Tag archive for "News"

Strangelove-war room

Big Business, Military, Opinion, War

A Cavalcade of Crazy Explores Some Slip-ups

No Comments 23 June 2010

“Mr. President, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.” These famous words of support were, of course, offered by Gen. Buck Turgidson, played by George C. Scott, in the classic black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, after a rogue U.S. Air Force general subverted America’s “fail-safe” system and sent a wing of nuclear-armed bombers to annihilate the Russians.

This seemed an appropriate intro to General McChrystal’s meeting today with President Obama, where the general’s attempt to explain numerous slip-ups to his Commander-In-Chief predictably resulted in dismissal. Scott’s line is also the lead-in to my reaction to a piece sent to me by Bob Kincaid, host of our favorite nightly progressive radio show on the HORN, describing our pay-offs to Afghan travel agents–otherwise known as insurgents and warlords–to safeguard passage for our military convoys. In a campaign fraught with mistakes and distorted vision, buying into protection rackets which invariably end up funding our enemy seems like another in a series of tragic slip-ups.

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104628.html?hpid=topnews

After you look at the story, try to re-read the opening sentence of paragraph six without making those gurgling noises we’re so fond of here at A Cavalcade of Crazy. No disagreement with that senior official here. After nine years and over 1100 American casualties, I think we need to give it more time. It’s just too early to tell. And all along, I thought U.S. Army trucks still transported the U.S. Army. Where have I been? Actually, I’m having trouble understanding what the program is at all, anymore.

Once again, we are totally out of our element. Here we are, once more, Third World invaders in a classic relationship-based country. News flash: The illegal heroin trade trade originates there. In addition to lacking a legitimate government–rather a huge obstacle to our success–Afghanistan has no, well, rules–no dependable legal structure with the incentives to chase down the bad guys. Were we expecting to go over some contracts with village leaders? These people conduct business on a handshake, plain and simple. Friends and enemies can change every day. This place has ground up everybody in history who’s tried to mess with them. On the surface, maybe greasing palms is a good idea.

Unfortunately, these tactics just sink us deeper into the quagmire. We’re not going to change any hearts and minds, let alone institute our democratic form of government for which they’ve been waiting so breathlessly for centuries, by buying them off. Of course if anyone reading this still believes we do this to spread democracy, we can find you some hogs to wash. Our military has and continues to be for rent at the pleasure of big business, for dirty resources and dirty money. We are up to our necks, past our necks, into where one hoped by now we would have discovered a brain, with the puppet Karzai and this scene of total madness. Do we even need to mention just how critically we must to attend to our own backyard, that it is redundant and ridiculous to even consider foreign entanglements?

The American people know nothing good can come from this. But we’re not in charge anymore, and haven’t been since the Industrial Age aristocrats opened up branch banking in Washington, D.C. This is corporatism at its finest. The fabulous New World Order. What’s Good for GM is Good for America–and the rest of the solar system, no doubt. Admittedly, GM’s stock price is a little low right now for such grandiose claims. Oh well, we all got the point.

Ah, the enduring Gilded Age. There’s so much in it for everyone, isn’t there?

In related news, let’s follow the Senate as they obstruct the latest unemployment extension benefits. Evidently, keeping the jobless remnants of our once-stalwart middle class alive is not on the agenda. It’s so difficult, these days, to get sustained help for life, but there’s always plenty of cash available for death.

We might as well be fighting space aliens on one of the moons of Saturn. Imagine the weekly briefing sometime in 2410: “Well General, how’s the mission on Titan coming along? What’s your assessment after 14 years of bloody warfare?”

“Well, we’re still taking it to them, although it would be easier if there was anything like a legitimate government or legal system up here. But we’re pressing on, and securing as much crazillium-7 as we can.”

“Sir, we understand United Crazillium is poised to make a fortune with the exclusive rights to sell this amusing and revolutionary energy source. Is that still our goal?”

“God willing. Their contractors have been working with us from the outset. Lord knows, they’ve written enough checks to right people.”

Four hundred years from now, those choosing to review the failed campaign on Titan will no doubt reflect on the history we ignored centuries before–and were thus doomed to repeat–of the conflict on a similarly hostile and formidable world known as Afghanistan.

Reverbo                                                                                                                                                                 Critic-At-Large

Government/Politics, Middle East, Video

Video: Watering the Tree of Iranian Liberty – NSFW

No Comments 21 June 2009

Warning! the Following Video purports to depict the Ultimate Sacrifice of an Iranian Woman in the cause of that Nation’s struggle for self determination.

[youtube vlehNLfk90c&ytsession=NkMfFFQMdFeXTsvIoHsewxXS-oXy6I7hZDNU4BPh2rQRzuORRjMkqPa4az-izT_0tD3EOxtumKmpXLdCuIXNBr-gcXFQ5PhNk68B1HLWoCJIECxWABAgs4j8wp0IeJS3AEZz3gPXREDUA7DGRvQCx_n7P0h_fRbtdrTomw42vLNjtXsaDejJQYOiRIIQ6kIMvkXgycE14IwCr49pSXKs9blsH_bShzzd0hhNsHcKAXS1R1o1Ao6aKZWDLoy5Hd0HdVELUQmIhxUABOctE1c-izWBWTGx67QPGsrIxZ6-BSuuSSFI1zWg3SmFwbEFA7UA]

After Iranian Elections, Protest and Backlash

Government/Politics

After Iranian Elections, Protest and Backlash

No Comments 15 June 2009

By Robert Fisk, The Independent:

First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi’s supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man’s face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles. It was the same all the way down to Vali Asr Square. Riot police in black rubber body armour and black helmets and black riot sticks, most on foot but followed by a flying column of security men, all on brand new, bright red Honda motorcycles, tearing into the shrieking youths – hundreds of them, running for their lives. They did not accept the results of Iran’s presidential elections. They did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 per cent of the votes. And they paid the price.

“Death to the dictator,” they were crying on Dr Fatimi Street, now thousands of them shouting abuse at the police. Were they to endure another four years of the smiling, avuncular, ever-so-humble President who swears by democracy while steadily thinning out human freedoms in the Islamic Republic? They were wrong, of course. Ahmadinejad really does love democracy. But he also loves dictatorial order. He is not a dictator. He is a Democrator.

Yesterday wasn’t the time for the finer points of Iranian politics. That Mir Hossein Mousavi had been awarded a mere 33 per cent of the votes – by midday, the figure was humiliatingly brought down to 32.26 per cent – brought forth the inevitable claims of massive electoral fraud and vote-rigging. Or, as the crowd round Fatimi Square chorused as they danced in a circle in the street: “Zionist Ahmadinejad – cheating at exams.” That’s when I noticed that the police always treated the protesters in the same way. Head and testicles. It was an easy message to understand. A smash in the face, a kick in the balls and Long Live the Democrator.

Many of the protesters – some of them now wearing scarves over their faces, all coloured green, the colour of Mousavi’s campaign – were trying to reach the Interior Ministry where the government’s electoral council were busy counting (or miscounting, depending on your point of view) Friday’s huge popular national vote. I descended into the basement of this fiercely ugly edifice – fittingly, it was once the headquarters of the Shah’s party, complete with helipad on the roof – where cold chocolate lattes and strawberry fruitcake were on offer to journalists, and where were displayed the very latest poll results, put up at 10.56am Iranian time.

Eighty per cent of the votes had been counted and the results came up as Ahmadinejad 64.78 per cent; Mousavi 32.26 per cent; Mohsen Rezai (a former Revolutionary Guard commander) 2.08 per cent; and Mehdi Karoubi (a former parliament speaker) a miserable 0.89 per cent. How could this be, a man asked me on a scorching, dangerous street an hour later. Karoubi’s party has at least 400,000 members. Were they all sleeping on Friday?

There were a few, sparse demonstrators out for the Democrator, all men, of course, and many of them draped in the Iranian flag because the Democrator – devout Muslim as he always displays himself – wrapped his election campaign in the national flag. Each of these burly individuals handed out free copies of the execrable four-page news-sheet Iran.

“Ahmadinejad,” the headline read, “24 million votes. People vote for Success, Honesty and the Battle against Corruption.” Not the obvious headline that comes to mind. But Mousavi’s Green Word newspaper allegedly had its own headline dictated to it by the authorities – before they shut it down yesterday: “Happy Victory to the People.” And you can’t get more neutral than that.

-Article Continues @ Source.

Rochester, NY Hickey-Freeman Workers vote to stage Sit In if Bank Shutters Plant

Labor, The Banks

Rochester, NY Hickey-Freeman Workers vote to stage Sit In if Bank Shutters Plant

1 Comment 17 May 2009

The 450 Workers of Rochester’s Hickey-Freeman voted Unanimously to stage a sit in at their work places if Wells-Fargo shuts down the plant or liquidate the company:

“There are a lot of married couples that work here. If they lost their jobs, their families would be devastated,” said Debbie Glinski, who has worked at Hickey-Freeman in Rochester for 15 years. “These banks received bail out money and that came from taxpayers like us. We helped them out and they need to help us out too.”

“We want to work. We’re willing to sit-in-and do more if necessary-to keep working,” said 50-year Hickey-Freeman employee Fred Cotraccia.

The Hickey-Freeman plant have been members of the Workers United Local for 90 Years.

Courtesy Workers United.

Good Luck and good fortitude guys, I, and many others are pulling for you. -Shinai.

Appeals Court Declines to Hear Siegelman Case

Government/Politics, State and Local, The Courts

Appeals Court Declines to Hear Siegelman Case

No Comments 15 May 2009

Former AL Governor Don Siegelman appears to be headed back to Jail now that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to hear his appeal:

“[Siegelman] goes back for re-sentencing now. It will be difficult for him to stay out of jail because it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will hear this case,” Horton said.

Courtesy Rawstory.

Obama Drug Czar Calls for an End to the Drug War.

American Society, Government/Politics, State and Local, War

Obama Drug Czar Calls for an End to the Drug War.

No Comments 14 May 2009

The Wall Street Journal Covers the call by Gil Kerlikowske of the White House office on National Drug control Policy, to End the Drug War:

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

The article goes on to examine what this could mean as well as Reaction to Mr. Kerlikowske’s Statement. As usual it pays to be skeptical, this is after all a Murdoch owned Paper.  But it would be great if this shift is allowed to happen. Heres to Hoping. -Shinai.

New York Assembly Passes Gay Marriage Bill

Government/Politics, State and Local

New York Assembly Passes Gay Marriage Bill

1 Comment 13 May 2009

Word comes via the New York Times, that the New York State Assembly has passed Same Sex Marriage Legislation:

The final vote was 89 to 52….

According to the Article, the battle for Marriage Equality now heads to that state’s Senate.  Where both sides are gearing up for major fight, including Television ads to sway public opinion.  Best of luck to all you committed couples in New York State.

-Shinai.

Obama, Notre Dame and Abortion

Government/Politics

Obama, Notre Dame and Abortion

No Comments 10 May 2009

Courtesy NYTimes:

Discord is nothing new for Roman Catholicism. But the controversy surrounding the appearance of President Obama at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement on May 17 suggests that run-of-the mill discord among American Catholics is escalating into something closer to civil war.

Just watch that airplane circling over the famous Golden Dome of Notre Dame’s Main Building and the spire of the university’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart. The plane pulls a banner with a picture of an aborted fetus.

The group flying the banner is unhappy not just with the university but also, according to a spokesman quoted in The South Bend Tribune, with “the pro-life community at Notre Dame.”

“If they were doing a good job of reaching the campus,” he said, “it’s unlikely Obama would have been invited.”

Now listen to Bishop Robert W. Finn, bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese in Missouri. “We are at war!” he told an anti-abortion convention on April 18. “We are engaged in a constant warfare with Satan.”

-Article Continues…

May Day around the Globe

Economy, Feature, Labor, Video

May Day around the Globe

No Comments 02 May 2009

[youtube FsWNFdUQfhs]
May Day 2009 Protests in Instanbul, Turkey.

More videos and commentary at Raw Story.

Congressional GOPers Fought Pandemic Prep

Congress, Government/Politics, Health, State and Local

Congressional GOPers Fought Pandemic Prep

1 Comment 27 April 2009

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year’s emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

Now, as the World Health Organization says a deadly swine flu outbreak that apparently began in Mexico but has spread to the United States has the potential to develop into a pandemic, Obey’s attempt to secure the money seems eerily prescient.

And his partisan attacks on his efforts seem not just creepy, but dangerous.

-Article Continues, courtesy: The Nation.

Editorial Comment: Bastards!

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