Author's posts
Feb 21 2010
Politico Smears Obama’s Islamic Envoy
Sometimes I wish I could feel more sympathy for our amiable non-entity of a President, so maybe I should be grateful to the miserable news-whores at Politico.com for inspiring me with a desire to enlist in the Army of Obamabots and bash Politco’s internet servers into smithereens!
Politico begins their smear of President Obama’s new Islamic envoy, Rashad Hussain, with a ridiculously demeaning and dishonest headline…
“Islam envoy retreats on terror talk!”
President Barack Obama’s new Islamic envoy, Rashad Hussain, changed course Friday – admitting that he made sharply critical statements about a U.S. terror prosecution against a Muslim professor after initially saying he had no recollection of making such comments.
Hussain’s reversal came after POLITICO obtained a recording of his presentation to a Muslim students’ conference in Chicago during which he can be heard portraying the government’s cases towards professor Sami Al-Arian, as well as other Muslim terrorism suspects, as “politically motivated persecutions.” Al-Arian later pled guilty to aiding terrorists.
So apparently Obama appointed a sympathizer with confessed terrorists as his envoy to Islam!
Get out your impeachment tools! That born-in-Kenya jigaboo is selling us out!
What Politico “forgets” to mention is that the federal prosecution and brutal detention of Professor Sami Al-Arian deserves special prominence even among the many other blatant and sadistic miscarriages of justice inflicted on the victims of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their gang of goddamned tools in the FBI and DOJ.
Professor Al-Arian was indeed tried by the Bush DOJ…
…after 11 years of Federal Bureau of Investigation investigations, wiretaps and searches, three and a half years of trial preparation and process, time Al-Arian spent in jail, most of it in solitary confinement.[21] Amnesty International said Al-Arian’s pre-trial detention conditions “appeared to be ‘gratuitously punitive’” and stated “the restrictions imposed on Dr. Al-Arian appeared to go beyond what were necessary on security grounds and were inconsistent with international standards for humane treatment.
And after so much investigation and so much brutalization of Professor Al-Arian before he was tried, how did the trial turn out?
The six-month trial featured more than 80 witnesses and 400 transcripts of intercepted phone conversations and faxes. At the end of the prosecution’s case, Al-Arian’s attorneys rested without offering a defense. On December 6, 2005, after 13 days of deliberations, the jury acquitted Al-Arian on eight of 17 counts and deadlocked on the others with 10-2 favoring acquittal.
Unanimous acquittal on 8 charges! 10-2 for acquittal on all the others!
In the context of federal courts where typically about 90% of defendants are convicted, these verdicts in favor of Professor Al-Arian were the equivalent of writing “BULLSHIT” across the sky in flaming letters!
Feb 19 2010
“Mass Casualties” and “Human Shields”
Dahr Jamail has just posted a review of “Mass Casualties: A Young Medic’s True Story of Death, Deception and Dishonor in Iraq,” by Michael Anthony, with extensive quotes from the book.
“Look around,” the drill sergeant said. “In a few years, or even a few months, several of you will be dead. Some of you will be severely wounded or so badly mutilated that your own mother can’t stand the sight of you. And for the real unlucky ones, you will come home so emotionally disfigured that you wish you had died over there.”
“I think about why I’m fighting this war and my eyes tear up. I think of all the people we’ve killed. I think of all the people’s families – mothers, fathers, siblings – and how they’ll never see them again … I think about the war and I feel nothing. I think about life and death, mine and everyone else’s, and I feel nothing. I think about myself and I don’t care if I live or die. On these nights, mortars go off and I won’t get out of bed. I’ll lie in bed as the bombs go off. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I live or die, nothing matters – I like it when I feel nothing.”
“I had a friend who didn’t want to go to Iraq so he purposely failed five drug tests in a row (smoking pot and doing coke) he still got sent to Iraq. There was one guy in my unit who didn’t want to go to Iraq, he told our commanders he was suicidal, they said he still had to go. The soldier then went and got a swastika tattooed on his shoulder, he told the commanders that he was racist and hated everyone except white people; commanders said he still had to go to Iraq. The next day he takes a bottle of pills and tries to kill himself – and I’m sure if he were physically capable of it, he still would have had to go to Iraq. There was a guy in my unit who was on anti-depressant medication; our commanders said they couldn’t deploy him on that medication that he should stop taking it. The next day he tries to stab someone and is put in jail, he still went to Iraq with us. There are more and more of the same stories … There’s literally nothing you can do to not go to Iraq and I think that’s why suicidal and homicidal patients aren’t getting the care they need because before it’s time to go overseas, you’re going no matter what, and after you get back, the government doesn’t care.”
Meanwhile Fox News is screaming about “human shields” supposedly deployed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In an effort to create hostility between coalition troops and local Afghans, insurgents are also reportedly using civilians as human shields – deliberately trying to force coalition troops to fire upon non-combatants.
This very emotive phrase, “human shields,” was even solemly echoed by some dim-witted fourth-tier bloggers on usually progressive sites like firedoglake, where the in-house “expert” about Afghanistan Jim White wrote…
New reports are now suggesting that the largest civilian casualty event so far in the offensive may not have been due to improper targeting, but instead resulted from the use of civilians as human shields by Taliban fighters.
And the miserable Mr. White also quotes this steaming pile of horseshit…
The ISAF later suggested that the coalition’s initial apology (for killing 10 or 12 civilians including 6 children) had been in error. Coalition investigators now think that the rocket hit its target and two insurgents died in the strike in addition to the 12 civilians, ISAF officials said. They’re trying to determine whether those Taliban were holding the civilians prisoner.
White only adds that “it should not require pointing out that the use of civilian hostages as human shields is a war crime.”
So let’s retract that apology, because along with 6 children and 4 other civilians, maybe we also killed 2 Taliban!
And even supposing that the Taliban really were holding thoise civilians hostage, why is it supposedly okay, inevitable, no apology required, to kill ten civilians just to take out 2 Taliban? Ordinary policemen encounter hostage situations all the time, and it’s never okay, inevitable, no apology required if cops killed 10 civilians to take out 2 bank-robbers.
So what’s the tremendous, all-changing difference that somehow excuses civilian casualties in combat, no apology required?
In this particular instance, instead of making do with idiotic hand-waving about the “heat of battle” from some no-combat shit-head apologist for all things Obama, we actually have a specific explanation from an honest-to-God soldier in the combat zone, General Mohiudin Ghori.
Ghori, the senior commander for Afghan troops in the area, accused the Taliban of placing civilian hostages in the line of fire. “Especially in the south of Marjah, the enemy is fighting from compounds where soldiers can very clearly see women or children on the roof or in a second-floor or third-floor window,” he was quoted by Associated Press as saying. “They are trying to get us to fire on them and kill the civilians.”
His forces were having to choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians, Ghori said, echoing comments by British commanders in the area about Taliban tactics.
Choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians!
Choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians!
The fiendish Taliban might force our forces to slow down and “distinguish militants from civilians!”
Unthinkable!
Feb 17 2010
Obama’s Neo-Con “Expert” for the Middle East
While I was browsing through the Washington Post Monday, February 15, 2010, in my never-ending quest to understand something (please, God, anything!) about the bizarro politics of this bizarro nation wherein I dwell, but instead (as usual) thinking “What the fuck?” after every article, I came across this very peculiar paragraph buried in an article about Hillary Clinton’s current junket to Saudi Arabia.
In his meeting with Obama in May, Abdullah turned down a request for Saudi Arabia to accept detainees from Yemen and rejected making any confidence-building steps toward Israel. (The Saudis themselves had thought Obama’s visit was a courtesy call and they were surprised so many tough issues were raised without much preparation.) The tough session helped convince Obama he needed great expertise in the Middle East on his staff, which is one reason why Dennis Ross was moved from the State Department, where he worked for Clinton, to the White House, officials said.
Dennis Ross! Great expertise? What the fuck?
Ross was a noted supporter of the Iraq war and he signed two Project for a New American Century (PNAC) letters in support of the war in March 2003.[20] However, he opposed some of the Bush Administration’s policies for post-war reconstruction.[13] He also opposed Bush’s policy of avoiding direct talks with Iran.[2]
According to Wall Street Journal, Ross, along with James Steinberg and Daniel Kurtzer, were among the principal authors of presidential candidate Barack Obama’s address on the Middle East to AIPAC in June 2008. [21]
Great expertise? This idiot was a cheerleader for one of the greatest foreign-policy disasters in the history of the United States! He’s a neo-con stooge from Club PNAC, along with Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney!
And then there’s AIPAC!
In the mid-1980s Ross co-founded with Martin Indyk the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy (“WINEP”)
And didn’t Ross write a script right out of the AIPAC playbook as one of “the principal authors of presidential candidate Barack Obama’s address on the Middle East to AIPAC in June 2008,” so well described by Dana Milbank:
A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday — and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner.
As a pandering performance, it was the full Monty by a candidate who, during the primary, had positioned himself to Hillary Clinton’s left on matters such as Iran.
Obama even outdid President Bush in his pro-Israel sentiments. On the very day that Obama vowed to protect Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — drawing a furious denunciation from the Palestinian Authority — Bush announced that he was suspending a move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
So all in all the neo-con stooge for AIPAC Dennis Ross isn’t exactly an obvious choice for “great expertise” about the Middle East, especially at a time when we’re trying to mend fences with Saudi Arabia and enlist their assistance with sanctions against Iran.
What the fuck?
Feb 15 2010
Missiles That Killed 12 in Marjah Didn’t “Miss”
NATO has disclosed that six of the civilians killed by rockets which crashed into their home outside the southern Afghan town of Marjah were children.
NATO said Monday the rockets missed their target by about 600 meters, or about a third of a mile.
The official story would be bad enough, even if it weren’t literally incredible.
One of Lockheed Martin’s high-tech High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems “missing” its target by as much as 600 meters is bizarrely unlikely; two missiles “missing” by exactly the same distance and hitting exactly the same target is about as unlikely as two meteors hitting exactly the same military genius on his pointy little head.
This obviously wasn’t a technological failure, which everybody could simply shrug off as “shit happens.”
This was a failure of what passes for “intelligence” in our far-flung war-zones, from Yemen to Iraq to Pakistan to Afghanistan and wherever else we may be killing “suspected jihadis” or “suspected insurgents” or “suspected al Qaeda operatives” all over the world, and this particular “mistake” in Marjah was just an unusually blatant demonstation that the CIA and Pentagon and Barack Obama don’t have a fucking clue who they are killing.
So our official story puts the stink on technology, but it wasn’t fucked-up electronics that killed those children in Marjah.
It was fucked-up Americans.
Feb 15 2010
Eternal Afghanistan
From those who have not, everything will be taken, even the little that they have.
-Matthew 13:12
Feb 14 2010
NATO TRIUMPHS IN AFGHANISTAN!
In an unusually honest appraisal (compared to their usual left-wing rubbish), the Guardian has announced NATO’s complete military and humanitarian TRIUMPH IN AFGHANISTAN!
Just read the caption under their awesome photograph at the top of the story, which they ran immediately under the equally awesome headline “Coalition troops force Taliban retreat from key stronghold.”
“US Marines from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, protect an Afghan man and his child after Taliban fighters opened fire in the town of Marjah, in Nad Ali district, Helmand province.”
The Afghan man huddles behind US Marines, who protect him and his child against homicidal Taliban maniacs!
And it only gets better!
Hours before the offensive, the commander of British forces in Helmand, Brigadier James Cowan, had briefed UK troops to avoid shooting even if it meant putting their lives in danger. He said: “Hold your fire if there is a risk to the innocent, even if this puts you in greater danger. Restraint requires courage.”
HURRAH!
By nightfall not a single civilian casualty had been reported!
Zero civilian casualties! Taliban on the run!
Reporters embedded with the troops yesterday reported US Cobra helicopters and Harrier jets firing missiles at tunnels, bunkers and other defensive positions before the ground offensive began.
NATO only fired missiles at “tunnels and bunkers and other defensive positions!”
No houses or civilians were harmed in the making of this imbecilic cartoon which is supposed to represent the murderous and illegal occupation of Afghanistan and the slaughter of tens of thousands of primitive tribesmen who never attacked England or the United States before we invaded their God-forsaken country.
Feb 13 2010
Chicken-Heartland
At this very moment, the awesome military power of the United States is focused on the miserable little town of Marjah in Afghanistan.
Marjah! It doesn’t even look like any kind of town at maximum magnification on Google Maps, as you can see in this bizarre video.
Where the fuck is Marjah? There’s no “there” there!
And now…
Marjah is getting plastered by NATO and the ISAF and the US Marines…
For the fifth fucking time since our goddamned occupation of Afghanistan began…
Nine fucking years ago!
Meanwhile, back in the chicken-heartland of America…
Red state “honchos” can’t stop pissing their pants for fear that prisoners from Guantanamo might be relocated at a super-maximum security prison in their backyard!
Omigod what if a terrorist escaped?
Abdul on the loose in Alabama!
Chicken-Heartland of America!
The good news is that blue states are just as brave!
New York can’t put KSM on trial without shutting down the city! Tanks in the streets! Black helicopters!
Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear!
And in the Oval Office, our fearless leader, Barack Obama…
Harharharhar!!!
Our fearless leader, Barack Obama…
Harharharhar!!!
Barack Obama is throwing his own Attorney-General under the bus in a piss-pants scramble to move KSM out of Manhattan and maybe out of the federal courts anywhere.
Retreat before the power of right-wing morons!
Beware of Abdul on the loose in Alabama!
Bomb a God-forsaken little town in Afghanistan for the fifth fucking time, in nine fucking years!
And that’s the news tonight, February 12, 2010, from Marjah in Helmand, in faraway Afghanistan, and from New York and Washington and Mobile and Petaluma and everywhere in between, in the chicken-heartland of America.
Feb 11 2010
TAG THE COURT!
(This diary was originally posted as a comment on the Wall Street Journal’s website.)
Chief Justice Roberts’ concurrence with the majority opinion in Citizens United is extraordinarily simple.
“-the Act violates the First Amendment, because it prohibits political speech.”
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/…
(The “Act” is of course the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002(BCRA))
No prohibition of political speech! And obviously this simple principle applies most directly to the public domain, like public streets and the airwaves. I can wave a sign on the street and corporations can advertise on TV, and so could I, if only I could afford $100K (or more!) per minute to “speak.”
But what I can afford is a can of spray paint, and the facade of the Supreme Court Building, so beautifully designed by Cass Gilbert in the Beaux Arts style in 1932, still belongs to the public, in spite of so much determined effort by Republicans to privatize everything in Washington.
And according to the simple principle so clearly enunciated by Chief Justice Roberts in his concurring opinion, no law can prohibit my “political speech” in the public domain, and in particular, on the facade of the Supreme Court, expressed in flaming orange letters 10 feet high.
“CLARENCE THOMAS IS A MORON!”
“ANTONIN SCALIA IS A TORTURE-PIG AND PERVERT!”
Orange letters 10 feet high!
“DICK CHENEY SHOULD BE HANGED FOR WAR-CRIMES!”
And I’m sure that every reader and employee of the Wall Street Journal will support my “political speech” on the facade of the Supreme Court, because Chief Justice Roberts is always right (FAR RIGHT!) and no law can prohibit “political speech” in the public domain!
Feb 10 2010
War With Iran Tomorrow?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Feb. 11 would mark the demise of “the liberal capitalist system,” adding that its champion, America, was on the decline and that Iran and its Islamic Revolution were on the rise.
According to a Jan. 28 translation from BBC Monitoring Middle East, Ahmadinejad spoke on official Iranian television, saying that this year’s “Ten Days of Dawn” celebration, marking the anniversary of the country’s Islamic Revolution, would see the “demise” of the American system.
“I believe that 22 Bahman [ February 11 in the Persian calendar] this year marks the demise of the liberal capitalist system.” Ahmadinejad said.
Iran’s supreme leader said the country will deliver a ‘punch’ that will stun the West to mark tomorrow’s 31st anniversary of its Islamic Revolution.
In an address to air force leaders, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: ‘The Iranian nation, with its unity and God’s grace, will punch the arrogance [Western powers] on the 22nd of Bahman [February 11] in a way that will leave them stunned.’
Daniel Pipes is making the case for Obama.
(Obama) needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.
Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.
Circumstances are propitious.
McLaughlin & Associates, May 2009: When asked whether they would support “using the [U.S.] military to attack and destroy the facilities in Iran which are necessary to produce a nuclear weapon,” 58 percent of 600 likely voters supported the use of force and 30 percent opposed it.
Fox News, September 2009: When asked “Do you support or oppose the United States taking military action to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons?” 61 percent of 900 registered voters supported military action and 28 opposed it.
And Sarah Palin is already on board!
Feb 09 2010
Death and Idiocy in the Arghandab River Valley
The Arghandab River Valley
US Army Captain Paul W. Pena died in the Arghandab River Valley January 19, 2010. He was 27 years old.
As a skinny teenager in the Junior ROTC program at San Marcos Baptist Academy in San Marcos, Texas, he worked quietly behind the scenes, ensuring that the unit’s annual inspection and other events went smoothly.
He rose to the rank of cadet major and graduated from the academy fifth in his class in 2000, said school spokeswoman Shelley Henry. Then he attended the military academy at West Point, graduating in 2004.
A teacher at the San Marcos academy, Max Smith, recalled Pena as a diligent, well-behaved boy. “He always came back here and let you know he was OK and that he appreciated all you’d done for him.”
Every week I read through the WashPo’s brief obituaries of US soldiers killed in Afghanistan, and try to understand something about the particular neighborhood of that God-forsaken country where each of them perished. But there isn’t much information online about the Arghandab River Valley.
The entry in Wikipedia repeats an article from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica verbatim.
There is a good deal of cultivation along the river, but few villages. The high road from Kabul to Kandahar passes this way (another reason for supposing the Tarnak to be Arachotus), and the people live off the road to avoid the onerous duties of hospitality.
People lived off the road to avoid the onerous duties of hospitality in 1911. And now they host the US Army!
Captain Pena represents the nobility of military service. The idiocy of it is represented by U.S. Lt.-Col. John Newman, who arrived in Arghandab River Valley in August 2009
U.S. Lt.-Col. John Newman was assigned to directly command the Arghandab troops. He began speaking slowly, carefully, his translator jumping in with words in Dari. There was consternation and shuffling among the elders. Then a whispered conference with Newman.
The translation should have been in Pashto, the local language, not Dari, also known as Eastern Persian, which is commonly spoken in central and northern Afghanistan.
It was just a mistake, you might say, but it was also a mistake that Lt.-Col. John Newman and his “translator” could not have made if they had ever spoken to anybody who lives in the Arghandab River Valley, before Lt.-Col. John Newman began yammering at the local elders.
Feb 07 2010
Hypocritical Prosecution for War-Crimes in Miami
From the Guardian…
The American-born son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor has been ordered to pay more than £14m in compensation to five people tortured during the West African country’s civil war.
A judge in the US made the order a year after the same Miami court sentenced Charles McArthur Emmanuel Taylor, known as Chuckie, to 97 years in prison for his role in one of Africa’s bloodiest chapters; he was the first person to be convicted by a federal court of committing offences outside the US.
The 32-year-old led the notorious Anti-Terrorist Unit, a band of pro-government paramilitaries nicknamed the Demon Forces who carried out murder and torture during his father’s presidency from 1997 to 2003.
Witnesses at his criminal trial in 2008 spoke of hearing him laugh as prisoners were abused and how the Anti-Terrorist Unit “did things like beating people to death, burying them alive, rape – the most horrible kind of war crimes”.
A spokesman for United States immigration and customs enforcement said that it was a “clear message the US would not be a safe haven for human rights violators.”
The US isn’t a safe haven for war-criminals?
Bullshit!
Remember these fine words from Barack Obama?
In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.
It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.
The torture memos from Bybee and Yoo cover everybody else, and Bybee and Yoo aren’t guilty either! It was just “bad judgement!”
Abracadabra!
Everybody walks! Nobody goes to jail!
So forget about the “clear message the US would not be a safe haven for human rights violators.”
The real message for the torturers of tomorrow is…
Get some whore of a lawyer (like John Yoo) in your local DOJ to opine that whatever you do is legal, and then you can chop up your victims with no more fear of prosecution than if you were chopping onions.
Feb 06 2010
Pictures of the Great Recession
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has posted a very illustrative discussion of the current recession on their website, and for readers confused by the simultaneous decline in jobs and the official measure of unemployment, 20,000 fewer jobs while “unemployment” declined from 10% to 9.7%, one picture may be more informative than so many curiously defined statistics.
The shaded area in the graph shows the upper and lower bounds of all recessions after World War II. The purple line is the current recession.
And meanwhile in Sacramento, Reno, and Seattle…
