Friday, November 25, 2011

Obama's War.

The “Left” and Libya by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Sometimes one gets the impression that God must have a sense of humor, and that God probably does enjoy a good game of dice with the universe.

It turns out that one of the big supporters of the Iraq and Libya wars is the, wait for it .... "Paterno Family Professor" at Penn State University. No big surprise really. After all, its not a huge leap from protecting someone who rapes 10 year old boys to supplying the endowment that pays for a professor that supports the rape of foreign countries.

That's a God who's a patient practical jokester spending years setting this up so maybe we can simultaneously laugh and become enlightened to see how wrong and evil all this violence and killing really is. Of course, one would have thought sending his son to get murdered trying to teach us not to kill each other might have gotten the message through to us monkeys, but apparently neither crucifiction nor practical jokes is enough to keep us monkeys from finding new ways to be horribly evil to each other. I hope God is infinitely patient, because any mere mortal's patience would probably be wearing a bit then with us murdering monkeys by now.

Here in America, we stay so far away from the wars. Our wars are sanitized. We get reports of victory from the battlefields. We hear accounts of our wonderful allies and their struggle for victory. Of course, our virtuous allies in the Northern Alliance ended up putting people in container trucks and leaving them in the sun with no food or water to torture and kill their vanquished opponents. And now the tales of retribution from the wonderful saints we supported in Libya are starting to come forward. But still, we usually just hear stories of our great victories. So, read this quote that comes from this article to get a good close-hand look at what our Nobel Peace Prize winning President has really done in the world.

A team of Russian doctors wrote to the president of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, as follows:

“Today, 24 March, 2011, NATO aircraft and the U.S. all night and all morning bombed a suburb of Tripoli – Tajhura (where, in particular, is Libya’s Nuclear Research Center). Air Defense and Air Force facilities in Tajhura were destroyed back in the first 2 days of strikes and more active military facilities in the city remained, but today the object of bombing are barracks of the Libyan army, around which are densely populated residential areas, and, next to it, the largest of Libya’s Heart Centers. Civilians and the doctors could not assume that common residential quarters will be about to become destroyed, so none of the residents or hospital patients was evacuated.

“Bombs and rockets struck residential houses and fell near the hospital. The glass of the Cardiac Center building was broken, and in the building of the maternity ward for pregnant women with heart disease a wall collapsed and part of the roof. This resulted in ten miscarriages whereby babies died, the women are in intensive care, doctors are fighting for their lives. Our colleagues and we are working seven days a week, to save people. This is a direct consequence of falling bombs and missiles in residential buildings, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries, which are operated and reviewed now by our doctors. Such a large number of wounded and killed, as during today, did not occur during the total of all the riots in Libya. And this is called ‘protecting’ the civilian population?”

That's Obama's war. A close up and dirty look at who the anti-war movement voted into office and exactly what he's doing in the world. If you vote Democratic in the upcoming elections, you are voting for more bombings of hospitals full of sick pregnant women. This is what you get when you vote Democrat these days.

The sad part is that we are broke as a nation. We are laying off teachers. We are letting our infrastructure crumble. How many billions did we spend on regime change in Libya? And exactly how does that improve the lives of ordinary Americans who are struggling to find work? How did it improve the lives of Americans who haven't had a raise in years? How does new leadership in Libya improve the lives of Americans who are fighting to save their homes from being seized by Obama's friends on Wall $treet? And yet, Obama and the Democrats are supporting the plans of a far-right-wing former Senator to gut social programs and steal from our children's and grandchildren's retirement in order to pay for this. Americans are told not only that we can't have any help, but that we have to pay the bill for this madness. And now they want a war with Iran. And now they are sending a carrier to Syria. It never ends.

We know Republicans aren't the answer. We know Democrats aren't the answer. Oh, there's a few decent people in each party who know this is wrong. The Ron Paul's and the Barbara Lee's who stand against this madness. But, those types are sidelined and scorned by the bulk of their own parties. The key thing Americans have to learn is that generally voting neither Democrat nor Republican will end this cycle of wars that has been approved by the vast majority of politicians in both parties. Its time to try something different.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

49 Congresspeople Who'd See You Starve to Save a Warplane.

Caucus forms to save the F-35 from budget cuts by T.W. Farnam @ Washington Post.

Reps. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) and Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) announced the formation of a Congressional Joint Strike Fighter Caucus with 49 members from both parties. Its purpose: to protect funding for the F-35 stealth fighter. The plane, as the most expensive weapons program in history, is one of the biggest potential targets in the defense budget.

The members of the caucus are also some of the top recipients of political money from the company that designs and builds the fighter, Lockheed Martin. The company’s political action committee and its employees have given the caucus members $1.3 million in political contributions over their careers, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

We are told over and over again that there is no money to help Americans. Bankers got bailed out, but everyone else is told 'tough luck'. There's no money for jobs. There's no money to stop foreclosures. There's no money to extend unemployment benefits. There's no money for anything like a New Deal for Americans. In fact, not only are we told that there's no money to provide any help at all to struggling Americans, but we are told that we are the ones who have to pick up the bill from the deficit caused by the bank bailouts, the wars and the runaway defense budget.

In the midst of this situation, this group of 49 congresspeople stands up and basically gives the finger to the American people. They declare that a hunk of metal in the shape of a warplane, a warplane that has absolutely no role in what we are told is the great threat to Americans, ie, the Terror Wars, is more important that the jobs, homes and survival of Americans.

Want to know why America is in so much trouble these days? Here's 49 reasons why.




Torture, Obama style

Report Confirms Bahrain’s Brutal Crackdown, Use of Torture

An independent commission in Bahrain has issued a report on the massive crackdown on pro-democracy protesters earlier this year, faulting the government for brutality against the dissidents as well as the broad use of torture against detainees.

“A number of detainees were tortured,” confirmed the commission’s head, M. Cherif Bassiouni. The report detailed the use of electric shocks and beatings against arrested protesters, and that at least 700 of the detainees are still in custody.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is trying to overcome opposition and get a $53 billion arms deal for Bahrain to go through. Pressure from people who don't like murderers and torturers nearly as much as Obama does has gotten the deal 'delayed'. But remember, the deal wouldn't exist at all without Obama and official Washington support. So, 'delayed' just means that Obama thinks the heat is on and he wants to delay it until some slow news day like around Christmas when no one is paying attention. Obama worked the same tactic on his aid to the murderers and torturers in Honduras when Obama supported their overthrow of the democratically elected government and tried to quash the radical concept of the people having a say in their own constitution there.

Apparently being a murderer and a torturer is the way to get to be Obama's buddy. There's not a leftist nor peace activist in the world that he apparently will talk to. One never hears of peace activists being invited to the White House to have a long and frank talk with the President. But, he's happy to talk with Republicans. Obama has protected all of Bush era torturers from any prosecution, and he seems to love people like the King of Bahrain who go out and turn loose the secret police on his own people.

Of course, since Obama is doing the exact same thing to the Occupy movement here in the states, I guess that isn't really a surprise. Or shouldn't be. I'm sure there are still plenty of Obama-bots out there who manage to never to see Obama's love of torturers and who probably support Obama's turning the police loose on Americans who want simply freedom, democracy, change and hope.