Total number of comments: 27 (since 2013-11-28 15:54:43)
Razer Ray
I fully subscribe to, AND ACT ON, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Principle IV eg. “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”
Website: http://auntieimperial.tumblr.com/
I said it at Tumblr (using your quote Mark) and I'll say it here:
The Vietnamese whipped American *ss with punji sticks, tiger traps, WWII vintage weapons (incl the agricultural dike protection ack-ack ‘Hanoi’ Jane Fonda posed on to the dismay of the US government), and sandals made from the tires of stolen jeeps.
They distracted our early Automated Battlefield systems consisting of a vial full of bedbugs with a tiny mic and transmitter that would transmit the noise of the active bugs when humans were near, by pee-ing on the foliage causing multi-zillion dollar airstrikes to be called in on… Nothing. An occasional unfortunate Water Buffalo.
The Iraqis did a pretty good job of forcing a US ‘planned withdrawal’ using propane bombs and IEDs twith common automotive freeze plugs for armor penetrators.
Israel doesn’t have the economic ‘depth’ to continue for long. Iran is waiting in the economic shadows and when the US can no longer afford to, politically or economically, continue to support it’s client state in the Middle East, Israel will simply collapse under it’s own untenability, by it’s own dependence on a war economy that was simple to attack by the use of primitive inexpensive weapons by the opposition.
Read my tweet. The Palestinians could never have survived this long if they didn't know how to do public relations.
:
> Tomorrow: #Netanyahu on @CNN State of the Union & #PLO US rep Amb. Maen Rashid Areikat on @CBS “Face the Nation http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/12/sunday-breakfast-menu-july-13/?partner=rss&emc=rss … #Gaza
https://twitter.com/AuntieImperial/status/488042077196787714
As an aside from the "Left Coast" of the US, youths everywhere are finding themselves under the socioeconomic 'gun'. Not just in Iraq, or Spain.
Where I live (Central coast of California beach/college town) their are more teen alcoholics, junkies and speedfreaks than adult, and in my estimation it's due to their growing up instinctively 'knowing' that the economic circumstances here (intentionally created by city policy to maximize commercial property interest profits) WILL NOT allow them to raise the next generation in the town they were raised due to lack of jobs that can literally pay the rent, and affordable housing.
The business district is ALL facework tacitly 'reserved' for UC students, along with housing that a transient student or businessperson on contract in the Bay Area can afford... because they can deduct a good portion from their taxes, but the bag boy at the local supermarket cannot.
So they 'hit the escape button'.
70% of the rather large homeless population here was either born and raised here of were working and housed here when they became homeless.
The city and county have done literally nothing over the years to ameliorate the problems. Instead they attempt to 'ameliorate their displaced workers' by driving them away with nuisance laws that criminalize the behavior caused by their economic situation (camping laws for instance... including a law that legally prevents one from even covering up with a blanket after dark... No lapwarmers... got that?).
I think local kids, Iraqi kids, the kids in Spain and many other nations, have more in common than they may be aware of.
If they ever DO become aware... Remember the movie "Wild In The Streets"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_in_the_Streets
Don't trust anyone over 13.
Iraq... remember Iraq?
Bombed back to the stone age.
It's former government uprooted, hunted down, and killed or imprisoned. Leaving it a socially, culturally, and economically destroyed nation, and all of that done based on nothing but lies?
The Pentagon, an now you, say we're leaving.
Reluctantly:
But we really aren't going to be gone at all:U.S.military presence will continue in Iraq
By Walter Pincus November 21 2011
The last 24,000 U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Iraq in the next few weeks so that most can be home before Christmas.
The departure is required by the 2008 Iraq-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement signed by Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then-President George W. Bush and approved by the Iraqi parliament, giving it the status of law.
Meanwhile, don’t believe those agonized voices on Capitol Hill complaining that “having won the war” President Obama is “about to lose the peace” because he didn’t negotiate well enough with Maliki to allow 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops to remain.
There will be a U.S. military presence. The Office of Security Cooperation (OSC), operating under the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, will have several hundred military personnel, and at least an equal number or more U.S. contractors, who will work with Iraqi security forces. Ongoing negotiations with Iraq about OSC activities will determine exact staffing numbers.
Normally, such an office would focus on training for the $8 billion in equipment that Iraq has purchased from U.S. companies. Under current plans, the OSC will do much more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/usmilitary-presence-will-continue-in-iraq/2011/11/18/gIQAJAWBjN_story.html
Would it sway your opinion about Syria's use of their military to suppress a revolt by elements SOME SAY are western financed if I mentioned that one of America's ostensible allies is doing EXACTLY the same thing right now?
How about if I throw in the fact that SecDef Leon Panetta, as one of his last acts as director of the CIA over-rode the wishes of that same country's US ambassador and committed to a drone strike that killed thirty eight civilians and probably qualifies as premeditated first degree murder and felony reckless endangerment/Mayhem?
Both sources Foreign Policy magazine Morning Brief... today.
I'll have MORE GASAHOL puhleese!
Here's a bit of philosophical grist for the mill. I live in California quite near a grove of Manarch butterfly roosting trees where they stop yearly in their migration when it gets cold. An amazing spectacle that people come from all over the region and state to see... Eucalyptus trees covered in layers and layers of Monarchs with their wings imperceptibly vibrating to develop a column of moving air to keep them from freezing in the cold.
The layers are getting thinner. It appears a particular GMO corn (Monsanto BT for gasahol to be specific) has pollen that kills the Monarch's larvae and the Mexican agribiz interests have invested heavily in type of corn... That the butterglies pass over on their migration route.
Mexicans find they're paying a higher price for tortillas and El Norte gets the ethanol... and a diminshing butterfly population.
MEANWHILE, the state of California upped the amount of ethanol allowed in California's gas mix further dooming the Monarchs in their overflight of Mexico even as the tourists drive to the trees wondering where all the butterflies went.
For the most part they'd just stare at you in disbelief or anger if you ever indicated their own lifestyle was responsible for the fact there aren't many butterflies left.
...and as the layers that the Monarchs roost on the trees in get thinner, more of them die, even further diminishing their number.
People... Whatareyagonnado!
It is a sad day for the Social Justice movement... Better Work For Peace, 'cause peace ain't comin' this way.
FWIW, I spent a decade and a half doing audio reinforcement for live performances in Central California, and one of the first gigs I ever worked was in 1982/3 for KUSP Santa Cruz community radio doing sound and a live broadcast of Gil Scott-Heron from Soledad prison. Like BB King, Gil Scott-Heron was a tireless worker for social justice and DID NOT forget his brothers imprisoned in America's gulags.
RIP Gil Scott-Heron. You will be remembered.
"And so it seems to me most likely that the US will have to leave..."
You left out the best part. It's the unspoken "...and don't let the door hit you on the as@# on the way out."
I think the Iraqis have been INCREDIBLY tolerant of our presence since day 1... and all the days after in which we demolished their country and society... Literally, either allowed the looting of, or built military bases on top of (Babylon) their 'antiquities' and cultural history,an in some many other ways acted like the Imperial Invaders we really were (are).
What was it Woodrow Wilson said on the eve of WWI? Quoting Cobb: "Once lead this people into war," Wilson predicted, "and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless,"
Wilson suggested thereafter that the US Constitution "would not survive" and Americans would revert to barbarism.
I think our war on Iraq for no legally valid reason ever stated publicly and proved not to be a total fabrication is the proof of that, and more.
You REALLY believe his officers will turn due to the inability to use armor? Really?
Also, by what part of the UN resolution was anyone allowed to interfere with normal (if war is the new 'normal') movement of personnel and armor?
Don't bother answering that question unless you can quote the provision and have a bulletproof(sic) legal presentation based on precedent. I've already heard enough 'spew' from people about their willingness to involve themselves in OTHER PEOPLE'S civil wars.
Or perhaps the resolution is just like the 'just another piece of paper' George W. Bush spoke of when he referred ...to the U.S. Constitution.
Thousands? I take issue with the semantic of describing a crowd of HUNDREDS of thousands as "Thousands".
Now back to our regularly scheduled program, al Jazeera English live.
Ahmadinejad is going to coerce the rest of OPEC? MAYBE Venezuela will simply move 'in solidarity', but Saudi Arabia? Seriously.
Also, the LAST THING any oil producing country (and Iran IS one of those) OR major end user wants are 'amplified' effects. The only sensible thing most oil producing nations want is price stability. The same on the corporate side of the equation. It allows them to rationally plan their cash flows.
FWIW, that's what the Neocons complain OPEC does not do. Adequately control the fluctuations in price caused by the leading and lagging (and imaginary intangible) datums used to calculate their oil production.
The good professor fails to mention that albeit the Iranians are turning back fuel trucks to Afghanistan affecting our war effort, which I OBVIOUSLY DO NOT SUPPORT, it saves Iran's environment, being polluted by the NECESSARY-DUE-TO SANCTIONS use of High Aromatic Gasoline, which does NOT burn clean, for electrical generation use, as recently reported by the NY Times and others.
This fuel will be used by Iran, for Iranians now... as it should be, until the sanctions based on a known non-existent nuclear weapons program are lifted.
A young friend of mine tagged me in this video when she shared it on facebook.
My comment to her (a college girl and lefty with somewhat of an interest in foreign service):
He's asking some hard questions about jurisdiction.
Juan Cole did that a while back
wikileaks-and-the-new-mccarthyism-maybe-we-just-need-a-more-open-government
...and also reiterated with a recent post using this video.
You know, they don't care about any of that "Jurisdiction" stuff.
Threaten their vested interests enough and they'll be glad to train a JSOC hit squad ESPECIALLY for you too! A waterboard with your name on it and a one-way ticket to Guantanamo could be another option.
As my status says today:
"You're supposed to be like an army.... a DIPLOMATIC army. If you can't keep your MF mouth shut about what you think of the second asst vice president to the Chancellor of Bratislavia... Then you HAVE NO BUSINESS IN THE BUSINESS... So to speak."
Personally I'm thoroughly enjoying the take down of the US diplomatic shadow government(no quotes intentional).
More about the 'shadow' thing at the bottom.
But about lying ...
It's complicated... Ever since humankind first started waxing philosophical someone has promulgated the concept of "The Noble Lie". [Wikipedia link]
...and someone has called them on it.
In the late 20th ad early 21st centuries it happens to the be promulgated through the Neocons, Leo Strauss, European Jew. [Wikipedia link]
In the other corner, for the 'left' was Hannah Arendt, who told him "The kind of world you visualize wouldn't have a place for a Jew like you." about his philosophic underpinnings [Wikipedia link, but quote source Adbusters magazine]
Arendt had also had gone to Jerusalem to see Adolph Eichmann on trial in his glass cube [IMAGE] and commented "I expected to see a hideous monster... but all I saw was a withered little man in spectacles", speaking of the culpability of the average person in German society for the 'Holocaust', in the endgame of what some of those noble lies (such as the demon-ization of Jews as threats to German society) had wrought.
She wrote an essay on it. "A Report On The Banality of Evil". [Wikipedia link]
IN a VERY similar sense we are demon-izing Iran right now in the American public eye, through Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in collusion with the 'Neocons', the philosophical descendants of Leo Strauss.
In an interview a few years ago, Strauss' daughter quipped that Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, and others, some of whom had actually studied under Strauss at Chicago (Wolfowitz for one), "weren't fit to shine her father's shoes."
Their "shadow" policies are going to get us into our next war.
Vicious morons with half-knowledge and half-truths in charge you know. Sociopaths self-select. They rise to the top.
They think they're "doing it all for us."
@ Kevin... It's ON!
"Hackers take down site of bank that froze WikiLeaks funds".
Fetch my trusty steed!
Furthermore... The other option is more, umn, Stalin-esque, with bureaucrats in mass numbers being taken out and shot.
I jest... but let me expound...
There a reason why Stalin said "For some, four walls are three to many"
When the Czarist government fell, there was scant little time, and no history of demoratic decison making, and IF the early Russian leaders took too long changing their previously feudal (?) system, the Czarist apparatchik would sabotage every thing they did... eventually destroying the young government and turning back the hands of time.
I've seen a recent analysis of why Center-Left governments are falling apart around the world...
The Democratic Party Debacle and the Demise of the Left-Center Left
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/3480/
Because they inherited booby-trapped... scratch that for the sake of argument... inherently flawed political and economic systems, and never bothered changing them.
We have more time than the Bolshevieks, and a long history of somewhat democratic tradition... but the American Shadow Government STILL needs to go. NOW!
Ecuador is quite willing to offer Julian Assange asylum.
Apparently, they saw something in SOUTHCOM's cables they needed to know.
Let's get something straight...
I AM an Anarchist.
I DO NOT consider "government in general to be a crime."
I DO HOWEVER consider the American government to be criminal... for quite a few decades now, if not since inception, for some seriously valid reasons if we judge our government's operations by it's own laws.
I ALSO THINK The Economist called it EXACTLY right.
What we are seeing here is the international public 'outing' of the American Shadow Government (no quotes intentional), and I for one, applaud that.
Sort of like the CIA, right?
Because THEY WERE CIA.
Right?
AFAICT, they're doing a GREAT job of supplying our Foreign Policy rationale for Central Asia, "where the Gas Pipes are", and the Middle East, "Where the Oil Wells are" and perhaps should STILL be on the CIA's payroll for doing that yeoman's work if they were ever actually relieved of duty.
(Removing tongue from cheek now)
Adversity breeds maturity.
That could also explain A LOT of what's wrong in American society, including why their so scared-while-deriding America's poor and homeless.
Amen to that last sentence. Henry Kissinger is just one in a looong line of War Criminals (General Sheridan... President Jackson entirely ignoring US law and the Congress on native 're-settlement'. Obama... Who has knowingly increased UAV attacks in areas known to contain large numbers of civilians indistinguishable from 'insurgents' and ordered American citizens 'executed' without trial.)
We're STILL breeding them.
I've linked this post here, and here along with other useful information such as:
"It's OUR war, but it's THEIR secret - The White House is not giving any details of yesterday's meeting on our AfPak war. But one thing IS known... our strategy has failed completely and dramatically."
And: "The AMERICAN war in Iraq continues as US extraction troops are called in to extricate Iraqi police and soldiers involved in a long battle with 'insurgents'... You know... The citizens of Iraq.
To wit... The "Headline Of The Day": US ‘Non-Combat’ Mission in Iraq: Heavily Armed US Troops Clash with Insurgents"
The (audio) commentary topic of the day is: "The Republicans - 'Crooks And Pimps' Who Have Done Incredible Damage To America"
Auntie Imperial
I've linked to this post here, and here.
The commentary topic for the day: September 03 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Bank Run In Afghanistan - What WILL Be Left When The Bank Has Been Run And Looted?
Also, in light of the recently disappeared 'oil sheen' at yesterday's Gulf drilling rig fire, and BP's attempt at blackmailing America's taxpayers (ie. "We keep drilling in the Gulf or we MAY NOT be able to pay for the Deepwater cleanup"), I've attempted satire on the topic at the bottom of those posts. Introducing "Sheen-B-Gone"!
Last I knew... "Mostly confined to bases" is a hoax and a lie as well.
In a picture.
Are you old enough to remember what an "Advisor" was in Vietnam?
If you are, then you MUST be aware that they are ABSOLUTELY 'combat troops'.
Like these:
"President Obama reaffirmed on Monday that the US would have all combat troops out of Iraq by the end of August,"
Really? "Obama did not say that all the combat troops were leaving (Iraq) this month. He certainly didn’t say this yesterday, and to my knowledge he has never said it."
..and FWIW, in Afghanistan, we just lost our main supply route due to the weather: August 03 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Our Military Prospects In Afghanistan Just Went From Bad To Nil - 'Mother Nature'... The History Maker
As in the growth in demand for Western marketed iPods manufactured by indentured, abused labor in (insert third world sweatshop nation name here)?
THAT kind of (consumer capitalist) economic growth?
More power to them.
OK... maybe you'll believe Popular Science magazine... quoting Reuters.
http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2009-09/your-prius-hogging-all-rare-metals#
I think the link is quite descriptive.
One way or another professor, America will have to keep KILLING for it's NIMBY 'lifestyle'.
You may be OK with that... But I'm NOT!
In other words, it's still another reason to rationalize our own continued destabilizing presence.
What do you mean by "looks like", and "insurgency"?
It IS a successful COUNTER-insurgency.
Don't forget who invaded who, and how desperately the US is looking for a graceful way out, even WITH Russian logistical support.