist, the British news outlet also offers readers access to economic and business research, forecasting and analysis by their Economist Intelligence Unit.

The same unit that publishes the bi annual Democracy Index, the Intelligence Unit recently published a Global Liveability Quiz that quizzes readers on how well they know the living conditions around the world?

If you are willing to take the challenge, take the Global Liveability Quiz, and see how well you know the living conditions in the world you live in. You may be surprised by the answers.

It is based on the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Survey, a newly published report that assesses 30 indicators across broad categories and scores cities from 1-100. You are entitled to a free summary of the report at the conclusion of the quiz

The Collapse of the Old Oil Order

2011-03-06T18:05:00.001-05:00

A recent article by Michael T. Klare on TomDispatch pitches the idea that the recent social and political unrest in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Oman, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen, is the beginning of the end of cheap oil and the collapse of the old oil order.

Michael Klare, who is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, and the author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, presents a strong argument as to why the days of cheap oil and gasoline will soon be as obsolete as vinyl records and analog TV.

Some of the more noteworthy passages from the article include historical facts on the Iranian coup and how western democratic countries like Great Britain and the United States have often undermined and sabotaged democratic movements in oil producing countries.

Isn’t it interesting how democracy and self determination is ok for the United States and other western countries, but if any popular uprising threatens western oil company profits, democratic movements in oil producing countries like Iran have been stopped and autocratic rulers like the Shah of Iran are put in place by the United States.

For the complete article by Michael Klare please go to TomDispatch or download the iTunes podcast internview with Timothy MacBain.

The Americans are Seen in Times of Oil

2011-03-05T13:11:00.000-05:00

As a long time supporter of one of the world's most popular and successful bloggers, whenever a blog posting by Beppe Grillo reflects the thoughts of Il Principe, Opinione will repost the article.

Home to over 40 US military bases, Italians such as Beppe Grillo are all too familiar with the crime, pollution, and other negative aspects that go along with hosting a US military base in their country. The following post by Grillo discusses how whenever oil is concerned, Americans always find a way to justify military action for humanitarian reasons.

The American ships are positioned at spitting distance from Tripoli, just 50 Kilometres as the crow flies. Officially they have arrived for humanitarian reasons. There are no Indian, Chinese, Iranian ships nor even are there Russian, Korean, Brazilian, Icelandic, or South African ones. Just American ones and a few bits of fleets of minor allies.

When there’s conflict in the world, ready-made assistance that’s immediate and above all armed, arrives from the United States of America. Disinterested and long-term assistance as there was for the war in the Balkans or in Iraq or Afghanistan. They are so comfortable in the countries to which they have exported democracy that they are not leaving any more. They set up bases and the flag as they did in Kosovo and they stay around for decades. They are nice generous people, big lads that are always smiling. In Italy the Yankees gave out gifts of cigarettes and chocolate that we still remember. Certainly they also bombed civilians in the main cities of Italy, from Rome to Milan, but those are incidents along the way that can happen in war. Allies that make mistakes. Our welcome guests (no government has ever denied them permission to stay in our country) in a hundred bases (and sixty nuclear war heads) and offices around Italy, hat have become their aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.

The Americans really believe in their role as the good giant, as the world’s sheriff, but if the nation in difficulty is the owner of reserves of oil or gas, then they believe that even more. In Darfur or in Tibet, to give an example, where there is no “black gold”, no one has been seen. If friends are visible in times of need, the Americans are seen in times of oil. Just as once upon a time for the “Pavesini” biscuits, you could say that it’s always the moment for the Americans when their interests are at stake. In Libya there’s a bloody dictator with whom the West conducted business until a few weeks ago. Everyone knew who he was, but the smell of money covered any miasma. Now Libya is split in two. It’s not known who will prevail. It’s a civil war, something internal to the country. What’s needed are humanitarian interventions, with UN forces acting as a buffer, welcoming the refugees coming from the war zones. What’s not necessary, and neither is it to be wished for, is the intervention of “Uncle Sam’s” Armed Forces. Whoever were to win, in the end would be the only winner.

National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Bill Introduced In U.S. House

2011-02-25T22:55:00.000-05:00

Although the GOP controlled congress will not do anything substantial like close unneeded and costly U.S. military bases in countries like Germany, Italy, and Japan, the pro gun GOP is proposing one piece of common sense gun ownership legislation.

H.R. 822,, which was introduced in the U.S. House by Representatives Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Heath Shuler (D-N.C.). would allow any person with a valid state-issued concealed carry permit to carry a concealed firearm in any state that issues concealed firearm permits, or that does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms. A state's laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would apply within its borders. The bill also applies to Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and U.S. territories.

H.R. 822 would not create a federal licensing system. Rather, it would require the states to recognize each others' carry permits, just as they recognize drivers' licenses and carry permits held by armored car guards.
While the legislation makes sense , the bill has little hope in passing due to the law including Washington D.C, especially after the recent mass killing in Tucson with a semi automatic pistol.

Rep. Stearns has introduced such legislation since 1995.

The ever widening gap between the rich and poor in America

2011-02-24T19:43:00.001-05:00

Numerous authors, political scientists, and intellectuals have been documenting the ever widening gap between the rich and poor in America since the mid 1980s. Although most Americans have been deceived into thinking that all Ronald Reagan did was end the Cold War and do some illegal activities during the Iran Contra Affair, most Americans are ignorant of the fact that Ronald Reagan and a compliant congress began to reverse the great gains the middle class got during the years following World War II. In an era Kevin Phillips refers to as the Great Compression when the wealth accumulated by the upper one percent of Americans after the Great Depression began to be reversed, Ronald Reagan and subsequent presidents and members of congress from both political parties have succeeded in turning America into a plutocracy.

The independent publication Mother Jones via the Yahoo news blog The Outlook, posted a chilling series of charts that highlights how the gap has turned into a chasm.

The Great Recession and the slump that followed have triggered a jobs crisis that's been making headlines since before President Obama was in office, and that will likely be with us for years. But the American economy is also plagued by a less-noted, but just as serious, problem: Simply put, over the last 30 years, the gap between rich and poor has widened into a chasm.

Gradual developments like this don't typically lend themselves to news coverage. But Mother Jones magazine has crunched the data on inequality, and put together a group of stunning new charts. Taken together, they offer a dramatic visual illustration of who's doing well and who's doing badly in modern America.

European Space Agency helps out NASA

2011-02-16T22:50:00.001-05:00

With the U.S. Shuttle Fleet surviving on duct tape and a prayer, the European Space Agency and its fleet of Ariane family of rockets and boosters has proven to be more reliable and dependable than the 30 year old Shuttle fleet.

While the United States has wasted trillions of dollars into an over bloated and inefficient military, the European Space Agency has become the world leader in satellite launches into low earth orbit. The successful launch of the Ariane 5 rocket supplying the International Space Station is another symbol of the declining world power status of America.

On Wednesday, February 16, Arianespace’s first mission of the year successfully launched the second ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle), designated Johannes Kepler, for the European Space Agency.

200th Ariane launch, 56th Ariane 5 launch, 42nd success in a row.

This latest successful Ariane 5 launch, the 200th Ariane launch and the first mission in 2011, once again proves the launcher’s operational capabilities. Ariane 5 handles a complete range of missions, from commercial launches into geostationary orbit to dedicated launches into special orbits.

The 56th launch of an Ariane 5, and 42nd successful mission in a row, clearly demonstrates the launcher’s reliability and availability. It also set a new payload record, by boosting more than 20 metric tons into low Earth orbit.

Today’s mission confirms that Arianespace’s launch Service & Solutions continue to set the global standard and guarantee independent access to space for all customers, including national and international space agencies, private firms and governments.

Second successful Ariane 5 ES launch

For the ATV2 Johannes Kepler mission, Arianespace used the Ariane 5 ES version of the launcher. It was the second successful launch of this version, following the original ATV1 Jules Verne mission in March 2008.

Arianespace uses the Ariane 5 ES version to launch ATV cargo vessels to the International Space Station. Ariane 5 ES uses the same lower composite as the standard Ariane 5 ECA launcher, comprising the cryogenic main stage and solid boosters, plus a special upper composite, the EPS reignitable storable propellant stage.

A new mission for the Guiana Space Center

Today’s launch marks Arianespace’s second mission to the International Space Station, confirming the Guiana Space Center’s membership in the highly select “club” of launch sites serving the Space Station, alongside Baikonur, Cape Canaveral and Tanegashima.

Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health

2011-02-13T23:10:00.002-05:00

Although the anti second amendment blog Mikeb302000 is obsessed with discussing fatalities related to fire arms in America, according to the United Nations World Health Organization, alcohol causes nearly 4 percent of deaths worldwide. That is more than AIDS, tuberculosis or violence. Perhaps when Mikeb302000 blogging from another country decries gun violence in America, he should omit blogging about fatalities involving a fire arm when alcohol is a contributing factor.

According to the World Health Organization in its "Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health.", approximately 2.5 million people die each year from alcohol related causes.

Including gun deaths when alcohol is involved allows anti second amendment critics like Mikeb302000 to focus on the firearm and not other extenuating factors in the incident such as alcohol. Isolated from the daily realities of living in America, this ex patriot often forgets that if he were to drive a car between the hours of 10 pm and 2 am in the United States, (that is 2200 and 0200 for our international readers) he would acknowledge that he would have a much greater risk of being killed in an alcohol related incident than a fire arm related incident.

Taking into consideration the lack of mass transit in the United States and the suburban sprawl layout of the country, you can see why there should be a dramatic overhaul of alcohol regulation in the Unites States and the punishment of people convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol. While MikeB302000 habitually decries the amount of gun violence in America, considering the high amount of drunk driving in Italy and the joke of a legal system it has there, perhaps he could share some stories of alcohol related deaths in Italy. While living in Italy myself, I particularly remember one incident where a son of a police chief in Rome killed two Irish women tourists.

The driver, 32-year-old Friedrich Vernarelli, is the son of a prominent former police chief and mayor who had campaigned for improved road safety in the area where the young women were killed. He allegedly fled the scene but was arrested a short time later after crashing into a parked car and bins where he was blocked in by a police patrol car.

Last night he was charged with drunk driving, manslaughter, failing to stop at the scene of an accident and offer help, and damaging public property.

While Mikeb302000 likes to decry injustices with the American police, making matters worse for the family of the two Irish tourists killed by the drunk Italian, the driver was then granted bail.

Rome mayor Walter Veltroni expressed his anger at the decision to earlier give him bail and said: "It is not acceptable that the person responsible for the deaths of two people on a zebra crossing is on bail at home.
As MikeB302000 constantly blogs about the injustices in America and the brutality of its police, perhaps he can update the readers on what ever happened to the drunk Italian who killed the two tourists while driving intoxicated. Like most of the legal cases in Italy, I am sure it will drag on for over ten years and then the statue of limitations will expire and the defendant will never see a day in jail.

While this is not to attack or single out where Mikeb30200 lives, it merely wants to put the issue of gun and alcohol deaths in an international and cultural comparison. The high amount of drunk driving deaths in the United States and the lower rates of mass transit options for Americans is evident in comparing the drunk driving deaths in the UK (population 61 million) and the amount of drunk driving deaths in California with half the population. According to the statistics, there were 380 drunk driving deaths in the United Kingdom in 2010 (12% of all fatal accidents), compared to 1,489 drunk driving deaths in California in 2007 (22% of all fatal accidents) with a population of 36 million people.

Considering the amount of legal gun owners in America and the amount of people who have a license to drive a car, the report by the World Health Organization has some merit. Driving (excuse the pun) the point home further was the recent story of a Connecticut State police trooper who ran his car into the back of a truck and it was later found that he may have been drinking.

Boehner: US handled Egypt crisis as best it could

2011-02-13T14:13:00.002-05:00

Remarks by Republican House Speaker John Boehner that the Obama administration handled "a very difficult situation in Egypt about as well as possible" is proof that when it comes to US imperial needs such as ensuring the flow of oil through the Suez Canal, both political parties in America have the same agenda. Controlled by the same AIPAC ( American Israel Public Affairs Committee) defense industry and oil interests, the remarks by Boehner reveal that any republican politician in control of the Executive branch would have done the same thing as the Obama administration did in reacting to the popular uprising in Egypt.

In addition to the concession that the Obama administration handled the situation in Egypt as well as possible, the chain smoking tanned politician from Ohio revealed how ignorant he is to what the over paid contractors and government employees of the national security state apparatus are doing. The remarks by Boehner that the uprising "surprised everyone," including U.S. intelligence officials, is a euphemism for saying that the US was surprised that the dreaded secret police or Mukhabarat were not able to suppress the revolution.

According to previously classified U.S. State Department cables, US officials were very aware of power of the Mukhabarat to suppress and intimidate any kind of opposition in Egypt. One cable even declared that the police force and security service in Egypt were wholly out of control. The cables suggested that torture was routinely used against ordinary criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers.

As reported by the previously classified U.S. State Department cable:

"The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders. One human rights lawyer told us there is evidence of torture in Egypt dating back to the time of the pharoahs. NGO contacts estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone," one cable said.

Under Hosni Mubarak's presidency there had been "no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution", it said. The police's ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence.

Some middle-class Egyptians did not report thefts from their apartment blocks because they knew the police would immediately go and torture "all of the doormen", the cable added. It cited one source who said the police would use routinely electric shocks against suspected criminals, and would beat up human rights lawyers who enter police stations to defend their clients. Women detainees allegedly faced sexual abuse. Demoralized officers felt solving crimes justified brutal interrogation methods, with some believing that Islamic law also sanctioned torture, the cable said.

The public ignorance displayed by Boehner that the uprising surprised everyone is an excuse for the politician to request more money for the national security state apparatus while cutting domestic programs like home heating grants for poor people in the winter time. As Wikileaks cables revealed in March 2009, US Officials well well aware of the Internet being used as a political mobilization tool when the US cable discussed the April 6, 2008 strike orchestrated through Facebook.

The March 2009 cable also discussed the role of bloggers in Egypt and that several bloggers were taken into custody for their denouncements of the Mubarak regime and police brutality of the Mukhabarat.

1. KEY POINTS — (C) Egypt's bloggers are playing an increasingly important role in broadening the scope of acceptable political and social discourse, and self-expression.

-- (C) Bloggers' discussions of sensitive issues, such as sexual harassment, sectarian tension and the military, represent a significant change from five years ago, and have influenced society and the media.

-- (C) The role of bloggers as a cohesive activist movement has largely disappeared, due to a more restrictive political climate, GOE counter-measures, and tensions among bloggers.

-- (C) However, individual bloggers have continued to work to expose problems such as police brutality and corporate malfeasance.

2. (C) Comment: The government generally allows bloggers wide latitude in posting material critical of the GOE.

Exceptions to this policy are bloggers who directly insult President Mubarak or Islam, and the government has arrested and jailed bloggers who have crossed these red-lines. The GOE has also arrested activists, such as XXXXXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXXXX, who have used blogging to organize and support protests (refs A and C). Activists are increasingly writing blogs to advance their political aims. Contacts accurately point out that bloggers have ceased to function as a cohesive activist movement. It is noteworthy that bloggers did not play a significant role in the most recent example of mass cyber-activism — the April 6, 2008 strike orchestrated through Facebook (ref G).

While the speech by Boehner was meant for an American audience ignorant of the Wikileaks cables, for this blogger, his statements were a confirmation that both political parties in America care more the status quo interests in the Middle East than they do about democracy and the will of the majority population in Egypt and other countries.

Egypt and Iran; Different looks at people power

2011-02-12T21:49:00.001-05:00

Robert H. Reid, the Middle East Regional Editor for The Associated Press, has covered the region since 1978. He offers a sobering comparison between the recent peaceful Egyptian protests and the ouster of Hosni Mubarak to the Iranian Revolution and the end of the autocratic and American backed Shah of Iran regime 32 years before to the day.

The article is highly recommended for anyone wanting to learn more about the Iranian Revolution and how the actions of the CIA in 1953 are still having negative consequences in the region and for the United States.

CAIRO – No sooner had the announcement come than the streets of Cairo exploded in joyful celebration. The hated autocrat was gone. A new era was ushered in with cheers, tears and the cacophony of car horns.

And so it was in Tehran — 32 years before to the day.

On Feb. 11, 1979, the commander of the Iranian air force announced on national radio that the armed forces were withdrawing from the fight to save the American-backed regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had already fled the country three weeks before in the face of burgeoning street protests against his autocratic rule.

With the military gone, the Iranian monarchy collapsed and with it any chance that the shah would return from what had been spun as a vacation — ironically to Anwar Sadat's Egypt.
As the troops returned to barracks, Tehran erupted into wild celebrations — punctuated by the deafening din of thousands of horns.

The popular revolt against the shah raised alarm bells in the West, which saw the prickly monarch as a trusted ally and counterweight to hard-line Arab regimes and Palestinian radicals. The face of the revolution was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose demeanor, vehemently anti-American rhetoric and stern interpretation of Islam challenged not only Western interests but also Western values.

Egypt's revolutionaries of today appear far less threatening, representing a broad spectrum of Internet-savvy youth, mainstream politicians and Islamists bound together by hatred of President Hosni Mubarak and a desire for a more open, democratic system. The closest thing to a symbol of Egypt's uprising was a 30-year-old Google executive, whose passionate, tearful remarks made on a private television station after his release from detention drove many modern-thinking, middle-class Egyptians into the streets.

Nevertheless, the images from Tehran a generation ago and from Cairo on Friday's "Night of Liberation" were uncannily familiar. The palpable sense of relief. The euphoria among the government's opponents. The carnival-like atmosphere. The explosion of national pride. And the blind faith that the new regime would be more just, more equitable and more democratic than the old.

Iran's masses were no less hungry for democracy than the Egyptians who crowded into Cairo's central Tahrir Square to demand an end to Mubarak's rule. Where the Iranians put their trust in Muslim clerics to bring about a just and equitable society, the Egyptians turned to the secular-minded army to give the Mubarak regime a final push.

Egypt's young revolutionaries used the tools of the 21st century — the Internet, Facebook and Twitter — to organize the first protests in late January. After the government unplugged the Internet and shut down mobile phones, Egyptians turned to Arabic language television stations — Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and Alhurra — for word of what was happening on the streets.

No such technological wonders were available to the Iranian opposition. Messages and sermons from Ayatollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Paris until the final days of the uprising, were spread by cassette tapes that were smuggled into the country, copied and distributed to mosques throughout the country.

From the mosques, information spread by word of mouth through a nationwide network of clerics and intellectuals who grew ever bolder as the shah's security services began to disintegrate.

Instead of turning to the likes of Al-Jazeera for news, Iranians relied on crackling shortwave broadcasts by the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Persian language service, which the shah's government tried repeatedly to jam. At one time or another, nearly every Western journalist in Iran pretended to be from the BBC when confronted by protesters who were sometimes hostile to Americans. Every Khomeini supporter seemed to know how to say in English: "Ah, you BBC? BBC very good."

Tehran University was transformed into a giant speaker's corner, where people could come every day to listen to anti-regime clerics rail against the shah and his American backers.
It took Egypt's demonstrators only 18 days to force out Mubarak, who had ruled the country for nearly three decades. Although arson and looting broke out briefly in late January — presumably instigated by state security to frighten the public and discredit the protests — the anti-Mubarak movement was remarkably peaceful and disciplined. Most of the violence appeared instigated by the police and thugs believed paid by the ruling party, who ran wild for a few days until the army reined them in.

Banks closed and ATMs ran out of cash. Groceries began running short on supplies. By and large, however, life in much of the capital continued as it had before — even as crowds in Tahrir Square grew ever larger.

Not so the Iranian uprising. It began in January 1978 with street demonstrations against the shah. By the end of the year, the country was paralyzed by strikes and demonstrations. Government ministries all but ceased functioning. Airlines stopped flying to Tehran. With a daily 9 p.m. curfew, which was brutally enforced in the capital, Iranians huddled in their dark, unheated homes, listening to the periodic bursts of gunfire that punctuated the night.

Protesters grew ever more violent. The shah's Imperial Guard did not hesitate to fire on unarmed demonstrators, some of whom were willing — sometimes even eager — for martyrdom. Comrades would cheer and shout "martyr" as their fellow protesters fell to gunfire.
Violence was not limited to government forces. Young demonstrators hurled firebombs — gasoline poured into soft drink bottles and lit with a rag — at the Guardsmen. A police colonel was dragged from his car and beaten into a fatal coma as protesters ripped off parts of his uniform and threw them into the trees.

Food supplies, electricity and cooking gas were scarce.

As chaos engulfed Tehran, the shah left on Jan. 16, 1979, leaving the government in the hands of his appointed prime minister. Khomeini returned two weeks later to a massive reception by millions of people.

Less than two weeks after Khomeini returned, air force technicians at a base in Tehran mutinied, setting off a day and night of street fighting. A monarchial system that had lasted for more than 2,000 years crumbled.

Egypt's revolt achieved its main goal — Mubarak's ouster — before the conflict had torn apart the fabric of Egyptian society.

After Mubarak resigned Friday, Egyptians partied in the streets, waved huge flags, set off fireworks and sang patriotic songs until dawn.

Three decades before, the collapse of the shah's regime triggered three terrifying days of looting, arson and street fighting. Pro-Khomeini groups stormed prisons and police stations, looting weapons and hunting down Imperial Guardsmen and other members of the old regime. The yearlong revolution had polarized society and built up tensions that exploded as the Khomeini loyalists struggled to restore order.

A fanatical mullah broadcast a call on state radio to hunt down and punish foreigners, prompting Khomeini's staff to issue a counter order to protect non-Iranians. Rival militias seized the Intercontinental Hotel, home to most foreign journalists, until Khomeini loyalists arrived and ran them off.

The shah's regime resisted the demands of the street and collapsed, setting in motion social and political forces that still trouble the country and the region a generation later. Mubarak stepped down, and the world now waits to see if the fallout will be different.

Press Review of Middle Eastern Country Editorials

2011-02-12T19:30:00.004-05:00

To help broaden the view of main stream media readers, the following are a sampling of excerpts from editorial pages from several Middle Eastern and North African countries like Algeria, Morocco ,Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

EDITORIAL IN EGYPT'S AL-JUMHURIYAH

With its martyrs and strugglers, the 25 January revolution has opened a new page that challenged all obstacles to change. There is hope for a better tomorrow where the real face and leading role of Egypt will be restored.

HEADLINE IN ALGERIAN ARABIC-LANGUAGE AL-FADJR

Three weeks of anger end 30 years of his rule.

RAFIQ KHURI IN LEBANON'S AL-ANWAR

The people of Egypt have emerged victorious, but this victory will not be complete without a transition into a civilian state through a democratic system.

HASNA YACOUB IN ALGERIAN FRENCH-LANGUAGE LA TRIBUNE

Yesterday Hosni Mubarak resigned, after 18 days of violent protests, 300 deaths and several hundred people injured. Mubarak went to great lengths to find an honourable way out, but the Egyptian people would have none of it. As if with one voice, millions chanted: "Mubarak out".

MOROCCAN AKHBAR AL YAOUM

The End of a Pharaoh: The will of the revolution broke the stubbornness of the dictator.

TAOUFIK BOUACHRINE IN MOROCCAN AKHBAR AL YAOUM

Would it not have been more honourable and more respectful if Mubarak had left on the first day of the protests? Would it not have been better for him to have spared the lives of 300 martyrs? Would it not have been better for Mubarak to have been a former president rather than an ousted and humiliated president, looking for a haven to spend his last days away from the Nile?

EDITORIAL IN SAUDI AL-WATAN

Sympathisers in the Muslim and Arab world are looking forward to Egypt entering a new era, when it resumes its role in the Arab and Islamic geo-political axis. There is no doubt that the youth who led the peaceful revolution with major understanding and awareness, will be committed to accomplish their mission in the same spirit.

EDITORIAL IN SYRIA'S TISHRIN

Finally, the Egyptian revolution has achieved its goal in making the regime and its symbols leave... The 18 days was like playing a game of cards before the regime yielded to the demands of the people who made history. The good thing is that that the people had the last word, and that the revolution reflects their sentiments, patriotism and sincerity... The historic moment has been achieved and the Arab masses are looking forward to a paradigm shift in Egypt. It is sincerely hoped that Egypt will return to stability.

KARIM EFTEKHARI IN IRAN'S HEMAYAT

The current revolution in Egypt and Mubarak's downfall, the Egyptian people's happiness and their slogans - are all a copy of Iran's Islamic Revolution. Liberal democracy was a bad omen for the world and by looking at the developments in France, Britain and Greece we can see that it does not have any place even there. Today, Islam is the best ideology for leading the world. Today, the collapse of a powerful empire in Egypt - and not Iran - is the main concern for the US.

MEHDI MOHAMMADI IN IRAN'S KEYHAN

The political geography of the Middle East will change quickly as the Egyptian revolution infects other autocracies in the region. Israel is also reaching the end of the story. Iran, as the only source of inspiration for anti-US movements in the region, will control the heart of the revolutions. Sidelining the US is the most important geopolitical effect we can expect to see.

MOHAMMAD SA'ID AHADIAN IN IRAN'S KHORASAN

This delightful end is the beginning of a new start for the Egyptian people's movement to achieve complete freedom from dependence and regaining their national and Islamic identity. However, will this people's movement be able to stick to the route to freedom, which will be full of twists and turns?

Beppe Grillo on Annozerro

2011-02-12T08:31:00.005-05:00

As Egypt is dominating the political and international news, Beppe Grillo sums up the political situation in Italy in his usually comedic manner when he says that Italians are missing an opportunity to oust the corrupt politicians running Italy by not getting off of their flabby asses and doing the same thing that the Egyptians did in their country.

When Beppe Grillo says that the Egyptians are better than Italians, he has a point. Unlike the self serving politicians like Silvio Berlusconi who enter into politics to protect their own interests, Beppe Grillo is the voice of true Italians.

Although a recent speech by Beppe Grillo on the state television network RAI2 ( the more moderate and central public networks of the three in Italy) is not translated, the Italians following Opinione should appreciate the posting.

The eyes of the world are on Egypt

2011-02-10T20:53:00.002-05:00

Friday will be a pivotal day for the protests in Egypt. It now appears that Hosni Mubarak has no plans to end his reign of power and the defiant speech by the dictator sets the stage for a possible violent confrontation between the protesters, the military, and Mubarak security forces. The defiant stance by Mubarak is a shrewd and calculated move to incite the peaceful protesters to resort to violence. If this happens it will give Mubarak security forces an excuse to open fire on the protesters.

Although most of the main stream media political pundits are not discussing the possibility, if this happens, it can open the door for a possible civil war to erupt between the military and civilian protestors fighting Mubarak security forces.

Wikileaks: Saudi Arabian reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes described

2011-02-09T22:29:00.003-05:00

Are you a subscriber of the New York Times? The supposedly center left American newspaper who claims to print “All the news that’s fit to print”. After reading this article, you may want to cancel your subscription and demand your money back.

Although The New York Times was one of the five news organizations Wikileaks released the same information that it received from a lowly Private First Class serving in Iraq, it appears that for people who are really series about their news, they have to turn to the British newspaper The Guardian. Like most of the American main stream media which has withdrawn from covering the Wikileaks cables out of fear from being perceived as being un-American or upsetting their corporate masters, the failure of The New York Times to report on the Wikileaks documents with the same tenacity and resolve of The Guardian is alarming. The almost total and complete failure of The New York Times to adequately cover the information in the US cables given to them by Wikileaks is demonstrating why Great Britain is considered to be more democratic than the United States and also a country with better press freedoms.

The latest story released by The Guardian related to Wikileaks is the story that Saudi Arabia has been under estimating its vast oil reserves by as much 40 percent. While astute political scientists have suspected this for quite some time now, due to the research done by political scholars like Michael Klare, author or Blood for Oil and Rising Powers Shrinking Planet, recent Wikileaks cables give further evidence that the world is fast approaching the era of “Peak Oil”. A time demand for oil is more than the available supply of oil.

According to a December 10, 2007 cable from the US Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in a meeting between the U.S. Consular General John Kincannon and Dr. Sadad al-Husseini, the former Executive Vice President for Exploration and Production at Saudi Aramco believes that Saudi Arabian reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes described. Perhaps as mush as 40 percent less than what many Aramco executives, Saudi officials and energy optimists portray in public.

While the candid discussion between the US Consular General and the former Executive President of Aramco in December 2007 will embolden peak oil supporters, the personal career and business ambitions of Dr. Sadad al-Husseini have to be taken into consideration. The pessimistic and gloomy outlook by al-Husseini may be influenced by unsuccessfully attempt to engineer his ascension to the position of CEO with Aramco and his remarks may be aimed at discrediting the company and its chief executives. Although al-Husseini continues to live at Aramco's main camp and has close interpersonal relationships with key Aramco executives, many of al-Husseini's views on Aramco are shaped by the perception that the company would be better off if he were running it.

While it is understandable that most of the main stream media is afraid to cover the release of classified and sensitive information out of fear for informal acts of retaliation by the people and institutions the release of information is affecting, the press is failing to perform its constitutionally protected role as a public watchdog and a provider of information to the public.

The annual adulation and misguided worship the MICC gets during the Super Bowl

2011-02-06T15:12:00.006-05:00

Unlike most Americans, this decorated military veteran is not planning on watching the grandest of all weapons of mass distractions in the arsenal of the status quo. Unlike the masses who will be wasting their time watching mindless commercials and a sport that is four hours long and has only 12 minutes of action, this military veteran would rather spend that time watching paint dry. Even though I am interested in learning how the military industrial congressional complex will get its annual adulation and misguided worship, this military veteran will instead spend the time reading a book. It is too bad that most Americans are easily manipulated by over priced military hardware, emotional displays of nationalism, and misplaced perceptions of the true meaning of being patriotic .

Because the Super Bowl being is being hosted in a doomed stadium and the weather may be too cold for the retractable roof to be pulled back, the traditional fly over of over priced politically engineered fighter jets at the beginning of the game will have to be substituted from some other event inside the doom.

While conventional wisdom dictates a more appropriate minute of silence for the 120,000 soldiers still serving in Afghanistan, some of them on their second, third, and even fourth tours of duty, the status quo elites and organizers of the Super Bowl would never allow such a long awkward moment of silence. In addition to the long minute of silence in a world of instant messaging and Facebook updates, a long minute of silence increases the chances of some drunken fool yelling something in the stands during the moment of silence.

Perhaps the organizers will honor the military by displaying the names of the 1,395 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the start of President Bush’s decision to bring democracy to a country through military force. With recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, we all know very well now why this military veteran and political scientist never supported an American Foreign Policy trying to bring democracy through military means.

While reading or displaying the names of the 1.395 soldiers killed in the on going and endless war would be too difficult and time consuming for the corporate sponsors of the Super Bowl, perhaps the organizers will at the least display the names and faces of the approximate 480 soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan since the last Super Bowl. Surely a stadium built with generous tax breaks and other public money could display the names of the men and women killed in Afghanistan on the world’s largest high definition video screen. Lockheed Martin one of the largest and most corrupt military industrial congressional complex corporate bedfellows is located not far from Dallas, would be an ideal corporate sponsor for honoring the soldiers killed in Afghanistan. The more public support given to perpetual war with the use of over priced and over budgeted military items like the Lockheed Martin produced Joint Strike Fighter, guarantees continued profits for war mongering corporations like Lock Heed Martin, Boeing, and dozens of other corporations in America.

Sadly though, the corporate sponsors and media outlet hosting the grandest of all weapons of mass distraction events will downplay the sacrifice suffered by the men and women serving in Afghanistan and mark the moment as quick as possible. Undoubtedly immediately after any tribute to the military the organizers will break to a commercial so Americans will continue to equate their level of democracy and freedom in America through a quantitative perspective and not a qualitative perspective.

The Legacy of Ronald Reagan - Iran Contra, deficits, and oil dependancy

2011-02-05T21:46:00.007-05:00

With some of the main stream media and conservative pundits trying to polish a turd that was the Reagan presidency, a great video clip from Robin Williams in 1986 highlights some of the things that revisionist conservatives often overlook when they get all teary eyed and nostalgic for the former actor turned politician.

Anti-imperialist political scholars and any honest political scientist would highlight how the National Security Act of 1947 and the creation of the National Security Council allowed Ronald Reagan to abuse the power of the executive office and in the process undermined the U.S. Constitution.

By shielding himself behind his National Security Council Adviser, an unelected government official who wields a tremendous amount of power, Ronald Reagan was allowed to play dumb to the actions of the people under him. As the video from Robin Williams highlights, Reagan and his staff were no different than any notable republican president, Richard Nixon.

While all the material from Robin Williams is hilarious, the bit about Reagan starts around 4:00.

Tolerant States

2011-01-30T18:45:00.001-05:00

Via The Daily Beast

Tolerant States

1, Wisconsin
Tolerance score: 77 out of 100
Hate crime score: 27 out of 40
Discrimination score: 39 out of 40
Gay rights score: 3 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 1.0 (10 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 9.2 (5 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 44%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 79%

2, Maryland
Tolerance score: 75 out of 100
Hate crime score: 25 out of 40
Discrimination score: 37 out of 40
Gay rights score: 5 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 1.8 (19 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 7.8 (1 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 51%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 72%

3, Illinois
Tolerance score: 74 out of 100
Hate crime score: 30 out of 40
Discrimination score: 31 out of 40
Gay rights score: 5 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 1.5 (16 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 14.5 (24 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 48%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 74%

4, Pennsylvania
Tolerance score: 72 out of 100
Hate crime score: 29 out of 40
Discrimination score: 31 out of 40
Gay rights score: 4 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 0.4 (5 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 11.8 (13 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 51%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 75%

5, Hawaii
Tolerance score: 71 out of 100
Hate crime score: 34 out of 40
Discrimination score: 27 out of 40
Gay rights score: 4 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 0.1 (1 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 20.3 (35 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 54%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 66%

6, California
Tolerance score: 70 out of 100
Hate crime score: 30 out of 40
Discrimination score: 29 out of 40
Gay rights score: 5 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 2.7 (29 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 15.9 (28 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 56%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 67%

7, Minnesota
Tolerance score: 70 out of 100
Hate crime score: 21 out of 40
Discrimination score: 38 out of 40
Gay rights score: 3 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 6.0 (49 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 8.7 (4 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 47%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 74%

8, New Jersey
Tolerance score: 69 out of 100
Hate crime score: 18 out of 40
Discrimination score: 35 out of 40
Gay rights score: 8 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 6.3 (50 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 12.1 (14 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 55%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 74%

9, New Hampshire
Tolerance score: 68 out of 100
Hate crime score: 18 out of 40
Discrimination score: 32 out of 40
Gay rights score: 10 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 2.1 (21 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 12.3 (16 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 55%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 79%

10, New Mexico
Tolerance score: 67 out of 100
Hate crime score: 32 out of 40
Discrimination score: 25 out of 40
Gay rights score: 4 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 1.3 (12 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 12.2 (15 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 49%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 62%

11, Virginia
Tolerance score: 66 out of 100
Hate crime score: 24 out of 40
Discrimination score: 35 out of 40
Gay rights score: 1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 1.9 (20 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 8.5 (2 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 42%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 69%

12, Iowa
Tolerance score: 64 out of 100
Hate crime score: 34 out of 40
Discrimination score: 16 out of 40
Gay rights score: 6 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 0.6 (7 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 37.5 (48 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 44%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 73%

13, North Carolina
Tolerance score: 63 out of 100
Hate crime score: 25 out of 40
Discrimination score: 30 out of 40
Gay rights score: 2 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 1.1 (11 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 11.5 (10 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 36%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 62%

14, Connecticut
Tolerance score: 63 out of 100
Hate crime score: 18 out of 40
Discrimination score: 27 out of 40
Gay rights score: 10 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 5.6 (47 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 16.8 (30 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 57%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 73%

15, Florida
Tolerance score: 61 out of 100
Hate crime score: 32 out of 40
Discrimination score: 21 out of 40
Gay rights score: 0 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 0.7 (9 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 18.7 (32 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 41%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 72%

16, Louisiana
Tolerance score: 59 out of 100
Hate crime score: 34 out of 40
Discrimination score: 19 out of 40
Gay rights score: 0 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 0.5 (6 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 14.8 (25 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 36%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 70%

17, New York
Tolerance score: 59 out of 100
Hate crime score: 18 out of 40
Discrimination score: 27 out of 40
Gay rights score: 6 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 3.3 (35 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 17.8 (31 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 58%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 77%

18, Massachusetts
Tolerance score: 59 out of 100
Hate crime score: 18 out of 40
Discrimination score: 23 out of 40
Gay rights score: 10 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 5.1 (43 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 21.1 (37 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 62%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 79%

19, West Virginia
Tolerance score: 58 out of 100
Hate crime score: 24 out of 40
Discrimination score: 26 out of 40
Gay rights score: 2 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 1.4 (13 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 12.6 (18 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 41%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 70%

20, Nevada
Tolerance score: 58 out of 100
Hate crime score: 25 out of 40
Discrimination score: 23 out of 40
Gay rights score: 2 out of 10
Religious Tolerance Score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents: 2.1 (23 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents: 15.9 (27 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage: 50%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life: 73%

21, Montana
Tolerance score: 58 out of 100
Hate crime score: 15 out of 40
Discrimination score: 36 out of 40
Gay rights score: 1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 2.9 (30 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 8.7 (3 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 45%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 63%

22, Rhode Island
Tolerance score: 57 out of 100
Hate crime score: 22 out of 40
Discrimination score: 22 out of 40
Gay rights score: 5 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 3.4 (37 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 24.4 (45 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 60%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 73%

23, Alaska
Tolerance score: 56 out of 100
Hate crime score: 13 out of 40
Discrimination score: 34 out of 40
Gay rights score: 1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 3.1 (31 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 9.3 (6 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 45%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 77%

24, Washington
Tolerance score: 56 out of 100
Hate crime score: 22 out of 40
Discrimination score: 22 out of 40
Gay rights score: 6 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 3.1 (32 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 20.6 (36 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 54%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 68%

25, Vermont
Tolerance score: 56 out of 100
Hate crime score: 16 out of 40
Discrimination score: 22 out of 40
Gay rights score: 10 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 4.0 (39 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 21.7 (39 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 59%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 79%

26, Oregon
Tolerance score: 56 out of 100
Hate crime score: 18 out of 40
Discrimination score: 28 out of 40
Gay rights score: 4 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 5.5 (45 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 12.9 (20 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 52%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 70%

27, Maine
Tolerance score: 55 out of 100
Hate crime score: 19 out of 40
Discrimination score: 19 out of 40
Gay rights score: 7 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 10 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 3.8 (38 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 22.5 (40 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 55%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 82%

28, Delaware
Tolerance score: 53 out of 100
Hate crime score: 13 out of 40
Discrimination score: 28 out of 40
Gay rights score: 4 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 4.2 (40 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 15.8 (26 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 50%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 71%

29, Texas
Tolerance score: 52 out of 100
Hate crime score: 32 out of 40
Discrimination score: 15 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 0.7 (8 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 18.8 (34 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 35%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 65%

30, Michigan
Tolerance score: 52 out of 100
Hate crime score: 21 out of 40
Discrimination score: 22 out of 40
Gay rights score: 1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 3.2 (34 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 21.2 (38 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 46%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 72%

31, Colorado
Tolerance score: 52 out of 100
Hate crime score: 16 out of 40
Discrimination score: 26 out of 40
Gay rights score: 2 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 4.2 (41 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 10.3 (8 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 52%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 72%

32, Georgia
Tolerance score: 50 out of 100
Hate crime score: 24 out of 40
Discrimination score: 21 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 0.1 (2 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 12.5 (17 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 34%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 63%

33, Indiana
Tolerance score: 49 out of 100
Hate crime score: 18 out of 40
Discrimination score: 21 out of 40
Gay rights score: 2 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 1.5 (14 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 16.4 (29 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 37%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 73%

34, Tennessee
Tolerance score: 49 out of 100
Hate crime score: 21 out of 40
Discrimination score: 23 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 2.7 (26 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 13.8 (23 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 31%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 63%

35, Oklahoma
Tolerance score: 48 out of 100
Hate crime score: 25 out of 40
Discrimination score: 18 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 1.6 (17 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 13.8 (22 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 26%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 65%

36, South Carolina
Tolerance score: 48 out of 100
Hate crime score: 13 out of 40
Discrimination score: 30 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 2.7 (27 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 10.6 (9 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 32%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 61%

37, Missouri
Tolerance score: 47 out of 100
Hate crime score: 24 out of 40
Discrimination score: 15 out of 40
Gay rights score: 0 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 2.1 (22 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 29.4 (46 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 37%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 73%

38, Mississippi
Tolerance score: 46 out of 100
Hate crime score: 27 out of 40
Discrimination score: 16 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 4 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 0.2 (3 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 11.6 (11 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 27%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 59%

39, South Dakota
Tolerance score: 46 out of 100
Hate crime score: 10 out of 40
Discrimination score: 28 out of 40
Gay rights score: 0 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 5.8 (48 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 9.4 (7 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 38%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 79%

40, Alabama
Tolerance score: 44 out of 100
Hate crime score: 26 out of 40
Discrimination score: 15 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 4 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 0.3 (4 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 12.8 (19 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 26%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 59%

41, Kentucky
Tolerance score: 43 out of 100
Hate crime score: 14 out of 40
Discrimination score: 24 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 4.7 (42 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 13.4 (21 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 31%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 69%

42, North Dakota
Tolerance score: 42 out of 100
Hate crime score: 16 out of 40
Discrimination score: 18 out of 40
Gay rights score: 0 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 2.3 (25 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 32.8 (47 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 38%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 79%

43, Arizona
Tolerance score: 42 out of 100
Hate crime score: 20 out of 40
Discrimination score: 15 out of 40
Gay rights score: 1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 3.4 (36 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 18.7 (33 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 48%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 64%

44, Utah
Tolerance score: 41 out of 100
Hate crime score: 16 out of 40
Discrimination score: 24 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 2 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 1.7 (18 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 11.8 (12 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 22%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 45%

45, Idaho
Tolerance score: 41 out of 100
Hate crime score: 22 out of 40
Discrimination score: 16 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 4 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 2.3 (24 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 23.9 (42 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 33%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 60%

46, Ohio
Tolerance score: 40 out of 100
Hate crime score: 15 out of 40
Discrimination score: 16 out of 40
Gay rights score: 1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 3.1 (33 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 24.2 (44 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 45%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 76%

47, Nebraska
Tolerance score: 40 out of 100
Hate crime score: 17 out of 40
Discrimination score: 16 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 5.1 (44 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 38.8 (49 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 35%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 78%

48, Kansas
Tolerance score: 38 out of 100
Hate crime score: 12 out of 40
Discrimination score: 18 out of 40
Gay rights score: 0 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 8 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 5.6 (46 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 23.0 (41 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 37%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 71%

49, Arkansas
Tolerance score: 37 out of 100
Hate crime score: 15 out of 40
Discrimination score: 17 out of 40
Gay rights score: -1 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 2.7 (28 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 23.9 (43 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 29%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 63%

50, Wyoming
Tolerance score: 32 out of 100
Hate crime score: 16 out of 40
Discrimination score: 8 out of 40
Gay rights score: 2 out of 10
Religious Tolerance score: 6 out of 10
Hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents:: 1.5 (15 out of 50 states)
Discrimination cases filed per 100,000 residents:: 201.9 (50 out of 50 states)
Population in support of same-sex marriage:: 37%
Population that believes many religions lead to eternal life:: 63%

How the US uses the social media for propoganda

2011-01-18T12:46:00.007-05:00

Although the US media has long since stopped covering the sensitive and embarrassing U.S. State Department cables being released by Wikileaks, other news organizations like The Guardian have continued to report on some of the often embarrassing details in the once classified and secret US cables.

In a recent article by The Guardian, the newspaper reports on a US cable from the diplomatic mission in Indonesia where government bureaucrats requested $ 100,000 to increase the number of fans following the website of its embassy in Jakarta. Although amusing to a certain degree, the once secret cable reveals how government bureaucrats continue to waste American tax payer money. Just another reason to stay off of Facebook.

For more on the Indonesian Facebook story, check out The Guardian article.

The US embassy in Jakarta made a request for $100,000 in funding to boost its Facebook fans to one million weeks before Barack Obama's visit to Indonesia.

A cable sent in February by US diplomats in the Indonesian capital described itself as "already the leading US Mission in the World on Facebook with nearly 50,000 'fans', and one of the leading missions using Twitter, YouTube and engaging local bloggers to promote USG [US government] messages and information."

"We are uniquely positioned to use these tools to amplify key topics and themes to support the upcoming visit by President Obama," it added. The embassy described itself in the cable as "on the forefront of Public Diplomacy 2.0."

Requesting the $100,0000, the cable said that the embassy could boost its Facebook fan page membership to one million in 30 days in a country it described as one of the fastest-growing Facebook markets in the world.

But it is unclear if it reached the target – with or without the money.

By April last year, the total number of Facebook fans of the US Embassies and consulates in Indonesia was 161,000, according to an interview given by the embassy team behind the page.

The cable set out how the money was to be spent, including increasing advertising on Indonesian online portals and elsewhere, as well as generating interest in the presidential visit by offering Facebook users the chance to win a "golden ticket" to meet Obama:

If the White House approves, we could invite fans to post why they should meet President Obama, and in doing so, use our social media platform to connect fans to the visit, as well as build excitement beforehand and follow-up coverage afterwards

The embassy's suggestion that it should also team up with a television show subsequently came to fruition. On a national television show, three Facebook fans of the Jakarta embassy won "educational trips" to the US to visit places that were said to have played a part in Obama's life – this was the embassy's suggested alternative prize if the White House did not give its blessing to meetings with Obama for competition winners.

Lockheed Martin- A robber barron of the 21st Century

2011-01-14T09:54:00.007-05:00

Do you feel like the country is going in the wrong direction? Do you think that the best years of America are in the past? Do you think that elected government officials care more for the interests of private corporations and wealthy political donors than they do about average hard working honest Americans? If so, than you probably should purchase the new book Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex by William Hartung.

In the book, William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, offers a definitive account into how Lockheed Martin represents all the dangers the military industrial complex and its offspring the national security state apparatus that Dwight D Eisenhower warned the American people about in 1961.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, he never dreamed that a single company would accumulate the kind of power and influence that is now wielded by Lockheed Martin. Prophets of War recounts the fascinating and often-frightening history of America's largest military contractor as well as its role in the formation of foreign policy.

A recent article on TomDispatch by William Hartung offers a disturbing account into how How a Giant Weapons Maker Became the New Big Brother.

Jared Loughner - The Consequence of Right Wing Propaganda

2011-01-08T17:07:00.008-05:00

Political pundits like Glenn Beck , a media personality who has never finished college ,often try to associate Barack Obama and progressive democrats in America to Adolph Hitler with subtle innuendos and accusations. People who listen to the former alcoholic and college drop out should put down the remote control and open up a history book. Instead of being easily mislead and manipulated by Fox News media personalities like Beck, more Americans should become aware that the same tactic of fear and hatred used by Beck and other right wing political pundits was also used by the Nazis in the 1930s to consolidate and maintain their hold on power.

Early indications are that Jared Loughner was an easily manipulated individual who most likely relied on ignorant and uneducated people like Gleen Beck and his Fox News handlers for his information and viewpoint on current events. Pushing the already volatile political situation over the edge was the irresponsible and obtuse use of gun imagery by the political action committee of Sarah Palin.

Below is a YouTube video posted by Jared Loughner which offers an insight into the deranged mind of the 22 year old Arizona resident.

The $ 14 Trillion debt broken down

2011-01-04T18:30:00.002-05:00

Compliments of Live Science.com.

The United States of America was built on debt. The first reported national public debt, declared on Jan. 1, 1791, totaled $75,463,476.52, or about $19 per person, most of which was run up during the Revolutionary War.

Both of those figures have jumped quite a bit since then, growing about $4.09 billion per day. According to the U.S. National Debt Clock, the debt has now passed $14 trillion for the first time. More precisely, it's $14,037,919,289,426.99, which works out to $45,315.70 per each of the country's 309,780,512 citizens.

The vast majority of this debt can be attributed to the past few Congresses, which rank as the top four in spenders. In fact, the 111th Congress, which adjourned for the final time yesterday, set a new record for debt by accumulating $3.22 trillion - more than the first 100 Congresses combined.

Wartime spending

Historically, the debt has jumped most during times of war. In 1860, just before the Civil War, the debt ran just $64.8 million; in 1865, the debt totaled $2.7 billion.In 1917, before the U.S. joined in on World War I, the debt was $5.7 billion; by 1918 it was $14.6 billion. The numbers fluctuated similarly in World War II. In 1941, the debt stood at $48.9 billion; it crossed $100 billion for the first time midway through the war, and was $201 billion by 1944.

The four highest-spending Congresses

1 - 111th Congress (Jan. 2009 - Jan. 2011) - $3.220 trillion

2 - 110th Congress (Jan. 2007 - Jan. 2009) - $1.957 trillion

3 - 108th Congress (Jan. 2003 - Jan. 2005) - $1.159 trillion

4 - 109th Congress (Jan. 2005 - Jan. 2007) - $1.054 trillion

Debt per U.S. citizen since 1900

Based on statistics from the United States Census Bureau and the Department of the Treasury:

2010 - $45,315

2000 - $20,162

1990 - $13,000

1980 - $4,006

1970 - $1,825

1960 - $1,597

1950 - $1,700

1940 - $325

1930 - $131

1920 - $245

1910 - $29

1900 - $28

The Facebook Bubble

2011-01-04T14:12:00.004-05:00

Beppe Grillo, an Italian comedian and blogger since 2005 proves yet again why his blog is Italy's number one blog and one of the ten most visited blogs in the entire world.

A recent posting by Beppe Grillo shows his unique insight into the issue of Facebook.

Goldman Sachs has invested 375 million dollars in Facebook while valuing it at 50 billion dollars. To each one of the 500 million Facebook users the value of 100 dollars has been attributed. Without members, Facebook would be worth zero. For example if me and my son were to cancel our profiles, the value of Facebook would immediately fall by 200 dollars. The capital is in the users, in their content and their relationship network and not in the platform itself, but Facebook is a closed world within the universe of the internet, anyone who enters can no longer exit. "Abandon hope ye who enter here." If in the future, other companies were to offer a social network with better services, the Facebook user should in theory be able to migrate his own content without asking permission from Mark Zuckerberg. In reality today he cannot do that. The financial value of Facebook depends on the billions of personal bits of information that have been inserted there. Who is the owner of this data, of the “digital identity”? Facebook or the user? It should be the user, the identity is his, the photos, the videos, the text are fruit of his labour, they are “him”, they are “her”. However, this information is usable only within Facebook. Anyone who registers on another social network has to put in all the stuff again. Every “digital identity” is basically the property of Facebook or of the social network where it has been entered. For some time there has been research into a standard for a “universal digital identity” to be able to have access to every social network where contents and relationships remain the property of the user. Our “digital identity” is always more important for our social relationships, but it can be deleted at any time by Facebook and we would be cancelled too. Facebook should distribute the money received from Goldman Sachs to its users who are working at a piece rate and for free by supplying information that can be used for marketing activity. With these thoughts up front, if the de facto monopoly by Facebook were to end, the capital from Goldman Sachs would have created the umpteenth Internet bubble. And who is it that pays back money in the bubbles? The small scale shareholders or the big banks? Certainly not Goldman Sachs who will be able to guide the launch of Facebook on the stock exchange in 2012 with enormous returns. I could be making a mistake, but just to be safe, I won’t be buying Facebook shares.

Brazil's Biofuel Revolution

2011-01-01T21:03:00.007-05:00

Already South America’s largest economy and projected to be the world’s fifth largest by the time it hosts the 2016 Summer Olympics, Brazil celebrated the new year with inaugurating a new woman president, Dilma Rousseff. Making the already momentous milestone even more noteworthy is the fact that the new woman president was a former Marxist rebel held and tortured in prison when Brazil was controlled by a military dictatorship.

While the new incoming President of Brazil has the tough challenge of maintaining the steady economic growth and holding together the various factions of the Workers Party, if the success of Brazil's implementation of a biofuel industry based on sugar cane is any indication of the new President's ability, the future for Brazil looks to remain bright.

In stark contrast to the response of the United States to the oil embargo's of the 1970s, Brazil made the strategic decision to pursue energy independence through the use of biofuel and other renewable energy sources. Going from importing 80 percent of its energy, in the 1970s Brazil is now energy independent due in large part to the creation of a sugarcane based ethanol biofuel program.

70 times more efficient than oil based gasoline and having four times as much energy as corn based ethanol, sugar cane based ethanol is also cheaper to produce than corn based ethanol .

Thanks to the award winning documentary film show Vanguard on Current TV, host Mariana van Zeller travels to Brazil and looks at Brazil’s Biofuel Revolution.

The Buzz Words of 2010 Explained

2010-12-26T14:30:00.004-05:00

Every year sees new words coined and old ones gaining new meaning. The Guardian’s Rafael Behr decodes some of the key terms of 2010 with a bit of tongue and cheek humor. Opinione has put an American spin on some of the buzz words for 2010.

Austerity – Sanctimonious meanness. Budget cuts for social security, education, and health care while the Pentagon gets yearly budget increases.

Blowout preventer – Device on deepwater oil rigs that, confusingly, doesn't prevent blowouts. Something the democratic party was not able to deploy in the 2010 mid term election.

Bondage – The sado-masochistic relationship between financial markets and European economies. The relationship between despotic Middle Eastern regimes, perpetual war and America’s love affair with gas guzzling cars.

Cable – Any communication that is supposed to be private but ends up embarrassingly public.

Debt – A curse and a blight, except when incurred by students to pay university tuition fees, in which context it is an opportunity and an engine of social mobility. Disastrous for any other country with a high public debt to GDP ratio except the United States.

Deficit – An excuse to do anything really out of order, eg: "Yes, I did spill red wine on your new white carpet, but what you must remember is that Labour left that carpet with a deficit of red wine; my spillage was the only responsible course of action." While the Bush administration and a GOP Congress increased the public debt by 6 trillion dollars between 2001 and 2008, Obama and the dems are given the blame by a media that favors the wealthy status quo.

Election – Reality show for unattractive people in which members of the audience only get one vote. Something that only a minority of Americans are distracted by every two years.

iPad – A very big phone that doesn't make phone calls.

Kindle – A device that enables you to not read books you have bought without feeling guilty, since you can't see them lying around unopened.

Obama – A unit of time defined by the period that elapses between first experiencing the hope that things will change and then realizing that they won't. An American politician no different than George W Bush.

Phone-tapping – A malicious practice employed by scurrilous journalists and wholly unknown to Andy Coulson, Downing Street head of communications, and formerly editor of the News of the World. Something the NSA and other American government agencies routinely do on unsuspecting Americans in violation of the US Constitution.

Pledge – A meaningless phrase, a chat-up line based on feigned sincerity; a vow that dissolves on entry into a "coalition". An empty phrase that the republican party has replaced with the word contract.

Progressive – A decorative word with no specific meaning, applied to government policies to make them sound nicer; artificial sweetener used to disguise the taste of disgusting medicine. A word that is used by Glen Beck and other agents of the status quo who equate it with socialism, Communism, and Hitler.

Protest – What angry lovers do when they realize they've been spun a "pledge". Something that Americans have no ability to do.

QE2 – quantitative easing: the sequel, starring US federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, in which the heroes of QE1 get together for another rollercoaster adventure in monetary policy. A euphemism for the printing of money.

Royal Wedding – A ritual that can be used very occasionally to promote "middletons" to higher social status. An event held in Great Britain to remind Americans why they revolted against the British Empire.

Scrounger – Person whose lifestyle is supported by the state, with the exception of MPs and royalty. An American employee of a private security corporation like Blackwater, DynCorp, Vinnell, KBR, General Dynamics, CSC, SAIC, etc……

Tweet – Noise made by a bird; nice surprise for Jonathan Ross. A text version of Facebook that has not been used by disenfranchised American voters to social mobilize and overthrow an increasingly corrupt government.

Wiki – A prefix applied to mundane objects or actions to give them a veneer of hi-tech subversive credibility. A four letter word that US government employees are no longer allowed to say or think about.

Youth – An affliction that makes people strangely susceptible to "pledges" and "protest".

List of all 16 American Intelligence Agencies

2010-12-26T11:08:00.003-05:00

Here is a list of the 16 American intelligence agencies that are a part of the $ 70 billion dollar national security state apparatus. Even with all the money, resources, and manpower, Americans are still forced to endure violations of their privacy and rights given to them in the 4th amendment.

1. Department of the Navy
2. Department of the Army
3. Department of the Air Force
4. Department of the Marine Corps
5. Department of the Coast Guard
6. Defense Intelligence Agency
7. Department of Energy
8. Department of Homeland Security
9. Department of State
10. Department of Treasury
11. Department of Drug Enforcement Agency
12. Federal Bureau of Investigation
13. National Security Agency
14. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency
15. National Reconnaissance Agency
16. Central Intelligence Agency

Commercialism

2010-12-25T22:53:00.002-05:00

The best Green Energy advertisement: Mr W

2010-12-24T19:10:00.001-05:00

The best Green Energy advertisement: Mr W

What makes a good green ad? A brilliant, clear idea and simple execution.

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

2010-12-24T15:20:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the blog MikeB302000.

Top TSA Security Jokes and Political Cartoons for 2010

2010-12-23T17:31:00.006-05:00

Just in time for the end of the year holiday travel period, Opinione is publishing some of the best TSA Security jokes for 2010.

1. "This year marks the first holiday season in which travelers will get molested before they get to their uncle's house." —Seth Meyers

2. "Rush Limbaugh on the radio yesterday told President Obama, 'Keep your hands off my tea bag.' Don't worry, Rush, even special ops couldn't find your tea bag." —Jimmy Kimmel

3. "Have you heard the TSA's new slogan? 'We handle more junk than eBay.'" —Jay Leno

4. "TSA says they are going to crack down on the invasive pat-downs. In fact, one agent was transferred to another parish." —David Letterman

5. From David Letterman's Top Ten Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming a TSA Agent: "In five years, whose pants do I see my hands in?"

6. ‎"You know, if I wanted somebody halfheartedly patting my groin without eye contact, I'd get married." —Seth Meyers

7. "The TSA has issued some special packing tips for travelers before flyling. They say not to bring food, sharp tools, or any shred of dignity." —Jimmy Fallon

8. It’s not a grope. It’s a freedom pat.- The Caucus- The Government and Politics Blog of the New York Times

The continuing abysmal American press coverage of the leaked US State Department Cables

2010-12-20T20:11:00.004-05:00

As the media begins to pump out their annual stories looking back on the previous year, it is disquieting that a recent Pew Research Center reported that the U.S. media devoted only four percent of its media coverage in 2010 to the never-ending military quagmire in Afghanistan. This shamefully low rate was a drop from the already dismal five percent by the media in 2009.

While Vice President Joe Biden recently said on NBC’s Meet the Press that the US military would withdrawal Afghanistan in 2014, it appears that the mainstream corporate owned media has already left Afghanistan due to viewer fatigue. Too bad political leaders like Biden are not fatigued by the never-ending war, instead of being financed and cheered on by the military industrial congressional complex and other vested interests who want the never-ending military quagmire to continue.

Similar to the lack of reporting on the Afghanistan quagmire, the weak and timid press coverage of leaked State Department cables by the American media is another glaring example of how the public lies and false information of political leaders is allowed to continue unabated with little public pressure. Haven’t the American public or the American press learned anything from the Iraq war and the failure of the press to challenge and refute the now discredited claims presented by the Bush administration during their run up to the Iraq War in 2003?

While it is impossible to definitively explain why the American media is not fully reporting on the US State Department cables, some of the information revealed in the US State Department cables reveal that American officials may be more interested in protecting themselves from answering embarrassing questions, than it is about protecting American national security as they publicly proclaim. One of the most notable US State Department documents that have been virtually ignored in the American mainstream media is a cable by the American government in October 2008 discussing a BP oil well gas leak in Armenia, 19 months earlier than a very similar gas leak that caused the Deep Water Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The cables reveal that some of BP's partners in the gas field were upset that the company was so secretive about the incident that it even allegedly withheld information from them.

In one cable from the embassy in Baku in October 2008, a U.S. diplomat says "BP has closed off a 'few suspect wells' from which they think a bad cement job caused the leaking gas." That, the diplomat says, "is actually good news, since had it been a reservoir leak the damage would have been potentially non-reparable, whereas now all BP has to do is fix the cement job." The repair work is "hard and expensive ... but preferable to losing the platform." By April 2010, that assessment would read like a gross understatement.

Although first reported on 17 December by The Guardian, highlighting the abysmal American press coverage of the leaked US State Department, Time magazine only reported on the issue on Monday December 20. Underscoring the atrocious and pathetic American press coverage of the leaked US State Department cables is the fact that the Time Magazine story referenced the British newspaper The Guardian and not The New York Times. It is an ominous indication of the freedom of the press in America when the American public has to learn of information about its government through foreign news sources.

While The New York Times may be hesitant to publish the leaked State Department cables for a multitude of reasons, not reporting on information contained in the cables does not mean the information in the cables will disappear or does not exist. Although some Americans may be angry at the actions of Julian Assange for releasing the US State Department cables, the people who lost loved ones in the Deep Water Horizon explosion or in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of government and corporate secrecy may not be as critical of Mr. Assange.

A message from Mark Zuckerberg

2010-12-19T10:23:00.003-05:00

A great comedy skit by Saturday Night Live where Julian Assange makes his case as why he should be Time's Person of the Year. Some of the more notable reasons include, “Thanks to WikiLeaks, you can see how corrupt governments operate in the shadows.” “Thanks to Facebook, you can figure out which Sex and the City character you are.”
He also included a couple of barbs at how differently WikiLeaks and Facebook define “invasion of privacy.” His organization reveals corporate tidbits to consumers for free, while Zuckerberg’s company inverses the equation, selling your personal information to corporations.

Why Karl Rove should be tried for Treason

2010-12-19T09:56:00.004-05:00

The conservatives who criticize the publication of the WikiLeaks material were not heard complaining when President George W. Bush and his national security team provided Bob Woodward and his coauthor, Dan Balz, with notes and minutes of still-secret National Security Council proceedings regarding the most sensitive matters of U.S. war planning and intelligence collection.

Similarly, it was liberals, not conservatives, who took the Bush administration officials to task for leaking the identity of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame in order to discredit the information provided by her husband, Joseph Wilson.

What is different about the WikiLeaks data is the scale of the leak, the motive of the leaker, and the manner in which it was ultimately made available.

The same Obama administration that condemns the leaks has said: “Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.” However, if the government decides what constitutes transparency, how can it achieve either objective?

War is the most serious thing to which a government can commit a society. A government that can make war while keeping essential information about its justification and conduct secret is neither open nor fit for free people.

President Obama, like his predecessors, asks for our trust. He'd say he can’t tell us everything, but government in a democratic society requires confidence in its leaders. A similar appeal for trust failed to impress Thomas Jefferson in 1798.

In his protest of the Adams administration’s Alien and Sedition Acts (which essentially criminalized harsh criticism of the government), Jefferson wrote in the Kentucky Resolutions, “[I]t would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism – free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.”

Or as the Irish statesman John Philpot Curran said eight years earlier, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

Yet how can Americans exercise vigilance against government threats to their liberty if critical information is systematically withheld? They can’t. That’s why people such as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers 39 years ago, and perhaps Manning heroically risked personal ruin and defied authority to bring that information to us.

The statement by republican Presidential hopeful Huckabee that Assange should be tried for treason and killed show the damaging effect of Americans corrupted by perpetual war and the national security state apparatus. It would be refreshing if national news outlets would ask why Karl Rove or Gordon Libby were never tried for treason when they outed CIA officer Valarie Plame. As opposed to Assange, who is not a US citizen and cannot be charges with treason, the legal case for Rove and Libby to be charged for treason appears to be greater.

However, Rove, a man who never finished college, is still living a comfortable life, while thousands of men and woman who went to Iraq because of his advice to the president to go ahead with the attack on Iraq in 2003, came back home to the US in coffins.

The difficult job political analysts have at predicting future events

2010-12-18T10:25:00.006-05:00

On the 20th day of media coverage related to US State Department cables released by Wikileaks, embarrassing documents are again released related to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Although the latest Wikileaks documents may be viewed as another forthright insight into the inner workings of the Berlusconi government, the latest US State Department documents reveal that the political analysis of Italian politics by American Foreign Service officers is not as judicious as the geo-political analysis of Berlusconi’s close personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to a Guardian news report,

In the leaked memo, William Meara, the economic adviser at the American embassy in Rome, reports that despite budget cuts and

"with its 2009 G8 presidency looming", the newly installed, centre-right government "may decide to maintain funding levels [to Africa] simply to avoid an embarrassing tongue-lashing from Bono et al".

The final paragraph taken directly from a State Department memo dated 23 July 2008 reveals the difficult job political analysts have at predicting the actions of politicians like Silvio Berlusconi due to the unpredictable variable of unseen events like natural disasters.

Although the American Foreign Service officer William Meara, may have been influenced by promises of Fabrizio Nava, the director of the office of sub-Saharan Africa assistance for the Italian government that African aid levels would remain the same, it appears that domestic pressures over the handling of the Italian government of the L’Aquila earthquake would later take more precedence. The American Foreign Service officer in the Rome embassy may also have forgotten or underestimated the favorable media coverage Berlusconi receives in Italy due to his control and ownership of the media in Italy, and that the international pressure of Bono and Bob Geldof were minimal. Understanding the personal history of Silvio Berlusconi and the power of the mafia in Italian society, the political analysis by the economic adviser at the American embassy in Rome that Berlusconi would be afraid of Bono or Bob Geldof is almost amusing.

Although the plight of Africans living in starvation and poverty in former Italian colonies like Eritrea and Somalia is no laughing matter, according to the Guardian article, the fallout between Bono and Bob Geldof led to “an irreverent online game in which a cartoon character of Berlusconi is hurled into the air by a hammer thrower. "

We all love a bit of fun," the site explains. "But there's a serious point to the game – since promising to increase aid to Africa in 2005 PM Berlusconi has actually cut it.

"One man alone has done nothing. In fact, Berlusconi is doing even less now than he was five years ago. Mr. Berlusconi should be thrown out by the G8," it added.

Public Propoganda and Private Reality- A look at "Bush the Decider"

2010-12-16T12:11:00.009-05:00

Remember back in the pre Great Recession time of 2006 when George W. Bush proclaimed, "I'm the Decider"?

Fast forward four years and the US media news cycle was temporally dominated by the release of a book by former President George W. Bush, and the public propoganda that George Bush was a decider while in office. The book and its accompanying media blitz is designed to continually influence how George W. Bush would be viewed by Americans and to manipulate public opinion on the disastrous and costly wars his administration started in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the book, Decision Points, endeavors to depict George W. Bush as a decisive leader in difficult times, recently released State Department cables by Wikileaks reveal that world leaders such as Hosni Mubarak, the long time authoritarian leader of Egypt, viewed George W. Bush as being easily manipulated by political handlers and subordinates.

According to a US State Department cable approved by the US ambassador to Cairo, Margaret Scobey,

“Mubarak viewed President Bush as naive, controlled by subordinates and totally unprepared for dealing with post-Saddam Iraq, especially the rise of Iran's regional influence."
"On several occasions Mubarak has lamented the US invasion of Iraq and the downfall of Saddam. He routinely notes that Egypt did not like Saddam and does not mourn him, but at least he held the country together and countered Iran.

While the assessment of an Obama appointed US ambassador to Egypt has to be taken into consideration, the blunt assessment of George W. Bush by a long time leader in the Middle East strongly contradicts the public message that Bush and his handlers were selling to the American public in the spring of 2006. This only proves that the louder a politician speaks about something in public, the truth could not be further from the truth.

In stark contrast to the myth perpetuated by Bush in his book and the propaganda during the run up to the attack on Iraq in 2003, the decision to attack Iraq was made by his chief political strategist Karl Rove for political reasons and Dick Cheney for business reasons. The US Department cable downloaded by Bradley Manning and posted by Wikileaks supports this viewpoint.

It is no wonder that the American politicians like Joseph Lieberman, Diane Feinstein, and Mike Huckabee to name just a few want to prosecute Julian Assange and call the release of documents by Wikileaks as electronic terrorism. These less than honorable politicians want to avoid any responsibility in their support of the War in Iraq and the ensuing one trillion dollars it has cost the American people.

A clip from the Daily Show in 2006 puts a comedic spin on the public rhetoric of Bush being "The Decider" while in reality, Bush was controlled by his subordinates.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Decider - The Origin

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

The Daily Show on Facebook

'TSA Christmas Carol'

2010-12-15T17:14:00.003-05:00

Mark Zuckerberg for Time magazine person of the year?

2010-12-15T14:30:00.006-05:00

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for Time magazine person of the year?

Couldn’t the editors of Time Magazine have a little more intellectual aptitude and give their annual award to someone or a group of people who have tried to make the world we live in a better place, instead of just someone who gave the Internet a place for self obsessed people to post their photos and ask you to water their crops in Farmville?

Although I do not argue the social impact that Facebook has made on the Internet, giving the annual award to founder Mark Zuckerberg instead of Internet freedom of speech advocate Julian Assange or the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobao, allows the editors of Time Magazine avoid any kind of political controversy. Besides, Facebook grew more in popularity in 2009 than 2010. Did the editors at Time just see the movie?

Reviewing Time Magazine’s list of runner ups for ‘Person of the Year’ and the ‘People who Mattered’, revels that Time Magazine is nothing more than a print edition version of an infotainment cable news outlet. Ranking people like the cast of The Jersey Shore, Sandra Bullock and Betty White ahead of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobao shows that there is something seriously wrong over at Time Magazine. The listing by Time is such a disgrace that even the winners and losers of the 2010 World Cup and Prince William were considered more important people than Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobao.

While it is impossible to only distinguish only one person as a person of the year, a more accurate reflection of the world in 2010 would have a list of the top ten most influential people of 2010. Instead of the politically correct and advertiser friendly version submitted by editors at Time Magazine, the following list comprises a more intellectual and realistic look at the most important people of 2010.

1. Julian Assange - Internet freedom advocate

2. Bradley Manning – whistle blower

3 Liu Xiaobao – 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

4. Chilean Miners – dangers that blue collar workers face everyday

5. The Unemployed American – victim of broken economy and a declining world power

6 Steve Jobs – iPods, iPads, and iPhones- enough said

7. Independent Internet blogs like The Daily Beast, Beppe Grillo, and TomDispatch

8 Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – political humor at its best

9. Don’t touch my junk guy – the dangers of a country unable to stop perpetual war and a powerful central government

10. BP CEO Tony Hayward – the face of corporate negligence and arrogance

1. Julian Assange- Creating a web site that exposes government abuses and lies is what the First Amendment and the protection of a free and independent press is based upon. As the last five hundred years have been dominated by the printed word, the next five hundred years will see the transformation of a world dominated by the digital word. Ensuring sites like Wikileaks are protected in the early years of a global communications network and recognizing the courage of individuals like Julian Assange will only benefit democracy and free people in the long run.

2. Bradley Manning- A young disillusioned private serving in Iraq, with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive US documents, will be soon added to a short list of the most famous corporate and government whistle blowers like Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) , Karen Silkwood , and Jeffrey Wigand.

Daniel Ellsberg –was the State Department officer that gave the “Pentagon Papers” (a not-so-glowing history of the United States’ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967) to the New York Times.
Karen Silkwood –was a blue-collar worker who raised concerns about plutonium plant safety. Unfortunately, she died under mysterious circumstances after she started investigating claims of irregularities and wrongdoing at the Kerr-McGee plant.
Jeffrey Wigand –appeared on the CBS news program 60 Minutes, and exposed his company’s (Brown & Williamson) practice of ‘impact boosting’ (intentionally manipulating the effect of nicotine in cigarettes).

3. Liu Xiaobao - The imprisoned Chinese academic and writer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 8 for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental rights in China." Liu was the architect of Charter 08, a manifesto that encouraged China's authoritarian communist leadership to open up to reform and multi-party politics.

Considering that Time Magazine once spoke fondly of Adolf Hitler in 1933 and recently named George W. Bush as person of the year 2004, the latest award by Time Magazine proves the magazine is nothing more than a print version of a infotainment cable news station.

If Julian Assange is a terrorist? Who has been terrorized?

2010-12-15T00:38:00.003-05:00

Tom Englehardt, the editor of TomDistach.com recently wrote an article on his blog that deserves to be republished.

Here in the United States of Fear, official voices are again rising in a remarkable crescendo of hysteria.

My advice: don’t even try getting on the subway car filled with American politicians and their acolytes accusing WikiLeaks and Julian Assange of terrorist activity. It’s already standing room only. Among those who have recently spoken out: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell ("I think the man is a high-tech terrorist"); former speaker of the House and possible 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (“information terrorism… [Assange] should be treated as an enemy combatant”); Republican Congressman Peter King, the next head of the House Homeland Security Committee (“…asked the Obama administration today to ‘determine whether WikiLeaks could be designated a foreign terrorist organization’”); former Republican Senator and possible 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum (“We haven't gone after this guy, we haven't tried to prosecute him, we haven't gotten our allies to go out and lock this guy up and bring him up on terrorism charges, because what he's doing is terrorism, in my opinion.”); Fox News host, Iran-Contra figure, and bestselling author Oliver North (“This is an act of terrorism. It’s information terrorism instead of a bomb going off in Times Square, but it’s still terrorism.”)

And that’s just to skim the (s)cream off the top of the terror accusations boiling out of this Congress and Republican presidential ranks. It’s quite a brew, especially when you add in senators like Joe Lieberman and Diane Feinstein calling for Assange to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 and figures like Sarah Palin calling for him to simply be taken out as a terrorist, pure and simple (“Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”)

Here, however, is a small catch. If this is “terrorism,” a question arises (or at least should arise): Who has been terrorized? Who exactly has been terrified by the recent WikiLeaks releases of, so far, more than 1,000 State Department documents, some going back decades? The answer, I think, is clear enough -- not the American people, but the Washington elite who have, in these last years, put in place a version of secrecy so wide-ranging that most of the government’s significant operations abroad (and many at home) have been cast into the shadows beyond the sightlines of the voters in this supposed democracy.

Within the penumbra of spreading secrecy, that elite, sometimes aided and abetted by the mainstream media, has acted with remarkable impunity in invading other countries, kidnapping“suspects” off the streets of global cities, secretly imprisoning under catch-all categories, and torturing, abusing, or even murdering those believed to be terrorists, or at least opposed to Washington’s desires. At the same time, they have been moving to lock down this country in ever more severe (and expensive) ways. So for them, it may indeed feel like a genuinely terrifying experience to see any aspect of that secrecy removed, to discover yet again that what they thought they controlled was not really theirs to control.

And don’t think it’s just a matter of Julian Assange or WikiLeaks in the gun sights either. The Espionage Act of 1917, under which Assange may be charged, was a classic suppressive response to antiwar opposition during World War I. It remains dangerous. Prosecuting Assange under it or any other terror statute would indeed prove an ominous development. It would have -- and I’m not one for throwing around totalitarian analogies -- a distinctly Soviet feel to it.

How Don Berlusconi narrowly survived the 14 December no confidence vote

2010-12-14T23:51:00.010-05:00

On Tuesday December 14, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi narrowly won a confidence vote that sparked violent protests in the center of Rome against police. Although most media outlets are reporting on the political ‘nine lives’ of the mafia tainted media mogul turned politician and the ensuing protests that erupted after the no confidence vote, the news reports have omitted critical background information related to the story. The lapse in reporting critical background information prevents more people to learn the internal domestic factors that fueled the protestors’ anger at the government and how Silvio Berlusconi survived yet another political scandal.

Not reporting on the high levels of corruption in Italian politics, which includes the mafia, the lack of press freedom in Italy, and the flawed democracy ranking recently given to Italy by the Economist Magazine, explains why more people do not know why Italy is often referred to as the Stinking Boot of Europe.

Corruption in Italian politics

Though most of the news media is euphemistically describing the financial power of Silvio Berlusconi to buy the votes of several key lawmakers as ‘Berlusconi's uncanny ability to survive’ a more accurate and independent analysis would highlight the rampant corruption that has been institutionalized in Italian politics. One of the most notable aspects of the story not reported on by any of the news wire services, is the fact that the vote was held on 14 December so members of Parliament would have reached the required 2 ½ years of public service to be entitled to a life time pension from the government.

It is erroneous for the news wire services not to include more information on the level of political corruption in Italy that triggered the riots, while reporting on the more sensational aspects of the no confidence vote such as including information about three pregnant lawmakers arriving in ambulances to cast their votes. Instead of wasting time talking about the circus like atmosphere surrounding the political spectacle of the no confidence vote, the news wire services should have cited research by the independent non-governmental organization Transparency International that ranks Italy as the 63rd least corrupt nation in the world. By not focusing on the level of corruption in Italy, the international press frames the recent no confidence vote and the ensuing riots as merely a violent political demonstration by youthful protesters, and downplays the factors leading to the political unrest. Perhaps fueling the rage for most of the youths in the recent riots was the revelation in US State department cables by Wikileaks that Berlusconi is “profiting personally and handsomely" from secret energy deals with Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

Taken to a new level by Berlusconi as recent classified US State Department cables highlight, the political corruption in Italy is perhaps the greatest factor contributing to the continuing political unrest in Italy and the frustration of its disenfranchised youth. The corrupt business deals by Berlusconi have gotten so bad that the US Department now feels it has undermined the geo-political relationship between the United States and Italy.

According to a Wikileaks documents provided by American Private First Class Bradley Manning serving in Iraq,

Berlusconi's close personal (and, some suspect, financial) relationship with Putin has led him to champion unquestioningly every initiative the Kremlin has rolled out. Italy's Russia policy is his personal game, one which he conducts on a tactical basis to gain the trust and favor of his Russian interlocutors. He consistently rejects the strategic advice of his demoralized, resource-starved, and increasingly irrelevant Foreign Ministry in favor of his business cronies, many of whom are deeply dug into Russia's European energy strategy.

Although most people living outside Italy have very little knowledge of who Silvio Berlusconi is or how he rose to be the most powerful and wealthiest man in Italy, the youths charging the barricades and the political opponents of Berlusconi like Beppe Grillo who often refers to Berlusconi as the ‘psycho dwarf’, are all too familiar with the mafia tainted media mogul turned politician.

While recent US State Department documents detailing the close personal and financial relationship between Silvio Berlusconi and Russian President Vladimir Putin may have lost their importance in America due to the 48-hour news cycle of the infotainment media bubble, the news was not quickly forgotten by Berlusconi’s political opponents in Italy. Young Italians not seduced and corrupted by the scantly clad models and reality TV shows on channels owned by Berlusconi, took to the streets to vent their anger and disgust at how their leaders are using their government positions to enrich themselves while public services are being cut and economic growth remains stagnant.

Lack of Press Freedom in Italy

In a political biography of Silvio Berlusconi in the book, The Sack of Rome, by Alexander Stille, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and the son of a former editor of the Italian newspaper Corriere Sierra, Berlusconi once told his close friend Marcello Dell’Utri, “

Don’t you understand? If something isn’t on television, it doesn’t exist.”

This understanding by Silvio Berlusconi between the power of the media and political power has been the cornerstone of his success and the unsolvable obstacle that political opponents of Berlusconi have had to overcome. In a political scandal that would have almost assuredly taken down any other leader in a Western European country, due to Berlusconi’s near total control of the Italian media and the government financing of newspapers in Italy totaling more than $ 239 million a year, the recent no confidence vote demonstrates the benefits of controlling the media.

From the nascent stages of Berlusconi’s wealth due to his friendship with the former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, Berlusconi has continued to avoid punishment for his numerous illegal acts and political scandals. The ‘psycho dwarf’ as Beppe Grillo calls Berlusconi, is giving the reputation Ronald Reagan had as being the Teflon President a whole new standard.

To appreciate and understand the system that Berlusconi manipulated, it is important to remember that Berlusconi began to gain a large share of his wealth and a vehicle to launch his future political career, after a 1976 Constitutional Court decision allowed private television stations to broadcast locally in Italy. Intended to open up TV frequencies to the private sector in Italy, the Constitutional Court limited private station owners to only local markets. This was intended to avoid monopolies and oligopolies from forming. Berlusconi with political cover from the Craxi government flagrantly breached the provisions set down by the Constitution Court and by 1984 Berlusconi was broadcasting on Rete 4, Canale 5, and Italia 5 covering almost the entire Italian peninsula. It should be noted that Bettino Craxi the Prime Minister was brought down by a huge corruption scandal in the late 1980s, and died in Tunisia a wanted fugitive from Italian justice in 2000.

Like all politicians, Berlusconi is a by-product of his environment. Understanding the clientilistic practices during the First Republic of Italy (1948-1992) and the United States supported Christian Democrats, Berlusconi learned that political access meant financial award. Since entering politics in 1993 to protect his financial and media empire, Berlusconi and his supporters have continued to exploit the system to their benefit. While he has been Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi has been able to use his power in the state television channels to further extend his power and influence. The type of power Berlusconi wields is equivalent to the owner of Fox News being President and Speaker of the House, while being allowed to appoint directors at 4/5 of the cable news outlets, owning several national newspapers and only the opposition having a voice on PBS public television.

In addition to the TV stations and his Media Set empire, he also has owns five national newspapers, over twenty magazines, and even the most successful soccer team in Italy, AC Milan. It is no wonder why Italy ranks as a partial free country when it comes to press freedom by the American organization Freedom House and ranked as the 50th best place in the world for press freedom by the non-governmental organization, Reporters without Borders.

Underscoring the synergy between the business and political success of Silvio Berlusconi was the news that Mediaset, the Milan-based media company that helped Berlusconi become one of the world’s richest men with a fortune of $9 billion, erased early losses and gained as much as 5 percent, after the recent no confidence vote. Mediaset stock gained 3.3 percent to close at 4.64 euros on the day of the no confidence vote.

Although Italy has the highest level of public debt in the Euro zone, forecast at 118.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) for this year, the reaction on the markets was positive, with the benchmark FTSE Mib index closing up 0.36 per cent.

Italy—Full Democracy to Flawed Democracy Under Berlusconi

The elevated level of political corruption in Italy combined with the near total control of the media by Silvio Berlusconi in Italy has greatly contributed to the recent 2010 Democracy Index by the Economist Magazine to rank Italy as a flawed democracy. Due to the strengthening of anti-immigrant political forces in Italy such as Umberto Rossi’s Lega Nord (Northern League) political party and the disaffection with the political system by the centrists like Gianfranco Fini, Italy is considered to have the same type of democracy as Panama and South Africa.

According to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy 2010:

Since the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, returned to power in 2008, the media situation has deteriorated significantly. In addition to owning and controlling Mediaset, which comprises three national television channels, Mr. Berlusconi also has indirect control over RAI, the state broadcaster. RAI 1, the state channel with the largest audience, has repeatedly chosen to limit coverage of, or completely ignore, negative news about Mr. Berlusconi or his close associates. There has also been political pressure on RAI to cancel or curtail several popular left-leaning programs for their criticism of Mr. Berlusconi and his government is widespread in Western Europe, as reflected in many countries by declining levels of trust and confidence in political institutions.

The Economist Magazine analysis that cites negative news stories of Berlusconi or his ‘close associates’ not being reported on in the Italian media controlled by Berlusconi, refers to individuals such as Marcello Dell’Utri, a Sicilian lawyer convicted twice of having business relations with the Cosa Nostra Sicilian Mafia. The close relationship between Marcello Dell’Utri and Silvio Berlusconi further demonstrates the close relationship between the political power of the mafia in Italian politics and why Silvio Berlusconi has been able to remain in power.

For readers wanting to read more about the power of the mafia in Italian politics, the books Excellent Cadavers by Alexander Stille and A Concise History of Italy 1943-1980 and Italy and Its Discontents 1980-2001 both by Florence University professor Paul Ginsborg would be good places to start.

What makes a good President?

2010-12-13T13:35:00.011-05:00

On the same day when the news media was commemorating the annual anniversary marking the attack on Pearl Harbor, The Atlantic Wire published an article describing a recent Gallop Poll that asked Americans to rank all the presidents since John F Kennedy on how they approved or disapproved of how each president handled his job in office. To no surprise, the most popular modern president for the Americans interviewed for the Gallup Poll was John F Kennedy. Coming in a close second, was the former actor turned politician, Ronald Reagan, followed by Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. Although most readers may agree with these results, the poll confirms how badly informed most Americans are about what makes a good president, and how most Americans closely associate American military strength and economic power to the success of the chief executive. The latest Gallup Poll helps to perpetuate the continued progression of the Imperial Presidency over the last 50 years and further sustains the popular misperceptions surrounding Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

The Gallup Poll released on eve of the anniversary commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor also helps to further influence the predisposition of Americans to view a president’s success on the economic and military strength of the country as opposed to honoring the Constitution or his moral character while in office. Although most Americans believe that honor, family, and hard work are some of the most revered traits of being an American, the gallop poll reflects the contrary. While John F Kennedy undoubtedly gets high approval marks based on the sympathy of getting killed while in office and his work on civil rights, Kennedy also benefits from his sucessful military standoff with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis and his pledge to win the space race to the moon. Kennedy also benefited from presiding over a growing economy, a huge military expansion, and not being linked too directly to the Vietnam War. Further helping Kennedy achieve the highest ranking in the recent Gallup Poll is the exclusion of Dwight D Eisenhower from the survey.

Astute students of American political history will confirm that the large peacetime military build up of strategic nuclear missiles that Kennedy is credited for, was due to deceitful propaganda by a democratic challenger to the Eisenhower/Nixon administration. Although started by Stuart Symington, a Missouri Democratic who was a fierce opponent of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the myth of a strategic missile gap was later continued by Kennedy, even after he was given information by the CIA that the claims of a missile gap were untrue. Further justifying why Kennedy does not merit the top ranking in the Gallup Poll, is his unconstitutional abuse of power and the use of the CIA in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Although minuscule in comparison to the unethical behavior of future presidents, the constitutional abuses of power have to be acknowledged.

Likewise, the jump in ranking for Gerald Ford and Lyndon B. Johnson are disquieting signs of how the American people determine what merits a great president. The rise of public opinion for Gerald Ford, a man who is the only President who was never elected President or Vice-President, and Lyndon Johnson a president who escalated the Vietnam War to near genocidal levels, show how badly misinformed the American people of what constitutes a great president.

Although not as charming and attractive as John F Kennedy or as skilled as a politician like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, history in due course will prove that the current low public opinion of Jimmy Carter is erroneous and shortsighted. Jimmy Carter, a president who tried to warn the American people about the dangers of relying on foreign oil, and a man who never performed any kind of illegal acts such as Ronald Reagan and the Iran Contra Affair or the unethical actions of Bill Clinton treating the Oval Office like a frat house, will one day be vindicated by historians.

The leadership of Jimmy Cater was based on the long-term interests of the country and not short term political goals. Contrary to Ronald Reagan who did nothing to get America to be less dependant on foreign oil, Jimmy Carter demonstrated his willingness to be a leader and not just a politician when he urged the country to support his initiatives on solar energy and to use less imported oil.

As the recent release of Wikileaks confirm, the inability of the United States to become less dependant on foreign oil has transformed the US military into a glorified global mercenary force protecting despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain.

One can only imagine the condition of the world in 2010, if the United States in 1980 put more of its natural resources, technology, and leading academic minds to the long-term strategic fields of alternative energy and high-speed trains, instead of the short-term goals of more oil and bigger defense budgets to protect an ever-dwindling supply of that natural resource.

A more accurate reflection of a presidents ability to protect the US Constitution and the ability to put the long term interests of the country before short term political gains, would be reflected in the following ranking. Because Ford was never elected, he is excluded from the ranking.

Eisenhower
Carter
Kennedy
Bush (Sr)
Clinton
Reagan
Johnson
Nixon
Bush (Jr)

How the CIA has become a danger to the national security of the United States

2010-12-12T23:34:00.005-05:00

In the introduction chapter of Legacy of Ashes- The History of the CIA, the author Tim Wiener writes:

Intelligence is secret action aimed at understanding or changing what goes on abroad. President Dwight D Eisenhower called it a “distasteful but vital necessity”. A nation that wants to project its power beyond its borders needs to see over the horizon, to know what is coming, to prevent attacks against its people. It must anticipate surprise. Without a strong, smart, sharp intelligence service, presidents and generals alike can become blind and crippled. But throughout its history as a superpower, the United States has not had a service.

History, Edward Gibbon wrote in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is “little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” The annals of the Central Intelligence Agency are filled with folly and misfortune, along with acts of bravery and cunning. They are replete with fleeting successes and long lasting failures abroad. They are marked by political battles and power struggles at home. The agency’s triumphs have saved some blood and treasure. Its mistakes have squandered both. They have proved fatal for legions of American soldiers and foreign agents; some three thousand Americans who died in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001; and three thousand more who have did since then in Iraq and Afghanistan. The one crime of lasting consequence has been the CIA’s inability to carry out its central mission; informing the president of what is happening in the world.

The book by Mr. Wiener which is based on three hundred interviews since 1987 with CIA officers and veterans, including ten directors of central intelligence, and more than three thousand oral histories of American intelligence officers, soldiers, and diplomats; is perhaps one of the foremost primary source documents of America’s most highly secretive and misunderstood government agencies.

The book however is not for everyone. Some of the biggest complaints from conservative readers are the author’s perceived liberal bias. Although most social conservatives have a hard time admitting that they might have been duped and manipulated by politicians such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, the information presented in the book from a historical perspective makes these complaints weak and fruitless. The chapter “Ineffective and Scared” Wiener will force ideological supporters of the republican party and every American to begin to see how the agency began to become a political tool for policy makers wanting larger defense budgets and to protect their own government jobs with the agency, rather than an impartial agency providing intelligence to the President.

In the chapter, “Ineffective and Scared” Wiener recounts how President Gerald Ford and his closet supporters avoided a potentially damaging legal battle with Congress, which might have exposed the CIA’s sensitive covert and illegal operations such as foreign assassinations. Although Ford Administration officials like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld won a short-term political battle with members of Congress wanting to investigate the CIA’s failures of espionage and analysis, the long-term damage to the American republic were evident with the run up to the Iraq war in 2003.

In the backdrop of the political fallout from the Vietnam War and the CIA’s involvement in neighboring Laos and Thailand, Wiener writes in Legacy of ashes:

The CIA was sacked like a conquered city. Congressional committees were combing through its files, the Senate focusing on covert action, the house homing in on failures of espionage and analysis. …The White House feared political destruction. In the Oval Office on October 13, 1975, the president and his men met to weigh the damage.

Any document which officially shows American involvement in an assassination is a foreign policy disaster” Colby told the president. “They also want to go into sensitive covert operations” – like Laos. Would the White House go to the courts to stop Congress? “We are better off with a political confrontation than a legal one”, said Donald Rumsfeld. To prepare for that fight, the president shook up his cabinet at the end of October 1975.

Although the White House and the unethical actions of Ford advisors like Donald Rumsfeld who became the Sec of Defense and Dick Cheney, who became Ford’s Chief of Staff in the cabinet shake up, undermined the Constitutional balance of power,the inability of the Congress to use its constitutional authority to investigate the CIA paved the way for the today’s spineless and corrupt congress.

In addition to installing Cheney as Chief of Staff and Rumsfeld as Sec of Defense, the Ford cabinet shake up also saw the firing of Bill Cosby of the CIA and the appointment of George H.W. Bush as the new director of the CIA. Bush who was neither a general, an admiral nor a spy, knew almost nothing about intelligence. However, as a political consolation for not being offered to be Ford’s vice president in August 1974, the former two time Congressman and former head of the National Republican Committee during the Watergate years, was offered the position of the CIA.

At the time of the appointment however, Bush was not happy with the appointment and saw the appointment as a political graveyard.

Soon after getting the job at the CIA, Bush loved the secrecy, the camaraderie, the gadgetry, and the international intrigue the CIA offered. As Wiener shrewdly puns in his book, “

The CIA was Skull and Bones with a billion dollar budget.”

More to the point, Wiener also astutely writes:

“In less than eleven months at the helm, he bucked up morale at headquarters, defended the CIA against all critics, and deftly used the agency to build up a political base for his soaring ambitions.”

Throughout the books 50 chapters and 516 pages, Mr. Wiener, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and three other best selling books on secret national security programs, extensively documents how political leaders in America have used the CIA as a political tool rather than an agency for national security.

From private security corporations like Blackwater and DynCorp over billing the American tax payer to the perpetual war that the institutions of the ‘national security state apparatus’ require to maintain their relevance and justification, the silence of a national debate on maintaining an $80 billion intelligence apparatus while cuts in social security are being discussed is alarming.

Most Americans are not willing to recognize the recent failures of the CIA in predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, the attacks on September 11, or the false information presented by George Tenet and the CIA that was used to justify the attack on Iraq in 2003. The book by Mr. Wiener makes a very strong case for the American people to demand that the CIA and other ‘national security state institutions’ be eliminated.

In a time of 12 percent unemployment in America, it is morally and ethically wrong that there is no serious discussion in the national dialogue about downsizing or capping the budget on institutions associated with the ‘national security state apparatus’, like the CIA.

A Message from MasterCard

2010-12-12T12:10:00.001-05:00

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange broadcasts from jail with some insight to what will happen if he's not freed.

The Vietnam War created the Khmer Rouge, Frightening to think what the Af-Pak War will produce

2010-12-10T22:57:00.007-05:00

Although the corporate owned mainstream media in America habitually refers to the conflict in Afghanistan as the War in Afghanistan, a more accurate description would be to refer to as the Afghanistan-Pakistan war or the Af-Pak War, as most foreign policy experts refer to the nine-year-old conflict. Similar to the Vietnam War, which the Af-Pak War recently surpassed in length, the conflict in Afghanistan has spilled over into a neighboring country that will undoubtedly result in similar disastrous consequences. While the war in Vietnam started by the United States helped create the Khmer Rouge in neighboring Cambodia which was responsible for one of the worst mass killings of the 20th Century , only history will reveal what kind of blowback will result in the American involvement in Pakistan’s Swat region.

A recent article by Fatima Bhutto, an Afghan-born Pakistani poet and writer, helps put the Af-Pak war in more context and the likely future blowback it will create.

According to the recent cache of State Department cables released by Wikileaks, his position and those of his colleagues in government haven’t wavered. In 2008, for example, Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani enthusiastically told American Ambassador Anne Paterson that he “didn’t care” if drone strikes were launched against his country as long as the “right people” were targeted. (They weren’t.) “We’ll protest in the National Assembly,” Gilani added cynically, “and then ignore it.”

In fact, protests by the National Assembly have been few and far between and yet, by the end of November, Pakistani territory had been targeted by American unmanned Predator and Reaper missile strikes more than 100 times this year alone. CIA drone strikes have, in fact, been a feature of the American war in Pakistan since 2004. In 2008, after Barack Obama won the presidency in the U.S. and Zardari ascended to Pakistan's highest office, the strikes escalated and soon began occurring almost weekly, later nearly daily, and so became a permanent feature of life for those living in the tribal borderlands of northern Pakistan.

Barack Obama ordered his first drone strike against Pakistan just 72 hours after being sworn in as president. It seems a suitably macabre fact that, according to a U.N. report on “targeted killings” (that is, assassinations) published in 2010, George W. Bush employed drone strikes 45 times in his eight years as President. In Obama’s first year in office, the drones were sent in 53 times. In the six years that drone strikes have been used in the fight against Pakistan, researchers at the New America Foundation estimate that between 1,283 and 1,971 people have been killed.

While the dead are regularly identified as “militants” or “suspected militants” in newspaper stories and on the TV news, they almost never have names, nor are their identities confirmed or faces shown. Their histories are always vague. The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) took a careful look at nine drone strikes from the last two years and concluded that they had resulted in the deaths of 30 civilians, including 14 women and children. (Perhaps, of course, superior American military intelligence classified them as “militants in training.”) Based on this study, an average rate of error can be calculated: 3.33 civilians mistakenly killed in each drone attack. The dead, Pakistanis will assure you, are largely unnamed, faceless, unindicted, and un-convicted civilians.

Pakistanis are considered irrelevant, however, and collateral damage, as it turns out, doesn’t seem to worry anyone in the governing elite.
The Pakistani media has welcomed the release of the State Department documents because much that reporters and pundits have long claimed (and which Washington has long denied) has now been confirmed: that, for instance, the mercenary private contractor Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) has been operating in Pakistan at the behest of the Americans, that the country’s military high command has given the green light for drone strikes on its own people, and that the infamously corrupt government of President Zardari has turned the country over to the Americans in exchange for money.

Please visit TomDispatch for the complete article by Fatima Bhutto.

It is perhaps a good thing that most Americans remain ignorant and continue watching sports and television shows like Dancing with the Stars. If Americans were awoken from their voyeuristic media induced coma, they would be frightened senseless learning how close Islamic militants are to getting a nuclear weapon in Pakistan.

Fatima Bhutto, an Afghan-born Pakistani poet and writer, is most recently the author of Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir (Nation Books, 2010). Her work has appeared in the New Statesman, the Daily Beast, and the Guardian, among other places. Her father, Murtaza Bhutto, son of Pakistan's former President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and an elected member of parliament, was killed by the police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto. Fatima lives and writes in Karachi, Pakistan.

Thomas Jefferson: "Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed."

2010-12-10T15:19:00.004-05:00

Transcript of Ron Paul's Speech to Congress

WikiLeaks’ release of classified information has generated a lot of attention in the past few weeks. The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news. Despite what is claimed, the information that has been so far released, though classified, has caused no known harm to any individual, but it has caused plenty of embarrassment to our government. Losing our grip on our empire is not welcomed by the neoconservatives in charge.

There is now more information confirming that Saudi Arabia is a principal supporter and financier of al Qaeda, and that this should set off alarm bells since we guarantee its Sharia-run government. This emphasizes even more the fact that no al Qaeda existed in Iraq before 9/11, and yet we went to war against Iraq based on the lie that it did. It has been charged by experts that Julian Assange, the internet publisher of this information, has committed a heinous crime, deserving prosecution for treason and execution, or even assassination.

But should we not at least ask how the U.S. government should prosecute an Australian citizen for treason for publishing U.S. secret information that he did not steal? And if WikiLeaks is to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents, why shouldn’t the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others also published these documents be prosecuted? Actually, some in Congress are threatening this as well.

The New York Times, as a results of a Supreme Court ruling, was not found guilty in 1971 for the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg never served a day in prison for his role in obtaining these secret documents. The Pentagon Papers were also inserted into the Congressional record by Senator Mike Gravel, with no charges of any kind being made of breaking any national security laws. Yet the release of this classified information was considered illegal by many, and those who lied us into the Vietnam war, and argued for its prolongation were outraged. But the truth gained from the Pentagon Papers revealed that lies were told about the Gulf of Tonkin attack. which perpetuated a sad and tragic episode in our history.

Just as with the Vietnam War, the Iraq War was based on lies. We were never threatened by weapons of mass destruction or al Qaeda in Iraq, though the attack on Iraq was based on this false information. Any information which challenges the official propaganda for the war in the Middle East is unwelcome by the administration and the supporters of these unnecessary wars. Few are interested in understanding the relationship of our foreign policy and our presence in the Middle East to the threat of terrorism. Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.

Questions to consider:

Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.

How Fox News Undermined Health Care Reform

2010-12-09T23:35:00.003-05:00

While most astute Americans understand that Fox News has long been nothing but the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and the owners of capital in America, a recent article by the independent watchdog group, Media Matters, emphatically proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

According to a recent article from The Cutline, a Yahoo News Blog,

Fox News has been accused before of promoting Republican talking points. Now, the Daily Beast reveals internal memos from Fox News executives that "echoed a key GOP talking point" during year's health care debate.

In October 2009, as the Democrats introduced a public insurance option, Fox News Washington DC managing editor, Bill Sammon, issued a memo to staff about how to describe the plan.

The Daily Beast blog had this take:

As the health-care debate was heating up in the summer of 2009, Republican pollster Frank Luntz offered Sean Hannity some advice.

Luntz, who counseled the GOP on how to sell the 1994 Contract With America, told the Fox News host to stop using President Obama’s preferred term for a key provision.
“If you call it a public option, the American people are split,” he explained. “If you call it the government option, the public is overwhelmingly against it.”

“A great point,” Hannity declared. “And from now on, I'm going to call it the government option, because that's what it is.”

For all the Americans making less than 60k year , the leaked memos by Media Matters show how these working class Americans were manipulated and deceived, and voted against their best interests. It is sad that many Fox viewers are foolish enough to think that a political party who has a large base of support on Wall Street, would care for the interests of people living along Main Street.

Like sheep being herded for slaughter.

Taiwanese news animators NMA and the Wikileaks Story

2010-12-09T13:45:00.007-05:00

Compliments of The Guardian.

The Taiwanese news animators NMA (Next Media Animation)have struck again with a video covering the arrest of Julian Assange. It features Sarah Palin with a rifle and a Canadian with bazooka.

Enjoy:

Jihad? Sorry, I don't want to miss Desperate Housewives

2010-12-08T21:23:00.004-05:00

Perhaps one of the most interesting State Department cables in the past few days was a news story from The Guardian newspaper related to American efforts to fight Islamic fundamentalism and the propaganda efforts of the US-funded al-Hurra TV news channel in Saudi Arabia.

According to The Guardian and the article: Jihad? Sorry, I don't want to miss Desperate Housewives.

Satellite broadcasts of the US TV shows Desperate Housewives and Late Show with David Letterman are doing more to persuade Saudi youth to reject violent jihad than hundreds of millions of dollars of US government propaganda, informants have told the American embassy in Jeddah.

Broadcast uncensored and with Arabic subtitles alongside sitcoms such as Friends on Saudi Arabia's MBC 4 channel, the shows are being allowed as part of the kingdom's "war of ideas" against extremist elements. According to a secret cable titled "David Letterman: Agent of Influence", they have been proving more effective than Washington's main propaganda tool, the US-funded al-Hurra TV news channel.

Al-Hurra has shown lengthy interviews with US politicians, including George Bush, but has run into problems with locally hired journalists. On one occasion it broadcast a call to arms against Israel by Hezbollah, which was not the plan when the channel was launched across the Middle East in 2004 after the Iraq invasion.

Diplomats said they believed the allure of actors such as Eva Longoria, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer meant commercial TV had a far greater impact than al-Hurra, which, according to one report, has cost US taxpayers up to $500m (£316m).

While some readers may take offense to the rhetoric used by Opinione that the United States uses “propaganda”, the term is actually used by American embassy officials in describing the US funded al-Hurra TV news channel in Saudi Arabia.

The following is taken directly from a US State Department cable provided by Pfc Bradley Manning and published by Wikileaks and The Guardian.

XXXXXXXXXXXX said the American programming on channels 4 and 5 were proving the most popular among Saudis. A look at the December 17 programming menu for MBC channel 4 reveals a 24-hour solid block of such programs as CBS and ABC Evening News, David Letterman, Desperate Housewives, Friends and similar fare, all uncensored and with Arabic subtitles. Channel 5 features US films of all categories, also with Arabic subtitles. XXXXXXXXXXXX told us that this programming is also very popular in remote, conservative corners of the country, where he said "you no longer see Bedouins, but kids in western dress" who are now interested in the outside world.

Over coffee in a Jeddah Starbucks, XXXXXXXXXXXX, and XXXXXXXXXXXX elaborated on the changes in the Saudi media environment. "The government is pushing this new openness as a means of countering the extremists," XXXXXXXXXXXX told Riyadh press officer. "It's still all about the War of Ideas here, and the American programming on MBC and Rotana is winning over ordinary Saudis in a way that 'Al Hurra' and other US propaganda never could. Saudis are now very interested in the outside world, and everybody wants to study in the US if they can. They are fascinated by US culture in a way they never were before."

From Tea baggers and Republicans who are against big government, and all Americans who know that the private sector can always do anything the government attempts in a more efficient and less expensive way, the 11 May 2009 cable from the American embassy in Jeddah further makes this point very clear.

An Analysis of the Media Coverage of Wikileaks

2010-12-08T16:57:00.009-05:00

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

-George Orwell

Before Wikileaks began posting State Department cables on its website, the Internet whistleblower organization sent the same information to five widely respected newspapers with a Spanish (El Pais), German (Der Spiegel), French (Le Monde), and English audience (New York Times- The Guardian). While all of the news outlets were chosen by Wikileaks for their reputation of being more independent than other newspapers in their respective countries, an analysis of how the State Department cables are being covered, closely reflect the level of press freedom in the country where these newspapers are located and the willingness of the press to exercise their constitutional right to challenge those in positions of power. The recent remarks by Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and other politicians in America, are chilling reminders of how war, secrecy, and calls for more security, are leading to fewer civil liberties and less democracy for Americans.

Although Americans have been largely insulated by the news media of the brutality and ugliness of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, other news outlets in countries such as Germany and Great Britain have not self censored their coverage of those wars. While Americans were only recently able to view images of flag draped coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base, people living in European countries regularly see the brutal and disturbing images of civilian causalities caused by American air strikes in Afghanistan, and the sectarian violence caused by car bombs in Iraq. The self-imposed censorship of American news outlets of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as compared to other newspapers in Great Britain and Germany, is reflected in the annual Press Freedom Index by the non-governmental organization, Reporters Without Borders.

Due to the excellent continuing research and advocacy conducted by the non-governmental organization, Reporters Without Borders, the mediocre coverage of the State Department memos by the New York Times represent why America is only ranked as the 20^th most free country in the world for press freedom. Threats of government prosecution by political leaders like Joseph Lieberman, fears of upsetting advertisers, and appearing to be unpatriotic, have all contributed to the inferior coverage of the New York Times and many American news outlets of the State Department memos given to Wikileaks by Private First Class Bradley Manning. Contrary to The New York Times, the press coverage by the British newspaper The Guardian and the Germany newspaper Der Spiegel has been more extensive and there have been no threats by the government against the media in those countries. Great Britain where The Guardian is located is currently ranked 19^th in the world for press freedom, while Germany where Der Spiegel is located is currently ranked as the 18^th most free country in the world for press freedom.

Some of the more notable artilces related to the US Department cables taken by Manning that you may not see in the mainstream US news include:

The Rocky US Relationship with Little Austria (Der Spiegel)

Saudi princes throw parties boasting drink, drugs and sex (The Guardian)

Chávez and drugs finance Nicaragua, say US dispatches (El Pais)

In 1941, the influential publisher of Time magazine Henry R. Luce, told his fellow Americans to “accept wholeheartedly our duty to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit”. The public statements by Joseph Lieberman that prosecutors should look into the release of the information by the New York Times could set a dangerous domestic precedent for more government regulation of the press and does not set a good example for the world. The remarks by Lieberman and other leaders in America corrupted by power will embolden repressive leaders in such countries as Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan to keep an ironclad hold on their own power by suppressing the press in their countries.

Instead of trying to score political brownie points with campaign contributors associated with Connecticut defense corporations, who all have a vested interest in maintaining perpetual war and conflict around the world, perhaps Senator Lieberman should start an investigation into why a corrupt Afghan leader was allowed to embezzle $ 50 million dollars out of his worn torn country of Afghanistan. A sum twice the amount of money the State of Connecticut has spent to develop a rail corridor from Springfield, Mass. to New Haven.

For Americans who cherish the First Amendment and the right of free speech, and all the other rights bestowed to its citizens in the U.S. Constitution, the recent remarks by Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman that prosecutors should investigate news organizations like the New York Times should be frightening.

At a time in American history when more information and transparency is essential for combating the negative consequences that war often imposes on a democracy, the public statements by Joseph Lieberman reflect a man more focused on protecting his own power and privilege than protecting the rights given to American citizens in the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment.

Interesting facts that the US main stream is down playing in the Wikileaks Scandal

2010-12-08T00:35:00.006-05:00

Drug use, homosexuality, and treachery; these are just some of the interesting facts that the US main stream is down playing in its coverage of the State Department cables given to Wikileaks by a depressed, gay, and self medicating young soldier serving in Iraq.

According a recent Guardian news article;

But who is Bradley Manning, and what motivated him?

Some insight into what drives him can be gleaned from the online chat he had from Iraq with a former hacker in which he talked about how he felt that no one had ever noticed him in life.

"[I'm] regularly ignored except when I had something essential then it was back to 'bring me coffee, then sweep the floor'," he told a fellow hacker who asked what he would do if his cover was blown during an online chat shortly after he is alleged to have sent the files to WikiLeaks. "[I] felt like I was an abused work horse."

Manning even added an "emoticon" of a crying face :'(.

"I've been so isolated so long," he went on, adding he was "self-medicating like crazy". "I just wanted to be nice, and live a normal life … but events kept forcing me to figure out ways to survive … smart enough to know whats going on, but helpless to do anything … no one took any notice of me."

Haven’t heard about those titillating facts associated with the Wikileaks scandal? It is probably due to the fact that a story involving anti-depressant drugs and homosexuality would not be a story Obama and White House Press Secretary Gibbs would want published during a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is being debated. Afraid it will derail any chance of the Obama administration winning even the smallest of political victories, the drug use and homosexuality of young Army PFC Manning have been quietly suppressed. Remember the story of Gibbs standing up for the White House Press Corps during the recent Presidential trip to India? It looks like Mr. Gibbs has called in his marker. Just another tragic example of how close the press and the government are in America.

By following the same script that the news media followed during the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal in 2004, the media is again focusing on the actions of lower level individuals like Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. Not focusing attention on the actions of high-level policy makers in the American government and the institutions of the national security state like the Pentagon and the CIA, conveniently allow the American public to avoid any responsibility or accountability. Instead of focusing their wrath on the individual actions of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, the press is allowing high-level policy leaders continue to pursue a war in Afghanistan that cannot be won, while in the process bankrupting the American country both financially and morally.

Ranging from Americans who love to drive huge gas guzzling SUVs running on imported oil from despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia, to the drug use by Ivy League college students that enables narco terrorism along the US Mexico border and the opium trade in Afghanistan, the press conveniently allows a wide range of American to avoid any responsibility. As anthropologist Laura Nader noted in her 1969 essay entitled, “Up the Anthropologist”, the study of social systems is often directed downwards, at those less powerful in a society rather than those in power. By focusing on the low-level actions of individual soldiers, the media hinders the American public from beginning to question the more substantive constitutional and moral implications of a country in perpetual state of war.

The recent story of Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman publicly declaring that the New York Times be investigated for releasing the Wikileaks documents, should be getting even the most fervent NRA card holding Republican concerned at how deeply militarism and secrecy has infected the American republic. Instead of trying to score political brownie points with Connecticut defense like Sikorsky Aircraft, Pratt and Whitney and Electric Boat, who all have a vested interest in maintaining perpetual war and conflict around the world, perhaps Senator Lieberman should look into why a corrupt Afghan leader was allowed to embezzle $ 50 million dollars out of his worn torn country.

Although America is mired in a never ending recession (at least for people who are unemployed) trapped in a perpetual war siege like mentality, and going bankrupt, all people talk about is sports, their iPhones, and what they are buying each other for Christmas.

It is so ass backwards in America, that even with all the unemployment in the country, the TV is filled with shows about people working or watching rich people live their lives getting plastic surgery and other daily drama.

Maybe more Americans should put down the remote control and begin to read a few books about the true condition of their "great" country. American voters distracted long enough from their self obsessed lives and the corporate mass media news anchors, which did not ask serious questions during the last election, politicians were more than happy not to tell them the true condition of their country.

Columbia students told job prospects harmed if they access WikiLeaks cables

2010-12-06T01:12:00.005-05:00

From The Guardian,

Columbia University warning students they risk future job prospects if they download any of the material.
The university's Office of Careers Services's cautionary note drew criticism from observers, who expressed alarm that the liberal bastions of academe in the US would be complicit in restrictions on access to the documents.

Instead of debating the issues of fighting a losing war in Afghanistan or talk about the other information in the documents released by Wikileaks, the US media is talking about the more sensational aspects of the State Department cables.

WikiLeaks dominated the Sunday morning talk shows, with views ranging from fears about what is still to come to calls for the Obama administration to adopt a more muscular approach.
Much of the debate centres on the need to restrict the number of people with access to classified material while avoiding a return to pre-9/11 when the number of people with such access was much more restricted.
Columbia University confirmed to the Associated Press that the Office of Career Services had emailed students at the university's school of international and public affairs, a recruiting ground for the state department.
The office said it had received advice from an alumnus who "recommends that you do not post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government."
The state department insisted no such advice had been sent out formally. Its spokesman, PJ Crowley, in an email to the Huffington Post, which had posted the Columbia University warning on its site, wrote: "This is not true. We have instructed state department employees not to access the WikiLeaks site and download posted documents using an unclassified network since these documents are still classified."

Just another example of how the US is turning into the garrison state that Eisenhower warned about in 1961.

America's Economic Death Spiral by the Pentagon Allows China to Prosper as a World Leader in Civil Technology

2010-12-06T00:20:00.010-05:00

Journalists photograph the bullet trains of a new high-speed railway linking Shanghai with Hangzhou Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2010 in Shanghai, China.

Shortly after entering office, President Obama , a candidate who ran on closing Guantanamo Bay and ending the war in Afghanistan, told an audience at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. “ Make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance”. Later at a commencement address to the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy, Obama stressed, “we will maintain America’s military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever seen".

What the President failed to tell those two groups as well as the American people as how the United States is going to pay to keep that military dominance and finest military force in the world.

As Chalmers Johnson observed in one of his books,

“the United States no longer has the capability to remain a global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster”.

To further highlight his point, the late Mr. Johnson quoted Robert Pape from the University of Chicago.

America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today’s world of rapidly changing knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as the death knell of America’s hegemony.

While most Americans are kept blissfully ignorant of the ever-declining status of their country by the news media, most political scientists agree that the United States is a crippled economic power. Most anti-imperial political scholars like Chalmers Johnson and Andrew Bacevich, will add that no world empire can sustain the military dominance that Obama spoke about, without risking insolvency.

It should be alarming to more Americans that China’s largest maker of rail vehicles, and partner General Electric Co. may bid to build high-speed train lines in California and Florida. Adding more insult to a recent story of China bidding on two rail projects in Florida and California, China has also said it may offer financing for a planned California high-speed line costing at least $40 billion to help local train makers break into the U.S. market.

The fact that China is also offering and is available to offer financing to cash strapped states to build high-speed rail lines in California and Florida, show how badly an overly expensive and inefficient military is costing the country. Instead of devoting national resources funding the next generation stealth destroyer or some other widely expensive weapons system, the United States should be developing its own high speed and light rail trains. To fund the critically needed infrastructure projects, all the government has to do is close some of the 800 foreign military bases it has around the world.

Even if the Pentagon was forced to close only 10 military bases a year, it would take 10 years to reduce only 12 percent of the American bases the US has around the world in wealthy countries such as Italy, Germany , and Great Britain. Not to mention undemocratic and despotic countries like Qatar, Bahrain, and Jordan.

While China recently built the fastest supercomputer in the world and is the leading maker of solar panels and wind turbine engines, America is wasting trillions of dollars on a bloated and inefficient military.

Wikileaks explained for TMZ viewers

2010-12-05T14:55:00.002-05:00

Another great skit on current events by Saturday Night Live.

Secret Deal Let Americans Sidestep UK Cluster Bomb Ban

2010-12-03T23:20:00.010-05:00

The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband signs the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008. Photo Credit: Gunnar Mjaugedal/catchlight.no

The recent release of State Department cables by Wikileaks verify that wherever the US military is located around the world, it undermines the rule of law and the democratic will of the people in the host country. The latest prominent example of how US militarism undermines the rule of law and the democratic will of the people in a country where the US military is located, is the disclosure that the United States is keeping cluster bomb munitions at bases on British soil in violation of a treaty signed by Great Britain banning the weapons.

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, commonly referred to as the Mine Ban Treaty, was adopted on 18 September 1997. The Treaty then entered into force on 1 March 1999.

The Mine Ban Treaty prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of antipersonnel mines. It is the most comprehensive international instrument for eradicating landmines and deals with everything from mine use, production and trade, to victim assistance, mine clearance and stockpile destruction.

According to a Guardian article,

Leaked US embassy dispatches, David Miliband, who was Britain's foreign secretary under Labour, approved the use of a loophole to maneuver around the ban and allow the US to keep the munitions on British territory.

Unlike Britain, the US had refused to sign up to an international convention that bans the weapons because of the widespread injury they cause to civilians.

The US military asserted that cluster bombs were "legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability" and wanted to carry on using British bases regardless of the ban.

Whitehall officials proposed that a specially created loophole to grant the US a free hand should be concealed from parliament in case it "complicated or muddied" the MPs' debate.

Gordon Brown, as prime minister, had swung his political weight in 2008 behind the treaty to ban the use and stockpiling of cluster bombs. Britain therefore signed it, contrary to earlier assurances made by British officials to their US counterparts.

The US had stockpiles of cluster munitions at bases on British soil and intended to keep them, regardless of the treaty.

The British military did not want the government to sign the Mine Ban treaty out of fear that the treaty would allow civilians in foreign countries like Egypt, where the British government dropped cluster bombs during the 1956 Suez conflict, to sue the British government. Despite opposition from the British military, the Mine Ban treaty was signed in 1997 and ratified by the British Parliament in 1998.

There are currently 156 States Parties to the treaty and the treaty is still open for ratification by signatories and for accession by those that did not sign before March 1999. States not party to the Mine Ban Treaty include China, Egypt, Finland, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States. Ironically, Afghanistan is a country that has signed and ratified the treaty, but because the United States has not, the US can still use cluster bombs and mines in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, which had suffered grievous civilian casualties from the continuing war on its territory, also unexpectedly signed up to the treaty in December 2008 "without prior consultation with the US government" and "despite assurances to the contrary from President Karzai".
Washington's reaction was to seek to convince the Kabul government that the US could still legally use cluster munitions on Afghan territory under the treaty, even if the Afghan regime itself could not.

The secret deal by members of the British Parliament to allow the US to transport and potentially use cluster bomb munitions from bases operated by the United Kingdom is the latest example of how secrecy and war undermine democracy.

The disregard and contempt by the United States military towards the wishes of British citizens mirrors similar actions by the United States military. In Japan the US military has balked at closing Marine Air Corp Base Futenma and the in Italy wthe US military and Italian government have disregarded the wishes of its citizens by refussing to stop the expansion of an Air Force base outside of Vicenza Italy.

If Blair was a poodle, what breed is Cameron?

2010-12-03T22:09:00.009-05:00

In one of the more droll cables released by Wikileaks and published by The Guardian newspaper, reveals how US diplomats are amused by Britain's 'paranoid' fears about so-called special relationship. While the cable release will undoubtedly make some Brits upset that their government is not as independent as the French government under Jacques Chirac or Germany under Gerhard Schröder, the cable also reveals the ever-continuing corrosive influence the American military industrial congressional complex plays in international relations.

Worried that the special relationship between the UK and the US may have been in danger because Barack Obama removed a bust of Winston Churchill given to George Bush by Tony Blair from the Oval Office, the incoming conservative British government tried to do everything in its power to placate the Americans. One of the things the incoming Tory government proposed to the Obama administration, was to reaffirm British support for the latest politically engineered and front-loaded American aircraft, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Political engineering is when a defense company like Lockheed which produces the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, will spread the production of the aircraft to as many congressional districts as possible. This will increase the weapons systems chance at being funded in the development stage and protect the program from any kind of future budget cuts or cancelling of the program.

In addition to political engineering, another bureaucratic gaming strategy used by defense companies like Lockheed and Boeing is frontloading. This tactic over promises what the weapons system will do and under estimates the economic burdens of the system. Over estimate the benefits and under estimate the burdens.

According to the Guardian:

Liam Fox, now the defense secretary, promised to buy American military equipment, while the current foreign secretary, William Hague, offered the ambassador a "pro-American" government. Hague also said the entire Conservative leadership were, like him, "staunchly Atlanticist" and "children of Thatcher".

Fox met the US ambassador, Louis Susman, a year ago. In a 10 December 2009 cable marked "confidential", Susman recorded: "Liam Fox affirmed his desire to work closely with the US if the Conservative party wins power … adding that 'we (Conservatives) intend to follow a much more pro-American profile in procurement'." He reportedly went on: "Increasing US-UK 'interoperability is the key' since the US and UK will continue to fight together in the future" and "expressed confidence regarding US leadership in Afghanistan and optimism about the way forward".

Britain's willingness to invest in expensive weaponry is a key part of the so-called special relationship. The UK's annual military budget is running at £37bn a year.

Fox's reference to more procurement from the US shows his zest for heavy spending on two future big-ticket items – the joint strike fighter [JSF], and the £20bn replacement for the Trident nuclear weapons system. The largely US-built JSF will be formidably expensive, and the original scheme was for Britain to buy up to 138 of them at £150m each, to go on giant aircraft carriers.

It is good to know that the British taxpayers will be soon supporting the corrupt and greedy American arms manufactures with the purchase of more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Here in America we do have socialism, it is socialism for the rich and corporate welfare for politically connected corporations. While unemployed Americans are denied unemployment assistance, wealthy Americans get tax breaks and politically connected companies over charge the American tax payer for unneeded weapon systems.

While the F-22 was the latest costly and over priced military aircraft to come out of the American military industrial congressional complex, the F-35 was originally proposed to the American people for a unit price of $ 184 million per aircraft, by 2008 the unit price for each F-35 has risen to over $ 335 million per aircraft.

It is comforting to know that the conservative Tory government of David Cameroon is willing to provide the corporate welfare to the American defense companies like Lockheed Martin have come to rely on for their corporate business growth model.

The Complex Shakes Down an Ally

2010-12-03T20:33:00.005-05:00

For people who are knowledgably of how the military industrial congressional complex has institutionalized corruption over the last 60 years in American politics , the recent story that the U.S. military has been charging its allies a 15% handling fee on hundreds of millions of dollars being raised internationally to build up the Afghan army, should not be too much of a surprise. The apparent shakedown by the US military in administering a 15 percent "administration fee" for German funded military projects in Afghanistan highlight how kickbacks and cost plus no bid contracts within the military industrial congressional complex has institutionalized corruption at the Pentagon. First, only a problem undermining the American political process and a lowering of the American standard of living, the latest cable release by Wikileaks reveal that the greed and corruption rampant at the Pentagon is now looking to extort money from some of America’s closest allies.

According to a Wikileaks memo published by The Guardian newspaper,

a protest to the US State Department from Germany's ambassador to NATO this year, Berlin raised questions about the fate of $ 50 million it dispensed last year as the biggest contribution to a "trust fund" for the Afghan national army.

In protests in Berlin, Brussels, and Washington last February the German government demanded to know what was happening to the money, why earmarked projects were not going ahead and why the US military was taking 15%.

A cable to Washington from the US mission to NATO sought instructions on how to respond to the protests from Ulrich Brandenburg, the German ambassador to the military alliance.

Ivo Daalder, the US ambassador to NATO, told Washington that the German complaint raised "serious political concerns".

"The appearance that the US is charging allies an excessive fee for the use of monies they have donated to the ANA [Afghan national army] trust fund may be difficult to explain away during a parliamentary debate. Brandenburg is probably correct in arguing that issues such as this could make it more difficult to encourage nations to donate to the trust fund."

The US ambassador added that the German protest may be "inaccurate" since the 15% was probably a "contingency" rather than an "administrative" fee.

No matter how the US ambassador to Germany tries to classify the "administrative fee" , the policy is wrong.

According to the non-profit, non-partisan group, National Priorities, as of December 2010, the United States has spent over $ 370 billion in Afghanistan. A good portion of that money was spent on highly paid private security guards (mercenaries), private security corporations, and defense companies supplying over priced equipment who have the sole purpose of profiting from a war that has been estimated to have killed over 10,000 innocent civilians, three times the amount of civilians killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In Afghanistan, a country over run with corruption, where bribery, extortion and embezzlement are the norm and the honest official is a distinct outlier, the latest news that the U.S. military is taking a 15 percent cut from German financial contributions demonstrates how institutionalized corruption has become at the Pentagon.

In an era of trillion dollar public deficits and a federal government unwilling to extend unemployment benefits to unemployed Americans, the political, economic, and cultural power of the military industrial congressional complex is evident. The lack of any discussion to hold public hearings asking why Afghanistan’s vice president took $52 million in cash out of the war torn country, further exemplifies how militarism in America is bankrupting the country, undermining American democracy, and lowering the living standards of average hard working honest Americans. Instead of debating the issue of extending Bush era tax cuts, the more essential debate of why America is still engaged in a war that has lasted longer than the Vietnam War and killed over 1,100 military members is being allowed to continue until 2014.

Although the recent Wikileaks release is disturbing and offers another prevailing argument why the war in Afghanistan is nothing more than a corporate welfare project for politically connected defense and security firms, the more tragic aspect of this story is that the news will be downplayed in the press and the war will continue to go on into the indefinite future, with millions of Americans out of work and an economy mired in a never ending recession.

Vietnam had the Pentagon Papers- Afghanistan and Iraq have Wikileaks

2010-12-02T22:03:00.004-05:00

As newspapers and the press are supposed to act as a check on the potential abuse of power by governments, the Wikileaks release of Pentagon documents earlier this year, followed by the release of state department memos, is proving how a free and independent press is the greatest protector of freedom and democracy. Trying to divert attention away from their own actions, and embarrassing lack of security on their own information, the trumped up charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is classic kill the messenger type of political defense.

Just as the government tried to do with the release of The Pentagon papers, a top secret 7,000-page study of US decision-making during the Vietnam war which revealed repeated lies and cover-ups by the government, the U.S. government is again threatening legal action to defend its illegal actions by threatening to arrest Julian Assange under the Espionage Act.

As the Daniel Ellsberg, the author of the Pentagon Papers, recently wrote in a Guardian Op-Ed,

“The administration responded by trying to suppress publication. It took out an injunction against myself and the New York Times in order to stop publication – a clear violation of the US constitution's first amendment – claiming that every page and every day's revelations were gravely damaging national security. We were eventually vindicated by the fact that no such damage was shown to have taken place.

As Ellsberg noted in reference to the release of Iraq War documents by Wikileaks earlier this year,

As with Vietnam, we have again seen evidence of a massive cover-up over a number of years by the American authorities. The logs reveal the human consequences of the continuing Iraq war, which have been concealed from the western public for too long: the countless instances of torture; the killing of hundreds of civilians at roadside checkpoints.

Now we know that the Pentagon, which claimed in the early years of the Iraq invasion either that it didn't count casualties or that it had no evidence of them, was indeed keeping meticulous records all along. It has reports of 66,000 civilian casualties – 15,000 of which were completely unknown to Iraq Body Count, the only public attempt to log the war's victims. That means 15,000 deaths that never made any news report – five times the number murdered on 9/11. It certainly would be news if they were American or British deaths. That's 15,000 families who've suffered huge anguish and who may potentially have been motivated to seek revenge against American or allied troops. For the Pentagon to lie or try to hide this kind of carnage can only be self-defeating.

Perhaps that the victims are "only" Iraqis shows the kind of mindset among the occupying commanders that kept this bloody war going for so long. Perhaps they failed to realize that the coalition's deadly activities have been such a powerful recruitment weapon for the resistance, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The political uproar in Washington over the release of the State Department memos, reveal how badly militarism has infected the American political system. It appears that the only time there is any kind of bipartisan support for anything in Washington DC in the post 9/11, perpetual war era is when the military is concerned. The silent cancer of militarism in America is clearly evident when both the top Democrat and Republican at the Senate Intelligence Committee called on Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute Assange for espionage.

Before these corrupt and dishonest public servants point the finger at Mr. Assange,and demand he be held responsible, someone should remind these politicians to look at their own hand and see that the hand in which they are pointing a finger at Mr. Assange has three fingers pointing back at themselves.

How the West Facilitated the New Autocratic Kleptocracy in Russia

2010-12-02T17:09:00.006-05:00

In January 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency released a report that declared that in the year 2025, there would be a mafia-controlled state in Europe. While at the time of the report Il Principe thought the report was a subtle reference to the country of Italy under the leadership of Silvio Berlusconi, new documents by the U.S. government released by Wikileaks, reveals that the CIA may have been actually referring to the current Russian government.

According to The Guardian and the cables released by Wikileaks,

Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centered on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organized crime are bound together to create a "virtual mafia state", according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower.

Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus: the cables paint a bleak picture of a political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300bn a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of the government and organized crime.

Among the most striking allegations contained in the cables, which were leaked to the whistleblowers' website WikiLeaks, are:

• Russian spies use senior mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations such as arms trafficking.

• Law enforcement agencies such as the police, spy agencies and the prosecutor's office operate a de facto protection racket for criminal networks.

• Rampant bribery acts like a parallel tax system for the personal enrichment of police, officials and the KGB's successor, the federal security service (FSB).

• Investigators looking into Russian mafia links to Spain have compiled a list of Russian prosecutors, military officers and politicians who have dealings with organized crime networks.

• Putin is accused of amassing "illicit proceeds" from his time in office, which various sources allege are hidden overseas.

The cable release by the US government reveals why Russia is considered the 154th least corrupt country in the world and is major contributing factor why Russia is ranked as being the 109th democratic country in the world.

However, the cable release by the US State Department does not acknowledge how the previous actions of the United States, the European Union, and the western led international financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank in the 1990s helped facilitate the creation of the current autocratic kleptocracy in Russia. To help understand how the former Soviet Union went from authoritarian communist rule, through a tough economic transition to market capitalism and finally to a corrupt autocratic kleptocracy, the 2007 book by Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, is an excellent starting point.

In the chapter, Bonfire of a Young Democracy: Russia Chooses “The Pinochet Option”, Naomi Klein explains that the glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) policies that Mikhail Gorbachev started in the 1980s, were intended to be followed up by Gorbachev in the 1990s with an economy based on a mixture of a free market and a strong social safety net. This macroeconomic model was based on the Scandinavian model, a model also followed by Japan, South Korea, and France.

However, during the 1991 G7 Summit, Gorbachev was told that the IMF and western financial institutions would only support Gorbachev if he embraced swift economic reforms based on deregulated capitalism advocated by Milton Friedman and other University of Chicago School of Economics alumni.

According to Klein:

Gorbachev knew that the only way to impose the kind of shock therapy being advocated by the G7 and the IMF was with force-as did many in the west pushing for these policies. The Economist Magazine, in an influential 1990 piece, urged Gorbachev to adopt “strong man rule…to smash the resistance that has blocked serious economic reform”. Only two weeks after the Nobel Committee had declared an end to the Cold War, The Economist was urging Gorbachev to model himself after one of the Cold War’s most notorious killers. Under the heading, “Mikhail Sergeevich Pinochet?” the article concluded that even though following its advice could cause “possible blood-letting” it might, just be the Soviet Union’s turn for what be called the Pinochet approach to liberal economics”. The Washington Post was willing to go further. In August 1991, the paper ran a commentary under the headline “Pinochet’s Chile a Pragmatic Model for Soviet Economy.” The article supported the idea of a coup for getting rid of slow-going Gorbachev, but the author, Michael Schrage, worried that the Soviet president’s opponents “had neither the savvy nor the support to seize the Pinochet option”. They should model themselves, Schrage wrote, after “a despot who really knew how to run a coup: retired Chilean general Augusto Pinochet.”

Emboldened by the external political support offered by western media outlets sympathetic to American and British capital interests, in combination with internal political unrest of the Soviet Union republics, Boris Yeltsin was able to challenge and eventually depose Mikhail Gorbachev. Although Gorbachev was reluctant to impose the economic shock therapy the west was looking for, Yeltsin quickly implemented the radical and draconian economic measures in hope of securing large sums of western financial aid.

In order to institute many of the financial stabilization policies the west was advocating for, the Moscow newspaper, Nezavisimaya, noted that Yeltsin appointed the notorious strongman Yury Skokov “in charge of the defense and repressive departments; the Army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Committee.” The decisions were clearly connected; “Probably the strong Skokov can ‘ensure’ strict stabilization in politics while the ‘strong’ economists guarantee it in the economy.”

Eager to satisfy the west, in October 1991 Yeltsin announced the lifting of price controls and the first phase of the privatization of 225,000 state-owned companies. Many western economists including Joseph Stiglitz supported the actions of Mr. Yeltsin.

In a paper written by Stiglitz when he was serving as chief economist at the World Bank, Stiglitz wrote, “Only a blitzkrieg approach during the ‘window of opportunity’ provided by the ‘fog of transition’ would get the changes made before the population had a chance to organize to protect its previous vested interests.”

According to Klein in the Shock Doctrine;

The average Russian consumed 40 percent less in 1992 than in 1991, and a third of the population fell below the poverty line.

The ‘window of opportunity’ for the economic reform advocated for by the west would come to an abrupt end in 1993 when the Russian Parliament endorsed a budget bill that did not follow IMF demands for strict austerity. The budget bill passed by the Parliament was seen by Yeltsin as a challenge to his power, who was desperate to maintain IMF funding, which was propping up the ailing Russian economy.

Although the Russian Parliament had Constitutional authority to do what it was doing with the budget bill, Yeltsin and the west were not happy with the situation. In 1993 before testimony given to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Clinton appointee Lawrence Summers, testified that the Russian government must do more to ensure continued IMF multilateral support. In other words, the IMF was not happy with the backtracking on reforms by the Russian Parliament.

The statement by the IMF was interpreted by Yeltsin that he had western support and a few days after the statement by the IMF Yeltsin issued decree 1400, announcing that the constitution had been abolished and the Russian Parliament was to be dissolved. Two days later however, a special session of Parliament voted 636-2 to impeach Yeltsin for this outrageous act (the equivalent of the U.S. president unilaterally dissolving Congress). This set the stage for a prolonged confrontation between Yeltsin and supporters of democracy.

Although the initial confrontation between Russian President Yeltsin and the Russian Parliament was peaceful and the two sides were moving towards early elections to settle the dispute, news from a recent Polish election and the loss of power by the Solidarity party which also implemented the same kind of economic shock therapy on its citizens, caused Yeltsin to abandon any support he might have had for early elections to end the standoff. This set the stage for a confrontation between the heavily armed Yeltsin groups of the military and secret police, and an unarmed civilian resistance. While a clear sign from the United States or the EU could have forced Yeltsin to enter negotiations, he only received encouragement from Western leaders.

On October 4, 1993, Yeltsin ordered a reluctant Army to attack the Russian Parliament building and arrest the members of Parliament. Using attack helicopters, tanks, armored personnel carriers and elite troops, the Army operation killed over five hundred people and arrested over 300 congressional deputies and staff workers. As Naomi Klein writes in The Shock Doctrine,

all to defend Russia’s new capitalist economy from the grave threat of democracy.

The members of the Russian Parliament, who wanted to uphold the new freedom and democracy bestowed upon them by the end of the Soviet Union, were instead portrayed by the western media as old hardliners trying to retake control of the country. Even some of the most liberal American newspapers like the Washington Post which declared, "Victory Seen for Democracy” and the Boston Globe, which declared "Russia Escapes a Return to the Dungeon of Its Past", perpetuated the fallacy.

While it is easy for political pundits to advocate for a military coup in a foreign country to enable western capitalists to take advantage of the newly opened up markets, these chicken hawk neo-liberal economic pundits have never suffered the economic upheaval and other social injustices associated with the policies they promote.

Similar to the ‘blowback’ of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the inability of the American public to put previous actions of the United States into context, the support of Mr. Yeltsin by the U.S. and IMF in the 1990s and the ensuing subversion of Russia’s burgeoning democracy ,is a geo-economic example of blowback.

Saudi Financing of al-Qaida and how Perpetual war is Facilitated

2010-12-01T23:15:00.006-05:00

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Too bad none of the infotainment outlets like CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, etc have the courage or honesty to connect the dots as Stewart did when he discusses how Saudi donors are financing Sunni militants in Iraq. Of all the leaked documents by Wikileaks, the ones dealing with Saudi Arabia, the United States, Pakistan, and Iran are the most interesting and should be the most alarming for Americans.

The release of documents downloaded by Pfc Bradley Manning and submitted to four major news outlets validates what many astute and honest political scholars have been saying since 2007.

Il Principe particularly likes how Jon Stewart mimics to be smoking pot in the video clip. This is a jab at all the status quo apologists who say that people who watch the Daily Show are nothing more than pot smoking college age kids.